Good morning everyone,

I got a message from Mojo this morning; he is spending a few days in the hospital, but wanted to let you know he is anxious to be back among the Famous.

Send your good vibes his way, and your birthday wishes (his is tomorrow).

Eric

Good afternoon everyone,

I got a call from Motown Mojo this afternoon, and he asked that I pass word along that he is back in the hospital.

While his voice was weakened, he still has strength in his spirit and intends to be back soon. He is in a hospital in the south Sacramento area, and was greatly troubled by their lack of wi-fi.

Please send good vibes his way, and hope for his speedy return.

Eric

Good afternoon everyone,

Just a quick note to tell you that I have a bunch of passes to an exclusive screening of 'Resident Evil: Extinction' on my desk, and I want to give them out.

The showing is at 7 p.m. on Thursday the 20th.

If you would like to see the movie, please go here and fill out the form.

I have lots of passes, so if you need more than two, put the number you need after your name - i.e Joe Modem 8

No fuss, no muss.

Thanks,
Eric

Late last week I referred to a new partnership between Famous and WalMart, and I wanted to explain that posting a bit more for the group, as your participation will be integral.

WalMart has placed video display terminals at stores in Modesto, Ceres and Turlock, and offered us the opportunity to share information about area events and promote the Famous sites and brand along the way.

This means that your events - free seminars, festivals, concerts, plays, poetry and performances can be put in front of tens-of-thousands of WalMart customers each week. WalMart customers listen to music, attend festivals with their kids and are looking for entertainment options in the area. Let them see yours.

What do you need to do? Very little. Submit your event (for free) in the Famous events calendar. We will take it from there. While we can't promise that all events will make it onto the video screens, we would like to get as many there as possible. At the very least, your events will be accessible by thousands of Famous visitors each and every month.

If you have any questions, feel free to let me know. You can also post a reply here and share it with the world.

Eric

We made it into the theater just as the house lights were going down, throwing us into pitch black. Darkness was soon replaced with a symphony of color and dance as the Central West Ballet dancers flew through the opening night performance of "Coppelia."

"Coppelia," and the talented CWB dancers shatter previous impressions of the art with an energetic, creative and - even without a single word spoken - funny performance that appeals to audiences of all ages.

You know the show is good when the kids are quiet. The only noises hear from the under-10 crowd in the row behind us was the occassional crinkle of a snack wrapper. Our 14-year-old daughter was transfixed on the dancers, the color and the showmanship.

The story - which is pretty easy to follow - involves a young couple engaged to be married until Franz - emphatically played by Joseph Adkins - becomes entranced by a beautiful new woman in town. Little does he know the object of his affection is an elaborate mechanical doll created by the eccentric Dr. Coppelius, expertly played by CWB artistic director Rene Daveluy. The crowd delights in watching the trials of Franz, Dr. Coppelius and the townfolk through the story.

While I won't act as a spoiler, the second act - and the work of the background dancers - caused me the most amazement. I am not sure how they did what they did - I know I couldn't.

I will admit, I haven't watched hundreds of ballet performances in my life. Probably not even a dozen - but "Coppelia" is really dance for the masses. It is entertaining, fun and a great night of entertainment for adults and kids alike.

The show only runs tonight and Sunday night at the Modesto High School Auditorium; tickets are reasonable ($30 for adults, $25 for seniors and $15 for kids) and well worth it. Call the ticket box to reserve your seats - (209) 576-0808 or visit www.centralwestballet.com
Eric

Okay, here is the straight poop on what happened to the comments on the site yesterday.

There was no conspiracy to quiet or censor our authors. As Mojo noted earlier, we encourage active and thoughtful dialogue, and sometime folks say challenging things. Thanks. Keep it up.

What happened to the comments was a result of us trying to make ModestoFamous more available to all users - registered or anonymous.

Late last year we made the decision to require registration on all postings in order to block the huge amounts of spam posted to the site on a daily basis. That decision did have an impact on the overall posting participation (we actually had more visitors during that 'quiet' time), but the public image was of fewer people.

As a matter of fact, in March we had 4,900 visitors on the site. Through today this month we have already had 4,600 - a good trend.

On the advice of our site host, and following the lead of sister FresnoFamous, we installed a module on our database that would serve to catch spam before it was published to the site. We installed it knowing that it was not perfect, and that there could be problems. Problems there were.

As many of you have noted, the spam filters were catching legitimate posts - Efren, by virtue of his regular posting - was incorrectly blocked more than any other. Even Mojo had his posts snagged in the net. Those things were irritating, but for every one legitimate post we were stopping a handful of messages promoting all kinds of crap.

So yesterday I was clearing some of the spam from the filter to make it easier to locate the legit ones. After deleting the messages I noticed that ALL comments from the site were gone - we found later this was caused by an unidentified bug in that spam module. I contacted our site host who started investigating resurrecting our comments from daily backups. Bad timing being what it is, the backup ran just a few minutes after the bug deleted the comments, and that comment-free site was what we had on backup.

Overnight the tech staff was able to find backups created when we moved onto a new server back in February, and republished those comments, so the total damage are comments lost for the last couple of months.

So how are we going to fix this? Last night we removed the spam filters from the site, and reinstituted the registration requirements for posting comments. I am a believer that if you have something to say, you should be willing to put your name to it.

That being said, sometimes folks like to be anonymous. We have created a public login for everyone to post 'anonymously' with. You can log in and post comments without publishing your name. Login as 'FamousGuest' with the password of '!guest' That will get you in.

Okay, so the site isn't perfect. We are working to make it stable and safe, and a great place for discussion to happen. We appreciate your patience, and encourage your suggestions for improvement.

Thanks,
Eric

So I got my first call about production problems at The Bee this morning at 3:30. Now that things have normalized a bit, we have come upon a problem with the Famous site.

As you will notice, all of the comments from the last year have been wiped clean. We are working with our tech crew to restore them, so please be patient - we hope to have them all back soon.

This is all caused by that new spam module we installed. Mojo and I are working on a solution that won't delete everything at the drop of a hat, and you will likely see those changes soon.

Sorry for the trouble, and thanks for being Famous.

Eric

If you are a subscriber to The Modesto Bee, your paper will be late today (Wednesday) - very late. Severe technical problems in our newsroom caused a delay of our press start by nearly 5 hours. If you live in Modesto, your paper will likely arrive by 10 a.m.; subscribers in outlying areas might not receive a paper until 1 p.m.

All of today's stories have been published at www.modbee.com on time, and are available.

Below is the story from The Bee:

Computer problems at The Modesto Bee delayed delivery of today's newspaper.

Bee executives estimated that most papers should be delivered in Modesto by 10 a.m. and in outlying areas by 1 p.m.

The system that the newspaper uses to produce the paper failed about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. Bee editors and production staff switched to a backup system to complete several pages that weren't finished when the regular system crashed.

Mark S. Vasché, editor and senior vice president, issued a statement to readers on the front page that said:

"Late last night we experienced serious computer problems, which delayed production of The Bee by more than four hours. As a result, most of our subscribers received today's paper much later than normal. Please accept our apology for any inconvenience that may have resulted."

Vasché's note was signed at 3 a.m. The press started at 4:52 a.m., a little more than five hours after the normal Tuesday evening press start of 11:45. The computer problems affect the transfer of some newspaper stories to The Bee's Web site. Most content, however, was being posted to modbee.com at normal times.

You may have noticed problems with the site today - sorry for the inconvenience. We were bombarded by SPAM early this morning, and Mojo and I have been working to clear it up.

We deleted the majority if not all of the garbage that was posted, and modified our filters to try and keep future attackers at bay. The module is not perfect, and might cause some of your comments or postings to be thrown into a SPAM limbo.

If this happens, let either Mojo or myself know, and we will do what we can to fix it.

Again, sorry for the trouble, and thanks for being one of Modesto's Famous.

Eric

Mojo already mentioned it in an earlier comment, but I would like to thank everyone who came out for our ModestoFamous community meeting in mid-March. The spirit and feedback was great, and I am pleased to announce we are making progress on some of those ideas offered up.

First, we have removed the registration requirements for the site. I am pleased to see an increase in participation, and hope that trend continues.

Second, we are working on some finishing touches on the Famous Flyer, an electronic newsletter with all things Famous. If there are specific items you would like us to include send a note to Mojo.

A third suggestion of the evening was allowing local businesses to advertise their goods and services on the ModestoFamous site. I am pleased to announce we have created an advertising plan that we think is effective and low-cost.

Long story short - you can have your message delivered via banner ads to our audience for as little as $200 per month, and we are willing to take up to 50% of that as goods and services (tickets, clothing, gift-certificates - you name it. Download our new rate card and check it out for yourself.

If you know someone who might be interested, forward the rate card to them. If they end up signing up and cite you as the person who referred them, we will give you $50. (To be fair, we can only give one person the $50 for each referral - five friends referring the same company won't get $250.)

If you need more information, send a note to ejohnston@modbee.com.