Review Wednesday - Project Hail Mary SPOILERS!

 ****SPOILERS****

    I wanted to give my two cents regarding the film because I had just read the book prior to the movie's release. I wanted to mention that I absolutely love The Martian (movie), and I ended up reading the book after the movie in that case, which is why I picked up the book for PHM (Project Hail Mary) as soon as I saw the trailers for the movie. I really like Andy Weir's writing; it can be kind of numbing when he goes through all the math and equations, but he doesn't do it for very long so it's not overwhelming. He does a pretty good job of dumbing it down so that you understand the gist of the issue at hand.

    First, I want to give props to the creators of the movie. Using practical effects instead of CGI as much as possible including making a puppet out of Rocky was incredible. If you can vote with your wallet that you want to see more of this, please go see the movie. This is the first movie I've seen in theaters in a long time, and it was worth it for sure. The CGI that was used was beautiful. 

     It might have been just me, but I felt as if the first 1/3 of the film was way too slow (most of it being flashbacks), but the last 2/3 of it went by really fast (while most of this was bad shit that happened on the ship). It might have been because there was no exposition really about why things were happening, it just kind of hurriedly happened. The holes in the two tanks causing the ship to spin out of control was one. Patrick asked why they couldn't just leave the atmosphere of Adrian before pulling up the container, as this was never explained. I do believe the book said that the engines would melt the chain if they tried that. 

    I was a little weary of Ryan Gosling as Dr. Grace, but he did a good job. I'm just not sure how much was his acting vs the screenplay adaptation. In the book, although Ryland was lighthearted and did crack some jokes, he was a lot smarter than they portrayed on the film; they made him quite a goofball in the movie. Which, you know, I did find funny and I liked it a lot, but I feel as if they dumbed the character down for the film. In the book, none of the other scientists liked him or took him seriously due to the book he wrote about saying that water isn't necessary for life. He explained how much of a disgrace everyone thought he was, which made the impact of him finding out that Astrophage had water in it more... impactful. It also helped when Grace discovered that Astrophage had evolved alongside Eridians and Humans with a progenitor, hence why they all had mitochondria. You could argue that it's pointless to the film but it's a cool thing to note.

    I wish Stratt had been more of a badass. They really downplayed how much power she had in the film. The book had her doing a lot of "illegal" things but with the ultimate goal of saving humanity, because she was given power higher up than any world leader - including authority to use nuclear bombs on Antarctica to release methane and create global warming in order for Earth to last just a bit longer. I also feel they kind of downplayed how much trouble Earth was in, I suppose, but there wouldn't have been any ill-effects before the launch so I guess they could only do so much (except for, you know, bombing Antarctica.) Also, that karaoke scene was completely unnecessary and added nothing to the film or Stratt's character.

    They never mentioned the coma gene in the movie, this is also why Grace was picked to replace the dead scientist. Not only did he have the knowledge they needed but also the gene that would allow him to survive a 4-year journey in a coma. There was a huge food issue in the book, because he didn't have enough even with the other two people dead, to survive the 4 years back to Earth. He discovered that he could eat Taumoeba to keep himself alive for the journey, although he'd be extremely malnourished. His memory loss was actually due to Stratt specifically giving him a drug so that he would fail to remember that he didn't want to go, and he was much more pissed in the book once he remembers that.

    However, one could argue that none of these things really mattered in the movie, except to add character development. But there is one scene that stood out to me over all others that I wish they would have kept the same: Rocky's "death". In the book, Rocky breaks out of his ball and saves Grace, but then collapses right there. Grace doesn't pass out all the way, and he engages the centrifuge and actually drags Rocky back to his ammonia bubble, which was very difficult because not only was Grace hurt, but Rocky weighed about 400 lbs (they never mention in the movie that Erid also has a much higher gravity along with the ammonia atmosphere). Rocky did not wake up for half a second like he did in the movie, which created a much more definitive viewpoint that he might be dead. This would have been much more impactful to the audience (not that it wasn't already, a couple people told me they cried. Aww).

    Grace did not get to see Rocky's ship in the book. There was no way to allow his body to survive from the heat/ammonia/gravity. The Xenonite body suit was a completely movie-driven invention. I didn't mind it though, it makes sense to me that the audience would want to see the ship. And it was pretty cool.

    The decision to save Rocky instead of going back to Earth was also a bit more involved. Not only would he not have the fuel to do both tasks, but he also knew that he would starve to death. In the book, it is mentioned that Eridians eat rocks/minerals that are toxic to humans, and Erid would not have any food for him to eat or take back home with him. I guess this was never explained in the movie because then they would have to explain how he managed to survive living on Erid. They were able to synthesize meat based on his own muscle tissue. He called them 'me-burgers' lol.

    Oh, one last thing that irked me - why would you leave out the best line in the entire book?

“On Earth, we have a scary, deadly creature called a spider. You look like one of those. Just so you know.” “Good. Proud. I am scary space monster. You are leaky space blob.”

    It would be like leaving out "I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this" from The Martian movie. Lame.

    My main takeaway is that, although I really liked the movie, I feel like I would have liked it a lot more had I not read the book first. And I don't really think it has anything to do with the minor changes they made, per se, but maybe more to do with how I knew how it was going to go. Usually I care not for spoilers, I am more than happy to read all the spoilery stuff so I know what to expect when watching a show or something. But this felt different, I think I just would have liked it more going in without that extra knowledge. Because yeah, the stuff I mentioned is fairly redundant and not needed to advance the story, it's just nice to have it and flesh it out and explain it. The book went into a lot more detail about how Astrophage works, and Rocky's biology etc but I can see how that would just convolute or make the story boring. It's just cool stuff. If you get a chance to read the book, do it. I won't say it's better, but if you want to learn about all the extra stuff, it's a fun read and I enjoyed it a lot. I couldn't put it down most of the time. But also watch the movie, because it's damn good! We need more stuff like this!

Whynter Almost Destroyed Me

    I sang your praises in my initial review of your product, and apparently I was extremely overzealous. So look, everything I talked about in my "review" (more like a preview, really) of the Whynter Portable A/C with Heat pump is still relevant here, but as much as I raved about the hose-in-hose feature, the engineering of the product was so horribly designed that I wonder if the company - in this case, Midea - even realized what the fuck they did. I can only blame Whynter for about 25% of it, because really all they did was repackage a design that Midea created. But that also gives/gave them the opportunity to re-design it to their specifications and nobody thought to do this. And I'm also not sure, but I don't think the Midea version of this product even has a heat pump feature, and if they don't, then it really is 100% Whynter's engineers' incompetence that I've had to correct for.

    So here's what I mean by this. Let me start out by saying that this winter has been one of the warmest on record, at least since I've been alive, so it took us a while to even start wanting to consistently use the heat pump to heat the bedroom. But once we did, we were running into an issue where the damn thing would turn on, open the louver, and then do absolutely nothing. No fan, no noise, nothing. So, I emailed support. To their credit, they do get back to you very quickly. And what it boiled down to was one of the stupidest things I had ever heard. Apparently, the heat pump feature will not work if it is below 41 degrees outside.

    Excuse me, what? A feature that it supposed to warm up your house when it is cold outside doesn't work when it's below 41 degrees? What the actual fuck?

    Okay, I kind of get it, if you know how heat pumps work (This video from Technology Connections is an amazing deep dive explainer if you are interested) is that they take the heat energy from the cold air and make it hot. It's exactly how and A/C works but in reverse. It's co-efficient of energy is nearly 1:1, which is why I wanted to use it to heat my bedroom, and to also control the warmth of the room better than the shit-tastic old-school thermostats I'm stuck with in this apartment.  When they were originally manufactured, they had an issue with working in very cold temperatures because THERMODYNAMICS. The radiator would freeze over and stop the unit from working. But engineers have overcome this problem for the mini-splits by including a defrost cycle. Also, I just want to point out that I used to own a Hisense portable A/C with heat pump, that had both an intake and exhaust hose, and it worked JUST FINE in the winter. I assume it's because instead of pulling in outside air from the intake hose to heat the room, it would intake the air from the unit itself, like it does in Fan mode (I always hated that fan mode doesn't work by taking in outside air, that would make a lot more sense to me and allow me to use the A/C a lot less often, but I digress). Either one of these solutions would work here but they instead gave me a completely different solution (because the engineers didn't bother to think about these things). Instead, the solution they gave me was to expand the exhaust house out of the hose-in-hose unit, and hook it up to the window kit by itself. Apparently by decoupling the intake hose from the window, it will allow it to intake room air, which would keep the unit above 41 degrees. (Or use Fan Mode, like why wasn't this just coded into the design?!!) But anyway, this already presents two problems.

    1. There is no connector to attach the exhaust hose by itself to the window adapter. When I asked customer service about this, they literally just shrugged their shoulders at me. I am not joking. They said they haven't made anything to help attach those two pieces together and suggested plexiglass (????) for what, I'm not sure. WTF.

    2. THERE IS NOW A GAPING HOLE IN THE WINDOW KIT WHERE THE INTAKE HOSE USED TO BE. This is the biggest mind-fuck of it all. Imagine, it's winter. Like, it's fucking cold outside, you know. You had such good intentions by buying a heat pump to heat your space because you like the environment and it's cheaper to run. But not if it's fighting against the cold air coming through the gaping hole in your window!!! FFS. It's already bad enough, to be honest, to fight against the inevitable leakage of cold air coming in through the window kit regardless of how much tape you use, but this is god damn ridiculous. 

    I was furious at this point, because I paid an extra $200 for this A/C to have a heat pump feature, and I have to now deal with this bullshit to even get it to function. But I was determined to figure something out because dammit, I PAID FOR IT. So, I put tape over the intake hole, and stuffed it with foam and cotton batting. It's not perfect; it looks like shit and it still leaks cold air but at least it works.

    

    But wait, THERE'S MORE! Yes, the incompetence of the engineers is not over yet, my friends. Because after I fixed this issue, I was presented with another. I am shaking with fury as I write this because this could have all been avoided if they programed the fucking thing to intake room air when running in Heat Mode. I attempt to turn on the unit in the night because it got cold, and it wouldn't turn on. According to the app, it was under 41 degrees inside. How is that, you might ask, when the intake hose is now inside the house? (Takes a deep breath), the exhaust hose is just sitting in the window, as as it sits there, cold air is just slithering its way down it and settling inside the unit. I scream into the void. Why was this never an issue with my Hisense unit? Why would a $400 piece of shit work better than this?!

    I don't bother to email customer service this time. I had already sent a long-winded email that was not super friendly letting them know my feelings on this thing. So again, here I am figuring it out myself. 

    And I do - I have an epiphany. 

    Fan mode pulls in room air, right? Well now, if I run the fan for just a couple of minutes, it will blow out all the cold air that settled inside the unit and replace it with warmer room air. And this actually works. I use their app to set a schedule, 6 times a day the fan will run for 2 minutes each time, blowing out any cold air so that when the temperature drops inside the room to 61, it will turn on unencumbered. After all this fucking effort, it finally works like it's supposed to. No thanks to Whynter or their "engineers". 

    I just can't fathom that nobody else in the world has run into this issue. Maybe I'm a unique case because I like to keep my bedroom temp between 62-64 degrees. I sleep hot, and I get warm way too easily. Maybe people that use this as a real heat pump to keep their entire house warm don't run into this? I mean, I don't know why not, but I can't possibly be the only one!

    So in the end, I can still pretty much recommend the Whynter A/C without heat pump, which is, luckily, $200 less, unless I run into some weird-ass issue during the summer months. I guess we'll see!