My Middle Name is Gerous

It's been an interesting week. I have tallied the week's score for your information. It reads as follows:

Early last week my new video camera arrived. Awesome. (Score: Good things - 1, Bad things - 0) It uses special memory cards, so I had to install special drivers on my computer to read the cards. My computer slowed down, and eventually stopped booting altogether. (Good things - 1, Bad things - 1) So while I had everything backed up on another drive (an obsession I picked up a couple years back after nearly losing 3 months of work from one project) I couldn't use the computer. I had a wedding coming up that weekend and really needed to use it to offload footage as I took it with the camera. Computer problems began Tuesday night. Wednesday I took my new camera out for a spin, and it performed beautifully as I took in some nature shots from a ways out of town. (Good things - 2, Bad things - 1) Did a little time-lapse, some slow-motion. So great. Because I was already headed to Portland the next day, I arranged to meet the Apple people in Portland (I refuse to call them the Genius Bar, though that's their official title, because it's beyond pretentious.) Went to the Apple store, was given a quick fix, and I was back out the door, waiting to try the fix later. Well, the fix didn't work, (Good things - 2, Bad things - 2) so I had to make another appointment on Friday, the day before I needed it for shooting a wedding. Went in the next day, and they had to take my computer in for two days to fix it. (Good things - 2, Bad things - 3) That evening I went to play guitar at a party, for which I was being paid more than fairly for 2 hours of playing. By the end of the night, I had played 3.5 hours and was paid more than twice the original agreed amount. Also gave out some business cards to the woman who hired me because she wanted to recommend that service to her friends who also throw small events. (I didn't tell her I had never done this sort of thing before and that I was just making it up as I went along. Good things - 3, Bad things - 3) Next day didn't have the computer, which is a bummer because I needed to upload my footage onto a computer throughout the night. So I used the computer of my friend whom I hired to shoot with me. We got to the wedding and had just finished shooting the most important part, the ceremony, and discovered that one of the most important files from my friend's camera didn't transfer properly, and we ended up losing the shot. (A predicament which we know how to avoid in the future. Good things - 3, Bad things - 4) We were able to get some additional footage from the church's video camera, thanks to my obligatorily new best friend Jake. The rest of the evening went pretty well, and was an enjoyable event (Good things - 4, Bad things - 4), though with the two of us, I heard at least one comment about feeling like there were paparazzi skulking about. Also my friend Fritz, the photographer who got me both of the weekend's gigs (thanks Fritz!) let me use his fisheye lens, which gives a really unique effect when held in front of my camera.

The day after the wedding was a nice relaxed day, biked a bit in the heat, hung out with friends and fam, and it was really great. (Good things - 5, Bad things - 4) Also got to meet with CJ from my church, which was great. The next day I went and saw "UP" the new Pixar movie, in 3D, which was pretty stinking cool. ((Good things - 6, Bad things - 4) Then I had to head back to Bend, and on the way my car overheated. Actually, I forgot to mention it did the same thing on the way TO Portland, so I'm afraid the score is off by two. (Good things - 6, Bad things - 6) It was frustrating, but I made it home in one piece. I spent the evening reloading all my files onto my computer, and reinstalling the entire Adobe Creative Suite, which alone takes a couple hours. The next morning I had the computer working just fine, and decided to reinstall that camera card driver, which promptly sent my computer into a stalling and crashing trajectory. (Good things - 6, Bad things - 7) I managed to uninstall that driver and after a bit of research, found an updated driver that wouldn't do that to my poor computer. (Good things - 7, Bad things - 7) So now I could actually use my camera with my computer, and was all ready to take my loads of files from the wedding and get editing. Well, I discovered that the import process we used on my friend's computer put the files into a format unreadable by my computer. (Good things - 7, Bad things - 8) So 1.5 hours of research and $80 later I could actually read the files I needed to use and made some real headway with the footage. (Good things - 8, Bad things - 8) And from that point on, the editing has gone on relatively smoothly.

Today I worked a bit more on the wedding footage, and worked a bit for my boss here in Bend. He told me to bring my older video camera along to see if a friend of his would want to buy it from me, which would be a huge blessing, and money I can put toward the new camera. So tomorrow I'll be picking up a check for my old camera, thank you Jesus! (Good things - 9, Bad things - 8) So the last week has been just a shade above neutral. Actually, one more thing I forgot (forget editing what I write, I don't feel like updating every score just for a bit of continuity). I think I have a place to stay in Portland, possibly for free. More on that later. So it looks like the score is officially Good things - 10, Bad things - 8. So all turned out well, but what a crazy week. I think I need a nap.

12851