Here's Some Fun For The Young People!

It's funny to me now, looking back on the battles I had with computer programs. It reminds me of when I was in college, working on the restoration of "Gone With The Wind," and treating all the material with gloves and tongs. It's so much easier now! Wonder what I'll be saying in three more years? Remember Macs? Final Cut? Wow, what were we thinking...? Saturday, October 07, 2006

Hey, kiddies, want to learn some new curse words? Get your parents permission and ask me about my "new" authoring software.

For the past year or so, I've been leaning on friends like Erik and Carlos for help burning DVDs. Serious problems getting movies off of my computer. Ridiculous sacrifices from my friends to allow me to put my stuff on the format I needed. Premiere used to burn them for me, but then stopped for some reason, and I could never figure out why, and that's about where my intellectual and technological capacity found its limit.

So, at some personal effort, another of my buddies (Jerrod) got me a copy of Sonic's My DVD, a no-frills program guaranteed to pump out the discs for me. Which was really helpful, because it allowed me to get my reel out to a company in Austin that (according to a recruiter who was bugging the hell out of me for a week) was really anxious to see it after reading my resume. The latest version of which I apparently need to frame, because no one should be that excited about my resume. Said company has since evidently sat on the disc for the week since, not commenting on it. Like my hair's not gray enough.

We were talking about authoring software, weren't we?

Okay, so Jerrod used it at his place, burned my disc, I got it into the mail. Then I took the software home and started to install it on my computer. At which point I got a message that read something like this:

"The program 'Sonic' is already on your computer, do you wish to replace it?"

I'll give you a moment to let that sink in.

The past year-plus I've spent trying to get software so I could get movies off my computer and onto a DVD for my friends and loved ones, all that time mooching and kicking my computer and whining, and the program was already on my computer.

If the dogs in your neighborhood started howling earlier this week, it was in reaction to my screaming. Or possibly to Lisa's hysterical (and I might add, entirely unkind) laughter.

Anyone else noticed that I promised to only talk about positive things on my blog, and then neglected it until I nearly had an infarction over a piece of software?

Yeah, me too.

If you haven't seen Cronenberg's "A History of Violence," do. Textbook example of how a great director can turn a mediocre script into something spectacular. And watch the extras. Incredible stuff there.