I got up “early” this morning, just after 9am, which is early for me on a weekend. I was determined to get the garage cleaned out. The recycling pile and the pile of cardboard boxes had grown to enormous size. Jen got up too, and between the two of us, we got the garage kicked into shape and got the recycling dropped off before lunch. Adam came down from Asheville this afternoon. We hit the driving range in TR. He was hitting the ball pretty good. I absolutely sucked. I seriously didn’t hit a single golf ball that made it look like I had ever played golf before. I’m thinking I may need to take another stab at getting some golf lessons. I had some when I was in high school, but I didn’t get much benefit from them. Now it’s like I can’t swing my back the right way to hit the ball, and all I’m doing is swinging from my shoulders. It doesn’t work. What I did manage to hit, I only got about 125 yards out of regardless of the club I hit… pitching wedge, 125 yards… driver, 125 yards… 6 iron, 125 yards.

After the driving range, we hit the movies for Terminator Salvation. Meh. Probably about as good as T3, but no better. It seemed sort of like they had a number of bullets to fire and explosions to have picked out, then wrote the script to fit them all in. There wasn’t a lot of character development, and what character interaction there was just never built any interest in what happens to the characters. I liked Christian Bale’s Batman, but he actually makes a pretty unlikeable John Conner. By the end, I was almost hoping the terminators would get him so we could have a different lead character in the two sequels.

Dinner was pizza. I “limited” myself to two slices, but each slice was probably close in size to a personal pizza, so it wasn’t saving anything really. Jen and I played a couple of games of the DVD version of “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?” tonight. Out of three rounds, I won the million dollars once. Too bad the show got cancelled before I could be on it (like I’d really go to California and try out). I like those odds.

I guess I’ll read a bit more of “Line War” before going to bed. So far, it’s a good read, but at the halfway point, the goals of all the characters are still mysteries. I’m wondering whether there is going to be a satisfying ending to this book or if Asher had problems coming up with a targeted plot and just started throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck.

Well, after over 4 years, I finally cancelled my World of Warcraft account. A combination of things lead to this: less game playing time in general, fewer of my gaming buddies playing it and more offerings in terms of single and multi-player games vying for my attention. I’ll probably reactivate and play again at some point, either when the next expansion comes out and my friends rejoin, or when I start missing it. I also just watched the trailer of Bioware’s upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. Granted this was a cinematic trailer, but it definitely has raised this game into the realm of potential WoW-killer in my book. I’ll almost certainly be playing that for a year or two (at least) once it’s released. As for MMO’s this year, if Champions Online draws in as many of the Martian Cartel as I suspect it will, I’ll be picking it up. I don’t expect to play it more than a couple of months, though. I just don’t see any costumed superhero MMO meeting my wish list for what I want in a superhero game, so if I get Champions, it won’t be because of a love of the game, it will be to play with my friends.

So, Jen talked me into getting a new Blu-Ray player. I had gotten a Samsung BD-P1400 about 2 years ago, when Best Buy was doing one of their “Buy A Player Get 5 Movies Free” deals. It was an ok player, but it got outdated pretty quickly, it was a pain to update the bios on and generally slow loading movies. She talked me into getting one of the new players with a built in internet connection and the ability to stream movies directly from Netflix, which we were already subscribing to anyway. We ordered a Samsung BD-P1600, which is the current player in the same price range as our old one. I have to say, I’m very impressed, with both the player and the service. The streaming video quality is excellent, and unlike DirecTV, the movie starts playing almost immediately (rather than downloading the entire movie before you can start watching it). Anyway, I’ve watched a few things on it so far and I know Jen has watched a good bit more. We’ve both been very happy with the service. The only real problems with it are a lack of current releases (most everything has been available as a physical rental for 3-6 months, at least) and the fact that streaming a movie eats up so much of the internet bandwidth that my ability to play games while streaming is hindered. It’s tough to enough to follow a movie while playing a game online. Try it with 500+ millisecond latency sometime. Now THAT is distracting!

Well, I think I have everything packed. We’re heading off to Florida in the morning for a vacation in St. Augustine and a side trip to Cape Canaveral to see the space shuttle Atlantis blast off. Be back Wednesday night!

Remember way back in 1999 when we heard there was a Lord of the Rings trilogy in the works. No one thought it would be worth much back then, especially when we heard Peter Jackson, best known then for the low budget horror flick The Frighteners was directing them. Then we saw the first trailer and started thinking “Well, maybe…”. Then we saw the first movie and it was as epic and magical as we hoped. Well, “Star Trek” has been a on a similar roller coaster. A new Star Trek with new actors taking over the classic roles? It’s going to suck. J.J. Abrams, the Cloverfield guy is directing it? Ugh. We see the trailers and “Wow, maybe it won’t suck after all.”

Well, the new Star Trek doesn’t suck. But how good is it? As a movie, it is ok. As a “Star Trek” movie, it is excellent. The new actors make good effort at taking over the roles, without copying the original actors. Only Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy really plays DeForest Kelly’s take on the character, and man does he knock it out of the park. For the other actors, they do a good job but don’t quite reach the level of the originals. Chris Pine’s Kirk matches the swagger of Shatner, but lacks the disarming charm. Quinto’s Spock matches the cool logic of Nimoy, but he can’t match the gravitas of the voice or the flashes of humor. Pegg’s Scotty is funny, but he’s also frigging hyper. Chekov, Uhura and Sulu are good in their roles, but they each get taken in slightly different directions from the originals.

In fact, much of what was laid down in the original series gets taken in a slightly, or drastically, different direction. This is the classic 60’s Star Trek television series dragged into 2009. The bareknuckle fights are here. Bones using his medical bag of tricks on Kirk is here. The short skirts are even here. The flimsy sets are gone, obviously. The special effects shots are great, as we expect anymore. Best of all, the effects aren’t going by too fast… you can actually see and appreciate them. Even Eric Bana’s villian is good. His story isn’t very deep, as most of the movie is devoted to reintroducing the core characters, but he’s no V’ger or Vulcan messiah either. He works, but another 20 minutes or so spent fleshing out him and his story wouldn’t have been a bad thing. Maybe in the Director’s Cut…

Anyway, the disappointments are few. I didn’t like the solution they had Kirk come up with for his academy test (fans will know of which I speak). I also didn’t like a few of Nimoy’s lines. The villian is, as I said, pretty one dimensional. That’s not going to be a big problem for Star Trek fans as there’s so much else here to enjoy for them. It is a bigger problem when it comes to the movie’s goal of bringing new fans in.

For me, the biggest flaw with this movie is that it is a movie. After a mini-series and 4 seasons of the new Battlestar Galactica, it is hard to sit here now and realize we might get 3, maybe 4, movies out of this cast and that is probably it. There really wasn’t much, if anything, in this film that couldn’t have been done for television. BSG proved that. Now I want to see this cast have adventures, not just big-budget popcorn flicks, but ones that let the characters and their interactions show through. I’m saying this down here because the movie is what it is, and what I may wish it would be shouldn’t effect that. That said, this movie would have been a GREAT start for a series, and a 4 hour mini-series would have really allowed time for more development. Some things are rushed for the sake of having everyone in their roles on the ship by the end of the film. It doesn’t really hurt the film, but the pacing could have been so much better.