In late 1994 I was attending college and amongst my curriculum were several computer courses, one of which being html/web development. This also included a shell on one of the campus' Solaris machines with a little bit of space for a free web/home page. I took advantage of this and I spent countless hours creating content and hand coding what was one of the ugliest web pages in history (not at the time though). The original layout was quite simple with a few sections dedicated to body modification, quotes that I liked, drug information, random links and a page for h/p/c information (hacking, phreaking, cracking). As a finishing touch I added a counter at the bottom of the page to monitor my growth, but one or two hits a week wasn't really all that exciting to me, so I set off to advertise. I took advantage of the campus resources available to me and began xeroxing quarter page flyers to advertise my offerings around campus. It wasn't too long till I started getting a whopping four of five hits a day, this excited me - so I submerged myself in continuous updates and handing out flyers to everyone that I could. It wasn't long until I was getting fifteen to twenty hits a day and just as I started getting regular visitors I was called in to the head of the computer labs office. He informed me that the campus officials did not approve of my web page, so with a little haggling and pleading I was allowed to keep my web space, so long as I put up a disclaimer. I promptly put up the disclaimer and about a week later I got called back in to discuss my little homepage. I was told that my account was being revoked and that I could no longer continue development, this was a blow and a quite upsetting one at that. I immediately started searching for a company that did web hosting; once I found one (digihost in florida) the only thing left was a name. During this time a few friends and I had a small punk/rap band which we called strik-9, but prior to settling on that name one of the names that we had scrapped was hektik - so this would be the name. Originally I only registered hektik.com (and later in 1999 hektik.org), and I set out on a mission. I would continue what I had started on the campus server and expand; I would give other social outcasts (so to speak) a place to call home. No one should have their ideas or projects censored, especially by a place of higher learning. Hektik was born.
As time passed the site grew, and I needed help. One of the first people on board was Switch and at the time hektik.com was the main site which was still being hosted, and hektik.org was its tech-geared offspring that was hosted in my apartment on a 1.1 megabit sdsl/covad circuit (screw qwest, which was uswest at the time) and in 2000 with Switch's help we merged the two sites and brought hektik.com in-house. More time passed and more people jumped on board to help and soon hektik became quite the little project. It was only a matter of time till we outgrew my overpriced home operation and hit a bottleneck. The site kept growing but we could not meet the demand of people and we hit our first roadblock. We had people, we had content, but the amount of traffic left the site bogged down which leads to an overall repulsive experience for the end user. Then in the winter of 2002 we got a break when a local ISP (XMission) lent us a hand with co-location. This was the break we needed. This not only took care of the blockage that was killing our stats but it gave us room to grow and opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Maybe one day we will be able to generate enough revenue to repay them for all of the help and headaches that we have caused over the years.
Over time (around 2002/2003) the focus became less technology orientated and started taking off in numerous directions, such as writing and photography. This direction upset some of the people on board at the time and rather than carrying their weight and helping to further the technical side of things they abandoned ship. So Gil and I continued focusing on whatever consumed our attention span at the time, and for me it wasn't that I had given up on the technical aspect of the site, but when you work in corporate America and are forced to work a lot of days and nights - well, doing computer/hacking related projects in your free time becomes less interesting and more of an annoyance.
In 2005 we celebrated our ten year anniversary with a party at a local club (Club Vegas), which I must thank since they were the only local venue that would dare touch us, no other establishment would wanted anything to do with us. We were/are considered trouble, but I would just say that we are misunderstood. As the year ended and a new year began the tension around our little family grew, a lot of this was caused by my brain taking a shit. I hit financial problems, problems in my personal life and I was hitting the bottle quite hard. With all of this there was one other problem, not trying to toot my/our own horn but we had become local celebrities - everyone knew us. Gil would get in trouble for everything that I did. If it wasn't something that I did it was people constantly bitching at him for every little issue they had with the site, since he was always in the public eye and for me it was a whole other story. A lot of people read what I write/wrote, and saw what I saw through pictures and video and they would frequently approach me when I did surface in public. They would talk to me, like they knew me (and they somewhat did), but at the time with more booze in my veins than blood I didn't put two and two together, I just thought that I was losing my mind. Everyone knew me, but I couldn't remember who all of these people were, so I thought I lost my mind and I disappeared and so did hektik - I took it offline. During my two month sabbatical I got my head straight, I stepped back and took a minute to ascertain the situation. Once I did this, I took advantage of the site being offline and everyone's assumption that it was gone for good. After ten years, there was no order in the site, no consistency so I scrapped the whole thing (the old content was kept, to later be re-imported) and decided to start from ground up. I continued to hide and avoid people along with their phone calls but I reached out to two people for their assistance in the re-birth of hektik, since I could not do it alone. Bios came on board for design, since my eye for creating an aesthetically pleasing layout is null and Mutilator came on board for backend/code development - everyone else was kept in the dark, even Gil. And I still feel that I owe a million apologies and thanks for him waiting it out - I love you man. As we neared completion of the new layout I began to drop random hints that we were not going anywhere in hopes that we could still retain a small fan base and also to put a stop to the e-mails from other local sites wanting to buy the rights to hektik.org/hektik.com.
It's now 2006 and we are entering our eleventh year. We have a new look and a lot of stuff planned to put us back on the map and on top of our game since I figuratively put a gun to hektik's head and pulled the trigger. We still have a decent fan base since there are a lot of diehards out there, and for those of you I want to give special thanks for your continued support and for keeping the word of mouth alive. Truth be told, I could never kill off hektik. I have invested way too much time and energy in to this project and I have had too many people tell us that they love the site, some have moved away and for them it's their eyes to their old friends and home and others have sent e-mails thanking us for giving them a break from a shitty day, and helping them forget. And even if it's just for a minute or one small chuckle - to be able to effect peoples lives in a positive manner, to me and I am sure the rest of the crew - well that is worth while and not something a lot of people can do (or choose to do).
Since the beginning a lot of people have come and gone and hektik is no longer just an overgrown web page, it is a family of friends. We don't always agree, we occasionally fight and sometime we even go to blows (well that was only a couple of times due to having a very unstable, mentally challenged person on board) but we all bring something different to the table. We are still going strong and we have hit new records with traffic (As many as 1.9 million hits in a single day [2006]). While we still offer free web hosting and e-mail for those that need it we have settled in to what we were born to be and that is everything. We document life with text, photo and video. We share what we find with the world, we entertain, we piss people off and we try to live life to its fullest - inviting you as an audience to participate. This is not only our blood, sweat, tears, laughter, pain and happiness… it's yours as well.
To find out more about who plays what roles check out the players.