In which one of my dreams is trod upon heavily...
The mama(')s(') (I don't know which apostrophe is appropriate here, because I'm not sure whether I am addressing plural mamas) wedding went off fairly well this weekend. Everyone seemed to get there okay, the brides were radiant, and the pot luck was varied and tasty. The cake Maria made was beautiful and tasty and got almost all eaten up. I got to spend a lot of time with my family - I even won a few hands of poker against my card shark uncles before getting cleared out on a particularly contentious hand of 7 card no-peek (what, I was showing a straight). Also, I learned a few more kinds of poker. Pretty good use of 50 cents - which was my total buy in.
The only thing that didn't go off without a hitch was the music for dancing. This was my department. Ian and I had planned to take turns running music off of my laptop, which would then go through my uncle's PA. Difficulty 1: I ran off just prior to the ceremony to help Maria wrap her sari, and then had four different people call me to ask what the password on my computer is, so they could play the theme for "Hey, look over here, we're gonna start a wedding already." There is no password to log on to my computer. Apparently, no one had tried clicking on the one user name to get in. Immediately following the ceremony, I put on soft music for eating and chatting. That much went well. Difficulty 2: Then we tried to get folks dancing. However, once I started playing music off of the data CD that they'd given me, halfway through the first song, Winamp freezes. I use Winamp 2.9 specifically because it's a little tiny program which doesn't have much in the way of moving parts to get broken. I have never had it freeze (unlike stupid flagellating iTunes, which freezes in a slight breeze). But there it was, hooked up to the PA with people on the floor, frozen and silent. After some poking and prodding and watching the door to my CD drive fall off, I determine that the CD drive has declined to read the disc. The dancing momentum never really recovered after that, even though I got the music going again about 10 minutes later. There were more little things that made me doubt my DJ abilities after that, and I have determined that I never want to do something like that without a proper crossfader and preview abilities. But, honestly, nobody there is going to ask me to DJ their wedding any time soon.
The only thing that didn't go off without a hitch was the music for dancing. This was my department. Ian and I had planned to take turns running music off of my laptop, which would then go through my uncle's PA. Difficulty 1: I ran off just prior to the ceremony to help Maria wrap her sari, and then had four different people call me to ask what the password on my computer is, so they could play the theme for "Hey, look over here, we're gonna start a wedding already." There is no password to log on to my computer. Apparently, no one had tried clicking on the one user name to get in. Immediately following the ceremony, I put on soft music for eating and chatting. That much went well. Difficulty 2: Then we tried to get folks dancing. However, once I started playing music off of the data CD that they'd given me, halfway through the first song, Winamp freezes. I use Winamp 2.9 specifically because it's a little tiny program which doesn't have much in the way of moving parts to get broken. I have never had it freeze (unlike stupid flagellating iTunes, which freezes in a slight breeze). But there it was, hooked up to the PA with people on the floor, frozen and silent. After some poking and prodding and watching the door to my CD drive fall off, I determine that the CD drive has declined to read the disc. The dancing momentum never really recovered after that, even though I got the music going again about 10 minutes later. There were more little things that made me doubt my DJ abilities after that, and I have determined that I never want to do something like that without a proper crossfader and preview abilities. But, honestly, nobody there is going to ask me to DJ their wedding any time soon.