> It kind of seems like the end of an era with the archival of this incredibly huge forum. I first came here a long, long time ago and made my first post on June 16, 1999 at 21:51:36. That was over two years and over 38000 posts ago....wow.

I know what you mean. It still seems crazy to me that this silly little forum - which had all of 172 posts on it when I first threw in my two cents - has grown to such monstrous proportions that the *index alone* is in excess of seven megabytes. Of course, I have to assume a large part of the blame for that one; I believe it was Wolf who, in a contest entry at one point, predicted that the end of the world would be caused by a black hole created when the RinkWorks Message Forum finally collapsed under the mass of my old posts. :-}

> And though I must give credit to Sam for the amazing amount of moderation he does on this forum (I'm sure we all remember a time or two when he went away for a while)

A few of us also remember a time when Sam could honestly claim that he had only deleted "maybe two or three" posts from the forum. Back when it didn't even need the moderation it had.

> (is there *anything* that we haven't talked about here?)

If there is, I'm sure we'll find it sooner or later. :-}

> May the new forum be as good as this one has been throughout the years and never lose the thoughtfulness and quality that the participants bring -- a thoughtfulness and quality that I've never seen on any other forums. Let us never lose that.

I have a sudden urge to start singing "Tipperary." :-}

Dar "Fare thee well, old friend" ien