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My camera imports videos to my computer as .MOV files. I tried today to use Windows DVD Maker to write a DVD. Error! "Cannot create the DVD. One or more of the files that were added in DVD Maker could not be decoded correctly. Verify that you have decoding software installed on your computer that can decode the different files, and then try again."

dvdmaker

Very helpful. NOT! I googled the error message and found that many users are having the same problem and there's a really easy fix.

Solution: Open the .MOV file in Windows Movie Maker, save the project and add the project in Windows DVD Maker.

Update: The solution didn't work. There was no audio on the resulting DVD. I searched online and found that this was a comon problem. The next step in the solution is to use Aimersoft HD Video Converter. Very frustrating. I couldn't imagine how non-geeks to this stuff.

Digital video solutions are really starting to suck! Lately, I've taken a lot of high definition digital video. Unfortunately, this means my hard drive is full. I tried uploading some to YouTube. They all failed to upload. I tried creating a DVD with Window Movie Maker. Failed! How about iMovie? Failed! WTF!? Programmers suck. They don't seem capable of creating software that actually works. Not to mention, I can't believe the average person can use this software. It's completely un-user-friendly. The only reason I can get as far as the error message is because I'm a computer geek. My dad, mom, in-laws, wife, brother, sisters, kids, niece and nephews would be in leftfield.
I have to guess that people who have bluetooth ear pieces think they are cool. NOT!
Today, I installed and started using Google Chrome. Looks pretty good. Seems faster than IE. But my WYSISYG controls don't work in Chrome. Wonder what the usage stats are.
I have no problem with swear words. Expressing yourself is very important. When the traffic light is red for four minutes and you are alone in the car and rushing to pick-up your daughter, then swearing at the traffic light is a great way of expressing yourself or venting some energy. I do it. In fact, I accidently left a voice mail with me doing exactly that.

I even tell my kids, "there are no bad words, just bad things to say." Yet, I don't swear much in front of my kids. Why? My wife doesn't like it and I respect her.

I don't swear either in front of the 9 year olds I coach in hockey. Why? Because I respect other people's opinion that swearing is wrong. I can't say the same for other coaches. I've seen coaches thrown out of games for swearing at the refs in front of 7 year old kids.

I was once at a pub and a guy at the table next to me was bragging very loudly about how he told his kids to lie to their principal in order to defraud the school of 200 dollars. I asked the fellow if I could interject a thought. He agreed and I simply replied "You are teaching your children." The guy blew his lid with those 5 simple words.

This brings me to the biggest cheating and lying facing all Canadians; kids hockey. This likely applies just as much to kids soccer, baseball and all else. In my case, I have a 9 year old hockey fanatic. I go to his games. I see what happens. I even got involved and coached kids myself. I love coaching kids hockey. Unfortunately, I don't like dealing with the adults. Most of the adults are fine, but too many are not. These adults are prepared to cheat and are prepared to F-bomb the ref in front of 7 year old kids.

I volunteered my way from water dad to parent rep to head coach and all the way to the BYHA (Brampton Youth Hockey Association) board of directors. I thought I could make a difference, but it turned out that cheating in kids hockey was more deeply rooted than I thought. I've always been naive that way.

At my 2nd board of directors meeting, the VP introduced a rule to cap extra icetime at 60 hours per year. Seemed reasonable to me and others and the rule was voted in. What the VP failed to disclose was that he was doing this to cap the icetime of a competitive team to one he coached and his son played against. A parent had donated 5000 dollars to a team in the VP's league to give the entire team an extra 25 hours of icetime.

When I was told about his failure to disclose the conflict of interest, I was shocked. I started asking around to confirm the truth. Inadvertently, I asked the wrong people and it got back to the league that I was asking questions. This resulted in several members of the board harassing me on a weekly basis. In a stroke of bad luck, the convener of the league I coach was the wife of the VP who failed to disclose the conflict of interest. She was trainer of his team and also a member of the board of directors. She twice called me on the phone and accused me of cheating and threatened to forfeit my games. She never could tell me which rule I violated.

I met with several members of the executive to discuss the problem. They not only dismissed the obvious conflict of interest, but they started attacking me for suggesting this was a problem. We resolved that I would file a formal complaint that would be reviewed by an independent person from the issue.

I filed the complaint and the harassment got amplified. More harassment from the convener and now a reprimand letter from another VP (not the husband). I filed a 2nd complaint against this VP. Then I got a letter from the president of the league dismissing my complaint and asking me to resign from the board. They were clearly resolved to harass me into giving up on my complaint.

I just have one thing to tell them, "You are teaching your children."

The head waitress at a bar I frequent just left for a smoke. She's on her last kimo treatment. I want to tell her she's stupid, but I assume she already knows.

I fixed Hello Santa today. It was broken ever since Amazon changed their API in mid-August. That's a three month outage. It's back, just in time for the Christmas season. This weekend is the Brampton Santa Claus parade. I believe Toronto has one too this weekend. 

http://www.hellosanta.org/

Rogers Cadenhead blogged a link where you can get your name in the credits of the movie Paranormal Activity. Go to the link and add your name.

http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/3566/theyre-gonna-put-me-movies

While navigating to a PDF on my cellphone, Google gave me the following funny error message. Too funny.
Oops. Sorry: the page you requested uses advanced space age technology that we were unable to adapt for your phone.