Random Friday Stuff

• I shipped off the HDCAM screening copy of the film to the folks at AFI Dallas. Though we shot on and mastered on HDCAM, we have yet to screen in that format, so this is an exciting first -- to see the full resolution image on the big screen. Interestingly, another fest we got into recently, the Sunscreen Film Festival, is also screening on HDCAM, right after AFI Dallas, so one fest is going to have to ship directly to another (a common enough occurrence on the festival circuit, but a first for me). And since I just mentioned it in this bullet...
  
• The film was accepted into the Sunscreen Film Festival in Tampa, Florida.
  
• The film was also accepted into the Indianapolis International Film Festival.
  
• ...nice, huh?
  
• Though I use a mac (PowerBook G4), I have a PC at home that the kids use, and my wife has a PC laptop. So I had to upgrade for the DST flaw (side note: did it never occur to programmers that DST is not an immutable fact of nature but a date set by the government?). So, the old desktop hadn't been updated in a while, and I didn't have XP Service Pack 2. So I started the process and found that I had to download all the updates to Service Pack 1 before it would let me download and install SP 2. I am now on hour number five of the download and install process. And I haven't even started the actual DST big fix. (Update: I finally finished this process after more than six hours, and after the PC hung up for an hour while installing Service Pack 2. After all that, now the computer will know when Daylight Savings Time is. Yee haw. You know what would make this easier? If you could simply go into your "time/date" settings and tell the computer on what day DST will occur. Easy, huh?)
  
• Windows Vista -- uh, no. Not gonna happen.
  
• It occurs to me that a computer is a little like a car. From the moment you buy it, it's out of date, and you have to keep sinking money into it even though it's not worth anything anymore. Sad.
  
• But I love my PowerBook. Truly. Most of the time, this thing is a pleasure to use. And it looks cool, too (that's just a bonus).