Monday, December 11, 2006

Oh goody...beta blogger

Since about 15% of me is possessed of a child's fascination with anything that promises to be easier and spiffier, when Blogger offered me--little old me--the chance to upgrade this morning I took it. This despite the other 85%, the Luddite part, who knew no good could ever, ever come from all this messing about. I mean, come on. I'm the girl who freaks out for weeks when Yahoo decides it needs yet another "new look". And no matter how many times they promise it will be easier to navigate, it isn't.

So why then, did I fall for Blogger's promises that changing templates and stuff would be oh so much easier with the new Beta Blogger?

I believe it was for much the same reason poor Charlie Brown tries to kick the ball again and again...because I thought, "Maybe this time..."

Alas, no.

"Rounders" still sucks for customization (witness the dumb little white triangle thingies around all the boxes, even the ones I made invisible) and Beta Blogger seems to have even less available templates. I did manage to make the blog title box a really cool, dark gray.

Unfortunately, for some reason the html codes for Technorati, Library Thing, and my little hit counter, all of which work perfectly well in this template, were all "unacceptable" to Beta Blogger's "edit html" screen.

So I gave up. I'm still stuck with Beta Blogger (Shiny! New! Awful! Begone, instruments of evil!) but at least I have my sort of old look back and didn't lose my links.

Speaking of which, the background here has been changed because I'm planning to do away with the deadjournal and embed Blogger into my website. The website blog looks so pitiful--nobody ever comments there--whereas this blog is of course a hotbed of fascinating discussion and freindly chatter. Okay, maybe not a hotbed. But I'm working on it. More rants coming soon! Thanks (or no thanks, as the case may be) to Bam, I have been forced to view images of Britney Spears' ladyparts. I plan to rant about said ladyparts, along with the whole "cult of celebrity" and how it relates to writing, either later today or tomorrow.

But first, note to self: New does NOT equal better. Ever.

We had quite a weekend. Friday was the Faery's second birthday. Princess's school had its Christmas Disco and we went. My new friend (remember! I officially have friends here now!) and I decided we were going to avoid the buffet of egg salad sandwiches and cold pizza, and so brought wine (everyone brought wine), Chinese appetizers, olives, hummus, crackers, and pretzels, and we all had a special little picnic on our table way in the back. It wasn't far enough back to get away from the cavalcade of shitty pop music ("Barbie Girl", for example, and they didn't even play any good shitty pop music like the Spice Girls, which is at least kitschy), but we tried.

Saturday those same friends came over for dinner. I'm telling you, we are social lions.

And yesterday we put up our tree, drank sherry, and watched the Patrick Stewart version of A Christmas Carol which is IMO the finest version ever.

So busy busy busy.

**Note: Ah. I see I can no longer copy my unposted posts for easy pasting into the dj. Nice. So I get to go back and rewrite all my html tage over there. Good thing I didn't include any links in this post. (shakes fist at Blogger)

6 comments:

Bernita said...

Beta frightens me.

Anonymous said...

Hotbed, huh? An apt analogy for a writer of erotic romance.

This reminds me of the time my stepson put a new browser on my computer--"Oh, it's just so cool, you can surf with tabs!"

Problem was, every time I left a comment and hit the back arrow button, it would take me back to my comment and repost it. Somewhere out there on some poor person's blog is a row of no less than seven identical comments from me, before I finally just X-ed the freaking browser and threw up my hands. Now my stepson thinks I'm a total relic from the stone age. My response was if you need tabs to surf more efficiently, maybe your time would be better spent doing something useful. So now he KNOWS I'm a relic.

Stacia said...

I'm hating the beta, Bernita. It keeps logging me out. It's no easier. It's BLEH. Stupid change.


Lol, kis. Sounds like stuff my husband tries to do for me. "No, look, you can do this neat thing if you just enter this sequence and..." (sees my glazed eyes.) "Never mind."

How would you surf with tabs, anyway? Why would you want to?

Anonymous said...

I'm usually against change, myself, kis. I like the old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Of course change is often for the better, but that don't mean I have to like it. -JTC

Anonymous said...

December;

The whole idea is you find a site or a blog or a page you want, set the tab, and then when you go somewhere else you can get back to the first place by clicking the tab. If you set five tabs, you can basically flash back and forth between five different sites--like having five pages open at the same time. Wonderful if you're running chats in five different places, but I can't even talk on the phone and chew gum at the same time.

So I'm a relic. I'm okay with that.

And JTC, change is only good if the "level of improvement"-to-"time spent bashing your head on your desk and wishing you'd never thrown away your typewriter" ratio is acceptable. No matter how great a new program is, if I've done a header off my roof after seven futile hours trying to learn it, it hasn't improved my life much, has it?

Stacia said...

I agree, too, JTC. I hate change. Why can't things stay exactly the same forever?

Ah, I see, kis. I actually do have tabs--it's the way BT Yahoo sets up--and I do find them useful to a point, but since I basically leave two static and only surf using the other one, I don't know it actually does that much. I just bring up a new internet screen. Very simple.