I Hate Sprint

Okay, so last night, I get a text message from my boss. It was regarding a meeting I had with our worship pastor and our lead PA engineer at Crossroads Church. He simply wanted to know how the meeting went.  I sent a reply, but I got the ever-so-increasingly-familiar "The network is not responding now" message after I hit SEND. That was around 8:30 last night.

This is me at 9:00 pm, a half-hour after the first message...

...and this is me at 10:35 pm, two hours after the failed text chat...

...and this is me this morning at 9:59 am, 13 1/2 hours after my boss should have had contact from me, answering his simple question...

The culprit? My house's metal roof. It's aluminum, made to look like cedar shakes. Five years ago, during Hurricane Lili, other roofs in the neighborhood were pretty badly damaged, but not mine. Here's a pic of the roof right above my front door. Pay close attention to the white stucco wall just to the left of the doorstep area. I'll get to that in a minute...

Here is the only place in my house that my phone works.  When I get a call, I have to go sit in my kitchen. We have this little solarium area that overlooks my goldfish pond. Notice the wall and overhang on the left side of the pic? That's my front door area...

OK, so you might be saying, "Well, doesn't your metal roof kill all cell phones, regardless of the carrier?" and "once you try to send a text, if it doesn't go through, it's too late. Try re-sending it." I'm glad you asked, and I know that already. Here's a pic of me with my wife's phone. She has AT&T. Go back and look at the lack of bars on my phone then notice all those bars on hers...

So, where am I going with this, and what does it have to do with the relevant use of media in a church setting? I've been desperately trying to get my boss/pastor to switch us to AT&T. I successfully got him and our executive pastor to switch to Mac, so why not AT&T and the iPhone? And, if we're going to be relevant, shouldn't we have stuff that works?

I'll keep you updated. What about you? Which carrier are you on, and how's your service? Am I alone in this? Where are the devoted Sprint-ers?

The Switch Continues...

In 2004, I switched my department at Crossroads Church over to Mac. I must say that professionally, it was one of the best moves I ever made.

When the department was remodeled in 1999 (before I started working there), they had installed a 512 MHz IBM PC running Avid Express 3.0. Well, when it came time to upgrade, it was going to cost over $10K to update the system adequately. I've never been a fan of Avid's (and ProTools') uber-proprietary way of doing things, and this was my perfect chance to get away from that platform.

I worked a deal with one of our local TV stations, KADN-Fox 15, for two years of airtime for our broadcast in exchange for our old Avid. This transaction was worth about $13K, which allowed me to purchase two Dual 2 GHz Mac G5s, both running Final Cut Pro, and one of them running Logic.

Well, here we are, for years later, and my department owns two Quad 3 GHz Mac Pros, a Dual 2.7 G5, the two original Dual 2 GHz G5s, two Mac Minis, an iMac, and a Dual 2.6 GHz MacBook Pro (a little something for me!). In addition to all this, our youth department is all Mac, and so is Facilities Management.

Now, the lead and executive pastors are going Mac. They both have VAIOs (which are both dead), and they're ready to make the switch. Our executive pastor wants a MacBook, and the lead pastor wants a MacBook Pro. Life at Crossroads is about to get a whole lot cooler!

2008 Easter Production

Well, here it is, as promised:  the Crossroads Church 2008 Easter production...

I'd love to know your thoughts. All of the video was created by our in-house production team, Crossroads Creative, and the intro will be offered for sale on our site. My wife and I wrote the script, and I did all of the post-audio work.

OK, here's the disclaimer:  the first couple of minutes of Judas' part were not tracked, so I had to use the live audio feed, which was noisy. You'll notice that it cleans up a LOT just before the first song. I guess you can't have it all...

To purchase the sermon intro, betrayal videos, and script, go here.