The Viral Meme (as tagged by Merrie…)

Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot, like so.
1) SFO Mom
2) Minivan Mom
3) Psy_guy (Minivan Dad)
4) MerrieB
5) The D’Arque Cathedral

Select Five People To Tag:
Okay… I choose ACJ, Jesse, Scott Howell, Tygerlander, and Jenn.

What Were You Doing 10 Years Ago?
I was still attending UH; I was preparing to go to Ireland with the UH Marching Band for the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin, and otherwise wondering if I was making the right choice staying at UH. I was also working part time at Prints Plus in the Woodlands Mall, where my ex-gf was my boss. (Go figure.)

What Were You Doing A Year Ago?
I was doing the same old same old work I’ve been doing the past few years, and also preparing to go to Midway Gamers Day in Las Vegas to cover Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks and the GameCube version of Mortal Kombat: Deception.

Five Snacks You Enjoy:
1) Cadbury Crunchies
2) Brownies
3) Nachos w/ queso
4) Kit-Kats
5) Chocolate chip cookies

Five Songs You Know All The Words To:
1) Pink Floyd – “Comfortably Numb”
2) Nine Inch Nails/Johnny Cash – “Hurt”
3) Tom Petty – “Runnin Down a Dream”
4) Bob Seger – “Turn the Page”
5) Kansas – “Carry On Wayward Son”
(I know far more than these, but they came to mind…)

Five Things You Would Do If You Were A Millionare:
1) Pay off bills.
2) Invest most of the money.
3) Buy a new home in England or Ireland.
4) Donate to a charity.
5) Get a nicer home for my parents.

Five Bad Habits:
1) I speak before I think what I’m saying.
2) I tend to rush when I eat.
3) I’m extremely disorganized.
4) I snack.
5) I procrastinate.

Five Things You Will Never Wear Again:
1) Sandals.
2) Pendants or chains.
3) Bracelets.
4) Cowboy hats.
5) Any belt with a buckle big enough to be mistaken for a license plate.

Five Favorite Toys:
1) My GameCube
2) My Playstation 2
3) My GBA
4) My iPod
5) My talking Dalek. :-)

The post trip post… heh.

First off, I wanted to share with you all my new desktop. If you’re an MK fan and you like the wallpaper, you can grab it from here; we at Mortal Kombat Online released the wallpaper this morning in four different sizes.

All right, now that that’s out of the way…

So, I got back from Canada on Saturday afternoon. I’ll go ahead and be kind by putting this under a cut, so that those people who may not be interested don’t have to read the whole thing. :-)

Read more “The post trip post… heh.”

Friday morning in the not quite frozen north…

Well, here I am, sitting in the hotel restaurant here outside of Edmonton, waiting for my breakfast.
Truth be told, it’s not really been that bad here. The temperatures have been hovering right around the freezing point, and there’s not been any snow. I was expecting a foot of snow and temps about ten to twenty degrees colder. I got most of what I came up here to do done, and today will be spent mostly doing cleanup and making sure everything is kosher. The main thing that sucks is that my flight out tomorrow leaves at 6:15 AM, so with taking customs and immigration at the airport into account, I bed to be up at 3. Bleh.
Anyway, my breakfast is served, so off I go. I’ll post a long trip summary tomorrow.

Another weekend over, and all that.

*sigh* I must say, this weekend has been a mix of both work and laziness; I’ve either been hard at work on stuff or laying in bed and sleeping. I guess part of the problem has been the fact that my trip to Wyoming and Canada is on Tuesday, yet I’m not exactly motivated to go quite yet. *sigh* Oh, well…

Part of my job this weekend has been getting data off this one drive; even on a 100 Mbps LAN connection, 30 GB takes a while to transfer. The worst part is that the only place I could store the data was on my iPod, as I’ll need to take the data to work with me tomorrow so I can transfer it back onto that hard drive once it’s been formatted with NTFS. (If anyone from work is watching; the machine was heavily firewalled and only I had access to it the entire time.) Once that was done, I had to put the test server the drive was sitting in back on the outside network, and put my spare 80 GB drive in place of the drive from work so that it could be used for backing up the MK Online site data. Most of that stuff has been hurry up and wait type stuff… *sigh*. Oh, well.

Tomorrow’s not going to be fun, either. I have to do some general cleanup around my desk area, check a gate card for someone at another company at our campus, burn a couple of data discs for the trip, transfer the data off my iPod and then resync it with my iTunes collection, etc. Then, when I get home, I need to make sure my laptop bag is packed only with the equipment and paperwork I need (I REALLY don’t need to have TSA asking about the computer toolkit should I forget to take it out), pack my bags, and then be up in time for me to leave for the airport at 4:45 AM. :-/

Ah, well. I suppose I should see about getting some AA batteries charged for my digital camera; I’ll need it for the trip to Rock Springs. Fun fun. Once that’s done… who knows.

Another stolen from groovychk…

WHITE
WHITES are motivated by PEACE, seek independence

and require kindness. They resist

confrontation at all costs. (Feeling good is

more important than being good.) They are

typically quiet by nature, they process

things very deeply and objectively, and they

are by far the best listeners of all the

colors. They respect people who are kind, but

recoil from perceived hostility or verbal

battle.

WHITES need their quiet independence and refuse to

be controlled by others. WHITES want to do

things their own way, in their own time. They

ask little of others, and resent others

demanding much of them. WHITES are much

stronger than people think because they dont

reveal their feelings. WHITES are kind,

non-discriminate, patient and can be

indecisive, timid, and silently stubborn.

When you deal with a WHITE, be kind, accept

(and support) their individuality, and look

for nonverbal clues to their feelings.

What Color Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Waco finally gets itself a Hooters…

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/3613286.html

WACO – Hundreds of patrons – mostly men – munched on chicken wings and hamburgers served by waitresses in low-cut tank tops and tight shorts Tuesday at Hooters’ grand opening, months after about 60 ministers tried to stop the restaurant’s construction.

The Rev. Greg Brumit, who disapproved of the increased traffic in the neighborhood as well as the skimpy outfits, said no more protests were planned.

“We’ve done all we can do. We’ll just leave the rest to the Lord,” said Brumit, pastor of Kendrick Lane Baptist Church. “They’re welcome to come down the street to our church.”

Last fall, Brumit was among dozens of ministers who wrote a letter to city and county officials, saying Hooters should not come to Waco.

Company officials say they are not surprised by the protests because the restaurant blatantly uses sex appeal, but “believes the Hooters girl is as socially acceptable as a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader, Sports Illustrated swimsuit model or Radio City Rockette,” according to the Hooters Web site.

“Some towns are a little skeptical at first, but then we get involved because we want to be part of the community, and we know that’s part of our success,” said Scott Wilkinson, executive vice president of Texas Wings, the Dallas-based franchise of Hooters of America.

Wilkinson said the Waco restaurant worked with the neighborhood about traffic concerns and sponsored a little-league football team. Hooters also held a VIP reception Monday night, and a Catholic priest was there to say a blessing.

Moving closer to the feminine side, are we, Jacko?

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/features/3611407.html

MANAMA, Bahrain — Pop star Michael Jackson was spotted shopping in a Bahrain mall on Wednesday, hiding his face behind a veil and donning a black robe traditionally worn by women in the Gulf.

In November, Jackson stirred controversy in the United Arab Emirates by entering the ladies room in a shopping mall. His publicist said Jackson, who arrived in Dubai as the guest of a champion rally driver, did not understand the Arabic sign on the door and left the bathroom when he realized his mistake.

But local newspapers reported that the performer was applying makeup in the woman’s toilets in a Dubai mall. Jackson’s host, Mohammed bin Sulayem, dismissed the story as rumor.

Alaska declares state’s raw voting data a company secret…

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7386582p-7298824c.html

The state Division of Elections has refused to turn over its electronic voting files to the Democrats, arguing that the data format belongs to a private company and can’t be made public.

The Alaska Democratic Party says the information is a public record essential for verifying the accuracy of the 2004 general election and must be provided.

The official vote results from the last general election are riddled with discrepancies and impossible for the public to make sense of, the Democrats said Monday. A detailed analysis of the underlying data could answer lingering questions about an election many thought was over more than a year ago, they say.

“Basically what they say is they want to give us a printout from the (electronic) file. They don’t want to give us the file itself. It doesn’t enable us to get to the bottom of what we need to know,” said Kay Brown, spokeswoman for the party.

At this point, it’s impossible to say whether the correct candidates were declared the winner in all Alaska races from 2004, Brown said.

“The issue is not about whether public information can be released, because the Division of Elections has already offered to provide the information requested by the (Alaska Democratic Party),” elections director Whitney Brewster said in a written statement. “The issue is that the (Democratic Party) is asking for a file format the state of Alaska uses but does not own.”

Diebold told the state it owns the format, which can’t be released because it’s a company secret.

Diebold maintains its voting systems produce accurate results, as proven through recounts in numerous close races, said Mark Radke, Diebold director of marketing.

Questions still hound the company. Some elections officials in other states are questioning whether its electronic machines are secure. Investors have sued the Ohio-based parent company, Diebold Inc., over whether it concealed problems with its voting machines, among other issues. Its chief executive, who once vowed to deliver Ohio electoral votes to President Bush, recently stepped down.

What the article doesn’t mention is that there’s no way of proving it produces accurate results, as there’s no paper trail to confirm the results. I’ve never understood why people trust these things; I work in IT, yes, but I also am familiar enough with technology to know that you ALWAYS have a separate paper trail on something as mission-critical as this. I can’t understand why people would just blindly trust those who make the machines and aren’t willing to do the bare minimum to make sure they’re trustworthy. As my parents always taught me, “Never trust anyone who says `trust me’.”

*sigh* Oh, well. I’ve since ceased being angry about this. Now all I feel is disgust towards those who blindly accept this, mixed in with a twinge of sadness. I’m not sure that’s any better…

Stargate SG-1 game officially cancelled…

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=7877

According to online reports, Perception, the Australian developer of Stargate SG-1: The Alliance, has cancelled the near-finished title and appears to be in the process of closing its doors, following continued issues regarding the game.

Posts by forum administrators on the game’s website forum appear to confirm the news that the game has been cancelled, suggesting that an official statement from MGM and/or Perception will be forthcoming in the next few days.

I had played this at E3 and didn’t think it was TOO bad… though I can understand why it’d be cancelled at this point. The big problem, to me, was the fact that the plotline revolved around Anubis and his quest for power… and the “incarnation” of Anubis they used stopped being seen at the end of season seven. It’s season nine now, the Goa’uld are defeated, O’Neill is gone, and the Ori are the big bad guys. The game’s plotline’s too out of date now.

Still, it is a disappointment.