Category: Rantings from the Pulpit

A relief and a rant…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, as per the previous post, I went ahead and scanned Mom’s laptop after she admitted at dinner last night that she opened one of those “greeting card” virus emails. I loaded ClamWin Antivirus Portable and AVG Anti-Rootkit Free onto the laptop and scanned it… to find nothing. Afterwards I talked to Mom, and it turned out I had misunderstood her. She had opened the email, but hadn’t actually gone to the link in the email. I was definitely breathing a sigh of relief at that point, let me tell you. :-)

On a completely different topic, I was reading a Fark forum thread earlier that was originally about an article bashing nightclubs, and there was a lot of debate over the subject. I was slightly amused by it all, really. Truth be told, though… I hate nightclubs. I always have, really. Don’t get me wrong, though… I like a good bar where I can sit and have a drink. Nightclubs are a different story.

Anyone who’s been with me in one (Jesse, Matt, Chris, and Scott Howell, for example) would tell you that it is a completely alien environment for me. Malia might actually agree when I say it’s probably mostly my Asperger’s at work. It’s too loud, the lights and whatnot are too disorienting, I don’t dance, and I’m shy. As a result, I usually end up at a back wall or on the railing by the dance floor having a drink by myself. If I get out on the dance floor, I literally have to be DRAGGED out there. 99% of the time I end up standing around waiting for the night to be over. The last few times I went was because it was either 1) free and others were going, or 2) I was the designated driver. Otherwise, I avoid nightclubs like that like the plague. I’m sure others can have fun there. Chris always seems to have a good time at the clubs. It’s just not my thing, and I never can enjoy myself even when I try.

Ah, well. I guess I don’t really have to worry about it too much anymore; my friends (other than Louie and Chris) aren’t really the clubbing type, and when I go to dance clubs with Louie I can always talk to Dave and BS for a while. :-)

As for the rest of this week, here’s hoping it goes fast. Friday can’t come fast enough, really… heh. We’ll see. :-)

Another slow Saturday…

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

Eh. I have to say it’s been a slow weekend so far. Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you; it’s been somewhat productive and relaxing at the same time. Still, like I said, it’s been slow for the most part.

Before I go any further, though, I switched my main PC’s wallpaper recently. I figured some people might get a kick out of it.

Main PC desktop - 11 August 2007

Yes, that is Samus Aran from the Metroid games. You can get the wallpaper from here.

My actual main productive time today was this morning. I had to go get my hair cut (before I go to visit Misty on Friday), and while on the way home I picked up my glasses from the optometrist. The last prescription I had, well… heh. It’s kind of funny. When you have your eyes checked, the optometrist keeps going from lens to lens to see which one you see better with. I must have chosen wrongly the time before, because my glasses never seemed right. My close-up vision was screwed, as was my far far vision… and I’d get headaches if I pressed it. This time, though, I put the glasses on and my vision was crystal clear. I’m a very happy camper.

I also tightened up some of the security on my mail server today. Several days ago I instituted greylisting to reduce the amount of incoming spam, which it has done tremendously. Today I added some new definitions to my Clam AntiVirus install that should start blocking the “greeting card” virus emails. So far it’s worked perfectly. Now, though, I need to check Mom’s PC. While we were at dinner, she admitted she had opened one of those emails… bah!

I had planned on going to the mall today to buy some new jeans. Unfortunately, it was so hot outside that Mom didn’t feel like going to the mall, and we had planned on getting dinner after the mall. So, we ended up just going to Strack’s for dinner instead. I’ll probably go up to the Woodlands Mall after work one day this week (seeing as it’s less of a hassle to go there from the office than it is to go to Willowbrook) and get some jeans then. Ah, well.

Otherwise, things have been relatively busy here. Fortunately I’ll be going on vacation on Friday; as I stated earlier I’ll be going to visit Misty for a week. That should be relaxing and a good way to get away from it all. For now, though, I need to get mom’s laptop scanned to make sure that virus didn’t get a foothold on it. Fun fun…

I feel embarrassed to be a Texan… and one in this woman’s district at that.

D'Arque Bishop3 Comments

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5020241.html

Texas students will have four more words to remember when they head back to class this month and begin reciting the state’s pledge of allegiance.

This year’s Legislature added the phrase “one state under God” to the pledge, which is part of a required morning ritual in Texas public schools along with the pledge to the U.S. flag and a moment of silence.

State Rep. Debbie Riddle, who sponsored the bill, said it had always bothered her that God was omitted in the state’s pledge.

“Personally, I felt like the Texas pledge had a big old hole in it, and it occurred to me, ‘You know what? We need to fix that,’ ” said Riddle, R-Tomball. “Our Texas pledge is perfectly OK like it is with the exception of acknowledging that just as we are one nation under God, we are one state under God as well.”

By law, students who object to saying the pledge or making the reference to God can bring a written note from home excusing them from participating.

But adding that phrase has drawn criticism from some who say it’s unneccesary and potentially harmful to children who don’t share the same religious beliefs. “Most Texans do not need to say this new version of the pledge in order to be either patriotic or religious,” said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. “This is the kind of politicking of religion that disturbs many Americans, including those who are deeply religious.”

BAH! Debbie Riddle is actually our state representative. This kind of thing pisses me off, as I’m a fervent believer in both freedom of religion and separation of church and state; acknowledging a God in state matters is not fair to those who have a polytheistic or nontheistic religion. (Is nontheistic even a word?) Even the Founding Fathers made sure to keep religion and the government separate. For Ms. Riddle to do this is, in my honest opinion, a violation of what this country was founded upon.

I probably wouldn’t have even had a problem if the children could opt-out on their own. The fact that this is being forced upon them is what makes this odious to me.

At least now I know what I’ll be doing this weekend. I’ll be writing a letter to her voicing my extreme displeasure at what she has pushed through. Also, when it comes time for her re-election, you can be damned sure I won’t vote for her.

Regrets? Everyone has them…

D'Arque Bishop3 Comments

Those reading this will have to bear with me. This is just something I wanted to get off my own chest for my own reasons. :-)

Now now… this isn’t anything bad, really. I’d been thinking recently about things that happened in my past. Everyone has things that they regret. Most people know that one of my big ones was going into music instead of computers when I went to college. Don’t get me wrong, though; I loved being in music in high school, and marching band was one of my favorite things about college. I also loved my time in the music program in high school. However, there were two things about my time in Klein Oak’s music program that I wish I had handled differently.

  • Being in the symphony orchestra my junior year: I was last chair flutist in the symphony orchestra. I was rather proud of myself for having gotten in. However, when it came time for the contest portion of the season, my pride soon turned into frustration. Time and time again, the director would cut me out of parts of the program, because the flutes were “too loud”. (Then again, it didn’t help that there were five of us.) It finally got to the point where in three pieces of music, I played in one small part in one piece. I literally turned to Jody and Patti and asked softly, “What the hell am I still doing here?” They nodded in sympathy. I should have quit. I was not needed, and frankly I felt my continued presence there was a bit insulting.
  • My letter jacket: At our high school, you lettered in band if you managed to earn ten points, and if you were a sophomore or junior you started out with points. The closest I came to lettering was in my junior year of high school, and that was because I was in a couple of different groups for solo & ensemble. However, I didn’t realize my flute needed repairs and as a result I got lousy scores, negating my chances of getting a jacket. There was a rumour of something called a “sympathy jacket”, where if you were a senior in band without a jacket, they gave you one. I had never heard of anyone getting one, as everyone who made it their senior year had a jacket.

    Fast forward to summer band before my senior year of high school. The band director was making announcements, and giving the list of people who needed to give their sizes for letter jackets. The list was read… and my name was on there. After practice, I walked up to him and told him that there was a mistake: I hadn’t earned enough points for the jacket. He replied that he had gone ahead and given me one. I had gotten a sympathy jacket.

    … to this day the thing could burn for all I care. I’ve worn it, but I’ve never felt happy having it. I didn’t earn it, and its mere existence is a reminder to me that someone took pity on me. I should have refused the damn thing. I could have lived with knowing I didn’t earn a jacket. I don’t like having a jacket I know in my heart I didn’t earn.

These may sound a tad foolish, but those had always bothered me. Do I feel any better having gotten them off my chest? Time will tell. However, I’m hoping I will; life’s too short to go through it full of regrets…

Hot damn… pay dirt!

D'Arque Bishop

All right, normally I don’t post song-only YouTube videos, but I’ll make a bit of an exception. First, though, a little backstory…

Back in the summer of 1990, my friend Chris and I went to England to visit for a couple of weeks. For the most part, while we were there, we stayed with my aunt and uncle. Now, my uncle loves to collect music recordings. While we were there, he decided to let us listen to one tape he had called World’s Worst Records. Now, some of the stuff on there was so horrible it was hilarious. Well, a few minutes ago I decided to do a Google search around on one or two of the tracks, and what do you know… I found the first track on YouTube. This should give you an idea of how bad some of that stuff was. Though, I should say, if you’re familiar with Dr. Demento, chances are you’ve already heard this one.

Anyway, without any further ado, this is “I Want My Baby Back” by Jimmy Cross. :-)

Please… just set the records straight.

D'Arque Bishop

Blah. Normally I would not post this but I’m getting a bit tired of this issue.

My mother received a letter from Spring Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge the other day. Once she opened it and read it, she brought it up to me for me to read. Once I read it, I shook my head and decided to email a response to the sender, who was a salesperson at the dealership. (Note: the letter was not from the salesperson who sold the car to me.) I hadn’t had any real problems with the dealership until now save one, and this is another example of how the problem was not fixed. The letter, as I wrote it…

We received your letter to my mother congratulating her on the purchase of a 2008 Dodge Avenger, and offering to help if there were any problems. I wanted to let you know that we appreciate the letter, and I want to take you up on your offer of help.

She did not purchase the Avenger. I did. She has absolutely nothing to do with the Avenger whatsoever. The car is in my name and she wasn’t even present at the dealership at any time when the car was sold to me.

We have been telling your dealership’s employees multiple times that we are not responsible for each others’ vehicles in our family; we all have Dodge/Chrysler vehicles but we do not appreciate them all being lumped under one name. I know you all mean well, but it does kind of put a damper in our confidence in you when you can’t get your records in order even after being corrected several times.

If you could get this matter corrected for us, we would greatly appreciate it.

I’m hoping this email gets the issue fixed, but personally… I’m not hopeful. We’ll see what happens from here.

Beware… I live.

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

Yes, I admit it’s been a while since I’ve done a post with actual happenings and whatnot. It’s actually been relatively busy here with work and other things, and haven’t had much motivation to actually post. So, consider this something of a potpourri/miscellaneous post. I might start posting regularly later… but then, I might not.

I finally bit the bullet, and went to see Transformers on Thursday. This will probably shock a few people, as they would have expected me to see it the day it came out. Truth be told, I’m not much for going to see movies on my own and really didn’t have anyone to go with. That said… I really really liked it. It’s definitely one to get on DVD when it comes out. I suppose my only complaint is that we didn’t get to see enough of the interaction between the Decepticons. Otherwise, it was well worth seeing.

Actually, I went onto the iTunes Store on Friday to see if the score for the Transformers movie was available. Unfortunately, all they had was the soundtrack, which I wasn’t too keen on. However, they DID have the soundtrack from the 1986 animated movie, in a new edition that included four more of Vince DiCola’s instrumental incidental music. I went ahead and picked that up instead, but will be keeping an eye out for the score in the next few weeks…

Last night we went to PF Chang’s, as it was my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary and they wanted to celebrate. I mainly went because I was going to act as a designated driver. The food was pretty good as always. My only real complaint came near the end, and it had nothing to do with the restaurant itself. Mom had ordered some peach tea but had neglected to say she wanted it iced… so it arrived as hot tea. She ended up cooling it off by pouring it into the glass her second margarita was in. Then she reached over for her glass of water, and started scooping up water and ice to put in to continue to cool it off. At least, she THOUGHT it was her glass of water… until I finally could work up the words through my indignation to splutter, “Excuse me… that’s MY water!” Of course, that drove Mom and Dad into a fit of laughter…

As for today, it’s been rather quiet. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon down in the kitchen on my PowerBook; it had been a couple of months since I last used it. I still need to replace the keyboard on it, as the spacebar is still wonky and only works part of the time. I can get a new one off eBay at some point; I definitely can’t justify the cost of a new laptop at this point, especially as the PowerBook still works fine for personal use, and for work use I have the company-provided Dell. Otherwise, I spent the day catching up on sleep, and spent the evening watching Cops and playing Gears of War.

As for the rest of this week… well, I’m not sure what I have planned. Personally, the only project I have to do is to update the SSL certs on the darquecathedral.org server. As far as work goes, I probably have a number of things that need to be done, but they’re probably not all that pressing and I can deal with them as they come. Hopefully I can spend the time needed for sleep and rest (unlike the past couple of weeks), but otherwise… we’ll see how things go.

More and more I find myself using MySpace.

D'Arque Bishop

I suppose it was inevitable.

As more and more of my friends use MySpace, I find myself having to devote more and more attention to my own MySpace page. This annoys me, as I’ve always had two common beliefs about MySpace:

  • MySpace is GeoCities ten years later.
  • MySpace allows everyone to have his or her own website. Unfortunately, everyone does.

In any event, I’d just as soon put as little time as possible towards my MySpace page itself, and devote that time to my main site. To that end, I’ve installed a new plugin by Roderick Russell that crossposts entries from this site onto my MySpace blog. If you’re interested, you can find the plugin at its page here. In essence, my MySpace blog will be just like my LiveJournal: a redirect and/or mirror of my main site.

We’ll see how this goes.

EDIT – 9:32 PM – Apparently it’s not going. Looks like I’m going to have to figure out what’s going on as the plugin is not playing nice with my site. Ah, well…