Happy 5th Birthday to EcoModder! (Party loot bags: win prizes! ScanGauges etc.)
 

EcoModder turned 5 this week - December 3, 2012.

One more lap around the sun!

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1354919045

Birthday cake: By Rev Dan Catt

(Note: not EcoModder's actual birthday cake. No cake was made this year, unlike the real cake made on our 2nd birthday. WARNING: DO NOT attempt to skip cake with an actual 5 year old.)

Birthday Party Prizes

We're celebrating by giving away a few prizes...

• ScanGauge II: thanks to Linear Logic for offering to sponsor our birthday party by giving away a ScanGauge II. It will be awarded at random to one member* who posts in any thread in the forum between 12:01 AM EST (Dec. 3) and 11:59 PM EST 1 week from today (Dec. 14).

• ScanGauge-e: the ScanGauge II's little brother (see comparison)

• EcoModder decals: one additional randomly chosen member who posts in the forum in the same time period will receive a free pair of decals.

* ... only members who joined on or before Dec 2, 2012 can win.

So, Happy Birthday to us! And as always, thanks to everyone -- moderators and members alike -- who make EcoModder worth celebrating.

Contest results to be posted [here] later.

Some EM birthday type factoids:

FIRST PUBLIC POST:

The very first public post made after the forum went "live" on Dec. 3, 2007 to the whole interwires was post #3 in this thread:

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea....html#post1263

(The thread itself was started by Ben (SVOboy) before the site was actually open. The actual very first post -- #1 in the database -- was made in the moderators special secret area on November 15, 2007 -- EM's "unofficial birthday".)

FIRST PUBLIC THREAD:

The first thread started by someone other than an admin/moderator after launch was, appropriately:http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...oline-177.html

Gee, and I thought the "Fifth" was of Jim Beam (wink,wink).

Happy Birthday, EM!

I'm celebrating having seen at least two of these birthday cycles pass, personally.

(I missed the first two, I think.)

Five years old - congratulations!

Wow, 5 years, congrats :)

I've only been here since 2010, though.

Love this site and so glad it's here! Been here for 4 years but read more than I post. (Woot! This is number 14! A whopping 4.67 per year! I have done 90k miles with this site though.)

who is the oldest active (defined as 2 posts a month?) member???


oh yeah....

PICK ME!!!:thumbup:

I've been here since almost the beginning... Happy Birthday!

I might not even be active time to time, as I rarely posted anything outside the Motorcycle section. But last week we bought a (not red, but golden) Yaris, so who knows :)

(And the first, Japanese version's firmware keeps resetting trip mpg at every single stop! So any kind of SG would be welcome :D)

5years nice job guys, love the site :)

Congrats on 5 years! This is an incredible forum, the knowledge and eagerness to help is second to none. I am on some much larger forums that don't have the same knowledge base as what is here.

I owe a huge thanks to everyone who started and run the site, and to all those members who have provided such support.

Thanks, and happy birthday! :thumbup:

Too bad 5 years old is too young for "adult beverages" to celebrate ;)

Happy Birthday and Great job on the site!!!

Happy Birthday! Happy to be part of such a great forum :)

congrats on 5 yrs.

5 years! That's a long time I'm here for a year and I love it! Great job, this site has changed my life. Good to be a part of it.

Happy Birthday EM :)

Whooo Hooooo
 

Congratulations and Happy Birthday.

My earliest recolections include the acual 2yr cake. You guys kept me around longer than my ex.:thumbup:

Happy Birthday!
Wow how time flies.
What have I learned/benefited from the most? Probably the cheap DIY EV conversions of bennelson, MetroMPG and MPaulHolmes. Truly inspiring, and now I have one of my own.

Hey Darin, how about some history, like how on earth you came up with the idea and how you went about making it successful.

Happy Birthday. I don't post hardly at all but I read almost daily. Just have to say I'm impressed by the knowledge, ambition and workmanship (Ok, sometimes the workmanship isn't THAT good) of the members here. Keep up the good work.

Congrats, down a beverage of your choosing.

And send the S-e my way ;-)

I only missed the first 20 months as a member, trolled for 6 months before.

Lots of great content!

Happy birthday EM!

Ask and ye shall receive!

Oh, but it's a tangled web...

As far as I'm concerned, the two main characters in this drama are Phil Knox a.k.a. aerohead (indirectly), and more directly, SVOboy (Ben... mostly not here any more since he moved to Japan under the witness protection program or something).

2005 was a busy year...

GasSavers.org forum launched.

Trivia: SVOboy (Ben - EcoModder's AWOL co-founder) originally got that forum going with its owner, Matt after meeting on the Honda-tech forum. I think the story is they were tired of the lack of appreciation about fuel economy discussion from the hard-core Honda gearheads, so Matt started GasSavers with urging from SVOboy.

I started MetroMPG.com in September 2005, coincidentally the same week GasSavers.org started up (which I didn't know about yet).

Eventually someone on GasSavers linked to one of my posts, which led me to that forum. So I signed up. Met moderator Ben (SVOboy) and a bunch of others. Eventually became a moderator.

How does Phil/aerohead figure in all this?

At that time I had also been hanging out at/moderating the now defunct maxmpg Yahoo group which started as a direct result of the June 2005 EV World article about Phil's aero mods to his Toyota pickup (EV WORLD: Free Fuel Riding on the Wind ). (At one time that was the most-commented-on article at EV World, but it appears those comments have since been lost.) I had been administering that group for its owner who had gone to Iraq as a member of the U.S. military.

Eventually, Matt lost interest in GasSavers. Late in 2007, Ben and I negotiated with him to officially take it over since we and a few other mods had basically been running the place in Matt's absense, but the agreement fell apart at the last minute.

So, we struck out on our own and started EcoModder in December, 2007.

Many of EcoModder's earliest members came from the maxmpg group (invited over en masse with the blessing of that group's founder), and GasSavers.

Cool thing, 5 years of spreading the gospel of paying less for the same distance. Or of course, being more friendly to the environment. Economical and ecological all in one!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

That's cool, it's always nice to understand the history and where it came from. Hopefully there will be another 5+ years of great info and discussion to come.

You come far Pilgrim.

Congrats Darin. Not only on the site and it's longevity but the ripples you have made locally and globally. :thumbup:

Instead of congratulating you, I'd like to just thank you.

Member since May, 2009. Thanks for helping me get better MPG from my Mustang and my F-250!

Thanks for all of the great ideas!

Thank you!!! for all you've done to make this such a great site. You've done a very good thing.

I just looked up my join date - Dec 7, 2007. Day four in the public life of ecomodder.com. What a journey it's been.

Amazing how chatty we get this time of year...

Pick Me!
 

The 1998 Ford Ranger project approaches!

I remember the Gassaver and Yahoo groups.
 

Ecomodder has touched the heart strings of so many people. May we be here in some shape or form 5 years from now. Maybe that is another thread - what will we be working on 5 years from now?

This website has been a quite the wealth of information and has put me in contact with some great people. Thank you for any hard work that was put forth, I've helped many others with the knowledge I've picked up here.
- Aaron

Thanks again Darin.

Congratulations as well from overseas and many happy fuel-saving returns!

Just in the remote chance that I (me me me) win the scangauge, already having one installed, would it be possible to connect them together via the second connector and read out 8 instead of 4 parameters? :D

(Serious question ;)) when money is right perhaps I will buy the second one.

Only 5 years old?

Forget that! I still haven't finished most of the things I started 5 years ago! :D

Pandaf: Yes, you can connect 2 ScanGauges together and view 8 gauges.

Thanks for everything! Even in my short time; it's been quite a ride!!!!