Might Have To Wrap This Up

 

As you may know if you've been reading this for a while, this is my semi-private blog. Not many people know about it or read it, somewhere between 5-15 views per post on average. I don't care really--it's more for me than anybody else.

However, as I logged in to add a new post I noticed that my last five or so posts have over 50 views apiece. Either a robot is scraping the site or an AI is using it to train something and let me just say now AI can fuck right off.

So I have to decide whether to stop this completely, turn it into a truly private, invite-only blog, or just ignore it.

Not sure yet what I'll do, but if this site suddenly shows up as private, you're gonna have to request to read it. I'll be fine if nobody does.

 

 

November Stuff

 

Got out to see the new Thanksgiving movie. Hadn't seen a movie with my pal Zig in a couple of years...and we used to see a movie a week back in better times.

He doesn't drive well in the dark, so I sent an Uber to get him and bring him to the theater. The movie was okay, but had some really stupid shit in it scriptwise. Like...one of the worst exposition drops I've seen in recent history.

And then, pretty sure the killer CAN'T be who they reveal it is, because there's at least one scene where you see the bad guy in full costume stalking someone, then we cut to another scene that appears to be the same time and there's the bad guy outside of his costume, like he's been hanging out with a crowd of people for a while.

But there was some cool gore. No nudity, which is ludicrous for a horror movie that's supposed to be a throwback. And from Roth? Like, is he collapsing to this new peer pressure that says sex and nudity in movies isn't cool?

--

Had an auction. I think the two people they have to replace me at the auctions are pretty decent. If nothing goes wrong, they're fine to run the auction. That's the rub, though. If something DOES go wrong, they're fucked.

But I'm not going to keep doing auctions just because they can't find a troubleshooter as good as I am.

--

Well, subscribed to another streaming service. It's the one that has the word cock in it. There were some things my wife wanted to watch there, and there was some other stuff I figured I'd check out so I just subbed to it for a year.

If Netflix ups their price again, I'm gone. It's now my least-watched service.

--

I'll tell you, my #1 goal has got to be to clean up my house. There's just stuff everywhere. I have so much shit I don't use, but I keep "just in case" I might need it. Well, some of this shit has been around for 15 years and I haven't needed it, so I just gotta dump it.

And then start organizing.

The hard part will be some of this obsolete film equipment. Like, tungsten lights. I don't wanna throw them away because they still work. But they're heavy as shit(so shipping them would cost a fortune) and most people just use LED lights now--they're battery powered and lighter.

I feel like I gotta get one of those portable dumpsters brought to my house, and then just get brutal. Toss shit and don't think about it.

 

 

 

 

Little Sick

 

I had a weird dry cough for three days that suddenly became not-dry. That only lasted a day where I felt pretty crappy, but now today I'm still a little rough but feel like I'm on the way to recovery. Doesn't feel very Covidy so I'm guessing just your run-of-the-mill crud.

Been pretty busy. Work, of course. Then I've been working on that dude's FX, but man--turns out he has someone else doing the exact same work, I guess to see who's better. Two guesses how that turns out--I've seen the other guy's.

Then I'm also working on the last edition of the Halloween book that I plan on putting out. Did I mention what a shitty shitty program MS Office is? Like, I use programs that dwarf its complexity, and yet, Office is harder to use. Clicking some buttons do nothing, then other times work fine.

Can I get Wordperfect back? Jesus.

Then I still have to edit that Halloween video we shot. I started, but had to stop due to all my other work.

Then I have to go through and edit all the Sleepy Hollow pics I shot on the real camera. So far I've only shown stuff I shot on the iphone.

----

Part of why my week was so busy was because I had a training class and then a test. The class was one-day long, nine hours. We got a 400 page pdf to go along with it.

Anyway, studied for the test on Sunday since the test was Monday and that's about all the time I retain memorized information for. I know how to use the component the test is for--I learned it on my own a couple of months back.

But the details they're going to ask on the test...unsure. The teacher gives us the test and says it should take us about 45 minutes to an hour to finish. She says people that finish in less than half an hour usually don't pass.

I take the test. Takes me 28 minutes. I'm thinking...well, guess I'm not gonna pass it. I submit it, and it tells me I got an 88 out of 100. We only need an 80 to pass.

The teacher gets with me on a Teams call later and congratulates me. Says I'm one of only two testers who passed it. I ask her what questions did I miss, and she's like, "Let's take a look." So she goes through it and the first one, yeah, I tanked it.

Second one though, she shows me the "right" answer and I point out--nope, that answer will cause an error. She's like, "No it won't" and I specifically point to why it would, and she realizes I'm right. She says she's going to have to let everyone get it right since her answer is wrong. MY answer was actually correct, given that hers was wrong. 

So my score went up to 90 out of 100. I also did the homework, and had had a question because I wasn't getting the results she wanted. Nobody else had asked her, so I assumed I was getting something wrong but no...someone had wiped the table that we needed results from. No way to get the results she wanted.

I think I impressed her. 

Then I find out that word is I'm going to be promoted to the next level...which apparently will set a new record for a tester going from 1 to 3 at the company, by a very large margin. (and will mean another big pay bump)

It's not guaranteed yet, but I heard it from a pretty high source. I'm cool with it as long as they don't try to push more management shit on me. I got into testing to test, not to babysit.

Man, does the picture below give me some feels.

 

 

Breaking Point

 

Halloween is over. Man, I dunno even know how I feel. The blitz of putting out the book and trying to cram in seasonal fun left me pretty drained. The fact that Sleepy Hollow was partly a wash-out sucked, and then that Lost Boys showing too.

And we didn't go out Saturday night either--the wife took advantage of the nice weather and went to the beach to close up the beachhouse. She meant to get back early enough Saturday evening for us to go out, but massive traffic screwed that up--she didn't get home until like 10pm.

Watched a lot of movies with the kid. Think this is the bunch, but am probably forgetting some:
Frighteners
Dawn of the Dead(remake)
Five Nights at Freddy's
Final Destination 2
Poltergeist
Deep Rising
Demon Knight
House on Haunted Hill
Dark Harvest
Idle Hands
Halloween 3
Halloween 4

Also watched the available episodes of the new Goosebumps series. It's actually not bad.

But Halloween night...we went over a pal's house who was having his 20th annual fest--Scream themed. I got my kid a Ghostface costume, and he seemed pretty excited to wear it. We didn't stay long, as it was outside and it was getting cold.

Came home, and the wife went to sleep. Me and the kid ended up watching a Halloween episode of Buffy. I dunno what it is, but watching these shows I used to watch when I was younger...they just depress the fuck out of me.

Seems to get worse and worse the older I get. I feel like if I had a breaking point, I'd have hit it by now. 

---

Work continues. Got talked into a training class that lasted nine hours today, and then we have some "homework" and a test on Monday. Am really getting tired of the me-as-manager thing though. Fucking performance reports, and trying to deal with them, when I'm also the only person in my division who can get shit done. 

Also, did I mention I'm an idiot? That filmmaker friend I've done work for in the past hit me up, asked if I know anybody who can do some cheap CGI. I don't, but I say maybe I can take a look and see if it's something I can do. He says it's basically a demon turning into smoke and blowing away as smoke, and then getting sucked into the mouth of another guy, plus some eye-replacement stuff(which is what I've done for him in the past, along with removing shit from scenes that shouldn't be there).

He sends me the footage. I start working on the smoke stuff--immediate problem is that I don't have Trapcode Particular any more. They went to a fucking ludicrous subscription plan that's like $80 a month. And using the built-in particle generators doesn't get the greatest results. 

They're okay, but I could do better...

But then the eye replacement stuff...holy shit. He didn't shoot this at all with an eye, pun intended, on replacing the eyes. He says the actor couldn't wear the contacts. But he shoots this guy turning his head all over the place, walking long distances in jagged lines toward the camera.

Like, I can't PERSPECTIVE change eyes when I only have front stock footage eyes to use. I could do the walking long distance, but I gotta track motion/angle/size and then try to get two eyes to match, all the while blurring as the focus does, and changing lighting on the eyes to match the rest of the scene as he moves through the light.

So I've explained to him it's just not gonna happen. He took no shots from behind of this guy--which is the first thing to do if you think there's gonna be issues with the front. 

I'll replace what I can, and suggest he re-cut some stuff if possible. Hell, if he gives me all the footage from that scene, I could try to recut it.

It's all just one more thing I signed up for that I shouldn't have. I still haven't worked much on that Halloween short I shot...but since I could tell I wasn't gonna get it done in time for THIS Halloween, I figure I'll take my time on it. Still don't know how I'm gonna do some of that CGI.

Gotta get my brother involved, I guess.