Disturbed

 

Two rather disturbing thoughts have entered my head lately. The first is that I realize that my dad is no longer my dad any more.

I mean, by the letter he is, but since that last massive stroke, he's strayed farther and farther away from the man he was. At first it was just little things like foods he used to like, he doesn't like any more. Some TV shows he liked, he didn't like any more.

But gradually he's changed so completely I barely recognize him. He's not really...a nice guy any more. Ask anybody who'd met him, my dad was friendly, funny and warm. None of those words describe him any more. I'm not going to go into the details, but some of the stuff he has said and even done is simply...sad. 

The whole thing is sad. None of us kids really know what to do or say about it. We don't really talk about it.

My mom and dad barely interact. You can sense my mom's disapproval and, yes, probably dislike of him. I never saw this coming for my parents. Part of me sort of feels numb about it.

----

The other thing is...I have a habit, especially now that I've got a little money, of buying stuff that reminds me of being a kid. Toys. Magazines. Movies. Whatever.

Lately though I see stuff and I think..."What am I going to do with that? Get buried with it?" I feel like I already have so much stuff that if I died tomorrow, holy shit does someone have a cleanup job to do.

I don't like having these thoughts in general. I still want to get that happy feeling when I get something delivered that reminds me of childhood. That's the disturbing part of it, these thoughts I don't want.

--

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the health issues. Went to the doctor's last week, and he referred me to a specialist. Went to that specialist today. Wasn't the worst news, but wasn't great either.

The choices are: Do nothing and live with it. Do some other painful things that might or might not help. Do something not that painful but $500 per visit to the specialist, not covered by insurance, that also might or might not work.

Yes, I haven't said what it is. Not really looking to air this one out.

It's not fatal, so that's not a concern.

---

The Malf has started his Xmas script. He even vague-booked it a couple of days ago. I think he's having fun, and the cool thing is, I started mine and I'm having fun. Well, sorta.

It's a weird, not-like-me kind of script in the form of it. It's much looser and playful than I usually do, but I think it reads pretty funny. Right up until it gets REAL depressing for a moment. Like, I didn't see this coming, it just sorta popped out as one character's story and I went with it, and I thought..."This is pretty good, but FUCK is it bleak."

I'm like 11 pages in. We're each aiming for between 30-40 pages, so hey, I'm either a 1/3rd or a 1/4th away from done! Short scripts rule!

And the funny part is, yes my Xmas script has a Santa with an axe. It's a goddamn time-honored tradition. Mine will have difference I won't go into, but I hadn't thought about who to play him.

Then it hit me as I wrote about this character. I'd love to work with this guy again, but he's been SUPER busy. I texted him to see if he'd be interested. He said, "Hell yeah I'm a (my name but spelled wrong) fan."

We went back and forth, and then he dropped this: "I just hope you realize that I am in a new category since I've had several lead roles with A-list actors. Now I require three cheeseburgers and a couch with no other actor sleeping on the floor. Oh, and I want to have a bathroom at least in the neighborhood or a tree outside."

Dude cracks me up. That's a joke from back when I asked him to be in FOC2--I almost didn't offer it to him because I couldn't offer him much. I told him that, and he told me, "If you get me a cheeseburger a day and a floor to sleep on, I'm there." And he was.

And he came out and starred in a movie I wrote for him, and he helped produce it, and we ran out of money at the end and he didn't even get his paycheck, PLUS he put some money in. 

Never once has he asked for that money or any of his money back. (it's one of my few movies that hasn't made its budget back, even though it's my highest rated on imdb)

So I'm kind of psyched about maybe bringing him out here for this. We'd have SO much fun.

 

 

 

More Writing

 

Been working on that Xmas short, and the Malf texted me that he's done his latest book for the publisher, so has about a month free so he's gonna start writing his. I've been looking at some stuff we'd need to do his movie, FX wise.

Mine is going okay--I finally came up with what's motivating the evil. (being vague on purpose) I have two main characters and I understand what's the first one's "deal", and the second is partially fleshed out but I need some deep background on him so I really understand him.

Have been reading some of the H'ween submissions for this antho. It's staggering how many have literally NOTHING to do with the holiday. It's crazy.

The other tropes I run into all the time are: 

• A ghost in a haunted house gets visitors on H'ween night. 
• H'ween is banned for some reason. People rebel.
• A pumpkin gets carved, by end of story the carver is made into a jack o’lantern. 
  

Have only found two I sorta like, with like three more that I've put in the consider pile because they're well-written but don't really hit me. Figure I'll give whatever stack of maybe's to Kenneth and Malf and have them rank them. If we all sorta agree, those will go in.

I think Malf's gonna write the introduction, cuz he doesn't have a story for it right now. 

I've paid a cover designer to start working on the cover. I'm sweating it, because if it's not great then I won't use it, and I don't wanna make the guy feel bad.

I'd actually reached out to him ahead of time and explained the situation, and offered him this: I pay him his full amount for the cover, but if I don't think it fits the book, I'll let him re-sell it and if he does then he just gives me $50 back. (it's $300 I'm paying him)

He turned me down. I don't get that. Like, you'd rather me keep this and it never sees the light of day? Or you'd rather get paid nearly double for the same piece? That one seemed like the better deal to me, but whatever.

---

Bad news on the T1 T2 blu front. I was getting very close to finishing them, but I got the new estimate. If I get less than 150, cost is gonna be just north of $14 per unit. If I get 250, I can get it to around $12.

I had planned on selling these for $20, shipping included, but at that cost I'd have to sell around 71% of the inventory just to break even.

I could up the price to $25, but will they sell? It IS a two-disc set, but I'm not sure...

So I'm gonna back off of it for now, or wait to see if the rep can offer me a better deal when I tell her it's off the table.

 

My first real computer. Man...the plastic keyboard was the worst, but what I wouldn't give to go back to when I was laying on the living room floor playing games or learning how to program in Basic. Such a weird time...I only had one brother at that point...

 

Someone's Getting Murdered

 

I have a VERY short fuse lately.

I looked back at my blog and it doesn't look like I told you about the trip to see the Xmas lights. To sum it up, overall it was very cool.

BUT...

Here's what happened when we first got there.

A bunch of younger people guide you through the rutted "parking lot", really just a dirt road to a field and they direct you to park in certain places.

Well, this kid pointed me to park in basically a ditch, with dug-in tire tracks. My car has an extremely low front, so it rubs all the time, and this would definitely rub.

So I pulled to the left of it, parking directly behind another car. Basically just leaving one spot open for someone else who might be driving a truck. I get out and start getting out my gloves and stuff from the back, and this kid who's directing people cops an attitude.

"What's going on here? Why didn't you park in this spot? Now there's no room for anyone else to park."

Clearly, there's PLENTY of room to park. I tell him--"There's a ditch there and my car's low."

He pretends to look for said ditch, even though it's pretty obvious. He starts complaining that I'm "parked crooked', which is bullshit. I'm the same angle as every other car, including the car in front of me.

So I get belligerent fast. Like, 0 to 60. I start cussing this guy out, using the F word. I hear another person say something about "language", but I'm going at this kid. I'm ready to fucking punch it out with him, but he doesn't seem too interested.

He just walks over to some other parking lot kids and starts getting snarky from afar. I finish getting my stuff--my wife is trying to get me to stop, but fuck that--and I stare this fucking dickhead down until he looks away.

Hair. Trigger.

Anyway, on to last night. I pull into the Food Lion parking lot and am driving toward a parking spot. There's a fat woman walking toward her car, but she's walking across the empty parking spots toward it. I'm driving toward her and then I slow, gonna let her walk the remaining 30 feet before I park, except a big truck comes up behind me.

Fuck it, I pull into the parking spot next to this lady's car, effectively blocking her from her straight line.

I get out. She's got this dumbstruck look on her face. I say, "Sorry, but I had to get out of that guy's way."

This fucking lady gives me the bitchiest look ever. Now understand, I am NOT an apologizing kind of guy. I rarely do it.

So for her to just throw it back like it's nothing. Boom, bad guy comes out.

"Ah, be a bitch about it then," I say and start walking off.

She mutters something, so I immediately turn back and go to her. "What was that?" I ask.

I honestly don't remember exactly what she said. It made me madder. I say, "Listen, I parked in a spot. I apologized. You gave me a bitchy look."

"I can give you any look I want," she says.

"Yeah, you can," I say. "And I can park where I want. I'm still sorry you now have to walk your fat ass around my car."

Oh, that got her mad. But she doesn't say anything, so I start walking back to the store. And hear her yell some more shit, so I immediately turn back around and go back.

"Why do you keep saying shit once I'm walking away? Say it to my face."

She says the same old horse shit, so again I walk away. She yells some more, so I yell back over my shoulder, "Fucking cunt."

Well, then another older lady loading her car snipes at me "Watch your language!"

"Fuck off," I tell her. I'm way too old to be told what to do. I think she got the idea, as she didn't say another word, just got in her car.

However, original fat bitch yells some more, so once again I TURN AROUND and head back. I notice there's a big guy who's probably security over by the outside carts who's now taken an interest. He starts coming our way.

Me and the lady are still having our "discussion" when he comes over. I explain what happened when all of a sudden the lady's like "He almost hit me with his car!" and I laugh. I say, "You were like 20 feet away when I parked".

The security guard points to her, "You, get in your car." Points to me. "You, go to the store."

"Yeah, I'm done with this bitch," I say and walk away, leaving that bitchy look on the lady's face. She probably said something else but I didn't hear it.

But it's just funny, the short fuse I've gotten. Prolly gonna be a fight or a murder pretty soon if people don't shape up.

(and I can assure you, next time something like this happens...there will be no apology from me. So she's now paid it forward...and the next encounter is going to be worse for whoever, because this fat bitch got inconvenienced slightly and wouldn't accept an apology)

Weight update: Down almost 10 pounds since I started. Another 8 and I can start slowing up, but this is the hard 8--usually takes longer, as the body starts to resist.

Who knows though, it's different every time I do it.

 

 

 

How It's Going

 

Maaaaaaan, nothing's ever easy, right?

I'm gonna skip all the boring this-went-wrong-and-took-a-day-to-fix stories.

Bottom line, I'm currently burning a test copy of T1 and T2 blus. These are definitely not the finished product, as there are definitely things missing.

From part 1, I didn't put any chapter markers yet. Thing is, I went back and found a large version of T1 and put it on, so I'm want to take a look at how it looks once it's transcoded and you really can't see until you burn it how that works.

On part 2, I'm still missing a teaser trailer.

Neither blu is overly flashy. I'm not a big fan of having to wait through screens to get to the menu so I'm not sure whether to do a video montage intro, or just let that opening menu pop right away. I also didn't put in any transitions on button pushes--do people care?

I've got the room to put them on, but are they necessary? Do people like them? No idea.

What I do have on each is the movie, a making of(over 90 minutes for T2), two trailers, two commentaries on each, assorted easter eggs, plus I added a new bonus on T2--the first look at the T3 map, if it were to ever happen.

I gotta go back and get a revised price estimate on these, as I'm not sure whether prices have changed in the two years since I last looked.

A 2-disc set isn't gonna be as cheap as normal, so I'm trying to figure out how many I should order and whether I should make this a limited edition.

 

 

4 Days Off

 

Took off Friday to go to a F13 Friday fun at Zig's. We watched part two, which I hadn't seen in a while. 

The night before I took the kid and my brother to go see Plane, a terrible title for a pretty fun movie. Nothing new in it, but still entertaining with some more character development than you might expect from a 90's throwback action movie.

Also, about that four days off? Well, Saturday I dove into the T1/T2 blu situation. Found the old files and started working on splitting it up, using the bigger assets for each. Spent all day working on it. The T1 blu is only about half full, so I'm trying to think if there's anything else I can add to it.

The T2 is pretty full, though still has room now that I've pulled the T1 stuff off of it.

Also read a few more stories submitted for the H'ween antho. Haven't been impressed by any of them, really. Couple are okay, so I put them in the Maybe folder, but I'm starting to get worried about the open invites. 

Also, haven't been able to turn any of the tentative yeses into yeses yet. So the tally is, I have three authors who said yes--only one has gotten me back the contract--plus two tentative yeses. I have six I've asked and simply haven't heard back. Not sure what to make of that. None of them are so big that I think they'd turn down above-pro payments, so I'm sorta guessing that somehow they didn't get the email or private message I sent them.

Still working on a title too. I'm making a list, so if you're one of the people I talk to a lot, be prepared to get my list and weigh in on the one you like the most.

 

Reinstalling

 

Got the hard drive in, so figured fuck it. It's Sunday, let's put this thing in, install Windows and try to put the old CS5 suite back on this bitch.

A couple of hours later, Windows is back on and so is my CS5 suite. I haven't put on any of the 100 other programs and filters and stuff, but maybe I'm not gonna.

Maybe I do all the actual work on my other computer, and then just copy it to a hard drive and bring it over here to make the final blu. It'll be a pain in the ass, but prolly less of a pain in the ass than trying to reinstall everything.

Also, all the USBs work fine. So it doesn't appear to be a BIOS issue either, as the BIOS would have been flashed onto the motherboard I believe, so wouldn't have changed just because I changed boot drive.

Now I gotta get go through the hard drive and find the original blu I made, and start splitting up the assets. I have to export all new versions of the movies at very high quality since each will get its own blu.

Was just thinking about putting the making of T2 up on the Tubi. Might get some people watching, but at this point it's too long for that. Might cut it down, might just say fuck it all.

 

 

Shit

Got up Saturday and thought, "Yeah, maybe I'll finally take a look at doing the T1/T2 blu", so I booted up the old editing computer. Gotta find out which hard drive I had been working the project on.

Except, the computer won't recognize any USB drive other than one plugged into the USB 3.0 card I'd added a while back for editing GOH.

I experiment on a bunch of things, different hard drives, different USB plugs. None of them are recognized. When I look at the disk management, it doesn't find any of them there.

I plug one of the hard drive that's not 3.0 into the 3.0 plug(which usually works), but this time it doesn't. When I plug the 3.0 back in, it no longer recognizes it. Like, wtf?

So I start uninstalling the USB ports, knowing Windows will automatically reinstall them when I reboot the computer. Hopefully that'll fix it.

Nope.

Like, fucksake. 

I then try to fix Windows, but it find nothing wrong. So I just try to reinstall Windows over this copy of Windows, but my version of Windows refuses. Must not be the disk I used to install this one, and I don't know where that disk is.

So my choices appear to be A) Give up the T1/T2 blu ray dream or B) get a new hard drive, put Windows on it as well as all my programs needed to make this. The rub is that I'm not positive I can get Encore to work on it, as I've had issues in the past trying it. 

Maaaaaaaaan, it pisses me off that every version of Windows makes it harder to install older software. 

I ordered the fucking hard drive.

 

 

Suck Week

 

So the week of diet seems to be going well. I weighed myself Wednesday morning and was 214.2, so almost a pound a day. Weird part is that I've felt bloated the whole time. I'm not sure why I'm not feeling hungry when I'm barely taking in 1400 calories a day...

That's a new thing as far as this diet goes.

Tonight I suddenly up and took the kid to see M3gan. It's fun, frankly better than that Child's Play remake, but you could tell they definitely chopped it down from an R cut to the PG-13. I hope there's gonna be an R-rated version on the blu ray.

I didn't realize James Wan co-came up with the story. But to be fair, it's not the most original premise. It's the execution that worked much better than most that tried this.

---

Work has been suck this week. Being a test lead is draining, especially on top of the being sole-tester now while I also train testers to work with me.

And then the guy who got me the job calls me, wants a favor. He's got a friend's kid who got hired into the company. He wanted to be a programmer but found he hates it. Wants to look into testing, maybe do that. My friend asks if I can try to show him the ropes, see if he has aptitude. My friend thinks the kid's not gonna work out, said he thinks the kid wants to sit around and play test games and get paid for it.

After a couple of days trying to work with the kid, I'd agree. And the sad part is, he doesn't realize what a huge opportunity this is, especially at only 20 years of age. I'd try to tell him, but I remember how hard-headed and looking for fun I was at 20. I wouldn't have listened.

And now everybody's reaching out to me for stuff. Show them how to do this, show them how to do that. Can you tell me why this isn't working? These are testers.

Then my trainees are a mixed bag. The girl seems very smart, headstrong and looking to figure shit out. The guy is pretty much the opposite. I'm prolly gonna try to get him moved out of my division. If she's really good, we can handle it together(since I've been handling it all myself quite frequently anyway)

-----

H'ween anthology is a pain in the ass. Some of the authors aren't responding back at all, which is weird given how much I'm offering per word.

Some of the ones I wanted have turned me down, all of them being too busy. I believe them, because, as I said, I'm offering them a lot per word.

I'm starting to read stories. Still mostly not-great. I think I only have one or two in the Consider folder.  I've prolly gotten about 60 stories so far, which isn't near as many submissions as I'd thought I'd get. Maybe once we're well clear from Xmas they'll start pouring in.

Then I had one author whose agent doesn't want to give me audio rights. I get it, a bit, in that they can sometimes make big money on audio books...but this is a short story, not a novel, and also did I mention I'm paying more than pro rates? We went back and forth talking about it, but I finally just told them I was gonna pass. It's a shame, they're a pretty big author, even though Malf hadn't heard of her.

But fuck it, I'm not gonna put out an audio book with a story missing. 

 

 

2023 Start is Gonna Be Bad

 

I knew it was, because I've been gaining weight since before Halloween. Pretty much 5-6 slurpees a week will do that, apparently. Also late-night eating and whatnot.

Hadn't been on a scale in four months, so stepped on today. 218

Gotta start knocking that off--200 is about where I should be sitting--so I'm faced with the same dilemma I always am: How fast do I want to lose the weight?

I can go full torture and lose the weight in probably a month, assuming the shake diet works again(and I have no reason to think it won't, since it worked the last time I tried it)

Or I can do the easier version and it will take me 2-3 months to lose it. 

Not sure which to go with, so will probably just do what I usually do, which is torture myself the first week and start easing back. 

Also, appears we're going to be setting up a trip to Cancun at some point this year so that'll be cool. Unfortunately, the group we went with last time wants to go in a summer month because it coincides with one of their birthdays. Seems a weird time to go, but whatever.