Rookie Mistakes...

[LabRat]

Here's a chance to share some blunders, in hopes of preventing others (or yourself) from making the same mistake. I did a real "rookie error" this evening, and thought I would share it.

Situation - had 25 strings of BLUE MINI's to make up my four six-channel arches. Leaving one string left over.
Purchased 8 strings of blues for use elsewhere in the display, including four mini-trees.

Went to wrap my first mini-tree and thought I would use up that last string first, before opening the new boxes. Sure 'nuff the new boxes are a completely different shade of blue, and this mini would have stood out more than my inflatable Homer Simpson. I had to unwrap the first tree, and re-do it with the corrected colour choice.

Rookie Lesson learned - check for colours before you begin wrapping the trees!!

Anyone else care to share?

[mnmike3]

I am a rookie and learned a lesson the HARD way sunday night.

Save your sequences often while you are sequencing. my computer crashed and i lost everything, granted i was way behind on sequencing and only had a little bit done, but now I am starting from scratch, the only thing i was able to recover and transfer to my new computer was my music. lost everything to do with blinky flashy.

Worst part is this was my main computer that crashed so i went to get my show computer up and running and that one had issues too! Luckily i have a good friend that is amazing with computers and he gave me an old one of his (way better than mine) to use every day till i get the cash for a new computer, then we wre able to piece my show computer back together using stuff from the two bad ones i had.

lesson learned - SAVE SAVE SAVE and if you are doing this for the first time and think you have a good show computer to use verify it is good before the last week in oct.

[Wayne J]

This one will help if you have lights from different stores and years...

Put the spare bulbs in baggies and label them to what items in your display is using them. Nothing worse than a cold rainy night trying to find the right bulb for the string that is out and there is a line of traffic watching you fumble around. :rolleyes:

[Goldie]

l had finished 2 Grinch's and starting 2 rennard 64's, instead of check the how to l put the LED'd in the same as the Grinch, wrong.
Allways follow the how to guide, they are there for a reason

[jpb]

mine is not really a rookie mistake but a real bad thing to do ....

I was noticing that my music on my show computer was skipping every now and then. So I did some testing and found that the same thing would happen in just media player. So I hooked it up to net to see what software patches were available for Win 2K. The update app crashed, something went wrong with the .net app and it won't reinstall.
My show computer doesn't work now and I have to wait for my brother in law to get me a copy of xp load, hopefully this weekend.

The moral of the story, I don't know, maybe computers hate me or finish testing in September and then leave things alone.

Jon

[dirknerkle]

When you install Vixen 2.1, you wind up with a folder on your C:\ drive that is (aptly) named Vixen 2.1. Of course, all your sequences, profiles and music reside in their respective folders inside that folder, too. Also into it, I added another folder named "installers" and put both the vixen and dot.net installation file in it. When done, you have a single folder that has everything you need -- all things Vixen are in one place on the hard disk.

After I finished sequencing (and actually several times before that), I made a CD backup of the whole vixen directory. Not only is the backup nice to have, should you need to reinstall or move it to a different PC, it makes re-installation a breeze because everything you need is right there -- including all your sequences, ready to run!

Lose your computer because of a Windows update? No problem. Accidentally delete a profile or sequence? No problem. Run into a corruption with a musical selection? No problem.