[Raion]

I didn't have time to post this on the 21st because I was actually at a wedding the week prior and at a graduation for a friend of mine the week of the 21st. 

As a result I missed the deadline and I apologize. I was busy a lot during May and the result I was not up to my normal standards. 

Let me discuss with you today; that I want the theme for this next 12 months before the 5th anniversary to be about moving on from what you cannot change. 

None of us could have prevented this. But we rose from the ashes and did the best we could to be stronger because of it. I would like to think that as a site we have grown a little bit more resilient and less shut down prone, and that I've done a lot to secure the future of the community. 

Not everybody survived the transition and I can think of A few friends that really didn't ever come here. ClassicHasClass is still around but when he was posting over at that site he was the life of the party and always very helpful not only to me but everybody else who had questions that he was within the realm of expertise to answer. Vince725 never really seemed to rejoin our community and I was sad about that because it was nice to have somebody around my age who I could chat with about things. And countless veterans who I guess just saw the site as the reason to move on. 

At the same time we have gained a lot of new friends and I wanted to thank some of them today. Kaigan, who has not only quickly grown into an expert on the systems but has become one of my best friends here, Lucanis, an early supporter and a very friend. Weblacky, what would we ever do without your endlessly helpful dissections of power supplies? And I wanted to most of all thank DefaultRouteUK. Not only did he join up and try as best to cheer me up when I was not doing the best emotionally, he quickly stood up to the plate and offered to help support our infrastructure. I am endlessly grateful for his continued support of our website and I encourage anybody who might need colocation services in Europe to talk to him because he has the connections to help you out. 

I also want to say that we have another staff member. Shiunbird was approached after a unanimous decision by all of the staff to extended offer to add him. He is not only another member who we can have covering our European time zones but also an incredibly helpful system administrator who is going to be doing a lot to improve our backups and also help audit and go through my infrastructure that is probably in major need of some love. 

Thank you everybody for continuing to be a supporter here and in general I am grateful to everybody, even my critics, for continuing to give me a drive to stay here. I have no problem thinking my critics because at the end of the day even though sometimes I think that a lot of things levied at me are unfair that kind of ignites my competitive spirit to the point that I want to prove them wrong and be a better contributor to the community that I started.

Let's focus on the future guys. And I'll be right behind every single one of you.

[Shiunbird]

All good things come to an end - this place will end one day as well.
The best way is to enjoy it to its fullest while it lasts, and have fun. Otherwise, there's no point.

I'm wrapping up my tenure at an infamous ultra mega corp after 13 years. I thought I would retire there, but I found out that no one will hold your lines for you and that HR is there to protect the beehive and very willing to sacrifice as many bees as required in the process. It brings me some sadness but it will be quite interesting to swap 40.000 colleagues for 8. (and, in the process, have more time for things like this community)

There's great joy in being proven wrong, for me. It means that I learned something new and I hope to delay the stiffness of my brain as long as possible by always keeping an open mind.

Not everyone has made the cut - I joined Nekochan at the very end and contributed only for a few months. But it's nice to see that folks like ClassicHasClass has found his way and keeps contributing to the greater good.

Which brings me to the point of what makes a great place a great place, and what makes this a great place: we are all good at something different, bringing the collective knowledge and wisdom to a level that's not matched almost anywhere else.

[Raion]

What an opening speech! Couldn't have said it better myself, I'm really proud to have you on the team. And in doing so I think we have only made ourselves stronger.

[jirka]

Wow, its already so long time!

Many thanks for your great service!

I am not too active user of course (I almost ceased to use my SGIs after 2018). But I still enjoy (passive) reading of forum posts. I often use the classic/limited version of the forum on my SGI O2.

[vishnu]

Since I don't use bookmarks (I visit so few Internet locations I don't them), and the scrubber script I wrote to delete everything Firefox related from my $HOME would delete the bookmarks anyway), I find that when I start typing the word "forums" into the URL field I sometimes still unthinkingly follow it up with "dot nekochan dot net"... 😜

[Trippynet]

It was a sad demise. When I dusted off my O2 back in about 2013, it was great to find that there was still an active community at Nekochan and a decent library of software that people had contributed (and which, although old in places was far more up-to-date than the old SGI Freeware releases).

Seeing such a great community spurred me into buying a couple of my more sought-after systems - especially my Indigo 2. When Pete pulled the plug, it was very sad indeed, but great to see that the spirit remains alive here. Thanks for everyone that keeps this place going!

I don't post as much these days, and it has been some time since my Indigo 2 was last powered up (lost a bit of motivation after multiple PSU issues), but I still have the three systems in my sig. I'll have to make a renewed effort at some point to fix my Indigo 2 so I can have another play with it. Right now it runs for about 30 minutes or so then trips out.