A few days ago, Highlandtide caught me taking a few extra minutes for my coffee-break. And, truth be known, it wasn't the first time I had been caught out.

He did what any employer would do and fired me, on the spot. It was made quite clear that I was outa here.

After a little while, I realized how terribly I was missing you miscreants. So, I got down on bended knee and pleaded to be allowed to come back to work. But Highlandtide was pretty adamant about keeping me out of here. When I promised him that you would all collect enough funds to have the kiltmaker of his choice craft up an X Marks tartan tank for him, he was suddenly all ears and handed my time card across.



Alright, so most of that is a porkie, although I was telling the truth about all youse getting him an X Marks kilt. He's getting pretty jonesed up, so don't dilly-dally.

The truth of the matter is that this is not the only Web site I am responsible for. I own three vBulletin forums of my own, 6 blogs, a vBulletin test forum that I use for testing scripts and a phpBB3 test forum I use for the same purpose. I am on staff at a vBulletin Webmaster's forum and also at a vBulletin graphics/styles forum. Until a couple months back, I was part of the development team for a pretty large vBulletin add-on script.

I have been doing freelance work on vBulletin sites for the last year or so and that has finally grown to the point where I have actually established a limited liability company and run all the Web work through that business.

I also do some data collection consultation for a handful of drag race teams.

At last count, I am fairly active on over 90 forums that are sites I use as informational sources.

Had I mentioned I also have an 8:00 - 5:00 job, on top of all this?

And this is a secret, so don't tell a single soul, but I am sitting right alongside the telephone, waiting for my son to call me to the hospital to celebrate the arrival of my first grandchild.

The fact of the matter is I simply had to start prioritizing my time, as there just wasn't enough of me to go around. And this grandbaby is going to get 99% of my time, which means by the time I spend another 50% of my time working on my own 9 sites, another 20% of my time working my day job, another 10% of my time working on the vBulletin-related forums I help moderate... Well, you get the idea.

So my position here at X Marks the Scot is changing somewhat, effective immediately. I am no longer going to be involved in the day-to-day forum moderation around here. The time I spend here is going to be spent on taking care of tech questions and problems, keeping the site running smoothly, updating files that require it and trying to better optimize the site for search engine crawls.

I will still be a staff member, but I'm leaving the cat herding up to the Mod Squad and concentrating solely on the technical aspects of running the forum. I'm not here to fix the stuff that breaks, I'm here to keep it from breaking in the first place.

If you have a technical problem, please post it in the Tech Questions forum. I will get you an answer or a fix as quickly as possible. Part of this time prioritization I'm doing will mean I won't be around here as much as I once was, but I'll be looking in at least daily. So if you don't get an immediate response to a question, don't go to pieces on me. I'll get to you as quickly as I am able.

If you've got a personality clash with another forum member or a post that is bothering you, those are matters you will need to take up with the Mod Squad. Don't tell them I said so, but they're all good lads and perfectly equipped to help with those types of issues.

One of these days, Highlandtide will realize how much better off he would be with me out of here, but for the time being I am going to stick around to help keep this forum growing moving forward. I'm in awe of how your forum has grown in the few years I've been here and that is the standard I am using for future growth. We're getting close to a half-million posts, which means it will soon be time to start working on the second half-million.

So I best quit jawin' and get back to work.

Oh, yeah, don't forget about that kilt for Highlandtide. He might get stern with me again, if he doesn't get his kilt in the next few weeks.