Newbie at Vox

Knowing how hesitant I am about keeping this going (in addition to the travel blogs and my apocalypse journal* and my paper journals and whatever else I've set up over the years), my friend Lindsey said, "You should!  You don't talk about killing yourself, and the fish are cute!"  (My theme is all beachy right now.)  How can I turn down encouragement like that?

But I have a a few complaints about Vox that maybe someone can help me out with.

1. No threaded comments.  Is there a way to turn that on, so it's graphically easier to see who's replying to what and what you need to reply to?
2. No way to change your "real name."  This isn't a big deal.  I had to disable it showing, though, because of that.  (Not, ironically, because it was my real name and I was concerned about privacy issues, but because I entered my usual email alias when I registered and no one I know will know who that is.)
3. No way to search by region that I've found yet.  Seeing as how searching through my top interests found a whopping three people and my searching by name found absolutely no one I know, I thought it might be neat to find other people in my area.  That...didn't really work out, except for AmyH.  Am I missing something?
4. A huge number of people just seem to be name-holding, with nothing in their blog.  I keep getting all excited about finding cool sounding people, then finding out they don't actually write anything.  Maybe it's too hard to keep up the cool facade that far?
5. No anonymous comments.  I don't want to actually force everyone to get a Vox just to reply to me.
   

Stuff I do like:

1. All of the media features.  Now I need some, um, media so they're not wasted.
2. Very few people seem to be talking about pills, suicide, makeup, Harry Potter, or eating disorders.
   
3. All of the fancy format buttons actually work properly.
4. The QoTD and assorted whosits are kind of neat, and seem like a good way of encouraging people who don't know what to write.

Now I've got to go pick up some boxes for moving at an unspecified time to an unspecified location.  Ahh.  Apartment living at its finest.

*For reals.  It has nothing about freeze-dried food or stocking up on ammo, though.