Where it All Began

TLDR: My desire to learn how to create my own Dragon Ball Z fansite 25 years ago led me to where I am now. This, is where it all started:

The creation of Dragon Ball: Project Aether started with one goal in mind. I wanted to pay homage to my roots in Tech and Web Design, and this was where everything began for me. In the late 90's (roughly '98, '99), when I was around 11 or 12 years old, I was absolutely obsessed with a handful of things: Video games, music, soccer, my home computer, and Dragon Ball Z. The latter, for whatever reason, became my biggest obsession of all. I loved to draw my favorite characters, watch all of the shows on TV after school, and I found myself absolutely infatuated with finding all sorts of content about Dragon Ball that was not readily available via the mainstream options (i.e. the official DB/DBZ web page) and found myself digging through tons of fansites. These websites had all the awesome underground content that fanatics like myself yearned for, so I spent tons of time cruising them. Eventually I realized that these sites were being made by people just like me, who had a passion for the content and wanted to put it out there for the world to see. This eventually led to me thinking to myself, "Wait a minute, why don't *I* make one of these fansites I love so much? I can put in all my own content, showcase my die-hard fandom, and maybe even end up on one of the many 'Top 50/100' sites lists that I browsed so often to find more content!" So, I did just that. I began using a drag and drop style editor, and due to my desire to make my site as popular as my favorite inspirations, I began learning HTML, and before I knew it, I was an integral part of the DBZ fansite community that I loved so much. From that point on, my passion (or more accurately, obsession) with the internet, computers, and technology in general only continued to grow. This is what ultimately led me to being a tech savvy teenager, the go-to tech guy for my friends and family in my late teens/post high school, and eventually resulted in me pursuing IT and Technology as my career for the majority of my adult life. 25 years later, here I am, at 37 years old, and I own an IT company, which specializes in small to medium business technology/infrastructure, as well as, shocker, Web Design!

Project Aether is the culmination of 25 years of my life, meant to provide myself and others a dose of nostalgia, and pay homage to the incredible landscape of the internet's early days. If you read this far. Thank you.