I managed to badger Nick enough to find out what exactly happened at the Underground and why. This is what he said:
Nick@nicksrealm.com to me
show details 12:56 PM (6 hours ago)
I don't owe anybody anything. I have an absolutely clear concience. Everyone knows, or should, that when dealing with anything to do with computers, the number one rule is "create a backup" and rules number two and three are "see rule number one". However, just in case someone didn't already know that, I clearly let everyone know, on several occasions, that if there was information contained in certain posts, that they wanted to keep protected, they should copy and paste it into a text file and save it to their computer and if it was something really important to them they should then save it to disk or some other external storage device. It's not my fault that some people were too stupid to follow that common sense advice.
Now, although I don't feel obligated in any way, I find it difficult to resist your eloquent inquiry. I did enjoy reading your wild speculation that some personal traumatic events combined with some supposed paradigm shift associated with Larry's experiments might have played some kind of a role in my decision, but you couldn't have been further off base if you tried.
The fact of the matter is that it became more of a chore than a pleasure. When you've spent as much time, effort and money, trying to help people with no expectation of recompense, as I have, after a while it becomes exasperating to see the same old nonsense and bull**** crop up again and again from people that should know better. It just became more like job that people expected me to perform than a hobby. When a hobby begins to feel like a job, it's no longer a worthwhile hobby. It's really that simple.
Nick@nicksrealm.com to me
show details 6:03 PM (1 hour ago)
I forgot to tell you that since Larry was kind enough to ask so nicely, I've gone out of my way to temporarily restore all the posts so people can copy whatever they feel is important before I shred them forever.