In Stargate: Continuum, I noticed that Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) reach for a box of Frootees cereal in the store. If you are an astute fan of the Stargate franchise and a fan of David Hewlett’s work, you may have also noticed that the Frootees box first appeared in the opening scene of a Hewlett’s A Dog’s Breakfast. Hewlett also played as Dr. Rodney McKay in the Stargate: Atlantis series and had debuted in a few episodes of Stargate: SG-1 opposite Tapping as the world renowned stargate expert. Carter and McKay have a love hate relationship.

Pretty cool tip of the hat to both the shows, and the respective characters .

If they want to do a strange plot twist, I guess the ‘alternate timeline’ that Stargate Continuum takes place in could be the same timeline as A Dog’s Breakfast. That would have been awesome if they just met in passing without McKay, err.. Patrick, knowing who Carter was. Ha!

Additionally, if you look close enough, the Frootees box in A Dog’s Breakfast appears to be original. The one in Stargate: Continuum looks like it was stuck on to a Kellogg’s Rice Krispies box (notice the side panel) . The cereal was made for ADB, and is not a real marketed cereal.

Serenity Little Damn Heroes

I drew this freehand and it looks pretty close to the maquettes!

Work has been stressful, as I’m sure many of you can relate. I spent the better part of May, June, July and August cooped up in the hardware engineering lab or the EMC chamber until the wee hours of the morning. There were a few off-site adventures to NW EMC to checkout FCC compatibility of my project, and at times find out that we’re not so compliant which led to a lot of debugging. As it were, it was a constant rinse and repeat cycle of working from 8-5 verifying my project, and debugging issues. I’d go cycling for an hour or two to get my head on straight, then return to the office from 8-midnight or later. I’m sure that can’t be good for anyone. Some days I would be so tired that my mind was completely numb, and I’d just walk around in a daze.

Cycling, for the most part, kept me sane. I’d ride 20-30 miles after work just to get my mind off of things. It was really nice to just sit and propel yourself on a country road for miles at a time. I started the season back on March 12, 2009, and officially ended it just last week on Sept 23rd, 2009 with a total of 2321 miles over the last 6 months. My bike, a 2006 Specialized Tarmac Comp has seen well over 4000 miles since i bought it in the spring of 2007. I wore out the original set of brakes and the original set of wheels after 3000 miles. The chain was changed back around 2000 miles and it’s only been through one “accident” during the 2007 STP. Not too bad.

Other stuff
Somehow I found some opportunities to fall in love with a new movie — well, new to me anyway. In early August, I was over at a friend’s place and and watched “Serenity“. Yes, it was originally filmed in 2005. The acting was great and the concept of a colonized universe because the “Earth was used up” seemed appealing to me. Apparently my brother, David, tried to show me this movie back in 2006 after it came out on DVD, but I had no reason to watch it. Boy, was I mistaken. I come to find out that the movie was based on the 2002 TV show “Firefly.” I looked it up on Hulu the same weekend and gave the first and second episode a shot. Boy, it was good and I wondered why I never heard of it before — perhaps it was because it was stuck in the library studying my ass off at the time.

I watched almost the entire season in the first weekend and thought I’d better see how many seasons this show ran. I was saddened to find out that the series only ran for one season before being canceled by Fox. D’oh! I bought the Blu-Ray versions of both titles and watched them both at least twice over now. I think it just gets better each time really. As a side note, I found the character of Kaylee Fry (played by Jewel Staite) really sweet and loving. She’s the ships mechanic, who is sweet and “bubbly” and yet be very stern and straight with someone when she is upset. I think Jewel is hot, so that may have something to do with it as well The whole Firefly / Serenity series consumed about 2 weeks of the late night hours which is great – something to watch before I doze off to sleep for the night.

Somewhere in here, I bought a new home theater system. I thought, man, it might be time to get sound that is better than just the two speakers from my TV. I’m glad I made that choice since the “movie experience” in the house went from “OK” to “DAMN! I didn’t know that bullet went from the front left corner of the room to the rear right!” (Of course, you may have guessed the first thing that popped into the DVD player was The Matrix and the all mighty lobby shoot out scene

ANYWAY… After finding out that Firefly only aired for a season, i started looking at the Filmography of the principle characters and found a couple of other good shows as a result. Nathan Fillion (who played Captain Malcolm ‘Mal’ Reynolds) was in Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog (starring Neil Patrick Harris — yes, Doogie Howser); Adam Baldwin (who played Jayne) is in Chuck as John Casey (knew this one already since I already watch Chuck!); Summer Glau (the Terminator on the Sarah Connor Chronicles, duh!) and Jewel Staite who was casted as a recurring guest star in Season 4 of Stargate: Atlantis and promoted to a regular status in Season 5 as Dr. Jennifer Keller.

I watched Stargate: SG1 on and off for the last few years on SCI-FI and was familiar with the whole “Stargate” concept so I thought I’d give Stargate Atlantis a try — started with Season 5. I watched it and definitely loved the characters in the show as well as a continuation of what the SG:1 series had already established. But again, I was saddened to find out that the show did not get renewed for a sixth season. (Man, i thought, that’s two shows that I’ve watched and that’s two shows that I find out that has been canceled?!?). So if you know me, then you’ll also know that I really like Science Fiction — yes, even Star Trek; I’m sure there is a Trekkie side in you as well — so I went a head and bought seasons 4 and 5 of Stargate: Atlantis on DVD (there is no Blu-Ray version, unfortunately ). While I waited for those to arrive, I started watching the Pilot episode of Stargate Atlantis and for the next month I watched Seasons 1, 2, and 3 from, uh, shall we say, an “online, and out of country, source.” The video quality suffered a bit, but the story line was rather engaging. I then followed suite with Season 4, and re-watched Season 5 for continuity and clarification and got all of the inside-jokes in the screen play. Watching SG:A revived my love for Sci-Fi, I went a head and bought Seasons 1-3 as well.

Stargate: Atlantis (SG:A) is the second part of the Stargate series (preceded by Stargate:SG1). With the cancellation of the show, the SyFy network premiered Stargate: Universe (SG:U) to explore the 9th chevron of the Stargate (9th symbol address to “dial” between two stargate devices and establish a connecting wormhole). Some back history can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_(device). It should be noted that much of the “Stargate” travel is heavily based on theoretical astrophysics, particularly that of black holes and wormholes — so not entirely “far fetched” considering that there are real people, today, that spend their lives doing theoretical astrophysics. But of course, “far fetched” is used broadly in this context Naturally i watched the pilot episodes and find it intriguing at this time. The only actor/actress that i know from that series is Ming-Na (who played Dr. Jing-Mei Chen on ER).

Oh yeah, so after watching the last season and episode of SG:A (for the second time!) i started to search for other shows that the main characters are a part of. First, there’s the obvious (because I told you above, unless you just skipped a few paragraphs) — Jewel Staite from Firefly who played as Dr. Jennifer Keller, Chief Medical Officer of the Atlantis base. David Hewlett (who plays as a self-described genius and astrophysicist Dr. Rodney McKay) wrote a British comedy themed movie called A Dog’s Breakfast — which starred himself, Kate Hewlett (real life and movie sister), Paul McGillion, and Rachel Luttrell – which i found quite odd and hilarious since some of those are the primary cast members and recurring guest stars on SG:A. I bought A Dog’s Breakfast just yesterday along with SG:A Seasons 1-3, so lets watch it at a movie night sometime in the near future.

There’s currently rumored to be a direct to DVD Stargate Atlantis movie, but the release date hasn’t been announced. I hope that one makes it through.

In closing:
If you’ve have made it this far, I applaud you.

When i started to write this several hours ago, I re-watched the Firefly episode “Out of Gas.” – If you don’t get into the whole Firefly series or the Serenity movie, do yourself a favor and at least give this episode a try. It shows a lot of the character development and the back history of the main characters that were on the ship. In my estimation, which may or may not be worth anything to you, it is definitely a “MUST SEE”

Thanks for sticking with it.
-T

Blueprint America: Road to the Future

It’s been a few days since my last post. Since then, I’ve:

• Gone snowboarding with Lam and two of his co-workers @ Meadows
• Hung out with my friends at Nat’s party
• Bought a neato Christmas present for myself. You’ll see what it is in a few days. :p
• Caught up on my TV shows (Bones, House M.D., Lost, Scrubs) and also watched Hitch for kicks

I’m going to see The Pursuit of Happyness on Tuesday and snowboarding this Wednesday.. do you want to go to either? (or better yet, both?)

In other news:

• 1) I’m going down to Corvallis tomorrow (Saturday) to purchase my cap and gown for graduation
• b) My vacation starts in 8 days! I’ll be flying down to Phoenix to visit Jill! (… only took a promise that is almost a year old now… hehe). Photos will be periodically posted that week.
• iii) If you’re a Scrubs fan: I thought the intro to Season 5, Episode 23 was pretty neat. If you haven’t seen it yet, find someone who recorded it and go watch it! And Gift Shop Girl makes an appearance again!

JD: Gift Shop Girl?
Gift Shop Girl: Hey JD.
JD: I thought you died.
Gift Shop Girl: No, I just got married.
JD: But I sent your family flowers.
Gift Shop Girl: I know. You bought them from me. It was kind of weird

I was stunned. I was like “hello?” thinking that it was the voicemail message. But it wasn’t! It talked back! Holy shit! So there I was, talking to a TV actor for two minutes – about the most random stuff. Snowboading was a topic (of course), and what there isn’t to do in Hillsboro, OR.

From IMDB (http://imdb.com/title/tt0285403/trivia):

In the Season 4 episode “My Malpractical Decision” (409) Dr. Chris Turk, played by Donald Faison, changes his cellphone number to 1-916-Call-Turk. Unlike other shows and movies, this number is actually a valid number that most of the times will take your to a voice message telling you the latest info about “Scrubs” (2001). However, as the phone is placed on the set where Scrubs is being filmed, every now and then, people from the cast or crew answers the phone to have a word with whoever is calling.

That was awesome. DId you CALL-TURK today? lol