I wish I had brought my camera, my film camera. I was leaving for PA from VA and thought about taking it. The problem was that I left it at work and I was leaving from home. I didn't want to take the extra 20-30 minutes it'd take to go get it. Besides, I had my video camera with me. Well, here I am in PA, wishing I had my good old Pentax K-1000 with me. Why? because it snowed yesterday. It was the first good snow on Christmas day in these parts in a long time. It's a pretty part of the country anyway. There are fields and barns and covered bridges and other photo friendly scenes. Now all that stuff is covered in snow and it's pretty. I drove around taking still pictures using my video camera, but it just can't capture the detail that my film camera can. *sigh*

I'm a little tired but I'm thinking about going to WalMart... around 1 or 2 am. I haven't really done much Christmas shopping yet. Yeah, it's pretty pathetic. I barely have ideas about what to get for who. It's kind of hard to write clever things and watch TV at the same time. I guess it's clear where my priorities are.

Oh, BTW, The video was a hit at the party and afterwards.

woah, the time on blogger must be messed up. The last published indicator says it's 9:03pm. On the post itself it says it was made at 5:03 am, I made the post at 12:03am. The prefs are set at -5GMT for eastern U.S.

It's too late for this sick boy to be up still. Good night.

oi, today wasn't a bad day but it had its frustrations. Most of them were computer/software related. If I were the cursing kind I fear the paint would have peeled off the walls from the verbal assult. As it was I just declared things idiotic and stupid. My voice sounds a bit different because I have a cold or something. I'm working on something that's due tomorrow by 1pm. I'm not totally happy with how it's coming out but its just a little video for a company Christmas banquet. It'll get done some how.

Hey what do you know, it snowed.

I spent most of the day inside the house. I got bored and I wanted a soda so I decided to go out around 8 or 8:30pm. It took a while to clean the crust of ice and snow off my car. I live at the bottom of a small hill on a road that hasn't been cleaned off yet. I had to back up and get just a bit of momentum before I could go up the hill. The world outside was fairly active, there were several souls driving around looking for a sense of being somewhere. The Taco Bell was closed along with several of her cohorts. I ended up at a McDonalds Drive-Thru for a Coke and a cheap chicken sandwich. Now I'm back at home typing this in and thinking of how interesting this tale would be if I were a better writer. :)

Also today I slept in, wrestled with an incooperative computer, received and installed a new CD Burner in another computer and fired some bottle rockets across the ice encrusted snow.

One of these days I might just write a rant about some opinion I'm having and you'll say, "hmmm. he has a point there."

TTYL,
Dana

It's 12:39am here in VA. I wanted to be asleep over an hour ago. I've been to bed twice already but I'm just not that tired right now. I'd blame it on the caffeine but I only had one 12 ounce can of soda today and that was for lunch. I did have several pieces of chocolate but that was over 2 hours ago. Sure, that stuff has caffein in it but it also has sugar in it. Sugar, of course, gives you a quick boost of energy but then leaves you feeling deflated. So why am I telling you this? Well, what who else am I going to talk to now? Okay, there are a few people on my IM list that are up now. I don't know. I guess I just wanted to add to the old blog. Poor poor you. You have to put up with all my drivel.

Actually, it's not uncommon for me to be up until 1 or 1:30 in the morning. I'm trying to change that a bit though. You know, Early to bed, early to rise. Etc.

Oh well... Good night. I hope you're sleeping well these days.
Dana

"Did you have a good weekend?"
That's a question I'm not eager to field, unless the weekend was somewhat unusual. A usual weekend consists of spending too much time alone watching too much TV or just playing around on a computer not really accomplishing anything. This weekend is going alright I guess. A friend and I went out and got some food, hung out a bit and then went to see a movie at the cheap theater (which happens to be the best theater in town).

Saturday, on the other hand, was much less interesting. I watched TV and surfed the web till around 11 then I got bored and went for a drive. I ended up looking around at Lowes. After that I came back home and shortly thereafter went out again and got something to eat. Ummm I'm not exactly sure what I did for the next several hours. I spent some of that on the Internet again (looking at expensive computers and customised cases... what a nerd). I was tired for a while. I eventually .... oh well... I've already given you too much detail on a rather dull day. I hope Sunday is better. Maybe I'll skip town after church. Next weekend I might go visit friends and family in PA. That should be a little more interesting.

Sorry if I bored you with this one. Eventually I'll tell you what I think about something instead of what isn't happening.

oh, BTW I also did laundry today. Yippee.

Howdy Howdy Howdy.
Well, guess what. We got broadband here at the house so I don't have to bug my room mate for his AOL password to get online. I have a pretty fast connection at work so I didn't really miss not having it at home. The down side of that is I didn't have a connection available to me when I'm most likely to write in this here log. Now that I do have net access here, at the end of the day, you might just be hearing more from me.

I just got back from a costume party 15 minutes ago or so. It was fun. I originally wasn't going to go because it's the same night I have small group/house church. This week church started early and it was a short one so I was able to go to both. I feel a little bad for telling so many people so adamantly that I wasn't going. But then I was feeling a little bad because so many of my friends wanted me to show up and some of them put a lot of effort into the planning and cooking and decorating etc. I'm a bit asocial so big gatrherings don't thrill be too much but I thought I'd better show up at least for their sake.

Anyway, I left house church around 8, I came home and through together a costume. I had it 80% planned out ahead of time. I had a couple of ideas but I thought one might be in poor taste. Oh yes, I thought it'd be funny, but I could see how some people could be offended by me going as a black ghost (black sheet and an afro). I decided to go with an "evil clown" costume. I'm not really a fan of evil or of clowns or a mix of the two. I do have, however, a big yellow rubber suit (the kind used by people working with toxic stuff) and the afro wig an ex room mate left here. I didn't have make up so I made a mask using an old pair of ruined khakis (if you cut a leg off up at the thigh it'll fit over your head), some markers, some fabric paint and some oil pastels. The whole mask making took nearly an hour. I ended up making two because the first one didn't turn out right. The second one worked. It came out effectively freaky/scary. It seemed to intimidate people, but it got a lot of compliments. I think the entrance helped too. The party was outside and I walked up the long driveway and right past the main gaggle of people, not even looking at them. I walked right up behind some of my friends who were getting their picture taken. No one knew it was me until someone lifted the mask and saw my mouth and chin. Of course, since they didn't think I was coming they were a bit surprised to see me.

Anyway, it was fun. Shortly after I showed the party moved inside and I took off the costume. I put it on briefly for another round of pictures, but I'm really not a psycho-evil-killer-clown.

P.S. No alcoholic beverages served... It's not that kind of party.
P.P.S. I'm not super-keen on celebrating Halloween in general. I made an exception because of the people involved.

adios

I must admit I'm feeling melancholly tonight. Okay, I don't HAVE to admit it but I'll say it anyway. I'm not feeling particularly lonely but I do miss having a girlfriend to spend time with. Actually, you can't miss what you haven't had. I guess it's best to say that I wish I had a girlfriend to spend too much time with. It's so desert here. I'm sure I'm harboring faulty ideas of what goes on in healthy relationships. I'm sure some (or most) of what I expect in a relationship is misplaced or even completely false. blah blah blah... I'm whining again. My loneliness is a puny problem in the big (or even the medium) picture.

Oh bother...

Actually, things are going fairly well for me. I simply have a tendency to get blue when I'm tired.

good night.

Hello again,
I amaze myself sometimes. I'm not amazed at how great I am (or think I am). I'm amazed at how I can drag my feet on stuff, how I don't speak up when I should and how I see obstacles where others see potential. I'm not so bad that it paralyses me. I'm not phobic about stuff. I don't fear the air I breathe. I do marvel, though, at how I seem to make life out to be more difficult than it is. Actually, I'm sure there are things I over simplify or simply block out because they're too complex. I guess it's all just an elaborate coping mechanism that I've built for myself. It's flawed, I'll admit to that. Sometimes I feel that it may be a little debilitating... then again maybe I'm just being paranoid. ; )

[Me: I really like the way he lists symptoms of schizophrenia and then dismisses them with another symptom of schizophrenia]

[Myself: and I really like the way he speaks as different people when he's commenting on his jokes about mental illness]

[I: I'm thirsty... let's all go get a Vanilla Coke]

[Me: Nah, it's too late. I'm just gonna get a drink of water then go to bed]

[Myself: That's the best idea I've heard yet.]

Once again I am writing out of a sense of duty. A duty I have to tell you things via this blog. I don't have anything specific that I want to say. Actually, I do want to tell you why I haven't written anything lately. I have no great excuse for my silence (not that typing is that loud anyway) except to say that I do most of this kind of writing at night and I don't have a handy internet connection at home right now. This time I'm using my room mate's aol connection but since I don't know his password I can't use it at will.

I'm guessing that there aren't any regular readers of this blog anyway. If I want to develop a following (which I doubt I will and if I do I imagine they'll tire of it after a month or so... if not sooner) I'll have to write more often. I could do a theme. I could tell all that's happening in my love life but I really don't have that much to say. Besides I'd feel pretty wierd writing about someone who could read what I was thinking about her etc. Maybe that's just me being paranoid again.

Hey, I'm going to stop here. have a good day.

Well, I don't really feel like saying anything but I think it's time to add to the log. I'm a bit tired and maybe a bit down.

Do you ever get the feeling that you've been lying to yourself for a long time? I feel like that sometimes. I assume that I'm not good at something so I might not attempt it for fear of being or feeling embarassed.

Lately I've been trying some new things and finding that I'm not as bad as I thought I'd be. Most of the things I'm talking about are sports related. My bowling game is getting better. I found I can hit better than I thought I could in the batting cages (albiet just the slow pitch soft ball). I tried to play golf a couple of times and the guys I was with had some encouraging things to say to me. Well, at least the first time I played they seemed somewhat impressed. The second time, however, I played horribly. The clubs I was using weren't as nice as those I used the first time I played, but that couldn't be the sole reason for my poor performance. Saturday I went out and hit some tennis balls around with some friends. There are some things I'm naturally good at. Tennis and golf aren't in that category. Maybe If I were to learn some of the basics I'd find that I really am generally adept at those sports. I'm not inclined to invest the time required to find out.

Maybe I'm just turning out to be more average than I ever imagined myself being.

Am I not meant to have a blog? I finally got around to writing something. It took a fairly substantial amount of time to write (>10 minutes <1 hour). I had put some links in it (for over the rhine and paste music) then clicked on "post" and poof. Error message. I lost all I wrote. Luckily it wasn't much, but it was something.

Wow, it's been a few days since I've said anything. Since then I spent a day at an amusement park (Kings Dominion near Richmond, Virginia), worked, slept, spent time with a friend discussing possible business/project collaborations and watched too much TV. Oh yeah, I also updated my website and posted an incomplete but functional new 'professional' site.

At King's Dominion I had a good time. It has been years since I've been there. There are more roller coasters now, but they got rid of some of the fun non-coaster rides. That made me a little sad, but the coasters were fun. Since it was a Wednesday and not a holiday the crowds weren't bad. There were only 2 times when we had to wait 45+ minutes for a ride. One of those waits was for a ride that lasted 20 seconds or so. Yes it's disproportionate, but now I have an idea of what it's like to be launched from an aircraft carrier while straped to the nose of an F/A 18 Hornet :) Generally I think of myself as not having fun (as if there were virtue in being emotionally numb) but many of the photos taken on the coasters featured me with a big ridiculous grin. Now when people as me what I like I can say fast acceleration and speed. That's not to say I didn't get bored from time to time on some of the rides, but it was a good day.

They always come in pairs. Whenever I think I'm starting to like a specific girl another one comes along at nearly the same time. I'm not talking about cheating on someone. I haven't gotten close enough to someone to cheat on them. It's just wierd how things roll into my life. Maybe this whole multiple crush thing is something I do to myself because I don't want to be happy. That's pretty darn twisted.

Anyway, right now there are a few women I'm trying to get to know better. I don't know if any of you are right for me but I see something in you that I like. I don't know if I should write this kind of stuff here. I fear scaring you away. I'm afraid you'll think I'm too strange or too desperate.

On the other hand, maybe you will like my openness and applaude my willingness to communicate. I can picture this little thing getting out of hand. Soon I'll have weblog groupies from all over the world hanging on my every word. I'll be getting fanmail and marriage proposals from beautiful women from exotic lands. I'll be the first weblog author to get my own TV show. I'll singlehandedly reignite the nation's passion for the written word. There will be many others posting their random thoughts online because of my work here. I'm not the first to do this, not by a long shot, but I will be remembered as the best. Then at the apex of my weblogging career I'll emerge from clouds and realize that I'm still alone. I'll weep bitter tears of regret. I'll pine for the day when I could've had someone before I went off chasing the dream of fame. I'll wish that just you and I were together sharing a modest home somewhere somewhat rural. Just you, me, a couple of kids and a big screen, high definition TV in a house full of love.

A snapshot, a few dozen instant messenges and commentary from a friend are all that I have. They aren't enough and are poor substitutes for actually spending time together. When we finally meet face to face will it feel as if we've always known each other? Will the conversation flow or will it feel akward and forced?

I don't know she thinks of me. I think she's wary. As for my thoughts toward her, I am intrigued. Part of me that wants to marry someone from a similar background as me. That way communication, the life blood of relationships, has fewer obstacles. While our families are seemingly very different we do have similar educational backgrounds. I get the impression that she isn't as cynikal about her past as I am about mine. That is, most likely, a good thing. Background is only one thing. Do I find her attractive? Yes. The picture I have isn't a great one but she looks like someone I'd enjoy looking at for a while. What about her personality? I don't know. We seem to connect well online but that is so very limited. She says she likes to laugh. I like to make people laugh.

That settles it. We're a perfect match. Let's get married. What's your last name again? Never mind it's going to change anyway. What? This is going to fast for you? I'm starting to freak you out? What do you mean I can't call you anymore? I think the restraining order was a bit over kill don't you? Lo? Baby?

Yeah, I know. I think too much sometimes. Just call me "Dana 'overly analytical' Burman"
Does saying the 'm' word so early in an aquaintanceship make one sound too desperate?

Next time we'll discuss how easiy my hopes rise and brutally they get smashed by women who value (or tolerate) my friendship but won't admit to themselves that they're attracted to me.

Yesterday I spent a considerable amount of time typing something in and then the computer froze. I don't feel like repeating what I was saying even though you may have enjoyed it. Oh well, too bad for you.

You know what? I really don't feel like saying much now either. So I won't. :)

Today (yesterday) has been a mixed bag of stuff. On the upside I finished my new demo reel to show off some of the graphics and visual effects I've worked on. I might have to edit together another little reel to show my animation projects. That'll be a pretty short one :)

The bummer thing of the day was that I screwed up my computer. I was trying to fix a problem I was having between my firewire card and a piece of software I use. Now I can't install the drivers for the firewire card so now I can't use it for anything. I'm looking at maybe reinstalling the whole operating system because of this. I think I messed things up by trying to use windows 98 drivers in windows 2000. Now when I try to install the drivers it keeps asking for a file I don't have. I'm sure this is boring most of you :)

SOMEONE was supposed to email her schedule for this week to me. It's the weekend now and I haven't heard from her. I guess she doesn't want to hang out. What a bummer.

Oh well, I'm chatting with some people on-line now so I guess I should go.

I like vanilla coke. I just thought I'd let you all know.

Sometimes I think I should start another blog. That way I can write about all the people around me without the fear of them knowing what I'm thinking. It's not always something bad, but I guess I like to keep my thoughts to myself (as evidenced by this note published on the world wide web). Also, I don't want you all thinking that I'm so terribly depressed all the time and if I wrote everything I felt like writing you might get that impression. I don't think it'd be an accurate impression either. I tend to write stuff as an outlet when I'm feeling down and not write anything when I'm feeling fine. So if I only write when I'm sad and you read everything I write you'd think I was sad all the time and that just isn't the case. I'm only sad 98% of the time :)

I just spent a half hour or so writing about a couple of my favorite things. You're not seeing that because somehow, after I finished it and while I was editing it a little bit, it disappeared. I accidentally clicked on something and it was gone.

I'm too tired to go through it again so here's the short of it. The music of Over The Rhine (particularly the "Good Dog, Bad Dog" album) in the warm, breezy summer night air is nearly heavenly for me.

I also described a car commercial that captures the feeling.

Maybe I'll wax poetic about it again later. I'm getting too tired.

This is a response to an email a friend of mine sent me. It has some of the autobiographical stuff that I imagine is in some other people's blog.

---------------------------------
You had me at hello,

Just kidding.
Actually, I think it'd be cool to get with you on some of this stuff. Perhaps not in a completely active role for now, but I am interested. As of right now I don't feel 'called' to this, but I guess it isn't out of the question. I'm not really sure what my 'calling' or mission in life is. Sure, I do the Christian film thing and I want to avoid working on immoral stuff, but I kind of fell into it. Okay, I stepped into it. I did quit a job I was tired of in order to work on Escape from Hell, but I don't think I want to be tied to DRC Productions forever. I don't know, maybe I will specialize in effects for Christian (or Christian-ish) projects. It seems like I'm just along for the ride right now. I enjoy it, but my heart isn't into it as much as I'd like. Then again, motivation and ambition have always been on the weak side for me. I'm thinking it's a situation where attitude is the difference. I should just choose to be a VFX artist as a ministry rather than a profession. At least then I'd have an excuse for not making the big bucks :) But you weren't asking for a rambling description of vocational self-doubt. My point is that (Christian) game development/animation might very well be in my future. It may already be in my present.

So yes, I am interested but I'm not as gung-ho about it as you are. I don't what to promise more than I'm willing to deliver. We should discuss this stuff over the phone or in person.

TTYL,
Dana

Well, it's been a couple of days since I started this here thing. I don't really want to take the time to write anything now but I feel I should. If I'm ever going to generate a fanbase for this thing I'll have to write stuff :)

Maybe I'll write something tomorrow.

This is a test, This is the first entry. I don't know how much I'll use this, but I thought I'd give it a go.