Betty's Pub 20.1
Main Menu => Old inactive posts. => Topic started by: ace on July 29, 2017, 07:15:48 PM
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Hey Betty,
I have just called into F'mania and a new story has just been posted by Mary Beth Sanford !
Are the user names easily broken into? Seems to be a pretty big story (Robomom) to try and fool everyone into thinking she's still around?
Let's hope she pays us a visit ... wouldn't that be a turnup!
Ace
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We had someone re-register under her name on July 21st on a Huges Satellite broadband system using a gmail address under her name. That can be faked. The ISP & mail address came up clean, & didn't appear on any old or new blacklists though.
So I approved the membership, but sent an activation link to the address that they must click on to activate/validate the account/membership. Nobody tried to activate the account, which means either it was a fake mail, they don't check their mail, gmail cancelled their account, or their mail account accidentally filtered our mail into the junk mail/spam mail folder, so they didn't see it (it's happened before).
So if you're out there Mary Beth, check your mail, junk folder, or spam folder to activate your account.
Several times a year I get a registration from a "Mary Beth" or "Mary Beth Sandford", but the ISP resolves from Brazil, Russia, Romaina, China, Vietnam, or Iraq. Needless to say, I know she wouldn't have moved there, & wouldn't use a bad proxy with a bad reputation from there, so it gets rejected, & the ISP is blocked permanently.
This is the first time a registration came through under her name that checked out as clean & safe. Yeah, so it might be her, or someone just using her name. Let's not forget, back in the days when she was well someone would turn up somewhere claiming to be her when they were not once in a while.
I used to catch mail from Betty at buffalobetties.com that wasn't from me. My mail was not hacked, someone faked/spoofed the whole thing. When you open the headers on the mail, you'd see it really came from some far away place like Russia or the Ukraine (Russian mobster headquaters), & the real but hidden mail address was some spam company.
If it was really Mary Beth, & for some reason her registration didn't go through, she could email me too. Her old original email address don't work, but most of mine still do. I've owned the old buffalobetties.com, & unclegadget.com domain with their mail servers for many years. Buffalobetties.com here, was our old Stories server since the days we moved off of Starblvd & went to PHPBB boards.
Unclegadget.com served this board & its mail for a few years too, including the last time she was here. Only our old 5dot3 & 5dot4 domains are gone.
So it is odd, that if it was really her, that I wouldn't get an email.
Tip: If you want to contact the administrator of a legal, safe, legitimate website, you can email them at admin at "WhateverDomain".com (or .net, .org, .uk, etc.) Like for here, it would be admin "at" buffalobetties.com. But it can also be addressed to betty, bettypearl, or pearl, too. It's still all my own private mail servers.
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Hi Betty.... Hello Everyone....
God it's been so long that I can't remember which seems to be more common now. That was me on Fiction posting the wrong story. I meant to post another version but now that I have my account back I'll post it here. I'm getting goose bumps.
Spent a long time sick.. Brother was sent packing by family right after my mother passed which was followed by a kind of reconciliation through a cousin. Fell into the dark for a time. Seriously depressed, and only lurking.
New computer, host thanks to that same cousin. Lost the disk with most of this life style links and log-ons and I can't get back into my old Email (they don't believe it's me). Wasn't sure how permanent things were going to be, but it all seems to have shaken out a little and just a nightmare now.
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Hi Marybeth,
Welcome back. I hope things get easier for you as time passes. Glad to hear from you again. Good luck.
Andy G.
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welcome back Marybeth.
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Well Mary Beth, like the others said before, Welcome Back my friend and hope you are doing fine these days. We missed you to say the least and are glad you kept lurking for awhile also to know how bad you were missed by all who visited here.
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OMG Mary Beth, you are certainly full of surprises -- disappear for 2 or 3 years, & turn up again just about the time we thought you must certainly be gone again.
At this rate it does appear that you may even outlive me. Indeed, up until a little over a year ago, doctors & myself didn't think I'd make it to 2017. It's not that I've gotten any better, but for the past year, I've stabilized, so it hasn't got worse. July's been a bit worse but I think it's the season rather than physically having another setback. With the higher summer humidity, pollution, mold growth, dust, dirt, & pollen in the air this time of year, my COPD always gets worse. So I should still be here for 2018 too.
Sorry I couldn't get back here much Sunday, it was a busy day & busy weekend. My COPD is usually a little better at nights with the cooler & drier air, but it's also a time when there's the least air pollution, ozone, & dirt in the air. I have AC & air filters to fight all of that, but I don't run them as high & as much as I probably should because it drives up my energy costs. It's working too. My average electric costs are about 20% less than last year, & last year was 20% less than the year before. Meanwhile my heating bill was cut by more than half in just a year... but it was a milder winter for a change. So even though the price of energy is still increasing, my energy costs are almost half what they were 2 years ago. I'm not keeping the air quality up as much as I should inside for COPD anymore, but I'm saving a ton of money.
Anyway, at night my slow DSL connection is faster. Web severs run faster at night because they're less heavily loaded. As part of my work these days, I do have to work online. Everything goes faster & easier at night.
Then I wanted to finish a laptop I was working on for a customer so I could have it ready for her by Sunday afternoon or evening.
Over an hour before you posted, I was already going to bed for a nap. Got up in time to get dressed, & look presentable because my sister was coming over. Sometimes I don't see her for over a month. By the time my sister was almost done with her visit, my customer came for her laptop. So I sat with her for a while to show her what I did to it, & work with her on some tricks & tips for stuff she uses it for.
I did check the security of the sites & servers with my phone during the day though. Can't afford a phone data connection, but it works fine with my home wifi anyway. But I didn't really have the time to surf through the sites, read or answer posts.
By the time I was done with the customer. It was time for me to make dinner for the kitties & me. After eating, that really knocked me out. Didn't get enough sleep in the morning so was really tired. So it was time for another nap. After eating the kitties get lazy too. So going to bed for a nap, they quickly cuddled against me to join in.
We didn't get up again until the night. 16 new membership applications at stories. It took a while to do a security check of all the ISPs & mail addresses to see if they were blacklisted anywhere before approving them. I have an automated system to do that, but the blacklists aren't automatically updated on the servers every minute. Most of the spammers get on new ISPs & get new emails all the time. So a manual check gets up to the minute blacklist checks.
It's good thing too. 2 applicants showed as blacklisted when I checked manually, but they didn't show up as bad on the automated system that just got updates a couple hours before.
Knowing I was going to be busy most of the waking day, I set the sites to lockdown... only members get full access. It has heightened security, & lightens server loads so they don't get overloaded. We had 17,000 hits to Betty's Saturday, so I didn't want to risk an overload when I'm not around or busy.
17,000 in a day don't sound like it would overload a good server, or in our case, spread out across 2-4 servers, at an average of a dozen a minute, but it's not spread out even through the day.
During peaks we can get 60-200 hits per minute, but even on a busy day there will be times with only a hit or 2 every 5 minutes. The traffic comes in big waves & peaks, it's not the same through the day. A dozen hits a minute is easy to handle. 60-200 can cause problems, slowdowns, or temporary crashes. If the servers are too busy, our security system doesn't react fast enough either. So too much traffic is a security risk when the servers are already too busy with a heavy load.
Anytime I think Betty's may be busy, & I may not be around a lot to watch it, switching to lockdown mode solves any problems that may crop up -- including self diagnostics, & repairs... if the servers are too busy they can't do that well. Most hackers, attackers, spammers, & trolls like to do their dirty work on weekends, holidays, & nights. Their logic is that whoever is in control of a site or sever may not be around to notice them at those times.
Anyhow... I digress as usual. I always got a million thing goings on in my mind & a dozen projects going on at the same time. It's not age, or COPD related, I've always been like that. As I type this with one hand on 1 computer, I'm clicking on another keyboard, mouse, & computer with the other hand getting a project done.
It's so nice to here from you again. My heart lit up when I saw you here.
So are you pretty much better or still battling health issues? I remember at one point you were in hospice, then had arthritis problems.
Sorry for the effort it took you to join. Nobody just "gets in" to Betty's anymore automatically. Even after approved, they have to click an activation link to validate membership. Then one needs to pass extra security checks after they're a member until they've posted 2 or 3 times. So after your second or third post, the place really opens up for you, & gets really easy to use.
After Betty's being online for over 23 years, I just won't phuck around with trolls, spammers, & hackers anymore. I work alone, & don't have the time for that BS. Some banks & most stores should be as safe & secure as we are.
If you post a story at our story site, you have to register again. Stories is still a separate site with it's own domain & server (We're on buffalobetties.com here, stories is on buffalobetties.net). Stories is on our biggest, best, & most expensive server because it gets a lot more traffic, & there's a lot more to loose if something goes wrong. Security is even tighter there, & it's triple firewalled. If bad ISPs & people try more that a few times to get in, they no longer get a banned message, they get sent somewhere else entirely with an error message that the site doesn't exist.
You may have noticed, I finally got your old site running just a few months ago. The last time I tried, I didn't have all bits of it, & none of the original coding, so it only partially worked with lots of bits missing. Through bits of it saved at the Wayback at archives.org plus what others & I saved, I was able to piece most of it back together.
Yours, along with Susan's old site (also here) was a project I was working on trying to restore in my free time. It took years with lots of hack tricks/tools to get all the pieces together, & actually get it to work right... and another good web server. The links to them are here & at stories, but they're actually served by another separate site, server, & domain of ours, pearlcorona.com. It was originally supposed to be for stories, but the server wasn't up to the task of the high traffic, & security we have for stories.
I hope you remember when you & Susan said you might loose the sites, you & her gave me permission to spider/copy the sites to save & use if they ever went down. Susan's didn't go down, but was taken over & changed. So I only saved & preserved the old original site, & not any of the new versions of it.
As an archiver, I love to save or restore stuff if it appears it may be lost or ruined.
You'll also find we have a massive Mary Beth gallery (see our older galleries section) of a lot of your old pictures. We have 2 Youtube channels now too. There's a "Mary Beth - The Musical" there -- a slideshow of your pictures with music. I had to cut out parts though because there were copyright claims against some of the music, which were false claims, but couldn't fight it. Youtube took their word over mine.
The copyright claim was against piano music that were piano player rolls made in 1918-1927 by the Aeolean Skinner company. They were recorded from an Aeolean Skinner player piano in my house on an Ampex reel to reel recorder in the late 1970s. So I own the copyright to the recording. I lost all my tape & records in the fire, but the ones that were converted to digital, & put on DVD data disks & hard drives survived, along with all tapes that were in my downtown office (several cases of them).
Fortunately over the years, I've formed a good relationship with google & an attorney who knows a little about copyright law, so recently if there's a copyright claim against me, instead of always taking the claimants side, google & others listen to me now. About 95% of all copyright claims I get now, I fight & win. Just this month I even won a big copyright battle against big bad giant Sony... and I didn't even have to call an attorney for that one.
Someday I should re-do the musical with the cut parts replaced. With better software, & computers now, I sure I can make one a lot better than that -- especially now that I can keep the copyright hounds & frauds off my back better.
Perhaps, if you're interested, I can make a copy of your restored site the way I made it, put it in a zip file, & put it in my googledrive for you to download & save. My fixed version will easily install & run on any server with just a couple clicks. It is also editable & modifiable to add updates.
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Hi Andy G. Thanks for the welcome back. Same for you Samantha, thank you. Angela M. it's great to see another old friend still here. And then there is Betty.... Hi.
I know what you mean... God, I just hit 71 this year and fought off two different cancers both of which could have ended it and was diagnosed myself with COPD back in 2011. Went on oxygen full time back in 2015.
Actually ride a stationary bicycle with a Breathing Exerciser that you can set to restrict air. Strengthens the lungs. About two years ago when the family was stepping all over me I fell into a very deep depression and like I said I disappeared for a time. The combination of things was simply too much.
Are naps the most wonderful thing.... :) I get up very early morning to use the "bonus" bandwidth from my ISP that begins at 2:00 AM and ends at 8:00. The day use I keep at a minimum. My computer is a tower running Windows 7.
I found a "stick" that I think still holds most of my last site before all hell broke loose. I was so relieved, and very happy, to see what you had done with my site. Without your support years of effort would have been gone. Thanks for that.
Been working on my story archive. Most all of it was in RTF formats so it fits on a pretty small disk with a password that kept family out. It was in a box of bits and pieces that was left alone. I have 67 finished stories and maybe 100 unfinished that I fuss with. I'd like to download them on your story site once I get access.
It's so good to be talking to everyone again. Most all of the sites have fallen by the wayside and a few refused to let me back in because I couldn't remember the log on or security questions - been too long. Hot mail closed me out and refuses access to my old account because I answered a couple of security questions wrong.
Anyway, it really is good to talk with you and the other members....
Hugs
Mary Beth
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Hello again Mary Beth,
It does seem like the older we get the harder it is to function as we once did. Not fair I say, we have seniority so leave us alone. Funny but I often say to younger folks, Old Age is not for Sissies and I guess we are proof of our resilience. I am really glad to hear you are doing better now and even working on old material and stories. Three cheers for Mary Beth, we have missed you. If not for Betty keeping some of your pics and stories we would not get our usual fix to get us through the week.
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About two years ago when the family was stepping all over me I fell into a very deep depression
I remember you telling long before that, that family start taking your stuff, deleting shyt, & taking over your computers. If it was me, I would have sued their ass. Being sick, I know it would have been a hard effort to fight them, but an attorney would have done all the work for a cut of what you sue them for.
Been through that since my high school days. In the 60s in my area, people were still incredibly uptight about gays & crossdressers. They didn't just hate them, most thought they were hardened criminals & sick perverts that should be locked away or killed.
My family was strict catholic, country music listening, conservatives. On my father's side of the family, they actually believed he was gonna burn in hell for marrying a non-catholic... even though my mom converted to catholic before they got married.
I started kindergarten at 4 (summer birthday), & skipped the 4th grade, so I was at least a couple years younger than anybody else in high school.
Anywho in the 1960s, my parents suspected I was gay & a crossdresser. I was also caught cutting school a couple times... not off having a good time. I was caught in public libraries reading books on tech, electronics, & photocopying circuit diagrams out of them. I was a small kid well under 5 feet high back then, so looked like a small child wandering in the library.
I was a good boy, did well in school, got along with all the teachers well, & was on the honor role. Yet because I was a gay & crossdressing suspect, & cut classes a few times to read in a library, my parents & the state made secret plans to send me away to a reform school for wayward boys. Let me tell you about those places -- they were as bad, or worse than most prisons. You were beaten & raped by the bigger kids or the staff almost daily, & conditions were deplorable.
I would have killed myself before going to that place. With nothing left to lose, I came up with a workable plan to run away. They didn't tell me they were sending me away, I had to secretly find out.
Mom had a nasty habit which I think she enjoyed, were she would thoroughly search all the kids rooms whenever they weren't around... everywhere -- under mattresses, behind drawers or dressers... she knew every hiding place. Everything was rummaged through every time we were out of the house. It was like living in a military boarding school.
Tights, a nightie, & an old dress was found hidden behind my dresser drawers a few times. I wised up & decided is was safer & more secure to just store my stuff in a hidden spot in abandoned buildings. But it was too late. My parents suspected I was a sissy.
Then a friend I hung out with a lot was caught being gay, & sent off to reform school prison for it. The cat was out of the bag, now parents thought I was a crossdresser & gay for hanging out with him a lot. I was gounded for a year. Not allowed out of the house except for school. I was sent to forced thearapy, & forced to take valium after school & on weekends to keep me calm/passive. If I refused to take it I was either beaten or it was secretly mixed into my food.
It got to be I would go to the bathroom when nobody was nearby, & try to throw all my food up as quietly as possible so they didn't know. Then sneak up in the middle of the night to eat something without valium in it. Mom loved that stuff, & took it regularly by a doctor's prescription. If she couldn't handle the kids, the doctor prescribed valium for the kid too (Quack).
My parents started treat me like shyt, they gave me the look of disgust & hate. They whispered to each other if I was in listening range... I know that look. They were talking about me -- not in a nice way. I knew something was up, & as bad as it was, I had the feeling it was gonna get worse.
Time for some counter espionage. Mission Impossible & Hogans Heroes were one of favorite shows then (along with sci-fi). I built my own stereo, & radios out of junk parts. Had my own TV that I restored out of the garbage. I tapped the phone line, & put a hidden microphone in the kitchen. With all the old & home made electronics in my room, they never knew or understood that there was a line tap & hidden microphone. I even had it transmit from my room to an off frequency that can't get picked up by other radios, but I can listen to on my portable radio. So I was able to listen to the kitchen or calls from anywhere in the house, just slightly above the AM radio dial
As sneaky as that was, remember, these people were treating my like shyt, grounded me for a year, tried to keep me heavily drugged with valium, & sending me to forced therapy... an now they were planning to do even more to me.
Through electronic eavesdropping, I discovered they wanted me out of the house, & locked away. The state & courts decided because I was doing so well in school that I wouldn't be sent to a state reform school until after the school year, less than a month away!!!
I started secretly, quietly climbing out my window in the middle of night to make contacts to try to run away, climbing back up to the window before dawn. I contacted Mattachine Society (gay right organization), the Gay Liberation Front, & even the university radio station WBFO... who hosted the Stonewall Nation radio show & explained my problem. I told them I needed to get away fast. I hung out on the streets around gay hangouts for contacts to find jobs & a place to live when my parents thought I was sound asleep in my room.
The dog never barked sneaking back in because he was my dog. I even made sure when I got in the alley to climb back up to my window to quietly call his name just so he, but nobody else could hear me so he would not bark.
On the second last day of school, exams were completed the week before. I lowered a couple small bags with a few changes of clothes out my window. Left for school out the door, double backed to the alley to get my bags, & ran away a little over a week before my 14th birthday leaving everything behind. I never went back, & never saw the house I was born in again.
Just before 16, I lived in a small place behind my father's house for a little while, but it was just a ploy to get me. Got info they were coming to ship me to the state reform school anyway. I guess they never figured out I tapped their phone line & had a hidden microphone before, or didn't think I'd do it again. So I had to drop everything & run off again.
That time, & the first time there was a big investigation to find, & lock up this runaway gay crossdressing kid... to cure me or keep me away from society. Any hint of where I was, the cops usually showed up looking for me. So I decided to sneak near my old neighborhood, make it look like I accidentally bumped into people I knew & fed them false information. I would brag that I was living & working in a town about 60 miles away, & was just back for a visit.
Sure 'nuff word got out that I was in that town & not in Buffalo often. Ironically in the beginning of the next school year, I showed up for school like nothing happened. During the search for me over the summer, they found out I had no friends in school. Everybody picked on the smart, smallest, kid in the school who was 2 years younger than anyone else. So the search & investigation was in the areas & with people I was known to hang out with. But outside of school I got along with everybody, & had lots of friends.
So at 14, I actually was living in a room right across the street from my high school, & in September, back in the school. The cops & everybody were too stupid to check if I ever went back to school, or just didn't think it was possible that a runaway would enroll back in school the next year. I used my real name in school, but was still living under another name with fake ID.
I didn't cut out of school anymore because I wasn't grounded for a year by living on my own. I could do whatever I wanted after school. I told them we're too poor to have a phone anymore, papers & report cards that required a parent's signature, I forged. But after what my parents did to me, tried to do to me, & what I went through over the summer, I came back to school a meaner, tougher, badder, bigger but bitter kid.
Nobody was gonna pick on me in school anymore. If they were too big for me, I'd wait in the bushes or shadows for them with a bat or board, & get them. After a summer on my own dealing with all sorts of bums, hoodlums, addicts, prostitutes on the streets in bad neighborhoods, including being shot, no pimply faced high school punk was gonna push this grumpy little sissy around. I was administering emergency first aid to stabbing victims & dodging stabbers on the street while their soccer moms were driving those bullies to Chucky Cheese.
They had no idea who they were dealing with anymore. I wasn't the 90 pound weakling they knew the year before.
At 15 I was on the school's football team. But it was a rough year. I remember in winter, going on my 4th day without food, a priest, prostitute, & pimp came over with lots of food, wine, & pot. They filled the cabinets, & fridge. Friends & saviors come from unexpected places.
By 16 I was on my old neighborhood's football team. They were not no longer searching much for boys 16 & older to lock up just because they were gay anymore. It was a low-priority thing as long as they weren't committing real crimes. Parents had separated & lived in separate houses somewhere else far from my old neighborhood. My old house was demolished to build a school. Home was gone forever. All my brothers moved out on their own or joined the military. My mom & sis lived in a house just a 1/4 mile from the University, but I didn't know that at the time. I graduated from high school just a week before my 16th birthday. By 16 I was putting myself through college there already. Couldn't afford a full degree, I was just taking some classes & courses for a couple years that I wanted (tech & music stuff).
It was a requirement to be a university student to be a member of the Gay Liberation Front at the University too. But I wanted to take the courses anyway. I was on their university radio station, WBFO about twice a month. My sister said she recognized the guy called John on the radio as me right away. I shared a house with other students (all GLF members) & 2 cats just a block from the university.
A few friends & I would often shoot pool at a nearby pool hall, while I never knew my Mom, sis, & dog were living just 2 blocks from it.
By the 1980s after my Mom found out my sister was a lesbian, & most of the male actors she ever liked or had a crush on since she was a kid were gay, she got a lot cooler about that stuff & kept the family together. But after she died, the family splintered back up into their own private conservative groups. After my third oldest brother died, my conservative family distanced themselves even more from me & my sister.
Except for my sister & a couple cousins, the rest of the family won't speak to me unless they have to, because I'm gay... and they don't even know about the crossdressing part. Only my sister knew about that after the fire. The rest of the family won't speak much to my sister & those cousins much either.
I couldn't even get anyone from the family to help me move & settle in the last time I moved for any price. With severe COPD, barely able to make it down stairs, taking 2 weeks to physically carrying everything I could 6 blocks to the new place, & paying strangers to move the rest. Even then, they wanted twice as much to get the stuff up the stairs, so I spent around 30 hours with COPD dragging all my furniture up the stairs all by myself.
I didn't just loose almost everything in the fire, but half of what I replaced during the 5 years after, I had to leave behind because I couldn't physically move it, & only could afford 1 small truckload to move. Moving to the new place with a lease, I needed the first & last month's rent, plus a month's worth in security deposit. With paying for movers too, I had to take out a bank loan to pay for it all. But the real loss was that I had to leave half of what I got after the fire behind.
My sister & cousins aren't in the best of health either, & on a tight budget (all retired). They'd love to help but can do much. I've always had to depend on my employers or former employers more than family. People I worked for really like me. I may have worked for a lot of places over the years, but only worked for 2 employers in the past 36 years, but they owned several businesses over the years. 1 I worked for 20 years, & another for 16. After the last one closed, I tried another place for a couple years but with my COPD getting worse, & the boss being a high-roller druggie I knew that wasn't going to last long.
But it's a sad family if straight employers care more about their gay employee than most of your family care because you are gay.
I was arrested on false charges just before my 19th birthday. My family's reply was to let me rot in prison. I was always a good well behaved kid. Never did anything wrong. I was on the honor role in school every year, & did excellent in college. All my teachers, instructors, & professors liked me. I get along well with everyone I work with. How do I deserve this hate from family just because I'm gay?
My employer called my lawyer, & the boss showed up to bail me out... even loaned me the attorney fees. I was proven in court to be innocent. The cop had it out for me & all gays, so made stuff up to get me. Cop was forced into early retirement after that.
Family is nice. But many of them, if they find out your little secrets, or you have something worth something to them, can viciously turn on you.
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I get up very early morning to use the "bonus" bandwidth from my ISP that begins at 2:00 AM and ends at 8:00. The day use I keep at a minimum. My computer is a tower running Windows 7.
Good for you. Keep W7 as long as you can. Don't believe the hype that you need to switch, or have to for security. Real security is independent from what OS you use. The same security offered in OS updates or new OS's is the same security found in good firewalls & antivirus. They often get updates for threats sooner than the OS too. I can even keep Windows 98 secure & functioning if I had to. Unless you prefer your computer as a giant app & ad filled tap-phone, newer windows is garbage, with W10 being the worst.
Many people still can't understand in this day & age why I still make Betty's to consume the minimum bandwidth of a 1990s page designed for dialup. They still can't grasp the concept that many people may not live near a city or town that will offer fast speeds, & unlimited bandwidth at an affordable price. And even on those modern phones, & other portables, unless you're near a free wifi spot, most are paying premium prices by the gigabite of data used per month, at speeds just a little faster than a dialup connection.
Here at Betty's you can watch an entire SVCD or DVD quality movie for the same bandwidth you'd consume visiting Facebook, or Yahoo's main or news page once -- or an HD movie for only about twice that bandwitdh. 40 minutes of music at only 5mb (AM radio quality) 10mb (FM radio quality) in size. I'm not living in the 90s or the stone age, just being practical for all our users. Not only that, if I'm not flushing & wasting my server resources, I'll have more to use to serve more cool stuff, & be able to serve it to more people.
Got lightning speed fiber optics, unlimited bandwidth with no data caps? Good for you if it's available in your area, & you can afford it. Statistically most of our users don't have that, & can't get it.
Besides, it's just a waste & burdens the whole internet to use more bandwidth than you really need to do the job... bordering on ignorance too. Why post a 600x400 picture at 250kb to 1.2 mb in file size, if you can post it in a regular JPG, using normal settings at 20-50kb in size that looks exactly the same way?
If a crappy HD version of a movie looks no better than a good DVD, it doesn't need a 4-20gb file size. If it only looks a little better than a good DVD (or worse) it can look the same in a 200-500mb size. HD is highly over rated for some things anyway. Great for a visually stunning movie, but for an average drama or comedy, I don't believe it's even necessary to be in full HD. Do we really need to be able to count every pock mark, zit or hair on a person's head to watch a drama, or comedy? This is not how we see faces in the real world. We're not counting the blemishes on someones face or their hairs when face to face with someone. We just don't get that close to other people's faces unless we're going to kiss them. And your eyes won't focus that close so the view will blur.
Betty's still does good on dialup. I don't expect the movies in our private section to stream on dialup, but you can download most of them on dialup in an hour or 2.
Maybe for extra bandwidth, you can get a second connection on dialup coming through your phone line for around $9 a month. Not fun for facebook, yahoo, or youtube, but regular independent or private sites it works fine.
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I was so relieved, and very happy, to see what you had done with my site. Without your support years of effort would have been gone.
I had it up a few years ago, very incomplete, & not working well. I figured I'd work on it right online. But it was taking too long. So I took it down until I could get it more complete & working better.
It took years to get/find more of the pieces, copy/past stuff from archives.org, & re-write pieces from saved screenshots & printouts. But I have to admit, I didn't work a lot on it all the time. I'd work on it in my free time once in a while, shelf it for while, then come back, shelf it again, find more pieces, & do some more.
It would have gone faster if I just copied all the text & images, & just made an entirely new site for it. But I wanted it to be exactly the was it was back then.
I actually surprised myself when I uploaded it to the server, & got it online to find it was working very well. I really expected all sorts of glitches & problems. I figured it would weeks or months to work out all the bugs. But when I put it up, I didn't have to touch anything. Damn, I must be getting good at this.
Susan's site went a little easier. I had more time to spider more before it was taken over, & manually go back to getting missing bits that the spider didn't take the first time around.
With your site, after I checked to go over what the spider missed, when I went back to copy the missing bits, the site was already gone.
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Wow Betty, I only knew part of your story. I sure wish we lived closer as I would have been there for you and whatever I could have helped with. You are right about families as my mom & dad were a bit like yours and tried punishing me for my dressing up and as I got older and hung out with girls my age or younger they thought I was a pervert or child molester. I got all kinds of literature from the catholic church dumped on my bed or desk throughout my school years and grounded often. When my girl clothes were found they were torn and hung on the clothes line to shame me into quitting. When I once went to the doctor about my feelings he told me I was more girl than boy due to hormone imbalance but would grow out of it. My mother told us both that it was nonsense and no such thing was possible. Inspite of all that I never had it as bad as you did and I don't ever remember them saying I was gay even though two of my friends were but they may have thought about it. I stayed out of sight most of the time and found jobs to do for the same reason and to buy the things I wanted without having to ask them. I also got very creative at hiding my clothes until one day after I moved to Toronto for a job. I came home the following week to retrieve my girl things and the box was nowhere to be found. I thought I hid it pretty well but didn't know dad was going to build a rec room in the basement and that meant cleaning it out totally. I left the next day and nothing was ever said about it. After that everything I needed to hide was kept in the trunk of my car because I was living with an aunt & uncle & cousins. I often wondered when I was looking after my old mom, if she ever remembered any of these days after being stricken with Dementia as she could remember many things from the past but not the previous days. She never said much to me and I hope she said nothing to her caregiver but there was never anything said. I do remember going through some old photo's with her once and she gave me one of me as a baby lying on a table after my bath with a pair of real rubber pants beside me. The nappy's were all hanging by the fire to dry and she said " we would just put you in your rubber pants until they were dry so maybe this is why you like rubber so much. " I was stunned as she stared at the photo and I just said yes maybe and then put it in my pocket and moved on. I had never seen that pic before. My sister never said much about her time with mom but her visits were few and far between so I will never know. When I got a more permanent job back in town, I was quick to get my own apartment and was delighted to be able to dress whenever I wanted. I even had a girlfriend quite a bit younger who did not seem to mind my fetishes and even helped somewhat. Life was good then.
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Mary Beth:
I just approved your membership at stories. Beware if you got a registration mail for it, it would be from buffalobetties.net, the stories domain & server, not buffalobetties.com like here. So watch that it don't land in your junk/spam folder. Too many spam filters automatically dump all mail from privately or personally owned domains & mail servers. I guess they haven't figured out that even the Clintons have their own mail servers & are not spammers.
Do not send mail to the buffalobetties.net, the stories server. It's an automated mail system just for stories registrations, so I don't check that one for messages often.
My primary mails are through buffalobetties.com, unclegadget.com, or pearlcorona.com (Susan's & your site is on that server).
You don't have to activate the account through the mail or do anything though. I already activated it on my end.
However your old original account is still there with 60 posts associated with it. It might be better just to use your original account to avoid user confusion & to make our search feature easy to find more of your stuff. Even google associate the original name with Betty's since your site went back up.
You probably long-forgotten your original password for the original account & it is encrypted so I can't see it. So I gave you a new password for the original account, & emailed it to you from buffalobetties.com. You can change the password to whatever you like when you login.
Use whatever account you like, but it's best to use the original if you could. Google searches for sissy stories would light up like a Christmas tree if that old account suddenly was active again. Stories is our busiest site, & very popular on google.
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What a life Betty.... Maybe it's me, but I see your life in your post and how you manage your site. I can't imagine going through some of it but then again it seems to have molded you in a positive way. I've so enjoyed our interactions and can't imagine a world without you and the others here. How odd is that considering we do all of this through post.
I did go through a lawyer of sorts, a friend actually, and he took the family to task. They are all under achievers and mostly broke but the lawyer set things so they make payments every month to compensate for the stuff I lost. Works better that way and I enjoy being a constant reminder of their shame. Water under the bridge...
I was lucky in that my step father owned a bar and my mother was a waitress there. They would start work around 3 PM just before I got home from school so I was a "latch key kid". I learned to cook for myself and was pretty much alone through the week. I'm not proud of some things like I'd learned to break into homes and would do so to get clothes. Never took valuables, just girl stuff and occasional baby things.
I was a bed wetter and wore diapers because of it. Funny reading about Angela's brief bio and her love for rubber. My first diaper covers were these God awful rubber bloomers. They were hot and the rubber stuck terribly. Montgomery Wards carried specialty catalogs and I found one that provided medical supplies including larger size plastic pants and diapers. I showed mom and she ordered them. After that it was more baby-ish.
Odd but I never considered myself a sissy yet I was and the baby life style was always there without noticing it as such. I stopped wetting the bed a couple of years after I began but by then I was hooked on diapers so I kept wetting to stay in them. My aunt suspected I liked them and tried getting me to stop by introducing more baby things like pacifiers and bottles but it only reinforced what was there. She gave up which was terribly disappointing :)
I grew up in San Francisco or nearby for most of my childhood so knowing about gays was easier for me and I had a couple of gay friends. Ironically they thought I was odd because I liked cross dressing. I couldn't hang out in most of the gay places but there were areas where the younger kids went.
Amazing how fast time flies when you're looking back at it....
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Hi Mary Beth, we were brought up in a similar fashion with my sister and I also being Latch Key kids as mom worked nights and dad often worked overtime late into the evening if it was available. Friday nights were Bowling nights so they were gone again after a quick supper. Also like you I am ashamed to say I broke into houses, well not so much broke in but took an opportunity if a door or window was unlocked or open and nobody home. This was also how I got some of my girl clothes and like you, these were more value to me than anything else. When my sisters things no longer fit too well I scored clothes from girls in the neighborhood when they were out or not looking. One girlfriend I had actually gave me tights to wear when we were taking Figure Skating lessons together but she did not know I already had some of my own. Hers had a special meaning for me as she was one of the first girls to know I wore tights and panties (also some of hers). The next girlfriend I had in high school was not as special to me and I never took any of her things but the opportunity never really presented itself where I felt comfortable "borrowing" her things. We only lasted a year or two and she went off with a friend of mine but I was not too upset. It is easy to look back these days because these memories are etched into our brains unlike what I did yesterday that I can't really remember right now LOL. I have collected several hundred panties over the years on all my travels and when I look at them I can usually remember where and when I got them and sometimes how much I paid also and I do wish I had not purged some things over the years as I had many favourite panties and tights and dance leotards that are just a memory now.
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Hey Mary Beth, my latest rubber panties come from a place in British Columbia called BabyKins or Kins for adult orders sent to my door. The are a bit pricey but very well made and so soft that I do not have problem wearing them every night. The waist and legs are gathered over flat elastic and create a comfortable seal against leaking. The first time I bought rubber pants, the baby powder scent of the rubber brought back so many memories of my childhood. I could see my grandmother and aunts all gathered around while I was being bathed and changed and it brought a smile to my face that stayed with me most of the day.
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I love the adventures, so anyone willing to share would be greatly appreciated. Angela, when you talked of a friend knowing, I too found myself facing a confessor (but not a priest). For a time I grew up in a neighborhood filled with a mixture of kids and hung with a group made up of both boys and girls.
We lived on a slight hill and near the bottom was Susan's house. Like our house Susan's was a two story boxy design sharing common walls on either side. By the way, there was a song written about that style of home by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1962
http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/MALVINA/mr094.htm
Anyway, the lower portion (first floor) was a combination two car garage in the front separated by stairs with a bonus room at the back. Alongside the stairs was a laundry chute with access from the second floor to the first near where you'd install the washer and dryer. As was often the case and when I was alone I'd open the chute at the bottom, reach in and search for the telltale texture of nylon.
Often nothing turned up, other times something was felt but turned out to be too big to take. On those rare occasions I'd touch a panty or slip or even both and on this one day it was a full slip. I wore shirts with long tails that buttoned in front and there was often enough room to hide something the size of panties in my pants.
If it was a slip I'd rush to the basement bathroom and quickly put it on. If a half slip I'd simply pull it over my head then to my waist before pulling my pants on. If a full slip I'd undo one button and pull the shirt off, put the slip on, tucking the skirt part into my pants, then get back into my shirt. I could do this in no more than a minute or two.
On this occasion it was a full slip and I was alone and before that status changed I carried it into the bathroom and put it on under my shirt. I was back "hanging" in the garage when Susan came back down the stairs. In her hand was a full slip in pink not too unlike the white one I was now wearing.
Susan didn't say anything but she did go over to the laundry chute, open it and began fishing around in it with her hand. I was in a panic and that got worse when she turned as asked me to unbutton my shirt. I asked her why and she said she wanted to see if I was wearing her mother's slip. I did the "what are you talking about" and "you're crazy" until she threatened to call her mother down.
I was in a total state of panic but undid a button while begging her not to tell and that I'd return it immediately. It's easy to write this now but at the time it was horrifying to think I'd be outed. When I undid the button to show her she nodded, handed me the pink slip she was holding and told me to go back into the bathroom and swap her's with her mother's. I was now in a total state of shock but hurried to comply.
When I returned to her side and while she returned her mother's slip she told me she knew I was taking their lingerie. I asked her if she was going to tell and she said no and that it was okay if I liked wearing girl's clothes but it was not okay to take them, especially her mother's things. That was the reason she swapped her slip for her mother's.
Susan and I would become very close over time and later, when the opportunity would present itself, I'd happily let her dress me in her clothes. We often fondled and caressed, but never "intercourse". I would later imagine her as a dominatrix in her adult life simply because she had so many of the traits I've come to know.
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Hey Mary Beth. Sorry I'm not around much yet, been busy again.
Most of the time when we have a system failure or too much traffic, hardly anybody notices it because I keep a lot of the same data & backups for all the sites on every server. So if a server or site is having problem, I can just have it or parts of it served by the other server with a copy/mirror of it. But due to differences of the server companies, their different databases & setups, my backups, databases, & sites were becoming less & less compatible with the different servers. And the servers stopped talking to each other.
So I just spent about 30 hours re-writing databases, codes, & scripts so they're somewhat more compatible again, & communicate with each other. Half of what I tried, didn't do that well, so I had to do it over several times to get it right.
Before that, I had another computer in to fix. I hate fixing stuff for poor people because they can't pay much... but they're my biggest customers. I guess if you got lots of money, you just buy a new one these days.
Boy do I really need a nap now!
Anyway, I see you still have your old original account with the username, "Mary Beth Sanford" here too. So I gave it the same new password as I sent you in the mail for stories. You can change it to anything you like when you log into it.
Here's a tip for those who visit both sites: Keep your name & password the same for both, so if you use auto-login or have your browser remember it, you won't confuse it. Because our sites use similar designs, software, & cookies, it might try to log you in with the wrong cookie or your browser may mix them up. If you keep the logins the same for both, nothing gets mixed up (easier to remember too), & if it does get mixed up, it still works anyway.
Anybody having problems logging in anywhere or staying logged in, your browser may be refusing a new cookies from sites or only temporarily accepting them. Delete cookies from us to force your browser to get the new cookie, & accept the cookie. If you or your browser only temporarily accepts the cookie, you will only temporarily be logged in. Your cookie is your login key.
I see in the past few days you're getting a lot of hits to your posts & your website from China. I checked the ISPs, they're not malicious. Just a lot of regular people from Hong Kong & Taiwan reading your stuff.
You're famous in China this week!
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I've often wondered what life would be like if society as a whole fully accepted most life styles. Imagine an alternate life style convention (like San Francisco's Exotic Erotic Ball). I had so much fun back then. I'm sure a lot of life styles were not represented there but there was a lot of variety
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Oh, wow! Mary Beth is back with a vengeance. I was just reading "Abducted" over at FM. I hadn't looked at the author, but after half a dozen paragraphs I was thinking, "This has to be Mary Beth" -- and sure enough.
Love your stories, Mary Beth!
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Just actually finished "Abducted." The thing I found fascinating about the ending is how much attitudes have changed. I don't think it would have been possible to end a story that way even 5 years ago.
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Thanks Mary Beth for Abducted, it is a wonderful story and I enjoyed reading it. Will you be expanding on the idea and taking us further into her life as a young girl out of touch with the world she remembered?.
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Oh, wow! Mary Beth is back with a vengeance. I was just reading "Abducted" over at FM. I hadn't looked at the author, but after half a dozen paragraphs I was thinking, "This has to be Mary Beth" -- and sure enough.
Love your stories, Mary Beth!
I have a few on a disk that I kept just for stories and at night I've been finishing them. Thank you for the kind words.
Hugs
Mary Beth
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Just actually finished "Abducted." The thing I found fascinating about the ending is how much attitudes have changed. I don't think it would have been possible to end a story that way even 5 years ago.
How remarkable that we came to that very same conclusion. As I was writing that story I was thinking of the changes. I dressed as a girl for Halloween and included a slip which I thought was daring until a girl saw the hem and mentioned it. I thought I was outed until she laughed and said her mother always made her wear slips under dresses which is why I wore one. Always remembered that. The transgenered changes in these new ages is striking.
Hugs
Mary Beth
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Thanks Mary Beth for Abducted, it is a wonderful story and I enjoyed reading it. Will you be expanding on the idea and taking us further into her life as a young girl out of touch with the world she remembered?.
I rarely go back and add to a story but you're right about the expansion. It begs for more detail and in my notes for this one I've added a couple of ideas (older cousin - still alive kind of thing).
Hugs
Mary Beth
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Thanks so much if you do this MaryBeth it could be a nice continuation but I know there are other stories out there, too many to read in one lifetime. I will just have to come back as a pretty little girl and read the rest of them LOL.
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I am interested in the journeys of all the sissies here. Betty, your journey is an amazing one. I am amazed at what you have done computer-wize. I am fortunte enough to be able to buy a new laptop when I want. :-[
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Thanks.
It's difficult to find a new laptop without that nasy-ass bloated Windows 10 on it, unless you get a Mac or android, or are handy enough to put something better than W10 on it yourself.
I guess W10 is good enough if most of your web & computer experience was on a phone, android tablet, chromebook, or Amazon fire. But if you're used to a real computer, you don't want Microsoft to turn it into a giant phone. If we want a phone, most of us already have one in our pocket. Nice smart andriod phones & tablets can be had for under $60, so we don't need a computer that imitates a cheap phone.
Even if I wasn't forced into early retirement with disabilities, I don't think I'd buy a new computer as-is right off a store shelf. They build them like crap these days. With the poor quality of the modern, made in China machines (almost all of them are from China including Apple products), you'll be lucky to get 2 years out of them before you have a serious breakdown, or they're obsolete.
I got a dual core 3ghz laptop that will run circles around most new quad core laptops... but I had to do some tweaking to make it so. And 2 years from now when that new laptop is broke & obsolete, mine will still be running, & still be able to run anything modern. I got it refurbished delivered to my door for $79. It looks like brand new, & even came with 2 new batteries. 5 1/2 hours runtime playing HD video per charge.
My current primary machines are a pair of quad core 3.2ghz (but will run up to 3.6ghz per core) mini desktops. I got them used off of e-bay. 1 for $79, & 1 for $89. With just a little work, they'll run faster & better than anything in a store. 10 years from now, they'll still be running, & be just as good as many new ones.
I tend to select robust upgradable stuff that's built like a truck. That way I can still upgrade them with the times, & they're built to last a decade or more. I look for good office & commercial grade machines. A company that has to buy a dozen or a few hundred computers for their offices, will not want to replace them in 2 years. They expect to get at least 10 years out of them before buying a dozen tp 100 new ones.
I read in the pro video forums, that people processing, converting, & editing video are processing them at 10-15 frames per second on 8-core machines overclocked to 4-5ghz per core, liquid cooling, that cost $4,000-$5,000.
Using the same software, even my very old single core 3.46ghz 2007 machine could do it at 20-30 FPS. My old dual core desktops & laptop could do it at 50-80 FPS. My current quad cores can do the same job with the same software at 200-600 FPS. So while their new $5,000 computer is taking all day or night to process a movie, I'm doing the same thing with the same software in 5-30 minutes.
Number of cores & core speeds are not the only governing factors for overall performance. A better built single core machine, properly configured, without bloatware, with the OS set up properly for what you need it for, will actually outperform most new crap with quad cores on the shelf. They even lie about their speeds because of boost technology. They may say 3.6ghz, but they don't tell you that speed is for brief bursts, under optimum & coolest conditions in turbo-boost mode, where in normal continuous operations, at normal room temperature, they may only run at 1.1-1.3ghz.
So in a speed test of brief bursts of processes, it shows fast -- good for loading a Facebook page fast. But it's not really that fast taking all day or night to process an HD movie or playing a game. They cheat on the specs on modern equipment, where in real world continuous use, they'll never perform as good as the specs. With Windows 10 bloatware in them, it's even worse. The processor is working harder for Microsoft & windows than for you. They'll never perform better than a good older computer set up well.
This is the same kind of thing that killed Windows Vista. You needed a computer twice the size just to do what you could already do with W7 or XP.