Awesomeness, lobster dinner

Allie, her father and I enjoying lobster at New England Lobster Market & Eatery

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CWPSYHTFZ6Z/

Totally Epic, with mustard and ketchup, kinda

 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CVa-Y0EF-fj/

Glazed and chocolate yeast doughs, double-chocolate cake donut, and an apple fritter

 

From original The Donut House in Aurora, Colorado

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CVX9woJF3nZ/

Pastrami and mustard on French Roll with Ruffles and Coca Cola for lunch

 

I love pastrami sandwiches. The shown fountain drink cup is of such quality that I'm actually able to reuse it after multiple washings. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CVX8opuldr2/

The purpose of this blog has changed a bit over the years

The purpose of this blog has changed a bit over the years since Feb 2002.  Early on, I was fascinated by the idea of having an online outlet.  At the beginning, there are literal log entries about what was actually going on in my daily life.  After while, I started covering news items and provided my opinions about stuff.  All the while, there was some self-reflection as well.  I also started a few other blogs that were more focused, including the exploration of alien life, poetry and even my car.  

All of these other blogs have since been retired.  I took postings from those and placed them on this blog.  All but the poetry blog have been deleted.  In fact, around the time I closed down those other blogs, my interest in maintaining a blog waned.  During some of the biggest changes in my life is when I posted the least. 

Then I started using Instagram.  All of a sudden, it was much easier to post about my daily life again, but in a much different way...in the form of images.  Instagram and IFTTT combined allowed me to post every IG image directly onto my blog automatically.  The number of posts increased 10 fold.  I prolly posted text based entries even less than before while I flooded my site with stylized photos.  This continued for several years until IG locked down its API...and then even a bit after that until my other methods of automatically uploading IG posts vanished.

I still post on IG frequently.  Now, to get IG photos on my blog, I actually have to manually add the posts with those photos.  This has actually caused me to post less frequently on IG.  Often, when I transfer the photos, I'll combine related images into a single post on this blog.

In addition to IG, I posted my review of scientific papers about the likelihood of life outside of Earth within our Galaxy.  These posts were very popular and still attract a lot of attention. However, my two most popular posts (that still top my list of activity for this blog)?  Beeper Codes and the related Pager Codes. There's a lot of nostalgia about these codes for some reason.

I'm not writing this post for contemporary consideration.  I absolutely know that this information will not interest anyone today.  But, this ties back to my first sentence above.  The current purpose of this blog, and the one that will stand for here and on?  A while back, I realized I have recorded a snapshot of almost the entire 21th Century to date.  If I keep this blog going (assuming Google continues to support Blogspot), this blog will represent almost the entirety of the first half of the 21th Century.  Nature allowing, I'll try to keep posting until 2052 for a full fifty years.  Although my life may not be very interesting to contemporaries, it may be more interesting as this Century becomes ancient history.  300 years from now, this blog may still be available in some manner within whatever form the Internet will take.  Maybe electronic archeologists will discover my musings buried in archives.  Or, if the world purges the old in such an electronic realm, then this blog or portions thereof may be discovered on some derelict server by dirt-digging archeologists of the 24th Century.  Either way, this is my experience for you.  Yup...you, Magnolia, et al. 

I know the likelihood of the images being kept intact with this blog for a long time are not great, given how Google and other services store them.  I know the likelihood that videos being kept intact are even slimmer.  Here's to hope that somehow forces beyond my control will allow most (all) of this blog to be preserved as a glimpse into the early years of the Information Age.

Insurrection is a good movie with a bad rap

A movie in the Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) theatrical series that often gets derided as being bad is Star Trek IX: Insurrection (STIX).  In my opinion, STIX is actually a very good movie.  The movie doesn't have anything egregiously wrong with the story, acting, setting, special effects or any thing else artistic or technical.  Of course, one could still knit-pick many things within the movie.  STIX is not perfect, but its also not in the same class of movies such as Star Trek V: The Final Frontier or even Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.  It seems that STIX is disliked because its predecessor set a certain type of expectation for Star Trek movies.  That previous movie, Star Trek XII: First Contact, is an action movie.  Arguably, it is an excellent action movie.  

STIX is not First Contact II, which seems to miss the mark with fans of First Contact.  This has harmed STIX's reputation much more than any actual issues with quality.   Taken in isolation as a TNG adventure, STIX is actually very entertaining and more in line with the feel of the TNG TV series than any other TNG movies.  While First Contact is an excellent action movie, STIX is a good adventure movie.

Regarding the rest of the TNG movies, I feel that Star Trek XI: Generations is a jumbled mess that is a cross between Search for Spoke and The Motion Picture.  Additionally, Generations delves deep into space magic to unsuccessfully tie up massive plot holes.  Star Trek X: Nemesis is a movie that seems to shoehorn the TNG characters into a Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (DS9) story.  What I mean is that the story of Nemesis is darker, with more pew-pew.  It also has multiple unrelated or barely-related subplots that are better suited for a season of TV rather than a 2 hr movie.  Additionally, Nemesis seems to be written by writers who forget they could build upon already well-established Romulan lore from both TNG and DS9 for a much more cohesive and succinct story. Nemesis is a bad movie that has a good movie buried somewhere deep within it.  For more on this, see the video called The Amazing Star Trek: Nemesis Theory You've Never Heard Of.

tl;dr: Although STIX is often listed lower on many ranked Star Trek movie lists, or it's outright called "bad", I feel this is not deserved.  STIX is a good movie that got a bad rap because expectations set by First Contact.