6/12/03 Primera Bravo DVD duplicator!; Erin disrespects 100 years of Pizza history as Richard scowls:







This is something that has been high on my technology wish-list for just over two years. Today I decided that I have the appropriate amount of funds and upcoming business to warrant the purchase. And so, I went to B&H, with my foldable cart, and picked one up. If it looks like an oversized printer, you're on the right track.




Out of the box, you can get a better idea of what it is. It is a DVD duplicating machine. I put in a stack of up to 25 DVD's at a time. It has a robotic arm that puts them, one by one, in a DVD recordable drive to "burn" them, and then, prints a label directly on the top surface of the disk, and spits it out into a 25 disk output tray. I go out, ride my bike, have dinner, hang out with friends, and when I come home, the work is done for me. No more putting DVD's into the burner one at a time. No more having to stay home just to do that. No more disc labels. No more blank disks with no labels. And because I can print on the DVD's in full color, no more full-size jewel cases. Just slim-line cases that you can see through. No more Jewel Case inserts!!!! In other words, with this $2000 piece of equipment, I upgrade both the way my product looks, and cut the amount of time and money it takes to make them in more than a half! Yes, I kissed it. Right in the smacker. (I looked in the manual to find out where that was).




Erin came over to hang out later on in the day, because we, once again, haven't seen each other in a while and needed to catch up. While we chatted, I put her to work, helping me label a sick amount of VHS tapes. Here she is, posing, after we finished.




Then I had to deliver a whole bunch of tapes and DVD's to a parent from Calhoun in the West Village. Rich came with me because we were headed to Cagematch at the UCB this evening, and Erin came so we could talk along the way, and to get a bite to eat with us before the show. Just as I finished making my delivery, it began to pour, and we quickly ran into the nearest place, which happened to be a pizzeria with an excellent smell emanating from within. So, we figured it was meant to be, and we had pizza.

But, when Erin broke out the knife and fork, Richard, a pizza purist, was offended, as in the above photo. Some people, especially in New York, believe that eating pizza with anything but your hands is a crime and a sin. Pizza gets its start from the fact that it was easily eaten by the workers on the go at the turn of the 20th century. Pre-paper-plates, Pizza represented an excellent self-solution to a new problem: How to quickly get a meal during the short mid-day lunch break, without being stuck to a sit-down table setting. Italians put the cheese and sauce on the bread, but here in New York, we invented the shape of the slice to-go, and we put the protein-filled meats (pepperoni, sausage, etc.) on top. Erin is disrespecting 100 years of history! And thus, Richard's face.