In May 2009, the eleventh Star Trek feature film boldly went where no Trek had gone before: rebooting and reimagining the franchise, under the aegis of producer/director J.J. Abrams. The film paid homage to the previous Star Trek continuity via a time-travel plot that resulted in massive changes to history, and a new timeline, now only loosely connected to the original, was born.
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Tag: Alpha Geek
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The altered reality of Star Trek
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A Look at Stardates
Originally created in order to indicate that Star Trek was set in some undefined future era without actually having to say exactly when the series took place, stardates were little more than largely-random numbers at first. By the time Star Trek: The Next Generation aired, decades later, a more logical, consistent formula was created for stardates: 1000 “star-days” passed per year, which was indicated by the first two digits of the now-five-digit stardate (the better to indicate that nearly a century had passed since the original Star Trek series).
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Slacker!
I’m falling behind on updates for this blog. I need to rededicate myself to this project, as well as to others. Mostly, though, it’s just because I’m so damned busy. Between working 30 hours per week at two jobs and taking a full-time courseload of 12 credits of upper-division history classes, I don’t have a whole lot of extra time left over for, well, anything, and most of what little free time I do have gets eaten up by playing video games. (Star Trek Online is, in fact, a key offender in that area.)
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Through a Glass, Darkly: Analysis of the Multiple “Mirror Universes”
Over the past four decades, since the episode “Mirror, Mirror” first aired on 6 October 1967, we have seen multiple iterations of the alternate reality known colloquially as “the Mirror Universe.”
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Dead wireless
The wireless modem died on my laptop the other day. As a result, the only working connection on the thing is the ethernet jack. Unfortunately, the only way to get online with the network at home is wireless. I’m able to bring my laptop to work and plug in there, so I can at least check my email, but they restrict the access pretty heavily, so I can’t do a lot of things that I would normally do online.
I wrote to HP about the problem, but their response was fairly typical. They first told me to try reinstalling the drivers (even though I told them I’d already tried that, but the computer isn’t recognizing even the presence of the hardware in either Vista or Linux, indicating that the modem simply burned out), and then said to mail it to them for servicing. My main problem with that is the fact that my laptop has been my primary computer for nearly a year now, and it will likely take nearly two weeks for the turnaround on repairs. My desktop has been sitting in the garage unused, so I may end up sending the laptop in and using that at least temporarily.
This is, to say the least, more than just inconvenient. I’m halfway tempted to just buy a replacement modem and do the repair myself, even if the computer is still under warranty. They’re sending a postage-paid box for the laptop, however; I’ll probably send it in after I get my desktop set up and running again.
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found the coolest toy
I was at the BX today and found the coolest Optimus Prime figure I’ve ever seen:
It’s the “War Within” design from the comic of the same name, set soon after Optimus Prime was given the Matrix, so he doesn’t have a human-based vehicle mode. It’s die-cast metal like the original toys in the 80s, and unlike the statues released of this design, it actually transforms into the Cybertronian vehicle mode. Best of all, it was only $15!
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Laptop screen works now
I got the screen on my laptop working now. Turns out I had to use the vesa driver instead of the ATI driver. As always, it’s something simple that trips everything up. I’m still working on getting the wireless and ethernet connections working, but that’s a less pressing matter. At least until the movers come and take my desktop system, anyhow.
