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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
| Friday, July 18th, 2008 | |||||
|
greenbirds |
2:03p | Lesson this morning at 7 AM. Except for the getting up at 5:15 part, this was nice. Lesson was okay. Not consistently on the bit, but consistently forward with nice rhythm, and accepting contact with good grace and no tantrums. A few really _nice_ canter transitions in the mix, too. I will apparently also be ordering myself a pad with a riser in front, because L. managed to fix pretty much my entire seat by adding a jury-rigged one (Flynn is built rather ... downhill, though much less so than she was a year ago, and the combination of that and the way my otherwise-wonderful dressage saddle causes my hip to rote seems to rob my leg of a great deal of effectiveness. Irritating that it took us this long to figure that out...) In the meantime, L. promised to bring me a riser pad for tomorrow. So. Not perfect, but all signs point to this show not being anywhere near the disaster score-wise that the last one was. And then I went off to work my schoolie for the day. Which, per L.'s orders, was one of our resident dressage schoolmasters, all 17hh of him. Tigger's not actually ours, but his owner part leases him to us as a lesson horse. Did I mention 17 hh? JEEZ. After my pony, who is a pony, that's HUGE. *faints* But Oh. My. GAWD. Whatta ride!! Consistently on the bit, with tons of forward energy and lots of suspension. Everything -- circles, changes of rein, canter transitions -- was absolutely effortless as long as I stayed still, kept my hands soft, and my leg on. So THAT's the feeling I'm looking for with the pony. Oh-KAY. I get it now... (Did I mention that it's been awhile since I rode a really, really FINISHED horse? Like, probably much too long?) Tigger's owner wandered by while I was working him, approved thoroughly of the way we looked together, and gave me blanket permission to ride him whenever I felt like it. I feel so flattered! ^_^ (I'm told I was grinning like an idiot for pretty much this entire ride). I cannot tell you how much better I feel after my wonderful schoolmaster ride. I have been thoroughly reassured that I Do Not Suck as a rider (occasionally, I need such a reminder. Flynn is not always easy to ride). Plus, OMG FUN! After my boost of self-confidence for the day, I bathed my pony, put a sheet on her, cleaned my tack, and tootled off to work, satisfied that all is in readiness for the show tomorrow. Except that I need to run by the tack store tomorrow morning and pick up a hay net. Oops. Tomorrow: Training 1 at 3:05; Training 2 at 3:50. We'll be loading up at noon to haul out there (it's about 40 minutes down the road...) And -- even better -- there's even a roundpen at the showground for me to work miss snorty-pants in after I take her drama queen self off the trailer. Wish us luck! ETA: Flynn celebrated her readiness for the show by staging a jailbreak from her stall. Fortunately, she didn't go far -- there was food on the ground not very far away, and she was hoovering it up when we spotted her. She was easily lured back in with a bucketful of grain. Yup, my horse thinks with her stomach. All the time. :P Current Mood:  cheerful | |||
|
brokenallbroken |
12:23p | EEEE! Cute! Last night we got in some girls' dresses that looked like wool plaid skirts with a v-neck sweater and a white shirt on top. Except they were all one piece. Did I mention the grey skirts had little pink hearts embroidered on them to match the sweater? EEEEE! If I had a daughter I would dress her as a bobbysoxer* ALWAYS. This is probably why it's good I'm not a parent. It's nice to see girls' clothes that look like girls' clothes again, instead of tiny ho gear. *Given ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} greenbirds' love of skulls and striped knee socks, this would probably end up being more bobbysoxXx0r. Current Mood:  sleepy | |||
|
harmonyheifer |
10:35a | I finally got an uninterrupted night's sleep last night, for which I am ridiculously grateful. If I spiked a temperature I managed to sleep through it. I think getting in the pool and exercising before bed last night was a really wise choice. I hadn't been in the pool since Monday and was overdue. The water was bathwater warm, but it was relaxing and I enjoyed watching the almost full moon peeking over the treetops while I worked out. My pain levels have dropped back to more normal as well, which indicates that the viral induced elevated temperatures have finally left the building. I also decided on Wednesday to take about a dozen chlorella tablets instead of my standard 4. This slowed my rampaging gastrointestinal tract down. I repeated the mega dose of chlorella yesterday. I figured that the worst that could happen is that I would just have more expensive poop. I think it helped. I guess the virus could have just run its course at the point when I decided to take the extra chlorella and the chlorella itself had no part in my feeling so much better, but I have learned through personal experimentation that chlorella packs a pretty astonishing chelation punch. My best guess is that if my body is fighting something toxic or bad, Chlorella can only help. I honestly think this stuff is the most beneficial supplement I take, and I've seen the way it has worked for Dawn as well. I can't say enough good things about it as a way to offset the toxic environmental pollutants we all have to live with. It has kept the Methotrexate from killing me, that alone is enough to make me pretty loyal to chlorella. I am feeling well enough this morning to toddle off to Scottsdale to pick up my paint. There will be painting this weekend if I am up to it, and I think I will be up to it. Puma and curry walls are in my immediate future. Or they will be if I get off my ass and drive to Scottsdale this afternoon. | |||
| Thursday, July 17th, 2008 | |||||
|
the_n_channel |
11:55p | Darkness and Light I got to the office and didn't really fell like working. Regardless I manged to make some inroads on a hacked-together, completely hard-coded and dependent solution for automating some processes. I wasn't really in a mood to talk with anyone, and got miffed when my boss asked me to schedule a meeting for a demo and did, then I received a response asking me to select an option from a dropdown list that she herself had access to, as a co-collaborator in the meeting. It took her about as long to write me to tell me to do it as it took for me to actually do it, maybe longer. I sent a terse little note of annoyance to another, who basically said that I'm terrible at setting up meetings and it's my meeting, my show, so I should be the one to do everything. This would make sense to me if I had requested the meeting, as I'm from the school that the requester should probably establish a tentative plan. But maybe I'm just foolish, as it's a fair criticism that's gotten me in hot water before. But meetings are generally a lot of "talking about doing work" without actually doing work, so I try to avoid them as much as possible. If I have to work in a managed environment, I prefer to let the managers take care of that administrative stuff so I can focus on solving problems, which is the part of the engineering job I actually enjoy. (>_>)...fuck, when did I become such a stereotype? I left and hit the gym in the evening, did some pretty intense squats and deadlifts and got a fair workout in. Gotta start a plan as of next week. I got a call from a friend who invited me to meet some of his people at a sushi bar, but by the time I got there everyone was leaving. So we decided to go to karaoke. The bar was incredible in terms of people, there were beautiful girls everywhere and dancing and debauchery and a general good time. There were so many people that I didn't actually get to sing, which was probably for the best. I clam up so much in that environment, though. There were all these amazing girls there and I had a couple of brief-eye-contact-then-look-away-then-fi Towards the end of the night, a rather unusual situation came up. One of my friend's roommates had gotten really drunk. There were murmurs that she was drunk and trying to hook up with one of their friends, when she started crying uncontrollably. But I noticed that a few of them were laughing at her. The rundown is that she's apparently not a very nice person, an alcoholic who's hypocritical about it, and I guess many of her friends really don't like her. It was really bad, like multiple groups of friends were leading her around and she just wouldn't stop crying. I tried to keep my distance as I don't really know this girl at all and don't want to put myself in a position to be some drunk girl's stupor-induced mistake, but around closing time things got out of control. She wouldn't stop crying, and her friends didn't know what to do with her. They kept asking her if she wanted a ride, but she just kept responding with sobbing and outright crying. They stood around like idiots because they couldn't figure out what to do. I knew what she needed: someone to take her in his arms and hold her for a while, let her cry out all of that pent up anger and frustration and make sure she got home safely. I resisted the urge to do this for reasons stated previously, but after a while it got to be too much, especially when one of the other roommate guys started getting verbally annoyed because she was so drunk and wouldn't give him her keys and was just ruining everything...she was crying her lungs out, and behavior like that wasn't doing anything to alleviate the situation. So I walked up and grabbed her by the shoulder, lifted her chin to look into her eyes (and hopefully convey I wasn't trying to be creepy) and hugged her tight. She clung on for dear life, like a shipwrecked survivor in the midst of a hurricane frantically grabbing onto a piece of driftwood. I softly cooed in her ear and stroked her hair as I eased her purse off of her shoulders and gave it to my friend, so he could get her keys. Then I let her cry a little more to see if she would reach some kind of semi-controlled state. She didn't. It got particularly hilarious when the bar guy said they were "closing up" (GTFO), and she clung to me as I tried to move, causing us to semi-waddle out the door and drawing everyone's attention. A myriad of onlookers came on to ask their useless questions, and it got tiresome when one particular couple thought we were trying to take a young, confused girl out of there to take advantage of her. I thanked them for their concerns and referred them to her friends, as I knew all she needed was some reassurance and a good night's sleep. Finally my friend brought her car and drove her home, while I grabbed his keys and took his car (and a drunken buddy of his) to their place. It amazes me how little compassion people can have for each other, especially in a situation like that. Everybody just felt weird and uncomfortable and no one was willing to step up and take responsibility for taking care of this girl and making sure she got home safely. I couldn't believe how childish they were about the whole thing. Yeah she was drunk and she should've known better, etc etc...those are all wonderfully valid points you can make later, when she's sober and they actually mean shit. I called out my friend (who'd been one of the ones standing around uncomfortably until I conscripted him into action) later, telling him that it's important for us to have compassion even for people we don't necessarily like in their times of great need. Because in the end, it reflects more on us than it does on them. He later countered that perhaps she needed a "wake up call" to deal with her problem of alcoholism and was hesitant to do anything to keep her from reaching "Rock Bottom" so that she'll finally deal with the problem instead of sweeping it under the rug and ignoring it. It's an interesting argument, since I do think that people need to deal with and pull themselves out of their own shit...but when it's obvious that someone just needs you, it's callous to turn a blind eye. She probably won't remember a damn thing and probably will "sweep it under the rug", but hopefully she'll at least remember enough of the incident to be internally embarrassed and self-critical of the behavior...and considering she's friends with the super-cute girl, it'd be nice if she put in a good word...pfft, I shouldn't need any of those. Current Music: Parasite -- Disturbed | |||
| Friday, July 18th, 2008 | |||||
|
desertwillow |
3:53a | Dark Knight I can honestly and with all seriousness that it is the best movie I have ever seen. Hands down. Yes, better than Indy or anything else you can name. Do you know why? Because it was also a great film (though I will give you not the best). It was just a fun action movie with lots of big bangs, which makes it a great movie. But it is an interesting insight into humanity and sanity, which makes it a great film. I can not think of one movie that pulls that off. Now I will grant you that there are a ton of better films out there that can beat this out. Easily. But this movie could be considered a great film, but it's not. It is a movie. It is a fun, popcorn action movie that crosses over to being a film. Now I know I am going to get shit for this from my film snob friends (Looking at you, Nate) but you know what? Fuck you. That was the most bad ass, interesting, fun, dark movie I have ever seen. Think I'm wrong? Prove it. Current Mood:  bouncy | |||
|
elfmagecin |
4:07a | Dark Knight Oh my F-ing Gods, holy bloody hell, I am truly just unable to think or create a constant train of thought when it comes to this film. It was bloody intense! Holy hell! Watch it. Seriously. Form your own oppinion and become dumbstruck as well. And and Heath as the Joker, DAMN! Current Mood:  ecstatic | |||
|
get_medieval |
4:11a | ||||
| Thursday, July 17th, 2008 | |||||
|
brokenallbroken |
10:21p | More of Andrew's navel We saw a commercial for Dirty Sexy Money before the movie this weekend. In thinking about it, I realized that a huge part of why I like that show so much* is that it depicts my dream job. Nick has my dream job. Actually, Clark has my dream job. Nick deals with waaaaay too much shit. But yeah, that. The trusted family retainer. It's the Josh Lyman thing, I guess. I don't have much interest in being The Guy, but I think I would like to be the guy The Guy counts on. I think I would like to be The Guy's Rottweiler who babysits his kids and finds his car keys. Something like that. Shit, at this point I would just like a pat on the head. Maybe a milkbone. I think I enjoy my time at Macy's more than I do my day job. *Aside, of course, from the way Donald Sutherland swans around the set swathed in a cloud of awesome and serving all his lines up with an extra helping of awesomesauce. Current Mood: sad | |||
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thegoldenseeker [ merlins_babe ] |
11:02p | Bonus I decided that we needed a bonus fic edition of the recletter this week, and because I have a secret crush on him it's going to be all about Charlie. ;) All of fics have been recced on the recletter before so they might look familiar but don't let that stop you from leaving feedback for the authors. Golden Snitches (fics) silvernatasha wrote The Sticking Place (Charlie/Tonks, Adult, one-shot) They want the same thing, but the timing never quite works.girlyswot wrote The Legend of the Sphinx (Charlie/Luna. G, one-shot) Luna decides to solve the riddle of the Sphinx. Bill and Charlie are sent to save her from the consequences of her folly. kittyfuck77 wrote A Bet Between Brothers (Charlie/Hermione, one-shot, NC-17) The Weasley brothers make a bet to get Hermione Granger, but she only wants one.peggieliz wrote Tuesday's Child (Charlie/Tonks, R one-shot) Tuesday's Child is full of Grace.csi_tokyo3 wrote Fire Down Below (Charlie/Tonks, NC-17, short story) Tonks thinks she's found a way to Charlie's ... libido. 7th Year at Hogwarts for both of them.fics_by_fey wrote What Ron Saw (Charlie/Lavender, Ron. NC-17, one-shot) While celebrating the end of the war at the Burrow, Ron gets more than an eyeful.SaraEK22 wrote Another Man's Wife (Charlie/Penelope. NC-17, one-shot) Charlie Weasley is having some inappropriate thoughts about his sister-in-law. bblackdahlia wrote Goodnight Sweet Prince (Charlie/Hermione, G one-shot) It was a shame that the child would never know the great man that was his real father.Leave a comment or send your fandom news or recs to: thegoldenseeker@gmail.com  | |||
|
harmonyheifer |
7:37p | We were watching Countdown tonight and Keith and Rachel Maddow were discussing McCain's abysmal track record not just on his votes that have anything to do with womens rights, but also the many horrifically misogynistic comments he has been caught making when there were people listening, sometimes even with cameras rolling. The latest to be dredged up is the joke he told years ago about an elderly woman being raped, beaten and left for dead by a gorilla. When the woman regained consciousness she asked her doctor "Where is that wonderful ape?" I wish I had the energy to be outraged by this, alas, as someone forced to share the state of Arizona with this idiot for two decades, I have heard so many things like this come out of his mouth that I can only cringe a bit. That kind of misogynistic crudeness wears a person down. It really does. I then pondered out loud about how good Republicans are at getting people to vote against their own best interests, you know, convincing the working poor or immigrants to vote for them, or women, convincing people that because they might someday win the lotto they really need to support huge tax breaks for millionaires. I told Patrick it reminded me of the disconnect in home improvement shows that stage houses for sale, and how designers will almost always stage a living room with no TV. How many people in this country don't have a TV in their living room? And yet week after week on Designed to Sell, people walk through open houses with no TVs in sight and if anyone mentions the missing TV, then certainly never play those comments. I find this gap between who and what we really are and who and what we think we are sociologically fascinating. People will cheerfully make an offer on a house with no TV maybe without even registering that the fireplace-centric arrangement they so admired in the open house just won't work if their own monster TV is added to the mix. These must be the same people who will consider voting for McCain, a man who has ridiculed and undercut their sex, their race, and their socioeconomic level time and time again because believing in the fantasy of who he is easier on their brain. It is more than just a lack of imagination, and it seems to permeate our society. Patrick's response to this was to tell me, rather forcefully that I needed to get out of the house tomorrow. He may be considering deleting the HGTV shows in the DVR buffer and blocking my access to political web sites. To keep him from following through on this, I have agreed to go to a movie with him this weekend. So tell me, what have you seen lately that you can recommend to get my thoughts off of old women being raped by gorillas and living rooms with no TVs? | |||
|
pentomino |
7:47p | Sanity, day 1. I felt a bit more creative today, but not much. I think more sleep will make the difference. My "why bother, give up" impulse seems to have deadened a little, as I went on OKCupid and sent a bunch of messages to a bunch of profiles. I hadn't done that in, like, a year. Update: I'm on meds now. The kind that work right away. Except it remains to be seen whether they help in the long term. Expect things to start looking up for me, or at least change. | |||
|
arymede |
8:12p | There's a cat on my lap and she won't go away. I suppose I should update this thing once in a while, hey? That said, I really have nothing to say. My life is fairly dull and unworthy of excessive commenting, and I never seem to be introspective or pontificating anywhere near a computer. I'm hardly even angry at anyone or anything lately! Beyond that, there's nothing much to write unless I'm prepared to do a laundry list of my daily activities. And, well, I'd really rather not. So what can I say? I have been rather pissy of late - Fuzzy's work is in the busy season and he's working truly ridiculous hours - 12 or 14 hours days on a virtual daily basis. I am not so busy - in fact, I'm currently at a lull at my own place of employment, nothing has to be done with any sort of timeline attached, and all of the projects on my to do list are general touchy-feely do it when it gets done kinds of projects. Not that I don't have any work to do, but that the lack of pressure equals a corresponding lack of motivation. Perhaps I should go make my boss a ridiculous promise to get some lofty goal accomplished by next week? Perhaps I should stop avoiding the half of my job that involves actual supervision and coaching? I did get it in my head a day or two ago that I was back in the mood to play Final Fantasy and decided to finish my game of Final 8. So tonight I went digging for it after work, only to discover that we have Final 7 and two copies of Final 9, but no Finl 8. Further investigation (ie. calling Fuzzy and Chewy) reveals that Final 8 actually belonged to Chewy, who is happy to loan it to me. But he's still at work and I had my heart set on playing all night tonight. Cue petulant me. Instead I am drinking moderately decent wine (Sebeka shiraz, 2006), which is a nice change from the moderately vinegary wine I last had (Long Neck shiraz, can't remember the year, and it is worth noting that Long Neck comes in a bottle with a conspicuously shorter than usual neck and a bad drawing of a giraffe). I have also had this stuck in my head for three days now, and have been grilling most everyone I encounter as to whether they have played the game, in hopes of finding someone I could share it with. Alas, my friends appear to be philistines with no experience in classic computer games. "The voices in your head said the dwarf shot first." I tried sharing it with Fuzzy, but he stared blankly at me and refused to even pretend that he found it amusing. We are also investigating the possibility of a relaxation room at work, courtesy of mild intoxicatedness at bowling last night (I got a turkey!), have gotten approval to buy an Xbox 360, and are now puzzling over where to put it and a couch, and how to develop a sign-out system for the Rock Band equipment. It's pleasant to work for a gamer! | |||
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jakesbrain |
4:18p | Voice Post
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righteousfist |
5:15p | ||||
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brokenallbroken |
12:45p | This is the post I was going to write yesterday but our internet went out Discovered on my Tuesday Macy's shift: The shirtdress is back! w00t! 50's society was a little fucked in the head, but I can't argue with the fashion. At least for the women*. One of my on-going "when you have time" projects at work is organizing our storage area upstairs. At the moment this consists of finding all the sheets of a plan set, all the plan sets for a job, rolling them together, and putting them back on the racks in alphabetical order. Minuses: So dirty I have to bring a second set of clothes to change into/out of, and our Safety Officer has forbidden me to go up there without a dust mask and gloves. Some of these sets are HUUUUGE. I had to roll CostCo in place because I didn't think I could lift it once I got all the sets together. We have 85 copies of a single sheet, and we have to keep all of them. Some of my predecessors had interesting ideas about filing. So far I found sheets for Damonte Ranch North Wetlands under D, N, and W. The Corporate Center at Damonte and Steamboat? Under Damonte, except for the sheets filed with the N's. Because the set title specifies it's on the North East corner**. It's in the shop, so functionally outside but under a roof. Oven. Pluses: No phone. I get to work at my own pace in the manner of my choosing. Pluses win. *The 30's and 40's baggy pants flatter my fat ass a bit more than the trimmer post-war profiles. **This is why I've spent six hours up there and am not yet finished with the D's. Current Mood: sleepy | |||
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niteangel |
12:53p | Winding down the days... So. My job had a closure announcement in May. Bad news, good news. Get to move to Utah, get a promotion and a pay raise plus an extra month a year leave. Bad news? Scheduled to report Aug. 2nd, still haven't found a place that will take me and my family, which includes our huge German Shepherd... Bleh. So on I search...but I will (hopefully) soon have internet at home again and be more on the ball with posts. | |||
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t_h_e_m [ thesawg ] |
12:31p | ||||
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pentomino |
11:50a | turn of phrase Lore does it again, coining the phrase "mandatory pants." | |||
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pentomino |
9:45a | 2001 self musings. Another thing I noticed in 2001: I was getting phone numbers from women. Not every week, but I was getting them. Not so much now. I miss the adventurousness. I was a lot more vocal about my overthinking of such things. It was painful to read. And I thank those of you who stuck with me through it, because I couldn't have stood it at all. It also seemed that swing dancing was doing much more for me than I gave it credit for. I hadn't made it to 2002, to figure out what made me give up. Also, in 2001 I was already having the "maybe quitting my job is the catalyst for change that I need" angst. But, at the very least, I had the dream of traveling to Europe, and the extra cash to fund a trip there. In August I had the "fuck it, I'm going" decision, and on September 10, I posted a list of cities I wanted to visit. And by year's end, I'd already determined that the WTC attacks weren't going to stop me. And when I did go, I had the ambition to move all my stuff into storage to save a month's worth of rent, and then the support of many people, from varied social circles, to help me get my stuff back out -- although, not all at the same time. That's something only an awesome person could do. | |||
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harmonyheifer |
7:38a | Feeling like crap and losing at scabble. I have been fighting some kind of a viral thing since Monday and yesterday I had to call the YMCA and tell them I couldn't teach Deep Water last night. I was just exhausted and in a lot of pain to boot cause my arthritis is always exacerbated by an elevated temperature, and my temperature has been elevated plenty. I have been feeling like a limp, completely wrung out dishrag. I spent most of yesterday in bed, accompanied by the fuzzy children. I tried watching TV for a while, but when I can't get or stay comfortable in my recliner, it is time to go to bed. Patrick took pity on me last night and came to bed early so we could play scrabble. Patrick is addicted to crossword puzzles so he always has an advantage when we play scrabble. I really enjoyed our game, and was touched that Patrick was willing to come play to distract me from being sick. Between the viral ravaging of my brain and my pain levels, it was an understatement to say I wasn't firing on all thrusters. Then I got what seemed to be every single i tile in existence. I even took a turn to get rid of vowels. I threw back four i tiles. In three turns I had drawn them again. It goes without saying that Patrick won by an embarrassing margin. It also goes without saying that my husband is a prince among men. He even crawled around on the floor to retrieve a tile that fell behind the bed. Just saying. | |||
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righteousfist |
9:19a | A Busy Week This has been a busy week, but not in a bad way. Remarkably, I feel like I am actually getting some summer this year. Anyway, this is just a "head above water" posting. More a little later. Current Mood: awake | |||
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news [ theljstaff ] |
7:10a | Basic Accounts and X-Men Account Structure Update Back by popular demand, Basic Accounts will be available to all users again by the end of the (northern hemisphere) summer. More information on the decision-making process and proposals relating to the future of Basic Accounts are in ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} lj_2008.New Themes Two attractive and all-new Flexible Squares themes, "Circular" and "Circular Brown" are now available.  L to R: Circular and Brown New V-Gifts Give someone you care about the gift of enticement. With the new Chocolate Ice Cream, Vanilla Ice Cream, Tea, Coffee, Curry and Sushi v-gifts, all the significant people in your life will be able to share in the longing for the tasty edibles below. Plus, it reminds loved ones you think they're really sweet, really savory or just plain satisfying.  L to R: Chocolate Ice Cream, Vanilla Ice Cream, Tea, Coffee, Curry and Sushi Ж-Men...but not the ones you might expect! This week LJ Russia launched Ж-Men, a new comedy series about superheroes, inspired by the LJ communities dedicated to superheros, comics and cartoons. The title's "Ж" comes from ЖЖ, the nickname for LiveJournal in Russia. Ж-Men's script is written by a group of LJ enthusiasts who also happen to be television professionals. Who knew? Following the premiere, five more episodes will be broadcast over the next two weeks. We hope you find the series fresh and enjoyable. This is, of course, an experiment for LiveJournal. As always, we'd love to hear what you think! Current Mood: awake | |||
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lj_2008 [ theljstaff ] |
7:09a | Basic Accounts Basic Accounts Proposal Since the decision in March to remove Basic Accounts, a lot of concern has been expressed by the community about this issue. In the days following that announcement, the LiveJournal team acknowledged that the decision had been badly handled and ill-conceived, and that more time was needed for discussion and consultation before completing the account structure review. In the past few months, this issue has been the subject of much debate by LiveJournal users, the LiveJournal team, and the Advisory Board (who have met on two separate occasions to discuss the issue, before and after the user elections). We have wrestled with some complex problems: how to generate the revenue we need to support the development of LiveJournal while respecting the community, and how to best integrate advertising into the existing account structure. Today's post outlines the results of these deliberations and highlights the areas where we are looking for feedback. Basic Accounts will become available again to all users (new and old accounts) by the end of August, possibly earlier. They will continue to offer basic functionality, and while it is unlikely that they will receive any major upgrades, people who want to use them will be able to do so. We do, however, need to address the issue of ad placement on LiveJournal. As we made clear in an earlier post, the business needs to generate sufficient revenue to bring the service back up to speed. That means, among other things, offering more commercial opportunities to partners. At the same time, we need to ensure the commitment of the community and foster its growth. We are considering several options and maintain an open mind as to the next steps we should take. Specifically, we are looking exclusively at adding limited advertising to Basic Accounts viewed in certain circumstances. The areas of potential change are of three different types, which could be implemented in any combination: Proposal 1: Advertising would be displayed to visitors who are not logged in to LiveJournal at the time when they are looking at Basic Account journals and communities. Proposal 2: Advertising would be displayed to logged-in Basic Account users when viewing application pages - pages which are not part of a community, a user's journal, profile or friends page (e.g. Update page, Edit Entries page, Manage Tags page). Proposal 3a: Advertising would be shown to logged-in Basic Account users when viewing a journal which they have not friended or community they are not watching (e.g. if you friend a Basic journal, you do not see advertising; mutual friending is not required to avoid advertising). Proposal 3b: Advertising would be shown to logged-in Basic Account users when viewing a journal of which they are not a mutual friend or a community of which they are not a member (e.g. if you friend a journal and they do not friend you, or if you watch a community but are not a member, you will see advertising; if you do become mutual friends or a member of a community, then you will no longer see advertising in that journal or community). We are not proposing to show advertising to Basic Account users when they view their own journals (including their profile and friends page), nor would they see advertising in the Basic Accounts of their mutual friends. Paid and Permanent users will not see ads, as always, and no one will see ads on Paid and Permanent users' journals. While we hope that the decision to bring back an altered form of the Basic account level is a relief for many users, we understand that any decision to show advertising at all will be an issue for some. On the positive side, we believe that these proposed changes will encourage users to engage with LiveJournal by logging in, creating accounts, joining communities, finding friends and more. This is an ongoing dialogue that we hope to get off on the right foot. Any suggestions or ideas that would help us find a better middle ground, one which gives us the chance to generate revenue while also satisfying current and future LJ users, will always be welcome! We'll be gathering your feedback on this issue over the next two weeks, so please give us your opinions by commenting below. We will discuss all points of view internally, with the LiveJournal team and the Advisory Board, and post a decision shortly thereafter; but this, as with all other policy positions we take, are part of an ongoing process and nothing is written in stone. We will implement any changes before the end of August. | |||
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niqaeli |
4:04a | ah the sweet smell of angst ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) | |||
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get_medieval |
4:16a | ||||
