Friday, March 30, 2007

Ooopsie

A few days ago I missed an important anniversary. My blog and I have been together for two whole years as of March 26!! Yes it's true. And I completely forgot to congratulate it or buy it a gift. It's funny, because on Monday the blog was acting kind of moody. I had made a post about Ninja Turtles and it was sort of looking at me...like "is that all?" So I added an image to the turtles post and looked back at the blog with a confused....."what?"

Tuesday it gave me the silent treatment all day. Any attempt to strike up a conversation with the blog was met with harsh glares. The word "jerk" kept appearing in the comments section of older posts.

All day Wednesday and Thursday it locked itself away and wouldn't let me post anything. I could hear it talking to Google and YouTube. Was it crying? It was sort of hard to tell. We have had fights in the past like when we upgraded to beta, but this was different.

Finally tonight I remembered. And after begging the blogs forgiveness and making it promises that I don't intend to keep, we toasted two fun years of providing written nonsense to the lucky people of the digital age.

Monday, March 26, 2007

Heroes in a Half Shell

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles opened this weekend to the tune of $25 million dollars. Not too shabby. I have yet to see the finished film but folks who have, have really enjoyed it. Turtle Power!

I now have my reel for Turtles up in the animation area. I only did a handful of shots (my reel shows all but 1 shot I did) as ReelFx was charged with completing only a couple minutes of footage. Maybe I will get to do more on the sequel ;)

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

At World's End...Now in English

I'm really digging this trailer. The duel on the mast of the Black Pearl is awesome...of course the trailer for Dead Man's Chest was pretty killer, yet the movie disappointed me on various levels. I enjoy DMC now, but yeah I left the theater feeling a little unsatisfied with the 2nd installment. Still, I'm jazzed about the new film.

Monday, March 19, 2007

How Be Yer Russian?

Yes this week the first trailer for Pirates 3 is finally being released; someone at Disney realized the film opens in 2 months. Already the trailer is on YouTube...but in Russian. Looks cool though! Here's opening it recaptures the spirit of fun lacking from the 2nd installment.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Spam

If you have ever emailed me off my web site you most likely sent mail to me@raymation.net. This alias actual sent your email to my aol account which is all fine and dandy. However, I have noticed that the spam filter on aol has been a tad too aggressive, tossing none spam emails, emails sent through the "me" alias, into the spam folder.

I tried adjusting the filter settings but it is like a big, crazy, drooling St. Bernard, operating in one of two moods. Mode 1: aggressive and frightening, marking friendly emails as hostile. Mode 2: sleeps in the corner and lets everything in.

Since I don't have time to scan the hordes of spam looking for legitimate emails, I am changing the site email to raymation@hotmail.com. If you have ever emailed me and never gotten a response, it may not be because I don't like you, it may be in fact, that your email was flagged as spam and was purged.

Friday, March 16, 2007

New Designs

So I added a couple designs to My Shop based off a couple DrawerGeeks submissions. Yes its true. Spring is almost here and what better way to say "Happy Spring" to a friend or loved one, than with a gift of a giant robot shirt.




Perhaps giant robots frighten and scare you; that's understandable since giant robots are evil by nature. Maybe a non-threatening, mostly less evil caveman shirt would be more your speed.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Monday, March 05, 2007

The Friendly Skies

This weekend we went up to Maryland to visit my wife's family. I love to travel. And I love to travel by air. However, for me, plane travel is usually pretty stressful. Sure I have the fleeting concern that something important might fall off the plane mid flight. And how can you not get on a plane without thinking, at least momentarily, about 9/11. But most of my stress...say 90%... occurs before I even step board on the plane.

The first big obstacle is getting to the airport on time. I am most always convinced that we are going to miss our flight. No matter how much time we allow, we always seem to leave the house "late". This was the case when it was the two of us and has gotten progressively worse with the addition of each child. So right as we leave the house I am having mild freak outs.

With self check in that portion of the experience has gotten less stressful, only to be replaced by the enhanced security screenings. Many times the lines can be reeeeeeaaalllly long which heightens my anxiety about missing the flight. On top of that, once we reach the security check, the stress rises as I try to keep track of all our stuff. This trip was particularly bad because it was the first plane trip for the four of us.

Lil Pumpkins stroller and car seat needed to be put on the belt. My bag, my shoes, my jacket, the baby bag, the wife's bag, shoes, purse.....ok you go through with the baby..Wonder pea stay with me...how many bins do we have...four....dear god...ok Wonder pea stay right there while I put these on the belt....ok now lets walk through..."Sir she needs to talk off her shoes"...oh right i forgot her shoes....."and her jacket"...right right ok...(this after Wonder pea went through the detector and then came back around to me...she did that twice)....ok everything is off and we both go through, Wonder pea now being scanned for the 3rd time...she wanted to go back for a forth...

Ok now that THAT is over we get to collect our four bins, stroller and car seat and put ourselves back together.

Whew ok....the big, huge amounts of stress are now behind us. We are here, through security, we have time to spare and oh good, our plane isn't even here yet.

So begins the next stressful part of the trip: the actual flight.

This was a 2 and a half hour flight and Lil Pumpkins first flight; it could go either way. This could be super stressful or moderately so; even if the kids are fine the whole trip, you have no idea IF this will be the case...so you are on high alert for when they may suddenly get nutty.

Fortunately the kids getting nutty were across the isle. Lil Pumpkin was pretty laid back the whole time. Although why do babies like to load up their diapers minutes into a flight? It's like they are challenging the parents. So caaaan you.....change my poo while on a plane with only inches of room while being very subtle as to not alert other passengers as to what you are doing .....hummm...riddle me that Batman??! Anyways he was great and Wonder pea only had a small melt down when we were descending; the air pressure does a job on her ears.

So yay! We didn't miss our flight, we made it through security with all our junk, the kids didn't freak out on the flight and nothing important fell off the plane in mid air!! Good trip!