Went to Tucson on Friday with Julia T. to hear Barbara Kingsolver read from her new book, and speak about writing and other matters. The whole event supported the Community Food Bank, and I hope that the sold out crowd and the number of folks I saw taking flyers about volunteering and their Farmers Markets means they will have a long term gain from the event.
Julia and I got to town a little early, so I could make her deposit recycling with me (the glamor!) and cruise by Clues Unlimited in their extravagantly purple new digs. It was fun getting to chat books with Chris for a while, and I picked up copies of Doubleback by Libby Fischer Hellmann (partially set in AZ) and Phoenix Noir edited by Patrick Millikin.
Then we picked up Julia K.T. and went out for a fabulous dinner at Ghandi Cuisine. Everything was delicious, from the Lasuni Naan and the veggie samosa (pretty much the only way I will willingly eat peas, I confess) and the Mango Lassi to the entrees. All three of us were "spicy" eaters, which complimented things nicely. We had various selections from the Tandoor Oven. Warning -- the Mixed Grill option is very generous, and while I was glad to have tried it and now know that yes, I do like fish and shrimp as well as chicken and lamb prepared this way ... well, Julia KT's puppies benefited as well. :)
Barbara Kingsolver was a delight. She read selected passages that made me want to come home and start reading The Lacuna immediately. (Maybe over winter break?) She spoke on a number of issues near and dear to my heart, including the importance of indie bookstores to their communities. She also hit on a couple of writing related topics that Julia T. and I had covered in our conversation on the two hour drive up (when we weren't listening to High Tide in Tucson on audio), and mentioned aspects of Tucson that she misses and still treasures, including Tucson Meet Yourself -- where Jeff, David and I met up with Julia K.T. and Grace this year! The Julias indulged me and we waited in the long but briskly moving line to get my books signed. When we reached the signing table, I was surprised and delighted to see my Harper rep there! :) Then we took Julia K.T. home, and Julia T. hit her door about midnight, and I came home to very sleepy dogs and hubby.

To compensate, I slept in about three hours past my normal time on Saturday, which put me out of sync all day. But Jeff and I did pay enough attention to the time to go downtown in Douglas and visit the Capitol Christmas Tree. Jeff blogged about this with photos. We saw a few friends, including Robin and Angie, and heard seasonal songs from the high school band. Jeff, having greater reach, added our wishes to the banner on one side of the v-e-r-y long truck, and I purchased a pin to mark this historical occasion, and suspect I'll be tracking it periodically as it continues on its journey. We visited briefly with some of the drivers / traveling crew, one of whom was in a car with a Bookman's twitter account on the bumper! :) The pin, BTW, is the wonderful "gift wrapped" AZ silhouette from the top of the web site, etc.

But for now, it's time to get off-line and dedicate myself to my newsletter deadline.

Accomplished back-up Nanowrimo goal. That said, with about 12% of the 50,000 words written and 50% of the month gone, I'm not optimistic about finishing the 50,000 words before Dec 1. It seems I'm maybe a 1,000-word-a-day girl (at least when I have anything else that I'm doing, like oh, working or sleeping).

While I was not writing, I read "Vicious Circle" by Linda Robertson. A very good read, complete with werewolves, witches, and vampires. I'd liken them to Patricia Brigg's Mercy Thompson series - some definite innuendo, but very little sex (oh, and the werewolf is by far the hottest creature in the book - yummy!). Enjoy!

Hrm... yep, suspecting it was rushed. The one-armed retiree in the t-shirt cracks me up, as does the rest.
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2009/11/12/stephenie-meyer-comic-book-twilight/

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!

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.

Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009 - 11am to 3pm @ The Seattle Center

Here are two more upcoming career fairs I found

*****************************

November 18

National Career Fairs
11:00 AM to 2:00 PM

Hotel Murano
1320 Broadway Plaza
Tacoma, WA

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Bellevue Career Fair
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
11:00 AM to 2:00 PM

Red Lion Bellevue Inn
11211 Main Street
Bellevue, WA 98004

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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.

Last week or two has been more about reading friends' adventures in Live Journal than posting. Which is not in any way to pretend I am caught up, but I hope to be at least semi-current.

Had a lovely time at World Fantasy, which has now officially been over for more than a week, and I feel like an extensive post would be very much like outdated vacation slides. Very much enjoyed seeing many friends, some of whom I hadn't seen in somewhere around forever, or so it seemed. Among the particularly memorable visits were getting to spend time with klwilliams and her fabulous jackets and mindyklasky with whom I've been friends for years without ever actually previously achieving any face to face time. Had brief discussions with both of them as well as a few other folks about the way one can see friends in the age of electronic communications, and experience the dissonance of being simultaneously very up to date (so, how's the new house? Did you enjoy your recent trip?) and having not seen each other and having things to catch up on that could go back several years.

In other news, most of work is consumed with trying to get our new web site platform ready -- which is part technology, and mostly, at least in my office, getting conversant with the particulars of the new system.

Will the Feral Cat's most recent friend, after this summer's Giant Toad the Size of Will, was a ringtail, who briefly inhabited the underside of our outdoor freezer. We hope it didn't relocate too far away -- like maybe the barn?

I'm about to write a flurry of reviews, including FLESH & FIRE by suricattus (who I might as well NOT have seen at WFC! :P ) and BITTER NIGHT by difrancis , which includes a MG shout-out around page 40!

This is the last of my posts for the day! =D

So, the final stop for Saturday (it was a full day!) was the Vampire cafe! Yeah... the Vampire Cafe.

Which is... exactly like it sounds! A kitchy cafe decorated to look all dracula and bloooooooood. Something a lot of people I know back home would like XD

Honestly, it was interesting, but.. well, too smoky. I would gladly go back if it was nonsmoking, but since that isn't going to happen and it was utterly miserable from the smoke of the drug-addicted girl behind us (they ARE drugs), and the chain-smoking guy next to us, I won't be going back.

However, whenever Tokyo is made smoke-free, I am so coming back! Here's to the future!!

( But some pictures Dracula himself would (not) be proud of XD )

You know how you hear about all of those random strange vending machines in Japan? Well, this one sells canned soups.

Canned ramen, oden, curry, chicken soup.... all sorts of strange things!!

( Read more... )

It's in Akihabara, by the way... Think you can find it? It's kind of hiding in plain sight ^_~

I wouldn't have even known about it myself if it wasn't for my friend Patrick, from Otaku2.com! He introduced it to us when he guest starred on Pop'n Press! I HIGHLY recommend his book, too!! The Otaku Encyclopedia!! It's full of nearly everything that an Otaku would want to know! I really loved it!! (I'll do a really good review of it eventually!)

I was volunteering in Akihabara, and we had a reservation for a place in Ginza that evening, so Adele and I decided to walk.... I took a lot of great pictures of the city!!

Sorry in advance, but I have a lot of posts to make and only tonight to make them (studio from tomorrow on), so I'm going to make a lot of posts all at once! ^^ Sometimes I don't like doing that, because it discourages people from commenting, (I love comments!!), but I've gotta post while I can! ^^

( +10 pictures of buildings and pretty sights in the city ^__________^ )

I'm starting a new tag, Conbini Life, just to post about weird things or just things that I find in japanese convenience stores (and of course, other ones when I travel!). I'd really like to post more about the "normal" (as much as my life is) parts of living in Japan... at least what I experience living in Japan, since everyone is different!!

So without further ago, a few more pictures of convenience store-ness! Guess I'd better take as many as I can right now, in case I suddenly get my break and am too famous to get away with taking pictures! (lol, well you never know! It would be nice, ne? ^___^)

( +6 conbini pictures, +5 berry cafe... )

I'm glad that everyone likes the random pictures! ^___^ I've been taking a lot more so that I can post them on my lj soon. =^-^=

But in the meantime, I went volunteering again the other day! This time, Adele came with me, so it was easy to get into things, and as always (lol, this is only the second time), I had a fun time!

We volunteered for 2HJ, which is basically a food bank, and on Saturday they have people come in and help and go feed homeless people in the park. We only helped for the preparations, because there were too many people signed up for the park part (which was my favorite part before, too bad). That's the only bad thing, I suppose... that to sign up to help, you have to be kind of competitive! I'd rather just help out in a more relaxed manner.

But at least we got into a rhythm, and so 'work' went fast. We met a lot of really nice people, too. I always love talking to volunteers!! I'm going to look for more places to volunteer, if there are any (let me know if you know of any!), and see if I can find something that really matches my personality. ^^ I don't want anything that has to do with money, or asking for money. I'd rather work directly with people or animals that need help. We'll see!!

I did take a few pictures, though not many since I can't show the volunteer's faces without permission (aside from mine and Adele's) ( Read more... )

Thanks for all of your suggestions on tv shows, guys!! I haven't even finished reading all of the comments, but I will definitely get through them!! Lots of good suggestions in there! ^-^

But.... BIG NEWS!!!!! I GOT MY NEW VISA TODAY!!!! It was kind of a struggle and I had to go over and over to this government institution or that office over the last two months, and get this form from the city office or that thing from Sensei or wait for this receipt or that proof-of-something. Only to have an immigration officer give me the most dubious look in the world a few days ago and talk to me in a tone of voice that said, "You are crazy, this visa is never going to fly." But it did!!!!!! I got the notice that I was approved today and changed all of my plans immediately and spent the rest of the day picking it up and taking care of other legal things! I'm now all set for the next three years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *throws a party* I really, really am considering digging into my savings to buy an ipod touch (in celebration). Or not. BUT I AM HAPPY!!!! *dances*

So, while I was in the immigration office I went to the convenience store downstairs and saw some cute things.. I was wondering, is anyone interested in random pictures of things like this? Truth be told, convenience stores ('conbini') are huge parts of life in Japan. At least, life in the city. Without them, I think that a lot of people would die for lack of food, bandages, or even shampoo. Funny because I never went to a convenience store in the states unless it was to get gas for my car (they don't have gas at conbinis here) or slurpees or those delicious do-it-yourself nachos (also not here)!

( +3 pictures )

(I should be sleeping because I need to get up early tomorrow, but I am totally watching the Star Trek movie because it just came out on DVD in Japan today... couldn't help myself and had to buy it!!!! And who knew my DVD player was region-free! Not me!! =D)

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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I'm just wondering, but... what current TV shows am I missing that are just too awesome to pass up? Any recommendations? There is a lot of TV that I follow, so I might be watching it alread/have seen it already, but let me know what you all like! ^^ ( Stuff I like right now.. )

I still have to get back in the habit of taking pictures!! I guess that it comes with being tired all of the time, that I just don't have the energy to find my camera. Maybe I should start putting it into the front pocket of my bag!! But I do have a few pictures to share!! ^__^

Yesterday, after I finished the very last of the MUSTDO errands during this time off (and this means that I'm niow officially on vacation for a few days!), I went over to Ikebukuro. There is a new electronics store that just opened, and I heard that they had sales on everything, so I thought that I might go and pick up the new Ipod touch.. Despite that I want apple to just stop making computers, I actually am really interested in this product ^^;;; But while the signs said SALE SALE SALE!, the prices were actually the manufacturers suggested prices. The same prices that everyone has.. (aka 30,000 yen for a 32gb) How is that a sale, exactly? They did say that they would match anyone else's prices, but I checked and can't find it for any cheaper anywhere else. Sad. T-T But I just don't want to pay that much.. it's the principle of the thing. And who doesn't like a good deal? ^^ (not to mention that I don't actually need one) So anyways....!

After that I met up with Aloni and Michele and went to the prison-themed restaurant, The Lockup! (http://r.gnavi.co.jp/g528911/)

Maybe it's because they redid the interior recently (It does resemble a giant prison, but you don't get handcuffed or anything), but I wasn't overly impressed... It was kind of barren (not that it's a bad thing to have less people in a restaurant.. that means we only had to deal with 20% death-by-secondhand-smoke). But it wasn't all that I was expecting, really. I might head to the one in Shibuya sometime to see if it's any better!

( A few pictures.... sorry it was dark so not too many! )

Ahhh, today I mainly slept and ate. I'm not sure what happened! And now it's 2am and I can't sleep. I suppose that I will read a little bit of Fushigi Yuugi and try to go to sleep. I really want to have a few productive last days before work starts again!! So I'd better rest up!!

PS: If anyone knows of any Ipod touch sales in Tokyo, let me know! I'm thinking a 32gb for ￥25,000 or less, or a 64gb for ￥30,000 or less ^^ Also if you know of any place to get a new Nintendo DS for less than ￥ん12,000 let me know too! ^^ Online is okay, but I'd rather in a real store so that I know for sure what I'm getting!

I was getting set to update, when I realized that I hadn't posted Thanksgiving pictures yet!! It's not yet Thanksgiving for me (yay America?), but it is for my Canadian friends (or it was), so we got together last month and had a big homemade dinner at Adele's house!

It was a big ball of fun, and so great being able to kick back and hang out with people (and meet all sorts of new fun people, too!!). Not to mention, food!! =D My favorite!!! ^___________^

Anyways, I'll just share a few pictures and let that tell any story (such as there is).

( Read more... )

It was an interesting night... populated by The Bulge (Adele's pear pie), Bobby Helen (our turkey-stand-in), and cranberry boobs (I might have had a hand in that..), among other things!

Oh, the memories.. I hope that I can make it to the American version next month! It depends on work and other stuffs, of course... ^^