I started soaking way back in 1998, it might have been mid-1997, around there. My friends and I did not use water guns, only water balloons and hoses. We would fill hundreds of water balloons and climb up to the roof. When our parents or other friends came over, we would ambush them right as they came up to the door. Those on the ground could control the 2 hoses and tried to drive us off the roof. They usually won because we ran out of water balloons eventually. My first gun was some kind of pistol with a screw-on tank that I've never been able to identify. I had it during this time period and it is now long lost.

I moved to Ridgewood in 1998, but those roof wars continued each time I visited in the summer. I met Nibordude in 1999 and we had wars with neighbors behind his house. I acquired several max-d guns, but I had long breaks from soaking at that time. Until I met Belisaurius 2 years ago at Ridgewood High School. In September 2003 I found the Waterbridge Forum and joined Waterbridge in January 2004. My first post in online soaking was at the Waterbridge Forum in mid September.

In early February I discovered SSC through Belisaurius and started posting there. I was aware of WWN, but I preferred SSC. I quickly became a respected member there because I didn't act like a n00b. I had extremely good spelling and grammer, followed the rules, and was one of the first super members. I bought many CPS guns, a 4100, 2100, 2500, etc. I got into modding and used a 21K in my first war in Waterbridge. During this time WWN closed, ISCF went up, and a huge 2100 modding spree took off.

Belisaurius's membership policy prevented many of my friends from joining Waterbridge, so in late July Nibordude and I broke off from Waterbridge and founded the Crescent Forest Militia. We fought Waterbridge in a 2 part war that ended in a 1-1 tie. We expanded to another battlefield and changed the group name to Ridgewood Militia.

In October Nibordude and I decided to take a shot at making a website. We called it Soaker Media and started the forums while I taught myself some HTML. The site was built slowly, as I had neither time nor hosting nor much experience. Doom provided the help and hosting necessary to launch the site on January 1st, 2005.
The forums took off, and the site slowly became a little better known. It remains not well known today, but will hopefully grow with time.

LOL that post was longer than my saga on ISS! :P

Why not update your saga, then?

I should probably update mine sometime soon. Truthfully, I didn't know you could. @ Spinner: Last time I checked my saga, there seemed to be a script problem where the font size changed around. You might want to check that out. ;)

@Spinner: Feel free to replace my current saga with this one; or add anything in this post that isn't on the saga.

A bit more history has passed since my last post here! Winter 2005 was a huge hit for SM. We had a crazy 628 post week in March and several 100 post days. It was active until June, when the bottom fell out of the board. We hit a bad recession, and bad times were felt across Soakerdom, with few new members joining anywhere. A whole drove of vets left for various reasons, leaving a diminished community by the end of 2005. If you held on, you felt like a soldier having survived a suicidal frontal assault. I can still name the remaining active veterans off the top of my head easily, since so few are left. SM gained somewhat more respect and legitimacy as a real community, with SSC and ISCF the other only survivors. WGN closed, WaterTalk closed, Soakology closed, High Command closed, SSN is in limbo in an early stage much like SM v2. TMW and a Super Soaker RPG forum opened, as well as Zoccoz's message board.

The Ridgewood Militia had a fine 2005 season: 5 victories, 2 ties, and only 1 loss. The 2006 season has so far surpassed 2005 in every aspect. We expanded from 11 members to 19 in a single week, and now have over 20. The "new" Douchenator has been joined by "Veronica" and 3 movies have been made about the launcher. We won our first war against Waterbridge this season, 8-7, the highest amount of points ever scored by either team. 2006 should be a great year for the team, and a great year for the site!

Join the Revolution and Soak on! B)

What/Who is Veronica?

And, this might be off topic, but who was marauder4? I've heard his name a few times but I don't know who he is.

M4 is one of the highly respected members of the soaker community, he's been around forever (well, almost), and he's a good friend of many people in soakerdom.

He's also been "back" a few times, but he left again after a while. You can find a lot of his posts around here.

Wow, I'm really interested in Veronica. If it's a decent successor to the Douchenator, then it must be good!

Of course, one of the Douchenator's strengths is its simplicity and low price. I don't want to build Veronica if it is going to be too extravagant. We need more documentation! Unless, of course, you don't want to reveal secrets to Waterbridge...

Veronica is simply the name of another Douchenator that my friend Mike built. The original can also be called the APOL [Air Pressure Object Launcher] because of that commercial we made a while back. I'm making a Douchenator, and it too will have a separate name [which I have yet to come up with]. Ideas have been "D2" , "The Goose Killer" , the "Cannon of Doom" , and the "Nick-Hunter" [Nick is the co-commander of Waterbridge :P ].

This will be a standard Douche, plus multi-shot if it doesn't make the cannon too long.