Congrats to KathyLauren, raeanne, Bari Jo, Yakayla, and LadyGreen. This may become a yearly event.
Quote from: Susan on December 21, 2017, 12:32:30 PM
...As a thank you to the members for their support I am going to randomly pick 5 members for free Gold subscriptions (1 year, $240 value) on Jan 1st 2018. You do not have to be a donor or a current subscriber to have a chance to receive one, just be an active registered member on the forums (Registered and made posts in the month of December 2017).
Merry Christmas!
Mechanism of the drawing
Each post made in December is an entry. On Jan 1st at 12:00:00am CST, I will do a SQL dump of all posts in the month of December. I will exclude all Deleted messages, and I will exclude the staff forums. Staff are otherwise eligible to win for their public posts.
I will then generate 5 random numbers between 1 and the total number of posts in question. The posts which match those numbers will win a free gold account, provided they are still a registered member, and have not already won one.
I have seen this work in another situation and it works very well, and it's also very fair. Someone with even 1 post can win.
If we feel that someone is inflating their post counts specifically for this (IE Making junk posts), we reserve the right to sanction the member in question.
How some of it was spent.
When paid myself what I had been shorted from last month, I went ahead and bought the items I need to re-purpose the old server into my new desktop PC. This results in a massive upgrade for me: +1ghz processor speed, an additional 4 CPU cores, and 16 GB of ram when compared to my old system.
I purchased a larger hard drive, and plan on reusing the 960gb SSD from the old server. I also purchased two hotswappable drive mounting bays one for ssd's and one for the new hard drive. With the drives from my old pc and the new drive, I should end up with around 14tb of storage capacity.
I was constantly running out of space on the 240gb SSD I had in my old system, so the upgrade I gain reusing from the one from the old server is massively appreciated!
Backing up this website is very space intensive :P My currently 5 year old desktop pc was also used for running the chat bot; Development environment (web, graphic, and application design), coordinating with staff and members, and personal entertainment. I spend more time on the PC than I spend away from it. So believe me when I say I appreciate it!
Here is the drawing and the results, and the pm sent to Cindy and all of the winning members. No entry was required.
QuoteEach of the below individuals have won a $20 subscription for 1 year ($240 value, however there is no direct cash equivalency available). They are free to continue to donate or subscribe if they wish to give additional support to the web site.
I did a sql statement SELECT id_msg, id_member, poster_name FROM `messages` WHERE poster_time >= 1512108000 and poster_time <= 1517464799 and id_board <>12 and id_board <>80 and id_board <>17 and id_board <>103 and id_board <>320 and id_board <>358 and id_board <>13 and id_board <>451 and id_board <>47 and id_board <>82 and id_board <>534 and id_board <>117 and id_board <>389 and id_board <>101 and id_board <>319 and id_board <>497 and id_board <>498 and id_board <>509 and id_board <>168 and id_board <>510 and id_board <>493 and id_board <>505 and id_board <>506 and id_board <>507 and id_board <>19 and id_board <>48 and id_board <>46 and id_board <>407 and id_board <>45 and id_board <>247 and id_board <>3 and id_board <>135 and id_board <>2;
Which excluded the staff and deleted posts boards. This came up with a total of 11,474 qualifying posts in December.
I then used the dice function in the transgender bot on the chat to generate a index numbering 20 random posts
<SusanLarson> !dice 20 11474
<!TGBot> The dice rolls around and lands on 7833 2911 8169 2032 7646 4036 610 9667 824 4395 7819 11036 2156 9093 9230 6486 10068 947 4707 2260
<!Susan> First 5 win that have not already won one of the 5.
I checked the first 5 post index numbers and came up with the following posts and users, by adding limit #,1 to the end of the previous sql statement, and came up with the following members.
<!Susan> 2065672 44165 KathyLauren
<!Susan> 2060822 56779 raeanne
<!Susan> 2067805 55103 Bari Jo
<!Susan> 2065796 44323 Yakayla
<!Susan> 2063741 55677 LadyGreen
The first number above is the post id in question. The second number is the member's user id. The third field is their Poster name. The requirements were that that have at least 1 post in December, have not already won a free 1 year subscription, and are not a deleted account.
I then pulled up the profile for each member by their numerical user id to verify qualifications to win.
<!Susan> first is a winner
<!Susan> second is a winner
<!Susan> Third is a winner
<!Susan> fourth is a winner
<!Susan> 5th is a winner
I did not have to proceed past that point and so the drawing is complete.
I am including each member on this pm and then will go through granting them a free gold subscription until Jan 1 2019.
Thank you Susan and congrats KathyLauren, raeanne, Bari Jo, Yakayla, and LadyGreen.
Congrats to all
Congratulations and Happy New Year!
Congrats and Happy New Year!
A nice way to end the year, Susan. Congratulations to the winners.
Robyn
Whose New Year's resolutions include spending more time in chat again.
Congratulations to the winners!
Thank you, Susan, and all the staff here!