21st September 2004

:: Prologue

Before iSoaker.com, Aquatechnology, the Internet, CDs...

Even before Super Soakers...

We still had water fights...

...and I knew how to hold my ground.

As a kid, I always loved water: from swimming pools to water balloons to watching rivers flowing and snowflakes falling. As I learned, water possessed so many unique properties that made it the key to life as we know it. That said, there was also something intangible, yet wonderful about hosing someone down in the summer months with some clean, cold water.

:: In the Beginning

Sometime in the 1980s, Entertech ruled the streets and the TV commercials with their motorised water gun line. These water guns were based on real guns in shape and colours, perfect for the Rambo_exposed generation to want, grab, and run around, spraying friends and family with our water bullets. Water balloons were our grenades, the guns carried water clips, and every kid in the neighbourhood was their own imitation of Rambo in the water fights. At that time, the water guns sucked the life from 4 AA batteries usually within the 1 hour that a water fight would run for; sometimes the water guns would run out of juice before running out of the water they held. No one cared. Slap in a new set of batteries, refill the 100mL clip, and Presto!, you're ready to take on the world again: one enemy soldier at a time! I was the proud owner of the Entertech Water Hawk, but never did manage to find myself a red head band.

Too bad some kids somewhere ended up getting shot when they pointed their realistic_looking water guns at over_zealous police officers. Sure the very end point of the nozzle was painted bright red, but perhaps the lightning or suddenness of movement made this fact easily overlooked and the officers thought it was either their lives or the kids'.

No more cool, realistic-looking water guns in stores put a real dampener on the water fights in my neighbourhood. My own interest in water fights waned, having only the odd water balloon fight, but really not doing much. My brother had donated an Aqua Force backpack to me at some point which was fun for awhile, but its small pump volume just felt wimpy compared to the pulsing streams my now banned Water Hawk water gun pushed out.

:: Along came the Super Soaker

When the SS50 debuted along with the Terminator/Blues Brothers_type commercials, there were still various wacky_coloured, but functional motorised water guns on the market. I remember shopping in toy stores seeing some teal/orange/yellow striped mutated AK_47 water gun alongside the now iconic solid yellow and green of the SS50. The SS50 didn't look like a real gun, but it didn't need to, either. Its shape screamed performance water gun. By more modern standards, the SS50's stream is tiny, but back then, it was the only one able to produce a solid, coherent, non_stop stream that out_distanced most of the motorised water guns. As well, the design of the reservoir allowed it to carry a LOT more water (5_10x more than the typical motorised water gun) *AND* it didn't drain batteries. Heck, no batteries required?! Sure the SS50 used the same principles as the common lawn pesticide sprayer, but it was smaller, cheaper, gun_shaped, and poised to take the water warfare world by storm.

My trusty SS50 served me well in many battles. However, while more shapes and sizes of Super Soakers appeared in the stores, my then limited cash supply prevented me from collecting. I did manage to upgrade my armoury, picking up an XP75 after battling one day against my cousin who showed me how much more powerful the XP line was compared to my original SS50 (I can still hear him laughing as he hosed me down). Unfortunately, this time was co_inciding with the start of university for me. My time, money, and energy were diverted elsewhere. Soakers would have to take a backseat to my pursuit of knowledge.

:: Birth of the Internet

We take the net for granted now, but it has not been around that long. It was in my first year undergraduate courses that I was introduced to email and a really limited browser known as Mosaic (that eventually became Netscape). It was only by my 3rd to 4th year university that HTML and websites began popping up. I ended up helping out a public school in designing their webpage and got hooked on the idea on building sites. My home connection was limited to 9.6kb transfer, but it sufficed then. As well, there just weren't that many sites out there, many of them educational or institutional since few were building sites. I was dabbling putting up a personal site for the heck of it while learning more about the graphics programs I had.

:: Graduate school

Choosing to pursue more than just a B.Sc. (Bachelor of Science), I opted to do a graduate degree and hone my skills in science. Thankfully, graduate school offered a stipend (though limited in amount) that was enough to cover both tuition and give me more cash flow for...err... other expenditures. The year was 1996 and on a fateful day just after receiving one of my first stipend payments, I was wandering the aisles of a local Canadian tire when I spotted something on the end of summer sales area: the CPS2000.

:: Hook, Line, and Sinker

The sheer elegant beauty, power, and styling of the CPS2000 shattered all my previous thoughts on what a water gun could be. Here was a portable water gun that could easily out_class most of the hose_wielders in my neighbourhood. The stream it made was thicker, shot farther, and wasn't tied down to the limited wandering range that hose_users face. I loved it! Thoughts of hosing down family, friends and co_workers quickly filled my mind. The summer of 1997 was spent using the CPS2000 at various picnics and outdoor parties, quickly drenching people with the quick pull of the trigger. Upon first sight, those who had never seen it would really question whether it was truly just a water gun. I'd smile mischievously at them, telling them, "Of course it is", then unleashing the 1L payload all over them. Sadly, summer came and went and, during the cold Canadian winter, thoughts of soakers vanished while I continued to build my personal site online, experimenting with newly acquired HTML_coding skills and exploring the ever_growing net.

Sometime in the spring of 1998, I, again, found myself wandering at a local department store. Deciding to see if perhaps I could pick up another CPS2000 for the summer months, I headed towards the toy section. Rounding a corner, my jaw dropped. There, before me, stood a full wall stretching from floor to ceiling of the new CPS_line of Super Soakers: the CPS1000, CPS1500, CPS2500, and CPS3000. My heart raced, I started to sweat a bit, and just remained motionless for a moment or three. I picked up the CPS1000, CPS1500, and CPS2500 once my funds allowed me to. A few weeks after that, I picked up the CPS3000.

These soakers offered power and versatility that I hadn't previously considered. Sure, the CPS2000 still was more powerful than any soaker in the new line, but the smaller ones were easier to move with while the CPS2500 offered a selection of nozzles and the CPS3000 carried around 8L of soaking mayhem! Online, I did some searching on Super soakers to see if there were others as hooked as I was. It was during this time I came across the original sites including Super Soaker Arsenal, MiB Alliance, and Water Weapons of Mass Destruction. Liking what I saw, but thinking I could also contribute to the information on soakers out there, I turned my webcreating skills towards making a little soaker website to be known as Aquatechnology.

:: Aquatech'

Aquatechnology launched in July, 1998. It featured 4 reviews then: the CPS1000, CPS1500, CPS2000, and CPS2500. A week later, I added in the CPS3000. It also had a few tips listed, mostly on care and maintenance of CPS_class weaponry. Aquatechnology was aptly named since I found my main interest was in the technology and behaviour of the soakers I was discussing. I also joined MiB Alliance about a month after Aquatechnology's launch and began interacting on the forums, learning more about the water weaponry I had neglected during my undergraduate days. Once again, though, summer faded. While I looked forward to the coming year of water warfare, the winter months let me further hone my HTML and image_editing skills. For Aquatechnology, I was considering only buying and reviewing the big water guns since then, to me, it was all about sheer soaking power. This thought lasted only for the winter months.

In 1999, the Super Soaker Super Charger (SC) series was released. I was curious about them, picking up the SC600 after I first saw it, noting that it appeared to also use CPS technology. Its power was definitely not in the same league as the smallest of the true CPS_named soakers, but it wasn't bad, either. I decided to add in the review on the SC600 to Aquatechnology, followed shortly by a review of my original SS50 (heck, I had one, why not review it, too). I also started frequenting the toy aisles of various stores to see what other Super Soakers I could find. Before I knew it, I had picked up the entire SC series and was looking at the novelty Star Wars line, but held of buying due to their inflated price due to carrying the Star Wars name.

Despite the existence of the CPS series, many of the older soaker fans still commented on their love of their older soakers, notably soakers like the XP150 and the newer XP110. I didn't really understand why, but decided to pick up some older ones that I could find, including the XP70 and XP110. During a few subsequent battles amongst friends, I now understood. CPS_blasters are great, but water fights became almost silly after the first 30 minutes since everyone would be drenched so quickly. Battles involving XPs didn't drench as badly, but lasted much longer since there always seemed to be one more spot one could add water to in order to increase the wetness of one's target! Now that I understood the joys in the different forms of soakage, I began my quest to find and try out as many Super Soakers I could. Super Soaker was THE only worthy name in the water blaster market; the other soakers available just did not have the same appeal to me.

By June, 1999, I had gone from my original 7 soakers to 21 different types. Keeping my eyes looking for the older models listed in the larger sites, I continued to save part of my budget for the acquisition of more soakers. It was also about this time that I linked up Aquatechnology with the Super Soaker Webring, bringing more visitors and interaction between myself and the online soaker community.

In August, 1999, I got my hands on a little program known as Macromedia Flash. A new splash page was made for Aquatechnology, and my love of Flash for building web content had begun. It was also around this time that I had begun interacting a lot with Super Soaker Warrior (SSW, webmaster of Aqua_Nexus) who seemed to share a similar love both of the water blasters and website building. Our sites would become design rivals, each of us pushing the other to the next level of site development. It was a good time for us, though perhaps an odd time for the online community.

:: Changing of the Guard

The MiB Alliance board, where most of the known community was chatting online, was feeling Founderless. Dominion32, the MiB Alliance Founder, seemed to have his time taken elsewhere and was rarely around. Many members wanted to help develop MiB further, but his lack of presence and energy equated into us (the group) feeling a little let down. As well, the Super Soaker Webring was growing stale with a lot of dead sites remaining linked and the maintainer of the ring not locatable. The first generation of sites were beginning to wane. Other sites such as Water Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Super Soaker Arsenal lacked updating due to those webmasters being occupied by other things. In September, I approached SSW with a thought: could we build a better community? Both of us loved soaking and sharing our thoughts with others. We joined our energies and put together Aquatica: Spirit of the Super Soaker.

Aquatica's goals were simple, though never really simply stated well then. Aquatica was meant to be a central message forum much like MiB Alliance was, but also had a webring consolidated as part of it. Aquatica was to act as an information exchange and means to get newer members to see all that online soaker sites were then. Aquatechnology and Aqua_Nexus were the two larger sites now on the net and this alliance proved successful. This, combined with Dominion32's choice to let MiB Alliance slide due to his own change of schedule allowed Aquatica to become *THE* central hub. Powered by Yahoo! Forums, the message board was easy to manage and fairly stable. By February, 2000, even MiB Alliance had joined to become a member of Aquatica.

:: I, Soaker

I continued to develop Aquatechnology through this time, adding to my arsenal and going through more and more site changes. In June, 8, 2000, I decided to launch the next phase of Aquatechnology. Aquatechnology had grown too large for my personal ISP server space so I had decided to move it into its own dedicated space. However, Aquatechnology.com was already taken, thus a name change was needed. I opted for iSoaker.com (sort of following the trend in those days to give Internet_related things an "i" designation in front of them, plus the fact I liked the phrase of "I, Soaker", if referring to myself).

iSoaker.com did manage to get some key people's attention, namely some guys at Hasbro as well as Jerry from InvertedDesign (the web design company that developed the SuperSoaker.com website up until 2003). In 2001 and 2002, I was given the joy of getting to help in the development of THE official SuperSoaker.com website, a true honour indeed for a serious soaker fan.

iSoaker.com's greatest reward, though, came in the form of a soaker: a Collector's Edition Silver-plated SS50 autographed on the soaker and the box by Dr. Lonnie Johnson, himself, the inventor of the Super Soaker. My efforts at putting my site on the map both in the community and in the manufacturing realm had most undoubtedly yielded its benefits.

One other unexpected benefit from running iSoaker.com came in the form of a film crew from Macromedia Inc. As Aquatechnology/iSoaker.com grew in size, I found myself needing more powerful web-building software. I turned to Macromedia software, having fallen in love with Macromedia Flash, then learning the power of Dreamweaver and Fireworks. As iSoaker.com grew in complexity, a database was set-up powered by Microsoft Access and accessed online through active Macromedia ColdFusion pages. During one day, I had received a general email from Macromedia asking program users to submit sites they've built using Macromedia products in order for being potentially showcased. Imagine my surprise when I had become one of the chosen ones for not only being showcased, but being interviewed by a film crew being flown in just to do a little expose on iSoaker.com, itself! Being interviewed and filmed both at home and at work was an interesting experience. The edited video was showcased as part of Macromedia's "Into" promotional ad campaign, showing off what the lesser known builders of websites were able to do with Macromedia products. This, of course, came at the cost of the online anonymity I had once coveted, but the chance of being able to show a wider audience my love of water warfare and perhaps get them involved as well was an opportunity I could not pass up. I also had no problems promoting the software company since their products did make building as it is iSoaker.com possible in the first place.

iSoaker.com has undergone some more notable changes in the recent years due to changes in the overall water warfare world. Larami Inc., the original manufacture of the Super Soaker, became a subsidiary of Hasbro Inc., becoming Larami Ltd. In 2002, Larami Ltd. became no more, now becoming fully absorbed by Hasbro. As corporate restructuring goes, some previous employees of Larami Ltd. were either let go or left (these details I'm not quite clear on). However, many of them were engineers involved in the development of the Super Soaker brand. Not wanting to give up what they were skilled in, a new company known as Buzz Bee Toys Inc. was created, pushing out a brand of soakers known as Water Warriors. Though not under the Super Soaker brand, the WaterWarriors products were styled similarly and behaved on par with similarly-sized Super Soakers. When the owner of Buzz Bee Toys joined the online soaker community in 2004, there was a huge stir. While many members were disappointed at the lack of CPS Super Soakers in the 2004 line-up, the Water Warriors line offered something analogous and relatively inexpensively, too. Learning about the migration of some engineers from Larami Ltd. into Buzz Bee Toys Inc., I opted to try out the Water Warriors line. Impressed by the performance, I opted to add in the WaterWarriors line into the product review section on iSoaker.com. Also, to diversity iSoaker.com a bit, I also picked up a few X-Stream soakers by Lanard Ltd. as well as a Shield Blaster by Mattel Inc. Presently, I strive to make iSoaker.com a little more rounded when it comes to products reviewed, but will admit my preference still lies in Super Soaker-brand products.

:: Aquatica _ a brief overview

Formed in 1999, the year 2000 was the veritable peak of Aquatica's success. While Aquatica would continue in one form or another for a few more years, year 2000 was Aquatica's glory days. Aquatica's existence was not without its share of problems. Popularity tends to attract individuals who feel a need to make themselves known through causing trouble as opposed to promoting community growth. Boards were spammed. Fake accounts were set up. Members were caught in the mess. As well, some members had desires to use the Aquatica forums for much more discussion than just on soakers and water warfare. While some off_topic threads are welcome, some just lead to problems, especially when some threads centred on controversial topics like politics or religious beliefs.

SSW and I were new to the community_running business. While the decisions we made in handling various problems we did to the best of our abilities, it was apparent in many cases we just lacked the experience and knowledge on how to stop a problem before it got too large. Our biggest mistake was paying too much attention to the 'anti_Aquatica' movements. When groups appeared to be blatantly hostile towards Aquatica, we did our best to find out who they were and to get them closed or shut down. This used useful energy that could have been better put into building the community as opposed to fearing that these 'anti_Aquatica' groups would prevail.

Aquatica's other major problem, though, was lack of a stable server. Yahoo! Forums had been good to us, but when Yahoo! switched to their group service, we found many problems. For awhile, Aquatica migrated to EZBoards since it was free. However, you get what you pay for. EZBoard's free features were also found to be too limiting. Thanks to offers from Jerry (see above), I was granted access to a good server with space and the ability to run a freeware forum known as Ikonboard.

The Aquatica Ikonboard was the last board of Aquatica that I had been a part of. It started off well, but soon the underlying problems due to mismanagement were re-appearing again. In late 2002, I had grown frustrated at how Aquatica had devolved in my eyes. Problems that had plagued Aquatica in its earlier days remained, but my patience with dealing it wore thin. My main frustrations lay in the fact of a general misunderstanding of what Aquatica was (members were often treating Aquatica like a small country as opposed to just an online discussion forum) combined with the fact that Aquatica's existence seemed to prevent other potentially good communities from developing. I had to admit to myself Aquatica simply couldn't cater to everyone though SSW and I had once hoped it could. I chose to close the Aquatica Ikonboard, pointing the membership and remaining interested individuals to look elsewhere if they still wanted to run a community, but I needed a break.

I spent the next little while watching what the community would do. A mostly_dead Aquatica was kept alive by a few members who tried to give it one more chance. Aquatica moved for awhile into the free MyIkonboard server under the guidance of Marauder4, Mafo0, and xNeverfacedefeatx, but as in the past, free boards are usually found to be too limiting. Cloud/Soakologist offered to provide hosting for them which they took, moving the Aquatica forum for the last time to ClubAquatica.net. To me, I had hoped Aquatica's name would just become a part of history and was annoyed that some had insisted on keeping the name instead of creating something new. However, some new forums did rise, most notably SSCentral.net which still exists at the time this is being written. However, the new leaders of Aquatica were planning on doing what I had always steered away from: making Aquatica a large water warfare website. I was actually planning on rejoining as a member of ClubAquatica after about a month, but turning Aquatica into an information site instead of just a set of forums with a webring was too contrary to how I had envisioned Aquatica being. Seeing no other people attempting to build a free_standing community, I tapped into my free server resource (namely Jerry) and got permission to use some server space to set up a new community: WaterWar.net.

:: WaterWar.net

I contacted SSW just prior to the launch of WaterWar.net, telling him of my new plans. He had also left Aquatica shortly after I had jumped ship, not following it into the 'ClubAquatica.net' phase. I wanted to make WaterWar.net what Aquatica was meant to be. However, instead of announcing the launch of WaterWar.net on any of the existing boards, I felt it'd be better to do it slowly, making sure all was set_up and functioning well as the membership increased. WaterWar.net would primarily feature a set of forums powered by a newer version of Ikonboard as well as a Links Hub (as opposed to a Webring) which was more of a glorified Links Page more than anything. Membership was mostly open (except for a couple of individuals who I had blacklisted during the initial launch phase to reduce stress on the site). Joining the Links Hub was also made as simple as possible, having the requirement being posting of a link back to WaterWar.net off the main page of the linked site. As WaterWar.net was linked off of the iSoaker.com main page, regulars to the iSoaker.com site soon found WaterWar.net and joined. WaterWar.net was to be the fresh, new slate from where to build from and those who joined seemed happy to have a new start. Of course, not everyone was happy to see me building up a new community, seeing that I had just ditched Aquatica a few months prior. This time, though, I had learned my lesson and was already happy with the state of the total community as a whole. For awhile, there were multiple large forums, each with their own flavour and appeal. While Aquatica still existed in name, I was glad to see the diversity now present.

As WaterWar.net grew but remained stable, I opened up the board fully, giving everyone (even the ones I had once blacklisted) a chance to prove themselves better suited for the community. My tolerance for problematic members was razor thin, but I felt only fair to give people at least one chance in the new system. WaterWar.net was happily growing.

Unbeknownst to me, the server WaterWar.net lived on was not as stable as I had first believed. In mid-2003, Jerry had opted to do a server upgrade, but I was uninformed. This server upgraded ended up crashing and wiping the first set of WaterWar.net forums. The new server was much faster, but the loss of the first board put a dampener on the once thriving board. WaterWar.net was rebuilt again, members having to restart their accounts again. The boards were stable for awhile, but in mid-2004, all was lost again. The reason: lack of server space. I had thought the space given to WaterWar.net on the server was a fixed amount of about 100Mb or so. While the board, itself, took up less than 5Mb, there were other images and files used for WaterWar.net. The total file sizes added up to only around 10Mb. However, WaterWar.net was not the only site using space on the server. Something else had eaten up the remaining 1Gb of space I could see on the server. Since there was no room for new or expanded files, one day, when the board program was attempting to update the membership databases, it ran out of space and the database got corrupted. The board functioned, sort of, but no one could log in, not even my Admin account. Having no viable back-up, I was faced with a choice: close the boards and leave it running as an archive or erase everything and rebuild again. At this time, I was unable to contact Jerry about the server problem. As well, my initial attempts at making room by deleting some other files were futile since something else on the server ended up usurping the space I had freed. Seeing it was a losing battle, I decided to lock down the site, make a note on the main page that WaterWar.net had been corrupted, and did all I could to ensure it would function as an archival site though no one could log into the boards anymore. At least threads could still be read to some degree.

:: Full circle

The current iSoaker.com Forums are not the first set of forums to be built under the iSoaker.com name. For a while, I had a Bravenet forum running during the early Aquatica days, dabbling with how a site-specific message board would run. As well, at one point, I had set up a Yahoo! Group known as the iSoaker.com Rogue Group that functioned as a limited membership group that I shared and discussed various ideas with for the development of sections of iSoaker.com. Both of the earlier forums were shut down to allow me to focus my forum-building energy on Aquatica.

Losing the WaterWar.net server, I considered setting up a new forum elsewhere, but did not want to rely on any free service nor bug Jerry any more regarding webspace. I had considered buying a second account on the host where iSoaker.com is hosted, but my bank account told me otherwise. Having not enough funds to set up a new account, I opted, instead, to see how well iSoaker.com's space would handle a message board. After ironing out some early glitches, I was able to get a board up and running within a few days post-WaterWar.net crash. As I had done for WaterWar.net, I opted not to suddenly announce the creation of these new forums, rather provide a small, innocuous link off the WaterWar.net main page, not even initially linking to the forums on iSoaker.com, itself.

Setting up a large set of forums on iSoaker.com is something I had not planned to do, but circumstances had forced me either to make forums here or be content with the current, existing forums. Other forums such as SSCentral.net and some of the smaller ones were running, but none of them really appealed appropriately to me. The iSoaker.com Forums are barely 3 months old at the time of me writing this, but things have developed well.

:: Epilogue

Perhaps one thing apparently missing from this saga is a more in-depth look at the evolution of Aquatechnology/iSoaker.com. I had opted not to discuss too much on this site since most of that history can be read on the iSoaker.com History pages as well as in the iSoaker.com News Archive pages. I also opted not to go into too much detail regarding some of the other problems the soaker community faced during its growth; dragging up old skeletons does not bring life to the current state of affairs.

As for the future, part of me still misses having a community site that is not tied to any other specific site. While I appreciate the information and resources having a forum running off of iSoaker.com, itself, provides, I still feel an open board does a better job at promoting the community as a whole instead of predominantly boosting a specific site. While iSoaker.com does quite well as is, I like to promote the growth of new sites to see new thoughts and perspectives on soaking presented to the online soaker world. Perhaps one day, a new little link will appear somewhere, opening the door to the next chapter of online Soakerdom.

:: Leave NO one dry! :: iSoaker.com ::