Well, all my plans for getting the Forums up by the end of the year have gone in the crapper (either because of frantic schedules on my part or a complete lack of energy, in no small part because of the schedules). I can guarantee, however, that the forums will be back up in 2005. ;)
Hope you all have a good New Years. Me, I'm off to a couple of parties. Yehaw!
For those that are curious, here's what I got:
Well, I ended up just deleting the account that had now close to 80 megs of stuff in there. I tried accessing it, but kept getting an error, so I had no other choice. I immediately recreated the account with a new password, so if the email account is still active, I should be hearing about it soon. :)
In related news, all evula.org accounts now have a 10 megabyte limit, rather than the unlimited (read: 100 megabytes) that everyone had before. As long as this doesn't happen another 10 times all at once, everything should be fine.
For those that are curious, there are 136 evula.org email accounts.
Sorry that I've been MIA around the web here lately; Hellcab is now done, which means I can have my life back! What this means for you (in the order of priority):
I've got the new layout 95% done. I need to do some tweaking before I start flowing everything into it. I also need to do some PHP tests. But before that, I need to test out some content management software that the host has provided; if I can use it to power the Rants, Reviews, and Joke Archive, it would allow me to focus even more on content generation (writing and the like) than website maitenance, which is something I'd very much like to have happen. Ultimately, it could mean many more Lair updates, with more new content.
Something that will also happen next year around the Empire: evula.org will get an overhaul, of a sorts. Dunno if I'll open it back up, but I'm going to be trimming the fat, deleting dead & deadbeat accounts, as well as overhauling the banners and navigation tables (both tied into a new Imperial service). I'm not going to say much else about that, since a lot of it is tied to what work I get done for the big Lair overhaul (both in techniques and in backend software used).
Some of you may have gotten an email from the evula.org Mailer Daemon saying that your mailbox is more than 90% full. Don't worry! It isn't a problem with just you. The entire evula.org mail server is at near-full capacity; there's one person in particular that needs to clear out the 70+ megs he has in his email.
To make sure you are keeping your mail off the server, though, here's what you can do:
If you use Mail, check to make sure it is set up to delete the messages off of the server when it gets it. In Mail, go to Preferences -> Accounts and select the evula.org account, then go to the Advanced tab, then make sure the "Remove copy from server after receiving a message" checkbox is checked.
For Outlook Express, go to the Tools menu to Accounts and select your account, then click on the Options tab and make sure that "Leave a copy of each message on the server" is unchecked.
Hopefully the problem will be solved soon. By the end of the year, I'll be instituting an actual limit on the mailboxes; when I set up all the accounts, a limit wasn't even possible, so all users were given an unlimited allotment when the feature became available. Just one more thing to do around the Empire...
Edit: Issue resolved, here is the related blog entry. Comments on this topic are now closed.
Sorry that the forums aren't up by now; my weekend didn't exactly go as I had planned.
Yipee. Verizon decided that, since they had to swap out my cell phone so much, both they and myself would be better served by simply getting me a different phone. Now I have a Samsung a670, yipee. It's a camera phone, which means I can now take horrible photos of just about anything! It makes a sound when you take the photo, though, which you can't disable, and all the sounds suck. It also has a color screen, which I couldn't care less about. But, it won't need replacing every other day, which is a vast improvement. I wanted a bluetooth-enabled phone, but the one they had was a full $200 more expensive. :\
It was priced at $99.99, but the support guy wasn't going to be able to get me that price (the price is for new customers only); I think the regular price is $149.99. Instead, he got me a bundle deal that got me a car charger, extended battery (?), and earpiece so that he could give me a break with the phone price.
The charger and earpiece are both marked individually as $29.99, and the battery was $59.99. All that plus the $149.99 phone price comes up to $269.96. What did I pay? About $75. I'm very happy with the deal. :)
The only drawback is that a holster didn't come with the package. They didn't have any plastic ones, so the guy dug around in the junk drawer to find one that would fit on my phone (it was free, too). Now I've got a crumby leather-ish holster that is fairly difficult to get off of my hip. I also didn't get a manual, since he grabbed a replacement phone rather than a retail phone.
My car is in the shop. I dropped it off at the mechanic's Monday evening, meaning I spent the night at my Dad's place. However, I still don't have a car. That means that I have to spend the night again.
This is crappy for several reasons. First, I don't have a car. 'nuff said. Secondly, I don't get to spend the night in my bed; my bed is comfy, and I sleep well on it. Dad's guest bed is nice, but it isn't my bed. Third, I was going to work on the forums tonight; since I won't be at home, I can't do that, which means I need to do as much as possible tomorrow evening, even though I'm supposed to have dinner with someone, meaning I won't have much time tomorrow (and I have shows Thursday and Friday evenings). Grrr.
Just a wrap-up of everything pertaining to the Forums:
The only thing I can suggest doing is keep checking back here at my blog for news about the Forums. If my fix works (as far as restoring the deleted accounts), I'll be keeping the forums down for a little while longer so that, when I open the forums back up, you shouldn't notice much of anything being out of place.
There will still be a bit of work as far as restoring everyone's permissions (user groups they belonged to, boards they moderated, etc), but all in all, it should be relatively painless for the user. A pain in the ass for me, but for the user it should be fine. :)
"Is it all worth the time and effort that I put into it?"
That is the question I'm currently wrestling with.
I'll let you know when I have an answer.
Arg!
So, I got another new phone yesterday. However, the calendar button (part of the four-direction button at the top) doesn't work half the time. That I could get over, I suppose... but the Send button doesn't work all the time, either. That, I can't deal with, since it's a fairly integral part of the phone. Grr. However, I did fix the backlight issue with the second phone over the weekend; it accidently got smashed into something, and then it worked like a charm. :)
So this means I have to go back to Verizon again and have them order me another phone. At least I'm not being charged for each swap-out.
I am fairly annoyed that the first phone I got worked perfectly for nearly two years, and the two I've gotten since (the exact same model) have lasted less than a week before problems have come up. At this point, I'm tempted to just buy a new damn phone; if I can get one with Bluetooth, that'd be swell. Dunno if I'd want a camera phone or not, though. *shrug*