Archives

May
15

Some Feathery Updates and Condolences

No GravatarIt’s been a crazy past couple weeks for me. I’ve been training up for my next fight (AFL 1, May 17, 2008 Elizabeth City, NC) and staying pretty busy at work. In other news, The Grand Tournament 2008 invitations were sent out, and RolePlayGateway will be hosting the event. I had a blast at the SEO - What You Need To Know Meetup in Raleigh, and met some great people (hi Ashley!), and got connected with the upcoming Advanced SEO Meetup (which I’m really looking forward to, Brian - sorry I missed the first one!).

Two of my friends passed away this past week, Brittany Custer and Chelsea Johnson, in two separate events. It’s so sad - both of these girls had an entire life ahead of them.

A few of my friends have also had recent losses, all very devastating in their own way. I don’t think you can possible hope to truly offer solace during times like these, but that is no reason to attempt to provide support and care for their loss.

It’s a very polarizing view compared to what we often feel - especially looking at the age at which people pass away. With Cyclone Nargis and the China Earthquakes, there’s a lot of pain in the world right now. It really makes you wake up out of whatever jaded state you’re in and realize that hey, you’re human. You’re in this with the rest of us, regardless of how much hate you think you have.

I’m not participating in the elections this year. Full stop.

It’s not that I don’t feel like I can make a difference - it’s that I refuse to be involved in what’s going to happen next. I’ll make my mark in my own way, this year. And hey, on a semi-related note, let me introduce you to an independent documentary (which means do your research to verify any of this) that I thoroughly recommend you sit down for 2 hours and watch. Two hours, give it your full attention.

All of that aside, let’s all remember that we’re in this together, like I said before. We need to be loving and supporting each other, through all of our trying times. Grow roots so that you might be able to nourish and feed others in their times of need, as we must do this in favor of our own health. (See The Golden Rule, figure 1.1)

For everyone who has lost someone, remember that everything has a cause and effect. You are still here and play a part in the effect of your loss - it is up to you to determine how you learn from and use the experiences you shared with this person. Be joyous and put these experiences to positive use, sharing and growing in their spirit.

Take refuge amongst your own family and friends - just as you have been there for them, they will be there for you.

Oct
27

Pimp Status and further updates…

No GravatarNow that I’ve upgraded to Google’s Blogger Beta, I’m tweaking a bunch of controls on my blog. I am continually running into the user-friendly syndrome, where a feature is too user friendly and I can’t get down to the nitty-gritty tech side of the application. While it saves me the five minute trouble of setting up a Wordpress or similiar in-house blog, it constantly reminds me of the merits of having the Wordpress, and consequently influencing me to neglect posting here at all.

I woke up this morning to a completed upgrade from Ubuntu’s Dapper Drake (6.06 LTS) to Edgy Eft (6.10), after encountering some problems resulting from my own stupidity. Upgrading from the servers took a grand total of 16 hours, start to finish. This includes my time working out the kinks from my said stupidity, which I won’t go into further here. Due to the complications, my personal alarm clock (XMMS and an alarm plugin…) failed to wake me at the goal of 5:30 AM, having not rung at all. Sadly, this caused me to miss the chance to see my beautiful Amber, with her leaving for school at 6:30, and me waking at 7. *grumble*

After rebooting the machine to seal the deal, I opened up my shiny new Firefox 2.0 to look at the GWing RSS feed. I clicked the most important thing at the time, a new topic titled A Tale of Two Wreckages: A True Story. I then proceeded to heartily laugh my way through the time I had remaining before I had to leave for work.

Pimp status, hrm?

Feb
02

Duality

No GravatarEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a really weird movie, and it really scared me.  Not only is the concept nail-head-on, but I used to be called Jim Carrey, and some say I bear a striking resemblance to him in my expressions.  Well… yeah.  It’s difficult to explain.

So what, I got over that.  But then, just when I thought the worst was over, I was *randomly* Googling - the verb form of to search the google search engine - and then… BOOM! HEADSHOT!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/A5089836

Okay, I can handle someone from WW2 looking almost like myself - and the fact that he’s a pilot, one of my dreams.  Okay.  I can handle that.  And then…

http://www.artofcombat.com/instructors.htm :
The training group (SOI) in Dallas was small and under the guidance of Eric Martindale (which promoted Ralph to 9th kyu), ….

I can handle a martial arts instructor being named Eric Martindale as well, a little odd, but then again, I’ve always been involved in martial arts, haven’t I?  Eric apparently promoted that guy to 9th kyu, right?  So don’t you have to be 10th kyu?  So he’s 1337 like that, right?    …      And then…

And of course there’s the soccer referee, or is he a player?  I don’t remember.  He’s another Eric Martindale.  A little weird, too… but I’ve played soccer since the age of five.  And then…

http://www.rtpnet.org/troop200/history/T200Eagles.html

I became an Eagle Scout, too.  When I was a young boy… I was once a cub scout aspiring to be an Eagle Scout.  Dun dun dun.  The plot thickens.

http://www.e-budo.com/forum/showpost.php?p=211703&postcount=15

Once again, I am involved in a martial arts situation, and I believe referring to the same Eric Martindale.  And then…

http://nhpresbytery.org/pdf/Graduates01.pdf

Holy crap, that IS me.  For real.  Only slightly unexpected at this point… after all of these STRANGE entries.  Slightly.  O_o ….

And then…

I’ve apparently lost myself on http://lostfriends.org - or is someone looking for me?  Oh… that’s what I meant to say.  I haven’t *found* myself there yet… but apparently Google did.  And then…

http://north-carolina.injuryboard.com/view.cfm/Topic=77/PAGE=2

I WAS on this page at some point… and this one is somewhat entertaining.  Apparently, in Charlotte during some point about a year ago, someone named Eric Martindale died in a car accident.  I believe I had four people come up to me that day and ask if I had died… I was about two hours north of charlotte at the time, and the "Eric Martindale" news had reached most parts of North Carolina and Virginia, and I got two phone calls, one from my mother - asking if I had died.   …. … … … ….   And then…

http://www.faqs.org/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/rec/rec.autos.rotary

I’m the president of a North Carolina rotary club.  I’ve always been a fan of rotary engines… but this is ridiculous… WTFH? ….  I’m becoming very frightened at this point… very frightened.  I love rotary engines.  That rotary club is two cities away.  …  And then…

http://www.wrestlingusa.com/02%20wusa%20web%20root/highschoolnews/wisconsin.html

I used to wrestle, but I’ve never been to Wisconson.  Or.   Have I.

"The One", any one?  Whoa!  The Matrix!  42!


Eric Martindale
IT Professional
Admin of GWing.net

Jan
31

The Great Gamer Championship

No GravatarJayme and I have decided to determine which one of us is the best at playing games.  We’re in the process of choosing the games to be played to determine the best of the best.  (Or atleast between us two.)  We’re trying to get an equal amount of games on both the console and the PC, since he’s a console gamer, and I’m a PC gamer.  The winner of this will get bragging rights an’ all that, but I think we’ll need to write an agreement of some sort stating that the winner is final, no bitching about how the choices of games are sucky, and how lag killed you, and that when entering, you agree that it is FINAL.  So yeah.  Here’s what we have so far, and by no means is this list final:

FPS (Console):  Halo 2 (XBOX)
RTS (PC): Starcraft w/ Expansion

Fighter (Console):  Guilty Gear (X or XX) - (Playstation/PS2) 

Simulation (PC): Mechwarrior 4:Mercenaries w/ MekTek’s MekPak 3

Sports (PC?): Pong
Puzzle (Console): Tetris
Arcade (Arcade): Initial D v3+  -OR-  DDR

So that’s a tally of 7 games so far, 3 console, 3 PC, and one arcade.   Of course,  I’d like to have two more, including a FPS for the PC, such as Unreal Tournament… and an additional game on the console to account for this.  Perhaps a 3D Fighter such as Tekken 4/5, Mortal Combat: Deception/Deadly Alliance, or King Of Fighters: Maximum Impact?

We’ll see.


Eric Martindale
IT Professional
Admin of GWing.net