Westendorf.US

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! 

Posted in Personal/Miscellaneous, Television/HDTV

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.

Posted in Personal/Miscellaneous, Television/HDTV

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.    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! 

Posted in Personal/Miscellaneous, Television/HDTV

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

Posted in Personal/Miscellaneous, Television/HDTV

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. 

Posted in Personal/Miscellaneous, Television/HDTV

I 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.    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.   And nervous…Ryan's never flown before.   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.

Posted in Personal/Miscellaneous, Television/HDTV

Every once in a while I check out various sites for job openings.  Tonight I found an interesting one at WGN-TV in Chicago.

IL Lottery Drawing Announcer/Part-TimeProduction
Seeking on camera talent for Live Illinois Lottery drawings on WGN-TV. Talent is responsible for selecting the winning Illinois Lottery numbers during the Midday & Evening News. All applicants must have a minimum of 2 years on camera announcing experience. Must be willing to work middays, evenings, weekends and holidays. Equal Opportunity Employer
IF INTERESTED, SEND RESUME & TAPE TO:
WGN-TV Human Resources Department
2501 W. Bradley Place
Chicago, IL 60618
Apply On-line: Please go to www.tribjobs.com, click on the Career Opportunities link then the Job Search link and search for keyword "AutoCad Technician/Part-Time".
NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE

Wow, I guess I never realized the lottery drawing people also knew AutoCAD.  To be fair, the ad below this one was really for the AutoCAD technician.  This just proves how bad cut & paste can go when left unchecked. 

Posted in Personal/Miscellaneous, Television/HDTV

No, not the one that lives in Radcliffe. This is the one who lives in the UK. I figured as long as Dustin gets to admin his guilty summer pleasure, then I get to admit mine. Personally, I can’t stand the CBS version of Big Brother. There’s just something about how it’s put together that annoys me. On the other hand, the UK version almost allows the viewer exclusively to form an opinion about the house guests. While the 13 episodes that air a week may seem overboard, you definitely don’t have to watch every single episode. I also like how on Big Brother’s Little Brother they bring on guests to talk about what has happened in the Big Brother house. For example, the first episode of BBLB brought on an expert in Tourette’s Syndrome.  Yes, one of the guests this season has Tourette’s.

The whole show is interesting to watch, even if I hate the American version.  Of course, I suppose the difference could be that I’m forced to watch the CBS one while I choose to watch the BBC’s version.

Posted in Personal/Miscellaneous, Television/HDTV

Well, my picture is anyway.  And even then, no one has any idea where it came from.  Anyway, it’s still cool.  Gizmodo posted a story about HDTVs coming to hotels.  In it, you’ll see a photo of an LCD monitor much like what I just got.  Wait a second…  that picture also has a kitty condo in the background.  And it’s angled the same way as the picture I took a couple weekends ago.    Yeah… that’s my picture.

What actually makes this a bit funnier, is that I’ve only recently subscribed to Gizmodo’s RSS feeds and have otherwise hardly read the site.  I’m sure they just found the picture by searching for the HDTV flag, but I’m still please they found the picture good enough to include on their site.

Posted in Personal/Miscellaneous, Television/HDTV