Since Amazon discontinued their service via Amazon Payments, both of the above links will lead to PayPal. We hope to have direct credit card acceptance working sometime in the future but that isn't that easy to set up.
I'll be at San Diego Comicon International Wednesday, July 8 through Sunday, July 12. Piper and Cat will be keeping an eye on the site and I will be available through laptop, tablet and phone but I won't be checking in every hour or so like I do normally.
If anyone else is going to be at Con or in San Diego, maybe we can get together. I usually eat lunch and sometimes dinner at one of the excellent restaurants in the Gaslamp quarter or Seaport Village and can be found eating breakfast at Cafe 222 on Island Ave near the Con most days I am there.
Sorry these didn't get up yesterday as planned, stuff happened. :)
If you've won, let me know what you want done with your prize money. If you got prize money in the earlier version of this contest, I'm sorry but that was it. :)
Oh, and all entrants get a free 3 month subscription to Hatbox. That's probably going to be a feature of ongoing contests.
On July 1, Amazon will turn off their Payments gateway and the links that BC has been collecting gifts for the Hatbox will go away. Any ongoing subscriptions will be canceled as far as collecting future payments. All such subscriptions will, however, continue to be honored for at least two years.
So this is the last chance for anyone who wishes to contribute money to BC through the existing version of the Amazon gateway. We may have another Amazon gateway up in future weeks but the software and interface to be used are not clear.
Due to various confluences of need and happenstance, we are short of money this month. We have about $1800 in bank accounts and outstanding checks and debit charges totaling about the same. Other bills are coming due, too. I have not taken a draw yet this month but I can wait. ISPs and hosting companies cannot.
We will have about $3500 in bills due before the end of the month. Some of that will be taken care of by advertising money coming in and by the revenue from Doppler Press which is beginning to make a difference.
Thanks to everyone who has contributed, seriously, we could not do this without you.
We still have close to $1200 in bills to pay in the next week or so and about $400 in the bank. We had an unexpected bill for close to $700 show up and caught us short.
As usual the links to the Hatbox page and the Janglewood page can also be found in the right hand column under the picture of the kitty.
I just want to say that I'm encouraged and discouraged both by recent discussions of unpubbing stories, kudos, criticism and the like.
I've demoted two blogs concerned with those subjects off the front page, not because they were unimportant but because I felt that they were both beginning to attract comments that some people could feel were unfriendly.
In general, people are trying to say things they think are encouraging or helpful but I've been doing this for fifteen years and I have a sense of when something is being said that can too easily be misinterpreted. So....
We have about $3000 in bills due before the end of the month and the HatBox has only about $600 in it, including the $300 or so received so far this month. So anything that anyone can send will help us pay our bills on time.
Next month, Amazon changes the way things work with their Payments interface and we hope to have our new version of the Hatbox up and running well before that. We think you are going to like it and it should make helping us pay our bills more pleasant and maybe even more fun. :)
A number of people stepped up in the last week and contributed almost $1000. Thank you all, thank you very much.
Because of gifts from our readers we are able to continue to maintain this site and support other sites in the community. It costs money. This last week, we have paid out in excess of $2000 in co-location fees, software license fees, purchase of hardware for upgrades, payments on loans and miscellaneous little charges. Almost half of that comes from our advertisers and sales of books but the other half came from readers and contributors to the site.
The new database server is up and running and will help BC keep up with our ever-increasing traffic and expanding archive of stories.
There should not be anymore outages today, though the risk is higher than ordinary until a shakedown period with the database is done. If the new server fails, it should just drop out of the local net and not cause an outage and changes have been made to the config to allow future three-wheeled and two-wheeled operation of the local net when necessary without outages.
We're installing a third database server and during configuration, we will have to take the site down for a short time to synchronize the new machine with the other two. This should be no more than 15 minutes or so but might have to happen more than once if anything goes wrong. Just wanted to warn everybody.
We still need the money to keep providing a friendly place to read, write and discuss TG Fiction.
I've updated the numbers in the The Hatbox heads up, again. Thanks to those who have donated. We're still a bit short and we've spent something close to $2400 bucks in the last few days so we will still be needing some soon to pay more bills and keep our internet connection and stuff like that. April is here and we are still working on March.
We had a serious database problem this morning involving four stories that got corrupted. We rescued the text of the four stories, though we had to repost Badasses of the Multiverse 14 which got lost somewhere between here and Miraz (which is a star in the Big Dipper).
Anyway, the problem may have been caused by a DOS attack, we're not sure.
But Paul Cousins, Shauna, Louise Anne, and Taralyn should check their stories to be sure they have been restored properly. I'm sorry but if anyone had made comments on those four stories or left kudos, those are gone.
There's been a snag in Piper's plans to move this weekend. The deal has been hung up by a glitch in the space being ready to rent and she can't move in as planned. The move had been pretty much financed but the snag is going to cost a few days in a motel, and boarding for Penny, the Labrador, an unexpected expense. I can loan her the money but it would be a lot less stress on me if I know that we have met our contribution goals in the Hatbox for the month.
We just paid about $2000 in bills and we have another $600 due next week. To top it up, Piper is moving this weekend and will need an advance to help with paying deposits and such. We're down to the last $300 in our company bank accounts right now.
We had a small database problem this morning which has been cleared up. We will be working on a permanent solution to this later this month with adding two more database servers. If you had problems posting this morning it was likely due to the database timing out while trying to update tables.
Let us know via email, PM, or status message if you are still having problems.
We're asking for more this month, $3000, because we are just not quite making all our payments on the debts owed by the site and the extra money is coming from me.
We're also developing at least one other site for the BCTS community and we have someone helping us with the expenses for that. More news on that development later in the month.
Many thanks to everyone who makes a gift to keep BC working.
Hugs to all,
Erin, Piper, Cat, Katie, Sephrena and all the volunteers
Please, if you can, help us keep BC alive and kicking. All the bills this week added up to about $1400, including internet connectivity, hosting and various software licenses we had to renew. It doesn't have to be a big check or a big gift, every little bit helps.
It's that time of month again. The server bills are due, payments on the debts we owe, and some money to keep Piper from having to look for other work.
Anything you can spare will be appreciated, and if you can't give, well, we know that that happens.
Electronic giving can be done through the Hatbox or through Janglewood or send me a PM for a snail mail address.
It's the beginning of a new year and we are still a bit short on our goals. It's always a bit difficult at this time of year since there are so many other things to put money into.
We've added some more stories to the Hatbox, so if you have the passwords, you can check them out. If you've donated in the past year and DON'T have the passwords, let me know in a PM. :)
If you haven't donated, now would be a good time. :)
If you donate through Amazon, the thank you screen will show you the passwords. If you donate some other way, you can PM me and I will send them.
Checks can be made out & sent to:
Joyce Melton
1001 Third St.
Space 80
Calimesa, CA 92320
USA
Note: $6000 is the operating, maintenance and upgrade budget. Amounts received in excess of the $6000 will be applied to long term debt accrued over the last 19 years.
