History of the Website
Samuelcolunga.com originally launched over the summer of 1997. I was a 16 year old kid riding high off that Burger King paycheck. So, I created this abomination of a home page. Please do not judge me. As a rambling teenager hopped up on the Tyra Banks SI cover, and chili cheese Fritos, surviving way too many late nights playing Quake, I needed an outlet to get it all out. My friends were most likely sick of me going on and on about deep Mortal Kombat lore, and the Star Wars expanded universe books, so I decided to write it all here instead.
Armed with a TV, a computer, my VCR, and my Dazzle capture device (that Burger King paycheck came through), I was recording Raw, Nitro, etc, and uploading screen caps to go along with my reviews. This was groundbreaking stuff. While I didn't get worldwide recognition, I was getting a lot of traffic to the site. It wasn't just reviews. I was blogging before it was really a thing, using a page where I'd park my individual "articles," things really got intense. There were times when I would write sporadically, and then times when I would really go on a writing spree. It was all about the mood I was in at the time. High school was socially tough. Thank God I had this website to help me channel what I was feeling at the time. It's safe to say I would have lost my mind otherwise.
I skated by in my later years in school, so much so that I barely graduated. All those nights of going out with my friends to the mall, Rockwood Park, Putt-Putt, and skipping class to hit up CiCi's Pizza, took their toll. I eventually walked the stage and made the decision that college just wasn't for me. By then, I was making that Whataburger money, trying to save and no longer using it as disposable income to buy just CDs and video games. I was trying to be more frugal. Having a girlfriend kinda made that difficult. I was still writing stuff, still reviewing Raw and Smackdown, but my heart started to not be in it anymore.
By 2000, I was going through the motions, hanging out and not really doing anything with my life. Traffic to my site was still solid, as my reviews were gaining traction. I was also active on forums at the time, so I had my ear to the ground at all times. By late 2000 I had moved onto a new job flipping burgers at A&W Restaurant in the mall. This was an era of adventure that I wrote about in great detail. The hot goth girl at Hot Topic next to the food court reminded me so much of my queen Daffney Unger. I wrote about her a lot, especially the time she conned me into seeing Dracula 2000, a terrible film. She thought it was a masterpiece, as if Bram Stroker himself rose from the dead to write and direct it. It took everything in me not to walk away from her right then and there.
Early 2001, I quit A&W. My buddy had gotten hired at a tech company's logistics center, and I knew this was my foot in the door. I applied after him and got the job. I was now a full fledged employee of (redacted). Right away they noticed my aptitude for problem solving and my knack for computers, so very quickly I went from simple inventory replenish person to a more forward thinking brain necessary job in front of a computer. Once I got this upgrade, I decided, it's time to put the site to bed. I attended WrestleMania 17, and the Raw after Mania the following night, which was in my hometown. I wrote about both shows and thought that would be the end. But the Thursday that followed I taped Smackdown and had a little extra time after work. I reviewed it, thinking I could just keep the site going after that. I recorded Raw and Smackdown after that, promising I'd return to it, but, I knew I had to focus on my job so I put the website and the reviews to the side. Which is sad, because I watched the Invasion storyline and wanted to write about it so badly, but I knew I didn't have time to sit and write about all of it. The only reason I got to watch it was because I taped everything and watched in spells.
The website lay dormant after that. Visitors to the site were greeted with this homepage and nothing else. I had cut off everything else on the site. It stayed like this until 2008, when I changed banks and forgot to update the domain site with the new details. Thus, the domain was bought by someone else. They held it for ransom, asking $2,000 for it back. Meh, keep it. Finally, around 2014, I noticed the domain was open and completely available. I jumped on it, creating a blog site for my work in college. When that fizzled out, I decided to bring back a modified version of the 2001 homepage. It was the same but just condensed. Check it out here.
Only recently did I attempt to bring it back. So, while it isn't anywhere near the same site, it is a modified version of the retro site for a new era. Let me know what you think. God bless.
Armed with a TV, a computer, my VCR, and my Dazzle capture device (that Burger King paycheck came through), I was recording Raw, Nitro, etc, and uploading screen caps to go along with my reviews. This was groundbreaking stuff. While I didn't get worldwide recognition, I was getting a lot of traffic to the site. It wasn't just reviews. I was blogging before it was really a thing, using a page where I'd park my individual "articles," things really got intense. There were times when I would write sporadically, and then times when I would really go on a writing spree. It was all about the mood I was in at the time. High school was socially tough. Thank God I had this website to help me channel what I was feeling at the time. It's safe to say I would have lost my mind otherwise.
I skated by in my later years in school, so much so that I barely graduated. All those nights of going out with my friends to the mall, Rockwood Park, Putt-Putt, and skipping class to hit up CiCi's Pizza, took their toll. I eventually walked the stage and made the decision that college just wasn't for me. By then, I was making that Whataburger money, trying to save and no longer using it as disposable income to buy just CDs and video games. I was trying to be more frugal. Having a girlfriend kinda made that difficult. I was still writing stuff, still reviewing Raw and Smackdown, but my heart started to not be in it anymore.
By 2000, I was going through the motions, hanging out and not really doing anything with my life. Traffic to my site was still solid, as my reviews were gaining traction. I was also active on forums at the time, so I had my ear to the ground at all times. By late 2000 I had moved onto a new job flipping burgers at A&W Restaurant in the mall. This was an era of adventure that I wrote about in great detail. The hot goth girl at Hot Topic next to the food court reminded me so much of my queen Daffney Unger. I wrote about her a lot, especially the time she conned me into seeing Dracula 2000, a terrible film. She thought it was a masterpiece, as if Bram Stroker himself rose from the dead to write and direct it. It took everything in me not to walk away from her right then and there.
Early 2001, I quit A&W. My buddy had gotten hired at a tech company's logistics center, and I knew this was my foot in the door. I applied after him and got the job. I was now a full fledged employee of (redacted). Right away they noticed my aptitude for problem solving and my knack for computers, so very quickly I went from simple inventory replenish person to a more forward thinking brain necessary job in front of a computer. Once I got this upgrade, I decided, it's time to put the site to bed. I attended WrestleMania 17, and the Raw after Mania the following night, which was in my hometown. I wrote about both shows and thought that would be the end. But the Thursday that followed I taped Smackdown and had a little extra time after work. I reviewed it, thinking I could just keep the site going after that. I recorded Raw and Smackdown after that, promising I'd return to it, but, I knew I had to focus on my job so I put the website and the reviews to the side. Which is sad, because I watched the Invasion storyline and wanted to write about it so badly, but I knew I didn't have time to sit and write about all of it. The only reason I got to watch it was because I taped everything and watched in spells.
The website lay dormant after that. Visitors to the site were greeted with this homepage and nothing else. I had cut off everything else on the site. It stayed like this until 2008, when I changed banks and forgot to update the domain site with the new details. Thus, the domain was bought by someone else. They held it for ransom, asking $2,000 for it back. Meh, keep it. Finally, around 2014, I noticed the domain was open and completely available. I jumped on it, creating a blog site for my work in college. When that fizzled out, I decided to bring back a modified version of the 2001 homepage. It was the same but just condensed. Check it out here.
Only recently did I attempt to bring it back. So, while it isn't anywhere near the same site, it is a modified version of the retro site for a new era. Let me know what you think. God bless.
