Monday, August 01, 2005

Back to the future or The case of the deleted Firefox history

Last month, on about the 26th or the 27th , I opened Firefox and when I hit Ctrl+h I was shocked to see that the history was blank, clear, empty just like the mind of an Indian politician. It's as if I hadn't been on the world wide web in the past 30 days.( I've set Firefox to remember the history for 30 days) So there I was with a browser that seemed to have suffered a dose of amnesia that would give the impression that it was Leonard Shelby living in a Memento of its own.


For a moment I was stunned and then I cursed a little and got on with things and I didn't think about the problem or else I should have discovered it at that time. People who know me will not be surprised that I didn't think because it's just the way it is with me; thinking is something I don't do often (ok ok at all).


I let things be as they were for a couple of days and my browser picked up new memories. Then I wanted to look up what day of the week a certain date was and so I opened the clock and noticed something quite weird. My computer was running in the month of August while I was sitting in the month of July. And then in a moment of realization's the case of the cleared Firefox history was solved by the the culprit and I kicked myself for not having figured it out earlier.


I had inadvertently changed the month to August while checking the day of certain date in August. This time I changed the month back to July before I clicked 'ok'. And ofcourse the history(may have been history) of the past (future?) 2 days disappeared again thus completing a cycle of living in the future, going back to the past and thus landing in the present.


Moral of the story: The dumbest part of a computer is its user.


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