I got a chuckle out of your complaint, because I realized that I never use those customization features, and for a very obvious reason: The HabitableZone looks right to me by default because I'm the guy who designed it. Customization's for people with differently-abled aesthetic sensibilities!

I limited cookie shelflife to try to be good, as Tom suggests, but I probably didn't implement it correctly. I should be extending the cookie by some amount each time you connect, not setting it for a fixed date.

At this late date I'd just advise waiting for the new interface. I've learned a lot in the, what's it been? three years?--since I built this interface. I designed it around IE, with adjustments for other browser, and it's become a pretty shaky edifice. Nowadays I can design a Web interface that works equally well in both browser families, and generally runs rings around this one.

Looking back, the Zone's interface was the first in a long line of designs that I've evolved for lots of different Web sites, and now it's coming back around. You can see the family resemblance in that prototype design--it's what I call a "pillar-n-post" layout, with a column on the left and a bar across the top, with an "arena" in the center. But while the layout's similar, it's similar the way a homo sapiens is simlar to homo erectus. Lots of evolution's gone on between this design here and the latest design coming.