Oh yeah. Happy Halloween. This year's pumpkin is based on the rare "worth 5 million on the Trading Channel" shocked face pumpkin on the Realm. It was a good, easy face to do, and I get to make jokes about it on Channel 1. The realm graphic was blatantly stolen from Bored's web site.

I got a bit tired of the chirpy bug, and so changed my blog name. Aren't you excited?

I feel the new one is suitable. I can be curious to the point of obsessiveness. Heck, to the point of driving myself half mad trying to sate my curiosity. Pandora has nothing on me when I get interested in a subject. What's this like? What happens if I do this? What does that mean? How can I do this? What's this feel like? Sound like? Taste like? Where did this come from? Why? Why? Why? Can I do this? Or that? How can I accomplish this?

It can explain a lot of my behavior. Pure curiosity. You think I'm acting strange? Out of character? I'm simply curious about something new to me. VERY curious. It keeps me going sometimes, even if it's not good for me. I nearly went nuts trying to find out if I could successfully set up an editing system at home. It seemed like every time I tried a different angle, something else would go wrong. (I seem to have everything working now!)

My curiousity can be vague inquiries, too. A lot of my projects are trying to answer the simple question - what will it look like when I'm done?

I'd say my obsessive desire to learn keeps me out of trouble, but that wouldn't necessarily be true. It's always people wondering about that strange noise around the corner that find themselves in trouble.

Yeah. I'm also aware of alternate definitions for the word curious. :-P

Whatever I did to piss somebody off, I'm sorry. Could you please take the pins out of the voodoo PC now? I NEED to finish this program.

It's gone. Bye-bye, woohooo! Cya! *sob*

I finally deleted the temp files and was able to get it to complete the chkdsk, and then performed a desperately needed defragging. (it's rather frightening when most of those little lines show up red in XP's defragger program!) It seems to be running much more smoothly now, but the video in the avi files are gone. I've still got the audio, and I still have one version of the Premiere project that's functional. I'm frustrated and incredibly annoyed, but fortunately my mindset has become "ok, I need to figure out what my next step is." It seems to leave out the plan involving the cold water and a jackhammer this time.

If I'm careful, accurate, precise and anal retentive, I MIGHT be able to recapture the video files and give them the same names as the ruined ones. The project file will recognize the file name and reassemble it all on the timeline just like before. If not, well, then. I get to redo the whole thing. I'm not going to have time to do it at work. Well, actually, I do NOT want to spend any more time than I have to in that basement, where there's now mold growing in the copier room. So my other plan is to set up an editing system at home. I'd have to buy more memory for this computer, and acquire a video card. And a mini-DV player. and stuff. *Sigh*

I feel so incompetent now. And I'm afraid to tell Roscoe.

Windows was Unable to save all the data for the file E:\$mft. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere.

and also: Cannot delete "Folder name". The directory is not empty.

And then: Cannot Play "file". the device is not connected.

These are the error messages that started plaguing my editing computer last Friday. It's saving some files but not all of them, and then doesn't recognize some later. I can see my video, I can edit it, but creating any new titles or importing music is hit or miss. Rendering is a nightmare. Problem is, I don't know what happened between Thursday afternoon and Friday. There is 55 gb of free space still on the RAID drive, so it can't be lack of space. There are, however, several large files on it. Do I delete them and start over, breaking the footage into smaller pieces? Do I break the main project into separate parts? Should I take off the music and titles, save the footage, and start a new show to add in the rest? Can I delete the temp files?

Have I mentioned how much I hate these RAID drives? I'm saying it again.

I love my aunt. Really, I do! So does everyone else. She's got one of those caring, charismatic personalities that just makes you feel good when you talk to her.

So naturally when she needed help at a community center's halloween party, I said sure, why not! I kind of missed my haunted house days, I figured I could do something halloweenish this year to celebrate the holiday.

I was there from 2 pm til about 10:30 pm, helping to set up, taking pictures during the kid's costume parade, passing out cider, popcorn and cookies, and then cleaning up afterwards. Supposely 500 adults and children had signed up to participate in the event, I don't know how many showed up. I just know that place was PACKED. Chaos at its finest.

I ran out of cookies early on and had to substitute tiny cinnamon buns until someone was able to bring me more. I went through four jugs of cider and a container of orange juice and then handed out cups and directed people to the water fountain or the vending machine. The pizza guys next to me ran out of pizza and had to order more, which meant I had to placate the angry crowd with popcorn and cinnamon buns until more pizza arrived. I had run back there simply to fill the popcorn bowl before people got there and ended up staying behind that counter the entire time. Apparently I was in a good spot. After everybody went upstairs to watch the magic show, I wandered out to see if I could help somewhere else.

Ye gods. It looked like a popcorn machine had exploded inside the building. Trash and crushed cookies and popcorn and cups were EVERYWHERE. We began cleaning up the downstairs and collecting lost bits of costumes to place at the front desk. Then we began sweeping. And sweeping. and sweeping. When most everybody had left, we began to vacuum. I'm surprised the vacuum cleaner didn't blow a fuse or choke on the amount of popcorn it sucked up. The mess was just too horrible to leave for a cleaning crew that may or may not arrive the next morning. I wish I had gotten before and after and after pictures.

When we could see the floor again, we took inventory of what was left. A lot of pizza, and a lot of bags of kettle corn. I brought a whole pizza home and four big bags of popcorn, which I can't eat, but thought that Joyce and my parents and maybe Erin and Andrew would like some. If anybody else wants any, I know where to get more.

Oh. One last thing. Never, never, EVER have popcorn at an indoor event. Ever. Have it outside. The birds will have a field day afterwards.

Occupation: Girl - Van Helsing in Fifteen Minutes

This was . . . . just about right.

Allow me to repeat what I said yesterday.

AAAAAAAGGGHGGHGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

A condensed scream so it won't run off the screen. But trust me, it should be longer and louder.

Remember the bathroom that was being repaired at work? Remember how there's only two bathrooms in the building, one on each floor, in the same corner? Guess what! The second floor bathroom leaked into the first floor bathroom, and then into the basement. According to the cemetery manager, it sounded like someone had left a faucet on and the drain clogged, but I'm not sure. All's I know is I came up from the editing room to get lunch, and saw all the first floor people staring into the bathroom. "There's a leak." They tell me. "Uhoh!" I say. A few moments later, I add: "I hope it's not leaking into the basement. Your copier room is right below this bathroom."

They stare at me. I turn around and go back downstairs, to hear an ominious, driptap, driptap coming from their nicely carpeted, new copier and network installed copier room. Fortunately for them, it was dripping where the copier wasn't. However, it WAS dripping where the paper was. And where the postage machine was. So we moved everything into the other room and called DPW to come back and fix the mess. The poor guys. Everything in that building just falls apart when they're looking in the opposite direction.

When I first started work there, it was the basement that leaked, due to overclogged and/or poor drainage when it rained. That leaked into the editing room. A few years later, it was the roof leaking, right onto the upstairs copier. Now the bathrooms are giving them trouble. I fear the building is going to sink.

Then I get to spend an hour and a half with the volunteer that's now come up with six different projects. He wants to learn to edit. He goes off on wild tangents and apparently doesn't listen to anything I tell him about picking one project, keeping it simple, and sticking with it. He also insists on going to Dave and getting an ok from him for everything, including learning to edit. It's me he needs to work with. I've told him this. Frankly I've been trying to protect Dave from him.

All this means I got very little editing done. However, Roscoe did stop by and was absolutely delighted with what I'd done so far. I'm assuming he's easy to please, as I have a LOT of work left to do!

Revenge of the Zombie Pumpkins! - pumpkin carving patterns

It's that time of year again! I liked some of his designs, but you need to send money before you get the pattern. Remember, I also like PumpkinGlow.com's patterns. I'm looking for new ones this year.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGG
GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Didn't help.

The miniatures show was a bit of a disappointment. Everyone looked at me blankly when I asked if they had a magnifying glass in mini, and there were very few rugs to be had. I can see now that all the rugs I was looking at were too big as it was. I did buy a microscope, a display table, and a small wooden tray. Nothing unusual to add to the 'collection' though.

After that Mom and I went to Lord and Taylors to see what we could find to buy with the gift card I got for my birthday. It would seem the most popular fabric this fall is wool. Sadly, I break out in big welts when I wear wool. There were a few dress suits I tried on, thinking I should own something suitable (har!) for interviews or working in a real office. I do still own two dress suits, one I absolutely adore, but I'm too afraid to try them on at the moment. The ones I tried were very nice quality, and fit me well, but the price was just more than I felt I could justify paying. It was a very disappointing trip.

So when my aunt asks, I can tell her: "Thanks for the underwear!"

Went up to Erin and Andrew's again. They had their cats fixed (they're no longer broken, according to Andrew, She plans to be next, according to Erin) so I offered to go up and distract Erin from fussing over the cats to death. I helped her stuff checks in envelopes and watched two almost grown siamese experience the effects of good painkillers. Of course, Clara has enough weird habits (such as staring at the ceiling for no reason) but she developed a new one. Water fascinated her. She sat and played with the water in the water dish for nearly half an hour. She'd stick her paw in it and splash it around slowly, then fast, making small waves, going in one direction, then the other. Then she tried it in the smaller half of the dish, also full of water. Later she tried to climb the floor lamp (like climbing a flagpole, not possible for her!). She also kept misjudging the distance between her nose and her food, and ended up burying her face more than once in the food bowl. Fortunately it was dry food! They didn't stagger, bob, and weave like our cats did, and by the time I left were acting pretty normally. (for them!)

They gave me Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Robin Hood on DVD for my birthday. I had also brought up Ella Enchanted for Erin to watch.

MOVIE REVIEW: Ella Enchanted
It was . . . interesting. Anne Hathaway's pretty talented, I'd like to see if she can get out of the doofy teen princess roles. Cary Elwes was in it too, looking a bit older, although not as bad as I expected. He looked the part of the evil brother-usurping-the-throne, but his voice didn't quite match. The whole movie had the feel of a live-action Shrek, and while the special effects were good, the combination of modern teen stuff in a medieval setting was just . . . annoying. And the soundtrack. That was annoying too. The giants were pretty interesting. I don't know why I thought they were.

I drove home with a thunder/rainstorm at my back. I had the Fantasia soundtrack playing, and as the wind picked up, the leaves swirled in circles across the road, the clouds grew up dark and menacing around me, and the rain began to fall from the sky, I thought, whoa. The Sorcerer's Apprentice is incredible storm music! I felt like I had my own driving-home-in-a-rainshower soundtrack. Of course, I'm not sure where the thunderstorm was. Erin got thunder, I just encountered the rain.

Miniature Show and Sale tomorrow at Tysons! I have a small list of things to look for, mostly for the archeologist's study. Money to spend that I shouldn't. Wohoo!

It appears to be a resume type of day. Dan and Jeff stopped by to visit (apparently killing time, which they're good at) and Dan took my resume back to work with him to pass around. So at least I've made ONE attempt to change my job.

At any rate, here's a WOHOO! from me. Something to cross off my list. I've had that resume at work for over a month now.

I just got a call from a SECOND staffing agency about my resume on monster.com. This one offered me an interview for a specific office manager position in Reston. She seemed reluctant to give me any further details about the job or the company she worked for. I turned her down. I want more details about a company before I make an attempt to apply for a job there. And I certainly want to know more about a staffing agency before I do business with them! Why are they reluctant to tell me more? Are they trying to protect their business so I won't go around them and get the job on my own? 'Office Manager' can mean a lot of things. Heck, even office assistant can mean ANYTHING. I never thought I'd be editing video when I got this job. Or running the damn station.

I'm thinking I made another mistake. However, I'm a bit leery of staffing agencies. I worked for/with one a couple of years ago, and found it incredibly frustrating. However, I can't keep refusing every phone call I get.

I finally got a chance to read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for the first time last night. It's been a while since I've read a book that could be easily read out loud. It's well suited to it. Too bad I don't have anyone to read to.

Of course, as I'm reading, I'm comparing it to the movie, and approving a LOT of elements that the directors used. They did make some changes, and the book finally cleared up one point that had irritated me for a long time. In the book, Dorothy meets the Good Witch of the North in Munchkinland, a little old lady that's munchkin-sized. After the Wizard departs in the balloon, Dorothy and her friends travel to find Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, who knows the secret of the silver shoes.

Now that THAT has been cleared up, I can proceed with the rest of the series!

Jackhammers. At 7:30 in the morning. I should pay someone to run one EVERY morning outside the house. I got to work at early for once.

Of course, at work, DPW spent the day attempting to fix the first floor bathroom, which created quite a bit of traffic in the editing room as they kept coming in to mess with the water pipes in the closet. They were also using some sort of machinery that sounded like jackhammers. I couldn't escape from noisy machines today.

This has got to be one of the most useful things I've learned on the Internet.

The strange thing is, I found the link on Dave Barry's blog.

Google on How To Change Your Oil.

I was randomly asked this question by a guy last night. My first thought was, 'NOO! not another pop quiz!'

In the past, every time a guy has asked me something car related, it's so they can laugh at me, stop me, and then proceed to tell me how it's SUPPOSED to be done. Incredibly humiliating.

So I start out on my awkward explanation slowly, waiting for the "Haha! no, that's WRONG!" exclamation of triumph, and it doesn't happen. It finally dawns on me that he was asking because he WANTED TO KNOW.

So, um, sorry about the defensive attitude and the sudden "You mean you don't KNOW??" outburst. I was expecting abject humilation and had a hard time switching mindsets to react to genuine curiosity.

I've been staring at airplanes and Roscoe all day.

It's a great project on the new air and space museum. Roscoe wrote a wonderful storyboard and script, all's I have to do is follow the directions. Right? Right?? I've run into issues already, but they're fixable. It will be a half-hour show when I'm done, but it's going to be one of those editing-intensive programs.
First off, I have no music suitable to airplanes and flight. Secondly, there's gaps in the footage that I need. (nearly three hours of video, and there's NOT ENOUGH!!!) Third, the microphone didn't work for part of his speech, so we had to do voiceovers. I can almost get the new audio and the old video in sync, but he says things slightly differently, so I'll have to figure out which video is useable and which to hide under b-roll footage. Or else hope the audience isn't paying too much attention. (sadly enough, I always do.)

As you can see, I've been deep in frame rate concentration all day. Then my cell phone rings (a shock on its own) and it's a woman from a staffing company who saw my resume on monster.com. What? Who? Where? Huh? I can't even begin to describe to you how difficult it is to come back to the present world when you've been in editing mode. She caught me completely off guard, but politely left her name, number and web site so I could contact her later, when I was interested in starting a new job within a month. I stupidly told her I wasn't interested in leaving the current job for another year. But gracious, she had pretty much woken me up from a sound sleep! Besides, I wanted to research the staffing company a bit first. And, if I left right now, who would run the station? I'm sure I could do it on evenings or weekends, but there's enough people in my family right now who have trouble leaving their job behind.

I should call her back.

Movie Review: Blade

Everyone told me this was a great movie, but no one gave any details. So I was pleasantly surprised by the soundtrack! Great music. Great acting, good nemesis who's also very nice to look at. (Stephen Dorff?) The blood club scene at the beginning of the movie was fantastic. I immediately recognized the music, but it took me a trip to the IMDB before I knew who did it. Turns out I have it on CD! I haven't listened to New Order in ages, I nearly got rid of it the other day. I think I'll drive around with it in the car for a while.

Anyway, I enjoyed it! I hope the second one's just as good.

If you're easily grossed out by medical photos, don't look. If you've put up with me and my braces for the past year and are curious to see what changes have occured, well then, by all means, take a look!

Morbid Outlook - Carmina Burana

An interesting accompaniment to my previous post.

Oh Fortune, Like the moon
you are changeable
ever waxing and waning;
hateful life first oppresses
and then soothes as fancy takes it;
poverty - and power - it melts them like ice.

Fate - Monstrous and empty,
you whirling wheel,
you are malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,
shadowed and veiled,
you plague me too;
now through the game
I bring my bare back to your villainy.

Fate is against me
in health and virtue,
driven on and weighted down,
always enslaved.

So at this hour, without delay
pluck the vibrating strings;
since Fate strikes down the string man,
everyone weep with me!

The translated words to Oh Fortuna by Carl Orff from the opera Carmina Burana. Sounds like some music today. I guess feelings don't change, just how you sing about them. (the tune's stuck in my head, it's annoying when you don't know the words!)

Robert, you're evil.

That gift certificate for Amazon has been sitting in my inbox, taunting me. I have NO idea what to buy with it. Yes, I have a wish list, but, well, it's there so people won't ask me what I want, because hey, look! Here's a bunch of ideas for Elaine! Since Amazon sells everything from books to car parts (I'm waiting for them to start selling houses and email addresses) I keep wandering through different sections, looking to see what may spark my interest. Interior design books? Music? Books? Movies? Home decor? Too many choices!

It was an unexpected gift, and thank you. I know your budget is more limited than mine.

But you're still evil.

I'm bored. I'm stuck here at work for another half an hour, waiting for someone to pick up their DVD, and trying to be good about being here during office hours, particularly since I didn't come in yesterday.

I felt awful yesterday. Stupid sinuses. I woke up this morning feeling great, got to work on time, (for once!) and was doing just dandy . . . til I went downstairs. It smells funny today here, too, so I'm suspecting it's mold. I'm allergic to work!

It's my parent's 32nd anniversary. I got them two gift certificates to Lowes, as part of my evil plan to encourage the renovation of the basement. Too subtle? Too tacky? Can I help it? I'm just trying to encourage them to work together on a project that will benefit both of them. Of course, who am I kidding? They've rarely worked well together on ANYTHING involving the house. Furniture shopping with them requires a referee. I think they reached a sort of compromise - mom gets the inside of the house, dad gets the outside.

Things got a little shaky a while back when dad discovered the Food Network and developed an interest in cooking. The kitchen is mom's domain. Even I have trouble getting in there to make anything! If I do get it, she's in there every five minutes with some sort of excuse.

Fortunately, dad found the landscaping shows on HGTV and transformed the side yard into a sweet little garden area. This was a major improvement from the overgrown garden swamp that had been there previously. Well, I'm sure the birds, the snake and the chipmunks weren't too happy, but everybody else is. Of course, now that we can see the basement door, it looks rather bad. 22 years old and way too small for the doorway opening. Apparently the builders only had one small door left, so they just Harveyed it into place. Dad wants a new door. I don't blame him. Mom wants a basement room. I don't blame her! I want to help. (I also want that kid outside with the whistle to STOP.)

I hope they cooperate with each other this time.

Interesting optical illusion

GAAAAHHHHH!!!!

It's bad enough that my allergies today have made it really difficult to see clearly - then I find this site . . .

I'm having fun.

After several days of fruitless searching on the Internet, I finally went to Lowes to check out what's available for walls for the supposed basement remodel. (which I'm really pushing, which is why I'm doing all the research. I find people are more likely to finish things when every thing they need is readily available, including data.) Mom and I hit a wall (HAR HAR!) when it came to what to use. I want drywall, she wants panelling. I say panelling is cheap and evil and expensive. She cringes at the thought of the finishing work that drywall requires. I'm slowly convincing her, though. I've won major victories with arguments such as the difficulty in hanging things on panelling (and oh how she loves to hang things on walls) and the price difference.

I bought a sample panel at Lowes to bring home, and was able to find panelling information at the Georgia Pacific web site. I just needed a name brand to direct me. I'm very grateful that they make more than just ugly wood panelling (like in my sister's house. awful stuff!) There's panelling that looks like linen, and leather, and wallpaper. There's even panelling that's whiteboard and chalkboard material. Lastly, there was pegboard panelling. I liked the whiteboard material - that would be fun to do in a kid's room. So, for panelling, I have, for the moment, stopped hissing and spitting at it when I see it. There ARE uses for it!

However, it's also nearly three times as expensive as drywall. I pointed out that we could buy drywall AND hire someone to do the mudwork for less than the amount it would take to pay for the panelling. The panelling price didn't even include the 'backing' it was required to have. (apparently under a certain thickness, it needs a sturdy backing. I'm assuming this is to prevent warping.)

Back to the panelling, this something mom and I could manage to install. (I'm getting the feeling that dad's not too interested in this project.) Drywall, however, is heavy. I'd have to do some coercing to get help. Fortunately, I know some people. Some of them I'm even related to.

I find this whole project fascinating. So much planning to do!

The Runic Journey

I came across this site while attempting to puzzle out the little scroll attached to the tree in this picture. Someone had posted on the message boards that he thought part of it translated to: "Jots Nell" which doesn't make any sense to me. It just got me curious - what DOES it say? If I could make out all the runes I'm sure I could get something sensible out of it.

At least something better than Jots Nell.

The blogger news section often gives suggestions for things to talk about or include in your blogs. Today it says to ask your readers to suggest three photos they'd like to see posted. I'm asking because I have a sick, twisted, extreme curiosity and am a glutton for punishment.

I also got curious about the mobile text messaging on AOL, only to discover that it won't work with my phone. Instead, you have to send an email to "yourphonenumber@vmobl.com" with a limit of 160 characters. I suppose it'd be fun to try out, but sounds like it'll be more trouble than it's worth.

Time to get dressed, run errands, and go to Maryland. Oh, I guess I need to pack, too!

Yahoo! News - Mount St. Helens Awakes, Erupting Steam and Ash

Wohooo!

There's something incredibly fascinating about natural events. Just small, subtle reminders that we're still not completely in charge here.

You are Here.


I plan to be Here over the weekend, at the Brunswick Railroad Days.

My old computer appears to be trashed. I can't even get it to reload Windows, it just keeps rebooting. I have the feeling that I can't fix it without purchasing something new for it, so I'm simply going to tuck it safely out of the way someplace until I need it again. Or else I'll gut it and put all the working parts into the Dell. I'm not very happy with the Dell. The DVD drive is incredibly noisy, the audio is ok, but I'm getting buzzing noises (although it could be the headphones.) It's quieter than the old one, and it doesn't crash or constantly reboot. It works. I can live with it.

Ok, so I am happy with it. hush.