Strange/Interesting/Confusing Firefox issue

[PMich]

As I made my way to the forum tonight and opened up the first thread something didn't look right. The offline indicator (the little blue circle at the bottom of the nickname/post count panel) had been replaced with an image of Tux similar to mairving's. It had the message something like "Hello Mr. Gates, I'll be your server this evening" at the top of it. Trying to figure out what was going on, I opened the forum in IE and just the image appeared like it should (little blue circle). Nevertheless, I ran the usual spyware stuff and nothing more than a couple of tracking cookies came up. Got rid of them but no change. Cleared the cache (I'm pretty sure this is where the problem was, but I don't know why) and history; everything is now back to normal. I have been playing with a few firefox extensions the last couple of days which may be the real source of the problem. Not to restate the obvious, but the "insert name here is offline" image had been changed from the blue circle to the Tux pic.

Has anyone else ever seen anything like this? What could be other potential causes of this?

[Statica]

Absolutely no idea what's going on. It is possible that its not an anomaly, but the result of some extension that you've used. Let us know how your searches turn up (I couldnt even begin to reason about what could be wrong)

[rjfvillarosa]

I have seen that little "Hello Mr Gates" icon somewhere else and I can't for the life of me remember where, if I can find it I will let you know, I dont visit a great many sites so it shouldn't be too hard to find.

[Statica]

Seen it on Mairving's icon : http://forum.pcmech.com/member.php?u=1456 .. a slightly different line though

[rjfvillarosa]

Originally Posted by Statica Seen it on Mairving's icon : http://forum.pcmech.com/member.php?u=1456 .. a slightly different line though

I have seen it on a site somewhere, not exactly the same but a similar intrusion to what PMich describes. It wasn't a forum type site because this is the only one I visit and it wasn't here. If I can find it I will let you know.

[glc]

Opera used to do strange things like that with the old vB - replacing icons with someone's avatar. Hasn't happened for a couple of years now. This site is/has been just a bit too IE-centric in some ways.

[WhatsThisBoxFor?]

Someone mentioned this happening before, you could try a search if you want. I seem to remember they cleared the cache, and the problem never came back again.