Jared W. Smith

…and no, I’m not joking, either. The Opera browser is an amazing piece of software; it’s achieved what Mozilla could only dream of — true portability. While Gecko was notable in that it would render largely the same on Mac, Linux, or Windows, Opera takes it a step further and ensures compatibility over a wide variety of devices, including phones, other embedded products, and even the Nintendo Wii. If you visit jaredwsmith.com on a Wii, you’ll see that everything — including the dropdown menus — renders with complete fidelity. This is amazing to me; devices other than Windows PCs used to be a pain to develop for.

It’s not only the portability of Opera that makes it stand out — it’s also the fact that it does not suffer from the performance problems that absolutely dog Firefox in the latest releases. Firefox constantly likes to get on this kick of consuming 100% CPU every five seconds, stalling my typing and general progress in the application. I don’t have many extensions installed, either, so that makes it difficult. Opera just seems snappier, too, and it gives detail about page activity that no browser has given since the days of oldschool Netscape.

It has its downsides — there are far too many Web developers who ignore its presence, so some portions of the Web (particularly those that are not standards-compliant) appear funky. Luckily, though, people have finally embraced the W3C’s standard versus Microsoft’s standard, so this problem is alleviating itself. Opera’s UI also needs some toning down (though that’s easy by switching to the native OS theme).

It’s a great browser. I’d recommend giving it a shot.

During the third quarter of the Chargers-Bears game, I had the lovely idea of going to Taco Bell for a quick fix of crunchy tacos (on Sundays, crunchy tacos are a mere 49 cents at most locations). So, I ventured to the Spring St. Taco Bell Slash KFC.

The trip, overall, sucked. It’s bad when

1. everybody has the same idea as you, and
2. the drive-thru is more dysfunctional than the Manson family.

I was in the line for at least a half hour. I probably could have gotten out of my car and gotten the food faster standing there, but I’ve done that and waited a half hour. And damnit, I wanted cheap tacos. I wasn’t going to spend twice as much going somewhere else for food I wasn’t really craving. So, I stuck it out in the car listening to Ryan Farish and Default (why I’m back to listening to Default all the time, I’ll never know).

After waiting in line for about 15 minutes, I finally reached the order area, where I was met with “One moment.” They must time moments like football games, with timeouts and clock stoppages for change of possession, incomplete orders, etc. because it was about six minutes before I actually got to put in my one line order. I was greeted with “Drive around for your total.” I drove around, where I was stuck behind this giant truck for 20 minutes — they were literally sitting there while the worker held their card hostage for what seemed like forever. When I see them getting their DRINKS after 20 minutes, something is wrong. In the meantime, cars were scattering left and right, saying “F this.” But you know, I was on a mission for taco goodness. I was not going to be discouraged. I was continuing to follow the Chargers game by using the play-by-play function of their mobile website. In this time, they scored another touchdown to seal the deal.

Finally, I got up there to the window, saw my glorious total of less than $5, and waited some more. Hey, if I got this far, what is five more minutes? The actual getting the food went fine, but man…it took nearly a half hour for this ordeal. Ridiculous. I got home and the game was ending. At least I wasn’t abandoned at the ordering area, though — that has actually happened to me before. “One moment” became ten minutes which became “[EXPLETIVE] this.” I hope they get it together up that way.

I’ve had a lot of reservations in the weeks leading up to the kickoff of the NFL season about the performance of the Panthers and the Chargers. The Panthers looked awful in preseason; they looked flat and one-dimensional. The Chargers were entering the 2007 season with almost total turnover of their coaching staff, headed up by Norv Turner, who had won two games as head coach of the Raiders in 2006 and held a 58-82-1 record overall.

After today, I felt a little better. The Panthers, while it appears they still have some work to do, played really well today (especially in the second half) in defeating St. Louis 27-13. I was concerned that it took a whole half (and an injury to Rams offensive lineman Orlando Pace) for the Panthers to put anything resembling pressure on Marc Bulger, but they eventually did. Consider me a fan of new offensive coordinator Jeff Davidson’s new scheme — the Panthers hadn’t called plays that creatively at any time in John Fox’s tenure. Jake Delhomme was as calm as he’s ever been, and he wasn’t running for his life, either. The Rams aren’t a slouch of a team, either. Let’s see how the Panthers do against Houston next week — that will be an interesting game to see Matt Schaub go up against an actual defense for the first time this year. :)

Chargers-Bears was, to put it lightly, quite the defensive exhibition. Both defenses were all over the field, hitting extremely hard and making their presences felt. The Chargers made some crucial mistakes on offense, and it was their defense that did a marvelous job in keeping it a 3-0 game into the half. The Bears had LaDainian Tomlinson’s number throughout the game — but there’s something about that LT. You can’t keep a good man down long, so if he couldn’t run with it, he’d throw it, and throw it he did to Antonio Gates for the go-ahead touchdown (which ended up being the game winner). This is one of those games that also will remind Charger fans just how lucky we are to have Michael Turner spelling Tomlinson in relief. He’s very much a changeup back, almost a perfect compliment to Tomlinson’s style, and he helped soften up the Bear D so that the Chargers could finally make an impact. Fourteen points won’t cut it in that high-octane Charger offense, though, so they do have some work to do. I think today made a good case for Tomlinson to resume taking some reps in the preseason. He’s been held out of preseason the last two years to avoid injury, but it also means he has to find his game shape in the regular season, not exactly the best time to find that.

Keep your thoughts with the Bills and, specifically, tight end Kevin Everett. He underwent surgery for a potentially serious cervical spine injury suffered on the field earlier today after he covered a kickoff. After the violent helmet-to-helmet collision, he showed no signs of movement. It’s a very frightening reminder of just how violent and dangerous football can be.