First things first… while this Akismet plugin for fighting spam on the site has been exceptional for the most part, I have managed to find one unintended casualty. Apparently all of ACJ’s comments are being marked as spam. I happened to be browsing the list of blocked comments earlier tonight and came across a comment he made a few days ago. *grumblemutter* I suppose I’m going to have to keep a closer eye on it, or find a way to make sure ACJ isn’t blocked.

It appears I’ll be going to Buffalo again on Friday. This time I’ll have everything in hand that I’ll need for the trip, so I don’t expect to need to make another trip for a while. Maybe this time I’ll be able to get the net access working and be able to do some actual work from there. The only thing that bugs me about Buffalo trips is the drive, but the fact that I’ll have my iPod with me will make it quite a bit more bearable. I should see about getting more Doctor Who audio adventures; when I went to Los Angeles last week I entertained myself by listening to “Shada” on my iPod, and it was quite entertaining. It’s really too bad Big Finish doesn’t offer them on the iTunes Music Store, as I’d be more likely to buy them that way.

I’ve also been trying to be a bit more smart about my food intake, exercise, and all. Starting Monday I’ve been doing a five to ten minute workout every morning with a set of hand weights I have here. I’ve cut out all soda again (I’d been slipping, but nowhere NEAR as bad as I had been; maybe a soda at lunch), and have gone to two cups of coffee in the morning and water the rest of the day, with the exception of a Shiner Light in the evening. As for food… I’ve been trying to eat healthier. While my sandwiches for lunch Monday and Wednesday came with fries, I only ate a few of them (as in, five or less). On Tuesday, I had a light pasta salad instead of fries with my chicken sandwich. Then, when I get home, I have a light dinner. We’ll see how it turns out, but I would like to shed a few pounds before May, which is when I’ll be attending two big trade shows (OTC and E3, to be more precise).

In any event, tomorrow should be a somewhat quiet day, other than poker tomorrow night. Then on Saturday, I’ll be going to see Cirque du Soleil’s Delirium at the Toyota Center, which should be rather enjoyable. For now, sleep beckons…

One of the things I got to do Tuesday night was interview Ed Boon, co-creator of Mortal Kombat and the project lead for Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. Joe was good enough to tape it for us using my camcorder, and we went ahead and posted it this afternoon. If anyone would care to watch it or read the transcript, you can reach it at the following link. (Be warned, you’ll need to register with the site in order to download the videos.)

http://www.mortalkombatonline.com/content/News/read.cds?article=734

Unfortunately, we didn’t have much of a choice as to where we could film the interview, so there was a LOT of background noise. That and the fact that my camcorder doesn’t support external microphones made it very difficult to hear Ed during the interview. More to the point, I think the interview illustrates beautifully why I stay behind the cameras for the most part. I didn’t have time to think up questions beforehand; those who are familiar with me know I have a stutter, and it’s more pronounced when I’m on the spot and haven’t had time to think about what I’m going to say. As you can tell in the video, the stutter was rather pronounced. *sigh* I think I’m going to let Justin handle interviews from this point forward. It’s not so much that I’m being down on myself, but I just think it reflected poorly on the site’s professionalism.

Oh, well. I’ll stick to what I’m best at for the site. At least there I can feel good about what I do for the site. :-)

All right, so, I’m back from Los Angeles.

I apologize for the secrecy surrounding the previous post. As it so happened, CCShadow and I went to Los Angeles to cover the Midway Pulse 2006 media event there, and Midway preferred things to be kept quiet until today. I arrived there at 11 AM PST yesterday, got a cab to the hotel, and waited there for a while for CCS to arrive. I wasn’t bored, though; I had to take some support calls for work while I was there, seeing as every single IT person in the company was out for one reason or another. After CCS arrived, we went and had lunch at a place across the street from the hotel called Pizza Rustica. He had a standard margherita pizza, while I tried a shrimp pesto pizza that was pretty tasty. From there, we relaxed at the hotel for a bit, at which point I switched my desktop wallpaper on my Powerbook. From there, we headed to House of Blues for the event.

We came across Ed Boon while in line, but he had left something back at the hotel and needed to go get it. However, we got to spend some time talking to John Podlasek (producer of Mortal Kombat: Deception and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon) while in line. From there, we signed in, took our spots… and then got surprised when the bar in front of us split apart to reveal a stage and chairs downstairs. We went downstairs and got set up… and the presentations began.

It’s too bad they asked us to switch off our cameras for the first presentation, because even in its unpolished state, the game they demonstrated was beautiful. Said game was Unreal Tournament 2007. After the demonstration of the game, we got to see other stuff, like X-Box Live Arcade announcements (including Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3), PSP games, and even the Lord of the Rings MMORPG. However, what we came to see was right about at the very end, and that was the presentation for Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. It started out with a video showing the effect MK has had on popular culture that was absolutely hilarious at times. After that was the teaser trailer. Then, they showed a several minute long video detailing the changes and additions made to this new chapter of MK. All I can say is… I’m really looking forward to it.

After that, they served food and drinks, and had playable games. Truthfully, the only game they had out playable that I was interested in was Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War. It’s an RTS that takes place in classical times; the fun part is that you can take control of your army’s leader and play him a la an third-person adventure game. They were also giving out free copies of Matthew Reilly’s 7 Deadly Wonders at the Rise & Fall area; I picked up a hardcover copy, and will probably read it at some point. Otherwise, I spent most of the evening chatting with Joe, and also talking to Ed, John, and Tony Goskie. It’s always fun chatting with those folks. We also ate, and took the time to get an interview with Ed. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any prepared questions and the noise level was pretty high. So, being able to hear much from Ed was a challenge in and of itself. I don’t know if I could say I did well, myself. All in all, though, the night was a blast.

… though, it was funny; at one point right after the presentations ended, Ed passed by me and saw me uploading files from my laptop to MK Online. He also happened to notice my wallpaper was the MK: Armageddon logo, and I cheerfully admitted that it seemed appropriate. He just laughed, shook his head, and walked away.

We left the event an hour early, as Joe had a 7 AM flight out. We went back to the hotel, where I spent time ripping the video I had taken from the event, watermarking them, converting them to Quicktime files, and then uploading them to MK Online. When I got up this morning, I pre-wrote the news stories for the site, and eventually went to the airport where I had lunch and attempted (semi-successfully) to transcribe. Unfortunately, the laptop battery gave out when I was two-thirds of the way done. When I got home, I got the stories posted except for the interview; that’ll be done tomorrow.

And now, I’m going to go to bed, as I have to drive out to Buffalo, TX tomorrow to get a new location onto our network. Fun fun…

… I’ll be back Wednesday evening.

(Sorry to be so secretive. I’ll explain once I get back.)

Well, first off, I must say that I’m glad I added this new spamfilter plugin into my WordPress install. Barely any spam has made it past the filter since I installed it, which has saved me from needing to do occasional maintenance on the comments pages of the site. I HATE seeing false alarms when I get email indicating someone’s left a comment or trackback… heh.

Today was not much of an eventful day. About the most eventful thing I did was go down to the new Best Buy at Cypresswood and I-45 that just opened this past Friday. I wasn’t after anything important, other than a mini-tripod for my camcorder. Of course, seeing as I found one within 45 seconds of entering the store, I took the time to browse around. I must say, it’s a larger store than I would have expected. About the only thing I seriously shopped for and priced other than the mini-tripod was LCD TVs; if I want a new HDTV for my bedroom, it’s going to have to be an LCD as I don’t really have room for anything else in there. Then again, all I’d be getting an HDTV for at this point would be watching DVDs and playing games; I don’t catch the local channels enough and there aren’t enough HD channels through DirecTV to be worth the cost of an HDTV dish and receiver. Oh, well… otherwise, I did some office-type work and played a few games, and that was about it for my day today.

Yesterday was a bit more eventful. After having a quiet morning and afternoon, I went out to meet my friend Tammy at Carrabba’s. Problem was, there was an hour wait for a table, so we sat at the bar, had drinks, and talked. Then Tammy had the good idea of having them serve our meal at the bar itself. So, we ordered food there… and by the time the hostess came by to tell us our table was ready, our entrees had already been served. :-) Afterwards, we left to head over to the Edward’s Cinemas off Weslayan, and we saw Firewall. It was a very good movie, though at the beginning I felt a bit TOO geeky when I saw Harrison Ford’s character do some programming, and realized it was Cisco IOS commands (for routers and firewalls)… and that it was accurately done. *sigh* After the movie, I headed home and went straight to bed.

As for this week… bah. Tomorrow won’t be too fun as I’ll have a number of things that need doing before I go on vacation. Tuesday and Wednesday will be spent on vacation (more details soon, I promise!). Then on Thursday, I’ll have to make the drive up to Buffalo, TX to put the new company location there onto the company network. Fun fun. I just dislike long-haul drives. I can handle across Houston without too much problem. Hell, I’m used to it by now. I just don’t like intercity travel. In fact, if I drive is longer than four hours or so, I’ll just break down and fly to my destination. :-)

Anyway, I’ve got a few things here that need dealing with, so I’ll go take care of those now. Oh, joy…

Well, I made a slight change to the site. On the top toolbar you’ll see a link marked “gallery”. That leads to my online gallery; I’ve actually had the gallery online for a long while (even before I relaunched darquecathedral.org), but this is the first time I’ve actually linked to it from the main page. Feel free to browse and whatnot. :-) I just wish I could run Gallery 2… heh. The thing is, I REALLY like the color scheme of the gallery as it is now, but I haven’t been able to find an equivalent color scheme in Gallery 2. That really sucks, because the color scheme now matches the main site almost perfectly. Oh, well… maybe in time I will.

I’m just glad right now that I can spend this weekend relaxing. It was a rather hectic week at work this week, with my having to make sure the phone system worked properly at our Corporate office after its processor and hard drive went haywire. At least one night this week ended with me not leaving work until 8:15 PM or thereabouts. I’m just glad at this point that I get to go on a two day vacation next week. Too bad I have to make the drive up to Buffalo, TX the day after I get back… heh.

On another subject, it’s been kinda interesting… over the past several months I’ve been re-establishing contact with a few people from my old high school and prior days. First it was Sean MC, then Kourt, then Meredith. Now within the past week, I’ve encountered another one: Kerri. HI KERRI! :-) On one hand, it’s kinda weird re-establishing contact with these people (a couple of which I haven’t spoken to face-to-face in like 14 years). On the other hand… it’s kinda fun being able to. :-)

Anyway, I just got handed a support ticket from work (sometimes being on-call 24/7 sucks), so I’d better go off and take care of it. Fun fun…

I could use another beer.

It’s just been one of those days, where with everything that was going on, I literally had to tell a user that his low screen resolution problem was pretty low on my priority scale. I also had to spend the day at the Corporate office kind of babysitting the phone system there, as it’s gone extremely flaky for some reason. Of course, this meant that a few of my other support projects had to wait; I might not even go to Buffalo Thursday like I intended. It’ll end up being Friday or Monday at the latest, as I’ll be on vacation Tuesday and Wednesday, and it needs to be done by Thursday of next week. Oh, well…

Actually, I realized a valuable lesson today. I arranged with my father where I would pick Chinese up for dinner on the way home. Now, I almost always hit this really good Chinese place at Louetta and Ella called Hunam Garden for Chinese takeaway or delivery. Anyway, when I was about ten minutes away, I called them up on my cell phone, and when they answered I told them I wanted to make a takeout order. The guy replied, “General Tso’s combination platter… anything else?” If they know my order even before I make it, then it’s definitely time that I start throwing in some variety.

I haven’t opened up my copy of Midway Arcade Treasures: Deluxe Edition yet, which may or may not be a good thing. Apparently not only am I hearing that none of the games from Midway Arcade Treasures 2 have music and the old bugs from those games still exist (including the inability to fight Smoke in Mortal Kombat II), it uses a piece of copy-protection software called Starforce which installs hidden device drivers into your system. *sigh* As before, what I’m about to say is my own opinion and not that of MK Online. That said… Midway, please. I love your games. However… you’re better than this. You need a much better QA department. The more games that get released with these glaring bugs (and this is the third or fourth time the Smoke bug has been seen), the worse the company’s reputation will get… and the less profit you’ll make. As a longtime Midway fan (even well before MK), I’m asking you to please take this into consideration. Like I said, you’re better than this.

All right, that said… I admit I am looking forward to two games coming out that are being published by Midway: Mortal Kombat: Armageddon and Unreal Tournament 2007. I’m also a longtime Unreal fan, as evidenced by the fact that my sterling silver moneyclip has the Unreal logo on it. :-) In fact, Unreal Tournament 2004 is my current favorite wind-down game… if I need to wind down and blow off steam, I load it and go to town on some bots. It doesn’t require careful thought or planning like Zero Hour does… just run in and blow apart things. :-)

Anyway, I’d better wrap this up, as I have a couple of things I need to check before heading off to bed and all that. Fun fun…

Well, I wish I could say tonight’s been a fun night so far, but other than talking to my friend Tammy (which has been a highlight of the day), it’s really not been a fun night. Twice Sinc and I tried to get games going in Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour, but both times we ended up being overwhelmed and destroyed. I don’t mind losing, but losing in the first thirty minutes isn’t my idea of a good time. So, right now, I’m just having a bottle of water and relaxing.

This weekend wasn’t too eventful, really; other than laying about the house, playing Generals, and going out to dinner twice. Saturday night we hit Denny’s, and Sunday night we went to Outback Steakhouse. Yeah, I know, it’s not really an exciting weekend, but I actually welcomed the opportunity to just sit back and relax, seeing as I’ve been run ragged at the office. This week’s not looking to fare much better, as I’ll have to do runs between the company’s Corporate office, the Ardmore office where I work at, the Cypress office, and even have to make a run up to our new office up in Buffalo (it’s about 120 miles north of my house). I’m not entirely looking forward to the Buffalo trip (which will be on Thursday), but I’ll endure it. It’s not any worse than the Corpus Christi runs I’ve had to do in the past.

Sean’s also invited me to go out and have coffee with him (and presumably Jinny) sometime this week. That’s another thing I’m looking forward to; not only is it a good excuse to get out of the house, I have a set of DVDs I promised I’d give him and Henry, and I’d just as soon get them off my hands as soon as possible. :-) Also, it’d be good just for catching up purposes. :-)

… speaking of catching up and whatnot, it appears my old high school classmate Meredith has gotten herself engaged. Congratulations! :-)

Also, today was good in that I picked up a copy of Midway Arcade Treasures: Deluxe Edition for PC. I haven’t taken the time to install it yet; I’ll probably end up doing that tomorrow. Still, having all of the first three MK arcade games plus a bevy of racing games is a definite win in my book. :-)

Anyway, enough of this… gonna chat a bit more with Tammy and then hit the sack at some point.