this extension no longer works - rss feed appears down or broken

Performance is horrible. We're using a synchronous GET call as a band-aid because the async stuff results in no content being loaded. Unfortunately, this has the side effect of the user not being able to interact with their editor once they click "Daily Dilbert", as well as resulting in possibly waiting for a blank modal dialog to populate with an image for several seconds, with no progress animation showing that there's work being done. This could result in the user closing the window thinking that the extension doesn't work when in fact it's just waiting for the necessary image tag to load.