Opera Unite

Opera Unite... does anyone actually use this?

Jen's new company blocks all of the instant message and web chat functions that we know about. Yesterday I read a report about the release of Opera 10.10 and remembered that Opera Unite has a chat room application. I had set that up a while ago and then never used it. I wondered if that might be useful to the Mrs and I.

I ran the service, sent her a url, and sure enough it was blocked.

I also set up the web server in the hopes that I can use it in place of the now defunct geocities for posting our family Christmas lists. I got that running too. The other cool looking thing is the media server. It would be nice to store my music on my desktop (I already do) and stream it to my computer at work. I got that running again as well.

This morning before leaving I made sure the services were running. When I got to work I went to the appropriate urls... and none of the services are running.

Damn it.

I don't know of anyone else using this. Do you? I was going to post a link to the chat room and then watch with rapt attention as no one logged into it. Stuff like that fascinates me.

***Change of Subject***

Christmas is one month away. Not that any of us could have missed it what with a couple of Boston area radio stations having switched to all Christmas music formats weeks ago, and every store in the world (not literally, it just seems that way) running massive Pre-Thanksgiving Christmas shopping advertising campaigns.

I hate that. Thanksgiving is a great holiday and we belittle it in the name of Christmas induced commerce. If you believe the adverts we have nothing at all to be thankful for beyond the chance to get screwed over by a huge retail chain giving false promises of unreal black Friday savings. It really is shameful.

Don't blow off Thanksgiving folks. Enjoy it. Once it's over you can start worrying about Christmas. Don't ruin a good thing.