I stayed up again last night catching up on tv shows that I missed earlier in the week. I forgot to set my alarm and woke up this morning at like 10:30. Oops. I picked up lunch on my way in to the church and got there a little bit after 11AM.

Before I left the office yesterday, I started rendering my pre-service announcement slides, which took about an hour to render. I watched them today and was pleased with how they looked and didn't feel the need to spend any more time on them.

I didn't really have a lot of other things to work on today. I want to do some creative camera work on Sunday but couldn't set up any cameras since the gym is being used tomorrow morning for kids games. Oh the joys of a multi-purpose room. Sometimes I wonder if we spend more time and resources on chair setup/teardown, having activity lights, fixing equipment that gets hit by balls, etc. than we would just having a separate gym (or not having a gym). I'm not good with numbers like that.

I did spend some time today cleaning up the tech closet. It's one of Andrew's recurring organizational tasks to keep the closet clean, but sometimes I like to clean it myself so that things get put where I like them. Plus it saved him some time so he could work on other things for me.

I like organizing and cleaning. I'm not really obsessive-compulsive about it though. I like it when things are neat and orderly but I favor functionality over cleanliness. That's why my desk is always a mess. The only reason I remember where things are is because of my photographic memory... I see a picture in my head of where I put that item, and then I can find it. When I have time though, I enjoy getting things back to an organized system.

Here is part of the tech storage closet. Everything is nice and labeled and it's so easy to find. I love having things organized like this. I keep this closet locked and only a few of us in the building have keys to it.


A lot of other staff people like the idea of coming in to a closet like this and having access to pretty much any cable, connector, or device they might need. Of course, I argue that the reason we have so many things available and easy to get to is because I take the time to keep it organized. It does take work to keep it this way though.

Anyway. I really didn't have much else that I could work on today. I'm waiting on some other resources from other people for a few video projects coming down the pipe, so I really couldn't work on any video editing or anything. Nothing that I really wanted to, anyway.

I left the church around 3pm. I headed out to my bank ATM to get some cash and then went downtown. I parked in the parking garage on Richardson Street and met my friend Jeremy at Marble Slab. Jeremy and I made plans earlier in the week to go to the Winter Jam concert at the Bi-Lo Center. The concert draws a fairly big crowd every year, bringing in a variety of different Christian artists/bands to perform.

As Jeremy and I were sitting at Marble Slab, we saw Toby Mac walk by the store twice. I wouldn't have recognized him but Jeremy pointed him out. I don't really care about meeting celebrities or anything. To me, they're just people that I dont know but have seen before. I've had plenty of opportunities in the past to meet "famous people" but the idea has never really seemed that exciting.

Jeremy's friend Phil joined us around a little after 4pm at the Marble Slab and then the three of us walked down to the Bi-Lo Center to wait in line.


The doors opened at 6pm, so we had to stand outside for about two hours. The time passed quickly though. When we came in and got seats (it was general admission), I wanted to sit higher up and in the center of the room, not to the side. You know it's always going to sound good from the sound board operator's point of view, so why try to sit anywhere else?


I really enjoyed the concert. Parts of it were loud but that's ok. The only thing that really bothered me the entire time was that they had projector screens hanging down and no content on them (at least, no correlating content) during the musical performances from each artist. Most of the time, it was just a image or banner of that particular artist. If I was running it, I would have brought in 4 or 5 cameras and done some IMAG. Just saying.

There were a few artists that I had not heard of before, and some that I had heard their music but never knew the artist name. I don't really listen to a lot of contemporary Christian music, but I think most people know that. I love it but don't really listen to it a lot unless I'm in the car or something and it's on the radio.

I took a lot of pictures and video during the concert. They weren't that fantastic, since I just took them with my little Canon Powershot and not my Rebel XTi DSLR. Everyone at the concert was pretty much just waiting for Toby Mac to come out. They always bring him out last and everybody went crazy and cheered really loud when Toby and the Divercity Band came out.



The concert was over around 10:30pm. Jeremy, Phil, and I walked out and back to our cars. I saw this Moe's truck on the way out and just HAD to pose for a photo. I love Moe's. Oh yeah, I was also the only person that I saw in the entire arena wearing a cowboy hat, which I thought was pretty impressive.


Jeremy and Phil were going to the "after-show party" for Toby Mac at The Channel. I opted to go home. Getting out of the parking garage was quick since I had parked on one of the exit sides (I had to drive up and then drive "out" to get to one of those spots).

On my way home, I stopped at Gewan's house to borrow his DSLR battery grip. Gewan has been my friend for a long time since we started working in tech stuff at the church back in 2001. We loan each other stuff all of the time. I had to call him and get directions to his new house since I had not been there before. I found it without getting lost. He gave the battery grip and I talked to Gewan and his wife, Hope, for a few minutes and then I went home.

Tomorrow will be a fun day. I'm going to sleep in and then Tim and I will be moving more things over to the house and working on the cabling some too. In the evening, I'll be shooting some photos at a retirement community event. Hey, it beats sitting around at home on Valentine's Day (Singles Awareness Day), for sure.

Later,

Joe