My Twitter tweets for the day.

Read them or not at your leisure. There may be some new stuff in there, so if interested, check ( behind the LJ cut. )

There is nothing going on in my life that is more important than the appalling acts going on in Iran.

If everything goes well, our house will be switching from Comcast to RCN tomorrow afternoon. As of then, all e-mail that goes to my Comcast address won't reach me. The best address to reach me will be at GMail.

All of the mail in my GMail work account is gone, save 10 messages in the Trash.

My chats are still around.

I followed the step-by-step help, with no luck. (I don't forward.)

I looked at account details, and didn't see any suspicious activity as far back as I could see, but it only showed the several times today I tried to access it.

Ack.

Ideas?

Addendum: Similarly, a whole slew of e-mails in my personal account were in the Trash for no good reason . . . but only a random assortment???

To whom it may concern:

Our apartment, Event Horizon, has no home phone service at the moment. If you need us, please call our respective cellphone numbers; I think rhya is going out and getting a new one tonight.

Thanks!

contradictacat
rhya
The Awesome New(ish) Guy
and Me

My Twitter tweets for the day.

Read them or not at your leisure. There may be some new stuff in there, so if interested, check ( behind the LJ cut. )

So! Comcast vs. RCN. If you're a local Boston user, what do you think? We're looking at a TV/phone/Internet bundle?

I've heard two negative reviews of RCN so far, one local and one in NY. I'd love to hear more information in the next day so we can make our decision tomorrow.

(Additional note that Blue Rose has had or heard bad experiences about RCN.)

Yep, phone's still missing.

I've called T.T. the Bear's and let them know, just in case it was lost rather than stolen. It could have fallen behind the large wood and metal thing on which I set my coat, scarf and purse. (I'm worried it's still there, actually.) Maybe I'm just too trusting. At any rate, T.T.'s doesn't open for the day until 6:00pm.

Neither Apple nor AT&T cover theft. So I'm SOL on that count. In fact, I'll likely have to pay the full price for the phone rather than the special rate I received for my plan with AT&T, which means that breaking the plan, paying the fee and getting a new plan might be cheaper.

They mentioned that my credit card might cover theft . . . but I just looked through my e-receipts, and I purchased the phone on a card I canceled. MasterCard Assist can't help either, because my purchase is over 90 days old, and they don't do replacements after that.

The good news is that when I called my old CC, I found out that I overpaid my last bill by around $300, and they're going to send me that in a check. So . . . it's sort of like it's being replaced? Sorta?

I'm currently on the phone with AT&T to find out how costly their fee is for breaking a plan, because it may just be cheaper to break the plan, pay the fee, and get the new iPhone at the $299 rate rather than the $499 rate I'd get it at otherwise. If the fee is less than $200, it's what I'm likely to do.

. . . and it's $176. So I'm still saving $24 by doing it this way.

So yeah. I'm likely going to the Apple store today and getting a new phone. I'll have to decide whether the hassle of canceling a plan and getting a new plan is worth $24.

So, yeah. At least the cost to me is ending up $200, not $500 (because of accidental monies in my old CC, but still).

What this also means -- and mea culpa to everyone -- is that whoever has my phone also has all the contact information for everyone I had in it. As I'm not even completely sure this wasn't a loss rather than a theft and I'm not sure what they'll do with this brick of a phone once the battery runs out, I don't anticipate there being any issues, but if you end up having any problems, let me know.

My friend riffling is an out-of-towner and hasn't found himself crash space yet. Anyone have bed or floor space for Intercon I? He's cool, a fun RPer and doesn't bite.

Messages to him, not me.

Thank you!

A quick heads-up for interested parties:

Jonathan Coulton
November 21, 2008 at 9pm
Paradise Rock Club in Boston (not Johnny D's!)
http://www.livenation.com/event/getEvent/eventId/336844

You can buy tickets as soon as now; I just bought two.

Are you an industrial designer that wants an intern? Do you work in a company that might want an industrial design intern? Do you just have contacts in the field? Or, heck, contacts in general that might pan out in that direction?

If so, I/we need your help! :)

We just found out today that numath needs an industrial design internship for the fall. He is a 2nd year year student (will be "pre-junior" as of the fall) at the University of Cincinnati in Industrial Design. He is experienced with Alias Maya, ZBrush, Alias StudioTools, Solidworks, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Poser, carpentry, and tailoring.

A link to his resume and portfolio can be found here. (This link is very slightly out of date and will be updated within a few days of this post.)

His school's internship requirements are as follows:

• related to industrial design (the design of any physical product that isn't a building or clothing)
• monetary compensation; the internship must be paid
• a supervisor/boss overseeing his work
• roughly twelve weeks experience between August 30 and January 5

If you have any leads at all, please forward them on to the e-mail address listed in his portfolio. If you pull this off, I am happy to take you out to dinner or something similarly shiny. Thank you, from he and I!

Invisible Housemate is likely moving out. Know anyone who's looking for a place to live as of September? Contact us here! (Or, y'know, over e-mail.)

( Click here for more details. )

I'm going to be (cabin) camping this weekend. Does anyone have a completely cat-free sleeping bag I could borrow?

Addendum: Huge, heaping thanks to those who offered their sleeping bags! In the end, I decided that I've been living -- er, sleeping -- on others' generosity too often, and shelled out for a simple bag.

My phone seems more or less unable to find its wireless grid at the moment. (This seems to be a change from this evening, when I made multiple calls.) I've been trying to call the number necessary to update the tower listing on the phone but, well, no ability to find the wireless grid = no ability to update tower information.

So I'm not sure how long I'll be without a cellphone. It might resolve itself on the T; it does sometimes do that after losing a connection underground and regaining it. If so, I'll be uncontactable when I'm out of the house. Sorry about that.

I'll post again when I know more about the phone.

I'll be back, at the earliest, by 8:00pm EST tomorrow.

As I'm not sure I'll have time to write up something substantial about the link I'm about to post before the strike, I'll just say that leora has an interesting post about further LJ developments up. In it she links to an apology from LJ (which should have been in news, but still) and some clarification from Nosik regarding the comments he made in the interview I recently posted. Basically, she says everything I would have wanted to say about them and does so eloquently. Go read hers.

From akiko via leora's LiveJournal, an article from CNews, a Russian IT review magazine.

The last paragraph of the article includes this little nugget (apologies for the translation language, it's theirs, not mine):

"Furthermore, head of one of rival projects believes that in the near future the service might also abandon paid accounts. 'Owners of paid accounts are of certain interest to advertisers. However, under the existing scheme such subscribers see not advertising, which reduces revenue from advertising,' - thinks CNews' source. But SUP assures that it does not intend to undertake any steps in the given direction. ‘To take such steps, the average revenue per user should exceed $25 a year (the cost of one account), which is unlikely to happen soon,' - says Anton Nosik."

Sooooo . . . they won't move in that direction until it's financially useful for them to do so. Right?

Another quote from Nosik, regarding why LJ didn't need to let anyone know about the policy changes: "We do not consider it necessary to inform those, who have not opened a basic account during 9 years of LiveJournal’s existence, that there is no such an opportunity any longer."

Thanks to shadesong, I was made aware of an interview in AND Magazine with Anton Nosik, The Director of the Blog Division of SUP. The original interview is in Russian and printed as such; anyone capable of doing so is welcome to read it here. As I don't know Russian, I'm taking it on faith that the English version of the interview (translated by russianswinga) is more or less accurate in content and tone.

I've included the English translation of the interview behind a cut for those solely interested in the text itself. Regardless of your take on the situation, I think it's well worth reading. It lends some insight into the perspective that the director has on the users of this particular blog, mentions the boycott, and so on. (It's also fairly appalling, IMO.)

( The interview. )

Here are some choice quotes from the article . . .

"I don't know any of LJ posters familiar to me, those I have friended and commented, that would want to join said boycott. I honestly don't know any people that would seriously take up that initiative."

(In response to the interviewer saying, "So, there'll be no boycott?") "No, I didn't say that. Because any person can create several hundred fake LJ accounts, comment in them that on the 21st of March, 'I will be silent in protest.' Then you journalists can quote those fake users and list the names of those that were silent that day. And add a cute catchprase like, 'that's just the top of the iceberg.'"

He then goes on to compare those who would boycott to those who would call the American advertisers and suggest they cancel their ads, and then comments that anyone who would do that are idiots.

Claims that base accounts should not be available to new users because, "To give such anachronistic features to new users should not be standard practice."

"There no longer exists an entity on the web, which, without specifically being a charity, would refuse to make money."

Highlighting the lack of need for base accounts, he notes that a "good portion" of base accounts are used ethically questionable activities such as, "spamming, increasing search engine ratings, leaving comments that would get their account banned."

Notes he's personally fine with offering an account downgrade to base after 3/12/08 but claims because the boycott has been initiated, "Our hands are tied."

". . . People are trying to scare and blackmail us, threatening to destroy our business, there are business reasons for not rewarding such behavior. . . There's never been a successful company whose success was based on bowing to collective resistant forces."


So . . . the boycott is being suggested by a few rabid idiots who will make the effort seem larger than it is by making hundreds of fake LJ accounts that list themselves as being part of the boycott and making sure the media knows about it. (This is, of course, similar to those who wanted base accounts in the first place, since most of them are spammers, TOS breakers and people looking to increase search engine hits.) This is not only idiotic, but blackmail, designed to destroy LiveJournal as a business. LJ and SUP are the victims here. And because of the blackmail, now LJ can't consider the possibility of reversing their decision because it would be bowing to collective resistant force. Besides which, journaling accounts with minimal features are a thing of the past and no new user should have them available to them (presumably because it would make the business that offers them look bad). Wrapping it up in a neat little package is this quote phrase: "There no longer exists an entity on the web, which, without specifically being a charity, would refuse to make money."

Gotcha.

Nah . . . I'm not locking this post. If something happens to it, we can talk about the implications of that.

Want to protest against LJ censoring the interest pages and removing the Basic account level?
Join the strike! (And repost this to your own journal.)
Everything's explained at beckyzoole's LJ, but basically: on Friday, March 21st, we will not be posting or commenting for 24 hours.

Also, x_bluerose_x points out this and this worrysome stuff.

( Some of the strike content below this cut. )