Wednesday, the line conditioner/surge protector, enclosure, and 7 port USB hub came in. This was the third enclosure that I have worked with and was the easiest. It has a fan on the bottom, is only for IDE and does not sport any cabling i.e. it is designed to accept all of the male ends on the drive natively. So with everything arranged and the right hand side of my desk clean, I eagerly await the purchase of my Mac.

Howton, you will remember, was the one who pushed me into going ahead and getting the mini. He has had to do this twice. The first time, I was looking at the Mac Pro and he convinced me that if I go ahead and get a mini that I could at least learn OS X and that when the time came, that particular proficiency would be available to me instead of waiting until I had the money to buy a respectable Mac Pro. More recently, he persuaded me to get the mini instead of the iMac.

I was looking at the iMac because I wasn’t happy with the mini’s technical specifications and wanted a video card, not integrated video. I’ve used Windows XP @ 2 GB for 4 years now and have been quite impressed; that having been said, when Black Widow died and I got the laptop, the video was integrated and will only render 480p. You can play 720p trailers, but they skip to the point of not being watchable; 1080p trailers give you mutilated audio with “screenshots”. Suffice it to say I am not happy about this.

My first computer was a Gateway E something-or-nother. It had integrated video. I remember dancing in the streets for joy when I put in a 32 MB PCI video card; Black Widow always had a stand alone card. As I am constantly watching video (and had gotten quite used to the real-time color correction, I might add) you can understand why this is such an issue. Also, I mentioned seeing how XP Pro runs on 2 GB of memory. Imagine what a system could do on 4! As OS X is a much more streamlined OS, those resources should really make the Mac fly.

So like I said, I’m sittin’ here looking at the iMac and then the Ubuntu box3n dies. So I start looking at Macs again and decide “What the hell? I’ll apply for the card. What’s the worst that could happen? They decide not to let me have any credit.” When I got the info back, I didn’t have as much credit as I would have liked and definitely not enough to purchase the $3500 iMac I was looking at. So back to the drawing board.

I call Howton and he convinces me that I need to get the base mini. I do my homework and see has a point…to a point. It’s true, the mini should do everything I want it to and more; that being said, outside of the afore mentioned memory and graphics card issues the only real issue is that the base mini does not have a DVD burner. Now I’ve been thinking if the going gets rough, I could sell my laptop or if things are really good next year, I might could look into getting a Mac Book Pro. Either way, if there’s the slightest possibility that I could wind up with miniMax0r being my only machine, I am not going backwards on DVD burning capabilities. Ergo, it’s the $799 mini or no mini at all. But then Howton pulls some shit on my blog saying that I really need the memory. We then had this exchange on princessleia2′s blog.

I thought about setting up a Paypal donation button and letting people vote if Howton is right or not: $1 if you think he’s wrong $2 if you think he’s right. For some inexplicable reason, this vision died before it reached the visualization stage. How sad!

I got a good couple of hours of reading in last night. Haven’t done that in a while. It was good to not be staring at the computer screen.

I hate dealing with these whiny emails where customers are complaing about how our software doesn’t work like their old software. Someone there made the decision to replace your old bu$ted a$$ $hit with our bu$ted a$$ $hit. Deal with it bitches.

I further hate retarded people who, just because one feature doesn’t have the exact workflow that they want, want the system tailored to them and they want it tailored now.

I think that if I take Howton up on this idea of keeping a docuemnt open all day at work and adding thoughts as they come and I have time, all my blogs will be me bitching about work. I’m sure that will go over like a lead ballon.

Speaking of work, remember the programming position that I said was open? Well, I got the news that I was first looser. If only I had done slightly better on the test. Oh well! I know that if shuch a position should come around again that I should surely get it next go around.

I wonder if you people think that I am self-centered the way I pimp out my blog because I am a comment whore.

Ok. This is my first crack at using Google documents. I don’t know how it will react to HTML, but the cool thing is that I can start working on something at 0100 at home in my underwear on my futon and it will beat me to work in the morning.

I’m also testing an idea that Howton gave me via an AIM session. He said that he kept his “Post to Journal” tab open all day at work, writing a sentence or two at a time and then at the end of the day he had a post. We shall see.

I should add that I’m using Opera for this task, so this is yet another example of things that Google got right. Now, if only they’d amend Calendar appropriately, we’d all be happy.

Speaking of Calendar, I must say that Apple took a page straight out of Google Calendar with advanced logic for determining when a string was a date even when it wasn’t in the typical mm/dd/yyyy format. I’m really liking what I’m seeing with Leopard–I can’t wait to own my own Mac.

So yes, Eric finally talked me into a mini and he did it over the phone no less. Imagine that! He took time out of his day with his family to hold my hand and guide me to the proper conclusion. That isn’t to say that I think he has everything right; I think I’m going to see the performance hit of only have 1 GB of RAM, but my mini should be rather steppy…for the first 24 hours. Let me get my *nix services configured, download the Adobe software, Open Office, Opera (those of you who are worried that I won’t take Eric to task about Opera being my first download on the Mac, don’t sweat it. I might even make a big presentation of it if I can plan far enough in advanced.) and finally my music and files going and I’m sure that there will be considerable drag. Of course he’s right: I’ve never worked on the platform so I don’t know what to expect. What he’s wrong about is the fact that I’m not happy that only the 24 inch iMac and up does full 1080p. Granted, the only thing that I have that is 1080p are a few trailers from Apple, but still, my ATI 850 XT Pro could render them, so why not the Mac? Oh, will someone in the Mac community tell me where I can find Quick Time Pro to download for free?

You might ask when I plan to purchase my Mac. Well, it works like this: I applied for the card that Apple offers on their website. There’s just enough credit to get the low-end mini without the keyboard and mouse, forget about the warranty. What I’m going to do is buy the bigger mini that is offered for many reasons, the ultimate being that if selling the laptop is in the future, it would be nice to retain the DVD burning capabilities I’ve had for the past 4+ years, especially if I may get to the point where the mini is my only machine. Also, I wont’ lie; the additional hard drive space will be nice. I really wished I had the do-ri-me to get 2 GB out the door, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Back to purchasing. So I’ve got a CompUSA card and now I’ll have the Visa. I can split the cost between the two and the machine should be payed for before I get my tax returns. I’m waiting for the card to come in the mail (which I hope will be sometime this week) but more importantly for Leopard to come out this weekend. I’ve already purchased a hard drive enclosure, a 7-port USB hub and a line conditioner in anticipation of the mac. All that is left is to get the machine itself and set it up which will make for a nice weekend project. Oh yeah, I’ll have to learn then interface too. I’m looking forward to that challenge and conquering it in record time.

It looks like I’m going to drink the Kool-Aid and get an iPod. My MP3 player was on my desk playing tunes in lieu of Samba being unavailable, but the little bugger got pulled off the desk and onto the floor. It continued to play tunes until I let it sit and the power management tried to kick in. The unit froze. I tried to reset it, but all I would get is a menu that would allow me to clean the files (which did nothing) format (not doing that without access to my files) reload the OS (which, when selected gave a hard disk error with a cute graphic) and finally reboot. I want the 80 GB classic to replace my 60 GB Creative Zen Xtra Jukebox. Donations accepted.

P.S. I wrote this whole entry in Google Docs. I think I can actually publish it to my blogs via the interface. I’m going to test that now. Perhaps there will be another post sometime today from work via the afore mentioned method.

P.P.S. It doesn’t support Xanga either.

I come bearing blogging news! I have made myself an outline prior to typing so that I can get all my thoughts in and this post stay organized. The bad news (if you want to look at it that way) of course, is that I have a lot that I want to say and so little time and space to say it in. I reckon I’ll begin at the beginning.

Romanticism in the Air
Being the Romantic I am, I can finally feel the magic in the air as the seasons change at the end of the year and Alabama goes from scorching to (what to us Alabamians anyway) is freezing. Our weather is wild in that until the seasons finally change, it will still be hot in the day but freezing at night. Eventually it will just be freezing and we won’t be able to wait for it to warm up again only to repeat the process.

But there’s something to be said about it getting cold at the end of the year. If you look at the circle of life, this is harvest time. The work has been done, life has been lived, it’s time to claim our rewards, get a little R&R, spend time with loved ones, watch the young’nes grow up and watch ourselves grow old. Of course, Christmas is always looming out there and as a general rule we open our hearts and become a little more tolerant and forgiving. It’s a lovely thing to see, especially if people learn to strive to do this all day long just as Ebeneezer Scrooge did. It gives a new meaning to the line I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year ’round. Past, Present and Future–the spirit of all three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons they teach.

Now that I’ve been on my own for a few years and, through no one’s doing but my own, reclused myself from any big crowd or party during these times on the basis that it’s mostly for show, I’ve resolved to get out there this year and do something. For instance, I’ve lived in the Great Metropolis of Huntsvegas for over four years and yet I’ve never been to the Botanical Gardens despite the fact that with all of my jobs and schooling I pass them multiple times a day. Therefore, even though I don’t celebrate Halloween, I have decided to attempt to make my way out there for whatever they’re doing for the holiday and plan to return for Thanksgiving/harvest/autumn and finally for the first time drive through all the lights at Christmas. And before you ask, yes, I was raised believing that Halloween is evil. I still think that there is a lot of demonic influence, but at the same time I’m not uptight anymore about the cute fun that can be enjoyed. That’s the biggest thing that I’ve learned as I’ve grown older: if you just let go a little bit, you can’t begin to hoard the rewards. For God’s sake, we’re all human and live on the same planet, so let’s strive to get along or at least enjoy each other’s company while we’re all here.

Speaking of events in town, Homer Hickam (anyone remember October Sky) will be in town next Saturday at the Von Braun Planetarium. I tried to get more information on the event (like what time of day exactly he was supposed to be there) but I couldn’t get a message through because of their bu$ted a$$ Micro$hit. Oh well! I may try to go on up during the day and hope that I’m there when he is.

The Computer Doctor is Sick Today
So Dad’s having a little trouble with his laptop. Actually, he’s having trouble with the Verizon Air Card. He was supposed to bring everything into town on his way to work this weekend, but he forgot everything at the house. Oops! I went out to Decatur and had dinner with him anyway and Mom is supposed to come have dinner and drop it off Monday night. I’m actually starting to enjoy spending time like this with the familia. My only gripe is that we haven’t had a movie night in quite some time and I have several films to share although I don’t think that Mom will trust me much longer. Mom thought that The Fountain was weird, but I think that the real reason that she reacts so my choices is that she sees what I see these films and it unsettles her.

Speaking of computer maladies, my Ubuntu box3n is sick. It started a couple of months ago when I first observed that when I toggled the USB KVM switch, the box3n would immediately power down. This would also happen if you pulled the USB plug from the KVM out of the box or if you pulled either USB device out of the KVM. Well, that isn’t precisely accurate. It’s true that the box would turn off, but the power light on the front of the case would stay on. Now this is an old HP, so it’s a soft switch, which means that you’d have to wait the 5-10 seconds for the damned thing to completely power down whilst holding the power button. But when the box would turn back on, it would immediately power down as described and you’d have to repeat the process several times. Eventually, the thing would actually go through the boot process, but when Ubuntu would attempt to mount the primary drive (post kernel load), the damn thing would power down again. Left alone for long enough however, the box would boot and load correctly.

That is, until last weekend. For whatever dumb reason, I decided I wanted to watch a movie on my 19″ LCD instead of on the laptop screen. But instead of just being content with just having the picture, I decided I wanted to control the laptop via the keyboard and mouse on the desk, not on the unit itself. That’s when the box started acting up more then usual. My uptime went from three weeks (I rebooted to load the latest kernel) to three days to less then an hour, but I wasn’t doing anything to trigger it.

I’ve tested everything I have the tools for. I thought it might be the BIOS because if you made changes to the BIOS and then saved and exited, the box would power down as described above and the process would repeat. But I swapped the battery as well as tested without the battery being in and there was no difference in behavior. I thought it could be the primary drive itself failing, but that doesn’t make sense; it seems like the OS would still be loaded and I’d get a kernel panic or something. I thought the drive could be overheating, so I took it out of the drive sandwich and put it in direct line of the fan (that was more coincidental then planned). I went from having less then an hour of uptime to almost five, but the drive wasn’t hot when the box powered down this time.

My guesses at this point are power supply and/or motherboard. The thing about it being the power supply is that was what was wrong with The Black Widow when she died after four years of faithful service. Now, when you plug something in at this apartment, there always seems to be a flash, so if it’s the wiring, I’ve got big problems on my hands. Know the bastards in management, they’ll likely let the apartment burn down before they replace the wiring.

The reason all of this is such a big deal is that I was using my Ubuntu box as a SSH server, a web server, a print server but most importantly a Samba server. All of my music, tools, downloads and hacks are on that machine. The good news is that all of that is on two different hard drives (redundancy will save my ass in this situation). The most devastating loss is the availability of my music. The Winamp library is currently pointed at the Ubuntu box. While I’ve got everything on my MP3 player and can connect it via USB to the laptop, Windows doesn’t recognize it as a drive, and as such I can’t add directories. Therefore, if I want to load a score, I have to do it via the library, preferably with a playlist. The other thing that sucks about this is that Winamp play music of off the MP3 player as a stream, so it’s not an instantaneous play like it is with it being on the server which sucks because I’m ADHD when it comes to listening to music and I want to listen to what I want to listen to right then and there. Furthermore, when I’m playing DJ, I normally time my additions to the playlist to coincide exactly with the end of the current track.

I went on New Egg and started pricing. I’d have to get an enclosure or two to transfer data from the IDE drives to my SATA drive since IDE is being (finally) phased out, but just under a grand I could have a Core 2 Duo Extreme with 4 MB of cache per core, 4 GB of PC2 6400 Kingston HyperX, and the GeForce 8600GT–512 MB of 128bit GDDR 3. The thing I hate about building this machine is that it would make one hellava Wintel box and would be perfect if I added a Blu-ray drive, but I don’t want to be on the Windoze platform anymore. Which leads me to my next point…

I’ve been looking at Macs for quite some time now, and now seems to be the perfect time to get one. The only thing that I’d want to wait for is Leopard to debut, but that’s slated for no later then October 31. I’ve been thinking of a Mac mini all along, but when I went to the store today to talk it up with the sales people, I found out that it looks like the mini will only do 720p; that was with 1GB of RAM and the 2 Ghz Duo. Hrm. I immediately turned my attention to the iMac and am looking at it more so because there are rumors that the Mac mini will be no more. I finally decided that I want 4 GB of memory, but can deal with a smaller drive. Because of the Unix kernel, I can run SSH and Apache and Samaba and read my ext2/ext3 drives just fine. Of course, that beast is going to come with a $3500 price tag.

I’ve considered selling the laptop to make it happen. In fact, I’ve got a whole bunch of junk that I need to sell and it it’s up to me, I’ll end up just giving it away. If anyone is interested in listing computer parts, sound boards and like for me, I’ll ship them to you if you will list and ship to the customer. I would give you 20% of the profit for your services.

Other Filmmakers, Other Films
I am also planning on getting a digital camera sometime early next year. I’m thinking of going the Nikon route because my A/V buddies both have Nikons (D70 and D80 respectively). I’ve thought about getting the D40 which from Wolf Camera would be $549 stock with an 18-55mm lens. However, there is a $1299 D80 kit that comes with the 18-135mm lens. Now here’s the irony: I can get the D40 with both lenses for $918 and either sell the stock lens or keep it as a spare to protect the 18-135. I’ll readily admit I don’t know the first thing about cameras and lenses but there does seem to be a bit of redundancy that could pay for itself. Photographers, please weigh in on this.

Also, I’ve got scads of scripts to get written but I can never seem to make the time. The good news is that I have a play that I’m going to adapt which will most likely be my first film. I’ll be buying the stage script from Amazon when I get paid this week, so the writing phase of that project should come and go relatively quickly. I think I may go ahead and adapt the play that I do have. As for the big script that I’ve been working on forever and a day: let’s just say that someone has recently given me a lot of inspiration unbeknownst to them and I’m still stewing over the new angles.

I didn’t tell you about it, but there’s a new internal programming post at work. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to blog about it tomorrow night.

I’m still planning to go out to Texas next year. I’m also going to Chattanooga to watch A Dark Knight in all of its IMAX glory and there may be a documentary next year as well. Details on that to come.

Boy, did I ever hit the jackpot today!

At work, all of the Windoze box3n are on the domain and authenticate as such. Somehow, the little support ticket hack that they wrote is also tied to the domain. Around here, passwords expire something like every three and a half months with a two week warning period. i.e. every time you log into your box you get an annoying message that says, “Your password will expire in X days, do you wish to change?” No, I like my current password because I can remember it, thank you very much.

Well, here lately, when I’ve been leaving work, I’ve been locking my workstation instead of logging off because I have to have several programs and office documents at my disposal at any given time. Furthermore, when I log on to the VPN from home and RDP to my box, I don’t have to start all of these programs over the VPN potentially killing the connection by overloading the bandwidth due to all of the necessary startup.

Cut to this morning: here I am working away noting a support case when all of the sudden the support ticket program asks me for my password. I type it in and it doesn’t take it. Now I’ve heard stories of how they’ve gotten rid of people in the past. They come into work and can’t log on but yet the sysadmins are told not to come to work that day, so the first thing I think of is that I’ve been fired but no one has the balls to tell me to my face.

I logged out of my box to reset my password. I was able to reset it ok, so I hadn’t been fired. I then tried to log on to the support ticket system…and “therein,” as the bard would tell us, “lies the rub.” You see, when I reset my password, apparently instead of typing twice what I thought I was typing I mistyped, and so I can’t authenticate with the support ticket system. The sysadmin is out today, his boss won’t be here until 1100, and the one person in development who potentially could reset my password hasn’t made it in yet.

Since I haven’t logged out since changing my password, I can get on the Web, use IM, get caught up on my reading etc. The thing that really suxs about this is that I almost brought in my laptop on the off chance that it might be slow enough today that I might be able to get a bit of writing done. I suppose I could go home and get it, but by that time, someone should be here to rectify my fox pa.

Until then, my friends.

Sunday, I watched Wit for the first time. It was a recommendation from Netfix. I checked it out. It had Emma Thompson in it, there were rave reviews, it seemed morbid so we’re talking my king of movie. I noticed that Mike Nichols directed the film; I’ve been running across his name a whole lot lately.

Anyway, I had to post this somewhere immediately after watching the film. Let me say that there will most likely be spoilers. All I’m going to say for those of you who don’t want anything spoiled is that if you haven’t seen this movie and you want something that will grip your utter soul and turn you into a wrung out sponge, get this movie. It’s $5 from Amazon.

I’ll let the thread from IMDB speak for itself. Here is the original post:

I was wondering if there is anybody else out there who is NOT NORMALLY MOVED by films, who have made an exception for this one. Personally I have never cried in a movie, that is until I saw this one. I was literally shaking because I was crying so hard. Any similar experiences?

followed by my reply:

I don’t know what came over me watching this move. I’m rather callous and don’t cry.

My mom died when I was 7. I had one cry over that about a year later but even then I couldn’t figure out why I was crying.

When Vivian curled up into a ball there was so much truth there. My lip started quivering and I didn’t konw what was going on. The next thing I know, her teacher walks into the hall as older and more wore out then Vivian and I lost it. I was watching the DVD on my laptop balanced on my knee sitting on my futon. This was the first time in over 10 years that I’ve had hot tears streaming down my face. I was wailing like a baby; it’s a wonder that the neighbors in my apartment didn’t knock on the wall. I cried so hard that I thought the movie would skip and ruin the moment. I couldn’t bear to look at the screen for 10 whole minutes. The story that the professor read to Vivian was just icing on the cake.

I’m buying two copies right now, one for my personal collection and the other for my adoptive mom for Christmas. I know that she bawls during most movies. My sister who really isn’t a crier bawled for 20 minutes after seeing Meet Joe Black; I want to see how they react to this film. Also, I want to know if I will react the same at Christmas. I’ll be back to let you know.

I immediately went and purchased a gallon of milk after posting my last post.

Last weekend was the Sidewalk Film Festival down in the ‘ham. Great times were had by all. I thought I had posted about the pre-festival meeting, but upon review I see that I did not. The only thing of note that went on that night was I had dinner with my manager from last year. It was great to get caught up.

I took last Friday off as a paid vacation day…or so I thought. When I left Thursday, I had 37 hours in (Actually, I didn’t know that at the time because there’s no way to see your punches or keep up with your time that I know of.) When I got my check this week, it was short to the tune of $150. Come to find out, the way that do vacation is that if you request off, they give you up to 40 hours, so in reality, had I done a few emails from work, I wouldn’t have needed any vacation time for last week. The thing that sucks about all this is that I thought that I had to make up for the day that I wasn’t going to be there and so I thought I’d have the overtime. Fucking bastards! I guess vacation time only makes since if you’re making excellent money or if you’re salaried.

So anyway, I drove down last Thursday and stayed the weekend with my aunt and uncle who I hardly saw at all. We visited for a bit Thursday night and then I tried to get on their wireless network. Come to find out, the authentication key they were using had a 0x prefix that was Mac specific…I don’t have the money for my MacBook Pro. Removal of said prefix allowed me to get online.

I tried to sleep in Friday morning. For whatever reason, I can’t sleep in anymore. I always wake up between 0800 and 0900; it must have something to do with having to be out the door so goddamned early. The only amusing thing about this is that when I try to sleep in, I wake up in what would a half-hour late for work had I actually been required to be there. Normally, I’ll just roll over and wake up a half-hour later. After having done this twice or thrice I said fuck it and got up.

Not one to eat breakfast unless it’s fixed and ready to go, I decided that I’d just have a cup of coffee. The non-dairy powdered creamer was a year past the expiration date. Needless to say, I really didn’t need the next cup of coffee to wake me up. I lounged around all morning getting caught up on the blogs and veggin’. Finally, I decided that I should head on into town.

I rolled in at the Alabama at 1400, but there was not a soul in sight, an inexplicable oddity given the fact that the Alabama is Sidewalk’s biggest venue and they picked up a venue across the street this year. I went around the corner and found a hole-in-the-wall hotdog place, ate lunch and headed back to the Alabama. I finally found one of the volunteers (albeit he wasn’t wearing a volunteer shirt). It turned out to be the signage manager. I worked with his crew assembling doors on street corners. (We would take three doors, make a triangle and screw them together by their hinges. The doors gave filmmakers a place to paper the town with their propaganda.)

We were done in less then 45 minutes, so I waited in front of the Alabama until my manager Brian showed up. From our discussion over dinner the previous Monday, he gave the impression that he would be at the Alabama early in the afternoon and that there would be much work to be done and that I could just drop by and lend a hand. Such was not the case. When we finally got into the Alabama at our 1700 call, there was nothing for us to do. All of the A/V stuff had been contracted out and was already taken care of. The event coordinator was running late and so we didn’t get our materials (like programs) until a half-hour before opening the house. Dinner was late too, but I was still full enough from the hotdogs that I had no gripes.

All I can say is there’s something electric about being in the Alabama. Maybe it’s because there was so much history there and we were making more, maybe it was simply because I was at a film festival but you could feel it.

I began to feel a bit dropsy; all those long weeks were catching up to me. The opening film was The Ten quite frankly a crappy movie. There were a few good jokes to laugh at, but the fillm just tries so hard to be something that it isn’t. A lot of people compare it to a Mel Brooks movie; while I haven’t to date seen a Mel Brooks film, I am under the impression that his films have you laughing the whole time. The Ten was downright sacrilegious and uncomfortable at times thus not a film I’ll likely watch again.

After the show, I walked the whole theater looking for programs that were left behind so that we could make our supply stretch over the weekend. When I left at 2330, I was dead. I don’t regret it; walking the theater gave me time to be there by myself, take in the view and wonder what it must have been like back in the day. The property owner mentioned that Paramount built the theater in 1927 for the expressed purpose of showing film. You can tell that it was a regal place and that even though you were going to watch a flicker show, it was a black tie event with real ladies and gentlemen, not the swine that try to pass themselves off as such these days.

Saturday was an early call. I had to be back downtown at 0900 to reserve seats for the 1000 discussion panel because stormreaver was coming into town with an ex co-worker for said discussion. This was a director’s panel; they showed three short films, criticized and circuited each and then opened the floor to general questions.

The next discussion panel about No Budget Filmmaking didn’t start ’til 1300 and we were dismissed by 1100 so the three of us walked around downtown and finally found a Quizno’s.

The No Budget Flimmaking discussion was great. The presenter, Mark Stoloroff had worked for an independent company who worked with a lot of now great filmmakers including Chris Nolan (they gave him finishing funds for his first film, The Following), Darren Aronofsky (I don’t think the company every did anything for him though they were in discussions for a long time) and Craig Brewer. (Funny, I had just watched Black Snake Moan a few weeks ago and we spent some time discussing Hustle and Flow which arrived in the mail while I was at Sidewalk; I watched as soon as I got back.)

At that point, stormreaver and Michael had to go back to Cullman. As we were crossing the street to go to the parking deck of the McWayne center, I ran into George the signage manager. He had what looked like a White Owl cigar. I asked him what he was doing with that and he said he was Jonesing for a smoke and that’s all they had at the Jazz festival. (The Jazz festival is an annual event that coincides with Sidewalk.) I had parked on the street and we were next to my car, so I hooked him up with a Da Vinci right then and there.

I caught an interesting documentary Saturday afternoon entitled The Devil Came on Horseback, documenting the Sudanese civil war. Even though my dad was there during the time the documentary takes place, I didn’t know that China had an oil pipeline in Sudan. That explains a lot, particularly why we don’t get more involved with Sudan. The Chinese buy oil for cheap, the Sudanese government uses the money to fund its genocide. If you’re ever flipping through channels and you see this playing, drop what you’re doing and take a look–what see will sicken you.

It had been my intention to go to The Fish Market at some point during the festival to get some more trout. I wasn’t really feeling up to it, but I said, “Hey, I’ve got the time and I’m in town” so I went and have no regrets. I think I’ll make this a Sidewalk tradition.

The last film of the evening was Mexican Sunrise, a noble effort that if nothing else was raw authentic reality. Earlier that day I had run into both the writer and director of American Fork. They were both nice great conversationalists and we chatted about working with Alec Baldwin and Bruce McGill. After Mexican Sunrise there was an invitation only party and since I had an invite I decided to go on anyway. I found Hubbler Palmer and Chris Bowan hanging out by themselves so I walked over and struck up a conversation. Shortly thereafter, Rowdy Stovall director of Mexican Sunrise was wandering around so I waved him over and the four of us enjoyed a wonderful conversation. I also learned that Robert Rodriguez was as much of a prick as George Lucas, not surprising as we’re talking about a love child here.

Sunday morning I attended the How to get Picked Up sidetalk and learned a lot. Amongst other things, I learned that it is ok to go ahead and write adaptations of books and that the only ramification is that you might not get to make the movie/sell the material. Sunday afternoon, I headed over to the Alabama for what would be my final film this year, American Fork. American Fork is commonly compared to Napoleon Dynamite which I have not seen. All I can say is this was a great little character movie that oddly enough I think kids who were sheltered can really relate to while at the same time being entertaining for the rest of the audience. It was the perfect way for me to end Sidewalk 2007.

I drove home so I could get in and veg or what-have-you for a bit Sunday before having to be back at it. My only regret is that I went and bought smokes for the festival and still haven’t smoked any of them. I have a lot of writing to do so that I can have something to show; I think that the next two years will determine if I get into film or not. There are more personal thoughts on that to come, but I need to run to work, this entry is rather lengthy and dealt specifically with Sidewalk 2007.