Re: Astromart vrs. Cloudy Nights vrs. S.A.A. vrs. yahoo groups TT, SCT-user ect.

From: Ratboy99 (ratboy99_at_aol.comet)
Date: 07/25/04 

Date: 25 Jul 2004 17:31:28 GMT

>Do you know the man are these just your impressions filtered by your being
>teed
>off that you were asked to follow the _rules_ of the group you joined?
>
>Phil is a gentleman, an accomplished writer, and one of the best and nicest
>people it is my pleasure to know.

Rod,

This post in its entirety is only my opinion, the facts may or may not
correlate to this said opinion, it is only what I think.

I've never met him personally. He was not one of the nicest people I've had the
pleasure to know (nor was he a gentleman) in the several emails that we
exchanged. On the contrary, he was basically a dictatorial, over-reacting,
insecure and defensive Nerd with a capital "N." (My opinion).

So, thanks but no thanks to his group(s) (I've not been banned, but the whole
idea of being moderated for posting at least relatively on topic on a group is
silly).

I'm not teed off for being asked to follow the rules, I am disappointed that he
apparently singled me out took issue with me as a person (felt threatened
apparently), and then decided to use his rules to fit his purpose of shutting
me down.

That's fine, no problem. After all it's his group (sandbox), and he can do what
he wants with it. It also happens to be the reason that I don't care for
moderated newsgroups. It is all to easy for someone like Phil to arbitrarily
label someone like myself "riff-raff" and decide to keep me out.

Just because my nickname is rat, doesn't imply that I am not qualified to make
a contribution to a hobby that I have invested a great deal of personal
resources (both time and money) in order to develop some personal expertise in
the subject of equipment.

 
His complaints were sophomoric and if he were more skilled socially, he would
have simply let my equipment/observing report go, as it was just another post
out of thousands.

Furthermore it contained a great deal of equipment review, as I was posting
regarding a new telescope that I had acquired. I did give a list of objects
that I observed and how they appeared as part of it both for reference and to
make the report more interesting.

"Well, if you wanted to do a proper equipment review, you would have done this,
and that, and this and that."

Poppy***! Why am I going to let some stuffed shirt dictate how I create my
prose? To do that would be to sell my soul to the Devil!

I have seen him interact with others, and sure, if you are a good ass kisser,
he will be nice to you and let you play with his sand bucket and spade. If you
care to have a dissenting opinion, then he takes his toys and goes home.

This was expressed to me by more than one of his group members as personal
favors in private email, admonishing me that if I wanted to remain a member of
the group I had better start kissing his ass, and quick, because he is known to
"86" members that openly disagree with him.

That's just ridiculous. He is an author and the emperor of a Yahoo group and
nothing more. I'd rather sit around and clean my eyepieces, or just go out and
look at stars than have to be a "yes man" to Phil so I could have to honor of
being allowed to remain in his Holy Presence.

As far as the book goes, I agree that it lists pretty much all of the Northern
objects that might be of interest to an binocular observer. But, it is a fact
that it is difficult and awkward to use, as there is no simple way to reference
it to a map of the actual objects in the night sky. It also falls short in the
description category for many objects that are of interest. Don't get me wrong,
however, I think the world is far better for having it than not. And I have so
stated on more than one occasion in the past.

Star Ware is also a great resource, and if it weren't for the childish
intentional omission of University Optics (another glaring example of his
unskillful unwillingness to get past his social skill deficiencies), and
included some better discussion of the high end producer TEC (who also appears
to have done something to limit their potential for acquiring his highness'
more detailed inclusion) it would be damned near perfect. As it is, I have read
both books several times and I really like them both. He is an accomplished
writer.

I like SAA because I am free to state my **opinion**, which was the whole point
of my post. You are free to disagree with it.

In the case of Phil (and as you know, SCT's, too), you are unlikely to sway my
opinion. I disrespect Phil for not being man enough to let a person be himself
on his group. In my book he has not yet collected all the tools necessary to
function as a mature adult in real society, so he has created a world within a
world where he can feel more comfortable by controlling events from "on high."
That's fine; it's his right to do so.

I am comfortable and confident that my opinion here will draw flames and be
very unpopular and in the minority, but at least here I have the right to state
it, and am not afraid to do so, because I am not here to win some sort of
popularity contest, but to interact with this group from my own unique
perspective. In my mind, Phil is a big baby.

And in the words of Dan Akroid, playing Tom Snyder, the old late night talk
show host: "There...I've said it!"

For myself, SAA is far more interesting, and that was my original comment
agreeing with Stephen Paul that Yahoo groups can be quite boring.

As I said above, this post in its entirety is only my opinion, reality may or
may not correlate to said opinion of mine, it is only what I think.

rat
~( );>

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