For the past several weeks, I occasionally get a hit from Korea. I have to know now. Who are you? Do I really know someone. Is it the governments checking to see if I should be censored? Or maybe script kiddies. The plot thickens….
Archive for September, 2006
Comments: 0September 12th, 2006 by Ryan Westendorf
Comments: 0September 11th, 2006 by Ryan Westendorf
Comments: 0September 7th, 2006 by Ryan Westendorf
Many of my consulting jobs that I do for places with websites involve the question of which comes first, the content or the design. About 90% of the time, the client says the content is their main objective. I wish that number was more towards 100%. Obviously, design is very important in determining whether a user finds the information at a website useful, but if the design to the site is the number one criteria and forces the content to hardly ever change, what is the end user's incentive to keep coming back?
I have exactly that same problem right now with a client. I recently changed web hosts to give myself better control over the hosting server and so that I could also change the back-end of the site. The clients had previously been using FrontPage. I have nothing horribly again FrontPage, but as a platform for a website that should have constantly updated information, it isn't the greatest. I actually set the clients up with a WordPress site much like my own personal site. It still had static pages that wouldn't change all that often, but it also offered them the ability to give frequent updates to the goings on of their organization.
I know learning something new is overwhelming for some people, but they pretty much gave up on it at first glace. The problem? It didn't look at all like the last site. Well, of course it doesn't. It's supposed to be a more dynamic site that will change and bring back people to the site for information. They became so entrenched with the idea that it had to look exactly like the old site (which we could have gotten to that point with time, had they let me) that I've given up and sent their site over to a server at the web host that supports only FrontPage. This means many of the new things that they thought were "cool" will no longer work. Yes, the customer is always "right", but sometimes they just "don't get it" and are wrong.
Comments: 0September 5th, 2006 by Ryan Westendorf
I got most of the pictures labeled on Flickr now. Feel free to browse around and finally figure out just what the heck those pictures were all about. Like I said, the ones that need to be combined will happen later, as will the geotags for where stuff was taken at.
Comments: 0September 5th, 2006 by Ryan Westendorf
I just uploaded the last set of pictures from the trip. Nothing too exciting in them. Just a couple of bad ones of downtown Orlando, and then dark pictures out the plane on the way from Houston to Des Moines. I'll weed out the horrible ones where you can't see anything later.
Also, later I'll finally fill in captions for what exactly some of that stuff is. A few sets of pictures were meant to be made into panoramas, so I'll finish those too. Then eventually, I'll try to track down the location info for the plane flights and try to map out where I was when I took pictures on the plane. That's it for now…time to head to work and turn in my receipts for the trip so I can get paid.
Comments: 0September 4th, 2006 by Ryan Westendorf
I'm back from safari tonight. Pepper is glad to see me, and I'm glad to see her. I only got a couple pictures today mainly of the room I was staying in and driving to the airport in Orlando. I didn't get a window seat leaving Orlando and by the time we got off the ground from Houston it was too dark to do me any good. Either way, I'll try to post them up tomorrow…because I'm beat. Thanks for following along and emailing, posting, calling or whatever!
Comments: 0September 3rd, 2006 by Ryan Westendorf
Hmm, good thing they used "jet plane" in the song. Boeing 737 doesn't quite roll off the tongue very well. Tonight was the most relaxed night of all. I got in and got to work finding more missing spots and shows for the new station. After I got that done with, I prepped the Chris Mathews show and then several Fresh Prince of Bel-Aires. On my way home for the night I decided to see what was around. That's a bit hard at 1am in the morning. Add to the problem that in the night your sense of direction is jacked up. I found my way, though, but sure didn't see much. There was a long line at Roxy's, and not so long of a line at the Orlando Art Museum. Funny how that works.
Anyway, I'll be flying back tomorrow afternoon. My flight to Houston leaves @ 3.15pm, and then from Houston to Des Moines at 7.35pm. Want to stalk the planes? Here ya go:
Orlando to Houston (Live Track)
Houston to Des Moines (Live Track)
I'll see you kids back in Iowa. 
Comments: 1September 2nd, 2006 by Ryan Westendorf
Today went much better than the rest of the week. Actually, every day has actually gone really well and been interesting, it's just frustrating to not really feel like you're getting anything accomplished. The past couple days have just had so much work crammed into them that even though we dubbed in hundreds of spots and oodles of programs, there were still just as many things missing.
Today (Friday), the station went off the air at midnight from the old studio and came back up around 5am from the new studio. This meant that for better or worse we had to figure out what some of the problems were and also to fill in holes in the programming schedule. When I got in around 2, I took over as the MC op for the new CW station, WKCF. Operation here is definitely still different than at home. For KCF we were mainly just watching to make sure things were running smoothly and to find and ingest missing content. They use the as-run logs as their actual logs..at least for that station.
I still got to see plenty of Jerry Springer episodes while prepping them and had plenty of "oh crap" moments when they were reconfiguring the plasma wall. It would go away for about a minute as it rebooted itself. Since the day was much calmer, I also allowed myself to observe a bit more of how they work stuff here as compared to home. I got some ideas that might be interesting to try…but then again change is bad.
I'm off to bed now as Saturday will be the last day at the station. Sunday's plans are a bit in flex… I have to be out of the room at 11, but then my flight doesn't leave until 3.15pm. Since I don't really have any idea how long it takes to get anywhere, I will probably just head to the airport and watch people again. If all goes well I should make it into Des Moines on Sunday night at about 9.55pm. Tomorrow night I'll post live flight tracking links again for my flights from Orlando and Houston.
Oh, and be sure to check out the full set of pictures on Flickr. I took quite a few tonight, mainly of the inside of the station. Tomorrow I'll try to make it early so I can get a picture of my car and the station during the daylight. Oh, the foggy ones are because my camera fogged over when I got out of the car…and I didn't think I even had the air on that much!
Comments: 1September 1st, 2006 by Ryan Westendorf
Yo estoy aqui. I've determined that while this station has a huge staff, they have to have one of the most confusing workflow models in the world. Each person has an assigned position, but it still seems like everyone is doing everything. I'm sure it's just because they only have, well, 3 more hours until this new station goes live, but wow. I've now done a 14 and a 12 hour day there spending my whole time segmenting out shows that they need. My eyes hurt, and I've seen more episodes of Frasier in one day than any human should have to bear.