geekhack
geekhack Community => Off Topic => Topic started by: Drew Baumann on Sat, 12 May 2012, 20:11:22
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Hey guys,
Im new here, but very excited about the scene!
Today I have been hacking together a site that acts as a facilitator for group buys. This means that a user will be able to login, create a group buy or browse open group buys they can then join.
For creators:
- Create new group buys
- Show assets like images
- Set pricing structure
- Set an end date (for new orders)
- Calculate prices per user
- See users who are interested
- See users who have paid
Let me know if you have more ideas. Eventually this could even include invoicing, but for now that part is still manual.
Whats done so far:
- Architecture and basic functionality.
- Basic User Auth (no Oauth yet)
What I need:
Someone to help with frontend dev. I can do it, but I'm not as good at making things pretty.
Oh yeah, the domain will be buy****with.me
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GLWIC
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i use this as a group buy site (http://geekhack.org/forumdisplay.php?70-group-buys)
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i use this as a group buy site (http://geekhack.org/forumdisplay.php?70-group-buys)
+1 LOL
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i use this as a group buy site (http://geekhack.org/forumdisplay.php?70-group-buys)
This DemiLk guy is funny
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would like to see conditional pricing structures added once you get it up and running. I've thought of doing something like this.
For example, someone has an IC and a good amount of users only want to buy if it's at 150 sets since that is the great price point, they could say to the website "I only want to buy this if it is possible to get 150 buyers." The site could then keep track of orders and interested orders at a price point, and if enough become interested at the specific price point, it would auto increment it.
Not conditional like, if orders = 150 then sign them up, but more if potentially interested @ this price point = 150 then sign them up. That make sense?
Sorry im high and not making tons of sense.
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How much is going to cost ? where is the catch?
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How much is going to cost ? where is the catch?
He gets traffic and essentially profit. He also holds all the money in and out i don't know who would trust a website like that when the person can easily just close down the site and say bye bye
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Also, I would just like to question the fact he is a very new user.
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How much is going to cost ? where is the catch?
Fair question. It will be able to be free for awhile, but Im sure that if the demand is high then ill have to make a simple pricing structure.
Also the question regarding notifications if it reaches a certain point:
Good idea and definitely doable.
Haters: If you don't want to use it you don't have to, but I saw the current process, saw weaknesses and would love to build this with the community in mind.
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so, you want to make money off group buys when it's already free (and working.. just ignore round 4) here?
lets not kid ourselves here, you see a money opportunity. the only part of the community you have in mind is the fact that so many group buys are running.
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He gets traffic and essentially profit. He also holds all the money in and out i don't know who would trust a website like that when the person can easily just close down the site and say bye bye
false. I will not be handling the transactions, I will only be collecting user info and calculating costs. Integration with paypal is up to the lead in the created group buy.
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so, you want to make money off group buys when it's already free (and working.. just ignore round 4) here?
This is not for profit. I do not see this as a money making venture.
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so you're going to do this for free?
completely for free?
no money from traffic or ads?
im confused on this part then:
Fair question. It will be able to be free for awhile, but Im sure that if the demand is high then ill have to make a simple pricing structure.
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I see nothing wrong with just using this site.. I am a very new user also and I have already gotten into 4 group buys haven't had any problems with this site at all
good luck though
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GLWIC? The groupbuy forum is fine as it is, and the google docs seems to be helping with speeding up and organizing orders. I think if you can successfully run your nyan cat GB R2, then you might gain the trust of some of us.
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lets not kid ourselves here, you see a money opportunity. the only part of the community you have in mind is the fact that so many group buys are running.
Hey you dont have to use it, but im developing it regardless and not charging... when money gets involved than it becomes more complicated and I already have a fulltime job. I am not looking to turn this into a startup and go after VC etc. All I'm doing is creating this because I've looked at several group buys and it seems like a pretty manual process. I honestly want to make it easier for people interested in doing group buys.
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OP, what you're suggesting is a few hours of hacking against the google apps APIs. we're not particularly interested in paying for something that we already do quite successfully for free.
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In 4 1. What am I buying in this group buy in this group buy forum?
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I thought about building something too but decided the forum works just fine and that's we're everyone hangs out and discusses anyways
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so you're going to do this for free?
completely for free?
no money from traffic or ads?
im confused on this part then:
Have you heard of heroku? I can build a site and host it for free or at the very least 36 a month. The DB will be pretty small and I can host that for free on mongolabs for a good time and after that it's pretty affordable.
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Hey you dont have to use it, but im developing it regardless and not charging... when money gets involved than it becomes more complicated and I already have a fulltime job. I am not looking to turn this into a startup and go after VC etc. All I'm doing is creating this because I've looked at several group buys and it seems like a pretty manual process. I honestly want to make it easier for people interested in doing group buys.
Since you're new here, I'm not sure if you read the thread that discussed profits gained from groupbuys... though it was probably lost during the roll back. That's the reason why some people may be against you making a site like this.
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Hey you dont have to use it, but im developing it regardless and not charging... when money gets involved than it becomes more complicated and I already have a fulltime job. I am not looking to turn this into a startup and go after VC etc. All I'm doing is creating this because I've looked at several group buys and it seems like a pretty manual process. I honestly want to make it easier for people interested in doing group buys.
we've adopted google forms and excel for that.
which stays on our google accounts and computers.
i still fail to see what's so hard about it?
if ANYTHING, the hard part is the shipping. if you can get an assembly line that will help with packing and shipping, then that would be welcomed. a site we have to go to outside of the already populated GB section seems dumb IMO.
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He gets traffic and essentially profit. He also holds all the money in and out i don't know who would trust a website like that when the person can easily just close down the site and say bye bye
What if he open sources it? Then it doesn't matter if he takes the site down - anyone can put it back up again. All that would be lost is the DB information. This way everyone can know what is going on.
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Perhaps you could head up to Washington and teach SP some QA.
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What if he open sources it? Then it doesn't matter if he takes the site down - anyone can put it back up again. All that would be lost is the DB information. This way everyone can know what is going on.
It will be open source after my first init and hosted on github.
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Perhaps you could head up to Washington and teach SP some QA.
that would make him a saint.
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while this is nice, and you're welcome to do whatever it is you want to do, we're not really interested, and this is not a group buy.
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I'm 15 minutes from SP. Hire me to go fling dog poo at their facility.
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I'm 15 minutes from SP. I could drive up their and fling dog poo at their facility maybe?
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while this is nice, and you're welcome to do whatever it is you want to do, we're not really interested, and this is not a group buy.
Mods feel free to move it to the applicable forum.
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Also drew, if you would like to reply to my PM at some point, that would be nice eh.
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In 4 1. What am I buying in this group buy in this group buy forum?
Is there an excel sheet I could fill out?
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I'm 15 minutes from SP. I could drive up their and fling dog poo at their facility maybe?
Only if they make us mad.
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I think what you fail to realize Drew is the group buys is part of what makes this forum popular. Even though iMav may not make money off the group buys you're still stepping on toes. It's like you want to remove this group buy forum from here altogether, and I think that's one of the reasons people won't like the idea.
Also the fact that you are so new around here doesn't help your cause. If you have a good idea (that you think is a good idea) the smart thing to do would be to PM iMav and discuss it with him.
Personally I think it's best left the way it is. Of course you're free to continue developing the site but if it was me, I would try to attract people from other fora that know me and already have a relationship with me. The trust thing is huge and no one is going to trust you if they don't know you. Just my 2cents.
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I think what you fail to realize Drew is the group buys is part of what makes this forum popular.
Its the group buys that are set up by members that bring the geekhack and keyboarding enthusiast community together. People get to know each other, or even game together. Its a personalized experience that you cannot find for many other hobbies IMO. :peace:
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I think what you fail to realize Drew is the group buys is part of what makes this forum popular. Even though iMav may not make money off the group buys you're still stepping on toes. It's like you want to remove this group buy forum from here altogether, and I think that's one of the reasons people won't like the idea.
Also the fact that you are so new around here doesn't help your cause. If you have a good idea (that you think is a good idea) the smart thing to do would be to PM iMav and discuss it with him.
Personally I think it's best left the way it is. Of course you're free to continue developing the site but if it was me, I would try to attract people from other fora that know me and already have a relationship with me. The trust thing is huge and no one is going to trust you if they don't know you. Just my 2cents.
it definitely comes down to trust. I hope to gain it. I'm not the type of dude looking for enemies nor do I want to kill these forums. I simply want to provide an option thats organized because at the end of the day I know at least some people will want to see whats available to order at a given moment. I want group buys to be the same on GH but instead of PMing the OP, replying in the thread with order, or using google docs, there could be a link to the group buy on the site im building in which a user could enter their info and the lead would be left without too much manual work.
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does this group buy section look too advanced for him? well it works well for me, so gonna stay GB over here
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I don't think the OP's looking to replace the group buy sub-forum with his site but instead for it to be used alongside a GB.
The Google doc's sure are fancy and pretty but they don't really help the people participating in the GB. Without writing it down first I can never remember what I originally ordered and I still have to PM someone to change my order (and now with the all the roll backs I’m not even sure if my change was even noted)
Now if there was a site like what the OP is offering to build where I can view what the real time order count is, change/modify/cancel my order and possibly register interest until a certain point is reached (like what was previously suggested) it would be great.
I've thought about making something similar to this ever since I started participating in GB's but never got around to do it. Good luck with the site and I'm curious how it will turn out. I have a feeling once you're done with it people will start to view it differently.
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what you're trying to say is very simple... making google docs public... people who organize gbs here can do the same... just need to set a restriction on only allowing people who have paid to gain access as to not troll and delete stuff
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Interesting to see all the negative feedback that this idea got...
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Moved to Off Topic because this isn't a group buy.
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I think the negativity came from Drew being a new member, and his first post is to start a group buy and an ordering system. My guess is if these ideas came from an old timer who have had a couple of group buys under his belt, this conversation would be very different. And he sounds like he is here to rescue us, from his very first post. Instead of greeting everyone, he comes in and slap everyone's face and tell us he is here to make it all better.
kinda rub me the wrong way, at least.
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While I'm not biased toward people being new as I'm new myself, coming in and trying to make an "improvement" without any trust or respect gained from veteran and regular users doesn't work.
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what you're trying to say is very simple... making google docs public... people who organize gbs here can do the same... just need to set a restriction on only allowing people who have paid to gain access as to not troll and delete stuff
google docs spreadsheets supports views (ie, projections), link-based permissions, etc. everything he's mentioned is a few choice lines of google api code. now if he wants to start a github for exactly those scripts, that's great.
what it appears the OP is doing instead is advertising his grand new idea: "group buys"! on the web! with a database back-end, controlled by him! wow! we've simply pointed out that we have all those things already, controlled by us, none of that functionality is particularly novel to us, and we don't see why he's bothered to tell us about this amazing idea of his.
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No offense to you personally, OP, but as a rule I wouldn't participate in a group buy run by someone brand new. Starting an interest check with < 20 posts was not the greatest way to introduce yourself. That said, putting up some useful tools for group buy automation would be a great way to build trust and establish a place in the community.
I'm not totally clear on what you're proposing, but here are my thoughts. I agree with what others have said here that the group buy subforum is where group buys should take place. The approach that makes the most sense to me is to provide tools for the GB organizer to easily manage orders. I have a pretty nice system of Python scripts that does just that. However sharing them with other group buy organizers isn't simple since they are very kludgy and dependent on third-party libraries. I've been working on cleaning them up and generalizing them, but if you could put up something usable by non-programmers, without a lot of configuration, that would be fantastic.
Most user-facing things like deadlines, pricing information, and order summaries can and should be handled by a well-organized order thread OP. I don't think we need anything special there. I suppose the argument could be made that not everyone wants their order listed publicly, but that's what I've done for my group buys and no one has complained so far. For my moogle group buy (http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?28923) I wrote a script that scrapes my spreadsheet and updates the second post of of the order thread. I ran this script several times a day while orders were being taken, and that made it easy for everyone to see how the buy was progressing.
The biggest manual process in my current group buy workflow is changing people's orders. Google forms will allow you to update your order, but only if you have a Google account and are logged in at the time you placed your initial order. Sending out mass PMs (e.g., invoices) is also a pain, though I've streamlined it to the point of a few copy/paste operations per order.
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Yeah I see some flaws with Google docs and this gives an opportunity to fix some of those privacy and accessibility difficulties.
@hashbaz thats awesome that you wrote some scripts to handle this workflow. If you're down with ruby I'd love the support. PM me and ill give you details.
In regards to the first post being around a group buy. Although I was really new I actually had an account a day prior in which I asked around about the nyan cat keys and gathered enough interest to look into a group buy. Unfortunately that account was wiped out in some sort of DB restore (guess) so I made an effort to resume where I left off.
Regarding trust: I don't want to screw anyone over. Ever. It's just not my way. Plus look at my username. Its my name! You can google me and see that I'm reputable. Now that the GB is being lead by someone else I wont have to spend a lot of time ramping the site up for immediate use.
If you are interested with helping out in anyway let me know. I don't need to be a lone ranger on this one. If there is a way to help the community through technology I'd like to help.
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OP, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you have good intentions behind all this. Our group buy operations don't have any huge problems, but at the same time it can also be more efficient. However, I think the biggest problem here is the trust. You're basically asking everyone in every group buy on here to trust you with their personal information on a different website that is no way affiliated to geekhack.
Secondly, your account name is irrelevant to proving how trustworthy you are. Anyone can name themselves Drew Baumann, but how would I know that's really you? Just be a regular poster, and perhaps host at least one successful group buy, then perhaps your words will be more credible.
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OP there is plenty of room for improvement, and yours ideas are as valuable as any body else in this community. Is nice to see people coming here proposing solutions (may be not the silver bullet) , instead of just complaining.
Google apps for sure are far from perfection, but they are handy and available on line for "free" (kind off ;-)).
BTW WTGH
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OP, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you have good intentions behind all this. Our group buy operations don't have any huge problems, but at the same time it can also be more efficient. However, I think the biggest problem here is the trust. You're basically asking everyone in every group buy on here to trust you with their personal information on a different website that is no way affiliated to geekhack.
Secondly, your account name is irrelevant to proving how trustworthy you are. Anyone can name themselves Drew Baumann, but how would I know that's really you? Just be a regular poster, and perhaps host at least one successful group buy, then perhaps your words will be more credible.
If need be I can provide proof, but Im just saying I wouldnt want to tarnish my name or screw anyone over. As for this information it would be secure and I'd let GB owners export the data to CSVs for use in Excel.
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How's the site uptime?
Don't wanna end up like MySpace.
Ha no doubt. Its up now, but not ready for release.
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I like the idea...
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I like the idea...
Well thank you.
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http://www.drewbaumann.com/The_Desk_of_Drew_Baumann/Welcome.html
this you? the 'made on a mac' part gets me worried... all this talk of ruby too... this cause it came with OSx? you at least updated it right?
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Regarding trust: I don't want to screw anyone over. Ever. It's just not my way. Plus look at my username. Its my name! You can google me and see that I'm reputable. Now that the GB is being lead by someone else I wont have to spend a lot of time ramping the site up for immediate use.
Like I said before, it's nothing against you personally, and it has nothing to do with how much interest there is. You need to be established in the community for at least a few months before you start trying to run group buys. I have no reason to doubt that you'll do so and that you could run a great group buy, and that you're trustworthy. It's just kind of off-putting to see someone that no one knows with such a low post count trying to start a buy.
OP there is plenty of room for improvement, and yours ideas are as valuable as any body else in this community. Is nice to see people coming here proposing solutions (may be not the silver bullet) , instead of just complaining.
Google apps for sure are far from perfection, but they are handy and available on line for "free" (kind off ;-)).
BTW WTGH
This ^^
A lot of people around here like to complain. Props for diving in immediately and showing a willingness to contribute to the community.
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http://www.drewbaumann.com/The_Desk_of_Drew_Baumann/Welcome.html
this you? the 'made on a mac' part gets me worried... all this talk of ruby too... this cause it came with OSx? you at least updated it right?
Ha yes thats me... I made that several years ago and need to take it down when I have the time. It was basically something I threw together a summer while I was an intern at a company that did webdev in java. I didnt want to make a site in java because its a *****, so instead I threw it together in iWeb. Since then I have come a long way. Basically I'll just redo it in rails or node when I find the time and my interest isnt peaked by other projects.
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Like I said before, it's nothing against you personally, and it has nothing to do with how much interest there is. You need to be established in the community for at least a few months before you start trying to run group buys. I have no reason to doubt that you'll do so and that you could run a great group buy, and that you're trustworthy. It's just kind of off-putting to see someone that no one knows with such a low post count trying to start a buy.
This ^^
A lot of people around here like to complain. Props for diving in immediately and showing a willingness to contribute to the community.
Thanks. Ill try and live up to it. I like you guys a fair amount from my short stay.
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While I applaud you on the initiative, I do agree that the current system works well with google docs/apps. Perhaps it might serve the community better to make a simple "group buy 101" page in the wiki on what works best.
My only issue with small sites like this are the security issues that arise. The web is not as simple as it once was and you really need a team of individuals to build a site like this safely online.
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I'm not so sure this is what the OP had in mind, but I do think it would be nice if instead of buyers sending PMs and organizers manually updating spreadsheets, there was something with a database backend that would allow users access to their own orders. For example, if people could log in, place and/or update their own orders, viewing current pricing and order status in real time, that should make everything easier for everyone. All the organizer would have to do is set up the pricing structure and everything else should take care of itself.
As for billing, I know nothing of PayPal API integration but presumably the billing process could also be automated. That leaves organizers with only having to place the initial order, sort/pack shipments, and mail them.
This can be integrated with the current group buy forum, essentially just replacing the use of Google docs and PMs.
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I'm not so sure this is what the OP had in mind, but I do think it would be nice if instead of buyers sending PMs and organizers manually updating spreadsheets, there was something with a database backend that would allow users access to their own orders. For example, if people could log in, place and/or update their own orders, viewing current pricing and order status in real time, that should make everything easier for everyone. All the organizer would have to do is set up the pricing structure and everything else should take care of itself.
As for billing, I know nothing of PayPal API integration but presumably the billing process could also be automated. That leaves organizers with only having to place the initial order, sort/pack shipments, and mail them.
This can be integrated with the current group buy forum, essentially just replacing the use of Google docs and PMs.
That is precisely the idea. Are you a dev? If so feel free to collab!
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That is precisely the idea. Are you a dev? If so feel free to collab!
I'm a DBA, so most of the coding I do is SQL, along with some Perl and some very occasional PHP. I haven't worked on any major programming projects in a while but wouldn't mind contributing. However, the major issues I see have already been mentioned: too much data residing under third-party control and with significant security requirements.
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make the thing open source so the GB coordinators can host it themselves ? :o.
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wait, is that new ripster? or have i never noticed it.
it's pretty nice.
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ah, mock ups. nowhere i couldnt see them.
looks good, i hope he goes through with it.
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I'm a DBA, so most of the coding I do is SQL,
Nice...
Hows this GB site coming along?
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Nice...
Hows this GB site coming along?
I completed it yesterday.