RAR!

It is starting to get late on a Tuesday night. I remain unemployed, not quite as blissfully as the last time I was unemployed (almost exactly 10 years ago) since debts and obligations tend to change the way you look at the time off.

I'm typing now from the computer in my bedroom. I built this computer as an unemployment present to myself. I had originally started building my own computers in order to make a TIVO computer to use to transfer all my old VHS tapes to DVD. After building a few of them (and destroying a couple of them), I finally have one machine (this one) dedicated to VHS to DVD transfer now. Yes, I have THAT much to transfer.

Right now I have a device that takes analog video/audio and transfers it into DV format which I capture with Pinnacle Studio 9.0 in AVI format. From there I take it into TMPEG Express 3.0 to trim out the scan lines and resize it back to original DVD specs then transfer it to MPEG-2 format.

I lost you, didn't I? Okay. Just know that for every two hours of VHS it takes 6 hours to process. Two of those hours come from just getting the video into the machine and the rest is taken up by formatting and resizing. I'm sure there's a better way to do it, but by golly, I haven't found one just yet.

I've had a frantic couple of weeks. I was supposed to go to a job seekers get together for unemployment last week. I didn't make it due to the heaviest snow we've had in years. By heavy I mean that it was so heavy that we have downed trees and branches everywhere. It's almost a week later and we're still cleaning up the mess of snow that was here for all of 24 hours.

During the messy Thursday morning our power went on and off about 5 times. It, of course, fried one of the two computers in my office. I had a motherboard and a case sitting there and I promptly fried those by putting the stuff from the dead machine into it. I then tried putting everything into a Biostar shell I had sitting there but it won't power on. That was Friday. I haven't touched the freaking computer since then, but I do have an order in for a new processor. Just in case.

Since then I've had to rely on my two capture computers. Sadly, the one in the office is for capturing and TIVO'ing current stuff and this one is for capturing and transferring VHS tapes. Since video capture is SO RAM intensive, I've had to run between rooms to surf the web or IM folks when the other machine has been in use. I'ts a major PITA and I hope to get a 3rd computer up and going by this weekend.

Since both machines had a ton to capture this weekend/week, well, I've had a lot of time on my hands. For the first time in about a year my bedroom is clean. Almost everything is put away and even my laundry is sorted and off my floor! I'm doing the office next (a TOTAL disaster), and then starting to finish pending projects.

Wish me luck, I'm going to need it.

k9

Sunday Morning

Late last night I installed the original Halo for PC on this computer. BIG mistake. I'm wasting so much time playing the game now that I don't know if I'll get anything done today. Frankly, I forgot how much fun Halo was. Halo 1 for Xbox was the only game in years that I've had the patience to sit through to the end. Now that I'm playing all the levels again (with the better pc graphics), I'm having an absolute blast.

I'm not as big of a fan of Halo 2 for Xbox. It's a good game. It's a fun game. There's more to do in multiplayer (as Evil James and I found out last time we killed each other), BUT the story and the levels are a letdown. They're over the top and mindless. They're fun to play, mind you, but they're not as intimate as those on the first game. It's much like Austin Powers 2 compared to Austin Powers 1 or Return of the Jedi compared to Star Wars. Bigger, badder, more stuff to do ... but not as satisfying as the original.

Rut-roh, I think I'm addicted. The game is calling to me now. Someone send help, please! I need multiplayer!

k9

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Saturday Night

It's a week later and I'm sitting here getting over life. Actually, I'm getting things done. So here's some random details of my life.

Got Iago's ashes today and the nurse said that the doctor said he had an abnormal liver. That's probably what killed him. They didn't do tests for cancer because he was already dead. I still feel bad that his last days weren't happier and that I wasn't there for him when he needed me. I couldn't save him, but dying alone sucks and it bugs me that I didn't see the signs.

I needed a computer desk and a dresser for my bedroom. I settled for an armoire with drawers. I was able to put my new computer in there and have storage for my pants. Most of them won't fit (either too big or too small), but at least they're in actual drawers now.

Went out and got a Sapphire radeon 9800 Pro Atlantis and a ATI TV Wonder Elite to replace the setup on my main TV computer. Well, the TV Wonder Elite has great reviews ... except it doesn't work with ATI's multimedia center application and the software that comes with it fails to regonize signals from s-video or composite cables. How they could ship software that can't even recognize the most basic signals (other than coax cables) is beyond me. I'm sending the TV Elite back, keeping the Sapphire pro and upgrading the tv computer to a AIW x800XT. That's the top of the line video card that also does video capture on the market.

My friend Brandi mentioned that she may have a one or two day job for me in coverting the old vhs tapes her fire company uses for training into DVD format. The x800xt will more than handle that AND make it easy. Next up, once that card comes in, I am transferring everything out of the Compaq case that I detest and into a new generic gaming case.

In the meantime I went ahead and upgraded the 9700 Pro that was in this sytem to a 9800 pro. Not a spectacular difference, but games are running slightly faster. I'm also testing my abilities to do VHS to DVD in my bedroom with some of my old tapes. I think the left over 9700 pro is going to end up in my mom's computer. My friend Michelle already has dibs on my 9700 pro all in wonder, but that's a different story for a different day.

It's about to rain. Why is that significant? Well, since October, nearly every rain has been snow. Our front yard has been under several inches of snow for months now and I'm overjoyed that it's going to rain only for the fact that it may unfreeze all the wood in our woodpile that's been stuck to the ground for months. I was going to take a sledgehammer to it but it looks like this is going to do it for me.

Yah go rain!

k9

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Monday Morning and I Have a Headache

I'm not doing that great today. I'm tired today, I've been tired for the past couple of days. Came home from vacation on Friday. Stopped part way into the journey to have lunch with a friend so I was running later than normal.

I didn't know that my mom had been gone for two days. I knew she had out of town mystery shops and I knew she'd be gone Friday night, but I did not know that she had actually been gone two days, leaving my disabled father to take care of the house.

About two hours from home I got a call that I'd need to go to the store for him before I came in the front door. It was also starting to snow heavily. As I got further east I ran into more and more snow. By the time I got to the store it was snowing pretty hard and I was dreading coming up our hill because I know since my dad was home alone I'd have to shovel just to get into the house.

Go to the store then start up the big hill. A SUV is on my butt on the way up. This guy would not let up. There's about two inches of snow and no way to stop and let him around me so I kept going up the hill towards our house with the idiot on my butt. I get towards my house and I try to pull into the driveway, hit solid ice and the car goes sliding into our grass. SUV doesn't stop to help. I flip him double birds but he doesn't stop.

I get the car out, get to the house and get the shovel out. I start shoveling so I can safely bring my computer in the house. Say hi to the animals that I can see, bring my dad the stuff he needed from the store. Get my mail, not only has there been no unemployment check, I have a note that my insurance has been canceled even though COBRA was supposed to continue it. I was tired and pissed at this point.

Finish bringing stuff into the house then take account of the animals. Iago, our oldest male cat is missing. I notice dried urine on the floor of the bathroom like someone had missed the cat box. I smell urine elsewhere and get really concerned. I go into the kitchen and find him semi-conscious on the floor by the water dish. He never goes into this room and he's nonresponsive when I call his name.

Call the vet, it's 8:30 on a Friday night so no one is there. The on call guy calls me back and tells me that he can look at the cat but wouldn't be able to do surgery or blood work because he wasn't set up for that. Instead he suggested taking him 40 miles away to the emergency vet center. Iago seemed a little better and was drinking water but suddenly he started purring really loudly, Iago never purrs. I was out the door with him 5 minutes later.

I race through the snow to the vet. I get there and they take him in the back. He was horribly dehydrated and his organs were failing. I knew there was nothing they could do but I paid for them to do everything possible. Waited for the bloodwork and they sent me home at 11:30PM telling me to get some sleep and it'd be touch and go. I ended up driving over 700 miles on Friday by the time I got home.

Iago died Saturday morning. I was out shoveling and getting wood when the call came in. I called the vet back and he said it was probably cancer but he was going to open Iago up and see if it was a blockage. Still waiting for a call back on that one. It wasn't a high priority since Iago is already dead.

Iago wasn't my cat. He was my sister's cat. She got him in Seattle about 15 years ago. I remember because when she had moved out there she left her two other cats and when she moved back in with us (with future husband in tow), she came back with a new solid black cat.

Iago was pretty confused by the move. Either that or had something that had screwed him up because he spent most of the first couple of months hiding under things and clawing the hell out of you if you came near him. This, of course, was a challenge to me and I eventually coaxed him out and got him to act fairly normal.

For a long time he wore a red collar. Not sure why she put it on him but one day I took it off and it was killing the fur around it so I took it off. He didn't like me much for that. I think he felt that it made him unique since none of the other cats (always hovering around 5 total), didn't have one and he was the king of cats.

Iago hated wet food. He'd eat tuna, but he wouldn't take part in the morning wet food rituals. He also was weird because he had some sort of phobia about dry food. Often even if the bowl was full, he wouldn't eat unless you put some new food in the bowl. He'd have to see it move to eat it. It was the weirdest thing.

In recent years he became the spot stealer. By this I mean if one of the other cats found a spot to sleep in that they really liked, if they weren't careful, Iago would take it and they'd never get it back. In fact the night Thrashie died I got the scare of my life when I went down the darkened hallway to my bedroom when I saw a shadowy figure sleeping in Thrashie's favorite spot. I quickly turned the lights on and it was Iago looking back at me.

I could never get any video editing done if Iago was around. I have a little stool that I keep by my computer desk. Iago would always jump up on it and rub up against my hand any time I tried to move my mouse. He didn't like petting all that much, I think he just enjoyed making it so I couldn't get anything done.

I'm going to miss him. He was a good boy and I wish I had more time with him. It was a horrible way to go, I can say that it was good that he wasn't in much pain (mentally he was long gone when I found him), but had I known he was sick I wouldn't have gone away and spent what time I had left with him here. That's going to be on my mind for a while.

k9

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Blogger-a-bye-bye

I've been informed by Blogger technical support that they've made changes to their system so it can no longer support the ftp on my website. For those who don't know, ftp is file transfer protocol and the way files are pushed around the web (for the most part). There are several flavors of ftp and alas, the kind my server uses is no longer supported by blogger.

So heads up, the RSS feed of this blog will eventually change as I'll be leaving blogger. Tech support has been less than helpful and really, it boggles the mind how they'd screw over their members like this. I'm searching for alternatives and even looking into how to use dreamweaver to program my own blog.

Nope, won't be doing livejournal. I dislike that more than I dislike having to click "publish" 30 times for this blog to actually publish ...

k9

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