Chad and Christine

I’ve always wondered what it was like in the projectionist booth at the movies. It turns out at AMC Concord Mills there is a series of corridors behind the theaters that connect all them, allowing a pair of protectionists to run the all the movies at once.

MA had a company meeting at the Concord Mills AMC theater today. Philip and I had a large hand in compiling all the material for the show so it was left to us to assist projecting it at the movie theater. We had a contractor multimedia guru in the booth with us running the equipment and we gave him the queues to switch to different video sources. The presenters did their thing and we brought up the appropriate movie on the screen in the right order with the right sound. Something like this: “Okay, queue the penguins, now star fade to camera three, bring the volume up on the right, aaaannnnnnnnnd roll DVD, now switch to powerpoint, kill the mic, bring up the digital beta, now drop house lights, swich to video four, and I’m spent.”

It was very nerve racking because the entire company, sans trackside was at the meeting.

Here is what I got on the camera phone

Door to booth

Here is what it looks like looking into the theater from the booth.

Equipment the contractor multimedia guru brought to tie in all our equipment

The back of the machine that reads the film and sends it to the projector.

The film is extremly long (linear length). It is laid out here on three large platers.

This is the movie, Unattended Minors.

Films

Uwharrie OHV trails close December 15th so Zach, Matt, and I went for one last go at the trails before winter sets in.

There was quite a turnout of people bidding the trails farewell for three months.

This will be the last time I take the Jeep to the trails stock. Next time it’ll have a nice lift and larger tires but I’m still amazed at what these machines can do right off the show room floor.

There was very minimal damage to report. The gas tank skid plate took a pounding at the end of Dutch Jon. Going too fast over a rocky mound caused the rear shocks to compress more than usual and it caught a large rock on the way over. Just a little rock rash, not something I’m going to worry about when I get the lift.

I won the smallest Jeep award, again.

Zach flexed his front suspension to the point that the shocks weren’t resting on the boot (see below).

I made a dizzy time-lapse video of about 2 hours of the excursion compressed to just over 8 minutes. Sorry for the quality, Youtube really did a job compressing it. You can download the uncompressed file here (RIGHT-CLICK save as) if the quality is too bad for you. It looks like I’m just chasing after Zach the whole trip. I videoed Wolf Den, Falls Dam, and Dickey Bell; but ran out of tape at the beginning of Dutch Jon.
Also, check out the photo gallery.

Tonight I made a gingerbread Galactica fighting a gingerbread basestar as a gift for the art department. Our art department is a great group of guys and gals, and every now and then I like to do something nice for them.

The blue and red is crossfire. You can make your own sound effects if you want.

The doctor said that the needle was in deeper than they had thought.

It hurts much worse post op but the pain killers are working.

I departed with a nifty boot and I have to use a cane for the next few days. Oh yeah, Mr. Cool.

Almost forgot. They let me keep the needle, see below.