Thanksgiving

Oh yeah, we also celebrated Thanksgiving all together at Pat & Chris's.  We all helped with dishes, and Chris's turkey was outrageous!  Look at that beautiful food!

Here we are too!  (These are actually celebrities employed to protect our privacy!  They look just like us!)

Let's take a moment to talk about shop safety...

Let's take a moment to talk about shop safety - never let your mother, mother-in-law or wives see the stuff you do with whirling discs of sharpened high-carbon steel.  Oh, and you should probably wear safety glasses and ear protection, read, understand, and follow the instructions for all your shop tools, and stuff.  I made the carcasses for a built-in bookcase and dresser drawers on Saturday with some help from my father-in-law Pat.  This pile of ply-wood is about to turn into sawdust.  Note my awesome dust collector, doesn't everyone think that Byron Black and Jason Addink really need one of these too?  I sure do!

I suck at making straight, perfect cuts with a circular saw, so I employ a simple jig that good-old Norm showed me one Saturday.

And, viola!  Just like the Old Yankee Workshop, you have a sweet bookshelf and dresser carcass. 

I actually made measured drawings for this project (which are available for $29.95), and highly recommend using them.  I was pleased with how accurate my Hitachi cabinet saw is, and everything turned out terrific!  I must admit though, even with measured drawings, lots of experience, and Pat's supervision, I still made a mistake or two...  Chatting with Pat, a question struck me - I wonder if Jesus ever had to measure twice?

Interdenominational Christmas Service

Grace Baptist Church hosted an interdenominational Christmas concert tonight - it was great.  Between my friend Skip and I, we handled sound without any hitches.  We even managed to make a recording so you could hear some of the talent we enjoy every week in our regular service.  Of course, I just listened to the recording and it's pretty crummy - ARRGH!  Just add that to the list of challenges to handle (why do microphones hate God?)

Christmas Gifts

I think I may have to do (help) with the Christmas shopping this year.  Katie is doing much better moving into her second trimester, but she still needs to take it easy, and I don't want her out in the crowds more than she needs to be with the flu bug going around.  So, does anyone know where I can find this dog leash for my mother-in-law and her dogs?

Running Sound in Church

I used to run sound in my church as a boy. I think we had about 3 channels or microphones to manage - 1 for the pastor, 1 for anyone else speaking, and one for the piano. We used a tape recorder to make records of the service. The hardest part of the job was setting up a conference call for 3 shut-ins at home, so they could listen to the church service. Sometimes they'd forget to flip the "mute" switch on their phone, so you could hear the football game or snoring in the background - but hey, they were shut-ins so you have to cut them some slack.


Anyway, I continue to serve my new church in Utah by running sound.  We have an older set-up, and typically run about 12 channels for a good-sized worship team and the speaker (we're currently looking for a pastor as my father-in-law retired after a gazillion years serving in ministry), plus CD's, DVD's, and a projector with audio from the computer.  And now, we make digital recordings of the service, instead of using a casette tape.

I really enjoy serving in this way, but I'm really frustrated by several problems.  Under the right circumstances (whenever the power switch is in the "on position"), we pick up a Sunday sports radio broadcast.  The radio is always there, but you usually don't hear it until a quiet moment - like during prayer.  And, there's usually an amazing home-run or goal scored during the prayer, so the radio announcer guy goes ballistic. 

The sanctuary electricity wasn't grounded correctly.  Once I realized this, I went through and grounded several outlets used for sound, but we still seem to fight a buzzing noise at 60Hz (I've been told by professionals at my work that this frequency is produced by the power flowing through the wires).

Several of our mics, including wireless, choose to stop working at random times even though they were working just before the service.  I'm convinced we have ghosts or gremlins chewing the wires under the floor.

We cram 8 musicians into the front of our tiny church, about 2 feet from the speaker mains.  For those of you who don't do sound, this means I've got mics really close to the speakers, which tends to create feedback.  Additionally, some of our worship team members (are they deaf?) need extra volume in their monitors (the speakers on the floor that face the singers, so they can hear themselves), adding to the cacophony blaring back into the mics.  Sometimes there's more volume coming from the monitors than out of the speaker mains.

I did drag a professional AV tech friend of mine to the church and work through a bunch of issues.  But he did finally say that this was a really difficult setting, even for a pro - this actually made me feel better somehow.

And lastly, everyone has an opinion - usually opposed in some way to the opinion of the guy running the sound...

All said and done, I do enjoy running sound for my church.  It's something I'm relatively good at, and unlike many people sitting in the pews, my brain can follow the service while I'm messing with a bunch of switches and dials (ADD - my spiritual gift?).  For the record, we really do have a great worship team, and we're blessed that out of a congration of 80 or so people, we have 8 with musical abilities. 

On the subject of church sound, check out the "sound guy neck crane" on SCL.  When I receive the "sound guy neck crane", I'm usually thinking "yes..... I surely would have missed that noise so loud that the roof caved in......yes....... thank you".

Bakkers in Utah finally have a blog!

I've really been wrestling with whether to post a blog or not. Katie and I would like to stay better connected with those we love, but I'm paranoid about posting anything personal for the universe to see.

I'll have to do my best to balance personal information with enough ambiguity to establish plausible deniability. There's got to be several Bakker families living in Utah, right? Of course, now there's no denying whose blog this really is... I guess I need to keep wearing my foil cap and polishing my guns ;).

We have some exciting news (this is the real reason to start a blog).  After several years, God has blessed Katie and I with a child! Katie is about finished with the first trimester, and has been sick morning, noon, and night. Normally she vanquishes illness with stoic fortitude, but the daily grind of puking, forcing something into her stomach, and acid eating her insides away is really getting old. Please pray for peace and health!

Now that we have legitimate news to share, I'll try to update this blog every so often. There's not much to see, but here's the first photo of our child!

From Baby pre birth 1

Our mental illness

Most of you should know that Katie and I enjoy home remodel. Actually, I enjoy home remodel, and Katie enjoys being able to choose the materials, colors, and finishes of our home. It's a good partnership as I have no eye for style. She points and tells me what she wants it to end up like, and I engineer how we're going to get there. Our home in Centerville is our 3rd remodel, and we're looking forward to applying many hard-learned lessons from the first two. I'll update this stuff periodically.



You may remember our last home in Flagstaff. Here are some photos of the finished product. We miss this house quite a bit.

Master bedroom after some more work