State of the Union - September

I hope the ads interest you enough that you click on them to check them out, as they are our primary source of income and keeps the site moving and ensure I don't have to beg for donations.

CSI
Let's start big. You up for that?

Okay! So we got Sara Sidle back! Wow. I really didn't see that coming, since Billy wasn't there anymore, but stranger things have happened. What did you think about the episode? See also: 10x01 "Family Affair" discussion post -- Episode 10x02 airs tomorrow night, but that's October and this is September. We did get a lot of cute little promos, and there was rampant speculation about that 'smudge' on Sara's left hand which was either edited in or edited out (depending on which GSR camp you're in). In the end, the truth won out and the spoiler was determined to be true. Sara and Grissom were married.

Of course, most of us knew that beforehand. On Tuesday the 22nd, People Magazine broke the news with a video of Catherine and Sara talking about baseball and marriage. Then TV Guide (.com, not the magazine) put up their MegaBuzz saying Sara was finding it hard to be a housewife. So by the time we got to Thursday, people were ready. Then again, on Wednesday, TV Guide Magazine published their article with Jorja and Marg answering questions we sent in! Apparently life does revolve around the idea of CSI: The Musical.

Also, Jorja made it out to Vegas for the opening of CSI: The Experience (gallery link) at the MGM Grand, and she and other cast members took part in Events of the Heart to promote healthy heart awareness for women.

I don't know about you, but I'm ready for a break! So maybe it's good that Jorja's not going to be in the first five CSI episodes. She's not in episode #3 (which airs October 8th). There's a brief list of confirmed appearances up, but it's subject to change. Such as I think she may actually be in the crossover episode, but I'm not certain. If your head is spinning, you're not alone.

Advocacy
Due to the massive fires in the LA area, Animal Acres gala was postponed to Sept 12th, which was the same weekend as the Las Vegas opening of CSI: The Experience. In the end, Jorja did not make it out to the Gala.

She did make it to the NSF and GQ Join Forces To Stop Puppy Mills Humane Society Benefit on September 22nd, though.

Radio Star
Jorja also made time to visit various radio shows. On the 23rd, she was on KCRW as a Guest DJ, spinning five of her favorite songs. Then on the 24th, she went to KROQ to talk about the CSI premiere later that day.

News Roundup!
In an effort to start making things easier for you, I've consolidated the news. How? Well, it's still sorted by year, but on the year page, you can now just go to September 2009. That should help!

Site News?
Actually, we're really cool! Out of nowhere, a brand new CSI fan donated $50, and with the extra traffic we've been getting, the ads for the site have been helping a great deal. We're good for this month, though. Our server alone costs $60 a month, just in case you wondered why we have ads! I believe in transparency, though, and as much of this as I can 're-purpose' from what my paying gig provides, I do! Thank you, Photoshop and Office!

I turned on comment moderation (some of you have noticed). This is an attempt to stop spammers more gently, and have fewer of you caught in my traps. I try to keep up with anyone in the moderation queue, especially on Thursdays and Fridays! This last week was hard, as it was Yom Kipper! A brief reminder to anyone here from Russia: I love you, but you produce more spammers than anywhere but China. For that reason, any email ending in .ru is automatically rejected when they try to register or post a comment. Please make a gmail or other such account for JFO. I'm sorry to have to do that, but it was that or my sanity.

There was a bit of downtime last week, which I believe I've fixed with a couple of changes to the code. Not to bore people, but if you don't care about that thing, the short answer is that JFO runs a little faster, but doesn't quite update in real-time with comments like it used to, and the gallery doesn't always reflect what's new right away. The geek version is that we're serving up static pages instead of dynamic. The gallery refreshes once a day, the blog every hour. I do manually purge those when I know a lot of posts/images are coming in.