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.