A new job would be a kind of change. I’ve thought about it and have actually ventured out there and tried my luck, but the experience taught me that it’s not all bad where I am at the moment. In fact it’s pretty good. Pretty cool colleagues (although the age difference is starting to smart), smack in the eye of the web/tv/radio digital hurricane, excellent work agreement, ok pay. It’s the commuting that takes it out of me, the crowded trains, the daily loss of 2 hours… Honestly, workers should get paid for their travel time. But even commuting isn’t all bad – it gives me time to read, if I don’t fall asleep before I turn the page.

The ‘monumental’ hinted at my living quarters: I seriously want to renovate the house. And by renovate I mean turn it inside out: move the kitchen, move/build a proper bathroom, extend the bedroom. Problem: it costs serious money, which I don’t have. I would have to look into a loan. And find a builder. And someone to draw the plan. And then live with strangers about the house for weeks. All this scares me, I don’t know where to start.

I’ve thought about going back to school. I’d like to get into university, work on my non-existent academic brain. Since I don’t have the right diploma to go to university, I would have to do what’s called a ‘colloquium doctum’: an extry exam. The course I am interested in is Art History, for which three ‘O level’ exams are required: Dutch, English, and a history test based on one (1!) book. Heh. Fingers, meet nose.

So, getting in wouldn’t be too hard, it’s staying put that poses the problem. I know I couldn’t hack it with a full time job, I simply haven’t got the energy. Also – I’ve got the concentration span of an amoeba, so unless the teacher’s gifted, I zone out.

Still, I’m keen on educating myself about art, so I enquired what the current standard text book is for students of art history. Apparently Janson’s History of Art is it. Amazon had it for 25 euro less than in the shop. I’m stacking up on the Oxford History of Art publications, starting with ‘After modern art 1945-2000′ I also picked up Rudi Fuchs’s ‘Painting in the Netherlands’.

Reading more doesn’t constitute change, but it’ll keep me from worrying about it.

Good software costs money. Well, a lot of the time, anyway. Deal with it. That said…

Do they EVER need a full time PR person! ‘Mena’s Corner’ did very little to improve communication. The announcement was very abrupt and confusing. They could save themselves so much trouble if they got it together in that department.

So, beta testing had ended? How come we didn’t know? Hey, I had signed up for beta testing. Never did get in, despite being told everyone would be phased in.

The naming is confusing too. Developer? Huh? It took me a few hours reading comments and threads to find out there will be another version later on for non ‘developers’.

Equally, all the talk about ‘commitment to developers’ and other corporate quack meant zilch to me. Dumb user here, what’s in it for meeeeeeee? (What I got from it all was the impression I should be using TypePad, not MT. But I don’t wanna!)

How many announcements do you need? A blog entry here, a statement with quotes there. Yet nothing on the Six Apart homepage itself?

I am quite willing to pay. When Six Apart quizzed users on this, I said I’d pay $100 dollars for a version that had comment registration.

The site I ‘needed’ MT 3.0 for (and put on design hold for many months to wait for this release) can just about fit into the 6-author license. Just about. There’s not much leeway. Still, we could ask users to donate to get the next license up. or I could kick some editors out. Heh.

Since you can only install the free version on one computer, all the other sites I use MT on will have to stick with the 2.6xx version as I simply cannot afford paying for multiple installs. And that’s ok. (God knows, I can live without comments.) But I do think the schemes for personal usage at least need to be re-evaluated.

By the way… Blogger? That redesign/launch was some impressive timing.

Update: Here’s some other people who say a lot of sensible stuff about MT 3.0 ‘developer”s pricing scheme.