I posted my works in my etsy shop today. Three more bottles with beads. I blogged about it in my sales blog, twittered about it and facebooked it. There.

I was then thining about this really nice program my church does called Jesus Overflowing Ministries. I have had to use it myself and if they are able, they will give you rent money, help with a house payment, help with car repairs etc. It's really wonderful and helpful to so many locals in need. The thing is, is that the people that run it seem a little...stingy as far as passing the news around. and I would really like to see it grow. So, I suggested a blog telling about the ministry mission and the other things involved like the coat closet (where you can get hats, boots, mittens and winter coats for free) and the food harvest where you can go and get free food once a month. Maybe a paypal link where people can donate to the cause (seriously, I do not think there is a thing wrong with asking for donations with any of this since they are all such wonderful and hugely helpful things. Okay I know, there is the Salvation Army and Goodwill and all the government help, but serously, sometimes people can't qualify for the government help, but everyone qualifies for the occasional bump in the road. And, this is local! I've had to use it myself. Curt has done repair work for people and they were so darned grateful. I don't know. I just think these people are setting such a good example for the rest of the community...

So anyway, blog. They need a blog with lots of pictures and fun. Then I was thinking that I have my Etsy site and I know I don't sell much, but I considered advertising that 5$ of every purchase from my site goes to the Jesus Overflowing Ministries. Maybe it would get the word out for the ministry and my own site. We would both bennifit from the exposure. I'm kind of wanting to see a blog for the ministry before I announce any donations so customers know that I'm not just flapping my gums. I brought it up to the tresurer and the ministry's head...we'll see. I have a feeling I'm going to be dubbed blog person though. I guess it isn't horrible. it certianly wouldent hurt me to be slightly proactive and blogging shouldent be too people oriented.

Um...what else?
Emma had a horribly hard poop this morning. On the bright side, at least she can tell me "mmmmpooh" when she pooped. She is also running around with an old cell phone smashed against her face saying, "ho?" She tried to say Noosie this morning (Noonie) and is having a bit of trouble telling the difference between a nah-nah (pacifier) and an ummbub (bottle) but both of them are useful for going "nigh nigh" so it's all good.

Noodle and Squirt got into a massive fight today over some bacon grease. It was loud enough that Limpy (the neighbor dog that adopted us), was standing at the kitchen window barking and freaking out. Squirt of course won, but Noodle is the skinny one so, I ended up pulling a very snappy and pissed off beagle away from the pan anyway. She has to stick with the healthy weight Benniful. I wish someone would yank me to the veggie dish and away from the bacon. I mentioned this to my hubby after the drama was over and he laughed and said, like little Squirt, I would probably bite him. Lol...he has a point.

I've been using my afternoons to help organize a thrift shop area for a friend of mine. He pays me with whatever I want to take home. I got 2 lazy susans, a copper pot to make a bird feeder with, a cool teapot/cup combination that is SO gonna be someone's christmas present, a 8 piece apple saucer and matching apple server bowl in yellow and white that i am debating making into a christmas gift or keeping for myself, a set of dishes (I desperately needed), and...I think that's about it. My next question is, I hope none of my friends are offended by previously owned stuff. I myself am a huge fan...but I am no stranger to offending unconciously...

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!

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Curtains

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

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.

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.

I have 8 bottles slumped and etched.  Do you think that a picture of a cup of coffee on a wine bottle is weird?  I was thinking if you use it as a tray for biscotti or cookies while having coffee with your buds...see?  They dont have to be just for cheese.  I was thinking if I slumped them over a low dish they could be more of a trencher to hold crackers or a stick of butter?  I still need a bottle cutter.  

I was also thinking the glass could be used to make beads?  I need bead making stuff though.  Hm.  

Whatever.  I still have not gotten my lazy susan (Roger!) but I've decided to start my smoker project anyway.  I have my fancy new clay tools now. 

Yeah. 

Thats it. 

OKay finish my post. 

So, I am the biggest hick on the planet.  here I am in the middle of Cool-dudeiness Madison talking about dissecting eyeballs, deer hunting, outdoor toilets and mouse shit on my stove.  Here, I think I am pretty cool, hip, artistic, free thinking and then I go to Madison.  I had fun despite my having both feet in my mouth and though Emma was in a very new situation, I have to give her credit for behaving as well as she did.  Poor little Morella was tired, missing her daddy and everyone's schedule was way off this week.  I would have fared way worse than any of those babies.  Despite the chaos, I had a nice couple of quiet hours with my ol' pal Laura, we swindled Michael's craft store out of an extra 20% off my purchase and I only freaked out for 2 miles on the drive home because I could have swore there were flashing lights behind me---but no cop.  It ended up being Emma playing with her flashy light up ball I bought for her in the back seat. 

Regrets:
I wish I bought the cookie mixes for Christmas gifts. 
I wish I could have made it on Monday and had more time.
I should have brought more apples. 

On the bright side, I was taking a drive to Ridgeland to find myself a lazy susan to put my sculptures on while I work on them, when I suddenly decided to pull into the dump area.  I saw chairs, a big tank thing--air compressor?- lots of console TV's, tires, old bikes...then I saw the glass recycle bin area...

The "dump guy" came out and asked if I needed some help with my trash, and I said I didn't have any today, but was wondering if it was possible to get some wine bottles? 

"Oh heck yah!"  He said and he opened the trap door on the front of the dumpster and 12 nice sized wine bottles spilled out on to the ground.  JACKPOT!  He asked if I made wine, and I explained to him that I melt them into plates. 
"Melt 'em huh?  You must have a doggone hot oven!"
Yeah.  I have four bottles "baked" now and should be cool enough to take out tomorrow.  EEK!  It's the coolest!  I have 4 others ready for etching cream and decoration and they will be in my shop by tomorrow afternoon!  I'm going back on Wednesday for more :)

When I got to Ridgeland, my friend, who does estate clean outs, had his thrift sale sign up and had mentioned that he had not gotten to many customers despite his advertising.  I decided to check out his stash. I was on a mission for a lazy susan and he swears he has 2 of them.  I looked and looked, but have not found one yet.  Everything is kind of in a big pile so you have no idea where anything is.  I volunteered to help him get things organized since he does have lots of really neat things.  I have my eye on a salt and pepper set he has and we both happen to love.  Then again he has big jars full of collector spoons (some silver) that can be melted and made into other things...a chest that looks like a pirate chest, a porcelain sculpture of a mom and baby playing, this cool old fashioned erector-type set, necklaces, some neat-o glass cabnets...all can be made pretty and functional.  I'm starting to really like going over there. 

Maybe Laura can come up next time and shop the flea market and my friends thrift/garage sale areas.  Lots of treasures to be found, made, resurrected--craft night!

Now.  I need a bottle slicer and I will be happy for a while. 

Tomorrow I'll load the kiln back up and start on my smoker project. 

I was gone 2 days.  The house is a wreak, the bunnies are starving, Dean skipped school, the fire is out and oh joy, the dog ripped up a bunch of dirty diapers that were in the trash. and now the sweet aroma of baby shit wafts through my living area.  Mmmmm.  Welcome home mom. 

I did not have a headache even once while I was away.  My head pounds now. 

Curt started his new job on Wednesday and he quit today.  I don't blame him.  I would have quit too.  The guy who was hired the same day as Curt quit yesterday.  The owner is a nightmare.  I'm not mad at Curt.  He tried.  I would have quit on the first day.  Anyway, he was hired as a mechanic, but its day three now and no wrenches had been turned.  He was told he would have his own space, his own office and as long as all the machinery was running, he would be left alone for 20$ and hour.  Instead, he has been unloading soybean.  He says he doesn't care, but the boss is a real ass and Curt has gotten chewed out a million times since he started 2 days ago.  Were talking "What the hell are you doing?" Are you stupid?  "Its none of your goddamn business what truck has what where! Get your ass to work!"  Were not talking OSHA approved nicey nice diplomatic business running here.  This guy needs a boot to the mouth if you ask me.  He was also sending Curtis off to do things he had never done before in his life (unload soybean) with no direction at all, (just do it and I mean now) then when it was done wrong, the boss would push Curt in the corner and scream at him about what a crappy job he is doing and to get his head out of his ass.  It was insane. Curt did get the supervisor alone and asked what the hell was going on, and the supervisor laughed and said, "That's just how Larry is.  Screw that.  Another employee who had worked there for 6 years asked Curt today why the hell he left his old job for this one.  Curt told the guy he was running his own shop before and was hired on as a mechanic, but hasn't even seen the inside of the shop yet.  The other guy told him if he can go back to his shop, to do it.  Unless your illiterate or something and can't get another job anywhere making decent money, this was not the place for Curt.  I agree.  So, He said he no sooner got out of the car than the boss had everyone lined up for a good chew out, then Curt was sent to run some machine he had never seen before-again, no help, no instruction, and when the boss walked up and saw Curt trying to figure the thing out, he proceeded to throw a socket at Curt and yell.  Seriuously, I'm suprised the guy hasnt had a coronary yet---how can you possibly be that mad all the time??  Anyway, Curt told the guy that he didnt get his master tech degree to break his back hauling soybean, told the boss to truck himself and left.  He's on a mission to get his shop right this time.  Lets see if he pulls it off.  

okay.  I'll post--jeez.  I had more to say, but SOMEONE is impatient,. 

The empire strikes back

In recent weeks, we've taken huge steps towards blocking spam accounts on LiveJournal. In fact, we've suspended as many as 30,000 accounts in a single day! We've implemented several pre-emptive measures to prevent the creation of spam accounts, and we've honed our detection of suspicious content. Spam bots are a crafty lot, so we'll continue to refine our tactics and keep up the good fight to keep you safe from spam attacks on LiveJournal.

RSS feeds again

If you're addicted to xkcd_rss, icanhaschzbrgr, or other syndicated feeds, we're pleased to report that we've resolved the update error that was mucking up your RSS feeds. While content was being pulled correctly, it wasn't being posted to the feeds themselves. Late last week, we finally nailed down what we hope was the root problem, so content should post properly. We thank you for your patience.

Wii have killer CSI Deadly Intent contests!

c_s_i

If you're a gamer who loves CSI, have Wii got news for you! c_s_i is sponsoring killer contests. Simply post a question to a member of the CSI crew. The winner will get a free copy of CSI: Deadly Intent for Nintendo Wii (with a retail value of $39.99) and get their question answered by a member of the CSI writing team! There's also a fantastic monthly contest. To enter, join c_s_i, play the online version of CSI: Deadly Intent, and respond to a two-part query for a chance to win a Wii! Entries will be judged on composition and originality. Sorry, but you must be a U.S. resident and over 18 years old to participate. Check out the rules here.

Enveloped in postcards

Last week, we asked you to send in postcards to help us decorate our drab concrete walls. Here's a photo of the results so far! Thank you so much and please keep them coming! You can mail them 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 giving ten random users paid account credits.

Photos of the week

If you haven't visited our new LiveJournal photo community, you're in for an amazing visual trip. LiveJournal users from around the world will take you on a scenic journey to everywhere. Post your own pictures or kick back and enjoy at lj_photophile. You can view some of this week's awesome photos after the jump. Please start tagging with geographic location, since we'd like to track all the places around the world represented in this community. Keep on commenting too!
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aiyatheydidnt
The Chinese version of ONTD, AIYA is a dynamic international community that welcomes users who share a love of contemporary Chinese pop culture. Dedicated to celebrity gossip and entertainment news, you'll enjoy gorgeous photos and breaking stories featuring the glitterati of mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

wendylady2
Designed to rescue fashion victims everywhere, this Brit-based community reads like a rag-ezine. Published once or twice weekly, you'll view bizarre highlights of the global fashion scene through captivating photos and delightfully snarky editorial. Sit tight for a virtual fashion tour from the runways of New York to Milan to Paris and back home again to London in homage to the adage: you can't buy good taste.

soldiers_heart
A passionate community for veterans of all ages (mostly American), plus families, friends, and supporters. View poignant snapshots detailing life in combat and back on civilian soil in the form of original artwork, personal narratives, poetry, and photos. Be forewarned that members don't shy away from describing their disappointments, disabilities, and struggles.