To Boldly Go No More

The home page of Star Trek: The Experience's web site (www.startrekexp.com), which has already been taken down.

One of many things we did over the Labor Day weekend was trying to squeeze in one last visit to the “Star Trek: The Experience (STE) attraction at the Las Vegas Hilton. George’s brother was also in town visiting us over the long Labor Day weekend, so us three space cadets ventured out to encounter some Klingons and being invaded by the Borg.

“Star Trek: The Experience” (STE) is closed now. It’s last day was on September 1st, after a 11-year mission to explore a strange new world, called Planet Vegas. Then reality and greed of corporate America has put a screeching halt to the exploration of the final frontiers of space. Due to some disputes of the leasing agreements of the attraction between Paramount Pictures, Cedar Fair Entertainment Company and the Las Vegas Hilton, it was decided to cease operations altogether. All the outcry and pleas of thousands of Star Trek fans to reconsider and keeping this mecca for Trekkies open, went unheard. The attraction also had seen better days and it’s visitor numbers plummeted over the last few years, which also helped to set all phasers on stun.

Although I like “Star Trek,” I’m certainly not a Trekkie. Neither is George and his brother. I do not know the registry numbers of the various Star Fleet vessels or each and every single alien species ever introduced in the Star Trek universe. However, I did enjoy STE, the Deep Space Nine Promenade with it’s stores, Quark’s Restaurant and all the actors who got into character as Klingons, Ferengis or Andorians.


This is me with an Andorian.


A model of the U.S.S. Voyager hovers above the dining guests of Quark's Restaurant & Bar.

The ultimate reason for STE’s existence were it’s two rides. The older one was a flight simulator type ride, called the “Klingon Encounter.” The other, more recently added ride was “Borg Invasion,” a so-called 4-D attraction.

Before boarding either one of the rides, guest would walk through an expansive exhibit of original Star Trek costumes, props and artifacts which were used in all the four television series and the ten motion pictures. People could also pass the time by reading very extensive historical time lines of Star Fleet, their starships and missions and their encounters of intergalactic species and other worldly places. It’s always been quiet interesting and fun. The massive models of two versions of the U.S.S. Enterpise, Voyager and a Klingon Bird of Prey, all suspended from a massive black, starlit space ceiling, were quite impressive.


One of two giant models of the starship Enterprise.
This one is Enterprise-D from "Star Trek: The Next Generation."


While people were waiting in line for the rides, they could look at hundreds of Star Trek artifacts being displayed in a impressive exhibition.

Since this would be the last weekend of operation, STE was drawing a huge attendance. People from literally the whole world were coming to help sent off STE on it’s last few missions. Some people were dressed up as Star Fleet Officers, Borg and other curious characters. And there was a long waiting line to get on these two rides. Even though we got there early in the day, we still had to wait over an hour for the more popular Klingon Encounter ride.

We’ve never been on the “Borg Invasion 4-D” attraction before and the line for it wasn’t as long. And now we know why. This ride was just lame. The pre-show was more exciting, with real-live actors playing the Borg as they are trying to “assimilate” the Star Fleet crew and the guests who just happen to be right in the middle of a Borg attack. The 3-D film was surprisingly unimpressive and the simulator itself barely noticeable. In the end I couldn’t believe that millions of dollars were invested into such a boring ride. It was utterly disappointing.

On the other hand, the original ride called “Klingon Encounter,” was still a lot of fun. The waiting line for this one was way over one hour long. Once it was finally our turn, we and a small group of other guests were “beamed” aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise-D and after being led through some corridors, ended up on the all too familiar and “fully functioning” bridge of the Enterprise. This still being part of the pre-show, we then ended up on the actual ride which was essentially a flight simulator, environed by a giant movie screen.


This was taken from the STE web site before it was decommissioned.
The bridge of Enterprise-D, part of the "Klingon Encounter" attraction.

The story line for this ride goes like this. We were accidently “beamed” through time and space to the 24th century and ended up on the Enterprise. One person in our group of riders is a descendant of Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the Klingons are attacking to kill that one descendant. So we are put on a runabout shuttle to be “time-warped” back into the past and hopefully safety. Of course, the Klingons are after us, attacking and shooting at us and we all end up in present-day Las Vegas. Which, by the looks of the film, is still sometime in the mid 1990’s. When our vessel flies over the nightly Las Vegas “Strip,” one can still see the long-gone Sands Hotel & Casino (now the Venetian), the Holiday Casino (now Harrah’s) and the old neon marquee of Caesars Place, promoting the Moody Blues, where now the ever popular Forum Shops mall stands. Hilarious!

Anyway, we all somehow make it back to the Las Vegas Hilton safe and sound. Good thing too because now we can continue to feed the slot machines or whatever else visitors do when visiting Las Vegas these days. After our brief intergalactic stunt, George, his brother and I decided to head on over the Planet Hollywood Casino, formerly the Aladdin, to enjoy a nice dinner at their Planet Dailies coffee shop.



Thomas' new girl friend, a Klingon beauty. K'plah!

It’s kind of sad to see “Star Trek: The Experience” close down. But I guess, that’s the sign of the times. The Disneyfication of a highly themed Las Vegas had it’s heydays in the 1990s and nowadays Las Vegas re-inventing itself again as an adult Disneyland. And the nerd factor of Star Trek doesn’t fit the bill of Las Vegas’ new vision of trendy clubs, sophisticated restaurants and high-end shopping.

Oh well, live long and prosper. Just not in this century.

And most definitely not on this planet...called Vegas.




Both photos above show the Space Quest Casino inside the Las Vegas Hilton, which leads into the "Star Trek: The Experience" attraction.

Not Kaputt Anymore

They both have served us well for 17 years.

George and I were so looking forward to the long Labor Day weekend. Well, it came and went...way too fast. There was a long weekend? Really? What happened to it? Oh, that’s right. That particular Friday we had two air conditioning units replaced. Since one unit weighs around 3 tons and the other 2 tons, one can imagine that installing these two babies would take a little bit of time.



From the back and the front of our house

As a matter of fact, it was a whole day event. The old units were located on top of our roof. It involved renting a crane to take the old ones down and lifting both new units back into place again. First, the guys from the A/C company had to go up on the roof to clean up and cutting metal sheets to size. They were also taking down the old cat walk, which a times sounded as if they were about to demolish our whole house. I expected the ceiling to come crashing down any minute. That was a little unsettling.


Demolished catwalk with rust, pigeon poop and all...


Waiting to be lifted to new heights...

It also didn’t help that it was rather hot that day. Obviously, the A/C wasn’t turned on while they were working up on the roof. It got fairly warm inside the house very quickly in the morning hours and I tried to avoid doing anything too strenuous. But there’s only so much one can do to stay somewhat cool in the middle of summer, in the middle of a desert, in a house without an air condition. Sitting in front of a computer screen in one’s own puddle of sweat is not that much fun.


The crane dude


Easy, easy, steady now...


Only weighs two tons or three

Finally, around four o’clock in the afternoon one the technician turned on the units to see if they were working properly. And success...they did a wonderful job. Ahhhh, cool air was blowing out of the vents. How great that felt.

It’s amazing how we take things for granted. Growing up in Germany, people have no air conditioning there. It’s unheard of and Germans tend to make fun of those spoiled Americans and how they waste all this energy to make their homes feel like they’re part of the arctic circle. It can get hot and humid in Germany during the summer, but people just deal with it. Of course, this being the desert where temperatures can easily hover around the 120º degree mark, one cannot make a comparison. No, you just can’t live without an A/C in the Mojave desert.

I have no clue how those pioneers did it back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when they first started to settle here in the Las Vegas Valley. Different times, different lives.

We’re just glad to have nice cool air again to keep our home all comfy.


The event of the day, but no one even noticed.

George und ich haben uns so auf das lange Laber Day Wochenende gefreut. (Laber Day ist in etwa mit dem Tag der Arbeit zu vergleichen und fällt jeweils auf den ersten Montag im September). Nun, es kam und ging und alles war viel zu schnell vorbei. Wir hatten ein langes Wochenende? Echt? Haben wir was verpaßt?

Ach ja, an diesen besagten Freitag vor dem Feiertag wurden unsere neuen Klimaanlagen installiert, nachdem die alten nach fast 17 Jahren fast ihren Geist aufgegeben hatten. Da nun eines der Geräte etwa drei Tonnen und das andere um die zwei Tonnen wiegen, kann man sich wahrscheinlich vorstellen, daß diese Angelegenheit nicht in fünf Minuten erledigt war.

Genauer gesagt dauerte es fast den ganzen Tag. Die beiden alten Klimaanlagen mussten zuerst abmontiert und vom Dach unseres Hauses mit einem Kran herunter gehievt werden. Dann mussten die Installateure alles sauber machen und Metallplatten zurecht schneiden. Auch musste der alte Laufsteg entfernt werden. Mit all dem Lärm und Hämmern konnte man meinen die würden unser Haus regelrecht abreisen. Ich hatte die Decke schon herunterbrechen sehen. Es war schon ein wenig beunruhigend.

Es half auch nicht das es an diesen Tag sehr heiß war. Logischerweise war die Klimaanlage ausgeschaltet, wenn Leute gerade daran arbeiteten. Im inneren des Hauses wurde es relativ schnell warm während den frühen Morgenstunden und ich versuchte mich so wenig wie möglich anzustrengen. Aber man kann nur so viel dagegen machen um kühl zu bleiben...im Hochsommer, in der Mitte von einer Wüste, in einem Haus ohne Klimaanlage. Und im eigenen Schweiß gebadet vor dem Computer sitzen machte ja auch nicht so viel Spaß.

Aber dann endlich am späteren Nachmittag hatte einer der Arbeiter die Thermostate eingestellt und die Klimaanlagen eingeschaltet, um zu sehen ob beide Geräte richtig funktionieren. Sie haben ganze Arbeit geleistet. Denn siehe da, wunderbare kühle Luft blies aus allen Öffnungen. Es fühlte sich einfach herrlich an.

Es ist schon erstaunlich wie man nun alles für selbstverständlich hält. Als ich noch in Deutschland lebte, hatte niemand eine Klimaanlage. Das hat sich bis heute nicht grundlegend verändert. Und Deutsche machen sich schon mal gerne über die verwöhnten Amerikaner lustig und wie sie die Energie verschwenden um ihre Häuser in Kühlschränke zu verwandeln. Auch ein deutscher Sommer kann schon sehr heiß und schwül werden, aber die Leute kommen deswegen auch zurecht. Natürlich kann man das nicht mit einer Wüste vergleichen, wo Temperaturen weit über 40º C steigen können. Nein, ohne Klimaanlage kann man in der Mojavewüste nicht leben.

Ich habe wirklich keine Ahnung, wie die Pioniere das in den späten 1800er und frühen 1900er Jahren ausgehalten haben, als sie angefangen haben die Las Vegas Gegend zu besiedeln. Das waren eben andere Zeiten.

Wir sind bloß froh unsere Klimaanlage wieder zu haben, um unser Haus so richtig schön gemütlich kühl zu halten. Und das ist etwas das man in Deutschland auch nicht allzu oft hört.

Global Warming Solution

Taking care of global warming...American style:





And once again on this happy note...have a great Labor Day, folks.

Uncertainty

Hope has two beautiful daughters.
Their names are Anger and Courage;
anger at the way things are,
and courage to see that they do not remain
the way they are.

- Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD)

Kaputt

On Wednesday evening, one of our two air conditioning units decided to die on us. Well, isn’t that just wonderful?! Especially when one lives in the Nevada desert. In the middle of August. When the temperature is still hovering way over 100º Fahrenheit and barely cools down at night.

Ah, the joys of living in the desert.

Luckily, we were able to have a technician over the next morning to take a look at it and fix it. At least temporarily. He switched out a fuse, which will blow out again pretty soon since the units are drawing too much power and overheat due to their age. These babies are 17 years old. All still original from the day we first moved in...well, 17 years ago.

We really can’t complain though. They’ve been working great all this time without any incidents. They’re both air conditioner/heat pump units which are true work horses. We were really lucky. Of course, it also helps to keep an eye on these things and trying to maintain them so they run efficiently. And being environmentally conscience as we are, we never cool our home lower than 84ºF anyway. This also helped not putting too much strain on them over the years. Besides, we never understood why people want to turn their homes into deep- freezers. It’s quite unhealthy to expose your body to extreme temperature fluctuations, like constantly walking in and out of an arctic home into the hot furnace of desert hell.

Well, that and trying to avoid a heart attack every time one receives the monthly power bill.

Anyway...

It’s only a matter of time before one of the units, or even both, will eventually crap out on us completely. George and I decided to bite the bullet and buy two brand new ones. Call it an investment. It’ll add to the home’s value when we’re ready to sell the place down the road. But have you seen the prices of these things lately? How many zeros were there again??? Good Lawd!

Ah, the joys of home ownership.

We’ll get the two new air conditioner/heat pump units installed next Friday. The A/C company must also bring a crane to lift both units onto the roof of our house. Hmm, a couple of tons of steel, valves and the like...resting on wooden beams over our heads. That’ll be interesting. After all that hassle and the money we’re about to spend, they had better send some cute guys over to install those things. We’re just saying. There must be room for some eye candy.

Yeah, we know. Who are we kidding, right?

George and I are both taking the day off from work for this joyous occassion. But at least it’ll turn the upcoming Labor Day weekend into an even longer one. Not bad. Not bad at all.

** On a completely unrelated note, it’s my father’s birthday. He would have turned 81 years today. Our relationship never was a perfect one. But he would have done anything for me. Always. And he did. Thanks for everything. Hope you have a good one...wherever you are. **

Happy Friday to everyone and a great weekend. Make the most out of it.

Cher

George, his mother and I went to see Cher at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace yesterday. We bought the tickets months ago as they were selling out fast. All three of us were excited and hyped and ready to go. Finally, the day has arrived.

First off, the show was absolutely fantastic. Cher is how old now? 61 years…43…24? Who knows? And who cares?! All these so-called stars of today can’t even hold a candle up to this woman. The audience was ecstatic. Here we were from all walks of life. Young, old, the die-hard fans and dressed up drag queens in-between simple looking folks. They all came from Anytown, U.S.A. and all over the world, to see this phenomenon called Cher. And she knew it. She knows she’s the shit (her words) but never takes herself too serious. This was a fun show. She admitted that she had to work even harder here as the Las Vegas audience is a tough one to get excited. And excited they were. Towards the final numbers, she had everyone go wild and dancing in the aisles.

While it was definitely one of the best shows we’ve seen on the “Strip,” there were a few things to gripe about. She was fashionable late, but that was expected. However, the transition phases between sets were far too many and dragged out to long. These were used to switch props on stage and to give Cher time to change into her many fabulous costumes. During these breaks we were treated to video clips, emphasizing the many highlights in her career. Cher is also famous for her outlandish outfits and that too is expected when one sees her shows. But paying the high ticket prices that all of us did, we would have rather seen more of her live on stage than some canned old footage projected on a giant screen. Her die-hard fans didn’t seem to mind and basically fainted every time at the first tone of some oldie, but goodie song. Fortunately, her fantastic dancers, acrobats and the incredible live band helped tremendously to bridge some of the dry spots.

Was it necessary for her to change a hundred times just to sing one song, only to vanish once again into the closet to get ready for the next transformation? Granted, phenomenal transformations, but still...

But still...

Still...we forgave her. It was Cher. She was amazing. Even with a few mishaps here and there. Including her rendition of “Love is a Battlefield” and “I will Survive.” Why would she sing Pat Benetar and Gloria Gaynor songs? Didn't we come to hear Cher's songs? It didn’t matter. The crowd went nuts.

She made up by singing many of her favorite hits. “ I Got You, Babe,” “Half Breed,” “If I Could Turn Back Time,” “Believe,”…

It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime extravaganzas. Something like this, someone like her will never come again. You’d better enjoy it now while you still can and suck in every little essence that is Cher. After all these years, one can’t help to be still amazed by her. After the show has ended and the Colosseum emptied, people were still ecstatic.

Do you believe in life after…? Nah…let’s not go there. Believe this though…Cher will live on forever.

Required Reading

The following opinion piece should be required reading for Americans, especially politicians. But maybe our two presidential candidates are more worried about their celebrity status than talking about and dealing with real issues? The text below is from the New York Times.


Op-Ed Columnist
Flush With Energy
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: August 9, 2008

Thomas L. Friedman
(Photo by Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Copenhagen

The Arctic Hotel in Ilulissat, Greenland, is a charming little place on the West Coast, but no one would ever confuse it for a Four Seasons — maybe a One Seasons. But when my wife and I walked back to our room after dinner the other night and turned down our dim hallway, the hall light went on. It was triggered by an energy-saving motion detector. Our toilet even had two different flushing powers depending on — how do I say this delicately — what exactly you’re flushing. A two-gear toilet! I’ve never found any of this at an American hotel. Oh, if only we could be as energy efficient as Greenland!

A day later, I flew back to Denmark. After appointments here in Copenhagen, I was riding in a car back to my hotel at the 6 p.m. rush hour. And boy, you knew it was rush hour because 50 percent of the traffic in every intersection was bicycles. That is roughly the percentage of Danes who use two-wheelers to go to and from work or school every day here. If I lived in a city that had dedicated bike lanes everywhere, including one to the airport, I’d go to work that way, too. It means less traffic, less pollution and less obesity.

What was most impressive about this day, though, was that it was raining. No matter. The Danes simply donned rain jackets and pants for biking. If only we could be as energy smart as Denmark!
Unlike America, Denmark, which was so badly hammered by the 1973 Arab oil embargo that it banned all Sunday driving for a while, responded to that crisis in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent. (And it didn’t happen by Danish politicians making their people stupid by telling them the solution was simply more offshore drilling.)

What was the trick? To be sure, Denmark is much smaller than us and was lucky to discover some oil in the North Sea. But despite that, Danes imposed on themselves a set of gasoline taxes, CO2 taxes and building-and-appliance efficiency standards that allowed them to grow their economy — while barely growing their energy consumption — and gave birth to a Danish clean-power industry that is one of the most competitive in the world today. Denmark today gets nearly 20 percent of its electricity from wind. America? About 1 percent.

And did Danes suffer from their government shaping the market with energy taxes to stimulate innovations in clean power? In one word, said Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s minister of climate and energy: “No.” It just forced them to innovate more — like the way Danes recycle waste heat from their coal-fired power plants and use it for home heating and hot water, or the way they incinerate their trash in central stations to provide home heating. (There are virtually no landfills here.)

There is little whining here about Denmark having $10-a-gallon gasoline because of high energy taxes. The shaping of the market with high energy standards and taxes on fossil fuels by the Danish government has actually had “a positive impact on job creation,” added Hedegaard. “For example, the wind industry — it was nothing in the 1970s. Today, one-third of all terrestrial wind turbines in the world come from Denmark.” In the last 10 years, Denmark’s exports of energy efficiency products have tripled. Energy technology exports rose 8 percent in 2007 to more than $10.5 billion in 2006, compared with a 2 percent rise in 2007 for Danish exports as a whole.

“It is one of our fastest-growing export areas,” said Hedegaard. It is one reason that unemployment in Denmark today is 1.6 percent. In 1973, said Hedegaard, “we got 99 percent of our energy from the Middle East. Today it is zero.”

Frankly, when you compare how America has responded to the 1973 oil shock and how Denmark has responded, we look pathetic.

“I have observed that in all other countries, including in America, people are complaining about how prices of [gasoline] are going up,” Denmark’s prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told me. “The cure is not to reduce the price, but, on the contrary, to raise it even higher to break our addiction to oil. We are going to introduce a new tax reform in the direction of even higher taxation on energy and the revenue generated on that will be used to cut taxes on personal income — so we will improve incentives to work and improve incentives to save energy and develop renewable energy.”

Because it was smart taxes and incentives that spurred Danish energy companies to innovate, Ditlev Engel, the president of Vestas — Denmark’s and the world’s biggest wind turbine company — told me that he simply can’t understand how the U.S. Congress could have just failed to extend the production tax credits for wind development in America.

Why should you care?

“We’ve had 35 new competitors coming out of China in the last 18 months,” said Engel, “and not one out of the U.S.”

A version of this article appeared in print on August 10, 2008, on page WK11 of the New York edition.

This is only a test...

This is only a test on our emergency broadcast system...Please don't change your dial...This is only a test...We'll repeat this message in German momentarely...Translation may vary...

Wir wollten nur schnell das Video raufladen ausprobieren...und hiermit auch schnell mal Hallo sagen.