Tedious and Monotonous Week

Ever since my trip with Dante to the lower bowels of hell I have been plagued with tedious and boring tasks that takes up hours of my life. What have I done to deserve this? Will this be part of my future and God is prepping me for a life of data entry?

Friday was a good day till I opened up iTunes and noticed a few exclamation points next to song titles. This is iTunes way of telling you there is something wrong. For some reason, the original file was missing and I had to reconnect it. I connect a couple and remembered that a few other songs had this same problem. after a little digging around I found out that over 500 songs where not connected. The only way to reconnect them was. Click on the song, find the proper band, the proper album and then click the song. The problem occurs with bands with multiple albums and on top of that I have the same song on multiple albums. Barenaked Ladies' Brian Wilson is on 4 albums and three were missing. I lost 4 hours fixing this problem.

Next is the new editing software, I love being able to now edit from the house, but I have to learn the terminology of this system. Of course Sony, Grass Valley, Avid and Apple can't use the same terms, no they have to make it hard. Example; to control the speed of a clip in Sony's Vegas Pro 8 you have to use velocity. Come on Sony, you could not call it speed? There are other such randomness that I am dealing with so I get a little bit of a project done and then I sit for an hour sifting through the manual trying to find a tool then trying to figure out what Sony would call it. I can't wait for the day that I can sit down and "Bang out" a project at normal speed. I'm guessing that will be in a month.

To help make some money down the road and to learn the editing software I am making a video for The Wife. I'm cheap and Valentine's Day is around the corner. The problem is I'm using a lot of pictures and most of the ones I need are from the wedding. If you don't remember we lost almost everything with the great computer fry of aught 7 and I never got around to rescanning all of the wedding pictures. Now I am 40 pictures out 200 that I am scanning. Oh it doesn't stop with the wedding, I have honeymoon pictures and other random fun picts that need to find there way onto the hard drive (Then to be backed up on the external drive and finally onto a flash drive).

I'm hoping this week will have something different, maybe some ninjas or a pirate ghost ship. Who knows something wacky. Who am I kidding, it's going to be script writing for the church with a side of editing frustration. I can't wait till I have to figure out how to crop something... and no the answer is not a ninja sword.

Fried Chicken Drive Tragedy Is Finally Over

While watching the BG Minnesota game my cell phone started singing. I looked down and it was a picture of The Wife. I'm guessing she is wondering how the game is going, but I was wrong she had received another phone call from Best Buy (Yet again they don't call me). Our new external hard drive is done and we can pick it up. If it wasn't Best Buy the story should have ended right there. Reggie the manager then proceeds to tell The Wife that they waived the pairs fees, but he would have to charge us for parts and labor. If it wasn't for the fact she told me I could not talk until she had finished the story I would have hung up and called my "Good Friend" Reggie and made him cry or give us a flat screen TV.

They wanted us to pay $90 for labor, of course The Wife argues that he had never mentioned us paying for this. Hell, I could have bought an external case and done it myself, I'm not paying that much for something I could have done. Well, Reggie remembered that during previous conversations that I was looking to buy an external hard drive and thought we would graciously pay $90 for the drive. The only problem is The Wife didn't want to pay for something that was suppose to be free, you know because Best Buy royally screwed up.

After a 10 minute conversation Reggie admitted that he talks to so many people that he could remember everything that was said, yet he remembered a small detail like I was wanting a new hard drive... every convenient. So he gave up and we got the drive for the original price of us not calling his manager. Most of the information is there, we are missing a few small documents, but nothing that's life threatening. I hope I never have to take the computer back to the Geek Square.

More Computer News

The new computer is working pretty well, even though it is made my the same people as the last computer it's set up completely different. We are still waiting for the old computer to be shipped back to the store and I was a day away from going crazy on the geek squad again, but The Wife stopped me. She got a call from the manager (even though my number is the new primary... I think he's afraid of me), he informed her that the computer "should" be back sometime this week and we had two options: number one is to give us a flash drive of the info we need, or number two make the old hard drive into an external and give us that. Hmmm let me think, flash drive or finally have an external hard drive, oh yeah and the drive would be a 250GBs. I'll take the external drive please! I'm still not happy with the squad, but they are making up for all the mistakes.

I wonder though, if they keep screwing up can I get a flat screen TV out of this... probably not, but it would be nice.

Me against the Geeks

Have you ever had one of those moments you knew something was wrong and if you did nothing things would get worse? This afternoon was one of them, I've mentioned in the past that the DVD drive in our computer went down and we had to take it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy. I was sitting around and I kept thinking, it's been a week, I need to call and see if the computer is ready.

I call and they can't find the work order... bad sign number 1. I call The Wife to call, because she as all the info with her. She calls me back with the reply "Your not going to be happy and you're probably call and yell at them." About two hours earlier they sent the computer to Hewlett Packard and it's going to be another two weeks (I'm confused with a little bit of anger with that). The reason they sent it out today was they tried call all week, but never got a reply. They decided to call the old house number that was on the original receipt. Could be considered an honest mistake until you realize that they require alternative numbers when we turned in the computer to get it fixed. They had BOTH cell phone numbers. The kid tried to put the blame on The Wife; all she had to do was change the number with customer services and none of this would have happened. No you young punk, you had two other numbers and no one called them. That sent me over the edge and I immediately called them to get answers.

After multiple calls and being told to calm down (I may have yelled, but I did have a little decorum, I did not call the guy names and did not you an profanity. My goal was to show anger with my voice, try not to demand anything but make sure they understand I am going to swallow someone's soul if this does not get fixed) they finally give an OK solution. They are going to upgrade the computer so that I get an extra gigabyte of RAM and I get a dual possessor, that soothed me a bit. They got a hold of UPS and the computer is still in town and they are going to get it back and I may get some of the info on the old computer back. We can get all files back, but we have to reinstall all programs. This causes a few problems, I have a Strat-O-Matic baseball game and I have to call the company and get all the codes reactivated... that can take a week.

I was content with everything and I am ready to leave, they hand me the paperwork, but no computer. They have to install all the anti-virus and spyware so I now get put to the back of that line. We may see the computer tomorrow. Once the warranty expires I am not going back to the Geek Squad, I'd rather go to the little mom and pop place in Wake Forest that has helped us in the past.

Randomly Hot

It's been a while since I last posted. I have had a few ideas, but time and will have been against me. So to get the juices flowing I'll just do another lovely random thoughts:

Drop It Like It's Hot

I've complained once about the heat and that was premature, because we have hit triple digits. We are on our second straight 100+ day and we have one more to go, after that it's not much of a drop off, well will still be in the high 90s till next week. The thing that makes it worse is the humidity, it's making it feel like it's over 114. Right now at 9:19pm it's 88 degrees and it feels like 93. The only bright side of hurting my thumb is that I don't have to be outside much. I did have to go out and help run a live shot from the parking lot and it was unbearable. I was sweating the second I stepped outside. I'm trying to get back on an exercise routine and I thought, it ought to be cooler. As I mentioned a few lines up it is still warm. I got over two miles in, but I was drenched by the time I hit the first mile. My 16.9 ounces of water was not enough, I conserve so I have have some for the return trip. I get near the end and I think "Hey I'm going to try and job the last 1/3 of a mile." I get only two blocks and I had to stop. I know I'm out of shape, but the heat makes it worse. I at least get to the end of the street and then I have to walk the rest... up hill. I started to get dizzy as I reach the house. I knew it was going to get hot, but this is ridiculous.

Caged Photographer

Even though the thumb injury has me indoors, which is a plus. The negative is... that I am trapped indoors. I can't stand another three weeks of this, I have to move around and sitting in a poorly lit small room with nothing more than a computer is death for me. As the week moves on the more I get restless, Monday I can handle the day; by Wednesday at lunch I want to take a hammer to the monitor and by Friday, An hour into the shift I'm wanting to pound my thumb so that I can feel pain instead of the numbing tediousness and repetitiveness of news editing.

Also every week I have worked a different shift. Two weeks ago it was 9-6 then 11-8 the following week, 3-11:30 after that and this week is 9-6 again. In two weeks I get the joy of editing overnights midnight-8. I know that do not know what to do with me, but come on, make it a little more consistent than this. It's making my struggle even worse, I can't wait for my thumb to heal and I can get back on the road... even though it is a billion degrees outside.

Hitting a Bird

I know I just ranted about being stuck inside, this week has been a little different. I have started training on our satellite truck. For those not in TV there are two ways we can go live from a location: 1. is via a microwave truck, that's the one with the giant pole, it is only for local shoots within a general range of 20 miles or so. They are fairly easy to use and the station controls everything 2. is via satellite truck, a large dish on top of a large truck. You can go just anywhere with one of these, but it is very hard and expensive to use. Also you have to pay for time on bird (an insider name for a satellite) which can get expensive. There is a lot of training and things to remember with a satellite truck, luckily for me The Network did a lot of sat shots and I watched some of the best truck operators do their magic. I've got the basics down, well from the parking lot, but once I exit our gates I have to know how to take this dish and point it to a specific spot in the sky and the bird. It's like taking a marble and rolling it across a ballroom into a Dixie cup. I think I can do it away from the station, but we will see tomorrow. The biggest problem will be the math of figuring out the angles and other monitors in the truck.

I've been asked by some at the station why I am doing this training, it's going to cause me to work a lot more (I will be one of three people who can run the truck). Also I am not getting any extra pay and from what I've heard the company does not consider sat truck operators as anything more than glorified photographers. I'm doing this for job security, the area has a lot of locations where you can not use a microwave truck, so we are always going to need sat truck ops. Another reason is if they ever try and get rid of me or all the photographers, I will have something else to fall back on. There are numerous companies that do nothing but drive a satellite truck to a location and charge people lots of money to use their truck, I remember one year The Network used one of these trucks every weekend during football season. During Virginia Tech a third of the trucks were rentals.

PC Load Letter?

I've mentioned we bought a new computer and for the most part it has been great... except for one thing. The only DVD drive has never worked right. We called Hewlett Packard support and it started working... for three days. We picked up an external DVD burner drive as a back up and well, to have a second drive. We bought it at Best Buy and have a year warranty, but their stupid Geek Squad is constantly busy and everything takes over a week. The Wife finally beat me down and we took it Monday to be serviced. Of course they don't believe me that the drive isn't working. They try to play a couple CDs and DVDs and it doesn't work, what a shock. Luckily they are going to replace it for free and we are without a computer. Luckily I'm WORKing around this COMPUTER issue, I just hate not having all my music, pictures and games.

Lots to Talk About

For most people Monday is the start of their week, for me, Monday is my Wednesday, which usually means it's not very exciting or filled with interesting tidbits that I would wish to share, but today for some strange reason everything seemed like I should write about it, so for the second straight post here is a little thing I like to call Random Items.




My Nose is Running A Marathon
Some of you may realize that my car is not yellow but silver. For the past few weeks, I thought I some how slept walked and painted my car yellow. The picture is not the best in the world, but my car is covered in pine pollen. This stuff is everywhere, our cars, windows, sidewalks, puddles of water, you name it, it has this yellow crap all over it. This pollen is too big for me to inhale it and make my allergies go haywire like it did not so long ago, but every other type of tree and plant is throwing off pollen and I feel like I'm going to die. I can't breath, I cough till my eyes and lungs hurt. My throat is sore to the point where I can not talk at times. It is insane, Ive been told that this is the worst season in recorded history for pollen in North Carolina, so of course it's my first year here. I've been on a cocktail of allergy medicine ranging from Claritin, Benadryl, Sudafed with pseudoephedrine, Sudafed with that other crap that's not as good as pseudoephedrine and Mucinex. One drug does not seem to be enough. Claritin gets me to the point where I can sort of breath, Mucinex will clean me up, but you can only take it once every 12 hours. I think I'm becoming immune to Sudafen. Benadryl works, but it has the tendency to make people drowsy, in my case "may cause drowsiness" means will knock you on your ass till it's out of your system. Hopefully with the nation wide cool down the trees will stop trying to create little sapling and go back to normal.



More Computer Fun

The new computer is up and running so The Wife and I thought it would be a good idea and see if some one can transfer all the files off the old computer onto the new one. We decided to try the Geek Squad at Best Buy, because we bought the computerfrom Best Buy. I walk in with old tower in hand. I go to the counter and the geek gives me the run down and I already know they are going to charge $156 dollars plus tax for the transfer, I except the large payment and then I'm told "It's going to be 3 to 5 days before we can get to your computer." WHAT, three to five days? I can get a new transmission put in my car within two days, why so long? Well I guess they are "really busy" and have a lot of people ahead of me. That's not a good enough answer, I mean what kind of staff do they have? One monkey with a mallet and a screw driver?

Thing about it this way, if one guy works on a computer and gets it done in an hour he theoretically can complete 6 in a given work day. Think about it some computers will take less than an hour while some will take more, that's a good average for a day, I would think it would be more, but I have been wrong before. They are open from 10am till 9pm so that's 11 hours and if you have 6 people on average per day that's about 36 computers per day, that means you would have 108-180 computers ahead of me and I don't think they would have that many computers at one time in their stock room. So I tell the guy to shove off.

I remember for some strange reason a computer shop in downtown Wake Forest I go there they tell me it can be done within two hours and will only cost me $50 and hour. Hell yeah! Even if they have a problem and go three hours that's still less than those other bastards! I drop off the computers, tell them which files to transfer and I'm on my way. Much later in the day I get a call (they forgot to inform me that there were other people ahead of me and that the two hours was the working time not actual finishing time) and come to find out that the problem with the computer was not the motherboard or the CPU but the hard drive itself. Since is was older and we were stupid and left it on for days on end the barrings gave out and everything is lost.

So what's the damage: over 3000 photos, over 4000 songs, all of The Wife's financial information for this year and a honeymoon video I made for The Wife. Part of the photos are lost forever, including all the pictures we took on our digital camera dating back to the honeymoon I think that's the worst blow to me. We also lost about 1/3 of our music collection. When we moved we thought we would be smart in selling a large portion of our CD collection, but burn the songs we like. I know that's sort of illegal, but we were saving space and in doing so we now have to go out and buy a lot of those songs now. The lesson we learned is we need to back everything up to a CD, flash drive or possibly to a new external hard drive for safe keeping.

New Shift

I started part of my new schedule today, 3-midnight. I will be honest it was a lot more work than being day side. We did a live shot and package for the 7pm show and then did a live and package for the 11pm. You have to realize, that normally the day side crews get from 9-6ish to get a story done for the 6 or 7pm shows. We did not start our story till almost 3:30. Lets just say we were in a little bit of a rush to get things done. My reporter actually lost track of time and did not realize that it was 6:30 and he was still writing. I get in there and crank out a short package within 15 minutes, feed back to the station and finish the set up for the live shot. It was very hectic for that last half an hour. Things calmed down for the late show, but still it was work.

While reading the above paragraph you might think I am complaining. For some strange reason to be honest that is not a complain, it was busy, but I enjoyed it. For so long at The Network, we really did not have deadlines or if we did they were always soft and could be pushed back. I think it made me a little lazy and complacent, I missed the rush of scrambling to get things done. Do I want this every day? Hell no, but it's nice to get that feeling back and know I can get things done when things are tight.

Random Items

It's been over a week since my last post so some may be asking, what happened? Well a lot of thing truthfully, but a lot of it was not worthy of a full post or I just did not have the gumption to write a post on a topic. So now I'll just do a group post I like to call Random items.

Office Space
Part of the problem of me not being able to post is the fact that we changed our office room around. It started with my reimbursement check I received from JDOG-17. If you remember back during the trip I talked about shifting some money around. Part of it was a check from the movers for damages to out TV stand and headboard. We go out and buy a computer desk. We spent the better part of three hours that night attempting to put it together. I hate putting together furniture, I always get confused with the manuals and the pictures that are never as helpful as they could be. So from Wednesday till Friday the office was a mess, the desk is in a new corner and everything had to be moved around to make things fit. I also installed new shelves, we got an idea from a magazine to use old hard back books as the selves to give it a more artsy look. They look pretty good, I've mostly use the selves for my Pez collection and other small collectibles.

Oh so Close
I was told a couple of weeks ago that I would be changing schedules which means I'll be moving off of the 2AM Saturday/Sunday deal. To make it even better I'm moving Monday thru Friday, the only not so good news is I'll be night side (3-midnight). I'm still happy, because I get weekends off, the only catch for this schedule is the fact I have to train a girl who has never edited news how to edit news. Truthfully, editing news is not that hard, but the tricky part is being fast and efficient. In an eight hour shift she will have to cut and or attach video for 5 half hours of news. You have to know what you are doing to get it done. She's doing ok, but has not gotten the speed down yet. So I need to spend another week watching and helping her find little tricks to get things done. I really want off this early mornings thing, I need her to pan out

Why Won't Saturday End?
Saturdays are currently my worst day. I don't sleep Friday nights so I generally go almost 24 hours with out sleep. I end my training shift a little disappointed with the fact I will spend one more week editing. I call my chief and give him an update. Find out that I needed to take a live truck to the shop. Well, the engineer who was suppose to help me was off. So I get to turn around and the chief will meet me there to take the truck in. There is an electrical problem and the windows will not roll up... and it rained all night Friday. The seat is soaked so my ass is now wet. On the way home The Wife tells me that the computer is not working (more on that below) right. Come to find out that it is dead. We then spend the next 5 hours looking for a new computer. I finally get to bed at 6pm. That's 33 hours without sleep. I hit the pillow and the next thing I know it's 1am and I need to get to work. I'm the kind of person that needs sleep. i know some people can go long lengths of time without sleep, but if I do it I can not function well. I'm still feeling the effects of not sleeping.

When Ctrl, Alt, Delete Won't Work
I mentioned above that out computer decided to die. It was expected. The computer is at least 6-8 years old. I got it from my friend Shorty after my first computer blew out a mother board. It was starting to act slow and I knew something was up. I call The Wife on the way home from work and she mentions that the computer needs a boot disk. Well since I did not buy the computer and I did an upgrade from Windows Millinuim to XP I did not have the proper boot disk. We try a couple of other disk, like a systems recovery disk and even the XP installation disk. We finally give up and decided to go out and by a new one. I would have normally waited, but since The Wife freelances, we need to keep track of the miles she drives and how much she gets paid, and with the computer we can keep a better track of everything.
What I learned from out trip is you just can't go out and just buy a computer anymore. We had to go through financing, programs, and then they will properly install everything (for a small fee of course). The process took about 5 hours and two Best Buys. I'm happy with our Hewett Packard computer and hopefully this one will not die a horrible death like the others. I have also learned that I need to buy portable hard drive or at least put everything on a CD as a back up.

Hopefully I will get back into form and start posting with more regularity.

Stupid Computer

For the last week The Wife and I noticed that the computer was working at half the speed of standing still. It locks up, if you have more than two windows open you might as well take a nap because its going to take for ever to load. I found out that The Wife downloaded a bunch of games from Yahoo! and then on top of that I renewed our Firewall/Spyware/Anti virus program and had to "download the new version." So between those two things and then finding out that the firewall was down for oh 4 days has got me worried. Tonight it's working a little better, but still not as fast as I'd like. I'm afraid I'm going to have to take the computer to someone and have them fix it. I'd rather not spend the $100 plus for someone to push three buttons and look at me like I'm an idiot. Oh Kip why do you love technology.

Sorry Dave for the fact I kind of stole part of your post on technology.