The Houston Notes
I had mostly finished the Dobie Retrospective on the airplane, but did some final tweaking to it on Wed. before I tried to hit "publish" in order to create the mp4 file to fun in the auditorium. It kept crapping out saying "one or more files is unstable" after twenty minutes of chugging away, without telling me which file that might be . . . out of more than 1500 of them. I got up early Thursday, and got over to the Leader by 6:30 a.m. to try again.
Wednesday afternoon Marie had gifted me my own key to the offices to keep, and we had made a conference call to Mr. Moses on when to meet up to test it. I had until 11:00 Thursday to have a file ready to check. And from 6:30 until about 10:00 I stubbornly kept at it. Finally, admitting at least current defeat, I chopped away everything except the first ten years, saved it as a different project, and produced a film that would be test-worthy. I decided I could spend the rest of the day finding the bug.
Getting over to campus at 11:00, I met up Mr. Moses and staff at the now-Beverly Hills campus and determining the film would work fine in that file format, at which point we we toured around the campus marking which areas should be unlocked for the tour and discussing some of the details of who would be where, doing what, I mentioned how sad it was all the letters set into the bricks of the library were all covered up.
Before I knew it, Franklin was pulling brown panels down! So we had a least one set for alumni to see on Saturday.
Heading out from there, I grabbed lunch and made a quick tour of the neighborhood before heading back to the office to deal with the film. (And stare at all the stuff I had hoped to be scanning.)
checking out the old home front: new gate for the driveway, doesn't look nearly as cool as the old black wrought iron, but at least it's being cared for.
Wednesday evening, Laura and her husband had come by the offices to drop off scads of old Dobie choir stuff from her parents attic. Her dad had been the first Dobie choir director until 1981. At that point, I was thinking I would have time on Thursday to scan a lot of it, but the reunion film had other plans.
Getting back to it, I tried producing a second file with the rest of the years, and surprisingly, it did so without any unstable file errors. Hmmm. So everything, every file, was stable enough to be turned into a film, but putting them back together, it came back with the same error.
Although I've made longer than an hour films before, I've never made one with more than 1500 files. That had to be the problem. But I comforted myself that at least I could just start up the second file as soon as the first was over and show the whole thing.
It was about this point that Tammy mentioned her hubby had been successful in finding a projector we could use for our 30th Reunion on Saturday night.
Guess who hadn't even started putting a 30th film together for Saturday because we didn't have a way to show it?
So, instead of turning to all the choir stuff sitting in front of me, I started up another file for the Class of 88.
I also still hadn't finalized the 80s playlist that would function as the DJ for the after dinner hours.
Steph and family had tickets to see the Astros Thursday night and I finally realized there was just no way I could sacrifice those hours and get everything done. So I bowed out and spent the rest of the night dealing with film, playlist organizing, and running to the store to buy the stuff to make the polaroid frame prop for our photo booth. I had ordered some signs from Amazon and had them delivered to Steph's to use as well.
Friday was check in at The Whitehall and get prepped for the mixer that evening
does everyone get a robe and slippers? It was a nice touch.
My view from the top floor:
The turn out Friday was good, including several folks who couldn't make Saturday's event.
Michelin, far left, was my right hand with getting things announced and moved on Saturday. Teri, on my other side, is the senior caterer at the hotel that got us the great deal.
all the 88 ladies from Friday night
Sean popping into the girls' pic
Saturday morning, I got up, worked on finishing the 88 film, then headed for Dobie to get things set up. Mr. Golenko showed up shortly after me and we got his old room 214 open for him to greet former students.
His bathroom passes were toilet seats you had to carry with you to the restroom if you needed to leave class. The Class of '76 had gifted him with an orange one reading "Golenko is Our Leader" which he bought for old time's sake.
I then headed into the sound booth to cue up and test both files, only to discover, to my horror, the second one that started at 1979, still had all the music cues from 1968. It had deleted 10 years worth of photo files and left the music in place. Auggghh!
Plan C: I pulled out my laptop that I'd brought just in case, opened up Movie Maker, and played the whole file straight from the console. Of course, I hadn't grabbed my cooling fan pad from the hotel room to smash into the bag.
I had put up a sign saying we would be showing it twice, at 12:30 and again at 1:30.
The 12:30 crowd:
It made it almost to the end before seizing up, and not quite that far but close the second time through. It was also as hot as an oven when I turned it off. It's going to be time to break down and get a new laptop soon, I'm sad to say.
I got to meet Dennis, who has helped me online with a number of Newspaper.com searches since I let my subscription expire a couple of years ago. He brought his 1969 Freshman Beanie that he was kind enough to let me take a photo for the Leader.
I ran into my old roomie at Sam Houston, Melinda, as well as Jennifer, neither of whom could make Saturday night, and Robert Flores and Steph when I had a few minutes to step away from the sound booth. Robert is probably our class' most high profile member, as he's been on ESPN and now the MLB network for a number of years.
And finally, someone at the very end, showed up with her letter jacket. I'd asked if anyone had the orange/orange version of the 70s or the black/black of the 90s since I was bringing mine from the 80s.
( I can almost get it closed...)
We ended up raising more than $2000 for Dobie scholarships in three hours!
I loaded up and headed back to the hotel after that to finish the 30th film, meet up with Marci who has been at the hospital with her Mom working out stuff for nursing care for her Dad once he gets discharged, and she cleaned up in my room before I finally finished everything ten minutes prior to the start of the 6:00 show time. Whew.
Some photo booth fun:
Cathy was a friend from way back at Easthaven as well as Dobie, and she rehomed my black and white rabbit that granddaddy had built a rabbit hutch for in our backyard when I was in middle school.
Lt. Col. Ricky Malek Mitchell and his wife, and Ricci photobombing
all the band kids
all the spouses of 88 alumni, with Russell photobombing. Russell and his wife Hana (in black behind him holding the crown) came all the way from Germany for this!
Steph with Yvondia, who was also a friend from way back at Easthaven
my film worked!!
The whole crew of 88ers still around later in the evening:
We shut the place down just before midnight, hauled everything upstairs to my room, and Steph and I collapsed until 8:30 the next morning.
We met up with Cathy for breakfast at Dot's before getting back to Steph's place,
where I then worked on all the photo booth pictures. It never ends.
I also packed and napped. Exciting day.
We went out for dinner that evening one last time, mexican food, of course.
Monday morning, I got up early again, and headed for the Leader, with the last hours devoted to finally scanning as much of the choir stuff as possible before I had to leave.
on the feeder road of BW8 headed to Beamer
Got the rental returned, and only realized the next day I'd never taken a photo of my Nissan Rogue with Colorado plates the entire week. Flight was on time, no hail or even rain in sight, and we were in the air over Houston just like that.
So often, the weather doesn't cooperate, but this afternoon was clear enough to get some good aerial views of the Bayou City.
and then it was nothing but blue skies and fluffy clouds
and dinner. :)
as we landed I managed this shot of our flaps slowing us down with another plane coming in over the airport.
the obligatory shot of Blucifer on the way home
back to my Colorado skies, cooler temps, and low humidity. Ahhhhhhh.
The two part film (with music cues fixed)
and The Leader's Coverage of the event is HERE.
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