About Me/The Site

So you want to know a little bit about me, eh?

My name is Katie; online I go by Commander or Commie. I'll answer to any of these! I'm in my late thirties (born late 1986) and I live in Nebraska with my husband, daughter, stepson (summers and every other Christmas), and cat. I have a bachelor's degree in English and Spanish, a master's degree in information science and learning technologies (aka, a library degree), and I do clerical/research work for local government.

My biggest hobby is writing... other than Petz, my greatest online presence is in writing fanfic, and in fact I've been writing fanfic almost as long as I've been playing Petz! My fic tends to combine my love of silly cartoons with my love of over-the-top power ballads lol. Some of my other hobbies are playing piano and flute, scrapbooking, collecting postcards (I have over one thousand!), hiking, traveling, roller coasters/thrill rides, and (very very rarely anymore) drawing.

As mentioned above, I love cartoons/animation. I'm interested in many types and eras, but my favorites are hand-drawn and the golden age of animation, particularly Looney Tunes. Speaking as a 90's kid, a lot of the stuff from that decade was awesome too ;) My other big interest is American history. Well, history in general, really, but I have a particular geekdom for the American Revolution and the presidents. And since I'm sure you're all dying to know, my favorite president is Theodore Roosevelt, and my second favorite (and favorite founding father) is John Adams :)

Some of my more specific favorite things:

  • Movies: Mary Poppins, with Forrest Gump as a very close second. Other movies I love are the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, the original Star Wars trilogy (I don't think the prequel nor the sequel trilogies are quite as bad as some people say they are, but... they definitely do have some issues, lol), most of the Disney Animated Canon (especially the 90's movies, see above re 90's kid), Night at the Museum, Airplane, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Horton Hears a Who, Megamind, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, most of the Marx Brothers movies, and lots of musicals--Sound of Music, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, 1776, The Greatest Showman...

  • TV Shows: Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Muppet Show, Animaniacs/Pinky and the Brain (both the original and the new version), SpongeBob SquarePants (first three seasons only), Garfield and Friends, John Adams (2008 HBO miniseries), Phineas and Ferb, Darkwing Duck, Kaeloo, Legend of the Three Caballeros, and the Cuphead Show. To name just a few!

  • Bands/Musicians: Mannheim Steamroller, The Alan Parsons Project, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Weird Al Yankovic, Journey, Queen, REO Speedwagon, Billy Joel, ABBA, AC/DC, Scorpions, Meat Loaf, Foreigner, Bonnie Tyler, The Cars, Heart, Enya, Pat Benatar, Def Leppard, Poison, Alice Cooper, KISS, 38 Special... you get the idea. Rock, classical, and "hair metal" are my favorite genres, but I like pretty much everything other than country and rap/hip-hop, and even then I have a few individual songs I like from those genres, too :)

  • Authors: I don't read nearly as much as I used to (I'm a bad English major, I know), but some of the authors who've stuck with me the most are PG Wodehouse, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sue Grafton, Oscar Wilde, KA Applegate, Edgar Allan Poe, Shel Silverstein, and Dr. Seuss.

  • Foods: Popcorn, macaroni and cheese, bacon cheeseburgers, club sandwiches, beef burritos, fries, crackers, Cheez-Its, anything salty really... I do like some healthy foods too lol--I really love pears, pineapples, peas, and green beans.

  • Drinks: I'm a very picky drinker. 95 percent of what I drink is water, unsweet iced tea, skim milk, and red wine. The other five percent is the occasional mixed drink (I'm fond of margaritas, piña coladas, painkillers, Bahama mamas, sex on the beach... oh, and the drink too (rimshot)) and sometimes orange or apple juice on the rare occasions I eat breakfast in a restaurant somewhere. But that's it.

  • Board games: Yahtzee! Scrabble, Monopoly, and Cards Against Humanity are also fun.

  • Card games: Pitch. I don't know how to play four-point, but my family plays ten-point, thirteen-point, and five-person/call your partner very frequently.

  • Video games: Other than Petz, I'm a big simmer. :) I bought all the games as they came out. Sims 3 is my favorite of the group, although I'll play 4 on occasion. My husband also managed to get me into Pokémon (X was my first game and my first Pokémon was Fennekin, even though I'm definitely old enough to have been a genwunner lol). But all-in-all I'm not really that much of a gamer.

  • Colors: Red, blue, purple, and brown

  • Animals: Dogs, porcupines, wolves, tigers, otters, giraffes... lots!

My history with Petz:

I first got into Petz around Christmas of 1997. I heard about the Dogz and Catz plush toys and wanted a Dogz plush more than anything--I very strongly suspect it was this very commercial that I saw, in fact:

Lucky for me, my parents paid attention, and I got one (the Scrappy breed) for Christmas! My younger brother, more of a cat person, got a Pouncer breed. I actually still have them, too!

About a month later, we got a new computer. It was quite the upgrade from our previous computer, a 1988 Tandy. This computer had Windows 95! And a CD drive! And it could actually--gasp!--GO ONLINE! My dad got a few games for my brother and me to play, and two of them were the original Dogz and Catz games. We were so excited to get the games that went along with our toys. I remember resolving to my Scrappy toy that I'd adopt a Scrappy breed, but when I actually adopted my first Dogz I went for a Bootz instead. I don't remember what breed my brother adopted originally lol

Sometime later that year, probably around summertime, we got Dogz 2 and Catz 2. This is also around the time that I started exploring the Petz websites that were online, cluing me in to many tips and tricks about the game that I simply hadn't known before... like when you returned your Petz, the files just went into a different folder. Oh, and here's where the folders actually are, and here's how to access everything in your C drive! (I was a young kid and this was a new computer, so cut me some slack for not knowing this beforehand lol) My heightened knowledge of files became useful when my brother grew very attached to one of his Catz, a siamese named Sophisto. We learned where her file was and how to take care of it, and take care of it we did... and I still do! She's in P3 now, but Sophisto remains in my crew as my oldest Petz.

Christmas of 1998 was just as exciting as the previous year, because we got Petz 3 and could finally start breeding our Petz! We brought over Sophisto (and later, I found her mate Pouncer lovin' on her back in Petz 2, so he got to join the 3 crew as well), I adopted two new Dogz, Dana and Rufus, and my brother adopted two new Catz, Princess and Aaron... and the rest is history ;)

My brother basically stopped playing Petz a few months later, but I still have the vast majority of Catz he adopted and bred. As for me, I doubled-down and played enough for the both of us lol. I visited so many Petz sites, adopted and downloaded things that caught my eye, and starting showing one of my Catz, but in general I was very much a lurker.

Until 2004, that is! After years of wanting a website of my own (despite never really learning HTML), I finally opened Commander's Kennels and Cattery on Bravehost. The site was tiny, and had just a few lackluster litters, but I actually did have people visit the site and adopt from it every so often! Alas, though, upon graduating high school and entering college, I didn't play Petz as much as used to, and although I did still open the game on occasion, my online presence and my website were greatly diminished, with the exception of a period in 2008 where I discovered PetzA and bred a bunch of Petz in Petz 5 while I was studying abroad in Argentina.

Fast-forward to early 2013. I was playing a Sims 3 legacy challenge at the time, but my game was becoming too glitchy to really enjoy playing anymore. I still wanted to work on a generational challenge, and got the idea to work on some Petz purebred breeding projects. While working on them, I thought, "hey, I should offer these up as resources for people!" So I reinstalled Petz 3, revamped my website and renamed it Powerhouse, and started to become more active on the forums. Not counting a few periods of inactivity (mostly in 2015 when my daughter was born), I've been in the Petz Community ever since. :) This game is a fun stress-reliever and a comfort to me, and I love seeing how much content this little community has made for this game! I'm glad to contribute what I can as well. It amazes me how vibrant this community is and continues to be for over twenty years now!

My crew is huge, way too huge for this website, so you can check them out here!