Now more than ever it is critically important for Conservatives to have Free Republic as our online resource where we can discuss the real news, not the news as the current administration's public relations spin machine is spewing it.
If you have been pinged it is because I just spent a good portion of my day reading through posts and articles. Before I started this today, I knew that Free Republic was big, but I had no idea it was this big.
If you haven't donated yet, Free Republic is a huge site, taking up a lot of bandwidth, has a massive archive of articles dating back to the beginning.
It costs money to have a site this big, to pay rent for the dozen servers, electricity and both Jim Robinson and John Robinson spend many hours every single day in front of their computers trying to keep Free Republic running.
Click here to pledge your support
If you have already donated please ping your Ping lists, and then bump the FReepathon threads. Thanks!
Actually, at one point some time ago we did have a dozen servers or close to it. But we lost a couple when they fried a few years ago. Then John installed a couple of new servers just before the last election that were each more than twice as powerful and twice the capacity of any of our older ones so he took a few more of the older ones offline. Then last quarter we lost our secure server when it crashed and burned. John moved it to one of the other boxes. So, minus one more. Then two weeks ago we lost one of our newest servers. John has not repaired or replaced it yet, but has crammed most of it’s functions onto its twin and where ever he could fit it in. My guess is we still have six or seven servers online at this time but I've lost track of the exact number and configuration. And who knows if we’ll have to add more before the next election or not.
BTW, John bounced the idea off me a couple months ago that he could replace the whole shooting match and be much more efficient and reliable with a completely new approach. He said he could do it for an investment of around $10,000. We didn't have that kind of money in our budget at that time and didn't want to borrow it, so I told him it would have to wait.
Also, by the way, it's more than just me and John. There's also Amy and Chris. John dropped his company a couple years ago and came back in with me and Amy as partners. We also added Chris as a partner after I lost my leg. Amy's been with me as a partner from the start. I'm hoping John and Chris can take over for me if I die or become incapacitated.
We also ended up borrowing about twenty grand a couple years ago when we did a lot of traveling (traveled to DC and elsewhere by air and by car several times) and also held our national convention. We've paid about half of that debt off so far. Hopefully the balance will be paid off within a year.