[RonDog]

Partial quote from a message by Free Republic founder JIM ROBINSON:

Just got home a little while ago and have been trying to catch up on reading all the complaints about our new face lift. Well, this particular email caught my eye and thought I'd post it to see if we can lighten up the atmosphere just a bit (I got a chuckle out of it anyway).
Subject: FREE Non Surgical Face Lift in a Bottle!

-- snip --

-- snip --

"By the way, we will be working over the weekend and the next few days, to try to make the new FR face lift a little less shocking. It will all be back to (almost) normal soon.

Hang in there.

Have received thousands of comments, emails and FRmail complaints and compliments today (running about 10 to 1 in the complaint department).
Will not be able to answer all (or even most), but we will do what we can to make things better.

Thanks,
Jim

Aye, aye, Captain! All may yet be well. This morning was quite a shock to the system, but FReepers are SURVIVORS.

Like they used to say about the pioneers who risked their lives to cross the Oregon Trail:

"The cowards never started, thw WEAK died along the way. Only the STRONG survived."

The many grateful hard-core FReepers here will make this new BETA format work. You can COUNT on it!

[RonDog]

How about a few PINGS to this re-assuring thread by Jim Robinson?

His calm acceptance of this apparently necessary change in our beloved forum provides a rather stark contrast to a few of the LESS THAN positive threads posted today:

This new design makes me....
Posted on 3/30/02 9:48 AM Pacific by smith288

I'm LEAVING Because of This New Format!!!
Posted on 3/30/02 5:00 PM Pacific by Texaggie79

How do I get the sidebars back!?!?!?!? THIS STINKS!
Posted on 3/30/02 11:12 AM Pacific by stuck_in_new_orleans

FreeRepublic Re-Design
Posted on 3/30/02 10:13 AM Pacific by rs79bm

This is awful!
Posted on 3/30/02 2:02 AM Pacific by Nogbad

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Great graphic!!

[VOA]

The old maxim applies to today's situation:

Every good soldiers realizes the only constant is change.
And every good soldier learns to not only deal with change, but embrace it.


My feeling: the new format will take some getting used to. But five years from now,
there will be "old timers" bragging about how they "survived" the Format of March 30, 2002!

[MeekOneGOP]

A little patient humor or some humorous patients would be nice, I agree! :O)

Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my ping list!. . .don't be shy.

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks for the flag Ron. I was out for a while.