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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/newsinfo.gif) news (posted by ![[info]](http://pics.livejournal.com/marta/pic/000gzfga) theljstaff) |
| 2010-01-07 13:10 |
| State of the Goat 2009 |
| Public |
| 10th anniversary, account settings, best buy, blurb, find friends, holiday promotion, international voice posting, my guests, paid accounts, rich text editor, spam, stats, txtlj, userpics, volunteers |
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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
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) 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 vicious 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!
- How embarrassing! It appears pingbacks have gone back to the shop for service. We’ll keep you posted.
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!
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This morning, while sipping my morning coffee, I heard an explosion, some screaming, then someone running towards our front door. The dogs were barking, which I did not find too alarming. The doorbell rang and I expected something benign, like the construction company warning they would be making a lot of noise today. Living in a community that is still in construction, I have come to expect rock blasting, pounding, and commotion often.
When I looked through the peephole, I saw someone I did not recognize. Under normal circumstances, I do not answer the door for anyone I do not recognize. I opened the door, smoke billowed into the house and an older gentleman stood wide-eyed and speechless. He merely pointed to the east corner of our property, where FLAMES WERE SHOOTING INTO THE SKY. There, in front of our house was an older pickup, completely engulfed in flames. The fumes were noxious and I was genuinely frightened. For a moment, I stood dumbfounded, then I remember shouting, "HOLY SHIT!" I rushed to our side gate to grab the hose. DUH! The gate was locked. I shouted to the stranger, "I'LL CALL 911!"
My heart started racing and my head was spinning. The utility boxes are located on the same corner as the truck was ablaze. The flames were blowing toward our tree in the front yard. Would our tree catch fire? Were the utility boxes in danger? What if the truck exploded? I worried, in that moment about Allie, upstairs, on the same east corner. What if the truck caught our house on fire? I panicked! I grabbed the phone as I raced through the house to the garage. I fumbled for the key to the gate, as I simultaneously dialed 911. I opened the garage doors to let our terror-stricken canines in. Tongue-tied, I began talking to the 911 operator, as I jerked the gate open, freeing the hose from the backyard.
I starting shouting to the 911 operator. The smoke was thick and I was scared.
Me: THERE'S A TRUCK ON FIRE IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE, 1234 MAIN STREET (not our real address). There was an explosion!
Calm 911 Operator: There is a truck on fire?
Me: YES, IT EXPLODED! I AM AFRAID THE REST IS GOING TO GO UP! (Perhaps, I watched too many CHiP'S episodes in the 1970's)
Calm 911 Operator: You heard an explosion.
Me: YES! OUR ADDRESS IS, 1234 MAIN STREET
Calm 911 Operator: Ma'am you need to calm down. I cannot understand you. Is your street MAIN street?
Me: YES!
Calm 911 Operator: Is anyone hurt?
Me: NO!
I believe she had to tell me several times, in actuality, to calm down. As far as I see it, the one time you are entitled to be hysterical, is when flames are potentially going to burn down your home. I did not remain calm, nor did I calm down. I typically work well in a crisis situation. Clearly, this was not entirely my finest moment.
When I came back in from the garage, Allie had been awakened by the commotion. By the time I stepped out to the porch, all the construction workers and supervisors from the entire hillside were in front of our house. The Sheriff had just arrived and the fire department was on their way. They dispatched three Sheriff units and a very large ladder truck. The owner of the truck was spraying the truck with our backyard hose and the flames were subsiding. (The truck, nonetheless, continued to smolder for some 30 minutes after.)
Shaken, Allie and I stood in our front yard, while many neighbors, sheriffs, firemen, and construction workers looked on. By the time the ladder truck had arrived, the fire had been mostly put out. They examined the inside of the truck, sprayed the inside out, then began evaluating the situation. They stayed on scene for about 30 minutes, shoveling some debris into the back of the pickup.
Allie enjoyed seeing the big fire truck, parked right in front of our house. For her, it was exciting. For me? Not so much. Clearly, this was the scariest moments I have ever had with fire before in my life. Fortunately, no one was injured. It took about 2 1/2 hours to clean up the mess. I am so thankful no one was injured. I am relieved that it did not escalate to the emergency I feared. No damage was done to our home, although a large hole was burned into the street and our Jacaranda tree caught fire. I am fairly certain, the explosion was the sound of the front, back, and the two side windows blew out of the truck. Truly, a frightening experience. I am glad it is over!
Apparently, the owner was driving up our steep hill at the entrance of the community. He said he saw smoke coming into the cab of the truck, then a small fire. He tried to throw dirt on it. When that failed, he tried to get our hose from the side gate. Since it was locked, he came to our door. He said in the time it took to get from our curb to our doorstep, the whole truck ignited. The poor guy was as shaken as I was and equally as fearful that the whole truck would explode, like on television.
Very scary. Our water bill is going to SUCK! I need to be sedated now.
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June 9, 2009 Jenny stares through the darkness at the ceiling. She isn't looking at me, I can tell, even though my head is on her chest, because she hasn't really been able to look at me now for a few days. "I feel like I've already lost you, you just haven't left yet," she says in a flattened tone that scares me. I don't really understand what she means, but I know enough to know that she believes it. "You're going to get better," I tell her for the eleventh time today, and the fortieth time this week. But I'm certain this time she heard me. This time it'll make a difference. This time everything will be fixed and healed. This time we can get back to normal. "Maybe I will," she replies. "I just don't see how we come out of this in a relationship. And right now, all I see is tunnel. I don't see any light, I can only see tunnel." I lift my head toward hers, and she still doesn't look at me. "Listen to me," I say, "I'm here, aren't I?" Please let this talk-down be the last. Please, Lord, let it work this time.And then she starts crying again, a wracking, sobbing cry that absolutely breaks my heart, the more so because I'm still convinced it's my fault. She turns away from me and curls into a fetal position, and all I can do is put a hand on her arm, stroke it gently, take a deep breath, forget my own pain, forget the questions of why, what I did this time, what I can do to stop this, what I can do to stop it from happening again, why all this has happened, why I said the things I did a few weeks ago, why, how, what... shove all that down, and wait.
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The past couple of months, I have been trying to get myself back on track. I could list a thousand reasons why I lost my way, however, they are the same reasons everyone else has. It is difficult. It is uncomfortable. Frankly, it sort of sucks.
I have taken the initiative to get moving more, even when I do not want to. I have been making healthier choices, even when we go out to eat. We have cut alcohol out of our diet since November 20. I have been grabbing the water, fruit and veggies. The change in eating habits has been the biggest lifestyle difference that has made the biggest impact. I have lost a full dress size (since September) and have welcomed back my favorite jeans into my wardrobe. I lost three pounds just last week!
I flaked out on running the past three days. I have a good excuse though. I threw out my middle back and it has hurt like hell for the past couple of days. Tomorrow, it is back to the grind. We have a race coming up the beginning of February and I want to be ready for it.
So far, 2010 has been kind too us. I look forward to more good stuff from this year. Hope everyone is enjoying this new year, too!
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Repino (form. Kuokkala), St-Petersburg, Russia
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Ten years ago, I was twenty-six years old and living the single life, which included plenty of parties, bar hops, and the sowing of wild oats. I was starting graduate school at San Diego State for my Master's degree in Political Science and living in Pacific Beach. I was living the life I had always dreamed of and had found it to be quite dull.
I was living by myself in a one bedroom apartment, not far from the ocean and near Mission Bay. I was working late nights at the insurance company that dons a lizard as their mascot. I hated my job. I hated dating. I had made some mistakes in my life and trouble seemed to find me. I had a lot of friends and had an incredibly active social life, yet I was lonely. Times were tough financially and I was an unhappy soul.
On my twenty-sixth birthday, a few friends took me out to TGI Fridays for drinks after work. My friend Michelle and I were the last ones to leave. As we were walking out to our cars, a security guard came up to us and asked, "Would either of you ladies like a kitty?" "No thank you," I replied. Then, out of his windbreaker, he pulled out the tiniest little boy kitty. He was not bigger than the palm of the guard's hand. He then explained that someone had dropped off an entire litter of kittens in the parking lot.
I instantly fell in love with the tiny creature and before I knew it, I was driving home with the little guy lying across my shoulders. The next day, I took him to the vet and the veterinary supply store. He was the smallest kitten I had ever seen and could be no more than four weeks old, according the vet. We got him started on formula and bottle-feeding.
I named him Friday. It was a Friday when I got him and I got him at TGI Fridays. He was the softest and smallest little thing. He instantly had my heart. He was grey, with stripes, and the biggest green eyes.
Some of my friends (That are still good friends---Hi Aubrey! Hi Sarah!) lived in my apartment complex and worked with me. When they discovered I had a baby, everyone wanted to help raise him. We got a sound machine that played a heartbeat sound and put it in the box with him. While each of us went to work, someone else would gladly watch over him. It took a couple of weeks to nurse little Friday to health, but he soon became a healthy little guy. I would often take him with me on long drives to my parents house, laying calmly on my shoulder. Imagine the looks I got driving with a cat stretched across my shoulder!
He was a quirky little man. He never got any heavier than 6.5 pounds. He looked like a bush baby, with big green eyes. He would chase his tail and do acrobatics on the kitchen chair. He was quite agile. When he was frightened, his hair on his entire body stood straight up, and his tail puffed up like a raccoon. He was a bit skittish and would hide whenever I had company over. We had to give him the equivalent of kitty Prozac on a few occasions, when he would exhibit some "behavior problems," such as improper urination.
I suppose it was because he was so young, so small, so fragile, and the fact that I nursed him to health that he never really learned to be a proper cat. He followed me room to room, like a puppy. I am a stomach sleeper and he loved to curl up on the small of my back at night. He became my my friend, my confidante, and snuggled me close through many tears shed.
He was never accepting of change. Over time, he learned to accept Mr. Bear and he learned to accept Allie. However, I would not say he was thrilled about it. He never accepted the dogs and would show his irritation, as he swished his tail at them through the sliding glass window, as if to say, "Ha, ha! I am inside with her and you are not!" He seemed to believe he was my human child and would finagle a way to be as close to me as he could. He was a bit needy, but love me with his entire being, he did.
As strange as my little friend was, he was a loyal companion and he won me over. I could count on him greeting me upon my return from even a short trip. I have never met a cat quite like him before. This inherently is due to his not believing he was a cat, instead, my human child. It was a comfort to have a friend to comfort and console me, never judging, and always there.
Since he passed, on Allie's birthday in November, I still feel him here. He would follow me into the bathroom and slink against my legs. On several occasions, I could swear I felt him rub against my legs. There have been times when I have heard him run through the house, with the "night crazies," as he would when he was still here. After we put the Christmas tree up, I saw the bottom of the tree rustle at the bottom, just has it had when little Friday would play with the ornaments the ten years previous. At night, I swear I can hear his compulsive cleaning of his fur.
I am not sure what I believe about spirits, ghosts, and paranormal activity, however, I have felt my little friend here. It might sound a bit nuts, yet, I know he is still here. My mom and dad said they can believe his ghost is still here. He would not be willing to leave me so easily. I do not mind his haunting, if that is, indeed, what they are. In fact, I welcome them. Although I am not that same discontent person I was ten years ago, I miss him terribly and miss his unconditional love.
This is the last picture taken of our Friday cat. It is of poor quality, but means so much to me. Our pet sitter took this picture when she watched him the last time.
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it may be freezing out, but the colors still look amazing.
if leaving the lights of los angeles means having a river view, i think ill survive.
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