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These past five years have been... wow. What can I say? No one reads this blog of mine, but I read it myself. So I need something to read about me some time later in the future.

Let's go back to summer 2004. I was only 10 years old. I was sitting on my dad's bed, watching him on the computer. Only me and my parents were home. My two brothers (oldest and youngest) were out with their friends somewhere. So my dad turns to me and asks, "Want to go to ICE?" Then, he turns back around to check their website to make sure it was open at that current time of night. Excited, I kept asking him repeatedly, "What is ICE?" He told me on the way there about how it was a computer cafe for LAN gaming. When I got there, I met the owner, Scott, right when I walked in. I shook his hand as my dad greeted him to me, as I eyed the players at the computer tables. I saw them playing Unreal Tournament 2004. As soon as I was able to get on a computer, I excitedly went onto Unreal Tournament 2004 and started configuring my settings, using an alias I used at the time. UnKnown.

Little did I know that it was instagib mode. Quickly, I learned that it was one shot one kill, a mode I never played before at home. Right when I knew the gameplay, the owning began. Instagib mode came quick to me. Crazy reflexes, shooting down everyone on sight. Had one hell of a KDR at the end of the first match. I remember one of the gamers on the other computer table stand up and say, "Who's UnKnown?" I kept in my laugh, amazed at how good I was.

Around these times, I also became part of a server called The Yaypit TFC on Team Fortress Classic. It's a community (different somewhat now) I will follow all the way up to this day. Axl's TFC was also one of them, and it has now evolved to Axl's TF2 today after a dead period on Impulse TFC.

5th grade (which started August 04) was the funnest school year I ever had. Our whole class knew each other, since most of us have been together since kindergarten. Our teachers were great and gave us free time after tests. Kyle, my best friend, and I would jam to Green Day's Amerian Idiot album at his house, which is right next door to me.

Through just one year after that day, I experienced so much at ICE, being in a thriving community and all. Just months prior to being at ICE, I had a community tag representing the Internet cafe. (It went from [ICE], to {1C3}, and finally {!C3}.) My dad was good friends with Scott and would even help with computer repairing. I went to most of the lock-ins. There were tournaments and food. I would constantly win the Unreal Tournament 2004 tournaments that they had and get prizes. I remember a tropical storm past through during the one adult lock-in they had (that I still went to). There were even videos of the first few lockins. (I managed to get the August 2004 lockin, but never retreived the November and December videos before they were gone.) 7PM to 7AM lock-ins, and damn they were fun. People would be whip-creamed if they fell asleep. I still remember the time I got whip-creamed near the end of the early October lock-in, when I was actually trying to fool them into thinking that I was sleeping.

They had their own website, with a forum I visited regularly. I learned how to play DDR very well. I introduced my best friends to the place. I met some friends I still know today like Kyle K. (I still remember when he got destroyed in karaoke by a little girl at the March 2005 lock-in), Daniel, Cory... I met Scott's brother Jeff (Brotha{!C3} or something like that) and Scott's wife, Nikki. (Jeff was the one to invite me into the {!C3} community clan.) Overall, I loved being at ICE Computer Cafe. When they moved their business into a larger building across the parking lot in March 2005, I volunteered in helping by removing tiles every time I visited. They would walk back and forth from the gaming center to the one they were constructing.

The new ICE Computer Cafe was even better. Larger space, more computers and X-Boxes. Lock-ins rocked even more. In March Soon enough, my 6th grade year began at Riverdale Middle in August 2005, and I was with my older brother Jacob. When Hurricane Katrina came through, I stayed in Sulphur, Louisiana, with my family and aunt at my great uncle's house for a few weeks and was put into school at Maplewood Middle. Through those weeks, we jammed to techno, and I'm listening to some of it for the sake of nostalgia.

We went back when Hurricane Rita threatened that area. When we came back, ICE was unaffected and was already back open by the time we came back. I continued getting better at DDR, still killed it in UT2K4, and moved on to other games such as Counter-Strike Source and Half-Life 2 Deathmatch. My two best friends Kody and Kyle R. started to come to some of the lock-ins. They were even part of Halo 2 tournaments with my brother Jacob. And yeah, tournaments became even better. Raffle tickets would be handed out every lock-in, and people would win prizes. (Even though pretty much everybody would win something.) I bought an ICE shirt with the $20 certificate I recieved one lock-in. (I still have it.) Scott, the owner, basically made ICE... ICE. He was like one of us, basically. Participated in his own tournaments, hung around, and was extremely friendly. Without him, ICE wasn't much. The community was still mainly mature, yet we had loads of fun at the same time.

Meanwhile, through 6th grade at Riverdale Middle, I met many new friends due to residents coming around us after Hurriane Katrina. It was a fun school year, but not as awesome as 5th grade. Classes were fine and all. My friends Dallen and Saint followed me to Riverdale, and we became three good buddies. We were good fans of KnoxsKorner's klaymations back in the day, and even made our own klaymation videos. (I still have our first video and some others on my Youtube account.) Jacob, Dallen, Saint, and I would get rides home daily with Jacob's friend AJ's dad. We would goof around every ride home, even AJ's dad himself. But, throughout that whole school year, ICE was on my mind. I would constantly ask my dad on weekend nights if we could go to ICE. I still went to some of the lock-ins. I managed to get Saint to come to ICE as a birthday present in February 06.

When 6th grade ended, I went to all the lock-ins for that following summer of 2006. I can't remember if my team won the UT2K4 tournaments at both lock-ins, but we probably did. Meanwhile, I found some habits to occupy me during the summer when I wasn't at a lock-in at ICE. I rode my bike around my neighborhood, and I started a hobby that became huge today: video-making. I made my first video just weeks before summer, and it was now a regular hobby I did through that whole summer and so on. (You can find them on video.google. I made videos for the Yaypit HL2DM community, live in-game videos on Counter-Strike Source, and other stuff.) Speaking of the online community Yaypit, the server went away during the end of the summer (followed by the website in November) and was replaced by The Monastary HL2DM, which was basically almost the same community.

As my most boring school year started (7th grade), my dad, brothers, and I started to go to ICE less often, mainly because of gas money, but the community wasn't any farther from our minds. We still visited every month. I can't believe it happened, but the mature community started to slowly fade as 2007 rolled around, and it was being replaced by younger kids. Friends we knew weren't around anymore. Sure, it was still fun to visit because Scott and a few old friends were still around, but it went from mostly adults + teenagers to mostly teenagers + some kids. This was because Scott began to advertise the Internet Cafe as a place for kids. Still, it was no problem for my brothers and I. My dad and Scott were still great pals. I focused more on Half-Life 2 Deathmatch and DDR as UT2K4 began to fade from popularity when I was there. (I also began to lose my skill in instagib.) Counter-Strike Source was also still a huge thing. We went to one or two lock-ins in that January-April 2007 range. I remember my brother Jacob and I won our last UT2K4 tournament at one of them, but it was difficult due to my fading skill in instagib. Meanwhile, most of my friends were now concentrated on World of Warcraft by this time, including my brothers (Jacob and Luke) and father. FPS gaming at the Internet Cafe became less active, but it was still alive. (Halo 2 was still beastin.)

In February 2007, my movie-making skills finally came to the surface of the Internet. My "UnKnown Moments" video on Youtube became popular. Kyle K., a good friend from ICE that was mentioned earlier, helped spread the video over WoW since he loved it so much. Corey (also mentioned as an ICE friend earlier) also saw and liked it.

7th grade finally ended. Summer came around at the end of May. I was now 13, and it was months by then since we've visited ICE and seen some good friends. Scott then invited us to a swimming pool party for his little kid Scott Jr. in July. There, I saw some good old peeps like Jeff, Nikki, and Scott himself. Kyle K. was there, I believe. We had fun the whole day in the large swimming pool in the backyard, while their surround-sound radio jammed tunes to make the moments more interesting. It was a great-sized party as a whole. It was an awesome way of revisiting the starters of a community that was now 3 years old at that time. Later that day, I showed him my UnKnown Moments videos, along with the rest of his family. He told me to let him know when I was going to have the second one out.

Just weeks later, it turns out that Scott recently sold the ICE Computer Cafe. He was working on another room for birthday parties WAY too fast and lost money to the point where he had to sell the place. It was pretty bad to hear it at first, but then I became optimistic about it. The place was still there, Scott was still going to be there for computer repairing, and it was just a new owner. So my brothers, dad, and I went to the lock-in at the end of July. It was the first lock-in with the owner, and it was the last we ever went to. It wasn't the same with the new owner, who was this lady in her 40s or something that was mainly about business than fun. I was disappointed, and the tournament I was looking forward to was canceled due to some engine errors on CSS. Scott wasn't there or any of his relatives. DDR pads were now broken, so there went that. I basically jammed to rave music all night and played a little LAN on CSS, for the kids who DID play it. And worse, most of the people there were young kids. Only a few of them were teenagers. It came known to me that this community won't be the same ever again. That was the last time I ever went... I haven't seen the original ICE crew ever since the pool party, which was 2 years ago now. That community was golden for 3 years, from 04 to 07.

Most of that summer of 2007 was the boredom of Saint and I. He always came by, because we were both basically bored. We would go in the back behind our house into the remaining of the woods and just find something entertaining to do. That was one boring summer. Though, I did start to become from a nerd to an average guy. I used to wear glasses until the middle of 7th grade, and now I ditched the watch at that point. Sagged my pants like an idiot, though.

I went on into eigth grade. Immediately, Saint began to talk to these new preppish kids. Dallen and I basically followed with him after a few days of sitting on this bench by ourselves. It was already a different school year, because I became friends with all these guys. They were already in my honors classes, anyway, so I thought that I might as well talk to them. But by the time it was the next year (2008), I already felt like these new friends of mine didn't even see me as a friend. I went into some sort of depression the first 5 months of that year, begging for that school year to be over with. My classes were better than last year's, but it's the friends that kept me happy. I was preparing to go to L.W. Higgins High, in my district, instead of Riverdale High across the river. Higgins was in my district, and I was supposed to go to Henry Ford Middle like my best friends Kyle and Kody did. I was basically isolated from my original friends for those three years at Riverdale Middle, and I was starting to go into a breakdown near the end of it, since I longed for my original friends again from elementary, who went to Henry Ford Middle, unlike me. Near the end of the school year, I began to work out... all the way till the end of the school year. I gained muscle and lost the only fat I had. (I'm skinny.)

Right when summer 2008 hit, I sprung into happiness and joy. Depression suddenly went away like it was only a quick-passing thunderstorm. My sleeping habits were inverted, with me sleeping at daytime and up during nighttime. I always listened to trance music and DJ Magix, which always put me in such a positive mood. The sudden drawback from depression caused me to suddenly fall into love/obsession with a girl I haven't seen since elementary. I had a crush on her all these years, and the sudden widthdrawal from depression caused me to fall into some sort of love. I made blogs about my feelings constantly, almost every day, about a girl who has no feelings for me at all. Things that I love were somehow reminding me of her, like the sunsets and nighttime. I could only talk to her on Myspace due to the distance, but I never bothered. By then, some part of me knew that she didn't even want to be my friend anymore. (I don't know why.) I kept hiding this realization until near the end of the summer, fearing that I would fall into depression again if this feeling grew into depression. Meanwhile, I was extremely excited for L.W. Higgins High School, since Kyle, Kody (my two best friends), and I would be in the same school again after 3 years.

The first day of high school came around. August 11th, 2008. The weather was made of summer humidity and rain clouds. Kyle and I had to sit together, since the bus was so crowded. Our bookbags were on our laps, patiently waiting for the arrival of our first year of high school. We were prepared to hang out with Kody (Kyle's older brother) and his friends that we've known all the way back to '02 like Demetri, Ashton, and Johnathan. They were seniors now, the ones I mention at least. We went into the gazebo with them. The weather was so muggy, I remember Demetr saying, "God is t-bagging us." Kyle and I had all the same classes except the class I was taken out of honors, English (did lazy last year due to my depression). I met many of Kyle's friends from Henry Ford in our classes. Just to name a few: Meghan, Casey, Don, Josh, Jordan, Tuyet, Allen, Julian... I even came across friends I hadn't seen since elementary like Casey J., David K., and Heidi G.. It was great! Some of our classes were a joke, so Kyle and I didn't take them so seriously. (The school had a horrible academic performance, so it was pretty easy to pass.)

The new group I was with was much better than the preppy group at Riverdale. At no point did I ever want to be back at Riverdale. I became really good friends with most of the group, and the rest seemed like they were my best friends, such as Don and Tuyet. Kyle and David K. already knew them back at Henry Ford, so it wasn't a problem for me to become part of their group. I didn't care that my school was bad, because as long as my friends were with me, I was just fine.

Freshmen year was the quickest year I have ever had. I know for sure, because I just finished it on the 25th of May, almost two weeks ago. I can't really tell you everything that happened, because that's how fast it went for me. Unfortunately, my bigger brother Jacob dropped out of school as a junior and moved out of our house as soon as his 17th birthday rolled around (back in January).


Now I sit here, finishing my moment of looking back at the last 1/3 of my life. I'm 15 years old at the moment now. Time doesn't look like it's going fast in the present, but you realize it sure did when it becomes a memory.

The Monastery/Yaypit community is still alive, definitely. Check them out at monagames.net . Their current server is The Chapel HL2DM. My videos have improved greatly since I've began making them, and they continue to get better.

I can't wait for the next three years to go by, because every year seems to be a great story to tell. Who knows? Maybe Scott will get another ICE up and running since he still owns the franchise. Can't wait to see what's in store in the next three years. :)