October 13th was the last day I was on the List for a while. Life reared its ugly head and I had to take a second job. In spite of being in front of a computer all night, I did not have time to do much with the List.
The cool part of this was that I did get several e-mails off list asking what had happened. In the spirit of a granfalloon, there were several people that wanted to know why I suddenly dropped off the list. Maybe we are actually a karass? And yes, I did get a chance to re-read Cat's Cradle recently.
On November 6th I got a chance to get on the List for a couple of hours. It was a hollow reunion of sorts - a few welcome back messages but mostly catching up with one person (Thanks, Steve!). I had heard some things about the List from the off list messages, and it appears that I missed (?) a run of subscription bots that got a lot of people's knickers in a knot. I tried to keep subscribed but it was not as easy as I had hoped. Still fighting fatigue from the evening shift and trying to keep up the appearance of work on the day job...I didn't get back to the List for another couple of weeks.
Whew! Back on the List for a day (November 24th) and there were 82 messages! I was able to drop the night job and concentrate on the day job (which is paying a salary again) and decided to jump back in again. Part of what spurred me on was a message I got from a BLister I met early on. Seems that another BLister was telling the List that I had dropped off because "MARK WAS SICK OF YOUR GARBAGE SO HE AND KAREN AND KARA AND HER HUSBAND ALL LEFT THE LIST". I explained that I had not had the time, and Kara and family had computer problems that kept them off the list, but I felt that the best way to dispell the rumor was to become active on the List.
If you missed me, I am back. If you didn't, welcome to the List!
Well, it seems that the List died on the weekend of 17 January, 2004. At least, I have tried to get to the site and have been met with a Cannot Find Server error. I have mixed feelings about it, since there was a lot of 'old times' type of posting in addition to a lot of repeat posts. The former was good to be a part of - comments back and forth between BListers, sites of interest submitted for our approval, New Year greetings...all in all a fun time. I even went a little overboard and started reposting from the first days of my participation in the list with the threat that I was going to take over the lead for total posts. The scarcasm of that action was lost on those who most needed to see it, but the other 'regulars' had a lot of fun with it and started reposting my reposts.
The demands of my workdays kept me from doing much more than subscribing, but I tried to participate when it seemed necessary. A lot of the time it seemed that staying subscribed was easy - there was little activity on the list. I would check my e-mail and find that I had been bumped an hour ago, but when I resubscribed there were no new messages showing on the main page. Maybe the apathy finally did in the List?
I would like to see the List resurrected, but it may have served its purpose and will just be a fond memory. Whatever happens to the List, it has been an interesting journey.
The List did NOT die off! It seems there was a move from one server to another, and the DNS didn't update properly. Or the database wasn't working right. Or the moon was in the wrong house. Something.
Anyway, the List has been back in business for a couple of weeks (as of this writing) and is doing well. The rigors of life have kept me from staying on the List as much as I would like, but I have been able to subscribe every now and then. There does not seem to be as much posting activity as there was before, so it is a quiet accumulation of time. The only problem is that the Bump notice can be missed because I don't get a flood of e-mails as before, which required me to keep checking to see if one was the dreaded Bump.
