In the WTF department.

I don’t like to swear and try not to do it as much as possible but stuff like this just gets me going and IMO deserves it.

Pinnacle Studio 20 Ultimate. Video editing software. New software version. Probably been using it since Version 2.

I put a hour and half of video on the timeline and the computer stops responding. Click on ‘File’ to save the project, it takes 3 minutes for the drop down menu to show up. Try to get into setup, same thing!

It’s so F’n slow Windows pops up the ‘this program has stopped responding’ menu.

Mind you this is an 8 core AMD FX-8350 CPU, 32G of memory, Areca battery backed up RAID controller, 6G nVidia GTX 980 Ti graphics adapater, and 8G nVidia GTX 1080 graphics adapter computer and its not responding??!!

I look at the resource monitor and 7 out of 8 cores are screaming along doing something. But what?

I finally notice this green and yellow bar moving slowly to the right above the timeline. Then I wonder, is this thing rendering?

I didn’t tell it to render. I didn’t click on any render button. Why is it apparently rendering? Rhetorical question because all I want to do is make it stop!

The project is no where near ready to be rendered. I just put the scenes on the timeline for God’s sake!

So I start looking around in the Setup Control Panel for Background Rendering or some such thing to disable it.

Can’t find an F’n thing. Before I can even do that I have to delete the video from the timeline so it stops rendering so the computer can be used!

Actually looked in the manual. Search for ‘background render’, ‘background’, ‘render’, nothing nada zip.

Google for it. Find some suggestions, one being you can wait till the background rendering finishes. Not. Find some stuff for older versions to disable background rendering but what is said to do can’t be done in Version 20.

Finally find some obscure reference to Optimization. And a sliding bar you’re supposed adjust to give you a good balance of performance. Huh? No reference there regarding background rendering.

Is it supposed to be intuitive that a sliding ‘Optimization’ bar is how to disable background rendering?

It isn’t to me… But that was the trick…

I was bouncing around the kitchen working on coming up with something for dinner tonight. I decided on rice and maybe some chicken. So I get the rice going, one of my favorite ways by boiling the water with chicken bouillon cubes and butter. A cup of rice and two instead of the usual one bouillon cube along with a 1-1/2 tbs. of butter. Continue reading Rice & Tomatoes. YUM! Some may say, Spanish rice… →

Salmon casserole you’re wondering? No this is not like a tuna casserole.

Can’t claim this one as my own, a past girlfriend made this dish with orange roughy and I think it was from a published recipe. The broccoli, rice, and cheese part is my favorite and I sometimes make that alone. The secret is it’s not just broccoli, rice, and cheese, there a sauce on it that is what makes it one of those things you just can’t stop eating… Continue reading My Salmon Casserole →

A few years ago I decided to make a turkey my way. Only thing was, I didn’t have a “my way”.  So it was time to come up with a “my way”. Believe me when I say I knew I might be cooking a turkey fit only for the wild critters I feed outdoors but that was a risk I was willing to take. Gotta start somewhere. Continue reading Best Darn Thanksgiving Turkey Recipe Ever! →

Fourth time I had pizza this week. I do like pizza but that often is unusual for me. Frozen pizza on top of it. Something I’ve always wondered why they made because it’s not that good but it is convenient.

Till now. Continue reading Frozen Pizza Can Be Good! →

Yep. It’s not music, or a movie, or book or picture or anything like that but they’ve jumped on the DRM protection bandwagon. Not that it will help for long. It all started when their K-Cup patent expired in 2012. Continue reading BEWARE! Kreurig’s new 2.0 brewing system is DRM protected! →

Ye-HA! My single cup coffee maker wouldn’t yesterday morning and that is no way to start out a day! So I took to fixing it today. The way it acted figure’d it was clogged. But where? Watched a video on YouTube that said the needle that punctures the cup is most likely clogged with coffee grounds and showed how to disassemble it to get it out and clean it. Quite involved and time consuming. If the needle is clogged why not just unclog it? 5 minutes later I was enjoying a hot cup for French Roast. Oh and 4-1/2 of those 5 minutes were spent looking for a paper clip I could use to unclog it. Continue reading Hey KEURIG, can you say “WE SCREWED UP”? →

As I mentioned my new cookbook arrived today, so far I’m impressed. It’s not just recipes as I thought it would be because well, it’s a cookbook, but it also includes a lot of other good information. And paging through it I see a lot of good recipes, this is going to keep me busy for a while…

OMG Wow. Yum! So I have all this canned and dried food, veges and dishes and meat and stuff, just in case something like a Katrina or Sandy happens. Ok, maybe not hurricane related here. The trick can be to make canned and dried foods taste good not just be something to eat. Continue reading Canned chicken can be good… →

Woo-Hoo! My own blog. Look out world!