It’s hard to believe that it was just 25 hours or so ago that I began this long and painful saga of frustration, humiliation, and spiritual growth the hard way.

See, I had a plan. I would do my presentation for Film Genre : Science Fiction and Fantasy about one of my favorite movies of all time, the Secret of NIMH. It would be a tribute to Mrs. Brisby’s enormous courage as one little mouse against a world that seems to be hell bent on killing her poor sick son Timmy.

I would just download the movie, clip out some scenes demonstrating her courage in the face of terrible danger which obviously terrifies her but she forges ahead anyhow because she has to save her son, put some text pages in between the clips to explain my thesis and make my case, and that would be the centerpiece of the PowerPoint presentation that was to be my  final project for said class.

The rest would be slides of facts about the movie, Don Bluth, etc.

Surely that wouldn’t take long. After all, I am a video whiz and this was a simple job. Half an hour in my trusted, ancient Ulead VideoStudio 11 and it would be done.

SO VERY WRONG.

First, Ulead 11 would not run. Its security certificates had expired or become corrupted and my OS was having none of its shit.

Well, that’s OK, I thought. I have this other video editor I downloaded a while back mainly because it was freeware and I have been trying to break my software piracy habit.

Turns out, I felt guilty about pirating software the whole time, but my greed for games masked it. It took a period without having pirated anything to make me realize that. Playing games I legitimately owned felt good.

So I try to use this goddamned thing, VSCD Free Video Editor, and it rapidly starts driving me crazy because it doesn’t work like any other video editor I have used and in ways that are mysterious, impenetrable, and faintly contemptuous of the user.

What the fuck is a “scene”? How do you define one? Is it just a clip or series of clips of media? Apparently not. All I wanted to do was clip some scenes from a movie, and it was giving me nothing but attitude. I fought that goddamned thing for an hour and a half before finally giving up and deciding to pirate a fresh copy of Ulead 11.

So I uninstall the old copy, download a torrent of it,  then decide that to prevent the problem I had with the old copy I will look up a patch, crack, serial number generator, or whatever other nefarious tool of software theft I need in order to fool my computer into thinking that I bought the software fair and square.

It’s a very old piece of software by now, and so I feel little guilt in pirating it. It’s not like Ulead is still making money off it. Not after they got bought out by Corel so that Corel could have their own video editing software.

So I find what looks to be what I am looking for, download it, and then I do something so colossally stupid that part of me still refuses to believe I actually did it despite having lived through the consequences of it.

I ran an unknown executable that came from a skeezy as hell website without even bothering to virus or malware scan it first.

I can only plead distraction. I was so focused on getting my presentation done that I was not being as vigilant as I should and I did something that I would never do in a million years and that I would have outright mocked if someone as computer-savvy as I had done it.

Anyhow, so I clicked, and boom, just like that, my computer was infected by a huge wad of malware that kept popping up windows trying to get me to download yet more sketchy software via various tricks like telling me my computer was infected by malware and only their sketch software could save me.

I admit, there’s a Machiavellian genius to that, plus a lot of chutzpah.

So now, just to use my computer, I have to shut down these fucking popups every minute or so, all because I made a very newb mistake.

I manage to get a bunch of work done on the video despite this, but eventually my nerves are shot and I go looking for a malware killer.

The first thing I notice is that my bookmark to Chrome is gone. Can’t have a victim like me using their web browser to download anti-malware software, right? So I look for a web based solution like they used to have, where you don’t have to download anything because it runs in your browser. No dice, that doesn’t exist any more.

Then I remember that I actually have a copy of Malwarebyte’s anti-malware software installed on my computer. My saviour! But when I ran it, it hung on the “updating database” phase, making it essentially useless.

Dammit, these bastards thought of everything.

Including blocking any attempt to download a different anti-malware program.

By now, I am on the brink of a nervous breakdown. I have been trying so hard to get my presentation start and it’s eating up enormous chunks of my time. I am battling popups constantly while trying to complete my video while evil software knocks down all my attempts to defeat it with contemptuous ease.

Luckily, eventually the Malwarebytes program managed to update its database and scan my system and rid it of nearly all of the malware.

But by the time that happened, I had very little time and energy left to actually do the motherfucking project. So I managed to finish the video… and that’s it.

Here it is (cringe!).

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/R7iHSHywjak” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

That is considerably below my standards and I had such high hopes for the video. I wanted to really show off my slick video editing skills, and instead, all I got was… *sigh* that slapped together piece of junk.

And nothing else! No slides, no handout like I was supposed to have, and a lame-ass video as the only product of seven hours of stress and pain and humiliation.

Then I had to get up in the morning after only three hours of sleep, go to school, and do my presentation with just a lousy video and none of the rest of the shit I was supposed to have. And to top it all off, the class ran long so my video was actually watched by people impatient to give to lunch.

So my self-esteem is not great right now. It will recover, especially after I sleep. And I have only one more day of classes then it’s Xmas break, Ross, and fun.

Of course, now I have to write beat sheets for the third and fourth episodes of my show,.

But fuck it. I can do that in my sleep.

One more day folks. One. More. Day.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.