There are so many names not around anymore. Mine being one, although I pop in periodically. I had just "re-signed up" to help admin the site, and along comes a job which has me working about 50-60 hrs per week, and having the family. My kids are now 11,9,and 7, and take up much of my time, the little I have. So my "I'm back" thingy a month or so ago is pretty much a moot point now.
Lots of good times here for a long time. I signed up in Aug. 2000. For a long time I had the highest post count, then Tachyon took over and pretty much doubled my count when we were both still active members and before we became moderators. EB had the most, by far, but moderators post numbers weren't officially counted then. I was really involved in helping out Starlancer spoilers and people who just couldn't get passed the mission. We had great mods for SL, but different from what we have in FL. My favorite was flying Homer Simpson around, putting a Tachyon Cannon in his mouth and missiles coming out his derriere. I changed the whole fleet to Homers, and the Coalition was changed to Pumpkins. I also turned their maximum speed to 1, so they'd come in during the mission and just sit there with their engines smoking. We had so many ship designs it was amazing. We'd change the existing ships to other mods, and then add guns, missile mounts etc.
For a long time we didn't have an off topic forum, and we had to stay "on topic" or we'd be locked down (which happened often). Mostly, we had countless "Moose" jokes. I once posted that I was working on a mod called "dumbass edit" to allow you to shoot Moose off into space. I kept looking for the registy value for Moose and finally gave up because he had no value whatsoever!
We got away with many Moose jokes, but they got old after a time.
The funniest thing I remember to this day is Scupmeister's signature line which was:
1. Take one alka selter and one piece of bread
2. Place alka-selter in bread
3. Feed to Seagul
4. BOOM!
Gibby started to really get on our case about exploding bird joke, so anytime someone wanted to talk about birds, we'd say "rear firing guns" instead. Hence my alter ego of "Alka-Bird" was born. The guns thing was funny. I remember a post about someone getting his car washed and right afterward some "rear firing guns" crapped on his car, and he didn't have any selter with him. This went on for a long time.
Best memory though was getting to go to Austin, TX and meet the DA team, and spend an entire day (13 hours) touring the studio and mostly, playing the game. At the time, I was a beta tester under NDA, but we were given the OK to discuss what we saw in Austin, so I got to mouth off about the game early. Tachyon and EB went as well. I feel bad for my "twin bro" Stinger. He was also a beta tester under NDA, but didn't get the chance to go to Austin, so he must have gone through hell not talking about it. This lasted about two months before they finally went gold and lifted the NDA. I wrote a game preview for some web site, and a long travelogue here (it may even still be in the archived forums somewhere).
I became a moderator about this time. Then we got hammered by the X-2 trolls, and it really became an issue. Then we got all the warez's posting on the site, and it seemed that me, Stinger, EB, Tachyon, and Bargib spent all our time dealing with this. At that time, we were the most active moderators. The combination of my life getting much busier with family and work, and the fact that the posting and forums weren't "fun" anymore, is the main reason I pretty much left the site. Gibby added more moderators, and it was really messy here. Anytime we locked a thread, we were called Nazi's and told "they don't run 'such and such' site this way" and crap like that. I spent more time moving spoilers out of the discussion forum everyday than I'd ever expect, and I had to stop because it was taking too much time from my real job. I guess I just had to leave for a while, take a vacation from it. I remember well when Gibby was close to closing down the site. We emailed each other over it a couple of times, and I told him that it might be good for his state of mind to do it. He was getting angry, other sites were incredibly nasty about him, and he has two beautiful kids to care for. I'm glad he didn't shut down, but certainly wouldn't have blamed him if he did. Stinger also needed to get away for some time. We were all getting beaten up on, and it showed in our postings. I never really came back to the forums after that. I still checked the site out often for mods and news, but stopped posting and worrying about moderating the ever increasing forums.
So, these are just a few of my memories of my participation in this site. I was VERY much involved when it was a Starlancer site, and stayed that way until the unfortunate situations I just mentioned. Now, mostly it's that I simple don't have the time to do more than glance the news and download a mod now and then. I still play the game now and then, especially if there's a really good new mod. I've been playing the Tie Universe mod when I have time, really like that one.
It is true what they say though, you can't go home again. My life has changed, and the site has changed, nobody's to blame, life just changes and sometimes we have to accept it and move on.
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The Next Thing I Say To You Will Be True
The Last Thing I Said Was False 
Sun Aug 22, 2004 12:57 am 
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No please not that...
have to buy fuel pods.