SwimFinsSF

George and Me

So it seems I’m a Republican now… Don’t know when that happened… Wish someone would have told me so I could have started behaving like one! 🙂

Got home last night and for the second time this month I’ve gotten mail from the Republican party to its members.. This one was the coolest though – it was a ‘Personal’ message from our fearless leader – George W. Bush – to party members to attend a formal dinner in the area… For the bargain price of $2,500 a plate – or, if I want to bring my friends – $25,000 for a table (of 10 – this is a fundraiser after all – no bulk discount)…

Wonder who decided I had become a republican and what I did to earn the honor! ;)… I can’t wait to have dinner with dubbya… 🙂

NOT

Pride and Falling Rain

So Saturday night… ughh… SUCH a roller coaster of a night… First part of the night… GREAT.. REALLY fun… last part of the night… sad… pathetic… such a learning experience..

Night stated off rushed but well… I had a bunch of friends come over for my friend Drew’s Birthday… I had to work all day so I came flying home, rushed to the grocery store to get snacks, wine, cheese, and any other things a self respecting gay man would have in the house when friends come over.. Fly home to find Drew and Adrian waiting on the doorstep for me (they SWEAR they were only waiting 5 minutes but I think they were lying)… ANYWAY… Long story short – everyone came over (Drew, Adrian, Jay, Brian, Clarke, Andy, and I)… Made dinner… drank… ate… watched part of Auntie Mame… Overall had a really nice time… I LOVE that kind of thing…

After that some of the boys went home… Clarke and Andy and I went out to the badlands… Couple of Gin and Tonics… Hanging out… Was nice… Closed the bar (which I hate to do)… but was fun… Then we parted company and went to our respective homes…

So I get home… not super sleepy yet… decide I want to go get a snack.. gatoraide.. something… just leave the house… so I scoop up my cash and keys , throw on my jacket, and march out the door… pull the door closed behind me.. pull out my keys to bolt the door…

DOHHHHHH….

Grabed the wrong half of my keychain… Grabed my work keys… House key and car key are still on my desk….

Inside..

behind the locked door..

3am… wrong keys… kevin is away in NC (did I mention that part?)… I’m locked out…

Fuck…

I walk around for a while… trying to figure out what to do… Matt and brian have a spare set of our keys but i’m loathed to wake them up in the middle of the night just cuz i’m a fucking idiot… Stall trying to come up with what to do… I walked around for a while… Walked by Becks to see if I could just crash there for a night – but without a credit card or $104 cash (of which I only had my Drivers License and $80) no go… As skanky as that stupid hotel is – I couldn’t get in… talk about feeling like a looser…

Then it started raining… At this point I was feeling really sad and stupid… I had no place to go… couldn’t get into my house.. was the middle of the night…

This is the part where my friends start smacking me and saying why didn’t you FUCKING CALL ME”… Short answer.. i should have… but I’m totally wierd when it comes to imposing on people – hate it… REALLY makes me uncomfortable… so the idea of calling anyone at 3 or 4 in the morning.. couldn’t bring myself to do it… The closest I came was sending matt an SMS message in the off chance that he got up to go pee and saw it… really stupid – I know…

I ended up finding a friend of a friend and crashing on his couch for a couple of hours until it was a decent hour and then took the N-Judah over to M&B’s to pick up the spare key..

In the grand scheme of things it was all just totally silly but I sure learned a few things… learned to make sure you have the right keys before you leave the house… learned that I should keep a credit card with my ID always – just incase… learned that I need to get over this need not to impose on people some times… also occurred to me that I need to be thankful for what I have – one night in the rain isn’t really THAT awful – some people don’t have keys to check and friends to call…

(I always find these little life lessons at random times)…

Bed Time

Ok… So I REALLY need to learn how to fall asleep alone without the TV…. I’m not sure if i’m the only one that has this problem but when I’ve got the place to myself I can’t stand falling asleep without watching a little TV first… With Kevin around thats no problem – he turns off the TV… But he’s out of town right now… The up side is I can be a geek and play on the computer all I want.. Down side though is since the bedroom TV doesn’t have a sleep timer ( that I can find ) I turn on the TV and doze off before I turn it off… Last night I did that and woke up at 4am to Donald Rumsfeld’s face – it was terrifying…

Guess I should learn to read to fall asleep instead..

Sorry – just had to share! 😉

And one more thing

The piece I worked on… (among others)… Full Unicode Support throughout the User Interface and Text Generators… For the non-geeks in the crowd, this means that you can add text in any language in use today at any point in the application… You can create titles for your video in Arabic.. you can name your clips in hebrew…. you can name your files in korean…. or any other text you can think of…

Final Cut Pro 4.0

I can finally spill the beans on the details of what I’ve been working on since I joined the Final Cut Pro team about a year ago. We announced the latest version of FCP yesterday at a couple of press events in Las Vegas yesterday. I’m TOTALLY PSYCHED about this release.. I’ve gotta say I’ve NEVER worked on a release that is as full of new features as this one (which is probably why i’ve been so crazy and grumpy lately)…

Here’s a few of the new things that are rolled into this version of the app itself:
– Multi Channel audio / audio mixer
– XML Support
– RT Extreme (I know – goofey name – but way cool).. Scalable Real Time effects that take advantage of as much hardware as you have
– Time Remapping tools
– Keyboard Customization
– Frame viewer for analyzing effects per frame
– LOTS more

But Even cooler if you ask me is the other things we’ve added to the package… We’ve rolled Cinema Tools into the app bundle so you get that app with final cut.. AND we’ve added 3 new apps to the package as well… Compressor, Live Type, and Soundtrack…. Compressor is a video transcoder that you can use to re-compress your video into multiple formats automatically… Live Type is for creating REALLY COOL motion font effects for titling… And Soundtrack is a crazy cool tool for mixing audio together in a very simple way to create outstanding background music for video.

You can go to the Final Cut Pro web site to get the full details but I just had to holler a little bit cuz i’m pretty jazzed and proud..

Weekly Wrapup

Just stumbled on this weekly wrapup thing and seems kinda silly and fun.. Don’t know if I’ll keep it up but what the hell… Probably give y’all more info on me than ya probably wanted to know..

1. Do you like to sing? Why or why not? Yup… Sure do… Don’t know why – probably something I got from my mom. She sings all the damn time and I think I picked it up from her when we drove from Maryland to California when I was a kid.

2. Where do you like to sing? Why? Usually in the car… Hour long commute to and from work ya gotta find SOMETHING to pass the time! 😉

3. Do you sing in front of people? Why or why not? Not in general but from time to time when I’m feeling silly I will… Don’t in general cuz I’ve got enough background in music to know that I’m REALLY BAD! 😉

4. What’s your favorite song to sing along with? Why? Cats in the Cradle by Harry Chapin… LOVE that song…

5. What song is your guilty singing pleasure? Why? Sound Track from ‘A Chorus Line’… Couldn’t be more Gay – I know.. but I love it.. songs are fun and silly.. Also makes me think of my little sister – when she was in pre-school we listened to that song all the time. So much so that her teacher called my mom one day and said, while she knew where the song came from and it wasn’t a HUGE deal – it probably wasn’t appropriate for a pre-school age girl to be singing ‘Tits and Ass’ (Dance 10 – Looks 3)… Cracks me up…