[Raion]

We lost a little bit of ourselves. Nekochan.net. Not a day goes by where I don't think about that place. May 20th 2018 will forever be a day in my memory. 

I guess it's a perfect time to detail my experience, and exposure, into SGI:

I was 19 years old and working for a company called InMotion in Virginia Beach. I met a curious guy there with a bright red workstation and a small light blue slab at his desk. His name was Will, but he was known on Nekochan.net as "thebulbguy". He was their Tier 3 Network Engineer, and I became fast friends with him. He began telling me about these "SGI" computers. At the time I was into Amigas and old PowerPC macs, so he had my attention. 

I then found two Personal Iris 4D/35s local in Chesapeake. I went and grabbed them, and was completely at a loss with what to do with them. I signed up on Nekochan, and well, learned I had pretty much useless machines for major enthusiast work. So I gave them to Will, and he used them for parts for his personal irises. 

I later grabbed an octane and became super active in 2014, and despite an emotional meltdown that had nothing to do with the site and everything to do with negative, shitty people I lived with in 2015, I was a regular user up until the day it died. I wasn't ever really interested in the 3D graphics. I was always interested in the OS itself, and its uniqueness. I even daily drove IRIX for about 2 months on a dual 300MHz Octane. 

I never saw myself as willing to take up the mantle, tbh, that Pete had left behind. This site's original purpose was a smaller alternative discussion that allowed for sales of commercial software, something Nekochan never allowed. 

Then all of us were blindsided by Peter's sudden decision to shut down. I don't know all of the facts, but I do know he had been troubled by running the site for some years, his interests have drifted to other microcomputers. And as of late we had a lot of controversy on the site, too, with users throwing around insults at each other constantly, people trying to "expose" us on /r/conspiracy etc. Nobody knows how this must have weighed on Peter's mind. 

It's been hard, but we've bounced back. We recently surpassed 600 forum members. This is all a good thing. 

Eventually, I hope to start offering more services and have more things people look for from a community like this. Make it the best we can be.