Mikej412

Turgon

Anyone heard from Mike lately? Haven't seen him on the boards for a while.

Webmaster

Turgon wrote: »

Anyone heard from Mike lately? Haven't seen him on the boards for a while.

Thanks for posting this, I've stretched this too long already... I wanted to post about Mike several times over the past months already but kept delaying it hoping I'd actually be able to provide an answer and hoping for Mike's return. The thing is, we (I and the mods) don't know either.

Late July Mike posted in our Moderators only forum that he had major problems with power, water, and Internet connections after a major storm. He posted a few days later he was ok and the connections were restored and he was going to take a few days off to recover from "camping at home". I've seen him visit once a week later and that was the last time he logged in.

Throughout the past few months we've made several attempts to contact him but with no success. Unlike for most mods I don't have Mike's physical address. Although Mike was usually in stealth mode (not showing on Who's Online for members/guests) he was online more often than anyone else and also the most active in our Mods only forum, for 5 years in a row... Without exaggerating, he's the best moderator ever (frequently amazing us by banning spammers before they finished posting). At first we figured he was in silent-study mode for another CCIE lab attempt, but that started to become more unlikely every week because Mike always let us know if he was gone for a day. Needless to say I'm very worried as it is very unlike to be inactive for months and not let us know.

I apologize for not posting sooner about this, I just hoped he'd be back before I had to.

Johan

Bl8ckr0uter

Hope he is ok.

cisco_trooper

I've been wondering the same myself. I was gone for a while as well and was surprised to see the lack of activity when I returned. I sure hope he is just super busy in a demanding top tier Cisco Architect role or something. I hope nothing bad has happened...

Sirsamon

Fingers Crossed

alxx

does he use the same nickname/handle on other forums ?

TheShadow

I have also wondered about this for a while. I know that he lives in the north Chicago suburbs and he is an older member age wise. Being from Chicago long ago and a Cubs fan are something we have in common. I do hope that he is well as it seems July was his last public activity.

ipSpace

I liked Mikes' posts. He was really here for us like Turgon and other moderators.

Plazma

I'm sure he's fine.. working long enough in this industry can make you hate the internet for personal use

nel

hope he is ok. does he use anything like twitter / facebook? maybe we could try through something like that.

JDMurray

nel wrote: »

hope he is ok. does he use anything like twitter / facebook? maybe we could try through something like that.

We have been trying to contact Mike for nearly three months now and we are pretty much out of ideas for finding him. We never got any ICE info from him.

Webmaster

alxx wrote:

does he use the same nickname/handle on other forums ?

&

nel wrote: »

does he use anything like twitter / facebook? maybe we could try through something like that.

I wish it was that easy. Not on LinkedIN either, he didn't "like" it (see article linked to from his LinkedIn field in TE profile).

TheShadow wrote:

I know that he lives in the north Chicago suburbs and he is an older member age wise. Being from Chicago long ago and a Cubs fan

Indeed, and there are many many more (also personal) details we know but we have nothing that enables us to really track him down sort of speak (yes that surprised even myself). I sent books/study material for example to other mods but Mike always passed it on to the next mod/member on the list.

Again, it's all very unlike Mike, even just to be gone for longer than a day and even more rare to do so without giving us a heads up. Last time he wasn't active for more than a day was when his favorite cat (the one that looks like his avatar) passed away. He's the only one with Super Mod permissions, a very appropriate group name (you've all seen only half of his dedication to TE as much was transparent to regular users/members). Not replying to our attempts to contact him, obviously expressing our worries, especially after keeping us up-to-date in detail when that storm hit late July, I just cannot explain with any logic other than situations that I rather not think about at all - all I can really do is hope he's ok. In his last post he cheered about his 4G broadband connection being back to the usual strength allowing a connection inside so I doubt he suddenly started hating the internet as suggested above.

tomaifauchai

It's sad to read this, i hope everything is well for Mike. He is a strong member of TE community!

rogue2shadow

I hope he's okay.

effekted

Time for JDMurray and others to bust out some forensics and etc. Trace back his IP from his last several posts and start tracking him back! This is where Abby from NCIS would come in handy...

cisco_trooper

effekted wrote: »

Time for JDMurray and others to bust out some forensics and etc. Trace back his IP from his last several posts and start tracking him back! This is where Abby from NCIS would come in handy...

+1

Time to start googling "mikej412" to find other content where this handle may be in use and take it from there.

nicklauscombs

i don't think there's a person who has visited this forum that hasn't been touched in one way or another by mikej412's kindness and dedication to all things techexams. hopefully all is well for him.

Forsaken_GA

Mike is a standup guy. Like the rest of you, I hope he's doing alright and just got sucked up into WoW or something.

erpadmin

I hope that mikej is part of his real name and not an allusion to Michael Jordan (being from Chicago and all.)

My prayers are with him and I hope he comes back if at the very least just to say he's ok.

jamesp1983

I hope he's okay as well.

vCole

Wow, I'm deeply saddened by this post. I really hope Mike is ok!

JockVSJock

***BUMP***

I been wondering that lately too...haven't seen him post in awhile and was hoping he is ok.

mikeeo

I just stumbled upon this post. I met Mike back in 2007 at the CCIE lab in RTP. You might want to reach out to one of the lab proctors and see if they can reach him. The exact date was May 18th 2007 in RTP. Mike and some others waited around to see if I passed (I did) and we all took the shuttle back to the hotel.

HTH!

nel

mikeeo wrote: »

I just stumbled upon this post. I met Mike back in 2007 at the CCIE lab in RTP. You might want to reach out to one of the lab proctors and see if they can reach him. The exact date was May 18th 2007 in RTP. Mike and some others waited around to see if I passed (I did) and we all took the shuttle back to the hotel.

HTH!

Im not sure they will be able to give away such information.

mikeeo

nel wrote: »

Im not sure they will be able to give away such information.

True, but you can have them reach out to him.

auos

I hope he's okay too.

Turgon

mikeeo wrote: »

I just stumbled upon this post. I met Mike back in 2007 at the CCIE lab in RTP. You might want to reach out to one of the lab proctors and see if they can reach him. The exact date was May 18th 2007 in RTP. Mike and some others waited around to see if I passed (I did) and we all took the shuttle back to the hotel.

HTH!

Some good advice. Maybe also an SOS on groupstudy might help. I think he is a member there, and also working in Chicago for a cisco partner so perhaps the cisco support forums. I imagine hes pretty well known amongst the Cisco community in that city, particularly on the Voice side.

mikearama

This may not be a particularly popular opinion... but hey, I can take any criticisms you may want to throw my way.

If Mike's not in the forums, it's cause he doesn't want to be. Unless any of you believe he's actually dead (in which case, yes, I'll feel very very stupid), then there's no plausible reason that Mike can't, in three months, put a post up in the forums.

Whatever you're doing, Mike, I hope you're enjoying it. We miss you.

Turgon

mikearama wrote: »

This may not be a particularly popular opinion... but hey, I can take any criticisms you may want to throw my way.

If Mike's not in the forums, it's cause he doesn't want to be. Unless any of you believe he's actually dead (in which case, yes, I'll feel very very stupid), then there's no plausible reason that Mike can't, in three months, put a post up in the forums.

Whatever you're doing, Mike, I hope you're enjoying it. We miss you.

Very possible. People do suddenly decide not to do certain things anymore. That is entirely upto them. I made 5000+ posts because I wanted to but never earned a cent from it and have no obligation to do so. Same for Mike.

Webmaster

We cannot exclude anything simply because we don't know. Based amongst other many things on 5 years experience with Mike and the situation he had the week for his last visit (see my previous post) I unfortunately do however have reasons to believe there's a chance he's not able to to let us know, besides it just not adding up with has last posts (see my previous posts) and his dedication and well in general... I certainly don't expect anyone to assume that same opinion I have but well... I'm personally 200% sure if Mike was able to contact us or wasn't in one way or the other too occupied with "off-line" matters that require his full-time attention, he would. But yeah, anything is possible, and anything is better than the worst scenario.

Turgon

Webmaster wrote: »

We cannot exclude anything simply because we don't know. Based amongst other many things on 5 years experience with Mike and the situation he had the week for his last visit (see my previous post) I unfortunately do however have reasons to believe there's a chance he's not able to to let us know, besides it just not adding up with has last posts (see my previous posts) and his dedication and well in general... I certainly don't expect anyone to assume that same opinion I have but well... I'm personally 200% sure if Mike was able to contact us or wasn't in one way or the other too occupied with "off-line" matters that require his full-time attention, he would. But yeah, anything is possible, and anything is better than the worst scenario.

In which case its probably safe to assume that Mike has a life event on his hands which requires him to disconnect. If he is alive he may or may not return as on that basis he has more important things to deal with.


Edit 12-12-2012, by Webmaster: I'm locking this thread for now to prevent any needless speculation that we cannot confirm due to a lack of info. If we find out anything I'll reply to this thread.