I spent a significant amount of time setting up my own system for making short URLs that redirect to longer ones. But I haven't had a chance to use it yet, because I don't particularly like URL shortening.
It may one day be handy for posting a short URL in an email or Facebook message, but in most cases I can use the real link, either because I'm putting it in a LiveJournal post where size doesn't matter, or because I'm linking to my own content or to blogs that have good URLs to start with.
