Hard to believe they grow up so fast. Today is 13 years that my web site, The 6th Floor has been online. What is even more amazing is the transformation the site has taken over all those years. Originally opened as Oswald’s 6th Floor Map Depository in support of map reviews for the Quake 2 modification, Action Quake 2. While I have all the original content archived, the Way Back Machine has no records dating back to 1999 when I was hosted at my ISP, The Loop when I lived in Redondo Beach, CA.

While I don’t remember exactly when the moved happened, I made the hosting jump to Planetquake, which worked to my advantage, allowing more gamers to be exposed to my rantings. The relationship with Action Quake 2 would last until June, 2000 when I would start looking in a different direction for The 6th Floor. Interest in Action Quake 2 was waning and new PC games, such as Quake 3, Half-Life and Unreal Tournament were the games on the horizon. I wrote a few pieces and compared some of the upcoming “mods” that were being developed using the Quake 3 engine, which could possibly replace Action Quake 2, since the development team was moving to a different game engine. Enter Urban Terror.

I was fortunate enough to start my 10 year relationship with this mod, which led to many great memories, trips, people and a hell of a lot of wasted time in my life. I don’t regret any of it. Hell, I met the girl I would marry playing Urban Terror! The 6th Floor started supplying a week poll question to the Urban Terror web site in early 2000. The relationship I had with some of the early developers, Brian, aka Preacher and Sam, dokta8 got me on the fast track and more involved with the development team and the modification.

The 6th Floor was also my base of operation when it came to ‘shoutcasting’ or providing commentary for online gaming. I aligned myself with TsN (Team Sportscast Network), followed by Radio iTG a few years later. I would be the only caster to provide coverage for Urban Terror at Clanbase. I also introduced gamers who played Medal of Honor to shoutcasting coving the MoHi (invitational league) followed by further coverage at Clanbase. I even ran my weekly 80’s show, Just Push Play off here.

Based on this story, I closed the door on my participation on the development team in 2008. Either I don’t have all those years updated, but at any point I made a quiet exit from the entire online gaming and Urban Terror scene. Since that time my has been my own. The site when stale for periods, but reemerged as my personal blog.

Gone but not completely forgotten is all the gaming related material, but more recently I have focused my efforts on using this as my journal talking about my life. Amateur radio seems to take front stage at times, as does fantasy football when the NFL season rolls around. But there is much more that I continually add to T6F. Since changing my diet (aka lifestyle) I have been promoting the success I have had in just 3 months.

If nothing else my site gives me the freedom to do whatever the hell I want to do. While I vowed I would never participate in “social networking” my site and participation existed long before Facebook, MySpace and Twitter came along. I still enjoy posting daily bits of information, relevant or not. As for the social networking aspect, I do link each post I make at Facebook for “friends.” Never once did I think I would still own my domain name and actively update The 6th Floor. I am glad I have and look forward to many more years!

Thanks to everyone who has supported my site over the years!