"All words are symbols that represent unspeakable realities. Which is also why words are magical." (Donald Miller tweet)

Saturday, January 24, 2009

cable labels

Thursday was a very satisfying day.

Tuesday was a high-speed work day, from the moment I stepped into my office to find two immediate-action phone messages, through the moment the funeral lunch group arrived (an hour and a half earlier than we expected), through to the end of the day, with a meeting that had been pushed from before the funeral lunch to after.

Wednesday was a loooong work day, beginning at 7:30 AM, holding my "cold enough for ya?" sign on the corner, giving out hot chocolate to anyone who wanted it; ending at 10:30 PM after an intense sound training session with our worship team.

But Thursday - that was a very satisfying day. Since we moved into the new building last fall, all things multi-media have been set up and working, but I had a sneaking suspicion that if anything went wrong, I had no instincts in how to fix it. I didn't have a grasp of the whole big picture, and being the person that I am (I call it doing my job well - others mutter "control issues" behind my back), I NEED TO KNOW what's happening!

So after the training session Wednesday night, I went to work on Thursday morning, and it lasted all the day long.

Cleaned out the big closet that holds all things multi-media. My friend George shoved it all in there on moving day, for which I was truly grateful, but it was time to clean it out and have it make sense. I installed hooks - without benefit of a drill, mind you - for patch cables, speaker cables and XLR cables. I got rid of broken things. Moved rarely used things to the high cupboards, and put signs on the cupboard doors to identify the contents within.

Crawled over every inch of the platform, identifying the reason why cable "3" was plugged into jack "F" and other such conundrums. Why, when everything is numbered, do we have one box that is all letters? Moved shiny stands into the drum booth - where everything is shiny - and black stands onto the platform - where everything is black.

And then I came back after supper on Thursday night to meet my B-I-L and his trusty label-maker. We are two of a kind, he and I, and we spent two glee-filled hours, testing, labelling and tidying countless cables. We put labels everywhere, forcing letters to convert to numbers that match the numbers to which they are connected.

And then we went crazy, putting tiny directive labels on door knobs and ductwork and artwork throughout the building. No we didn't. We did consider it, though.

Now I only need to create a couple of laminated sound and platform diagrams that trainees can hold close to their hearts, and it will all be settled. No one else will know the difference.

But Thursday was a very satisfying day.