[RyanMcE]

Ok guys, I'm sorry I started this thread. The entire thing really backfired at me. Let me explain...

When I made my first post this year, it was about entanglement. It was bitter, inflamatory, and generally not in the spirit of FIRST. I was aware of all of this, but I didn't really care because I was pissed and I thought a little flame war on CD would be a fun way to blow that steam. I was right, it was fun, but as it dragged on, I noticed that I was having a negative impact on the reputation of my team (thus I eliminated references to my team) and even worse, I caused some people to think worse of 93 (our very gracious alliance partners).

Also, it turned about that, because of the nature of the post, many people missed the underlying point of the post in the first place. So I decided that, having cooled down by writing many replies with dripping sarcasm, it was time for me to write another post that more clearly addressed one of the underlying issues I had in ind when I wrote the post.

This is where it gets interesting. You see, that post generated for me more negative reputation than I knew it was possible to recieve. And then I discovered that one post alone had made the the second most infamous person on CD. I wanted to keep that standing and even expand on it if possible, so, since I figured my new post would generate a small amount of positive reputation, I would counteract it with largely meaningless posts like this one, which I was certain would continue my negative reputation slide.

Well, I was dead wrong. I was very surprised to read, that "Your reputation on this post is Very Positive." I'm actually really confused about this, but I guess I just haven't figured everyone at CD out yet. It seems that a lot of people feel the need to post messages sent privately publically or something. Who knows. So I'm sorrry to have to tell you that you all replied to post which was largely meaningless to start out with. I am impressed, however, with some of the responses, especially dlavery's. Way to put just about everything in perspective, and actually answer the question at the same time. Hopefully others get something out of it as well.