Nothing a little Force can't handle:P
Dec. 28th, 2017 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogMy day began nicely, turned instantly shitty, but was then redeemed.
Let's take the tour of the early nice part: the panels are finished and ready to be inspected, connected, detected, and see-lected! A few outside shots of the final, snowy-for-now product:
And here, what it looks like inside the house:
The left side shows the inverter, where the solar product comes in and is turned into some very potent electricity before going through the meter (out of shot here) and out to the utility to net-meter; top right is a closer look at the warning on the bottom of the gizmo, which had 720 volts exposed before the cover went on; and upstairs on this very desk, bottom right, is the device connected to our router, which transmits data on the production to their website. The town inspects tomorrow, and National Grid then has ten days to connect it into their system. But we're done this year, yay!
----
From there, once the guys left, I only had one appointment in the office and one out. Neither went well. Morning client took an unreasonable position and would not be moved off it through logic, incentive or even the threat of a much worse and prolonged result for him. In the end, I went along, just because the need to be kind is always of paramount importance to me (and others, as you may have heard). I then headed over to get my car inspected and the winter tires put on which I'd been quoted for two days earlier- and I already had my Last Jedi ticket in hand for the cinema just down the road, which I planned to walk to and back from while they did the work.
Just one problem: today's employee had no idea what the Tuesday employee had done. No tires, and none to arrive until Saturday at the earliest. Again, left with no alternative, I booked the gig for then and drove the two blocks to Regal. I was maybe five minutes past the time on the ticket, but with trailers and other BS I figured I had plenty of time. Instead, I walked in on the film already in progress- and with Rey on a spaceship, not an island with Luke where we left her last time. No idea how much I'd missed- and then, even worse, I realized I was having trouble seeing the picture even with my glasses on....
which is when I figured out I'd walked into the 11 a.m. 3D screening of the damn thing, not my 12:40 standard showing. Half the auditoriums in the building were showing it, and my real one was one door down and was still on previews when I found my seat. The shitty morning quickly faded as I headed back a long time ago to a galaxy far, far away for the now ninth time. Still processing, but overall, I loved where it went and how it got there.
On the broadest scale, it matches the middle picture of the Original Trilogy for its descent into Darkness by the end. Just as everything seems pretty hopeless after the Empire Strikes Back, the First Order seems firmly in order after slicing through so much of the Resistance from the film's first scene to its final one. And there's death here- the ones you see die in bunches on the bridge early on, the baddie who buys it in the False Hope scene in the second half, and the hero who becomes one with The Force after holding off an entire army from eight parsecs away before anyone realizes he's not really There. (Couldn't Ren/Ben sense his non-presence?) None of that even touches the most significant offscreen death of General Leia, who will NOT be CGI'd into any of the final episode and who will be sorely missed for it.)
The moments of humor are well-paced and even better-placed. There's a homage to Hardware Wars, of all things, and Luke gets off some great lines and gestures to keep things from getting too dark. Rey is everything we need her to be, Finn is just crazy enough to keep hope alive, Poe is Han's spiritual if not actual love child, and his real love child Ren/Ben is gonna turn, I just know it, and will be there in the last scene of IX smiling and waving with his Shimmery Dad and Shimmery Mark and Shimmery Carrie and Shimmery Hayden and Frank Oz with his up hand butt Yoda's again.
One oddity I didn't quite get. So they keep intercutting- Rey and Luke, baddies on the imperial ship, Leia and the rest of command on their base/ship, eventually the casino scene. But there's one shot, after Luke and Rey have one of their early hissies, where she's back in space on the Falcon with Chewie and the Porgs, a scene seeming to be there only to provide exposition- and then moments later she's back on Lukeagain's Island getting her second lesson. I started to wonder if I was in the wrong auditorium again.
Btw, wasn't she entitled to three lessons on her all expense paid trip to Jediland? What was the third? Does she get partial credit for her payment? Unless he taught one to her indirectly, via Snoke: Don't monologue. It never ends well.
IIRC, Artoo and Threepio never have a scene together. Since the latter is now the only one continuously performed in all of them to date by the same performer, maybe that was their tribute to Kenny Baker.
I still hum the 20th Century Fox theme music as soon as the final trailer ends. Sorry, Mouse.
Let's wrap this now.
One more workday for the year, tomorrow, away but without significant snow predicted. Saturday is Snow Tires Strike Back Day, Sunday is the last day of the Bills' season barring some serious Jedi interaction, and then we can kiss 2017's pasty ass goodbye.
Let's take the tour of the early nice part: the panels are finished and ready to be inspected, connected, detected, and see-lected! A few outside shots of the final, snowy-for-now product:
And here, what it looks like inside the house:
The left side shows the inverter, where the solar product comes in and is turned into some very potent electricity before going through the meter (out of shot here) and out to the utility to net-meter; top right is a closer look at the warning on the bottom of the gizmo, which had 720 volts exposed before the cover went on; and upstairs on this very desk, bottom right, is the device connected to our router, which transmits data on the production to their website. The town inspects tomorrow, and National Grid then has ten days to connect it into their system. But we're done this year, yay!
----
From there, once the guys left, I only had one appointment in the office and one out. Neither went well. Morning client took an unreasonable position and would not be moved off it through logic, incentive or even the threat of a much worse and prolonged result for him. In the end, I went along, just because the need to be kind is always of paramount importance to me (and others, as you may have heard). I then headed over to get my car inspected and the winter tires put on which I'd been quoted for two days earlier- and I already had my Last Jedi ticket in hand for the cinema just down the road, which I planned to walk to and back from while they did the work.
Just one problem: today's employee had no idea what the Tuesday employee had done. No tires, and none to arrive until Saturday at the earliest. Again, left with no alternative, I booked the gig for then and drove the two blocks to Regal. I was maybe five minutes past the time on the ticket, but with trailers and other BS I figured I had plenty of time. Instead, I walked in on the film already in progress- and with Rey on a spaceship, not an island with Luke where we left her last time. No idea how much I'd missed- and then, even worse, I realized I was having trouble seeing the picture even with my glasses on....
which is when I figured out I'd walked into the 11 a.m. 3D screening of the damn thing, not my 12:40 standard showing. Half the auditoriums in the building were showing it, and my real one was one door down and was still on previews when I found my seat. The shitty morning quickly faded as I headed back a long time ago to a galaxy far, far away for the now ninth time. Still processing, but overall, I loved where it went and how it got there.
On the broadest scale, it matches the middle picture of the Original Trilogy for its descent into Darkness by the end. Just as everything seems pretty hopeless after the Empire Strikes Back, the First Order seems firmly in order after slicing through so much of the Resistance from the film's first scene to its final one. And there's death here- the ones you see die in bunches on the bridge early on, the baddie who buys it in the False Hope scene in the second half, and the hero who becomes one with The Force after holding off an entire army from eight parsecs away before anyone realizes he's not really There. (Couldn't Ren/Ben sense his non-presence?) None of that even touches the most significant offscreen death of General Leia, who will NOT be CGI'd into any of the final episode and who will be sorely missed for it.)
The moments of humor are well-paced and even better-placed. There's a homage to Hardware Wars, of all things, and Luke gets off some great lines and gestures to keep things from getting too dark. Rey is everything we need her to be, Finn is just crazy enough to keep hope alive, Poe is Han's spiritual if not actual love child, and his real love child Ren/Ben is gonna turn, I just know it, and will be there in the last scene of IX smiling and waving with his Shimmery Dad and Shimmery Mark and Shimmery Carrie and Shimmery Hayden and Frank Oz with his up hand butt Yoda's again.
One oddity I didn't quite get. So they keep intercutting- Rey and Luke, baddies on the imperial ship, Leia and the rest of command on their base/ship, eventually the casino scene. But there's one shot, after Luke and Rey have one of their early hissies, where she's back in space on the Falcon with Chewie and the Porgs, a scene seeming to be there only to provide exposition- and then moments later she's back on Lukeagain's Island getting her second lesson. I started to wonder if I was in the wrong auditorium again.
Btw, wasn't she entitled to three lessons on her all expense paid trip to Jediland? What was the third? Does she get partial credit for her payment? Unless he taught one to her indirectly, via Snoke: Don't monologue. It never ends well.
IIRC, Artoo and Threepio never have a scene together. Since the latter is now the only one continuously performed in all of them to date by the same performer, maybe that was their tribute to Kenny Baker.
I still hum the 20th Century Fox theme music as soon as the final trailer ends. Sorry, Mouse.
Let's wrap this now.
One more workday for the year, tomorrow, away but without significant snow predicted. Saturday is Snow Tires Strike Back Day, Sunday is the last day of the Bills' season barring some serious Jedi interaction, and then we can kiss 2017's pasty ass goodbye.