Went to Jay & Rachel’s first last night… Amy, James, and two of Rachel’s friends were there… After I left there, I decided to stop by Chuck’s for a minute to say hi to him and Johnny… I eventually landed here and crashed..
I was going to go back to boston today, as I heard that some friends I don’t see very often anymore were going to be in town, but I just got way too behind on laundry and showers and stuff, then the weather report made travelling look pretty anti-appealing… Once I let the time slip too much I figured that everyone would have already left by the time I got in (not to mention that I wasn’t even sure if they were going to be there at all), so I said fuck it. Hopefully I can catch up with them all in the near future…
I have played something like 9 hours of Metroid Prime in the past 2 days… I had to stop playing a little while ago because my eyes hurt, but I don’t want to stop… After this break (as if switching CRTs is really a break). I might jump back on the horse… The game is that good (christ, it must be if it has held my attention this long… I barely play games at all anymore).
My landline is sucking wind today, so it has appeared busy all day when trying to call it and I get no dialtone. Unfortunately, compounding the gravity of this problem, my cell phone (which doesn’t get service in the house) is set to forward all calls to that line… So one line being down has disrupted two… The problem is a line problem, as far as I can tell… I disconnected all devices from the line and it still shows as busy when called… I am so not-interested in trying to fix this problem tomorrow…
I have absolutely no plans for tomorrow, dunno what I will do… I am still planning on leaving on the 1st or 2nd, but I really have no specific plan (nor do I plan on having one… Picking up and going sounds good to me)…
Spent some time tonight playing with some of the options on my DV cam (such as shooting some stuff in Anamorphic Widescreen)… I am going to get a camera bag for it tomorrow, and Chuck is going to order me a tripod and head (he works at a camera shop).
Went out with Chuck and Johnny tonight to finally see The Two Towers. I enjoyed it alot, but I never read the book so I have no touchstone to compare it to. When I was in High School I read The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring, and didn’t like either, so I never continued on. I have recently given FOTR a second chance, and have begun re-reading it, so we will see if I continue with the rest of the trilogy this time around…
My parents got me a JVC GR-DVL120U MiniDV Camera for Christmas this year, which is awesome. Unfortunately, the camera didn’t come with either a tape or a 1394 cable… I got Chuck to bring over an old tape he shot at Stellafane 2000 so I could play around yesterday, and Johnny ended up giving me another tape (because he got a camera as a gift as well as a 6-pack of tapes)… Today I went out to get the cable and some blank tapes… I used iMovie to transfer the Stellafane video from Chuck’s tape to the Mac, and then logged all the different cuts. I have been playing around with iMovie a bit now that I have something to use it with, and it seems nice (if not basic). I think I feel a bit more comfortable in Final Cut Pro, though… But I am not laying out \$1000 to pick it up…
Since I didn’t end up using Johnny’s tape for much, I dumped the Stellafane footage back out to it to give back to him… I figured that since he was there he might like the footage to play around with. It’s weird, because he was asking me for help with using his camera with his PC, and since ALL of my 8-ish hours of DV work has been done on Macs, I was absolutely no help… He had some crappy-looking editing suite that came with his fancy Radeon, but it was so anti-intuitive it was sickening… Anyone know of any cheap, simple, 1394-aware video editing packages for someone who just wants to simply edit home movies and the like? I thought of personalStudio, which I recommended to him, but their online store is currently borked… It appears that they still have a demo available, so he should be able to play around with it in the meantime.
I may have a nasty cold, but that can’t stop the goodness… All of the stuff I gave has been well received, and I also got some really cool stuff (more on that later). Anyway, just wanted to wish everyone well…
Chuck and I went to the mall tonight to people watch, which is always fun this time of year. The mall wasn’t that crowded, but it was late on a Sunday night, so I didn’t really expect it to be too crazy.. Actually ran into someone from high school who I not only remembered, but who remembered me, which was amazing… I have only run into about 5-6 people from Hopatcong in the 7 years since I graduated, and many of them had trouble remembering me. Of course, I can barely remember anything from that time anyway, so I don’t blame them.
I am off to go play some Risk on the computer and finish a bit more of the book that I am currently reading.
Chuck and Johnny came over last night to watch Fellowship of the Ring. Chuck hadn’t seen it yet, and we wanted to go see The Two Towers, so we needed to bring him up to speed before tossing him into the fire. We might go see The Two Towers tonight, but we also might go after Christmas. I am not a fanatic, so I can wait a few days if necessary.
We got the Christmas Tree decorated last night, and it is looking good. My parents picked out the tree a few weeks ago and it is definately a beauty… I am finally getting in the Christmas Spirit… For my first few days home I was a bit worried that I wasn’t really bouncing around like I usually do this time of year, but the energy is finally building… I guess all the negative stuff going on in my life right now just made the Christmas ride a bit rougher..
I just realized that I never actually described what my Mac is… This is because I am not trying to publicize the specifics about how the Mac came into my possession… This friends-only post is to let you guys and gals in on my little secret…
First of all, the machine is a PowerMac G4 Tower (" quicksilver") running at 733Mhz. It came with 256MB of RAM, but I recently upgraded it to 768MB. It has 40GB of disk and a CD-RW drive. The best part? I paid nothing for the machine… Zilch… Zero…
When Rovia mentioned that they were selling some old equipment, I put a bid of \$575 on the PowerMac, which I wasn’t too serious about because it was WAY lowballing it. The bid was initially accepted, but I was later told that they decided to only sell equipment to employees, so I was SOL. Mario (former co-worker) called me while I was in NJ for Thanksgiving and said he would buy the machine for me if I gave him the money. When I got back to Boston after the holiday I stopped by the office to give him the check. He closed the door and told me that the purchasing company decided to give away the equipment to the employees… But the Venture Capital firm couldn’t know about this… So Mario paid for the machine, and the purchasing company reimbursed him… So I got the machine for free.. :P
