Monthly Archives: January 2013

21Jan

Gamers for giving

Posted in Gaming, PC | Leave a comment

I received the following email from fellow MVP Zach Wigal. If you are in Eastern Michigan please show your support. This is a great cause!

Zach here. For those who don’t know, I help manage a charity organization called Gamers Outreach Foundation. We fund the construction of portable gaming carts for children’s hospitals, and we also send video game care packages to troops overseas. Each year, we host a fundraising event called Gamers for Giving within the state of Michigan. It’s a competitive gaming event / LAN party that helps support our organization’s activities during the course of the year.

We’ll be hosting Gamers for Giving 2013 at the Eastern Michigan University Student Center during the weekend of February 16th & 17th. At the moment, we’re trying to get the word out to the gaming community. If any of you would be willing to help promote across your social media channels / websites, that would be a huge help! We’re trying to raise $15,000 to support our programs in 2013. We’re managed on a volunteer basis, and entry fees from the event as well as public donations will be directly supporting our initiatives.

I’ve attached our event’s press release to this email. You’ll also find some photos you can use to accompany any content you’d like to produce below. If you have any questions or thoughts, feel free to reach out! cc @GamersOutreach on Twitter and we’ll RT your coverage. We’re also using the hashtag #GFG2013 for our event.

Here is the press release:

Gamers for Giving 2013

Eastern Michigan University attracts video game industry influencers & companies for a weekend of eSports competition benefitting charity.

Saline, Mich. – Over the course of February 16th & 17th, the eyes of the interactive entertainment industry will focus on Eastern Michigan University as video game enthusiasts from across the country convene to participate in one of the Midwest’s premier gaming events, Gamers for Giving.

Founded in 2008 by current Eastern Michigan University student Zach Wigal, Gamers for Giving is a non-profit competitive gaming tournament & LAN party that helps raise money for the charity initiatives of Gamers Outreach Foundation. The organization, a 501(c)(3) non-profit within the video game industry, facilitates activities such as building portable gaming carts for children’s hospitals (dubbed “GO Karts”) and sending video game care packages to troops overseas.

“Gamers for Giving is an opportunity for people who love to play video games to come together, share their passion for gaming, and raise money for charity,” says Wigal. “This year, we’re trying to raise $15,000.00 to support the programs of Gamers Outreach. We’ve been able to deliver GO Karts to medical facilities in Michigan, but we’d like to expand the program to additional hospitals both within and outside the state. We’ll also be supporting Eastern’s ROTC program in connection with our military initiatives.”

Supported by the likes of Astro Gaming and the Intel LANFest series, Gamers for Giving features tournaments with cash prizes for the hardcore enthusiast, as well as casual activities for those who enjoy the light-spirited side of gaming. Headline activities include a Halo 4 tournament, a Call of Duty Black Ops 2 tournament, a League of Legends tournament, a StarCraft 2 tournament, and a BYOC (bring your own computer) LAN Party. Entry fees from the event directly support Gamers Outreach programs.

Gamers for Giving 2013 begins on Saturday, February 16th and will end on Sunday, February 17th. The event is taking place within the Eastern Michigan University Student Center Grand Ballroom. Information and registration for this year’s event can be found at http://www.GamersforGiving.org. A live stream will broadcast at twitch.tv/LANFest.

For more information, contact Zach Wigal by email at zwigal@gamersoutreach.org or by phone at 734.476.7506.

And some photos:

Gamers for Giving Halo players
Helen DeVos GO Kart
Gamers Outreach military package
Gamers for Giving StarCraft 2 player

17Jan

Please welcome our new (dream)host

Posted in Entertainment | 8 Comments

Okay so I’m not entirely sure that I did this correctly so for now I’m keeping my fingers crossed.  If I did everything correctly I signed up for new hosting at Dreamhost (2 year package for $214.80 – $8.95/mo) and I created and them imported the old database and then I uploaded the old files.

I didn’t upload our old forum so that link in the last post won’t work anymore.  I was trying to figure out what the actual IP address was for our site to see if we could get to it that way but I can’t figure it out.  Perhaps someone with more knowledge of these things can figure it out.  If so then I’ll hold off on canceling our old hosting so we can get to the old forum and grab some of the old posts.  If not, then we’re old postless for now and we’ll just have to forge ahead and create new information and posts here.

While I think the site is resolving to the new host (I updated the DNS settings on our domain about an hour ago), I can’t be certain. When I ping pregamelobby.com I am still getting a reply from Site5 so this one is up in the air for right now.  BUT, shortly after I changed the DNS servers I was able to access the new site on the new host and I’m pretty sure we’re on the new host now.

Anyway, I’m pretty excited I didn’t screw anything up too badly (other than perhaps not giving you all enough time to grab old posts from the old forum – SORRY!) and that we’re back up and running on a new host without too much difficulty.  In fact, I’m pretty proud of myself considering I really have no idea what I’m doing! haha!

Oh yeah, one other thing. When we switched to the new host we lost all of our old PGL email accounts. If you had one, email me at my gmail account (yes, it is peench), and let me know what the settings were and I’ll re-create it. Thanks!

Alright, enough rambling from me for now.  Start poking around and let me know if anything seems broken so I can try to fix it.  If all is good then we’ll forge ahead with our new host Dreamhost and leave Site 5 behind us!

17Jan

Farewell Site 5

Posted in Entertainment | 4 Comments

So our current host, Site 5, decided that they would rather spend more money trying to sign up a new customer than accommodate an existing, long standing customer.  With diligent follow up on my part I forced them to respond this morning.  Even though I was promised that the response would be an actual response, it was not.  Here’s the bullshit answer I received:

I have examined your resource usage and unfortunately at this time, it has not stabalized from the changes you have made. We will need a few days worth of usage before we can provide you with a reliable recommendation. I see that you are looking to change packages before the 25th and I believe we can should be able to provide you with a reliable recommendation by the 21st.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Thanks,

Collin Simmons
Server Health Manager, Site5.com

I’m not sure what they expected in terms of stabilization since that is not what they asked of us.  I’m in a chat session with them right now giving them one final chance and if they don’t move us today then screw them.  I’m tired of wasting my time trying to save us as one of their customers.

If they don’t move us today I’ll sign up for hosting at Dreamhost tonight and make the settings change on our domain right away.  It might take a few hours or whatnot to populate and I’m not sure how we’ll move all the posts and the site itself, but we’ll figure that out.

In the meantime, for those of you who wanted to save posts from the old site, please go to the old site HERE and copy any posts you all want and save them and email them to me so I can post them when we’ve moved to the new host.

Thanks you all!

16Jan

Thank You For Your Continued Patience!

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

We are going to be kicking the tires for a bit and testing out different themes.  If you see or don’t see a feature that you really like, please suggest it.  I have found a number of really sweet themes, but a lot of them require Photoshop CS+ to edit them, which takes it outside of my current skill set.  Also, I would have to buy that software and THEN learn how to use it.  I don’t quite have that much time currently, but I promise that we will continue working to make the site the very best that we can.  Thank you all so much!