Only Love Remains

The final class. PowerPoints and Movies. Kudos to Commander Pietrzak. He, our technology maven, commented that although he admired our class, we had more technical problems than other classes. I have a theory about that. Perhaps it was the three hour drive to school in six inches of snow. Many classmates were crunching time to iron out the inevitable last minute glitches that crop up in this mess we call TED. Three hours! My journey was to Division and Ashland to pay my cab lease, and then back to Bryn Mawr and St. Louis, normally an hour on a bad traffic day. On this snowy eve however I could have watched the Deer Hunter and some selected shorts instead of gnawing on my steering wheel like a giant filth glazed donut as I watched precious computer time swirl away in glittering gusts of snow. I had been determined all day to have at least my two links to the two multimedia projects done. I thought I would have time to other things on my page as well. There are many finished items in my http folder with only two working links on my page I had some good fortune last weekwoth linking and wanted to do it at school thinkingit would be easier. No such luck. The first thing I did was check to see if my movie was there, it was!!!!! So I thought I might open it to see if there was a loading delay that cost me points. points!!!! Flippin' Moses in the Bull Rushes, not only would it not load, my powerpoint seemed to disintegrate right before my very eyes. So now I'm looking at no points, baby and probably a failing grade in the class. I was hopeful up until the last minute that our intrepid leader would be unable to pass the crystal laden streets or that my classmates might not show up. Damn their dedicated souls they all--all minus one-- arrived. I thought I was doomed but my group mate Jon and my back table pal Belinda took one look at me and said com'on you got it done all you have to is link it. Under Belinda's tutorage I got the powerpoint up and with Jon's help got some of the sound going. We three each tool a wack at different ways to get the movie going but it was for naught. When Jeff Mangrum and I finished it last night (he was my camera man and we used his adobe film editor) we saved the file as a avi file when it needed to be wmv and play in realtime. Sir Pietrzak thought that might be the source of my trouble although an avi file should have worked. I am grateful to everyone who has been instrumental in the last two days in helping me stay somewhat sane. I have til Saturday to finish the bulk and then the paper for next Thursday. Is a rare thing but I will miss this class inspite of the fact that it put me through six layers of hell and met at a horrible time. I don't know if I will continue this blog but I will certainly continue blogging, like most things in this class it serves a purpose and allows for creative outlet.