Are you on Windows?

Yeah. That's about the shape of it. I didn't realize google indexed LJ. Go me. Let's hope my prof doesn't google his own name too often.

You can minimize the inclusion of your journal here by checking "Minimize your journal's inclusion in search engine results".

Yes, I'm running Windows XP. :-)

I checked that box - thank you!

If you can use Java Hide Journal may do the trick. It worked for me.

There's a Windows version that won't strip the tags.

Neat :D

I used LJ Sec, on the 6th of January to do exactly that.

Painless, fast, all done. Loads of control over exactly what it does.

Fantastic - thanks!

Thank you!

About google cache, there is an option in LJ settings
for disallowing search robots to index your journal.

You can explicitly ask Google to remove something from their cache. Details are probably on their website somewhere.

I looked into that - you have to show them that the page is 404. Grrr.

You do? this Google FAQ suggests that once you've made the entry friends-only, you should be able to contact Google and have them remove it from their search index.

Hey! That's great - I was misinformed.

Actually, that's only one of the methods :)

If you use the single page option, you can request the entries be removed because the page now has the meta tags in them for it.

Although it says "Single Page" you can use it multiple times. Your best bet is to tell it to remove your user page, and any entries you explicitly don't want in the cache or searchable right this minute. They'll be gone in a couple of days, and google will remove the rest next time it crawls your journal.

Thanks for the great advice! It's a relief to have a solution.

Could you please clarify this? What do you mean by "the single page option"?

When you go to google's automatic removal system and log in with a google account (or make one if you don't have one), there are 3 options for removing pages from google's index and/or cache.

One of those is labeled "Remove a single page using meta tags". That is what I was referring to :)

Thanks!

Has anyone found anything like this that will run on a mac and not strip any tags or other information?

OS X has Java installed by default, Hide Journal (mentioned above) should work on it.

I know that, but this implied that HideJournal would strip tags...

It does now!

http://rdc.untamed.co.uk/HideJournal/hidejournal.htm

"UPDATE! : Windows Hidejournal now supports LiveJournal TAGS!"

It's the best program I've ever used! It's ace, and it worked on my journal. =)
I've added public posts since, but they're not personal ones.

But, if you read my original post, I do not use windoze - I use a mac.

Ooopps... I think I'm going blind, sorry - it's my age!

Indeed, from the HideJournal page linked to above:
"Make sure you're not using tags.

Because HideJournal was written before the introduction of tags to LiveJournal, it will strip tags from entries. You should expect to have to back them up and restore them by hand if you want to use the current release of HideJournal."

I asked for:
"anything like this that will run on a mac and not strip any tags or other information?"

So...

I've got the same problem with managing my messages for friends-only =(
The only thing I've found is
http://hidejournal.livejournal.com/
but it's kinda inconvinient and complicated =(