Can anyone tell me why...

...there are so many bail bonds companies near downtown San Jose? I mean, how many do you need in a 4 block area? 25? 30? 7,982???!

I'm an eeeeeeeediot...... (A Haiku)

Forgot my sunscreen.
Went to great, fun baseball game.
Look like a lobster.

A Marlin (fan) at SBC Park...

This will never get old...

So here I am again at 36,000 feet...

Jeez I'm an idiot.

In the midst of packing for my current trip to San Jose, we had a really intense thunderstorm with a ton of cool lightning. Normally, we have cloud to ground lightning. This storm had that, but it also had something a lot less common: cloud to cloud lightning. Really cool stuff, and a wonderful show in the sky for a few hours.

So, bolstered by the fact I had captured a nice lightning strike with my digital camera during out Fort Meyers Beach vacation a couple weeks back, I thought I'd try to get a shot or two from my office window at home, especially since the lightning was so plentiful. I did get a couple strikes, but they didn't look as good as I had hoped.

So here I am on the plane to go to San Francisco, leaving at 7:45am, and it's a beautiful morning. The plane lines up to take off from MIA heading east. Engines roar up, off we go.

Looking out the window, I start to see the Brickell Avenue skyline. Hey, that'd make a nice photo, lemme get the camera out.

I reach into my bag and grab it. I flip in on and it beeps differently than usual. Huh? Oh, wrong mode (review mode). Lemme flip it to camera/picture mode. Flip. Beep beep. Huh?

The display reads --- ....instead of the number of photos I can take. Why would it do th....???

WHERE'S MY FREAKING MEMORY CARD????

*SIGH*

Sitting in my friggin' card reader at home, where I put it after taking the lightning photos last night.

Damnit.

Well, I'm SOL on the flight, but I have extra cards in my luggage (less capacity, tho...sigh). Jeez.

Whatta way to start a trip.

The Mug of Fear!

Sunset over the Pacific...

La Jolla, California

Only in California...(Well, I'm pretty sure, anyway...)

Yes...it's real...

Seat 44F on a plane with two flat tires...

So, on a last minute trip to San Diego (which, coincidentally, happened to fall during the very week that we had wanted to *be* in San Diego for the ComiCon...), I fly out as early as possible to get me there.

In Atlanta, the remnants of Hurricane Dennis don't seem to be holding things up too much. Then I board Delta flight 1793, scheduled to leave around 8:30am. It's about to leave, just waiting for paperwork and some final bags, the captain says. 8:30...8:45...captain comes on. During a walkaround, he said, a couple of tires were underinflated..."flat"...from a "warm landing" earlier. They need to change 'em, just another 25 minutes. Some time later, he comes back on and says that they found a problem with a brake when they pulled the tires off...so it'll be another 45.

Fine.

We take off at around 10am, about 90 minutes late. At what point do you think the captain was going to tell us/get the tires checked if the paperwork & bags had been done faster?

On that note, the captain told everyone on the PA where his young son was sitting (42D). Just in case any terrorists may have wanted to know so they'd have a bargaining chip. *rolls eyes*

So the flight is in the air. Now I want to put the seat back...and it won't go back. Great. Overhead light? Heh...only if IT wants to go on. Flight attendant call button? Oh, sure, it goes on randomly.

(On a packed flight...everyone can hear you scream.)

Atleast the movie...Sahara...was passable.

YABBTYF30000F.
(Yet Another Blog Brought To You From 30,000 Feet)

I hope we see this more often... 

Even Roger shared the vocals on Wish You Were Here... 

Sing and play your heart out, Dave! 

About 25 years in the making...proving that Hell apparently had frozen over, and that pigs DO fly! Welcome back, Dave, Roger, Nick and Rick! You did a fantastic job! 

Ahhhhhh....

Yahoo! Sports MLB: Atlanta 5, Florida 6 (FINAL 13th) 2005/06/29
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Smart quote of the day

"Q-tips, anybody?"
- Sales pitch by a cotton candy vendor at the Marlins-Braves game in the 6th inning
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Y'know...

...flat tires on rainy Monday mornings just suck...
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...'enough said. 

I've always been unsure of what to think of people who bought Honda Elements...until I came across this one in the airport parking lot... 

If you ever wondered what the wing of a 757-200 aircraft looked like at over 30,000 feet elevation when viewed through a crappy, scratched-up airplane window...now you know. 

Sometime I wonder... 

...what the heck I'm doing here? 

Can you imagine...?

What would it be like if you somehow extended Duel of the Fates and were able to use it for the soundtrack for the Battle of Yavin? I'm not being blasphemous here...it's just an idea...and one that might be pretty darn cool!

Just a random musing as I sit here on the plane...

###
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SW CD correted track listing

I made a mistake. There is an extra track I put on there. Track 7 is 'Tales of a Jedi Knight/Plea For Help (Ep 4)' (again from memory). That's the scene where ObiWan tells Luke about his father for the first time, and views the full hologram.

So make that track 7, and move the rest of the tracks up one number.

That is all. Move along...move along...

###
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Star Wars Soundtrack Mix

Bloggin' at ya from up in the sky, over 30,000 feet high!

I love movie soundtracks. I love movies. The soundtracks are an 'emotional glue' which, when I listen to them, brings back the feelings I have when I watch the movies.

Probably the first soundtrack I fell in love with was from Star Wars (in 1977, for those of you who may be confused). I can't recall how many times I've listened to it. Anyway, in preparation for a business trip, I decided to put together an ultimate (or as close as I could get it) mix of selections from all 6 Star Wars films on one audio CD. Here is the selections, in the order I placed them. I wanted it to be as chronological as possible, while giving the ability to tell the story of the entire saga.

(Track names are paraphrased from memory; some contain music from other scenes which adds to their importance, such as track 10, which has Luke and Vader confronting one another, and track 12, which has the conclusion to their second confrontation...)

1. Opening credits/Blockade Runner (Ep 4)
2. Duel of the Fates (Ep 1)
3. Across the Stars (Ep 2)
4. Battle of the Heros (Ep 3)
5. ObiWan vs. Anakin (Ep 3)
6. Hologram/Binary Sunset (Ep 4)
7. Death of ObiWan/TIE Fighter Attack (Ep 4)
8. Han and the Princess (Ep 5)
9. Darth Vader's Theme (Ep 5)
10. Carbon Freeze Chamber (Ep 5)
11. Luke and Leia (Ep 6)
12. Leia Is Wounded (Battle of Endor Part 2) (Ep 6)
13. A New Hope/Closing Credits (Ep 3)

In particular, I like the selection of the first and last tracks, since it brings the movies (and the CD) full circle. If you were to watch the movies in episode order, track 13 would be the last you would hear before track 1, and its themes blend well into Episode 4, as well as containing bits of music from almost all 6 films.

After listening to it, I think tracks 8 & 9 need to be flipped.

Overall, it works rather well. I'd love to edit all the tracks together to trim out unneeded bits and work in others (Cantina Band, Yoda's Theme, Battle for Yavin...). That will likely be my next task.
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After (5/2005)

Before (8/2004)

Okay, so I watched the final two episodes of Enterprise last night, the first of which was the conclusion to "Terra Prime" (TP), and then the final 1 hour of new Enterprise that we'll ever see, titled "These Are The Voyages..." (TATV).

TP was the better of the two episodes...it's a shame that the series has ended, because I would have liked to see Trip and T'pol's characters grow a bit more.

TATV was noble in its efforts, and mixing in TNG with Enterprise was a great touch. However, if the ending was taken away (the "These are the voyages..." speech that intro'd TOS), this would have been ANY OTHER REGULAR SEASON EPISODE. It was not a 'finale' in any way. I liked Trip's sacrifice...I always give kudos to shows that are willing to go to that level with their main characters...and seeing the NCC 1701-D in high defintion was *sweet*...no to mention just seeing it again on TV.

So...here are my thoughts on why Enterprise failed:
- It was not canon with the rest of the Star Trek universe. Why have we never seen Denobulans again in any other series? Or even a mention of them? Why have we not heard of Archer before, or even this Enterprise. I point back to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, with Decker showing Ilia all the previous Enterprises that came before the NCC 1701. Well? Where is the NX01?
- The theme song. While it grew on me...it's not memorable or anything that I'd attach to Star Trek. Plus, it wasn't even written for Star Trek! It was written atleast a year or two earlier, before the show started.
- The title of the show...for awhile. For some time, the show was just "Enterprise", not "Star Trek: Enterprise". It took three seasons for Paramount to correct that.
- The writing...until the 4th season. It seemed like Paramount really didn't care about attaching this series to the rest of the Trek universe. Why? Finally in the 4th season we had stories that started to bridge Enterprise and TOS, including the rather well done "Into the Mirror Darkly". I mean..the Temporal Cold War?
- The "sex appeal". Why did Trek have to even go there, especially with the decon chamber? Sure, they've been doing it ever since TNG (what I call the Troi factor), with Dax, 7 of 9...then Hoshi and T'pol. Was it really needed?
- The time slot. As soon as they moved Enterprise to Friday night, the show was dead. Besides the fact that Friday nights are the second to least watched (Saturday night is the least, and Sunday and Monday are the most watched), and that the X-Files DID start and survive on Friday nights for a long time....that was a much better written show. When they moved it to Friday nights, they put Enterprise up against a very powerful scifi lineup on the SciFi channel, specifically Stargate, which was doing extremely well and was in its 8th season. You think Enterprise is going to survive that?

Before the final episode, there were rumors that Troi and Riker were going to be in the final episode, and that it was going to be a holo-novel. A part of me wished that were the case, and that Enterprise had been one large work of fiction played out on the NCC 1701-D's holodeck. This would explain a lot...(see points above about being 'canon'). I know it would piss a lot of people off...but the way they ended it still did that, with Jolene Blalock (T'Pol) saying publically that the show was ended horribly. I can't blame her.

I did like Enterprise, I really liked Trip, Archer...and the rest of the crew. I really liked the Andorian Shran. He was played wonderfully! I will miss the show...but with Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica starting back up on Friday nights, I'm sure that the feeling will pass.

Test blog

Check out http://www.tropichunt.com today!
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Take the quiz: "Which LOST character are you?"

Charlie
You are Charlie You are an ex-rocker trying to kick a drug habit. While on the island you have met a very nice girl Claire.

NOTE: I do not agree with this assessment. I should have been Locke. Owel. BTW, ignore the spelling errors that are riddled throughout the quiz.

Hey Mr. VJ: " "

Pretty sad for a child of the 80s, donchathink?