The Devil Went Down to Georgia » UnofficialCKI.org

Back from the Dead

Pete — Wed, 02 Jun 2004 22:41:00 +0000

I’ve tried to think of the best way to present this, and I just can’t come up with one that’s adequate, so I’m not going to make any sort of presentation at all — I’m just going to link it:

http://ideabase.circularfile.net

Any questions?

Real Ultimate Power!

Pete — Fri, 12 Mar 2004 05:29:00 +0000

Back in the day of Unofficial CKI, Amy threw together (as a joke) a REAL ULTIMATE POWER parody about the Unofficial CKI site.

If you don’t get the whole “real ultimate power” thing, go read this site first…

THEN… go view Amy’s masterpiece. It is sooooooooooo sweet that I want to crap my pants.

Welcome Back, Bose Law

Pete — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 15:02:00 +0000

Well, Kiwanis has, for whatever reason, sent their bullies back again. It’s not surprising, of course, because Casey’s goal the whole time wasn’t to take UCKI down, it was to beat me… and somehow I’m still being a snarky bastard about the fact that we won. Sure, UCKI is down… but it came down of our own choosing not. They also managed to make themselves look like tremendous idiots. I wish we could take credit for that but, sadly, they did it to themselves.

Nevertheless, in case you all are interested to see what kinds of oh-so-interesting things Bose came to see, have a look at their session log:

216-136-78-110.boselaw.com 9:45am - /archives/category.php 9:45am - /archives/index.php 9:45am - /archives/category.php 9:47am - /archives/category.php 9:47am - /archives/category.php?cat=9 9:47am - /archives/index.php 9:47am - /archives/category.php?cat=11 9:48am - /archives/000459.php 9:49am - /archives/category.php?cat=11 9:49am - /archives/000517.php 9:49am - /archives/category.php?cat=11 9:49am - /archives/000572.php

PS: voting on posts now works again, though I had previously broken it

Dispelling a Myth

Pete — Wed, 12 Nov 2003 02:15:00 +0000

So, a little birdie told me that someone (Possibly even staff themselves, although I certainly don’t know this for a fact) has been insinuating that Unofficial CKI was taken down due to pressure on me to do so. Some have said that it was “legal pressure” and some have said that it was “pressure from staff.”

Let me be the first to assure you that there isn’t a person in that office that could “pressure” me to do anything. They’ve tried and tried they’ve failed and failed. They tried being big and tough themselves, and got laughed right out of the picture. They’ve tried threatening me/us with the FBI, they’ve even called their big bad lawyers.

None of those things worked. In fact, I haven’t heard a peep out of the office since we shut them up by telling them to take their legal threats and stick them somewhere uncomfortable. I guess they must have done just that, as we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of them since.

So let me make it unfailingly clear: UCKI was not taken down to appease anyone. It was taken down for two very simple reasons:

1) It wasn’t being updated enough to remain useful.

2) It cost me money to keep up and running.

None of this should not be interpreted to imply that the new CKI site is adequate (which I’ve stated before that it clearly is not, especially for how much KI has allegedly spent on it — they got taken to the cleaners hardcore). The fact is that my interest in keeping the site up waned with my membership and other folks had (understandably so) more important things to do.

So the next time someone tells you that staff was exerting any sort of pressure, I want you to laugh a deep, hearty laugh and say this: “Are you strokin’ me? Those worthless bags of wind have done no such thing!”

And they’ll believe you, wanna know why?

Because everyone knows Casey Keller, Gloria Bidgood, and Steve Werner are not worth the paper their paychecks are printed on. Manny and I could replace them all with a very small shell script… and you know what? If we did that, your club’s addresses wouldn’t be fucked up, the website wouldn’t suck, and the will of the CKI House of Delegates wouldn’t be subverted in an attempt to conceal power-grabbing and poor spending policies.

You know what else? The food per-diem for ICON would be cheaper. Much, much cheaper.

Decoder Ring

Pete — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 00:01:00 +0000

Because I don’t have to tutor tonight, this is being posted early… enjoy.

Back in late January, Manny, Amy and I received an email from three CKI trustees, writing as a group for reasons I’m sure you can guess. I was feeling a bit mischievous and got a little creative with the response… to date on a few select people know about this, but now that I’m officially no longer a member of CKI I feel that I can share my creativity with the world. First, their email:

Pete, Manny, & Amy,
After careful consideration, we must ask that our contact information, as well as any other references to us as members of the International Board be removed from the site known as “www.unofficialcki.org”. While we appreciate the intent to provide the membership with the best possible resources, we cannot support the malicious undertones that we feel that the site maintains against the staff of Circle K International. We would encourage each of you as the administrators of this site to go through the proper channels to make the difference for the members as you claim that you want to do.

As you each know, there is a method in place for a reason and if your intention truly is of the member and making lasting change in this organization, I am sure that you will realize this and hopefully act accordingly.

In Service,
International Trustees
Nick Borghardt, Jason D. Miller & Ricky Reuchlen

Finally, my reply — presented without commentary, but with a few hints to help you find the secret message.

Nick, Jason, and Ricky,
Your personal contact information (email addresses and AOL Instant Messenger Screen Names) has been removed, as per your request, from UnofficialCKI.org. Other information, such as references to you as members of the CKI Board, has not. Using this other information is acceptable due to the public nature of your positions and will not be removed — this is not negotiable.

Although it is unfortunate that you feel there to be malicious undertones to the site, it is our hope that you will take any qualm you have with Staff’s recent behavior to them instead of asking us to hide it or downplay it. Requests for changes or clarifications of a factual nature will most certainly be honored if they can found to be accurate. Especially given the wide appeal of this site, we feel it important for members of CKI to have all of the facts dealing with how their elected and hired representation is reacting and behaving toward the site.

A good-faith discussion between members of staff and administrators of this site would be preferable to us. Manny, Amy, and I initially took steps to try to have those discussions. Our attempts were met (some time later) with threats of legal action and removal from an organization that we’ve devoted countless hours to. Resorting to this sort of conflict and terse discussion is not in anyone’s best interests, however it is necessary that we respond to staff in the manner in which we are approached. Obviously “discussion” is not quite what staff has in mind. Nevertheless, we have every intention of continuing to provide this site as a service to the members of CKI and are still open to debate and discussion with the board and staff.

There is a method in place for change and while we have participated in that method, we have found this to be a much quicker and more thorough solution to the problem. Further, if you doubt our intentions, we ask that you say so directly. Making vague implications as to the quality or nature of our intentions only detracts from meaningful and topical discussion. Thank you for your time and participation

I’m Just Sayin’

Pete — Mon, 11 Aug 2003 02:45:00 +0000

As of rightthisminute, the CKI and KCI sites have been down for AT LEAST 36 hours. Three things here:

1. UCKI has never been down for that long on accident.

2. If we had posted something objectionable it wouldn’t have taken Stevie-poo half that long to call the FBI on us.

3. It took two years for staff to develop a website that broke within a month. With what limited information I have, it seems like this breakage is due in large part to slacking (or incompetence) on the part of the developers.

Not that it makes any difference… I’m just sayin’…

UCKI has a Troll!

Pete — Sun, 20 Jul 2003 20:45:00 +0000

It’s said in the blogging world that you’re not famous until you have a troll. Well, UnofficialCKI isn’t a blog, but it sure does have a troll. Although, I’m still torn as to whether she’s a troll or just delusional. She might be both.

For the sake of this post, let’s call her “Stacey” (after all, that is her name). Let’s pretend like she has a blog and a website… because she does. [Please note, I’m not responsible for any seizures or neuroses caused by clicking on the website link.] Now, Stacey has been terrorizing the UCKI forums since the beginning, and I’ve not mentioned anything here about it because she was pretty well taken care of in the forums for some of the off-the-wall things that she’s said. However, if you check the post on her blog from 7/17 you’ll see that she decides to blame UCKI for her getting her head bit off in the forums when she spouts nonsense. I take issue with this, because I think she’s deserved every snapping-at she’s gotten.

You see, UCKI is not a place where we treat every idea and opinion the same way. Those places are stupid. We treat them fairly, I think, but you’ve got to keep in mind that bad ideas don’t deserve the same sort of response as good ones… and, the fact of the matter is, Stacey’s posts are almost exclusively drivel.

If we start with the off-topic War Discussion you’ll see that Stacey (sec4582) loves to mention classes that she’s taken and degrees that she has as evidence that she’s correct. Heh. On the third page you see where she made a random guess (and an incorrect one) about something that took roughly 30 seconds to google. She’s also very fond of repeating what previous people have said.

In the thread on the ICON HoD, she manages to play the role of finger-shaking ideologue and chastises the site for finding the negative side of CKI. Darn us! On the second page she returns to her old tricks of appealing to her own authority on an issue. “i’m going for a masters, yes a masters, in public administration, so i think i should know just a little bit about that.” What a coincidence, I think she should know a little bit about it too… I just wish she’d show it.

You can also check out several different threads in the General CKI Discussion category for more of her work.

You see, she really doesn’t have a clue. Her points are clearly thrown together based on the fact that she “knows” she’s god’s gift to CKI, not based on facts, then she complains when people shoot her down. Also interesting is the fact that she seems to be incapable of spelling just about anything correctly. That doesn’t, of course, make her points any less valid, but it doesn’t help make her look any better. She was one of my LTGs back when I was KC governor and from that experience, I’ll just say that this sort of posting behavior doesn’t surprise me.

Stevie-poo LOVES UCKI!

Pete — Mon, 07 Jul 2003 02:17:00 +0000

My brother was LUCKY enough to get a picture with THE Steve Werner (of circlek.org fame) after the Website forum at ICON. This website is proud to feature a picture of Mr. Werner here, promoting the UnofficialCKI.org.

PS: more included in the biggie-sized version of the picture! Click it!

UPDATE:

Jeff’s right… Does he bear a striking resemblance, or is it me?

Out of curiosity, I wonder how much time Stevie-poo spends slicking back his hair every morning to get that creepy pedophile look juuuuuust right! It’s probably a lot, which might explain his past performance on the official sites.

PS: Mad Props to my brother for being so smooth as to get this picture. Photoshop at will. Send me your best attempts.

New CKI Site

Pete — Thu, 03 Jul 2003 11:20:00 +0000

A quick note before I dash off to work, I was informed that the new Official Circle K Website is up and running. I haven’t had time to give it any kind of thorough looking-over, but on the surface I can say three things with definite certainty:

1. It doesn’t look like shit any more. (that’s good)
2. Lots of stuff is still under development. (that’s bad)
3. There’s still a definite need for the Unofficial site.

Amy called from convention to inform me that Stevie-poo is doing a forum on how to use the website effectively. That’ll be interesting to say the least.

Finally, UCKI posted that the staff member chosen to sing the national anthem at convention didn’t know all the words. Wonderful. God Bless… ummm… where do we live again?

More Brilliance from CKI

Pete — Wed, 04 Jun 2003 03:00:00 +0000

As if it wasn’t quite enough that CKI was wasting a small fortune bullying the admins (both current and past) of a quality website with countless hours of work from CKI Workers (and I use that term loosely) and who knows how many hours worth of legal fees, they’ve taken the next step down the road of stupidity.

KI’s resident “technology guru” (I tried typing that without laughing, but failed miserably) has now set up the CKI site to pretend like it’s broken when you click on a link from UunofficialCKI. On top of being an exceptionally trivial thing to work around, it’s exceptionally childish and proves (yet again) how the staff at that office have their priorities aligned.

I can see it now…

Random worker: “Hey! Let’s block all incoming links from that Evil Website!”
Voice of Reason: “But won’t that hurt our members?”
Random Worker: “Who cares about THEM, we’ve got to beat that unofficial site that’s putting us out of business.”
Voice of Reason: “They’re not hurting us at all!”
Random Worker: “Shut up! Are you some kind of communist?”

The sad thing is that Stevie-poo probably thinks this is some sort of brilliant idea. It’s not. I know small mammals with no opposable thumbs that can come up with better ideas than this. On a technical level, it’s child’s play. From a PR perspective, it’s just dumb.

Once again, just for the record… if I was the one in charge of his employment, he’d be standing in line at the unemployment office. He’s got all of the technical skill of a herd of half-retarded african wildebeests… every penny of his salary is a waste of somebody’s dues dollars, if you ask me. (And you all did, that’s why you’re here)

Fire them all… let them reapply. Start from scratch. I’d support a 50% dues increase if they’d promise to do that.

PS: I’m still allowed to LINK TO CKI. Steve knows he can’t handle me and my entry-level programming languages.