Well after about a week of up and downs in computer land. All things seem to have been resolved. It all started when my X-technology system that I bought on half.com a few years ago decided to give up its hard drive soul (and let’s not try and say that this has had anything to do with not posting for eons, I just don’t have the motivation to keep up like a good little blogger). Two things came to mind. 1. Sadness, the thought of getting this bad boy running again included lots of money and lots of time and lots of cables and my wife freaking out cause she needs to check her e-bay business. 2. ELATION, this is it! It’s time for a new system! JOY! RAPTURE! GLEE! I was going to be forced to spend lots and lots of money that I don’t have. YEAH! So suffering is life right? And suffering is caused by desire, right? Well I was suffering for the desire for a new badass system that could finally take my video production to the next level. The SONY VAIO RC110G has answered my suffering and I will never want again. It wasn’t all that easy really but for the sake of your readership I will just say a few things. I started with a RB44G, I liked it, and I liked it a lot. I could not for the life of me get it to recognize my scanner though, and for this I refer back to the aforementioned week of “up and downs in computer land” I did everything folks, everything, (well, actually not the one thing, and that wasn’t until I had purchased and new scanner, recovered my hard drive to it’s original state, and purchased the computer I really desired) that I thought of plus some really good help from Sony support, (looking back on that support I wonder how good it really was, but the dude was really nice and I learned a lot about XP that I didn’t know). Let’s just say that if scanner software tells you when it’s loading up to disable virus software during the install that it’s not always the right advice. Let’s just say that Norton Antivirus is REALLY protective. So protective that without it I could have been up and running my malicious scanner the second I bought the first computer and NONE of this would have happened. Oh well. My wife likes it.
I bought this new system so I could do to things. 1. Make videos for funerals, (not video the funeral silly, image-montage videos of the deceased in life on the big screen) and 2. to bring all of my analog video footage to DVD/digital format. Well, the system works beautifully for the latter, I have not had the chance yet to make a video for a family with the new system but boy am I ready.
What transferring my analog tapes to digital format has caused me to do in the last few days is to review the hours of my life captured on the camera for the last 7 years. And this has caused me to reflect. Imagine that.
Note: at this point I’ve switched on itunes again; I won’t bother you with what comes on cause that is annoying to ye and me. I have it playing in the eclectic section/Sylvia and Spinoza Internet Radio. It is wonderful and my advice is to turn it on and read this part of the post to it.
I started my analog adventure with a tape of my wife and I going to the Como Zoo in Minneapolis. We are traveling to a kite festival, on a frozen lake in January or February. That last sentence does it all for me in the context of that time. My wife had bought me the camera for Christmas with money we didn’t have. (THANKS Best Buy!) We didn’t have kids, we didn’t have money, we didn’t have anything but each other and we were living in the midwestern wasteland trying to get through school. I was embalming bodies for the medical school. It was so simple then. What I come to when I view these times is such a feeling that I really have been living my life all this time. I know that’s kind of given but to be able to stop, pause and rewind to a time that was in relation to what is really does an amazing job of bringing to light the fact that time has moved forward. I take day to day as day to day and really get hooked up with what needs to be accomplished so that the future is not so “unknown”. Psychologically I really do understand that I don’t have ANY control of what might come down the turnpike of life but that rarely stops me from attempting to smooth the transition of now to then. To look back on then becomes a window on whom I have become, but reflecting on it helps me only slightly on what will become of me in the then of the future.
My four-year-old has been drawing a lot lately. I drew voraciously when I was his age and beyond and watching and helping him is absolutely blowing my mind. I see myself in his actions; I see the quest to put forth on paper what is in the mind. In that I see him beginning to “see” better. I have watched his drawing hand go from a fist grappling the marker like a club to delicately holding the pencil with his fingers and using his wrist and fingers make subtle lines of detail. I watched an early tape of him last night and saw this baby that I can hardly believe is the guy that I discuss the various ways you can kill vampires (not just water, holy-water). At the same time, I watch this baby that can’t even control his movements enough to keep from sticking a spoon in his eye. I know who he is, he’s the guy that I loved so much that it hurt me physically inside. He’s that little guy that taught me about love and absolutely continues to each day. They are two different guys and yet they are the same.
My goal is to get all of this tape downloaded to hard drive so that I can cut out all the boring parts and leave just the good stuff. Now, the trip to the zoo is pretty easy in this case. What the hell was I thinking? Ten minutes of ONE type of monkey? OH MY GOD THIS IS BORING! WHERE IS MY WIFE? WHERE AM I? WHY DID I TAPE THIS? Cutting down the “baby tapes” is harder. While it is still unimaginably boring most of the time; baby eating (whole meals, not kidding), baby bathing (yep, whole bath) baby crawling, crawling, crawling, baby eating again, baby trying to talk, walk, etc. is all so…great. It gives me the same strange understanding of who I was and where I am now. I have felt really blessed with the way my life is right now, (I have also felt very discouraged about how others lives must feel like right now. Guilt anyone?) The rewinding seems to put in great focus as to why I am feeling so blessed. And I guess that does put into perspective that the future could be a certain way as long as things are kept in perspective now.
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