Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Friday, September 16, 2022

Book Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

 


Obviously, people have wildly different opinions on The Force Awakens, which was the movie that brought the Star Wars franchise back to theaters. This is a pretty standard novelization of the movie, although it is not a word-for-word reprint of the movie. Some of the dialogue gets changed slightly, and there is some material that was deleted from the movie (one particular scene involving Chewbacca and Unkar Plutt) that appears in the book. It fleshes out the story a bit and adds some context, but it does not give away anything that was not revealed in the movie (e.g., Rey's backstory).

So, ultimately, how you feel about the book is likely going to mirror how you feel about the movie. Personally, I liked the movie, although I strongly disagreed with having three different writers for each movie in the trilogy who could pretty much do what they wanted with the story. Although the different writers were more of an issue with the next installment, The Last Jedi. I think The Force Awaken developed the new characters well, incorporated the legacy characters fairly well (with one exception), and set up the new trilogy well. So, if you liked the movie, this is definitely worth reading.

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