If you notice you're not on my friends list anymore.. Don't worry, I didn't mean to remove you. I was trying to delete a couple of deleted journals and somehow ended up removing a bunch of other people. I have no idea how the hell I managed that. I'm currently trying to fix my mistake.

[Edit] Added everyone back. I think I'll avoid trying to remove any dead journals until I'm on a computer, hah.

So I'm sitting at the mall waiting for my car to get done. I've bee here for two hours now and I'm looking at another hour at least before my car is done. What should have been a $107 bill for a tire has turned into a $537 bill for a tire, tie rod, and other things. Fml. Apparently I put off getting the tie rod fixed for too long. *sigh*

 

Mum is letting me put $400 of that on her credit card and I have to have the money by March 10th. I'm gonna have to go to dad and beg him to loan me at least $300 of that. Then I could pay him back in a couple of months. I hope like hell he will because if he won't, I'll be well and thoroughly screwed.

 

This was the perfect way for a crappy week to end. Bah.

This whole thing with not having internet has completely screwed up my daily routine. Well, messed with it more so in the morning. I didn't think about how it was going to mess with my routine. I didn't know what to do with myself this morning and so I ended up taking a nap. Which, of course, made me feel very unproductive. Hah. *sigh*

Tomorrow morning I have to go to Sears and get a new tire. Talk about leaving it to the last minute. Hah. When Cage gets home from school tomorrow afternoon it will be off to Coloma we go. The roads had better be fine by then.

Anyhow.

1. The Wiccan Spell Manual By: Sirona Knight

This is a good book for beginners. For more experienced practitioners it could be used as a quick reference guide if you don't already know the information like the back of your hand. :)

2. How To Turn Your Ex-Boyfriend into a Toad and Other Spells By: Athena Starwoman

A few months ago I had bought some used books that someone was selling as a set. This was one of the books in the set. I wouldn't have bought this book by itself as it seems geared more toward younger people. It was a quick read. That is about all I have to say about this book.

3. Book of Shadows By: Phyllis Curettage

This is a book I try to reread at least once a year. It is such a good book and I've always been drawn to it.

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So, after nearly a decade at this site, LJ finally does something that makes me actually rage. No popcorn and laughing as the masses storm to news posts complaining, this time I'm actually worried.

A while back I was invited to help out with BETA testing new LJ services (I got this invite via lj_releases).

They have just announced BETA testing of a new friendslist.

LJ is planning on redoing everyone's friendslists in the style of the new comment page and update page. They want to copy tumblr and make your friendslist into a dashboard-like system page (infinite scrolling and all). It's also been renamed to "feed" (this I don't mind too much, though). In fact the whole dashboard idea with infinite scrolling wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that everyone will be locked to one specific layout. The system style comment pages are bad enough, but now I'll have to strain my eyes reading my flist? That defeats the purpose of this entire site. The font, use of whitespace, oversized boxes and UI elements ... all contribute to making the page difficult to read, on a site where all you do is read. Aaaah. Even just the possibility of adjusting the font (style and size) would make this suggestion easier to swallow, but it's still not something I'd want for my journal. It would not improve my LJ experience in any way (in fact it would most likely make my daily LJ activities more time consuming).

Now, I wasn't able to make the BETA page display my own friendslist, so I apologise to the random users who are featured in the screenshot, but to give everyone an idea, the below image shows you what your friendslist probably will look like in a couple of months.


(Click for big)

[A couple of more screenshots]
I never switched over from Dystopia, so that adds to the weirdness. You're going to have to picture this with the standard LiveJournal drop down navigation + no blue sidebar to the left. Click the screenshots for bigger versions.

Top of page with links to journal, archive, profile


Example of text heavy post as displayed on friendslist


New buttons to the right replace the navigation strip. One tab for filters


One tab for Archive/Calendar, you can filter your feed to display posts from one specific date. These buttons follow along as you scroll down the page (infinite scrolling).



All friendslists will look the same.

Snippet from the locked post at lj_releases:

The friends page has been redesigned as a system page for all users, and is now available for Beta testers. There is a link at the top of your friends page allowing you to switch between the new and old versions, and will later go into public beta testing. You can switch back and forth between both versions throughout beta testing.

PUBLIC POST AT lj_releases ABOUT THE NEW FRIENDSLIST: http://lj-releases.livejournal.com/79480.html.

You can also see the proposed changes for yourself by enabling the BETA on your own journal (instructions from ruljautonews):

It's trivially easy to test beta features.
1) Go to lj_ru_beta and request to join.
2) Wait to get confirmation that you've been accepted into the community (this could take a few hours.)
3) Go to this page and choose Go To under Beta.
4) That's it, you're now testing the beta release. All site-scheme pages should now display a big "BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA" in yellow letters across the top.
5) You could make comments in the lj_ru_beta post, but if you do please keep this in mind: the majority of commenters there don't speak English and if they do it's not their primary language. Machine translation of Russian is lousy. "My hovercraft is full of eels" lousy. While you can engage in basic dialogue and get a feel for what the other person is saying, don't get too hung up on anyone's phrasing.

You can easily switch back to the old version.

Make sure you let LJ know what you think of these proposed changes, I can't be the only one who thinks this is a horrible idea.

ETA: It's nice to see that I'm not the only one worried about the proposed changes, but please direct your feedback through the proper channels. This is a private journal, I have no affiliation with LJ. Please also be respectful when addressing the LJ staff. They are just doing their jobs. Thanks!

ETA2: Russian news post about the BETA test: http://lj-ru-beta.livejournal.com/7013.html

ETA3: Added more screenshots.

ETA4: Additional info at ruljautonews: http://ruljautonews.livejournal.com/27964.html

ETA5: An update on the new site scheme.

ETA6: Public beta has now been announced. Official announcement.

ETA7 (really?): RUSSIAN NEWS POSTS CONFIRM PAGINATION AND ABILITY TO CUSTOMIZE FONT AND BACKGROUND IN THE FUTURE, ruljautonews HAS MORE: http://ruljautonews.livejournal.com/28207.html

I just did a "friends cut." Granted 99% of the people I took off my friend's list hadn't updated in months and months. Quite a few of those hadn't updated in years even. Yes, it was long over due.

A handful of people I removed because they didn't update often and half the time I forgot they were even on my friend's list. If I removed you and you didn't want to be removed, let me know and I'll re-add you.

I went from having 116 people on my friend's list to 38. :O

Wanted: 5ml bottles of..

LE

Snow White '07
Archangel Winter
Love's Philosophy
House of Mirrors
I Fell in Love With a Floating Brain

GC

Antique Lace

Wanted: 5ml bottles or partials or decants of..

LE

Selkie
Pink Moon '07
Velvet Unicorn
Cheshire Moon
Dolce Stil Nuovo
Meditation in Autumn
Old Moon
Fearful Pleasure

Wanted: imps or decants of..

GC Imps

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U.S. horse slaughter plants in the very early stages of planning, proponent says

... Words fail me. There is so much I want to say about this, but at the same time I don't know what to say...

It's bad enough that the government has paved the way for the three slaughter plants that closed in 2007 to reopen, but now people will be trying to open completely new slaughter plants? What the hell.

The Wyoming state representative said her pro-slaughter group “United Horsemen,” is working closely with entities to open what she says will be humane slaughter plants. Humane slaughter plants? Yeah right.

Wallis also said she is working with some tribes on eventually opening plants to help control multiplying wild horse herds. #%)&*#W$ That just makes me what to hit something. Pisses me off that the slaughter of horses is going to start happening again in this country. Pisses me off that there is someone out there who wants to make plans to start slaughtering the wild horses.

Everyone in the horse world is so excited we may have an opportunity to turn the whole equine market around. Are you fucking kidding me? This bitch is making it sound like "everyone in the horse world" thinks this is the best thing to happen since [insert your own thought].

... I know I will have more to say on this, but I need to get my thoughts sorted out first.

Originally posted by write_light at BAD Internet Laws Heading Your Way