fixed. this issue has been resolved.

PS: the 80′s called. they want their FAX machine back.

wait, is that right? shouldn’t that be lower case… oh, um, hold on. no, the directions say to use UPPER case for all the letters. good thing I checked.

okay that was not fun. the usually is a normal-ish and oddly similar to an Applebee’s. but tonight I might as well have been in “pick a Marina bar, any bar!” and think odious experience. okay, not that I seek out the Applebee’s but I certainly don’t seek out the Marina. that’s the place where you meet every girl ever and every boy seeking the same. the mob looks the same page of the catalog. white shirts, grey tops, black bottoms and fashionable boots.

so these douche bags are there trying to pick each other over and over and I’m already over it by the time I find my way to the bar. somebody gives up a seat because I have that look in my eye of I’m about to change you into a different dimension. and not because it’s Saturday and you’re in my bar. but because I’ve had another version of my relationship with Final Cut Pro. you know, it’s either working for you or you want to break up with “it” but it’s the Holiday’s and somebody’s Mom will be disappointed. just so you know, my Mom doesn’t care.

over there in the corner was every girl ever who was so loud you could hear her every word over the very loud of loud people being loud. that’s one loud loud. savages is the better way to describe them because they order shots of things that no human person should shoot. she seemed rationally disappointed that there isn’t a way to have a clear tasteless alcohol plus Red Bull so she whines “okayIwillhavacosmo” because that’s what she knows despite the fact that she doesn’t like that drink every time. it’s pink, tastes like candy and she’s not paying for it until later. pay it forward baby.

but back to the loud girl. can you believe that one of the white shirts actually wanted to take her home? please oh please we all said! take her. this is such a good idea. secretly between us we empty into the karma pile merging it with pay it forward bridge toll for the dude behind me fare points to make that happen. and eventually it got quiet. she left! hurray! there was that 3 minute moment of oh yeah I like this bar again. but wait… crap, there’s that screeeetch again. she had to pee.

and then the lights went up. but not because it was last call. it was far from that right then. but the scary lights made them go away one by one. never underestimate the power that low lights or maybe no lights does to make them into something that they are not. with lights on the word dim comes to mind. go with that.

we had a few more and then one more. then it was my bus. and that’s were my whole night repeated itself for the third time. I have to ask, when did deja vu come in threes? I thought people died that way. I’ll just mark this day down as the 1, 2, 3 dying experience without the dying part.

[rant]
QuickTime X officially ated my show. and I’m reverting to other tools from here on. Apple frigtards don’t get a second chance on this one. I’m livid about this loss. it is no small bug. because it’s beyond just some crashing problem that has to get solved. I have planning, travel, costs, guests, and lots of time wasted. but worse in not getting the performance.

generally I’d be all about finding what the problem, solution and resolution is to fix whatever happened. but here’s the thing. I’m not going to waste that time. instead I’m going to find another solution. this bug is like something we’d put up with 10 years ago. but this is OLD code. capturing audio is something we’ve been doing for 20 years now. that’s 26,280,000 seconds. or 175,200 hours. or 21,900 work-days. get it? [I]this should not be a problem[/I]. not now in 2009 now almost 10.

I will not scorch earth and flatly say that you should never ever never use OS X 10.6 in production but I will tell you that I’m not going to from here on. not after losing a show I’m not. instead I’ll revert back to 10.5.6 and work there.

the prior state of things was that QuickTime Pro could reliably record audio for hours. there was never an issue in three years of using the tool for this task. even across upgrades and updates it never came up as a question that QT was somehow less reliable. my thinking was not wanting to run “a whole editor” to do capturing. take a big footprint and make it smaller seemed to the best possible practice.

in all the years of using QT Audio Capture there were things that I just didn’t like. setting levels is for the birds. you have to use the System Preferences to get to dialed in. which makes it seem less professional. and the default capture states always have to be checked to make sure they don’t revert. I have longed for a better system that didn’t require a long check list but it’s the devil you know or at least thought you knew.

[/rant]

following up on my own rant I have to say that I’ve been incredibly lucky with what I have lost because of problems. in most studios the engineer will have some other kind of recorder recording a backup. that way all is not lost. I have a way to make that happen. and I guess from here on I’ll roll that backup. the mixer will certainly allow that to happen. it’s just one more thing.

my setup is not ideal. I don’t have a way for ME to see the board or recording devices while recording. I shouldn’t have to after the sound check though so I can pay attention to my show not my gear. one thing that will go far to fix this is to finish the full screen Level EQ and Timer. this way I could use that thing to VNC into the screen OR I could bolt a screen into the table. either is fine with me.

finally, I am at the point where I’m less interested in doing post production. my shows in 2010 will be supported by a “cart system” so I can drop in intro, extro, SFX and commercials during recording. or at least have better way to mark drop ins without having to find the section, break it, insert, etc. that means I’m thinking live even if I’m not.

however, sometimes the winner of the game is the loser if the winner fails to beat the spread. lets see that makes the winner the loser because the winner lost. ri-ight. 

I thought about this for a while then decided a COIN would actually do a better job. it doesn’t factor anything into landing heads or tails. in this case it’s home or away.

two weeks ago I fired the COIN and replaced it with a pair of dice. 18 sided ones. because there is no such thing as 18 sided dice I fake them with some code. blue is home. red is away.

http://beerschool.com/picks/

anyway… the dice didn’t do so well. I’ve fallen from 1st to 8th place. it’s not really the all seeing dice fault though. NFL is a stoopid sport with predictable game play because of strategy. it’s painfully slow to watch too. so picks that looked to be solid get aced out because of OVERTIME kicks. or that play that takes scores on the last seconds of the clock winning by a point. in other words undeserved victory.

thus I’ve re-hired the COIN and fired 18DD as my picks manager.

cast:
the COIN is a full sized Silver Dollar
18DD is fake 18 sided dices
picks is a dumb game where you predict the outcome of other dumb games.

the worst thing in the world is making a new logo. but these look like D graded art students made them. and what’s with the period as the last character? I think that it signifies the end. the artist ‘splains it all.

whatever.

… if it was just one of you I would write it off as a sucks to be you anomaly but this is a rampant problem. much like the putting the CD on the desk shiny side up.

“why do you do that?”
“to protect it!”
“what makes you think that’s better?”
“I don’t want it to get scratched!”
does the demo with a grain of sand shiny side up. “okay, play it now…”
“hey! it’s skips, what did you do?”
“what you would have done eventually. don’t DO that.”

if you REALLY want to protect your CD/DVDs put them back it the case.

there isn’t a lot that I love about the jorb of dealing with computers from a day to day. why have a server monitoring program when you have customers. why do they bother sending me email when right after they send it they call about it. before I even have a chance to know what the problem is they are explaining why what they can’t do is critical to get working in 30 seconds of less.

[more rant goes here]

anyway this comic sums it all up. and it takes just four frames to say what will take me over a thousand words. never mind then. link to the comic.

the people of SF can’t park. I watched this bimbo beach her SUV in front of my flat. wish I had the video “on” for that near crash. if she’d bothered pulling up there’d be space for a whole nuther car! [opps: the photo of the white line in the street is missing. that shows you how much in the middle that boat is.]

here’s an alternate flat pano made with the Canon PhotoStich software. it’s not great software Mac but it did make the image.