• 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.

  • IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!! About the Google Adsense ads being displayed

    =====================
    Posted 08/15/2025
    =====================


    Yeah, I know. They are a pain in the butt. But they pay the bills to keep my server running. Just a fact of life, I am afraid.

    Want to get rid of them? Simple. Just become a Contributor level member or above and they will be gone. -> Please click HERE."

    Is that too much for me to ask of you to keep this site running? Well, sorry about that. I too wish I could get everything for free. But alas.....

    =====================
    Addendum: 01/10/2026
    =====================


    Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....

Server move (10/10 & 10/11/09)

WebSlave

WebSlave

It is what it is, but certainly not what it was.
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Just a heads up to everyone that there will be a server move within the next week or two. They are building my new one right now.

The hard drive space has been hitting 87 percent full lately, and it's just time to get fresh components anyway. Bigger, faster, and hopefully BETTER. The RAID 0 SAS 300gb drives should hold us for a while, and the 12gb of main RAM should help a lot.

But of course these things are never painless. I have to figure out the install procedure for the chat again, so that will likely be down for a while for the duration.

I'll try to give you all as much notice as I can, but I'm up against a timeline to try to get this done before the bills are due on the two servers I am going to consolidate into the new one. Yeah, I've got to tighten the belt too these days.
 
This move may take place in the next couple of days. Had a LOT of problems getting the first one running with the configuration I wanted (I'm going kind of radical with the hard drives!) so they had to switch to a different data center for some reason.

So I'm told it is running at the new data center and they just have a few more things to do before they hand it over to me. Well, more accurately, my server guy.

I'm not sure how much warning I can give you before this site has to go asleep for several hours, but I'll do the best I can. This is a BIG site, so the transfer may take quite a while. In any event, chat will be down for a while, because I need to find my notes on reinstalling it. That reinstall is a real pain in the butt to do. Maybe I'll check to see if they have an upgrade available to streamline that process. Lord knows I've yelped at the developer enough about it.....
 
Those of us who are "chat die hards" will have a rough time with out each other LOL but, what ever will keep this site on top, I will support.

I would be bald if I had all of the head aches that you have endured over the years. Thanx for giving us the best place in cyber space to hang out Rich!
 
Good luck with the move. If you have problems integrating Real Chat let me know, I may be able to help...
 
If the server checks out OK with my tech, the move may begin as early as 1pm EST on Thursday, 10/08. He's figuring on about 24 hours to move everything from my first server to the new one.

Expect things to be broken afterwards. If things get TOO broken, I may just drive down to the beach and think pleasant retirement thoughts.... Might be time for me to resume drinking. I quit doing that when I stopped playing music, oh, 30 years ago. One of these days a server move is going to go SERIOUSLY wrong on me and lose stuff. It's just a matter of time.

Hopefully this new one will hold out for a while. I counted 16 processors when I checked the server stats a little bit ago. 12gb of RAM, and three 300gb 15K rpm SAS drives. Still, this will probably be obsolete in less than 2 years. Or else the hard drives will be filled up. Traffic is definitely increasing here at a steady pace. Which, of course, is a double edged sword.....
 
Got word from my server guy that the domain moves to the new server will take place either later today or early tomorrow. I'll be shutting down this site right before the database move needs to happen. Sorry, I won't have very much warning myself, so this is about as much warning as you are going to get about it. Any emails to me asking what has happened will be ignored, as I am going to be out of town most of tomorrow (Saturday) anyway.

Try to make any posts you make short and sweet so you don't lose them if I shut down the forum while you are composing your words.

Sorry, there is really no completely pleasant way to do this....
 
Well, I thought this was going to take place yesterday and today, but my server guy apparently fell off the face of the earth.

You know, I hear people bitching and moaning about the economy these days, yet this kind of crap seems to be the rule rather than the exception. :rolleyes:
 
OK, we're back, finally. Sort of. Chat is down and some of the later image attachments that were made between the site being copied over and the time when the database was refreshed haven't been copied. I'm hoping just copying over those missed files will fix that, but maybe not. If not, the red "X"s will just have to be found and the links deleted in the threads.

Not sure when chat will be back as I believe the IP address was hard coded into the script and one or two ports need to be opened for it.

Might be some other fanged problems lurking that haven't surfaced yet, so be on your toes. I was up till past 4am and my server guy was up later than that working on this.

Man I hate server moves. They really stress me out. But at least I'm not doing hosting for other people any longer. That was MUCH worse being responsible for other people's sites.

Anyway, if you notice something odd going on with this site, please let me know so I can take a look at it. The sooner the better, because that old server isn't going to be available much longer, so anything still on it that is needed, NEEDS to get captured REAL SOON.
 
Hey Rich, my contributing membership expires in a few days. Should I wait till the last minute or is it ok to re-up now? I realize you have many big fish to fry right now, no disrespect intended to the fish people. However I would LOVE to give you some of my money, so let me know if you see any problems with extending my membership at this time.
 
Jerry_c_62 said:
Hey Rich, my contributing membership expires in a few days. Should I wait till the last minute or is it ok to re-up now? I realize you have many big fish to fry right now, no disrespect intended to the fish people. However I would LOVE to give you some of my money, so let me know if you see any problems with extending my membership at this time.
Click to expand...

Jerry,

Thanks! Anytime will work. The system just automatically adds one year to your membership period, no matter when you renew. I've actually had people try to use that method to pay for a membership for someone else, not realizing that all it does is extend their own membership period. Which I have to go in and fix manually, of course.

Yeah, I'm hoping these server moves work out OK and in time so I don't have to fork out the money for the old servers for an additional month on top of this new one. I'm hoping this much faster server can be used to consolidate my two servers, but if not, well, I guess I'm stuck doing what I have to do. Won't know whether it will work or not till I actually try it. Would suck to have to pay for another server, but unless I close down some sites, I don't see any alternative.

Speaking of which, my server guy says this new server is by far the fastest server he has ever seen. So I guess that is saying something. Of course, all the apps I have tend to choke the best of them.........
 
What your server guy says does sound good. I hope that you don't get bitten by the "didn't see that one coming" bug. Good Luck.
 
Jerry_c_62 said:
What your server guy says does sound good. I hope that you don't get bitten by the "didn't see that one coming" bug. Good Luck.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, no doubt that will happen....

Matter of fact I've gotten two emails so far from people having trouble uploading image files for their ads. Anyone else having this problem?
 
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