It's a Glork!

[Glork]

Being less than a week old on the forums and something of an SF regular (on Thurs-Sun, anyway), I'd make one of these here thread thingies.

Born and raised in Virginia, moved to Ohio when I went off to the University of Dayton. Moved back home for a summer while jobhunting, then got hired by a consulting company and moved to Columbus, Ohio last October, where I've lived since then. Ironically enough, travel back to VA every M-Th for work now. Travel gets really boring really quickly, but I've built up status to the point where I can fly anywhere for free and have some 8 bajillion Marriott rewards points.

When not poring over enormous MS Project files (Worst. Tool. EVAR.), sleeping on planes, fixing the shit that everyone around me fucks up, or traveling to visit friends/family on weekends, I spend an awful lot of time gaming (SURPRISE!). I watch a ton of sports, and try to play when at all possible. I took two semesters of fencing in college, and I really miss that. I also play poker, a slew of different board/party games, a few RTS games, and the like. Basically, I love competition. And most of the time (most of the time), I can keep it friendly.

Oh, and I like talking. (Could you guess?) And I'm loud. Very loud.




Feel free to ask me anything. That doesn't necessarily mean I'll choose to answer it, though.

[Tango]

After that indept research monolog of your short life, I will give your story a makeover. Ehem.

Glork: "It all started in beautiful, Suffolk, Virginia. I grew distant from my parents. My father was a fisherman and my mother was a government secretary. At age 17, they told me I ought to get a real job. I received a BA in Engineering after 4 years of kinship seclusion at the University of Dayton. I came to believe that family was an element to be forgotten. Plucked from my prime, I started my 'real job' in Columbus Ohio. Every now and then I fly by the borders of Virginia, and am reminded of warm summer's playing football on the shores. Life now revolves around the sterile plastic of computer screens and those little packets of peanuts on 3am flights. I make 68k each year, and yet, I don't know if my parents' are proud of me."

There, much more dramatic. :D

[Glork]

Suffolk? Please.


Charlottesville.

[Lstormy10]

What RTS games do you play?

[Tango]

I took a stab.

[Glork]

What RTS games do you play?Mostly Age games (especially AoEII and AoM). Some CoH. I have a soft spot for Star Trek: Armada -- even though I never was much of a Star Trek fan.

Surprisingly enough, I never was much into Starcraft or the Warcraft series.

[Lstormy10]

Mostly Age games (especially AoEII and AoM). Some CoH. I have a soft spot for Star Trek: Armada -- even though I never was much of a Star Trek fan.

Surprisingly enough, I never was much into Starcraft or the Warcraft series.

Very similar to my RTS games that I play:

AoE III (including the 2 expansions - used to play AoE II), CoH (and the expansion), Star Wars: Empire at War (and the expansion), and Sins of a Solar Empire

I only found Warcraft III interesting a little bit - I am not a fan of Starcraft at all.

[Glork]

I definitely liked AoE II better than III, though that may be because I spent years playing II, and have only played III when visiting my younger brother (as he owns the game, and I do not).


EDIT: In fact, in our senior year at UD, I got all four of my housemates addicted to AoE II for a few solid months. It basically became a Friday afternoon ritual to crack open a couple of cold ones and beat the living tar out of each other.

[Lstormy10]

I definitely liked AoE II better than III, though that may be because I spent years playing II, and have only played III when visiting my younger brother (as he owns the game, and I do not).


EDIT: In fact, in our senior year at UD, I got all four of my housemates addicted to AoE II for a few solid months. It basically became a Friday afternoon ritual to crack open a couple of cold ones and beat the living tar out of each other.

My friend bought me the gold edition of AoE II and since then I have been addicted to the series. The naval battles are probably my favorite part and AoE III has the best ones - that's why I play AoE III instead of II.

[masterlink43]

Man, I totally got some glork on my pants the other day. It took hours to get out.

[Demon Pimp]

Man, I totally got some glork on my pants the other day. It took hours to get out.

TMI, TMI . . . you'll go blind if you don't stop glorking off.

[Virigoth]

Very similar to my RTS games that I play:

AoE III (including the 2 expansions - used to play AoE II), CoH (and the expansion), Star Wars: Empire at War (and the expansion), and Sins of a Solar Empire

I only found Warcraft III interesting a little bit - I am not a fan of Starcraft at all.

I tried playing some Sins and it honestly made me want to rip my eyes out..It's so slowwww(side note: I kept trying to compare it to travel in Eve and that was probably the problem)

[Glork]

This puts a very awkward spin on the taunt "You just got glork'd!" :/




I don't think it's enough to make a new thread, but since I mentioned my job/travel, I need to rant. Hard.

So, when you fly on a round trip week in and week out, you're bound to have some bad days. Today was the second worst air travel experience I've ever had.

So, normally I fly between where I work in VA and my hometown in C'bus. This weekend, I'm going to Missouri for a friend's wedding. PHF - ATL - STL. My flight from PHF to ATL was delayed by nearly an hour due to thunderstorms in Atlanta. My layover is only 50 minutes, but after arguing with the agents in PHF, they convince me that the flight to STL is also delayed, and I'll make my connection fine.

So we get off the ground, we're heading towards Georgia, and the pilot comes on the intercom to tell us that we'll be circling the air over South Carolina for the forseeable future. After another hour of circling clouds, we finally land in Atlanta, and I deplane to the grimly expected result that I've missed my flight out to St. Louis.

I go to one of the gate agents in ATL to see what can be done about getting on another flight. Lo and behold, every single flight to St. Louis until 5:00 PM on Friday was booked solid. Thing is, I need to be near Kansas City by midday Friday to start wedding weekend festivities. I mention this to the gate agent, and she actually gets me onto a flight straight to Kansas City (which was scheduled to leave at 3:00 PM but was still delayed as of 6:30 PM -- yay Atlanta). An hour and a half after I was supposed to land in St. Louis, I leave Atlanta bound for Kansas City.

On the flight, I get seated next to this ~6 year old kid who is completely unsupervised. The kid's also hopped up on sugar, crazydrugs, hell if I know. He cannot sit still, insists on bothering both me and the other guy in our room for every little thing. I think he elbowed me no less than fifty times, he tried to get the flight attendants to give him coffee of all things, he wouldn't leave me alone while I was trying to work on my laptop, and as his ears popped, he kept yelling at nobody to "get out of my ear." The little man was very polite, but seriously. Unbelievably annoying.

Anyway, I manage to survive the flight, land in MCI, and make my way to baggage claim. Apparently God enjoys taunting me, because my bag is nowhere to be found when they unload the bags. I check with their baggage claim office, and they are completely unable to locate my bag, assuring me that it "probably" got stuck on the next flight to Kansas City, which is due in about 15 more minutes. Fine. Whatever. I can't get picked up from the airport for another hour and a half anyway.

Said flight lands, and after its passengers make their way over to baggage cllaim, the carousel starts running. The third or fourth bag to come out gets to the top of the conveyor belt and, instead of dropping onto the carousel, it just stops. Three or four bags pile up behind it, and those of us waiting realize that something is very wrong. Another passenger and I climb up onto the carousel (not without me bruising a shin, naturally) and realize that a strap/clip on this suitcase got stuck at the end of the conveyor belt and has managed to wedge itself against the metal structure itself. And it won't budge one bit. So we do the only thing we can. We start grabbing the piled-up bags and dropping/tossing/setting them onto the carousel as quickly as we can. Eventually, somebody alerts an AirTran employee, who gets the message down to the baggage people to stop the carousel.

Us: "Yeah, this bag got caught in the conveyor belt. It looks like we'll have to get something to cut that strap and get it out."

AirTran employee: "Alright, let me just have a look here..."

The guy goes through the same motions that the two of us had. He pulls on the bag, tries to push the strap down, tugs it left and right and every driection imaginable. It's stuck fast.

"Well, that thing's stuck in there pretty good."

No shit.

Another employee climbs up to have a look and does the EXACT SAME THING that the three of us had already done. Same conclusion.

A fifth person gets up there and starts screwing around, turning the carousel on again and back off. Eventually he comes to the same decision as the previous four -- it needs to be cut. At least he has a pocket kinfe. A good 25-30 minutes after the bags were first loaded, we finally get the carousel running again.

Surprisingly enough, my suitcase was on that flight, and so I won't go clothesless on Friday. (Sorry to disappoint.) I also managed to get a ride with the groom's sister, whose flight was also apparently delayed, and who was able to take me to his place to crash tonight. So here I am, unwinding with an ice cold beer and SportsCenter.

Still, today sucked. Hard.

[/rant]

[ZUEIG]

My worst ever plane story was a flight that was from Winnipeg to Chicago. I was on the first flight out at 730am and it's only a 2 hour journey so I expected to be home by 1030am. I got home at 1030pm...

My flight was delayed cos they had a smoke detector go off during takeoff. After a check, it was thought to be a false alarm. AFTER we took off, the detector went off again. So the plane turned around and landed back at Winnipeg. The gate agent kept reassuring us about quick repairs but we waited till 1230 CST and finally the agent said we should look for another flight.

Naturally, all (3) of the remaining flights that day to chicago are booked. So I ended up having to go via Ottawa. The phone agent I spoke to gave me a 3pm EST connecting flight from Ottawa to Chicago. So I got on the 1pm CST flight to Ottawa only to realise when I reached, that even though the flight was 1 hour long due to time zone difference, I had already missed my flight.

So the next flight out of Ottawa was at 730 EST... It was a bad travel day in all.

[PandaBear Assassin]

My worst ever plane story was a flight that was from Winnipeg to Chicago. I was on the first flight out at 730am and it's only a 2 hour journey so I expected to be home by 1030am. I got home at 1030pm...

My flight was delayed cos they had a smoke detector go off during takeoff. After a check, it was thought to be a false alarm. AFTER we took off, the detector went off again. So the plane turned around and landed back at Winnipeg. The gate agent kept reassuring us about quick repairs but we waited till 1230 CST and finally the agent said we should look for another flight.

Naturally, all (3) of the remaining flights that day to chicago are booked. So I ended up having to go via Ottawa. The phone agent I spoke to gave me a 3pm EST connecting flight from Ottawa to Chicago. So I got on the 1pm CST flight to Ottawa only to realise when I reached, that even though the flight was 1 hour long due to time zone difference, I had already missed my flight.

So the next flight out of Ottawa was at 730 EST... It was a bad travel day in all.

Yikes dude! I can't even imagine how pissed you were.

[Glork]

I've had a day like that, ZUEIG. Was supposed to get into PHF at 11:30. Got into ORF at 21:30.

Note to airlines: Turning a 6 hour travel day into a 16 hour travel day does not make for a happy customer.

[Glork]

Photos from my best friend's wedding today:

Four of us playing Rock Band, ZZ Top style, in our hotel room... I'm on the far left:
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a136/AjaxUD/DSC00016.jpg


Me with a friend:
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a136/AjaxUD/DSC00059-1-1.jpg


Me with the bride and groom:
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a136/AjaxUD/DSC00065.jpg


...and last, but not least, me making a fool of myself on the dance floor. And yes, that IS a portly man wearing a kilt in the background:
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a136/AjaxUD/DSC00075.jpg

[ikem1223]

OMG your tall.... but yea alot of talking. :/ me no like talk....

[*dianne*]

Hi glork!!! Hope to kick you ingame again soon :D

I love you and wont really kick you on purpose :P

[*dianne*]

Eventually he comes to the same decision as the previous four -- it needs to be cut. At least he has a pocket kinfe.
Still, today sucked. Hard.

[/rant]

Does anyone else find the fact that an airport employee has a pocket knife highly amusing?

[Glork]

Does anyone else find the fact that an airport employee has a pocket knife highly amusing?
He was a maintenance guy or something. I'm willing to bet he had clearance for something like that. I mean, one doesn't generally ask why police officers around airports have guns...



And yeah, Ikem, I'm tall. 6'2"ish.