Limbo or something like it

I am in limbo.

I failed to officially drop a course and received an "F" because of it. I was/am the receipient of boatloads of financial aid, some of it grants and scholarships, the other is Loans. I suppose it would make sense to consider the fact that not only do I pay taxes, but now I pay taxes on money I've borrowed (which I pay taxes with also, Sales Tax etc.) but eventually they will get the money back with a big chunk extra. Okay. End Rant.

I often think to use this space as a place for more meaningful discourse, to elaborate or elucidate, and in so doing to cause to action a whole useful sort of concepts and systems.

Unfortunately it has turned into my notepad where, when sitting in front of the computer, I turn to like I would have done with cigarettes about five and a half months ago.

Creativity

What the hell is and where can I buy a lifetime's supply?

I start back at school on Monday, without any real idea what the hell I am supposed to do or feel about it. For the last several months I have been concerned with a wholly different realm of knowledge: technology.

I guess I should be grateful (and I am) that I have had the time off, but except for spending money on equipment, I have done nothing to bridge the continuum that was last year's class/mindset to this coming year. I expect that I will be playing catch up for a while and that is actually okay with me. The problem with art school is there is nary an empirical means to guage one's progress. My experience of my progress is described by wordlessness and doubt, with the frustrations and awareness that I am competing solely with myself. I do not arrive at this obvious understanding without having first compared myself to anyone who seems at the moment to have "it" where I do not.

It is Friday afternoon. I will need to be in a state of readiness (co-opted miltary terms abound, now) in about 60 hours from now. Huh.

Frustrations and Expectations

So.

At the begining of the month I purchased a Pentium 4, 2.4Ghz, (Socket 478, 512k 400Mhz fsb) to replace the measly little P4 1.4 (Socket 423, 256k cache) in my continuing effort to reach Avid editing bliss. I have a Dell branded mobo which use a proprietary power supply and case.

So...

In order to go past the preliminary levels set for the Socket 423, or 'Williamette' of 2.0 Ghz, I needed to purchase a Powerleap adaptor, (PL-P4/N) allowing the motherboard to accomodate the newer Socket 478, "Northwood."

So...

I purchased said Pentium on ebay. I thought that I got a pretty good deal, maybe about wholesale, nothing special. I have sent about a dozen messages. No CPU. I purchased it through this website: Jeremy Flinn Studios In the last email the supposed Operations Manager, Said:

Hello,





I did not mean for you to feel this way. In all honesty I have been aware

that there has been some internal fraud with some our warehouse associates.



This has not been confirmed, but I feel that you, as well as other

customers, your products were stolen by our own people.



I will not go into detail, however, we have now had to fire many workers,

and because of that action we are now extremely understaffed. I am doing

everything I can to take care of Ebay Customers, Local, International,

Web-Site, and National Customers. I am extremely busy.



Your processor is in. The truth is, that when I stated that we had no

inventory, this was another error from our warehouse.



In all reality, I do not see you receiving your processor until late next

week. (i.e. Thursday, Friday) I understand if you wish to have a refund.

However, that will only expedite this transaction by a day.



Please let me know what you want to do. Thank you for all of your patience,

kindness, and cooperation throughout this whole matter.



Jeremy Flinn



davmar79@mindspring.com



At this point I would appreciate my money back, but what do you do in this circumstance? I could go through ebay, but his user name "speedyj19" has been suspended, I don't know if it would matter at this point. I wonder what is going on?

I guess this is the problem with online consumption. I guess I am a little bitter, huh?

If he would have said, hey, would you give me a $350.00 donation, in exchange, I will give you a few misleading promises, a side of outright lies and a some sugary sweet, pathetic apologies for dessert? What do you suppose I would have replied?

That's right.

You got it, I might add fuck off, however.

Update

23 Aug 02

He emailed me to say that he had received my emails, and that a chargeback would be issued. I await said chargeback in a bit of a cynic's mindset...

MP3 artist page

I have uploaded a "song" to my MP3.com Artist page. It is a recording of some wind chimes we have in our kitchen, using a Sony MD (MZ-R909), and a Sennheiser ME66. While I was monitoring the recording, I noticed that the highs were starting to clip, and quantize rapidly. The recording sounds like the ATRAC3 encoder being defeated. If you want to listen go here:incite_insight on MP3.com.

Our Babies have come home!

We have been looking to get kittens since we moved out of our last place, in fact, we made it a priority in choosing a place this time. Well with 'kitten season' almost over, we (I) were a bit concerned that it wouldn't happen. We had screens installed on our windows, and if you are in the Bay Area I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend Gilman Screens and Kitchens, solely on the integrity of the installer, Jerome. He exhibited the utmost amount of professionalism, We are truly very happy with the job he has done. So, we got the kittens through craigslist. After several attempts trying the shelter route, we were begining to feel a bit discouraged. I think it is one of those things, you see, it doesn't matter how much abundance there may be of a particular thing, something extra, something just rght needs to exist in order for it to feel true. There were plenty of kittens in the shelters. Though the ones we saw were precious and cute and certainly in need of love and a good home, we did not feel the it. So craigslist was something of a last ditch effort. I posted to the list stating that we were looking for baby kittens, preferably eight weeks old. I was immediately contacted by a wonderful woman, who is in the business of rescuing feral kittens and the like (though ours are regular domestic babies) and made arrangements to get together to see them.



Me and Arugula

Queen Isadora

That was last night. Today has felt like Christmas in August.

There will be more pictures of them soon, just you wait.

Road or Parking?

What kind of car rager are you? I am of the parking variety. When it comes to driving, as far as Justine is concerned, I am in a perpetual state of Sunday afternoon in the Buick on the way to church while listening (at a reasonable volume) to Louis Armstrong's Disney rendition of What a Wonderful World. However, the moment I enter a parking lot, the Lucky Strikes come out, the hood of the car grows an air intake manifold, and the amount of grease in my hair and teeth grows exponentially.

I was on the way to Vons this afternoon, feeling great, ready for homemade mashed 'taters for supper*, when it occurs to us that we do not have a masher. I hopped into the car to go to the store. It was typical parking hell, in fact, the short distance from our apartment to the market could, on its best days be described as a parking lot in its own right. I found a spot almost immediately. I sat and waited while I watched three differently shaped men load a late model Crown Victoria full of grocery bag pillows. I switched stations at random, as I sat there, quietly judging the varying degrees of competency the three men possessed. The biggest of them was directing the show. The potato-neck one was writing in a small book and bobbing up and down ever so slightly.The third one seemed to expend more effort than was necessary for the task, all the while smiling gleefully, as though Toys R Us and a new Star Wars action figure were on the horizon. Han Solo, put the cart away, traipsed back to the car and unlocked it for the others. It has been long enough now that I have thought to turn the volume of the radio down, for fear that someone might notice that I have been unconsciously enjoying Smooth Jazz. As the spacecraft in front of me begins to ignite its final thruster, I notice a car backing out several spots further down. At this point there are three or four cars waiting behind me, so as a nice gesture, I speed forth and zip into the spot that has just reveal itself. Unfortunately I was not the only one to see it. In fact, two guys in a Jeep begin blaring horns and cuss words at me.



"HOOOOOOONNNNKKKKK! HHHHHOOOOOONKK HOOONKK!!"

"Hey asshole! We were waiting for that spot for 20 minutes!"



The looks on their faces, the fact that they were both more muscular and more tan than I will ever be, and the fact that I was feeling guilty as hell made me follow through with it. As I am getting out of the car, thinking to myself, am I really so bold as to just park here? Yes, yes I am, I reaffirm. I walked away from the car in combined states of What the hell just happened and What? I didn't do anything. Fuck off And now, to tell the truth, I wasn't feeling enraged, pissed or vengeful. If anything it was a perfect example of the victimless crime; all I was guilty of was sheer stupidity. I stood around in the lot for a moment worried that some kind of attack would be perpetrated against the car. Nothing happened. I went into Vons, bought a masher, drove to the video store, and then home. I sit thinking about it for a minute.



*Supper I don't often hear this anymore. Is it still cool to say or is dinner better?

Saturday morning...Until

This is just a quick detailing of my wonderful weekend. This morning after working on an Avid icon to use for the DesktopX desktop I use, I played Quake 3 until 11am. Justine suggested that I make pancakes. Since we have been in this apartment, I had yet to try the griddle on our stove. We have what looks like a circa: some time before my parents were born (50's) stove with a Griddle section in the middle and 4 burners around the sides. I cleaned it and preheated it, began the pancake prep. Justine talked with Monica and I made breakfast. As everything goes, the pancakes turned out great. I tried to pour the batter in large, like a restaurant style circles, the variety that can fill one up with just a few. As I think about it now too, the entirety of the ingredients were from TJ's. Nevertheless, the breakfast was most satisfying. We ventured off to Golden Gate Park, to the Japanese Tea Gardens.. It was typically foggy, parking was hell, and it ended with my flipping someone off, because they stole our spot. They hadn't really stolen the spot, we tried to sneak into it coming from the other direction, and though we saw it first, well, that doesn't matter. At any rate, The garden was glorious. We agreed to come back to it on a day that isn't as crowded, when I have a charged camera battery, and when we can stroll about longer. One particularly peculiar behavior I have taken note of, is that we tend to do tourist activities in our own town, all the while chastizing all the damn tourists. It may in fact be possible that the majority of those amoung us are living in the city we are visiting. We sat and had Jasmine tea. As it was foggy, though not too cold, just right in fact, tea was a great healer. We are going out to see Full Frontal tonight, after dinner at Cafe Regio.

I look forward to the rest of the night.

This fine sir was not quite ready for us that day.(Sacramento Zoo)

(video still captured PS TRV900)

(Video still: PD150)

Art indeed: Monterey Bay Aquarium

Art-Speak Word of the week: flâ·neur (flä-nûr)

Avid has converted me

I am a former Canopus RaptorRT and Prem6 User, my experiences after an initial bout of growing pains (or shrinking pains, as far as my bank balance is concerned)is that I have installed:



a new sound card (SB Live! 5.1)

a new video card (GeForce4 Ti4400)

doubled my RAM (512 to 1024mb)

installed XP pro (clean install )

and await a new proc. (p4 1.4 socket 423 to p4 2.4 socket 478)



I am finding XDV 3.5 to be REALLY REALLY stable. In the coming weeks I will report my progress. The main thing that I have noticed is the ability to work with long clips as well as short clips equally well. In Premiere my definition of a long clip was 5 minutes give or take a minute I have found that working with XDV 3.5 long clips out to 20 minutes do not present any problems whatsoever.

If the choice remains to be made between Premiere and XDV use Premiere for the Windows movie maker replacement and Avid for the serious work.