And how's your week going?

Let's see, I have to go to Omaha this week, for a trip I'd rather not take. This is in support of another trip that is scheduled for a week I'm required to be at home for business. Can't wait to see how the company screws me on this one.

While dreading the trip, I went to bed at an early hour last night, so I could awaken at 5am to carpool to work. The Boy decided that I'd rather be awake at 3, and proceeded to climb into bed and kick me at random intervals.

After getting ready for work (casual day since our customers are taking this Federal Holiday off, even if we aren't), I drove over to my carpool partner's apartment, a few minutes early. When he became 10 minutes late, I pounded on his door to no avail.

So, I'm at work, all alone. I've been here an hour, and still nobody else from my group has shown up. Some moron turned the heat off over the weekend (thermostats are tough technology), and it's almost gotten up to comfortable now. I'm tired, I'm bored, and I have nothing to do even if I were motivated to do anything. As soon as I get the laptop for tomorrow's trip, I am so heading home.

I need a nap.

Random Thought

Where is Dick Cheney?

Codes

Since I just paid for another year of LJ, I've got like 2 dozen invite codes, yet my family and friends (with the notable exception of c_feightner) can't figure out how to join. Well, D just hasn't gotten around to it; I have no doubt he could follow the oh-so-complex sequence of "enter username and password desired" to get an account.

Community Proliferation

While anyone can create an account to use as a community, it seems that some folks are just not looking hard enough at the existing ones before they launch one that competes. Some examples? OK.

While there is the official LJ group lj_style for discussing styles, and the ljoverride group to discuss the Override system (which is the only way free users can modify their journal style), someone has recently started an unofficial group called layouts which is aiming for the same thing, although aimed more at newbies.

Of course, the proliferation of "icon" groups devoted to helping folks make LJ Userpics helps to draw users away from the near-moribund official group userpics.

After the success of nakedparts and sensuousart, the group naughtyparts was created, as a moderated (closed membership) group. For a more free-for-all group, social_smut was created that same week. Within two months, there were dozens of clones, and they ended up taking the majority of interested users away from those first two groups, which are now basically dead.

I don't see a problem with folks making their own communities on a whim, but wouldn't it make sense to see if there is already a community that is exactly what you wanted? That way, you don't dilute the number of users that would go to a group. In particular, if there is an official group that does what you want, that would be a great place for authoritative answers to questions. The guys who are actually creating the new Styles system pop in on lj_style regularly, for instance.

Just my opinion, for whatever it's worth.

Site Reorg

I rearranged the Icons page, adding a frameset for ease of navigation. The pictures are still in the same places, but I plan to move them next week to subdirectories.