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I have spent the last three and a half years struggling to build a business. So far I haven't had a moment yet where I had both money in my pocket and the prospect of enough future income that I could afford a nice long vacation. Once, after a big sale, I treated myself to a nice massage. It was great, but it was also over in about 60 minutes. I was a little dejected. I had been working seven days a week for months, and my only escape was fleeting at most. That was when I decided I deserved a toy. Luckily, President Bush obliged me by returning some of my money. So,I decided to buy myself a Sony PSP.

The last time I played video games on a regular basis, MTV was in its infancy. My brother was the one who wanted a Nintendo game system. I got sucked in when he got the epic fantasy quest game Legend of Zelda. I played for hours. I quickly became expert at Super Mario Bros (1, 2 and 3), Contra (and Super Contra!) and many others. When my brother traded in the glitchy Nintendo for the more-stable Sega game system, I was on board and came to love Batman, Road Rash (1 & 2), Streets of Rage (1 & 2), and Final Fantasy.

Then I went to college, and lived in a dorm. Back then, we weren't required to have our own personal computers, and I didn't have a television in my room either. So there were no more video games. The campus computer labs sometimes had games on them, but my college years were the burgeoning years of the World Wide Web, so instead of seeking out computers that might have the first version of Civilization loaded, I instead devoted myself to exploring the Internet, learning about chat rooms and Mosaic, and browsing the now-archaic Gopher/Telnet directory-based system of the Internet. That, plus studying, working, and having a social life, ended my video-game playing days. When I came out the other side of college, it was off to the real world no time for video games anymore.

My early working years were a blur. I was working all the time, and didn't have a computer at home. During that time I missed out on the rise of first-person shooter games like Doom and Delta Force. I also missed out on pure strategy games like Myst, and the early Multi User Dungeons (MUDs).

I found a loving group of friends who played video games. William was the first. In the rooming house where we lived, he played first person shooter games and strategy games, gobbling them up as fast as they came out. I would sit and watch over his shoulder, enjoying it as he put animated skeletons out

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