About Weasel & Weasel’s Lair:

About Weasel:

So, who is this “Weasel” guy?

I am a seasoned Information Technology (IT) professional, with 40+ years of experience in various IT arenas – from 1985 until today.
I am an IT “Generalist” with a wide-range of experience, including (but not limited to):
- Team/department management,
- Project management,
- Documentation (better than most IT professionals),
- Various old and new hardware:
  - Apple ][ computers,
  - Early Apple Mac computers,
  - CPM computers (various),
  - IBM computers,
  - IBM-compatible “clones”,
  - Various printers, scanners and MFPs,
  - Compaq/HP desktops, laptops and servers,
  - Dell desktops, laptops and servers,
  - Network hubs, switches and routers (various), and
  - Network firewalls (Check-Point, Cisco and various others).
- Old and new network and operating systems:
  - Apple DOS,
  - TRS-DOS,
  - CPM,
  - PC-DOS / MS-DOS,
  - Windows 2.x onward,
  - OS/2,
  - Unix’s (Solaris, HPUX, AIX), and
  - Linux (lately Debian family, some Red-Hat family previously).
  - Microsoft Servers (file/print, SQL, Exchange, Active Directory, etc.)
  - Microsoft Office,
  - Google Suite (whatever they are calling it today),
  - Web-sites, web-hosting (IIS and Apache), and
  - Cloud-hosted infrastructure (Azure, etc.).
- Various (less hard-core) programming systems:
  - BASIC (various),
  - Pascal (various),
  - Visual Basic,
  - VBScript / Windows-Scripting-Host (WSH), and
  - Bash.
I have also (probably most relevant to why you are here) been hosting dedicated game-servers for various first-person-shooter (FPS) games since (circa) 1999.

I have been hosting (usually highly-customized) game-servers for various games on and off over the years for:

Half-Life (HL1) – Both deathmatch and/or team-deathmatch on/off since 1999. Originally under the “LADT” moniker for those that may remember.
Team Fortress Classic (TFC).
Team Fortress 2 (TF2).
Counter-Strike 1.x (CS1).
Counter-Strike: Source (CS:S).
Counter-Strike: GO (CS:GO) – until Valve replaced it with CS2 and effectively broke all community servers.
Fistful of Frags (FoF) – since its debut on Steam, and on the old HL2 “mod” version before that.

I have also created a system for easily hosting (Steam-based) dedicated game-servers on Linux, requiring very little Linux administration experience. Related to that, I have both:

Published it on GitHub: https://github.com/Mecha-Weasel/wgasm, and
Published an extensive Steam Community Guide for setting-up and using it: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3259278773

Lately, I have been very engaged with the Fistful of Frags (FoF) community, both with discussions, creation of various guides, editing/tweaking various maps, also currently hosting four (4) dedicated game-servers for it (as listed HERE), as well as publishing a couple of important community-made updates for the game – under the Project “Spittoon” umbrella. Of particular note are these two efforts:

Community Server-List Update: A community-driven update to resolve issues with out-of-date / 2-year old server data in the the curated whitelist. You can read more about it in the associated Steam Community Guide.
Community Map-Thumbnails Update: A community-drive update to resolve issues with no map preview thumbnails for any newer community-crafted non-stock maps. You can read more about it in the associated Steam Community Guide.

About Weasel’s Lair:

At various times, I have setup and managed several gaming-communities, typically focused on particular games that I was hosting dedicated-servers for, and had friends playing on, these have included:

L.A. Dream Team (LADT): A community built around the first Half-Life (HL1) game-server I hosted in the 1999-2000 time-frame. Steam did not exist back then. However, the “LADT” server was ranked #3 in the World for HL servers on “The CLQ” (The Champions League for Quake) – a famous server/player-tracking web-site, which was a big deal back then. LADT at one point had a web-site at http://LADT.us. LADT was from its beginning a bit of a socializing server, and not a very competitive arena. Although, there was one somewhat infamous match setup against another team – “Shadow-Clan” (SC) if I recall correctly. At the time, I went through several disposable and long-forgotten names, before eventually settling-upon “Weasel“.
Weasel’s Lair (WL): This community was established sometime after primary LADT players starting dropping off-line. With Weasel now firmly established as my in-game presence, the community name Weasel’s Lair just occurred organically. With Steam now starting to become a real thing, an early version of the Weasel’s Lair Steam Community Group was eventually established. During this time, Team Fortress 2 was released, and our TF2 server became very active. At various times a Weasel’s Lair web-site has come and gone, under many different domain names, including:
- http://WeaselsLair.org (long gone)
- http://WeaselsLair.com (where this site now resides)
Freaks & Misfits (F&M): At one point, in an effort to try to delegate more control to other community members, a new community named Freaks & Misfits (F&M) was crated. This only lasted for a few years, due to other community members moving on with their lives. Presumably, many were collage-aged, high-school or even middle-school students – and got busy with real-life stuff (more school, jobs, etc.).
Saphe Space (Saphe): This was a very short-lived effort to make a more family-friendly spin-off of F+M. Unfortunately, it never really took-off. Trying to split the community between ostensively minor and adult audiences proved unworkable.
Weasel’s Lair (WL): Today, things are back (almost) to where it all started.

About Steam:

People seem to mistakenly believe Steam started in 2003. While it may have launched on September 12, 2003, the beta actually started in early 2002. Consequently, many SteamID‘s actually pre-date that date – regardless of what it says in the Steam profile.