James Doohan, who played Scotty on the original Star Trek series and in seven Star Trek movies, died early today. He was 85. I met him a couple of times when I was in graduate school at UCLA. I drove a shuttle bus to and from a private parking lot at the Burbank Airport (now the Bob Hope Airport) and he happened to park with us when I was on duty so I got to drive him to his plane. About a week later, he came back when I was on duty again. He was working on the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home at the time.

He was very nice, though grumbled a bit about being type-cast as Scotty. At the time, he drove a nice white Jaguar. He also tipped well.

Of all the famous people I got to meet while I worked there, meeting him was the highlight, since I'm a huge Star Trek fan.

Today is also the 36th anniversary of the moon landing, July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong became the first human being on the moon. Buzz Aldrin followed him onto the surface shortly thereafter.

Google has decided to celebrate the first moon landing by offering us Google Moon, something similar to Google Earth:

Google Moon

Make sure you zoom in all the way. It's amusing.