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It has been FIFTEEN YEARS....


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....since I found Nightly.Net. I've only recent returned, by my Gods, most of the original members are still here and active. I find myself incredibly nostalgic being back.

 

What I'd love to do is ask all you awesome people a question that might take you down memory lane;

 

What was it like back when you first found Nightly.net?

 

How does that compare to where you are now? I see avatars with kids and babies in them. Frak me, 15 years!

 

 

Anyhow... 15 years ago I was 13 and just discovered the awesomeness of Star Wars. I found Star Wars Chicks (GIRLS like Star Wars too?!) which eventually led me here. I fancied myself a Padawan learner and was mentored by Gin Skywalker!

 

I wrote silly and serious stories with the usual suspects and loved every second of it.

 

 

Fast forward to now... 28 years old, College Graduate, Sr. Business Analyst with a medium sized telecommunications company, but still writing my novels and finally self-publishing after getting 6 or so viable books written. I bought a house in 2012, had a girlfriend, discovered girlfriend was crazy, was single again... I travel often for work. I discovered DragonCon in 2011 and have had the BEST drunken nerdy times every year since.

 

I discovered I make a bad ass Starbuck lookalike.... (http://i.imgur.com/t1rt3.jpg), gotten addicted to Reddit, Supernatural and Night Vale.

 

I never stopped being a nerd, even if there were lulls.

 

 

But that's enough about ME. I want to know about everyone ELSE! Tell me about THEN and NOW. :)

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I was 24, just started a writing program for grad school and moved to LA to get into film.

 

Now I'm 40, still in LA, have a ten year old, and come Halloween you can see Leatherface, prequel to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, written by moi.

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Well, I didn't join Nightly until September of 2000, but then I was a freshman in college and had just moved to Florida to major in aerospace engineering. Met my future husband 4 months later. I read Star Wars voraciously and did typical college student stuff like joined a sorority, played soccer and bowling, and sang in the a capella choir when I wasn't studying. It was fun being at a nerd school.

 

Now I live in the Seattle suburbs, and I've worked on the space shuttle and the commercial aviation industry. I've been married 7 years to my college sweetheart, and we have 2 little kids and a dog and are busy as heck with them. I'm hoping to get back into skiing and playing soccer now that my youngest is turning 1 shortly, and I've promised my oldest I'll take her skiing next winter. We go to pro soccer games as one of our primary fun activities. I got disenfranchised with Star Wars books but we're really looking forward to the new movies coming out.

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Now I'm 40, still in LA, have a ten year old, and come Halloween you can see Leatherface, prequel to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, written by moi.

Tank - that's sooooooooooo awesome!!

 

Destiny - I had no idea we used to share a state. I bet Seattle is awesome, though! I hope you plan to teach your kids ALL OF THE ROCKET SCIENCE. :)

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I was 18 when I found Nightly in June of 1999. I had just graduated high school and started college that fall. I was in the height of Star Wars craziness, thanks to new movies and books.

 

Now I'm 34 (ugh), work a full time job and write whenever I can. Still obsessed with Star Wars and do a podcast and write for a blog. We're going to Celebration VII next month, woot!!!

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I found this place through a blurb I think in EW as episodeii.com. I was 16 and TPM had just come out and I was a lonely high school nerd. I joined two years later to respond to some AOTC rumors, having just graduated high school and desperate to get out of town and start college. I moved to Tucson to go to the UA just after that, and was a lonely college nerd.

 

Now I'm just shy of 32, have a wife and a kid, a useless college degree and am rethinking my career outlook since grad school now appears off the table for at least this year.

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I was 21 when I found Nightly, working night security. I was just a year into my marriage to my high school sweetheart and I was only a father of one kid. I'm 37 now, been a Mr.Mom for 13 years (my wife wanted to pursue a career but keep a parent at home). I'm still married, but now have four children; 16 yo son, 9 yo daughter, 4 yo son and a 2 yo son. My wife and I are happy, blessed if you're so inclinded. She is well established in her career, recently promoted. My teen is on course for medical school, he wants to be a doctor... don't know how that happened as I am generally a simpleton. lol

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it's also been 15 years since i've been on nightly. registered back in march of 2000, under the name slipknotica at the time. jedi master bryce, long time moderator of the videogames forum back when the playstation/N64 and ps2/gamecube discussions were fierce, turned me to nightly. we went to school together. i was a 16 year old kid in hs, trying to find myself and was honestly a complete ****ing tool here my first few years.

 

 

now, i'll be 32 in april, am a single father with custody of my son, and am a frito-lay representative for these past 8 years. and still check in to nightly from time to time.

 

 

 

also, i never get tired of these looking back/memory lane threads. always a good time.

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Then: 26, divorced, living in a small apartment and languishing in a decade of restaurant management purgatory. My best friend lived a couple buildings over, but came over for a few hours each day to watch cable and take turns using AOL and stuff. My ex still had custody of our son.

 

2000, I took a pay cut to switch career tracks. 2002, I got custody of my son after his mom dropped the ball several times too many. 2004, I married the best friend. 2007, bought a house.

 

Now: my son's a college sophomore, my wife and I celebrated our tenth anniversary last July, the house is just-okay but still beats apartment living, I make twice what I used to and finally qualify as Middle Class, and I write 4000-5000 words a week online in a fun way that devalues the medium for millions of bloggers who treat it as a serious profession.

 

Because you gotta have goals.

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I joined in 2003. I was 20 and somewhere between the coma and self-destructive stages of a broken heart. I'd just run away to Houston from Austin hoping to shake it, but it didn't work so about the time I started being more active around here, I had run away to Boston. That didn't work either.

 

Now, I'm back in Houston and married (4 years next Thursday) with a 6 year old son. Turns out, broken hearts go both ways and at least we both finally came to our senses. ;) I'm back in school (again) and doing the stay-at-home-and-homeschooling mom thing.

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I joined in April 2001. I was a freshman in high school at that point, figured I would probably always live close to home, and was terrified of dogs.

 

Since then, I got a few degrees and am now a professor, moved halfway across the country twice (in two different directions), and have a dog that I couldn't imagine life without now.

 

So, just a little bit of a change.

 

Also, it is so strange realizing that Nightly has been part of my life for just a tiny bit more than half of it at this point.

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I stumbled on the place back in late '99 (under a different user name) back when it was a discussion/prediction forum for episodeii.com. So yeah, I remember "Degobah = Naboo" discussions and stuff like that.

 

I was married, in my mid-late 20s and without children. Worked nights in a plant that made high tech office furniture. I may well have had a part in assembling the desks and video screen walls used at NASA head quarters, among others.

 

Today, still married, 2 kids age 12 and 8. I took a few years hiatus in the early 2000s when I returned to college and quit drinking. Returned in 2005. By then I took a job as a school bus driver to make a few extra bucks while finishing my diploma. The six days it took me to get an air brake ticket and 3 axel/24+ passenger vehicle operator's license did WAY more for my earning potential than the degree it helped pay for did.

 

The internet has changed a lot more than I have. When I first started here, reasonable discussions could still be had over the interwebs over religion, politics or whether Darth Sidious really was Palpatine. Such an innocent time, in retrospect. Why can't it be 1999 again?

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I joined in 2005. In 1999, I was only 15, so really not much to say.

In 2005: College sophomore hating college, put on probation with a 1.8-ish GPA (I can't remember exactly), still a year away from switching majors from accounting to ecology. Thought about dropping out. That 3-semester streak peppered with F's still haunts me to this day....pain is temporary, GPA is forever. Two straight years of 3.5+ GPA couldn't get my overall above a 3.0. I was very depressed and lost. Just the typical gifted high school student going to college with an empty tool box and almost flaming out. 2005-2006 was probably the darkest period of my life, I was on the cusp of failure and very aware of it.

 

Now: Got my college career together, got my undergraduate and graduate degrees, published some papers, carved out a career. Have a great family. Adversity has been ever present, but I have tools to deal with it. I'm *just about* where I want to be. Optimistic about what the future holds, but still aware I have to keep working my tail off. If this site is around in 2035, I hope to be reading this post from a super fancy holographic watch while sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of my cabin on a cattle ranch. Seems like a long-shot, but when I was 4 I wanted to be a duck, and here I am researching birds, so just got to keep grinding.

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I joined in June '99 as Amidala777. I think Tank and Jedi Cool are the only people here that pre-date me and still regularly post. Maybe a couple others I'm forgetting.

 

Back then I was in high school. I can't remember exactly how I found the site; but I think I was searching for Episode 2 news, right after I had seen The Phantom Menace. Forums were pretty new back then and there weren't a whole lot of them dedicated to Star Wars. It was this one, TheForce net, maybe 1 or 2 others.

 

Now I'm in my 30s. To be honest, I'm pretty surprised this site is still here. Since then, I've come and gone. Sometimes I'll forget about the site for a few months and then come back again. Had both my original name, and my second one (Letsgo) banned. And then they were revived, but then with the forum software switch, it appears they've once again been lost forever. I've since graduated college, law school, worked at a couple different investment banks in NY, then moved to Europe a few years ago. That's about all, to tell the truth, my life's been pretty boring.

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I joined in 2005. In 1999, I was only 15, so really not much to say.

In 2005: College sophomore hating college, put on probation with a 1.8-ish GPA (I can't remember exactly), still a year away from switching majors from accounting to ecology. Thought about dropping out. That 3-semester streak peppered with F's still haunts me to this day....pain is temporary, GPA is forever. Two straight years of 3.5+ GPA couldn't get my overall above a 3.0. I was very depressed and lost. Just the typical gifted high school student going to college with an empty tool box and almost flaming out. 2005-2006 was probably the darkest period of my life, I was on the cusp of failure and very aware of it.

 

I have a FB group for this. I completely feel you! I'm struggling with this very issue right now. Luckily for me though, I did this right after high school which was almost 15 years ago now, and in Texas you can do an Academic Fresh Start after 10 years and it clears your record. So I plan to do that when I'm ready to transfer to a university. Right now I'm happy paying less tuition at a community college. But I'm serious about the FB group. The raising/educating gifted kids boards were getting full of adults wanting to talk about their own stories/struggles/lives, so I started on for gifted adults. You'd be amazed at how many people have a lot of the same issues and histories.

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I joined i April 2001 so I'm not quite at the 15 year mark but I'll play. I had just broken up with someone I thought I was going to marry and living with his parents when I joined. Oddly I did not come for the Star Wars stuff - I was here because of the alternate board CC, Comic Collector - and just joined to read stuff about Lord of the Rings and Lando and escape my exs parents. I have been mostly a lurker for the first part but later I started posting regularly as I had insomnia and my other boards at Wizard World and Issue9mm kind of broke apart. The drama from that period is funny now.

 

I am now living in a condo. My sweet cat Meeko has passed away but I have two cats and 8 outdoor cats have me slowly working on crazy cat lady. I was in the slow college track too but mostly mine was a mix of crappy grades and transfer credit bs where my Georgia college stuff didn't exactly match the stuff offered in my new school so they forced me to pay for more useless classes. I was teaching when I started here and quit to do some food work which I really wanted to do and then went back to teaching.

 

The GPA thing is no joke, man. That was something I struggled with too. I excelled in subjects I hated and sucked in subjects I liked like art. Can you imagine getting a C in art? I did. And it wasn't like I skipped class. Much of my art work took hours or days to do. I guess it hurt that I had to work a 50+ work week so I could pay for living expenses and school. I changed majors 3 times. I think I would have stuck out my career in Taco Bell for 10 more years if I could get an academic clean slate like Cerina mentioned.

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I joined in 2005. In 1999, I was only 15, so really not much to say.

In 2005: College sophomore hating college, put on probation with a 1.8-ish GPA (I can't remember exactly), still a year away from switching majors from accounting to ecology. Thought about dropping out. That 3-semester streak peppered with F's still haunts me to this day....pain is temporary, GPA is forever. Two straight years of 3.5+ GPA couldn't get my overall above a 3.0. I was very depressed and lost. Just the typical gifted high school student going to college with an empty tool box and almost flaming out. 2005-2006 was probably the darkest period of my life, I was on the cusp of failure and very aware of it.

 

I have a FB group for this. I completely feel you! I'm struggling with this very issue right now. Luckily for me though, I did this right after high school which was almost 15 years ago now, and in Texas you can do an Academic Fresh Start after 10 years and it clears your record. So I plan to do that when I'm ready to transfer to a university. Right now I'm happy paying less tuition at a community college. But I'm serious about the FB group. The raising/educating gifted kids boards were getting full of adults wanting to talk about their own stories/struggles/lives, so I started on for gifted adults. You'd be amazed at how many people have a lot of the same issues and histories.

 

It definitely seems widespread. My generation was told how great and special we were, and it seemed like the adults assumed our natural abilities would make us successful, so no one bothered to teach us practical skills like time management, real study skills, etc. I eventually took control and became accountable, but it definitely contributed to my slow start.

 

That's awesome about the Academic Fresh Start. I didn't know that existed.

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I stumbled on the place back in late '99 (under a different user name)

In case any of you are curious, my first user name here was a true stroke of creative genius on my part: my last name "England." That profile was lost after my wife and I moved and we ended up changing internet providers since the people we were with proved chronically unable (or unwilling) to set up the new place correctly. So a new email address and a new name - "Lord Kargan" was born. This was due to a friend of mine calling me that way WAY back in '91 since my appearance (and certain aspects of my personality) at the time reminded him of Connor MacLeod's original nemesis.

 

 

You should marry a poor fatty and let him knock you up-- just to completely turn your life upside down and make it exciting like a ****ty movie!

In the same vain, I suppose I should do homage to what has always been my signature trait hereabouts - all the way back to '99 - and hook up with a staunch rad-fem. "Sex objectifies women" meets "love entraps and weakens men" - Wouldn't that be something? :lol:

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It's crazy to think I've been visiting this site for half of my life.

 

Joined in early June '99 after seeing Episodeii.com being promoted on a big TV news show somewhere along with a few other big Star Wars sites. I forget which one. I signed up because I had a sweet new theory about Boba Fett that nobody on earth had thought of yet. (Vader told him 'no disintegrations' in ESB and clearly it had huge implications.)

 

 

Fast forward to now and I got married last year and bought a house the year before. Went on my dream vacation last year with designs for more in the next couple of years. Have the best paying job I've ever had, albeit a boring office job. So life is good. :thumbsup:

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I found this place in 2000. I was Roleplaying a lot as Darth Bane and other characters on Star Wars RP.net or something and episodeii.com was talked about in the general forums there. From there I stumbled to Nightly. Feared Lando for the longest time. Stuck to Star Wars lurking, then enjoyed the Arena (Wrestling forum here) for the longest time. Became mod of the Arena. Got fired. Somehow became mod of Lando. Deleted Lando once. Got fired again. All very wise Admin decisions, mind you (grrr... Yogi! ;) ). Kinda left for a long time, but have always lurked even to this day - I feel quite the creeper.

 

When I started here, I was in the 10th grade, have since served in military, lived on an aircraft carrier, fought in a war and worked for the State Department. Have spent the last 4 years doing Mission and Aid work throughout the world (mainly Ethiopia, Thailand, Eastern Europe & Bangladesh). I now live in Hawai'i with my wife and 2 year old son (and baby 2 is literally due to be born any second now) where I work with a film company which is about to make a movie in Bulgaria in partnership with a couple of big studios (more on that when it goes public), so life is a real adventure!

 

It's so great to see so many familiar faces here so often.

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I joined in 2005. In 1999, I was only 15, so really not much to say.

In 2005: College sophomore hating college, put on probation with a 1.8-ish GPA (I can't remember exactly), still a year away from switching majors from accounting to ecology. Thought about dropping out. That 3-semester streak peppered with F's still haunts me to this day....pain is temporary, GPA is forever. Two straight years of 3.5+ GPA couldn't get my overall above a 3.0. I was very depressed and lost. Just the typical gifted high school student going to college with an empty tool box and almost flaming out. 2005-2006 was probably the darkest period of my life, I was on the cusp of failure and very aware of it.

 

I have a FB group for this. I completely feel you! I'm struggling with this very issue right now. Luckily for me though, I did this right after high school which was almost 15 years ago now, and in Texas you can do an Academic Fresh Start after 10 years and it clears your record. So I plan to do that when I'm ready to transfer to a university. Right now I'm happy paying less tuition at a community college. But I'm serious about the FB group. The raising/educating gifted kids boards were getting full of adults wanting to talk about their own stories/struggles/lives, so I started on for gifted adults. You'd be amazed at how many people have a lot of the same issues and histories.

It definitely seems widespread. My generation was told how great and special we were, and it seemed like the adults assumed our natural abilities would make us successful, so no one bothered to teach us practical skills like time management, real study skills, etc. I eventually took control and became accountable, but it definitely contributed to my slow start.

 

That's awesome about the Academic Fresh Start. I didn't know that existed.

Wait-- are these gpas haunting you guys on a personal level? Or are employers asking what kind of grades you got decades ago?

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Both. Sorta. No employer has ever asked about them, but the universities I want to transfer to require a 3.0 minimum to transfer. Currently I have like a 1.87 or something. Plus, I'm completely ineligible for financial aid (any of it).

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