I picked up Dwarf Fortress around late July-early August of 2010.
At the time, I had never heard it before. Also, I was recovering from major jaw surgery.
For 6 weeks I was on an entirely liquid diet and not allowed to do anything more physically straining than carrying a gallon of water, carefully. Not to mention my jaw was in crazy amounts of pain, even with some pretty strong doses of painkiller several times a day.
About a week into this ordeal, after lots of internet-surfing, I came across Dwarf Fortress by chance. I don't really remember what I was looking for at the time, but I ended up on the Bay12 Games home page. I was rather intrigued.
I downloaded Dwarf Fortress and started playing it. I didn't have a clue what was going on, and I don't remember which version it was. I taught it to myself from scratch, over the course of about a week, maybe a week and a half. Every time I played, I learned something new. Every time I played, my fortress crumbled for a different reason, whether starvation, thirst, siege, tantrum spiral, or forgotten beast attack.
It was utterly engrossing, trying to work out all the little logistical management issues with my dwarves, and dealing with their dwarfiness and their desire to go on break rather than bring crafts to the trade depot.
Dwarf Fortress gave me something to think about besides my hunger and mouth-pain. It kept me occupied and happy for those 6 long weeks.
I remember the first fortress I consider a success, in that it didn't crumble as a result of my inexperience. Instead, it crumbled due to a sudden case of rampant FUN.
It was around week 5, and I had been starting to feel better, both physically and in my DF abilities. I had dug out a meager fortress, around 30 dwarfs strong, with a 7 dwarf military. I had already repelled some minor goblin attacks, and trade was good. My dwarfs were content enough to throw parties, and because I had a strong surplus of food and booze, I didn't really mind. I let them have their fun.
Then, suddenly, for no reason at all, Urist McRandomPsycho picked up a -dolomite statue- and hurled it across the table, injuring several dwarfs and killing my outpost leader. Urist McRandomPsycho then started chasing dwarfs through my fortress, beating them to death with his bare hands.
The party raged on. They were determined to party. It would break up briefly when Urist McPsycho would charge back in, but every time he left (to beat a hapless farmer to death in an isolated dead end of my fortress) they would party again.
The worst part was that my entire military was participating in this party.
At the time, I didn't realize you could undesignate the dining hall to break up the party by force, so I felt pretty helpless to stop it.
Then, while all this was going on, there was a goblin siege. 12 speargoblins stormed into my rioting fortress (which, at this point, there were 3 berserking dwarfs (due to best friends murdered by the first one, and my lack of a royal dining hall to supplicate them)).
I thought, hey, awesome. Maybe the berserkers and goblins will take each other out and let me salvage this fort.
Nope, turns out goblins and berserk dwarfs are best buddies, at least when there are sane, rational dwarfs around.
There was so much blood that day.
....
I think I'm going to donate to Toady once my next paycheck comes in.