The Actual News:
Ack! Sorry for the lack of updates lately, but I’m still alive!
I try to leave my personal life out of website stuff, but hey, I’m only human… and when my personal life begins to affect updates, I think it’s only fair to let everyone know what’s up.
Nothing drastic, but due to the Human Malware Virus going on lately, I haven’t been working… and so over the last few months I’ve been spending all the free time I have in trying to find employment. Unfortunately no employer has bitten in that time, which wasn’t too bad while I was getting pandemic unemployment assistance. But now that program has officially ended this past week, I’m now in a situation where no employer is biting COMBINED with the not getting unemployment assistance. Fortunately I was prepared for this so my financial situation isn’t dire, but it does affect my ability to post on updates as often as I’d like to.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not me complaining, or demanding that the government give me more free money. Just that, clearly I haven’t been doing enough to get my ass into a new job, so I need to pour myself more into this than I was doing before. This will—albeit temporarily—affect site updates for just a little bit.
That said, I’m trying to at least find things to update in the background so that the site isn’t COMPLETELY dead. Like, I have an article in the wings about the general history of Wizards of the Coast’s tenure of the Pokémon TCG from 1999 to 2003 and what exactly they could (and couldn’t) so, as well as discovered another Wizard’s-era Pokémon TCG .PDF file with a bunch of neat artwork unique to it, and of course I still have a LOT of updates left for the Card-E sections as well… so I still have plenty to work with here. The only real issue is trying to find the time and energy to work on them in between job searching!
OH! One NEW thing I actually can share now is… remember last post when I said that I’d share the fake card I sent to Teslalyte for his birthday, but only after he’s seen it? Well… he saw it, and he loved it! So here it is for everyone else to enjoy:
Awww… isn’t that cute? I just hope you enjoy it too. 
Anyways, that’s all I have to share right now. Sorry for not updating lately, but I’d be lying if the whole process of finding a new job isn’t a soul-sucking task of rejection after rejection after rejection… but I just gotta make sure that I don’t let it get to me. I need to stay strong and never surrender! And once I get that new job and the money rolls in, I know my life will be so much better for all the suffering I’m going through right now. Please with my luck, and soon the good times will return. Send me a HUZZAH! when you can, ok? 
2 Comments
Hey,
I just stumbled across your website, imagine that after all these years. I used to be a Pokémon Professor, tourney judge at W STS’s and the 1st Worlds, and wrote for Pojo’s and Beckett’s Pokémon magazines. Now I’m old and retired, haha, but looking through the old STS’s I attended.
Would you happen to have any pix of Mitsuhiro Arita who (I recall) appeared at the ECSTS in 2000 or 2001? He signed a few of my cards, and I’d like to assemble a nice framed set of it all.
Thanks for keeping the Pokémon flame alive.
Steve Diamond
Hey Steve, I totally remember you! You got my PTCG deck in an issue of Beckett’s Pokémon Magazine. I still have my copy you sent me (the one with Birthday Pikachu on the cover), and I’m actually working on adding the story of my deck in Beckett’s in a forthcoming article about the Super Trainer Showdown.
In answer to your question: I’m afraid I don’t have any photos of Mitsuhiro Arita… Truth be told I don’t have much of ANY photos from the STS events I went to. Like, I have only a few from 2000 WCSTS (proper film photos to boot), and of the 2001 WCSTS I only have photos from day one because I lost my digital camera on the second day. Sorry!
But yeah, because I was a popular website from back in those early years, I almost feel a sense of duty to keep that flame lit. Like, despite all of that early history being online back then too, it has still slowly disappeared over time… so the fact that my site has remained online this whole time puts me in a unique position to be able to not only share those tales of the early years to a new audience, but to show it exactly as it appeared to everyone back then. This authentic window to Pokémon’s past will give everyone an idea of where we came from, aas well as show how far we’ve gone in the 20 years since then. 😄
Anyways, I’m glad you enjoyed the site! I still have a ways to go, but it’s all for the sake of keeping that flame of Pokémon’s past burning bright. 🕯️🕯️🎆 😊