...has the system started "featuring" users who live thousands of miles away from me and match me less than 60%? In what strange, Cubist reality does this make sense?

The slightly new style to the pages and frameset isn't bad though.

This is my shameless way of letting those few individuals who *might* be occasionally following my poorly-documented adventures that I'll be at the OKC meetup this Sunday at Vasona Lake Park, Los Gatos. Here's the link to the relevant thread:

http://tinyurl.com/okcvasona

Perhaps I'll get to meet a few of you there.

It's time to revise the profile. Most of the changes were in the self-summary; I'll probably tweak the rest sooner or later. Shift happens.

"Talibangelist"

Homepage is still borderline useless. Without knowing where all these people live or what their match percentage is, I'm not going to stalk them. And the "thumbnail" strips of new photos are highly useless.

I don't need to make work for myself today; I have a songwriting workshop all morning and afternoon and a party tonight. But maybe tomorrow I'll contemplate dusting. Or (*gasp*) spend time being social with a real, in-person human being. One I *didn't* meet on here.

Home page still borderline useless. Bah. Will devote time saved today to clearing near-dead vegies out of garden and writing a new song. If shitful interface continues into next week, I may consider rebuilding my house. Viewing the home page is not dissimilar from experiencing a root canal without anaesthetic.

The system is still largely unusable. Information I formerly relied on is gone, and I'm buried in useless info on my homepage. Have started cleaning my house and spending more time rehearsing out of frustration. May volunteer for some worthwhile cause next.

Home page still useless. Feh. You guys are *LOSING AD CLICKS*!!! Guess I'll just have to get things done instead of wasting my day here.

In response to Polyamory and Monogamy: Knowing Myself by Mjausson:

Integrity is very important to me. It's how I feel about my actions that matters, not the opinions of other people.

Keeping that in mind, what matters to me is that I keep to whatever agreements my partner and I have negotiated. That's not usually a problem for me, regardless of the restrictions it places on my relationships with others. I wouldn't promise what I couldn't keep anyway.

In fact, a red flag for me is when people have an unrealistic view of themselves and what they can do. I much prefer if my sweetie says that they'll see me at 7, rather than at 6, if there is no realistic chance of them getting out of work and to our meeting place by then. Please know yourself, and know Bay Area traffic patterns. No amount of communication is going to help you keep a poly relationship together if you communicate things that have no earthly chance of happening.

My ideal relationship would start with non-exclusive dating. After some time when we feel that we're both serious about this, we'd close the relationship to others. That will allow us to fully concentrate on each other. When we feel that we've got a solid understanding of our relationship, we may open it up and start seeing others as well. That may take a couple of months or more.

This assumes that my partner doesn't already have other partners. I'm looking for a primary partner. Knowing myself, I couldn't be a good secondary partner if I didn't have a primary. I'd be all needy and clingy and prone to feeling neglected. That's not the kind of relationship I'd like to have, so I've been saying "friends only" to people who already have a primary.

It also assumes that I would want to be poly with my primary. In the past that hasn't always been the case. In addition, if my primary wants kids, we're probably not going to last. In the past I have broken off relationships because my partner wanted kids. I'm serious about not wanting to devote twenty years or more of my life to taking care of new people.

So yes, I want to be poly in the long run. But I'm not terribly goal oriented or rules driven when it comes to relationships. I know my boundaries and desires and within those limits I act on what I feel in the moment. That works better for me than to try and fit the people I meet into preconceived relationship patterns.

I've been trying to find a good way of articulating how I feel about relationships. This really covers about 90% of it in a better way than I currently can, and by incorporating it into my own journal, I can both get the benefit of better wording and make sure that the author gets credit. :)

Now, it's going to take a *lot* for me to consider seeing someone exclusively even in the short term - that bar is set rather high. But I can see the value of it when a relationship is getting going and trust and process are being built.

But other than that...what she says is fairly close to how I feel about my own relationships. Anyone with a need to know more has only to ask.