A Minor Setback

When I got my new laptop back in April, I had to borrow several hundred dollars to get it because I didn't have the money right then and there. I wanted to be sure I got the rebate on it, so I had to buy it that day.

Lately, I've been been getting 40+ hours at work. That's not bad for a part-time cashier! That overtime really helps too. Anyway, I've been catching up. I have car insurance and rent both due at the end of this month. I can pay my insurance in full if I have the money, and really that's the way I prefer to do it in order to save money down the road.

I have an issue that came out of nowhere -- my car doesn't run anymore! It died tonight in the parking lot at my work place. This is not what I needed right now. Just as things were turning around and I was getting extra money that could be used to get ahead again, now I'm probably going to have to shell out extra money that will set me back. The thing is, I don't really know what's wrong with it. It's been acting really weird these past couple of days. I will have it looked at ASAP, and I'm hoping that it's nothing expensive.

I'm fearing the worst though -- a problem with the fuel pump. So much for getting ahead.

I Was Suprised, But I Shouldn't Have Been

I have been monitoring my viewership on my YouTube channel. The chart shown here shows my viewership from the time I first became a YouTube partner, up to yesterday. Now before the partnership, I was getting between 100 and 200 views daily without any video uploads. When I got the partnership, I decided to make a lot of my videos (including some very popular ones) private to give my channel sort of a clean start. As you can see on the chart, my viewership declined as a result of that. Everytime I upload a new video, you see a big spike on the chart, and then the viewership trends down again.

I want you to look at that huge spike all the way on the right. That is from the Justin Bieber video I put up. It's an enormous spike, and compared to the viewrship I had before the partnership, it's among the biggest spikes I've had since October 8, 2007 (the biggest spike was 499 views.) It's impossible to know how it compares to videos earlier than that date.

I've tried and tried over the past year to have something that would generate a large spike in viewership. I'm happy I found something, but only now has it become obvious to me why this Justin Bieber video works (and it's not just because Justin Bieber has lots of screaming girls falling for him.) There's a lot of people who are annoyed about Justin Bieber due to his music being a little too pop. In other words, it's entirely manufactured for the sole purpose of selling, and nothing else. I think that's pretty obvious, and many people resent it, so they start saying nasty things about Justin all over the internet. His die-hard fans see this and go the extra mile to defend him. My video is about Justin Bieber haters on the internet, and that subject strikes a chord with a lot of young people. If you play to people's emotions, you will surely get a big response out of it.

I might experiment with videos similar to this in the future to see how people react. It certainly worked for Daxflame. It is important to do it in the interest of my audience though. After all it is you, my audience, that makes this happen in the end. So thank you for helping bring some more life to my channel.

Sony Vegas

I bought Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD today since my laptop uses Windows 7, which doesn't have a "good" version of Movie Maker. For those who don't know, Windows Live Movie Maker is very limited, and I can't get Windows Movie Maker v2.6 to see my Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000 at all!

Anyway, Sony Vegas is supposed to be a good replacement, so I bought it. The problem is everytime I record something with it, the video and audio are out of sync. With closer examination, it appears it starts recording the audio before the video has a chance to start recording. With standard playback of the raw AVI files, it is fine. When Sony Vegas tries to mix/encode the file for playback, that's where it becomes out of sync.

My question is, what can I do to stop it from screwing up? Is there a way to make the audio recording sequence wait for the video (as it should?) I don't want to do something crazy like destructively edit the audio so that it is in sync. That's a silly solution since that should not be necessary to begin with. I'm looking for a solution that will make it work the way it was meant to work. Can anyone help me?

Laptop

I bought myself a laptop today. It took a big chunk of money I had, but it was worth it. I can now access the internet, and having this laptop will also make doing certain things for school a lot easier.

It's an HP Pavilion DV6-2173CL. It was a good deal for $700. It comes with a 15.6" screen, an Intel Core i3 processor at 2.13GHz, a 500GB 7200RPM hard drive, 4GB DDR3 RAM, a built-in wireless 'N' card, and Windows 7 64-bit. It connected to the internet without any issues. I'm still getting used to Windows 7 after having used Windows XP for so long.

The Most Boring Book Ever

Try reading "The Structures of Everyday Life" one time. Just try it. I guarantee you will fall asleep, get distracted, or something along those lines.

I had to read a chapter (about 90 pages) out of it for my history class, and I couldn't do it. Normally I force myself to read a book when it's required, but history is bad enough, and having to read it is worse. When it goes into detail about food though, it's really bad. I don't care about how wheat traveled across the world. The author loves this topic apparently.

Tonight, I (at the age of 25) went to my mom and asked her to read to me. I sat down and took notes as I listened. It's a sad thing to do, but it was the only way I could get the job done. Anyway, I had a whole page of notes by the end, and I took those notes and wrote my paper that was due for my class. I better get a good grade!