Category: My Life

2 Bad Dates

I can’t believe how SUCKY I have been with updating this blog lately. Damn me!

Anyways, last weekend was alright. It was V-day, I hung out with Carlos on Friday and Saturday night. Friday we went to GGB and had a great time. He danced and I talked to guys and hung out. Matthew was there…. Swooooooooon. I have a major crush on that guy. I doubt anything would ever work out, mostly because we have been TRYING to go out for drinks for AGES, but nothing ever works out! Damnit!

Saturday I did lots of shopping and stuff, hit the gym, then hung out at home with Carlos for the evening. Didn’t even get a V-day fuck! 🙁 How sad.

Sunday was rock climbing. We did the zip line which was TONs of fun! Then I did a LITTLE bit of climbing but was very sore or tired or something. I’m not sure what the problem was, either way I sucked at climbing on Sunday. We went out and saw “Shopaholic” that afternoon which was a funny movie.

Monday I worked a long ass day and then had a horrible date with this guy off “Who’s Here”. He had GROWN up in Long Beach, but had NEVER been to fucking Santa Monica, The Getty, Yosemite, Death Valley. The list went ON and ON and ON! How can you live in ONE place for so long and never get out to see/do these things. WTF is wrong with people! Then he got ALL PISSSED off when I wanted to end the date early. Besides the fact that he had NEVER been to these places, he also asked the MOST BORING questions ever on our date. It was like he had read the “10 standard questions for every BORING date” book or something.

Tuesday I worked another LONG ass day. Then had another horrible date with another guy. He seemed alright online, he liked the out doors, kayaked, hiked, shot guns, etc. So we meet, first off, GAAAAAAAAAY! OMG. Secondly all he could talk about was his parents money and his parents 6 hours and how his aunt makes $5million a year. Blah blah blah. Found out he grew up in the OC. NOOO WOnder that’s all he could talk about. I left the OC for a reason!

After that I got home and was a little depressed. I’m pissed that the Russian has a bf, who he’s apparently happy with, Jason has a BF, Kris is apparently into someone. WTF, why is it that the one thing I really want, and I can’t find it or get it. UGH! I’m so sick of this shit.

Wed was more work, just boring shit was supposed to hang out with Carlos that night, but he canceled on me last minute which was annoying, but whatever. I had an enjoyable night at home, got all packed for Death Valley, read some of my camera book, etc.

Today has been enjoyable. Mostly because the REALLY hot marketing guy was in my office for like 2 hours and we just chatted and BSed, etc. PS, I’m in love! hahah. He’s a cool guy. I wish he’d come hang out with the group some. It was funny just bitching with him about the company, talking business, etc. Where’s the gay version of him?!?

So as I stated, this weekend is Death Valley. I am very excited for it! I have a car full of people going in the G, I’m a little nervous about taking that many people in my G. It’s going to be a mess! 🙁

Later!

iLife ’09

So I’ve had iLife ’09 for about a week now and have been using it heavily. About the only 2 things I use in this though are iPhoto and iMovie. Both of which are a HUGE improvement over what was previously there.

However, iPhoto is missing a TON of features.

  • Very SLOW! – Faces and Places are both VERY VERY slow. When I add new photos, it takes FOREVER to find the faces, etc.
  • Additional Faces / Missing Faces – It’d be nice if when I click the “Add missing faces” iPhoto attempts to locate missing faces. Also, I wish that you could add the box, and then just CLICK in the Name area to name it, instead of having to click “Done” and then click again to name someone. Another thing is it’d be nice if there were a way to tag “Other people in this photo”. IE people who might not be exactly FACING the camera, but are IN the photo.
  • Smart filters for Places and Faces – These need to be expanded a LOT. I’ve always found iPhoto’s smart filters lacking and now they are missing even MORE features. I wish I could find photos who have a face but are not labeled. I wish that the Smart filters for places were much smarter. Some photos DO have geotagging, but they are not “apple’s” geotags, so it counts those as not having GEO info! Very annoying.
  • Delete from Albums, Smart Albums – I use albums, not events, to manage my photos. This is how I like to do it, I find it MUCH easier to organize. I have folders for each year and then albums in those folders for each event. I also use Smart filters a lot to find photos. But you cannot EASILY move images from the albums to the trash. Give me the ABILITY to do that with a warning or something at least.
  • REMOVE BACKUPS! – This is something people have been wanting FOREVER! I currently have 19,717 photos in my library, at 37.6Gb. But my iPhoto library takes up a whopping 51.73Gb!!! This is insane. I want to recover all the space from images that are duplicates (backups/etc). If I make edits to a photo 5-8 years ago. I don’t really CARE about keeping the original. LET ME DELETE THEM!

    • I haven’t really used iMovie too much yet, but one really annoying thing that I was hoping would be there was the ability to edit background music from within iMovie. Currently if I have a track in the background and want to quickly cut out portions of it, I have to open the audio track in another program and edit those sections out. It’s just very cumbersome. I hope that they continue to make HUGE strides in iMovie they way they have in this last release!

The Crazies

The movie “The Crazies” will be partially filmed in my grandparents home town! How cool! I spent many many summers there as a child. It’ll be really cool to see what happens on the big screen!

The movie The Crazies will be partially filmed in Lenox. Iowa offers tax incentives for filmmakers and this makes it very attractive to the movie industry. John’s job is to find locations in Iowa that fit a particular look that is needed for a movie or commercial. In mid December rural landscapes were looked at and they settled on Lenox. This is a remake of the science fiction movie from the 1970’s called The Crazies. George Romero directed the original movie, and he is serving as Executive Director. The premise of the movie is: An army plane crashes into the town’s water supply contaminating it with chemical warfare. The hero is the hometown sheriff played by Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell plays his doctor wife. You may be familiar with Timothy in his HBO series Deadwood and the film Hitman. Once the water supply is tainted it makes the residents crazy. The town is cordoned off by the military to contain the situation.

Production will begin in April with pre-production crew arriving the beginning of April. Iowa State Savings Bank will be the setting for the jail, Trost Agency will be the interior of the medical clinic, and Gary Freeman’s abandoned house in the country will be burned down for the film. Ritchie Funeral home will be used for the exterior shots of the funeral home, Lenox Community School will have shots of the gym, hallway and baseball field, the water tower and Main Street will also have scenes filmed.

John’s roll is to coordinate the locations and to keep the public informed. The movie crew will be focusing on shooting this $18 million project and will be working 10-12 hour days. They may seem abrupt but they are very focused on their job. Filming will begin around April 20th and conclude around May 8th. The community will benefit financially with fees going to the school, city and chamber for their help as well as site locations. This is a firm deal and they are definitely coming to Lenox.

Approximately 140 pre production people will be arriving and need housing. They are interested in hunting lodges, motel, bed and breakfast and RV’s. If anyone is interested in providing lodging please contact Michelle at the chamber.

The Crazies will be released by October of this year.

Bronco, and Rubio Canyon

Another busy weekend of driving! This weekend started out pretty good, I can’t remember what I did on Friday. Carlos (the painter) and I went to a movie last week sometime. It was fun, he’s a nice guy, but won’t really go anywhere with that.

Saturday I got up early and putzed around the house for a while then headed out to meet with George to look at the Bronco. I was a little disappointed with it, first it’s not the 1976 version he said, it’s a ’77 which means it’s a Bronco II, which is MUCH larger then the Bronco I was hoping for. Second the body has lots of scrapes and dings and stuff. I test drove it and nearly killed someone! lol. I took lots of pics and sent them off to the Cousin for information. So we’ll see what happens.

After that I drove to downtown LA and went to the Museum of Neon Art. It was neat, realy CUTE guy working the front desk. Very small for what I was expecting, after that I walked around downtown LA. It was really pretty after the rain. Got some shots of the Disney Concert hall, the farmers market, and bradbury building.

From there I drove to A16 to buy a new pair of hiking boots. Talked to another REALLY cute guy who was working there, but he was SO NERVOUS! It was almost annoying. But I think that he sold me a good pair of hiking boots. From there I drove up to Sherman Oaks and hung out at the Barnes and Noble to kill time before JoEric’s birthday party.

At 8 I went up to the birthday party and we had a really good time. Lots of jumping around and playing and what not. Very very funny. Left there about 10:30 and went home.

Sunday I got up and rock climbing was canceled so I did some laundry and other stuff around the house. About noon I headed out to meet with JoEric and Ally and we did a nice 3-4 mile hike. It was very wet, but tons of fuN!

Monday Carlos came over again and we watched “Leaving Las Vegas“. I feel asleep.

Fontuky, Simi, Palm Springs, Salton Sea, Weist Lake, El Centro

So to start off, I drove a LOT this weekend. Check out my trip here.

So not to much has really happened since my last post. I hung out with Jason and his new boy James on Saturday, got a new couch which was TONS of fun. And VERY comfy!

Sunday was rock climbing and this new guy came who was HOT. Lucky! Yum! Anyways, it was a GREAT day of climbing. We’re headed out to Death Valley on Feb 20.

After that I drove to the Salton Sea which was a mess, took some pics then drove to Wiest lake to camp. Smelled LIKE SHIT!

Got up Monday morning and drove to El Centro, Took about 10 minutes to fix the problem they were having down there, so that was annoying. I hung around till 11:30 to make sure everything was working and then headed home.

I’ve txted Kris a few times this week. No reply. Guess we are not friends any more. Oh well!