Heh, I saw something… well, odd… on the way to work yesterday morning.

I was driving southbound on US 59 right at the south edge of downtown, where 59 splits off to become US 59 South and Texas 288. As per usual Friday rush hour traffic, we were going about 20 miles per hour or so. Anyway, ahead of me, I see this large grey rat running across the freeway. It gets to about the second lane from the right… and a passing car serves it a direct hit with its back left tire.

End of story, right? Nope. The rat rolls around for a second, gets right back up, and starts running again.

A few seconds later it’s run back across to the left. To my amusement, I see Superrat chasing a car. By that point traffic was clearing and I was out of sight of it. At lunchtime, my coworkers and I went down the same stretch of highway to get back to the office, and there was no sign of it. Damnedest thing I’ve seen in a while.

Anyway… I do have a question.

Am I the only one on my flist that couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Dawn, even if I tried?

(I know, I know, I’m the muthafuckin’ AntiChrist.)

Well, things have pretty much returned to normal around here, for the most part. I’m back at my desk, listening to stuff on iTunes, waiting for support requests to come in via email and/or the phone. Most of my coworkers have come back to work, and life goes on.

It’s actually a bit of a relief, in a way. It’s just been a bit off the past week or so. Even yesterday felt that way; then again, I had arranged with my boss that I would be working from home because I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d be able to get gas. I did get some around lunchtime, after Mom told me the Shell station at the entrance to my neighborhood was serving customers. I wasn’t really missed per se, as my laptop was on the corporate VPN and my office phone was forwarded to my cell phone. I was able to get work done without any issues. It’s just… it feels more like work now that I’m back in my office. Weird as it might be to say, at least everything seems to be back on the straight and narrow.

Oh, Louie called me last night… turns out he didn’t get out of town after all. He got as far as Conroe before giving up and heading back to his apartment. Just as well… he got less effects from the hurricane than I did. Heh.

At this point now, the big thing I have to look forward to is Fight Night. For those of you not aware of it, Fight Night is MK Online’s series of chats with celebrities in the world of Mortal Kombat. The next Fight Night chat is Monday, and it’s with the development team of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. I don’t mind saying, it’s going to be a strain… I’m the one who has to maintain the technical side of things while Scott Howell hosts the event and handles the questions from the fans, plus does the main interaction with the team. Usually after Fight Nights I end up taking a month leave of absence from the site, as the strain gets to me and I need to take a break. I guess I should look on the bright side… ]{0MBAT would have had to have taken my place had Hurricane Rita made me unavailable for the event, and the way he was worrying over it, he would have had a coronary by the time the night was over. :-)

Anyway, I’ll probably have a post a bit later concerning servers and related matters, so unless you don’t mind my tech talk feel free to pass that one up. For now, I need to go get my retractable network cable from Anderson (who I let borrow it when I left Villahermosa)… fun fun.

Well, Malia had made a couple of posts discussing my status.

All in all, we’re good here. The power came back on 45 minutes ago, which means the worst effect of the storm on us was the fact that we lost power for 23 hours. We got high winds and some rain, but by 5 PM it had cleared out and we even had blue skies. The damage was also very minimal.

And now, I’m off to sleep in blessed air conditioning. :-)

Here I am… rock you like a hurricane…

I don’t know why that song just popped into my head. Then again, I’ve always liked the Scorpions’ music.

Anyway, as it stands, I think I’m not in too bad of a position. I was in Villahermosa, Mexico earlier this week in order to do a site survey; I had originally scheduled myself to come back this morning, but after getting word of how nasty the storm was going to be, I decided to come home a day early. I got home yesterday morning, but ended up having to rush straight to work to pick up some tapes to take to the datacenter. After making sure all computer equipment would be safe, I went to the datacenter and replaced tapes so we didn’t need to go back anytime soon for that reason. From there… I went home. Bleh. The evacuations had already started, so what would normally have been a 45 minute drive instead became a three and a half hour drive.

I didn’t even bother going into work today; there really would have been no point. The roads are so backed up it’s unbelievable. Louie had called me last night to tell me he was going to Oklahoma City, but that he was leaving this morning at 4-5 AM because traffic would hopefully have eased off. I’m betting he’s back at his apartment now. One of our neighbors had planned to go up to Oklahoma City for her father’s birthday, but she came back after giving up on the traffic. It’s insane; people are getting heatstroke out there for lack of water, and cars are running out of gas idling in the highways.

As for us? We’re boarding up and hunkering down. I spent today helping Mom and Dad prepare the house for the oncoming storm, and also taking care of a couple of work related issues. We survived Alicia and Allison in this house; we’ll see what happens as far as Rita goes. I’m not entirely worried, mainly because there’s no point. We’ll take it as it comes and what happens, happens. I’m also set as far as communications go; granted, my main site and personal email accounts will be knocked out when (not really if) the power goes out. On the other hand, I’ll have my Blackberry with me and it’s fully charged, so even if heavy load on the voice lines prevents calls from getting through, I’ll still have access to my work email. Furthermore, in case of emergency, I unlocked my old Nokia 3650 phone from its T-Mobile-only restriction and its battery is charged to full; if we need an extra cell phone with a charged battery, that one is available to us.

So… when the storm comes through, we’ll see what happens. We’re boarded up, we’re going to make final preparations tomorrow, and we’ll ride it out. In the event that the DSL service gets knocked out, I’ll try and send an email to Missy and Malia letting them know how I am, and they might post something in their journals.

… damn, and I just looked at the TV. Traffic is STILL a nightmare on I-45 North at the Woodlands.

Anyway, catch you all after this blows over.

Well. I’ll have a few words on the hurricane, but first… a bit of humour.

http://www.maverickmedia.co.uk/bloodonthecarpet

Aren’t you glad your business meetings aren’t like this? :-)

Okay, the music department at the high school which serves this area (which is now headed up by one of my former band directors) has started a new fundraiser. Apparently, for $30 a year, they’ll put an American flag in your yard for all of the standard patriotic holidays, like Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veterans’ Day, Presidents’ Day, and Patriot Day. (I’m guessing the latter is the new name for September 11th. I must have missed that memo.) That’s nice and dandy. I have no problem with that.

However, they decided that the best way to get the word out about their fundraiser would be to put a flag in everyone’s front yard Saturday morning, along with an envelope and a flyer explaining the fundraiser and saying they’d pick the flags up on September 13th. Now, if these were understated hand-held flags like this one realtor puts in yards every July 4th, I’d have no problem. These, however, are full-size flags on 10-foot-tall poles. I for one didn’t exactly like the idea of someone putting this thing in our lawn without our permission.

Dad ended up moving it elsewhere. If they gripe, well… that’s their tough shit. We didn’t have permission to move it? You didn’t have permission to put it on our property in the first place.

Oh, well… obviously we’re not taking part in this fundraiser. If the flags had been half the size they were or had asked our permission first, maybe we would have. Hopefully they realize this wasn’t the best way to go about this and don’t do it again… *shrug*

ACJ sent me a link to this media file, which is an MSNBC editor commenting (okay, more like ranting) about the state of the Federal government’s response to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Now, granted, I don’t like the local and state response too much either; there was plenty of asshattery to go around. This video concentrates on the Federal government and how they dropped the ball.

http://media.putfile.com/OlbermannSwings

All right… it’s a slow Labor Day morning, I’m sitting down in the kitchen with my old Compaq laptop (seeing as the Powerbook is elsewhere), and I think I have a few minutes to do an update on what my trip last week was like. That said…

We arrived in Las Vegas early Sunday afternoon, and got our rooms at Bally’s after a bit of trouble involving their misunderstanding of how the comp dollars were to be used. We did some gambling at the slots at both Bally’s and Caesars Palace, and had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory in the Forum Shoppes. After dinner and a bit more slots, I retired to my room to take a nap before hitting the slots again sometime during the night. Unfortunately, the nap turned into a full-fledged sleep, and I ended up waking up at around 5:30 AM.

After doing some checking of mail (and taking a support call from a VP at work who hadn’t realized I was on vacation), I got showered and dressed, and headed down to the casino. As I had expected, my parents were already down there. We ate breakfast at the Sidewalk Cafe, and did the slots some more. From there, we wandered down the Strip to the Venetian to visit the shops there. Problem was, we got there about 9:30 AM and the shops didn’t open until 10 AM. So, after a bit of that, we went over to the new Wynn casino/hotel to see what that was like. After browsing through there (and hitting the slots there), we wandered back to Bally’s. From there, we got on the monorail and separated; Mom went down to the Luxor to get the Blue Man Group tickets, and Dad and I went to the Las Vegas Hilton to see Star Trek: The Experience. We went through the Klingon Encounter ride, and then from there returned to Bally’s. After taking an afternoon nap, I met back up with Dad (who had met up with Mom when she got back), and we headed over to Cheesecake Factory for an early dinner. From there, we went back to Bally’s and got on the monorail, where we headed over to MGM Grand to see the new Cirque du Soleil show, Ka. Ka was a hell of a show; the only disappointment I had was the fact that the soundtrack won’t be available until mid-October. After the show, we headed back to Bally’s for a little gambling, and then off to bed.

The next morning, I was down at the casino at 7 AM, and of course Mom had already been down there for an hour or two. As soon as Dad came down we had dinner at the Sidewalk Cafe, and then did some slots. As soon as it got close to 10 AM, we headed over to the Forum Shoppes to browse around the entire thing and see what the store selection was like. About the only couple of notables were the Sony Style store, and a store with signed collectibles and other stuff from movies, TV, music, and the like. The latter had two locations, and we browsed both. Both stores even had old arcade games; while the second and larger (and original) location only had Ms. Pac-Man and an old pinball machine, the first location we visited had a Space Invaders machine, a Millipede machine, an Atari Star Wars machine, and a Terminator 2 pinball machine. The last one was the one that amused me the most; I felt like asking the clerk/manager if they guaranteed their stuff was in full original condition. If they did, then I would have given them a dressing down. The T2 pinball machine appeared to be in good condition, except for the part of the machine between the actual table and the top display, where the LED display and speakers were. That portion was very obviously originally from a Doctor Who pinball machine. Anyway, from there, we went back to Bally’s for a bit more slots. After another nap, we went to the Cheesecake Factory for the requisite early dinner. From there, Dad and I made our way over to the Luxor to see Blue Man Group. (Mom had seen it last time she was in Vegas with her sister, so he declined to see it this time.) As always, it was a great show. From there, we returned to the hotel, where I watched a bit of TV before turning in for the night.

The next morning, I spent a bit of time packing my stuff, and then wandered downstairs for breakfast. We ate at (you guessed it) the Sidewalk Cafe, and then returned upstairs to finish packing. Once we were packed and ready to go, we went downstairs, checked out, and checked our bags with the bell captain. (Our flight wasn’t until 4:45 PM.) From there, Mom and Dad hit the slots while I found a blackjack table and played there for a while. After we got done there, we wandered over to Cheesecake Factory and had lunch. That done, we went back to Bally’s, got our bags, and headed to the airport. The return home was covered in the previous update.

All in all, it was a fun trip. I did learn my lesson, though: I need to stick to blackjack, as I tend to get raped at the slots and lost a LOT more money off that than I did in the equivalent time in blackjack. I say blackjack, as I really didn’t have a desire to play poker there, and the poker table games didn’t really appeal to me. (The only one I had experience with was Let It Ride, having played it on my PC. I lose money far quicker than I do in blackjack.) Next time I go to Vegas, I’ll definitely play on the tables far more. I’ll also try and do a couple of different shows next time as well. Oh, well… I did enjoy myself, and I’m already looking forward to my next trip. :-)

Yes, I’m back from my vacation in Vegas. I’ll post about it tomorrow or the next day. I don’t feel like doing it right now.

When we got off the plane, we switched on our cell phones, to find voicemails waiting for us. They were from our vet, with whom our pets were being boarded. It turned out that Matey (our black cat, who first came to us as a stray who was hellbound and determined to be our cat) had a severe allergic reaction this evening, and died before they could get her to the emergency clinic.

Obviously we’re devastated by this news. Mom’s going to find out more from the vet tomorrow; he left his home and cell number with Mom, but Mom wasn’t going to call him at this time of night.

We’re going to miss her… :-(

Apparently the late 80s TV series War of the Worlds is coming to DVD.

For those not in the know, it wasn’t really an adaptation of the book so much as it was a sequel to the 1953 film. The series did have its moments, but all in all… I don’t know if it was as good as it could have been. I actually considered the book adaptation of the pilot better than the actual show, due to one detail: in the series, humanity forgot about the aliens and doesn’t believe they existed. In the book, humanity remembers the alien invasion; they just refuse to discuss it and try to consciously bury the past. Also, there was one episode that had a few gruesome spots that I honestly still can’t believe they showed on broadcast TV. (For those of you who remember the uproar about the guy’s head exploding in one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation… this episode was worse. A lot worse.)

The second season actually was notable enough due to the fact that almost everything from the first season was casually wiped away. All but three characters were killed off, the aliens and their technology was completely revamped (and now almost nothing like the aliens of the original movie), and the setting was completely changed. In fact, now when we see a series almost completely reinvent itself between seasons, I call it pulling a “War of the Worlds”. (The term was originated by the venerable Jenn.) And no, when a series is referred to in that way, it’s rarely a compliment.

It’s sad, too… the second season was decent enough. It just wasn’t War of the Worlds anymore, and it’s likely that discontinuity that killed it.

Ah, well… I may or may not pick it up for shits and grins. I also see Dracula – The Series made it to DVD, and that might be worth seeing just for pure nostalgia (seeing as the series itself wasn’t all that good). We’ll see.