Girls and Gadgets

This month, my floor has taken a nose-dive into the James Bond series, dubbing it "The Manly Month of March Bond-a-thon." Every weeknight at 9pm we've been throwing in Bond movies, one after the other. Today's movie was Tomorrow Never Dies, with Casino Royale finishing us up this week. Ah, James Bond - the king of men. He's got everything. The looks, the personality, the wit, the gadgets, and the ladies. Not to mention the STD's...
I wouldn't mind having a sledge-hammer proof car that tasers anyone who comes within a foot.....
Alright nevermind... forget James Bond. My roommate Sean and the guy across the hall from us, Nick, just got in a water fight. Hehe. In the middle of me writing this, I helped Sean unlock our bathroom door while Nick was borrowing our shower. We dumped cold water on him. He dried off, shook his butt at me and then opened our door only to be greeted by Sean (again) with another bowl of cold water! He got me a little wet in the process, but nothing beats getting someone soaked after they've just finished drying off.
..
Hehe, now they're towel whipping each other! Running back and forth through the hallway, cutting through our suitemate's room connected to our bathroom chasing each other. Bear in mind, it's a quarter 'till one in the morning. Hehe. Uh oh, the doors are slamming again. My roommate needs backup. He's calling my name in between shouts of, "Ow! Ow! Ow!" I have to go. I love dorm life.

***Update***
Chris hides in Nick's room behind the door. Nick has been seeking refuge in the R.A.'s room for the past five minutes. Warily, Nick returns back to his locked room.
The door opens slowly. Nick peeks around the corner...
*SNAP!*
"Ow! Ow!" Nick backs away in pain from the unexpected towel-whip to the face. Breathing heavily, he exhales, "Haha, great. Where's Sean?"
*POUNCE!*
...you get the idea.

300

This week, I had the chance to see the blockbuster movie, 300. For those of you who have been living in a cave or have been ignoring the ads on MySpace.com, 300 covers the Spartan battle of Thermopylae, where three hundred Spartans lose their lives in a battle for freedom from King Xerxes' oppressive Persian empire. Honestly, no other true story in history could inspire a greater movie for men to watch. This movie had more catchy one-liners than Steven Wright, enough blood to fill Al Gore's heated swimming pool(s) every day for a year, and just enough gratuitous nudity to earn itself it's rightful R rating.... *sigh*. I guess going to PG-13 movies for fun is so 20th century. The MPAA really doesn't care about violence anymore, sex raises the rating now.

Oh yes, the movie was very violent. Most epic movies are. But for that group of young folk whose parents locked them in their bedrooms on opening night, Black20.com released this preview for the PG version of 300. Brilliant.

All in a Day's Work

Work today was something out of a movie. Well, maybe about half an hour of it was, the rest was plain old work - but gobs of fun all the same. Today, my boss, Garry, was privileged enough to be called upon by a very eager survey questioner from Microsoft Corp. As the Helpdesk Manager in I.T., Garry was the guy she was looking for; She had questions, and Garry had answers.... or so she thought. Little did she know that Garry had allowed me to answer the phone under the guise of his name, partly because I volunteered to do it (hey, where's your sense of adventure!?), and mostly because he hates dealing with stupid stuff like that over the phone - mainly surveyors and vendors.

I was looking over a work ticket assigned to the Helpdesk from the Tier 2 guys when I heard the phone conversation to my left. "Yes, I can get Garry for you, he's right here. Please hold. Thank you. *click* Garry, it's for you - some lady from Microsoft wants you to answer some questions for a survey."

Me and my stupid mouth. I was in the mood to mix things up a bit, so knowing how much Garry dreaded calls like these I volunteered my impersonating services. You should have seen his face, it was like Christmas morning. My coworker Robert chuckled as I picked up the phone with a cheery disposition, "Hi this is Garry. What can I do for ya?"

I thought it would be easy. The first set of questions were easy. Granted, I had no idea what she was talking about - something about whether or not our company uses objective or subjective means of determining how well a piece of software we use is comprehended by those using it. As I answered her questions, I thought to myself, "As long as she keeps giving me multiple choice answers, I'm fine." And then, like my tenth grade U.S. History midterm final, the "Fill in the Blank" section reared its ugly head. Out of nowhere, she starts asking me stuff about how we hire people, how I decide how I hire those under me, how many people I oversee, how many computers in our business, etc. I can hear her translating my words onto a computer, typing very heavily as I ramble along, BS'ing my way through the whole thing. As I'm just making this stuff up, my coworkers are trying to contain themselves. Yeah, the pressure was on.

Trying to keep my composure was the least of it. After those horrible questions about how our business runs, she brings out the big guns. Sentence construction so intricate and wordy starts finding its way into my brain, in one ear and out the other. "Uhhhh... Um... what was that?" Everyone around me is losing it by now - I'm losing composure. I would try to give you an example of some of the things she asked me, but I really have NO IDEA what she was talking about. Something about time-integrated management of our employees' functionality something something over the course of so many months. How important do I think something management discretion something is, and how does it effect the working environment for my employees?

Finally, I choked. I had no clue what she was asking me, and didn't have the slightest idea of how I was going to con my way past it. Master of all one-line getaways, I quipped, "I'm sorry, miss - I'm really indisposed at the moment, something has come up."

Pleading with me she says, "Oh no! We're almost done, just a couple more questions and we're finished."

"Send me an email." She got the email address for the Helpdesk, and I hung up.

After that, my name was, and will henceforth stay, Chris Wright, Helpdesk peon.

If only....

I want to work in THIS store! :)

Brought to you by Ctrl+Alt+Del

Happy Monday to Me

After a solitary day of class this week (thank you, Missions Conferences!), I took a nice happy sigh as I walked out of my last class for the week this afternoon. Tomorrow, the rest of Biola goes to class as I go to work, and enjoy my class-free Tuesday. Wednesday-Friday are set aside this week for a special thing we call Missions Conferences, which are a series of ten seminar-like events aimed at pushing us out into the world to be effective in our walk, and in sharing our faith.

Enough of that, I'm actually here to talk about something else. As some of you might know, I am majoring in in Film here at Biola, with an emphasis in Audio Production. Well, this past year has been especially trying as I've been putting a load of effort into two main films. One film was Dinner with Death, an animated short comedy, and the other more recent film, Winston, which is a short thriller. Both films took a toll on me as I poured my heart into them. As you could guess - animation doesn't come with very much sound to start off with (more accurately, none!), and to make a good thriller like Winston, you need to spend a ton of hours behind the mixer making scary effects. Bradley Clarke (Winston's director) made sure I was good and sleep-drunk when I concentrated on all the trippy sound-effects parts. :)

Last week, I put two 36 hour days spent in the studio finishing Winston in time for the Biola Film Festival deadline. The nominations were released today:

Nominations for Winston:
Best Thriller
Best Editing
Best Production Design
Best Sound Design
Best Original Music

Ah, cripes, Bradley never gave me the list for Dinner with Death, but he told me Best Sound Design was one of them! I swear! Haha. Well, it gets better - Both films that I designed audio for were the only films nominated in that area! It's nice to finally see this sort of work go appreciated by more than just a producer and a director. They like me! They really like me!

One Rough Week

It's been a long week for me. Two 36-hour days have taken a toll on my mental and physical state. Since Saturday of last week, I have seen little rest, and free time has been nonexistent. My time has been plagued by post-production audio work in the studio working towards the nearing film deadline. Winston is finally complete. On top of the film deadlines, I've had the pleasure of dealing with one outrageous World Civilizations midterm, whose workload was so arduous that it took me and a friend of mine about fifteen hours to complete. We spent Sunday night / Monday morning in the lobby of the Disneyland Resort Hotel lobby sitting in comfortable chairs with our laptops and coffee.

Though I'm still very perturbed about the entire matter, I managed to get a B+ on it. If there's anything this professor is doing right in the class, she's getting our grades back to us quickly! A large amount of my being upset with her is that she does not know how to conduct a general-education class. This is a 100 course and she gives us a workload like we are taking the class as a major. I hear that in the 300 and 400 courses she teaches, she recommends to students that while enrolled in her class, to only take 12 units total in that semester. No one really knows how she gets away with it.

Besides my woes of World Civilizations and my daunting lack of sleep, this week has been just peachy. Another episode of LATE is in the can, and I'm practically a typing zombie at the moment. I feel so drawn out - weary to the point that every muscle aches and cries out with exhaustion. My arms are limp, I can't feel my feet, and I'm afraid I may be getting bronchitis because I can barely swallow.

Wow, this is really weird. All those symptoms of pain and exhaustion. One would think I had a girlfriend. ...or owned a Macintosh.