Atomictumor

“Come and listen to a story bout a man named Ray,
OakRidgerX, had a lot of things to say”

Seems like no matter what you do, you end up getting weirdos trying to trip up what you do.  GAC and I attracted one last year, around September.

We had spent the summer doing the ACES thing, trying (and failing) pretty darn hard to sweet talk the city into giving the school system enough money to keep from cutting bus lines.  In hindsight, it worked out better than I thought it would, I was paranoid that some coffee fueled weirdo would run down a poor first grader crossing Illinois Ave to get to school.  We’d been talking about it at length, and by August were getting ready for school to start.  Eaves wrote a post about how parents need to step up and take a bit more responsibility for their kids getting to school, when we got a comment from some guy named AnotherAtomicCitizen.

Now, this guy had been on the Oak Ridger forums, and was one of the reasons they were going downhill.  He had a tendancy to just ramble, without making much of a point, or any kind of effort at objectivity.  He was a troll, plain and simple.  You can see about halfway down the comments on that page, where he came in.  Now, after posting that first one, he jumped onto another post that GAC wrote about this hit and run driver at Staples, and insulted her.

Well, that pissed me off.  By the time he came back to Eave’s post, I yelled at him, and banninnated him from the tumor, the only person in history to have been hwacked like that.

I like dealing with trolls on the tumor, which is why we don’t see too many of them.  We’ve had him, and this other guy who worked for a car dealership in town, and posted from his mom’s house.  The thing is, I’m really, really good at detective work, and getting around the anonymity of people who post on the site.  I’m geeky that way.

By taking his email address, atomic-rebuilders@comcast.net, and doing some google searches on it, we determined that a guy named Ray (or Raymond) Kircher runs a home repair business called that.  By doing some further google searching, we found him popping up on some other forums, and a little more found some letters to the editor that he wrote that exactly matched what he was saying on the forums, down to the grammar and sentence structure.

Oh yeah, we had positive ID.

Some time went on, and his wife (who posted under the name Atomic Citizen, but tended to be a bit more rounded and make more sense) asked if we couldn’t unblock the home IP so that she could read the tumor.  I went ahead and did it, and never blocked him again.  Because, hell, now I had ammunition.

But things were cool.  They popped on a time or two more, but I think it was mostly the wife that posted.  She ended up talking with GAC about setting up some neighborhood watch groups to keep an eye on kids walking to school in the morning, but between school and dying, GAC didn’t have much of a chance to do it.  When the kids got a nasty bout of poison ivy, she came online with some ideas to help.

When GAC died, one of them was on the site expressing good wishes.  I think it might have been the wife, because whenever we’d get sensible posts, they’d have a hotmail email address, something about being a stepparent.

I had stopped paying attention to the Oak Ridger forums, but apparently the AnotherAtomicCitizen login, the one that was indisputably Ray’s, got banned by the admin for something or another.  Shortly after the banning, OakRidgerX showed up.  Now, it didn’t take much of reading for me to be pretty sure that ol Ray was back in the saddle again, but I was staying out of it, I had my own problems, and he was leaving me alone.

Cool.

I helped Daco set up his website last winter.  Daco had still been on the forums, trying to wrestle them into something worth going to on a daily basis, and by doing so had become the object of enmity on the part of OakRidgerX.  When he got Manland set up, it didn’t take long to get mean spirited comments by Oak Ridger X.  Now, by now he had the sense to keep the atomic-rebuilders email address off, using an oakridgerx at comcast, but damned if it wasn’t the same old IP address that used to pop up on the tumor, showing a comcast account in Oak Ridge, on LaSalle Rd.

Positive ID, once again.

However, it didn’t matter to me, because he wasn’t bothering me.  Hell, back in September he called himself part of the AT family, and was invited to our anniversary party.  I figured things were cool.

Something must have happened.  He was opposing the COR thing, and getting at odds with Daco.  He also had a fixation with attacking Angi Agle on the school board, who’s a friend of mine.  However, she’s a big girl, and in public office, so I figured she could handle herself.

A few weeks ago, tho, he started attacking her kids.  That just wasn’t cool, so I started stepping in.  I tried not to be an ass, as I know I can come off online, but it was really irritating me.  Her kids are angels.  They babysit my boys.  They’re too good to be maligned by scum online.

I understand that Angi went to the publisher of the Oak Ridger, with some printouts of what sure looks like libel in there, and the publisher didn’t want to do anything about it.  Thats a bit disappointing, it wouldn’t take much to rein in the bad elements in that forum, just the backbone to stand up.  I mean, what can Kircher do?  Sue em?

Around this time, I started investigating Kircher’s appearances on the ‘tumor.  I determined, with the help of Netmom and Daco, that he was using an IP proxy to get around the ban on the Oak Ridger forums.  Whats interesting about the occurances is that he always popped onto the ‘tumor from Ellen Smith’s website.  I notice on her page that he’s constantly posting comments under his real name, and there were correlations between when those comments would come on, and when I’d see somebody with his cookie (the tumor does use unique cookies for tracking, hee) pop on with an IP that would be in one of three ranges.

Now, an IP proxy is an interesting thing.  I’m not sure which one specifically he’s using (probably Freebar), but what it does is take the home IP address that he posts from his house (68.34.212.157) and connects to another server, which uses one of three IP ranges.  Whats interesting about the ranges is that they go through an ISP called Groupe Iweb Technologies, hosted in Canada (because proxies are only semi-legal in the states, and certainly against the user agreement made when you get an account with, say, Comcast).

Groupe Iweb Technologies has been linked with terrorists and scammers.  Super company, and kinda fitting.

Now, what brought this up, and the entire reason I’ve been going on this diatribe, is because he made it personal.  On the day before Mothers Day, he put this up on the forums:

 By the way, congratulations for GAC’s commencement, I hope the boys use it well.

My first reaction was shock.  I’ve always tended to jump to GAC’s defense, and can go to the extent that I’ll imagine an offence when it wasn’t really there.  I took a bit of time to form a reply, and it ended up being one suggesting that I didn’t appreciate where he had gone, we can insult each other online all day long, but that I’ve always respected the fact that we don’t attack families (despite what he had said about Angi’s kids).

Particuarly not motherless boys, the day before Mothers Day.  I mean, how low can you be, right?  Surely he didn’t mean it.

However, his subsequent responses indicated that he meant it the way that I took it.  I talked with a few other people who saw it to make sure I didn’t overreact, and then bounced back with an angry reply.

He responded indicating that I choose to be public on the internet.

I thought about this for a while, and last night I figured on turning the other cheek.  I sent an email to him, on all three email addresses (the oakridgerx one, the atomic-rebuilders one, and the stepmonster one) suggesting that its all forgiven, just as long as he understands that the jibe at GAC wounded me pretty deeply, and that he’d stay off that ground in the future.

This morning, he reiterated on the forums that I chose to be public on the internet.

Well, thats true.  However, now that he’s chosen to attack me publicly like this, I’m evening the playing field.  Petty?  Maybe.  But the fact that this guy, Ray Kircher, owner of Atomic Rebuilder’s home repair here in Oak Ridge, attacks the children of school board members, and makes strange insinuations about GAC and my boys, indicates that he is a menace, and locally, people need to know who he is so they can be aware that he is unstable, and very possibly dangerous.

If nothing else, he’s simply vile and mean spirited, and people need to know this also.

So, Ray Kircher, OakRidgerX, enjoy your publicity.  Jackass.