Are you a gladiator? You must be cuz you're the only one I've seen make even a feeble attempt at moderation/explanations around here so far.

Nice try on the tip jar thing, but I notice that it's really a beer mug. Guess we all know it's 5:00 where ever YOU are.

PS Do you think I'm cute?

no. you are not cute. you are boring. go away now.

Troll Troll troll yer boat
Gently down Jim Beam
Merrily merrily merrily
Now we can be mean

Well, fine! I think my cell phone is finally charged up by now, anyhow. See how nicely I respond to requests?

Well I was just thinking a sliding scale of sorts, because the more that comes in, the newer and more powerful the server or servers could be. Like, a little over $100 will get one an HP ProLiant from 2005. A little over $200 will get one a Dell Poweredge from 2009. A little over $300 will get one a HP from 2009 but with 6 drives included so it would be simple to RAID up and be even more reliable with more storage. And twice each would make two servers so the database server could remain separate.

There are many many eBay deals out there, it's a matter of working through them all...!

I've priced the cloud computing and there's no big savings... the cloud people are making big profits and remain in high demand...

thank you for answering my question.

are you looking at what's available or are you thinking more of what hardware is best suitable for the intended task? i know that sounds condescending, not what I meant. I kind of mean, I know you're not shopping for new with some configurator tool that lets you pick the components in the quantity / speed / capacity you need. I never really considered the mfg date in my calculations, but then I never was concerned about it even though I did sometimes buy used gear.

I know db servers looooove disk space and memory, for example. What does the replacement server .. What will be the main function of the replacement server(s)? What trait/component will it need or benefit from an abundance of? If it's running pretty nicely (as it seems to me over the last many months) on a mere 256 mb of memory, perhaps a new server with gobs of gigs of ram would be a "waste", for example.

I'm just curious.

There ya go; I'm typing this on my phone, in Wilmington... the server was almost dead from lack of memory, so I swapped the old cellar server's memory in and that is giving us some breathing room

Thanks, toad.

Yes. Thank you. For more than just fixing shit today.

Toad, should we be refraining from doing anything? Like, oh, I don't know....posting frivolous images/videos?

Steady on, old boy, if the fly didn't kill you, abstinence from posting frivolous images/videos surely will :eek:

Way to go Toad :) You da man!

Now, a benefactor is interested in promoting this Tip Mug project and here's the deal.

From as of now, until 11:59pm Saturday a "matching grant" will double any donation, until there have been $300 of donations to match.

Iit should be pointed out that there has already been another large donation before matching, but we wanted to start this as of now. It will probably ensure that we can get two quality servers without a lot of mileage, and ensure that the Cellar is in really good shape as we move ahead.

Tip mug donations are anonymous because we really don't want to make anyone feel bad if they can't afford to give. Whether they give, or don't for ANY reason, I hope people feel equal on the Cellar.

I will also say that if there is enough money for us to get a decent amount of disk space, I will be looking to create an image hosting system for Dwellars, as a way of saying thanks yet one more time.

I will point to the eBay sale pages once the servers are bought, so you can see what the donations have brought us.

*phew*

This has been a rough day, and by the way, making it all that much tougher is having to schedule people coming through my house to see if they want to buy it. There were two people today! And I can't be here when the house is being shown!

UT

hang in there man. keep your priorities straight in this stressful time. there are *lots* of houses out there, ok?


There is but *one* cellar.

Plan accordingly.

;)

Bollocks! My contribution was 10 minutes too early!

?

what's wrong?

I'll match it! (um.. .within reason. I don't think UT can spend monopoly money).

pm if you wish.

No it counted. Takes a little while for Paypal to chew on it.

The first $175 is matched. (!)

Yay for generous cellarites! :) You guys rock

Mine too!

It was too early? I'll make the same offer to you. I'll match yours (within reason).

been a while since I've tipped. Seems like a good time to make up for that.

are the cookies out of commission until we get a new server?

They work now... needed a configuration tweak

... or a 747 full of dvds.

mine counted, you mean?

yes it did!

sweet.

Can you tell us what on the big "tote board" at this time? (I remember hearing that term, and I believe it's short for total.)

With the matching we are just over $900. This will give us some fine options indeed.

awesome. thanks bigV. sorry it wasn't much, this is the worst month for us

Wow. I'm impressed!

I am proud of everyone!

you all rock.

Thanks a million UT.

wow, that's so awesome!

Well done everyone, and especially well done to Da Toadster!

Although I expect that the "regular" mug is going short this month... I am planning to reserve a segment of that for the monthly nut. (Keep giving folx, if you haven't)

Also as time goes by it occurs to me that I need to put a lot of engineering thought into this. What *precisely* is the best setup in terms of disk, memory, etc. versus a more recent system that hasn't been so used? And I'm thinking maybe new hard drives is a good plan rather than just taking the up-to-five years old drives in a used system. A lot of considerations.

Is the thread subscription email notification broke down or does it just not like me? Seems like a few weeks since I got any email love (from the cellar at least).

Ok, guess I didn't read far enough back, server issues, bad stuff all around in the poor cellar so I assume that's the cause. Best of luck with repairs UT!

New Q: My images aren't showing up when I preview my posts...they show up in the actual post, but not the preview...any ideas?

ETA:

Attachment 41149

When I don't use the 'attach' bracketry, the pic shows up in preview.:neutral:

Dunno! That one's a mystery.

Fixed itself, apparently.

I want a lol button.

can you put in a lol button...? like a like thing on myface? where when infinitemonkey says something like perplexephelia and I lol, but I don't have anything other than lol to add.... and i don't like to just post lol. can you do that?

for meeeee? and lollers like me?

I'd like that.

And a sarcasm font.

Like we'd ever use that.

People on many forums want a LIKE button

We should consider a software change after the hardware change.

The gamer forum I visit has a one click rating system. There are a range of ratings: agree, disagree, like, dislike, funny, informative, creative. A tally then appears on the post, showing the icons for ratings.

That then also feeds into a rep system for users, but I wouldn't suggest we have anything like that here. The ratings though are kind of fun.

We've been campaigning to get the mods to add 'facepalm' and 'Wtf?'

+1 like
+1 informative
+1 agree

-1 popularity contest
-1 canned feedback
-1 we don't need no stinkin' avatars do we need another distraction that other forums employ?

I'm with im on this. There are individuals here who post a fair amount of dreck and occasional irreplaceable brilliant insight. Would they keep posting if they got slapped down 9 of 10 posts? I'm willing to wade through the flotsam.

Agree. :thumb:

I bet you wish you could have just hit a little + sign huh?

No, that's like whistling at a chick hitchhiking, while you blow by at 65.

:lol:

Yes,it is like that.

Not that Bruce ever passed by a chick hitch hiking.

Should we dispense with annual moderators elections and just hold special elections if a moderator resigns, is impeached, banned; or, kicks the bucket?

I realize that some may like having elections to gauge their relative popularity even though they're not at all likely to change the status quo; but, the competition seems to detract from the spirit of the holiday season.

I think the elections are good. People should have a choice.

The job has been a lot easier since UT changed the sign up procedure.

Yeahbut, UT's getting up in years and sometimes forgets to get the ball rolling in a timely fashion. After elections, he forgets to update moderators' names in the Cellar introduction. I think he just gets a tad overwhelmed what with the holiday season and all.

Perhaps we should at least move the elections then. How about April 1st?

What say the wolf lady?

April first is fitting.

who you calling a lady!?

I like April 1, too.

Getting back to the "ratings" thing:

One of the other forums I visit has a "Thanks" feature (for your incredibly useful, insightful, whatever) post. The names of the people thanking the poster are shown below the post. Naturally, there's always a gang of the usual suspects who thank each other, but if someone posts something really good, I'll notice all the "Thanks" beneath and decide to read it to see what all the fuss is about. It's a very large forum, and the "Thanks" help seperate the wheat from the chaff.

While the Cellar is nowhere near as large as this other place, I can still see where a thanks/plus system might be helpful here and even kind of fun. I don't get discouraged from posting on that other forum if my every word is not greeted with universal acclaim, and no one else does either. It's no different really from starting a thread and seeing if you get any bites. Sometimes you do - sometimes you don't - no biggie.

Rep points are kind of fun, too. The system I'm familiar with lets you give other posters rep points for a really great post, but the rep points are added to the username field rather than the post itself. If you want to make a comment along with your rep point, it gets sent to whoever made the post as a pm, but the rest of the board doesn't see the personal comment or even who it was that awarded the points.

I think either or both of the above might be interesting to try. We could have rep points and/or "Thanks" for a given trial period and then everyone could vote if we want to keep them or not.

I am still with griff who was with im. ;)

Rating of any kind is extraneous and distracting. What's all the fuss about? Usually much ado about nuttin' (see merc wtf.)

Yeah, but you and griff could be thanking each other and giving one another rep points for these very posts and no one could thank me, never mind giving me rep points and that would prove YOU are the ones who truely understand the Cellar gestalt if only we had a rep point system. :D

Sam, can users there turn these features on and off themselves as we can do with some of our post displays?

[User Control Panel>Settings & Options>Edit Options>Thread Display Options>Visible Post Elements>Signatures, Avatars, Images.]