I could do with a longer weekend.

Of course, it didn’t help that I was at work until around 9 PM on Friday. Admittedly, most of it was spent cooling my heels while my boss worked on software upgrades on the machines at the datacenter where I was at. Then when I was done, I went home and caught up on the Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis episodes I had missed; fortunately, TiVo is my friend. Once that was done I was ready for bed…

… and got up nice and late the next morning, having caught up on lost sleep. Quite frankly, Saturday was a very slow and unproductive day, with one exception: I had to go down to Sears at Willowbrook Mall to get new passport photos taken. Unfortunately, I had misjudged when my passport would expire, and instead of expiring at the end of the month it expired this past 30th. Oops. Fortunately getting the pictures was a quick and painless process. Once done with that, I went with the parents over to this place in the Willowbrook Mall perimeter called 221B Baker St. Pub & Grill.

221B Baker St. was actually quite nice. Up until about a year or so ago, the parents and I liked to go to this Irish pub called Matthias’s. Unfortunately, the owner got tired of running the place, and ended up closing it. It was a shame, as it had a really good beer selection and the food was quite good, too. The atmosphere also was very pleasant, and authentic, as it were. Anyway, as we went into Baker St., I felt like I was wandering into one of the pubs back around my Aunt Norma’s cottage. The decor was suitably British, and the drinks and food were very good. They’ve earned themselves a repeat customer. Now I’ll just have to drag Louie and Dave down there one of these weekends…

As for today, the main thing I’ve done that was productive was upgrade PHP on this server, so that I could get thumbnail creation for uploaded images here working properly. Otherwise, it’s been a suitably slow and relaxing day, topped off with a quick nap in the kitchen. Right now, I’m just chatting with Missy, having a Shiner Bock, and enjoying what little weekend I have left. I’m hoping this week doesn’t turn out to be really stress-inducing, but one never knows. In any event, I’ll just take it as it comes.

Just a bit of a fluff post…

A little bit ago, we let Chase out into the backyard, and he went straight to the birdbath and lay down. While there, he just kind of started looking around, as if sniffing something. Dad couldn’t resist going out with the camera and taking a picture. :-)

Yesterday, a couple of people and I were discussing one of the new features of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon: parries. While parries are new to the Mortal Kombat series, they’re not new to fighting games in general. In essence, a parry allows you to block an opponent’s incoming attack and leave them open for a counter-attack. The parry doesn’t take a hit off your health like a normal block does; on the other hand, the parry has to be perfectly timed as it’s more complex to pull off than a block. While we were discussing the parry system, I was reminded of this particular moment from the Evolution 2004 fighting game tournament during a Street Fighter III: Third Strike semi-final match, where Daigo (playing as Ken) is fighting against Justin (playing as Chun-Li). Daigo has virtually no life left, and when Justin fires off a 17-hit super combo for the kill, Daigo masterfully parries every single hit and responds with his own super combo, winning the match.

Like I said, it was a sight to behold. I’m certainly in awe; I could barely get the hang of parries in MK: Armageddon, and I’m sure they’re easier in that than they are in Street Fighter III. :-)

Well, I just finished watching Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. While I rather enjoyed it, I can see why it didn’t do too well at the box office. I can’t imagine that there would be a lot of people nostalgic for the old “futuristic” serials of the 1930’s; this was a well done nod to them, though.

Moving right along…

In my time at Mortal Kombat Online, I’ve run into a pair of rather weirdass coincidences that sometimes make me wonder just how small of a world we live in. These are both true (if not a bit scary) stories that just came at me right out of nowhere.

Nearly three years ago, I got an email in my MK Online inbox from Kyle DeHaas. (Yes, for those who know him, that is Kourt’s brother.) It turned out he had been doing a Google search for a certain character name he had invented, and found that in some official MK Online chat some guy named “DArqueBishop” had referred to it in a chat. Now, this character name was so off-the-wall that it was almost impossible that someone else had come up with it independently, so he was emailing to find out how to contact me and find out who the hell I was. By the time I had gotten the email, he had found his way onto the #mortalkombat IRC channel and was asking about me. I went ahead and told him who I was, and I think I shocked the hell out of him. It’s still funny to kinda laugh at these days…

What made me think of that and the whole “small world” thing, though, was something that happened yesterday. I got a message from a Midway employee who will remain nameless, asking for my help. It turned out he had been doing a Google search looking for an old college friend of his, and the only valid result he could find was on… well, Sean MC’s site. However, Sean had no email address listed on his website. What WAS listed, however, was a link to MY website… and the Midway employee recognized it as belonging to the same person from MK Online. :-) So, he asked me for help… and with Sean’s permission I obliged. Hopefully Sean was able to help…

It’s funny. Like I said, it’s coincidences like these that make me realize how small our world gets sometimes. Still, they happen infrequently enough where it’s a surprise when it DOES happen. Either way, it makes for decent conversation later…

I know I’m probably late to the game here, so to speak, but I found this rather amusing. Forgive the inherent geekiness of this post…

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve been playing the Transformers game for Playstation 2. It’s a surprisingly good game, actually. However, it’s not based on Generation 1 (the mid-80’s TV series and movie). It’s based on Transformers: Armada, which admittedly started out pretty badly but seriously improved as the series went on. Anyway, the opening movie for the game shows Megatron and Optimus Prime battling atop a building on Cybertron, while Megatron’s army of Decepticlones are overwhelming the Autobot defenses. Then, suddenly, Megatron throws out a line that was a nod to G1.

He grabbed Optimus by the throat and said, “I would have waited an eternity for this. It’s over, Prime!”

Those were the same words said by Megatron after mortally wounding Optimus in the movie… heh. Yes, like I said, it’s geeky. It amused me, though… heh.

I must say, a weekend with an extra day was exactly what I needed. Right now, I’m just sitting here, drinking a bottled water, and listening to my iPod on my home theater. Not having to worry about going in to work tomorrow is a good thing.

Yesterday was fun, though. I made my way down to Dave’s apartment, and we went ahead and grabbed some lunch over at Fuddruckers while we swapped war (work) stories. From there it was back to the apartment, where I introduced Dave to a movie he had never seen before: The Matrix. After that (and after explaining a few things that still left him a bit confused), we headed over to Specs and replenished Dave’s depleted drink stock (alcoholic and otherwise). After that and having a couple of drinks (and watching a couple of funny things on the net), we went out and searched for somewhere to have dinner. We finally settled on Grand Lux Cafe, which is located across Westheimer from the Galleria. It turned out Grand Lux Cafe is owned by the same company that owns the Cheesecake Factory, and it showed. :-) From there, we wandered over to Barnes & Noble and did a bit of browsing around. About the main notable thing we discovered there was that the movies Road to Perdition and A History of Violence were based on graphic novels/comic books. From there we headed back to the apartment, and I made my way back home.

Today has actually been something of a slow day; I really haven’t done much of anything, save put in some time on my Transformers PS2 game. I also went ahead and got my birthday wish list started; it’s a tradition in this family to start our birthday wish lists two months before the actual event, so the others can be ready and have enough notice as to what to get people. While I do have a bunch of video games, DVDs, and CDs on my list, the most expensive thing I’m asking for is a Logitech Harmony universal remote. I kinda want SOMETHING to cut down on the number of remote controls I have, as right now I have remotes for my DVD player, HDTV, home theater, and satellite receiver/TiVo. Ah, well… actually not having to do much is a good thing right now.

Heh, there was one thing I found amusing yesterday… Dave actually met a girl on Friday at Friday’s. He got her number and email address, and apparently they’ve already been emailing each other back and forth. It should be very interesting to see what comes of this, but hopefully something DOES develop for Dave. Now, if I could only find myself a girlfriend… heh. (And yes, I’ve been on Match and Lavalife. Not finding too much luck there right now.)

Anyway, I think that’s about it from this end… time to go check on some things elsewhere. Fun fun…

Before anyone starts griping about the formatting of this message, I’m testing out a new version of Postie for the site; I’m writing this post via email.
Anyway, yesterday Midway and GameSpot announced they were going to hold the search for the “Ultimate Mortal Kombat Fanatic”. If you want to take a look at the press release, you can see it here. Anyway, to enter, one needs to submit a short movie describing how they are the ultimate MK fan, and the winner gets to go to GameSpot’s world headquarters in San Francisco and play Mortal Kombat: Armageddon against Ed Boon himself. It should be interesting to see how that goes…
The funny thing is, the two fans I would have expected to win, Jeff Henry/DECEPTION/samus_aran3900 or Bezo, are ineligible. Apparently the contest is only open to entries from within the United States. I also had to send an email to the other MK Online staff members asking them not to enter. The few I would expect to do a good job in the contest actually have already met Ed and played against him, so it wouldn’t really be fair on anyone else.
Still, like I said before, it should be interesting to see who wins. I’m hoping it’s an MK Online member, myself, but then that’s just me. I guess we’ll just wait and see…

This conversation happened earlier on AIM between myself and CCShadow…

DArqueBishop: Here’s something I don’t understand.
CCShadow: forty….two…
CCShadow: :-P
DArqueBishop: Why does Stargate Command use Dell XPS laptops?
CCShadow: its obvious
CCShadow: Ancients use Windows
DArqueBishop: No wonder their species died out.
DArqueBishop: They do seem to be susceptible to wide-ranging virus plagues.
CCShadow: hahah

(Yes, you do have to be familiar with Stargate SG-1 to get it. Sorry. :-) )

I knew I forgot something when talking about last night.

Among the festivities for our easily-amused selves was a bit of science-type fun involving, well… mixing Mentos and Diet Coke. :-) Sean and Jinny brought the Mentos and two two-liter bottles of Diet Coke, and before the first movie started we decided to mix it up in one of the bottles. After the second movie was over, we did it with the second bottle too.

I went ahead and took video of the first bottle going up; it’s from my camera’s phone, and keep in mind that lighting was horrible and that my phone’s camera isn’t too stellar to begin with. Those of you having difficulty even opening it might have luck using Quicktime. And, for your amusement… Diet Coke and Mentos exploding…

Ah, well… like I said, we were easily amused. :-)

Well, here I am on another lazy Sunday. It’s been more or less uneventful for the most part; I’m sitting down in the kitchen having a soda, working on my laptop, and listening to music on my headphones. I should say it was uneventful except for one thing, which I’ll get to in a bit. Right now, though, I’m taking a break from doing some MK Online-related work. There’s an upcoming project I’m getting materials and proposals ready for, and it’s not exactly the most fun thing I’ve ever done. Ah, well…

The most eventful thing that happened this weekend was that I went over to a moviefest being held over at Becky’s and Brian’s (dude, if I got your name wrong, punch me out later; I’m HORRIBLE with names :-/) house; apparently they have them every so often, and the theme of last night’s moviefest was Austin Powers movies. Sean and Jinny were there, as well as Merrie and Jonathan (her new husband), not to mention a whole score of people I hadn’t met yet. The evening was quite fun, and I rather enjoyed myself. :-) The only regret was that we couldn’t see Goldmember, but that was perfectly understandable as Becky wasn’t feeling well and it was getting late as it was. Apparently the next moviefest will be a Monty Python marathon; I’ll be all over that one. :-)

Speaking of good movies, I saw a really good one Thursday evening: Good Night, and Good Luck. I’ll probably end up putting that one in my permanent collection. For those not aware, it’s about Edward R. Murrow and his confrontations with Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the early 50’s. It’s a powerful film, and I highly recommend it. The next film in my Netflix queue is V for Vendetta; that’s another one I’m really looking forward to. I’ll likely get it on Tuesday.

And now, I suppose I should get back to work on this MK Online stuff… fun fun…