A Brief History of CF

[scallywag]

The written word can be hurtful or kind. The problem is many people including myself have a quick curt response that might be interpreted by the reader as hurtful. Listing dates on the last time I visited might be interpreted by the viewer of the dates as what pissed him off, if I did not visit CF from 12/21/08 to 1/3/09. If I based my opinion on the screen names some of us have, mine included, boy do we have a wild bunch on CF. I was pleased to see that some of the members that went away did come back to visit. There is always something interesting going on this international forum.
John(Yes this is my real name, I am not a solicitor that has been arrested and booked)

[Greenman]

I thought it was interesting, I don't think the dates were offensive, unless of course you want to take them as such.

This is still a great forum, 2 or 3 people can and do make a difference, but they do not make or break the whole forum.

Cool history IMO.

[martinworswick]

[/QUOTE]This is intended to be a very brief, necessarily cursory, and incomplete history of the CruisersForum.[/QUOTE]

very incomplete!

the only part of gords post i consider to be history was the creation date of cf,
the rest was the coming and going of various mods, not really an interesting history imo and i don't really see the point of the thread either.

[TaoJones]

Those of us who live in the Los Angeles area, and enjoy the NBA, have had ringside seats for all of the drama (and melodrama) that surrounds the Los Angeles Lakers. I bring that up because, it seems to me, the episode that culminated with Shaquille O'Neal leaving the Lakers is relevant to this Cruisers Forum discussion.

Shaq was a mighty force on the Lakers - indeed, it was considered "Shaq's Team," just as the Bulls were "Michael Jordan's Team." No one could imagine that the Lakers could ever part with such a vital part of the team - but they did. Now it's "Kobe Bryant's Team."

How is this relevant? Shaq, though he was the highest-paid player in the league at the time at $20m+/year and two years remaining on his contract, wanted an immediate two-year contract extension at $30m/year. In the 2003 pre-season training camp in Hawai'i, during a practice game, Shaq had done something he thought was especially great and as he trotted back to the defensive end, he looked into the stands at Jerry Buss, owner of the Lakers.

"Now you gonna pay me?" he loudly challenged Dr. Buss. At the end of that season, the Lakers traded him to Miami, and thousands of fans were irate with the Lakers, particularly with Kobe Bryant (another player), Mitch Kupchak (General Manager) and Phil Jackson (coach). Few ever mentioned the team's owner, Dr. Jerry Buss.

What's the point? Well, it seems to me that Kupchak, the "administrator" of the Lakers, and Jackson and his coaching staff, the "moderators" of the team, and Bryant, another "registered member" were all publicly taken to task for Shaq's departure, but all of them enjoyed their positions with the team at the pleasure of Jerry Buss, the "site owner." Only Dr. Buss actually had any skin in the game.

Shaq had gone public in a very big way. He may have thought he was more important than anyone else on the team, or he may not have cared if he had to join another team, but he had dramatically drawn a deep line in the sand, placing the Lakers owner and his GM and coaches in difficult positions.

Shaq had willingly signed a binding contract when he joined the Lakers, so he knew the "rules," and the team's owner had fulfilled all of his responsibilities under that contract. But when Dr. Buss (through his General Manager) asserted his rights under that contractual agreement and enforced the rules that the contract delineated, Shaq soon found himself playing on another team.

The moral of the story: It's awesome to be the most dominant player in the league, respected by all of your peers and even idolized by some, but if someone else owns the team, you're just passing through.

TaoJones

PS: Until they moved to Staples Center in 1999, the Lakers had played their home games (for 31 years) at the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood.

[First Mate]

sorry to see a thread like this one

[Soft Air]

David, Chuck's thread is not his own "Obituary" as many of us are sure he will be back soon

Cheers

[Soft Air]

I think publishing statistics regarding last visits by Sully and Chuck was very unkind specially coming from a senior member that I do respect as well.

[Wotname]

Guys, the dates are just dates, you might be bringing your own bias to the information. The last vist dates are available for any of us to read at any time. Mr Gord just made it a littel easier to see them. Not sure why he did so but that really doesn't matter (at least to me).

[Pblais]

Things do change as do people. It's not always bad or for the better. There has been a lot of change in CF. It was not always for the better but we have grown in far too many ways to count.

Gord adds a lot of perspective to a great many things here. A short summary often can focus that idea and this thread does that quite well I think. We reach toward 19,000 members and 1/4 million posts and it's not a lucky break we got this far. We have changed as was required and we don't see that getting different. We continue look for new ideas and ways to make it sail better. It does not happen in a day or even a a few weeks. We are more than one person yet it is through each person we find what we look for.

We are a large crew looking for new things in familiar ways. They don't always come together that easy or familiar. Not everything new is familiar and not everything familiar is appropriate with the things that are new. It creates storms. Weathering a storm is just something you need to accept now or later.

"It is not a mistake to have strong views. The mistake is to have nothing else.”

It seems to fit CF quite well. After all this time here I find "something else" is the more important part and I've found a lot of it here. If you can read 25,000 posts you'll see it clearly.

[psteele235]

Originally Posted by Soft Air

David, Chuck's thread is not his own "Obituary" as many of us are sure he will be back soon

Cheers

I think not....

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by TaoJones

The moral of the story: It's awesome to be the most dominant player in the league, respected by all of your peers and even idolized by some, but if someone else owns the team, you're just passing through.

Eloquent and interesting story Tao but I wonder from Shaq’s perspective that when “sh8t happens” behind the scenes you would rather that you pass thru more quickly and get on with your life.

[jkd]

With all due respect to Kobe and Shaq, I think of CF as a community pool that allows everyone to swim in and has a concession stand selling soda’s and chips to keep it going. You don’t need to buy the soda’s to use the pool but it’s there if you want. In the pool are various instructors that stop by and offer free lessons to anyone interested. Some of the instructors are very good, some have a strange way of teaching but anyone looking to learn can choose any instructor or a group of instructors to help with whatever particular stroke they are looking to learn.
The owner of the pool has assigned lifeguards to keep the people using the pool from playing grab a$$, taunting each other, running around the pool or bringing outside snacks into the pool area. The lifeguards are called upon to sometimes throw out the lifeline to someone that needs it or help explain the rules or direct people to various areas around the pool that they can use.
Occasionally it seems that a lifeguard drops a brown toilet trout on someone’s back as they swim by. Others in the pool will debate the merits of swimming around, through or ignoring the newly deposited floater. One will say ‘when I swam the channel I went 2 miles through wale droppings and half way through the wale came by, hit me with his tail fin but I made it to the far shore’. Another pool user will say ‘It doesn’t bother me I just swim around it and keep using the pool’. Some are too busy ogling the bikini’s to notice there is even a floater in the pool. Some pre-teens are shouting ‘Cool did you see that guy get bombarded’?
Me I’m just sitting on the steps at the shallow end with my little blow up arm floats on, content to watch everyone swimming, looking to find someone that will tell me why that lifeguard stood up on his lifeguard stand turned around, dropped his suit, showed his big hairy butt and pooped on that guy swimming by in the first place. The life guard then saw the man on the other side of the fence drying off and proceeded to walk over and pee through the fence on the mans towel.

John

[bstreep]

[DeepFrz]

jkd, I notice that you are a new user with 2 posts and both on this thread. What is your dog in this fight? Are you a poser?

jkd, I find your last post offensive. If anyone is crapping in the pool it is you.

[jkd]

I think if you look at my ‘born on date’ you can see I have been here lurking for quite some time. I have followed all the melodrama while gaining some VERY good info from a lot of very knowledgeable folks. I just hate to see this site keep going thru the same issues again and again with people leaving on bad terms.
I take “play nice in the sand box” seriously and think those in charge should be above the fray more than they do. That is the only reason I was driven to post at all. If I have used up all my allotted posts for this year on this subject, I will simply go back to lurking.

P.S. being forum illiterate, I don’t know what a ‘poser’ is.