Patience and Endurance

On Saturday, I was working at Framestore. We had two new shots come in that I was involved with and Robin has asked me to extend my contract until April 11. One of my tasks for Saturday was to estimate how long it will take me to finish all my shots.

I took one of the ones that I hadn't started yet, estimated how long it would take to finish it and then started in to see if I was right. The first step took me about three times as long to finish as I thought it would and I started to panic. Trying to control my panic, I just kept working, trying my best to get back to my estimate. But the harder I tried, the more problems with the scene I found. I realized that if all the scenes had this kind of problem, I was in very serious trouble. I finally went and talked to Sam about it. He is the artist that did the modeling for the lower half of the tree. He had some solutions for the scenes and I went back and tried them for the one I had started. It still didn't work. Now I was really starting to panic. 

Then I decided to give up on that one shot and try a different one. The next one I tried, Sam's idea worked perfectly. So working quickly, I was able to get three scenes into the render queue before packing up to go home.

As I was submitting the last of the three to the farm, suddenly a great wave of peace came over me and I realized that I actually had had quite a bit of success that day, even though one of the scenes had problems. My next thought was that someone must be praying for me.

I went home and told this story to M and K. They said that they were happy I got so much done, but they hadn't prayed for me. Then I told Kelly, and she said that she had prayed for me. I was so happy. And I was also relieved to remember that God is in control of everything, and that I don't need to stress out over schedules. After all that God has done in this adventure, I should already have known this one.

And as a side note on patience, I just got word that Logos Bible Software for the Macintosh has entered into it's alpha program! I've been patiently waiting for this powerful Bible Study software to get ported to the Mac, and now it is a significant step closer to reality.

Dave

Turned Ankle

Yesterday, I was coming down the stairs at Queens Road Peckham train station on my way home. But I wasn't just coming down the stairs. I was kind of running down the stairs, taking two at a time. I was very eager to get home and see my family. 

But about 3/4 of the way down, I misjudged a step by a fraction of an inch and turned my left ankle over. I caught the rail with my hand, and didn't fall, but I hurt my ankle pretty badly.

I got to the bottom and was in a lot of pain. But I realized that there was nothing for it but to walk home. So I grit my teeth and started walking. I think the adrenaline was pumping through me pretty well because each step felt better and better. By the time I got home, I was walking fairly normally.

Then I sat down on the couch with some frozen peas on my ankle. It started hurting again, which I expected, but the pain was pretty bad. Then I found that we were all out of ibuprofen. So I put my shoes on and laced them up tight. M went with me down to the corner market. Each step this time was worse and worse and by the time I got there, I knew I had made a bad decision. I bought the medicine and hobbled home.

By this time, it was dawning on me that my feet were my main form of transportation and that not being able to walk was going to make getting to work much harder. So I sent an email to a couple of friends and family who I knew would pray for me, took my medicine and went to bed with frozen peas on my foot.

When I woke up this morning, my ankle felt much better, though it was a bit sore. I got ready to go to work, figuring that if it started hurting, I could call in sick and go the doctor, and if it didn't, I could go to work. It didn't hurt, in fact it started feeling better and I went to work.

I took it easy on the way, standing on the escalators rather than walking up them, but by the time I got up to Soho my ankle felt about normal. Throughout the day, I kept wondering whether it would get worse, but it never did.

I'm going to take it easy on it for a few more days, until the soreness is completely gone, but I'm praising God for His mercy in healing my ankle so quickly.

Dave 

Some Things Can't Be Rushed

I don't usually post many details about my day to day stuff from work, but this story must be told.

Last week, some top executives from Disney and Walden Media came to Framestore to see how things were going. They went into the screening room with our production team and were watching some of the latest images that we had made. They had been in there for about 30-40 minutes, when Robin (our producer) came to my office and asked where Joe was. (His desk is next to mine.) I said that he had been there just a moment earlier, but that he must have stepped out for a minute. She asked if I knew where a particular thing that he had been working on was, and I looked and he still had it up on his monitor, but it was hidden behind a few other windows. I brought it forward and left it alone.

A few minutes later, Robin came back and asked if he had come back. Then all the executives and their entourage, our production team, Robin, Jon, our VFX Supervisor, and Mike, our CGI Supervisor, were crowded around the door to my office, waiting for Joe. Mike went to find Joe, and found him in the bathroom. Joe told me later that he actually knocked on the door to his stall and said,"Wipe faster." Joe replied from inside the W.C.,"Some things can't be rushed."

Joe eventually came back to his desk and showed the work to the people and was quite brilliant about the whole thing. They all apologized for lying in wait by his office, thanked him for his hard work and went away.

It was one of the funniest episodes in our office the whole time I've been here.

Dave