Tech Trauma

Although Eli was warned to 'not be that kid', he was.  That kid who almost does not get his final movie burned before the plane leaves the gate. There is apparently always someone panicking in the airport as the Minnesota delegation heads toward the gates. Last year the bpys wound up burning their movie at the end of the year school picnic.  They traded off tossing frisbees and monitoring the progress on their laptop.  This year that was not a worry.  There was a new program that had other issues, but that burned movies in 5 minutes, rather than 5 hours.  So Eli used the week between the end of school and plane departure by putting on final touches to the movie, waiting until the last evening, after dinner, to start the burn process.  Everything had been fine for the state competition- the movie downloading and burning in a slick few minutes.  And all started out that way at 9pm the night before a 5:30 am airport shuttle.  And by shuttle I mean me.  9 became 10 became 11.  At that point Eli's fabulouso teacher Tim came over.  He's known Eli since Eli was 6 weeks old, but still, that is going above and beyond.  The two of them were strangely unstressed as they tried several workarounds.  It was one big puzzle that they enjoyed solving, despite Friday becoming Saturday and the departure time looming ever nearer.  By 1am, Tim went home to try Plan F on his home computer, while Eli and I holed up in his room devising plans G-Z.  We tried several.  Finally, by about 2:30 am, we found a solution.  I would like to proudly state that I had a hand in it.  I had no idea how or why it worked, I just found a solution online after screaming for help into the midnight netherworld of the internet.  Someone answered.  Disc got burned.  Eli and I got about 2 hours of sleep before we rose and headed for the airport.  We picked up a blurry-eyed Tim on the way, still in high spirits from the late-night high stakes adventure.  The two of them got out of my car, giggling away.  I was glad I didn't have to get on the plane with them- as I'm sure that they came down at some point!