It's interesting to note that I haven't been blogging as much this past week because I haven't been editing. It's sad but true, I do more blogging as means of procrastination, and when I'm busy trying to get my shit together, I stay pretty busy and I don't really have time to reflect and blog.
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Well, at least the DVD is burning now. It's 3 in the morning and I've got 3 more to burn, but I have to get the DVDs in the mail for tomorrow. They were supposed to go out Thursday, but DVD Studio Pro has to act like a punk - I've been dealing with some pretty interesting problems, all of which are probably too boring to explain. But basically the software puts this limitation that I had to figure out how to accommodate in order to get my DVD written. At 2 hours 15 minutes, it's one of the longer DVDs I had to make, and it was getting me plenty pissed because I have been encoding since Monday. It would come out wrong, and I'd do it again. Encoding takes quite a while, about 2 days or so. I know, yours may not take as long, but I opted for a two-pass, high quality, dual layer encode. Anyway.
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So instead of editing, I've been doing other productive tasks, such as taxes, which I hate with a ferocity and usually avoid altogether. But it's just that I have this downtime and it needs to be done anyway, so I hacked at my mom's taxes first, and then went on the painstaking task of back-documenting all my business expenses - stuff that I don't keep any track of because I'm a lousy bookkeeper. Anyway, further proof that I am a terrible businessman - I made about 12 thou doing videography, which sounds pretty promising until I tell you that I spent about 7 thou trying to equip and maintain it. So that left about 5 thousand to support my family for the whole year. Yeah, I'm no good at it. I gotta get out of it.
Part of it was trying to start up my business, and with that came a lot of new equipment purchases. I mean, I actually scrimped on a lot of stuff, believe it or not. I purchased a Panasonic camcorder, for crying out loud. And FYI, it shoots like one too. I bought everything pretty reasonably, and now I'm just more equipped than the average bear. I think it was my secret ploy to equip myself with filmmaking materials in order to write it off. I dunno, it would be a tricky sneak if I didn't realize that I could've done the same thing under a different business venture, like independent filmmaking.
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I feel bad for the kids tonight. I wasn't the happiest Daddy for them, because of the whole DVD thing (but seriously, you should be able to author a DVD like that, right? Stupid DSP.) and I was a little snappy with them. But luckily children have this great capacity to love unconditionally, and to live moments as they happen and not hold grudges. Days like today I really wish I was done with videography altogether so that I could maintain a regular schedule. These few days I feel like I've been working non-stop, though mostly on taxes, not videography.
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Well, I'm a little zoned out since it's past my usual bedtime, so I'll just go watch a movie or something. Might watch United 93.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Um, Okay
For some reason it decided to snow tonight, which was kind of weird. It was hailing earlier, and then it just dumped some snow on us. But it'll be gone by tomorrow, so the kids won't even get to play around in it.
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So my mom went to the doctor's finally today, after a week or so of coughing. She said that it was so bad last night she contemplated having me drive her to the ER, because she had problems breathing after coughing. And of course, as I had suspected, she had caught a case of pneumonia, likely from my wife who is just recovering from it. Since I'm of a different species, I haven't gotten it yet. The kids haven't caught it either, though they've got some kind of ear infection, because they can't seem to listen real well.
Lately, we've had to fight the kids over meal times like the Dickens. Charles, that is. They would just stall or play during mealtime, and Zoe will straight out pout through the whole meal, making Daddy very very cranky. Nothing makes me more cranky than things not going as planned. I've also been having a hard time with the kids - I think a huge part of it is because they're bored, and I don't know what to do with them. I would take them out, but it's too cold to do anything and I detest going to the mall just to kill time. I would teach them games, but between the two of them, with one being bored and wandering off and the other making up their own rules, it gets to be just problematic as hell. We tried playing Candyland a while back and I couldn't do it. I tried to explain and follow the rules, but the anal side of me prevailed and I had to give up on any kind of rules.
So while Zoe's extending her lips by pouting and not eating, Alex has been overconfident and a bit of a bully. He's got his own agenda a lot of times, and most of it has to do with intimidating Zoe or pretending he's kicking someone's ass. When I've disciplined him a few times, he'll just look at me without any sign of regret. Sigh. We've really got to step up the parenting here. Got a couple teenagers in our hands.
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I've been in a bit of a limbo here. When my weddings are encoding, I can't do a whole lot. So I've been goofing off a lot today, doing a little of this, a little of that. Had my teeth cleaned yesterday. Had nitrous and I had to ask them to give me more because I was feeling the pain.
My eyes are starting to burn. It started after the 4th hour of video games. Gotta go.
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So my mom went to the doctor's finally today, after a week or so of coughing. She said that it was so bad last night she contemplated having me drive her to the ER, because she had problems breathing after coughing. And of course, as I had suspected, she had caught a case of pneumonia, likely from my wife who is just recovering from it. Since I'm of a different species, I haven't gotten it yet. The kids haven't caught it either, though they've got some kind of ear infection, because they can't seem to listen real well.
Lately, we've had to fight the kids over meal times like the Dickens. Charles, that is. They would just stall or play during mealtime, and Zoe will straight out pout through the whole meal, making Daddy very very cranky. Nothing makes me more cranky than things not going as planned. I've also been having a hard time with the kids - I think a huge part of it is because they're bored, and I don't know what to do with them. I would take them out, but it's too cold to do anything and I detest going to the mall just to kill time. I would teach them games, but between the two of them, with one being bored and wandering off and the other making up their own rules, it gets to be just problematic as hell. We tried playing Candyland a while back and I couldn't do it. I tried to explain and follow the rules, but the anal side of me prevailed and I had to give up on any kind of rules.
So while Zoe's extending her lips by pouting and not eating, Alex has been overconfident and a bit of a bully. He's got his own agenda a lot of times, and most of it has to do with intimidating Zoe or pretending he's kicking someone's ass. When I've disciplined him a few times, he'll just look at me without any sign of regret. Sigh. We've really got to step up the parenting here. Got a couple teenagers in our hands.
----
I've been in a bit of a limbo here. When my weddings are encoding, I can't do a whole lot. So I've been goofing off a lot today, doing a little of this, a little of that. Had my teeth cleaned yesterday. Had nitrous and I had to ask them to give me more because I was feeling the pain.
My eyes are starting to burn. It started after the 4th hour of video games. Gotta go.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Oscars 2007
First of all, Zoe's fine. She woke me up this morning and she was pretty much tip-top, so we were happy. Normal Zoe can be very draining, but it's also one of her great attributes.
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Well, there's exactly one person who cares about how I feel about the Oscars, but I don't like to refer to myself in the third person, but here's my score anyway. I got half of the noms correct, 12 out of 24, and I guess I've seen only about three of the films. The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, and An Inconvenient Truth. I was surprised that Eddie Murphy and Cars didn't win, more surprised that Alan Arkin and Happy Feet did. I mean, c'mon... Happy Feet? I liked the singing portions great, but half the movie required a great deal of the suspension of my disbelief. When the film changes tones, it's not so much like, "Oh Great!" but more of a "Oooookay, I guess..." Weird.
And I'm glad to see Marty win, and he was such a shoo-in that they even got the Masters of the 70s auteurs to kinda receive him into the club, so to speak. Except Lucas who didn't really win one, but probably win get some honorary one bestow upon him when they figure he ain't got much time left. Anyway, I'm glad Marty won, even though I do have my misgivings about "The Departed."
The rest of it all, I guess was okay. Since I watched it on DVR, I skipped all the commercials and sorry to say, all the technical awards and their speeches. I mean, after all, we are watching what is equivalent to the Employees of the Year awards of the film industry.
I had two moments of yelling at the TV, when Happy Feet won and when the announcer said that the Departed was a remake of the Japanese film, "Infernal Affairs." I yelled that I was going to pee on his head, that it was a Hong Kong movie.
But you know, I do need to get a life.
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Well, there's exactly one person who cares about how I feel about the Oscars, but I don't like to refer to myself in the third person, but here's my score anyway. I got half of the noms correct, 12 out of 24, and I guess I've seen only about three of the films. The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, and An Inconvenient Truth. I was surprised that Eddie Murphy and Cars didn't win, more surprised that Alan Arkin and Happy Feet did. I mean, c'mon... Happy Feet? I liked the singing portions great, but half the movie required a great deal of the suspension of my disbelief. When the film changes tones, it's not so much like, "Oh Great!" but more of a "Oooookay, I guess..." Weird.
And I'm glad to see Marty win, and he was such a shoo-in that they even got the Masters of the 70s auteurs to kinda receive him into the club, so to speak. Except Lucas who didn't really win one, but probably win get some honorary one bestow upon him when they figure he ain't got much time left. Anyway, I'm glad Marty won, even though I do have my misgivings about "The Departed."
The rest of it all, I guess was okay. Since I watched it on DVR, I skipped all the commercials and sorry to say, all the technical awards and their speeches. I mean, after all, we are watching what is equivalent to the Employees of the Year awards of the film industry.
I had two moments of yelling at the TV, when Happy Feet won and when the announcer said that the Departed was a remake of the Japanese film, "Infernal Affairs." I yelled that I was going to pee on his head, that it was a Hong Kong movie.
But you know, I do need to get a life.
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