Friend in Need… PAD #1171

Friend in Need... PAD #1171

Today was another interesting day in my life. Sure it didn’t start off that interesting what with answering e-mail and sleeping in a bit for the first time in weeks. Then I went and visited my grandmother, which was a nice visit. Spent some time talking with her. Then I went to the Falmouth Cinema Pub to see Kung Fu Panda. I really liked it, the animation and the voice acting was superb. I also liked the story very much. When Jack Black plays the lovable loser he is dead on perfect. I loved Shallow Hal and School of Rock. Those movies he really shows his heart and Kung Fu Panda is another one.

But that is not the interesting part. I headed home from the Cape and got a call from my friend Meghan.You may recall that this past Thursday I visited with her at her house and helped her work on a 50th anniversary party slideshow video. We went over everything and she was good to go. Or so we both thought. I got the call that the video was not saving and she couldn’t get it working. I helped talk her through it for about an hour, all the while getting closer to the turn where I could head to her house. By the time I got to the turn the video was not saving, so I headed down to her house. The computer started cooperating just as I turned off the highway. So I hopped off at the next exit to park and wait to see if it would save.

It didn’t. While is was starting to save it suddenly sped up and was done. This was not good. This means that something went wrong, so I headed back out on my way to Meghan’s house. I had her reboot the computer maybe clear out some of the buggies. Nope, that didn’t work. So we tried everything possible and finally I arrived at her place. The idea was to copy the whole set of files from a flash drive to my computer rebuild the video and save it on my computer so that I could put the final copy on the flash drive. However we only had an hour to do it along with printing out a speech that her brother had just finished writing. So, we had three computers going and I was running them all.

Everything loaded on my computer perfectly and I saved the project as a video and had the same issues that Meghan did.

Oh Crap!

We were now at 3:30pm, zero hour. What could I do, she had worked so long and hard to make this video for her parents and now the only copy that would work even partially correct was on my laptop. So I followed Meghan and her brother to the church where the family was having a special mass. That was starting at 4:00. We flew there (a solid 30 minute trip) and made it about 4 minutes late. Meghan and her brother ran into the church and I put the finishing touches on the video from the car.

Oh yeah, the working copy, I discovered that if I played the preview of the video through Windows Movie Maker it works fine,Meghan has a desktop and so that is why we are using my laptop to play the video.That is also why I am sitting in my car on the passenger side with a computer on my lap. I shot it with my brand new XShot 2.0. The mass should be getting out soon and then I’m following Meghan to the country club where the family is gathering for dinner, photos and then the slideshow. We shall see what happens….

What happened next…

So, after church we went over to the country club to set up the computer, ipod, screen and projector. Then I headed on home, I was pretty nervous about how things would go. The whole show was in God’s hands at this point….

Once home I dropped Eva’s crib to the lowest point, she is now in a toddler crib because she has shown some interest in pulling herself up. Well, no kid of mine is falling out of the crib. She is now safe. She also sent me a postcard from her vacation. Man I have missed my girls so much.

Meghan just left. The slide show was an incredible hit, there was not a dry eye in the place. I just knew that this had to happen because of all the hard work that Meghan put into this, how much heart she put into it and how much love she had for her two amazing parents. I’m just so glad it all worked out.

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10 thoughts on “Friend in Need… PAD #1171”

  1. Karen,
    She is a very dear friend and since I started her on the path to using that program I made sure to see it through so that it worked for the big day.

  2. That is so precious how everything eventually worked out, some things like that just can’t be explained.

    Your little X shot is pretty nifty. Whoever invented that is one lucky person! 🙂

  3. Great that you could help. I’m sure Meghan appreciated it and the family enjoyed it.

  4. Chica,
    Yep, the inventor is a pretty cool guy. There will be another contest here on the blog to give one away, soon. We have to work out the details.

    The funny thing about yesterday was that I was going to go to a chowder festival but decided against it, then I was going to go shooting some flowers at a garden but decided against it. I just started heading home and got the call. It is weird how events play out to have things happen as they do,

  5. Dad,
    When Meghan dropped off the computer she offered babysitting for life, so I think she appreciated the help. Her family loved it, I just knew if it wasn’t there then there would be a very important part missing.

  6. Pete,
    The XShot is a fun little device. There are many applications for it.

    And I really enjoyed Shallow Hal, it also featured a song by Ellis Paul, one of my favorite folk singers.

  7. Yep, Drew is the best! This is Meghan and it’s true, Drew saved my life or at least saved me from my head exploding and my heart jumping out of my chest. I am so lucky, very very lucky to have a friend like Drew. In print here, free babysitting for life!!! I’ve known Drew for 20 years!! If you all think he’s a great guy, friend, blogger, dad, etc. He’s been a great guy for 20 years!! Thanks again Drew for everything!
    My family thanks you too!!

  8. Meghan,
    Oh man, you’re making me blush. Looking forward to when you live a little closer. Glad your family loved the video you worked really hard on it.

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