It has been said that Facebook is for people you knew, Twitter is for people you don't know yet. I think this is true, as I have particularly enjoyed stretching both directions recently with both tools.
Below is a screen shot of a recent "conversation" I had with several old friends. The cool thing about this to me is that I know that if I could get these people in a room together, they'd probably all get along great! Below are comments from Chapel friends, Cedarville friends, high school friends from Kansas City, high school friends from New Jersey, and local friends. It is a lot of fun to be reconnected, even if the thing that reconnects you is trivialities. Ultimately, I see Facebook and Twitter as a ministry tools, but that's fodder for another post.
It was more than just a holiday show, however, as Connick's two hour-straight performance turned in several classic New Orleans blues, such as Beale Street Blues and St James Infirmary.
As a special bonus, his good friend Branford Marsalis joined him on stage for a couple of tunes. Marsalis is not part of the tour, but since he lives in the Durham area, he was a welcomed and easy addition to a great show!
Here left to right are Connick at the piano, Lucien Barbarin on the trombone, Mark Braud on the trumpet, and Marsalis on the Soprano Sax.
Here are some random things I enjoyed about the concert:
1) the venue. The new "DPAC," as it's called is elegant and state of the art. It seats 2,800 (most or all of which were full) and sounds and looks outstanding. 2) the band. By this I mean the horn players, in addition to a couple of excellent soloists, the horn section was tight, confident, and in perfect sync. There were three trumpet players, three trombone players (including an excellent bass trombone player) and three saxes (tenor, alto/tenor, bari). This was scaled down from the normal big band of 4/4/5. I imagine Connick had to do some revoicing and rearranging to make all that work. 3) the rhythm section was outstanding as well. The bass player in particular was spot on with time and intonation. He and the drummer worked so well to create deep, deep pockets. 4) the intonation. Trumpets in octaves, the band harmonies, and balance were perfect. 5) great time. Everyone knew where the pulse was. Even when Connick intentionally played so far behind the beat on some of those blues tunes. It never slowed. Just a perfect feel. 6) great improvisational solos. No one played a bad solo. Connick's playing is so tasty. Somewhere between his former teacher, Ellis Marsalis and Thelonious Monk--he has a strong blues influence but also plays very percussively and angularly at times. 7) great singing. Connick knows his limits vocally and stays right in his comfort zone--keeping everyone listening in their comfort zone! 8) great entertainment. Part of what made the show so enjoyable was the fact that Connick is great at talking. Plenty of humor and improvisation which was a lot of fun.
If you ever have a chance to see Connick, do it. You won't regret it!
This busy day began with a general worship session, that began with none other than Psalty. If you don't know Psalty, you probably didn't grow up in the 80's. The time ended with a group and pastor from Destiny World Church in Atlanta. They had a lot of energy. I think that is an understatement. After our break at 10:30, we regrouped in the worship center for a worship concert with Nathan and Christy Nockels. They were great. It sounds like they have a lot going on as they are literally moving from Nashville to Atlanta this week.
The lunch break featured the usual live music around campus. First there was the Saddleback team doing some gospel tunes in a little amphitheater area, then there was the fusion jazz going on in another area. They weren't afraid to run that one loud, and Rick was prepared with ear plugs. The rest of the afternoon were spent in workshops. The first one I attended was about improving your church's vocal team. Some of it was stuff I had heard before and things I think we practice pretty well, about being on time, being prepared as a leader to help your team be prepared, hedging and confronting pride issues, etc. The workshop ended with Tim Davis showing us how they do their vocal charts. He uses the Nashville number system. As you can see below, this system codifies parts and pitches, but does nothing for rhythms. He dictates the rhythm and then rehearses each part. The numbers represent the scale degrees. We spent some time learning this little tune. Reasons he mentioned for using this method for their vocal teams: 1) many people can't read music, and those who can, can't read the rhythms anyway 2) he can make the chart quickly 3) he doesn't have to pound out the parts on the piano. In response to my question about transitioning people who are already used to reading notes and rhythms to this system, he responded by saying, in essence, if the team already knows how to read notes and rhythms, then don't move them, and oh, if you can find the charts with the rhythms and parts on it, then great. I think we'll be ok.
The next session I went to was a session on maximizing Ableton Live in your worship services. This was an esoteric workshop that was lightly attended, but helpful, even though it was sponsored by a vendor offering his performance tracks. The tracks they sell are actual studio tracks that are used on regular recordings (Israel, Baloche, Tomlin, etc), so you literally have the guitar, loop, pad, fxs, drum tracks, even backing vocal tracks that you can play (along with click) to fill in the spots you don't have. Pretty slick.
The last session I went to was pretty good, but it was too elementary for my experience. I am not an experienced B3 player, but I was hoping to learn more than what this class offered, which was stuff I already knew. It was nice, however, because it was set up as a lab and we all got to play along and watch what he was doing through his little camera projected on the wall. The evening concert featured Jadon Lavik, who played and sang all of his songs with just his guitar--no band. He was excellent. Great writer and singer. The Saddleback team presented an entire arts package, which was also excellent, centered around the American church's complacency regarding social injustices around the world, from human trafficking to AIDS in Africa. My favorite moment of the night was the Selah arrangement, which they did in the weekend services of I Bless Your Name. After the concert, I went with my Chapel friends to the Cheesecake Factory for fun and, of course, cheescake.
There was a time, not too long ago when I first migrated to OS X (from OS 9--that was a long wait for me! but that's another story all together) that I signed up for iChat. At first I ignored it. I never used it. My reasons were simple. First, I resented being interrupted at any given moment by someone, anyone who sees me online. Second, there's the phone. There's email. There are cell phones. There were already a variety of ways to reach me. And of course, most compelling, the two people at the time with whom I would most likely share a chat were in the offices next to me. So why bother?
After moving to NC, I decided to resurrect iChat. I played with it for a while but soon discovered that some of my friends, litterally from all over the world, were on several different chat services. As it turned out, I unwittingly had accounts on many of these chat services already in place. I was an early adapter of ICQ, back in the dial up days. I rarely used it. I have a Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, and AIM account (iChat works on AIM). How could I see if my friends were online without having to check all these different services?
Enter Adium. This is a great little program for MAC OS X. It combines all of your various chat accounts into one place. As you can see, you may access me from any one of these services below:
You can organize your contacts in various ways, by a custom-assigned buddy list, or by account. My list automatically resizes as people come and go. It lives in the bottom right hand corner of my screen. It may look like any of these windows at various times:
I've now decided that the reason I live with chat on so much has more to do with just knowing that I can reach someone quickly and easily. (Yes, I'll admit, email has become just too slow!). I've enjoyed the instant contact with someone who may be across the hall or half way around the world. Just like most chat clients, you can set away messages if you're busy, or sometimes, you just can't reply to someone right way--no different then not answering your phone just because someone calls.
For those of you wondering what the Windows equivalent of this program would be, I would suggest Trillian, though since I tried it last, it didn't compete with Adium's slickness.
I feel like I owe someone a blog post. Truth is, I have so many things I could post about, I don't know where to start. Maybe I'll do the Gary Underwood bullet points to get caught up and go from there.
We recently returned from a long trip. First a drive to Iowa, where we spent time with Janet's family, here sister in the Waterloo area and her folks 45 minutes away on "the farm." While we were there we celebrated Lindsey's 6th birthday and the Chezik's 50th wedding anniversary. We had a great time!
I got to go to a worship conference at Saddleback Church in Orange County, CA. it was great! more on that some other time.
I visited the Y a couple of times while in CA. I like the Y in Raleigh better.
On the first night in the OC I skipped early registration and went to an Angels baseball game. They played KC who swept them in the three game series.
It's humorous to me that in CA, the highways are all qualified by the locals with "the." It's not "take 405 to exit 106," it's "take the 405 to exit 106." I'm gonna start referring to 440 and 540 as "the 440" and "the 540" and see if it catches on.
At church, I feel like we could do a lot of things better, but I also feel like we do things as well as most churches. I'm mostly referring to music and tech here.
I had the largest pork tenderloin sandwich I had ever eaten at this fair, in IA.
Before our trip, we had to spend about $860 in our van, plus get it inspected.
While returning to Iowa from CA, via DFW, I missed my connecting flight and had to sleep overnight in Ft. Worth. I hooked up with a couple of dangerous characters:
Over the course of many hours of driving, one of the ways I entertained myself was to "read" by audiobook Crime and Punishment. I'm about 1/3 through it.
Man, was it hard to go to work this morning. The services went well, but it was a lot of work! God works in spite of us.
It's been a long time since I've been able to see a Major League Baseball game. It was great to drive up to Baltimore and not only see a game, but see Camden Yards, and see the Indians play. We left around 6:30 in the morning and arrived right around noon (after three stops, thanks to the Starbucks boys). Keel flew in from Cleveland at the same time, arrived at the airport, took a train to the stadium and watched the game. It was great to see him again.
The view from our seats just before the game started.
Brian, Eric, and Mike all took in the game. We never could get Mike to wear that Indians hat he just carried around all day.
Eric "insisted" we get our picture taken with the Orioles Mascot. He (or she) stayed and posed even though we all had our Indians garb on. Notice who conspicuously offered to take the picture.
After Hafner hit the grand slam in the 8th (I think) making it 9-1, the stadium emptied and we moved down to the lower level, a few rows behind the dugout. Here's Grady Sizemore in the on deck circle.
The final score.
This is the right field plaza. The famous long building is on the left and right and right-center field is on the right.
The put these little plaques in the sidewalk to denote locations of where long home runs landed and who hit them and when.
This is actually on the wall of the long building on the other side of the plaza.
I think it's a great game, baseball, that is. But I do NOT understand this:
Not that I'm a world traveler or anything, but we were given an opportunity--a gift, really-- to spend a few days with some friends in a place we'd never been near a place we really enjoy and just couldn't say "no." Thanks to Dale and HB, we were able to spend a few days last week relaxing on the beach, riding bikes, eating, watching the kids in the pool, eating some more (shrimp on the grill--who'd ever thought that could be so good?), and just enjoying being away as a family. A very nice time away with some great friends.
I don't know why, but for some reason the palm trees give me a quintessential vibe of South Carolina.
And I decided I needed to add this picture. There were people there, of course, but the island was not very busy in early May and we had the beaches mostly to ourselves. Lots of people out for strolls, sitting in the sun, not necessarily in the water, though it wasn't bad!
We have needs. We have to eat. Where to go. Someone decided we were going to "New York, New York." here's a picture of the hotel. It's a miniature Manhattan skyline, complete with the statue of liberty.
Parking is free everywhere you go on the strip. Valley Parking is free as well. You tip the guy a buck when you leave the car, tip him a buck when he brings it back. OK, it's not free, but it's very convenient.
Once inside New York, NY, we were very surpised to see once again...ANOTHER casino! Notice the New York Skyline. The shops in the mall area were made to look like you were walking down the street in the city. (but nicer)
Here is the restaurant we ate at. Called, as you can see "America." Pretty good food.
This was on the wall behind us. A map of the whole U.S. with little icons representing each region. I couldn't fit the whole thing in one shot. Sorry.
For some reason, we had on-going "bets" all week. I think Kimsu started this one. "Eric, for $5 drink this whole container of green chunky salsa." A few others threw another $10 into the pot. He did it, but he said it ruined his dinner.
Where else can you go from New York to Paris in just a few steps? Only in Vegas, I guess.
I can't remember where this was (can someone help me?). It reminded me of the mummer's parade, excpet there where not floats. Everything was made out of flowers. Pretty creative.
Some of the things on display at NAB are things like helicopters, TV news trucks, big satellite dishes, and a big ultra-def theater. But my favorite thing was the sports truck. All the gear is actually in a trailer. It's the truck that shows up at a sporting event that is a self-contained television studio. Baseball games are broadcast this way, as well as football, hockey, you name it. This particular trailer was evidently most recently used for golf.
If you've ever taken the time to watch golf on TV, you may have noticed that as soon as you watch one guy put a ball in, they immediately take you to someone else on the tee, then to someone else in the fairway, then, someone else getting out of the bunker.
This is all monitored and scheduled for broadcast in this truck. It was kept very cool, by the way...
Tim may be the only person I know of who could actually sit down and know how to run this stuff. Don't worry, he's just pretending!
Here are all the preview monitors.
This is the audio mixing desk. The mixer was actually able to monitor and mix in 5.1 surround. Ahead of him (out of the frame) is a window that allows him to look into the main room where the producer/director sits.
On Wednesday, Tim and I met up with Neil who wanted to see an IPTV presentation. He is doing work on that at his company and so he wanted to see how other companies are using the technology.
So let me try to help set the stage. Most of the people who attended this tech conference were men. But many of the presenters were young, attractive women. I had no idea so many women were involved in the tech industry. Well, I'm a little slow.
This young lady is giving this slick presentation. She is representing a company who provides content and servers to companies like Time Warner, or Bellsouth. Companies that can combine content and on demand TV, telephone, internet, and wireless. The idea is that you may be sitting in your living room watching something but then need to leave to go somewhere. Using your mobile device, you can pick up where you were in your living room and continue to watch the show on your hand held. Pretty nifty. The presenter was going through this, showing simultaneous broadcasts of msnbc on both the large screen and the PDA.
I was intrigued by this, and after the presentation I began asking Neil a lot of questions about it. So he asked the presenter if we could see the PDA. We wanted to know if it was proprietary. It turns out it was, though it was running the microsoft handheld OS. I wanted to see it stream the video to it and see what other channels were available. "Sure," she said, handing me the device. "Let me know if I can answer anything for you."
So I started playing with it. I didn't want to just watch msnbc so I pushed a button that I thought would take me to a menu to view other channels. Oops. I did something. Couldn't get the channels back. I wasn't too worried, she obviously knew what she was talking about, she could reset it for her next presentation.
Oops, the device is in French (just like the GPS display on Chuck's rental, but that's another story), and she doesn't have any idea how to fix it. She plays with it for a while and as it becomes more and more obvious that she can't navigate the device any better than I can, some things come out about her.
It turns out she's just the face for the company at that presentation. She really didn't know anything about the product, what it did, how it worked or anything. She was slick, she pushed the remote at the right time, navigated the menu correctly, but outside of the presentation she was clueless. In fact, she had a little cassette recorder with an earpiece in one of her ears that actually had a recording of someone reading the script. She just repeated it to everyone. So she was about a second behind what she heard on the tape and had the ability to stop it and start it as she needed. She said that they had just completed the script two days before the show started and didn't have enough time to memorize it.
As I thought back to other presentations I saw, it began to make sense. All the smart tech guys were there to answer your detailed questions about the product, and interact with other geeks, but many of the presenters were not only not with the company, they probably didn't even know half of what the stuff they were presenting did! (In most cases, we didn't really mind).
I know, I'm behind on my posts. As I have mentioned, my internet options are very limited. It is so unbelievable, and ironic, even, that the one place where the greatest concentration of tech minds are gathered, internet is scarce or unavailable all together. But don't get me started. I'm paying $10.99 for a 24 hour internet connection right now so I'm squeezing in all I can. We leave for home tomorrow, my internet runs out in about an hour, so I'm going to try to get this post off before I run out of time!
We flew in on Saturday night, technically that was day 1. Sunday was our first full day, however, so day 2 was Tuesday and here are some pictures and commentary of places we went, ate, and explored. Janet's probably right, people like pictures, so here are some pictures...
Where we ate Monday night.
A picture of something, not sure what, on the strip.
