After some technical difficulties and some long-awaited changes, NewPointe’s podcast is back in good order and ready for your subscription.

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Did you have a chair to sit in when you were at NewPointe this weekend?  You can thank these guys for that!

Here’s the video for anyone who didn’t see it when it aired 2 weeks ago.

There’s been some Blog Tag going on through the NewPointe staff as of late, and I’ve been tagged 3 times already. Basically, this means that I am being asked to post 8 random facts about myself.  Here goes..

1. I hardly ever watch TV.  In fact, I watch more TV at other people’s homes than I ever do at my own.
2. I love thunderstorms, which might be a little odd for an IT guy.  I LOVE to sit on the porch and take in bright flashes of lightning and huge peals of thunder.  The bigger the storm, the better the experience.
3. Food fact #1:  I like love to eat vegetables.  I can munch on veggies any time, anywhere.  They’re delicious.  The one vegetable that I don’t care for?  Beets.
4. I am far FAR better at listening to other people than I am at talking about myself.  Not only that, I enjoy listening more than talking as well.
5. I have acrophobia, which tends to be a hindrance when it comes time to pull cable through some parts of the building.  I’m good up to about 17-20 feet, and then I start to “lock up.”  I’m working at this though.
6. Depending on what time of night it is, and how much caffeine I’ve had, I can be pretty easy to freak out if you use the right tactic.  (Disclaimer:  I do not guarantee that my reaction won’t cause you physical pain, in fact don’t be surprised if it does.)
7. I love riding my motorcycle around.  It’s a 400cc Honda that’s almost as old as me, but it runs and it’s inexpensive to insure.  Someday I’ll get a bigger bike, but for now this one does good for me.
8. Food fact #2:  My favorite food?    SUSHI!  I think EVERYONE needs to at least TRY it sometime.  There is absolutely NO OTHER FOOD ON THE PLANET that tastes like sushi.  Just for the record, I also really like sashimi, which is raw fish (sushi is NOT RAW, thank you very much), but at $2.50 for 3 bites, I don’t eat it often.

Is any of this surprising to anyone? 

>> I took some time earlier this week and upgraded my Wordpress installation to version 2.2.  I was expecting a possibly a small face lift and some more features, but there really isn’t much to note aside from my theme getting whacked and RSS icons getting plastered all over the top of the header.  I upgraded to the latest version of the theme and that seems to have fixed it, and all my plugins seem to be working as well.  Just for good measure, I added Digg icons at the bottom of the posts.

>> Has anyone else ever dealt with credit card readers on their network?  We’ve got one set up in our cafe area at the moment, and we are getting quite a few read errors during transactions.  It’s a pain because any read error totally voids the transaction and it has to be restarted.  We’ve tested this reader on various locations in our network with the same results (which actually makes me breathe easier).  The only thing I haven’t tried at this point is putting the reader on a separate VLAN, but I haven’t had time to get that far yet.  If anyone has any experience with credit card readers, I’d love to hear any advice you have.

>>  This Thursday the Video Department received some much-needed help!  Mr. Jeff Conn has come aboard for a summer internship and will be working mainly in video post-production.  Jeff has already lent quite a bit to the video team with his editing skills.  It’s going to be a tremendous blessing to have him around!

>>  On Friday I entered into some new territory (for me, anyway):  SSL certificates.  Though it’s a little embarrassing to admit, SSL implementation has been on my to-do list for some time now but had never made it to the front burner.  Between Friday and Saturday, I managed (with some how-to advice from John Dolan) to get a CA set up and get a certificate set up on our Exchange server for OWA and OMA.  OMA wasn’t a huge deal, because we only have 2 Windows Mobile devices checking mail on our server, but it’s still nice to know that it works.  Thanks for your help, John!

Next week my primary goal will be getting SSL-Explorer up and running for our non-notebook-toting staff.  I’ve been having some issues with the community edition, such as the WebDAV URLs not opening correcting on the client end.  Hopefully by the end of the week things can get smoothed out.

Anyone that works in video production knows that sometimes the pace can be maddening… looming deadlines, crazy shoot appointments, and endless editing tasks can add up to a lot of stressful times.

Seriously…I really enjoy what I do, but there are times when the workload is crazy.  And when the workload is heavy, it’s just hard to grow.  Face it, it’s just HARD to look ahead and think of growth when you’re in a constant struggle just to keep your head above the water.

There have been a few things happening around here that are worth celebrating.

-  I’ve gone off-staff as Media Director.  OK, so this wasn’t so recent (mid-March, I believe), but was the first in this string of events.  After a re-organization of the staff, my job changed from IT and video production to solely IT.  This doesn’t mean that I’ve quit video, but it really allows for more clarity as far as job responsibilities and priorities are concerned.  Most of all though, this is freeing me up to think more on terms of growth and the future, which I’ve missed out on for some time now.

-  God has brought some incredible volunteers into the video ministry — behind the camera, in the control room, and in post-production as well.  These people are passionate about what they do and are constantly stepping up their game.  You guys ROCK!!  NewPointe would NOT be the same without you!

-  Most recently, uber volunteer Shannon Bailey has signed on as Media Director.  He will be coordinating non-live productions, from live shoots to the re-scaling an existing video for the weekend.  This is huge, as the amount of productions we’re taking on is ever-increasing.

-  Coming down the pike, Jeff Conn is going to be coming on-board as an intern for the summer.  Jeff will be doing a majority of his work on Final Cut Pro, and will also be filling in some gaps in the IT department.

Needless to say, I am extremely STOKED about what’s going on here!  It’s pretty apparent that God is stepping us up so that He can do some awesome things here in Tusc./Holmes County.  I can’t wait to see what’s in store.