Below is just my opinion on the situation. Others may see it differently.

My take on the Ocean Marketing, Paul Christoforo, and N-Control Avenger situation.

When you are sorry you truly feel bad for what you did. When you are sorry you got caught you are not sorry for what you did, but instead you are are sorry for how it ended or how you got caught.

If you don’t know what is being reference the jest of it is that a customer who ordered an N-Control Avenger controller, but hadn’t received it when he was supposed to. He then emailed the contact address listed for the controller and what resulted was a back and forth between him and Paul Christoforo, the President/Owner/Solo Operator of Ocean Marketing. In that conversation Dave, the customer, eventually CC’d a few news blogs and Gabe/Mike from Penny Arcade to let them see how he was being treated. This all resulted in Paul making a bigger fool of himself by calling out Mike and saying some more things that should have never been said.

Anyhow, after this all happened the story broke to the internet and things came crashing down on Paul. The company being the N-Control dropped Ocean Marketing, lots of people who Paul claimed backed him denied having anything to do with him, and Paul got flooded with emails and calls. After all this went down Paul issued an apology to Mike at Penny Arcade, but in it he started with:

I just wanted to apologize for the way our emails progressed I didn’t know how big your site was and I really didn’t believe you ran Pax , So for what’s its worth I am very sorry. Your post has obviously made my life very difficult and I have not slept yet dealing with all the spam and personal information intrusion as well as my family being smeared on the internet.

So you see Paul is sorry, but from my understanding it appears he is only sorry because he didn’t realize how big Penny Arcade and Mike were. If this would have been someone without so much pull on the internet would Paul still be sorry or would he have continued on? In my opinion Paul was not sorry about what he did instead he was/is sorry he got caught by someone who was big enough to make it known to everyone.

Previous incident with Paul that shows he did it before and would have probably continued if not for getting caught up in how he was acting: Poor customer service

I picked up The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim last Friday and I’ve been enjoying, but I feel I may have misspent some of my perk points and made it so I cannot get everything I want later. Since this happened I started looking for a Perks tool online to help me build out my perks before I buy them so I know I can get make things perfect. In my search I found lots of people looking for the same thing, but no tool. So I’ve decided to try my hand at creating one.

You can find my list of Skyrim Perks there and hopefully within the next day or two I will have a functioning Skyrim Perks Calculator for planning out your characters.

Skyrim Perks – Perks Calculator for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

This is actually very simple. In your custom_functions.php file add the following code.

add_theme_support( 'nav-menus' );

remove_action('thesis_hook_before_header', 'thesis_nav_menu');
add_action('thesis_hook_before_header', 'wp_nav_menu');


Simple, right?

Now for the error you get when running WordPress 3.0 and try to access the Custom File Editor in Thesis. It should say something like:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function use_codepress() in /home/your_directory/public_html/wp-content/themes/thesis/lib/admin/admin.php on line 42

For now to fix this just comment out line 42 in your /lib/admin/admin.php file like so. (by adding // in front of line 42)

// if (use_codepress()) add_action('admin_print_footer_scripts', 'codepress_footer_js');


No more error!

Have fun with WordPress 3.0 and Thesis.

Not sure what Thesis is? Check out http://diythemes.com

Let me first start by saying that I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell ok no really I’m not crazy, but this is what happens to me occasionally at night. After reading a recent conversation on Reddit, it made me really think about whether I am having sleep paralysis or night terrors. I never seem to wake up screaming or anything, but my breathing does become heavy and I do freak the hell out.

I cannot pinpoint when this all started, but I would venture to say it was about 5-6 years ago. Nothing too dramatic happened beyond a break up a few years before that. I don’t remember being too stressed about anything and I am currently not stressed out except I guess occasionally thinking about money and how I am going to pay for this or that. Other than that I cannot think of anything beyond what I read on Wikipedia about sleep paralysis possibly being a symptom of migraines, which I tend to get quite often. I attribute those to either not having a healthy sleep schedule (maybe another cause of the sleep-terrors) and/or working on the computer plus my glasses/contacts. Anyway let me get to the point of what happens to me.

At night for the last few years I will be sleeping peacefully when I, for what seems like no reason at all, will open my eyes to see in the dark what appears to be either spiders crawling down from the ceiling or a mysterious person/thing standing in the corner staring at me. Now when I say “spider” I mean a big fucking spider like creature that looks like it is dangling from a web coming at my face or my sons. And when it appears to be the person I see them either at my closet or the corner near there and they appear to just be staring at me then slowly fade away. The same thing happens with the spider. After a few secs or being like WTF, starting to panic, and breathing extremely heavy my mind seems to realize the objects aren’t there and they begin to fade away. I do occasionally jump up and turn on the lights to make sure that no one or thing is there, but that has become less frequent as I seem to have trained myself to realize that it is not there quicker.

hypnagogia.com

Now let me get this straight, this shit is freaky. If you have never experienced it, and I hope you don’t, to all of a sudden wake up and feel like something is watching you or coming to get you is a bit scary. I have never screamed or reached for a weapon, but I have “jumped” or been startled and can tell you for 100% fact that I know my heart has sped up on multiple occasions. Let me say that this does not happen every night, well not to an extreme. I do almost every night, wake up to feel like I am at someone else’s house or that someone else is at my house, but maybe that isn’t related as it doesn’t freak me out, it just feels weird. Now I don’t know if these events/episodes would be classified as sleep paralysis or night terrors or maybe even Hallucinatory Sleep Disorder (HSP).

Night Terrors Symptoms: Sudden awakening from sleep, persistent fear or terror that occurs at night, screaming, sweating, confusion, rapid heart rate, inability to explain what happened, usually no recall of “bad dreams” or nightmares, may have a vague sense of frightening images. Many people see spiders, snakes, animals or people in the room, are unable to fully awake, difficult to comfort, with no memory of the event on awakening the next day.

From this list of night terror symptoms I can see a lot of similarities between what I describe and what people experience who have night terrors. Except I have memories and can recall what happened, I actually can remember quite vividly what was going on. I do wake up fully a few secs later, I don’t believe I have nightmares before it, and I’ve never screamed. So what does this mean? I can’t say. Lets look at sleep paralysis

Sleep paralysis occurs when the brain awakes from a REM state, but the body paralysis persists. This leaves the person fully conscious but unable to move. The paralysis can last from several seconds to several minutes “by which the individual may experience panic symptoms and the realization that the distorted perceptions were false”.

In addition, the paralysis may be accompanied by terrifying hallucinations (hypnopompic or hypnagogic) and an acute sense of danger. Sleep paralysis is particularly frightening to the individual because of the vividness of such hallucinations. The hallucinatory element to sleep paralysis makes it even more likely that someone will interpret the experience as a dream, since completely fanciful or dream-like objects may appear in the room alongside one’s normal vision. Some scientists have proposed this condition as an explanation for alien abductions and ghostly encounters.

Ok so wtf. Sleep paralysis sounds a lot like what I am having too. When I awake to see these “spiders” or “people” in my room I have this period of being unable to move for a few secs in which I start to panic. Then a few seconds later I snap out of it and that is when I would jump up and turn on the lights before. Was I abducted by aliens or is there a ghost in my house? We were told a few years back that someone who used to live in our house, a young girl, killed herself in the room I sleep in. Maybe she still around and causing this? We have had lots of mysterious stuff happen, but I guess that is for another post another day.

So after reading through symptoms of both night terrors and sleep paralysis I feel I am no closer to knowing what is going on with me. I don’t feel it is anything that needs urgent attention as other than a feeling of panic and freaking the hell out for a few mins a few nights a week, I am in no danger to myself nor anyone else. Maybe one day I will eventually go to a sleep clinic and they can help me diagnose what is happening. I do know when I was young I was told I don’t enter the REM stage of sleep as I am always on the verge of being awake. I don’t remember how they diagnosed this as I don’t remember doing any sleep test or anything, but maybe this is part of the cause too.

For more information on these check out:
Sleep paralysis on Wikipedia
Night Terrors Resource Center

4Player Podcast - A live show about video games

Something I’ve been working on. Some stuff is not finished such as the placement of the search, the posts need to be worked with for better separation, menu isn’t correct yet, and I think it needs a different logo. Give me some advice or ideas if you will.

Had to throw this together.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand

Tonight, April 16th, is the season finale of Spartacus: Blood and Sand on Starz and I can’t wait! Last Nov/Dec I remember seeing previews for Spartacus, but I had believe that it didn’t start until later 2010. Late in March I learned that I had missed many weeks of the show and figured I’d wait until I could buy it on DVD/Bluray and just watch it then. Until I found it on Netflix and Comcast On Demand.

About two weeks ago I had a free day and I started watching episodes on my new iPad via Netflix. I quickly got drawn into the series after the first episode. For some reason I am really fascinated by Ancient Roman period TV shows and movies (I enjoyed Rome on HBO) so I knew I would like it, but didn’t realize I’d watch 10-11 episodes over 2 days after being hooked. After finishing all the episodes available I was like a addict wanting my next hit, but alas I had to wait a week until the new episode played. So wait I did.

Then on Friday, April 9th, my (what seemed long) wait ended. I almost missed the show, but luckily the red light of my DVR caught my eye around 10 and I watched. It happened to be a great episode that leads up to the season finale tonight with the great words, “we kill them all”. So now I am ready 10pm EST to roll around so I can watch Spartacus get the revenge he has been wanting all season long. But the thought does creep into my head that if he “kills them all”, what will season 2 be about. Oh well, I’ve been waiting for this for 2 weeks and I can’t wait any longer.

Lucy Lawless, John Hannah, Andy Whitfield, and Peter Mensah

If you can’t tell I recommend this series to anyone who enjoys this type of show. I think the acting is great, the story is great, and just the overall feel of it is great (even the exaggerated blood squirting from foes as they fall). Be forewarned that there is lots of nudity and of course violence.

Yesterday I took my dog, Macy, to get spay (spayed?) and to have a hernia that she had repaired. I felt horrible dropping her off as she didn’t know what she was in for. When I picked her up she was still groggy, but eventually came around. Now she just needs to realize she has stitches in her stomach and can’t jump around.

Oh yeah, she has to get used to this e-collar for 2 weeks. She has already pried it off once, so I guess I need to tighten her collar a bit more. Poor girl.

Macy with her e-collar

I wasn’t sure I was going to get this today, but when I called my local Best Buy and they had it I couldn’t resist. So far I love being able just to chill with it and read the news and browse videos or forums.

Lately as a part of my work with ChaCha I‘ve posted (a long with some others) news stories on ChaCha’s Facebook/Twitter pages about celebrities who have passed on or when something interesting happens to them. This has made me realize, while only 27 (28 on the 19th), I am old. After posting these we always receive a good number of people, yes they are mostly younger, but some are 18+ and they have NO idea who these celebrities are.

My brother (right) and me (left)

For instance today Corey Haim died and on the posting on Facebook a few people say “Who is he?” or just “Who?” This is what makes me feel old. I mean who hasn’t seen The Lost Boys or maybe The Two Coreys (ok I didn’t watch this either)?

Anyway, that is my gripe for the day. On top of me having a 9-year-old son who makes it seem like time flies by, I now have this younger crowd throwing it in my face that I am indeed old. Oh well. At least I’m not turning 30 this year like my brother.

My brother (right) and me (left) at Halloween of '86