1st Blog, Read on.....

"Wow, 1st Blog...erm why" I can hear you all thinking.
Well it's my 1st anniversary with the clan. Yes I have been here for a whole year now, and I thought that there would be no better way of celebrating it, than sharing my story and feelings with the one gaming passion I have - THIS clan.

I thought I'd give you a little history about myself, my gaming life and my time here in PMS.
I was an avid gamer from the word go. My first computer was a ZX80, and growing up went though the ZX Spectrum 48K, Spectrum 128K, 128+2, and the +3 (the one where it was called Amstrad and had the Amstrad 3 1/4inch drive in it! I think at this time we also had an ATARI 2600, and I ruled on space invaders in my household. Sort of around this time, or soon after, I was at this time well in my education and as I went through university, consoles were no where to be seen as there was much more exciting stuff for Students to do.....

After I graduated in Electrical Engineering (Specialising in Electronics) I set up home. The cost of keeping a house was a drain on my wage and so I decided to invest in a games console to prevent those 'boring' nights in as going out was not financially viable. I got a limited edition Nintendo 64 with gold controller and Goldeneye - one word - ADDICT

As I went through my early employment years, gaming became a passion and I was a dedicated gamer, ending up with a awesome gaming PC (built by my own fair hands - which was an achievement AND cheaper than buying 'off the shelf' in ye olde days) and a GameCube to boot.

It was about 4 years ago when I had a fire in my house and I lost everything, including my best pal who always sat next to me when I was gaming, Sasha my cat and first pet. When I was back in my house, after it being re-wired, re-built (almost totally) from the inside out, the gaming bug was a-calling so the Xbox360 was out, PS2 on the market and the Nintendo wii, still waiting for release. SO I weighed up the options and plummeted for a 360.
I played this by myself for around 6 months, and then decided to sign up to Xbox live.

Online gaming - this was a totally different experience, and a very welcome one too. I was playing GRAW and UNO at that moment and started to make friends quickly. I think at this point I should mention that I was soooo into UNO and I was within the top 100 players in the World, with around 2 Million ranked players, last time I looked I'd dropped to around the top 500 mark, I'm not sure what I am now but you can check out my gamertag on the UNO ranked players - I should be still top 1,000 [I hope]. But back to GRAW - this is where I was playing online and meet my first clan "Team made in Europe", we rocked on Desert Gulch . This was the game of choice until Rainbow 6 Vegas came out and TMIE disbanded. Some of the former members formed a new clan "MK1" (I found out that some of the girls & guys in the Europe CoD4 division used to play us LOL !) at one point I think we had about 10 Members and were regularly playing Gamebattles' clans and doing okay. I was Tactical leader and anyone who knows my game style in CoD4 will now be thinking "ah... so that's why he plays like that".

In between the disbandment of TMIE and the formation of MK1, I had the pleasure of meeting, in person, two of my clan members. One lived in Belgium and I spent an afternoon with him and his daughter. The other lives in Poland, an ex-brit who lives with his polish girlfriend. Now bearing in mind I'd only ever chatted with him and his girlfriend on Xbox video, when we arrived in Warsaw they put me and my woman up for a week, and we slept in their small 1 room flat on an airbed on the floor of their bedroom-come-lounge. It didn't matter though, cause I was with someone I cared about and spent a large amount of my time with and he shared my passion - gaming. James is most definitely one of my best friends and Gaming bought us together.

So about 1 year ago, I was playing with some Welsh boys, including CPT ZOD and namerdips (that's Spiderman backwards !!!) and they used to play with this PMS|H2O clan, a pro-girl gamer clan, and when I say pro-girl gamer I mean that this clan, actively encouraged girl gamers, "well I'm deffo in that then" I thought to myself. I think Gaming should be for everyone with equal access for all no matter what sex, race, background or creed. SO in February 2008 I passed my 4 week (seemed soooooooo much longer) recruitment into PMS|H2O Europe Call of Duty 4 Division. It wasn't long after this that I was made co-leader, and two months after that Leader of the Division. I was just the right person at the right place, at the right time.

Over the last year, I've seen members come and go, I've seen the division bounce in number from as low as 6 to over 30, currently it's on the climb again, with around 15 members and 10 recruits, and I still love the girls and guys in the division (I remind them of that every now and again!). I've done all the position within the division, from Practice Captain to Roster Manger to Leader, that last one is hard - believe me !!!!

A few months ago, I got promoted to General of H2O for Europe on Xbox, and boy was I proud (and scared) of that! I had a great leader in place on CoD4 at the time and everything was going swimmingly all be it a few ups and downs. It wasn't long after that a member of the current divisional leader's family passed away, and he had to leave the clan for related personal reasons. So this left the division without a leader, so I stepped in as acting divisional leader and that's where I am today.

So there you go, a little history of me and the bumpy road I have travelled to this point in time.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone and to say what this clan means to me.
A few thank yous - Krystal (you're the best) & Uteena (Squidgy), Stu for the early help, Dajin for putting up with my insane questioning on msn, Matt for the introduction, my fellow and ex teammates, esp Charlie, Jake, Kayleigh, Mark, Glenn, Jason and everyone! My lil bro's past and present (Dan's the Man), the 'forum' girls and guys esp Snake, rip, Kitteh and Gypsy and last but by no means lest Amy and Amber for forming PMS in the first place.
What does PMS|H2O mean to me - well if I could some it up in one word, I would, but I can't so here are a few words and phrases that define PMS|H2O for me : Community, Friendship, Teamwork, LOLs and LOLcats, XL weekend meet up, pwning, skills, addictive, haven, randomness and LOVE.

Well this is DJ Drewman H2O, signing off, maybe I'll do another blog next year........