Below are the most recent 5 friends' journal entries.

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
news [ theljstaff ]	11:37a	LiveJournal Major Notes: Get your holiday fix! Holiday debuggery We know there were a few kinks with the holiday promotion. We've been working very hard to get them ironed out. If you have a paid/permanent account, keep on sending those coupons. Here's an update: If you were unable to send out multiple coupons at a time, please perform a hard refresh, and you should be good to go. If you redeemed a coupon to upgrade your account and the balance at checkout was $0 instead of $9.95 or $15, this means your upgrade did not go through (nor were you charged). We've straightened this out, so you can now apply your holiday coupon toward the purchase of an annual paid account. If you tried to redeem a holiday coupon and had trouble using a gift certificate to cover the balance of an annual paid account, we identified the root problem. If this happened to you, you can now use your holiday coupon together with your gift certificate. If the number of holiday coupons you have available suddenly goes up (instead of down), this might be due to recipients declining the coupons, at which point your pool of available coupons will be replenished and, therefore, increase. If you need assistance with holiday coupons or pretty much anything else (well, LiveJournal related), please open a support request and we'll be more than happy to help! Tweaks There were some initial glitches displaying results on My Guests, but we've worked them out. We hope you'll check out who's been checking you out! Some of you reported formatting issues using the Rich Text Editor (i.e., line breaks were being removed incorrectly). We've implemented a fix! Thanks so much for your patience. Give a little extra! We're pleased to report that we've already sold over 100 virtual red ribbons in honor of National AIDS Awareness month. Remember, for each charitable vgift you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to fund the development of an HIV vaccine. Once again, we thank you for your generosity. Celebrate with holiday vGifts! Stop by the Virtual Gift Shop and share some holiday magic with your LiveJournal friends. Photos of the week We're back with more dazzling pictures from around the world. Congrats to marlenemcc, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our fourth photo contest. We hope you'll click over to LJ_Photophile poll and tell us your picks in pics! For more fantastic user content, we'll meet you under the cut. ( Read more... ) Curtains Thanks, again, for reading. Here's wishing you the very merriest of holidays. We'll see you next year! (75 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
news [ theljstaff ]	5:07p	LiveJournal Major Notes: My Stats, My Guests, Holiday promotion, Yandex search, Whitelisting! Get to know My Guests. Want to know who's checking you out? You can now view the 100 most recent, logged-in users who visited your journal during the past 30-day period with My Guests. For those who prefer to fly under the radar, you can update your My Guests privacy setting here. Introducing My Stats. If you have a Paid or Permanent account, you can now see detailed reports on how many people are visiting your journal, friends pages, and entries (wherever they're posted on LiveJournal). You can also view data on comments and RSS requests. My Stats is only available to Paid and Permanent account holders, but you can upgrade anytime. (FYI, an annual subscription costs less than a large pizza with everything on it, PLUS it's rumored to make you lose weight in your sleep!) For additional details on this feature, read this article in paidmembers. Get ready to check your vital statistics!. To begin, mouse over Journal in the upper nav bar and select My Stats from the dropdown menu (Horizon) or select My Stats under Journal in the side bar (Vertigo). If you're using another design scheme, you can visit My Stats directly. You'll find My Guests on the My Stats tool bar. Happy holiday promotion! We're delighted to tell you about our holiday coupons, which will help you share the love with your LiveJournal friends! If you have a Paid or Permanent account, you can send up to 10 LiveJournal Basic/Plus users a $10 coupon for an annual paid subscription now through January 15th, 2010. Recipients can upgrade for $9.95 (instead of $19.95) for one year by enrolling in our automatic payment plan or make a manual payment of $15 (instead of $25). Please note that these coupons are not transferable and cannot be used to renew existing paid accounts. If you're a Paid/Permanent user, you can send out your holiday coupons now! Tweaks and Enhancements The search is on: We've replaced our default search tool with one from Yandex, a leader in search engine technology. This means you'll get smarter, more granular results! To get started, enter your search terms and click the Go button to the left of the Find box on the upper right of the LiveJournal header. This will take you to the search landing page where you can further refine by Entries, Comments, People & communities, and FAQs. You can also access the search page directly. Whitelisting: We've released a new option to help you moderate your busy communities more efficiently. If an entry contains a link to a whitelisted (i.e., trusted) site, it will be posted automatically without need for moderator approval. If a post contains a link that is not on the whitelist, you'll be prompted to approve. To access this option, please visit settings for any community you maintain and select the third option in the Community Moderation box (located in the lower left-hand corner). Click the enable link to custom-edit your community's whitelist, which has been prepopulated with trusted domains. You can manually add or delete URLs in the text box. Please note: If you're the maintainer of an unmoderated community, you may see the radio button for this setting checked, even though it's not active. This is a known issue. Please select whichever option you prefer and click Save Changes at the bottom of the page. If you're happy with your current settings, then no need to do anything! TMI, dude: We've added some fun FREE sponsored vgifts! You can send up to 50 TMI vgifts to mutual friends (btw, you cannot send free vgifts to communities). If you're a Paid/Permanent user and you want to view sponsored gifts, click Show sponsored gifts on your homepage or visit the sponsored gift page. These vgifts will only be available through Wednesday, December 23rd. You can view more awesome user content after the jump! ( Read more... ) Curtains Thanks, again, for joining us. Until next time, stay snug! (629 Comments |Comment on this)
2_gryphon	6:32a	Midfur! I have returned from Midfur! Here is a tip, when on a plane going from Australia that is transporting a person who has just eaten a lot of Mexican food, make sure that person is you. Heh. That was fun. Midfur this year was like dousing a house cat in axle grease and throwing it down the front of your pants. It was awesome! Last year was great, but they really stepped it up a notch this year. Of course, I haven't been to every furry even in the world, but I would have to say that next to Eurofurence, this year's Midfur was the most professionally hosted foreign furry con I've ever experienced. Being the GOH at Midfur was a pleasure. They really took care of me! I'm not talking about "here, have some beer! Have some food! Have this toothless kangaroo we trained to suck!" No. Well, except for the booze and the food. They did do that. And they offered the kangaroo, but the hotel wouldn't let it in the hot tub with me. But there were also limousine rides to and from the airport and literally a long red carpet into the event space! They made me feel like a dignitary in a foreign country! Not only that, but they inducted me into their Furry Hall Of Fame. It was a brilliant ceremony! It was like the furry version of the Academy Awards. And the statue they awarded me is absolutely beautiful! I'm proud to display it in my studio. While I was there, I was interviewed by several magazines and video shows, some furry, some not. One of the ones I had the most fun with was ACTfur On-Air. They're a furry video show that is starting up in Australia, and their material is really nicely put together. You can check out some of what they've done on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/user/HuskyPause In short, everything was taken to the next level this year. Probably actually the next two levels. For those Americans who like to travel to more exotic places to far away fur cons, this convention is perfect! I truly believe that Midfur is quickly going to become the next big foreign fur con in the world. And from what I've seen, the staff there will be more than able to handle it. I certainly hope to be able to attend again next year! AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE! (22 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
news [ theljstaff ]	2:49p	LiveJournal Major Notes: Notification fix, Snowflake cookie avalanche, LJLimerick, holiday vgifts! Tweaks and enhancements As a number of you reported, a service interruption impaired sending and receiving notifications for a couple of days. This was due to an avalanche of snowflake cookies. We've removed the free snowflake cookie and unclogged the pipeline. Timely notifications should resume shortly. Please note that there's a backlog in our queues, so you'll be getting earlier notifications first. For more details, check out this post at lj_maintenance. In anticipation of the new year, we've embarked on a self-improvement kick to boost our backend (pun semi-intended). This will allow us to offer you a holiday promotion in the next few weeks (yes, we're listening and working very hard to make it happen). We sincerely appreciate your continued patience and support. Holiday vgifts are here! We've added some fantastic new vgifts to help you spread holiday cheer. We also hope you'll honor AIDS Awareness Month by purchasing virtual red ribbons. Priced at $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to support the development and global distribution of an affordable HIV vaccine. Introducing: LJLimericks We cordially here do invite you To craft a fine limerick. Might you? Each week, a new theme, Then a poll, that's our dream Winner posted on news to delight you! In honor of all the brilliant writers on LiveJournal, we've created a brand new community: ljlimericks! Each week, we'll enter a handful of limericks into a poll (which we'll tuck snugly under an LJ-Cut). The winning poem will be published in the following newsletter. In addition, the author will receive a virtual blue ribbon! If you have the time, come drop us a rhyme. Please keep the "Nantucket" stuff on the downlow, since this is a youth-friendly community. Our first prompt is: Insomnia in winter. Photos of the week We're back with more incredible images from our global photography community. Congratulations to sempre_marseeya, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our second lj_photophile poll. We hate to squelch your creativity, but, as a courtesy to other users, please post only one photo at a time and keep the main photo no larger than 350x350 (so images display properly via mobile and on friends pages). You can link to a larger image and/or post photos under a cut. Just so you know, we select photos for the poll blindly, based on user comments and staff feedback. Please continue to vote, comment, and, of course, enjoy. You can check out the week in pictures and view more awesome user content after the jump! ( Read more... ) Curtains Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay warm and safe out there! (481 Comments |Comment on this)
2_gryphon	6:07a	Injustice. Hello folks! I'm still down in Australia after having performed for Midfur. The organizers were kind enough to give me a few extra days to relax and see the country and I have to say, it is very hard not to fall in love with this place and the people. Not only have I had a brilliant time down here entertaining the Australian furs, I've also had a few very enlightening moments. In fact, one of these moments has very likely changed how I look at the world entirely -- probably forever. Bear with me a moment and perhaps I can give you something to think about... Jenner. Jenner is a friend of mine down here. What makes him so cool? Well, in the first place, he is the creator of the Doc Rat comic series (http://www.docrat.com.au/), probably the best anthropomorphic comic strip in all of Australia. He's royalty down here. He's like the Bill Holbrook of Down Under. But what makes him even cooler is that he's a 51 year old furry who is an actual medical doctor currently practicing in Melbourne. Jenner whips up a mean martini, let me tell you. I know because he invited me to his place to have one. His wife cooked a wonderful dinner and then he and I sat down for a couple of his "Doc Rat" cocktails -- made with some crazy fruit that only happens in Tazmania or something. Very unique and very tasty. Well, as a person who is also very deep into comedy, we began to discuss what it was that actually created a laugh. After all, as comics, this is very important to us. I told him my idea that in the end, death was always the base motivator in human emotion. And then, he laid it on me.... Injustice. "What?" I said. "It's not death that is the base motivator, it's the injustice of death," he said. Injustice. I thought about it a minute. Injustice. Of course! If I'm dying, it's not the sole fact I'm dying that makes it suck. It's that I'm dying and others get to continue living. It's that I'm dying instead of bad people who don't deserve to go on. That no matter what good I've done in my life, it's not going to keep me alive any longer than anyone else, no matter what they've done. The biggest, wide-spread emotional defense to the concept of death has been religion. And basically, religion is just a judgment system. It's there so we can believe that evil people are punished and good people are rewarded. That's what really matters to us as humans. We're not so much adverse to the idea that we'll leave this existence one day as we are to the idea that an innocent six month old baby and a 60 year old child molester could both die and wind up in the same place. The entire purpose of the most popular and unavoidable mind cults on the planet is to develope the idea that this can't happen! If you talk to religious people, many of them are not afraid to die. But why not? Because they believe their consciousness will continue past death? Or because they believe it will continue in a place where there will be no worry of the people who cause hardship and pain? Would religion take away the fear of death if it taught that we would continue into eternity in the same place with murderers and thieves? Upon thinking about it, I believe Jenner is some kind of whacked out, crazy, doctor genius. The guy is fucking DEEP. And he's given me a lot to think about. He's said that he might be able to make it to AnthroCon for the first time next year, and I certainly hope he can. I have a feeling I'm going to miss him a lot when I leave here. I will have a more detailed report of Midfur when I return. For now, see you later, Australia. Thank you guys for the astounding hospitality you've showed me while I was here. I hope to see you again next year. You guys rock! (28 Comments |Comment on this)