Mudcat Upgrade Fundraiser Part II

Subject: RE: Mudcat Upgrade Fundraiser Part II
From: GUEST,Dani
Date: 26 Mar 13 - 09:28 PM

Thanks, Max, but you didn't answer Jeri's Question, just her question.

Dani

Subject: RE: Mudcat Upgrade Fundraiser Part II
From: Max
Date: 26 Mar 13 - 08:53 PM

Got about seven grand since December, need another eight for summer and ten more come fall... plus the five we need to get thru any year tho the ads are covering that nowa days. Money is for labor mostly, myself and those much smarter than I, hardware, cloud space for backup, and if we get enough, a redundant internet connection. I'm really trying hard to create a sustainable model here, really doing things the right way, no band-aids, hacks or put off something for another day or we'll regret later. I may call on several uber-specialists as we come across different issues.

Like the traditions stored within, mudcat's great substance is that we've stood the test of time in a world where giants have come and gone. I'm vested. You build something that gets 17 years in and a guy, this guy, gets to feel like its worth his time to build something that could last forever. I suppose in other trade terms I could say that I'm trying to put a copper roof on the old shack. They last 100 years.

Subject: RE: Mudcat Upgrade Fundraiser Part II
From: Jeri
Date: 26 Mar 13 - 06:43 PM

I can't be first, but I can be second.

I CAN be first with the following:
So, how much do you actually need? How much did you need last time, and how much did you get? Why? Will you be posting a detailed list of what you used the money for? Are you wearing tighty-whities, shorts, a G-string or none of the above? If you have 6.7 oranges and 3.178 kumquats and put the bananas on a train traveling west at 65 MPH, what color is an invisible dirigible?

Subject: RE: Mudcat Upgrade Fundraiser Part II
From: Abdul The Bul Bul
Date: 26 Mar 13 - 05:55 PM

Ha! First to say dunnit!
Al

Subject: Mudcat Upgrade Fundraiser Part II
From: Max
Date: 26 Mar 13 - 05:48 PM

Well gang, I am humbled, honored and pleased as punch at the overwhelming success of our December round of fundraising to work on the database end of the mudcat upgrade. While I just hoped for a few bucks to keep us plugging thru the (seemingly endless) cold winter months of central Pennsylvania, we actually got halfway to our total programmatic budgets extending thru the summer.

To date, the specialists and I have a fully functional opensource database slave in operation. At this juncture it is passively (attempting) mirroring our production server, serving as a backup and testing to make sure it accepts, stores and redelivers the data (in all it's infinite international diversity of crazy characters, encoding format, html tags, sanskrit... and spaw's posts). Incidentally, we will soon be sending out a request to verify your membership email addresses, update your passwords and I know of a few of you who may have to change your usernames slightly due to strange characters. More on this later...

Living in a college town and therefore using a lot of college staff as helpers, the summer is where we need to get the bulk of our programming done. While I am not hiring students, their absence affords us the time to invest outside our usual semester load.

Our third and final phase is planned for fall and will be for hardware to create basically 2 exact servers for redundant fail-over. That is to say, no more "mudcat is down" stuff.

So here I am with hat in hand once again requesting you to dig deep and give what you can to keep us going. All the same is still the case in how's and where's which you can find below.

Thanks all, having a ball with the work and I'll have more info coming soon.

Keeping this short, the best way to contribute in via Paypal. They have been very good to us over the years, cut us a break on their cut cuz we're awesome and allow us to accept any sort of currencies without conversion/transfer/banking fees. The account is [e-mail] which you can enter manually or by clicking the following links and buttons:

USD:

GBP:

EUR:

AUD:

CAD:

If you need to, you can also mail checks or money orders in US currency, ***made out to Max Spiegel*** to:

Max Spiegel
The Mudcat Cafe
PO Box 274
State College, PA 16804

In the UK, the kind kind folks knows as The (UK) Friends of Mudcat can help, hopefully posting below the information you will need to see that the funds are directed such that we can avoid the banking fees usually associated with international bank transfers.

And as always but especially during this holiday season, you can help mudcat by shopping at Amazon using the following links (though our cut won't show up till January and February):
amazon.mudcat.org or amazonUK.mudcat.org or amazonFR.mudcat.org or amazonCA.mudcat.org

The big upside is that once the upgrade is complete, mudcat.org will be completely sustainable on non-member ad clicks. Huuurrrrraaaaayyy! No more ads for members, and God willing, no more of my pesky contribution requests (read: begging). Also, until then, please take this as a reminder that clicking our ads is an extremely important/effective source of revenue for mudcat.org.

Thanks for your time and considerations