Home for the Holidays

I made it back from my freelance gig alive. It will have to suffice to say I worked literally around the clock for 7 days straight, and now it is over. I had to buy a new computer because my old laptop -- despite sending out under the warranty twice -- finally stopped working. It was a Compaq which I got a great deal on, spent a couple hundred extra on the warranty and then had the whole thing fall to pieces within a 2 month period. I got about 36 months out of it, so I guess you get what you pay for, I just wish the ending hadn't been so spectacularly ill-timed.

I decided to take the plunge and shift to Mac. My printer is on its last legs and I have to replace almost all of my other office equipment within the next year anyway, so it seems like I might as well join 99% of the creative community. So far, I'm completely in love. I do not like the wonky sound my sleek new black MacBook makes whenever I put a DVD in the drive, but everything else is beautiful. And the keyboard is wonderful. After pounding away on that Compaq for 2 years I feel like a drunken sailor abusing this beautiful little thing. And I can see everything I type on the display. Marvelous. I just uploaded some pictures, no video yet, probably wait to do that until I set up the external hard drive and the extra monitor, but I'm eager to play with all the new toys on here. I feel like I already got my money's worth when I was traveling and someone tripped on my power cord on the plane and it just broke away from the computer instead of sending the whole thing crashing to the floor. Me and my seat-mate (another new Mac convert) just grinned at each other, shook our heads and said, "Now that's worth 2G's right there." Yes, I'm a big gadget nerd. I'll admit it. :-)

I'm going to go back to posting about production related issues in the new year. I've spent a lot of the last few months doing very low-budget indie work, and no-budget cable television stuff, so I'd like to get into that a bit and pick everyone's brains, and I'm starting to get inquiries and interest in doing webisode/mobile phone work from a few corporations that specialize in media. I recently pitched some work for mobile content to a company that has a lot of media content and they had some interesting things to say about rights clearances, etc. that hadn't come up in any of my creative discussions with folks, so I'm wondering if its because they are relatively new to internet media, or if this is an area of litigation and liability that is just catching up to the big media companies. Anyone who has insight, please feel free to post or email me.

Anyway, my writing group put on a reading last week which I wasn't able to attend. It went very well, I'm waiting for my tape, but I think we may do a few more in other cities. That's way more exciting to me than the prospect of another one of these freelance gigs -- I'm my own boss, I answer to no one and people listen to my suggestions and advice. :-) It's hard to be a Diva in today's world. All this free will nonsense going around.