ON BEING AN AV NERD

Several of you have asked what it is I do for a living. There are people who work in the office with me who are curious about what it is I do for a living, so I’m glad you asked.

I’m an AV nerd. Specifically, I’m an AV nerd for the Glory of God (I’ll explain that in a moment).

Yes, I was the guy in high school with tape on his glasses who sat up the overhead projector for your science teacher. And NO…I still haven’t recovered emotionally from the lemon swirly you gave me in the 10^th grade.

While the rest of you grew up to be successful doctors and lawyers, I have continued to be an AV nerd; just on a larger scale.

For example…my company put the sound system in the Astrodome, as well as the Denver Broncos Stadium, Coors Field, and Ericsson Stadium. We’ve done giant video walls for the Bank of New York, Cyber Warfare rooms for Northrop Grumman, and we are currently doing all of the video displays and electronic paging for the new Honolulu Airport. If you’re bored enough to be watching C-Span, you’re watching it over a video backbone we designed and installed.

So, I’m still the guy setting up overhead projectors, just much more expensive ones. And NO…I’m not just telling you this because I still have a chip on my shoulder because Cindy Lou Spunkmiser turned down my invitation to the Jr. Prom because of my love for pocket protectors.

Now, back to what I meant about being an AV nerd for the Glory of God: Because of my “pastoral” background, I handle our company’s business with churches. When you turn the TV channel to some mega-church and you see the giant video displays, the stacks and stacks of speakers, and the pastor rising up out of the floor in a haze of smoke that Motley Crue would be jealous of…it’s my fault. Yes, it’s true. When those Television evangelists tell you to put your hand on the TV screen and be healed so that you can send in a “seed faith” gift of a $1,000.00, I’m to blame.

How can I do this with a clear conscience, you ask?  It’s actually quite easy…they spend LOTS of money on AV gear, and I’m a whore.

Actually, I love my job, and I’m very proud to be able to provide sound, video, and lighting systems to churches (and if you’re one of my customers reading this; I’m talking specifically about how proud I am to be associated with you).

People assume that I must have the greatest home theater system imaginable. Unfortunately that isn’t the case. Up until about a year ago, the only stereo I had in my home was one I spent $120.00 on at Wal-Mart. This is because the systems I want for my home would cost more than my home did and I’m incredibly cheap. I finally broke down and did a surround sound system for my living room last year. I will admit that the system is capable of shaking my home off its foundation (the way God intended home theater systems to be) but I’m still watching TV on a 27” set I bought 100 years ago.

So, if you have a question about the merits of 1080i vs. 720p, or how big your woofers and tweeters should be, I’d be glad to try and answer them, just please don’t give me another wedgie.

THE GRAND SOCIAL EXPERIMENT

Thanks to everyone for your words of encouragement after my little spill. I appreciate the fact that no one came right out and said that I was a complete-friggin-idiot for attempting to carry a power-washer up an extension ladder, even though I know you were thinking it. That was very PC of all of you.

There seems to be a little medical disagreement over my injuries. The after-hours clinic doc said my ankle/foot was not broken. My primary care doc thinks the after-hours clinic doc has been partaking from the drug-samples cabinet and that I have stress fractures. Apparently the x-rays are hard to read because of the swelling. I’m supposed to wait 2 weeks for the swelling to go down and then they will do an MRI.  In the mean time I get to wear a cool looking moon-boot and watch my toes turn black.

Speaking of things turning black, my left ass cheek looks very similar to Gorbachev’s forehead. I’d post pictures, but I don’t want to break my new camera.

I’m attempting to learn how to get around on crutches. I’ve never used crutches before and I have already determined they are a tool of Satan. My armpits hurt much worse than my ankle does (but my ankle probably smells worse than my armpits, so it’s kind of a trade-off.)

Moving around on crutches has given me an opportunity to observe human behavior in a new light…mostly asshole human behavior, but human behavior none the less.

My wife and I went to go see “Happy Feet” at the IMAX on Sunday (which is an interesting movie by the way. Be sure to check out Bad Dogma’s take on the movie. I agree with his assessment). There were two ladies there together in line in front of us with about eight little kids in tow. The kids bumped into me repeatedly without a word from either lady. When we got up to leave when the movie was over, the kids crowded in front of me so they wouldn’t have to wait on me; again without a word from their adult escorts.  There was also the guy at the convenience store this morning. He was waiting to pull in next to me and he HAD to see me struggling to get the crutches out of the back seat so that I could get out of my car. He pulled in next to me with less than a foot between my car and the passenger door of his pickup truck so that I had to squeeze out of the car while attempting to navigate the crutches. He watched me do this and then walked into the store ahead of me and let the door slam in my face.

Assholes.

On the other side of the coin, there was a guy who saw me get out of my car at another convenience store and not only opened the door for me, but walked around the store with me, picked up the items I needed, took them to the counter, and then helped me back out to my car with them.

THAT’S a nice guy!

My theory is that innate behavior probably doesn’t change when someone is confronted with a “disabled” person.  Assholes continue to be assholes and decent people continue to be decent people. I wish there was a way for me to test this but I have no way of knowing if the people I encounter are assholes or decent people before I encounter them. Regardless, I’m going to enjoy watching people’s behavior.

There is one thing I do know…if I ever see those little kids from the movie theater again I’m going to trip them and then beat them with my crutches.

GETTING OLD BLOWS

My 50^th birthday is about a year and half away…looming out there on the horizon like a giant turd.  Most of the time I don’t feel my age, but at this particular moment, I happen to feel every 412,000 hours of it.

The weather here was beautiful today so I decided to power-wash the house in preparation for painting it. I was carrying the power-washer up an extension ladder from the lower deck to our upstairs deck, and was just climbing over the deck railing when the ladder slipped out from under me and I fell about 15 feet to the deck below…with the power washer on top of me and the ladder underneath me.

I did a number on my left ankle. It currently looks the way my Grandmother’s ankles used to look…you know, no ankle – the leg just goes straight into the foot. I also landed on the ladder hard enough to actually put a major dent in it with my ass. From this point forward my ladder will forever have an ass-shaped dent in it. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

I have several other cuts and bruises and I can’t walk but that’s the worst of it. Currently, I’ve taken two prescription Motrin and had about six glasses of wine, so I’m not feeling any pain at the moment…in fact, I can’t even feel my face. I’ve had to run spell check on this 25 times already just to type this far.

What I’m worried about is what inevitably awaits me tomorrow morning when I attempt to get out of bed. I can tell right now that it ain’t gonna be pretty, and that’s what sucks about getting older; you just don’t bounce back as quick from these little mishaps. When I was a punk kid I would have shaken this off and made plans to go bungee jumping in the morning. The only plan I currently have for tomorrow morning is shooting myself.

Thank God I have a laptop with a wireless connection to keep me occupied while I’m recuperating upstairs in my bedroom. There’s only one problem…I have no friggin idea how I’m going to get there.

It’s good to be married to someone who keeps you grounded…

…and my wife can ground me like the Hindenburg.

An exchange that took place Sunday morning between my wife and a woman at our church is a perfect example of her ability to keep me grounded. I’m the interim music director at our little church and I actually start our worship services by doing three to five minutes of stand-up based on whatever the theme is for the morning’s service.  In fact, the little piece I wrote on time a couple of posts back was the opener to a service. Religion has a tendency to be a sour affair at times, and I figure any service that’s starts with laughter can’t be a total waste of time.  

The theme Sunday morning was about smiling through adversity and I told a story about an ill-fated church ski trip in which all manner of hilarity ensued. After church, a little old lady stopped my wife in the hall and said, “Your husband is so funny. Is he that funny at home?”

In a perfect deadpan my wife replied; “Yes he is, and sometimes it’s as annoying as hell.”

My wife…keeping me humble on a daily basis since 2002.

There are a zillion different quizzes on line that get passed around from email to email and blog to blog. These quizes take up valuable time and seriously impact American productivity. And since I’m all about wasting valuable time on Xanga, I’ve decided to create…

THE OFFICIAL XANGA QUIZ:

• How much time a day do you spend on Xanga?

• Do you ever fear that you might be addicted to Xanga?

• If not, why did you copy and paste this stupid quiz?

• Have you ever Xanga’d naked?

• If you could “do” anyone on Xanga, who would that be and why? (Please give explicit details)

• Whose Xanga do you read first?

• Whose Xanga makes you want to put a bullet in your head?

• Have you ever left a comment on someone else’s Xanga and wished you could go back and erase it?  Really?  What was the comment?

• Does the fact that Dan the Theologian gets two million hits a day for doing nothing more than asking questions irk you as much as it irks me?

• Do you ever feel that your Xanga friends are more “real” than your “real” friends?

• If so, have you ever thought about getting out more?

• Do you ever secretly wish that all of the waif-thin Xangians on Featured Content that post about nothing but their Anorexia battles and how they have subsisted for the last three days on two glasses of water and a corn chip, would just go ahead and friggin starve to death?

• Have you ever feared that you are being stalked by a fellow Xangian?

• If so, does it bother you that I sit in your front yard and type on my laptop?

• Are you a comment whore?

• Yeah, me too.

• Have you ever taken a picture of yourself in a mirror to post online like all of those people on My Space?

• Did you wipe the toothpaste off the mirror first?

You must answer all of these questions and then tag 200 people to participate in this quiz within the next five minutes. If you do this, the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstake people will show up immediately at your door and present you with a giant cardboard check for a million dollars.

If you don’t do this, you will die.

Happy quiz taking!

ONCE UPON A TIME

I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately. I never seem to have enough time to do everything I want to do and I bet you feel the same way. Sometimes I wish time would just stand still. It’s easy to obsess about time;

after all…

We can spend time, make time, take time, kill time, manage time, waste time, or save time. We can have a good time, a bad time, quality time, or have no time at all. We can be pressed for time, loose track of time, keep up with the times, or arrive somewhere just in the nick of time.

The world uses Greenwich Mean Time to set time. And don’t forget to observe Daylight Savings Time in the springtime. For some reason that no one has time to explain, we stop observing Daylight Savings Time in the wintertime, but that’s ok, because by that time, it’s Christmas time.

We can spend lots of time at jobs that are either part time or full time, and then get home just in time for dinner time while we watch primetime. Some primetime shows like “24″ are even scripted in real time. 

Sometimes people get to the end of a long hard day and proclaim that it’s Miller Time!

We can read about someone’s life and times in the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times. But whatever newspaper we read, it doesn’t really matter because it’s probably owned my Time Warner.

Everyone remembers their first time.

Football has time outs and half time. But the officials that keep time obviously don’t understand time or a game wouldn’t last for another hour and a half after the two minute warning.

Some of you might want to travel through time in a time machine, or at least bury a time capsule so that those who follow us later in time can see how we spent our time. That’s because once upon a time we lived in better times but really, there’s no time like the present time.

Prisoners serve hard time, most guys in bars are just looking for a good time, and the rest of us are simply trying to take life one day at a time.

We can even spend time singing about time. For example, there’s “Time is on my Side,” “One Moment in Time,” “Time in a Bottle,” and that all time favorite; “Get Me to the Church on Time.”

Musically inclined chefs like to cook with parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.

In conclusion, I want to note that time marches on and we all need to spend time setting priorities on our timeline before old man time catches up with us and we are forever out of time.

Well, that’s all the time I have for now.

See you next time.