The Gas Chamber Reborn

(Note: The point of this post was to introduce my new forum, The Gas Chamber. However, the post took on a life of its own and grew so long that I’m now afraid that the announcement would get lost. So, consider the forum announced. Now, read on.)

Setting aside Taco Bell, Taco Bueno, and Taco Mayo for a moment, the central Yukon, Oklahoma area (15 square miles, population ~20,000) has an additional six Mexican restaurants to choose from: Alfredo’s Mexican Cafe, Juanes, Las Fajitas, Los Amigos, Poquito De Mexico, and Ricky’s Cafe. Expand your search radius an additional five or ten miles and Google Maps adds so many red dots that it begins to resemble, well, my face from high school.

From time to time, some of these restaurants close down and new ones spring up. In fact, Juanes recently closed their door, changed names, and re-opened within a week. I’m always surprised when a new one opens up when there are already so many to choose from, but open they do. And, each one is a little different. They all serve Mexican food, but Ted’s has the best cheese, Alfredo’s has the best nachos, Pancho’s has the best post-diarrhea, and so on.

As my local modem/BBS scene continued to swell throughout the mid-90s, I decided to set up and run my own BBS. Most of the old BBSes I called had fantastic names — Ball of Confusion, Magic Rat University, Buzzard’s Treehouse, and so on — so I named mine The Gas Chamber. There was no real significance behind the name; at the time I was listening to Ice Cube’s “Lethal Injection” album, but I had already used that name for another project so I came up with “The Gas Chamber” — TGC, for short.

Like teens of the 50s with their hot rods, I spent hundreds of hours configuring, modifying, and tweaking my BBS. (Unlike teens of the 50s, I don’t think my BBS ever helped me pick up a chick.) And while there may have been hundreds of other local BBSes up and running, The Gas Chamber was mine, and I ran it the way I wanted to. Several of my users were much better at creating art than I was, and soon every inch of The Gas Chamber was fully customized.

The Gas Chamber went online sometime in 1994, and stayed up for over two years. In the fall of 1996 I transferred to Spokane, Washington, and shut the BBS down for good. I considered relaunching the BBS in Spokane, but my people were in area code 405, not 509. By the time I made it back to Oklahoma City in the spring of 1998, the BBS scene was all but dead.

While I don’t miss the technology, I do miss the experience. The Gas Chamber ran in DOS, which meant when the board was up and running, the machine was occupied. There was no multitasking, at least not for me. In its heyday, I was paying for two dedicated phone lines each month, not to mention the the thousands of dollars I had spent on computers, hard drives, CD-Rom changers, and so on. Looking back it may seem clunky or archaic, but at least for me, it was a blast.

The best thing about The Gas Chamber in my opinion was it was like throwing a party every single day. My friends would stop by (virtually, of course) and we would chat and have a good time. And the best part was, I got to run things my way.

Several of the podcasts I listen to have their own message based forums, which makes sense. A podcast is, unless perhaps you’re doing it live, a one-way form of communication. Only one person talks; everybody else listens. But by design, podcasts generate conversation, and moving those ideas from the podcast to a two-way form of communication (like a forum) makes sense.

I know a few people who run their own forums and I’m sure one or more of them would allow me to piggyback with one of them — however, the more I thought about it, the more I thought — yeah, I wouldn’t mind having my own forum and running things “my way” again.

The whole project is in flux at the moment. New forums may be added as suggested; forums that see little to no traffic may get dumped. I have no master plan at the moment. I will say this, however; I promise to run and support the forum through December 31, 2010. At that point I’ll evaluate how things have gone; if I’m the only person using them, there won’t be much reason to keep them alive.

Currently, I’ll be validating all users manually, just like I did on the original Gas Chamber. I’m hoping this keeps spammers and other miscreants to a minimum. I’ve already found a mod that adds a field to the application process, asking applicants one additional question: “Why have you come here?” Anything semi-coherent will probably get you in the front door. I’ve set up a few “private” areas as well, where old tbh405 members, people I went to school with, and even the Nasty Pirates will have their own little areas to hang around in.

Often times I have a poor grasp on what other people want to do. It is possible that the time for a small, semi-private forum has passed. I know many people have moved on to Facebook and Twitter and just don’t see the point in adding one more stop in their daily digital adventures. If, however, you’d like to stop by and chat for a few minutes over a cup of Joe, the door is always open.

Link: http://www.robohara.com/tgc