givesushope
It's that glorious time of year when we reunite with loved ones (we neglected all year), stuff our faces to excess, and pass out in front of the TV. Perhaps a recalibration of the thanksometer is in order. A spin-off of the popular GivesMeHope.com site, this community invites you to document moments of kindness, generosity, and pure human love in 350 words or less.

veggieslackers
Despite its mainstream appeal, Thanksgiving is not for everyone. There are those struggling with food disorders, for whom this day causes endless conflict. There are the cash-challenged, who can't afford the gluttony we've grown to expect. There are the lonely, who don't have loved ones nearby. And let's not forget the vegetarians, who decry the animal cruelty. But there's one more group we often overlook: the terminally lazy! This community of lazy vegetarians offers easy recipes for an animal-friendly feast.

fashin
Just in time for holiday shopping season, this fashionista community brings you the world of haute couture in the form of sumptuous photos, video clips, and candid commentary. There's also a sugary sprinkle of mainstream movie discussions and debates on such pressing social issues as manicure styles and celebrity colonics. If you need a break from the daily grind to indulge your girlie side, this is twinkly pink on steroids.

Just random thoughts, plucking away at my lj because I'm too tried to work on my nano, but not quite willing to give up and go to bed yet.

Last night at Wal-Mart I encountered... Sparkle Ken. And dear lord does he sparkle! I pointed out the barbies and their display(in the dvd department) to my parents, at which point my dad asks if Edward was a James Dean type character. I couldn't help but laugh. (Dad's other comment was about the prince - each doll costs more then the deluxe dvd, and they don't come with accessories! And now they're coming out with a Jacob!Ken, complete with NO SHIRT. He doesn't even have a hairy chest for that price!)

I also bought the first two seasons of Stargate Atlantis, as muse fuel, and picked up the Nintendo Power calendar because I could not resist. Glanced through the New Moon art book, and I'm pleased to see the Volturi are suitably, well, Volturi.("oh thank goodness, real vampires! ...sort of.")

Drove in snow for the first time today. By myself. Whole new set of panic attacks, yipee! Well. I didn't crash or get stuck, so I'm probably doing alright. (Heeee....) Had to drive all the way to my Aunt's to collect and then deliver her purse and cellphone, then I went to Waldens - They had Betrayals! *glee* Also, Black Bird vol 2, xxxHOLiC vol 14, and volume 1 of Hero Tales, which I nearly overlooked except for the name HIROMU ARAKAWA emblazoned on the cover. Then on to Fred Meyers... then back to home to pick up Punkin, then back to my Aunt's, then to dinner... arg. Looking at it like that I think I can see why I'm exhausted.

I'm actually glad the meeting is later in the day tomorrow - I don't have to rush to be there. I just have to keep telling myself that it's too late to worry if I've been telling people the right time. That's just the sort of worry that has me pacing my room in the middle of the night. Tomorrow! I shall catch up on my wordcount! I so swear it!

(...can I wear my pajamas?)

To bed now, to sleep perchance to write upon the morrow's eve.

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!

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Curtains

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

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.

So, of course, the NaNoWriMo stickers arrived Saturday. While I'm at the meeting. *sigh* But! I now have them for NEXT weekend! Or should I save them for the TGIO party? (I got a shiny pin too. :D )

Yesterday I tried to write, but it didn't get off the ground under after midnight. Which is just sad. Instead of writing I chilled and took my day of rest to catch up on my Netflix. Speaking of which... So, I have all 7 discs of Escaflowne at the top of my queue, plus the end of Darker then Black, and a couple vampire movies(Vampire Effect, of which I twittered, and Blood, the live action version). What does Netflix send me? EMMA. Not Jane Austen Emma, but the Emma : A Victorian Romance. Which is excellent, and poignant, and fluffy, but... One of these things is not like the others? Oh Netflix, I do love you... even when you confuse the hell out of me.

It snowed last night! Started off real light, but by the time I let my dogs out they came back in white and wet. By the time it stopped we had at least four inches! It's wonderful! Everything is so pretty. We didn't quite break the record for latest snow fall ever, but it was close. >> I was up early so I went out and took pictures of the snow in the dawn light. Then Punkin came by to visit, so I took her out to take pictures with Chai and Tobi. (flickr) And of course I managed to lose my (white) pedometer outside. In the snow. (thankfully I managed to find it! but egad!)

As it happens every year, all the drivers have forgotten that we live in ALASKA, where it SNOWS. So I ended up missing martial arts class because my parents didn't get home in time to get us there... so we ended up just swimming.

I'm having a hard time staying awake. I really didn't get enough sleep. Maybe if I head to bed early I'll get up earlier...

(So apparently I never got around to hitting 'post' yesterday. Gah.)

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.

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!
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Session Start: Tue Jan 13 13:33:44 2004
Session Ident: Anora
[13:33] Session Ident: Anora (~boba@btstts10c025.nbnet.nb.ca)
[13:33] (RED_ROBOT) ARE YOU YIFFY
[13:34] (Anora) yess
[13:34] (RED_ROBOT) RED ROBOT IS YIFFY TOO
[13:34] (RED_ROBOT) MURR
[13:34] * Anora smiles
[13:34] (RED_ROBOT) RED ROBOT TAKE OFF SHIRT
[13:34] * Anora giggles
[13:34] * Anora watches you undress as she dosent were enyting
[13:35] (RED_ROBOT) I SEE YOU ARE PREPARED FOR EVERY OCCASION
[13:35] (RED_ROBOT) AS AM I
[13:35] (RED_ROBOT) I EXTEND ROBOTIC PHALLUS IT GOES INTO YOU
[13:35] (Anora) i just never were enyting
[13:35] * Anora meeps
[13:36] (RED_ROBOT) YOU ARE IN AWE OF MY ROBOTIC FURY AS I THRUST INTO YOU
[13:37] * Anora graons and holdes onto this strange robot
[13:37] (RED_ROBOT) YES - YES - YES - YES
[13:38] (RED_ROBOT) I HAVE ROBOTIC STAMINA THEREFORE I ORGASM INTO YOU AND KEEP GOING
[13:38] (Anora) ............. *yeps*
[13:39] (RED_ROBOT) I THRUST YOU WITH NUCLEAR POWER AND BREAK YOUR FLAWED ORGANIC SPINE BUT I DO NOT COMPUTE
[13:39] * Anora pushes you off
[13:39] (RED_ROBOT) CIGAR EXTENDS FROM MOUTH
[13:39] (RED_ROBOT) LIGHT UP
[13:39] (RED_ROBOT) WAS IT GOOD FOR YOU
[13:39] * Anora loooks at you
[13:40] (Anora) i should destroy you on the spot
[13:40] (RED_ROBOT) OH YOU
[13:40] * Anora her paw glow red
[13:40] (RED_ROBOT) TEE
[13:40] (RED_ROBOT) HEE
[13:40] (Anora) i'm a godess
[13:40] (Anora) my spine hasent broken
[13:40] (RED_ROBOT) THAT IS INCORRECT
[13:40] (RED_ROBOT) THAT IS FLAWED HUMAN CONCEPT
[13:42] (Anora) machines
[13:42] (Anora) are flawed
[13:43] (RED_ROBOT) DOES NOT COMPUTE
[13:43] (RED_ROBOT) I EXTEND ROBOTIC PHALLUS
[13:44] (RED_ROBOT) LET US MAKE INTERCOURSE
[13:46] (RED_ROBOT) RED ROBOT WISH TO APOLOGIZE FOR INJURY
[13:47] (RED_ROBOT) DOES ORGANIC ANORA AGREE PRESS Y/N
[13:58] (Anora) i'm bloking you good bye
[13:58] (RED_ROBOT) RED ROBOT DESIRE PEACE