New Beginnings: Part 1.1 - High School & Everquest continued

So I'm fairly new here and I just wanted to share a little bit about myself, where I came from, and my experiences up to this point. Everyone has a tale, and here's mine.

Part 1.1: Additional Embarrassment

My first post, "New Beginnings: Part 1 - High School & Everquest" received a comment from our very own Atalicus which brought to light very obvious lapses in my memory. Please allow me to include an addendum.

The Nerd Crew: We caught some shit in HS. We were the dorks who sat together at lunch and talked about Starcraft strategies and funions. Here's a short list of a few notable things I failed to include:

Stefan Hsi: The token Asian of the group. He was two or three years older than the rest of us. His family ran a ghetto-ass Chinese food place in the neighboring town that got shut down for health violations. He was really into the online game Descent and tried to get us all to play it so he could dominate us, we never really bit on that though. Known for his loud potty mouth (think Konty, but asian and into eating soy beans and rice every night, fact.)"Manx" ended up moving to Boston and getting into drugs. I know because I stayed with him for a summer in college and he was doing a lot of drugs.

The Cayouette Brothers: These two dudes came from a rather poor background. They kinda smelled, had really shitty PCs and they stole from our spare computer parts stash when they came over for LAN parties. Their Dad ran a flooring company in a neighboring town. These two were really annoying, but entertaining - especially when we forced them to play together in our Quake II 2v2 tournament. They would fight and we'd all laugh.

Menotsmall Whereitcounts: At least that was his warriors name in Everquest when he joined Inner Circle during the Kunark expansion. Tom lived in "The Cabe" which was sort of like a cave (his parents basement) with just a shit ton of cables (because there were always 71235 computers hooked up down there). The place was disgusting, but we held a majority of our LAN parties there. Tom still lives in "The Cabe". He is 28.

Owninator: The dude's brother was the manager at the first cable internet place in our home town. Since Own didn't live in an area where cable access was possible, they let me be the first beta tester. It was dominant. Own loved to game. As Atal put it recently, "he would show up with that giant ass white case and he'd have to rub those 2 wires together to turn it on and he had that damn dunkin donuts box tapped to the side." Good times.

Josh: This dude didn't have internet at his house, so he would set up shop at our places during the week after school and before work. First he hit up Atal's place and finally after a few months Sheila booted him. Then he took up residence in "The Cabe". He lived down there for a few months, then he was shipped to my place. He'd come over every day after school and log into his female gnome magician with a face that looked just like my mom and the character name was my mom's. At the time I thought it was hilarious, but thinking back it kinda pisses me off. My mom booted him after a month.

The Can-O-Whoop-ass: At one point we had a LAN at my house where there was a Quake II tournament, 1v1. Mr. Hsi felt it was necessary to have a prize go to the winner. So he went into a cupboard in my house and found a can of chicken broth that he wrote, "Can-O-Whoop-ass" on. From that point forward that trophy went to the winner of the LAN party games. It was a tradition that stuck.

Quake II Config Files: I had one and the others did not. It made things smoother, less laggy, less explosions and less complex so I was able to kill easier. I was better because of it and people hated me for it. It wasn't cheating though, promise.

Bobs Vader: My Dad's nickname. His name is Bob and he had a really bad temper. Growing up was scary at times, but just funny as hell all the other times. One time at the kitchen table I took too much salsa and my Dad called me on it. With his fury building and my ability to realize it and build off of it, I started scooping the salsa back into the jar all dramatic-like. My dad got outraged and told me, "cut that shit out, you smart-ass!".

The nickname also stemmed from one time we were driving from Boston to Maine as a family. My friend and I were in the back seat. Vader started complaining about there being a gas leak in the car. So he stopped at Home Depot, bought a gas mask and put it on. I'm not talking one of those white strap on nurse masks. I'm talking one of those huge gas masks that riot police wear to not get caught in their own tear gas types. So Vades puts this beast on, gets back in the car and continues the drive up the Maine coast like nothing had happened, allowing the rest of his family to suffer from the "fumes". Meanwhile I'm sitting in the back wondering how the hell this guy is my Dad.

20 minutes later he gets pulled over for speeding. Instead of taking the gas mask off when the officer walked up to the window, he left that shit on his face and talked to the officer sounding EXACTLY like Dark Vader. The cop was very suspicious and weirded out. The nickname easily stuck after that little incident.

One other weekday night, my household went to sleep. Except my guild was still raiding in EQ. After about 15 minutes of lights out, I got up, turned my PC back on and started to log into EQ. After a couple minutes my dad walked into the room looking like Atal with 100% rage. He ran downstairs and brought a knife back to my room. I was like, "oh seriously? this is how I'm going to die?" Instead he walked down the hallway where my Ethernet cord led into his office across the house and he cut that 50' cord right in half. Game Over Cobus.