Rant: On Asbestos, Hacking, and Ineptitude
Posted by Nick on 10 July 2000, 20:07 GMT

Alright... I'm beginning this item at 12:37 AM. I just got home from a rather complete day. I don't know how many mistakes I'll make, but here goes nothing (everything?). Keep this in mind while I lambaste all you otherwise comfortably happy people with a very (very) bad rant that I've had festering in me since about last March.

I've always enjoyed my work at ticalc.org. The people I work with are great, they're friendly (even though there are people I rip on as a joke sometimes *g*), and I'd be hard pressed to find another team quite as talented, skilled, and devoted as the people I've worked with since my joining the staff last May.

I like posting news. I like making people smile at the news, to have a chuckle, and then to be entertained to boot. They have fun coming to the site. Inevitably, they come back for more. I enjoy what I do. I'm good at it, and I'm having fun at the same time. I really haven't found such a thing in my entire life.

For those of you who have just started visiting here (and I just know we get such an influx of visitors in mid-July), my name is Nick Disabato. I post news here at ticalc.org. It's what I do. I was initially hired to do screenshots, but problems with the system and a vacancy as news editor quickly found me at the helm of said section in question. I've been that way ever since. I'm getting close to posting my 250th news item (yay!), but that's not really a milestone that I care about much at the moment.

Since my beginnings as a completely inept, bumbling moron of a news editor who would insert many a grievous error into news items (destroying our page layout was a real fun one), I'd like to say that my practice has led to perfection... at least, technical perfection. Up until about late March of this year, I can honestly say that working at ticalc.org was one of the best things I've ever done.

Quite sadly, my current position and views on things have led me to think of my job as being far from the halcyon days of yore. I refuse to mention names, I refuse to link to email addresses or web sites. I don't want to start wars. I wasn't hired here to start wars with anyone. The only person I'm at war with right now is myself.

Let's start with the general immaturity and ignorance of most people who decide to visit me during my normal day. Requests have filled the news mailbox and my mailbox like clockwork that: think we're the epicenter of vast conspiracies headed by TI because our secondary DNS server is ns.ti.com, want me to post news about $1,000,000 contests if people can find two numbers that divide together to equal a number besides 1.41, want me to go F myself, want me to die, tell me that I'm going to die by their hand, etc. etc. etc. Mostly it's just people begging for news items, and the signal to noise ratio has gotten alarmingly low as of recent. I doubt it has much to do with the signal decreasing as it has to do with the noise increasing: people see a lack of news posts on the site to be their cue to flood my email box. I've gotten mailbombed before, too. With 2,000+ messages. That was really pleasant, especially for my friend who hosts my mail servers and web site for free.

It almost seems like, as far as my posting news goes, there's two camps: those who get along with me fine, who claim their files and participate actively, who put out good quality software, who get my news posts more often than anyone else. There eventually becomes an influx in that direction of news items pertaining to that person or people, and that irks me, because it always seems like I'm not giving enough focus to the people who have rising talent and potential to improve. On the other hand, if you're not intelligent and polite in your requests, and you don't seem to want to talk to me (I am an approachable person - most people should probably notice that by now); you want me to die, to fall off a large building (ironically, I do live in the city with the largest building in the world, heh), to be shot. I've had death threats before. I don't take things like that lightly, only because I've never really gotten serious death threats in real life prior to my working at ticalc.org. I hate to say that, but it's true.

Horribly Extreme Example of the Day(TM): Someone from the East Coast wanted to visit me. So much, in fact, that he decided to drive to Chicago to visit me. This involved stealing his parents' SUV and driving across five state lines. He did so, and was eventually caught at the Indiana/Ohio state border. Furthermore, he's fifteen years old and as a result has absolutely no driving experience.
All to see me. To top it all off, I still have NO idea what he would do if we actually met.
It's flattering, but... you get the idea.

Moving away from the people who hate me with a passion and/or are obsessed with me, let's go on to the immature and ignorant ones. People have done things that really, REALLY chafe me - I don't want to say what they've done, because that gives their name(s) away, and furthermore - this is what really gets to me - they don't understand that they've even done something wrong in the first place! Doesn't that seem just a little wrong to at least some of you? Please? Anyone?

Another example. Two programming groups - both of which code BASIC programs (you know who you are) - have gotten themselves into a war because one of them is full of power-hungry, pre-pubescent, twelve-year-old control freaks. They both come to my email box pleading to post news items validating their respective existences. They bug me through AIM. They invite me to Buddy Chats with them. I oblige. They spew "I hate this group! I hate this person!" over and over again, not giving *ANY* reasons as to why: or even HOW it happened! And you think this would simmer down after a few weeks? No! They have to be painfully persistent about it. They deface each other's web pages in only the most moronic and blatantly obvious of ways. I tried to make some humor out of the situation at my personal site a few days ago, but none of them noticed. They chose not to view that page. They blocked that out of their collective consciousness.

You know what? Ignorance is bliss, and they're in euphoria right now. Life is inherently unpleasant. None of them understand that. None of them ever WILL understand that, it seems.

But wait, there's more! A highly esteemed, respectable programming group - all of its members I have a great deal of respect for - has been at the forefront of what seems to be Nick Disabato's Evil Bad Few Months(TM) for the past week. One of their projects, which they've been working on for five months, was prematurely leaked to the public by what seems to be an unknown person. It's been traced back to another TI site, and essentially what happened in the past day or two was a lot of people were added to my AIM block list. By now, I've refused to deal with this anymore. Can you tell?

I posted to nickd.org six weeks ago that, come college this fall, I won't have any more time to work at ticalc.org. I mean that: I really won't. After September 15, I honestly won't know what to do. I love my job, I love the people I'm around, but there are just those bad points that really, really do irk and chafe me. None of you have any idea the kind of world of terror one goes through when people call you up at 3:00 AM repeatedly with death threats. Or when they drive across four state lines in an effort to stalk me. Or...

I hope at least a few of you can reflect on what I'm saying, and really do act upon it, without blindly sending flames to my inbox. I doubt it'll happen, though. After all... ignorance is bliss. Enjoy your ride.

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