saturday, 14 november, 2009 19:55 MAT

if you didn't like the vc before, there's a good reason to now.

Colleagues

As you would be aware, enterprise bargaining negotiations between the University and the unions are well advanced with substantial progress having been made to date. All parties to the negotiations remain committed to concluding negotiations as early as possible. However, given that negotiations in respect to the salary increases to apply over the life of the next agreement are not yet concluded, I have decided as a preliminary step effective as of 1 July 2009 to pay a 2% salary increase administratively to all staff. All staff employed as of today’s date (i.e. 13 November 2009) will have this salary increase back-dated to 1 July 2009 or such later date commensurate with their date of appointment to CQUniversity.

The back-dated salary increase will be paid prior to the Christmas closure.

Regards,

Scott.

Professor Scott Bowman
Vice-Chancellor & President
CQUniversity Australia


i didn't realise the vc could just do that, but apparently he can. i hope we don't get an "oops" email in the near future.

friday, 13 november, 2009 21:10 MAT


from: Velocity Rewards
to: me
date: 13 November 2009 16:41
subject: Melanie, surprise! You've turned Gold.

Hi Melanie

We’ve got a treat for you - a free upgrade to Velocity Gold! Given you came so close to making it on your own, we wanted to say thanks so much for your ongoing commitment to the Virgin Blue Group, we really love having you around.

*insert promo for all the perks of being a Velocity Gold member*

The Velocity Team.



from: Velocity Rewards
to: me
date: 13 November 2009 19:53
subject: IMPORTANT: Please disregard our last email titled "You've turned Gold"

Hi Melanie

Oops! Due to an error you've received our previous email by mistake. Please disregard the free upgrade communication as unfortunately you do not qualify for that upgrade.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Warm regards,

The Velocity Team


virgin blue fail.

Notes augmented

We've enhanced and de-bugged Notes. If you haven't tried it yet, now's the time! You can create a private note when you ban multiple users. You can also delete multiple notes at once. Lastly, paid users have the option to add a note (visible only to you) whenever you add or remove a friend (guaranteed to avoid embarrassing social mishaps). If you don't currently have a paid account, you can upgrade now! It only takes a few minutes and costs less than a bad shopping mall haircut (plus, it's way more fashionable)!

Product tweaks and bug kill

1. In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
2. If you sign up to get notifications of the Writer's Block question of the day, you'll now see the daily question in the email notification, so you'll have a little extra time to ponder before you post. You can subscribe to Writers Block notifications here
3. The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
4. If you visit a LiveJournal page and get prompted to log in, you'll be returned to the same page after you sign in (Thanks, Dreamwidth)!
5. If you don't edit the timestamp for an entry at all, the entry timestamp will indicate the time the entry was posted instead of the time the Update Journal page was loaded
6. Comments with paddings/backgrounds render correctly within the comment box (and will no longer wrap outside the box and break frames/margins)

New FCK fixes rich text editor!

1. We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
2. When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds are no longer broken
3. RTE now functions properly in Safari 4.0
4. An extra line/space will not be auto-inserted whenever you switch from RTE to HTML editor
5. The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers

LiveJournal Cares

We’re pleased to introduce you to lj_cares, a new LiveJournal community dedicated to raising awareness and funds for U.S. charitable organizations that improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Each month, we’ll spotlight a nonprofit that is making a significant global impact through medical research, public outreach, and/or humanitarian social programs. Charities will be selected in accordance with the U.S. calendar of national health observances based on a high rating (of over 60%) on Charity Navigator and global scope of impact.

In this, our inaugural month of November, we will celebrate national adoption month by offering a charitable virtual gift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that saves the lives of orphans with life-threatening diseases and places them in loving homes around the world. LiveJournal will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of charitable vgifts (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares and read about how they helped save Baby Kang and the Rainbow Twins from fatal illnesses, who are now thriving in nurturing families. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries gifts in the Virtual Gift shop.

Papered in postcards

A couple of weeks ago, we asked you to send in postcards to surround us with LiveJournal community. Thanks for coming through! We've received postcards all the way from Germany, Finland, and Canada and from all over the US, including Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Indiana, Hawaii, and Oklahoma just to name just a handful. We're thrilled with our improved decor.

Please keep the love coming for one more week by writing to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be drawing the names of ten random contributors next Thursday to win paid account credits!

Photos of the week

We have more dazzling images posted by talented LiveJournal photographers from around the world. We're hoping to span the entire globe, so please continue posting and tagging. Of course, you can also sit back and enjoy the view at lj_photophile.

You can see a sample of this week's gorgeous photos and check out spotlight communities and awesome user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

( Thoughts on Puerto Vallarta )

I had a talk with the lady that works at Sultan bakery who was in PV in 2006. She said to use American dollars for everything... What about pesos do they take pesos should I GET pesos? Anybody know anything about preferred currency, or even better, what's going to get me the most for my money?

Still, I can't wait, it's going to be awesome.

Absolutely gorgeous. If you think the colors changing in Washington are beautiful? I am just in awe of the autumn New England has to bare. Ha! get it? Bare? all the colors without any evergreens and there are wild turkeys that just roam around. I'm jumping ahead so here let me rewind a bit. The wedding was small and somewhat informal but, in no way cheep or less beautiful. I welled up a bit like everyone else but, managed to hold back. I gave a toast, "To Amber and Jason, May your days together be long and your hardships few". Which I totally stole from wow but, I like the sentiment and no one noticed. We had an hour before dinner so I went out to visit the truffle pigs and sample a few herbs in the garden. It's funny to watch a guy run out every once in a while in a full chef's uniform with a pair of scissors. The pigs were adorable. I have a couple pictures of them. The irony was I returned to the dining room for a nine course pork themed meal. Ok so maybe I'm not as sophisticated but, it seems to me the more expensive the meal, the grosser the food tastes. $200 a plate and I was fantasizing about a nice big juicy porterhouse. I threw up on the way home and didn't eat for another two days. The plane ride was very uneventful. Chicago to Hartford I rode in a smaller jet that was incredibly fast. almost caught some sleep but the children behind me kept kicking my seat. I vaguely remember threatening them and was reminded why I don't want children. Little bastards should have been thrown in a cage and made to ride in the cargo section.

I made it to Hartford a little early but was met with a huge embrace and a passionate kiss. Just like in the movies. I guess the anxiety of, I hope she likes me in person" was over. Got into the apartment and had amazing sex. Much relief I after over a year of celibacy I still knew how to do it. I would say it's like riding a bike but, no this is much more fun.
Only embarrassing moment was when I had to use the bathroom and took the stinkiest poo I have ever taken in my life. I blame the food from Friday night. luckily I found the Fabreze and she either didn't smell it or pretended well.
Finally got caught up on sleep. Sunday we went to visit Mark Twain's house. They said you weren't allowed to take pictures of some of the museum pieces but I did anyway. Mainly the shackles that belonged to a former slave he freed and made into his butler also Mark Twain's traveling trunk which he took everywhere he went. A couple of candid shots of Christine and I posing as Mark Twain, Huckleberry Fin, and his girlfriend whatever her name was. I'm thinking Darla but that's probably wrong, wait, maybe that's Alfalfa. The house was amazing, he bought it for $40,000 but was easily worth ten times as much. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside or touch anything. I only touched something once, I leaned on a chair and got yelled at by the tour guide. The tour consisted of me, Christine and two sixth graders who were friends of the tour guide, so she sneaked us into a few areas of the house we weren't supposed to go into, so that was cool. Mainly his man cave with the billiards table and we saw the desk that he wrote all of his favorite works at. The tour guide also let me put my hand on the railing where Mark Twain had his hand so hopefully I will get some inspiration out of that. It was getting late, but we were able to peruse the gift shop where they had a life-sized Lego sculpture of Mark Twain, I have a picture. Also a scale Lego model of the home itself. I also have a picture of the woman who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin who lived in the house next to Mark Twain. A very influential book for the time. Everything in the gift shop was double the price it should have been. There were tags on books covering up the ISBN price of 19.95 with one of $40. Everything here is really expensive. It's like half the quality and double the price. I just don't get it. On the way back we found a really cool Irish pub where Christine (who I keep calling Amy because that's her in game name) had her first Irish Car Bomb. We shared a corned beef sandwich, the bartender told us there was a really cool Irish rock band on Wednesday night and we decided we would come back on Wednesday. I wanted to sample some of the local cuisines and restaurants and places we don't have on the west coast. There's a place called Wings that served hot wings of all different flavors and ribs. We decided to go w/ the #2 heat wings and some honey BBQ pork ribs run by very *ethnic black people* The most shocking part of that restaurant was that they did not have any corn bread so we had to go back to the store and get some. Who would ever had thought of BBQ negro style and not having any corn bread. Tuesday night Christine had a long paper to work on that is 40% of her grade towards her Master's degree so I home cooked a meal and she was very impressed so that won me some points on top of all of the much needed home repairs I've been doing while she's at work. Among those home repairs I painted a giant lobster, which is her favorite animal, on her bathroom door, which might I add was hung really badly and I had to fix as well. I was a little worried she'd get really pissed off but it turned out she liked it so I still have my balls. Turns out there really isn't much I can do to piss this person off.

So tonight we're hooking up with her friend and getting some much needed weed on the condition that we take her home and afterward we're going to see a very kick-ass band. On a side note, I love Sanctuary and finally got to play Rock Band and discovered that I suck at the drums. Future plans include a trip to New York to hook up with George Hayes who is now a professional comedian. That's all for now. I will update in a couple of days.

New hard drive, 1TB Seagate from Staples: Acquired.

Sleep: Had.

Websites launched: Not yet.

Spanish: Been practicing, still a lot to learn.

To work!

EDIT@08:16 UTC/GMT. Wow. That was ugly. I expected it to go for 30 minutes and have maybe 1 minute of broken connectivity. Instead it lasted over 4 hours and we had 10 minutes of downtime directly related to the load balancer upgrades and then another 5-10 minutes of downtime when our primary Pingback database server crashed and the secondary couldn't take over; which could have been indirectly caused by the network upgrade missing a self-VIP.

Anyways, we're up, we're working, the load balancers are barely breaking a sweat right now and I need some food and a shot of whiskey. I don't even *like* whiskey!!

Thanks mhwest and dnewhall for helping out!

---

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

Today can suck my butt.

Got no sleep.

Mike's hard drive has died.

Monroe offers sweet FA in the way of computer hardware, though Staples may have one, waiting to hear back.

STILL haven't launched those two sites. Waiting to hear from people.

Good: Fresh doughnuts at Sultan bakery at 5:30AM, Friendly barista at 6:00AM.

Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009 - 11am to 3pm @ The Seattle Center

Here are two more upcoming career fairs I found

*****************************

November 18

National Career Fairs
11:00 AM to 2:00 PM

Hotel Murano
1320 Broadway Plaza
Tacoma, WA

*****************************

Bellevue Career Fair
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
11:00 AM to 2:00 PM

Red Lion Bellevue Inn
11211 Main Street
Bellevue, WA 98004

*****************************

sixwordstories
Whether you're in the mood for a creative challenge or you're short on time or attention span, this semi-addictive community is perfect for those who find flash fiction way long. Once you get the hang of it, you won't be able to stop. The prince turned into a frog. The girl ran home to mother. Tough to write. Easy to read. It's a double threesome of fun.

dailyfoodie
Delicious, ambitious, and occasionally nutritious dishes make for an eclectic, all-you-can-eat feast. Whether you're searching for recipes for your next dinner party or you're jonesing for a late-night brownie fix, your cravings are sure to be well sated. A warm and inclusive community that welcomes all orientations, from carnivores to vegans, from gourmands to junk-food junkies. Guaranteed bias-free, food-positive, and pan-epicurian.

Rustycon's Art show info is updated!

Sign on in and get yourself a spot! If you've created steampunk, science fiction, science, or fantasy themed artwork, sculpture, jewelry, or photography, sign on in. This is a great opportunity to sell your work, your prints, and get recognized!

Rustycon is the Northwest's first science fiction convention of the year, it runs January 15-17th, 2010. The hotel is awesome, and this year promises to be the best so far. If you want to stay and party(and you should), Hotel rooms are a worthwhile $99 a night.

My work days are more exciting. Jeebus.

( Free-Range Pork and...Normal stuff )