Saturday, November 26, 2005

You Think You Got Too Much Turkey!

HTD Sounds Worse Than It Is. I have a habbit of abbreviating things. I guess I just like acronyms. This year I shortened my Thanksgiving greeting to HTD. Just swap the H with an S and my not-oft-used acronym for Happy Turkey Day takes on a whole other meaning.

Thanksgiving went well this year, mostly because some of my family came to visit my parents, including a long lost (almost literaly) great-grandchild. My mom and dad were happy, and all the more thankful, and when they're happy that makes my job easier. One relative brought some turkey and waaaaayyy too much stuffing to go with it. Plus other goodies. Later my brother brought us an entire turkey along with all the usual extras. It was one of those you heat for about an hour, and I ended up saving it for the next day instead. So our After Thanksgiving meals (ATMs) have been more of a feast than the actual day. But there's only 3 of us here, two are seniors who don't eat that much anyway, and I'm not much of an overeater. I have half a mind to try donating the vat of extra stuffing (VES or VXS if you prefer) to some charitable org. Do they take prepared food? Maybe I can freeze it.

AM homework for last week (week before Thanksgiving) was bumpy. There was so much going on around home I barely had time to touch animation. I turned in some serious poo. So with my assignment in a state of suckage I'm not posting any pictures or playblast files here. Hopefully I'll have something interesting to show after spending a bit more time on it. I've got to pull this one off at least as well as the last assignment, wherein luck played a large roll! Some classmates who have seen my reference and blocking have been reciting the line from my shot saying, "It's the tv guru guy!" when they see me in Q&As and the Flashmeeting "Digital Dailies" that have become popular with AM students. It's funny that people associate me with the scene, and I don't want to let them or myself down. I've gotta turn in something decent in FINAL.

Last Sunday after the homework was turned in some of us in NorCal met up at Rex's place to give him a nice send off party. He is one of the recently hired AM students and will be moving to Washington for his new job. Most of my classmates at the party seemed to have the same situation with their homework...not quite enough progress to turn in something that looked good. Of course, we are learning that transition between stepped blocking and linear or spline is often bumpy and takes a lot of massaging to get it looking decent. Experience helps but it's still part of the process. Some glitches in the school Web servers this week resulted in the decision by school admin to restart week 10, which buys us a bit more time to refine the assignment we turned in last week. Hat's off to our school president Bobby and his support staff for putting in some serious extra time getting things working again right in the middle of the holiday. They all go the distance for us to make things right and we're all very thankful for that. I wonder if any of them would like extra stuffing.

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