Been a pretty busy month of work for TradeWind Productions (yeah, I know, not a whole lot on the website yet......still waiting on a logo, 'cause the one there right now...well, it ain't it). I feel like I learn something new every time I take on a new project, which is great.....although, learning curves can be dangerous when it's crunch time and something is due for delivery in a handful of hours.

So I'm having fun with that, and the new editing machine is pulling its weight. What a great investment...I'm saving so much time now, and so I can take on twice as much work. My day job is still fun, getting to do streaming video has it's own interesting twists and turns.

Oh, before I forget......HAPPY GAY FREAKIN' BIRFDAY TO ERIC! I think he turns 48 today....or 33. I forget.

We had a "housewarming" party a few weekends ago (if you can call it that after living there for over 6 months). What a freakin' blast! Got to chill with the buds and folks from Your Favorite Town and Athens......good times. We had WAY more food than we needed, so we all hogged out and drank way too much. Chilled around the fire outside and chatted about whatever. Cool.

In the middle of all the work and fun, Hil and I are planning out the weekends for the fall. Gonna be about 6 weekends where we'll be going to UGA football games, and that leaves a few others where we'd like to take some little trips. We want to get some folks together to go camping up in N. Georgia and do Oktoberfest in.....October (you should e-mail me if this sounds fun to you.....), and we were thinking about pulling a weekend getaway to Savannah, GA. I know what you're thinking..."Savannah? Why? What are you gonna do?" Well, they have a fun nightlife, and there's some neat historical tours we've always wanted to do down there but never had the time to do. One is a tour of haunted houses and such around the town, which is always a neat Fall thing to do. We're also thinking about putting together another camp weekend (well, probably just one night) out at Stone Mountain and catching one of the last laser shows for the year. Then there's always Furman Homecoming in Greenville, SC. Not even really sure if we're gonna do that this year because I don't know if any of the regulars are planning the trip. Not that I mind taking a trip just w/ my sweetie, but there's other things we could do if we're gonna be the only ones there (out of the group, anyways).

Now the hard part is actually figuring out 1) if we really wanna do all this stuff, 2) if we can really do all this stuff and 3) where our friends are at on all this stuff, because it ain't fun to be alone.

Now back to work......still plenty on today's plate.

Totally rad.

So over the sales tax holiday, Hilary and I invested in my company in the form of a new editing machine. We shopped our good friends at Monarch Computer while they were knocking out the tax and also had rebates for just about everything we wanted. If the sales tax and rebates weren't there, I don't think I would have been able to buy such a boss machine.

I do feel like I had to scrap a couple of the things that I wanted to get on this machine just to bring the price down, but nothing integral...the machine will still run faster than any machine I've ever layed hands on. However, I did want 2GB of RAM (settled for 1GB) and I also wanted more storage (wanted 2 more of the 250GB SATAII drives to set up a RAID 5). Both of those things are easy upgrades though, and not very pricey either, so they will come in the near future. I really needed to get a fast, reliable motherboard, though, so I got the best one (and apparently one of the more pricey) I could find. It'll allow for processor upgrading in the long run, to keep this thing making money for a long time. For now, I got a nice fast processor from Intel that will maintain its value for a few years.

And of course I had to get the awesome case with the window and glowing lights (see links below for pics). Nice and roomy, making sure my new machine doesn't burn itself up from the massive heat it's gonna generate. Here's the general specs (most females and all non-techie males need not apply):

• Case: Thermaltake Tsunami Dream
  
• Power Supply: OCZ 520 watt ModStream
  
• Motherboard: Asus P5WD2 Premium
  
• Processor: Intel Pentium 4 640 (Hyper-Threaded) 3.2Ghz 2MB L2 Cache
  
• Memory: OCZ DDR2 PC2-4200 (533Mhz) 1GB (2x512)
  
• System Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB SATAII (8MB Cache)
  
• Storage Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB SATAII (16MB Cache)
  
• Video: eVGA GeForce 6600 GT 128MB DDR3
  
• Optical: Pioneer DVR-109BK (OEM)
  
• Operating System: Windows XP Professional w/SP2
  

I should probably also tell you not to bother trying to figure out how much I spent, because we got a TON of money knocked off of that thing. I think it could have been cheaper if we stole it.

I still have the "old" machine (little over 3 years old) to help with more multi-tasking as well as any and all office-related tasks (spreadsheets, e-mail, web, etc)...however, now I gotta find a KVM switch.

Now that I've bored everyone to tears (except, of course, me....and all the techie gearheads)......I should say that I'm getting buried under all sorts of projects right now....slide shows, weddings, even a beauty pageant....all needing edits. Hopefully business won't slow down....ever....but at the same time, between that and my day job and just getting stuff done around the house, I am wishing for more free time. I think a wise man once said something to the extent of "you can sleep when you're dead."