[Gossamer's Scrapbook] The Ethereal Canyon I

[Paragon]

Wow you're right about the comb looking alien, that first big picture in your most recent post is absolutely beautiful - nature at its best!

[Gossamer]

. More Bee Stuff This should be the last for a while. But who knows... swarms and removals happen all the time. So all of Saturday, Gillar and I spent working on the yard and getting things planted and looking in ship shape for the Workshop. The yard really needed work, so it was time well spent. A friend came over to check out the work we did afterwards. Here she is toasting the deck looking great. So here's an arch of the yard and a view of the apiary from afar. This is before it was invaded with people. And let me tell you, it was invaded with a lot of people. I think there was somewhere between twenty and thirty people, counting all the kids and folks that were just hanging out. We had so many people, that we filled our driveway, our barn laneway, and then put the overflow at the neighbors. So at the time of the workshop, we had three hives. The first was a nuc hive. it was doing well and had a lot of excess comb. They were making a supercedure queen as well, so we left them alone. We added a second deep super so we'll see if they move into it and burst out waxing in frames. The instructor, Norm, flipped a few frames to encourage equal spreading in the comb. But otherwise, the coral Nuc hive looked great. You can see the crowding. The bees are happily clinging to the frames and there's a lot of excess comb beneath which is a good sign, though we scrape it all off. This is the pink hive. It had some odd growth, but otherwise it was the poorest preforming hive of the ones we have. Oddly enough, it also has the most potent stings of all the bees. I got stung once and cringed because they hit me hard when they stung me. I didn't have a suit on. So, while the pink hive got a passing grade, we weren't as impressed with it as we were the coral hive. Then we busted into the blue hive. Now the blue hive was the hive that we made (I've shown pictures of it as a smallish squat white cobbled together hive) from the carve-out removal/rescue. Around Wednesday we moved bees from the squat white box into a freshly painted hive. So they went from the vet bees to the blue hive bees. When we started pulling frames out, there was a huge surprise. Not only were the bees thriving, they were doing better than my own two boxes and were making queen cells like crazy. Queen cells look like peanuts and stand out on the frames like sore thumbs. The one above is a really good shot of a queen cell. But the frame below has three on it, covered with bees, two of which are full and have queens that are being fed by the other bees. Also, this shot below shows how well they are glueing the skewered comb into the frames and gluing them to each other. In fact... there were ten queen cells in this box. Once we dug into it, the president of LBCA decided the colony was doing so well we could split it and make two colonies from the one. All we had to do was split up the frames, and make sure both boxes, the old and new, held food, brood, and new queen cells. So we did. So suddenly we went from having three hives to four. Thankfully someone had an extra hive box in their truck to loan us until we could get another one. Here's some more shots of our Workshop Leader giving a talk about the split, how to do it, why, and how to choose frames. Can you see the queen cell, yet another one, on the top part of the frame Norm is holding? He's selecting that one for the new box. So that's why I was busy this weekend. First we had to get the house into ship shape, and secondly we had to work on the yard and then hold the workshop. All in all it was a big success. But I'm tired... very tired. .

[Gossamer]

. Status Update! I know, I never do these in my scrapbook! Okay, I know its the first day of the new season. I've got a ton of stuff to do sitewide, aka, roll out the Featured Character, Featured Contributor, and unless Tarot posts it, the Featured Thread. I switched the season on the site, posted the notice, and changed all the places in the lore where it says the current season. I'll get ALL the featured things up later today UNLESS I get called into work. That's right, once more, I'm on call for being extra help today at work. That won't start until about 5pm or so tonight if I have to go in. The easy Dispatcher is there today, so he won't work me unless he absolutely needs me and we have two new drivers, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed no one thinks to call me in! Anyhow, we are gearing up for an emergency Bee Team Colony Removal. We got the call that its a go today for 10am, so we've been up early packing the truck. I feel like its a bank heist about to take place all the gear we get and need to take with us. Anyhow, who knows how long that will take. I'm thinking about as late as 2-4pm depending on how difficult this one is. And this one is supposed to be an up on a second story roof type situation. That reminds me, I have a Bumblebee story to related. Last week we saved some via the Bee Team again. Hysterical. It involves Gillar becoming Public Enemy Number one, and me and a very veteren beekeeper running like crazy and laughing hysterically. Anyhow, I'll tell it later complete with pictures. Until then I wanted to let you know that ALL the Featureds are coming today (Unless I work) and that includes the Riverfall Calendar and two major events. One, involves Falyndar and is open to anyone! The second is the Cyphrus wide HUGE event for the season. I haven't told any of the Team in Cyphrus about it because they have been working sooooooo incredibly hard I want them to have ZERO details so they can drag their PCs and play as a reward for creating such awesomeness in the Region. See you all this afternoon and I will let you know if I go into work or not. .

[Gossamer]

. Kenash It's kinda like Monopoly, only better! I just realized why Kenash is so appealing. It's like a city wide game of monopoly where the corporations are the plantation dynasties and they get to form agreements and allegiances with each other against each other to see who can keep going past go and stay in the green and ultimately build all those hotels. It's going to be sooo much fun as a PC and as a Moderator. .

[Banickle]

Hmm. That's funny. I just bought this at my local game shop... Secret : But if it's a game of Monopoly you're looking to play, so be it! Long live Kenash, Nick

[Gossamer]

. A Two Part Open Letter To Mizahar And to Tyler, whom this letter is mostly about. Greetings Mizaharians. My fellow players, I'm posting this letter publicly so that you will all have absolute transparency to the situation so you know what's going on and don't have to rely on the rumor mill that is always so strong on Mizahar. Leila, Banshee, Rengar, Mongoose, and Deadfang will be immediately deactivated and retired as soon as I hit submit on this post. Many of you know the player, Leila, as a young woman named Kat who is deaf and loves to roleplay from PA. That is about as far from the truth as possible. In reality Kat is in fact a young man named Tyler who keeps getting deactivated from Mizahar and who comes back in various elaborate disguises to play the game he loves without facing any of his social responsibilities. Tyler has never really done anything really wrong in terms of breaking rules on our game besides lying about his identity to gain staff positions. He's a talented roleplayer, but the truth is everything about him is a roleplay. He picks a role and sticks to it both IC and OOC. I have never known him to tell the truth in any of his three incarnations on the game about anything in regards to himself. The first time he showed up, he was AS Secret who caused some issues and retired abruptly. His elaborate ruse that time was that he was building a house. Then later, he told everyone he was actually a girl pretending to be a guy, and while that was a bit weird, we all shrugged and said who cared. Girls do it sometimes because they want protection from internet predators. The second time around, he was Creeper, Shepard, and a ton of alts that he played a bit and mostly retired. He revealed to the entire game that his wife was killed (to me he said she was hit by a drunk driver to Jules he said she hit a deer and ran into a tree). The entire game mourned with him. He posted multiple blogs and scraps about it. He posted pictures of her. He spent hours with our players talking on the phone, being social, leaning on the pbase to get through this tragedy. The truth was however, his wife didn't die, we don't even know if he was actually married, but all the pictures he ever posted were of a woman who was very much alive in a relationship with another man who was fringely related to him via facebook. He was also, btw, a very rich business owner who ran a successful business operation and didn't really have to work anymore. There were a lot more lies, there were tons of them, but when he told them so often and so frequently, they became a reality to him... and he started tripping up. People started noticing. Mainly he was found out through Facebook. You might remember Creeper, because he was so competitive that he started a moderated thread with everyone in the Spires and then vanished when people from this site confronted him on his lies. He left the city a mess and that's why we closed it for a while. It needs a dedicated ST that will revamp it and not go overboard and overpopulate the gentle Jamoura community that it is. Moving on... He only stayed away a few months though.. less than a year. And he was back. This time, the story was that he was a young deaf woman from PA who ragequit her FB months before she started the site. Inquisitive players examined the pictures Tyler posted of himself posing as Kat and came to the conclusion that they were mostly of different women, and when I got to looking at Leila's IP, every single log on was from a small area in WV where Tyler was from... or within a hundred miles of it. Not a single one was from PA. God knows what sort of lies he told this round because I heard none of them. He avoided me like the plague, probably because he knew I'd figure it out sooner or later - probably sooner. We had a deaf founder, at one time, as you might have remembered which I'm sure was his inspiration for the elaborate ruse this time. And being deaf you don't have to talk on the phone or skype. And rage quitting facebook you don't have to share any info that might out that you are not a young woman. I didn't speak out about this situation last time it happened with Creeper because one of our Founders was adamant about keeping dirty laundry behind the scenes. I think that lack of going public about it just opened the doors for a lot of gossip and other people who knew about the situation talking about it and spreading misinformation. Tyler's pcs were not removed from the site. Only his Staff position was, and that was due to the dishonesty in his staff application. He did not log on again though after he was 'outted'. He never explained why he lied about his wife's graphic death and why he told everyone about going to identify her body in the morgue etc. He never came clean about any of the lies, and he left a great deal of us hurt and wondering what the hell because we'd given so much of our time to his pain and trying to help him get through it. Mizahar's community is amazing like that. But honestly, its a deep and abiding mistrust when you get to be friends with someone on the net and then get emotionally involved like so many people did and have everything you were told be a lie. Banshee, because she lied to get her staff position, will be removed from staff. I'm still debating on what to do with the other alts, because now that Tyler has been outted again, its certain he won't be back until he comes up with an other identity and starts fresh again. I have no doubt he will be back though. Three times in three years three different ways? So as for the other PCs involved, I think I will retire them so there is at least closure for the people that threaded with him. Otherwise, you'll do what I did and so many other people did and just wait and wait and wait for him to log back in and find out he won't... not until the new identity is in place or he gets bored. And if this time holds true like last time, he won't answer our questions. He'll never tell us why. He'll never answer phone calls or emails or pms and just leave that chapter of his life like it was worthless and meant nothing to him. I blame myself here. I should have caught this. If I spent more time with Leila or Banshee I would have seen it undoubtedly. Others have pointed out so many things that clued us in on this being Tyler. I just sit here and shake my head. I would list all the ways and then you could go compare them, but I don't want to give him more feedback on how to hide better, how to not be so obvious, because in retrospect its hugely obvious. And as a personal note to Tyler. You were never kicked off this site due to being a bad player. You were kicked off this site due to your lies. If you ever wanted to come back as yourself, as Tyler, you are welcome to be here. But each and every time we catch you pretending to be someone else, lying to people outright, leading them on emotionally as if to study how human nature reacts to various things.... you will be booted off again and again and again. That's not fair to people morally, ethically, or emotionally. It's a dick move. Its a cowardly move. And I can't believe I actually ever called you a friend, cared, or even put any of myself out there to see you through your 'hard times'. There is still a lot of quiet rage in me, and you know its not so much for myself, but its for all the other people who really really really were devastated when your lies were found out and you denied them... then said.. 'oh yea well its true but you know my wife leaving was like her dying and that was easier to process that way..." And I remember how you said you were so far buried in your own lies by the time you realized how cool everyone here was that you were trapped by it. Okay. I get it. But then to come back and do it again? Your actions are truly pathetic. Someday I hope you grow up, learn to be a man, come back and own everything you've ever done to this Pbase emotionally. Then, and only then, will you be welcome to rejoin our community and be an integral part of it. What the fuck are you so afraid of? That we'll hate the real you? We'll find you boring? Fuck dude... really? We all have big flaws. We all feel a little boring. Half of us are unemployed, live at home with our moms, or struggle just to not eat Ramen every day and pay the internet bill. A great deal of us are in college too. Get over it. Get the fuck over yourself. You don't have to be Mr. Rich or Mr. My Wife Died or Miss Deaf Woman to be interesting. Go out and fucking do interesting things to be interesting. Lies are fucking boring. Tired. Old. We've seen the fake you. All kinds of fake yous. And the truth be told? You aren't really all that good at being fake to begin with. Try some reality, why don't you? Goss .

[Paragon]

I'm absolutely gobsmacked by this... and Leila was talking to me more and more, becoming central in many of my city quests and plans. Wow, just wow. Can't believe he did this again.

Thank you for sharing. I think everyone appreciates the transparency this time round. But for now I'm pretty speechless.

[Phoenix]

It's hard for me to even comment. I extended my friendship not once, but twice. Things felt off and I made inquiries and I finally just followed my gut instinct and put two and two together.

It pains me that this keeps happening because there is a simple solution. I hope everyone understands that this is a convoluted, complex situation and we appreciate your support in Jen and my decision.

What's done is done and I am saddened, again, but... What are you going to do?

x

[Poison]

I had no idea. I rather enjoyed talking to Leila and reading „her“ posts. Creeper/Shepard/etc. used to be one of my favourite people on Mizahar and one of the few I talked to outside of Mizahar before the truth came out. I also had fun RPing with him when he was Secret.

I can’t help but wonder why he did the things he did. Why pretend to be somebody else? Does he hate himself? Is he not content with is life? Does he suffer from some kind of mental illness? And why does he keep on returning to Mizahar as somebody else after his current account has been banned? Doesn’t he have any other place to go on the internet?

I’d love to read his explanation, but I unfortunately doubt that this will ever happen.

[Ai Shou]

I cannot believe this. Thank you, Gossamer, for explaining this and I apologize for acting up when you were taking action. I was so incredibly fooled by this person and believed all of it... and it hurts. The only reason why I was defensive was because I thought that Leila was who she was, not some fake on line and I've learned a valuable lesson from this... not everyone can be who they are. And it saddens me. I had a friendship with a person that didn't even exist. And oddly enough, my emotions on this are mixed between sadness and anger, so I think that I ought to hold off on posting for a while until I can settle my thoughts. Leila got close to a lot of us and hurt quite a few of us. I hope this never happens again.

I'm gonna go cry now.