I got tagged yesterday by the fine folks over at blinkdagger.

So, without further ado, 7 things about me you’d not likely guess:

1. I was a lucky recipient of Dan’s game console charity for both the Xbox 360 and Wii.
2. I think Gmail is good but overrated. As of this writing, its standards support is poor — like worse-than-Hotmail-and-on-par-with-Outlook poor.
3. I used to be a big sports fan: in high school, I was able to name all the starters for most teams in the NBA and MLB (for some, it was the entire roster), and watched a lot of football. Favorite teams? Oakland Athletics, San Francisco 49ers, and the Golden State Warriors. I don’t know why they were all Bay Area teams.
4. I’m a casual classic Jazz fan. Coleman Hawkins is one of my favorites.
5. I worked as a research assistant after college, killing rats and harvesting their brains for research.
6. I put up my first webpage in 1996 on the student server at Pomona College. Students were each given a whopping 5 MB of web space.
7. I suppose this is a gimme: I’m a big Battlestar Galactica fan. I think the series is underrated because of genre bias. If the series were set in our world, or better yet, in a hospital (wink wink, ER and Grey’s Anatomy fans) it’ll be a different story. Er…no pun intended.

I tag Zach, Steve, and Marni.

Just wanted to share an absolutely fun song for the season:

Super Mario’s Sleigh Ride

Some talented musicians put together a fun medley of Christmas songs and Mario themes. Worth a listen!

I don’t really pay attention to the Emmy Awards, but I happened to glance at the nominee list. I’m not familiar with most of the shows listed, but one nomination stood out as a head-scratcher for me. Heroes for Outstanding Drama Series? An interesting show, and only because of one character, but hardly deserving of the Best Show on TV.

But this post isn’t really about Heroes. Further into the list, I saw two obscure nominations for Outstanding Directing and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. Right up there with the big networks is a nominated show from the relatively tiny Sci-Fi channel — Battlestar Galactica. Yes, it’s true, it is my favorite show on TV.

Now before one jumps to conclusions about a certain TV show (and the people who watch it!) based on a rather cheesy title and stereotypes of a certain genre, allow me to elaborate. Battlestar Galactica (BSG) is definitely not what most people think of when they hear “science fiction.” It is nothing like Star Trek or Star Wars. From the creator of the series:

Our goal is nothing less than the reinvention of the science fiction television series. We take as a given the idea that the traditional space opera, with its stock characters, techno-double-talk, bumpy-headed aliens, thespian histrionics, and empty heroics has run its course and a new approach is required. That approach is to introduce realism into what has heretofore been an aggressively unrealistic genre.

For just about any successful work of fiction, the audience needs relate to it. And one can argue that BSG is one of the more relevant shows on television. It made TIME’s best of 2005 (“Most of you probably think this entry has got to be a joke. The rest of you have actually watched the show.”) and (to my surprise) their all-time 100.

Now, I should stop before I start to sound like some raving geek fanboy. Or maybe I already do. Oh well. Yes, the show has its flaws, particularly in some of the acting, and I’ll be the first to say it’s not for everyone (especially the kids). But for the relatively small budget that the show operates on, the result is quite impressive. And the reason why I wrote this is because this next season will be BSG’s last. If you’re interested, go and rent the mini-series and start there. But don’t come to any conclusions until you’ve gone through at least 3 episodes of the first season.

Related Links:

Naturalistic science fiction

TIME: Best of 2005

TIME: 100 Best TV Shows

Battlestar Galactica, the only award-winning drama that dares tackle the war on terror

Why Smart People Love ‘Battlestar Galactica’