Bwahahaha... had this shirt under the tree today.

More tomorrow.

Right now I am a little too merry to post anything very coherent.

An early start to the day, woke up early, not enough time before my alarm to make it worthwhile to attempt going back to sleep so I began my day, "Merry Christmas to all!" Once ready, I drove in to site, needed to bring some last minute items out for our Company sponsored Christmas meal. OK, the Company pays, but the work is organized in small teams and the Team Leads, me for instance has to do all the background preparation to provide a meal for all our folk, both day and night shifts and manage the budget for it etc. Not too great a challenge, while on my last series of days on-site, I gathered with some of the team who will be sharing the meal and we developed a menu, then while at home, LOML (aetheldaeg) and I went shopping. Two sizes of paper plates, plastic cutlery, aluminum foil, and the food list too. At the check out I had to confirm that they would accept my company credit card, whew, and the total was well within the amount budgeted.

Back at work yesterday, I discovered that we'd be a few more than anticipated, therefore, back to the store for more. I even added two traditional fruit cakes, not much hope that many will partake, but, it's a Christmas tradition.

The weather outside is not frightful, it's even quite delightful, cold at -22 Celsius but clear and bright. Once daylight arrives it's supposed to warm to a balmy -15, yeah!

We will commence food prep at about 10:30 so that we can eat between 11:30 and 13:00. Night shift will decide when they want to consume their meal and back up the timings accordingly. BBQ T-bone steak, sauteed onions and mushrooms, baked potato with bacon bit and sour cream, cole slaw, Ceasar salad and for dessert, two varieties of cheese cake and of course the fruit cake.

I expect that there won't be much outside the scope of routine operations today, but, I should be going for now.

My best wishes to all that you may celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus with family and friends, enjoying the spirit and shared good times.

Stuffing stockings this afternoon and having a good laugh. Well, good in the-universe-is-out-to-fuck-with-you way.

Had picked up goodies prior to my visit with the diabetic ed person, and was happy as a clam when I stumbled on "sugar free" chocolates. "Woohoo!" I thought to myself. Erm, may have actually exclaimed that loudly in the grocery store, but I didn't get too many funny looks, so maybe not.

Now that I'm divvying up, I'm laughing my ass off. The REAL stuff has 15g of carbs; the FAKE stuff has 18g of carbs for a smaller serving. I'll grant the fake stuff it's smaller dose of saturated fats (7g vs. 13g), but holy Moses, what a crock.

Happy Festivus to all my non-religious friends. May your grievances be few, your strengths be many and your pole always be firm.

For those truly tired of the regular versions! :P

Holiday debuggery

We know there were a few kinks with the holiday promotion. We've been working very hard to get them ironed out. If you have a paid/permanent account, keep on sending those coupons. Here's an update:

• If you were unable to send out multiple coupons at a time, please perform a hard refresh, and you should be good to go.
• If you redeemed a coupon to upgrade your account and the balance at checkout was $0 instead of $9.95 or $15, this means your upgrade did not go through (nor were you charged). We've straightened this out, so you can now apply your holiday coupon toward the purchase of an annual paid account.
• If you tried to redeem a holiday coupon and had trouble using a gift certificate to cover the balance of an annual paid account, we identified the root problem. If this happened to you, you can now use your holiday coupon together with your gift certificate.
• If the number of holiday coupons you have available suddenly goes up (instead of down), this might be due to recipients declining the coupons, at which point your pool of available coupons will be replenished and, therefore, increase.
• If you need assistance with holiday coupons or pretty much anything else (well, LiveJournal related), please open a support request and we'll be more than happy to help!

Tweaks

• There were some initial glitches displaying results on My Guests, but we've worked them out. We hope you'll check out who's been checking you out!
• Some of you reported formatting issues using the Rich Text Editor (i.e., line breaks were being removed incorrectly). We've implemented a fix! Thanks so much for your patience.

Give a little extra!

We're pleased to report that we've already sold over 100 virtual red ribbons in honor of National AIDS Awareness month. Remember, for each charitable vgift you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to fund the development of an HIV vaccine. Once again, we thank you for your generosity.

Celebrate with holiday vGifts!

Stop by the Virtual Gift Shop and share some holiday magic with your LiveJournal friends.

Photos of the week

We're back with more dazzling pictures from around the world. Congrats to marlenemcc, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our fourth photo contest. We hope you'll click over to LJ_Photophile poll and tell us your picks in pics!

For more fantastic user content, we'll meet you under the cut. ( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for reading. Here's wishing you the very merriest of holidays. We'll see you next year!

This morning, Rachel woke up suddenly.

"What time was I born?"

She was off by a few minutes. =)

A dozen years, minus about a half hour, after we spent the night at the birthing center with the midwife, I piloted Deb and the midwife down an icy hill, almost driving right into the emergency room entrance (The smokers sitting on the bench in front of the glass entry way got up and moved. Quickly.) The midwife commandeered ~ and by this I mean that the under 5' tall woman barked orders like a commanding general to an infantry squad ~ an ambulance crew who were intending on reloading a stretcher (once they got around my car, which was stopped almost blocking the door), and re-routed them back into the hospital and up to the delivery room. After parking the car somewhat more legally than the "don't even think of driving here" area the midwife had me drop them off at, I was able to find the delivery room quite easily, as ~ well, there wasn't quite a swath of destruction, but for some reason, there was still a clear path from the charge of the midwife's phalanx. I just had to walk a little bit further, and I think I might have had to ask "Which way did the..." once, without getting the entire question out, and people just pointed, and I found them.

Minutes later, with everyone in the hospital and probably the entire state watching (seriously, it felt like an old operating theater, with crowds of people...) I held my favoritest daughter ever, Rachel Laurana, in my arms.

Happy Birthday Neffchen !! Wish you happy festivities :-)

I just love this clip from the Rachel Maddow show. Taking of on Roland Burriss trying to be poetic in the Senate, she features a libdub video battle between 2 rival Seattle High Schools happening on Youtube. 7m54s but IMO worth it, it's just great.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Links to the 2 full videos:

Shorecrest's Hey Ya
Shorewood's "all in reverse" response

And with that, I'm off home through the big piles of snow we've had the last couple of days.

Everybody have a nice holiday!

Click to continue reading “”

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Originaly posted at The Slamlander. You can comment here or there.
All rights are reserved under US copyright law. More detail may be found on my Disclaimers and Rights page.

And we are having a lovely time watching Zhinn play like a kitten.
:)

All the Christmas presents are bought and wrapped!

Mr. B: How do you spell "Mahna Mahna"?

Rachel, Justin, Me: Do doo be-do-do

Mr. B: No! How do you spell "Mahna Mahna"?

Rachel, Justin, Me: Do do-do do

Mr. B: Arrggh! How do you spell "Mahna Mahna"!!!

Rachel, Justin, Me: Do doo be-do-do be-do-do be-do-do be-do-do-doodle do do do-doo do!

(Repeat three times, with variations)

Mr. B: How do you spell "Do doo be-do-do"?

Rachel, Justin, Me: Mahna Mahna

Mr. B: How do you spell "Do do-do do"?

Rachel, Justin, Me: Mahna Mahna

Mr. B: How do you spell "Do doo be-do-do be-do-do be-do-do be-do-do-doodle do do do-doo do!"?

Me: (improv on Birdland)... Mahna Mahna...

Mr. B: But how do you spell "Mahna Mahna"?

Me: The question is, how do you spell it?

Mr. B: I T!

GIGABYTE – Support&Download – Motherboard – CPU Support List – GA-6VX7-4X.

Motherboard support link.

---

Originaly posted at The Slamlander. You can comment here or there.
All rights are reserved under US copyright law. More detail may be found on my Disclaimers and Rights page.

This is a direct livejournal post. Yes, something on my LAN died or is dying. A LAN switch, I suspect. The DB aerver isn't visible to the Web Applications server or the mail server. Both are down accordingly. However, it is visible and working fine when logged on directly. Doing various matrix tests to locate the problem.

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!

I seek the Holy Grail. Oh wait, wrong movie.

I seek a working heated bird bath. We've used a fiberglass-with-heater-embedded design and watched 2 of them short circuit before our very eyes. The problem being the basic conflict between a too short cord and the need to put the bath far enough away from the door that the birds will indeed come down and use it. This necessitates the use of an extension cord, which try as I might, can't seem to get water tight. Sadly, snow melts. And fzzzt, there goes another heater.