The player Kevin Elliott signed up at the end of May 2006, friended Rabbit and I and never logged in again. I don't know Kevin Elliott all that well nor have we met in person. He lives in the Bay Area as far as I'm aware and I thought he might have a bit more interest in the game. I know him from the EfNet IRC channel #hiptop (as the nick "knight_") where we used to talk about hiptop development amongst other things. He was generally idle for the most part and more recently not very participatory. In fact, we never got on all that well and we'd generally sport arguments about technology, racism and politics amongst other things. I'm very rarely on IRC anymore for my own health.

I decided to try contacting him on June 22nd. I sent him an SF0 mail asking him if he'd like to collaborate on something. He never read it. On June 23rd, I joined EfNet and sent him a /msg "134302 >knight_< you around?" that got no response. I did a whois on him and realized he had been idle for days. I would rejoin IRC about one a week asking where the heck he was, sometimes in a more vulgar fashion. He'd always be idle. I sent him another SF0 email on June 27th asking where he was. Never read. I tried emailing him on some of his known email addresses. He runs phunc.com, which is mostly outdated. Mail to every address I tried at that domain bounced. He runs kevinelliott.net and every email I tried there bounced as well. I emailed the addresses listed in his whois information and those bounced.

I found him on other IRC channels and asked around and nobody seemed to know where he was. It got to the point where people were telling me, "I think he's trying to avoid you, s4xton."

I kept trying to ping his AIM screenname that I thought he had and it always reported that he was offline. I assumed he had me blocked.

On July 19th, I decided to check out a blog that was on his site that must have recently been found by Google (most of his other content on his site were links to non-existent pages)... his last post on it was from February 2006 and it seemed like he was no longer upkeeping it. I posted on his most recent post saying "I've been trying to get ahold of you but you're never on IRC nor do any of the email addresses I can find for you work. Drop me a note."

I check the site a few hours later and find that not only is my comment gone, every single post on the entire blog has been trashed. WTF? Wow. Is he really trying to avoid me?

I jump back onto IRC and bitch yet again about how "knight_" is avoiding me. At this point, he hasn't been on EfNet at all in about a week. Another user suggested I try using AIM again, and for some strange reason... he was online this time and after 28 days of trying to contact him he actually responded! Here's the relevant portions of the communication:

Me: you around?
Me: I have one - quick - easy question.
Him: Hey dood
Me: Just curious - you've signed up for SF0 - haven't done any tasks - curious - why not?
Him: That main server is on the fritz. I'm trying to get migrated over to a new pair of servers.
Him: And reinstall that host. So it's up and down.
Him: i.e. email has been down for 6 days
Me: ah.
Me: understandable.
Him: Well, I intend to get into sf0, I've just been uber busy.
Me: fair enough. Just curious. Thanks.
Him: :-)
Him: NP.
Him: But I'm not avoiding you specifically :-)
Me: ah - okay - sounds good
Me: it was funny though, I was emailing at phunc, kevinelliott.net... etc.
Him: yeah
Him: they were all down
Me: all bouncing, and never responded on IRC, etc.
Him: I have mail turned OFF right now too.
Him: So that no new mail shows up on the server since my new backups wont have them

Well, there you have it. Kevin Elliott is not receiving email yet "intends to get into sf0," but has been "uber busy."

Glad that this is finally completed.