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.

Tags: gives us hope, moments of kindness

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.

Tags: lazy vegetarians, veggieslackers

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.

Tags: fashin, fashion. celebrity fashion

play for keeps.


I've made up my mind.
Airforce, I'll be seeing you.

Lol..
You're hella funny.

I overstepped my boundaries? Are you fucking kidding me?
It's cool. I ain't trippen. Adios.

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!

Tags: bugs, csi wii, fck, lj_cares, lj_photophile, notes, rte, writer's block

_rambling;
FRIENDSHIP GAMES 2009.

What a weekend. I feel so accomplished. This was the first event I helped coordinate for FSA, so I'd say it's pretty much a big deal. Our Friendship Games theme: Legends of the Hidden Temple. I got everyone hella lovin' this year's event, so hopefully next year, they'll all come out for Round 2. Damn!

Best Things About My Weekend:
1. Best Caravan Ever (TEAM 6).
 - Me, Red, Samantha, Hubert, Everett & Chris, Hersh, Sarina, Crystal, Charmaine, & Gee.
2. In-N-Out Fix.
3. Ramada Plaza Hotel > Ramada Inn.
4. Drunk in the AM.
5. Actually SPUFing.
6. CPK with MirA Union + Western.
7. DRUNK IN DOWNTOWN DISNEY.
8. House of Blues was the best clubbing event I've been to.
9. Brandy showed up randomly at the club.
10. Roscoe's in Inglewood.

Worst Things About My Weekend:
1. Argument with the Co & Co-Chair.
2. MY iPHONE 3GS GOT STOLEN.

I'd say the best things outnumber the bad, so I had a pretty damn good weekend. As the saying does go, "If you lose something at Friendship Games, you had a good ass time." There you go, I lost the most valuable thing in my life, but I wouldn't trade it for all the memories I made. Regardless of how irritated I was at the actual event, there was no way I wouldn't want to relive this. I'm already having Friendship Games withdrawls. Fuck.

On top of that, I feel that Friendship Games has fixed my friendship with Gee. We're no longer on different pages, & we can chill & talk like we used to. & The innovation of MirA Union (me, Chris, Hersh, Hubert, & Gee). We're gonna expand this for days. It's only October, & I can tell it's finna be a clutch ass year.. Minus the fact that I am still hella heated over the bullshit blasts my co & one of my co-Chairs gave me. Fuck dizzzz. DILIGAF.

I'm already hella juiced for next year. I hope I gave my school community enough confidence to do better each & every year. To actually attempt SPUFing next year. I hope clubbing's at the House of Blues next year, too. That place was intense. I danced with so many hunnies, I don't even know. Hella on erry girl, fuck.

So what to do now that I'm iPhone-less? Fuck my life, but I'm glad Sammie's gonna spot at least up to half the price of a new iPhone. So not all is lost.

Dopest weekend thus far?

Fuck yes.




^ NEVER AGAIN, LOL.


^ Best caravan ever!


^ Tryna push my car to the front door.


^ Assholes.


^ Car, without Everett.


^ AM Photo.


^ SPUF.




^ Housemates.






^ MirA Union + Western.








^ C for Not Chris.


^ Haha, damn.


^ O for Orgasms.


^ SUBWAY.


^ AIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIAI!


^ Fuck, we're third years now!


^ Red's water kills our Eclipses.


^ DAMN, GURL.


^ GET IT.


^ Inglewood.


^ MirA Union!


^ Family.




^ Farewell, LA.


^ Yeah, Fuck You, Too.

( October 23-25, 2009 )

EPIC WEEKEND.

Tags: adrenaline, alc, bests, elite, fun, journey, legend, socal, the cruz
Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "Give It All U Got" - Lil Jon f/ Kee

_rambling;
LEAVING FOR FRIENDSHIP GAMES TOMORROW!

If you ain't going, you ain't dope.

So, tonight, I watched The Pixar Story with Justin & Marian. That shit was dope. It was a documentary about the beginnings of Pixar & what it takes to make hit movie after hit. If you ever get the chance you should hop on it. Did you know Disney originally fired John Lasseter when they didn't like the direction he was taking them in (computer animation). Ironically, they wanted him back once Toy Story became a big hit. & That every Pixar movie is directed by another person in the company that wants to step up. God, that was such a dope documentary. I would watch it over & over.

Pixar's been all over UCSC this week, too. The president, Ed Catmull, came the other night.. There were like other screenings that I couldn't attend, but damn, I hella want to work for Pixar. Their workplace is like ideal for me. They get to have fun, while at the same time, get the job done.

I can only dream. I have no artistic experience.. Does that mean I can try to be a marketer or accountant for them? PLEASE. They're only in Emeryville! Commuting distance. (:


^ Should I be worried? Jk.


^ Western Thirsties.

( October 21-22, 2009 )

Good thing, tho: DODGERS OUT.

Tags: alc, the cruz
Current Mood: mischievous
Current Music: "Right Hand Hi" - Kid Sister

_rambling;
"I saw the bike, but not the biker."
I almost hit a biker today & this came out of my mouth. Hella dumb.


^ No one's ever seen the behind of this door. LOL.


^ Bryan's library fail. HAHA.

Tags: the cruz
Current Mood: studious
Current Music: "Do You Remember" - Jay Sean f/ Sean Paul & Lil Jon

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.