Hummingwolf at Home

Because LJ has made it intensely difficult for me to sign in on my dial-up connection, and because I can't guarantee that none of the entries I write will violate the laws of the Russian Federation, I am pretty much a Dreamwidth-only creature these days. My recent entries have been access-list only, but if you'd rather not get your own account on Dreamwidth, then those of you who are signed into LJ should be able to log in with OpenID and participate that way.

Same username there as here. And just so you know, it hasn't been all whining over there. I had a good weekend. :-)

Because friendbots seem to be taking over LiveJournal these days, those of you with accounts here should keep this link handy:
Report Suspected Bot

If you think that account that just friended you out of the blue that's posting badly-written fiction, sex tips (in English or Russian), advertisements (of course), or whatever might possibly be a bot, just report it already.

If we must have bots around here, let them be entertaining bots, not this unoriginal crap.

[Edit: It's 3 o'clock now, so the window for the drawing is probably over. Please skip this paragraph.] For those interested in such things, haikujaguar is having a Balance Card one-card draw right now! It lasts until 3 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (which is, unless I'm much mistaken, seven p.m. UTC). If you'd like to have a Balance Card drawn for you for whatever reason, go and ask!

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On an unrelated note, for those of you who weren't paying attention to the news announcement a while back: LiveJournal has a paid account sale going on until September 30.

If you haven't yet voted in the LiveJournal Advisory Board election, please consider doing so! Relevant information and links may be found in this news post. It should be noted, though, that a couple of candidates have dropped out because the election has gone completely bloody insane (threats? threats?!).

I might have endorsed a selection of candidates in this post, but I'm starting to wonder if they're a bunch of politicians after all.

elfwreck writes a post featuring a discussion between SixApart and the Abuse Prevention Team about the flagging feature. I LOLd.

perspicacity:, n. keen judgment, understanding; acuteness of perception; the capacity to assess circumstances or situations and draw sound conclusions.

I added "perspicacity" to my LJ interests list this morning. Those of you who saw my post of 1:15 a.m. will probably not be surprised to learn that you cannot currently do a search for other users who list "perspicacity" as an interest. You also can't search for "perspicuity" (clarity of expression; lucidity).

Comments over in this post list some other strings you cannot search for. A few minutes ago, I added "spicy rice crackers" to my list so I could have something which is unsearchable for two reasons instead of just one.

For those of you who have been either living under a rock or out having lives recently, there are some changes to LiveJournal you should know about.

First, there is a new content flagging feature. No matter what your settings for anything else on LiveJournal have been, you will want to visit your settings page, go down to the section for "Adult content options," and pick something. You can rate your journal if you like, or you can leave it alone--this option is (currently) (supposed to be) voluntary. If you are unable to select certain options, make sure you have your birthdate set to something (anything!) over 18.

For information on both your ability to rate content on your own journal, and the ability of different people to flag content on journals they do not own, see this post and this post in lj_biz.

Next: LiveJournal has been sold to a Russian company called SUP (pronounced "soup"). Many people, knowing something about the corruption that's endemic to Russia, are a bit concerned about this, even though the new LiveJournal, Inc. is located in California and is supposed to be governed by U.S. law. Other people, somewhat less informed about what's been going on in Russia, are afraid that LJ's servers will now be located behind the Iron Curtain. (Hint: There has been no Iron Curtain since the 1980s, dudes. Hate Putin's government all you like, but pick a new metaphor.)

This thread should prove very useful for us all.

Brad's reaction.

An old Wired news article about SUP's involvement with LJ in Russia.

Collection of more links here from stewardess.

Note: If you're coming to the game this late, all of the "In Soviet Russia..." jokes have already been made. Better luck next time.

Now I have a question: If it is indeed now going to be dangerous to criticize and/or make fun of Vladimir Putin on this site, which one of the following will get me into more trouble?

Personal stuff: Remember how a few days due to fatigue, I have done my best to keep not just my eyes but all my information about Y was heavily filtered through the perceptions of X, who still doesn't exist no matter how much nutritious food I eat or how much exercise I get, nobody will be able to understand what life is like for someone else, the work of trying to find ways to keep the heat exhaustion from getting worse, that probably wasn't too hard.

According to the Attorney General, "we can use Jedi mind control. These aren't the droids you're looking for. The program is part of southern (US) regional dialect. A Google search for the phrase "very concerning" turns up a bunch of people to get nekkid; and while the show certainly does have some attractive actors, I still like some decent storylines on my television. But each episode I've caught this season has been enjoyable, even if Lana Lang is still annoying as heck. Another question: I know everybody hates Lana, but am I the only one who ever bothers to take out the trash?

Plus there's the usual medical problems, bureaucracy, inability to pay my bills. Bleah.

Yes, I'm cranky. Venting a little bit now then later more

Angel, angel, ring them bells
Ring them bells
Something is wrong it doesn't belong
and it's not natural to sing that song

And if I wash my hands in your dirty water
Will I be blind for all I see

Oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh
I know I saw the snow had stopped, the sky lightening and turning pink. I went back to reading. Looking up once more, I saw a branch hanging low over the sidewalk and was considering whether I should try again some other day. Tried again today, repeatedly. Same message every time.

Called dental school. Earliest available appointment is for a full bleeding month from today. Full exam & x-rays: $100. See, this is why I was standing in line today along with oodles of friendly neighbors.

As we stood in line, the election judge called for our attention, holding up a piece of paper and shouting, "Listen! This is a link for fans of mashups: If you haven't heard about my Easter celebration (though at least I no longer remember what it was. Maybe it'll come back to me after a few hours' sleep.

[Edit: LiveJournal has a brand-new toy, y'all. I'm likely to be offline for a couple days, but I just had to be one of the first to try this one out. :-)]

I really do love this site. There are so many wonderful people here who I never would have gotten to know if it weren't for this place. But LiveJournal? You so need to stop infuriating fandom and many outside with actions which, while they may be both well-intentioned and well within your rights, do not really make quite as much sense as you probably think they do.

Looking at the aftermath of Strikethrough '07, I honestly thought that LJ had learned something. Apparently what they learned was to re-do site code so that deleted & suspended accounts don't have a strikethrough anymore.

Copperbadge says it well.

For those of you who aren't avoiding LJ in an attempt to avoid Harry Potter spoilerers: You probably already know that lj_biz issued clarifications about LJ policy yesterday, but you should also be aware that they have since clarified the clarifications. Yeah, HP fanfic authors are going to be so pleased when they get back.

On Tuesday, US President George W. Bush unveiled a new executive order, Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq. Associated Press article about it is here; Shakesville clarifies.

Here in the DC area, temperatures have finally gone from sickeningly hot to reasonably pleasant, considering. Does this mean summer's worst is over? Clearly not.

Hey guys, Warriors for Innocence are back! I suppose this is what SixApart gets for putting advertisements on LiveJournal.

In other news, Permanent Accounts will be on sale soon; and for every account purchased during the first 36 hours of the sale, LJ will donate $25 to EFF, RAINN, Creative Commons, and WITNESS. "We know that other actions count too, so we're actively working to make our policies more transparent and our actions accurately reflect the will of the community. To this end we are working on:" [see list at link].

If you don't already watch paidmembers or the ever-helpful the_lj_herald, see this post about how you can get an extra week of paid time as compensation for LJ's recent downtime.

Once again: If you had a paid account during the recent LiveJournal downtime (that was the weekend all us addicts were whimpering that we couldn't get to our friends pages, remember), you can get a full seven days of extra paid time.

"This extension claim expires in a week on Monday, 11.20.06 (at 11:59pm GMT)" so go check it out now.

One of the things that kept me busy on Saturday and a small part of Sunday was watching lj_biz, specifically this post about sponsored content on LJ followed by Brad's valiant attempt at damage control, both posts of course followed by umpteen zillion comments about how much people hate the idea of sponsored content. As bad as LJ's introduction of the change may have been, Making Light points out (link via supergee) that the real problem is what the publicists for The Science of Sleep did with the sponsored "community" they got for their money.

Unlike a lot of people, I don't hate advertising. In fact, I think it provides a valuable service (along with much entertainment) as long as it's informative (or at least entertaining) and not deceptive. The problem here is the erosion of trust created by a bunch of sock puppets pretending to be a community of genuine fans. I'm a big fan of real community. Fake "sponsored community" just makes me want to claw somebody's eyes out.

Questions from a June post by conscience:

1. Why/What do you post in your journal?

Why? Because grrwoo gave me an invite code so I could keep up with all his posts. Didn't know what to do with the journal, so I posted some quiz results. I quickly did an interests search, found madralaoi's old journal, and realized that I knew her from a mailing list we were on (and that I still owed her an e-mail). After adding her to the list, I figured it was only fair to post something once in a while.

What do I post? Whatever seems appropriate at the time. I still haven't figured out what I'm doing, honestly.

2. What does NOT get posted?

If I think it will hurt someone I care about, I don't post it. Sometimes I decide against posting things publicly out of respect for someone who doesn't even know I have a journal online: the question "Would they want this to be known publicly?" may intrude if there is too much personally identifying information, even though the "Hummingwolf" name and my real name are kept as separate as I've been able to manage.

3. How do you feel about Friend Lists? Are the journals personal friends, reading fodder or a mix of both?

Definite mix. I do use the list to keep up with friends and potential friends, but some people have been on the list in the past who I may not have liked very much. The list is a reading list for me, and I usually refer to it as "my reading list" or "my flist" to keep that problematical "friends" word out of the discussion.

4. What do you see going on in LJ that just royally pisses you off...or just irritates you?

I get annoyed by people who justify writing half-truths here with "It's my journal and I'll write what I want to!" Deception is deception wherever it takes place. On the other hand, I get immensely irritated with folks who try to tell other people what to say or do with their journals. "Don't post so many quizzes!" "Don't add that person to your friends list!" "Quit complaining about your health!" "Quit bragging about your job!" "Stop flirting with everybody on your friends list!" Seriously, as long as a person's not out to ruin someone else's good time, let them write what they want.

5. What is the perfect journal? Personal, educational, dramatic, humorous, many links to interesting sites...other....

There is no one perfect journal.

6. Your Friend's List...what makes you add someone to it? Do you add them because they added you? Do you have to have some common interest or be entertaining to stay on your list? Do you form a bond with everyone on your list?

I add journals because I want to read them. Simple as that. If I don't add someone who's added me, it may not be a reflection of them. I may simply be unwilling for whatever reason to read what they're posting on a regular basis. I've deleted people I genuinely liked because I didn't have the energy to deal with what they write.

~~~~~~

I think I had something to say, but my brain melted and leaked out my ears. Will try again tomorrow.

It seems that, for the time being, it's best not to click on any link you see anywhere on your friends page unless you're prepared to have the same thing posted into your own LJ. Some of you have realized this already, either with the "sausage meme" (the list of usernames and (in the original version) Russian text, referred to as "sausage" because of all the links) or with the "This is interesting" link. From what I've read, neither of these seems to be harmful in itself, but there's a possibility that a copycat will dream up something less benign.

Here is an lj_dev post with discussion of the security hole--and for the record, any link I intentionally post in my journal will have some description or hint of what I'm linking to, so a generic "This is interesting" link shouldn't be appearing here ever. If you do see a generic link in my journal, please let me know.

For those of you whose journals have changed color today, there's a known bug with some new version of code. If you don't like the colors you've got this morning, this suggestion seems to work for some people: Go to http://www.livejournal.com/modify.bml and change the Color Theme setting from "Default Theme" to "Custom Colors" without changing anything else. Since I've been using custom colors already, this isn't an issue for me, but I've got nothing better to say at the moment.

Ooh, new Buffy tonight! Last Buffy episode ever (unless SMG's film career goes completely down the toilet and she begs Joss Whedon for a job).

For those of you who don't already know, there are a few nifty new features here on LiveJournal this week.

1. When you look at someone's userinfo page, not only are interests you have in common now in bold type, but common friends are bold as well. (Hey! My friends aren't common! Well, most of you aren't, anyway...)

2. Along similar lines, if a user name you see in a friends list has a line through it, that crossed-out name represents a deleted or suspended account.

3. The lj-cut tag is now closeable, so you can include more text after /lj-cut. For example, ( this is an lj-cut tag ).

4. A new tag is the lj comm tag, which works just like the familiar lj user tag but applies to communities rather than individuals. For example: If you read news and lj_nifty, you'd already know these things. And if the previous sentence includes [unknown lj tag] rather than displaying the way it's supposed to display, I am not at all surprised--the LJ servers aren't quite used to the tag yet.

(Information about LJ-specific tags can be found in the LiveJournal FAQ in this section.)

5. The one most likely to waste paid members' time: There are now friendsfriends pages where you can see the recent unprotected posts by friends of people on your friends list. The addresses for these pages are of the form [paidmember's name].livejournal.com/friendsfriends, as in http://bearybipolar.livejournal.com/friendsfriends
You may need to reload this page once or twice, as the LJ servers don't seem fully accustomed to the new feature yet.

Oh let me mention an old page as well, since some of you seem unaware of it: http://www.livejournal.com/portal is a good page to visit, for the nifty links if for nothing else.

This has been a public service announcement. We now return you to your regularly scheduled LiveJournal.