I Dream of Jeannie Restarts Today

Since the pilot episode is being skipped over on primetime (they appear to be airing even numbered episodes this time around, they aired odd numbered ones since Jeannie arrived on TV Land in June), let me give you the executive summary if you are a new (or soon to be) fan. This is a spoiler for the pilot episode, but since it won't be airing again for some time, you may want to read this so that you know how things got started.

Captain Anthony “Tony” Nelson (Larry Hagman) is in the Air Force, serving as an astronaut at NASA in Coco Beach, Florida. During an problematic rocket launch during the pilot, the orbiter that Nelson is in fails to get into space and crashes next to an island. On the (not so proverbial) desert island, he finds an interesting bottle and uncorks it. To his surprise smoke pours out of the bottle and a 2,000 year old genie named Jeannie (Barbara Eden) appears. Jeannie had promised herself that should would forever serve the person who rescues her and immediately seeks to grant whatever wishes Captain Nelson had.

After wishing Jeannie to learn English (she only knows Arabic), Tony is rescued by a search plane looking for him that Jeannie blinks onto the right path (Jeannie folds her arms and “blinks” to make things happen). Before the plane gets to him he wishes that Jeannie is free to do whatever she wants and leaves her on the island (or so he thinks). Jeannie has other intentions and rolls her bottle into Nelson's bag.

After arriving back at Coco Beach, Nelson's first indication that Jeannie came along is after Nelson and his fiancee walk into his house for dinner. Jeannie comes into the room, which needless to say leads toward the eventual demise of Nelson's engagement, much to his chagrin (he finds he can't get rid Jeannie — how do you get rid of magical being that doesn't want to leave?). While Jeannie will generally grant her “master's” every wish, she will not grant his wish for her to leave (since his one wish was that she be free to do whatever she wants, she doesn't have to do what he wishes even though she normally does) — she wants to marry him instead.

This and a few other events lead NASA's psychologist, Dr. Alfred Bellows (Hayden Rourke) to suspect that the crash landing has somehow caused Captain Nelson to be psychologically disturbed. In one of the few times Nelson in anyway acknowledges his having a genie to Bellows, he chases the garbage truck after throwing away Jeannie's bottle with Jeannie in it (even though he wants to get rid of her, he isn't a cruel guy and so he doesn't want her to be crushed and left in a garbage dump). The good captain doesn't rerelease Jeannie from the corked bottle until after Dr. Bellows leaves, so this appears to be some kind of hallucination on the part of Nelson in the eyes of the doctor. As Nelson dug furiously through the garbage truck before finding the bottle, Bellows assures him that he doesn't need to dig in the truck since NASA can get him all the trash he could possibly want.

This pretty much sets the stage for the whole show. Dr. Bellows begins monitoring Captain Nelson's erratic behavior (caused by trying to cover up Jeannie's magic), despite Nelson's attempts to suggest that his digging in the trash episode was only to “fool” Dr. Bellows into thinking he was crazy. From this point on Nelson decides it would be better not to reveal the fact that he has a genie to anyone (a few people will learn eventually, but that's another story).

Also introduced in this episode is Army^* Captain Roger Healey (Bill Daily), Nelson's partner in space program projects. Healey is an all around nice guy, but he's one sandwich short of a picnic — he lacks common sense and always is one step behind what is going on. While Nelson is far more serious than Healey, they get along well most of the time, and Healey is Nelson's best friend.

So, that's it. The stage is set. These few concepts and conditions manage to put everything in motion that made I Dream of Jeannie's plot for five years and 139 episodes. Don't let all of the details overwhelm you, unlike some series — take Star Trek as an example — if you don't remember everything you won't be lost. Things will just make a bit more sense faster if you know how everything happened.

Friday Five: Travel

1. What's the last place you traveled to, outside your own home state/country? Technically speaking, that would be last month when I went over to Calhoun County, Illinois for a ride. You can make a nice trip of it — take the bridge over to Alton, Ill from St. Charles, Mo, then drive down the Great River Road. From there you can take the (free) Brussles Fairy over the Illinois River to Calhoun County, home of the world's best peaches. Calhoun County is a very pretty area and a nice place to spend an afternoon.

From there, you can take the Golden Eagle Fairy across the Mississippi River to return to St. Charles County. Two fairy rides in one day is very nice! Better yet, on my last trip I found out a new fairy opened — now you can take a fairy over to the Great River Road too. This fairy was especially nice in that it crosses over the confluence of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers.

At any rate, if the question was asking the last time I actually stayed overnight, or longer, out-of-state, that would be Indiana last August. I went up there for my grandfather's wedding.

2. What's the most bizarre/unusual thing that's ever happened to you while traveling? Hmm… I dunno. The thing that comes to mind occurred on one of my family's semi-annual trips to the Ozarks when I was little. My grandpa (not the one mentioned above) decided to bring a metal detector to look for coins and other stuff on our trip. We didn't have room for it in the car, so it was tied up on the roof. We stopped for lunch at the very nice rest area right outside of Springfield, Mo, and then took back off. As we were pulling out of the rest area, we heard a loud “TTTHHHHHUUUUMP!” It was the metal detector flying off the roof. My mother pulled off Interstate 44 and chased the metal detector up the highway (it was in a cardboard box and drifted away from the car). Fortunately neither my mother nor the detector were hurt.

3. If you could take off to anywhere, money and time being no object, where would you go? Hmm… depends when you ask me. On Monday I would have said San Fransisco for LinuxWorld. Seriously, that's tough, but since it is probably more expensive to get there than other places I might want to go, I'd probably make Australia the destination for this trip. For some reason, Down Under fascinates me. Although, probably I'd rather go to Europe — I'd like to tour through England, France, Germany, etc. I have some friends over there I'd like to meet, so that'd be an added bonus.

4. Do you prefer traveling by plane, train or car? Car, definitely. My legs are long enough that a coach seat on a plane is very uncomfortable for more than a short while (and first class costs too much!). For that matter, I also get an ear ache when on planes, which isn't too pleasant either. Cars are good — you see more, you can go where ever you want, and your stuff can't accidentally go to the wrong destination or get damaged.

5. What's the next place on your list to visit? A new place to visit or just the next place? The next place is probably the Ozarks again — hopefully in mid-fall, otherwise, hopefully at Christmas (schedule permitting). I don't have any plans to go any place new, although who knows…

LinuxWorld: What a Show!

Ah, I wish I was there. Where? LinuxWorld San Fransisco! For those of you not familiar with it, LinuxWorld is the twice a year show during which all the biggest names in the GNU/Linux world (and computer world for that matter) come together to promote their wares. Best of all, dozens of exciting announcements come out of the show.

Consider this week's headlines over at OfB.biz. So far, I've written or linked to stories about IBM Suing SCO, Real Networks announcing a new GNU/Linux media player project, Red Hat Suing SCO (see a theme here?), Oracle becoming completely Linux-ized, Disney switching over to GNU/Linux desktops in some cases, Apple getting a more Free Software friendly license for the poorly named Darwin, and Novell purchasing GNU/Linux desktop supporter Ximian. Interested in these stories? Take a look.

But beyond that there is the experience. All the big names promote new products and let you see the latest — AMD, Intel, Red Hat, IBM, Novell, even Microsoft (yeah, that sounds strange, but it is true). Then there is the .Org pavilion where the great developers and projects of the community show up: KDE, Gnome, Debian, and more. Linus Torvalds, Jon “Maddog” Hall, and Richard Stallman have all been spotted at LinuxWorld.

Maybe I'll make it next year.

Le Sabot Post-Moderne: Not Down... Moved.

John, Discoshaman himself, wrote me about his site. I just mentioned that I added it to my blogroll last night. Unfortunately, it seems, in the process of moving to a new location, his old site went down due to lack of bandwidth. He asked if I would mention the new address, so here ya go… If you are looking for Le Sabot Post-Moderne, stop by www.postmodernclog.com instead of the old address you may have.

Blog Roll'n

Well, I've added a few good links to the ol' BlogRoll (see right) over the past few weeks. I just added Elevation, a new blog (I just got word about it!) that should prove very interesting, I think. Gavenagain is a very nice guy I know and I'm really looking forward to hearing what he has to say here.

I've also finally added a link to Darren Rowse's Living Room, a blog I've been following for some time, but hadn't linked to. It's a great blog with lots of thought provoking content. Darren recently did a cool series on “Underblogs,” those of us who have blogs that aren't quite as well known.

Finally, I've added Discoshaman's Le Sabot Post-Moderne. It's somewhat of a political/culturally focused blog. I really like it so far.

There is a logical explaination for this, sir.

You're Tony Nelson! It doesn't get any more stable
than you. You love peace and quiet, manual
reading and gardening are among your exciting
weekend endeavors.

So who are you? Does Dr. Bellows need to analyze you too or can you blink your problems away?

But the real question is: Does it Come with Free Shipping?

It seems that someone is working on copying Dell's build-to-order model in another industry: Cars. Build-to-Order Inc. is hoping to create an on-demand car manufacturing business with low inventory and quick arrival of parts from suppliers.

It works well for computers, but I wonder how well it works for cars?

Rebates, Rebates, and More Rebates

Yikes! I had a stack of rebates that had been waiting on my desk to be filled out for several weeks. sigh It ended up taking me thirty minutes to get through the stack, although fortunately with the new technique of printing the rebates on the receipts themselves, it makes things easier. Still, I just don't like doing rebates for some reason… at least I don't have to think about it any more.

The Case of the Lost Comments

I think I figured out what might have been causing some comments to get lost after posting. If you did post and your comment didn't stay online, please try again. I think everything should be working now. Thanks!

What about Forgiveness?

Consider the case of President Clinton. There is no getting around it: Clinton made lots of mistakes. He made some of what we tend to think of as “big” sins. He was not really helpful to Christian causes.

But, let's especially focus on that “big” sins thing. My Bible doesn't have a “big” sins category; Jesus blew that concept away. Consider what he said during the Sermon on the Mount. President Clinton committed adultery, yes, but according to Jesus, “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28) President Clinton lied, but I think I can safely say anyone who said they never lie would have to be lying to say that.

Even if we could avoid falling into the types of sin Mr. Clinton often gets condemned for, we ought to still consider the cost of sin. “[T]he wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), the Apostle Paul reminds us. No, it isn't the wages of the really big, get on national TV sins is death. It is simply the wages of any and all sin. We are all in the same boat.

Indeed, “[a]ll have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) In other words, “[t]here is none Righteous, no not one.” (Romans 3:10) Yes, we are all sinful and dispicably marred by sin in the eyes of God.

We need forgiveness to fix that problem, and speaking of forgiveness, we are also reminded that “if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” (Matthew 6:14) and “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Matthew 7:1-2)

It should strike us as ironic that we, believers in something that revolves around the concept of forgiveness of sin, can't seem to forgive sin. It is fine for us to say “hey, this is wrong — that's sin,” but it is very very wrong for us to go around condemning people and not forgiving them. It may be politically handy to do so, but not Biblically right. Yet, I think President Clinton could come out tomorrow in sack cloth and beg for forgiveness from the nation and it wouldn't do any good at all. (I say all this keeping in mind that I have been as guilty of condemning him and others as anyone else.)

President Clinton has been condemned by Christians for years. Five years after his attempted impeachment we are still busy condemning him and certainly not forgiving him. Why is that? Does God keep condemning us for past sins? Does he take years to forgive us? No! Yet we judge others, such as Clinton, with a holier-than-thou attitude. What kind of example does that present to the world? What kind of testimony does it give when we talk about forgiveness but show nothing of it? Where is that Change?

This is coming out far more jumbled than I had hoped, but I guess what I am trying to say is that it is time to forget what is politically beneficial and worry about what gets the important goal accomplished (bringing more people into a relationship with Christ Jesus). I fear that in our maneuvering to get more votes we may do so at the price of losing souls.

So, it seems to me — to bring this back to where I started — that when President Clinton says something nice, we shouldn't be so quick to start the condemning process again. That just makes us look (and in reality, quite possibly be) hypocritical. We certainly wouldn't want that type of behavior directed toward us. In the recent case, as Kevin pointed out, he didn't have to say anything nice, but he did. We should have said something nice in return… did we?