i did a work around for this using an iframe for the default value with this code
[code:1] <iframe width="200" height="100" src="http://localhost:85/joomla/a.htm" scrolling="no" frameborder="0">[/code:1]
This allowed me to give the default message that was long enough (it was longer than 255 characters) however... when the user updates their profile but doesn't update that field, the result is a display of the hard code instead of an iframe. Is there a way to remedy this?