Intersection Logs

I stumbled across something useful this morning: a fix for ljarchive that works properly for downloading comments again.

It's amazing how much more energy I have when the dewpoint drops to a sensible level, even if the high temperature is still in the low 90s. Today, I hauled a couple of bags of books to the used bookstore and traded them in, picked up groceries on the way back, made some serious progress on estimating the volume of my possessions for shipment (it's looking about right for one 20-foot container), popped over to Office Max on the bus for printer paper, and went up to Trader Joe's for more groceries, and though I'm warm and tired after all that, I'm still cheerfully functional.

And the LJ PTB finally came through with a news update that's at least half a step in the right direction -- promising to disable FB/Twitter crossposting on locked entries some time the week after next. There's a lot of "too little, too late" sentiment in the replies over there, but at least it's a less unanimously horrified reaction than the 31st August post got.

The used bookstore also sells used beads, in the form of home-made jewelry. I've been using some of the trade credit from the surplus books to pick up a few necklaces and bracelets, when the beads look interesting and the price is right for considering them as raw materials rather than ready-to-wear pieces.

There's some kind of bat event going on up the street tomorrow, and there are little roadside placards advertising it, Burma-Shave style. "Blind as a bat?/That's NOT their fate/They see darn well/and they can echo-locate," and, "Visitors from out of town/Hanging huddled/upside down/Acro-bats!"

There is no fifth thing.

For those concerned about the privacy issues in the latest LJ update, a staff member has posted to the news post here.. (On the second-to-last page of a comments section that's now up to 92 pages!) And there's a poll which is apparently being taken official notice of.

I got email from Livejournal.com in Russian. Google Translate revealed that it was a response to a password reset request, which I certainly hadn't sent.

The message ended:

If you have not requested anything like this, do not worry. Maybe someone sent a request by mistake, thinking that this account belongs to him, or simply made a typo in the name or address of the email.

But even if it was an intruder who was trying to find out your password, laugh at his failure: it's a letter come to your own address, and not his.

The message also gave an IP address, which resolves to somewhere in the middle of Russia and apparently a known spammer if not worse.

In good computer news, it looks as though LJ has fixed the issue that was blocking export of comments to DW or LJarchive; I've just successfully imported my comments and backed up my journal.

The work desktop seems to be back to normal, and much less noisy, with two new chunks in its RAID; new laptop is running fine and reports of trouble with that update are proliferating. (Note; be very careful when Googling for Windows update numbers!) The work laptop was being awkward today, but that was just a problem with a stupidly complicated figure in a PDF document that stuck in the print spooler. I don't think the home desktop or the Eee have caused me any new gray hairs in the last day or two, but it's been one of those weeks.

I may or may not have much online access for the next couple of weeks, and in any case I hope to be away from computers for large chunks of most days, at the very least. So I may be even less evident around here than usual, for a while. Good thoughts to those who need them.

The claret cup cactus is blooming!

Also: note on putting a header image in Transmogrified, here.

Yes, thanks to the nice people and random-number generators at Dreamwidth Studios, I have an account while the site is still in closed beta. (Open beta next week!)

I'm not leaving LJ, but it's nice to have an alternative to try out, and if half my flist ends up migrating I don't want to be left behind.

( Test cut )

So this morning I was added to the f-list of a brand-new account, with 200 random friends, no posts, and nothing in the profile but what looked like a YouTube link, which I didn't click on. I shrugged and went on with my day; I've been friend-botted before, and they usually go away in a few hours if you don't friend them back.

Now the account has been suspended, and I'm wondering if that link was actually one of those fake virus-dropping ones. (I hadn't thought of that at the time; I just thought it was most likely something offensive.)

I ended up spending the afternoon and evening cleaning up and defragging the Behemoth laptop, which lately had been taking approximately forever to start. I needed to clear 15% on the 15Gb system partition to let the defrag tool do its thing properly, and that took some doing; I ended up blowing away a bunch of unused software, and then digging around for well-hidden installation and temporary files, to get that far. Once the defragmentation ran, suddenly it was up to 24% free, and it does seem to be running a bit faster now.

I don't know if I deleted a cookie that was doing something that can no longer be reproduced by normal means, or what, but suddenly LJ is sending me to the home page -- where I have no wish to go, pretty much ever -- when I log in, instead of leaving me on whatever site page I logged in from. The stay-at-home machines stay logged in anyway, but the work laptop doesn't, and I shall be mildly annoyed if this behavior persists. (I shall try not to be paranoid about the way the first version of this paragraph got eaten when I hit a wrong key and had to 'restore saved draft'.)