When the news of the shower incident truly broke (Friday-ish) I was on my way out of the door and stayed offline for the rest of the weekend. That kinda sucked big time.
Came back to the forum being offline and went to my old watering hole, the bore, a chill place for esteemed gentlebeings that one way or other left that other forum at some point in time. Obviously, people were neck deep in the entire thing and were tossing juicy bits and snarks back and forth in a dedicated thread. Spent a good chunk of time getting up to date and coming to terms with the entire thing, then started debating with myself whether to install or use one of them newfangled chat things to get a code (had the main retreat been on IRC, I'd have been there immediately ... such is the folly of old farts). Well to be honest I wasn't optimistic about this whole endeavour either, to put it kindly, so staying at the sidelines and watching who'd emerge victorious and grab all the refugees seemed like a good bet, anyway.
By the time the numbers had spoken (and I had wrestled myself into submission with regards to the code acquisition), the sign ups were already opened in phase two, so I could forego the entire ordeal and just sign up using my email. Which I did.
So yeah. I'm a filthy nonbeliever. At least I got better, eventually.