[spoon-discuss] The time has come, the Walrus said...

["David E. Smith" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

... to talk of many things.

This game has been going on for over a year and a half.

Wow. That's a while, actually.

When this game started, I was working about 20 hours a week at Kmart,
living with two slightly deranged (but lovable) lesbians in Saint Louis,
just barely making it (and often not), and I didn't even own a car.

It's later now. I've moved (twice, if you count both TO and FROM Oregon,
under the vaguely-memorable Road Trip! rule). I bought a car that actually
runs. I'm working about fifty hours a week at a small local ISP, and I'm
now officially on-call ALL the time. (The previous holder of the dreaded
office pager has had it for about six years, so I can't fault him for
wanting to get rid of the damn thing.)

I've got a lovely girlfriend who, while not quite a geek herself -- she's
an accountant, arguably the archnemesis of geeks everywhere -- is very
geek-friendly (she's looking forward to seeing The Hulk even more than I),
and very tolerant of my weird little computer obsession.

I've got commitments both in online communities (things like the Usenet
Volunteer Votetakers) and offline communities (friends, family, politics,
all the usuals).

Sadly, I no longer have the time to keep up with B Nomic as much as it
deserves.

Let's look at a lovely quote from Joel regarding our predecessor, A Nomic,
from the Web page thereof:

> Though it is clear that I would not have been able to keep A Nomic
> running as long as I did without the tools I developed for the task, I
> now believe that streamlining the bookkeeping process is merely treating
> a symptom of a deeper problem--namely, that no matter how efficient my
> tools were, I was still the bottleneck.

Right on, brother.

It's just not possible to automate everything. If it were, well, we
wouldn't all even need to be here. We could just automate the whole game,
and come back three months later and see how badly Glotmorf and Wonko
screwed over the rest of us. :-)

I simply cannot continue this much longer. There are too many demands on
my time, and as much as I have come to love B Nomic, and every one of you,
something has to give.

I don't want this game to simply die out like A Nomic did (and,
apparently, its predecessor Berzerker Nomic). Whether the game simply be
brought to some formal conclusion (someone manages to hose the ruleset so
thoroughly that further play is impossible), a handoff to some new Admin
(you'll get a lovely shell account on Joel's machine as part of the deal,
and some lousy PHP code), or something even more outlandish, this game
deserves better.

Everyone who has ever voted, submitted a proposal, even merely posted to a
private forum -- and I know there are a lot of former players that may
never see this -- EVERY ONE of you has an investment in this game too.

I hate that I can't continue to repay that investment of time and effort
and energy and genuine oddness, but I can't continue to do so for much
longer.

I'm not yet formally resigning, but I would certainly welcome ideas.
Anything from a simple "amend the Admin rule to put in someone else's
name" to whatever your deviant minds can come up with.

[[ ObGame: No, I'm not dead. I've got votes counted, but I still have to
implement the few passed proposals and do all the usual end-of-nweek
stuff. I will do my darnedest to attend to this later today. ]]

...dave



-- 
David Smith  dave@[technopagan.org|bureau42.com|whatisay.com|mvn.net]
This signature contains 35% or more post-consumer recycled electrons.
_______________________________________________
spoon-discuss mailing list
spoon-discuss@xxxxxxxxx
http://lists.ellipsis.cx/mailman/listinfo/spoon-discuss