Portrait of the Artist as a Young Geek

Jaylene, the latest resident of the Room of Doom, pulled out (under nicer circumstances than the previous two) after a couple months of residence. She has been immediately replaced by Bo, the landlady's son, as he just got out of university and can't hang out in the dorms anymore. So this is actually sort of convenient... and as a relative of the landlady, hopefully Bo will have curse immunity.

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.

So yeah, with some major furniture-moving help from Allen (thanks Allen!) I got... well, not everything, but all the big stuff and quite a bit of the little stuff moved to the new place. The advance planning I did with measuring tape and a lot of cutouts on graph paper helped considerably when deciding where all the furniture would wind up, although I made a miscalculation in placing my desk (more on that in a minute) and I expected more out of the closet than I got (or rather, I expected there'd be less to fill it).

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So yeah, I spent the weekend up north, as mentioned. The trip up went smoothly until we reached Casa de Fruta, this tourist trap rest stop in the middle of nowhere, about an hour from San Jose. We stop for a quick leg stretch and bathroom break, I pick up some dried fruit as a gift for the parents just because, and then we all pile back into the car... and it gurgles. And stalls. And generally refuses to go. We'd noticed a bit of gurgling as we pulled in, but we figured it was nothing... joke was on us. So after checking the obvious for problems, we drag in both Triple A and Allen's parents, one to retrieve the car and the other to retrieve us. Arrival time was thus two hours later than planned. (Turned out the water pump broke down, meaning the radiator wasn't getting water, if you were curious.)

Saw my good friend Cheryl that evening, along with some of her friends. (I owed her that after not seeing her once all Christmas break, due to one complication after another.) Followed that up with seeing my grandmother (who's getting chemo right now but is holding out okay) for lunch the next day, and the usual crew at church on Sunday. This was not, however, the best choice of weekends if I wanted to see my parents; they were highly busy due to some church planning event (there's some major redecorating coming up in the next few months), so I barely saw them at all Saturday and only saw Mom for most of Sunday. But I did get to spend the last bit of Friday afternoon watching a DVD with both of them.

Still, it was good timing in one other respect. There's this elderly lady I'll call L who was going through some trouble last year and, with the encouragement of her friend R, sought a lawyer... namely, Pam. Coincidentally, R was (and still is) a member of Santa Clara First Baptist; she had no idea until she walked in the door that I was working for Pam as an assistant, but she was glad to know I'd be helping out. I moved down south before the case was resolved completely, but it was basically a stunning victory for our side, and no one was more pleased than L (who was convinced she was screwed and there was no point to fighting it). But I bring this up because R continued being L's friend, and invited her to church, and by another sheer coincidence, L got baptized this Sunday. So it was just cool to see how much better she was doing. I made sure to say hi after the service and congratulate her.

Trip back south was uneventful, although I wasn't able to sleep through as much of it as I did on the way up. Also made sure to bring south as many books as I could pack; I had left most of them behind when I moved for space reasons.

And oh yeah, while I was up there, I was helping Mom out at Costco briefly, and while I was there I poked around the bargain bin computer games, and behold! Brand new, 16 bucks. I haven't seen it used for less than $14. Can you say "Score"? Good!

So yeah, the haul:

- Jumbo cutting board and frying pan. (Mom says the first sign that the kids have grown up is when they start asking for practical stuff.)
- DVD writer. I just asked for a DVD-ROM drive, so bonus.
- TWO sets of headphones. Apparent failure to communicate between the gift-givers, but I'm fine with this: one for work, one for home.
- Huge tin of Jelly Bellies, among other snack food. (Yum.)
- Pen set.
- Reimbursement for airfare.
- 40 bucks.

Andrew bought Double Dash for me on eBay... it has yet to arrive. He bought it two weeks before Christmas, and the eBay ad said the seller could get it anywhere in the States in a week, so we're not sure what went wrong there. If it doesn't get here before I leave, he's promised to deliver pain and agony to the seller in question. ^^;

Andrew also bought the entire family Twilight Imperium, which we spent a good chunk of yesterday learning. Interesting game, though kinda complicated, and not ideal for five players.

A friend got a whole mess of 24 DVDs (that's the series on the DVDs, not the number) and last night he got a lot of us together to see the first six episodes of Season 1. Mind you, this was my first time watching the show. ...the writers are EVIL! EVIL I SAY! (Must watch more...)

Which brings me to this morning. If you've got to wake up with the annual flu bug, you might as well get it while spending a week at home, away from work or the need to cook, and with parents who have plenty of cold meds in reserve. I'll be skipping the planned get-together tonight, most likely, but with luck I'll be back up and running by tomorrow.

kitarin, got your card, thanks. More than a bit unexpected, since we haven't had the chance to talk in some time, but no less appreciated. (But, uh, who's "Abi"?)

Saturday (yeah, I'm behind on my entries; so what?) Allen called in Brian and I for a special mission. We went over to a nearby park with a banner, which we were to attach to a bridge over the lake. Then we were to film the result as Allen and Christina (his girlfriend for six years) rounded the bend, and Christina read the message: "Christina, will you marry me?"

*waits for the "Awwwww"s to die down*

Unfortunately, there was a snag... the letters on the banner weren't large enough. We should have checked earlier, but it simply wasn't legible at any distance that you could reach without walking on water. So Allen gets her to the planned point, and it's clear from there that there's... something... hanging from the bridge... (D'oh!) So he makes some excuse to make a phone call and gives Brian updated instructions on the sly, then heads around the side of the lake, facing Christina away from the bridge while we furiously take down the banner and reposition it across the entryway.

Alas, by this point Christina had figured out something was up, and she was able to deduce from there. So the only surprise for her was that Brian and I were involved. But hey, she still said yes (like there was ever any doubt), so all's good. Congrats, both of you!

Within thirteen hours after our flight left Seattle for home, my cousin Jenny had gone through a rapid labor and given birth to her first child about five weeks early. Despite definite premie status, Zoe Potesta is healthy, but really needs to work on her timing.

Anyway, all you gathering in the area over the next few days, feel free to hunt through hospitals until you find her so you can say hi for me. And so you can get an early start on molding her in our image. MWAHAHA. ;D

I've been running the projector for the church for a couple of months now. This being the most important service of the year, not to mention involving a few extra features we don't normally mess with -- live camera projection, DVD -- meant our Audio/Video department head (Jerry) was running around the booth beforehand to make sure we understood absolutely everything we needed to do. By golly, we were going to do this flawlessly, and nothing would stop us!

So, of course, God taught Jerry humility by blowing the circuit breaker to the projector. ^^;;;; We missed an entire song getting it back up and running; thankfully, it was in the hymnals, so the worship leader was able to direct the congregation (that's church-speak for "audience"!) to dust them off and read from there. (I knew we still had those for a reason.) Our screw-up for the day complete, we handled all the more complicated tasks without incident... though that may have been partially because Jerry got paranoid and didn't leave the booth again until the very end of the service.

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The church also did a "Journey to the Cross" on Good Friday, which was open for the entire afternoon: people would enter the church and move from station to station, each depicting a scene during Christ's last day before His execution. Inspired by the Catholic Stations of the Cross, but we aimed for something much more physical and interactive. We had at least 20 potted plants in one corner for the Garden of Gethsemane, a path with bloody footprints to walk down, and an actual casket at the end.* The most effective, though, was a wooden cross... and a box of nails. It becomes very real to you when you take a nail and a hammer and pound it into the wood. Visual, auditory, kinesthetic, all at once. Having the station there also meant that you could be at some other location in the room and suddenly hear, in the distance, the WHAM! WHAM! of a nail entering the cross. Very powerful.

Oh, and of course the Good Friday service that evening had to have its own glitch... The church has a large but empty cross engraved on the wall, and during the entire afternoon we'd had Jesus projected on it (my contribution to the "Journey" project: getting that set up). We intended to keep Him up there through the evening service, but we'd neglected to take into account that we'd had to restart the projector multiple times over the afternoon because it was beginning to overheat. Sure enough, midway through the service, Jesus suddenly had "High Temperature" flashing next to Him... about ten minutes later, the projector had performed an emergency shutdown and Jesus had bugged out entirely. The pastor, ever on top of things, merely pointed out at the end of his sermon that although Good Friday is a time to be mournful, the best part was ahead, because (and here he gestured to the empty cross to much chuckling) "as you can see, He's not on the cross anymore!"

* Interesting story behind that one: we wanted to borrow one from a mortuary, but apparently they can't sell a coffin once it's been "used". No, it didn't matter that no one was actually in the casket at any time, or that it would never be buried. However, after further discussion, the mortuary decided to simply give us the casket. Well, hey, we're a church, we do funerals, so sure. The staff figure that they can offer it to use for "in state" viewings of people who are eventually going to be cremated and don't need it permanently.