August 5th, Saturday

OK, I've been gone a long time. Apparently they've done some things and my DSL may be staying for a while. Besides that, they won't let me cancel it. So I'm back.

Well, the last several weeks I've been occupied with my Unreal Tournament clan, {KS}. I'm not working or going to school right now, and I LOVE this game (this is THE best game ever made, no question), so I decided to immerse myself in the online/clan scene for a while. I play a lot on the Domination servers and I was getting to recognize a lot of the different clans: {KS}, -=AA=-, -[BHS]-, and <Ю�>. KiNgDOM from {KS} gave me the URL to the site and I applied. Next night I tried out with most of the guys, and I made it!! I've since been made War Arranger, though I also handle a ton of duties: I'm doing our custom clan skins, I do the error checking on the web site, I research all of ClanBase and ProvingGrounds' rules, I am chief strategist, I contact the CB and PG admins when there's some question, I contact the leaders/war arrangers from other clans, sometimes I'M ICQing with 3 or 4 European players at one time, very interesting; I post to all the DOM clans' message boards, I'm setting up an August/early September 3 team miniseries for the US clans, I try out the servers requested by our opponents, I am doing "action screenshots" of each of our members in a game and editing them in PaintShopPro for display on our site, I am also helping with .wav editing for the same purpose, I take all notes and updates in our private forum regarding practices and meetings for those members who couldn't make it, I send ICQ messages to each regarding any important news, I post regularly to the Planet Unreal Forums, I keep up with what's happening in the UT competitive ladders, I evaluate custom maps for use on one of our two servers, I send custom server settings to our admin, I take aerial view shots in UnrealEd of maps, I customize maps for our training server, I Demorecord all our practices and matches and then watch the "tape" and analyze, I spectate our opponents on public servers and then post the information, I suggest war assignments, I am in charge of recruiting, and I am one of our most devestating players!!

So you can see, it keeps me busy. My involvement lets the others spend less time worrying about all those administrative duties and more time in dealing with the game itself. It's a hell of a lot of fun, and I enjoy every bit of it, including the 2-3 hours of personal practice I do every day and the 4 or so hour practice sessions we have together 2 or 3 times a week. I even bought a Voodoo5 5500 AGP which has about tripled my frame rates, and helped my game enormously.

{KS} is excellent. We currently have 11 members, with one on the way out and another about to join. You could NOT ask for a nicer bunch of guys (and one girl, erica, aka AIRika). We are mostly in our twenties, although one is 15 and two are in their mid thirties. I enjoy their company all the time, be it online in a public server, in our chat room, in ICQ, or just communicating via the message board and email. These are guys who, like me, are in this to have fun and get as much hyper-enjoyment out of this fantastic game as possible. There are no rude people here. No Llamas. No whiners. We come to play hard and have fun. For the most part, the other clans in the Domination community are much like this as well. I've talked many times to the #1 ranked DOM player in the world, -=AA=-�|�|M|�|�|�.

As a result of my participation in this clan and my practice regimen, my own personal game has improved dramatically. At certain points, I am nearly unstoppable. I've overcome a lot of the demons that used to plague my ability to be a solid player, and I'm very happy with where I am at this point. I feel I've become a very experienced player, though I'm not as battle-tested as someone like Domino or Hyperion or Bert. That will come. I think we have a great chance of being one of the best in the world, though we have a long way to go.

Domination, you see, is a team game. You absolutely MUST play as a team if you have any hope of competing with the better clans out there. To that end, we are working on some very complex strategies and team commands. It's an ongoing project, and one which will take considerable time to perfect. But we're all dedicated. By the way, my name in UT is Entropica{KS}.

For a nice thread I started on PlanetUnrealForums (PuF), go here.I really got a great response on this one.

Well, this entry may seem a little one sided, maybe a little anally detailed, but hey, that's my life right now, and it's my diary, so