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.

Job Search

In the short term the ad agency I signed with is not working out... the long run it still could be good, but I need some cash flow. I went onto craigslist and started looking around for some work. From time to time they have some decent projects, other times crap or nothing. I've seen listings wanting people to shoot and edit a video for $100, oh yeah and use your own equipment, fat chance. While looking around I found a posting in Chapel Hill for production company needing a part time editor. I can edit, I know Final Cut to a point then I see something that makes me wonder.

Must be comfortable with Adult content.

Obviously you know where my mind went... knock knock, who's there? PORN! I know Wilson is probably going to call me and tell me to take it, but I don't know if I could work in the porn industry. In fact I know I couldn't (stupid moral upbringing and beliefs). Then again maybe adult content just means blood and gore with an occasional boob shot. I think I could do that, I've seen enough of that in movies. I did shoot them an email with a resume and asked them about the adult content. Still I'm not optimistic.... who am I kidding, it has to be porn.

A Random December

I've been scatter brained, tired and well not in the mood to do anything other than play Madden on my Playstation 1 and read. I am so ready for a vacation and there is one on the way... WEEEEE! The only problem is that it is our Ohio Christmas Tour and there is not enough time to see everyone I want. Hopefully I will get recharged and feel like my old self, to get me feeling better here are some random tidbit's I've had.

Writer's Strike

If you did not realize there is a writer's strike in Hollywood and every TV show is suffering. The biggest thing is the writers want some royalties from DVD sales. To be honest they are not asking for that much, but the producers are being greedy and not giving an inch. This is going to start to suck for TV. If you like original creative programming it's about to stop, so no new Office and possible only 8 episodes of Lost. For me, I do not like this idea. If you are a fan of Deal or No Deal or any other type of "reality show," then you will be in heaven. I'm about ready to grab a large blunt object and go to town on some Hollywood heads. Get a deal done or I will gather a posse and start clubbing producers and writers like baby seals... WHO'S WITH ME!

Good Day?

I know there are ice storms in Oklahoma and mud slides in Oregon, but in North Carolina it's FREAKING AWESOME! We were in the 80s at one point. It was so warm for enough days that I actually got to go out and play a round of golf. Justice and I got a tee time at a pretty nice course. Normally, I would never be able to pay the course fees, but we had a coupon. We head to the first tee, Justice slices one into the woods... typical start. I on the other hand tee up and hit one down the left side of the fairway, my is that a good shot... wait, it's hooking. We hear a "DONK!" Justice looks at me, "Did you hit a house?" Yes I hit a house on a hole where it's very hard to hit a house. I am off to an awesome start. We bet the over/under on houses hit... today's number was three. I'm doing OK and then we get to a par 3, I pull out my 3 iron and whack a way. It's straight and by Jove, I think it's on the green. We walk up and we see what the picture to the left shows, I am 5 feet from the hole. I almost had a hole in one. I of course choke the next shot and get a par, but still, if that was a few feet shorter I'm buying drinks. I probably will ever get that close again.

When Do I Work?

At work we lost I think 9 editors, well maybe it's only two, but it feels like 9. This means if anyone knows how to edit, they are editing a lot more than normal. I've already pulled one weekend overnight and I edited once this week and it's currently 10:30pm and I get to go to work in 4 hours. I'm not happy, I'm not a fan of editing, I hate being in a tiny room attaching the same video to 6 half hour shows. That's why I like being a photographer, yes, I shot and edit every day, but it's always different, one day might be a meeting, then the next a meeting... crap I do have a repetitive job.

STOP WITH THE MUSIC!

OK, I like Christmas music as much as the next guy... if that guy does not like Christmas music. Raleigh radio has decided that they need more than one channel of Christmas music it, they need three. Then every other station rotates a Christmas song at least one every four songs. I normally avoid the radio and listen to either sports or my lovely MP3 player, but The Wife on the other hand LOVES Christmas music, I can't get away from it.

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.