Labels:text | screenshot OCR: What does a locally-based, BBS-dependant group do when its WHQ goes dow unexpectedly? When you're in the middle of an unpopular and risky move like putting a group through a tour and communication is vital, it gives a leader a heart attack to see something like this at the matrix login. Che screa a u g 24 1994 to itnitnitnitnit may 01 1997. .: (pause)- and then it hung up. Was it hacked? Or was it, as the ansi read, really dead? Some die-hard optimists and naive innocents thought that the board truly had undergone some sort of invasion, as the ansi was far from longtime sysop Nitnatsnoc's typical style (although similar to aspects of one Dieznyik, an artist Nit had always shown respect towards for his originality. ) The rest of IS, however, knew the sad truth. This was all clinched when it was revealed that his last communications to the outside world were shortly before the first reported sighting of the boards' closing, in the form of netmails to his net hosts and hubs asking for them to stop sending him mail packets. He knew it was going down and was going to do it orderly and neatly - except for not warning any of the users or members of the groups it represented beforehand. The board, which had celebrated its much-lauded second anniversary about ond anniversary about He wasn't part of eight months previously, was taking its toll on its sysop. He wasn't part of the scene actively anymore, his role in ACiD having been reduced to doing spot duced to doing spot art for the quarterly newsletter, and his lack of enthusiasm for the scene in general was well known to an inner circle of longtime callers. n for the scene in the board during the summer One example of this was the long downtime of the board during the summer of 1996 - no big threat to irregular pack releases but a major stumbling block ut a major stumbling block xtrenist who depended on its for long-distance members such as Thanatos and The Extremist who depended on its reliability for a link to the group. A more private arrangement had existed for arrangement had existed for d gone to school together some time between me, Cthulu, and Nitnatsnoc. We had gone to school together riginal Telegard setup, and for several years, dreaming up most aspects of the original Telegard setup, and there were many long chat sessions I successfully argued on the behalf of all of gued on the behalf of all of the regular callers to keep the board up. All it required on his side was to quired on his side was to leave his but the en cater to mediocrity. ter If he could not muster up the motivation to keep the board changing and dynamic, it would die, and him along with it. This all came to a pseudo-head at the beginning of April, 1997, when Nit asked me to provide something which I had been promising for a long time - a uniquely customized version of the online game Legend of the Red Dragon. He accompanied the request with an ultimatum - if the game was not up and running, fully customized, by May 1st, he would take the board down. of realized deadlines, April 28th, 1997: After a frantic weeknend of realized deadlines, Cthulu uploads LORD, fully edited and ready for play. Casual conversation-type e-mail May 1st cane and passed without event. Casual conversation-type e-mail mically enough, some of it centred had been sent without any foreboding, and ironically enough, some of it centred ake in the ANSI scene - in ACID - around a proposed comeback Nit was going to make in the ANSI scene - in ACID - before dropping completely out of the scene in late August 1997, for the board's n late August 1997, for the board' as normally, at least for the next three months. d it seemed that all would proceed third anniversary. The board remained up, and it seemed that all would proceed Maybe his computer clock was faulty, or maybe he just forgot to do it at the designated time (check my agenda: feed the cat, mow the lawn, disconnect a part of my life which has dominated my free time for the better part of three years. . . ) but come the morning of May 3rd, the above matrix was displayed in the place of the typical jolly ansimated tonato. This came as a surprise to most and an outrage to me, after having fulfilled my commitment with the customized LORD in time and not having even been warned about the closure. FACT: When the customized LORD was passed on to The Jade Monkey, a few errors remained to plague its availability for a few weeks. Did IST go down because I had only tested it locally and not while running a fossil driver? Still, I had asked Mit about LORD the day I uploaded it, some four days before the actual closure of the board, more than enough tine to effectuate changes were they needed. But he wanted an excuse, and that may have been a sufficient one. Still, outraged as I was, it came as no surprise to me, after the immediate shock. It was inevitable that he take the board down and leave with it, but his timing was notoriously bad. FACT: So fatalist about the whole thing were both of us that a few weeks later, when we saw each other face to face at my school's production of Guys and Dolls (I played Harry the Horse) neither one of us mentionned it. We have not talked since. Perhaps someday I'll present an exclusive interview with him, via telephone, of course, examining his motives for having taken the board down. Maybe he will return some day and reveal the truth to us, although upon final discussion it seemed that if he would ever return to the art scene, it would be with a different handle, different style (and perhaps a different medium altogether - he had mentionned trying high-rez a few times) and with different groups . What follows is the original press release given on all local (to the board's denise. 604 area code) networks informing members of the board's denise. The Screaming Tomato has gone down. Possible [sic] permanently. (The ansi i manent ly. displays at login reads a birthdate and a death date. ) ic] permane Mistigris is currently without a WHQ. Until we can establish a central board, I'll be operating primarily out of the following three boards - Dreams of Dark, Enchanted Lizards - 299-5191 Entrance to Obscurity - 525-2767 Neosporin - 942-9772 I'm assuming that everyone will be able to call at least one of those. Once the displaced TST users find their way onto one of those boards, we'll get around to assigning a new WHQ - this will have to be local to everyone. I'll have to e-mail Thanatos about it. (Hm. .. Cenobite's going to need a new WHQ too So how did we deal with it? How was order regained? How did Mistigris recover from this grevious blow to make the full and utter comeback you see before yourselves this fine day? It wasn't easy. After frantic denomination of all three of the above- mentionned boards (Neosporin, Entrance to Obscurity and Dreams of Dark, Enchanted Lizards) as Provisionary HQs, it was decided to settle on DoDEL as the main one of the three, despite its uncommonly high usage (up to 40% on a slow day) as it was local and free from LD charges from everywhere in our area code, unlike the other two. It stayed like that for too long. Suitable boards to becone replacements were suggested and discarded one by one. Finally, it was decided that a new board would have to be drawn up - one that I would have co-sysop access on - by someone who was formerly a SysOp. This fell on the shoulders of Happyfish, known before as the SysOp of the eye-melting mind-trip, The Aquariun home to the most wacked-up colour scheme since Al's House of Meats. She'd just recently been inducted into Mist a few months previously, though we had known each other for years through TABMet and years previously at school together. The fact that we were at that time (and are, as this goes to the presses) going out together certainly didn't make the deal any harder to swallow. And so The Jade Monkey, after going through a plethora of silly names (Canopic Jar, Salopard, Salute This !, The Yelling Potato) was born. The board is up now - with an eye-melting colour scheme available but only if you spcifically turn it on - and perhaps this has been good for the group. Replacing an unstable element - IST - with a stable one - TJM - can't be detrimental, and the energy in a new board allows us to develop before setting into old ruts and traditions. Aside from the new Mistigris WHQ, let's look at what other changes the death of TST brought about. what other changes 1) Daemon's Gate became available again to the public. Though this board had been up consistantly over the past three years running and maintaining our vital support line, KitschMet, it had been closed to the public and the reclusive mannerisms of the SysOp, Maurik, seemed to be following in the footsteps of Nitnatsnoc. (exerpt from system news on Daemon's Gate) Hello all; The closure of IST cane as a surprise to me. With 604's biggest Art Board, and the WHQ of Mistigris down, I decided it's about bloody time I let people apply to my board, even if it's just to have another place where they can read Kitsch and grab the latest art packs. Please bear with me though, DG is in no way complete, in fact it's pretty danned crappy right now. Not what I was planning on having it like when I opened it, but I haven't had the time I thought I would to modify it nicely. I'm also not as knowlegable with Renegade as I once was, it took me a while just to figure out how to validate some people :) Anyways, make yourself at home, and please message me with any questions or bug reports about DG, for I'm sure there are many. Mavrik ( Fire/Mistigris ) While this renaissance of the board bears good portentions for the summer, things are hazy beyond that as Mavrik is moving north to go to school at UNBC. 2) Cenobite died, and Schtroumpf left the scene. Despite the birth of The Jade Monkey and the rebirth of Daemon's Gate, it is apparent that there were negative as well as positive recompenses to IST's unexpected closure. The Screaming Tomato was the WHQ of this locally-based lit group, and Nit taking it down was in turn the excuse Schtroumpf needed to destroy his group and leave the scene in turn. The lit scene is still assessing damage control from this reaction - both from the loss of the group and of the dynamic individual. 3) Thanatos wants his 28.8 modem back. Not really a large point, but still worthy of mention, is that some time ago, in an effort to be helpful, Thanatos donated an extra noden to the cause of the board. There were conflicts when it finally got plugged into Nit's computer, so he gave it to his friend from school Izod, who may be known to some better as Dead Hand. A modem is an expensive piece of hardware, and it doesn't seem fair that Nit gets to keep the one donated to the cause of the board after he himself abandonned the same cause. Out of all of the reactions from saddened and teary-eyed former users of IST, this one was by far the most eleoquent. Agnostic was a regular IST caller From: Agnostic To : Steely Dan Base : -- tab- general Refer #: 189 Subj: tst - bye Replies: None Steely Dan, as in: "Drink scotch whiskey all night long, / nd the wheel" A brief rundown of IST's life in the art scene will now be presented in a little retrospective of this board, which in its life warranted more than 3000 calls from me, more than four times the amount given to the next most- called board, or about equivalent to the total calls for the second-through- sixth most called boards on my dialing list, and that includes my ISP. boards are presented in chronological order. These EUPHONiX DiGiTALLUSIONS HAPPY FETUS RECORDS We started out with these three music affils before the board was up because, before the board was up because, hey, they were there for the taking. IST was put up in the days when the affi is put up in the days when the affil made the board, and this was really the bottom of the hill. A good place to tom of the hill. A good place to start, if nothing else. These are why the caption at the bottom of our first caption at the bottom of our first requested ANSI, from Darkforce back when he was in UNiON, reads "604's Finest Music Oriented Board" was in UNiON, reads "604's Finest arkforte Union> The Screaming Tomato (604)430-8805 Sysops: Mitnatsnoc and Cthulu Co's : Access Denied and Zanfir Worshipper EuphoniX Distro . Digitallusions Site Recoil - Happy Fetus Records Distro TabNet - SiHFMet -Sonic Link- AlphaNet . NeuralNet 604's Finest Music Oriented Board- An interesting note to make is that members of Euphonix and the sole ember of Digitallusions are currently Mist members. Schmoozling does pay off in tine SONIC EQUINOX Starting Records and cast an af! from this deno-g criticism on the would work (a qu and still lies u RECOIL A mag with roots in iMPER to be a review nag. We were invo issue ever came out but that was only find one pack left with any IMPERIAL (for about 18 hours befo It took us three month to yay or nay my request for T he agreed for the group to com shambles. Coincidence or cons MISTIGRIS (18 hours after iMPE Mistigris was, from the everyone could have their say, talked the loudest got heard. seemed apparent that we should position of KitschNet coordina WIND Someone on the IRC was of picked it up without stopping to the shame of appearing on their s bad. One recurring chestnut from in the first Mistigris April Fool by Prince through The Guardian, masquerading by Thor of Shiver. Its appearing of sorts. INTEGRITY Following acquired Nitnatsnoc only a few, and in f board, The Ho-Zone, but as only a few bo ACID BC OUTPOST With Integrity's absorb and was given ACID BC Outpost s ost ACID affiliations were considered qu Consider it a touch of class fr Cenobite The last major affiliation, and the board in any way, Cenobite took the lit sce storm with his whilrwind attack of (gasp) g have, and we were fortunate enough to have Schtroumpf, its leader. Apathy (for a few days before it died) A few late-night IRC conversations clinched this one for all of a week. This was the last affiliati d got before going down I always urged Mit to try and join they didn't have sites, did they? Guys Named Jason) but There are too many other stories about IST to recount in this one article; the voting questions, the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers Fan Club, the BarneySplat OnLine Game, the Monkey Fondulator Drive, the most downloaded file in the Nit's Picks software area (CUNTLET.ZIP, an X-rated hex-edited version of Gauntlet 2) .. it'll all have to wait for the movie, I guess. even better, for the TST tribute pack. I'll leave you with the eternal question: "Why is the tomato screaming, anyway?" (we had some good answers for that in the voting booth (oh well - Cthulu - Histigris - Co-Sysop of
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