Hello...

In a moment of frustration, I am driven to existential questions  
since practical ones seem even more impossible.  I wanted to simply  
start a mo-blog, and thought since I am a uvm student, why not use  
UVM's blogging site, it seemed like a good University community  
member thing to do.  Yet, I have found Movable Type to be the  
opposite of its name.  I have published on other blogging sites and  
found they allowed individual creativity in layout with an extensive  
template library, while still allowing it to be rather idiot proof.   
I encounter movable type, and it is as if I have hit a total wall.  I  
find it to be the most impenetrable interface.  All I would like to  
do is add a bit of individual style to my blog, but I am finding it  
impossible to intuitively modify styles and layout, or implement  
other people's MT themes.  Before I am accused of simply being a  
luddite, I am getting my phd, not in computer science, but I write  
programs/ macros for excel, arcgis, and R, so I don't think its  
necessarily because I'm ignorant.  I am sure that all my answers are  
in the documentation, but I wanted to ask others at UVM some  
questions.  One, why implement a system that is so unuser friendly?   
Sure its powerful, but I don't want to spend my leisure time figuring  
out how to blog, I just want to type and go.  I spend 8+ hours a day  
reading dry technical manuals and programming, why do I want to do  
that with my blog?  Has anyone encountered this problem of finding MT  
difficult to use?  I suppose I don't understand why if the university  
would want to foster a blogging community, it implements a technology  
that is far from easy for the average user to use.

-Ted