(no subject)

... SLEEPY. But before I go to sleep, a few comments, links n' things.

whitecollar_rec! It's a newish White Collar recs community, and I have a bunch of stories I want to rec that I never seem to get around to here, so I'm going to start trying to post more recs over there ... about one a day if I can remember. =) Anyway, they take all kinds of recs (gen, het, slash, etc) and there's no need to sign up or be obligated to post a certain number of recs or anything.

Dreamwidth! They deserve kudos. :) I suppose I've been clear since day one that I'm not especially partisan about where I blog. Most of my flist is still on LJ, and for a long time my DW journal was just a backup; then I started crossposting some stuff; then I started crossposting a lot of stuff (I like the DW posting interface better than the LJ posting interface, in general). But I think the tipping point for me, from "eh, it's a business I deal with" to "hmm, I actually like giving these people money" came just recently when I had a technical issue after a recent code push, and posted my complaint/question on their new-features announcement post, and got an answer with a solution to my problem in LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES from the owner of the company.

It was, I guess, the latest in a long line of little snowball effects - they have always been very courteous, pleasant, and responsive to deal with, they have an increasing number of nice little interface features that LJ doesn't, they don't have ads, they've had almost no downtime, their much longer post & comment word limits are AWESOME ... basically, what DW promised to be two years ago (a nice, simple blog platform without the corporate-ness and unresponsiveness and ads and other things that make LJ a pain to deal with), they have turned out to be, and whereas with LJ I sigh and cave and renew my paid time every year because I can't live without my icons, on DW I like giving them money because I like supporting them as a business. From the perspective of a pleased customer who never did have a horse in this race (and whose opinion of them was, in fact, rather wary in the beginning), I can honestly say that my experience has been 100% positive and I recommend them highly. (I still blog on LJ and like it, much like I still buy books in Barnes & Noble and like it. But DW is more the equivalent of that nice little independently-owned bookstore that you really like going into, and feel happy when you buy something, whereas with LJ I'm happy here because my friends are here, as opposed to liking it as a business, if that makes any sense.)

AO3! A useful tip if you (like me) don't particularly like the new default site scheme: you can change it by going to http://archiveofourown.org/users/YOURUSERNAME/skins and clicking on "public skins". I am told that "Snow" is the one that most closely resembles the old default. I'm using "Snow Blue" right now, which I kinda like, though it is DIFFERENT and my brain does not deal well with change. *g*

Because I so often find myself accentuating the negative at the expense of the positive ...

... I love the AO3. I really do. I use it every day, and it's my first go-to stop when I get into a new fandom. I really love the upload interface (it's smooth, it's easy to use, it's easy to compulsively edit fics as I am wont to do), I love the tags, and the next time I do a fic exchange, I plan to use their (quite awesome-looking) anonymous exchange system.

Thank you to everyone who wrote the code, who does the tag wrangling, and all the other behind-the-scenes stuff that I'm sure I don't even know about. <3 Thank you for making it, and thank you for keeping it running smoothly.

(And, you know, no archive is going to be everything for everyone, and I know there are some of you out there who don't want to use it or haven't had a positive experience with it - and I don't want anyone to feel pressured to enjoy reading/posting on the AO3 just because I like it, or to feel like they need to get their fic up there if they don't enjoy the place. Your experiences and opinion are valid as well! But I do really like it, and while I know it's still in beta and don't expect to like every new change that is trotted out - there are dozens and dozens of things I do like for every one that don't work for me, and that's a really good ratio, methinks. <3)