[caedmonscall.net]

Now, we don’t do this very often, so we hope that you understand when we do. :) Ever wanted to contribute to the site, but didn’t know how? Love Amazon.com and want to make it more awesome for you? How about signing up for Amazon Prime with our affiliate code? I’ve been an Amazon Prime user for years, and I’m a fan.

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That’s their marketing schpiel, but the way I look at it is this: I order a lot of stuff from Amazon every year [to the point that I bet my UPS guy hates me], and I never, ever think about the shipping charge anymore. Doesn’t matter if I’m ordering a single CD, ten books, or heavy luggage—all the same. The only time I think about shipping prices are when I want the overnight shipment—mind you, not often, but every so often, it happens.

Thanks for taking the time to put up with this shameless plug.

Update, 17 Aug: Peter noted below that we didn’t talk dollars. Amazon Prime runs you $79/yr; we’ll let you run the cost/benefit analysis for yourselves. We get $12 out of that.

Please bear with us as we work on some technical issues here, which have driven us to the use of this bland, neutral site template.

Update, 1620 CDT: A-ha. Apparently leading an entry with the term “CC” gets the post-slug written in such a way that it triggers mod_security rules. Such a pain. We’re back to the old style now. Sorry for any confusion.

As you might have seen on [rocksmyfaceoff.info], I screwed up bigtime in moving [caedmonscall.net] today. Everything’s fixed now, though.

I’ll give you your money back for the downtime! ;)

Well, if you’ve visited the .net today, you’ve seen that we have Google ads up now. Why? Well, this site [and the others on this server] is expensive to operate.

I lease this server on behalf of its community of users. As time has gone by, what that costs me has gone up. In 2004, when we first started this, the server cost $225/mo., which was largely paid for by the fact that I had roommates living with me that offset the cost. Sure, I winced when I saw that go out every month—it was my largest bill after I paid the rent—but I could handle it.

Today, the serve lease runs $324/mo., and domain registration, license fees, and other expenses run that to about $4200 a year. Part of that is because the traffic to the forum has increased; part of that is because we’ve got a lot more on the server today; part of it is because we’re more popular on the Internet. And also, part of it is because the number of spammers on the Internet has increased significantly—email spam, comment spam, attempts to forum spam, server exploits, etc. Most of the cost growth, I would argue, comes in trying to handle the increased traffic across the board.

But no matter that, the cost is a lot higher. As you can see from the second link, what we take in from user fees on The Rumor Forum—the main reason we’re on a dedicated server in the first place, admittedly—and from hosting a smattering of sites on the server accounts for about $2700 a year. That still leaves me $1500 short, and unlike 2004, I have neither roommates nor a paid-for truck. So … it’s a little painful.

So I’m being up-front and honest: providing all what we provide you costs money. Please consider donating to the cause if you have not already done so; if you have, I thank you.

Okay, so it was weird for a while that we had a page for Garett and then … none of the other seven people in the band. So we rearranged some things. And then I got industrious today and stole some of the very-old text from the original cc.net band bios and repurposed it for our new pages for the band. Go poke around and let us know what you think.

Also, we’d love feedback as to what you’d like to see on those pages.

Have you ever taped a Caedmon’s Call concert? Would you like to share that audio with your fellow CC fans? So would we. :)

If you ever taped CC in the past, please comment here or shoot me an email at gfmorris AT gfmorris DAHT net, and I’ll get with you. The process isn’t entirely painless, but it’s definitely doable, and if nothing else, I’ll take CDs that you mail me.

Oh, and if you haven’t noticed, we put up a pre-40 Acres bootleg of CC the other night: a late 1998 show from College Station that features a crowd hearing “Daring Daylight Escape” for the first time. I just finished listening to it, and man, it was a lot of fun. My thanks go out to Lance Orton of Blue Couch Studios for sending this one to me.

While we all earnestly await Bryan’s liveblogging next week—and I count myself in that number, because I’m gonna be stuck in Huntsville next week—we’ve got some bits for you.

• After a short discussion this morning, Chris did a quick pass at a song vault entry for Overdressed. That Hubbs, he’s a machine.
• Also, if you didn’t see it this morning, we updated our post about the Overdressed poster to indicate that they’re on-sale now at Portland Studios’s store for $25. Get ‘em while they’re hot, yo.
• Lastly, we’re on Twitter at twitter.com/ccnet. We’ll use Twitter Tools to send you notices when we have new stuff up on the blog, and Bryan can always send funny things from his cell phone with it, like “I just stealth disco’d Cliff” or “Miller just gave me a wedgie” or “Todd told me I could play cowbell on ‘Hands of the Potter’ again”. We hope that it’ll be a fun way for you to stay on the cutting edge with us.

Peace, love, and Crisco,
Geof

for those of you reading this in a feedreader, click on over and take a peek at our new skin over at caedmonscall.net. not only have we changed our colors, but we’ve ditched the “red rumor or blue rumor” thing in exchange for some more descriptive post categories.

All these changes are in preparation for our “Overdressed Release Week LiveBlog” which will be going live in 10 days.

Stay tuned for more updates in the coming days…

So the new Caedmon’s Call CD, Overdressed, releases 2 weeks from today. We’ve been lucky enough to have had this disc for a while now and we are confident that y’all are going to enjoy the songs that the band has put together.

We’re also excited to announce that we’ll be partnering with the band to bring you some exclusive content during release week. We don’t have many details nailed down at this point, but for now just know that we’ll be there during all of the release week activities (from sunday to wednesday) and we’ll be blogging about it all. You’ll get some interviews, insights, photos, and some behind the scenes looks at what release week is all about.

Make sure you keep us locked and loaded in your favorites or feed reader, because we’ll be delivering the goods in about 11 days or so. stay tuned…

ok, this is random, but hey, we are random here at cc.net.

the band’s manager, Christie, has a sister nameed Cyndi entered in a contest to win a car. Cyndi needs as many votes to as possible before 6am on Monday morning, so if you get msg between now and then, go to this promotional website and click “voting” to vote for Cyndi.

If Cyndi wins, then i guess the world will be a better place. And if she doesn’t, at least we’re only 6 weeks away from the release of Overdressed.

bryan