From the Desk 5/16/2008

It's Friday! I'm really glad because my sinuses are really starting to bother me. I didn't sleep very well so that didn't help either. I got to work and began furiously working on the video for Dave's project. I got a lot accomplished at first, but then the work for The School Box took over for a while. I had a website committee meeting that lasted from 9:00 until 9:45 and then when we finished that, Mike and I headed out to the Graphics Solutions Group production facility. We met Nina, our rep, there at just after 10:00 and she proceeded to take us on a tour and meet everyone we came across. This was my first visit to a printing facility so when I saw the sizes of the 6-color presses I was amazed. (You can be too, just check out this picture of one of their press machines!) We got a quick lesson in how they do sorting, printing, mailing, and project management. I'm not sure if we will use them for a large part of our needs or not, but they would certainly be capable of handling our projects. Our tour ended and we headed back to the office around 10:50. I was able to edit about 5 more children's pictures before I was invited to go out to lunch with Carmen, Blair, Tausha, and Anna. We all piled in the family bus (Carmen's SUV) and headed to Willy's for some Mexican sustenance. I had the usual and we decided to eat outside since it wasn't very sunny or hot. We also figured we might disturb a few less people if we weren't actually inside the restaurant while laughing hysterically. We ate and then had to return to work far too soon. I focused solely on the project for Dave for the rest of the afternoon.

I finished up with the kids' pictures part of the DVD and then ran into a problem. iMovie doesn't have a way to create a DVD menu! I searched online and on my Mac to determine if I had the appropriate program to fix this problem. Thankfully I did. I had to export the show into the media browser and then import that into iDVD. iDVD allowed me to customize a main menu screen and then add the video clips to that project before burning the final copy. I realized that the project would not get done today and then Dave said that it would be best if we could meet on Sunday afternoon around 4:00. He would give me the music I needed to add to the program and then I could render the 2 slide shows and add them to iDVD and then finally burn it off as a hard copy for duplication. I wasn't really looking forward to coming in on Sunday, but I really didn't have anything else to do so I figured why not.

I left work a little early, as pretty much everyone did, because the entire office was sleepy and drained. I went home intending to go mow at Stacy's since it has rained the past couple of days, but when I got home I fell asleep on the couch for a couple of hours. I woke up feeling refreshed and decided to work on the video until going to bed. That proved to be a good idea, in theory, but I soon got bored and then watched one of the NBA playoff games that was on TV before going to bed at a decent hour (trying to not get a sinus infection).

Meditation for the day: Job 11:18 " You will be secure, because there is hope; you will look about you and take your rest in safety."