What A Day!
Posted on July 7, 2008
Allowing our redneck to shine through
Yesterday was one of those days, a day where we had one problem after another. When I got to church, Daniel was there getting things set up with sound so I proceeded to log in to the EasyWorship computer. The mouse worked but the keyboard did not, no response at all. It’s wireless, which I wouldn’t advise but it has done ok. No AAA batteries on hand and no time to run and get any, so, I ran back to the tech ministry wall….we get a wall in a room, which I had to fight for, so I’m glad to have that much…. so I went there and pulled a spare keyboard. Not a big thing.
Then, once EasyWorship was up, I clearly had no secondary monitor, aka projection to the big screens, which poses a slight problem. On other systems, it may be an easy thing to troubleshoot but not ours. I have mentioned our redneck system and I stand by that, it’s redneck! It works great but when someone who knows nothing about our setup starts unplugging things, it’s a problem.
Over the years, it has been pieced together and a couple of pieces of hardware in the rack are not even used anymore. So, I got on the floor under the counter chasing wires. About a year ago, when I was barely getting started here, a similar thing happened and that’s when I learned that our setup was redneck.
First service we had no projection, which isn’t a big thing, the hymns that they sing are all known and they have sung them for years. We were able to get things up for second service. After plugging things in correctly, we also power cycled the scan converter.
Over time, including yesterday, people suggest what needs to be done to fix all of our problems and my response, including yesterday, is that I agree but their suggestion costs money, usually big money, and for now, my goal is to make this current system work the best it should.
This current budget year, my big expenditure is a new firewall and other network upgrades and I’m in the process of getting that done right now. That is necessary and last year at budget time, I focused on what I knew, which is more the IT side of things. For next year’s budget, I’m focusing on replacing the video/projection equipment in the sound booth. It fascinates me that people who have little to no involvement with this ministry sure do know how to spend the tech budget, at least they think they do.
Part of being a good steward is making the most with what God has provided, not just complain about how much better it could be.
We had other issues too:
- the DI on the piano was static-y, so it wasn’t mic’d.
- Even though sound got to the laptop we were streaming too, there was no sound on the stream and we have done this for the last few weeks successfully.
This was my first post in nearly a month! I have been busy and distracted and traveling and trying to figure out where God is taking me. Still not sure exactly but I have an idea what the near future holds, hoping to finalize the details this week. Of course, it could all change too, so I will share more about that as things firm up.
I would love to write more, even full time, even though that hasn’t been evident lately.
How was your Sunday?
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4 Responses to “What A Day!”
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i got to church yesterday morning to find no internet connection (again!) and the new m-audio transit unit i had installed for input and output between the pc and the sound board wasn’t working. it worked great the week before, but now all of a sudden it wasn’t showing up as a device option for sound at all. after numerous attempts to uninstall and re-install the driver failed, we scrambled to reconfigure the internal sound card. time ran out; didn’t get it up and going until yesterday afternoon. fortunately the only video we had yesterday morning simply used a music bed, so we improvised with the keyboard. not near as good, but you do what you have to do. so, yeah, what a day!
Much love and many prayers for you Jim, and to you too Angela.
Just keep the faith, and smile even when the 100th person gives you ‘advice’.
Smile and nod, smile and nod!
Fun times eh? A budget is another of my battles that I need to convince the management about but I do understand your redneck setup - it’s something we have here as even though I’m meant to be in charge I still find others add what they want when they want.
Look forward to hearing abouyt your future plans too.
Ahh, the joys of the Technical Arts!
Here’s my recent woes:
-our best projector (we run two on Sunday mornings) decided that it’s intermittent problem is now a permanent one. Sent of to manufacturer for repair.
-pastor’s laptop running like a x286. Take me two evenings just to get it to the point to find out that the hard drive is failing. Ordered new drive but recovery of the past 3 1/2 years of sermon documents is not coming via standard methods.
-children’s ministry laptop power adapter died. $50 for a refurbished one!
-a component of our Aviom (in-ear system) died and had to be sent in for repairs.
-the tech team laptop (the one that I run Song Show Plus and my video editing tools) seems to start having overheating problems. Every once and a while the video will go to all asterisk symbols. Last time I saw this the video card went bad.
-another problem with our tech laptop on Father’s day. The message was centered around a movie and we had 4 movie clips to play during the message. Only one of them ran correctly.
The good news is that we’ll be moving into our building (hopefully) in August sometime. Where all our problems from being a mobile church will turn into new problems being in a building!
The most important thing is to keep the proper perspective. My team lives by this motto. “We strive for excellence but God is responsible for Sunday morning.”
Since I live in WV, we should have the title of “Redneck Setup”, but since that is taken, I’ll choose “Ghettotastic”