Two posts in one week? How can this BE? What sort of god would allow this?

Click on the picture to watch Cindi be a monkey…

A friend of ours is getting married on Saturday (huh…if it doesn’t work out, I guess they can say it was an April Fool’s joke…..). He and his bride-to-be are both musicians, so they recorded a bunch of music for the ceremony. They want to create CDs that they can then give to their guests to take home with them. I happen to own a CD duplicator/printer, so I told them they could use it to make their CDs. So he comes over last night to get everything going. I was at rehearsal, but had showed him earlier in the week how to use everything, so I didn’t figure there would be a problem. I get a call while I’m at rehearsal saying that it’s not working. He tells me he’s tried a few things but can’t get it to work, and if I can think of anything, I should call him and let him know. I finish up rehearsal and call him back. He’s still at my house, just hanging out and hoping that I’ll have some magic solution to the problem. I tell him I’ll be home in a half hour and I’ll see what I can do then.

The machine has two cables connecting it to the computer. One is a USB cable that it uses for communication for the printer, and the other is a firewire cable that is used for the CD-R drive. The problem seemed to be that the computer wasn’t recoginizing the CD-R drive, so I figured there was a problem with the firewire communication. I tried everything I could think of. I updated firmware. I re-installed drivers. I deleted other software that may have been causing a conflict. Nothing worked. I began to figure that there must be a problem with the firewire port on the machine, itself, because it worked only a month or so ago and now, suddenly, it wasn’t working anymore. I took the screws off of the cover of the machine so I could look inside and see if maybe a cable had come loose. I couldn’t really get to where the drive was, and everything that I could see looked fine. I apologized to my friend and told him that I didn’t think there was anything else I could do. He said it was okay as he had a backup plan and asked if he could send out an e-mail to put that plan into motion. While he was doing that, I began to put the cover back onto the machine. When I finished, I decided to hit the machine a few times. “What the hell,” I said to my friend. “I’ve tried everything else, it can’t hurt.” I plugged the machine back in…

…and wouldn’t you know it? The damn thing started working. Just call me The Fonz, I guess….

A lot of people would say that I’m crazy for having built my theater, given how much money I spent on it. I really feel blessed to have it, though. It’s really my favorite room in the house, probably one of my favorite places in general. It’s kind of like my little sanctuary. It’s a place I can go and just sort of forget about the outside world for a little while. I can disconnect down there. Things can get pretty hectic around here, especially at this time of year. There’s dozens of things to deal with and worry about on any given day, and it’s a gift now to have somewhere to go and just turn all of that off.