Stijn!!

[Porsche-poor]

currently 43 and might make 49 before the end of the day.

[GH85Carrera]

Hey we got a dribble of rain. California has been sucking all the rain from the storms and all we have been getting is wind. We got a whopping .23 inches!

I wish they would share some of the rain. All points east could use it.

[Porsche-poor]

Morning all. Glen I am not going outside again and fanning the clouds your way.

[GH85Carrera]

Thanks, we don;t need anymore of the cold air, but some is coming next week anyway.

[Porsche-poor]

I'd say more cool than cold. Its all rain unless its in the mountains.

[Porsche-poor]

Morning all. Not much going on here. Just work and chores.

[GH85Carrera]

I went to my visit CPA's yesterday. We went to lunch first, and he paid! We have been friends for 30+ years.

I got him my business QuickBooks file and we fixed a couple of weird issues. Of course he has the CPA version of Quickbooks and can do thing to the files I can't do. One task is by law I have to send out a 1099 to any person or company that received more than $600 in payments with a check. Credit card payments are not included, and the IRS has access to any CC info.

He can electronically file the 1099s with the IRS, and has the ability to mail a analog copy to all the companies we paid with a check. We never pay with cash.

The weird part was one customer that had paid us via credit card, I applied the payment, yet it showed it as unpaid. He got that straightened out.

[Porsche-poor]

Yep its that time of year here to. Gather all the tax info and send it off to the accountant and pray!

[GH85Carrera]

I expect to start receiving 1099s from all of our customers. I just toss them into the trash. I record every penny of income and expenses, and the 1099s are just redundant for me. It does tell me the IRS will know and be able to double check my numbers against the 1099.

It would be interesting to see how the computer programs process every return. I sure hope to never go through an audit again. We were audited in our second year of business. What a total waste of time and money. In the end, they found on error on my part and it was under 30 bucks. They admitted it would cost more to open the returns and change them and process a payment than the 30 buck so they let it slide.

At least I got to write off the cost of two reams of paper, a new printer, and the large chunk I paid to my CPA for advice the next year.

[Porsche-poor]

Speaking of which I should be getting a 1099 from a project I did work on.

[GH85Carrera]

I bought myself another toy, er, I mean tool!

It is a Kodak 8mm and Super 8 film scanner. I have a box of family movies, many I have not seen ever, and some not in decades. I am scanning or "converting" one now that was shot in the middle 1950s. Some award winning stuff. My favorite part was seeing my long dead uncle and long dead grandfather mowing the yard! Grandpa in his wife beater t-shirt, Bermuda shorts blue socks a black shoes.
There is one part of some relatives in the back yard so that is cool.

I will scan them all, and edit out the really bad parts, and where whoever shot it had the bottom part of the face, from the nose down to the knees. There are no low cut blouses so I guess they were using the wrong viewfinder on the camera.

In the end, I will upload them all to my YouTube account and let the family members watch and download them if they want. I figure YouTube is good place to store them. I will of course keep them on my RAID as well.

I will have to time it, but it is not too horrible slow. I would guess 15 minutes to scan a small reel. It is not fast for sure.

I have many many hours of movies to scan.

[Porsche-poor]

I need to get back to the conversion of the video tapes to digital format but its a time killer.

[GH85Carrera]

Yea, a lot of old VCR tapes just self destruct from age. If they were shot on tape, they are low resolution. If they were originally film scanning the film is better.

[Porsche-poor]

nope they are old video camera tapes.

[GH85Carrera]

Well, my time estimates were a bit optimistic and based on short clips. It takes about 45 minutes from loading the film into the very tricky film gate, getting the frame edges aligned, and centered. Then start the process of capturing the movie. The old hand sized roll of 8 mm file is just a 3.15 movie and from turning the machine on to done and ready to rewind, is 45 minutes. It makes a 250MB MP4 movie.

I found the movie of me riding my bike along side the Apollo 11 containment chamber to keep Earth safe from moon bugs. It passed within a few blocks of our house.

I am scanning one of the large reels now.

[Porsche-poor]

Morning all. That Apollo vid would be cool to see. Always have been a fan of the moon missions.

[GH85Carrera]

It was super cool at the time.

This is from the second mission, Apollo 12.



The returning astronauts had to fill out a Customs forms before being allowed into Hawaii.




After Apollo 12 they decided there were indeed no moon bugs that might kill us all and they did not use the containment module.

[GH85Carrera]

Golly I am good at wasting time. I go the large reel scanned and as it was finishing up I noticed I had failed to string up the film through the rollers properly. That allows the film to shift just a little. It makes the movie really jumpy as the frames move up and down. Crap.

Oh well, just electricity and time wasted. So, scanning it again. This time properly set up, and let it run. It might have some more historical stuff on it. Some really exciting parades through downtown San Marcos, TX in 1964. Lyndon Johnson had recently become the POTUS and he came to town to his Alma mater, Southwest Texas State College. Dad was a ROTC instructor there as we lived in San Marcos when LBJ came to town. I was able to shake LBJs hand and my brother got skipped, and I got to rub that in with him.

I am sure LBJ remembered me, just like Neal Armstrong did when he waved at me.

[flipper35]

We got some rain. Snow, ice, sleet and everything in between at the same time. Roads are clear though.

Trip to Brownells tomorrow to let the boy check out some optics for his rifle.

[Porsche-poor]

oh fun! Toys for big kids.