Hello, for those who don't know me, I'm Skies. As for my history, I was a closed and open beta tester for CA, my original name being Pyre, then switching to a new account under the name of BurningSkies for reasons I don't remember. For a while, I was in a clan called SuperVillain, founded and led by Gigi, and I think they went on to become a pretty big CA clan under a different name. I joined Team Paragon when it was only a couple days old (in-game), after Harold asked me to join in a Nexon Forum game. This was back when I was averaging 3.0 ratios, as apposed to my lucky-to-get-a-1.0-kd I have going now. I played until the end of summer until I finally had enough of Nexon's incompetence, and I quit playing CA for OP7. Then we picked up OP7 as a div and I joined that, for a while. Was going fine until my computer did nothing but lag, at which point I went inactive for a long time, which was sometime around Fall 2009, IIRC. Then, this December (2010), I got a used gaming computer from a friend for $250. This allowed me to resume activity in TP, so I rejoined the CA div, as most of you probably know.
As for my IRL, I'm 18 years old, and about to graduate high school. I'm currently looking at attending a community college for a year or two, then transferring to a university. That, or I might join the Air Force, because it would allow me to get some good experience in many fields, and help pay for college. Ultimately, I want to go into a scientific or technological job. I've been using computers since I was 4, and I've been actually learning useful things about computers for 5 years. I currently have about 4 solid years of experience in Photoshop, and general graphic design is my strong point. I have been doing more or less serious web design (apposed to editing the HTML on myspace layouts. Lol, myspace.) for 2 years, and I've gotten fairly decent at it. Competed on the national level this year for it, which I'm pretty proud of.
My interests are computers, guns, nature, science, technology, and reading. I've already gone over most of my computer stuff, but as well as what I said, I play other vidya games, and also occasionally Second Life, which I used to play a lot in 08, prior to Combat Arms. I'm a gun person, although not very violent. As soon as I move out I plan to purchase an 870 or a 590 for home defense and target practice. (My dad is not a gun person.) As well as my technological interests, I also really love the outdoors. Camping, canoeing, hiking, and all that good stuff. I'd really like to move to either a northern semi-rural area (Alaska, Wyoming, something like that), or somewhere in the southwest such as Arizona or New Mexico some day. My favorite genre of most everything is post-apocalyptic. Books, movies, shows, games, etc. I don't know why, I just do. But I also like scifi, western, and other stuff.
As a person, I'm a bit of an introvert, but once I'm comfortable with a person or group, I'm fairly outgoing. This stems from the treatment I received in previous years, although at least now I'm being myself. For the most part, I've been a dork/geek/nerd thing all my life. Starting in the 8th grade, I tried to run from that. In my freshman year, I finally was one of the "cool" kids, sort of. I wasn't preppy, but I fit in with the alt/emo crowd. I really hate looking back on it now, though. It wasn't who I was, at all, and I ended up being mean to the very people I used to be. I deeply regret that. The past couple of years, though, I've completely given that up and embraced who I am as a misfit geeky kid, and it's really helped me.
I've also been prone to depression over the past 6 years (6 years ago, almost 7, is when I moved to Texas). It's gotten better as I've made the transition to being myself, but sometimes it lingers back and I just can't get it to go away. Usually I can at least maintain contentment, though, now. Part of this, I feel, is my new appreciation for life as an atheist. I was born and brought up in a very Christian family, where for the longest time I was solid in my faith. But I've dropped it after having done a lot of research and questioning to the validity of my beliefs. And I've found it's actually easier for me to have morals, purpose, and happiness without faith in God. So, yeah, that's a big thing in my life right now.
And that's all she wrote.