Emily Watches Star Trek

For three months this past summer, Emily was unemployed; this gave her ample time to watch DVDs while applying for jobs. After a single cajole by your humble author, Emily was convinced to sit down with the entire seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation and watch them from Encounter at Farpoint to All Good Things... Since this is the 21st century, she was on gchat, keeping me up to date on all the latest.

Following are some of my favorite exerpts from Emily's first viewing of any Star Trek television series.


Emily: MAN IN SKIRT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Later]

Emily: MORE MEN IN SKIRTS
they're in some sort of dress uniform and all wearing skirts
me: well those are not skirts though
because they are wearing pants
those are just long jackets
Emily: well when hipster girls wear leggings they are still wearing skirts

---

Emily: the Picard doppelganger almost had sex with Dr. Crusher
Me: wait, there's a Picard doppelganger?
Emily: yeah he got kidnapped
with three other people
and a doppelganger was running the ship
Me: oh yeah
Emily: and now he apparently needs a vacation

---

Emily: Picard has spent most of the current episode in a metallic Speedo
me: haha
Emily: he also just punched a Ferengi, which I enjoy
me: I believe he will get it on in this episode
Emily: it's looking that way

[Later]

Emily: picard DID IT

---

Emily: this episode is WEIRD
me: which one is that?
Tin Man?
Emily: no, the one after that
there's this awkward engineering guy
who keeps going into the holideck to have sexual fantasies about Troi
me: oh, Barclay

---

Emily: Picard just said "my love is a beaver"
me: haha
oh, is he reciting things to mom troi?
Emily: wait FEVER
his love is a fever
me: haha
Emily: but yes, he was awkwardly trying to pretend to woo her, and then started spouting Shakespeare
me: that scene is classic

---

Emily: well Data is reading poetry
me: ohh
the poem about Spot
Emily: Ode to Spot
he says Spot isn't sentient
I think Bernard is sentient

Let Me Explain Google Wave

Author's note: It's possible that you know all of this. I am writing this down in the hopes that people who didn't get it before might be enlightened by my thought process. Enjoy.

I sought out a Google Wave invitation, not exactly knowing what I was getting into. It was new and I wanted to add it to the list of new technologies I could claim myself as an early adopter of (the list, as I recall it, runs from mini disc to kindle--incidentally, neither lasted very long).

My invitation came on Friday night. I poked it a few times over the weekend, but it ran too slow and there was too much going on at once. I was a member of the Twin Cities Wave and pretty much no other waves. I was confused and I was bored.

(A wave is a message thread made up of individual messages called pings.)

Yesterday I was confused and bored again. But then I joined a few smaller waves with some friends.

Google Wave is the following existing technologies wrapped into one delicious web app burrito:

• Wiki - Anyone can edit any part of a wave and there is a full record of who has done what. This beats wikipedia (or any other wiki I've used) by about a thousand in terms of intuitiveness.
• Message board - A ping (a message within a wave) can be replied to much like a LiveJournal or I Can Has Cheeseburger-style post, with root replies and sub-replies.
• Instant message client - Wave lets you see who is online. It is actually most like the old ICQ, where you can see what another person is typing as they type it. If you open up a wave with one other person--bam. Instant message.
  
• Email - It's not exactly like email, but it really helps to think of it as email: every message is private and includes only the recipients you choose. You can send a wave to a person when they're offline and it will sit in their inbox until they return.
  

These technologies are all a decade old or older. But just because Google Wave hasn't really introduced any new technologies from an end-user standpoint doesn't mean the combination of existing technologies isn't potentially game shifting (but not really game changing, like email was).

It may be obvious how there is some overlap with the functions the items on this list fulfill. But what was not immediately obvious to me is why it's so interesting to slip them all together into one very browser-crashing web application. Here's what I can see so far.

What it will be good for:

• Collaboration - What I never could get wikis to do, Wave does almost effortlessly: one document with multiple editors. Google suggests you use Wave to have everyone at a meeting take notes; maybe smart, maybe dumb. The playback feature is key here--it totally trumps the edit history page on Wikipedia. Much more useful (to me) to see edits progress temporally than see them listed.
  
• Discussion - The problem with message boards is their public nature. The problem with email and Gmail is its linear nature. Wave lets you communicate privately in a message board setting. If you branch off into two topics, no more guessing what a person is replying to--you can create new waves based on old waves. Google Wave provides the sharpest, slickest format for private, lengthy online discussion so far.
  

Wave is important. Being better than a wiki and easier to use for lengthy conversations than email will allow us to have richer conversations more easily. Definite value added. Not a Segway.

There is one problem I can see: the necessity of ubiquity. Sort of like Twitter, there's a critical mass that must be reached before this will be useful to me. I can't collaborate by myself. But give it a year; this thing will be pretty popular but, as I said, I don't think it will change the game on the scale of email.

This Is Adulthood

I am feeling quite grown up this morning for the following reasons:

• I got out of bed (not just woke up and turned over again and went back to sleep) fully an hour and a twenty minutes before I needed to
• I have washed a few dishes... in the morning!
  
• I am listening to Styx
• I will be getting into work early to set up for a presentation instead of keeping everyone waiting for my fumbling with a projector
• I am on my second cup of stimulant and I haven't even left for work
• I have resisted the urge to play Sim City 4 instead of get to work early

The New Star Trek Movie

Spoiler alert: I saw the new Star Trek movie.

I was at work when I refreshed Twitter. Right near the top of my feed I could see that @vita_mn had said

Vita.mn invites you to BOLDLY GO... tonight at its premiere party for STAR TREK. 2 pairs of tixx available now. Email christian@vita.mn!

And ten seconds later I was in gmail. I wrote

I want them! How do I get them?

and was subsequently informed that I had already done all that was necessary.

And that was it. I had tickets to an advanced screening of a movie I've been anticipating for approximately three years. But not just an advanced screening--eight days before it comes to theaters. Seven days before regular people who win tickets get to see the "advanced" screening. In fact, according to Vita.mn, I am a taste maker. And my taste says this movie was fuckin' boss.

Better than Iron Man. And, yes, Better than the Dark Knight. (Note: I will not compare individual performances. Heath Ledger's Joker was a villain for the ages and was--somehow--way above the rest of that film.)

I will not bore you with spoilers. Suffice it to say the film stays close enough to the spirit of Star Trek to satiate this canon-aware fan. No, that's not right. I'm not just canon aware, but canon expectant. Ok, fine, here's a minor spoiler: this movie breaks canon. But if you really care you probably already knew that, right? I won't bother reviewing something you haven't seen past saying it was even more badass and fun to watch than the ads make it look. I dare say it nearly surpasses both Star Trek VI and Star Trek: First Contact. Nearly. If you wanted to determine which was the best of the three, you'd probably have to toss all of them in the air and see which one landed closest to the center of a target that denotes quality. That is how good this movie was.

I'm going to hold off on full-on analysis of the movie until I see it again next week (and when everyone else has seen it). However, I would like to note the demographic makeup of the crowd who saw this movie with me. This screening was made up of people who were in the know (plus me, Emily, and the other two people who were fast enough to get tickets from Twitter) about this movie, according to Christian. The rest, apparently, was made up of people who know Christian and their plus-ones. This made for an interesting mix of people, broken out approximately as such:

55% obvious nerds

40% obvious hipsters (Seriously. Skinny jeans? Still?)

5% indistinguishable/me and Emily

All in all I am really happy to have won tickets to see this movie. I am a little rueful that I was unable to share the devirginization of this rebirth with my best friend and collaborator Donavon. However, I believe it was worth potential perceptions of betrayal to see one of the best, most exciting films I've seen in years.

My Taste in DVDs Part 2

A few days ago, I noted that my DVD collection tends to favor a specific genre. In that post I included a photo of my movies that were not either comedy or science fiction. It's a stack of about 20 DVDs. So, in that context, here are my science fiction DVDs:


That's over three feet of DVDs. And yes, you notice correctly: the complete Twilight Zone (five seasons) and the complete Star Trek: The Next Generation (seven seasons) are making the stack pretty tall. They are also making the stack quite awesome.

But that's not even the best part. I went ahead and stacked all my comedy DVDs. The stack is so tall that I could not stack them without help from Lovely Assistant Emily:


I took these photos a few days ago when I was pretty drunk. That means most of these stacks were toppled in a depressing/hilarious drunken way.

File this one under "stacks provide unique insights."

How Should I Spend My Stimulus?

When I filed my taxes (actually, when I had my mom do it, because I'm a child), I discovered (my mother informed me) I am receiving $300 in stimulus money for some reason. I am a patriotic American, so I intend to use this money to its exact purpose: to stimulate the economy. Which means I'm going to buy some stuff.

But I'm no fool. I think before I spend. I present to you three options I am considering for my $300.

The Nerd Collection

Register www.punsultancy.com $10

Fill out my Led Zeppelin collection (all their albums except Houses of the Holy) $75

Battlestar Galactica seasons 1, 2, and 2.5 (I own three and four already, which give it a slightly more nerdy edge) $70 (on Amazon)

LOST seasons two, three, and four $125 (on Amazon)

Dark Knight $20

OR

The Comedy Collection

All My Stuff (George Carlin DVD box set of TV specials) or Seinfeld -- the complete series $180

Let's Get Small and A Wild and Crazy Guy (Steve Martin comedy albums) $15

Venture Brothers Season 3 (but only after March 24) $20

Andy Richter Controls the Universe -- the complete series (but only after March 24) $30

Saturday Night Live season one -- $50

OR

The Responsible Adult Collection

Membership to the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association $195

Microsponsorship of MinnPost $25

New business cards $20

Socks and underwear $40

Backorder www.artallen.com on Godaddy $20

And there you go. $300 smartly spent.


So what do you think? Which would you spend your $300 on?

Nerdscale

Preface: This scale is meant as a jumping-off point for discussion. Please feel free to critique or make your own list. It is my hope that, one day, there will be a definitive list achieved through collaboration.

“Nerdy” is a term bandied about, willie nillie, affixed to many things. My intent is to establish a definitive list of nerdiness.

Is Spaceballs as nerdy as Firefly? Is Spaceballs as nerdy as Star Wars? No, it is not. So, we will take Spaceballs to be our baseline. All items will be measured in Spaceballs (SB).

The main facet of our measurement is level of divorcedness from Reality. For example:

aliens > (Cylons > androids >) robots > spaceships

So Star Trek is nerdier than Battlestar Galactica which is nerdier than Firefly

0 SB: Sports

0.01 SB: "Hans Solo? Isn't he that guy from Star Track?" THIS CAUSES NERDS TO DIE.

0.1 SB: Harry Potter

1 SB: Spaceballs

1.1 SB: Ghostbusters

2 SB: Jeopardy.

2.5 SB: Twilight Zone

3 SB: Star Wars

3.5 SB: Futurama.

4 SB: Firefly

4.5 SB: Star Trek VOY,

5 SB: Sar Trek TOS,

6 SB: Battlestar Galactica

7 SB: Star Trek TNG/DS9

8 < SB: Anime

This, sadly, is where my expertise in nerddom ends. I wanted the list to go to ten, but alas, I am uninspired and unknowledgeable past here. FAIL.

Because You Asked

I have a plant in my cube at work. I have come to really love this plant. But there has been a bit of a problem: the plant had no name. So, a quest for a name began--with the idea that the piece I took from this plant and put in some water at home to turn into a second plant (hooray thrift!) would be [Plantname, Jr.]. Two people suggested I name the plant after myself: one person suggested "Art, Jr. and Art III," while the other was making a mean joke and suggested "Stupid." I also momentarily considered Ralph and Jefferson. None of these seemed right.

But I think I have it now.

The plant at my desk will be known as The 1987 Minnesota Twins.

Which, then, makes the plant at home The 1991 Minnesota Twins.

I'm not sure what kind of plant it is, so don't ask. I will say it looks like this:



(Note: Yes that is my work's only copy of the Chicago Manual of Style, and YES it lives at MY DESK BECAUSE I AM THE GREATEST.)