My church is merging with another reformed church in town. It’s great to be attending a church that values mission before pride. Together Praxis and East Valley Bible are better than they were apart. I can’t say that EVBC is really the sort of church that I would have chosen to go to. I have a thing against churches with coffee shops and more stage lights than a good indie rock show. I’d like to think they do have their priorities right and this move gives weight to that. The life cycle of a church can be rough and hopefully this merger will create a church that bridges that gap. They’ve setup a blog to help describe the merger as it happens over the next few months. http://www.redemptionaz.com

Cora and I are doing great. We’ve been talking about marriage for a little bit now and I’m getting to a place where my qualms are being put to rest and our questions and concerns are being answered. Who knows, maybe by the end of the year all that will be stopping us is a healthy nervous fear. :) It’s been really amazing to see how someone can become such an integral part of your life in less than a year. We’ll be in Boise for Christmas, I look forward to introducing her to more old friends while we’re there.

Take it easy, you know I will.

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It would be nice.

I kid you not, I feel like data loss is the worst thing than can happen in my profession. Yes, getting cheated by a client is bad, simply being without work is terrible. However, there is really nothing that devastates me like a drive that won’t mount, won’t repair and won’t rebuild.

I tried all the tricks I’ve got and then when I still couldn’t get it to mount I went into full freakout mode for a couple hours. I have a backup and archival system in place but, with the amount of data I’ve accumulated for Praxis projects in the last year, I hadn’t kept up. Nothing was in danger of being completely lost, thankfully I’m more responsible than that. I pride myself on keeping everything pertinent to a project, I love having the freedom to change a shot for my reel, or resurrect a cut for a client. You have to have some decent luck to keep that up though. My luck ran out and I lost 6 projects. I still have the master renders, I still have much of the capture scratch, but the project files, images, effects and color grading is all lost.

Meh, I let this sort of thing bother me way too much. Overall this year has been sorta lame. Other than BSU’s win I can’t say a lot of good has happened.
Which is bull shit, I shouldn’t have such a bad attitude. My life is rather kick ass, by even first world standards.
lol, that’s a terrible way of quantifying happiness.

I now live in a world temporarily without Jay Leno. So, I guess it can’t get much better.

Here is the video that was first mentioned in this post. Silas did all the real post production work, even without my drive crashing I quickly realized how terrible it was of me to want to change things. I won’t even say what I wanted to change, because it’s immaterial. Silas had finally gotten the chance to edit a video and he did a great job. It’s his edit with some normal changes from the rest of the team and it’s fantastic.

Identifying your Apocalypse – Survivor’s Guide to the Apocalypse. from Praxis Church on Vimeo.

The new sermon series is about the end of the world and thankfully it’s not some silly study of a movie including Kirk Cameron. It’s just an overview of the different theories with an emphasis on what really matters, not scary, imaginative theology. The videos however, are informational and made with the highest attention to biblical, historical and cinematic accuracy. :)

If you can figure out the source of the video’s music without looking at the description you’re my new favorite person.

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Trust me, I’m a scientist.

George Hildreth had a full funeral. Standing room only and very nice until the power went out. After people had a chance to talk, after a few songs and the pastor had said a few things the lights went out and didn’t come back until just about everyone was ready to leave.
It was sorta fun actually, we had a recording of my Grandpa singing a song and right when it was time to play it, everything went dark. I guess Grandpa figured that if you weren’t around to hear him in person, then you missed your chance. It was nice to see some extended family and we got a good family picture out of the day, so there were some perks.

My vacation has been great so far, I’ve got some work to do but, for the most part I get to just relax for the next few days.
Last week and the one before were not good weeks, not good in a lot of ways. So I’m doing all I can to enjoy this time at home.

Our Advent video series finished up last Sunday, here are the last two videos:

Reaping the rewards of giving – Advent from Praxis Church on Vimeo.

Giving for the sake of community – Advent from Praxis Church on Vimeo.

Every now and then I’ll let a video get the best of me. Most of the time cutting something together is rather utilitarian, it’s just putting things in order, or getting a few points across. Somehow that last Advent video became complicated though, I think I started on it too early. My naming system allows for me to keep major changes in my edits and early last week I was already on major revision number four. I like the way it turned out, but it could have been better.

We started production this week on the latest series. I’ve handed off editing duties to another guy on our team. I had been doing basically all the post, so it’s time to spread the work around. I’ll still have some animation and color to do… and will probably do the online edit as well. We have a lot of talent on our creative team, it’s nice to be able to assume another role for a project or two.

Whether you spend it with friends or family enjoy your holiday.

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Winter

Here is week two of the Advent video series I mentioned last week:

Giving for the sake of community – Advent from Praxis Church on Vimeo.

I’ve decided to look around for a Christmas tree for my place. I don’t have any ornaments down here, just some keepsake types back home… so this endeavor might get expensive. We’ll see how it goes, I need to find something small and I don’t really feel like spending a whole day looking.

Last week my Pastor wrote a blog entry about a new philosophy he’s trying to live out. He is doing his best to live with only 100 possessions. He isn’t counting things like furniture or individual plates and forks or anything, but he does count clothing. He lists out the 100 things in the above link and reading through the list really hit me hard this week. I own a lot of stupid shit… boxes full. If I played by his rules or even if I didn’t count clothing I would not make it. It wouldn’t be close and honestly that’s just sad. I’ve taken my comfortable living and matched it up with a nerdy obsession for new gadgets and it’s just gotten to be too much. I don’t need two computers and literally enough parts for a couple more. I don’t need three cameras, I don’t need a tablet I never use and a few hard drives I’ve never filled. I don’t need half of my wardrobe and I don’t need to sit around and think about what furnishing my apartment needs next.
When I find the time I’m going to start going through my closets and shelves. I don’t need most of this stuff… it doesn’t just take up space or consume a part of my pay check. I really do believe that having excess is just going to make me want more excess. If I don’t learn how to live without now, I’m not ever going to get that down. There is something to be said for only owning 100 objects. Hopefully it doesn’t take my too long to get down there.

That being said there is an arcade machine (that’s so close to being fixed) that is absolutely yelling at me from the other room. :/

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1000 things and counting.

This Sunday starts Advent and we’ve been working on a series of videos for service that sheds some light on some people who have really exemplified giving. This is the first of four videos.

Sacrificial giving – Advent from Praxis Church on Vimeo.

I’ve been listening to Sufjan Steven’s Songs for Christmas non stop lately. I’m usually not into Christmas music at all, but I just can’t resist his music. He recorded five small albums of traditional and new Christmas songs and now you can get them all in a little box set for $20. I high recommend it, there is even a great version of Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Sufjan’s Episcopalian, it’s easy to hear the biblical references in any of his albums. I honestly don’t listen to much ‘christian’ music these days, so it’s especially nice to hear a good hymn.

Looks like I’ll be in Boise from December 23rd until the 3rd of January. For a few days I thought I might be in New York for New Years on some business, but it all fell through. I’ve never been to NY and there are few things better than traveling on the company dime… but it would have cut into my time back home. It’ll be nice to have more than a week in the city of trees. Hopefully I’ll see you there. :)

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December?