Category: Rantings from the Pulpit

Hmmm… end of the week.

D'Arque Bishop

Bleh.

I’ve ended up making an appointment with my eye doctor tomorrow morning. My left eye is still a little irritated and bloodshot. I’m thinking that when I had to put my contact for that eye back in after it fell out Monday, that it might have gotten an eyelash underneath it that ended up scratching the surface of the eye. It’s a little better today, but I’d feel better if Dr. Moyer took a look at it in the morning.

In addition, I’ve gone since Sunday night without drinking any soda. This is actually something of a record for me, as I’ve always had at least one or two Diet Cokes a day. The fun thing is… I really don’t miss it. I’ve been doing fine with coffee and water (with the occasional beer). I think I’ve turned the bend and have pretty much kicked the habit… with the exception of having to remind myself to order water and not Diet Coke when at places like Fuddrucker’s and the like.

Today was the annual Christmas luncheon here at the office, complete with a gift giveaway. We each had three numbers, and if we won something and one of our numbers was drawn again, we could trade our old gift for the new one. I was really hoping for the poker set, the large wood cabinet 70th anniversary Monopoly set, or even the 26″ widescreen TV. Instead, I won a company polo shirt. (I must have more of those than anyone else in the company… heh.) Then, almost to seal my fate, so to speak… the next shirt that was up for grabs was won by one of my other numbers. *sigh* Oh, well… it’s better than nothing. :-)

Anyway, I’d better get back to work… then later on will be meeting Sean and Jinny for coffee, which should be fun. Ah, well… back to the grind…

Fun at jury duty…

D'Arque Bishop

Bleh.
I had completely forgotten I had jury duty this morning. Oh, well. I’m currently in the jury assembly room waiting for them to get on with this. Of course, I have no idea whether this post will even go through or not, and if it does the LiveJournal readers won’t see it until later.

This actually wouldn’t annoy me so much if it wasn’t for the fact that we have a Christmas party tomorrow and I have a trip to Las Vegas a week from tomorrow. I guess I’ll just have to hope for the best.
My left eye still aches, but it’s doing better. A stray eyelash had gotten under the contact lens I was wearing and managed to scratch my eye. It hurt like hell a couple of days ago, but it’s been getting better since. My eye isn’t as bloodshot now either.
Anyway, enough rambling from me… time for us to be put in jury pools…. Fun fun….

A Thursday post…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, first off, here’s my new Powerbook desktop, for anyone who might be interested:

It’s kind of weird. I’ve never been much of a coffee person. Give me a choice between coffee and Diet Coke, and I’ll usually take the Diet Coke. However, for the past week or two, the Coke machine outside my office has been bare of Diet Coke. For that matter, it’s bare of Coke too now. The only remaining choices if I want caffeine are C2 (which last time I got one out of there a couple of months back had already expired) and Mr. Pibb (and I HATE Dr. Pepper-like colas). Well, yesterday, in a bit of desperation for caffeine, I got some coffee out of the coffee pot upstairs and put the French vanilla cream they had available in.

It was actually pretty damn good. I have no idea why.

So, I guess I’m switching to coffee from Diet Coke here. Don’t ask me what prompted me to start liking coffee… I couldn’t tell you. Maybe I’m turning more and more into a professional geek by going for a “professional” drink like coffee instead of sodas like Mountain Dew and Diet Coke. Oh, well.

Then again, lest people think I’ve completely turned away from the geek side… my coffee mug is a black mug with the following immortal words written on it in a classic video game font: “ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.” :-)

I’ve been pretty busy on the computer front too… I’ve been meaning to make a post detailing the pitfalls that went into moving MK Online from its old server to its new one, but haven’t had the time or inclination to do so yet. Last night was also spent in rebuilding my test server, Mileena, with parts taken from the main server, Tyrande. The plan was to rebuild the server and then install CentOS 4 onto it. It ALMOST went all right, except for two major problems. The first was that I somehow managed to put the ATX power connector for the motherboard in upside down. (I STILL don’t know how I managed to avoid frying the motherboard.) The other was that the system didn’t support the 3Com network card I put into it out of the box. Supporting the 3Com card will require me to rework the kernel, which I DON’T want to do. So, I’ll put its old Realtek RTL8139 card back in. Of course, I’ll mess with all that stuff tonight… bleh.

I also found out today that I’m going to be sent out to Edmonton next month to FINALLY do the server switchover I had been expecting to do for the past several months. I just wish I could have gone during summer, when I wouldn’t have to worry about ice and snow on the roadways. Oh, well… I don’t really mind either way. I just won’t be able to go visit the West Edmonton Mall and give their casino a try. :-)

Anyway, I need to get a bit of work done here… I’ll be back later, maybe with the MK Online conversion story for those geeks who care to read it. :-)

A friend’s travelogue…

D'Arque Bishop

A couple of weeks ago, my old friend Sean went to the United Arab Emirates on a business trip for work. While he was originally apprehensive about going (as I found during a late evening coffee with him and his wife at Denny’s), it appears he found it to be a rather… hmm, I’m not sure enlightening is the right word, but it certainly seemed like an interesting experience. While he was there, he posted his observations and photos in his weblog; I showed it to a coworker earlier today, and she found it so interesting I figured I might as well share it with the rest of you.

The posts are all located at http://dianto.org/blog/index.php/category/travelogue/, and are posted in reverse order. (So, I do recommend scrolling to the bottom and reading upwards.)

(Hopefully he won’t mind me linking you all to it… heh.)

An early start to the season’s givings…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, I got myself a very nice surprise when I got back to work from lunch today. :-) When I got back from lunch, I found a box from Amazon waiting for me. I was at first happy, but then got a bit perturbed, as the small box wasn’t big enough to hold the three CDs I had bought using the gift certificate Missy had gotten me. Then, I happened to see a larger box that also had Amazon’s markings on it addressed to me. I took them back to my desk, and out of curiosity, opened the smaller box.

The smaller box turned out to have a DVD… specifically, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I looked at the packing slip, and it turned out it was Jesse’s and Rob’s Christmas gift to me. Thanks, guys! I’ll probably watch it tomorrow evening, as tonight will be stuck working late…

The bigger box did in fact have the three CDs… so, once again, thanks Missy! :-)

Just a quick FYI…

D'Arque Bishop

I just wanted to give a brief heads-up to anyone who might be considering buying me something for Christmas. (Note: this isn’t an obligation, of course, and I’m not asking; this is just going hand-in-hand with the request for the Amazon wishlist earlier…) If you want, I’m always happy to get iTunes Music Store gift certificates. I have a number of CDs and tracks already purchased from there, and don’t mind getting more. :-)

Again, this isn’t me specifically asking or anything… just consider it an extra option should someone decide they actually want to get me something. :-)

A bit of a musical note…

D'Arque Bishop

A lot of my friends know I happen to really like Blue Man Group. I have their album Audio and have seen their show in Vegas twice. Well, today I happened to be browsing around the iTunes Music Store, and saw that they have a celebrity playlist (link only viewable if you have iTunes). Out of curiosity, I went ahead and took a look.

The main thing that jumped out at me was the inclusion of the song “A Different Drum” by Peter Gabriel. “A Different Drum” is from an album called Passion, which is somewhat obscure. Enough so, in fact, that I’ve only come across two other people who have even heard of it; that doesn’t even include Missy, who I gather is a Peter Gabriel fan. The CD is in fact his soundtrack to the movie The Last Temptation of Christ, so it’s hardly a rock/pop album. It’s filled with world-type music and the like, and I rather enjoy it. In fact, “A Different Drum” is my favorite track off that album.

So, needless to say, I was rather surprised and impressed with the fact that they added it to their celebrity playlist.

If you have iTunes and you want to get an idea of what the album is like, you can find it on iTunes Music Store by clicking here.

The post-Thanksgiving post, as it were…

D'Arque Bishop2 Comments

Hmmm… Tygerlander seems to have a point in her LJ:

Concensus sez… That Thanksgiving sucked for the majority of my friends.

More often than not I’m seeing people complain about Thanksgiving, from people getting sick from what they DID eat for Thanksgiving to other people getting roped into doing tech support for their families. Ugh.

In my case, I can’t really complain too much about Thanksgiving, as it went okay. It wasn’t great, but it was okay. We had the standard Thanksgiving fare of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, and gravy. For dessert, Mom picked up a Cheesecake Factory cheesecake with four different kinds of cheesecake in it. Then, after dinner, I lay down for a nap… only to be woken by my Blackberry going off. :-/ *sigh* I ended up being groggy and crabby for an hour or so afterwards, and spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for the Big Upgrade.

(The Big Upgrade, as it were, is simply an upgrade to the main darquecathedral.org server. I’ll be putting the old motherboard, CPU, and memory from my main PC into it, and upgrading the operating system to Slackware Linux 10.2. The preparation was just me backing up certain files from the operating system hard drive. I’ll start at 1 PM CST, so obviously the main site will be down for a good part of the afternoon…)

Anyway, all in all, it was a decent Thanksgiving all told. Now my plan is just to enjoy the rest of the four-day weekend, and avoid going out of the house if I can at all help it. No shopping for me… heh.