Ok, so here am I on my pc, having a beer on my 23rd anniversary. I was smoking a cigarette in the kitchen and started to think someting like "hell, I've been visiting the-elite for more than 8 years, that's like 1/3 of my life!".
It feels like yesterday I was told about the-elite (which wasn't even the-elite yet, it was just the PD/GE rankings), by an internet friend of mine who liked to speedrun PD, just like I did back in 2001. That friend just disappeared after a few months, and I've never seen him again since then. He used to help me write stuff to my PD walkthrough website, which was the best available here in Brazil. Anyway, he didn't know how this would affect my life. I gotta tell you, after I joined the-elite, my life changed. Yeah, I've wasted years playing PD/GE, like wtf these are just numbers on the screen, but I like that. I like that way that we speedrun to the limit. This is the place where I've learned 95% of my english. If wasn't for the rankings, I'd never be motivated enough to create the brazilian rankings and make some of my best friends, which helped me to create the website (laercio, knuckles) or joined after (diogo, ghus, mitrhil).
After a while, I realized that I couldn't play any game the same way anymore, "just for fun". I saw that I would try to do my best on whatever game I'd be playing, and find new strategies, and try to be fast whenever I could. Today I was driving back home, and I had to speed down a little at some point, and for a split second I thought "well, I better just not use the break here so I don't lose any speed". I mean, wtf. And I like that. If I didn't, I wouldn't been reading the boards almost every day for 8 years. I love when someone gets a crazy untied WR, or a new strategy is found. I tell everybody about the-elite, and I'm proud to be part of it!
I know most of you don't know much about me or what I do, well it's hard anyway since I'm too far away, on a different country with a different culture and etc. And I don't join chat that often (well basically I forget to join AIM sometimes =p). But I'd like to share with you guys how this place was, and IS part of my life, in a very positive way. It's fucking eight years, and I still enjoy visiting this god damn website the same way I did when I was 15 yrs old.
Long live the-elite!
