Frank’s Corner

In his comment Brooklyn (MilkandChase) asked “Will the next installment reflect the negative aspects primarily? or will you still try and spin it in a positive way? Or is this a PR exercise, leaving M&C.com to tell the nitty gritty technical details?   Let’s think about this a second or two.  Think back to the sound system of years ago, a mic at the pulpit and another at the lectern, an on/off switch to an amp and two speakers (we know - we found most of that equipment and salvaged it from the loft and other storage places, remember?)  Then somewhere along the way they added a Lapel and two hand held wireless mics.  Later a cassette tape recorder was added. That’s about where we came along, do you really think those who put together what we inherited didn’t have any difficulties moving from “speak louder” to what they handed off to us?  The point is from where they were to where they got was progress and that was good.  Our journey from where we were to where we are is progress and that is good.  We both see a great difference from where we are to where we believe we should be, you see our not being there yet as negative and I simply see it as still having a great deal of work to do.  So yes, my story will always be positive.  And yes I’ll leave it to M&C.com to tell the nitty-gritty of breakdowns of archaic equipment and the heroic efforts of the people working with it to constantly find new work-arounds and ways of getting the job done, besides you always manage to do it in an entertaining and informative way.

Looking back I realize while I pretty well covered what we do at church I didn’t hit much of what we or in particular I was doing otherwise.  We started the year with a paying job for BCS (paying in this case meaning covering materials and hopefully coffee and big gulps.) wiring their building and all the classes and offices for internet.  Of course as soon as we finished the job their PA system went bad and their tech. blamed our Ethernet wire being next their wire for the problem - we knew it wasn’t, but had to pull all our wiring out of the classes where it was in proximity to theirs to prove it, then of course we rewired them all putting in our own conduits.  Then (soon to be) Army Dude gave us a price (parts only)  to bid on building, programing and installing a new computer for the sanctuary  projector system.  Then we managed to talk Gram into buying us the Grizzly  PTZ remote system, which meant we could buy a single unit system off eBay and a new disc copying tower also.  We used the Grizzly system for the West Islip Spring Concert, which turned out to be the last real paying job Army Dude (enrgeeman.com)  got do with us as he shipped the week before the LIYM Golfouting, which we pulled off by using the Grizzly system and asking Cowpie Productions ( Mr & Mrs Dein, from church) and 2 of the young people who were part of the church Video Ministry to work with us.  Other than a few minor things our next paying jobs  through Sept. ended up being 2 shoots on the same day, which we only managed because they were both at the same location as 90% of our equipment - namely church.  The first and real job was the documentation of the assembly celebrating BCS’s 30th anniversary, with State Senator O. Johnson attending.  We used one of our GL1’s,  a borrowed HD camera from Cowpie and a borrowed HD camera from Atlantic TV, the idea being for M&C.com to eventually do series on the relative merits of each of them on the shoot. (never has been completed)   The second shoot of the day was a wedding in the early evening in the sanctuary.  Some of the family couldn’t make it and we were asked if we could do a live edit to DVD to send to them or be played over the internet for them. For this shoot we relocated 2 of our camera locations in the sanctuary and used 3 GL1’s.

May was Graduation for (soon to be) Brooklyn (B.F.A. in Film making from Five Towns College) his internship with Atlantic TV became a real 5 day a week job, with dad transporting him daily to and from Babylon RR station until he moved to Brooklyn Dec 1.  Of course nothings quite as simple as it seems, he wanted to start a web comic but decided he couldn’t draw so dad offered to lend a feeble hand and things were going pretty well till someone wanted a M&C logo for posting on the web comic (80X80pixels) naturally I had to draw the font pixel by pixel to make it fit,  once he liked that it was “make it a desktop” then Make it a bowling shirt for the bowling team (we bowl every other week in the Sayville Methodist Churches league)  That’s what I was working on there when October came.  Since October he’s been drawing his own comics and doing a better job then I ever did.

At church I was working on the coordination of the installation of the carillon, a gift in memory of a long time member, elder from his family.  We were also getting ready to host the CNN Worship Summit simulcast on Nov 2 & 3.  The first contracted dish installer backed out without letting us know, so on Nov 1 I’m still going back and forth with Chicago and Colorado trying to get an installer lined up.  Nov 2 the gentleman they got left Jersey thinking he had plenty of time, but arrived in Babylon at 10:30 - we got the dish installed and actually had the video up at 11:57:23 with the telecast starting at 12Noon.(I guess he did have plenty of time.) It was a good 2 days and we learned a great deal.

Yeah, It was June 13  when Army dude shipped out and it suddenly dawned on me anything that was going to be done on any of the web sites we were handling would now have to be done by me as he was the one who had built and maintained them for us.  Rather than admit how long it had been since I did any real coding or having to relearn HTML and then the other languages he interspersed in the coding I found it easier to breakdown and buy the Serif web10plus.  I have in another post related my wonderful time working with that when we lost power and it crashed.  After rebuilding our site, clenchpics.com, and our churches site, 1stpresbabylon.org, I actually brought in a couple new  paying sites.  I then started researching SEO and Affiliates to draw traffic to our sites hoping to scare up some real paying business so mom would also be able to retire, but then came October.

Next time from October to present- I hope

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