(no subject)

[stormdog]

To me, LJ-cuts are much like a title page for a website. You go to www.xyz.com and here's a big splashy XYZ company logo and a message that says 'To enter the XYZ website, click here!'
It's alwyas seemed to me that this is what I should have accomplished by typing the URL into the browser. Should I need to click the link to show that I really do want to go in and I'm not just there by accident?

I don't want to make anyone's life more difficult. I apologize to datahawk and others who've been annoyed by my posts (I'm fairly sure I'm the most egregious offender of the lot she was referring to). I'll play with a different style here for a while and we'll see how it goes.



I think part of the problem here is that there's a dichotomy in the meaning of 'friend' in the context of LiveJournal. There are two very different effects to friending someone's journal.

Firstly, it shows trust in the person friended by allowing them to read some of your locked entries. Admittedly, you could almost as easily friend someone and then put them on a filter where they can't see any of your locked posts anyway and they would never be the wiser, but I like to think that is not the case for most of my friends and I deeply appreciate their trust.

Secondly, assuming you are using a default friend page layout and filter, it puts them on your list of people whose journals show up when you click on friends. While I appreciate knowing that my friends enjoy reading my writing as deeply as I do knowing that they trust me with their private musings, these two ends are not inseperably intertwined.

If someone doesn't like reading what I write, I regard that as a matter of personal choice. This would not anger me. Coupled with friendly constructive criticism, it might prod me toward evaluating my writing style, but it would not upset me. I understand being unintersted in someone's writing.

It is possible to friend someone and allow them access to your writings without having to read what they write by creating a filter of people who you are interested in reading. I have a filter like this. Admittedly, every single individual on my friends list is in it (it just cuts out communities I'm a member of), but the same principle applies. Should I ever have as many people on my list as some of friends do, I would probably use if for more then just communities; I just couldn't keep up with that much information.

Anyway, I'm going to play with using LJ Cuts in my writings here for a while. I'll see how it goes. In the interst of this experiment, the rest of this entry will be behind a cut or three. However, if I find this annoying, or it feels unnatural for me, I may stop. In that case, I would not be at all upset at those who should feel the need to remove me from their reading filter.

That said, here's the rest of what I have to say today.

The Oldsmobile is finally gone. It's a weight off my mind to not have to keep worrying about coming home and finding it's been towed away while I was at work. The women who I was originally giving it to could not get money together for plates and registration for it. I feel bad for them. I liked that and knew that they'd get as much use out of it as they could and would take care of it well.

But, instead, it went to a guy who has a towing company who could come pick it up that day, which is what I needed as it was going to be towed the next day according to the big orange sticker on the back window. I won't relate his plans for it here. You can ask me if you want to know. I'll email you. It would have been towed and junked anyway, probably losing me a chunk of change in the process, so at least something is being done with it.

In other car news, Andrea is out looking at a car today. Our mechanic is checking it out even as I type. If he likes it and we can talk the seller down to a reasonable price, we'll probably take it. Otherwise, after long discussion yesterday, Andrea is probably going to go carless until after we move. While I feel terrible about leaving her stuck at home all day without, a car would not be essential for what she does and, once we're settled in and I have a confirmed job, we could begin the car hunt again. Well, I'll see what's decided after work. Or, more likely, when she posts about it in her journal. *smiles*

I have a bunch to say about other things but that will proably go in an entry I won't have time or opportunity to write today. I have four three minutes left in my lunch break and then I'm going back to mentoring. She's with me all day today and tomorrow, then I'm back on my own next week. Actually, she's very low maintanence; she started on this desk three years ago and is moving back after working on a couple of the other desks so it's really just brush up on changes for her.

Back to work; more later...