I looked up this site for the first time sometime in August of 2003. I joined, in Sept 2003 as mikesgroovin, shortly after finding an answer to a motherboard question that I had. Played around for a while and helped a lot of people. Became interested in becoming a mod and then, I believe that I approached Dave or Larry about it. Not sure which. At any rate, became a mod here and then a smod shortly after that.
We had a pretty tight team of folks. DM0224, ekÆsine, ADZ, Microbell, Shakie, Emily, Qiranworms ... bunch of folks. I can remember when the "Off Topic" section was at the top of the forums instead of where it is right now. It took a few of us to convince Larry that it didn't belong at the top because we really wanted to get people away from that section. I also remember the first day that the Networking section was launched ... sometime around mid to late 2004.
I had a lot of people involved in the Software, Hardware, Linux and Networking Quizzes. I had a lot of fun building those for people. Larry loved it too. I can remember talking to Larry on the phone about new experiments on the site. They didn't pan out due to different reasons, but, crap happens I guess.
My favorite classic moment has to be when, right after Larry bought the site. He was going to choose two "admins". Out of all of the Smods running, DM0224 and Shakie were chosen. Since Microbell didn't get picked, he went ahead an got REALLY ****ed at Larry ... lol. He ended up deleting ALL of his own posts. Over 4,000 of them ... all providing good information. LOL (no such thing as Pruning then either).
Another favorite moment of mine was when Nubius became a mod. Man, was he shocked. He then realized that he didn't want to stop posting his "edgy" posts... so he quit. And then we asked him, later on, to consider it again. LOL. I've met Nubius in person though and he is no different than he was in his posts ... very interesting and a good thinker. Extremely great guy. Lots of fun.
The General and his extreme posts ... the mysterious unbanning
of The General.
So many weird times, bad times, good times. I began to drink pretty heavily and ****ed a lot of people off ... including Smods. So I asked Dave to remove my Smod status. I still manage to **** people off nowadays, but the difference is now I'm completely sober. I love not waking up and then half way through the day laughing at myself and wondering what the **** I posted on the forums the night before. I'm sure that Trotter can agree.
