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Started playing CS in early 1999 before the betas were public. It quickly took over my own time playing Team Fortress Classic, and basically everybody else that was into TFC as well. CPL and OGL league ladders were fun, except the west coast was dominated absolutely by one clan, but I forget the name. Working on that.

www.counter-strike.net Oh the glory days.

I co-led [$iK] for a couple years and we had a blast.

Beta 4.0 - Burst fire. All of the sudden, we had to burst fire, especially with the 552 and M4 (might have been 4.1 or 4.2, forget)

Beta 5.2 - The pinnacle of competitive CS. P90 was insane rushing, AWP was perfect while moving, M4 and AK you could get 3 or 4 kills with one mag. My fav though, P228. It's kind of like what the five seven is now, except zero recoil. Same 1 shot HS close/medium range.

Beta 6 - suck. When the new netcode started getting introduced, and everybody that had payed out for DSL and cable at the time, started getting owned by 300+ ping players.

Then Counter-Strike 1.0 with full blown netcode which drove away many regulars. Shooting somebody and watching the bullet holes show up directly behind them without any damage, that will kill the game. Also around the same time other FPS games were taking off - Quake, Descent, Unreal Tournament, as well as EQ and WoW were very well established.

I played it early, a LOT, near pro level at the time, if such a thing existed. I won real world money in a local tournament once (200 bucks or so from Frys). 40-50 hours a week at least, sometimes 15-20 straight. I very mildly dabbled in the other CS versions, but nothing too solidly speak of, except I played each one a bit. Even bought the boxed retail versions. I was loyal, if never really got back into it. I was partly annoyed that CS basically became Valve. Goose and Cliffe stopped developing it, and the little CS.net forums were consumed by Valve.

2018, I decide to give myself a gaming rig as a Christmas Present, mostly because I'd been equipping my son with new stuff for a few years to play Fortnite and was kinda jelly. :) For the record, he was ranking high and won a few of the discord invite games, just before turning 13, which is when he could have officially entered to win some money. Then they made another stupid patch change and basically he lost all interest - Epic was very good at that around the time, turning off all of the streamers and pro's because "reasons".

Assembled the computer and jumped right into CSGO early 2019. The kid did, too. I still have an old clip of a pistol round where he gets 5 headshots, a couple were jumping. Insane what kids can do.

Sometime in late 2019 I think, I opened a crate. And got a red. A red m4. Sold it for $140. That was such a terrible moment, because it basically kicked off CSGO skins for me. All of the sudden my Steam wallet was fat, and what to do with it?

Anyway - I started collecting skins, and had spreadsheets about them. I knew exactly which I had, at what quality, when purchased, for how much, etc. When COVID hit, skins turned into a new hobby. I wanted to collect them all, but also used them all. I didn't really want to collect the $1000+ stuff, but I had a few in the multiple hundreds. I focused on the ones I thought looked good, to me, not what the market said was valuable. I'd have loved to rotate in my favorite skins.

At my peak I had almost 8k in skins, which was making me nervous. I started to worry about getting hacked, even with a unique email and password, and authenticator. It kept me up at night.

So, sold it - I think I got about 5k back out. Yes, I basically dumped them, but when I decided to do it, I didn't want to draw down slowly, I wanted out. I kept a few that I still use.

So, I've now been profiled. BEHOLD, for it is good, and so are dumplings, especially korean bulgogi's from costco…

(this is not my bio)