I win again today !!

I so figured out how to print one page per side on our company printer!! Years ago the LAN guys, in an effort to save paper, set the printing default to duplex print FOR EVERYONE. For the most part duplex printing is alright for work documents but once in a while I need something printed one page per side.
Now I don't have to throw away one 500 page ream of paper per week to make up for the paper savings. Whew!

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JoeCubicle

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My new want: Sony HDR AX-2000 Hi Def Camcorder

I think I have a new favorite camera. This beauty is under $3,500 and tapeless. It records onto 2 HCSD cards at 1080. I won’t go into all the details, there is a link below for all that. Wish with me for this creature to be in my possession in the near future. Oh yeah.



Amazon.com

Review on B&H




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February… ugh

I really don’t want to be ‘half empty’ but For The Love Of Pete is February not the most depressing month?!?!

It is in between “Winter” and “Spring” and no fun. Actually it is the middle of winter so that’s why it’s depressing.

My daughter said something the other day that I’ve been thinking for a long time, something like: “It would be fun to travel to wherever it is 72 degrees”. I agree. I could write a book about the travels and call it ‘Chasing 72’. <sigh>

I'm one of those guys now...

I finally have crossed the line, literally. I left the building I work in over lunch to run some errands to find that either I parked like this early this morning or elves came and moved my truck over 2 feet to the left. Wow, what a jerk.

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January almost gone – 2010

One month and a day after Christmas 2009 and I can’t wait for next Christmas already. I love Thanksgiving and Christmas, that it by far my favorite time of the year. We’ve only 10 months to go till Thanksgiving.

It’s cold and will be for the next few days. I took Audrey and Nathan to the Golden Archery club Tuesday night archery group lesson/shoot this evening. Nathan has been there before but Audrey went for the first time and really enjoyed it. We found out she is left eye dominant and shoots better left-handed. Nathan popped two balloons while Audrey had a number of near-hits.

Enough is enough. We've had a good amount of snow for sure. I've battled an ineffective (since fixed) snow blower, 19 snow removals, bitter bitter wind chill, on call at work, issues at work, my truck breaking down with my wife and kids with me and a $75 tow bill.

Whew!

I guess all is ending alright. A simple adjustment to my snow blower made it work like a champ. A call from the repair shop is implicating the my truck's battery, so if that is the case, it won't be that expensive. OK, they just called, the fuel pump is bad and of course it's in the tank so it'll be a few more bucks.

And... as this is written there is an emergency code fix needed at work, so off I go....

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JoeCubicle

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A few weeks ago I shot and edited a music video for a fellow name Tracy Skretta. He lives here in Omaha and I met him when he was playing one Friday evening at a local coffee shop.

I offered to shot some video of him playing for him to use as well as practice for me. I think it turned out pretty well. I learned a lot and had some help from a guy named Chris Bridges. I can't thank Chris enough!

The embedded video above is a little wide for the column but that is the smallest embedding YouTube offers for this video.

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JoeCubicle

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Don't forget to write 2010 on your checks

Jan 4, 201o and I'm going back to work today. I've been off since Dec 18, it was nice to have all that time off and I'm trying to not let it bug me that I'm going back into the office today.
The big snowstorm (read the previous blog entry) did in fact come and dump a ton of snow on us. The big snow fall happened on Christmas day. My wife and I went out together to tackle all the snow accounts I have the next day on the 26th. I went out at 8, did a couple then picked her up at 11:00 and we worked for the next 12 hours and 3 hours the next day. It was a lot of work and it took 2 days for all the aches and pains to subside with a little help from some Advil.

Happy New Year everyone

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There is a sleet/ice/snow storm coming our way over the next few days. This Friday is Christmas day and that is when the snow and whatever else is supposed to stop falling. I do snow removal for 14 residential houses. I am bummed.

I really really don't want to go out and do snow removal on Christmas day. I am actually letting this start to ruin my mood. In all actuality I can do all the houses in 5 hours if it's just a few inches or it can take as long as 12 like it did the last storm with someone helping me but we got 12 to 18 inches that go around.

I feel like a big baby but I SO look forward to the Christmas holiday, not to mention Christmas day.



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After the two snowfalls we had last week (the latter delivering much more snow than the first) we get freezing drizzle this morning which means... scraping.

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Omah Singer Songwriter - Tracy Skretta

I'd like to tell everyone about a local singer songwriter named Tracy Skretta. He writes and sings alternative rock and his sets include some covers of great songs.
Tracy recently recorded and put out a new CD, please follow the link below to check out his music.

http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/TracySkretta

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JoeCubicle

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Happy December everyone! I'm writing this after the big ol' snowstorm we had two days ago. Sunday night we got a few inches of snow then a few days later another and bigger snow came through. That snow started falling early Tuesday and got BIG later that night and ended early Wednesday morning. The rest of Wednesday turned out to actually be sunny and a little blustery until the wind totally subsided by Wednesday afternoon. All in all we received 12 to 18 inches with some drifting up to 3 feet easily.
I did snow removal for the houses that I usually do plus my own.

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JoeCubicle

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Crazy Mystery Light(s)

Did anyone see this story the other day. The photo was taken by a guy in Tromso Norway on his way to work. It turned out to be a failed missile launch from a Russian submarine. For a day it was a mystery though. I love the image, it looks like a crazy black hole sucking energy from our planet.

Back to work after Thanksgiving

Today is Monday, November 30th, and also is back to work after having a whole work week and two weekends off. It was nice to have some down time. Thanksgiving went well, there were many days of eating plenty.
We had very nice weather most every day, you really couldn't ask for better this time of year.
I hope everyone had a nice holiday.

Thanksgiving Day 2009

6:00 AM start to this day. Lisa and I got the turkey in the oven ( 21 pound tom ) and she went back to bed. I decided to stay up and turn into JoeCubicle for a few hours. I hope everyone is going to have a great Thanksgiving day. I know we will.

Sony Vegas Preview Fix

I recently had to reload my laptop that I use to edit and render video using Sony Vegas 8 Pro. When I had the laptop all set up once more and had Vegas installed and was ready to edit some video I noticed the video preview was REALLY jerky and skipped over transitions. It did not do this on the previous install before I reloaded my operating system.
There is something that does work for small, selected regions; select a region of the video timeline and press 'Shift-B'. Vegas will 'pre-render' the selected region then you can play it back smoothly without the jerkyness, that does work, BUT, you will want the preview to work all the time without the 'Shift-B' pre-render.
I'll make a long story short and get right to what helped me make it good.

Once you have a new project open and you have dropped in a clip or even before you have dropped in a clip, perform the following steps:

Click 'Edit' in the menu, then go down to 'Properties' and click it.


Once the new project properties window opens, click the little yellow folder.


Navigate to one of the video clips you are going to use, select it (the clip name should populate the file name text box) and click 'Open'. This will make Vegas 'read' your video clip and import all the properties correctly for that specific clip as well as subsequent clips of that type.


This worked for me like a champ! Please give it a try. I don't know if this will work for sure in Vegas 9 or other flavors of Vegas but it did help a ton for me in Vegas 8 Pro.

I have to credit Eugenia Loli for the information. I will include her website which contains MANY helpful articles as well as two great links I use to go to directly from time to time.

Eugenia's Website:
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org

Sony Vegas hints and tips.
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2008/12/19/sony-vegas-hints-and-tips/

Exporting with Vegas for Vimeo HD.
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2007/11/09/exporting-with-vegas-for-vimeo-hd/

Here is another thing I had to do a little searching on to 'fix' ( In the menu, click on 'Options' then 'Preferences'). Every time I would switch to another window away from Vegas then come back, all my video clips in the timeline had 'ghosted' text across them saying 'Media Offline' and I could not edit until it went away, anywhere from 5 to 45 seconds. A major pain. Unchecking the box will keep your clips 'online'.


Good luck and thanks for reading.

Motorcylce - 4 out of 5 days

I have ridden my mototcycle to work the last 4 days in a row. With running errands and such plus to and from work I'm probably sitting at about 20 to 25 miles a day so figure I've saved about 100 miles in my truck at 12 mpg.





Here is our 'new' kitty, Zuuko. I don't really know how we spell it exactly but that's close enough. He is a really loving cat. He has started jumping up on the couch and sitting next to me. He's a good cat, sweet, playful and loving.

Two weeks to go till Thanksgiving

I love love love Thanksgiving. I will have the whole week off from work and that is a good thing.

I should NOT have taken this photo...

Hockey Game last week

My son and I went to an Omaha Lancer hockey game last week. It was fun, it was my son's first hockey game and my first since I was his age. I think we would go again.
The Lancers won. We got there when it was 5 to 1. The final was 7 to 4.