So for those of you who were helping me in my icon drama over here, I finally got a response from my support request:

Thank you for your report. The Content Delivery Network (CDN) used by LiveJournal to display some content, such as userpics, is currently experiencing an issue with incorrect content stored in its cache. This is causing userpics to display incorrectly to some users; please note that userpics are not being physically replaced, they are just displaying incorrectly.

LiveJournal developers have now cleared the CDN cache and your userpics should now all be displaying correctly for you. If this is not the case, please try clearing your browser's cache, as explained in the FAQ located at http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=160.

I still say that's not a good sign for them.

Ok you guys, some of you may remember the icon that I had which was a Canadian flag waving (gif), and it said, "made in Canada".

So I went to use it, AND IT HAS BEEN REPLACED BY SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!

This icon in fact! WHAT THE FUCK?!

I'm opening a support ticket.

What the fuck is Sheffield United F.C. anyway?

*Edit: Apparently I'm the only one seeing the Sheffield United F.C. 1889 icon. I still opened a support request. Request here if you are interested.

**Edit: Ok, I'm not the only one seeing it. Some people see it and some people don't. What the hell?

Despite that this entry doesn't talk about costs, I think it's unlikely.

I finally got to meet stuporstar! She and her man stayed at our place, and she is exactly as sweet as she seems. I wish we could have spent more time together, but it was such a nice visit!

I finally got around to updating the look of my site and livejournal.

In addition, I updated my links, made sure they all work, and yeah... I'm thinking it looks kinda nice :)

I'll miss flexible squares, but I don't know enough CSS to style it further the way I'd like.

Re: The recent livejournal drama where journals were being suspended due to people having certain "interests" listed in their profile. The lj-abuse team over-reacted to a questionable complaint about child abusers, and without actually looking into the situation, did a mass suspension of journals which effectively labeled all the journals/communities that were suspended as being pedophiles (a list of the offending journals were published)...

Read more about it here: http://news.livejournal.com/99159.html.

I posted a comment on a friend's entry that I will expand upon here:

I have always seen the interest list as a list of things in which I am interested, not a list of things I necessarily promote or support. For example I used to be an addictions counsellour, I studied in the field of toxicology and my current job is in drug research. My interests contained (note the past tense here) things such as: addiction, cocaine, alcohol, mj, crack, poisoning, etc. This doesn't mean I like them, use them, and condone/encourage the use of them, but considering my background, I am quite interested in them. I certainly didn't interpret those little sentences prefaced in lj's instructions on what to put in your interest list “I like x”, “I’m in favor of x” or “I support x” to indicate that it was an lj policy that you had to be in support of those items you listed. This is not indicated on the TOS nor anywhere else on the site. If they are concerned about objectionable interests, they should consider blocking the ability to list those things as interests, rather than delete the journals involved. I listed them as interests because I am interested in them.

Some people have expressed that this issue is not one that is serious. I would disagree.

Here's an example. What about people that are previous sex offenders, but are currently law abiding citizens and are not doing anything wrong? For example someone convicted of stat rape because his girlfriend was one month too young. Not wanting to get into a debate on stat rape here, but I honestly don't see the above situation the same as an adult targeting a 10 year old. If a law abiding but previously convicted sex offender was associated with one of those communities that had been identified and labeled as promoting pedophilia, he could have been thrown in jail.

Here's another example regarding fandom. Harry Potter fans involved in fandom communities on lj are now unofficially associated with pedophiles. They may not have pedophilia as an interest, but to people who saw the vague news reports and didn't follow through with seeing fandom get off the hook in the end, this association may not have been broken.

Hopefully this won't have professional or legal consequences for any people who have mistakenly been labeled as being a pedophile or associating with pedophiles, but I certainly think any such false accusations are very serious indeed.