Sometimes I get so sick of the Internet that I want to kill it.

As a perfect example of my frustration, I have been plagued by Firefox slowdowns which have grown steadily worse since I was forced to largely stop using Internet Explorer. This started with sluggishness whenever I tried to type URLs in the Firefox URL location bar, and then the sluggishness got worse and worse (such problems don't get better over time, do they?) and finally it spread to serious sluggishness whenever I enter text anywhere, including Google search terms.

My temper finally reached the boiling point when I found that I could no longer write blog posts in a normal manner in Firefox. I try typing something, and I can enter as many as ten characters without them appearing at all! They appear a few seconds later. Maddening.

Worrying that it might be a virus or a RAM problem, as a comparison experiment I opened bad old Internet Explorer (an old, outmoded version which caused so many problems I had to switch to Firefox). IE was totally normal, and characters I entered appeared immediately, just as quick as a whip!

So I Googled and found a long discussion of my problem here. Apparently, I need to clear my history. The problem is, I don't want to clear my history, as I'll lose passwords and all that crap I don't remember.

But no problem! They say that all I need to do is download and run something called "MozillaHistoryView" and run it:

Export Firefox Browsing History
1. Download MozillaHistoryView and run it.
2. You can either export it to text or HTML format. For HTML format, go to View and select "HTML Report - All Items". For text file, go to Edit and click on Select All. Then go to File and select Save Selected Items.

This Web page has been identified as Dangerous.

What you can do:
>
For your own safety, please close this web browser window now and never return to this website.
>
If you still want to see this blocked page:

1. Launch Trend Micro Internet Security console.
2. Click Internet & Email Controls.
3. Click the Settings... link under Protection Against Web Threats.
4. Click the Approved websites link in the next window that opens.
5. Copy and paste the address of the blocked website into the list.

I installed it, ran it, and guess what? MozillaHistoryView itself hangs! So there's no way to save a backup of my history or anything, and I had to go through a long and stupid process just to turn off the stupid MozillaHistoryView.

When we were cave men, we could just kill stuff when we got pissed.

Looks like I'm going to have to kill my history without ever being able to save it.

It's so sad, but so typical.

MORE: This touches on something I find deeply disturbing, which is that I don't like change.

In a normal, logical, real world, not liking change would tend to make me a conservative. But in a world where conservative means sticking with the dysfunctional Internet Explorer until it dies and progressive means putting all your eggs in the new Firefox until it dies, it's all about having to change, and the idea of simply being left alone and continuing to do what you always did is laughably unrealistic.

Perhaps "conservative" is a poor choice of words for those who find change annoying. I'm thinking that "curmudgeon" might be more like it. Frankly, I find it annoying to be told that I am an "elitist" for not listening to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck.

Fortunately, no one will judge me by my browser preferences.