Why hello SURPRISE WINTER!

I betting the wild flowers that had sprung up already around here are thinking they've been had. I mean we have Indian Paintbrushes, Blue Bonnets, buttercups, and those tiny white/purple flowers already blooming. Azalea bushes have been blooming. We were in SPRING! (For southeast Texas anyways.)

Apparently not. It was 48 degrees when I drove in for my chiropractor appointment this morning. 48 degrees! Our high today is predicted to be 50 degrees.

Meh. However, we do need this rain as we're under a burn ban. We finally got more than just sprinkling last night.

Also, I've mentioned this before on this journal about other LiveJournals' being hijacked. news has finally posted about this. Please read it. Especially if you ever used Hotmail for LiveJournal.

First off, there's been a bit of hacking going around on Livejournal. There's at least one bigger LJ I read daily that's been hit. While you can't really stop a determined hacker outside of taking the machine off the network, you can slow them down. They seem to be hitting e-mail addresses like Hotmail that are attached to the LJ that the user no longer has control of. And while they seem to be hitting larger journals, it never hurts to check what your account is listing. (E-mail management is here.)

Here's some posts about it, including several from copperbadge which was one of several who's been hacked. An account of the hack from copperbadge's side.

Three Things to remember before freaking out Which is a good summary of what to worry about.

1. Most importantly: If there are any email addresses associated with your LJ account that you no longer have control over, remove them remove them remove them remove them now. If they are the originating email address on the account, uh, reopen the account or contact LJ support to get it removed, I suppose. It can be done -- they removed my hotmail address permanently.

Another community hacked and what to do if you've clicked on the link.

Besides being hacked, the hackers delete all the journal entrys and post a "hey go look at these awesome lyrics" post, which has a keylogger on it when you visit it. Fun, huh?

Some things to backup your LiveJournal with, which by the way, is also good for the uber rare occurance that the LiveJournal database servers go down in flames with their redundant backups: ( Backup links )

Interesting thing I found from the commentors was this Firefox addon - Keyscrambler. It's interesting. And it does have an IE component.

Test your typing speed! I'm roughly 68WPM. How about that. :> If I don't get too flustered because of the ticking clock that is. (And subtract all the errors I make...)

Now, for fun: The Brave Superhero List in response to the Evil Overlord list.

So for the TL;DR version: check this when you're logged in, if you don't have control of any address listed there, remove it.

sarcastic_elf, I think your Hope Diamond analogy is sounding more and more true everyday.

Okay, yes, this is another "What did LJ's owners fuck up now?" post. If you're not interested at all, that's fine. I'm not certain how everyone's friendslist are so I'm passing the info along.

There's a content strike on Friday brewing for LJ. Current outrage is due to this (article within) and LJ not letting its customers know upfront about a change to the accounts. (Another less incendiary translation of the article by furiosity, with some helpful cultural points. )

So, want more info?

Here.

I like femmequixotic's view here.

An industry POV of all this by xie_xie_xie (IJ).

Personally, with so little time to spread the news, I don't think it's going to do much. But I probably will be inadvertantly participating by the fact I really don't post much on Fridays. I look at my friendslist...unless I'm trying to fit in some game time before I leave for the gym. Last week I saw my friendslist on Thursday, and didn't see it again until Sunday.

Or they can go by copperbadge's suggestion and post the heck out of LJ til one of the servers goes down.