Just one more reason why I like Kevin Smith. This is in the most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly:

Ben Affleck’s Changing Lanes enjoyed a box office bump in Lexington, Ky., on April 16, thanks to the star’s friend and Dogma director, Keving Smith. Speaking to a large crowd at the University of Kentucky the night before, Smith offered to pick up the tab for a matinee the next day. “Three hundred people showed up,” says the auteur. “Me and my big f—ing mouth.” Especially since the theater wouldn’t let him put the $1,000 bill on platic. (He was allowed to FedEx a check to them the following day.) “‘Twas like a bad Visa CheckCard commercial,” says Smith, who recently shot a cameo as a loose-lipped forensics assistant in Afflec’s now-lensing superhero flick Daredevil. Can starving students expect similar generosity when Smith speaks at their school? “Only if there’s a new Ben Affleck movie opening that week.” Now, that’s what freinds are for. –Jeff Jensen

TBS Superstation to Host “HowStuffWorks at the Movies” this Fall

Cool.

For those of you going, and you know who you are, the tickets are bought…

An item that no home should be without…

Link stolen from Penny Arcade.

I just found this article about the Princeton Rep. Shakespeare Festival and their season for this summer. They are the client whose event I have been working on/stressing over for the past few weeks.

Wow. What an interesting weekend.

On Friday, I came home from ETS quite tired. You see, I haven’t really been sleeping lately. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I seem to be suffering from a bit of insomnia So, anyway, I came home, and I was tired, but I had planned on going out with my wife. Unfortunately, I first had to take care of some business. Part of what I needed to do was scan a document into my computer so I could e-mail it to a client. Unfortunately, my new printer/scanner/copier/fax was not really working correctly. So, I called tech support. See the last post for information on that one. Because I spent so long on the phone, I missed going out with my wife, who ended up going out with someone else, and after I got off the phone, having gotten no further with the printer than when I started, and being very frustrated, I attempted to go to sleep. This was around 9:30. At around 10:30 I was woken up when my wife came home. I tried to return to sleep with no luck, and after reading and watching some TV for a while, finally managed to sleep for an hour or two.

Saturday morning I woke up and went into Princeton to work at the Communiversity event held every year in downtown Princeton. There were some problems with the set-up, specifically the fact that our stage was supposed to be in the middle of the street, and the street was supposed to be closed to traffic at 11:00. We were supposed to have the bands start at 12:00. They finally closed the street at 11:50. So, it was a bit of a rush. During the event, the guy I was working for asked me if I wanted to work at the Junior Prom for The Lawrenceville School later that night. Since I hadn’t been sleeping anyway, I figured I might as well get paid for it, so I agreed to do it. I returned home at 2:00 am. I attempted to sleep, and maybe slept, somewhat fitfully, for a few hours.

At 6:15 am this morning, I woke up so that I could meet Alissa and Angie for our 9:45 reservation to go white water rafting. I was somewhat apprehensive about going. First of all, it was raining. Second of all, it was cold. When we got there, we were freezing. We checked in, and then went to get our wetsuit rentals. The wetsuits were complete with jacket, boots, and mittens. After sliding into them, we wandered over to the shop and found that they had wool gloves and hats. I got a hat because, well, it was COLD! Then we get our life-jackets, which were cinched up so tight that it was almost difficult to breathe. Now that we were all suited up (and having a good laugh about our inability to move), we were ready for some quick instructions, a scary bus ride, and then a launch into the Lehigh River.

This was an AMAZING experience. It was SO much fun. The cold and wet did not bother me since I had the wetsuit on. We only managed to lose one member of the raft into the river, and she was recovered quickly. (I won’t go into details, since I’m sure Alissa will cover that.) I’m not sure what else to say except that I had a great time.

However, let me take a small aside here. All throughout my life, it seems that when I go to learn something new, I pick up the basics of it very quickly, and so within a short time, I’m able to show some amount of proficiency at the task. However, I never really have the dedication to master much of anything. If I were a D&D character, I would classify myself as a bard. Jack-of-all-trades, master of none. It’s always really frustrated me about myself. The same seems to have held true for rafting. I was able to quickly pick up the concepts of how to steer and how rowing the paddle one way would make something happen, etc.

So, anyway, it was a great ending to an otherwise mediocre weekend. I’m HOPING that I’ll actually sleep tonight. I’m supposed to go to ETS tomorrow, but I’m debating whether or not I actually will right now. I guess I’ll see how I feel in the morning.

Caveat emptor: If you don’t live in the 302 area code, and you buy a Hewlett Packard printer, be aware that they do NOT have an 800 number for technical support. Also be aware that you may spend an hour and a half on the phone with them so that they can discover that the disc that came with your printer is corrupted and you need a new one. Just figure these things into the cost when you buy the printer.

Here’s something that’s always bothered me about Spiderman. Presumably, he can stick to walls because of some change in his skin that, much like a spider, gives him this ability. However, when he’s playing the role of superhero, he puts on a suit complete with gloves and boots that cover every inch of his skin. So…how does he continue to stick to walls? If you put a spider on a piece of fabric and then put that fabric next to the wall, the spider would not stick to the wall through the fabric.

Makes you wonder…

Huh. *blink* Look at that. It seems I haven’t posted in a while. I….uh….don’t really have much to say, though.

Much of my time and brain power, lately, has been devoted to figuring out how I can make certain quotes work. I’m realizing that before now, in a desperate attempt to just get clients, I have been charing people far too little. This does not necessarily mean that I have been losing money on these jobs. It just means that I’ve been charging WAY below industry standard, and so little that I barely make any profit, and certainly nothing significant. Certainly not enough considering my time and expenses. So I’ve been gradually raising my prices to get them to where they should be. For some people, this is okay. For others, a constant stream of “this is too expensive” has begun to come my way. The problem is, I don’t see these prices are unreasonable and they are, as far as I know, very close to and often below what everyone else in the industry is charging. So what do people expect? It’s very frustrating. I understand that people don’t want to pay a lot, but, well, we’re all just trying to make a living. I don’t think that I’m the problem. I think the problem is that these people are unrealistic when they plan their budgets, and somehow they never seem to learn. It always comes as a shock to them when they find out how much things cost. Well, listen…industry standard dictates that a weekly (or daily, depending on what you choose) rental cost for an item is either 5% or 10% of the purchase cost of the item (depending, again, on what you choose and what the full price of the item is). What’s interesting about this is that, in fact, the higher the cost of the item, the lower the percentage of the cost when it comes to the rental (because, let’s face it, if you tell someone that the one week rental for a $500,000 console is $50,000, they’re going to laugh at you). Anyway, given that, I’m sorry if people don’t want to pay $75 for a one week rental of a $950 speaker. It seems fair, and more importantly, it is standard throughout the industry. You know what else? We people in the rental industry try to be even more fair when it comes to long term rentals! You want something for two weeks? Okay, we’ll only charge you for a week and a half. You want it for a month? Okay, we’ll only charge you for three weeks. I don’t know how I can be any more fair.

Okay, sorry for that little rant. That’s what’s been on my mind lately. Welcome to my little world.

At 10:00 pm I decided that I would go to my office and do some work. I thought I’d pay some bills, and then work on a few quotes I need to do and write a recommendation letter for one of my freelancers who is applying to graduate school. However, after spending an hour paying the bills, I’m so drained that I can’t even imagine doing any other work. Bills are bad. Evil. Spawn of Satan.