This blog is written in memoriam of my cousin.
To those of you who live in New England you probably heard last week in the news about a man in Lempster NH who was reported as to have jumped off of a the Brattleboro bridge in Vermont. The reason it made such news is because the man in Lempster was reported as being the man that jumped… he shared the same name as an optometrist in Claremont New Hampshire one town over. The name the two man share being Jason Fulton, both age 35.
Jason Fulton of Claremont is my cousin.
I write this as my way of coping with the situation. I don't exactly know how I should respond. I can say that my mind and my heart have both been screaming in anguish since I was told. They both are screaming for very different reasons. My heart screams because he was a very caring person. We shared many experiences together. He was the first grandchild on my father's side of my family, he was the first of the grand children to get married, he was the first to have a child. He was also technically the most successful of us all in getting his degree in Optometry. He was also well on his way to having his own practice.
I have so many reasons to look up to him and so many reasons to believe that he was a great person. When I would go to Loon Mountain as a kid he was the one that I spent most of my time with because he was only slightly older than me and I could easily identify with him. Loon Mountain was the one place other than my grandmother's house that I associate with Jason. As kids we would go on the occasional hike in the mountains, we would race to the top of "The big rock" behind the timeshare home. We would spend time in the arcade or at the pool just hanging out and having fun.
Every moment I think of my heart screams louder realizing that there will never be another time in which we will get together, and while I have never had the chance to meet his wife or his daughter (because of my time in Florida) he will never get to be the one to introduce me to them.
It screams for every moment that we have shared, and every moment that we will never share again. God damn it Jason I miss you…
My mind is screaming in pain because it can't fathom why he could ever do such a thing. How the hell could you do this? Someone of your intellect and your beliefs and you go and destroy the worlds of everyone that cares for you! You selfish jerk how the hell can you abandon your family, your daughter, your unborn son! The fact that you felt that the world was coming down on you and that everything was going wrong.. yeah I can understand that, I'm in the same spot… everything that I have been trying to accomplish has been tough, it certainly hasn't been a walk in the park, and while things are coming down around me and I look at what appears to be a dead end at every corner I still push forward. We all do! Life isn't easy for any of us and it's even harder for those of us that refuse to back down, so what the hell?! Take the easy way out? YOU SELFISH PRICK! My mind can't comprehend how you can do this because it makes no sense, you were the provider! You were the one that was taking care of your family! You helped them accrue the debt that you were working at paying off and then you just abandon them??! Leave them in a position in which they are now buried under the weight of the world that you were building for them only to rip out the main support beams before it was finished!
You also robbed your sister of her happiness! She just got married two days before you decided to do this! THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING? You got a wedding, you got a honeymoon, you got to have the happiness that you so longed for all of your life, and the moment your sister finally gets the same kind of happiness you steal it from her! You just swoop in and destroy it! You thought this was the easy solution, you thought this was the way that everything would be alright… everyone you left behind that was counting on you will have the hardest times of their lives! You never thought of that! You never thought of what the consequences were to those that you leave behind and for that you hurt us in a way that you can't imagine. I love you Jason, but there is no way I can respect this choice… I've never had reason to be angry with you before but I can't let this go… and my anger may never die because you took the easy way out and made such a cold hearted self absorbed choice.
I don't know what to do… I don't know what to think… my mind is pissed at him and my heart is crying for him, and those emotions are so conflicting that my body is locked. My mind won't let me cry for him, and my heart won't let me curse the choices he has made. I don't know what to do…. I feel more statuesque as I think it over my emotions are almost encased in granite.
Because of this my dreams are getting more painful. While my dad had tried to tell me that it's just a dream and that I shouldn't allow it to affect me but also don't tend to second guess what I see. I haven't dreamt of my grandfather in many years. The last dream I had of him was shortly after his death. In that dream he was relaxed. He looked younger than I ever knew him, he looked like he did in pictures that I had seen of him growing up, long before I was born, long before my father was born. This new dream was different. In this dream he was the man I remember when I did something that he wasn't happy with. He was a very strong man, someone that had a presence that people didn't challenge. When I made mistakes and he corrected me it instilled fear and later respect. In this dream he was angry with me. He was correcting me again… reminding me that Jason... no matter what he has done... is still family. You don't EVER turn your back to, or your heart away from, family. I keep wondering if this was because my mind was getting too aggressive over the way I felt and something needed to keep me from shutting down. Either way he didn't like the fact that I was more pissed at Jason than sad. The fact that I haven't cried (and I still haven't) over the loss of his life, over the situation that his wife is now going to be in, and the torment that my Aunt and Uncle are now experiencing is the source of why he is angry at me. I have a feeling that this is going to take a long time for me to resolve… it's not like anything else I have ever experienced, it's not supposed to be like this….
"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal." – A Tombstone in Ireland
Monday, June 16, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Computer Killer
Geek, Nerd, Techno-geek, Computer-freak, yeah I've been called just about everything that you can think of when it comes to computers. I've spent years studying them, building them and ripping them apart only to rebuild them and make them better. At the same time I am also someone who most people turn to when their computer is on the fritz. I can understand how a computer can be one of the most frustrating things to deal with, and recently I have had an experience that I had never had previously on any computer. Fortunately & unfortunately it happened on my home computer. I say fortunately because I would rather this happen to my system and experience the problem first hand than to have it happen to a friend and have no idea how or what they might have done to cause the issue.
A couple weeks ago I had an issue with my computer, I was logging into the computer remotely so I could access my programs from work (I told you that I was a geek when it came to computers). I noticed that my recycle bin was showing that it had trash in it. Now I am usually one of those people that when I delete a file, if I don't delete the file directly, I immediately empty the recycle bin. So for me to see files in the recycle bin is kind of unusual, so I thought maybe I got distracted and forgot to empty it. I decided to open the bin and see what it is that I forgot to delete. When I opened the bin it was empty. The icon showed it being full and the bin was empty. Now this isn't all that surprising. Windows is know for having strange quirks and seeing a malfunctioning icon is nothing new for me. I've seen that a dozen or so times and there is usually a really quick fix for this issue. Delete a file and empty the bin will take care of it 98% of the time.
So I created a quick junk file, a simple txt file that I planned to immediately delete. So I trashed it as soon as I made it and followed my usual procedure of emptying the recycle bin. I got the usual "Are you sure you want to delete the items in the bin" and I clicked yes only to get a response "Error: Not all files could be deleted." I opened the recycle bin and the junk file was gone and there was nothing in
the bin, but the icon still showed a full recycle bin.
Well that seemed annoying, so I decided to do what any good tech would do and "restart the computer". A few minutes later the computer is back up and running... and the recycle bin is still full. I check the bin and it shows nothing. So I decide to do the next trick and try to empty the empty recycle bin.... this time the message says "Are you sure you want to delete Windows?"
Ok so this is an interesting question, do I want to delete windows? Well considering the frustration that it has caused me over the years I went for the immediate response of "yes". I clicked on Yes knowing that there wasn't going to be any way that this system would allow me to physically remove windows. And I immediately got an error that says that it couldn't delete windows, files were in use etc. With some comfort of knowing that the computer was smart enough not to delete the operating system while it was running I knew things couldn't be too bad.
After about a day of research I found out that this is a bug that randomly occurs in windows and that Microsoft is well aware of it but has no intention of ever trying to find a fix for it.
I tried a number of options to correct the problem, searching through forum after forum of other people having the same problem and what they did to try to resolve the issue. After about 2 days the problem was solved.... but not before I discovered another issue. One of the things that I thought about doing to resolve the issue is to use Microsofts "Restore System" function. This can be quite the life saver. If you have never used it, here is how it works: Windows saves a snapshot of your computer (usually on a daily basis) it saves a quick image of what the computer was running and what the registry looked like on a specific day. Now the idea is to look at just the programs that are installed and the registry. It does not look at files that are saved or emails that are downloaded. So when you use the restore it ignores everything except the program changes. So if you install a program that has an issue with your computer you can restore the computer to the way it was the day before without losing your email or any new things that you may have downloaded. It simply pretends that it never installed the software and removes all knowledge of the software from the registry and its installation folder. This can save you a lot of time if you have a problem with the computer. So where was my issue that I discovered before resolving my recycling bin problem?
All of my restore points were gone. This was an issue. I looked at the system and it was set to save restore points everyday, and there were no restore points to be found. This is could be a major issue. Without those restore points I can't restore the system to a previously working state. So here I am wondering what I am going to do if I can't get it working?
So I am now surfing through even more forums trying to find where this problem comes from, the only info that I could uncover on this problem is that windows does this if you are running low on hard drive space.
This is the part of the blog where you need to know that I was laughing about "lack of hard drive space". Anyone that knows me knows that I have more space on my computer than most people will have in the next 5 years. When people were talking about how they had 1 gig of hard drive space in 1996 I had 2 gigs. When people were telling everyone about how they had 10 gigs of hard drive space in 1999 I had a 40 gig drive. Here we are in 2008, and people are talking about how their computers are coming with 500 gig drives.... I have just over 2 Terabytes (2000 gigs). Yeah it seems like a lot but for what I am doing with my computer you'll realize that in the next 5 - 10 years I'll have a petabyte (1000 Terabytes) just to support the kind of animation that I want to be making, and backing up all of my previous work. Needless to say I have plenty of hard drive space so for my computer to be doing something that is usually only done when there is no hard drive space that means that there is a problem with windows.
So as I said, I managed to fix the recycling bin problem, and I didn't want to panic over the inability of restoring my system should a major issue occur. So I took this time to start backing up my system. I spent the next 4 days backing up as much of my system as I could onto my external hard drive.
After I had backed up most of the hard drive I noticed one other strange occurrence my image files wouldn't open using windows picture viewer. They would open fine using my image editing software (Photoshop) but the problem with that was it takes nearly 1 minute to get Photoshop started and if someone sends me a picture that I want to look at quickly I want to just use the windows software because it will open the image in a matter of seconds and then I can close it. A day later, the recycling bin error returned.
Well, with all of this happening I made the decision that I need to reinstall windows. I decided that windows had become corrupt and without being able to restore to a good state, it seemed only logical that I wipe out my hard drive, reinstall my software, and have a fully functional version of everything running.
The weekend hit and I spent 2 days reformatting and reinstalling, I had most of it taken care of by the end of Saturday and on early Sunday morning I realize exactly how bad my situation had become. The wipe of the hard drive was a good thing, a fresh install of windows is something I usually do once a year but this was something that I had done only about 6 months earlier.
So if the reinstall was a good thing why was my situation bad? I realized that it was bad as soon as I plugged in my backup drive. The computer identified it immediately and I was able to browse the files. Everything that was on the drive seemed to be there. The only problem is that everything that I had backed up from the previous install of windows had become corrupt. Apparently the corruption of windows was passed onto all of the files that I had been storing on the same drive as windows. It wrote all of the files in an undecipherable format that only the corrupted version of windows could read.
I spent the next 3 days attempting to recover my files only to find that they were gone. Hundreds of pictures gone... audio files that I was editing for my next film....gone.... months worth of work all history because windows destroyed the files. Nothing could decipher the corruption and what made it worse is that the corruption was tying itself to my hard drive. It wouldn't allow me to delete any of the files, so it was eating up hundreds of gigs of space and preventing me from being able to delete the files.
So I spent 2 more days copying the good files that I still had access to which had never been on the corrupt drive. And finally I had to run another program that would forcibly and permanently wipe out the drive.
So here I am a couple weeks later, still trying to see what was recoverable. I'm glad that I make multiple copies of my important files, but I kick myself for not having been able to catch this issue earlier.
There is a lot that I can never recover, but if anything I hope this serves as a warning to all that a simple backup is not always the only answer. From this point forward if I ever notice corruption in windows and I still have network access I will be transferring the files to another working computer first to make sure that the files are truly backed up before I wipe it out.
A couple weeks ago I had an issue with my computer, I was logging into the computer remotely so I could access my programs from work (I told you that I was a geek when it came to computers). I noticed that my recycle bin was showing that it had trash in it. Now I am usually one of those people that when I delete a file, if I don't delete the file directly, I immediately empty the recycle bin. So for me to see files in the recycle bin is kind of unusual, so I thought maybe I got distracted and forgot to empty it. I decided to open the bin and see what it is that I forgot to delete. When I opened the bin it was empty. The icon showed it being full and the bin was empty. Now this isn't all that surprising. Windows is know for having strange quirks and seeing a malfunctioning icon is nothing new for me. I've seen that a dozen or so times and there is usually a really quick fix for this issue. Delete a file and empty the bin will take care of it 98% of the time.
So I created a quick junk file, a simple txt file that I planned to immediately delete. So I trashed it as soon as I made it and followed my usual procedure of emptying the recycle bin. I got the usual "Are you sure you want to delete the items in the bin" and I clicked yes only to get a response "Error: Not all files could be deleted." I opened the recycle bin and the junk file was gone and there was nothing in
the bin, but the icon still showed a full recycle bin.Well that seemed annoying, so I decided to do what any good tech would do and "restart the computer". A few minutes later the computer is back up and running... and the recycle bin is still full. I check the bin and it shows nothing. So I decide to do the next trick and try to empty the empty recycle bin.... this time the message says "Are you sure you want to delete Windows?"
Ok so this is an interesting question, do I want to delete windows? Well considering the frustration that it has caused me over the years I went for the immediate response of "yes". I clicked on Yes knowing that there wasn't going to be any way that this system would allow me to physically remove windows. And I immediately got an error that says that it couldn't delete windows, files were in use etc. With some comfort of knowing that the computer was smart enough not to delete the operating system while it was running I knew things couldn't be too bad.
After about a day of research I found out that this is a bug that randomly occurs in windows and that Microsoft is well aware of it but has no intention of ever trying to find a fix for it.
I tried a number of options to correct the problem, searching through forum after forum of other people having the same problem and what they did to try to resolve the issue. After about 2 days the problem was solved.... but not before I discovered another issue. One of the things that I thought about doing to resolve the issue is to use Microsofts "Restore System" function. This can be quite the life saver. If you have never used it, here is how it works: Windows saves a snapshot of your computer (usually on a daily basis) it saves a quick image of what the computer was running and what the registry looked like on a specific day. Now the idea is to look at just the programs that are installed and the registry. It does not look at files that are saved or emails that are downloaded. So when you use the restore it ignores everything except the program changes. So if you install a program that has an issue with your computer you can restore the computer to the way it was the day before without losing your email or any new things that you may have downloaded. It simply pretends that it never installed the software and removes all knowledge of the software from the registry and its installation folder. This can save you a lot of time if you have a problem with the computer. So where was my issue that I discovered before resolving my recycling bin problem?
All of my restore points were gone. This was an issue. I looked at the system and it was set to save restore points everyday, and there were no restore points to be found. This is could be a major issue. Without those restore points I can't restore the system to a previously working state. So here I am wondering what I am going to do if I can't get it working?
So I am now surfing through even more forums trying to find where this problem comes from, the only info that I could uncover on this problem is that windows does this if you are running low on hard drive space.
This is the part of the blog where you need to know that I was laughing about "lack of hard drive space". Anyone that knows me knows that I have more space on my computer than most people will have in the next 5 years. When people were talking about how they had 1 gig of hard drive space in 1996 I had 2 gigs. When people were telling everyone about how they had 10 gigs of hard drive space in 1999 I had a 40 gig drive. Here we are in 2008, and people are talking about how their computers are coming with 500 gig drives.... I have just over 2 Terabytes (2000 gigs). Yeah it seems like a lot but for what I am doing with my computer you'll realize that in the next 5 - 10 years I'll have a petabyte (1000 Terabytes) just to support the kind of animation that I want to be making, and backing up all of my previous work. Needless to say I have plenty of hard drive space so for my computer to be doing something that is usually only done when there is no hard drive space that means that there is a problem with windows.
So as I said, I managed to fix the recycling bin problem, and I didn't want to panic over the inability of restoring my system should a major issue occur. So I took this time to start backing up my system. I spent the next 4 days backing up as much of my system as I could onto my external hard drive.
After I had backed up most of the hard drive I noticed one other strange occurrence my image files wouldn't open using windows picture viewer. They would open fine using my image editing software (Photoshop) but the problem with that was it takes nearly 1 minute to get Photoshop started and if someone sends me a picture that I want to look at quickly I want to just use the windows software because it will open the image in a matter of seconds and then I can close it. A day later, the recycling bin error returned.
Well, with all of this happening I made the decision that I need to reinstall windows. I decided that windows had become corrupt and without being able to restore to a good state, it seemed only logical that I wipe out my hard drive, reinstall my software, and have a fully functional version of everything running.
The weekend hit and I spent 2 days reformatting and reinstalling, I had most of it taken care of by the end of Saturday and on early Sunday morning I realize exactly how bad my situation had become. The wipe of the hard drive was a good thing, a fresh install of windows is something I usually do once a year but this was something that I had done only about 6 months earlier.
So if the reinstall was a good thing why was my situation bad? I realized that it was bad as soon as I plugged in my backup drive. The computer identified it immediately and I was able to browse the files. Everything that was on the drive seemed to be there. The only problem is that everything that I had backed up from the previous install of windows had become corrupt. Apparently the corruption of windows was passed onto all of the files that I had been storing on the same drive as windows. It wrote all of the files in an undecipherable format that only the corrupted version of windows could read.
I spent the next 3 days attempting to recover my files only to find that they were gone. Hundreds of pictures gone... audio files that I was editing for my next film....gone.... months worth of work all history because windows destroyed the files. Nothing could decipher the corruption and what made it worse is that the corruption was tying itself to my hard drive. It wouldn't allow me to delete any of the files, so it was eating up hundreds of gigs of space and preventing me from being able to delete the files.
So I spent 2 more days copying the good files that I still had access to which had never been on the corrupt drive. And finally I had to run another program that would forcibly and permanently wipe out the drive.
So here I am a couple weeks later, still trying to see what was recoverable. I'm glad that I make multiple copies of my important files, but I kick myself for not having been able to catch this issue earlier.
There is a lot that I can never recover, but if anything I hope this serves as a warning to all that a simple backup is not always the only answer. From this point forward if I ever notice corruption in windows and I still have network access I will be transferring the files to another working computer first to make sure that the files are truly backed up before I wipe it out.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Wonder-Con
A week ago I went out to San Francisco because my film was running in the San Francisco International Children's Festival at Wonder-Con. I have to admit that I had some interesting expectations for this festival but it was so much more than I could have anticipated.
What I didn't know was that the gamers conference was being held a few days before Wonder-con and the two fests overlapped on Friday. It was quite the experience.
Thursday night - I arrived in San Francisco at about 8:15pm after flying from Florida to Atlanta and when we were held up in Atlanta for about 30 minutes. So I arrived a little later than I expected I would. While I was headed there I struck up a conversation with the guy that was sitting next to me from the Atlanta leg of the flight. He told me about how the company he was working for was sending him to Atlanta a few times a year, and this was the first of many trips. We also talked for a while about the film industry and how I was on my way out to a festival. So over a couple hours we got to know each other and had a lot to talk about. As we landed he told me that he lived pretty close to the hotel I was staying at and since his girlfriend was picking him up at the airport he offered to drop me off. I was really appreciative and offered him a couple of my extra tickets to Wonder-con.
Well so far the trip was going good, the hotel was right in the middle of the city, really close to the Moscone where the Con was happening. Everything we could possibly need was right there. So after checking into the The Maxwell Hotel and getting into the room (it was on the 12th floor, and the view of the city was pretty nice) I took a stroll down Geary st to a local pizza / sub shop and got dinner. As I was walking out the door of the shop I knew I could get in a lot of trouble if I wasn't careful.
A girl walking by the shop immediately stopped and began acting far more friendly than most people do. She acted as though she knew me from somewhere else and even said "I remember you, we met earlier" and I told her that she was mistaken. So after about 5 minutes of her trying to get me to either buy her dinner or "walk her home" as she was kind enough to put it, she realized that I wasn't about to be taken and tried to find someone else that she "recognized". So I high tailed it back to the hotel dinner and money still in my possession.
Friday was interesting as it was the first day of the Festival and the Con, Ari and both knew that we should check in that day but we didn't have much intention of hanging around there since our films wouldn't run until Saturday. We explored San Fran for a couple hours, and then headed out to the Moscone where we met up with some guys that Ari knew would be at the game conference. So after we met up and had lunch, we went to the Moscone South and got our passes to get into the Con.
Friday @ The Con -
We had some difficulty getting the passes, it seems that one of the guys that was working for the Festival had picked up all of the passes and we didn't have his phone number to find him. After talking with the registration people one of the ladies took pity on us and made a couple professional passes for us to get in and find out where we were supposed to be for the film fest.
As we explored the lower level of the main floor we found a bunch of the booths where a lot of various companies were that we were familiar with. While I needed to check out the View Askew booth (and buy up a bunch of the stuff that they usually only sell on the website) Ari needed to check out the SLG Publishing booth (they were right next to each other so that made things easy). We each picked up a bunch of things that we wanted and decided that anything we would acquire at this con we should do on the first day so we don't bog ourselves down on the days that were more important.
After doing some more exploration of the main floor we came across an area where there were various people signing comic books and a I noticed a familiar face... I can't say that I had ever met him before but I remembered seeing him a number of times in various documentaries about Star Wars. As I got closer I realized that I was standing before Peter Mayhew who played Chewbacca in all of the Star Wars movies. Now those that know about my past know that all through out high school and college I was a star wars geek. Before the movies were re-released I was still coveting a prized collection of about 20 figures and when people had questions (or wanted to make me look like even more of a geek in front of other people by trying to stump me) they would ask anything they could think of about Star Wars. Fortunately for me I have been in many various industries that have gotten me accustomed to having the opportunity to meet celebrities. I learned many years ago not to freak out or go all "fan-boy" on anyone of pop culture status. So when I approached Mr. Mayhew I simply shook his hand and told him that I appreciate his work. I watched a number of other people freak out and while he was courteous with them I could see that he was used to this kind of a reaction and knew it was best to be polite and eventually they would either stop of move on to the next celebrity that they could freak out over. So while they got a smile and a hand shake, he actually talked with me for a while. When I told him that I was running a film in the children's festival he even took out his copy of the Wonder Con book to try and look up my film so he could see what it was about. I think it was probably one of the most positive experiences that I have had in quite a while getting to meet someone that I grew up watching on many different occasions in what was once my favorite movie series of all time.
Afterwards I got a call from the director of the film festival and he wanted to tell me that there was a booth for the fest on the floor and he told me where the films were playing. So Ari and I decided to find the booth and put some of our promotional materials out. We also decided that it might behoove us to work the booth for a couple hours in between the showing of our films on Saturday.
We made our way to the area where the films were being shown and then we realized how much time had gone by so after becoming slightly familiar with where we would be spending the next day we made our way back to the hotel to meet up with a friend.
After having a drink and just relaxing at the bar & grill adjacent to the hotel with our friend we got a call from Jenny and Dan, two other directors that we met at the Los Angeles Film Fest. We gave them directions to the hotel and agreed to meet up for dinner and drinks at 7 which gave them a couple hours to get settled and find their way to the hotel.
So Dan and Jenny met up with us and we went to a place called the Sushi boat which was across from the hotel, to follow it up by going to Lefty O'Douls Pub down the road. After a few hours of drinking and laughing and just having fun we decided to call it a night at about 1am. Being that I was still functioning on east coast time it was about 4am for me and while I would try to "sleep in" the next day I would still wake up at 5:30... and then struggle to stay in bed until 8.
Saturday @ Wonder-con
Saturday would be just as busy as Friday. Getting up at 8 so we could get to a cafe down the road in the morning and meet up with another animator that we had been in touch with since watching his film at various festivals. We didn't get much time to hang out as he had to get to work, but it was cool having the opportunity to meet up for a few minutes.
After breakfast we headed straight to the Moscone and got to the booth to make sure that our promotional materials were in check. We talked with a couple people about the films and told a few people with kids to check it out. 10 minutes later I was in the auditorium watching the films during the block in which my film was playing. My film was the last to show and I was getting slightly discouraged as the two films prior to mine were both documentaries that lasted 10 minutes long each. I could see the kids getting restless and parents started leading them out of the theater before the second one ended. Suddenly with about 3 minutes remaining for the film before mine would end I noticed that what was a 2/3 full theater was now 1/4 full. A lot of people had left and it was looking pretty sparse. I didn't know what to think at this point and I figured that this would be tough because the place was mostly empty.
As my film started the place was just about as barren as I would see it....... and then it happened. As soon as the slash screen for my little picture company cleared off of the screen, and the first couple seconds of the film began I noticed that just about every kid that left the theater was still near the door outside, and all of the kids that were waiting for the next show were also there and they all seemed to spot that a cartoon was playing. Suddenly the theater filled in quicker than I could have ever imagined. I could hear them laughing, and while I have been told by hundreds of adults that that they like my film about "bears" the kids were saying "Look! Dogs!"... the kids get it! That was the greatest feeling to hear them talking about it. This is the whole reason to do what I do. Hearing the reactions of the kids, the kids that I made this film for, made the whole trip worth it.
After wards we had the Q&A and when I got up to talk with about the film the kids were still in the crowd and one of them was saying, "I want to ask a question" to his mother, but didn't know what to ask. Then Ari came to the rescue by whispering "Ask him how long it took to make." After that question came a flood of other questions from the kids "How many dogs do you have?", "Do they really act like that?" etc. It was the most interaction that I have had in a Q&A ever, it was great.
Afterwards, we went back to the booth to continue promoting the film fest. When we got there, almost all of the cards that we had put down were gone. I came with over 250 post cards promoting the film and I was nearly out. After and hour or two of promoting the fest I decided to explore the Con a little more. I managed to get around and see a lot of different people dressed as various characters. It was interesting to see how many people were dressed up in Star Wars costumes, one guy even had a working life size R2-D2 he even gave a seminar on how to make your own.
As I continued to wander around I saw a number of other celebrities that were around David Duchovney and Jillian Anderson were there to promote the new X-Files movie, Jon Favreau was there talking about Iron Man. I made my way back to the booth and Ari and I met up with Jenny and Dan again, we decided to get lunch and then headed back to the convention, and as we were walking back we met up with Serena Valentino the author of "Nighmares & Fairy Tales" and "Gloom Cookie". She was really nice to talk with, and it was cool to just hang out with her for a little while. After getting together with her we ran back to the theater for Ari's showing of his film. The showing ran a little long as they decided to put 3 films in that were 22 minutes each, and then they put Ari's film in last. After the film ran the Q&A went really well, a lot of people asked about his film and what he is working on next. Once we finished with the Q&A we met up with Dan (the director of the fest) and he told us to head over to the Thirsty Bear for an after party. We hung out there for a few hours talking with a number of other directors and just had a good time. It would be around 1am when we would get in, and being that Ari's flight out would be at 6:30 we would have to leave the hotel by 4am to go to the Airport. My flight wasn't until 7:50.
Sunday - The airport
We made it out of the Hotel at 4am and had to call a cab because none of the other transports were running at that time on Sunday. Apparently they run that early most days with Sunday being the exception. We got to the airport with plenty of time to check in on the flight. Ari got to his gate and we grabbed a drink and relaxed while waiting for him to be able to board. His flight was soon ready and he was on his way back to Minnesota. I headed to my terminal and waited. Making some calls to people back home knowing that it was now 10 - 11am there it was safe to know I wouldn't be waking anyone up. As the time got closer, my gate changed to a few gates down, so I moved there, and found that things were not going to have an easy flight out. The readout on the flight plan started showing Memphis then Atlanta. As it turned out the winds in San Fran were much higher than they would normally be, so they said they needed to lighten the plane to make it easier to transport. So instead of cutting the number of passengers they decided it would be better to reduce the amount of fuel and then land some where else to refuel and continue. At 7:30 we were on board the plane preparing to go to Memphis and then on to Atlanta.... at 8:30 they were telling us that we were still to heavy and that we would be now landing in Kansas City. By 9:30 they were telling us that we were still too heavy and that we were still landing in Kansas City.... by 11am they told us that we were still too heavy and that we would be landing in Denver Colorado. After sitting on the tarmac for 3 hours (with a child 2 rows behind me that was screaming her lungs out) we finally took off, before we took off I called Delta and rearranged my connecting flight. Because I knew that I would never make it to Atlanta on time to catch my regular flight. We landed in Denver and then after refueling about 1 hour later we were able to take off again (the kid continued to scream the entire flight... 6 hours of flying 4 hours total on the tarmac... 10 hours of non stop screaming, I was happy to get off that flight). We arrived in Atlanta around 7:30 eastern time, I ran to my next gate which was almost done boarding and expecting to leave at 7:45pm. 20 people from my flight showed up on my heels and they each tried to change their tickets from the previous flight. I handed them my ticket and they told me that I had a ticket waiting for me (good thing I knew to call ahead). There were about 4 seats on the flight and I got one. I was back in Florida 2 1/2 hours later. I got back to my apartment at midnight, and passed out right away.
While I wasn't happy to be waking up for my Monday morning meeting at work, I can say that this trip was definitely worth every minute. In fact I have already put in for my time off for Comic-Con. I don't know what to expect out of Comic-Con but I can say that Wonder-Con brought in roughly 20,000 - 25,000 people on that weekend... Comic-Con is expected to average 120,000+ people.... this is going to be great!
What I didn't know was that the gamers conference was being held a few days before Wonder-con and the two fests overlapped on Friday. It was quite the experience.
Thursday night - I arrived in San Francisco at about 8:15pm after flying from Florida to Atlanta and when we were held up in Atlanta for about 30 minutes. So I arrived a little later than I expected I would. While I was headed there I struck up a conversation with the guy that was sitting next to me from the Atlanta leg of the flight. He told me about how the company he was working for was sending him to Atlanta a few times a year, and this was the first of many trips. We also talked for a while about the film industry and how I was on my way out to a festival. So over a couple hours we got to know each other and had a lot to talk about. As we landed he told me that he lived pretty close to the hotel I was staying at and since his girlfriend was picking him up at the airport he offered to drop me off. I was really appreciative and offered him a couple of my extra tickets to Wonder-con.
Well so far the trip was going good, the hotel was right in the middle of the city, really close to the Moscone where the Con was happening. Everything we could possibly need was right there. So after checking into the The Maxwell Hotel and getting into the room (it was on the 12th floor, and the view of the city was pretty nice) I took a stroll down Geary st to a local pizza / sub shop and got dinner. As I was walking out the door of the shop I knew I could get in a lot of trouble if I wasn't careful.
A girl walking by the shop immediately stopped and began acting far more friendly than most people do. She acted as though she knew me from somewhere else and even said "I remember you, we met earlier" and I told her that she was mistaken. So after about 5 minutes of her trying to get me to either buy her dinner or "walk her home" as she was kind enough to put it, she realized that I wasn't about to be taken and tried to find someone else that she "recognized". So I high tailed it back to the hotel dinner and money still in my possession.
Friday was interesting as it was the first day of the Festival and the Con, Ari and both knew that we should check in that day but we didn't have much intention of hanging around there since our films wouldn't run until Saturday. We explored San Fran for a couple hours, and then headed out to the Moscone where we met up with some guys that Ari knew would be at the game conference. So after we met up and had lunch, we went to the Moscone South and got our passes to get into the Con.
Friday @ The Con -
We had some difficulty getting the passes, it seems that one of the guys that was working for the Festival had picked up all of the passes and we didn't have his phone number to find him. After talking with the registration people one of the ladies took pity on us and made a couple professional passes for us to get in and find out where we were supposed to be for the film fest.
As we explored the lower level of the main floor we found a bunch of the booths where a lot of various companies were that we were familiar with. While I needed to check out the View Askew booth (and buy up a bunch of the stuff that they usually only sell on the website) Ari needed to check out the SLG Publishing booth (they were right next to each other so that made things easy). We each picked up a bunch of things that we wanted and decided that anything we would acquire at this con we should do on the first day so we don't bog ourselves down on the days that were more important.
After doing some more exploration of the main floor we came across an area where there were various people signing comic books and a I noticed a familiar face... I can't say that I had ever met him before but I remembered seeing him a number of times in various documentaries about Star Wars. As I got closer I realized that I was standing before Peter Mayhew who played Chewbacca in all of the Star Wars movies. Now those that know about my past know that all through out high school and college I was a star wars geek. Before the movies were re-released I was still coveting a prized collection of about 20 figures and when people had questions (or wanted to make me look like even more of a geek in front of other people by trying to stump me) they would ask anything they could think of about Star Wars. Fortunately for me I have been in many various industries that have gotten me accustomed to having the opportunity to meet celebrities. I learned many years ago not to freak out or go all "fan-boy" on anyone of pop culture status. So when I approached Mr. Mayhew I simply shook his hand and told him that I appreciate his work. I watched a number of other people freak out and while he was courteous with them I could see that he was used to this kind of a reaction and knew it was best to be polite and eventually they would either stop of move on to the next celebrity that they could freak out over. So while they got a smile and a hand shake, he actually talked with me for a while. When I told him that I was running a film in the children's festival he even took out his copy of the Wonder Con book to try and look up my film so he could see what it was about. I think it was probably one of the most positive experiences that I have had in quite a while getting to meet someone that I grew up watching on many different occasions in what was once my favorite movie series of all time.
Afterwards I got a call from the director of the film festival and he wanted to tell me that there was a booth for the fest on the floor and he told me where the films were playing. So Ari and I decided to find the booth and put some of our promotional materials out. We also decided that it might behoove us to work the booth for a couple hours in between the showing of our films on Saturday.
We made our way to the area where the films were being shown and then we realized how much time had gone by so after becoming slightly familiar with where we would be spending the next day we made our way back to the hotel to meet up with a friend.
After having a drink and just relaxing at the bar & grill adjacent to the hotel with our friend we got a call from Jenny and Dan, two other directors that we met at the Los Angeles Film Fest. We gave them directions to the hotel and agreed to meet up for dinner and drinks at 7 which gave them a couple hours to get settled and find their way to the hotel.
So Dan and Jenny met up with us and we went to a place called the Sushi boat which was across from the hotel, to follow it up by going to Lefty O'Douls Pub down the road. After a few hours of drinking and laughing and just having fun we decided to call it a night at about 1am. Being that I was still functioning on east coast time it was about 4am for me and while I would try to "sleep in" the next day I would still wake up at 5:30... and then struggle to stay in bed until 8.
Saturday @ Wonder-con
Saturday would be just as busy as Friday. Getting up at 8 so we could get to a cafe down the road in the morning and meet up with another animator that we had been in touch with since watching his film at various festivals. We didn't get much time to hang out as he had to get to work, but it was cool having the opportunity to meet up for a few minutes.
After breakfast we headed straight to the Moscone and got to the booth to make sure that our promotional materials were in check. We talked with a couple people about the films and told a few people with kids to check it out. 10 minutes later I was in the auditorium watching the films during the block in which my film was playing. My film was the last to show and I was getting slightly discouraged as the two films prior to mine were both documentaries that lasted 10 minutes long each. I could see the kids getting restless and parents started leading them out of the theater before the second one ended. Suddenly with about 3 minutes remaining for the film before mine would end I noticed that what was a 2/3 full theater was now 1/4 full. A lot of people had left and it was looking pretty sparse. I didn't know what to think at this point and I figured that this would be tough because the place was mostly empty.
As my film started the place was just about as barren as I would see it....... and then it happened. As soon as the slash screen for my little picture company cleared off of the screen, and the first couple seconds of the film began I noticed that just about every kid that left the theater was still near the door outside, and all of the kids that were waiting for the next show were also there and they all seemed to spot that a cartoon was playing. Suddenly the theater filled in quicker than I could have ever imagined. I could hear them laughing, and while I have been told by hundreds of adults that that they like my film about "bears" the kids were saying "Look! Dogs!"... the kids get it! That was the greatest feeling to hear them talking about it. This is the whole reason to do what I do. Hearing the reactions of the kids, the kids that I made this film for, made the whole trip worth it.
After wards we had the Q&A and when I got up to talk with about the film the kids were still in the crowd and one of them was saying, "I want to ask a question" to his mother, but didn't know what to ask. Then Ari came to the rescue by whispering "Ask him how long it took to make." After that question came a flood of other questions from the kids "How many dogs do you have?", "Do they really act like that?" etc. It was the most interaction that I have had in a Q&A ever, it was great.
Afterwards, we went back to the booth to continue promoting the film fest. When we got there, almost all of the cards that we had put down were gone. I came with over 250 post cards promoting the film and I was nearly out. After and hour or two of promoting the fest I decided to explore the Con a little more. I managed to get around and see a lot of different people dressed as various characters. It was interesting to see how many people were dressed up in Star Wars costumes, one guy even had a working life size R2-D2 he even gave a seminar on how to make your own.
As I continued to wander around I saw a number of other celebrities that were around David Duchovney and Jillian Anderson were there to promote the new X-Files movie, Jon Favreau was there talking about Iron Man. I made my way back to the booth and Ari and I met up with Jenny and Dan again, we decided to get lunch and then headed back to the convention, and as we were walking back we met up with Serena Valentino the author of "Nighmares & Fairy Tales" and "Gloom Cookie". She was really nice to talk with, and it was cool to just hang out with her for a little while. After getting together with her we ran back to the theater for Ari's showing of his film. The showing ran a little long as they decided to put 3 films in that were 22 minutes each, and then they put Ari's film in last. After the film ran the Q&A went really well, a lot of people asked about his film and what he is working on next. Once we finished with the Q&A we met up with Dan (the director of the fest) and he told us to head over to the Thirsty Bear for an after party. We hung out there for a few hours talking with a number of other directors and just had a good time. It would be around 1am when we would get in, and being that Ari's flight out would be at 6:30 we would have to leave the hotel by 4am to go to the Airport. My flight wasn't until 7:50.
Sunday - The airport
We made it out of the Hotel at 4am and had to call a cab because none of the other transports were running at that time on Sunday. Apparently they run that early most days with Sunday being the exception. We got to the airport with plenty of time to check in on the flight. Ari got to his gate and we grabbed a drink and relaxed while waiting for him to be able to board. His flight was soon ready and he was on his way back to Minnesota. I headed to my terminal and waited. Making some calls to people back home knowing that it was now 10 - 11am there it was safe to know I wouldn't be waking anyone up. As the time got closer, my gate changed to a few gates down, so I moved there, and found that things were not going to have an easy flight out. The readout on the flight plan started showing Memphis then Atlanta. As it turned out the winds in San Fran were much higher than they would normally be, so they said they needed to lighten the plane to make it easier to transport. So instead of cutting the number of passengers they decided it would be better to reduce the amount of fuel and then land some where else to refuel and continue. At 7:30 we were on board the plane preparing to go to Memphis and then on to Atlanta.... at 8:30 they were telling us that we were still to heavy and that we would be now landing in Kansas City. By 9:30 they were telling us that we were still too heavy and that we were still landing in Kansas City.... by 11am they told us that we were still too heavy and that we would be landing in Denver Colorado. After sitting on the tarmac for 3 hours (with a child 2 rows behind me that was screaming her lungs out) we finally took off, before we took off I called Delta and rearranged my connecting flight. Because I knew that I would never make it to Atlanta on time to catch my regular flight. We landed in Denver and then after refueling about 1 hour later we were able to take off again (the kid continued to scream the entire flight... 6 hours of flying 4 hours total on the tarmac... 10 hours of non stop screaming, I was happy to get off that flight). We arrived in Atlanta around 7:30 eastern time, I ran to my next gate which was almost done boarding and expecting to leave at 7:45pm. 20 people from my flight showed up on my heels and they each tried to change their tickets from the previous flight. I handed them my ticket and they told me that I had a ticket waiting for me (good thing I knew to call ahead). There were about 4 seats on the flight and I got one. I was back in Florida 2 1/2 hours later. I got back to my apartment at midnight, and passed out right away.
While I wasn't happy to be waking up for my Monday morning meeting at work, I can say that this trip was definitely worth every minute. In fact I have already put in for my time off for Comic-Con. I don't know what to expect out of Comic-Con but I can say that Wonder-Con brought in roughly 20,000 - 25,000 people on that weekend... Comic-Con is expected to average 120,000+ people.... this is going to be great!
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Perspective
Its been months since I sat to write in any of my blogs. Its not that I haven't had anything to say its that I have been in need of a change. I needed to recompile my thoughts because I realize that a lot of my blogs are becoming more about me ranting about things that I find to be obnoxious, disturbing, frustrating, or just just plain wrong. There are too many blogs out there with people who are spending their time whining about anything and everything.... so this is going to be a different type of blog.
I want to write today about something other than the frustrations of the things that hit me on a daily basis. Today I want to talk about success. Yes, success... everyone defines technically the same, but the real question of sucess is based upon degree. For example. I've been working out for months now. I decided one day that I wanted to change my life and that I knew that if I didn't I would be headed in a bad direction. It wasn't long after I got into my position as network admin that I knew I would need to have have something to break up the monotony of my job. I didn't want to be that guy that took the job and sat in his office all day long and didn't do anything. Fortuneately I am not that guy... while I may be in my office all the time I am never without enough to keep me busy. Once I got out of work I would find myself going home and doing the same thing sitting in front of a computer and trying to get things accomplished, whether it be finding different forms of entertainment to get my creativity flowing or trying to control the ideas that I have for my current film project and get them put into a form that I can be constructive with the direction of the film.
So to break these activities up I signed up for a gym. I figure if I could work for 8 hours then work out for an hour for at least 4 days a week it would give me a positive change.
Well the change has been positive for the most part.... positive in the form of losing almost 30lbs. So this change has been a success for me. Am I at my goal yet now that I have gotten my alternating routine in place? Not even close. But the little changes that I have had happen are the first step of success. When I started I was able to drop 5lbs a week without even thinking about it. It happened that way for a few weeks and then it slowed down. This was expected as the body tends to adapt to the changes you make, and therefore you need to keep changing to prevent it from getting comfortable with what you are doing and plateauing. So for a while there were a number of weeks where I would drop only 1 lb others when I might only drop 1/2 lb. Its not a great feeling to see that no matter how hard I worked out my body compensated for some of it and made it more difficult to reach the same peak I reached the week prior.
I thought about how most people would respond to these results. I remember seeing people in the same position that I am in saying things like "I have to get strickter, I ONLY lost 1 lb this week."..... "I can't belive I ONLY lost a 1/2 lb this week, I worked so hard and it didn't pay off."....."I'm not getting the results I want and I am working out so hard, I ONLY lost....".
I decided when I began this process that there would be no "I ONLY'S" in my vocabulary. As long as I didn't gain weight then I would celebrate the week as victory.... and I have! No matter how minor the change I talk myself up as though it was the biggest loss in the world, and I plan to keep doing so because it means that the next week will be different.
So how has it worked? Great! I know that can honestly say that I started this regiment during one of the hardest times of the year and I am one of the only people that can say that I ate really well during Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years and during each of those weeks I still lost weight. I had actually told myself that if I gained during any of those weeks I wouldn't beat myself up about it, I would simply go back to everything I was doing. I didn't exactly stay perfect during any of those weeks but I made sure that I would continue to hit the gym and push as hard as I can and stick to the path that I began a while back.
So even minor things can be a success....
My film that I finished last March has been touring around the world as most who know me have heard. It has been in over 20 film festivals and I have been able to attend only a small number of those fests, but the ones that I have been to have been a lot of fun! I haven't been able to apply for all of the festivals that I would have liked to be part of but I am happy to have been able to get into those that I was accepted to. The best part is that with all of the fests that I have applied for I managed to get accepted to about half of them. I have also gotten my fair share of rejections. The thing that I have a hard time looking past is that there are those who look at my film and they compare it quality wise to films that have 5 - 6 people helping them, or budgeted films and shoot it down. I even had one company write to me and say, "We received many good films, and we're sorry but but yours will not be shown at the festival: Reason: The story is poor even by short standards, and the ending makes no sense." I kept this response and I look at it everytime I get accepted into another festival. While I was awestruck when I got it, I have to say that I was laughing the second time I read it and I realized that the person that wrote it was not in my target audience.
I have to admit that last week I wanted to write back to this festival and let them know that I appreciate their input and they have helped me tremendously but not in the way they expected, oh, and if they want to give my film a second chance, they can watch it at ComicCon this year in San Diego. Sometimes the best revenge is just to do well with what you have, and what I have is a film that one of the largest Comic Book / Entertainment / Movie Conventions in the world wants to show.
I suppose life can be pretty funny sometimes.... it all depends on your perspective.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
My Precious....
It's come back to me. I am exstatic, I have to say that yesterday was a day of hell, but this morning I awoke and decided to try and make my day better by going for a swim. I don't know what changed but the ring was there... in the pocket of my swimsuit. I swear it wasn't there yesterday, I went swimming yesterday too, and I know it wasn't there, the suit was even hung upside down where anything in the pockets would have fallen to the ground, but this morning I put the suit on, and the ring was sitting in the pocket.
After over 24 hours of hell trying to find it, I am completely relieved by the unexpected nature of its return. This morning I put it back on and I have vowed that it will not leave my finger until I am safely back to my apartment. So I am happy, I have my ring back.....
......my precious.
After over 24 hours of hell trying to find it, I am completely relieved by the unexpected nature of its return. This morning I put it back on and I have vowed that it will not leave my finger until I am safely back to my apartment. So I am happy, I have my ring back.....
......my precious.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Lord of the Ring
It's gone. That's the only way to put it. I have been in Modesto for 3 days now, I arrived last Saturday, and here it is Monday and now it's gone. What am I referring to you might ask? My college class ring. My ring is gone. After the flight here it was uncomfortable as the pressure (physical pressure from pressurizing and depressurizing the airplane) of flight causes the human body to react strange after a long flight. I had 3 flights on Saturday, I spent damn near 10 hours in the air, and when all was said and done it caused my body to react like I had been eating from a salt lick all day... my fingers swelled making my ring finger uncomfortable. So I took the ring off. Unable to get it back on I put it aside. I have spent all day searching, I have ripped everything apart, retraced my steps a dozen or so times and in the last 36 hours my ring is no longer in my possession. Its strange, I haven't been without that ring for even a full day in just about 8 years and now its gone.
I don't know what to think, my mother has the receipt for it, and she has all the info so I can reorder it from Jostens, but the cost is going to be great. I can't believe that it is gone.
I don't know what to do.... what a way to start the trip....
I don't know what to think, my mother has the receipt for it, and she has all the info so I can reorder it from Jostens, but the cost is going to be great. I can't believe that it is gone.
I don't know what to do.... what a way to start the trip....
Thursday, September 13, 2007
The First Week of October
It looks as though my little animated film is gaining some ground, I have been accepted into 2 films festivals that I was unsure that I would get into. The California International Animated Film Fest, and the Los Angeles International Children's Film Fest. To be honest I was hoping to get into the LA Children's Fest for a long time. I even skipped out on going to SIGGRAPH this year just in case I had a chance to get into the LA fest. Well I am on my way! September 28th I am headed out to Modesto California, and I will be staying there until the 4th of October while I attend the California Intl Animation Fest, and then I am driving from Modesto to Los Angeles where I plan to do some couch surfing while I attend the LA Children's Fest, before heading back to Fort Lauderdale on the 7th.
I have also been really excited to find out where my standing in the Digifest.net festival is, it appears that my campaign to get people to watch the film has been working. I have been hearing back from many people checking out the film and telling me what they think about it, I wasn't exactly expecting my film campaign to go viral but I am hearing from more people than I ever expected. It has also given me great inspiration to push even harder to get my next film rolling. So now I am in the process of setting up the scripts for the two that I have in mind, the biggest thing that will help me determine which one will get my total focus first is going to be where things stand financially. If I talk with a couple select people about my live action idea, and they show the interest that I hope they will have and are willing to help back me on it, then I will be doing everything I can to push that forward, if I am going to be put in a spot where I have very little financial support on the film then I will resort to going back to working on just my next animated film. This is because I already have a couple computers that I can use to model and render with, I won't need to acquire any fancy equipment like I would with a live action film, at the most I will simply have to upgrade one of my computers a bit to handle some of the render times, but it should be considerably easier than it was to work with all the fur that I used in the first film.
Well this Friday is the last day to check out "The Hard Life of A Dog" at the online film fest at Digifestival.net The more people I have check it out the better my chances are to move on to the next round. I hope people keep spreading the word for these last couple days and that the number of votes continues to go up, unfortunately they don't give anyone the opportunity to view the voting, and I think that is a good idea and a bad idea, its good in the respect that it keeps people from just going to see who is voting for one film and just going to watch that one. But it is bad in the respect that it doesn't give an accurate depiction of where people stand, so I never know how accurate the audience vote is, especially if someone that checks the votes and knows that one film was better made than the others because of a major budget and a lot of people working on it, they might just put them up as being the winner of the audience vote even if someone else did get more votes overall. Who knows, I'm keeping my fingers crossed, and hoping that the sheer number of people that have been contacting me will tell me that I have been doing as well as I think this one is going.
Well two weeks from Saturday and I am going to Cali. Wish me luck!
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