Unfortunately, PF@AOL has no choice but to close down forever and ever until death do us part, blah blah blah
See, I originally had all my pf@aol stuff on voicenet's server here, but I got so damn many hits that I was forced to take the site down and put up a message saying pf@aol was dead... then, a beacon of hope sent me a message.
I was informed by web space provider named Gold Net Services (later changed to For.net or something. I was moved to for.net anyway) that they would host my site for free, which was, to say the least, excellent. Here is the chronology of events:
Day 1: Upload files to new space.
Day 2: Continue uploading
Day 3: Online! Change all links, inform sites of the change, all that crap.
Day 10: Server has some kind of problem. I email the guy in charge about it.
Day 15: I get a response and am told my site is being moved to for.net and my password is now changed, etc.
Day 20: Informed for.net server is up and ready for my stuff.
Day 20.1: After trying to upload, I am unable to. I email the guy in charge.
Day 23: Get a reply.
Day 300: The server is finally working and I upload my stuff.
Day 301: Update links, all that crap.
Day 330: Continue updating pf@aol. All is fine except the site is horribly slow. I begin redesigning the site to be faster on the slow server, which is a huge pain in the ***, due to how many files I have.
Day 340: Finish design. Get ready to upload. Discover my site no longer exists but points to for.net's site.
Day 345: Reply recieved from guy in charge about Day 340's events. Told it will be fixed soon.
Day 1243156234: Fixed. I begin uploading some stuff.
Day 1243156235: All my files are gone, moved to another directory which I cannot access. I email the guy in charge
Day 1243156240: Informed it will be fixed soon
Today: No reply. Defeated and helpless, I upload this page, informing everyone my site is dead. Sorry. I'd love to keep it up - but it appears to no longer be an option
You get what you pay for, eh?
I'd love to go out with a bang.. in fact, I wanted to finish AOLDoom2 (with all new enemies, weapons, and brand new, EXCELLENT levels) but I've been so damned occupied with my site (or lack of my site) that I have not been able to work on AOLDoom2, especially considering I was not very sure, if I did finish it, that it would have a place to go.
I would like to take a moment to apologize to Mr. Peterson. This guy actually created 10 Doom levels for me (since I don't know how to design doom levels), EXACTLY the way I wanted them. He had to work his *** off, as these levels were clever, contained puzzles, excellent baddie locations, and gobs of great stuff... and in the end it turns out the product they were made for will never be released. I truly am sorry for this - I wish I could have made this game. I personally recommend that you keep your levels and make some kind of WAD yourself, because your levels truly were excellent, and I enjoyed playing them much more than the original Doom levels.
Back to addressing everyone now...ya know, I have hated doing pf@aol for..hmm.. I guess 2 years now. I stopped loathing AOL quite a time ago, simply deciding to dislike the service. But I continued updating the page, week after week. I continued looking around on the net for stuff to post. I continued to be subscribed to alt.aol-sucks despite the fact that it turned into absolute crap, occasionally sprinkled with a good post from Lindell, Nightheart, or some of the other good posters who actually stuck around. Why did I continue doing it? I'm not sure. I think it's because I really got a kick out of being able to go to virtually any anti-aol page and seeing a link to my own site. I loved that - I'm not sure why. I'm going to miss that the most.. because soon, as people gradually realize my site is gone, they will remove their links. While i'm making this officially the longest goodbye ever:
Thanks go out to:
Nightheart - as the posts in a.a-s wore thinner, and I ran out of stuff to find on the web, I got closer and closer to announcing the death of pf@aol.. solely due to lack of material. But the day (quite literally) that I wrote the goodbye letter for then, I found another post in a.a-s. It was pretty damned funny. It was yours. I thought "what the hell. One more week of updates" and uploaded your post. Then you kept doing it. Pretty soon I had a whole directory full of stuff I still needed to post on pf@aol, not even including all the stuff on your web site I wanted to archive. You kept my site going when nothing else could. I appreciate this very much.
Lindell B. Jones - You, like Nightheart, continued posting songs and parodies when nobody else would. You also provided an excellent site that I was proud to link to. Most importantly (to me, anyway), after I made my first post to alt.aol-sucks, stepping into the world of posting to newsgroups for the first time (before I was just a lurker, although I didn't know that was the term), I was flamed. I felt extremely stupid. I figured I turned a whole group against me, a group that had similar interests to me (at the time). But you emailed me. I can't even remember what my damn post was, but you responded to it, like a normal human being. I knew at LEAST one person in the group didn't hate me, and that was all I needed to stay subscribed to a.a-s (without which, pf@aol would have never lasted a week). Thanks.
David Cassel - You deserve recognition here just for doing aolwatch.org, an excellent site that helped fuel any dislike of AOL I had. You also responded any time I had a question about AOL or anything like that and even linked to some of my pages (mainly aoldoom and the halloween adventure). Thank you, Dave. Art Stone - Like Lindell, you became a friend in a whole group of people, few of whom I thought didn't loathe me for being an idiot. You always said positive stuff, and were generally a cool guy. You also were one of the few people I knew who I could talk to on IRC when I visited the a.a-s channel. You even answered my rediculous questions when I had them. I probably wouldn't understand the internet as well as I do if not for you. Thank you.
Kelani - Geeze, Kel, what can I say? Whenever I emailed you, you actually replied, positively. You also made the wonderful Kel Calls AOL series, which, without a doubt, became the most popular aspect of my site (most of my emails were regarding when the next one would be done). Thanks for that and just for being a cool guy who chatted with me in IRC.
Obviously, I can't thank everyone who helped pf@aol exist for as long as it did, as that list is just too damn huge. But special thanks go out to all the people who owned the pages that I used to link to. Also, to anyone who ever emailed me with a positive comment about my site, or sent me something funny to post on my page, or even visited the damn page to keep the counter rising and rising, letting me know people still visited, I wish to thank you very, very much.
I'm not sure if anyone will ever see this page, as the pages being linked to for pf@aol are the ones on the for.net server, but I hope the four people mentioned above as well as the catch-all 5th group see it at least.
That's it. I got nothing else. I wish I had some kind of neat last line here, but I don't, because I'm tired, and somewhat drunk. So I'll just type one last line in for a goodbye, and whatever it is, no matter how rediculous, I won't erase it and it will be the final line of pf@aol forever. Ok, here it is.
Happy New Year! Damn, that sucked. Oh well.
-rod
