I had a fun and relaxing weekend. I waited to write my blog entry until now because it does take some time to write, and I valued my sleep last night over writing an entry. Strange to hear, I know. So, Saturday morning, I got up around 9:30AM. Rex and Catie's dog, Sasha, came barreling down the stairs to wake me up on the couch.

We didn't really have any plans Saturday to do anything except sit around, play some StarCraft, and just relax. I was talking to Rex about an idea I wanted to try out--making my own lens bokeh, where you basically cut a custom shape and cover up the front of the lens on the camera, and the out-of-focus lights will take on that shape. Kind of cool.

So, we headed out a little bit later to go to Target to buy some construction paper and scissors. After Target, Rex and I decided to get some lunch. We drove around a few places but then decided on the local Brixx pizza. I had some pasta. At a pizza place, I know. It was so good.

When we finished eating, we drove around a few neighborhoods in the area and looked at houses. There are a lot of nice neighborhoods in the area. When we got back to Rex and Catie's house (they live in downtown Greensboro, on a downtown street rowhouse, actually), Rex and I played some StarCraft. Yes, again. You can probably skip the whole next paragraph because you know I'm only going to talk about the game and you'll get bored.

We played this new map that I had never played before, so I had the uncertainty of "fog of war" (where you can't see any areas you haven't "explored" yet) so I didn't know the layout. Rex and I played against three computers, and one of them quickly came in and wiped out my entire base. But not before I snuck some of my buildings and guys out. I completely rebuilt on a separate spot of the map (with Rex's help/protection) and built up a sizeable force to then attack the enemy computers. I ended up doing some decent damage but ultimately, we lost. It took 2 and 1/2 hours to lose though.

The entire time we played, Sasha laid in my lap and slept. That dog sure likes me.


Catie came home after her work meeting. We all spent some time chilling in their office, and then started up another game of StarCraft. Yeah, I know, we're nerds. Around 6:30, Rex and I went downstairs to clean up the kitchen so that Catie could cook dinner. We put away all of the clean dishes and then washed the dirty ones, cleaned the stove, and wiped down the counters. Catie cooked pretzel chicken and mashed potatoes while Rex and I watched "Bender's Big Score", the Futurama movie that came out a couple of years ago. It was hilarious.

Dinner was fantastic. Catie can cook really well. Around 8:30, I decided it was time to get going, since the drive home was kind of long. I'd like to say the drive was rather unventful. It was, so, I suppose I can say that. The drive was rather uneventful. I had to stop and use a public restroom on the way home. I suppose you could consider that eventful, but not really. I got home around 11:45pm. By the time I unpacked and took a shower, it was almost 1AM, and I didn't really want to stay up too late writing a blog entry so I just went to bed instead.

I fell asleep quickly and got a few hours of sleep. I woke up this morning at 6AM. I was tired when I woke up and I almost fell back to sleep. I got up and got dressed and headed out. Sometimes when I am worried about oversleeping, or want to save time the next morning, I go to bed partially dressed. Don't judge me, I'm just being honest. So, I woke up this morning and put on my black shirt, took care of my perpetual bedhead situation, and headed out.

I got to Southside Fellowship just before 6:30AM. I went in to the worship center and started bringing all of the equipment online in the tech booth. I worked on setting up the forward cameras for the IMAG today while watching the video announcements on the projectors to make sure everything was good to go. It's always good to test on the live system.

I spent about 15 minutes looking for the youth HD camera but couldn't find it. I looked in the youth trailer, my office, and the youth rooms upstairs but couldn't find it so I just called Tommy. I think I woke him up when I called, but he had the camera at his house, so I was kind of a jerk and I made him bring it in. I really needed it this morning. Tommy didn't really mind though. At least, that is what I told myself so I wouldn't feel so bad after making him get up after only 3 hours of sleep.

I spent the rest of the time before the first service started getting the cameras ready and configured, communicating with volunteers, and testing everything else. We had 5 cameras going today and it looked really nice. We had the two normal cameras in the back of the room, two additional cameras on the floor toward stage left and stage right, and then I had one camera on stage pointing at just Matt on the piano for a standard shot which looked pretty cool.


We had some new volunteers return today for additional training and observation. Both Tonya and David came back to observe slides, and they both had a chance to operate it live too for some experience. Russ and Joel also came back today for more camera training. Lindsey (ministry assistant at the church) and her husband Mark came by today to observe Tyler on lights and they may possibly be helping out there, and Canon, a teenager, came by to observe Zack run the video playback. I am excited to get to work and serve with all of these new volunteers on the teams.

I think everyone enjoyed the video announcements today. I did some pretty cool (yet simple) things in After Effects that I think came across well for title/transition slides. Not my best work or anything, but new and fresh and creative, which is what I was going for. I like to learn new things, and using that program continues to challenge me to learn new things. Here they are if you want to see them. Feel free to watch them in HD on YouTube... it looks nice.



The IMAG and camera work today was excellent. All of the services went really well. The third-service was the best video/camera-wise but that's mainly because by that time, we've perfected our art and are just executing. Ron, one of the camera guys, did a great job moving his camera to a better location and actually ran the camera handheld for most of the morning and I didn't even know he wasn't using a tripod. That's how stable it was.

Here are some pictures from the Valentine's prelude song medley that we did today.





I wanted to post some of the creative camera work with Rodrigo Rodriguez (the guest artist/guitar player had performing with us today) but I don't think I have copyright clearance to do that. Or, at a minimum, I didn't ask for it, so I probably shouldn't post any of it. Here's a picture from the DVD though. This guy was really talented and humble and also, talented.


Between services today, I did a fair amount of running around and fixing/adjusting things. People kept coming and asking me to do things and I had to turn a lot of people away and tell them to just email me about it later because I couldn't think about it right then. That's one of the downsides of being in a booth and being approachable--when I'm focused, I need to stay focused and think about directing tech for the worship center services, not about other problems in the building, dvds that people want copies of, computer questions they may have, etc. That's why I don't come out of the control room sometimes. Nothing personal folks. It's just my brain can only hold so much at once and I like to stay focused. I am good at multitasking though, but in that tye of environment on Sunday morning, I only have so little time to accomplish a lot.

Anyway. Everything went very well today. I spent a lot of time cleaning everything up after church, putting away cameras, trash, etc. Tim offered to pick up some lunch on his way home, which was nice because all I wanted to do was go home and lay down. On my way out (around 1pm), Nate stopped and asked if he could show me something he was working on in After Effects that he needed my help on. We walked out to the youth trailer/modular and he showed me one of his renders and what he wanted to accomplish, so I think I'm going to be helping him learn how to do what he wants to do later this week.

On my way home, I called Ruthie and tried to convince her that a local news station had seen our Valentines video interview and wanted to bring us in as guest reporters/interviewers. She didn't fall for it. I should have made up more intricate details, which I often do when trying to prank someone or fabricate a story for fun. We did talk for a minute about her recent speed-dating experience at Liquid Highway (local coffee store chain) where she was on the news. I am considering going to the next speed-dating event. It might be fun, you never know. The only problem is that its hosted in a coffee shop, and I don't drink coffee or anything so I'm sure I'll feel awkward. Maybe I can buy one cup of coffee and pretend to drink it. Or just get an empty cup and fill it with water and pretend its hot. Who knows.

I came home and ate some lunch and laid on the couch for a while. I went to my room around 4:30 to take a nap but decided that an hour-long nap wasn't that enticing. I had to be at my friend Dan's place at 6pm since a few of us were getting together for a small party for Dan since his birthday is tomorrow. I packed up my Xbox, Rock Band/Guitar Hero instruments, my DSLR camera, and headed out.

I got to the house around 6pm. Dan's fiance, Rachel, lives in the house part, and Dan lives in an apartment connected to the side of the house, which is kind of cool when we all want to get together, everyone can just go to the same place. I got out my DSLR and took some pictures while we were hanging around. I'm not sure if I've posted a picture of Dan and Rachel on my blog before, so here's some faces to go with the names.


We ate dinner, played some Halo, and ate some ice cream and cake while singing happy birthday. My deep operatic vibrato made a slight appearance but I was slightly busy taking pictures that I didn't really concentrate on singing that much.


We played some more Halo but it really was no contest. I thought it'd be fairer to put Dan, Jami, and Dustin on one team against me... because I have been playing Halo for like 5 years and they're all brand-new to the game, but we did two versus two instead.

I left around 8:45 since I was feeling pretty tired. I came straight home. So, that was pretty much the last two days of my life. Try not to get super excited. I'm still debating what this blog will look like after its one-year anniversary. I may decide to not blog every day (or at all). Feel free to leave your comments on what you think I should do. I think that if "enough" people told me in writing that its worth my time to write every day, that I could keep doing it, but otherwise I have way too many anonymous readers that I'm not really concerned about upsetting or losing if I stop blogging every day. Not that I'm against anonymous reading (I read lots of other peoples' blogs and never comment on them). I'm just saying that I can't take your opinion into consideration if you never voice it. That's all. And it takes a lot of energy to want to do this every day, when sometimes, I'd rather just not do it at all.

Anyway. It's 10:45pm now and I just remembered I have to go back to the church to hook up a lapel microphone in Room 202 for an event in there tomorrow. I don't really want to go in on my "day off" or get a phone call, so I better just go take care of it now. 5 bucks says I get distracted and end up playing around on the piano for 45 minutes.

Later,

Joe