Site Update

ALERT: RETRO TECH NEEDS TO ADDRESS UNRESOLVED EXTREMISM!

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(Hillsborugh County, NH) September 12th, 2025

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
REMARKS TO THE ATROCITY THIS WEEK:
This platform does not support both extremism and political violence and the assassination to Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA. Hatred should never be externalized to violence with or without weapons.
I want to be very clear: I have blocked certain followers over the last couple of years where I suspected have appearance of extremism. It was so bad, that I considered canceling the site for the 5th time because of the events following the attempted assassination of now President Trump last summer, made me wonder “am I indirectly creating evil?” My audience skews older, based in the South part of the US and are gray bearded white men… this is why I am alerting my followers.
I know that the majority of the #RetroTech community is also extremist as well – in a different way. And they have been selectively silence this week, but will speak out in other events. It’s a shame on them. Also there is a reason why I do not use Discord, or even host a so-called “server” as the events this morning showed apparent private communication was turned over to the Feds per to a Friday morning presser.
Niche communities, global connectivity, lack of regionality, lack of neighboring of fellow phone geeks IRL is what leads to isolation, depression and extremism. All Retro Tech folks should be extremely mindful in the future should institute boundaries and avoid this parasocial culture that *indirectly* leads to these atrocities
To the Retro Tech communities: #ifyouseesomethingsaysomething – block people where their front facing socials have strong political undertones, don’t be affiliated with them, second start to institute a boundary with your audience, get regional and local IRL other than VCF events. I personally didn’t like much of Charlie Kirk’s rhetoric, but in podcasts the shtick was less overt, but I am a political nerd second to tech.
If this appears to be scripted, it’s because I have seen the writing on the wall for a while. There is a specific reason why my content is New York like. I speak to a single region and if any other global audience is tuning in they’ll pick up the regional undertones if they really cared. I really live near Boston but no one really gets New England and it’s 6 states, but there’s a reason why I don’t use the metric system or talk about other parts of global telephony because a) I never left the country and b) it’s not my primary area of dominate influence or ADI. Think of the domestic CNBC for so many years with their New Jersey-centric presentation.
The other concern that has scared me. Allaboutism is the cancer. Obsession on one subject limits the world around you and for some people it degrades humans to become animals. Get a life, hug your family members, touch grass, and people like me and other competing retro tech people are just nearly things on a screen

2025 Site Update!

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My life was a burning hell in the last couple of years. My beloved grandmother passed unexpectedly thanks to our crummy healthcare system that as a whole is a cluster. Not to mention another family member dealing with mental illness is dealing with early stage dementia putting my mother as a new caretaker. As a result of being supportive of my family, 2024 like the previous 3 vaporized as if it didn’t happen.

Personal things aside, as the lucky 13th anniversary approaches in June… TMOT is being completely rebuilt as an archive of work created from 2012 to 2019. During this time, major changes to the direction of the archived site has occurred, and there will be crackdowns to abusers of this platform that took years to build.

In late 2022, TMOT moved hosts from one cloud to another. The domain for a while was a sub-domain but has been at clickford.net/telephony and is expected to be it’s permanent home on the Web for the distant future. (So you can bookmark it.) No present certificate, but that’s a work in progress.

In life, there should be some hard boundaries:

  • The direction of TMOT is mostly on the subject of telephony on an individual level. Devices like private branch exchanges and key telephone systems are cornered-off to separate sections on the site. Why? Because we do not celebrate allaboutism, meaning all you care about is PBX systems, Avaya PBX systems, Avaya Red PBX systems after 2002, etc.  Because I was too open it backfired. But it’s not to say the history of telephone networks shouldn’t be excluded. Many of the innovations from on premise systems could be applied to modern day, but in the VOIP world, that has been raped by allaboutism. (And despite it being on a self-hosted WordPress – THIS NOT a “web-log” or “blog” – thanks much!)
  • Multiplatform approach. While the iTheme focused on the persona, it was time to make it easier for any device, and any platform. So now the site is reactive to whatever device and resolution you’re consuming
  • Cellular friendly photos. Now compressed and fits under a megabyte, makes it easier for people on the go… why the hell did Joe The UCX Guy not get that?
  • Any advice on modern day systems (made after Y2K including VOIP, Cisco and Asterisk is on my personal site… ahem not related to any of my existing clients or employers) again to keep a boundary of what TMOT should be.
  • Any present day rants, has been removed
  • The Facebook fan page has migrated to a Facebook group to build a community, a healthy and trusted one.

Like on WordPress.com, the accidental success on TMOT was the Search Engine Optimization; and in the coming months in the final work to finish the archiving, will be ensuring people get what they are searching for.