Well, I have achieved one of the many challenging goals I have set for myself at this stage in life. I have finally gotten Rory Blyth to mention me, by name, in his blog. It was a difficult road and was kind of touch and go for a while, but it finally happened. Rory’s a little bit like a skittish fawn and I was this big bear crashing through the woods trying to be friends. But the fawn just refused to believe I was one of the few bears out there that has allergic reactions to eating fawns and kept running away until finally the Bear just sat on the fawn and had a nice long talk about friendship and trust and ended with a very nice song and dance number to the tune of Britney Spear’s smash hit Toxic.

Anyway, here is the post which I have decreed my “Crowning Achievement of the Last Lunar Cycle”

http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/8909.aspx

So, you’re probably wondering what’s next (and if you’re not, you probably should at least pretend that you’re wondering ‘what’s next’, just to kind of humor me and so the rest of this post works for you). What comes after being mentioned in Rory’s blog? Well, I myself was confused for a while, kind of adrift in a sea of purposeless life. Then, it hit me, just the other afternoon while staring at my cube wall in a semblance of deep thought (I have to keep up the appearances that programming is really, really cerebrally intensive and not really, really easy with all my work being done in the first few hours of the morning so all of our jobs remain safe and the secret never gets out…), there really was only one other option left to me. I have been mentioned by Rory, which in itself is a great honor, but there was one more slightly more difficult challenge before me. I could be listed in Rory’s Homies list!!!! So, my friends, that is now my new purpose in life. I somehow have to wrangle my way into that high society list of the best and brightest people in Rory’s inner circle. I recognize that this may be an impossible dream, but as Rory would say (and did say in his geniusical (kind of like a genius, who presents and argument in a musical fashion and then waves his jazz hands in the face of the opposition) arguments about podcasting),

“Sometimes, when you just want to get something done, you do it. All the warm fuzzies in the world about community involvement will not get your idea realized.”

So with that, I begin my quest. All you naysayers can just eat it, soon you will be seeing my name, in Rory’s “My Homies List”, of that you can be assured.

Sincerely,

George W. Clingerman

So, last night as I was trying to play UT2004 I kept getting interrupted by these crazy little boys running around the house (we’ll refer to these particular little hellions as “my sons” ). Anyway, as I began yelling for my wife to please get these little guys out of my hair because I suck at Unreal bad enough as it is I suddenly remembered, wait, the reason that I’m playing UT2004 at 3:30 in the afternoon is because I had to come home early because my wife had a doctor appointment. Thus, in a true demonstration of the responsibility I felt as a Father, I closedUT2004 (after a just a few more rounds and multiple frags, if this shocks you please refer to my earlier post about my UT2004 obsession).

Well, as I glanced around at the carnage throughout the house, I thought to myself what can I do. And then it came to me, as it would to most Dads, I can bring out more toys and we can stage a huge intergalactic war of Good vs. Evil and my wife can clean it all up when she gets back. So, I dragged the crates of G.I. Joe, He-Man, Rescue Heroes, Major Powers and other miscellaneous action figures from the shelves and my sons and I began setting up the base camps and the war soon began.

There were vicious battles; it seemed like every time the Good guys set up a base camp from which to plan their brilliant strategies, it was destroyed, either by evil attacking robots or 1 1/2 year old Giants who think it’s funny to destroy what Dad builds. But the Good guys, being the hopeless optimistic that you must be to be Good, persevered and struggled to build structure after structure. But after the wave of robots, came a wave of monsters and then a wave of dinosaurs. The Good guys just weren’t doing to well at all, and the Evil guys were living it up. They even took time out of their destruction and carnage to do a few song and dance numbers about how evil they were. Things started escalating and everything was going wonderfully, there were fights all over the room between good and evil. It seemed that every single toy was involved in some manner, and then as the Evil Robots made one more attack on the Good guys’ secret base, my 4 year old son said the words that caused my world to halt.

“Now, the Evil Robot should learn a lesson about how it’s not nice to destroy secret bases.”

What is the world coming to? Has television stolen my son’s soul and taught him that everything must come with a lesson? What wrong with some good evil mayhem with no lessons learned? When did lessons being learned creep into playtime and imagination zone? What kind of craziness is this! I would write someone if I knew who to write, my son is being corrupted by some Tele-tubby thing weirdo on TV who has brainwashed him into believing that everyone should learn a lesson and we’ll all just get along. And I just don’t blame TV, I blame books as well. That’s right, Books!! Have you read a children’s book that doesn’t contain a moral or a lesson? Can a book just tell a story of fantasy and fun without trying to drive some moral lesson across? But….after my mind finished wrestling with the wrongness of a lesson creeping into my playtime, I decided, very reluctantly, to go along with my son’s suggestion since I didn’t want to limit his creativity in anyway and plus he was right it is a good lesson to learn, it isn’t nice to destroy the secret camps of Good guys. So I agreed, “Yes, the Evil Robot has learned his lesson. He’s sorry he destroyed so many secret Good guy bases and will never do it again.”

“Good” my son replied, “Now he should go kill those evil guys who sent him”

And order was restored in the world!

Well, I’ve been meaning to put this post up a long time ago but I’m just now getting around to it. A few months back, the 4 guys attended a Microsoft.NET conference where our lives (mine in particular) were changed forever. You see at this conference, is where I first was introduced to quite possibly, the most interesting and funny human being I have ever met in my entire life. His name was Rory Blyth.

That day will forever be remembered. He was funny, interesting, witty, and sarcastic. Basically everything an amazing speaker and presenter should be, plus he is a techie. He knew code, he was a programmer. In a nutshell, he was and is perfect (yes, I may have issues but once you’ve met him you too will become completely obsessed).

Here are just some quick quotes jotted down during that first conference from Rory Blyth written and blogged to preserve the genius of Rory Blyth demonstrated that day.

Rory Blyth Quotes:

“Your skill set did not scale with your ambition.”
“Reindeer Purple”
“…or whatever inferior scripting language you want to use”
“Whether you’re using punch cards or people in the back writing real fast”
“Clipboard inheritance” - a term used to describe copying and pasting code to simulate inheritance, what a genius!
-when referring to his microphone fritzing out on him… “…this stupid cheap stuff, oh it’s made by Oracle…”
-Rory sprinting like a crazy gazelle out of the theater (to get help with the microphone)
“I can scratch that off” - referring to a giveaway prize, left over from a previous conference that had a non-Microsoft label on it.
“…and other stuff like that” - summing up 2 slides that he skipped right through
“..This little lifeless stump”
“I tend to avoid the ‘GAC’”
“…some people drink Honey but I think bee vomit is kind of gross”
“This is some or osme ” -mistyping during the presentation and reading what he was mistyping, classic comedy!
“Did everyone just hear the entire building shift to the left about an inch” - Rory’s response to a small chime that he heard during his presentation.
“It is going to change the entire presentation” - His response to using green instead of yellow for creating the icon
“You don’t have to use the smiley faces as your icon, you can use something else”
“I left the metrics in my car so I can’t answer any questions about that” - Rory’s pre-response to questions about the statement that it’s the fastest web application

“They are so proud ‘Look we can use PowerPoint!’” - talking about the marketing guys and their power point slides
“If you’re coding in ASP.NET 2.0 and you go to the bathroom, you’re going to have intellisense there too” - talking about ASP.NET 2.0’s use of intellisense everywhere
“ASP.NET is so cool that you can almost grab any control and show it and people say ‘Wow, I like that’”
“I have OCD. I have to test the connection then it satisfies me. I get that positive affirmation…”
“That’s the value I add…”
“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to dieeeeee!”
“First pants, then shoes and if you do it the other way it’s a lot tougher.”
“Next version of Windows is coming out in two-thousand and (cough)”
“Fire 70% of your developers” - another suggested method by Rory to reduce code by 70% like ASP.NET 2.0 will
“…there were checkboxes and Visual Studio say cool you go ahead and do that. Go for it!”
“There’s no reason fir it, it probably from someone in management then.”
“Intellisense is .NET goodness”
“We are all going on a journey of discovery together!”

…and those were just a small fraction of the amazing comment Rory made while speaking. One very interesting thing was that when he was asked a question, he would repeat the question for the group but he would repeat it with the exact same words and tone that the question was asked in which was very funny and probably not noticeable to everyone, I just happened to become obsessed with him quickly.

For a more in depth look into Rory’s world, feel free to check out his blog at www.neopoleon.com He has something new there basically everyday and it’s probably the easiest way to see that my obsession with Rory is obviously justified (albeit still slightly sick and wrong.) And that is just a brief introduction to Rory Blyth.

I recently created a picture (I was inspired by Rory’s pictures on his blog) or Rory during the ASP.NET conference. I think you can kind of get a feel for just what he is like from the portrait.

…yes I am still alive. Since I have not been in touch for a while, here are some lengthy and barely interesting observations from this period of my life.

We have successfully traversed these United States, by car, with a three-year-old in tow. Actually my daughter did very well as long as we stopped at each and every McDonalds we saw along the way (who knew that was such a large franchise?). Of course, my wife and I each had to have our stomachs pumped twice along the way.

One thing we noticed while driving (and driving…and driving…) is that there is an enormous amount of apparently unused wasteland in the center of this country. I say apparently because, although there are no buildings, livestock, crops or any sign of civilization whatsoever, somebody took the time to build a fence around it. What purpose the fence serves I have no idea, other than to give some very bored souls something to do for a while.

After arriving and spending a couple days learning how to walk again, we began the arduous task of finding a home. Apparently during the 10 months were in Oregon, wealthy Arab sheiks have taken over western Virginia, as now a 1969 rusted manufactured home off a 3 mile walking trail on a pristine 5000 sq feet of land that used to be part of a landfill costs $300,000. (I know…that was a bad sentence) In short, I concur with the previous blog post.

Last Monday I started working, and after 2 days of being re-indoctrinated I was actually allowed to touch a computer. Two days later I figured out that I actually had to type the code instead of just speaking and having it appear for me as it had the last few months at Viewpoint.

That is the word from the east coast. I hope all is well in Viewpoint land and I will check in regularly now that I’m counted worthy to be on the internet again.

Sean thinks looking for a new home sucks.

Hi, my name is George and I am an UT2004 addict.

[Hi, George]

I started playing UT2004 about 1 week ago and have already racked up 15+ hours of game play (to put this in perspective, I have a wife and 3 kids and a fulltime job with an hour commute so 15 hours is a lot for this lifestyle). I can’t stop thinking about it. Even now, I’m wishing that I wasn’t typing this stupid post and was instead playing Unreal. I like the teamwork, I like laughing at the stupid things people are doing, I like laughing at the stupid things I do. I like learning new skills and improving my stats (I check them daily, sometimes 4 or 5 times in a day, I memorize them, I look at other peoples stats and figure out what I’m doing wrong and try and improve my own game from just looking at stats).

My friends sometimes play. They jump in for a game or two, but then they are done. I don’t know how they can do that. Unreal is constantly calling me, every free waking moment I have I am jumping into a server and getting shot to death. You see, even though I’m obsessed, I’m not very good. But does that stop me? Does running a fully loaded Hellbender off a cliff to my death and the death’s of my passengers stop me? Does shooting my own teammates repeatedly as they try and heal a power node and they keep yelling at me “Same Team” stop me from playing? Does ending a match with a score of -1 stop me? Does walking everywhere on the map on foot because I can’t figure out how to drive the dang vehicle down the path stop me? No. Because I am an UT2004 addict. I am obsessed with this game. UT2004 is now my life.

My name is George.

Well, after losing one of the esteemed members of the “4 guys”, an undeclared break was taken from posting to the blog. But we’re back now and let me tell you, it’s been taken to another level. In just the past month, let me run down a few of the topics that have been discussed:

1. Cats: Satan’s offspring
2. American is American
3. UT2004
4. White Trash and Vancouver
5. House Shopping
6. Those sausages are good!
7. Chess, Chess and more Chess
8. Curves are nice.
9. Cleaning naked.
10. Burnout 3 (not Burnout 2)
11. Pacifico rocks.
12. The Presidential debates.
13. Why so many people suck.
14. A barren wasteland.
15. Lots of walks.
16. OO makes my head hurt.
17. Why George is so full of himself.
18. What a snob Sean is.
19. Why Rick doesn’t have to follow politics because his cult card tells him how to vote.
20. Wars.
21. Foreign policy.
22. Religion.
23. Family.
24 Whale Tail.
25. Dirty Sanchez.
26. How to survive the first night in Prison.
27. Just pick a dang computer George!!
28. Have you bought UT2004 yet?
29. Male sensitivity, is it ok to cry?
30. Wife Swap.
31. Chick flicks.
32. Why people suck?
33. Hot or Not?
34. UT2004
35. She’s hot.
36. Killing Methyl (driving off the cliff, shooting him in the back)
37. Snooping co-workers
39. WickedWhores
40. Why doesn’t Sean think he’s that smart? Wierd.

….and much more politically incorrect, socially insensitive and particularly foul commments. All in a days work for “4 guys from Viewpoint”.

Now that we’re posting again, I’ll try and keep up a little better with the day to day of what’s going on with the “guys”.