• Posted 12/19/2024.
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    I am still waiting on my developer to finish up on the Classifieds Control Panel so I can use it to encourage members into becoming paying members. Google Adsense has become a real burden on the viewing of this site, but honestly it is the ONLY source of income now that keeps it afloat. I tried offering disabling the ads being viewed by paying members, but apparently that is not enough incentive. Quite frankly, Google Adsense has dropped down to where it barely brings in enough daily to match even a single paid member per day. But it still gets the bills paid. But at what cost?

    So even without the classifieds control panel being complete, I believe I am going to have to disable those Google ads completely and likely disable some options here that have been free since going to the new platform. Like classified ad bumping, member name changes, and anything else I can use to encourage this site to be supported by the members instead of the Google Adsense ads.

    But there is risk involved. I will not pay out of pocket for very long during this last ditch experimental effort. If I find that the membership does not want to support this site with memberships, then I cannot support your being able to post your classified ads here for free. No, I am not intending to start charging for your posting ads here. I will just shut the site down and that will be it. I will be done with FaunaClassifieds. I certainly don't need this, and can live the rest of my life just fine without it. If I see that no one else really wants it to survive neither, then so be it. It goes away and you all can just go elsewhere to advertise your animals and merchandise.

    Not sure when this will take place, and I don't intend to give any further warning concerning the disabling of the Google Adsense. Just as there probably won't be any warning if I decide to close down this site. You will just come here and there will be some sort of message that the site is gone, and you have a nice day.

    I have been trying to make a go of this site for a very long time. And quite frankly, I am just tired of trying. I had hoped that enough people would be willing to help me help you all have a free outlet to offer your stuff for sale. But every year I see less and less people coming to this site, much less supporting it financially. That is fine. I tried. I retired the SerpenCo business about 14 years ago, so retiring out of this business completely is not that big if a step for me, nor will it be especially painful to do. When I was in Thailand, I did not check in here for three weeks. I didn't miss it even a little bit. So if you all want it to remain, it will be in your hands. I really don't care either way.

    =====================
    Some people have indicated that finding the method to contribute is rather difficult. And I have to admit, that it is not all that obvious. So to help, here is a thread to help as a quide. How to become a contributing member of FaunaClassifieds.

    And for the record, I will be shutting down the Google Adsense ads on January 1, 2025.
  • Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

Cape Hatteras, May 1987

WebSlave

Maybe seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.
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I was cleaning up some stuff around the front door the other day, because a Comcast tech was coming in to take a look at a modem problem I have been having. Things kind of got piled up there with everything going on lately. Anyway, I found a bag of some slides. No telling how long they have been there, or why there were there. The slides are dated May, 1987, and I suppose that Connie and I had taken a trip to Cape Hatteras then, along with her friend Liz. Connie looked through the slides with me (there were just 10 of them, and she exclaimed in amazement, as one of the slides was one that she had just been talking about to Liz just a few days ago. She asked if there was any way she could send that picture to Liz, so that gave me an excuse to find the equipment to use with my Nikon D850 camera just for that purpose. That pic (#6) that Connie was talking about is where both her and Liz are standing on a porch (Connie is on the left, Liz on the right in the pic) with a black dog in the foreground. Man, Connie and I had been married just 9 years when that pic was taken 35 years ago.

Anyway, figured what the heck, I'm not doing anything better tonight, so I will just put those pics up here. Can't remember what camera I was using back then, but I think that is when I had my Canon A1 35mm SLR film camera.

This will be in two steps with the attachments.
 

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The rest of the pics....
 

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Those are beautiful pictures. What a lovely area. :)
 
It used to be that anyone could take their vehicles out on the beach and ride for miles along the banks. But now they have some really burdensome permitting you have to go through to get onto the beaches. Not only expensive, but they require you to carry all sorts of equipment in the vehicle as well. And you have to find the place to get the permit, and I guess go through some sort of inspection too. For someone like us just casually passing through for a day or so, it really doesn't make any sense to jump through those hoops. Which I guess is the reason they did that.

So much of formerly public lands are getting "KEEP OFF" signs placed on them and roadways to them chained and gated closed. Each generation is getting more and more restricted in the freedoms that the previous generation took for granted, it seems.

At that time, we had a four wheel drive Ford Bronco. That was back at the time when you could specify every little option you wanted on a new vehicle instead of being limited to large package deals that made you buy things you really didn't want to get what you actually wanted. I got the optional limited slip differentials in both front and rear axles, so that Bronco was pretty capable on the beach. But even then, there were some close calls to getting stuck out there. And you often saw vehicles nearly sunken completely in the sand as a warning that getting stuck out there could be a real serious problem. When the tide comes in and you are stuck, it would not be at all unusual to lose your vehicle to the ocean.

One of these days I really need to digitize my entire photographic 35mm slide library. I have an entire wall stacked with the slide carousels that likely I will never look at again otherwise. Heck, I don't even know if I still have a slide projector around here any longer. I may have taken it to Goodwill at some point.
 
It is sad how public lands have more and more restrictions. But then again, I remember when I was young and my parents would take us to the beach, I do not recall there ever being any sort of littering or misbehavior. Other than taking a few little shells that had been washed up on the beach, we and everyone else left the beach exactly as we had found it. Now, littering and destruction of the environment, broken glass, fights, loud music that others might not appreciate, all seem epidemic.
 
It is sad how public lands have more and more restrictions. But then again, I remember when I was young and my parents would take us to the beach, I do not recall there ever being any sort of littering or misbehavior. Other than taking a few little shells that had been washed up on the beach, we and everyone else left the beach exactly as we had found it. Now, littering and destruction of the environment, broken glass, fights, loud music that others might not appreciate, all seem epidemic.

Yeah, it seems that people, as an average, have changed substantially over the decades. And not for the better. Watching the news, it is hard NOT to see how true that is.

Makes you wonder how things will be in the future. I am glad I won't live forever, so that will be a problem I won't have to worry about. The future is going to become something that people will deserve by allowing it to happen.

IMHO, anyway.
 
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