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| snowing againas i look outside my office window, i see little flakes of snow floating on the wind.
STOP!
i think we got close to 3x the amount of normal yearly snowfall in chicago this year - i might be wrong, but i heard some stat about it recently - if i'm wrong, i know someone like danny will find out what the real figures are.
all that to say, this winter has been the most brutal and wearying i've been a part of for the longest time. i'm looking forward to spring. we sprung forward, not to warm weather, but to this bloody mess.
easter may be snowed in.
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| i love my macso we're migrating everything over to the mac platform here at church because pro presenter is so much stabler than mediashout (our presentation software) - last thursday we tried playing a simple video through mediashout and guess what happened? yep, it totally crashed. i watched as our tech director and red-faced volunteer tried to rectify the problem midstream - bad times. but apparently pro presenter is bullet-proof - and it runs only on mac.
a while back, i attended an integrity conference - the second mid-day session seemed like a prolonged infomercial, but the most entertaining part of it all was watching the mediashout and pro presenter folks tout their products. it was like watching the pc vs mac commercials - the MS guy was old and dumpy, the pro presenter dude was young and hip.
and so the switch begins. and it began with me first getting a macbook pro, in anticipation of one of our most talented volunteers out for the count because of pregnancy (good for her!) - who would make the fantastic vids she makes? i guess, me. or at least in some part me - i need to know the ins and outs of it. and it was stinking simple with imovie (though all imovies have a certain look and feel to them because of the canned text... it's harder to sync up, more powerful software is probably required). also, i was and am intrigued by ableton live and reason - complicated sequencing software that produces all the whirrrss, beeps, and clicks on tracks made by, say, david crowder or fee. since we already play with click on sunday mornings, it would be an easy transition to start using backing tracks.
the learning curve wasn't as high as i thought for the reason and ableton and the best part of it all? ableton allows me to drop the tracks made in reason into a multiple channel output. that way, our TD can mix beeps, whirs, loops, etc. separately while we play. instead of sending him a stereo signal, i'm sending him five or six different virtual instruments - and it makes for a very full and lush sounding mix.
in the famous words of danny chai, "no one cares." which means for me, i hope everyone reads this all the way through.
but the mac has opened up whole new avenues of possibility for music and video - you can do all these things on a pc, sure (except for pro presenter), but i'm using a ton of space and a ton of ram - i need something pretty powerful. i guess if you're going to drop a couple grand on a laptop workstation, might as well be on a shiny, uber cool macbook pro.
didn't mean for this to be a long-winded advert, but oh well. the mbp is THE best for the artsy types. i guess, i'm semi-artsy.
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| the second and the lastblack ice. i hate you.
i am convinced that black ice would be the arch nemesis of even the most powerful superhero. the stealthiest attack. the invisible sweep to the legs. and you think it'd be entirely your fault. genius.
today is the second day i took a spectacular fall because of black ice. it's been bitterly cold here in chicago. over breakfast this morning, my good friend bernie, no stranger to the cold climes of the midwest, blurted out in exasperation, "i've had JUST ABOUT enough of this snow. okay, Lord, you've proved your point - you can make things really cold." bernie later shared that someone would die because of all this snow. and that that's what he thinks about when it snows. yeah, he's pretty morbid. and yeah, God, you can make things really cold.
and icy. with the steady snowfall, the lumbering city trucks with their plows and their salt sprayers are having a hard time keeping up, leaving sheets of ice on black pavement. and leaving poor saps like me who invariably never account for the extra time needed to travel from one place to another hurrying across these dangerous thin sheets never suspecting that the evil archenemy is planning the next concussion.
so me, today - i was trying to get to the gym to run before my breakfast meeting and that's when i went parallel. parallel to the pavement, i mean.
a big bump on my head, a mild headache, some drowsiness, and an aching back. i love chicago.
but black ice, i hate you.
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| new musicon the way up to winter camp, i had the good fortune of riding with the kenneally boys, luke and taylor.
interesting.
watching them fight over who was going to sit in the middle in the back seat... good times.
they introduced me to some new (old) music - james had his ipod and i discovered that i really like anberlin. and some song by the lostprophets called "rooftops." they're occupying my cd changer right now. not highly musical, kind of like pop punk, but i still like it - pretty melodic stuff.
youth winter camp is exceptionally entertaining but i'm gunning for high schoolers next year. this junior high boys cabin business is wearisome. when talk descended into inappropriate "your momma..." jokes, i was done. i should have hid under the covers like chris lee, but nope, after watching jim get up over and over again to tell our boys to shut up, i blew up.
best moment for me: breakfast on saturday. not bad!
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| ted the introvertso i've been making the gradual and glad realization that i've got lots of introversion in me. i think the light bulb went on talking to one of the elders at our church with whom i share many similarities. she loves being alone yet she's very comfortable in large settings and speaking publicly.
i went home and shared this with b and she said, "you're now just realizing that? aren't you supposed to be mr. self-aware (read: mr. self-absorbed)?"
uh, yeah.
then she pointed out: "you like disappearing from the room when lots of people are around, you spend your days off alone, you like going places alone, you want to go on vacation early when i'm at the conference so you can have some alone time - i mean, HELLO."
i enthusiastically joined in, "yeah, and when you leave for a few days, i get stressed out when everybody asks me to hang out and the days fill up with people."
HELLO.
i can't tell you how freeing this is. i thought i was supposed to be an extrovert, i mean, i tested that way on the meier briggs, but then again, if i'm not that self aware then ... ? but i always felt guilty for wanting to escape and hide away. i also didn't understand the feeling like i really didn't want to see anyone or be with anyone during my off days - feeling like it was because i was too tired and too burnt out and something was wrong.
but my intern says that he's never thought that i was an extrovert - that i could get up for the big events, but that those things don't recharge me.
tru dat.
for the record, i'm not sure if i'm more extrovert or introvert. i know i'm crazy, but that's about it.
a crazy introvert.
great.
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