xepheria's Friends

Sunday, November 16th, 2008

news

Subject:	LJ News Special Edition: Server Move, Permanent Account Sale Update, A La Carte Userpics
Posted by:	theljstaff.
Time:	11:35 pm.

Welcome to a Very Special Edition of LJ News.

Moving Day and What It Means for You

Moving What Where?

The long-awaited server move takes place this Tuesday, November 18, at 8:00 a.m. PST. We're moving the site from servers based in San Francisco to the servers in our new data center in Montana. A massive data move like this takes a lot of heavy lifting, and to haul all that data from San Francisco to Montana, we have to take the site down, starting at 8:00 a.m. PST on Tuesday morning. We don't think the move will take more than four hours, but there's always the possibility that it could take longer (the best laid plans and all).

What Does This Mean for You?

During the downtime, nothing on LJ will be available—no posting, no Friends page, no LJ mail, nada. When we bring the site back up, we're going to ease into it rather than open up a floodgate of traffic. Posting might not be immediately available or the site could be slow to load for a while.

New servers mean new IP addresses, so it's possible that LJ mail might not reach your email inbox because your email provider or client doesn't recognize the new IP addresses. We're working with email providers to whitelist the new IPs. There are a few things you can do on your end:

Add these two IP addresses to your "allowed senders" list (or whitelist) and address book in your email client: 208.93.0.18 and 208.93.0.50. These are the new IPs for sending comments notifications and LJ mail to your email inbox.

Add lj_notify@livejournal.com and webmaster@livejournal.com to your email address book.

If you can't edit the spam or junk filters in your email client, you may need to disable them entirely. Make these changes just before 8:00 a.m. PST on Tuesday morning or shortly after the site comes back up to ensure that your LJ mail makes it to your inbox.

Those of you who use domain aliasing to forward your domain to your LiveJournal will need to create a CNAME record that maps to livejournal.com. Please note that we're no longer supporting the A record. For more information, check the domain forwarding FAQ.

Before the move, you can check

lj_maintenance for complete details about the planned downtime. During the move, you can check status.livejournal.org for updates about the site's status.

Permanent Account Sale Delayed

We regret to inform you that due to the server move, the Permanent Account sale has been pushed back to December 4, rather than November 20 as announced in the last news post. After the virtual dust has settled from the move, we'll be able to turn our attention to the Permanent Account sale. Except for the start date, the details remain the same: You have a limited opportunity to purchase LJ for life for only $175. It's a bummer to delay the sale, but on the bright side, you have more time to save up.

But What About A La Carte Userpics?

We know we promised more information about a la carte userpics, and we're sorry that details have not been forthcoming (blame it on the move). We're still planning on having a la carte userpics, but we don’t have any details yet. When the move is over, we'll have more information. We're sorry for the delay.

Comments: Read 597 or Add Your Own.

greenpotato

Subject:	Stolen from a Moo Cow who stoled it from a Fish aka "Ugly"
Time:	7:19 pm.

1. Put your iTunes on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!

(okay, now that I've gotten a dozen of these written down I come to the realization it's on shuffle... in alphabetical order by song title... but it's too damn funny to redo, so. It's on shuffle. Shut up.)

IF SOMEONE SAYS 'IS THIS OKAY' YOU SAY?
Today's the Day

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Toes (totally sounds like a "me" answer)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Tom Sawyer

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Tomorrow (lmfao, that's fkkn ironic fo'sho)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Tomorrow Never Dies

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Tomorrow Night

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Too Bad

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Too Good Too Bad

WHAT IS 2+2?
Too Much

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Too Much to Ask

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Too Much Too Soon

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Total Eclipse of the Heart

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Touch Me (...that's hot)

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Traditional Irish Folk Song (Denis Leary - listen to it if you've never before, it's fkkn hilarious)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Train

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Trendy

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Tropical Depression (lol@playing Alan Jackson at my funeral...)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
True Colors

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)

WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Try Again

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World (that sounds like it could be the death of anyone, tbh)

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Tsp (wtf? ... >.>)

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Turn the Radio Off

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Turn Up the Radio

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
Turning Japanese (lawl)

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Two Steps Behind

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Two-story Town

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
U + Ur Hand

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Ugly - Bon Jovi

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Ugly - Smashing Pumpkins

Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.

phurie_dae

Subject:	Technology bad!
Time:	3:21 pm.
Mood:	cold.
Music:	Bunty aur Babli - Kajra Re.

I am such a dolt sometimes.

I've been dancing around this little craft project idea I had a while ago for a couple of Christmas presents, and this weekend I finally had the opportunity to take all the material I'd gathered so far and get my hands on my mother's sewing machine. I was cat-sitting for the weekend while my brother was away at the Tang Soo Do British championships (Incidently? We now have a British champion for forms in the family) and my parents were down at Saltcoats visiting my grandparents.*

Unfortunately this plan went to hell, since what I mainly needed to get started was flesh coloured fabric, which my mum told me she had plenty of and had left it out for me. It seems she and I have vastly different ideas of what "flesh coloured" means, and to her it apparently means "just barely off-white". Damn. I tried dying it overnight in a bowl of onion skins and teabags, which gave me a bowl of lovely flesh-coloured water and stubbornly off-white-and-wet fabric. If I can't make the base, the rest of the project kind of falls apart, so I naturally started panicking.

Panicky Me: Oh crap, even if I somehow can find the right fabric in Elgin, how am I going to find the time to get back round here and use the sewing machine in the next two weeks? And somehow get anything done with the family around? WITH the cats' help? I'm screwed.

Practical Me: You were cross-stitching and hand sewing when you were eight years old. You took Textiles at GCSE and made a bunch of cushions, a shirt and a beautiful child's coat when getting a turn on the class sewing machines was like getting to play with the school unicorn. You don't NEED a sewing machine! Moron.

I am technology's bitch. Too many years at home with my mum's fancy quilting sewing machine next door and I completely forget that I know how to hand sew.

*My granddad is sick. Very sick. He has what was apparently stomach cancer to begin with, but it had spread too far by the time they caught it. We've spent the last month taking various trips down there to visit him every time he ended up back in hospital and, like pulling teeth, have finally got the doctors on his case to admit that there's nothing they can do for him. I would be down there right now, but I used up all my holiday days when he had a couple of strokes last month. So he's being sent home sometime next week with a lot of pain medication and some arrangements for a nurse to come and help my gran out (who, thank god, is a very healthy and able woman), and we're just going to have to pray that he makes it until Christmas when we can all be together with him.

Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

greenpotato

Time:

9:43 pm.

Hooray for going back to work.

Not.

Really. Really. Not.

Comments: Add Your Own.

Friday, November 14th, 2008

lj_maintenance

Subject:	We're moving Tuesday, November 18, 2008 at 16:00-20:00 UTC
Posted by:	dwell.
Time:	12:17 pm.

We're pulling the plug! And putting it back in a different location! Ok, that was bad.

Seriously though, our data center move -- from San Francisco to Montana -- is scheduled for THIS TUESDAY, November 18, 2008 at 16:00 UTC (this equates to 8AM Pacific timezone) and will last for 4 hours. Unfortunately it'll be total downtime for all our sites and services -- no posting, no reading, no email.

Another

news announcement will be posted on Monday November 17, including links to updated FAQs that you'll want to check out before the move.

As always, status.livejournal.org will have any updates during the move so bookmark it and check it out for the latest news.

All of us at LiveJournal have been eagerly looking forward to this move and I want to thank you for your patience and understanding as we put the finishing touches on something that will allow us to bring you an even better product in the future.
Though for us in the Ops and Engineering teams, we'll be REALLY happy if, on Tuesday, everything just works the same way it did on Monday. Heh.

bt

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

greenpotato

Subject:	In other news...
Time:	6:26 pm.

On a totally un-Tom's-sister-having-a-baby related note, I sent myself to the hospital today.

Something about having a 102.7 degree fever last night... After spending the day groaning in pain, doubled over with waves of nausea, with achy joints and a killer migraine that wouldn't quit, and a really, really, REALLY sore boob that felt engorged even though it appeared to be empty.

Welcome to the joys of motherhood, really. Whether because my dirty child puts his dirty mouth on my boobs or for some totally different reason, we're not sure, but WHOO-HOO for mastitis! And whoo-hoo for antibiotics that look like candy even though they have no taste D=

I would have gone in last night, but by the time I managed to crawl out of my wallowing-hole of self-pity (read: my bed), it was around 7:15, and walk-in clinics close at 7. I really didn't feel like paying the extra the insurance company always finds a reason to charge you when you go to the emergency room for a non-emergency, so I just started popping Tylenol as often as is safely recommended. The fever was gone within an hour or so, and a couple hours after that, the body aches subsided, as well. I actually felt like there wasn't anything wrong with me when I woke up this morning, however, I know these things don't just go away on their own, so I sucked it up and went in anyway.

Good that I did. By the time I got in, I had developed the warm, red patch on the breast that signifies the onset of the infection. The doc examined me and said there was definite swelling in the glands on the side of my breast just outside of my armpit (which is where it hurt like a bitch yesterday and the day before), but no abscesses that needed to be drained!

...Sometimes I wonder why we still have to go to the doctor for these things.
I knew what the problem was.
I knew which glands were swollen.
I knew there were no abscesses.
All I needed to know was which antibiotic to take, as Katie told me not to take the Penicillin I have squirreled away in my big box of drugssssss.
Oh, and for him to write me the script so I could get it.

Silly doctors. I can't wait until Megan becomes official, I'm just going to call her every time I have a sniffle and make her write me scripts. >_> I didn't say that. Just to be clear. K. <_<

Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.

greenpotato

Time:

5:03 pm.

Well, aside from the fact that I am still upset about the whole "no one felt like telling me until much later" ordeal, I am an aunt now (a mommy and an aunt a little more than a month apart... can we be done with babies now?).

I've been trying to distance myself from the situation until I can really calm down about it, so when Tom told me his mom had sent him pictures, I really didn't give a damn, as awful as that is to say. Sorry, she has time to take and email pictures but not time to send a two word, 8-letter text to say "baby girl"?

Unfortunately for me, Tom knows all my weaknesses.
"Honey! Your niece-in-law has a FAT FACE!"
Open mouth. Insert foot. Repeat until the giggles and name-calling urges subside.
...I couldn't resist. Call me a horrible person. I won't deny it. There's something incredibly funny to me about fat and/or ugly babies, just because everyone always says that there's no such thing as an ugly baby. Trust me. They exist. And maybe, just maybe, I AM biased towards my own child, but THANK GOD MINE CAME OUT CUTE.

Anyway. The 8lb, 9oz, 20 1/2in long porky face's name is Tessa Antoinette. It's okay if you laugh. I did. And then said something to the effect of "who the fuck names their kid something that ridiculous?! Do they WANT her to be teased?! OMG!" Then again, somehow I just KNEW she'd name her kid something wacked out. Kinda like I just KNEW it was going to be a girl, even though they refused to find out. Ahem.

Before all this happened, I was really, really excited to go down and visit and see the new baby and lavish attention all over the new mommy... not so much anymore. Right now I'm not even sure I want to see them at Thanksgiving. And while I know that sentiment will blow over by then, I'm really not planning on not being childish about this at any point. All I ask for in life is a little common courtesy, and it hurts me that I can't even seem to get that from my family some days.

Comments: Add Your Own.

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

news

Subject:	Find Your Friends Setting, Permanent Account Sale, Profile Page, Montana, Search Update, and More
Posted by:	theljstaff.
Time:	4:32 pm.

Find Your Friends, Now with Dialog Box

We wanted to give you an update about the Find Your Friends feature we talked about recently in news and feedback. Based on your feedback, the opt-in implementation has an overwhelming mandate from the people. So that's the method we're going to use. Before we launch this feature, we need you to set your preference for the setting. The next time you visit the LiveJournal homepage, you'll see a dialog box that prompts you to set your preference for whether you want your email address to be searchable by the new Find Your Friends feature. If you have more than one account, the dialog box will appear the first time you visit each account's homepage.

The Find Your Friends feature will be launching in the weeks to come.

Permanent Account Sale Coming Soon

It's almost here—the Permanent Account sale! For a limited time only, you can purchase a Permanent Account for only $175. Your chance to get LiveJournal for life starts on November 20. Check out the benefits:

All the cool features offered to Paid Accounts

The highest amount of storage available on LJ (currently 10GB, but we think there might be room to grow in there)

No ads in your journal and, as long as you're logged in, you won't see ads anywhere on LiveJournal

The most userpics available on LJ (currently 144 and increasing all the time with our Loyalty Userpics program)

$25 of your purchase price donated to charity (look for details about the chosen organizations in the next news post)

The peace of mind that comes with never having to make another payment

We've been talking about this sale for a while now, so hopefully you've had some time to save up for it. Remember, the Permanent Account sale is very temporary. We don't want anyone to miss out, so tell all your friends that the sale starts November 20 and ends November 26. After that you'll have to wait at least another year for your chance to buy a Permanent Account.

When you purchase a Permanent Account, you can gift a friend with any balance of paid time or extra userpics you might have. Look for more details in the next news post, and keep an eye on the Gift Shop to buy your Permanent Account as soon as they go on sale!

Profile Page Goes Live

The redesigned Profile page is graduating from beta and going out into the wider world of LiveJournal. The design team put hundreds of hours into this redesign, with a marathon three rounds of beta testing. We considered every comment and critique that came through feedback and worked hard to incorporate as much user input as possible. We think the profile page is much improved and ready to go live.

Thank you to all the beta testers for your hard work and feedback. We couldn't have done it without you (no, really).

Montana-Bound

By the time you read the next release, a shinier, faster, better LJ will be up and running on the servers at our brand-new data center in Montana. The ops team is hard at work packing up bits and bytes here and unpacking them in Montana. The new servers and data center are an investment in LJ's future; they also offer more immediate benefits, such as room for more userpics, improved energy efficiency, and, of course, cool new servers. Check

lj_maintenance for news and announcements concerning the move. If there's any downtime during the move, exact dates and times will be posted there. And you can always check status.livejournal.org, our offsite status page.

Unpacking is the hardest part of moving.

Watch This Space

Back in our lj_2008 update, we mentioned that we were going to start increasing our local partnerships in India and elsewhere. Like

india_sport, for example. Building on those experiences, we've been hard at work expanding our global footprint with a new partnership with one of the leading newspapers in the United Kingdom. So watch this space in the next release for an exciting announcement!

Search Update

So, Find Your Friends is almost ready to go (you can choose your setting now, before the feature goes live, as noted above). But, as talked about in the lj_2008 update, our goals for improving search included two other projects. Where do they stand?

Search for public posts and comments: We're making great progress on developing a search engine for public posts and comments, which will include tags and interests.

Journal search: We've been so hard at work on the other two search projects that Journal search for Paid users to search within their own journals isn't going to make it to the finish line in 2008. We're still working on it, although it has turned out to be a bit more complicated than we originally thought.

Word Counts and Daily Posts

As of last Saturday, furiously clattering keyboards can be heard echoing around the globe. NaNoWriMo is off to a roaring start—word count updates are flooding the NaNo servers, main characters are refusing to cooperate, and world coffee prices are skyrocketing due to demand. We had an overwhelming response to

lj_nanowrimo (and the overflowing email inbox to prove it), and we're all (except for our accountant) really rooting for you to finish those novels. And for those of you who are busy crafting daily blog posts for NaBloPoMo, keep it up! We know you can do it.

OpenID 2.0 Now Supported

In the last release, we upgraded our OpenID client support to include OpenID 2.0. So if you're a user with an OpenID 2.0 account (like Yahoo, for example), you can use that ID to log in to LiveJournal.

And More

You can find all the details of this week's release at

lj_releases.

Comments: Read 3690 or Add Your Own.

greenpotato

Subject:	Feeling betrayed?
Time:	10:52 am.

We've had the internet shut off since Halloween thanks to my inability to pay the bills (let's not go into how my paycheck has still not shown up and I wrote out a rent check for $513 more than I have in my account yesterday), but thanks to my parents' generosity (read: I decided this qualified as "an emergency," and charged it to their credit card), it was turned back on late last night. Exhausted from being up all day with a midget, and running errands in the meanwhile, I opted to curl up on the couch and pass out watching Kung Fu Panda and Wall-E rather than futz around online. {side note: why does the auto spell-check not recognize "kung fu" OR "kung-fu," but FUTZ is a properly spelled, accepted word?}

So just a short while ago, I'm going through my hotmail (after deleting about 45 spam emails), and there's one from Tom's brother Devin, marked "No Subject." I figured it was another one of the silly videos he finds on YouTube and forwards to us all the time, so I prepare to chuckle and open it.

I DIDN'T FUCKING CHUCKLE.

Quite the opposite.

To sum up the email's content... "Erin has had her baby, she had a little girl and should be home by Thursday."

It's Thursday now, and this is the first I'm hearing about this. That wouldn't be so upsetting, considering the situation of us simply not being able to get to our emails, if it wasn't for the fact that Tom's mom called me on Saturday afternoon to tell me that Erin was going into the hospital, presumably to have the baby as her water had broken (as verified by Erin's physician, who *sent* her to the hospital). I got really excited and antsy and anxious waiting for the news to come later on. Didn't hear back from her at all Saturday, or Sunday, so Monday morning I'd sent her a text asking how Erin was and if the baby was born yet. She sent back, "No baby yet, she got sent home. I'll let you know."

This was Monday.

Devin sent that email Tuesday at 2pm.

Meaning she would have had the baby late Monday night or Tuesday morning.

Shouldn't "oh hey, go call your other kids and let them know" be RIGHT THERE in your mind?

I understand how crazy things get with hospitals and babies. I do. I'VE BEEN THERE. But Tom called his mom right after Sean was born, and I called/texted practically everyone I knew the next morning, including my own parents who DID NOT WANT ME TO BE BEARING THEM A GRANDCHILD AND STAKE ALMOST ZERO CLAIM TO HIM WHATSOEVER.

I know we didn't miss any phone calls/texts from ANYONE, as I've been checking our phones absolutely religiously, especially since before I'd read the email, I was starting to think about the fact we hadn't heard anything. Going into the hospital for having contractions and being sent home is one thing. HAVING YOUR WATER BREAK is another. Yes, the water can break a long time before labor begins. BUT... not almost a week later long time. And even if somehow a text had gone awry or we'd missed a phone call and the voicemail never made it through, don't you think that if you heard NOTHING BACK from that person when it's a subject as important as this (also considering that I'd shown concern and the desire to know by sending the follow-up text), that you might maybe call back later?

I'm very, very hurt by this. I can't really be mad at his family, as they have done a LOT for us in preparing for our baby, but what the hell? Don't I deserve at least 30 seconds of your time to send a text like "baby here. girl." OMG HOW LONG DID THAT TAKE TO TYPE? Like I said, I can't really be mad, but right now I'm so upset I'm furious.

UGH!

edit, 12 hrs later...

Yeah, I'm still pretty cranky about this. I mean, come on. This is my future sister-in-law we're talking about here, and I find out about her baby in an email that was sent to 20 other people, only 2 of which I can tell are other family members (namely Tom, and a cousin)? Meaning that (obviously, since he sent it) Devin knew. Meaghan knew. Assumedly, as I've seen some of Tim's family on Dev's "to" lists before, Tim's family knew. And I find out. In an email. To a bunch of random "family friends." I'm a fucking family friend? Not to sound cocky, but I just gave this family its first and only grandson, the first O'Neal of this generation that will continue to carry the O'Neal name on (girls get married and lose it, after all)... And I can't get the time of day to be more than a "family friend." Nice. Real nice. You know, MAYBE it WAS a miscommunication, but as I mentioned earlier, you would think that if there was some notice "lost in the mail," as they say, we would have gotten follow-up notice a day later. Two days later? When there was no response from us at all. Not a cluster email to "family friends." Just. Plain. Inconsiderate. /sigh Okay, I'm done ranting now. I ~~promise~~ think.

Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.

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