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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
- In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
- 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
- The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
- 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)!
- 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
- 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!
- We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
- When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds are no longer broken
- RTE now functions properly in Safari 4.0
- An extra line/space will not be auto-inserted whenever you switch from RTE to HTML editor
- The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers
LiveJournal Cares
We’re pleased to introduce you to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) 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!
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Curtains
We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!
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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 ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mhwest and dnewhall for helping out!
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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. |
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Nov. 8th, 2009 @ 12:19 am
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I've had some time to think over that bar fight from a few posts back, and here are my conclusions.
( This may get a little boring... ) |
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Okay, since I know you're all waiting on tenterhooks for it, date news is first. It was not the worst date that I have ever experienced. And... that's all there is to say about it, really. Not very eventful.
So, on to more important matters! Such as a links round-up.
http://nickjonasthinks.tumblr.com/ I was recently made aware of this, and it is amazing. Long-term readers of Poppy's blog know that I like Nick Jonas, and that I love macros. The "Nick Jonas Thinks" tumblr is a series of fantastic Nick Jonas macros. And they're pretty much all in the same style awesome style:
( In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that these are probably a lot more enjoyable if you already have some familiarity with images of Nick Jonas. Oh, and fair warning: there are 12 pictures of Nick Jonas making cute faces under this cut. )
And now for some embedded video!
( A variety of interesting, funny, and/or thought-provoking video under the cut! )
And now for blog and articles! You know, things that it isn't impolite not to place behind a cut.
I've mentioned, both in this space and in conversations in real life, that I might someday create a substantially sized post about my love of the Jonas Brothers. Perhaps in effort to explain myself, perhaps just to share what is a huge part of my life right now. I am not yet ready to write such a post, if, in fact, I ever will write one (although I certainly still intend to write a review of some kind of their most recent album, because I have some thoughts), but I would still like to share something with you all now. A while back, someone posted a JoBros picspam that is simply amazing. If you want to know why I love this band, this post contains many of the reasons. In the end, it's because of family. (Happy birthday to Kevin Jonas today, by the way! Um, if I manage to post this before midnight!)
This one is a little difficult to explain. You should just click through. It is hilarious, and not in any way inappropriate.
Several weeks ago, my friend Benji linked to some article or another regarding sleep scheduling, an on-going interest of his. Though I don't recall being particularly impressed by the article that he linked, I followed a path of links from that article and found an endeavor in self-discipline titled "How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off." An interesting exercise, I'm sure. But what I really liked about it is the following humorous passage regarding the author's feelings when his alarm goes off in the morning:
It’s nice and warm under the covers. If I get up, it’s going to be cold. That won’t be too pleasant.
Oh, I really should get up now. C’mon legs… move. Go, legs, go. Hmmm… that isn’t how I move my legs, is it? They don’t seem to be listening to me.
I should go to the gym. Yeah. Hmmm… I don’t really feel like working out right now though. I haven’t even had breakfast. Maybe I should have a muffin first. Banana nut. Now that’s a good muffin.
Maybe I’m trying to get myself up too early. I’m still sleepy, aren’t I? Maybe getting up with an alarm is unnatural. Won’t I function better with more sleep?
I don’t have to get up right this minute, do I? Surely I can relax another five minutes or so. The world isn’t going to end if I don’t get up right now.
I’ll bet my wife is toasty warm right now. She told me she hates it when I try to snuggle her at 6am, but so what… she loves me enough to forgive me, right? I know… I’ll start massaging her back and shoulders first. She can’t resist a good massage, even so early in the morning. Then I’ll transition to a head scratching. Yeah, that’ll do it. And then slide right into the spoon position. Won’t that be a pleasant way to start the day?
[ Scootch... scootch... Zzzzzzzz ]
Two hours later…
Me: What time is it? I don’t even remember the alarm going off. That was a good snuggle though. Oh well, guess I’ll have to skip exercise today.
Wife: Why do you keep setting your alarm if you aren’t going to get up when it goes off?
Me: Oh, did you think that was my wake-up alarm? It’s actually my snuggle alarm.
SNUGGLE ALARM!! I LOVE THE CONCEPT OF THE SNUGGLE ALARM. It's as awesome as the dance bell at the beginning of HSM2. It's as fantastic an idea as 6 o'clock hugs! (You could argue that it is in fact a logical progression of 6 o'clock hugs.)
I would never have thought of this, but it is apparently hilarious to hear about someone who does not usually read fashion and beauty magazines encountering Glamour for the first time. I mean, the bit where they tell you how they did the makeup for the cover model doesn't seem weird to me at all! But I can see how it might be strange to someone who isn't used to that sort of thing. Basically, I appreciate that the following sentence was legitimately used to build an argument: None of the media through which you experience Reese Witherspoon includes aroma capabilities.
Fuck You, Penguin is subtitled "A Blog Where I Tell Cute Animals What's What," which is a very accurate description. I don't know much about this blog, other than that it's hilarious. It's some guy (I mean, I assume it's a guy, but maybe it's a lady) viciously berating some of the world's most adorable and rare creatures. That's really all it is! But if a really cute picture of an animal has ever driven you to use profanity, this is the blog for you. (Be sure to check out the "Great Moments in History" in the sidebar on the right.)
Okay... now, with all that funny stuff out of the way, all that's left is the feminism and similar topics. Good times!
Let's start with one that's kind of funny, to ease the transition: "Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed To Work!" I would like to see this on a poster all over college campuses. I mean, the poster clarifying what counts as "one drink" of various types of alcoholic beverages was interesting, but ultimately useless, I suspect. Anyway, it's things like this that remind me how subtle and pervasive some types of victim-blaming are.
These next two are both from a fat acceptance blog that I recently discovered called "Shapely Prose" that is totally awesome. Fat acceptance and sizism are really interesting topics! And I do recognize that being able to view them merely as "interesting topics" -- or choose not to think about them at all at any time! -- is a manifestation of my privilege as a naturally thin person. But I've always been interested in body image issues, and fat acceptance seems like a natural extension of that interest. Anyway, this first link is actually not about sizism. It's a feminist article, ostensibly addressed to the fellows in order to explain how to ease interaction between men and women who do not know each other: "Schrödinger's Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced." Quote:
Now, you want to become acquainted with a woman you see in public. The first thing you need to understand is that women are dealing with a set of challenges and concerns that are strange to you, a man. To begin with, we would rather not be killed or otherwise violently assaulted.
“But wait! I don’t want that, either!”
Well, no. But do you think about it all the time? Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for women, it is. When I go on a date, I always leave the man’s full name and contact information written next to my computer monitor. This is so the cops can find my body if I go missing. My best friend will call or e-mail me the next morning, and I must answer that call or e-mail before noon-ish, or she begins to worry. If she doesn’t hear from me by three or so, she’ll call the police. My activities after dark are curtailed. Unless I am in a densely-occupied, well-lit space, I won’t go out alone. Even then, I prefer to have a friend or two, or my dogs, with me. Do you follow rules like these?
So when you, a stranger, approach me, I have to ask myself: Will this man rape me?
Do you think I’m overreacting?
This next article is very important to me. If you choose to experience only one thing that I've included in this post, it should definitely be John Hodgman's TED talk, embedded above. But if you choose to experience just two things here, this link should definitely be the second one. Kate Harding's "The Fantasy of Being Thin" is incredibly well-written and sharply insightful. I dare anyone to read it and not find something that speaks directly to them.
Finally, I have the articles that Sady Doyle (of the fantastic Tiger Beatdown, linked on this blog many times previously) has recently been writing for Bitch Magazine. Sady's blog, She Pop, brings a feminist lens to pop music, often while including sarcasm and CAPITAL LETTERS. So... basically it is a blog that might as well have been designed solely to bring me joy. And now that its run has finished, I'm a little stumped about which posts I particularly want to highlight for you. They are almost universally fantastic, and you should really just click through and read them all. By far the most controversial posts were "Taylor Swift Wants To Ban Access To Your Lady Bits" and its follow-up, "The Red and The White: Some Thoughts On Taylor Swift and Katy Perry." I guess those two were particular favorites of mine.
In conclusion, I'D SAY THIS HAS TURNED OUT TO BE A PRETTY GOOD POST FOR GETTING TO KNOW WHAT POPPY IS ALL ABOUT. (That sentence works best if you imagine T-Rex from Dinosaur Comics saying it, by the way.) |
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The empire strikes backIn 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 againIf you're addicted to , ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) 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 postcardsLast 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 weekIf 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!
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Holy crap, I JUST REALIZED something incredibly important and awesome.
You know who would be absolutely perfect to play Gen, from Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series? Like, you know, if a live-action movie(s) were made from the book(s)?
Joe Jonas
Seriously. Think about it. I mean, yes, I am basing some part of this on the cover art from the awesome paperback volume of The Thief that I own. (See this post for an image of that cover.) Even if that illustration doesn't really resemble Joe very much at all. But I thought of this mostly because I was reading through the excerpt that is also part of the entry linked above, and Gen was just... really reminding me of Joe. In the whole excerpt (and the whole book, the more I think about it), but especially here:
"You could shorten the time without shortening your life," said the magus.
I looked up at him. I'd lost the thread of the conversation. In the moment it took me to recover it, I realized that he was now nervous himself. I relaxed in my seat. "Go on."
"I want you to steal something."
I smiled. "Do you want the king's seal? I can get it for you."
"If I were you," said the magus, "I'd stop bragging about that." His voice grated.
My smile grew. The gold ring with the engraved ruby had been in his safekeeping when I had stolen it away. Losing it, I was sure, had badly damaged his standing at the king's court.
That was when I realized that picturing Joe Jonas in that conversation was ridiculously easy. And of course I immediately felt the need to blog about it!
Seriously, you guys. I want a movie version of The Thief starring Joe Jonas so bad now. WHAT MUST I DO TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN?? |
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Enthusiastic followers of Poppy's dating life (as I assume all of you are) will be quite interested in hearing about a strange turn that my dating plans for tomorrow have taken. While remaining incredibly (shockingly, even) clear about where we will be meeting, I suspect that this fellow and I have suffered a major miscommunication about where we will be meeting! I expect that hilarity will ensue!
(The miscommunication is actually an internal one on this fellow's part, I believe. I'm pretty sure that I have all the relevant information. But seeing how this will pan out is easily the most interesting thing about this date so far.)
EDIT: Dammit, he worked the miscommunication out. I just missed a call from him, but he left a message straightening out where we're meeting. I mean, how is hilarity going to ensue now?? This puts a lot of pressure on my sarcasm reserves. (But I think there are probably more lunch options where we'll be meeting now, so. You know. Six of one, half-dozen of the other.) |
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I have not been on a date in two and a half years one and a quarter years. (Yeah, I forgot about the date that I went on during the Reunion last summer.)
It is important that I make this statement now, as I have just made a date for this Thursday. I almost don't even want to go on this date just because I will no longer be able to say: "I have not been on a date in two and a half years one year and three months." And I have seriously liked that. I mean, now it's going to be, what? "I've been on a date this week"? "I haven't been on a date in a couple weeks"? BORING.
As soon as I realized that this imminent date meant that I would be breaking the trend (which is so far my personal record for not-dating, if you don't count the first nineteen and a half years of my life before I started dating), I immediately felt the need to blog about it. THIS IS QUITE POSSIBLY (but hopefully not) THE LAST TIME I WILL BE ABLE TO SAY THIS: I haven't been on a date in two and a half years approximately one year and three or four months. (The exact figure is 472 days.)
For those who are (incomprehensibly, I must say) more interested in the details of the date than in tracking my inevitable slide toward old-maidenhood, I can provide the following: a fellow from church called me up and asked me out to lunch this Thursday. That is really all I know so far! I think his name is [Redacted], but I can't be 100% certain, because I am totally shit with names. If I need to blog about him more, I'll come up with a blog-name for him. (Also, I will hopefully figure out his real name at some point.) And I think that he's the guy who came up to me at church and awkwardly started a conversation a couple weeks ago, but, again, I can't be 100% certain that this is that same guy. If it is, then he's very tall and thin and quite resembles my oldest brother. Seems like a nice (albeit fairly awkward) person. |
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Nov. 2nd, 2009 @ 09:04 pm
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Today I taught my favorite 7th grade class. There are about 4 girls in the class that are really sweet. They're well-behaved, eager to participate, and love talking in English.
Today, one girl told another, "You are fat!"
The other girl smiled happily and answered, "I am fat cat!"
So cute! |
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Last night we went to a bar with some of the Chinese teachers, and we witnessed a bar fight. A customer had an argument with the bartender - both were very drunk. The customer smashed his glass on the bar, and said something to the bartender. The bar tender responded by smashing a bottle and waving the jagged end at the customer. The customer walked away, and I thought the affair was over. Not so: the customer yelled something, the bartender came around to confront him, and then things got crazy. The customer may have had a knife - I saw him hold something to the bartender's throat. The bartender made no move to defend himself - maybe he was saying something like "You don't have the guts to do it," I don't know. Then the two picked up beer bottles and smashed them on each others' heads. They made no attempt to stab each other with the broken bottles afterward - they just reached for new bottles. A third fellow came out and grabbed the customer. They all grabbed hold of each other and seemed to wrestle for a few seconds, then they separated, grabbed beer bottles, and threw them at each other.
Our group (8 people total, 2 guys and 6 girls) was sitting at a table to the side of the action. At this point everybody moved toward the wall. I stood in front of the group, looking at the scene playing out in front of me with disbelief. Some of the Chinese bar girls came over to stand with our group away from the fight.
Meanwhile, the beer bottles were flying. At this stage of the fight, practically every empty or full bottle at the bar and surrounding tables (excluding our table) was smashed. A woman behind the bar threw a bottle at the customer, and he threw one back. It was like dodgeball with Heineken bottles. A piece of glass landed on our table. After maybe 10 seconds of this, the three fighting men clinched again, continuing to break beer bottles on each others' heads and trying to scratch each others' faces with their fingers. A female bartender came over to try to separate them, and got hit in the head with a bottle for her efforts. I clearly remember the bartender staring ahead blankly as the customer repeatedly hit him on the head with a beer bottle, apparently trying to break it. Finally, the three made their way outside, still all embracing each other. I remember the bartender had blood pouring down his face. An entourage of bar workers accompanied the fighters outside. After a few minutes we peaked outside to see what was happening. The woman who got hit was holding her head and crying. I couldn't make out any of the fighters, but I was trying not to stare. Meanwhile, some of the bar girls had started sweeping up all the broken glass nonchalantly. It made me wonder if this sort of thing was a common occurrence for them. We left the bar, and went back to our rooms.
Seeing this fight bothered me a lot, on many different levels. Throughout the fight I felt tense. As I watched them repeatedly smash beer bottles on each others' heads, I tried to think of what would happen if their attention turned to us. They fought like animals, just lashing out without caution or discipline, without intent or purpose. None of the fighters tried to protect themselves - they only thought about attacking. But they never punched, never kicked, never stabbed. The action was happening so quickly, I felt like I could hardly process what was happening.
Maybe I'll post more about this later. |
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Daylight Savings Time is finally over, bitches!! This is how I celebrate:
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
So, I ABHOR AND LOATHE Daylight Savings Time. My reasons for this are myriad, but it's mostly just because I grew up in Arizona, where almost the entire state (everywhere except the Navajo Nation, which extends into NM and UT) does not observe Daylight Savings Time. Other parts of the US that do not observe DST: Hawaii, and all of the territories and protectorates (Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands). GOOD JOB, GUYS! STAY STRONG. (Yeah, I'm looking at you, Indiana. QUITTERS.)
I think we need to abolish Daylight Savings Time altogether, and if we can't do that, then we should really start calling it "War Time" again. |
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