I'm rather enjoying our new morning time slot; the day feels less broken-up. I still have a dozen errands to do before I head home, but at least I can relax a bit before tackling my next task. If I worked for the federal government like SOME PEOPLE, then I'd be blogging things left and right. For the moment, I'm stuck with a couple of full-time jobs – both of which I enjoy greatly. Sure, I'd much rather spend most of my time at home working on converting my VHS tapes to DVD, but… there'll be time for that in 2034. Hopefully, my friends from Muvee will get back to me about a problem I ran into with their software last night. I've been raving about it for weeks now, but I think Microsoft's Windows Media Player 9.0 beta codec screwed something up beyond repair.

I can import my video and audio clips into the autoProducer, but as soon as I include the MP3, the music plays, but the video goes to black. Eventually, the application crashes (in a DirectX control). This started happening when I tried to watch a video on the beta of the Windows Movie Maker 2.0. Yeah, Windows Media Player 8.0 automatically downloaded and installed the required codec, and that's when all hell broke loose. Man, I don't know what the hell that team is thinking – but if they dorked up my fresh install of Windows XP, they'll have hell to pay. You're saying to yourself: “How?” Well, I have a big mouth – and I'm not afraid to use it. We've already told people to avoid the beta of WiMP 9.0 like the plague, and… now I'm starting to think that Microsoft should fire their entire Media team, buy a better product, and rebrand it as theirs. I'd tell 'em to stick to OSes, but it's clearly evident they can't do that well, either.