What A Week

 

 Lot to cover, so here we go.

Couple weeks back I got invited to join this app called Clubhouse. It's interesting, but honestly seems like just a way to waste a lot of time listening to strangers talk. Another buddy invited me to a group where authors read excepts from their books. 

This group is run by that other well-known author who has a book coming out with my book's name. My buddy thought it would be funny if I asked the guy if I could read an excerpt from my book in an upcoming get together(they do them every Monday), and I thought, "Why not?"

So I reached out to this guy and gave him the details of the book. I honestly sort of figured he'd never reply, but he got back to me fast and said, "Sure, how about next Monday?" 

Now I'm freaked out a bit because I get weird about public speaking. But tomorrow night I'm reading the prologue to my book...

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Last week at work was busy. A lot of tickets coming into my lane late Thursday night, so I was not a popular guy when I started finding a lot of errors at about 3pm on Friday. Nobody wants to hear that right before the weekend.

On top of that, my bathroom sink backed up again and I finally decided to take it apart and look. I thought the backup might be in the trap but guess what? It wasn't. It's farther in, inside the wall. So I have to go into the wall in my kid's closet, break a hole and take a look. 

I call my dad to come take a look and we try to remove some pipes. It's not working. These pipes are solid steel from like 1970 and haven't been touched in 50 years. So Friday night we had to super heat the pipes and I finally got the pipe off. It's backed up with hard stuff so that the pipe isn't even salvageable.

My dad makes a drawing and goes to the hardware store. He's gone for like 2 hours, but he comes back with a bunch of stuff to completely rebuild the pipe from the sink to the clogged place. It takes us a little while, but shockingly it works on the first try. No leaks.

Now I have to fix all the drywall holes, which are pretty sizeable, but at least we have our sink back. (we have one bathroom, remember? So we been brushing our teeth in the kitchen sink.)

I gotta get out of this fucking house. Or level it and have them rebuild it from scratch, because I like the neighborhood(and can't really afford a new house in this state)

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Then Saturday--off to shoot a video for the freelance doll thing. It was supposed to be short, so I can finish editing it this weekend. Turns out, it's just as long as normal. I worked 12 hours on it, same day I shot it. About 60% done.

If I don't get it done today, it's gonna wait--I have a lot of actual work to do this week so I'm not workin 8-10 hour days testing, and then going back to editing. Not gonna happen.

And May is almost here...it's going to be the most brutal month of my life. At one point I'm working 21 days straight without a break. Gonna suck, and to be honest, I'm starting to feel old for the first time in my life.

 

 

Whoops

 

 That movie thing...

So it turns out the director's not in a great place, mental wise. He's a bit burnt out--he's working on another segment for another movie at the same time he's working on this one--and long story short, he's was having a hard time on this.

I think about it and say to him, "Listen, I'm not sure I can even do this, but let me know if you're interested and I'll see..." and then I tell him that maybe I can shoot the hardest part of this segment for him down here. He'd have to send his crew if he wasn't coming, and his actors, and I'd bring my lights and camera and shoot it.

He's excited. Wants to do it. I check my schedule and technically that weekend is off for me. (this is in May, when I'm already getting smashed by my freelance job and my regular job.) 

So it looks like we're gonna do this. 

Since my time is so tight, I took yesterday and went looking for the locations in the Ttory area. Here's some pics of me there--first time I'd been there in quite a while. 

I found some decent locations. The whole place is being fixed up with path signs and shit, like it's a state park or something, and that kind of sucks as far as shooting shit. We're going to be shooting almost completely at night, though, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Hear that, Zig? If you're bored and wanna come play movie making again, lemme know!

 Also did a podcast where we talked about the movie Alien for nearly two hours. You can hear it here--was pretty interesting and fun, and I think I'll go back when they do Aliens.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1004596/8348913

Also, here's some cool movie posters I recently saw that I liked a lot.

 

Just when I thought I was out...

 

 More work, but nothing interesting to talk about there. I'm getting paid and not sweating bills so much, so that's nice.

Anyway, a director friend of mine has been working on a horror anthology about clowns for a while(and part of it is written by an actor friend of mine who also stars in this). They're on their last segment, but needed some money to finish it off as they managed to get some minor B-movie names in it.

They put out a notice, so I asked them about how many Exec Producers they were gonna have and he's like, "Maybe 10-15". Well, I'm not looking to get on a card with a bunch of random people. I mean, I don't think I'm some big name, but my name will definitely get you some more views and put in more search engines, so I know I have SOME value.

So I tell my friend--I'll give you a little money, but I have to be on my own card, or be on a card with you. He's cool with it, says he'll put me on his producer's card rather than Exec, or give me a card for myself. I tell him to just put me on his card, cuz I'm sure he's gonna have too many titles already anyway.

He's excited about me joining on and announces it all over, putting my pic up. I don't mind. I did it to sort of keep my name out there, especially when it comes to horror clown movies. But then he asks me for a little help. I don't mind helping people out, but I'm pretty busy right now.

He ends up sending me the script for this last piece of the anthology, and it's rough. Like, not well written, and VERY talky. It's also 29 pages. I ask him how much of the movie is done, because this is basically 1/3rd of the length of the movie unless he's making the anthology too long.

He agrees and says he wants to cut it down, would I mind doing that? 

I am incapable of just cutting the bad shit without truly fixing problem areas. One problem is, they've already shot the first scene in this script because it involved one of the known B-movie actors. The problem is that I'd cut the whole fucking scene. It doesn't serve much purpose and is almost 5 pages.

So I take a whack at everything else, changing a lot, and also changing a major plot point, as most of the kills in this movie take place in a cabin, but they cabin they got access to won't let them use any FX in it.

I just finished it and sent it off. It's still not great, but it's definitely an improvement on what it was.

I do love the poster artwork they have for the flick though. (I'm not linking or mentioning it because I don't want any searches leading back here)

 

 

Woah, back to the slacking...

 

 Man, I was doing so well and now a week went by and no post!

Last week was sort of hectic for a while, and then Friday hit and they told me--"Take the day off, your developers are screwing you, and you're gonna have to work overtime next week."

We don't get paid for overtime so it's really just what they call flex time. I only worked 2.5 hours on Friday, so I have to add 5.5 hours extra this week so the days average out at 8.

So I took a nap on Friday, then sat around and played games and relaxed. Didn't do much over the weekend except had a little get together for both my brothers' birthdays--my younger brother just turned 40, which is crazy.

Then Monday hits and I'm like, ready, man. Smash me with the tests. Only two tests come through. There's a small issue that delays me, but I get both tests done on Monday. Tuesday rolls around, still no more tests. I'm literally sitting here wondering what to do as I wait.

I've been told by my supervisors that I'm "killing it", but I have no idea how to gauge that because honestly it's not that hard. I've worked late a couple of days, but there have been days where I sat around for three hours watching TV while I wait for something to roll around.

(and yeah, I watched Alien today while waiting because I'm to be a guest on a podcast discussing it on Thursday, and I haven't watched it in 20 years)

 Who knows? There's still a lot of things at the job I don't understand, but it's not stuff I can just figure out on my own, or I would. The guy who's been mentoring me has his own work to do, and he's busy, so I don't want to bother him over it right now. I'm figuring I'll pick it up as I need it.

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Sent one story to that anthology I want to be in, and am desperately trying to finish the other one that I'm specifically writing for it. It's WAY more gruesome than most of the stuff I write. I'm not sure if it's good or not, so I'll pass it by the Malf first and see what he says. I won't have a lot of time to fuck with it before I have to turn it in though.

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On the potentially bad news front...remember my wife had the big C on the back of her head and they operated and it all looked good? A few weeks back the doctor called and said there was some new genetic test they can give to see what the chances of a reoccurrence are, and my wife went in and had it done.

Doc called back, said it wasn't the best result, and he'd like to do a full body scan. They did that on Friday, and there's a spot on her liver. She goes in for a biopsy this Thursday, so fingers crossed it's not a problem.

Weekend Went Fast Plus Ghana

 

 Forgot to mention--really enjoyed Kong Vs. Zilla. Lot of fun. Not so much fun? The theater was pretty packed and they weren't ready for it. Had everybody funnel through a tight ticket line, then ONE fucking cashier for everybody. Luckily I got there pretty early so I only had to wait for about 10 people ahead of me, but as I walked out the line went all the way to the front doors.

They've definitely moved their prices back up to normal...

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Job wise, I plug on. It's an interesting job at times, I'll give it that. There are so many moving parts and goddamn acronyms though, that at times I'm not sure I'm doing a test as fully as I would normally because I'm also trying to figure out how everything goes together as well as little micro problems that I have to solve before I can even do the test. (and consulting one of many acronym guides to figure out what the hell is even being talked about)

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So I have never heard of Ghana movie posters. Had a filmmaker friend who apparently was looking for a particular one but couldn't find it, and his girlfriend either had one made for one of HIS movies or they found one made for one of his movies. (I'm not sure)

It's cool, though. Would love to have one for some of my movies. I went on a little search, and here's some of the best ones I found. There's a certain weird charm to them.(though I'm not sure why Nicolas Cage is on that Tremors poster, or the dog from Invasion of the Body Snatchers is on that Thing poster...)

 

Couple More Days Down

 

So this week was crazy because I got word from my manager that I was getting moved to another team. I'm thinking, "Guess they didn't like how I got stopped on these tests."

Then my buddy who got me the job calls me that night and says, "So here's the deal. I have some terrible testers on my team, and they don't know this yet, but I'm moving them all to another team. You're gonna come to my team and be my only tester."

I'm like, Wow, that's pretty steep a jump for a guy who barely knows his way around the complex environments. My buddy was real pissed at these testers, he told me some of what they were doing, and it sounded bad.

Yesterday they gave me the news in a meeting(without my buddy), but the people on the team I was on asked if I could try to finish the seven tests I was working on. I wasn't sure I'd have time--I hadn't looked to see how complicated all of them were. I said I'd give it a try.

Well, I worked an hour and a half late(we don't get paid overtime) but I got them all done. Sort of became a point of pride. I wanted to leave with my slate clear.

Today I started on the new team. Got to take a look at this component, and at first it seems really complicated and weird. They give us tables with data that doesn't make sense, like if you saw something that looked like this, what would you think?

TR_URBTASK      TR_RUNDOWN    QP_CURR_PR

12345                           02895875989     39394023049

AGHEI                        39450239420      32492930492

But with a lot more columns and rows. And none of the documentation tells you what any of the columns mean. How do you test a piece of software without knowing what data it's supposed to be manipulating?

Gotta figure it out. Luckily there was a "hand off" meeting with one of the old testers, and here's what's strange. I figure he's a slacker or an idiot or both. Turns out he's pretty good and has already designed and tested two of the tests, but he didn't document it in the place he was supposed to.

So it looked like he was doing nothing, and apparently what he's really bad at is communicating. Nobody knew this stuff. He showed me what the test is supposed to do, what some of the data meant. Got me up to speed. Monday I'll dig in, as I spent most of the day looking through the documentation and figuring out what had been done. 

(Oh, and I messed up where I saved my tests yesterday, and there's no way to move them, so I had to delete them, then manually pass each one and put it in the right place--tedious, but didn't take too long)

Looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow. Man, did Loverboy know what they were saying when they said Everybody's Working For The Weekend.

Oh, and did my taxes. Thought we were in good shape until the wife hands me some dividend thing she'd gotten to the tune of $9K. I never knew she got it--we keep separate finances. But no taxes were taken out. I'm like, fuck, this was gonna be such a mellow year...