I Iz So Dum

So this is what I do for a living, video and audio formats. So I know better than to believe Corel Video Studio when it cranks for 8 hours and gives me an MPG4 AVC transport stream file, claiming it is good for blu-ray. Fired up Nero's video transcoder, and converted that to MPEG2.

Spent the last 2 hours in Corel DVD Factory, because Nero's doesn't have a precise way to designate chapters, and marked about 25 spots in the video. In the process re-discovered two songs I had completely forgotten about. I was probably in the Green Room (aka outside) when those were on stage.

Too late to finish, still a lot to do, including fighting the "theme" thing which wants to put a couple of layers on top of the background image I want to use.

Work - got in early. That glass of wine helped me sleep straight through the night, and also helped me get to sleep. So I'm sipping on another one now.

Team meeting ran the full hour. I reported a bug which I had seen on two machines I had tried to break into, and boss asked around, found out that only two team members had not seen it.

Spent a lot of time online looking for HEVC videos. HEVC is the next step up from MPEG4, very high compression, which means much better quality HD videos using less bandwidth and disk space. Found a handful of excellent clips. Most of them were for 4K, which my players don't handle, and a couple were in 3D, so ditto, but there were two 15-minute shorts from Norway which blew me away. Tears of Steel is an live action + CG + animation romance gone wrong between a cute young man and a woman with a robot prosthetic arm. Sintel is the name of a waif-like dragon hunter, all animation, gorgeous procduction.

Cable companies are clamoring for HEVC because it will save a ton of storage space while increasing quality and using less bandwidth. I'm impressed.

Finished my SNMP class slides, added some screen captures at 150% so they can be seen on the screen. Hoping to keep it to an hour, may or may not succeed. One more team member signed up, so now I have 3.

Lunchtime was a trip to UPS where I use to have a mailbox, so they can sign for me, where I had the 85mm lens delivered, because the eBay seller in Canada decided to check the box for in-person signature. Would have had it Friday otherwise.

Looked at the handful of photos I took at the party with the 16-35mm, and they sucked. Too wide an angle for an outdoor event. And the host has a very expressive face, but I only managed to catch the ugly ones. I got a shot from across the yard of my crush's butt, and one of here 90% hidden with host (who is 6'3" and broad-shouldered) between us. Amy. I want to marry her and have her babies.

Delivered to the house was the s-video cable. I will try it on some old VHS after the DVD project is done.

Also in the mailbox was my Toyota finance info. April 25 is first payment due, but I am leaning toward selling some mutual funds and either paying it all off, or half of it. Having the loan at 0% makes this a stupid idea, except my mutual funds are not doing well. I make too much to take it out of my IRA. 33% tax. No thanks.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Plan A is to go to the library for a talk on controlling headaches. Plan B is go to Janice's to fix her remote.