Flashing a smile, Angie remembered to involve the muscles under her eyes to make it look genuine.  She replaced the empty carafe with a full one after refilling the board member’s cups and fading out of the room.  Comfortably out of sight behind the door, her shoulders fell and she tugged at the uncomfortable uniform collar that always felt like it was choking her.
    Angie took a pocket watch out of her apron and checked the time. The dinner mess was gone, wheeled away by the rest of the staff to the dish room and compost bins before they left for home.  It was just her, the percolator, airpot and icebox until the meeting finished up.  From the after-dinner coffee onward it was a closed meeting, but she had to hang around in case there was any dire drinks emergency.  Angie killed a little time straightening the catering nook, then peered through the little panel of one-way glass.  They were still at it, hunched over papers, toying with delicate cups on matching saucers.  Pre-Five Cities china, actually from China, as indicated by faded blue marks on the underside.
    Loosening the hateful collar, Angie moved on quiet waiter feet to the percolator and poured herself a cup.  However draining and often degrading serving the powerhouse minds that ran the Five Cities was, there were perks.  Coffee instead of tea.  Sugar from the east instead of honey.  Leftovers smuggled home, buffalo and salmon from the coast.
    In the flickering light of the candles and alcohol lamp turned low, Angie let the first sip run over her tongue, all grassy and heavy, with berry tones.  The roaster’s guild, despite the small amount of stock they had to work with, were masters.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at something or other. You can comment here or there.

Originally published at something or other. You can comment here or there.

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.

Soon we’ll back to regular updates and I’ll roll out the new website, but in the meantime, here’s our third week of art devoted to some of my favorite comics online.  This week we move away from longform narrative comics and head for strip land, with Arthur (duck) and Flaco (lizard) from Dave Kellett’s Sheldon.

There are many strips online that I enjoy deeply, but Sheldon is the only one that makes me feel like I’m a little kid again, pressing my nose with delight against the daily newsprint funnies while I wolf down a bowl of Rice Chex before school.  Calvin & Hobbes was a strip at the time which, even if I didn’t get every joke, was so exuberant that I loved every panel.  I think 9 year-old me would’ve felt the same way about Sheldon.

As it is, 26 year-old me happily returns to Sheldon every day, snerking at the obscure “grown-up” or pop culture jokes and quietly enjoying the sheer silliness of it all.

Dave Kellett is also a bonafide funnybook scholar and a stand-up fella.  Bless the internet for bringing him to us in this day and age!

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My maternal grandfather died a couple of years ago.

We were very fond of each other – he took me to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (a full day and a half drive) from 7th grade through my high school graduation, a gift of immeasurable impact.  He was a bright, curious, caring, and endlessly enthusiastic man. He reacted with genuine joy whenever his didactic little granddaughter held forth on erudite topics.  I still remember his delight upon hearing me tear apart the production of Romeo and Juliet that was one of the first productions we saw together at OSF.

I didn’t ask for anything of his after he passed away; my mother knowingly brought me a few things that meant a lot, but all in all my memories were the most vivid token of our relationship.  Recently, however, his last wife sent my mother a number of his old files.  Including one entire manila folder full of every letter and picture and document I had ever sent him, or that my parents had sent him relating to me.

So I’ve rediscovered verything from short stories I wrote in second grade to novellas I wrote in middle school to graduation notices and e-mails and silly cards.  I haven’t quite had the strength to go through all of it yet, but one thing I did find:  the poem below.  I remember this odd, apocalyptic little poem quite well but had no record of it myself, so knowing that he had it all along is very touching.

And, now that he’s gone, the poem – being as its topic is a girl with a fondness for the departed – takes on a sweet poignance.

Anyway. Here it is.

Annie stayed.

Annie McSalva stood that day
but no one was there to enjoy her stay
only the ghosts had not gone away

Annie remained for the ghosts.

Annie McSalva walked down the streets
her feet tapping sidewalk to various beats
She looked in the theatres, all empty seats

Annie played Hamlet for ghosts.

Annie McSalva read all the books
out loud, in the library, and none gave sharp looks
the ghosts listened well in their crannies and nooks

Annie read on for the ghosts.

Annie McSalva swam in the pond
that led to the gutters and sewers beyond
but nobody stayed to drink that which was fond

to Annie, who swam with the ghosts.

Annie McSalva lay in the sun
and thought that the world had only begun
but the ghosts whispered back that it almost was done

Annie survived with the ghosts.

photo by Nocturnal Bob

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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.

Open on Sundays, sorry if that’s a problem

    I am, by most counts, a great transit commuter.  I have TriMet on my RSS, so I catch announcements.  I pay attention to reader boards in case of sudden changes.  I’ve built a 20-30 minute cushion into my commute in case of total WTFs.  So, when I saw that the west side MAX line was being worked on I was not concerned about probable 15-20 minute delays.  I had my cushion.
    However, it is TriMet.  So, instead of arriving at 8:00a to play hardcore catch-up (I normally get in at 9:00a on Sundays) I got there a little before 8:30a.  I’d noticed, as my bus brought me over the Ross Island Bridge, that there was a guy asleep directly in front of Sock Dreams HQ.  Like, directly in front of the doors.  I was totally “DAMMIT,” ’cause I was going to have to wake him to get inside.
    As I walked up to the building I checked the time, hoping TriMet had made me late enough that the other employee due in at nine would be arriving soon.  No luck.
    See, I’d recognised the guy and his shopping cart.  He’d hung around SDHQ before and sometimes his cart would stand lonely for a week until he was able to come back to get it.  And the guy was a dick.  Sometimes he was cool, but most of the time he was a little bitch about moving to the side of the building so our customers (when the store was at HQ) could use the sidewalk.  He’d leave messes of rags and he’d been known to snarl random shit at one of our employees.  But whatever, I would be polite, so he wouldn’t be a jerk-ass.
    I took a breath, because I hate confrontation of any form, walked up and asked if he could please move out of the way enough that I could open the door to get in.  I was polite, because he was sleeping and I am secretly a nice person.  So I waited while he gathered his blankets and things and shoved them with increasing agitation into his cart.  I had not asked him to leave, just to give me enough room to get to the door, but whatever.
    Thanking him, I let myself in, made sure the door was shut and went to turn off the alarm (the door has to be shut for the alarm to turn off).  I could hear him bitching about how fucking stupid it is that we’re open on Sundays and “who do you think you are!”
    And I am all sighs about this as I go to my cubicle to put away my things.  It is sort of the 21st century and shit does not turn to the Monday-Friday wheel as tightly any more.  I listened as he wheeled his cart along the front of the building, working himself up into a lather.  The entire curved front corner of the building is glass, so if he’d been enunciating I would have heard his building tirade clearly.  A little worried, because crazy and anger are unpredictable, I turn on my computer, hear a ‘thunk’ sound and think “You stupid fucker don’t hit the windows.”  Then, as his bitching escalates he does hit the windows, loudly and clearly.
    I could see the rest of the glass rattle in sympathy at the impact.  Knowing full well what comes next, my hand drifts to the phone on my desk.  And there, with a cry of “Fucking WHOORES!” the guy slams into the window again, kind of like a rearing bear.  Very logically, the window shatters.  Also logically, I pick the phone up and call 911.  As it rings I hear the sound of tinkling glass, muttering and shopping cart wheels scurrying away.
    The 911 lady was awesomely competent. I called my office manager who is equally awesome and competent.  I had to reassure her that I was find and thank GOD I had half a cinnamon roll left from the day before.  Then, with little to do about the window besides wait for the police officer to show up, I warmed up some coffee and answered some sock questions.
    Now, I’m not saying I was all super chill, because there is nothing you can do about adrenaline, but I did need to catch up on work.  Work is also nice and distracting, I’ve found as of late.
    Police cars circled the building a couple of times, looking for the dumbass.  I spoke on the phone with the adorable Officer Parks, confirming my (rockingly detailed, in my opinion) description of said dumbass.  It turned out they’d probably found him.  I explained that I had to wait for the other employee to show up before I could leave, thanked him and went back—albeit distractedly—to work.
    Officer Parks came by, took my statement and asked me about socks.  Which, y’know, glad to oblige.  When my co-worker showed up I explained things, called my office manager again to let her know all was cool and that I’d be stepping out to ID the shitheel.
    Then I got to ride in a police car (in front)!  Dude, those things are crammed to the gills with gadgets.  We drove a whole three blocks away from SDHQ, pulling up less than half a block from where another black-and-white was parked.  Before I even saw the guy in question I recognised his cart.  The other officer had the guy stand up and move forward to where we could see him from the car.  I positivly ID’d him, sort of in awe that he thought a couple of streets down was far enough away to hide.
    Back at SDHQ Officer Parks gave me the info needed for us to press charges and I went back to work.  Because the sock mines call and we’ve got orders to get out.  Even if that makes us “fucking whoores”

Originally published at something or other. You can comment here or there.

   Hunt was, frankly, pretty damn pleased with his personal situation.  Sure, he didn’t have solar or gas and lived by the candle, plus he had just the one goat. But he had a hell of a garden and a bioswale just a couple of blocks off, with the river just beyond, if he needed it.  There was none of the push-shove you got living right along the river, which was perfect.  Hunt liked to keep to himself.
   That was another plus to the whole thing.  There were only a couple dozen families in a five-block radius, living a happy limbo between the clannish western hills—with their lumber and salvage—and the weird, half-dead downtown.  Even after everything, one thing held true about folks: despite the various pros to a neighbourhood, only trashers and the young wanted to live under the god-damn interstate.
   Kneeling in his tomatoes, with their summer-warm smell, Hunt looked up at the beautiful eyesore of an overpass.  It was too big, too much for even the blackberries and ivy to entangle.  It would exist forever, like the Roman aqueducts, a symbol of civilisation past.  Unlike its predecessor, however, the interstate would not remain unused and beyond common man, mocking his decline.  The Five Cities were going to put their stamp on it, building a sort of welcoming district for émigrés from the eastern desert.
   There would be shops, inns, entertainment (of the skirted variety, Hunt presumed) and city quarters up there; with plenty of space for carts and people on both levels.  Hunt was proud of the whole thing in a vague sort of way, like when the Hives won a basketball game.  He might personally have nothing to do with the achievement, but it was his people doing the achieving.
   Peering, Hunt could just make out black specks of a construction team leaning on the barriers for a smoke.  Hunt was prevented from further expansive meandering by a glance at his watch.  He had a date and that tail would not wait.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at something or other. You can comment here or there.

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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Hey hey hey, guess what I got sixteen boxes of in the mail today?  If you guessed it was sixteen boxes of the second printing of Bite Me!, then you win!

As an extra “thank you” to everybody who ordered while the book was reprinting, trusting all the while that I was not going to run off to Cabo with their hard-earned $15, I’m including a nifty print I whipped up just for the occasion.  I promised “Claire and Lucien bein’ silly”, and lo, hopefully this qualifies:

Oh, those crazy kids.  Two peas in a pod, really.  A dead, bloodsucking pod.

It will be a delightful 6×10.5 inches so I can slip it into your book order all handy-like.  If I have any left over, I’ll put the extras online next week for those who might be interested.

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Valkyrie and warrior, fish and shark. Puck.

Originally published at something or other. You can comment here or there.

Another week, another drawing of somebody else’s character!  Continuing with the unintentional theme of “naked green ladies”, this week it’s Angora from The Meek, by Der-shing Helmer.

Sadly I drew this sucker on Bristol, and had to use my four remaining Colerase pencils – or else I would’ve watercolored again.

I’ve been gawking at The Meek since shortly after it started up, so it was a pleasant surprise to turn up at APE and see actual print copies of the first chunk!

The Meek is one of the few comics that manages to be densely, lushly illustrated… and lively.  Too often an artist will lavish all their time on the coloring or the stylish character design…and forget to inject life through gesture and interaction or, you know, writing.  The result is eye candy that I get bored with about ten pages in.

But Der-shing has been knocking it out of the park for several dozen pages now.  I can’t wait to see where she’s going and how these delightful, elastic characters are going to smack into each other.

Also?  I adore how she draws Angora’s boobs.

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Buffalo Bill’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeons justlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what I want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death

ee cummings
illustration by bone_doll

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aiyatheydidnt
The Chinese version of ONTD, AIYA is a dynamic international community that welcomes users who share a love of contemporary Chinese pop culture. Dedicated to celebrity gossip and entertainment news, you'll enjoy gorgeous photos and breaking stories featuring the glitterati of mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

wendylady2
Designed to rescue fashion victims everywhere, this Brit-based community reads like a rag-ezine. Published once or twice weekly, you'll view bizarre highlights of the global fashion scene through captivating photos and delightfully snarky editorial. Sit tight for a virtual fashion tour from the runways of New York to Milan to Paris and back home again to London in homage to the adage: you can't buy good taste.

soldiers_heart
A passionate community for veterans of all ages (mostly American), plus families, friends, and supporters. View poignant snapshots detailing life in combat and back on civilian soil in the form of original artwork, personal narratives, poetry, and photos. Be forewarned that members don't shy away from describing their disappointments, disabilities, and struggles.