I am blown away by WWdN readers. Seriously.
In less than three days, I’ve gotten tons of responses to every single challenge I issued in the last post.
The result? gmail4troops.com!
And if that’s not enough, some guys pulled together gmailforthetroops.com before we could even get our site going.
My favorite thing about this (other than the “good deed” nature of it — I’m always looking for a way to do good deeds) is how for the vast majority of people, it doesn’t matter if you’re a liberal or a conservative, a dove or a hawk . . . we’re all coming together to do something cool for our soldiers in the field. I hope that there’s a bonus to this too: maybe someone will give out invites, feel good about it, and donate a phone card . . . then they’ll help put together a care package . . . then, maybe they’ll volunteer to help out a soldier’s husband or wife, or become pen pals . . . this could really be the start of something cool, and may help improve morale for our guys and gals in uniform.
When I started this lame website so long ago, I never thought that any of these cool things would happen . . . and now, I can’t wait to see what happens next!
I’ll do my best to get back to regular blogging next week. I’ve been waiting for Anne to have time to write up about the marathon, and I’ve been crazy busy with auditions, meetings, and some actual jobs (!). More on all that after the weekend.

I keep reading about how soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are having their tours extended long beyond when they expected to come home, and their morale is suffering as a result. Thankfully, many of our soldiers are able to stay in touch with friends and family via the Internet, but their e-mail access is often very limited.
WWdN reader Drew sent me the following note earlier today:

I will send you an invitation for the hard to get Gmail if you post something on your site telling others to give their invites to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. See, Google gives 1 gig of email space, perfect for movies and pictures from home, but it’s invite only. When you get an account you will get invites too, and if you could pass them along to those who need em that would rule.

I think this is a fantastic idea, and an easy, but very powerful way for many of us to help support our troops. GMail gives users 1 GIG of free storage space, which is more than enough for pictures, movies, sound files . . . all sorts of things that could help our servicemen and women feel a little closer to home.
The thing about GMail is that it’s currently invite-only, so I e-mailed Drew back, and asked him if he had some sort of clearinghouse set up for soldiers to submit requests for invites. He responded:

No, but about 10 of us are trolling www.gmailswap.com looking for folks in the military. See, once you talk to one of them, they pass an email along to fellows stationed with them, so we’re just trying to dole them out as we get the request.
There’s no way to know how long Gmail will be invite only, but SGT Tim Knowles in Afghanistan said that good morale is hard to come by out there and in Iraq, and the guys are buzzing about the possibilities of 1 gig. They all seem to have hotmail and well it’s weak.
I’m going to look into getting a site together or at least a list.

Of course, there are epic assholes online who will pose as soldiers so they can get invites, but I think it’s completely worth the risk.
So here is your challenge, WWdN readers:

• Help spread the word about this effort, and keep checking back here for a link to the soon-to-be-built clearinghouse for requests.
• If you’re a designer, and you would like to donate some time, or a host who would like to donate some space and / or bandwidth, send me an e-mail and I’ll pass it along to Drew.
• If you’re a reporter, maybe you’d like to do a story about a bunch of nerds who are working to do something cool to support our troops. Maybe your story will be seen by some other people who can get on board, and together, we can make a positive difference!
• If you’re a Google employee, maybe you’d like to come up with a way to ensure that members of the armed services can get GMail acocunts, no matter what.
• If you’re a fellow blogger, you can link this post, or the clearinghouse website when it goes live.
• And of course, if you’re a GMail account-holder, you can use those invites that are piling up (I’ve sent out six in the last week) to do something really cool for some people who are making an incredible sacrifice right now.

Okay, now you know what to do, so get to it!

Dave Barry, one of the funniest guys on the planet, gives us a hilarious look into the heart of America’s current love affair with Poker:

Be advised that a Poker Craze is sweeping the nation. Almost every night, there are poker tournaments on television. And if you think that would be boring, I have three words for you: Correct-O-Mundo.
The problem is that there’s not a lot of action in televised poker, where the most strenuous thing the players do is push plastic chips about 15 inches. (Granted, this is more action than you see in televised golf.)
To make matters worse, poker players do not betray any feelings, so what you have, visually, is a bunch of grim-faced guys looking like a hemorrhoid support group. Most of the emotion is supplied by the TV commentators, who, in hushed, dramatic tones, say things like: “He’s thinking about what to do here, Bob.” “You just know that, inside, he is churning with emotions, Bob.” “I’m sure glad I took powerful methamphetamines before this broadcast, Bob.”
The guys on TV are usually playing “Texas Hold ’em,” which is the hottest poker game at the moment, although there are many other popular variations of poker, including Seven Card Stud, Five Card Draw, Alabama Grope ’em, Iowa Bore ’em, Six Card High Low Medium Jacks Wild Stud Draw Go Fish, Cincinnati Lawn Flamingo, Florida Recount ’em, New Jersey Whack ’em, New York Kvetch ’em, Red Rover and Whist.
All of these games are essentially the same: A person (or, in poker slang, “dealer”) gives you some cards (“cards”), which you look at in a furtive manner (“sneaking a gander”) to see if you have a good hand (“bling bling”) after which you bet (“kiss the eel”) by placing money (“cheese”) into the pot (“marijuana”). This goes on until somebody (“not you”) wins, at which point the losers express heartfelt congratulations in colorful slang.

It just gets better from there. I was flipping between WPT and the Dodgers tonight, and wondering when I’ll have time to sit down and actually play again. Maybe I’ll get a chance to show Dave Barry what all the excitement is about!
(Big thanks to WWdN reader Troy, for the link!)

I’m getting ready to watch the Dodgers, and they just showed Tom Cruise carry the Olympic torch into the stadium, and take a lap with it . . . man, that’s so incredibly cool. I remember when I watched the torch go by in 1984. I was on a street corner in Glendale with my parents, brother, and sister when it went racing past us. I’ll never forget how excited my parents were for us to see it. I think I was more excited about their excitement than I was about the torch going by. And you know what? I bet they were even more excited that we were excited . . . which is something that I never would have understood before I became a parent.
We were really poor in 1984, but my folks wanted to make sure we got to experience the Olympics, so they took us to the only event they could affored: Rowing at Lake Casitas. I remember watching people trading pins, I remember the cool fog that hung inches about the surface of the lake . . . I remember how FAST those boats cut through the water . . . but my clearest memory is how happy my parents were that they’d been able to take us to an event where there was a medal ceremony.
If I got to run around the warning track with the torch, I’d throw the goat the whole way. And when they asked me, “Are you a big baseball fan?” I wouldn’t give the evasive answer he gave (he looked like he wouldn’t know an infield fly if it landed on his head, but that’s cool. Not everyone’s a baseball nerd.) I would say, “Yes. Yes I am. They should raise the mound back up, eliminate the DH, and get rid of Free Agency.”
They’d probably pan the camera off of me when I called Pedro Martinez a little bitch, and went off about what brilliant warriors Nolan Ryan, Sandy Koufax, and Bob Gibson were. By the time I launched into a rant about how much Ernie Banks ruled, they would have turned off the camera.
Oh! And I wouldn’t leave the field until someone gave me a baseball.
Heh. On second thought, maybe it’s better if I just stay in the stands.

Like any long term relationship, my relationship with Star Trek has its ups and its downs, and there are times when it’s easy to forget why I love it.
If you’ve read Dancing Barefoot, you may recall a scene where I remember all the things that made Star Trek wonderful.
This is one of the things that keeps it wonderful, and makes me feel proud to have been a part of it.

A Love Letter To Star Trek
This is too soon to write this. I should wait a few months, maybe a year, take time and coffee and dreams and let it finish whirling around my neural net. But Star Trek is all about the temporal anomalies so here I sit.
One year and a couple months ago, on Star Date something-or-other, my sons and I started a family tradition by accident. We rented the first disk of what seemed like an endless set of Star Trek: The Next Generation DVDs. When Star Trek played in real life I was busy trying to make a dead-end marriage work and my two young sons didn’t exist. I didn’t watch television then, but if I had, I wouldn’t have watched a sci-fi soap opera about humans and aliens chasing time.
[. . .]
I can’t explain the hold it had on my sons, and then on me. I don’t remember the episodes the way they do. I’m sitting here crying while I type this, searching for a way to tell you how it transformed them into something a little bit better, how they started recognizing the world news for the first time and asking me when would our people stop fighting, start working together as one planet – simple ideas, good ideas, too simple for people who crave power. One day, a bad bad day, when many soldiers lost lives in that distant senseless war, my middle son stood with barefeet on the cold tile floor of the kitchen, listening to NPR, and clenched his fists in frustration.
“Why don’t they stop fighting? We’re never going to join a Federation of Planets if this continues. Don’t they know that? Why don’t they want to help end starvation instead? I wish we lived in the future.”

Read the rest of the story here
(Thanks to WWdN reader Mathieu for sending me this story!)
I want to add something to this entry, mostly for myself, so I don’t miss out on a great lesson: I was talking with Anne about Weslsy Crusher few days ago. I told her that I’m really tired of feeling like I still have to defend Wesley (and myself) to people from time to time. Perfect example: when my column in Dungeon was announced, a lot of people started complaining about me writing for the magazine. Did they talk about the quality of my writing? Did they try to find out what my credentials as a gamer were? Of course not. They just bitched and complained that “Wesley” was writing anything.
How incredibly stupid is that? How incredibly stupid is it that it really upset me? I have — more or less — come to terms with Wesley Crusher and what he means to me . . . and I am so over dealing with jerks who are holding on to some stupid problem they had with a character I played eighteen years ago.
Even though I *intellectually* know that it’s not my problem, it’s a challenge to ignore the *emotional* response that comments like that elicit. It’s sort of Newton’s Third Emotional Law, I guess.
Anyway, because of that irrational emotional response, I’ve been feeling sort of “down” on Wesley, and that is a big part of that Fear I wrote about yesterday . . . then, I read this woman’s story this morning, and I had a wonderful “light bulb” moment: I didn’t make Star Trek for jerks who want to complain and nit-pick and project their own insecurities onto an actor they’ve never met. I made it for people like her, and her children.
I don’t know why I keep losing that perspective. Maybe it’s because, for so many years, the voice of jerks fed my personal Voice of Self Doubt. It was louder than any other voice, and it’s still the easiest voice to listen to.
I hope that I don’t ever forget how I felt when I read that blog this morning, and how incredibly OBVIOUS it was to me then that touching *one* person like this should outweigh a thousand jerks.
It’s all part of The Journey.