This would be so fucking cool!!! :sneak:

I think I'm quite reputable. No, really.

Is the Blogosphere really this powerful?

Bacon's MediaSource is keeping tabs on what it considers the web's most influential blogs and sharing info about those blogs with it's clients.

So what does that mean to us?

Probably nothing to most of us, but some of us could be wielding some real power.


Thanks to Richard for the heads up.

A million atomic bombs?

While still reeling over the news about the East Asia earthquake and tsunami I found an article over at CNN that is keeping my mouth agape.

The East Asia quake was strong enough to upset the Earth's rotation.

It causes the planet to wobble a little bit, but it's not going to turn Earth upside down.

Kerry Sieh, California Institute of Technology geologist

Wobble a bit?

To what effect?

The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami

News and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts.

Hey! I'm sick! Yay!

I am coming down with a cold.

Great.

Merry Christmas!

The best Christmas memory I have was when Josh was only 2 1/2.

It was Christmas morning 1995 and being the good Catholics we were at the time we made it to the morning mass. It was very crowded but we found seats off to the side and Josh had some quiet toy in tow to keep him occupied during the hour long mass.

Josh was very quiet during the service, he just played with his toy without noise as the mass went on around him. He was doing about as good as small child on Christmas morning could do.

Finally the priest was to his homily. He was talking about Jesus' birth, life and finally sacrifice.

Fr. Brosnan was talking about the crucifixion in very hushed tones, the church was still, hanging on his words.

He let Jesus' sacrifice sink in, then said these words letting the air hang between the phrases, "... and that is why... we come together... in the presence of the lord".

At that moment every person was listening.

At that moment every person heard a very excited small voice eminating between my wife and I say "PRESENTS?!?!?!? WHERE?!?!?!?"

The church-goers burst out laughing. My wife turned nearly five shades redder than I'd seen before. Josh got bummed out when I told him that there were no presents in the church.

The priest wrapped things up quickly because his momentum was stolen.

Next... next... next... WTF?!?!!?

I was killing a little time hitting "next blog" and I stumbled on to a blog from a person I know in meat form. I used to work with her and haven't seen her in years.

The blog is all political, I was kind of hoping for some naughty bits but no.

I'll never see her but even if I did I don't think I'd tell her I know about her blog.

You can find it here.

Hey look!!!! Another post!

I think I may be crazy because I'm actually thinking of going shopping today.

We have one gift to get for a fam member we never see.

Mary's thinking a Blockbuster card. Me too.

More server probs...

I am still having probs with my server and Bloggrrrrrr!

At first I thought it was a server issue, now I don't know.
Until I figure aout WTF I'm here at blogspot.

The thing that kind of pisses me off is that things didn't start going wonky until a couple of weeks ago. So something has changed or been corrupted with my Blogger stuff or my server stuff has been changed.

What do I care really? It's not like there're any advantages to me publishing to my own server.

I might as well just stay here.

The biggest ordeal will be having people update their links to me. ;-/

Floating Logos Project

The Floating Logos Project is something that I stumbled across the other day and was instantly struck by two things.

First, I thought it was pretty cool. Second I was pissed because I didn't think of it. GRRRRR!!!!

They just look so odd just floating there.

GRRRRR!!!!

I'm having bigtime probs with my site.

I updated the template yesterday, loaded it up a couple of time, now it loads up an old version of the site.

No new posts, just old posts.

I even deleted all of my old blog files on my server and then re-puplished and the old stuff still comes up. So far I can't tell if it's Blogger's fault or MS11.net's.

So why am I even bothering with this post...

Yeah, again.

Again I am playing around with a different look.

I'll more than likely be back to the red look by Thursday.

Prolly. :sneak:

Almost done.

Almost done with Christmas gift shopping, just one more and we're done.

Josh's came via UPS the other night when he was taking a shower though I think he suspects what's in the box.

Mary's gift from Josh and I are sitting in his room waiting to be wrapped. For now his room is safest to hide stuff from Mary since neither of dares to venture in to the mind field of clothes and shoes and junk.

Coo coo ka joob!

I know who are.

What I mean by that is that even if I don't know who you are I at least know how you got here. Most likely you clicked my sig someplace. Least likely you got here by actually Googling for me.

Somewhere in between though are the ones who find my blog by clicking "Next Blog" on the Blogger bar up there. :points: I find myself sometimes clicking next just for the voyeuristic opportunities, the insight in to minds and hearts of people I will never meet.

A lot of time I am surprised at the things I read. There are jewels out there. There are writers out there that I have found that can connect, sometimes with the outlandish but often with the mundane. Tales about picking up fruit at the market, taking care of the kids or the frustrations of work have a way of makes me feel like we are all connected; that the sameness of our lives tie us together. A kind of electronic empathy in a way.

Reading the next blog is a way for me to feel like I'm not on some island. That there are others going through the same things. I am he as you are me as you are she and we are all together.

I am the walrus.

This is a test too, or 2. Your choice.

I got turned on to this little app called MacJournal from a guy over at AAF. It allows you to post to your Blogger or LJ blog without having to use a web browser.

So of course I have to kick the tires a little.

First impressions are that this is a small program, that is very to use. Just add your journal to the drawer, hit the new button, type away, go to entry, select LiveJournal or Blogger and put your member/blog info in click publish and you are done.

It does everything you can do when you are logged on to LJ or Blogger.

So why would you want to use it?

Uhm...

Cuz you can add checkboxes! ✓

The real reason I might start using it is so I don't have to be logged on to teh internets to work on my entries. Yeah, I could just type my stuff up in any WP or text editor and paste it when I do log on to my blog, but I just don't feel like I'm doing a journal when I'm working in Word.

So far the only thing I don't like is that I haven't figured out how to store my password for my blog. that means I have manually input my password every time I update. But other than that I'm digging it.

MacJournal is donationware so if you do end up keep this app send a couple bucks in.

You can find out more about MacJournal here.

This is a test...

This is a test of the application MacJournal.

Had this been a real blog entry, there would have been even less content.

You can now go about with your regularly scheduled surfing.

Thank you.

HEY LOOK! ANOTHER QUIZ!!!!

You are Jack. Self-appointed hero and doctor
extraordinaire, it's your job to save everyone.
You have little time for fun and games, but you
do like a good stiff drink every now and then.
You prefer your stitches black and have been
known to make gross pasta comparisons. And if
anyone needs CPR or a tracheotomy, you're the
correct person to go to.


Which Lost Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Look! A quiz! WOW!!!

pi22seven Look out for the

m HOLE

Username:

From Go-Quiz.com

wasting my vacation

Not really wasting my vacation, just not doing anything exciting. Like laundry, sweeping and other chores.

I did though finally have the chance to watch SciFi's Battlestar Galactica yesterday and today thanks to Tomato Torrent and VLC. :gives secret handshake of thanks:

I also goofed around with Garageband today. Nothing original, just using the loops to make something.

Here's the result for you to thumbs up or down.

I already want to change it up.

First gig

bleaders
Originally uploaded by pi22seven.

Josh and his band played their first gig Thursday night. It was at a poetry slam at mine and Mary's alma mater.

The singer and the bass player are both in the 10th grade at the school. Josh and the drummer are in 8th grade.

The boys sounded great. Mary said Josh and I stand the same way when we play.

The funniest part of the night was watching some girls lose interest in Josh when they found out he was still in middle school.

What to do.

I'm in a mood of wanting to create. I have no idea what but I feel the
need to make something that wasn't.

In a way this blog is a sort of stop-gap, a way to take the edge off
the urge for days at a time but the urge comes back. Always a bit
stronger than before.

So what to do?

I have an idea for a short film/video that I should hammer out. But
after the script is done I'd have to find actors and crew then I'd
actually have to edit the thing. No instant gratification here.

I could throw a band together like I've been threatening for months,
though I've lost contact with the players I have that special
connection with. But I could start those wheels rolling.

In a way I'm a little jealous of my wife Mary. She's a writer. Not in
the sense that she can string words together, but in the way stories
roll around in her head trying to be told. She doesn't need others for
her art/work. She can write anywhere without having to lean on others.

And even though I need others for it, I want the band thing the most.

I need a lyricist in a bad way. I have songs that need words.

It's all about me!

I want one of these



and one of these



please.

@#$!!#@ FIREFOX!

I had a long post ready to go and Firefox crashed on me!!!!

Damn!

You get a couple of more chance Firefox! *shakes fist*

Sometimes...

I'm not smart enough to know when to sleep.

Like right now, my eyes feel like they'll slam shut if given the
smallest chance.

I am ready to sleep right...















now.

The 500 Greatest Songs

I love lists. I'm a sucker for them. If you made a list about lists I'd think it was the coolest in a Mobius loop kind of way.

So when Rolling Stone comes out with a list of The 500 Greatest Songs I have to see it.

The list is not a list of the best rock songs, but a great collection of the songs that built rock and/or roll. The songs have a certain attitude that makes them seem right at home on the list.

I waded through the first 100 or so and saw a few surprises that made sense on second thought. If it was a playlist on your iPod it would be the best ever.

Thanks to the Big Z Man for the link.

I have no problem with this.

It's nice to see David Stern is man enough to hold these guys accountable.

We have a winner!

It looks like our hunt for a new car may be over. The Scion xB has shown itself to be a quite a value and a joy to drive. It's mileage is really great at 31 and 34 mpg and to make matters better Consumer Reports rated it as the 2nd most reliable small car. So Monday I'll call the sales guy (though he didn't try to sell me anything) to get ours made and hopefully we'll have it at the end of the week,

Scion xB Originally uploaded by pi22seven.

My boss was giving me crap about it earlier in the week when I told him we we're looking at them. "Those things are the ugliest things on the road". I pointed out that there are still Aztecs on the road and that if I got one I'd be on the inside and wouldn't be able to notice.

If you're looking for a car, give the xB a try. It handles a lot differently than it looks and is pretty zippy for the price.

I'll let you guys know more as the week goes on.

Uhm, WTF Audioblogger?

I prolly screwed it up, but I tried to make an audio entry about 4
hours ago and it still hasn't showed up.

Hmmm...

Call me Al.

Your Porn Star Name is: Big Al Rod

Get your own Porn Star Name

A little internet tip

Evidently you can find this place if you Google girls with ass from another planet.

Just in case.

Sorry Everybody

No really, we are!

Thanks go to AAF's Koda Bear for this one.

A car poll!!!! aka help!

Yeah, that's right!!!!

Joe Strummer... you've been through the cleansing
fire of punk, only to pick up a few venerial
diseases along the way. You're more of an
optimist when it comes to fucked-up genius.
But you can write wicked-deadly riffs and lycs.


Which fucked-up genius composer are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Now wait second...

The regional Emmys were given out a couple of weeks ago.

A spot that I'd worked on was nominated, and won. Yea.

I haven't written about it because I'm not in the least happy about it. In fact I'm fucking pissed.

The spot was about a male libido booster. The video showed a basketball on a surface being magically inflated, then pulled away with no inflation device being shown.

Most of you know that in the "art" of video/film editing timing is everything. Without a good sense of timing the best story becomes crap.

Even though this spot had only one shot for 15 seconds, it was actually made up of 7 different clips time changed so the basketball would inflate to the beat of the music I chose. All of the clips had to be painted to match for effect and to get rid of the nipple from the air pump and the edges of the table the ball was resting on.

It was work, but the spot looked good, pulled in viewers and ended up winning an Emmy.

So why am I pissed?

I am pissed because the producer who submitted the work for nomination listed himself as the editor. Not me, but himself. When I asked him about it he said "What did you edit? It was only one shot." I was so furious I couldn't say anything.

This was a couple of weeks ago. I'm still very pissed.

I'm going to talk to him about it on Monday. If he feels that my time and contributions to the spot don't deserve merit, then why did he claim that he edited the spot?

I hates liars and thieves.

1,462 days to go...

The outcome of the election left me sour for a bit.

The guy I voted for lost. I had a right to be angry.

But after a while I remembered that people like my friend aurostion had given of themselves for this election. They gave their time and sweat to knock on doors, make phone calls, stuff envelopes and damn near anything else you can think of to get the word out.

What did I do?

I might have changed a couple of votes at work, but really I didn't do a damn thing.

I pressed "Vote" on an electronic ballot machine. That's all. That only gives me the right to be disappointed, not angry.

But not next time. Next time I will do more. Next time I will make the calls and knock on doors and lose the sleep.

This time though I have to settle for saying thank you aurostion for your convictions and hard work.

Today is the day.

I don't care who you vote for, just vote.

lowtone it is, I guess.

I was divided between 2 names for a band that I'm putting together. My first choice was bad robot, the other was lowtone.

I was really leaning toward bad robot. It has some fun ideas attached to it. lowtone is just meh in comparison.

Flash to last night where my 13 year old son was playing his first "real" gig with a band he threw together on Wednesday at a football teamate's house. I walk up to house to pick him up and spy the drummer's bass drum. On it were the words bad robot.

GRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

He owes me bigtime.

Hey! Another quiz!!!!!!

I am a Light Cycle. I drive fast, I turn fast, I do everything fast. I even breakfast. I tend to confuse people with my sudden changes of heart. Sometimes I even confuse myself, which tends to cause problems. What Video Game Character Are You?

The one thing about Livejournal

I miss the whole sense of community.

I miss the little friends list thing so you could do cool/fun things like this.

My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
pi22seven goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as King Arthur.
aurostion gives you 3 light orange mint-flavoured gummy bears.
compassplayers gives you 10 dark green cherry-flavoured nuggets.
himeykitty gives you 13 light blue grape-flavoured wafers.
smithmatt gives you 8 mauve orange-flavoured gummies.
pi22seven ends up with 34 pieces of candy.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

bad robot or lowtone?

I've been kinda sorta working on music for a band I want to start. I want it to be original material. So I need to find the right people for the band. You can't just invite someone that can play bass, they have to be able to write lines.

I was going to invite Bob from the "Beer Incident" to play drums, but I'm not sure that would be a good idea now. Besides, what I need most are lyrics. I've written lyrics before but I take waaaaaay to long to finish the words. I work best with someone who can bounce lyric ideas around the room.

Anyway, THIS is something I was able to construct on Garageband. The drums and the bass lines are from the free samples from Apple, but they worked well for what I wanted. The guitar was recorded straight from the guitar to the computer without an amp. It's still missing vocals (that whole not having words thing) and a guitar solo over the mechanical guitar riff thing but it's a start.

I'm playing around with the name "bad robot" for now, but it may end up being "lowtone".

WARNING! DOWNLOAD IS DIAL-UP HOSTILE!

High tension...

I share my office with another producer named... let's call him Bob. A guy I've kind of mentored, saw that he was smart and helped him through the ranks to get where he is now.

Where we both are is an office that measures roughly 14 x 14, give or take. In it are 2 desks, 4 chairs, 1 filing cabinet and a shelf with a TV on top. Space is tight but not yet precious.

Bob and I share this space when we don't have edit sessions, shoots or client meetings. And all has been well. Lately it seems that we've been getting on each others nerves though. Just little things, but they add up.

Today though, he crossed a line. He gave something that was mine away. The something in question was a bottle of Rolling Rock Beer that I had placed inside a bobble-head farm that we have on the TV shelf. The beer was given to me by a producer who was laid off just this Monday, a token of sorts.

This afternoon I looked at the bobble-heads and the beer was gone.

So I asked Bob "Hey where's my beer?"

He said "I dunno..." but the tone in his voice told me that he knew. I pressed further and he denied more. The sad part is that he could tell that I knew that he was lying, but he kept lying.

Finally he confessed that he gave it to another coworker, then tried to turn it around that I was at fault for even having the beer in the office. I pointed out that a member of our management team had a bottle from the same sixxer on his desk so it wasn't a big deal.

Then he said he didn't know who the beer belonged too and he thought he was being set up. "Set up for what?" I asked and he said he didn't know. How could he not know it was mine? It's a 2 person office, if it isn't his then it belongs to me.

I was pissed. Not because he gave away a beer, but because he lied to me. And so very badly at that.

I want to say something tomorrow, but I'm dreading it.

As if the iPod weren't cool enough...

Apple decided to blow minds today. They released 2 new iPods. The first being the U2 iPod, available in black with red scroll wheel. So what makes it different? Well... uhm, the black and red bit. That and Apple sends each and every one of them to U2 so the band can scrawl their sigs on the pretty chrome back cover. Not really, but they are engraved with band member sigs. Oh, and the other new one has a color screen and can display pictures in addition to playing music or something like that, blah, blah, blah... Gray is not the new black. Black and red is the new black.

U2iPod Originally uploaded by pi22seven.

Ashlee, say it ain't so!!!! :waah:

This story's been floating around on the web since 1am Sunday.

Nutshell: Ashlee Simpson's lip-syncing on SNL was exposed in a biiiiiig way. It sounds like the wrong main vocal track started to play and things went down hill from there.

What do you do when the wrong thing for you to lip-sync to starts playing?

My band started playing the wrong song. I didn't know what to do so I thought I'd do a hoe-down.

Ashlee Simpson

Riiiight, your band messed up.

The video is available here. But be forwarned, it is painful to watch.

Lesson learned? No matter how bad you sing, do not try to lip-sync on a live broadcast.

KER-POW!!!!

It's raining real hard right now.



SEE?!?!?!?!?

I was standing in our backroom and a bolt of lighting hit our house where the electrical line connects.

Josh and I were about 20 feet away from it. We just happened to look outside at the right time.

It was a bright flash and sparks, but not nearly as loud as I thought it would be.

I'll post pics if there's anything to look at.

EDIT:
Stupid weather.com keeps updating the RADAR!

My Small Clone is here!!!!!

Now I don't have to ruin the sellers life if he tried to rip me off.

::jams::

How bored are you exactly?

I was checking the traffic logs for my blog to see how people were finding this place and got a funny surprise.

Someone got here trying to relieve their boredom! HAH! Wrong place bucko!

Anyway, this person was really bored. Bigtime. They were referred by this search but the best part is that my site isn't listed in the first 20 pages! I got bored just trying to find the link to me.

Whoever you are my friend, you are welcome.

But if you want to relieve your boredom go here. :sneek:

WHERE'S MY SMALL CLONE?!?!?!?!?!??!?!

So I purchased a Small Clone off ebay from some dude I'd checked out. He seemed okay but he's turned into a "Shitty Ebayer! FFFFFF----- Don't trade with!" kind of guy.

He's sent me 2 emails saying that he's "going to send it tomorrow", the latest saying that it'd be here "Monday at the latest". Today is Monday so where is my shit?

So I emailed him essentially saying WTF?, and he mailed back that he mailed it today priority. So I'm looking at getting it by Thursday-ish. If he doesn't send it I'm gonna be pissed. Like drive across the country and spend $200 in the process to get my $64 from him pissed.

That and I'll ban his ass from Texas.

BTW, I bought a new wah pedal from Sam Ash this weekend!

9229

Yup, an odometer palindrome from the car I'm renting. For people who like that kind of stuff. ;)

9229 Originally uploaded by pi22seven.

When is a blog not a blog?

When it's a bunch of chat logs!!!!!

Needs to be updated though.

Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You?

Apparently I'm Yoda. Thanks to himeykitty!

OMG!! GMail as an iDisk?

If you have a Gmail account you know that you've been wondering how you could use the 1Gb of mail space as an online drive like Apple's iDisk.

Well over at viksoe.dk they have figured out how to do just that. "GMail Drive shell extension" seems to be a very handy bit of code that allows you to turn your Gmail account into an iDisk.

But the catch is that it's Windows only. GRRRRRRR!!!!!!

The guy who made it said it took him about 2 days to code so it shouldn't be that hard for some enterprising Mac coders to whip out the goods.

A lot of people are waiting to see what Google's gonna do about it.

I hate waiting!

No, really. I hate waiting.

Right now I'm waiting for the Small Clone I won off ebay to get here. Like a kid waiting for Christmas morning. Time is creeping along. Slowly.

Waiting.

Choose wisely.

I've tried to remain impartial in this blog about the election.

In part because I've been waiting for a sign; I'd yet to firmly make my choice for president. I knew I wasn't going to vote for Bush, but maybe for one of the other candidates running for the office. Kerry was the front runner, but I had to be sure.

But after last night's debate my choice is firm. Kerry handled himself very well, without making me think that he was just saying anything to be elected. Sure there are things that I think need clarification, but I am firmly backing the Kerry/Edwards ticket.

Bush on the other hand has acted like a jerk during the debates. I'm tired of being lied to and I fear for the future if he stays in office.

Here's a cut from last night's debate with GW acting like an ass. Or himself, you decide.

To show my support I am even getting a Kerry/Edwards sign for my front lawn, no small thing considering I live deep in the heart of Texas. I almost look forward to the looks I'm going to get from my neighbors. Who knows, maybe others will follow.


Choose wisely.

I finally have a Small Clone.

I've been playing guitar since I was 14 and have had numerous effects pedals. But I've always wanted a Small Clone because of it's sound and retro coolness. The other chorus pedals I've had/tried all sounded meh to me, they did the job but they always lacked something or sounded brittle or too muddy or... So recently I started to rebuild a my pedal collection and do away with my all things digital and go with the warmth of analog.

EHX Small Clone Originally uploaded by pi22seven.

So away goes my all-in-one Korg multi unit. I'll miss having presets but it has to go.

So the Small Clone goes in the signal chain right before my Cry-Baby Wah. Next on the list for purchase is a Big Muff Pi. :sneek:

Screw the end user.

Things are changing at work.

We're finally replacing our 9 year old Accom Strataspher editors. All 3 of them. And our Quantel EditBox (which I hate). We're going to get 4(!) Avid Media Composers with shared storage.

This ROCKS!!!! The whole stored storage means we're not tied down to one room for a project. Start a project in Suite 2, finish in Suite 4. It's more like it's one edit bay with 4 terminals. Very cool.

The bad side is that we're getting the Windows™© version.

I'm pretty much a Mac advocate, but not so much that I won't work on a Windows box. It's more of a very strong preference.

Still, I'm disappointed because our Chief Engineer said that the platform didn't matter to him. He said this just last Friday, but changed his mind for maintenance purposes.

My problem with the situation is that they didn't ask the operators of the gear (my department of 3 editors and a couple of promotions guys) what we would prefer. They decided that since they have to fix it when it's broken that it should be on a platform that they know.

So in other words, the guys who don't have to work on the machines day in and day out get what they want.

And I can't say anything about how I feel because in their eyes it'll be because I'm the "Mac Guy", not because I have any real concerns about my work flow.

[/whiner]

Hey look!!! Another poll!!!!

Never forget!

Ever!

How do I do a commercial about dying?

I have a client that needs a commercial about their home hospice services.

How do I write a spot about that? Sure, there are commercials for the funeral industry but those are for when the dying is done. They are not about the whole process of leaving life.

I can sell damn near anything, but this has me at a loss. Not because I have any issues with dieing or mortality, but because other people do.

No one wants to watch their loved ones die, so how do I sell the service that does exactly that?

Bored at work.

I'm stuck here at work, directing "severe" weather cut-ins.

I'm supposed to get off work at 9:00am after directing my station's Saturday morning news. But here I am. Watching our radar and putting our weather guy on tv every 20 minutes or so. If I was a kid I'd be major pissed off that my cartoons were being interupted.

I'm operating with a skeleton crew of myself to punch buttons on the switcher and our audio op for sound. We'll prolly be stuck here for another hour or so before the weather guy lets us go.

After watching Star Wars on DVD the other night I killed about 15 seconds this morning pretending I was operating the kill-em-all switch on the Death Star. They used a tv switcher as the control panel so it made sense.

Yup, bored.

Hey look! A Poll!!!!!!

Yeah, I caved in.

We got "Star Wars" today and we're watching "A New Hope" right now. They did a great job cleaning it up. If it wasn't for the Lucassinine additions and changes it would be perfect. We also got "The Alamo" as well. I loved it in the theatre but I think that has more to do with me being a loyal Texican that the actual quality of the movie.

Nice box! Originally uploaded by pi22seven.

Hey that's my idea! Give it back!!!!!

Some Cannuckrian stole my word and fucked it all up!!!!

2 weeks is a long time.

Today at work we found out that there would be layoffs. This is the second round of layoffs for us since 9/11.

250 people will lose thier jobs corporate wide. About half will be at one property with the other half spread out between 12 or so other sites.

My station is running pretty lean as is and our GM said there would be 3 to 6 people gone. He said that it would happen within the next 2 weeks.

That's a long wait.

While I'm a little nervous, I'm not worried. I'm lucky that I went into the "creative" side of TV as a writer/producer/director/editor. Computers can't create, yet. But they can do other jobs.

We were going to lose staff next year anyway due to automation in our operations department and management will prolly try to wrap those positions into our cuts now to try to lessen the blow to our staff.

There's a "dead man walking" vibe in the building now. When you chat with someone you're wondering if they're gonna get cut.

Even though I've gone through the waiting before, it's not something you get used to.

It sucks.

GROW

You will hate me for this.

Sorry.

Gmail invites Part III

I still have about 12 Gmail invites left, but I got tired of looking at my silly little invite button and pulled it from the site.

If for some reason you want an invite and haven't gotten one yet feel free to let me know.

So you too can bare the burden of the Gmail invites.

a reminder

while it is the anvil that is beaten, it is the hammer which breaks.

the daily grind...

Work is work.

Even if it's something you enjoy it's work.

I love what I do. I get to create TV. It's still magic to a lot of people, myself included and I get to be a part of it.

But there are times when I'm not being creative, when I'm just stringing words and images together to appeal to the LCD; times when I am just cranking out "product" to make deadlines and to give the client what they want. At that point I am in the daily grind that millions of other workers live in day in and out.

While I don't do my job for the creative outlet, it's a nice bonus.

But none of that today. Today I made video Big Macs™.

LOST: 1 Camera Memory Stick

Imagine finding a camera memory stick in a taxi in New York City.

What do you do with it?

Most of us would either give it to the cabbie or we'd be thinking "Score!" and keep it for ourself.

This guy decided to make a blog posting a picture a day. And making up the story of the owner as he goes along.

I hope the owner sees the blog and gets his/her pictures back.

Brilliant.

Johnny Ramone dies at 55

I saw The Ramones for the first time when I was 14. It was my first concert and about 7 of us crammed into a car with somebody's mom driving and headed to Austin. Two of us didn't even have tickets. We got to the Armadillo and there were about 10 people in line. Then we heard music. It was The Ramones doing their soundcheck. After about 10 minutes it was quiet. Then one of our guys said "Hey, it's them" and bolted.

ramones Originally uploaded by pi22seven.

The other people in line said bullshit. But we followed and there they were.

They talked to us for about 15 minutes. Thanked us for driving from San Antonio to see them. When they found out 2 of us didn't have tickets for the show they had the their manager leave them tickets at the box office.

What strikes me now though is how normal they were. They weren't stuck up. They didn't act like rock stars. They were regular guys.

They split and we got back in the line that had grown to about 40 people. The guys at the front jokingly asked us how the Ramones were. We said they were doing great and that they got a couple of us in the show for free. They laughed then figured out we weren't joking.

The show was great. We wormed our way to the front and we had our arms on the stage right in front of Johnny. I couldn't tell what they played, just that the songs were loud and separated by Dee Dee's "1,2,3,4!"s.

But I had a hero after that night. And he played a Mosrite.

Crash! Boom! Bang!

Today was blech day and to top it off I'm writing this post on my
Handspring.

At work I had the pleasure of editing a poorly written PSA. I guess it
wasn't that bad, it just lacked heart.

Josh had a football game today at 4:30. I don't get off until 6ish. But
my boss Randy let me off early so I was able to see Josh's team win. He
stayed at the game while the B team play and to ride the team bus back
to school.

I left for home. And got into an accident.

No one was hurt and the other guy's car had minor taillight damage and
light fender damage. The Vista-Cruiser in some cruel twist of fate
suffered MAJOR damage to the front-right fender.

I was technically at fault, but that's more stuff than I want to tap
out on a Palm.

Oh yeah, I have a Palm...

Actually, I don't have a Palm. I have a Handpsring.

Yeah, I know, same thing.

I haven't used it since I got the PiPod last Fall. There is a limit to how many pieces of tech you can hang off your belt without looking like a total jackass. That magic number is exactly 2 so after the iPod and the phone got on my belt, the Handspring got to stay at home.

I dusted it off and tried to power it up.

But it didn't. Well, hell.

Thinking it needed new batteries I pulled it out of it's case and took off the battery cover. Here's the strange part, I was actually smart enough to pull the batteries out beforee I mothballed the thing.

I crammed some AAAs in and it started up fine.

I used to use that thing all the time at work, but now... it's really amazing how much information you can get on a scrap of paper.

I don't know what the hell to do with it now.

Advice to clients

Please don't feel like you can ask me to lie about how much time I have spent working on your commercial so your costs are less.

Don't try to bribe me with merchendise from your store in an attempt to get me to lower your bill.

Don't act like we are best friends so you can ask me for favors.

I guess what I am trying to say is that even though I am in TV, I haven't sold my soul. I have honor. I have self respect. I want to be the man that my family expects me to be.

Wear a helmet. Just wear one.

My next door neighbor Troy got a new motorcycle a couple of months ago.
He's ridden his whole life but took the last couple of years off.

When I got home from work Saturday morning he was riding down our
street without a helmet. He seemed to be having a blast.

Last night about 11ish my son bolted into the living room saying that
he'd heard a noise outside. I went outside with a flashlight to
investigate. There seemed to be something going on in front of the
next house so I went over to get a closer look. I dudcked back in for
a second to say it was nothing to worry about, then went back out.

Troy had hit my other next door neighbor's SUV from behind at a decent
speed. His motorcycle was laying in the road all busted up. Glass was
everywhere and I was bare footed. The guy across the street was in his
PJs holding a towel over Troy. Troy was bleeding. A lot. His wife and
his brother were standing nearby holding each other, just kinda
stunned.

Troy was busted up bad. He was bleeding bad from a few places on his
head, his leg was bent funny and his speech was slurred. He kept
trying to get up saying nothing was wrong, so I kept him down. He said
his leg hurt so we shifted him on his side and he seemed to feel
better. I took the towel and bunched it up on the side of his head to
keep the flow of blood down. I took his bike gloves off to make more
comfortable. He wanted something to drink but I wouldn't let them give
him anything because we didn't know what was broken inside.

The ambulance came about 15 minutes later. The put him on a back board
and locked down his head. Luckily he was inside the ambulance before
the news crews showed up so they couldn't get a shot of his face. The
ambulance pulled away I went inside.

Mary was waiting at the end of our driveway. I told her what happened
as we went in.

In the light I noticed that I had Troy's blood on my hands and arms.
When I washed up Mary thought it was mine.

Troy's family was at the hospital all day so we didn't get any news on
him. But the newscasts tonight said that his injuries weren't life
threatening.

When we went out today the pavement was stained where he laying. There
had been a lot of blood.

If he had been wearing a helmet he may have walked away from the accident.

Stoooopid FlickR!

isn't loading my images!!

Our new newcular pals! Maybe.

Evidence suggests that North Korea may have joined the Nuclear Club. This would be a bad thing since their leader might actually be crazy.

But this suggests otherwise. Hmmm. If this wasn't a nuclear explosion then the base they had there prolly isn't anymore.

So here we are, 3 years later...

I had a long post about 9/11 ready. I almost hit publish post, then I realized that nothing I could write would ever be worthy of what happened.

I hope we've learned from what happened. I'm still angry at the ones responsible for changing the world that my son has to grow up in.

I grieve for the victims and for what we've lost.

Now I'm pissed at Musician's Friend!

I had the bug a couple of weeks ago, but shook it off. I had the itch, but ignored it until it went away. But now, now I feel it hitting full force. And I know in my heart that I am weak, that I will break soon. I know that the forces that have kept me from buying some new piece of guitar gear will be defeated and I will have to explain some new purchase to my wife. My son got a Musician's "Friend"(ha!) catalog in the mail last week and with a Pavlovian response my mouth watered and I leafed through the guitars. They say love at first site is possible and I believe. There it is, the Gretsch Duo Jet. That's prolly what I'm gonna have to explain. And when Mary kills me for buying it, Josh will have a new guitar.

duojet Originally uploaded by pi22seven.

If only President Bush were President...

Yeah, I know it's a week late, but this article by William Saletan brings up many good points about President Bush's RNC acceptance speech.

Every time the President speaks I get a feeling that we are at a pivotal time in history. If Bush gets the office a second time I feel he will take the nation in a direction that we'll never be able to correct.

If you aren't registered to vote, please do so here.

Thanks to Lisa for the link.

w00t! teh 100th post!!!111!

I said w00t!

Just another day, again.

I hate 4 day work weeks.

I feel like I'm falling behind. But I guess that's because I am. I brought a couple scripts home to work on, but life just got in the way so they didn't get written. So I'll have to bust them out out early at work tomorrow.

Hopefully tomorrow goes by fast. I am so fucking ready for the weekend.

Newer site

This week I started working on a family site for my, uhm, family. I also tried to make it as easy as possible for my wife who's not as computer savvy as she likes to think.

I went with a combination of Blogger, iPhoto, Transmit and ms11.net. The Blogger bit is so it'd be easy for us to just throw up the quick update. She's pretty good on iPhoto already. But the whole ftp things gonna blow her mind.

I hate forgetters.

I wanted an address on Blogger for a family blog but some German dude
is camped on the site.

I can't get in touch with him because he left no way to contact him on
his site. He has 3 entries and that's it. Blogger won't contact him and
I respect that.

What it all means is that I won't get a chance to beg some German dude
for a website he's prolly forgotten about.

Public Service Announcement

Re-ripping 2000 plus songs from CD to iPod takes a long time.

SMART MOVE APPLE!!!11

I started having probs with my iPod about 2 weeks ago. It didn't want to play a few songs, so thinking they were somehow corrupted I deleted them. When I tried to put the re-ripped songs back on the iPod I got the error message "error ( -36)".

Hmmm.

I didn't think much about it at the time and just ejected and unplugged and listened to what I had for a while.

Then about a week ago the iPod started to act all goofy so I hooked it up to my iMac to see what was up and it wouldn't mount on the desktop and iTunes couldn't see it either. But Disc Utility could see it so I tried to repair the iPod. No go. It wasn't able to fix whatever was wrong with it so I formatted the drive and installed the iPod software on the pod.

Then I opened iTunes to throw my music back on. The transfer went good, then slowed, then stopped. The the -36 error message popped up again.

Aw, crap.

I repeated the process a couple of times and ended up with the same result. And it always stopped the transfer with 8.47 gigs of space left.

I didn't want to call Apple because the iPod is a 10 gig, 3G way out of the 90 free call service and I have an aversion to being charged $60 just to talk to anyone. So I searched the the support site for any info and found a thread where a guy with the same trouble as me was able to waltz into an Apple Store with his broken iPod and walk out with a new replacement. This sounded very promising unless the guy was full of crap.

I decided that sending my iPod off to get repaired was for losers and planned a road trip to the closest Apple Store. I was planning to drive from San Antonio all the way to Houston but found out that they had a store in Austin. So today after I got home from work the fam piled in to the Jeep.

Josh and I went to the SoHo Apple Store when we were in NY last summer, but this one was in a mall. When we walked in I almost got a headache from the whole store being so white. It was just so odd visually.

After signing in for an appointment to see a "genius", we walked the mall for a while until our time came up.

The genius guy was real cool and did exactly what I did to try and fix the iPod and said "Let me get you a new one" after about 5 minutes. I almost freaked. A new one? NFW! thoughts of me with a new 4G iPod danced through my head in a geeky way.

Then he came out with the box and said it would be no charge, did some warranty stuff at the computer and we swapped iPods.

Then I noticed that the iPod he gave me was a NEW 10GIG 3G IPOD. Where the hell did he get that? They haven't sold 10gig 3Gs for a few months and they already have the new 4Gs in the stores! But I guess they held on to that older inventory for people wanting replacements like me. Still I can't bitch, I feel like I pulled off some heist and got a free iPod.

This time though I'm gonna put a screen protector on it.

This could change everything

New Scientist says that we may have found a signal from another planet.

Maybe.

If it really does turn out to be a signal from a civilization from a far off planet then our lives will change.

We won't be alone anymore. We'll know someone is out there.

What if we're actually able to understand the message?

Stoooooopid iBook!

The stupid power connector socket thingy has gone all wonky on my rev a clamshell!

I need to get it fixed but I don't want to send it to Apple. There's a guy local who can fix it but I don't really have the cash. I do have a G4 Powerbook ac adaptor that I can trade for repairs.

I hope the barter system isn't dead.

trashing tv

I started another blog the other day using a different alias.

It was me posting acid stuff about the tv industry. I figured since I was in the business that I could offer some behind the scenes kinda commentary and dish out the shit when needed.

Great idea. But a suit from work who I turned on to blogger found the site.

So in a preemptive move borrowed from the Russian Army during WWII, I scrapped the blog before it could be used against me.

So now I have to come up with a new alias, and a new blog title and get going again.

I should have archived the site so I could do one big copy and paste.

One more thing before I forget.

My boss is at that "strategic planning" meeting that I mentioned before.

I saw a leaked agenda that shows them having "free time" from 3 - 6pm. "Free time" translates to golf and/or drinks.

It also got stretched to 3 days from 2 so they can take a cruise. That's right, a cruise.

All I know is that the staff better get bonuses this year.

Working at home sux0rs!!!

I had to bring some work home because I'm so swamped at work. And it's not much really, just fleshing out some ideas for a spot.

But it's the whole idea of bringing work home; work should stay at work.

The problem comes from my boss being at "strategic planning". When he's gone my work load increases by 75%. And to top it off I'm booked for the rest of the week by the promotions department for some stupid doppler network promo. So it makes it a challenge to get my commercial work done.

And it's not like my boss expects work to be done at home, in fact he's dead set against it. Which is cool because some guys I know work on Sundays all the time. Their boss' attitude is "If you don't come in on Sunday, don't bother coming in on Monday".

I so want to win the lottery.

And I thought I sucked!

I'm watching our 10pm newscast and it is cratering bad. No direction from the booth and sloppy punching as well.

I felt bad that I made one mistake last Saturday, but these guys are fucking up bad.

I gotta find out what happened tonight.

A fav0r.

Here's that link to the Queen Creek Performing Arts Center that everybody's been asking for!!!!

How to handle a rope.

I need to figure out how to handle the links on the right.

I want to do something thats dynamic but still easy. I want some method that is more intuitive than banners and links.

I want, stuff.

ESPN behind the scenes

ESPN is doing a live behind the scenes show. RIGHT NOW!

It's pretty neat to watch if you're in the business; looking at all
the new gear, hearing the chatter. It's prolly pretty neat too for
people not in the business.

They just took their facility all digital. Not bad considering that
they have NTSC and HD to worry about.

Thanks to Pablo for the tip. :fullrock:

Gmail invites Part II

I thought I'd let you guys know that I no longer have 2 Gmail invites.

I now have 5. They friggin' sent me more.

Same rules as before.

You guys out there...

I've been hitting the "Next Blog" button to see what's out there.

It's cool just to see how different we all are, how special we are in our own ways. And how alike we all are.

The bad thing is that there are a lot of you out there using some really fucked up code on your pages. Ouch.

Gmail invites!

I've got 2 Gmail invites left that are yours for the taking.

Here's the deal though, I have to know you from someplace. Nobody who has gotten here by hitting "Next Blog" on the Blogger bar will get one.

All you have to do is hit the "Gmail Invite" button located in the links on the right. Let me know where I know you from, give me your REAL name and you'll get an invite. It's that simple. The only reason I want your real name is that my real name will be on the invite.

So click away.

I said I'd never do it...

For fear of starting a mobius loop of bloggery, I said I'd never blog about another blog.

But here we are.

Green Arrow has a blog now, offering a window into the mind, no, the soul of this defender of Star City.

HAR™!

What the hell does that mean?

Why don't computer guys have error codes that make sense to the average user? Why can't they just have the friggin' window say something like "Your iPod is fucked, please send it in for repairs"? No, they have it say "unknown error occurred (-36)".

error Originally uploaded by pi22seven.

So, I'm prolly gonna get a repair request tomorrow over the internet. After I try to get them on the phone for free. I should have paid the extra $60 or so for the extended Applecare thing for my iPod.

First my phone broke, now my iPod. What the fuck am I gonna hang from my hip now?

It just up and died!!!

My iPod has been acting like it was gonna crater any day, and it did. So I got to use the updater finally and I'm throwing songs on it right now. Luckily I still had a lot of the stuff I ripped on my iMac. Still, I had over 2000 songs on there.

Since this is the first time I've ever had a real prob with Apple hardware, I'm not going to issue a "SMART MOVE APPLE!!11!!" and save it for when something big happens.

EDIT-SMART MOVE APPLE!!111!

Looks like the drive may be toast, so off to Apple it goes,

I think it's still covered by Applecare.

PiTunes-Big Boys

Austin, Texas in the early 80s was an incredible place for music. All of the various scenes were exploding with ideas that had never been heard before. The one band that almost everyone liked was the Big Boys. The Big Boys were an oddity for a punk band at the time. They were inclusive. They wanted you to be a part of the show. Big Boys shows would end up with the crowd up on the stage. Every show ended with their singer Biscuit saying "Y'all go out and start your own band".

bigboys Originally uploaded by pi22seven.

When the Big Boys played, they killed. There was no holding back for them. And nobody could touch them. Touring bands learned about having the Big Boys open for them.

"The concert was at the Ritz, the shell of a theater in the middle of the nightlife strip of Austin. The Dicks opened up and I immediately realized that we were in trouble. Here on stage was this enormous man with his head completely shaved except for a baby curl sticking out from the front of his head, with him were three guys who looked like they had just escaped from some chain gang, a different league altogether. I knew that we would have a difficult time getting up there after them, but nothing compared to the way I felt when the next band went on stage... the almighty Big Boys. I felt humiliated, how could we play after this? The Big Boys pulled out the stops. More enormous men, decorated in jump suits, food props, great songs, a horn section, 200 friends on stage singing and dancing... we were fucked. We made it through our set, maybe it was a good one, I can't recall. I only remember the other bands. The next year we came back to Austin and did it right ­ we opened for the Big Boys. The way it should be."
--Ian MacKaye / Minor Threat

The iTunes link is to the Big Boys anthology "Wreck Collection" with 34 tracks for only $9.99.

Everyone can sleep now...

I fixed the iTunes link prob.

It was user error.

Stupid Safari!

Well, there might not be any Pitunes after all.

The iTunes links screw with the way the page displays so I may ditch the whole idea. I guess I could link to the band's sites or to product on Amazon instead but I just like how the links take you to samples of the muzak.

SMART MOVE APPPLE!!!

Hey look! It's Blogger Bar!

Used to be when you published on Blogger's servers you'd have that fugly Blogspot banner/ad at the top of your pages. Whether from complaints or pure genius they've replaced it with a new thing called the Blogger Bar.

Blogger Bar is a hell of a lot better looking than the old banner and actually serves a couple of functions.

First off it has a link to Blogger. Good if you want to go to Blogger to log in or if you are currently blogless and need to remedy that situation.

It's second function is the power to search the blog you are looking at. Although in my own scientific tests it couldn't find much on my site.

The third thing it does is allow you to "Blog This". Since the bar is available only on Blogger pages, you're essentially creating a "Blog Mobius Loop" by blogging about a blog.

The fourth area links to Blogger so you can get your own blog. Deja vu.

The last and coolest button on the bar takes you to some random, recently updated blog. Now this is cool because up until now there's been no real way to go to a random blog on Blogger. I like this button a lot.

All in all the Blogger Bar seems pretty damn cool, though surfing random blogs has shown me that most people blogging are pretty fucking odd.

But in a good way.

Mostly.

PiTunes-Big Star

PiTunes! Get it! HAR™!

Ahem.

Anyway, PiTunes will live on the right (or on the left if the site changes) and will have iTunes links to some band or artist or something that I think you should hear. Hopefully you'll hear something worth making a part of your music collection.

The first band to be in PiTunes is Big Star.

I first heard about Big Star years back in an interview Paul Westerberg. The Replacements had a song titled "Alex Chilton" about the singer from The Box Tops, you know "Give me a ticket for an aeroplane..." that was bittersweet. In the interview he said that Chilton was also in a band called Big Star. I heard the song a couple of times and forgot about the whole affair.

Flash to few months back and I saw Big Star on the front of the iTunes Music store. I bought "#1 Record - Radio City" and fell in love. It was fucking great. I was stunned. Listening to the harmonies of the vocals and the riffs on the guitars it's hard not to wonder why the hell this band never made it big. It's kind of sad.

Fans of Fox's "That 70s Show" will recognize "In The Street", covered by Cheap Trick for the show's title open.

Leave work early?

It's 3:40ish in the afternoon. I'm just watching the time change on my computer.

I have a few things I could be doing, a couple of clients to call, a couple of scripts to finalize but I don't feel the motivation. Motivation beyond the whole get paid thing anyway.

So, should I put those things of until tomorrow and leave early for a change?

Why not? My boss who came back from an 8 day vacation just yesterday left about an hour ago.

Follow his lead?

Probably. But I'll at least call the clients and let them know that I'm working their commercials. And I'll probably just email myself the work and do the scripts at home.

I rarely leave early. I almost feel guilty when I do. Almost. I get home and I know the sun is in the wrong part of the sky.

I need to get back to work if I want to be a slacker later.

rain_by_car

A few weeks back I submitted a couple of desktops to Pixelgirl Presents and was quite surprised when I got a return email from Shanalyn saying they were going to post my stuff even though they were straight photos.

Cool.

I started to get some emails from randoms saying they liked my stuff. Cool.

Then a couple of weeks back I got an email from somebody wanting to use my picture rain_by_car on their site. I did a little research and discovered that the person in question was Joan Carles Martorell who made "The White Nights", a cool multimedia web project.

Seeing her and the others' work made me feel good. It gave validation to my picture. Not that it was "Art", but that it had weight. That it was more than just a snapshot.

She sent me a link to her site with my picture.

Cool.

Thanks Netflix!

How did it happen that I never listened to others rave about Alias and almost miss this great show?

We're playing catch up with the show now with the season DVDs coming in the mail.

I'm gonna start watching when the new season starts. I hope it hasn't jumped the shark yet.

New site!

We have a new site, but it's not mine.

Mary signed up for a Blogger site. She's going to need an easy way to put together a website for her school assignments and Blogger is about the easiest way to go.

We have it posted on our ISP space and that took a little tweaking, but it works well now. And without the Blogspot ads.

I think she'll get to the point where she actually likes doing the site.

Vote now!

iPod vs. The Cassette

I chuckled a bit when I saw this but I'm not entirely sure why.

The pictures have pretty colors though!

But, I wanted FCP4!!! :waah:

It appears the powers that be have chosen our future NLE path. And the winner is pictured to the right, the Quantel eQ. We'll prolly end up with 2 of the Q Edit Pro models to replace 2 of our Accom Strats.

It it a very powerful NLE that is capable of editing 2K all the way down to HD with all of the formats together in one sequence. Not bad.

Of course, I really wanted to keep working on an Apple but I'm just happy that we're getting something new. The Strats have beige Macs running them!

At least Quantel fixed the GUI since the EditBox.

I hate tired.

Worked until 1am last night. Had to be back 7 hours later.

Of course I couldn't sleep right away. So I listened to Orson Scott Card's Xenocide on my iPod until I dozed off.

This morning I punched a shit show for GDSA. I was just off. I couldn't focus and I made 2 mistakes, I fucked up a bump when I rolled the SOT too early then I double punched a shot during an interview. I wouldn't care really because there's only about 80,000 people watching at that time, but I'm a pretty damn good director and I haven't made any on-air mistakes in almost 10 months.

Spent the rest of the workday just kind of numb.

Sent a script for a spot to a client today and he wasn't impressed. In all honesty I wasn't either and I was going to work on it tonight but I never got around to it. I'll just fix something up real quick when I get done with GDSA. I do my best work with my back against the wall.

We had dinner at a trendy up-scale bistro tonight. For some reason I felt like Nick Carraway in Gatsby.

Sleep beckons.

One man's love...

Michael Simmons is a very talented web/grfx/coder/photo/renaissance guy and fellow AAFer from Chicago. He's had some brilliant iTunes ideas in the past and just has a knack for seeing things the right way.

Because of his self-proclaimed love for the CSS Vault, he's made a desktop to show his heart.

Download and stare it. A lot.

The Hellfighter is gone.

Red Adair died today.

He was a tough Texan who who ate rocks and shit sand. He was blessed with the job of "blowing fire up".

They don't make them like him anymore.

Sizing up next week.

I hate Sundays. They're the tail-end of the weekend. Whatever you do on Sunday doesn't matter because Monday is tomorrow and the weekend might as well be over.

So I was thinking about the week to come. My boss is on vacation so I get to to a week plus of GDSA, and I also get the pleasure of directing/editing Air Force Television New for the Air Force. AFTN is pretty easy, I get a little nervous when I haven't done a show in more than a year. But it'll be ok.

What's got me worried though was an incident that happened a couple of weeks ago that seems to want to bite me in the ass. I'm teaching a guy at work how to direct a show. I'm using a very simple 2 camera chat show for his training. We were mid segment and he happened to look at the "off-air" monitor of our station and noticed the wrong spot playing for a client of his. He made a motion to call the sales guy for the account, but I wouldn't let him because at that moment he was directing a tv show and he needed to keep his attention on the show. So I told him "That's not your problem right now, finish the show".

Two weeks pass and the sales guy comes up to me and asks why I told the other guy not to call him when the wrong spots aired. I had totally forgotten about the incident and went to talk to the other guy, the trainee. I asked him what the sales guy was talking about and we reminded me about the show and stuff. I got pissed and reminded him that I didn't tell him to blow it off, I told him it wasn't his problem right now. So now I'm pissed because he made it seems like I told him not to fix a problem.

This guy feels like he's always fucking up and he did fuck up on this. But the way he told the story it looks like I told him to let it go when in fact he forgot about it. So now I look bad.

But I'll fix it on Monday.

DON'T PANIC!

The people making "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" movie have finally released a trailer!

It's just a small tease. No plot or characters, just... setup.

Still, it seems like they're doing good with the SFX.

Thanks bigtime to Matt for the link!

Today...

Today was Gigi's funeral. It was pretty good I guess, as far as funerals go. It was emotional for everyone, but it was nice to how our extended family came together.

After the funeral we gathered at my in-laws' home for comfort and food.

I've already made up my mind for my funeral to just be a drinkfest with novelty t-shirts.

Aw crap.

The day before we left for Dallas I was unplugging my cell phone from the charger. My grip wasn't as tight as I thought and the phone was launched from my hand at an incredible velocity straight to the floor. I checked the face and everything looked ok so I pocketed the phone and left to run some errands. Later I tried to check my voice mail but it couldn't find the network. So I rebooted the phone (why not, it's more computer than phone). This time the screen was about half the resolution and much dimmer, and still couldn't find the network. When we returned I went to the Cingular store to see about getting a replacement. The store has very bright colors that hurt the eye. You're supposed to sign in but there wasn't anyone else so I jumped to the front of the line. I showed the clerk my phone and he essentially told me I was screwed. I don't have insurance on the phone so I have to pay full price. And Sony stopped making the phone anyway so I can't get a replacement, but they'd be happy to sell me the more expensive model for full price. Cell phones are fucking expensive. Fuck. I'm prolly gonna get one off of Ebay.

T226 Originally uploaded by pi22seven.

Link updates

I just kind of noticed last night that I don't update my links at all. Originally I was gonna update stuff all the time, but life gets in the way.

So now you have my solemn vow to update more often.

Like twice or something.

Arrangements

Gigi's funeral is set for Thursday with the Rosary the night before.

I don't do funerals well. I hate them. I never know what to say, because I know that there's nothing that can be said to make things better. The only thing that eases the feelings is time.

But this time I won't be trying to comfort friends or coworkers, this time it's family. Mary is doing as well as can be expected now, but Thursday will be a different story. Josh seems to be okay, but I feel like he's holding things in. I wish I could help him, but I don't thinks he's ready for me to help yet.

Just by chance I saw a cartoon that I'd clipped years ago. It was brown with age and half covered by photos and memos I'd posted on my cork board behind my desk. It's a single frame of two men in the showroom of a funeral home. The guy on the right is angry at the guy on the left, who is wearing a party hat. The showroom is decorated for party, streamers over the caskets and all. A banner above their heads says "We put the "Fun" in Funeral!". I decided when I clipped the comic that that's exactly what I wanted. I want a party funeral. When I go I want people to push my casket around a bunch of bars and have a good time.

So do I need to have that put in my will?

Death in the family

Mary's grandmother died this morning a little before 10.

We were on the way back from Dallas after attending Mary's RWA convention/awards ceremony. We'd stopped at a gas station in Waco for something to drink when Mary got the call. When Josh and I got into the car with the sodas she was on the phone. Her face was stone then she looked at me and nodded.

At that moment I didn't think her grandmother had died, just that she'd gotten worse and that we'd better hurry to get home. When we got on the highway again Mary burst out crying. It could only mean one thing. There was no place to pull over on the stretch we were on, just high barriers from road construction. So I tried to comfort her as well as I could while driving. But she was more worried about Joshua than herself. Josh sat dazed for about a hundred miles before he could cry.

We got home a couple of hours later and unpacked in a somber mood.

The funeral looks like it will be on Wednesday. Josh and I will be pallbearers. He's only 13 but understands that it is an honor. He's holding up amazingly well and we take turns supporting Mary.

Mary is "holding it together". Her words. But she's crushed. Mary and her grandmother were great friends, closer than Mary and her mom. Mary feels guilty that we weren't there. But we wouldn't have been there if we'd been in town. We would have been eating breakfast someplace, maybe on the way but not there.

We said our goodbyes before we left knowing that this might happen, but you can't ever be prepared. There's still that feeling that someone has knocked all of your breathe out.

Dallas-Day 2

Thursday started out with the news.

It seems that overnight greater Dallas was downpoured into a flood. Parts all around were under water. All the TV stations were there live with their "action cams" giving reports on the aftermath, and that it wasn't over yet.

Mary didn't even have time to notice. She was going to have a busy day with her convention and prolly wouldn't be seeing the outside for a day or two anyway.

Josh and I didn't have too many options; parts of the city are flooded, I don't know the city. It seemed best to just stay local in downtown Dallas and not drive anywhere. The last thing I want to do is add "high water rescue" to my vacation plans.

So I had to figure out what to do with Josh to fill the day.

First we found a place near the Subway that made breakfast. Then we scouted about a little before returning to the hotel. We stayed in for a good part of the day and traded guitar licks. Thank god he asked to bring his guitar because it helped to pass the day.

Noon had us driving around trying to find a Walgreens. I always forget to pack something and this time it was my razor. We bought some chips and some sodas along with a package of Oreos for Mary. Halfway back to the hotel I realized I'd forgotten to buy a razor. That'll give us something to do Friday.

Mid afternoon it started to clear up so we grabbed our boards and went for a ride. Downtown Dallas was cleaned up a few years back. There's biiiiiiiig money there. And it had all of the sidewalks repaved with brick. So riding around was a little bumpy, but not bad enough that you couldn't ride. Just an ever present clicking.

We rode all the down to the touristy "West End" and only got a couple of remarks. One guy looked at me and said "Woah, somebody's doing it old school." GRRRRR!!!!!! Am I that old that I get the "old school" moniker? After a while we just picked up our boards and started walking. About 10 minutes later some older lady remarked "I heard that skateboarders couldn't be on the sidewalk". That pissed me off because at that point we were pedestrians! We were walking and had been for over 10 minutes. I let it go, because if I said anything I'd be the asshole. Old ladies always win in this so why fight.

We headed back and found a cool park made for carving. So we did. Then went back to the hotel and made dinner plans.

Mary had come in and out while we were gone. We really didn't expect to see her this week. We decided to have some pizza at a place real close to the hotel instead of going to the touristy West End. It was a cool little place. The walls were covered with pictures. Some were of family. Most were of patrons getting caught mid bite, business men and women with napkins placed as bibs trying to smile with half bitten slices hanging from their mouths. Then there were a couple of pictures of celebrities who'd visited. There was a picture Jay Leno mugging it up, and sports celebs that were from Dallas. Bet the best shot was of Mohamed Ali looking young and healthy, totally unaware that the owner was trying to take a picture with him, just trying to leave. Josh didn't know who he was. So I told him a little about the greatest.

We walked back and watched some TV until Mary came back to the room.

Dallas-Day 1

We drove to Dallas on Wednesday. It was uneventful, until we got close to our hotel.

We were on IH35E, and needed to stay on 35E but we turned off. This wouldn't usually happen with both Mary and I in the car, but we were too busy looking at the buildings like a couple of yokels and missed our turn. So we circumnavigated downtown and made it to our hotel by accident.

Checking in was a pain. For some reason the Adam's Mark-Dallas decided that it would be ok to have the guest registration desk manned with only 4 people. Just 4. They had 2 national conventions checking in and only 4 people at the desk? So Mary waited in line while Josh and I just waited. When Mary got to the front of the line things looked not-right, so I went up to help. Our credit card was being rejected. A lot. Mary was emotional as Mary is and became embarrassed and walked away.

We called our credit company and found that the guy at the counter had tried to charge us for 17 days instead of 4! We didn't so the charge was refused. The CC Co was kind enough to remove the denial and we went back to the line.

The line was even longer, Mary was ready to throw in the towel. So I walked up to another counter. I explained that their guy had screwed up royal and they checked us in no prob.

After that we were all a little drained so we walked down the street and had dinner at a Subway.

One thing that was freaky was downtown Dallas; we are the people? There are these huge buildings but we never see that many people. It's just odd.

Later that night it started to rain and started the worst flood Dallas has seen in 50 years.

More later.

Don't let us down.

The DNC is on. And I don't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

I vowed to become more informed and more involved in my nation's
electoral process, but just hasn't happened.

I used to be informed. I used to be involved.

It's not that I don't care; what kind of person wouldn't care about his future?

No, I care. But at the end of the day do I care enough to learn the
issues? Obviously I know the issues. They're pretty big. It's hard to
miss them.

I think the problem is that I have yet in my adult life to see a
candidate that I can truly get behind.

None.

Part of the problem is that I look back on history and see great
men/women doing great things. Today they are missing. Where are the
Trumans? Where are the Roosevelts? Lincolns? Jeffersons?

Are they around anymore? I don't think so.

I think todays' candidates are "most likely to wins" based on
demographics of what todays' voters want and how well they'll play the
game once they get in.

I don't know if it even matters who gets the big job anymore.

That being said I'll probably pull the Kerry lever. Not so much
because I am behind the man, but because I can't stand what Bush has
done to the world. the world my family lives in. The world my son will
inherit.

Mr. Kerry, when/if you get the job, don't let us down. We're quite
literally banking on you doing the right thing.

Still Dallas bound...

With everything that's going on right now, I'm surprised we're still going to Dallas.

We're going to Dallas so Mary can attend the Romance Writers of America's 2004 convention. Mary's up for a Golden Heart Award again this year. If she wins it'll almost guarantee that her book will get published. Even if she doesn't win it'll be good for the editors and agents to put a face to the voice, and maybe get published anyway.

Josh and I have plans to skate the X Games Skatepark. Well, mostly Josh. But I want to hit a couple of museums while we're there. And Six Flags too.

I don't know if we're gonna spring for the extra $10 a night charge for internet in our room so this may be the last thing I write before we go.

Huh, who knew?

Which internet subculture do I belong to? [CLICK] You are a Conspiracy Theorist! Holy cow! You actually did an online quiz? Little did you realise that the information you gave us is being sent to an unknown government agency for evil use against you! Don't try to leave, we are already watching. More Quizzes at Go-Quiz.com

BTW, I steal all my quizzes and such from himeykitty. She finds the best. :fullrock:

Almost normal.

This is the first night in a long time that things have felt even
halfway normal.

Josh is in the red room playing his Strat through my gear. He sounds
pretty good. He needed something besides video games to do indoors.
And it's a scientific fact that you can pick up more girls playing
guitar than you can playing video games. I should know, that's how I
met Mary. ;-)

Mary's at a BBQ/party being thrown for the lucky defectors from her
school. One of the leftbehinds is throwing it. I'm jealous because of
the whole BBQ thing. They're prolly burning their old school shirts
right now.

Mary really needed a night away from the nursing home. The hospital
suggested hospice services and Mary and I tried to explain what that
meant to her mom, but she is still in denial.

Things are about as normal as can be expected.

What a way to start my vacation. That sounds kind of shitty, but all I
want to do right now is sleep.

We wait.

I've wanted to write about Mary's grandmother Gigi for while but I haven't figured out how to do it.

Essentially I'm writing about waiting for someone to die, but that sounds so callous. But it's what we're doing. Waiting.

Gigi took a good fall almost 2 months ago. She fractured her skull and it left a blood clot on her brain. She left the hospital rather quickly for a 92 year old and was home after a short 4 day stay. Then she was back in after a fainting episode; this time for good.

She stayed at the first hospital for a couple weeks. It was trauma based and for the most part it seemed couldn't do anything for her. She needed rehab. So she was moved to a hospital with much better rehab resources.

She was there for 3, 4 weeks? I can't remember. The time is just blur of going there every night to visit. I don't know if this last hospital was able to help her at all. Gigi got steadily worse. No improvement. Her hearing worsened, her speech became softer and her body began to shake.

But I think the worst part for her was that she was having a harder time communicating. I think it was here that she decided that she was done.

So the family had to decide what to do with her.

Gigi's son didn't want her to go into a nursing home. I think he didn't want her to go a home because this would be admitting some kind of failure on his part. But he didn't want her to go home to his house. She'd spent the last 18 years at my in-laws' and why couldn't she go back there? So he came up with an unfair arrangement, Gigi would stay at my in-laws' house, the son would come over and take care of her during the day, and my mother in-law could take care of her the other 16 hours of the day after she got home from teaching elementary school.

Thank god a nurse came along and set him straight. She told him "There are 25 trained people taking care of her at this very
moment. What makes you think you can do a better job than them?" She let that sink in and walked away.

A little more than a week ago,Gigi ended up staying in a nursing home not even a mile away from our house. Don't confuse this with assisted living, this is a place where people go when they need long term medical attention. It's nice enough and a bargain at $2,000 a month.

Still Gigi's condition waned. It became obvious to us all that her condition wasn't going to get better. I know she knew she wasn't getting better because as Mary, Josh and I were leaving one day last week she told me she loved me. She'd never done that before.

Friday on my home from work Josh called from the home and told me hurry up because Gigi thought she was dieing. I got there and things were bad. The whole family was there. They had her on a breathing treatment. It didn't look good but her condition improved. After a while when things looked better we all left.

After I got off work Saturday morning, we went by and the nurses had her dressed and in a wheelchair. So along with Mary's brother, we wheeled her outside. Josh "drove" and we sat outside for about 15 minutes. Gigi hadn't really been speaking for a a week now and seemed to be content just looking around.

She appeared more delicate to me than ever before. She'd always been old from the day I first met her, but never delicate. Never fragile. Saturday morning she looked to me as if the wind blew the wrong direction she would break.

That afternoon as Mary was on her way to visit, her youngest brother Michael called to let us know something bad was happening. So Josh and I piled in the car and raced over.

When we got there we found out she had a seizure and this was probably it. She had a couple of more seizures before the meds kicked in. She's been unconscious since then and it doesn't look good.

She has a "Do not resuscitate" order so it's just a matter of time. We go and sit around, on the floor if there aren't enough chairs and just talk. Sometime about her, sometimes about trivial things. But always talking.

We wait.

Our lives are kind of on hold. So we wait.

Sometimes it's better to wait.

My wife has been having trouble at the schools she teaches at. Used to teach at.

Her principal was a terror. Her method of management is ridicule, deception and blame. There is too much to tell here. Let it suffice to say that if half of your staff has filed grievences against you to the school board, then you are a bad, bad person.

After the grievences were filed, the principal became bent on revenge against anyone who was involved. with the end result being that my wife's school became a very shitty place to work for a number of people.

So, this summer most of the filers started requesting transfers and otherwise seeking work elsewhere. My wife included.

Luckily my wife landed a gig this week teaching 5th grade at a nice school with a good principal. And a few others found work as well. But my wife was happy and sad. She would be working in a better environment, but she'd be leaving her friends and back in the classroom after spending the last 7(?) years being the best elementary music teacher in her district. But for the most part she felt great about the move.

Until last night.

She got a few calls from her peeps last night saying that the evil witch of a principal was getting transfered to a different school. Just rumour at this point, but it hit her in a bad way.

If the rumour was true, she'd made her move too soon. If the rumour was true, she hadn't had to leave after all.

At this point she settled in to a bit of second guessing. But the deal is done. She's gone.

And with this came guilt. Had she let her students down as well?

Mary is an emotional one. She lives by her heart, and I love her for it. But for her sake I wish she'd just waited. Now she has to deal with a major change in her life because of making a choice 2 days early. Sometimes it's better to wait. Just a little while to see how things develop.

Of course it's easy for me to say wait; I never had to work with her principal. And I'm not Mary. I like a good fight. I have no problem tilting at windmills.

I hope I can give Mary the strength to get through this. It's another in recent trials that the fam has gone through.

I just want her to be happy.