Aidan Rhiannon

...hope rises again!

Welovefine has offered to replace the shirts, saying that they are switching to a higher quality fabric.

Assuming that I actually get them, and assuming they're wearable when they arrive, this will completely switch my opinion from "never buy from them again" to "satisfied customer" (Though not "happy customer", bit too late for that one, really. This aggravation hasn't been fun. But if the shirts are't crap I would consider buying from them again.)

My package was not only late (as I ranted about before,) but also mis-addressed, thus lost, and I finally got it today to find that it was also, frankly, CRAP. The shirts are thin, flimsy, low-quality material, and they included a bunch of useless junk freebies, which are not really free at all, given how expensive their shirts are ($25) and how crappy quality they are. I'd rather skip the posters, stickers, and ugly Barbie tote and have nice shirts!

So yeah. Can't recommend Welovefine at all. They kind of suck.

Thought the one. People who are tech savvy really, really, really, really shouldn't condescend, or tell half-truths to people who are not. If you want to go there, your IQ is probably not any higher than mine, I've just applied myself to the humanities and not computer science. It's not just in my journal but all over the discussion of this I've seen tech people sneer down their noses at non tech people. Not all of them, but enough to really get my back up about the whole thing. Please stop doing this. Thnks.

Thought the second. I am not paranoid. I'm really not. In actuality a HUGE amount of my personal info is available to anybody who cares to look for it. But that is my choice. I do business under my real (ish) name because I choose to do so. I tell people how to find me at the Saturday Market because I choose to do so. I use my address and not a PO box when shipping because I choose to do so. I feel those choices are the best for my and my business, and after taking reasonable precautions for my safety, I feel secure in having made them.

So in actuality I don't really mind people knowing what city I live in. When I choose to tell them. Having that choice, or any choice about my personal information taken away from me pisses me the hell off. It is not right. My personal information is MINE. I made the choice, on many occasions, to leave comments on posts where I was told my IP address would be shared with certain people. That was my choice. I chose to make it possible for posters and moderators to find me if they felt they had a real need to do so. I did not choose, in any of those occasions, to have my IP address parsed out to directly tell those people my location. There is a difference between those two things, and having somebody else make that choice for me is completely unacceptable.

I hope that someday this will become recognized as proper privacy etiquette by website owners and other people who have access to my info. Right now it seems woefully misunderstood by all kinds of people. It is never okay to make privacy choices for somebody else. Not about anything. Not ever.

When you comment in a community* the community moderators and the owner of the post you commented on can now see your location. Country, state, and city. Which means that people living in small towns who do things like... oh... call out a scammer on their scammy posts, for one example I've seen happen a lot, can now be found. Physically. Where you live. By people who might have a reason to go and hurt them.

You can't turn it off. You can't opt out. It doesn't draw from the fields you voluntarily fill in either, far as I can tell it's pulling the info from your IP address. And it's retroactive so every comment you've ever made in any community EVER now has your real location attached to it.

Bra. Fricking. Vo. Livejournal. Bravo. If anybody gets hurt because of this I hope you get sued into oblivion. This is almost enough to make me leave lj, permanently and for real this time, even though this is my primary internet "home" and social hub.

Morons. What the HELL were they thinking of when they did this? WHAT THE EVERLIVING HELL.

(And yes, I know that by posting people's IP addresses they've effectively been doing the same thing all along. But there is a big difference between "If somebody knows how and wants to go through the effort they can see where you live" and "HERE'S WHERE YOU LIVE FOR ANY IDIOT TO SEE RIGHT NOW, NO EFFORT REQUIRED." That kind of thing puts ideas into people's heads. It begs for abuse. It's just pleading for somebody to do something stupid.)

*Update: Apparently it's not all communities. Since I don't own any communities to test with I'm not sure what settings are required, I'm hearing conflicting answers from different people. There's some protesting going on in the latest lj news post, but it looks like most people haven't noticed the change yet. LJ itself has said nothing at all about this, neither notification it was starting nor defense of it continuing.

Update again: They've removed the feature. And there is a poll (and good comments discussion) about the IP logging here: http://lj-feedback.livejournal.com/16181.html

Update some more: Oh GODS I'm glad they removed this. It told people specifically when you move/go on vacation. Ie. if you post from a new spot it displayed (New location(Formerly Old Location)) That is such a bad idea that I can't even come up with words for how much of a bad idea it is! And it means that you can't retroactively proxy it to fix the problem, as it will then say (proxy location(formerly real location)) WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING?

Yay, one more update: "Generally, when you run an IP addresses (past and present) through a search engine, it defaults to the largest town within a certain radius, thus preserving some sense of anonymity. What is being broadcasted on lj, however, is much more specific.

In one instance I entered an IP address from location x into a search engine and it showed my location to be ~20miles from x. LJ reported my location to be ~5miles from location x. (And, incidentally, the town lj announces is not even shown on some road maps.)"

From a user's complaint on the well-hidden post from livejournal that mentioned this "feature" in passing. (Which I finally dug out.)

Now will people please stop treating me like I'm some kind of idiot and admit that I had reason to be concerned? Thanks so much.

If you hit on me, via IM or any other medium of communication, you will get blocked. I have public IMs for business only, and even if I didn't, I'M MARRIED.

Thanks.

P.S. I'm also not your shrink.

Before commissioning somebody for a fursuit, ALWAYS do your research.

And in particular, make certain you're talking to who you think you're talking to. It turns out that I might have an impersonator. Yes, there appears to be somebody going around, using the name Bladespark and showing pictures of my suits as examples, but they're not me. Not sure what happens if you commission this person, I heard about this third hand, apparently the person he/she approached turned him/her down because of horrible behavior and an absurd price quote. But I'd kind of suggest not commissioning somebody unless you're sure who they are!

How do you do that? I'd suggest you go to the real maker's actual website, and find their actual contact information (and if it doesn't match, there you go) and contact them and make sure they're really who you're dealing with.

A google search should turn up the legit site first. :) "S. Park fursuits" turns up me, for example.

(And now I know I've hit the big time. I've got an impersonator. XD )