My Thoughts on Star Trek (SPOILER ALERT)

The view of the hull from the bridge of the Kelvin was interesting. Are
these windows with a HUD, or viewscreens? The scenes before
the main title were excellent. One little nit-pick: Kirk's mother is
the only one watching the Kelvin get destroyed. One of the doctors was
not human, but the other appeared to be. I would have thought he would
be watching.

Bad:
Sigh. Nero is another in the long list of paper villians. I expected
it, though, because the time needed to develop main characters. But
the recently late Ricardo Montablan still wears the mantle of best
Trek villian.

The scene with the car was a throw away. It did take me a couple of days
to place the voice on the other end of the phone. Ethan Phillips?

Engineering on the Enterprise looks like a brewery. Huge tanks with
workstations in front? And the bridge was !BRIGHT WHITE!. I liked
the bridge of the Kelvin and I hope the Enterprise is toned down
in the next movie.

Why can Spock Prime see Vulcan destroyed from Delta Vega? Is it a moon,
or a space station?

Sigourney Weaver in Galaxy Quest is screaming in my head "What is the
purpose
of this?!?" after Kirk and Scotty beam in. I would have prefered an
intruder
alert and a chase through the ship. It seemed a little contrived.

The climatic battle with Nero seemed easy. At least throw the Enterprise
in front of the missles. On the other hand, there was no transporter
malfunction cliffhanger where Spock or Kirk can't make it back onboard
until the very last second.

James Kirk hasn't finished Starfleet Academy before he is made
captain of Starfleet's flagship? That's a leap. However, Spock Prime
is standing in back watching over it all. I had the feeling he had
been manipulating events ala Darth Sidious/Palpatine without the
evil revenge endgame.

Good:
The acting was superb. The last scene of Chris Pine stepping on the
bridge had me thinking "Wow, that's James T. Kirk!". I knew Quinto
would do a good Spock and was still pleasantly surprised by the
way he did it. The scene at the Vulcan Science Academy was a
favorite. Salanda had a bigger part than I expected, but was
well done. Cho was more limited and still good. Yelstin as Chekov
was over the top at first, but came back down. Pegg was more of
a comic relief Scotty, still the character worked. Sarek (can't come
up with the actors name right now) was just the right touch
when needed. I would have been happy to leave Chris Pike in the
captain's chair. Bruce Greenwood was my favorite in this movie.
I hope he has a part in the next one.

I could not help getting a little choked up at Nimoy's first line, and
he assumed the character that made him famous with ease. Even the scene
between Quinto and Nimoy is touching. This was the perfect part for
Nimoy's Spock. There was the puppetmaster overtone although
it was used to put things right.

So my final analysis: Not quite up to the Wrath of Khan, but
a good second. The flaws were technical for the most part, or
a matter of taste.

One season down

Indoor soccer is over. Patrick's team ended up in third place, losing out to a girls team and a La Roca team. Not bad overall. Thomas's team did not win at all, but he did get a few goals, so he is happy. They did win a few futsol games, and they still have a couple more to go.

 

Basketball has one more tournament in Pocatello (March 20-22). Patrick missed the first game of the tournament last week, and sat on the bench the next game. I was a little upset over it, because I have yet to see him play (although he has played), and I felt he didn't really want to. For the final game, the coach put him in the fourth period with the score 15-17 in our favor. He played the whole period, and the final score was 15-25. The opponent, Rowland Hall, did not get a single basket. He was in the face of each player who had the ball. They were forced to take long shots, and the very tall point guard got most of the rebounds.

 

Rachel has been busy with Girl Scouts, either helping other scouts or learning to be a counselor. Her top braces are off, and the results are stunning. She spent the last two months working on her science project. It was about the effects of color on memory. I thought she did well, but one of the judges (a high school boy) thought she did it at the last minute and marked her down. She seems to have had fun with it.

End of Entry

January to date

Patrick is taking snowboarding lessons. He started two weeks ago, and is enjoying it. The instructor is the guy who sits next to me at work. After the first lesson he walked around for two days saying 'Ow', 'ow'. Apparently he fell on his butt quite a bit. The next session went much better, although April was not happy because on one run he 'caught air'. I didn't take him up last Sunday because of the rain and snow.

 

I usually run into people I know from the kids' school. Most of them ask where Rachel is. She had some skiing lessons a couple of years ago, but feels embarrassed that she isn't as good as her friends. A friend's of April daughter offered to teach her away from all her classmates, and she jumped at it. I hope she can gain some confidence.

 

It's been a busy month. Patrick is on the basketball team, and they have games and practice twice a week. April is not happy with the coach. Patrick has had about a minute of playing time in the three games played so far. He's not as good as the 'fab five', as April called them, but she thinks he should have some playing time each game. He doesn't care, but she feels it's not worth our time to get him to practices and games only to watch him sit there.

 

The schedule for the week this month has been: Monday April goes to class, and I run Thomas to soccer practice and then Patrick to basketball practice. Tuesday April runs Patrick to a basketball game, and then I pick him up, get him something to eat (Sizzler has been the choice), and then go to scouts while April goes to class. Wednesday April does homework and I take Thomas to scouts. Rachel has managed to upset him on at least two Wednesdays so that he hides in his room and we miss it. Thursday April takes Patrick to his basketball game, and then goes to class. Friday has been a down evening, although this coming Friday is Thomas's Pinewood Derby. Saturday is spent at the 12^th street indoor soccer with games for Patrick and Thomas. Sunday I run Patrick to Snowbasin for snowboard lessons. And repeat.

 

This last Saturday Patrick had a game at 8:30 AM playing a girls team. Both this team and his are at the top of the league. It was a close match, but the girls won 5-3. The coach was upset about playing a girls team. The girls knocked the boys around (include Patrick getting pushed over twice), but none of the girls were even pushed aside. It's a double standard, but at least the boys had a competitive game and they did make some mistakes.

 

Thomas's game was at 10 AM. His team lost again, but did score three. I see the same sort of mistakes in his team as in Patrick's. No girls on the other team, though.

 

Patrick had his Pinewood Derby after Thomas's game. He drew the design on the wood, and I cut it, polished the axles and wheels, lined them up, glued more weight on, put the graphite on, and he swiped the sandpaper over the car a few times. He thought about painting it Saturday morning. He was pretty pleased when it came in first or second every race. After the race he went to a neighbors birthday party.

 

Rachel went with April to the hospital to work on her science project. She was pretty happy by the response, and seems to be having some fun with it. It was not what April wanted, but she is the one doing it, so I think it's good.

 

We got the van back last week. The insurance company agreed the transmission problem was due to their repairs, but the transmission place was surprised that most of the issues have gone away. They say they will pay for further repairs if we have problems in the future. I'd like that in writing, though.

 

End of Entry

Legend of Bill

David Reddick did a comic called 'The Trek Life' for Startrek.com, and does several others including working on Garfield. He has guests do comics for him on Thursdays, and Kevin Hancock had his put up this week.
http://www.legendofbill.com/

Congrats, Kevin.

Keyboard

Warriors have no use for USB!
http://tinyurl.com/6wzzff

Since U Been Gone

The last post was one month ago. The Christmas break was also a break in the kids activities, so it was good for April and me as well.

On December 13th, while driving to the airport to pick up April, a lady in the middle lane tried to break for a slow traffic around an accident on I-15 in Clearfield, spins her car around to the right lane and directly in front of me. The collision was low speed, so fortunately no one was hurt. She had insurance, so no worries there. The left fender of the van was smashed, and the yellow-green liquid pooling under the van told me the radiator was broken. I called April, and she got the toll free number for our insurance company, and I filed the claim. The lady on the phone told me where the van needed to go, and assured me the a case manager would talk to me on Monday. Not so. I called the autobody place, and they had already talked to our insurance company. They would need to subcontract the engine work, but the body work would be done by Friday at the latest. By Wednesday, April called the local office of the insurance company because we had not heard from them. She was reamed because we had taken the van to a shop, and told the adjuster should have been out to see the van before anything was done. She told them we followed what their company rep told us to do that day. One good peice of advice April got was to call the other lady's insurance company and make sure she filed a claim. April did, and yes, they did know about it, it appeared to be thier claimants fault, and they would be happy to reimburse us for a car rental, towing, and other expenses. The receipts where faxed to them, but I haven't seen anything yet.

The van was ready on Friday. April and I picked it up after the shop closed, and I noticed the transmission was not right. We called the adjuster, who called back and told us to take it to whereever we liked to have it looked at. We went to our regular service place, and he told us the transmission fluid did not look good, but he didn't have the tools to do much else. He recommended a place in West Haven. I dropped the van off, and told them it had been in an accident but didn't give any details. The guy told us it would be a day or so before he could get to it. On Wednesday, he called me to asked if I know the radiator had been replaced. Yes. Well, the transmission fluid was almost gone from the van, and there is a hose that would have to have been disconnected for the radiator to be replaced. He thinks the fluild drained out, and was not replaced. He's going to talk to the adjusted about it.

On Monday as well, I was almost finished shoveling the driveway that night and slipped on a patch of ice at the end of the driveway. I landed on the point of my right elbow, and wrenched my shoulder. I am able to raise my arm all the way up once, but not twice. Rachel slipped on the ice at school and cut her leg up. Patrick also slipped on the ice at school and has a big bruise on his left knee. Topping that off, he lost one lens in his glasses. The winter is not going well.

On the bright side, Rachel got her top braces off, and her teeth look great.

End of Entry

Have you ever read Milton, Captain?

To all of the Trek fans out there, today is the 400th anniversary of John Milton's Paradise Lost. If you don't know from the title, that's the question Khan put to Kirk at the end of TOS's Space Seed.

"It is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven." - Lucifer

Sci-Fi's No. 1 Fanboy Dies at 92

Forrest J Ackerman

I'm not a politician

Apparently I know too much for the job...
US officials flunk test of American history, economics, civics

Civil Literacy Quiz - You answered 30 out of 33 correctly — 90.91 %

Answers to Your Missed Questions:
Question #28 - "removed"
Question #29 - "removed"
Question #33 - "removed"

Lotta Updates

Catching up now. The kids got their grades. Everyone did well,
although Patrick was upset because of an A- in English (the rest
were As). He was much happier after getting the Principal's Award for
highest GPA, plus Student of The Month, plus High Honors.

I did the rest of the Engineering scout achievement for Patrick's den.
The first part was done at one of the other kids' house, where they
are putting in a new garage. The boys got to operate a backhoe, and
use some surveying equipement. I did electrical and structural,
which was not as fun as operating heavy equipment. They did get to
build bridges with paper, strong enough to run Hot Wheels cars over.
Electrical did not go quite as planned, but I hope I got some ideas
across. Four more months and he is done with Cub Scouts. He still
does not want to do Boy Scouts, but that may change.

Patrick fainted in school a week ago. He's been having problems with
headaches and dizziness. The doctor thinks it's hypogylcemia, and
suggested a snack mid-morning. He is still having problems, so he
is off to the doctor again. He did the Olympic Development Program
tryouts. He was not happy about it, but I wanted to see how he
measured up. I thought he did well. I doubt he will get picked but
it was useful.

Thomas, who has been struggling with homework, did get high marks in
in most areas. He is a year away from getting A, B, and the like, but
he should do As when it happens. His SAT scores were a little above
average except for vocabulary, where he scored in the bottom 10%.
I'm not sure why, but he may have misread the instructions, or
simply got into a hurry to finish. It's something to keep an eye
on.

Then there is Rachel. Her grades were good, but she is adopting the
typical teenage 'I don't care' attitude. She spends hours doing
homework, then gets 0 credit because she doesn't turn it in. She has
made both her brothers mad because she didn't turn in the lunch menu
twice, so for the last three months they did not get hot lunch (and
won't until January). I pulled her internet access for a few days
because of the homework. April has handed out other punishments,
but she is still apathetic a lot of the time. We have what, 8 more
years of this? She has another week to come up with a science
project. So far all suggestions are met with 'Lame.'

She did put on a father-daughter dinner as a Girl Scout project
with a friend. It was a fair amount of work for them with minimal
help from adults. I thought it went well. She did not get much feedback
so all I have is my opinion.

April has been doing support for PDAs at work. I warned her that
once begun, she would be stuck with it. So far, it seems that I am
right. The up side is that when her laptop power plug broke the
center pin, she was not against trying to take it apart to see
if we could fix it. We were stymied by one screw that seemed to
have no way of being removed.

End of Entry

The new President

Congratulations to Barack Obama. I enjoyed the speech he gave, no 'we have a mandate from the people' crap. John McCain did a good concession speech, marred by boos and catcalls. I felt embarrassed for the Republicans because that. Show the same class and honor McCain did.

Maytag Repairman

One Saturday a few weeks ago during a rain/snowstorm, the power went
out. I was in the middle of doing laundry, and when it came back on
I started the dryer. It ran for ten seconds, then the lights flashed
and it stopped. You could start it again, and it would do the same
thing. At this time, we can't afford a $100 charge for someone to
come out, much less the charge for parts and labor. So we did
research on the Internet. The first conclusion was the thermal
fuse. April ordered the $6 part, and we waited a week for it to
arrive. I replaced that last Saturday in an hour (it's
in the back underneath the drum). No joy. More research and a post to
a forum pegged the problem as a faulty control board. April found one
for $89, plus $12 S&H. It arrived yesterday, and I spent 20 minutes
replacing that, and lo, we have a functional dryer again. I was pleased
by how easy the swap is. Six screws to pull the back panel off, and the
4 inch square board just snaps in. The hard part is that the small part
has 8 connectors going to it, three on the front, one each for the sides
and bottom, and two on the top edges.

So my apologies to the lonely Maytag repairman, but I don't need your
services.

Soccer Update

Soccer Update
The last month has been heavy soccer. I'm talking 6 days a week, I was
taking the boys to games or practice. The school team improved quite
a bit, but never won a game. We played a tournament in Sandy, but were
short players and came in last.

Rachel had to go with me to one of the school game practices, and
had enough fun that she came back for the rest of them. She's pretty
good. I wish she would play on a team.

Patrick and his friend Trey went a few nights from the school game to
comp games. This is because the league realized it was getting dark
very early, and moved the games up from the end of the month. The
comp team finished in fourth place out of nine, and
the games that were lost were only by a goal or two (there were a
couple of exceptions where they played badly and were beat by five
or more, but those teams were not in the top bracket). The last
game was a blowout for us, 9-0. It was pretty obvious after five
minutes when the ball had not been on our side of the field at all.
The second half the coach was trying to get all the kids to score.
Patrick, who didn't score much this year although had a ton of assists,
make a beautiful shot across the goal box and into the corner of the net.

Thomas's team did very well, and he is improving. He did goalie in
the last game, and let the game-winning goal in. I didn't think there
was much he could have done to prevent it short of tackling the kid.
April was a little unhappy with the coach because he threatened to
keep Thomas out when she was caught up at work and didn't get him
to the game until ten minutes before it started. The coach wants
them there thirty minutes to warm up and strategize. I agree with
her, it is not his fault if he is ready to go and has no transportation.

We are done for a few weeks, and I think we need the break. Patrick
is disappointed, but also happy to be home at night.

From John's Blog

The results are no surprise to me, but I can tell who said what.
<table style="height: 202px; width: 500px; padding: 4px; border: 1px solid black; background: url(http://images.perturb.org/election/flag_background.jpg); color: black;"><tr><td><img src="http://images.perturb.org/election/obama.jpg" alt="Obama" style="border: 1px solid black; margin-right: 5px;" /></td><td><div style="color: black; font-size: 10pt; font-family: sans-serif; line-height: 125%;">You preferred Obama's statements <b>78%</b> of the time<br />You preferred McCain's statements <b>22%</b> of the time<br /><br />Voting purely on the issues you should vote <b>Obama</b><br /><br />Who would <b>you</b> vote for if you voted on the issues?<br /><br />Find out <a href="http://www.perturb.org/election/" style="color: #001491;"><b>now</b></a>!</div></td></tr></table>

RIP Smokey

Smokey the cat passed away last night. She has been very sick the last couple of weeks, and not eating much at all. I've been trying to hand feed her, but she has trouble swallowing. Yesterday, April found her on the floor randomly batting at the air. She snapped and growled at April, so we left her alone. This morning, she was gone.

Happy 50th NASA!

The National Aeronauntics and Space Administration has been around for a half century now.

Crushed

The school game was a mess. Of course, the other team has been playing together all summer, whereas we just started, and I don't think anyone on our team has played 11 v 11 (I know I have not). So we lost 8-0. There are some things to work on, and I need to find formations for that many kids. Rachel said one of her teacher said they were "crushed".

End of Entry

Soccer and scouts

You knew this was coming. Two of the main subjects here. Thomas is on a competitive team, and Patrick is on a competitive team and the school team. This makes for games and/or practices six days a week. The other little catch: I am coaching the school team. It's the equivalent of a JV team. The kids are in all ranges of ability, which makes for a challenge. Our first game is today against Rowland Hall.

Patrick comp team has been annoying. At this point, we should have played four games, but we only played the second last night. The other games have been rescheduled because players can't make them, even though the schedule has been out for a month. Last spring Patrick got a lecture about not supporting the team because he didn't show for a game when we had less than a day's notice, and I told them he had other commitments. On top of that, the last practice one coach couldn't make because of a family emergency, and the other had to leave halfway into it. I get asked out of the as he is leaving to take over. With no idea what they are supposed to be doing, so I set up a scrimmage. After a half-hour, the parents wanted to call it quits. I agreed, and it ended. One of the new kids walked up to me and said, "That sucked. I hope you never run practice again." I kept my mouth shut, but I am sure I can make his wish come true.

We have not been to scouts in a while, and with training the same time as the meetings, we won't for a while yet. I tried one of the pack
meetings over the summer, and the kids were bored to tears. Patrick does not want to continue, but I told him he should complete the cub scout program, and then we will decide. I do agree that it is not very fun. The book seems a little out of the 1950s sometimes. When I compare the program to Girl Scouts, it lacks a lot. Rachel has done week long camp trips for years now. Patrick did one overnight camp. Rachel went to Savanna. The Cub Scouts are not allowed to take trips. It seems the girls have a lot more freedom and fun than the boys.

The Horror

Saturday I took Rachel to Newgate Mall to meet with her friends. They went to see a movie, and then hung out there for a few hours. I was there most of the time. It's not easy, since my idea of shopping is go in, get what you came to get, get out. Teenage girls don't do that. I tried to hang back while still keeping an eye on them, and staying out of the conversation about boys. Not what I would consider fun, but all part of the job.

Update for Dani

I just about ran over Dani and Kevin at Smith's last week. They were headed to see about some problems Kevin is having (there's a list! :).
It sounds like the docs don't think it's cancer, so that is good news indeed. The bad news is they had to put their dog down. I am sorry to hear it, and I know how hard it is.