It used to be 70 here that you could opt out of.  They bumped it to 75 now. Just when I thought I could get out of it. Make me wait another five years.

I used to a jury summons about twice a year. Only got picked for jury one time.
Opted out when I turned 70.

Goody goody - jury duty today. Something new and different, I guess.

On the other hand, it will be a big change from my usual day so maybe I should embrace it and enjoy the experience.

Well, it happened again this morning at 6AM. Our forum software was updated to version 2.1.5 by the same strange 'Guest' account at IP address 127.0.0.0.   Those of you familiar with computer networking and communication recognize that IP address as the "loopback" address or internal IP address of any computer. That is how it refers to itself when identifying by IP address. 

So I know that it had to be the server itself. Time for a virtual trip to GoDaddy, our web hosting service.  A little digging around there (there are literally HUNDREDS of settings to mess with) and I found a setting that allows the server to automatically search for and apply software updates when they are available. A quick check of the log there showed that yes indeed, the server had applied the updates. A few mouse clicks later and the auto update function has been disabled. 

I then restored the system to this morning's backup of 4 AM and life is back to normal here at HMJ with our forum software back to version 2.1.4 and all of our add-ons work again.

Be aware that we will upgrade to the newest version at some point in the future, probably not until autumn when I should have a little more time. A proper upgrade involves doing some homework on all of our add-ons to make sure that they will work with the latest updates. Once that is done, I plan a date and time to upgrade, then make a proper announcement in this forum with plenty of advance notice.

Once the process starts, the forum is placed into maintenance mode, a full backup is done, and finally the update is applied. Another backup gets done and then the add-ons get reapplied.

Last step is to go through and make sure that everything is working properly, then finally throw the switch to let everything go live again. The actual process up upgrading should only take a few hours if everything goes smoothly.

I don't mean to bore any of you with all of this, but some folks are honestly curious about what goes on behind the scenes, so giving a brief synopsis is the least I can do.

One last thing: If you see anything behaving strangely, please let me know by making a new post in the Site Problems and Forum Software Support subforum.

Many thanks to all of you for your patience and support.

Our database has been restored to the backup from Wednesday morning, prior to the upgrade being applied by I have no idea who. 

For those of you familiar with computer stuff, the upgrade was applied from IP address 127.0.0.0 which is an internal IP address on the server itself. This means that the update was applied by:
* An employee of GoDaddy, our web hosting service, directly from the server console.
* Someone who hacked into the webserver on which our forum exists, and that person applied the update.

But common sense begs the question "why would someone hack into the server or sit at its console and apply the upgrade for us??"    I have no answer, but I know that it has been removed. The upgrade broke all of our add-ons such as Tiny Portal and other things. Let's hope that we can move forward without further problems. 

I was not logging in each day in the past, but I will be now so that I can make changes of necessary.

I am asking each of you to be observant in the future. If you log in and find the sidebars gone on each side of the screen, please refrain from posting as we will need to restore again.

If this problem continues I will be having conversations with the folks at GoDaddy.

We should be all set to continue forward as usual.

I had one of those VFD's like that. The manual didn't make sense. Some how, I got the wires crossed for the for/rev switch and blew up the  VFD! Don't ever blow one up, I thought the whole house had blown up with me in the middle of it all.

The VFD works! First a little history. Many moons ago I bought an ACME VFD. The manual said wire it anyway you want to (switches can go anywhere in the circuit) and no parameters to mess with. It has been flawlessly working since day one. Then I bought this Chinese MySweety VFD the other day, expecting similar results, yeah right! Wired it up plugged it in...and. Well at least the lights came on! Had to learn VFD terminology. Had to work around the lack of operator manual information. Had to learn Chinese interpretation. Had to learn button pushing. Then after about a day of no-good news. I switched parameters from internal speed pot to external speed pot. Which should not be correct and it's working. The manual was wrong! Happy Days!

Quote from: TerryWerm on Jun 02, 2025, 10:03 PM

Quote from: Jake Parker on Jun 02, 2025, 08:41 PMDon't be a stranger!

I'm already stranger than anyone you know... 

That's why we all get along!!
 

Quote from: Jake Parker on Jun 02, 2025, 08:41 PMDon't be a stranger!

I'm already stranger than anyone you know... 

Don't be a stranger!