Hi everyone.
Reading all the threads in the "Reminiscing" post, 22/06/05 by Painindaas, I was reminded of a post that I made several years ago, titled "A Short History of KickAS", so I tried to find it, without much luck. All I could find was the first paragraph, hidden deep in the bowels of my PC. Then I remembered that Tony (Hobbit) had posted it in the Forum about a year later and added his own memories of those earlier days. I searched the Old Site and found the following Post by Tony:
Date: 8/11/01
"Rick sent me this a long time ago and I dug it up to try and clear up some of the Hobbit-lure that has been said". (I don't recall what this was about......Rick)
A short history of KICK AS:
MY FIRST ENCOUNTER:
A few years ago when I was just a beginner at the net thing and having fun with search engines, I though maybe there is something here on this crappy Ankyosing Spondylitis thing that I have. So I went to Search and entered it. Yep, there were a few places. One was called The Anklyosing spondylitis Site (or something similar) and owned by Brian Harris, a fellow sufferer of A.S.
Brian's site was quite large, about 25 pages, full of AS facts, AS reading materials, medications, so much information I couldn't believe what I had found. There were also a few stories from people with AS, including Brian's story. I read everything, and I signed Bryan's Guest Book, as I recall, number 87, and thanked him for giving us ASers a place to be.
At that time, the message board was not operating, or I just didn't try at the correct times. My work began to take up much of my time and moving my family from SC to NY, so it was a few months before I got back to Brian's site.
THE MESSAGE BOARD:
When I returned to the site, the message board was working fine, and there were about 10 or 15 people posting messages. I read all the posts and posted a few of my own. I couldn't believe I was talking to others like me. I had never met anyone else with AS and now I knew people who could relate to my condition.
I began to meet the people and found a guy that lived in Chihuahua, Mexico. His name was Pete, and because I had been in Chihuahua a few months before on business, we had a little something in common in addition to AS. Back in those days there were just a handful of people using the board and it wasn't unusual for the board to go 1 or 2 days without a new message. So I began to meet ASers from all over, Teddi from Oklahoma,
James in Texas, aka, Billy Bob James, Christina from California, John L. in East Texas, Dave the master chef, Jade from Cannada, Pete aka Dakoda Dan, John in Cailf., Fairy Sue and Sue in OZ, (I need some help with more names guys) and of course Brian, who would post from time to time. The board started picking up new members and we began to grow as a group (sort of a spontaneous organizing of people with the same concerns and pains).
Someone, I don't remember who (help me guys) suggested that it would be nice if we had a place on the site to post pictures of ourselves. As I recall, Brian said that he had though about it, but hadn't found the time to generate anything.
Unfortunately Brian's health was deteriorating at this time, due to AS ,and keeping up the site maintenance was about all he could do.
Then our old friend from Chihuahua stepped in, and even though he didn't have much web page experience, he began building a place for us to post photos. (PETE, PLEASE HELP ME HERE WITH MORE DETAILS) The page had a great picture of a mule kicking its hind legs up, as in Kicking AS. Now there was a place for posting pics of ourselves and families. Back in those days, only a couple of years ago, access to a scanner or digital camera
weren't always available to everyone, so, if I'm not mistaken it was Christina that volunteered to scan photos that anyone wanted to send her, and get it posted in KickAS. And then we started to see some of the people who had become so dear to us. Although it took me a over a year to get my own photo posted. (I do procrastinate sometimes).
At some point during this time a fellow named Tony joined the board, he was from Baltimore Md. and, a Web Master. Tony gave Pete pointers on how to improve the photo site, and began to help Brian to maintain the message board. (I'm going to leave the details to Tony and Pete) Also around this time Pete moved from Chihuahua to El Paso Tx. and we had new members from the UK, Africa, Europe, Israel, Pacific Rim and additions from OZ and Canada.
By this time Brian's message board had become "HUGE" sometimes it would take 3 to 5 mins. for my computer to load the board. Back then the board was only one page that got larger and larger with every post. Finally it got so big that some, in our family couldn't load the board on their machines.
Brians condition had worsened, and we were in danger of losing members, or possibly crashing the board completely. I believe it was about this time that Tony and Pete contacted Brian to offer their assistance in an attempt to save the message board that had now become an everyday part of our lives.
(Back to Tony)
All of the above was from Rick, and I will try to add to it as I remember correctly........
I had written Brian back and forth a few times, but his email had become less and less to the point where we were all really worried about him. The message board was growing so big that many people couldn't load it all since most people were on 28k modems, and loading a 1/2mb file took forever. That presented a major problem sice the form to post new
messages was at the bottom, or end of the page!
So I used some of my personal webspace on another website I was running and placed the posting portion of the message board on it. The website I used was actually used for a program I had written called Quake Name Maker, which allowed people to easily make fancy names for use in a online-shooter game called Quake.
Pete continued to add new content to his Geocities website, adding pictures of AS Kickers and updating his AS Bits pages (short stories or uplifting text). He was using the Geocities programs to make the pages and it was making a real mess of the page (as far as HTML goes). I saw the mess it was making of the pages and offered to help Pete out.
Now at this point we had 3 websites with AS info. Brians site, my site, and Petes. I recieved a grave email from Brian asking me to fix the message board and he gave me total access to the ASWeb site. Brian just couldnt do it anymore. His hopes and dreams of developing the site were crushed, and I felt really bad for him, and offered whatever I could to help him out.
I added lots more content to my site and it became ASKAW, or AS Kickers Assistance Web. I posted content that I had gotten from people, improved on Pete's foundation, and the group continued to get bigger and bigger! The message board was really cooking now, and I did my best to keep it running, but the web server that hosted Brians site just couldn't cut it. It kept crashing and losing posts and such. I contacted them quite often and found out that Brians site was being hosted out of kindness. It kind of scared me to think that the entire time the message board was on a borrowed server, so me and Pete put our heads together and had a
dream!
KickAS.org was born. We started up our new site with this fancy message board (WWWThreads), and did our best to honor Brian who is really the father of us AS Kickers. On one hand we felt bad that Brian was not able to be a part of our group anymore, but on the other hand we did not want to lose anything that we already had. We added more and more features to the site, like the database that holds all of the personal information, a links section, tons more pictures, and lots of stories.
More and more content was rolling in everyday, and it was a major chore for anyone to keep up with. I tried to school my friend Pete in the ways of webmstering, but eventually it got to the point where I was making so many changes to the site that I left Pete in the dust. Me and Pete had quite a few "confrontations" about the amount of work I was doing, and Pete wanted me to document and instruct him on how to do the tons of things I was doing, but it just became so much work for me that my health deteriated, and I needed a much needed break.
I think that pretty much covers it. I know there is a lot I left out, but this should give everyone a good idea of where we were and how far we have came.
Where once we were few, now we are 100's!
CONTINUING ON:
This is me (Rick) again. I'm hoping we can continue this story and bring it up to date. Could anyone who remembers any more, or who can help to bring this "Short History" up to more current times, please add to the story. (Pete-Dakotadan, Christina_in_Ca, John-Dragonslayer, Chris-fyrfyt187, Sue in OZ, Littlesis, Lord Simpo, Linc, Strutsy, Old George, Stevec, Lon and anyone else, old or new)After all, we are not 100's anymore, were 1,000's
Maybe Chapter 2 of the Story should start off with:
Then came Loz............(Take it from here)
Stay Well Ya'll
Richard, aka, Rick S.
