David Herren wrote:
I've sent a private response to silverstrim (I'm afraid I didn't catch his real name). I am sorry my post was so ill formed and so easily misconstrued and I do apologize. My comment, poorly worded and decontextualized as it was, was not intended to offend. I am intimately aware of the stresses of health problems (my wife is dying of cancer).
Thank you for the apology and I both accept the apology and admit that I overreacted to the posting, so there's shared blame, and again thank you for the apology. It seems rare on the lists that people will come out from the anonymity of the Internet to be somewhat human or admit mistakes (and I've had to admit plenty of them on different lists in my time) rather than posturing.
I'm also very sorry for the situation with your wife. I have a friend online whose wife is dying of cancer, one coworker who has retired early due to cancer complications, and another whose mother has passed away just a few scant months ago from it and another who just took a sabbatical due to breast cancer and a family friend just a few short years ago who lost a breast to cancer. It's virtually surrounding me lately. Fortunately my own surgery wasn't due to that, but any surgery that involves open abdominal work and a couple months of recovery isn't without risks as you most likely know and when people make allusions to it...well, I get sensitive, sometimes overly so.
As for the top posting thread, I've already said my piece (probably more than I should have, as I attacked David in a second post and it moved from a perceived uncalled for message to a truly uncalled for attack on my part, seeing as this was a misunderstanding), and I hope you can forgive my own mistake there. Chad (I think?) said that your original message with the surgery was private; I honestly thought it was on the list, and if it was resent to the list when it was meant private that was an honest mistake on my part, as I normally try hand editing messages when the mailing list insists on private messaging and list messaging so people don't get double messages so I may have screwed that up myself in a fit of anger and probably thought I screwed up the reply vs. reply-to. If that's what happened then I agree I was out of line, even if it was unintentional.
The whole top posting debate is something that periodically gets stirred up and you're right in that it accomplishes nothing. No one changes their views. Each camp rarely acknowledges points made by the other side. None of it matters, and the whole thing ends up being a virtual replay of the XKCD comic where the protagonist yells that they can't go to bed yet, someone's wrong on the Internet!
In the end it's just another bubble of frustration that tech people end up getting bubbled and furious over and take out their workday frustrations with, and it always gets angry and furious for a short time, and then subsides for another month or two, and somewhere in between people subtly acknowledge that nothing ever changes.
In conclusion...thank you again for your apology, David, and I sincerely hope you accept mine as well for my part in this and accept my best thoughts for you and your wife as you face her medical challenges. No one should have to go through this.
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