The Long and Winding Road

With all the commotion surrounding the launch of EEv10 at the beginning of February, we quite simply lost track of the fact that we haven't mentioned those members who have been answering questions for at least the past ten years and in quite a few cases, even longer. Without the following people, Experts Exchange wouldn't be the community it is today; it seems appropriate that, at this time of year, we extend our sincere thanks to all of you. Oh, and in case you're curious, caloisoft joined on New Year's Eve in 1996, followed shortly thereafter by volking and Zvonko.

Nata's Corner

Don't look at this if you had too much champagne for Thanksgiving. On the other hand, sign the Twinkie petition.

You've gotta love Facebook. I mentioned in our last issue that the site was now giving new members some how-tos when it comes to modifying the default privacy settings. Then a week later -- our off-week for the EE newsletter -- they released some new proposed governance documents. One of the main things they're going to get rid of: voting on how the site is governed -- and of course, Facebook decided to tell everyone about this change on Wednesday, November 21 -- the day before a four-day weekend in the US -- and gave people only until 9 am this morning to post comments about it.

I also mentioned last issue that there was no way you were going to find me in the middle of all that Black Friday nonsense -- although apparently, if you live out in some rural town, it wasn't nearly as bad as you might have thought. But I'll say one thing: all the hype is putting a damper on the whole Thanksgiving weekend; the never-ending advertising is almost as bad as it was about a month ago during the election.

It's a little bit early, but we won't have our annual Gift Guide out before the Wallet TrackR finishes up its crowdfunding. It's a little different than the Cobra Tag that came out last year, but if you've ever had that horrible combination of panic and nausea that happens when you lose your wallet, the price isn't all that unreasonable.

Over the past few years, you've probably read lots of items in this space about companies and organizations that have had security breaches or lost laptops or something that has released the personal information of who knows how many people. A couple of weeks ago, there was one more organization whose official spokesperson accidentally revealed the email addresses of everyone on its mailing list: the Taliban.

We usually travel to the Midwest anywhere from two to four times a year -- that's where the grandkids are -- but it looks like there are at least two more reasons to go there. One is that Google has rolled out its super-fast Internet service in Kansas City, and the other is that it costs a lot less to live there than California does. On the other hand, it gets really cold there.

Finally, Mozilla and a startup called disconnect.me has begun the daunting task of assigning icons to indicate a website's digital privacy policies (or absence of them). I'm pretty sure it's going to take them a while to get through them all, but you can install the tools and use them yourself.

Milestones

My First Million: Members who reached 1,000,000 points overall in October were gerwinjansen, Paka and jjdurrant. Congratulations!

Milestones:

• nobus is the 15th member of EE to earn 13,000,000 points overall.
• RobWill has earned 11,000,000 points since joining Experts Exchange.
• boag2000 has earned 6,000,000 points in the Access topic area.
• arnold has reached the 7,000,000 point level for his career.
• Akhater has earned 4,000,000 points in the Exchange topic area.