Faces of Apolyton #10

Solver: You say you picked The Emperor as your nickname. How come it is then that everyone knows you as DanQ:?

DanQ: There are those in the community from ‘way back’ that I believe would still credit both titles to me, but the reason that the vast majority identify me as “DanQ:” and not “The Emperor” is because I made what in reality not that difficult a decision to drop “The Emperor” nickname at Apolyton’s onset and go with an label that – at least to my thinking – was less pretentious. I felt that I was giving the impression that I considered my position in the community more of a means for show rather than a means for real contribution which I felt was not accurate. In addition to a few isolated but admittedly pertinent bad habits in the site’s operation (i.e. not updating file pages (to call it a ‘database’ then would be to say the least an insult to the current system on Apolyton)), I decided that I had to start with the basics to achieve the desired image change. Occasionally I did pen “a.k.a. The Emperor” beside my full name on Apolyton during its first year, more as a makeshift means of linking my old nickname with the new, but thereafter dropped the reference completely.

Besides, nobody at school would appease my ego by addressing me as “The Emperor”. ;))

Solver: Were the first 3 months of UC2S much different from the other time, when you became in charge of it?

DanQ: You mean in terms of 'maintenance style', I suppose, when compared to how Mike had done things? At first, I wanted to copy the patterns that Mike had established -- at least for the first month or so -- until I settled into the position and to help with the transition more than anything. I will say that it quickly became apparent that I was less then diligent in keeping the files database up-to-date (which at the time was considerably smaller in total than the likes of one of Apolyton's major databases today), and I take no hesitation in admitting to it.

Kent Wang, whom many today may know as being the co-founder and programming guru of GameLeague, became UCIVII's technical director in the summer of 1997. He wasn't helping out with the files database... that would come after Apolyton's inception. Rather, he took on emails dealing with game-specific questions and message board posts to allow me to concentrate on other efforts including the much neglected files database.

Solver: In those days of February 1997, when The Overlord cut his support for the site, what was it like? Did you really fear that the site would die?

DanQ: You guys have really done your homework, haven't you? Honestly, it was hell. The turnover between the time Mike told me that Glubco International, a site which Mike began to spearhead shortly before handing the day-to-day operations of "UCIVII" over to me the previous August, could no longer support the UCIVII site due to outstanding and future bandwidth charges and the time that the site was turned 'off' was little more than 24hrs(!). The possibility had seriously risen a few weeks before but it was my understanding that Mike had near reached an agreement with Glubco's hosts that would allow the site to be hosted for another month in a financially feasible fashion to allow time to find alternate hosting arrangements. Essentially, we would advertise across the top of all pages of the site Glubco's hosts -- the company of which I can no longer recall the identity of -- using a standard 468x60 banner. It would have been the first advertisement "UCIVII" would carry to support the growing expenditures required to keep it online.

It was at the end of February that I found out the full details of the proposed deal that had not gone through in the end. Had the site still been online at midnight on March 1st, 1997, the site would be facing a $600US/month bill for the previous month. Glubco's hosts were quite generously willing to forgive our February bill if we met the said term. I totally understood and still understand Mike's reasoning for the shutdown, but the timing could have hardly been worse. In all fairness to Mike, he had kept "UCIVII" hosted as long as he could and being a high school student like myself the dollar figure was not an affordable amount.

 To answer the second part of your question, the site was dead -- for 11 days, in fact -- before resurfacing on Aim4Game. This was the site's first near death experience on my watch with Mike having been through it a couple of times already himself. I had spent the five preceeding days before that tirelessly uploading the sites content to the A4G server (oh, the days of 28.8K dial-up and limited access hours) and working out financial compensation arrangements for costs the "UCIVII Site" would undoubtedly incur for the said network. Thankfully, Mike permitted a redirect from the site's old location on Glubco.com to Aim4Game.com for ~4-5 months to allow people to learn of the move and update their links and/or bookmarks accordingly. Still, when "UCIVII" came back online we were definitely behind the eight ball and the site's perceived stability was naturally seen as non-existent.

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