| Fall |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|09:10 pm] |
Saturday we went to see Teatro Zinzani for their monthly brunch. It was entertaining, and the food was decent. Unfortunately, while we were out someone came by and shattered ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) cuddlyeconomist's car passenger window and rifled the glove box in the middle of the day. Likely they were looking for the GPS since she has a mount on the dash. We had parked her vehicle on the street behind our house for the Halloween party, and I suppose the street is just too secluded. It was the same place where our wood got stolen. The neighbors from that street did let us know about the damage, so it is likely just the fewer number of houses (the lots fill one side and all face the other street). Nothing of value was taken, but it's another $200 just for someone being a dick. Dave & Denise came over with dinner, however, and we had a pleasant evening playing board games with friends after I covered the car with a tarp and moved it to the front.
Today was spent getting the yard ready for winter with some new mulch, digging up the Triffid-sized sunflowers, and putting in some bulbs for spring. Phase 2 of the yard project will start soon with the flagstone patios getting installed sometime in the next few weeks. The recent windstorm took out two sections of the old fence between me and one neighbor, which is fine since we planned to replace that whole run next year anyhow. Since she is elderly and seldom goes out, she might not even have noticed it yet. |
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| LiveJournal Major Notes: Spam counter-attack, RSS feeds again, CSI Deadly Intent contest |
[Nov. 5th, 2009|01:15 pm] |
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!
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) 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!
( Read more... ) |
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| V |
[Nov. 4th, 2009|09:15 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  calm | ] |
I was in 7th grade when the original V mini-series first aired. And I remember how the big reveal at the end of the first night scared the crap out of me. But I still fell in love with the show and kept watching all the following mini-series, even through the rather silly weekly TV show.
This new incarnation, I liked it. Didn't love it, but it was an OK start. Unfortunately, they tried to smush the entirety of the plot of the first 2 hours of the original mini-series into one hour. And so the whole episode seemed really rushed, and I felt like I wasn't given any time to really connect to any of the characters. Also, the big reveal wasn't really that big, because they were all talking about it before the actual reveal. Kinda left it a little flat.
Obviously, there are some glaring differences from the original. Names have changed. Cultural references are now 2009 and not 1983. The Visitors no longer have that weird vocal thing (they sound like normal humans now). The uniforms are blue. The special effects benefit from a nice CGI budget.
The base premise is pretty much the same as most other alien invasion stories, though. But I'll keep watching for now, especially since quite a few of my favorite actors are in it. |
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| Halloween |
[Nov. 1st, 2009|11:14 pm] |
It was a busy weekend with Rhys in town, and the first 'full-on' Kid's Halloween of my adult life. Friday cuddlyeconomist brought him over to the Microsoft campus for the company trick-o-treat event. With this being the first year for the new Commons and Studios West campus where I'm located, it was a madhouse with huge crowds of Microsofties and their progeny (or should it be "spawn"?). He had a good time, and I'm sure most of my co-workers were thinking some variation of "I didn't know Chuck had a son?" and "I always thought he was gay?"
Saturday evening we hosted a Halloween party for Rhys. We had about 8 kids and about 12 adults over including some of my neighbors who I have only recently met--they were in the houses behind us and we met them because of the fencing project. The kids enjoyed the yard and turning Rhys' room into a disaster area, and the adults seemed to enjoy mellow conversation and punch. A group of us including drakemonger took the kids around the immediate neighborhood for door-to-door trick-o-treat. It was a little surreal for me, and I don't recall a group of adults shadowing me around as a child. Then again, I grew up on an Air Force base which was a closed neighborhood surrounded by barb-wire and guarded by guns and dogs so the adults never sweated it--gated communities only wish they were that secure. After most of the kids left, we played Apples-to-Apples and then Arkham Horror. Margo passed out about 10 minutes after Rhys did, which was sometime during the first round or two of play of Arkham. We ended up winning by playing her investigator for her for the next 2+ hours :>
The Apples-to-Apples game provided for some amusing moments. For those who haven't played it, one person (the judge, which rotates around the table) pulls out a random adjective or adverb card, and the rest of the players put down a card with a noun. The 'winner' of the round is the noun card the judge picks. Now when the judge is a six-year old, and you are playing the full-grown adult vocabulary version, it tends to be pretty amusing. Rhys has a better than average vocab, but his popular culture and history knowledge is still very limited. Adjective: visionary. Judge: Six-year-old boy. We play out six noun cards, and one of them includes Michelangelo. Six year old does not choose this card as a the best match for visonary. He chooses "Bird watching". His reasoning: Michelangelo is the crazy turtle, Donatello is the visionary one. Headsmack! To his credit, "Bird watching" was the only thing directly related to 'seeing' in the set of nouns... |
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| Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs |
[Nov. 1st, 2009|03:38 pm] |
Like most modern computer animated films, this one is a demo for a new technology making its way into the 'mainstream' of application. This movie is a demo for soft-body deformable modeling.
It is also pretty darn funny.
The voice-acting is amusing, complete with Mr. T. Neil Patrick Harris puts in his best voicing of a monosyllabic monkey since Dr. Horrible :> |
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| Writer's Block: Would you talk to the dead? |
[Oct. 31st, 2009|09:20 pm] |
Yes I did. It was when I interned at a summer theatre and the cook was a parapsychologist and he conducted a seance with us. I didn't know who I wanted to talk to so, I just thought to myself anyone who wants to talk, please talk to me. At first I heard a rush of voices. And then my rational mind took over and I noticed my butt was wet from the grass, my legs were sore and I was tired. Then the voices I went away and all I heard was the sounds of the waves on the beach. |
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| Emmet Otter's Jug Band Wizard Music |
[Oct. 31st, 2009|12:29 am] |
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cuddlyeconomist and I went with some friends to see tonight's show at Emerald City Trapeze. The athletics were good, the girls were cute, and the music was mostly appropriate. The pacing, costuming, and choreography needed a bit of work, so in the end it was a bit Cirque de So-So. The scene was also a little too "Burner", but we had a good time. |
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| Network Maintenance - Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 04:00-05:00 GMT/UTC |
[Oct. 30th, 2009|05:17 pm] |
EDIT: If you're reading this, our maintenance is OVER! The problem was not found on our equipment, which means we'll have to work with our ISP to fix this small problem -- which also means another maintenance window in the future -- but at least we have eliminated our side.
Thank you everyone, and a special shout out to rekoil for giving me a great suggestion AND also the opportunity to feel like I've just called in to a local radio station.
Have a great day, night or afternoon wherever you may be.
---
Hi everyone, sorry for the late notice but I'm going to have to do some testing on 1 of our 4 internet circuits TONIGHT; Friday night or Saturday morning depending on which time zone you're in.
Most of us shouldn't notice any impact, though there may be some slowness or lag when I switch traffic on to our other ISP circuits and then another hit when I stop the tests. If a page won't load or times out, try hitting refresh 1 or 2 times and it should load then. If it doesn't work at all... trust me, I'll be typing really really really fast to try to undo whatever I just did. Hopefully you'll have some Halloween candy (if you're in the USA and celebrate that kind of thing) nearby to take away the bitterness of a small site outage. :(
Here's the handy-dandy Website That I Always Use to get a feel for when the maintenance will start in your area. Our site traffic historically dips on Friday afternoons until Saturday morning which is why we tend to pick this time for maintenance work.
( tech details )
status.livejournal.org will, of course be updated before and after the maintenance window. Or else marta will get mad at me. :D
bt |
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| Give me some heat, man! |
[Oct. 29th, 2009|06:17 pm] |
The first year or two I was in this house gave me the impression that oil furnaces were finicky devices as likely to kill you as warm you. I was very happy to have central heat after having lived in the PacNW for five years in an apartment that only had puny little electric wall heaters. The only thing the wall heaters ever did was discolor the bedroom wall, and made one side of my futon couch hot--which was enough for Koshka.
Anyhow, when the heat works it is fabulous to have it come on automatically before I get up, and be on by the time I get home. The problem was it was often not working. After a year of having the maintenance folks out every few months--and having some very cold weekends--, it became obvious that there was something messed up and all signs pointed to the chimney. It's a little short one, and it was completely open so when it rained hard it would fill up and drip down the pipe into the furnace. Soot+Water -> Corrosive, sticky acid.
Last year I had a chimney mason show up and put a chimney cap up there, and it's been pretty reliable since. This year I fired up the furnace and it worked but after a few weeks it stopped working. It was time for an annual cleanup anyhow, so I had them out this week.
Turns out the problem was that my short little chimney was full of soot and other junk. They are supposed to be cleaned out every 6-10 years, and who knows if mine has ever been cleaned since it was installed in 2002. Today I fought through rush-hour game traffic to make sure I could met the furnace cleaner people. They had a truck-sized shop vac and cleaned it out. Good news since Rhys will be here tonight and while he would be happy to be sleeping in his mummy bag sleeping bag, I wasn't happy with the idea of needing him to. |
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| LiveJournal Major Notes: Search super-tweak, postcards, and amazing user content! |
[Oct. 29th, 2009|10:53 am] |
In response to user comments from last week, we want to let you know that we'll remain LJ cut-free for the next month in order to get more eyeballs on our evolving newsletter. As for product coverage, that continues to be our top priority. For more granular detail, however, we recommend you join lj_releases.
Super-tweak for Yandex searchSome of our beta testers expressed privacy concerns using the Yandex search engine. Here's why: Last week, when you ran a search, you could see the usernames (and only the usernames) of everyone who commented on an entry, even if that entry was switched to Private or Friends Only after it was originally indexed. You could NOT see the actual comments from Friends Only or Private posts. In response to your input, we've implemented a fix to keep all user activity currently marked Friends Only or Private completely hidden. If you'd prefer your public content not to be indexed by Yandex, click here and use the settings labeled Search Inclusion (this covers your entire journal) and/or Comment Search Inclusion (which covers comments only). To test drive Yandex search now, click here.
Postcards from the edgeSeveral years ago, we asked LiveJournal users to send postcards to help us decorate our dull, white-washed offices. Since a good idea warrants repetition, we're at it again (same issue, new address). We hope you'll surround us with LiveJournal love by sending your postcards to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. We'll post snapshots right here. Be sure to include your username, since we'll randomly pick 10 lucky recipients to win free paid account time.
Conquer Writer's BlockHere are some excerpts from this week's most popular question of the day:
If a friend or relative makes a racist or homophobic remark, do you tend to confront them or let it slide? Are you more likely to confront them if it offends you directly or someone else who seems reluctant to speak up?- I find it easier to stand up for other people, and i wouldn't let it slide if they made a rude or hurtful comment.
- Usually if a friend makes a racist or homophobic remark, I tend to let it slide. I think that while i would not say such things myself, I have no right to censor those around me.
- This happens all of the time. I confront some relatives, but I refuse to if they are drunk or watch Fox News.
- I'd let it slide if it was just a private remark... As much as I despise bigotry and intolerance, I know that you can't change people-they have to change themselves ...
- Confront! confront! confront! Politely, but without equivocation.
- SPEAK UP. Always, always, always speak up. Letting something slide lets ignorance win. No matter if it offends me directly, or someone else, I will confront the speaker and let them know that's not ok.
- I don't get offended personally. As an immigrant, woman, gay and person of color if I took every single potentially offensive remark seriously I wouldn't get anything done.
- I punch them in the balls. With my mind.
- I do speak up, but often very timidly because I feel that I'm white and therefore I don't really have any authority to lecture someone on what's racist and what isn't...
- Generally speaking, I do not let this shit fly, because it reduces me as a person, to this non-person and it replicates the destructive discourse that makes sure that sexual minorities, racial minorities, women, people with disabilities, trans people and every intersection thereof into something other than human... And sometimes... I'm just too tired to deal with it, so I roll my eyes, make a sarcastic remark and hope the conversation moves on quickly.
For more daily questions and user comments, join writersblock. FYI, we don't want to invade your privacy, so we haven't credited individual users for their responses. We'd appreciate your feedback on this!
Spotlight community of the weekWe can't resist making one last midnight trip to the ol' pumpkin patch. If you adore crazy costumes, fiendish festivities, and bottomless candy consumption as much as we do, this community has just what it takes to light up your jack-o-lantern.
halloween_fan
Photos of the weekWe received so many incredible photos, we had to close our eyes and point. We uploaded a selection of awesome images at our new lj_photophile community. Please join and start posting (try to keep the width at around 625 for the sake of consistency)! We'd love for you to tell us more about your photos! You can help us select spotlight photos by commenting on your favorites. Once again, we thank you for making our online world more beautiful!
CurtainsThanks, again, for tuning in. We look forward to seeing you next week. |
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