Hi guys. Don't be too disappointed: I'll still be around from time to time (sorry for my recent lengthy absence: been a busy guy, and lucky, too). And no, this decision was completely my own. As always, the bad guys display their total misunderstanding of reality: no one has brought the least pressure on me about my posting here (well, other than by a certain polite and proper government official, who politely and properly asked me why I post on message boards: I politely noted that the first amendment applies to me, too). And no, no one on this end cares a whit about the lengthy posts and laughable emails sent over and over to the board of directors in a fashion so laughable they dispel any doubt as to the clownishness of their author. They are serious people, they know the system is corrupt, and the incessant deposition-style posts and emails from a "hobbyist" (coupled with the cronyism from guys like Herb) are just additional proof of what I have been saying. As if further proof were needed at this point.

Here is what has been going on in my absence.

As I indicated in the preamble of that post to which Evren linked, the simple truth is that Yahoo was made useless by senseless clogging. And once the everyman investors who meet at the Fool began demonstrating that it was clicking for them (what was happening Behind The Curtains), the Fool got hijacked by a few folks in the service of the powerful interests who fear exposure. So I came to investorvillage, and it has been, by far, the best of the lot. The shills have largely been checked from disrupting the conversation here, and there are definitely some smart guys here. However, even here the conversation too often drifts into mindless chatter with the bad guys: I have them on "ignore" but in a way that makes it worse, as I can see even more clearly how their chatter disrupts the conversation of the non-shills (the shills get their heads handed to them time and again by the non-shills, but the real goal of the shills is still served: distraction).

More to the point, however, I have noticed that when I make a post here the shills quickly show up and clog, just as began happening at Fool. They are really quite shameless about it: they just want it off the screen. That got me thinking, and in time, I realized that scattering my posts here, Fool, and even our own auction message board, was probably a mistake: there are conventional thinkers who want to mediate information for the public, and I want to disintermediate them, but to do so with the clearest voice possible I should focus it in one area that they cannot clog over. Plus, I want the rhinoceros to have no place to lodge a horn, nor the tiger to lodge a claw: moving my posts onto a blog at Overstock reduces the potential (already miniscule) that they can argue there is some Reg FD issue involved with me speaking directly to the public. Last of these points: I really like Omuse and want to see it develop to its full potential.

For all of these reasons I decided to create my own blog on Omuse and funnel into it all the previous work that I could find from these various forums. I'll come back here from time to time, reading, when I get a chance, but intend to write mostly on my blog, hoping that what I write gets reposted here. When it is up and running smoothly, those that want can even migrate there, where there will be a 0 Tolerance rule for miscreants. Evren had it right: not much will change in practice, and of course, I will come back on occasion, if only to dispel rumor mongering of miscreants.

All that notwithstanding, I came back here yesterday in a desire to catch up a bit, and after reading through the last several pages of (non-ignored) posts there were a few responses I wanted to make:

Promarket - Thanks for your overly kind words.

http://www1.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=3532&mn=8514&pt=msg&mid=2486000

Evren - Ditto. You are a deep guy, and write beautifully. It is hard to believe that English is a second language for you, as you write better than 99.99% of those to whom it is a first:

http://www1.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=3532&mn=8518&pt=msg&mid=2486817

Lastly, Lucky Guy - Why do I have this funny feeling that I know you? I picked up a couple hints in your posts.... We met once, didn't we? If so, I hope everything is working out for you. Please let me know.

Please answer here, all non-miscreants, as the Omuse blog is still not very workable.

By the way, I am in San Francisco today. Good clean fun.

Patrick