Well, if you’ve noticed the lack of “Current Mood” and “Current Music” fields on the site, it’s because I’m trying out a different LJ crosspost plugin for WordPress. I’m actually hoping this one handles cuts and whatnot better than the old one did. We’ll see.

Right now, I admit to some annoyance. This morning I received an email from a coworker telling me to get an airline ticket and hotel reserved, as he and I are now going to Villahermosa, Mexico on Monday. I’ve already booked the hotel and the flight; the main stumbling block is going to be my passport. My passport expired last month, and I have an appointment at the regional passport office downtown tomorrow to see if I can get a rush on my passport. Here’s hoping, as I don’t really relish the thought of trying to get out and in the country without a passport.

Ah, well. Hopefully this trip won’t end up like the last one did, with me having to rush home because of a hurricane. :-)

EDIT: Okay, it looks fine except the LJ side got a bigass header with the post. Ah, well… they can live with it, I hope. This plugin does more of what I need anyway, so it gets to stay for the time being.

First off, yet again, my latest desktop… :-)

I figure you Mortal Kombat fans might appreciate it. Now if only I could get a higher-resolution version of the image…

It’s 7:05 AM and I’m already at the office. I’ve started getting up an hour earlier so I can avoid traffic; it used to be that instead of taking I-45 to downtown and then TX-288 to my office, I would take the Hardy Toll Road to 610/US 59, and then take 59 to 288 (which would be a LOT faster). Unfortunately, construction on the Hardy Toll Road has started meaning that I’m paying for the privilege of sitting in traffic, and as a result I’ve started arriving at work later and later. So, beginning today, I’m leaving for work around 6 AM; even with taking I-45 I’m arriving at work faster than I did leaving at 7 AM and taking Hardy. This also gives me a bit of extra time in the morning to get my morning coffee and take care of a few things before the majority of employees arrive. I’m just not liking having to go to bed earlier…

Speaking of which, I should go get a refill on my coffee. Fun fun…

I could do with a longer weekend.

Of course, it didn’t help that I was at work until around 9 PM on Friday. Admittedly, most of it was spent cooling my heels while my boss worked on software upgrades on the machines at the datacenter where I was at. Then when I was done, I went home and caught up on the Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis episodes I had missed; fortunately, TiVo is my friend. Once that was done I was ready for bed…

… and got up nice and late the next morning, having caught up on lost sleep. Quite frankly, Saturday was a very slow and unproductive day, with one exception: I had to go down to Sears at Willowbrook Mall to get new passport photos taken. Unfortunately, I had misjudged when my passport would expire, and instead of expiring at the end of the month it expired this past 30th. Oops. Fortunately getting the pictures was a quick and painless process. Once done with that, I went with the parents over to this place in the Willowbrook Mall perimeter called 221B Baker St. Pub & Grill.

221B Baker St. was actually quite nice. Up until about a year or so ago, the parents and I liked to go to this Irish pub called Matthias’s. Unfortunately, the owner got tired of running the place, and ended up closing it. It was a shame, as it had a really good beer selection and the food was quite good, too. The atmosphere also was very pleasant, and authentic, as it were. Anyway, as we went into Baker St., I felt like I was wandering into one of the pubs back around my Aunt Norma’s cottage. The decor was suitably British, and the drinks and food were very good. They’ve earned themselves a repeat customer. Now I’ll just have to drag Louie and Dave down there one of these weekends…

As for today, the main thing I’ve done that was productive was upgrade PHP on this server, so that I could get thumbnail creation for uploaded images here working properly. Otherwise, it’s been a suitably slow and relaxing day, topped off with a quick nap in the kitchen. Right now, I’m just chatting with Missy, having a Shiner Bock, and enjoying what little weekend I have left. I’m hoping this week doesn’t turn out to be really stress-inducing, but one never knows. In any event, I’ll just take it as it comes.

Just a bit of a fluff post…

A little bit ago, we let Chase out into the backyard, and he went straight to the birdbath and lay down. While there, he just kind of started looking around, as if sniffing something. Dad couldn’t resist going out with the camera and taking a picture. :-)

Yesterday, a couple of people and I were discussing one of the new features of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon: parries. While parries are new to the Mortal Kombat series, they’re not new to fighting games in general. In essence, a parry allows you to block an opponent’s incoming attack and leave them open for a counter-attack. The parry doesn’t take a hit off your health like a normal block does; on the other hand, the parry has to be perfectly timed as it’s more complex to pull off than a block. While we were discussing the parry system, I was reminded of this particular moment from the Evolution 2004 fighting game tournament during a Street Fighter III: Third Strike semi-final match, where Daigo (playing as Ken) is fighting against Justin (playing as Chun-Li). Daigo has virtually no life left, and when Justin fires off a 17-hit super combo for the kill, Daigo masterfully parries every single hit and responds with his own super combo, winning the match.

Like I said, it was a sight to behold. I’m certainly in awe; I could barely get the hang of parries in MK: Armageddon, and I’m sure they’re easier in that than they are in Street Fighter III. :-)

Well, I just finished watching Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. While I rather enjoyed it, I can see why it didn’t do too well at the box office. I can’t imagine that there would be a lot of people nostalgic for the old “futuristic” serials of the 1930’s; this was a well done nod to them, though.

Moving right along…

In my time at Mortal Kombat Online, I’ve run into a pair of rather weirdass coincidences that sometimes make me wonder just how small of a world we live in. These are both true (if not a bit scary) stories that just came at me right out of nowhere.

Nearly three years ago, I got an email in my MK Online inbox from Kyle DeHaas. (Yes, for those who know him, that is Kourt’s brother.) It turned out he had been doing a Google search for a certain character name he had invented, and found that in some official MK Online chat some guy named “DArqueBishop” had referred to it in a chat. Now, this character name was so off-the-wall that it was almost impossible that someone else had come up with it independently, so he was emailing to find out how to contact me and find out who the hell I was. By the time I had gotten the email, he had found his way onto the #mortalkombat IRC channel and was asking about me. I went ahead and told him who I was, and I think I shocked the hell out of him. It’s still funny to kinda laugh at these days…

What made me think of that and the whole “small world” thing, though, was something that happened yesterday. I got a message from a Midway employee who will remain nameless, asking for my help. It turned out he had been doing a Google search looking for an old college friend of his, and the only valid result he could find was on… well, Sean MC’s site. However, Sean had no email address listed on his website. What WAS listed, however, was a link to MY website… and the Midway employee recognized it as belonging to the same person from MK Online. :-) So, he asked me for help… and with Sean’s permission I obliged. Hopefully Sean was able to help…

It’s funny. Like I said, it’s coincidences like these that make me realize how small our world gets sometimes. Still, they happen infrequently enough where it’s a surprise when it DOES happen. Either way, it makes for decent conversation later…

I know I’m probably late to the game here, so to speak, but I found this rather amusing. Forgive the inherent geekiness of this post…

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve been playing the Transformers game for Playstation 2. It’s a surprisingly good game, actually. However, it’s not based on Generation 1 (the mid-80’s TV series and movie). It’s based on Transformers: Armada, which admittedly started out pretty badly but seriously improved as the series went on. Anyway, the opening movie for the game shows Megatron and Optimus Prime battling atop a building on Cybertron, while Megatron’s army of Decepticlones are overwhelming the Autobot defenses. Then, suddenly, Megatron throws out a line that was a nod to G1.

He grabbed Optimus by the throat and said, “I would have waited an eternity for this. It’s over, Prime!”

Those were the same words said by Megatron after mortally wounding Optimus in the movie… heh. Yes, like I said, it’s geeky. It amused me, though… heh.