Hello!
I hope you are doing well, or whatever passes for doing well these days.
The board has been intermittently down for the last week or so. As you know, intermittent problems are irritating. it’s like your car is making weird noises and you take it the mechanic and you say “Gene, a lot of times my car makes a weird noise.” And Gene says, “I can’t hear it right now.” And you say, “Gene, I know. It’s not doing it RIGHT NOW! Also, Gene, why did you leave Brenda? The whole town is talking about it.”
So, I put in support requests to Dreamhost. They check it, it’s running, and they send a nice note telling me that it’s running. (And, also, asking me if I have any idea why in the world Gene the mechanic left Brenda.)
A problem we have had for, I dunno, 15 years or so is that Ben and I don’t know how to mess with the server and databases. At 1.2 million+ posts, it’s probably a larger database. In fact, according to my rough calculations, the database is large enough to cover all of Bibb County, Alabama. Bibb County is small but it’s a whole county. Neither did Nanohedron or MTGuru know how to repair databases. And, by their own admission, neither does our hosting service. I don’t know anything about databases, which I just demonstrated by that reference to Bibb County.
I am talking to the sales department of another hosting company that I THINK offers phpBB support. If that works out, I’ll migrate the board to them.
I should also say, while I have your attention (and I realize really don’t, but when has that ever stopped me?), I’m concerned that we are down to two moderators: Ben and myself. And myself doesn’t really moderate anymore. In a case where Ben is hit by a bus (or whatever they call busses in England), I would not be able to administer the site. So, it would be great if we could get a couple of people willing to moderate.
I plan to keep the lights on and pay the rent here as long as I can. (Yes, they’ve been blinking a bit lately.) However, strange as it seems, I was in my 40s when I started C&F and next year I will turn 70. There’s not a chance in hell that Mrs. Wisely will continue to pay the bill when I am dead or whatever. That’s because the woman, to whom I’ve been married for 46 years next week, has good sense.
I got several emails from a company that wanted to buy the board. I declined. I think it might have been a front for the U.S. Republican Party.
Okay. There you go. Thanks for your attention and for your participation in the board!
Later,
Dale