New York

Just got back from New York, which proved to be a very enjoyable trip. We flew down on Saturday, which was much better than driving. An eight hour trip was now 45 or so minutes, which was outstanding. The flight was good, and we had no problems getting to our hotel room. I think that we were in the same room that we were in last time we went down, for the same occasion. After checking in, we wandered around for a couple hours, taking in some of the sights. We later met up with Dan, who had spent the week down there already. I went back with him to his hotel, catching up, and we took a cab to get dinner with everyone at a great Italian resturaunt. From there, we went to the performance, which was outstanding. Three bands played, with some pieces that I recognized, some that were new, and all were outstanding. This morning, my bother and sister went with me to Central Park, where we walked around for a little while before heading back to a fair/market that was going on 7th Ave. I bought a small Chinese plate set that's pretty cool looking. Tried to find a bootlegged copy of Revenge of the Sith or Hitchhiker's Guide, but no luck. Got back on the plane and headed home. Good trip.

I got to do a fair amount of reading on the flight, something that I haven't had much time to do recently. I finished Karen Traviss's Crossing the Line, the second book in her series. (Which was just upped to six books total) Outstanding novel. I think that Traviss is my favorite author. I can't wait for her next one to come out, The World Beyond, which is out later this year. Also just started Cagebird, the third in Karin Lowachee's trilogy, which is proving to be a good read as well. If you haven't read either of these two authors, I'd highly recommend them.

Just saw my Spring 2005 semester transcript- Nothing below a C. That's a huge relief for me, and a full two letter grades higher for two classes than I predicted. wOOt!

Report!

So, it's been a busy couple of days this week at KAS. I've been up in the area for a couple days now, having spent the night over at my friend Sam's house, mainly to get a couple extra hours of sleep, avoiding the 4-4:30 wake up that my dad had planned, for he was getting to work really early. I got up, drove to work, promptly dropped the car off at the wrong car dealership to get looked at for an inspection. The people at Berlin City were kind of confused about this...
Work for the past two days has seemed a bit long. I've had three reports that I've been working on at the same time, in two different states. That's pretty interesting, but it's hard to juggle them at different times while I wait for maps. I was just able to finish two projects, because Doug just handed me the maps.
The LOST finale is on tonight, as I've found and confirmed with two co-workers who are fairly big fans of the show. I probably won't see it, unless I happen to get a tape, which might happen, but dammit, I want to see what's in the hatch and what that monster looks like. I guess we'll see in a couple hours. I'll defininently check out the official site later tonight to see if they posted up a new summary. It's awesome having several people in the office who are really into SciFi shows and movies.
Just found this off of Karen Traviss's weblog: She's been contracted to write three more City of Pearl Novels, bringing the total up to six. I must say, I think that she's my favorite author at this point, and I've very excited for this.
And, Coldplay's got a new album coming in a couple weeks. Can't wait to listen to that.

Review for Revenge of the Sith

Warning: Spoilers

Summary: As the Clone Wars come to a climax with the capture of Chancellor Palpatine, Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi go to the rescue, killing Count Dooku. The Jedi are heroes. Chancellor Palpatine appoints Anakin to the Jedi Council, much to the distaste of the other members of the council, who see this as the Chancellor's attempt to take control of the Jedi Council. They fear that he's prepared to continue to hold onto power. While this is happening, the Chancellor starts to sow mistrust of the Jedi into Anakin. Obi-Wan goes off to hunt down General Grievous, finding and killing him. Anakin finds that Palpatine is the second Sith, and the Mace Windu and three other Jedi move in to kill him. When this fails, due to Anakin's intervention, Anakin pledges himself to Palpatine and becomes Darth Vader. His first assignment is to destroy all the Jedi at the Jedi Temple, which he does with a garrison of Clone Troopers. Palpatine issues an order to all of the Clone Troopers, who turn on their Jedi commanders, killing them. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda are the only two to survive the purge. They are rescued by Senator Bail Organa, who returns them to Coruscant to find out what happened. While they're there, Obi-Wan finds that it was Anakin who was the one who led the attack on the Jedi Temple. He and Yoda split up to try and destroy the Sith, with Yoda going to fight Palpatine. Obi-Wan approached Padme, telling her that Anakin led the attack on the Jedi and she couldn't believe it. She took out her ship to find her husband, with Obi-Wan stowing away. Yoda confronted Palpatine, and the two dueled in the Senate chamber. Padme confronted Anakin, who told her that he didn't lead the attack on the Temple, and that he would overthrow the Emperor, with her at his side. She grew frightened, and when Anakin caught sight of Obi-Wan, he force choked her, and the former master and apprentice duel over the lava flows of Mustafar. Meanwhile, Yoda was beaten back by Palpatine. He runs, and escapes once again with Bail Organa, who leads him off planet. Anakin and Obi-Wan's duel grows fierce and at the end, Obi-Wan slices off Anakin's remaining arm and both legs, sending him sliding close to a lava flow. As he catches on fire, he screams "I HATE YOU" to Obi-Wan, who picks up his lightsaber and leaves. Anakin is rescued by Palpatine shortly thereafter, and is fixed to become Darth Vader. Padme gives birth, but dies during childbirth, leaving the two Jedi to split up the twins. Leia goes to Alderaan with Bail Organa and Luke goes to Tatooine with Obi-Wan.

What worked: This movie was fantastic. It completely met my expectations with most things and exceeded them with others. While it isn't perfect, it was by far the strongest of all the prequel movies. Several things stick out in my mind. First, the movie is well edited, and on a technical level, is probably one of the strongest movies that I've seen in terms of Special Effects. It's amazing how far technology will go in such a short period of time, and everything is a step up for Revenge of the Sith. The space battles, the lightsaber fights, the background scenery, all of it looks completely outstanding. While there are times when things are obviously CGI, overall, it's the most seamless that I've seen. I mentioned Editing a second ago, and this film really stands out from the other movies, with a much different feel for most of the movie, similar in some ways to Empire Strikes Back. Here, the editors cut a lot of scenes together, with much intercutting between important parts of the movie. Two of these scenes really stand out. The cuts between Padme and Vader taking their last and first breaths respectively was a very well done moment. The second, and almost as powerful, the montage of scenes shortly after Palpatine issues his famous Order 66. Following that, we see several well known Jedi cut down by the Clone Troopers under their command, with a wonderful editing and sound behind it that almost brought tears to my eyes.
Storywise, there is no question that this is the best of the Prequels, and the perfect lead-in to the Original Trilogy. Over the past years, I've written a number of essays detailing how I thought this might play out a bit, and I was pleased to see that some of my ideas were correct. We have the final chapter of the story, with the fall of a hero and the rise of the Empire. While we all had a vauge idea of how this would happen, the presentation on the big screen was fantastic, in every regard. The battles, lightsaber and space, the interference of Palpatine/Sideous and the destruction of the Jedi. In some ways, the story, combined with the editing, is almost able to be broken into two parts, the first and second halves. Between the two, there is a very different feel. The first half feels the most like the other five Star Wars movies, with the action, pacing and editing. The second half, however, feels very, very different from the other movies, in an almost artistic way. The colorings and film angles of the shots, but also the storyline, which just carries itself with the momentum from the prior half and other two movies. It's much more fluid and much more depressing than anything else that we've seen. This is not a happy movie, by any stretch.
Acting and Dialogwise, this movie is also the strongest of the prequels. Both Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman have improved greatly with their acting skills, and while neither performs a perfect job, it's much much better than the two that come before it. I was very happy to hear no more lines that were on the level of Agressive Niegotiations from Attack of the Clones, which I still cringe at every time that I watch.
I was thrilled with the movie, and at everything that happened in it. There are some moments there that I just had chills going down my spine, seeing things that were completely outstanding. Things like seeing Alderaan on the screen, the fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan and Anakin's last moments together, Order 66 and the Jedi Purge, the opening Space Battle, Palpatine's transformation and so much more.

What didn't work: There are several things that I noted that I wasn't pleased with. First, the speed at which some things happend. Anakin's turn to Darth Vader after the fight with Mace Windu, I felt happened too quickly, and much more should have happened there. Anakin essentially goes from What have I done, to I pledge myself to you, in a matter of seconds. There should have been more there. Grievous, I was not very thrilled with at all. He was built up too much in the Expanded Universe and his character fails as a result of that. He felt that he was just there for show, and while some of the fights that he had were spectacular, they were also too short.

Overall: You cannot possibly think to call yourself a Star Wars fan if you do not stop reading this review right now and go out to see it if you haven't yet. Actually, what are you waiting for?!?

Rating: 9.5/10

Revenge of the Sith

So I saw Revenge of the Sith early this morning, at 1215. I haven't written a review yet, although I'm hoping to review it by this weekend.

BUT, the bottom like is that I thought that it was outstanding, and it completely met my expectations. The action, visuals, story and even acting was even better than the other prequel movies. It's just good. Very good.

And I was on the front page of the major newspaper for Vermont, as well as two TV news reports. That was pretty cool, although I'm really not sure I'm used to that type of attention, and a ton of people have IMed me or e-mailed me about it.

Fun and my review will be up and around this weekend. Now, sleep, for I spend an entire day in the field and the same for tomorrow. I need more sleep.

The Night Before

So the final Star Wars movie is about to come out. Tomorrow night. I can't wait, and for the first time ever, I'm going to a showing opening night showing. I absolutely cannot wait. I was called by one of the larger Vermont newspapers, The Burlington Free Press, about the movie, and about fandom in general. I talked to a reporter for about ten, fifteen minutes, and they said that they'll be sending out a photographer out tomorrow to take some photographs of me in armor. Should be interesting.
Work's also going well. I went to New Hampshire today to do some work, measuring the water levels and analysing the water in two seperate sites. Very cool stuff. I'm really liking this job, except for the getting up at 5:30 part, but I guess that I'll get used to that.
And finally, Arrested Developement is one of the best shows on TV now.

Graduation

Just got back from Norwich's graduation, where I helped out with the lines and handing out of programs. They had Joseph Galloway as their speaker, which was pretty good, and my friend Jen was the valedictorian. She did a pretty good job with her speech, well thought out, I thought, although she could have talked a little louder at times. I had quite a few friends going off this year in the senior class. Most of them were Enviro-Sci or Geology majors, but a couple scattered throughout the other fields of study. I'm going to miss a good deal of them all, and next year, with several of my other friends leaving for other schools, I think that it's going to be a lonely semester, although some are staying. I can't wait until I graduate.

Summer Vacation- In two days.

I'm finally done with the semester! I took my Stratigraphy exam this morning, finished it in an hour (It was only 11 questions) went home, finished my basin project that I've been laboring over for the past week or so got everything done there, returned some overdue books and yeah, I'm done for the year.

It didn't really hit me until I was walking away from the library that the year was over. Completely over. I cannot believe how fast it went by, because it seems like I had just started first semester just days ago. And yet, it seems like I've been at this forever, and it's now done. Now to start two jobs. I'll be starting at KAS Inc, an environmental company that my Dad works at, for four weeks until Camp starts- and when I go off to Admin training for a week, then Staff training for another week. I'll be working there for ten weeks total. So, over the next fourteen or so weeks, I'm going to have a greatly decreased online presence, probably. I know for the last ten weeks or so.

And now, computer problems to deal with. Whenever I try to engage my virus checker, it shuts down, saying that I have made an illegal error or some shit like that. Same thing with my e-mail and a couple of websites. Gr... As I'm writing this, I'm defraging my harddrive, then for a restart and disk cleanup. Hopefully that will solve things, or things will get ugly.

First, time to catch up on all the sleep that I've missed the past couple days...

Accepted!

I had my job interview with Jon today, which went extremely well. I got the Village Director postition, with a bit of a pay raise ($600 up from last year.) We talked about quite a few things, mainly about camp, and how it can be improved. It was good to talk to him again, he's a very good camp director. I was saddened to learn that there were some people who I worked with (and became very good friends with) won't be returning for various reasons. But overall, looking at the staffing list for this summer, we have a very good group of people coming, so that's good. I'm excited. This has been one of the best jobs that I've ever had, and I look forwards to going back every year about this time. And now as a VD, it should be an interesting summer. I like the village that I'm in, and I like a lot of the people who are returning.

I'm excited.

After the interview, I went and got lunch and met up with my friend Andy Bulpre, who I used to work with at another summer camp, and who I haven't seen for about four years now. Andy's a crazy guy, and a great friend. It's been far too long in between talks for us, having finally gotten his contact info from another friend. Man, how time flies, and it's entertaining how small the state is, because we both know several of the same people from various places. We walked around Burlington's Church Street for a while, catching up on things and chatting, the three of us (he had a friend, Lucy with him, who was also a pleasure to talk to), like no time had passed. Apparently I've changed a bit, although I don't really see it. Great to see him though. From there, I went to my dad's office, where I dropped off my resume for another job, then visited my Grandmother for a bit, before going and picking up my sister, talked to Eric briefly at the store, then drove my sister back home.
On the way back, I let Keelia drive for her first time. She was a little shakey, but she got the hang of driving very quickly, although she needs a lot more practice, expecially where it comes to the side of the road and breaking to stop. She was excited to drive for the first time, and she'll have more practice before she gets her license. Man, I can't believe that she's almost ready to get it. Scary. My dad found it amusing that she drove with me for the first time, while my mother was on the verge of freaking out at me. Oh well, it would happen sometime.

And now, to study for my final final.

Three Down, One More To Go...

I just finished my Structural Geology exam, and I was extremely surprised how easy it was. I'm not sure if it was the professor going easy on us, or if I just knew the material, I think that I'm going to be fairly pleased with the results. Hopefully, it will help with my grade, which isn't going to be really great. One more exam to look for, Stratigraphy, plus the monster project, which I need to finish up. Finished History last night, and Political Science earlier that day, so I'm almost done. Finally.

I just went out to drop off my paycheck for last month, and found that the Dave Matthew's Band just released their next CD, which caught me by surprise. I picked it up, and it's got a really different sound from what they've used in prior years, which surprised me somewhat.
So Stand Up. I've listened to it a couple of times, and I've gotten a couple of thoughts on it so far. Overall, good CD. Not great, but pretty good. It's definently a much different sound from what they usually sound like, even from their last CD as a group, Busted Stuff. Stand Up seems a lot more laid back, calmer, whereas a lot of their other albums have a lot of energy bundled up inside. There are some really good tracks on this one that has more energy than others, such as Stand Up (For It), American Baby, Everybody Wake Up and Louisiana Bayou. They're all really good tracks, as are all the other ones here, but some parts are just so different than their other prior works. I imagine American Baby was selected for the radio because it's probably the one that's the most similar to their normal stuff, and it's gotten mixed reviews.Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy their sound for this album. It's innovative, interesting and have roots in several different types of music. It's just slighty unexpected. It's got some Southern Babtist, Folk, Rock and a little R&B thrown together and the results are impressive. Musically, it's amazing. I'm sure that this is going to grow on me a bit more.

Anyone else having problems loading it into iTunes?

Anyone use the FaceBook? My school just opened up to it and I got a profile for it: Facebook me! It just exploded here. Literally. I've also been able to find some people that I haven't talked to in ages.

More later, if I have time...

I am: Arthur C. Clarke Well known for nonfiction science writing and for early promotion of the effort toward space travel, his fiction was often grand and visionary.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Midnight Showings

So I now have a ticket to the 0115 showing of Revenge of the Sith on the 19th. The question is, should I wait in line in Armor?

Summer Work

Last day of classes! Finally, I'm almost a Junior and done with the semester. Still have exams to work on though, so let's hope that those will go okay. I can't wait for summer vacation. Already, I have two major jobs lined up, which is outstanding. The first, for most of May is working at KAS Environmental, the company where my dad works. Apparently, they're understaffed and over worked, so he said that they're hiring me to help with some of the reports and field work that they need done. It'll be good for the time that I'm not doing anything.
Today, I got a job offer from Jon, my boss over the summer, and he wants to interview me for the Village Director postition. I'm very thrilled with that. At camp, the kids are broken down into age groups, or villages, of which there are four. Each village has six or so cabins, which has a varying number of kids depending on the village, from six to twelve. The village director doesn't have any kids to manage, but they oversee the entire group, managing the staff of the village, as well as various activities and discipline issues that the counselors cannot deal with. They get their own cabin, as well as a radio. This will be my sixth year at camp, and I hope that I will be a) given the job, and b) if I do get it, I hope that I can deal with it. It's not an easy job, but it's one that I'd like to do. I can't wait for Camp, it's an excellent job and I really enjoy going back there every year.
And now, finals to study for.

Winding Down

Finally, I just had my last two geology classes of the semester. It's such a relief to have finally finished. I like geology, but these two classes have been extremely discouraging at times, enough to make me rethink being a geology major.

It's nice to end the semester on a couple of classes that you're somewhat interested in (Political Science and History)

I really miss C3 :(

Music & Celebration 3 Pictures

Something that I picked up from a friend's weblog: 01) Total volume of music files on my computer? Currently: 1539 Songs, 4.4 Days at 5.73 gigs. And growing. At a quick pace. Currently, I have 372 songs that I have not yet listened to, although in some, if not most cases, I listened to most of it then passed over to the next one just before it ended. In any case, that's 24% of all the music that I have that I really haven't listened to. 1.1 days. Yikes. More statistics:

Albums: 197Artists: 219 Genres: [Genre, (Song Count)] 33: Acoustic (1), Alternative (50), Alternative & Punk (47), Bluegrass (1), Blues (2), Classic Rock (13), Classical (2), Country (11), Electronic (2), Electronica (2), Film Soundtrack (3), Folk (21), General Rock (1), Hard Rock (27), Humor (26), Jazz (75), Jazz/R&B (20), Light Rock (41), Metal (10), New Age (31), Other (6), Podcast (5), Pop (50), Rock (548), Rock/Pop (11), Salsa (1), Soundtrack (495), Spoken Word (2), Techno (2), Unclassifiable (2), Vocal (1) and World (1). Now, I don't know why some of these are here, like Electronic, Electronica and Techno, aren't they the same thing? Ditto for soundtracks. A couple others, I think that I'd reclassify, because iTunes tells me what everything is, including the genre.

02) The last CD I bought was...The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy soundtrack. Really enjoyed the music set to this, having fun listening to it, listened to that a couple times. I think that my favorites thus far are So Long and Thanks for all the Fish, and Journey of the Sorcerer, which is a weird title.

03a) The last song I listened to before writing this was... Life Less Ordinary, by Carbon Leaf. Outstanding band from Virginia, have some great CDs.

03b) Song playing right now is... Stay (Wasting Time), Dave Matthew's Band. That's really just a coincidence.

04) Five albums I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me...This is going to be difficult: a) Indian Summer, Carbon Leaf. Even though I just found these guys, I must say that their music is very relatable to many things in my life. Life Less Ordinary, This is My Song, Changeless and What About Everything are my favorites off of that album. b) Garden State Soundtrack, Various. This is an incredible CD with a really cool mix of music from a really good movie. Favorite tracks off of there is the Winding Road, Don't Panic, Caring is Creepy, New Sland and Let Go. c) Moonlight Dancers, Sara Wheeler. New England singer, I don't think that I've ever gotten tired of her music. d) Yourself or Someone Like You, Matchbox 20. I think that this was one of the first rock CDs that I got. Love every song on that one. e) Under the Table and Dreaming, Dave Matthew's Band. First CD from these guys, probably their best CD and one that I constently listen to. Runners up: Rush of Blood to the Head, (Coldplay), One, (Beatles) Crash (Dave Matthew's Band), Silent Steeples (Dispatch), Cracked Rearview (Hootie and the Blowfish), Room for Squares (John Mayer), Inarticulate Nature Boy (Josh Clayton-Felt), Ex-Girlfriends (Low Millions), Star Wars (A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi- John Williams), The Italian Job/Bourne Supremacy Soundtracks (John Powell)

5) 5 People to pass the baton to and why: Anyone really. It's always interesting to see what other people like for music.

My cold's almost gone. I just love how something can make you completely miserable for a straight week then just up and vanish. I've spend the last two days going through about two boxes of kleenex and now hoping that whenever I blow my nose, I'm not also going to make it start gushing blood.

Alrighty, start the countdown. 10 more days until exams are over. 16 more days until Revenge of the Sith is out in theaters. I should look into getting advance tickets. You know something, I've never, ever been to a Star Wars movie on opening night. Never. When Attack of the Clones was released, I was working that night as was Eric, so we went the next day, and when the Phantom Menace was out, I can't remember why I didn't go the opening night, but just that I was annoyed that some people that I knew had. And the special editions, it was some time after they had been released.

And finally, I've gotten my Celebration 3 pictures up online!

Here's some highlights:

Me

Me and Brian Gates, my "Boss"

Me, Cathy from DelRey Audio and Donovan

Donovan and I

Me and Matthew Stover

Jan Duursema and I

Alpha and... Beta?

Clones

Me and Timothy Zahn

The New England Garrison

Karen Traviss and I

Me and Troy Denning

I guess we found out what happened to Jar Jar...

R2-D1 and R2-D2

Aaron Allston and I

The George Lucas talk

Sarah, one of the very cool people that I met.

That's all for now. The rest of the images can be found here.

TUCWS New Site

For all of those who visit the Unofficial Clone Wars Site, we're now located at a new address:

http://www.clonewarz.com

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Man, I can't remember a time that I've laughed so hard at a scifi movie since I first saw Spaceballs. I read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a long time ago, and recently reread it this past fall. If you haven't read this book, do so soon. It's quite a funny book, and well worth the time for it's complete difference from everything else in this world. I was excited when I heard that the movie had been greenlit for production, after being in limbo for nearly twelve years. From the first trailers, it was clear that this movie was going to be unique, expecially with a new director at the helm. The movie is a delight to watch, and a great laugh. It's witty, funny and it doesn't take itself overly seriously until the very end. It's fairly close to the book, with some sections verbatem from the pages, while there are a couple others that are clearly not, but overall, the entire plot works extremely well. Visually, the film is spectacular. The CGI department did an outstanding job with some very odd things, such as the entire ship turning into a ball of yarn, flowers and any other number of things. There are several very cool scenes in here, and it's just amazing how much computers can do now adays.But the CGI doesn't overwealm the film at all. I believe that most of the costumes, aliens and sets were real, which is a good thing, expecially since Jim Henson's company did all the puppets and things. Being the same people to do Farscape, they did an outstanding job. The soundtrack was also very fun to listen to, very witty at times. I have to go download the main theme, that was a pretty good tune to listen to. I didn't listen to a lot of the music though, I was paying more attention to what was on the screen. The only problem that I had was that the movie does change up several things, which was somewhat disapointing, and why I'm not giving this a perfect score. That being said, the changes that were made are all fairly well done, and very funny, expecially the end, although it's a little flat and predictable.
In other news, I purchased an FX lightsaber that Master Replicas created. Very awesome.

Heart of an Empire

As some people already know, I'm a member of the 501st Storm Trooper division, a group of fans who dress up as Storm Troopers, not just for fun, but for some charity work, expecially with children.

At Celebration 3, I had the pleasure of attending a panel by Jay Thomson, who's working on a documentary on the 501st, entitled Heart of an Empire. It's been in the works for the past three years, and he's had to make some incredible sacrifices to make this.

Initially intended to be a simple, 30-40 minute documentary on the legion, it took a very sudden turn last year when Katie Johnson, the daughter of the legion's founder, Albin Johnson, was strickened by an inoperatable brain tumor. The documentary is now about the 501st, but also what we do. It's about the conflicts between legion members, how we work together, how we work with the professional community and what impact that we've had on people. It's going to be very good. The crew is shooting for a 2006 Sundance release and they're hoping to finish post-production this November.

I urge everyone to go take a look at their main website and trailer, and to spread the word. The project needs all the help that it can get, and word of mouth is a great way to get other people to know about things like this.

Celebration 3: Day 4

The last day was pretty sad. I had to leave, and I wasn't looking forwards to it. Over the past couple of days, I had met many interesting people, and I'd call some of them my friends. I met people who were professionals, who were there to work, and I met people who were just there to have some fun. Overall, I think that everyone had a lot of fun over the days. I got up at 7, fixed up my armor and went out to find the 501st, who were doing a picture. I found out that I just missed them, for they were doing a parade around the convention Center, and I sprinted around the building a couple of times before I found them. I also had to go back to my hotel room to get my volunteer pass, which I forgot. Thinking that I missed the picture, I walked to the room, hoping to find some people. To my surprise, they hadn't taken it yet, and I was able to get in. (It's up online at www.501st.com- bonus points if you can pick me out of the group.) After that, I got some pictures with people from the New England Garrison, and got out of armor, which I put away and sealed up. I then set about saying goodbyes to the various authors, artists and professionals that I had met, as well as friends that I found along the way. I got a quick lunch, tried in vain to find Linh and Sarah, turned in my badge and hours, said yet some more goodbyes, and left. I left a note at Sarah/Linh's room, which they didn't follow up on. :p I got a taxi back to the airport, and waited for my flight. I talked with a couple of people from the convention, including the graphic novel's writer, who was on the same flight, and waited while learning that the flight was delayed pending a couple of people dropping out of the flight to make room. I ran into Randy Stradley and Jeremy Barlow, who nearly killed me when I told them that I was Darth Nuke, a particularly annoying forum member at Dark Horse. (I'm really not) Boarded the flight to New York, waited around there for a little while, got dinner, waited for yet another person to drop out of the flight, then boarded that one. I changed seats with a woman wanting to sit with her family, and sat next to a girl, Lindsay, who happened to be a UVM student. We talked for most of the flight home, working on a crossword puzzle, which made the flight go by very quickly. I gave her my AIM SN, although I have yet to hear back from her. Waiting at the airport was my brother, and we drove home. It was over. And that's that. I'd do it again in a heart beat. It passed as fast.

Next up: Pictures!

Here's one:

New Firefly Images

Here are some screenshots that I took from the Big Damn Trailer:
Lots of Images:

Still Flying

Reavers!

Serenity!

Finally, a Civilized World

The Fearless Leader

Booms

Yahoo!

A wretched hive of Scum and Villiany

The Man they Call Jayne

Zoe

"Good"

Mal with a Gun

I didn't expect this- Space Battles!

BOOM!

"Let's Be Bad Guys."

Nice. Just nice.

Ouch

Now what's she up to?

Up to no good.

That just looks painful.

Ooh, Aah.

That looks cool.

This reminds me a little of the Black Hawk Down crash.

The bad dude of the story.

Another cool location.

REAVERS!

Landing

That just looks sweet.

SERENITY!

KICK ASS

The Convention Part 2

Day Three of the convention was the one that a lot of people were looking forwards to. George Lucas was in for the morning to make his first convention appearence in nearly twenty years. People knew it too, and began lining up early. From the reports that I heard, people started lining up at midnight for the 8 am show. On top of that, it was about forty degrees, lightly raining and windy. Not really the most receptive place for a line. I awoke at about 4 am to get ready to help with the lines. It was already several blocks long, wraping around my hotel. Crazy, and people were getting annoyed, because we had to move them around a little bit. I didn't have armor on, and by 7 am, we started moving them into the building. I had to lead a couple of bitchy people around then went back outside and to my room, got my armor on. I then was asked to man the ground floors to help get people out of the building. I was given a pass to get into the second Lucas showing of the morning, and I went up to go see him. It was quite a while before I got in, as we took a while to move nearly three thousand people into the room. We didn't fill it with the people supposed to be in the next showing, so we started filling people from thethird showing. Then we went in, and for the first time in my life, I saw the person who's really changed my life by introducing Star Wars to me and countless others. For a half hour, probably twenty or so people got up and asked questions of the flanneled one. There were the general questions, like what's coming up next (Two Star Wars TV series, a possible Willow TV series, a couple movies that might be in the works.) What did he think of the fans, and some things like that. It was a quick, but very good talk, and he was very appreciative of the fans, and the 501st. He pointed right at me, or my section when someone asked about the Five-Oh-First. "Well, seeing how they're all pointing guns at me..." The entire trooper line cheered. It was great to hear him say that. After that, we cleared the room and got out, and went on to our other assignments. My armor was really starting to fall apart and I got out of it, and worked at Del Rey for a little while, then wandered around for a little while inbetween signings. I talked with Randy Stradley and Jeremy Barlow from Darkhorse comics, whom I'd met the day before. I won a t-shirt from Lucas Arts, talked to Ken, one of the guys who was on the production team for some of the Star Wars games that I made friends with. I saw Battlefront II being played for a bit, which was a really cool looking game that I'm certainly going to upgrade my computer for. It was amazing. Can't wait to see it in it's entirety. I went back and helped with another couple signings, and talked with Matthew Stover, then met Timothy Zahn for the first time. I also went to the Star Wars Spectacular, which was 8 mindblowing minutes of finished Episode III footage. It was absolutely amazing. All of the major fights, and even then some other footage, it was just amazing. Simply amazing. I talked to several people about it and got dinner, tried to get into the panel on the new 9 book series, but the guys wouldn't let me in. Gr... But I found out anyway, which is good. I got Aaron Allston to sign my books, got images from Karen Traviss, Troy Denning and talked with them for a little bit. I got dinner, talked to the artists again and went and walked around at the convention center then went back to the hotel room for a while. I told Sara and Lihn to stop by, but they never did, and I called Eric, who was just on his way into class. I went to bed early. It was almost over.

The Convention: Part 1

I knew that the convention would be really fast, but man, it blew by. I had an outstanding time while I was there and met some very cool people, as well as some weird ones. I didn't get around to writing things down like I did for Arizona. I was busy. Literally, I got up earlier than I thought that I would and got in later than usual, usually pretty tired. To start, I got on the plane and headed out to Indy, making a layover at Philly, where I met a girl named Lynn, who was also headed to the convention. She was reading the same book that I was, Republic Commando, and struck up converstation, and shared a taxi to the hotels that we were staying at. When I got there, I signed in, got my volunteer badge and walked around the center for a while. (It wasn't open yet) I met the Del Rey people, Shelly and Colleen, who said that they'd need a bit of work later on during the event. They had a nice schedule lined up for signings. Matthew Stover, Aaron Allston, Timothy Zahn, Troy Dennings and Karen Traviss were the big ones, and there were a couple others. From there, I wandered around for a while, running back into Linh, who was on her way to meet a friend, Sarah, at the bus station. We met her, then I went off to go do some work, having nothing to do. I ended up manning a door and directing people to the proper entrance. The next day was the big event. I got up at about 7, got my armor on and headed down. There was already a huge line forming, and people were getting excited seeing the number of Storm Troopers, Snow Troopers and pretty much every other costume around. The 501st troopers lined up and we marched to the state house, where we got our photos taken. My armor kept coming apart, and I later patched it up with some tape that I found. From the march, I went to work over in the store, which was a complete disaster all weekend, with people waiting in line for upwards of 7 hours. Insane. With some time off, I wandered over to the Fan Room, which had several fan booths and a life sized X-Wing fighter. I ran into Karen Traviss, who wrote Republic Commando. Her thoughts on the convention are in her blog on the right. She is a wonderful woman and I really enjoyed meeting her. I was then drafted into the Storm Trooper Olympics, which has been covered in this story. (There's a picture of all of us.) From there, I went to the DelRey booth, where I helped manage the line for Matthew Stover and Karen Traviss. The lines grew quickly, and I talked to a number of fans of the books and EU. That evening was the opening Ceremonies, which I am kicking myself for not going in armor to. The 501st did a march to Imperial March, which was awesome, and the 2 hour event was just fun. A Jazz band played, people talked about a number of things, and we saw several live performances, including a great rendition of The Saga Begins and of the Revenge of the Sith Trailer, brought to us by the SW in 30 people. Funny stuff. We also got to see some of the music videos featured in the next soundtrack, which looks amazing. Finally, all of the VIPs in attendance were brought on stage, which was cool to see. After that, I left and ended up wandering around the convention hall for a while before patching up my armor and heading off to bed. Day Two of the convention was much like Day One, except that I didn't work the store. Instead, I worked at Del Rey for the entire day, meeting several authors and having some great chats with them. I also met Jan Duursema and a number of artists whom I'd talked to, as well as several people from Lucasarts, who invited me to take a look at their projects. Great people. That evening, I went to a 501st party to raise money for Katie Johnson (More information at the banner at the bottom of the page- not the Serenity one) and I met a number of people from the New England Garrison. More great people in that group.

I'll get back to days Three and Four later, but I have class in a little while.

However, before I go, excellent news: Tomorrow, the first official trailer for Serenity will be released on the internet, and will be hitting theaters this Friday. KICK ASS.