SpawnPoint - Where Game Begins

Bored, and it is 8:15 in the morning.  I am recovering from an all-nighter I just had with Skinny playing StarCraft (and yes, I pwned him hardc0re), and decided I am in the mood to write.  I don't really have any topics in mind and I am not quite awake enough to write a review... I guess I'll just write about me...maybe shed some light on who Mr_Me_II really is, and how I found my way to the interweb.  This could get long.

I lived in Ireland for most of my childhood (from age 3 to 12), and moved to the US in 2000.  In ireland, I was raised in some pretty rough places.  I wouldn't compare them with the US's 'ghettos', but I mean seeing a car parked on the side of the street in my old neighborhood in flames with a bunch of 10-15 year olds throwing bricks through the windows was not exactly rare.  And no I am not exaggerating there...these were places where rent was like 15 bucks a week.  Needless to say I was fairly excited to get away from all of that, and start a new life in 'the land of the free'...

Back in 2000, I didn't know the first thing about computers.  I didn't even understand exactly what the internet was.  I was in Jr. High at this time, and seeing as I had just moved to the States from Ireland, I didn't really have a whole lot of friends to hang out with.  I spent the majority of my free time playing Perfect Dark and Mario 64 on my Nintendo, taking stuff apart...or just watching TV.

In early 2001, knowing my interest in electronics and love of taking crap apart, my granddad gave me his old worn out computer to play with.  It barely worked, but it was still one of the best gifts I had ever gotten.  It was a Pentium 166 with MMX, 32mb of ram, and I believe a 12gb hard drive.  Since I didn't have the slightest idea how to use it (the only family computer before that was an Apple PPC) I just kinda took it apart, thinking I was going to be able to figure out what made it tick.  Needless to say I didn't learn a whole lot, and spent the next 7 hours trying to put it back together and hope it still worked...which thankfully it did.  My mom wanted to have a computer online, so she went ahead and set up some Dialup on it, and started teaching me how to access the net.  It wasn't long before I was online, though I didn't really understand what the big deal was.  I mainly used the computer to play Solitare and Sim Tower.

A few months later when school started back up, I started making some friends (one of which currently goes by [PHXX]Skinny).  His soon-to-be-stepfather at the time was a total computer geek.  As I started going to his house more and more (he had playstation :D ) I started getting to know his soon-to-be-stepfather more, and started learning more about computers.  I was also introduced to my first love, StarCraft.  It wasn't long before the three of us were playing StarCraft almost every day after school, for hours.  I learned little bit about how computers work in my time in at skinnys house, but I wanted more.

As I became more comfortable working on computers and the internet I started going online more often, learning what I could about computers from Jeeves...by the time I started HighSchool, I knew enough about computers to at least be able to use one, without assistance.  I was still a very slow typer, the only keys I knew how to find easily were the hotkeys from StarCraft.  As I started making more friends in HighSchool, I eventually ended up getting AIM, and Myspace (UGH).  Anyways, I learned how to type a whole lot faster after a few months of being an AIM-Whore.  Only catch is I never learned how to type properly... I type using only 2 fingers on each hand (to this day) which results in endless typos and a fair ammount of pain in my wrists...I think (besides the typos which I try to correct on the fly), I type pretty good now though.

Skipping forward 18 months;  One of my friends used to go to a Lan cafe called the DMZ which was a couple miles from my house.  He went to play a game called Counter-Strike.  I never went, because I only play StarCraft...but he eventually convinced me that some people play StarCraft there (which was a LIE!!) so I went along.  I had no idea what exactly Counter-Strike was, my friend never told me.  When I saw it all I could think of was Perfect Dark.  Since I was a Perfect dark nut, I loaded it up, died 15 times in a row, and was hooked.  For the record this was Counter-Strike 1.4 - 1.5

I started going to the DMZ at least twice a week, for as long as I could afford (3 bucks an hour), and it just got better and better.  At this time I played under the name Person, because I was too lazy to use anything else.  I already had the name Mr_Me_II at this point but I only used that in StarCraft.  Anyways...I bought Counter-Strike when my parents finally decided I was spending too much of thier money at the net cafe, and installed it.  This was CS 1.6, and Steam was required, which was fairly new at this time, and buggy as hell.  I was shocked when it installed, and ran at about 10FPS on my computer (at that time I had a Pentium 2 450mhz, 64mh ram, and a VooDoo 2 12mb video card).  Christmas was coming, and mr me wanted to play CS.

I got my wish that year to my surprize, and opened up a big box containing an eMachines T1742 (Celeron 1.7Ghz, 128mb Ram, 40gb HDD, Intel 845GL onboard graphics).  It was the cheapest computer available at bestbuy and I knew it, but it ran CS at about 35FPS in minimal settings so I was more than happy.  I started making a couple friends in one server I went to regularly, and enjoyed playing there for about 6 months.  As is the case with most clans however, they broke up and the server disappeared.  This was pre Steam-Friends so I had no idea how to contact any of them :(

I started server hopping tring to find somthing I liked, and I finally hit it with the PHXX.NET | FY_ONLY FragFest.  I started playing in this server, and just kept coming back.  It wasn't long before I knew just about everyone who connected to the server, and knew every one of the more than 100 fy maps that had run on it.  After upgrading my computer to 512mb of ram, and getting a PCI Radeon 9200SE, and replacing the Celeron with a P4 1.8Ghz, my game improved greatly.  It wasn't long before people started accusing me of cheating, so me and another similarly-skilled player came up with the tag *h4x0n?!* and wore that every time we played.  Some of you may have seen me wearing that tag in CS:S servers, which I still do... rarely. (not a very professional/adminly tag to wear).

Near the end of the life of PHXX.NET I was admin on two of thier servers - FY_ONLY and East5 (which was east2's little brother, and is currently East Assault 174.5).  Soon thereafter, PHXX.NET turned into Spawnpoint.com, and the servers started switching to the new CS:S.  I had tried CS:S before when it was a free public beta, and thought it was going to fail.  It was really cool technology, but I thought all the guns looked like toys, and that no computer would be able to run that smoothly considering mine only got like 12FPS on it.  It only had one map - de_dust - and was so buggy that it you angled yourself against a certain wall just right you could see right through it (I could anyway)  Anyways, I wasn't too interested in CS:S and stuck with the 1.6 servers as long as I could.

Eventually of course I caved and bought CS:S, after aquiring a new PC (Pentium 4 2.8GHz with a GeForce 4200Ti AGP card and 512MB of ram)  The first server I started playing in, and also one of the only 'spawnpoint' servers I could find was the 174.5 East Assault server.  I was surprized to see that my admin had carried over from the 1.6 server, so I started learning Mani Admin mod.  For the sake of showoff-ism - Random fact - Mr_Me_II was in the FIRST group of server admins at Spawnpoint.com - in your face!  Anyways...The server started getting more and more popular, as did the website.  Two other Assault servers popped up, the DA Assault, 174.11, and the former PWND assault, 108.4.  I recieved admin in both of these servers, and I watched over the three.  There were not many admins at this time, other than a couple DA and PWND clan members who didn't really know how to use Mani.

There was no set ruleset for spawnpoint servers or admins, so I took it upon myself to try and make some.  This is when I wrote my first instalment of the Admin for Dummies handbook, and posted it in the Forums.  I made it my responsibility to try and teach new admins how to use thier powers for good, because I had seen a lot of abuse on the servers and I didn't like it.  Note that I was not staff at all at this point, I just kinda slid in, and tried to teach anyone who needed it.  This is also how I learned what I know about both the Source Engine, and Mani Adminmod.  To this day, I still have people asking me little questions about commands, settings, and errors in Source, and every time I come across something I don't know the answer to, I don't stop until I find it and permanently engrave it on the front of my brain.  Again, for the sake of Showoff-ism - Random fact - Mr_Me_II taught, gave advice, and/or helped many of the senior admins and staff on spawnpoint servers today - Booyah! =P

Anyways...After 4-6 months of nothing but Assault, I got bored with it, and re-found FY_ONLY and East2.  FY_ONLY had the same IP it did in 1.6, so that was easy, and a PHXX member gave me the new IP to East2 and EvolutionGaming, where they mostly played at that time.  A lot of my old friends from the 1.6 fy server did not make the switch to Source, and I still miss a lot of them, they were a great group for some hardcore fy fragin'.  fy_only and east2 at this time were rarely populated, so I played in Evolution Gaming for a while, eventually recieving admin there also.

Well, I'll cut it short there...I've been typing and typo-fixing for an hour+ and I need to get some sleep.  I left a lot out, but it's a blog not a freakin bio.  I've got a feeling I'm gunna wake up at 7pm and regret publishing this...but whatever.

 - Mr_Me_II,
 - Spawnpoint Lover, CS:Source and Admin Guru, Computer tech geek, obsessive computer upgrader, 17th registered member at Spawnpoint.com, 1st regular admin on 174.5, Spawnpoint Writing Staff, Forum Moderator, Server Admin, self-centered a**hole =D , and of course - Religious StarCraft and Counter-Strike player.

Gamin 'till the day I die, and when that happens I'll just wait to respawn.