A Bad, Then Good, Then Painful, Then Meh, and Then the Absuded

For the last two weeks the only work to describe work is well... ass-tastic. One of the big reasons I left The Network was story quality, I was tired of going to pressers and meeting and using file. For some strange reason, the last two weeks I have done nothing but meetings. I've been getting frustrated and then just add in the general stupidity of an ever increasing manager base that seem to not know what they want has brought back angry J-Dog. I do not want this to happen. I was tired of it with The Network and it will only create problems here, even though the entire night side crews feel the same as I.

So I walk into work not happy. A couple other photographers are around and we sit there complaining about the stuff that is happening around up. New job descriptions that make us indentured servants, working late for a live shot even though there are other mid day and night side photographers (including myself) sitting around not doing anything. We have new cameras sitting in a room unused. You know the general things that happen every day.

At this point The Chief walks over and is basically attacked. I lob the question "When the hell are we getting the new P2 cameras." The others jump on like The Chief is chum in a shark tank. He gets flustered, we throw up other things he can't really answer because they are beyond his control and finally he leaves to get "answers" about the new cameras. We go back to our conversations, then we walks back and I think "Why is he coming back for more? He knows we are on the attack." Well he has an answer and it involves me getting a new camera, not just any new camera, the 800 model, the caddy of the new cameras! I go over the tutorial and was informed that if they get my laptop up grated that I will get the camera on Thursday.

I'm in a better mood, when I am formed that I am going to shoot a package with an intern. A local group is building a car that can drive itself. The twist is that it may be an anchor package. I'm not pleased with that thinking. With the addition of a 7pm news the anchors get lunch from 8-9 and that means I won't see a package until 10 and that's if they just do it fast. I'm a little down, but we get to the assignment and we hit the jack pot.

We meet the engineers and students and I see a small trailer with Lotus automotive stickers on it. I ask is the car a smaller model and I get a look of shock. "Ummm, no there's a Lotus in there. A FREAKING LOTUS! They pop the top of the trailer and I see a beautiful car covered with cameras, sensors and other things. I'm not a car guy, but I know a Lotus is a high end car that I will never own or probably never have a friend that will own one. The reasoning behind them having Lotus sponsor them a car was to show they can get all their equipment into a small area and IT'S A FREAKING LOTUS. The intern and I spend the next hour and a half shooting interviews and generic shots of the car. Everyone piles into some cars and one student and my intern get to ride in the Lotus (Damn intern!) We get to the test street. I hop out of the bed of the pick-up. WHACK! Everything turns blurry and I see stars. I feel a sharp shooting pain in my shin and I realize that I just walked into the trailer hitch. Within a minute I start to bruise. That's how hard I hit it. The Adrenaline kicks in and I continue to shoot. We finish the story and leave.

I find out on the way back I have to shoot fresh gas video. I ask "So where is the closest refinery?" I hate blanket statements like this. Shoot me weather, go shoot the wind, find me people doing stuff. Some times the desk does not think what they are actually saying. One thing you can't shoot the wind. You can shoot the effects of wind and what the hell is "fresh" gas video. I know they mean new video of people filling up, why won't they just say that.

By this time the adrenaline has worn off and my leg is pulsating. It's making it hard to drive. I get back to the station and find out we are holding the car till tomorrow. I'm glad, I just want to sit and not move my leg. I realize the season finale of Lost is on and get excited that I may get to watch it live. I pop on a TV and then I hear: "J-Dog can you go to Durham?" Something is happening on the scanners, even though we do not chase spot news, we have been burned of late by some bigger stories that happened so now we are gun shy and any thing that might show interesting we send someone. I get the directions and drive the 30+ minute drive to the not so nice part of Durham (I know, does Durham actually have a nice part?). The cops in Durham won't talk, seriously they have rules that they can't talk to TV. Every market I've worked in cops were not suppose to talk, but at least they would give me a vague idea what is going on. Here... nothing, only the PIO can talk and the PIO won't answer the phone after 6pm. I finally get this bit of information out of someone. There maybe multiple things going on. Wow, that helped, it's a dark street the locals are out and most of the police have left. I call back and let them know that it really is nothing. Come to find out later it was a sting and nothing really happened. I missed Lost, so I was bummed, but I got a nice drive out of it.

I get back to the station and start talking to Shawn and Boston. To the three of us that Boston and I were they only ones night side. We start talking about it when the deskie walks up and mentions that I was the one not on the schedule. I was suppose to edit Thursday and Friday, but The Chief "remembered" that one of the part time editors was going to do it. Well no one put me back on the schedule so no one knew when I am suppose to work. For some reason Boston started laughing hysterically and I thought he was going to need oxygen. Will all the problems we have had with the increasing management structure and our difficulty of figuring out what is going on and who is at fault that just typified our problems and Boston had to laugh. He laughed to the point of coughing. So hopefully when I go into work on Thursday I'll get a new camera and finally figure out what I am suppose to do.

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.

Lack of post = lack of sleep

I've had about six different post I've wanted to do since I moved to Raleigh: the new pad and Christmas tree place called Booger Mountain. I'm serious Booger Mountain, you can't make that up. Why haven't I posted anything? Well I blame my new schedule or the lack of a schedule. Since I've started working at JDOG-17 (The new station name) I have worked 9am-6pm, 2am-11am, 11am-8pm and 3am-noon. I've been all over the map and this will not end until after the holidays. I'm the new guy and everyone is taking time off so I'm the filler guy.

I get home every day and pretty much it in my recliner and watch movies or should I say watch half and fall asleep and wake up to the credits. I'm hoping that when I get off at work tomorrow at 11am I can at least get a picture of Booger Mountain.