We finally got pictures back from UPS of our server.  This one is of the front cover and shows the most damage, although there are others that show some of the damage inside.  Anyway, progress is being made (very slowly) on getting a settlement from UPS to pay for the new server.  In the meantime, thanks to God and many of our listeners making some very generous year-end gifts, we were able to go ahead and order the new server from Fairlight, so that they could get started on putting it together.  That turned out to be a wise decision on the part of Mrs. Ritchie, because if we had to wait until UPS pays up, it might not be until we're going into season 27!!!  Seriously, we should have the new server in place by the middle of next week (PTL!!).

Now, wi ...

Hey everybody.  Long time, it seems, since I posted an entry here.  Well, I guess the holidays can have a tendency to create a lot of busyness.  Actually, I don't feel like we were especially busy this year, just more comitted than ever before NOT to take myself away from the family in order to do work.   

So, now we're back into the swing of things and need to ask you to pray for our equipment issues again.  Some of you may remember how towards the end of season 9 we were experiencing trouble with the digital editing and post-production system: Fairlight.  Well, thankfully, we were able to hobble to the end of the season and through the 2 holiday specials we had planned for the end of the year, and ordered new parts and software to get the system back up and running.  In ...

Oh, the Joy...

So, our audio editing system (Fairlight) has been a real stable, rock-solid platform for producing Gilead almost since the beginning of the series back in 2001.  But (as computer systems go), she's getting kinda old, and this season has been riddled with crashes and system failures such as we have never seen since we began.  Our plan was to try to limp along through Season 9 until we had a little down time to address the problems and get some much needed upgrades.  But, oh yeah, we're producing 2 holiday specials this year...

No problem, what harm could come from trying to do just 2 more shows?  Well, because of having to nurse Fairlight so much, we've been seriously delayed ...

Well, it seems at the end of every season it gets pretty tight, so I shouldn't be surprised... right?

But I think we went into this season already behind--with the comittment to not split the season into two parts like we've had to do in almost every previous season.  Then in August, I got the "go ahead"  to hire Cal to help out part time with post production--what a relief that was!

UNTIL

We started having equipment problems in totally unrelated componets that put the porduction process into a near stand-still.  Over the course of about 3 weeks, we were very "stop & go" which seriously set us back.  Three weeks may not seem like much, but when you're already right on your deadlines (or a week late), that much time really puts a squeeze on ya.

So here we are in the middle of post production on episodes 10 and 11, the first of which wi ...