One morning, shot to hell

I have this weird habit of resisting change at the damnedest times. It took me forever to upgrade from Windows 3.1. I'm still using IE despite all the great things I've heard about Firefox. And I clung to an S1 style of LJ far into the time when S2 was available and better-supported.

But after yet another day where someone's meme had thrown my flist page all out of whack, I decided I should upgrade. This proved to be both easier and more difficult than I imagined. You see, I hate fussy interfaces, and reading against a colored background. I don't want my layout to entertain me; I just want it to be restful to look at and easy on the eyes. Neither did I want something completely stark and barren that looked like a text-only page from 1998.

Which meant that I spent the morning screwing around with design and color and customization. When I really meant to spend it getting a workout.

I have to say that the LJ people have made it pretty easy to customize the things that matter most to me - view 50 entries instead of 20, change the colors and the text. It's just the fussiness of the final tweaking that could use the help of preview pop-ups ("better this way...or this way?"). Change, Save, Preview, dislike and back up, that's time-consuming.

I'm not 100% happy with it. But I'm hoping it'll mean that my pages don't get tweaked quite so often.

Shocked disbelief for the friend of a friend

The phrase "died in childbirth" just isn't part of our vocabulary anymore. The little shadow that clouds joyous expectation is pretty much reserved for the baby. Babies still die now and then, or arrive less than perfect. But no one really worries about the fate of the mother.

I'm sorry for your loss, Lyss.

Joss Whedon is my master now

Serenity in 2000 Words.

Don't click through unless you've seen it - or are willing to have every plot point revealed. But it comes under the category of amusing. It's not up to Movies in 15 Minutes quality, but I got a couple giggles out of it.

(Stolen from aehallh.)