I reached out to John in private to apologize earlier, and he graciously accepted it. I'm now back here to apologize to the community as a whole.

I'm sorry for the way I handled myself in this thread. It's not behavior I'm proud of, and it was very unfair to John as the target, and unfair to the community as a whole.

And there's no excuse for it either, so I'm not going to try and justify it.

I will say that I appreciated that John took the high road here and defended me in this thread after my statements. His reaction speaks volumes to his general character. Thank you again John for that and for what you conveyed in our private discussion.

A prime reason I stepped away after that post is that I realized it coming from an admin could have a chilling effect on other members posts. It does disappoint me that a member chose to use my time away as a reason to pour further fuel on this fire.

This community still means a lot to me, and it's been a great honor to be trusted with hosting it for the past 13.5 years. I still plan to be active and around for a bit, while the continued plan to transfer the boards moves forward. Due to personal matters on both my side and Andy's, progress is slow at times with this transition. At this time we don't have a formal date to announce though it is likely close. I do want to thank Andy for still being willing to take on the duties of hosting. I also want to thank a community member here for a donation that came in recently which will help pay hosting costs for another 45 days on my side.

I have gone ahead and demoted myself in preparation for the transition ahead. I retain moderator powers to be able to interact with a Moderator's only forum where aspects of the transition are still being planned out. The reason for this change is more tied up in my general desire to hand off duties here and this incident and time away became a point to do it. I do want to make it clear though that my actions of stepping down are not tied to my behavior in this thread nor the commentary that followed. It's been a desire to do so since late 2014.