This is where all of you explain to me in excruciating detail what an asshole I am. The story- we had 562 draft posts in the WordPress dashboard, so I fired off an email asking all the fp posters if I could delete them. I have no idea why this was such a pressing issue, as it had nothing to do with server performance. But I got a bee in my bonnet, thought everyone had responded, and went ahead and deleted them.
Then got an email from Anne Laurie, and it turns out I deleted stuff she was saving. I feel like the biggest asshole, so here is your chance to say everything nasty you ever wanted to say about me:
Sorry, Anne.
AT
People draft and edit posts on this site?
Roger Moore
Does this mean the front pagers will stop bigfootting each other for a while?
John Cole
@AT: I don’t, which goes a long way to explaining the quality of my posts.
sb
I can’t bring myself to do it. Even when the site raises my blood pressure, I visit daily. I don’t comment all that much but I enjoy the posts, enjoy the comments–including the pissing contests–so, calling you an a-hole ain’t gonna happen.
Thanks for the site, JC. Keep it going as long as you’re willing and able.
Comrade Mary
But were you naked when you cleaned things up? Did you hurt yourself in the process?
lamh35
Dang! Unfortunately, ur not really that much of an A*hole even on ur most sanctimonious, snarky, self-righteous, uncompromising, white-priveleged days. So I’ve go nothin’ to add.
mclaren
Why would anyone want to say anything nasty about John Cole? He’s one of the fairest and most sensible people on this blog, as far as I can tell.
It utterly baffles me when people get their hate on about stuff like this. George W. Bush…the Iraq War…torture…that stuff I can understand people getting foaming-at-the-mouth enraged about.
But this stuff?
Huh????!!?!?
Just Some Fuckhead
Weird how you always manage to overlook Anne Laurie.
arguingwithsignposts
OP is an awesome guy. I don’t know why anyone would say anything bad about him.
MikeJ
Will there be a footy thread for the USMNT tonight?
dewzke
You are a good man, John. (since you turned) Nah, you always were. /atheist lefty
sb
@MikeJ: Chances of a USMNT win tonight, MikeJ? I like the odds of a Boehner apology better but I’m cheering for the boys.
Kay
@Comrade Mary: Why,oh why can’t I recommend this?
+1
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: Opie grew up to be that smarmy Cunningham boy in Milwaukee.
Chet
Oh, come on. If you want to save stuff, save it in Evernote or something. The WP dash? That’s like trying to save stuff in the garbage can and complaining when someone empties it.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Mistakes were made…
Baud
FYJC
max
I feel like the biggest asshole, so here is your chance to say everything nasty you ever wanted to say about me:
Backup?
Dumb shit happens man.
max
[‘Pity we’ll miss Anne’s unposted posts, but hey, she’s pretty good at this.’]
geg6
Don’t you be fucking with Anne Laurie, Cole. I owe her a big one.
As for calling you an asshole, I have several reasons other than that. For one, you have not yet told me how gorgeous my new girl is. Everyone else has, but not you, you asshole.
Second, you haven’t responded to my email. I know how you hate getting email, but jeebus. I’m not bitching about the site acting up, the new server, ABL, Zandar or Obama and his DRONEZ! I expect an answer, asshole. ;-P
askew
Man, out of all of the front pagers to do this to. Anne Laurie already has a complex about you ignoring her and now this.
Omnes Omnibus
@geg6:
I expect he deleted that as well.
Just Some Fuckhead
Prolly wanna at least find out if geg6 looks like Kathy Bates, John.
amk
fatcats lover.
Gmann
You Austin TX heartbreaking, mustard losing, post deleting dolt.
Kinda new here, so I’ll leave it at that. . . Certainly not an asshole, but a tad on the strange side. . .
Baud
OT: I’m watching Rachel and the Supreme Court artist drew the most hideous picture of Justice Scalia during the argument today. I wonder if the artist is gay.
raven
Don’t sweat the small shit.
geg6
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Not quite. But I do own a mallet.
PsiFighter37
I shame thee long and hard.
TWSS
PigInZen
You should just go back to being conservative.
Yutsano
@Just Some Fuckhead: She (at one point) self-described as having spiky short hair. So I guess it’s possible if Kathy Bates decided to explore her unrequited punk side.
MikeJ
@sb: There’s a chance of a win, but I’m not putting any money on it. Mexico hasn’t done better than a draw yet.
Ted & Hellen
BOT-ENABLER!
Villago Delenda Est
@PigInZen:
Well, yes, because being an asshole is not just expected with them, it’s a prerequisite.
Poopyman
@Baud: I thought that was a rather accurate drawing. Kinda like Jabba the Hutt.
Poopyman
@geg6: IIRC that was a sledgehammer.
Gotta raise your game.
Redshirt
Crackerjack!
Baud
@Poopyman:
Didn’t say it was inaccurate — just hideous.
ETA: And Jabba the Hut really deserves better.
Randy P
Didn’t you do a complete backup before your server upgrade? Shirley your IT team can recover this stuff.
I speak as someone who is really terrible about backup policy, both at home and at work.
Anoniminous
Talk to the person who did the server swap. Proper protocol is to back-up everything to
tape* disk before switching.* Yes. I am an olds.
geg6
@Poopyman:
Been a long time since I’ve seen the movie. No matter, though. I have a couple of sledges in the garage, too.
JWL
You want to talk about feeling like an asshole? OK.
A casual acquaintance- actually a guy I hired to plaster my walls- lent me his father’s WW2 82nd Airborne yearbook (yeah, the 82nd published one). Being a WW2 freak, I accepted it, and extended my profound assurance that I would guard it, if not with my life, then jealously. I’d take the best of care with it. He had explained it was a family treasure, one that his son would inherit. I also met his son, and he was as good a guy as his old man.
Just last week he phoned and asked for it back. I said sure, no problem. But when I went looking for it, looking where I thought I had put it, it wasn’t there. I spent hours turning my house inside out, but it was no where to be found.
I was just about to call him and confess, feeling near as rotten as I’ve ever felt in my life, when I took one last look around. I then experienced a “Thank You, Lord” moment. Because I did find it, just a few feet away from where I thought I’d left it (and where I had already looked at least a half dozen times). I nearly vomited, I was so relieved.
The moral being: never accept anything that cannot be replaced.
Again, Thank You Lord, and a Happy Easter Bunny Hopping Day To You, Ma’am, This Weekend.
Yutsano
@Anoniminous:
Incidentally, the IRS still does this…
Punchy
Trash The Host Thread? REALLY?
I’ll bite: who’s the bigger asshole, 2013 Scalia or 2005 Cole?
Baud
@Yutsano:
Makes sense. Tape is probably the only storage medium that can handle Mitt Romney’s secret tax returns.
Omnes Omnibus
@Punchy: Scalia, but only because he has actual power.
Baud
@Punchy:
@Omnes Omnibus:
Scalia, because it’s goddamn 2013.
Ted & Hellen
Weird.
The alleged participants in the alleged Bin Laden murder raid can’t seem to keep their story straight.
Why would that be?
piratedan
our mistakes are the one thing in this life that we truly own imho either by acts (or cats) of commission or omission. Ty for the site JC and the quality FP folks and the excellent commentariat. I learn more things here than just about anywhere else on the web and engage with people who can just as instruct via snark and/or constructive arguments. Been called out on my transgressions here and lauded for my insight. Not sure that there’s any place else on the web that I feel so comfortable being me.
WereBear
There should be a backup because of the recent server move. Of all the times for John to screw up, this would be the best possible one!
Suffern ACE
None of this would happen if there were policy manuals. I think we need to have a bleg so we can raise money to hire mckinzie or Bain.
Anoniminous
@Yutsano:
Not surprised. The last time they tried to update their computer equipment they blew $4 billion and got squat.
eastriver
And you’re a drunk. Which will be partially ameliorated if you follow through and adopt a kid. But you have to stop drinking first. Getting your diet under control is a proxy for getting your boozing in hand. Like your pet fetish is an emotional proxy for children.
Typing on an iPhone, so no beating around bushes.
raven
@JWL: I lost track of two rare films I had on video. I asked everyone I could think of if they had it and no one did. I gave up and three years later a buddy who I had not asked was moving and brought them over.
Schlemizel
JAY-ZEUS Cole! if you want to troll for praise just say so. Yes you screwed up & AL ought to have one free shot at your nads in retribution.
But we all should understand that this blog is not your job, not your livelihood and (hopefully) not the driving force in your life. Mistakes will happen, maybe you are a bit insensitive but that happens.
We love what you do & appreciate it a lot. Tell her your sorry & move on
Schlemizel
@Yutsano:
Magnetic or paper?
amk
@Punchy: black robed vs scantily clad. umm, though choice of ah’s.
NotMax
562 drafts sitting around gathering virtual dust? Well past time to clean up.
Also too, knowing of the, um, idiosyncrasies of the site and particularly of WP, if the drafters did not already have back-ups on their machines, that’s their lookout.
Not worth kvetching about at all.
Culture of Truth
even North Korean dictators save their front pager’s posts.
eemom
O Cole/asshole T, but I’ve been wondering: is the March madness thingie over? And did Duke lose?
Anne Laurie
@Just Some Fuckhead: And Sarah Proud & Tall — if she’s still in Australia, it would have been the middle of the night when Cole gave “everybody” a two-hour window to move their drafts elsewhere or lose them. I keep vampire hours, which is why I lost out.
Way I look at it, Cole’s the owner, the rest of us are just bartenders at his joint. More fool me, if I start to mistake an employer (who doesn’t pay me anything but exposure) for a friend!
YellowJournalism
God damn you, John Cole. You asshole who:
-Even in your wingnut days, posted interesting topics and welcomed opposing views.
-Admits your failings and offers apologies when necessary.
-Shares your life and family (furry and human) with what could possibly be the most eclectic bunch of comments who may/may not be who they say they are. (And it’s probably scarier that we are who we say we are, if you think about it.)
-Shares the spotlight with front pagers, some who used to be members of the aforementioned group of weirdos.
-Takes in animals and posts adorable pictures, and shares embarrassing stories of being under your pets’ control.
-Encourages a community of people who offer eachother emotional support, engage in pet rescue, give tips for finding jobs, and display artistic wares.
-Overcomes a cranky loner streak to meet up with people on your travels.
-Posts hilarious rants and drunken tweets.
All that, and you delete people’s draft posts. You monster.
Suffern ACE
@Culture of Truth: he is the least dictator looking dictator they’ve had there yet. I’m sure he’s got a general’s uniform with epaulettes and all sorts of doodads.
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
Man, that’s so melancholy.
White Trash Liberal
@Ted & Hellen:
Because memory is a fickle, faulty instrument made moreso under duress… And a raid into hostile territory to kill public enemy #1 is stressful beyond most everyone’s ken.
Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable because people only see part of an event and then fill in details afterward. A disagreement over whether OBL was reaching for a weapon or not is certainly a discrepancy that can arise. It’s not unusual.
While I am sure you are inferring sinister motives to differing accounts, Occam’s razor safely makes the death of OBL exactly the kind of scenario that films such as Rashomon or Memento point to as saying as much about the participants as to the event itself.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Anne Laurie:
Yeah, he’s a dick. Just gotta suck it up and be glad he isn’t a bigger dick.
amk
@Ted & Hellen: omg, obl is alive !!!
idjit.
lojasmo
You are somewhat accident prone, and have an affinity for animals. Also, too, you take shitty pictures.
But we love ya, dude.
Mnemosyne
@White Trash Liberal:
Wait, so you’re saying that a difference in a very small detail (he did or did not reach for a gun) doesn’t put the entire raid into question? Where do you live, planet Earth?
Comrade Mary
John, I think I found a way for you to make amends. (And yes, the most recent entry is from a Papillon. God is watching you.)
Redshirt
Two solutions!
1. FP’ers! Save your drafts locally.
2. All! Use this event to back up your own stuff!
My experience is most folks don’t understand the importance of backups until they lose everything. So, live vicariously through Anne Laurie and use this opportunity to backup what’s important to you.
And if it’s really important (baby pictures, for example), make another backup. Perhaps in “the cloud”.
Baud
Anyone else using Firefox, and is this site crashing it every 2 minutes?
Omnes Omnibus
@Comrade Mary: You want Cole to eat kitty litter?
Yutsano
@Anoniminous: Heh. We were supposed to roll out the huge system upgrade that they started 15 years ago and kept promising. Still hasn’t happened yet. I’m not holding my breath that it’ll happen either. I will say this: the system the IRS uses is almost hack-proof unless an insider is helping.
kwAwk
@Anne Laurie:
Look at the bright side, at least he didn’t delete all of your posted content too.
On a related note, has anybody started a calendar to keep track of Cole’s menstrual cycle yet?
Anya
@Anne Laurie: AL, why don’t you just come out and call him a thoughtless asshole?
srv
This is really an BJ apocolypse, we might not have FP’ers stepping on each other for weeks now.
Anne Laurie
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yup!
Bobby Thomson
I blame Obama.
White Trash Liberal
@Mnemosyne:
The fact that there is a discrepancy in accounts on the OBL raid highlights, in my opinion, the reality of the incident. It’s when there is a lockstep uniform story announced and corroborated by experts and witnesses that my suspicious hackles are raised. See Tillman, Pat.
Just Some Fuckhead
@kwAwk:
I tried, but every time Allan shows up, he syncs with him and throws off my dates.
tofubo
you’re just another one of those insincere liberuls doing that tired old no-apology apology
asking for permission beforehand, awiating an appropriate time for response, doing what you said you were going to do, and then saying sorry to the person you wronged
how lame, you should be ashamed, a real conservative would have said that the make-up of the countertops of their unpaid intern in benghazi caused them to be forget that you paid them 2,000$ to lie to the prosecutors and then deleted them on principle cus that’s the kind of stand-up guy you are
geg6
@Baud:
Yes. And I blame that asshole Cole.
Heliopause
Accept Jesus, John Cole.
different-church-lady
It’s times like this when it’s good to remember Tug McGraw’s “Frozen Snowball” theory of pitching.
kwAwk
@Just Some Fuckhead: lmao
Though I do have to give Cole some credit for being man enough to publicly apologize.
Irony Abounds
@Baud: Melancholy ain’t exactly the word I’d use. To err is human, to forgive is divine. Cole is human, AL is certainly not divine.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
You fool, he isn’t saying obl is alive — Ted & Helen is saying that obl is alive and wearing a black flesh mask as he poses as Barack Obama!
Just wait till Obama’s next State of the Union speech where he starts screaming “Allahu akhbar!” and pulls out an AR-15 and starts blasting away at congress and the Supreme Court justices…
Yutsano
@mclaren:
Stop teasing me…
lojasmo
@Ted & Hellen:
A huffpost blog with a link that says nothing?
Strong trolling! Would click three links again, for sure.
Mike E
@different-church-lady: Ya gotta believe!
NotMax
@Anne Laurie
As if the two are necessarily mutually exclusive?
As if friends are incapable of doing anything foolish or thoughtless or inconvenient or boneheaded?
That dog won’t hunt. That agenda does not compute.
joel hanes
Relevant internet tradition
Soonergrunt
@Anne Laurie: I don’t have any posts brewing like you do. I’m lazy.
Which in this case works out for me!
Short Bus Bully
“Daniel-san! Show me… fuck the dog!”
This shit happens man.
dms
Raymond ShawJohn Cole is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.Omnes Omnibus
@Soonergrunt: Nice planning.
different-church-lady
A lesson to those who trust the cloud.
Another_Bob
Many years ago, I was supposed to have ordered some radioactive biochemicals for someone else in my lab to do a big experiment she had planned. I forgot. On the day of the big experiment, she asked me where it was. I sheepishly told her I hadn’t ordered it, and she instantly started crying. As in, whimpering with pain crying. Boy, did I feel like a schmuck. But not as big of a schmuck as John Cole when he deleted that stuff that Anne Laurie was saving. Thank you, John, because I’m no longer the biggest schmuck in the U.S.A.
Groucho48
@JWL:
It wasn’t hiding behind a jar of mustard of unknown provenance, was it?
mclaren
@dms:
The troll-fu is strong with this one!
Thymezone
Sorry, it’s been 8 years and I have already said everything nasty I wanted to say about you. But that’s only you. The rest of these miscreants have a lot of wrath coming their way, one of these days when I get around to it.
Ted & Hellen
@White Trash Liberal:
It has been established here at BJ that nothing untoward occurred in the death of Pat Tillman. To admit otherwise would be to concede that conspiracies take place, and it has also been established here that conspiracies do not happen. Ever.
Of course, the alleged plan to kill OBL was itself a…conspiracy.
Ted & Hellen
@mclaren:
Actually, my best GUESS is that OBL is dead, as he already had been for sometime when Obama’s fake raid was staged.
None of you credulous maroons knows with any more certainty than I what really happened, of course. You simply know what your government has spoon fed to you, and for your own tribal reasons you choose to believe it.
Emphasis on BELIEVE.
Ted & Hellen
Oh…Mclaren seems to have balanced out its meds and is thusly attempting to bond with the Bots.
Fascinating.
Mnemosyne
@Ted & Hellen:
Dude, when you discover that even mclaren thinks your crazy conspiracy theory is too far out to be plausible, it’s time to reconsider it.
Amir Khalid
@mclaren:
“God is the news”?
Lavocat
Why in the hell would you EVER delete a draft post YOU YOURSELF haven’t written?
That’s grounds for an asskicking, right there.
Currants
@sb: ditto. Even if late.
Cassidy
@Mnemosyne: I love that it thinks some X-Files level conspiracy shit is going on when the simple answer is that JSOC is really good at killing things whenever and wherever they want.
That’s the only real complaint anyone around here has. Send this motherfucking piece of shit into the internet wilds to find a new group of people to be a completely miserable douche to.
Ted & Hellen
@Cassidy:
Gotten any emails lately, assidy?
Cassidy
@Ted & Hellen: Nope. You sending some more? He really loves that shit.
Cassidy
@Ted & Hellen: But I’ve noticed a lot less of you and a lot less miserable venom. Your welcome for the PSA. Just lookin’ out for ya you big glob of shit, you.