Path: news2.digex.net!access5!dpm From: dpm@access5.digex.net (David P. Murphy) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: plaque: r.i.p. speaker Date: 5 Sep 1996 14:22:47 -0400 Organization: Phase of the Moon Software Inc. Alexandria, VA Lines: 264 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: access5.digex.net Xref: news2.digex.net alt.callahans:159624 prologue ======== CARL logged out at 23-AUG-1996 12:44:25.86 ^P >>>h Halted >>> storyline ========= PhaseOfTheMoon looks up from his seat at the bar, where he has drained the last can of his pepsi six-pack while listening to the many, many patrons who have spoken for, against, and/or about the one known as Speaker-to-Minerals. "This is a very interesting Place," he begins. "A few of you have read those papers i tacked to the wall, some of you have discussed them openly, and some of you have whispered your thoughts to me while others were talking. i was happy to hear from you, regardless of your opinions. Even those who refuse to listen to any words they do not wish to hear," he says, motioning to an individual who stares constantly at Phase; this person has somehow acquired several of Phase's business cards, and is busy scratching out the title 'systems programmer' thereon and writing 'sysadmin' instead . . . but whenever Phase opens his mouth to speak, the man frantically stuffs wads of cotton into each ear, only to remove them as soon as he finishes conversing. Phase shrugs. "Killfiling. It happens." He casually strolls around the bar, appreciating the respect shown him by the patrons. He has already privately complimented those who contributed particularly well-thought-out remarks; there were many more then he expected. "I will admit that i was beginning to feel a bit frustrated that, after a week of discussions over his fate, no one seemed to have made any effort to find out the truth behind his termination. Did this group of people prefer to sit around and mong rumors? Finally i called his employer myself and relayed what i heard, though i knew it would not mean much coming from 'the accused'. I have since been informed that others had indeed been making inquiries, and in one case had been specifically asked *not* to post. So i apologize to the Patrons in general, and i'd especially like to thank The Yendi, Fred Bach, and," he pauses to look up into the rafters, "Kyla-Sprite for their efforts. There are probably others; my thanks to them as well." "The best place for me to start is to answer the many queries about my motives in sending that letter; these range from those who agreed with my assessment but were disgusted that i 'complained to an employer', all the way to those who believe i was doing my damnedest to get Carl fired for his 'miscarriage' comment. "Point one. Many letters had already been received by caltech about his behavior, going back a long time. He had been abusive for years without any apparent reaction from his superiors, so i certainly had good reason to think that *nothing* would happen as a result of my letter; in fact, i said as much in the letter itself. "Point two. Anyone who seriously believes that caltech would fire an employee with several years tenure over a single letter might as well stop reading this post, since you're obviously beyond my ability to convince of anything at all. "Point three. I did not suggest in my letter that his net.access be revoked, let alone that he be terminated. I only wanted to ensure that they were aware of what their employer was accomplishing with their resources and their name . . . any actions taken would be theirs. "Point four. It can be seen that his termination would not be in my best interest, because i fully expected him to simply get an account with a private ISP in pasadena and continue posting to comp.os.vms as he had always done. "Point five. Since i did not expect him to be fired or even reprimanded, the intent of my letter was to find *someone* he respected (thus the thirty- one coworker recepients) who would hopefully be alerted by the letter to take him aside and convince him to be more considerate." Phase shakes his head. "Sure, it was a long shot. But there wasn't much else for me to do, and although i was the only one to write it and sign it, i wasn't alone in spirit. Many of the comp.os.vms regulars resented Carl's attitude, and someone over there recently said Whether we sympathize with this or not is irrelevent. The end result is a situation where people are less likely to try answering questions, and we the members of this newsgroup/list are the ultimate losers. which pretty much confirms what i felt. I assure you that i was as surprised as anyone here when i heard he was fired, and that i was quite sad and unhappy when i heard of his death. I can't claim him as a friend --- he never talked about himself on that newsgroup --- yet i felt naught but grief over his end. "He wanted to scare away anyone who couldn't ask questions intelligently and anyone who posted misinformation. He justified this stand by saying the signal-to-noise ratio should be kept high, and that false information would harm people who used it. But he *knew* his abuse resulted in much more noise than 'wrong' questions ever did, and if he despised those he felt incompetent, why did he try to protect them (since any competent person would test code off the net before placing into a production area)? "Many people have said that Carl 'did not suffer fools gladly'. But the determination of who is a fool and who isn't reflected heavily on Carl; again, i'll let someone from the vms group speak: _Usually_, Carl would give a poster the benefit of the doubt the first time around. However, as time proceeded (I watched him over a period of about four years) it seemed to me that he stopped making these distinctions and adopted a "shoot first" policy. which i agreed with so strongly that it was the primary cause of my decision to write the letter; the 'miscarriage' comment, if anything, was simply the last straw. Re-read the very end of the attachment on my web page and decide whether his goal was to persuade the person to post more detailed explanations in the future, or simply to insult." A voice is heard from the crowd. "I feel that your bringing up a personal tragedy in the midst of an argument wasn't appropriate either." "Yeah, my 'emotional blackmail'. If you had heard my tone of voice," he glances over at someone and smiles ruefully, "you would have realized that i was merely remarking upon a coincidence, as in two bad things happening at the same time." Phase glances over at one corner of the bar, where an ugly person is viciously beating a villager, yelling 'I know how you'll react to this!!', then continues on. "Obviously not everyone will believe this, but while i was most certainly hurting from the miscarriage, i was still able to be depressed that someone i respected was not only refusing to understand my question, but was putting words in my mouth and distorting the thread." Someone in the back snorts, "You respected him? You don't act like it." "Everyone on comp.os.vms respected him for his knowledge and his devotion to helping people about VMS. Anything else we felt doesn't change that. He helped me many times, and i thanked him each time. Sometimes i thanked him for assisting a third party." A lady at the bar murmurs, without turning around, "You've painted a rather one-sided picture, Phase." He turns in her direction, pauses, then blushes. "Truly, i *am* guilty. T'was unintentional, and i thank you for pointing it out." He resumes facing the majority of the crowd. "No matter how often i stand here and talk about his help, i'm understating the case. Carl was astoundingly prolific, replying to a host of questions not only deep in number but wide in subject. His *answers* were almost always complete, clear, and correct. There are hundreds if not thousands of VMS users, programmers and admins logging in today who are better off because Carl spent some of his time helping them. He certainly earned respect and admiration for that, and i'm sorry that i've talked so much about the 'bad' without fully acknowledging the good." A rough voice calls out from a booth. "So Carl said something that paraphrases to 'I want to make newcomers feel so unwelcome that they don't post again.'? Can I find that on DejaNews?" "No, he said he wanted to scare away newcomers *who couldn't ask questions properly*. As for DejaNews," Phase looks a bit exasperated, "look yourself. I don't remember when he said it, i can't find it in any of my email archives, and i stopped my Deja attempt as soon as i saw Hits 1-50 of 2079 for Query: ~a lydick & ~g comp.os.vms * 975 articles posted between 1996/01/01 and 1996/06/24. * 99 % followups. i'm sorry, but i just don't have to time to read over two thousand articles." A slight pause as his eyes unfocus, then "Geez, the man posted to FIFTY-EIGHT different newsgroups in six months! I wonder how much of that was due to cross-posting?" The rough voice continues, "You are saying you know WHY Carl acted a certain way. I'm saying 'I'm very sure that you're over-speaking yourself.'" Phase sighs, thinking of that Perfect World in which everyone carefully reads postings. "No, i'm saying 'Carl publicly described his motives', not 'I know his motives'. The innermost truth about Carl is beyond my grasp." A small, misshapen yet somehow unlikeable sickly-green monster struts up to Phase and begins beating his arms against Phase's knees, striking blows which would fail to dent a marshmallow. Phase reluctantly reaches into the hyperspatial pocket of his denim jacket (not the one holding the katana ;-) and hands the malformed creature a child-sized basketball with a happy face painted onto it. The freak gleefully runs around, using the ball to push chairs and tables into different positions. Mike tolerates this until it maniacally attacks the cash register, and which point he asks it just what does it thinks it's doing? It looks up at him in contempt and snarls loudly "I'm rearranging this bar with his head!" Mike looks it straight in the eyes and quotes the Monster Manual, "To kill a troll, the monster must be burned or immersed in acid." The troll glares back at him and shouts, "Your remarks are not probative! I cannot be harmed until no fewer than two other statements of separate origin confirm that to form a *plane* of fire! Here, I'll show you!" He jumps into the fireplace and is instantly and totally consumed by the roaring flames; a few patrons reward his ashy remains with a golf-clap. Mike finishes his quote, "Intelligence: Low." Another voice, soft but sure. "At one point I considered sending your letter and attachments along with a personal letter stating that you had caused the death of my friend to your employer and as many fellow employees that I could.... but I chose to let the anger burn away." Phase shrugs. "If you think you'll accomplish something, send what you will to John Abate (my superior), Doug Borella (his superior), Dr. John Kelly (president), Grady Ogburn (head of support), Tony Scanga (VMS programmer), or Jeff Edmonds (guy across the hall) at Datametrics Systems Corporation 12150 East Monument Drive #300 Fairfax, VA 22033 USA or call (703) 385-7700. However, i'm not *encouraging* you to do so; they've all got plenty of Real Work to do, and i've kept them informed of my actions from the day i handed the thirty-five envelopes to a Post Office employee, and they pretty much agree with what i've done. But i'm not going to hide anything from ya'll. "Please be quite sure of any accusations you make, though. i strongly doubt you can legally defend the statement that i 'caused the death' of Carl. "And as for 'letting the anger burn away', many people tried many times over several years to get Carl to chill out. They and i felt that it was *not* his newsgroup nor his place to decide who could post and who couldn't, and that *he* had no business posting insults to a technical newsgroup. I let him alone for a long time, and sat on the letter for two weeks after originally writing it, thinking it over, before sending it. "Clearly i don't agree with those who think it was none of my business sending the letter to caltech; in my mind, i was merely bringing their attention to a matter of which they either were already aware or should have been." A distinguish-looking gentleman calls out, "What if he had not posted from caltech.edu?" "Then i wouldn't have sent anything to caltech. And that, i'm afraid, makes me think that Carl was *stupid*. To constantly send such abuse and libel from his employer's computers strikes me as either incredibly dim- witted or incredibly arrogant, and at least one person has already said that Carl deserved due to be fired just for that." Phase asks Mike for a glass of Glenfiddich, then walks to the chalk line and eyes the fireplace, which is now reminiscent of a pickup location for a glass recycling center. "I cannot toast the memory of Speaker-to-Minerals; i never met that individual, and he seems to have been a bit different from the person i knew." He sets the glass on the floor, the whiskey untouched. "One patron said 'Carl needed help in his present, not in this one.' He might have needed help, but IMHO he never asked for it, didn't want it and probably wouldn't have accepted it if it had been offered. "And now i've got things to do. My older daughter just started junior high, my younger wants me to finish painting her dollhouse, and I have yet to make the HER and HOLMES source available to the vms people as I promised. I'm grateful to all of you, good and bad, for showing me the other sides of Carl which of course were there, though i never saw them. "But i'll be in Anaheim in two months for the DECUS symposium. There'll be more than a few of the regular comp.os.vms/vmsnet.* crowd attending, and i'll be proud to buy a RL drink for anyone who wishes to toast Carl J. Lydick, who spent so much of his time answering other people's questions and doing what he thought was right to improve the newsgroup." Phase walks over to the papers he pinned to the wall, pulls them off, hesitates, then pins them back up. He nods to Mike, drops a double-eagle on the bar, and walks back to the chalk line. "One more thing," he says, picking up his whiskey and looking around the room. "To lively debate, to remembering each other, to seeking the truth, to enjoying life and attempting to find the meaning therein." He raises his glass to the crowd, drains the Glenfiddich, makes his System Shock roll (barely), and throws the glass into the fireplace <<<>>> with a passable screwball. PhaseOfTheMoon tips his ever-present black baseball cap with the purple _Sandman_ logo, replaces his glasses with prescription shades, pops open the inevitable pepsi-for-the-road, and walks out the door into that dark night. He doesn't look back. ok dpm -- David P. Murphy mailto:murphy@connor.datametrics.com (work) systems programmer mailto:dpm@access.digex.net (personal) http://www.access.digex.net/~dpm COGITO ERGO DISCLAIMUM ftp://ftp.access.digex.net/pub/access/dpm