The Internet Battle

Alright.. for quite some time my family lived with only a dial-up connection. It was alright because I was little and really didn't know how to use a computer or anything. I believe the only thing I used the internet for was chatting and role-playing. Of course as I got older I began to spread my horizons and fully get to appreciate what the internet had to offer. But the dial-up was so incredibly slow. Luckily my parents were kind enough to install Cable for my brother and he kindly let me use his computer whenever I wanted. I was immediately hooked on the high speed of cable. My website shot off and became bigger and I was downloading songs and music videos like never before. It was great! But when my brother moved out, so did the cable. **frowns** Soon I too moved out and entered the world of college (which is a totally different thing i need to talk about) where i was introdued ito T3 connection. This was the best thing ever! I could d/l song and stuff in less than a minute and movies only took a couple of hours! It was fab! Oh yeah I loved it! But alas, i soon moved back home due to difficulties which will be discussed later. And of course back to stupid dial-up!! It sucks so much. I can't work on my website (which is located at www.geocities.com/lash17_2000/ladylash.html - if you go, please leave me a message. ) And I can't get new songs or movies. It just totally bites. Now after months of begging and asking my dad finally got the cable guy to come and reconnect our cable internet. YAY! Fast internet again. yeah right! Of course it lasted one day! Now we are stuck with the stupid dial-up again until we get the cable guy out here again! AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Heights... definately not for me

So all this weekend I was busy working up at the college in the theatre hanging lights and such. It was quite fun in fact and realized how much I missed working with the lights. Some of it can be confusing and a bit hard but I still love doing it. Part of friday was spent up in the cat hanging some of the large zooms and 22's. The zooms were definately a pain in the butt to get working, but with a little effort and team work, my friend Jonathan and I, managed to get them all up. Now in order to get to the cat its a pretty crazy little rat maze. First you have to climb this small spiraling staircase that is quite high. Once you reach the top, if you havent decapitated yourself b/c of the low ceiling, you must crawl through this tiny door probably the perfect size for a leprechaun. But the escapade doesn't end there. Once through the door you have to crouch low and arabatically manuever yourself through pipes in order to get through another tiny door. Of course it really isn't too hard, but doing it in the dark is quite a challenge. Anyways... on Saturday we mainly were trying to figure out what kinds of gobos to put in Zoom's and 22's, re-weighting the fly rail system, hanging more lights, and cabling the new lights. Well... in order to cable some of the lights we had to unhook a box thingy off this rail Stage left.

Of course the rail had to be way high in the air. Since there were only three of us, Travis and Jonathan went to the grid and left me to climb into the Genie and make my way high into the air to unscrew the C clamps to loosen the box from the rail. Now true they had to go much higher but they weren't standing by themselves in a wobbly Genie. I was so incredibly scared!!! I tried to stand as still as possibly b/c the stupid machine kept wobbling. As soon as I got to the rail I clung to the rail and desperately tried to unscrew the C clamps as fast as possible. I don't think I have ever been that scared in all of my life. Ok you have to understand I am deathly afraid of height, if you haven't gathered so much. But the curtain that was hanging on this certain rail was in the way which made unloosening the C clamps even more difficult.I don't know how long I was up there but I remember just praying for strength and safety. As soon as I got it unclamped I imediately lowered the genie, jumped out, and clung to the ground. I was so happy, but my nerves were shot! I was shaking so bad. I will never, ever, ever do that again! That genie machine is just to shaky and unsafe. Some one needs to redesign it to make it much safer.