I'm Back (previously titled: "I quit")

[Synsational]

I started having cold sweats, waking up screaming, having nightmares and overall my life was fading to the thought of Apathy becoming an Admin.

Damn glad to have you back, Sir.

[cC.Agitator]

Oh great he is back :|

[John]

John, We all know you have other things you must do as well, so do we all. We all have lives outside of the Void, and yet we still make time to come around, and help out. I have set up a few forums myself in the past, though not VB, but I am sure it doesn't take too much longer to fully set up IPB, and it should have all been done on day 1. We gave you a link to a skin we all agreed upon, and nothing. If you do not have the time to devote to this place, allow us to take on more of the responsibility. I am sure you are reluctant to do so due to what happened with Samuel, and now Dark Method, but the reason they both left was because you don't seem to care about the stability of this place.

We have been asking for a few things for years, you say they are coming, and yet we wait.


Hell, I was talking to my tattooist the other day, about their website, and even though she runs her business, is teaching 3 apprentice tattooists, doing consultations on artwork, and setting up some charity events, she still has time to revamp their full website. Being a web designer myself we got to talking about it all, and when you start from scratch, design the look and everything yourself, code from scratch, those things do take time, but even that can be done faster than the void is being put back together.

You make a lot of good points.

I understand what you and others are saying about me spending more time on the void. All I can say to that is I will as I'm able to and I do truly want to do what I can to make the void an even more vibrant community.

Financially I'm having quite a rough time. I'm sure many others are as well in this fragile economy. One of my personal obstacles are bills & debt. Most of my bills are debt. (For any of you reading this, do yourself a favor and stay out of debt no matter how sure you are that things will be better in the future. Debt can start to control you and in some ways feel like a prison sentence.) Ultimately, I feel as though my head is constantly on the chopping block, financially. When I have free time the first thing I think of is how I can make that time not free so it will or might turn into some sort of revenue (so I can use it to pay down debts). Heck, this stuff is usually the first thing on my mind each day even when I wake up. I might be sharing too much info with all that, but I'm just trying to be straight with you about it. The Void does not generate income, maybe in the future it will but not currently and not in the past.

It was a LOT easier to spend whatever time I wanted wherever I wanted when my income was better and when my bills/debt was under control.

About vB versus IPB, I think they're generally the same in terms of setting up a new forum. Although I much prefer vB over IPB, at least based on my experience with IPB of a few years ago (they might be better now). I'm quite meticulous when it comes to major upgrades, as when we upgraded from vB3 to vB4, and paranoid (for lack of a better word) about data security. Simply backing up the database was not enough. I had to (wanted to) back up everything completely & ensure that it could be recovered 100% if anything went wrong (including a possible server crash during this type of upgrade, which I unfortunately experienced a few years ago while working on another site). Before even starting the upgrade I had a fully verified operating copy of the site on my personal computer. Next step was to make note of any mods (so they could be restored, if possible), uninstall them from the site (so as to not cause possible issues, maybe with incompatibilities with vB4) before starting the actual upgrade. Then with the void being quite large, part of the upgrade took hours with all the data moving to vB4 and rebuilding the search index. Anyhow, my point there is simply that it's not just a few clicks, especially when working on such a large vB database (and data that you absolutely do not want any chance of losing).

Everything you mentioned about your tattoo artist makes sense. The difference, though, is that she makes money from all that work which enables her to pay her bills & live. Doing all that stuff is almost a necessity in order to remain in that type of business and to grow that business. Even the website of a tattoo shop earns money, even if indirectly. Charity events probably have a lot of promotional benefit as well, which ultimately means more $ for the biz. A friend of mine has tattoos which have cost hundreds of dollars each. He probably has close to $5,000 in ink on his body now. And that's just one person out of many clients of that particular tattoo shop. I would love to be able to find even just a few clients that would drop that type of coin advertising on the void. Figure, if the tattoo artist does not do everything possible to stay in business and grow there's another tattoo shop probably the next town over, or maybe another competitor in the same town, which would be more than happy to work harder to earn their $5k ink customers.

Sometimes I think about changing my business to provide offline tech services. I would probably work the way your tattoo artist works on her business. I'd prefer to get my online biz back in shape again, though. I even often think about working for someone else instead of for my own business which might be what I end up doing eventually.

The void isn't my only website. I have others which do earn some money (a while back it was good money) along with what I believe are some good domain names that I have been trying to find buyers for. With bills/debt being an urgent necessity (including what I pay to keep the server online which also runs the void) I end up having to choose where to spend time with a focus on ways which result in revenues. A few years ago I didn't mind so much spending time even when not earning from it, because I had sites earning money when I was not working directly on them and I also had enough money to handle my bills easily. That has changed quite a bit, so I now work a lot on restoring all of that.

I don't know how else to explain it other than to say things aren't as simple as they might seem for me.

I didn't intend on making such a long response and I would edit it to shorten, but at this point I need to just post it so I can get on to something else (sleep).

[faru]

NICEEE !

[cC.DOMINO™]

3 cheers for DM, Hip hip hooray, 3 cheers for John, Hip hip Hooray! And Apathy... Go Fuck yourself!

finally the void makes sense again. Will this mean that things will change now? or is DM just coming back into the same BS with no Admin CP and no fixing of the website?

Also John, when DM did get demoted you demoted him to general member what was that all about? He shoulda gotten retired staff color and a little respect imo.

[Pet]

John, I know more than you might think about owning an operating a business. I myself do not run one, yet, but I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My family owns a renovation company, garbage company for 2 local cities, and is working on making an organic waste company as well. They also ventured into the coffee shop business, but that didn't make them any money, so they franchised it to local university. I have already sold art to several people, including MTV, and want to work at making a fashion line, and go from there.

If what you are doing now isn't financially viable, then find something else. Sometimes you have to work based on what the economy allows you to do. Also, if you do admit to seeing a potential for profit from the void, why not put in some effort to make it profitable for you?

[Linda]

This made my day <3

[Aether]

I started having cold sweats, waking up screaming, having nightmares and overall my life was fading to the thought of Apathy becoming an Admin.

Damn glad to have you back, Sir.

^this

[exclusive]

naice bruh

[Nutter]

You make a lot of good points.

I understand what you and others are saying about me spending more time on the void. All I can say to that is I will as I'm able to and I do truly want to do what I can to make the void an even more vibrant community.

Financially I'm having quite a rough time. I'm sure many others are as well in this fragile economy. One of my personal obstacles are bills & debt. Most of my bills are debt. (For any of you reading this, do yourself a favor and stay out of debt no matter how sure you are that things will be better in the future. Debt can start to control you and in some ways feel like a prison sentence.) Ultimately, I feel as though my head is constantly on the chopping block, financially. When I have free time the first thing I think of is how I can make that time not free so it will or might turn into some sort of revenue (so I can use it to pay down debts). Heck, this stuff is usually the first thing on my mind each day even when I wake up. I might be sharing too much info with all that, but I'm just trying to be straight with you about it. The Void does not generate income, maybe in the future it will but not currently and not in the past.

It was a LOT easier to spend whatever time I wanted wherever I wanted when my income was better and when my bills/debt was under control.

About vB versus IPB, I think they're generally the same in terms of setting up a new forum. Although I much prefer vB over IPB, at least based on my experience with IPB of a few years ago (they might be better now). I'm quite meticulous when it comes to major upgrades, as when we upgraded from vB3 to vB4, and paranoid (for lack of a better word) about data security. Simply backing up the database was not enough. I had to (wanted to) back up everything completely & ensure that it could be recovered 100% if anything went wrong (including a possible server crash during this type of upgrade, which I unfortunately experienced a few years ago while working on another site). Before even starting the upgrade I had a fully verified operating copy of the site on my personal computer. Next step was to make note of any mods (so they could be restored, if possible), uninstall them from the site (so as to not cause possible issues, maybe with incompatibilities with vB4) before starting the actual upgrade. Then with the void being quite large, part of the upgrade took hours with all the data moving to vB4 and rebuilding the search index. Anyhow, my point there is simply that it's not just a few clicks, especially when working on such a large vB database (and data that you absolutely do not want any chance of losing).

Everything you mentioned about your tattoo artist makes sense. The difference, though, is that she makes money from all that work which enables her to pay her bills & live. Doing all that stuff is almost a necessity in order to remain in that type of business and to grow that business. Even the website of a tattoo shop earns money, even if indirectly. Charity events probably have a lot of promotional benefit as well, which ultimately means more $ for the biz. A friend of mine has tattoos which have cost hundreds of dollars each. He probably has close to $5,000 in ink on his body now. And that's just one person out of many clients of that particular tattoo shop. I would love to be able to find even just a few clients that would drop that type of coin advertising on the void. Figure, if the tattoo artist does not do everything possible to stay in business and grow there's another tattoo shop probably the next town over, or maybe another competitor in the same town, which would be more than happy to work harder to earn their $5k ink customers.

Sometimes I think about changing my business to provide offline tech services. I would probably work the way your tattoo artist works on her business. I'd prefer to get my online biz back in shape again, though. I even often think about working for someone else instead of for my own business which might be what I end up doing eventually.

The void isn't my only website. I have others which do earn some money (a while back it was good money) along with what I believe are some good domain names that I have been trying to find buyers for. With bills/debt being an urgent necessity (including what I pay to keep the server online which also runs the void) I end up having to choose where to spend time with a focus on ways which result in revenues. A few years ago I didn't mind so much spending time even when not earning from it, because I had sites earning money when I was not working directly on them and I also had enough money to handle my bills easily. That has changed quite a bit, so I now work a lot on restoring all of that.

I don't know how else to explain it other than to say things aren't as simple as they might seem for me.

I didn't intend on making such a long response and I would edit it to shorten, but at this point I need to just post it so I can get on to something else (sleep).

I understand your financial problems, but the time spent typing that could have been spent on stuff for the site.