Month: June 2006

On the road again, as the song goes…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, right now, I’m sitting in a very comfortable room in the Hampton Inn in Odessa. I’ll be spending the night here, and heading back to Houston tomorrow evening. I must say, though, that Midland/Odessa isn’t really as bad as I had thought it would be. Granted, it’s still more or less the middle of nowhere (especially at the location where I’m doing my work), but it’s definitely a bigger city than Rock Springs, WY is. It’s a good thing I scheduled to be out for two days, as well… granted, a week would have been better time, but I think I can get this location more or less functional by the time I leave tomorrow. About the worst that’s happened is that I ripped my shirt on a chain-link fence by accident. That in itself annoys the living hell out of me, as this shirt (my tan long-sleeved shirt with the company logo above the breast pocket) is one of my favorite shirts.

Frost’s hard drive had another seizure overnight, and I can’t log into it remotely again. It’s still operating its DNS services with no issues (likely because all the information its hosting is loaded into memory), but obviously I can’t manage the machine. I’ve not been able to snag a replacement hard drive for it yet, so what I’ve decided to do is replace it with a new machine this weekend. I have one machine available that I can spare as a DNS server; I’ll rebuild it this weekend and put it in Frost’s place, then retire Frost. Ah, well… such is life, really.

Anyway… should go get a drink and consider going to bed early. I’m tired and need sleep. Oh, well…

Probable problems and upcoming trips…

D'Arque Bishop

Bleh. Yesterday while I was at work, I was checking my home email (as I didn’t have time before leaving work and I had gotten in a few minutes early), and I noticed that Frost (my DNS server) had failed to send its daily log report. So, out of curiosity, I went ahead and tried to log into it via SSH. No go; for some reason, Frost kept rejecting connections. Despite Sinc mentioning that it might just be sshd freaking out (as it sometimes does on his own server), I kept figuring that something serious might have happened. I wasn’t sure what it might be, though, as it was still responding to DNS queries without any issues. Anyway, I got home, and switched on the server monitor… to see the screen filled with filesystem errors. :-/ I powered Frost down and back up quickly, and it wouldn’t even detect the hard drive. Crap. I then powered it down for a couple of minutes, and brought it back up. This time the hard drive was detected and it booted. I’ve not seen any further hard drive errors, but I’m not taking any chances. I’ve already backed up the DNS server configuration, and as soon as I can scavenge a small (4-6 GB) hard drive, I’ll take the old drive out of Frost and rebuild it.

Also, it appears I’ll be getting one of my planned trips out of the way this week. I’m having to go to Midland/Odessa on Thursday to bring the internet circuit up at the building our location there just moved to, in addition to setting up a time clock and getting some data off an old machine. It’s not exactly how I would have liked to spend the end of the week, but it’ll do. Heh, though, it IS funny… Malia mentioned that this trip should be a fun trip and not a business trip. My response was something along the lines of, “There isn’t anything IN Midland or Odessa!” I wouldn’t exactly choose to go there on a fun trip, really… it’s really the middle of nowhere. Ah, well… at least I can always take along a DVD or something to entertain myself while I’m spending the night there.

I picked up a new strategy game Saturday night while I was out and about: Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. I wanted to try something other than Command & Conquer: Generals (which Sinc and I have been playing often the past few months), and I had heard Dawn of War was a very good real-time strategy game. Plus, I must admit, I’ve always liked the Warhammer 40K setting. (Those of you from the old days who remember playing Talisman have seen a couple of elements from Warhammer in that game, as they were both made by Games Workshop.) Right now I’m still getting used to it, especially with the fact that infantry is squad-based as opposed to having individual units created and manually formed together into units. Sinc’s getting used to it as well, but he’s a little more pessimistic than I am. Then again, I’d love to get a network game going where I can try out the Chaos Space Marines and put them through their paces. :-) Frankly, I wouldn’t mind switching to WarCraft III for our network RTS games, but that was ixnayed. Ah, well… we’ll see what comes up on the horizons. Hopefully the Dark Crusade expansion for Dawn of War will spice things up even more, especially seeing as they’re throwing the Tau and the Necrons into the mix.

As for me, right now, I’m thinking I’m going to turn in early, as I’m likely going to have a long day tomorrow. Fun fun…

Talk about mixing water and magnesium…

D'Arque Bishop

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/features/3964802.html

LOS ANGELES — Tonight host Jay Leno might want to consider wearing referee stripes on Wednesday’s show when Ann Coulter and George Carlin are his guests.

Coulter, the acid-tongued conservative with a new book out, and Carlin, the quick-witted, antiestablishment comedian who’s in the voice cast for the new animated film Cars, were booked at separate times for the NBC late-nighter, a spokeswoman said Monday.

But the duo’s meeting could produce serious fireworks for Tonight, which usually limits its political fodder to Leno’s bipartisan monologue jokes.

This should make for some interesting viewing… heh. I’ll have to remember to record it when it comes on.

And now, another example of, “I can’t make stuff like this up…”

D'Arque Bishop

http://www.bbkingblues.com/schedule/moreinfo.cgi?id=3420

Steven Seagal is a martial arts master who has gone on to have a successful movie career, starring in movies such as Above The Law, Under Siege and Exit Wounds. As a “blues fan”, Steven Seagal admires and has been inspired by some of the greatest musicians ever, such as Curtis Mayfield, Lightning Hopkins, Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King and Robert Johnson. Mixed with world music’s strong influence, his “blues world” compositions appear as natural, subtle, and authentic.

I don’t know whether to chuckle or cry. Then again, Garret has apparently heard his music before, and said, “I’ve heard his music before. It’s not nearly as kickass as his movies. But… I guess it isn’t too bad.” I’ll take his word for it; I have no plans to travel to New York just to find out for myself. :-)

Real-Life Tekken?

D'Arque Bishop

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/tekken/tekken-with-actual-humans-178609.php

For all those that believe fighters aren’t an accurate representation of reality (well, they’re not), two marital arts dudes have created a live-action Tekken. The effects might be fake, but the moves ain’t. If you’re still a naysayer, these guys will kick your ass. For reals.

I must say, the video was relatively well done, especially the fight choreography. It’s worth a view… even if you’re like me and don’t like playing Tekken. Heh.

A lazy Sunday afternoon…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, I’m sitting here in my kitchen, on my Powerbook, and feeling like I need a nap. As it stands, I’m waiting to see whether I’m going to be allowed to install a piece of software onto some of the servers at work, and I’m in a holding pattern until I get permission. So, right now, it’s a bit of a slow day.

Yesterday wasn’t quite so slow. I went to go visit Dave at his new apartment sometime around lunchtime (which is in a MUCH nicer and safer complex). From there, Dave and I went to lunch and then Spec’s (which I mentioned in a previous entry), then returned back to the apartment. Louie soon came around, and we settled down to watch a movie I had seen on Dave’s coffee table but had never seen before: The Towering Inferno. I quite enjoyed it, and probably have a space in my DVD collection for it. :-) After the movie, we followed Louie to his apartment (he needed to shower and change), and then we went to dinner at Ninfa’s. In retrospect, India’s probably would have been better as I didn’t care for the food in Ninfa’s. After dinner, we made our way to Club Tropicana, which is a Latin club Louie likes to do salsa dancing at. Those who know me well know I’m no dancer, so Dave and I had a couple of beers and chatted while Louie went out onto the dance floor. Afterwards, I went back to Dave’s apartment with him to pick up the beer, ale, and my laptop, and headed back home.

As for today… I’ll likely just have dinner out or something. Otherwise, it’s just going to be a slow day, which should be fine considering I’m looking at another busy week. Ah, well…

I swear, I can’t make things like this up…

D'Arque Bishop

I’m over at Dave’s apartment right now. While we were out and about getting lunch at Fuddruckers, we stopped in Spec’s because Dad had requested I get some more Shiner for the house. I picked up a 12 pack of Shiner Bock and Shiner Light… and then Dave showed me a bottle of something that surprised me to no end.

Yes, that does say “Tempered with burning witches” at the bottom.

I ended up picking up three bottles: one for me and two for my parents. I’ll let you guys know how it tastes later on. :-)

Long days and needed rest…

D'Arque Bishop

Bleh. So, I did end up travelling to Corpus Christi yesterday. Believe me, the Corpus run is enough of a pain in the ass when it’s clear skies the entire way. Unfortunately, the weather was pretty bad, so I was driving through almost constant rain showers until I was about ten miles past Refugio. On the way there, I picked up some lunch from a McDonald’s in Odem (about 15 miles from the actual office location), and brought it to the office with me. As I remarked to one of the employees there, “I only ever eat McDonald’s when I go to Corpus… and each time it reminds me of why I never eat there any other time.” After getting everything taken care of there that needed to be taken care of, I left at 4:30 PM, stopped for food at a nearby Denny’s and gas at the Raceway in the same parking lot ($2.50 for regular… damn), and then made the long drive home. Again, it was rainy off and on most of the way back, before settling on hazy and humid by the time I reached Houston proper. I got home at 9 PM, checked some stuff, and eventually went to bed…

… before getting up an hour earlier than normal so that I could be at the office early to make some preparations in advance of a board meeting. *sigh* I’m almost tempted to ask if I can go home early tomorrow after all the late nights I’ve had, but I’ve got too much to do to even consider doing that. Ah, well…

Those of you who know me well tend to know that I tend to be rather pragmatic, to the point where I don’t even wear jewelry save one item: a gunmetal and gold wristwatch. I bought it using money given to me by my paternal grandmother before she died, and it’s meant quite a bit to me as a result. Well, a few days ago I found something rather disturbing: I must have hit the watch against something accidentally with some force, as a crack had appeared in the crystal face. Mom was good enough to take it in to the jeweler she uses, and they’re ordering a new crystal face for me. They didn’t have the ones with the gold band around it in stock, apparently. In the meantime, I tried doing what some friends do and use my cell phone as a timepiece, but it tended to annoy me more often than not. Thankfully, Dad’s letting me borrow a gold watch in the meantime until I get mine back. I was going crazy checking my wrist and not seeing a watch there…

And for now, I’m just going to get a drink and possibly go to bed a bit early. Thankfully tomorrow is the end of the work week, and I can relax a bit afterwards. Fun fun…