Monday, January 21, 2008

Slideshow problems AGAIN!!!

We had our annual Awards Dinner scheduled for December. Then the day of the dinner was freezing rain and we had to postpone it until Jan. 6.
Each year I have made a slide show of the season to show at the dinner. I do this for the kids -- my slideshow isn't about the football stars, it is about ALL the participants, about the entire season's memories.
During the year, the football starters get all the media attention -- so I carefully go thru all my photos to make sure every Varsity football player and cheerleader is in it. This year I had to go thru over 6000 photos to make a 20 minute slide show. Let me tell you, that is no easy feat!!! There were so many wonderful moments to share! And this year I got a bunch of video from YouTube that I broke into short clips and inserted in between the photos.
Now, for the past few years, every time I had to show the slideshow, something would happen -- the year before last, it ran about a third of the way thru and then the projector shut off!! We tried again, and it did the same thing!!!
Last year there was a glitch too (long story)!
So this year I figured all the kinks had been worked out .
Wrong!! First, Tom forgot to bring his laptop to run the disk! I had to go around the room asking if anyone had one -- how embarrassing! One of the cheer coaches lived nearby and her dear husband dropped one off for me! Yay!
Then, we had to figure out a way to project the sound -- well, the only way was for me to hold a microphone against the speaker at the bottom of the laptop! OK, no problem.
So then, I hit the PLAY button to start the show, and so does one of the football assistants -- and he hits it like 4 times -- so now the darn computer gets too busy trying to start it 5 times and it takes forever to start! Tom, the president of the football club, comes over and starts yelling at us about the delay!! I'm getting mad now, so I told him I'm not doing a slide show next year.
Finally, it starts, and everyone really seems to be enjoying it! Tom comes back to where I'm holding the microphone in this awkward position, to tell me how good it is, and he kicks the projector plug out socket! Right in the middle of the slide show!!! When he plugs it back in, the darn thing wouldn't start again because the machine was hot! I was sooo upset!!!! He went out with the micorphone and told everyone that we would continue the show after we gave out some awards -- but didn't even tell them that HE was the reason it stopped! I was fuming mad, because it looked like I had done something wrong -- I was so upset and embarrassed !!! If it wasn't done for the kids, I would have just walked out without showing it!!
Anyway, the kids seemed to enjoy it. Now I just have to make some copies of it for the seniors.

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