blake_logan

On May 25, 1977 I attended the first showing in my home town of the original Star Wars movie (later subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope). I found it to be amazing and captivating. I saw it at least 6 times that first year and I convinced my friends who weren't into Sci-Fi to come along with me to see it again. It's still one of my all time favorite films. I was really excited when The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980 and I looked forward to another amazing experience, but I ended up paying to see it 3 times before I was able to get through the entire film. The first time I ended up falling asleep in the movie theater . On reflection, it probably wasn't a good idea to sneek two bottles of beer into a movie after working all day on 2 hours sleep and a hangover. The second time I fell asleep in the movie theater again, but this time without the influences of alcohol or sleep deprivation . When I finally saw the entire film in one showing, I was disappointed . It didn't live up to the promise of the original film. By 1983 I'd bought a VCR and saw Return of the Jedi on VHS. I wasn't expecting as much from that one and so I ended up deciding that it was OK and better than The Empire Strikes Back. I think I saw The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones on VSH and by the time Revenge of the Sith came out in 2005 I'd switched to DVDs. They were OK films, but none of them were as good as the first. I've got all six movies on DVD now and I pull them out every couple of years and have a Star Wars marathon. I think they're more entertaining than the Star Trek movies but less entertaining than selected episodes from any of the Star Trek TV series. I'll wait to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens when it gets to Netflix or HBO or Showtime. From the trailers, the special effects look like they'll be better than in the previous movies, but it's the story line that will determine whether it's a good film or just more over-hyped rubbish.

That's correct. Your turn.

Hmmm...a week with no guesses. And here I though this one was too easy to post. Maybe this hint will help. Her TV series was cancelled during the 5th series (finale aired in June 2015), but she's still doing guest shots.

King Harvest - Dancing in the Moonlight

Isn't that Jimmy Carter?

You must be one of those 'points of light' that Bush the 1st used to talk about.

Doesn't anyone use Crisco anymore?

I really enjoyed Mann Rambling's "Ship Logs of the Santa Claus" series of stories. dkstories (dkstories), Rob Colton and Rilbur all have some pretty good sci-fi stories posted to this site, although you have to pay for premium access to get to some of them

In the US, 'pissed' means you're angry or upset about something. In the UK, it means your drunk. 'Pissed Off' means the same thing in both places

For an apocalypse, it's hard to go wrong with black leather with studs & heavy zippers.

There are 24 breweries in my town, so I can usually find a beer that I like , but for special occasions... If it's really hot outside, there's nothing like a Bombay Sapphire Gin & Tonic: The rest of the year, Jack Daniels with some ice and maybe a splash of water, but never ever cola! Wine almost always makes my head hurt

It really pisses me off when a computer program tries to think for me and it seems to be happening more and more frequently. I guess the developers are trying to be clever, but I'm beginning to suspect that it's something more sinister. The first time I noticed this issue was when I put my collection of mp3 files on the hard drive of my computer and Windows Media Center decided to move them around, rename the folders and put the tunes where it thinks I want to store them. Yes, I found the settings that let it do that and turned them off; then moved every thing back to where I wanted it (took a couple of days of unplanned effort) but whenever there's an upgrade, settings go back to the default and I have to reconfigure everything again. I got a new cell phone last month and on the way home with it, it literally overheated and started sending out messages. When I got home, I learned that Verizon Wireless decided to automatically download all of the apps that were installed on my old phone to the new one and in the process, burned through 95% of the month's data allowance in the first hour I had the new phone. I would have been much happier installing the applications that I wanted on the new phone myself after I was back home and had a Wi-Fi connection available. That one potentially cost me money and I ended up turning off my data connection for the rest of the month so it didn't automatically buy an overage allocation of data :pissed: :pissed: And this one is just creepy. I have an application that manages all my affinity cards called Keyring. When I get to a cash register, I open the app, pull up the virtual card for the salesperson to scan. I don't have to carry around a pocketful of cards for the stores that I do business with so it's really convenient. Keyring recently had an update which added new functionality. I got ready to pay for my groceries the other day and when I turned on the phone, Keyring had already launched itself and opened the card for that merchant. Cyberstalking by an application vendor is almost enough for me to delete the app. Who knows what Windows 10 / Google / Chrome / Firefox / IE are doing for you behind the scenes. It worries me when I go to a web page and one of the advertisements includes everything that was in my most recent order with that merchant. If this keeps up, and I'm sure it will, I may have to learn to program my own apps. I'll get off my soapbox now. Sorry if that went from "Whinge Binge" over to "Rant", but there you go.

Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > System Settings Password protection on wake-up: Require a Password / Don't Require a Password

It's the underlying economics that push the topic into the political arena.

When my dentist said "Oops!" Followed by "Get me an endodontics tray"

We had Cliff Notes back then

I used to have two Labrador Retrievers who were apparently part goat....they would eat anything....paper, sticks, tin cans, plastic bottles ... well, you get the picture. If something irritated their stomach, they would throw it up and usually swallow it again, but that's pretty normal for dogs. I also have a relatively large back yard...almost an acre inside the chain link fence and mostly wooded. The patio door in my bedroom opens to a deck which leads down to the enclosed yard. When nature calls, I just have to let the dogs out on the deck and they have free run of the space to attend to their bodily functions, chase rabbits, squirrels and other wildlife and to otherwise just be dogs. This works a lot better for me than putting the dogs on leash, walking through the neighborhood with the little plastic bags to clean up after them and the subsequent transportation of the filled backs home for disposal. At any rate, one night around 3:00 one morning I woke up to that unmistakable rhythmic grunting sound of a dog getting ready to vomit, which was followed shortly by a loud splash which was followed shortly by a wall of stench that made me gag and set my eyes to watering. Apparently during their pre-bedtime pitstop, one of the dogs overindulged in deer poop, decided that he didn't like the taste it left in his mouth and filled up on water before he came back inside for the evening. Over the next few hours, the combination turned into a thick brown slurry of sewage in his stomach which he eventually emptied into my bedroom. I turned on the lights to see the dog sitting in his crate in a pool of this brown muck. I contemplated moving the crate with the dog still in it out to the deck and returning to bed to deal with it in the morning ... maybe that would discourage him from eating deer poop in the future...but between the smell and the spills on the rug, I had to go ahead and clean up in the middle of the night. To make a long story short, I put the dog outside on the back deck and managed to get the crate full of sewage into the bathroom with minimal spills. I drained the crate into the toilet then washed it out in the shower. Next, I pulled out the rug cleaner to shampoo the spots that managed to get out of the crate. Finally, I had to wash the dog, since he was covered in the brown sludge. Just as I was finishing up, my alarm went off and I had to get ready for work. It was not a fun day. I'm not sure if all that beats eating cat boogers, but it's the 'ewww-iest' pet related story I could come up with.

Ummm....perhaps you meant to put this in the "Eew-Day Tuesday" thread???

Mine would be Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon. 40 years later, it's still one of my favorites. I have fond memories circa 1993 of listening to "I'm in the high fidelity, first class traveling set and I think I need a Leer Jet" whilst riding in a Gulf Stream somewhere over the middle of the Atlantic

In 1971 I was in college, so I didn't spend a lot of time watching television, but by the end of the year, I'd heard the tune one too many times already. My real question regarding the last episode of Mad Men is this. Was ending the episode with that particular commercial an indication that Don was heading back to McCann get the Coke account?

Or you could just swing by Bojangles

Natalie Wood?

Looks like Shirley Temple