What's up with these banner things? Is what you see somehow related to your own PC, "cookies," and stuff? Yesterday here at work I had sheep. Today I'm back to snow. And last night at home I still had snow.
It's related to your Internet browser's cache. Caching downloads images and text from web pages you visit frequently and stores them as files on your computer. Then, when you revisit a page, the browser compares file names, sees that they are the same, and then instead of downloading the images again from the Internet, it simply grabs a copy of what it already downloaded to your computer. Additionally, some Internet Service Providers do this kind of caching themselves to reduce their bandwidth expenses and, in some cases, speed up the perceived loading of pages (it's almost always quicker for your ISP to send you a page from their servers than to let someone else's server send it).
There are obvious trade-offs here. The positives are an increased speed of page delivery and reduced costs for having to transmit the same images and text over and over again. The negatives are that you won't always see the latest iteration of a web page. Local caching on your computer can usually be bypassed manually just by hitting "refresh" or "reload" the page. When you do that, it tells the browser you don't think you are seeing the latest or most complete page, so most browsers will request a complete re-download of the page you are looking for. Unfortunately, some ISPs who do their own caching don't respect that, and you'll simply have to wait for their service to re-access fresh copies of the page themselves. AOL was notorious for this in the past, and it sometimes took an hour or more for their caching servers to catch up with the most current information on a web page. Things have gotten better as the years have passed, however.
So, the reason you see snow vs. sheep is based on what your browser or ISP thinks is the latest page. You can try refresh or reload, or try to empty your browser's cache (each browser handles this differently, but it's usually found under Tools or Preferences and may be called deleting browser history - just avoid choosing the option to delete your cookies or stored passwords, or you'll find you'll have to re-log in on every website that requires a login, and your stored password will be gone.)
We've been all-sheep since the other night.
Tell you what, something else of a technical nature that I might have added. Every day, when I'm ready to leave work, I log off from Bettermost before I log off my PC. Some mornings when I come in, even though I've logged off Bettermost the day before, when I access the site, I'm already logged on , and sometimes not.
This is a cookie issue. When you log in here, BetterMost delivers a small web cookie to your computer which remembers you as a user and keeps you logged in. When you log off, it's telling the system to exit your account, but it doesn't necessarily delete that web cookie, so upon a return visit, there is a possibility you'll find you're logged in automagically again, especially if you set your login session for "forever." Users concerned about potential third-party access can logoff the system, and when they log back in, they can set their session time in that drop down box for a shorter period. This 'should' make the web cookie expire.
I have noticed some inconsistencies with this myself, particularly in the time I have supposedly been logged into the system. It seems to remember it in terms of days and hours even after I've logged off. This is probably a cookie issue.