It's like Tuesdays with Morrie without all the wisdom
I’m not good at categorizing
You Got Red on You
4January 25, 2010
January is so uninspiring. I have nothing to say about anything. Except I’ll miss Conan and I can’t wait until he’s back on tv. I hope he gets to move back to New York. The end.
What have we been doing? Who gives a care? That’s what. I just want to watch Shaun of the Dead all day, that’s all. But I can’t because that’s inappropriate. And it just magnifies my zombie feelings.
Lena and Liberty are making a documentary about Woogi World in the style of The Office. Maya has been making videos too, but each one of hers ends with Liberty or Lena screaming at her to turn it off. Rude. Actually, I think that’s the shot that Maya’s going for in each of her videos. Seems that way. Maybe when she’s bigger, she’ll edit all of the “turn it off” clips together and set them to music.
Uh, I’ve been staring at my entryway walls where I painted a little bit of just the right color. I keep hoping the smears of just the right color will somehow multiply in the middle of the night and I’ll find my walls freshly painted in the morning. It doesn’t happen.
Bryan works and tries to get excited about football even though it was a bad year for all of his teams.
We eat dinner. Bryan and I love soup. Nobody else does.
Um. Yeah. January is just filled with little things that don’t make up a decent post.I read stuff in books and the internet, and I watch tv, but I’m not inspired to write anything about anything. I still enjoy things, but it’s none of your business how much or how little! I’m sorry, I didn’t meant that. It’s just the Januaries.
It’s almost over so there’s that. February, with the Unschoolers Winter Waterpark Gathering, is right around the corner. Maybe John Taylor Gatto will put my brain back in place. January is so going-through-the-motions for me. Sometimes February has a couple of days that are brilliantly sunny and 55 degrees, right? Days like that are fun.
Maybe I just need to do a crossword puzzle. Or a jigsaw puzzle. Something to jump start my brain.
Did January take your brain away too? Are you looking for it? Or did you just say, “Good riddance, stupid brain! See you in springtime”? Or have you kept your brain fresh by alphabetizing your spice rack?
Six Things
2January 21, 2010
1. If I’m too busy for the internet, I feel like I have to catch up with it before I can write anything on it. Otherwise, I feel rude.
2. Maya and I were looking at a photo album together and she came to a picture of me on my 29th birthday and said, “You were so young back then; I don’t want you to die.” Because now I look like this:
3. We’re changing Kids Know Stuff. If you have a kid who wants to contribute anything at all, no matter how random, let me know. If you’re local and your kid wants to learn how Lena and Liberty make their videos, let me know. If you want to know why Lena and Liberty use the correct version of their/they’re/there and you’re/your on Kids Know Stuff, but not usually on Facebook, I can’t help you out. It’s a mystery. Their only answer is “It’s just Facebook, GOSH!”
4. I’ll miss Conan on “The Tonight Show.”
5. I’m not surprised that we don’t have universal healthcare. I didn’t vote for Obama because of healthcare. I still love him as our president and I still approve of him. I don’t believe we’ll ever in a million years have universal healthcare. We don’t even have equal rights in this country, there’s no way we’re going to get healthcare.
6. I don’t like to capitalize “internet.” It seems stuffy and ridiculous to make it a proper noun. Maybe in the ’00s, but it’s the ’10s now, so let’s stop capitalizing it, k?
It’s a Real Snow Day! (And FlipShare is Dead to Me)
4January 8, 2010
A real one, not a fake homeschool one like we had yesterday where we went to the library for supplies and came home to camp out in front of the fire with books and movies and cinnamon bread. This here’s a real snow day with all of Columbus.
Bryan blew some snow into a hill at the top of our regular hill this morning when he was gleefully (yes, gleefully) snowblowing the driveway, he strategically placed a snow pile at the top of our regular hill. He’s nice like that.
Look, here’s a video:
GAH! There would have been a lovely video with subtitles and whatnot if I hadn’t been enraged by our new Flip Ultra video thing. I tried to put the videos into Windows Movie Maker, but couldn’t find the files. I asked Flip to tell me where they hid my files and they said, “They’re in that folder over there, I swear!” And when I opened that folder over there, they weren’t there, so I asked them again where did you hide my files? And this time, I cocked the gun and put it at their temple. Then Flip said, “Okay, okay, okay! We hid your files in a special place so you wouldn’t accidentally delete them! Don’t shoot! They’re in a magical place. Somewhere nobody can ever find them. Have you read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone? It’s like that. You have to go through a bunch of tests of strength and will to find them. We did it so you wouldn’t accidentally delete them! WE DID IT FOR YOU!”
Boom. (Don’t worry, I only shot him in the leg because I knew I might need more info.)
Let me tell you something, I have accidentally deleted so many important things over the years, I know exactly how to use the “restore” function on my computer, thank you very much.
Flip wants me to only use their software for editing and making movies, but guess what? They’re software is not what I want to use! I want to use my Windows Movie Maker! Turns out, it’s a Windows+Flip harmony issue, so I asked, “How do I get around your bullshit, Flip? Tell me now or I shoot you in the nut sack.” Do you want to know what he told me? Me, the person he thought was so techno-challenged that he had to hide my very own videos from my delete-happy fingers? These are the steps he expected me to follow (don’t read it, just look at the enormity of the thing and recognize that I don’t know what half those words are):
The 64-bit version of Windows Media Encoder has been updated so that you can install the encoder on the 64-bit version of Windows Vista. This updated version of the encoder includes the fixes that are described in this article. To obtain the updated version of the encoder, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/AllDownloads.aspx (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/AllDownloads.aspx)Note To apply this hotfix on a computer that is running Windows Vista, you must have elevated user rights. We recommend that you right-click the hotfix package executable file and then click Run as administrator. Alternatively, you can run the executable file through a console window that has elevated user rights.
Before and after you install the hotfix, check the version number of the Wmenc file and of the WMEncEng.dll file to make sure that these files are updated. To do this, follow these steps:
- Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
- Double-click Programs and Features.
- Remove Security Update for Windows Media Encoder (KB954156).
- Remove the current installation of Windows Media Encoder 9 Series.
- Restart the system. Do not install updates.
- Reinstall the Windows Media Encoder 9 Series. To do this, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5691ba02-e496-465a-bba9-b2f1182cdf24&displaylang=en&Hash=Q7YOichtn5uaPziFse1ENeP0pr3Zm3uDvElbQn2p9UGArhz5hMZIta1wqWhKm7czKB%2bzqI%2fM7a20p1YBh%2fuqIg%3d%3d (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5691ba02-e496-465a-bba9-b2f1182cdf24&displaylang=en&Hash=Q7YOichtn5uaPziFse1ENeP0pr3Zm3uDvElbQn2p9UGArhz5hMZIta1wqWhKm7czKB%2bzqI%2fM7a20p1YBh%2fuqIg%3d%3d)- Verify that the version number for the Wmenc file and for theWMEncEng.dll file is 9.0.0.2980.
- Install the hotfix that this article describes.
- Verify that the version number for the Wmenc file and for theWMEncEng.dll file is 9.0.0.3352.
- Use Windows Update to reinstall security updates.
- Verify that the version number for the encoder files is still 9.0.0.3352.
Uh…I don’t think so. All of that made me nauseous and disgusted. So I decided to shoot the bastard dead and go elsewhere for info.
Enter Jess Totdfeld’s comment on this post at technologizer.com:
I think I found the best work-around for the new Flip software.
My problem was that I couldn’t edit Flip / AVI videos in XP Windows Movie Maker. They needed to be in WMV or WMA format. Also, I don’t like this business of not being able to find my files. That’s crazy.
Here’s what to do.
1) Attach the Flip and think of it as an external drive.
2) Open the file with the videos in it and drag them to a file on your computer. You’ve just emptied the Flip and now have files you can see on your computer.
3) Download picasa.google.com . It is Google’s photo viewer. It turns out it is great for viewing videos on your computer too.4) View your videos in Picasa. There’s a feature to trim the videos if you want. You can upload right to YouTube if you want as well or… export to a file. When it exports, it saves as a WMA file and saves within a minute. It also doesn’t seem to decrease the quality which I’ve seen happen with some other programs as well.
Hope everyone finds this helpful.
Oh, I did, Jess. I did find that helpful. So, so helpful. Except, I just opened Movie Maker and dragged them into there instead of messing with Picasa. Thank you, Jess. Thank you, thank you! Why isn’t that Flip’s answer when we ask them to help us? WHY? It’s such a good answer.
By the time I got it all figured out, I was bored of the video thingamajig and I didn’t spend any time doing anything to the sledding video, but here it is anyway. It would have been way better if I hadn’t spent the preceding 2 hours yelling at the Flip guy.
ETA: OMFG IT’S NOT WORKING NOW. Are you effing kidding me? I know this is you, Flip. I will kill you again. It worked when I saved it. It worked when I uuploaded it to youtube. It worked when I posted it to my blog. It worked when I published my blog, and now it doesn’t work.
ETA: OMFG IT’S WORKING AGAIN! I have such mixed feelings about this. I know you’re screwing with me, FLIP!
Just Pretend it’s a Real Card
4December 24, 2009
I’m taking time out from losing at euchre and poker to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and happy New Year! I suck at cards, but you guys rock at being you. Have a great year!
(P.S. Thanks for the great pic, Kristen!)
Feckless Friday: iTunes Edition
5November 13, 2009
I know you like to read about my own fecklessness (I can tell by my stats that Panic! at the Whole Foods Edition is your favorite post, Sadists), but I’m outing iTunes today. Because I’m mad and they won’t return my phone calls. And I’m outing you people because you can still participate in Feckless Friday by tweeting or facebooking or calling me and telling about your (or other people’s) fecklessness even if I skip a few Fridays as I am wont to do because of my fecklessness! Ok? So play along.
Anyway, iTunes? Why are you doing this to me? I like to make a playlist of podcasts, mixing “The Moth” in with “This American Life” and “School Sucks,” or what have you. I need to be able to push skip when I’m listening to “School Sucks” and they start talking about statists and how dumb it is that we all want states. I can’t do that now. Now, when they veer off the school subject on to the Paultard subjects, I have to stop running, take off my arm band, pause my workout, choose “change music,” find out that I can’t just choose “change music” and find another podcast, oh no, I have to choose “end workout” and then I have to look at my milage and subtract what I’ve already run from the total that I want to run and then start a whole new workout with a new podcast, which means you’ve committed the ultimate sin by forcing me to do maths! And then my Nike+ bar graph isn’t as pretty with long, tall slender bars. Instead, it has short, stubby bars with decimals. DECIMALS! Because that is the extent of maths I had to go to. It makes me want to write a letter in all caps with lots and lots of exclamation points. And maybe handwritten. But probably nobody would be able to read it through the tear stains. So fix it, iTunes. Everything was fine until you did your stupid 9.0.stupid update. Stupid.
And don’t tell me that I can still make a podcast playlist, because I know that. I can make all the podcast playlists that I want, but when the little menu of playlists comes up for me to choose which ones I want to sync? Well, there are no podcast playlists available for syncing. Not allowed! They should have a pop-up that says, “Did you enjoy making that totally useless podcast playlist? It was fun to watch you do that for absolutely no reason. We’re all laughing at you from inside your computer.” Because that’s how it feels. And I can hardly function.
