(I know I'm 2 days late but I wrote most of this the day of before work stuff happened)
Today, marks the first anniversary of the day that I first heard S3rl - June 16th, 2015. A whole bunch of things have happened in my life to get me where I am now, and so I’ve done my best at telling my story about who I am, what I’ve done, what I do, and what I’m going to be doing, and how S3rl and raving have been involved in my life.
Sorry it’s so ridiculously long.
I moved schools 3 times as a child and never really made any strong friends or got involved in what was "popular" and I was pretty miserable. Things changed in 8th grade when I suffered a very large concussion in a biking accident. If I hadn't been wearing a helmet I would have died, but instead I ended up smashing my face against the pavement for a couple meters. I don't know anything for sure, but that concussion changed me, it made my emotions suppressed. That meant that although I never got much more than mildly sad, I never was truly happy either. One of the other side effects is that I only experience some emotions on the right or left side. For example, when I'm listening to a really good song and the bass drops, I only get goosebumps on my left side. It's really weird. Anyways this kind of constant neutral state meant that I could do schoolwork without getting frustrated or bored, and I started to excel in school. As I moved into high school, I joined the robotics team as a programmer. I easily list robotics as the second most influential thing in my life other than S3rl. My first year on the team, freshman year, was disaster. We had 7 motor controllers burn out in a single day and never advanced past qualifying rounds. That experience gave me a strong resolve to do better, as I was not going to watch my work literally go up in flames again. The next year, sophomore year, was the year that first defined who I am today. Our team had lost many members and mentors after the poor performance of the previous year, but through hard work and dedication, working in the machine shop 14 hours a week, the remaining members and I built a robot that could compete and compete well. It nearly did not work, but luckily at the last moment we designed a magnetic release mechanism that allowed the robot to operate pneumatics with a much higher speed than was normally possible. Due to this, our odd, easel-shaped robot was able to overpower even some of the world class teams. That year we first advanced past qualifying, then into eliminations, then onto the state championship, where we went undefeated for our first 7 games and won the prestigious GM Industrial Engineering award. After being damaged in our 8th match, we were unable to repair enough of the robot to win our last 4 matches. Within 4 matches, we had fallen from 1st to 22nd, and had almost no competitive appeal yet we barely edged into eliminations, as the last pick of the last alliance. In competitive robotics, the last alliance first faces against the first alliance in a best of 3, and we were facing overwhelming odds. Every team on the first alliance had won at least one world championship before, and nobody on our alliance had even won a regional. But then a miracle happened. Right before the match, we finished repairing our robot and played a stiff defense, and shockingly won our first match by a large margin. Then disaster – an error on the field had interfered with the autonomous operation of our opponents, losing them a couple points. Therefore, the match had to be replayed. Even if you had assumed a best case scenario for the first alliance in the autonomous period, we still would have won. Nonetheless, we replayed the match, and once again handed the first alliance another large defeat. Then the world fell out from beneath our feet once again – that match had the same error and was also invalidated. Keep in mind that the error was so minor, that if it had not occurred it would have only affected the outcome by a few points. The next match we won once again, but this time it was by a smaller margin. It was declared valid and we continued into the second match. By that point, our robots had become battle weary and desperately needed maintenance, and our drive teams and pit crews exhausted but we had to push onwards. The second match, which was actually the fourth match we had fought against the first alliance, was when the dream crumbled. By that point the first alliance had gained plenty of experience and had figured out our strategy. We lost by a small margin. The same thing happened again in the third match. After our alliance of no-name teams had done the impossible, defeating the first alliance 3 times in a row, and nearly eliminating them, we had lost the last 2 crucial matches and were eliminated. To this day we question if it was right for the referees to force a replay, even when we had won by enough to make up for the points lost. It was when that final score went up on the Jumbotron when I was at my lowest. But out of the ashes of our defeat arose a phoenix. After the elimination matches had finished and a winner found, there was still an awards ceremony and announcement of teams who qualified for the world championship. Completely unexpectedly, we had won the State Championship GM Industrial design award, due to the rugged design of our magnetic release mechanism, which had experienced zero failures the entire championship, even surviving through the most vicious ramming and roughest collisions. We returned to our seats proud and refreshed. Then after the awards ceremony, they began to read the names of the teams that had qualified for the world championship. With each team number they read aloud our hope slowly faded, until we heard our team number, 4362, appear on the Jumbotron and echo through the stadium. All at once our team rose up in celebration. We were hugging each other like we had just won the lottery, and a few of us were crying, including me. It was the happiest moment of my life. Soon after, announcements finished and “Don’t Stop Believing” by journey came over the loudspeakers. Me and my teammates locked arms, and we all started singing. That song still has special meaning to me today, because we had lived it. Our team was that city boy. We were all actually born and raised in South Detroit. We had taken the midnight train going anywhere. And we never stopped believing. In one year, we had transformed from complete failures to a world class team. Next thing I knew the world championships were over, with us taking 99th out of 100 in our division. But it didn’t matter, because we had made it. Then the part that’s actually applicable to raving happened. After the world championships, they hold a giant afterparty. It turns out that at the afterparty there was a giant rave. At the time I had just started listening to EDM, and when I saw it I knew it was calling me. I really wish I could say that I went in and I danced until the lights went on and music silenced, but that would be a lie. My idiot friend was there, and he didn’t want to go, and me being much less confident than I am today I very stupidly followed him away. My only keepsake is one red glowstick I picked up off the floor before I left. I regret very few things about my life, and that is one of my biggest regrets. The next year, 11th grade, we returned to the worlds championship and after it was all over I excitedly rushed to where the rave had been only to find an empty room. Apparently it had to be cancelled, because during the previous year, people were doing bad things in the rave (Robotics is a high school sport, so almost everyone is a minor). I kind of just sat in the room and listened to music for a while, then I left without ever getting the chance to jump to music under the lasers and smoke. Between last year and this year however, I found S3rl. I was travelling for business on behalf of my robotics team, and had just returned to the hotel. What I did while I worked or resting was to visit plug.dj and listen to mostly trance and house music. For those of you that are unfamiliar plug.dj is pretty much an online room filled with people's avatars, and you could dance to the music or actually DJ yourself. It just so happened on that day somebody unknowingly change my life. I never got their name down but I could not be more thankful. It was their turn to DJ, and they started playing Pika Girl. Of course, playing happy hardcore in a room meant for trance didn't sit well with the crowd and it got voted off. But I was curious and searched Pika Girl, and found S3rl's youtube and found the second song I heard - Catchit, which at the time was the latest release. Catchit also happened to be the first song that had a link to this website, back when it was still just an unofficial work in progress. I started talking on here, back when the site was mostly just Aaron, Super, and Wolfy.
(This wouldn't fit in one post so it continues below)
Today, marks the first anniversary of the day that I first heard S3rl - June 16th, 2015. A whole bunch of things have happened in my life to get me where I am now, and so I’ve done my best at telling my story about who I am, what I’ve done, what I do, and what I’m going to be doing, and how S3rl and raving have been involved in my life.
Sorry it’s so ridiculously long.
I moved schools 3 times as a child and never really made any strong friends or got involved in what was "popular" and I was pretty miserable. Things changed in 8th grade when I suffered a very large concussion in a biking accident. If I hadn't been wearing a helmet I would have died, but instead I ended up smashing my face against the pavement for a couple meters. I don't know anything for sure, but that concussion changed me, it made my emotions suppressed. That meant that although I never got much more than mildly sad, I never was truly happy either. One of the other side effects is that I only experience some emotions on the right or left side. For example, when I'm listening to a really good song and the bass drops, I only get goosebumps on my left side. It's really weird. Anyways this kind of constant neutral state meant that I could do schoolwork without getting frustrated or bored, and I started to excel in school. As I moved into high school, I joined the robotics team as a programmer. I easily list robotics as the second most influential thing in my life other than S3rl. My first year on the team, freshman year, was disaster. We had 7 motor controllers burn out in a single day and never advanced past qualifying rounds. That experience gave me a strong resolve to do better, as I was not going to watch my work literally go up in flames again. The next year, sophomore year, was the year that first defined who I am today. Our team had lost many members and mentors after the poor performance of the previous year, but through hard work and dedication, working in the machine shop 14 hours a week, the remaining members and I built a robot that could compete and compete well. It nearly did not work, but luckily at the last moment we designed a magnetic release mechanism that allowed the robot to operate pneumatics with a much higher speed than was normally possible. Due to this, our odd, easel-shaped robot was able to overpower even some of the world class teams. That year we first advanced past qualifying, then into eliminations, then onto the state championship, where we went undefeated for our first 7 games and won the prestigious GM Industrial Engineering award. After being damaged in our 8th match, we were unable to repair enough of the robot to win our last 4 matches. Within 4 matches, we had fallen from 1st to 22nd, and had almost no competitive appeal yet we barely edged into eliminations, as the last pick of the last alliance. In competitive robotics, the last alliance first faces against the first alliance in a best of 3, and we were facing overwhelming odds. Every team on the first alliance had won at least one world championship before, and nobody on our alliance had even won a regional. But then a miracle happened. Right before the match, we finished repairing our robot and played a stiff defense, and shockingly won our first match by a large margin. Then disaster – an error on the field had interfered with the autonomous operation of our opponents, losing them a couple points. Therefore, the match had to be replayed. Even if you had assumed a best case scenario for the first alliance in the autonomous period, we still would have won. Nonetheless, we replayed the match, and once again handed the first alliance another large defeat. Then the world fell out from beneath our feet once again – that match had the same error and was also invalidated. Keep in mind that the error was so minor, that if it had not occurred it would have only affected the outcome by a few points. The next match we won once again, but this time it was by a smaller margin. It was declared valid and we continued into the second match. By that point, our robots had become battle weary and desperately needed maintenance, and our drive teams and pit crews exhausted but we had to push onwards. The second match, which was actually the fourth match we had fought against the first alliance, was when the dream crumbled. By that point the first alliance had gained plenty of experience and had figured out our strategy. We lost by a small margin. The same thing happened again in the third match. After our alliance of no-name teams had done the impossible, defeating the first alliance 3 times in a row, and nearly eliminating them, we had lost the last 2 crucial matches and were eliminated. To this day we question if it was right for the referees to force a replay, even when we had won by enough to make up for the points lost. It was when that final score went up on the Jumbotron when I was at my lowest. But out of the ashes of our defeat arose a phoenix. After the elimination matches had finished and a winner found, there was still an awards ceremony and announcement of teams who qualified for the world championship. Completely unexpectedly, we had won the State Championship GM Industrial design award, due to the rugged design of our magnetic release mechanism, which had experienced zero failures the entire championship, even surviving through the most vicious ramming and roughest collisions. We returned to our seats proud and refreshed. Then after the awards ceremony, they began to read the names of the teams that had qualified for the world championship. With each team number they read aloud our hope slowly faded, until we heard our team number, 4362, appear on the Jumbotron and echo through the stadium. All at once our team rose up in celebration. We were hugging each other like we had just won the lottery, and a few of us were crying, including me. It was the happiest moment of my life. Soon after, announcements finished and “Don’t Stop Believing” by journey came over the loudspeakers. Me and my teammates locked arms, and we all started singing. That song still has special meaning to me today, because we had lived it. Our team was that city boy. We were all actually born and raised in South Detroit. We had taken the midnight train going anywhere. And we never stopped believing. In one year, we had transformed from complete failures to a world class team. Next thing I knew the world championships were over, with us taking 99th out of 100 in our division. But it didn’t matter, because we had made it. Then the part that’s actually applicable to raving happened. After the world championships, they hold a giant afterparty. It turns out that at the afterparty there was a giant rave. At the time I had just started listening to EDM, and when I saw it I knew it was calling me. I really wish I could say that I went in and I danced until the lights went on and music silenced, but that would be a lie. My idiot friend was there, and he didn’t want to go, and me being much less confident than I am today I very stupidly followed him away. My only keepsake is one red glowstick I picked up off the floor before I left. I regret very few things about my life, and that is one of my biggest regrets. The next year, 11th grade, we returned to the worlds championship and after it was all over I excitedly rushed to where the rave had been only to find an empty room. Apparently it had to be cancelled, because during the previous year, people were doing bad things in the rave (Robotics is a high school sport, so almost everyone is a minor). I kind of just sat in the room and listened to music for a while, then I left without ever getting the chance to jump to music under the lasers and smoke. Between last year and this year however, I found S3rl. I was travelling for business on behalf of my robotics team, and had just returned to the hotel. What I did while I worked or resting was to visit plug.dj and listen to mostly trance and house music. For those of you that are unfamiliar plug.dj is pretty much an online room filled with people's avatars, and you could dance to the music or actually DJ yourself. It just so happened on that day somebody unknowingly change my life. I never got their name down but I could not be more thankful. It was their turn to DJ, and they started playing Pika Girl. Of course, playing happy hardcore in a room meant for trance didn't sit well with the crowd and it got voted off. But I was curious and searched Pika Girl, and found S3rl's youtube and found the second song I heard - Catchit, which at the time was the latest release. Catchit also happened to be the first song that had a link to this website, back when it was still just an unofficial work in progress. I started talking on here, back when the site was mostly just Aaron, Super, and Wolfy.
(This wouldn't fit in one post so it continues below)