Archive for August, 2006

Well, Ernesto pretty much passed out and decided to weaken to tropical depression strength as it went over Florida.  This meant not much in the way of winds for the Orlando area.  Actually, I've seen stronger winds tonight on the back side of the system.  According to weather sensors on local hospitals, the highest wind since midnight has been 30mph.  The photos I uploaded tonight are of when we lost all the cable/sat channels as a heavy squall was moving through the area.  I was talking to Mom at the time, so had to juggle the phone and the camera.  After I hung up with her, the power actually went out for a few seconds, but then came back on.

Since the station pretty much cancelled their 24/7 coverage, they changed my assignment to help them bring a new station online.  WESH will actually be broadcasting 2 channels (3 if you count Weather Plus+) from their studios.  The trick?  It goes live way early Friday morning…and there is NOTHING on the server yet.  It took us at KCCI a little over 3 weeks to move commercial spots over to the server.  We did it in one day today.  I think in total we dubbed in about 250-300 commercial spots and I prepped about 40 shows.  Granted, not all of the shows were for the new station, but they were for the Hearst Hub.  I still have no idea how the crap it works, but basically WESH receives shows that other Hearst stations also air.  Someone at WESH prepares the show for air and then sends that information along with the show file to the stations that air the show.  Except to double check the information, the other station really doesn't have to do much of anything at all.

This also means…I potentially knocked stations off the air across the country today.  Innocent  Alright, I guess this didn't turn out to be so short, but still, after working a 14 hour day today, this is most definitely a short post.  Time to crash in bed, The rest of the week should, hopefully, be 10-hour days starting at 3pm.  I fly back home on Sunday starting at 3pm and should get back to Des Moines around 10pm if all goes well.  I'll post links again to the live flight tracking sites for the flights that I'll be taking closer to Sunday.

That's all for now…Good night! 

I just woke up because I can't sleep…and I'm freaking thirsty.  Obviously I would buy groceries to eat last night, but forget to buy something to drink.  The water here is nasty.  Smile

Anyway, TS Ernesto is still holding together, but will keep the bulk of the winds along the coast, away from the Orlando metro area.  Right now they are thinking we will see steady winds of around 30-35 mph.  Once the rain bands start turning in, then the main threat will be from tornadoes.  The threat of flooding is still there, but again the Orlando metro is only expecting about 3-5 inches of rain.

If you're interested in talking to me, keep an eye on the box in the top right of the screen.  If it says I'm online, it means that I've got my laptop powered up and am logged into the server. 

Coming in tonight's update will be photos from my room I'm staying in and the car.  The car's pretty nice, maybe I'll accidently forget to return it and drive it back to Iowa.  Tongue out  That's all for now… and remember, I'm keeping Orlando safe under my Parasol of Protection.

Photos from Day 1 are now up on Flickr.  I won't really have time to add titles and descriptions until after I come back home.  The storm has weekend quite a bit now, and I really don't think we'll see much of anything.  I'll try to take photos each day and then upload them when I get back home that night.  If you're looking at the day 1 photos and can't figure out why there are pictures of my leg, it's because the paramedics met us at the Orlando airport for a girl that got sick and needed an IV to be put in during the flight.  This caused us to alter our flight a bit and got in to town about 40 minutes early.

12.30pm

I'm writing this in the Houston Airport as I wait for the next flight.  I got in from Des Moines at about 11.50am.  The next flight leaves @ 1.40…so I've got a bit of time to burn.  The first trip on an airplane was great.  No real big bumps, and once I was actually on the plane everything was all good.  The TSA agent pulled my shoes aside to do whatever to them.  Good thing I took a shower and washed my feed.

Now in Houston I'm doing more people watching than anything else.  Right now I'm eavesdropping on a man talking to customer service in Spanish.  Besides the fact that I think his boarding pass is somewhere horked up, he's also quite upset.  But that's all I'm able to figure out.  Rats..should have taken 4 full years of Spanish. :)

The schedule for the rest of the day should be arriving into Orlando around 5.17p et.  From there I have to find the car rental place and get a car for the trip into downtown and find WESH-TV.  They tell it's hard to miss and you almost can't not find it.  This means I'll be hopelessly lost and driving around in circles for hours.  In other news, since I haven't looked in my luggage yet for stuff, I only have one casualty of being left behind.  I forgot the cable that plugs into my camera to download pictures.  Since I'd hoped on uploading pictures as I go, I'm hoping that there will be an electronics store somewhere near the station or the hotel that I can go and grab an extra cable.  I sort of need one anyway, I've always wanted a cable that's always attached to my desktop and one that just travels around with me and camera.

Hmm, this didn't waste near enough time, so now I've still got an hour of sitting in the termin

Just a few links for myself and anyone who is interested.

Flight to Houston Live Tracking (Continental 2977)
Flight from Houston to Orlando Live Tracking (Continental 786)

Orlando Text Forecast
NHC Public Advisory
NHC Forecast Maps
WESH Live Radar
Orlando Radar
Florida Radar
Downtown Orlando LiveCam
WESH Weather Page w/LiveCams
WESH Streaming Radar (Windows Media Player)
WESH WeatherPlus+ Streaming Channel (Windows Media Player)
Westendorf.US Live Warning Map
Westendorf.US Radar Images (Radar) (Winds)

If you're lazy and want to load all of the images linked above at once, you can also go to my Tracking Ernesto page.  It doesn't include the streaming movies and it also has rather large images, so chances are good that the formatting for it is broken. 

hurricaneth.gifI got a call this afternoon from work that the sister TV station in Orlando was looking for some help in their master control area during their coverage of the impending landfall of Tropical Storm Ernesto.  I said sure, and figuring I'd be leaving after the storm went through I got a call back tonight that I'm leaving tomorrow morning at 9am for WESH-TV.

Unless things change after tomorrow, I should be on my way back Sunday night or so.  I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.  The only thing that sucks is I will end up missing Pam & Sam's birthday parties on Saturday. Cry   I really feel bad because I've been promising them I would make it.  I'll make it up to you guys though, I promise.

As for communicating with me in the meantime, I probably just plain out won't take my cell phone.  I'd be roaming the whole time down there anyway, so I don't exactly need to see that bill when I get back. I do plan on taking my laptop though, unfortunately it just developed a problem a week ago where the fans aren't exactly happy in cooling things, so I'll probably just turn it on quick enough to check mail and then log off.  If I get the chance, though, I'll probably post some updates either from WESH or from the hotel on what's going on.

I'm excited. Cool  And nervous…Ryan's never flown before. Surprised  Maybe this will give me a chance to see if the airline has those ads on the barf bags yet.  Yes, I know I just linked "barf bags", it's a safe link…trust me.

onnoticephp.jpgI really shouldn't write this as I never cease to be surprised by the 6th & University McDonald's.  Tonight for my lunch I went on over to over my food.  Twenty minutes later and I had my food (correct, I checked) and my third drink.  Third?  Yes, first I was handed a Sprite, then a water, and finally a Coke…or at least a dark substance.  As near as I can guess, it is Dr. Pepper.  I probably would have taken the Sprite and the water over the Dr. Pepper.  This isn't the first time.  there have been plenty of other screw ups.  So, therefore, I am placed McDonalds on notice.

Steve Guttenberg in Short CircuitHe has a birthday, I have a birthday.  Let's all have a birthday.  Cause really, "Wouldn't you like to be a Dr. Pepper, too?"

Depressing isn't it?  Yeah, I really don't have anything to write about, so… this is all you get.  Sorry to disappoint.

See the post right below this one?  The line about not having to be at master control for the rest of the fair?  Yeah… someone  *cough*  (Brayton)  *cough*  called in sick, so I did master again for the 5pm today at the fair.  Today's show, however went a billion times better than yesterday.  It just took getting everyone on the right page for what each position needed from everyone else.  Now, next week I think it's a different director, so it will probably suck again.  At least I won't be in MC, though!  (Unless something changes…again….)  Wink