Heather wrote:
Dan... please stop telling me (constantly) how the way that I run websites is wrong. It's really starting to grate on my nerves.
I don't host avatars for pretty much the same reason you don't, plus actually having had the experience of discovering just how easy it can be for some people to get around hot linking barriers. I had to pay over $1k for 2 months to figure out that porn communities were using my avatar hosting generosity to their benefit.
I'm NOT doing that again. I don't care that technology has gotten better in that regard. Photobucket is willing to save us just that much more bandwidth.
Use photobucket (or similar service) or don't have an avatar. Those are your options... just like the rest of us.

Whatever, I don't care. I'm not the one bugging for you to get one. I'm the one being bugged to create one. I'm just not doing it.