Do not expose disk to direct sunlight. Do not place near magnetic field. Do not use as Frisbee or pet toy. Do not use as drink coaster. Reflective surface is not to be used as vanity mirror. Failure to comply will result in a severe spanking by the brotherhood of Delta Force.
I’m all for new media. In fact, it’s one of my favorite things to talk and think about. If I could choose something different to do at work it would be to work on and develop new ways of delivering the news to our viewers. Blogs actually are a very good way of getting information to people. It’s not just because I can express my viewpoint, but also syndicating blogs is incredibly easier and allows readers/viewers simple access to updated content. Personally, I use Google Reader for all of my blog-type readings.
Anyway, today I caught a blog from WCNC-TV from Charlotte, North Carolina. They’re covering a funeral for two firefighters from Salisbury. I’m all for covering events like this if it’s in good taste. However, there’s something about doing a minute by minute blog of the events. It just seems a little odd. Maybe not quite bad taste, but just seems like a little much to me.
I’m over this caucus crap… I’m just sayin’. So far we’ve got 7 remotes scheduled for tomorrow night with probably more to get scheduled in at the last minute. I’ll try to take pics of the madness if I manage, but don’t hold your breath.
I’m not going to say this is the sole reason for the lack of posts lately, but it is a pretty good one. I’m already into day 12 of Big Brother UK 2007. What I’ve always said about the UK and the US versions still holds true… the UK version just knows how to make its program more marketable. Not only do they produce at least 2 shows per day, but they also forbid the housemates from discussion nominations, something the US version doesn’t do. This allows the housemates to interect more candidly rather than blatantly trying to manipulate the nominations. Sure, manipulation does play a part, but it isn’t as blatant and annoying as the US version.
Supposedly the US version this year has some “changes”, but I doubt they will be on the level of getting the program back to its roots and being more like the UK version.
Hmm, that title sounds familiar… Goodnight Mr. Sinclair (January 7, 2007) Oh yeah, I remember now. I was on Mediacom’s side for the whole Sinclair ordeal and said I wasn’t going to change just because KDSM had disappeared from the lineup. Now, however, I’m jumping ship. Actually, running from a flaming car might be more like it. After a $3/mo increase in my internet last month, beginning next month the cost of TV will be going up $4/mo. That’s $7/mo more on my bill in just 3 months. I don’t even have that complicated of a plan: 2-78 analog and the lowest internet price. Suffice to say I am on my way to Dish Network and Qwest. See ya Mediacom, don’t let the price increases hit you on the way out.
Remember last fall when I was at work waiting for the clocks to fall backwards in time? I’ll be doing it again this weekend, only according to some computers it’s happening 3 weeks earlier than it should. The other difference is that I’m training people this weekend so that should be….fun… As far as I know we’ve upgraded as many of the systems and programs that need it, but I totally have this feeling that one or two things were completely forgotten and will be quite confused about what time it is come Sunday morning. If the power goes out..don’t blame me. If the TV goes out…don’t blame me either, I’ll probably just be swearing at the equipment.
I had a server upgrade this past week and it sort of broke the website. So that’s why it was unavailable. If you actually had power and were trying to see radars, I apologize.
On the electricity front, I got a hold of Mom & Dad. They lost power Saturday at 11am and are still without power. Luckily, the generator is still hooked up from when we had chickens. I believe that Calvin & Connie brought over a tractor so now home is the new emergency shelter for the neighborhood.
At work, I had a 1.30p-1.30a scheduled shift on Saturday. Since stuff started going down around 11pm, I didn’t get to leave there until about 3.30am and then still worked a bit on stuff from home after that. On the plus side, I now know which computers throughout the whole building that need to be rebooted for things to work again. Fun!
A few mostly random updates for tonight. If you've been watching or reading the news at all lately, you already know about the pissing match battle going on between Mediacom and Sinclair. Well, Saturday morning at 12:00:34am (I was recording it for a story at work), Mediacom had to pull the plug on Sinclair owned stations across the country. It's really no biggie for me, since I prefer to watch the digital signals for the stations anyway, whether it's via antenna or cable. What did effect me, though, were the disconnects Mediacom was doing. My complex is fairly old and the port that my apartment is supposed to be plugged into has some problem. A few people in the complex dumped Mediacom in favor of dish and Mediacom sent out techs Saturday to disconnect them. The problem? I was also disconnected. I was able to catch the guy, but he argued it was because I was on the wrong port. He hooked me back up to my old port, but that one can only cause me problems. He said I'd have to make a service call to get it fixed. (I'll let you figure out why he couldn't do it, I honestly have no idea.) After an hour and a half trying to get to someone I finally got someone on the phone. The service call was scheduled… in a week and a half! Ryan entered not happy mood. I called back tonight at work, and was told someone had already gone out to fix it.
This is after I've already had problems for a couple weeks with my connection. Those problems, though, are related to my router. I think the hard drive in the computer I use has finally passed gas and creating the bottleneck. I've already change the modem ethernet card, now I have to change the local network card, and then finally the hard drive before giving up and curling up into a ball. This has effected a few services I offer such as the PepperCam & the live weather warning map. Hopefully I'll be able to get those back up and running soon.
In not-home-but-work news… I found pens!! Seriously, sometimes it takes so little to make me happy, and this week it is the discovery of my long-lost secret stash of pens. Now to hide them in my locker.
That's it for now… more later on how the moaning of Mediacom subscribers is getting on my nerves. 
"If you have an intestinal tract, you're going to want to stick around and watch this program."
Um… Doesn't everybody have an intestinal tract? Maybe they were just trying to scare away The Blob. Although, I hear he farts…and to do that you need an intestinal tract.
We had a triple play of sorts last night at work. First, CBS sports went long so the 10pm news didn't start at 10. Then the news ran long, and with weather cutins for most of the night, my programming schedule kept getting bumped back. I spent a good chunk of the night rearranging commercial breaks by killing promos and PSAs. I also had to do some funky working with the late night replay of the news because I didn't want to freak people out into thinking there were still tornado warnings for places that shouldn't even have been seeing rain at 4:30 in the morning.
I actually killed enough spots at times to just have a 10 second promo in between segments of shows. And you know what? I LOVED it. Seriously… there's just something that I like about actually being able to use my brain and think while working. It was honestly probably one of my more enjoyable nights in master control.
So, from saving the world, I'm now off to sleep. There doesn't seem to be too much excitement on the horizon for tonight, so I'll probably be bored out of my mind once again.
