TimWoolery.net
- About
- Archives
- Essays
- Doses of Reality – Part 1
- #02 – Why I Don’t Call Tech Support
- #07 – Infomercials
- #08 – The Death of the Star Wars Franchise
- #16 – The Cynical Generation
- #33 – Ruling by Policy
- #39 – Business Communication for Beginners
- #41 – Hospitals and Other Scary Places
- #45 – Rock n Roll Pt.2
- #46 – Strata
- #50 – Thirteen Months
- #51 -The Blue-Eyed Devils
- #52 – Beating out the competition
- #54 – The Healer
- #55 – Idiotspeak
- Doses of Reality – Part 2
- #64 – Being an Adult – 101
- #65 – Lesson 2: Living on Your Own (Collecting tin cans for fun and profit!)
- #66 – Working Life: They Call it “The Grind” For a Reason
- #67 – Being a Successful Person
- #70 – Overcoming the Writer’s Block
- #71 – Subtlety
- #72 – Things I’m Too Old For
- #73 – I Hate You, Nick Burns
- #74 – Shut Up About SpongeBob
- #75 – To the Class of 1995
- #76 – The Lottery
- #77 – You Do Not Represent Us
- Doses of Reality – Part 3
- #78 – Being a Guy – Part 1
- #79 – Being a Guy – Part 2
- #80 – Invasion
- #81 – Clutter
- #84 – The Family Miranda Rights
- #85 – The Agenda Lounge
- #86 – Bulimia
- #87 Why We Love Them
- #88 – The Mercy Killing
- #90 – Detroit Rock City
- #91 – Endstop Sweep::Init Part 2
- #92 – The Big Fat Who Cares
- #93 – The Hero Rides Away
- #94 – The Laugh of the Damned
- #95 – Die, Tim Allen, Die!
- #96 -Being a Guy – Part 3 (The Last One)
- #97 – Not a Geek
- The Darkside
- 01 Rolling Stone Memories
- 17 – Somewhere on the Circle or the Bakerloo
- 2/17/04 – Water Pipes and Tight Spaces (Or, What You Do for Family)
- One Year
- Road Trip: January, 2004
- Roadtrip, April 2004 – Florida
- Roseanne, High School and Me
- 05 – The Writing Workout or, Daily Weirdness
- 08 – Battle of the Rags
- 09 – Road Trip – September, 2004
- Year 2008 in Review
- Doses of Reality – Part 1
- Photos
- Photography
- 105mm Films
105mm Films – Some good news…
Posted by Tim in on February 5, 2010
The City of Fremont was very nice about pushing through a film shooting permit application at the last minute. We’re shooting at a location previously owned by the fire department so I had to go through the Deputy Chief and the CoF film office with 24 hours to go before shooting begins. Hope against hope, the whole thing worked out and we’re on our way to shooting tomorrow.
T-Minus 48 Hours – Crunch Time
Posted by Tim in on February 4, 2010
Running around finalizing rehearsal details and negotiations with our shooting locations. With the weather, we won’t be shooting out of doors but fortunately we have indoor locations locked up that should do nicely. Just have to be prepared to deal with the lack of available light (this is a cinematography issue). Other problems pop up. Realized that with my normal day-to-day haircut, I don’t look like an annoying hipster as much as I do a skinhead of some kind – see an example below:
Getting Better All the Time
Posted by Tim in on February 3, 2010
One of the best pieces of advice I got last year was about managing expectation. I never learned to do it when I was younger and it was a bad habit that colored pretty much every relationship I had. It took a long time to sort that out but now, moving forward, I’m happy to say that I’m much better at it. Case in point, I experienced a disappointing setback with a project that meant a lot to me (details are purposefully vague…deal with it) and The Lady and I spent a lot of time discussing the ins and outs. As disappointed as I was, the advice that Ace and PKT gave me last year came echoing back almost immediately – you cannot change this, so revise your expectations.
The practice I got from living through the dogpatch of my life (too cryptic? 2009 was not a good year for me) made it pretty easy to quietly close the door and move on to something else. What was a very difficult thing to last year is now just a good habit. It’s interesting how good habits make the leap from OMGthisisimpossible to just another part of the week – I like that doing the right thing is getting easier for me.
Good-bye
Posted by Tim in on February 3, 2010
“Comes the Dawn”
After a while you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul …
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
and company doesn’t mean security…
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
and presents aren’t promises…
And you begin to accept your defeats with your head up
and your eyes open, with the grace of a woman [or man]
not the grief of a child, and learn to build all your roads on to-day because
tomorrow’s ground in too uncertain for plans,
and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight…
After a while, you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much,
you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers…
And you learn that you really can endure…
That you really are strong and you really do have worth..
And you learn… and you learn…
With every goodbye…You learn…
– Veronica Shoffstall
Shooting on Saturday
Posted by Tim in on February 3, 2010
Principal photography of What I Should Have Said is happening this Saturday, 2/6. Please enjoy some location shots I took last week – probably won’t use them because of the weather but they’d make for a great film location.
Suffering From Blog Pule
Posted by Tim in on January 29, 2010
Thanks to the Internet, it doesn’t matter how big you get – any half-wit with a Wordpress account can spew out gallons of trash seasoned with an air of pitying contempt. Enjoy the following movie clip while the irony soaks in…
I read the following article and it set off in me all manner of angry nittering. Rushfield’s previous experience of making snarky comments about American Idol translates into making snarky comments about Ford. I don’t know how you do the math on that one but I think the words ‘arrogant’ and ‘hubris’ are somewhere just out of sight. Read that article and you’ll understand why Paul Boutin (I used to work for and with him at Valleywag) says that blogs need to die, like, yesterday. Why does every new form of communication on the Internet quickly get dragged into graffiit-on-the-bathroom-wall territory?
Where I Was Standing
Posted by Tim in on January 28, 2010
Today is the 24th anniversary of the loss of the Challenger - it seems significant because it was the first major ‘national tragedy’ that I remember from my childhood. In consideration, I find it interesting how different major events can be elevated to the status of a national tragedy and the math that everyone uses to arrive at that conclusion is both arbitrary and capricious. F’rinstance… more people died in the Bath School Disaster (I’ve linked it before you can say ‘What’s that?’) and the Boston Molasses Flood.
But who talks about those?
I think a number of factors contributed to people calling the Challenger explosion a national tragedy – the fact that it was televised, the fact that it was the biggest loss of life in the history of NASA – but realistically it wasn’t a national tragedy. Space flight literally is rocket science and a lot of things can go wrong with it. As the fire of Apollo 1 demonstrated, things can go wrong and kill people – you’re sitting on top of more than a half-million gallons of liquid oxygen (one of the most flammable materials in the world). Is it that much of a shock?
Stop Drinking the iKool-Aid
Posted by Tim in on January 27, 2010
I got drawn into an Apple vs. PC discussion the other day and found that my feelings on the matter had not changed. I mentioned to them how my position on the iPhone was quoted in the Chron. My problem with the iPhone is really my problem with Apple and how cult-like it has become. The way that people work themselves into a lather whenever a new Apple product hits the market, you expect at any moment that Steve Jobs is going to walk out at CES and try to make everyone drink the iKool-Aid. People who bought into the iPhone and anncillary app market now find themselves siloed into a world of technology that Apple controls and they don’t always like it.
Never mind the discussion about AT&T being iPhone’s only carrier, never mind that Apple’s warranty service is just as capable of wrecking your day as the Geek Squad. You’re stuck with this highly customizable device that only works with applications sold by Apple. Third party applications are only available after you jailbreak the phone and that, of course, voids your warranty.
The geek in me enjoys the technology and the challenge but the human in me goes “there have got to be better ways to use my time”. I guess all healthy engineering begins with learning to listen to your Inner Sloth and know when doing something or fixing something passes over the ‘More Trouble Than It’s Worth’ threshold. In this case, the iPhone stunk of MTTIW when I first saw it and nothing since then has managed to change my mind. I wish we could all live in the Asian-themed minimalist utopia that Apple seems to think everyone should live in, but some of us have day jobs not involving hoteling in a coffee house and a turtleneck sweater.
Everyone talks about the genius of Apple but what they refuse to accept is that the genius of Apple is limited to their ability to sell a lifestyle that people want to emulate. All their technology fits into that end goal. They make the technology that people want to be seen using – not what they want to use. I guess I always enter the equation at the wrong end.
And the Daddy Tomato Goes: Ketchup
Posted by Tim in on January 21, 2010
The weirdness has been closing in this week – one major project at the day job is starting to calm down and another one looms over the horizon. I’m really tired and burnt out; looking forward to taking Little Man to the snow for the first time this season. The rain seems to have forced itself under the roof flashing, causing a tense moment last night when water started seeping in from behind my wall. I was envisioning a very expensive plumbers bill but we seem to be okay.
Quick thought: Can we stop saying that California has been ‘battered’ by winter storms? Haiti is battered – California is just wet. Another season of rainfall is followed by no-story stories in the paper about how bad the rain is. Rain falls, you idiots, wet roads mean more accidents happen – the sky is also blue; let me let you off the hook on that one before I have to read a front page story about your amazing discovery. Thank you.
I watched this movie – The Moon and the Son – because it was part of a stack of short films I got from Netflix. I’m not sure why I’m telling you but if you get a chance, watch it – I found it very moving.