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.

OK, after 10 minutes of trying, I can’t get the thrice damned lawnmower to start.  The presence of blackness on the exhaust and down the side of the mower where the exhaust spits out, as well as the fact that the pump primer seems to be pumping air into the thingy would lead me to believe that I have a hole in my fuel line.

I wonder if its big enough to put a match in.

I’ve been trying to see how long I can old out talking about this situation, but after it hit Knoxnews and the AP, I figure I can’t hold back much longer.

It seems that Pigpen isn’t the only one who likes to pee in the flowers…

Theres evidently a bunch of dumbasses that like to golf over at the Centennial (should be paying for itself in 10 years!), get tore back, and let loose around the 18th hole, right next to this woman’s house, who evidently bought a house next to a golf course thinking that people wouldn’t be peeing in her backyard or something. Geez.

Man, I make no bones to anybody who knows me of my contempt for golf and the whole damn golf experience. Its a waste of land, it has idiotic fashion trends and terminology, and tends to attract the most shallow, contemptible people.  Yes, its a judgement call, and yes, some of my friends play golf, but I still make fun of them, both behind their back, and to their face.  Yes I do.

Wait, I lost my train of thought.  Crap…

Anyway, golf is dumb.  And peeing in public is too, unless you’re 4.  Then its cute.

A letter to the Oak Ridger today stood out as a shining example of what happens when smart people don’t stop to consider exactly what their positions on things are, and why this weird little town is as backwards as it is today.

Now, I don’t intend to call out the author, because I’ve met him, and he’s a smart, friendly guy, but his points in the article didn’t make much sense.  Lets go over them, because this is what I’m getting from a lot of people these days, and it don’t make a lick of sense.

The nut of the thing, and I was going to do a point by point thing but got lazy, is that he’s applauding the school board’s decision to ask for a million extra bucks for their budget so they can slap a 2% raise on the teachers, and telling city council to fully fund the school board and stop screwing around, all points that I wholeheartedly agree with.

However, on the other hand, the dude is trying as hard as he can to block the whole Crestpoint thing, which, by all projections, would be a huge boost to the money available to the school board.  I mean, at this point, the school board ain’t getting the money they need without raising property taxes.  Now, I’m not necessarily against that, but the town already has one of the highest property tax rates in the state.  Seems to me that it ain’t exactly a sign of fiscal health to have to keep milking the already high taxes in order to fund a school system fully.

So, whats the deal?  Sure, the city’s going to have to dump some cash into infrastructure and works on the Crestpoint deal, thats life in the 21st century.  Yeah, its gonna be traffic.  However, that traffic problem is all going to be chock full of people paying income tax into the city, and the lions share of that goes to AC and OR schools.

So, seriously man, how do you negotiate the two points?  How would you propose that the city funds the school system for the next 10 years or so, and we’re not talking 2% penny ante raises, we’re talking decent 3-4% raises like everybody else gives?

Peter’s broke, and lemme tell you, Paul is starting to get a mean gleam in his eye…

Sometimes thats my problem.  See, I’ve learned of myself that I have very little impulse control.  If I get the urge to do something, well, it’s pretty much going to get done.

Now, I have this large audience, that checks in on a daily basis, evidently hoping that I’ll have something to tell em, and on days like this, when about the only thing on my mind is a headache, well, its hard at acquiesce.  However, the problem is, that blank spot under the “Write”  header starts to mock me, insulting my lineage, and telling me that I’m lower than dirt.

We can’t let that happen now, can we?

I suppose I could talk about the many faceted smack down that the Oak Ridger’s publisher, Richard Esposito, gave today in his editorial.  He manages to address problems with retail in Oak Ridge, small mindedness in the world, and dumbasses on the internet in a way that is both masterful and wicked awesome.

See, I’ve mentioned it before, but I kinda cut my internety teeth with the Oak Ridger (no, not the April Fools thing, although so far nobody has sued), but on the old skool Oak Ridger forums.  This was about 3 or 4 years ago, and it was great to see a place filled up with people in this weird little town, discussing the issues of this weird little town.  Before that, there was the newspaper, and that was about it for folks like myself  that weren’t ‘connected’ with the town.  I started posting on there, met some good friends there, and enjoyed it.  Over time, different elements of folks started rolling in there, people who weren’t interested in intelligent discourse, but in berating other users, and continuing mindless tirades against certain people, for reasons that I’ll never understand.

Around that time, we started the Tumor, and the friends we had on the boards starting coming over here, or starting their own websites, and it kinda picked up from there.  Meanwhile, the trolls and jackasses on the Oak Ridger forums started multiplying, and we had to deal with one or two of em here as well.  I always kinda enjoyed that, as the beauty of having your own website are the multitudes of various ways to deal with mean people, which might be why we never had many of em.

Unfortunately, these days the playground we all used to enjoy is filled up with weeds.  I made a very short attempt to head back there, along with Daco, and Joel, and a few others, and try to steer the forums back into a place where theres a remote possiblity somebody would enjoy being there, but I gave up.  Lots of people blamed the mod of the forums, but I don’t.  I’ve met the guy a time or two, and got along.  He’s a hired gun, and I doubt he has any power to do anything to clean up the place.  Frankly, I get the feeling he dislikes the place as much as I do, but he has to keep going back every day.  Sucks, huh?

By this point, the plane has crashed into the mountain.  There isn’t any saving those forums.

But my headache’s better…