Core drilling gone bad

 The Core drilling has continued.  As they planned out how all the cables were going to get into the dimmer room,  they x-rayed the concrete floor and then started drilling.  Then, what was supposedly just a piece a re bar, turned out to be a conduit packed full of wires.  But after four hours of trying to figure out where this conduit that ran through the slab under the dimmers came from no one could to find the other ends.  It was determined that all of the wires were not hot so that meant it could have been one of the hundreds of panels that have been demoed since this project began.

So they continued to drill the rest of this array of holes.  I looked at it on Friday and now that there are two or three holes going through this conduit i start thinking that maybe it is coming from the studio booth.
I go to the studio booth where two men have found a potential assortment of cables that seem to match the colors that are in the conduit.  (Timing is everything really) So that makes me think which one of the conduits is heading towards the dimmer concrete slab.  Two seem to go that direction so i go back into the dimmer room and then continue to try and follow the line
I walk into the Studio theater and suddenly it all comes together when out of these two circuit boxes the evidence is all you need to see what the men on the other end where figuring out is that the lines that were cut were circuit lines running from the old Studio dimmers to this upstage right area.
Then just for fun later in the day they core drilled through the crying room wall.  Unfortunately that is in view of the audience.  This time the drawings were completely accurate and the people drilling somehow went 5 feet to the right of what they were supposed to do.  Oh well.  I guess we cap it and paint it black.

Core drilling

We had about 17 core drills today.  These are some samples or our walls.  As you cans see from the growth lines it indicates that because of the warmth this summer we are likely to move towards a rapid rise in cloud cover and we could soon be involved in another ice age.  Concrete can really tell you a lot about the history of the geological realities of this region...

the machine.  Soon we will reach the other side and turn up in Madagascar.  We are looking forward to the molten energy we will soon harness with giant turbines that will power all the new dimmers we are getting.  Did i mention that we were getting off the main Grid.  Soon we will be the first theater run on the power of the Earths molten core.
It is very new technology harnessed by ETC.  We got a bargain on this new technology since we are the first to attempt it.
We have recently found a some carbon material in these cores we are hoping that this carbon based material will not turn out to be human.  That would put a huge damper on the progress of this project.  One estimate is that we could end up like the wetlands project next to the college inn.  But we will wait until the lab results come in before we stop work.  From what i hear that could be 6 weeks from now.  If we are lucky we may be finished by that time.

Plans for the Stage Managers Panel

Our stage manager panel consists of three different Sections.  Image below is the SMP 1B.  Two arms that will extend off the wall to hold our video monitor and our 20U rack that will hold the cue light control panel, the sound mixer, monitor speakers, Clearcom base station, CD burner, DVD burner, ETC Network hub and our paging system mixer.   

The picture on top of the image below is my attempt at a 3d version of our desk sitting below the SMP 1b rack. to the right of that is the wall mounted SMP 1a and the SMP 1c.  SMP 1a & b will be made by ETC and the SMP 1c will be made by Stagecraft.  1C will control all of the motors With a new 10 inch LCD Screen.   Should be pretty nice
Here is the layout on the wall.
If it works out it will be amazing.  Unfortunately that clock above is ticking away and all the contractors are beginning to freak a little as they see the hand keeps on moving.
Honestly one thing that has been very difficult about this project is language.  It seems that since the electrical company speaks electrics and we in theater also speak electrics it is kind of like we all English speakers but one set of us is living in London and the the other set of us is living in New york.  We all think we know what the other person is saying but in the end we don't seem to understand the cultural difference.

Good thing we all speak electrics ; )

Back up to the Grid.

So my theory is that people are afraid of the Grid and they don't pay much attention to it.  It has been suprising how often things have been wrong in the drawings and in the implementation of what is going to happen up there.  

But today i can say that luckily we are keeping our eye up there and the raceway is being installed in a good place that wont hinder us anymore.  Now if we can get them to install the Terminal boxes by ETC up on this railing then we will be doing great.  Notice Ryan holding the nice black box right where we would like it.

A lovely 4 x 4 raceway will sit just offstage of this as well that will hold all the communication lines.  One day this place will be pretty close to state of art.

Here is the large open hole for bringing things up to the grid.  It is just a mere 80' to the plywood decking below.

This is an image of the new blocks we will be getting from stagecraft for installing our boom SOCA lines.  Stagecraft if you are watching this please take note.  This is what my redlines indicate on the most recent submittal.

the dimmer room

We received a large shipment of back boxes from B line.  The shipments will hopefully be coming fast and furious as we move on in to week four but we shall see.  That means nine more weeks

The dimmer room is huge when you compare it to the size of these dimmers but even with all that room width we have a ceiling that is only 9' 6."  The dimmers are 8 feet tall and the amount of wires that are coming is creating a problem with the design of the routing that was all supposed to be above it.  So this room came to a stop and hopefully it will get solved quickly so that i can upload a picture that shows the new dimmer room.
These are the Studio dimmers.  It has left a lot of room open in the control booth where they used to take up a great amount of the precious real estate.

New Choral Risers

Well this has nothing to do with lighting but it sure is nice to replace our old choral risers with these ones that roll.  The other ones were original.

These ones roll.  Like everything else in this theater.  Now we will not have to worry about the grooving swaying singers might collapse the rickety wooden risers we used to have
Oh,  who needs risers.  Our old ones should be going to surplus by the end of the summer

nOOOOOOO not there!!!!!

So i am on my way upstairs to the Grid to see how the demolition is going up there.

Oh look finally the most aggravating wire way is gone.  Now this section of the grid can be used again.  5 feet is open again so that i can place blocks in this area and actually drop points here again.
But wait,  What the heck is this.  Two large 2" conduits are running upstage from the plaster line.  Why are these here.  I thought that i was supposed to be consolted before anything is installed up here.  NOOOOOOOOOO.  Another five foot section that i wont be able to drop a point running all the way upstage from the plaster line.  Why did this happen?

So it turns out that there was these two panels up there that are supposed to hold 3 phase motor power that we could plug into easily on the grid and if we are lucky we could even have control down at the stage managers panel if all goes correctly.  But so far it is not looking good, this 2" conduit just can't be here.  So now we have to figure out who's fault it is so that then we can figure out who is responsible for paying for fixing it.  We don't have time for this silliness we just need to get it done and done right.

I think this is week three right.

SMP panel stage left is out and looks like this now.  

SMP stage right.  The clock keeps on clicking by as the things around it change.  Even the amazing mystery box that somehow controlled all of the motors including the main curtain.  At least all of the purple cables are marked

Pat is trying to break the crazy code that will decipher the complexity of this project.  Lets hope that the alogorithm that he comes up with works on the first try because there is not much time left to adjust.