Browsing through my archival copy of Computerconsultantsforum.com

This will be of interest maybe to "Hillary's Colon", ndo and JoFrance who are listed as members of that old board.

I have a hidden backup copy of the forum I ran that preceded this one.

ComputerConsultantsForum.com (call it 'CCF') was a rebranding of an older forum called "OpenIT" that was formed in 2002 when disgruntled forumers from a BBS run by a popular computer consulting author left her BBS and started a less censored forum. I wasn't the owner then but I requested and was handed the forum by the owner who considered it a growing nuisance, and I branded it "CCF" and and made it "my own web app" in 2010.

The board was a robust discussion community but declined over time from 2010 on.

I shut down CCF in 2019 - the date appears to be sometime in the spring of 2019 - and devoted my part time energy to this place. I shut down CCF because posting had gotten to maybe 2-3 messages a week and it was painful to watch. I hate running into dead forums so I killed it off. But made my own backup.

I did block known web spiders with robots.txt and I sent a request (which was honored) to the Internet Archive to block their store of CCF's pages. Therefore except for my personal copy, CCF is completely erased from web history.

Some general thoughts:

- CCF showed robust interest in a wide range of topics, and a lot of "drill downs" of topics such as politics, economics, freelancer "arbitrage" and negotiation, H1B, etc.

- I was a pissy person back in the 2010s with very half baked, incoherent ideas about how the world and especially how politics operated. I took way too many discussions personally. I argued semi convincingly but there were a lot of holes in my logic and my grokking of the world.

- I knew a fuckton of a lot about how to fail as a freelance IT person. Not much about how to succeed.

- Almost all of my personal business posts from 2010 onward were about pain, insult, being demeaned and insulted, being screwed, being threatened. Not one thing seemed to ever even vaguely go my way. If I wrote some nice marketing copy for a business they would not pay me or would insult it childishly. If I built a web site to specs I would be threatened with legal process.

I honestly believe I was cursed to stay in IT and maybe cursed in life in general. I mean cursed as in actual demons haunted my every move. Not kidding.

(Personal insight: this probably says that I really never learned how to decisively leave really bad situations, and instead dug into bad scenes as a sort of personal honor code thing that eventually metastasized into a degree of self hatred.)

- I did have a whale of a lot of practical business knowledge that seems to still be valid. Negotiation, how clients and consultants reason, the weak spots of each, etc.

- The actual discussions on CCF in its best years (say 2006-2015) read to me like the dialog of philosopher-kings. Amazingly great clarity of arguments in general, great debates, problems not solved but characterized with a verbal scalpel.

I sit on the fence and say to myself at times "I f*cking wasted decades on these forums" but CCF was a legitimate, valid community of highly intelligent raconteurs that overall behaved pretty decently.

I honed some fairly good writing and written argumentation skills.

I'm kind of in awe of what used to be, and is no longer possible. Social media killed off that clubbiness, and people today are impatient about anything that isn't directly functional to themselves.

CCF was a great site and it had a good long run. All forums tend to wane over time no matter what you do but you should be proud of maintaining it so well. I couldn't do what you did. The DCC website is more sporadic. Sometimes people post and other times not.

When I first met you on CCF, I thought you were an honest and no BS person. Pissy, maybe sometimes with some people, but never with me. It was all good. I think you're too critical of yourself. You did a beautiful website for me and I thought you were very easy to deal with and very thorough. Freelance IT is hard to do. I know you had some real doozies for clients that you didn't deserve.

Overall, the IT profession has deteriorated alot over the years. It used to be a lucrative profession, but foreign competition ruined it. Back in 2010 and the years that followed I could relate to being screwed in the IT field too. I lost my 19 year IT job in 2012 and never found a decent IT job after that. All that was left was trash jobs.

I was a part of the forum towards the end.

I enjoyed your no-BS writing style there and on the JOS boards. Even though we were in different worlds (me in corporate IT and you in consulting), I thought "I could relate to this guy".

Personal insight: this probably says that I really never learned how to decisively leave really bad situations, and instead dug into bad scenes as a sort of personal honor code thing that eventually metastasized into a degree of self hatred.

I am guilty of this as well. Finally left a bad job long after I should have. At least I thought I left it....had a nightmare last night that I went back.....and it went on and on.

Almost all of my personal business posts from 2010 onward were about pain, insult, being demeaned and insulted, being screwed, being threatened. Not one thing seemed to ever even vaguely go my way. If I wrote some nice marketing copy for a business they would not pay me or would insult it childishly. If I built a web site to specs I would be threatened with legal process.

Sorry you had to deal with all that. Some people always seem to end up in the right environment, fall into the right cliques and social groups, make the right contacts, and end up in cushy high paying jobs. The rest of us have to struggle and grind to make a buck.

I sit on the fence and say to myself at times "I f*cking wasted decades on these forums" but CCF was a legitimate, valid community of highly intelligent raconteurs that overall behaved pretty decently.

Looking back, I think I've spent too much time on the Internet in general. Then again, without the Internet, it's more difficult to converse with intelligent people.

I'm kind of in awe of what used to be, and is no longer possible. Social media killed off that clubbiness, and people today are impatient about anything that isn't directly functional to themselves.

It's a shame. Social media may have its positives but so much has been ruined by it.

^ Bingo, this statement.

The key problem of a forum is aggregating enough regular users to keep conversations flowing.

You guys aren't enough in number to do this and nobody here now is prolific enough posting to keep interest high.

I mean none of you write enough and about different interesting things to make this place interesting. I'm including myself in that. I can't seem to start a discussion about anything here except right wing politics that gets traction. Sorry not sorry.

"Idiot"/HistorianPDQ was one such who did so and generally had studied input for almost any out of the box topic.

These conversations here can be painful to witness. I've put out invitations and the people I invite consistently say they have no time whatsoever.

It seems to be the times, among other things.

I mean none of you write enough and about different interesting things to make this place interesting. I'm including myself in that. I can't seem to start a discussion about anything here except right wing politics that gets traction. Sorry not sorry.

We can always go back to bitching about IT, tech, and the job market. When was the last time there was an MBA thread posted here? :)

"Idiot"/HistorianPDQ was one such who did so and generally had studied input for almost any out of the box topic.

Surprised he hasn't tried rejoining.

These conversations here can be painful to witness. I've put out invitations and the people I invite consistently say they have no time whatsoever.

It's funny. Everyone likes to say "I don't have time". Well, if they stop binging on woke streaming services like Netflix and quit posting on social media, they might actually have some free time.

Some issues I see in real life that make this up:

1) Everyone is very dumb about maintaining relationships. No comprehension that without a workplace or other physical commons where we meet, there is absolutely no "water cooler". A forum is a water cooler - you meet up, exchange pleasantries, and stay reminded of what people stand for and think about. After a couple of years I hardly remember someone that I haven't talked with regularly. I vaguely remember many of the high profile personalities on CCF but it was a long assed time ago, too.

2) Most people are zombies today. They may or may not be on Netflix or gaming but they have no energy to converse. They may say they have no time but really they have no energy to spend even discussing something.

3) Cowardice. Being unwilling to meet any level of disapproval for one's opinions. However, it is extremely stressful to be attacked even anonymously on a forum because it's still "you" even if you are just a screen name. I've tried to tamp down, discourage and combat personal attacks on boards I've run because people shut up and shut down and don't want to provoke the mob when attacks are frequent. But that requires a huge amount of psychic energy to do so and I got blamed constantly anyway. Not strict enough for one faggot, not free speech enough for another faggot. "Faggot" meaning a complaining forumer. :-D

4) Intolerance of forum-level opinions, mindsets or the owner's own opinions. I know for a fact that I drove a ton of users off of CCF by indulging the right wing politics. To which I said and say the US is a gigantic declining dumpster fire, of course you need radical change. But that message is too over the top and harsh for many normies, many of which happen to be IT types on a message forum.

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P.A.G.A.N. - People Against Goodness And Normalcy

Browsing through my archival copy of Computerconsultantsforum.com (Public Board)

Browsing through my archival copy of Computerconsultantsforum.com

"without the Internet, it's more difficult to converse with intelligent people"

"without the Internet, it's more difficult to converse with intelligent people"

The "I don't have time" thing - a smokescreen