I hate May.

[BillESC]

I moved to Virginia from NJ in 2001 just after 9/11. I've come to understand that Virginians like to use May as their outdoor event month of choice. It can be hot but not brutal like summer gets.

May enters the scene at the end of next week.

Monday morning at 9AM is a meeting of the principals, AV integrator and myself on a bowling/retail/office/restaurant followed late afternoon by a four hour call at the local performing arts center to adjust our lighting for an upcoming show and next years Foundation series.

Tuesday will be spent dealing with Monday's meeting and pulling gear for the weekend. If the Academy tent is up on wednesday, that evening we will install the water effert under the gang plank of the passageway between the two tents for a fund raising auction. If the Realitors tent goes up first on the 3rd tee, we'll install that system.

Wednesday will be finishing which ever one we didn't do and pull more systems. Thursday should be an office day (yea right) and Friday starts the fun.

I forgot to mention, sometime during the week we need to permanently install a monitor system for the choir loft at a local church.

We have rehearsals for a Dance Schools Reciteal Friday afternoon into late evening.

Saturday starts (hopefully) loading in a sound system for 200 in a private country club. After dinner the Reedville Socitiy will present a skit requiring 3 - lavalier mics and 2 - handheld, all wireless. The rest of the day will be monitoring the two tent venues followed by loading out the Reedville system late in the evening.

Sunday has two recital performances and a load out.

It would be nice to have all the gear back by Monday night because the following weekend is dam near a repeat.

I hate May.
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[ship]

Touring season (spring) just started with a Lion for me. Something like six large tours and 16 shows leaving in the next two weeks. 14 hour days seven days a week for the next two weeks than we will see what comes up afterwards. This and word that amongst a few tours already out there one of them might want more custom fixtures made for it to add on - this amongst other custom gear TBA or in the planning for tours that have not left yet.

Nope for me its more like April... while touring season has not ended in a few years, touring season just got even busier with the start of spring.

Hmm, a week or two notice.... me drooling... This as opposed to having to ship gear in from Europe or across the country within a few days notice so as to get the gear done on time, or in todays case, took a week longer than promissed to get the 30KVA transformer in and we noted a wee problem in attempting to do a 120/208v to 240/416v transformer.... no neutral on the secondary.... This given the show leaves Monday and it took two weeks to get this one that’s the wrong one... Project manager is pissed. Wee slight mistake on my part in part on the concept of Delta as a primary for reverse wired transformer instead of a secondary winding, in it otherwise being ok to do Delta winding for the primary but not the secondary when reversed in power in but not a stocked transformer. This amongst many problems today in getting shows out the door and gear fixed, or the five minute factor... If not in E-Mail form... I will forget it and I forgot a lot of stuff it turns out today within the same hour of finding out I had the wrong transformer. This much less still not getting all my 16A/240v circuit breakers etc. for the project.

Also have $15,000 worth of lamps in the trunk of my car. Figure I’ll take them home to open up each box and inspect/mark the serial numbers on them. Yet to get home early enough to do so, and no time at work to do so given someone on average every 15 minutes bugs me for something or there is other stuff to work on. Yep... it’s the busy season. This much less after update I started off the day by finding out my lamp tracking program was suddenly missing from the corporate server program. Gone - completely, not even on the backup. Only like 15,000 lamps at like an average of $100.00 each. Luckily it at least was found without loosing any datta - just took a few hours to restore that lost time for me in twitting fingers.

On the other hand, I still prefer to go to one place each day than at some point at least sleep in my own bed than do shows that often are a shame to rush to get done than have to take down right away.

 

[TimMiller]

My today was excitement consisted of going out to a school to replace a light I repaired and pick some gear up from a rental. On the way back i got pulled over for not having a rear license plate (COPS DO NOT GET THE FACT APPORTIONED VEHICLES ONLY HAVE 1 PLATE) I even have documentation stating that, yet they continue to go on and tell you your wrong even though the letter from TXDOT says differently, along with an array of other laws you are breaking though TXDOT states you are not. COPS REALLY NEED TO READ UP ON THE LAWS... Then they decided to go on about how the truck was technically a commercial truck (truck is under 26k so its not considered commercial) Cop started saying any truck over 10k he thinks is a commercial truck, i told him he better get busy pulling over every one who rents a U-haul or drives a dually. So after waisting an hour and a half of my time and two other cops showing up i finally got let go. Then it was off to the shop to get the great memo that i have 16 lights to repair by the end of the month, besides the 3 other installs i have going and several other repair jobs on on top of my classes. Got 5 of the 16 repaired, so i guess i'm on a good start.......