It’s kind of disappointing when you’re turned off something you’ve wanted to see for a while.

It’s no secret that my tastes in music are extremely eclectic. One only needs to look at the playlist I use at work on my iPod to see how varied my music collection is. As such, it shouldn’t be too surprising that I enjoy opera, even though I rarely get the chance to actually watch it. As a fan of fantasy and mythology, the one opera series I’ve always wanted to see has been Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, better known as the Ring Cycle. The Ring Cycle is made up of four operas: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung. It’s based on Norse mythology and tells the story of the struggles to obtain a magic ring with the power to rule the world (sound familiar?), and how it brings about the downfall of the gods.

The problem with performing the Ring Cycle is its sheer size. Each opera ranges from three and a half hours to five hours in length, and the stage directions and effects necessary make it prohibitively expensive to perform. In fact, the number of opera companies in the United States that have performed the Ring Cycle is in the single digits. As you might imagine, then, I was excited to learn that Houston Grand Opera is performing all four operas over the space of four years.

As it so happens, Das Rheingold is being performed this month. While I would normally go ahead and buy tickets, I had two concerns. The first concern was for Jennifer, because she doesn’t like opera. She would go for me, though, and while I do appreciate that with all of my heart, I don’t want to put her through something she’s not going to like. The other was that I had no idea what the production was going to be like, so I’d like to see a review first. After doing a web search, I ended up finding a review by the Dallas Morning News.

With set design by Roland Olbeter and video design by Franc Aleu, with sci-fi costumes by Chu Uroz, this is a Rheingold for our attention-deficit age. Nothing is ever still. Water and vague protoplasms splash and spin across giant projection screens spanning the upstage. The descent to Nibelheim takes us through a dense, diabolical factory.

The gods move about, rise and fall on hefty booms manipulated by visible stagehands. Red-lit Loge, demigod of fire and general mischief-maker, whizzes around on a Segway. The giants Fafner and Fasolt are giant tin-man puppets. Highly effective lighting, originally designed by Peter van Praet, is realized here by Gianni Paolo Mirenda.

I guess I can see the point of the gods-on-booms: actually only pawns in the game of life (apologies to Blazing Saddles‘ Mongo), they only think they’re in control. But I’m completely befuddled by the various realizations of the Rhine gold as a giant human fetus and, later, a pile of human bodies, apparently manufactured in Alberich’s sinister factory. And what’s with the portrayal of the gods’ new home Valhalla as either a spidery human bust or a tower of suspended acrobats? Sorry, don’t get it.

That is not promising at all.

If all of that were an opinion of the quality of the performance, then I’d take it with a huge grain of salt. As it stands, though, this is a factual description of what happens during the performance (and a local review, while glowing, confirms the presence of the Segway). I guess you could call me a traditionalist in this sense, but that pretty much destroyed any desire for me to see the production. While I appreciate different, this just seems too offbeat to me.

It’s a shame, because I would like to see the Ring Cycle at some point. However, the Houston Grand Opera version just strikes me as different for the sake of being different, and I can’t get on-board with the changes they’ve made. An opera isn’t just a musical piece. It’s a theatrical piece that requires good set design and good acting. However the music might be in this performance, I just can’t see myself enjoying myself if I keep going “WTF” with the set design.

Maybe in the future I’ll see a live performance of the Ring Cycle. It’s just not going to be right now.

It should be no secret that I love classic arcades. Not only does it bring back a nostalgia factor for me, I genuinely enjoy spending the time to play the games.

Admittedly, my favorite classic arcade isn’t even in Houston. That honor has to go to Pinballz Arcade in Austin. Consisting of two floors of both classic and modern arcade and pinball machines, it’s easy to spend several hours in there just going from game to game, having a blast. In fact, the last time I was there, I ended up spending most of my time playing Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition and Street Fighter X Tekken against Jenn Dolari. Of course, I don’t go there as often as I’d like for the simple already-stated reason: it’s not in Houston. As I go to Austin once every year or so, that’s about all I get to do there.

There are options in Houston, however. The most popular one is a place downtown called Joystix. Most of the time, it’s a distributor of video and pinball arcade machines, from as old as Pong to as new as Terminator Salvation. Twice a month (on the first and last Friday), they open their showroom from 9 PM to 2 AM for a $15 cover fee, and every single game is available to play. In addition, drinks are available at the lounge connected to Joystix through a door.

Unfortunately, though I’ve been to Joystix several times, I don’t really enjoy going there anymore. There are two major problems I have there. The first problem is that even though the place sells the machines that are on the showroom floor, they’re not always of good quality. I’ve come across machines with unresponsive controls, damaged screens, or were plain not operational. The second problem is just how popular the place is. Within a half-hour or so of the showroom’s opening, there are so many people that you’re almost shoulder-to-shoulder at the machines and people are pushing against you to walk down the aisles. It gets even worse in the lounge, where it becomes a solid mass of people. Jennifer ends up not enjoying it because she feels crammed in when sitting in a corner reading her book or checking her phone, and it gets so loud and so crowded I come close to a meltdown.

Several months ago, my friend Josh told me of another arcade that had opened around 59 North and Beltway 8 called the Game Preserve. I ended up going there with Jennifer, and ended up having a good time. It has fewer machines than Joystix does, but they tend to be in a better state of repair. When a machine DOES malfunction, it’s generally repaired quickly. Since my last visit there, they moved to a newer facility where instead of being in a converted small warehouse space, they’re in a pure office space with working air conditioning throughout the facility.

The only two problems I can think of with the Game Preserve are that it’s pretty far from my house and that they don’t tend to have newer machines. The only really new machine they have from the past five to ten years is a single Tron: Legacy pinball machine set to one side, though that’s understandable considering the place is owned by a collective of collectors. That’s not to say they don’t get additional games every so often; they recently added the pinball machines Bram Stoker’s Dracula (one of my favorites) and Twilight Zone to the game floor. As for the distance, it’s around 45 miles from my house, which means I really am only able to go when I’m on that side of town, which is not very often anymore.

I’ve personally found the staff at the Game Preserve to be very friendly and helpful as well. My friend Louie wanted to go to an arcade for his bachelor party earlier this month, and had originally thought of Joystix. Instead of spending $600-700 or so for a couple of hours to have Joystix by ourselves (Louie doesn’t like it crowded either), we went to the Game Preserve where it was nowhere near as crowded and spent far less. In fact, we were prepared to spend $60 total to get in ($15 per person), but the staff informed us that if I paid $30 for a bronze membership for the month, the rest of us could get in free. Not only did we do that, I went back this past Sunday with Jennifer and spent a few more hours playing. :-)

If there was a classic arcade like the Game Preserve closer to my home, I would be a very happy camper. Still, I enjoy the chances I do get to visit the Game Preserve and Pinballz Arcade, and I’m glad that there actually are decent arcades out there, allowing me to live a little bit of nostalgia and play the classic games the way they were meant to be played. ;-)

It’s been five and a half years since the parent company for Bennigan’s and Steak & Ale filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, leading to the closing of every single one of both chains’ restaurants. I thought the brand was well and truly done. A year or two ago, however, that thought was turned on its head when driving to my friend Louie’s house. I noticed (to my shock) that a Bennigan’s had opened on the corner a few blocks from his house. The logo was different, but the theme looked to be the same. Once I got home, I checked online and found it was a resurrection of the original brand. I was curious, and resolved to try it someday.

The problem for me, though, was that the Bennigan’s was the only one in the city, and Louie’s house is very much out of my way most of the time. Therefore, my opportunities to go were extremely limited. I only ended up going once, and that was when I spent a day car shopping back in August. In the end, I was seriously underwhelmed. The food tasted pretty much like I remembered, but Bennigan’s never was good enough to be a “go out of your way” place. In addition, the customer service wasn’t very good. The wait staff didn’t really seem to care, and I didn’t feel like we were welcome there. I chalked it up as indulging in some nostalgia, and didn’t feel an urge to go back.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. This past Saturday, I went over to Louie’s house, and found that the Bennigan’s had closed and was now a 59 Diner.

It turned out the problems I had noticed with customer service were not due to an isolated incident. Not only did people get terrible service at the location I had been to, a new location had opened in the Woodlands and their customer service issues were just as bad.

The sad thing is that Bennigan’s is falling into the same trap it fell into before it originally went bankrupt. Even back then the customer service was becoming horrible, to the point where people like me were swearing off the chain. Unless the food is absolutely fantastic, no one is going to come back to a restaurant where the service is awful. Bennigan’s was never terrific food; it was at best okay but cheap. This revival of the chain will probably not survive unless they get their act in gear.

It’s sort of a shame, as Bennigan’s was a fixture in my adolescence. Still, the way the company looks now, perhaps it’s better that it stay buried in the past.

I suppose it should come to no surprise to some that I enjoy reading, and am a pretty fast reader to boot. Unfortunately, I tend to buy books to put into my library, and they end up sitting there because I find myself spending evenings watching TV or playing video games instead. This started becoming unacceptable to me, so I decided to do something about it.

A few weeks ago, I declared Sundays to be reading days. This happened after I found myself stuck in bed with severe back pain (due to aggravating a back injury), and wanted to be productive at least. I ignored my tablet and laptop all day (as my desktop PC was still inoperative), and spent the day reading instead. The first book I read was The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan (the third book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series), and Heat Wave by Richard Castle. After doing that, I decided that I would go ahead and make it a point to stay off the internet every Sunday until I’ve read at least one book. :-)

Last week’s book was Blowback by Valerie Plame and Sarah Lovett. Blowback was very much an impulse purchase; Jennifer and I were at Murder By The Book, a local independent bookstore specializing in mystery novels, when I happened to notice the book on a table. I didn’t know she wrote mystery novels, and in fact this was her first one. I knew of her as the former CIA operative whose cover was blown in retaliation for her husband revealing that one of George W. Bush’s claims regarding Iraq’s WMD developments were false. The book itself was a pretty decent mystery thriller, involving a CIA operative seeking out the man who was murdering her contacts, hoping he’ll lead her to a mysterious terrorist/criminal mastermind she had been pursuing. It’s obvious Plame used her background as an operative in the novel. I’ll likely pick up the second book, if/when it should come out.

I went ahead with a “related” book yesterday: Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. While the thriller film Green Zone was based on the book, the book itself is non-fiction and does not delve into the search for WMDs in Iraq. Instead, the book (based on interviews and the author’s own experience on the ground) delves into the American occupation of Iraq after the invasion, leading up to the handoff of sovereignty to the Iraqis. It’s a pretty damning account of how badly the attempts at reconstruction and formation of the new government were handled. The common theme throughout the process is that qualified and experienced individuals were pushed aside and ignored in favor of those who followed the Bush administration’s political orthodoxy and told them what they wanted to hear. As a result, the country was left in far more of a mess than it was when they found it. I’m seriously considering picking up my own copy of the book; the copy I read was borrowed from my father-in-law, who received it from me as a Christmas gift a year or two ago.

The next few books in my list will likely be The Cuckoo’s Calling by “Robert Galbraith”, Necropolis by Michael Dempsey, and A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter J. Miller, Jr. All three are books I picked up at Half-Price Books and intended to read, but never got around to doing so. My hope is that by scheduling one day a week as a pure reading day (excluding any needed errands or chores, of course) I’ll be able to knock out most of my literary pile of shame. :-)

Of course, that will mean I’ll need to buy more books, but that’s a never a bad thing…

If you have a Goodreads account, I’m on there too. You can find me at http://www.goodreads.com/drkbish; I’m always open to suggestions regarding good books. :-)

The following post was originally posted at Mortal Kombat Online. If you wish to take part in the discussion on that site, the forum post is located here.

Last year, Valve Software announced that they were introducing their own entries into the world of gaming consoles. Their approach differs from that of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo; they have gone the way of Android, where they have created their own Linux distribution called SteamOS, and are encouraging PC manufacturers to create their own hardware boxes called Steam Machines. While SteamOS can run any Steam game that has been ported over to Linux, its other big selling point is In-Home Streaming, which will allow players to control and play a game from one system while the game itself runs from a second system. Thus, a person with a Steam Machine could play a Windows game from a Windows-based PC on the same network.

Also last year, NetherRealm Studios surprised many fans by releasing a port of Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition to PC, thus ending a fifteen year drought of PC ports of Mortal Kombat games. Later in the year, they also released Injustice: Gods Among Us to PC as well. As a result, it would be fair to say that the next Mortal Kombat will likely eventually find its way to PC.

While both games are available for PC, they are only available for Windows. NetherRealm Studios have been mum as to whether they would support SteamOS. Assuming that they would not, I was curious: would a Mortal Kombat game be playable on a Steam Machine via streaming?

Recently, Valve brought their In-Home Streaming service into beta, and gave access to anyone who joined the group called Steam In-Home Streaming. One does not have to run SteamOS in order to stream; as long as you have Steam (with the appropriate betas enabled) installed on more than one PC on your network, you can stream between the two. I decided to give it a test.

For reference, I used my desktop PC and my personal laptop to conduct this test. My desktop PC is a custom-built machine with an Athlon II X2 245 (2.9 GHz) CPU, 6 GB of RAM, and an nVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti video card. The laptop is a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E420 with an Intel Core i3 2350M (2.3 GHz) CPU, 4 GB of RAM, and integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000. Mortal Kombat runs close to console speeds on my desktop PC at 1080p, with the exception of arenas with a lot of activity in the background.

I ended up testing it three times, with different variations. In the end, the answer I came back with was, “At this stage, it’s not ready for prime time.”

Given my setup, the game ran extremely slow. The CPU is the biggest bottleneck; not only did it have to run the game, it had to push the game audio over to the client and re-render the video in the laptop’s resolution. The network speed matters as well; as slow as my game was, it was almost unbearable when I tested via wifi (802.11N). I ended up plugging my laptop directly into the router in order to get some semblance of a good test. Checking the Steam discussion communities shows that this is hardly an isolated problem.

Other problems can be explained away via glitches in the beta client, that may be fixed upon release. For example, my 360 gamepad was not immediately recognized, and did not work until I actually responded to a couple of prompts using the keyboard. In addition, the game does not cleanly exit; more than once I had to kill the streaming client process on the laptop to get it to exit properly.

To give everyone an idea of what the final results looked like, I used my iPhone to record the game playing a demo match streamed to my laptop.

In the end, I simply cannot recommend playing Mortal Kombat via In-Home Streaming. It runs too slow to be enjoyable; even people with hardware more powerful than what I am using have noticed the severe gameplay lag. Unfortunately, unless NetherRealm decides to port their next game to SteamOS, it looks like it won’t be feasible to play it on your Steam Machine.

As I’ve posted about in the past, Jennifer and I were on the paleo diet, where the idea is that we would stop eating processed foods and grains, and eat far more organic meats, fruits, and vegetables. We were doing well for the most part, until we reached my birthday last month. Starting with my birthday party, we started being less strict due to different events like birthday parties, a New Orleans trip, Christmas meals, and others. As a result, we started gaining weight again.

We knew we had to get back into the program, so Jennifer came up with the idea of going back in with a bang: starting the New Year doing what’s called the “Whole 30”. The Whole 30 is a hardcore version of the paleo diet, which acts as a sugar detox. Absolutely no cheats are allowed, and you stay on the strict diet for 30 days. It sounded like a good idea, and we started on the 1st.

After three days, we’ve decided that we’re in hell.

While eating dinner tonight, we realized that it was the little things that made the original run bearable. We would allow ourselves small cheats, like Crystal Light lemonade, creamer in our coffee, and dark chocolate for dessert. Now, we have to do workarounds. The lemonade is totally out, and we now drink water instead. I’ve been drinking coffee black, with the exception of this morning when I tried a creamer Jennifer made with coconut milk and vanilla. Our one dessert has been that creamer concoction with blueberries. They’re not bad, per se, but we were happier with the minimal cheats and the sweetness they brought to balance everything out.

It’s just more strict, and we’re struggling. The small cheats made it much more bearable, and we’re not sure if we’ll be able to make the entire 30 days. We’re going to keep it up until Thursday at the very least, but if we’re not happy (or at least tolerant), we’ll go back to what we were doing before when we first started the paleo diet. It’s not worth it to us if we’re miserable, and we’d rather be on a less strict version than become disgruntled and give up entirely.

We’ll see what happens.

Happy Halloween!

Jennifer and I aren’t doing much of a Halloween this year; seeing as we don’t anticipate many kids coming down to our end of the street, we’re skipping giving out candy. If we watch a movie tonight, I’d like to see The Crow or the 1931 Dracula. It all depends on what Jennifer’s in the mood for, though.

In lieu of a normal Halloween, then, I’d like to repost this story I saw from elsewhere. Those of you who, like me, grew up in the days of computers that had minimal graphics and were known for text games like Zork will appreciate it. The original author is unknown.
Read more “Halloween, under the light moon…”

Of course, on the weekends, Jennifer and I divvy up the chores. One of the things I always do is make the bed. Tonight, I took the sheets into the bedroom and began putting them on the bed.

We have four cats in the house, so as one might imagine there’s some cat furniture in our bedroom. One of the most prominent pieces of cat furniture in the bedroom is a tower with two platforms the cats can use to sleep on. In the evenings, the top platform is usually occupied by Bennett, our younger male. Tonight was no exception, as he lounged in the platform and watched me work on the bed. That struck me as odd, as he usually enjoys “helping” (aka, playing on the bed and getting in the way) whenever we make the bed. I didn’t pay it too much mind, though, and continued to work.

Unfortunately, I should have realized he wanted to “help” after all. As I walked around my side of the bed to tuck in the sheets, I passed in front of the tower. Just as I moved in front of it, I saw him get up, and then caught a glimpse of a white blur…

… and the next thing I knew, I felt the weight of a ten pound cat land on my back, right on the shoulder blade.

I was knocked forward to lean over the bed, and tried to maintain some semblance of balance so that Bennett wouldn’t hurt himself by falling. Bennett, on the other hand, was less concerned about me as he dug his claws deep into my arm in a bid to keep from falling. He failed, and fell backwards onto my bedside table, knocking over the phone and lamp. He then straightened himself out and ran off.

By this point Jennifer was wondering what the commotion was about, and came over to investigate. We found Bennett had left a bruise and sizable bloody scratches on my arm. As she was helping me clean and bandage the wounds, I explained what exactly had happened. She ended up laughing, and saying, “I’m sorry, it’s not funny… but it is.”

So, now I have bandages on my arm, and I’ve learned my lesson: next time, when making the bed, make sure Bennett isn’t in the room, or if he is, stay out of his way if he’s on the platform.

It hasn’t been a pleasant month for me on the car front.

I had a black 2008 Dodge Avenger SXT that I nicknamed “the Beast”. I called it that because at the time it was the largest car I had owned (even if it was a mid-sized sedan), and the way the front of the car was designed it looked like it had a fairly mean expression on its “face”. I also joked that the Beast was my superhero car, as it was an Avenger, had remote start capability, had Bluetooth handsfree capability installed in its stereo system, and accepted alternate fuel (it had flex-fuel capability and accepted gasoline and E85). I loved that car, and had absolutely no intention of giving it up.

Note that I’ve been speaking about the Beast in the past tense. There’s a reason for that.

Almost exactly a month ago, I was driving to meet Jennifer for dinner after work. I was stopped at a red light, waiting to make a left turn, at the front of the line. A car coming the other way ran the red light, and smashed into a car turning into the lane right front of him. He then lost control, and his now-ballistic vehicle smashed into mine, on the front driver’s side corner. The impact was hard enough to cause all of the airbags to deploy, and the car frame was severely warped.

I got off relatively easy: my ribs were slightly bruised and my arm was slightly burned by the airbag. More than anything else, I was annoyed and upset, as I only had one payment left on the car and I had only gone that particular route to avoid another accident. Still, the family in the car that was hit first wasn’t as lucky, as they all went to the hospital as a precaution. The guy who hit us declined to go to the hospital, and the police investigating the accident cited him for running the red light.

The Beast was eventually declared a total loss, and I got more than a fair settlement for it from my insurance company.

While waiting for the insurance check to arrive, Jennifer and I decided to go vehicle shopping. At first, I had four initial choices for my next car: a Dodge Avenger, a Dodge Charger, a Subaru Impreza WRX, or a Volkswagen Jetta. The first car I got to try was the Dodge Charger, as it was the rental vehicle that the insurance company was reimbursing me for. I had been thinking about a Charger for years, as it was Dodge’s “performance” sedan. As it turned out, I ended up not liking the car at all. It was too big for me, and I never felt comfortable driving in. In addition, I didn’t like how the windows were shaped and tilted, and I felt I had a better range of vision with the Avenger. After a day or two of driving the rental Charger, I dropped it from consideration.

My next choice was the Subaru Impreza WRX, which was Subaru’s “performance” sedan. However, when we went to the local Subaru dealership, we learned something that crossed it off our list immediately: the Impreza WRX is only available in manual transmission, which I never learned how to drive. I decided to try the Subaru Legacy instead, and I felt it was decent. However, the possible maintenance costs were a serious concern. I ended up keeping looking.

The next car I looked at was the Volkswagen Jetta. I tried the “performance” model, but Jennifer and I talked it out and decided that it didn’t suit how I would end up driving it. I test drove the next version down, and while it was okay, we decided there were two problems we couldn’t ignore. The first was again the maintenance costs. The second was that it was smaller than the Avenger, and as such I wasn’t as comfortable. Cargo space in the trunk was also an issue. We briefly thought about the Passat, but like the Charger it was too large for my liking. We ended up crossing Volkswagen off the list as well.

We finally went to a Dodge dealership and trying out an Avenger. I was perfectly comfortable and happy in it, so we decided to make that our first option. After doing research, we found that our choices of Avengers were somewhat limited. I had originally wanted an RT (which are the top of the line), but there were no Avenger RTs anywhere in the Houston area. I was okay with an SXT, but was not going to downgrade to an SE. In addition, I wanted black (or at least grey), the bigger 3.6L engine, and Bluetooth handsfree capability. We narrowed it down to several vehicles at three different dealerships, and I ended up spending a Friday shopping (with the help of Jennifer’s father).

In the end, we found that of all of the vehicles I had picked, only one really fit my specifications. Specifically, it turned out that while all of the other ones could have Bluetooth handsfree installed, it would end up being a bit of a kludge like it was in the Beast. The dealership had added the Bluetooth handsfree after the fact, and had placed the microphone right next to the windshield. As a result, anyone who I spoke to through it had to contend with wind noise coming from my end. The one I picked was the only one of all the choices that had Bluetooth handsfree built-in. In addition, it had Sirius/XM, GPS navigation, auto-tinting rear view mirror, and a sun roof. The only thing it didn’t have that I wanted was a spoiler, but that was easy enough to take care of. They gave me a good deal on it, and I signed on it. The main thing I ended up waiting on was the spoiler installation, and once done it looked like it was factory-installed.

So far, I have to say I really love this car. It’s essentially an updated version of the Beast, with the same colors and outside trim, except with the sleeker look and different external features (foglamps, dual exhaust pipes, sun roof, spoiler). It also has a stronger engine, so it has more oomph to it. The seats are also more comfortable, which makes for a more pleasant drive.

I wasn’t ready to give up the Beast, and I still feel bad about how I lost it. As Jennifer put it, “It gave its life to save you.” We had hoped to get another couple of years of life out of it, but it was not to be. I’m glad for the time I had with it, and I’m hoping I get the same long and useful life out of the new Avenger.