IT'S A GAS, GAS, GAS!!
MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVES/WEEKLY ROCK POLL POST
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Name: Keno
E-Mail: keno@fairpoint.net
Subject: Very important news about our polls(& other things
Date: Tuesday, April 16, 2024
Time: 5:14:45 PM
Remote Address: 216.245.78.27
Message ID: 321666
Parent ID: 0
Thread ID: 321666
This is an open letter to all of our poll voters and those many more who still show up here every week to lurk the Poll Post. Of course, only a handful of you can post here today (my decision, back after I closed down Gasland), so if any of you wish to reply to me via email on this, that would be cool.
As most of you know, these weekly polls kept going after Gasx3 ended, and since this board was always the place where the Poll Post was published, well, I decided to still use this old board for that, and so the Land of Gas was simply renamed "the Poll Board", while Gasland's old archives, also lived on here, too. But I also realized when I closed down Gasx3, that doing so could destroy the polls, too, or at the least, the Stones Poll. Would Stones fans still show up to vote if they weren't dropping by here every day anymore to post or read the board anymore? Well, they/you did show up, and so did the Beatle and Rock fans, too, to vote in their polls, so all 3 weekly polls lived on and actually grew in voters each week, and today, while I had to close down the Rock Poll 2 years ago, since I needed to ease my workload; with just 2 weekly polls running, my domain's polls still see more voters today than they saw when Gasx3 was still active, and I thank all of you for that!
So, the reason for this letter. Well first, it will take a bit for me to get to the main reason, but if you been reading my posts for longer than, let's say, 2 weeks’ time (and most of you have been reading them forever), you know that I'm not one to get to the point real fast, so what I have to say that's so important, will be noted later on, as I first want to tell a story or 2 about Gasland and our polls, first (but you can always skip way ahead of course if you’re short on time [about 5 paragraphs down], but if not, just pretend it’s 10 years ago and you just stopped by here to spend a bunch of time, like we all did in the good old Gassy days.).
I've always been so pleased to see the support here for our polls. Believe it or not, the weekly polls were one of the 2 main reasons why I started keno.org in the first place, with my weather site, the other reason. My plan before keno.org got officially off the ground, was not to just run music polls, but run polls that covered everything, from being heavy on music and political polls, to whatever was out there that one could vote on. I planned it to be in time, a giant polling domain, but I also realized I couldn’t do it all alone, not for something that big. I would need help, and at first, my friend Tee (who built our polling system and also the Gas board) was to be that person to help me. But he let it be clear that he couldn’t do this at first cause of other business, other than he put a basic Polling system together for me that I started the polls with, and 2 years later, a new board for Gasland, too (we used a CGI programed board for the first 2 plus years). But in a nutshell, Tee couldn’t join me in expanding the polls to what I envisioned, so nothing else changed after that, other than Gasland was - from almost the day it started up, the biggest and most popular Stones board on the Net for years to come. Yet to this day, I still have to think - what if what I wanted to do with the polls, had gotten done?
I also in the beginning of planing this domain (1997), planned a lyrics site for the Stones songs, with the help and blessing from the late Allen Klein (yes, that Allen Klein). I've only revealed that fact here in the last 4 or so years now, since Allen didn't want anybody to know he was involved; he also told me that the Stones might not even give the domain permission to publish their songs recorded after 1971 here, if I did let that be known... so I didn't (the band still wasn't on the best of terms with him after their split from him years ago). But if there was one thing everybody who ever dealt with Mr. Klein in the business world knew about him, was you didn't ever cross him, and I never did. In fact, I liked the guy and we got along fine. He was very helpful to me and this domain when it first started out, too.
But there weren’t really any Stones lyrics sites up on the Net in 1997, really none to be found at all. Alan wasn't allowing anybody to publish those songs that he controlled; that included all of the band's original, non-cover songs from the 1960s, up to 1970, plus a few tunes from 1971. But I wanted to publish all of their lyrics online, and when I asked him for permission to do so, over a short period of time after getting to know me better, and he grew to like me and trust me, and decided that I could - but only if I did what he insisted on, that being, how he wanted them presented, so I agreed to do that, instead of doing it all on my own (the way I really wanted to do it). But I would do so only if he promised me some leeway, along with the help already offered (since again, he controlled 100% of the Jagger/Richard/Wyman/Phelge Stones songs/lyrics from the early days. Our agreement was that nobody else online would be given permission, for the first year that I had the lyrics up on my site, to publish the Stones lyrics anywhere else on the Net (but at least 2 sites did illegally, near the end of the first year, without asking for permission to do so). But for the rest of my new Stones site (or the future John Lennon site), he didn't have anything to do with (other than to connected me with several Rock photographers, so I could use their photos on the Stones and Lennon sites. But with the lyrics I was to publish, I had to show them online the way he sent them to me (I couldn't alter the lyrics if they weren't correct, because as he put, they were correct. He noted that Mick just changed some words in the studio when he sang the song, but I still had to show what the copyright lyrics were, and nothing more). So, I didn't change anything. He also was the one who got me access to all of those session logs, so I could list with the lyrics who played what. Yet, we two never talked about a Stones message board, either, but when it was clear that one was needed, and I decided to start one, It's a Gas, Gas, Gas! was born, along with my having access to four of the best Stone insiders to get current and old info from, and of course, one of those insiders was Allen Klein - but, with him and 2 of the others, I couldn’t say a word as to who they were. Stones and Rock photographer Philip Kamin was the only one who didn't care if I noted his name at the board or not. I of course, wrote my Stones book using his photos of the band, but I also wanted to get permission from Allen and the other two about being able to quote them in the book (after all, this request had nothing to do with quoting them online). Allen still said no, and without naming the other two here, one, who I was/am still friends with, offered to write the book's forward (and did), but he didn't want me to name him anywhere else, other than he was fine naming him in the acknowledgement statement in the book. My third insider (SC) said no, too, as he was still working directly for the Stones at the time, and while he's deceased now, I'll still honor his wishes. If you can figure out the initials to his name that I just left, you might be able to figure out who he was. But in one of my last phone calls with Allen, all that he ever told me, was that once he was gone, I could then use his name, but not before. So, I then asked him what did he mean by that, "You aren't dying?" I asked. He just said "Nope, let's change the subject", and I did. But shorty after I started actually writing the book, I tried to get ahold of him again, but at this point, email was the only way to do that, as he wasn't in the office any longer answering his private line. While I was told via email (I think it was his son writing the email in his name at this point, but I’m not sure). I was told again that I could use his info for sure in the book, but I couldn’t use his name in the book as one of the sources. What I also didn't know at the time, was that Allen was now very ill, he was dying, from dementia, which I nor anybody else, other than his family, knew about, and soon after, I lost all contact with him (I wrote my book in '05).
But no, the Gasland Message Board, the first successful fan board on the Net (that first board, that was on the first Stones site, was popular, yes, but it wasn’t successful at all, and was closed down in mid ’97). So yes, Gasland was one of the first early social media sites, along with the other 2 main Stones boards, as these 3 boards, all really lead the way as "fan boards" (as we called them back then, as "social media" wasn't used until the early '00s) and these 3 Stones boards, early on, were a step head of all the other major bands' boards that were around - including the Beatles board, in having so many posters on them. Good for us Stones fans! While my polls actually started up before Gasland (those were on a different platform, off of the domain, and I closed them down and restarted them with the help of my new Gas Board, and in time they became a total success, too! In fact. Last week was the anniversary of the new polls launch date, April 7, 1999. But again, while I state in the Poll Post each week of the Stones Polls, what week we are in (presently week 1,287), that doesn’t include the polls that ran in 1997-98, and yes, I reran those poll questions on this domain in time, since those old polls are long lost. But, pretty much, keno.org was/is the leader in Rock, Fab and Stones fan polling on the Net, bar none. I'm so grateful for the support from all of you who never left the polls behind after the Land of Gas was closed down for good, several years ago. Without you, none of this would be so! So thank you all for that and also the many lurkers who still show up to read the Poll Post without ever voting, too. The fact some of you come here just to read the Poll Post, is very cool indeed!
Now finally, the sad reason for this open letter. You see, because of 3 different illnesses that I'm suffering from in my old age, illnesses that I will never recover from; and unless something else were to kill me in time, one of these illnesses will do me in sooner or later. Because I haven't been well for actually the last 4 years now, it's been a struggle for me to keep running these polls with a broken operating system, and it's hard to post the Poll Post on this (also) broken board. You all know about the ASP problems, since while I kept my illnesses mainly private (not totally, but for the most part I don’t talk about them here too much), I've bitched a bunch about the broken ASP programs that run the polls and this old message board, a million and one times! I just can't keep doing this work any longer, as much as I want to keep everything going. So, I'm here today to announce that sometime in June, our very last 2 weekly polls will be run. Yes, the polls that have been running nonstop on this domain each week since 1999, will be ending. Gosh, I hate to have to say that or do this, but I can't run them any longer, as 2 of my illness are increasingly getting worst and getting in my way as to being able to do so any longer.
Now yes, I have talked here - just a bit - about my lung problems, mainly in part, in anger I guess (it's a way to blow off steam), since I never smoked tobacco in my life, and now my lungs are so messed up, that they will kill me if my body lives long enough to let them do that. I've been on oxygen for 2, almost 3 years now. My lungs are just shot. I watched my wife die from lung cancer back in '11 (she did smoke) and I never wanted to deal with that again, although no, it's not lung cancer that I have. But bad lungs hurt, not being to able breath normally, hurts. This in turn has cause a second problem, although my soon to be ex-neurologist, still isn't 100% sure about this, my family doctor is, as is my daughter Jackie (the former Gasser), who's a nurse. I agree with them, in fact, I'm gonna be seeing a new neurologist on the Colorado Front Range - almost 4 hours away from here, since the one I'm seeing now, is the only neurologist within 3 hours of here and I just don't trust her anymore. Living in a small, isolated mountain town when you become old and ill, is not easy to do, or perhaps wise. As much as I love living here, I, Jackie and her hubby Rocky, along with my grandson Cooper and his baby daughter, are thinking about moving back to the Colorado Front Range (after 22 years out here in Crestone) for that reason only (well, not for Coop, he's wanting to go for other reasons, as his job with the water department in this small town [which one has to be certified for, and he is], pays a lot more $$$ for the same job in a city). But for the rest of us, having nearby doctors are important in old age (me) and in bad health (Jack and Rock, she has the big C and Rocky has a bad heart. His heart is as bad as my lungs are).
But getting to that second health problem I have, and this I never have written about here, two different CT scans over the last 4 years have shown my brain is not getting enough oxygen to it, and in turn is causing what they call "reversible dementia" in me. I never heard of this before, as I thought that all dementias were fatal and not curable. At first, I was told I had regular dementia (twice), but then, both times, I was told, no. If you don't know, dementia is very hard to diagnose, especially in the early stages, and there’s 19 different kinds of it, and the only one way any doctor can be 100% sure any one person has it, is by performing an autopsy - a fact. But yes, I've had severe memory loss for 3 to 4 years now, although I noticed in the last 2 years, it hasn't gotten any worst - and IMO, it's because of the oxygen I'm now on. But with reversible dementia, well it's a half misleading thing to say that it's reversible, at least in my case, anyway. They can't totally bring back all that I lost, they can only stop it from was getting worst (so I've been told), and the way it is right now, it won’t kill me, unless it becomes one of the non-reversible kinds.
I'm flat out sick of having to go to so many different kinds of doctors and hospitals for way too many tests! Plus, some of the tests - they fucking hurt! Have you ever had a spinal tap before? If not, believe me, you don't want one! Even if they dope you up really good - and they do, it still hurts like hell! But I will ask you this, since you’re reading this... Do you think that a person with dementia for 4 years, could write such a long letter like this, if they had true dementia? My dad, who was a very smart man his entire life, and after 10 years with dementia, died from it, couldn’t write like this after he had it after just 2 years or so. My oldest sister is dying from it today, too, and while she was once a big-time web poster on websites I never really checked out, she stopped posting on them after the first year she was diagnosed. I also lost 2 close friends from it, and none of them could do the things I can still do now, 4 years after I was first told I had dementia. Yet while I will say that, I know I'm still a doomed man anyway, thanks to my lungs, and my age, too. But everything combined with these 3 main illnesses that I’m living with, it’s all a bit too much, so I have to say goodbye, as far to running our polls goes, it's just too much work for me at this point of my life.
Ok, at this point (really before this point), this is just another Mumble Jumble (2 written here in one week, wow), and I have said what I had to say about the polls (I think!). So please feel free to visit another site now, or go offline, etc. But I’m gonna keep typing away here, since I can’t go out and do too much things anymore (not alone), like I used to. Writing is still something I can do and like to do, so I’ll just keep this going…..
Dementia is something many don't understand, some will treat like you're a pariah when they find out you have it. But I'm no pariah, not even close. I might have been an outcast to those of the WW2 generation many years ago, back when they were still alive, since I was a full-blown hippie then, and all hippies were labeled outcasts and drug addicts by them. But I always rose above all that, and never let such people get in my way. If they did try (and some did), I just pushed them to the side and I never let them win! I mean, unless you were born before 1970, you may not understand this, but you never heard of a longhaired salesman business owner before the 1990s, and I must have been one of the very first, since I started my firm in 1986! I could sell anything to anybody in my prime, and unlike, say a used car salesman that everybody hates, everybody loved me. Yep, this old hippie, when I was a younger hippie, started my sales marketing business - with little money - 100% on my own, and in a conservative city, mind you (Colorado Sps.), and made it big with over 50 employees and many happy clients all over that city, and in later years, in Pueblo Colorado, too (as I had a satellite office there after '92). I sold that business in '96 and started working on my home computer as a web designer and well - the rest of that life on the internet story is written up above (well, a part of it).
So yes, I did it my way for sure, and beat anybody who tried to get in my way - 100% of the time. But I can't beat old age, it will beat me in the end, as it does that to everyone (who live long enough)! I won't let all that get me down, but I'm only human, and sometimes I guess it does. I can't go hiking up high in Colorado's beautiful mountains anymore - and that just kills me. Hell, I can't get high smoking weed anymore, either, yet that I don't miss too much, and while I can still do the drug in non-smokable ways, that kind of high I don't care for, so I just don't partake anymore. I'm also not supposed to drive anymore, either, so I don't. I gave away my SUV to Jackie, and when I need a ride somewhere, she or Cooper will be there for me. Still, I feel I'm getting in their way sometimes, even if they never say I am. I just never been the dependent kind. Yet I think the thing that I hate most, besides having this damn oxygen tubing following me around wherever I go, is that I won't get to see my beautiful baby granddaughter grow up to become a woman. She’s in the terrible twos stage of life, and living up to that title for sure! Gosh I love her so much!
So, you may ask, what will happen to this domain? Well, it all stays right here where it always has been. The last sites that will remain totally proactive, will be my Crestone Weather site, and my 3 Cam sites, as they are easy for me to run, and for my grandson/or daughter to run when I no longer can. The Stones, Lennon, Rock, and Hound Dog music sites, and all the other non-music sites on the domain, will all stay up too, just not be proactive! My domain (keno.org.) is prepaid for the next 10 years, so it will more than likely out live me, as considering the shape I'm in, I don't see myself lasting nearly that long. But if the Stones do come out with some more new songs in the next 2 or so years, I'll still place the new songs online (as long as I can). But other than that, the music sites will still be a place to visit and I hope you all will check them out from time to time… But sadly, Gasland and the Polls will be mainly lost, as the ASP has to go. Still, almost every poll that I have run here in the past, has their results listed in the Poll's List Pages, that are HTML pages, so that info will not be lost. Then this old - what use to be Gasland board, does have its own HTML archive page that our old friend, Gasser Undercover, put together years ago. Named the Let it Loose (LIL) Gasland archives pages, it will remain up too, of course (that's why LIL was published in the first place, as I and Undercover knew this day would someday come around, and it's here now, in 2024). Only thing about LIL is, it isn't that big at all, but it does have at least a few of the better posts saved there, and will always be up online here at the domain - along with some of the earliest posts ever made at Gasland - made back in the 1990s, when we used to post on that CGI board. So, the saved best posts made there will also not be lost either. Yeah, they are somewhat limited too, but there's a lot more posts saved at LIL than what the ASP board (this platform) has saved, too. Now, and important - if there's any old posts on the ASP board that aren't on LIL that you think should be saved there, and you know where these posts are located in Gasland, please let me know real soon, so I can save them on the LIL html pages! I right now have links noted and linked to at LIL for the many posts that were made when 9-11 took place. Some real good posts came from that sad day and for a few days after, that I never saved in LIL, because there was just too many of them. That problem still looms today. It would take a ton of work to save all of those posts, there's just so many of them, and I don't think I'm up to do the job. But it bugs me, as yes, that stuff should be saved! So, I'll think about it, and what might be the best way to do that, if there is a best way.
So, more than likely, we will lose the ASP pages around September of this year. For now, the On-Going Polls will continue to run for the next few months (so you can still vote there!), then, after they are closed out, all of their info will be saved on HTML pages, too, and then finally, the ASP Gas Board pages, and the ASP Polls' pages, will all be gone forever (Unless the Wayback Machine site has a few of them up over there on their domain. They have covered this domain nicely over there, but I'm not sure if they ever covered anything in the ASP part of the domain?).
So, I hope in the last 7 to 10 weeks of our polls, that even some of you who only lurk, will join us in voting, too. Let's go out with a big bang! Gosh, I wish we could have gotten all of the Stones and Beatle songs rated, but while that can't be so, we do have a nice large number of them that have been rated, too. But to close this letter out, please understand, I'm not looking for any pity from anybody in writing here about my illnesses (hell, I only talked about 2 of them), I'm just explaining why I have to close down the polls now. Again, I don't want to do it - just like I don't want to be sick with something that will kill me one day, but that's just how it goes. I'm still having, and had, a great and happy life, with a totally great family and kids, and friends, and I wouldn’t change any of it! Plus, I do still hope to be around for a few years to come, too, if that's possible, and things are not any more painful. I just won't be here online talking to you anymore, like I've been doing for the last 27 plus years. I plan after the last week of polling here, that there will be one last Poll Post written, so I can do a poll wrap-up and say goodbye to all of you one last time. That will most likely be in June, but again, I don't have an exact date set. So hey, for now I'll still be talking to you with each new weekly poll run, and until then, when it’s time to say my finial goodbyes, I'll see you all back here next Monday morning! Oh, and if you didn’t vote yet this week, please remember to do so!
Keno
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