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…

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).

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. :-)
Read more “Recovering from the Vegas vacation…”

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. :-)

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.

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. :-)

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

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…

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. :-)

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.