I'm back from a week of camping with the kids, and happy to see Charitocracy's beta test server is still humming along with no signs of missing me. I would be lying if I said the reverse were true. I'd have pulled all-nighters in the tent if I had (A) power, (B) Internet, (C) Hodor to carry me around the next day on the hiking trail with the kids.

As I get back to work here, I've decided that keeping the test server online as I make further progress will be a good way to build my discipline as a fledgling sysadmin. I'll use maintenance mode (shutting down the site with a "back in 5!" message) sparingly and do most of the new work on a separate staging server before merging the databases back together and putting the new code online. It will slow me down a bit at first, but once we go live this is how I'll need to operate anyway, so best get used to it now!

All of this is to say: the Charitocracy beta test open house is permanent. Jump on whenever you feel inspired to test the latest and greatest. I'll post here on the blog when there's something new to try out. This post has instructions and caveats that I'll try to keep current. Happy beta-testing!  Hopefully the open house will be short-lived, and I can instead start taking actual sign ups...