Well needless to say, this week didn't exactly go as planned. I'd like to thank everyone once again for showing up for me during this most recent difficult bout with plagiarism. I'd also like to mention that the guys responsible for the theft have written and apologized, so please leave them alone. I'd like to put this behind us.
Which can't happen, unfortunately, until I straighten out something with Windows 98 Central. It seems that "Digital Dave," the person responsible for a lot of that site's updates, has quit because of the mail he received over this unfortunate incident. From what I can gather, many of you that wrote our little Italian buddy also CC'd Dave, and he was a little upset about it. Of course, I had written Dave twice before this all happened, asking him to change the credit for that story on his site and he ignored me. He has also ignored all of the mail I've sent him since. I can't pretend to understand the pressures or problems he has.
So Dave, if you're out there. Please. Contact me.
I'm not sure what else I can do. Like me, Dave probably spent countless unpaid hours working on his site, and I'd hate to see a misunderstanding like this put an end to his tireless dedication. I've received mail from several Win98Central fans, who were pretty upset with me, though not a one of them had their facts straight. As I've said to these people via email, my original posting about this problem was written off-the-cuff and would have benefited from a little more time in the oven. But I never intended for anyone to attack Dave or Win98Central. In fact, I never thought they had done anything that wrong; I knew they were simply crediting the people they thought had written that article. Again, my original post wasn't very clear on that.
Well, I'm human. As a writer, the most awful thing I've faced is seeing my work on someone else's site, credited to the person that stole it. And it's happened too many times. And I guess Dave is human too, because he's clearly allowing this misunderstanding to continue in an effort to cause me some grief of my own. I understand. Hey, I screwed up.
OK, enough of this. Thanks again for everyone that wrote, and that includes those who found my original post a bit radical; you were right. Please have a great weekend,
--Pau
