colemanation

stepstomarrow
When granddaughter, Jada, was born with leukemia, a donor-match was located and Jada made a miraculous recovery. In honor of her grandaughter's health, Jeanna has decided to walk across the country (in the dead of winter) to raise awareness and build support for the bone marrow registry (all that's required is a cheek swab). Follow Jeanna's remarkable journey as she travels the United States by foot.

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

1. 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.
2. 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!
3. 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!

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Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Until next time, stay snug!

Jeff has a new vis a tergo up. It's got a new "True Facts About..." in it.

I don't want to alarm anyone, but this is, hands down, the greatest thing I've drawn, or will ever draw. It's been a long uphill climb, and it's all downhill from here, people.

Enjoy.

Also, uh... go ahead and keep reading my comics.

---

As far as those other comics are concerned, I am actually pretty tickled by today's Political Machine. And I found out last night that my POD service just added a venue for schools and libraries to order wholesale. So I think that could go pretty well for my book if I can ever figure out how to get word out.

Well, a bill is finally being introduced that I'd been hoping Obama would champion since before the election. And in a massive dose of irony, it's being introduced by John McCain.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/226938

The bill doesn't have a prayer in hell of passing, but if it did, it would be the best thing that could ever happen to the country. The sad fact is that a company that's too big to fail is also too big to be told "no." And if they're left too big to fail, I guarantee you the demands will keep coming.

So seriously, anyone reading, I'm fuckin' begging you: print out a letter and send it to your Senators, telling them you want them to vote for this. Print it, and mail it, and make sure it's a formal letter with your address listed so they know you live in their state. They don't give a shit if you e-mail them, and they seriously don't give a shit if you sign an online petition. They at least give a tiny shit about a print letter. You can find your Senator's mailing address here:

http://www.senate.gov/reference/common/faq/How_to_contact_senators.htm

Home inspection yesterday! Went pretty well.

At about 8:32 this morning, something snapped, and I officially crossed the line from nervous to impatient. Come on, come on, tell us we got the mortgage or we didn't, so we can either start picking drapes or looking elsewhere.

Seeing as they've cashed the earnest money, and we've spent irretrievable money on inspection and appraisal, I'm obviously going to hope for the former. It looks likely, but we still don't want to get too excited before it's absolutely certain. Which brings me back to impatience. ARGH.

The place is awesome.

In other news, homebuying and Christmas prep have made me stall out on drawing. But that's what buffers are for. The Political Machine is drawn through January 4th, and my employer gives me an ungodly (ha) amount of time off for Christmas. So I'll be playing catch-up soon.

Also: buy my book. IT IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON.

taste_buds
Holidays provide a built-in excuse for indulgent entertaining. This all-purpose foodie community covers everything from homemade hangover cures to dinner party menus. Need quick advice? Get five-minute snack suggestions, low-fat ingredient substitutes, and even measurement conversions. Delicious recipes garnished with humorous advice. Yum.

naturesbeauty
Always on the lookout for compelling images, we were delighted to discover this flourishing community of artists who share a love of nature. Honoring the subject with photographs, paintings, sketches, prose, poetry, and other creative works, you'll be simultaneously riveted to your monitor and inspired to run helter skelter towards the nearest wooded dale.

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!

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Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay warm and safe out there!

backpacking
Want to embrace your wanderlust on the cheap? If you're tall on adventurous spirit, but short on funds, this community can help you plan a trip to anywhere. Offering plentiful tips on how to travel light, you can post about bargain hotels and hostels if you're into urban exploration or discuss camping gear and mosquito netting for the great outdoors. Hitch your backpack, pitch your tent, and carpe diem!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, there goes the public option.

Look, I don't even know what to say. The Democrats control the executive and legislative branches. A majority of the country supports the public option. I mean, for shit's sake, the public option is 17 points higher in the polls than the Senate compromise.* If the Democrats can't muster up the courage/competence to pass something this popular while they have this level of control, I really don't know why anyone expects the slightest glimmer of a progressive agenda from them.

And just in case it's not blindingly obvious where their priorities actually are: since the Senate compromise was announced, UnitedHealth Group and Wellcare Health Plans Inc's stock went up by almost 4%. Cigna by 5%.

How 'bout that.

---
*A ridiculous name any way you slice it. The public option was the compromise between private health care and single payer. The opt-out public option was the compromise of the compromise. This is the compromise of the compromise of the compromise, also known as total fucking capitulation.

Hot damn, am I ever glad to have an office this morning.

Last job I had, I was in a line of cubicles in a massive room. The heat got turned on at 9:00 on the button, so the only real heat benefit for arriving at work was that the wind was no longer right in your face. I was wearing my coat for the first hour of work. We got more warmth from people arriving and putting body heat into the air than we did from the heaters.

Now I'm in maybe a 90 square-foot room, and I'm nice and toasty at 9:10. Let's hear it for upward mobility, am I right?

Speaking of blistering cold, Laura and I got talking last night about the pella windows in the new condo. And I realized that having energy-efficient windows is a prospect that genuinely excites me. This might be inspired by the fact that (for those in warmer climes) the mighty fist of Ymir the Frost Giant is currently pounding Chicago like a heroin addict in the back room of a strip club. But still: I'm genuinely excited about energy-efficient windows.

I'd say I'm in danger of losing my edge, but I think if I'm really honest with myself, my edge has been blunted for a few years. "Hey guys! I'm the edgiest happily married thirty-something with an office and an impending mortgage that you ever did see!"

That's cool, though.

Hey, I haven't gone ahead and plugged my assorted sundries in a while, have I? Well, there's actually plot going on in The Political Machine. So you might wanna go ahead and check that out. I finished drawing the first plotline a couple days ago, and am now on the interlude between chapters one and two. I decided to make it the strangest shout-out in history by centering it around John C. Breckinridge. (Which was a specific request from Carl.) You'll see that in the new year.

Also, my book is ready for love any old time you wanna sidle up and give it a kiss. If you order one for Christmas, I promise to say a special prayer for Bill O'Reilly, asking God to give him the strength to win the War on Baby Jesus.

The following seven Democrats voted to include a (thankfully defeated) anti-abortion amendment in the health care bill.

Evan Bayh (D-IN)
Robert Casey (D-PA)
Kent Conrad (D-ND)
Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
Ted Kaufman (D-DE)
Ben Nelson (D-NE)
Mark Pryor (D-AR)

Casey, hilariously enough, serves on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

That's all. Go about your business.

**FINAL EDIT Thu Dec 10 02:15:47 UTC 2009**

So there is the final update... Over the past day we have processed around 11 million jobs out of the 12 million that were in queue at that time. Please bear in mind that over this past day, more jobs for notifications are also created. So while the queue has been dropping, we are still not fully caught up at this point, due to backlog and new jobs. We have roughly 3 million jobs still pending that involve the notification system in some manner. We had hoped we could have fully cleared the queue in a day, but unfortunately we can't clear it too quickly, since we need the rest of the site to operate normally. From our current perspective on the amount of jobs that are left in queue, and how many it has processed thus far, we believe it will take around another 8 - 12 hours to process everything.

And finally some answers to some questions:

( Read More and Get Some Answers... )

freeskiers
While some of us long to escape the cold, dark stretch of winter for hot tropical beaches, for others, there's nothing quite like whoooooshing down those shimmering sugar alps. If you're fond of freestyle skiing, get ready to slide down the slippery slopes in good company. This passionate, international community shares travel/gear tips, anecdotes, photos, and videos for those who can't get enough of the sweet stuff.

seasonal_icons
Need some extra twinkle to decorate your place? Check out these dazzling holiday-themed icons. If you're an artist, you can post your own creations, provided you abide by the simple rules (which is to say, all cheer and no politicking). Be sure to comment and give credit if you wish to borrow a little spirit (no direct links, please). If you're feeling a touch of humbug this season, this is an instant shot of festivity.

handmade_gifts
High on creativity, but low on cash? You'll find tons of brilliant suggestions for do-it-yourself crafts sure to please everyone on your holiday gift list. Offering detailed instructions, photos, budgets, timelines, and active support, you'll soon turn spare remnants of fabric and time into cherished keepsakes. Be sure to search entries and read user guidelines before you post for help!