Please consider my application for membership.

[Detta_Walker]

Hello. I am 34 years old, and I have read the FAQ and AUP. I agree to both wholeheartedly and am very pleased to have stumbled accross this wonderful place. I humbly request admission to your illustrious if not aging ranks.

For those of you interested, a little about me:
I have been playing first person shooter games for er, uh a looong time, starting with the first Castle Wolfenstein. I am one of those vintage gamers who remembers the the awed rapture of playing both pong and tank on my very own television right before the Atari 5200 came out. Then wow! Cartriges! I graduated to a Commodore Vic 20 and Apple II. I moved into MS-Dos early on starting with the original 8086. I dropped out of PCs and gaming when I dropped into my late teens/early 20's which oddly enough is mostly a haze.

About 7 years ago I came back on the scene with the acquisition of AMD K62 380 w/32mb Ram and the incomparable Ati Rage Fury with it's very own 32mb or Ram. Thus was born NORAD, my gaming rig and flagship of my 3 PC home LAN. NORAD has been in a constant evolution and is currently incarnated as a AMD XP3200 running at 3400 (it's overclocked to 2400/400 from factory 2200/400) w/ a gig of (2.5 7-3-3-3@400) RAM and NVIDIA 6800 GT overclocked to a frenzy. The evolution has developed into quite a fun and lucrative hobby of building PCs and home networks. My other 2 PCs are COMPAQS. (An XP3200/400 and a XP3000/333) Despite the hobby I just couldn't beat the deals I got on refurbs. Plunk in some ram and an AGP card and whamo! (without the headache potential)

Right around then (7 years ago for those of you who forgot due to my little PC ramble) I discovered Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament. I took a real shine to Q3 and so began my FPS addiction. I have never been one to play much against computer AI, but when I discovered online/realtime shotgun blasts to the face of other computer geeks holed up in their caves all over the world, I knew I had found something for me. There is nothing like a little faceless agression to bring me down from a frantic day at the office.
I played Q3 until I discored Unreal Tournament 2003, and had a very brief very passionate affair with her until I met her younger sister UT2004. Right now I only have eyes for UT2004 and am spefically enjoying instagib and vehice CTF, but have nothing against a little old-fashioned death match carnage fest with bazookas and grenages. (mwua ha! ha! ha! )

After 33 years of total bachelorhood, 9 months ago I married the love of my life. She came with my 10 year old, very energetic, very devious, very intelligent very lovable very infuriating step-son. Needless to say I am in a period of adjustment and these new people have really put a crimp into my gaming style. I don't know why honey doesn't want me to dissappear into the gaming den for 10 hours, but she doesn't. I mean, she has her MYSPACE and 50 cagillion MP3s, what gives???? I guess it's just one of those women things I'll never understand.

I have been practicing martial arts and massage for about 10 years. I primarily study Dan Zan Ryu Jujitsu, Inayan Eskrima, and Kashima Shin Ryu, and Sefuku Justu, Reike and accupressure. I commute by mountain bike in when it's not raining. I am a 10 year distributed computing enthusiast who stared with the original Seti (10,000 wu's) going to United Denvices (well over 1,000,000 points), and am currently crunching for UC Berkley Boinc project. This is where this long winded hello will end, as it was actually my beginning with TOG. Little of you may know this but there is a TOG distributed computing team for BOINC's "climateprediction.net" project.I was looking for a BOINC DC team, when I came across ToG, with a link to this web site. Needless to say I joined, and the rest is history in the making. There is only one other member on the ToG DC team, and he is inactive. I'll mention more about the ToG BOINC distributed computing project in another thread where I will try to do some recruiting for the glory of ToG. (if approved of course.) I am very much looking forward to getting to know some of you. Before I found you I thought I was a fossile. I am really excited to have found this community. I am hoping to get in on some UT2004 ToG action.

Thank you for your consideration,
Michael aka Detta_Walker

[Ijs]

Pong... check.
Vic 20... check.
Apple II... check. (Was that the + edition?)

Welcome to ToG Detta Walker! An admin will be along to give you access to the forums.

Good hunting!

[Detta_Walker]

We were fortunate enought to have a IIe AND a IIc with the ever incredible 80 dpi $700 Imagewriter. (was it color??? I don't think so, I can't remember. ) Man if I remember right the ole IIc with is 128k, built in 5.25 floppy, and 12 inch green monochrome monitor was like $1300...... Ah, but then the birth of the PC Clone..... and then AMD.

[Ijs]

128K? HOLY CR@P! Actually my Apple II+ was a clone but the stock version came with 48k. I 'upgraded' to a whopping 64k (I think it cost an extra $150-200), just so I could say I had more horses than my cousin. (He was sooooo jealous!).

Just to be different, I went with the amber monitor. Did you get around to adding a Commodore monitor for your Apples? Gotta give them credit, Commodore made a damn good monitor.

[doggsley]

Welcome

[B B]

WELCOME BUDDY

[Detta_Walker]

Ooh, early apple clone, I almost got one of those. Who made them again? The IIe and IIc were Mom's. I used to fantasize about having my own II+ clone, but if I remember correctly they were about $600+ which was alot for a kid with a paper route and a spending disorder......
I never got a commodore monitor, because we never went beyond the tape drive vic 20 that ran through our tv. We jumped ship to apple from there.

Thanks for the welcome.

[Detta_Walker]

I sure hope Admin comes along soon.... (and my app is approved.....) I can't wait to see what there is to see around here. I feel like a kid with a $20 bill standing outside the candy store 5 minutes before the store opens. I haven't been this excited for awhile. Have i mentioned I have read and agree with, and agree to comply with the AUP and FAQ????

[CommandeR_SuLLy]

G'day and welcome...

Great post......it's amazing how many of us have similar histories with computers. Most clans could not fathom how far we go back !!!!

Enjoy...

[Detta_Walker]

Much obliged. It's nice to be in a place where some history is a good thing.