Eventually, you have to talk it out with people...

I had a long talk today with one of my bunkmates from camp from the summer of 1982. She's the one who lynched my cabbage patch doll in the shower, but not the one who put nair in my conditioner or who tied me into my bed or who put shaving cream on all my stuff or who poured water on my quilt at night. And she's not the one who tried to drown me. We cried, it was emotional, it was very good for both of us. We've been friendly for a year, but she's always been nervous around me - and now I realise why.

She apologized, I said don't worry about it and we're going to be better friends because of this.

Sometimes, you need distance before talking things out - other times, you need to talk things out immediately, before things fester and reach a point where nobody will be able to talk for about 19 years because of the mistrust and anger that exists among them.

Could I have had this conversation three months after camp that summer? No way.

Would I have loved to have had it 10 years ago? Completely.

But I still never ever want to send a child of mine to sleepaway camp.

My Blackberry is down again

I hate cingular.

If you email me and I don't respond right away, it's because of this. I'll get back to you from my desktop as soon as possible.

Why do I let myself get surprised?

Why does it surprise me that when FidgeNet was offline, the Top HP Fanfic Sites Poll Guy posted here on the 18th of April saying, "Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I am trying to contact fidgenet, at the moment to see what is happening with their site. I will place a small note on their link to advise users of this." then posted 3 days later saying "Unfortunately the guys at fidgenet have lost their site due to a problem with their host. They have been removed from the list as their link is dead, hopefully once they have sorted out their problems we will see them back again."

Which is the nice and sensible way to handle things - you give people a day or so to reply, and if their reply means they can't do something like provide a link to your site (and your rules say No Link, No Showing...) then you pull them. Very sensible. Very practical. Very considerate.

But then, when it gets reported that Guns & Handcuffs is currently under construction (although their message boards are live and having a bit of traffic...) the reaction of the same mod is Delete First, Change Rules Second, Email Third (or possibly change rules third and email second - it's a bit confusing, although possibly unintentionally) and a post that goes like this: "Unfortunately, I have deleted G+H from the list as I was getting quite a few emails complaining that all it contained was a "coming soon" message. After checking the site I found that this was correct( apart from a message forum)... I have sent an email to the owner of this site explaining why this was done. Basically it is not fair to users of this list who spend time trawling through sites to find dead links(which are also removed) or "under construction" sites."

Well. A message forum about fanfic doesn't constitute a live fanfic site. And not only can the rules change in 6 days, the application of existing rules can too.

Fascinating. Very fascinating.

And again, nothing derogaroty meant to any of the mods/admins of any of the sites mentioned above - other than he who made those confusing posts on his board.

Btw - I always had enjoyed reading on and posting on those boards. I made a few suggestions about logos - which were accepted. And Cairnsy and I even agreed on something there once - it was a great moment in fandom history! But now, I feel, well, alienated a bit. Which makes me sad, because I wanted to do something good for the fandom, good for the other sites - that's one of the reasons FA stepped aside for our sabbatical. Well. Don't I feel like the idiot now?