Jabbergah, I agree wholeheartedly:
1) The main focus should always be on improving snipe reliability and consistency. If snipes don't work the way we expect them to, I'll move elsewhere. All other enhancements are icing on the cake. But remember, sometimes we enjoy just eating the icing! And making some things easier to find helps to increase the user's success at sniping.
2) While I like more obvious colors for certain important buttons, I will NEVER advocate blinking for any portion of a webpage. People who design such sites should be forced to sit in front of a blinking traffic light for hours at a time (preferably a blinking GREEN one, since they'll go crazy trying to figure out what that means!).
As far as I remember, the snipe calendar link has always been in the same location it is now. It's a nice feature, but if I ever have enough active snipes to make using the calendar a better way to organize than the normal chronological list, then I want a quantity discount on snipes!