what happened to VPforum?

[Isaac Sauvage]

the 'expiration date' i had in mind was how long a person can reasonably give benefit of the doubt to AJ without hearing any communication, given that he may have suffered some kind of personal hardship. it's been over nine months now. he had plenty of donators / volunteers, he's had time to be online, and they are entitled to an explanation IMO.

when i first found the myspace page i contacted "happy camper", but she had no idea who AJ was. you know how it is with internet 'friends'. and i did send AJ a myspace message a few days ago asking what was going on, just for the heck of it.

re: drives waiting to be recovered,
i would donate to such a project if that db could be recovered and hosted here or at VPF.ORG as an archive. at VPF there was a tonne of great code examples and history of the evolution of VP, VPM, etc that are worth being preserved for hobbyists and 'scholars' of VP.

one of the coolest code examples i remember is how to start up a second table and pass it focus from within your main table... that way you could simulate shifting PF's without having to cram everything onto a single PF. a lot of commercial PB's do this, but rarely if ever do you see it in VP. (i think starman came up with that one... not totally sure)

 

[sleepy]

I think Bubblehead did that one. Remember the "What Did I Come Up With?" thread, or same such?

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

oh yea, that's right.

tried to look for it through archive.org's stash just now, but the records are extremely patchy. sometimes threads and sub-pages will be scrupulously recorded, but most of the time there'll be nothing at all. i don't understand the pattern at work.

 

[mrschultz]

the 'expiration date' i had in mind was how long a person can reasonably give benefit of the doubt to AJ without hearing any communication, given that he may have suffered some kind of personal hardship. it's been over nine months now. he had plenty of donators / volunteers, he's had time to be online, and they are entitled to an explanation IMO.

That's a hard amount of time to come up with, being totally in the dark as we are. I'm sure with enough time and/or money it would be possible to find out if he's still alive somewhere.

For someone that works with computers to disappear from the Internet I can think of a few possibilities. A major tragedy leaving him physically or mentally debilitated. Got burned out and gave up the Internet. He's spending all his time caring for a debilitated family member (but that would still leave some time for going online). Or he's purposely using different aliases so we can't find him with normal searches (I don't think that's likely but it's a remote possibility).

re: drives waiting to be recovered,
i would donate to such a project if that db could be recovered and hosted here or at VPF.ORG as an archive. at VPF there was a tonne of great code examples and history of the evolution of VP, VPM, etc that are worth being preserved for hobbyists and 'scholars' of VP.

Several years ago I looked into this for people at work that have had drive failures, it's ridiculously expensive. Would probably run into many thousands of dollars for such a large database, even if they can't recover any usable data.

 

[sleepy]

What about his associations with www.dallascowboystalk.com?

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/dallascowboystalk.com

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

That's a hard amount of time to come up with, being totally in the dark as we are. I'm sure with enough time and/or money it would be possible to find out if he's still alive somewhere.

true... i was going by the time that VPF has been down, which i guess is over nine months based on when this thread was made. as you are implying(?), the actual time was probably longer, but perhaps not too much longer than a year, since around a year to 1.5 years ago AJ went on a major offensive to upgrade the site software, and if he had time, given his history, this probably indicates that his life was relatively 'alright' at that time.

but i have no reason to doubt that he's alive (real estate agent) and able to hit the net (myspace login).

what i'm not clear on is if he's still working on his other sites. i guess that would be another fruitful and relatively easy job of detective work.

For someone that works with computers to disappear from the Internet I can think of a few possibilities. A major tragedy leaving him physically or mentally debilitated. Got burned out and gave up the Internet. He's spending all his time caring for a debilitated family member (but that would still leave some time for going online). Or he's purposely using different aliases so we can't find him with normal searches (I don't think that's likely but it's a remote possibility).

or divorce / bankruptcy?

but i think that AJ's history of site support should also be taken into acct, and it fits that profile very readily from my experience. he typically disappeared for years at a time and was absolutely murder to get a reply out of while AWOL. and if he went bankrupt or through a divorce, then VPF might have been one expensive hobby too much. in other words, probability would seem to give this scenerio more weight than the others IMO.

Several years ago I looked into this for people at work that have had drive failures, it's ridiculously expensive. Would probably run into many thousands of dollars for such a large database, even if they can't recover any usable data.

isn't there also the possibility that he stopped paying the monthly server bills, meaning the drives would be overwritten by now? ie, no crash. (there is probably some aspect of this that i don't know about or don't understand yet. )

 

[mrschultz]

isn't there also the possibility that he stopped paying the monthly server bills, meaning the drives would be overwritten by now? ie, no crash. (there is probably some aspect of this that i don't know about or don't understand yet. )

Going by what the folks at Dallascowboystalk said when they came back up there was a server crash that wiped out all the backups and mirror drives.

So we do have that as evidence there was a crash.

I had never looked into how mirroring works until this summer when I did my computer upgrade, some types of mirroring store the data in such a way that all could be lost even if only one drive in each array fails. Usually this type of mirroring is used to give you maximum space (minimum redundancy). So if things were set up that way, and drives were failing (automatically switching to good drives and rearranging data on them), and he wasn't around to see it, all his sites could have been running off the last mirrored array for a while until the final drive failed, then there would be no hope of recovery.

If it was his responsibility to check for problems and notify the server farm of failed/failing drives, then he would be at fault for any data loss for his customers. That could have pushed him into bankruptcy (people could be suing him). Could be another reason for him being MIA all this time...

All speculation of cource...

 

[PinballAddict]

Just curious...
Has any new info. on AJ surfaced in these last 2 1/2 yrs. since the last post???
After reading almost 95% of this entire thread I'm just wondering if any thing else has happened.
I'm quite surprised it's been 2 1/2 years & nothing was added on this topic...
BTW- I recall hearing somewhere that 4dealhosting's owner had failed to make necessary payments about the time all this started happening(maybe it was him??)...

Anyway,he's currently listed as the owner of 4dealhosting according to the who.is page on that registrant(for what it's worth)...

 

[sleepy]

Ike had some info in a thread (this one???) that AJ had a divorce and that his house where the server was located was put up for sale; that AJ then left California.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

IIRC the divorce was purely speculative. but if you've read the whole thread as you say, you should know all those details that were to be had, not that there ever very many.

re: server and hosting issues,
IMO mrschultz had the most informative and educated guesses on that stuff, but they may have spanned more than just this thread.


personally i'm not very surprised that there hasn't been an update on this topic. the guy simply never came back to let anyone know what happened AFAIK, and a better-run replacement forum popped up around the same time frame.

AJ was a friendly-enough guy IMO, but he insisted on maintaining complete control of VPF.COM, even if that meant running it slackly and having no backup person. not a good situation.

but what really irritated me was the way most of the VP-crowd just said 'no big loss, we've got a better forum now'... completely glossing over the loss of eight years of nice code examples, support resources and the history of the development of the VP project.

bunch of assholes.

 

[Shockman]

I'm not surprised that he never came back to let anyone know what happened. Everyone knew what happened. As to why, there is only guesses, but he was never as hard to get a hold of as the staff claimed.

VPF was his site and no one was forced to staff it. The staff though worked, not just happened to, but worked against him. No one would maintain a site where the staff said the things they did about him (not caring, holding too much of the admin access, etc.) or over-riding his decisions.

He was more like JPH. He did not think anyone should decide who was a member of the site, and this was job one of his staff.

I'm sure he appreciates the loss, but has no regrets.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

I'm not surprised that he never came back to let anyone know what happened. Everyone knew what happened. As to why, there is only guesses, but he was never as hard to get a hold of as the staff claimed.

VPF was his site and no one was forced to staff it. The staff though worked, not just happened to, but worked against him. No one would maintain a site where the staff said the things they did about him (not caring, holding too much of the admin access, etc.) or over-riding his decisions.

He was more like JPH. He did not think anyone should decide who was a member of the site, and this was job one of his staff.

I'm sure he appreciates the loss, but has no regrets.

speaking of you making yourself unwelcome wherever you go, are you currently banned from VPF.ORG?

 

[Shockman]

this username, Shockman, is banned at vpf.org, yes.

 

[sleepy]

I dunno.
I e-mailed the dallascowboys site on his server when it came back online (in 2009?) asking for information about vpforums and got no reply.

 

[mrschultz]

but what really irritated me was the way most of the VP-crowd just said 'no big loss, we've got a better forum now'... completely glossing over the loss of eight years of nice code examples, support resources and the history of the development of the VP project.

That's always been my feelings as well.

It may have been after my last post here that I read about a fire at one of the server farms run by the big company that AJ used for his sites. If an entire room of servers was lost then that would explain why all his sites went down and all backups were lost. It's usually safe to backup to another machine in the same room, and a big server farm should have adequate fire suppression to prevent losing an entire room.

What was really strange was how he disappeared off the Internet entirely.

 

[sleepy]

But who was it that said we have a better forum now?
Was it the authors or was it "the so-called leachers"?

 

[LeeVanCleef]

I don't know... as a leecher, I'd have to say it's a better site for VP pinball and cabinet-building... it does go to show what a little organization can do to add a little life to a scene that was heading towards moribund. It's kind of a shame that it's more regimented than the old forums (points to Nic and TMFP for the Argument Clinic!) And Nic's right in pointing out the loss of so much history with the absence of the original VP.

 

[Shockman]

But who was it that said we have a better forum now?
Was it the authors or was it "the so-called leachers"?

I heard it from the new forum owner.

 

[Liteuser.]

I really do miss the old VPForums.

There was so much history that was lost and answers to how problems got solved that were lost. Not to mention all my own posts that are gone.

TMFP in the outlane had told us that AJ was going to close the forum. I just didn't want to believe it. So it wasn't really all that big of a surprise to me when the forum closed.

I have helped on updates and new versions of VPM tables and I have built original tables as well and some of them are still at PO. I have tried to give back to the community and I will continue to do so.

Tables I have supplied some image resources for at the old VPForums are.

Batman Forever by Pingod Apron image
The Addams Family by Pacdude Look in the table info I am listed. Playfield
Stargate by Tab and Destruk Playfield

Noah has a new VPForums site now and we might as well all try to get along. Just my two cents.

 

[Shockman]

When I am at friends house, or a family member's house, I create a VPF.org account, just as I did with VPF.com.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

It may have been after my last post here that I read about a fire at one of the server farms run by the big company that AJ used for his sites. If an entire room of servers was lost then that would explain why all his sites went down and all backups were lost. It's usually safe to backup to another machine in the same room, and a big server farm should have adequate fire suppression to prevent losing an entire room.

wow. so there's a whole new angle on it.



@liteuser,
about TMFP saying that AJ intended to close the site--

i don't remember that at all, and in fact that clashes with other things that were going on, such as TMFP going out and finding a replacement admin (as he was retiring), donations continuing to come in, and the suddenness of the loss of all AJ's sites at the same time (certainly he would have transitioned everything smoother than just flat pulling the plug). in addition, nothing pete ever said to me afterwards indicated that he knew what was going on.

sorry, mate, but i'm pretty sure you're mistaken on that part.

 

[sleepy]

Donations?

Well...what about that ex-employee from Ultrapin/GlobalVR who offered to write a whole new pinball engine?
He posted a very crude, unplayable development work-in-progress, took in a pile of willing donations while VP appeared to be in permanent limbo,
and then quit the scene.

I wonder if he returned the donations?

 

[Liteuser.]

@Ike Savage

As I recall TMFP did say in the outlane that the AJ had talked about closing the site, but there is no point in discussing it now. I guess I could be mistaken about what TMFP actually said. It's all water under the bridge now as far as I'm concerned.

Later

 

[sleepy]

Donations?

Let's try this again!
The .com site was also an archive for developments and announcements involving Ultrapin, so sometimes I wonder if there was sponsorship of the forum, or whether the company influenced the disappearance of the forum archives, in order to lose the documentation of the statements and promises made with regards to Ultrapin and contracts offered?

Maybe they had "A Fire Sale"?

 

[Shockman]

If it wasn't for other things, it would be easy to think that, sleepy. It is logical.
What ever the reason for it's closing, VPF was there when we needed it, and gone when it needed to be. And with Tom as the new admin., actually a blessing and gift to the community that it shut down.

As I have said, all I know is for sure is what I saw and what I got from AJ himself, and he was very disappointed with his staff, not one but all, not current, but all.