Ramblings of a Wayward Code Slave

Boo.

I'm the grand master of unexcitement with the spoken word, so I figured it was an appropriate introduction for a ghostly day like Halloween.

Halloween was always an exciting day for me despite my monotonic verbosity. As a kid, we'd carve the pumpkin and, after dinner, I'd get dressed up in my Halloween costume and we'd go trick-or-treating. It wasn't the candy as much as it was the ability to "become" something or someone else -- I guess it was kind of liberating in the same kind of way a costume party is. I'd then watch scary movies for the rest of the evening and go to bed with way too much candy in my stomach and way too many monsters floating around in my head. It was great.

Later on in life, though, we grow up and have to suddenly behave sensibly. Too bad -- if grownups had to dress up and go door-to-door asking for candy -- for themselves, not for their kids -- then perhaps the world would be a better place. If they also liked old black and white movies that had people with fangs and way too much body hair (no, not your old dorm room neighbor) then the world would definitely be a better place.

These days, my Halloween festivities are pretty much limited to movies on the television. I thought that this year was going to be dismal as the TV listings had Halloween 3, Halloween 4, and Halloween 5, as well as Scream 2 and The Amityville Horror. The three Halloween movies are just plain awful, especially Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. Now Scream 2 was okay the first time I saw it, but after finding out which dunce is wearing the costume it takes the wind out of its sail. I originally liked The Amityville Horror but when it came out that it was all staged by the owner just to get out of paying for the house because he financially overextended himself it ruined it all. If the story had been pure fiction from the start (which, ironically, it was) it would have been okay, but the reason the film was made in the first place was because the events upon which the film was based were supposed to have been true and verified.

So anyway, I had seen these movies on the TV listings and, aside from being awful or not suspenseful, they've been on AMC or other channels like they were the summer Olympics. Talk about overplay, geesh. Well, I finally found some good stuff. SciFi had all four hours of Salem's Lot on this morning and this evening TCM started with the 1958 House on Haunted Hill with Vincent Price, followed by the 1963 The Haunting (one of the scariest movies of the genre and my personal favorite) and the silent film Phantom of the Opera with Lon Cheney, which I'm watching right now as I'm typing this.

Black and white is where it's at with horror movies. The starkness of the medium is perfect for setting the mood. This is part of the reason why there hasn't been a really great horror film since the early '60s. Now I love the Hammer films as much as any B-movie horror junkie, but they don't hold a candle to the Universal films of the '30 and early 40's. I just got Universal's Legacy Collections from Amazon.com the other day (all six: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon) and they're great. Each collection has all of the films associated with that particular subject, so I have 40+ movies in 6 collections on 12 CDs. Saturday night I watched Son of Frankenstein with Basil Rathbone (of Sherlock Holmes fame), Boris Karloff, and Bela Lugosi (playing Ygor) and it was wonderful. The way the sets were constructed to accentuate odd angles and the way the lighting was used to create an eerie and mysterious presence was something you just don't see any more. To rob a word from Yiddish, this schlock we get today isn't scary -- most of it is just gross or, even worse, a way to view young naked people getting it on in dangerous situations. Now that may appeal to the lewd and lascivious side of some, but you can count me out on that.

Well, Phantom of the Opera is just about over, so I'm going to shut this down and pull out the original Dracula with Bela Lugosi while we still have a few moments of Halloween left.

I'm not picking on BEA here, but they had some really snazzy businesstalk that just begged for it...

From BEA's White Paper on WebLogic Platform 8.1:
Do you need to leverage your existing IT assets for competitive advantage? BEA WebLogic Platform simplifies enterprise computing by enabling IT to evolve application infrastructure on a project basis, provide greater responsiveness to line-of-business needs, lower costs, and increase returns on IT assets—creating overall faster time-to-value.

Translation:
Do your programmers currently have enough time to get a cup of coffee and go to the bathroom during the day? BEA WebLogic Platform puts them to work by making them learn how to code in a completely different yet bloated way while mucking up project after project, it makes them truly panic like the hand of God is about to strike them down whenever the bloated code breaks, it lowers costs by causing them to quit and leave IT forever, and it makes them work like a freshman the night before an assignment is due -- making money for you only if you're a T&M outsourcing company.

No-Frills Translation:
Are you scared to death that your programmers aren't getting ulcers and high-blood pressure while working for you? We have a really complicated and bloated platform that redefines everything they know so that the complexity of what they do goes up a few thousand percent. It will lower payroll costs by weeding out all but the champion coders, who will despise both the platform and you but will stay at the company since the economy sucks. In the end, you'll make a ton of money as an outsourcer but don't count on repeat business.

Really No-Frills Translation:
Programmers not always in a cold sweat? Buy WebLogic. Kill 'em off, make tons of money, and embezzle it all and join the Enron crowd evading extradition in South America.

The Houston Astros and the St. Louis Cardinals are going into Game 7 tonight for the National League Pennant and entry into the World Series against the Boston Red Sox. It's tied 3-3 and StL has the edge with the statistics junkies; of course, plenty of people are saying that the past 6 games are meaningless and this will be its own ball game.

Houston never has been to the Series before, so I'm really hoping that my hometown team makes the magic happen again one more time. After that, the rest is just dessert. Seeing Houston in the Series would be enough for me. Of course, beating Boston would be the icing on the cake, but I'm not even thinking that far ahead.

I've been faithfully not watching any of the games so as to not cause the Astros to lose. I hope that this valiant effort on my part has paid off and will help to send Houston to the next round. We'll see...

I recently posted an entry on the apparent demise of the classic horror film in modern times. I think nothing underscores that sentiment than the celluloid pustule that I just managed to live through. I knew when I turned on Freddy vs. Jason that I wasn't in for deep thoughts and serious character development. On the other hand, I didn't know a barf bag was required. I don't expect serious emotional depth, engaging dialog, or involved plot when it comes to horror movies, but this was about as entertaining as watching Guy Lombardo and Lawrence Welk battle it out with their conducting wands. For six hours.

The plot was so thin it had one side, and I'm afraid that the juggernaut Jason thing has had its bones picked clean a long time ago. The FX budget must have been pretty thin too, because it looked like Freddy was wearing a rubber mask from Spencer's. Either that or the Michelin Man barfed on his head. So the movie started out really slow -- abnormally slow -- and then things finally sped up. This was apparently the point at which the script finally arrived on the set. So young people were running around for a while screaming and getting mutilated and killed. I figure that they had to buy the fake blood in bulk and didn't want to waste the money. We were then treated to the final showdown, which was anything but scary or suspenseful. It tried to be, but it came off having the feeling of something that had been choreographed by Weird Al. So who won? A better question to ask would be who lost. Me. And especially all of those poor slobs who paid money to see this.

For those who just need to know, Jason won and now has Freddy's decapitated head, which is still animated and winked at the camera in the final shot. No lie. Winked. You just can't get entertainment like this anywhere. I would sooner have someone staple my toes to the floor and forcibly give me a Tabasco enema rather than suffer through this film again. According to IMDB, Ronny Yu was the director, best known as the man responsible for the regrettable Bride of Chucky. Apparently, the film industry is the only place where incompetence and failure result in a neverending series of second chances. At least Ed Wood made such horrible movies that they were cult classics thanks to the weirdness. Freddy vs. Jason just sucked like a bird going through a jet engine.

Why do I do this to myself? I guess because I've already seen the decent movies enough times to act them out a la Rocky Horror. Speaking of that, why does it seem like the premium cable movie channels did the Time Warp dance? The stuff on is 95% pre-Y2K and the post-millenium offerings are abysmally sub-par. And I pay $110/month for this. Ask not for whom the ding-a-ling bell tolls; it tolls for me...

For as long as I can recall Halloween has been my favorite holdiay. I know it's heretical to pass such right and good Christian holidays as Christmas and Easter (the dates of which are steeped in paganism, incidentally) but I just love to get the crap scared out of me at Halloween. Always have. I have fond memories of haunted house tours my father took me and some of the other neighborhood kids to go see, and scary movies on the television is just as much a requirement of Halloween as the haunted houses or trick-or-treating.

It's really unfortunate, however, that scary movies have really been going downhill lately. Back in the '30s, Universal put out the "classic" horror movies starring Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Cheney. The Frankenstein, Dracula, and Wolf Man series are great. Then, in the '50s, an English production company named Hammer Films put out remakes of the classics starring such people as Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. A bit more campy, perhaps, than the older ones, but just as good and very well done. Then in the '60s there was the Roger Corman flirtation with Poe that resulted in the Vincent Price movies like Masque of the Red Death and The Raven. Boris Karloff even got to do another film -- The Terror -- co-starring Jack Nicholson of all people and done on the set of The Raven after Corman finished filming. As an aside, Francis Ford Coppola directed the "seaside scenes" in that one. The Terror was a Friday night favorite of USA Network's Night Flight back in the '80s, for those old enough to remember what that was.

Then came the '70s. Let's get this one out of the way first -- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not a horror movie, it's a gore movie that tries to scare from grossness rather than suspense. On the other hand, Halloween was a true masterpiece of horror and was completely original. Even its sequel, Halloween II, was good. All the sequels after that were garbage, unfortunately. And, even more unfortunately, it spawned a series of crazed slasher movies that didn't fizzle out until the '90s were upon us. Who can forget the Friday the 13th series, much as we might like to? Or A Nightmare on Elm Street? The true nightmare was the fact that something like 7-8 of them were finally made. Then there were the couple dozen me-too movies that were cheap knockoffs of the better knockoffs. In all of these, the plot was the same. Here are the rules for those of you who don't know:

1. If you get undressed then you die. If you're also showering then you die horribly.
2. If you have sex then you die, usually in a painful way to offset the fun you're having.
3. If you go somewhere dark then you die for being stupid.
4. If you're alone then you die because you're not popular enough.
5. There's always only one survivor, usually female, so if you're a guy then you die.
6. If you're a girl then your chances aren't so good either.

Not exactly up to par with Bride of Frankenstein or The Mummy. However, the 1973 film The Legend of Hell House with Roddy McDowall, who later co-starred in the dreadful angst-ridden '80s horror flick Fright Night, was a notable exception to the mess we got stuck with in the '70s and '80s. I should mention that several John Carpenter films -- The Fog, The Thing, Christine, and Prince of Darkness -- are other notable exceptions to the sewer sludge that got shoveled our way. In the same vein, Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining with Jack Nicholson as the psycho dad (not too much of a stretch, I think) was fantastic despite it being a significant deviation from the book. Moral of the story: always watch the movie before you read the book since the book is usually better.

In the '90s, we had a hiatus from scary movies until right around 2000. We then got a gory remake of House on Haunted Hill, a remake of The Haunting (the 1965 original is my favorite ghost movie of all time), and of course the extremely-hyped The Blair Witch Project. The first two movies were adaptations of the original, so while holding to certain plot elements, they took enough liberties to make these completely different films. Blair Witch was original, being like a cross between MTV's The Real World (egad!) and a horror flick. I think the furor it caused was more due to good marketing than anything else -- they presented it like a documentary, leaving the fact that it's fiction an open question for most people until much later. Well, I guess if Orson Welles could get away with it on the radio with War of the Worlds then these people could as well.

I hesitate to mention it, but we then got a remake of The Mummy, but as an adventure with comedic overtones starring Rachel Weisz and Brendon Frasier. There was horror there all right, but it was in my heart as I realized the mangling that this poor film got at the hands of the director and actors. They even put out The Mummy Returns, and I believe that both people who saw it gave it a horrible review as well. We also got subjected to Blair Witch 2, which was so bad I actually fell asleep in the theater. Yes, I was one of the handful of people who actually saw it, and I make no apologies. You would have seen it too if it were a choice between that and the Pokemon movie. Gimme a break.

In the midst of this we get The Ring, an Americanized adaptation of a Japanese horror film. This was a darn good movie. It scared the hell out of me, which is hard to do these days unless you show me a scale and put it on the floor next to me. The Ring has renewed my faith in the ability of Hollywood to occasionally put out a decent horror flick in between the fluff, garbage, and Oscar whoring that they usually focus on.

This year, the Halloween burnt offering is something called The Grudge. It remains to be seen whether this is a good horror flick or whether it should have been named The Sludge. The ads on television are invoking The Ring in comparison, so the hype is in progress and people are probably waiting to pony up their hard earned cash to see if it delivers or if it sinks into The Sludge...

You may have seen Foucault's Pendulum if you've ever been to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., or at least have visited its website. It's a free-swinging pendulum that travels around in a circle, knocking over little pegs every so often as it cycles through 360 degrees. So why is a pendulum so interesting? Read on...

If you take the link above you'll read about how Foucault used his pendulum to prove that the earth rotates on its axis. This is proven by the fact that the pendulum swings back and forth but changes apparent direction on each swing, eventually going through an entire circle. It's not actually the pendulum changing direction, but the earth changing position beneath it. How quickly this occurs depends upon the latitude at which the pendulum is located. At one of the two geographic poles the pendulum would sweep out a circle in exactly 24 hours (actually 23 hours and 56 minutes, since that's the actual period of rotation of the earth). At the equator, the pendulum would not seem to rotate at all. In between, the pendulum slows its apparent rotation as the latitude approaches the equator.

Now why is this so interesting aside from the physical science of proving the earth's rotation? It seems a fitting metaphor for various places I've lived. In some places things are always moving, life is a busy process, and excitement is always around the corner. In others, the pendulum just never moves from its one arc. I'm in one of those places right now. Ruston is a place where the pendulum not only doesn't change direction, but it's given up swinging altogether and has taken up a serious drinking habit at the local bar. Unless you're a devout Baptist with an affinity for rubber chicken and green bean casserole, you'll fit into the Ruston social scene like Jeffrey Dahmer at a vegetarian convention. I wonder how many other places throughout America are like Ruston. It's a scary thought, and given that I'm looking for a new job it's one that's really on my mind these days. I don't really think I could pick something worse than Ruston unless I go for some Montana town 200 miles from a city, but I'm worried that I might swap out one dog with fleas for another with different but equally unappetizing fleas. It's time my wife and I went for a location upgrade, someplace where we could super-size the city and actually reside somewhere where the population doesn't double when the university is in session.

Oh give me a town

where the water's not brown,

and the power and cable work well;

where the tax rate is low

and the downtown don't blow,

so I don't think I'm living in hell...

This evening I was reminded of a movie I saw recently called The Emperor's Club. It starred Kevin Kline as a prep school history teacher who saw his mission in life as not only to impart knowledge, but wisdom and character as well. The story went on to show a very fallable human side to his own character, a subsequently well-meant mistake regarding a student, and then his attempt at self-redemption only to discover that the student was completely lacking in character despite the teacher's sacrifice. The story is a morality play that shows the humanity that often is lacking in other "superteacher" movies. The other movies try to show the humanity of the student-teacher connection, but it usually comes off as contrived nonsense. For instance, are we to believe that overnight Edward James Olmos took remedial math students and turned them into calculus superstars as was shown in Stand and Deliver? Or does Whoopee Goldberg really take Catholic school malcontents and immediately turn them into a singing sensation as advertised in Sister Act 2? As a teacher myself, I can attest to the fact that nothing happens overnight and we're lucky if anything happens at all.

This is why I enjoyed The Emperor's Club so much. It wasn't a rose-colored glasses look at teaching a la Dead Poet's Society; it showed a flawed man who meant well and who felt a calling go out and do what he loved as best as he could. Sometimes he succeeded and sometimes he failed, but he kept trying and he always had the students' best interests at heart. Through Kevin Kline's character I saw some of myself and identified with his motivations. Often I've seen kids who are brilliant yet lacking character or motivation, and I've just wished so hard that I could tell them how the real world is and let them see through my eyes what I know to be true. Sometimes I've even compromised promises I've made in my classes, like on due dates for assignments, because I saw the largely untapped potential in someone and hoped so much that with a bit more work and a bit more help that I could get the person to tap into that potential. I've always used my own moral compass to guide me in what I've done as a teacher; sometimes that compass dictated that I stick to my guns and hold to things I've said and sometimes it dictated that I should compromise myself for the sake of someone else. As a result, it's nice to see a movie where the teacher isn't an academic superhero but a regular guy with a calling who sometimes does the wrong thing for the right reason.

One thing I'll never forget is when I told my parents that I was leaving a really good job to go teach at a university. It involved a serious pay cut and there was no guarantee that the job would even last past one year, but I felt a calling in my heart that I couldn't ignore any more. The need to take what I knew and try to help others grow beyond who they were was always something that was within myself, but I had supressed it for years while concentrating on the business of getting college degrees. Once I had finally finished school for good, the need turned into a nagging and I finally faced the fact that I wanted to do something with my life besides make money and work 40 hour weeks under fluorescent lighting. So I called my folks up and told them that I had decided to apply for a teaching position at a university. My father was stunned that I was thinking of leaving a job that paid more than he was making after 35 years of experience. My mother was taken aback as well, but she quickly told me that she understood since she used to be an elementary school teacher herself. All I could say to them was that teaching was a calling, much like the priesthood I suppose, and while I could decide not to teach I couldn't help the fact that I was a teacher. Since ignoring my own identity seemed to be lacking in wisdom, acknowledging that I was a teacher meant that I had to do something about it. And thus, eight years ago, I went down a path that will continue to define my life regardless of whether I'm actively practicing it or not.

This reminds me of a quote from The Emperor's Club that has a lot of meaning to me. "Great ambition and conquest without contribution is without significance." If any one sentence could sum up why I became a teacher it's that. As someone with a recent Ph.D. who was good at what I did in industry and got paid well for it, I had this feeling of conquest, of finally overcoming the last hurdles between me and the rest of my life, and I wanted to do it all. But at the same time I realized that without making some kind of tangible contribution to society I was nothing more than a highly-educated cog in a large machine. It's this thought that nagged at me the most. I kept asking myself who would remember me after I'm gone and how I would look upon my life in my last moments. The last thought really stuck in my mind. The idea really bothered me that I might look back upon my life at the end of it all and realize that, despite my accomplishments academically and professionally, I was a person of complete insignificance that wouldn't even be missed. A life without contribution is indeed without significance, so this coupled with my desire to teach spurred me on.

I'm rarely moved to discuss my motivation for becoming a teacher -- students are still too young to really understand and most other people just don't want to know someone well enough to understand their motivations. I suppose it's scary for many to get personal with people. I guess this is why I've kept going back to The Emperor's Club so much. It shows someone who, while unlike me on the surface, has desires and motivations that are close to my heart and I think close to the hearts of all true teachers. It's ironic that we sometimes have to watch someone else to understand ourselves, isn't it?

It's about 3 AM right now, but earlier this evening I saw a repeat of Dr. Strangelove. I love this movie. It's frightening to consider that crackpots like this could exist, but then again this film is a send-up of the nuclear apocalypse movies of the '50s and '60s like Fail Safe, Butterfly Butterfly, and On the Beach.

I think what stands out most in the film is Peter Sellers. On one hand he was the calm Brit with the bum leg who kept trying to talk sanity into the whacked out general and on the other hand he was the ex-Nazi Dr. Strangelove. I liked him best as the latter, with the arm that took on a mind of its own. Of course, George C. Scott was great as well, delivering my favorite quote from the whole film, "Mr. President, we cannot afford a mineshaft gap!"

Leave it to Kubrick to direct something this. He did a great job with 2001 and with A Clockwork Orange (one of my favorite films, albeit fairly avante garde for 1971 -- and today as well, for that matter). Full Metal Jacket was great as well, immortalizing R. Lee Ermy's platoon sergeant character. I didn't go for Eyes Wide Shut, but then again Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are two of my least-favorite actors and I'm not into the subject matter of the film. His last effort, AI, was a dud in my book, but then Kubrick died during filming and Spielberg finished the film. I think that's the reason it wasn't too great -- the first half of the movie was classic Kubrick (stark and dark) and the last half was classic Spielberg (smarmy, feelgood -- Schindler's List a notable exception). It's like oil and water...

Of course, this is just my two-cent's worth. Since I'm not a professional film critic then your mileage may vary. If you haven't seen Dr. Strangelove -- or A Clockwork Orange, for that matter -- give it a try. Just be forewarned that the latter film is not suitable for little kids -- check IMDB for details...

We got our first Christmas catalog in the mail today. It's not even Halloween yet, but seeing the decorated trees and the outdoor doodads has already uplifted my spirits. I have great memories of Christmas from my youth and the lights and the smell of cinnamon and of fir trees really brings it all back.

When I was a kid in Houston, my grandparents would host the big Christmas Eve celebration every year. Grandpop would put up a big O-scale model train set in the den on a special 12" high table he constructed just for the set and then he'd put the tree up in a corner of it; he'd rig it so that the train would go into a tunnel under the tree next to where the tree stand was. Then he'd place the presents around the edges of the table and there'd just be enough room for him to sit by the transformer and run the trains for us grandkids. The lights from the tree and the lights and sounds from the layout were magical and is one of my fondest memories of both my grandfather and my childhood.

Grandmom, being the quintessential homemaker, always made a special Christmas ham and decorated the rest of the house in a way to put Martha Stewart to shame. There'd be special tablecloths and napkins in the dining and breakfast rooms, all sorts of candles and scented things throughout the house, and special towels in the bathrooms even.

So we'd all get there in the afternoon -- my parents and I as well as my aunt, uncle, and two cousins Jay and David-- and the festivities would begin. After Grandpop ran the trains for a while to placate my cousins and I, Grandmom would call us to dinner and we'd have a feast like no other. Of course, Jay, David, and I had our eyes on the presents and we knew what was coming up. So after dinner was over and the cleanup was finished, Grandpop ran the trains for a bit more and then it was time for the kids to open presents. Our gifts were handed out one at a time, and we all had a turn at opening. When we finished, they put us to bed in the guest rooms so that they could have the "grown up" opening. Not wanting the magic to be over, I'd sneak down the hall and poke my head around the corner of the hall and watch them open their gifts as well. My cousins, for some reason, always went out like a light as soon as they were put in a bed. Not me.

In later years, after my parents and I moved to Mississippi, my grandparents would come to visit for Christmas in alternating years. One year in Houston for the Andrews clan, and one year in Laurel for the Alexander clan. Even in off-years, they'd pack up and come out to Laurel on the 26th and stay through New Year's. For all of us in Laurel, the real holiday season began when they pulled up in the driveway.

My grandmother passed away in the summer of 1987 and my grandfather followed her in January of 1988, so it's been a long time since we've had that feeling. After their passing, Christmas lost its magic for me until a couple of years ago when it started coming back. It's been a long time since when my grandparents put the magic into Christmas and much has changed in my life and the lives of my parents, but after 15 years of searching my soul for the magic of Christmas in a post-grandparent world I've found a shred of it here and there. I think I'm finally ready to feel merry again.

In my life I've only lost my maternal grandparents -- my father's parents died long before I was born. For years, the grief of losing Grandmom and Grandpop made Christmas a dismal reminder of what used to be and never would be again. After that, the pain faded but the magic was gone. I still miss them terribly -- my Grandfather especially -- but Christmas at my parents' house the past couple of years was really special. The magic is coming back...

So to all of you who do actually read this, have a great Christmas! And if it's a magical time for you as well, hold onto that feeling for as long as you can and cherish it always. May I be the first to wish you a Merry Christmas!

As was reported on CNN, Slashdot, and elsewhere, Col. Leroy Gordon "Gordo" Cooper died Monday at the age of 77. Gordo Cooper was one of the original seven Mercury astronauts and went up in Faith 7 in 1963. What is ironic is how his life and death ties into the X Prize which was just won by SpaceShipOne. Here's what I mean...

1. Gordo Cooper was the last American to go into space alone...until the two pilots of SpaceShipOne took it into a low-earth orbit on their respective flights yesterday and last Friday.

2. Gordo Cooper passed away on Monday, the same day that the X Prize was claimed.

Many have talked of the X Prize and the subsequent rise to the challenge by various enterprising companies as being the start of the privatization of spaceflight. Long having been the backyard of NASA, efforts such as SpaceShipOne and others are proving that within a few years private orbital missions could not only be possible, but probable. I think that Cooper's death, while coincidental, could almost metaphorically be seen as a passing of the torch from the last American to go into space alone to the next.

I don't think NASA needs to worry too much -- I imagine that corporations will contract to NASA and vice-versa in an almost symbiotic way to maximize results while minimizing costs. What this will do is spur on new development in space. Perhaps the ill-fated International Space Station -- which is currently little more than an orbiting jalopy with the tires missing -- will be replaced with something more usable, something that private corporations are willing to fund. Imagine a rotating Sheraton with room service. It might be the most expensive bed and the most expensive club sandwich on or off the Earth, but it's an experience we'd all love to have.

So a part of me mourns the loss of one of my childhood idols, but I think that it's fitting that he passed away at the dawn of a new age in space travel. As someone new travelled where he had gone in Faith 7 some 41 years ago, he moved on and ventured into the final unknown. Peace be with you, sir.