2 words to begin it all. I guess a good place to start would be my programming journey. After all, where would I be without it?
It all began when I found the most wonderful site on the internet: Neopets. For those of you not cool enough to know what Neopets is, it’s a magical place where you can raise virtual pets, train them to battle, play Flash games to acquire Neopoints (NP, the currency of the site), collect all sorts of items, sell those items in a customizable store, play the stock market, join a guild…the possibilities are endless.
If you were good enough at the Flash games, you could even acquire trophies to decorate your profile and let everyone know how l33t you were. On the first of each month, the leaderboards were reset and if you were able to get in the top 3 spots by midnight you’d have yourself a shiny new trophy to display. I had already collected a good amount of gold, silver, and bronze trophies. I was looking to add to my collection with a game called Extreme Potato Counter.
The concept was simple: each round count how many potatoes fly across the screen. The more rounds and potatoes one counts, the higher one’s score. I was eager to attain a trophy on reset night. So eager, in fact, that I downloaded an application to assist me in my triumph. I achieved glory, but it was short-lived as my account was suspended shortly afterwards. I attempted to reason with the site’s gatekeepers, but it was to no avail.
I immediately began scouring the interwebs for a new home. Luckily, many other teams realized the allure of Neopets and attempted to create rival sites with their own twist on the formula. I stumbled upon a list of such sites and proceeded to have accounts and new internet pets on many of them. One of them in particular began to beg more of my time than the others. This site was called Terapets (which apparently is now an Android game?).
One great thing about Neopets being so large was that there were many fansites, guides, and forums on all the minutiae one could possibly want to get lost in. This I sorely missed from Terapets. There were a smattering of basic sites but none were really the go to spot for all things Terapets. Armed with the little HTML knowledge I had from modifying my Neopets shop page and Myspace profile, I set out on a journey to create my first true website.
My memory is slightly fuzzy on the exact details, but I’m fairly certain I used Dreamweaver and a boatload of tables to create what was lovingly dubbed Wrath of Zoya. Zoya was one of the most difficult monsters one could battle on the site with their pets. Needless to say, I was eventually banned from this site, too. Thus ended my love of virtual pet sites, but not my love of programming. No, that was something that would stick with me for the foreseeable future.