From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Good last-minute save, WSFA
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:48:15 -0500 (EST)
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Sorry for the delay in replying.

Mike Bartman wrote:

> I took what you were writing as sarcasm stemming from bitterness.

Sigh.  Email has no tone-of-voice cues.

> FYI, Paul posted an explanation to the other WSFA list about the
> last minute renewal.

Odd that he wouldn't post it here, since this is where it came up.
He is on this list.

> Bluehost has an auto-renew feature, where it notifies the owner of
> a DNS name of impending expiration a month in advance, and, if no
> action is taken, automatically renews it just before it expires.

So, ironically, I was actually mistaken about the renewal being a sign
of life.  It would have happened even if every WSFA member had run off
and joined the Foreign Legion months ago.

> "Apparent total abandonment of the website" is a bit extreme, isn't it?

I call them like I see them.  Note that I didn't share this with
anyone outside of WSFA.  But of course I'm not the only person who
ever looks at the WSFA website and draws conclusions from what I see.

For whatever it's worth, WSFA and Capclave weren't mentioned at all
at last night's PRSFS meeting.  (It was Friday the 13th, and there
were exactly 13 people and one black cat present.  Two of the books
reviewed had "13" in their title, and a third was published in 1913.)

> The site gets updates as needed...the event listing shows currently
> upcoming events, such as twice-monthly meetings, with directions on
> how to get there, ...

Yes, it lists upcoming meetings for the next 7000 (!) years, with no
indication of when it was last updated.

Long after calendar.htm had been abandoned, it still showed future
meetings, at least one in the wrong location.  It wasn't until I
discovered this -- by noticing the discrepancy between what it
said and the claim here that the July 4th meeting would be at the
Pomeranz/Overton picnic -- and pointed it out that it was replaced by
a pointer to the new online calendar, the one that says where meetings
will be held, not just in 2009, but also in 9002.  (And it gets the
days of the week right, too.  Very impressive.)  When I was webmaster
I made sure the calendar always showed at least the next three and at
most the next four upcoming meetings, which I thought was a reasonable
compromise.  That's obviously not the only correct way to do it, but
7000 years is a little out there, even for an SF organization.

I was roundly flamed by a WSFA trustee for warning WSFA that
calendar.htm was wrong.  That's why I decided not to warn WSFA
about the pending wsfa.org expiration.

>> I'm sorry to hear that Steve Smith has been ill for the past
>> several months.  He has my best wishes for a speedy recovery.

> I'll pass along your thoughts...if Steve isn't still on this list to
> get them himself.

He is.  Of course that doesn't mean he reads it, especially if he is
seriously ill.

> Given the various mailing lists, web sites and direct mail
> capabilities today, the WSFA Journal isn't as critical for conveying
> information as in decades past.  It's still an official record, but
> timely posting doesn't prevent people from finding out what they
> need to know, or from sharing their thoughts and creativity.  I.e.
> it could wait until the secretary was feeling better...so long as we
> collected the data for him...which we did.

Don't members need to know the minutes of the previous meeting?
Joe Mayhew published the WSFA Journal twice a month so that at each
meeting there would be a Journal containing the previous meeting's
minutes.  His successors, including me, weren't that ambitious, but
I did put the minutes of any meetings not yet in a WSFA Journal at
minutes.htm.  I see that that page is still there, and has been
updated since I left.  But it contains, not the minutes of the last
meeting or of the last few meetings, but the minutes of a meeting
in June -- and not the most recent June, i.e. it's 20 months or 40
meetings behind.

This is exactly what I mean by the appearance of abandonment -- pages
that are neither updated nor taken down, but are left in limbo as if
everyone had just vanished in the middle of dinner one day like on the
Mary Celeste.

> I strongly suspect that if the club was dissolved, or meetings had
> been done away with for that long, you'd have heard about it here.

Maybe.  I've noticed that it's been months since anyone has made any
mention here of any recent meeting.

> I was not blaming you for their leaving.  Leaving was their choice.
> You were involved to the extent that you were their main target, ...

No, Ted White was.  He was the only person they banned.  And the only
person to be denounced in every one of their letters.

Arguably, they ceased hosting WSFA as soon as they banned him.  If a
host picks and chooses which members can attend, he's not hosting a
meeting.

> My main point in talking about this at all at this point is that
> the club was not complicit in your treatment, did not condone your
> treatment, and tried to correct the situation to the best of its
> ability.

The Gilliland situation is water under the bridge.  The reason I
haven't returned to WSFA has nothing to do with them.

> I can admit that not everyone likes everyone else all the time,
> and that there are some people who might well benefit from therapy
> and/or a lot of serious introspection to improve their ability to
> deal with others (you and me included), but this is fandom, and
> people with various kinds of non-functionality are the majority of
> the population.

I disagree.  Most fans are no more non-functional than anyone else.
Rather the opposite, I'd say.  If I have any mental non-functionality,
it's an extreme intolerance for malicious gossip.  I believe that a
person's reputation is the most valuable thing they own, and that
trashing it without a very, very good reason is even more inexcusable
than taking a shotgun to their kneecaps.  You can get along better
without legs than without the trust of other people.

In every large organization there may be people whose idea of fun is
making others miserable, and whose only way of building themselves up
is to tear others down.  But WSFA is the only organization I've ever
been associated with that seems to knowingly and systematically place
such people in positions of honor, trust, authority, and responsibility,
and keep them there despite knowledge of their character.

> You can't be as exceptional in many ways as fans are, and exist in a
> mundane world, without getting some serious dents and bruises, and
> the coping mechanisms aren't always optimal...though it is possible
> to understand them with some info, consideration and kindness.

I respond to many slights and omissions with consideration and
kindness.  If someone says they'll give me a ride, but leaves me
stranded, no problem.  If someone borrows something of mine and fails
to return it, no problem.  If someone disinvites me to an event
everyone else is invited to, no problem.  If someone calls me stupid,
or lazy, or bitter, or vain, or ugly, no problem.  But publicly
stating that I or any other innocent person is dishonest, violent, or
creepy, that's way over the line, and no, I'm not going to give them
any consideration or kindness.  Such a person should be shunned by
everyone until they give a sincere apology.  And on second offense
they should be shunned by everyone permanently.  Maybe after the
second or third time they have to find a complete new set of friends,
they'll wise up.

>> * Walking home from visiting my mother in the hospital, I stepped
>> on something that went right through the heel of my shoe and gave
>> me a nasty bruise, making it painful to walk.  I still can't walk
>> without pain.

> You might have a bone bruise.

I doubt it.  It's still painful when I walk, but less so.  There's no
pain at all when I'm off my feet.  There's no swelling.  There is pain
in my leg when I walk, which is obviously due to my basically walking
on tiptoe on that foot to keep my weight off my heel, which stresses
my leg muscles in unusual ways.

I've noticed there's almost no pain when I climb stairs.  Maybe I'll
try duct-taping a block of wood to the front of my shoes so that I
don't put any weight on my heels when walking on level ground.

>> * For a couple days there was raw sewage that had come up out of
>> the drains into my bathtub and toilet.  It smelled very bad.  And
>> all the landlord had done was turn off the water. ...

> I'd say that the "babitabiity" of the place is compromised, and the
> landlord should be doing what is needed to fix it ASAP, or putting
> you up elsewhere in the meantime.

It was only for two days.  The plumbing was already back to normal by
the time I posted that.  And fortunately it's been good weather for
airing the place out.

> What does your lease say about the place becoming uninhabitable?

Nothing except that I don't have to pay rent until it's restored
-- *if* it's uninhabitable in *their* opinion.  They don't have to
put me up elsewhere, or even allow me to use the bathroom in the
rental office.

> I've seen leases with clauses to cover this sort of thing...though
> reminding the landlord about them can be necessary.  There are laws
> about this sort of thing I believe too.

Landlord-tenant law in Virginia is very pro-landlord.  I have won a
few victories, though.  Some years back they insisted I move all my
furniture away from the walls so that cable TV could be installed.
I said I had no interest in cable TV.  I pointed out that all of my
walls, and my picture window, are lined with bookcases and shelving,
mostly nailed together in place, and that unless I quit my job it
would take me weeks to move all of it away from the walls even if
there was someplace else to move it to, which there wasn't.  I asked
them to show me where in my lease it said that some third party I had
never signed any contract with had the right to enter my apartment at
all, much less to demand I do several days of unpaid heavy labor for
them.  They pulled out a lease agreement and showed me.  I said I
didn't see my signature on that lease agreement.  They said every
tenant signed the same lease.  I said I hadn't.  They said that had
been the standard lease for some large number of years.  I said I
had been there a larger number of years.  I had to bring in my copy
from home, as their files didn't go back that far.  They finally
backed down.

They also backed down when I asked them not to repair water damage to
my ceiling.  As it is, I know where the water will come down if my
upstairs neighbors once again let their bathtub overflow, and I make
sure nothing valuable is underneath.  If the landlord were to repair
the ceiling, it's anyone's guess where the water would come down next
time.  (Perhaps I shouldn't say "once again," as it's a new set of
neighbors since last time.)

> I'd guess at a blocked vent being a likely cause, unless WSSC is
> having larger than normal issues in your area.  They can install
> one-way valves in the building outflow pipe to prevent problems like
> this that are caused externally...the landlord should have them
> installed.  It can help with insurance costs in some cases as well
> as keeping tenants from leaving.

I don't know what the cause was.  I do know they turn off the water
for a few hours to a couple days at least once or twice on most
months, always for "emergency repairs."  It gets tiresome.  At least
the gas and electricity almost never go out.

As for insurance, they've made it abundantly clear that they're not
responsible for any loss or damage to any tenant property, no matter
what.  They recommend every tenant get renters' insurance.

>> * A spammer has been forging my email address on his spams.  This
>> has resulted in over two and a half million blowback messages,
>> and is likely to cause me to miss legitimate email and to have my
>> domain name added to numerous spam blacklists.  And there's not a
>> thing I can do about it, as he's touting a website in Spamland
>> (also known as China).

> You should at least notify your ISP of the problem...if nothing
> else, it creates a record that you are aware of the problem, and
> aren't the cause and are trying to deal with it.

Both of my ISPs are aware of it.  It's been happening on and off for
over a decade, though seldom with such high volumes.  It would take
a spectacularly clueless ISP to think I was actually sending those
messages, as the Received: headers clearly indicate they're coming
from vast numbers of infected Windows boxes all over the planet, not
from either of my ISPs.

I've since discovered that they all seem to point to a phone number in
San Antonio.  That doesn't particularly help me unless I were willing
to travel there to sue them.  I strongly doubt the police or attorney
general in Texas will care.

> The ISP may be needed to get your domain un-blacklisted if that
> happens.

There's not much they can do about it, any more than someone else's
ISP can get me to remove something from *my* blacklist.

For what it's worth, I even blacklist myself.  If I don't include
a special header line in messages I cc to myself, my own procmail
filters will silently delete my own messages.

> Have you got SPF records on your domain?  Those are sometimes used
> to detect fake addressing so that spammers who do this can be routed
> to the bit bucket more easily, and no bounce generated.

My procmail filters catch nearly all of the blowback.  Unfortunately,
that means they also block legitimate bounce messages.

>> That was not the first time Candy had called me a liar.  She
>> had previously insisted that I had blocked one of her messages
>> from this list.  She later apologized, and I, perhaps foolishly,
>> accepted that apology even though it was without explanation.

> Candy can be emotional, and say things she shouldn't.  She's done
> that with me too.  If everyone she said mean things to or about held
> it against her permanently, she wouldn't know many people anymore.

I already forgave her once.  Perhaps if everyone were to shun her,
she'd be motivated to straighten up.  Even if she doesn't, things
would be much more pleasant for everyone else.

Life is too short to waste one minute of it in the presence of people
like her, even if I were being paid for it, which of course I'm not.
I'd just as soon spend it in the company of someone whose hobby was
shooting my kneecaps with a shotgun.