A Long Time Ago, in a City Far Far Away: It was a guy's night out, 30 years ago this week. My dad decided that we should go out for a movie. We got in the car and headed to the theater. Along the way we stopped at a 7-Eleven and bought the newspaper (The Bellevue Daily Journal, I think) and opened it up in the parking lot of the Crossroads mall, right in front of the theater. He asked if there was anything that I had wanted to see, I didn't have anything at the time. We looked over the list of showings and there was an ad for one of the movies, for some reason neither of us had ever heard of. It changed my life.

Few movies have had the impact of that little known movie. Star Wars changed the way movies were made. George Lucas dumped so much of the budget into the special effects, something that hadn't been done on that scale before. He used little known actors. Mark Hamill had done a lot of TV from The Partridge Family to The Streets of San Francisco, but never a movie. Harrison Ford had done a couple, but nothing in a lead role. Carrie Fisher was in Shampoo, but that was it! The only actor to have any weight would be Sir Alec Guinness who had seen the screen some forty times previous. It had talking robots, big hairy creatures that couldn't speak (at least not so we could understand, but Han seem to do fine with Wookie-speak) Spaceships, fights with lightsabers, and of course swinging on a rope while holding the girl. It was the quintessential epic space drama. Many imitators would try to reproduce the drama, they would all fall flat.

So thanks George for giving us a great movie, thirty years ago this week. Thanks dad for taking me to the movies that night.

Shake It Up Baby: One of the things that I really love about politics is the constant uncertainty of the campaign. Right now there are three leaders on the left - Clinton, Obama, and Edwards. Depending on the day of the week each of them are leading. Kind of funny. On the right it looks like the three leaders are Guiliani, McCain, and Romney. Each of these guys have baggage that causes me to scratch my head, but there they are, and Guiliani appears to be leading.

I have been amazed at how this year the race seemed to start so early. They have each reaised millions of dollars and hit the trail hard. In fact, some of the guys currently serving in the Senate have taken flack (and rightly so) for missing votes because of being on the trail. I am not sure that I want to vote for a person who can't do the job that they are being paid to do now (and paid by me!). Anyway, these people are criss-crossing the country telling everyone why they should be the next president, spending their campaign chest like they were Paris Hilton on a weekend on Rodeo Drive.

But the fun part, to me, are the unknowns. These are the people who are just sitting there waiting for the right time. It appears that one of these individuals may announce in the next month, and I believe that if he does he will immediately spring to the lead for his party. It is speculating that he will announce on July 4th. How cool is that? I hereby state that if I ever run for President of the United States that I am going to announce on July 4th. And, in a Caprasque move I think that I will do so standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Symbolism without substance? Maybe, but it would certainly be the only announcement that anyone would remember. Can anyone tell me where Hillary or Rudy announced? Probably not, unless you are a fan of Hillary or Rudy.

I hate giving away my great political strategies for free, but I have a few political plays that will really shake things up.

Democrats: Al Gore needs to announce his candidacy the day after a major hurricane hits the US. As the leading spokesman for the environmental movement he could make great strides by showing the destruction, blaming the current administration for their failure to sign the Kyoto Accord and thus causing all of the destruction. We didn't get any hurricanes last year, so we are bound to get one this year. Since they tend to happen worst in the early fall, he won't have to campaign but for a few months.

Republicans: This is actually the only play that I see that is totally fool proof. In August Cheney feigns a heart attack and has to resign for health reasons. Bush brings up Condi Rice to be VP. Then Dr. Rice announces her candidacy. She would get huge numbers from the women vote, huge numbers from the minority block, and most conservatives would love that she is so conservative (a lot more so than the three current leaders).

It will be an interesting fall to see what happens.

Hiking at Mammoth Cave: Took Peyton to hike in Mammoth Cave National Park yesterday. What a terrific time! We were both exhausted when we got back. We went to Good Springs Church and parked there and then hiked to the waterfall. They have closed it to hikers so we had a little work to get a picture of it. Too bad they have closed it. We saw 60 horses with riders, a new born fawn, and lots of trees. It was a great day!

Finally a Solution to Immigration Problems: I read where 70,000 illegals where expelled in the past month. Now that is something that you don't read about in the main stream press. When everyone is running about trying to figure what to do there is finally someone who has figured out the answer - deport them. The problem was though that the deportations were not from illegals in America, they were illegals in Iran. 70,000 Afghanis were sent packing in the past month. Why is it that the mighty USA can't do that? I hear all the time that we just can't deport them, but Iran did it. Now if you take a look at the math, this becomes really interesting. First, Iran has about 1/5th the population of the United States. Iran is about the size of Alaska. What if were were to expel the proportionate amount of illegals? That would be about 350,000 a month. At that rate we could take back our country in less than 5 years! So, while the Senate and Congress debate what to do, maybe we should just try to be a little more like Persia.

Site Recommendation: Okay friends (both of you), I have to pitch a site - LifeHacker.com. I was killing some time in Barnes and Noble last week and stumbled across the book Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day. What a great book! Each of the 88 tips (I don't think I knew one of them) are designed to make your life better. That is what the whole web site is about, taking technology and actually making it make you life better and easier. What a concept. Obviously not all of the tips are going to apply to your life (some of the tips are OS specific), but on the whole there are so many great tips that you can't help but find something that you would like.

Crystal Clear Double Standard: This is not politically correct, it is just a couple of facts. Last month Imus got in trouble on Sirius for using the phrase "Nappy Headed Ho's" to describe the Rutgers Women's Basketball team. Stupid mistake, shouldn't have done it. He apologized in person to each of the women. Kudos for standing up for his mistake. Didn't matter, he got fired. Why? ?Because it is socially unacceptable to use that kind of language to describe women of color, unless you are a million dollar rapper.

Yesterday on XM Satellite Radio a couple of shock jocks joked about raping the Secretary of State, the First Lady, and the Queen of England. It wasn't just that simple, the person speaking laughed as they described the process of holding her down and doing it. But, where is the outrage? No where. Why? They are conservatives. It is okay for a liberal talk radio show to discuss raping conservative women, but if someone so much as insults a person of color they have to go.

Good thing Imus didn't say that he wanted to rape the women of Rutgers, he would be dead!

Google Rave (Gmail): Okay, another rave on Web 2.0. A few weeks ago I had a terrible hard drive crash. My new drive came in bare and I started the process of loading it up. Some of the stuff was easy, some a little harder. Part of the new strategy is to keep as much off the laptop as possible, or at least in such a way so that I can have a ready back up.

The toughest loss was the e-mail. I live by my e-mail, certainly the most critical business communications tool that I have. I am notorious for checking the e-mail while driving to an appointment (mobile web card). So when Outlook went down with the hard drive I was in a world of hurt. I lost many critical things because I only had a copy in Outlook. But this turned out to be a great thing, because it caused me to think about how I store documents, and how I access my e-mail. When I had a temporary laptop while they were fixing the other, I moved my business mail domain to Google and started accessing from a Gmail account. It really was simple, and I was only down about a day. When the old laptop came back with the new hard drive I was online with mail in less than 10 minutes.

Two things that I missed from Outlook were folders and mail notification sounds. Well, I downloaded an extension for Firefox so that my Gmail now plays the cool notification sound that Outlook used to do. Also, I have learned to get around the folders thing with Gmail's labels. It took a little to get used to, but now I am hooked. I need to find something and I just do a search and there it is. How cool! Now I just have to pray that Google stays online for me.

New York Liberal Times is Crap! I cannot believe the article that I read this morning. It was about the increase in deportation of illegal aliens and the opening paragraphs were nothing more than a sob story about a guy who's wife was deported. Family and friends brought him donuts as he grieved. He is also an illegal. If this guy was so upset, why didn't he follow his wife back to Honduras? He is hear illegally, lets give him the same honor that his wife has received. Any person who enters any country illegally is subject to the laws of that country. If that country says that it is illegal, don't go! Can you imagine trying to sneak into China? You'd be dead.