I'm currently on the fifth mission, battling the Protoss. I've secured the resources to my right, though I'm not sure if it's well-defended enough. Against the Terrans, sure, yeah, their dropship would be dead before they got a chance to land, but the Protoss ships are faster and have shields. I guess it depends on whether they approach from the south (solid wall of spore colonies) or the north. My main base is decently defended, but not very well, relying a lot on unit support that I'm building up. My main concern at this point is mainly getting my defenses solid so that they can withstand an assault with only minimal support, while also building up my own forces.
To that end, I know there's some crystals to the southwest, where I want to establish a third base. That's one reason I'm not as concerned about my main base; I'm anticipating that once I build down there, the land attacks will shift towards that base. After all, the Protoss can only attack so many locations at once, meaning that my forces only need to be in so many places. I'm not really anticipating that hard of a level. Once I've gotten two or three resource fields, I generally have more at my disposal than the enemies do, and thus, can afford to muster my forces. The Protoss have shields that are annoying, but the Zerg naturally regenerate and from my understanding are much cheaper overall--thus, in a resource battle, so long as I can keep my losses to a minimum, I'll win this match easily.
In much sadder news, going to round dancing tonight, we learned that the people officially running it, who also serve as our teachers giving us the critiques we need to improve, are retiring. The events will still happen, headed by the people who put the dances together as they have since we joined, but...it's just not going to be the same.
And my browser is being so slow that it's basically becoming unusable. :/ It's really frustrating. It's taking dial-up lengths to load things. SETTINGS for the browser should be near-instant and yet are taking that long. Web pages? Even longer. It's ridiculous.
As of this typing, I'm attempting a fix. Which may have just broken it even worse; hard to tell.
In fact, I think I may have crashed it and lost all my tabs. No biggie, since I can mostly list them off. Furthest to the right was two that're my personal site. Next comes two that are devoted to Rain. Then, I believe it's S&W, followed by Gaia, with Vampire Cheerleaders not far behind. Kongregate after that, with the proxy site. Then comes weebly, for this blog, and that's probably missing one or two, but if it was important, I'd remember it.
Anyway, it wasn't past midnight when I began, but it is past midnight now. That should give you an idea of just how utterly my browser is freezing up, and simply put, it's at the point where I'm giving up on it. Like...I'm typing this up, and considering switching to Firefox from Chrome because of how unbearable it's being. I don't know what changed. Chrome used to be much faster than my other browsers, which were laggy and kinda sucked with their features in comparison. Just in case it was an overuse problem, I got rid of everything--and I do mean everything--I had. Not a lick of difference. It still consumed way too much, so now I'm basically going to Firefox for the first time on my current computer. (It was my original browser of choice for my old computer.) It has memory leak issues, and I don't like that ever since version 4 and onward or so it's been nothing but a second-rate Chrome copy (I LIKED Firefox when it was 2-3; I considered it SUPERIOR to Chrome, and then they had to ruin a good thing).
...But at least it freakin' WORKS right now. I just...can't stand what it's become. Eating up half my CPU for no visible reason is just...unacceptable. So the first browser I used on this computer is officially being retired as far as I'm concerned. I've got ClickerHero backups on my computer which I'm hoping will transfer. I wasn't playing actively any other game except Heroes, which is online anyway. Chrome's dead.
And that sucks, because Chrome's been the best browser ever since Firefox and Opera tried to copy it and failed. When FireFox was its own thing, it was cool. It had its quirks, its uniqueness, its beautiful SIMPLICITY and was easy to navigate, compact, and relatively neat. Opera had a TON of neat features, including tab-stacking which I mercilessly abused. Its layout was different from both Firefox and Chrome, but in a GOOD way. Now both are just worse versions of Chrome, which just broke.
I really, really hate how software companies have such a dominance on their consumers. They can do whatever the heck they want to, and get away with it, because the majority of users simply don't have an alternative available. It's technically not a monopoly because technically they are competitors. But they might as well be as far as I'm concerned given the actions they pull. They dominate the market. They all do the exact same things. They don't care.
If I had my way, there would be an option that would work just as well as the other browsers do, but without all the JUNK that those browsers now have put onto us. If I had my way, this browser would be available for free just like the other browsers are, but would have much more freedom in what could be done. Having some of the quirks of the other browsers at their best, and yet being streamlined and simple and not bogged down in the garbage that causes the current browsers to suck so much.
When it comes to physical things, like, say, where we shop, we generally have a choice. We can choose where to go, and thus, stores have for the most part figured out that they need to be as appealing as possible. Everyone wins--the store gets you as a valued customer and you get what you want from them. Yet in software? In software, it seems to be that you don't have a choice. It is what it is. Everyone uses the same basic templates. If you don't use the common names, tough luck. It's just...
Well, infuriating. Now I realize that whatever happened could have been a fault on my end, but I suspect not, given that this problem only began occurring recently, after Chrome updated automatically. (Which it did after my computer's crash, naturally.) It was like a switch. Before, working fine. After, progressively more and more laggy to the point of being unbearably slow. So I really, really don't think it's anything I did on my end, up until the end when I made one last attempt at fixing things in settings. (Which ended up basically removing all of my tabs, as if starting a brand new session from scratch.) What could it be? Literally everything is exactly the same on my end. The only thing it could be is on their end, and there WAS a marked difference in Chrome, with a "you" tab appearing where it hadn't been before and whatnot. If you have a current version of Chrome, you should know where it is, near the minimize/maximize/close buttons.
Even if this is somehow a screw-up on my end and not theirs, though, worth noting is that my rant is all the same still valid. Market diversity is good; browsers entirely lack it now where they once had it a plenty. And sure enough, the quality of each browser (save Chrome, until just now) has gone downhill as a result. Driven by blind ignorance, by greed, I don't know what, but it's pretty dang clear that the people coming up with these ideas don't have to live with them on a day-to-day basis.
As I write this, looking at Firefox...it's just...wow, is it fast in comparison. Still has a minor problem, in that it's got script issues, but the extra speed should help make up for it. Now, mind you, Firefox apparently doesn't have flash in it, which weebly apparently doesn't need to work and yet which is used by weebly anyway (presumably for stuff like facebook and whatnot which I have no need for anyway), meaning once I install it--and I need to, for my games--it might slow down a bit, but daaaaaaaaaaaaaang, Chrome. You really dropped the ball.