April 15th

This post is not about LetzGoOut.com.

It's about a brilliant idea I have that could quite possibly fix our great nation. Actually, I have two great ideas that would do that. The first one is put me in charge. But let's talk about the other one instead.

Actually, this one is far simpler. It may not benefit me as greatly as my other proposal, but I still like this idea. No, I love it. I frekkin love this idea. It's beauty is it's simplicity.

Ok, so what's the great idea, you're wondering, right? Or you got bored with my long intro and went on to surf for porn instead...

Election day. Move it. I wonder if they timed it this way deliberately. They had to have. Election day, in case you didn't know how they determine its date, is held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Tax day is held on April 15th every year. In your average year, this is only about 15-20 days away from the farthest two dates in year can be. That can't have been an accident.

My proposal would make Election Day the first Tuesday after April 15th.

Just think how much more responsibly our elected officials might spend our money if they knew that on the day after they billed us, we would decide whether we wanted them to spend our money, or if we'd rather put somebody else in charge of that this time.

About the only thing that could make a greater statement is if we eliminated the federal government's ability to deduct directly from our pay each week, and that on April 15th, we actually saw how much we were REALLY paying, rather than making that statement that so many foolishly make each year, "Hey, this is great! I didn't have to pay taxes! I actually got $1,500 BACK!" No, you didn't dumbass. You overpaid the government by $1,500, and they got to collect the interest on it for the past year instead of you. And had you UNDERPAID by that amount, they'd have CHARGED interest.

Imagine for a moment, the accountability that senators and congressmen might feel if they knew that the day after their constituents sent around 25% of their hard earned money in that these people would then be deciding who got to spend it. It just might reduce the chances of awarding a hammer contract to their buddy who charges $1800 a piece, allowing federal funding to study the mating habits of the tsi tsi fly, or giving tax breaks to oil companies that are charging record prices at the pumps.

Now, instead picture some nervous lawyers sitting in a committee room in DC calculating how much money they can give back to the people. Imagine our elected officials working to appease the people that will decide whether they should be updating their resume next week, instead of cutting a deal with some lobbyist who, in exchange for a tax break, government contract or change in some legislation that benefits them specifically, can get some contributions to their reelection campaign.

This might be the next best thing to a Second American Revolution.

Now, if you're looking for a bar and in need of a drink now, might I recommend LetzGoOut.com. 50 states. 50,000 bars. Coincidence? Yes. An awesome coincidence.

New toys to play with...

LetzGoOut.com has been working steadily to deploy new toys for the site weekly. This month, we're proud to announce several of these toys.

• The Bar Photo Gallery: Registered users are encouraged to upload any pictures they have of themselves having fun, or their friends making a asses of themselves (with their reluctant consent, of course). ;^D
• The Bathroom Wall: Our message board forums are starting to take off with the inclusion of our "Bar Jokes" section. Of course, there are other forums for more serious things, like talking about your favorite bar, band or telling everybody where they should go tonight. (And we mean that in a nice way!)
• The LetzGoOut Links Page: Yup, just what it sounds like… a page with links. If you've got a bar, a band or some other business that pertains to nightlife and you have a website, I'd love to add you. And all that I ask in return is that you do the same for me somewhere on your site. Visit our links page and check it out. And also, if you do have a bar, a band or another entertainment based business, you really should register. Doing so lets you post pictures to our gallery, it lets you post on our message board, if you're a bar owner, it lets you enhance your bar profile page, and in a few days, it will let you enroll in our affiliate links program. It's free, so just do it!
• The LetzGoOut Affiliate Program: Just puttin' the finishing touches on this one. Kinda like the links page, only better. We give you a link and an image to put on your page. Every time it displays, you get credit. If somebody clicks the link, you get even more credits. And with these credits, we will display a banner ad on our site, driving thirsty people who haven't decided what they want to do yet on to your website. Sound like a good deal? We think so!

So, if you own a bar or entertain at one, you can see that there's a bunch of reasons you should be spending some time on this site. And the more you put into it, the more everybody else is going to get out of it, and they'll think you're cool. Really. They will. I know I will.

So, sign up, post some pictures, post some jokes, tell us what's going on at your place, make your profile page nice and informative so that our thirsty, undecided visitors will wanna check you out, and see what happens. It's all free, so get to it!

Getting back on track...

Though it may not be visible on the surface, a number of enhancements have been made to LetzGoOut.com which will be deployed next week.

We've made some tweaks to site performance which should speed up the site quite a bit.

We've started playing with a photo gallery section, and should have it in place within two weeks, and will allow all registered users the ability to upload their best bar photos.

The enhanced user profile system is up and running now, which, coupled with the affiliate program, slated to be launched within two weeks, we are finally ready to make the big push to get bars actively involved with this site.

The event calendar is about to begin development, following deployment of the affiliate program and photo gallery module.

We're open to suggestions on anything else you think this site may need. Please feel free to comment here, or use the feedback box on the home page to let us know what you'd like to see here. This site's for you, not me. If I ain't doin something you'd like done, you gotta tell me!

Happy bar hopping as always!

-- Brian, CEO of LGO

The LGO Referral Program!

We're putting the finishing touches on an exciting new feature here at LGO - The LetzGoOut.com referral program!

How it works is simple. As a bar owner, you register for LetzGoOut.com. It's free. No reason not to. In addition to being able to participate in this new program next week, you'll be able to update and enhance your bar profile right now!

Next, you your site up for the referral program. There will be links the second it's ready for use. If you're signed up, you won't be able to miss 'em.

On that page, it will show you how to post a link to LetzGoOut.com on your site.

That's it.

LetzGoOut will then credit you every time our link is displayed on your site, and credit you even more when somebody clicks the link to our site.

These credits will then give you ad displays on our site. You'll be able to choose from different sizes depending on how quickly you wanna burn your credits versus how prominently you want to display your ad.

So, if you own a bar, don't wait... register, and get ready for our free advertising program, ready to send thirsty patrons to your site.

New host up and running...

Well, as promised, the contract with our old hosting provider, who will not be named again, or mentioned again after this paragraph, has been terminated. The site is now up and running on new servers, and everything is working great.

We've got some new features that will be rolling out over the next few weeks.

• Our bar search will now provide a more accurate distance on search results.
• The Blog has been given a facelift
• The Bar Search page will be getting a facelift
• Bar owner pages will begin to be promoted in January
• Location based ad serving should become available by the end of January
• The Event Calendar should be in beta testing by February.

Look for all this and more as we get ready to usher in 2008!

The Last Straw with Lunarpages®

On 9/11/2007, roughly one day after LetzGoOut.com was launched, our soon-to-be former web hosting provider, Lunarpages®, disabled the site. The reason for this was that, in its initial launch, the site needed to build its search catalog, and LunarPages® found that act to be too resource intensive.

Rather than call my cell phone, which they do have on file, they sent an email to a yahoo account that I had when I first set up hosting of my first site with them a few years back, and had since informed them, on several occasions, that I do not use that address anymore.

The whole ordeal could have been handled over the phone in one call in less than 10 minutes, but instead, took about 18 hours, countless support tickets sent back and forth with absolutely no assistance whatsoever in explaining what the issue with my site was. At the time, I had no idea what the offending script was, and they not only could not tell me, but refused to let me back onto the site until I could confirm that this script would not run again when they did let me in.

After talking to several different support people (notice the ommission of the word "tech" as I feel it would be inappropriate to categorize these people as such), and several conversations with support managers, I was finally able to get the name of the script that had run, and was able to convince them that if they were to let me on to my site, I could disable the script permenantly. I could work around this without impacting the user experience of the site. By 9/12, the site was running again, and continued to do so for the next 97 days.

Then, on the morning of 12/18, the site went down again. There was no phone call. There was no email. Not even to the yahoo address that I told them not to use anymore, but that was still recieving their monthly newsletter and billing notifications.

After submitting a support ticket, a process that requires logging on with a username and password, I was told that they didn't have any information about why my site was down, but I would need to provide username and credit card information (last 4 digits) before they would share information with me as it became available.

Fast forward about 2 hours. I am thanked for confirming who I was, and am told that there is still no known reason for the site being down.

In light of the fact that there is no reason for the site being down, I make the obvious request that they reenable it.

Three hours later, and after several phone calls yielding similar lack of information or attempt to resolve, I am forwarded an email that they claim was sent to me explaining the issue. I read it. It is dated 9/11/2007. The site had been taken down because of something that had been resolved 97 days earlier.

I have since confirmed that the script HAS NOT run since. Not even once. It was purely an error on their part. Several hours later when I was finally able to pin a supervisor down on the phone to actually get the issue resolved, one of their support supervisors did confirm this. No compensation was offered, and the explaination as to why it happened in the first place, as well as why it took close to 8 hours to get to the point of figuring out the problem and getting it resolved. The only consolation offered was that the admin from September was no longer with the company. That didn't offer any consolation whatsoever, as HE actually had reason for doing what he did, though the notification sent was to the wrong address and action taken was extreme.

The only other thing offered to attempt to rectify the issue here was to provide a direcet phone extension to this supervisor, should any such issue arrise again. He assured me that if he did not answer, I could leave a voicemail and he would return my call immediately.

Fifteen minutes later, it did.

That's right. After a mere fifteen (15) minutes, the site was taken offline by them again. Exact same symptoms.

I called the number.

It rang.

And rang.

And rang.

No answer, no voicemail. Nothing.

The support ticket that followed that was answered about 6 hours later from somebody in Faisalbad, Pakistan stating that he didn't know what database was at fault, so he reenabled all of them. Amazingly, this course of action actually fixed the problem.

When I tried to ask WHY it happened again, he cited the reason for the disabling as the issue that was resolved 97 days earlier, and took the position that the reason for this was actually my fault, not theirs.

This will be the last entry I make to this site as hosted on Lunarpages®. The site will be relocated to a new, reliable, and competent host by the week's end. It had been intended to house the site here as it grew, and scale to a higher level hosting plan as traffic built up. It is clear now that this host will not be appropriate as this site reaches its potential.

That is all that LetzGoOut.com wants for Christmas.

Hope you all get what you want as well this holiday season.

Brian Davey
President, LetzGoOut.com

WE HAVE LIFTOFF!

www.LetzGoOut.com is now live! After many late nights and many hours of development, LetzGoOut, Phase I is now live, and Phase II is close behind.

Phase I is basically just the core foundation of this site - the user registration, the basic bar listing search, and a few other fun features to keep the site moving. The real cool stuff is coming in Phase II.

Plans for Phase II center around the event calendar. With this, bar owners and bar entertainment (bands, dj's, etc) can list events so you can see what's going on on any given night. Additionally, not much has been done for the site's apperance so far. Pretty much all of the time has been devoted to functionality. So, Phase II will also look into a facelift for the site. Your input is, as always, encouraged.

The other cool thing planned in Phase II is the barebones version of the site. This will be a stripped down version of the site, designed specifically for use on cell phones.

Keep coming back often. LetzGoOut is out now, and there's still a lot of places it's gonna go!