About This Blog
A blog about my life, universe, etc. At any given time you might find something endlessly interesting or just me ruminating on something else, which no one (not even myself) finds interesting. That's the way blogs go, I suppose. Anyway, I was eleventh in line, and you weren't. Hah!

About Me
Name:
Sarah
Age:
26
Residence:
Columbus, OH
Religion:
LDS
Political Score:
5.00/-2.15
Job:
Temp @ JPMorgan Chase
College:
Ohio State University
Majors:
Political Science, International Studies
High School: Home Educated
Hobbies:
Reading, standing in line for things, writing, research
Resume:
HotJobs
Email:
lloannna@gmail.com

About My Family
My mom is a lawyer in Pickerington; my stepdad and dad are computer guys, and my stepmom (who works with my dad) is an engineer. My sisters are, in order of age, a photographer, an artist, and a person too young to have her own website. My brothers are, in order of age, living up north, and again, a person too young to have a website. At some point soon I'll be collecting links for my aunts, uncle, and cousins. ^_^

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Message Services
(Please see the notes below the Comment Policy before sending me a message)
AIM:
lloannna
ICQ:
29395930
Yahoo:
lloannna

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My CafePress Designs

Even More CafePress Designs

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Star Wars: Episode 3 Line (Hollywood)
My Star Wars Line page

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NaNoWriMo 2007:
My Novel: Cipere Lumen




NaNoWriMo 2006:
My Novel: The Manatee Conspiracy




NaNoWriMo 2005:
My Novel: Beyond the Cliffs of Kefira





NaNoWriMo 2004:
My Novel: sul Okyar tir taTz'ileea

 
I DON'T LIKE IT...   I don't like it one bit. I hate it when online entities (or, for that matter, brick-and-mortar ones) change the way they look and function on a whim. It seems extremely rare to me that this sort of thing ever works out, and when it does, it only seems to work when the change is made to make things simpler, cleaner, less cluttered, less confusing, less sixteen-clicks-to-make-a-new-entry, etc. And Blogger has managed to fail EVERY one of those tests. Now I even have to scroll sideways to see the entire edit screen, and I hate it.

You know, I can even think of examples where something as small as a logo change has created permanent dislike and non-identification with a product: Disneyland, or more specifically, the Disneyland Resort. When the logo was changed to add the Resort part (because we had DCA and Downtown Disney), it was supposedly more broadly appealing, more modern, more ergonomic, more something. But it only struck the general Disney-loving populace as more corporate, more egotistical, more out of touch, more disrespectful of Disneyland's legacy and history, more dumb. We've taken three years to start to change backwards; the new Disneyland Resort logo uses the old Disneyland classic logo (you know, the one that was on the sign outside the parking lot, and sort of part of the still-used Disneyland Hotel neon roof sign) with the word "RESORT" in tiny letters underneath the "land" part of "Disneyland." The old "new" logo had the classic Walt Disney signature "Disney", a generic (Arial or something) "land" appended, and "Resort" (maybe 1/4th as tall) in wide-spaced letters underneath. Jackie likes it, but I certainly don't. The best that can be said of it, in my opinion, is that it looked like the WDW logo. And I hate that logo, too, so...

Anyway, this is the second time Blogger changed its look and functionality on me. The first time, they had a "classic interface" option (probably because so many people hated the new one). I've not been able to find a classic interface option, and the changes they made (including but not limited to: a dumb new splash page, rearranging the look and orientation of all the options on the member login page [there wasn't one before], proudly toting the geek-certifiedness of their new look [whoop-de-doo, it's fully compliant], making the white and tan more prominent and diminishing the actually quite attractive blue, minimizing the old "B" logo, taking away the auto-preview of recently published posts in the add-new-posts screen [which was one of my top complaints about the old new interface, the one I rejected before], making you click two [or maybe three, the new interface isn't intuitive and I got a bit lost] times before getting to the point where the new post entry space is, default layout for something like 1024 x ??? resolution [there's a HUGE amount of scrolling space to the right of the screen as I type this, and a bit more to the left], and an exponential increase in both the hey-look-we're-geeks-love-us-and-use-our-product attitude [already I'm only marginally tolerant of that feel from the folks at Google, and then only because they're generally much cleaner and aesthetically pleasing] and the this-is-how-you-do-this-you-ignorant-slobs instructions everywhere [it is NOT necessary to have "ctrl + shift + p" next to the Preview link on this edit screen; in the worst scenario they ought to have included the keyboard shortcut in a mouse-over ALT text, NOT as a permanent 12pt hint which is actually longer on the screen than the word "Preview", already there]) are really obnoxious. The reason I went with Blogger and why I liked it was in large part because it was actually simple and classic; easy to use, lots of information on one screen with tabs to indicate additional options, uniformity of style, difficult if not impossible to get lost (except in the Help area, which still has the exact same problems it had before, plus is even more dumbed down and difficult to navigate). The free hosting thing was part of it, but I can get free hosting elsewhere.

I've not decided to move on just yet, in part because they implemented about twelve features I do like, including comments (welcome to 1996; I think my GeoCities site had a GeoCities powered guestbook on its original format), separate pages for each post (again, 1996 -- or maybe I'll be kind and say 1999), and -- GOOD GRIEF sendmail's only been around for longer than I have -- email posting. Now that MT costs a fortune, and anyway I still haven't bit the actually-buying-space-online bullet, I'm even less inclined to move, all things being equal. I don't know if I'll become resigned to this new format, or if it'll still work well enough for me that I'll live with the changes (still hating them, and even more convinced that the folks at Blogger/Google are trying too hard and doing the wrong things as a result), but I want to go on the record as saying these changes stink. And there's no way on earth I'd pay for Blogger Pro, unless it included a version that was like the classic option (because for me, denial of someone else's stupidity is, in fact, worth money). And I'd still want the other cool features, like password protected articles.

Incidentally, the reason my last post makes no sense is because BlogSpot deleted the post previous to it, where I said that I had a ton of free time and would actually get to do some blogging. I ended out spending the evening fixing problems and reading other blogs instead, as you can see from that post. I leave it up (and choose not to upload the original post, entitled "Time for Blogging") as a testament to why Blogger is, in my opinion, increasingly permanently screwed up.
posted by Sarah at 6:48 PM. | 0 comments |