• We've slipped the bonds of our high-priced, low bandwidth DSL line, and as of 26 August, we are on a high-speed, significantly-lower-cost ISP! More speed for you; less cost for the HBD!
• A day-long outtage 24 September was caused by a rogue perimeter defense program, which eventually put the HBD server itself in its "deny". Diagnosing that problem turned up an ages-old, overlooked issue within DNS. The *good* news from all of this is that DNS has been patched up, and server response time is orders of magnitude better than just two days ago. Also, nagging email issues with several ISPs should now be resolved.

Time to face the facts, folks:

• Participation in the HBD is at the lowest levels in memory, and has been for some time.
• SPAM mail comes in at such high volumes that I think the server is rejecting legitimate mail due to the bandwidth consumed by the detritus.
• Web forums have superceded email digests as the main source for information though, personally, I have had issues wading through the junk to find the gold in them.
• It has proven cheaper for many of our former sponsors to add their own forums to their websites as the cost of bandwidth has receded in recent years.
• Due to the economy or whatever reason, people just aren't donating to the upkeep of HBD much anymore.

The economy, in Michigan in particular, frankly sucks. I am employed by a US automaker which, as they all are, is struggling for survival. I cannot and do not consider my employment secure in this environment. I will continue to run the HBD as it is for as long as I can do so. Should something happen to my wife's employment or mine, the HBD will have to be immediately shut down as we will not have the finances available for its continuation.

Club websites and mailing lists will endure as long as operation of the HBD itself continues, as will the preserve and the Brews & views BBS. The HBD will, however, no longer accept requests for web space or new mailing lists. If something "evil" happens, I will do my best to forewarn those on board so that other arrangements for the hosted content can be made. I will also seek a new home for the Digest archives and, if possible, for the Digest itself.

It's been a great run, folks, but, apparently, history will not be denied her price.

I've been remiss! I promised to do this some time ago: The Home Brew Digest, Inc. EIN as a non-profit is 26-0150215. Under IRS rules, we are a 501(c)3 corporation until such time as our annual taxable receipts consistently exceed $5000 - not likely to happen any time soon, methinks; nonetheless, I will be filing IRS Form 1023, Application for Recognition of Exemption Under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code because many corporations require a copy of the resulting letter before acknowledging a 501(c)3 and donating (not that we have many corporations beating our door down to donate, anyway!).

Here's the relevant portion of the IRS code for those who can donate without the recognition of exemption letter:

Form 1023 not necessary. The
following types of organizations may be
considered tax exempt under section
501(c)(3) even if they do not file
1023.
• Churches, including synagogues,
  temples, and mosques.
• Integrated auxiliaries of churches and
  conventions or associations of churches.
• Any organization that has gross
  receipts in each taxable year of normally
  not more than $5,000.

Instead of Home Brew Digest, we are now Home Brew Digest, Incorporated, a 501(c)3 corporation. We are an educational charity, dedicated to disseminating information pertaining to the home production of fermented foodstuffs, including beer, wine, cheese, sauerkraut, etc.

If you were waiting to make a donation to the HBD because you couldn't deduct it from your income taxes, you can now. It complicates the records I must now maintain, and reporting I must do to the IRS, but, in light of our last fundraising success (T1 upgrade - ~$80 raised against a $3600 need), something had to be done to improve our ability to raise needed funds - particularly when considering the age of several of the HBD servers.

Well, we'll see where our new tax-deductible status gets us! Once I have the "official" EIN number, I will add a page to the HBD showing our 501(c)3 status and relevant information.

Upon reboot, I discovered their presence, tracked them to the node they used to hack us, and notified the admins there (likely, they were working from a hacked box, but we may have caused another 'bot-infected machine to drop from their network. Who knows.)

If you notice any strange behavior from the HBD server, be sure to let me know. They're picking new vulnerabilities everyday, and if this person hadn't crashed the server, I may not have noticed their presence for quite some time.

On another note, we still haven't had a bite on our T1 sponsorship request. Oh, well. Keep those donations coming. If we reach half the amount in single donations, I still may kick the thing off in the hope that we garner a full sponsor quickly down the road.

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH! I'm about to give up on mailman. Due to an unfortunate accident, ALL Mailman lists were lost today, including the archives, memberlists, and backups. Gone. Lost. Clubs, DBD, Sake list, all of them. Server, too. Life's too short for this crap.

I will rebuild the server once I get the time. Clubs will have to notify me of what their list name was, and who the admin was.

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH! A simple update to the Mailman server has result in its failure. If you have a club list on the HBD server and can't get through, this is the problem. No ETR as yet as I'm not entirely sure why it has failed.

Another server bytes the dust... Seems our DNS server has gone on to join the "other team". Have patched together a temporary replacement, and have a new server on the way. For those curious about any missed Digest mailings or failed mailing lists over the past several hours (up to 4 days, on the offside chance this had failed earlier and wasn't noticed), all should be OK now - the maillogs show mail now being properly routed to the destination domains rather than to localhost. Any missed messages should be in teh respective archive files.

The Janitor address has been restored - I had forgotten how much of the moderation process depends on its being there.

Next planned hiccup: reinstating the spam filters. Wish me luck!

• A new address parsing method is in place, and I fixed the FUBAR which interfered with the distribution of the Digest last night (that issue is in the archives and on the web. I'll have to kludge together a routine to resend them when missed in that manner*. In the meantime, please use your browser or FTP client...) This routine is an adaptation of the method I use to send the Probes out. Should resolve the issue - assuming my coding around the permissions was effective :^)
  *I have written the new routine, using the same mailing method, to send out the copy from the archive. And, so far, it is working - 150 addresses and counting. Hopefully, it is sending what it is supposed to be sending...
  My apologies to those who received more than one copy. I guess I'm not getting enough sleep to be as careful as I should be in the code...)
• If your club had a mailing list, and you wish it to be re-opened, email me at webmaster at hbd.org
• As noted in the HBD y'all missed, the Janitor address was retired until such time as I can implement a spam filter (without breaking the rest of the HBD, as happened last time...). 20,000 spam messages in one day is a bit much to expect anyone to wade through, isn't it? In any case, use my personal address in the meantime. pbabcock followed by the customary symbol, and this domain will work.

• First, it provides me with a "natural governor" so that I don't take time away from more mission-critical tasks.
• Second, it will help me cull the list, removing those who requested, but never bothered to use, space and those who are no longer using their space.

The probe was a roaring success - well over 600 pieces of mail were received back, each indicating either a desire to unsubscribe, or a defunct address. So ends the GOOD news! The bad news is that I had not expected such a response, and had not yet implemented a parser for automagical handling of the messages. In order to prevent the appearance that the HBD is a SPAM rag, and the resultant blacklistings, complaints, yada, yada, yada; I have temporarily disabled Digest delivery until such time as I can finish wading through these messages and remove the subscriptions.

Also, I am still wrestling with Proftpd - a most finicky package. Users should be able to get in unfettered; however, anonymous ftp (archive retrieval) is not working at this time.

Finally, the Recipator may not be recovered after this move. Mark compiled it, and I do not believe I have the source. Could still be Apache 2.0; however, it (Recipator) appears to be not finding files, and the system logs are providing no guidance.

• The Google Ads on the HBD pages were put there by me - no-one has hijacked your browser. The HBD earns money each time someone clicks through one of those ads. (Hint: Click early; click often!) It's not going to make the HBD rich; however, it does provide some income outside of the donations and sponsorships. Anything is better than nothing.
• There were two HBDs missed last week 2/3/04 and 2/4/04. These were not due to any failures, nor did I withold the Digest in an effort to prompt more donations. It's been a long time since this phenomenon has occurred, but there simply were not enough posts in the queue for the Digest to publish (it looks for a minimum of 10K before publishing - see the FAQ).
• Our connectivity bill has increased for 2004. Many have noted the sluggishness of the HBD/Brewery in reponding at peak times - particularly at the lunch hour. This has affected my ability to remotely administer the network as well. Increased bandwidth would help the situation, but in researching it, I have been told by our ISP that it is technically infeasible to increase it. No cost-effective, higher bandwidth solution has yet been identified.
  To resolve the inability to administer the system in this condition, a cable modem has been installed and bridged into the network to allow a consistent connection for remote maintenance. This does not outwardly enhance your ability to connect, except where system maintenance issues would have prevented you from doing so. (It did, however, muddy up our security as these cable systems are a notorious hunting grounds for hackers...)
• And, lest I forget, Beer, Beer & More Beer (morebeer.com) has taken over as our sponsor for 2004! Thanks, Olin! Be sure to pay their site a visit. If you appreciate their service to the HBD community, be sure to buy a few things while you're there!

There have been many other offers of help, which I truly appreciate and have retained for future reference. However, the state of the HBD server is shaky at best, and many systems are not behaving as they should be due to memory and drive issues. Until I resolve these, I cannot saddle anyone with any of the systems or domains in good conscience as the opportunity for failure is tremendous due to all the "special means" which must be taken in their maintenance. The move to the new server is still hampered by technical issues, but I am steadily working through them - there is a light at the end of this tunnel!

Regarding disk issues, one of the most pressing ones is that of space. Unfortunately, this has required that I suspend hosting of any new brew clubs as well as any expansion of the preserve until the move is made. If you are having difficulty finding hosting arrangements, you can still contact me, but I will be "selling" you space on the HBD's commercial server (babstech.com). The proceeds from this sale of space benefits the HBD server, and the "contract" only need be renewed if, at the end of one year's time, I have not yet been able to move the HBD to the new box (the chances of this happening are remote, but real).

Finally, I am having MAJOR revisions to my home to accomodate the needs of my family (particularly with the recent birth of Jillian Marie - child number 5!). In light of this, there will de a disruption of service to all hbd.org domains, and those hosted on our network when they upgrade the electrical service at my home. I will attempt to add an announcement to the HBD and through the other communications systems on board beforehand, but you know how these contractors can be - I have no clue when they will be on site, but I know it will be fairly soon.

This morning, the server was down due to a filesystem failure at reboot last night. Discovered the outage this morning, repaired the error and restarted.

2003 to date:

• Our ISP - the same ones that claimed they would never go belly up - went belly up. We're are now all the way down to the backbone source, which is probably a safer place to be than anywhere else.
• The HBD server is on its last legs:
  • Drives are full
  • Memory is failing
  • Filesystems are failing
    
  All considered, this server has out-performed the two previous ones. A replacement waits in the wings, but, thanks to the advances in security made to Linux since the last time I had to build a server, it's not an easy port, and it's giving me fits. Soon... Soon...
• GADZOOKS!, but the idiots with the viruses are sure tying up email! Between them and the spam-mongers, I'm surprised the server has enough capacity for anything else!
• Karl has retired from Janitordom. We'll miss ya, Bro!

Hopefully, through this action, I will recieve fewer "HOW DID SPAM GET ON THIS LIST?!" notes and won't have to feel guilty when someone gets their PC infected by being foolish enough to open an unrequested attachment sent from the machine of one who was obviously similarly foolish (there's another hint there. That and keep an up-to-date virus scanner on your machine...).

Happy, Healthy New Year to all of you! Let's show them the responsibility we brewers put on our hobby and the consumption of its fruits.

We at the HBD wish you all a safe, happy and blessed Christmas. Christmas Eve is a wonderful time to be with friends and family. It is also a time in which many of us find ourselves on the road in pursuit of time with those friends and family. Be safe when doing so. If you intend to drive, please cut back on the holiday cheer so that we find you back here poring over the HBD. Remember that the consequences of indiscretion with drinking and driving can be devastating - both to you and yours as well as to perfect strangers should you meet head-on in your travels.

Lets also spare a few silent moments during our holiday celebrations to remember those that have perished this year through no fault of their own and, in particular, for those who they have left behind. This will be a very hard holiday season for many. If you know of someone who will be spending the holidays bereft of their loved ones, or simply someone who will be alone, why not invite them by for a fine home brew and a few hours of your companionship? The rewards are unbelievable!

The old ISP raised the rates in October (forwarned, but they "forgot" to invoice anyone whilst they were busy going bankrupt...), so this increased rate is the one which our new ISP has signed up to honor. To this end, we are proposing an adjustment to our sponsorship schedule. Proposed changes are in red on the "Sponsor the HBD" menu pick. Please review and provide any comments.

Finally, the upgrade to the mail transport was suspended. Be advised that the HBD itself is immune from passing viruses to your mail, but the side lists enjoy no such immunity. There should NEVER be any attachments in any of the side lists. If you receive one, do not open it.

And thanks to Wayne Holder aka Zymie for pointing out the putrificating effects of the last "strategy"!

Check out the new features added today:

• Realtime HBD
  A server-based chat room for HBDers.
• HBD IRC chat channel

• Fleamarket script is repaired!
• The HBD Competition Calendar software has been updated!

• There seems to be an outage somwhere past Chicago making the HBD inaccessible to some (like Karl, for instance :-) I've notified our ISP, they say it is off of their network. (It was - they fixed it at around 3:30 Central...)
• There is a bug in the Home Brew Flea Market scripts that gives you a server configuration error immediately after posting your ad. This only affects the notification I receive to review your ad, and I've noted it and am working on it. In the meantime, either reload the page, or back-arrow to the menu. I've taken to checking my preview queue every now and again rather than wait around for notification. I should either have your ad approved, or contact you with any required changes within 24 hours. As for the bug, as soon as I figure it out, I'll repair the puppy! (That means I'm working on it :-)

• A bulletin board (Already implemented in cooperation with The Brewery - see "Discussions" on the menu at left.)
• A classified ad system (On it's way! The Home Brew Flea Market is being redeveloped specifically for the HBD site, and will be moved from The Home Brew Page before the end of this year.)
• An online "Chat" (Working to identify the ideal software for a HBD chat.)
• Web-based HBD subscription management system. (On its way! Targeting 1st quarter 2001.)
• Enhanced educational and reference content. (Underway! Watch the site for its roll out!)

Many still may not be receiving the Digest currently - particularly if their ISP check DNS prior to allowing mail into the domain (many now do). In this case, I'm afraid you will not receive the HBD until the DNS changes made propagate to your ISP. Your continued patience is appreciated! They will eventually catch up. In the meantime, there is the web version at http://hbd.org/hbd or the archives at ftp://hbd.org/pub/hbd/digest. If you still run into trouble accessing, use 63.219.236.210 in place of hbd.org. Again: if you can access this, but know of others who cannot, pass along the IP address. Thanks!