Eight PM and the director calls from California: "Could you get your arms a bunch bigger and more defined by Wednesday?"

Probably a good thing, because I'd been working on building a new mailserver and doing other adminly stuff for most of the day and hadn't gotten around to hitting the gym yet--and it's better to do that earlier rather than later, before I start feeling tired.

Not much better motivation than that. It's true, I can think of some better motivators, but not any that I've experienced recently. I'll do a lot for a part, especially if there's a reasonable probability that it'll look cool.

Trouble is, there's a limit to how much I can do for real in three days. But I can fake it--I'll just bring a couple of dumbbells to the set and pump up right there. I'm sure nobody will notice.

'Course I'm a bad guy again (go figure). Maybe it's the hat.

. . . maybe I just need to get a white hat.

Yeah.

I finally got to see the rough cut of The Shadow Walkers, which is still a bit rough and it looks like we'll be filming a bit more to smooth out those edges.

That's pretty typical with any movie; you usually go back and do some pick-up shots after you've done your rough cut. That'll be kicking off a week from today, so it looks like I'll be doing at least a little shooting in September after all. :)

I don't mind the short notice--and I've just realized that one definite advantage of playing monsters is that I don't have to worry that I'll wake up the first morning of the shoot with a big pimple on my nose. As long as I'm covered in a sufficient layer of foam latex appliances and makeup, nobody would ever see a pimple if I got one. For that matter, I could probably even bring a guest with me who could ride along, hiding comfortably inside a Shadow Walker nose.

Not that I ever actually have problems with nose-pimples popping up just in time for a shoot. Oh, no; not me. I never have anything like that happen.

In the meantime, things are still pretty much filled with getting ready for the upcoming American Film Market. It's hard to guess ahead of time what the atmosphere will be like at this one, but one difference I have noticed is that exhibitors are spending a lot more on promotions and advertising than I remember them doing in the past few years.

It could be that the rest of the film industry is expecting a hotter market this year. My marketing budget's only a little higher this year over what it had been in the previous two years, but at least I got in early while some of the promotions I wanted to arrange for the market were still available. Now I just have to design and lay out the necessary graphics for them.

Back here in Colorado, I had a meeting with Martin Cuff, Colorado's new film commissioner, and others from the local industry. I've tried getting some promotional material from the state to bring along in past years and nobody's ever been able to come up with anything in time. Martin says he won't be able to either. Oh, well.

But we did discuss a bunch of things that *could* be done over the longer term, so that's promising.

Er, um, with Halloween coming up in just over a month, what could be better for amusing your guests (or as a thoughtful present to your host) than Silly Putty in bulk? No longer will you have to unwrap and crack open thousands of Silly Putty eggs just to get enough Silly Putty!

Take my word for it--if you show up at a housewarming party and hand the hostess a big 'ol handful of silly putty, it'll be a moment they'll always remember. That's so much better than boring stuff like a bottle of wine or yet another electric can opener.

It's not just programmers who get confused between Christmas and Halloween. I bet dogs do, too, and some of them probably expect presents, treats, or even food on holidays like that.

Now if you're at a loss for the perfect present for your pooch...and you really want to get him something that he'll hate you forever for, it's not too late to get him one of these amazing Yoda dog costumes.

You could probably give one as a housewarming gift, too, but I don't think it would be quite as memorable as the Silly Putty.

After all the excitement of this past Summer, September is shaping up to be a month with a lot less thrilling stuff to write about. As far as I know, anyway. All the major shoots I know of have been postponed until October or later, so I'm left with a block of time to get caught up on a lot of less-exciting video work: digitizing footage, minor editing, authoring DVDs from this stack of master tapes, and fixing computers for most of the people I know.

Especially laptops, lately. It really struck me on the laptops I've repaired or upgraded in the last few days that laptop computers are designed to snap together and designed to break apart. I think a lot of work has gone into building them in such a way that an average, technically competent user cannot reasonably expect to repair or upgrade them without causing significant permanent damage.

I've been building and repairing computers since the days when putting even the smallest and lightest models on your lap would cause the average, technically competent user significant permanent damage, too, so I've had plenty of time to develop the skills to fix most everything, laptops included.

With a bit of extra time on my hands, I suppose I really ought to buckle down and work on some of the weapons skills I'm supposed to look competent doing for a couple of projects scheduled for next year. I can probably even apply those same skills to working on computers...at least for the ones where causing them significant permanent damage is okay. I'm sure the manufacturers will be happy with that.

In past years, usually I upgrade the displays that I'm going to be hauling out there, but so far this year I've accidentally ended up on a printer binge.

It's not that I *need* a bunch of new printers, it's that there are a few specific functions that I'd find useful and it appears that printer manufacturers have gone to a great deal of effort to make sure that no one printer has more than one of the features I'm looking for. Digital cameras are the same way, but I don't go out and buy twenty digital cameras because that's the only way to get the twenty features I'd like to have in a digital camera; hanging twenty cameras around my neck would be a little excessive, even for me.

Though, now that I think about it, hanging twenty printers around my neck would be even more excessive. I have a strong neck, but that would get awkward after a while, especially if I got in a few more color laser printers.

Fortunately, I did test the Canon i960 printer by this point and, though the store I'd bought it from had assured me that all their demo models are fully checked out and tested before they put them out for sale, it didn't work at all.

I brought it back to the store and, since there wasn't another demo unit I could exchange it for, they gave it to their service department and let them have a stab at it.

And this is what they found: a blue "Mega Blok" building toy had been wedged into the printer's drive mechanism. You can see how that could mess a printer up. It's harder to see how that would be likely to happen in a computer store or how the service techs had missed it the first time around, when it had been "fully checked out and tested before putting it out for sale."