   Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
So I'm just going to come out and say it: My favorite episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation is "Conundrum." It's episode fourteen of season five, and I just deeply love it.
I don't know if it's because I literally just assumed Erich Anderson's Commander McDuff was a random Enterprise officer of the week (which we saw quite often during the show) when I watched it as a kid during the original run, so the twist actually worked on eleven year old me. I don't know if it's because I just like a good "everyone has amnesia" story. I don't even know if it's just because it's a good Ro Laren episode. I don't know if it's just because we learn that Starfleet doesn't give a crap about lasers.
I just like it. It's neat.
And I rewatched it last night, and feel that it holds up -- which is why I found it deeply weird that the folks who wrote the episode actually think it's not that good. My favorite episode of the entire seven season run of the show was a failure according to the folks who wrote it.
And maybe, as a writer and creator, I should remember that.
Like the hardest part of releasing creative works to the public is that often, after a while, I'll start to judge those things far more harshly than when I first made them. Or I'll compare it to the potential I thought an idea had in my head. And if I don't reach that potential, I'll think of it as "bad" -- when it might just be slightly different than that idea. I have one hundred percent published stories that I thought were just sort of okay and later had someone tell me how much it meant to them to read it.
*cough*I Hate November*cough*
So I should make sure I remember Conundrum. That one of my favorite things to rewatch is considered one of those failures by its creators. That the things I make might have value, just not in the way I originally thought they should.
It's just sort of how things work out.
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I’ve become very endeared to Ruth’s perch on the bins at every con she works.
Part of me wants to know where they get such durable bins. A different part acknowledges that Ruth is a heck of a lot lighter than I am.
You can get bins strong enough for oversized people to sit on, we had them. They’re expensive though. Those bins in the comic are pretty big if you look at how high two of them stack and how long they are as compared to people’s legs, so they could be industrial versions.
I have bins that can support my weight.
I weigh 300lbs.
Ruth is significantly less than half of that. 😛
You lucky, lucky bastard. All the ones I could ever find for sane amounts of money would maybe stand a couple other bins on them, if they were full so the lid couldn’t flex at all. At that, they had to be not full of insanely heavy shiat like books. Bah. Development in technology is a good thing, but from time to time it creates a, “Dammit, why couldn’t I have that stuff back in the day?? “/ ” reaction.
I’ve had some of these bins for decades…
Are you sure you’re not just cheap? 😛
Man I hope this is not all foreshadowing.
I just never found any that weren’t either too lightweight to handle heavy stacking, or too heavy material-wise – they added a lot to the overall weight. Apparently, I stopped looking way too soon. I think the problem may not be so much that I’m cheap as I’m easily discouraged. Shoulda kept looking it seems. So umm – you… not so easily discouraged bastard!