Re: BOAF: Time to say goodbye

Birds Of A Feather is closed to new posts. Please visit my blog, Loose Feathers.

Lin,

Many thanks, and no apology necessary. You, Bernie, Jeroen and I go back several years, and I've always appreciated your friendship. I never cared that much about the number of posts as much as the quality, and I always regarded yours highly. If you're a redneck as you say, you could teach a lot to American rednecks!

I was thinking about you the other day. I was out shopping and stopped at a Mexican restaurant for lunch. Among their background music they played "It's A Mistake," the old Men At Work song from the 80s. Still relevant, and still a great band. (I tipped my hat to you and Jeroen in this post last month. Did you see it?)

It's too bad about the Iraq War. You may recall Steve, Todd and Pete, also fugitives from CTF, who used to hang out here. Pete's cat Bob is the official BOAF mascot. The antiwar tone that took root on BOAF convinced them we were "Democrats" and they were having none of it. I truly mourn the loss of those guys, and anyone else who split because of the war. BOAF was never intended to be political, just a place to hang out and talk about chess or whatever.

Funny how my decision came about. I've been duplicating my postings and replies to them, between Loose Feathers and BOAF, since last Fall. That's time-consuming, and Loose Feathers is getting far more hits, as blogs are the big item these days. Open discussion forums are ignored by the search engines. What that says about the state of the country is something about which I can only guess. Loose Feathers was never meant to replace BOAF, it was just something to play around with. I probably didn't have to spend so much time blocking spammers as there are several methods built into the BOAF code to interdict them, but a couple did get through recently. I caught them right away, but once the word gets out among the criminal classes it's like blood in the water. The server logs show more than 600 attempts this month.

I'm planning a month-long trip to Europe next year (Jeroen and I are planning to get together in Amsterdam!) and I sure didn't want to be worrying about site maintenance. When I got up yesterday (Saturday) morning and came in to see how the battle was faring, I realized I just didn't want to do it anymore. All day yesterday I felt sad about closing BOAF; sometimes it's hard to get on. But this morning I woke up feeling liberated. So I guess it was the right decision. BOAF looks and works better than it did when it started, and I've enjoyed the company of many friends in the process. Better to end it on a rising curve.

By all means, respond at will at Loose Feathers. You'll have to enter an email address but it isn't published online. Replies are emailed to me for approval, but I usually get to them pretty quickly. I know you're very interested in global warming. If you want, you can email something to me (you can always use the "Webmaster" link, which will remain on the BOAF homepage, to contact me if you've lost my email address) and I'll post it with due credit to you.

Cheers, my friend, and best wishes for 2007.

Jim

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