On the Threshold of a New Year

[akirlu]

I haven't been around LiveJournal much over the past year. I really should try to rectify that -- journal the days as they go and participate in what community is left here. And so, a post! A post!

Truth to tell, I dropped in today partly prompted by the news that a friend was migrating entirely over to Dreamwidth, owing to the tiresome service outages on Livejournal. And now that I'm here, poking around my friends feed, I see that here in LJ-land there are concerns about security of personal and financial data, now that the servers for Livejournal have been physically located in Russia. I can can certainly understand the concern. But for me there isn't much that happens in my journal that isn't publicly visible anyway, and I don't have a paid account so there's no financial information associated with my account either. And truthfully, I just don't like Dreamwidth very much. It's always felt like the most anti-social social medium I've had contact with, ugly in design, badly set up for reading comfort, and a nagging nanny about constant sign-ins, while throwing impediments in the way of building a viable network of friends. So, like sartorias, I guess I'm here until the place burns down and falls into the swamp, or until the Russians do something sufficiently egregious to force me out.

Meanwhile, it's a lovely, sunny day in Seattle and the office is dead quiet due to the impending three-day weekend, so I believe I'll lock the place up and take myself off to lunch, by which I mean taking some pictures and buying some art supplies. Wishing you all a Happy New Year, and, to borrow a page from the often wise and very smart Avedon Carol:

this year I wish you all the strength you need to face the future, and many moments of peace and joy.

As always, I also wish you good, reliable health care that's free at the point of use, and the fortitude to admit it when you are wrong and cope with being right when no one else is.

I wish you these things no matter where you come from, what you look like, what you believe, or how you voted.

Be kind to each other, dear friends.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Good to see you back, and here! And best wishes in the rollercoaster year ahead!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Good to see you; good to be back. Hope to make it a regularish thing going forward.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

It would be deeply awesome if you posted more! Yaaaaay.

My main rule for posting is "Am I willing to discuss this in a court of law?" When I was a paralegal oh so many years ago I was simply appalled at a court case where people claimed something-or-other (a drug? a placebo?) ruined their sex lives. They then had to discuss the number of orgasms they'd had before and after the clinical trial and all sorts of what I found far too intimate details of their sex lives. Boy, did the prosecuting attorneys enjoy their work on that case. I know there's only a sheer veil of privacy over my data in real life.

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

I still consider LJ to be my primary online home, and find it far too useful to leave (more than once, I've found some necessary information about some past event by checking my journal around that date), but I mirror everything to Dreamwidth, just in case. I've also got the username malkingrey tied down at a number of short-lived or obscure journal sites, just because it's mine, dammit, and I want to keep it that way.

I use Semagic for my LJ posts, which can be set up to post to Dreamwidth at the same time -- it's a tiresome process to set up, and every time I switch systems or upgrade my operating system I have to slog through it all over again -- but the trouble is worth it.