So yesterday I decided to reformat my computer. It'd been awhile since I'd last reformatted and over the years or months or however long its been, it's collected a fair amount of useless crap that's slowing it down, no good. That and I had the OS installed on a 20 gig HD along with a substantial number of programs and I was out of space to do much of anything. So I took out the 20 and used my 80 gig for the main HD so that I could again install Adobe CS2 and all of those other wonderful programs without having to worry about space. One of these wonderful programs is Half-life 2 and more importantly, Counter-Strike. Now me and CS go back many years, to the beginning of my college career when my room mate and I failed many a class in order to be 1st and 2nd in the rankings and head up our own clans. ( I know, we're geeks, get over it)Well as the years went by it became obvious that perhaps we should focus more on school than 10 hours of gaming a day. (Also, more and more different games came along that needed to be perused as well.) Well now that finals are over, and my old roomie still plays CS quite often along with running a server, I felt it was a good time to get back into the Counter-Striking groove. With a clean HD, I was eager to install CS and get to the killing. Ha, here's where the fun comes in. Not only does Valve use Steam for it's gaming purposes, ( I hate steam with an unbridled passion. It wouldn't be so bad if the program actually worked right more than 5% of the time, but it doesn't) but apparently once you've installed your game, you may never do so again. You see, when I'd installed Half-life 2 last year, and played Counter-Strike, they authorized my CD key and that was the end of the line. So even though I paid $50 for the game, and the right to own it and play it at my leisure, or so I would assume, in order for me to play it again after reinstalling it, they need another $10 so they can provide me with a new CD key. What a bunch of crapola! Seriously. I hate you valve! HATE HATE HATE. Thank-you.

edit: Turns out I'm slightly stoopid. Apperently your cd key goes along with your steam account. I was trying to create a new account to which it responded, and I quote, "Uhm, don't think so." So now that I figured my old account info, I think I'm good to go. But I still hate Valve, and Steam. Thank-you.