[update]

[hermionesviolin]

Friday morning the flist was all aflutter over the nudge feature.  It's not on news and I didn't even notice the button on UserInfos.  Supposedly it sends a form letter.  Apparently it only works for mutual friends who haven't posted in a week or more, and I'll concede that the list of inactive journals could be handy, but a form letter seems tres gauche.  (This is an interesting idea for using the function if it let you nudge any user and write your own message.)

Catching up on the flist now, I hear S1 has tag support.  This should have happened from the very beginning, and I still find the tag thing problematic because tags only show the 50 most recent entries, so people using tags instead of Memories (as opposed to using both, since I do grant the convenience of tags) makes me right pissed.  [Sidenote: Is there any reason Memories is forever giving people the message "The memories feature is temporarily unavailable." forcing them to refresh umpteen times?  Couldn't the LJ team expend some effort on that?]

Back to Friday:

musesfool: Speaking of which, I have fic wanting to be written. Why it's not writing itself, I will never understand.
hermionesviolin: Word, yo. I have assorted fics from last year that need to be kicked into shape and somehow they have yet to turn themselves into finished products.
musesfool: It's unacceptable! Lazyass stories, making us do all the work!

'Twas a slow day, and I was attempting to work on my fic for seanarenay's resurrection of the incest challenge, but writing pr0n at work is weird.  I was also attempting to work on another one of my fics and realizing I may have two mutually exclusive timelines happening in the same fic.  I need to actually write down a timeline so I can keep it straight (the fic switches between present and past) and finish the fic.

Jasmine and I were talking just on Thursday about evolution of language and suchlike, but dude, it's spelled "Shepherd."  One who herds sheep.  Okay, the SGA character's last name is spelled Sheppard, but when you come from an Abbey and it's a title, it's Shepherd.

Watching Millionaire, the $100 question was: Smokey the Bear and Woodsy Owl are representatives of what organization?  (Or something like that.)  Heart the D. option: Bureau of Self-Righteous Icons.

'Round 3:00, my temp agency dropped by, with balloons and a gift (jelly beans and an AmEx giftcard).  "Associate of the Month" (for December; no idea why it takes them so long).  So cheesy, but hey, gifts.  Prof. MW came by and saw the balloons and asked what the occasion was and I explained and said I got jelly beans and money too and he said, "I hope it's lots and lots of money -- so much money you don't know what to do with it."

A note came with the gifts, reading in part: You have always stepped up to the plate whenever we have called you for assignments with many of our clients.  Your supervisor has rated you as an excellent Associate and we are proud of your performance.  You have received positive feedback from your supervisor on your assignment such as: "Elizabeth has been doing a great job- good enough to consider her for a full time position."  The American Express gift card is our way of saying "thank you" for your outstanding job performance, flexibility and positive attitude.

Cynical people might have comments.  Proving that I sometimes do have a filter between brain and mouth, I just thanked them.

No way was I taking the balloons home with me, but it occurred to me to give them to Mary Alice to give them to her son (it's a bunch of normal balloons filled with helium and one shiny one saying "Congratulations").  "I won't tell him they're second-hand," she said, "I'll just tell him they're from a colleague" -- which is true enough as far as it goes.  She told me multiple times how thoughtful I was, and I was so glad the balloons could go to a good home 'cause it would have been so sad to come back in Tuesday morning (yeah three-day weekend!) and see them all wilted.

After work, I went out to dinner with hedy and my mom (onwingsofeagles).  I got an avocado & havarti melt, half-size fruit salad, and a smoothie.  Yum.

Then we went to see Home -- which I had gone to the staged reading of last summer.  (Staged reading reaction here; reaction to this version here.)

Came home and slept for a huge amount of time, which was bliss.

Then I watched Pulp Fiction with my brother.  Um, okay.

We had my grandma over tonight to celebrate her birthday (which actually happens on Monday).  After dinner [complete with Riesling :) ], presents, and dessert, we watched March of the Penguins.  Nice, but not as amazing as it had been made out to be.  The anthropomorphizing was kept to a reasonable minimum.  I would have preferred more tragedy, but (a) I'm nobody's target audience, (b) it was marketed as a family film.

We rounded out the evening with DVD of my brother sledding on the hill outside his dorm at school.  (Choice quotes from the cameraman: "You're officially an idiot" and "You suck at sledding.")

Comments

[marginaliana]

Congrats on the appreciation of your fabulousness! And I was amused by your comment about having a filter - I definitely feel that way sometimes. You just have that moment of going "I should just say thank you. I should not say what I'm thinking. I can write a post about this later." At least, that's what I do.

The nudge feature seems, eh, pointless? Actually, no, it doesn't seem pointless - it seems RUDE. "OMG you haven't posted enough to keep me amused rite mor plz!" No, thanks. If anyone ever uses that thing on me I will have to depend on my brain/fingers filter to keep from giving them a not too polite reply. :)

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Thank you :) And yeah, knowing one does not have to remain silent forever makes it so much easier to remain silent/polite for a time.

The general reaction I saw was along the lines of: "Anybody who 'nudges' me is gonna get defriended."

Havarti--Second only to Brie

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Whoa. I hadn't heard of this nudge thingie, but I'm all WTF? If I haven't heard from someone in a while, I'll email them, or if I don't know their email, I"ll drop a comment to their most recent post. That's much more sensible than a form letter from LJ on their frequency of posting. Too, too weird.

Can't wait to read these fics you've got gestating. I've got a Regan Tam fic in the works, but I can't guarantee that anybody's gonna wanna read it. It's gonna be a lot about being pregnant. LOL

Hello, naked lady icon.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I'm hardly a cheese connoisseur, so my surprise of the evening was learning that when mixed with other things I like avocado.

I rarely go more than a day without posting, nevermind a week, so I'm sure I'll never be a victim of "nudging." I honestly don't know how word got out about it. I assume somebody saw the new icon on a UserInfo and tried it out and things went from there. But yeah. I can see the usefulness of a list -- LJ says at the top of the list "Feeling you haven't heard from someone recently, but don't know who? Here are all of your mutual friends who haven't updated in at least a week." -- and if it let you write your own message that could be handy for people who don't have their e-mail addresses displayed, but a form letter is so tacky.

Fic about the Tam parents can be really interesting, so I'll definitely be interested to read it. (And I really will read your Buffy/Faith one of these days ;) I have a huge backlog of fic to read, but I'm thinking mutual friends are gonna get moved to the top of the list 'cause [a] the fic's more likely to be good and [b] if I don't like it I know I can at least have a conversation about why.)

Hola to you, naked lady bottom icon *g*

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Isn't she lovely? I love her haircut.

I very much like avocado. It's one of my favorite fruits(?). When I studied in Spain, we'd eat salads loaded with thick, green slices and the most perfectly red tomatoes and this lemony, acidic dressing.

I know what you mean about the backlog of fic. I have about five fics of glossing's to read. I just couldn't keep up.

Re: Hola to you, naked lady bottom icon *g*

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

It's a good thing I saw the comment title in my inbox first so I knew who it was from already 'cause I opened it up and was like, "Hey, that's thistlerose's icon." Oh the confusions of shared icons :)

Leaving out the sidecurl, her haircut is much like mine now.

Avocado is a fruit. Seed surrounding by pulpiness.

I had plain avocado once at school 'cause it's a big thing with vegetarians and I wasn't a huge fan, but apparently mixed with stuff I'm fine.

I didn't know you studied in Spain. I took many years of Spanish but never felt confident enough to try actually living in a Spanish-speaking country (I also wasn't a huge fan of most of the Spanish Dept. classes at my college, so from very early on I had numerous reasons not to go JYA, and I'm very glad that I stayed on campus all 4 years).

Re: Hola to you, naked lady bottom icon *g*

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

And I just found out that Naked Lady in my icon is actually Josephine Baker, one of the first African Americans to become a silent screen star. Oh, I bet your hair looks lovely; I've had mine that short as well, although now it is shoulder length.

I studied in Spain for a summer in undergraduate. It was an amazing experience. Being immersed in the culture and the language really helps you learn the language much more quickly.

[(Anonymous)]

Watching Millionaire, the $100 question was: Smokey the Bear and Woodsy Owl are representatives of what organization? (Or something like that.) Heart the D. option: Bureau of Self-Righteous Icons.

What was the answer? As I recall, Smokey the Bear is either a representative of the United States Forest Service, which is part of the Department of Agriculture, or the National Park Service, which is part of the Department of the Interior. Woodsy Owl, on the other hand, was dreamed up by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is an independent agency, not part of any Department.

So was the answer "the federal government?" If this wasn't a $100 so-easy-that-anyone-can-get-it question, I'd wonder if the answer might be The Advertising Council, the people who make up and place so many PSAs (public service announcements, not prostate specific antigens, the chemicals that often rise in people with prostate cancer). People working for the ad council dreamed up McGruff the Crime Dog and the slogans, "Friends don't let friends drive drunk" and "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

http://www.adcouncil.org/campaigns/

Yes, I should google before I post.

[(Anonymous)]

Contrary to my memory, they are both from the Forest Service.