Eighteen years - it's been a good run.

[pillowpc2001]

Well, I never would have thought I'd ever be making this post, but here it is...I have made the difficult decision to begin the process of shutting down my website.

Over the last few years I had already begun to explain my diminished presence in the CC world as due to real life, and there were moments here and there where I did manage to carve out time for certain projects (level set page changes, playing through CC2/CCLP1, designing a few new levels). But they were few and far between, and I was always just assuming that "down the road" things would slow down and I would get into a routine where I could make "real life" and "CC life" coexist.

But here we are, a few years later, and I find myself with a full-time job, a wife, a house to take care of, changing interests and priorities, and it is just seeming less and less likely that I can make that happen. Even when I do find myself with some CC time, I feel oddly divided. On the one hand, I feel like it is never enough - I get a chunk of time to solve two CCLP4 levels and wish I had more time to better optimize my scores or to continue playing. On the other hand, after playing I see household chores piling up that I should have been taking care of, and feel guilty that I even took the time that I did to play CC. Either way I look at it results in an unsatisfying feeling.

I'm not at all saying it's not fun anymore - it is - and this is not a goodbye post. However, I might be less active than before and will not be able to keep on maintaining my site any longer.

I am open to a bankruptcy buyout if anyone would like to keep certain aspects of my site going, especially:

- the Tile World 2 homepage

- the Chip's Challenge Creator homepage

- the level set pages

and if someone really desires:

- the AVI archives

- MikeL2/3/4 scoreboards

- the page with the latest 64-bit CC options

- my listings of links

Whoever would like to take over hosting any of these pages, I will send them (and the database) to you to officially become "yours". (For Chip's Controls I plan on re-uploading the latest version here with all the HTML pages included.)

Hope everyone is doing well - thanks for reading, and now back to your regularly scheduled Chipping.

Mike Lask