@jake4480 While I’m fully open for more #TheXFiles, I don’t know if this is really the right move. The revival season was (at best) okay. I don’t necessarily want a reboot, but, if done right, a continuation could be great.
Today, March 7, in 1992, Dr. Dana Scully and FBI agent Fox Mulder work on their first case together, traveling to northwest Oregon to investigate potential alien abductions (The X-Files, s01e01 “Pilot”, 1993)
This week Simon and Eugene are taking a special one-off look at The X-Files episode Die Hand Die Verletzt. This was the 14th episode of the second season of The X-Files and marks the departure of Glen Morgan and James Wong from the series. It first aired on January 27, 1995.
Simon and Eugene discuss romanticizing conspiracies and misinformation, implanted memories and satanic rituals, and which way water goes down the drain.
Trigger warning: Two atheists end up talking about religions.
Get your comments in for this week’s recordings. Monday, 15-Jan-2024: The X-Files Die Hand Die Verletzt, and Wednesday, 17-Jan-2024: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Unchained Woman.
Next week: Children of the Dog Star, Swamp Light and Alien Summons, and Real Humans, Sly Leo.
I’ve completed my acoustic barrier just in time to record our 666th episode.
Of course, it’s not designed to block out all sound; it’s really about suppressing echoes and dampening outside sounds. Hopefully, it will help. It certainly sounds very different when talking inside the barrier.
See if you can tell a difference. The first episode recorded inside the barrier will drop on Saturday, the 20th of January. It’s our look at The X-Files episode Die Hand, Die Verletzt.
Of course, I’m telling you this on January 14th, less than seven days from release, which means our patrons on Patreon will not get the episode a whole week before the main release. Regrettably, scheduling issues prevented Simon and me from recording before tomorrow.
Which leads me to this week’s apology. You might recall that I had a fiasco during December with the quotas for the releases in December. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to work around that, and it did prevent me from posting January’s episodes until the January rollover on my quota. It’s still not quite straightened out.
This really threw off my “routine” of posting, and that is a disaster waiting to happen.
Let me tell you a story about my days in Information Technology. One of the many things I did in my career was manage a data center that had, among other things, IBM AS/400s (later IBM iSeries) midrange computers. These computers are multiuser systems rather like very small mainframes for those unfamiliar. They have lots of redundancy and a very high uptime. These systems were typically used for mission-critical business applications, often in finance, insurance, inventory, etc.
As such, any reputable company will have maintenance agreements on their computers, and IBM, to their credit, will treat you very well when you need service.
When I started working with AS/400s, I worked for a company that wasn’t willing to spend on maintenance contracts, and so I learned and did the maintenance myself. I daresay that, by the end of that, I was qualified to diagnose, field strip, fix, and reassemble most problems with an AS/400.
Then I went to work for an organization that paid for maintenance contracts, and so I would sit on the sidelines when IBM would do maintenance and repairs. We had our usual technician, and I had a lot of respect for him. We’d talk about the systems while he’d work and it was clear to me that (duh) he knew more about the systems than I did.
He knew what he was doing backward and forward. Where I had performed dozens of repairs on just a couple of systems, he’d done hundreds, if not thousands, on many different systems.
…and yet, he used to do something that drove me nuts.
No matter how simple the procedure, he cracked open the manual with a checklist of steps and performed every one every time. Many of those steps were unnecessary depending on the particular circumstances, and he knew that, but he did them and checked them off every single time.
One day, I finally asked him about it, and he fully and freely admitted that he was taking unnecessary steps, but he said, “By doing so, I never make a mistake on somebody else’s mission-critical system by forgetting something or making a false assumption. The customer pays for the job to be done right. Problems can still happen, but I’ve done my due diligence.”
It made sense. It wasn’t his system, and he was being very conscientious, but it didn’t necessarily sway me for “my own” systems.
Then, my organization got cheap. They put the maintenance contract out to bid and another company took over. They too were competent, and the guy who did our work was knowledgeable, and I had no qualms that he was capable of the work. He didn’t use the checklist, though.
You can see where this is going, right?
He fluffed one, and the hard drive RAID array was broken, wiping our system and all the data. We had the proper backups and restored and returned to full operations, but it took 36-48 hours to do the full restores. He was chagrined, and I slept on a cot in the data center for two nights.
After that, I also very much adopted the habit of using checklists, and when following printed instructions, I treat them as checklists, too.
…and when I don’t do that is when I screw up.
I have a checklist for posting podcasts, and I was not following it while I was scrambling with the quota problem. As such, I screwed up the posts for our Patreon subscribers. I noticed the problem when I was posting this past week’s bonus Babylon 5 episode, Exogenesis. I unclogged the jam and dropped two additional episodes that should have been released earlier.
Inexcusable, I’m afraid, and I hate making that mistake in the same week when I have to delay this week’s Patreon post until Monday, but there it is. I’ll see if I can’t come up with a bonus something just for patrons as an apology.
With our recordings this week, we will hopefully return to our routine schedule of two weekly sessions.
https://i0.wp.com/fusionpatrol.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/IMG_4459-1.png?ssl=1Get your comments in. Tomorrow, we’re recording our first episode on Children of the Dog Star, a 1984 New Zealand sci-fi TV series. We’ll discuss episodes 1-2, The Brass Daisy and Power Stop. Next week, we’ll be recording our episode on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Unchained Woman, and for our 666th episode, we’ll be doing a special recording discussing The X-Files episode, Die Hand, Die Verletzt.
As we’re slowly getting back into swing in the new year, I’m changing things around the studio a bit, and adding some new gear.
Although we have tried to make continual improvements in the quality of the podcast, the fact remains that the only room practically available to me to record podcasts is my home office, which is problematic at best.
Like many American homes, even ones dating back to the 1940s like mine, it’s not uncommon to see neighborhoods built uniformly. The floor plans are often basically the same, but they can come in variations. For example, I don’t have a garage. Others in my neighborhood do, although, given that it was the 1940s when they were built, they have 1-car garages.
In my house, the variation is that the space that would have been a 1-car garage was built as additional living space. This is the room that is my office which sits on the far side of the house, next to the kitchen. It has single-pane windows, abuts the carport, contains the dog door to the backyard, and is the nearest part of my house to the neighbors. It’s long, narrow, and inadequately ducted. It’s too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. It’s a delight.
While I’ve made many changes to improve the sound quality over the years, the room remains a challenge.
Recently, I’ve begun to notice some increasing levels of background noise in my recordings, and I haven’t been able to figure out what it is. I have ruled out hardware – inasmuch as it isn’t my hardware introducing additional noise. It might still be possible that my hardware/software is simply collecting more sound somehow, but the more likely answer is that there is more noise.
This week, I’ve begun constructing a free-standing, four-side barrier made of hanging acoustic blankets around my desk. Two sides are up now, which already makes a noticeable difference to the room’s sound when I’m sitting at my desk. We’ll see if it helps solve the stray noise problem. I know it won’t help with the sound of the dog door flapping as the puppies fickly enter and exit the room.
I’m waiting for parts to assemble the other two sides, and then we shall see.
I can only image how awful it will be in summer, though.
This past week’s discussion on Buck Rogers was a surprise. I never thought it would be that piece of 70s fluff that got us the opportunity to talk about living with disabilities in a Sci-fi future. Maybe I’ll have more thoughts on that in an upcoming Patrolling Beyond Fusion post.
But... but... the important thing is right behind you, Mulder!
Was trying to have a bit of fun with watercolors tonight, but I really couldn't bother to develop this further. I was more interested in watching youtube videos about the end of capitalism.
I enjoyed a ton of scattered rerun episodes of The X Files during my teenage years on Star TV/World (cable TV) in India.
What a joy to now watch it from the very beginning! The uniqueness of the main theme, great writing and production and that sexual tension between Mulder and Scully - it is all there from the start. 👌
It is streaming on Freevee (which I discovered is free).
It's uncanny how this 30 year old show looks like it was made recently. The 1990s never truly ended and its styles still evolve in pop culture today #TheXFiles#XFiles
Yesterday (September 10) was the 30th anniversary of The X-Files first airing -- in 1993. I was definitely watching (I was 13 and living in Maryland) with my family - we I watched every episode, every week (I believe until Mulder disappeared and they replaced him with Doggett)?
I would later meet my now wife, and I found out that she would watch it with her family too (she's just 9 years younger than I am)-- all the way across the country, in Tucson, Arizona!
We're both huge fans still- we recently rewatched the whole series again, start to finish (including all the Doggett episodes, which I now dig). And I could do it again!
The X-Files was wild in the 90s-- an amazing mix of the Twilight Zone, Twin Peaks, straight up horror, and more. And its amazing crossover with the Simpsons was a treat, too.
What’s the strongest TV pilot ever? The X-Files pilot was broadcast 30 years ago today… Radio Times argues it’s the greatest pilot of all time. Has there been a better pilot?
The X-Files pilot remains the greatest in TV history – even 30 years on (www.radiotimes.com)
What’s the strongest TV pilot ever? The X-Files pilot was broadcast 30 years ago today… Radio Times argues it’s the greatest pilot of all time. Has there been a better pilot?