Help Redesign the Imbroglio!

Dear readers: As I just mentioned, I'm hoping to redesign this site very soon. I'm thinking clean and simple is the way to go, but I'm still not really sure how to accomplish that.

Therefore, I'm asking for your help. Please let me know what bugs you about this page, or what you particularly like, what you don't like, what you never look at, what you look at every day, what you've never understood, what you think is necessary/unnecessary/missing, etc.

In addition to that general call for whatever is on your mind, I have some specific questions:

1. Do you ever read or click through the bits? Do you ever wish you could comment or trackback to them? Would you miss them if they were gone? Do you think they are pointless? Are you ambivalent about bits?
2. What about the comment sidebar? Do you ever check that out? It actually doesn't work correctly, and I realize that. I see it as more of a way for me to keep track of conversations I'm participating in, but it wouldn't really need to appear on this page to accomplish that goal.
3. Have you ever transmogrified ai? By that I mean, have you ever used the little drop-down menu at the upper-right to change the default stylesheet for this page? Again, do you like that “feature”? Would you miss it if it were gone?
4. Column widths: Are the widths for the text too wide or too narrow, as far as you're concerned? I am often bothered by columns of text that are on one extreme or the other; I mostly think there's a good balance here with the main column of blog posts and the sidebar, but, well, I could be wrong. Plus, most of you browse via IE and that might make everything look different.
5. What do you think of 3-column layouts? If you prefer 2-columns, do you prefer sidebars on left or right?
6. Do you read the RSS feed for this page, and if so, how often do you click through to the main page? I'm thinking if the majority of readers are moving to RSS-only, there's not much need to make this page visually interesting, is there?

And be honest. I'm pretty tired of this “look,” so you won't hurt my feelings, I promise.

Posted 11:09 PM | Comments (13) | meta-blogging

Stoopid Style

It's over. It was over sometime late Friday afternoon, actually. “It” here means my second year of law school. Hoo. Ray.

Here's how to finish your second year in stoopid style: First, schedule three finals in two days and make sure you don't study at all before the last 3-4 days before those finals begin. Take your finals and then blissfully retreat from reality for a week. Then, approximately 16 hours before your final 30-page paper is due, start writing it. Stay up all night listening to great music and drinking some diet carbonated and caffeinated beverage, alternating a cup of coffee occasionally for good measure. Pepperidge Farms goldfish are also helpful. Write about something with which you're fairly familiar and basically rehash arguments you've previously made in other papers, combining them in the most gawdawful mismash you can possibly concoct. Finish a few hours before it's due, spell check, shower, turn it in, and pray that it's good enough for a C.

There. You're done. Don't you feel great now?

For me, the answer is, um, well, I sure I wish I wouldn't have waited for the last minute to work on that damned paper, but yeah, done is good.

Since finishing I've felt a little lost. What to do now? The job starts in a week and I've got a long to-do list, so I'm sure I'll be plenty busy. If all goes well, this site will be completely redesigned by the end of the week, but, well, no promises.

But first, here's another little story of my stoopid stylings: I was walking home in my sleep-deprived stupor on Friday after turning in my paper and I met someone I'd met briefly before who was very nice and we said hello and she introduced me to her friend and they were both very friendly and also seemed to know all about the fact that I had finished finals last week and everything and I was thinking, “hmm, she must read my blog.” Then, the next day I realized: “Holy inability to add two plus two, Batman! That was LawRah!” It is also possible that her friend was Idle Grasshopper, but for that I have basically no evidence. So my point here, if you haven't gathered, is that I am stoopid. And I also want to apologize to LawRah for being so clueless. Um, I get it now.

Posted 10:53 PM | Comments (2) | 2L