with apologies to the Blair Witch Project

On Friday I and two of my colleagues made a movie. It's about solution architecture which is what I work on. I've been trying to think up ways to encourage people to follow a standard practice and thought, since they seem bored with my power points, multimedia would be the way to go.

It's horribly acted and likely only funny to anyone who is an (IT) architect that has also seen the Blair Witch Project. You can see the fading pink in my hair (have to do a refresh next week). I am eternally grateful that my colleagues agreed to join me in this project.

I used wondershare to edit the video since we filmed it on an iPhone, iMovies sucks, and I don't have a Mac. I've never edited a video in my life so had no idea what I was doing. I think it came out pretty well except for a bad splice at the end (learned a lesson about having some pauses in the vid in case you have to edit it). It's pretty obvious I spent the whole movie on the verge of hysterical laughter. My colleague Pete kept coming up with one liners that I wasn't expecting and that I couldn't laugh at. We both almost made each other laugh a few times in the movie.

Anyway, not heading to hollywood, but had a ton of fun and plan to make more movies. The movie took us about 20 minutes (including set up and practicing each scene) to make.

I also did a vlog after the movie about making the movie and the ideas behind what we did. I sent the above vid, and the vlog, to a senior VP in my company (I made the vlog for him). He should get it on Monday at which point I'll either be praised or fired. I'll try to post some quick clips from the movie later this week.

fingers crossed for a green thumb!

While I've been slacking on my blog I've been busy with all kinds of projects...

I had to sand, patch, and repaint my ceilings upstairs because I had new vents installed for my swamp cooler. It took a lot longer than I thought it would to sand and patch and there was a huge mess to clean up after...

And today a guy came to fix the back flow for my sprinkler. He also made some minor adjustments to make the drip system work better (no charge for that). I happened to mention to him how I get a really bad pipe bang (pipe banging against one of the 2 x 4s holding up my kitchen) every time the sprinkler system goes off. The banging is so loud it would wake me up at 430 every morning, and because the sprinklers run for 15 minutes it kind of sucked (sometimes I could fall back asleep but most times I couldn't - nothing sadder than wandering around a house at 5 in the morning with nothing to do because it's too early to vacuum). He managed to fix the banging by putting in a release valve. Psyched!

it's like a cigarette for the sprinkler system - relieves pressure

I told the sprinkler guy how my next door neighbor was complaining about military planes flying low over our building early in the morning waking him up and at first I was puzzled since we hardly ever hear planes and then realized my neighbor was also hearing the pipe banging and assumed it was an F-16 or something. The sprinkler guy laughed so hard he had to turn off his torch thing that he was using to weld the release valve. As I was writing him a check he called one of his sprinkler buddies and told him the story. If you read about it somewhere else, that was me.

And since my mom gave me a gift certificate to home depot for my birthday I decided to go there after work today to buy some plants. I didn't even spend half of the money yet because they were sold out of some of the plants I wanted...things could get really interesting in my back yard as I use up the gift certificate.

I got these, um, white and pink flowers - I don't know what kind they are, they're...flowers - and I like them

the plant to the left is a raspberry bush (going to see how it does in a planter as an experiment), and the other two are cherry tomatoes plants purported, by their labels, to grow "excellently" in planters

blueberry bush!!!!!!! much of what I read cautioned that blueberries can take over a yard - have at it! I love blueberries

I had to re-pot my christmas cactus that Cam gave me for christmas - hope I don't have to re-pot it again because it's getting too heavy to lift - 13" planter, I remember when I first got it and it fit into a 6" pot

this is the start of an herb garden, I'm going to add some chives and cilantro to the pot as soon as I can find some - it's like a little herb garden in a big pot

while I was carrying the christmas cactus outside one of his little arms snapped off - so I put it in a shot glass to see if it will grow roots

this is some thai basil from take out pho that I got two weeks ago - I put it in a shot glass and it grew roots so I potted it to see what will happen

Hopefully my garden will be a success this summer. If not, I'll be sure to post pics of the deadest plants ever.