I road for a full month before other life issues forced me to get back into a combustible engine. I did like riding, I hope to be able to start it up again. We had a few windy days that nearly blew me off my bike, but for the most part, I enjoyed the ride.

Today is a great day to ride, but yesterday it was pouring incredibly, and last night we had walnut-size hail hitting around town. Such is life in March in the Northern portion of the State of California.

I had to ride clear across town to the DMV  in a MAJOR windstorm, to get proper registration for my other car, which was registered as a non-op for 3 years. The “other” car is a 22-year old Alfa Romeo Graduate-Spider with only 72-thousand miles on it, I-kid-you-not! It’s a 2-seater convertible, so I can’t exactly cart my video gear around in it.

I finally dumped the German car that broke down, causing all my earlier drama. It’s a 1997 Audi A4 Quattro, an all-wheel-drive that really likes speed, and corners better than a Roller Derby Queen, but it also liked to spend more time in the shop than on the street. Between the two European cars, I had a whole one, but I didn’t want to put too much wear-n-tear on the Italian job, and I was afraid of the German vehicle’s expenses so I bought a new-to-me Honda Accord (2005). I like this one; it packs my video gear well and is kind on repair and gas.

I’ve been commissioned to shoot another wedding next week. Still camera, which is different for me. Video I know like a pro baseball player knows the feel of a bat in his hands, but still shooting has always been just a hobby for me.

Shooting video, I’ve run second cam for Brent or Ryan once in a while, which I like doing, but shooting a wedding solo can be a pain sometimes. Wedding videography can be a pretty lucrative business, but I tell you, some brides act as if they are the spawn of a demon on the days before the wedding. A good wedding planner can ease a bride’s drama, but sometimes brides and grooms just shoot themselves in the foot all on their own.

Trying to “bargain basement” the videographer or still photographer is not a good idea. I mean, after it’s over, for instance, who’s going to remember (or care) if the table cloths didn’t match the balloons, (I had a friend go ballistic on the caterer over this one time…) but if you have a poorly shot poorly produced video, you can’t redo the wedding to fix that. My hat is off to all of you wedding shooters out there, you do a great job, at great risk to your reputation if a bride goes over the deep end.

Well those are my musings for the week, it’s been awhile.

Long before it was hip to be eco-friendly, Videomaker’s hometown of Chico, California was doing the Save-the-Earth thing. We honor, preserve and sometimes battle over our old-growth trees. We’ve been a cycling town for decades, and even have a Velo cycling club, several century-mile cycle clubs, and a world-class cycling team, sponsored by our own world-class beer-haus: The Sierra Nevada Brewery.

This week was “Bike Chico“, a week-long event to encourage people to ride their bikes to work and school. Events around town included Energizer Stations with drinks and snacks for riders; and games, demos and important bike helmet safety tips for kids.

Last week was “Free Bus Ride” week, where anyone could ride any city bus for free all week. I sampled a ride, it didn’t take too long.

This is just a taste of what makes Chico such a wonderful place to live and work. It’s a college town with a small population, and has an honest-to-goodness thriving Old Town Downtown where you can actually stroll Main Street in the evening and stop off at Shubert’s Hand Made Ice-Cream shop, sitting outside on the sidewalk and watch and wave as other strollers go by.We have two marvelous Farmer’s Markets weekly, one selling veggies and goodies early in the morning, and the other more of a carnival, meet and greet in the summertime evenings. We even have outdoor movie-in-the-park night in the summertime.

Karma wasn’t on MY side this week, though, when it came to getting to work. I rode Monday and Tuesday, but decided to drive on Wednesday, due to a stupid need to run errands on my lunch hour. And wouldn’t you know it, my car broke down on the way to the office and I spent the next 2 hours waiting for a tow truck and then getting an estimate. It’s a German car, Audi A4 Quattro, All-wheel Drive. Nice sweet ride… until it doesn’t ride.

COST: Starter and Ignition, $1500, New key, $300, a chance to ride my bike for a few more weeks: Priceless.

It’s going to cost me a couple paychecks to get that baby out of the shop! Stupid gas-guzzling machine!

I guess I’ll be riding my bike more, not less… and taking the bus a time or two.

Chico California a great place to be. Just some rambling musings before I hop on my bike and head for the park. Night, all! Happy Weekend!

Videomaker has been at it’s 3rd and present location for a good number of years, and it seemed time to freshen up and rearrange the office.

Several departments work closely together, like our Editorial Dept. and the Production Dept, but the layout wasn’t efficient for one-on-one interaction, and some staff members were pretty isolated from others even within their own departments.

The Production  Dept. was on the opposite side of the building from the Editorial Dept, for instance, so we agreed to merge office space.  Production and Editorial merged with IT, creating a Super Cubicle Center we’re dubbing ProdITorial.  Sales and Marketing have also moved into a Super Center, …”Sarketing?” “Mar-sals?”… and we’re all trying to get used to each other’s differences.

Some who were in full 3-sided cubicles are now in open-air space, (like me) while others are more enclosed, (like Tech Editor Mark).

What was interesting to watch was how our daily habits have changed… “Where’s the printer” became a game similar to watching mice in a maze who have traveled around their familiar surroundings for months suddenly having to find their way around it again when someone moves a couple of the dividers.

Some of us like it more open, others prefer the enclosed space. Poor Susan and Melissa no longer have windows, and are now trying to Feng Shui their space with personal touches like fish bowls, plants, and mirrors.

The office previously had six long divided sections, each with 3 or 4 cubicles on each side of the divide. Now we have three “Super Cubicles” as I like to call them, with larger open areas in the center.

John joked that we need to make a true lounge in the center “quad” of our Super Cube to look what people assume our “Videomaker Lounge” community site must be based on, as everyone knows we have a fun office full of games like basketball tournaments, old-fashioned popcorn machines, and we used to ride around the nearby park in a old-time Surry on lunch breaks.

I have the garden table, bar stools, twinkle lights and umbrella ready, we just need the Tiki torches and luau skirts!

Here’s a photo of Life in an office environment that would be fun to work in. I sent our I.T. guys the photo with a request, but they have yet to build me a super fish tank!

So I seem to have become the Guinea Pig for getting a Videomaker Lounge blog up and running.

After many trial and errors, we discovered that I’m a Bozo. Yep. That’s right. The computer thinks I’m a Bozo. That’s what I was told, anyway. It kept spitting me out of the system, suspecting that I’m doing some illegal internet activity, maybe even some s.p..a…m’ing. Notice that I didn’t even spell that correctly, just in case.

What this meant was that I couldn’t add an avatar to my member sign on. This discovery had our wonderful I.T. guys scratching their heads for a while, but they are such brilliant guys that the problem was solved. This might be why so many of our members don’t have avatars, so I’m looking into that, and will report on it… somewhere!

So we got my member sign on to stick, then I had to deal with the site admin when I made my blog page. A number of the pages don’t allow the user admin abilities, rendering them useless, so after some more trial and error, we are discovering which ones are mere dummy pages, and which ones actually work, and will fix those when we can get to them. I’m meeting up with the really cool Art Department next week to work on that. Again, as soon as I know.. you’ll know.

I think I have a shoot scheduled right now, so I gotta run!

I’ve been needing to create my blog, and join The Lounge, for a long long time, now, but I’ve been busy with the many duties I do here at Videomaker.

We all wear multiple hats, and this week I am trying to firm up assignments for the upcoming West Coast Summit in Pasadena in April; finish proofing the May issue of the magazine that goes to to the printers next week; beg and bother writers assigned to the July and August issues to please get their stories in; finish editing the June issue so I can send it to our marvelous art department so they can do the magic they do, … and… I’m writing the May Quick Focus column on how to sign up to The Lounge. So I guess I better get myself signed up! It’s not as intuitive as I thought, but I’m not as techy as the rest of the guys here, so I’m lucky to have them as my support.

Well, I must get back to proofing, or this issue will never make it out the door!

Welcome to my new blog, Jennifer VideoChick.