i HEART firefox so much!! my attempts to convert others, though, have been unfruitful. and i spend 8 damn hours a day in front of this poor corporate box, with no bugmenot plugins or tabbed browsing or anything. makes we want to bring my own laptop to work. i bet these cheapskates would consider that a pretty good idea...

Emily, just install firefox yourself, or wont they let you?

I just switched to sage from #reader as my RSS reader, and I'm much happier.

My favorite firefox plug in is the one that lets you grab a URL, drag it, and it opens up in another tabbed window. Brilliant!

Well, Ennis, it's probably not that simple. At our computer labs (which is how a lot of corporations set up their non-technical workersଁ workstations), ainଁt nothing going on those computers that our tech services staff donଁt put on.
Emilyଁs main recourse, as you/she may already know, is to make nice with someone in the tech department. My rec would be to feign various problems with the computer as excuses to talk to them and play la naive, asking them whether Firefox is really as good as they say, and if itଁs so much more secure than IE, why donଁt they install it at your office? I mean, all of your techie friends, and many of the non-techie ones, swear by it and say that their tech departments even recommend using it over IE. Maybe you could be part of a pilot program to see whether it causes any problems for average users, hmm?
Or you could buy them the Star Wars DVD boxed set.

trip's got it right. they basically treat us like morons here, which drives me berserk. for example, they recently replaced my non-computer-using boss's box even though mine is the one that doesn't work very well. and we run windows 2000, which i think is based on NT, so i can't even install things onto my treo here. or install the treo software--had to call tech support for that. that said, i do have some cred with them, since i usually call knowing how to fix my own problems and just need someone to come up and login as an admin.

i bet they all already have the star wars box set...

Well, I wouldn’t suspect they think of you as morons. “Potential sources of total data catastrophe,” maybe.

Anyway, 2K can be a tricky system to circumvent, since most of the choices they make are done centrally or by making you not an administrator on the machine. As a practical matter, you have the previous-mentioned option and the following:
1) Get a tech guy to login as admin and memorize his keystrokes when he enters his password.
2) Same as 1) except you get him to leave the room while logged in and then you do the install.
3) Same as 2) except you club him over the head while he's logged in. You must have some nice heavy books in your office.

Problem solved.

This would make a good addition to debate day funnery. You should check this out.

www.thepoliticalcircus.com

You pick your candidate and shoot him from a cannon, collecting campaign funds and avoiding political scandal. They have their own "polls" too based on points earned for each candidate. Kerry's in the lead by like 15%.