Well I woke up to a beautiful New York day. It's sunny and warm and I was feeling great, so I grabbed my resumes, camera and hual my ass out to another day of production house visitation.

Now I REALLY need to learn how the NYC subway works. I ended up walking to most of the places I needed to go to.

So first I headed over to Freestyle Collective, I somehow ended up knocking on their back door, and Vincent opened the door and he showed me around. Apperently they just finished building a new floor of post suites, there are like 3 or 4 brand new inferno suites wow, it was off the hook. Needless to say, I felt like me and my wimpy AfterEffects reel was just totally out of place, but hey I'm good at rotoscoping that may be my only salvation.

And then I headed down Broadway to "The Diecks Group", they are a Media 100 house, so it was a familar ground for me to stand on. While there I met Erik, we talked a little about NLEs, M100 VS FCP, and then as I looked over to the production area, I saw the Media 100 844/x. The Diecks Group is a beta tester for Meida 100, I found out about them through my research on the 844/x, so it was really cool to actually see the set up at a production house. And it was totally awesome that Erik actually spend a little time to show me what the 844/x was capable of doing.

So I'm going to go out tonight, get some good food, have a little fun and then head back to Boston in the late morning. Yeah I saw a lot in the last few days that really inspired me and not having access to my machines is driving me nuts, I need to do some design work now! Oh yeah and that research paper that I still need to research for, damn it, why can't school just be over now.

For example, Arnold was blend, on the verge of being boring, wait, it was boring and they had no lights, this poor ex-intern eyes got all fucked up from that.

Digitas was interesting, it screamed "we had way too much money to spend when we set out to build this office." A lot of open space, a lot of art, a lot of TVs, it deffinately looked really cool, well designed and actually quite stylish.

Tom.com in Hong Kong on the other hand is what you call tacky, typical Hong Kong "LOOK! We spend A LOT OF MONEY!" style. Their office was this over-designed, Aeron Chair filled mess with a sickly blue and green furniture (company colors) with random "hi-tech" looking things and gold fittings. It's the type of office Master P would build if he were to open a Web firm. Hey well what do you expect from the web company that had the highest valuation in the Heng Sang on it's IPO but all it was, was a portal with no content.

Pisces' office is super fly. I haven't seen it since their renovations, but judging from their pictures it looks waya cool, theme resturant like.

Spot Editorial is kinda like Pisces as well, smaller and way more low key (plus they are an Avid only house). But their kitchen totally does it for me, they have these 60's dinner style tables and stools a welcomed and refreshing change from Pisces' Itlian furniture.

Heavy's office (as far as I can see from the reception) is really cool. Got the whole Red floor and white walls thing going on, so of course that's totally in my taste. It's bright! Minimalist styling and clean. Yeah I'm super down with that office. I was some how expecting more of a warehouse, unpainted walls, exposed steel beams, black and red urban themed, basketball court in the middle, oil drums and sheet metal as desks, loading dock as it's enterence. Yeah I don't know what the hell I was thinking. Well the brushed steel door is close :) In any case I hope I get to work for them.

More research tonight, more work tomorrow, looks like I'm heading back to Boston on Saturday afternoon. Interesting note, I haven't taken a single picture yet and I have my camera on me all the time... odd.

So I've been pretty much mad busy the second I got to NYC. Starting doing a lot of planning, dealing with my resume and portfolio, job hunting and apartment hunting. I found a few places on both front, I'll look into the job stuff tomorrow. Apartment stuff will have to wait a tad, maybe friday.

After dealing with some stuff, I went to B&H with my sister to pickup a new photo printer for her. Now the word is, NEVER allow me to enter B&H. NEVER! I found so many things I wanted but I was being really good and was almost able to walk out without buying a single thing. And then my sister wanted to check out some of the PorterBrace bags, and I driffted over to the video tripod section, and then driffted even further to the photo tripod section... Then it was all over. I saw this sick ass Manfrotto/Bogen monopod, which is totally what I've been looking for for quite a while now. So I decided to get that, and then as I was looking I saw this dope quick release head that'd work great with my Manfrotto/ Bogen Tripod, picked that up too. Oh that head won't work well with the monopod? OK, lets get the small head for the mono... Oh extra hex quick release plate is a good idea? OK.

FUCK! Before I know it I dropped $200... My sister was looking at me like I was nuts, and to be honest I think I was. But this time she didn't say anything because she just dropped $550 on a new printer... Yeah today we were both guilty for spending too much today.

Tomorrow I'm locking myself in her apartment.

So I'm going to find me a job and an apartment. Yes the roommate with my sister thing fell through already, I guess we both made a decision, forgetting that maybe her current roommate may actually stay in NYC, which as of now he is... Oh well, what fun is life without making stupid decisions.
Wish me luck.
Oh! I'm taking that fun China town BOS to China town NYC bus, HA! This one is going to be interesting.

So yeah it's been long hours for me here, great start for my spring break isn't it? Well I can't wait to head down to NYC on Sunday to chill with my sister. Oh... and yeah, find a job. So in this boring time of taking a break, I finally got around to catch up with my email, and my sister had mailed me a link to some pictures she took during her trip to Tokyo with her friends and my parents. Yeah apperently they all hung out together and had a lot of fun, now if they remember to ask me if I want to go next time they decide to plan another one of these trips...

Looking through the pictures I saw this one of my parents being their typical goofy selfs. They are so great! Now the fact that my dad is wearing a beanie is kinda interesting... and then I realized that he's wearing the ecko beanie I got him, it totally made my day. I think he was reading some magazine, and saw some picture and figured that he'd look cool hooking up a beanie, so he send me out to get him one and I got him this ecko beanie because it was the first thing that I can find two days before I had to fly back to Boston. I brought it home telling him how he'd totally look all badass hip hop style and that I can fine him something else if he didn't want to go that direction. Well maybe I shouldn't have told him about the whole badass rapper deal... cuz I KNOW he now thinks he's all hip and shit, I bet you he picked up that Dr Dre CD I told him about as well!

My dad wearing ecko... wow I never thought the day would come.

So the idea of dropping almost $2500 on a film camera and lenses makes even less sense to me now as it was when I was actually shooting a lot of pictures on flim. But then the idea of something like the Leaf Digital backs is becoming appealing to me, to have a camera that can do 6x4.5cm, 35mm, Polaroid and digital is deffinately a plus, and if it is a 645 PRO LT? Then even better. But of course price is going to be stupidly insane and unless I suddenly become stupidly rich or decide to become a photographer I just can't justify anything like that. But if it does happen, if I can afford to get a medium format camera, it'll be the Mamiya 645.

Why no interest in Hasselblad you ask? Well, I don't really know Hasselblad, I know they are good cameras but I've never really worked with them, I've really enjoyed working with the Mamiya 645 and that experience really stuck with me. Maybe if I get to try one out, I may change my mind. Now I just have to find someone who does own a Hasselbald AND is cool about letting me check it out.

Heh, I often forget how much I loved photography and have always wondered why I never took that scholarship to RIT to study photography instead.

Oh right, it's in Rochester, upstate New York...

I guess I got buned out with dealing with the lab. Hours sucked, pay sucked, politics sucked, but for the past two years, I've loved working at the lab over all. I take joy in being able to help people out with making their project happen, I enjoy being able to make someone's production easier. I hate seeing all these talented people unable to finish their project because of the computers crapping out. This job let me help people that inspired me and I hope that in some way I made a difference in their learning process and work.

This job was different from most of the other jobs I had before, I had the daily challenge fixing strange hardware/software problems which I loved. I had access to some of the coolest computing and production toys around. I have build and worked on machines that I'd put on my dream computer list and was given the time to learn how to use them. I met many great people at the lab, many became good friends of mine. I've learn so much from working at the lab, and from working there I realized my love for teaching and building a stronger collective of knowledge. So the anger, stressed and bitterness the came with the job really didn't bother me that much because under all that bad stuff I found joy.

Lately though, there was no joy. I believed that there is always a solution to a problem, that there is always a way to make things work. But time and time again I had to look at a student and say, "There is nothing I can do." I hated myself for saying that, because I knew there's a way to make it work, but I no longer had the means to get to the problem and fix it. The politics that surrounds the lab has made it almost impossible for me to do my job. For a few weeks I didn't have the means to gain override access to the computers so to complete simple tasks such as upping the memory allocations for softwares. All kinds of purchasing has been on hold because the tuitions we've paid are held up for a new building and equipments that we will never get to touch because most people would have garduated before these things are completed... With that limitation, I have to improv. quite a bit of fixes to make these computer work and they get done sometimes. But a dead hard drive, is a dead hard drive, is a dead hard drive! There is nothing short of putting in a new one that will solve the problem. We ran out of new hard drives about 9 months ago, number of drives on order? None. Plus I'm sick of lying to tours and current students alike about the status of the labs. I mean it's not hard for them to figure out that they are working with computers that are almost 7 years old, and that the Emerson PR myth of students being able to work with industry standard equipment is a blaten fucking lie unless a time machine is invloved. There is that one or two almost working G4s that kinda works, but then who the fuck are we kidding, what we really have is a showroom full of broken computers and the two good PR machines to make the rest look new.

So where is the joy? Why should I continue to help maintain this illusion of a functioning production lab, which will only hinders the learning process for everyone else. Why should I continue to help hide the underlying problem of this school trying to push more then they can handle. My advisor I should not quit when I went to talk to him about it, as he said "If you leave, the lab will fall apart." the fact is this lab had falled apart long ago, it's just that we've been taught to ignore that fact.