Felon's adventures in online gaming, part 1

So I had been trying to decide what part of my gamer experiences I wanted to share on here first. Although I began my gaming "career" much earlier then when I began online gaming, my experiences with it are something that really developed me as a gamer, so I am going to begin with that for now.
Starcraft was my first online game. It was released in 98' but I'm fairly sure I was 14 or 15 when I started playing it. I had played through all the single-player campaigns and eventually I worked up the nerve to make a battle.net account. That was where I created my first online identity: Dark Mystery. Yes, it was ridiculous, but my main goal was to be as inconspicuous as possible. Even then, I didn't want people to automatically know I was a girl so I picked a name I thought to be non-girly. (NOTE: years and years later I told my dad about using that name to which he replied "Really? No one suspected you were a girl with a name like that?")
And so Dark Mystery was born. I have no trouble admitting that I was a terrible online Starcraft player at first. As any gamer knows, playing against a computer is a VERY different thing from playing against a human. So in short, I sucked. Nonetheless I eventually was solicited to join a clan, not because of skill but just because many clans back then just wanted to boost their numbers. I'm sorry to say I really can't remember the clan name anymore (that makes me a bit sad) but two guys in that clan were my first online friends and were the first people I revealed my gender to. What I liked about them was that while they liked having a girl in their clan (typical response unfortunately), they didn't make a really big deal about it. We would just play together and have a good time. Over 10 years, and I still remember those guys: Tom and Adam. I hope their still gaming. Any how, I began making more online friends on Battle.net and soon, I started to spend a lot more of my weekends playing and less time socializing with my school friends. Don't get me wrong, I did not completely shun human contact (at least not all the time ^_^) but this was when gaming started to take over a little more of my life then it ever had before.
I spent a lot of time with online Starcraft, but then, when I found out that a new Aliens Versus Predator PC first-person shooter had come out in 99', it opened a new chapter of my online gaming life. But that chapter is for part 2!

One last thing. Kerrigan from Starcraft was always one of my favorite game villanesses. Maybe that's why I always liked playing as the Zerg.