Drove from CDA to Syracuse, UT—took an extra hour or so because of the road conditions (and being stuck behind snow plows a couple times in Idaho.) No problems on the trip, though.

Started this weekend with Robert helping hook up the heat pump. Sure is nice to get that done! Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning was spent hooking up Tom’s main water supply. The ya-hoo’s that did it originally 10 years ago put galvanized to copper, which increases electrolysis, which eats the iron out, making holes, and very high water bills. When finished, I had 1” copper to a di-electric union to galv. tee (feed the sprinkler system) to 1” union to 1 1/4” plastic that fed the house. Had it apart 4 times and to town 4 times (2 of which was because of a defective T) and 9 hours later we were all set. Didn’t need 2 unions there, but was nice in the end!

Thursday and Friday was spent trying to get 3 subtitle tracks to work with Scenarist (our $5,000 + $900 upgraded DVD authoring program.) It’s an easy fix, once you know it. But I don’t have a service contract and tried everything I could think of to make sure it wasn’t something I was doing wrong. In the end, it’s working fine. 12 discs missed the can.

Just some shots for the day. Men’s breakfast at church then helping a friend get some firewood for the winter—from another who is building a house.

Here’s some of the weekly troubles that plague my large projects:

On Mondays I’m on phones, so the day is often broken up by phone orders, questions, and the like.

Tuesdays seem to be a hap-hazard day for some reason. One reason is we have an office meeting from 9:00 to 10:00, which breaks up the morning (but is a good thing to do.) Then lunch (another good thing) followed by a full afternoon, of about 4.5 hours. But the breakup does break up any concentration on the project at hand.

Wednesdays I pack for Lloyd, as he has the day off. Perhaps a couple hours’ work, but the constant thinking and seeing orders come in and wanting to get them out as soon as possible tends to put a damper on this day. And as Russ will remind you, it’s also trash day.

Thursday and Friday are ok. And Saturday, too, if I don’t have any outside work to do.

Today is Thursday, 3:00 pm. So far this week, I’ve not been able to get to my DVD Re-author project (putting on the Spanish Subtitles.) Been doing thing like:

1. Inventory
2. Man the phones (Monday)
3. Quote requests for The Lamb reprint
4. MERGE forms for mileage to Canada
5. Thank you’s to supporters
6. Fixing broken links on the GoodSeed website
7. Take out trash
8. Pack orders (Wednesday)
9. Order more envelopes
10. Print / fold TERM brochures
11. Approve print job for ATP English book and WorkBook
12. Finalize files for ATP book / WorkBook
13. Zip, upload, send files to print house
14. Organize Dutch Stranger files to send

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to work on that project tomorrow… but I’ve heard that Time will no longer tell.

Did the cooking today… 2# of spaghetti w/ 1# ground beef, 1.5# (dried weight) pinto beans, and 4 (dry) cups of rice. Should be enough for 36 some dinners! Not all in the same pot, mind you, but bagged up and in the freezer.

Earlier today I turned down a tree job—just not enough time to tackle the project these days.

Friday, drove up to Canada w/ a load of books. Dropped them off at the office, then out to see the Kary’s. They were just finishing harvest when I got there, which was good and bad. Good because the harvest was done, bad because I didn’t get in on all the pictures that could have been. Drove home the next day (Saturday) to be able to rest up on Sunday…

Just a 20 min. part of the drive to our CDN office. Through Radium and some of the mountains. (For those of you who may never get out this way : ) Its best if you go full-screen and sit real close.

Today my long-lost skid came in. I contracted a company to pick it up from Seattle, who in turn dropped it off at another company (second) to deliver it to me. But instead, they dropped it off at another (third) trucking company, so the second couldn’t find it. Eventually, they realized the third company had it, so they had to bring it back before the second could deliver it. This is the third time I’ve had a skid lost in transit—something that seems odd to me…

Packing up to head north tomorrow. Looking forward to heading up again!

Sam and Lindsey’s wedding day!

Sam and Lindsey’s rehearsal

Waiting for the wedding (this Sat) I’ve been able to install a couple storm doors, help clean the church yard up and some other things. Here’s some random pictures of the area…

One would think it would be easy to send a skid to Australia, or receive one from Taiwan. However, it’s proved to be just the opposite this time.

I hired freightquote.com to pick a skid up in Kent, WA to be delivered here. It was delivered—but in Tacoma, WA (apparently was given to another carrier to deliver to us.) It was supposed to arrive yesterday, and by the end of today, it’s not been seen.

The other skid to Australia—I have a quote to send this on its way. On Monday. I approved it and am still waiting on paperwork to arrive. I bumped the fellow yesterday and this morning I received an email stating “I should have some news for your shortly.” By the end of the day—zip-o.

No worries on these—they aren’t critical (time-wise.) That being said, it does add to the “things to do” list, instead of being able to “set it and forget it.” One thing I don’t like to do is hound people to get something done. I’d just forget them and try someone else, however, I’m stuck this time. Or should I say these times!

Well, as I continue to work on this project, it brings me back to when I first edited The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus DVD set. That was a 7 year project for me, and this, while not expecting to be another 7 years, is still quite involved.

Today I finished creating the subtitles (step 5 below.) While good, it's only the fist main step. Here's a list of what's needed, and what's to come. Multiply each step by 52, as there are 52 sections to the video:

1. Combine the Spanish Audio files to the Video. Ajust timing as needed.
2. Export AVI files to be the base of everything to come.
3. Import straight text and have it automatically blocked to caption size.
4. Manually go through the file and straighten / shore up each caption.
5. Watch (or listen) the video and time each caption.
6. Print a hard copy to have proof-read.
7. Import corrections.
8. Export captions for YouTube captions
9. Transcode the AVI video files (with Spanish audio) to YouTube format.
10. Upload video files to YouTube
11. Import caption file to each video at YouTube
12. Link to each file
13. Have each video clip / captions proof-read
14. Import changes
15. Export caption files as Subtitles
16. Export caption files as Closed Caption files
17. Re-work video files to make smaller for web (remove book roll in from beginning)
18. Adjust caption files to fit new timing on video clips
19. Transcode new video files for YouTube
20. Upload new videos
21. Export caption files for YouTube
22. Re-import YouTube caption files to current online YouTube videos
23. Create page for Spanish visitors to watch entire 11 hours, with PDF files for the WorkBook questions and answers!

At this point, it's time to start authoring the DVDs. There's only 6 DVDs to create:

1. Transcode each video clip to MP2 and AAC files.
2. Import all video / audio / menu stills and overlays
3. Assign all as drop-frame timecode
4. Build each video track with: Video (with English Captions and Spanish Captions), Audio, English Subtitles, Spanish Subtitles, and a possible second Spanish Subtitles (with only Scripture.)
5. Finally author the DVDs. Each video clip has to verify which audio track to play, which (if any) subtitle track to play, and then after it was played, check to see if the audio / subtitle was changed during the video clip to record that change for the next one.

So, all in all there's a bit more to do yet... hopefully it won't take too long!

It’s been a good, but busy week.

Started on Monday helping a friend gather firewood, and trimmed several trees for another. It was Labor Day, after all!

The rest of the week included:

1. Bought a new 24 port switch, as our old one bought the farm over the weekend.
2. Managing a skid of books from Taiwan, and sending another skid of books to our Australian office from our office here.
3. We are moving our email server over to another system, so I had to create those new accounts and forwards (around 50 POP accounts) and will be sending emails to all those preparing our folks for the change over.
4. Web maintenance—adding a new product (French By This Name WorkBook) as well as engineering a different way to promote free books online.
5. Finishing up creating subtitles in Spanish for the DVD series.

Those are the main things going on, but lots of little things going on as well. Thank all of you that help me be here!