Rutabaga

THE LATEST: We have completed the process of changing awesomedude.com links to awesomedude.org links in the story pages. I'm not sure what volume John worked on, but my FTP software reported about 35,000 file transfers, which works out to about 17,500 round trips. Thankfully we have a software tool that can make alterations in large groups of files all at once. The hardest part is making sure not to introduce new errors while correcting old ones. Any authors reading this might want to take a moment to review your pages and make sure everything is shipshape. If you notice anything out of whack, please let John or me know. Cheers, R

General note on site links -- there are a lot of remnant links based on awesomedude.com in the various story pages and author index pages. As a general rule, if you edit the link in your browser address window to say awesomedude.org where it now says awesomedude.com, the link should work. In other words, delete the "com" and replace with "org" in the address. R

The new site is substantially complete at https://www.awesomedude.org. All of the story content should be in place, barring any corruption during the upload process. Please speak up if you find any problems. I helped connect the initial dots to marry the .org domain registration with the new web host, but John (Alien Son) did the vast majority of the work uploading the site files. Thank heavens he decided to do a full site backup late last year. It sounds like he spent much of yesterday, from lunch until (late) bedtime, managing the uploads. I thought about hiring somebody to stand nearby and mop the sweat from his brow periodically. A couple of notes: 1. Story pages and chapter indices will all have a broken link to the AD home page (still using the .com address) at the top and bottom until we figure out the best way to fix these hundreds and hundreds of links. 2. Codey's World still exists as a subdirectory on the AD server, at https://www.awesomedude.org/codeysworld. However, the address codeysworld.com will not work. Like moving into a new house or apartment, we still have some electronic boxes to unpack and put away. But we have made great progress, in an international collaboration between folks in the United States, Australia, and the UK. Welcome to the 21st century! R P.S. -- We have removed the preexisting PayPal links for now because we cannot access those funds. We are actively seeking a new mechanism for support of the site costs.

Thank you for grabbing the awesomedude.org domain name. R

Try it again. Somehow the URL got corrupted in my earlier post. I have corrected it now to https://www.awesomedude.org. Sorry for the inconvenience. R

It is 3:00 AM right now in Australia where John lives, so I thought I'd go ahead and announce the good news while he catches up on his sleep. The new site is substantially complete at https://www.awesomedude.org. All of the story content should be in place, barring any corruption during the upload process. Please speak up if you find any problems. I helped connect the initial dots to marry the .org domain registration with the new web host, but John did the vast majority of the work uploading the site files. Thank heavens he decided to do a full site backup late last year. It sounds like he spent much of yesterday, from lunch until (late) bedtime, managing the uploads. I thought about hiring somebody to stand nearby and mop the sweat from his brow periodically. A couple of notes: 1. Story pages and chapter indices will all have a broken link to the AD home page (still using the .com address) at the top and bottom until we figure out the best way to fix these hundreds and hundreds of links. 2. Codey's World still exists as a subdirectory on the AD server, at https://www.awesomedude.org/codeysworld. However, the address codeysworld.com will not work. Like moving into a new house or apartment, we still have some electronic boxes to unpack and put away. But we have made great progress, in a collaboration between folks in the United States, Australia, and the UK. Welcome to the 21st century! R

Ditto.

I am working with Mike's adopted son David to try to get the various accounts that support this site (web hosting, domain registration, forum platform) under our control. We have had to peel the onion layer by layer, because (at least so far as I can tell from David) Mike did not leave behind any helpful documentation. The good news is that Alien Son has a full backup of the site on his local disk, and we can recreate it on a new host if it comes to that. So the stories here will not be lost. R

Very sad news. And thank you, John, for the incredible amount of effort you have been putting in every week to keep the site updated, process stories, and deal with all the myriad tasks involved with a site this size. R

Yea, verily, this evergreen epic returns here as another new Pick from the Past. As you will see from my earlier posts on this thread, it is hazardous to start on this story unless you're prepared to go the distance. And that warning goes double if you dare to venture into the "Mystery and Mayhem" adventures such as this one. R

Check out this listing: https://www.estately.com/blog/2016/09/the-complete-list-of-lewd-sounding-town-names-in-america/ R

"I'm here all week, folks!" R

I love your trip down memory Lane. R

An eye-opening history of the runup to World War 1 is "The Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark. I read it about a month ago, and it shows dramatically how the dynamics within sovereign governments can lead to unfortunate results. It also carries worrisome lessons for today's world. R

But that implies . . . oh wait, I get it. R

I was just thinking how much I approved of the choice of Aladdin's Awakening in this month's set of Picks. Delightful story. R

I wear shorts all the time in this weather, especially because the a/c is not working at home right now. My legs have only a tasteful amount of hair, not much different from when I was a teenager. Hirsuteness does not run in my family. I still remember in high school a bunch of us piling into someone's car after school and going to the local carhop eating place, pulling into a space, placing our orders on the Teletray intercom, and always ending the order with ". . . and a waitress with nothing on it." Har-de-har-har was always the reply. And as I recall shorts were not allowed at my high school. R

Seems like the cat has got a bunch of tongues. R

New story found here. One word of warning -- don't start reading this if you're hungry. R

A totally appropriate title for this Pick from the Past, found here. There are some thought-provoking twists and turns that I suspect many people can relate to in one aspect or another. I can't say more without spoiling it. R

A Pick from the Past found here. An intriguing and thought-provoking quickie that leaves the reader to fill in most of the blanks. R

Found here. Be prepared to have your funny bone tickled. R P.S. - This is a Pick from the Past.

Found here. This will have you recalling the lyrics from the tune "Route 66." 4 chapters. But to me it seemed like it ended just when it was getting good! R

Probable last post concerning Philo Vance. I finished "The Scarab Murder Case," which is the 5th Philo Vance book, and then the 4th book "The Bishop Murder Case," became available from the L.A. Public Library. I finished that one last night. It seems like the library has not chosen to buy any of the later volumes in this series (there are roughly a dozen). The Wikipedia entry for this author suggests that the later books deteriorated in quality, and that may be the reason for LAPL not acquiring more. I think these first five are dandy. This last one, "Bishop," definitely had twists and turns. R

The public library finally had the first Philo Vance book available ("The Benson Murder Case") and I just read it. It's a good yarn. Unlike the later Vance books, which are sprinkled with quotes in French (which I speak) and Latin (which I know a little bit), this one includes some German sayings that I could only guess at. It's interesting that authors in the early 20th century (not to mention late 19th century) simply assumed their readers had learned at least smatterings of other languages in school. Nowadays I guess it would be more plausible to break into a patch of computer language. Just starting "The Scarab Murder Case." R