The Amazing Race is On…
It’s out of my hands now…
Sean, my hopeful partner in Amazing Race III, just picked up my half of everything required for the application process, including the printed application, the 3-minute video, pictures, and copies of our passports. It’s been a long journey and I’m glad it’s over, although I hope that a new journey begins as a result.
We started a while ago, but the video portion we put off until a week ago Friday night. I’ve done all sorts of application videos for these reality shows, and I decided to take a more serious stance this time, so we talked on tape for an hour and then it was my job to edit it together. So the pressure was on. The worst part was that my computer decided that it didn’t want to capture the video no matter how much I cajoled, how much I threatened, how much I begged. Worst still was that my computer had taken the liking of crashing every time I did anything from opening email to pulling up my website, which explains the lack of recent entries for richard’s ramblings…
Now, as a parent, one thing I’ve learned is that you have to follow through. If you say that Junior has to go to bed at 8:00, then he goes to bed at 8:00, not 8:15 or 8:30. So when I told my computer that if it didn’t cooperate that I’d rip its guts out, I meant it. And I did it. I wiped it out completely. Reformat. The long, slow reformat, not that wimpy quick kind. Everything gone. Before you go into a complete panic, realize that I do have servers and all my vital data was archived there.
Hey, dummy! Remember me? I’m that video you were supposed to put on tape!
Oh, çráp! I knew I was having problems with the capture and output video processes, and that the computer kept crashing constantly, but I know I could have held it together long enough to do the video. But I had forgotten about the deadline and the urgency. “No problem”, I said to myself. All I had to do was reinstall the OS, reinstall only the most important software and everything should be fine.
Here’s where it got fun. When I bought my Dell, I fortuitously purchased the XP upgrade, so that I’d be legitimately licensed in the event I needed to upgrade. I was sick of 95, 98, and ME and their remarkable ability to crash at the most inopportune times. So, like I said, reformat and reinstall, this time with XP. First of all, that was a complete nightmare. I installed it three times, each time it did it differently, asking me different questions and giving me different screens. Ever tried logging in with a username and password when it didn’t actually ASK for you to specify one during the installation? Or how about doing a graceful shutdown when it won’t allow you to login and the shutdown button is disabled? Sheesh! And they call that progress?! Not to mention that my CD was bad and I had to recreate one (very hard to do when you only have one CD.) So that took up a whole evening. Then I installed a few basics: Eudora, StarCraft, Empire Earth, Perl, Easy CD Creator, and Adobe Acrobat (yes, all legitimate paid-for licenses!) and everything looked fine. That is, until I tried to install the Dell Edition VideoWave 4 XP Upgrade.
Ummm, where’s my original VideoWave 3 CD?
Oops! I searched my office for hours to no avail. So I thought to myself, “I have a legitimate license. I’ll search for it on the Internet.” Why is it that I can find just about every Adobe, Microsoft, or game product out there free to download, but I can’t find the one application that I’m looking for? Arrgh! Nothing worked, not even trial products of other software packages. Another day wasted.
I walked over to Best Buy. They carried only two video capture products, neither of which were well suited for what I wanted. So, I walked back home, and then got into the car to drive to CompUSA. They, too, only had two products (albeit different than Best Buy’s offerings), but they looked like what I needed. $300 down the drain. Ouch!
I got home and installed Pinnacle Studio Deluxe on my newly installed XP system. Didn’t work at all.
*sigh*
Another day wasted. By this time, it was Sunday night, and I had to have this video completed by Tuesday at the latest in order to arrive at CBS by Wednesday. I figured a fresh install of XP wouldn’t hurt since my computer had nothing of value on it, and I had attempted to install about a dozen packages and diagnostic utilities. Maybe it was gummed up. Sure ‘nough, it did the trick. Three days after I started this monumental task, I was frantically splicing and dicing video clips together. Once I got that final edit on VHS and tested it out on the big screen, I crashed into bed, leaving the computer and everything else in the state it was when I finished the tape. Oddly enough, when I awoke in the morning, it took hours of fiddling to get it to work again; something about fooling it into thinking it was going to capture video in order to make the output to television work.
So, just like Microsoft, the Federal deficit, and the economy, the tape is out of my hands, hopefully on its way to the producers who, upon seeing the incredible on-screen personas of Sean and myself, will have no choice but to pick us for the next season of Amazing Race III: Two White Boys Lost in Madagascar.
See you on the Today Show!
Well, it’s been about three and a half years. Interested in trying again?
“Applications must be received by Friday, January 13, 2006 at 5:00 p.m. PST”
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/amazing_race_application/eligibility.pdf
“We will not consider any new application or submission you may submit unless you are applying with a new teammate.” - RDL
Yeah, yeah. I know. And if I were them I suppose I’d have a database of all prior applicants, probably using Social Security Numbers, so I could see if if a team had applied before as well as screen any that had previously been rejected as grossly unsuitable (felons, the simply obnoxious (although that has seemed a boost to your chances for selection far too often)).
But rules made to be broken and all that. And Given the “casting” that is actually done for these shows I would be suprised if they truly start all over again each season.
Can you really picture them saying “Well, these 50,000 applicants from season 5 can’t ever be considered again. We need to find a whole new group of people who have never ever applied before.”?
Or, would they consider an application from season 3 still in the running for season 10? Somehow I can’t picture getting a call: “Remember that application you made 4 years ago? Well, we’d like to know if you’re still interested because we haven’t seen anyone that interests us better in any of 250,000 applications we’ve received since then.”