I'm 51 years old and have never been banned from anything in my life--until about 10 days ago. From this forum. I've always played by the rules in everything I do, although sometimes I have been known to skirt them. Case in point--this forum. As I've mentioned in the past, I've never been an active member in any forum before. This one is my first. That said, I had to go through the learning curve, of sorts, on how to participate on a/this forum. I've recently learned that this forum is unlike most others--granted, all forums are different, but... A couple times, theymos PM'ed me, stating what infractions I have made. I quickly corrected my practices. Fast forward about 10 days ago. It seems I was posting off-topic. Although they were not malicious posts, they were off-topic nonetheless, especially when related to the OP of those threads. In my mind, I fully put the blame on getting caught up in the narrative of this forum. The result of my infraction: Banned for 3 days for off-topic posting. Boy, was I pissed. Threes days would seem like an eternity for not being able to play with my friends. What I couldn't understand is why I couldn't have gotten another PM telling me, in no uncertain terms, to play nice. I'm not a kid! As I sat at my computer, with tears in my eyes (maybe I'm going overboard here and should have stated that I was standing at my computer), I contemplated my next move. I asked myself, WWAD? Upon finding the asking, I did it--opened a new account. With that new account, I went on a diatribe about being banned, this forum needs change, etc. The usual stuff a 51 year old would do in my case (I guess that negates the sentence "I'm not a kid", above). Result: Banned for 7 days for junk-posting and evading a bad. Note to self: Read the fuckin' rules. During the first couple days, I was totally locked out of this forum. I couldn't even read posts by my friends. I was alone. I was scared. I needed a fix. Result: I joined SA. Paid my $9.95 to read about Bitcoin. When I got to the B-Thread, I was bored shitless. I at least wanted some humor to help me through this episode in my life. Nothing! Then I was able to read this forum again, albeit still unable to post or PM. Great! But the narrative seemed to have changed. Did others get banned as well? Were those not banned put on their paper (southern expression--I miss that freckled faced redhead)? Well, it looks like a little house cleaning is the works. I guess that's a good thing.

The other thing I want to restate is the following. There are a lot of bright young adults on this board. Sometimes the knowledge they share is over my head. I like that. But, with all that book smarts, the one thing they mostly lack is life experience. Please don't take that as an insult. It's just a fact of life. All because you've the best one who read and understood the manual, doesn't mean you're on the next ship to the ISS.

Love you guys, and hope you enjoyed this post. But if I get banned because this is off-topic, I'm taking up masterbation opposed to SA.

Your friend, Bruno