A SERIOUS post for all to read
It's coming up on "that time of year" and I need to get this out there. We've had a long ... and occasionally "rocky" history here at GoodHunting. People have come and gone through the years. Some I REALLY miss, others, not so much, but we're still family and even in the best families, brothers and sisters have disagreements. The difference is, if you have a disagreement with your brother, he doesn't normally move out of the house and never speak to you again. Here, evidently, some find it easy to simply move on, never to be heard from again. Getting new members is just a pipedream. I'm not sure of the reason and there could be many. One might be the "good ol' boy" feeling here and newbies may feel intimidated by simply dropping in to what appears to be a very tight-knit family. I think another possible problem could be the vetting process. I'm not 100% positive, but I believe, in order to be allowed in, the registration request has to be sent to the administrator for approval. I may be wrong, but I believe those requests all go to The Lenster .... some fucknut who barely speaks to us anymore hisownmiserableself. ;)
With all the Russian spammers, etc. who try to gain access, I believe ol' Ticboy just got in the habit of denying ALL member requests. Maybe I can't blame him as vetting elebenty-bazillion membership requests daily, would be a bit time consuming. ALL of this is purely speculation on my part ... or it could be that nobody in their right minds would want to hang out with us crusty old farts anydamnway. Then there's the natural attrition and we've lost many members who will NEVER be back. I miss them all and often wonder how many old friends we've lost here because they have passed on and we have no way of knowing?
The point is, our site renewal is coming up in a few months. Back when we had plenty of members, the fund raisers were easy-peasy, in fact, sometimes I thought TOO easy. Back in the day, there was no accountability here regarding expenses and when we were at our prime, I can't help but think "somebody" may have been making a profit off this place. We started out with Orion and he set things up as site building was part of his business. Nobody knew what the actual income or expenses actually were and I never liked that. I won't go down through the history of our financing, but I swore the books would be totally open to anyone who wants to see them as long as I'm handling the finances. I used to post a detailed ledger every year, but tbh, I just got too lazy to fool with it, but I can (and will) if anybody asks. Every penny is logged and accounted for in a file on my desk.
But, I'm rambling and turning this into a Thump Post. I don't have the book in front of me, but I believe our site renewal is coming up in early July, but it HAS to be paid before the end date or the plug gets pulled by Go-Daddy and everything here disappears off into cyberspace somehow. I often wish we had some way to go through the posts on the original site, it would be a hoot, but they're lost forever I suppose. The question is, this site is all but dead due to attrition, but there are still at least 2-3 posts/year, so it's barely breathing and on life-support. Do we go on?
The expenses run about $200/year for the basics (no virus/hacker protection, etc). I think last year's renewal was just under that at $190-$200 (?). Everything else has gone up, but I have no clue if Go-Daddy's prices have followed suit. As of 7/3/2022 (after our last renewal), I have $91.52 in the official GoodHunting bank account. What'chu bozos suggest we do here? Keep this place afloat for another year and see what happens? Or pull the plug and lose everything? If we let the joint go down the tubes, I ain't giving the money back, I'll buy 1/8 tank of diesel fuel for my motorhome with it! Ha! Seriously, I just figured I'd put out a heads-up to see how you buttheads feel about our future here and what you suggest we do about it.
