Back into the greenhouse.

Now there’s a logo that hasn’t been around for a while, eh? Scary thing is, it might be coming back. Two weeks from today I should have an Avid sitting in my house, and I’m trying not to be utterly terrified at the prospect of going into business with the thing. I’m trying to focus more energy on finding another day job – a real day job this time, not a graveyard shift that calls itself a day job, and certainly not the just-this-side-of-indentured-servitude gig that I’ve got now. I haven’t given that gig a drop-dead date yet…but damned if it isn’t tempting to do so.
The new job and/or new business angle kinda puts the whole going-back-to-school angle in the air right now. The lesson of the recent financial crisis we’re still trying to limp away from before it explodes cinematically behind us, slightly out of focus, like any good downed helicopter in the movies does, is simple: I’m going to need to be bringing in some income for a while yet before I can cut loose and be a full-time student for a while. The best bet there is a new job; while Greenhouse Effects might still re-open quietly on the side, there’s no guarantee that it’d make the kind of money I still need to bring in for a year or three.
For those who have no idea what GHFX was, it was a little business I ran out of my home – VHS tape duplication, VHS & DVD region conversion, a bit of web design here and there, CD, DVD and VHS custom packaging, and some marginal editing. I also did some custom music composition during that time, for horse videos and radio theater projects. It had a nice little run of about two years, but once the indentured servitude thing kicked in at my real job to the point where a 12 hour day was a light day for me, I had to close it down. With the new gear, and other stuff I’ve picked up since the end of 2003, I’d be able to add other capabilities, such as actual editing and post-production, voice work, PC video file-to-DVD/VHS transfer, and maybe even camera work. I could conceivably produce a commercial from the ground-up with this stuff. And to get into that line of work, basically, it means I’ll have to undercut and snatch business away from folks I’ve probably worked with before. (Or maybe even some that I work with now, for that matter. But I’m not under contract, and therefore don’t have a non-compete clause to worry about, so if/when that time ever comes, they’re welcome to take their best shot. I was editing on Avid back in Green Bay, so it’s not like I’d be walking out of there with trade secrets.)
Still, there’s no guarantee that I’d be able to line up enough paying clients to pull it off. So I’m spending a lot of quality time with Monster.com. One thing’s for damned sure: no more broadcast gigs. No more stations. After a while, it’s a thankless, soulless thing, and I’ll be happy to be free of it someday. It’s an environent that’s increasingly friendly only to the young, and ya know, I’m not 22 years old anymore. I can’t strip the gears and suddenly pull a day shift after an all-nighter just because someone doesn’t know how to do something.
Anyway, back on track. One decision I have already made about the new machine is that I have no plans for it to ever touch the internet. There’s no reason for it to. If I do bother to pop a network card into it, all that connection will be used for will be updating anti-virus software and Windows, and networking will be disabled the rest of the time. If this machine is supposed to be something I can earn a living with, and its function does not depend on being online, then there’s no reason for me to let it go and play in the traffic on the information superhighway. (In fact, it’s my experience that in the past few years, Avid has been telling clients at new installs and training sessions to keep their edit suites off the ‘net unless the company needs to automatically update the software.) Zen and Orac can pull anything off the ‘net that I need, and now that we don’t have to worry about building our own Avid-capable machine from scratch, Kent and I can now focus on building Orac II – still a Win98 machine, but not quite so cranky (good lord, but it lives up to its namesake in that respect).
Which brings me to my next point: the new machine’s going to need a name! Something other than “Avid” or “the Avid.” I have a running Blake’s 7 theme with Zen and Orac, but somehow “Slave” doesn’t seem like a good fit. I’ve been running down the list of fictional computers and artificial intelligences at Wikipedia for inspiration; I quite like VALIS, Colossus and a few others. If anyone can come up with a name that has a little more bearing on a machine that handles audiovisual tasks, though, I’m all ears. (And no, the Guardian of Forever isn’t a computer or an AI.) I may even offer some kind of prize. (What that might be, I have no idea. A hot date with Burchuss?)