You might want to point out to your friend that there are many more icon slots and that insanejournal openly allows fanfiction, roleplaying, etc.
As for the layout, are you trying to post it in the userinfo on LJ? That would, if I'm not mistaken, strip out the style tags and leave you with a very plain and off-centered table. Try posting it within an entry on the LJ account in question, to see if that works?
But if that's what you've already done, then I'm afraid I can't find any reason for the code to be doing that. I tested it out on my dreamwidth and my insanejournal (I don't actively have a livejournal anymore); the code seemed alright and the table displayed properly.