One day, I stopped in the middle of a bunch of work.

I had been on the phone with clients and potential clients all day. I'd just signed a huge web design contract, I had a fair amount of money in the bank, and I'd finished setting up a new reseller server so Simpli could offer reseller hosting plans.

I'd just finished setting up our last dedicated RaQ 550.

I OKed a lease on a new condo (I'll be moving next month.)

I used the last of our initial capital and began preparing a cash-flow statement so we could get more.

And I was busy writing a proposal for a new web design customer.

Somehow, in the middle of all that, I stopped. I looked up. And I realized that my company -- the company I've been pouring my heart and soul into for over a year now -- was finally successful. In that moment, I knew that from here, there was no place to go but up. Keep hiring. Find an office. Start the big advertising. Secure additional capital, because we are PROFITABLE. And keep our clients happy, because they've been referring new clients like mad.

For my entire life, I have been building companies... and now I've built one that has its own legs and is running on its own. This is a magical moment -- that one moment when you look out the window and you realize that this is what your entire life until now has been preparing you for. It's an indescribable feeling, but one that is extremely special.

I made it.

I will remember this for a long time to come... the first moment I realized that it really was all going to work out. I built this company from the ground up, and it has become more than I ever thought possible. All I can think is "I did that." And I am amazed.

:)

Hey, so I finally got my friend/employee Devon to go post in his Slashdot journal. All together now... "HI DEVON!!!"

So will you guys (425 of you have marked me as a friend, last time I checked) please go make him feel welcome by harassing him in his journal? ;) Anyway, I'm sure we will have to welcome him by showing him the FK HOF JE, the Gossip Column (thanks for the Simpli plug this week, Surak!), and many, many, many, more journal entries courtesy of you crazy people.

Anyway, welcome, Devon. You really have no idea what you've gotten yourself into. ;)

Hmm. Slashdot has no "me" icon. Guess I'll have to settle for "User Journal". How boring.

So, in the great saga of my life, I started a business. A lot of you probably know a bit about this, but I'll refresh your memory.

In May 2002, I left Sun Microsystems, where I was working as a web developer on Sun.com. I left of my own accord... I just didn't agree with a lot of what Sun was doing (and apparently I wasn't the only one.) I'd always wanted to start a web hosting company for real. I mean, I'd had a colocated box or two since '98, and I hosted a bunch of sites for friends, but I wanted to do this for real.

My grandmother had died in February, and my dad had received a small inheritance from her. My parents didn't need the money, so I wrote out a business plan using the name Simpli, Inc. (which is now my business's legal name.) I had registered simpli.biz a while back, so I used that and built a website.

I brought in a few clients, but the website stunk and I knew I could do better. Meanwhile, my web design business was taking off, so I didn't really have time to work on Simpli. I started a sketch of a new website, but let it fall by the wayside for several months.

A few months ago, I really woke up to the fact that a) I had 13 servers and I wasn't doing much with them; and b) the web design business, while fun, wasn't giving me the income I needed. I decided to kick Simpli into high gear... and I finished the new website in a flurry of late nights. (Hey, if you haven't checked out our website, now's the time to do so. It doesn't look like any other hosting company's website.)

Then I started advertising. I still haven't kicked the advertising into high gear, but it's already starting to pay off. Our customers are referring new customers, and the fact that we offer $25 cash for a virtual hosting customer referral and $50 cash for a dedicated/colocation referral helps tremendously. (We'll have a signup form up for those of you who want some cash in a few days, BTW. Go yell at this guy if you want our affiliate program to work! ;)

We signed three new dedicated customers today, which is great. Two of them ordered custom boxes. I don't know how we will pay for them, but hey, that's life. It will be good income in a few months. And they will refer other customers, I'm sure... we've already gotten two new customers from one of the guys.

Don't let anyone deceive you... web hosting is a hard industry to make money in. There are a lot of providers that promise everything for $1/month. I started this business in part to prove that my company could outshine thousands of others in a crowded market. I feel that I've already been a moderate success there, and we're still growing by leaps and bounds.

So what has been going on with me lately? I've been doing sales calls, followup emails, chatting on the 'simplisales' alias on AIM, and just generally running a business. It is the most exciting experience of my life... knowing I've created a market opportunity where many have failed; knowing I've created profit where many swore there was none to be had. I live and breathe this company, and I'm as proud of it as I'm sure most parents are of their children.

I'll try to update this journal more frequently, but if I don't have time, you can probably guess what I'll be doing... out selling my company like mad! :)

Here is some more fun stuff from an AIM convo I had late tonight:

[03:50] Me: Being a perfectionist drives me nuts a lot of the time, because everything that isn't perfect is like an itch
[03:51] Me: Just the urge to improve... constantly improve
[03:51] Me: It's called "making your client buy new computers and printers"
[03:52] DJStarchBoi: ROFL
[03:52] Me: And "driving your other friends nuts with TiVo sales pitches" :P
[03:52] Me: I realize that I can be obnoxious about it
[03:53] Me: I usually get the *sigh* look, like "Oh there goes Erica trying to sell me something again"
[03:53] Me: And then I am like, okay, it's time to stop :)

[03:54] Me: Right now it's my roommate and a digital camera
[03:54] Me: I am like "Get a digital camera"
[03:54] Me: And he's like "You bum, YOU get a digital camera"
[03:54] Me: And I am like "No, I don't have any money... so you get one"
[03:54] Me: And so on :)
[03:55] Me: He has two jobs! I am like "Whatever, you can afford a digital camera!"
[03:55] Me: And he's like "Shut UP" :P
[03:55] DJStarchBoi: ROFL
[03:55] Me: And then I stop and file it away for another day... hehehe
[03:55] DJStarchBoi: and then you open the file, page through it, and find the vulnerable spot
[03:55] Me: Yep!!!
[03:56] Me: Like "You know how you said you wanted to go to that autocross this weekend? Wouldn't it be great if you HAD A DIGITAL CAMERA so you could take pictures there?"
[03:56] DJStarchBoi: HAH
[03:56] Me: And he is like "Shut UP!!!"
[03:56] Me: He will get one eventually ;)

I am a sadist. But it's all good. Because he will get a digital camera. And eventually everyone I know will have a TiVo, too. Hehehe... ;)

Okay, I know I haven't updated lately... yes, I am bad! I will update this journal with more "me" information soon... I promise!

But in the meantime, I had to share this bit of IM hilarity (from one of my not-so-technical friends):

[23:29] Rico: a friend of mine just stopped by and brought a friend with her... HOT AS HELL.... NOT LYING WHEN I SAY SUPERMODEL MATERIAL!!!
[23:29] Rico: no lie..... probably the #2 hottest chick I've ever seen (not met) in my life
[23:31] Rico: FYI: I showed the hot chick MOZILLA... that's right.. I'm not too proud

(And he says he isn't a geek... Heh heh heh.)

I can't believe the Slashdot team actually fixed a bug I submitted, but they did.

After installing Japanese font support on my system, I noticed that Slashdot started rendering in Japanese. This, to put it mildly, stinks. Random Japanese characters appear and the font is hideous.

I figured out that this was because Slashdot doesn't specify a character set for the page to be rendered in. Since it isn't specified, IE decides it needs to be Japanese (I still can't decide whether this is a default setting or whether it's sniffing out something in the page. The W3C specs say not to assume a default, but who knows what IE is really doing.)

Anyway, I reopened an old Slashcode bug and explained a couple of ways to fix the problem. (If you have a web site and you don't know what I am talking about, definitely read the W3C page on the subject and familiarize yourself with how to set a charset. Otherwise, your website may also be rendering in Japanese for some of us.)

Pudge replied to my bug submission. Apparently, Slashcode has a built-in field for the charset, and they had just never bothered to set it. Well, tonight, the fix went into effect, and Slashdot is now rendered in UTF-8... which is a huge relief to me, as Japanese characters are no longer being displayed on the front page. I just hope there aren't any complaints from those with very old browsers, but I doubt there will be, as pretty much every other website in the world sets the charset by default.

By the way, if you're not setting the charset on your site and you don't want to use a meta tag in every page to set it, you can just add the following lines to a .htaccess file:

AddType text/html;charset=iso-8859-1 html

This will cause all files with a .html extension to be rendered with the iso-8859-1 charset. A similar line for .php and .pl (whichever you use) and you're all set!

I know I haven't posted a journal in a while, and I have lots of things to update all of you on. Stay tuned, because in the next couple of days, I'll write about that. In the meantime, however, I'd like to write about Lindows.

I received lots of email after my latest comment regarding Lindows in general and Michael Robertson in particular. I started thinking about why some people are so gung-ho about Lindows.

Lindows goes against everything Linux stands for. Michael Robertson is a snake-oil salesman. He based his distribution around Linux because Linux had mindshare and people knew what it was. He's in this only because he wants to make money, not because he wants to make Linux better. Lindows's "Click-and-run" flies in the face of Free software by charging for open-source programs. Robertson is noticed because he's an excellent marketer, not because he has a good distro; very few people actually run Lindows or recommend it to others.

Despite this, many of those in the Linux community continue to support him. It finally dawned on me why they do: some people actually believe this is the only way to beat Windows!

Of course, our own logic and experience tells us that this isn't the case. Mac OS X doesn't beat Windows by bashing Microsoft or by being cheaper than Windows; it beats Windows by being a solid competitor that is actually as much or more fun to use than Windows.

However, some people seem to be convinced that Lindows will beat Windows by being better at mediocrity. This logic goes something like, "Oh, Windows 98 isn't secure, so Lindows doesn't need to be secure either." Or, "People find it hard to install software on Linux, so Click-N-Run will make that easier." Yet, at the same time, I see that even in the most pro-Lindows posts, there is a doubt. This doubt is: "Is this what people really want?" I notice that most people carefully edge around this doubt by saying that they're happy that there is a choice at all.

So, let me ask you this question: Is it worth it to give up everything that Linux stands for (security, Freedom, open standards) in order to make it popular?

You can argue all you want that Lindows being popular doesn't mean the end of our ideals. I will argue against you.

Why? Because once Linux becomes known as the cheap, crappy alternative to Windows, the mindshare battle has been lost. Michael Robertson, if he succeeds, will have killed any chance Linux has to be better than Windows. The stranglehold of mediocrity will have killed Linux.

Here's an example. Let's say it's 2005, and Windows NG (Next Generation) has just come out. Your friend is still running Windows 98 on a P3/1GHz (this is about where Windows 95 on a P200MMX would be today.) You're trying to convince your friend that, instead of paying $200 to upgrade to Windows NG, he should pay $49 and try out Lindows 8.0 instead.

What does your friend say? You'd be expecting him to say, "Cool, I've heard really good things about Linux. Let's give it a shot."

Instead, your friend throws you for a loop. He says, "Isn't Linux what comes on those cheap Wal-Mart PCs? I don't want a cheap Windows knockoff; I want Windows."

If Michael Robertson and Lindows win, the mindshare battle for Linux will have been lost. And it's not only your friends who will be saying it -- it will be the CEOs of major corporations. No matter how much you try to convince them that Linux is better than Windows, all they will see is "cheap knockoff", because that's exactly what Michael Robertson is pushing.

We, as the open-source community, can do better than that. We don't need to be a cheap knockoff of Windows. The community is full of technical geniuses, and we have a lot of programmer mindshare and momentum behind us. We can be better than Windows, not just cheaper. Apple has proven that people value quality as much or more than price.

Give people the perception of quality, and you will have won half the battle. Give people the perception of "cheap", and you'll never get away from that image.

How many of you remember Packard Bell? What image does that name bring to mind? Do you really want Linux to be perceived the same way?

I figured I'd take a page from Some Woman and do an Awesome/Blech!/Whatever journal entry. Since Slashcode sucks and I can't put tables in, I'll do this in sort of a bulleted list thing. I think this is a pretty cool idea. I edited her selections a bit, but I kept the overall theme the same. The "Whatever" category turned into a "I really don't get people's obsession with this" category.

Here it is:

Music
Awesome: Sophie Ellis Bextor
Blech!: Nelly
Whatever: John Mayer

Operating Systems
Awesome: Windows XP; Mac OS X
Blech!: Windows 98; Windows ME; Debian
Whatever: Gentoo

Applications
Awesome: Dreamweaver MX; Photoshop 7; EditPlus
Blech!: The GIMP; vi
Whatever: emacs

Fonts
Awesome: Tahoma; Georgia
Blech!: Comic Sans MS (aka "The Soccer Mom font")
Whatever: Times New Roman

Hardware
Awesome: Pentium IV 3.06GHz
Blech!: VIA chipsets
Whatever: AMD processors

Companies
Awesome: Dell; Apple; Adobe; Macromedia
Blech!: Disney
Whatever: Microsoft

TV Shows
Awesome: Six Feet Under
Blech!: Raymond; Survivor
Whatever: Friends

Politics
Awesome: Bill Bradley
Blech!: Dubya
Whatever: The anti-French sentiment

Famous People
Awesome: Steve Martin
Blech!: Olsen twins (gah!)
Whatever: Osbournes

Movies
Awesome: L.A. Story
Blech!: Boat Trip
Whatever: Jurassic Park; Lord of the Rings

Alcohol
Awesome: Pina coladas; strawberry daiquiris
Blech!: Beer
Whatever: Wine

Restaurants
Awesome: In-N-Out Burger; Chipotle burritos, Mai-Kai
Blech!: Buffet places; crappy American ripoffs of Mexican and Chinese food (see: Indiana restaurants)
Whatever: "All vegetarian, all the time" places.

Feel free to add whatever you want in the comments (or whine about my choices...) ;)

Update 3/25 4:26PM PST: Added the fonts and restaurants categories.

I am such a bum!!

So I got great news last week... I'm getting over $5000 back on my tax return. This means I can finally pay off all (er, most) of this crazy debt I've built up. I am pretty excited about the prospect of there actually being money in my checking account!

So what did I do today but open Slashdot and see the story about the Game Boy Advance SP... *sigh* I used to have a GBA, but I sold it and my original Game Boy (the big honkin' gray plastic one) to my ex-boyfriend for $165. This included ALL of my original games like Chu Chu Rocket and Tetris! :( (I miss Chu Chu Rocket. I will have to buy it on eBay.)

Anyway, as you can see here, I've purchased my new Game Boy and am pretty excited about it. It's charging on top of my (huge) printer right now. (My printer would double as a coffee table or an ottoman if I ever needed to use it as one.)

Anyway, I'm pretty excited. I haven't purchased anything else for so long, and I knew that I wanted one when I first heard about the new release in November or so. And, as you can see from the picture, they are tiny! I bought the Yoshi game with it, so I'll let you guys know how well I like that one.

Did any of you impulse-buy this as quickly as I did? Do you have a favorite game that you would recommend? (I'd certainly recommend Chu Chu Rocket to any of you who like Tetris, and the Mario Kart game is high on my list of games to buy as well.) Let me know!

Seriously, what was up with $$$$$exyGal?

I suppose I have to give a little bit of my perspective here first. I'm female, and I make that pretty clear in my posts. Yet I still get the "ARE YOU REALLY FEMALE OMG?!?" posts and the "CAN I HAVE YOUR PHONE NUMBER? R U HOT?!!!" posts as well.

Having said that, I found it interesting to watch the battle going on about whether $$$$$exyGal was really a female.

Slashdotters, who are overwhelmingly male, are fascinated with females, and especially ones who tend to be geeky and post on Slashdot. For one thing, there aren't that many geeky females, and for another, I think geeky guys are interested in how things work, and many of you just can't figure out the female psyche... (not like it's really your fault... we can be weird and moody.) I followed the battle with great interest because there were so many heated opinions on both sides... when there were very few people who could possibly know the truth.

So, being the token Slashdot female, I suppose it's now time to reveal what I know and don't know about $$$$$exyGal. Like all of you, I don't know the truth, but I can take educated guesses. Here's what I pieced together:

• As mentioned in my previous Slashdot comment, ekrout's latest account (that I know of) is Amsterdam Vallon. ekrout apparently "lost" his account password; that is, someone most likely hacked in and changed it. Whoever you are, I applaud you. I find ekrout just as annoying as most of you do.
• However, "Amsterdam Vallon" (ugh... I hate even typing out that name) hasn't posted much lately... is ekrout finally moving on to other things (mercifully), or did he create another account? I'm currently on the lookout...
• Anyway, some of you seem to think that ekrout and SexyGal are the same person. I don't agree. I think she tended to use some of his techniques, but I think there were enough differences, especially in the language used, to make them two separate people.
• The million-dollar question: Is SexyGal female? My answer: most likely. (Honestly, that's about as close to the truth as pretty much all of us are going to get at this point.) Some of the comments she made, and the way she said things, made me picture a female saying them (or else a really, really gay guy.) For instance, in this comment, she says "Yay burritos!" That's something I would say, or my friend Amy would say. Sure, you could fake this as a guy, but she pulled it off pretty successfully every time. To me, this fits a profile similar to mine and Amy's: a super-cool, spunky, geek chick. Am I 100% sure? No. I'm sure there are plenty of guys out there who could pull this off... but I think only a geek chick could pull it off as well as $$$$$exyGal did.
• I think this journal entry (and probably this person's entire user account as well) is complete bullshit. I have serious doubts that this guy actually ran a piece of OS X software that turned out to be some mystery webcam showing $$$$$exyGal. If she wanted to show herself, why not just set up a regular webcam? Hell, I have one that I used to turn on every night. I think you'd have to be pretty gullible to believe that guy's story.

Anyway, apparently $$$$$exyGal has now called it quits, so the mystery remains open. Personally, I think she did the right thing by stopping there. Some of you (and you know who you were) were getting pretty obnoxious about her gender, and she already had more fans than anyone else... there wasn't much left to accomplish with that user account.

$$$$$exyGal, whoever you are, male or female, ekrout or someone else, you made Slashdot interesting again. And--if you were really female--you completely beat me in the "most well-known/popular Slashdot female" contest. What you did was impressive, and you should be proud of it (even if most of your popularity was due to the porn links.)

-----

What do you guys think about $$$$$exyGal? Throw in your two cents below! I want to hear your opinion, and so does the rest of Slashdot (a lot of whom apparently read this journal.)

If any of you have mod points, try giving them to this comment.

I find myself to be somewhat of a root beer connoisseur. After having tried nearly every root beer on the earth, I have to say that my favorite bottled root beer is probably Henry Weinhardt's. What's yours (bottled or not)? I'm always on the lookout for more good root beer.

gmhowell, I know you brew your own beer -- do you brew root beer, too? If so, I'd love to try some.

Hi folks,

Thanks for the great response to the $26 challenge. It seems that a lot of us have been there before!

I got paid this morning, so the $26 challenge is now over. After 8 days of eating for less than $4 a day, I now have some idea of how to eat cheaply.

I learned how to cook rice (I have a steamer, but I normally only use it for hot dogs.) I learned how to cook bacon as well, both on the stove and in the microwave. I figured out the cheapest things on fast-food menus. I bummed meals off of friends. In short, I survived!

Things I Liked

1. Rice. Rice has to be the cheapest meal to make. With butter and salt, it's excellent. I already had a bag of jasmine rice and a steamer, so rice was a natural fit. I highly recommend the steamer. Cooking rice on the stove just seems silly, and you can do lots of other things with a steamer as well. I have a Krups Optisteam Plus that I bought at Bed Bath & Beyond. With one of those 20% off coupons that BB&B sends out, it was like $35. A good deal.
2. 99-cent deals. I got everything from a double cheeseburger (McDonald's) to a Jr. bacon cheeseburger and a 5-piece chicken nugget set at Wendy's. When people say "stop eating at fast-food restaurants", they aren't looking closely enough. Don't ever buy drinks at the restaurant if you can avoid it--but take advantage of the 99-cent specials! I got dinner for $2 or less several nights. Getting a drink would have nearly doubled the price. Drinks are where the restaurants make their money. Buy 2-liters instead... which brings me to my next point:
3. 2-liters. I took advantage of having a Wal-Mart close to work and picked up some Sam's Choice 2-liters there. Their 2-liters are fifty cents. (In other words, you can buy three times the soda for a third of the price of those ripoff restaurants.) I liked the grape soda and the orange soda. The root beer was average. I didn't try anything else. If you're not sure whether you'll like one, pick up a 12-ounce can at the vending machine outside Wal-Mart. They're 25 cents and you won't feel guilty tossing one if it doesn't suit you.
4. Cereal. I will admit that I didn't take advantage of the milk and cereal thing this past week because I was out of milk and I was trying to avoid going to the store. However, it's a cheap meal, and it's not just for breakfast! I know people who buy the bulk cereal, but I don't like it as well. I buy when Safeway has buy 1, get 1 free specials on General Mills cereal. Watch for specials at your local store.
5. Ramen. I don't eat it often. My boyfriend seems to like it, though, and I have a feeling I'll end up with the giant package from Costco soon enough. Ah well. I'll stick with rice, thanks.
6. Target. This one doesn't necessarily have to do with food, but I see a lot of people buying things like paper towels and cat food at the grocery store. Folks, that is the worst place to buy non-edible items. Try Target instead. An example: My cats eat Fancy Feast. The stuff is 61 cents a can at Albertsons and 31 cents a can at Target. That's nearly 50% cheaper. The same goes for laundry detergent, paper towels and other items. Try Target or Wal-Mart for those items before you buy them at the local grocery store. (As a side note, Target has Mobil 1 oil, which is what my car takes, cheaper than Costco's bulk package of it. The moral of the story: Even buying at Costco doesn't mean you'll get the cheapest price. Shop around.)

So what did I learn? Sometimes cooking really isn't that difficult, and sometimes it's okay to eat out. Just watch your budget and keep track of how much you spend everywhere. Keep price-checking, and don't buy everything at the grocery store. Don't buy drinks or combo meals at restaurants; stick to sandwiches. Snag your drinks in 2-liter form from Wal-Mart or the grocery store.

I took $80 out of my paycheck today. I came home with some Girl Scout cookies, a bunch of drinks from Albertsons, a pen refill from Staples, and a whole bunch of stuff from Target, including a wall clock, a hummingbird feeder, a new spinny toothbrush, and some conditioner and body wash. I got a burrito for lunch... and now I have $13 in my pocket. It's amazing how fast you can spend money if you have it. :)

So, on a more personal note, I'm broke. Well, not completely. I have a lot of assets in my company, in various stocks, and in my car. (Yes, that's me hugging my car! My car is LILZOOM!)

Anyway. (Heh. I bet a lot of you are going through my personal directory now, aren't you? Oh well... if I didn't want it to be public, I would have turned directory indexing off. ;) As I was saying, I have a lot of assets, but no cash. That is, until Thursday or Friday, when I can finally get a payment from one of my clients.

How did this happen? Well, everything Simpli, Inc. makes (which is fairly substantial) gets invested back into Simpli, Inc. in the form of equipment, hosting, etc. (For those of you rifling through my personal directory, there are lots of pictures of our servers in there.) Everything I make is going to pay off credit card bills. So... no cash.

So, out of necessity, I've embarked on what I like to call the $26 challenge. That is, I have $26, I won't get paid until Friday, and my car is out of gas. The challenge is figuring out how to make this work.

I suppose this is the point where I should explain some background. I was never poor. My parents were poor at various points in their lives, but after they had me, my father started his own business and became fairly wealthy. (Wealthy by Indiana standards, which is where they live, but not particularly wealthy by California standards, which is where I live.) I've always had enough money to buy the things I need. I'm not used to having to budget for things or to make the choice between food and bills. I've just never had to do it.

The $26 challenge I've sent myself on is a way of proving to myself that I can actually realize what's important in my life. Keep in mind that $26 may sound like a lot, but it's for one week (Friday-Friday; I spent nothing this weekend) and my car is out of gas, so that's $20 of it. Over the weekend, I gradually ate most of the food in my house, so this week is where it becomes interesting. Part of the challenge to me is to focus on work so I can get some billable hours out the door, and part of the challenge is to learn what I spend the most on vs. what I need to be spending the most on. To be honest, I have just about everything I need in terms of creature comforts at this point: TV; DVD player; TiVo; DirecTV; nice computer; nice flat-panel monitor; etc. What else do I need? In reality, there isn't much else. Yet more money continues to flow out of my bank account than in. I have to figure out how to reverse that situation. Thus, the $26 challenge was born.

How did you figure out what your monetary limits were? Are you still having problems figuring them out? Let me know. I may incorporate some of your ideas into the $26 challenge!

So it seems there is a new phenomenon on Slashdot. Instead of karma whoring, which quickly got old, we now have "fan whoring." I'm taking about the huge lists of fans that some people seem to have racked up.

As far as I know, I was the first one to put the fan-whoring stuff in my signature. I only had it in there for a couple of days, though... and then ekrout picked it up. (Oi.) It got worse from there, with people making accounts just to fan-whore.

I've now switched my signature to a fan-whoring signature so I can better fit in with the new Slashdot groupthink. :P (I just find it hard to take Slashdot seriously anymore. It's so overrun with copy-and-paste trolls that the good discussion is being relegated to the user journals, which are pretty much all I read anymore. I'll do another journal entry on that.)

P.S. Is anyone else finding out that it's now ridiculously easy for people to get +5 posts? Also, is anyone else completely unable to moderate? This account of mine hasn't been able to moderate, even though I got M2 access after this feature was implemented. Emails to CmdrTaco have generated no response. Any ideas?