For the last several months, I have been participating in this forum under the name of Yoshikuni Masato. Now I have to confess that that is not my real name. My real name is David DeCristoforo.
Come May, it will have been two years since I "suffered" a serious hand injury (table saw). This was severe enough to abruptly put my woodworking activities on hold. It would seem that this was the underlying cause of my developing a "very bad attitude", something that became painfully obvious to everyone but myself. The big "tip off" came when, after getting kicked off three online forums (including this one) and complaining about it to my wife, she told me that, yes, I did indeed have a crappy attitude and that I had turned into a complete "curmudgeon" (according to Webster, "a bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous person".) Think Walter Matthau's role in "Grumpy Old Men". So, I happily (not!) began to reexamine the situation and realized that everyone was right! I had become a grouch. I was swearing at every car on the road, every pedestrian, bicycle, every stop light, every store clerk...everything and everyone irritated me in some way. Most of my postings on forums like this one were arrogant and in many cases downright offensive.
While I have always been an "somewhat opinionated" person, I have also always been a pretty happy person who enjoyed interactions with others. And so this realization that I had become someone that people were crossing the street to avoid was a bit of a shock. Fortunately, I have also been a person who can admit it when I screw up so I have always been able to find a path out of situations like this. The problem was that I really missed being able to interact with other woodworkers. A couple of times I petitioned the forum moderators to un-block my account but even these requests were, I am afraid, somewhat "caustic" and evidently did not impress anyone. So I decided to create an new account using a "pseudonym". I made up the name Yoshikuni Masato because it was as far from "David DeCristoforo" as I could get.
At this point it seems to me that "Yoshikuni" has become an accepted member of this community and that is pleasing and allows me to participate but I am not comfortable with continuing this "deception" and I would very much like to be able to participate under my real name. So this is a request to the forum members and moderators to:
1) Allow me to re-activate my account and
2) Accept my apology for the deception which I hope will not have offended anyone and
3) Accept my apology to anyone and everyone I may have offended previously.
I realize that this is a bit of a "calculated risk" because some people might really be offended and feel that this was dishonest and if that is the case, I understand completely. This is, in no way, meant as an attempt to elicit sympathy but simply an effort to "set things right". I will happily abide by whatever you guys (and "gals") decide. I had planned to post this on April 1st but, after thinking about it, I decided that would have "made light" of the situation in a way that I was not comfortable with and would have denigrated the sincerity of this apology which is really what this is
Thanx
DD
