ipb

Starting today, we are handling price cap violations slightly differently. We have found that with over 70 price cap violations to date, it's harder to track the way we have been doing, and many violations have been going unmarked. These changes are not very different from our current policy, except that we now use the warning system to keep records of previous price cap violations. Even after 90 days, price cap violation warnings will remain in the warning log for moderator records, but they will not affect your warning level after 90 days. Warnings for things other than price cap violations (such as for duplicate topic) will NOT affect your access to the swaps forum. First price cap violation: After the first price cap violation, a reminder will be issued. Second price cap violation: After the second price cap violation, a warning will be issued. This warning will NOT be reversed upon fixing the violations. Third price cap violation: After the third price cap violation, the individual will be suspended from the swaps are for two months. A warning will be issued. Fourth price cap violation: After the fourth price cap violation, the individual will be permanently suspended from the swaps. No warning because they can't commit the offense any more. Since Decant This pro-actively deals with the pricing issues (eg, the pre-approval of all threads), it will NOT be affected by this. Swaps, For Sale, and Wanted WILL be. Over the next two weeks, we will be retroactively adding warnings to the warn log for price cap violations. Warnings over 90 days old will be neutralized after we add in all of the price caps, but you may see a temporary rise in your warning level.

Break a leg - I know how nerve-wrecking these big exams are (having just taken the engineering one two weeks ago). Which actuarial exam are you taking? I vaguely remember, back when I didn't know what I wanted to do and was considering doing something with teh math instead of engineering, that there are several exams...

We've been getting complaints from people who are being contacted for swaps that are in the Dead Swaps Cemetery section of the forum. Please do not contact anyone about the swaps offered in those posts or report posts for moderator activity. The area consists of DEAD Swaps, the swaps that have been completed or had no activity for more than six weeks. That's why it's in the read-only archive and NOT in the appropriate swap forum. We've added a reminder in the "Attention: This section is read only" that appears on every page within the Forum Archives to not contact people about swaps in the Dead Swap Cemetery.

The Lab has never expressed the desire to have GCs to me while we have discussed various things that they wanted with the shopping cart. Scent recommendations, wish lists, search engine integration with impulse links, yes.... GCs, no.

i won't have time to fix the menu or update the db until about about may 12th (when i'm done with school... at least for three days). right now, i've got 3 weeks of class plus finals left, but that's not so much the problem as everything else i have to do (i've got a big national licensing exam on the 22nd, i'm running my office solo for 2 weeks starting the 24th, and that brings us to finals week ) regarding the 4 letter thing: it's something i can't fix without completely rewriting how it does the boolean searches. i tried to do it other ways, but this was the only way that worked consistently.

Oh great googley moogley. It's really good that we hadn't yet announced the feedback, because as it turns out, anyone who has registered (or changed their password) since we upgraded to 2.x wouldn't've been able to log in. Fixed now, but all y'all totally owe emzebel for finding this bug and working with me til it was quashed! Entry Title: Pearls Into The Dirt

I think my end of the code mods for the swap feedback is really, truly done. For realz this time - I think I've said that four or five times, but the lastest one hasn't seen any more comments of changes by the beta testers (aka, the mods). Entry title: Idiot Express

The raffle should be taking place later tonight. Whoo ha! Di finished the ticket audit at some obscene time earlier this morning (I was actually asleep, that's how obscene it was!). The skin for the swap feedback is more or less implemented. There's a little detail work that needs to be done (a few image changes & maybe some table/color futzing) yet, but the lion's share is now done. This doesn't have the real image work, but it'll give you an idea of what it'l look like... Yes, we bought Censura's reviewing software for our swap feedback. No, it's actually not that pretty out of the box. In fact, out of the box, it looks like this... and we don't like those default skins around here Entry Title: Everwhere A Crisis

We don't sleep But in all seriousness, it comes down to being fairly organized and having great time management. Most of the administrative stuff (at least on my end) ebbs and flows with how much time & work is required in getting it going. Right now, it's a little more busy from the raffle & the new software, but that'll even out by me reducing my time here for the week after CXII and the time in May when I'm taking this insane three-week, 3-credit graduate-level course.

Integrating third-party software is such a pain in the ass, especially when you want to pimp it out to be all purty and the developers go and encrypt the core code. I think I may talk to them about getting an unencrypted set of code and use the "but I'll give you the integration-with-IBP 2.1-info!!" as a bribe. Looking at my various schedules, I think I'm going to need to talk with Di to see if we should set the feedback to be manually entered at first and worry about automation later -- we'll be giving someone the task of babysitting the feedback, and they can monitor the new user queue. It looks like I've got about 15 hours/wk of homework/projects/labs coming up next month in addition to prepping for my national exam on the 22nd (15hrs/wk of prep), NOLA on the 14th-16th, tomorrow's exam prep, and finals... (I don't really plan on sleeping more than 6 hrs/night again until after 5/11.) My current list of what needs to be done to the swap feedback script to make it what we want: Set up categories (#, A-Z) & a "user" vendor. ~15 minutes Integrate admin login w/ IPB. 20 min. Layout front page ("list of categories"). ~10 minutes Layout remaining views (27 pages). ~1 hour. Add a default skin. ~1 hours of my time plus whatever it takes Di to find/create the page wrapper, CSS, and images. Figure out why test case can't have reviews added. 2-3 hours. Integrate reviewer login w/ IPB. 1-2 hours. Integrate "item creation" to sync with new user registration & import current users. 2 hours. Add profile info where currently just the name is. May just sync up Avatars on a weekly basis. Unknown, minor detail. Can happen after it's up. What else do I have forum-wise that needs to be done? Just the raffle, I think. Raffle drawing code is done, so I can just export the tickets, assign raffle tickets by order, run the drawing, announce winners, get donors the winner addresses, and start decanting & packaging, and then start compiling the list of people who get PM box upgrades that haven't gotten them already. Oh, and getting GD set up for the gallery. I think I may just submit a ticket for that as I really need to finish the gallery and do raffle stuff this weekend. And fixing the 'who's chatting' thingie. Oh yeah, that reminds me, I need to print off the decant set labels and send them on to Di, Donna, and Meg tomorrow. Whoops, I'm late. Entry Title: The Suffering You Knew

First off, I want to thank all of you for your generosity. Despite being down most of the month (even as I write this, due to my admin powers), we've managed to nearly meet our amended goal - $7,581! By the time you see this, we will have installed the majority of the updates that YOU, yes, YOU, helped us get -- our shiny dedicated server, our status blog, our new image gallery, our pretty blogs, everyone's favorite java-based chat room, and the upcoming swap feedback and link exchange! It gave me chills (and panics at the tax implications ) when I saw that we'd nearly raised our original goal of $4,500 in 24 hours. That's ... wow ... it still amazes me, a month later. I mean, I've seen the generousity to help others come out in the past - last year's charity raffle, the efforts earlier this year to help fulfill a dream, but I think this one's affected me the most because of how swiftly our original goal was met, and again as I was reading the sweet comments that people added -- including those from people who aren't even members, but thought we were useful to their BPAL decisions. Anyways ... onto what I really meant to talk about: As of today (roughly 3am, 3/19), I will have the last chunk of PM box upgrades through 7pm 3/18. I plan on doing additional upgrades for future orders on next Saturday (3/25) and the Saturday after that. If you notice that your PM box is wrong (too high/too long), please wait until after I've announced that all of the PM box upgrades are done to PM me, because it could be that you're eligible for an upgrade for purchases made after my last update.

Images in your signature and avatar should be work-safe as a common courtesy: not everyone has the same comfort level as far as nudity goes. many forumites have small children and may not want to unintentionally expose them to such images. many *more* forumites do occasionally check into the forum at work (where it may be considered porn). there have been some complaints about some of the more explicit scent icons/avatars for Smut. For the same reasons that we request/require NWS/NSFW tags be put up in topics that aren't obviously not work safe, we request/require your avatars and signature images also be work safe. It's just common courtesy. People with avatars and signature images that aren't work safe will have them removed if they are reported to us (either via PM or via the report button). If they are returned after removal, a warning may be issued.

While we don't have a specific policy regarding images, anything that is something that most people couldn't see at work (eg, explicit nudity) should probably not be used as avatars or signature images, and if in topics, there should be a NWS ("not work safe") notice attached to the topic or instead of directly posting the image, it should be linked with (NWS) noted near it. If you post an image that is not work safe, please report it so the area mod can alter the topic title if it's not yours. If we see avatars that are not work safe, they may be removed. If we see images in signatures that aren't work safe, more than likely, the image will be replaced by a link and the text along the lines of "User posted image (NWS)." Images in topics will be left at the discretion of the moderating team, though if they're off topic, they are more likely to be removed. Be aware that some hosts do not allow hotlinking of images and will replace that image with one that is less than pleasant. At this time, warnings will not be given, but this may be revised it if becomes problematic. ETA: If you haven't be told that there is a problem, then it's safe to assume that there isn't one. If there is a problem, you will be notified when any action is taken.

Normally, I don't announce forum creation, but since this one is basically a forum mini-con hijack of another con ... I thought I would. We started it to make it easier to do any plans - roommate requests/housing comments were getting lost, as were attempts to actually make plans. So, now there's a place for it. Feel free to start up new threads. One word of note, I don't know what we'll do with the forum after Convergence is over. It may be dumped in the archive, or we may toss all Convergence talk into a general thread in BPAL Chatter and then all meetup-during-Convegence talk into the Meet n Greet area.

The search engine will be down for a few days while I go and do some long-needed updates (no, nothing exciting like the TAL site -- boring stuff like double checking which ones are listed as feminine/masculine/gender neutral and d/c stuff is marked as d/c, changing how it stores moods/scent families and making sure it's all ready for being dumped into the shopping cart's database, etc). The secondmost time consuming part - making sure that everything's entered in - is almost done. Once it is done, the search engine will go back up, using the other database. You will note that some things will no longer be in there, namely: * Up and Coming, because the menu on the cart is automatically generated. There were only 2-3 of these left, anyways. * TALs, because some time after the cart is live, we'll be putting the TAL site up. For legality reasons, the TAL site is completely separate from the BPAL site (just as BPTP is and will be completely separate from the BPAL site). There is no timeline for when the TALs will go up, or at least none that I have heard. * Carrier Oils, because they're no longer offered & haven't been for quite some time * Forum-only Oils, because the search engine will be hiding them as they'll now be listed as Forum-only.

Just a reminder: this still applies.

The banners produced by sloganizer break our 480px-wide image restristrictions. Those that have been using them have been contacted and warnings will not be issued at this time. However, any future use may be removed from your signatures by the moderating team, and you may be warned. Also, please remember that the 480-px image width holds for consecutive images that are not separated by a space as some browsers will treat them as one giant image. Thanks!

this actually smells like light lemons, rather than hazelnuts. curious.

it's a very green scent - all bamboo and tea when wet. like most teas, the tea starts disappearing when it dries, and it ends up being a yummy green/woody scent. it's perfect work scent.

use paypal for your order instead?

i've been ordering regularly for about 27 months now, and only once (out of probably 18-20 orders, many of which were over $100 size-wise) have i had to contact them about problems -- twice if you count me bribing ted to separate my BPTP inquition + skellie order so my sister would have part of her pressie under the table.

you make me happy enough to explode on a regular basis

regarding the 'half filled 5ml', i know there was recently an issue with the bottle manufacturer & a handful of the bottles were not sealing properly once the cap was put on and this wasn't discovered until after the bottles went out. more than likely, that was one of those bottles, and the lab & tedwin have been great about sending out new bottles when this happens.

I did put the wrong set of prices up, so scroll up a bit

Discontinued scents are capped according to their catalog (or former catalog) category. So, single notes hit the single note price cap, celestials and astrological oils hit the catalog price cap, voodoo blends hit the catalog price cap, etc. Unreleased scents are capped at catalog prices. As before, if you bought something for a value higher than the cap, please talk to shriekingviolet or myself before listing it, but be prepared that you may be asked to demonstrate it (giving the ebay link & sending a question from your ebay account, forwarding a paypal transaction, etc). See this announcement for exact numbers and a few examples.