Almost as fun as "Adventures With"!

My story's not as good or funny or referential to Sam's story as Brunnen_G's.

It started when I was *really* bored one time after school and my friend and I started playing our cardless Magic: the Gathering game. Cardless Magic is like, I don't know, pieceless chess or robotless BattleBots; it's kind of impossible and pointless. So what it really was was us doing freeform roleplaying and making up new and inventive ways for our hypothetical all-powerful wizard characters to kill each other, making sure to get plenty of references to pop culture, geek culture, and in-jokes.

Then some random passerby said, "Hey, you two sound just like Duel of the Ages."

And I said, "Huh?"

And he said, "Never mind."

That was about it for that phase.

Okay, okay, so that's not really the beginning, but it was more like a false start.

Then one day, a year or so later, I was browsing USENET and somehow came upon a link to some guy's favorite Computer Stupidity story. I read it, and thought, "Oh, man, that's pretty funny." Then I read the other ones, and thought, "Oh, man, those were pretty funny too." So I saw there was a link up to the rest of the site, and I clicked on a link for Slapdash City. "Hey," I thought, "everything around here seems like it's pretty funny." Then I did some poking around, and lo and behold! The Duel of the Ages.

After I recovered myself, wiped the spittle from around my monitor and managed to get my breathing down to a reasonable rate, I came to a conclusion:

"This site is pretty funny."

After a bit more puttering around, I quickly found another conclusion:

"This site is pretty big."

I spent the next few months of my life exploring the glory that was Rinkworks. I found surprisingly many things that I had taken for granted as just existing living here; all those "stupid people" stories, the Apogee FAQ, the Duel of the Ages, etc. Finally, an Internet site with some depth, with some variety, with some *culture*. I still consider Rinkworks my portal site. (Even though, of course, it's not really a portal, it feels big enough to be one. Who needs the rest of the 'Net when you have Rinkworks?)

I avoided the RinkForum and RinkChat for a while, since, on the whole, I didn't feel up to participating in an online community at that time, what with having no social skills and no RL friends and all. But I kept visiting Rinkworks off and on, just to read the ever-growing Computer Stupidities page, and play the AGLs, and even send in questions for the trivia games. (Of course, mine tended to be poorly worded and grossly unfair; I apologize to all my victims.)

And then, one day, it dawned on me:

"Rinkworks is part of my life. Why, then, should I not become part of its life?"

No, actually I lie. It went more like:

"Nothing to do today... Guess I'll read the RinkForum and see if there's anything interesting... Hey, a death penalty thread.... Too bad no one seems to share my opinion so far, it always bugs me when discussions start off one-sided.... Hey, wait a minute. *I* have a computer. *I* can post. Why shouldn't I be as good as anybody else? Or at least somewhere above the level of toleration? And with school over for the summer, my parents have no excuse to stop me! Muhuhuhahaha!"

And then I started getting *responses*... And people were talking to me like I was a *person*, not a newbie... And I even started getting *e-mails* (don't get me started on how my RL friends never e-mail or IM or even call anymore)...

So, hey, I figured, why not drop by RinkChat, too? Those archives looked pretty funny, sounds like it'd be cool...

And the rest is history. A kind of short one week or so history, but history.

Ar"likes telling his stories because he rarely has interesting ones"thur

P.S.: Before I forget: Rinkworks ROCKS! Everybody thank and worship Sam! And give lesser thanks and worship to all the regulars, too, of course, who are too numerous to name here. YAY RINKYDINKS! *collapses in a heap of sheer enthusiasm*