Software Developer, Media Nut, and Proud Father of Two

After having had a fun time trying to locate the hidden building of fun, otherwise known as Chuck E. Cheese, we arrived safely home and thus bed time preparations began for Sarah and Jennifer. I offered to let my niece sleep over; I know, I'm such a good uncle! So while they were having their fun in the tub, and according to my traditional customs, I summarily fired up Team Fortress 2. When I first got in, things were so-so. Several maps came up that I had little interest in, so I eventually worked my way into the Christian Crew's Gold Rush server (on a side note: I absolutely love Gold Rush). I decided that I wanted to play on offense, and man I was on fire. Not literally, however, as I kept killing the Pyro before he could light me up. It was a great time, but things started going downhill as people were dropping off the server. In TF2, the more people playing, the better. Saddened, I disconnected and started playing on some random servers.

With the fun of Gold Rush having subsided, I decided to begin working towards my last Medic achievement (cue Dr. Evil): 1,000,000 healing points! The new set of achievements have made me a much better Medic and I love it when I suddenly whip out the Bonesaw and I kill my enemy, sending his dead corpse flying with the powerful boom in laying the saw down. Coincidentally, it is also the source of several verbal gripes that I have had in the past because I don't like to get owned by a Medic. I typically play the Black Scottish Cyclops, best known as the Demoman, but the point was to get my last achievement.

I decided join one of those achievement servers and just keep healing people. After all, garnering (cue Dr. Evil) 1,000,000 healing points is no small feat. Some may argue that going to an achievement server is illegitimate; I'm healing when they're being hurt, so I see no harm. Eventually a buddy of mine, Jester, showed up, and that's where the real fun and hysteria began: we started beating the ever living daylights out of each other with different classes. There are several different achievement maps, but the one were we on was small and had large health and ammo packs everywhere, so getting back to full health and full ammo was as simple as walking in circles, which made killing your enemy all the more difficult. Jester became Heavy Weapons Guy, aka Heavy, and started tearing me a new one. Even worse, he walked 10 steps and was on my respawn point and tearing me down. Trusting my instincts, I changed to a Demoman and after many attempts, I finally took him down. Victory, but short lived. Respawn times were set to zero, so he immediately came back at me and I was dead, dead, dead, dead, dominated. We continued doing this for the next 20 minutes, and it was some of the most fun I ever had in TF2. We exchanged blows, becoming different classes. I eventually became Heavy and gave him such a hard time trying not to die every three seconds. We then started having a melee fight: his Heavy's punch vs my Demoman's broken glass of liquor. He won this easily, even killing me in one hit four times in a row. We then went Heavy vs Heavy and had so many laughs that we didn't want to stop. People eventually started showing up, and being an achievement server, I expected problems because they wanted their achievements, but these guys joined in and it made the night even more for us.

Jester loves being a sniper, so he found a sniper only server and we started playing one on one. Jester's a great guy, but he thinks he's a great sniper, so naturally I had to, in my own humility, put him in his place. We started playing and we were about even, and then a third guy showed up, and then a fourth, and we could no more have an epic personal battle. No biggy, it just made things more interesting. He dominated me two, maybe three times, and then the #1 ranked player on that server showed up: cry about it (that's his name). So we're playing and I'm noticing that this guy is getting his shots a little too well. I'm a decent sniper, but I can tell a hacker when I see one (having used them at one point gives me good insight to their actions). As we're playing, it's becoming more and more clear that something is up with this guy. Frustrated, and convinced, I eventually call him out, which was easy because all talk was on. No one noticed this guy until I mentioned his ability to never see me, yet appear and get a headshot instantly. The other players eventually catch on and Jester becomes a spectator and confirms my suspicions: the guy is a cheating punk of a hacker!

I was having so much fun that I eventually noticed the time: it just passed 4am. It's been quite a while since I stayed up that late playing a game, so surely I was having a great time. But then... that hacker showed up, and boy did he ruin a great mood. The hacker began chatting with us, saying that he didn't care if the account got banned because it was his brothers and he was dumb enough to have hacks on his computer (great excuse, jerk), so he had no cares or worries, despite making an awesome game a lousy one. I eventually said, "Well, I'm not going to stay up past 4am only to get shot up by a hacker, I'm out." I closed TF2 and went to bed.

What a great night of fun.... and then he showed up.