Mods? If this isn't appropriate/needed for 1bruce1 let me know.

Um, hi everyone. :)

I found out while Googling "Francine Pascal" that some of the early books which were reprinted are showing up as Google Books results. So you, too, can see Jessica moaning about the zit that ate Sweet Valley in Double love on your web browser. :)

Aside: I was actually trying to find the Fearless books and couldn't remember the name so I was Googling her name to see if maybe they'd come up. I ended up running a search on amazon.com and then I remembered. :)

Hi y'all!
this weekend i have been re-reading SVH - the boyfriend war, Deceptions, Dangerous Love etc and now i'm re-reading #33 Starting Over wherein Jess and Liz get Prince Albert.

So a question - what happened to him? i have this feeling that he 'ran away' in Aftershock or Earthquake but i cant recall.

Anyone remember?

i dont know how to tag this?

It's too bad I didn't pick this up last fall at a bookstore I'd stopped at - I would enjoy owning this (FYI, I did pick up Stargirl, SVH #3 Playing with Fire [the 2008 reissue], and The Veronicas' Hook Me Up).


On my copy, it says "scratch and sniff here" on the top of the cup. Unfortunately, I can't confirm the verity of that statement, since the cover is covered with plastic.

( Is love an STD? From what I've seen, it's harder to cure than herpes. )

Previously stamped as the following...

Princess: Su || Prince: Aladdin || Villain: Kronk

(I haven't seen Mulan 2 and probably never will, so I know nothing about Su. I love Aladdin but I don't think I'm like him. Haven't seen The Emperor's New Groove either, so I don't know that much about Kronk.)

Notes augmented

We've enhanced and de-bugged Notes. If you haven't tried it yet, now's the time! You can create a private note when you ban multiple users. You can also delete multiple notes at once. Lastly, paid users have the option to add a note (visible only to you) whenever you add or remove a friend (guaranteed to avoid embarrassing social mishaps). If you don't currently have a paid account, you can upgrade now! It only takes a few minutes and costs less than a bad shopping mall haircut (plus, it's way more fashionable)!

Product tweaks and bug kill

1. In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
2. If you sign up to get notifications of the Writer's Block question of the day, you'll now see the daily question in the email notification, so you'll have a little extra time to ponder before you post. You can subscribe to Writers Block notifications here
3. The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
4. If you visit a LiveJournal page and get prompted to log in, you'll be returned to the same page after you sign in (Thanks, Dreamwidth)!
5. If you don't edit the timestamp for an entry at all, the entry timestamp will indicate the time the entry was posted instead of the time the Update Journal page was loaded
6. Comments with paddings/backgrounds render correctly within the comment box (and will no longer wrap outside the box and break frames/margins)

New FCK fixes rich text editor!

1. We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
2. When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds are no longer broken
3. RTE now functions properly in Safari 4.0
4. An extra line/space will not be auto-inserted whenever you switch from RTE to HTML editor
5. The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers

LiveJournal Cares

We’re pleased to introduce you to lj_cares, a new LiveJournal community dedicated to raising awareness and funds for U.S. charitable organizations that improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Each month, we’ll spotlight a nonprofit that is making a significant global impact through medical research, public outreach, and/or humanitarian social programs. Charities will be selected in accordance with the U.S. calendar of national health observances based on a high rating (of over 60%) on Charity Navigator and global scope of impact.

In this, our inaugural month of November, we will celebrate national adoption month by offering a charitable virtual gift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that saves the lives of orphans with life-threatening diseases and places them in loving homes around the world. LiveJournal will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of charitable vgifts (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares and read about how they helped save Baby Kang and the Rainbow Twins from fatal illnesses, who are now thriving in nurturing families. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries gifts in the Virtual Gift shop.

Papered in postcards

A couple of weeks ago, we asked you to send in postcards to surround us with LiveJournal community. Thanks for coming through! We've received postcards all the way from Germany, Finland, and Canada and from all over the US, including Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Indiana, Hawaii, and Oklahoma just to name just a handful. We're thrilled with our improved decor.

Please keep the love coming for one more week by writing to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be drawing the names of ten random contributors next Thursday to win paid account credits!

Photos of the week

We have more dazzling images posted by talented LiveJournal photographers from around the world. We're hoping to span the entire globe, so please continue posting and tagging. Of course, you can also sit back and enjoy the view at lj_photophile.

You can see a sample of this week's gorgeous photos and check out spotlight communities and awesome user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

Anyone know what's up with dibbly-fresh.com? I've tried to go there twice this week and both times gotten a message saying the site has malware and may harm my computer. :(

As a half-sibling myself, I always wondered why there were no half-siblings in Stoneybrook. You have biological siblings,step-siblings, and even an adopted sibling, but no half-siblings. Why is that?

EDIT@08:16 UTC/GMT. Wow. That was ugly. I expected it to go for 30 minutes and have maybe 1 minute of broken connectivity. Instead it lasted over 4 hours and we had 10 minutes of downtime directly related to the load balancer upgrades and then another 5-10 minutes of downtime when our primary Pingback database server crashed and the secondary couldn't take over; which could have been indirectly caused by the network upgrade missing a self-VIP.

Anyways, we're up, we're working, the load balancers are barely breaking a sweat right now and I need some food and a shot of whiskey. I don't even *like* whiskey!!

Thanks mhwest and dnewhall for helping out!

---

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

After a couple of hectic days (had to put our old cat down and do some stuff for next semester), it feels good to post something.  Unfortunately, I think the book I'm reviewing deserves more time devoted to thinking it over.  And at the same time, I just want to do this and move on.


It really sucks when you finish a book and the first thing you can think of, regardless even of whether or not you liked it, is "At least I didn't pay money for this." Well, okay, maybe I'm feeling a bit miserly lately, but the point is I was disappointed in the direction this book took.

( It's the first time Iris has ever seen her stepsister look, for just a moment, as if she doesn't mind being beautiful. )

sixwordstories
Whether you're in the mood for a creative challenge or you're short on time or attention span, this semi-addictive community is perfect for those who find flash fiction way long. Once you get the hang of it, you won't be able to stop. The prince turned into a frog. The girl ran home to mother. Tough to write. Easy to read. It's a double threesome of fun.

dailyfoodie
Delicious, ambitious, and occasionally nutritious dishes make for an eclectic, all-you-can-eat feast. Whether you're searching for recipes for your next dinner party or you're jonesing for a late-night brownie fix, your cravings are sure to be well sated. A warm and inclusive community that welcomes all orientations, from carnivores to vegans, from gourmands to junk-food junkies. Guaranteed bias-free, food-positive, and pan-epicurian.

So.  I went over to my grandparents' for dinner tonight, along with an off-kilter combination of cousins and relatives, and got into my grandma's basement library in search of books.  Later, after engaging her in a dialogue about The Pillars of the Earth, and then reminding her that I'd read her copy of Gone with the Wind, she invited me to borrow/take some more of her books for reading. 

When she told me that there was a group of books she was planning to throw away - not donate, not sell, but toss out - I had a mild panic attack.  Unfortunately, I couldn't save all of them, but at least the ones I did take are now mine.  Sweet.

Little Women
Made in the U.S.A.
Can't Wait to Get to Heaven
Eleven on Top - A Stephanie Plum Novel
Motor Mouth - A Stephanie Plum Novel
East of Eden

I like to think that such a list is more impressive in its range than perhaps its total (that is, if a list of books can have a value).  I'm happy to get my hands on a couple of classics, along with a couple of feel-good, Midwest-speed style of books.  Grandma didn't like the Stephanie Plum books at all, which is why they were on her "take out the trash" list.  But I think I remember seeing a few blurbs about them, good things, and decided to give them a try.  I'm excited to read Little Women and East of Eden first; however, for now this list is secondary to the couple of books from the library I have yet to read.

Review for Ugly Stepsister should be up soon.

Kristy, I didn't think you'd go for another sponsorship deal after the Davis Diapers debacle.

( Image under cut. )

Disclaimer: I don't usually steal promotional material from fast-food joints.

Book 39 is correct. Poor Mallory, indeed. She had a difficult time getting in the BSC to begin with,she's had mono, she's very underappreciated at home, and the kids at school tortured her so much, she had to be sent off to boarding school. Then there's the movie. I feel sorry for Stacey Linn Ramsower. She must have been bored too death. Her role in the BSC movie was horribly written. But the ultimate sign is the tv show. I have seen 9 episodes, and so far, seriously, what's the point of even having her in the show? Her role is basically a joke. She's just there, being a follower and a puppet. If I hadn't read the books,I wouldn't even know why she was in the show to begin with. Poor Mallory. She just ain't getting no love.

I literally squealed with delight as I finished reading this. 


The title is so similar to How to Be Popular, I wondered if this was written as a response to that book.  And yet, it bears many more similarities to Stargirl.  On a different note, it's wonderful to see an original cover instead of some stock photo.

( Lunch at a new school is like the SAT of social tests. It determines your immediate standing. Whomever you choose to sit with tells people who you are, or who you see yourself as. )

How cool! Thanks to strangerface's eagle-eyed sister, we found out yesterday that 1BRUCE1 is in the December 2009 issue of Marie Claire! We're in a list of the 15 best websites for wasting time!

Jessica and Heather from The Fug Blog also mention a bunch of other sites I love, like Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and Alinea at Home!

Here's a scan of the article on the Smart Bitches site, in case you're interested in diversifying your time-wasting. Thanks, Jessica, Heather, and Marie Claire! We're so excited!

Sorry that it’s a photo, not a scan, so it's kinda blurry. I haven’t put ink in my printer for over a year, and my scanner has gone on a sympathy strike.



This cover is mostly bad, except for Todd. One arm draped over Elizabeth and the other ending in a closed fist. Has he ever been summarised so succinctly? I bet he punched everybody in the room seconds after this was taken.

( friends forever? )

So, I've been perusing the 'strange view of Europe' tag. Utter hilarity. I know that there's a strange view of new york' tag, but I have to know this...

For the people not living in the States? Did reading the Sweet Valley books give you crazy stereotypes Of the US?

I know I got some strange ideas about France and wanbted to see if it went both ways!