[Groop] Testing...

[Tone]

Steve,
            When I first read your response to my long e-mail, I took it
more as a dark-humored joke. I get flak from some of my best friends
about my long e-mails, and I have always viewed the Groop as a bunch of
light-hearted people, who share the same quirky sense of humor since we
all read and enjoy the same comic. Therefore, I considered your e-mail
playful, if anything. However, after your reply to the "snarkiness"
reference I have to wonder.
            What I have to wonder about is whether I really did offend
you somehow, whether it be because of your perception of me slamming the
"Those Who Fear Groo" Forum or just because I write lengthy e-mails.
While I have always had a hard time limiting my writing (I type fast,
and besides. the point of writing is to communicate ideas, so I
generally try to convey all my thoughts at once so I do not really have
to follow up later on), I think you may have misinterpreted where I was
coming from with my lengthy e-mail.
            I honestly was not trying to slam the TWFG forum at all.
Like I said, I originally joined it early on when it was established.
Heck, I even created my own animated gif avatar for that forum. It was
just that after some time I found myself visiting it less and less. Over
the years I have joined other unrelated web-based forums, and the same
thing tends to happen with them as well. If I were to visit and navigate
my way through a separate interface for all the forums I joined at one
time or another to keep up on everything going on. the little free time
I have would disappear pretty fast. My wife certainly would not be
pleased, that is for sure. Admittedly. (and I say this with humor to
lighten things up a bit) maybe part of it also has to do with how I tend
to write long thought-out posts, so any potential inactivity time-out
feature functioning on a web-based forum might log me out. :-)
            The primary point of that long e-mail was a response to how
Gary admitted he was behind the times in keeping up on all these newer
social/networking sites. I was merely trying to imply that it is not
essential or totally necessary for everyone to keep up with every new
method of communicating on-line. regardless of a person's technological
know-how. It just seems like a person is being left behind in the dust
more-so if they are not as super-tech-skilled as some people.
 
            With what I have clarified, Steve, I do hope you re-asses
any negative opinions of me, which you may have formed. There really
should not be any significant reason why any Groopie should dislike
another (except for maybe being outbid on eBay over that one elusive
Groo item a person might be missing from their collection). I would
imagine Sergio and/or Mark would think any idea of feuding Groop members
would be ridiculous and even comical. wait maybe we should keep
escalating the tension, so that we become the basis for an idea in a new
Groo story! Us Groopies should support anything to help encourage
another Groo story, right!?
            Seriously though, just to be a devils advocate against
myself as a demonstration of me extending an olive branch (not to hit
you with it, but to. what is the point of that saying anyway? It's a
good thing though, I swear!) I would like to agree with you on some of
the points you followed up on. I totally agree with you when it comes to
not having to worry so much about viruses when using the TWFG forum.
Having to log-in to a forum definitely has advantages in that
department. It also definitely avoids the worry of exposing your
personal e-mail address to spammers scanning the world-wide-web for
active e-mail addresses to hit. Personally, like I said earlier, I am
fairly tech-savvy so I know how to screen bad stuff pretty well.
Therefore using a forum does not benefit me personally so much in that
department.
            In terms of including images through links to third-party
sites rather than directly in a forum post, I also must agree with you.
I can certainly see why you would view that suggestion of mine as
stupid. In retrospect I realize when I first said that I was thinking of
one of those other forums I mentioned. In that other forum, you were
able to include an image, but it would only appear as a text-link or
thumbnail to the forum's gallery pages on a separate page, where you
then had to navigate further to select and view the full-resolution
version of the included image. That was a bit annoying, but now I fully
recall that the TWFG forum allows you to directly imbed images in your
posts, and I am correcting myself.
            Something else to keep in mind, which is related to on-line
images and strengthens Steve's points, is that each time a person views
an image in their personal e-mail the remote server that stores the
image can keep track of who is viewing that e-mail because of the IP
address info zooming back and forth behind the scenes. That means that a
spammer can send out an e-mail with even just a 1-pixel transparent
image in it, and if your e-mail program displays it, then that spammer
now knows you have an active e-mail address, which they can continue to
send junk mail to. My own e-mail program blocks automatic viewing of
such images unless given permission each time or through previously
established rules. A good example of this is how our fellow Groop member
YodaZone sometimes includes little images (I think they are small blue
fishes) after some of his text lines, almost like a graphical smiley
face. Well, I use to see those all the time with my previous e-mail
address, but now they are blocked, which is why I do not remember
exactly what they look like. I never told my program to block them, it
just automatically did, so I hope I have not offended YodaZone! :-)
            By the way Steve, once again in my own situation I have my
own server space, so it has always been convenient for me to post
whatever files or images I wanted on my FTP server fairly easily without
having to use any on-line photo gallery. That made it convenient for me
to include links directly to stuff for people to access without anyone
else having to worry about any extra bandwidth from ads or logging into
another web site. I mentioned those free sites mainly as an example for
those users, who might not have their own FTP server space available to
share files through. I certainly agree with you about the terrible
security level of images posted on those free photo gallery sites (or
any ultimately publicly viewable site for that matter, even a forum).
All it takes is a little bit of relatively easy visual code scanning of
the web page html source. I never did say using a photo gallery site
would be secure though.
            Oh yeah, another supporting reason to include in your
arguments for the TWFG forum, as Shawn the girl points out (Yes, I read
your e-mail too Shawn, thank you!) is that not only is Mark on it, but
so is Stan. For some reason, I seem to also recall something about
either Dark Horse originally setting up the TWFG forum or at least
people at Dark Horse monitoring the TWFG forum. Am I wrong about that? I
can see myself mixing up the Dark Horse forums with the TWFG forums. By
the way, I joined the Dark Horse forums too, but primarily to throw in
votes for Groo stuff. Other than that, the Dark Horse forums are yet
another web forum I do not keep up on.
 
            So Steve. if you have read this far that is. ;)  I sincerely
hope there are no negative feelings lingering because of my previous
post or this one. I do have some questions for you, which I am curious
about.
            1) When you said, "I read about a third of your message
(more than usual)" were you referring that my post was more than usual,
or were you saying you read a third of my message and that was more than
you usually read of my writings? I ask simply because the latter would
be funnier to me.
            2) In my initial response  to the reply with the reference
to "snarkiness" (MUCH shorter I should point out), I joked that I might
get revenge on your supposed "snarky" reply by starting to revisit the
TWFG forum once again and perhaps sharing my long winded thoughts there
so you would have to deal me there too and thus have nothing to thank me
for. That was definitely written to be funny. However, after reading
your follow-up message I had to ask myself if I really was offensive
somehow and whether I originally gave the TWFG forum a fair chance. At
the moment, though I have no clue if I really would have the extra free
time to catch up on everything there, I am considering the possibility
of returning to the TWFG forum. I do sometimes wonder if I am missing
out on things over there. If I did, it would be for sincere reasons, and
not as any revenge no matter how funny some might think that idea would
be. What I am wondering though, is whether you honestly would rather not
have to deal with my notoriously long posts on yet another group/forum,
or whether you would indeed wish to welcome me there. As I have stated,
I think I can live without including the TWFG forum, so if you or anyone
else really does not want me there I would not be hurt my feelings. that
much :-(
            Writing this message did remind me if I do start checking
out the TWFG forum again, then I would have to update my profile there
with my new e-mail address. I actually went ahead and did that just now,
but I will not start revisiting it until I get feedback from you or
others. By the way, when I updated my profile on TWFG, I did notice
there are drop-down options during the log-in for how long a user can
have the system keep them logged in. Well, one of those options is
"Forever", so it looks like someone had me and my long posts in mind
when they set that up!
            Something else to consider for me personally not keeping up
with the TWFG forum. you obviously can see how thorough I am about
writing messages, well I am sad to say, I am also KIND OF compulsive
about reading posts. I read every Groop post as well as all the messages
from other unrelated e-mailing lists I get. At the TWFG forums, posts
are all over the place in terms of message threads, subject headings,
and such. that kind of chaos stresses out an uber-orderly mind like my
own. Therefore if you really want to be mean-spirited (or "snarky" if
you prefer) you would greatly encourage me to return to the TWFG forum.
;)
 
Shawn (the girl),
            If it becomes apparent Steve fell asleep during this long
post or simply abandoned it part way through (I swear the length of this
reply to him is not a form of revenge!), would you maybe just tell him
"Tone said he was sorry." . thanks. :-)
 
Trying to be as non-skarky, snarkless, de-snarkified as possible.
_TONE_
 
            
            
            
 
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