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What the @$&# ?  Does my blog look as different to everyone else as it does to me?  Last night, I logged on to work on an entry while my students were doing a lab exercise, and the entire thing was screwed up.  The format was messed up, the usual options were gone, and it was unbelievably SLOW loading up.  In fact, the panes didn't even fit on the screen!  I couldn't do anything!  Then, aferwards, I tried from my office, and it was still different, but at least things fit on the screen and some options worked.  The same at home.  I guess that this is Microsoft's new "improvement" to their Spaces.  Well, as usual, they took something that worked adequately, though not well, and made it worse in the name of improvement.  I figured out that probably the reason that it is totally unusable from the lab was that the computer there is using an older version of Internet Explorer.  My office uses a newer version, and at home I use a new version of Firefox.  So, in typical microsoft fashion, you have to get the latest product to do anything.  The latest product doesn't always work on older computers.  Also, the lab computers are protected so that students can't download and install things on them, and that means that I also can't do anything.  I have to get someone to do that.  Tell me that this is better?  They are apparently raving about how the new features are so much better.  Well, I don't even see much in the way of new features (other than an icon for the blog owner, is that important?) .  In fact, many of the old things that I used no longer work.  Wow.  I'll have to try to figure out if I can adapt this thing.  If not, I may be moving my blog.  I have thought about that now and then, since this never was something that worked quite like I had wanted.  But, it was here, and this is where I started the blog, and it did work for at least posting stuff, so I just kept it since people had gotten used to finding me here. 

Oh, and as if to make things even more confusing, they changed the URL on me once again.  Why can't they leave things alone?  What about all the pointers to this little spot on the internet?  Yeah, yeah, they apparently went and automatically fixed pointers within their system so that other blogs pointing here were corrected.  That is only blogs pointing here from within their own system.  As usual, they forgot that there is an entire world out there that is not doing everything under microsoft.

So, I will see if I can get the new features (if I can find them) working, see if I like them, and if not ...
It wold just be a hassle to move.  Still, it is a hassle to stay and have everything change every now and then.  That is just like moving.  Does anyone out there have suggestions for favorite places to host a blog?  I realize there are several, and the best one for me might not be the most popular.

-Astroprof