The Legend of the Rangers

It's been another pleasant weekend, even if it did spend much of Friday evening and early Saturday raining. Still, it was supposed to rain through today, so that's not so bad, really.

My project this weekend has involved running hoses through my back yard.

As I've noted before, my back yard is partly a patio, with a nice bench to one side with a drop-down planter behind it, and a pond and garden along the fringe. It's very nice, but I'm still working on maintaining it. My former cow-orker Genevieve visited me a couple of weeks ago and filled me in on some of the plants around the yard, and more particularly which ones are weeds that I needed to pull up (I should probably drag Lucy down to do the same). Then there's watering the place.

The pond's pump-powered stream is not watertight, so running the stream means running extra water into the pond to keep the water level up. Which means positioning a hose to run the water. And the drop-down planter had a drip hose running through it, but the hose seemed to be in bad shape (dry and not very effective). So yesterday Debbi and I went to a hardware store and bought a bunch of hoses and accoutrements by RainDrip.

First we ran a length of 1/2" hose under some of the patio's tiles (which just rest on a bed of sand) and around the edge of the garden to the rear of the pond. This makes it easy to add water to a pond, and at a point where it will help cycle the water from the back of the pond (which is not near either the pump or the flow from the stream), and keeps it almost entirely out of sight. Then I ran a length of 1/2" hose behind the planter and capped it at the far end, and I'm running some 1/4" hose with pre-installed drip holes through the planter to water the plants. I've tested it out and it seems pretty effective, though I'm going to add one more hose line than I've put in so far.

I do need to get some stakes to hold the 1/4" hoses in place, though, since they have a tendency to flop around. I also bought an "anti-siphon" (which supposedly prevents water from backing from the hose into the water supply when you turn off the faucet), but I can't get it to work. Water just runs out of the anti-siphon and doesn't really run into the hose beyond it. I'm kind of stumped on that one.

All-in-all I'm happy, though. I still want to move my orange tree upstairs to the parch, and then start looking at putting container plants up there with it. Then I can look at running another hose up to the container plants to water them. Not to mention the question of whether I want to install a drip system for the plants in the garden.

But that's all for the future. I'm pretty happy with what we accomplished this weekend.

Friday night Debbi and I joined folks (Susan, Mark and Yvette) at Subrata's to watch the recent TV-movie Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers, which Susan brought on videotape. (For some reason, expanded cable in my city doesn't provide the Sci-Fi Channel, so Subrata and I can't tape it ourselves.)

Overall, I'd have to say this is one of the sillier and less successful shows to come out of the J. Michael Straczynski brain-trust.

The Rangers are the military organization of the Interstellar Alliance, following the events of Babylon 5. They comprise mainly Minbari and Humans following codes of conduct handed down from Minbari hero Valen a millennium before. (Valen, of course, was really human Jeffrey Sinclair, cast back in time.) Their slogan is "We live for the One, we die for the One", and they have a truly ridiculous credo for any technologically-advanced culture: They never retreat, and never give up, no matter how hopeless the odds.

David Martel (Dylan Neal), first officer of a Ranger ship, is nearly thrown out of the caste when he refuses to follow a band of raiders in a damaged and weaponless vessel. When former Ambassador G'Kar (Andreas Katsulas) intervenes on his behalf (apparently the only person in the film who sees how ludicrous this code is), David is given command of a small, old, damaged, and 'cursed' ship, the Lianda, and is to escort the brand-new Valen and its cargo of diplomats to a remote world. His crew includes several of his old comrades, as well as new Ranger recruits from the Narn and Drazi races.

Unfortunately, the ships are ambushed by mysterious ships which belong to an unknown race called The Hand, and the Valen is destroyed. The diplomats' escape pods are rescued by the Lianda, which must now play a game of cat-and-mouse with the Hand ships, while trying to figure out who they are and what they want. There's also a side-plot with the ghosts of the Lianda's last crew haunting the mildly-telepathic first officer Dulann (Alex Zahara).

There's enough silliness in this episode to have you rolling your eyes for days. Unfortunately, as you can see, the basic story is not particularly gripping, so the silliness comes to the fore. The Hand, although given the obligatory offhand comment that they're more dangerous than the Shadows, basically are the Shadows: Another super-powerful mystery race, only this one from even further back in the past (didn't Straczynski already tread this ground in the Thirdspace movie?). The Rangers' culture seems implausible, especially considering the hard-hearted pragmatists who seemed to make up the Ranger caste in Babylon 5.

The Lianda is a small ship, which is fine - even novel, for SF television - but it seems much bigger than it is, with many long corridors and various rooms. And unfortunately, the story milks the whole notion of running a broken-down ship for all the so-called humor it can muster. It's hard to credit that the Rangers would let such a beaten-up ship go out without being properly refitted, especially since it's not like this is a time of war.

The Lianda is a weird fire control mechanism: The gunner, Sarah Cantrell (Myriam Sirois), jumps into a virtual reality chamber, and punches or kicks at targets to fire the weapons. While this might be a nice cardiovascular workout, it looks silly and seems sillier. Why not use computers? Or a video-game interface? What are the advantages of this interface? Especially since other Minbari ships we've seen don't have anything like this. This seems poorly thought-out.

Lastly, there's the title: This isn't really a Babylon 5 movie, as the station only appears briefly at the end of it. And it's not at all clear what the Legend part refers to. It seems calculated to be a marketing title, not a descriptive one.

It's a disappointing movie. I guess they're angling to make a series out of it, but it doesn't look very promising from this beginning. The Babylon 5 pilot was also rocky, but at least it wasn't quite this ridiculous.

Debbi and I have been playing Cribbage a lot lately. Wednesday when we played I helped her think about her strategies in each hand, and our games have been a lot closer since then, with her finally beating me once yesterday.

I also introduced her (at her request) to Abalone last night ("Why do I always want to learn these games after 10:30 at night?" she asked). It's a more complicated game, with a lot of interesting moves possible, and we spent some time during the second game discussing some approaches to strategy. I'm far from an expert at the game, though. She did okay for her first time, but it will take some work before she starts beating me at it.

We had a pleasant weekend otherwise, as well. Had Italian for dinner last night, then hung out at Borrone for a while. I'm still working on my preparation for our fantasy baseball draft, in two weeks. I need to mail off my income taxes, now that they're back from my preparer. And the first installment of my property taxes are due soon.

And with that, I head off into a new week...