I also did want to add, fairly late, that it is precisely my own googleability as a staff member of a university that led me, personally, to have doubts as to the veracity of some of Gus's life. And, that we all are probably at differant stages of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief, so we can expect continued posting.

And to keep this Buffy related, from my personal favorite Buffy "Espensode"

Anya: Okay, that's denial. That usually comes before anger.

Buffy: (angrily) I am not having sex with Spike!

Anya: Anger.

Went back and reread. I totally missed this from Topic!Cindy:

He was quite ill, and would never recover from whatever it was the monkey gave him. He was able to post despite whatever it was the monkey gave him, because he used voice recognition software. He had a hard time posting with it, but he wrote a book.

Is this true (about him having to use voice recognition software)?

Has anyone here corresponded with someone on a board or mailing list who uses voice recognition software because they are unable to use the keyboard? There tends to be tons of typos - extra or missing words, but especially lots of homonyms. And to edit the resulting text using voice recog is a huge PITA - you gotta sit there and command the cursor where to go, and then you have to tell it to edit the word and then you spell out the word for the software.

I knew a guy on another board who couldn't type and who had to use voice recog software - it was very obvious from his emails that something was off (as it just wasn't worth his trouble to edit). If someone had told me years ago that Gus used voice recog it would have immediately pinged me.

(Or are we done poking holes through Gus's backstory?)

As a lurker, I really appreciate the way this was handled in the Bureaucracy thread rather than backchannel. It's been comforting to be able to work through thoughts and emotions in the company of such a thoughtful, caring group of people. Many of you express my thoughts much better than I can! Thank you all.

Is this true (about him having to use voice recognition software)?

I have rememberings of this as well.

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IIRC, he only mentioned the voice recognition awhile after the monkey incident. I thought his posts did get shorter and more cryptic as time went on.

Cindy, I think you did us all a huge favor by posting as you did. Better to bring out the suspicions and discuss them than to worry about them all alone. It's been a valuable experience working through this together, and I think the good that's come from it has far outweighed any negative aspects.

I knew a guy on another board who couldn't type and who had to use voice recog software - it was very obvious from his emails that something was off (as it just wasn't worth his trouble to edit). If someone had told me years ago that Gus used voice recog it would have immediately pinged me.

I have a friend who used it and it took some months of training (during which time I was called shoe, sui and show), but it became pretty accurate. However, her emails were often brief and to the point. I'm not sure if she's still using it (I shall ask), but I got an email from her today that was letter perfect, except that it was all lower case.