His name is Usher, I got him yesterday and I am going to mod him into an SA at some point but for now until I have time here he is, I luff him O_O Usher is my newest and last of my Dollshe collection.

A very big thank you to marny for selling me this boy!



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Rowan looks better now :x

( The three stages of Rowan Matteau....Something )

Don't know which do I like better, the Firm or the Now. He definitely did start off as a quiet gentleman. He's more gentleman now, but less quiet looking than the Firm.

He really looks like Raleigh in the firm one OTL

So I heard that Crobidoll's got more new boys. I took a look at Gillian A and thought that it was the weirdest SD sculpt they've ever made. I didn't feel the least bit compelled to look at him again after scrolling past all the pics.


And then I saw Gillian B.

Dude. Faceups do matter.

(my heart is crying inside for the boy in the second pic)

On a side note, is anyone else interested in coming for a small doll meet tomorrow at Ikano Starbucks? Mostly for the CiG participants but everyone is of course, welcome <33

Not modded by me. He is for halonofeathers and she also requested he be painted like a previous Saint. Damn, I forgot the moles >__________> I hope you like him and sorry for the use of Thourne's body over and over again but it is most convenient >_>



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Ever had a doll for awhile that you had every intention on selling and well......he sells? I just sold my little Wendall (Kuuta) O_O I honestly did not think he would sell since he was not one of the more popular YO's. I had him for awhile and he sat there while I painted him over and over again, last night I finally got him to where I was really happy with him and put him on DoA. He just now sold and I am a little sad :( I know I can get him again if I miss him too much and I'm sure this will go away but he was such a good sport....lol

Kuuta goes bye bye...




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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!

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Curtains

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

Once again, it's 3am and I'm still not asleep. I seriously need to rework my sleep schedule.

Anyway I managed to snap a couple of pics of my dolls in their new eyes today before it started to chain-rain.

( A few piccus of MSD boys in new eyes )

I guess 2 rights out of 4 is a pretty good stat. Unless you count Milan's as half since Elan's eye is doing him some justice. I'm not sure if I should sell the fourth eye or try it out on Haruka. I'm too scared to try it on Devrin incase I regret not the dollshe Sky Blue eyes OTL

First I heard about it was a couple days ago when B got ripped off for $600. Someone used his bank ATM VISA debit card to make a purchase of $600 of cosmetics in Los Angeles. I guess after that they tried four more times to rip him off but those were declined.

Sadly he's with Chase now who has a history of handling these things badly. Because it's a debit card it's hooked to his bank account which means his account is frozen and he can't access the money. Chase will not close the account.

From what I read on-line, this has been happening a lot and Chase's policy is to tell people too bad, we think you authorized the transaction. Since it's money from bank accounts and not credit cards, the customer is out not Chase.

Now I'm reading today of other people having this happen including BofA customers. I do not know if they are VISA debit cards. I also had someone the other day attempt to buy somethings from eBay outside of eBay using a VISA debit card. I declined because I can only take Paypal and they claimed not to have a Paypal account. The whole thing smelled.

From what I read, it's important to get a police report to have the banks take you seriously. Sadly B found out the police aren't really investigating this. However from what I'm seeing on-line, this is becoming a massive problem and people are losing thousands of dollars.

He found out because he checked his account. So checking your account if you have a VISA debit card is important. I think also maybe getting it closed and having a non-VISA debit card might also be something people should consider.

Here is why. With a regular ATM card you have to use a pin number no matter where you use it. You can not just sign your name. It does limit the use of it, but actually it's better to pay with cash because doing that tends to make people spend less. If you don't want to carry cash around, have a credit card with a low limit on it and pay it off every month.

I say credit card because stores usually ask for ID when using one. On-line transactions ask for those numbers on the back. And if there is fraud, the credit companies are more likely to deny the charges since they can be the ones out the money. Unlike a debit card fraud where the money comes from your bank account.

Anyway, B is going to move his accounts to a good credit union for now, once he can get his money. All I can figure is someone has accessed the data banks for the VISA debit cards because this is turning out to be extremely widespread with many people getting ripped-off.

So I'm posting this as a warning for people to at least pay attention to your accounts if nothing else. Me, I don't have a VISA debit card but still going to keep tabs on things.

Stuff coming and going.  Always seems when you need to spend all your time doing something important, a bunch of non-important stuff pops-up to cause interference.  Anyone up for adding an extra week to this month?

So to keep my brain from going all 'splody, I tempt myself by looking at various goodies on this here internet.  Fashion being one of those vices.  I have a love for some of the Japanese design houses, because I feel like they are more accessable to their customers in both accessability of the clothes and designing for the human form.

Sadly it's been for a smaller form than many of us humans have.  So I look longingly yet do not touch.  Such as one Atelier Boz, known for elegant goth aristocrat wear.  But the other day my eyes did spy a sizing that actually could work!  Not just women's size but men also in case someone's shoulders are a bit more than too.



Also tempting is this skirt they have to keep posting on their blogs, darn them.



I don't know how well you can see this, these are the best photos so far.  But it has this marvelous ruffle that twists round and round.

And if that isn't enough, someone tell me what Isao and Suigintou are doing hanging out at the Kobe store?  (doll people you have to check this out)   http://bozkobe.blog115.fc2.com/blog-category-3.html

My images are bigger, what do you think? too big? she wanted him painted like a previous Saint I had done so I tried to make some differences.



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So I have been doing a lot of thinking about my part in this hobby, my dolls and photography mostly and when Kristen was here we did a lot of doll talking and playing and oogling over other people's dolls and photography. Kristen said something to me that has stuck with me ever since, we were looking at someone's dolls and she mentioned how their dolls were all so "interesting". Then I started thinking how true that was and how important that was.

I then started thinking about my own dolls and wondered why I did not get the urge to photograph some of them and I think it is because they lack something "interesting". Sure they may be "pretty", decent face up and clothes but to me that is not really all that interesting and along the lines of boring. I think this is an exciting revelation and I really need to look into my own dolls and figure out a solution.

I don't want anymore boring pretty dolls but more interesting dolls. What makes a doll interesting? there are so many things and I need find out what that is and be more creative to and put forth this into my dolls and make it exciting for me again.

I really wish I could start this whole hobby all over again from the beginning as I would do it so differently but now I have said doll and have put work into said doll and gave said doll a name and have become somewhat attached it is too hard to let go Y_Y I really hate that and how I get attached to inanimate objects.

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.

1. Paid a visit to the Betsey Johnson store, where the friendly but somewhat overbearing salesgirls tried to pressure me into buying this 200-dollar jumpsuit. I tried to explain to them that I do not have the kind of lifestyle that involves the buying and wearing of sequined, ultrashort 200-dollar designer jumpsuits, but they didn't seem to get it.

2. Bebe: Most of the stuff in here is a little out of my price bracket, but they had some items on sale in the back. Tried on this cute 20s-style dress. On me it did not look anything like the way it looks on the website model (egad, I just typed "moddle"), but I thought it looked nice.

3. Anthropologie: OMG most cute kitchenwares ever! I pretty much wanted to buy that entire section of the store. One can never have too many whimsical measuring cup sets. (A bit spendy, though.) Got some crafting ideas in the Christmas decoration section. I need to get my hands on some wool roving.

4. Stumbled upon an enormous (3-floor!) Forever 21 outlet. Thumbs-down: unfriendly salesgirls who avoided eye contact when I tried to get their attention and then snapped at me dismissively when I requested assistance. Thumbs-up: three floors of very reasonably priced, fun clothing. I was ravenously thirsty and when I got to the third floor I discovered that they miraculously had drinking fountains! I would have been grateful for lukewarm water at that point but the drinking fountain emitted a generous stream of frosty H20 for my delectation.

5. I saw a red wool skirt at H&M yesterday and planned to go back and buy it today. My plans were foiled, however, by my fallible sense of direction: I was unable to find it until a couple of minutes after it was closed (the doors were still unlocked, but the doorman ejected me without so much as a how-do-you-do).

6. Hit Britex Fabrics shortly before closing time; only got to look cursorily at the offerings on the first floor.

7. Panhandlers. Every sidewalk. Every ten feet.

8. As we walked through the public parking garage on our way to the car, we came upon a flailing, desolately howling man and two security guards who were attempting (so far unsuccessfully) to talk him down. The man was clutching his head as if he thought his skull might explode into shards at any minute. First thought: "Yikes, mentally unstable man -- better keep a wide berth." Second thought: "I guess I'm better at keeping a lid on it, but I cannot honestly say I've never had one of those days."

9. I wish my body were more resilient. Neck, shoulders and lower back muscles: sore from unfamiliar bed, bag-lugging, etc. Feet and ankles: sore from walking around. I'd probably do a lot better if I had one of those space-age antigravity devices like the obese villain in David Lynch's (sorry, Alan Smithee's) Dune.

ETA: 10. There was a creamy-white Pomeranian loosely tied to a parking meter outside a cafe, with no owner in immediate proximity. I offered it my hand, then rubbed its absurdly fluffy little body. It toddled between my knees so as to facilitate the rubbing. Pomeranians are such unlikely creatures -- like manipulatively adorable wind-up toys come to life.

Just felt like taking pics of her as I find her somewhat interesting, doesn't help me to get her ready to sell -_-




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This weekend I discovered that I freaking love Hujoos and wish there was a more active online community for them.

Due to a massive USPS screw-up, the Dirty South Will Call didn't receive their Raven Moon and testers in time for Will Call. So, they're holding a second Raven Moon Will Call!

GA Will Call will be at Whole Foods Market, aka Harry’s Farmer’s Market, in Roswell, GA.

They will be holding Will Call on Sunday, November 15th from 5 to 8pm, inside Salud (which is inside the store.)

Whole Foods Market is located at 1180 Upper Hembree Road, Roswell, GA, 30076.

They will be holding an auction to benefit flood damaged farms in GA. Everyone who donates will receive an imp of Daya.


They will have all of the current LE’s available, along with their extensive selection of GC scents and all of the Retail-only Salon series as well.

Whole Foods accepts Visa, Master Card, Discover, American Express and cash. They will not be able to accept any preorders.