Shirebound's LiveJournal

I'm curious to find out if anyone gets a message on their device (tablet or phone), when trying to access Dreamwidth or Livejournal, of either "A secure connection cannot be established" or "Connectivity problems"? My brother's rather old tablet won't connect at all to either site ("Connectivity problems"), and my smartphone gives the "A secure connection..." message and then lets me in. I never have trouble accessing either site on my ancient laptop. Dreamwidth and LJ are the only two sites I've had an ongoing problem with.

I finally ran out of my old hand and body moisturizer and wanted something new, and thought I'd try a very reasonably priced jar of Jergens Hydrating Coconut Crema. It's lovely, except that Pippin wants to lick every drop of it off my hands.

My LJ post fonts are all wacky suddenly. I see on the Support page that some other folks are having the same issue. Hope they can get it sorted out.

Pippin, my dear sweet Scavenger Hound, is suddenly trying to pick up every mangy, disgusting, icky whatever-it-is from the sidewalk and taste it. I have to watch her every second. She's very snuggly, though, which makes up for a lot.

Chapter 10 to Beta-mom tonight, yay! I'm so happy to get it finished.

If you have an LJ or an LJ community that hasn't been updated for two years or more, you might want to play it safe and post something there. From news (bolding is mine):

Purging inactive accounts: One of the benefits of the work we've done to purge suspended accounts is that we will now be able to purge inactive journals and communities too--something you've been requesting for years! A journal is defined as inactive if it has not been logged into for 24 consecutive months and has only one post (i.e., the welcome post). A community is defined as inactive if has not been updated for 24 consecutive months and has only one entry and no comments. Once an account is eligible to be purged for inactivity, the owner will be sent an email to alert them of the inactive status. The owner will then have two weeks to log into the journal or post to their community to prevent it from being deleted. If the owner does not log in or post, the account will be deleted and treated like any other deleted account (the owner will have 30 days to log in and undelete the account to prevent it from being purged). Purging inactive accounts will take place sometime after we've begun purging suspended accounts, probably in late August.

From here: http://news.livejournal.com/127507.html

I made a brief post to lotr_rpf_fanfic since it hasn't been updated since 2007.

Gosh, I still love this icon. It was my very first one. Do any of you still use (even occasionally) your first LJ icon?

I see that a few folks are re-posting their very first LJ post as a way of celebrating LJ's 10th Anniversary. Mine is below in italics, from 2003. And my 6-year LJ anniversary is coming up in a few weeks; it's a good time to look back.

At the time I got an LJ invite-code (thank you, kookaburra1701 and claudia603), I thought I would use LJ only to post fic. I had just been banned from ff.net for two weeks, with one chapter of "Quarantined" left to post, because someone thought a poem I had written should not have been in the LOTR category. (I *still* think it's a LOTR poem). I had hesitated getting into this "LJ thing" because I was afraid it would eat up every second of spare time I had. (It has, and I love it. Being forced to find a new place to interact with LOTR folks turned out to be a blessing in disguise.) I never dreamed that, years later, I would have found such a warm community here... offering love, encouragement, information, creativity, and incredible friendships that still take my breath away. I never dreamed I'd still be writing fic, or that "Quarantined" would spawn so many fluffy sequels. But I *did* know that I'd still love hobbits. (Some things never change.)

Thank you all, for making LJ one of my favorite places to be... with some of my favorite people on earth.

May 1, 2003:

Omigosh, another baby boomer gets dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century! I'll familiarize myself with this brave new world of the LiveJournal step by step.

Thanks folks, and especially Paula! I feel very welcomed!

My FANFICTION.NET "upload access" has been temporarily suspended. As soon as it is restored, Chapter 20 of "Quarantined" will be posted. This chapter will contain tentative summaries of two new stories flying about in my brain. One person told me that these "suspensions" last a few days, and someone else said a month! I'll just try it every day and hope for the best. If this lasts longer than a few days, I'll probably post the chapter here.

I wanted to share something I just learned from sayhello about polls. Apparently, there's an LJ glitch that makes the list of "answers" (names of folks who have responded to polls) blank. The LJ "known issues" page has this to say:

"Some users are receiving a "(No answers)" message when attempting to view detailed results to polls that have responses. This issue will be fixed in LiveJournal's next code release. In the meantime, you can view detailed poll results by opening the "View Answers" link in a new tab or window in your browser"

In other words, if you right-click on the "view answers" link, then click on "open in new tab" or "open in new window", you'll see the list of respondees.

Wacky. Thanks, sayhello!

I know there's an LJ "strike" being planned for March 21, which I respect, but I won't be participating because a dear friend's birthday is tomorrow, and sending a greeting on someone's birthday means a lot to me.

For anyone who hasn't seen it, this was just posted in lj_2008:

The announcement last Wednesday was a mistake in regards to Basic accounts, as the change was not clearly stated, it did not allow for you to provide feedback, and went into effect immediately. Many of you have pointed out that the decision worried you less than the way it was communicated. You should have been given a voice, and you were not; we didn’t follow our own rules, and we apologize.

At this point we are working on a solution to enable existing LiveJournal users to create new Basic accounts as so many of you have requested. Nothing has been decided yet, but we are considering options which would allow existing users to continue to create new Basic accounts

From here: http://community.livejournal.com/lj_2008/3846.html

If Livejournal ever crashes temporarily, do folks still head over to Greatestjournal.com to huddle in the dark and light candles? Or is it Insanejournal.com, or both? I haven't visited either one in quite awhile, but I want to be able to find folks in case of an emergency...

*whimpers*

For anyone interested, it looks like Viggo is scheduled to appear on David Letterman tonight.

I have a question! I've seen you folks post a picture, and when you click on the picture it gets bigger. How do you do that? Also, there are some pictures/banners that are actually links to other sites. How do you do THAT? There's still so much I don't know...

And I'm in auto repair shock right now. A lady in a car 'nudged' my car at a gas station when I was in the little office paying for gas, then she sped away. (A good Samaritan got her license plate number, thank goodness.) The damage to my bumper appears so minor it can barely be seen, but I dutifully got an estimate today for my insurance company. Repairs will be... $1,152.39 PLUS the cost of a rental car for a week. I couldn't *believe* it when I heard the total. Thank goodness my insurance will cover all but the deductible, and if I can track down the hit-and-run lady at the DMV, and if she has insurance, maybe it will all be covered. But wow, that's a lotta money for a slightly off-kilter bumper. My poor baby. *pets car*

I have no plans to leave LJ, but I decided to make a journal over at insanejournal.com as a backup to GJ, which is a backup to LJ. *sigh* If anyone has a journal over there and wants to 'friend' me, I can be found at

http://shirebound.insanejournal.com/

I doubt I'll ever use that site (although I do visit GJ when LJ goes down) but... I guess it's better to err on the side of too many journals as opposed to too few.

Oh wow, I never knew we could post via e-mail. Thanks for the "heads up",
lily_the_hobbit!

Ooooh, new toys to play with...

ETA: It took about 8 minutes after I sent the e-mail for this post to show up. What a cool function.

There may be massive delays in my responses to comments, as LJ seems to be delivering e-mails to me about 8-10 hours late. Anyone else having problems?

But.... Froday! Yay.

LJ is working on putting in a search function! Yay, I've been longing for that for years.

We're building a search system for LJ: journals, entries, communities, people, or everything on the site.
Our new search will respect your privacy settings.

From here: http://news.livejournal.com/96715.html

When I click on "Edit entries", then click on a past entry to edit, there's now a pull-down menu in the upper left corner of the screen showing all the months of the year. The month of the entry being edited is highlighted. Has this been there all along and I just now noticed it? And... what purpose does it serve? (I only see this *after* I locate and click on an actual entry to be edited.)

*is puzzled*

gentlehobbit has posted a list of HTML codes we can use to type accented letters (such as ë or á) directly into LJ posts.

http://gentlehobbit.livejournal.com/142121.html