Herping in Alaska has its challenges to say the least. Well this weekend was one of those challenging weekends for us Alaskans. We were hit very hard Friday with an endless snow storm that started Friday early and ended Sunday Evening. Our temps bottomed out at -15 by Saturday afternoon with a blinding snowstorm continuing with visibility less than 5 feet with little or no light (we only have 5 hours of light to begin with this time of year). I was forced to plow my 175' drive way three times Saturday or give up on most of it for the remainder of the winter. By Saturday night it was snowing so hard I could not see my 6' fence just three feet way from my front door. I was cleaning my black throat cage when we stated to get power outages only lasting a few minutes at a time then it went out with a bang at 8:00 pm. It been a few years now since our power went out like that so we knew we were in for a tough night. By 1200 I was getting beeping alarms from my reptile room that got me right up and running only to feel the house cooling off way to fast. I walking into my reptile/music room to a ambient temp of 70 and realized we were going to drop even lower. I ran and started a fire and once I got the temps up to 75 I moved my now rather pissed off 4' Black throat and 105lbs Sulcuta Tortoise to the upstairs living room. Poor guy thinking about it heres comes me grabbing him out of a dark cold tank with a flash light that would scare me for sure. I spent the the rest of that night and all day Sunday burning wood and keeping him and my tortoise as warm as I can. Boy or Boy trying to find my wood pile and dig wood out of the 48" of new snow at -20 in the dark is so much fun when it took me almost 10 minutes just to reach my wood pile. This really make me rethink my plans of moving my reptile room to the barn. All went well this time. How have any of you dealt with power outages. I put off the new generator this year to tile my basement floor but next year I will have a nice working generator and space heater ready. Now we have just three more months of dark days and snow to go so for now I have my fingers crossed.
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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.
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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.
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Responding to email notices you receive.
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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.
Close call as power goes out
- Thread starter Chris Wilkinson
- Start date
While I realize California is no Alaska (I spent my adolescent years in northern Idaho) I can on some level relate.Last season we got a couple of feet of snow overnight(highly unusual),that threw the power out for nearly two weeks.My turtles were alright but my juvenile Savannah monitor was another story.We were forced to remove him from his enclosure and leash him in front of our heater. He was fine and on the bright side he became very familiar with our cats and dogs.This year we have a generator,but no snow.Go figure.
Lol forget moving the reptiles to the barn i would be moving out of Alaska!