- 23,800
- Philippines
UPDATE: In honor of my 20,000th post, I now give you Jeff Goldblum.
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I was hoping to hit 20k right before this anniversary, but obviously, I failed. So... uh... Yeah, so I don't really know what to say, but... wow. Just wow.
It's been ten frickin' years. I'm feeling totally, like, retro, digging up things like my first thread here, as well as my log-ins for places I don't visit anymore.
GTPlanet was not my first board. That distinction belongs to a closed-off subforum on a site that has been shelved for a newer site, and what I've written there will probably never see the light of day again. I've checked, it's still on Network54. But it's closed unless you know the hyperlink.
GTPlanet was not my first automotive board. That distinction belongs to nissanforums.com, which is no longer the place it once was. I still miss the self-banning button. Yes, the ability to ban yourself for 24 hours is as awesome as it sounds. I learned many things there, as it was the online hangout of the SportCompactCar staff. I haven't visited there for six years. But apparently my log-in is still there. Incredible. http://www.nissanforums.com/members/niky.html
And GTPlanet is not where I've posted the most. I've got 21k posts here: http://tsikot.com/forums/members/niky-3929/
I believe I had almost that many on our local Ford Club board before it crashed, and a few thousand more on the new one, but I don't go there, anymore. And I don't go to my cardomain site, anymore... http://www.cardomain.com/ride/380665/2004-ford-laser/ or my various club forums.
I've got to do something about that.
In fact, I don't go to a lot of my old haunts. But... GTPlanet... GTPlanet is home, and it's where I've enjoyed myself the most. Sans the lack of a self-banning button (got to do somethinng about that, too).
-----
I don't make many threads. But when I do, I try to make them special. Which is why my first (unclosed) thread here was a car review... of sorts:
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/thre...mparo-accord-bora-c5-m6-primera-vectra.67294/
Did I feel a little foolish? Yes. Did I enjoy doing it? Hell yes. And this, friends, is where it all started. The germ of an idea that led to the foolish notion that maybe I could do it for real. My cardomain site sold several of those cars, some of them to people who eventually became friends and clubmates, so, I figured, why not?
Over the next few years, I worked, I wrote, I played silly videogames, I hung around on the internet too often for my wife's liking. I got drafted to a website. I wrote some more.
http://web.archive.org/web/20120709032919/http://bigbigcar.com/ (this is the only place you'll find it now)
(I would sometimes write two articles off of each test drive, one for our site, one for an American site)
I spent five years of my life working and building up credibility and honing my craft. Even when we had web troubles, we still worked. When the site developer bailed, I simply posted articles on the forums. We had a print magazine lined up. I worked feverishly on copy-editing, only to find the layout guys were too lazy to use my corrections. It went to print uncorrected. And then folded after three issues, with no further input from me. I still wrote. I got recruited (after several years!) as a moderator here. And started writing in this godawful shade of green. Right about this time, I became an honest-to-god on-track car tester. And I also became even more insufferable, if that can be believed.
I still wrote. It was damn hard to find motivation to write for a dead site walking, but I wrote.
And then our EIC finally called it quits. That was it.
It was devastating, but I knew it was coming. Another friend offered me a job at http://www.kotse.com. I did some of my best work there. I brought along the orphans from our old site with me. I kicked one friend who'd been a fixture on the motoring scene longer than I had to finally start writing. I was finally happy again.
(no, that's not me)
One of my articles got 78,000 hits in one day, going viral last month, two years after I left that site.
I left that site for my new home:
Worse writers than me have been on that cover. Better writers than me have also been on that cover. It doesn't matter. What matters is I'm on that cover. Took me nearly ten years of drudgery, but I made it.
And I'm still writing car reviews.
Am I satisfied? No. There's still so much to do. So much to see. Things that I can do better.
In the meantime, I've had to sacrifice some things. And Gran Turismo is one of them. I have not played the game seriously in nearly two years. I'm not getting any younger. Or richer (not yet). And having two jobs has been rough on the family, but I have a supportive wife and loving kids. We get by.
And when things get rough, I know there's one place I can go to relax, blow off steam, ban a few blowhards...
... or just hang out.
I'd mention names, but I'm sure to forget somebody (and I don't want to offend anyone!), and so many people from back in the day aren't around anymore. But despite old friends, old dreams and old haunts lost, I'm glad there's a place I can still call home out here.
Yeah, so sue me. Couldn't think of anything better to put there. Either way, thank you, everyone, thank you.
-----
I was hoping to hit 20k right before this anniversary, but obviously, I failed. So... uh... Yeah, so I don't really know what to say, but... wow. Just wow.
It's been ten frickin' years. I'm feeling totally, like, retro, digging up things like my first thread here, as well as my log-ins for places I don't visit anymore.
GTPlanet was not my first board. That distinction belongs to a closed-off subforum on a site that has been shelved for a newer site, and what I've written there will probably never see the light of day again. I've checked, it's still on Network54. But it's closed unless you know the hyperlink.
GTPlanet was not my first automotive board. That distinction belongs to nissanforums.com, which is no longer the place it once was. I still miss the self-banning button. Yes, the ability to ban yourself for 24 hours is as awesome as it sounds. I learned many things there, as it was the online hangout of the SportCompactCar staff. I haven't visited there for six years. But apparently my log-in is still there. Incredible. http://www.nissanforums.com/members/niky.html
And GTPlanet is not where I've posted the most. I've got 21k posts here: http://tsikot.com/forums/members/niky-3929/
I believe I had almost that many on our local Ford Club board before it crashed, and a few thousand more on the new one, but I don't go there, anymore. And I don't go to my cardomain site, anymore... http://www.cardomain.com/ride/380665/2004-ford-laser/ or my various club forums.
I've got to do something about that.
In fact, I don't go to a lot of my old haunts. But... GTPlanet... GTPlanet is home, and it's where I've enjoyed myself the most. Sans the lack of a self-banning button (got to do somethinng about that, too).
-----
I don't make many threads. But when I do, I try to make them special. Which is why my first (unclosed) thread here was a car review... of sorts:
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/thre...mparo-accord-bora-c5-m6-primera-vectra.67294/
Did I feel a little foolish? Yes. Did I enjoy doing it? Hell yes. And this, friends, is where it all started. The germ of an idea that led to the foolish notion that maybe I could do it for real. My cardomain site sold several of those cars, some of them to people who eventually became friends and clubmates, so, I figured, why not?
Over the next few years, I worked, I wrote, I played silly videogames, I hung around on the internet too often for my wife's liking. I got drafted to a website. I wrote some more.
http://web.archive.org/web/20120709032919/http://bigbigcar.com/ (this is the only place you'll find it now)
(I would sometimes write two articles off of each test drive, one for our site, one for an American site)
I spent five years of my life working and building up credibility and honing my craft. Even when we had web troubles, we still worked. When the site developer bailed, I simply posted articles on the forums. We had a print magazine lined up. I worked feverishly on copy-editing, only to find the layout guys were too lazy to use my corrections. It went to print uncorrected. And then folded after three issues, with no further input from me. I still wrote. I got recruited (after several years!) as a moderator here. And started writing in this godawful shade of green. Right about this time, I became an honest-to-god on-track car tester. And I also became even more insufferable, if that can be believed.
I still wrote. It was damn hard to find motivation to write for a dead site walking, but I wrote.
And then our EIC finally called it quits. That was it.
It was devastating, but I knew it was coming. Another friend offered me a job at http://www.kotse.com. I did some of my best work there. I brought along the orphans from our old site with me. I kicked one friend who'd been a fixture on the motoring scene longer than I had to finally start writing. I was finally happy again.
(no, that's not me)
One of my articles got 78,000 hits in one day, going viral last month, two years after I left that site.
I left that site for my new home:
Worse writers than me have been on that cover. Better writers than me have also been on that cover. It doesn't matter. What matters is I'm on that cover. Took me nearly ten years of drudgery, but I made it.
And I'm still writing car reviews.
Am I satisfied? No. There's still so much to do. So much to see. Things that I can do better.
In the meantime, I've had to sacrifice some things. And Gran Turismo is one of them. I have not played the game seriously in nearly two years. I'm not getting any younger. Or richer (not yet). And having two jobs has been rough on the family, but I have a supportive wife and loving kids. We get by.
And when things get rough, I know there's one place I can go to relax, blow off steam, ban a few blowhards...
... or just hang out. I'd mention names, but I'm sure to forget somebody (and I don't want to offend anyone!), and so many people from back in the day aren't around anymore. But despite old friends, old dreams and old haunts lost, I'm glad there's a place I can still call home out here.
Yeah, so sue me. Couldn't think of anything better to put there. Either way, thank you, everyone, thank you.
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