About Me

Name: Dan White
Date of Birth: December 21, 1982
Hometown: Providence, RI
Grew Up In: Warwick, RI
Current Residence: Groton, CT
Education: Bachelor of Science, Mechanical Engineering, University of Rhode Island
Current Employment: Sytems Engineering and Analytics Inc. (SE&A Inc.)∞
Job Title: Systems Mechanical Engineer
Job Location: Groton, CT

Hey hey, my name is Dan White, but you all know me as blakstang98. I was born on December 21, 1982 (shortest day of the year!) in Providence, Rhode Island (not Long Island). When I was 8 years old, our family moved to Warwick, RI to secure a better life. Mainly so I could go to better school systems to get a better education. So technically Providence is my hometown, but I really consider Warwick to be the place where I grew up, as I spent my more formative years there.

After I graduated high school in 2001, I went on to college at University of Rhode Island to major in Electrical Engineering. After 2 and a half years of struggling to grasp the concept of Electical Engineering from it's major classes, I decided to switch majors to Mechanical Engineering. Luckily for me the General Education Electives were already done (for the most part), so I just had to focus on the major Mechanical Engineering classes. After 2 and a half, I graduated in May 2006.

After college, I continued working my part time job at Budget Rent-a-Car for a year and a half. Due to personal interests, I didn't pursue an engineering job very strongly right after college. And also a combination of lacking an internship and a mediocre QPA didn't help my cause for finding a job. Then on September 17, 2007, I earned a job at a small federal sub-contractor job called Systems Engineering and Analytics Inc. I have been there ever since, working as a Systems Mechanical Engineer.

How I Found ScoreHero

Well, I actually had 2 references to ScoreHero. The first one, I was viewing an FAQ/Walkthrough from GameFAQ. The author of this particular FAQ/Walkthrough referenced ScoreHero as being a great source for help and information on playing Guitar Hero. Then when I found out about the idea of custom songs, I was curious to how much work and effort it would take. On ScoreHero, you have to be a registered member in order to view information on customs, so I figured this and the first reason, that I'd register and check it out.

I was a lurker for the first 2 or 3 months after being registered before I decided to post. I'm not totally sure, but I think my first post was in Technique, Style and Gameplay about how to pass Play with Me. The little information I got wasn't very helpful, so needless to say, I still hadn't passed it for another few months. I was pretty pumped when I actually passed it! And now, I have a 5-star on the sucker, and my 80's Log, so I've come a long way, thanks to the help and vote of confidence of the ScoreHero community.

My Guitar Hero Ability

I shine as a hard player. To quote my good friend dramacomic "I play hard". I can however play on expert, but I don't feel very comfortable with it. I have a 5-star on every song on expert on all the Guitar Hero installments, except World Tour (don't own yet) except The Way it Ends and Through the Fire and the Flames. I passed Through the Fire and Flames once, and quite frankly, I'm not going to make an effort to grind it again. I still haven't gained the knack for The Way it Ends, but at least I have a 4-star on it, and can stand to improve some more. Of the first 5 Guitar Hero's, those are the only 2 songs I've failed to 5-star. I've went through Guitar Hero World Tour on expert guitar, but just passed every song. I failed to 5-star a bunch of them, but I'm not ambitious enough to take on that job yet.

As far as my hard play, it took way too long to get a 5-star on Through the Fire and Flames, and have vowed to never play it again. With the first 5 Guitar Hero installments, I have a total of 203 Full Combo's out of a possible 242. I can still get a few more Full Combo's (FC's) on hard, but those will require a bit of grinding. I still haven't played Guitar Hero World Tour on hard for any instrument yet. I imagine I can get a bunch of them, but certainly not all of them. I've only played Satch Boogie on Quickplay, and it was hard as hell and I didn't even 5-star it. I don't own Guitar Hero: Metallica yet, and I probably won't have that for a while. I was disappointed that my favorite Metallica song (The Four Horsemen) didn't make it on there (the solo is probably too hard to chart, it's sort of out of control). Seeing songs like Creeping Death and Orion make me want to play it though.

I do have scores for all the first 5 installments on easy and medium difficulties as well. I went through all of them to practice my squeezing. The only song I didn't FC in this grind was Through the Fire and Flames on medium. My score is fairly close to a 7-star, but I really have no interest in trying to improve it, let alone FC it. I rank in the top 10 for the platform on easy for all of these Guitar Hero's and rank in the top 20 for the platform for these same games. I suppose I'm not a bad squeezer, but if I could whammy better, I could get better scores for sure. I won't bother to play easy or medium for the rest of later Guitar Hero games, with all the instruments and a ton of songs, it's just too much work. So consider my easy and medium scores to be set in stone for a while.


Coming later, links to scores.