We're finishing up a few odds and ends before our next major release. Our mighty Ops guys continue to slay spambots and balance load times on a highwire without a safety net (which is kind of tough dressed in full ninja gear). Down on solid ground, we're celebrating this week's virtual birthday party with a warm toast to pants. If you can rearrange the letters of your favorite city, state, and/or country (feel free to combine these elements) to spell one of Frank's favorite treats (e.g., pants, wire, paper, etc.), he'll send you over a can of whipped cream to top it all off (provided you return the empty can for his midnight snack)! And, with that, let the word scrambling commence!

Stuff you should know:

We're still working on the delayed/missing notifications issue. Sorry, we're frustrated too. We'll keep you posted. Last week, we became aware that a recently-implemented script was overwriting affiliate referral fees for some of our users. Once we confirmed this, our Ops team quickly removed the script. Please be aware that, while we may beta-test other affiliate scripts down the line, we will take greater measures to ensure that no existing user-referral arrangements are impacted in any way. While we plan to stick to a weekly news schedule, if we have a release in between regular newsletters, we'll post here to keep you informed. You can also check lj_releases for current release information.

To our paid users, we send squirrels in love!

If you have a paid or permanent account, you can send five free Squirrels in love vgifts through Monday, March 15th at 4pm, PST! You'll see both the free and the $0.99 squirrels displayed until they've scurried off to their new homes. Please send only one vgift at a time. In other words, you'll need to complete check-out and start a new order for each vgift you send. If you're not receiving vgifts (from friends and/or Frank), you may have disabled them. To enable vgifts, visit Edit profile (under Profile), scroll down to the bottom of the page, and select 'Do not disable' from the drop-down menu. Have fun!

Help is on the way!

We're pleased to announce the winner of our first charitable vgift poll, Doctors without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières, which provides critical medical care to under-served populations around the world. Priced at $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of the proceeds we raise from the sale of this vgift (we'll cover credit card fees). We invite you to start recommending nonprofits for our next fundraising drive at ljnewscontests. We'll take suggestions through the month and post a poll in the news during the first week of April to let you choose the recipient. We thank you, again, for your passion and generosity.

We've crowned a header

Congratulations to ohterlus for submitting the winning header, which will go live next week and keep us leafy through mid-April! You can submit designs for our next header contest at ljnewscontests now until March 31st. We'll post a poll in the news to let you decide which header will sit at the top of LiveJournal from mid-April to mid-May. All artistic interpretations are welcome. The winner will get a $25 LiveJournal gift certificate. All other contributors will receive $5 gift certificates. Our heartfelt appreciation for sharing your talent and creativity!

For this week's winning photo and more adventures with Frank & Meme, we'll catch you under the cut!

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where in grand rapids can i go to sell used books for cash?  I've already tried schuler's and Argos in east town.  The books i am trying to sell is Manga, so if that helps.   thanks for the help.  if any of you guys are interested this is what i have:

* Mars vol. 1 - 7 $5 each
* Neon genesis evangelion vol 1, 4 $5 each
* Hellsing vol 2-4 $5 each
* Magic Knights rayearth 1 - 3 $5 each
* Rurouni Kenshin vol 1 - 7 in japanese $10 each
* how to draw manga vol 1 - $15
* busorenkin vol 2 $5 each
* deathnote vol 2 $5 each
* Genshiken vol 1 $5 each
* Watchmen - $10
* Astonishing x-men 1 - 2 - $5
* Ultimate x-men 1 - $5

So this year I am totally going to Latitude Festival. I have always wanted to. The headliners were announced last night and well, looks pretty good. I'd go into the standard questioning though of whether Vampire Weekend, Florence, Belle & Sebastian etc are ... suitable to headline and ponder over if these are really safe or really dangerous choices but ...

Bret Easton Ellis.

A+ Latitude. I am in awe. Well played, sirs. You managed to convince one of the most critically acclaimed, the most influential novelists of the 20th/21st century to spend a weekend in a muddy field surrounded by rainbow sheep, when his long-awaited sequel to his INCREDIBLE debut novel is about to be published?

... My hat goes off. Wow. I cannot wait.

My Band Name and Album Cover meme

Shamelessly stolen from, er, either Ais og Gabs!

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4.Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result as a comment in this post. Also, pass it along in your own journal because it's more amusing that way.

Again, no ( excuse! )

Is there a good place around here to buy non-factory farmed meat? Open pasture, sustainable, predator-friendly, etc?