Well, in my last Thoughts paper, I said the next paper I would write would be my normal weird stupidness. (My spell checker is claiming that “stupidness” is not a word – it did it again – is that possible? I think that’s stupid that stupidness is not a word if it is actually not a word.) The worries I had on Monday now seem insignificant. On 9/11/01, the World Trade Center towers were completely knocked down, being hit by planes taken over by terrorists. They also hit the pentagon. I’m not a huge history person, but this is a day I will probably remember the rest of my life. I went to work but was sent home about 9:00 AM (Pacific time). All day, Patti and I watched the destruction that took place in New York. All I can say is, “Terrorists suck.” I’m taking all my Christmas cards for all the terrorist friends I don’t have and ripping them up. Their present getting days from me are over.
What always comes up at these times of bad things happening are my thoughts regarding evil. I still don’t believe these terrorists are evil (mainly because I don’t believe in evil). They committed horrendous acts and their organizations should be punished for what they did, but, in their minds, they were doing the right thing. They did a very very very very bad thing, but there is no scale or amount of people you could kill that will ever put anyone closer to the evil side of the good/evil marker making them “evil.” Evil is a mental concept people have used to explain the actions of other people. In an extremely obvious way, the disaster in New York proves my point. Not everyone who died that day died because they were evil. People present the idea of good and evil as if something different happens to people they call good as compared to the people they call evil. If they can live with themselves, that’s just what they’re going to do. The same random acts of nature hit both parties. Neither is all good nor all evil. They just are. What happened on 9/11/01 in New York was a bad thing, but not an evil act. (I’m just glad I’m so smart and can explain these things to the rest of the ignorant world. As per my last Thoughts paper, anything I say within these parentheses is not to be taken seriously.)
I got Patti flowers the other day. Actually, I paid for them yesterday and she got them today. She liked them. I still don’t really know what I’m doing for her actual birthday. There are many things I would like to do, but I can’t afford to do them. In all honesty, I could afford to do them, but I couldn’t afford anything else. Especially with recent events, her birthday week is going to be odd. I have an actual gift and a card for her, but the gift is small, and the card is just a card. I will just have to ask her what she wants to do (within reason) this weekend and pay for it. I’m on hold with Patti right now. I just thought I’d mention that at the end of this paragraph. In this last sentence, I wanted to say all these words I’m typing right now.
Okay, back to animation. The other day, I did something amazing. I created a composite picture with one of my Alien Bees in Adobe Premiere. It was seamless. I also was working last night (when I couldn’t take anymore footage of the New York disaster) with Animation Master with a function that is supposed to turn off seeing an object while still showing the shadows produced on that object. That’s great, Brian. What does that mean? What it will allow me to do is create a background image or images that will be perfectly integrated with other images (that can be changed) to create multi-level work that would otherwise take hours and hours per frame to create. The best part is, if I need to change the foreground image, I don’t have to re-render the whole thing. This is all great and wonderful, except the function isn’t working in Animation Master. I press the button, but there’s no shadow. I could get it to work on something by itself – not pre-created, but that will not work. The other option is to get the new version of Animation Master 2001 and hopefully they have solved the problem. It’s still $99. Someday, this won’t be much money, but it’s still a consideration today.
All in all, life goes on. I just don’t have any great desire to travel the world like I used to.
Thoughts from Life 
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