I was just starting up my freshman year of college and this kid down the hall told me a new HL mod was coming out. I decided to give it a spin and was instantly hooked. The problem is, my college had some crap wireless line to feed the entire campus and it wasn't rare to spike to the max ping consistently.
I guess the first time I really got addicted was the following summer when we got a cable connection at home. I began playing on this pretty neat server Free SunnyD which culminated in an incredible series of games with Flayra, MonsE, LB, TommyD, etc, pretty much every mapper/dev/influential PT you can think of (I'm hesitant to name more names since it's been over a year, hehe). I think it was for the 2.01 release... but it's been a while, hehe.
Anyways, I got slotted up sometime the next couple days, and then unfortunately had to leave for evil college world where the pings were even worse than the previous year. Fortunately, the college wised up and got some new equipment for the next semester, so now I'm back in action and getting almost no res kicks, which is nice
And thus ends the Ballad of SydneyCarton (he's Sydney, Sydney Carton, greatest lil' hobbit of them all).