There are some days you should just push back from your desk, get out of the chair and walk right out the office door.

Today was one of those days, mainly because I think the office at the part-time gig is cursed or otherwise possessed. For some reason just about every piece of equipment we have decided it didn’t want to work, all at the same time.

I wanted to transfer some PAL (foreign format) video tapes to DVD. Shouldn’t have been an issue. We have a VCR that plays the tapes…but of course the capture box wouldn’t even register on the computer.

Time to move onto another project — a seemingly easy request to burn two copies of a DVD photomontage project we did last month. The burner was able to make the discs, but for some reason has decided it will now only print labels all in red ink. Fine, probably not a big deal for the client. Now to make labels to go on the outside of the DVD cases…and we don’t have a single sheet of the correct kind of paper.

Maybe we can capture some audio tapes instead. The reel-to-reel machine works. The mixer works. The computer even recognizes the mixer. The program that actually captures the audio does not show any audio inputs. Le sigh.

Ok, we just got a microcassette tape that needs to be digitized. Hm, that would require the mixer that still has no interest in playing nice.

All of that doesn’t even count the VHS transfer process that was going swimmingly, until my boss’ son turned the computer off.

At least my peanut butter & jelly sandwich was tasty. Here’s to a more productive tomorrow!