After a party, the oncoming storm.

D'Arque Bishop2 Comments

Well, so far it’s been a relatively calm and fun three-day weekend for me. About the main productive thing I did today was go to Spec’s after getting my hair cut, and picked some snacks and drinks for the party tonight. I picked up some Jose Cuervo strawberry margarita, a bottle of TGI Friday’s strawberry shortcake blender (which Louie introduced me to not too long ago), and a can of wasabi peas. :-) You see, Merrie had a party at her house tonight to celebrate her husband quitting his job, and a few of us came out. It was mainly me, Heather, Lissa, Sean, Jinny, Henry, Brian, and Becky. Mostly we sat around and drank, had snacks, and smoked. (Well, they smoked; Lissa and I didn’t.) All in all, it was a good time. At one point, Jinny broke out the camera and took a picture of most of us in a Godfather/Sopranos moment.

That’s Jonathan, Sean, Heather, and Henry, with Brian seated.

The funny thing is, I almost left with more than I started with. I brought most of the margarita back, not to mention most of the wasabi peas, and the strawberry shortcake blender was untouched. I might have my parents try that tomorrow. I also left with four bottles of Michelob Ultra so as to save room in Merrie’s and Jonathan’s fridge. Fortunately, I had plenty of room in mine.

As for the rest of this weekend, I really have nothing planned… though I admit I’m keeping an eye on Hurricane Gustav, and am not liking what I’m seeing. I’m figuring Houston may at the very least get a glancing blow fron the storm, but if its path keeps moving westward we may very well be in serious trouble. I should know by tomorrow afternoon whether or not I’ll need to make sure both laptops have fully charged batteries and have my spare cell phones charged. I’ve got at least two spare unlocked Motorola V180 phones I can pop my iPhone’s SIM card in if its battery fails. We can’t evacuate, as we have three dogs and two cats to look after. Not to mention I figure evacuation will be a nightmare given what happened when Rita came bearing down on the city.

Ah, well. We’ll see how the storm goes. Otherwise, I’ll just relax and enjoy the weekend, and hope the storm doesn’t decide to give us more than a very glancing blow.

The Beast looks meaner…

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

I have to say it’s been something of an uneventful weekend.

About the only thing of real note I’ve done this weekend (other than play Team Fortress 2) was take the Beast (aka, my black 2008 Dodge Avenger) in to Spring Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge to have some work done. It was time for the car’s 21k mile service, and I had also decided to have its windows tinted. Houston summers tend to be pretty brutal, and while it’s kind of late in the year for the tinting to do much good, I figure it’ll be good for next year. In retrospect, I should have left the car there while they did the work, as I didn’t expect them to take four hours. I alternated between working on my laptop and taking a look at the Vipers and Challengers in the showroom. I have to say that while they look nice, I would not get either car. The Challenger is a bit more expensive than I’m willing to pay, and has crap gas mileage. The Viper has no cargo room, and, well… I can’t afford $100k on a car. :-)

Still, in the end, the Beast looks nicer. There’s just something about tinted windows on a black car that makes it look nicer. Also, admittedly, current model Dodges tend to look like mean cars. The Beast is no exception, and the tint only makes it look meaner. :-)

Otherwise, it’s been a pretty quiet weekend, all told. I watched a movie (Resident Evil: Extinction) this morning, but otherwise it’s been uneventful. This week should hopefully be quiet as well… but I don’t expect it to be. About the only good thing I’m looking forward to is a party at a friend’s house at the end of the week… which, coincidentally, will be part of a three day weekend. We’ll see how it goes. :-)

The final PC game (for me, at least)…

D'Arque Bishop

Late Friday night, my friend Josh alerted me to the fact that Team Fortress 2 was available to play for free through Steam this weekend. I hadn’t taken the time to play it before, so I went ahead and downloaded it. Last night, after consulting with Josh on a couple of servers to try, I went ahead and played it for a couple of hours.

Damn, that was fun.

The end result was that this afternoon I bit the bullet and bought the game off Steam. It definitely makes for a good game for releasing pent-up frustration. I have to say that this may end up being my PC game of choice for a while, as well as Quake Live… as soon as that one is released, that is. (I signed up for the beta and didn’t get accepted. Damn.)

However, Team Fortress 2 may very well be my final PC game purchase. I had also considered purchasing Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, as I know Sinc will likely get it and would be playing it online. However, I was looking at the released technical specs for the Windows version of the game, and on the ATI side of video cards, the minimum card supported is the X1800. My main PC has an X800. In other words, I would need to upgrade the video card in order to play the game on my PC.

I’m not doing that again. I have an Xbox 360, and the game is coming out for it as well. I’m tired of the constant upgrade cycle needed for a PC to be, well, competitive in the gaming scene. It’s sad but true: consoles have a slower cycle time and cost less to boot. Not only that, my 360 is on a better gaming setup, so to speak: I have it plugged into a 27″ LCD HDTV and a Dolby 5.1 surround sound system. I’d rather play on that than on the PC’s 19″ LCD monitor and 2.1 speaker setup.

So, here I am. I used to do PC gaming, but I’ve pretty much migrated over to console gaming. I knew this day would come, but I’m not really feeling bad about it. In the long run it’ll cost me less and be less headache. By less headache, I mean dealing with building and upgrading machines. It’s a pain in the ass and I’m happy to be done with it… if only until such time as I do need to rebuild a machine. Being able to play the latest games isn’t a “need” situation.

We’ll see how it goes.

An update on Gus…

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

Well, as stated in the previous post, we were getting extremely worried about Gus. Mom and I were discussing him on Sunday, and came to the decision that unless we heard good news from the vet yesterday, we would go into worst case scenario.

Fortunately, we won’t have to go there. :-)

According to the vet, Gus has a benign tumor on his thyroid, which explains why he hasn’t been wanting to eat. Of the three options open to us right now, we’re going for the least invasive/expensive option just in case other things the vet noticed don’t make the whole point moot. The option we’re going for is daily medication. From there we’ll see how he takes to it and whether he improves any.

I’m thankful that we didn’t need to go into worst case scenario. Other than losing weight, he hasn’t shown any other signs of problems; he’s as playful and perky (and some would say annoying and pushing) as ever. At this point, we’ll just take it as it goes. I’m just glad things are really looking up for him.

Good weight loss and bad weight loss…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, yesterday I weighed myself once again. I’m down to 221 pounds, which means that so far I’ve lost 37 pounds. It might have been a little bit more had I gotten a chance to exercise Thursday night. As it was, I was at work until 11 PM and didn’t even have a chance to eat dinner that night. Then again, my weight loss was helped by the fact that from Monday through Wednesday, all I would have for lunch was pho. At this rate, I doubt I’ll make my final goal (195 pounds) by the end of the year. That’s okay, though, because as long as I’m LOSING weight and not GAINING it (which I haven’t done since I started this diet/lifestyle change), I’m in good shape… no pun intended. We’ll see how things go over the next couple of months, but for right now I’m feeling good. :-)

What I’m NOT feeling so good about is my cat Gus. Over the past month or two he’s been losing weight dramatically. We’re not sure what’s wrong with him, as about the only obvious problem we can see is his weight loss; he’s as perky as ever and his coat is in great shape. Still, according to the vet, he’s gone from fifteen and a half pounds to eight and a half pounds, and his weight loss is pretty obvious. Dad has joked that because I’m Gus’s “special friend”, he’s decided to lose weight because I have too. It’s an amusing thought, but we’re still worried about him. According to the vet he’s dehydrated, so we’ve been having to give him an IV of water or saline (I forget which) every night. Let me tell you, that has NOT been fun. I took Dad’s place today in holding Gus down while Mom put the needle in, and while he was calmer with me than he was with Dad, he still made his displeasure WELL known. I also now have a bandage on my right hand, as he gouged me pretty badly with one of his back claws trying to get away. (He’s since forgiven me, though.)

Still, like I said, I’ve been doing well on my own weight loss… but I am worried about Gus. It doesn’t help that he’s an older cat and this could very well be an indicator of something far more serious. We won’t know until the lab tests come back, though. Here’s hoping everything goes well… both for me and for him.

I have joined the iPhone Collective.

D'Arque Bishop

Well, it was bound to happen.

At the office, we’re in the process of testing the iPhone for possible inclusion into our corporate environment. A few employees like the system administrator, the network administrator, and the CIO already have iPhones. Yesterday, the boss (CIO) decided to assign the last of the spare devices (a 16 GB iPhone 3G) to me. I’ve had it for about 24 hours now, and am getting a handle on it.

So, what do I think, you might ask? The answer is complicated, as you might imagine.

As far as email goes, it’s a damn nice device. The Exchange support seems to be working fine, and I’ve also got it linked to my Gmail and personal “professional” account. The latter is the real big thing, as Windows Mobile (what my previous three phones ran) didn’t support the IMAP specification correctly. What it meant for me was that those phones couldn’t see the right folders for drafts and sent items. This phone implements the IMAP specification much better, and actually works much better for it. I’ll end up setting my personal email and my MK Online email accounts on them later this weekend.

The interface on the device is damn nice, too. It’s very intuitive and easy to use, and looks slick to boot. Say what you want about Apple, but the one thing they seem to consistently get right is making user interfaces that are intuitive, easy to use, and powerful. I haven’t had any issues with finding stuff and information on the device, and have already loaded a couple of extra applications onto it. I’ll probably end up loading Apple’s Texas Hold Em on it at some point, too, but that may end up waiting until my next trip out of town. I’d considered loading Galaga and Pac-Man on it (which are my cell phone mainstays), but I’m a bit hesitant about spending $10 each on them. Buying and loading apps is dead simple too, thanks to both the iTunes Store and the built-in app store on the phone.

So, what problems DO I have, you may ask? I have two problems right now… one minor and one major. The minor problem isn’t even really Apple’s fault. I loaded the official AIM client onto the iPhone and attempted to sign in through it. It wouldn’t accept my screen name and password. I’ve done some troubleshooting and learned what I think the problem is. I seem to vaguely remember having to change my AOL password some years back but I have no idea what it could be. I can sign into AIM using unofficial clients like Pidgin and the IM client that came with the AT&T Tilt using my old password. However, official clients like the AIM program for iPhone and AIM Express won’t allow me to sign in. I’ll have to talk to Mom for help; my AIM screen name was originally a sub-account of her AOL account, which is still active. We’ll need to talk to AOL and get it reset.

The major problem is the one that REALLY irks me. As I found out the hard way, ever since the 2.0 software was released, the iPhone will not work properly with uConnect, which is the in-car Bluetooth system used by Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep vehicles. They’ll pair, but won’t communicate outside of that. That annoys the living hell out of me, as I use the Bluetooth in my car extensively. It’s a known problem, as a lot of people are commenting on it on Apple’s discussion forums. Until a fix is provided by either Apple or Dodge, however, I’ll have to start wearing my Plantronics Bluetooth earpiece in the car again. I’m sure as HELL not going to talk on the phone while holding the actual device when driving.

All in all, it’s a pretty nice device. Hopefully the uConnect issue will be fixed soon, and once that’s taken care of my main issue with the device will go away. We’ll see how it goes. :-)

An animated Buffy?

D'Arque Bishop

A few years ago I had heard word that Joss Whedon was working on a Buffy the Vampire Slayer animated series. It was supposedly going to take place sometime around season 2 or season 3 of the original series, and all cast members except for Sarah Michelle Gellar were to come back to voice their characters. I had only seen character designs, but not any actual footage.

Well, as seen on Ain’t It Cool News, someone on YouTube managed to put up a short promo for the animated series. I don’t know how long it’ll remain up, so catch it while you can.