end-of-March snow

As I mentioned, we got around nine inches of snow on friday. Sunday afternoon, the temp almost hit 50°. In the evening, we got an inch or less of snow. It's been warm since then, and the snow is just about gone. My lion vanished some time on Tuesday. I thought there would be one little lump of ice when I got home form work, but there was nothing.

Today, they're predicting a couple more inches of snow. But they're also predicting a high of 36 this afternoon. There's precipitation on the radar, but it's mostly to the south of us.

new sponsored accounts

Did you hear about the impending new account level? They're testing it in Russia now. It's called Sponsored (not to be confused with the former "Sponsored"). This one is where you choose a sponsor, and they pay for your account. You get all the benefits of having a paid account, and they put their stickers on your car ads on your journal. And they choose your journal style. Staff says that the style will have the sponsor's "subtle banding," but I can only imagine how that will work.

Interesting.

So... if you're paid, you don't see banner ads, but you will see their logo in your background. And so will everyone else (unless you use "?Style=mine"). I imagine this will be very popular. I think most people have some companies that they like, and wouldn't mind seeing their ads in return for the paid bennies. In fact, I picture this cutting down on the number of actual paid accounts. And of revenue from banner ads. I wonder how much cash LJ actually gets from this deal. I can't picture any company paying the price of a paid account for the privilege of running an ad in the background of a blog page. Maybe that's why they're only testing it right now.