Microsoft, Google and Blogger.com: "I Hate You Each, I Hate You All"

(Subject line is a play on LA mayor Villareconquista's address to huge gathering of illegal aliens, in which he said, "I love you each . . I love you all.")

I sat down at my computer this morning ready to blog. It had been a long time and I had several humorous things to write. I was eager to jump in.

I went to blogger.com. It gave me the choice of logging in with my old Blogger account, or a new G-Mail account. Blogger has recently broken their service so you have to use G-Mail. Excuse me, that's UPGRADED their service.

I hate G-Mail.

G-Mail's big feature is that you can - or rather, you don't have a choice to NOT - group e-mails in 'conversations' like threads in a newsgroup. It's a feature that is neither interesting nor useful to me. I guess I'm not in G-Mail's demographic.

I learned about G-Mail from my friend Karl. That was back when you had to be invited by someone before you could have an account. Karl loves G-Mail and has used it ever since. I like Karl fine, but I don't care at all about G-Mail.

So, obviously, I chose to log in with my trusty old Blogger account.

It wouldn't let me log in. The blog had already been switched over to the new G-Mail format, so I HAD to have an account on G-Mail before I got on. In fact, the sole puprose of the old-account-login now seems to be to show you the things you can't get to anymore.

So I off I go to G-Mail. A few minutes later, I have my account. I haven't blogged anything yet, but I have a G-Mail account I don't want.

I get back to blogger.com, and put in my G-Mail address and password.

It takes a loonngg time . . . almost three minutes . . I'm still staring at a title bar, a blanked-out kinda cream-colored window, and a progress bar. After another minute or so, it comes back with some generic error. But wait, my wife's been blogging all morning. I want to play!

My wife offers to log in with my name and password on her computer. I let her, and it comes up with a screen saying service is temporarily unavailable. I am more impressed with Blogger than ever. Not.

I give up, and bring up my favorite text editor and type my blog entries into it before I forget them. No, wait - I reformatted and reinstalled on my computer last night, so the text editor isn't there yet. I grab my CD of favorite apps, install the text editor, THEN type in my entries. I now have an email account I don't want, a newly installed text editor I do want, a couple of saved files on my desktop, but no blogging.

After I finish typing my entries. I come over to my wife's computer. After all she's been blogging all morning. I enter my G-Mail address and password, and . . it logs me right in.

^#$@&$!!

I go back to my computer. Try to log into blogger again. It takes my G-Mail name and password, and . . . and . . . a title bar, a blanked-out kinda cream-colored window, and a progress bar.

I go back to Cindy's computer. Exit blogger, come back in, and . . . it logs me right in.

Clearly, my browser is out of date. I reinstalled, using Windows Update LAST NIGHT, but never mind that. I go to Microsoft's webbages and try to download the newest IE, figuring I'd one-up everyone, get the newest thing, and be able to blog. The Microsoft website says the new IE is for XP. I am running 2000 Pro.

I can't even blog on my own computer!!! I came over to Cindy's computer and did my blogging there, copying over the two files from mine and writing this sitting at her desk.

So, are we all enjoying the new Blogger.com?