Howard asked me to post this message for him.


It is with the greatest regret I have to inform you, I won`t be coming back to TS.
The reasons are many and are deeply personal.
Suffice to say, I`ve had a complete mental breakdown for reasons I won`t go into.
I apologise for all the inconvenience I`ve caused. I wish I could take it all back, but I can`t.
Regards Howard.
I wish you all the very best.


I for one wish Howard a speedy recovery. I also hope that at some time in the future he will come back to TS. But, no pressure there, it's entirely up to him.

That is very bad news, and what could have happened. Is that a lie, or something?
We will miss him alot he was a good Guy, and i really find it so pressing, we pray for him, and hope he will come back to normal, i Like that guy.
God bless you Mate

Robin

As he say's, it's deeply personal and therefore not anyone elses business (no offence meant, just making the point as strongly as I possibly can).

To me, he is also a fantastic friend. I plan on doing what I can to help him.

I once said to him that if we lived near one another I just know we would have been firm friends long before now.

Good luck to you Howard. Many of us have gone through bad times, and understand.

Remember it is never so dark that there is not a little bit of light. Bad things eventually disappear in the ether. Come back when you can.

Nicely said there raybay. I will make sure he sees your message.

Hope this isn't permanent. Howard really seems like one of a kind and just in the last few months I have watched him help hundreds of people. I even read the forums back to 2005 when he was helping people through their probs. He got me through something that I don't think anybody else could of, and he did it in a 24 hour period.

If you read this Thank you so much for the help and I wish you well.

Good luck Howard. You've been a great help to everyone in the forums. Thankyou.
regards
Spleenharvester

People who are concerned, and share their time and considerable knowledge freely are such a rarity. Howard gave so much, much more than he took, while working within a very, very challenging venue. Accordingly, we should all thank him heartily, and wish him well in whatever is next. Thank you again Howard, and all the best.

All i can say really is i hope howard recovers and is back on his feet soon

I wish him all the best and thanks for all the help over the years, not just to me but to others :)

Sadness deep sadness in my heart now. Howard sir, take care and know that we love you.

consider yourselves lucky you got to know him so well. i didn't get to for very long.

but i can say this. whatever time i did know him for was well worth it. i may not be able to share the same feelings of incredible friendship and comradery, but i will definitely miss him. he had a presence in whatever thread he was in. it's hard to describe. but you all knew him so well i'm sure you know what i'm talking about.

i'm honored to have known him. perhaps not in a face to face type of way, but you work with what you've got. long live howard. it's been an absolute pleasure, and i sincerely hope he gets himself back up to speed.

WE LOVE YOU HOWARD!

I too wish to add my sentments to Howard. He was and is a great person who would go out of his way just to help people. If there were more people like him in the world it would be a better place.
I raise a glasstoyou Howard, and want you to know that you never caused anyone on Techspot an 'inconveniance.'

We all wish you the best

Howard my mate - what can I say? I have to say your the most helpful, kindest person I've ever met. Please take your time mate - your health comes first than TS.

Well I do hope you can return once again to TS - because your such a wonderful person.

Regards Jason :)

PS: Rik can you send that too Howard.. please..

Good luck from a fellow Brit and best wishes for a speedy recovery. You have helped a lot of guys and gals on here in the past and I am sure they would happily help you if they could. We wish you all the best and hope you will be back at some time in the future but only when your ready.

Get well soon Howard,

I consider myself lucky to have known you for so long. TechSpot will miss you.

I hope you get better man.

Is this why his post in the Security & the webs part of the forum ( the virus removal instructions ) has changed to Julio?

Yep, Julio must have recovered the threads somehow and re-posted them, but keeping the same thread number so it must be some sort of Admin thing ;)

Be well and enjoy life again. You'll be missed.

My thanks also go to Howard. He is one of the bunch of very helpful people on these forums that make these forums what they are today.

To Howard:
Mate, if you can, keep this thread. May it remind you of happier times when your help was/is greatly appreciated by many. You have friends, be it personal or via a keyboard, don't lose faith buddy, you will always be eagerly welcomed back here.
Good luck to you :)

I will miss howard....

I'm so sorry to hear about Howard's troubles. He will be sorely missed here both for his technical knowledge and his distinguished presence. I hope he will be back here one day soon.

All the best Howard.

I'm sure that conservatively speaking, there's 100's of Techspotters behind you, wishing for a speedy recovery.

As we know, 1 post equals 1 billion people, so 24 billion people wish Howard all the best :)

Howard, you were a great help to everyone here and will be sorely missed. But I'm sure you already know that. I don't doubt that you'll pull yourself out of this. Just one piece of advice if I may, go easy on the cigs ok? More for your sake than ours mate. I will see you soon and I hope this message reaches you via rik.

I`d like to say a very big thankyou to all you guys for your fantastic support, it really is very much appreciated.

I`m told by my doctors that I will recover given time, but just how long that`s going to be is anyones guess. Life has taken on a completely different meaning for me at the moment and every day is a struggle just to try and find some kind of normality. This maybe one of the biggest battles I`ve ever had to face, but I`ll try my damnedest to overcome this malaise that has overcome me.

I have for reasons I won`t go into, tried to help a couple of folks out in the S&W forum, under the username of baros1954. I don`t expect this to occur too often as I`m really not up to it at present.

Whether I`ll ever come back to TS in any real capacity I don`t know. I`d like to think that one day it may be possible.

Again, I`d like to apologise to everyone for all the inconvenience I caused when I went nuts. I assure you it was never anything personal against any TS members/staff/mods. I`d especially like to say sorry to Julio for all the work I`ve caused him.

It has been a great honour and privilege to have known and interacted with so many outstanding individuals here on TS.

I`d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very merry X-Mas and a happy and prosperous new year.

Regards Howard :)

Howard, be well, take your time to heal and come back.....both for the help you give others and for the enjoyment that you obviously received here for if it wasn't that, then you wouldn't have been helping others.

And just a quick thanks for being here.....your presence has inspired many of us.

Get well soon Howard, you'll always have a home and friends to talk to here on TS. Thank you for all of your help and guidance. Happy Holidays to you.

howard; take whatever time you need before coming back

And btw, it wasn't Julio that did allot of work, it was me ;)

This thread is kinda fun, I hope you appreciate the irony, I do :D
http://www.techspot.com/vb/post522155-34.html

Howard, pliz take all the time u need, we can handle, how do u know whether u will worsen it, we will pray for u, and am very sure u will be ok.God is your father, always there whenever u need him.
I wish u a nice recovery.

God Bless u
Robin

I`d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very merry X-Mas and a happy and prosperous new year.

A very Merry Christmas & a Prosperous New Year, Howard!.

Wish you a speedy recovery.

oh!

howard is one of the best

Wish you a speedy recovery.

i have no doubt that this board would not have been the success it was without the presence of Howard.I'm really impressed with his skills.


To Howard:

Please know also that you are valuable in God's sight and have been a
blessing to many people around you.

we,here in TS are confident that you will soon make a complete recovery
and return to your friends in TS to join the world again as a healthy and
productive person.


You may not know everyone here as close friends, but
I think that what you're getting through right now affected everyone quite a lot.

Hoping that one day,you will wake up and be all better.....a speedy recovery mate.


all the best for you Howard......



turbo1

How come Howard is a techspot Evangelist now and not TS special forces ??

Good point, hamas123. Also, his post count has gone down about 100 posts :confused:

The post count has been addressed in the Feedback forum.

Regarding his title. Howard is no longer a moderator of the boards. And mods are given that special title. Howard is still a regular member, but not a mod. No worries there mate.

Daveskater; Howard has lost ca 100 posts because he deleted those, he hinted at that in his post above...

Some of the more popular posts have been recreated by Julio from a backup server I run, also mentioned by you in a previs post :D

I did see that he deleted a load of stickies but his post count was still over 26k with them gone. I think it could be to do with the thread that poertner_1274 said about, which is here:
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic94429.html

I just noticed, even Julio's post count has gone down to below the 4k mark, which it was above yesterday.

what on earth has happened. He was fine like 3 weeks ago, whats happened in between. No one to look at my hjt now :(

Hes been a legend of the higest calibre. thanks so much man, you will be missed. I have no idea whats happened.

We have people who can look at your HJT log, howard was not the only person qualified to read them.

yer, anyway im sad to see the end of howard. what actualy happened and how long ago did it take place.

If you read the first post in this thread you can see what happened and when. It was a couple of days before this thread was started.

Sorry to see Howard go, he's been a great help to me recently, hope he gets better soon.

Howard had 26,433 posts before the "incident"

Julio just informed me that allot of members have lost posts, myself too maybe? I don't care tho :D (ok, I had 1652 posts before)
Anyway, if you have been a member long enough to remember the Jawbreaker forum we used back then you will have a clue as to what happened...
We recently ran a forum maintaince thing which reset the post counters to actual posts in the forums, so reason I lost about 500 posts for example is because I made those on our old forum
I think Julio is looking into a permanent fix for this problem which always occur when we want to do a database upgrade

Please direct post count discussion to this thread (http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic94429.html). Howard deleted several of his own threads, and that is the cause of some of his losses. Other losses on his post count were from posts in the old News forum. I forget when the old format for news ended, but chances are if you have been with the site less than 2 years you weren't affected.

It is in these times that we have to remember Howard for the great person he was. Although I am upset that we had to see him leave; especially as abruptly as he did, I do hope he feels better as soon as possible. He was a great guy, and a great security helper as well :) .

The post count has been addressed in the Feedback forum.

Regarding his title. Howard is no longer a moderator of the boards. And mods are given that special title. Howard is still a regular member, but not a mod. No worries there mate.
So Howard is a human then? What is going on. it seems as if the TS SPECIAL FORCES are losing their post counts.

As has been said in earlier posts, try to keep the post count discussion for another thread.

I am also one of those Howard helped in a very personal manner to solve a problem, leaving me with a huge appreciation for him, an admiration for his technical skills, and a fervent wish for his early recovery.

May I remind him that statistics say as many as one-in-three people suffer some similar problem at some time in their lives, and virtually all make a full recovery.

Howard, you are not alone, and are certainly far better surrounded with friends anxious to help than many....

Howard was the first person that ever wrote to me back when i first started.
Since then its like..... i clicked anywhere and BAM!! there was howard always
taking the first step when it comes to helping others.

It kills me that.. This is the first problem that howard has ever shown me and ... there is nothing i can do to help him.

All i can do is wish you well....

Get well soon.

Show the gods that you
are here to stay , and that
you are not going anywhere
anytime soon.