Jessie from dodge-charger.com

[Stormhammer]

I think a lock should be in effect as well as a sticky - just to prevent more threads asking the question

enough was explained for me - as they put it "delicate personal problems" arose, and thats enough of an explanation for anyone on a public forum

[twilt]

what is so delicate about stealing other peoples money?  he is a liar and a thief.  that is fact.  thats all i need to know.

[Drache]

Wow... there are more rumors flying around here than in a female beauty sallon!

[FastbackJon]

so that makes it ok for people to say that he's doing drugs, that he left his wife for another broad...

Well they were never married if that makes you feel any better...

[Ponch ®]

what is so delicate about stealing other peoples money?   he is a liar and a thief.   that is fact.   thats all i need to know.

that he may be, but that's not what we mean. You can bash him all you want (or rather, as much as Troy will put up with it) about the shirts, the site and the decals. It just ain't right to bring up his personal and private matters on this board.

[FastbackJon]

I agree that his personal matters have no place on this board so long as HE doesn't mix his own personal life with other people's money. If he had just disappeared without the whole shirt thing, then we all would have been right to just leave him alone.

But that's not what happened. He brought it upon himself by choosing to mix his personal and private matters with the website members by taking a large amount of money from the members and not getting back to anyone. So people have a right to know what happened to him and why, at least a little bit anyway.

Maybe if this thread gets long enough, he'll come on here and defend himself? lol

Maybe he doesn't even care now??

He's never done anything bad to me personally, always been pretty cool. I never ordered a shirt the first time around, but he gave me one for free and I wore the heck out of it. That level of respect that I had for him was why I stuck up for him when he disappeared before he sold his car when no one got their shirts.

But then he came back online right when selling his car, promised everyone that everything was in order and that they would be shipped out immediatly. I honestly thought he would come through then. But months later, Jesse gone, money gone, one site down the drain, and no shirts shipped, I'm done sticking up for him, he's on his own.

[Ponch ®]

Well they were never married if that makes you feel any better...

Who are you, his biographer or something? Why do you keep posting this stuff?

YOU and the other yentas are the ones mixing his personal life and other people's money. Assuming he did steal the t-shirt money, then that's all that needs to be said - He stole it and that's that. I feel bad for the people who sent him money and didnt get their shirts, but at some point they have to write it off as a bad experience and move on. Does it make a difference WHY he stole it? No.

[FastbackJon]

Who are you, his biographer or something? Why do you keep posting this stuff?

Good job! The book is due out in a month. 362 pages, hard bound, with a softcover coming later. Watch for me on Oprah to promote it to the book club. All of the proceeds will go towards this site. Do you want the first signed copy?

[472 R/T SE]

Troy:

Any chance you can lock or delete this thread??

I'm saddeded by the loss of the old Jessie, the old board plus the t-shirt and decal money.  I'm also somewhat curious about the circumstances.  HOWEVER, its none of my business and I just don't think it's right to air someone else's personal business in such a public forum.

Certain facts aren't gonna change:  the old Jessie, the old board and the money are all gone.  Does it really matter what clearly unpleasant personal matters in Jessie's life caused that outcome???

Move on, folks. 

Peace,

Neal

Just like a car wreck, everyone's gotta slow down to look at it. 



Jesse and I talked at the last D-C.com get together and a few emails after that.  What we talked about should be left at that, nobodies business but ours.
I'm a little surprised people kept ordering after his first disappearing act. 

[Ponch ®]

I'm a little surprised people kept ordering after his first disappearing act.  

you know the old saying: "fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice......."

[Charger_Fan]

I'm a little surprised people kept ordering after his first disappearing act.  

I didn't.

[ChargerRob]

 

[Khyron]

It's easy for me to say that   But I didn't get my prize shirt.

How bout someone coming up with a phrase on a shirt pertaining to the fact shirts were received this time

I already did that

[Charged]

Alright, I suppose the grand answer concerning Jesse and the site has been taken care of. I can say that I personally have closure on it and I hope others do as well.

Thanks for helping me understand
Charged

[Big Lebowski]

  Before this gets locked, lets have a grand total of what this total loser got from us....I'll start. Jessie owes me $73.68 or 3 T-shirts.

[Troy]

I hinted earlier that this site wasn't to be used as an avenue to bash Jesse but I guess I should have been more clear about that. I have my reasons and the main one is that I don't think the personal life of anyone should be up for discussion - especially if they aren't here to refute any claims. If Jesse wanted to air out all of his problems to the world then he would have done so and either asked for help/support or told you all to take a flying leap. As it was he chose to keep things under wraps. I've stated on many occasions how I feel about the t-shirts and how that deal fell apart so I'm not going to bother covering that again.

Here's some history and exactly what I know:
* I started reading the site near the beginning of 2003, really liked the tech information and the way people treated each other. I officially joined in December of that year when I needed to start asking questions.
* In April 2004 the site suffered a major crash. Jesse installed the new forum software (with no old data) and added a chat room. I caught up with him there and volunteered to help recover the old site and he trusted me to not screw it up. We communicated mostly through chat and AOL Instant Messenger over several days He seemed like a really decent guy who was very concerned about the site and everyone on it. Jesse told me that he was currently unemployed and also some of his other problems but I felt awkward because I barely knew him. I promised not to say anything to any other members and I felt it was his right not to bring it up.
* Once I had the database restored I deleted my access to the site. He made a lot of upgrades over the next couple of weeks and everybody was happy (even though the most recent backup was 2 1/2 months old it was better than losing it all).
* April 3rd was the last email I got from him. After that, he slowly disappeared from the site. Looking back on it I guess he had started drifting away a while before then but I hadn't noticed.
* He was completely gone by late June/early July. I was having discussions about it with Neil and Chris at that time and we all seemed to know that he wasn't working. The Off Topic section was getting out of hand and the suggestion came up about me being a mod *if* anyone ever got in touch with Jesse.
* In September and October the site started acting up and running slowly. Jesse wasn't around and people were wondering why I didn't fix it. Well, I had deleted my access in April. Chryco and I were discussing the possibility of relocating the site at that time to a more stable environment.
* In early November Jesse reappeared. On November 9th he asked if I wanted to become a mod (thanks Chris!) and it became official on November 12th. The site was still dragging and generating random errors. About this time Jesse offered t-shirts for sale and then promptly disappeared again.
* On January 4th the site suffered a massive slowdown. At the time I thought it could have been an attack or that it was hacked but I had no access to investigate. The error messages became more frequent and the site was almost unusable. Load times were over 5 minutes per page. Complaints were rampant (most directed at me). Chris, Neil, Todd Wilson and I were sure to exchange phone numbers "just in case". All attempts to contact Jesse failed (I had neglected to get good contact information when he was around in November).
* It was determined that something needed to be done. I managed to piece together enough information to regain admin access to the site and, with Chris and Neil's blessing, I started to perform backups, regular maintenance, and adjust server settings to deal with the load. The site traffic had been steadily increasing for over a year and it just couldn't keep up. The site got noticeably faster but it still wasn't what I would consider as speedy.
* Near the end of January the shirts hadn't shown up and the natives began to get restless. All sorts of accusations were thrown about (some at me) and tensions were high. The rumors of the demise of the site were everywhere you looked.
* On February 24th the domain name expired and over the next three days the site slowly became inaccessible as the DNS servers stopped listing it. There was a mad scramble to find Jesse or at least get the word to him that things were about to be lost. During this time I happened to be unemployed as well (didn't know that did you?) so I had lots of time to track down rumors on all of the other Mopar sites. I was able to talk to Beth and FastbackJon to get Jesse's attention and solve the domain name issue. He still didn't post which caused a whole new barrage of speculation.
* Nothing relevant to this story but I met Neil (Chryco Psycho) in person in March!
* Almost exactly one year after I got started in this whole mess, the site went down on April 5th, 2005. This time it was a bit baffling as nothing worked at all. Through some detective work by Todd Wilson it was determined that the site was shut off intentionally due to non-payment of the hosting bill and it was 2 months overdue. No one knew how to reach Jesse and the site stayed off for more than a week.
* On April 13th Jesse's Charger showed up on eBay. I was able to reach him through the seller's account. He explained his situation and assured me that the shirts and hosting bill would be paid for with the money from the car. He seemed disappointed at the way people were talking about him and said he wasn't sure about spending much time on the site because of the attitudes.
* Once the site came back up he also gave me all the passwords and access to everything on the web server. We talked again via email for several days while upgrading the forum to the latest software release and performing other updates. We even discussed adding memory to help combat the slow page loads. The board was much faster at that point and we decided to hold off on any hardware upgrades. Jesse apologized about the shirts and his absence from the site and explained that the money from the car would get him out of a financial jam. He even offered some decals for sale and some free t-shirt contests. Everyone was happy again.
* His last login was May 8th.
* Went to the Chryslers at Carlisle show in July and met Chris for the first time and Neil again. We discussed the site, Chargers, and had a great time.
* On July 13th the site performed its last vanishing act. It was due to non-payment of the hosting bill again. I spoke to Beth and she assured me that she could get the site turned back on (the one thing I had no control over was money). Days went by and I heard nothing else. I spoke to Chris and Neil and everyone was feeling a bit used and frustrated after all we had been through. We agreed to keep trying though.
* The next weekend I had lost all hope of seeing the site restored. I ran the idea past Chris and Neil that maybe it was time for a fresh start. On July 18, 2005 at 01:50:44 AM I made the first post on this new site and Neil was already online. As far as I know, none of us has heard from Jesse in that time and the old site is still out of commission.
* All in all, Jesse was practically gone for the last 18+ months that the site was running.

In all of my contact with Jesse he treated me well and seemed like a genuine type of guy. I never asked about his personal life because I didn't feel like I needed to know about it to survive. One thing to remember is that, without him, most of us would have never met and probably wouldn't be here today. He put in countless hours and a lot of his own money into giving us a place to discuss our favorite cars. The sheer amount of features on the site becomes a bit overwhelming when I try to duplicate them. I do not agree with outcome of the t-shirt orders. However, many people used his own site for over 7 months to blast him about what was going on. It's been 9 months - I don't intend to allow it to drag on forever. I think that's everything and I hope that's a fair accounting of how things occurred.

Troy