It's been a while

Hello, everyone.

I promise I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.  Things have just been a little crazy.  Two times in the past month, we've had 5-day marathons of events, one of which just ended last night.

Since last I wrote, we have gotten full-swing into hockey season, concluded our football season with the Wolfpack (though we're not completely done with football yet....), and have begun our basketball season with NC State.

For those looking for equipment perspectives, I hope to continue on the series I started about the equipment reviews soon, as well.

Quick issues we're having: 

• Cam Mate iris control for the robotic camera is very touchy, and the gear has a tendency to "slip off" the iris ring of the lens if it is tweaked too quickly.  Gentle adjustments keep it happy, so we deal with it as best we can.  The overall camera is working out quite nicely, with the broadcast trucks loving the angle, as well.
• We had a Gefen DVI/Fiber extender go out to one of our multiviewer monitors.  It's under warranty and was sent out for replace/repair.  We had a spare or two, but at $1000/pair, we want to be sure it's replaced!
• One of the Centrio cards has lost it's mind, as far as the monitors it's displaying to.  One of the monitors is showing a crazy resolution and I'm working on getting tech support to call me back.  We just noticed this one last night, so this is an ongoing issue that I hope to resolve before Saturday's hockey game.
• The other night, our primary Daktronics scoreboard control computer went screwy in-game and left us with a mostly-black board during game play.  There were a few issues in the 30-seconds leading up to this, including data freezing up, sequences "pausing" and then finally the computer locking up.  We've since streamlined the way we switch to the backup system so that we aren't left with empty boards for too long.  Of course, I'll be fine if we never have to use that protocol, but... you never know with live production!
  

As for game-night operations, things are going much more smoothly.  We're getting into a pretty good rythm and our game-night staff is getting used to the new setup fairly well.

December holds twelve events for us (compared to a modest fourteen events in November), including our final football event of the year on Dec. 12th (NCHSAA Championships....  3 football games, one day) and NC State's first Commencement in HD.