Archive for March, 2009

I worked with a awesome new client Kilgannon and some kick ass ferret renderings to create this cool web animation for OVE.com.  Check it out.

Technology is a crazy thing. Especially these days. I decided to write this blog a long time ago when the media war between Blu-Ray and HD Dvd had ended. But as with all technology, things change. Let me start with this: Business is business. The media was only a battle between companies and the companies those companies backed. They both made a choice and put their money on one of the competing sides. Blu-Ray won. I wasn’t a big surprise. Blu-Ray had a high storage capacity, Playstation 3 used it and it had a cool name with “Blue” in it but instead of spelling it “Blue” they spelled it without the “e” at the end. Yep. Crazy. The sad thing is I’m pretty sure this is the reason with it won. The Playstation thing helped too, but who wanted an updated DVD player with an “HD” thrown in the beginning of the name? I wasn’t convinced.

Anyway, Blu-Ray won and that is that.  HD DVD is dead.  The future of media is set.  Or is it?  This is my main argument against Blu-Ray.  As I said before, this is a business.  The thing is, is that media in general is about to be obsolete.  Companies already have the capabilities to stream giant amounts of information to your home without even touching a Disc.  Downloading is becoming the norm along with Netflix and just watching movies online.  Netflix recently made a move with XBox that allowed XBox owners to stream movies through their game machine from the Internet to your TV.  Brilliant idea.   This is two big companies preparing for the future.  I don’t see Netflix going anywhere if they keep this up.

I have always been a movie collector.  Always.  But it wasn’t until recently that I was over it.  I decided I had bought my last DVD and I would not start collecting the single new media, the Blu-Ray.  My current DVD collection will most likely start to dwindle as I sell them away or let people borrow them with them never returning them.  It happens.  I might just box them up and put them in my new attic til I can give them to my kids to teach them about the crazy cinema of my day.  Either way, I am done spending the funds on something that was mostly a waste of money anyway.  How often do you actually watch movies you buy anyway.  Once?  Twice?  Never more than that.  Unless it’s like Half Baked or Grandma’s Boy.  Those are classics.  

Anyway, I am excited about creating my new library.  One that will most likely be already made for me.  One that looks like a cable box, has a hard drive and an Internet connection that can stream movies whenever I want them.  The size of selection will always be growing and I will never be without a new release the day it comes out.  I will never have late fees.  I will never have a scratched disc.  Discs will never get lost in the mail.  I wont have four disc always floating around my living room.  All movies will be in High Definition.  When High Definition becomes obsolete, The next new format will automatically be available to me.  I will have a box and a screen.  This is the future of media.  No media at all.

We closed on our house on February 24th 2009 at 12:00.  The events that lead up to that day were littered with fear, anger, frustration, stress, and excitement.  You see, after the official acceptance of the offer we had three weeks of Due Diligence and Financial Contingency.  What this means is that we had three weeks to get financed, get appraised, get inspected and make a decision.  During this period, we could walk away for any reason at all.  So we had a lot of decisions to make.  But, in the beginning, it was a waiting game.  We had to wait on our Mortgage Broker and our Realtor to set up our appraisal and inspection and get us financing asap.  Fortunately this was the least of our worries as the appointments were made for early the next week.

We didn’t say much to the appraiser, but the inspector took us on a quick tour of our new home pointing out all the imperfections along the way.  From the beginning, I was nervous that Priscilla would find something to make her change her mind as I knew that inspectors are paid to find something wrong.  That wasn’t the case though and she was surprisingly accepting about the homes tiny faults.  They were minor though.  A few boards that needed to be replaced.  A leaky pressure valve.  Some other little minor things, but nothing to keep us from closing on our new home.

Next we had to wait on the finances.  At the moment we had an acceptance letter James Willard was in contact with us requesting a number of documents including proof of employment, credit checks, proof of funds, etc., etc.  After that it was in someone else’s hands.  Mostly the Banks as they have a list of potential mortgages and they were not going to even get to ours for more than a week.  We waited, but I wasn’t too worried.  This market wants buyers like us and we fit all the requirements.  Plus we had the money and credit.  We waited.

Closing was on Friday, so we decided to do a final walk through on the Monday before.  Everything was looking perfect.  That was about to change.  

Quick back story on the house:  There was a lady living in the house that was not the true owner.  She was renting the house from a young guy that bought the house in 2008.  The details from there get a little cloudy, but all I know was that she did not want to move out.  From what I can gather, she had been doing small renovations throughout the house since she had lived there.  I am not sure why a renter would spend the money to renovate a house they do not own, but, as far as I know, she was responsible for a the dishwasher, the carpet, the unpainted crown molding throughout the kitchen, the updated thermostats, and alarm system, to name a few.  She did these things thinking she would be buying the house.  I guess.  We found out she had lost her job and ran out of funds.  All in all, she was not happy about loosing the home.  OK end of back story.

Our walk through was interesting from the start as when we walked in we heard noises from the upstairs.  Not wanting to freak anyone out, we talked loudly to make sure they knew we were here.  A young African American man came down the stairs and said all of three words to us.  Our Realtor David Willard asked if his mother was home and that we had an appointment to see the house.  That is when we noticed some things.  A broken marble fireplace corner, a broken baluster, and a few ten inch gashes on the stairway wall.  These were things that were new and the boy confirmed that.  We also noticed the alarm system and the thermostats had been yanked off the walls throughout the house leaving large holes in the drywall.  It was not pretty.  As we were leaving the lady living in the house came home and as she walked in the door she threw her hands up in disgust.  Unaware why we were there, she was pissed.

We didn’t know just how pissed til a couple days later.

I get a call from David Willard stating that they would offer $500 as compensation from the new damages, but there was a kicker.  The Lady had taken a key to the front of the super nice dishwasher and scratched up the whole front.  We were not sure just why she did it, but we assumed it was out of spite.  This lady was growing more annoying by the hour.  After I had agreed to the terms and a few hours later, I got a call from David that she has done damage to the dishwasher and that it may not work.  Now, let me remind you, this was a “short sale.”  The seller was broke and had now way of compensating us for the new damages.  The $500 was the limit.  Our only choice was to completely back out, and David seemed to think that they would just let it happen if that is what we decided.  In other words they would call our bluff and let the house go into foreclosure.  He seemed to think we had no other choice but to let it ride out and take what we get.  We were stressed and confused and pissed.  We let it ride out.

The next day the owner decided to replace the thermostats and try to fix the dishwasher before we moved in.  We were pleasantly surprised.  By this time he had kicked the Lady that was renting out of the house and changed the locks.  She had no more overnight privileges.  The only thing was that when we signed he was going to put the old locks back on.  Crazy Lady had the keys to the old locks.  First chore and expense in our new house was a set of new locks throughout. (but that’s for the next blog entry)  We found out the dishwasher was not broken at all.  It was disconnected because the Lady tried to take it!!  We couldn’t believe it.  But really we could.  She was nuts.  But is didn’t matter.  We were happy with our functioning dishwasher.  When we signed the papers, we were content and convinced this was the house we wanted. 

We are officially home owners.

So a couple of years back I heard of this awesome invention called ear candles.  It was actually my good friend Kiki that first told me about them and from the start I loved them.  With a history of ear issues I thought that a natural safe cleanse of ear wax would be good for me and feel awesome.  So I went for it.  Kiki, Priscilla and I all took turns watching the candles burn down to nothing and cutting them open to find out who had the most nastiness inside.

Ear candles are easy to use.  They come in packages of two and are basically a thick wax sheet rolled into a tube that has a cone at the end.  That end is placed into your ear and the other end is lit like a candle.  It burns for about ten to fifteen minutes.  It needs to be monitored by someone else so the ashes don’t fall on your head and light your hair on fire Michael Jackson style.  It’s not hard but definitely takes patients.  I have ADD so it’s not easy for me, but neither is getting my hair cut.  haha.  Anyway, when you are done you go to the sink and with some basic scissors you cut the rest of the tube open and examine the insides.  They always include a collection of yellow and white stuff that is bunched up like ear wax.  The reason that has the most wins a prize of the knowledge that they have the most ear wax in their head.  I won most of the time.  But later I would find out that our competition really meant very little.

About a year ago I was ready for my next ear candle experience and I went online to search for the best place in Atlanta to buy some.  The health food store by my house had gone out of business so I was left with no place to go.  Whole Foods does not carry them and Whole foods has basically wiped out all the “Mom and Pops” health food stores so my search was not easy.  I resorted to Google and what I found was alarming.

The first article that came up was an article explaining how Ear Candles were not only ineffective, but extremely dangerous.  I continued to read and found out tha ear candles have been around for centuries, but only recently has been considered a waste of time.  The current Wikipedia stats:

“Ear candling, also called ear coning or thermal-auricular therapy, is an alternative medicine practice claimed to improve general health and well-being by lighting one end of a hollow candle and placing the other end in the ear canal. According to medical researchers, it is both dangerous and ineffective. ^[2]Claims that the practice removes earwax have been thoroughly debunked.”

It’s amazing just how many people I know personally still stand by ear candling and use them to this day.  My own wife needed proof before she believed me and so that exactly what I got her.  Priscilla, not believing my warnings, insisted we buy some ear candles.  So I said that as long as we can burn one by itself, we can seek out and buy some for her to use.  All I wanted to do was run a simple experiment to see if the contents of the candle after it is burned is truly only the residue left from the candle itself.  And thats exactly what we found.  After letting the candle burn for over fifteen minutes without an ear to accompany it, the inside looked identical to that of one that had it’s ear partner.  Priscilla was convinced and so was I.  

After realizing that the wax found inside was indeed from the candle it scares me to think that some of that wax could drop down inside the ear itself while candling.  This is the main reason doctors are against them.  So stay away and dont believe the believers. Tell them to do the experiment themselves and they too will believe.

(All these pictures are from our experiment. No Ears included.)

I work at Indigo Studios which is located at 660 11th Street Atlanta Georgia 30318.  11th Street is located in between Howell Mill Road and Northside Drive in Midtown Atlanta.  Northside drive is a very unique place to work and is shared by a number of different kinds of people that makes Northside such a wonderful place.  There is always something different, something new.  There honestly could be a reality show purely based on the trials and tribulations of the characters that reside on the street they call Northside.

Northside actually runs from my condo in Vinings then through the edge of Buckhead and then all the way to my office in Midtown.  Its about a ten mile ride with numerous lights along the way which is why I bypass most of it with a quick jump on the freeway.  It’s kinda funny to think of the type of people that litter the streets only ten miles apart from each other.  You see, up by my house Northside is a forested community with rich mansions and preppy neighborhoods that include some of the riches people in Atlanta.  Celebrities such as Jermain Dupree, Oprah,  and Elton John  also have been known to live up in the north end of Northside.

But that’s not the Northside I work in.  The Northside I work in is the south end.  Almost everyday I have been driving the stretch of Northside that starts at Interstate 75 and ends at Georgia Tech.  Lets just say that it is the ghetto part.  Yeah it’s ghetto, but it’s also an artsy, cool kinda ghetto.  It is beginning to be an art deco neighborhood with a ton of digital art shops like Indigo itself.  We have several competitors right down the street from us.  It also is on the up and up with a couple giant new developments including the wonderful Atlantic Station that is right down the way on 17th Street.

Northside also has a large community of music recording studios that almost completely make up the local Atlanta Rap scene.  Actually Indigo shares a building with Solar Sound Studio that pumps out mad beats that we can hear all day through the wall we share.  The vibrations are accompanied with a heavy stench of marijuana which is something our clients just love.  Also, 5 years ago Indigo was located just a mile down Northside and we were neighbors to the infamous Atlanta rap duo Outkast.  It was pretty cool to see them and there hallowed out cigar remains in our parking lot.

Northside Drive also ends directly at the inner city college Georgia Tech.  It is a beautiful campus with a extremely diverse demograph of people.  Mostly those include nerdy Asian kids and 24 year old women that have never been laid, but overall I’m glad the campus is close.  It is still a college.  It brings a whole other element to Northside and is the main reason it has begun to grow with all the new developments.  College kids need apartments to live in and they are going up everywhere.  Even with such a shitty housing market, there is a massive complex being built right next to Indigo that now dwarfs our building.  I’m just excited cause we are getting a Smoothie King and a Jersey Mikes right next door.  Holler!

But all this is not the true deep down entity of Northside Drive.  Northside itself has its own residence.  It is littered with a large amount of homeless that can be seen daily walking up and down the street.  There has been copper stolen from our neighbours and Indigo itself has been broken into.  There is a metal scrap shop at the end of 11th Street along with three abandoned homes that look as if they were built in the fifties and left to rout in the seventies when cinder block homes went out of style.

We also have grown to get to know our homeless friends.  At Indigo, we constantly get a knock on the door from the same 2 homeless men asking for our collection of coke cans.  We also have one guy that drives around on his tricycle talking to himself and dancing through traffic. We lock our doors when we see him.   There is actually an abandoned bank where homeless people live, but not in the building just under the covering for the once active drive through ATM.  We often see a skinny black woman sitting in the parking lot of the bank  holding her knees rocking back and forth whispering to herself.  We also see our old friend that used to live in the parking lot of building next door in an abandoned house before they tore it down to build the new apartments.  He calls himself the Sheriff because he watches the neighborhood.  We found out later we was a regular at the local bar Northside Tavern.

Northside Tavern actually is on Howell Mill which is one street over but it is worth mentioning because it is so famous for its live Blues music ever night.  Northside Tavern is one of many wonderful bars and restaurant that are found all over the Northside area including Taco Rio Del Sol, Flip Burger and Six Feet Under.  Unfortunately they are also accompanied by a number of trashy strip clubs and novelty shops.

I once saw a movie named “Crackheads gone wild” that has a wonderful quote from an Atlanta crackhead that said, “I buy my shit on Northside drive!”  I thought it summed up the neighborhood pretty well.