Technology RULZ!!!

Last night I helped my friend Kelly make a dvd cover for a film he had to have submitted by 10:00 am this morning. In fact, in the end, I made it for him.

The really cool part is that this was an on-the-fly impromptu thing, and I'm in Austin, Texas and he's in Los Angeles, California!!!

Here's the thing: This could not have happened 5 years ago. I mean, we couldn't have done it.
I remember in '98 or '99 or sometime watching a vcd on Kelly's laptop on which George Lucas was in Austrailia (if memory serves) and Dennis Mueren(sp?) was in LA and they were video-conferencing, working on THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: SPECIAL EDITION. It was the most amazing thing to Kelly and me that these geniuses were able to harness this new technology in such a way that allowed them to work on the same project ACROSS CONTINENTS!!!

And now, maybe 6 years later, Kelly calls me up (via cell phone) and tells me what he needs to have happen in a few hour, asks me for my technical advice -- because he knows I've been playing with MSPaint and PaintShopPro for several years now, and has seen some of my work -- and together we make happen exactly what he needed to happen!!!

Basically, this is LIVING THE DREAM. I mean, neither of us are making Big Bucks in the field we are striving to get into, but -- more importantly -- we are doing what we want to be doing, and utilizing ALL our resources in fairly inventive ways. I mean, no, we don't have web-cams for web-conferencing. But we are using the technology at our disposal to the uttmost extremes of its abilities!!! I mean, Kelly says he's having problems with this, and I'm not, so I whip it out on my end, emaile it to him ALMOST INSTANTANEOUSLY, and he prints out his dvd cover!!!

HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT?!!!

Now, granted, you have to be here to really enjoy this -- and if you're reading this and you're under the age of 30 you will NEVER actually feel what this feels like -- but maybe you can bend your mind around it: We are doing things that we never knew would be possible, creating in ways that -- for most of our lives to date -- were actually BEYOND our imagininings. (And we're both VERY imaginative buggers!!!)

Theres' just no other way to describe it other than to simply say that between 2:00 am Central time and 5:30 am, Kelly and I WERE LIVING THE DREAM.

And I believe that to truly get the most out of this Life we're given, we have to appreciate those little near-perfect moments we're granted within it.