Most of the time, site administration runs smoothly here. I check email alerts, clean out the spam account signups, check the dashboard for failed logins — that sort of thing.
Aaaand then some of the time, it doesn’t. Not at all. That few minutes of morning routine turns into hours, and then days, of back and forth with tech support from multiple providers.
Back in June, SDA began puking up bad connections and resource limit warnings. Our traffic stats crashed and then froze. The hosting company diagnosed “ai bot traffic” and recommended Cloudflare to take the load off the server.
You know about Cloudflare — it’s a big tech expert company that measures your humanity.
So, upon the advice of experts I purchased a Cloudflare plan. This immediately broke the site good and hard.
Dealing with Cloudflare support required a heroic act of restraint on my part when, after days of failed fixes, the ticket was elevated, and a higher level tech arrived to “take over the case”.
I thanked him, before reminding Mr. Al-High Level it had been his case all along and closing the account.
To cut a long and ridiculous story short, our newish hosting company (they inherited SDA when they bought out Hosting Matters) then thought to check our traffic stats.
“Oh”.
They had “inherited” a site that served 5.7M visits and pushed 1.19 TB of bandwidth since January. Well, that was new information! This resulted in a phone meeting with the host company’s owner and tech team, real people, for which I am genuinely grateful.
So, now we have a higher $$ plan. It’s not a heavy lift financially, but it does double the hosting fees we enjoyed for nearly two decades. That, combined with the security plan renewal, means that it’s fundraising time again.
We only do this once a year, and you all contribute far more than required to cover our costs, for which I’m also grateful. As I wrote last year at this time, “The business model of SDA has always been “this blog runs on the volunteer effort of people who enjoy yelling at radios, but your donations are appreciated”.
The funds raised over and above those costs are divided among myself and the guest bloggers. Etransfer is the preferred method, but there’s a link to a Paypal address on the sidebar as well.
*** If you’ve recently donated or contribute monthly, please ignore this – you’ve done your part! If you’re not in a financial position to contribute, please don’t and don’t apologize for it. ***
Finally, a reminder about SDA account creation: If, in the interests of commenting privacy you create a username and/or email address with properties common to spammers, I’m going to nuke it. So, if I’ve deleted your account in error, drop me an email and we’ll get you fixed up.
I’ve subscribed to other blogger’s monthly, but, discontinued for various reasons.
I like Martin Armstrong, but he seems to like the Iranians and hate the Jews. Oh, sorry, his COMPUTER says that, SMH…….so after 6 months, cut the sub.
Chris Martensen. Well, he did great work through Covid from the start. Published the reports showing Hydroxychloroquine, then Ivermectin was saving lives, incontrovertibly, and debunking the garbage studies of same, which gave the wrong doses at the wrong stage of illness only, which somehow “proved” that they did not work, courtesy of Fauci money. Plus, showed the Vitamin D studies which also showed without doubt, that this simple vitamin could save you from critical illness and death by Covid, and to avoid the deathly ClotShot.
For all that I’m greatful. But, he’s now a severe conspiracy theorist, a Jew hater as well, and is fixated on the oil market being manipulated, suppressing the “real” price of oil which he says is over $200. Mkay. 6 year subscription nuked, when he changed the sub from $10/mo to $99US/mo. Bye.
I still pay Dr William Makis his $6/mo. He deserves $20/mo. Or more for his valiant work.
SDA has been the constant throughout. It’s worth throwing the shekels at every now and then. The login feature is understandable, and certainly disposed of the spam/wankers and most of the droogs that can go post their LIEberal/ENDP wet dreams somewhere else.
Throwing $20 into the kitty here is well worth it.
You might want to rethink your support for William Makis. The guy who wrote this is a reliable source. https://substack.com/home/post/p-194244657
Speaking as a frequent flier here at SDA … I can honestly say I get far more out of this place than I put into it. I have nothing but gratitude, appreciation and a few shekels for Kate and Lance. And as you may have noticed … I REALLY like many, many, of the regular commenters here.
Your formerly local baseball team sucks though!
Okay, it’s my team too………
Pretty grim. But thanks for reminding me … I need to go catch a game at Raleys Field. The Tower Bridge is an icon of my youth growing up in Sacto.
“Speaking as a frequent flier here at SDA … I can honestly say I get far more out of this place than I put into it. ”
Likewise. First stop of the day for me.
I hit APOD first, then SDA, everyday.
Ironically I just won a hefty bounty at work in a security vulnerability squashing contest, so let’s share the love.
As they say at David Thompson’s place, “ping”.
I trust you enjoyed that short excerpt from my exchange with the Cloudflare help desk bot. I should have saved the emails…
I once got to sit in a boardroom and go up one side of the head of Azure Canada and down the other because the company I was working for had been down for 7 days thanks to his utterly incompetent support. I later found out he was Satya’s hand-picked successor who’d been sent to Canada to learn the ropes in a small region. I’m sure it’s totally a coincidence that Azure’s quality and reliability has been nose-diving since then.
The Internet (well, the World Wide Web, but that’s pretty much the same thing these days) is increasingly managed by a small number of companies that hate you, and are incompetent.
increasingly managed by a small number of companies that hate you, and are incompetent.
At risk of sounding like an old fart … or sounding like my old, bitter, grandmother … that describes every municipality I struggle to work with every day. Hate and incompetency. Yet they all fly the … Love is Love flag.
Thank you for being an actual person doing important work that bonds together a small but mighty (and salty) nation. I swear fealty to my queen!
Consider it done but I hope they gave you a bottle of wine.
That can’t be a picture of NME666?
Looking wayyy too intelligent.
GYM sucks, pass it on.
Cloudfare is the absolute worst. My website lapsed because I could not contact anyone nor update my payment information.
Somehow after it lapsed I was able to repurchase it through GoDaddy for way effing cheaper. Which from my experience never happens.
the succinct version.
lve been showing up @ SDA since around my last house purchase 2003.
some of the links subscribers posted in that time have led to astounding insight and new understandings (l am a knowledge glutton)
Kate, you have a VERY HIGH and deserved profile in this nation’s online set.
l will be making an etransfer nxt payday. it will be a ‘b’day’ gift to myself.
soldier on. be sure to line up someone to ‘carry the torch’ if it comes to that.
if at some point SDA exists only in the wayback machine l will know it was big gubbamint did it.
“I’ll clear that clogged drain!”, said Tom Swift, succinctly.
Dun. Or some other “when is it ever going to rain because the crops need it” colour. Which, if you’re like Calgary this year, doesn’t currently apply.
vaguely related topic regarding the reaaaaaally big boyz running (ruining?) things on this ubiquitous internot. (note the spelling)
had a lead on some exercise gear. look up the address on google maps.
head out. aw what???? confusion causes my ride to abandon the trip.
l check the online map. l check the screen print.
ahfer$*!?@#!sake. google put North pointing DOWN. on the bottom of the page.
l swear l never saw such nonsense. esp from the ‘dynamic duo’ mssrs page and brin.
they of the few multibillionaires, TOO CHEAP TO GET A MAP RIGHT WAY AROUND
“…our newish hosting company (they inherited SDA when they bought out Hosting Matters) then thought to check our traffic stats.”
They didn’t notice they were hosting the biggest blog in Canada? Okay then…
Thanks to the SDA Kate & all contributors for the very informative news & opinions.
“ Etransfer is the preferred method, but there’s a link to a Paypal address on the sidebar as well.”
I nuked my PayPal account after they “refunded” my Canadian truckers donation, but I will figure out how to do this Etransfer thing.
E-transfer is pretty painless. I sent Kate some shekels that way in July.
It also doesn’t skim a piece for itself.
I couldn’t get e-transfer to work so I sent something via penpal (under my real name).
Mr. Lone Wolf…
Ask Treadstone.
I’m a Luddite … and there isn’t an E-Transfer button … sooooo
How do I “E-transfer”? Do they calculate the exchange rate, or do I need to do that?
I don’t know if it works crossborder. It’s a function of online banking. You need to log in to your bank account and send directly to the recipient’s email through the etransfer option.
Wells Fargo (yeah, I know, I know) doesn’t appear to have anything like an E-transfer. They have Zelle which I have used to give my kid money, but everything else requires I give personal information and log Kate into their system as a legit recipient … no thanks.
I also use Venmo to pay my barber and one of my consultants. I don’t believe they extract a fee if I send the $$ as a ‘gift’.
Kate, you’ve just answered why I couldn’t do an e-transfer, as I mentioned above. Although I think I still have to do it from my bank account to another bank account.
Did my first e transfer yesterday. Quite painless actually.
SDA is my first stop almost every morning. I don’t comment very much as the majority of regular commenters are way more knowledgeable than myself. Read and learn, read and learn.
Can I just send a cheque?
Sure can.
C. McMillan, Box 579, Delisle SK S0L 0P0
Hit you by e-transfer this morning, thanks for all you do.
e-transfer today.
Sanest thing I read in the morning and throughout the day. MSM first for local approved slant, DaybyDay and then SDA, Rebel and Juno.
Though I am worried about David, continuously exposing himself (he he) to all the odd crap he finds cannot be good for his mental health.
SDA is where I get my news about my northern neighbor. Good neighbors are hard to find.
Thanks again, Kate, for all you do. And thanks also to those others that add to SDA.
My first and last each day!