It could be worse

Today could be worse, but I'm not sure how much worse.

Well, ok, everyone I love could die of a horrible disease that doesn't kill me, but leaves me scarred and disabled; and I could have to spend the rest of my life alone, eating shit pies for every meal. That would be worse, I confess. I should count my blessings.

Still, last night was so frustrating I wanted to scream. I actually did, and in the process woke my wife up. I'm such a jackass.

So anyway, on Monday I got this idea for a Valentine's Day gift for Rebecca. It would be like one of those e-cards, except I would build it all myself and it would be personalized. I could have pictures of me and her and I could make it funny and sweet at the same time. And the effort I would put into it would be endearing, and worthy of some husband points. I figured it would take about two hours of work.

The whole project would be done in After Effects, the animation program I have been teaching myself. So I started last night at about ten o'clock and at eleven Rebecca came to me and told me she was going to bed. Naturally, I quickly hid what I was doing on the computer because I didn't want her to see it. Only, I wasn't exactly smooth about it and it was obvious that I was hiding something. She didn't ask what I was doing, but I could tell she was wondering.

Two hours on the project came and went well before I was even half done. One o'clock passed by; then two o'clock. By three o'clock I was finally putting the finishing touches on the project. But it had actually turned out just about as good as I had hoped, so I was excited. It was well worth the groggy, bleary-eyed day I had to look forward to.

At 3:30 I finished the project and saved it. Now I just had to render it. Rendering is basically where you throw the project at the computer and tell it to turn it into a movie. For the size project I had I was expecting the render to take about twenty minutes. It only took fourteen. That is to say, the computer tried to render it for fourteen minutes and then it decided that I didn't have enough memory to store the finished project so it aborted.

*sigh*

Actually, this is not a big deal. It has happened to me before so I knew what to do. I had to free up memory. I had downloaded a huge amount of pictures for this project, and most of them didn't get used. Those would be the first things I would delete. Then I would go for some pics I used on past projects that were already rendered. It would mean I couldn't render them again, but I doubted I would want to do that. I also deleted some pictures of me that I didn't think should ever be viewed by people who could potentially die of disappointment.

Finally I had to delete the unfinished render; not to be confused with the actual project. Oddly, when a project is successfully rendered it usually takes up a very small amount of space. You may use 100 pictures and tons of text and even music files. The sum of the memory of those pieces can easily reach up into the tens of megabytes, depending on how big the project is. Especially if it is using music. But the rendered project is usually significantly less memory. And even more peculiar is the fact that an unsuccessfully rendered project will usually take up an inordinate amount of space. I had one project that didn't render correctly and it took up 3 gigs. Then when I successfully rendered it the movie was only 19 megabytes.

Anyway, I went into my computer and deleted all of the unused pictures and all of the old pictures of me, then the unsuccessfully rendered project, which was almost 4 gigs, and then the project itself, and then some more pics, and then an old project and render that I wasn't really happy with anyway. Then I had to go to the trash can and empty it so I would actually free up all of that space. There, I had plenty of room.

Then I went back into After Effects and tried to pull up my Valentine project. That's odd, I thought, it's not there.

Wait! No way! I didn't!

Gotta check, gotta check, gotta check.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I totally just deleted the project! Five hours of work is gone!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I tried the computer restore, but the last restore point was from the day before. And I couldn't find any way to save my damn project. HOLY CRAP!

That's when I started yelling and I woke up my wife.

So now I have no Valentine's Day gift.

It's all fine and good to spend 5 hours of work when you have something to show for it; even if it's ruined. If I had decided to become a glass blower and I tried to make a glass heart and then dropped it on the floor and it shattered everywhere I could at least point to the destruction as proof of my loving devotion. But I don't have shit.

"Honey, look. If we scan the disk in DOS, then we can see it."
"See what?"
"There, that empty file with no name."
"What about it?"
"Well, that might be one of the files that once was your present."
"How romantic."
"Well, it proof that I was working on it."
"How do you get that from that jumble of numbers?"
"Ok, I don't exactly. But I'm pretty sure that this could be part of what I was doing all night last night. It could be part of a very elaborate e-card I was making you for Valentine's Day."
"I'm convinced. And I'm totally turned on. Let's go do it."

I'd have been better off cutting hearts out of construction paper.