I could use another beer.

It’s just been one of those days, where with everything that was going on, I literally had to tell a user that his low screen resolution problem was pretty low on my priority scale. I also had to spend the day at the Corporate office kind of babysitting the phone system there, as it’s gone extremely flaky for some reason. Of course, this meant that a few of my other support projects had to wait; I might not even go to Buffalo Thursday like I intended. It’ll end up being Friday or Monday at the latest, as I’ll be on vacation Tuesday and Wednesday, and it needs to be done by Thursday of next week. Oh, well…

Actually, I realized a valuable lesson today. I arranged with my father where I would pick Chinese up for dinner on the way home. Now, I almost always hit this really good Chinese place at Louetta and Ella called Hunam Garden for Chinese takeaway or delivery. Anyway, when I was about ten minutes away, I called them up on my cell phone, and when they answered I told them I wanted to make a takeout order. The guy replied, “General Tso’s combination platter… anything else?” If they know my order even before I make it, then it’s definitely time that I start throwing in some variety.

I haven’t opened up my copy of Midway Arcade Treasures: Deluxe Edition yet, which may or may not be a good thing. Apparently not only am I hearing that none of the games from Midway Arcade Treasures 2 have music and the old bugs from those games still exist (including the inability to fight Smoke in Mortal Kombat II), it uses a piece of copy-protection software called Starforce which installs hidden device drivers into your system. *sigh* As before, what I’m about to say is my own opinion and not that of MK Online. That said… Midway, please. I love your games. However… you’re better than this. You need a much better QA department. The more games that get released with these glaring bugs (and this is the third or fourth time the Smoke bug has been seen), the worse the company’s reputation will get… and the less profit you’ll make. As a longtime Midway fan (even well before MK), I’m asking you to please take this into consideration. Like I said, you’re better than this.

All right, that said… I admit I am looking forward to two games coming out that are being published by Midway: Mortal Kombat: Armageddon and Unreal Tournament 2007. I’m also a longtime Unreal fan, as evidenced by the fact that my sterling silver moneyclip has the Unreal logo on it. :-) In fact, Unreal Tournament 2004 is my current favorite wind-down game… if I need to wind down and blow off steam, I load it and go to town on some bots. It doesn’t require careful thought or planning like Zero Hour does… just run in and blow apart things. :-)

Anyway, I’d better wrap this up, as I have a couple of things I need to check before heading off to bed and all that. Fun fun…

Well, I wish I could say tonight’s been a fun night so far, but other than talking to my friend Tammy (which has been a highlight of the day), it’s really not been a fun night. Twice Sinc and I tried to get games going in Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour, but both times we ended up being overwhelmed and destroyed. I don’t mind losing, but losing in the first thirty minutes isn’t my idea of a good time. So, right now, I’m just having a bottle of water and relaxing.

This weekend wasn’t too eventful, really; other than laying about the house, playing Generals, and going out to dinner twice. Saturday night we hit Denny’s, and Sunday night we went to Outback Steakhouse. Yeah, I know, it’s not really an exciting weekend, but I actually welcomed the opportunity to just sit back and relax, seeing as I’ve been run ragged at the office. This week’s not looking to fare much better, as I’ll have to do runs between the company’s Corporate office, the Ardmore office where I work at, the Cypress office, and even have to make a run up to our new office up in Buffalo (it’s about 120 miles north of my house). I’m not entirely looking forward to the Buffalo trip (which will be on Thursday), but I’ll endure it. It’s not any worse than the Corpus Christi runs I’ve had to do in the past.

Sean’s also invited me to go out and have coffee with him (and presumably Jinny) sometime this week. That’s another thing I’m looking forward to; not only is it a good excuse to get out of the house, I have a set of DVDs I promised I’d give him and Henry, and I’d just as soon get them off my hands as soon as possible. :-) Also, it’d be good just for catching up purposes. :-)

… speaking of catching up and whatnot, it appears my old high school classmate Meredith has gotten herself engaged. Congratulations! :-)

Also, today was good in that I picked up a copy of Midway Arcade Treasures: Deluxe Edition for PC. I haven’t taken the time to install it yet; I’ll probably end up doing that tomorrow. Still, having all of the first three MK arcade games plus a bevy of racing games is a definite win in my book. :-)

Anyway, enough of this… gonna chat a bit more with Tammy and then hit the sack at some point.

To quote the message this pic came with:

“When you are in deep trouble, look straight ahead, keep your mouth shut, and say nothing.”

Well, it’s Sunday night, and the weekend’s over. It was kind of productive and kind of not, but all in all I can’t really complain. Well… I can complain about my wireless keyboard trying to tell me the batteries are nearly dead, but that’s about it. Otherwise, it’s been decent.

Back around Christmastime, Missy bought me a $30 gift certificate from the iTunes Music Store. I didn’t get anything until this past week, because I really couldn’t decide what to get. Finally, I went ahead and bought three albums this weekend, and got them burned to CD and into jewel cases with CD labels and case inserts. I got…

• Madonna – The Immaculate Collection (This is actually my partial quota for 80’s pop music, as the album doesn’t have any of her work post-1990 or thereabouts. I can’t say I like her recent work, but this stuff is okay.)
• Blue Öyster Cult – Workshop of the Telescopes: Best of Blue Öyster Cult (I’ve been wanting to get a “best of” album from this group for a while, and this was too good a deal to pass up at two discs for $10.)
• The Alan Parsons Project – Eye in the Sky (I got this for the first two tracks; the funny thing is, I had been looking for “Sirius” as it had been part of a game called High Impact Football by Midway. However, it wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I found out who actually made it.)

Yesterday, Dave came around around lunchtime, and we had a nice lunch at Fuddrucker’s. Afterwards, we returned to the house and watched “Tomb of the Cybermen” (which is a Doctor Who serial from 1967). Then we headed down to Louie’s apartment and met up with him there. We WERE going to go to Macaroni Grill for dinner, but once I stepped inside and saw just how many people were waiting on a table, we got back out of there in a hurry. From there we went over to Richmond Ave. and hit India’s Restaurant for some good Indian food. I had keema curry, which is a minced lamb curry… yum. :-) After that, we did a bit of driving around to kill time, and then we went to Club Tropicana for drinks and salsa dancing. I should say, Louie went to dance… I’m not going to get into specifics, but I contented myself with having a couple of beers, talking to Louie and Dave, and observing. Even Dave danced the merengue with this girl named Natalie… but then Natalie is a friend of Louie’s and merengue is not that hard of a dance. About midnight or so, we went back to Louie’s place to get my car and to get the 1 GB memory chip he’s selling me, and then Dave and I headed back to my place (where his car was). After Dave left, I went upstairs, talked to Missy for a bit, and then went to bed, exhausted.

This morning, I got up, had breakfast, got coffee, and proceeded to burn the albums I had bought off the iTunes Music Store (and Chrono Symphonic, a Chrono Trigger collaboration I had gotten off of Overclocked Remix) to CDs, put them in jewel cases, and put them up into my CD shelves. I also upgraded the memory in my main PC; it now has 2 GB of RAM in it. I’ll have to try DOOM 3 and Half-Life 2 on here now. I also helped Dad pick out a new print server and wireless access point/router for his new office. So, it’s been a bit productive today too…

I’m not looking forward to this week, though. At some point I’m going to have to run up to Buffalo (which is just over halfway between here and Dallas) to get the computers and printers set up for our new location there. I also have a vacation two weeks from Tuesday I’m going to have to keep in mind. Oh, well… at least I’m being kept busy. Tomorrow should be another busy day as well, with meetings with cabling contractors, setting up a pair of printers, a meeting with security system personnel, and a conference call to end the day.

I suppose I should go start winding things down here. Fun fun…