Updated a post about Sarah Rush — the “launch when ready” crew member from 1979 Battlestar Galactica

I recently noticed that a blog post I created in 2003 has been getting a spike in traffic. Today my five-year-old son was watching one of my wife’s old Battlestar Galactica videotapes, and I remembered that when I was about 11 I had a crush on the cute bridge crewmember who told the Viper pilots stuff like “Transferring core command to probe craft. You may launch when ready.” —Battlestar Galactica…

Inside the utopian, brick-loving world of LEGO’s adult fandom

I used to enjoy buying my kids a $4 set of Legos for no special reason, figuring that some people spend that much for a fancy cup of coffee. My kids would cannibalize their Indiana Jones and Star Wars sets in order to create characters from the steampunk bedtime stories I used to tell them. Then one Christmas, the boy (then a young teen, now a young man) told me…

When we play Star Trek Monopoly, I am the Captain’s chair.

The Last Jedi: Oh, the Feels.

No spoilers here. (I managed to avoid all spoilers, and hadn’t even seen the trailer. I did see still pics of porgs, though, and I knew the name of the character the StarWars Bros were hating on, so thank you to everyone who did their part to keep the secrets.) No intellectual critical distance for me while watching this movie. I couldn’t even eat popcorn, I was so totally into…

PR Pop Quiz: Intro to Crisis Management

Pop quiz for public relations 101. Scenario 1: You run a wildly popular app that incorporates video with a live host. You learn that a reporter is writing a personality profile of your host. Do you offer some cheerful quotes and then make a note to get your host to sign a new contract that handles such things as media requests (and maybe giving him a raise because he’s obviously a…

Friend I hadn’t seen for about 20 years delivers a vintage nerdy gift.

During the original run of Star Trek: The Next Generation, my college roommate and I invited our friends over to our duplex for Star Trek parties. Our local TV station ran the show at midnight Sunday, which was a terrible time, but we sometimes had 30 people over. Though we kept in touch virtually, I hadn’t seen my roommate for probably 20 years, so it was pleasant surprise to hear…