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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Thursday 1 August 2002 (Day View) – Banned from AustNet
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01.08.2002 – Thursday 1 August – I get banned from AustNet
- Morning
- • I woke up in pain. Not a good start, so I went back to bed and woke up again later, not in so much pain.
- • Mum drove into town to do shopping and all that exciting stuff. I spent most of the day on “chat” and at my PC. Shan rode into town on his motorbike to see his teacher, which I was also supposed to see but obviously can’t, and then dropped in here on the way home. We re-watched the “American Outlaws” DVD that I have copied to the hard drive.
- IRC
- • Shortly after Shan left, I had a bit of excitement on “chat”. I noticed the nickname “ai” was no longer registered, so I registered it to myself. I then set about trying to link the nickname to my other nicknames, “the”, “thei”, and “ned”. Linking nicknames means that I can use any of the four and have the same privileges. Basically, if I get “access” in a channel under one nickname, any nicknames linked to that nickname will also share that access. To link nicknames is mildly difficult, one has to have the current host added to a “hostlist” in the nicknames to be linked. I was having difficulty with this because the command “host add current” which should add my current host, was failing, as my host was a numeric IP; Austnet must not have been able to resolve it.
I went to the Austnet #ASD channel for help, but they were only able to provide basic help, which was no problem as I worked the problem out shortly thereafter. Just before I went to #ASD for help, a friend from the #planetchat channel said (I am the nick “nasti”):
(netwerk): COMPLAIN LOUDLY!
(netwerk): to #ASD
(netwerk): because
(netwerk): they are so so helpful
(netwerk): </sarcasm>
(nasti): but I don’t want a gline today
Shortly after:
* nasti has now requested help in asd
(netwerk): nasti: might be a good time to fly to bali, while you wait for a response And then a minute later, just after the people in #ASD had said they couldn’t help me:
(nasti): (helpful asd person): thei; I can’t see why it’s not working then ..
* nasti parts asd
* (nasti): brb gonna think with my own (functional) head
(Sunflower): (dumbo thei): i just can’t figure out alone and neither can ASD but i call myself better than them
* Sunflower hides
(nasti): well we’ll see if non-helper, non-asd thei can work it out or not ma’am :)
(nasti): (NickOP): thei added to linked nicks
(nasti): there, didn’t even take long
(nasti): ASD are dimwitted casserolle fillings
And yet again, a short time later, while discussing the reasons I couldn’t add the link to my nickname:
(nasti): however that’s somewhat over the heads of our friendly casserolle fillings in asd
(Sunflower): oh would u stop it
(Sunflower): get over yourself
(nasti): yep I’m stopped now :)
(Sunflower): you can’t even help yourself
(Sunflower): so don’t get hard on ASD admins
(nasti): lol
(nasti): I’m sure there’s good ones
Then a few minutes after:
(thei): <whine> why can’t it be easy?
Then, just over an hour later, during which time I said nothing more than a few cursory and very average and polite hello sort of comments, and set away to mess around with my iLog2 script, from “out of the blue”:
Banned from this server: Banned from AustNet: Complaints and criticisms dribble from your mouth about this network. Plenty of other networks out there to complain about. Start looking here: http://eyersee.org/
I assume someone “high up” in the Austnet chain of command saw my “complaints and criticisms” regarding the Austnet Services Department (#ASD) and calling them “dimwitted casserole fillings”. I’m not sure what, if any, sense of humour this person has – but it is obvious to me that calling someone a “dimwitted casserole filling” is very light-hearted and meaningless abuse, and was meant to be humorous. I would have thought everyone would know that no one calls someone something that absurd if they are seriously abusing them. Looking back I can see how it doesn’t sound very nice, but I still think its pretty funny.
What has really got my goat up now is the fact that I am banned from Austnet for complaining and criticising. I did not complain, nor did I criticise anyone or anything. I did make some humorous remarks which are included above, which in retrospect I can see aren’t very humorous, but why am I banned?
I know its just chat and no big deal; but it really annoys me to be abused by people who have the power to abuse, and with no recourse to have that abuse stopped or justified. Plus chat is a pretty big deal to me at the moment; I am essentially stuck here in front of my PC, and chat is how I fill in a large amount of my time.
The other thing that gets to me; even if I was complaining and criticising the network (which I am not), why should I be banned? What I did say wasn’t said to anyone affiliated with the network, or in any official network channels. It was said in the channel of a friend of mine (who just happens to be married to one of the “owners” of the network... but that is most certainly no justification) and in which I have high access and am presumably welcome. If I was offending someone in that channel (they are the only people that saw what I said and therefore the only people that can have been offended) then I could have been banned from that channel, which would still allow me to talk to my other friends in other channels and yes, I could complain and criticise the network as much as I liked in my other channels, what harm does it do to anyone?
I’m going out on a limb here, making an assumption that could be entirely wrong; but one of the most “powerful” people on Austnet is married to the owner of #Planetchat, and I am assuming it is he who banned me. Many people in that actual channel say things the same and much worse than what I say and don’t get banned, which leads me to assume (bear in mind I could be entirely wrong) that this man specifically doesn’t like me. He has been extremely jealous of me in the past, as I was a good (chat) friend with his wife. This in turn leads me to speculate that he is targeting me, as he is jealous of me, which puts the whole event into a different perspective. I am being unfairly banned because one of the men with the “power” is jealous of me. And there isn’t a thing I can do about it.
It would be farcical if it weren’t me that was banned. I’m not very happy about being unable to chat to my friends. - • 2 AM and time for bed. I have snuck onto “chat” anyway (under another nickname), and found that I am banned for over 30 days, the ban set by “RogerY”.