LOL, the images have elicited som pretty weird comments! :-) PTSD's is still verrrrrrry off-kilter. Who picked those things?!

As a male this one doesn't do much for me either. Why not a scene of a beach in Fuji or somewhere like that. I agree with Leo - who picks these things!!!

I see we've graduated from the coal mine to a massacre or something. Funny, I complained *again* this morning about the horrible header on this page. I don't like this either. How about clouds or scenic picture like Bear suggested. I guess this is one of those something is better than nothing scenarios.

Sugarbear: Colours say nothing about gender. :) Girls being associated with pink is historically quite new. Pink is in the red family - which is a royal colour that stands for power and passion. So in the olden days, pink meant the birth of a boy. Blue is a cold colour - which was said to be representative of the shy and demure nature a girl was to have. Baby blue for a girl. Society demarcating gender through colour is ridiculous. :)

Having said that: ...I'm not much into pink or flowers myself, regardless of gender, hahaha. Though most things are better than the depressing cliff side. Like a rather cutting visual representation of what life with a chronic condition looks like. "See this depressing, steep mountain? Scaling it represents your daily lives." I get it, thanks.

Still - as one of the people that worded that complaint to DS that the banner was off-putting, I shot them a message thanking them for finally changing it. With the darkish colour scheme the site had already adopted, the banner made it quite dark.

AnnNY: Did you manage to friend the person? I hate website problems. On the laptop, at least, when you click on the blue name of the person you're trying to friend and go to their profile, you'll see a bunch of orange button in the top right. It's at the height of the person's name on their profile, on the banner picture - orange button "Add Friend." If you hit that, the person is sent a friend request.

Thanks Sonya for the info. I managed to friend her by messaging her and asking her to friend me!

You also explained one of the last names in my family--which is Van der Las. (I'm on a genealogy binge). A Dutch person was laughing that "Las" means little piece of land, and the "Van der" is a grandiose way of saying from the "little piece of land." Your Napoleonic explanation now makes the name make sense.

I was complaining about the black depressing mountain in the RA forum, too! (The same one that was here!) I can't fathom how anyone could pick an avatar like that in groups where people are suffering and in pain. They might as well just hand us the pills to put us away permanently!

I was also hoping for a tropical beach. I got a beach, nice blue sky in the groups list, which turned to dark thunder clouds in the group. Well, at least this one isn't black! They did try!

AnnNY: What a coincidence! Never thought it would be of use to anyone. The Dutch of that time were really not original, haha. There are a lot of names in the vain of "van der," which pretty much just means "of the." Van der Meer - of the Lake, because they lived near a lake. De Vries is also a very common name, meaning "the Frisian" which are people heralding from the province Friesland. It's the same as someone from Texas registering their new name as John the Texan. They really didn't think the whole surname gig would last, and now we have very samey names. It's funny to me. Sorry, polluting the thread with my nonsense - trying to distract myself from the pain.

Ha ha ha! I couldn't even see a flower, just a bunch of smeared red / pink. Still better than a black volcano. I hate those colors. Maybe plant life, beaches, fishes, or some sunny / rainbow skies. Anything relaxing. Poor DS, they can't win with us LOL. We're a bunch of tired, angry, grumps.

I did send DS a message to thank them for making the change before anyone suggested it. All of a sudden we have a bigger reply box and now this. Will wonders never cease!