Half-Life 2 - "Out of Steam"

Well I got Half-Life 2 for my birthday and up until a few days ago it was working fine. But then I got this weird steam error and was informed on the official steam forums that the server was messed up and reinstalling should fix the problem. So I reinstalled steam and when I went to update it I once again got the error saying steam was offline. Since I've got an un-updated steam it means I can't even run it to set steam in offline mode... is there a way to fix this?

I gather circumventing steam is illegal, but really this is preventing me from playing it.