All the old guard eh?
In a way, yes. I just found it interesting that a BEA user with less than 20 posts initialed a thread that had replies from essentially ALL major users of the BEA exclusively. As if something specific about this post touched a nerve. Just look at who replied. I mean,
Random X posted, at a time when she was nearly gone...
THE PLMN MYSTERYThere is a interesting story behind the small image I attached and it is associated with Palomine. Back when some of the old guard were first wondering where Palomine had vanished off to I had been in a chat session with some mutual friends and the topic had come up. Palomine had some PMs with Kithara and me and had helped over the years with forum problems and other moderator stuff (basically being the cool guy he was) so we had a good on-line connection and there was even one very late night on the chat (many years ago) where Kith, Pal and me just "chewed the fat" late into the early morning.
Jump forward to about the time Pal eased out and he left me a direct e-mail providing a little personal/discrete info that alluded to what was happening in his life and I will leave it at that out of mutual respect. Some others here at the BEA appear to also have been "in the loop" just from the words they said at the time. Real life stuff.
Well, not too long afterwards,
I did get an e-mail from a generic g-mail address to my "dump" e-mail associated with the BEA. There was no way to know who exactly sent it and at the time I assumed it had been Palomine, only because he had been the last to use my BEA address months earlier.
Well the e-mail was a tiny mystery as it really was a simple remark about wishing those who got it a good life and to "take care of each other". This was something Pal had said to Kith and me on more than one occasion. So, I think it was him. Anyway at the bottom of the e-mail was a string of numbers which at first looked a bit like a phone number,
like it had been part of a signature line or such. However, I determined it to be a geographic location.
Of course being
Nimrod I had to research it. It turned out to be a spot in the hills in the Los Angeles California region. (sort of a non-descriptive area) The exact location was near a hilltop community center pool. I was about to disregard it when I decided to try viewing it in Google Earth just to see if it was more about what could be seen from that location than the location itself. (There was a vista site a few meters away)
That is when I found a bit more.This was just as Google Earth announced that they would abandoned the
Panoramio photo layer and when that photo layer was turned on there was an image tag positioned exactly at that spot. This high-res image was of a group of adults sitting around the pool with the cameraman sitting on a lounge chair aimed at and photographing the fellow I have cropped to. I looked around the image for more clues and when I
zoomed into the reflective glasses of the man in the center of the shot I could see those "behind" the camera. There was the man taking the photo and a busty gal in a two piece outfit interacting with the two of them. Could that be Palomine? Was that one of his "chesty" gal-pals? What was in those drinks that had miniature umbrellas?
Because the rest of the photo included young people in the background I cropped, purposefully blurred, and resized the thumbnail and have saved it as just another odd bit of lore from the BEA. Was this Palomine sending some last message or someone acting in his regard? Pal did like to play with photos and set-up, just look at his "
show yourself you coward" entry here in the forum. I could totally see him "hiding" himself in the reflection from the glasses of this pool-side photo. Because the original image was large enough, one could make out the faces of the other two people rather well.
Palomine was very respectful of Kithara's likeness withdrawal from the BEA Princess pinned thread that he contributed just prior to his departure so I will respect his requests here too.
The redacted thumbnail is provided here simply as indication to those who sent me the original e-mail that Kith and I did get the full message and found the photo. ~ Thanks.Anyway - now that Google Earth has fully dumped the
Panoramio layer I feel it is safe to mention this little mystery as the photo is truly gone. So - even knowing the location today would not help as there is no image to now grab. However, it was a very interesting bit of detective work and image review - something I enjoy, which makes me like to think that it was one last fun gesture from good ol' Pal.
Throwin' a steak on the grill for ya. ol' man!