The 3 S's Suite, Sweat, SWEET

This blog has been quite a few months in the making. As some of you may have heard, I will be replaced in my current job by automation. We were first told of the upcoming loss of our positions a few months ago. At the time, we were brought into a meeting with the President/General Manager and told of out outcome. It was not to be because of job performance, but, do to financial. They would no longer in the near future be able to afford us in the budget.

Am getting a little ahead of myself. Let me digress just a little. I am not the only one who got this notice. There are three of us. In my Department, originally there were six people. The three of us were given notice, and since then, one more had been let go. After the three of us go, then there will only be two. I am great at math huh? LOL

Anyway, We three got the notice early. Since we had gotten out notice, five have been let go. One of them being the other person from my department that I had already mentioned. Of the five that were let go, two were department heads. So, a total of eight seems to me the magical number for amount of Reduction In Force, or as it is also known, RIF.

Getting on as to how I named this entry. I gave it this title, because thru the years, I have taken some photographs of my office. First set would be my old set-up, and next grouping would be after the announcement of The loss of my job, and last set, of which I had been waiting to take to show The new automated equipment.

My job is called Master Control Operator. I work for a local television station. I am the person who pushes the buttons who puts programs and breaks on the air at the correct times. This is an overly simple explanation of what I do. It is enough to explain a little of what you will see in the upcoming photos. When I first started at this place, it was back when all the break spots had to be run individually. Each break segment was on a different tape and we had multiple decks on which to air the spots. As I can recall, If a program was short, We may run from 12 to 16 spots on rare occasions.

As time progressed, we moved to getting a server installed where we would load the spots onto a server, and the server would be able to run all the spots without the use of any tape decks. This made the job a whole lot easier. This was all in the time of Analog Television. I was there for the transition into the Digital age. At one point, we were broadcasting in both analog and digital Programming. We were the first in our local area to be broadcasting Digital. At first, was just all SD. Was not all High Definition. Even now, not all programs are HD, but all are Digital.

With the digital age, we have moved from broadcasting just a single channel and co-broadcast on cable, to broadcasting an analog signal and a digital one. While still being an Analog station, were were actually broadcasting three channels. Now, as a digital station, we are broadcasting three different channels not counting doing anything affiliated with cable. We are carried on a few different cable companies. There is our local one, We are on some others feeding nearby communites as well as a cable company in Canada feeding the London Ontario market.

Going to the photos at the top of the page, this was my original Suite. Alas, the photos to our temporary MCO office have been lost. This office for those of you whom may have visited me at work was the small room just off of the main office. All the equipment was crammed into this small room. hence the word in the title of SWEAT. With all that electronics equipment in a small room, it heated up fast. We were so loaded with electronics, that we had a concern about blowing fuses because of how many extention cords we had been using. There was no more spots open in which to plug in anymore.

The SWEET name comes from our new suite. WOW, What a set up. Am learning how to use, but this is all going towards my replacement, but, atleast I will have experience on the board. The Master Control Office now looks so large! Eliminating the racks that had held all the Cathode ray TV units have now been replaced by only TWO count them, Two, Flat Screen units. Even the desk top has so much room now. I will add a few photos below. It has been a ride.




Lastly, I will add on a video clip I took using my camera. Just to show what these flat screens can do.

SCARY EXPERIENCE

The other day (Thursday) I forgot my watch at home when I went to work. I was lost without it. Anyway, when I got home after work, I settled down to watch some TV before bed. Is strange huh, that I sit and watch TV to relax when here it is my job to work at a television station and my job is putting shows on the air at correct times. Anyway, I had my bottle of soda next to me and sipped from it while I watched for an hour or so. I finally was getting tired enough to call it a day. I turned off the tv, and set the remote down, and then off came my glasses and I put them right next to my watch which was where I left it the day before, and I clicked off the light. After a short interval, sleep overcame me.

Well, next morning comes, and alarm clock sounds, and I awaken. Here is where the strange part comes in. I found that the TV remote was on my chest, and my watch was on my wrist! Yikes, and it was even put on the right way. And before you ask, the TV was still turned off. Just was a little freaky to find my watch on my wrist, and remote sitting on my chest.

Damn....Or Is It Dam

Locally we are experiencing and early thaw this year in the whole area. On Tuesday of this week, I could be found driving in the county. As I came upon French Creek, I saw a sure sign of the thaw in progress. An Ice Dam. This is where the ice that had previously covered all the water starts to melt, and is broken up into smaller ice floes and as it moves down stream and finds some sort of obstruction, the ice backs up and gets all jumbled into what you can see here.

Satellite Dish Goatee

Today, I am posting about a phenomenon of satellite dishes. in the top picture, you see the ice formed at the bottom lip of the dish. This is caused by heaters on the inside of the skin on the dish to melt snow. With the sub-zero temps, the snow melts from the dish, but freezes before it hits the ground. the second picture is a closer up view, and the last is a view from the back side of the dish and goatee. Stay Warm!

My life Flashes Before my Eyes

i should not be the one to harp about bad winter drivers. On Monday this week, I went to Jobeth and Brads house for a visit. And as the old saying goes, you should never take your eyes off of the road. I went to change the CD I was playing and when I looked up, here is the sight i was greeted by. A Freightliner coming right at me! It was on the wrong side of the divided highway! Yikes! You can see on the left side of the picture, I-90 westbound had two semi's already coming at me.

Let me tell you, my life was not exciting. So not exciting in fact, if you think about it, I had time enough even to pull my camera out of my pocket, aim it out the windshield, and take this picture, and still have enough time to put it back in my pocket before I had to swerve around this semi. What you cannot see, is that this semi was being towed, and it is in the correct direction of travel. As always though, it is a good wake up. Now that I have seen my life, I had better do something exciting so that the next time it flashes before my eyes, it will be something with a sequel worth watching. LOL, hope this gave you a smile as it did me when I took the picture

Tech Support Yeah Right!

Sunday night 12/21/08 We experienced A real cold snap. Temps went down to single digits. After I got home, power cam back up and I found out that I had lost both cable and internet. Called my supplier whom I will leave nameless right now, but not blameless. Hear that RR? Anyway, I digress. Called them up to report loss of cable. Once they determined what account I was speaking of, ( a story in itself) The agreed that there is an outage in my area, and they have A tech ( a, one, singular) working in the area, and will get to it ASAP. Hear that one before have you? Well, was already after 1 AM so i called it a night. next morning, no cable. Go figure!

So, called once again, and of course, all you get is the automated answering service. Press 1 for tech support etc. etc. Once I press 1, the phone disconnects. Tried and tried and tried again with same results. Well, tried cable at around noon, when I got home from errands, and woo hoo, had cable. Alas, still no internet. So, near 2 PM called the dreaded 877 number again, and went to #1 for tech support, and #1 again for automated help where comp talks to you,and you answer after you do what it asks to reboot. Even went as far as being instructed to go thru as far as Command Prompt. I know, Ree, all you hear is Blah Blah Blah, but stick with me. After all that failed, all told about 10 minutes of this, I got a real honest to god person. They went thru the whole script again, word for word with the computer generated one. When that failed, I got switched to the dreaded further "TECH SUPPORT" Now, am connected to a person half way around the world, who has barely passable English.

Now I am in a world of deep doo doo. After repeated failed attempts of them trying to fix it from their end, and with me seeing absolutely no change on my modem, I again remind them that this is the Erie account and not the Ohio account. Oh, Did not see that! Was their response. Sorry Ron, Ree, and Phil if you got interrupted Monday afternoon. 38:53 minutes into the call, eating up the cell minutes, my phone died due to lack of battery power. If I could have reached out to touch someone, I would have throttled them at this point! I gave up for the day just to calm down and regroup.

Bit the bullet once again and made the dreaded call again, and was put on hold for 12 minutes the first time, and hung up with out getting to a live person. Called back again, atleast this was after 9:01 PM so was on free time for the phone. Went thru live operator number 1 again with no positive results, and they said with their syrupy joyful tone thanking me for being a proud customer of their service again, before they transferred me around the world again. After hurdling the language barrier once again, we finally got it up and running. Fingers crossed this never happens again. I am just waiting now for their call back to see how stellar their rr tech service is. They so seem to want to be praised! My personal opinion right now is that they are knuckle draggers. Their arms are so long from patting themselves on the back congratulating themselves on how great their service is, is how I feel they earned the nic of knuckle draggers.

Thanks for taking the time to read my rant and raves

Careful In Winter Driving Safety Tips

Here are some things not to do with winter driving. The car on the right was tail gating too closely to a semi. As you can see, he kissed the rear end rather hard. I'll wager he gave a big Homer Simpson, DOH!" when that happened. I'd assume the semi never even knew that it had been kissed from behind. Do not take your eyes off of the road. Pay attention to where you are at all times. Here, someone had crossed the center-line of the road, crossed someones driveway and is now straddling a ditch. Good Idea! Do not drive yourself home. get some one to pick you up. No apparent damage other than the car is ditched. I have been saving these to add on here all at one time. I was going to come up with some witty caption, but I guess the pictures say more than I ever could.