Month: May 2004

Here’s even more proof that George Lucas has lost his mind:

It looks like he’s still making changes to the original three movies so they will match up better with the new trilogy. The consensus among fans of the original series seems to be “why is he trying to make the old, good movies more like the new, bad movies!”

I’m still upset by the changes he’s already made. Everyone knows that Greedo didn’t shoot first.

First off, rumor has it that the Emporer’s face is going to be changed in The Empire Strikes Back to match the new movie. DVD Dungeon has a screenshot.

This is not so bad. I might even be able to live with this change. Actually, most people probably wouldn’t even notice.

The next change is rumored to be in Return of the Jedi. At the end of the movie we see the spirits of Anakin, Yoda, and Obi Wan. According to DVD Dungeon, the actor who played Anakin in the original is going to be replaced with the idiot from the new movies. This is just madness.

I’m hoping these are just images that have been doctored. But with the changes Lucas has already made, there’s no way to be sure.

Interesting footnote: Paula walked out of the theater during the original Star Wars when she went to see it as a child…

I see students working on projects almost every day, but it’s not very often that I take time out to recognize truly outstanding work. While I was at Travis yesterday, I noticed a student working on a Haiku that I just had to share with the rest of the world:

I really hate school
It is extremely boring
It just wastes your time.

I hope this kid gets an A.

The guest speaker at my graduation back in December was Texas State Senator Bob Deuell. I still remember when his name was announced, someone behind me said “Wow, they got Bob Dole!” That still cracks me up. That also explains why that person was sitting behind me, they weren’t exactly the “best and brightest.”

Anyway, Mr. Deuell talked for about 20 minutes during the ceremony. I don’t remember most of what he said, but one thing stuck with me that day. He said “Read. Read within your subject and outside your subject. Read fiction and non-fiction. Read everything you can get your hands on. Successful people read all the time.”

I’ve always enjoyed reading. At first it was mostly science fiction and fantasy, but as I got older I moved on to computer books. It got to the point where I was actually purchasing computer science textbooks to study on my own. I’m probably the only person in the world with a calculus book on my Amazon wishlist. After several years of that I started taking classes in Commerce. During school, I read computer science books exclusively to the point that I pretty much got burned out.

Now that I’ve graduated, I find myself getting back into reading again. Earlier this year I flew through Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and Neuromancer by William Gibson. Both of those are really cool sci-fi, Matrix-y books. Most people call these “cyberpunk”. Right now, I’ve just about finished the Dark Elf Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore. After that I’m going to have to read some Dan Brown books since Paige wants to discuss them with me, but she doesn’t want to ruin them for me either. I also have a few recommendations from Geoff.

So what’s the point of all this? Basically, I’m always looking for interesting things to read. I thought if I shared a few of the books I’ve enjoyed with the world, then maybe other people would point out some of their favorites to me. I also want to mention a few websites I’ve found with good reading material:

Read Print – This site is new to me. It looks like what they’ve done is taken some of the more popular books from Project Gutenberg (see below) and cleaned them up for easy online reading. This is a great way to get started reading books online.

Project Gutenberg – As far as I know, this was the first website to make public domain books available for free download online. According to the site, they have over 10,000 books available for download.

I came across one more thing this morning at Kuro5hin.org – an article titled Four Unproduced Screenplays. This article provides links to several different screenplays with writers such as James Cameron and The Wachowski Brothers. The comments that follow also contain some great links such as Alien 3 by William Gibson (not the one that was made into a movie) and Superman Lives by Kevin Smith (yes, that Kevin Smith).

I read most of Superman Lives this morning and I’ve really enjoyed it so far. There’s plenty of comic book action mixed with a touch of Kevin Smith’s humor. I’ve never read a screenplay before, but the seperation of dialog and scene descriptions makes it easy to picture it in your head as if you were actually watching the movie.

I guess I could set up a section of the site just for book reviews, or maybe form some kind book club. Until then, let me know if you come across any interesting books and I’ll do the same.

I can’t think of a better gift for our good friend Geoff than .

I’m sure some of you are wondering why I haven’t posted anything here in a while.

About two weeks ago, around the morning of April 20th, Paige was bitten by a spider. So far she’s been to two different doctors, spent one morning in the emergency room, taken six different prescriptions, and missed eight days of work. It’s been a rough time to say the least.

The doctors aren’t sure exactly what kind of spider it was, but almost everyone else agrees that it was a brown recluse. The bite was made even worse by the fact that the lymph node under her left arm became infected. This infection caused her to break out all over and gave her a really high fever.

Luckily, the antibiotics and pain medicines did there thing and she’s getting better now. She’s still weak from the infection and she has a nasty wound where the bite was, but at least she’s up doing things again. Today was her first day back at work since the morning it happened.

Obviously, I’ve been too busy trying to take care of her and things around the house to post anything here. Thanks for all of the calls of concern, and thanks to Ben for the cake:

Only Ben would send a cake with a spider on it. I didn’t see what Paige did to that part of the cake, but something tells me it was chopped to bits.