• Posted 12/19/2024.
    =====================

    I am still waiting on my developer to finish up on the Classifieds Control Panel so I can use it to encourage members into becoming paying members. Google Adsense has become a real burden on the viewing of this site, but honestly it is the ONLY source of income now that keeps it afloat. I tried offering disabling the ads being viewed by paying members, but apparently that is not enough incentive. Quite frankly, Google Adsense has dropped down to where it barely brings in enough daily to match even a single paid member per day. But it still gets the bills paid. But at what cost?

    So even without the classifieds control panel being complete, I believe I am going to have to disable those Google ads completely and likely disable some options here that have been free since going to the new platform. Like classified ad bumping, member name changes, and anything else I can use to encourage this site to be supported by the members instead of the Google Adsense ads.

    But there is risk involved. I will not pay out of pocket for very long during this last ditch experimental effort. If I find that the membership does not want to support this site with memberships, then I cannot support your being able to post your classified ads here for free. No, I am not intending to start charging for your posting ads here. I will just shut the site down and that will be it. I will be done with FaunaClassifieds. I certainly don't need this, and can live the rest of my life just fine without it. If I see that no one else really wants it to survive neither, then so be it. It goes away and you all can just go elsewhere to advertise your animals and merchandise.

    Not sure when this will take place, and I don't intend to give any further warning concerning the disabling of the Google Adsense. Just as there probably won't be any warning if I decide to close down this site. You will just come here and there will be some sort of message that the site is gone, and you have a nice day.

    I have been trying to make a go of this site for a very long time. And quite frankly, I am just tired of trying. I had hoped that enough people would be willing to help me help you all have a free outlet to offer your stuff for sale. But every year I see less and less people coming to this site, much less supporting it financially. That is fine. I tried. I retired the SerpenCo business about 14 years ago, so retiring out of this business completely is not that big if a step for me, nor will it be especially painful to do. When I was in Thailand, I did not check in here for three weeks. I didn't miss it even a little bit. So if you all want it to remain, it will be in your hands. I really don't care either way.

    =====================
    Some people have indicated that finding the method to contribute is rather difficult. And I have to admit, that it is not all that obvious. So to help, here is a thread to help as a quide. How to become a contributing member of FaunaClassifieds.

    And for the record, I will be shutting down the Google Adsense ads on January 1, 2025.
  • Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

Remember the good old days...

Half our town was going through rolling blackouts today, with more planned tomorrow. Not looking forward to tomorrow if we're affected. It is -8 at the moment. Kinda pathetic how they're regularly bumping up costs to "maintain " the system yet never seem to spend it on actually fixing the shortcomings.
 
Read elsewhere that in TX about 25% of the power to the grid comes from windmills, which is fine but when the windmills were purchased the power companies didn't bother to get the cold-weather package add-on that keeps them from freezing up. Apparently those big wings act just like airplane wings when they freeze, making them either unbalanced: a wobbling windmill is a bad thing and it will break if permitted to turn. There are sensors that actually stop them from turning if they are unbalanced.

That heating add-on is why the windmills in the Dakotas are still working, no one figured on single-digit temps in Texas as historically they only happen once a decade.

So, 25% of your generating capacity is offline at the same time you have other power plants down for regular maintenance. Toss in a demand spike because when temps are in the single digits heat pumps run on e-heat, which means they're pulling a lot more power than when acting as a heat pump, or people are plugging in 2-3 1500W electric space heaters because their heat pumps just aren't getting the job done, and you get outages and rolling blackouts.

BUT that's only part of the story. Homes in TX are not designed or built like ones further north, so they're going to have water issues. Pipes are not buried deeply or are often exposed or run along exterior walls so they're going to freeze. PEX will be ok, but I feel sorry for anyone with copper.
 
Ran to get more fire wood (first year using the fire place so didn't have enough) and this is what the dash showed.
 

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WebSlave said:
And now, to add insult to injury with the cold temps and blackouts in Texas:

Griddy customers face $5,000 electric bills for 5 freezing days in Texas

:ack2:
Click to expand...
Apparently there are two types of contracts for purchasing electricity in TX:
- Fixed rate plan, where you are charged a set amount per kWH no matter how much you use or how much is available, and
- Wholesale plan, where the amount you pay varies based on the wholesale kWH price at any given minute. During periods of extremely high demand and extremely low availability, the wholesale price skyrockets. When you sign up for such a contract you do so knowing that while most of your bills are lower per month than the folks who purchased fixed-rate power, the chance exists that you're going to pay dearly during a bad weather event.

Hell, these folks were warned in advance that there would be an issue. If I'm in a situation where there's a damned good possibility of paying $9,000 per KWH you can bet I'm going to have backup heating and cooking options available so I can cut off the power to the house myself at the panel.
 
Banks

Banks obviously do not believe global warming is real as the constantly give development loans and mortgages on coastal properties in FL.............By the way also remember reading a PUBLISHED article in elementary school maybe 20 or so years ago that stated "South Florida would be under water before 2018".........They taught us this in school!
 
Accorcing to the whackbird Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” I think we need to make a thread where all of these statements/predictions can be documented and then checked like a time capsule.
 
Ecologist Kenneth Watt warned us we would be out of crude oil by the year 2000.

ABC News ran a segment in 2008 promoting a movie called Earth 2100. Some predictions to scare us to buy the propaganda were gas reaching $9 per gallon, $12.99 cartons of milk, and New York City — engulfed by water in 2015.

Al Gore said in 2006 that “Humans may only have 10 years left to save the planet from turning into a total frying pan.”

Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).
 
marker1 said:
Accorcing to the whackbird Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” I think we need to make a thread where all of these statements/predictions can be documented and then checked like a time capsule.
Click to expand...

Probably anything published by Al Gore would suffice. :hehe:
 
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