Absurd Minds

Hey guys,

My name is Gavin. Amaroq was gracious enough to answer some questions I had on the Steam forums and he mentioned your website and servers. I have since emailed him a few times and he has been extremely helpful answering my plethora of questions.

I played Counter Strike obsessively for 2 years back in 2001 and 2002. During this time, I co-owned a public server with several friends which was reasonably successful and a ton of fun! I also was a CAL admin briefly and then I later played in CAL league in a strong up and coming clan who eventually worked their way up through the ranks and held their own in CAL-I. I never made it past CAL-M, however, as I quit CS completely to pursue a career as a pilot.
Here I am 11 years later and on a whim, I decided to look into CS again. I have often thought about the game over the years, but always came up with an excuse not to play again. Finally I have given in and I would like to see what CS:GO is all about. I am now married with a 15 month old son and I travel often for work.

After reading through your website's mission statement and corresponding a fair amount with Amaroq, I feel that your clan would make a great fit for me. My primary interest in CS is league/competitive play because I'm big into teamwork and coordinating an action plan and strategy that works to defeat the opponent. That said, my current schedule doesn't really give me the opportunity to practice on a regimented basis, so I'm not sure if I will be able to really compete again in organized competition. Your servers sound like the next best thing where people try to play competitively, but have fun and are respectful. My favorite weapon was probably the AWP. I got rather good with it back in the day, but I'm told it has changed in CS:GO and is more difficult to use now. I'm hoping some of the muscle memory comes back to me.

I have a thread going in your Counter Strike forum where I'm working on putting together a machine to play CS:GO. Once I get the necessary components, I will be joining your server and I look forward to meeting you guys and playing with you. Perhaps if we all get along and you feel that I would be a good fit for your clan, I will be extended an invite. If not, your pub still sounds like a place that I would like to frequent.

I've got a lot of rust to dust off.... I mainly played during CS 1.2 & 1.3 and I think some of 1.4 as well.

Looking forward to seeing you guys around!

Gavin

Let me give you some back information so this doesn't sound too weird. I got counter-strike when I first went to college. This was literally the first time I ever had internet that was worth using. So I was highly paranoid of people internet stalking me, random strangers finding out where I live and killing me, etc etc. I was studying to become a math teacher, and a guy named Forrest Parkay wrote one of my text books. I thought to myself, "I'll just use his name. Then people won't search any further because they will actually think that's my name.

But I'm actually a girl. LOL.

Sorry for the obvious confusion. :/ It's really awkward when I meet people through the steam forums... I need to just make a new account.

But anyway, thanks for making a recruitment post. As I said in my emails to you, I think you're EXACTLY the type of player that would fit in with us. Most of us love competitive play but simply don't have the time to dedicate to it, so we try to create it as much as possible in our own servers.

While you're waiting for your computer to be built, you should hop into mumble from time to time and just hang out with us. There are usually a lot of people in there conversing and what not.

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Haha... yes, quite a surprise. The Steam name obviously, but for some reason I suppose I also just assume gamers are men, until evidence proves otherwise. Clearly a faulty assumption on my part, but perhaps somewhat reasonable as video gaming tends to be dominated by men (or used to be at least). There was one woman in the clan that I ran the public server with and it was really cool to have her around.

No problem! =-)
Thanks. I'm looking forward to playing with you guys!
Sorry, can you explain please how this is done? I don't know what mumble is, nor do I know how to join it. Do I need to have CSGO installed (even without the proper computer equipment) to do this?

Hey thanks for the recruitment thread. I am serial the other co-owner with amaroq. Everything you have said fits in exactly with what we want and are as a clan. We a tight family group that is more than just people we have met on the internet. We really consider each other friends. We love to play to our best ability and always try to win even when we are playing in our pub. Plus we have several people that want to do a team this summer when more of us have more time. Yeah, mumble is just like teamspeak or ventrilo so you can communicate. Mumble is open source free software though. Plus it has virtually no delay from the time you speak to the time we hear it, which we all feel is much more beneficial when trying to tell your teammate that an enemy is behind them! Don't worry though we will help you get in so you can start talking to all of us. Don't get intimidated by us though we have an eccentric group. I hope to see you around.

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I'm so official, like a dealer with a pistol or referee with a whistle.

Mumble is just a VOIP program, sort of similar to skype. All you need is a microphone to join. Simply download the program, do the automated set up for best microphone volume, and enter the server by clicking [url=mumble://absurdminds.murmur.nfoservers.com:5980/?version=1.2.3]this link9[/url]. The server is just a place where a bunch of people can hang out voice chatting with each other. Kind of like a chat room but with microphones.

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A pilot huh? I have some aviation experience myself from 'Nam. CAN'T wait to chat.

I'd really like to meet you. I haven't really been able to find time lately and my upcoming weeks are pretty busy. Hope to see you soon

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Since plastic is made from petroleum and petroleum comes from dinosaurs, then that means plastic dinosaurs are made from real dinosaurs

Thanks guys for the welcome! Looking forward to meeting all of you.

So the mumble server is just chatting right, not gaming? Or are you guys playing CSGO at the same time you are chatting in the mumble server? Sorry, all of this is a tad confusing and new to me. Once I get a microphone, I'll join the mumble and say hi.

Both. Many people in our clan will be in mumble at all times of the day, no matter what they're doing. For example, when I get home from work, I'll usually load mumble and just sit and talk to everybody while browsing the internet. The mumble server has multiple "channels", so if I get on to play with some of the members, we can go into a gaming channel and talk about the game without having to bother everybody and without being interrupted by general chit-chat.

Right now, this is what mumble looks like:



I think funny29 is currently playing Rust by himself and Jero is playing CS:GO by himself, but the rest of us are just sitting in here chilling. Actually right now nobody is talking, so they're probably just browsing the internet or something.

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Oh yes another pilot!! Can't wait to tell some stories!!

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Welcome to our forums. Always glad to meet new people.

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Northern
Life's short, so make the best of it

And I'm the baby, wa wa wa

Gu gu ga ga?

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4:3 1024x768
i7 2600k
Radeon HD 6790
16gb Ram
Razer Deathadder
Razer Blackwidow Ultimate
Steelseries QCK+ XL Navi Edition (Heavy)

Let me finish that for you.....

Gu gu ga ga gap gap gap!! Love you! :*

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jester?

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I'm so official, like a dealer with a pistol or referee with a whistle.

Now that you got the game running, you need to accept my friend request on steam and also come into mumble some!

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Friend Request.... done!

Mumble.... my microphone hasn't arrived yet, so that might be tough. Hopefully it gets here today or tomorrow. The only thing I ordered from a 3rd party so its taking longer.

Will any of you guys be playing CS tonight around 6:30-7:00 PST? I should be able to play for several hours this evening. Hoping some of you guys are around.

Yeah, we'll get on to play around then.

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Crap! Sorry, not going to work afterall. My wife's work schedule got changed last minute today so I won't be able to play for very long tonight. I might be able to play for 30 minutes or so in the next couple hours, not quite sure yet. I should for sure be able to play more later this week though.... Tues, Wed, Thurs.

Well it was fun playing CS for the first time in over a decade! Nice to get to play with you guys a bit. Sorry, it sucked not having a mic yet and not being able to communicate.

The biggest challenge I had was identifying enemies vs team mates. Any suggestions on this? I did try to use the radar but some situations the radar may not give a clear answer, or I'm just not good enough using it yet. There were many occasions where I delayed shooting at an enemy because I wasn't sure and didn't want to shoot my own team mate. One time I was a CT and I had actually sneaked up behind an enemy and his dress looked so much like a CT that I didn't shoot him twice. Finally he turned around and killed me. What suggestions do you have to help me improve on this?

Should i lower my resolution? Switch to 4:3 ratio? Something else? I'd love to get some feedback on this topic. Is there a way to change a setting so that all CT or Ts look the same in game?

Hopefully I can get this straightened out and get a little weapon practice in so that I can play a little better next time.

Cheers!