Update

Wow. Almost a week since my last post. Sorry about that.

Nothing new to report, really. This week has mostly been spent trying to recover from the Christmas service-athon last week (which was wonderful, but very very tiring).

I'm in the process for putting together some spots for the weekend service, and spending time with Steph & the families when I can, so all in all, the last few days of 2006 are pretty calm for now, which is a welcome change. We'll see how it goes between now and New Year's.

Alrighty, my junk is done rendering. Back to work!

HD Capture

Ah, the times, they are a-changin'.

For starters, I have half a day to myself, which for the past few months has been virtually unheard of. I'm actually having a very tough time disciplining myself to just be and enjoy a single afternoon of free time, which I guess speaks volumes about my proclivity towards workaholism.

Also, Thursday I checked my grades for the semester, and to my absolute delight, I passed everything with all A's and a B+ in orchestration. And I managed to do it without yanking out any of my hair or kicking any small animals in frustration.

So, that's the quick n' messy update for what's been going on in my life these days. Now that things have calmed down a bit, I'm sure I'll be posting more words and posting them more frequently. For now, though, I really really want to talk about how Kyle and I spent last Saturday night.

Kyle and I have been spending the past few Saturday nights staying up all hours cutting together and rendering the High Definition signal for our other campuses, which, on a good night, can take up to 4 hours.
Basically, it means combining the stream from our standard def cameras (which is the same thing you see on the side screens when you visit FRC's main campus) with the stream from the single HD camera we've got locked down in order to give the front-view impression of a live teaching service when you watch it at one of our other campuses.

All this means that we have lots of free time while the footage is rendering, and last Saturday we discovered the wonders of this nifty little program called Photo Booth on one of the MacBooks they keep up in the production room. Hilarity ensued.

extreme excuses

Many apologies fro the extreme lack of posting. In the last two weeks I've been in Arkansas, have been finishing school (I had my last final Thursday), planning and executing video shoots and editing oodles of footage (Brian was out of town last week, so I was the guy), and also, let's not forget that I work at a church, which means that Christmas is a little nuts anyway.
There is just one last hurdle and after that I think that things will settle down a bit, and that is our annual Christmas services (semantic pondering of the day: it would be a little strange if they weren't annual. Could you imagine?)
The equation looks kinda like this:

9 videos + 2 video guys + 3 days to do them all = no sleep.
Or the taking of hostages, whichever Brian and I decide come Wednesday afternoon.

bring it on.

Hmmm

It really is Wednesday, isn't it?

hmmm...that's the third time today that I forgot what day it is. I should probably get more sleep.

...Anywho, I finished a final yesterday (94%, yeah baby!) and found out today that my lowest quiz grade in my evo of jazz won't count anymore (that will nicely cover that one that I accidentally missed the deadline on). Just one more final: Orchestration.

All that stands between me and the end of my coursework is the ranges of most of the orchestra, extended techniques for about 20 instruments, score analysis, and a bunch of other orchstra-related things that I covered in tests 1 thru 3.

Bring it on.

Almost there...

Epilogue:

My senior recital was off the hook, my friends. Off. The. Hook.
If you weren't there, be sure to take a moment and hang your head in shame, because as I mentioned before, it was (all together now) off. The. Hook.
Seriously, write down every synonym you can think of for "stupendously awesome," (I don't care that those are actually two words, not one) and blend them into a verbal smoothie of "rock my face off"-ness, and it'll come pretty darn close to the euphoria I am feeling because a) I survived this week with my sanity intact (by the grace of Almighty God), and b) my recital is over and it rocked!
And with that, the most grueling part of my semester comes to a close. I am now only two finals away from finishing all of the coursework required in order to aquire a Bachelor's Degree in Wind Performance from the grubby mitts of the Florida International University.

I'm sure once I have time (time? what is this time of which you speak?), I'll get into the nitty gritty of the experience and write a nice award-wining post about how nice it feels to finally be done and ready to move into the next stage of life, and get all philosophical about the importance of accomplishment, of finishing what you started; and maybe I'll use some fancy vocabulary words so you guys can know I read stuff (ah, the thrill of irony...as I laugh at my own stupid jokes); and maybe it'll be this amazingly bittersweet coming-of-age kind of a mini-memior that my mom will read and cry. Maybe.

Or maybe I'll just finish this post right now because I'm tired and holy cow, it feels so great to finally be done with my senior-flippin'-recital! Ha!

I'm not done yet, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and, Lord willing, it won't turn out to be an oncoming train.

PS: I love Stephanie like a fat kid loves cake.

By the way....

...so if you're not doing anything this Sunday night, I'll see you there!