A million post, I can¡¦t believe that we made it. A lot has happened in the past 6 years. I thought a little history lesson would be good for the new folks.
In 1999 hayabusa.org was created by a man named Chase in Texas that worked for an ISP. His screen name on the board was bigdog and he had the skills and the know how to make the site prosper. In 1999 message boards were just up and coming and bigdog was on the cutting edge. Back then there was only one hayabusa web site and talk of the up and coming busa was exciting. As the hayabusa was released to market the true performance was unveiled and the site began to grow.
Original members of Hayabusa.Org included screen names like motorhead, Frank Adams, and Ducmaniac. You might know these names as now owners and administrators of great sites like LAbusa.org, Suzukihayabusa.org and Psychobike.com. As Hayabusa.org grew in popularity and size bigdog was faced with many of the same problems that we encounter today. Chase's vision for the site was exactly the same as the one to which I hold today, clean, PG rated full of information for the members. As with any other large group of people there were many opinions on the way the site was run and many felt the site was censored and they did not agree with the vision. A couple of other sites were spawned out of Hayabusa.org with their own visions and today we see those sites thriving on the Internet. There is nothing wrong with someone disagreeing and a few good men took action and opened their own websites, I support them whenever I can.
I ordered by busa in 99 and it was delivered to me in Feb of 2000. I searched the Internet high and low for information and the only results in those days on a search Engine (Alta Vista) was hayabusa.org and a review between a blackbird and busa. I was a member on the board then under a different screen name (withheld ) and I went to the site every day. One day there was a message on the site that Chase was shutting it down because of cost and financial woes in his personal life. The website stated that he was selling the domain and all content of the site. His only requirement was that whoever took the site over had to have the means to keep it running. At that time I worked at a world wide ISP and had plenty of resources. I spoke with Chase on the phone and we agreed that I could keep it going, because if licensing problems he sent me the data from the old board but could not provide me the message board to use. I started a new board with zero post and always had the plans to import the old data into the new board. I got that completed a few months ago, you can read those posts from the original members in the forum called "Original .Org Message Board"
It took 5 or 6 months for me to get the site fully functional with a message board. I remember the first new member that I met, his screen name was narcissus and I consider him a close friend to this day. Paul was one of the old timers and he joined the new board and helped me through the early days. You will still see him login from time to time as an admin. We would wait for days for new messages, when we started to grow a little Labusas and SH.org had jumped in the mix and they were absolutely ripping us apart with the traffic and member comparisons. Psychobusa.com appeared about this time and eventually transferred names to psychobike.com about a year into it. Frank and I go way back, I hosted his website and administered his website and board for about 2 years.. I still sneak over there as an admin and snoop around every once in awhile (no one tell Frank).
The site began to pick up speed and to be honest I'm not sure when exactly it happened but this place went from being a website hobby to a job¡K¡K I hosted the site in my house, I had two T1 circuits, seven servers ranging from mail to web servers pushing out pictures, videos. As the site grew the T1's couldn't keep up and I had to move hosting out of the house (very manageable) to a hosted service. It took about a month for the ISP to call and tell me no way was I going to be able to stay on a shared server, the site had too much traffic and we were bringing the server to its knees. We went to a dedicated server and have since upgraded a couple of times. There is a co location move in the near future because pricing is so crazy on dedicated servers to support the demand that we have.
I can honestly tell you that I have made great friends here and I never would have imagined that you could do that on the Internet. Here are a few of the highlights of the last 6 - 7 years.
Message board had 10 people online, when we went to 20 concurrent users I thought we had hit the big time How many Busa lovers could there be?
We had the great board crash of 2003 when we lost about 150k in post.
My young son rewired my switch without me knowing it, he enjoyed moving cables around. Took me months to figure out why the site was running so poorly..
I have had the pleasure of hosting narcissus, Jester and Professor in my home. Each has come at different times over the years. Jester doesn¡¦t know this but I had not known him very long when he came up, he had a long drive back to Texas and so we told him to sleep at our house until the next day. I slept on the bed with my Glock in my hand¡K. Sorry Josh the truth has been revealed, as it turns out he is one of the folks I trust the most.
We lost some great members over the years, Bog and then Flying Swan there are others but those two were devastating to the board because of their involvement with the site.
I sold my Busa in 2004 so I could build my family a house... I still havent recovered from that one... The wife isnt the hold up its me waiting for the new 1500cc
We have seen hundreds go down and recover, even more go down with no injuries.
The top of my list was to participate in the Eureka springs get together, I could not believe that folks that had never met in person could immediately hit it off.
I hate to mention any names because there are literally hundreds of folks that have sent me supportive emails telling me to keep the site just the way it is. I need that, I get so much hate mail from folks that disagree with my vision. However I do consider there to be a second generation group that came here They included Lobusa, Howlin_Mad, Thinker62, Hawaiibusa (now known as kento-moto), bullettrain, narcissus and so many others.
One year ago a member of this site sold his integrity and honor for cash. Without going into details and detracting from the positive spin of this post I can tell you that the proudest and most honored I have ever been was in jan of last year. I turned the operations of this site over to another admin and he stole over 7k in raffle money and prizes donated to the site. When that happenned I did the only thing that I knew to do and that was tell the members and PROMISE to pay them back... When the situation went public members were VERY understanding, my wife and I had wondered how in the world we were going to pay all these folks back that had entrusted our website. I got a call on my cell phone on a sat morning from a member named RSD.... I dont think that I had ever spoken to Andy before that but he tracked me down and told me that he had started raising money to pay back the funds that were stolen. To this day I still cant believe it but the members that were stolen from donated more money to the site to make the problem go away. It has been one year since that debacle unsurfaced and I could never have imagined the support and help the members provided me. There was almost enough money donated to cover the loss..... Andy, thank you for spearheading that.... I can never repay you for that......
I can't stop with out bringing up the true strength of the site The mods and admins are the foundation of this site. Vabusa, RSD, Ninja Eater, professor, Revlis, Jester, Thrasherfox, Kento-Moto, MC Mustang, JWCFBD and the new guy KS-Waterbug.
The admins talk constantly behind the scenes about what is going on and how to best keep things from getting out of control. They do an awesome job and still get the hate mail. I pulled each one of these people into the ring for a reason, I dont always agree with them but I know that they will shoot the truth to me and that I can trust their opinions Its a thankless job.. Thank you admins for what you do every day..
Now, where are we headed? I know that there is a lot of turmoil over the auction site. I am incurring over 600.00 a month in hosting fees, that has to come to a stop. I have been pulling money out of my pocket for years, I now have a 12 year old that is eating me out of a house and home and he has a little bother that can almost keep up. My priorities are changing and so is the funding. We have some very generous sponsors that often give above and beyond what we have agreed to¡K but you see sponsors come and go on the site, what that means is that they are not making enough in sales to justify having a banner here, that forces me to lower the rates that I charge and look for more ways to generate money. I have some ideas working that I hope will be beneficial to us all.
I am constantly reminded of what YOU have created and I wonder in amazement that I am a part of that, keep looking out for each other and continue to use this site with respect, integrity and honor in the forefront.
Thanks for letting me play
Doug King
AKA Captain
In 1999 hayabusa.org was created by a man named Chase in Texas that worked for an ISP. His screen name on the board was bigdog and he had the skills and the know how to make the site prosper. In 1999 message boards were just up and coming and bigdog was on the cutting edge. Back then there was only one hayabusa web site and talk of the up and coming busa was exciting. As the hayabusa was released to market the true performance was unveiled and the site began to grow.
Original members of Hayabusa.Org included screen names like motorhead, Frank Adams, and Ducmaniac. You might know these names as now owners and administrators of great sites like LAbusa.org, Suzukihayabusa.org and Psychobike.com. As Hayabusa.org grew in popularity and size bigdog was faced with many of the same problems that we encounter today. Chase's vision for the site was exactly the same as the one to which I hold today, clean, PG rated full of information for the members. As with any other large group of people there were many opinions on the way the site was run and many felt the site was censored and they did not agree with the vision. A couple of other sites were spawned out of Hayabusa.org with their own visions and today we see those sites thriving on the Internet. There is nothing wrong with someone disagreeing and a few good men took action and opened their own websites, I support them whenever I can.
I ordered by busa in 99 and it was delivered to me in Feb of 2000. I searched the Internet high and low for information and the only results in those days on a search Engine (Alta Vista) was hayabusa.org and a review between a blackbird and busa. I was a member on the board then under a different screen name (withheld ) and I went to the site every day. One day there was a message on the site that Chase was shutting it down because of cost and financial woes in his personal life. The website stated that he was selling the domain and all content of the site. His only requirement was that whoever took the site over had to have the means to keep it running. At that time I worked at a world wide ISP and had plenty of resources. I spoke with Chase on the phone and we agreed that I could keep it going, because if licensing problems he sent me the data from the old board but could not provide me the message board to use. I started a new board with zero post and always had the plans to import the old data into the new board. I got that completed a few months ago, you can read those posts from the original members in the forum called "Original .Org Message Board"
It took 5 or 6 months for me to get the site fully functional with a message board. I remember the first new member that I met, his screen name was narcissus and I consider him a close friend to this day. Paul was one of the old timers and he joined the new board and helped me through the early days. You will still see him login from time to time as an admin. We would wait for days for new messages, when we started to grow a little Labusas and SH.org had jumped in the mix and they were absolutely ripping us apart with the traffic and member comparisons. Psychobusa.com appeared about this time and eventually transferred names to psychobike.com about a year into it. Frank and I go way back, I hosted his website and administered his website and board for about 2 years.. I still sneak over there as an admin and snoop around every once in awhile (no one tell Frank).
The site began to pick up speed and to be honest I'm not sure when exactly it happened but this place went from being a website hobby to a job¡K¡K I hosted the site in my house, I had two T1 circuits, seven servers ranging from mail to web servers pushing out pictures, videos. As the site grew the T1's couldn't keep up and I had to move hosting out of the house (very manageable) to a hosted service. It took about a month for the ISP to call and tell me no way was I going to be able to stay on a shared server, the site had too much traffic and we were bringing the server to its knees. We went to a dedicated server and have since upgraded a couple of times. There is a co location move in the near future because pricing is so crazy on dedicated servers to support the demand that we have.
I can honestly tell you that I have made great friends here and I never would have imagined that you could do that on the Internet. Here are a few of the highlights of the last 6 - 7 years.
Message board had 10 people online, when we went to 20 concurrent users I thought we had hit the big time How many Busa lovers could there be?
We had the great board crash of 2003 when we lost about 150k in post.
My young son rewired my switch without me knowing it, he enjoyed moving cables around. Took me months to figure out why the site was running so poorly..
I have had the pleasure of hosting narcissus, Jester and Professor in my home. Each has come at different times over the years. Jester doesn¡¦t know this but I had not known him very long when he came up, he had a long drive back to Texas and so we told him to sleep at our house until the next day. I slept on the bed with my Glock in my hand¡K. Sorry Josh the truth has been revealed, as it turns out he is one of the folks I trust the most.
We lost some great members over the years, Bog and then Flying Swan there are others but those two were devastating to the board because of their involvement with the site.
I sold my Busa in 2004 so I could build my family a house... I still havent recovered from that one... The wife isnt the hold up its me waiting for the new 1500cc
We have seen hundreds go down and recover, even more go down with no injuries.
The top of my list was to participate in the Eureka springs get together, I could not believe that folks that had never met in person could immediately hit it off.
I hate to mention any names because there are literally hundreds of folks that have sent me supportive emails telling me to keep the site just the way it is. I need that, I get so much hate mail from folks that disagree with my vision. However I do consider there to be a second generation group that came here They included Lobusa, Howlin_Mad, Thinker62, Hawaiibusa (now known as kento-moto), bullettrain, narcissus and so many others.
One year ago a member of this site sold his integrity and honor for cash. Without going into details and detracting from the positive spin of this post I can tell you that the proudest and most honored I have ever been was in jan of last year. I turned the operations of this site over to another admin and he stole over 7k in raffle money and prizes donated to the site. When that happenned I did the only thing that I knew to do and that was tell the members and PROMISE to pay them back... When the situation went public members were VERY understanding, my wife and I had wondered how in the world we were going to pay all these folks back that had entrusted our website. I got a call on my cell phone on a sat morning from a member named RSD.... I dont think that I had ever spoken to Andy before that but he tracked me down and told me that he had started raising money to pay back the funds that were stolen. To this day I still cant believe it but the members that were stolen from donated more money to the site to make the problem go away. It has been one year since that debacle unsurfaced and I could never have imagined the support and help the members provided me. There was almost enough money donated to cover the loss..... Andy, thank you for spearheading that.... I can never repay you for that......
I can't stop with out bringing up the true strength of the site The mods and admins are the foundation of this site. Vabusa, RSD, Ninja Eater, professor, Revlis, Jester, Thrasherfox, Kento-Moto, MC Mustang, JWCFBD and the new guy KS-Waterbug.
The admins talk constantly behind the scenes about what is going on and how to best keep things from getting out of control. They do an awesome job and still get the hate mail. I pulled each one of these people into the ring for a reason, I dont always agree with them but I know that they will shoot the truth to me and that I can trust their opinions Its a thankless job.. Thank you admins for what you do every day..
Now, where are we headed? I know that there is a lot of turmoil over the auction site. I am incurring over 600.00 a month in hosting fees, that has to come to a stop. I have been pulling money out of my pocket for years, I now have a 12 year old that is eating me out of a house and home and he has a little bother that can almost keep up. My priorities are changing and so is the funding. We have some very generous sponsors that often give above and beyond what we have agreed to¡K but you see sponsors come and go on the site, what that means is that they are not making enough in sales to justify having a banner here, that forces me to lower the rates that I charge and look for more ways to generate money. I have some ideas working that I hope will be beneficial to us all.
I am constantly reminded of what YOU have created and I wonder in amazement that I am a part of that, keep looking out for each other and continue to use this site with respect, integrity and honor in the forefront.
Thanks for letting me play
Doug King
AKA Captain
