Okay, I have to come clean. I have to admit to this as it's been twinkling in my feeble brain for some time now. Now with the shutdown of the CLI_DEV (formerly the altnetconf mailing list) I may as well spill it.

I am not Steve Ballmer. I am not Richard M. Stallman. I am not Scott Bellware.

I am altnet pursefight.

There. I said it. It's out. Let the chips fall where they may.

How did this sad tale of hidden identity come to pass?

The heathens of the original altnetconf mailing list were just bickering and acting too much like children. So I opted to do the only thing that made sense, be the red-headed step child and tell the world like it was. Unbiased, unadulterated, and unaltered. From the trenches with bullets of bullshit firing left, right, and centre. Natterings of nonsense all around me. With me in the middle, sifting through the mess and bring up the nuggets of crap to the top of the cess pool.

First I thought I would register altnetpursefight.com and post from there, but then that wouldn't work as I'm a cheapskate and wasn't willing to foot the privacy bill to hide my name. Next I thought about setting up a blog somewhere using SharePoint (the CKS:EBE was just released and would have done the job) but that was too much effort for a venture that may have blown up in my face.

So I turned to Blogspot.

There I was able to post anonymously and distill the word amongst the cretins known as the ALT.NET readers.

I also setup a Twitter account to respond to the backlash, which I knew would come post haste. I even posted a message on my own blog trying to throw off would be hunters for the elusive identity of the one with the knowledge, but I'm not sure how successful that was.

Then I sat back and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And finally... the first post! Which got my own little thread in the mailing list wondering who I was. And other threads followed suit but there was much fodder for my posts. There were thoughtful posts of course, but then there was the crap. The banana infested baby Vista like poo-poo that really made my blogspot site shine. The heresy, the name calling, the knock-down-drag-out cat fights that ensued.

My favorites were of course my own name calling (like comparing Scott Bellware to a raving shopping cart bag lady) or The "Law of Two Feet", a farce made up by people who don't want to engage you on an intellectual level, so they make up passive-agressive, bullshit granola ideas like the Law of Two Feet to shield themselves from an actual, fundamental critique of their ideas (whew, that was a real mouthful).

Anywho, there it is. You now know the obvious truth that has plagued the ALT.NET community for months now. The secret it out and I am it. Next up, the identity of Mini-Microsoft!