Gearheads of War

Hey Gearheads, or those of you left, this is an especially sad post for me to write, and it's one that I've been tormented about for about a week now.  I've decided to go ahead and stop posting on Gearheads and shut down the comments and diary functions.  I'll leave it open for about a week just so those of you left here can say an official goodbye to each other on the site if you'd like.

I've decided that Gearheads was a fun community and I made a lot of great friends here, but my life became simply too hectic to keep up with the site on a daily basis.  That's the kind of love a community like this needs in order to grow and prosper.  I thought I had left it in the hands of the other appointed admin folks here but I think I did something to piss off Suns and Blankman because as all of you know, they went off and started another site without ever mentioning anything to me.  And I can't really run this site on my own as I just moved, I'm having a son in February (yes, there was confusion on the ultrasound and it turns out my girl is really a boy) and I need to make sure that my business is ultimately a success.  Then I'll have all the time for gaming in the world.

So I just wanted to thank a few people for helping make this community such a success.  First, I have to thank my brother for creating a fantastic universe and the first Gears of War that gave us so many hours of endless entertainment and priceless experiences.  I also want to thank my wife who put up with me running this site on top of the thousands of other balls I have in the air.  I want to thank Jon Ponsford and Jeremy Bingham who basically did a lot of work on this site for free (although they did get some compensation when we did the fundraising for the upgrades).  I want to thank SweetTea and Suns and Zoso and Robbins and tyrus and Kenai and GearsChrisB and Grymm and all the guys who helped make this a special place.  And even though this site is ending with a whimper, I take pride in knowing that I connected all these people with this community.  People that I met in real life and came to consider good friends. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed meeting people like Bob Bierasinski (aka) Polandstyle and Jim Ratajski (Kenai) and Kenny Chung (Blankman).

I'd be lying if I didn't say that I'm extremely hurt by the way things are ending here, but life moves on.  At the end of the day, the people who truly became my friends will remain my friends and those who were something less will go on and lead their own lives.  I hold no ill will other than just being extremely hurt that there was apparently no level of communication at all. In many ways it was my fault because I simply didn't have enough time to pour into this site and maybe some felt like the channels of communication weren't open or I wasn't listening.  Regardless, I loved my experience here.  It gave me moments that I'll never forget.  Obviously the biggest ones were involving gaming, but it was often the banter between the Gearheads that made this place special.  Whether it was Zoso joking about his testicles for the 80th time or Polandstyle falling asleep in the middle of a match and twirling around in circles or Grymm giggling like a school girl or everyone in the room just wowed by the myriad of ridiculous headshots Robbins had.  There are a million of them.  Countless numbers to recall.

This site started about three and a half years ago with this post.  I honestly never really believed that we would do things like play a match against the folks from Infinity Ward or conduct podcasts with some of the biggest names in gaming journalism.  Or that I'd finally get to attend E3.  Regardless, I want to just once more thank everyone for making all that possible.  I've enjoyed making so many new gaming friends and I hope that you will continue to be a part of my life.  Thanks, Gearheads.  It's been a great ride but every great ride must end.  This is the end.