Okay. Getting firewood in the snow at 9° F, versus Bay Area traffic? A no - brainer. So glad to be home. God is good! Happy New Year you'all
Just got an App to help me in my quest to read 12 books in 2018. It's called goodreads. Anyone here using it?
Finally saw The Last Jedi yesterday. Quite enjoyed it for the most part, although I think it could have been a bit shorter.
On first viewing (approx. 1 week ago), I'm not sure how I feel about it. Was it a "good" movie?? I'll say yes. But overall, I was somewhat disappointed. I enjoyed certain parts of the movie, but was a bit disappointed by the timing of it. It was interesting to see that many people (Mark Hamil included) didn't care for how Luke was portrayed. But I rather liked his character in this episode. I could see a lot of that young Luke snarkiness in his interaction with Rey. There were a couple things he did that surprised me a bit, but didn't necessarily mind them. Some parts felt rushed, like it could've been expanded and perhaps carried over a bit into the next episode. Definitely gonna see it a few more times because, well, it's Star Wars...but also, being I missed a number of things, I wanna catch those in the next few viewings.
The portrayal of Luke seemed reasonable based on the backstory that was presented. The hyperspace suicide run was pretty amazing visually. Looking back on it, there are a ton of plot holes and questionable tactics and decisions.
What's really on my mind is, where in the World did the First Order come from? How did they come to power so fast? I mean at the end of ROTJ, Luke and the Rebellion had crushed the Empire, and this new evil "empire" is even using the same weaponry and soldiers and tie fighters. And where did this Snoke guy come from?
I’ve done some poking around a bit. From what I gathered, yes, the Death Star is destroyed at the end of Return of the Jedi, and, yes, there is a big space battle where many of the Imperial warships are destroyed by the Rebel Alliance. But NOT all. There were factions of the Empire scattered throughout the galaxy that were not in that battle. The Empire was dealt a heavy blow, but it was not completely destroyed. The First Order rose up, over time, from the ashes of the Empire. As far as Snokes, I don’t know much about him.
Yeah, the Empire was a massive organization. A fair chunk of their fleet was at Endor, but not nearly all. Despite the loss of the Death Star, the rebel fleet would have been in tough against the remainder of the star destroyers there. I can imagine the Empire strategically retreated at this time to sort out the leadership and consolidate the worlds they still held. The Force Awakens should have better explained the backstory and probably could have done it effectively like the introduction of the history of the ring in The Fellowship of the Ring. I think the early Extended Universe books dealt with this fairly well (at least the few I have read), but they are not considered part of canon anymore.
Got a Phone call from Micro$oft, lady said something was wrong with my PC and that she wanted to fix it together, me behind the screen, she telling me what to do. And I said, madam you are a fraud. And she hang up.
You need to take lessons from Tango. I think his record is about 26 minutes with a fraudster, with Tango in hysterics because his "computer had a cold."