Hello David,
Congratulations on your upgrade to Gold. It's a very positive action. I want to welcome you to our fine and gentle community and I'm sorry the upgrade delay affected your entire business.
BUT - I would urge you in the future to temper your comments with some compassion and humanity in this forum. Nobody in the IM space (or any business for that matter) deserves consideration and kindness more than Mark Austin.
Any one man show is subject to exactly what happened to him. It could happen to me. I believe the designated adjective which you choose to put in your first post ("unprofessional") was unwarranted and unnecessary.
RRW has been a dependable, reliable and professional partner with me for about 4 years. I love the site and have great affection (kind of an understatement) for our owner/admin. On another front, those of us who get lucky will have the sacred honor of caring for our parents. Mark honors his family and all of us with his loving service to his mother in an especially difficult - unforeseeable - crisis.
Your comment about having someone with whom to share the load has some merit in my mind. The timing of that is not for us to determine. Our ways of suggesting this kind of move would be better received if the suggestion was couched with great care.
Hopefully, that was simply an inappropriate word used in the heat of frustration. Words matter. Especially during a first impression post. Even our membership in general here is composed of loving, caring, successful people deserving of respect and care. I'm giving you respect by sharing my feelings in a fairly cordial way directly. I would have sent my note in a PM except I prefer to stand up in public on this particular subject.
This is a very special space in the cyber-world. Once you've been here for a while, you'll probably find - as I do - it impossible to leave.
Having said the above, I do welcome you here and will do everything in my limited power to assist you and help you in any way.
I hope you will forgive my directness. It is not meant to offend - simply to reaffirm. If I've been a tad brusque, I'll certainly hear about it in this space and will respect those opinions and comments.
I look forward to your contributions to the membership here. Please let me know if I can personally help you in any way...such as navigating the vast treasure trove here in this membership (Jerome is much better at it than I - but I'd be happy to try).
With sincere beat wishes...Peace. Out.
Magicman
How long does it take to get upgraded? I've seen in other threads that Mark isn't around or something... Yes, that's perfectly acceptable if he's having personal things, but not appointing someone else to do the job instead of him really is unprofessional...
Anyways, I had to put my business on halt because I wasn't upgraded yet and I hope this will be dealt with soon.
Mark, if you're reading this, I wish your family member a speedy and full recovery :)