so, last night my wife and i watched Ratatouille. actually it was the first time. we really loved it and thought it was another classic from Pixar. we always watch movies through the credits because we always find something interesting or hidding in them. with this movie my wife pointed this one out and we thought it was kind of a in your face to the other studios who do 3D animated movies. it reads “100% Genuine ANIMATION! No motion capture or any other performance shortcuts were used in the production of this film” wow. i guess people who make movies like “The Polar Express” and “Beowulf” should be ashamed. the animation on Ratatouille was amazing! they have some real talent in that company!

yesterday Sen. Barack Obama was in town for a major rally at the Xcel Energy Center. The rally was very historic and exciting. if you don’t already know, last night Sen. Obama clinched the Democratic Presidential Nomination! it was very exciting to be a part of it.

we got downtown st. paul at about 4pm and the line was already very long. this map is where we started out in line.

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not a bad place to start. but after about 20 Minutes the line moved and we were in an even better location!

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That is where we stayed for the next 2 and a half hours, moving only a few feet every 20 minutes or so. the line in the end was more than a mile long…

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it was really not that bad waiting for that long. we had Miles with us and he had a really good time. we made some new friends. a couple and their son from Duluth. they cam down after he taught a class. they are both political scientists and professors at UMD. they were really fun to hang out with and talk to and that made the time go by faster.

there were plenty of vendors selling lots of t-shirts and buttons. i would have bought one, but you really don’t knwo where that money is going to go. but they sure were having a good time.

Well at about 6:30 they started to move people to the doors and explained what we could and could not bring into the arena. it was all the usual secret service stuff: no bags, not umbrellas, no professional cameras stuff like that. but at 7pm they started letting people in. they had to scan everyone and we all had to go through a metal detector and all that. but we got in and got pretty good seats. we were not far from the podium where Obama was going to speak from.

so we were in. it was great. they had MSNBC on the jumbo-tron and, of course, everyone cheered when they showed the crowd and they interviewed people from the Xcel. it really was fun. there were a massive amount of cameras and reporters there. also, a section for video bloggers and podcasters, of which there was a good number. we sat around and talked, ate some food and watched what was going on until about 9pm when Obama came out and gave his speech. it was really exciting! he had a lot of great things to say. if you have not heard the speech i’m sure you can find it. i am not goingt o talk about the speech because i just want to talk about my experience. he talked for about 35 minutes and he was very interesting to listen to.

it was really a lot of fun to be there because it was actual history in the making. it will go down in history as the day that the first African-American man got a major nomination for President of the United States. it was really something. any way check out the photos, there are a lot of them!

so its been really busy for me lately.  i have been working over at ProMedia Productions for the past 2 weeks and it has been great.  it sounds like i may be working over there on a freelance bassis for a while now.  that is great for us!  other than that we have just been busy outside working in the yard or playing with Miles.  he loves being out there.  some days we can’t get he inside with out a fit!  but that is fine, we are glad he likes to be outside.  he also enjoys going for a bike ride with us.  he has his own little pull behid trailer that is hooked onto Miriams bike.  we have also been speding time at my grandparents house since they are back from Arizona for the summer.  always good times there!

so yesterday my wife wanted to mow the lawn. which is fine by me, it really needed it anyway. we also had a

lot of dandelions in our yard this year. Miles discovered that he could blow on some of them to make the seeds fly away. that was cute to see. but that is not what this post is about. this post is about the freak mutant dandelion that my wife found while mowing. it was crazy and looked like something taht would attack us if it was allowed to grow.

what had happened was 3 plants fused together some how and creatated this stem with like 6 blooms on it! it was nasty ugly. is this a new species? Or is it jsut strange sci-fi, now sci-fa? Check out the photos…

this is just a fun little post. when we are at my parents house Miles gets to “drive” grandpa’s car. just up the driveway when it is parked on the street. he has a good time with it, as you can see

well i didn’t get that video archivist job i was hoping for.  its probably all for the best though.  turns out they offered it to a freshly graduated college student who was happy with $22k/yr ($10.50/hr).  honestly it would have been hard for me to live on that while supporting a family.  i do feel ripped off though.  mostly because i have a family and i have “too much experience”, which blows my mind because when i was fresh out of college i did not have enough experience and i could not have found a job like that for the life of me.  in the last interview they guy told me that i was “over qualified” for the job, which made me feel that i should have been running the place since there is no way i was more qualified than the other 2 guys working there.

that said its time to power through and trust God that there is something better out there for me, even though we have almost no money right now.  so i am going to keep going with Artvark as long as work comes in.  there is also the possibility of help out another production company in the very near future who maybe getting a contract with the Food Network for one of there shows. needless to say i am praying that they get it! there is also still a glimmer of hope for that Graphics gig at KSTP.  sounds like they are waiting till July to review the need for the position, which i know they need the help.  so now we are praying that they need someone on full time for that position because i know i will get that one since i was the one they wanted to hire before they put the job on hold.  so that is the update for now.  next post will be more fun!

yeah its been a few days since i posted. i’ve been a little busy with projects and stuff. i hope to have some extra time in the next day or so to post something worth posting. any way i’ll write something soon. hey look 200 visitors in one month!

going to try and write at least every other day.

image courtesy of http://hillaryis404.org/ Thanks to drvono for the heads up!

this past weekend we went to my parents house for some odds and ends. one of those was going through some of my old stuff and old computers that we had sitting in the basement. there were tons of old video components and random other things, but the main attraction was my old Video toaster computer. man that thing was loaded up! (for 1993). i think it must have had at least 2GB of Hard Drive Space in it! Also the NewTek Video Toaster with which i edited video, animated with Lightwave and a few other things. i also has “personal animation recorder” in there. what that did was record my animations to the hard drive so i could watch them or record them to Video tape (imagine that). the kicker was that i was able to do all this on a 33 MHz processor! amazing!

we plugged it in to see if it would start up. it seemed to but i don’t think the hard drive was spinning properly. so we opened it up and when my dad took out his handy dandy little flashlight to look the top fell off and shorted the computer out. (this was because Miles was playing with the flashlight and has recently learned to unscrew things. needless to say he unscrewed the flashlight). so off to the recycling it went. no worries. i don’t think it worked any more any way.

for the past two years my wife and i have received a gift card to Linder’s Green House from my Grandma.  last year we got a birch tree and tulip magnolia.  this year we got 2 apple trees, a Honey Crisp and a Zestar!  both of which were genetically engineered in Minnesota!  both apples are very good and also a little spendy at the store.  both they are so good.  so after a few years we should have a healthy crop of apples!  this year and next we should only see a few apples, but it will all be worth the wait!