Richard K. Rowland

3.5 days till Mission Sunday 2009. Will we have the presentation ready? 2 of 6 videos done. I have to redo the Nigeria video, ugh! David Lusk is having a multitude of computer problems and will not have Ghana video done in time, so I have to throw one together. I have South East Asia and Guyana done. Tonight I will be getting the voiceover track recorded for Costa Rica, and will finish the video tomorrow. So I still have to redo Nigeria, Create a Ghana video and finish Costa Rica, plus do a Year in review slideshow containing pictures from all mission areas to the Light the fire song.

You might notice several changes and posts in the coming days. This is for 2 reasons:

First of all, I thought it was about time I changed some stuff up. From looks to content and more, I feel like showing a different side of myself.

Second, I just lost my job and since I am looking for a new one, I need to work on stuff to show my skills. I will be working on my portfolio, resume, and current profiles. I am also going to be spending some time learning some other things to make my skill set a little more rounder.

If anyone has any suggestions as to where I can find some work or what other things I might like to get interested in, please let me know. Also please pray I find a job soon so I can pay the bills.

So I guess I won’t have much time to watch TV shows for awhile. But while I look for another job I will be listening to podcasts and audiobooks. If anyone has a suggestion on some excellent content, please send it my way.

<>< Rich

Hello all,

Well I am going to be taking the next year to concentrate on myself. For the past decade I have been overweight and had little energy. I will be setting a new scheduled routine that I have to adhere to the strictest sense. I encourage those of you who know me to help me out with this and keep me accountable. 

Every day after work I will be going to the fitness room at my apartment complex and walking on the treadmill for a certain period of time. I am going to try to start off walking a mile a day then gradually work my way to 2 miles.  Right now at 283 lbs, I am definitely overweight and out of shape. I am hoping to lose 100 lbs by this time next year. My goal is to get to 180-190 lbs. 

Another factor in losing weight is a diet. I am cutting out a lot of high fat and high calorie foods and drinks. I am not really counting calories, but I am in a way. I am choosing foods carefully at the grocery store. I need to be working towards keeping a meal down to about 350-400 calories. This means no more fast food for lunches, except Subway® every once in a while. I am getting my food advice from my dad who has had real success in this sort of diet. Again please help me stick to this. 

So hopefully in a year, I will have changed into a whole new me. Again I ask all of you for your prayers and encouragement. Please help me stay accountable to this task. I pray that in time, you will see me again and see how much I’ve changed.

In God’s Love,

<>< Rich

The equipment for the sound department ocasionally will need updating. For the past few years I have been working towards replacing all the old equipment and adding new equipment to keep up with the times as well as making sure we don’t have an old peice of equipment quit durring service.

Currently there are 8 mic cables running through a conduit to connect mics from the stage, floor, and back wall, to the soundroom. There used to be a Biamp 8 channel virtical rackmount mixer right where the mic cables stop in the soundroom, but we sold that mizer and replaced it with a 14 channel tabletop Peavey mixer. Only 2 of the 8 cables were plugged into the new mixer. We used 6 wireless mics as well. For the balcony extention project, I ran 2 mic cables as extentions for the pulpit and the baptistry mics to the mixer now on the desk on the balcony.  We have a TV sitting on the front pew and a wireless video transmitter sending the computer video to it. Also we have a presentation remote for the computer that is just barely in range of the reciever 100 ft away. All this needs updating more.

This next project, we will be tearing out the 8 mic cables going through the conduit and running an 8 channel snake cable, a coaxial cable for video to the TV, and Cat 5 cable. The run is about 125-150 feet long. The coax cable will replace the wireless transmitter for a cleaner and mored steady video signal. For the cat 5 cable, we plan on getting a USB to Cat5 converter and attaching that to both ends of the cable so we can have the remote reciever less than 10 feet from the remote and the signal will run through the cable to the computer 100 feet away. And finally the 8 channel snake cable will connect the pulpit mic, the baptistry mic, and 6 other mic ports on the front pew. The reason for this is so we can have 4 (wired) mics and 2 monitors or 6 (wired) mics in the front for acapella singing groups. The other end of the snake cable will be connected to a new mixer on the balcony desk.

We plan on getting a Mackie CFX20 MKII mixer. This will compliment our 6 wireless mics, 8 wired mics, 2 future chorus mics, DVD and Computer audio into the stereo channels and have output to mains and 4 aux sends (Foyer/Hallway, Hearing Aid Recievers, and 2 for a future video system.

Mackie CFX20 MKII

Samson CM12C Hanging Choir Mic

On Sunday, November 2, 2008, Mesa Church of Christ had their annual Mission Sunday, where they collect funds for mission work planned for the next year. During the service, the congregation gets to watch a video of the past year’s mission trips and reports on the mission works. We have had several great themes since I’ve been involved in the creation and planning of Mission Sunday (“The Touch of Jesus”, “The Whole World in His Hands”, “Everybody Needs Jesus”, “The Time Has Come”). The theme of this year’s Mission Sunday was “Shout To The Lord” For the past 5 years, I have put those videos together. Now we are making a DVD of the Mission Videos to insert into the “New Member Packets”. I have been working in iDVD, and have constantly had problems with the video. This weekend I’ll be making a Raw DVD with just the video, no menus or slideshows. Hopefully next year will be better because we will be using Final Cut Pro for the video editing and DVD Studio Pro to make the DVD. Next Year’s Mission Sunday Theme is: “Light the Fire”.