Of links purloined and piracies thwarted

I'm adding a link to my brother's online diary entitled "Hours of Fun & Challenge". He goes to San Diego State, which I'm told is beautiful when it's not engulfed in flames. Adam is what's known as a "red-shirt" freshman there, which I assume has something to do with Star Trek ensigns. He is pretty expendable, from a strictly tactical standpoint.

Of late, I've been on something of an odyssey trying to nab a copy of Sorenson Squeeze. It's a video compression tool that shrinks great big video files like my Kill Bill movie down to itty-bitty cute wittle file-lets. Unfortunately, the full version runs a nice $450 (Cheap!) and I constantly find myself missing Benjamins that a hard-working American artist such as myself surely deserves. And so I chose the path less travelled: the outlaw trail.

My first foray was onto the messageboards. I was kindly directed (and by "kindly" I mean I was told "Learn to use Google, you dumbest of fucks.") to any number of warez sites. For those of you not "hip" to my "internet" "scene", a warez site is a download website that strives to ensure that multimedia-authoring software developers, the folks at Rockstar Games, internet pornographers and the filmmakers who brought you "Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag" never make a goddamn cent again. Which, in the latter case at least, isn't such a bad idea. But as anyone who's been to extralegal sites before can attest, what I got for my troubles was several useless keygens and an open invitation to a virus party on my hard drive.

So I turned to slightly less illegal venues, namely my uncle and his vast collection of legally purchased multimedia software. Turned out he had a copy and everything! He burned it onto CD and sent it directly to my home! When I saw that package in my mailbox, you'd have thought Christmas had come twice. Then I slap that thing in my Sony and was hit with the awful surprise. As it turns out, my uncle owns something called an Apple Macintosh, which I imagine he picked up in his Edsel on his way to a drive-in movie theater.

So I'm back to square one and considering getting a PayPal account. I can't imagine anyone would donate money, but their reassuring embedded icon reminds me that nothing in life is free, except wisdom. And pop-up ads. And viruses.