minor feature request

[marijke]

It's very nice the profile options allow you to choose a timezone (and switch auto-summertime on/off) for the forum to present you message dates/times in. What i would also like it to do is give options to

• switch off the 12-hour clock, plain 24-hour in stead without all the "am" and "pm" business. It confuses me. I can remember to simply add 12 when i see "pm" and not add it when i see "am", for example "11:30 am" is plain 11:30 and "11:30 pm" means 23:30. But that goes all haywire after "12", where "12:30 am" isn't 12:30 and "12:30 pm" isn't 24:30 (0:30 the next day)... or *are* they??? I always mix them up...
  
• switch off the terminally cutesy "Today" and "Yesterday" and "Tomorrow". For example: message is posted on the 3rd Thermidor at 23:00, reply posted the 4th at 01:00, that's easy, the reply came 2 hours later. But what to say about a reply posted "today" 01:00, is that 2 hours after the original, 26 hours, or 50 hours, or... no way to tell, unless i dig out today's date from the taskbar. All unnecessary obfuscation.

As to the latter, my bank does it too, when i 'phone in and ask it to list recent transactions, and for all i know also "Maundy Thursday" and "Second Tuesday of the month before last" and "the Director's birthday" and such. I write down the transactions, a few days later i look at the slip of paper again what i wrote and it says the 7th this, the 16th that, and "today" something else --- verrrrrry useful that! Plain numeric dates all round would be beter. Sometimes technology just tries too hard to sound all human and woolly and homely... and looks all the more fake human for doing it at ludicrously innappropriate occasions. Bwleeeeech!

PS -- and how about not logging me out if i take longer than a minute to write a message?

--Regards, marijke