The D'Arque Cathedral

I went ahead and put it on the wall where I had put the “YOU’RE NOT PAID TO THINK” poster my friends Sean and Corinne had given me for my birthday. That and my Mortal Kombat II advertisement poster are now out in the hallway outside my office. Personally, I think the new poster looks good where it’s at.

I have to give Jennifer a lot of credit.

She’s been very supportive of the fact that I’m into gaming. She’s been willing to come out to Dave & Buster’s with me whenever I’ve had an itch to go, for example. Then again, it gives her an excuse to play some Time Crisis 4, which is her favorite arcade game. She also lets me know when she hears about arcade conventions coming into town, and comes out with me.

Yesterday was another example of that. She received an email alerting her that Stern was having a release party for their new The Rolling Stones pinball machine, and the Houston one would be at Joystix. Seeing as we had nothing else going last night, we decided to go out there. While on their normal “Pac-Man Fever Fridays” the whole showroom was available to play, only the middle showroom was available this time around. I entered the tournament they had for The Rolling Stones; the objective in the first round was to hit twelve million points in as few balls as possible, and you had three tries to do it in. On my first try I did it in four; it would have been three had my third ball not gone into the right drain almost immediately. Unfortunately, by the time I got to my second try, enough people had done it in three that I had to do it in three balls or I would be eliminated. I didn’t manage it. It was fine, though; considering the other people in the tourney played a lot and I don’t get to play pinball too often outside of emulators, I was happy I did as well as I did.

The thing is, for various reasons, I’ve been getting a nostalgia for old arcade games. My home office is an extension of my geekiness, so to speak, as I have framed posters and other memorabilia set up around it. For example, I have two Mortal Kombat II posters in my office. A couple of weeks ago, though, I was browsing around on the net and found a movie type poster for the game Dragon’s Lair (as seen on the right). I went ahead and picked one up, and this weekend I will be seeing if I can get a 27″x40″ frame for it. It’ll be replacing one of the two Mortal Kombat II posters.

However, what I would really like to have is an arcade machine or pinball machine in the house. I admit I’m a little jealous of my friend Eric, who not only has Ms. Pac-Man and Scramble machines, he has an old Pinball Wizard pinball machine. The problem, though, is that I almost literally have no place to put a machine. As it stands, about the only kind of machine I could reasonably put in the house is a cocktail table machine, as it could double as actual furniture. If it were available, too, I’d love to get one of the pseudo-arcade cabinets NetherRealm Studios made for the new Mortal Kombat game. Unfortunately, I don’t have the money available for it, and if I did I wouldn’t have a place to put it.

Ah, well. It’s a nice thought to have an arcade machine or a pinball machine (preferably Doctor Who or Bram Stoker’s Dracula), but we have more important expenses to worry about right now. For now, I’ll content myself with Pac-Man Fever Fridays, Dave & Busters, and the occasional Game Night at Eric’s house.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/nokia-and-microsoft-enter-strategic-alliance-on-windows-phone-b/

It’s happened. Former Microsoft exec and current Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has married his future and his past in the holy matrimony of a “strategic alliance.” Windows Phone is becoming Nokia’s “principal smartphone strategy,” but there’s a lot more to this hookup…

Well, I could say I was surprised, but I wouldn’t be telling the truth.

Something had been troubling me for a while now regarding Nokia, and it only just occurred to me what it was yesterday. Don’t get me wrong; I used to really like their phones. I’ve had a 5210, a 3390, and a 3650 in the past. However, for all of their domination in the “dumbphone” market in the United States and abroad, they never seem to go anywhere in the smartphone market. I’ve heard people on Slashdot and other tech sites talk about how much they loved their N900 phones, but when it came to people I knew in person who used smartphones, it was always Blackberry, iPhone, Android, or Windows Mobile. I never knew anyone who used Nokia phones. Then yesterday, in a Slashdot discussion about the merger, I saw a couple of people mention how much they liked Nokia’s E71.

It hit me then. Nokia’s smartphones are very geek-friendly, but ONLY geek friendly.

The reason the E71 made me realize it is more of a personal one. A year or two ago, in an effort to try and save money on smartphones at my old job (as we were handing them out more and more), I did a bit of research and found the most cost-effective one was the Nokia E71x. It had full Exchange support, which was our primary requirement. So, we started handing them out to users.

In the end, we stopped after a few months. Why, you may ask? It’s simple: the users HATED them.

The company I worked for was not a tech firm. It was a company that manufactured oilfield equipment, so the users were much more often than not non-tech savvy. The phone interface was confusing them, and as a result it was extremely difficult for them to get the phones to do what they wanted them to do. It was also extremely confusing for us to troubleshoot, as the menus didn’t make any sort of logical sense to us either, especially when previously dealing with phones like Windows Mobile or Blackberry. We got numerous complaints about the devices, and in the end they were phased out.

Around that same time, my parents went and got new phones, and without consulting me they got E71x devices as well. Mom is (and has been) ambivalent about them; she doesn’t care about the phone one way or another, and probably would like a better interface, but she likes that she can get photos off it via free software on her PC (unlike her old Motorola phone) and she likes the QWERTY keyboard for texting. Dad, on the other hand, LOATHED the phone, to the point where his brother did him a favor and sent him an unlocked RAZR to use instead. Dad can’t get pictures off it easily, but he considers it a small price to pay for not having to deal with the E71x anymore.

I know people around have been saying Symbian et al were very powerful phone OSes, but the problem is that Nokia wasn’t going anywhere in the US in the smartphone market. Everyone I know hated the interface, and while I know the plural of anecdote isn’t data, it would not surprise me if a lot of people across the board felt the same way. It doesn’t matter how powerful or versatile your phone OS is if it’s difficult to use. That’s why I can easily see Nokia having partnered with Microsoft in this venture: say what you want about Windows Phone/Mobile, but it has a much more logical and usable interface than Nokia did. If Nokia wants to be taken seriously in the business world, then they need a much more friendly OS for their phones.

After all, while geeks care about power and versatility, the lay users care more about whether it works easily and efficiently. In the end, it’s the lay users that end up driving the market.

I’ve been living in Pearland for eight months now, and truthfully, it doesn’t feel like it. It almost feels like I’ve only been there a few weeks still. This is actually a good thing, as it shows how Jennifer and I are meshing well. We definitely haven’t gotten tired of being around one another, and we’ve been enjoying the time we’ve been spending together. Now that we’re past the initial adjustment period, things haven’t really changed much. Life is good.

However, I’ve had one thing still tying me back to the parents’ house, in a sense: the darquecathedral.org servers, which were still being hosted on the DSL line there. I had been planning on moving them down to Pearland anyway, but Mom and Dad decided they wanted to get AT&T U-verse to replace both their DSL and their DirecTV. So, we went ahead and purchased Comcast Business at our house, arranged for static IP addresses to assigned to us, and then went up to Spring this past Saturday to grab them. All in all, it was a pretty quick and painless process, and fortunately everything fit in my car, including the cart the servers were sitting on. Once I configured my parents’ PCs and their router to work without the servers, we headed back to Pearland. We got home by 9:30 PM, and had the first two servers online by midnight. I got up from bed at 7:45 AM the next morning, and had the third server online 45 minutes later.

The one thing we were worried about most with the server move was the heat generated by the servers. Fortunately, we’ve found keeping my office door open keeps the room at a somewhat normal temperature. The temperature gauge on the front of one server shows normal temps, too, which is a very good sign. We’ll keep an eye on things, but all in all the server migration was a great success. Now I just need to clean out boxes to make more room for me to be able to walk around…

The amusing thing, though, is that now that the servers are migrated, we’ll be getting away for a few days soon. Jennifer and I have decided to take a vacation to Las Vegas, as she’s never been and we managed to get good deals on airfare and a hotel. We’re only going to be gone for a couple of nights, but I figure I’ll introduce her to some of the sights and a couple of the shows. I’m thinking at the very least I should show her the dancing waters in front of the Bellagio, the volcano in front of the Mirage, the Forum Shops at Caesars, and the canals at the Venetian. As for the shows, well… Cirque is out due to the high prices of tickets, but we have a couple of other ideas in mind. No, the wedding is not one of them.

Speaking of which, I know I mentioned it on Twitter, but forgot to mention it here: Jennifer and I are officially engaged. Right now, it’s looking like the actual date is going to be sometime in late September. We’re looking at having a small intimate ceremony with just close friends and family invited, and then a few months down the road have a nice big blowout. We’ve been spending days off (on Jennifer’s end) and weekends going to different places to get ideas of venues and the like, plus potential food options, etc. It’s been a bit overwhelming, but we’re off to a good start. Hopefully we’ll be able to announce something to our friends in the next month or two, even if it’s only a “save the date!” type of thing. We’re looking forward to it, and we’re definitely making sure it’s what we want.

Like I said earlier, life is good. Here’s hoping it just keeps getting better.

Several months ago, I had made a post talking about a trailer for a new Mortal Kombat movie that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Starring Michael Jai White as Jax and Jeri Ryan as Sonya, this trailer (popularly referred to as “Rebirth”) was a completely new take on Mortal Kombat, with a more realistic urban setting, and characters such as Reptile and Baraka reimagined as deformed and/or mutilated insane humans. It later came out that the trailer was the work of a director named Kevin Tancharoen, who financed it himself and was making it as a pitch to Warner Bros. to make the next Mortal Kombat film. The trailer was definitely controversial, but also was very well-received. Even Ed Boon liked it, but he said that it probably went too far. The trailer was soon pulled off YouTube, and nothing more was heard from it. It was pretty much assumed “Rebirth” was dead.

As it turns out, we were wrong.

A report over at Bloody Disgusting is saying that Tancharoen is getting to helm a Mortal Kombat ten-episode web series, under the Warner Premiere brand. Michael Jai White will be returning as Jax, though there’s no word on whether Jeri Ryan will be returning as Sonya. She’s not listed in the article, and I didn’t get a response to my query on Twitter. In fact, it’s not even certain yet that it’s based on “Rebirth”. It’ll start filming in Vancouver next month.

If “Rebirth” is anything to go by, I think it’ll be really good. While I hope the series will be based on “Rebirth”, I’m fairly doubtful it would be, simply because it’ll be in wide circulation on the web… and “Rebirth” was definitely a pitch for a hard-R film, complete with gory deaths. Still, while it was a very different take on the Mortal Kombat mythos, it was also VERY reverential to the source media, and it showed that Tancharoen knows his stuff. There’s no word on a release date, but I would imagine it would probably be this summer, especially after the new game hits stores.

I’m definitely looking forward to it.

Changes have been happening in my work life.

A month or two ago, it was announced that a company called Robbins & Myers would be acquiring the company I work for, T3 Energy Services. While I had been through acquisitions before, most of the time it was T3 doing the acquiring. The only time I was on the acquired side was when I started at T3; I had been working as the IT guy for a company called Walker Bolt, and their parent company was acquired in late 2001. I moved from Walker Bolt to T3′s IT department, and a couple of years later Walker Bolt was sold off. It was going to be interesting being through it again…

… or it would be, if I was going to stick around for it.

A couple of months ago, a former coworker contacted me. About a year and a half ago, the VP of process improvement at T3 was offered a job at a company called Kem-tron. Since then he’s become the president of the company. Also, said former coworker, the manager of pressure control engineering at T3, went over to Kem-tron as the VP of engineering. They contacted me, and asked me if I’d be willing to come work for them. I went over and interviewed with them, and gave it some thought. After thinking on it, I decided to accept their offer. I start tomorrow as their new IT person.

Leaving T3 has been rather sad for me. I’m going to miss my coworkers, and it’s been great having a boss who’s so good to work for and looks out for his employees. Also, as I’ve put it in the past, working at T3 has shown me exactly where I went wrong with Walker Bolt. However, things are definitely changing at T3. Many of my now-former coworkers (especially in the corporate side) are leaving. Also, after the acquisition is finalized, the IT department is going to be moved to a new office at I-45 North and FM 1960. While this would have been nice had I still been living with my parents, it would be a 40 mile drive from my current home. I’m personally done with the long commutes.

I’ve been working up until the end, too. Even now I’ve got my T3 laptop sitting next to my monitor here in my home office, and am working on some database maintenance that needs to be completed by the start of business tomorrow. Still, first thing 8 AM, I’ll be at Kem-tron reporting for work and learning about my new job. I’ll be doing all of the IT work for them. It’s a much smaller company, but it’s definitely growing, and if I’m lucky I’ll end up with an IT department of my own.

It’s been a wonderful run. I’d been at Walker Bolt for two and a half years and T3 Energy for nine. However, it’s time I moved on. I’m hoping for the best to those I leave behind, and I’m looking forward to what challenges lie ahead.

(Note: the following represents my own views and do not reflect those of Mortal Kombat Online or any other of its staff.)

Well, it’s been a tad difficult separating myself from Mortal Kombat Online’s day to day operations, but more and more ~Crow~ has been proving himself up to the challenge of taking my place and in fact is doing a better job than I ever did. Nowadays, though, my site work has consisted of helping do database maintenance and working on supporting CCShadow’s efforts towards V.8. So far, things have been coming along swimmingly.

One of my definite hopes with V.8 is that we finally create a mobile-friendly version of the site. As an iPhone user, I’ve found myself using my phone’s Safari for more and more web browsing. V.7′s layout is definitely not mobile browser friendly, and it would be nice to make it where it can be so. It’ll be much more of a design issue than anything else; for example, adding mobile browser support to my personal site really required nothing more than a small plugin which detects the browser’s user agent string and chooses the layout based on that.

Another site called Kamidogu has taken a rather interesting approach. Its webmaster actually developed an iPhone native app for accessing his site. Admittedly I haven’t tried it, but it’s a neat concept. Kamidogu is hardly the first website to make an iPhone native app, but it is the first Mortal Kombat fansite to do so. So far reviews have been very positive regarding the app, and I wish them the best of luck regarding it.

Now, would MK Online ever release such an app? Personally, I would say no, and I say this as an iPhone user. Considering we’d not likely be creating any other apps, it doesn’t make sense for us to pay the $100 or so for the certificate needed to publish apps from Apple. Also, it’s much easier to create one universal layout for mobile devices than it is to create separate apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc. Finally, it comes down to time. CCShadow is a very busy guy and just developing V.8 is taking the bulk of his free time. I just don’t see him developing separate apps.

Ah, well. Like I said, it’s an interesting concept. I just don’t ever see it being implemented for MK Online.

It’s kind of funny how some things begin.

Back in 2001, I was hanging out in an IRC channel called #mortalkombat. It was being run by an alliance of sites, one of which was a site called MK5.ORG. Back then, the future of MK was pretty uncertain; no one really thought that another MK game would come out. Then, near Christmastime, Midway announced they were making Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, the fifth fighting game in the series. One of MK5.ORG’s founders, Scott Howell, knew the game would be at E3, but neither he nor Joey Schorr (the other site founder) could go. So, he asked if I would go, provided I covered the game for the site. I said sure.

I don’t think any of us expected me to become a central figure to the site. However, I ended up being one.

The years since have been great. Once Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance came out, we became Mortal Kombat Online. We became the top ranked Mortal Kombat site. We ended up releasing exclusive news, like the first render from Mortal Kombat: Deception and the revelation of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. We’ve been to many Midway media events. We’ve been to several E3 shows. We’ve done live online chats with the development team. It’s been a blast.

However, lately, I’ve been finding myself with less and less free time. I’ve got a wonderful girlfriend that I spend my life with. My job has gotten far busier. I also have projects of my own I want to pursue. They may not be as popular as MK, but it’ll be my own work, and not my extolling the virtues of someone else’s work.

So, effective today, I stepped down as MK Online’s webmaster, and have moved myself into a purely technical role at the site. Others (namely ~Crow~ and Tyrant-Cenobite) will take over the site’s day to day operations.

I have to admit I’m a bit melancholic. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do, and the site is in good hands. Plus, I want to give my projects the time they deserve. On the other hand, MK Online has been a big part of my life for the past nearly nine years. It’s a bit hard to walk away from it, even if I don’t plan on going anywhere. Still, I know it’s for the best.

So, what are the projects I’m working on? I’m keeping them close to my chest right now, as I don’t want to jinx anything. I hope to announce something within the next couple of months, however. We’ll see.

In any event, I enjoyed my time as MK Online’s head honcho, and am proud of my accomplishments over the past several years. I’m thankful for the opportunities afforded to me, and all in all… I’m content, and glad the site is in good hands.

In my last post I had mentioned that we have our home theater set up for watching movies at home. We’ve also changed how we watch movies out as well. Up until a few weeks ago we would catch movies at the AMC over at Gulfgate or (in one case) at the Cinemark in Pearland. However, Jennifer pointed out a better option recently that we’ve started to take advantage of.

Pearland has two movie theaters (that I’m aware of). One is the aforementioned Cinemark at 288 and FM 518. The other is a “Premiere Cinemas” further east down 518. A couple of weeks back, we decided to go see Resident Evil: Afterlife at the Premiere Cinemas for a change. It’s a much older theater; it reminds me of the old AMC (like North Oaks 6) or General Cinemas. However, the price for an adult ticket was $4.50. So, for (less than) the price if one ticket at the Cinemark, we both got to go and see a movie.

Of course, it’s not perfect; there are obviously no IMAX screens and they don’t support 3D films. (The posters for Jackass 3D had notices that said “in 2D” on them.) However, it’s not often a film comes out that I want to see in IMAX and/or 3D. For $4.50 a ticket, this theater pretty much provides us the best value for the money. We may end up seeing more movies out as a result.

It’s nice to know we have another good value method for watching movies.

One of the things Jennifer was looking forward to when I moved in was the integration of my audio/video equipment with hers. While she already had a DVD player and HDTV, she didn’t have a sound system to go along with it. On the other hand, I DID have a home theater setup, consisting of an Onkyo receiver and Aiwa speakers and subwoofer (the speakers were part of a “home theater in a box”; the original receiver was long destroyed). When I moved in, we put my receiver in place, along with my DVD player (as it was upconverting). While I hooked the DVD player to power and had it ready, we left the receiver disconnected for a few months.

The problem wasn’t that we didn’t want to use it. The problem was that we didn’t know what to do about the rear speakers. Our floors are hardwood, so we couldn’t just run the wires under the carpet. Also, we had NO desire to run wires through the wall. I did that before at my parents’ house, and did NOT like it. That’s also the reason my office at home is linked to the home network through a wireless bridge.

A few weeks ago, however, I came across the perfect solution. A company called Rocketfish had a universal wireless rear speaker system. We picked one up from the local Best Buy, brought it home, and I spent the evening wiring up the receiver to the speakers, TV, DVR, DVD player, and Wii.

The end result was very satisfying. The sound came through very crisp and clear, and the rear speakers were clear as well. Even my friend Mike, who has the most impressive home theater room I’ve ever seen, was impressed by how well the wireless solution worked.

In fact, the home theater setup revealed a weakness in how I had the speakers set up at my parents’ house. When we wired them up at my parents’ house, we put them up by the ceiling, facing out… but not down. The sound as a result was always subpar, and I thought the speakers themselves were probably very low quality. It wasn’t until I listened to them at ground level on the new setup that I realized why they seemed low quality: they projected across the room, but not down to where I could actually HEAR them properly. Oops. At least now they sound great at room level.

Since we put it together, we’ve gone ahead and added a Blu-Ray player to the mix, and use it to watch Blu-Rays and instant viewing from Netflix. We ended up getting a decent little player from Samsung for about $140; a number of people had recommended that we get a Playstation 3, but we didn’t think it was worth it. It cost twice as much as the Samsung (which does everything we’d want the PS3 to do), and we wouldn’t be using it to play games. It’s worked out beautifully so far; the best test was when my parents came over to visit a week ago last Sunday. As I sat Dad down in front of the home theater, he asked if he could borrow my copy of Avatar… and then sat, mouth open, as the Blu-Ray version of Avatar finally finished loading and started showing. He asked Mom for a similar setup, but I don’t think Mom’s going to go for it.

Since then, it’s gotten plenty of use. We still have two movies waiting to see for it from our Netflix disc queues (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Cloverfield), and my entire instant viewing queue. Looks like it’ll be serving us well for quite a while.