Rain Delay

We had some snow and freezing rain overnight and into this morning, so when I got up I called the “Inclement Weather Hotline” for work and learned that we would be opening two hours late.
I thought about going back to bed, but decided instead to just take a more leisurely approach to getting ready and to take the opportunity to start my car and let it thaw out completely before heading in to work.
By the time I left the roads were merely wet, and thus easily traversable, and I was pleased to note that there was considerably less traffic than normal, so, overall, I’d have to say “Yay snow and freezing rain!”
I ended up pulling in about 45 minutes later than usual, but given that I typically get there 45 minutes early, this meant that, technically, I was on time.
Most everyone else took full advantage of the delay, and more besides, rolling in somewhere around 11, and a lot of other people clearly opted to work from home, so the place was pretty quiet all day.
I had considered working from home – opting to bring my laptop home with me yesterday rather than simply locking it up in my cabinet in my cube – but there was a meeting I was scheduled to attend at 9. I figured it wouldn’t actually happen then, given the delay, but assumed that my boss would probably reschedule it for later in the day, which he did.
Of course, after the meeting started my boss turned to me and said that I could leave, as it turned out that my involvement wasn’t required.
(He’d thought that one of the results of this meeting was going to be a document that I would have to produce, but it turned out that someone else was producing the document, which was fine by me.)
It was a pretty boring day for the most part, as I didn’t have much to do. I have a lot of projects on my plate, but for pretty much all of them I’m waiting on information from other people, and am unable to really do much until I get the information.
On Tuesday, the latest in DC Comics’ direct-to-DVD animated adaptations of classic comic storylines, Justice League: The New Frontier, will hit the shelves.
I decided I couldn’t wait that long and did a search of the newsgroups to see if an advance copy had made its way out to the public. I found several copies and downloaded one to watch last night.
(I don’t feel guilty about this in the slightest, as I’m still going to buy the DVD come Tuesday, if for no other reason than that I’m hoping that, just as Superman: Doomsday had a sneak preview of New Frontier, New Frontier will have a sneak preview of The Judas Contract, which is the one I’m really waiting for.)
I won’t post a review – I already did a write up, via e-mail, for the only regular reader who cares – but I will discuss some of the troubles I encountered in watching it.
(Okay, mini-review: it was awesome. The too-short running time meant that a lot – and I mean a lot – of the story from the comic it was based on didn’t make the cut, but the essentials were there, and the animators absolutely nailed Darwyn Cooke’s style, producing something absolutely stunning to behold. The voice work was top-notch, with only a few minor exceptions, none of which were anything close to being deal-breakers.)
I’d started to watch it on my computer, but decided that while my new monitor is big and bright, it would still look better on the HDTV.
When streaming to my Media Lounge there are some issues with audio quality, so I decided to copy the file onto my USB drive and play it back from there, as the Media Lounge has a USB input for just that purpose.
However, there were still some audio glitches, so I decided to burn a DVD.
The encoding of the DVD took forever, and then, during the actual burning process, it crapped out at 92.9%.
Finally, two and a half hours later, I was back to where I had startedand decided to just watch it on the computer, though even that wasn’t without complications, as some encoding issues with the file caused it to randomly switch from color to black and white and back again at odd intervals.
Still, it was ultimately well worth all of the trouble, and I eagerly anticipate picking up the DVD on Tuesday.