System News   (27) News about Chatropolis.
November 19, 2008	All Chatro Advertising 4 Sale/Or Leaving Due to the ADVERTISING SHAKEUP we will be moving away from services like Adbright. All banners are being sold for a price of between $100-$500 dollars per month! A $10,000 banner going for a fraction! For users this means NO MORE FULL PAGE ADS, More tasteful ads because I will be approving each ad. Less advertising overall. Due to increasing user support there is no need to put as much real estate into ads. With slightly more support we could be free. But for now I am doing this blowout. Chatro is A PR5/Alex 5400 U.S. rated site. With 56% traffic coming from the United States. If YOU WANT TO BUY ANY BANNERS CALL 866-417-2414. You name your place and price. One zone is the 140 room entry's that get millions of ad views. This is an extremely valuable space. NO REASONABLE OFFER WILL BE REFUSED! All unsold space will be gone forever and dedicated to our content. We are happy to make this offer to our advetisers and what will ultimately benefit our users. I plan on revealing the New less ad Chatro within a Month! This is an everybody wins situation. In this case "Less is more" really does apply. I want to thank our supporters that includes our users and sponsors. For more info call 866-417-2414 During normal Business hours CST/GMT-6. Thanks again for this great very unexpected surprise.
November 17, 2008	Ouuuuuuuuuuuh! It's a Tight Fit! Well I called my friend Ricky at Peer1 leasing and they have put a temp server in the rack without ripping my guts out. It's a Intel 2.4Ghz Quad Core (4 processors in one in theory), 4 Gigabytes of Ram and a RAID disk array. Compared to CS10 it is a monster. It will easily fix all our problems. It's like a 286 with 1 Mb compared to a Pentium with 32 Mb. We will have wings. The box will be awaiting configuration shortly and we will get it up as soon a humanly possible.Thanks for being patient but as soon as we pinned down the problem I took action. It was frustrating but will soon be a memory. We still need your support in the form of memberships, or downloading Alexa or just spreading the word. If your a WebMaster let's trade links. If you own a company we are buying several products in quantity. Shuttle desktop cubes,Wyse wireless terminals,Office furniture,Security Guard Uniforms(Another company), Office supplies, PR firm, Writers. You may be surprised what our network of companies buys.
November 16, 2008	New Equipment Well the cause of the latest problems has been pinned down. Between the size of the underground and increased traffic we have ran out of CPU cycles on cs10. I am getting a replacement this week if I can get a short term lease. We need a short term because we have quite a bit of new hardware coming. Delivery of the all important Database server is scheduled for this week. The combination of them both will bring us back to normal until we can get the new software in place. Now everyone that claimed a membership drive can see the effect of not having enough cpu network wide does. This was always our intention to avoid. This is my fault. We are in a growth cycle, pretty un expected but our alexa ranking pretty much shot thru the roof. Although Alexa is not a perfect measuring stick but when you go from 30,000 to under 15,000 rank it is because of increased usage. We have moved some services to other machines in an effort to balance things out. It looks like we have an improvement. It should be much better early next week depending on my success with Peer1's leasing department. Thanks for everybody that emailed their support. It takes the edge off a very frustrating situation.
November 11, 2008	Do you want the rooms set to 30? Our Alexa ranking is important. Right now we are climbing at an incredible rate. My goal is to get Chatro into the top 1000 sites in the world. We have been as high as 5200 but now we hover around 13,000 a day. That sounds like a pretty high number but consider that Talkcity hangs in the 60-80,000 range and they're a huge company. So here is what you do. If you download a tiny piece of software and we get in the top 1K I will up the ante to 30 or higher. For Firefox download SPARKY. All other browsers go to Alexa and grab it. It is a tiny little piece of real estate at the bottom of your browser and it may surprise you on the ranking of the sites you visit. Plus it provides other info on the site your visiting. This will cost you nothing and you will be helping us attract more users the higher we get. More users more fun. So grab it now and have our undying gratitude.
October 31, 2008	Pruning the Chat Tree You may have noticed about 30 rooms are gone. We have removed these rooms because they never reached 4 users and that was almost never. I only went thru about half the site but all rooms that cant reach 5 users on a regular basis will be scrapped. Then we will concentrate on areas that are popular. The something for everyone isn't working and I'm not a fan of shit that doesn't work. So here is the plan. After we rid the site of all dead rooms we will add rooms back 5 at a time (Please call us with your ideas). If they work they stay if they don't they go. Simple concept. We will also be re-doing the description on each room. If you haave a favorite room and would like to see it on the entrance simply email it to mludwick(AT) interfun.net and we'll be glad to put it up.
	System News Index >
Headlines   (16) Headlines concerning system news and news from headlines.
November 16, 2008	We Need Your Help We need everyone to download a small piece of software from ALexa. For Firefox it's called SPARKY All other browsers can go to Alexa and Download the proper version. This willl do 2 things. It will allow us to see a usage increase coming and you will be able to get info on every site you visit. It is unobtrusive. I barely notice it on Firefox. All links will open a new window. It takes about 2 minutes to download and install in the background. It will be of great help to the site in many ways. It will show us our real place on the Internet. It will also show everyone else. It will help us see a growth cycle much better. The problem we are having now is people are staying on much longer and talking much more. During the morning reset we used to dip to 900 users now we barely dip to 1350. Traffic starts at 6AM and goes straight to the peak. As it says in all other articles we are taking action and should be able to remedy this situation while the new hardware is being built. Speaking of hardware we use industrial telco grade equipment. It is expensive and they are custom built. They have positive ventilation, wind tunnels,silicone seals, hot swap drives stuffed in a case thinner than a pizza box (1.75 inches high x 19 Inches x 17.5) They will also have dual NIC's (Network ports), This allows us to break traffic up into inbound/outbound/local. Ya just can't go down to CompUSA and get half a dozen of these.We should have 2 online this week which will add 16 GB of memory and improve CPU availability by a factor of 8. If you have any questions feel free to call. I'll be glad to answer any questions. One thing I can't do is answer email. My email box is highly filtered and not an effecient way to provide support. This method has improved our support greatly. What used to take a 6 email volley ball game now takes an average of a 4 minute call.
November 11, 2008	We need user of the day pics We have some space and I'd love users to send in real pics so we can rotate thru them and do collages. You can remain anonymous or lets us put your screen name on them. If you want to make friends fast being featured on the main page should get you more than a stack of hundreds in a whore house. Sorry Ladies I'd like your pics and we all know women never have to pay for sex. It's just one of God's little financial jokes. So send you pic to mludwick[at]interfun.net with the subject my pic. .gif and .jpg please. Come on don't be shy. Send in those pics. When we get a 100 or so I'll start rotating them on the main page under "User of the day" feel free to send a quote with it if you like.
October 31, 2008	800 Support Blows Away Email I think about the best thing I did was get an 800 number for support. Here's how the old method went. People would fill out a ticket. we would email them to clarify the info and it would take about 5 or 6 emails back and forth to solve the problem. It was a nightmare. People wouldn't quote or include the ticket number and we had to restart the process half the time. Now to the 800 support. Members call an 800 number listed on the support page during the hours listed. 4 minutes later the problem is solved and everybody is happy. This also lets me get to know our users and I get feedback on important issues instantly. It is absolutely the best thing I have done. Sure it costs us money but it improves service. We even have a number for NON-Members. WHITE SCREEN. Getting a center white screen is about 95% of all issues. This is caused by "Webshields". Many security packages include these. Just turning off this useless function speeds up your surfing and will eliminate the white center screen. Honestly webshields are useless and most security like firewalls are snake oil. If you use any type of cable,DSL or Sat modem they have built in firewalls better than anything you could purchase. If you are having other problems search this section of the news by clicking the title link and you will find fixes for things like Sat systems ect.
August 27, 2008	New 800 Number/Assorted Member Goodies For members we now have a toll free number on the support page. This number is for members only and comes with expanded service hours. This number is toll from the U.S. , Puerto Rico and most U.S. Territory's. Members feel free to call this number for the slightest thing like reporting spammers, kiddie porn or the smallest glitch. You can even call to suggest a room or room actions. We want to hear from you and there is now "automated system from hell" a real person picks up the phone. As for other goodies. Shortly we will make a software bundle available to all members. The bundle contains 20,000 Ringtones, 1000's of sound files, 30,000 ebooks on just about every topic (My favorite is "David Blains Magic Secrets") I've always wanted to levitate, it also includes 1,000 web site templates, 100 Photoshot professional websites, Fonts, Images for Avatars and the list goes on and on. Over 75,000 files and programs will be in our members file library. We are amiming tp put the new members interface online this week and it wil include the new software bundle.
August 18, 2008	Hardware Upgrade this Week We will be replacing some hardware this week. During this critical time occupancy levels will be reduced. We are hoping for a smooth transition with a quick return to normalcy. Also during this time we will be stress testing one room. The "Nifty Fiftys" in the bars section is set to 35 users. When it fills up we will set it to 45 and so on. This is to give us an idea of how many users we will be able to support. We know we can easily support 100 users per room but with the new video option coming we need some more info. Thanks for understanding.
	Headlines Index >
Tech Center   (7) Information on fixes for problems accessing Chatropolis. Also General news on gadgets and technology.
November 17, 2008	IE Stuffing/ANOTHER DANGER FOR IE USERS There is an exploit for IE that allows people to put information in your prefix box. Commonly it makes it so you can't speak in a room or it will say something nutty when you try to talk. All other browsers are immune to this. I have not been able to pin down the code but the removal instructions are in the bottom frame of every chat room. You simply hit config while chatting and clear the prefix box. If this happens please send me the contents of the prefix box and I will give you A FREE 1 YEAR MEMBERSHIP! This will allow us to fix yet another Internet Exlorer exploit. This is an issue of great concern because people think Chatro is malfunctioning when it is IE the is the culprit. My advice is to download Firefox. browse the zillion useful add-ons including Sparky. Then right click the IE icon and get to advanced/network proxies or connections. Put 127.0.0 for the proxy and you effectively disable microsoft from gathering information on your system or pulling the plug on your OS if your vendor put an illegal copy of the operating system on your box. If at any time you absolutely have to update any Microsoft product that requires you use IE you can remove the proxy setting and the browser will work. I can't say it as much as google has 349,000 results on IE exploits. Don't use IE! It's insecure,broken,slow,ugly,fatware and just a piece of junk!99.999% of all support calls involve IE and it's degree of brokenness. Simply google download firefox 3 and you can do it in 3 minutes. Then you can browse themes (I prefer the Harley theme) and add-ons like screen capture,passwd helpers like Skipper. Skipper lets you train forms and I would die without it. There are also privacy,encryption,time,geolocation,SEO and more tools than you could ever use. The tools are super small downloads that install themselves. Thunderbird mail Firefox's mail companion is also a great mailer with the same range of add-ons. I use Validation and spam reporting tools and also a neat clock weather combo that are always on my desktop.
November 11, 2008	Google Chrome Browser It was just a matter of time for Google to come out with a browser. If you like the minimalist look then this will give you a hardon. I didn't import any info from firfox so I'm sure a few tabs were missing but even then it is very basic and simple to use. I just got done done testing it. You must use http1.0 on the room entry's or the message box will not clear. But once you get the Chatro advanced setting to 1.0 it is very fast and I don't see a problem with using it here. It is another alternative to IE which is alwys a good thing. If your using IE please switch to Firefox or Now Chrome by Google. The download took about a minute from start to chatroom. As always with new browsers it hasn't had had time to show it's cracks yet but Google does a lot of things well why not an open source browser...Yea I think it's open source to for the tech heads. Now in my campaign to rid the world of IE there is one more choice. It looks like a better choice right off the bat. Well lets be honest Microsoft hasn't released a product that worked for the first 10 revisions in 15 years. I'd rather play Russian roulette with Chrome any day over IE. See what you think just make sure the room entry setting is correct.
August 27, 2008	Reporting Kiddie Porn/Spammers Alot of users report kiddie porn and spammers but unfortunately they don't provide the correct information and it doesn't help. When reporting Kiddie porn please call the 800 number and have the URL of the offending image ready. You obtain this info by right clicking the image and looking at the properties. We will immediately check the image and filter it. Spammers are another problem. Chatrooms are Holy ground and we don't advertise in them so it really pisses us off when someone else does. If you see anyone spamming our rooms please call us immediately and we will filter these talentless morons. On a funny note the telegraph spammer from a couple of weeks ago called me to complain he couldn't spam anymore. I immediately had his caller id info and told him. He stuttered and said this call is being forwarded I'm in Panama. So I called him back at his Hollywood flophouse (When I googled Earthed it you could actually smell the crack and see the hookers standing outside his house). Just from a glance it seems he lives off his 76 year old father and had what sounded like a dozen untrained rugrats in the backround when I spoke to his grandmother/wife or whatever I let her know I knew how stupid this guy is. I'm waiting on a backround/asset report to see if he's worth suing. Unfortunately these guys are usually too broke to bother with.
June 18, 2008	Common Errors and Fixes/Rules The dreaded white center screen. This is almost caused by the last peice of software you have installed. It's usually a webshield or anti virus program. Sat systems are sometimes a problem. For the most popular Hughs this will work for high lag time and a blank center window. You can go in your browsers advanced settings. For example in Firefox go to TOOLS>OPTIONS>ADVANCED>NETWORK>CONNECTION SETTINGS And put this is manual settings http proxy 69.19.14.10 Port 3128. That works just fine. 403 Error. This means your IP is banned. If you think this is not your fault please contact support so we can reconsider the ban. Sometimes a ban takes out more than one person. This is more of a problem in support email than an actual technical problem. We do not ban people because you don't like them. Because they are assholes or in your opinion "Have to go". This goes for members and non-members alike. Our rules are very few and very clear. You can read them here http://www.chatropolis.com/rules.html Reporting Child pornography. If you would like to report an inappropriate image please send us the room name,users screen name,time stamp and right click the offending image. When you right click the image give us the location of where it is hosted. We do NOT host child porn on Chatro.
June 03, 2008	Two Steps Forward One Step Back Well it's clear I'm going to have to redo the HTML of Chatro myself. Evidently I don't play well with others. That's not the end of the world I just find it boring work and it's not programming by any stretch of thee imagination. It's closer to spell checking and everyone knows my prowess with spelling. The good news is huge strides are being made with the new chat server. The other night a handful of users got a look at the video/audio end of it. It should be a lot of fun for those brave enough to put their mug in front of a camera. I did have one use give me an excellent view of their keyboard.LOL. In addition to the A/V end there will be many other features added. Most behind the scenes but just enough to make an improvement. But not so much as Chatro becomes unrecognizable.
	Tech Center Index >
Mike's Corner   (20) Rantings from the founder of Chatropolis.
November 17, 2008	Dictator,Extorsionist amd asshole at large That's a full schedule for any man. My energy levels must be soaring with this new diet and vitamin thing I'm on. Just a few months ago being an asshole was hard enough and I wasn't even really doing that well any more. Now to suddenly be doing two more full time jobs on top of that is a real credit to eating well. I bet Fidel Castro is on my diet. I'll have to go to this years meeting of Dictators,Extortionists and assholes or DEHOLE as it's called by us in the know. I did all this by asking for 44 cents a day. Imagine what I could achieve at 50,60 or even 99 cents a day. I think I'll scan the 8 or 9 emails I got and make a site out of them. Too bad after 15++ years of doing this they really only get a chuckle out of me. I haven't gotten one that really got a rib breaking roar out of me. But there always is hope. Just take your time when you write. But I've lost interest in this subject and I am too busy doing what's best for Chatro. What's best is to get the new hardware and software online and start adding fun stuff to it. Usage is soooo high now it has become a frantic priority. Yesterday we had 1907 chatting and 600 doing other things. Uploading,downloading,reading and god knows what. When we get the new software and add the new rooms that have been requested I think we will be rocking to the tune of 3,000 users chatting God only know how many will be using the video option. Now I have to run out and get a new shirt and cufflinks for the DEHOLE meeting. The least I can do is look my best. I also have to figure out my platform of hate. Everybody hates the U.S. so I have to stand out. I think I will hate the Swiss. Those neutral pricks are just plain evil. Their clocks are annoying and their chocolate has added tons to asses everywhere. Neutral clock making ass wreckers! Somebody must stop the Swiss or the world is doomed. I don't have a country or an army but how hard can that be. I think our flag will be purple with a giant sphincter. The words wraped around will be "sphincters orbis terrarum iunctum". It's Latin so that makes it cool. A few hours later I figured I gotta really move on this. We need currency,national religion,my title,country name and so much more. For the currency it will be the "Mick" Fat Mike will be on the 100 Mick note skinny down to the 1 Mick. Change will be dingelberries. Of course me on the front and the amount of dingleberries on the back. The 50 Dingleberry coin will be the size of a toilet seat.The National Religion will be Proctolojism. Pews will be replaced with toilets and our symbol will be the rare and wonderful circular turd. We will worship the website ratemypoo.com.My title will be The First Dickheador his Dickness,Lord of the Dingleberry. My cabinet will be referred to as my Water closet. The party will be known as the Movement. The country will be called assholio. National food beans,broccoli and all chinese. Greetings will be "Long loaf and prosper" with the reply "Shalicutone". Taxes will be 10% more than you can make. The national food will be fried beans and broccoli. The National Bird will be the Shitbird. All furniture will be porcelain. All Government employees will wear sharkskin suits and use hey,yo,yagottabeshittinme in every sentence. They also will have to pay me 110% of their daily wages. They will do this by selling protection. The death penalty will be for every crime unless you can pay a fine of exactly 1 dingleberry more than you can beg borrow or steal. This will only be told after you pay. The only thing that won't be a crime is extortion,foul language and being an asshole.Imagration is free, exiting the country is 10% more than you have unless you can sell an immigration officer protection. Which will raise your stature in society so high that you may only leave upon death which is the punishment for trying to leave. I expect to see you all at the temple of Proctolojism wednesday afternoon at 10 AM. The High Colonic will give the sermon and you better fill the collection plate with all you got. If not the sharkskin suited ushers will kick your ass and take your wife's jewelry. The national education system will be study of the website ratemypoo.com go there now or fucking hey, you ya get me. I now have to plan our attack on the evil Swiss and their fucking clocks. We will use a methane based gas weapon and all soldiers will say "Wasn't me" after the attack.
November 16, 2008	New Life to The Underground Anybody with half a brain knows the value of having a chatroom on chatropolis or some other site. Yea I can get a room for something like 25 bux a year on magnachat but magna only has 20 users online. There are also a few other places but they run IFCS which is MY software and they will never see an update. They also have no traffic and restrict usage and will never be able to add features. So what does this mean to the average user? Well the best chatmasters will be staying. I will be working closely with them to provide the best underground ever. I think I can do that because I invented the concept. I exhibited loyalty by having a one time surcharge. One fat trailer trash bitch called it extortion. Excuse me but 43 cents a day is the stupidest extortion on the planet. The bounced checks alone from the uground cost us more. and yest many bounces and had declines. I never complained or daid a thing. Now they all have an opinion. Honestly if your on thee fence leave. I already have commitments from the best rooms. The rooms originally cost 14,99 per month and we still have people paying that. So if your loyalty factor is a negative number go. Go quickly and leave the traffic to the intelligent people. We supply the best chat and next week we wil be back to normal no matter what the check I have to write. I told a UG master this was to remove "chaf" more than the 20 dolar bill. And if ya can't take the truth well I'm sorry. When the new software comes online you wil be dinosaurs. For the people that accused me of a crime you can't come back. The rest are welcome, as we all know I don't hold a grudge.
November 15, 2008	Some things Chatro has been acting funny. I believe because of the increased load on the system it is making the chatserver puke every couple of hours. You can chek this by looking at the "Realtime graph" of traffic to the right. Generally it should be smooth nut now it has become jagged. This is not normal. This can cause members to have to relof and I am sorry for the inconvience. I did order one of our crucial servers and am upgrading it thru the roof compared to the machine in question. The current machine is a p4 3.0 2 GB ram and I am replacing it with a Quad core 2.66 / 8GB RAM and moving the operating system from 32 bit to 64 bit. Since the chatserver is CPU/memory intensive and is not really affected by disc IO this should cure what I believe the problem is. The machine will be ready next week. I'm not exactly leading the march on this other people think it is another issue entirely. But since communication of the entire network with this server is needed for Chatropolis to work I think that is where our current burps are originating from. Ordinarily this would be a 2600 dollar gamble but the machine needs to be upgraded anyway and it can only speed everything up. We should see as soon as the server is built and configured. For now I can only say sorry for performance issues and assure we are working on it.
November 14, 2008	Anniversary of a Real Man Today is the 6th Anniversary of my Fathers death. So I guess maybe writing something will help me actually get over it. I must be the worlds bigest pussy because I still pick up the phone to call him some times and I've never actually be able to morn him and put it in perspective.Heres a little about him The real Michael Ludwick (I'm a cheap copy) was an Iron Worker out of the DC local. He was also a member of the International Steel Workers Union. He was a very educated man and actually had to hide the fact in his line of work. He played the piano and could talk on just about any subject intelligently. He was an honest hard working man that took no short cuts. To my knowledge he never broke a law in his life. Well Iron workers do do things on strikes like bust guys in the head with a piece of angle iron but I don't count that. I started taking my Dad to costa Rica almost 16 years ago. We would fish,smoke Cohibas and play lifestyles of the rich and infamous. He was at my wedding and my inlaws and my Mom and Dad came on our honeymoon. It is still one of the best memories I have. Shortly before my Father died I bought him a Land Rover Discovery XLV8 with every option. It was to trade in the previous 2 year old car I bought him. He lived in a small town in PA and they had never seen a 55,000.00 dollar truck and he showed it to all 1300 residents of the town. I have 3 male friends, Anthony M, Skip F and my Dad. I think Skipper is no longer with us. So I got maybe one but I would have to go back to NJ and find him because he went bad. Dad I am gonna smoke those Cohiba Torpedos and drink a glass of Gran Mariner tonight. I still miss you. Patricia is burning a candle. Miguel is up there with you and I was close to coming up a few times.
November 12, 2008	ABMX.COM Starts the day from hell! On Monday I called ABMX.COM a company I was planning on buying a few servers from. I called to see if they were working vDay for the order. A very polite guy said sure and I was lookinf foward to ordering the new hardware. As usual instead of ordering online I like to make a person contact for my order plus I usually get a discount. I can usually get 5% off for a check instead of a credit card on large purchases. So Tuesday I call and Suresh Mc Slurpee woke up on the wrong side of the 7-11. I have a lot of experience of dealing with people of Indian descent.Muslims are usually very polite. Hindu's are usually mother fucking slurpee slinging pissed at the world douche bags. This is just a general observation and yest it's racist. But it is my life experience and I'll tell it the way I see it. So after I ask if there is some wiggle room this piece of cocking shit tells me to 'You should be going to ebay if you want shit" and more that I can't remember. Well everybody that knows me that that won't fly to far. I said listen you convince store cock sucker give me your boss. "Listen to me I am one of being the CEO's here". A CEO taking orders unlikely but let this guy have his fantasy. He probably lives in an apartment with 40 relatives. So I educated him. I sai ya know Hasheeshs if you talked to me like that in person you would be shitting ivory for a fucking month. Then you would need to go to the emergency room for anal boot removal. Do you understand that asshole? "I assume this means we will not be doing business today". Yea Mr Hawking we won't be doing dick. Actually this was a good thing because after some research I found out ABMX.com sells the worst shit on the planet. So after this I went to work to find another company. I was on the phone for 8 hours straight and only got 2 quotes. One was from a large company and one was from a smaller operation in Georgia.Prices aside I decided to go with the smaller company that is probably being hit much worse in this economy. Believe it or not but we actually care if our business will help someone or get absorbed into a giant office building. The equipment will take an extra week to get but what the hell. I like the south. If my heart could stand it I could go for 2 eggs over a chicken fried steak with biscuits and white sausage gravy. Now just to piss off ABMX.com and make sure this article is forever linked to them I'd like to say. Discount rack computers from 399,ABMX,computers,telco servers,dc voltage servers,rack NAS,rack systems. ABMX systems,Abmx,Abmx.com sucks,Computers,industrial. Now eat that google. LOL. Munch munch munch. Till next time.
	Mike's Corner Index >