Last spring my son asked for a domain name and hosting account. No problem - I set him up at HostGator and then headed to GoDaddy.com to register a name.

Me: What name do you want?
Him: “Ultimate Ownage”
Me: Geez, what’s that? Sounds like some kind of bondage something or’nother!
Him: *laugh* it’s a gaming term, Mom
Me: Hm - K - cool…

The site was offline for awhile, but he put it back online tonight… so I was checking it out. I have to admit, it’s pretty cool - he has a great start on it anyway:
Ultimate Ownage AA Clan. (Warning: there’s music)

As I was clicking around on the site, I was really impressed with it. Sure I’m biased (what mom isnt?!) but I thought it was a pretty cool concept. The boys have been playing Americas Army for awhile now (a year or two, I think? -maybe longer…) and I like that he took the initiative to mastermind a clan group and put it online like that.

So I’m checking it out, click on the forum and I say:

Me: Nice, is that PHPBB?
Him: Yeah
Me: Cool, where’d you get that skin?
Him: I just downloaded the template from PHPBB.com and FTP’d it
Me: Sweet…

I find myself incredibly humbled by this child. Where it takes me a day or two to get a good start on a project, he can whip it up and skin it out in a matter of hours…

Two thoughts ran through my mind as I was checking this out with Zack tonight. The first being that I’m really glad that we’re close like we are, and that he keeps me in the loop with all of his cool projects (some of which are so far over my head it isnt even funny, lol). The second being a memory of his first interests in computers - and then gaming.

I still to this day say “Slowly, Lowly” (in the funny voice) to the kids from time to time, which comes from the first little computer program that Zack played. I think he was barely 4 years old, and the game was - well I cant remember the name of the game. Anyway, it would say that all the time and it got stuck in my head… but I dont even know if the kids (the older kids - my son and stepdaughters) even remember where that came from .

The only game I ever played on that computer was Solitaire - and I had to have my husband turn it on and off for me so that I could do that (dont laugh ). We ended up trading that system for a Chevy S10 pick-up truck… It was a top of the line 486 Packard Bell hehe.

Our next computer was a DX50 with a 9600 baud modem and by this time Zack was 5 years old and we were “online”. I had left my job as a Unix Sys Admin and was home full time starting our first business by then.

So I think Zack must have been 6, going on 7, when he took a serious interest in network gaming. By then I had the business off the ground and in a shop with a 5000 sq ft showroom. I had gotten bored with just managing the business and doing the bookkeeping, so I went into computer training and custom pc builds on the side. I ordered 6 new systems and set them up in the showroom to do training classes at night.

Those 6 systems, along with the other computers we had running throughout the shop, doubled as a gaming station on the weekends. At the time we were playing Quake II CTF, and when the cable modems first came out we started up network gaming tournaments.

And I mean that cable modems had just come out. They werent available publicly, but we had a beta line at the shop to showcase the service. So at that point, there were no upload/bandwidth limitations. Made for some pretty cool gaming …

Anyway, when I first got those 6 systems in (I want to say they were P166’s - and we thought they “screamed” hehe), we were going to wait until the weekend to set them up. Zack was like a kid at Christmas though, and finally asked if he could set them up himself. I kind of laughed and said “Sure - go for it”.

Two hours later he had all six computers set up, operating systems installed, Quake II installed, and network cable run… and he invited two of his friends over to play.

Zack was always involved in our network game tournaments on the weekends. He was the youngest member of our team at just 6 or 7, of course - but he was one of the better players. He would play into the wee hours of the morning with the rest of the group and everyone treated him like “one of the guys”. Of course ‘BFG’ stood for ‘Big Firing Gun’ etc - but everyone wanted him on their team, so nobody minded keeping it clean.

I played too of course, and it was just something fun we always did on weekends. We usually had 20+ people show up for the tournaments on Friday and Saturday nights… and I guess that’s where Zack got his love for network gaming and first person shooter.

He’s a cool kid. I guess in a way I regret getting out of gaming myself - but gosh, one of us had to work, lol. At least I can relate to him on it all… I’m glad for that. I’m awfully proud of him, if you cant tell *grin*. And sorry for the walk down memory lane… I was just feeling a little nostalgic

Zack is actually working on a game of his own, which I’ll let you know more about once he gets ready to go to market with it. He’s been working on this project for almost two years now and it’s super cool!

p.s. Zack - if you are reading this and I made you blush and go - I’m terribly sorry. Moms are bad for that!

Tags: network gaming, teenagers, americas army, clan