So what the #@$! happened to Transbuddha, anyway? *UPDATE*

UPDATE: As some of you have discovered, ‘transbuddha.com‘ is now redirecting to dadsbigplan. What that means is that yes, I am in full possession of the name. Where do we go from here? Well, my basic plan remains unchanged. We will get Transbuddha’s archives up and online for your historical pleasure, but dadsbigplan will be the banner under which we put this fantastic collection of tubes to the flames of awesome.

Let me clarify a point: I stand by everything I said below, good and bad. But I do want to emphasize this: Transbuddha was not built upon my labors alone. Jae Cha, Justin Strelow, Stuart Wallace (of the soon-to-be-revived dhadm.com), and Phil Plante were just as instrumental in the creation and development of the site as much as myself or anyone listed below, and I will forever be thankful and grateful for the collective efforts that allowed such a beast to lumber on for as long as it did. As a wiser man than I once said “All things must pass”, so it’s with no regrets we move forward into this new phase of existence, and we’re happy to have such a passionate and enthusiastic community to get there with us.

Thanks.

– Aaron / alphamonkey

Long story short: Fuck you, Jae Cha. Transbuddha is dead, long live DADSBIGPLAN.

Short Story Long:

Well, it’s like this… 7 years ago I (being Aaron Weber aka .alphamonkey.) started contributing to a test-drive of blog platforms that went under the name “Transmuto“. Over time it grew enough enough to warrant a dedicated site (and a name change for legal reasons*), and thus Transbuddha, every pixel lovingly hand-crafted and built by myself, was born. The original contributors to the blogs came and went, and new authors (like ShadowStalker, mrcookieface, Scarlet Harlot, Heretique, Thundarr, and others) would step up and kick ‘Buddha’s ass a few more steps down the road.

Let’s skip all the self-congratulatory bullshit about page rankings, readership, and Technorati rankings and get to the point: 4 years of putting in 40 hours a week on Transbuddha effectively kicked my soul’s ass, and I’ll admit I started slacking after my Terror Twins(tm) entered the fray. Thundarr (known nowadays as Cap’n Carrot) returned to Transbuddha from the sadly shuttered RazorFine Review, and filled in the gaps with a ton of good content (except all that Condorman, crap. I mean, seriously?), and yeah…Transbuddha limped along, a diminished but persistent presence.

So again: What happened? Well, effectively this: The hosting account underwhich Transbuddha was situated went bye-bye. And not in a good, planned way. I don’t have any desire to air all manner of idiotic business dealings (both my own and others), but here’s the gist: Transbuddha generated some 30-40K in ad revenue over the last few years from Federated “We don’t answer e-mails/phone calls for ANYONE” Media, but Cap’n and myself haven’t seen a dime of it. I had a contract that gave me majority ownership of Transbuddha, but it expired ages ago. We had some inkling that our hosting account would go away, and we backed up the site in January in anticipation.

What I didn’t anticipate would be that, at the end of 7 years, I still wouldn’t have possession of “transbuddha.com” as a domain name. I’ve been offered a veritable fuck-ton of excuses in the last month as to why it can’t be done (ranging from winners like “I’m locked out of my domain registrar’s account” to even bigger winners like “I don’t have a computer right now”), so I’ve just given up on getting possession of the name. I’d decided that even if the name was put in my hands, it was time to set that past aside and move on with a new name (even though “dadsbigplan” pre-dates Transbuddha by almost 5 years), and a renewed dedication. Transbuddha meant the world to me for a long time, but dadsbigplan represents something both wholly mine and wholly disconnected.

Okay, okay, so I took my sweet time getting this burgeonging monster up and running, but I promise you this: The Cap’n, myself, and whomever else decides to hop on board this great ‘net coaster are here to stay. We’ll do our damnedest to find cool links, sweet videos, and make dick jokes in an effort to keep you (and ourselves) entertained. Trust us. We have a plan.