Appreciation

It's nice to be appreciated. It doesn't happen all the time, but it is nice when it does occur. Today at Novell one of the managers of the team I work with mostly did a really nice thing for me.

Yesterday I was at the office supply store looking at mice for laptops. You know the ones I'm talking about? Wireless with a tiny little plug-in for the computer and they fold or do something to be small when they aren't being used. Anyway, I was looking at the Microsoft Arc mouse and I thought it would work well for me, but I was concerned that it wouldn't be precise enough. Well, this morning one of the people in my morning meeting had one and I was able to check it out and it worked well.

I had just mentioned that I was looking at them so for lunch, this manager went out and bought me one! Just to thank me for all the work I was doing on the project, they bought me the mouse. It's nice to be appreciated.

Links, links and more links

I've been asked several times how to get to...whatever. So I'm providing all the links I know to all the stuff we have right here in a single post for your clicking pleasure!

Pastor Dean's Audio Blog
RCC Message Audio
RCC Worship Experience Video
RCC Live!
Pastor Tom's Blog
Real Time! (our audio podcast that we've ran out of time on for now)
Spike Speaks (connection group leadership training)
Email Pastor Dean
Email Pastor Tom
Email Pastor Dale

I hope that's enough! Let me know if there's something missing for you.

Vodcasts

We keep our vodcasts available here. What makes it interesting in my mind is how many different methods there are to viewing it. We try to use Google Video to provide it online in flash movie format, we have them embedded by clicking the title of the vodcast and they are available via iTunes by either subscribing to RCC's vodcasts or just selecting the one you want to see.
What has been taking so much of my time has been trying to get the live stream going. I have been doing the work on the client out here at rockcanyon.org/live but I been generally unsuccessful so far. I have a friend in the business, but theirs is a business for certain and there is no way we could pay that company's prices. I have also been talking with some of the folks who have the free methods out there. I was hoping I could buffer the first 10-15 minutes of a Sunday morning (so 'live' online would be 15 minutes late) so there would not be any jerkiness or pausing but I have so far been unsuccessful in that as well. I have not given up yet!

Getting help...

I need help with this live streaming thing. I just can't seem to figure it out other than wishing for a much faster connection! My thinking now has been pre-buffering the service. You know, we start at 0900 for the first service, but I'd like the live people to start at 0915 so there is 15 minutes of the broadcast ready and buffered to keep the jerkiness away. That does not seem to be an option, so I sent an email to an ex-co-worker who went to a company that streams and I sent an email to Mogulus to see what they have to say. My ex-co-worker has not been heard from but Mogulus has been back in touch with me. He asked for the results of SpeedTest.net so I ran that and found our disappointing results here. Hopefully Mogulus will have some ideas for me...

Little girls are different than little boys...

and I constantly learn that. You see with my boys when I come home I tackle them and pin them to the ground while I tickle them until they can't breathe. That tells them I love them. I can't do that with my little girl because she gets hurt much more easily and cries. She tries sometimes to roughhouse but it just doesn't work out for her. She likes to do girly things. So tonight, Daddy was able to paint fingernails pink. We talked about doing her toes but with Winter on us we decided against that. I also was able to use the hair dryer and help out with that. The girly things Dads do! :-)

Big Red Spider

YEEEECCH!

This is what we found in our kitchen this morning. Then ANOTHER one joined my wife in the shower! Thankfully, my brave daughter, in the pursuit of 2 cents (a penny per bug, doubled for danger) got the central vacuum and sucked it up. It was still yucky. We had to find out what it was and found the information here that it's a Badge (Huntsman) Spider. It's not supposed to have a bad bite, but others in its family do so I'll avoid that. It also got aggravated when it realized death was near and it reared up on its hind legs flailing the front ones in the air. Thankfully the forces of truth and justice prevailed and she went away with a clatter along the tube of the vacuum!

A little better

Well, the live streaming vodcast for Sunday will be a little better.  I found that if I put the directive mms:// in front of the address they need to connect to, that will tell Windows Media Player that it should stream from the source that follows.  While that is not the best solution, for Sunday it's all we have.  The really bad part of it is I'll have to actually edit the web site Sunday morning after we have an ip address for the TriCaster from Cricket.

Trying to fix it

This live streaming is really turning into a bear!  I thought it would be fairly straightforward after we had the TriCaster since that beast is ready and prepared to send the live vodcast out but I was way, way off.  That was only the beginning.  Just because it can send the live vodcast out doesn't mean its easy.  So far I can get it out, but the problem I am faced with is it's really jumpy and the audio cuts in and out.  I was hoping to solve that with increasing the bandwidth, but that doesn't seem to do anything.  I was able to have the TriCaster directly servce the video and that seemed to work fairly well, but that is only a viable solution for one or two users.  Beyond that, the bandwidth limitations will be too great.  So I continue to work with Mogulus trying to get that working.  I'm on the NewTek forums hoping for help, I've been to LiveTV, to ZapLive and uStream.tv in an effort to find someting that will work, but I just can't seem to get it yet.  Thankfully there are some knowledgeable folk at work who are interested as well, so I'll pose the problem to them on Monday.  For this weekend, people will have to manually point their Windows Media Player at the ip address that I won't know until Sunday.  So if you are interested in watching live for Sunday, find out right now how to point your Windows Media Player at an http stream!