An Unexpected 3-Year Hiatus

     Hello! Long time, no see. I hope this post finds you well. This Sunday, January 28, 2024 will mark three years since my last post here on The Chaotic Ramblings of a Half-Empty Mind. It was not my intention for the blog to have a three year hiatus. My apologies but, ya know, life. A lot has happened over the past three years, in the world and for me personally.  Instead of reminiscing, we should look to the future but be mindful of the past.

     2024, at least in the United States, is a Presidential Election year. Not only is it a year that the voting population of the country will vote for President of the United States, but also Representatives for the U.S. House of Representatives, the lower house of the United States Congress, and one-third of the U.S. Senate, the upper house of the U.S. Congress. Furthermore, many states in the United States will elect state officials such as Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Treasurer, Auditor, and state legislatures. Also, many cities and smaller communities will elect local officials as well. Finally, tax issues and ballot referendums will be decided on. It has been and will continue to be an active election year. Regardless if you have made a decision on any of the electoral races in your state or if you haven't made a decision at all; DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!

     Also this year marks the "five-year" anniversary of a several movies; Ghostbusters, Gremlins and Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom turn 40, Batman (1989) & Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade turn 35 and Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace & The Matrix turn 25. As a nearly lifelong Star Trek fan, it would be negligent of me not to mention that five of the movies celebrate "five-year" anniversaries this year as well; Star Trek: The Motion Picture turns 45, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock turns 40, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier turns 35, Star Trek: Generations turns 30, and STAR TREK (2009) turns 15. There are probably older films that celebrate a "five-year" anniversary this year but these are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. 

     As for the blog; I make no promises of future posts during the year. With that said it is an election year so I may actually post, particularly the night of the General Election in November. But, again, no promises. While you wait though in great anticipation for the next post; consider visiting my website: LibraryTrekker's Webase. It's pretty simple looking but you might enjoy the information and imagination that is housed there.

Until next time, "Live Long and Prosper".

Challenger: 35 Years Later

 

It was cold, bitterly cold. During the previous night, the temperature had dropped to at least 28°F (-2.2°C). In some places in the world, north of the equator, that was normal for January but not along the Atlantic coast of the U.S. State of Florida, where the average low was between 50°F and 55°F (10°-12.8°C). On the cold morning of 28 January 1986 at 11:38:03 AM Eastern Time, seven brave souls; Francis “Dick” Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe, were beginning a journey toward space aboard their spacecraft… their Space Shuttle known as Challenger.

The Challenger 7

Sadly, their journey would abruptly be cut short 73 seconds in when aerodynamic forces tore Challenger apart following a sequence of events that could not be stopped once the Shuttle had launched. Seven lives were lost that day, seven families lost someone most dear to them, a nation mourned then asked ‘Why?’

The families, the nation and the world would learn the causes of Challenger’s loss and NASA would repair the physical issues with the Shuttle and the internal organizational issues that led to a tragedy that should have never occurred in the first place.

When Challenger was lost, I was a young kid who was fascinated by space and believed in NASA’s vision: “To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity”. To this day, I still believe in NASA’s vision and fascinated by space and all the wonders it beholds. However, the 28^th of January will haunt me until my dying day as will the 1^st of February, the day Columbia was lost in 2003. Ten years ago, I wrote on this very blog the following:

“Today is a day of remembrance and reflection. A day in which all citizens of our world should take a moment to remember and reflect not just on the crew of Challenger, but on the crews of Apollo 1 and Columbia as well. The men and women of these spacecraft made the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of expanding our knowledge and exploration of the final frontier.”

These words still ring true ten years later, and I hope for all time. The sacrifice that these exceptional men and women made should never be forgotten as we continue to explore the final frontier and prepare for humanity’s return to the Moon and its’ first landing on Mars. Take a moment to remember, especially if you are old enough to remember, that cold Florida morning when seven brave travelers who began a journey to the stars only to pass through the gates of heaven.

Live Long and Prosper.

The End of an Era in Personal Website Building

     After more than 16 years online, I chose to shut down my old Angelfire.com website which had been one of the earliest iterations of “LibraryTrekker’s Star Trek InfoBarn”, originally known as “LibraryTrekker’s Star Trek Web Database”.

     As I was logging in to angelfire’s website builder control panel for the first time in years this week, I realized that the login page did not have a secure connection. This really concerned me. It made no sense, at least to me, that Lycos (the owner of angelfire.com) didn’t use a secure connection for customers’ login. That is cybersecurity 101, I would think. I’ve never taken an actual cybersecurity course but every other site I log into has a secure login page.

     After logging in and looking around the control panel and other portions of the site builder I discovered that the amount of storage that was available to me was only 20 MB and I had used 13.2 MB. That’s 66% of the total storage available. At this point I should mention that this was a free account and there are account types that a person could pay for with increasing amount of storage with a maximum amount of 5GB at a yearly cost of $109.45; so, 20 MB for a free account is understandable… for 2003, not 2020. The host for the current iteration of the “InforBarn” and the entire “LibraryTrekker’s Webase” for that matter, provides 512MB of storage for free accounts. As of this month (January 2020), “LibraryTrekker’s Webase”, in its entirety, uses 103.9MB of storage on the host’s servers, that 20.29% of the 512MB provided. I can’t image needing more than the 512 but no one knows what the future holds.

     Subsequent to browsing through the angelfire.com site builder, I logged out and visited the actual site. Clicking through the site and seeing the banner ads was annoying but each link I clicked within the site resulted in a popup ad appearing every. Single. Time. The ad was not being blocked by the browser I was using either so there must have code built into the pages that bypassed the popup blocker.

     With these issues and concerns uncovered, I chose to shut down the site and delete the account. Once the account was deleted, there was a brief moment of sadness because I had ended something I had created while in college which had been a fairly good time in my life. However, the site can be resurrected. Ten years ago, I saved the files for the site from angelfire.com and still have them with no changes from the online versions of the files. If I choose to resurrect the site as a subsection of the current “Webase”, I’ll have to do some major HTML code maintenance on the pages before I upload them to my current webhost and that will take time. Right now, I have all the time in the world do to it but, there’s no time like the present. 😏

Until the next blog post from yours truly, “Live Long and Prosper.”

Twenty-five Years of “Two Captains. One Destiny.”

     Twenty-five years ago, November 18, 1994 was a Friday. Four films were released in theaters that day as part of the holiday movie season. One of the films was a remake of the Christmas classic, “Miracle on 34^th Street”. The second film was the animated movie “The Swan Princess” with the third film being called “Léon: The Professional”. These three films, along with the fourth, were in the top ten of films in release the weekend of November 18-20 that year however; the three aforementioned films grossed just over $10.5 million combined for their first weekend of release. The fourth film released on that Friday earned $23,116,394 during that weekend in the United States, more than twice the other new films released and was the Number 1 film that weekend. By the end of its run in theaters the film would earn $75,671,125, domestically and an additional $42.4 million worldwide for a total gross of $118.1 million. That film was Star Trek: Generations, the seventh film of the Star Trek franchise.

This image is copyrighted to Paramount Pictures

      Generations was released by Paramount Pictures as “A Rick Berman Production” with its’ story by Rick Berman, Ronald D. Moore & Brannon Braga and its’ screenplay by Ronald D. Moore & Brannon Braga. The cast of the film included Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Malcolm McDowell, James Doohan, Walter Koenig and William Shatner. The film served as a bridge between the original Star Trek television cast, who starred in the first six films, and the cast of its successor, Star Trek: The Next Generation which had ended six months earlier.

     At the time of the film’s release, it received mixed reviews from critics. On the positive side, Michael Marriott of Newsweek said that the film was “A super nova of unpredictable sci-fi thrills! …and big-bang special effects.”  Avis Meyer of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reviewed the film as being “the big kahuna” for Star Trek fans and “…’astronomically’ ambitious: a star-crossed cauldron’s brew of old and new…” Unfortunately, there were some critics who were not as kind; such as Susan Wloszczyna of USA Today, who wrote “Generations feels like a flimsy device to ensure Trek’s earnings continue to live long and prosper.” The famous/infamous movie critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that the film was “undone by its narcissism”.

 

     Personally, I enjoyed the film, then and now. Twenty-five years ago, I watched the film on opening day (I still have the ticket stub) at a theater and a movie theater chain that no longer exists. Back then it cost $3.25 for an Adult Matinee, today it costs nearly $8.50 for the same ticket. Last night, I watched the film again for the umpteenth time but for the first time in a number of years and still enjoyed it. But being the lifelong Star Trek fan that I am, I’m biased. In her review at the time; critic Susan Wloszczyna also wrote that Generations was an “overblown TV episode”. I disagree. On a budget of $35 million, the second highest budget for a Star Trek film at that time, this motion picture was well-produced and well-acted; deserving praise, not disdain, then or now. As part of the Star Trek franchise and as motion picture, I think that it has held up well over the past twenty-five years. We will see how well it holds up over the next two and a half decades.

Happy 25^th Anniversary, Star Trek: Generations. Continue to “Live Long and Prosper.”

P.S. “Life forms. You tiny little life forms, you precious little life forms… where are you?” 😁