Bleh. It’s nearing the end of Sunday, and I could do with some more time off. Right now I’m just sitting at my desk, with my TV set to CourtTV, and kind of watching Cops out of the corner of my eye. Ah, well…

I finally got around to buying a 12 month subscription to Xbox Live Gold on Friday, while out getting lunch. Of course, I ended up getting the value pack that came with a headset, 200 Microsoft points, and a free Xbox Live Arcade game. (For $10 more than just the subscription, it was a decent deal.) I was hoping that the free game could be one of my choice. It turned out it was a specific game: Bankshot Billiards 2. I’m not complaining, mind you; I don’t mind having a free billiards game. I must say, though, that I don’t do much better in the video game version of billiards than I do in real life. :-) Ah, well… it’s still a fun little game.

However, more to the point, I played Gears of War with friends online. I had fun Friday night. Saturday night was… not so fun. I was finding that I could never get opponents down with the machine gun before they knocked me down with the shotgun. However, I just could not get the shotgun to work. No matter what I did, I could never get any damage in, and I’d end up getting killed in response. By the end of the night I was so frustrated I felt like throwing my controller across the room. I ended up leaving the game and shutting off the console, extremely frustrated. I don’t mind losing. What makes it not fun is when it becomes purely obvious that I’m not doing any good and that I’m apparently nothing more than cannon fodder. *sigh* My teammates (BloodySinner and Murdoink) weren’t happy that I left, but what’s the point in playing when it’s not fun anymore?

At least today was a bit better. I got a little Easter bag with Cadbury Crunchies and Dove chocolates. :-) We ended up having lasagna for Easter dinner, which ended up being VERY good. As for the rest of the day, I’ve spent it napping and talking to Misty. I MIGHT play some Gears of War or Mortal Kombat: Armageddon a bit later, but I haven’t quite decided yet. Of course, talking to Misty is a given as well, though she’s going to be watching The Tudors. Ah, well.

As for the rest of this week, I don’t have any real plans. I’ll have work to do, of course, but overall I don’t know what the main tasks for this week will be. Ah, well… I’ll find out soon enough. For now, though, I’m just going to sit back and watch some more TV.

It’s April Fools’ Day. Bah.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind it per se. I even manage to get a couple of good minor jokes off on people every so often. It’s just that some of the sites I go to like Slashdot and FARK just completely overboard on it and make it much more annoying than funny. One or two joke stories is fine. Overdoing it just drives me away for the duration of the day. At least Slashdot is less annoying than last year; the whole “OMG PONIES!!!” thing got very old on the very first viewing.

So, you might be wondering what the April Fools’ joke for MK Online is. There isn’t one, so stop looking. We didn’t remember that April Fools’ was today until late last night, and by then it was far too late. In retrospect, we probably should have forced everyone onto a Mokap theme and left it like that for the day. Ah, well… I did put a minor joke on the site’s IRC channel, though:

[11:58] *** Topic for #mortalkombat: The #MortalKombat Online IRC Network! – Congratulations to our newest ops: outworld222 and Coltess! – IGN Previews MK: Armageddon For Wii! – http://www.mortalkombatonline.com/

(No, there is no way in hell I would ever put outworld222 or Coltess on ops. Heh.)

Anyway, I’m just going to finish up this cup of coffee and wander off elsewhere to see what I can do about lunch… and hopefully I can avoid April Fools’ annoyances the rest of the day.

I just found this shirt on ThinkGeek, and damn… I want one now. :-)

(If you don’t get it, read up on Knight Rider and Battlestar Galactica. :-) )

Well, it’s Friday, and I have the weekend to look forward to.

Actually, my plans for this weekend have changed slightly. I hadn’t planned on doing much of anything, as Dave and Louie were both going to go up to Austin for the weekend. However, I got a call from Dave last night while I was out having drinks with my coworker Brent, letting me know that the trip had been cancelled. I didn’t find out why until today: Louie had to leave town due to a death in the family. :-/ My heart goes out to him, and I hope the services go well. In the meantime, I’ve invited Dave to come up here tomorrow and hang out here for the day. I’m not sure what exactly we’ll be doing. Ah, well… we’ll see when the time comes.

This week has been relatively uneventful for the most part, other than meeting Brent for drinks yesterday and having dinner with the boss, Brent, and a couple of other coworkers on Wednesday. The only other notable thing that happened was that I needed to take my car in for service this morning. As I was driving to meet Brent yesterday, I noticed that the temperature gauge was rising as the car idled, and would lower when in motion. By the time I got to where Brent was (after driving through stop-and-go rush hour traffic), the car’s temperature was in the red zone. (Fortunately, driving home was almost nonstop once I got on 610 from Westheimer.) The issue turned out to be a combination of a short-circuiting cooling fan motor and a malfunctioning electronic coolant temperature sensor (which was reading at -22 degrees… heh). $400 later, the car was fixed and I was on my way to work. Not the most fun way to start my day, let me tell you…

As a final note, I have a new desktop wallpaper on my main PC…

I actually picked it up from this site; it’s a steampunk reimagining of Darth Vader. The artist also had steampunk reimaginings of Jabba the Hutt, Han Solo and Chewbacca, and the Death Star. I dunno… I think Star Wars would make a very good steampunk background. Then again, I fully admit I didn’t begin to appreciate the aesthetics of steampunk, so to speak, until I saw the way the TARDIS console room was designed in the Doctor Who TV-movie. One of these days I’ll pick up The Difference Engine and read it, as it’s supposed to be a very good steampunk book. Final Fantasy VI also has a definite steampunk feel to it. :-)

Anyway, for now, I’m just going to finish this drink and ponder going to bed. Fun fun…

Well, this is fun. Apparently I have a helper/companion when working on my computer at home.

With Gus and Ringo being exiled to the upstairs more or less permanently (thanks to Chase and especially Star not being cat friendly), they get bored and lonely. So, I’ve taken to leaving my bedroom door open during the evening so that Gus can come visit. (Ringo is rarely that adventurous.) Most of the time he would either find a spot on the floor or on my bed, and lie there contentedly.

Recently, though, he’s been taking to getting up on my desk and exploring around. It wouldn’t be so annoying if A) he wasn’t so twitchy and likes to move around, and B) he loves pens and related objects. More than once I’ve had to stop him from taking Sharpie markers, a pocketknife, and even my Bluetooth earpiece from the desk. He also likes to stand or lay in front of the monitor, as evidenced above. While I was writing the first couple of paragraphs of this post, he actually had a paw outstretched onto the keyboard, and I had to work around him.

I love the guy, but he is a typical cat in that he is very demanding for attention, and to hell with any reason why you shouldn’t be giving it to him. When working on stuff that can be a bit of a pain in the ass, especially when he jumps in my lap. Still, it is cute sometimes, and I enjoy his company for the most part… when I’m not trying to keep him from stealing stuff, that is. :-)

So, last weekend was spent with Misty. Yesterday was a day out with Dave and Louie, as we decided to spend the day doing some sort of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. The day wasn’t all THAT eventful, but it was a good day out and about. The plans were started on Thursday night when Dave called and we all arranged that we would meet on Saturday. From there, we proceeded with our plans…

Read more “A weekend with friends… (Or: “So, what’s next for us?”)”

Bleh. I know I haven’t updated this site in a while. So sue me.

The truth is that I’ve been extremely busy with work and the like. This past week it wasn’t uncommon for me to not be home until after 7:30 PM, and that’s even with my coming in to work at 6:45 AM. I’ll go into detail later… maybe. I guess one could argue that it’s what I get for spending last weekend visiting the girlfriend up in Jackson. Back when I last saw Misty in November, I met her friend Dani, who more or less made me promise to take Misty to her wedding. And so this visit was set in motion… :-)

Read more “A weekend with the girlfriend… (Or: “I caught my mom’s garter! Ewwww!”)”

Meh. Well, I’m in my hotel room in Conway, AR, right now, just relaxing at the end of a long day. I plan on turning in early, but that’s not going to be for another couple of hours. For now, though, I’m just browsing the web, chatting with friends, and winding down.

I ended up getting up at 4:15 AM this morning, as my flight to Little Rock was going to leave at 7:15 AM. I got to the airport terminal itself around 6 AM; normally I might have been earlier, but I drove myself to the airport this time and parked in the economy lot. It was a good thing I got there early, as there was quite a line to get through security. I boarded my flight, got to Little Rock, got my rental car, and made my way to Conway without incident. Once I got to the Conway facility, I met with the two employees there and started work on mapping out where everything was and what needed to be done.

Of course, while I was doing so, I saw something that I had seen the first time I came out; this was there the last time I was at the facility, so don’t take this as a reflection of us or my coworkers. I guess you can call it Arkansas public education at its finest.

After I got finished at the location, I ended up going to the hotel and getting myself checked in and to my room. Once I got settled in, I decided to go have dinner, which would have consisted of a burger and a beer at Chili’s. I knew where the Chili’s was, so I drove over there, got a table…

… and was quickly informed by the waitress that I was in a dry county. Bah!

Such a thing has rarely made sense to me. I just don’t see the point in having dry counties; I guess it comes from living for 25 years in a “wet” county and not seeing any problem with it. It just seems, well… silly to me. Ah, well… I ended up having a Diet Coke (which will play havoc with the desire to sleep) instead.

Tomorrow looks to be another productive day. I should be done with everything I need to work on by noon, which leaves me free to work on other work projects the rest of the day. Hopefully I don’t encounter any setbacks… heh.

(And I can’t wait to get my laptop in for service. The spacebar is REALLY beginning to annoy me…)

Meh. I should be packing right now, or at least pretending that I am. Instead, I’m sitting here at my PC not doing much of anything, while my TV and satellite receiver are tuned to CourtTV and I’m half-watching Cops. The trip is going to be to Conway, AR, to get a new location there up onto our corporate network. Fun fun…

At least it’s been a semi-fruitful and eventful weekend. Yesterday I went over to Dave’s apartment at around noon. Once I got there, we left for Fuddrucker’s for some lunch. I ended up trying their new chipotle BBQ burger, which was decent (if they had remembered to add the barbecue sauce in the first place). After that, we went to Spec’s so Dave could stock up on some scotch. Once that was done, we headed back to his apartment.

When I went to Dave’s apartment, I had brought my DVD box set of volume one of Batman: The Animated Series. Dave had never seen it before, so I figured I would introduce him to it. I ended up showing him the episodes “Heart of Ice”, “Be a Clown”, and (the appropriately two-part) “Two-Face”. Half-way through the last episode, Louie arrived and watched the rest of it with us, and then we switched over to the OSU and Michigan basketball game. Before long, we were discussing places to eat dinner. The final choice came down to Cheesecake Factory, so we piled into Louie’s truck and headed over to the Cheesecake Factory at First Colony Mall in Sugar Land. After a 40 minute wait, we sat down and had dinner.

Once done, we made our way to Slick Willie’s on Westheimer for some pool. I actually won a game… go me. :-) After we played a round of eight-ball and then a round of nine-ball, we went back to Dave’s apartment; Louie dropped us off and left, and I went up to get my DVDs and left back home.

Today was more or less uneventful, other than going to K&G to pick up a new dress shirt for Dani’s wedding on Saturday. Fortunately I found a shirt pretty quickly, bought it, and brought it home, with a stop at CVS for deodorant and toothpaste for the trip tomorrow. That last stop ended up being a bust, as they didn’t have anything in the size I needed to take on the flight. I ended up going to Walgreen’s later for what I needed. Anyway, now I have my entire suit ready to be sent to the dry cleaner’s for cleaning; I’m more or less ready for this coming weekend, methinks.

I’ll probably do a bit of a technically-oriented post a bit later on. As for now, I think I’ve dawdled long enough and should get to work at least getting my laptop case ready for the trip. (Aka, remove the computer toolset and put phone/earpiece chargers in, that kind of thing.) I’d rather get it taken care of now, especially as I have to be at the airport by 6 AM, seeing as my flight is at 7:15 AM. Ah, well…