You Get What You Pay For
A while back, I wrote that VH and I have been thinking about hiring professionals to handle the 8mm film to DVD transfer of some of his oldest family home movies. Naturally, half of our friends have since volunteered to handle the transfer for free — or, more accurately, in exchange for a few beers. They can’t, for the life of them, understand why we aren’t eagerly accepting their offers.
The thing is that we want it done right — without fingerprints or improper projectors damaging our old films. That’s something our friends find incomprehensible; that even after the film to DVD transfer we’d still want to keep the old films. No reason — we just do.
Besides which, most of our friends are offering to run the films through their old Super8 VHS cameras… which sounds like a practical idea but photography and film experts say will lead an inferior reproduction. (Which, meanwhile, might have damaged our originals.)
So earlier today when I mentioned to one of our volunteer-friends that I’d finally finished readying the reels for a film to video transfer, he lectured me once again on spending money for a professional service when I’ve got friends ready to handle the matter for me for free.
That’s when I reminded him that a few years ago when his wife filed for divorce, I wasn’t the lawyer he turned to for help even though I probably wouldn’t have charged him more than a few martinis. It’s funny how fast things like that make people shut up.
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*snorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt*
P.S. Can you please recommend a feed reader? I liked having it in Outlook but because of the stoopid Microsoft programmers, having newsfeeds, while convenient, cause MAJOR slowdown while fetching data. I will even pay for a good program. I feel like I’m missing everything by not having my blog updates every day.
After running into the same problem with Outlook (I pull over 400 feeds), I use FeedDemon from NewsGator.
FeedDemon automatically discovers feeds from your favorite sites, or you can import your OMPL file. It’s intuitive and easily configurable. For instance, I have my feeds divided into different folders based on the day of the week (Monday reads, Tuesday reads, etc.). Thanks to their cleanup wizard and “Panic button” I don’t have to worry about getting overwhelmed.
Best yet: it’s free.
Good Call!! I have always gotten burned when well-meaning friends attempted to save me some dough by doing something like this on the side. Unless one of these friends actually performs this service for a living, hiring somebody you can -yell at or sue if they screw it up - is always preferable.
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Ironically, one of the friends who offered to do this is the same one who offered to take our wedding pictures for free. I took her up on that one, which meant there isn’t a single decent picture of VH and me together in the whole lot.
LOL! Classic jab! You rule, madame.
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It’s a real pity I can’t earn a living having permanent PMS.
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