What's Your Birthday?

[Harold Henderson]

In case some of our members who have joined in 2019 or later are wondering why some AAV members get Happy Birthday messages from me but they do not, here's the skinny. Three elements here - data, notification, and workaround.


Data

Your birthday is an optional feature that can be maintained through your AAV site User Control Panel - Profile.

Notification

We used to have an automated system using that data to gave notification of birthdays on a calendar that we lost because of software changes in 2017 or 2018. I could just check the calendar and send best birthday wishes until we lost that functionality. Unfortunately, no compatible calendar for our web hosting software has been found, yet.


Workaround

In 2019 I asked our CEO and chief web site maintainer, Michael Blakely, to pull birthday data out of our site and give it to me in a text file. He did that and has updated the info several times; however, this is just an additional burden on the time he already spends addressing more important issues.

So, I am asking anyone who wishes to get Happy Birthday forum posts and is not already getting one, to let me know their birthdate by replying to this post with their birthdate [please use mm/dd/yy format]. This will largely apply to our newer members joining (or re-joining) in 2019 or later. Birth year is optional but then you deprive me of the occasional wisecrack. I also suggest that you keep our database consistent by updating your birthdate in the UCP-Profile for the eventual day we have a working calendar again.