Time Wizard Cosmo
Newcomer
@Num7 nudged me over here, and I thought I'd finally take the plunge and say hello instead of lurking in the shadows.
I'm Cosmo, the current owner of Time Travel Institute, and some of you may recognize me from my time at Paranormalis (hey @Cloaked , it's been a while). My journey with running forums started back in 2004, when Paranormalis was known as timetravelforum.net. In between Star Wars Galaxies sessions, I stumbled upon TTF, which was just getting off the ground. They needed help with CSS and HTML, and being 19 or 20 years old with plenty of free time and a love for tinkering, I jumped in.
At that point, I wasn’t an admin, more of a front-end guy focused on HTML and CSS. Several of us played different roles, but one day, unexpectedly, an admin named Satan (who later changed his name to John, but let's be honest, once you're Satan, it's hard to shake) handed me the site. It was completely unexpected, but I was into the subject matter, so I rolled with it.
As the site expanded, its scope also expanded, prompting me to rebrand it as paranormalnetwork.net, and later as paranormalis.com. By 2009, life took me in other directions, and I passed the torch to Num. In hindsight, he’s done a far better job than I ever did. I was always more of a tinkerer than a steward. Paranormalis (and TTI) was really my playground while I was learning, but all that trial and error eventually led me to a career in DevOps.
Fast forward to 2014: I was married, my first kid just born, and I heard that Time Travel Institute was about to shut down. I had helped Mop upgrade TTI to a more modern platform years earlier, so when I found out it was closing, I saw it as a chance to jump back into the forum world, this time with a clearer vision of what I wanted to create.
Over the next decade, there were a lot of starts and stops—new ideas, restarted projects, and of course, the fun (and headaches) that come with all of that. It's always been done for fun, and life has a way of delaying things like this (having four kids, for example).
I recently "retired" from the daily grind (technically I'm just not somebody's 1099 anymore and I run my own deal with my wife), so I've finally had the time to focus on TTI the way it deserves. There’s something incredibly satisfying about watching all the pieces fall into place after so many iterations. We recently launched the first phase of this new direction, and it’s exciting to see it come to life. Lots of moving pieces, still lots to do.
Anyhow, glad to be here!
I'm Cosmo, the current owner of Time Travel Institute, and some of you may recognize me from my time at Paranormalis (hey @Cloaked , it's been a while). My journey with running forums started back in 2004, when Paranormalis was known as timetravelforum.net. In between Star Wars Galaxies sessions, I stumbled upon TTF, which was just getting off the ground. They needed help with CSS and HTML, and being 19 or 20 years old with plenty of free time and a love for tinkering, I jumped in.
At that point, I wasn’t an admin, more of a front-end guy focused on HTML and CSS. Several of us played different roles, but one day, unexpectedly, an admin named Satan (who later changed his name to John, but let's be honest, once you're Satan, it's hard to shake) handed me the site. It was completely unexpected, but I was into the subject matter, so I rolled with it.
As the site expanded, its scope also expanded, prompting me to rebrand it as paranormalnetwork.net, and later as paranormalis.com. By 2009, life took me in other directions, and I passed the torch to Num. In hindsight, he’s done a far better job than I ever did. I was always more of a tinkerer than a steward. Paranormalis (and TTI) was really my playground while I was learning, but all that trial and error eventually led me to a career in DevOps.
Fast forward to 2014: I was married, my first kid just born, and I heard that Time Travel Institute was about to shut down. I had helped Mop upgrade TTI to a more modern platform years earlier, so when I found out it was closing, I saw it as a chance to jump back into the forum world, this time with a clearer vision of what I wanted to create.
Over the next decade, there were a lot of starts and stops—new ideas, restarted projects, and of course, the fun (and headaches) that come with all of that. It's always been done for fun, and life has a way of delaying things like this (having four kids, for example).
I recently "retired" from the daily grind (technically I'm just not somebody's 1099 anymore and I run my own deal with my wife), so I've finally had the time to focus on TTI the way it deserves. There’s something incredibly satisfying about watching all the pieces fall into place after so many iterations. We recently launched the first phase of this new direction, and it’s exciting to see it come to life. Lots of moving pieces, still lots to do.
Anyhow, glad to be here!
