A new toy is on the way...

I can't believe I haven't written anything in over a month...  I guess nothing overly exciting has happened.  Since my last post I have accepted an offer from our personnel scheduler to come back to the Voyager of the Seas for the Asia season in 2012, I am supposed to join on or around Feb. 18.  This would mean I should be home for both Christmas and my birthday which would be really great.  Also, when I return I will be in the theatre which is good news because as much as I love Studio B and the Ice Odyssey show, I will probably be pretty bored of it come the end of this contract.  It will also give me more chances to program shows since I will be programming guest entertainer shows in the theatre.

Wholehog II

Road Hog

My lighting console in Studio B (a Wholehog II) has developed a number of problems over the last month or so to the point now that it is no longer usable.  Luckily we have a spare PC-based console on the ship which was on loan from head office in Miami while our Promenade console was away being repaired and we hadn't really gotten around to sending it back to them after we got the promenade console back.  So for now I am using the PC console and so far there haven't been any major issues, just small tweaks needed here and there to keep things running.

I had sent an e-mail to our fleet sound, lighting, and rigging specialist in Miami to express my concern in repeatedly repairing our old consoles and to my surprise he responded that he had a Road Hog console just sitting around the office and offered it to our ship as a replacement for the old Hog 2.  We should be receiving it sometime next month I would guess.  It will be really nice to have a new toy to play with, with many added capabilities, not to mention something more reliable than the Hog 2 (ours are all 12 years old and each has SOME kind of issue).  I sent my Hog showfiles off to the manufacturer today in order to have them converted into the newer format.  Since the conversion process doesn't convert every last bit of the file, there will be some work still for me to do in order to get Ice Odyssey looking the same as it did before.  That will not be a problem at all for me since I was present during the recent visit of our lighting designer in February and during that time I absorbed a lot of information about the show that I will be able to use to touch-up the show (in addition to videos from past shows, if needed).

So far there is still no real update on the itineraries for the 2012 Asia season, other than the crossing from New Orleans to Singapore.  That will be one heck of a cruise and something I am really looking forward to.  It will contain calls in the Bahamas, Azores, Spain, Egypt, the Suez Canal, Dubai, Goa, India, and Malaysia over a period of 6 weeks, broken up into 3 cruises.

Also, our current Head Sound and Light Technician is going to be signing off in just over 2 weeks and it sounds as though I am the most likely successor.  It will be good experience for me to have, plus I am already contributing a lot to the overall running of all things technical as it is right now so I think if I am chosen I will settle into the position just fine.