likewowman2cool: The second problem doesn't seem to be repeating. In other words, the refresh cycle seems to be working now. The other problem is still going on.....

likewowman2cool: most likely has to do with auto vacation. This from Fencer in December, about new vacation time...

Fencer New vacation system announcement 10. December 2010, 10:50:35
Modified by Fencer (11. December 2010, 03:33:24)
I would like to announce a new system of vacations and weekend days for games. The purpose of this change is that current system seems to be too complicated and there are make many users confused, which leads to unexpected losses by timeouts.

This new feature is already completed and I have programmed BrainKing to activate it automatically on 1st January 2011, 00:00:01 GMT+01:00. The old system will be used for the rest of this year.

Vacation days will be turned to vacation hours. The reason is that BrainKing users live in different time zones and it is not always clear when a day actually starts, according to the server time. Total vacation hours a year will correspond to current numbers of days - for instance, a Brain Rook member would be given 840 hours (35 x 24).
All vacation will be automatic, which also means that the calendar would be removed from Settings page (it should disable all attempts of cheating by periodical setting/unsetting of scheduled vacation days, as we could see in the past). Users of all membership levels will be allowed to activate/deactivate automatic vacation anytime.
How it works: All started games are checked for timeouts every 10 minutes. If a timeout is detected in a game (and the game can use a vacation), 1 hour is added to all games of the particular player (where it's their turn to move) and it is also deducted from their total vacation hours. This system ensures that you don't spend more vacation time than it is really necessary - for instance, if you play a game 7 hours after it would normally timeout, you use only 7 hours of your vacation hours left, not the full day (24 hours) like before.
Weekend days should work without any changes. By default, they are set to Saturday and Sunday, and you can change them once in 30 days. The day start is determined by the server time - GMT+01:00 zone.
Vacation rebuy option will be altered accordingly - instead of 10 and 5 days for the first and second 1 year renewal of your membership, you would get 240 and 120 hours.

In order to make the new system work properly, the automatic vacation will be activated for all users as of 1st January 2011. Everybody can turn it off then if necessary.