News - 2 Year Anniversary

Happy 2 Year Anniversary to Fonzie! It's been just over two years since the term "fonzie" was first used. Since then, that same small group of friends has grown into a much larger group; something we couldn't have thought of years ago.

A little background on Fonzie for those who don't know (and for who's interested), here's a little something to remember how it all started. Sorry if it gets a little...mushy here and there

High School. It's been said that you spend the best years of your life there. On the contrary. Although I can only speak for myself, I think the last few years for us as a group have been really great. But there's much, much more to come.

Somewhere in 1999 I met Ivan Vriezen (Infinity). Again, I can only speak for myself, but I feel we both weren't really...actively "social" with the rest of the class. We became friends, although the most time we were talking was over the Internet. The good old times of "oh-oh's" and ICQ messages popping up every two seconds.

Although we chose a different path at school, we stayed friends. Even though we sometimes had disagreements (we still have), we had alot of fun. We still laugh about some of the things that happened during our years on school.

In 2000/2001 we met some other people. I still remember my first encounter with Michiel van Schilt (Vito). We both had a meeting with our mentor. It was in a terrible french-storage room because our mentors' classroom was taken. At first I was kinda afraid of him (he was so big...), but he was really kind. He even stayed, listening to what our mentor had to say to me, because I already waited so long for him to finish.

Then there's Machil Deinum (Octavius). I first met him while he was playing Quake. I was with his sister for a Dutch project, but I watched him play for like 10 minutes while I was there. After that, we also started talking on ICQ. I cannot remember how many Simpsons sounds he sent me, but it was great anyway.

With the addition of someone from earlier years (Robert Pennings, Carlos), we had our own small group of friends. Michiel, Ivan and spend almost every lunch break together, starting from late 2001. After throwing bags down four meters, crushing school bags filled with chips and flushing desert down toilets in London with Ivan, we found another hobby: sitting in the school's computer class for as long as we could. I even talked our system administator into installing Quake II on every PC. With a resolution of 320x240, this was certainly a blast. We spend hours playing Quake II at school. Unfortunatly, it slowly died because of some rules and a german teacher who was surfing for porn all day long.

Then, I started a small forum for Ivan and me. This really, really stupid forum was fun for like three days, but we needed something better. I came upon the Ikonboard; a free, cgi/perl based forum. We installed it, and within a week we asked Machil, Michiel, Robert and Sjoerd (another classmate) to join us.

A few weeks later, we had to think of a name for this forum. No one really remembers exactly how or when it happened, but we came up with the word "fonzie". It was, however, slightly taken from Robert fathers' first name, Fons. So, in October 2001, the Fonzie Forum was born. It quickly grew into more: a group of friends, not just chatting and posting, but...well, more chatting and posting then usual.

Ivan, Machil, Michiel and me could spend hours sitting next to each other, not talking but posting messages on the same forum. We'd get up to a hundred posts in just an hour. We refreshed the forum like every ten seconds. I think whenever we were around, you could see a large spike on the internet connection graph.

Then, around november/december 2001, the idea came to get together for a lan. Five people (Ivan, me, machil, michiel v. schilt & sjoerd) finally got together for our first lan. On the 3rd and 4th of January 2002, Sjoerd introduced us to a game called Counter-Strike. Some had heard the name, or even played it for some time, but no-one was addicted to it.

I think the word 'wow' describes it pretty good. Wow. It was great. Machil and me were instantly hooked. So much, that about ten days after the first lan I started mapping for CS. We started playing on the Uithof CS Server (which we later left because the atmosphere wasn't (and still isn't) that good there anymore). Months later, Ivan and his brother Alex (Dominator) also bought the game and loved it.

Afer this lan, every one went into another direction because High School ended for most. I think some of us were kind of afraid the group would split up and we would never see each other again. But the forum and chatting kept us together. We actually talked more then before. Next to that, we decided that the first lan was such a success, that we should organize more of them. During our time on alot of CS servers and our lans, we got to know people like Kris (Sur5or) and Thierry (Impulse). They expaneded Fonzie beyond our province; even into Belgium.

The rest most people know. To date, we held about 8 small lan parties. We have never really felt we needed to go to a bigger lan like Netgamez or Campzone. This is because we just want to have fun with each other. We don't need a huge lan in order to play against others we could play against over the internet anyway.

This has become a larger post then I imagened. I didn't think I'd get this far, but hey. I personally wish to thank everyone who helped us throughout the years. Especially every single one of you guys actually in the Fonzie Group. Also, thanks for putting up with my sometimes stubborn behaviour =) It's been great with you guys, and I certainly hope it will stay that way in the coming years.


Michiel Sypkens Smit / Gare Gast

Je bent me voor, ik wou een post maken bij 2 jaar fonzie clan

Nee, maar ehh, het is metname 2 jaar forum waar dit over gaat. Clan is nog niet 2 jaar, duurt nog ff

Er zitten iig een paar leuke deja-vu's in de tekst voor mij

Kwilde meer iedereen bereiken dan alleen paar forum lezers. Tis ook meer bedoeld dat de groep onder die naam 2 jaar bestaat ja, clan is iets langer dan een jaar nu =)

jeuj \o/ ben nu al ruim een jaar een fonzie :]

hey, dit is fucked up, mijn acount blijft niet aangemeld

maar wat ik ff wil zeggen is: happy to have u with us

fonzie is een raar groepje losers maar we zijn hoe dan ook op de goede weg om naar een erg raar groepje losers te gaan

( NOGSTEEDS MIJN SMILE! )

Moet je even kijken of cookies aanstaan in IE instellingen machil, anders kijken we morgen wel eventjes.

Mja...mooi gezegd *amen*

Waar zit translate to NL button?

Onder de cursus engels button...
KUHL! ik nog niet lang in fonzie...ik denk 4 maanden ofzo
Maar ik ken jullie al wel een jaar
En ik vind het steeds leuker worden!!!

zijn julie pas vorig jaar januari gaan csén joh dat wist ik niet dan zat ik dus toch redenlijk snel bij de clan, februari geloof ik...

Nee in 2002 begonnen, jij joinde in 2003 pas Toch ietsje langer...