Love and Truth

I’m neglecting everything right now, simply because of the things I’m neglecting!
Tough to explain, but I haven’t had much time. However, I wanted to thank the commenters to this post for offering advice on how to salvage old VHS tapes — expecially “guy on internet” who advised me not to screw around with dedicated conversion units, but to capture the analog video to a computer, and save it in digital form on my hard drive. After many hours researching this, I discovered that by downloading the appropriate drivers and software, I could get the built in ATI card to work as a video capture card with a VCR (which it never had before; I tried in the past, but it adamantly refused to capture anything from DirecTV).
The next problem was my VCR. It had been sitting unused for over three years in a damp location, and it would only play audio with an unrecognizable zig-zaggy pattern in lieu of a picture. I didn’t know whether it was broken or the head needed cleaning, but I put in a tape I was pretty sure was good, and let it play. At first I could only hear the sound, but eventually, the picture came through, and it kept getting better.
Finally, I grabbed a piece of the video at random, and I converted the huge file to the smaller mpeg-4.
This morning I uploaded it to YouTube. It’s Idi Amin delivering a stern lecture about Truth and Love to his cowering ministers. Always tell the truth (because he’ll find out anyway), and be sure to educate the people that they should love their leader, and everyone in the government!
“Everybody must be loved!”

In addition to the lecture from Idi Amin, I also captured and saved a vintage interview with Eric. Yes, embarrassing as it looks today, it’s me in 1991, in which (following Idi’s advice) I tell the truth about an accident in which a driver backed into a pole in a city-owned parking lot and then tried to involve me, because he wanted to blame someone, and I happened to drive along and park in the lot after his accident.

I didn’t tell the driver I was an attorney, but he didn’t ask, and I don’t think he suspected anything.