Hi, Rob--

A while ago, the Space board and Current Events board, as well as an affiliated Sports board, were located at AfterHours, owned by Al Staley. He moderated them with an iron hand, being no friend of anomalists. For a long time they were private boards, populated by invited people who wanted a more private place to post than MSNBC. I heard about them just before they went public. Shortly after that, the Sports board was deep-sixed and the Off Topic board was invented. Also, Al asked for help moderating, since the job was getting a lot bigger, and Justin volunteered to help. Al turned over most of his moderating work, though not the ultimate authority over the boards, to Justin.

Help me with the sequence here, guys.

Thomas Lee Elifritz was one of a very few people (the only one I'm absolutely sure about is the poster formerly known as james) who was banned from posting at AfterHours because Al considered him to be a nut. Those who can't post can still read.

One day like any other, when Justin had left for the weekend on a trip to Texas that he had talked about on the boards, someone hacked Justin's PC and turned the screen at Space black. Maybe other places too, but I don't remember. Al was furious, and announced his intention to close the boards rather than let them be hijacked. After some rather busy email and IM traffic, the boards reopened, but Al was still unhappy and wanted out.

That's when Robert, who had HabitableZone, offered to set up the boards over here if Justin would continue as moderator, since Robert didn't have the time. Justin agreed. And here we are.

There's an unhappy collateral history of the breakup of Al and Justin's friendship over the switchover, but that's not as pertinent to this, and besides, I don't like talking about that in the absence of both of the principle players.

The person who blacked out the AfterHours board was Thomas Lee Elifritz. Just to show he could.

Now, guys: corrections? deletions? additions? apologies?

Regards--
Mary Anne