It’s been a long time since I attended a pop culture-style convention (think “Comic-Con”), and I was super excited to hear GalaxyCon was coming to Oklahoma City Memorial Day weekend. Susan, I, and the kids all spent some time at GalaxyCon this weekend and boy was there a lot of things to see and do!

Like many conventions, GalaxyCon has many events around the country each year and the Oklahoma City event took place at the Oklahoma City Convention Center in the heart of Oklahoma City, just south of the Paycom center and connected to the Omni Hotel. Last year Susan and I attended the Oddities and Curiosities Expo in the same location, but that show only took up half the convention floor space. GalaxyCon not only filled the entire space but had panels up on the second floor!

We saw kids who were six and adults in their sixties dressed in costume. There were costume contests at the convention, but a lot of people just enjoy dressing up. We recognized some of the costumes like Napoleon Dynamite and Mr. T, but a lot of them seemed like videogame characters we didn’t recognize. We sure recognized this pint-sized bounty hunter who was outside the convention, getting his jet pack fitted before entering.

The inside of the convention center was a bit overwhelming at first until we got the “lay of the land” so to speak. Essentially, the convention was split into the celebrity autograph section, the vendor/booth section, and the special event section. The video game and arcade section were in another room, and all the speaking panels were in rooms upstairs. There was no shortage of things to see and do at the show!

Susan and I walked through the celebrity autograph/meet-and-greet area a few times. Autographs seemed to range between $40 and $80, depending on the celebrity with the biggest stars commanding the biggest prices. Above you can see the line of people waiting to meet George Takei (Sulu from Star Trek). I was embarrassed by how many of the celebrity names I did not recognize, but there were plenty of people lined up to meet many of them so I was in the minority. I’m not sure how many celebrities were present but I would estimate that it was somewhere around 50-60. For professional wrestling fans, there was an entire row featuring Jeff Hardy, Lex Luger, Jerry “The King” Lawler, Mick Foley, and a few others. Some of the bigger names we saw were Chris Parnell (Saturday Night Live) and Butch Patrick (Eddie Munster). One of the funniest things we heard was Joey Fatone being identified as “that guy from Impractical Jokers” instead of “that guys from N’SYNC.”

Also in the celebrity/guest area was my pal Guy Hutchinson, who was sitting next to Dana Snyder and Andy Sipes. We were able to chat with each of them for a few minutes there but there was always someone waiting behind us in line, so we tried not to take up too much of their time!

Next up was the vendor area. There were over a hundred different booths filled with artwork, toys, crafts, costume accessories, play weapons, and more.

One of the best booths at the show was my friend Drew Stone’s Jurassic Park display. Drew has painstakingly recreated not one but two Jeeps from the film. He also had multiple dinosaurs on display, and an area set aside with multiple classic Jurassic Park videogames for people to play. Every time we walked past Drew’s booth there was a line of adults waiting to have their pictures taken and children waiting to pet the dinosaurs!

There were multiple Star Wars booths, lots of comic and videogame-related booths, and so, so many Ghostbusters! If there’s something strange in your neighborhood I’m not sure who you could call because all the Ghostbusters were set up at this convention.

Next to this room was the videogame room. While Mason was there he participated in a Super Smash Brothers tournament. There were lots of arcade games available to play, and even more comic, videogame, Twitch, and YouTube personalities to meet.

Because we had weekend passes, we ended up going to the show multiple times over the weekend. That worked out great. There were a lot of things happening on Saturday, but that was also the busiest day. Friday and Sunday were better days for spending time talking to vendors and celebrities because it wasn’t quite so busy.

I guess attendance was good because GalaxyCon has already announced they will be returning to Oklahoma City in 2025. WE can’t wait to go back, and they even take volunteers to host panels so who knows what might happen next year…

Our trips involve equal parts planning and impulse. Case in point — last year when Susan first heard about the 2024 eclipse, she booked an AirBnB in Austin. Then, a month before the big event, our reservation was abruptly cancelled without notice. We received a refund along with a note that said “this reservation is no longer available” which, to me, sounds like they got a more lucrative offer. I’ve been told they’ll take a hit on their rating and that there may be other consequences for then, but none of that matters to us. With less than a month before the big event, we had to make new plans… fast.

Sometimes things happen for a reason, and as it turned out the area of Texas we had originally planned to visit was now predicting cloudy weather. Coincidentally I was contacted by an old acquaintance who was going to be visiting Arkansas the weekend of the eclipse, and a new plan was formed.

SUNDAY, APRIL 7

Susan and I left home on Sunday around 8 a.m. and around noon I met my friends Kevin and Earl at the Arkadia Retrocade, the retro arcade in Fayetteville, Arkansas owned by Shea Mathis. The Arkadia Retrocade is a happy place, a place that recharges my batteries by being bathed in the warm glow of arcade monitors. Arcades are not a place that recharges Susan’s batteries, but she was more than happy to drop me off and spend the day exploring Fayetteville on her own. Despite being around so many classic arcade games, the three of us spent most of our time sitting around a tabletop Warlords machine, chatting and catching up. Kevin and Earl left around 5 p.m. and Susan wasn’t scheduled to pick me up for another hour, which gave me plenty of time to enjoy the arcade and play some classic games. I didn’t take any pictures with my phone but I did stream some video to Facebook using my Meta glasses.

After the arcade closed, Susan found a local restaurant called Noodles. We were expecting more of a noodle-based restaurant but it was more of an Italian place, which was fine with us. The food was fantastic. I had chicken parmesan served on linguine with a cilantro and jalapeno lime cream sauce which was really good. Susan got the traditional spaghetti and meatballs, we got some bread served with vinegar and oil, and the cocktails made the meal absolutely perfect.

Fayetteville was just outside the path of totality, which meant hotel prices were still reasonable. We got a good night’s sleep and woke up rested and ready for an adventure.

MONDAY, APRIL 8

Our first stop of the morning was Doomsday Coffee, located in Fayetteville. The cafe’s name seemed to fit the theme of the weekend. The barista suggested we try the breakfast tacos, and we were so glad she did! They were so good, and the coffee was even better.

Doomsday was our last stop in Fayetteville. From there, we began driving toward… TOTALITY! (I can’t remember ever typing the word “totality” before this post.) We heard on the news that Russellville, Arkansas was having a large solar eclipse festival, but the closer we got the heavier the traffic became. On our way there, we stopped to top off our tank and found gas stations were beginning to run out of gas.

We ended up stopping at Ozark, Arkansas, a smaller town that was in the path of totality. Ozark was having their own festival, which turned out to be a lot of fun. We were able to park on Main Street for free, right next to the festival, and just a few feet away from a Daylight Donuts where we snagged a donut and a coffee. We also discovered that at 11 a.m., the donut shop would close and by taken over by a local group selling hamburgers and hotdogs for a fundraiser. We told them we would come back, and we did.

There were all kinds of vendors at the festival, selling all kinds of things. We bought Eclipse 2024 t-shirts, met the Sonic Slushie, had our pictures taken by a 360-degree rotating camera, and eventually made our way back across the street again for hotdogs and hamburgers.

After several hours of waiting, it was time for the big event. Around 1 p.m., the world started to look different. Things looked more yellow; it felt like there was a haze in the sky, or that our eyes were constantly out of focus. As the time of totality began to approach, more and more people began to stop what they were doing, put on their solar glasses, and claim their spots.

And then… Totality.

I heard a piece of advice on the radio this weekend: “watch your first eclipse, and photograph your second.” I thought pointing my iPhone toward the eclipse during its totality phase would capture at least s semblance of what we were seeing, but it wasn’t even close. In the sky we saw a black circle surrounded by a thin ring of fire. Every picture I took with my iPhone shows a blurry yellow circle with a tiny dot in the middle. A total eclipse is an amazing thing to see, and a difficult event to photograph without good equipment or better planning.

As the moon moved between us and the sun, all the dogs on leashes laid down in confusion. Birds that had been resting in trees suddenly began chirping before flying away. Everyone in Ozark, Arkansas stood still, staring at the sky.

And then, it was over. Light appeared faster than it had disappeared, it seemed. Susan and I wasted no time returning to our car and zipping back toward the interstate in hopes of beating the traffic rush. Traffic was indeed heavy for a few miles but before long it thinned out and it was smooth sailing for the rest of our trip back home.

They say we won’t have another total eclipse here in the United States for another 20 years, and who knows if we’ll ne able to see that one. I’m glad we were able to experience this at least once in our lives. It’s something I’ll never forget.

If you weren’t able to be in the path of totality, here’s a sped up version of the event I recorded with my GoPro. Watch it go from normal daylight to complete darkness and back in less than three minutes. Stay to the end and you’ll hear the festival attendees spontaneously applauding. Thank you, Sun and Moon, for your great performance.

Over the past fifteen years I’ve had a front row seat to the evolution of streaming digital content to televisions. While most modern televisions have the ability to stream both locally and externally hosted content, streaming video to a “dumb” TV fifteen years ago took a lot more effort. When I set cobbled together my first streaming network nearly twenty years ago, I crammed a dedicated computer into a small cubby inside my living room’s entertainment center and connected it to my television using a video card with an s-video cable. The living room PC was connected to my upstairs media server using a network cable that ran out the back of the entertainment center and literally up a flight of stairs, connecting the two machines.

Back in 2011 I purchased my Boxee box, the first add-on box I owned that allowed me to wirelessly stream content to my television. It’s kind of funny, reading my initial review of Boxee. (“I can now watch YouTube on my television!”) A year or two later I stumbled across Western Digital’s WD TV Live, which I found on sale while visiting Fry’s. I’ve seen them referred to by a few different names like WD TV and WD TV Live, but when I first saw them they were labeled WD Live, which is how I’ve always referred to them. The WD Live is a little box that uses your home’s WiFi network to stream local content (movies on your home computer) and other content like Netflix and YouTube over the internet. You can also play content off an attached USB stick. Again, these are all features built in to most modern flatscreen televisions, but being able to add these features to your television back in 2012 for $99 was pretty amazing.

If I wrote a blog post when I purchased my first WD Live box I can’t find it, but in 2014 I wrote an article about putting together my annual Christmas slideshow and doing it on the WD Live. One neat feature it has is that it can simultaneously play mp3s in random order from one directory while showing pictures in random order from another folder at the same time.

The Boxee device I bought died a low death. Boxee was bought by D-Link and phased out. Updates dried up, which is a death sentence for any cloud-dependent device. YouTube and other built-in streaming apps broke. Eventually, I replaced it with a second WD Live device. By the time I went to buy a third one, the WD Live had already been discontinued (WD stopped production of the device in 2016) so I bought a third one via eBay. I had one WD Live hooked up in the living room, a second one in the bedroom, and the third one in our upstairs den.

And again, like everything… time moves on. The WD Live does not support some of the newest (H.265) encodes, meaning it won’t play some newer content. It also suffers from an outdated interface. Today’s users expect a Neflix-like interface with lots of metadata and large screenshots. The WD Live works best by displaying filenames and nothing more.

Fast forward and today we have multiple DirecTV streaming boxes in our home, all of which do everything the WD Live boxes did. Our televisions also have Netflix and YouTube and all those streaming apps built in. What took a lot of technical knowledge to build 15 years ago now comes built in to every TV sold at Walmart. The WD Live has been rendered obsolete.

Well, almost.

Despite running Plex on my media server and trying everything I can come up with, there doesn’t appear to be any way to play random mp3s while displaying random photos at the same time. Such a seemingly simple thing should be easy to do, but there just doesn’t seem to be any way to do it.

I recently disconnected and boxed up two of my three WD Live boxes and relegated them out to the garage where they will most likely sit unused for the rest of my life. The third, however, I left hooked up in the living room. I may only use it one night a year on Christmas Eve to display my annual Christmas slideshow, but even if that’s all it does, it’ll be worth keeping around.

I met Carol back in 1995 on my first day of work at a new job. In that office there were twelve helpdesk analysts and two admins who did all the adulting. Carol was one of those admins; she answered incoming calls and routed them to the technicians, processed warranty and purchase orders, and all sorts of administrative tasks. She also became the office’s unofficial mom. Carol was the one who organized parties and often played peacemaker when tempers flared.

More than all of that, Carol became one of our dearest friends. Back in the 90s when Susan and I were broke and moving houses, we asked all our friends for help on moving day. That morning, Carol arrived with a towering plate full of egg salad sandwiches for everyone. Actually, she brought enough egg salad sandwiches to feed three times as many people who showed up. We kept the leftover sandwiches in the refrigerator of our new house and ate them for a week. Carol has become a close family friend, and Susan and I really cherish that friendship.

At some point, it came up in conversation that Carol has bever seen Star Wars — specifically I’m referring to the original film (“A New Hope”), but one could just as easily say “any” Star Wars. Carol has seen a lot of movies and I have seen a lot of movies but for the most part, we watch different kinds of movies. Back in the late 1990s we invited Carol over and I made her watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. She thought it was okay. I feel like it was around that time that I learned she hadn’t seen Star Wars, either. I said someday she should come over again and we would watch it. It took another 25 years, but last weekend it finally happened.

We turned our movie night into an event. Susan ordered Mexican food from a local restaurant while I made popcorn in the popcorn machine my dad got me for Christmas a few years ago. Carol brought a tasty dessert that topped off the entire meal. After we finished eating and catching up, it was time to transport ourselves to a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

I wore a Star Wars t-shirt.

I have no idea how many times I’ve actually watched Star Wars, but it’s a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. Like, twice a year ever since we recorded a copy of it off of HBO. I am an annoying person to watch Star Wars with because I will say every word of the film and not mean to. Yeah, even Greedo’s lines, which are in Huttese. I try not to do it but I’ve seen the film so many times it’s almost like listening to your favorite album. It’s super annoying and I try not to do it when other people are around, but I slipped a few times and had to physically cover my mouth to prevent such lines as “you are part of the Revel Alliance and a traitor! Take her away!” from coming out.

It was so fun and interesting to sit next to someone experiencing the film for the first time. Carol was worried Luke might not reemerge after being pulled underwater in the trash compactor, and laughed at a few moments that I’d forgotten were funny.

Carol’s only complaint at the end of the film was that the love triangle between Han, Luke, and Leia hadn’t been resolved. That’s when I let it slip that really she needed to watch the entire trilogy to get the whole story. It took me almost 30 years to finally show her Star Wars so I’m not sure if I’ll get her back over to see the remaining two, but even if that never happens, we had such a fun time. Mission accomplished!

When you own as many things as I do, organization is a must. Despite having a relatively messy work area, I’m pretty disciplined when it comes to organizing my storage. Over the years I’ve purchased dozens and dozens of garage storage tubs, plastic “shoeboxes” for storing smaller things, and Ziploc baggies for keeping bits and bobs together. I own lots and lots of things and found out a long time ago, searching for those things drives me absolutely batty. I am always on the lookout for new ways to organize things, whether that’s labeling the outside of all those storage tubs or keeping track of what’s where on a spreadsheet. Despite my best efforts, one of the areas that is constantly getting out of control is my workshop toolbox drawers. Despite my best efforts to “keep things apart,” somehow everything gets intermingled and tangled every time I turn around. I suspect every night after I close the drawer, some sort of Toy Story partying is happening in there.

I’ve been trying to come up with some sort of drawer organization system for a while now. I’ve looked online at drawer organizaters and the ones I found seem both expensive and not to my liking. I considered building something out of wood or even 3D printing something, but those solutions felt like a lot of effort and not very configurable. Instead, for the past few years I’ve done nothing, accepting that every time I go looking for a specific screwdriver it’s going to take five minutes of digging to find it.

A couple of months ago while searching for small storage containers on Amazon I found these: food containers. They come in a few different sizes and colors, but these particular ones had everything I was looking for — they’re black (which will look good in the workshop), come with lids, and, appealing to my thrifty side, are inexpensive. This 50 pack of containers costs $25.

There were some smaller ones available, but I thought these slightly larger ones would work better for storing tools and I was right. In the top drawer of my workbench I discovered I could put 15 of the containers (three deep, five wide) although after a little shuffling I removed the fifth row to make room for slightly larger tools. The top drawer is where I put smaller things that I use frequently — pliers, screws, tape measures, Allen wrenches, and so on. It was simple to sort things out into “like” piles and put them into containers. There’s a small space in the front of the drawer between the containers and the front of the drawer, which is a great place to store the screwdrivers I use the most.

The containers aren’t fastened down inside the drawer which makes them easy to remove if needed. Last week I was working on a van project that required an Allen wrench but I wasn’t sure what size I needed. I simply picked up the container full of Allen wrenches and took it to where I was working. Easy peasy!

So far, this system is working great. I’m planning to use the remaining containers to store other random items… and possibly, leftovers. ;)

If you’re interested in pickup a pack of these up, here’s a link to them on Amazon.

It’s been two weeks since I went to the emergency room with excruciating back pain. It took a minute to get all the pieces aligned, but last week I ended up with three separate appointments regarding my back. Last week was a bit of a roller coaster with lots of information, both good and bad, coming at me at a rapid pace. Here’s a quick summary of those appointments, where I am now, and what the plan is moving forward.

01. ANOTHER MRI

Last weekend, I had a second MRI scan, this time to scan the thoracic portion (middle third) of my spine. My entire body was inside the MRI machine both times so I’m not why they don’t scan your entire back while they have you in there, but they don’t.

The results of the MRI were simultaneous sent to me and my doctor so I got to read the news first hand. And while the previous scan seemed to be a “best guess” as to what was causing my pain, this one was a bit more certain. I have two herniated discs (one ruptured, one bulging) in the middle of my back.

02. A VISIT WITH THE NEUROSURGEON

My next stop was a meeting with a local neurosurgeon, who performed four more X-rays on my back and went over the results of them and then MRI scans with me. The herniated discs are definitely the problem. After a brief discussion, his plan is to initially treat my chronic back pain with medicine and physical therapy. If that doesn’t work, the next step will involve steroid injections into my back (essentially an epidural). Surgery would only be performed as a last resort. It was described to me as an invasive procedure which would involve removing parts of my spine, trimming the herniated discs, and then reassembling my back — a procedure that would be followed with month(s) of recovery. Everyone involved is hoping we don’t get to that. The neurosurgeon’s partying words were I should avoid doing anything that might hurt my back worse.

03. PHYSICAL THERAPY

I was apprehensive about attending physical therapy, as I didn’t want to do anything that might injure my back further. In fact, the neurosurgeon insisted that I get “manual” treatments only (no machines). I went into the PT thinking it would be the least helpful part of this process, and it turned out to be one of the best parts. The physical therapist I was assigned, Mark, explained to me that a surgeon’s goal would be to keep my spine straight through internal means like metal rods. His goal, he said, was to help me keep my spine straight through external means, like correcting my posture and a few simple exercises. Mark explained some things about bulging discs and my spine that no one else had up to this point.

04. HERE WE ARE

The neurosurgeon put me on Gabapentin (daily) and a muscle relaxer (as needed). I had to buy a larger pill box from Amazon, one with three compartments per day… yay.

The good news is, between the medicine, the exercises, and finding new ways to move (or more importantly, not move), I haven’t had one of those crippling back spasms in about a week. The muscle pain is always there, but varies between and one and a three out of ten on the pain scale throughout the day — not perfect, but manageable. I’m still ramping up on some of my meds, and I hope as I continue the exercises, things will get better. I will be following my neurosurgeon and avoiding activities that could hurt my back further (I’m glad I got away from collecting arcade cabinets). If things stay the same as they are I’ll survive, and if they get better I wouldn’t complain. :)

Last week I announced that I had discovered, as far as I can tell, a previously unknown Star Trek special. Not only can I not find any information regarding this special online, but the Trekkies I reached out to — and the Trekkies they reached out to — can’t seem to find any record of it, either.

As I wrote in my last week’s post, the special is a television airing of parts one and two of the classic Star Trek episode “The Menagerie,” presented together as a single episode. The special is hosted by Leonard Nimoy, who filmed original segments that appear before, during, and after the special.

While YouTube has blocked every version of the video I’ve tried to upload, Earl Green from TheLogBook.com came up with a pretty good solution. Earl edited the actual episode out of the clip, formatted the original Nimoy content in a way that would appease YouTube’s censors, and added a wealth of information to run alongside the video. I think it’s a pretty good compromise and awesome way to enjoy the video. I’m working on a way to get the entire video out there, but for now this seems lke a pretty food solution.

Please enjoy this previously lost Star Trek video.

Thanks again to D. Stone, The Retroist, and Earl Green for all their help.

One of my favorite hobbies (which I have previously discussed) is “digital archaeology.” I love finding, digitizing, archiving and sharing audio and video from the past that may not have mage the transition from analog to digital. I get great personal enjoyment from digging through old cassettes, video tapes, and even computer disks in hopes of finding something that got left behind, something that never made it to the internet and putting it there. To be fair, 95% of what I find already exists in some form. Most of the movies and television shows I find on old tapes have been released on physical media and/or are available to stream, and that stuff isn’t very exciting. The television commercials I find get uploaded to their own YouTube channel (VHS Dumpster Dive). All the home movies I find get archived; some get shared publicly while others may never leave my hard drive.

It’s actually pretty rare for me to find a VHS recording that hasn’t made its way to the internet in some form. It’s extremely rare to find something that nobody seems to remember.

Yesterday, I think I found one.

This tape opens with a station identifier from KAUT 43, a UHF channel operating out of Oklahoma City. An announcer introduces the program as “The Movie For a Sunday Evening,” described as “a series of features selected for family viewing.” This evening’s program? “A very unusual presentation of the first feature length production of Star Trek, The Menagerie. With special guest host, Leonard Nimoy.”

After the opening credits from the original Star Trek television show play, the camera moves to the Enterprise’s transporter room. Moments later, Leonard Nimoy appears in the transporter — not as Spock, but as himself.

Nimoy begins by asking viewers if they can believe it has been eleven years since he first stepped foot on the set of the Enterprise. He further clarifies the date: “it’s been 11 years, 30 days, 8 hours, and 15 minutes since the first Star Trek adventure was filmed.” Overlaid text confirms the date the program was originally created: January, 1975.

After introducing The Menagerie, Nimoy asks Mr. Scott to transport him to the bridge, and after some familiar sounds and special effects, he reappears there. In these shots, Nimoy is very clearly standing in front of a green screen with old Star Trek footage from the bridge rolling behind him. The transporter scene appears to have been shot the same way, but it’s not quite as noticeable as the bridge scenes.

Before the program begins, Nimoy explains that The Menagerie contains clips from The Cage, the unaired Star Trek pilot. After a bit more introduction, The Menagerie Part One begins. I am not a Star Trek expert and couldn’t tell you if there are any differences between this airing and the versions that exist today.

One of the most difficult parts in regards to all this digital archeology is dating recordings. Occasionally I’ll find a tape where the person who recorded the tape physically wrote the recording date on the label, but that’s pretty rare. Most of the time I have to search for clues within the recording itself to figure out when it was recorded. This is most easily done via car commercials that often mention the year, but there weren’t any of those on this tape. I found one commercial with a copyright date of 1982/1983 at the bottom, which feels right based on the other commercials. Later in the program a KAUT 43 advertisement for “Alien Attack” says it will air on “Sunday, February 13th.” In 1983, February 13 did indeed fall on a Sunday, so that year is confirmed. There are ads for upcoming programs on February 13th and 20th. If I were a betting man I’d guess this program aired on Sunday, February 6th, 1983.

Just look at this sweet van you could have purchased for only $299 a month!

After a series of commercials, the program resumes with The Menagerie, Part II. There are more commercials, and more Star Trek.

While there isn’t as much of the Nimoy footage as I would have hoped, he does return for a final appearance at the end of the program. After stating what an impact Star Trek had, he mentions that his journey began eleven years earlier… by putting on these ears.

After watching the program I searched for information online regard it and found nothing. I can’t find a single reference to this special. There’s no reference to it on Leonard Nimoy’s IMDB page. There’s literally nothing about this TV special online.

I then reached out to Earl Green from TheLogBook and The Retroist — two guys who have forgotten more about old stuff than I’ll ever know — and asked them about the program. Not only had they not heard of it either, but each of them reached out to their contacts, and none of them were familiar with it.

I stumped the panel!

I’m not sure what my next plan is. I cannot upload the video in its entirety to YouTube as the Star Trek content will get it removed almost immediately. I’m not sure if I can upload it to the Internet Archive, either. I could in theory clip out just the Leonard Nimoy segments and upload those to YouTube, but I hate presenting this in such an incomplete fashion. Today I’ll be clipping the commercials and uploading them to my VHS Dumpster Dive YouTube channel. If you have suggestions on where or how I should share this tape, let me know below in the comments. My intent is not to hoard this finding but rather to share it with the community at large; I just need to figure out the best way to do that.

Thanks again to Earl Green and The Retroist for their input and my friend Drew for the original tape! May they all live long and prosper.