“We had a pretty amazingly incredible lesson with [a non-member family, at a member family's house] about tithing, then [their houseguest] shared her conversion story and [my companion] and I bore our testimonies and [the non-member family's member son] got in there and wow, the Spirit was amazingly strong. I talked about my price coming up [a concept I may explore further in a later post], and about when I received my Joseph Smith witness at Elder Uchtdorf’s talk [in the MTC] and about my witness of the Book of Mormon out here in the mission field and the Spirit bore witness to me again that yep, this is true.

“So hey, future self, if you’re reading this, remember that I know that the Book of Mormon is true. That price was hard, wasn’t it, but it was dang well worth it, because this is the true church. Know that I know this church is true, and if for some stupid reason you don’t know that right now, that you can know again. So stop being a pansy and get another answer.

“PS – You will probably be paying the price for a long time. Just remember – it’s always worth it.”

The MPAA and RIAA and similar organizations would like you to believe that Megaupload is a site completely devoted to wholesale piracy of copyrighted works. This is simply untrue. Megaupload is in fact sort of a digital locker service — think Dropbox, but more public and with a better web interface. When a user gets an account on Megaupload, they can use it to conveniently send very large files (like, the kind that are too big to fit in an email attachment) to their friends, family, and coworkers without having to set up their own FTP server or something. For instance, my uncle uses Mediafire (a similar site) to schlep around large zip files of digitized family photos.

Unfortunately, some people have leveraged Megaupload to commit piracy of movies and music. Hey look, I can throw a large file on here and let other people download it, guess what, I have a large file right here that just so happens to be an avi of Star Wars, sweet, throw it up there. I’m not going to debate copyright law here, but I *will* suggest that the federal government issuing a takedown notice for Megaupload because lots of people use it for piracy is like the federal government seizing everyone’s cars because sometimes they serve as getaway vehicles in bank robberies.

Okay, so maybe I will say a few words about copyright law. In the beginning, copyright law was meant to stimulate producers of intellectual property — give people some protection, the thinking goes, and they’ll be incentivized to create more cool stuff. I ask you to consider whether or not the takedown of sites like Megaupload truly promotes the creation of intellectual property. I suggest that it does not; in fact, actions like these are more likely to have a chilling effect on internet entrepreneurs, as they will have to hire legal counsel at the outset to make sure their thing can’t possibly be construed as promoting piracy. If you had a cool idea that you could use to help people move files that were too big to email, but you were afraid that you’d be charged with “conspiracy to commit racketeering, copyright infringement, and money laundering,” would you actually throw time and money at your idea to try to get it off the ground?

TL;DR: The federal takedown of Megaupload, which even the FBI will admit is targeting “the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site,” and I emphasize the word “misuse,” runs counter to the original aims of copyright law.

(Quotes taken from this PCWorld article.)

My old roommate Jordan and I were walking up the hill to the Best Buy for some reason. When we got to the parking lot, my sister was driving around in a car with my niece. So then my sister and I went to the 7-11 right there, where I got in trouble because I didn’t realize the Slurpee machine wasn’t self-serve — you had to wait for the attendant to go pour your Slurpee for you. Then the other attendant, whose name was Antonio (but he had a Slavic accent), told me that my beard is “like a hundred red pieces of doctrine” (this was apparently a compliment) and gave me his phone number.

In some sort of homage to the people who only put up a Christmas tree like a day or two before Christmas (ours goes up on Thanksgiving or maybe the day after and stays up until we finally get sick of it, which is typically after the New Year, anyway), the Lego for the 23d was this Christmas tree!

All of the Lego people are (more-or-less) circled around the tree, (more-or-less) holding (more-or-less) hands and singing the dahoo dore song from the Grinch. (I couldn’t find a Youtube video where all the Whos down in Whoville are holding hands and swaying, so you can just listen to the song and use your imagination.)

Check this out: The tree topper with the star is exactly the same size at the base as the lightsaber blade. That means that we can transform Chewbacca into the Fuzzy Spirit of Christmas Cheer, complete with Wand of Cheerfulness and Delight! (+161 stamina, +107 intellect, +72 spirit, and increases mastery (and cheerfulness) by 72. If you understood this parenthetical, you’re a geek; if you laughed, you’re an even bigger geek; if you recognized the statistics and know what wand this is without looking it up, may the good Lord have mercy on your geeky, geeky soul.)

Aaaaaaaaaand here’s Day 24:

Santa Yoda! (Slip a saber under the tree, for meeeee — I’ve been an awful good Jedi (This is just going to stop right here, because I hate this song almost as much as the worst Christmas song in the world, and even making a Star Wars parody of it really won’t help.)) In his pouch he has a yellow brick and a blue brick, for boys and girls who have been very good all year! (Presumably they are presents wrapped in yellow and blue paper, respectively, but my version is funnier.)

You’re probably wondering where the pictures of Yoda with his lightsaber are. Well, you’ll just have to wait until tomorrow, when we are having a Star Wars movie-watching party, and I’m totally bringing all these Legos. There will be a picture-post-extravaganza afterwards, because who says the advent calendar fun has to end on Christmas Day? Not me, that’s who! (That sentence sounds ridiculous, like something an overly cheerful striped-shirt-and-overalls-wearing ruby-cheeked 1950s neighborhood scamp would say, but I’m having too much fun writing a description of why it sounds silly to actually try to remedy the problem.)

I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas!

Today’s lego iiiiis:

An A-wing!

Here are some other things that start with the letter A.

We’re coming up on the end of the Star Wars Lego advent calendar. This is sad, but on Monday, several friends and I are going to watch the Star Wars movies. Of course I am bringing all the Legos. Pictures will be taken, and summarily posted on this blog.

Today’s Lego is pretty awesome:

Iiiiiiiiit’s the Millennium Falcon! I would say that you can make it with less than 12 bricks, but it actually takes 13. Chewie is going to put this one together. With a hammer, and a tire iron.

And here’s him hammering the canopy on:

“AAAAGGHGHHGOOOGHGHOOOORRRAAAGHGH*” (*”If I had a hammer, I’d-a hammer in the mo-or-nin’…”)

It’s amazing what Chewie can accomplish with a hammer.

Congratulations, you made it through the paragraph about things that are not Legos. Now, here are some things that are Legos! Day 16 brought us a clone trooper with an all-black head. Of course it got put on a bunch of different people:

Don’t they look sort of menacing? Here’s the original clone trooper, and Day 17′s piece, which is his weapons rack!

The weapons rack contained a pair of binoculars (which the clone trooper is looking into in the picture), two blaster rifles, and HELL YES A LIGHTSABER.

“WWOOAAAGHGHHRRGAAAGHAAAHH*” (*”An elegant weapon, from a more civilized age; also, a crossbow.”)

Day 18 brought us a Y-wing, so now Wedge can fly that too, if he wants to, I guess. Day 19 is a TIE fighter pilot, who looks like he wants to start something with Wedge. I’d advise him not to. Wedge is pretty bad-ass. Remember, this is the guy whose hand fell off, who then bandaged it back on, no big deal.

So, since I got a TIE fighter pilot on Day 19, it would only make sense that Day 20′s little box held a TIE fighter!

Mr. TIE Fighter Pilot couldn’t be one-upped by Wedge’s spacecraft construction skills, so he borrowed the wrench and put his TIE fighter together himself.

Four more little boxes to go, and don’t worry, now that I’m caught up, I’ll go back to full-length posts and trying to be funny for the rest of the days!

Look how perfectly the advent calendar box fit in my suitcase! :D

Day 11 is a battle-droid that was kinda difficult to put together. He came with an extra set of arms, and also a blaster rifle! He has a hard time standing up straight. I finally got him to balance while holding his blaster rifle and a tire iron. Danger is his middle name.

Day 12: A snowspeeder!

They did a killer job with this one. In particular, they put a black grate on the rear to look like the heatsink or whatever is on the rear of the original snowspeeder.

Day 13: Not exactly R2-D2, because he’s black! (My niece: “Don’t be racist.”) I put a laser hat on him. Also, Day 14: A mouse droid! My mom decided it is the not-exactly-R2-D2′s pet dog. We decided he should have a laser hat too.

Also I have included a picture of the original mouse droids from actual Star Wars.

Day 15: A LAAT\i gunship! It’s even better if you put someone’s head on it!

There. Now you have days 11 through 15. In a few moments, 16 through 20!

Today’s Lego is another one of the iconic flying vehicles of the original Star Wars series!

If you know what it is, award yourself 7 points. If you don’t know what it is, watch this video:

Just kidding – Youtube does not have a video of the original quote that is not dubbed in French. Instead, read this quote: “I used to bullseye womp-rats in my T-16 back home. They’re not much bigger than two meters.”

Yay, it’s a womp rat T-16! [EDIT: As mcnutcase and imwacco have noted below, it's pretty clear that this is a Lambda-class shuttle instead. I bow to their superior nerdery. :D ] Let’s make Wedge put it together again with his trusty wrench!

Wedge, are you sure you should be lifting something that heavy with one hand?? “Mehhhh, it’s fiiiiine. I got this.”

Moments later, TRAGEDY STRIKES:

“AAAGHGGHGHG MY HAND (and also my forearm)!!” (This actually happened, it wasn’t engineered, I promise, and it made me laugh a lot.)

While Wedge gets patched up, Chewbacca will put things together. With a hammer. Because he don’t use no sissy wrench. Also, he can lift much larger things than Wedge can without catastrophic forearm detachment.

Here it is, all put together! Also, note that Wedge is so hard-core that he bandaged his own forearm back on. With a wrench. NBD. Ain’t nobody tellin’ Wedge to cut the chatter now, are they.

Here’s all the flying vehicles so far lined up together:

And finally, the idea for this picture made me laugh pretty hard, and the picture itself is making me laugh even harder.

Tune in tomorrow for more head-switching, emergency surgery, and hitting things with hammers!

Also, there is a helicopter that is circling in obnoxious proximity to my apartment complex. I hope that they are not looking for the bodies that I may or may not have disposed of in the green space adjacent to our parking lot. Ooh, it just flew away, which is probably a good sign.

Now that I’ve gotten my long-form Facebook status updates out of my system, here’s today’s Lego surprise!

Iiiiiiiiiit’s…

… an X-wing!!

I’m way excited about this because the three most iconic starships of the original series are, in some order, the X-wing, the Millenium Falcon, and the TIE fighter. (That was potentially the nerdiest sentence I have so far written on this blog, and the best part is, I’m more or less serious.) I will fight anyone who disagrees, because they are objectively and perhaps even morally wrong.

Anyway, who else would I pick to build the X-wing besides X-wing pilot extraordinaire, Wedge Antilles? Now that he has his trusty, um, wrench, he’ll have this thing together in no time! He does have his work cut out for him:

Good work, Wedge; looks like the wings section is coming along nicely. Why don’t you put together the fuselage next?

Oh goodness. Wrong, Wedge; very, very wrong.

Looks nice when it’s all put together! Why don’t you take it for a spin? What’s that? It’s way too small? That’s what she saiThis calendar does seem to have a serious problem with scale. Also, with extra parts – unless these are the power converters you were going to take to Toshi Station.