Chaotic Fringe World Blog

Today was the day I set aside to do most of the work on the video project I’m working on. I didn’t expect to finish most of it today but I did. Did the 8 hour shift at work, came home and told myself I would work on the project for a few hours before going to bed but I realized I was in ‘the zone’ and by 4pm I pushed myself away from the computer and the project was close to being finished. I have a few color correction issues I want to explore, maybe change some clips and I need to drop in the soundtrack but the basics of the project is complete. I even checked out the project on the big screen TV, which is larger than the screen it will be projected on if my last experience is any indication, and it passed my ‘it doesn’t suck to bad’ test.

I was incredibly beat when I finished and I was sure I was going to sleep for a long time. Here I am, waking up at 10pm and at the stage where I’m really too tired to sleep, too tired to stay awake, and I cringe at the prospect of having to suffer through Saturday Night Live. I guess I will work on the tweaks to the project now.

It will be some time before I can do a review of Diablo 3. I loaded the game before I left for work yesterday. This morning I played for about 45 minutes. When I woke up an hour ago I wanted to play again but I couldn’t because the servers were full. Just now I tried to get in again and the servers were down for maintenance again. From what I could tell this was the second time today they had been taken down. Yes, the drawback of having a game dedicated to online play, even in single player mode, means if the servers get full, you can’t play the game.

Food for thought. The Carl’s Jr Six Dollar Burger, introduced around 2004, originally cost $3.95. The big tag line for the burger at the time was it tasted like a $6 burger you would find in a sit down restaurant. Today I found myself in a Carl’s Jr and the price for the six dollar burger is now $5.49. Where is the bargain with that?

There is something special about crossing the border into the US on a Saturday morning. I have never seen it but a general walk of shame has nothing on this. I will have to write about this a lot more on Chaotic Fringe. The crossing was fast, only 10 minutes but I had to wait for a second trolley to arrive because the first was so full of drunken American youth.

There were so many too young girls in dresses two sizes to small who had way too much to drink. Girls supporting themselves with sloppy renditions of supposedly girl powered enthusiasm. The many weren’t better, with their vomit-covered jackets and alcohol filled bravado.

I got here at 6am to cross the border. 7am and the line is twice as long, more people are cutting in but I’m making progress.  From where I’m at now I should have another hour before I cross.

The calculations were wrong. I got cross the border at 8:30am. It was incredibly crowded inside the border place. Today definitely has to be a slow day. Right now I’m waiting for the trolley to show up. Which is coming right now.

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The birthday breakfast will now be brunch. I still think I can get some photography in before the end of the day.

Now I’m on the trolley heading to San Diego. Crowded like Comic Con type crowded.

I have made 3 gate moves and now got an alert the flight is delayed by an hour! I just found a plug by the ATM so I’m going to hunker down. Hungry but airport food? Even the Sean Hannity burrito is expensive here. Yes that is a bean and rice burrito. Cheese is too ritzy.

A birthday has to have a little work for me so I’m testing out a new toy I got for myself. A few weeks ago the iPod died.  I didn’t want another one but I missed having some of the perks of the device. A laptop can be too cumbersome for some tasks and takes up too much room. I still like the Transformer I have but even at it’s thin design it can take up too much space, like in my camera bag.

I’m reviewing the Lenovo 7″ tablet I got a week ago.  So far so good, but I will have a formal review in a week or two. This trip is also helping me work on light travel planning. All I have is the one camera bag and it is filled to the brim with equipment. This is a good prep for Comic Con.

Speaking of Comic Con, still no pro pass information. I’m not nervous but concerned. I’m keeping an eye on the site and email messages. It shouldn’t sell out for me, but you don’t know.

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This is what sharing an outlet with a nice person looks like at a crowded airport. It’s so fun to know I have another four hours to wait for a one hour flight.

I have been in a kind of depression for most of the week. One little thing after another has been put on me, like a scale of justice and little bits of metal are put on by some unseen force, causing the scale to dip every so slowly. Dreams have been a mixed hodgepodge of events, mixing people from school, California and situations from different times in my life. A lot of messages being sent in very confusing ways.

Something that is painful about the weekends and this early morning time is there is nothing decent to watch on TV or to listen to on the radio. It’s dead time so you are forced to think inwardly because there is no external stimulation to block your thoughts. You are stuck with you at these times. The only thing that is on at this time remotely interesting is George Noury, and believe me he’s no Art Bell. He tries, he’s good to listen to, but Bell was the master of late night radio.

With any luck I’m going to have a video review of the Lenovo A1 tablet in a week or two. I want to put it through its paces to give an honest review of the product. Just on a quick thing I’ve noticed, if you are looking to buy a tablet and you get caught up in the Android OS mess, meaning if you should get grasshopper, ice cream sandwich, peanut butter or whatever silly name they come up with for their systems, these tablet OS speeds are very similar to clock speed on a computer. You essentially have Pentagon fast and regular people fast. Unless you job entails needing to avert the start of a nuclear war by having your tablet calculate a code algorithm, you don’t need to have the latest and greatest Android OS. ‘Slow’ is a relative computer term and for most people, slow isn’t really slow to them. You should concern yourself, as you should with any electronic product like a computer, figure out what you want to do with it and then find the machine to fit those needs.

I was heading to the comic shop this morning and I saw three teenagers at the bus stop. They were being typical teenagers so I didn’t pay them much attention. When we got on the bus they sat across from me, and for the next fifteen minutes this girl and guy mercilessly laid into their friend. They kept telling the guy he was gay and they literally talked to people on the bus, mostly men, trying to ‘get a date’ for the guy. He was bothered by it but didn’t do a lot to stop them from doing it. The two really got obnoxious about it.

I had my Transformer ePad with me and I was able to remove it and record them for a few minutes. Believe me, what I was able to capture didn’t give the full volume of the harassment that went on. After two of the teenagers left the bus, which was about five minutes after I shut the camera off, the harassed kid was on the bus for a bit longer. He was so depressed after the barrage his ‘friends’ gave him. Apparently we need to talk more about the effects of bullying to teenagers if what I saw was any indication of the life of a sensitive teenager.

Here is the link to the video I shot – Harassed Teenager on Bus

Yes, I know. I can never let up on diabetes. I know I don’t have a choice in it. Please, can you do me a favor? Yes, I know I’m being stubborn but honestly, don’t expect me to become a saint overnight. I haven’t been struck by the light of the Lord while going to Damascus like Saul was. This whole process is going to take time and frankly I don’t have a doctor I go to every month or two monitoring me. I’m doing this on my own. I found out why I’ve been having mild headaches. I haven’t done a running total, but since I checked my blood glucose a few minutes ago and it was hovering at 500 (OK it was French kissing 500) that explains all the medical issues I have been feeling the past week. No wonder I have been drinking water like a drunk in a bar with a thousand dollars. And to answer the obvious question no I haven’t checked my glucose level in some time, maybe three weeks.