I thought this revisitation could be a source of joy. I am disappointed that you chose pain. I know it's your choice, because I've been away far too long, to be cast as some kind of thorn in your side.
This, I cannot let pass unchallenged as I do a great deal above.
No, understand that I should have permabanned you five years ago, when you loudly and repeatedly savaged me over a disagreement about promotion. You would have been gone forever, zero doubt, -I wouldn't allow you to flame anyone else that way, period- if I'd had any staff backup on hand. You were only spared by I don't act while angry, and that, paradoxically, has been your biggest single shield, making me derelict, constantly, in my duty to my other guests to not let a well-meaning member with a rough edge annoy them, which you have over and over and over for A Very Long Time.
The entire time I was worried about you, I never forgot for a second that I HAD To Do Something About bvanevery. I've just had time to firm my resolve and Man Up. This is not new; it's old. I CHOSE to try being as gentle and tactful as I can manage, not something I'll ever be a master of, but this thread is me trying as hard as I can, astonished that it ever seemed to get ANY traction, actually. Helping Brandon struck me as a promising tact towards Solving The Brandon Problem.
And you chose to escalate over a passing remark that I wouldn't mind if you cooled it there. No, you chose to square off at me, and I refuse to play those games, winning automatically all measuring contests initiated in my yard as I do. That was a troll. Trolling the owner. Not. Smart.
So until you can admit to yourself that you made a bad call, still think it's all on me, you're not going to grow, and you have no place here. I think it's a [complaint or disagreeable woman] move to demand an apology, and I do not - but if you get your head straight about who chose what, and see that banning you would be an easy, if not my style, way out --- I'm willing to try again, someday.
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on July 10, 2025, 10:10:42 pm »
[He locked the thread, not me]
Okay, I wasn't done and all, but okay.
Try this: maybe you ought to do what I ask because I asked - that's just civil, and right. Maybe that will sink in before you return.
I'm juggling and dancing as fast as I can, and I'm not going to let a management failure -which this is, as the only useful way for me to look at it and grow as a person, me being the only one whose behavior I control- stop me.
-Now to go get that &^%$#@! Admin status back not showing...
« Last post by bvanevery on July 10, 2025, 10:02:31 pm »
"Selfish reasons" lol. As though that's why people put work under Creative Commons license, or do such heroics for $0 for years, while homeless. I've only ever been guilty of taking SMAC very seriously, and that's rubbed people the wrong way at times. Since I'm the artist who got done what I did, and few have filled shoes similarly, I'm not going to apologize for having that rough edge.
I'm done with having negative features of my persona debated in public now. I know how much you dislike doing anything in private, and that's generally a non-starter anyways. This shall be locked, and posterity can judge it.
As email notification doesn't presently work, it will be trivial for this site to fade into the obscurity of my life, as it already did 2 years ago. I thought this revisitation could be a source of joy. I am disappointed that you chose pain. I know it's your choice, because I've been away far too long, to be cast as some kind of thorn in your side.
I must be destined to be some kind of footnote in your experiences running this place, including having had the last posts in the last outage. It is possible this will revisit someday when your email notifications are working again.
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on July 10, 2025, 10:01:40 pm »
So, I ain't been re-litigatin' nuthin' just couldn't not talk about the elephant in the room.
Protip: When brevity is impossible, we ain't got no policy against multi-posting. Breaking it up into closer to bite-size chunks can help mitigate the Wall-Of-Text problem, one that you DO have. Some people just won't read something long - doesn't matter that it could be said to be their problem; if you make a lot of really long post all the time that you'd like to have read, it's your problem, too.
-That I'm also breaking it up into multi-posts because I'm multi-tasking is irrelevant, a coincidence - and walls of text is no part of the problems I'm trying to thrash out here, just a point of personal style that I believe harms you.
« Last post by Buster's Uncle on July 10, 2025, 09:45:09 pm »
You misunderstand me pretty badly above. Despite everything, I sorta like you and want you to win at life. I really do. I hate to see a nerd brother w/ good intentions suffer.
SO many things would be SO much easier for SO many years if I didn't see that you're AC2's second or third biggest fan - Trenacker is willing to put his money where his mouth is, and I take second place to NO MAN if it was a freakin' contest.
You've put your time passion and effort into effective promotion of this thing I live making it work, and man, do I LOVE that. I just do not care that you do it for selfish reasons - I care that you do it, and I do care about you.
But all the stuff -personal and professional- I've been sincere about offering as attempts to help you win? That's fer realz, but also me stealth moderating; something I do constantly, and try not to get caught doing. A soft word usually turns away wrath and trolling, and I've always said that I can work with anyone well-intentioned.
Well. Except, it seems, with you. It's always SOMEthing with you, who seems to never forget that hammer I have tucked in back out of sight - and --- as soon as I post this I'll go set my Admin status to show so you can see the difference. If you'd stop taking it as a challenge when I ask you to do ANYthing, we'd get along a lot better - I DO tend to always try to ask, first, having the same authority problems you do and not liking Being The Man. That deeply informs how I roll here.
I've been sincerely worried about you for months, especially the last one.
And something somewhere else about me being valued. Might have been in your thread. Stuff about unloading our mutual psychological burdens and knowing the other.
I'm not sure you see the beauty in the forum rematerializing. What a potentially beautiful thing! All this time that has passed, all this psychological distance that has been gained from whatever was going on before.
I was quite surprised when you started intoning a desire to re-legislate old grievances. It certainly wasn't something I was planning on, it's something you brought up. I've been through hell and a handbasket since 2 years ago. I've got bigger fish to fry than long ago disputes. Yet you've continued to intone a deep need to Go There. To make darned sure I get put back in some kind of a box, and that I know for sure you're the one who gets to do it.
Being protective of your community, also seems premature. Your big threat isn't me, it's the technical possibility of the server imploding again. You know you can't grow anything without stable communication to the rest of the internet. It's almost as though you dwell on what you think you can control - me - rather than the technical things you can't.
Worrying and caring about me, BU, why? It's hard to believe you were going through those emotions about me, in a way that's actually about me. Like who I am, respect for me as a person, and what we've shared as human beings over a number of years. You have the opportunity to open a new chapter, something that starts with an expression of caring... and within 48 hours, you're flipping the script. Over a volcano.
You don't see any kind of problem with that?
I only read your "bad mood" thread for the 1st time just the other day. It's given me insights as to what's going on with you. It explained a number of things. You were at times very forthright, about what you are going through.
To map the very stuff of life, to look into the genetic mirror and watch a million generations march past. That, friends, is both our curse and our proudest achievement. For it is in reaching to our beginnings that we begin to learn who we truly are.
~Academician Prokhor Zakharov 'Address to the Faculty'
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