Rather than write an essay, I'm just going to list the people I want to thank...
Brad Smith (SkullMac)
Reid Sheridan (Kaio)
Julian Grybowski
Jon Allen
Eric Phan
Kyle Smith (Trunks, Skull's brother)
Rob Anderson (He hates you all)
Justin Bunnell
Brian Real (TheDuck)
Steve Simmons (Daimao)
Castor-Troy
Chris Psaros
VegettoEX
Greg Werner (For sucking at making websites so badly that he made us look good)
Meri of ToT
Skitz-Zero
Ramza
Everyone who bought the Planetnamek.com t-shirt
Everyone who donated money
Everyone who bought merchandise from our store
Everyone who submitted news and content
Everyone who e-mailed me with compliments and constructive criticism
The kid who brought me a package of ramen at Comic-Con
The fine people of #namek
The fine people of forum.planetnamek.com (especially the mods/admins)
The voice actors at FUNimation (except Sean Schemmel)
The staff of the FUNimation online store
Mom
Dad
Jim
My "real-life" friends (Angus, Matt, Lauren, Jo, Jakub, Eric, etc)
And that about wraps it up. Thanks again everyone!
Kaios goodbye: Because I know there's nothing you guys would like more than to hear my life's story with regard to Dragonball, here it is, you crazy bastards! The very fact that I am willing to type this up should shed clear light on to who the crazy bastard in fact is.
When I was in 7th grade (5 years ago), I visited such DBZ sites as JKwok's (possibly JKwok44's) DBZ Page, Ed Gorgen's (Gorgon?) Saiya-jin Pride, and Wuken's DBZ Page. I thought, "Hey, I could do one of these." Let it be known that JKwok was a really nice guy, who, though busy, was very helpful and supportive when in contact with me.
The tenses change and the grammar is horrendus, but kaio@planetnamek.com doesn't work any more, so tough luck, boys!
Fall of 1997
> I set up Kaio-Sama's Dragonball Z/GT Page on Geocities. This was way back guys, before Geocities put ads on their hosted sites. I think the address was geocities.com/Tokyo/Towers/6384, but I could be wrong about the number.
Sometime After Fall of 1997
> Geocities adds advertisements to their hosted sites. I move Kaio-Sama's Dragonball Z/GT Page to AOL. It undergoes a redesign. I believe the address at this point was members.aol.com/KaioSamaZ.
> Sometime around now I visit #db on irc.fanfic.com for the first time. #db was the only real Dragonball chat channel back then, because DBZ wasn't popular enough to warrant anything else. Wuken stopped in from time to time, SREDBZ was there, I remember some guy named KingMog, SonGokuu, and a few others. Also saw Ed Gorgen there once.
Sometime in 1998
> I buy an account with SimpleNet (this being before they merged with Yahoo! or charged extra fees to the heaviest trafficked user accounts), and move the site to dragonball.simplenet.com.
> While on dragonball.simplenet.com, Kaio-Sama's Dragonball Z/GT page is renamed Karin Tower, and redesigned as well. I can't remember if I did this in '98 or '99.
> Karin Tower becomes the most visited DBZ site on the internet, for a while ousting Wuken's new Shuushinchuu. Translation: Four Star Dragonball; I almost definitely messed up the Japanese spelling. Despite skepticism from SREDBZ and some others of #db on irc.fanfic.com, a counter from thecounter.com proves me right.
Sometime in 1998 or 1999
> Simplenet becomes unweildy. I am afraid of being charged the extra $200/month fee (Karin Tower makes no money, has no advertisements), so I move off to an almost comically mismanaged host named True Hosting.
Sometime in 1999
> I put up an ad on the site and collect enough money to buy a video capture card. Begin adding movie clips to Karin Tower. I am in direct competition with Planet Namek by now, trailing significantly in popularity, but second only to PN, to my knowledge, at least.
> True Hosting claims I owe them $1200 for bandwidth charges (despite claims of unlimited bandwidth) because my movies violate copyright laws. FUNimation explicity stated that movie clips of under one minute are acceptable, and all of mine were under one minute, and I specifically alerted one of their (FUNi's) VP's to my site (he was fine with it), but True Hosting refuses to listen to these arguments. They also refuse to disclose how they arrived at the figure of $1200. Shortly after they are kicked off their host, as they turned out merely to be a reseller.
> I cut off all contact with True Hosting (without paying, of course) and they never bother me again. > I post on Karin Tower that I am shutting the site down to avoid future legal/financial trouble.
> I contact Mr. E, and talk to him about a merger. We are on friendly terms, having met over IRC before, and he agrees. I'd put together a tremendous amount of content for Karin Tower, and I didn't want it to go to waste.
> Some of Karin Tower's content becomes part of Planet Namek, and I become a staff member.
> I update enthusiastically, several times a day.
> Planet Namek moves to GameFan and enters its golden/most popular age. E, SkullMac and I probably updated at least 3 times a day (though not always content), and I regularly received several useful news emails each day. I put in ridiculous hours (probably over 15 per week), and from the updates they made, I would guess that Skull and E did too. We reach the 35,000 unique visits per day mark.
The Year 2000
> Planet Namek makes a lot of money going into this year. I update pretty consistantly, with decent enthusiasm.
> GameFan drops us, we stop making money, and we move around. I update less.
The Year 2001
> Junior year of high school gets kind of crazy, and my updates lessen. I take "only" two APs (computer science and English), and get some pretty serious schoolwork. I also discover ultimate frisbee, which I play every day after school in the spring.
> My updates become less and less frequent. My interest in Dragonball has worn off a while ago, and I don't really have any will to update. I never got into the DB website business for the money, but when I'm not interested in the series anymore, updating becomes a chore and nothing else.
The Year 2002
> I update only once (I think). I have become completely apathetic, which I think is a good thing for me, though not the best for the site.
> E decides to shut PN down. He is quite undertstandably not willing to bankroll it any more.
> You are here.
It was a fun ride, guys, but this shutdown had been coming for a while. Thanks to all our visitors.
So I looked at James's thank-you list, and figured it's an idea worth ripping off. Here are the people who have influenced or supported my work on PN in one way or another. You guys will be able to recognize yourselves if you read this. I'm probably going to miss some people here too, but oh well. This list isn't going to be of much interest to you unless you're on it, because I'm not as stranger-friendly here as James is on his list.
Brad
and of course, James, for PN
There are more, but it is almost 3 AM. Perhaps I will update the list tomorrow.
By Reid "Kaio" Sheridan, Co-Webmaster.
Eric
Kyle
TD
Daimao
Jason Kwok
Dooley
Lee
Eleanor
Lowtax, for the laughs
Ed, for the inspiration
The stores in Chinatown that got me the bootleg DBZ I needed
Asahiya Bookstore that got me the Daizenshuu to send to James and Brad
Uetani-sensei
Kimura-sensei
Lugo-sensei
Helinski-sensei