#WFTB – Watch from the Beginning – Refresher

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With the final season of LOST just around the corner, it’s time to get the Twitter rewatch back in full stream.  We’ve had a nice break over Thanksgiving, and all you all everybody has had a chance to get their hands on the LOST Season 5 DVDs. (some of us were lucky and won a contest, and have recieved the LOST Dharma Initiative Orientation kit… be very jealous)

So it’s time again, to get to re-watching.  The Season 5 #LOST #WFTB Twitter re-watch party kicks off on December 14th at 9PM CST.  The rest of the schedule is here, so bookmark it.  (Or just ask me @LOST_WFTB on twitter)

What do you need to do to join in?  I made a handy list:

  1. Follow me @LOST_WFTB for #WFTB news updates and reminders.
  2. You might consider following my list of WFTB regulars, and if you aren’t on that list, give me a holla on twitter and I’ll add you.  The list feature of Twitter is also a great way to participate in the #WFTB Live tweets, if you don’t have TweetDeck (my favorite) or some other Twitter client.
  3. Get your DVD (or stream, or whatever you use to watch episodes) ready with time to spare.  I try to be hitting up twitter with reminders at least 42 minutes in advance, but sometimes I’m late, keep an eye on the #LOST #WFTB hashtags.
  4. Start on time (I usually tweet at “Press Play” tweet at the starting time.  I post times in my time zone, CST, so be prepared at your local time.
  5. Start watching and tweeting your comments, all types of comments are allowed.  Snarky MST3K type, or obeservations, or OMGILTS.  Include the episode hashtag (usually #s5E1 or whatever episode we’re on, the finale will have a special hashtag.
  6. Have fun! Everyone is a LOST fan, and all shippers are welcome.
  7. Last and final one, is don’t be a jerk. (That is a general rule of the internet, IMO) We all love the show, and with that common thread, we should all be able to get along.

Namaste, and if you’ve read this far, congratulations.

If you are hard core invite a friend, like @CarltonCuse, @DamonLindelof or @EWDocJensen to join in on the re-watch.  How awesome would it be to have them join in… supremely awesome, beyond words.

See you Monday at 9PM CST.

LOST Game Changing Episodes: #10 Every Man for Himself

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I wanted to push my self to write more on my blog, so I decided upon writing about LOST episodes that “changed the game”.  My emphasis on game changing, means to me that the episode had a moment or scene where something was revealed that changed the way I perceived the show.  So without further ado, I’ll start the list off.

Every Man for Himself was the fourth episode of season 3.  Stuck in the middle of the 6-pack of fall episodes, before the very long wait of 17 episodes that ran back to back in the spring of 2007.  This series of episode has gotten a bad rap, after re-watching all the episodes the past six months, I’ve found new appreciation of being stuck in the Dharma Zoo.  This episode was the turning point of that arc. 

The back story was all about Sawyer and his willingness to con anyone if it favors his own skin.  Off island Sawyer really was a scallywag, and his preference for the long con is showing strong in the back story.  The characterization really highlighted Sawyer’s past character, and really around this point the back stories were getting a bit repetitive.  Still they managed to have Sawyer pull a fast one, and was an enjoyable story, and left a few breadcrumbs for fans to hold on two in the larger arc of the story.  Besides, who doesn’t like Bill Duke as the prison warden.

On the island, we are seeing Sawyer and Kate bond as they try to figure a way out of the animal cages.  Ben catches a whiff of this and pulls Sawyer out of the cage, after beating him real good with his Daredevil cane.  The first glimpse of a Dharma test bunny is revealed as Ben demonstrates to Sawyer what will happen if his heart rate goes to fast.

Sawyer and Kate get a glimpse of a hooded Jack getting ferried to the Dharma operation station, to operate on Colleen (who was shot by Sun when the Others stole back Desmond’s boat).  The operation is futile, and an enraged Danny (Colleen’s husband, and the main warden of the Others’ prison camp) goes to take out his rage on Sawyer.  Sawyer gets the best of him by pummeling Danny’s fists with his face a few times, then to add insult to injury revealing, unbidden, his love for Kate. (wait, maybe I have that backwards…)

Anyway, the point is that Sawyer is too worried about his imminently exploding heart to put up a fight or over exert himself anytime the pulse monitoring watch goes off.

image The real game changing scene was after a long hike, Ben reveals that he conned the con-man, and Sawyer doesn’t have a heart monitor and he faked the rabbit’s demise.  But that wasn’t the reason he brought Sawyer on the trek, the real reason was just over the last rise.  The image of Ben and Sawyer on a bluff over looking a wide expanse of ocean to the main island.  Jack, Sawyer and Kate weren’t only imprisoned, they were trapped on another island.

Stand by for more Game Changers in the days to come.

Open Letter to Doc Jensen

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Dear Jeff,

I can call you Jeff, can’t I? Since I’m one of fourteen of the people that you follow on Twitter, I could be presuming too much that we are now, like, BFFs? Maybe I should call you Doc? Or possibly Mr. Jensen. But that seems too informal, since I’ve been reading your LOST columns for many years, I feel like I know a little bit about you. Though I probably hardly know you at all, and so should probably be more formal than just Jeff, or, “Hey Doc”. Sigh, I seem to have gotten a bit circular, which having read your columns, I think your probably familiar with my dilemma.

Let’s just cut to the heart of the matter, shall we? I was going to title this post “A LOST fanatics guide to Twitter”, or alternatively, “Doc Jensen needs HELP!” But at the last moment, I’ve shied away from such vanity. Though I do feel a bit of responsibility for getting you set straight on Twitter, and how to use it’s cryptic but useful syntax and customs. I don’t want you to look too noobish, like Neal Patrick Harris, who apparently, while brilliant and was a practicing Doctor at a very young age, can’t quite count to 140. So I thought I’d help you out. Oooh! Just thought of another alternate title: “The Keys to the Hieroglyphs: LOST Twitter Guide” Yeah? Hm. Too presumptuous.

I’ll just start at the beginning.

140 characters, that’s all you get. You could go to some services like twitlonger or tumblr to get more words linked to your tweets, but that’s a bit lame. IF you MUST be wordy, get a blog, or write a column for Entertainment Weekly, or something. Keep your tweets at 140 characters, that’s the LAW. Even @jacob_islandgod has to use 140 characters. Also the 140 character limit includes any of the names you’ve addressed in your tweet, so you might even have to edit more. I know, I know… it might be hard to do for a person that has a way with words, such as yourself. I don’t make the rules of the twitterverse, I wasn’t even consulted.

Some characters are more special than others, think of these of those that are on Jacob’s list. These characters are:

  • @ – The “at” sign is like an address.  The @ sign is used to address a tweet at someone, or to have the tweet show up in their Mentions feed.  So, for example, any tweet with @LOST_WFTB shows up in a special way to me.  But you @EWDocJensen might not even realize that it’s been tweeted.  Also with the @ sign, if it’s placed at the very beginning of your tweet, it’s sent as a semi-private tweet to that one twit.  Kinda like when Ben used the mirror to flash a signal to Richard before turning himself into the Orchid Station.  People following Ben, (Locke and Hurley) knew about the message, and all of Richard’s followers knew about the message.  But Kemy and his posse, or Jack and his team had now idea about the message.  So be aware, that tweets starting with @LOST_WFTB will only be seen by those twitterers that follow both you and me.  Everyone else might not see the tweet.
  • # – the ‘pound’ sign is called a hashtag in twitter.  It’s kinda old skool, but still very useful.  It can be used to ‘tag’ your tweets with a special symbol or sign that your tweet has something to do with #LOST or #FlashForward or #Fringe.  Such tags help people search and find topics.  There are no real rules, it’s kind of a make it up as you go along thing.  Ask @DrDreia the self confessed #queenofthebaroquehashtag for more details. Another special tag that I use a lot is #WFTB which means (to me) Watch From The Beginning.  Which is the name of my LOST Re-watch that is based on Twitter feeds.  More on that later… maybe in a special edition of post on this blog.
  • D – This may look like the letter D, but in twitter at the very beginning of your post, it takes on great meaning.  It’s stands for Direct Message (or DM).  This is used with a valid username to send a private message to another user.  Think of it as Ben sending a min-tape to Juliet to communicate secrets without the prying eyes of other people listening in.  Of course, if your recipient goes ahead and retweets a DM then you’re screwed. Maybe.
  • RT – This isn’t official, but it’s stilled used by all the cool kids.  It stands for re-tweet, and it’s a bit contreversial for people with nothing better to do than to worry about proper citation syntax.  You know, the kind that read the Chicago Manual of Style, AP Stylebook, or Strunk & White curled up next to the fire, with a glass of chianti and some fava beans (Or write the awesome iPhone app Tweetie). But for us cool kids, that really could care less we just tack on an RT (or use TweetDeck to RT old skool) at the beginning of our tweet to re-broadcast something that we like or think is cool.  This is like, well, remember in the Lord of the Rings, when they lit those signal fires on the tip-tops of the mountains (and boy, who are the losers that get that duty station?) Retweets are kinda like that, public rebroadcasts of good information.  Twitter went ahead with this concept and made it a feature, but it’s kinda different, and kinda lame, being that it’s officially sanctioned and all.  Kinda like roaming the halls of highscool with a hall pass.
  • URL shortening services.  These are a must by the hard core twits, to keep the 140 characters alive with content, and less with the arcane url syntax.  So if you want to keep big long strings of URL’s outta your tweets (like http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20313460_20325436,00.html for example) use http://bit.ly or http://is.gd to shrink your URLs and unlock the code to better tweets. (Or use TweetDeck, which can shrink URL’s automatically.

Well Doc, that’s it, The secret of the Twitter codes and gylphs. I hope you enjoyed reading, and take this with the humor that I’ve intended.  Also, keep pushing the LOST Themed Disney Attraction petition… We’ve gotta get @DamonLindelof and @CarltonCuse to sign that thing.

To my faithful readers, who are legion:  What advice about twitter would you give Jeff “Doc” Jensen?  Put it in the comments.

Petition: Disney Please make a LOST island attraction

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I made a off hand comment on Twitter to a friend:

@mfeige 1) never be sorry for Disneylan 2) I want pictures of when Tom Sawyer’s Island becomes LOST

(yeah, I tweet like a blog with typos)
Then I made an all out tweet:

Disneyland’s Tom Sawyer Island transformed to Pirates Cove… would be better as Dharmaville LOST Island. who’s with me?

Then suddenly:

EWDocJensen

I TOTALLY SECOND LOST_WFTB’s CALL FOR TURNING TOM SAWYER ISLAND AT DISNEYLAND INTO #LOST ISLAND! GET ON THAT, DISNEY!

Are you KIDDING ME. Jeff “Doc” Jensen agrees with me!!! (there aren’t enough exclamation points)

Then to totally rock my world he added:

EWDocJensen LOST_WFTB: Seriously, dude. Start a petition. I’ll help promote it. We’ll get this done. I have no doubt Mighty Disney will bow to our will.

So Uh, One problem, I don’t know how to make a petition… But
I HAVE A BLOG! and Instapundit says that’s better.

So sign this post and do whatever you wanna do to get this done.

DISNEY MUST MAKE A LOST ISLAND ATTRACTION!

sign the petition here: http://www.petitiononline.com/lostdisn/petition.html

(okay, also add any imagineering ideas to the comments… we can DO IT! /ty voice)

Holy Cannoli… Damon Lindelof just tweeted:

DamonLindelof

@EWDocJensen — Carlton and I have been pushing to get a damn polar bear on Tom Sawyer Island for YEARS!!!!

Watching LOST from the beginning (Update)

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It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about anything.  That’s because I’ve been a bit busy with life.  But if you follow me on twitter, you’ll know that steadily for six months now, I’ve been tweeting about LOST episode by episode as a group of us have rewatched the show.  I even started a separate twitter account (@LOST_WFTB) to keep track of the whole thing.  Please allow me a moment or two of navel gazing as I write a few words.

Season 5 Finale aired on May 13th, 2009.  We started rewatching the following weekend, and by Monday had an official re-watch schedule to watch as a group starting with Tabula Rasa (S1E3) on Monday May 18th.  Last night we completed the strike shortened Season 4 with a rewatch of There’s No Place Like Home Part 2.

My number of tweets since I started the @LOST_WFTB account stands at 9,833.  While not every tweet is about LOST (many are promotional and scheduling oriented, some are about Bones or other TV shows) the majority are from rewatch nights.

I’ve gained a following of 599 other tweeters, and have followed back 540, of which the majority are dyed in the wool LOST fanatics.  I’ve been fortunate to be listed in 77 of Twitter’s lists (a feature that didn’t even exit when we started six months ago). I’ve met some fanstatic people and have enjoyed every moment of the show.

Starting this twitter group has allowed me to meet and follow some amazing people, keeping tabs on my favorite show, and living vicariously through all the lucky bastards that got to go to ComicCon in San Diego and then tweeted about it.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all the devoted tweet addled addicts like me, that have joined in.  The group has ebbed and flowed through the six months, but as a whole, I think we’re all mostly upto date on the re-watch.

Now, we are taking a pause.  The Season 5 DVDs get released on December 8th, and that night (I plan on making a Walmart run, if not watch one of my archived episodes) we’ll kick off Season 5 rewatch.  The schedule has us finishing up Season 5 on January 15th, which gives us 5 days of rest until Season 6 premiere (if the start date for S6 doesn’t change).

So if you’ve slacked off on your re-watch, fallen behind, life has thrown you a curve: Now is the time to catch up.  You can even just start new with Season 5 rewatching on twitter.  Follow me @LOST_WFTB and I’ll keep you upto date on scheduling with irritating reminders.

Thanks so much for participating, and stay LOST.

Contemplating Jonah

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I’ve been doing a better job at studying and preparing for Sunday School earlier in the week.  And this month long study on finding our place in God’s will has been one good passage after another.  Last week was Gideon, this week Jonah.

Jonah is a nice short book, you can read the whole thing in a few minutes, but it’s so layered and rich, it bears a lot of contemplation, and reflection.

But first, let’s grab a verse from Jeremiah that I ran across in my other quiet times.

The human mind is more deceitful than anything else. It is incurably bad. Who can understand it? – Jeremiah 17:9

That kinda begs for some context, doesn’t it?  I’d read the surrounding passage, and it describes ‘one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength, and whose heart turns away from the LORD.’  The passage describe him becoming like a bush in the wastelands… dwelling in the desert.  The examination of the heart/mind in verse 9 is the final determination of this man.  Our only hope is to trust in God.  Outside of that we are doomed to the selfish nature of our deceitful heart/mind.

Jonah understood that perfectly.

And he still did the exact opposite of what God asked of him.  In the belly of the fish, he was thankful to God for his rescue.  He gave thanks and rededicated himself to God’s mission.  And with fish guts still in his ears he trekked to Nineveh, and did as God bid him, and proclaimed their impending doom.  They listened, and repented.

The God did exactly what Jonah knew he would do.  God had compassion and cancelled the destruction.

That ticked Jonah off. Why? Because Jonah knew that He would do that.

How odd.

Thoughts?

Dell Mini 10 vs. WHS

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This is a sad saga, because it really shouldn’t be this difficult.  I should be able to say, “Woo! WHS paid off again, thanks my little backup buddy!”

But I can’t fully give a big *high 5* to the WHS, though it came out the winner, it got bruised and battered on something that ended up being easily fixed, but that fixed relied too much on me finding answers outside of normal MS channels.

First, some background. We have two kids with September birthdays.  We decided to pool resources with family and get them one big present, we got them each a Dell Mini 10.  Sweet little portable laptops.  (I’m ignoring the, “Wait, it isn’t September yet!” question, maybe another post, so put your hand down).  So they’ve been enjoying playing with them. 

In a fit of uncoordinated laziness, I tossed one of the power supplies to my youngest so he’d have it to recharge.  A bad throw followed on the heels of that bad idea, and the cute little charger hit the cute litte keyboard right about the letter ‘F’ which is right above where the hard drive resides (I found this out later).  Movie stopped working, reboot was met with a BSD.

*gosh* stream of thoughts follows roughly:

  • I’m an idiot.
  • Good thing I made sure it backed up to WHS (Windows Home Server) last night.
  • Hard disk is probably toast.
  • I’m an idiot.
  • Should have gotten the SSD instead of the SATA hard drive, less moving parts
  • I’m an idiot.
  • I’d better call Dell, it’s still under warranty.
  • I’m an idiot.
  • Run the diagnostics first, so you can speed up the Dell support call
  • I’m an idiot.
  • Oh cool they have a Dell support Chat, I don’t have to SPEAK to anyone. FTW!
  • I’m an idiot.
  • Waiting for a Support agent, 67 in line.
  • I’m an idiot (repeats 67 times)
  • Oh hi, Mr. Dell Support person that types really good English, my hard drive is toast, please replace it.
  • Thank you, awesome, cool.
  • I’m an idiot (repeats 2 days while waiting package).

Hard drive comes and it’s pre-imaged with the software load, and they re-included the DVDs/CDROMs of software that is installed.  Nice touch, but since the Mini 10 has no optical drive, not really necessary and/or useful, a USB with the same content would be teh awesum though, please make note, Dell.

So while I quickly swapped out the drive, and restarted and the computer did it’s little ‘first time installation’ thingy.  I started creating a USB key to have it restore from the WHS.  I had to relearn some lessons:

  1. To make a bootable USB key you need to use a Vista machine and use the diskpart, so I had Angie do that part for me.
  2. Next is just copy the files from the Windows Home Server Restore CDROM image. I do this by loading the CD-ROM image with Nero Image Drive, rather than burn onto plastic, then copy.

After a bit, and about the time the ‘first time’ processes got done I had a USB stick ready to roll.  Plugged it in, booted up the Mini-10 attached it to the wire at the network switch and…

Nothing.

Dell Mini 10 couldn’t find the server.

Three hours later, and google searches galore, I got it to work.  Here’s a break down.

  • Dell Mini 10 uses a RealTek PCI-E Ethernet driver.  The driver on the WHS Restore CD-ROM identifies it correctly, and it all appears to be ready to work.  But it doesn’t work.
  • The drivers on the Mini 10’s installation, (XP NDIS variety) also don’t work (if you copy the c:\drivers directory to the usb stick and then scan for additional drivers, it finds them)
  • The drivers on the WHS PowerPack 3 Beta restore image, also don’t work.
  • The drivers for the Vista (Windows Server 2008) do work, but you have to download them from the vendor, (not Dell, Realtek) then extract and stuff the drivers into a drivers folder on the USB stick, and then scan for additional drivers.

So once I figured all that out, by brute force, trial and error, I was glad for my 8 years of education in computers and 20 years of practical education.  And if anyone else buys a WHS and then a Dell Mini 10, I’m sure they’d stuff it all in the trash and go live in the wilderness.

Though I understand that technologies change, and the Dell Mini 10 is new technology…  C’mon, Ethernet drivers shouldn’t be an issue!

The bright spot of the story, is the computer is back in the midget’s grubby little hands, looking and working just like it did moments before the power adapter harshed the hard drive’s mellow.  I just wish two things.  Drivers need to be easier, or at least an better error message on how to troubleshoot drivers in WHS.  And that they built hard drives at least as ruggedly as they do key-caps (no damage sustained by the failed lob).

LOST – Black Rock and the start of the loophole

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It’s been a while since I’ve blogged or theorized. I’ve done some smatterings of this and that on twitter, but once in a while you need to write more than 140 chars… so, have a seat.

The frustration on the face of the Man in Black (henceforth noted as MiB) in his discussion with Jacob at the start of The Incident shows, to me, that he was plotting something. With the Black Rock bobbing like a cork in the distance, I think his plan started then, with the crew of the Black Rock, and the current location of the Black Rock has a lot to do with what happened.

This could be rather detailed, or it could be hinted at flashbacks, or it could be entirely wrong. For all I know the paper in the back of Darlton’s pocket could be the script for the Black Rock spin-off to LOST that they’ll announce at next years ComicCon. But with those caveats, lets hit some details.

The core of the mysterious properties of the island is that it sits a top of a ball of magnetic energy. This is what Dr. Pierre Chang is studying, the cause of the incident, and the source is primordial, meaning that the source is probably present while the Black Rock was still floating, but not tapped or used quite yet.

The island isn’t fixed in time or space. That we learned from Ellie in the Lamp Post station. We assume that has always been the case, but I think a good case can be made that the island was dislodged from a fixed location at some point prior to 1954. I’m theorizing that point is around the time the Black Rock sailed the troubled waters around the island. Then after that, the search for the dislodged island, by the Hanso family, started.

Chang stopped work on the Orchid when they started getting too close to that magnetic pocket, the scan showed the Darlton dubbed Frozen Donkey Wheel in silhouette. Here I speculate, that the FDW isn’t primordial, it was placed there somehow, and I think the Black Rock is it’s source. The details we’ve seen of it when Ben then Locke applied pressure to it is it’s build seems nautical, wood and metal. The size of the wheel is too big for a helm, but about right for an anchor capstan. Could the FDW be the Black Rock’s capstan?

What does a capstan do? Well it uses applied man/muscle power to raise the anchor chain and coil it along it’s axis. There is obviously something dangling off the end of the rope of the FDW (IF it is a capstan). Perhaps the anchor is still attached. Perhaps manipulating the anchor through the magnetic pocket is what ‘moves’ the island. Just like hauling in an anchor chain moves a ship closer to the anchor drop point.

So at some point, the Black Rock gets yanked into the middle of the island, the dark territories says one map. Is it because the anchor got yanked into the magnetic abyss, pulling the ship along with it? Ripping the capstan off, until it got lodged in it’s current location.

So if that’s true, at some point, the crew of the Black Rock had to have gotten onto the island. Perhaps the crew members included Richard Alpert. Where he began his role as the right-hand man of Jacob, or who he thought was Jacob.

We still don’t know how Charles and Ellie and the original band of hostiles made it to the island. We know their presence was there in 1954, and they were fighting off a U.S. military crew that left behind Jughead. Are Charles et. al., descendants of the Black Rock crew? Charles certainly had a reason to bid on the log from the Black Rock.

I’m not sure how much time will be spent in season six investigating this ‘loophole’. I think Darlton will be more interested in completing the story of this set of characters, the Oceanic survivors than detailing Black Rock mythology. Perhaps they’ll leave enough hints in the Richard storyline to have one heck of a mini-series, feature film, about the Black Rock.

Okay, tell me where I’ve missed something.

Happy Anniversary baby.

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Was trying to think of something to move down the AWESOME vacationing at the hatch page, and my better half beat me to it…

So I direct all my readers (or what’s left of them) to her blog to see her 16th Anniversary Photo montage.

Yep me and Angie have been married for 16 years.  Which is a long time when you consider I’m 29 and she’s 25. *wink*

Vacationing at the Hatch

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For those not following my @LOST_WFTB twitterfeed, we’ve shifted to an undisclosed location for a little vacay.  So when we got here, I got setup to work from our vacation hut (aka Grandpa and Auntie’s house.

It’s TOTALLY AWESOME.  It’s a HATCH… I need some Dharma labels to trick it out, but here are some photos for a tour. (click to embiggify)

image 

View from my workstation.  Note the concrete construction and eerie lighting. I haven’t noticed any magnetic anomalies, but that’s cuz Locke stole my compass. 

 

image

 

Here is a view out the back entrance of the hatch.  Note the black shirted others.  They may be aligned with Smokie.  Investigating.

 

 

image

 

Around the corner are shelves full of provisions! I’m not gonna tell Hurley about this, or he’ll tell Dave, and once Dave knows, EVERYONE will know.

 

 

image

 

This is my computer setup, dual screen greatness.  Note the VPN FOB above the keyboard this is important to be able to periodically punch in the numbers to communicate with Mittelos while on wokring vacay.

 

image

 

Here is an alternate shot looking back at my workspace.  The others stopped by to watch a movie, but I chased them out so I could do the important work of saving the world, brutha. An upgrade from Super8, I think I may do my re-watching from that chair.

 

image

 

The hatch even has an exercise station.  I had to chase this other off of it, incase he hurt himself, I haven’t found the first aid-kit yet.  I haven’t found the armory either, but I’ll be sure to change the combination one I find it to keep the others out.

 

Namaste and 4 8 15 16 23 42