Tom

Di Edwardo, Thomas Joseph
Thomas Joseph Di Edwardo, 57, died 10/07/10 in home.  Thomas lived in Mansfield Township, NJ and was born in Hornell, NY on 06/08/1953.
 
How can you describe his loyalty, his devotion, what the network meant to him and what he meant to the network?
CM & I (CW) had been Admin on another server, where we had known Tom for 2 years before the beginnings of IRCStorm. When we left that server Tom came shortly after, planted himself and stayed. He knew nothing about IRC commands, servers, or computers. He was still using Webtv at the time.
Stormy & I spent all night on the phone helping him get mIRC set up so he could connect on a pc for the first time. Weeks of phone calls followed to help him get his first computer set up. Computers were very frustrating to him in the beginning but he quickly caught on.
The first time he set an o:line he was so proud of himself. He never lost that sense of awe that he was able to work on the servers. He was there in the old days of botnets, before such tools as proxy scanners. When others logged off, given up, Tom would spend night after endless night with CM & I setting akill after akill, zline after zline in an attempt to beat off the botnets. This was his home, he wasn't going to give up on it anymore than we were.
When learning how to set spam filters, he accidentally set it so anyone who typed the letter 'm' got banned. =) He had an endless willingness to learn and do anything he could to help the network. He ran #lobby and #trivia for years.
He was so much more though. Tom was always a shoulder to lean on when real life came crashing down to so many people, me included. We shared family life, home life and all the bumps in the road that came with it, as well as recipes. We could always count on Tom to come up with a joke.
There's an empty void many of us feel when we connect and he's not there. We keep expecting to see
*teej123 has connected* but sadly it doesn't happen. We will always miss you Tom.                                     -CW
 
If you have something you'd like to add please send CW, Dude or Matt a memo. All are welcome that wish to honor the memory of this treasured staff member and friend.

Author Name/Nick Read the message they'd like to share.
HurricaneTornado When i had the pleasure of first knowing teej123 he came to the channel i was in to help me get it registered etc He never tired of me sometimes through the months and years to come ask the same questions. He got me hooked on this server because you cant kick the owner of a room out unless you have the room pass or are admin.
I remember a time when someone owned a room called Tornado after i got the room Tornado! he shut down the room and told me if i had any problems with anyone to let him know..
I considered him more than just admin here. I counted him as my friend down through the years, and he proved to be just that.
i always missed him when i didnt see him in the channel and gave him a hardy wbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwbwb when i finally did see him. When i didnt see him for a while , i didnt know what to think. then someone told me that he had passed and to look at the topic. I miss him very much!!!