I've had a couple of computer scares the last couple of days.  Yesterday, I returned home to find my computer rebooting itself, but it seemed stuck in an XP startup progress screen.  I turned it off, waited 10 minutes, as I'm apt to do, then started it back up again.  Unfortunately, it was really noisy on the reboot, and I knew it was time to take a look inside.  I mean, it had been too noisy for awhile, but this was ridiculous.  So, I opened it up, and it was full of dust, so my first attempt was just the basic clean up.  I took it outside with my compressed air duster, and blew out a lot of the dust, especially from areas containing fans, as they were the most likely culprit for the noise-making.  I took it back inside, plugged it back in, and still there was the noise. 

With the cover off, I put my ear near the inside to try to track down the source of the noise.  The power supply!  This was a good thing I thought, because I've replaced power supplies before, and they are failry cheap and easy to replace.  I took the power supply out, and gave it its very own air duster treatment.  I decided I'd take it apart, too, which voided the warranty on it, but like I said, they aren't that expensive.  I wanted to test it now by itself, so I plugged it in and turned on the switch.  Nothing.  This is because, it turns out, it's controlled by the power button on the computer via the motherboard.  So, I decided to plug the power back into the motherboard in order to use said power button.  Doing so also powered the fans on the CPUs, and now with the power supply separated from these fans by more distance, I realized that the noise was coming from one of the CPU fans.  By alternately turning the computer on with each CPU fan plugged in by itself, I discovered which fan was the problem.  I took it off and could tell just by spinning it with my finger that it was not in good working order.  So, I walked down to the neighborhood Radio Shack, bought a $10 fan, and installed it.  Problem solved and a quieter office to boot!

Then, this morning, I came in to my office, and was greeted by a hard disk failure error message.  Yikes.  But I didn't panic, because I know that whenever I get inside my computer and start messing around and moving it around, cables and such are likely to come loose.  Sure enough, I hadn't firmly plugged the power back into that hard drive, so it was just not turning on.  I plugged it back in and now my computer has lived to blog about it.

Clinton called tonight and asked me, “What do people do on a Friday night?”  He vaguely remembered that in his not-too-distant past he would go out and do stuff on weekends.  So, we piled into the car, sans Doug, who doesn't know what he's missing, and headed to the Grove for a little dessert at The Farm.  It...was...awesome.  I started off with a perfectly temperatured hot chocolate with whip cream.  Soon to follow was The Farm Something Or Other Brownie Sundae and an order of S'mores.  They bring a flame out to the table with marshmallows on sticks, a Hershey's bar and some homemade-style graham crackers.  Wow.  Being at the Grove and eating s'mores reminded me of the last time Jamie and I were there at Sur La Table, and they were selling a s'mores candy bar called “some'mores”.  These people either didn't get the etymology of the word s'more, or they have no idea what function an apostrophe performs.  It still tasted good.

Jamie and I got to go with Tony & Martel to VH1's Big In '04 awards show last night at the Shrine Auditorium.  It was quite a production and a lot of fun.  We got to their place about 5:00 pm, which gave Jamie a chance to get her eyes done by Martel.  We were dressed “hiply”, and Tony was sporting a designer sport coat from a designer whose name he could not pronounce.  The limo driver, Milos, came to the door to pick us up about 5:30, and we piled in and headed our way through the traffic to get to USC.  Traffic has never been so nice.  There was a wide array of beverages for our enjoyment, and we got to catch up with the Hale's as we hadn't hung out in awhile.

We arrived at the drop-off point, where we received our credentials: a “Talent Guest” card and a ticket.  Jamie and I got out of the limo first, exiting on the side of the limo furthest from the crowd.  They couldn't tell who we weren't from that distance, and when they saw the back of Jamie's blonde head, I heard someone yell out “Paris, Paris!”  The setup was basically on a street corner which was full of onlookers.  The red carpet, which was actually a yellowy-beige, led us past the onlookers into the press tent.  Jamie, Martel, and I walked behind the press, while Tony and his publicist navigated through the photographs and interviews.  We watched as others showed up, including Joss Stone, Jeffrey Tambor, Alia Shawkat, Black-Eyed Peas, Maroon 5, Ron Jeromy, Joe Rogan, Kathy Griffin, and others that we didn't recognize.

Once Tony was done going through press, we went through security, and then headed on into the green room.  This was a pretty sweet spread.  The bar was open and the food was plentiful...and free.  We hung out mostly with AD cast, including Alia, Tony, and the girl who has played George Michael's girlfriend in the last couple of episodes.  After a little while, we were joined by Will Arnett and Amy Poehler.  This was my biggest got-to-meet-a-celebrity moment of the night.  Will is on AD, and Martel knows Amy from her SNL days.  Martel introduced us, and I admitted that she is my favorite cast member at the moment.  We also talked with Tony's publicist, who has skydove-skydived-skydiveded over 500 times, and does it at the same place where I jumped.  Before the show, in the green room, we saw Nikki Hilton, Chad Muska, Jason Bateman, that's all I can remember.

We stayed in the green room until the show started, and they made us leave.  We weren't sitting with Tony & Martel, so we went to enter by another door.  On our way, we came across the guys from The Lonely Island, of 'Just 2 Guyz' fame, waiting to get in their door.  We struck up a conversation and got along really well.  Jamie hooked them up with her backstage pass for use while we were watching the show.  I talked to them several times as the night progressed, and I'm hoping that I can connect with them again soon to do some video nonsense.

The show itself was pretty pathetic.  I booed Michael Moore when he won some award, but at least his speech didn't mention Bush and didn't sound bitter, so I didn't have to boo his speech, too.  Nick Lachey was the host, and I can only hope that the Segues did a better job of hosting Baylor events than he did.  (Yes, even Diadeloso, though we weren't hosting.)  In his defense, the jokes didn't suit themselves to play to the live audience.  Perhaps it will be better on TV.  The low points were Anna Nicole Smith's acceptance speech, and Brigitte Nielsen & Flavor Flav's award presentation.  The musical performances of note were Maroon 5 and Green Day.

After AD accepted their award for Big Family in '04, we met Tony & Martel back in the green room, where the entire group of Lonely Islanders had all managed to get in.  We enjoyed some more food and beverage, while watching the likes of Ron Jeromy, Brigitte Nielsen, and Flavor Flav mingle with the crowd.  We headed out to go home, and while we were waiting for our driver, Jamie spotted the Hamm brothers and went and introduced herselft.  That was her highlight of the night.  OK, I think that covers just about everything.

UPDATE: Fixed spelling of 'sporting'.

We went to see the progress on our new condo today.  We had to enter through the garage, which was cool, because we hadn't seen that yet.  It's really coming along.  The walls are painted.  Almost all of the cabinetry is in.  All of the sinks are in.  They had mirrors up in all of the bathrooms.  The light switches were installed.  It's pretty much finishing touches, flooring and appliances.  The move-in date is still March 15th, but maybe something will happen sooner.  It was such a beautifully clear day today there, too.  We could see the snow-capped mountains to the east and the ocean to the west.  Wow.  Can't wait.

Now, you're getting tired of me.  I saw the preview for In Good Company today for the second time.  I'm really looking forward to this one.  A friend of Clinton's at Dreamworks is going to try to get the script to me, so I can read it before I see it.  I want to see if I can imagine the movie myself without the aid of the movie.  I figure that is a skill I'll need if I ever want to be an actual producer.

I realize that it's been years since I've really blogged last and nobody reads this anymore, but in case someone does, I'm trying to come up with a good word that I can use as a trademark for an idea I've had lately.  Something short that's probably not a real word that I can use as a domain name.  For instance, I really like TiVo, but sadly it's already taken.  Any ideas?  No, I can't post the idea here.

In the course of the last week, I saw National Treasure and Finding Neverland.  I expected very little from National Treasure, and apart from the in-your-face, surprise-attack-style product placement, I thought it was quite entertaining, actually even good.  Cage's sidekick is really good, and the characters' self-deprecation keeps the movie from taking itself too seriously.  Finding Neverland was really quite sad, but if you don't mind that so much, the story is moving, especially when you already know the story of Peter Pan and can see it forming before the Depp's character's eyes.  If you prefer to escape sadness in movies, be warned.

Oh yeah, we have to pay $1 for parking at the ArcLight now.  Boo.

You should...http://www.pinback.com/.

Wow, long vacation.  By the time we got back from vacation, I was pretty sick with a cold and tired from all the traveling.  Plus, I had loads of work stacked up waiting for my upon my return.  So, I didn't really feel like blogging.  It's a shame, because I had a lot of stuff that I wanted to say about the election that is now all moot.

Tonight, we went over to Tony & Martel's for the season premiere of Arrested Development.  It has been blessed with a solid time slot finally, following the Simpsons on Sunday nights.  Hopefully, it will play there consistently and not get pre-empted too often.  Is pre-empted hypenated?  Anyway, it was a great episode; I hope you all got to see it.  Mike and Alia, the actors who play George Michael and Maeby were also there, and it was fun to watch them watch their show.  Terence and Clinton were there as was a new girl from New York named Tanya.  It was a fun group to hang out with, and Clinton brought some sweet root beer.

Speaking of Clinton, he just purchased a Windows Media Center PC from Sony this week.  It's pretty awesome.  It's basically a powerful video editing workstation and a Tivo all rolled into one, plus a lot of other cool stuff.

This weekend, we're heading to San Diego to shoot Jamie and Clinton in a pilot/audition video for the Food Network.  Should be interesting.  Perhaps it will get posted.

And before I go, how about a pic from the va-cay.

I ventured out in the rain tonight to meet with Scott Coones (and supposedly Cameron Coen) about a short Scott wrote and I'm going to help produce.  If there had been thunder and lightning, it could have been a Texas thunderstorm.  We're off to Texas in the morning, and I'm not likely to blog while we're there.  Oh, we did get a portable dvd player for ourselves for an early Christmas present so we'll have something to do on the plane.