it snows nine months of the year and hails the other three

From synecdochic, your new rage stroke for the week:

* Gender will be a mandatory field at account creation, and it will be able to appear public on one's profile. (I can't tell if people with existing gender specification will be defaulted to "nobody can see it" or "everybody can see it".) (Subsequent changelog reading indicates that the public specificity has since been removed. It is unknown whether this is to require public specificity in the future or if it will remain private.)

* LiveJournal is removing the Unspecified option for the gender field. That's right: you get to be male or female. Period. That's it. (Source.)

If this pisses you off as much as it pisses me off, go to Edit Profile and select Unspecified for your gender option. Then, go to http://www.livejournal.com/contact/?dept=feedback and politely register your displeasure. (The people who read and process Feedback are not the people who make the decisions. They are often the people who are yelling internally about the decisions.)

(This will likely take place at the next code push, which given LJ's history will be either this Thursday or next, so spread the word fast, especially to the genderqueer community. After that point, you will no longer be able to pick "Unspecified" as your gender.)

Here is what I wrote; copy and paste as much as you'd like:

( feedback letter )

To also reach someone who's higher up the food chain than the poor staff members who have to read and reply to Feedback, also email anjelika@livejournalinc.com who is Anjelika, GM of US operations.

--

This is BULLSHIT, guys. There is no other way to put it. LJ is someplace I love and I frankly want to keep it that way.

There are 2 68ths and Universities (as in the corner) in the Greater Des Moines area: one in Windsor heights, one in West Des Moines.

And there are Paneras on both corners.

What. The. hell.

nebulia out.

Just found out that we won't have Christmas at home.

No, we're having it at HypochondriacAunt's house.

Wonderful. Now I get to be made fun of all Christmas, don't get to say anything other than please or thank you, get the last shower, and get to clean up everyone's dishes.

I'm the furniture of the family. The really comfy chair everyone likes, but it's a Godawful color apparently, so everyone makes fun of it too. If it suddenly exploded or something, they would be sad, really sad, but they would et over it relatively quickly.

That's me.

To make it worse, because I'm an only child, I don't get to complain. Even if it's a legitimate reason to protest something ("sorry, I've got a migraine the size of Mt. Everest," "sorry, I've got a fever of 102," "sorry, my best friend just got randomly dumped by her long-term boyfriend and really needs me right now"), I'm whining. I mean, my family situation isn't horrible, it could be a lot worse, but I'm in a sucky position regardless.

So there's that.

There's also the fact--and this more than anything--that I love Christmas. It is my favorite holiday by a huge margin. I love Christmas decorations. I love Christmas music. I love the whole aura of Christmas. And I especially, more than any other day of the year, love Christmas Eve.

I love the church service. I think, even if I totally gave up on all religion whatsoever, I would still go to the 11 o'clock/midnight candlelight service at a nearby church every Christmas Eve. I don't know about other denominations, but the Christmas Eve service for Lutherans is a lot of music, a brief sermon, and it culminates in all the lights being out, candles being lit, and everyone singing Silent Night.

Even better, at my church, we have a bell, and the service ends at midnight and someone will ring the bell, and it's Christmas.

I love Christmas. A lot. I love spending Christmas Eve (before church and after--we usually stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning, all 3 of us) with my parents, sitting on the couch, enjoying the lights and usually eggnog. Sometimes, if it's snowing, we go for a walk or something, or we watch Rudolph the Red-nosed reindeer, but I love sitting in the family room with only the Christmas lights on enjoying Christmas.


I love avoiding TBS' 24-hour marathon of "A Christmas Story." I've never seen that movie, other than the lamp scene and a scene where a geeky kid beats another boy up, and I don't plan on doing it.

I love reading all the little Christmas storybooks that Maman puts out only during Christmas. I've spent my entire life reading them over and over again, and I never get tired of them.

I love the feeling of going to bed in my bed on Christmas Eve--even though I haven't believed in Santa for well over ten years, I still get this tingly feeling every time I go to bed, like something good happens during the night. I still follow NOAAD's Santa-tracking satellite thing that they do Christmas Eve, so little kids can track where Santa "is" throughout the night, because it amuses me, and it's just so thoughtful that someone does this for little kids (I don't think about how they're lying to them, because I loved Santa Claus, but I wasn't particularly heartbroken when I discovered he wasn't real).

When Christmas comes around, I become a huge romantic.

And I don't get Christmas at home.

It's a little thing, but it's such a huge deal to me. I'm a pretty flexible person...I like my birthday, I like having a day to celebrate myself, and I'll ask it off from work or whatever, but I'm not going to go out of my way to make sure my birthday is a clear day just for me. Halloween is fun, but if I have other plans...I have other plans. Easter is okay. I like the Good Friday service but whatever. Fourth of July it's nice to see fireworks, but I don't have to celebrate. Christmas, to me, though, is just the holiday you spend at home, cuddling on your couch, doing nothing.

And it really makes me sad that I can't do that.

Not to mention that today I caught Dad in a lie and it really, really hurt me. This is aleady and uberlong post and it's kind of a pointless story, but suffice to say, I hate when people lie to me and I was totally heartbroken. And then he tried to cover things up, and I felt worse, and so I'm already emotional. Everything's making me tear up. We've solved things, but now I just feel bad.

nebulia out.

Anneliese is being a bitch and not letting me on. Because of new updates and my own stupidity, but still, computers are supposed to be stupid-people friendly, dammit!

Grr.

Four days of school left, four days of school left...have a prayer or a good thought or whatever for Anneliese and me; I really, really need her for finals. She has my story for Creative Writing on it.

nebulia out.

Anyone who has an Apple and is FFN literate, is it acting up? Basically, anywhere I can sort stories by the different categories (title, chapters, words, reviews, etc.) I can't see the stories. Not on search, author profiles, or, worst of all, my sotries list for when I want to update. Here I was, about to do this three-chapter dump of horrors and it won't let me! But only on the two different Apples I've used for this. PCs seem to be fine...it's just Apples!

And now they're making it uber-hard to e-mail them and ask for help, because obviously they've not noticed this. how do I e-mail their support section? Anyone?

ACK!

nebulia out.

My mother is pissed. Auntie is pissed. Auntie tells my mother everything I fucking do when I'm alone, and that pisses me off, and this is the last fucking straw!

( on second thought, this is long and full of language and emotion and crap. rant under the cut... )

Swimming this afternoon--time trials still--was interesting. Fun, as always. I did fairly well in 50 breast though the board was screwed up so I'm not sure how well. 200 IM was a laugh, and I think the 100 Free was the slowest 100 Free time that I've ever had timed.

...

I feel rather proud, actually. Which makes me question my sanity. But still.

It was a good afternoon, and a decent evening, until Auntie showed up. Then it went down the drain quickly. Dammit.

quote of the post: "you...fascinate me." --miles massey (george clooney, in real life), intolerable cruelty