I left TFP in a flaming explitive filled email to Jim and never looked back. I liked his site as it brought a lot of us together. Jerry Thomas was member #1 and he emailed me with a link to Jim's new website.
My reply to Jerry once joining was, "where are we?" It was just the two of us with nothing on the pages.
I had joined as member #2. People started discovering the site.
I think the FCI site had either disappeared, or people were upset with it because of zero moderation even though one member was hacking their site, even finding other people's passwords. FCI did nothing about it. Jim's site seemed like a relief.
Early on, he asked for a vote. Did we want this to be a public site or private site. We voted private, and so began TFP.
It was also that early on that Jim told everybody about his health conditions and lung capacity and life expectancy being very short and that he already had in place someone to take over the website when he passed. He seemed to insinuate that he had had very little time left...... a year maybe?
I know his health was not good but I think he used his misfortune deceptively. Later, I also began to distrust his claims to near eminent demise that he was always in need. He needed flooring, he needed a computer, he needed stuff and people donated to him. Even a Segway.
He used our opinions to upgrade the site and make it more appealing. We voted on color schemes and fonts and his logo and all kinds of things. He showed us his ideas and if we liked it, he adopted it. There were a lot of subtle changes that made the site look good.
Then all of a sudden he made it a public site and put advertising all over the place. He wanted to make me a moderator but I told him I'm a terrible policeman. Even with that, he allowed me into the "Control Room" A place where moderators could talk about issues on the website, including members and their behaviors.... It was like bar talk amongst buddies. ....a necessary evil on websites I suppose.
Other members couldn't see that part.
At some point, Jim decided to start doing giveaways.... Tools and stuff.
I discovered later that Jerry Thomas, was quite generously, donating some of the items.
At some point, Jim pissed off Jerry and he abruptly left. Don't bite the hand that feeds you comes to mind......
I know Rusty had issues with Jim and then he left, and then Nick left, and Jim started moving my topics from one forum to a different form because he wanted them in a different place. I asked him not to do it because I put my topics in a certain forum for a reason. He kept moving them to where he thought that they would get the most page hits...... and I had to go hunt for my own topics.
I was getting a bit hot at that point.
He told me he put them in places where they would get more views.
More views to him meant more traffic, more dollars more advertising money.
I have no problem with that because he put a lot of time into the website and deserves to make money off of his hard and devoted work. He just was never honest about why he created the website and what is intentions were. In the beginning he said he created the website for us. ....no, ... he didn't.
It all ended with me sending him an email that I certainly wouldn't want to print out on this website.
It felt like it was a Chinese country with an emperor ruling the site and I didn't like it. I never went back either, even though I really liked the website and I liked all the people there very much.
My preference would be like this website, him being the owner and sitting in the background and letting members be members.
I took him as controlling and overbearing in the way he ran the site and that's very unfortunate because it's the best website that was ever created for flooring people.
Okay with all that history in my long, mostly negative rant, I'll say this.
I am very thankful to Jim for creating the website and bringing all of us together. It's scary to think of what website would have replaced the one that he created and how that would have affected how many of us came to know each other.
...so for that, I thank him.
Miss you Jim and all the other diseased TFP members, may they all RIP
.)
) It would have been nice to meet him in person. 
spending countless hours and days creating a beautiful sand sculpture, only to then destroy it as a reminder that nothing in life remains permanent. TFP members started as strangers, then became real close, like family ! ..... If you ever received the emoji of the bowing 
person after sharing an idea or a Job picture with your extended family, you felt all warm and fuzzy inside. Now ! Social media is so common place, I believe we have lost some of that novelty. Again, maybe back to Jim’s accidental point, that nothing remains permanent.
.......Is it possible because he had a tool box with ‘ The Banning hammer ‘ in it, he became tempted to use it for maybe the wrong reasons ?.....A human being, doing what at the time seemed appropriate, but maybe would like to do a do over but can’t ? I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. We are all family, good, bad and ugly. Altruistically speaking, forgive yourself for what could have been perceived as your part and then also forgive them for theirs. Sorry for all that jibber jabber, it was probably Not-Necessary! 
