Thursday, February 25, 2010

Gish

A few weeks ago at my last gig, I noticed that something was amiss in my little edit room. Generally I like to keep a tidy workspace. No extra clutter cluttering the room. No empty coffee mugs lying around. Pens and papers in their proper places. But on this day something didn't feel quite right.

I took a step back from the console and I finally saw the problem. There were two extra chairs in the room. Two extra chairs making my little edit room littler. So I did what any borderline obsessive compulsive editor would do: I walked out of the room and began searching for a place to put these extra chairs.

The answer lay right next door in the adjacent little edit room, which had only the editor's chair inside. Plenty of room to house the two extra chairs. So I rolled each chair into the other room. As I went to close the door, my attention was diverted from the closure of closing the door. My hand slipped off the door handle and into the area where the door latches into the doorframe. Bang. Ouch. My middle finger was smashed and gashed and immediately started bleeding profusely.

As I went searching for the medical cabinet, I couldn't help but think "Why did I do that? My room was fine with the extra chairs. I could have kept on working without this smashed bleeding finger which impedes using the tools I use for working. Why?" I found the healing gel and some bandages and kept the bleeding to a minimum.

In the following days, I made the extra effort to heal the wound as quickly as possible. I made sure to keep a fresh bandage and ointment on the finger at all times. And in a week, the finger was almost completely healed.

Did I learn to accept the fact that sometimes people leave their chairs and junk in my little edit room? Did I learn to accept clutter? Hell no. I learned that, with just the right amount of obsessiveness, I can do anything.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Rooster

It was inevitable. Simply by having a goddamn e-mail address it was inevitable. I received some nude pictures via e-mail today. Nude pictures of some random person, inadvertently sent to my e-mail address. And it couldn't possibly be pictures of a nude hot woman. No. Women probably don't send nude pics nearly as often as men. It had to be pictures of a dude. And not just nude pictures of him. But up close and HELLO yes very very personal pictures of his junk. Rightfully so these pictures landed in the "Junk" mailbox.

I don't know why, but for some stupid reason I always need to know what the unread junk mailbox count is all about. Usually it's about choosing the right contractor to upgrade my house. Or it's spam for flowers this Valentine's Day. But today it was two innocent looking mails from what looked like a personal e-mail address.

I clicked on the first one and was exposed to two shirtless upper torso pics of a guy, photographed in a mirror, who looks like he's frequenting the clubs. I clicked on the second link and within less than a second it was HOLY CRAP RIP MY EYES OUT NOW!!!! This while I was at work, with no NSFW warning from this pornographer. Before that second deadly click, I vaguely remember having some thought shoot across my mind about "don't click on that second one". And then the ick bomb landed. I've heard of people sending nude pics, but for everyone's sake please verify the address first before hitting the send button. Can't we just get rid of e-mail altogether? Ick.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Word Up

Lily sent me an e-mail the other day with the subject line: Note to self - Don't enter this film fest.

She found the following posting on a parents online forum in LA. Posted by the founder and producer of the film fest which shall remain unnamed, because... well, just because. And the film fest is here in LA, the capital of like all the movies in the entire universe!


The Microsoft Word program driving me crazy. It shows me a kind of q
looking character with an extra line every time I hit return.

I cannot figure out what to turn off to make it stop.

Please help.


What year is it? 1993? Yeah, Word has been making the "q looking thing" every time you hit return for decades now. And to make it go away you hit the very same "q looking" button on the toolbar to do what Microsoft calls "hide". No more wacky q thing everywhere. Or any of the other formatting that you may or may not want to see.

Thankfully most films don't have words on the screen. Or q-looking characters. Otherwise she might have a real problem getting films into her fest. Note to self: Don't enter that film fest.