I dug up a photo from a November 2007, when Dave and I took a small road trip to Toledo one afternoon. We took Jefferson Avenue out of Detroit, which turns into River Road eventually, and followed that as far as we could before we got to I-75. Along the way, the Fermi II nuclear power plant is visible to the east. It's almost a cliche to say it "looms," and I've often wondered what it feels like to see the towers outside your windows or across your fields every day.

An hour or so later we reached Toledo and got a close look at the new Veterans Glass City Skyway, which I described in this post. That post has an image of the bridge, which I re-edited and posted on Flickr, too.

Tags: michigan, ohio, road trips

How to lose money fast: Open a business... As part of the media's blitz on poor crippled Detroit, they talked to PJ from PJ's Lager House, the venue where the Sean Fitzgerald CD release was just held. Very clear-eyed talk about the economics of opening a bar. At least it sounds like profitability is in the near future for the Lager House, and that's good news, because they're trying really hard and it is a good music place.

Tags: music, news

Franken shuts down Lieberman on Senate floor ... Senator Franken was presiding over the senate, Senator Lieberman was speaking, ran out of time, asked for more... and Senator Franken did not grant it. His spokesperson said they're running the Senate very tightly in order to get things done.

Reports that Senator Franken gave Senator Nelson (news) the evil eye when he rose to speak are as yet unsubstantiated.

Tags: politics

On Friday, Dec. 18, I'm playing at a new-to-me venue, Phoenix Cafe in Hazel Park. Sharing the stage with three other performers, Kris McLonis, Johnny Ozer, and Panama Doug... show starts at 9, cover is $5. Phoenix Cafe is at 24918 John R, Hazel Park, MI 48330; free parking in the back. One interesting thing about this place is, it's BYOB. They have coffee and tea, and that's it, but you can bring in soda or (I've seen) beer. I think it's nonsmoking, too.

On Saturday, Dec. 19, Finvarra's Wren will give their annual Solstice Concert at Mama's Coffeehouse at the Birmingham Unitarian Church (8:00 p.m., $12). Celtic and American traditional music, performed very skillfully on traditional instruments. This concert is one event in the holiday season that gives me all kinds of good feelings.

In between, I somehow have to accomplish Christmas gift shopping and making out cards and helping my Mom get her shopping done. If it wasn't for music, I'd really dislike this time of year more than I can say.

Tags: music

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!

( Read more... )

Curtains

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

Tags: holiday promotion, lj_photophile, ljlimericks, my guests, my stats, sponsored vgifts, whitelisting, yandex

Crooks Hijack Facebook Accounts, Injuring Dignity ... reason number 4,182 why it's hard to have faith in the goodness of humanity.

Tags: internet

At the end of the Sean Fitzgerald CD release show last Sunday, I was talking with Anthony Retka, Tone of Tone & Niche and one of the folks who pulled the CD together out of a digital mountain of recorded songs. Jokingly, I told him his next project had to be a how-to document to say what a person should do to prepare his/her creative work in case of untimely demise, for the benefit of those like Tone who try to make a "product" out of it later.

We laughed about it, but more than once since Sean's death, I've thought about the issue of my finished (or nearly finished) but unreleased music, and whether it'll be findable or useable in the event of a hasty unplanned exit on my part. It's not that I'm delusional about how much demand there would be for any posthumous Charlie Monterey release. They're not beating down my door now, and though death may enhance one's reputation, I'm not terribly hopeful it'll do that much for mine. But... still... there are a few people who might want to hear a recording of, say, "Take the Picture" (my latest completed song) after I can't sing it. That's why there was a posthumous Sean Fitz release; there are a couple hundred fans interested, and there were good songs that only needed to be dusted off, shined up a little, and burned to CDs.

So here's a question for musicians, writers, photographers, and other artists reading this: Have you given much thought to posthumous work? Any aspect, as far as what you'd like to see released, to how you're arranging your current works-in-progress, or whether it's even worth thinking about at all.

I kept stumbling over the last paragraph, and even now I see where I could've clarified things. This probably means ... something.

Tags: art, music, photography, writing

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!

Tags: handmade_gifts, holiday vgifts, lj_photophile, lj_spotlights, ljlimerick, notification fix, snowflake cookie avalanche, writer's block

It didn't seem to have a set, formal name, but I called it the Remembering Sean Fitzgerald CD Release show, Sunday night at PJ's Lager House in Detroit. It was a fine night with lots of cool people to talk with and much good music. The highlight was the unveiling of a CD of previously unreleased songs of Sean's, compiled by friends of his. Some of the songs are on the relatively new Sean Fitzgerald Memorial Myspace; the whole CD will eventually be available on CDBaby and/or iTunes.

Here's a video of "Worlds Collide," a song of Sean's that I did with jjfmi to close my portion of the evening. Thanks, John, for discovering the video.

Speaking for me, it was a relaxed evening and not terribly sad, rather a good night for reminiscing and hanging out. I did tell the owner of the bar that I need to come down sometime when the reason isn't that someone died. It's a cool little place and the sound guy is maybe the best I've encountered in any bar or coffeehouse. Usually they book rock acts there, only rarely acoustic-oriented bands. But I like rock too, sometimes.

Tags: detroit, music

**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... )

Tags: notification system
Current Location: Under a Rock
Current Mood: grumpy