shirenomad | "Hi, I'm a Mac." "And I'm a PC."

I've been the media dude for Irvine Presbyterian's third service for several months now. What that usually means is that I show up about an hour before the service, set up the media laptop and plug it into the designated projector jack, and load the music lyrics (alone with the "Welcome!" images and so forth) into the church's slide show program of choice. Then during the actual service I switch from digital slide to digital slide as things progress; this all runs through the projector and shows on the big screen behind the pulpit/praise band, so everyone can sing along to the lyrics. I've gotten good at the pre-service setup and can usually finish in about 30 minutes; the other thirty is if there are any surprises.

This Sunday there were surprises. As I'm arriving, Heidi comes up to me and informs me that she's got a bunch of photos she wants to show on the big screen during a presentation she's going to make about an orphanage in Swaziland we sponsor. The photos are currently on her iBook; should she burn them to CD? Sure, go ahead. Off she goes to find a blank CD while I get back to handling the other pre-service chores.

At Service T-minus 40 minutes, she returns with the CD. I accept it, insert it, and discover that the folder with the images is divided into folders and sub-folders and sub-sub-folders, all not in the order she wants anyway. Whoops. Well, wait, what order did you want them in? The order they're on her image utility on the iBook. Does this image utility have a slide show option? Sure! Oh, why didn't you say so? Plan B, then... since Pastor Mark won't need the second cable jack this week, we'll plug the iBook direct into the projector and run straight from that!

...and being an iBook, it doesn't have the proper outlet for the video cables we have. But fear not! Plan C: Pastor Mark also has an iBook! He uses an adapter to hook it in for his sermon slides. Go talk to him. Well, Mark was occupied with the second service, but he said he'd dig the adapter out of his office as soon as he was done.

My first real mistake: I should have started copying the images off the CD and reordering them anyway, but I figured the problem was solved, so why bother? "Why bother" came at T-minus 15 minutes, when the second service ended, and Mark comes over with the adapter to discover... it's an AV-to-DVI adapter. And Heidi's laptop, being older, doesn't have a DVI port either.

Plan D: panic. With 15 minutes to go, I need to get all 90 images off the CD into one folder, then figure out a fast-and-furious way to load them into MediaShout, unless... yes! This laptop also has an image utility! With a slideshow option! ...that refuses to display on the second monitor! (The "second monitor" is the projector; the primary is the laptop screen.)

After wasting ten minutes trying to find a way to put the slideshow on the projector, I go back to Plan D as I furiously transfer images. People are already starting to file in by this point, so I have to restrict all activity to the main monitor or everyone will see me dragging and dropping files on the big screen, which is not why they've entered this house of God. As I do this, I quietly inform Heidi that she may have to drop the image portion of the presentation entirely; she informs me that the images are, pretty much, the presentation.

T-minus ZERO. Files are still transferring and I have absolutely no way to get them into Media Shout any faster than "create a slide, insert an image, create another slide, insert another image..." The worship band starts up. I minimize everything and start the lyrics (c'mon... I know your poor RAM is stressed, but switch slides please? For me?); while I'm doing this, Kirk comes up and I inform him that we may have to accept defeat on this one.

T-plus 3 minutes... Trevor's delivering the opening announcements, which gives me a five minute window where I can drop attention from keeping the projector in sync with what's going on. I hunt through the programs. There's gotta be... PowerPoint! God bless you, Bill Gates! And it has a "photo album" fast loader! And a simple selector to display the presentation on the secondary monitor! And it's time to resume the lyrics! You couldn't have dragged that out just a little longer, Trev?

T-plus 20 minutes. Out of stuff to sing; if we don't do the presentation now, we never will. I select every image in the folder, package it into a PowerPoint Photo Album, wait a breathless minute while Kirk introduces Heidi and PowerPoint processes (stall, Kirk, stall!), then hit F5 and pray... And! It! Shows! On the big screen! Hallelujah. Kirk glances back behind him, confirms that yes, he is looking at Swazi orphans, and hands it off to Heidi. They weren't quite in the order she wanted, but after all that, we were all grateful to have them at all.