Back from vacation…

D'Arque Bishop

All right, so, I’m back from Los Angeles.

I apologize for the secrecy surrounding the previous post. As it so happened, CCShadow and I went to Los Angeles to cover the Midway Pulse 2006 media event there, and Midway preferred things to be kept quiet until today. I arrived there at 11 AM PST yesterday, got a cab to the hotel, and waited there for a while for CCS to arrive. I wasn’t bored, though; I had to take some support calls for work while I was there, seeing as every single IT person in the company was out for one reason or another. After CCS arrived, we went and had lunch at a place across the street from the hotel called Pizza Rustica. He had a standard margherita pizza, while I tried a shrimp pesto pizza that was pretty tasty. From there, we relaxed at the hotel for a bit, at which point I switched my desktop wallpaper on my Powerbook. From there, we headed to House of Blues for the event.

We came across Ed Boon while in line, but he had left something back at the hotel and needed to go get it. However, we got to spend some time talking to John Podlasek (producer of Mortal Kombat: Deception and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon) while in line. From there, we signed in, took our spots… and then got surprised when the bar in front of us split apart to reveal a stage and chairs downstairs. We went downstairs and got set up… and the presentations began.

It’s too bad they asked us to switch off our cameras for the first presentation, because even in its unpolished state, the game they demonstrated was beautiful. Said game was Unreal Tournament 2007. After the demonstration of the game, we got to see other stuff, like X-Box Live Arcade announcements (including Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3), PSP games, and even the Lord of the Rings MMORPG. However, what we came to see was right about at the very end, and that was the presentation for Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. It started out with a video showing the effect MK has had on popular culture that was absolutely hilarious at times. After that was the teaser trailer. Then, they showed a several minute long video detailing the changes and additions made to this new chapter of MK. All I can say is… I’m really looking forward to it.

After that, they served food and drinks, and had playable games. Truthfully, the only game they had out playable that I was interested in was Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War. It’s an RTS that takes place in classical times; the fun part is that you can take control of your army’s leader and play him a la an third-person adventure game. They were also giving out free copies of Matthew Reilly’s 7 Deadly Wonders at the Rise & Fall area; I picked up a hardcover copy, and will probably read it at some point. Otherwise, I spent most of the evening chatting with Joe, and also talking to Ed, John, and Tony Goskie. It’s always fun chatting with those folks. We also ate, and took the time to get an interview with Ed. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any prepared questions and the noise level was pretty high. So, being able to hear much from Ed was a challenge in and of itself. I don’t know if I could say I did well, myself. All in all, though, the night was a blast.

… though, it was funny; at one point right after the presentations ended, Ed passed by me and saw me uploading files from my laptop to MK Online. He also happened to notice my wallpaper was the MK: Armageddon logo, and I cheerfully admitted that it seemed appropriate. He just laughed, shook his head, and walked away.

We left the event an hour early, as Joe had a 7 AM flight out. We went back to the hotel, where I spent time ripping the video I had taken from the event, watermarking them, converting them to Quicktime files, and then uploading them to MK Online. When I got up this morning, I pre-wrote the news stories for the site, and eventually went to the airport where I had lunch and attempted (semi-successfully) to transcribe. Unfortunately, the laptop battery gave out when I was two-thirds of the way done. When I got home, I got the stories posted except for the interview; that’ll be done tomorrow.

And now, I’m going to go to bed, as I have to drive out to Buffalo, TX tomorrow to get a new location onto our network. Fun fun…

Stolen from Scott Howell…

D'Arque Bishop2 Comments

Ok the rules..: Fill out about me.. and then if you do I’ll fill it out for you later in your journal. Lata’ fellows.

1. Who are you?

2. Are we friends?

3. When and how did we meet?

4. Do you have a crush on me?

5. Would you kiss me?

6. Give me a nickname and explain why you picked it.

7. Describe me in one word.

8. What was your first impression?

9. Do you still think that way about me now?

10. What reminds you of me?

11. If you could give me anything what would it be?

12. How well do you know me?

13. When’s the last time you saw me?

14. Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn’t?

15. Are you going to put this on your blog and see what I say about you

The High School Meme… once again stolen from Merrie.

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

Not going to tag people either… do it if you feel like it.

Year: 1992

1. Who was your best friend? Chris Wiser

2. What sports did you play? None. I was in the marching band.

3. What kind of car did you drive? A white 1980 Dodge Mirada.

4. It’s Friday night, where are you at? Either at a football game, hanging out at home, or over at Chris’s.

5. Were you a party animal? Hell no. I wasn’t even entirely social. :-)

6. Were you in the “In Crowd”? That’s a joke, right?

7. Ever skip school? Not without permission (say for touring colleges).

8. Ever smoke a cigarette? Nope.

9. Were you a nerd? Nope, I was (and still am) a geek.

10. Did you ever get suspended/expelled? Nope, but a couple of projects we did in Government class got us damn close…

11. Can you sing the Alma Mater? It has words? (I only ever played it as part of the band.)

12. Who was your favorite teacher? Mr. Tumlinson. Ms. Gray was a close second.

13. Favorite class? English, Advanced Social Studies, and Band.

14. What was your school’s full name? Klein Oak High School.

15. School mascot? The Panthers.

16. Did you go to Prom? Yep… and got called either the Phantom, Dracula, or even Batman by one guy. (I was wearing an opera cape.)

17. Would you go back again and do it over? Uh… NO.

18. What do you remember most about graduation? That idiot Mr. Schwettmann mispronouncing my middle name. If you were watching me closely you could see me muttering obscenities under my breath as I got on stage.

19. Favorite memory of senior year? Er… heh. I’ll get back to you on that.

20. Were you ever posted on the senior wall? I do not speak the English.

21. Did you have a job your senior year? I worked at my mom’s office doing filing during the Christmas and summer breaks.

22. Who did you date? I dated Malinda Brown the second half of the school year (and after).

23. Have you gained weight since then? Unfortunately, yes.

24. What did you do after graduation? I went to college, stayed there longer than I should have in a mjor I didn’t like, left, learned computer repair, got a series of jobs in computers, until I reached where I am today… no college degree, but in a nice and comfortable job.

More and more, I live in fear of what this country is becoming.

D'Arque Bishop

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/socal/la-me-diebold22feb22,0,33600.story?coll=la-news-politics-local

A word processor accused of stealing damaging documents about electronic voting machine manufacturer Diebold Election Systems was arraigned Tuesday on three felony counts.

Stephen Heller was charged in Los Angeles Superior Court with felony access to computer data, commercial burglary and receiving stolen property. He pleaded not guilty.

“It’s a devastating allegation for a whistle-blower,” said Blair Berk, Heller’s attorney. “Certainly, someone who saw those documents could have reasonably believed that thousands of voters were going to be potentially disenfranchised in upcoming elections.”

The charges arise from Heller’s alleged disclosure two years ago of legal papers from the Los Angeles office of international law firm Jones Day, which represented Diebold at the time. Heller was under contract as a word processor at Jones Day.

The documents included legal memos from one Jones Day attorney to another regarding allegations by activists that Diebold had used uncertified voting systems in Alameda County elections beginning in 2002.

In the memos, a Jones Day attorney opined that using uncertified voting systems violated California election law and that if Diebold had employed an uncertified system, Alameda County could sue the company for breaching its $12.7-million contract.

The documents also revealed that Diebold’s attorneys were exploring whether the California secretary of state had the authority to investigate the company for alleged election law violations.

The Oakland Tribune published the legal memos on its website in April 2004. By then, the issue of whether Diebold used uncertified systems was already receiving widespread attention, because many of its systems failed during the March 2004 primary. As a result, poll workers had to turn away some early voters in San Diego County, and Alameda County voters had to use paper ballots.

A subsequent report by the secretary of state’s office found that Diebold had marketed and sold its systems before gaining federal qualification and had installed uncertified software on election machines in 17 counties.

…

Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, refused to call Heller a “whistle-blower.”

“We call him a defendant,” she said. “He’s accused of breaking the law…. If we feel that the evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt in our minds that a crime has been committed, it’s our job as a criminal prosecutor to file a case.”

Although state law protects whistle-blowers from retaliation by their employers, they can still be criminally prosecuted, said Tom Devine, legal director at the Washington, D.C.-based Government Accountability Project.

“It’s very rare that it’s successful,” he said. “It’s a tactic where the primary goal may be to scare other would-be whistle-blowers rather than a realistic attempt to obtain a conviction.”

Ebony and Ivory, as the song goes…

D'Arque Bishop

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/…_a_source=&ct=5

When Kylie Hodgson gave birth to twin daughters by caesarean section, she was just relieved that they had arrived safely.

It was only when the midwife handed them over for her to hold that she noticed the difference between them.

Remee, who weighed 5lb 15oz, was blonde and fair skinned. Her sister Kian, born a minute later weighing 6lb, was black.

‘Our two gorgeous little girls’

“It was a shock when I realised that my twins were two different colours,” said Kylie, 19. “But it doesn’t matter to us – they are just our two gorgeous little girls.”

The amazing conception happened after two eggs were fertilised at the same time in the womb.

Both Kylie and her partner Remi Horder, 17, are of mixed race. Their mothers are both white and their fathers are black.

According to the Multiple Births Foundation, baby Kian must have inherited the black genes from both sides of the family, whilst Remee inherited the white ones.

…

The odds against of a mixed race couple having twins of dramatically different colour are a million to one.

Skin colour is believed to be determined by up to seven different genes working together.

If a woman is of mixed race, her eggs will usually contain a mixture of genes coding for both black and white skin.

Similarly, a man of mixed race will have a variety of different genes in his sperm. When these eggs and sperm come together, they will create a baby of mixed race.

But, very occasionally, the egg or sperm might contain genes coding for one skin colour. If both the egg and sperm contain all white genes, the baby will be white. And if both contain just the versions necessary for black skin, the baby will be black.

For a mixed-race couple, the odds of either of these scenarios is around 100 to one. But both scenarios can occur at the same time if the woman conceives non-identical twins, another 100 to one chance.

This involves two eggs being fertilised by two sperm at the same time, which also has odds of around 100 to one.

If a sperm containing all-white genes fuses with a similar egg and a sperm coding for purely black skin fuses with a similar egg, two babies of dramatically different colours will be born.

The odds of this happening are 100 x 100 x 100 – a million to one.

The end of yet another weekend.

D'Arque Bishop

Well, first off, I must say that I’m glad I added this new spamfilter plugin into my WordPress install. Barely any spam has made it past the filter since I installed it, which has saved me from needing to do occasional maintenance on the comments pages of the site. I HATE seeing false alarms when I get email indicating someone’s left a comment or trackback… heh.

Today was not much of an eventful day. About the most eventful thing I did was go down to the new Best Buy at Cypresswood and I-45 that just opened this past Friday. I wasn’t after anything important, other than a mini-tripod for my camcorder. Of course, seeing as I found one within 45 seconds of entering the store, I took the time to browse around. I must say, it’s a larger store than I would have expected. About the only thing I seriously shopped for and priced other than the mini-tripod was LCD TVs; if I want a new HDTV for my bedroom, it’s going to have to be an LCD as I don’t really have room for anything else in there. Then again, all I’d be getting an HDTV for at this point would be watching DVDs and playing games; I don’t catch the local channels enough and there aren’t enough HD channels through DirecTV to be worth the cost of an HDTV dish and receiver. Oh, well… otherwise, I did some office-type work and played a few games, and that was about it for my day today.

Yesterday was a bit more eventful. After having a quiet morning and afternoon, I went out to meet my friend Tammy at Carrabba’s. Problem was, there was an hour wait for a table, so we sat at the bar, had drinks, and talked. Then Tammy had the good idea of having them serve our meal at the bar itself. So, we ordered food there… and by the time the hostess came by to tell us our table was ready, our entrees had already been served. :-) Afterwards, we left to head over to the Edward’s Cinemas off Weslayan, and we saw Firewall. It was a very good movie, though at the beginning I felt a bit TOO geeky when I saw Harrison Ford’s character do some programming, and realized it was Cisco IOS commands (for routers and firewalls)… and that it was accurately done. *sigh* After the movie, I headed home and went straight to bed.

As for this week… bah. Tomorrow won’t be too fun as I’ll have a number of things that need doing before I go on vacation. Tuesday and Wednesday will be spent on vacation (more details soon, I promise!). Then on Thursday, I’ll have to make the drive up to Buffalo, TX to put the new company location there onto the company network. Fun fun. I just dislike long-haul drives. I can handle across Houston without too much problem. Hell, I’m used to it by now. I just don’t like intercity travel. In fact, if I drive is longer than four hours or so, I’ll just break down and fly to my destination. :-)

Anyway, I’ve got a few things here that need dealing with, so I’ll go take care of those now. Oh, joy…

A minor update and a relaxing weekend…

D'Arque Bishop2 Comments

Well, I made a slight change to the site. On the top toolbar you’ll see a link marked “gallery”. That leads to my online gallery; I’ve actually had the gallery online for a long while (even before I relaunched darquecathedral.org), but this is the first time I’ve actually linked to it from the main page. Feel free to browse and whatnot. :-) I just wish I could run Gallery 2… heh. The thing is, I REALLY like the color scheme of the gallery as it is now, but I haven’t been able to find an equivalent color scheme in Gallery 2. That really sucks, because the color scheme now matches the main site almost perfectly. Oh, well… maybe in time I will.

I’m just glad right now that I can spend this weekend relaxing. It was a rather hectic week at work this week, with my having to make sure the phone system worked properly at our Corporate office after its processor and hard drive went haywire. At least one night this week ended with me not leaving work until 8:15 PM or thereabouts. I’m just glad at this point that I get to go on a two day vacation next week. Too bad I have to make the drive up to Buffalo, TX the day after I get back… heh.

On another subject, it’s been kinda interesting… over the past several months I’ve been re-establishing contact with a few people from my old high school and prior days. First it was Sean MC, then Kourt, then Meredith. Now within the past week, I’ve encountered another one: Kerri. HI KERRI! :-) On one hand, it’s kinda weird re-establishing contact with these people (a couple of which I haven’t spoken to face-to-face in like 14 years). On the other hand… it’s kinda fun being able to. :-)

Anyway, I just got handed a support ticket from work (sometimes being on-call 24/7 sucks), so I’d better go off and take care of it. Fun fun…

Stolen from Dementia…

D'Arque Bishop

Okay, so, here goes…

If you had me alone, locked up in your house for twenty-four hours and I had to do whatever you wanted me to, what would you have me do? All comments will be screened because it’s a secret. Then repost this in your LJ. You might be surprised with the responses you get.

(Because I can’t figure out how to get WordPress to screen comments like LJ does, I’m going ahead and disabling comments on the main blog. If you want to reply, go to the LiveJournal mirror which is located here.)