Terminal not saving preferences?

Hi all,
I'm having this annoying problem with my Terminal, when I change the preferences they only last for that particular session. That is window color, size, etc get reset when I close and open Terminal again.
The really annoying part is that when I want to run the latest version of Ruby, I have to type . ~/.bash_login every single time I open a new Terminal window.
I remember doing something to a system file once when I wanted to get transparent windows for the Terminal but now I can't remember which file or what did I do to it =(. I've tried restoring my system, but since it saves all preferences, the problem remained the same.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.