Well, folks, the votes are in and the polls are closed (much like the U.S. elections, eh...yea, lame joke...sue me), and the date has been scheduled and set into stone!

So, the actual date of the OtherFamily X-Mas 2008 will be December 19 - 21. Perhaps I should clarify those dates a little more - December 19 will more than likely be a setup day for Hess (and anyone else he recruits), which may include myself as well.

The party itself will be on December 20 (a Saturday as usual). As per the normal routine, it will be an overnight deal for those that would like to stay (you certainly do not have to if you do not want to).

Finally, December 21 will be cleanup and departure for those still in attendance.

For those who have attended in the past, I am pretty certain you have a good idea of how this all goes down. There will certainly be a main dinner meal prepared by Hess and some of the others in attendance, gift exchanges (for any who brought gifts to exchange...budgets are tight for everyone though so this is not a required affair - do it only if you want). Obviously there are plenty of social activities, and normally a breakfast deal the morning after.

Well, with all that said, start making sure you have the time off so you can try and be there, and as always we hope to have as many in attendance as we possibly can!

Hope to see you there!

Well, it is getting to be about that time again, and already, if you are a member of the OtherFamily Crew, you can cast your voting in relation to what you think would be a good date for the event. Voting is being held for the next week (pending any revisions) and will be conducted in the Current Events forum. Check the OtherFamily X-Mas thread for details.

So, it has been a little while since anyone has dropped any kind of news post around here, but leave it to me of all people to break the silence.

Anyways, to start off here we have had yet another successful OtherFamily Reunion (I apologize for not getting a news post up on this event, I will try to stay more on top of things in the future). I was unable to attend this year myself, but I hear it was quite the interesting time as always - even more so considering the flooding going on out in Wisconsin at the time! Thanks to everyone who made this annual tradition possible to continue on!

Now, onto some content of the digital sort (and personally my favortie kind considering it means changes on the horizon around here). I have taken up a new project of getting this site revised so that it does not look like it belongs on Geocities free web service. For far to long have we left this place in the dark ages of the net, and so I am working on bringing us up to the times.

Recently I have run into some problems regarding this, but I am trying to enlist the design skills of Hess to correct the error of my recent ways. Needless to say, I think that most of you will enjoy your time here quite a bit more then you currently do.

From there will begin the task of making a new forum and image gallery that will be more compliant with the new structure of the site as a whole (which will include the need to restructure the user database), and then on to some more new content for the site to add to the overall useability around here. I have some major ideas in relation to the OtherFamily RPG Project that many of you may or may not have heard anything about already (things concerning a possible near future release of this aspect of the site).

On a closing note, I think it might be time to shake things up again around here in regards to the Site Operations. Another one of the tasks that I have been working on is developing the guidelines for the assorted posistions needing to be filled around here to keep things running nice and smooth. Once I have this, and some of the other aformentioned tasks, completed I will setup an application and interview process for these positions and start getting them filled.

I think that about covers it for this installment of the OtherFamily News, but stay tuned for more updates in the future (cause with us, you never really know when you might see one).

So, once again the Annual OtherFamily Xmas has come and gone, and this year like all others past went off without a hitch really. A big thanks to everyone that came, helped out, etc. to ensure that this tradition continues into the future.

Along with the end of the Xmas Party, as usual, ushers us into another New Year for the OtherFamily. Over the course of this trip, Hess and I did a lot of discussing of what we will be doing for the future of this site, and I ensure that there are many great things that will be coming up.

Compounded with this, I myself now have a PC again, and will be able to more actively code for the site. This should bring about a faster turn around on the various projects we have lined up.

Also, with the New Year, we here at OtherFamily will be reaching out to you, our users, for some assistance and the chance to make your own permanent mark on the OtherFamily site. Within the next few days here we will be releasing all needed information for the OtherFamily Logo Contest! Keep your eyes peeled!

That is right everyone, the holiday season is upon us once again, and with it comes the return of the Annual OtherFamily Christmas Party!

As in previous years, the party will be held at the splendid Lake House courtesy of Hess and his kin. This year the party will be held on Saturday, December 29th - and it will be an all day event!

Expectations have started to become high for the OtherFamily Staff in relations to the Christmas Party, party goers anticipating good food, spirits, drinks, and so on. And what of the OtherFamily Christmas Poker Game? Will we see a return of the gift giving gambling extravaganza? And what of special news announcements related to the OtherFamily Site?

So, come and join us once again for another fantastic holiday with the OtherFamily!

The following is the modified and most up to date list of accounts that are pending removal at the end of the year due to being unused for an excessive amount of time. Again, if you are or know one of these people, please advise them that if they wish to retain their OtherFamily account that they must log in before January 1st. Without further adue, here is the list:

Reeder
kylie
SpaceDonkey
CHUNX
J Money
Goatboy
RJ
wickedjuggalo10
sinseviltwin
Irie G

The following accounts will be placed into an Inactive State on January 1st due to lack of use for an excessive time period, but the following individuals have conveyed that they may not be able to log in any time soon:

TinkrBel
MoRt

Thank you for your cooperation as we move through some cleaning of the database so that we might move onto some larger projects that have been put off for far too long!

Okay, it has been a couple days now, so I figured that I would go ahead and toss down an updated list of the usernames in risk of deletion at the start of the new year. Again, if any of you have actual contact with these folks, please advise them of this:

TinkrBel
Reeder
kylie
SpaceDonkey
CHUNX
Badfish
J Money
Scooter
Goatboy
RJ
MoRt
wickedjuggalo10
sinseviltwin
Irie G

I am also dropping this news post on MySpace in my Blog and in a Bulliten (provided that I remember to do this at home since I can not from work).

Thanks everyone for your consideration on this matter!

Alright people, I figured I would get a head start on the unused accounts this year so that it can be handled a little bit better than it has in the past. As it stands now, all accounts that have not been used in the current calender year (2007) will be deleted at the start of the new year (2008).

At this time, there are a number of accounts that this will effect, and I strongly urge anyone who may know the owners of these accounts to try and contact them to advise them of this, if they wish to continue their account here at OtherFamily.

Below is the listing of users that have not logged in since sometime in 2006:

Cr@sH
TinkrBel
Reeder
kylie
SpaceDonkey
CHUNX
Badfish
J Money
Scooter
Goatboy
RJ
MoRt
wickedjuggalo10
sinseviltwin
narcosys
Irie G

Thank you all very much with any assistance that you can provide us with this process. We would obviously prefer to see these people return to the site, but at the same time if they have no intent of coming back then there is no need for us to maintain their account information.

In closing, your quote of the day:

It is a dangerous business going out your front door.
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Hey there everybody, just wanted to drop a quick line to fill everyone in on some of the more recent behind the scenes stuff here at OtherFamily.

First thing is first, both Hess and myself are being bogged down with work as of late. Even as I write this out to you all now, I find myself in Indiana for work for the second week in a row. As for Hess, he is locked into a death march on something like 4 separate projects at his job as well. What does this mean to you, the user?

Nothing.

Well, not really, it does mean that the content that we have been developing on the backend has been put on hold for the time being once again. Yes, yes, yes - it happens a lot and we know this!

Now, most of you are probably asking yourselves, or have asked yourselves, is there ever any positive news when it comes to Hess and Red Eye. Well, I am also here to tell you that there is!

My good buddy, known to all of you as The Red Fist from the board...though I do not think he has ever posted anything before...has been working on a new design for the website. I have seen it already, and submitted it to Hess for final approval, and believe me when I tell you this - YOU ARE GOING TO LIKE IT!

With that said, we will be doing some interesting things here at OtherFamily in the moderately near future, so keep your eyes peeled for another News post here soon!

In closing, I figure I will keep up with my recent theme of giving you something to chew on in your head until my next post, and here it is this time:

A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
-H.L. Mencken

Well folks, the OtherFamily Reunion has come and gone, and it seems that it all went down without a hitch! It was really good to get together with some of the Family for good times, good food, and relaxation. A huge thanks to everyone who came and made it possible, and to everyone who helped with the various odds and ends while we were there.

Now, for the icing on the cake, keep your eyes peeled in the future for information regarding future OtherFamily Christmas Parties and Reunions. From the sounds of the information we got so far, these milestones in this Family are sure to be a regular thing for the future.

Now, with all of that said, I just wanted to touch once again on the current hold that we have on the development side of things here at OtherFamily. Now, this is still in effect, but I wanted you all to be aware to keep an eye open for another news post from me soon here about that in more detail. While I am out here in Wisconsin, I will be talking to Hess at great lengths about the site and the future of it as well (in truth, we have already been talking about it, but we have further dedicated some nights to doing nothing but work with this site).

Anyways, I think that about covers everything I wanted to touch on right now, and until next time, take a moment to ponder this:

The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.
- Arthur Koestler

Well everybody, I figure it has been awhile since I have dropped a news post on here, so I wanted to fill folks in on some things happening around here.

First of all, projects on the development end of things here have been put on hold for the time being. I will soon be traveling out to the good state of Wisconsin to get in touch with Hess regarding some things about the site. Until this has occured, no projects are being worked on.

Now, as for the other reason I will be heading to Wisconsin - it is time for the OtherFamily Reunion! That is right folks, the summer counterpart to the OtherFamily Christmas has finally come into sight. Located on the same wonderful lake as the OtherFamily Christmas, and coming up here very soon! I look forward to seeing everyone there for good times, good food, and wonderful summer relaxation!

I am very pleased to announce, be it about a day later than I should be, that we here at OtherFamily have renewed our contract on this website, and that this new contract will take us into the year 2009. It has been a true pleasure providing the content of this site to our users over the course of these past nearly 2 years, and we look foreward to continuing to provide you with the same quality - if not better - of content that we have provided in the past.

I know that we have said it before, but we really do have a lot of wonderful ideas on the horizon for this domain, and I would like to express our gratitude to all of you who continue to make this dream a reality!

Okay, so I am dropping out a little line here to essentially retract my previous news posting for the time being. Initially, we were going to be bringing down the forum to make some needed updates to it, but we have since decided that we will be taking this project a step or so further and actually make some more massive updates to the site as a whole.

To give you a little anticipation as to what this will include:

-Across Site Login Ability
-Restructure of the Forum
-Restructure of the Gallery

Keep checking back for the status of these projects and more!

Wanted to make sure that people are aware, in the near future the forum here will be going down for a period of time for some extensive updating. You can find all pertinant information regarding this here for the time being: http://www.otherfamily.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=14281#14281

Once we have actually taken the forum offline, please stop back here to the news station for any needed updates!

Well everyone, please welcome Randy aboard the Moderation Team as the newest member. In the past Randy has worked as an administrator for the site before, but personal obligations have prevented him the time needed to fulfill much of a role here. Well, he does have enough time to get some random work around the board done for now, so once again please welcome Randy back to the OtherFamily Staff!

I just wanted to drop another quick thank you to our users who have supported us since the creation of OtherFamily. Less than one month ago I posted on here stating how we had acheived 9000 posts on the board - well, now we have reached the 10000 post count and are still climbing quickly.

So, once again, thanks to all of you who have helped Hess and I realize one of our visions for this group!

Well, after long and careful consideration from myself, Hess, and our current moderation staff, we have reached a decision on the Moderation Staff opening.

First and foremost, let me make it clear to all who applied for this that it wasn't due to lack of credentials that you did not get this spot, but simply that we did not have the spots available for everyone who applied for this to take.

With that being said, everyone please welcome aboard the newest member of our Moderation Staff here at OtherFamily: Ben Peterson, more commonly known around here simply as peterson.

Once again, thanks to all the applicants for showing your support to this site, we look forward to seeing applications from all of you in the future regarding any new spots that become available here!

We are cleaning up around here at OtherFamily, and it is time for the Inactive Account to go.

The following accounts have been deleted due to inactivity:

unholyproigy
teady fukin' bear
Possum
nuwildcat62
nativepsycho
LJtoker
LADY MONOXIDE
KelliAli
K.T.
cemeterygirl
Brooklyn
Baby 'Lette

The following accounts are under investigation due to inactivity:

wicked juggalo
spacedonkey
scooter
Puck
nutz
mr. Green
Mort
kylie
kurushio
Krazidninjalotus
j money
irie g
goatboy
Cr@sh
Chunx
Badfish
sinseviltwin

Make sure you are activly using your accounts, folks, cause we will remove the clutter.

Well, folks, we on the OtherFamily development team have some changes that will be rolling out here in the near future that I wanted to give a quick heads up on. Mainly, I wanted to let you all know that there will be some drastic changes occuring to the forum board.

At this time, we are still looking into the best methods to go about these changes - but be sure to check back to the news page over the next few days to catch any updates as they come!

Well, it is pretty well known that we here at OtherFamily have been around for some time now, and I am pleased to announce that we have had our 9,000th post made on the Forum Boards.

I would just like to thank all of you for your support as we push foreward to try and provide you with the vision that Hess and I shared a few years back.

Well, we have been letting the applications roll in, and it is time to put a closing date on this position. So, all applications will need to be in this week by Friday, and from there we will begin to tool through them and make our decision.

Check the announcements section of the forum board for information regarding a spot on the Moderation Team that has become available.

Check it out boys and girls, we are affiliating with some other sites at this point in time. Click the link to the left and see what is shakin.

Looks like we finally have them up, even though it took a couple months. Head on over to the gallery and check out the pictures from the 2006 OtherFamily Christmas Party! Hope that you enjoy!

I just wanted to thank all of the people who have frequented this site since its arrival. We have come through over a year now of the OtherFamily being live and on the Web, and now some 8000 posts and gigs of pictures later, we are still running strong.

It means even more when you add the fact that the development of the site has been something of a slow project. As most of you know, Hess and I are both rather busy individuals - and it means a lot to see that the efforts are appreciated.

Please continue to bear with us, I know we have said it so many times in the past, but we have so much in store for the future!

All in all, thanks to all of you who have helped make this dream become a reality!

Well, I am trying to get this out since we have not had a chance to get the page related to this up.

Everyone should show their love to OhioChat.org!

This site is run by a personal friend of mine, and I would like to help them out, and they would like to help us out...now come on, show some love, let them know they are welcome to chill with our family, and in return lets spend some time with them too!

Their site has a similar feel to it as our site does, so give it a try!

Well, it has been some time now since you have actually -SEEN- any of the work that we have actually been doing around here, but finally the fruits of our labor are becoming visible.

Wait, is this just not enough to appeal to you, then let me give you a quick and dirty run down of some of the things we have in store for you:

Contact OtherFamily
Affiliates
Re-release of the OtherFamily Site

And that is just the begining of it. Presently, Hess and myself are looking into the distribution of power around here as well, not to mention looking into more coders.

Keep your eyes open folks, there is more on the horizon!

Hey, look at that! We actually got an actual news system in place now! I know you haven't seen the "Current News" updated in nearly a year now, since it was always easier for us to just make announcements on the forum, but now this page should be getting updated much more regularly. In addition, as you can probably see below, I've copied the announcements from the forum board that really belonged here. Stay tuned for more!

All,

As we draw in to the end of the year, I feel it is only appropriate that we go through and do some cleaning up around the site. This is mainly being composed of taking care of any accounts that are no longer active and having them removed from the database. Any account that has not been accessed since December 2005 or before will be deleted on Saturday the 23rd if they have not yet logged in by then. Following is a list of all accounts that will be effected by this:

Nutz
Puck
Reeder
Goatboy
~Altdawg~
cassandra jane
casey grattan
SpaceDonkey
kylie

If you personally know any of the people who these accounts belong to, please attempt to contact them and advise them of this issue before their accounts are lost.

Some of you may have noticed some various changes occuring around the website recently, most noteably the Forum Board itself. In short, the Development Team is working on making some changes to things that will improve the flow, look, feel, and maintnence of the website. More information will come as it is available.

Well, everyone, the acounts on the Forum have now been synced back up with the image galley, so now all users should be able to login to the gallery with their username and password for the forum and post pics if they so choose!

As I am sure people have noticed by now, the only people that are in posistions of "power" within the site are Hess, myself, and the Moderation Team. The reason for this is as follows:

Hess and I have been discussing how things have been going here behind the scenes, and we have decided to reestablish how we intend to get things done here on both the Admin and Webmaster side of things. Once we have pounded out some more of the details we will let you in further on what is going on, and will also be taking applications for posistions.

Stay tuned for updates!

As of now, it is officially considered abuse of the Gallery to post Music Videos and MP3 songs for access to other sources such as MySpace, hi5, etc. We do not need our bandwidth consumed on these places. All items like this that are known have been removed.

Accpections to this would be any members of the staff that would like to host music and videos may do so, but these will be set to restricted access.

Thanks

Hey everyone, just wanted you all to know that the forum board is back up and running! Check it out, I know its not all creative, but it is something for the time being so that it looks like it is meant to be accessable!

Well, here we go, this little news post is here to let you know that the forum board is down for the time being! Make note of this, and there will be a news post again once the forum is back up and running! Thanks a million for your patience!

Wow, it's been a little while since this page was last updated. Anyways, we now have an Image Gallery installed, which you may get to by clicking the link above. You should already have an account in the Image Gallery, with the same username and password as your Forum Board account, and it will create an album for you to upload pictures to when you first login.
Within your album, you can create any sub-albums you want, and you can upload pictures and/or movies to them. (For now, movies can only be downloaded by people who want to view them, but we will eventually have streaming video built-in so you can watch it from the Gallery.) Uploading pictures is really easy: if you click on the Add Items link in your album, you can choose from several different ways to upload. Among these are uploading single files at a time from the browser (you can even upload a .zip file containing images, and it'll extract 'em for you!), using an Upload Java Applet which will allow you to drag and drop pictures from Windows Explorer to your browser, and using the Gallery Remote - a Java application you run on your computer which works really well with the Image Gallery. Choose whichever way you prefer. There are currently no quotas on how much disk space you can use, but if it becomes an issue, we will probably enforce quotas.
When viewing pictures, you can view a slideshow (be sure to set the size that you wish to view images at, though) of pictures, or you can view individual pictures, and you can even leave comments on pictures. There's a whole bunch of other nifty little features in there as well, so play around with it a bit and see what you can do. If you notice anything wrong with it, or that you think could work better a little differently, post about it in the Bugs or Suggestions boards in the Forum!

Okay, well, I was just kind of sitting around here, and I popped off a quick set of text messages to most of the people we all chill with to let you guys all know about checking out this site - then I remembered that some of you have no idea why this site is actually being made or anything like that...so, allow me to explain a little bit for you.
Hess and I started B.S.ing with one another a few months back about how it was sort of shitty that we have such an amazing group of friends...totaling in at well over 30 people (more than most people could ever hope to ever have in their lifetime), and through the years we have somehow grown and grown, and also we have staied together through a lot of strange, hard, and interesting times. The thing is, though, that Hess and I also noticed that the group of friends has been slowly drifting apart.
Don't get me wrong on this, it's not really the drifting apart that you probably think I mean...no, I am more or less refering to the fact that as we have all been growing older, people have been moving to different towns, and it has started to make contact with one another rather difficult. Hess and I decided that we were not going to allow something like that to happen after we have been able to endure through maintaing these friendships for so long: thus this website.
You see, to Hess and I, this site can be an essential tool for us to be able to maintain communication with all the people we have gotten to know so well over these past years of our lives, and at the same time, it can also be so much more than that. I don't want to get to spoiling all the surprises for you right now, but you'll see what exactly I'm talking about here soon enough. For now, just skim around what we actually have up in this little cheap-o version of the site, which is mostly just the forum board (see the link below cause I'm too lazy to hyperlink it here)!

Well, well, well - you made it here, congratulations. It tooks sometime for anyone of us to think of getting something like this up and going, but here it is...in all of it's Version 1.0 glory. So, in honesty, there really isn't much of anything here for you guys to do yet, but what can you honestly expect...it's within the first week that we purchased the domain. There will be pleanty of features coming, some of you know about most of them, most of you know about some of them, and none of you know of all of them - so sit back, and enjoy the ride!

Hey, what's up? Well, we got the site, and you can see the site now, but we haven't actually done anything with the site yet, other than posting this message. Check back soon and there'll be something more...