Well, there was a trade-off between having it be non-irritating for the regular users, but be noticeable to the newbies. I realize that it doesn't do a huge amount of irritating blinking, but since it's right above the box where they enter their new message, they have to see it cycle at least half a dozen times before they're done typing.

And so far, I haven't seen anyone say "I did not see that link" unless they had images turned off in their browser (and there's nothing I can do about that one). I was afraid this guy was going to be the first to have missed the image. But in fact, he had not missed it, he'd just managed to miss that entry in the FAQ. So the first thing (did he miss the blink) is not an issue, but I don't know how to fix that second thing (he still didn't know it was in the FAQ). I guess I have to accept the old horse/water axiom.