Today is the four year anniversary of the first communication between me and Jennifer. :-) We’ll likely celebrate on Friday by having a date night at BJ’s in Pearland, which is where we had our first official date. It’s funny… it seems like such a short time, but I honestly can’t imagine having ever lived life without her now. It’s great. :-)

This past weekend, while we were out running errands, Jennifer asked me a question that I honestly wasn’t expecting: “Do you ever miss Misty?”

Misty, for those not aware, was my girlfriend before Jennifer and I started dating. She lives in Mississippi, and we had met online many years ago; though she had held a torch for me for a long time, we didn’t actually start dating until 2006. We started off as a long-distance relationship, and, well… it never progressed further past that.

To be perfectly honest, after about the first year or so, the relationship started falling apart. A relationship lives and dies by communication, and this is even more important in a long-distance relationship. Misty tended to withdraw into herself more and more, to the point where many days in a row the only communication between us would be me IMing her to let her know I was home from work, followed by me IMing her to let her know I was headed to bed a few hours later (with oftentimes no response). She also never made any effort to visit me in Houston; while I came and visited her four times in total, any attempt to get her to visit was rebuffed with excuse after excuse. She also insisted on us doing our own separate things, where if I made any suggestion of going with her to do something she liked and she didn’t think I would like, she would refuse. She also had no interest in meeting any of my friends, where she literally once said, “They don’t look like the kind of people I would get along with.” This was well after I had come up to Mississippi with her specifically so I could accompany her to her best friend’s wedding.

The most telling example of how bad things were getting was in the fall of 2008. For months I had been suggesting things for us to do together online to spend time with each other. One of the things I had suggested was World of WarCraft, as she enjoyed playing MUDs in her spare time. Her response to that was to tell me she didn’t care for World of WarCraft. A few months later, she went pretty much radio-silent after Black Friday. After about a week or so, she IMed me saying, “I’m sorry I’ve been so quiet. I’ve been playing World of WarCraft.” She had bought the game at a Black Friday sale and hadn’t told me, even though she remembered me suggesting it earlier.

A month or so later, I called her and told her I was done. I ended up giving her another chance after she sobbed and begged me not to leave, but I made it conditional on her improving her communications with me. She got better for a short time, but before long she had fallen back into her old habits of not communicating. Finally, I had had enough and ended the relationship. I maintained the friendship, though, as I still considered her a friend. I didn’t tell her I had started dating again, though, as I didn’t think she could handle it.

Several weeks after I started dating Jennifer, I left work on a Friday and told Misty via IM that I was out for the evening. Her response was a bit surprising, telling me not to meet any pretty women. I asked why not, and was floored by her response: “We had agreed not to see anyone else while we work on our relationship.” I had made no such promise, and said as much. She went off on me, especially when she learned about Jennifer. I ended up spending the next twenty-four hours being berated by her via the phone and via IM. The worst part was that Jennifer got to witness most of it. Finally, I told Misty that I was cutting communication lines with her because I did not feel like she could handle the fact I was seeing someone else. I said that depending on how things went, I might reestablish ties down the line, but for then, I had to cut her off. I then blocked her on IM and Facebook, and stopped taking her calls.

That did not stop her at all. If anything, things got worse. She constantly called my phone, to the point where I had to download and install a silent ringtone to assign to her so I could sleep without being woken by her calls. I would wake in the morning and found she had called 20-30 times overnight. She would call in evenings, and during her lunch breaks. She would keep emailing me. I always deleted her voicemails without listening to them (thank you, visual voicemail), and what little I saw of the emails alternated between her begging me back and her angrily lashing out at me. It got so bad that several of my friends and I ended up talking one evening about whether I should change my number. It got exhausting.

She only stopped when she made the mistake of sending Jennifer a catty message on Facebook along the lines of, “Take care of him because he has lost his friend.” At that point, Jennifer had seen me go through a month of ignoring her as best I could and saw what it was doing to me, and she had had enough. Jennifer ended up writing a several paragraph long “reason you suck” letter that bitched her out and told her to leave us alone. After that, she did, with the very very occasional message afterwards. To give you an idea of what it was like, the first message after she went silent was on my birthday, and simply said, “Happy birthday, fucker.” The second was around New Year’s, and said, “Are you really going to let the year end on a bad note between us?”

Now, I compare all of that to Jennifer. Jennifer and I had different lives and different experiences, but she was nothing if not very open. She not only had things she enjoyed doing that I had never done before, she encouraged me to join her in them. When I had things I wanted to do that she never did before, she joined me without any hesitation. We introduced each other to each others’ friends, and accepted them with open arms. We even encouraged each other to do things we would never have done before without each other. The previously mentioned birthday featured a party that Jennifer had put together herself, complete with gifts I had never even known to ask for but were still absolutely perfect.

Through it all, she’s remained my best friend, the person I feel most comfortable and myself with. With her I’ve been a better person, and I’ve grown so much more with her guidance. I was worried at the very beginning because she saw the crap I went through with Misty, but instead of making it solely my problem, she held my hand, and supported me in a way I hadn’t felt supported by a girlfriend in a very long time. Like I said before, I can’t imagine life without her now and wish I had met her much earlier, so that we could have had more time together.

After Jennifer asked me if I missed Misty, I looked at her for a second, shrugged, and replied, “No. Not at all.”

Hey there,

I’m pretty sure you don’t know who I am, and you probably don’t have any reason to. My name is Scott Bishop, and for several years I helped run the fan site Mortal Kombat Online, which was one of the top fansites for the Mortal Kombat series. I’ve noticed a bit of a disturbing trend recently, and I was hoping to bend your ear for a little bit.

To give a bit of history, we worked heavily with Midway Games in the time between Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance up until their closing (and your subsequent purchase of a good chunk of their library). We reported any news on the series we could. We had Fan Interviews where fans could submit their questions to be answered by Ed Boon. We had live chats with the Mortal Kombat development team. We and other sites banded together to successfully petition Microsoft to make Mortal Kombat: Deception and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon backwards-compatible on Xbox 360. We and other sites were even invited to press events like Midway Gamers’ Day, so that we could report the latest news for the fans.

All in all, it was a good time, for us and for Midway.

These days, though, it’s feeling a lot less rosy.

I want to bring up something my friend Patrick McCarron said on Twitter today. For reference, he’s a fellow Mortal Kombat fan site webmaster, having run the site TRMK for many years (longer than even Mortal Kombat Online has been around).

It honestly feels really shitty to run a fan site for a developer's games for over 18 years and I'm still not allowed on the PR blast list.

— Patrick McCarron (@McCarron) August 7, 2013

As I understand it, there is a PR policy at WB Games that fan sites are not allowed on the mailing list for press releases. In addition, many requests for info, interviews, and the like have been ignored and/or outright denied. I would put forward to you that this is not a helpful policy for either yourselves or the fan communities.

Now, I understand the need to approach the “big name” sites such as IGN, Gamespot, and Game Informer before the fan sites. After all, we could be more or less considered “guaranteed sales”, as we are fans of the series and would very likely buy the games. The big sites have much larger subscriber bases, with many people who need to be convinced to purchase your game as they are not necessarily fans. That’s the purpose of marketing, after all.

What you need to realize, however, is what the fan sites can bring to the table. The fan sites are not invisible; for the longest time sites like Mortal Kombat Online and TRMK even ranked higher on search engines than your own official sites. They all have different communities, and focus on different things that you yourself may not have time to do. Mortal Kombat Online and TRMK, for example, focus on news reporting and fan discussions on same. Test Your Might focuses on the tournament space and discussions of same. The Kombat Pavilion gives a spotlight on anything and everything regarding Mortal Kombat media. While we might be guaranteed sales, we also generate buzz outside of the sites, as fans relay what they learn and discuss from us and each other to the internet at large. Large sites sometimes even take notice; when Mortal Kombat Online broke the news that 2008’s Mortal Kombat title was Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, the site was crushed by incoming traffic as it was linked to by sites such as Kotaku and Gamespot.

While we fans do what we do for love of the fans and the games, it gets discouraging when we are not just unnoticed, but actively ignored by the publishers we are trying to reach out to. We don’t blame the folks at NetherRealm Studios, as they reach out to us as best they can. However, the impression we get is that they’re hamstrung by the policies you put into place, and we end up feeling left out when public press releases are blasted out to the big sites but we’re not seen as “good enough”. In addition, lack of timely information can lead to massive amounts of confusion and miscommunication. For example, in today’s announcement of new DLC for Injustice: Gods Among Us, fan sites were announcing Zatanna’s inclusion without being able to say when she would be available for purchase… information that would have been available had they had access to the actual press release. As a result, I know more than one longtime fan site webmaster has been considering hanging up their hat and leaving the community (and thus letting their fan communities wither and rot) because they don’t feel like the work they do for the fans is appreciated.

Here’s the thing: I’m not asking that the fan sites get preferential treatment over the big-name sites. As stated before, the big-name sites deserve the best stuff because they provide the widest audience. All I propose is that you give the fan sites back their seats at the table. At the very least, giving the fan sites access to press releases can generate buzz among the fan communities that will excite the base faster than on their own. Even minor exclusives would make the fans feel like their work has been worth it.

The big name sites are the major marketing tools, but the fan sites are your advocates. Please don’t alienate them.

This weekend, Houston’s Space City Con was held at the Marriott Westchase. I hadn’t originally planned on going, but I became very interested when I learned that Sylvester McCoy (the Seventh Doctor from Doctor Who and Radagast the Brown from The Hobbit) was going to be attending. My decision to attend was cemented when I learned that the actual TARDIS console prop from the 1996 Doctor Who TV-movie was going to be there, as the console room in that movie is by far my favorite of all the TARDIS console rooms. We managed to get passes for Sunday, and made our way over right after lunchtime.

Once we managed to find a parking spot (thanks to Jennifer finding one in a prime area), we went in and got our wristbands, and then proceeded to explore. The first place we went to was the primary autograph area, just to see the celebs. The first person I noticed was J.G. Hertzler, who is best known as Martok from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. If I had remembered he would be there, I would have gotten him to sign my copy of Injustice: Gods Among Us, as he voiced Deathstroke in the game. We also noticed John de Lancie (Q from the Star Trek franchise), and Jennifer (who had a huge crush on him when she was younger) had a nerdgasm. :-) We also saw Denise Crosby and Walter Koenig, but Sylvester McCoy was not at his table yet.

From there, we made our way across the hotel, when Sylvester McCoy nearly ran over us. Apparently he was doing photos elsewhere in the hotel and was heading back to the signing area. The funny thing was that I didn’t recognize him, as I wasn’t expecting him to be in a scooter. Jennifer heard him talking and recognized his very distinctive voice. :-) Rather than follow him, we decided to head over to the dealer halls to browse around. :-)

After browsing through the artists’ area, we ended up in the dealers’ area, and I browsed about very happily. There were numerous gaming stores that had booths there, and many had games I had either wanted or found very interesting. For example, Comics Unlimited had a copy of Infiltration, which was a game I wanted to try out at the monthly Game Night at my house. Also, another company called Instant Attitudes had a wonderful Weeping Angels t-shirt I ended up purchasing. I considered getting other games like DungeonQuest, but ended up sticking with Infiltration. I also spent a few minutes talking to Eric Kinkead about his game QuestLord, and even played some Galaga for NES at the Game Over Video Games booth. The time spent in the dealer area was almost worth the price of admission in and of itself.

Once we left the main dealer area, Jennifer caught sight of the inside of a photography area, where we saw the TV-movie TARDIS console set up. A woman inside the booth invited us in, and took free pictures of us in front of a Stargate from Stargate: Atlantis, and with a TARDIS prop that had been set up. They were REALLY nice, and allowed me to actually see the TARDIS console up-close. I even got to operate a couple of the controls, which were set up to make noises when operated. I do have to make one confession: the knob for the scanner control lever came off in my hand. Fortunately, it went right back on. After being allowed close to the console, I decided to pay for a professional shot of me with it. :-)

After going through the dealers’/artists’ area, we went back to the lobby for a snack and a drink to cool down. While there, we saw a Dalek, a Weeping Angel, and a remotely controlled K9 enter the lobby and interact with attendees. We observed them for a while (and even took photos), and then went back to the autograph area. We walked through it, and then got in line for the upcoming Sylvester McCoy panel. While Jennifer waited in line, I went back to the photography area to pick my TARDIS console photo up. It wasn’t ready, so I went back to the line in time for us to be allowed in. Robert Picardo introduced McCoy (ironic having Star Trek: Voyager’s Doctor introduce one of Doctor Who‘s Doctors), and for the next hour McCoy regaled us with stories from filming the series, going to conventions, meeting other Doctors (especially Jon Pertwee), and the like. While I watched the panel, Jennifer went back to the photography area, got the photo, and came back. We didn’t get to see how the panel concluded, as we had planned on meeting Jennifer’s parents for dinner and we had to leave the panel early to make sure we got to them in time.

All in all, I had a terrific time and want to go back next year. Jennifer didn’t hate it as much as I thought she might; in fact, she somewhat enjoyed herself. :-) If interested, I did post the (few) pictures I took from the con to my gallery, which you can find here.

Well, this was a fun weekend.

Every month or so, my friends Chris, George, and I get together for a Game Night.  About the only common theme in our Game Nights is that we don’t play video games; we stick to board games or card games.  It’s usually pretty fun, and we spend from 5-6 PM to 1 AM or so playing different games, only stopping for a dinner out.

This time, it was my turn to host, and I decided to do something different this time around. Instead of going out for dinner, I figured I would grill hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. Not only would it likely taste better, it would cost less than going out. As it happened, it turned out to work extremely well, as the burgers and dogs ended up being cooked more or less perfectly and were delicious (if I do say so myself). It also allowed for more flexibility, as Chris’s girlfriend Brandy arrived an hour or so after we had eaten, and was hungry. Instead of having to pick up food on the way in, I fired the grill back up and made her a burger. :-) For dessert, we had already bought Blue Bell homemade vanilla ice cream and Smuckers magic shell topping. Jennifer made Ghirardelli triple chocolate brownies, and we ended up with delicious brownie a la modes. :-) All in all, dinner was a resounding success.

As far as the games went, Chris, George, and I finished up a Dungeons & Dragons campaign we started during the last Game Night. It was a campaign called “Mines of Madness”, and was a play test campaign for the next version of D&D written by the author of the webcomic PvP, Scott Kurtz. Unlike the previous session, which ended up being very combat-heavy, this session required a lot of problem-solving. More than once George (our DM) despaired that we wouldn’t figure out the puzzles, but Chris would eventually say something that would provide the clue I needed to solve the puzzle. Eventually, we triumphed, and got our hands on the object of the campaign’s quest: the Forever Stone. We enjoyed it enough where George is now putting together a follow-up campaign.

After we finished the D&D campaign, Brandy arrived. I usually feel bad for Brandy during our Game Nights, as we usually don’t play games she wants to play. While Jennifer sat in the living room while we played D&D and read Ender’s Game, I wanted both women to play with us and not feel left out. Fortunately, I had planned for this, and had picked up a copy of Cards Against Humanity earlier in the week. I don’t think I need to describe the game, as popular as it is. We had an absolute blast playing, spending most of the game laughing our asses off. We resolved to pick up at least one expansion pack for the next Game Night. :-)

Depending on how long it takes for George to create the follow-up campaign, we may end up playing a board game at the next Game Night. Chances are it’ll be either Talisman or Arkham Horror, the latter of which we haven’t played as a full group yet. In any event, the night was a resounding success (probably the most successful one yet), and I’m looking forward to the next one. :-)

As with most of the rest of the country, Jennifer and I had a three day weekend. During the week leading up to it, Jennifer was wanting to know what we should do to occupy our time. We couldn’t do a road trip, because we’ve been saving up for another vacation coming up in June. While the comic convention Comicpalooza was going on at the George R. Brown convention center, I didn’t feel much like going, and I knew Jennifer wouldn’t want to go. In the end, Jennifer decided she was going to do something she had been wanting to do for years, and that was repaint the guest bedroom.

Jennifer has never liked the paint color of the guest bedroom. She had originally planned for it to be the “red room”, as each room in the house is painted a different color. The red color she had picked was supposed to be a rust red color, but it wasn’t until she had the walls painted that it turned out to be an ugly reddish-brown color. Since then, the room has been referred to as the “brown room”. The brown room over the years became a sort of catch-all dumping ground room, with one of the cats’ litter boxes in the back corner, Jennifer’s old school desk filled with books from our childhoods against one wall, and a corner filled with boxes of wrapping paper and the kitty carriers. About the only times the room was used as anything but a dumping ground was when the cats used the litter box, or when my friend George would stay the night during one of our game nights. (The litter box would then go into my office for the duration of his stay.)

We decided early on that the two main tasks of our work on the guest bedroom were to paint the walls and get rid of much of the clutter. To that end, we spent most of Friday evening moving all of the furniture out except for the bed and the dresser; those two items were going to stay anyway and would have been too awkward to move, so we covered them with massive drop cloths. We didn’t find a paint color we liked until we went to Lowe’s Saturday morning. The paint color we ended up getting was a much lighter shade of brown that ended up looking a lot nicer on the wall. We spent most of Saturday afternoon painting the bedroom with the first coat, and let it dry overnight. Sunday morning, we got up bright and early to apply the second coat of paint (plus touch up the areas we missed with the first coat). It went pretty well, other than the fact that we ran out of paint before hitting the last wall. We had to go out that afternoon anyway (we had tickets to the Alley Theatre production of Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club), so while we were out we picked up another gallon of paint, and finished the room that night.

This morning, we finally got around to taking all of the drop cloths off and rearranging the room. The desk was not put back into place; we decided to move that to the library, which will replace the white couch we have in there now. The couch itself is going to Purple Heart, as we never use it and it’s only used by the cats. Thus, whenever someone sits on it, they’re covered in cat fur. The kitty carriers went into our main closet, while the wrapping paper went into Jennifer’s office for the time being. The bedside table went into our bedroom while a smaller one took its place in the brown room. We also rearranged the room, and the new arrangement gives an illusion of a lot more space than was originally present. The litter box went back in, of course; it’ll be moved back into my office whenever we have company staying the night.

All in all, we can say we’ve had a very productive weekend. We are very happy with how the room turned out, and Jennifer has said repeatedly that the color of the walls is so much better than what they originally were. While we don’t intend for the room to become a dumping ground again, we can’t guarantee it won’t. As it stands, this has been the beginning of several changes in the house. The library is already being redone, as is the front part of the living room. Of course, we can’t finish the library until we get the appropriate furniture donated. Still, we’re happier with how the house looks now, and can’t wait to finish implementing all of the changes we’re working on.

So, Jennifer and I have been taking advantage of seeing local theatre here in Houston over the past few months.

I have to admit that before I dated Jennifer, I wasn’t really into theatre at all. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it; I simply didn’t know anyone who really wanted to go and I didn’t feel like going by myself. Furthermore, I had never been to anything like a small community theatre, so going to those never occurred to me either. However, it turned out Jennifer was a theatre geek, to the point where her bookshelves have several plays on them. Needless to say, since then we’ve been to plenty of live performances.

This year we’ve actually been to two performances at the Alley Theatre, which is Houston’s largest theatre company, thanks to tickets provided to us by our friend Julie. The first play we saw was A Few Good Men; we didn’t know what to expect from it, but as it turned out we enjoyed it a lot more than we did the movie with Tom Cruise. We also saw The Elephant Man, which, despite its name, is NOT connected to the movie starring John Hurt. That one was well-acted, but to be perfectly honest we’re not sure we liked the story itself. We have tickets to see Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club this weekend; being a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, I’m really looking forward to seeing this story, even if it isn’t based on an actual Arthur Conan Doyle story. :-)

We’ve also been going to smaller theatre productions as well. As I mentioned in an earlier post, a new theatre group called Bayou City Theatrics is in town. Since the last post, we’ve seen their productions of Little Shop of Horrors and Aida (the Elton John/Tim Rice musical, not the Giuseppe Verdi opera). Little Shop of Horrors was well done and we really enjoyed it. Aida, on the other hand, was a bit weaker. The woman who played Aida wasn’t that good; in fact, Jennifer pointed out that the woman who played Nehebka would have been a better Aida in her opinion. Also, unlike the previous two shows Bayou City Theatrics put on, Aida was done in a black box theatre configuration, and as such there were several times when we found it difficult to hear what the actors were saying or singing. We consider this a one-off; we’re still almost certainly going to go to their next performance.

We’ve even branched out a bit to smaller local theatres. On Sunday, we went with our friends Debby and Scott to the Pearl Theater in our home of Pearland to see their performance of Murder at the Howard Johnson’s. One might not think that Pearland would be home to a local theatre, and I would not blame anyone who does; it actually took us a bit of time to locate the theatre, as it was located in the sticks of Pearland in a converted small factory building. I have to say, the seats were comfortable and they did a great job with the set. However, none of us had heard of the play before we got tickets, so before the show started we looked it up on Wikipedia. When the play was over, we understood why it only lasted three performances on Broadway: in short, it was pretty dreadfully written and not very funny at all. The actors did the best they could with the material they had to work with, but they just could not overcome the bad writing. We’ll probably give them another chance, but we weren’t that impressed with our first show there.

I suppose the sad thing is that for the latter two groups, the shows we saw were the last of the season, and the Alley has one more show before their season ends. However, I’m not a big fan of Agatha Christie, so I don’t think missing the last Alley show will hurt my feelings too much. Still, I’m hoping Bayou City Theatrics gets a second season, and we may give Pearl Theater a second chance. As for the Alley, we’ll see what they have to offer next season. In any event, I enjoyed myself at these live theatre productions, and I’m looking forward to more.