Warning: trying Hollywood auto stunts may be potentially fatal.

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4880884.html

One man died after his car crashed through the wall of a downtown parking garage and landed on the roof of an adjacent building tonight, the Houston Fire Department said.

No other other injuries were reported this evening.

Authorities currently are trying to identify the victim, said Assistant Chief Omero Longoria, HFD spokesman.

The crash was reported about 6:30 p.m. when authorities said the victim’s Ford Mustang convertible punched through a brick wall in the parking garage at Houston House Apartments, 1600 Fannin.

The car fell approximately five floors and landed on the roof of an adjacent building, Longoria said.

After the fall, the car landed on its roof and firefighters appeared to be using the “jaws of life” to extricate the dead man.

Meredith Meredith Morin, 37, a Houston House resident, said she was standing on the sidewalk in front of the building saying goodbye to her mother, Hilda, when the crash happened.

Morin said she heard an explosion, looked up and saw a maroon-colored Mustang crashing through the wall. Bricks soon came crashing down on the sidewalk around her, she said.

For those not familiar with downtown Houston, the Houston House Apartments are almost smack dab in the middle of downtown and the building is easily seen while travelling down the Pierce Elevated. I don’t know what could have prompted someone to do that, but I’m willing to bet it was either drug/alcohol related or a malfunction on the car itself. Still… damn.

Pac-Man: Championship Edition? Count me in.

D'Arque Bishop

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070605/tc_nm/pacman_xbox_dc

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Pac Man will be reborn on Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox Live online service on Wednesday as a final tribute for designer Toru Iwatani, who is retiring from the $30 billion games industry he helped ignite.

The new version of the iconic arcade game is a faithful interpretation of the addictive 27-year-old original, where players wrenched joystick controllers to race a character — resembling a yellow pizza missing a slice — around a digital maze to chomp white pellets and chase multicolored “ghosts.”

The new game, “Pac Man Championship Edition,” is the second and final version Iwatani personally designed, and was created for the final round of the Xbox 360 Pac-Man World Championship in New York, when nine finalists played it for the first time.

Iwatani, 52, an employee of Japan’s Namco Bandai Holdings, said in an interview he will retire from active duty at Namco and spend more time teaching the next generation of game designers at Tokyo Polytechnic University.

He said there were no immediate plans for another version of Pac Man, but that he could work with Namco in a supervisory position or work on a new version with his students.

The new game, which pulses to dance music and has mazes that change shapes, marks Iwatani’s swan song from electronic interactive entertainment, an industry with annual revenue that now tops U.S. box office movie sales.

…

Despite the last decade’s advances in computer graphics technology and design, Iwatani created the new Pac Man as he did the original — in two-dimensions. “I wanted to stay with the original simple rules of Pac Man,” he said.

The new version also reshuffles older formats. In one mode, called “Dark mode,’ most of the maze is hidden from view with players guided only by a flashlight lighting Pac Man’s path.

“Pac Man Championship Edition” will be sold for about $10 as a download on the Xbox Live service, starting on Wednesday.

Those who have known me since my elementary school days are well aware of how much I loved Pac-Man growing up. I had a shitload of Pac-Man memorabilia, from the desktop game unit from Coleco to bedsheets and the like. I’ve always had a soft spot for the game even since, going as far as to have it installed on my last cell phone. :-) Hell, back in 2003, my favorite game at E3 was Pac-Man VS. for the GameCube. What made it so kickass was the fact that there were four players: three used standard controllers, watched the screen, and played as ghosts. :-) The fourth person used a Game Boy Advance for a controller, and played as Pac-Man, using the GBA’s screen to play (where it looked like the original arcade game). You can see a few shots from the game here.

As for this game… damn straight I’ll be getting it soon. I’ll just have to remember to get it once I get back from Odessa, as tomorrow will be spent packing for my trip and whatnot. :-)

Yet another weekend in review…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, it’s Sunday evening, and I get to look forward to heading to work in the morning. It’s been a decent weekend, all told… busy yesterday and quiet today, but then again, there’s nothing wrong with that. :-) It all started on Friday night; Misty was going out for the weekend, so it was going to be a quiet chatting night. So, I decided to play some Gears of War with BloodySinner, Total-MK, Sub-Zero27, and Genku. (They’re all #mortalkombat regulars.) It was a decent night of gaming, all told. At around 10:30 PM, Misty called, so that was the end of the gaming for me. After a bit, I ended up going to bed.

The next morning, I got up bright and early, and took the Avenger in to Spring Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge to get the LoJack system installed in it. I also found that the Bluetooth uConnect handsfree set was in stock, so I opted to have them install it as well. Fortunately, I had brought my laptop with me, so I was able to do web browsing and talk with people online while there. When it got close to noon, though, it turned out that my car wasn’t ready yet. Dave was on his way to the house, so I had Dad come pick me up and bring me home. Shortly after I got home, Dave arrived, and we made our way to Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch. Once done there, Dave was kind enough to take me over to the dealership, where I picked up the Avenger after a bit of a wait. While at the house, Dave and I played a bit on the Xbox 360, and even Mom stopped in to play some Hexic HD. Eventually Louie arrived, and we made our way to Outback for dinner. After dinner, we made our way over to Barney’s to shoot some pool (and watch the Cavs defeat the Pistons). From there, we went back to my house to watch some bullriding. Afterwards, Dave and Louie left, and I headed to bed.

As for today, it’s been relatively quiet. I pretty much spent the day lounging around the house, getting paperwork and the like sorted for the Avenger, and pretty much relaxing. Tonight I don’t plan on doing too much, other than maybe playing some GoW if the others are online and willing to play. Ah, well… at least this week will be relatively quiet, other than spending Thursday and Friday over at Odessa doing an inventory there. It should make for a nice change from the usual. Otherwise, it’s the same old same old. Ah, well… :-)

A couple of degrees of separation between myself and a self-centered prick…

D'Arque Bishop2 Comments

Well, this is interesting.

I’m sure everyone’s heard by now of that Atlanta lawyer infected with tuberculosis who is the ultimate representation of self-entitlement and arrogance. In short, if you didn’t hear: when he was advised by doctors not to travel, he went on a trip to Europe. When contacted by the U.S. CDC in Italy and told his condition was far worse than expected, that he was NOT to travel (and in fact put on the no-fly list) and to report to Italian medical officials for isolation, he snuck back into the US. He’s now claiming he did nothing wrong and that people shouldn’t be upset with him, despite the fact that he endangered everyone around him with his selfish “I’m more important than God” actions.

The interesting thing is, my friend Rob had an interesting take on the whole situation on his own LiveJournal. I’ll go ahead and repost his original post here so people can give it a read.

By sure I’m sure everyone who isn’t living under a rock and has access to electricity has heard about the lawyer in Atlanta who did some world traveling while being infected with TB, right? Andrew Speaker. Turns out this was a guy I went to highschool with.

Speaker and I went to Mount Vernon Christian Academy together. I was a sophmore and he was a senior, but we were both in Year Book class together so we saw each other just about every day. Let me tell you, the guy was a douchebag back then, and it appears nothing has changed. He’s a personal injury attorney, so even if he didn’t risk infecting groups of fellow airtravelers, he’s still about as low on the lawyer scale as it gets.

He was also the one senior that none of the underclassmen respected. I wouldn’t go so far as to call him an asshole or anything like that. Best I can describe him would be “obliviously arrogant.” It’s not that he thought he should receive special entitlement or anything, it’s more along the lines of he’d expect special entitlement, without realizing no one else was getting it.

The definitive memory I have of him was sitting in class with him while he was reading the Victoria’s Secret catalog. Our teacher walked by, and took it from him. He raised high hell trying to get it back because he couldn’t understand why he couldn’t read it.

So Andrew, nice to see you’re the same as ever. I take an odd kind of comfort knowing that some things haven’t changed since high school.

It sounds like a superhero’s car.

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

Well, it’s official. My 2002 Saturn SC2 is no longer in my possession.

I was out at my employer’s Cypress location yesterday, when my dad gave me a call. He was over at Spring Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge having his own car worked on, and he had seen this black Chrysler 300 that he thought would suit me to a T. I told him I’d go with him and look at it after work. As soon as I got home, we hopped into his car and headed up to the dealership, where he showed me the car.

I was not impressed.

The car simply wasn’t me. The interior was too fancy and I didn’t care for the appearance of the exterior. The salesman there (Reece, if you ever go by there) offered to show us other 300s; we looked, but I didn’t see anything I cared for. So, we continued looking, and eventually moved over to the Dodge Avengers. We took a look at a couple, and tried one or two. I found one I liked, and I eventually went home to get the Saturn. I brought it to the dealership, we discussed price… and now I’m the proud owner of a 2008 Dodge Avenger.

My new Dodge Avenger…

So far, I’ve been impressed. It’s handled smoother than the Saturn, is roomier, and is more comfortable. Time will tell how it goes, but I’m happy for now. Tomorrow morning, though, I’ll be taking it in to get the LoJack installed and also see what it would take to install a Bluetooth handsfree module into the car stereo. After that, I’ll just need to wait for the plates to arrive… so I can then get the new EZ-Tag for the car. (Going through toll booths is starting to annoy me.)

Ah, well. I’m meeting Dave (and probably Louie too) tomorrow, so we’ll see what they say. Everyone else who’s seen it has been impressed, and I’m inclined to agree. :-)

MySpace friends?

D'Arque Bishop

I do have something to admit. I might be rather dismissive of MySpace as a whole, but the sad fact is that I do have a MySpace page. It’s minimal and I rarely update it; I only really keep it so that I can see friends’ pics on MySpace without having to bug them for direct links and the like. After a question a friend put forward in her LiveJournal recently, though, I decided that it might be an idea to add some of my rl friends to my friends list in MySpace.

So, if you recently got a friend request from me in MySpace out of the blue, now you know why. Just don’t expect me to keep up with it too much. :-)

Remember how I said this was a quiet weekend? I lied.

D'Arque Bishop

You know, I should learn to keep my trap shut sometimes.

I had posted in an earlier entry that this weekend was going to be a welcome respite from the hectic month before. I had very little planned (other than meeting Louie for dinner and drinks last night), and mainly planned on relaxing and not doing anything of note. That ended up being true for both Saturday and Sunday. Today, however, turned out to be another story altogether.

I got up at around 9 AM or so, had breakfast and my morning coffee, and settled down to catch up on the day’s news plus talk to Misty some. Unfortunately, right around lunch, I got a call from a VP at work telling me that he wanted me to come down to Mexico tomorrow evening so I could fix a printer issue at our location down there. Fortunately, I was able to talk to coworkers, come up with an alternate solution that didn’t even need to involve me going down there, and relayed it to the VP. That crisis was, fortunately, averted.

However, while this was going on, I was informed that a serious recurring issue with the network uplink at the corporate office was not on our ISP’s end and instead was at the office, so I ended up having to drive down there in miserable weather to see about getting it fixed. I actually passed at least two major wrecks on I-45 northbound on the way down there; needless to say when I drove home I took US 59 and the Hardy Toll Road. Still, I managed to get it fixed and came back home. I would have preferred to have those two hours to lay about the house in, though.

As for the rest of this evening, well… not sure what I’ll be doing yet. I might go take a short nap in a bit, and then watch some TV after dinner. Exciting, I know, but I really don’t have anything else planned. Tomorrow is going to be something of a hectic day, so I need some relaxation before I hit the ground running in the morning. Ah, well… might as well make the best of it. I just hope I don’t have any more work-related interruptions…

The original “Human Nature”…

D'Arque Bishop

This week and next week, the two part Doctor Who story “Human Nature”/”The Family of Blood” is airing. What might not be too well-known is the fact that the two-parter, written by Paul Cornell, is an adaptation of the novel Human Nature that Cornell originally wrote as part of Virgin Publishing’s “New Adventures” line of Doctor Who novels in the 90’s. The original novel featured the Seventh Doctor and Professor Bernice Summerfield.

The funny thing was, the BBC had the original version of Human Nature on their website available for reading online or downloading. I was going to link directly to it, but the link has been temporarily removed with a note saying that it “will return in two weeks”. I guess my main suggestion is to try the other books on the site, and then once “The Family of Blood” has aired, return and read the original novel once it’s become available…

A slow three day weekend so far…

D'Arque Bishop

You know, given the hectic nature of this month so far, it’s kind of relaxing having such a slow and uneventful three day weekend.

So far today, I’ve pretty much done nothing of note. Of course, I wasn’t really motivated to go out anywhere as it was, considering we had a massive storm overhead most of the day. At one point the power went out here for about 30-40 seconds; fortunately both of my main servers and my main PC were all on battery backups. That actually led to me doing the one thing of note I did today: I finally ran a USB cable from the UPS under my desk to the main PC’s USB hub. That way when I’m not home the machine will shut itself down on a power outage. Of course, I had also planned on installing APC’s software for UPSes, before remembering that Windows XP supported them on its own. We’ll see how well it works in the long term. Of course, both of my servers already have their own UPS monitoring solution. I admit, it was kind of funny the last time there was a major outage at the house that I wasn’t present for; I watched remotely as the main server announced there was an outage, and then ten minutes later announced it was shutting itself down…

Okay, so maybe that was only amusing to me because I’m a computer geek. So sue me.

As far as the rest of the weekend goes, I don’t have much planned. I’m considering going out tomorrow for dinner and drinks or something, but other than that I don’t think I have anything in mind. I’m just going to enjoy some quiet time. Heh.

I do admit to some annoyance earlier this week, though. As is no great secret, my site’s blog is mirrored onto my LiveJournal account. However, for a couple of days, none of my posts were mirroring over to the LJ. As near as I could tell LJ was having some problems and finally got them fixed, but still… it’s damn weird. I’m finding it sad how my small personal website was being the anchor while other big sites I use like MK Online and LJ were down for various issues. I guess it helps when the server itself is in the next room…

Ah, well. I’m just going to continue drinking this bottle of water and keep an eye on #mortalkombat (and keep talking to Misty, of course). Like I said before, a slow weekend is a nice change, and I’m just going to keep enjoying it.