October 2005 Archives

Herein lies an update.

Working on family DVDs

I've been trying to spend some time working on some DVDs of family videos. Previously, I had some made up of the years before Maya was born and shortly after Maya was born. Lucy was feeling a bit left out and asked if I'd make a DVD that included footage of her, so I jumped ahead to a few months before Lucy was born.

I just finished that DVD. June 2000 - Dec 20, 2000: 4.1 GB of DVD video. I separate each event into its own title on the DVD and produce a menu that lets you skip to a specific event/title or play all. Each event is preceded by a CG title sequence.

Most of the time, I don't really edit much out of the video, but some of the longer ones, I cut up extensively. For example, there was a trip to the zoo in this DVD I just finished. I think my edits make it a lot more fun to watch.

It seems the only time I ever have to work on any of this stuff is on the weekends... so I try to do as much as I can.

Home improvements and basement

Now that Autumn is fully upon us, I have begun transfering my limited home improvement skills from the yard to the interior of the house.

A couple weekends ago, I put low-voltage boxes and keystone jacks in the walls of our family room to make the installation of our home theater system more attractive and professional. I also have three network cables coming up behind the TV. One is for a videophone Christine brings home from work. I'm thinking about building a media PC so I can watch video I download on the TV.

We've been doing some planning in the basement as well. We decided to cover up one of the doorways for my office, so I got that framed this weekend and I've got a sheet of wallboard ready to go up there.

I messed something electrical up in the lighting circuit for the office -- only two of the four recessed can lights would come on when I turned the circuit on. I finally got a tester and figured out where the problem was. I had to cut a hole in the ceiling and get into the junction box by the second light and re-connect the leads going into one of the wire nuts and wrap it good.

I don't know if it's possible, but I'm hoping we can at least have two bedrooms done in the basement by Christmas. Right now, it's looking like we're going to move the plumbing for the bathroom in the basement and that means cutting up the cement floor: not fun. The way it's plumbed right now, however, imposes some very undesireable limitations on what we can do. For one thing, we have to install a shower if we keep the current plumbing. There just simply isn't enough room for a tub. By relocating the drains, we'll be able to have a tub, a bigger bathroom, and more.

Trailering

Because we knew we were going to be doing more construction work in the basement, we'd been thinking of either picking up a beat-up pickup truck or a trailer to pull behind the Subaru. About two months ago, someone was selling a small utility trailer nearby and I bought it. Since then, I've been gathering all the necessary hardware to hitch it up to the car. It's been quite a learning experience for me.

I pulled the trailer down to my parents' today without the electrical hooked up to it. I still need to replace the trailer-side connector for that and finish connecting the wiring harness on the car side.

Too busy for politics?

I have been so busy the last couple of weeks, I haven't had much time to listen to talk radio or download and listen to MP3s of the Rush Limbaugh show (I'm a Rush 24/7 member). I don't feel too bad about it, though. From what I have gathered, most of the chatter has been about the Harriet Miers nomination, which I don't really care that much about. I'd be fine if she had gone through and was confirmed. I'm fine with Bush nominating someone else. It seemed to me the people on the right who didn't like her were all Ivy League legal snobs (i.e. Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, etc.) Rush Limbaugh didn't have anything bad to say about Miers, specifically. He only thought the president did an unnecessary thing by nominating a stealth candidate for the Supreme Court when the GOP is in so much power -- that it makes the administration look weak.

It's all moot now, though, right?

I did, however, buy a somewhat politically-oriented book: Millionaire Republican : Why Rich Republicans Get Rich--and How You Can Too!. I'm about halfway through it and enjoying it. It's very easy reading and despite the fact the author is quite obnoxious, it contains some very compelling information.

I thought I'd comment on some things in the entertainment realm.

Serenity

If you know me, you know I'm a big fan of Joss Whedon spawn like Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. In 2002, Whedon had another series on TV called Firefly which only lasted 11 episodes before the Fox network put the lid on it due to lackluster ratings.

Firefly still had life left in it, it seems. Universal made a deal with Whedon to take Firefly to the big screen and this last Friday, the film spawned by Firefly made its big-screen debut nationwide titled Serenity.

I was not planning on seeing Serenity anytime soon. In fact, if I was planning anything, it was to wait until the film was available on DVD. But, we got lucky. Christine managed to get my mom to agree to watch our kids Friday night so we could go to a movie. That movie, of course, was Serenity.

We made it to Jordan Landing about 25 minutes before the 7:15 show and got in line. When we were behind the people buying their tickets, one of the ticket clerks stood up and placed a "SOLD OUT" sticker over the 7:15 showtime for Serenity. Dang!

Christine was depressed, but I was vigilant and resilient. I remembered that the film was also playing at the Jordan Commons theater- so I used the fancy shmancy features of my Treo PDA/phone to find their phone number and had Christine call them while I started driving in the general direction.

Christine learned there was a showing at 7:45. We got there about 7:25 and I dropped Christine off at the door so she could get tickets (if any were available) while I found parking.

Parking was, of course, a challenge in of itself, but I managed to find a spot and proceeded toward the theater and tried to call Christine on her cell. She didn't answer but called back and told me to meet her outside theater 14. When I finally waded through the deep pools of loitering theater patrons and made it to "14," Christine was furious that I had taken so long. She obviously didn't know how far away I had to park and then I couldn't run because of all the people obstructing my way.

We got in and found a half-decent place to sit and I still had time to run out and get popcorn and a beverage. Ahhhh. We made it. We were going to see the film. The theater didn't sell out, that I know of, but it was pretty packed in. A lot of geeks out on the town Friday night.

Now, the film was awesome. The story starts shortly after where Firefly left off, so fans of the show got some continuity. There was a short introduction to get Firefly virgins initiated and familiar with the characters and it wasn't distracting at all.

River Tam (Summer Glau) in Serenity

The story was awesome. The characters were awesome. The acting was spectacular -- partly due, I'm sure, to the fact these people had quite a bit of time to settle into these roles before the film. The writing was, not surprisingly, witty, brutal, and honest. Perfectly Whedonesque.

The special effects were outstanding. Apparently, the same company was used that did the F/X for the TV show. They made great use of their expanded budget and produced imagery that blended perfectly on the big screen.

My only complaint is that it seems like Joss shot the show a little too much like TV. That's no surprise, really, because he hasn't had that much experience shooting for theater releases. It wasn't bad, by any means. I just noticed many times there were shots that were tight shots of characters that felt a little claustrophobic on the big screen. They could have pulled the camera back a bit- gave the scene some more breathing room and it would have looked, in my opinion, better.

I thought the character of Inara was especially beautiful and breathtaking to view even though her role in the film seems a bit small. River Tam's facial expressions alone were worth the ticket price for me. And, of course, Jayne never disappoints.

My verdict: I want to see it again in the theater. I will definitely own it on DVD. I either want to, preferably, see the series return to television with new episodes, or, alternatively, begin a film sequel franchise.

Smallville

Last Thursday was the season five premiere of Smallville. Over the weekend, I downloaded the episode and watched it twice -- once with Christine.

Very nice episode -- especially the shocking final 10 seconds of the show which I didn't see coming.

It will be interesting to see how this season shapes up. Lois Lane is now a full-time credited regular character. They gang isn't in high school anymore and we know, from Buffy, this can be a cumbersome transition for the writers. School is such a solid background. Now what?

The relationship between Lex and Clark is obviously more strained and the relationship between Clark and Lana less strained, but Lana grew up a LOT in the last season and now has her own agenda in finding the truth about the mysteries of Krypton that affect her.

And now Clark knows that Chloe knows his secret. And Chloe knows Clark knows. And Clark knows Chloe knows he knows.

Should be interesting. More knowledge-is-liability territory to explore there.

My verdict: I'm still hooked! I want more.

Desperate Housewives

Like a lot of people, I had no interest in Desperate Housewives when it was first promoted as the must see show on ABC Sunday nights. It seemed like a trashy drama-heavy soap.

But, somebody did something right because halfway through the season last year, I decided to download the 2-part pilot episode and give it a spin. I was hooked.

I think the things that attracted me to the show (besides the attractive actresses) were the music (Danny Elfman) and the pacing. During the first season, the writers were whipping through storylines about ten times faster than normal. After watching three or four shows, I felt like I'd watched a whole season's worth of situations and plotlines.

Anyway, a week ago Sunday was the season two premiere and I downloaded it last week. It was a good episode, although not as good as some of the season one episodes. The episode, more or less, tied up loose ends from season one and started to open up new mysteries for season two.

My verdict: Still interested, but it could lose my interest if it becomes more of a traditional soap and less of something crazy like it was in season one.

I really should be in bed right now, but just as I was finishing up for the night -- having watched an episode of The X-Files while snacking on nachos -- I got a text message from our system monitoring service that a major client server was down. After investigating I had to rouse the the troops and get someone onsite.

I'm currently waiting for one of our guys to visit the colocation facility where this server is at so why not finish up from my last Fozzolog?

A second visit to Steamboat Springs

There were so many things better about our second visit to Steamboat Springs. The weather counting for many of them. We loaded in while the sun was still out and that means a lot. Everyone was helpful and very excited to have us there.

We really messed up on the scheduling, though. I had told Patrick -- the lighting engineer -- we'd probably be there around 1:00 in the afternoon. He requested that we be there as early as possible to go over the show. We didn't pull into town until closer to 4:30 in the afternoon.

Part of the reason was because of the late night the evening before. A big part of the reason was because the decision was made for everyone to go sit down at a Dennys in Grand Junction. We had to wait quite a while for a table, for service, and then for our food.

When we finally got out of Dennys, Tim and Amanda went back to the Mesa Theater to look for a couple items they left the night before. Meanwhile, Matt, Juli and Daryn went off in search of a music store. Thom and I loitered outside the Dennys.

Fairly typical, I have to admit.

Once we got on the road, however, things moved more swiftly.

As I mentioned already, the guys at Levelz were awesome. Patrick had been itching to do this show for a few weeks -- He and I had talked on the phone about it two or three times. I knew he had put a lot of thought into how to light everything. The band was concerned there wouldn't be much draw because it was off-season. During load-in, I walked across the street to one of the resort village of shops and it was completely dead. Hardly any of the shops were open, let alone serving any customers. I had my doubts we'd have an audience of significant numbers.

Patrick reassured me and everyone else that everyone he knew was coming and that the show had been well promoted. When showtime came around, there were around 50 people in attendance and by the time the second set started, the room was full of 250 or so people and they were big fans of the music.

We're already lined up for a big in-season show at Levelz in January. I don't know if the room can hold twice as many people as it did last weekend, but if it can, I have a sneaking suspicion it may very well do so.

Levelz comes with a handful of techical challenges. For one, there's really no good place to put a projector screen. Last time, I gave up my wish of having the screen centered and behind the band and put it to the side of the drum riser. We placed the projector at the top of the speaker stack on one side of the stage. It was far from ideal because nearly a third of the audience had some kind of obstruction in their view of the screen.

This time, however, Patrick and I planned ahead. Patrick moved some lighting instruments on the rear electric to accomodate a screen hanging on a diagonal angle from the ceiling. People standing in front of the stage would be looking straight up at the surface of the screen.

It worked perfectly. We mounted our projector on an unused monitor wedge near the front of the stage. Thom was on one side of the projector and Tim was on the other. It worked out really well.

The room at Levelz is not very well ventilated. I complained the last time we were there about how smoky the venue was but this time, I have no complaints. The room served as a very nice environment for our fog machine. Very little fog was needed to create a thick uniform medium for the lights to cut through.

The performance on Saturday night was at least a couple notches better than at Grand Junction. Before going onstage, everyone agreed to "focus!" and to make it a great show musically. It paid off, big time.

I got some spectacular pictures and some video. Amanda took many pictures too. You can see all the pictures on the SoN site, but here are some of my more favorite ones:

Juli	Money	Tim
Matt (w/ viz i background)	Juli's reloading the 'sheep gun' with another pig. I'm standing by with the plunger.