Snow Day

Today I woke to about 6 inches of snow and though I had been anticipating it, it still managed to come to me as a bit of a shock. This happened because the last time I saw this much snow was back in '94 when what I refer to as "The Ice Storm" hit Delaware and my brother and I got to spend the day playing instead of going to school. So this morning, after getting up early, getting ready and sweeping a half-foot of snow off my roof I attempted to plow through the otherwise unplowed parking lot. After getting stuck on a hill and having smaller cars with front wheel drive pass me I managed to turn myself around and get back home. Parking in the lot, I found, was harder than exiting it. Once I did get situated into a snow bank of a spot it was one quick phone call and a short instant message conversation to see who made it into the office before heading back to bed. :-) Lindsey and I programmed all my contacts into my new phone (Thanks Dad!) and watched the beginning of War Of The Worlds then it was time to try one more time. This time I needed some help getting out since the plows had formed with all the snow once on the street an almost waist high white fortress protecting my car from all who wished to view it from a reasonable distance. After walking around it a few times, blowing my rams horn and realizing that it must not work with all Joshua's I look over my shoulder to see none other than Scatman Crothers walking towards me. Well, it looked a lot like him anyway. The Scatman and I dug the Vitara out and I went on to work. I got there about 11:30 and the client I was supposed to be working with walked in a few minutes later. While editing, he asked me to get rid of a graphic that was in the captured video. Hmm. It's not on a layer that I can just hide or delete. So I watched how the video underneath was before and after the graphic and realized I might be able to work around it and fake it. I did, and it worked seamlessly. This is cool when it happens and even cooler when a client is sitting there watching you. He said "Wow, you can't see a jump or anything!" followed by a long pause of astonishment then "I think I'm the most impressed I've ever been." That, to me, made it worth risking my life on the icy highway with Pennsylvania drivers. It was one of the best compliments I've had concerning media.

Well, I just got done packing up more stuff to take home tomorrow. Which reminds me, I'm not done!

Exhale (Only To Inhale Again)

Lately I feel like I've have had half a million things going on, most of which take up my spare time and have nothing to do with work. Well...I shouldn't say nothing because by far the biggest is the fact that come January, I will be employed by Watermark Productions located in Southern Delaware! (I'm working on the new site so nothing is up there quite yet) Watermark is owned and operated by my father Bill Sammons who has so graciously offered a mentorship program to me with the intention of soon stepping away and letting me take ahold of the reigns! This daunting task is both overwhelmingly exciting and extremely nerve-racking. Lindsey and I recently found a house to rent in Milford where I will be working out of until Watermark grows into an office. There's an extra guest room as well as one for the baby, and the dogs have a moderately sized back yard to run around in. A few weekends ago my father-in-law and I built the biggest dog house I had ever seen for Jax & Sadie to keep warm in during the winter. I'll be putting a heat lamp in there for them soon and I think they're just going to love it. Say good-bye to crates and a small apartment! I suppose we're all excited about that!
So today I gave my two weeks at Triscari and to my surprise, everything went really really well. Seb seemed happy about it, which could be read two ways I guess. The other producers were sad to hear one of them was departing but I know they understand. Over the past two months we've been making long one-day-weekend trips which has enabled us to move enough of our "stuff" to mom's to make our apartment look empty and at the same time keep us worried over the question "Will the rest of it fit in the huge trailer Dad's bringing on the 17th?". I also have to line up a way for my piece of stang to travel back home. Ugh. Well, now I'm rambling on with my thoughts.

Man...two weeks. It's going to fly by.

My Late Thanksgiving Post

Shh. Silence is broken only by the frigid winter breeze as I steady my hand.
Watching. Waiting. Gently I reach for the button, revealing the red. I'm ready. I hear them coming. The first flies by me faster than I antisipated, I shoot. The second follows as I shoot again. Both targets go down.

I would have been a proud storyteller of an actual animal hunt, however my thanksgiving morn involved skeet. Which I think is better. Less waiting, more shooting! My dad, brother, granddad, uncles, and some friends have been skeet shooting every thanksgiving morning since I can remember. We always do horrible but it's a lot of fun nonetheless. Being married over the holidays can be fun, you just have to enjoy travel and be capable eat twice as much (especially over this holiday)!

I also got invited to a party my buddy Danny was having at his place that involved a bunch of people I'd never met. I haven't seen Danny or my brother Nick in a while so i decided to go so I could spend a little time with them. We played poker, ate a delicious meal, way too many deserts, and then capped it off with a lil' Halo 2.
I even got to play (and kill a few times) the #2 Halo-er on Xbox live. wow.

Family, friends, guns, poker, darts, Halo, yeah it was a good one.

Tutorial: How To Mess With Coworkers (Mac)

Ha! Dan and I just got done making custom eject overlays for our unsuspecting coworkers. We are going to install them on their computers the next time they step away. What's an eject overlay? Why is this awesome? Well, lets Tarantino this bad boy.

About an hour ago Dan came in here to test an interactive CD that made his computer crash. We tested it and it seemed to work fine on my computer. Once we were done testing it I hit F12 (eject on the EZ Keyboard) and the CD came out. Now for those of you not familiar to the mac interface, when you eject a CD it overlays the universal "eject" symbol on your screen. Well we made some comments to the effect of how it'd be funny if it came on and said, "No, I like this one" and kept the CD from us. Then we got to thinking. If we were able to find and edit the quicktime player interface buttons images to say " H I J O N", could we in the same manner edit this overlay?

The search began and in about 2 minutes I found it: "eject.png". For those of you also wanting to experiment with this here's the path:

System > Library > CoreServices > BezelUI > Images > eject.png

You have to change the permissions to allow you to access both the file and the folder it's in. To do so, perform a "get info" on the item. Then under "Ownerships & Permissions" drop down the "Details" twirly and click the locked lock to unlock the locked lock. Now that it's unlocked change the "Owner" drop-down to show the name of your computer instead of "System". Once that's taken care of on both items, have at it! Be sure to save a copy before you edit! The image is set to the specific size of 211 x 206 but can be full color. I've made two versions so far, both of which Dan already posted on his blog so I told him I'd post his here on mine. haha! He also put up a copy of the original overlay just in case.




So anyways, go check mine out and try to imagine the look on my coworkers faces next time they eject their drive and see Mickey flippin' em the bird!

THAT's why it's awesome.