Movies and Stuff

I managed to get all of my movies transfered (or transfered back) to DVD. However, it turns out that I'd set the timer on the DVD-Recorder for too short a time when I recorded The Day After Tomorrow, because it cut off right as Dennis Quaid was dragging the other guy into the fast food restaurant. Bummer. That's one of my favorite movies too. I guess I'll just have to wait until it's on again though.

On Sunday, Ocean's Eleven was showing again, between two showings of Mission: Impossible II. I got both movies, so now the only empty DVD cover on my floor with a title on it already is for The Day After Tomorrow.

I have found cover images for all the movies I didn't have images for now, but I haven't printed them out, because my laptop is still up in my bedroom. I can't print unless it's in the dock on my desk, so I'm finishing up a few more projects upstairs before I finish with the movies.

I had finished recording all ten Dutch units last week, so I tried to disconnect the harddrive and take it (with an empty CD) to my parents' house on Sunday so that Dad could burn it for me. For some reason, the computer couldn't stop the USB drive, so I just got fed up and un-plugged it.

Imagine my surprise when Dad couldn't find ANY of the MP3 files I'd saved onto that harddrive from the Dutch tapes! I had saved them in a specific folder, and they were all named things like Unit One - Reading Exercises, or Unit One - Greetings (there were two files for each unit).

They were there before I disconnected the hard drive--I know, because I'd tried to record them on the DVD-R, but couldn't, since apparently my DVD-R can only play CDs, not record them. Go figure.

But anyway, now I have to record the tapes to the harddrive again. I just hope I can get them to stay on there this time, especially since I have no idea why they wouldn't have stayed the first time!

I'm hoping it won't rain on Saturday, so that I can try to time the bicycle ride to work in the morning, and then maybe go to the pool (even just to get my pool pass) after I go grocery shopping. I'm pretty sure there's no movie that I want to see this week, but I'll have to look at my calendar at home.

I'm planning on making another post either tonight or later this week, if I've had a chance to talk to Heather on AIM again.

Making Progress

"That's a rather grim beginning for a Disney movie."

That's what Jason O. said when we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End last Saturday, and I totally agree.

That doesn't mean the beginning wasn't as awesome as the rest of the movie--far from it! The whole movie was an action-packed three hours full of total, mind-boggling thrills. I'd've just never expected that particular type of beginning to come out of that particular producer.

And now, in order to avoid the temptation to spoil you all any further, I shall continue recounting my week so far.

Sunday was dinner at Mom & Dad's again--of course. Dad gave me his old Palm Tungsten T3, because he'd gotten a BlackJack.

Then, on Monday was Memorial Day. I had to do my grocery shopping then too, because I'd skipped it on Saturday and I was running out of food. I thought about going swimming at my neighborhood pool, but there wasn't enough time afterward, and I didn't feel like trying to get my hot and sweaty body into a clean and getting-too-small bathing suit.

Not to mention, the people running the pool were supposed to have put my pool pass into my mailbox (they'd run out of ribbon for their card printer when I got my picture taken for it), but it still hasn't shown up. I'm hoping that, when I do actually end up going, they'll have it there for me.

So, instead of going to the pool, after I went shopping, I went back to Mom & Dad's so that Dad could help me configure the Wi-Fi card that he'd given me with the PDA. That didn't take very long, but I stayed anyway because they were all going to another movie. We went to see Meet the Robinsons in the $2.99 theater. That was a cute movie. But I want to know what his mother looked like too!

Tuesday meant back to work for Darcy. The same old boring thing, day in and day out. After work, I managed to finish recording the Dutch tapes to my computer, but when I tried to use the DVD-Recorder to copy the files to CD, it didn't work. Apparently, the DVD-R only works for playing audio CDs, not recording them. Darn. I'll just have to get Dad to burn the CD for me next time I go over there or something.

I also managed to get Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone over to the VHS, and I got Spiderman onto the DVD. Now, I just have to get Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone back to DVD, then I can get The Day After Tomorrow to go both ways and I'll be finished with those.

Tonight I'm going to be recording Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl though, so the re-recording will have to wait until that's done, at least. On Sunday (I think, but it might be Saturday) I'll have another chance to record Ocean's Eleven, which is good, because I've had the cover sitting on my bedroom floor for at least two months now. I'm debating on whether or not I want to record Mission: Impossible 2. It'll be on both before and after Ocean's Eleven. I'll have to wait and see.

GAH!

Thursday night, there was a movie on that I wanted to record. It was actually on twice that night, but I didn't catch the first showing because I was watching the Smallville season finale (which was awesome, by the way--even though I hate it when Patrick J. is right about spoiler-y things).

The movie was Bulletproof Monk, and I'd seen it before, so I knew it was awesome. So, at 10:30, I started to record the second showing of the movie, all the while pausing the recording during commercials.

While I watched/recorded the movie, I got through Unit 8 of my Dutch tapes (recording them to my computer, that is, not really listening to them and learning anything). Actually, I managed to get that far before then--while I was watching Smallville.

After Smallville was over, I had decided to play the Smallville Legends: Justice & Doom game online. So, I got into that, and eventually the movie started, so I started recording that.

Shortly after the movie started, I noticed that it was taking a loooooong time to load one of the parts of the game, so I thought I might try defragmenting my hard drive. I knew defragging would take a while, so I just let it go while I watched the movie.

About 20 minutes before the movie ended (around 12:40 Friday morning), the defrag was complete. So, I went back to the game.

Problem is, I still had the movie paused, because the defrag ended during a commercial break. I completely forgot to press record again until I realized that the movie had been on again for at least two minutes, and I'd missed my cue!

And it wasn't just a couple seconds' worth of movie, so it wasn't worth pressing record again and just filling in what they would have said in my head--no. So, I pressed stop, and since I didn't know when the movie would be on TV again, I just deleted the whole thing off of the disc.

I had been recording on Long Play, so I have almost half of a disc to record another movie on. And depending on which speed I record it on, that could be almost four hours of movie there.

I figure, I'll just buy the movie when I can afford to splurge on a DVD again--it's just not worth sitting through another two-and-a-half hours to record something I should've already had.

Friday was boring, but okay.

Saturday, I went to see Shrek the Third with Anna, Kayla and the crowd. Anna and Kayla had to sit in a different row, because Anna's had surgery on her ankle and that was the only place her wheelchair would fit. The rest of us were stuck sitting in the very front row of the theater.

The movie was pretty cool though.

I went to Mom & Dad's house for Anna's birthday dinner yesterday. It was Dad's home-made pizza. Yum!

I am such a geek.

So, I have these tapes, right? They're foreign language tapes. Pimsleur Language Programs' Speak and Read Essential Dutch. I've had them for at least a year and a half, and got them before I even thought of registering for that class down at the Belgian Embassy.

But my tape player is old, and sometimes doesn't work right. So I don't like to use it.

The other day, I was thinking, "If only I could get that onto CD--or my ipod--then that would be awesome, 'cause then I'd feel like listening to it more often." (You're supposed to listen to no more than one new unit per day, but if you didn't feel comfortable with the previous unit, you just repeat it the next day.)

And then I realized: I can do BOTH!

I got a cord a couple weeks back that connects headphone-jack-to-headphone-jack. Well, in this case, it's really headphone-jack-to-microphone-jack. And I've got a hard drive that will hold 160 GIGABYTES, so I have plenty of space for that kind of thing.

Today, I plugged the cord into the headphone jack of my tape player, with the other end plugged into the microphone jack of my laptop. Then, I plugged in my headphones to the laptop (so I wouldn't bug my roommates), and opened my Audacity program.

Holy Toledo, IT WORKS! It came through loud and clear, and I was able to record it and then export the recording to MP3! I also managed to get rid of the static (there was a lot of it) using Audacity's "Noise Removal" effect.

I've decided I'm going to record each of the ten units, plus each of the ten reading exercises, into twenty different "tracks."

And--this is the REALLY GEEKY part--I'm going to get some blank CDs, hook up my laptop to my VCR/DVD-R, and make my own CDs! I'd forgotten until this evening that my VCR/DVD-R could do that.

Once I've finished the Dutch course, I've got quite a few other cassettes (French, Finnish, and actual music tapes) which I can transfer to CD!

So, totally a geek.