Time to have a talk about longevity and money.

This is very uncomfortable to me.

Almost exactly a year ago I announced that TUAK would be going dark, because it had lost its sugar mama and I couldn't take up the slack. To my shock and delight a good friend of the blog ponied up enough money to keep me online for months. She did it again since then. When that money ran out I was working a nearly regular job and have been paying for it myself.

But life is change, and a number of things are changing. People have all the geiger counters they want, my income has gone back to "irregular" status, and in the very near future I will be required to decide whether to move the whole infrastructure to the Lair - which means signing up for another 24-month obligation - or shutting the whole thing down and bumming wifi for email. I am not comfortable about my ability to sustain that first obligation. And I am not going to ask my one (very generous) contributor to do it for me.

I said at the time "To ask people to make sustained contributions for a little 200-hit-a-day hobby blog would be absurd." To be honest I still think it kind of is. Certainly with my numbers, putting up Google ads or something would not be a significant help. On the other hand, I have tangible proof that not everybody finds it absurd.

So I'm opening comments to see what regular readers think. I don't have a paypal account and don't plan to get one, but I can start and post an email addy specifically for people who want to make contributions. I do have a person willing to handle the account, but I'm not going to broadcast the contact info for that person. These contributions would be used for the account, and for no other purpose. So not a lot of money would be needed. Uncle Joel does not need or want other people to pay for his beans, rice, or bullets. The person handling the account has proven utterly honorable and reliable over several years - I would (and do) trust her with a great deal more than a few hundred bucks.

I've got a few days before I have to tell Landlady what I'm gonna do, so tell me what you think.