HAH.

Remember me telling you guys that they were filming a commercial at the factory I work at? Well, here it is. They titled it "Going to Work". Uhhh...

Also, I swear to you, nobody looks that happy going in, really.

While I'm at it, they made me park out in the boondocks since they were filming that on the side I PARK ON, just because I drive a Chevy. Well, SORRY, but my Equinox was way cheaper than a CR-V. But yeah, that's what the place looks like on the outside.

I guess the other night, they had four break-ins on the Womens Side of the parking lot. (To clarify, there are locker rooms inside; the side with the girl's locker room is referred to as the "womens" side, and the side with the mens locker room is referred to as the "mens" side.) Women left their purses on the front seat of their cars and someone broke their window to steal 'em. Well, duh. But people felt safe doing that. Quite a few people even leave their keys in the ignition while they work so they don't have to carry them around. Hah.

And for those who were curious... Here's a good video, that shows what the new Accord Crosstour looks like. By good, I don't mean that they speak highly of it, because it seems they don't. But you can see what it looks like. And yes, I've been building those.

Bah, 5:00am and I still can't fall asleep. :/

sacae sacae sacae sacae sacae sacae sacae sacae sacae sacae sacae sacae

NEW LAYOUT, KIDS.

It's all thanks to qieru, though. She's the genius artist. *_* I'M JUST THE LOWLY COLORIST...THING YEAH.

Also, this font. Hard to read, yes/no?

Anyway, Shannon and I are going to meet at his house on Saturday to discuss things. :] Hee. ♥

Notes augmented

We've enhanced and de-bugged Notes. If you haven't tried it yet, now's the time! You can create a private note when you ban multiple users. You can also delete multiple notes at once. Lastly, paid users have the option to add a note (visible only to you) whenever you add or remove a friend (guaranteed to avoid embarrassing social mishaps). If you don't currently have a paid account, you can upgrade now! It only takes a few minutes and costs less than a bad shopping mall haircut (plus, it's way more fashionable)!

Product tweaks and bug kill

1. In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
2. If you sign up to get notifications of the Writer's Block question of the day, you'll now see the daily question in the email notification, so you'll have a little extra time to ponder before you post. You can subscribe to Writers Block notifications here
3. The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
4. If you visit a LiveJournal page and get prompted to log in, you'll be returned to the same page after you sign in (Thanks, Dreamwidth)!
5. If you don't edit the timestamp for an entry at all, the entry timestamp will indicate the time the entry was posted instead of the time the Update Journal page was loaded
6. Comments with paddings/backgrounds render correctly within the comment box (and will no longer wrap outside the box and break frames/margins)

New FCK fixes rich text editor!

1. We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
2. When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds are no longer broken
3. RTE now functions properly in Safari 4.0
4. An extra line/space will not be auto-inserted whenever you switch from RTE to HTML editor
5. The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers

LiveJournal Cares

We’re pleased to introduce you to lj_cares, a new LiveJournal community dedicated to raising awareness and funds for U.S. charitable organizations that improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Each month, we’ll spotlight a nonprofit that is making a significant global impact through medical research, public outreach, and/or humanitarian social programs. Charities will be selected in accordance with the U.S. calendar of national health observances based on a high rating (of over 60%) on Charity Navigator and global scope of impact.

In this, our inaugural month of November, we will celebrate national adoption month by offering a charitable virtual gift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that saves the lives of orphans with life-threatening diseases and places them in loving homes around the world. LiveJournal will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of charitable vgifts (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares and read about how they helped save Baby Kang and the Rainbow Twins from fatal illnesses, who are now thriving in nurturing families. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries gifts in the Virtual Gift shop.

Papered in postcards

A couple of weeks ago, we asked you to send in postcards to surround us with LiveJournal community. Thanks for coming through! We've received postcards all the way from Germany, Finland, and Canada and from all over the US, including Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Indiana, Hawaii, and Oklahoma just to name just a handful. We're thrilled with our improved decor.

Please keep the love coming for one more week by writing to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be drawing the names of ten random contributors next Thursday to win paid account credits!

Photos of the week

We have more dazzling images posted by talented LiveJournal photographers from around the world. We're hoping to span the entire globe, so please continue posting and tagging. Of course, you can also sit back and enjoy the view at lj_photophile.

You can see a sample of this week's gorgeous photos and check out spotlight communities and awesome user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

Siiiiiiiiiigh. It was a long night.

At any rate, I've decided to give up on NaNoWriMo. My left arm was tingly for about 5 hours at work, and I can't afford to hurt myself further by typing like a madman. So yeah. No novel from the Mannadon.

I think I'll take it easy for a while, so if I disappear for a day or two without really saying anything/much, that's why.

EDIT@08:16 UTC/GMT. Wow. That was ugly. I expected it to go for 30 minutes and have maybe 1 minute of broken connectivity. Instead it lasted over 4 hours and we had 10 minutes of downtime directly related to the load balancer upgrades and then another 5-10 minutes of downtime when our primary Pingback database server crashed and the secondary couldn't take over; which could have been indirectly caused by the network upgrade missing a self-VIP.

Anyways, we're up, we're working, the load balancers are barely breaking a sweat right now and I need some food and a shot of whiskey. I don't even *like* whiskey!!

Thanks mhwest and dnewhall for helping out!

---

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

I'm debating quitting NaNoWriMo. I don't know if my hands can take it.

No, I will not skip entire scenes, and no, I will not introduce random shit or kill off a character just to make word count. Sorry, but if I'm writing a story, I'm going to do it right. That's just how I roll.

I think Shannon's discouraged that he and I don't have very much in common. I guess he didn't expect it? I did, though. Seriously. A 21-year age gap means you can't have a heckuva lot in common. But it did make me want to send him Collin Raye's Not That Different, since the song and the general concept match so well.

Still itchy. I'm taking more Benedryl and then going to bed. Sigh.

Happy 50th birthday to my mother. ♥

I'm lazy, allergies still hanging around, Benadryl makes a person sleepy, and uh... Up is a great movie so far. Too bad I have to stop watching it to go to work.

Take care, everyone.

WHOA, WHOA, WHOA!

LET'S BACK THIS WAGON TRAIN UP AND HEAD BACK EAST.

This is my new catch-phrase. Get used to it.

Also, I think I'm having a pretty bad allergic reaction to...something unidentifiable at this time. Acne isn't supposed to itch. But. I itch. Badly. My head itches. Annoyingly. This reminds me of a pretty bad period of time in my live, that involved a lot of hives and a visit to the ER. So. Tomorrow, I should probably find Benedryl that didn't expire 12 months ago (aka: buy it), and then like, stop using soap on my face.

I recently did the following:

1.) Changed hair conditioner and shampoo
2.) Washed face with soap

And my head/face has been itching for a while. I didn't use the soap on my SCALP though. BUT IT ITCHES.

I also have this huge lump on the back right side of my head. Actually, now that I think about it, this lump came out of nowhere. My whole scalp is really tender to the touch and kind of hurts...

God, I hope I don't have hives on my scalp. :| Again.

I also have a quarter-shaped red spot like, right in the center of my chest, right below my collarbone. It's so weird.

And NaNoWriMo? I'm so lazy. I'm at a Caring Level of like, 10%. :| I bought birthday goodies for my mumsy today. And other stuff. And yeah. It's after 3:00am and I'm really tired and etc. Please to be shooting me in the foot, please. I'm getting up early to wish my mom a happy birthday. |D Now, to write something mushy on her card...

♥

sixwordstories
Whether you're in the mood for a creative challenge or you're short on time or attention span, this semi-addictive community is perfect for those who find flash fiction way long. Once you get the hang of it, you won't be able to stop. The prince turned into a frog. The girl ran home to mother. Tough to write. Easy to read. It's a double threesome of fun.

dailyfoodie
Delicious, ambitious, and occasionally nutritious dishes make for an eclectic, all-you-can-eat feast. Whether you're searching for recipes for your next dinner party or you're jonesing for a late-night brownie fix, your cravings are sure to be well sated. A warm and inclusive community that welcomes all orientations, from carnivores to vegans, from gourmands to junk-food junkies. Guaranteed bias-free, food-positive, and pan-epicurian.

Some new photographs, guys. Taken with my shiny new camera.

( Flowers and cats, and dogs, oh my! )

And that's all for now. :D

For: shimizu_hitomi. I said I'd stand outside her LJ with picket signs, so here's one. :B



Updateeeeee. D:

My new banner is epic, and it's all thanks to qieru, even if she didn't know I was planning to borrow it. :B

Will change when journal updateness is complete. Which...could be a while.

I have two things: a history lesson, and a serious question.

1.) The Donner Party Tragedy was a terrible event that took place in 1846-1847. Trapped in the Sierra-Nevada mountains, half-starved, the Donner Party was the most well-known tragedy of the western migration. The website linked above has a detailed account of the journey, and it's actually quite fascinating.

Suspected foul play, dates that don't match to events, varying accounts of things (like a stabbing), et cetera.

At any rate, The Donner Party got so desperate for food that some of them, after eating everything possible, including shoes, clothes, et cetera, eventually ate those in the party who died. Which brings me to my question:

2.) Could you eat human flesh?

I know it sounds terrible, but reading through the diaries, seeing the mention of cannibalism (and the hesitation, in part, of other people in mentioning it in their memoirs) got me thinking. They were so hungry, having not eaten for days, having already killed all their animals... What else could they do to live?

But at the same time, they must have known how others would react to hearing of such a thing. It would be shameful to recount in the future, and it would probably bring shame to your own family. It would have been considered scandalous, and possibly even a sin.

Personally, I don't know if I could do it. I guess, though, to people living in 1847/1847, the killing and skinning of animals (doing it, seeing it) was perfectly normal. Today, it's not normal. So to them, it might not have been so difficult to skin and dry the meat of their fallen party. It's not as if they killed them, themselves; the people who were eaten died of starvation, going insane, etc.

But you know, you'd be scarred for life, with the knowledge that you ate someone, and you knew them, their family, their face, their name.

Imagine how terrible it must have been for those people-- for anyone, really, but especially for these people, who traveled months together, side-by-side-- to have to have resorted to eating those that died. I can't imagine what it would be like to be forced into that situation, to have no other choice. I think that I would rather die, but these men had families-- wives, children-- depending on them to bring help. And really, it's not as if you can feel pain once you're dead, you know? It's such a debatable thing.

Note that later wagon trains of emigrants remembered and feared something similar happening to them. This resulted in a lot of people left on the side of the trail. Cholera victims are most worth mentioning. Since they usually died fairly quickly anyway (within 24 hours), many were left to die. (Sometimes a "watcher" was selected to stay behind, dig a grave, and catch up to the train when the victim died, but oftentimes the watcher was in such a hurry they dug the grave before the victim died. Imagine watching your own grave be dug. Quite a few were buried alive.) If the wagon train halted too many times, too often, they could be caught in the snow like The Donner Party.

It was, no doubt, on the mind of every emigrant as they reached that particular general area. (Now called Donner Lake, it was formerly Truckee Lake, named after an Indian who guided a train through the mountains, there.)

Okay, plot officially changed.

( Here's a synopsis, if anyone's interested in reading it/is willing to tell me what they think of it. )

Not sure how I feel about this, but I think it'll give my novel a lot more drive. With her actually loving William, she only had a half-hearted reason to go to California-- which was, essentially, to be with him sooner/save time-- but now she's got a really good reason to leave Missouri. I think I'll write her and William's relationship as one of those "everyone expects it" romances. (You know, they grew up together as close friends, et cetera.)(Which I swear was in a movie or something, but for the life of me, I can't remember what.)

I'll stick with the title Equilateral for now, even though my love triangle (HAR HAR HAR, why yes, it does amuse me!) isn't a love triangle. (I could add another woman to the mix, though, considering Louisa's going to be viewed as a man by the others. Hmmm...)

Also, genre is practically Historical Fiction/Romance/Drama/Spiritual now.

I'll stop posting about my NaNo story for tonight, I swear.

Why hello there, plot change.

I don't know if I'll edit the beginning of the story this month, or wait until next month. Sorry, William, but I need you to be the anti-Love Interest. D: I feel bad for doing it, but it'll make things work out better, I think.

Now Sarah Jane can play the instigator. It'll be beautiful. And I'm about four seconds away from changing her middle name to Jaye, because I keep reading it that way!

Also, research is SO MUCH FUN. I keep finding out cool stuff for the characters to think about. The famous Donner Party Tragedy, the amount of people that drowned in [insert river here] in 1850, et cetera, et cetera.

Too bad the research is more fun than the actual story.

Edited at 9:54pm to add: I'm done writing tonight, I think. I can't think of what I want to happen next. So...

NaNoWriMo, Day Seven
Word Count: 11,229
Stress Level: 7/10

Notes on this...

•I'm behind by about 400 words.
•I like my new plot better. It makes Mary Sue even more "logical" a person as a character, and Louisa more of a rebel, which is pretty much what I wanted to begin with.
•Sarah Jane's going to be the one who convinces Louisa to head west [as a man].
•I might need to write some scenes from William's POV, maybe.
•Jack needs to show up soon.

Procrastinations Accomplished Thus Far

•1/2 hour documentary watched (The other hour of it, I will watch after I edit this post.)
•1.5 hour date with Shannon.
•Hung out with Codee at the mall in Springfield.
•Napped.

Tomorrow I need to vacuum and clean the living room. I've turned into a slob. I'd also like to get more pictures of CiCi, especially now that I have that shiny new camera.

I didn't write anything today.

I'm so tired. My fingers, hands, forearms, and elbows hurt.

But I need to catch up. Sigh.

Edit @ 2:40am

NaNoWriMo, Day Six
Word Count: 10,104
Stress Level: 6/10

Apparently, Louisa's dad gets his own point of view. So yay. I guess. The more points of view I can write from, the freakin' better. Though I doubt he gets much screentime in the future, I wanted to at least portray the father-daughter relationship they have going for 'em. :| Hm.

My hands hurt so much at work tonight that it makes me want to drop NaNoWriMo like a hot skillet.

This story won't be finished in 50,000 words. I doubt it'll even be finished in 100,000 words.

So much has to happen. But leaving Independence, Missouri is the only thing that'll happen to Louisa before I make it to 50k. If I make it to 50k. (The Oregon Trail, Jack Rowe, California, William (and the love triangle created), plus Sarah Jane and Mary Sue... They'll take 150k by themselves.)

Sigh.

I need to get up early to buy some pants. Well, partially for my date, but also because I'm a whole 98lbs at best, and I don't have any jeans/nice pants that fit. I have sevens, fives... and now I have to buy threes? If I'd have known I was going to lose that much weight, I'd never have bought sevens or fives to begin with. At least, not as many.

The empire strikes back

In recent weeks, we've taken huge steps towards blocking spam accounts on LiveJournal. In fact, we've suspended as many as 30,000 accounts in a single day! We've implemented several pre-emptive measures to prevent the creation of spam accounts, and we've honed our detection of suspicious content. Spam bots are a crafty lot, so we'll continue to refine our tactics and keep up the good fight to keep you safe from spam attacks on LiveJournal.

RSS feeds again

If you're addicted to xkcd_rss, icanhaschzbrgr, or other syndicated feeds, we're pleased to report that we've resolved the update error that was mucking up your RSS feeds. While content was being pulled correctly, it wasn't being posted to the feeds themselves. Late last week, we finally nailed down what we hope was the root problem, so content should post properly. We thank you for your patience.

Wii have killer CSI Deadly Intent contests!

c_s_i

If you're a gamer who loves CSI, have Wii got news for you! c_s_i is sponsoring killer contests. Simply post a question to a member of the CSI crew. The winner will get a free copy of CSI: Deadly Intent for Nintendo Wii (with a retail value of $39.99) and get their question answered by a member of the CSI writing team! There's also a fantastic monthly contest. To enter, join c_s_i, play the online version of CSI: Deadly Intent, and respond to a two-part query for a chance to win a Wii! Entries will be judged on composition and originality. Sorry, but you must be a U.S. resident and over 18 years old to participate. Check out the rules here.

Enveloped in postcards

Last week, we asked you to send in postcards to help us decorate our drab concrete walls. Here's a photo of the results so far! Thank you so much and please keep them coming! You can mail them to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be giving ten random users paid account credits.

Photos of the week

If you haven't visited our new LiveJournal photo community, you're in for an amazing visual trip. LiveJournal users from around the world will take you on a scenic journey to everywhere. Post your own pictures or kick back and enjoy at lj_photophile. You can view some of this week's awesome photos after the jump. Please start tagging with geographic location, since we'd like to track all the places around the world represented in this community. Keep on commenting too!
( Read more... )

Wordle is so interesting.

Here's a word-cloud of Equilateral thus far. It's quite amusing. Gee, I wonder who my characters are. :|

My word count's not too bad right now, but I feel like a failure. I'm so tired and lazy that...I don't really want to write anything else today. Maybe I won't.