"I'm trying to fix the FUTURE!"

Last night, my ravishing girlfriend and I had the honour and privilege of watching the modern re-make of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine with my friend Mike. Although hardly a cinematic masterpiece, it was mindless and flashy and showed off our TV and surround sound system well (love that DTS sound!), which Mike was really interested in. I'm not going to start in on the failings of the movie, or the stadium-sized holes in the plot, or the leaps of logic necessary to follow the plot (Mike and Stacey started to use "imaginary logic," as I called it, to explain the ludicrous science and physics of time travel whenever I found yet another plot hole)....but it did start to get me thinking.

One of the main driving motivations for this movie's adaptation of Wells was the question of using time travel to change an event in the past to effect change in the present. Although I won't go into the specifics of the movie in case you want to see it, I thought that they handled this question in an interesting way. I usually don't like to dwell on past decisions and regret anything that I've done (you can drive yourself mad that way), but it made me ask myself the question: just for fun and all aspects of the movie aside, if you could change one event or decision within your lifetime in the hopes of making your "present" better, what would it be?

I have three answers off the top of my head:

1) The gushy answer: I'd have gone back to convince my past self to go to the Arts School in Ottawa, Canterbury, instead of the academics school, Lisgar. I would've had a lot more fun in highschool, I'd be a much better artist today, while still being challenged in academics, and I would have met my Stacey earlier. Awwwwwwwww.....

2) The serious answer: I would have gone back to tell myself at some point before University that I need to choose a career and focus on that. It wouldn't have even mattered what it was, as long as it was something creative and lucrative....I wish I knew what the hell I'm doing right now.

3) The space tourism answer: I'd go back and convince the NASA people not to send up Challenger and fix the problem with the solid-fuel boosters. It was a tragic loss of life and we'd be a lot further along today if there was greater public-support for space travel. When those poor souls went up with Challenger, people were scared off the idea or worse still, didn't see the value in space exploration anymore. Of course, this answer is totally framed by that Lance Bass thing, which is still bothering me....

What would you do?