That means its they’re birthday.
We’re all lost, WOOKIN! I’m glad you showed up.
Thanks, DB. I would miss you all too much to just give up without trying. 
@WOOKINPANUBv.2 be sure to e-mail TubaDiva@aol.com and tell her about this otherwise she may never know. And be patient – she’s already deluged with those other 10,000 e-mails from everyone else who did the same.
I had to change my password to incorporate non-alphabetic characters, then had trouble logging in because my screen name was already taken. After e-mailing Tuba Diva, however, I’m back on the board – for today, at least. Now to hit “Reply” and see if I’ve got this right…
You’re in!
Present, but OMG the clutter is overbearing!
Play with the themes. Some are less cluttered.
Thanks. I just contacted her so we’ll see. I’m not even sure what difference it makes. Is that the reason I can’t find the CP, i.e., I don’t have that “privilege” yet?
Eep; this was in reply to Senegoid. Still getting the hang of quoting. Sorry.
Uh, I have a cake? I don’t see one and my birthday is in September. Oh! I see, that was my first post on this new system, so it thinks I’m new.
They give you cake if you’re new? Hey!!! I want cake. I like cake🎂
jumpbass Happy belated/next b’day anyway!
I think you get cake on the anniversary of when you joined the SDMB.
#sniff# With the old software you got pie. Another tradition trashed.
Mikey, you changed your Avatar!!
@dropzone
Here’s pie 
Oh, crap that ain’t pie. Sorry I’m using a little screen at the moment.
What do these numbers mean?
One number is gray, one is blue. (These are viewable before I click on the thread.)
Gray are old unread posts, blue are new unread posts.
I think the way it works is once you log in, there’s unread posts. If you don’t read the thread right away, it starts accumulating old and new unread. Not sure, though.
The new posts show up if the thread’s set to ‘tracking’ or above, which it will be automatically if you’ve posted in it (though you actually have a choice about that! but it’s the default.) If the thread’s set to ‘normal’ (for you personally), unread posts won’t show you a new-posts count.
I’ve got threads below the “last visited” line that still only have a blue number.
I think it’s like this: you open a thread with a blue number, but go off somewhere else before reading through the end of the thread. After that, it’s split into the gray and the blue: gray is “hey, there’s still some posts here you didn’t read,” and blue is “and now there are more new posts on top of that.”
I think blue are threads that are less than 2 days old and gray are older than 3 days old (if I’m talking about the same thing). That’s what the system just told me, at least.