Contact Information
Time/Language
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This user uses Central Standard Time, which is UTC-6.
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During the northern Hemisphere summer, daylight saving time is in effect, which is UTC-5.
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Personal
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This user identifies as male.
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This user is 20 years old.
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This user is from the state of Illinois.
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This user has a pet Dog.
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This user spends too much time on the computer.
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Bulbapedia
Template:User received GoldPika
Anime
Games
PAK Man is an administrator and editorial board member on Bulbapedia, and a fairly active member in the online Pokémon community.
History with Pokémon
The first time I had ever heard of Pokémon was when I was watching an episode of Beast Wars. One of the commercials I had seen was for the series, complete with the Gotta Catch 'em All! slogan. Initially, I didn't want to watch it, because I believed it to be childish. At that point, I had no idea that it was based on a Japanese video game of the same name.
Anime
That would change in July of 1999 when I was on vacation with my family. I wanted to watch TV, and the only thing remotely interesting that was on was Pokémon. I was apprehensive about watching the series at first, not just because I thought the series looked childish, but because I had read in a now-defunct magazine that the series caused seizures.
Nevertheless, I decided to sit down and watch the series. This was not the first episode of Pokémon I had seen, though. Prior to this, I had seen the tail-end of Primeape Goes Bananas and Pokémon Scent-Sation!, but I had never seen a full episode until that point. As luck would have it, the episode that happened to air was the first one. I was hooked from day one. I saw the first four episodes, and when I arrived home, I immediately went to my local video store to rent the videos of the series that had been released at that point.
Although I stopped watching the series on a regular basis when it moved to Cartoon Network, I still pay attention to the latest goings-on in order to remain up-to-date with the it.
Games
For Christmas 2000, I received Pokémon Silver, my very first Pokémon video game. For the longest time, I failed to get anywhere in the game, and after restarting my game several times, I finally moved foward and defeated the Elite Four in May of 2001. I still remember the night I defeated Lance, and then proceeded to defeat every Kanto gym leader within an hour of that event. Around the time that happened, I bought Pokémon Blue. However, I stopped playing that game after I caught Missingno. and it messed up my Elite Four statistics.
In the subsequent years, I picked up Crystal, Sapphire and Emerald. Crystal I stopped playing as well, because of some odd glitch that happened with an ID number that to this day, I can't figure out. I have defeated all gym leaders and Elite Four members in Sapphire, and am currently working on completing the Pokédex. For Emerald, I just recently defeated Tate and Liza, and when I get back home for break, I may try and get to Juan.
TCG
I began collecting the Trading Cards around the same time I started watching the anime. However, after the year 2000, I stopped buying them for reasons that I am unsure about. As a result, the TCG is the one part of the Pokémon meta that I know the least about, which is unfortunate when it comes to TCG articles that need to be created for Bulbapedia.
Online
I am also fairly active in the Pokémon online community. I was a member of the Serebii.net forums in 2001-2002, and I became a member of the PokéMasters forums in late 2002. I have also contributed to web sites such as Pojo.com and Dogasu's Backpack. On the former web site, I contributed several character bios under my real-life nickname at the time. I rejoined the Serebii.net forums in May 2006. In late 2006, I joined the Bulbagarden forums for the first time, although I had visited there many times prior. I consider myself a semi-regular poster. I usually only post in a topic if I feel it is necessary.
Bulbapedia
I joined Bulbapedia in April 2006, after visiting a few times prior to that. I was a little nervous about making contributions at first, because I didn't want to get in trouble for making any mistakes. After my first edit to the Who's That Pokémon? article, I took a few months break from Bulbapedia. I returned in July 2006 and have been a regular contributor since that point.
In April of 2007, about a year after I joined, I was appointed as an administrator to Bulbapedia. I was honored by the Editorial Board's decision, but did not let my new status go to my head. In fact, I was pretty much the same user I used to be, except now I had the ability to block people, delete pages and protect them as well. Additionally, I could also edit protected pages. One of my first edits as an administrator was to go into a protected page and correct a link to a disambig page that I had noticed a few months earlier.
After more than a year as an administrator, I was asked to join the Editorial Board in October of 2008. I accepted the invite, and am now one of the decision-makers of Bulbapedia. Along with the new position, I am now able to manage user rights as well as lock the database in the event of a major vandal attack (although I hope we won't be having any of those for quite some time).
Contributions
Since joining Bulbapedia over two years ago, I have contributed to many different sections. My own personal area of expertise is the anime, which is where most of my edits have been. In fact, the very first article I ever created was that of Sean Schemmel, a voice actor who worked on the 4Kids dub of the series. Since then, I have created many more voice actor articles, countless character of the day articles, and have added character information for nearly all of the Master Quest episodes.
Likewise, anime-exclusive songs featured in the dub is another area I am familiar with. When Cartoon Network began to rerun late-Kanto and Orange Islands episodes, I would use those to add which song was featured on Pikachu's Jukebox, and in which episodes. Since purchasing the Kanto DVDs, I no longer need to record the episodes as they air, and have almost fully completed the Pikachu's Jukebox listing.
Among my proudest moments on Bulbapedia are when I went through the now-defunct Category titled Pokémon Missing Their Generation Number and classified nearly all of them. There were virtually no Generation IV Pokémon, but nearly all from Generations I-III were unclassified. More than 200 articles later, every single Pokémon should have the correct Generation number. Another proud moment was when the true titles of three English theme songs (Believe in Me, Unbeatable, and Battle Frontier (dub)) were revealed. I went through and fixed the links so they wouldn't go through redirect pages.
When I'm bored, I sometimes look through the disambiguation pages to make sure no articles link to them.
For a full list of my contributions, click here, and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave a message on my talk page.
Bulbapedia Projects
I am currently a member of three Bulbapedia Projects. As a member of Project Anime, I help out with the individual episode articles. This may mean proofreading and editing synopses, fixing the character lists with the {{op}} template, checking the errors and dub edits sections, and possible even writing my own synopses.
Project COD is the one I have dedicated the most time and energy to. I have created countless articles for the characters of the day, found numerous screenshots, and cross-referenced with other sites in regards to voice actors and other information. It is my goal to have a page for most characters of the day on Bulbapedia.
The most recent project I've joined is Project Music. I've been doing much work for this section, including creating two templates, and creating character lists for all Pikachu's Jukebox songs. I plan on doing Karaokémon next, but that will depend on whether or not I can find my old Johto tapes.
Reference
I currently have no reference pages at this time.
My to-do list
- Create character of the day pages for all that I am able to do.
- Find screenshots for characters that are missing them.
- Correcting links to disambiguation and redirect pages.
- Cleaning up the articles needing improvement and weeding out ones that just need expansion.
- Patrolling recent changes
- Editing synopses that need cleanup
- Create new VA sections for anime characters.
- General cleanup around Bulbapedia
- Answer any questions about Bulbapedia
- Help new users become accommodated with the wiki
Other areas of interest
Although Pokémon is one of my main interests, it is not my only one. I am a Legends of the Hidden Temple fan, and I am a member of a well-known message board in that community. Another interest of mine is writing, and I hope to become a journalist when I am older. I served as one of four news editors on my high school newspaper during my senior year, and I was also responsible for creating their new web site. I am currently a college sophomore, and I am very excited to be writing for the newspaper. Last year, I wrote twenty articles for our school's paper, and this year I hope to do just as many, if not more. I also used to be a big part of the now-defunct Animorphs community, contributing to several web sites there.
Personal
As a general rule of thumb, I don't reveal too much personal information about myself online. However, there are a few details that I will reveal. I am from the Chicago suburbs in Illinois, and I currently attend college in Iowa. I am a sophomore, and just recently began my fourth semester at college, and the second semester of the 2008-2009 academic year.
Some people ask me about my username. The letters P.A.K. are my initials. Several people in the online community know my first name, and a select few know my last. Nobody, to my knowledge, knows my middle name. I received this nickname by my aunt when I was a child. As I became active in the online community, I adopted it as my username. It is the name I use in almost every online community I belong to, with the exception of two.
