D'Arque Bishop's Journal

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

Well, as many people know, a few weeks ago I went to Dubai on a business trip. It was an interesting experience, and one I would very much hope to go through again…

I flew to Dubai on an Emirates Airlines Boeing 777. For the most part, the flight was comfortable even if a little long. I must be more used to intercontinental flights than I thought, though, as the fifteen hour flight really didn’t bother me all that much. If anything, the only real drawback to the flight was that my iPod Classic malfunctioned, preventing me from watching or listening to any media on it. Fortunately, the airplane’s media system had more movies than I could have possibly imagined, so I entertained myself by watching Watchmen and Disney’s Atlantis… when I wasn’t sleeping, that is.

Going through immigration and customs was a breeze, and fortunately there was someone from the hotel waiting outside of customs to pick me up and get me to the hotel. The hotel is located in an area called the Green Community, which is a bit distance outside of the city proper and kind of in the middle of nowhere. As we drove to the hotel, I was amazed by the sheer amount of construction that was being done; it was as if they were building a completely brand new megalopolis. I even saw the Burj Dubai in the distance. I tell you, even from far away that building is highly impressive.

Once I got checked in at the hotel, I decided to have some dinner (as it was around 6 PM local time when I landed), and checked out one of the hotel restaurants. I ended up sitting outside right by the pool, availing myself of the barbecue on the buffet, and especially the chicken and lamb. That’s where I realized just how hot it got in Dubai; it was around 8 PM and the sun had set, yet it was still at least 90 degrees outside. I ordered some water with my meal, and sweated as I ate and drank. As soon as I was done there, I wandered over to the hotel bar. In the United Arab Emirates, alcohol is only allowed to be served in hotels, so I figured I might as well have some there. I ended up sitting on the balcony with a cold Heineken, adjusting to the heat, and communicating with friends and colleagues back home via my iPhone. After I was done with my drink, I headed to bed.

The next day was a Saturday. The people at the facility I was going to be working at were going to be there that day working, but I felt I needed a day to try and recover from what jet lag I had. It turned out to be a good thing I was, because I ended up sleeping for most of the afternoon. I also encountered a rather unpleasant shock that showed how much more expensive Dubai could be: while internet access is generally free at US Courtyard by Marriotts, here it was $20 or so a day(!). Needless to say, for the most part, unless I was at the work facility I ended up using my iPhone for internet access for most of my trip.

Now, before I go any further, I suppose I should describe what the culture was like there. If it wasn’t for the lack of clouds and the signs being in both Arabic and English, for the most part I could have sworn I was back home. In fact, I saw more signs that were English-only as opposed to Arabic-only. The range of cars one would find there was about the same as one would find here, including even Dodges. The food available to me was pretty much the same as one would find here, too. Sausage and bacon wasn’t a problem, as places would serve beef or turkey versions as opposed to pork. Men wearing thawbs (called kanduras there) and women wearing hajibs were commonplace, though not all women kept their face completely covered. Finding Arabic books was a bit interesting, as I had intended on getting a copy of Twilight in Arabic for friends, but in the bookstores I went to most of the books were in English.

After having lunch at a Chili’s Too in the shopping center connected to the hotel and resting for the afternoon, I decided to take a free shuttle to the Mall of the Emirates. To say the place is huge is an understatement. The entire place was two to three levels, and had at least two food courts (one with full-size restaurants), a movie theater, an entertainment complex, and of course Ski Dubai. At least one part of the place was set aside of traditional Arabic wares, while many sections were nothing but Western stores, including places you’d expect to see in the States like Marble Slab, TGI Friday’s, Border’s, Virgin Megastore, and the like. I spent a full two and a half hours looking around, seeing what they had compared to us, and overall being very impressed. A friend asked me if I stood out like a sore thumb (as an Arab in a thawb would here), and the answer is, “Certainly not.” There were about as many Westerners as there were Arabs that I could see, and even many Arabs were wearing Western clothing.

Another thing that one notices over there is how many foreigners there are working there. For example, most of the “working class” grunts I saw over there were primarily Indians, working to send money back home to their families in India. In restaurants, that I saw, the women working as waitresses were primarily Asian. As for the “working girls” in Dubai, well… believe it or not, I never saw any. They mostly congregate around the hotels in the city, and the Green Community is far enough out of the way they apparently don’t consider it working hanging around.

After two and a half hours of wandering around the mall and taking in the sights, I headed back to the shuttle pickup area to head back to the hotel. Once there, I went straight to the hotel bar and had a Heineken and people-watched, while communicating to friends/family back home via iPhone. I ended up going to bed early, but didn’t sleep too well as jet lag was still being a pain.

The next day was the big day for me, as I had to get to work at the facility. Posts about that will be forthcoming in the next couple of days.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

It’s kind of funny. With the advent of the fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, it’s been appearing more and more in things I read like Penny Arcade, PvP, and Something*Positive (though, to be honest, tabletop RPGs have come and gone in S*P throughout the comic’s history). It makes me sad, in a way, as I never really got into D&D, even though I always wanted to. I’d been wondering why I never did, and it finally occurred to me recently why that was.

Now, keep in mind, I’m not against tabletop RPGs as a whole. During the 1990’s, I used to play the various World of Darkness games (especially Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse) with two different groups, and I loved playing them. However, while I got into those and enjoyed playing them, I still couldn’t get into Dungeons & Dragons. I have no idea why, as “sword and sorcery” fantasy tales are something I enjoy watching and reading. I thought it might have been just the whole “hack and slash” nature of D&D as opposed to WoD, but talking to my friend George recently helped me put it into perspective.

The thing that had never come into my mind before then was that D&D ISN’T inherently all “hack, slash, get the gold” like I had imagined. Reading tales of the D&D games played by the Penny Arcade guys, Scott Kurtz (of PvP), and Wil Wheaton hammered that point home. What, then, made it that way when I played? It then dawned on me while talking to George.

Another friend of mine who was in the RPG group with George was Chris, who I’ve known since first grade. The other RPG group I was in (headed up by Malinda and Jeff, aka my ex and her now-husband) didn’t play D&D, but instead played only WoD at the time. Chris was the center of the D&D group. However, Chris has never taken much to actual roleplaying. He gets the most enjoyment out of hack and slash. A perfect example is one of the times Chris and George played together in EverQuest II; George would want to read the NPC’s dialogue and find out why he was killing these particular monsters they were hunting, while Chris would impatiently drag him on to the next one, saying, “Come on, come on! Let’s get the next one!”

In fact, if it wasn’t for the nature of WoD itself, I’m sure Chris would have been the same way in those sessions. In WoD, for the most part, going in and hacking/slashing will get you nothing except very dead very quickly, especially considering some of the monsters out there. Chris had to do character roleplaying as a result, but he mostly only ever played one type of character. Still, it would explain why Chris preferred Werewolf out of the five WoD games, as it was easily the most violent and combat-intensive of them. We ended up playing it far more than Vampire, and almost never played the other three games.

Since those days, I’ve only done one RPG session with Chris et al, and that was a D&D fourth edition campaign run by Chris’s former roommate Preston’s wife. Even then, the hack and slash mentality was there; Chris complained that there wasn’t enough combat, while I was the one who worked out the riddle behind the entire story and came up with the plan to fix things. It was fun, but the combat wasn’t something I was thrilled with and even was any good at.

So, where does that leave me now? Well, the answer is… in the cold, I guess. I don’t have any real RPG groups to play with, even though I would like to try D&D with a non-hack and slash focus. I play these games to act out a different role. If I wanted pure hack and slash gameplay, I’d play either Diablo II or Gauntlet. Heck, I have a couple of board games like Talisman and Dungeonquest that would fit that category. It’s not just D&D, either; I’d even like to try something like Paranoia, Shadowrun, or even Dark Heresy. I’d been thinking of going into World of WarCraft or Warhammer Online, but then I like the versatility that comes with a tabletop game. (There’s also the MMO burnout to think about, but that’s a whole different subject right there.)

In the end, it’s just a bit of geek culture and entertainment that I wish I had had a better opportunity to get into. It’s not too late, I know, but for now, I’m just going to wait and see what comes up. Here’s hoping I actually do get to enjoy D&D on its own merits sometime soon.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

I spent most of yesterday over at my friend Dave’s place. In the evening, while he and I were discussing something regarding movies, Dad gave me a call. He suggested that I stay the night over at Dave’s, as the air conditioning at the house was out. I decided it couldn’t be that bad, as I endured two weeks without A/C after Hurricane Ike, and made my way home when it was time to go. (I also had other reasons for not wanting to stay, but I won’t get into them here.) It wasn’t too bad when I got home, so I decided to ride it out.

I’m beginning to wonder whether that was really a good idea.

What I forgot to take into account was that temperatures in Houston dropped significantly in the aftermath of Ike, and Houston is presently in a record-breaking heat wave. Right now, the temperature indicator on my system keyboard says it’s 99 degrees in my bedroom. Fortunately I have the ceiling fan going full blast, and also have a desk fan sitting elsewhere in my room providing circulation. My main server’s faring a bit worse, though; the LCD temperature gauge on the front of the case is reading twenty degrees higher than usual. Probably most horrifying of all, I’m also having to wear a pair of shorts and a muscle shirt in order to keep cool. Those who have met me in person will tell you that I almost NEVER wear shorts (and haven’t in public in probably over a decade), and I don’t have anywhere near the physique that can carry a muscle shirt well. Fortunately, with it being nearly 5:30 PM, it should start cooling down in the house within the next few hours.

Dad’s already arranged for someone to come out first thing in the morning to fix the air conditioning. I wish it could have been today, but never mind. For now, though, I’m just going to go downstairs, have a cold drink or two, and help my parents figure out what the heck we’re going to do about supper (as none of us want to work over a hot stove or oven).

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

Well, as you can probably tell (unless you’re seeing the site via the LiveJournal mirror), I’ve switched the site’s theme. I had been using the same theme since I reopened the D’Arque Cathedral back in 2005, and while I had been updating the site’s WordPress software all that time, I hadn’t been updating the theme. It’s just as well, as the theme stopped being updated some years back. Unfortunately, during that time I decided I wanted widget support in the site, and the original theme was too old to support such things. So, I went ahead and looked for a new theme. I FINALLY found one today that I could use with a bit of tweaking, and with Joey “CCShadow” Schorr’s help, I got it up and running. It now looks a bit cleaner and more up to date, and to keep it from looking too static I made my Twitter feed available on it. For now, though, I think it looks nice.

The website isn’t the only thing I recently updated. A few days ago, I went ahead and bit the bullet.

Windows 7 desktop on my main PC

Yes, I put Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 on my main PC.

Actually, so far, I’m quite impressed. It certainly runs smoother and lighter than Windows Vista did, and so far the only problems I’ve had with installing stuff have been my fault, especially when trying to restore my Firefox and Thunderbird settings. The interface took a little getting used to, especially as other than when testing the release candidates of Vista for a couple of weeks, I’m mostly used to Windows XP. (I, of course, exclude Linux and Mac from that.) Still, I think I’ll definitely migrate to the final version of 7 when it comes out. The only thing I haven’t tested has been games; I’ve reinstalled Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2, but haven’t tried loading them yet. Then again, I don’t know if the latest video drivers from ATI will support my video card; my card is less than four years old yet ATI recently retired a bunch of cards including mine. Ah, well…

For now, though, I’m just going to continue tweaking the site and my system as best I can, until I get them to a point that I’m most comfortable with and think runs best. We’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, suggestions/comments on the new layout are welcome.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

All right, let’s get the obvious news out of the way. Michael Jackson is dead. If you’re one of the very very very few people who didn’t know that already, now you do. (And if you didn’t, how the hell is it you’re reading about it on MY site?!)

Moving right along…

One of my old friends from junior high and high school, Kerri-Leigh, has had a rather different take on the whole thing. While everyone else is seeing fit to give their RIPs and condolences to Michael, she is instead giving RIPs and condolences to Navy enlisted and officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty. Unlike Michael, these are people who, other than their shipmates, friends, and family, aren’t known to the public at large and gave their lives in the service.

She’s been posting them on her Twitter, which you can find here. Please take a minute to read through the list; while these are not celebrities, they are people with friends and family who died in the service of this country, and do deserve be remembered.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

It’s pretty obvious to anyone who knows me that I’m a pretty big fan of Mortal Kombat. So, it really should be no surprise to anyone that I have the first movie on DVD, and also on my iPhone/iPod. I’ve stated before that one of my little traditions is that if I go on any trip for Mortal Kombat Online, I watch the first movie on the flight. Well, there’s one confession that I kind of need to make, that I really haven’t told anyone before today.

When I saw the movie in theaters, I was actually a bit disappointed.

I should explain. About a month or two before the movie came out, I had bought the novelization of the movie from Waldenbooks. I had already read it before the actual movie came out, so when I saw the movie I was expecting something pretty close to the book. As it turns out, I’m guessing that the novelization was based on an earlier version of the script than was one filmed, as there were some pretty significant differences. In fact, I would personally say that the story of the book was better than the story of the movie. The book differences added more character development and exposure; on the other hand, being closer to the book would have meant the movie would have lost a major fight scene and three major game references (two of which were played for laughs).

Some of the changes that come to mind are…

• Jax is seen after Sonya boarded Shang Tsung’s boat in a minor sideplot, investigating the tournament and eventually reaching the Temple of Light and meeting Liu’s grandfather.
• There is a scene after the dinner, where Art Lean is looking for his quarters, is confronted by three or so belligerent fighters, and easily dispatches them.
• Sonya’s first fight is with Jade. After Johnny comments that he’s heard she’s pretty tough, Sonya begins the match by bowing to Jade. Jade responds with a deep bow, and when she’s at her lowest point, Sonya kicks her in the face with her combat boot, killing her instantly.
• Sonya refuses to kill Kano during their bout, as it would have meant doing what Shang Tsung wanted and she’s having none of it.
• The Scorpion/Cage fight ends right at the point where Scorpion created the portal in the movie; Johnny shadow kicks him and knocks him unconscious. At that point it’s revealed that Art saw the whole thing, and comments he thought the shadow kick was a special effect done for movies. Johnny offers to teach it to him after the tournament.
• Goro is portrayed as a much less blatantly evil and more honorable warrior. After he defeats Art, instead of contemptuously telling Art it was time to die, he says, “You fought well.” After Art’s death, the other Earthrealm fighters give him a funeral/memorial service.
• After Johnny makes his deal with Shang Tsung, Raiden confronts him with Sonya and Liu. Johnny chews him out, and it is at this point (in front of all three) that Raiden says, “At last, one of you has understood.”
• In both the book and the movie, Raiden tells Johnny that because of his fear, he’ll rush into any fight to prove he’s not a fake, fight recklessly and foolishly, and lose. His fight with Goro in the movie seems to still be reckless and off-the-cuff, seemingly showing Johnny hasn’t learned anything. In the book, the fight is much longer, and much more brutal. More, Johnny has a definite strategy he uses, including the use of a chain as a weapon and dodging in and out of obstacles to avoid Goro.
• In the movie, it’s never shown why Goro couldn’t pull himself up from the ledge he was holding onto with one hand, and Johnny makes a smartass remark to him before he falls. In the book, Goro couldn’t lift himself up because Johnny had broken his other wrists using the chain. Johnny offers to help him up, but Goro refuses, saying Shokan die in battle. Johnny acknowledges it and gives a word of respect before Goro falls.
• In the book, the nature of the light show on the boat, the island itself, and Raiden’s lack of authority there are explained: Liu realizes that they crossed over into Outworld during the light show, and that the island itself was an illusion. It’s when Liu says it that Raiden says, “I have nothing further to teach you.”
• When they return to the Temple of Light at the very end, they meet up with Jax, Liu’s grandfather, and Raiden. They also see Kano, and Sonya and Jax arrest him. Kitana asks Liu to return to Outworld with her, and Liu asks if Raiden knew it would end like that. Raiden responds with his “I didn’t have a clue; you humans are so unpredictable” and vanishes, ending the book. There’s no confrontation with Shao Kahn.

I’m sure there are a lot of people who would disagree with me, but I actually liked the character development with Art Lean, and the fact that Goro wasn’t just a one-note monster. I still have the novelization of the movie on my bookshelf; I’d probably get rid of the movie sooner than lose the book, especially as the book is FAR harder to come by these days. Truthfully, while we’re getting a heck of a lot of remakes of films out there these days (especially ones that don’t need to be remade), I wouldn’t mind seeing the first movie remade, to be far more like the novel. While the movie as filmed had more of a “kick ass” mentality and crowd pleasing action… I simply thought the novel’s story was better.

If you come across the novelization somewhere, and are a Mortal Kombat fan, I highly suggest you pick it up. It’s a different take on the events of the movie, to be sure… and in my opinion, a superior one.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

Well, I knew this trip was coming for a while. My bosses had been talking about it, but nothing concrete had been stated until a week or so ago. The details were finally worked out early last week, and now I’m working to get prepared.

I’m leaving for Dubai on Thursday, and will be returning the following Friday.

The company I work for has a joint venture out there, and one of the things that needs to be done out there is to get the computer systems operational and also get their databases set up and the like. While I doubt I’ll have a week’s worth of work to do, it’s better to be out there longer than necessary than have to make a return trip later on, especially considering it’s a fifteen hour flight from Houston to Dubai. I still need to get with my coworkers to decide what exact software I need to take with me, but I should have that all taken care of by the end of the day tomorrow.

Mostly, now, my preparations are something of a personal nature. I’m finishing up converting movies into an iPod-friendly format; I’m taking the iPod as well as the iPhone because the iPod has ten times the storage space, which means it can carry all of the movies I want to watch. So far this weekend I’ve converted the Lord of the Rings extended edition trilogy, The Towering Inferno, and the original Star Wars trilogy. In the next day or two, I need to pick up a couple of new pairs of tan slacks, plus maybe a new pair of shoes and a panama hat. Most of my clothing tends to be on the dark side, which doesn’t help in temperatures of 100-110 F. I also should get an airline power adapter for my iPhone and iPod.

I’ll still be online from there, of course. I plan on taking a camera with me, plus the iPhone has its own camera. I’ll make the occasional Twitter posting and site posting. I just don’t plan on doing as much Twitter posting as usual, as the data service on the iPhone will be disabled (unless I go through a wifi access point). Still, I will be checking email and instant messages. Just don’t try to call me unless you absolutely have to.

This should be an interesting experience. I’ve never travelled quite this far; ten hour flights are old hat to me, as I’ve been to England more times than I can count. I’ve never been to the Middle East before, though, and I’m hoping a fifteen hour flight is as doable for me as a ten hour flight is. Still, I’m truly looking forward to it, and plan to make the most of it. Right now it’s looking like I’ll be staying at the Courtyard by Marriott; it’s not in the center of the city, but it is close to the facility and it does have a shuttle to/from the Mall of the Emirates. Seeing as I’ll be there on a Saturday, maybe I’ll have time to look around there. We’ll see.

In any event, I’m looking forward to it. I’ll let you all know how it turns out.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

Time Out’s list of essential science fiction films. Italicise the ones you’ve seen, and bold those you like, while strike-through the ones you disliked (nb: I’ve changed the formatting codes to make this clearer).

The Abyss (1989)
Alien (1979)
Batteries Not Included (1987)
Cocoon (1985)
Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)
Battlefield Earth (2000)
The Black Hole (1979)
Cherry 2000 (1987)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
ET: The Extra Terrestrial (1982)
Contact (1997)
Sphere (1998)
Critters (1986)
Dark Star (1974)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Dune (1984)
Earth vs The Flying Saucers (1956)
Enemy Mine (1985)
Event Horizon (1997)
Explorers (1985)
The Fifth Element (1997)
Sunshine (2007)
Flash Gordon (1980)
Flesh Gordon (1974)
Forbidden Planet (1956)
The Fountain (2006)
Howard the Duck (1986)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
The Hidden (1987)
The Last Starfighter (1984)
The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976)
Mars Attacks! (1996)
Metropolis (1927)
Morons from Outer Space (1985)
Pitch Black (2000)
The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Quatermass and the Pit (1967)
Red Planet (2000)
Mission to Mars (2000)
Repo Man (1984)
Brother From Another Planet (1984)
Serenity (2005)
Silent Running (1972)
Solaris (1972)
Solaris (2002)
Soylent Green (1973)
Spaceballs (1987)
Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983)
Ice Pirates (1984)
Solarbabies (1986)
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) (note: I liked the Director’s Edition. It’s a clear case of editing making/breaking a film.)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
Star Trek Generations (1994)
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
Star Trek Nemesis (2002)
Star Trek (2009)
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Starship Troopers (1997)
Supernova (2000)
The Thing (1982)
Things To Come (1936)
This Island Earth (1955)
Total Recall
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
War of the Worlds (1953)
War of the Worlds (2005)
Independence Day (1996)
Zardoz (1974)

Admittedly, a couple of these are classics I actually need to sit down and watch. We have Metropolis and Forbidden Planet on DVD here, and I really need to rent the original The Day the Earth Stood Still…

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

My father’s birthday was a week and a half ago. Unfortunately, this year, he decided not to put a birthday list up, so neither my mom nor I knew what exactly to get him. Mom was cut a break thanks to the fact that Cirque du Soleil’s show Saltimbanco is coming to town in a couple of months, so her present to him was tickets to that show. For me, though, I was still a bit in the lurch. However, soon, an idea came to me.

Whenever I call Dad while on my way home from work, he answers the phone with, “Dirty Dave’s Bar and Grill… how may we serve you?” By this time, he usually already has gotten his scotch out and has had a drink or two. He’s also said recently that if he were to open a bar, he would call it Dirty Dave’s Bar and Grill. With that in mind, I did a bit of research, found what I was looking for, and placed an order… only to find that considering how long I had taken to figure it out, the gift would arrive well after his birthday. So, on his birthday proper, I warned him the gift would be late, but said no more.

During the time waiting for it to arrive, Mom happened to mention to me that his thoughts as to what it might be were completely wrong. He was assuming that it was a Star Wars DVD or something similar that was on backorder.

Anyway, the gift arrived yesterday. When I got home, I put the plain brown box on the kitchen table, and said, “Happy birthday.” He looked at me with a look of puzzlement, especially when he saw the label on the box that said “GLASS: HANDLE WITH CARE”. He opened it, and dug through the packing, and smiled when he saw two scotch glasses and two beer glasses. He unwrapped the bubble wrap from a scotch glass carefully… and then grinned in surprise and elation when he saw that the glass had the words “Dirty Dave’s Bar and Grill” etched on them.

He’s since had one drink of scotch from one of the glasses, but then asked me tonight if I minded if he just kept them for show pieces, as they’re nice glasses and he didn’t want them to be damaged. Of course, they’re his glasses, so I told him I didn’t mind what he did with them. In any event, he’s extremely happy about them, so I think I can consider that a job well done.

On another note, I won’t go into details (though Louie for one will get a kick out of it), but seeing as she didn’t know my father’s name was Dave, Misty made an assumption as to what “Dirty Dave” referred to that was hysterical and somewhat true, if completely wrong. When I told Mom and Dad about it tonight, they damn near died laughing. I have to admit that I didn’t even think of that one…

All in all, I think Dad’s very happy with his birthday gift this year. I just hope I don’t have to outdo myself next year…

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

The following is my post on truTV’s message board about Operation Repo, a show they air about repossession agents. I used to like this show, but it’s become patently obvious to me from reading about it that the show is staged. If you want to read the post on the message board itself (including the inevitable replies from fans who probably won’t have any real evidence to back up their claims about it being real), you can find it here.

Frankly, this show bothers me.

I first caught this show several months ago, and I thought it was a fun show to watch. It kind of surprised me that the repo agents on this show got away with some of the stuff they did, but I didn’t think too much on it. I figured that because truTV was all about “not reality, actuality”, it had to be on the straight and narrow.

Well, after catching it again and deciding to read up on it… I now know that this show is fake. Even calling these re-enactments would very likely be stretching the truth.

Let’s start with the actual cast. Luis Pizarro has an active manager’s license for a repo company. His actual reposessor employee license is cancelled. No big deal, probably. Sonia and Froy, on the other hand, do not have active licenses. Sonia’s license is listed as cancelled, and shows an expiration date in 2006. Froy’s license is also listed as cancelled, and shows an expiration date in 2003. That means that Froy hasn’t been a licensed agent in nearly six years, and Sonia in three. Matt and Lyndah, on the other hand, do not have licenses at all, and unless they have them from another state, never had them. Before anyone jumps in about Lyndah being a “trainee”, no real on-the-job training is listed as a requirement for being a licensee.

In any event, let’s think about this for a second. Froy and Sonia have not had active licenses in YEARS, yet the show implies they’re doing active reposessions of recent vehicles. An example would be a recent episode where Froy doing a repo of a Dodge Journey, where they weren’t familiar with the type of vehicle… which came out five years after his license expired. Also, mention is made of the bad economy, and the like. So, in essence, if they’re doing re-enactments of their own repos, they’re stretching the truth quite a bit. If they’re doing re-enactments of others’ repos, then they’re being very dishonest by making people think its them. Also, keep in mind that there’s no real effort except for a brief disclaimer to show that these ARE “re-enactments”. With camera people around in plain sight, and people “reacting” to the cameramen, we’re meant to think this is real.

It’s plain dishonest, is what it is.

So, why does this bother me so much, and why shouldn’t I just “not watch it” instead of griping, you may ask? The reason is because I actually like watching shows on truTV, for the reason that they ARE “not reality, actuality”. I like watching shows like Forensic Files, The Smoking Gun Presents: World’s Dumbest…, and Inside American Jail, where they show events as they happen, or if they show re-enactments they’re clear about what they are. This show, on the other hand, is obviously staged, and tries to deceive viewers into thinking it’s real. It’s a lie, and it’s a black mark on truTV’s schedule and reputation.

I wish the show would be taken off the air, honestly, or placed on another network which doesn’t pride itself on showing “actuality”. Unfortunately, seeing how often it seems to be on the schedule now, I’m guessing it’s getting good ratings… either because people are fooled, or people don’t care. I guess all I can do is speak my peace here and hope my voice gets heard.

I can hope truTV does something about this blemish. Maybe it’ll not be for nothing.

Note: if you want to reference the rules for repossession agents and their licensing, go to http://www.bsis.ca.gov/forms_pubs/repo_fact.shtml . On the left side of the page is a link marked “Verify a License”; that’s where I looked up and got the information on the show’s participants’ licenses (or lack thereof).

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

You know, it’s kind of sad.

I’ve got this perfectly good website here, and I haven’t been updating it. Instead, I’ve been spending more time updating my Twitter. I don’t know why that is; I guess I just like the quick-and-easy format of doing status updates. I was doing status updates on my Facebook page, and then when I realized I could link my Facebook status updates to my Twitter, I switched over to that. It helps that I have two quick methods of updating my Twitter: TwitterFox for my web browser, and Twitterrific for my iPhone. What I’m going to end up doing, though, to make the site a little less static is put the Twitter feed in via a sidebar. Of course, the fact that this WordPress theme doesn’t support sidebars means I need to find a new theme. I’ve found one; the problem is that I need to create a new header image, as the new theme requires a larger image size. Oh, well. Hopefully I can get some help on that, and have the new theme up relatively quickly.

On another tech front, I have to admit to a bit of disappointment. At the house, if I have to do work on the company network, what I’ll frequently do is take my work laptop and set it on my desk next to my main PC’s monitor. However, it’s usually a bit inconvenient for me to reach over to use the laptop keyboard and touchpad, and there’s not really enough room on here for a second keyboard and mouse. I managed to find a piece of software called Synergy, which allows one to use one keyboard and mouse on multiple machines. You move the mouse off one screen, and it appears on the next. Just what I was looking for, right? Well, the problem is that the machines need to be able to communicate via TCP/IP for it to work. Normally that’s not a problem at all, except for the fact that when my laptop connects to the corporate VPN, the VPN profile automatically disables all communication to computers on the local network. So, in other words… I can only use Synergy when it’s not on the corporate VPN, and 99% of the time when the laptop is booted up here, it’s on the corporate VPN. Thus, it’s useless to me. I wish there was something I could do about it, but I’ll just have to grin and bear it.

Ah, well. We’ll see how things go on either front. For now, though, I’m just proceeding as I have been and hope things change where I can implement either improvement I’m looking into.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

I have to say that last week was a blast. I took the entire week off work, and from Tuesday through Friday, the folks and I went to Las Vegas for a vacation. If you’re just interested in seeing pictures, you can go ahead and look at my gallery of pictures taken during the trip, located here. I apologize for the quality of some of the photos; I hadn’t planned on wanting to take pictures, so they’re all from my iPhone’s camera.

I’ll put the trip description, etc. behind a cut so that those who aren’t interested can skip over.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

Well, the work-related travel I mentioned in my last post is over. Now I’m nearing the end of the break before I leave for Las Vegas on vacation; I’m actually looking forward to that trip, as I could use a bit of time away from work, and playing some poker sounds like good fun. Also, it’ll be nice to actually stay in a hotel room and not need to be rushing in or out of it for once…

My business trips actually started with a trip out to Alvarado last Thursday. Instead of flying out, I decided to drive out. I entrusted the task of navigating me there to my new GPS Navigator (a TomTom ONE 130S), and it turned out that trust was a bit unfounded. Apparently maps of Mansfield and Alvarado are not up to date on the TomTom, and so it took me the LONG way around… and neither the TomTom, Google Maps, or MapQuest could find the actual company location. (It turned out it was because it was on a private road.) I managed to find it, though, and worked until about 5 PM. From there, I went to my hotel, checked in, checked my mail, and then left for a Pappadeaux north of Dallas where I was meeting my friend Ginny for dinner. The meal was delicious, and it was good to catch up with Ginny for a couple of hours. Though, I WAS nearly killed on the way home; as I was driving down I-20, in the right lane, as I was passing an exit some idiot in the lane to my left decided he wanted to exit RIGHT THERE AND THEN, and swerved right in front of me to exit. The only way I avoided hitting him was by swerving out of the way exiting as well. Seriously… exiting a highway is not so vital that you need to kill someone. Just go to the next exit and loop back!

The next day, I worked at the facility for a few hours, and then headed back to Houston, with a stop in Corsicana to have some dinner (and buy Dad a fruitcake from Collins Street Bakery). The rest of the afternoon was spent driving home in rain almost the entire way…

On Sunday, I flew out to Midland/Odessa. While I wasn’t due to be at the facility in Odessa until Monday morning, the company’s travel agent had me there extra early. I ended up watching movies on Netflix to pass the time and having dinner over at Logan’s Roadhouse. I got to the facility nice and early Monday morning… to find I was the only one there. A quick call to the other Odessa facility resulted in someone coming out to open the facility up, and I proceeded to do the necessary audits and software installs. Around 3:30 PM, I left to go get a late lunch/early dinner at Logan’s (as Texas Roadhouse wasn’t open yet), and then headed to the airport. My flight to DFW left an hour late, which made me worried that I would miss my flight to Little Rock. Fortunately, when I landed in DFW and rushed to the next gate, I found out my flight was delayed a half-hour. I finally boarded it, got to Little Rock, got my rental car, and made my way to Conway. I got to my hotel at 11:30 PM, checked my mail, and went straight to bed.

I got to the Conway facility at 8 AM, and proceeded to get everything done that needed to get done. Fortunately I had plenty of time to work with, and only two machines that needed working on. At around lunchtime, the shop hand, branch manager, and I went over to Mazzio’s for lunch. I was first introduced to Mazzio’s when visiting Misty once, and I wish they had one here in Houston. After I got everything done, I made my way back to Little Rock, and flew back to Dallas, where I had supper in TGI Friday’s. Then I boarded my flight to Pittsburgh. The weird thing was that this was the third flight in a row with the same flight crew. I think my greeting to the stewardess on boarding was, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this…”

I got into Pittsburgh around 11 PM local time, and made my way to Indiana, PA… a two hour drive. My rented car was a Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder; I had been interested in the Eclipses once, and this drive only made me glad that I hadn’t bought one. The thing had no cargo room to speak of, and I could barely see out the back. Driving the Pittsburgh freeways was a bit of a nightmare, too, when navigating by GPS navigator and weaving in and out of traffic. I made it to my hotel in Indiana at around 1:30 AM… and when I got into my room, all I did was set the alarm and go to bed.

I slept in an extra hour, and got to the facility at 8:30 AM or so. After spending a couple of hours evaluating and inventorying the facility, plus doing software work, I made my way back to Pittsburgh. I must say that the drive was especially beautiful now that I could actually see something other than total blackness all around me. I made it to Pittsburgh well before my flight, so I ended up killing time by having dinner at TGI Friday’s and doing some work using the airport wifi. It was about 8:30 PM by the time I got to my driveway at home.

So, now, I’m preparing for another trip. We’ll be staying at the Rio this time around, as opposed to Bally’s (where we normally stay). My dad and I went to the Rio a year and a half ago to see Penn & Teller, and were so impressed by it we decided to stay there this time. We’ll see how the trip goes this time around. Up-to-date details will likely be posted on my Twitter feed.

Ah, well. Here’s hoping I have a relaxing week.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

http://www.t3energy.com/en/art/80/

HOUSTON, March 4, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — T-3 Energy Services, Inc. (”T-3 Energy”) (Nasdaq:TTES) announced today that it has completed the purchase of the assets of the Azura Energy Systems Surface business for $8.14 million in cash plus the assumption of accounts payable and other current liabilities. This business, when consolidated with T-3 Energy’s current Wellhead business, will provide additional geographic locations in key markets and allow consolidation of several facilities where both companies are presently located.

One of the things I had been hoping for recently was to do a bit more business-related travel. It gets me out of the office and out of the house for a while, and I see parts of the country I normally wouldn’t see. (Though, granted, considering the industry I work in, I tend to describe such places as “the ass end of America”.) So, when I heard about the acquisition of Azura Energy, I figured it’d be a good excuse to do a bit of travel… especially considering one of the locations is in Norman, OK. That gives me an excuse to go say hi to Jeff and Malinda.

Well, as always, it didn’t turn out like that. After talking to my boss on the phone, it was decided that I would go up to our Alvarado TX location next Thursday and Friday… and that I would hit the Odessa TX, Conway AR, and Indiana PA locations the following Sunday through Wednesday. I’m going to be a human pinball for about a week. I swear I’m going to end up tired of traveling by the time I’m done.

What makes that a problem is that the Tuesday after I get back from my breakneck journey across the States, I’m leaving AGAIN to go to Las Vegas. The main saving grace will be the fact that I’ll be going there on vacation instead of on business. I’ve taken the entire week off… which will likely be the last long vacation I get to take for a while. Still, with all the traveling I’ll be doing, I know I’m not going to be in any mood to travel for the next 30+ Club outing, which is why I’ve already decided to sit this month’s out. It sucks, but it’s either that or burn out even quicker.

Ah, well… we’ll see how the trip goes. Fortunately I have a week or so to prepare for it. I just hope it goes better than I’m expecting.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

It’s kind of funny. I know I hadn’t been the best at updating the site before, but it seems that ever since I got Facebook and Twitter (especially Twitter), I’ve been doing more of my updates over there instead of on here. Maybe I should try harder to find a site theme that I can use which could integrate my Twitter feed. Ah, well… I’ll just have to make more of an effort to update in future. Whether I do or not is another matter entirely…

I’m down to 207 pounds. I decided recently that I wanted to try and make it under 200 pounds by the time I go to Vegas (which will be on the 21st), but it’s looking more and more unlikely at this point. For the most part I’ve been good about what I’ve been eating, but then I have a day like today, where I had a safe lunch (rice vermicelli with sliced pork and a Vietnamese eggroll), but ended up having a bacon cheeseburger and onion rings for dinner. I met Sean and Jinny for dinner tonight at a place called Hyde’s Cafe in Old Town Spring, and I figured it would be a long while since I went back, so I might as well try their burger. It was delicious. I can see why Sean and Jinny think so highly of it. I just dread to think what the burger did to my weight…

I have to admit I had fun on Saturday. Meredith and Jonathan were hosting Lisa’s birthday party, and it was an absolute blast. What was probably the most fun part of the night was after Becky, Lara, and Dylan left… and Meredith broke out the Singstar and the Karaoke Revolution. We took turns doing duets on Singstar, and did solos on Karaoke Revolution. In retrospect, I felt bad that I didn’t think to bring my Logitech mic, as one of Meredith’s two mics was busted and with mine we could have done Karaoke Revolution duets. Probably the funniest part of the night was when Lisa and I sang Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)”. I ended up belting out the notes pretty well… though more than once I ended up cracking up because both Meredith and Lisa were laughing their asses off. We were up until about 2 AM or so singing, at which point I was nearly at a crash point and had to head home. Good times.

I’ve also been finally getting around to watching some of my Netflix movies. I went ahead and watched Equilibrium and The Incredible Hulk this weekend, and have Stardust waiting to be watched. Also, I’ve been taking advantage of my Xbox 360’s Netflix instant watching capability. It’s been great, especially considering I’ve been using it to watch older TV shows. I watched three Doctor Who serials (”The Three Doctors”, “The Curse of Fenric”, and “The Robots of Death”), and episodes of Knight Rider and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. I’ve also got other movies queued (for example, The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn), and just need to take the time to watch them. Hopefully I can take the time to whittle down my “pile of shame” and get some movies that I’ve always meant to see watched.

Wow, this post was extremely random. Heh.

Ah, well. It’s getting a bit late and I should be heading to bed. I’ll try and keep this site more or less updated. No guarantees, though… we’ll see how it goes.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

Well, this was a fun week on the server front.

On Wednesday morning, after I had my breakfast, I logged into my main PC to check email and morning news (as I usually do before going to Cypress or Creekmont). Unfortunately, I found a major problem on my main server involving the hard drive holding the operating system. The system had registered enough errors where it put the filesystem in read-only mode. That’s usually a very good sign that the drive needs to be replaced. I sighed, and rebooted the machine to clear out the problem. I resolved to see what spare hard drives I had at the house when I got home from work, and do the replacement on Saturday.

Alas, that was not meant to be. Later that morning, while at the office, I got a notification that the main drive had again gone into read-only mode. I sighed, logged into the machine, and shut it down. At that point I was resigned to reloading the server that night. I went ahead and downloaded the most recent version of Slackware, and otherwise did work as normal.

I’m sure a couple of my Linux-using friends are probably raising their eyebrows over the choice of Slackware, considering at work (both main job and MK Online) I use CentOS, which is a free reimplementation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The truth of the matter, though, is that when I started with Linux, I started on Slackware. Considering Slackware is the oldest of the active Linux distributions, you really can’t get much more old-school than that. I had briefly considered using CentOS for the new server build, but decided that I really had no reason to. Slackware was what I started with. I’ll keep using Slackware for my personal servers until such time it no longer is actively developed… if that ever happens.

When I got home, my first order of business was to switch the server back on and copy off the AMANDA databases and indexes, copy off the entire configuration directory, and make a full dump of the MySQL database. From there I shut down the server, disconnected it, put it on a table, and got to work opening the case and removing the OS hard drive. I’m actually not too surprised the drive finally failed, to be honest. It was a 9 GB SCSI hard drive that I got with the original server hardware back in 2002, and even back then the drive was probably old. Fortunately I found a 13 GB Maxtor hard drive in my pile of spares, and ended up using that. I burned the Slackware 12.2 CD images to discs, reconnected the server (with the case still open in case there was a problem with the “new” drive), and tested. Once I was sure it had come up fine, I put the case back together, hooked everything up, and installed Slackware on the machine.

The rest of the night was spent getting the mail system operational. While it wasn’t that important that my email, my mom’s email, or even my friends’ email be up ASAP (sorry, guys!), my dad’s business uses my server for email hosting, so it was kind of important I get it back up for his sake. I finally had email back up and running by midnight… and it was NOT an easy process. One thing I always forget about these reinstalls is just how many services need to be brought back into operation. In this case, it was the SMTP service, POP/IMAP service, spam filter, virus filter, and greylisting service. That doesn’t even include the webmail, which requires the web server to be operational. By the time I had all that operational, I was ready for bed.

The next day, I worked on getting everything else operational (in between doing work tickets). The biggest pain in the ass ended up being the web server; I encountered more than a couple of problems getting it up and running alongside mod_security. On the other hand, fixing those problems showed me why an upgraded Apache wouldn’t work on my old install. The thing that took the longest to fix was a problem in the webmail, and that ended up being an extremely easy fix once someone in Freenode’s #slackware channel pointed me the right way. By the end of the day Thursday, things were more or less completely operational.

So, in effect, if you read this site and noticed it was down or I host your email and you lost access temporarily, then I apologize. I hadn’t expected needing to replace the drive that quickly. Fortunately things appear to be running smoothly, with the possible exception of a couple of headaches that I’ve so far been able to work around. Hopefully I won’t have to do this all over again soon, but in case I do, I hope to have early warning. We’ll see what happens.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

I happened to see this on Jenn’s LiveJournal yesterday, and I happened to share her general reaction to it: “HOLY CRAP!” It seems some guy is putting together an anime short based on Doctor Who. He did a posting on YouTube of his progress so far, and it’s amazing so far. It’s got the Third(!) Doctor, Imperial Daleks(!!), Davros (in his Emperor Dalek configuration, as he SHOULD have looked) real proper Cybermen that look more menacing than the new series ones (wait until you see one take out a Dalek), the Brigadier, and even the Master.

If I had to say what I DIDN’T like, it would be that the animation of the kids(?) running in the subway looks a little off, and that the look of the Doctor’s “companion” is just jarring compared to everything else. She doesn’t fit. Otherwise, it looks DAMN good so far.

If you want to see other stills and work in progress stuff, you can find it at the maker’s DeviantArt page, located here

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

All right, all right, I know… I haven’t posted in a while. So sue me. Things have been a bit hectic around here in D’Arque Bishop Land. I figure it’s about time I rectified that with an update or two. So, I apologize in advance as this is going to be full of random tidbits.

First off, I finally gave in and got myself a Twitter account. You can find it at http://twitter.com/drkbish. The main reason I did it was because I found myself doing the status update thing more than anything else on Facebook, and decided that Twitter was probably a better way of doing it. Heck, it’d be nice for keeping friends updated when I go on trips like to E3 or to Las Vegas. Finding a decent client for the iPhone helps as well. Now if I could just figure out a way to put the Twitter feed on the main page of my site… (No, I’m not going to use LoudTwitter.)

My dieting is paying off quite nicely. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been losing about two pounds a week. As of this past Friday, I’m down to 209 pounds. In total, I’ve lost 49 pounds since starting my weight loss regiment, and only have about 14-15 to go. In fact, I haven’t been at this weight in over ten years. It’s been great… it’s surprising how many people have come up to me and told me they noticed I lost weight. In fact, while I was at my work’s Cypress location today, one of the CNC programmers told me that a number of the shop people were talking about how much weight I lost. My goal right now is to hit 190-195 pounds by the time June rolls around. At this rate, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Actually, the one problem I’m facing now is a good thing, but still an annoyance. When I started, I wore 40 inch waist pants, and really should have been wearing 42 inch waists. Right now I’m on 38 inch waist pants; in fact, a couple of weeks ago I went through my closet, pulled out about 20 pairs of 40 inch waist pants, and either tossed them out or gave them to charity. However, the 38 inch waist pants are now beginning to fall off me. Within a couple of weeks I’m going to need to go out and buy some 36 inch waist pants. As nice as it is being able to go get smaller pants… I really didn’t need the expense.

I’ve also had something of a social life these past few weeks. A few weeks back a group of us from the 30+ Club met up to go to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, where half of us went to Body Worlds and the other half saw The Birth of Christianity: A Jewish Story. I went through Body Worlds… it was interesting, if a little creepy. Afterwards the group went to the Chocolate Bar (at Eric’s suggestion) where we had chocolate ice cream and chocolate cake. Two weeks ago we all met at Sean’s dad’s house for his bday, to celebrate the release of the soundtrack to season one of Red Cedar Place (long story), and to toast the house as his father was selling it after twenty plus years of ownership. Then, last Saturday, we all met at Indian Wok for some good Indian food. Either eating pho with sriracha, sushi with wasabi, and the like helped or my order got mixed with Brian’s, as the lamb vindaloo I ate wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting. It was hot, but not unbearable. I don’t know if I have any plans for this weekend, though… I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

Ah, well. I think that was all that’s happened to me in the past few weeks, other than a fright involving the girlfriend that I’m not sure she’d want me to post about here. In any event, it’s time for me to relax for a few before I get around to doing my DDR exercise. How fun…

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

As I write this, I’m reminded of the old Despair demotivator (which they don’t seem to have anymore) that said, “If we don’t take care of the customers, maybe they’ll stop bugging us.” I’ve run into another example of that while talking to the corporate administrative assistant at work yesterday. I’ll avoid naming actual names, but this story amused me enough where I felt I needed to share it.

Of course, one of the most important luxuries in an office is coffee. And of course, there are companies that specialize in providing coffee and coffeemakers to companies. We use such services at where I work, too; in IT, we’re a bit different in that while our coffeemaker was provided by the same provider the rest of the facility used, we had a different provider for the actual coffee as my boss (and I myself) prefer Community Coffee and the main facility provider sells Folgers. Well, a couple of months ago we decided to have the IT coffee provider provide the coffeemaker as well, and they came in and got it set up. The old one was put to one side, and I sent a note to the corporate administrative assistant saying it needed to be picked up. It ended up sitting there since.

A couple of weeks ago, the corporate admin assistant remarked to me that they had changed coffee providers for the main facility, but I hadn’t paid too much mind to it. Yesterday, the IT admin assistant asked me when the old coffeemaker was going to be removed, so I decided to go to the corporate admin assistant’s office and ask. When I got there, she shook her head and told me about Monday.

You see, on Monday, our delivery person from the old coffee provider had arrived on (what he thought was) schedule to restock our coffee and see what we needed, only to find his equipment put to one side and someone else’s where his employer’s used to be. So, he went to the corporate admin assistant and asked, “Did you guys change providers?” The admin assistant looked up in surprise and said, “Yes… didn’t your office tell you?!” He sighed, and said they hadn’t… but that he wasn’t really surprised. She then said flat-out that it was the office’s inability to even listen to our requests and fulfill them was what led to us switching providers. She asked if he could remove the old coffeemakers, and he replied he’d have to come back for them as he would need help, not to mention need to make room in his truck.

What he said next was the truly sad part. The guy told her that we were the fourth customer in two weeks that they had lost because of the office people not taking care of them. He then asked for her card (presumably for future business, as we had no problem with his service), and admitted he was very likely going to look for a new job as he didn’t see this one lasting the way they were hemorrhaging customers.

It’s just sad, really. I wonder if the office people realize just how much their attitude and lack of service is costing the company. If you don’t take care of the customers, you won’t have customers… and if you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business. I also hope the rest of the facility does well with their new coffee provider. We’re still doing well with our current one.

As for the last one… hope the delivery guy gets a good job, as he was decent. The rest of the company, well… if you go out of business, you deserve it the rate you’re going. We don’t miss you and are doing much better now with someone who actually knows customer service.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

I suppose it’s kind of stating the obvious that Windows Vista hasn’t exactly caught on with people. As far as I know, the only reason it gets the sales it does is because it’s offered by default with new machines. I’m not one of those that have been using it, though. I have a perfectly good license for Windows XP Professional, and I have no real pressing need to upgrade. (I have no programs that require Vista to run.) In addition, at work, we’re still ordering machines with XP Professional as the OS. I don’t see us moving to Vista until we absolutely have to.

In any event, Microsoft’s been aware of the very cool reception towards Vista, and have been working to get its replacement, Windows 7, out the door. This past Friday Microsoft released a public beta of Windows 7, and I decided to go ahead and give it a try. I did so for Vista when it was in release candidate form, and I figured doing so for Windows 7 wouldn’t hurt this time either.

However, seeing as I’d just as soon have a completely functional main PC and not deal with any real issues with having a main machine that doesn’t work, I’ve taken a slightly different approach this time around and installed Windows 7 in a virtual machine. It’s definitely a less than ideal situation, as my main PC only has 2 GB of RAM in it and Microsoft recommends a minimum of 1 GB, so the virtual machine (named Anezka; I name my systems after female video game characters) only has 512 MB of RAM available. I definitely took care to give it plenty of disk space, though.

So, how does it run, you might ask? The answer is, “Surprisingly well.”

Even though Anezka is definitely underpowered as far as the memory requirements go, the system itself stays snappy. Granted, though, most of what I’ve been doing has been involving web browsing and checking out the controls. One thing I’m not finding is an equivalent to the black Aero glass theme in Vista; it might be a stupid gripe, but it’s one all the same. I’ve also found that at least one program suite required me to run it in Vista compatibility mode in order for it to install properly. The install itself was relatively painless as well. As far as installed programs go, Windows 7 is actually lighter than XP or Vista. There’s no mail client, IM client, or any of that junk. About the only two of those programs I personally found have been Internet Explorer (version 8 beta) and Windows Media Player. There’s also the opportunity to add gadgets to the desktop, but I haven’t availed myself of that yet.

The thing that amused me most, though, was the version number. The official name of the operating system is “Windows 7″. However, if you open up Command Prompt or happen to look at logs from a web server accessed by a Windows 7 machine, the version number given is “6.1.7000″. Which is it, folks? (For the record, Windows 2000 was 5.0, XP was 5.1, and Vista was 6.0.)

So, the question becomes… will I migrate my main PC to Windows 7? I probably will, at some point. However, I’d just like to make sure Logitech SetPoint works for it first (it currently does not), and also it would help if I could find out if my Dalek webcam will work with it. Anezka currently lacks USB support, but I suppose it might be possible to enable it so I can test something like Skype or Windows Live Messenger on it. We’ll see. The interesting thing is that when I posted on Facebook this morning that I was working on installing Windows 7 beta on a virtual, I had a couple of friends tell me they were already running it as their primary OS with absolutely no issues. (I should add that one said he helped another mutual friend put it on as his primary OS too.) In fact, they liked it better than Vista, which appears to be the common theme from reactions across the web. We’ll see.

For now, though, I’m going to keep using XP as my primary OS and testing out Windows 7 on the virtual. Once I know the core apps I need work, and I get around to putting an external hard drive on this box for archival purposes (my media folder is far larger than my tape drive’s capacity), then maybe I’ll see about switching. Still, it’s impressed me more than Vista, so a switch is a definite possibility.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

Well, I have to say that I’m feeling somewhat better.

It took me a few days, but I’m far more mobile than I was at this time last week. I ended up spending most of three days laid up in bed on doctor’s orders; if I had to sit up in bed, I would be forced to support my weight on my hands as my lower back couldn’t handle the pressure. When I walked, I needed to use Mom’s walking stick in order to get around. One could argue that I could watch all the TV I wanted, but the problem there is how the room is laid out. The TV is parallel to my bed at the pillow level, as I do most of my TV watching when sitting at my computer desk. So, for the most part, I spent my days laying in bed, with my work laptop next to me so that I could keep myself entertained as well as keep up with support tickets from work.

Needless to say, by the time Thursday or Friday rolled around, I was going stir-crazy. Also, needless to say, I missed Meredith’s and Jonathan’s New Year’s party AGAIN. I know Merrie said it was a more or less quiet affair, but I still felt bad because this was the second year in a row I had to miss due to illness or injury. Hopefully NEXT year I’ll actually be able to attend their NYE party.

As for how I am now, well… my back still aches and I don’t dare lift any heavy objects. On the other hand, I can get up without difficulty and walk without too much of a problem. I was even able to drive in to work with few issues (other than my hip giving me some problems… go figure). I was slightly amused, though… the VP of HR saw me walking in a bit gingerly and asked why I was back at work. I answered honestly: I was feeling a lot better and I would go nuts if I had to spend another day working from home. Before anyone asks, I’m at the point now where I’m taking Advil instead of hydrocodone and valium for my back, so driving isn’t an issue.

So, all I have to do now is take it easy and hope I recover well. I have a full physical exam scheduled for Wednesday, so we’ll see then if any other action is needed. My only real disappointment is the fact that the Vegas vacation I had planned for next week will now need to be postponed thanks to my injury. It’s a shame, because I had been looking forward to the trip. (On the other hand, it’ll give me a chance to practice my poker…) For now, though, I’m just going to let my back rest and hope that some quiet recovery time is all that’s needed.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

Normally I would be at work right now, doing tech support and database administration. Instead, I’m at home in bed, and will likely be stuck in bed for a few days on doctor’s orders. How did this happen, you might ask? Well…

A week and a half to two weeks ago, I started noticing pain in my lower back. It wasn’t TOO bad, but it was annoying to say the least. I decided on Saturday that I would call my doctor on Monday morning and see if I could get worked in to see him about the pain. Things were fine on Saturday evening, so I wasn’t too concerned. Then, Sunday, I managed to aggravate it badly after sitting in my desk chair for a couple of hours. I tried switching chairs, but that only made it worse to the point where I could do nothing more than lay in bed after 7 PM on my back, waiting for the pain to go away.

At 2:30 AM, I woke up, and could move around. So, I decided to sit up…

… and fell back down with a scream of pain loud enough to wake my parents.

From that point, my back started twitching and spasming, with each spasm being bad enough where I got to the point where I was gasping for breath and begging for an ambulance. An ambulance was finally sent for, and I got sent down to Houston Northwest Medical Center’s emergency room.

The prognosis from the ER doctor is that I badly sprained my lumbar muscles. He’s prescribed me a painkiller and a muscle relaxant, and has ordered me to stay in bed for the next few days to let it heal. I’m okay with that for now; I can access the company network remotely from my work laptop and also have access to my main PC via RDP. My main gripe is that I’m hoping I don’t miss Meredith’s and Jonathan’s New Year’s Eve party for the second year in a row. Ah, well… we’ll see.

In the meantime, I’m just going to relax, take my meds, and hope I actually do get better, as this pain is really for the birds. Here’s hoping…

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

Well, I’m not one to obsessively say “Merry Christmas”, “Happy Hanukkah”, “Blessed Winter Solstice”, and the like… but I’m hoping everyone has a very good holiday season of his or her own choosing. That said, I figured I’d post this holiday video card I saw on Kotaku. I’m sure about the only ones who’d be amused by it are Becky, Brian, and Jesse, but it’s cute nonetheless.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

I admit to playing a prank on coworkers today.

On my way to Festivus Friday night, I stopped by Spec’s and picked up a bottle of strawberry margarita and a canister of a particular snack food. I had plenty of the snack food left when I left the party, so I brought it home with me. When I left for work this morning, I brought the canister with me. During the day, I walked around the office munching out of the canister, with my hand strategically placed over the name of the snack. If someone were to ask me what I was eating, I’d hold the canister out and offer them some. They’d then try it…

… and in over half the people, they’d chew on it for a second, and then their faces would turn into a look of pure horror. One or two of them even spit it out. I just love watching the look on people’s faces when they have wasabi peas for the first time.

I think the funniest encounter I had was with the CEO’s secretary. She tried a few peas, munched on them; her eyes grew wide and she quickly swallowed them. At that moment, the CEO walked in, saw the canister in my hand, and before I could even THINK of saying anything (not that I’d be so stupid as to try that trick on him), he smiled and said, “Ahh… wasabi peas. I love them; I always keep a canister in my pantry.”

Ah, well. It made for a fun and amusing day.

Originally published at The D'Arque Cathedral. You can comment here or there.

Yes, Festivus was a lot of fun. I’ll probably make a post about it a bit later, but first I wanted to make an observation…

As is well known, back in March or so I made it my goal to change my eating and exercise habits, and lose weight as a result. I had noticed some changes (especially in terms of pants sizes), but more often than not I would hear from friends and colleagues about how much weight I had been losing. When I look at myself in the mirror, it’s kind of hard to tell. Well, late last night or early this morning, Ray posted some pictures from last night’s Festivus, and I was floored by how I looked. I’ll give you a bit of a comparison.

Me at Festivus 2007

Me at Festivus 2008

I had no idea I had lost so much weight. In all modesty, I think I look good… heh.

I’m kind of falling off the wagon this month thanks to Christmas et al, but I plan on getting back on the wagon once the New Year rolls around. I’m not eating like I was, mind, but I’ve been in more splurge situations than before. I hope to get closer to my target weight by February, but for now I’m just happy that my efforts are obviously paying off.