Without A Hitch, and Crash And Burn

A while back, Pastor Harry Strong of the United Church of the San Juans invited me to do a "reading" of one of the columns I wrote for the Ouray County Plaindealer. I put him off, but finally relinquished to his persistence. He was doing a month long series on "Art," and thought one of my writings worthy of a Sunday service. It morphed into a slideshow presentation after he saw a few of my photographs. The more "Art," the better. 
I was amazed at how many tech obstacles rolled into my path after I agreed to "do it." First, I tried a projector, but it was both dim and unkind to my photographs. Next, I thought a large screen HD TV would solve that problem, but it turned out that I would need two instead of one if it was to be a quality experience for those in the back. No problem. I reserved a 60 inch HDTV and Pastor Strong agreed to bring in his 48 inch from home. 

I thought it would be simple to feed my slideshow to two large screen TV's; all I needed was a HDMI "Y." Ha! Not that simple. It turns out the "Y" is called a "splitter," and it needs to be "powered" (amplified) in order to mirror the high quality image on my Mac Book's screen. The 30 foot run of HDMI cable between screen 1 and 2 needed to be robust... as in expensive. 

There are various "splitters" out there, but by the time I figured out what I needed the service was only four days off. None of the distributors, including Amazon, gave me the option for express mail or Fed X. All of them said, "allow three to five days for shipping." What burned me the most was that none of them gave me the option to talk to a real person so I could try and expedite the order or at least explain my situation. Not that you will listen, but folks, please, don't do business with people who don't have a phone number on their website. If your problems and questions are not important enough for them to deal with a phone call, Fuck 'em (pardon my "French," Pastor Harry). I can be on the phone with a real person in 3 minutes tops at Apple. Just request assistance on line and they will call you... usually within five seconds! 

Long story short, I found a powered splitter in Grand Junction at Best Buy... over four hours round trip but worth it after what I endured trying to order it ASAP on line. 

The presentation went off without a hitch... no glitches, crashes or problems whatsoever. It was well received and I have a stack of requests for a DVD version. Oh boy... wonder what I'll run into there... 

On another note, while I was busy rehearsing my presentation, Marathon Man Leonard's first attempt on "Iron Lady Imogene" was a success. He was on par for a time under four hours... till he went down hard, as in "crashed," two miles from the finish line. He was bleeding from four or five places, but he picked himself up and limped in. The First Aid Tent medics hurt him more than the fall, trying to get the dirt out of his wounds. Bobbie went over to Telluride and was there to greet him at the finish line. Nice of her. Congrats, Leonard... you tough old gizzard :))

Leonard, all bandaged up but happy the Imogene pass run over and done