So, here I am; Saturday afternoon. I have chosen to geek out. I am rebuilding both of my computers. Chris, a friend of mine from around these parts, has given me quite the scheme. I am rebuilding my laptop and my desktop with new swap partitions. I am taking my secondary slave drive in my desktop, creating a new partition in FAT16, and using that partition as swap space. Theoretically, with it being the first partition on the drive and the fact that there’s no NTFS overhead, I should get at least somewhat of a performance increase. I’m skeptical that it’ll increase performance all that dramatically, but it’s worth a try. It’s always good to squeeze your machine for all it’s worth. The laptop will be similar, although it has only one drive, in that I will make about a 4GB partition of FAT16 for swap. We’ll see how it goes. Fortunately, the laptop mirrors my desktop in terms of settings and such, so all I have to do once rebuilding one is copy over settings and documents from the other. I don’t even have to bust out the nightly backups. What I need now is some good (free, if possible) ghosting software.
I finished reading Episode III. The story is definitely quite awesome, and I can only hope that the movie only adds to its kewlness.
So, basically the rest of the story involves no unusual twists or turns. It’s pretty straight-forward.
Obi-Wan is dispatched to get rid of Grievous on a far away planet and, of course Palpatine takes that opportunity to start to train a new apprentice in Skywalker.
Skywalker valiantly fights temptation in many instances, and even seeks counsel in Master Yoda. In the end, though, the main power Palpatine has over him is Padme. The nightmare that Anakin had about Padme dying is something that haunts him and eats at his soul. He must do absolutely anything he can to make sure that she survives and that they can raise a family together once he leaves the Order.
Anakin is put onto the Jedi Council by Palpatine, which the Council agrees with. The only catch is that Anakin is not given the rank of Jedi Master. This, of course, miffs Anakin because his ambitions are pretty high. This is also one of the last straws, as he sees the Jedi Council as holding him back and betraying him.
Palpatine, of course, uses this to his advantage to further sway Anakin away from the Jedi. He convinces Anakin that there’s a conspiracy afoot and that the Jedi are trying to establish rule in the Republic. Anakin, skeptical before, is leaning more and more towards believing him. Palpatine was Anakin’s confidant in many instances, including where he slaughtered the Tusken Raiders on Tatooine three years ago. Palpatine confides in Anakin that he is the Sith Lord which the Jedi have been hunting for. Anakin is taken aback by this and tells Windu, the most high-ranking Jedi left on Coruscant (Yoda is elsewhere on Kashyyk).
Windu goes to confront Palpatine with three other Jedi. The three others are quickly eliminated by Palpatine. Windu and Palpatine start to duel. Eventually, when Palpatine is about to lose, Anakin slices off the saber hand of Windu and Palpatine lighting-pushes Windu out the window of the Chancellor’s office.
It’s at this point that Anakin is knighted Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader. His first mission is to kill all Jedi in the Temple. He does this, eliminating basically every living thing in the Temple–including the “Younglings”. After he is finished, Palpatine orders Vader to Mustafar to destroy the remnants of the CIS (e.g. Nute Gunray and the Trade Federation, along with others on that world).
Obi-Wan and Yoda eventually end up back on Coruscant to find all Jedi there dead. Obi-Wan goes off to Mustafar to confront Anakin and Yoda remains on Coruscant to face Palpatine. Yoda is very much spanked by Palpatine and scampers off to the Tantive IV, Bail Organa’s ship. Obi-Wan goes to Mustafar, Padme accompanying him to try to get through to Anakin.
Anakin meets Padme to find that she has brought Obi-Wan with her. He’s so enraged that he Force strangles her, nearly to death. While 3P0 and R2 take her away back to the Tantive IV, Obi-Wan and Vader begin their huge duel. Of course, this ends with Anakin sliding down a cliff into lava. Palpatine, having sensed Vader was in danger, headed off to Mustafar. Obi-Wan decides not to kill what’s left of Skywalker, and leave his fate to the Force. He leaves just as Palpatine moves in to try to find his lost apprentice.
Obi-Wan meets Yoda and Bail on the Tantive IV. Padme, just before her death, gives birth to the twins. Anakin and Padme had decided previously that, if it was a girl, her name would be Leia. The boy, of course, was Luke. In her dying breath, she says that there is still good in Anakin.
Obi-Wan and Yoda decide to go into seclusion, deciding that they wouldn’t directly raise the children, but let the Force bring them when the opportunity was right. Eventually, they would be trained in the ways of the Jedi and attempt to rebuild the Order. So, Bail decides to adopt Leia and bring her back to Alderaan, and Obi-Wan decides to take Luke to Tatooine to be raised by the closest kin of Anakin, Owen and Beru Lars.
The story ends with Yoda checking out his new digs, the Organas holding their new baby on Alderaan, Obi-Wan delivering the twins on Tatooine and heading off into the sunset, and Vader, Palpatine and Tarkin on-board a Star Destroyer looking out at a small moon-sized sphere being constructed.
A most awesome story, although my summary could never do the awesomeness justice 🙂
The Cubs have started playing. So far, they’re 1-3–but, it’s the beginning of the season. No big.. Yet. lol. They’ve been doing alright, so far. The pitching needs a good tune up, I think. The offense has been fairly decent, so far. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll keep my beer to cry in, just in case 😉
I was watching some SG-1 today. I saw the one where Daniel Jackson ascends–I had never seen it before. It was definitely the saddest SG-1 I’ve seen, but that doesn’t say much since I know that a season later he comes back. lol. This really takes a lot of surprise out of things, but it’s a very good plot. It’s good to go back and see it to fill in some of the holes. So, I’m now up to Season 6.
It’s such a freakin nice day around here. 77 degrees, mostly clear skies. I might take the swimming trunks out of mothballs and take a cannonball into the pool 🙂