Payback, in this case, is more of a feline.

D'Arque Bishop

Jennifer and I have three cats. The oldest, Lucy, has been with Jennifer since she was a kitten. Now fifteen years old or so, she hasn’t been doing well as of late. She’s back to her old self, but she’s still not 100%; she had gotten so bad at one point that we were afraid we were going to lose her. Still, like I said, she’s bounced back.

Now, Jennifer disputes this story, but I figure it’s a bit amusing…

The past few days, before we leave for work or come home from work, we’ve noticed Lucy has been laying on the kitchen table. She’s not supposed to do so, but she’s been doing so anyway; we figure she’s milking the “I’m dying” thing for all of it’s worth. We’d tell her to get down off the table, and she just gives us this look as if to say, “What are you going to do about it?” The answer is that I immediately pick her up off the table and place her on the floor, admonishing her.

Well, I try to be very careful about not disturbing the cats when they’re laying on the bed when we go to sleep. Last night, while in bed, I got Darcy (another of our cats) off the bed after he angered Lucy. I tried to get comfortable, but after the scuffle, Lucy had decided to snuggle in right against me where I couldn’t move without rolling on top of her. Worse, the position I was in was very uncomfortable and it was either bother a sleeping Jennifer or possibly hurt the cat laying right up against my back. I spent quite a bit of time in that position, praying Lucy would get bored and get off the bed.

After a while, I turned and looked at Lucy. She looked at me, with an almost smug look on her face.

“Well played, cat,” I muttered.

Random musings, part III…

D'Arque Bishop

Hey, no macking on the fiancée!

Last night, Jennifer and I went and met some of her coworkers for dinner. On the way back, she needed to stop for gas. While I waited by her car, she went in to pay. When she stepped out, she had an odd expression on her face. When I asked her what was wrong, she looked at me and told me that when she walked in and asked to put money on the pump, the cashier replied with, “You are very beautiful.” She was thrown and didn’t expect that, and asked him to repeat it as she wasn’t sure she heard him right. He repeated what he said, and asked, “When will we be having dinner?” Jennifer just looked at him, and said, “Well, I’m not sure that’ll be cool with my fiancé, who’s right outside…” He replied, “Tell him he is a very lucky man.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, after she had pumped her gas and we had left, she called me (we were in separate cars) and told me that as she was telling me the story, she looked into the store and the cashier was looking at her and making motions implying she should call him. What the hell?

Listen, folks. If someone says she’s unavailable, she’s unavailable. Don’t annoy them or their significant others.

How do you like your barbecue? TOASTY!

TeeFury’s shirt design for today (and only available today) is just awesome. I’m definitely planning on wearing it next time we have a cookout at the house. I’ll let the design speak for itself. :-)

Broken phone? You have a cheap option.

I was talking to Scott Howell earlier, and he mentioned that he had broken the touch screen on his cell phone. Worse, he isn’t eligible for an upgrade until July. Fortunately, though, he uses AT&T, which is a GSM provider. I had originally planned on asking my dad to send a spare phone to him to tide him over, but my dad had a much better idea: buy a cheap prepaid phone and use that. Scott researched it, and ended up buying a cheap GoPhone at Walmart for $11. I guess the GoPhones are unlocked; he put his AT&T SIM card in it, and it worked fine. Now he has a phone to tide him over until July, when he can get a nice phone.

So, if you’re on a GSM provider (AT&T or T-Mobile, for example) and need a replacement cheap phone, just get yourself a GoPhone and you should be fine. :-)

Sometimes the bar isn’t what you expect.

D'Arque Bishop

Jennifer and I had decided that tonight, we were going to cool off after work by going to a bar a coworker had told me about last Friday. The bar is called Barcadia, and its claim to fame was that it had a number of classic arcade machines in it. The machines looked like a decent selection on the website, including the original Mortal Kombat. It sounded like fun, so we decided to give it a try. We stopped off at District 7 first to have some dinner, and then made our way over for dessert and drinks. Jennifer in particular was looking forward to their fried oreos.

Were we impressed? Well… no.

When we drove up, we noticed right away that the only parking at the place was valet parking, which we wanted to avoid. After looking around for a minute or two, we parked on the street near the bar and walked over. As we approached, we noticed that the crowd was significantly younger than us. We went in, ordered our drinks, and I walked over to play some games. I ended up playing a few games of Mortal Kombat, plus other games like Star Wars, Robotron:2084, and Popeye. The machines weren’t in great condition; several had monitor issues and the controls on some weren’t very responsive. Star Wars in particular had nonfunctional buttons and was out of alignment. In addition, it wasn’t clear whether or not the machines were supposed to be on free play. I had asked for quarters at one point and was directed to a change machine, but when I walked around several machines had numerous credits in them. As I was closing my tab, I heard the bartender who directed me earlier tell someone the machines were supposed to be on free play.

As for the fried oreos we got? We were not impressed at all. The vanilla ice cream that came with them was a generic single serve vanilla ice cream cup that would be at home at a Chinese buffet or school cafeteria. The oreos themselves were, well, fried oreos, but were okay at best.

As we were leaving, Jennifer looked around at the crowd, and commented that it was “douchebag central”. I couldn’t help but agree; the place was pretentious and the average person there was ten years younger than us, looking to hook up. It really was not the kind of place we liked, and if it wasn’t for the arcade machines, we wouldn’t go in at all. We shrugged our shoulders, and decided that it was not some place we would go back to.

Ah, well. It’s a shame, but it was worth a try. We figure that from now on, if we want classic gaming and drinks, we’ll go to Joystix for their “Pac-Man Fever Fridays”, where we can have drinks in their nice little lounge and have the run of the entire showroom of games. :-)

A tentative step in the realm of writing fiction.

D'Arque Bishop

I had mentioned something called “Project DK” on my Twitter a couple of times. I guess now I can finally say what it was… not that it was anything important, mind.

A while ago, I had decided to get back into writing fiction. Mind you, I haven’t really done any since high school and was a bit out of practice. I had a couple of stories knocking about in my head, but didn’t know where to start. That problem was solved when out of nowhere, a story came to my head, waving its arms, and going, “Me first! Me first!” My only concern was that it was a fanfic, and I really didn’t want to get started working on someone else’s characters. Still, the idea wanted to be told, so I sat down and wrote it.

The end result was a Mortal Kombat fanfic called “Dracula Killer”. I knocked it out in a couple of hours, with Jennifer giving me advice and editing. Once I was done, I sent it on to Crow and ]{0MBAT for their thoughts. They, plus Jennifer, had pretty much the same opinion.

“It’s great. What happens next?”

Well, crap. I honestly had thought the story would end there, but they wanted to see more.

So, a couple of nights later, Jennifer and I were at dinner, and with her help I brainstormed an expanded storyline for the story. I thought it through, and then began working on the expanded story. Over time, I had gotten the page count doubled and wasn’t even anywhere near halfway through. Unfortunately, I hit a bit of a creative stumbling block: the new game.

I apologize if this is a spoiler, but a big part of the setting/tone of the story depended on the Outworld invasion of Earthrealm (from Mortal Kombat 3) being rather sudden and mystical. As the story for MK3 explained, Kahn opened a portal over an unnamed city and used his magic to claim everyone’s souls, except for the chosen warriors. However, screens from the new game showed that it was, in fact, a full-on military invasion. The thing that ended up killing it was watching a video today, where kombatants were fighting on a rooftop, while the city burned around them and a dragon and a helicopter had a dogfight.

Based on that, the premise I had wouldn’t work anymore. The only way I could see it working is if the method Kahn uses to invade Earthrealm was changed in the new timeline, as this story takes place in the old timeline. (Mortal Kombat is starting a new continuity the same way Star Trek did: time travel changing the past.) Otherwise… no. It won’t work. So, I decided to bite the bullet and submit the original version of the story on MK Online.

If you want to read it, you can do so here.

Comments and criticisms are welcome. Just keep in mind that it’s written under the assumption that the person reading it will be familiar with Mortal Kombat. :-)

Random musings, part II…

D'Arque Bishop

Honesty is the best policy.

Jennifer and I had dinner at TGI Friday’s tonight. After dinner, we each ordered our own dessert. After we were done…

Jennifer: “That was delicious. And I was NOT sharing. … just kidding.”
Me: “No, you weren’t.”
Jennifer: “No, I really wasn’t.”

Poe’s Law, anyone?

Sometimes, on Twitter, I’ve been known to take something the official Mortal Kombat Twitter account says and make a wild unfounded rumor joke about it. Well, apparently in God of War, Kratos has something called “Quicktime moves” that he can use. A new gameplayer for Mortal Kombat featuring Kratos was released today, and @MK_MortalKombat retweeted someone noticing the Quicktime moves were in there. My response?

“Quicktime moves? OMG MK IS COMING OUT FOR MAC.”

I thought it was funny, until @MK_MortalKombat retweeted it, commenting, “No. :p” Well, crap. Now I have to wonder how many people out there actually thought I was being serious…

Why not remake Braveheart with Arabs while you’re at it?

http://www.racebending.com/v4/blog/akira-adaptation-courts-white-actors/

I don’t even know where to go with that, other than what I said above. Really. It just seems like an incredibly stupid move. I mean… will they even be called Kaneda and Tetsuo anymore? What about Akira himself? What’s the damn point, other than to make it interesting to American audiences who won’t want to see the foreigners or subtitles… oh, right.

Never mind. After all, they’ve done the same thing with Let the Right One In and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

A nostalgia for gaming days gone by.

D'Arque Bishop

I have to give Jennifer a lot of credit.

She’s been very supportive of the fact that I’m into gaming. She’s been willing to come out to Dave & Buster’s with me whenever I’ve had an itch to go, for example. Then again, it gives her an excuse to play some Time Crisis 4, which is her favorite arcade game. She also lets me know when she hears about arcade conventions coming into town, and comes out with me.

Yesterday was another example of that. She received an email alerting her that Stern was having a release party for their new The Rolling Stones pinball machine, and the Houston one would be at Joystix. Seeing as we had nothing else going last night, we decided to go out there. While on their normal “Pac-Man Fever Fridays” the whole showroom was available to play, only the middle showroom was available this time around. I entered the tournament they had for The Rolling Stones; the objective in the first round was to hit twelve million points in as few balls as possible, and you had three tries to do it in. On my first try I did it in four; it would have been three had my third ball not gone into the right drain almost immediately. Unfortunately, by the time I got to my second try, enough people had done it in three that I had to do it in three balls or I would be eliminated. I didn’t manage it. It was fine, though; considering the other people in the tourney played a lot and I don’t get to play pinball too often outside of emulators, I was happy I did as well as I did. :-)

The thing is, for various reasons, I’ve been getting a nostalgia for old arcade games. My home office is an extension of my geekiness, so to speak, as I have framed posters and other memorabilia set up around it. For example, I have two Mortal Kombat II posters in my office. A couple of weeks ago, though, I was browsing around on the net and found a movie type poster for the game Dragon’s Lair (as seen on the right). I went ahead and picked one up, and this weekend I will be seeing if I can get a 27″x40″ frame for it. It’ll be replacing one of the two Mortal Kombat II posters.

However, what I would really like to have is an arcade machine or pinball machine in the house. I admit I’m a little jealous of my friend Eric, who not only has Ms. Pac-Man and Scramble machines, he has an old Pinball Wizard pinball machine. The problem, though, is that I almost literally have no place to put a machine. As it stands, about the only kind of machine I could reasonably put in the house is a cocktail table machine, as it could double as actual furniture. If it were available, too, I’d love to get one of the pseudo-arcade cabinets NetherRealm Studios made for the new Mortal Kombat game. Unfortunately, I don’t have the money available for it, and if I did I wouldn’t have a place to put it.

Ah, well. It’s a nice thought to have an arcade machine or a pinball machine (preferably Doctor Who or Bram Stoker’s Dracula), but we have more important expenses to worry about right now. For now, I’ll content myself with Pac-Man Fever Fridays, Dave & Busters, and the occasional Game Night at Eric’s house. :-)

A few thoughts on Nokia, post-MS announcement.

D'Arque Bishop

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/nokia-and-microsoft-enter-strategic-alliance-on-windows-phone-b/

It’s happened. Former Microsoft exec and current Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has married his future and his past in the holy matrimony of a “strategic alliance.” Windows Phone is becoming Nokia’s “principal smartphone strategy,” but there’s a lot more to this hookup…

Well, I could say I was surprised, but I wouldn’t be telling the truth.

Something had been troubling me for a while now regarding Nokia, and it only just occurred to me what it was yesterday. Don’t get me wrong; I used to really like their phones. I’ve had a 5210, a 3390, and a 3650 in the past. However, for all of their domination in the “dumbphone” market in the United States and abroad, they never seem to go anywhere in the smartphone market. I’ve heard people on Slashdot and other tech sites talk about how much they loved their N900 phones, but when it came to people I knew in person who used smartphones, it was always Blackberry, iPhone, Android, or Windows Mobile. I never knew anyone who used Nokia phones. Then yesterday, in a Slashdot discussion about the merger, I saw a couple of people mention how much they liked Nokia’s E71.

It hit me then. Nokia’s smartphones are very geek-friendly, but ONLY geek friendly.

The reason the E71 made me realize it is more of a personal one. A year or two ago, in an effort to try and save money on smartphones at my old job (as we were handing them out more and more), I did a bit of research and found the most cost-effective one was the Nokia E71x. It had full Exchange support, which was our primary requirement. So, we started handing them out to users.

In the end, we stopped after a few months. Why, you may ask? It’s simple: the users HATED them.

The company I worked for was not a tech firm. It was a company that manufactured oilfield equipment, so the users were much more often than not non-tech savvy. The phone interface was confusing them, and as a result it was extremely difficult for them to get the phones to do what they wanted them to do. It was also extremely confusing for us to troubleshoot, as the menus didn’t make any sort of logical sense to us either, especially when previously dealing with phones like Windows Mobile or Blackberry. We got numerous complaints about the devices, and in the end they were phased out.

Around that same time, my parents went and got new phones, and without consulting me they got E71x devices as well. Mom is (and has been) ambivalent about them; she doesn’t care about the phone one way or another, and probably would like a better interface, but she likes that she can get photos off it via free software on her PC (unlike her old Motorola phone) and she likes the QWERTY keyboard for texting. Dad, on the other hand, LOATHED the phone, to the point where his brother did him a favor and sent him an unlocked RAZR to use instead. Dad can’t get pictures off it easily, but he considers it a small price to pay for not having to deal with the E71x anymore.

I know people around have been saying Symbian et al were very powerful phone OSes, but the problem is that Nokia wasn’t going anywhere in the US in the smartphone market. Everyone I know hated the interface, and while I know the plural of anecdote isn’t data, it would not surprise me if a lot of people across the board felt the same way. It doesn’t matter how powerful or versatile your phone OS is if it’s difficult to use. That’s why I can easily see Nokia having partnered with Microsoft in this venture: say what you want about Windows Phone/Mobile, but it has a much more logical and usable interface than Nokia did. If Nokia wants to be taken seriously in the business world, then they need a much more friendly OS for their phones.

After all, while geeks care about power and versatility, the lay users care more about whether it works easily and efficiently. In the end, it’s the lay users that end up driving the market.

Moving the servers, getting away for a few days, and looking at wedding plans.

D'Arque Bishop

I’ve been living in Pearland for eight months now, and truthfully, it doesn’t feel like it. It almost feels like I’ve only been there a few weeks still. This is actually a good thing, as it shows how Jennifer and I are meshing well. We definitely haven’t gotten tired of being around one another, and we’ve been enjoying the time we’ve been spending together. Now that we’re past the initial adjustment period, things haven’t really changed much. Life is good.

However, I’ve had one thing still tying me back to the parents’ house, in a sense: the darquecathedral.org servers, which were still being hosted on the DSL line there. I had been planning on moving them down to Pearland anyway, but Mom and Dad decided they wanted to get AT&T U-verse to replace both their DSL and their DirecTV. So, we went ahead and purchased Comcast Business at our house, arranged for static IP addresses to assigned to us, and then went up to Spring this past Saturday to grab them. All in all, it was a pretty quick and painless process, and fortunately everything fit in my car, including the cart the servers were sitting on. Once I configured my parents’ PCs and their router to work without the servers, we headed back to Pearland. We got home by 9:30 PM, and had the first two servers online by midnight. I got up from bed at 7:45 AM the next morning, and had the third server online 45 minutes later.

The one thing we were worried about most with the server move was the heat generated by the servers. Fortunately, we’ve found keeping my office door open keeps the room at a somewhat normal temperature. The temperature gauge on the front of one server shows normal temps, too, which is a very good sign. We’ll keep an eye on things, but all in all the server migration was a great success. Now I just need to clean out boxes to make more room for me to be able to walk around…

The amusing thing, though, is that now that the servers are migrated, we’ll be getting away for a few days soon. Jennifer and I have decided to take a vacation to Las Vegas, as she’s never been and we managed to get good deals on airfare and a hotel. We’re only going to be gone for a couple of nights, but I figure I’ll introduce her to some of the sights and a couple of the shows. I’m thinking at the very least I should show her the dancing waters in front of the Bellagio, the volcano in front of the Mirage, the Forum Shops at Caesars, and the canals at the Venetian. As for the shows, well… Cirque is out due to the high prices of tickets, but we have a couple of other ideas in mind. No, the wedding is not one of them. :-)

Speaking of which, I know I mentioned it on Twitter, but forgot to mention it here: Jennifer and I are officially engaged. :-) Right now, it’s looking like the actual date is going to be sometime in late September. We’re looking at having a small intimate ceremony with just close friends and family invited, and then a few months down the road have a nice big blowout. We’ve been spending days off (on Jennifer’s end) and weekends going to different places to get ideas of venues and the like, plus potential food options, etc. It’s been a bit overwhelming, but we’re off to a good start. Hopefully we’ll be able to announce something to our friends in the next month or two, even if it’s only a “save the date!” type of thing. We’re looking forward to it, and we’re definitely making sure it’s what we want. :-)

Like I said earlier, life is good. Here’s hoping it just keeps getting better.