Eric

Lately, part of the normal Windows update process is a chance that your OS will no longer be in a bootable state upon completion (or half-completion) of the installation, with potential for data loss. Keeping your system updated is important, but it's hard to blame the average person for being leery of updates given Microsoft's recent track record.

I've got alotta problems with you people.... and now, you're gonna hear about it!

Thank you! I think all that's left is improving the automated emails that go out. And if anyone can think of a better group title than "Donors" then suggestions are welcome.

...But I wanted to mention that I had removed the Donate tab at the top of the site for a few days while I worked on a new system for collecting donations with an option to support recurring donations (suggested by @Catherine and @JohnH) The primary goal, though, is to finally be able to associate every donation with the person who made it. Before I usually had a good guess based on name or email address, but since the whole PayPal process happened outside of the website, there was no definitive way to make the connection between donation and donor, especially if a check was mailed. So now, no matter what method of payment is used, as long as you go through the checkout process, the site will create a record of that donation and associate it with your account. This also allows me the flexibility to add some minor benefits to the accounts of those who donate, like increased file attachment quotas, inbox size, etc, which is more of a gesture of gratitude than something of any actual value. If the ability to pay with PayPal is requested, I will look into implementing it as an additional payment option. Recurring donations can be cancelled at any time from the Donate > Manage Donations page. Card info can be updated/removed from the Donate > My Details > Cards page. Please let me know if you find anything confusing about the process or the way things are set up. Fine print: This is all PCI compliant. No credit card information is stored on my server. All transactions are processed by the Stripe payment gateway, and transmitted over an encrypted connection. I have implemented similar systems for hospitals around Maine--this is all up to industry standards.

I had considered adding the feature. From the development angle, it's the kind of thing I'd have fun building. I'm a big fan of automating tedious/repetitive/boring tasks, or just things I would tend to forget. And from a user perspective, it's something I would take advantage of too. But I don't know how I would communicate the addition of the feature without making it sound like I'm asking for money. So the anxiety of that situation is the reason I haven't added anything like that. I think I will now, and blame @Catherine for its implementation

You can still write down some numbers and check them against the winning pick, though. That way you can still experience the thrill of participation and the disappointment of not winning, but without paying for it.

I don't mind building computers, but I would feel badly if a component were to fail. I think you're better off buying from someone local, or from Dell so that you can get service if something goes wrong. For the laptop, if the requirements are 17" and Dell, you have a couple options. XPS doesn't come in 17" which is unfortunate because the Dell XPS laptops are really high quality and feel great to use--great keyboards, great trackpads, quality materials and finish. In my past experience, the Inspiron laptops feel like cheap flexy plastic crap, but maybe they're better now. You could also get Alienware, which has been owned by Dell for a while. They're obnoxiously styled to appeal to Gamers, but it's what's on the inside that counts and a computer that's good for gaming is generally also good for heavy workloads of any kind. It seems unimaginable that you wouldn't be able to configure a laptop with an SSD instead of an old spinning disk. If you have trouble configuring the laptop the way you want online, then maybe it's worth calling them to order over the phone.

On my own computer, I use VeraCrypt for encrypted drives, but I've heard Windows 10's built-in Bitlocker works well too. My feeling is that the antivirus software from the major companies is so bloated and intrusive that it often causes more problems than it prevents. Whatever you do for encryption, make sure you learn about what is available for recovery methods and implement them before enabling the encryption.

Haha that's messages stored per inbox

In case it's a message quota issue, I've increased PM quotas from 300 to 1000

Anyone who says violence isn't the answer hasn't given it an honest try.

Done! Edit: Almost done. I have a few more things to take care of before those last two bullet points are finished. Testing emojis. Modifying style sheets to increase their size a bit. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean aliquam in dolor vitae condimentum. Nullam tincidunt mauris eu congue ornare. Integer sit amet diam nunc. Vivamus vestibulum aliquam neque ac congue. Proin et nibh vitae risus faucibus viverra rutrum id arcu. Phasellus vulputate sem vehicula nisi ullamcorper lacinia. Pellentesque vehicula scelerisque est et sollicitudin. Cras viverra, dui et tristique blandit, quam urna scelerisque lacus, nec semper sem massa quis odio. Nulla vulputate ut ligula at aliquet. In congue mi purus, a molestie tortor congue eu. In mattis gravida egestas. Aenean pharetra pretium hendrerit. Edit2: Alright, seriously this time, all done.

I'm going to be installing a medium-sized forum update in the next few minutes, as soon as my backup has completed. There are lots of new features, but most of them aren't relevant to our community. Emojis will be added, lots of them. They are the standard emojis you are used to seeing on mobile devices. I've installed a security certificate and the whole site will default to https. I'll be implementing Google's newish invisible Captcha service as an additional layer of protection against spammers. It works by magic. Unless something goes horrifically wrong, there shouldn't be more than a few minutes downtime. Thanks!

I probably won't be in TN for the party in June (sorry), but I was there for that picnic at ATX!

Haha, thanks Judy! Yup, my join date is the date the forum software was installed. I just checked and that's also the day I registered the atxcommunity.com domain. It probably took me another day or two to get everything set up, and I think KC was the next registered member on the 11th. 36 other members followed that same day, thanks mostly to KC's network of friends.

What a terrible waste of prime office real estate. That's where my desk would be.

Could it be that it's just the point of Antarctica furthest from the pole? "Northern tip of Antarctica" is such a weird thing to say. That's the kind of phrase that will give you an aneurysm if you think too hard about it.

After that, download all of the free poker games and wallpaper apps you can find.

You said yourself that long passwords can make password hacking reasonably hard, and encryption makes internet sniffing a bit tougher. Google/Microsoft/Amazon/Apple don't expend that additional processing power encrypting all of their site traffic for the heck of it. Taking long passwords as an example, every time some website or service is hacked and a huge collection of email addresses, usernames, and passwords is liberated from their servers, almost half of them are very quickly cracked because they're weak. It's often not worth the time required to brute force the remaining passwords. That's what I mean by low hanging fruit. I mean, I have a database (stored locally) of my hundreds of passwords. I can't imagine why I would store that information in plain text when it's trivial to add a significant layer of protection by encrypting the whole database. Sure it's relatively safe on my network, but sometimes happens, you know? EDIT: Speaking of poop happening, sorry about the site going wonky for a while this morning. There were some issues that may have been brought about by my host patching the server against meltdown and spectre late last night or early this morning.

And not doing it makes you the low-hanging fruit.

Merry Christmas holidays are awfully hard on an introvert. I am so tired.

Have you considered that maybe you are a robot?

Alright, added a bunch of emoticons/emojis/whatever. Nevermind! I had to remove all of the new emojis. I checked the roadmap for the forum software, and a new emoji system is in the works for the next version, and it looks like full unicode emoji support will be added. I want to avoid conflicts, so for now I'll have to get rid of the new ones. Sorry