My Plugins Are Out of Date

As if. One of the many reasons that computers will never replace humans is they're stupid. I'll grant you some humans might qualify, too, but no human on this planet will point out you have toilet paper on your shoe repeatedly after one reveal. "You have toilet paper on your shoe." Done. The plugins message banner is there every time I do anything. I've just endured 10 days of trying to get my entry to the 3 Minutes in Lyon Film Festival ready to mail, using old technology. Deadline May 25. Late April I completed the prep work. Early May I filmed on good days. Footage extends, and I get better at shooting each day; learn to pan slowly, hold steady, stay out of the direct sun. All prepared, I attempt to upload the film to my middle-aged Mac. Nothing. Nada. I try bribes, small sacrifices to the film gods. Nothing. I get a pretty picture of a laptop on the camera screen and not a damn thing else. Okay. Back out with a still camera to recreate the scenes. Open iMovie, and grind my way through learning how to work it on the fly. I cut audio tracks, do flips, transitions, fades and titles. Meanwhile I have the yellow police tape about my plugins and their current status on every single tab I open now. Google doubles down with a reminder that it does not, will not, and absolutely refuses to, support my version of Firefox. It forces me to Dismiss twice on every entry into the realm of the untrainable Google. Meanwhile, back in Filmland, I finally get iMovie to cooperate somewhat, move the masterpiece to Quicktime, and view a few glimpses of brief encounters, some tracking lines that look like a printer gone bad back in the 1980s, and no sound. Back to iMovie, wrestle it into submission again, playback works, back to Quicktime, back to phantom movie. Check the internet for forums, nobody wants to talk about iMovie 4. Nobody supports nothin' as old as this. I hop some more hurdles, get a good result with Quicktime and hustle the DVD to the post office. Mailed. Done. Get an email the next day that the file is 16 kb and not readable. Load all onto a stick, go see the computer guy at the library. He tries, he prints a conversion plan for iMovie to MP4 files via Saturn, to whatever. No, the library does not have a Mac. Who's buying all the Apple stuff? Huh? I stop by the technology store in town with its gleaming new Mac in the window. Do they have a working Mac? No. Damn. I think they have a lot of nerve selling Macs without one in the shop. Back to the phone store because my new phone has seized over all the calls to the film festival guy who was nice enough to tell me that if I was having more trouble, call. Guy at phone store loads my stuff onto a new phone, and says that will be $79.99. I said what? no, that's not the deal the other guy and I talked about. Well, the other guy ain't here. Fine. Load the shit back on the malfunctioning phone. Good bye. Meanwhile, back in Filmland the festival director calls and tells me if I can load the film to youtube with an unlisted address, send him the link and he can see it, we're good to go. Rosemary calls during the upload process. She becomes the film birthing coach. Pant. Breathe. Hold breath. Stop pushing. We, together, are the proud parents of a .dv. Rosemary said congratulations! I wanted a cigarette. Meanwhile, my plugins are still out of date. So's my car. So's my phone. So am I. I'm going to put yellow police tape around all of us.