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Did you win a contest?

This kind of fell between the cracks and didn't get announced but there were five winners in the April Fools and Other Wise Contest. Check here to see if you were one of the top four winners and then PM or email me to tell me what you want done with your $35 prize. Since there was only ONE vote between fourth and fifth place, we decided to go ahead and give five prizes.

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Big server bill coming due in September

I'm not the world's best financial planner and it's caught me a little by surprise that the annual server contract for four of the BC/SD/TGF servers is coming due. These servers run BC, Stardust, TGFiction.Net, CrystalHall, qnez, TGLibrary, StorySite and a dozen other TG and TG friendly websites. If we pay annually, we save about 20% on the bill but that is a $1600 hit this time.

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Trouble Down on the (Server) Farm

If the site seems slow today or even goes up and down a few times, they are having equipment problems in the facility where we keep our servers. Our equipment is fine but they're going to be working on whatever caused the nearly three hour outage earlier this morning. Patience is the only coin we have.

Hugs,
Erin

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The Only Holiday in August

When I was a kid, the first Saturday in August was always a holiday. Just a family holiday but it usually involved a big party with cakes and presents. Why? Because six of us cousins had birthdays within a couple of weeks of each other and two other cousins (including my brother) had real birthdays near Christmas and so celebrated their birthdays with the rest of of us in early August. My birthday is Sunday this year, August 5th, but tomorrow is Summer Saturday, the only holiday in August!

Happy Summer Everyone!

Hugs to all,
Erin

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This is another strange dream you've gotten us into!

Was sitting here and just remembered the very odd dream I was having this morning before I woke up.

It was about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, two of Fritz Leiber's fantasy characters from a series of books back in the 40s, 50s and 60s.

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Erin's Extended Vacation...

Just an FYI...

Erin is still home, but she is currently without internet acces. She's trying to figure the problem out herself, but the soonest her internet provider can get a tech out is Tuesday.

She will peek in on us from time to time via her cell, and various wifi hotspots when out and about, but let's PLEASE keep up our good record and leave the place mostly in tact for when she gets back online again.

-HuGgLeS-

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I'm home

Tired, sweaty and footsore; according to my pedometer I have walked something over 30 miles in the last five days.

Not sure I can afford to go on such a long vacation again though, while at the kennel someone taught Cuddles how to fart. You all almost read about it on the news, woman and dog found asphyxiated in their car on the I-10. HOLY SHIT, BATMAN! So to speak.

I'm hoping it was just because she only got kibbles to eat while in the kennel.

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Sorry for the restarts last night...

For those of you that have been heavy on the site last night and this morning, may have notice an inordinately large amount of what I'll call "Small/Micro Outages". I've been working on tweaking the server all night hoping to reduce the load and fix a few small recurring errors. I did sleep for a couple hours, but basically since about midnight last night I've been "fixing, testing, restarting" in what felt like an endless cycle.

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Sleepy

Got back to the hotel, ate some chips and salsa and worked on the site for an hour or so and fell asleep. I probably would have slept straight through except some guy outside my window about 11:30 couldn't get his car alarm to shut off. Either that or he was stealing a car. I got up to look out the window, my car is still there but by that time, I was awake and hungry so I made a trip down to the snack machines and here I am.

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PLEASE Backup Your Stories!

We/BigCloset are in NO WAY responsible for lost stories. If our servers die and data is lost, there is a chance that it will remain that. LOST.

We can not be expected to be your only repository for your information.

I urge you to create other online or offline backups. GoogleDocs is a GREAT resource for this, as is just emailing a copy of the story to yourself.

-HuGgLeS-
-P/KAF/PF -- BigCloset Administrator

(This was originally posted as a comment on a blog, but we decided it needed more attention)

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Okay, here's the deal for my vacation

The site stays up as long as there are no blowups. I'll leave it up as long as I can and only take it down if there is a mess that I or my helpers cannot clean up easily without me writing a lot of PMs and emails. If I think I'll have to do that, I'll close the site down until, probably Sunday night or Monday morning.

Hugs to all and be excellent to each other,
Erin

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I need some time off

I'm stressed out by things that have happened back stage this past week. I need some time off and Piper's real life is kind of nightmarish lately so I hate to dump any more responsibility on her. My other assistants are really not experienced enough to do what I do here.

I'm going to be gone to the San Diego Comicon from Wednesday the 11th to Sunday the 15th. I'm thinking of shutting the site down while I'm gone or maybe just Thursday to Saturday since I'll be able to work on it Wednesday and Sunday. But really, the place would have burned down if I had been gone three days this weekend.

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$1300+ in Two Days! Thanks everyone. :)

I was actually a bit worried, nothing was past due but things were getting tight. And knowing that everyone has their own expenses I wasn't sure anyone would be able to help out. But plenty of you cam through with donations and in two days, we reached goal for June and got a start on July.

Yay, us! :)

I'll be gone for a week in July but I'll have my laptop with me and Piper and my other helpers will be around to keep things on an even keel. Let's have a great summer!

Hugs to all,
Erin

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Memberships Below Goal for May

It's June 16th and we're a bit in the hole. We didn't make the subscription goal for last moth and this month is half over. I know not everyone can do so, but if you can, please, send us a few bucks via the Hatbox Membership request box on the side bar. It really does take about $40 bucks a day to keep this place open.

Thanks and hugs,
Erin

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Worth a link to

This link is to the blog of an acquaintance of mine, Mark Evanier, who writes the Groo comic book and the Garfield television show among many other things. Mark is a whiz at words and here he does a marvelous job of expressing part of what I mean when I say, give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

http://www.newsfromme.com/2012/06/03/the-olaf-story/

Hugs to all,
Erin

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2012 April Fools and Other Wise Contest -- Voting

This is the voting form for the 2012 April Fools and Other Wise Contest -- Vote for as many stories as you believe deserve it, but please only vote once.

Voting will be open from Monday (5/21/2012), at Noon (12:00pm) Pacific till Monday (5/28/2012), at Midnight (11:59pm) Pacific.

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Increase in Hatbox Amount Request

What with vet and doctor bills, repairs to the house and other expenses, I just had to borrow $800 to pay this month's bills. Accordingly, I've increased the amount I'm asking in the Hatbox because, quite frankly, the time I spend running the site could be spent doing something that would earn money. Expenses on the site have gone up also, since running websites and servers is Piper's actual job, I feel I have to pay her at least some for the time she spends working on the site and the servers as well.

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2012 April Fools and Other Wise Contest - Last Chance!

We only have 13 entries so far in the contest, so I'm going to allow a few more days for anyone to mark a story that was posted during the contest time, April 1 to May 5, as an entry in the contest. Unfortunately, things got really busy around here the past week or so and will continue busy through next Monday, so I'm not sure how many days I'm going to be able to allow for this. So hurry. I will start the voting no later than Thursday, May 17 but hopefuly, sooner than that.

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2012 April Fools and Other Wise Contest

ONLY FIVE DAYS LEFT!

It's another contest! The 2012 April Fools and Other Wise Contest will be open for submissions from 1 April, 2012, 12:01 A.M. until 5 May, 2012, 11:59 P.M. PDT.

Submissions should be original stories or stand alone chapters in a series or serial, not posted elsewhere before or during the contest and voting, and should have some transgender content. Length is arbitrary but should probably not be much over 10,000 words because we want people to have enough time to read all the entries if they want to.

If you have already posted a story that would fit the contest, go back and add the contest tag before the end of the week! There are only nine entries so far!

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This is not Facebook

BigCloset is not a social media site, it's not chaos and it's not a place without rules. One of the rules is don't post as a story something that isn't a story. A piece of a story that doesn't have a title yet, that's perhaps posted to draw comments and be developed later into a story should not be posted as fiction. It should go probably as a blog or as a forum post under one of the writing categories. There are places here for such posts but they don't belong with the stories.

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BUTTONS

Buttons

Everyone's button count has been removed. We aren't ready to release the new "product" yet and we said this could and would happen. In fact I want to let everyone know that it WILL happen again, when the system goes live, in order for everyone to start on an even footing.

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2012 April Fools and Other Wise Contest

It's another contest! The 2012 April Fools and Other Wise Contest will be open for submissions from 1 April, 2012, 12:01 A.M. until 5 May, 2012, 11:59 P.M. PDT.

Submissions should be original stories or stand alone chapters in a series or serial, not posted elsewhere before or during the contest and voting, and should have some transgender content. Length is arbitrary but should probably not be much over 10,000 words because we want people to have enough time to read all the entries if they want to.

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Reader Tags Revisited

Not a lot of enthusiasm for this here at BC, so the consensus among our admins is also no. At least, not for BC. We have two other sites we are attempting to bring up within the next six months that reader tags might be just the thing.

However, this discussion gave us some parameters for this:

1. It would be opt-in for authors whether they allowed any of their stories to use user tags. Default, no user tags. And a switch where authors could turn off user tags for one or all of their stories.

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Reader Tags?

What do you all think of allowing readers to write tags to stories? This would be an opt-in for authors to allow or not and readers would have to spend buttons to be able to write tags, maybe. I'm just thinking out loud sort of but I found a neat module someone has already written. We'd also need a couple of three "tagerators" to keep the new tags coherent and appropriate. Perhaps authors could moderate tags on their own stories?

Hugs,
Erin

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Membership Income

It's almost the end of March and we've had a bit more expenses this month than usual, including me personally who has just spent close to $500 bucks on unexpected private expense (including $225 for plumbing repairs). So if you haven't joined the Hatbox yet, now would be a good time. There will be some new content for the Hatbox going up soon, too.

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Time for another contest?

Contest are fun and seem to increase involvement in the site. So I'm thinking of a contest to run from April 1 to May 5. Since there are several important calendar dates in that range, including April Fool's Day, Passover, Easter, IRS Day, May Day and Cinco de Mayo, I'm thinking of offering a choice of themes for contest entries, like these:

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Hatbox Access Page

This is the signup page for the HatBox, BigCloset's premium pages where stories contributed by authors can be viewed or downloaded by people who have joined the Hatbox. After one year in the Hatbox, contributed stories are made available elsewhere, either on BC or on the donors' own websites. Downloads are made available on the honor system, please do not distribute these files privately as that would be a violation of the copyright of the author. Please do not share your login or password with others.

If you have already signed up to the HatBox the link is: The HatBox. You will need your Hatbox user id and password (different from your BigCloset id and password) to access the HatBox stories.

If you want to contribute a story to the HatBox, send me a private message.

If you need a refund, send me an email at [email protected].

Enjoy and thanks,
Joyce

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February 2012 Short Story Contest Winners

Voting for the Short Story Month February 2012 Contest is over. I debated leaving the voting open another day to see if we could get 150 voters but we need 20 more and we did not get 20 voters on the last day of voting and I don't think we would get 20 more with one more day. So there are only five prizes instead of six.

Here are the results of the voting.

130 voters cast their ballots and the top five stories all won $29 for their writers:

Girl Detective Redux - A Beginning by Roberta J Cabot
9% (48 votes)

What The Hell! by Susan Brown
6% (31 votes)

Chemical Ali by Melanie Brown
6% (29 votes)

Lady of the Lake by Maggie Finson
5% (28 votes)

Luck be a Lady by Maeryn
5% (28 votes)

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How do I "bookmark" or "favorite" something and how do I undo them?

At the bottom of each story there are links to "Add to favorites" or "++Bookmark". "++" means "add". Click a link to add to either list.

Bookmarks and Favorites are two different things. Favorites show up on your My Account page, and there's a tab there to bring up your Bookmarks.

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20,000,000 visitors and counting

Sometime between 11a.m. and noon, PST, this morning, we hit 20,000,000 visitors on the site counter. Since that only goes back to June 15, 2005, we really had probably a million visitors in the six years before that. At the current rate of visitors coming to the site, we'll hit another 20 million in about three years. :)

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