Who Hired the Detroit Lions to Paint?

Hey! Who changed the drapes?

As you probably have noticed by now, last Friday we closed down the office so that an interior decorator could come in and wreak a little havoc. When we told Blogger that we’d be cool with making the jump to its new “Beta” version, we were hesitant that it could destroy everything we’ve written up to now. But, since our “Ooh, shiny!!!” impulse got the best of us, we hit the OKAY TO PROCEED button before reading the fine print.

And for the next five hours, we prayed against the Blogpocolypse.

When the conversion screen first came up, it relayed a friendly message. “Your blog’s conversion to Blogger in Beta will only take a minute or two. Please stand by while we assist you in the conversion.” However, after “a minute or two,” the message changed to “The conversion is taking longer than we had thought. This is likely because your blog is older or has a large post history. Please try again later.” Considering I’ve written approximately 350,000 words at this point, this is a safe assumption.

And then there was silence. Long, spine-tingling silence.

4 hours later, the YAB hamsters came roaring back to life and the site was up again. Other than a more complex sign-in process, everything looked the same. As I reviewed the site, I proceeded ever-so-cautiously. With the patience and precision of the Ghostbusters in the stacks of the NY Public Library, I realized that nothing had actually changed; merely ability for things to be changed had been granted to Condon.

Like talking in the third person, apparently.

So as you can see, things are a lot more…blue. This re-formatting is the first of its kind since the blog’s inception. When YAB opened its doors for business in July 2004, we had a choice of around 8 color schemes to go with. (In addition, we had to pound on the keyboard with rocks while relying on burning coal to power our little laptop, but hey, that’s just how things got done back then.) We chose a healthy blend of blue, tan, and greenish-tealish-kinda-bluish-but-really-just-green. It’s served us well for over 2 years and 4 months. People could identify with the site by its colors. Of course, with 50,000 other blogs sharing said colors, we feared not being able to be picked out of a lineup.

They don’t let you tell jokes in police lineup.

So here we are in blue. There’s still more to come – I may actually figure out how to put a decent picture over there to the right, and I may have some more material for the sidebar – but we’re pretty proud of the new color scheme. And my God, how big did we let that title get? We’re not just telling you you’re a blog, we’re yelling it at you. That must come from the Sam Kinison School of Bringing the Funny.

And it looks like the future of blogging also is written in numbers. To the right you now have much easier access to 1) find past posts that you seek and 2) keep track of how many days I am actually behind without invoking your calendar. (Note, this makes it 33.)

The links have also been shuffled and updated a bit. There’s a few more places to go, as we bid adieu to former timewasters like Homestar Runner and Hollywood Stock Exchange. And if Matt Weng decides to trample out something other than the Vintage, we’ll welcome him back.

Tomorrow we return with what major purchase we’ve made in our honor. Stay tuned.