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Tuesday, November 19, 2002

I saw Gerhard Richter's painting retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on Saturday. Gerhard is a german painter, and the exhibit showed thirty years of his paintings. Richter was an interesting painter. The man can definitely paint, and there two portraits, one of his wife and his daugher, that looked like photographs. His brushstroke work was amazing and very, very fine. When I looked closely at these paintings, I was amazed at how Richter achieved such fineness in his strokes. The rest of the Richter's paintings are abstract, and I could see how Richter was trying to explore the medium of paint. There was even a set of painting sthat was commissioned by the Vatican to depict St Francis of Assisi, that was on exhibit because the Vatican thought the five paintings were too abstract.

Richter often painted over canvases first, and then repainted them over and over again, and sometimes scraping off the paint. There was set of paintings from 1999 which exemplified this technique of Richter's. It was my favorite part of the exhibit, only because I did that witih my collages. I used to make collages, and sometmes I would take either a knife or scissors and just slash the collage up. It was a violent act, but I just felt the urge to do it especially for the more disturbing of my collages.

As a side note, there was guy walking around SFMOMA who looked exactly like Weird Al Yankovic. I didn't think it was him, but I kept seeing him. When I went into the SFMOMA store, I heard the clerks talking about meeting him and how he was here in San Francisco for some animation festival. I was right, it was him, and I was sort of tempted to go up to him and say "you're that guy who does all the songs spoofs aren't you?" But I didn't. That's so rude. Weird Al is very thin in person, and really does have longish very curly brown hair, and he really does look like he does in his videos.
I finished updating everything on my PC last night, except for a free printing program that came with my printer and a free graphics software program an Aussie coworker gave me in 1999. I decided to name my PC, just to give it a name. I named my care Siegfreid or Sieggy for short, because my VW Golf reminds me of german husky boy.

I've named my PC, Clive Lord PerCy, because my computer is my lord and master. Wasn't Percy the name of the Scarlet Pimpernel? I loved the Scarlet Pimpernel movies on A&E.

I found my screenplay last night, but it was bittersweet. I'm glad that I was able to retrieve it, but the last three critical scenes that I was working on right before my PC crashed weren't saved. I'll have to check if the program has ten minutes saves.

I still have to upgrade the virus software. I installed my old one, even though a message keeps popping that it might not work properly. I think I'm okay for awhile as long as I don't upload any files from a disk into my computer. My ISP screens my mail for viruses, so thankfully I'm protected from email viruses at least.

Monday, November 18, 2002

I'm listening to Amadeus, the soundtrack from the movie. I loved this movie, especially the music. I loved how Tom Hulce potrayed Mozart as hearing complete finished musical pieces in his head, and how he never made corrections on his music. I wish my writing could be like that. I also have Immortal Beloved, a movie about Beethoven's life, which I also love.

I love the character of Salieri. I think that every writer, composer, any kind of artist runs into many Salieris in their life. Art is a weird thing. It's sort of like money and food. One either has it and then some, or one does not, and there doesn't seem to be very few inbetweens. And what's sad is, the ones who don't have it often have the unfortunate gift of recognizing when others really do have "it". I think what is also the case, is the artist who has it, doesn't know they have it, and are constantly plagued by doubts and insecurities no matter how much money or fame may come their way.

I think everyone has talents, some definitely more than others, and then others, it's like it's their destiny or something that they are going to reach the pinnacles of their profession. Mozart definitely was one of those who was born with it, and seemed destined for greatness. I think of the Beatles in the same way. Musical Genuises.
I think I picked up the flu bug that everyone seems to be coming down with lately. I woke up, and my throat was all scratchy and I felt blah. I called in sick at work, which is just as well, since I can now spend the whole upgrading my computer.

I figured out last night that I probably didn't have to go through all the trouble of uninstalling IE6, just so I could keep my bookmarks. I could have probably just copied them, but that's not what the support pages would have you believe. There is so much disinformation on the Net about computers, it's amazing.

I installed Outlook 2000, and imported my old .pst files from Outlook 98. The support pages basically say you can't do that, but I did it. That's when I figured out I could have just copied my bookmarks. So I probably wasted two hours last night downloading "stuff" from the Windows Update. Oh well, live and learn. I should have just listened to my instincts.

After two hours this morning, I finally got my old scanner to work. I found some website called www.driverguide.com. It's database for all kinds of drivers. It took three tries, and four downloads of different files, but I finall got the thing to work. I have an old Optrox Photomaker 6E scanner.

I can't get my virus software or my fax software to work, both products of Symantec, who got smart and went the Microsoft way and started making their products obsolete so you're forced to upgrade and spend money.

Supposedly, Windows Office 2000 comes with some kind of Symantec fax software that you can use, so I must hold off on upgrading my Winfax Pro 9.0. My ISP now automatically scans emails for viruses, which is nice, but I think I still need to upgrade my virus software. I had McAfee for while, and there was this program called Guard Dog which I really liked. I think it was a simple prototype for personal firewall. I like having a personal firewall, and am debating whether I need to spend another $50 for a new personal firewall software and new virus software.

Now I know why people hate upgrading their pcs, and why businesses loathe it. Once you upgrade the operating system, everything else needs to be upgraded.

I wonder if I can donate all my now so obsolete software to some charity and get a tax write-off?