Goosebeak

[Goosebeak]

Hi guys....

Been a long time - I got a new phone, changed SIM cards, and promptly lost all the names/telnos from 'M' onwards... so no 'Shorty', nothing. Around the same time, I had a system crash (typical I.T. practitioner, I was just about to back up everything!). Then I couldn't remember the link to this site, and when I finally got my butt into gear and found the link, I couldn't remember my password....

Anyway, I'm back, sorry I missed so much, but things are looking up for me.

In April last year I was retrenched from ABSA, courtesy of Barclays - 2500 I.T. specialists retrenched and hitting the market at the same time was a bit of a disaster for those of us with bills to pay, which was basically all of us. I tried going back into real estate, to no avail - while there is a market for sales out there, buyers and sellers are tending to stick with the old, established names in the industry. So I started working for my brother's golf cart rental business, doing maintenance/repairs and helping him deliver and collect golf carts. This went extremely well, and as of this year I became a partner in the business. I've also got myself accredited as a mobile installer for Tracetec (it's a battery-powered tracking/recovery unit for almost everything you can think of that could get stolen - I've fitted units to everything from Lamborghini's to television sets!). So I'm keeping my nose above water - although sometimes it's only just above!

Looking back, despite all the hardships and uncertainty, I'm not sorry about the way things have turned out. Although it would be nice to be busy EVERY day instead of only 2 or 3 days in a week, we get through the month somehow.

I hope all of my old friends and acquaintances here are well and I look forward to catching up on everything!

Regards,

Charles (Goosebeak).

[Jan Horn]

Welcome back Charles. Glad you are sorted with a new password. Good to hear that your are back in earning a living mode as well. Looking forward to your contributions. On the old forum it was always to the point and thoroughly enjoyed by yours truly. Shorty has been very quiet lately, I will give him a ring later today to see if he is still ok health wise.

[fugglefeet]

Hi Charles and welcome back,

Hopefully you will be able to make yourself at home here and enjoy the topics on the menu.

Darryl

[Goosebeak]

Thanks, gents! The only thing I'm stil battling with is changing my password from the temp password to my New! Improved! permanent version. It may just be something to do with my Ubuntu machine - I'm going to try SWAMBO's Windows machine just now, see if that fixes the problem....

I have a heckuva lot of reading to catch up on, from what I can see..... and I need some advice, going to have to just find the right place to ask...

EDIT: Yup, that did it, managed to change the password, all up and running now.........

[Jan Horn]

It may also be that the system restricts some privileges for members with less than 3 post. Loading of images and files and the PM facility should all be available to you now that you reached the 3 post limit. As you know spamming is a big problem and The board has some restrictions build in. The measures Darryl introduced here reduced the our work with about 90% compared to the old forum.

[Goosebeak]

Well, it's fixed - Darryl PM'd me, basically said the same thing, but I can't reply to him (system says my reply has been flagged as spam). I logged in on SWAMBO's (Windorks) machine and managed to change the password, so the "Kaap is Hollands". Back on my Ubuntu machine now...

But yup, you are 100% correct - spamming and bots are the biggest problems on any forum/website, and anything that makes like more difficult for the spammers &c. is good. Having run my own forum/website for a while, I fully understand how much time you can end up wasting every day, trying to keep things under control. After a full day's work, you still have to put in 4-to-8 hours on cleanup every day?!?!?!?! No thanks! Something that you have a passion for will quickly burn you out like that.

Must say, it's looking really good here. You guys have done a fantastic job - a lot of forum admins out there could (should?) come here to see how to organise and run a forum properly... But then again, the quality of the members is also important - and that side of things is also looking good!

Generally, Impressive!

[Jan Horn]

I can say without fear of contradiction that all 256 members of this forum are here because they cleared the two anti spam systems we have in place. Those that were cleared for registration still face the scrutiny of either Darryl or myself and those that fail our scrutiny is banned blocked and deleted. Apart form those we know from the old forum we gained an excellent bunch of new members. Looking at membership numbers we are still small but we must bear in mind that we are barely a year in operation. Looking at the statistics at the bottom of the index page I think we are getting there. We are visible on Google search when you use certain keywords but it is still difficult to find us. Unfortunatly we could not retain our first choice of name which would have made searching for the forum easier but a few old friends found recently and registered.