I just want to say that I'm grateful for this conversation. I enjoyed the person I knew as Gus, but I was surprised yesterday when I found no mention of him on the Google.

Also, gus sent me a picture of himself once, bu it was tiny and hard to make out. He didn't look 70, however. (Although he could have been - it was a tiny picture.)

At one point when Gus was online, I mentioned that tvtropes was down, and he came back and said that he rebooted the server, which he said was connected via a DSL line to his home.

The IP address of www.tvtropes.org is 69.4.98.212. The reverse of that is dal-broadband-static-gstraley.dsl.airstreamcomm.net, which indicates that it's a DSL connection going to someone named "gstraley" for an ISP in Wisconsin.

Based on that and the whois information, I would say it's very likely that there is/was someone named "G. Straley" in Cameron Wisconsin.

Based on this information (last edited in March, 2006), kimi would be Gus' live-in Korean girlfriend (who he has mentioned here before), which would also explain how she would have access to his Wiki and email accounts.

I don't mind if Gus was a pseud; factual elements, which were always fantastic, aside, he was a unified voice, and never asked for anything from us but our time. I just hope nobody is laughing, because that would bother me.

Totally this.

I've gotten emails from Gus from a gmail account and a gstraley one.

On a different topic, when I was looking to see if I ever got the check that Gus emailed me about sending in 2004, I noticed a paypal donation from Schmoker with a woman's name, which I thought was curious.

Not necessarily curious, Jesse. Well, I guess, curious for me insofar as I assumed that Schmoker was a man. Not sure why I did, but I clearly did.

.

I don't mind if Gus was a pseud; factual elements, which were always fantastic, aside, he was a unified voice, and never asked for anything from us but our time. I just hope nobody is laughing, because that would bother me.

Given that the poster we knew as Gus seems to have not been truthful about aspects of his life, it follows logically -- for me -- that maybe the report of his death might not have been truthful, either. And I'd just like to know for sure, one way or the other.

When I saw another hundred or so posts here I was hoping that Gus had posted, "The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

Of course, count me with the many that googled like mad yesterday. Somethin' ain't right.

My on-line relationship with Gus was all good. I felt a real loss when I read he passed. I don't know what I hope the truth is, but I would like to know at some point.

I've had my doubts about "Gus" for a while but after a lot of agonizing yesterday, decided to keep my mouth pretty much shut (except privately to a few close friends whom I knew would listen to my reasoning dispassionately). I'd come to the conclusion that if 'Gus' were a pseud, he was one of the benign ones who adds to a community, and it would only add to the community emotion at this point if I spoke up.

Sometimes it's better to keep your mouth shut if the Emperor has no clothes, if it doesn't matter in the long run.

Now I'm in the uncomfortable position of wishing that a nice guy is actually dead so that my friends will be OK. That's damn sad, really.

Now I'm in the uncomfortable position of wishing that a nice guy is actually dead so that my friends will be OK.

God, you put your finger on it. What a horrible feeling. Overall, I'm not that troubled about having been misled (if I was) by storytelling. But having grieved about a possibly nonexistent death outrages me. So here I am hoping the death was real. That sucks.

I too tried to google Gus after the news of his death was posted, not because I doubted the story, but because I wanted to know more about the man. I thought it was strange that I couldn't find anything, but I was hoping that it was my google skills or that there was another reasonable explaination. This is a sad discussion to have to have, but I do think it is necessary.