What is On Jeffs' Mind

Lately I have been thinking a lot about fandom and the area of negativity. With the release of the Star Wars Blu-Rays in September, it has opened up the debate again about Star Wars and peoples feelings on how George Lucas has cared for the franchise. I am a big Star Wars fan, so I will be honest, the negative criticism bothered me. But a positive from this is that it forced me to rethink how I view fandom in general and how I approach it.  I guess for me, I have decided, that I am going to hold my own negative comments to myself when I come across different things in fandom I might not enjoy. If there is a TV show or a movie I did not like, unless I have something constructive to add to an argument, I am not going to say anything, as there are people out there who might really be fans of them. It is not my right to bring someone down for enjoying something, feel like I felt when I had to go through the negative criticism for Star Wars, or even going back, all the negativity around Star Trek Enterprise years ago. To me, it is so awesome to be able to go somewhere and celebrate with others the excitement over a piece of work, it helps me appreciate it more, and really get excited about it. I understand nothing is ever perfect, and for some, debating the strengths and weaknesses is where they get their enjoyment, but that is just not for me. I guess it is a fine line, as if it is done in a way that there is a like for the material being debated, then that is cool, but if a person is coming from a point of dislike, then to be honest for me, I really do not want to hear it. Vice Versa, I am not going to inflict my own feelings on others if I did not care for something.

With Star Wars, I find there is so much more to the whole series then just the 6 movies. I get that some people only really care for the Original Trilogy, it might be something they grew up with, but for me, there is so much more. They are sort of the stepping stone to this much bigger and larger universe that I have gotten into. The Empire Strikes Back is my favorite movie of all time, hands down, after that the rest of the movies I am not sure I could rank in any particular order, as I think I like them all as a whole. I guess since I view Star Wars as a larger piece of work then just the first 3 movies, the changes to the movies over the year have not bothered me, as it just brings the universe all together. When people say they don’t care for the EU, or even the prequels, that is fine. They don’t really need it to enjoy the original trilogy. I will buy their argument though that the movies they know have been changed for it, even though to be honest they are really only minor changes. I don’t get how a few seconds here or there can ruin a whole experience of a movie, especially when it is not really changing anything with the plot of the movie. In a sense, for me even though I do not have an issue with the changes to the original movies, I wish George Lucas would re-release a Blu-Ray cut of the Original Movies, more so the quiet all the critics. That way they can have their movies, we don’t have to listen to them anymore, and the rest of the people can go on enjoying the larger universe.

The criticism for the prequels as well baffles me. People go on and on about them, and how much they dislike them. I guess my simple answer to that is, don’t watch them, don’t pay any mind to them. Those stories don’t exist to you, and should not hold you back from enjoying the Original Trilogy. Same goes for the Clone Wars or any other story that has been put out since the Original Trilogy. I am sure when the Phantom Menace comes out in 3D in early 2012, the whole prequel debate/hate will flare up again. I hear friends tell me they don’t get all the extra content in the Star Wars universe, they feel it is to much, just leave it at the movies.  Again, my answer is, leave your fandom at the movies, nothing in the rest of the EU is going to change what you see in the movies. Some people just enjoy a movie for what it is, others like to get immersed into something so much larger and more, nothing wrong with either.

I heard similar feelings about Star Trek Enterprise. People railed against it when it originally came out. They said it was an affront to the Original Star Trek series, and was messing with continuity. But I never bought that argument. If a person is just a TOS fan, then what ever happened in Enterprise, had no affect on TOS. Not one TOS episode changed because of Enterprise. If you did not like what was happening in that series, then don’t watch. Star Trek fandom for you ends at TOS, and anything past that, does not change anything with how a person views the original episodes. Like wise for TNG, Voyager or DS9, if a person liked or disliked those series, for the most part they did not affect the other series. If a person dropped Voyager, because they did not like it, nothing in that affected what happened in TNG. A person could end their fandom in Trek where ever they wanted, and what came since would not affect what they already saw.

It always bothered me that people were so vocal with Enterprise, in how it was ruining Trek and should be cancelled. Again why? If they had stopped watching, then the stories did not apply to the Trek they know. They could still come to their own conclusion on why things were in the Trek universe if they did not want to accept what was being done in Enterprise. Kirk was still Krik, Spock was still Spock. Klingons looked the way they did, the missions were still the same missions with the same outcomes. In a sense, sadly the negative people got what they wanted at the time. They said they would rather have no Trek then Enterprise, and that is what they got. Since then there has been no new Trek series, and now we are dealing with a rebooted Universe. I liked the new Star Trek, it was a great movie and looking forward to what is next, but I think my heart will always be in the Trek Prime universe. But I wonder if all those negative people pushing for the end of Enterprise ever imagined we would get what we got after it left. The old adage careful for what you wish for, it might come true. Just sadly for all us folks, who liked Trek, we got pulled along with them. But for me, Trek Prime remains alive in books, and again, a person can either accept them, or they don’t as they do not change anything to date that they have seen.

This was a bit of a rant on my part, but something I was thinking about for awhile. It has forced me to relook at things and how I relate to my own fandom.  So for me, if there is something I might not like, but others do, I am just keeping it to myself, they have the right to enjoy what they like to fullest they can. Maybe it goes against the spirit of debate, and even peoples right to express themselves, but at least I know I have not put a cloud over somebody’s fandom.

Tags: DS9, Enterprise, Fandom, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Clone Wars, The Phantom Menace, TNG, Voyager

Today was the annual Edmonton Collectible Toy and Comic Show, and I had a really great time. There was so many cool things to see, and got to talk with a lot of really cool people. I was selling again this year, and even though I did not bring much, I still had some decent sales, and came home with more money and a lot less then what I had left with. It always feels good to sell things to people, and when selling toys, usually people are pretty happy about things. My Friend Dave also had a good day, and sold a lot of things he no longer wanted, and was happy with his take. There were plenty of people in costumes, which is always cool to see, lots of parents with their kids, and in general a lot of people. From what I could see, it looked to be the most successful show yet.

The Special guest this year was LeVar Burton who played Geordie Laforge on Star Trek The Next Generation. I got an autograph and my picture with him. He is a really nice gentleman, and even posed for a picture for me as well. He looked very happy to be at the show and sounded like he had a good time with his stay in Edmonton. As well I picked up a Gentle Giant Comic Maquette of Wicket the Ewok from my friend Ryan from Red 5 Collectibles. All in all it was a good day, and already looking forward to next year.

Me and LeVar

Table for Show

The Floor

People Getting Tatoo’s across from us

Tags: Dave, Edmonton Collectible Toy and Comic Show, Gentle Giant Wicket, LeVar Burton, Ryan from Red 5 Collectibles, Star Trek the Next Generation

The past few weeks for me for the most part have been quiet, with nothing to exciting happening. We came off a long weekend last weekend for Family Day, which I did not do to much, but that was ok. It gave me a chance to finish work on a new website I created, which is called Popoff Podcasts.

The purpose of Popoff Podcasts is to be a general place for a person to go and see all the podcasts Jason and I are involved with. As usual, it was fun to work on the site, as I really like getting into building these sites, and it turns out to be weekend long project. I can sit for hours and work on the site, as it is something I really enjoy to do. The site is nearly done and I am pretty happy with how it came out.  I found a WordPress template I liked, and then modified it to what I wanted. It really helped me learn a lot as I was able to add things to the template that were not there. I find I am reading php and css sheets better now, and understand what they are doing, which is good, as maybe in the future I would like to get into web development.

This past week I attended a digital camera course with my Dad. I have to say I learned quite a bit about my camera in the first class. I have another class on Tuesday. The first class they went through some of the settings on the camera, things that I never really knew where there, or did not really understand what they do. It gave me a better understanding of what my camera can do. I am looking forward to the next class and learning even more. I might consider taking a photography course in the future, so will see where it leads.

I also got the opportunity to help my friend Jen from the Anomaly Podcast on a new site she it working on. It was a lot of fun to work on it, she has picked a great theme for her site, and it helped me expand my knowledge on WordPress some with editing php and css style sheets. She is still working on it, so looking forward to seeing it when she is done, as I think it is going to be great. You should check out the Anomaly Podcast, it is a real fun podcast to listen to. This past podcast, they did a review of a Star Trek TNG episode for their worst of Trek series. It was a fun review of the episode Sub Rosa, from the seventh season of TNG. I have to admit, that this episode also ranks up there in my all time list of least liked Star Trek episodes.

I also started a new Star Wars book that I am excited about, it is the Fate of the Jedi series and the first one called Outcast. I have really gotten into this book, and made quite a dent into it just reading for a few days. I really enjoyed the last Star Wars series The Legacy of the Force, all the books in that series were top notch. I get the feeling this series will be just as good, and I like the long story arcs that go from book to book, more so then some of the event type one off books.

Also, last week, my friend Rick bought me an iTunes copy of the new Stryper CD called The Covering. They  cover a lot of cool Heavy Metal and Hard Rock songs from the 70′s and 80′s, such as Iron Maidens’ The Trooper, Van Halens’ On Fire, Breaking the Law by Judas Priest and Heaven and Hell from Black Sabbath. It is a really cool CD with a lot of other cool covers from some great bands.

Tags: Anomaly Podcast, Black Sabbath, Fate of the Jedi, Heavy Metal, Iron Maiden, Jason, Jen from Anomaly Podcast, Judas Priest, Legacy of the Force, Popoff Podcasts, Rick Moyer, Star Trek, Star Wars, Stryper, Van Halen

The past week was nothing short of a nightmare in regards to work.

Earlier in the month, at work we attempted to migrate our clients Microsoft Sharepoint servers from 2003 to 2007. Our first attempt at it had to be backed out after we discovered some problems with performance and issues with adding users. The adding users was resolved quickly, but the performance problem dogged us for a week and a half. Many calls to Microsoft support, lots of logging and investigation was spent. That troubleshooting led to having to work on the 20th and 21st in attempts to solving the issues. So on the Saturday, I start work, only to find that one of the servers was not operating, after a full day of troubleshooting, it was decided that it was best to reinstall Sharepoint. Boy, was that a mistake, we installed it, but the resource that we had, got busy on other things, and we were left with an unconfigured Sharepoint. Throughout the week we worked on the performance problems, only to find in the end, that it was a netbios issue in that it resolved the SQL servers name slow. So essentially, adding the SQL servers into the local hosts file for the Sharepoint servers fixed the issue with the performance. After that we continued on with the configuration, but ran into a problem well trying to configure the SSP for the farm. Another call to Microsoft, and working late at night with a deadline date looming. After a few stressful hours, the fix was found, and involved running a command on our second Sharepoint server. A few other issues were resolved, and we were ready for our Migration.

Armed with my steps on migrating, I set out on Saturday to start the configuration. Well it could not have gone any worse. Our first attempt failed, when we could not load the front page. We decided to try again, as we felt some other config we had done earlier in the week was causing an issue. The second attempt was a failure as well. People were getting pretty worried, as these servers needed to be done by March 31′st and this would be our last attempt. Another call to Microsoft, and we worked through the night and into Sunday troubleshooting the site. Finally after hours and hours of troubleshooting, we copied over the part of the Sharepoint site that was working from a different server. That fixed the issue, and the servers were done.

The past week was probably the most stressful and most hours I had ever worked. I had worked basically double my hours for the week, and all very stressful. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I did not get a chance to eat my supper until 12:00 am each night. The only bright spot in the work week was the Star Trek comic I received from my friend Rick in the mail, it is cool, and I am looking forward to reading it. I would start work around 7:30 and would not be finishing until 12:00 am, so basically lived the job. The second weekend, I worked from around 7:00 am Saturday morning until 2:00 pm Sunday, only taking a few hours off to go setup for the toy show on Sunday.

Probably the hardest part of the weekend, was that I ended up missing a good part of the toy show. once work had finished on Sunday, I headed to the toy show, but only got to spend a few hours there. I had a table again this year, and was so looking forward to selling and talking to all the different people. Jason shared the Table with me, and covered for me. He actually did a great job selling my stuff, he sold a lot of the stuff I could never the previous few toy shows. By the time I arrived at the show, most of what I brought was sold, so that was a pleasant surprise. But it was a real disappointment to miss so much. I was there to setup and there to tear down, but missed the real heart of the show. I was happy to get there for the final few hours, talk to a few people, wander around, and man the table.

I was so tired after working straight so many hours, but I am really glad I went. My friend Dale had a great setup of all his Kubricks, it was incredible to see all the Star Wars Kubricks in one spot. Dale is the only known person in North America with a complete collection of Star Wars Kubricks, and his display was impressive. Dale also sold me a set of Boba Fett Kubricks that were on the card. They are the first set of carded Kubricks I have ever bought. It is beautiful, as there are six different variations of Boba Fett. I am really impressed, and so happy Dale sold it to me. He told me about it on Saturday well setting up, and then told me again about it. I am just so happy to buy these, they are just so awesome, and since I have been a Fett fan, really something I should have in my collection. I am going to check with my Wife to see if there is some way I can get this mounted so I can hand it on a wall. The car backs for these are cool as well, as they mimic the Vintage Star Wars Kenner figures from back when I was a kid. All I can say, are these are awesome, I am so glad I went to the show, and it helps make up for a hell of a week.

Tags: Boba Fett, Dale, Jason, Microsoft Sharepoint, Rick Moyer, Star Wars Kubricks, work