Tuesday 01/31/2023
Did the round of gym machines. Then went around to three different venues, the Activity room, the Training room, and the Conference room. In each of these places, IT has installed a big TV screen managed by Zoom Room software. I was practicing how to do a screen-cast from my laptop to the TV. This ability is important for our A/V team to understand going forward. I fought through several problems of my own making and think I have it all figured out, but I need to make another round of tests and write some notes. Then I will schedule some training for the committee members.
Joined the writers meeting for half an hour, and then went to the auditorium to join Bert.
Back story. Bert is part of a “barbershop” men’s singing group. They wanted to have a performance here, which got postponed by somebody’s illness. But setting up for that, Bert wanted to try a new style of wireless mic. We have four “lapel mics”, small mic with a clip to attach to clothing, and a wireless transmitter. Bert bought three feather-weight mics that consist of a stiff wire that wraps around your ear and lays alongside your cheek. The mic plugs in to the same wireless transmitter pack, in place of a lapel mic.
When he tested these, however, they were much much too “hot”, sensitive, and went into instant feedback no matter what setting on the sound board. So he had brought in the sound engineer who is also a member of the singing group. The three of us met today and investigated the problem. The guy really did know his onions, sound-wise. We worked out the issue as a setting on the wireless receiver bank in the rack backstage, and got the new mic working nicely. It’s an improvement over a lapel mic in several ways. One, it doesn’t have to be clipped to clothing, which has been a problem with female presenters who often don’t have collars or lapels close to their voice-boxes. Two, it sounds better.
I had to leave them because it was time for a scheduled 12:30 lunch with Steve Madsen. I know him from the Museum where we are both docents. But he is also involved in Rotary, and through that, knows Gloria, who moved in to CH a year ago. Gloria had invited him to lunch, and me.
Steve is considering carefully whether he wants to move to a senior residence, and has checked out some others. After lunch we gave him a tour of Channing House. He’s a very deliberate sort, asked sensible questions but didn’t say a lot.
About 4pm Jerry, who I mentioned yesterday, called. He thinks he had a problem singing to the recorded music the other day, because the sound of the accompaniment comes out of speakers on the ceiling aimed away from the stage, so it comes back with a small delay. He wanted to experiment with maybe having a monitor speaker on the stage pointed right at the singers. We figured out how to do that and went down and tried it out. So that was another hour of fiddling with the sound system.
Codgerville 