About the birthdays, I think its rather annoying. Don't get me wrong, CFers having birthdays is a good thing, but I really don't want to have it shoved in my face first thing when I open the forum page. Ignoring normal posts if I don't want to read them is fine, but when there's five and six and seven birthday announcements slapped up at the top, its a pain to have to try and find the actual posts beneath them. I don't reply to birthday posts because I don't want to feel obligated, as someone else mentioned, to say happy birthday to everyone or no one at all (especially when I don't know who half of these people are). I think birthday annoncements should be sent to the PM boxes of people who sign up as wanting to hear about them. That makes a lot more sense to me then clogging up the main forum.
As for SD, if the admins are censoring his posts, there's something very wrong with that. He has as much right to post whatever he wants on this forum as the rest of us. Just because he isn't afraid to speak his mind, he gets "watched"? I respect anyone that says what they truly feel, period. Therefore, I respect SD. If he really is being censored here, I would be completely disgusted.
