Hello Daryl!

** On Sunday 09.08.20 - 13:04, daryl.stout wrote to Vk3jed:

... A fool and his money are SYSOP material.

Isn't that the truth??

Yep. :D

The BBS has been a financial black hole for me...no telling how much
I've spent on hardware and software upgrades.

Such is the nature of all hobbies. The black hole is irrelevant if you
enjoy the hobby, right?


--

---
þ Synchronet þ End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: Ogg to All on Sun Aug 09 2020 06:00 pm

Hello Daryl!

** On Sunday 09.08.20 - 13:04, daryl.stout wrote to Vk3jed:

... A fool and his money are SYSOP material.

Isn't that the truth??

Yep. :D

The BBS has been a financial black hole for me...no telling how
much I've spent on hardware and software upgrades.

Such is the nature of all hobbies. The black hole is irrelevant if you enjoy the hobby, right?

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys
---
þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: MRO to Ogg on Sun Aug 09 2020 09:02 pm

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

Lately I only spend money on the electricity to keep my BBS PC going. I've had the PC since 2012. I've only replaced the storage drive(s) a couple times (the last time was in December last year, when I bought a new HDD for it, put in an SSD for the OS, and bought a new CPU cooler for it). Other than that, my BBS PC still works fine. I haven't bought any new door registrations in years. So aside from electricity, I don't have any other regular ongoing expenses for my BBS.

Nightfox

---
þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: MRO to Ogg on Sun Aug 09 2020 09:02 pm

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

I've been using my BBS PC since 2012 and it's still working fine (aside from replacing the storage drives a couple times). The last time I registered a door game was years ago. So the only recurring charge I pay for my BBS is the electricity to keep the PC running.

I have one of these Kill-A-Watt devices that shows you the wattage, kWh, etc. of electricity being used by whatever is plugged into it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_A_Watt
I just plugged it in between my BBS PC and wall power about 15 minutes ago. It was saying my BBS PC is using between about 28 to 35 watts. By my calculations, that's about 672--840 watt-hours per day, or 0.672-0.840 kWh per day, which is about 20.16-25.2 kWh per month.

From my last electricity bill, my electric company charges $0.07051 per kWh up to 735 kWh and $0.06329 per kWh above 735. So, based on the $0.07051 charge per kWh, I calculate I'm paying about $1.42 to $1.78 per month in electricity for my BBS PC, which is about $17.04 to $21.32 per year. Give or take, depending on what all my BBS PC is doing. I also have a Plex media server running on that PC, so I'm sure its electricity usage is a bit higher when it's streaming a video. But just the electricity to run the PC seems fairly inexpensive.

Nightfox

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þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: MRO to Ogg on Sun Aug 09 2020 09:02 pm

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

Are you hosting on a VPS?
---
Underminer
The Undermine BBS - bbs.undermine.ca:423
Fidonet: 1:342/17
---
þ Synchronet þ The Undermine - bbs.undermine.ca:423

On 08-09-20 21:02, MRO wrote to Ogg <=-

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

Around $20 every 5/6 months for me.

The bulk of my hobby money goes into sport - around $400/month there, while ham radio takes up around $30 - $40/month. :)


... An idea is a curious thing. It won't work unless you do.
--- MultiMail/Win v0.51
þ Synchronet þ Freeway BBS, Bendigo Australia. freeway.apana.org.au

On 08-09-20 19:44, Nightfox wrote to MRO <=-

bought any new door registrations in years. So aside from electricity,
I don't have any other regular ongoing expenses for my BBS.

My BBS expenses are electricity, which is trivial, since it runs on a Banana Pi, and a new SD card twice a year as standard maintenance (around $20 each time).


... Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen.
--- MultiMail/Win v0.51
þ Synchronet þ Freeway BBS, Bendigo Australia. freeway.apana.org.au

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: MRO to Ogg on Sun Aug 09 2020 09:02 pm

Such is the nature of all hobbies. The black hole is irrelevant if you enjoy the hobby, right?

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

I'm just getting back into the BBS world after a long time out of it... two of my friends and I decided why not. We spun up a VPS for a year ($50 for a simple linux server) and I bought a domain for about $15 for the year. Given the low cost VPS and the fact that we're doing INet only, it was the best solution available.

That's not to make light of the time and research we're going to need to do in order to get the board visitor ready. In previous decades I had a multi-node running that took a ton of time and money.

73 de NY5I
Hatton

---
þ Synchronet þ Three Corners and Beyond! http://3corners.us

I'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

It's hard to say, it's running from an old box that had no real use,
bought licenses for trade wars and others stuff long time ago, if a had
to the time i bought them it would be a few $ a year.

Some hardware from time to time but still out of others spare parts
mostly. So I would say apart from time not that much.

---
þ Synchronet þ MtlGeek - Geeks in Montreal - http://mtlgeek.com/ -

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: MRO to Ogg on Sun Aug 09 2020 09:02 pm

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

I run mine on an HP thin client alongside two game servers so electricity and Domain name maybe $5 a month or less.
the computer is fanless and low energy consumption.

---
þ Synchronet þ outwestbbs.com - the Outwest BBS

MRO wrote to Ogg <=-

The BBS has been a financial black hole for me...no telling how
much I've spent on hardware and software upgrades.

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

I spend whatever the cost of electricity for the small computer
it's running on. Maybe $1/month?



... 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: MRO to Ogg on Sun Aug 09 2020 09:02 pm

Such is the nature of all hobbies. The black hole is irrelevant if
you enjoy the hobby, right?

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

I spend nothing on the BBS. I pay for the gear and an internet connection that I would pay for anyway, BBS or not.

I do have a dedicated machine for the BBS that I paid $400 for a few years ago but that about it.

Ttyl :-),
Al

... What bug? That's a feature

---
þ Synchronet þ The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada

Re: BBS has been a financial
By: Nightfox to MRO on Sun Aug 09 2020 08:18 pm

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: MRO to Ogg on Sun Aug 09 2020 09:02 pm

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

I've been using my BBS PC since 2012 and it's still working fine (aside from e PC running.

I have one of these Kill-A-Watt devices that shows you the wattage, kWh, etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_A_Watt
I just plugged it in between my BBS PC and wall power about 15 minutes ago. .2 kWh per month.

From my last electricity bill, my electric company charges $0.07051 per kWh
is about $17.04 to $21.32 per year. Give or take, depending on what all my
run the PC seems fairly inexpensive.

Nightfox

One of the reasons I'm trying to consolidate items i would normally run on
PC's I have from older pc's (pre-Core2 Pentium 4's) is because of the power consumption difference. The old 2.8Mhz and 2.4Mhz P4's are before the newer design that dropped the operating power below 65W, and if I can put run the programs on a linux alterative application on a Pi4, that would save considerable money.

---
þ Synchronet þ The Cave BBS - Since 1992 - cavebbs.homeip.net

The BBS has been a financial black hole for me...no telling how much
I've spent on hardware and software upgrades.

Such is the nature of all hobbies. The black hole is irrelevant if you enjoy the hobby, right?

This is true. Hobbies help you forget about the stresses of life.

Daryl

... LaQuinta: Spanish for "Next To Denny's".
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
þ Synchronet þ The Thunderbolt BBS - tbolt.synchro.net

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: Nightfox to MRO on Sun Aug 09 2020 07:44 pm

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: MRO to Ogg on Sun Aug 09 2020 09:02 pm

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

Lately I only spend money on the electricity to keep my BBS PC going. I've had the PC since 2012. I've only replaced the storage drive(s) a couple times (the last time was in December last year, when I bought a new HDD for it, put in an SSD for the OS, and bought a new CPU cooler for it). Other than that, my BBS PC still works fine. I haven't bought any new door registrations in years. So aside from electricity, I don't have any other regular ongoing expenses for my BBS.

since i took down bbses.info's services [except for irc and i host for people and do a few other things], i've tried to use the hosted server for personal stuff. i have proxmox as the host os so i can make vms pretty quick for playing around.

i do have a guy who donates half the money and he uses the server too so it's not that bad.
---
þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: Nightfox to MRO on Sun Aug 09 2020 08:18 pm

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

I've been using my BBS PC since 2012 and it's still working fine (aside from replacing the storage drives a couple times). The last time I registered a door game was years ago. So the only recurring charge I pay for my BBS is the electricity to keep the PC running.

I have one of these Kill-A-Watt devices that shows you the wattage, kWh, etc. of electricity being used by whatever is plugged into it:

yeah i think we talked about that a few years ago.
i have this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009MDBU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title? ie=UTF8&psc=1


i was living with a woman and her daughter and trying to keep costs low because her electric bill was huge.

so she was her doing laundry 7 days a week, her old ass samsung smart tv was a huge drain and she had a 150gal fishtank with 2 filters running that used a lot of power. also i'm sure her central air and heat was costing us a lot of money.
funny thing is, it was a super tiny house.

i moved out and my bill was 100 at the new place. i'm living at another place after that and bill is decent.
we have 3 acs running all the time and do a lot of laundry and the bill is like 200. we are also in a huge house.

i wish i still had the formula to calculate cost.
it's in the comments someplace.

there's a bunch of people blowing them up doing dumb shit so it's buried some place.
---
þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: Underminer to MRO on Sun Aug 09 2020 10:11 pm

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: MRO to Ogg on Sun Aug 09 2020 09:02 pm

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

Are you hosting on a VPS?

i tried that, but it sucked. so i'm using a dedicated server
---
þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: Hatton to MRO on Mon Aug 10 2020 03:36 am

I'm just getting back into the BBS world after a long time out of it... two of my friends and I decided why not. We spun up a VPS for a year ($50 for a simple linux server) and I bought a domain for about $15 for the year. Given the low cost VPS and the fact that we're doing INet only, it was the best solution available.

make sure you back up
---
þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: Al to MRO on Mon Aug 10 2020 12:14 pm

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: MRO to Ogg on Sun Aug 09 2020 09:02 pm

Such is the nature of all hobbies. The black hole is irrelevant if
you enjoy the hobby, right?

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

I spend nothing on the BBS. I pay for the gear and an internet connection that I would pay for anyway, BBS or not.

I do have a dedicated machine for the BBS that I paid $400 for a few years ago but that about it.

Ttyl :-),
Al

fucking lightweight! i've spent like 13k in the last 19 years!
i could get a used car for that.
---
þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: MRO to Hatton on Mon Aug 10 2020 08:57 pm

make sure you back up

Yup, once we get things ready to add the board to the BBS list that'll be a regular process. Not my first ride around the block.

What's cracking me up lately is that I've gotten 4 emails and 2 calls from "Bob" (yeah right) offering design/dev services for the domain I just bought. I try to educate them about BBSes and it generally ends the call faster than a Jehova's Witness knocking at the door.

73 de NY5I
Hatton

---
þ Synchronet þ Three Corners and Beyond! http://3corners.us

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: Hatton to MRO on Tue Aug 11 2020 03:01 am

What's cracking me up lately is that I've gotten 4 emails and 2 calls from "Bob" (yeah right) offering design/dev services for the domain I just bought. I try to educate them about BBSes and it generally ends the call faster than a Jehova's Witness knocking at the door.

i remember when i tried to use rent a coder to make a clone of the bbsmates site.

it would monitor the bbs listings to see if they were up.
i laid it all out and i was very specific.

i got like a million hits from indian guys trying to sell me their wordpress setup services. not only could i do that myself with my left nut, it was not at all with what i wanted to pay for.
---
þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: MRO to Hatton on Tue Aug 11 2020 12:37 pm

i got like a million hits from indian guys trying to sell me their wordpress setup services. not only could i do that myself with my left nut, it was not at all with what i wanted to pay for.

Yeah, same here. I've actually received 4 random calls now from "affiliate partners" of the company I used to register the domain. I didn't pay the extra $5 for the "private registration" option and am going to correct that oversight shortly.

Oh, and I take the opportunity of their call to try and educate them on what an Electronic Bulletin Board System is. Generally goes right over their heads.

73 de NY5I
Hatton

---
þ Synchronet þ Three Corners and Beyond! http://3corners.us

On 8/9/2020 7:02 PM, MRO wrote:

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

Right now, my DO bill is around $50/month... though will probably be
closer to $120 if/when I get things setup closer to how I want it
between roughneckbbs.com and bbs.land - of course that assumes I get it anything done before the next year or so.

Getting back into messages more regularly has helped a little with
motivation at least.

--
Michael J. Ryan
tracker1 +o Roughneck BBS

---
þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - coming back 2/2/20

Tracker1 wrote to MRO <=-

i'm spending over 50/month on the bbs. how about you guys

Right now, my DO bill is around $50/month... though will probably
be closer to $120 if/when I get things setup closer to how I want
it between roughneckbbs.com and bbs.land - of course that assumes
I get it anything done before the next year or so.

Why so much? That's a lot of horsepower in a VPS for that price,
why is that much needed to run a BBS? Seems that a VPS in the
$5-10 range is enough.



... "42? 7 and a half million years and all you can come up with is 42?!"
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL

MRO wrote to Nightfox <=-

so she was her doing laundry 7 days a week, her old ass samsung smart
tv was a huge drain and she had a 150gal fishtank with 2 filters
running that used a lot of power. also i'm sure her central air and
heat was costing us a lot of money. funny thing is, it was a super tiny house.

I was living in a studio apartment in San Francisco when I started
realitycheckBBS. We had steam heat, so no utility cost for heating. I
remember being concerned about how much draw the BBS would take, so I
kept the bill from the month before to compare. I think my bill went
from $18 to $24/month.

Those were the days...




... Do you know what kind of game this is?
--- MultiMail/XT v0.52
þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org

MRO wrote to Hatton <=-

i got like a million hits from indian guys trying to sell me their wordpress setup services. not only could i do that myself with my left nut, it was not at all with what i wanted to pay for. ---

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a Wordpress site
to you.




... Emphasize differences
--- MultiMail/XT v0.52
þ Synchronet þ realitycheckBBS -- http://realitycheckBBS.org

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: Hatton to MRO on Tue Aug 11 2020 09:29 pm

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: MRO to Hatton on Tue Aug 11 2020 12:37 pm

i got like a million hits from indian guys trying to sell me their
wordpress setup services. not only could i do that myself with my
left nut, it was not at all with what i wanted to pay for.

Yeah, same here. I've actually received 4 random calls now from "affiliate partners" of the company I used to register the domain. I didn't pay the extra $5 for the "private registration" option and am going to correct that oversight shortly.

Oh, and I take the opportunity of their call to try and educate them on what an Electronic Bulletin Board System is. Generally goes right over their heads.

just put in bbses.info identity shield in every line and if someone
tries to contact me about you i will tell them to fuck off.
---
þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::

On 8/11/2020 7:29 PM, Hatton wrote:

Yeah, same here. I've actually received 4 random calls now from
"affiliate partners" of the company I used to register the domain.
I didn't pay the extra $5 for the "private registration" option and
am going to correct that oversight shortly

May want to move to another registrar that doesn't charge extra... domains.google.com does free privacy (for TLDs that allow it), I know
there are others that don't charge for it either.

--
Michael J. Ryan
tracker1 +o Roughneck BBS

---
þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - coming back 2/2/20

On 8/12/2020 5:56 AM, Gamgee wrote:

Right now, my DO bill is around $50/month... though will probably
be closer to $120 if/when I get things setup closer to how I want
it between roughneckbbs.com and bbs.land - of course that assumes
I get it anything done before the next year or so.

Why so much? That's a lot of horsepower in a VPS for that price,
why is that much needed to run a BBS? Seems that a VPS in the
$5-10 range is enough.

I currently have a 20 and a 15 dollar droplet, the BBS one is the $15
one with backups and a storage volume at $10/month.

Planning to shift to a 3-node kubernetes cluster with storage volumes
for persistence, which should hold all my projects and allow for
redundancy for a lot of things... Including parts of the bbs (web/message/nntp access).

--
Michael J. Ryan
tracker1 +o Roughneck BBS

---
þ Synchronet þ Roughneck BBS - coming back 2/2/20

Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: MRO to Hatton on Wed Aug 12 2020 09:18 pm

Yeah, same here. I've actually received 4 random calls now from
"affiliate partners" of the company I used to register the domain.

just put in bbses.info identity shield in every line and if someone
tries to contact me about you i will tell them to fuck off.

Hah! I've always been told I'm too nice of a guy. My normal line of thought is that these poor souls probably get told off all day long and all they're doing is trying to make a living. Recently I've started thinking otherwise about it.

... Dachshunds are really small crocodiles with fur.

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þ Synchronet þ Three Corners and Beyond! http://3corners.us

Re: Re: BBS has been a financial black hole
By: Tracker1 to Hatton on Thu Aug 13 2020 12:31 am

May want to move to another registrar that doesn't charge extra... domains.google.com does free privacy (for TLDs that allow it), I know there are others that don't charge for it either.

Yeah, I will definitely keep that in mind, thanks!

... Make no little plans. They have no Magic to stir Men's blood.

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þ Synchronet þ Three Corners and Beyond! http://3corners.us