I have chatted with Tom in Israel three times now. He's been sweet and I think he misses me. Whatever, I'm just thrilled that he wants to connect. He's having a great time and his favorite part, as of today, was the Sea of Galilee. That's where they traveled earlier today and they're looking forward to seeing the sunrise over the Sea of Galilee in the morning. Which would be about four hours from now, I'm guessing. (I don't know when the sun rises; I'm thinking 6 a.m.)

John and Paul, Jim and maybe Micala, and several guys from church have all left to go hunting for the weekend. Pheasant season. Blech.

Lynne has lost her new eyeglasses. She even searched the trash outside. Please pray they show up; I'm hopeful they didn't actually land in the trash to begin with. Quite frankly, all of my kids are careless about where they put things and don't like picking anything up (though Lynne's room is very neat at the moment, I'm happy to say), so it's more of a surprise that they're not more constantly losing things.

Sarah and I will get our hair cut tomorrow. No other plans as yet.

I'm in no danger of writing a romance novel, and you may not be, either, but everyone who cares about books has a stake stopping the nasty stunt Harlequin hopes to get away with. annathepiper offers this very helpful overview and collection of links.

Postcard winners!

We wish to extend our heartfelt gratitude for sending so much joy our way. Frank is still blushing with excitement over the love notes, proposals, propositions, and occasional intimate photos sent from his admirers around the world (China, Norway, Japan, and Poland just this week)! At his request, we blindfolded Justin, one of Frank's BFFs, spun him around in five dozen counterclockwise circles, and asked him to point to ten random postcards/envelopes pasted to the wall. After a brief trip to the bathroom, he chose the following lucky winners, to whom we will give a six-month paid account token (for paid, basic, and plus users) or, for our permanent account holders, a $15 voucher for the LiveJournal gift shop.

So, without further ado, the winners are:

1. seraphene
2. fotog
3. boykitten
4. seshat_6
5. anti_aol
6. lisalees
7. katrinkacat
8. mistyboston
9. _woody_lein
10. another_slender

Bugs, Tweaks, and Enhancements

1. We fixed a bug from the last release that was causing screened comments to become unscreened if they were edited
2. If you happen to be gaming around the corner, check us out on Facebook and be sure to spread the word!
3. We've added new vgifts to celebrate Thanksgiving! Check out our feathered friend, below!

Give more with charitable vgifts

In honor of national adoption month, we're offering a charitable vgift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that provides healthcare and adoption to orphans suffering from life-threatening diseases. LiveJournal will donate 100% of gross proceeds from the sale (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries vgifts in the Virtual Gift shop. We'll keep you posted on how much we raise!

Photos of the week

We're delighted to showcase yet more incredible photos from some of our brilliant LiveJournal photographers around the world. Keep posting (and tagging). And be sure to show some love by commenting on the awesome view at lj_photophile.

Check out this week's photos and more amazing user content after the jump!

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Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. See you next week!

And boy did I need one!

It wasn't so bad when Gareth was satisfied with The Backyardigans. Run the "Samurai Pie" and "Mission to Mars" episodes on infinite repeat, and I can live with that. But then he discovered Kai-Lan, which is written right at his level, with no layer of anything that engages adults. We don't watch a lot of tv in our house, but it doesn't take much Kai-Lan to make a grown-up twitch.

Thank goodness for Li'l Cthulhu. What every parent needs to counterbalance all the blasted cuteness of kid-focused marketing is a heavy, if much-sweetened, dose of vintage horror.

This weekend I'll be at Philcon to schmooze, flog the e-books, and disseminate the call for submissions for the anthologies.

You can find me on Saturday at 11am at the Broad Universe group reading.

1. BABYMOUSE THE MUSICAL




This is an adorable take on the whole musical craze told through babymouse's POV. I couldn't help but smile throughout this tale.

2. LUNCH LADY AND THE CYBORG SUBSTITUTE

3. LUNCH LADY AND THE LEAGUE OF LIBRARIANS




As a former teacher I often wondered what really went on behind the scenes in the lunch area. I do know if you were nice, the head lunch lady would go out of her way to save a yummy treat. At my last school it was bread nut bread. At my school in South Whittier, it was yummy pan dulce.

What would happen if the lunch lady was really a secret agent? Looking out for the good of the kids at the school?

This is the premise behind these funny books. The first one has lunch lady checking out the substitute teacher. And in the next book, checking out what the real reason for the bookfair.

Hilarious. My son loved them too.

And number five is a guilty pleasure book. This story is getting tons of hype. And believe me, it's so worth it.

BEAUTIFUL CREATURES




The last book that made me feel this way was SHIVER. This book has it all. A southern town, a haunted plantation, a cursed girl and a boy who wants to know more about her regardless of what others in his small town tell him. Talk about vivid setting! Just love this book!

**Guilty pleasure today:

Every Friday I decided to 'treat' son if he does well. I figure when I was a teacher, I kind of did this with my own students. Since I'm homeschooling now, I'm doing the same thing.

Treat today? Lunch at In and Out Burger. Part of homeschooling is visiting the library which had a reading incentive. Of course son made it.

Bianca D'Arc was one of the first Samhain writers I met live--and one of the nicest. Her paranormal romances, usually featuring m/f/m menage, have won numerous awards, and in January her first m/f/m zombie romance will be released from Kensington. This is all great professional news for her.

What's not great is what's happening in her personal life. Her mom is very, very ill. As a result, she's not even thinking about promoting her latest Samhain release, Dragon Storm. So the rest of us at Beyond the Veil are trying to help out. BtV's fearless leader, Carolan, has posted the publisher's blurb and a link to an excerpt. If paranormal menage--with dragons--is your thing, you won't be disappointed.
Cheers,

• 16:19 Celebrating a new $ store rising from the ruins of the old. Bought a really super plastic pistol, perfect for pirate costumes. #

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• 16:36 Sorry 2 b so quiet. Still crashing on a story, so no brain left for brilliance. So I'll start an occasional series reviewing other folks'. #
• 16:37 Some R brilliant. Some not so much. All books, etc., bought by me unless I say otherwise. #
• 16:41 HOUSE OF MANY WAYS: Cranky, very real heroine I didn't like until I started loving her. & Howl! & Sophie! All good. All D. W. Jones. :D #

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Lynne is better, praise the Lord. She's back at work today after a full week of no work and no school.

Tom left on his Israel/Egypt trip this morning. We left the airport at 5 a.m. when he got in line to head for the plane. We got there at 3:20 a.m. so yawned with everyone else for a long time. He and his classmates are really excited. Dan and Mary and their boys and one daughter-in-law also went so it was fun talking with them too. I'm thankful Martha and Randy went as their son Ben is Tom's best friend and he spends a lot of time at their house. I know Martha will be Tom's "mom" while they're away and that gives me a lot of peace. That--and knowing the Lord is in control!

I just finished an incredibly busy week at work. It's weird how some months have the two weeks of regular busyness and then another month, like this one, is just overwhelming. The mechanic at one location is now off for six weeks for knee surgery and my job is going to be stressful while he's gone. The A/P person at another location is also going to be off for possibly the same amount of time. I am not looking forward to this since all their work has to come to me to be coded and entered and paid... and if it doesn't get to me properly, I'm the one who has to nag and do the research. Oh well, maybe it won't be as bad as I'm predicting.

Tom just finished acting as "Fred" in "A Christmas Carol" at school. He did a good job and I thought all the "ghosts" were great. I really miss our previous directors. Lynne will start working at CYT (Christian Youth Theater) in January and might be working with one of them. I'm excited for her. She'll be helping direct "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown".



We have another Music Workshop at church tomorrow. Most, if not all, of the attendees are already showing impatience with having to do this. We are SO SPOILED. If we went to a big church, we'd be having weekly rehearsals at the very least. It's hard to plan six weeks of music in one workshop (and we didn't manage it last time with THREE workshops); this Sunday the goal is to plan all of December through February. If all the songs haven't been picked out yet, that will make it even more difficult to complete the preparations. I have to write up the instructions or whatever and remember to include things like this so we will be prepared the next time we meet.

Tom's football team won the KCAA Championship game November 7th. They beat St. Mary's 48-0 in the third quarter.

November blusters in. My pockets and house are full of the fallen leaves my child collects. My email inbox and livejournal friends list are full of other people's cheery National Novel Writing Month progress reports. Congratulations on your massive word counts to those of you who have them, and much encouragement to those of you who've fallen behind. Maybe next year I'll be in on that great, insane endeavor again.

NaNoWriMo was tremendous fun, and stress, and fun (and did I mention the stress?) the two years I tried it. I never did reach "The End," but I did rack up 100,000 words on the Stisele book. As October waned, it was hard to resist the pull of my recurrent November project. I came very close to committing the month to Stisele, but I had promises to keep, and miles to go, etc.

Instead, in keeping with one of my Wiccan denomination's customs, I took a vow at Samhain that I'll be following until Beltane. I've returned to a daily writing discipline. Over the past year, I'd fallen a long way from writing every day. Six months of a couple hundred words a day may not get me a higher word count than one month of just under 2000 words a day, but it is likelier to get the Rugosa Coven print volume finished, as in actually finished.

You all have to read fellow LJ Carrie Jones heartfelt post on depression.

http://carriejones.livejournal.com/233294.html

Books again! First I'll start with four Cybils nominated graphic novels:

1. COURTNEY CRUMRIN'S MONSTROUS HOLIDAY



Courtney and Uncle Aloysius go on a Romania holiday where they run into werewolves and vampires. Courtney has some mega 'tude as she tries to make sense of all of it.

2. CONSTANCE AND THE GREAT ESCAPE




This book's illustrations reminded me of a book I checked out when I was in first grade some thirty years ago! Constance and her cat Tiny are BFFs. But a plot is made to separate them by sending Constance to boarding school!

3. BINKY THE SPACE CAT




This is a very adorable tale of Binky the cat who swears aliens have invaded our world. It's up to Binky to save his masters by blasting off into outer space(outside), explode unknown places(backyard) and battle the aliens(bugs). I really enjoyed this tale and loved Binky's devotion to his family.

4. THE ELSEWHERE CHRONICLES #1 THE SHADOW DOOR




Interesting premise of kids going to a so-called haunted house and finding an old movie projector that opens a passageway to a world of monsters and creatures made out of shadows. I wanted to know more about this other world. I'm sure the next book goes into more details.

**Number five is a book I've been looking forward to read for a long time. Today the UPS guy dropped it off on my door step.

The book?


MAGIC UNDER GLASS



Tomorrow I'll post my review of LEGACY at YA Books Central.

We've made some additions and improvements to Notes!

The Notes feature has been added to two action-taking pages:

• You can now add a Note directly on the Add a friend page - handy if you'd like to mark down where you met them or another name you know them by!
• On the Ban and unban users page (under Account -> Privacy) you can now add a Note, including to a group of users all banned at the same time (so that next year you won't need to ask yourself "hey, why did I ban these guys?")

Other changes:

• When you're viewing your existing Notes they're grayed out; click in a field to activate it to change the text (this page can be found from the header by using Profile -> Manage Notes)
• Changes to editing:
  • When you're going to create a new Note but one already exists, you'll get a warning that you're editing an existing Note
  • You can now delete a note from the "Edit note" pop-up in the hover menu
  • You can now delete notes for multiple selected users on the Manage notes page
  • When you change Notes on "Ban|unban users" page, they can be edited and saved with "Save Changes" button

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. The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
3. 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)!
4. 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
5. 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!

• 12:19 Just checking in to say I'm here too. :-) #
• 17:51 Adding my voice in praise and gratitude to our veterans and the many sacrifices they've made for liberty. Thank you, all. #

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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.

Survived the first couple weeks of homeschooling. Getting in some writing has been challenging but still doable.

Also reading graphic novels for the Cybils this year. Some fun ones out there!

Plus, of course, reviewing for YA Books Central, will I totally LOVE! I'm thinking I might also post links to my reviews here for those who like to read them.

So far I've reviewed GOTH GIRL RISING

http://www.yabookscentral.com/cfusion/index.cfm?fuseAction=books.review&review_id=20146


STAR IN THE MIDDLE




http://www.yabookscentral.com/cfusion/index.cfm?fuseAction=books.review&review_id=20053

GHOST HUNTRESS: THE GUIDANCE

http://www.yabookscentral.com/cfusion/index.cfm?fuseAction=books.viewBook&book_id=8590




DEAR BIG V

http://www.yabookscentral.com/cfusion/index.cfm?fuseAction=books.review&review_id=20117




LEVIATHAN

http://www.yabookscentral.com/cfusion/index.cfm?fuseAction=books.review&review_id=20114




THE INVISIBLE ORDER:

http://www.yabookscentral.com/cfusion/index.cfm?fuseAction=books.review&review_id=20081


**Some future reviews: LEGACY, WHEN MIKE KISSED EMMA, and more!

A big Ooh-raH to my cousin Thom serving in the Marines.

My dad was a Army Veteran. He served during the Vietnam War. Mercy...:( I still miss the greatest man I ever knew.



"I’m not cryin’ cause I feel so sorry for you
I am cryin’ for me." Toby Keith

Until later~
Mel

http://www.cnbc.com:80/id/33785094
Now that's some seriously interesting publishing news.

Until later~
Mel