Yesterday, Jenn performed an act of sublime grace; never to be repeated. She removed, without damage, the CD-case sticker/sealer from the edge of the Green Day American Idiot CD.
I’ve never heard of this being done before. I’m sure it will never be done again.
Last night I saw the Indigo Girls live at the Chastain Park Ampitheater, Atlanta! This culminates a 14 year odyssey to see them perform in concert. For one reason or another, I’ve been missing their concerts since 1991. Now, I’m a satisfied man.
Their concert was excellent. They are a muscicians group, not a performance group, if you understand the difference. They had no bling on stage; no pyrotechnics. Just them and a gazillion different guitars (and a harmonica, once).
They were opened by Magnapop which didn’t blow up my skirt. However, Magnapop apparently alternates with another group, Three 5 Human, who were excellent. They played a few songs with Indigo Girls at the end of the concert. We’re going to look into them.
An amusing story from the concert: The last song played, by Indigo and Three-5, started up and everyone was singing. Jenn and I looked at each other. I asked her, “Should I know this song? I don’t recognize it.” Jenn replied, “Maybe it’s on the new album” (which I don’t have yet).
Then the chorus comes and we realize that the song is “Midnight Train to Georgia.”
I guess we had better learn that one.
As mentioned in my post concerning Dragon*Con ’05, I saw two of the actors from Battlestar Galactica over the weekend: Tricia Helfer and Richard Hatch (not from Survivor). I refuse to link to his website because it belongs on webpagesthatsuck.com. If you must see it, go to http://www.richardhatch.com/ but don’t if you’re on dialup. You are warned.
Mr. Hatch played Apollo for the original Battlestar Galactica and now plays Tom Zarek for the new one. He does a good job on the show with his character. I am suitably impressed. He’s not all that in person, though. I showed up for his panel (which was supposed to be with Jamie Bamber and James Callis, but they cancelled at the last minute. Apparently they were called back to Vancouver for shooting), and expected to hear about Battlestar or things related to Battlestar.
Unfortunately, we got a lot of Richard Hatch talking at us. He had some interesting stories, but he sounded more like an inspirational speaker than someone answering questions about his work. It got rather boring after a while.
I was amused that he kept staring at Jenn, though. I think he liked her.
Tricia Helfer was much more interesting. Her panel was on Sunday. She was a stand in for Jamie Bamber and nicely flew out to give us a Battlestar fix. She answered questions about the show–without revealing any spoilers–and herself. She mentioned that the Pegasus storyline would be coming up in an episode or two, but we knew that already (Pegasus is another surviving Battlestar).
I asked her the following question: “We have seen five human-looking Cylons. That leaves seven. Do you, Tricia, know who they are, and if so, have we seen them on screen?”
She answered that she knew who one of them was, and she did not think that that character had been on screen yet. She also said that the actors are always the last people to know about the plot twists and anyone we’ve already seen could be a Cylon. I’m still waiting for Adama to turn into a Cylon. That or Colonel Tye’s wife.
I’m glad I went to those panels, even if Richard Hatch was a bit preachy. Tricia Helfer was engaging–and nice looking!
Dragon*Con, 2005, was a blast! I had no idea it would be as totally rocking awesome as it was! I’ve already made reservations in one of the conference hotels for 2006 (the main hotel is already ENTIRELY sold out of rooms for that weekend).
Until now, I’ve been a purveyor of strict game cons; never a full-up sci-fi/fantasy/pop-cult convention. That has officially changed due to the sheer amount of fun I had last weekend. It was non stop, and the only mistake I made was not spending Friday night at one of the convention hotels. There is something quite amusing about walking down Peachtree Street in Atlanta on the way to Breakfast and seeing a Stormtrooper, followed by a Klingon, cross the road.
A brief list of what I did at this Con: A reading by Robert Jordan from Knife of Dreams; A reading by Anne and Todd McCaffrey from the new Pern book; A reading by Peter Beagle from his new book; A talk by Richard Hatch ostensibly about Battlestar Galactica, but really about the Philosophy of Richard Hatch (man does that guy like to hear himself talk); A Q&A session by Tricia Helfer concerning Battlestar and her character and about working with everyone else on the set; The Dawn lookalike contest; concerts by Belle Morte, Cruxshadows, and Combichrist; The art show; lots of gaming; playing Are You a Werewolf? (a lot); staring at people; ogling costumes; watching the parade down Peachtree; admiring the opposite sex; getting photographed with my Noodly Appendage T-shirt on; running into Lou Ferrigno on Sunday morning in the elevator with him looking much the worse for wear; getting robbed by the Hyatt (bring your own booze); watching the Killer Robots play; Blowing up the USS New Jersey!
People Met and Spoken with: Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time), Tricia Helfer (#6 from Battlestar Galactica), Lou Ferrigno (The Hulk), Mike Lewandowski (the Man)
People Met and Watched: Anne McCaffrey (Pern), Todd McCaffrey (Pern), Richard Hatch (Apollo on Old Battlestar, Zarek on New), Marina Sirtis (Star Trek), Peter Beagle (The Last Unicorn)
People Seen: James & Oliver Phelps (Harry Potter), Kevin Sorbo (Hercules), Margaret Weis (Dragonlance), Dick Gordon (Apollo 12)
The list just keeps going. That is maybe half of the people I recognized. The dude who played Chewbacca was there. Young Boba Fett was there. Darrell Sweet was there. So many people were there!
The 501st Legion, A.K.A. “Vader’s Fist”, put in a showing and did some charity work, collecting money for the Red Cross to aid Katrina victims.
It is now my goal to convince as many of my friends who don’t live here to get their butts down to Atlanta for next year’s Dragon*Con. I’ll be there, and I hope they will be, too.
My Flying Spaghetti Monster: Touched By His Noodly Appendage T-Shirt is here! (Jenn bought the pirate vs. global temperature mug for school)
I plan to wear in to DragonCon this weekend and wander around the X Track, which consists of people who believe in psychic abilities and ghosts (although there is at least one Skeptics session).
Ever have a really bad day at work? Drop a large asteroid on it!
Next door neighbor using your lawn as a leaf depository? Slam a 100 km ice comet into him at solar escape velocity!
Go to Solar System Collisions for unending fun!
The following website was brought to my attention by the Bad Astronomer. It is called The Art of Science and it contains some very cool images.
As a continuing series of posts concerning Intelligent Design, I found this site via Bad Astronomy.
Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is definitely the way to go for realizing the truth about life.
I plan on getting one of their t-shirts for wearing at DragonCon ’05!
This past Saturday was an interesting day for me. In celebration of my 20th birthday (I’m 1F until Tuesday), I decided to give myself the gift of leaping from an airplane. This was something that I had always wanted to do, at least once, before I croaked. Therefore, I made an appointment to take the Accelerated Free Fall course from the Atlanta Skydiving Center in Cedartown, GA.
Google Maps link showing the airport and the Atlanta Skydiving Center. You can see the small orange cross which marks the target area.
I and two other gentleman participated in the first step of the AFF program, conveniently known as AFF1. This involved basic knowledge of skydiving, the rig, proper positioning, procedures, and emergency procedures. All in all, the classroom aspect of the course took about 4 hours, and then we were ready to make our first jump.
I received my flight load assignment (#10) and my instructor (Katie) took me through the procedures one last time for exiting the aircraft and going through the skydive (She’s very admanant on remembering to take deep breaths). Then we walked up and climbed aboard the aircraft that would deliver me to my Date With Destiny.
Without checking my logbook I can’t say for certain which aircraft we went to altitude in, but I’m sure that it had onboard stomach-butterfly-generation equipment. Said butterflies were merrily churning away as the plane zoomed up to altitude.
Aside: I’ve never been in an aircraft before that wasn’t a commercial jetliner or a Cessna. This one beat the pants off them all for willingness to get UP in the sky, NOW!! Quite a ride it was.
As we approached the jump altitude of 14,000 ft, my jumpmaster and mistress (JM), Danny and Katie, made sure I was checked out with what I was going to be doing exiting the aircraft. I’m sure part of the reason they do this is to make sure you are still breathing and that you remember what you spent all that time on the ground learning. Danny had fun making ribald jokes at my, and everyone elses, expense. Lesson’s learned: Don’t wear your goggles until you’re almost ready to go; they fog up.
At 10,500 ft. AGL , a team of four skydivers went tumbling out the door and the plane churned the rest of the way to 14,000. Two more people, one skydiver, one video person, made their jump, then it was my turn.
I must say, once I was up and moving, I was fine. Of course, it was quite a rush to get my feet positioned against the edge of the door and stick my entire body into the airstream coming off the prow of the aircraft (the door was to port, by the way), with the hull sandwiched between my hands. I faced forward in the correct arched position, checked in with my main JM, checked out with my reserve JM, then I stepped out into the wild blue yonder (correctly arched of course).
The rush of falling from the plane was awesome! I took a few seconds to make sure I was correctly positioned, performed the HARM check (heading, altitude, reserve JM, main JM) and did my three practice touches on my pilot chute handle. Well, I should say that I *tried* do do the three practice touches. It’s a lot more difficult to find the handle with 105 knots of airspeed rushing past you, pushing your hand around. My main JM (Danny) helped me find the handle for those three touches.
After that, it was relax, breathe, extend my legs a bit, and enjoy the ride. I found myself keeping a close eye on the altimeter; I suppose I was being paranoid, but I didn’t feel like screwing up the skydive by forgetting to do my pull at 6,000 ft. At 6,000 ft, I did my wave-off, and pulled the pilot chute (without assistance from Danny) and waited for what seemed a long time before THWUMP! my canopy deployed.
(I realized once I was halfway down under canopy that I’d forgotten to count to three and then look over my shoulder to make sure the canopy was deploying correctly. Whoops.)
The first thing I said to myself after pulling the chute was, “oof,” as the canopy inflated, then, “Holy crap,” as I realized I’d just fallen 9,000 feet. Wow. I reached up, pulled the steering loops out of their holders, and played around with flying the canopy. I wasn’t quite as daredevilsh as I could have been; I never went swooping directly at the ground. Instead, I concentrated on turning left, turning right, practicing a flare, and generally setting myself up to land.
Once I was nearing 1,500 ft. (keep an eye on your altimeter!), Danny started talking me in over the radio. Solid comments like, “You’re too high, burn off some altitude,” to “left-left-left-left-LEFT-LEFT-LEFT!” With him coaching, I steered through my downwind leg, my base leg, and he got me onto a perfect approach path. As I slipped down to the landing area, I jumped the gun a bit, not waiting for Danny’s command to flare, and ended up doing a swoop-drop-swoop-thud, “oof” into a stand-up landing. I was momentarily psyched by my good landing, then the chute tried to drag me off of my feet. I got it down and gathered up and walked back into the hangar. My jump was all done.
Thoughts on the jump:
1) The reason I did this the way I did (AFF vs. having a Tandem) was because I figured that if I were to make only one jump in my life, I wanted to pull my own chute and I wanted to fly my canopy in. However, if I knew then now what I know now, I would have gone with the Tandem. I could have concentrated much more on the feelings of freefall, without worrying about the procedures that I needed to undertake. Sitting here, I cannot consciously remember the exact feeling of leaving the aircraft. I remember stepping away, then I remember being in the freefall arch, but it’s a bit fuzzy between those two moments. Maybe I closed my eyes? So, I should have done a Tandem.
2) It was freaking spectacular! I think I’ve decided to keep going and do it again, which means I’ll be doing at least 6 more jumps to get my USPA “A” certification, which would enable me to show up at a drop zone, hitch a ride to altitude, and jump solo.
3) The Atlanta Skydiving Center puts together a cool video for sale. I anticipate that I’ll have one done on my first solo dive. I recommend them.
Jenn commented last night that she doesn’t know anyone who only jumped once. Well, I’d hate to disappoint her.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution often has amusing movie reviews.
I quote from their review of The Dukes of Hazzard: “More P.U. than Yee Haw.”