I did not sleep well last night. I tossed and turned all night and just could not fall asleep until about 3AM. Maybe it was because I had so much on my mind. Or maybe because I drank a lot of soda before going to bed. Or because I knew I had just written a sub-par blog entry. I don't know. It could have been any of those things.

I got up this morning at 8AM. Well, I woke up. Let's put it that way. I promptly turned off my alarm, fell back asleep, and woke up at 9:45. Wee. Some days the whole "open honesty on my blog" thing gets old. I had to pay my rent for February on my way in to work. I almost always pay it early. I'm a good tenant like that. I've been getting more and more excited about moving out. Almost everyone I have mentioned to about moving out has offered to help me move, which is great. I've never been on the receiving end of such offers. I've helped so many friends move over a lifetime that if it was required to be reciprocal, in theory, all I should have to do is unlock my apartment and unlock the house, and go play golf for the day or something.

The one thing I am not looking forward to is boxing stuff up. I really don't want to. It's not like I'm moving across the state or the country. I'm just moving to Simpsonville from Greenville. It's just a few miles. Eh, maybe 10 miles. I don't know. I just don't see the value in procuring boxes, packing my things up, driving 10 miles, and then unloading it again.

So, here's my plan. Last night, I cleared out my entire closet. I brought out everything and put it on the table in my room, I laid my clothes out on the floor (most of them were in the laundry basket anyway), and got out all of the other junk in there. Most of this stuff are things like equipment boxes (computers, etc.), my original and still working Atari 2600, some programming books, etc. I'd like to start taking over most of this stuff (including clothes I don't wear that often) and move it all to the house before my big "moving day". If I can, I might even move my plates and cups and kitchenware and all of that stuff in advance too. I'm sure I could survive on just a few cups and plates for a month. Then, when my moving day comes, it'll just be big furniture and stuff like that. People won't judge me for not putting my stuff in boxes, and we can get it all moved in and set up quickly. I'd like to throw a big "thanks for helping me move" party the same weekend if possible. That sounds like fun, yeah?

Anyway. Back to my day. I got to the church around 11AM. Andrew probably got there promptly right at 9. If I were him, I'd show up at 10, because, I never show up at 9. He could show up at 10 and say he got there at 9, and I'd never even know it. I went to my desk and did a little bit of work on the baptism testimonies, doing some final color correction and titling before rendering the final exports.

As I was working, Jeff Greenaway stopped by to ask me some tech/AV questions. Jeff is my friend Dallas's father. Dallas is a high school student that I hang out with and supposedly try to be a good influence on. I think Dallas reads this blog... right D? Jeff wanted to know if there was a room set up with a projector and PowerPoint capabilities that also had Internet access. We went upstairs to Room 202 and I gave him an overview of the tech setup, ran through how to use everything, and gave advice on showing a website on the screen. I really wish the computer in that room was faster. It's so old. That was a tangent to the subject. Sorry about that. We talked for a few minutes and then I shut everything back off and went back to my office to keep working.

Around 12:30, I left for lunch. Andrew ate lunch at his desk today so I ate by myself. I got in the car and decided to go to Moe's. To be honest, I go there a lot when I don't really know where else to go. They never disappoint me and sometimes, I just need to know my lunch will be good and not let me down. That sounds lame but a bad lunch can ruin my whole day.

I got some food and brought it back to my office. As I was getting a glass of water from the kitchen, I stopped to talk to Laurie Glass for a few minutes. I helped her son, Gage, get a little more organized in his English class in high school, and now he's gone from I think a D to a high B average (or whatever an 89 is these days). Maybe I should be a tutor on the side.

I ate my lunch at my desk and then got back to work. Andrew finished making the light cues for Sunday so I took a look at them and made a few revisions. I really didn't have a whole lot for Andrew to work on today. Sometimes Fridays are like that. Until the room is set up for church (with the chairs out and all) there isn't a lot we can do, so I just wait until that's done and I do it myself.

A while back, Art came and talked to me about the embedded YouTube videos we had on the church's website. They're all clips from the recap interviews that I put together at the end of the Galatians series that we did last year. The clips were originally showed in the church service, and then we decided to put them on the web. Normally when you watch a video on YouTube, when the video is over, it will recommend related content based on tags, keywords, video titles, etc. Sometimes these recommendations are completely not-related and are sometimes inappropriate. These also show up in the embedded off-site player, like on our website. A few people have watched the video and then seen the recommendations, and, since they were watching the videos from our site, assumed that those videos were also from Southside. My response to this viewpoint was, "Learn how the internet and YouTube works", but we decided it would just be better to not embed YouTube videos directly on our church website anymore.

All this to say, it's been on my task list since then to replace the videos. Last week, I copied the project files over to my drive from the archives and loaded it back up. Looking at it with fresh eyes, I had to do some color correction. Either I missed that step last April or I thought it looked ok. I also did some audio filtering and then re-created the Flash Video files and uploaded them to the church website and added the necessary code to embed the files directly from our own server. No more YouTube embedding on the main church website. The videos actually look and sound better this way anyway, so it's a good thing.

I also spent some time this afternoon cleaning up the control room and setting up extra chairs for new volunteers to observe comfortably. I set up another computer with EasyWorship on it next to the production computer so that they can "practice" if they want to.

Tommy stopped by my office a little bit after 4pm to bring me a miniDV tape. I gave him all of the ones I had and needed one for this Sunday. I decided to set up the miniDV VTR deck that I have to record the actual baptisms during the first and second service on Sunday, to use to edit for playback during the third service rather than messing with the actual DVD we are recording with. This way, I can work during the 2nd service and get the videos ready and tested in advance. It's a good plan. Tommy helped me set up the deck and I turned on the switcher and tested it really quick.

I left the church today just before 5pm. I talked to Kerry Buttram, the Global Outreach Pastor, for a few minutes on my way out. Kerry and I have been good friends for a long time. We traveled to Athens, Greece together on a mission trip (we call them "GO Journeys" at Southside) back in September, 2006. I was reading the blog that I wrote while on that trip the other day. Here's a picture from the trip, of Kerry and I "single-handedly cleaning the streets of Athens". I got a lot of weird looks for doing this. I thought it was funny.


Anyway. I went home and Tim was there sitting around. I laid down on the couch and almost fell asleep. Around 6:30pm, we left the apartment to head out to Texas Roadhouse, a steak restaurant in Greer, to meet my sister Gina and her husband Jay and a few friends for Jay's birthday. On the way out, I saw my neighbors Dale and Patty, and I talked to them for a few minutes about us moving out. They've always been good neighbors to us and I regret that I basically lived here for 2 years and never really moved past the "fancy this weather we're having" stage of conversation. I tried a few times to talk about where I go to church and what I do, but I'm just not good at conversations like that.

After talking to them for a little bit, Tim and I got in the car and headed out. It only took about 15 minutes to get to the restaurant. I didn't really know where it was but figured I'd find it as I got closer. That's definitely something in my personality that has changed in recent years. In the past, I wouldn't even get in the car if I didn't know exactly where I was going. Now, I just hop in the car and drive to a general area and then start worrying if I can't just find it right away. I rarely get lost, but sometimes it happens.

We made it to the restaurant around 6:45. As we were walking inside, Gina and Jay pulled up so we waited outside for them.


Tim wore that top hat the whole evening. He has the Abe Lincoln beard, and now a top hat. I'm trying to convince him now to learn part of the Gettysburg Address for February 12. You know, Lincoln's birthday. I tried to convince him tonight to walk around saying "4 score and 7..." all the time. You know, like "This piece of gum cost me 4 score and 7 cents..." or, "4 score and 7 minutes ago, I was at home, sitting on the couch...". I don't think Tim has enough of a flair for the dramatic as I do. But wearing the hat all evening and let us call him Abe was pretty fun.



We went inside and tried to get a table. Gina had called at like 4:30pm and made a reservation, but apparently that doesn't really mean much at that restaurant. We ended up having to wait from 6:45 to 8:15 to actually get seated. I didn't really mind because I'm a really patient person, but it did get a little annoying having to wait that long and not really have anywhere to sit or anything.


We finally got a table. There were 7 of us--Gina, Jay, Michael, Jeremy, Tory, Tim, and myself. I had a great time at dinner. The food was good and we even got some free appetizers because our waitress was awesome. Great food and great service. The whole waiting for almost 2 hours thing was not that enjoyable, but, hey, sometimes life hands you lemons.

I did see a friend (I guess by now, former friend) while we were in the restaurant that I hadn't seen or heard from in a while, but I'm not really the type of person to approach other people when I'm out and about, even if they see me. I guess I don't really find it odd that I might run into people I know when I'm in the same city that I live in. And this person stopped talking to me a long time ago for a reason still unknown to me, so I figured I'd just leave the situation alone.

Anyway. Gina brought an ice-cream cake with her and had one of the hostesses put it in the freezer for us while we were waiting to be seated, so they brought that out after we were done with dinner. Gina specifically asked them to not sing to Jay because it would embarrass him, so they came out and sang to me instead. Well, at least, they were all looking at me when they were singing.






We all left the restaurant around 10pm. Tim and I went straight home. We had to take a small detour since there was a wreck blocking an entire road near Pleasantburg Drive and Wade Hampton Boulevard. I knew an alternate route so I took that, but there was a car in front of me that didn't know the route, so it took a while because that car kept slowing down at every intersection trying to figure out where to turn next.

When I got home, I unloaded some stuff from my SUV. I started setting up my Xbox and then decided to write this blog entry instead.

Tomorrow will be a good day. I offered to help rewire and fix the video setup in the tech booth with Tommy. For whatever reason, I suggested 10AM but now that sounds like a bad idea because I really want to sleep in. Oh well. With great power comes great responsibility. Or it was something like that, wasn't it Uncle Ben? I don't really have an Uncle Ben. I'm quoting a movie.

Later,

Joe