Taking a Break

Well, right now I'm taking a break from making this video. I think this is the first time I've been so stressed about doing a video, especially since it wasn't just sit down for just an hour and work on it. This is the fourth day I've worked on it, and jeez is it tiring. On top of that I have a couple of 'team members' who are contributing their 'ideas', and I don't quite mean to be that sarcastic but it really is starting to give me a headache. Plus I'm totally worried about that final english paper that I have to finish, and I'm pretty worried I'm going to fail that class entirely. The teacher is kind of strict even though she was nice about extending the deadline for me on this paper. I am really bad about this procrastinating thing, especially when I'm tired and have an earache.

Other than all of that, I'm enjoying my MacBook a whole lot, especially how nice it is to use entirely. Everything just flows really well, and with most of the programs, especially the ones that are grouped together, there isn't much of a need to waste time rendering a video or whatever, I can just drag the file to the program and it will play it or render a preview in realtime. In the end that adds more time to render the whole thing, but it's all worth it, especially if I end up deleting it. The nicest one so far has been going from iPhoto to iMovie to iDVD. iMovie can access the iPhoto gallery directly, and then I can prepare a movie for iDVD in about five minutes, and then burn the project straight to a DVD. Some time soon I'm going to move to Adobe's software suite, since it's even more centralized, and I'm really looking forward to messing with After Effects and Premier Pro. I've already done a little thing of Nate having a lightsaber and then doing that whole thing of the fast run like you see in Smallville.

The other thing I've really liked about having this MacBook is that it acutally is a LAPTOP. I love being able to sit anywhere in the house, in front of the TV, or get comfy in my bed. And since I downloaded a fan controller and turned it on max to keep it cool, it doesn't actually get that hot--and I'd rather have a shorter life on my fan than on my processor (really, what were they thinking on that one?). Which brings me to the few issues I have with my Mac. The original problem I had with it was that they sent me one with a broken keyboard, but they sent me a new, better one for 'free'. Oh well, I didn't pay for it ;) The other thing I'm a little bit peeved about is how hot it gets. Not so much for when I'm doing something processor-intensive (the fans kick themselves on if I don't already have them on full blast), but for when it's charging. The changing of the lithium ion polymer battery makes the whole thing get really hot, and you'd think they would have made some sort of vent for that. Another thing I really don't like is where they put my USB ports. I use a Bluetooth mouse most of the time for when I want to do that--and really, the trackpad on this thing is NICE--but I kind of wanted to get a Mighty Mouse since they're laser, but the USB port is all the way on the left side of the Mac, and I'm right handed. Speaking of positioning, the place the power chord goes into isn't all that conveniently located either. It's located on the left corner as well, which really doesn't do any good when my chord is coming from the right. Alright, now I'm having some trouble finding things to complain about on this Mac. I would say that I don't like the fact that XGrid doesn't work with my Windows Server, but that's just a software issue, Windows doesn't have Cocoa libs xD

Loathings of a Mac

Well, a Mac is nice and all. Even the one I have in my lap is nice. Few problems though.

When I first got it, I was extremely excited. That is, until I turned it on. Within the first ten minutes of using it, the thing was freaking out on me. Great. Someone must really not want me to have a laptop or something. The brightness was turning itself down until the LED's on the screen weren't even lit up at all, making anything impossible to see. (I actually like the screen dim; Just not that dim.)

So, the first thought I had was to take it to the Apple Store and ask for an exchange. But then when I was working on a video my mom asked me if I could burn it to a DVD for her. Nope, it doesn't have a DVD burner, we got the cheapest model we could get (except for custom configuring to have 2 gigs of RAM instead of 1), so I couldn't burn DVD's. Well, she didn't take that too well, so we decided we would just get a full refund since I just got it three days ago, and we had bought the 3 year AppleCare Protection Plan, so we would get the next model up, which had the faster processor, bigger hard drive, and the DVD burner, and still had the 2GB's of RAM.

Well, to our dismay, when we walked into the Apple Store today, I walked up to an Apple "Genius", and I showed him that the screen did the funky thing, and on top of that you couldn't use the right shift key with a, q, z, or 1. Which is really annoying right now since I keep typing in RAM. He went to the back with it to scan it, and then he walked back out with a really bad look on his face. Uh oh. "We really would love to refund it, or even just give you an exchange, but since this is a custom made model, we can't give you the refund, you'd have to go to the Apple Online representatives and get a refund from them."

Damn. At this point I was kinda pissed, especially since I had loaded all my stuff, then reformatted to see if that would fix it, and then loaded all my stuff again. Sigh. So, I called the Tech Support line, and got this nice girl on the phone, told her the whole story, and then she had to put me on hold for about 20 minutes because for some reason they were so extremely busy. Finally I got hooked with some guy named Martin, who was actually a Sales Rep (thank God, someone higher up the food chain.), and he said that if I wanted a refund, they would give it to me but there would be a %10 restocking fee (why the hell would it cost $100 to restock something?!), BUT, if I ordered the new one the day I got the refund, there would be no restocking fee. But, I'm lazy, and I really don't want to wait another week for a MacBook to come in. (I don't know if it would take that long, this one did, but that was because it was custom configured), so I had to hang up on him because my parents might not have been totally up for charging over $1000 on a credit card. So later, I'm going to call and ask him how exactly it would work, and ask if I could get the refund on a card of some sort, specifically a credit card, walk into the Apple Store and get the Macbook I wanted.

I'm gonna stop writing now 'cuz Kim just posted on my Wall, and because I've got nothing else for now xD

First Post

Alrighty, well, since I have nowhere to talk about my work, I've decided to ramble here. Recently I've been going crazy with Photoshop because there is a Quest T-Shirt to work on. The first thing my mom and I did was create an energy drink, and since she's not so great with the pen tool, I created the realistic looking can, she added the graphics onto it, and I finished it off by shading it.

After all that was done, I created some wings, since I had been wanting to do a wing shirt since last Quest. Since it's called "Recharged", I made electric wings first. After that I did some real wings, and then went more crazy with making it look all cool. It ended up being a wallpaper, too.