Settling in is suite

Last week, I put the Kona/AJA card (digital to analog converter) and the RAID card in the Dual G5 in before the IT consultant my agency hired to install it showed up, so he just sat around and answered questions while we installed FCP Studio.

I’m not a big Mac fan. I know I’ll never figure out how creative directors can stand putting 500 files in one folder or on their desktop. Can you say subfolder? I hate not having a subfolder for everything. I don’t believe that Spotlight is going to help this habit, not to knock it--I guess it's the artistic thing to do.

We ordered the A/V equipment from ProMax and the computer products from MacMall. (We had problems with MacMall. It took over 3 week to get the G5 here.) I called up ProMax yesterday and the tech guy tried to troubleshoot why the Trinitron monitor wasn't working. He helped me get a picture, but it was luminance (black and white). Well, the tech guy was stumped once we got that far. He asked if the cables were all connected. It’s not a good sign if technical support asks that. I had planned on buying an S-Video cable to test the monitor with the DVCAM deck, but this morning just looking around the AJA board control panel application I switched the Component Y/C/VBS to a Composite Y +C and it worked. So much for technical support. . .

Also, for some reason my agency’s D-Link wireless router won't let my G5 on. It won't assign me an IP address via DCHP. So what's a geek to do? Bring his wireless router from home, of course. So it's been "National Bring Your Router to Work Day" for a week. The downside of course is then there is now no hurry to get the problem solved if an employee can just bring his from home everyday.

--Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com