shriekingviolet

I have a day off tomorrow so I'm going to be installing the new security update for the forum sometime tomorrow afternoon which means the forum'll be down anywhere from 2 to 6 hours (but hopefully no more than that!). Sorry for the inconvenience everyone, but obviously last time I put off upgrading the forum software my procastination bit us in the ass so I'm trying to get a move on!

As most of you have already heard, we were hacked yesterday which lead to some nasty virus spreading among a chunk of our users. A hacker used a known security flaw in Invision Board v. 2.1.5 to gain access to the admin control panel where it inserted iframes (an html element that allows the content of another website or page be displayed seamlessly on another page) into several (though apparently not all) skins. The offsite page it integrated into the forum contained the actual virus, no files on our server had viruses directly embedded into them. Kate and I have gone through each of the different skins to removed the iframe insertions and checked the different upload folders for new files, so we're pretty confident that all malignant content has been removed. We've also upgraded the software so that the hacker could no longer take advantage of that flaw in the script (which is something I've been meaning to do, but hadn't found the time since the new version was release 3-4 weeks ago) and changed our passwords just to be safe. Hopefully this will prevent the hacker from reentering the admin center and reinserting any of his modifications. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused! For more information on any possible information compromises that occured because of our breakin, please read Kate's announcement on the issue.

Just in case anyone's missed this, both admins and about a third of the mod staff will be away this weekend to attend Convergence in New Orleans. Communication during this time will be slow as those of us gone won't be checking in here and those of us staying behind will have more work to do than usual in our absense. Please be patient and cooperative with the mods that will still be around, I don't want them going crazy. I may never get to take another vacation if they do. I myself will be gone from tomorrow until Monday, so any requests for my help will go unanswered until Tuesday!

She's not Artemis, but Kali's a warrior goddess with her own BPAL blend. Oya (an orisha) is also a warrior goddess Beth has blended for.

BPAL Forum Raffle! Just to clarify, the forum will end tomorrow at midnight CST. After that, no more will be sold and Kate & I will spend the weekend assigning numbers to each ticket and choosing the winners. Thank you to everyone who's made the raffle so successful this far in!

As I'm sure many of you have noticed, the forum has been slow and down some since we came back up. It seems that our host put us on a machine with less RAM than I ordered and we're taxing the resources we have. They're going to install the RAM I ordered which will improve our performance but that's going to take some downtime. I'm currently waiting on a tech to get back to tell me how long we'll be down for and when we can do it. I'll get back to you guys when I get that information. Also, as a reminder, this is the last week you'll be able to buy raffle tickets! The last day they'll be on sale is Friday (Saturday, for you Aussies!). Barring any complications, the drawing will be held this weekend and winners will be notified next week!

Hey everyone! After nearly two weeks of downtime, the forums are back up and finally on a server on our own! I didn't get nearly as much done as I would have liked, but a combination of time constraints, missing plug-ins and extreme fatigue have lead me to throw in the towel for the time being and open up without them. I know you guys want to be back just as much as I'd like to not spend ever spare minute on forum work for a few days, so this is best for everyone even if I do find it pretty disappointing. Hopefully though we'll get the proper plug-ins installed onto the server this week and get at least two of the three uncompleted projects up and running before a third of the mod team leaves to attend Convergence. In the meantime, here are some of the changes that have occured since we went down: Live Chat!: The forum now has an official chat room! It's integrated into the forum so that everyone's forum log-in should work for it, AND it's tied into the "Who's Online?" list so that people can tell when our members are within, chatting away! Member Blogs: All Members now have the ability to create and maintain their own weblogs on site! This feature can be setup within your "My Controls" control panel. New Skin: I created a new skin which I'm very proud of while we were down. You can find it under the name "she devil." Other Important Items of Note: Mata Hari skin temporarily down: Sarah's lovely red skin is down while she's making buttons to accommodate some of the forum's new features. Once she's finished it'll return. Feel free to bug her if she takes too long. Gallery not up: This is just a heads up to anyone who stumbles across the Invision Gallery links in your user control panels. A community gallery (where people could upload and share images) was something I had planned to have ready when we opened, but we're waiting on a module to be installed so it can work. Until then, just ignore than section. Once it'l ready, I'll make an announcement and explain how it works. New Moderators to Be Chosen: Over the next few weeks, we plan to adding several moderators to both help moderate the Politics subforum and the help staff some of our new projects. We don't plan on having a formal application process as we think that limits the pool of people we have to choose from, but it never hurts to inform us of your interest in a position as that will at least make sure you'll be considered. To the few of you who have already expressed interest during the past few months, I haven't forgotten you. I think that's about it. It's very late and tired, so I've probably forgotten something. If you have any questions, concerns, or post crash errors to report, feel free to pm Kate (quantum spice) or I and we'll attempt to get back to you ASAP. And no I'm going to go to bed. Welcome home guys!

Can't see how the blog looks if I don't have a test entry.

allo

testing hey hey

The "Get New Post" feature is going to be buggy until traffic on the forum (and your participation!) goes back to normal. Some of you have already noticed that when you click on the "Go to New Posts" graphic (looks something like this though the color differs from skin to skin), you'll get an SQL error. This is because the forum (it seems anyway) hasn't completely acknowledged that the week's worth of posts that are missing are gone, so it tries to take you to posts that you hadn't read that are no longer there. When it tries to call up said posts, it runs into an error because the posts don't exist. This error will fix itself as you read the forums more and it counts all posts up to the present as read because you've visited that topic since we've been back up. For the new few days, for threads you haven't read since the forum went down, your the numbered page links rather than the "get new posts" button. Or if you want to end the problem swiftly, hit the "mark forum as read" option in the option menu (it's on the title bar for all forums). It'll rest the "have read and have not read" settings for you so that the forum no longer tries to show you unread, no longer existing posts. Thanks!

As I'm sure many of you have noticed, the forum has been down since Saturday evening. No this wasn't planned downtime (I would have told you all about that if it were), we had some unexpected, major problems occur in the database that were either due to Mercury in retrograde or a failing hdd (or both). As a result, there were three major tables that had to be repaired and given their size, that took hours upon hours to run functions on. And then even that wasn't successful so we had to take even more time to restore week old copies of the compromised tables, which means a LOT of data was lost including a weeks worth of posts and affected topics. I greatly apologize for so many posts missing, but there was nothing to be done and at this point, no way to recover them. We are working on getting the database to back itself up much more frequently than weekly so in the future if something like this happens again, the data loss won't be so great. I know that's a great inconvenience for many of you, especially where reviews and swaps are concerned. It couldn't be helped. So far, as far as I know *knocks on wood,* the only lost information is in topics and posts that have been created since Feb 26 and everyone's read/unread markers. Everyone's member accounts, reward points, pms, etc. should be unaffected. There might be a few error messages here and there, though I tried my best to find them. If you do run across one, copy down what it says, and then pm me with it and where it happened. Just give me some extra time to respond. Fixing the forum has been a small nightmare and I need a little rest time. It's amazing I didn't try to hang myself with the power cord sometime in the last 72 hours. Anyway, on to the few tidbits of good news. I had a forum upgrade planned waiting in the wings which I took care of this afternoon as I figured it'd be easier to do it while the forum was down than schedule more downtime. There are a handful of new neat features (like a list of similar topics on the bottom of each topic page, a list of members who've viewed that topic that day, an icon with all members posts that allows you to easily search for all posts that member has made in that topic, among others) for your use. Also we've reopened the forum raffle for the time being. We still don't have a concrete plan as to what will be done with any extra money because I haven't had a chance to discuss this with my accountant (been too busy working to get the forum back up!) about what the IRS is going to think about all this, but quantum spice and I have reassessed our forum budget and decided that as the money is coming in greater quantity than we thought, we might as well set a monetary goal that would cover the cost of all the little wishlist items we've always want for the forum but couldn't afford before (like chat, a good gallery, blog features, moving to a dedicated server early). The ticket sales are set to cap after another 555 tickets are sold, but provided the chat with my accountant goes well that cap will be lifted. I think that's all for now. Welcome back guys!

I *think* the automatic reward points issuer is fixed (thanks to some help from allidavie! ) and we've issued back points to quite a few people and now it's just a matter of figuring out what and who we might have missed. If everyone can peek at their point total (which can be viewed with your posts) and contact me if you think it's less than it should be and by how much. I'll try to get the situation rectified ASAP. Thanks!

I'm going to do some security updates (software wise) on the forum early next week, and will do a fresh install on the reward points script and hope that stops the stagnation on points. At which point, I'll go back and attempt to add missing points.

There was an error in the table that let people log in, not sure how it occured, but it happened. Was very easy to fix but unfortunately I didn't come online to notice anything was wrong until hours after the problem first appeared. Sorry guys! Guess I need a pager like an ER doctor, eh?

Initial Impression: Good lord it's caramel! Smoky caramel with maybe a hint of berriness from the currant. After Wearing It: Wet this smells of caramel and tobacco goodness. The caramel is very rich and sweet without smelling toothachingly sweet, and the tobacco is just gorgeous. Smells sweet, deep and smoky, without a trace of any stale cigarette stench. There's a whiff of something like coffee too, that gives the caramel a bit of bite to it. For the first hour, Red Lantern is very foody, yet it's not quite dessert-like. It's like if the essence of food snobbery was condensed into a smell this would be it. It's the caramels that are too good to give to children or anyone who finds any satisfaction eating anything made by Kraft. Very slowly, other notes start to show up to the party. The coconut is the first to join up and it's acclimated into the circle quickly. The tobacco, caramel, & coconut combination makes Red Lantern smell very reminiscent of Elegba, but it's far less boozy and much lighter. The next to come to play is amber, heating the scent and fuzzying it up. There's something like hazelnut next that's a wisp of a thing. Leaves an impression and a texture, but otherwise not much of a presense. The opium and the spice doesn't kick in until at least 2.5 hours into the life of the scent, but when they arrive they subtly turn the blend into a cloud of sweet incense smoke that's richly appealing. From the onset, Red Lantern gave me an impression of an intimate gathering in an opulent setting. Hushed voices whispering together, heads bent close, enthralling each other with their knowledge and wit. It has a feel of a intellectual salon for sensualists rather than a brothel. Information and secrets are the aphrodisiac here, the intoxicant, and not the promise of flesh. It's sensual in that it's luxurious and langourous, with its dim lighting and the plush velvet cushions. It's even sexy, but in a more intellectual sort of way. Like being attracted to a plain looking stranger for the depth of knowledge he carries, and can share with you if you can entice him. But it's not carnal and it's not bawdy, it's... deeply promising. Final Thoughts: I love this so much! Very tempted to go snag another bottle of it right now. Quite possibly one of my favorite scents ever. A must buy!

Initial Impression: Sweet booziness with a background of dirty musk. After Wearing It: Wet this smells really dirty and gritty. I definitely can smell a similarity to the opening moments of Smut to Sed No Satiata, which in its first hour was giving me mental images of being in the front row watching angry women mud wrestle in a seedy bar. Smut doesn't smell quite so dirty/muddy, it's more musky and sweaty. The musk is heavy and almost bestial and there seems to be a dirtier vein of patchouli here. I smell a little booze but not much. If I had to guess on what type I'd say it was something darker like bourbon, because there's not much sweetness at all. Definitely cannot smell the sugar. For the first hour or so, Smut is very, well, smutty. It's sex but not sex with affection or even much sensuality. Not sex that's about seduction or mutual pleasure, but blind hunger and a good amount of selfishness. It's dirty, raw, and somewhat mindless. The scratching, pushing, taking and panting parts of sex that seem to serve as a reminder of how much genetic information we have have in common with hairier species. It's the kind of sex that would be more alarming than embarrassing or arousing to walk in on because it might even look nonconsensual until you notice both are definitely participating. The scent is definitely more than a little disconcerting as it ravages my chemistry. Ahhh but then the afterglow kicks in, the happy, sweet relief that comes in when you've finally satiated that hunger, that craving. It's like that immediate alleviation you feel after you start eating after starving all day even though the food hasn't have a chance to nourish your cells yet. The sugar finally kicks in and it has a vanilla tinge to it. It smooths and soothes the strained heat that smut had been for the past 90 minutes or so. It brings in a surprising amount of care and cuddling with it, providing the calm after the initial storm of desire. It's still sexy and sensual, but it's not as powerful, its needs are not immediate. And yes it does smell a little like Snake Oil, but softer, muted like it's been wrapped in flannel sheets. Very gorgeous and I love it! Final Thoughts: Wonderful scent! Perfect embodiment of smut, great job Beth! Couldn't have captured the essence better. And doesn't smell at all like Devil's Night to me, that was sweeter overall and more boozy. Wow this is my first review in ages. I haven't had time to give a scent enough proper attention so that I felt comfortable reviewing it in a while, but I felt compelled to do it for the people still on the fence!

Site Description: none yet Initial Impression: Smells slightly like kerosene. Something herby in the background. After Wearing It: This smells like summer to me, like sitting on the lawn at night among the tiki torches and citronella candles trying to keep the bugs away. The smell of the grass, weeds and wildflowers drifts upward to blend with the smell of smoke, citronella, kerosene and a touch of lime. It's a slightly masculine blend, quiet and reflective yet impersonal. A quiet vigil on a hot, sticky night. Final Thoughts: Nice scent, good energy and imagery behind it, but in the end not for me. It'll go up for swap someday when I actually feel motivated to start swapping.

I meant to post about this on our actual anniversary date which was Monday the 16th, but I was still working on the new skin sets I wanted to release as something new to mark our milestone. I finished working on them earlier tonight (you can switch skins using the dropbox in the bottom lefthand corner, it's one new design available in 4 different color schemes), so I'm finally going ahead and break out the streamers and the confetti and saying "Happy Anniversary guys!" We've gone through a lot in the past two years. We've survived a quick change in management (those who've been around since the beginning will remember that I did not have a hand in the founding of the forum, but took over a month later), been at three different internet addresses, lived on four different servers, suffered through three major upgrades in software, had a handful of major outbreaks of drama, and experienced major life changes that we've helped each other through. We've witnessed major growth for the company our forum revolves around, friendships formed, and regional gatherings organized. Later this spring, we may even see a miniconvention of sorts of forumites as dozens of us make the journey to New Orleans to visit the Lab while they participate in Convergence 12. May it be the first of many! We've had over 3,000 members come to join our ranks, made over 400,000 posts in over 16,000 topics. Our bandwidth (which was the main reason that the founder gave the forum up in the first place) has grown from about 6 gb a month to 60-70 gb a month. Those numbers are quite reflective of our success as a community, but I think my favorite forum statistic is that of the 88 people who joined the forum during that first week of being open, 52 of them still visit the forum. That's 59% which I think is pretty amazing given the transient nature of internet communities and the short attention span of many consumers. I think that speaks volumes for the sense of community people experience here. I want to thank my mod staff, to whom I will be forever in debt for their advice and aid in keeping the forum in order. I want to thank the Lab for encouraging the forum the way they have through their interaction and the offers of special perks like forum exclusive scents to our members. But most of all I want to thank everyone who has posted here other the past 24 months, as the forum could not have grown to what it has become without all of you. A product line alone, even one as extensive and wonderful as the Lab's, could not has driven a forum to become this large. It takes a lively community full of fun and friendly people to create an environment which makes people want to spend their time and share their thoughts in ways that keeps people coming. You guys have been great and have made the occasional frustrations worth bearing through. And for that I am grateful! Happy anniversary everyone!

Yes, I'm aware of the issues with the reward points calculator. I haven't figured out exactly what the issue is as it hasn't broken down completely (which be easier to find errors on ). I may not be quick to find a solution as I just went back to school last week and time has been a little cramped, but don't worry, points for rewards and reports made while your points were stuck will be granted retroactively when we get a handle on it. If in the meantime you wish to use your points and have been keeping track of your own, just submit a request to me with such information. Thanks!

Site Description: there isn't one, but Beth tells me it was intended to amplify not only sexual passion, but a joy & lust for life. Desire without its darkside. Initial Impression: Citrusy floral blend, tropical feeling with an slightly waxy smelling overlay After Wearing It: Wet and during the first hour after application, Passion smelled to me like the lovechild of The Star and Pele with the lime turned all the way up. I could smell the "just lit" candle smell I noticed in The Star along with the lime, with Pele's soft, warm floral breeze. The scent was warm, but only comfortably so. Like a sunny day in late spring when the chill of winter is barely even a memory but the heat of summer hasn't started to set in. My favorite type of weather too, so I was tickled by that, particularly since it was very cold when I wore it. After about an hour the candle wax note had burned off and Passion didn't remind me of Pele much anymore. The lime note was still very strong and dominant, but round and smooth. It lay over a bed of flowers that briefly peaked out clearly, but were really hard to pick out individually. At one point I thought I could smell carnations, but that note was whisked away before I could be sure it had really been there. A powdery jasmine note was the only one I felt somewhat confident in identifying. The scent wore on the rest of the day that way: a strong but sleek, bright lime over a soft, slightly powdery floral base. This scent was very cheery and positively buoyant. Didn't feel much sexuality to it, but the joy was definitely there and a sort of innocent sensuality to it that enlightened you to the sensuality that lies in all things. I don't know if it was actually the therapeutic vibes built into the blend or if it was what I had read in Beth's PM to me about the blend that I carried with me in the back of my mind as I wore it, but I couldn't stop smiling all day. It was like wearing a hug in the way it was so aggressively comforting. It's the bottled, concentrated feeling of knowing someone loves you and was so touching I almost felt moved to tears whenever I sniffed my wrist. It inspired a lot of confidence too and oddly made me think of something President Clinton said about how people who were loved can accomplish anything. It certainly felt that way! Final Thoughts: Passion is certainly not the sort of scent I normally wear, but I love it all the same. How could I not adore something so positive? This bottle was such a touching gift and I'll cherish it forever!

My tinkering around tonight caused a few problems with may or may not be noticable for mods. I'm about ready to pass out so I'm heading to bed without trying to figure them out. I'm no good for thought right now! So please excuse the mess. I'll deal with it tomorrow. Ah, and if everyone could lay off the report button for today as that's one of the things that needs fixing, I'd appreciate it.

The board will be down at around midnight CST tonight while I get some work done. It hopefully won't take *too* long.

I'm using my fall break to visit Sarah (retail therapy mod) in D.C. so I'm going to be gone from tomorrow to next Monday night. I will have internet access, but I wouldn't count on me being around to answer any emails or pms, so please either wait until I get back or pm quantum spice instead. I trust you'll all do just fine without me.

Miss Lynx perhaps? hahaha and so that is a cat on her avatar! for some reason, it kept looking like a seal to my eyes. I think it's because the whiskers are so long and with the cat's head bent and out of sight, the neck looks like a muzzle!