Friends

davis_square

smoterh

04:25 pm - Today's globe article about pahking

You can read it here.  Reading the Globe reader's comments is especially fun.

news

theljstaff

01:10 pm - State of the Goat 2009

It's been a momentous 12 months here at LiveJournal. We crossed a capital T at Ten years young. And, like most precocious pubescents, we celebrated turning double digits by publishing our first book! Needless to say, we've experienced some major changes, both inside and out. Before we recap, we'd like to thank you for bearing with us as we've struggled through ungainly growth spurts, identity pangs, and, yes, the occasional blemish. We hope you'll continue to stand by us: We're gaining wisdom with maturity.

Stuff you liked

• Back in February, we placed a call for entries for our ten-year anniversary anthology in lj_turns10. In December (less than a year later!), we officially announced the publication of Live Journal: The First Decade. Featuring an inspired collection of writing, photographs, and artwork from the pages of LiveJournal history, the book has been selected by Blurb.com as a top staff pick! We are proud to have played host to so much talent over the years, and we thank our contributors for sharing their extraordinary work.
• We all love quirky surprises, but not when it comes to managing our account settings. This year we streamlined settings into one central account management area. No more pouring through FAQs to figure out how to control privacy settings, modify notifications, adjust mobile settings, or update contact information!
• Being users ourselves, we realize our own mothers couldn't find us on LiveJournal based on our usernames and userpics alone (*heaves heavy sigh of relief*). But since there are times when we actually want to be found, we created a search tool--Find Your Friends--to help locate people by email address (it's in the Friends drop-down menu).
• Spam counter-attack: The war against viscious malware and spambots reigns eternal, but we've been making serious inroads to ensure your online security. We've established new protocols, such as requiring email address validations. We've grown more savvy about ferreting out suspicious behavior. We've added features, like whitelisting, to help you protect your communities. Our valiant (i.e., overworked) spam avengers (a/k/a the LiveJournal ops team) are standing on red alert so you can sleep safely at night.
• After an intensive beta, we launched My Guests at the end of the year, which lets you see who's been hanging around your journal. A number of you have even discovered secret admirers (not all of whom are creepy)!
• Last, but by no means least, we want to thank our volunteers for providing invaluable support and feedback. Their Herculean efforts enable us to answer your questions more efficiently, identify spammers, reduce abuse, and deliver better features (through tireless testing). On behalf of the staff and the larger LiveJournal community, we are truly grateful for their diligence, intelligence, loyalty, and passion.

You got your fix

• We recently debugged a number of the oustanding issues with the rich text editor so your entries look great regardless of whether you know html. You can read more about text editors here.
• In response to user demand, we brought back international voice posting. For more info on voice posting, read here.
• At long last, we revived TxtLJ with Verizon. For more info on TxtLJ, check out the FAQ.

Paid features you enjoyed

• In December, we introduced My Stats, which provides detailed data on who's been viewing your entries as well as statistics on commenting, RSS requests, friending history, and more. Despite a few early glitches, the response has been extremely favorable.
• This year, we launched and improved Notes (i.e., the feature formerly known as Alias), which lets you add private comments on friends and commenters (it's in the Profile drop-down menu). This way you won't be caught red-faced when you strain to remember details about that wonderful LiveJournal friend who sent you a birthday vGift. For more info, read the FAQ.
• When we first announced View friends pages by date, we thought it would be a quiet, minor enhancement. The rave reaction floored us, which made us all very happy. We gave it a fine tuning in February of 2009, so it's even better!
• We didn't know just much you liked pingbacks until it went in for service. It's back and, judging by your irritation when it wasn't available, this is good news. FYI, pingbacks send instant notifications (via screened comments) whenever someone links to one of your entries on LiveJournal. For more info, read this entry in paidmembers or check out the FAQ.

Mixed reviews

• The search is still on. Some of you have reported getting more comprehensive results for keyword searches using the new Yandex search engine and like the ability to search within content categories (like entries or comments). Others have not been satisfied with the relevancy of search results. Please be patient. We're still tweaking this product.
• This past December, we wanted to try out a new holiday promotion. Given the crap economy, we decided to offer our Paid/Permanent users a stack of $10 coupons to send to Basic/Plus users for paid account upgrades. We hoped you would like it. And some of you did, but many were disappointed that we didn't offer Give More as well. We want to thank you so much for letting us know. Your input will help us plan better in the future. Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users can continue to send out coupons through January 15th. Coupons can be redeemed through January 31, 2010.
• We were pretty excited about Your Journal Your Money, which allows Paid/Permanent users to earn extra cash by displaying Google ads to Basic/Plus and logged out users. A number of you tried it. Some of you really like it. Others, not so much. (Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users who do not participate in this program will not view ads on journals. Participants will see ads on their own journal, but won't see them on other journals unless they specifically opt in.) For additional details, visit here.
• We relaunched m.livejournal.com, our mobile app. While it offers a nicer UI and enhanced functionality, some of you think we can do better on load times. Like most of us, it's a work in progress. You can customize your mobile settings here. For more info, please read the FAQ.

Missing Inaction

• We shudder to bring up the neon purple elephant squatting on our heads, but, yes, we didn't give you those a la carte userpics. We've been making radical improvements to our backend in order to support them. But no excuses. We know you want them. We cringe every time you mention them. We're sorry we dropped the ball on this, and we promise to do our best to get them to you in 2010.

Stumbling points

• Back in early August, we experienced outages related to a series of DDoS attacks. We are proud to report that we were down a total of one hour over the course of a few days. We thank our heroic ops guys for getting us up sooner and more consistently than any of our less fortunate social networking friends. We apologize for leaving you temporarily stranded.
• A couple of months back, we offered a free, unrestricted vGift, which induced a snowflake cookie avalanche. This resulted in backed up/delayed notifications, which, in turn, led us to reboot systems, rendering scrapbooks unavailable. It took a while to shovel free. Apologies for the inconvenience. We learned a valuable lesson that should keep us calamity-free in the future (fingers crossed while knocking on wood).
• That darn Best Buy ad. First off, we're sorry about the audio auto-play (we got it turned off as quickly as possible). While it's true that we'll continue to show this type of ad to accounts that normally see them (never to Paid/Permanent accounts), we'll make sure the sound defaults to off moving forward. We promise to do our very best to keep ads to a minimum on LiveJournal, while keeping a roof over Frank's head.

Full steam ahead!

As we plunge headfirst into the next decade, we want to take a moment to look back and thank all of our employees, both past and present, who have worked so hard to create our unique and magical universe. We couldn't have made it this far without you: Your contributions brighten our path everyday. We also want to extend our heartfelt appreciation to each and every one of you. Whether you've been around for ten days or ten years, your humor, intelligence, talent, and creativity are what makes this the most vibrant global community on the Internet (the best place on the Web, in our humble opinion). Here's hoping that 2010 will be the greatest year yet! We thank you for joining us as we embark upon another glorious decade of LiveJournal history!

patrissimo

12:25 pm - Help the ephemerisle doc go viral

By upvoting the Ephemerisle Documentary story on Hacker News. And Reddit.

Thx.

(And thanks to jason_watkins for posting it to HN)

davis_square

filigreepm

01:11 pm - FREE Home Ownership Workshop

FREE Home Ownership Workshop

Make the most of your biggest investment, whether it is a condo, single-family, or multi-family.  The Home Ownership Workshop offers existing and prospective home owners the information you need to prevent costly surprises and properly maintain your home. By following the steps outlined in this one-hour course (followed by an optional 30-minute Q&A session), you will have the tools you need to maximize the enjoyment and value of your home.

The workshop will take place on Monday, January 11th at 7:00 PM in the private screening room at the Somerville Theatre.  It will be conducted by Thalia Tringo, Realtor® and Vice President with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, and Lars Unhjem, Manager of Filigree Property Management(SM).

Although there is no charge for the workshop, we encourage you to bring canned goods or other non-perishable food items for the Somerville Homeless Coalition.  Thank you.

davis_square

aroraborealis

11:37 am - Somerville: Your Walkable Community

Somerville: Your Walkable Community in Winter

Join us for a workshop on walkable neighborhoods! We will discuss:

• What makes a neighborhood walkable
• Winter challenges for walkability
• Snow clearance requirements in Somerville
• What you can do if someone in your neighborhood isn’t clearing their sidewalk
• Some options for people who can’t shovel
• Avoiding injury when shoveling
• Avoiding injury on icy sidewalks
• Advocating with the city to make your neighborhood more walkable

When: January 30, 2010, 2:30-4:30pm
Where: Somerville Library, 79 Highland Ave

Light refreshments will be provided.

The first 20 people to RSVP and attend will receive a pair of winter traction cleats for safer walking in snow and ice.

For more details or to RSVP, contact Rosa Carson at WalkBoston
(617) 835-9943, rcarson@walkboston.org

davis_square

latvianchick

10:36 am - grey cashmere for crafts, etc.

I have a grey cashmere sweater that is no longer usable as a sweater due to several moth holes. It is, however, soft and fuzzy and I was wondering whether someone might be able to use it for something crafty. The holes are near the wrist and on one of the shoulders, so there are swaths of undamaged cashmere. (It's men's size small.) Let me know if you'd like it!

Pickup in N Cambridge or we can arrange to meet in Porter / Davis at mutual convenience.

patrissimo

03:34 pm - Ephemerisle documentary!

Ephemerisle Documentary by Jason Sussberg from The Seasteading Institute on Vimeo.

ilai

04:29 pm - New Year for a new post

It's been a while since I posted, so it's time to catch up! Except the more I wrote the more pictures I added, so now it'll all be under an LJ cut. ( My last couple of months )

pandemonium_bks

smoagendash

03:28 pm - New Event: Wargame Wednesday at Your Move Games!

At Your Move Games, every Wednesday is Wargame Wednesday! This is your chance to break out your armies and pit them against other players in a variety of tabletop miniature games. Our most popular games are Arcane Legions (including organized League play), Warhammer Fantasy and 40k, AT-43, and Battleground, but all minis games are welcome. Bring in your Monsterpocalypse, your Hordes, your Warmachines, and of course, your friends!

Wargame Wednesday is open play, free to attend, and starts at 6pm.

patrissimo

08:52 am - Paleokits are 15% off

For January.

Simply type in "PaleoNewYear" in the discount code box at checkout to receive your 15% discount on orders of 25 kits or more.

patrissimo

08:51 am - Sleep/energy QS

(Main personal project for 2010, at least first half)

Note: interventions can be classified as short or long-term (ST/LT), depending on whether their effect is daily (breathe-rite strips) or takes time (quitting caffeine, regular sleep schedule).

Decisions: randomize ST interventions daily (2 from 5-10). Do LT one at a time, start w/ control period, then try an LT for 2-4 weeks and see what happens. (as opposed to: randomly choose a subset of LTs every long period and accumulate data over many months.) This risks confounding, but I can give second tries to apparently unsuccessful interventions or challenge apparently successful ones later to help w/ this. (Benefits: smaller menu of options is lower-overhead in various ways).

Open question: ? track things that might affect sleep and are under my control therefore could be interventions later, but I don't feel like randomizing now, like alcohol, exercise, hot tub ? More data, but more work to track. Umm...let's start simpler.

ST interventions chosen:

Bed tilt (nose)
BreatheRite (nose)
ENTsol acute (nose)
Pre-bed relaxation ritual (bin beats or body scan meditation)
Desmopressin
low-dose Trazodone
Earplugs

LT:

Sinus rinse
Sleep schedule, 8am 6d/week, sleep in once

Outcomes:

Zeo data (incl time to fall asleep, sleep efficiency, etc.)
Subjective: sleep quality, awakenings, energy/alertness (morn/afternoon/eve)

davis_square

mmancuso

10:47 am - roommate wanted for Feb 1; $420 plus utilities

Hi Folks-- Our three-roomate situation is now down to two, since a lovely roommate accepted a swanky job out-of-state, and so I'm writing to spread the word.

Location: 81 Bromfield Road Apt #1, Somerville. 2 minutes' walking distance from Tufts U. 10 minutes' walk to Davis Square. Three-storey building, divided into two residences: landlords have upper 1.5, downstairs tenants have bottom 1.5. Available bedroom is one of the two bedrooms at top of stairs. Super landlords.

( Details behind the cut. )

Current Mood: chipper

patrissimo

07:42 am - morning brainwash

Patri walks into kitchen, has this internal monologue:

Voice1: Ok, breakfast, so eggs, should I use the microwave for speed or the stove for tastiness?
Voice2: I don't think I can resist a chance to cook.
Voice1: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU AND HOW DID YOU GET INTO THE HEAD WITH ME?

Does getting up early poison the brain?

I shouldn't be so surprised, I do sorta enjoy cooking, I just don't like how long it takes, and I have been cooking more lately. It was just very strange to hear a voice in my head casually state an opinion that's brand new to me / not part of my identity. Oh well, we already knew that voice is just a narrator trying to weave together a coherent story out of what various conflicting modules do...

patrissimo

07:19 am - jet lag

Is not so bad. Falling asleep 1:15 after getting home and sleeping through family time last night was not so great, but being up at 4:45am means starting work at 5:15am and getting a hot tub break at 6:30am, as the sky slowly lightens...

Extra bonus: jet-lagged wife who usually doesn't get up before 10am magically appeared to join me in the hot tub.

It is kinda weird, though, that I'm falling asleep at 8pm every other night or so...I mean, India is 13.5hrs off, where the heck does my body get "go to sleep 3-4 hrs earlier than normal" from?

Ok, breakfast and back to work...

lokiect

09:53 am

Robins really show against the snow. and work has a lot of trees with berries, so there are a lot of them around here. It recently occurred to me that, since the jay in jaywalking refers to country folk who didn't expect cars in the street, the jay in bluejays is probably the same.

Yesterday I brought the grey metal child to the dealer. I'd taken it in for maintenance last week (happy 3rd birthday, grey metal child!) and they said that the head gasket was leaking. And they said this is almost unheard of, given the age & milage of my car. They said it'll be covered by the warranty and I'll get a loaner car. When I went in, they said I'm getting a rental (them covering, again) and I sat and wait about half an hour for the rental guy to show up. I didn't really expect that part of the process to take an hour, and I had expected a subaru loaner instead of a chrysler rental.

So until they call and tell me the grey metal child is out of the hospital, I am driving an 09 chrysler sebring. which feels like a boat to me, but I can't tell how much of it is size vs different layout and feel. It feels like there's a lag when I do anything except brake (phew!) One thing I noticed about rental cars is that I always have to manually turn off the headlights and radio, whereas the grey metal child needs to be told explicitly to leave them on. Is it somehow a feature?

davis_square

othniel77

08:30 pm - David Bowie fans, where art thou? At Johnny D's?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“The Thin White Duke Resurrected By Generation of Adolescent Boston Rockers”

CAMBRIDGE and SOMERVILLE - English singer David Bowie (born David Jones on January 8th, 1947) has been called a cultural chameleon throughout his long and colorful career. From music and film to art and the Internet, Bowie has challenged the perceptions of fans and critics alike with his many malleable personas which seemed to mirror the cutting edge trends of the day.

Two separate and very different venues will be the site of performances by the Paul Green School of Rock Boston students in a tribute to Ziggy Stardust himself.

On Friday, 1/22 @ 7:00 PM, the show kicks off at the Cambridge Family YMCA Theatre (http://www.cambridgeymca.org). Tickets are $10 in advance/$12 at the door and this event is 100% ALL-AGES and open to the public.

Like a whirlwind mini-tour, the very next day (Saturday, 1/23) finds the School of Rockers at that historic Davis Square landmark, Johnny D’s Place on 17 Holland Street in Somerville. This show manifests itself as a pre-suppertime attraction, running from 4:00-6:00 PM. Johnny D’s will be serving a full menu for hungry Boston-area music fans, so come out for dinner and a show! Once again, tickets are $10 in advance/$12 at the door and this event is 100% ALL-AGES and open to the public.

Visit School of Rock Boston’s website at http://www.schoolofrock.com/boston or call the School at 617-923-3434 for advance ticketing information.




--
Ms. Anderson Mar
General Manager
School of Rock Boston
120 Elm Street
Watertown, MA 02472
Office Phone: 617-923-3434
Cell Phone: 617-605-6758
FAX: 617-923-1859
Email: amar@schoolofrock.com
http://www.schoolofrock.com/boston

ricevermicelli

05:03 pm - The Unfulfilled Desires of a Pigeon

The more I read of Mo Willems' books about the pigeon, the more I begin to reimagine them as a series of Mao-ist fables.

In these enlightening works, the pigeon spurns the nepotistic favors offered by Cousin Herb and works his way up through the ranks of bus drivers without assistance. He ceases to desire participation in the bourgeois institution of pet ownership. After years of service and clean living (the pigeon never does get to stay up late), the pigeon is able to consume a hot dog of his very own as his just reward.

davis_square

thespian

04:05 pm - feed the soymilk need

Over Christmas, I got very addicted to Westsoy Chocolate Peppermint Stick which was, surprisingly, better than most 'real milk' chocolate milks I'd ever found.

They were selling it at Shaw's in Porter, and they all disappeared the day after Christmas. I've looked at Market Basket, and saw nothing, but if anyone else has seen this anywhere else around the area, I would really like to lay in a supply of it.

davis_square

serious_noir

03:31 pm - missed recycling pick up (doh) - can I drop off?

So I missed recycling pick up today - have a bunch of NY's eve party wine bottles overflowing the recycling bin. Dug around the somerville city site but didn't see any info @ drop-offs. Anyone know if it is possible to drive over to the sanitation dept and drop of there?

tx

patrissimo

10:57 am - Neti pot vs. motorized spray?

Anyone researched the benefits of nasal irrigation via a neti pot vs. a device like the SinuPulse or WaterPik or whatever? Sounds like there is a little evidence that pulsating sprays may be better, but not much. It's only $80, I'm more concerned about having yet one more piece of crap lying around. But if it works better...