42, Day 5

7am in, 2am out.

Today's 8:00am meeting started at 8:33am. We're planning a quick fax with the Entertainment show on Wednesday at 6:30pm. The list of cameras everyone was agreed upon that are shares with the Studio show changed yet again, which means another 2 hours worth of programming and faxing.

After the 8:00 meeting there was another meeting about transmission. It is very evident that they really aren't sure what they want. After 90 minutes, they have a plan, and we start to put that in motion. I'm not quite sure they understand everything that is going on, and what they aren't really seeing.

Next up was that I missed lunch again. This is my time to be able to get things done for the show. When I can be left alone, I can get many more things done. I actually re-programmed the tallies for the cameras during this time and got caught up on paperwork.

We got Camera-39 to come out of the Studio truck. It took a little while to get control of it in the game truck, but after several tries, and having the right hand talk to the left hand, everything came up.

Later on in the evening, the TD reported that tallies in the monitor wall are sluggish. I verify that, and spend the next 3 hours working on this problem. It ended up being a misplaced colon on a VIP monitor that was added for this show.

This delayed the TD/Tape fax by 3 hours, but the fax did eventually go well with the exception of tallies through the tape release switcher. We'll be working on that on Wednesday.

What a surprise. The cameras going to the studio show have changed yet again. This requires re-programming all the tally shares yet again. It wouldn't be such a big deal, but since many of the cameras are being shared three ways, the tally statements get really convoluted.

XLII Day IV

Fourteen hour day again today. The real long ones will be Wednesday and Thursday I predict. At the end of the day, one of our vendors took us out to dinner. We really appreciated that.

The day started out by once again re-hashing the camera count. It appears that we're going to be 3 cameras short on site, and have no spares. The GBB is taking care of getting us what we need.

To give you an idea of how dis-organized this all is- we still don't have a single piece of paper from Fox that could qualify as a survey.

More on this later- I'm already a day behind.

42 Day 3

We scaled back to a 14 hour day today. Running on 6 hours sleep for 2 weeks would eventually take it's toll. As it was, I lashed out at someone today for doing something incredibly stupid, and exactly what I told them not to do.

The day started out fairly innocuously. I got some of my alone time that I desired (I found that turning the lights off in transmission kept people out. They probably thought no one was home. I was able to make the changes to the routing on the audio console and actually found I left some things out of the plan. They were easily added back in.

While looking for something else, I ended up in the VIP room and found Jerry there listening to his iPod. I ended up showing him how it can be connected to and controlled by the stereo in the room and I think he was in heaven. Lenny was faxing the analog video feeds to the VIP room at this time and they all came up properly.

Back to programming the router, there were some name changes that had to be done and some sources had to be re-defined. This was no big deal. Next up was routing the inputs to the main switcher. During this time, Mike and Bryan were busy taking care of the needs of the tape guys and getting the final VIP installed. There were some problems with the installation, but moving it to a different slot fixed the problems.

They continued to work with the video guys, who poitned out that they'd need an extra set of scopes. Mike cleared out room for these, including moving the NCP panel from Video to D-Unit transmission. It was decided that we'd probably need to add another monitor in Video, so they made arrangements for that.

The pre-show A-1 had made a specific request for some patch cables last week. I passed this on to the office and initially it looked like this hadn't been fulfilled. We started cutting patch cables to get the A-1 what he needed, but right after the last patch cord was cut, the proper ones were found in a box.

While it was said that the company providing the Comms engineer would provide two people, they in fact only provided one. Nick and Bryan were both helping him run cable for intercom panels. While I'm all for helping out, this put us out a little bit. I needed to troubleshoot a problem with the phones in the D-Unit, but couldn't be in two places at the same time. Mike was taking care of things in Video and tape release, Mark was sorting cameras, Lenny was making everyone happy in the VIP room and Bryan and Nick were with the Comms guy. The work all got done, but not as efficiently as it could have. At this same time, I was alerted to a problem in the C-Unit with the KVM for the EVS in there. I couldn't find Mark (he was sorting cameras) so I troubleshot it and found that somewhere 2 cables are crossed. I crossed them back at the C-Unit I/O and all was well. As for the phones in the D-Unit, they all seemed to have lost their mind. Once they were setup again, everything came up just fine.

While programming the router in the evening, the GUI crashed several times, leading to a very annoyed Kevin. This can be an ugly thing. I went to take a break from the router and found that 10 hours later, they were still sorting cameras, and hadn't assigned any camera to anything, and hadn't even counted to make sure that they had enough of everything. I nearly blew a gasket. I feel bad for Mike because he was there when I vented.

There were some issues with wohler monitoring in tape, all of which Mike and I sorted out relatively quickly. The biggest was a high impedance air gap due to a lack of analog audio ties in tape. Mike ran a 4 pair to the I/O and this was quickly solved.

For the record, I didn't go LC yet, but it was close. It's a good thing we'll get a decent night's sleep tonight.

42 Day 2

Yet another 16 hour billable day. At least today on the way to the hotel we were able to get a bite to eat.

Early in the day we were told Patriot was out of LCD computer monitors and they needed to borrow some. I was very reluctant to do this since I don't want to run out and it is still early in the week. It was decided that the GBB would go out and get some for them. I also suggested that they look in the cases the items were shipped in, and they'd probably have monitors in them.

Met with folks from the international distribution to sort out their needs. It should be fairly simple, but I'm sure that there's something that we're missing. During the day, the crew was laying cable down to the house panels, and ran fiber cables into the house.

We were alerted to a problem with SportVision being so far away- a piece of their data just wouldn't make it to them. We were working on a fiber solution for them, but in the end a different space was found, and everyone was happy. It's not the best space in the world for them, but it's better than running all that cable.

I'm beginning to think that Phoenix is a black hole. Much like Frosty yesterday, the GBB was gone FOREVER today while out shopping. I really think it was 10 hours. He also didn't get everything that we needed, but hopefully he'll finish tomorrow.

We learned that the halftime show will be using our ENG camera in the morning. This was a surprise to us. It's not a big deal, but just a large oh by the way that we weren't expecting. Hopefully they'll be done with it in time so the batteries can recharge and it can be used for our show on Monday morning.

We worked on getting the 4th truck back up and on the router. Normally we have 5 trucks for NASCAR and only 3 for NFL. For this show, we're adding the 4th truck back in. The router connects with Ethernet for control and fiber to move the audio. The Ethernet for the primary controller came up right away. Once I added a comptuer switch in line to get a second feed, the back up controller also was showing on the network. The next hurdle was reference. Everything needs to be referenced to the same thing to prevent timing errors. After about an hour of troubleshooting, I found that someone had unplugged the reference DA. Once that was in, the reference errors went away, but it was still showing no fiber links. After moving some fiber cables around in the rack, everything eventually came up. I'm not sure who moved fibers in the back or why, but the good news is everything is up and working now.

While the above was going on, everyone else was busy working adding VIP's and monitors in Production and Tape Release. Later in the day, more VIP's were added in Tape and in the edit rooms. One of the ones in tape was done as a demo to see how it works, and it looks pretty damn good. It's not as good as the others, but good enough.

We ended up having a meeting about transmission, and of course, right after the meeting there was a smaller, private meeting where everything was changed to the "right way". After that second smaller meeting, we were given another piece of information, and that made the right way wrong.

We ended the day with a trip to Red Robin. We were very grateful to them for seating us at 10:55pm when they close at 11pm. It's always a good day when you cane end with a beer. Sunday's wakeup call, 6:00am.

42 Day One

Today we left the hotel at 7:15am and arrived back around 11:45pm for a nice 16+ hour day. Some highlights and low lights of the day-

We parked the trucks. Well the drivers did. It's a tough job to get the trucks exactly where they need to be so the stairs and porches work, as well as all of the rear access doors to the equipment, just in case. Parking was interrupted because the field had to move outside 2 hours earlier than it was originally scheduled. When the field moves in or out, there is a cease and desist of about 80-90 minutes with anything going on by where the field moves to and from. This will get to be very annoying. We took this opportunity to get lunch.

When I saw the VP, the first words out of his mouth were "I hope these fucking generators work." He loves to drop the F-bomb. We usually have bets as to how long it will take for the first f-bomb of the day.

The floors of the trucks are filthy from being in Green Bay last week (and Dallas the week before didn't help). We cleaned the floors, first by hand to get the top layer of salt and grime off, and then we used the Oreck Orbiter that we have on the trucks. We actually have 2 of them to help things go quicker. Unfortunately, one them is broken, so we have to share the one for 4 of the trucks. As soon as we turned it on, this one started making really bad noises, and it broke also in the middle of waxing one of the trucks.

Next up, we installed 4 of the 5 EVS's we need to add for this show. Frosty was sent to Scottsdale to grab the 5th one from another truck. While on his way out there, he got a flat tire on my rental car. He couldn't figure out where the jack was or how to get the spare tire down so he ended up calling Roadside assistance AFTER being on the side of the road and trying to figure it out himself for 2 hours. SIX hours later, he finally made it back with the equipment we needed. This really lengthened the day.

When we opened up the D-Unit, we found some really bad things- First, two speakers had fallen onto one of the submix audio consoles. One of the speakers suffered severe damage and will definitely need to be replaced. The audio console has suffered major damage as well and will need to go out for repair. This isn't NEEDED for this show, but would have been nice to have. Second, the large LCD in the viewing room has a scratch on it. This wasn't there when we left the truck in June. One of the DSS receivers is just missing. Not sure where that one ended up.

Some equipment shipping in got screwed up and we never received it. That slowed things down a bit also.

We moved three Wohler speaker monitors from Graphics to Tape for the added positions we have in there. We installed 4 new CCU's in Video. We added a UPS on one of the tally controllers so it'll survive power changes better. We installed a DVC Pro in the Edit truck.

I have a 3 page list of to-do's and I got NONE of them done today. I think tomorrow will be a long day as well. I have a 6am wake up call, so it's time for bed now.

Freakin' Cold Part 2

I was in Green Bay this past weekend working the NYG/GB game. I'm sure that most of you watched the game, and you know how cold it was at the game. Keep in mind that it was even COLDER during setup. This was one of those events that doesn't happen every day. It was the third coldest game in NFL history. It was also the NFC Championship game, which meant a much bigger game than normal. Everyone would be watching.

In order to prepare for the game, we purchased every twin and full sized electric blanket between Milwaukee, the city I flew into and Green Bay. This totaled 19 electric blankets. This would total the number of cameras that would be outside in the cold. Several of the cameras are actually located in booths, so we were less worried about them. These were mainly for the cameras. We were worried about a few things with the cameras being out in the cold. First thing of course was the camera itself. Secondly were the lenses. Third was the panhead. The pan heads the cameras are mounted on are fluid heads. They have fluid in them that absorbs shocks and displaces in order to create a nice smooth movement. As the pan head gets colder, that fluid gets thicker and sludges up. It makes it more and more difficult to move the pan head, which will result in poor performance, and possibly lead to the seals of the pan heads bursting.

We have several racks of equipment that normally live out on the field to receive RF equipment and this week, since the studio show was on site with us, to move the audio back and forth from that set on the field via fiber. Each of these also got an electric blanket to provide some extra heat and to keep the heat generated by the equipment in.

The idea behind set up was that once a camera was built and outside it would stay turned on until after the game on Sunday. Cameras started being built on Friday morning, so that would be in the arctic temperatures for 3 days and 2 nights. The electric blankets were draped over the cameras and then cinched around the pan head at the bottom. Once the camera was built, the electric blanket was turned on and would be on until after the game -- same as the camera.

While that was the theory that we employed, we forgot about the UL safety measures. The electric blankets sold today all have a 10 hour timer/limit on them. We didn't realize this at first, but after it was pointed out, we went back to the old standby -- a 75W lightbulb. Two of them in fact for each camera in a standard "clamp-light" you can buy at Home Depot. The light bulbs put off heat that is trapped inside by the elephant bag over the camera overnight. When the blanket tripped off, there was still heat being generated by the lights. The cameras were also generating their own heat, which was being trapped. Every bit of this heat helped, believe me.

Inside the trucks themselves, we had some other temperature issues to deal with. In a typical TV truck, the air conditioners are able to put out massive amounts of cooling, but the heat is minimal. When we parked the trucks on Thursday, it was in the teens so not too bad relatively speaking. The thermostats in the main trucks don't read below 32 degrees F, so they were in alarm. The heaters kicked on right after we got power to them, and we went to lunch. We came back 2 hours later, and the temperature in the trucks was in the 40s. It took about 5 hours to get up to the 60 degree temperature where I feel comfortable turning on the equipment. Once the equipment is on, it will generate heat, which will help to raise temperature of the truck. Eventually, it will generate enough heat that the air conditioning will turn on.

The air conditioners for the trucks are outside in the front of the truck. They're in the cold weather, so the pressure of the gas in the compressors is extremely low. Basically, the higher the temperature, the higher pressure the gas is at, and the colder the temperature, the lower pressure for the gas. When the pressure is low, the compressor will go into a fault. When the sytem called for cooling the first time, it needed to run the compressor in a pre-heat mode for a few hours before it would kick on. During this time, the return air on the equipment side of the truck got to 82 degrees. That's a little warmer than we like. Once the unit was in cooling mode, the compressor is kept warm using Hot Gas Bypass which basically uses the refrigerant as a hot gas to keep the compressor from freezing up.

When we came in on Friday morning, the B-Unit temperature was in the low 50's. The B-Unit doesn't really have that much equipment in it, so it isn't generating any heat itself. It's relying on the heaters to keep temperature. We put some extra space heaters in the truck, and that definitely helped.

Things went well for the most part with setup, barring the extreme cold and the human factors involved with that. I actually had a coax cable break in my hand as I tried to straighten it out to connect it. There were some single mode fibers that suffered the same fate. It got to the point on Saturday where it was difficult to breathe outside. It physically hurt to take a breath. The wind and the cold was biting and would cut into any uncovered flesh almost instantly.

On Saturday night, the decision was made to switch to generator power despite our objections. The switch was made, and we had some minor issues coming back up, but nothing major. We waited until the air conditioning unit came back on. It had to go through a pre-heat process again, but once it was on it was fine.

Then it happened. I got a 5:30am wake up call from Mike who had the same call from the Tech Manager. The generator had failed. We all got ready as quickly as possible for the frigid weather (-18 real temperature, -33 windchill) and drove in, not knowing what we would find. We immediately switched to house power, getting the heaters back on as quickly as possible. In the 40 minutes the trucks were off, the A-Unit dropped 20 degrees. Next up was to fire the equipment and see what happened. Everything except for one camera came right back up, and that did after getting some more heat to it. (The cameras are powered from the truck, so when the truck lost power, so did the cameras) The pregame show truck had issues with a tally computer, probably related to the power issue we had.

Overall the show went extremely well. We noticed before the game the beauty shot, a camera at the top of the stadium looking down inside was taking hits. There was no electricity near it, so there was nothing on it. We ended up sending up some gaffers tape, hand warmers and blanket to the camera. The vents on the camera were taped over, the hand warmers were taped to teh camera and the blanket bungee corded to the camera. This got the camera to settle down a bunch.

Strike took forever due to the extreme temperatures. Much of the cable was pulled as it was onto the loading dock, or coiled in huge 12' coils and left on the loading dock to thaw out. A crew of utilities would be coming in on the next day after they thawed to properly coil them and ship them in a cable bin to meet the trucks in Glendale for the setup of the Superbowl.

Personally, I have no idea how the camera guys did it. I was wearing 4 layers, easily over $1500.00 in cold weather gear and after being out for a few hours was cold. I was moving during these hours of strike. The camera guys were standing there, doing precise movements, keeping critical focus. I know some of the hard camera operators had heating pads strapped to them front and back. Everyone had their own methods to keep warm. A few hours after the game, I was talking with one of the hand held operators inside and he was still shivering. I doubt that he's gotten warm yet.

I'm really looking forward to Glendale now.

Freaking cold

This weekend for work I am going to be in Green Bay, Wisconsin. If you are living under a rock, it's going to be in the low single digits as high temperatures here. I own a lot of cold weather gear. I am fine if the temperature is in the 20s for several days in a row, or for one day of single digits. I am not prepared for multiple days of single digits, and then add in the windchill you're at -20.

Last night I went out and purchased additional clothes, properly layering so I hopefully won't have to write in a future blog about suffering from frostbite or hypothermia. Going to three different stores, I was able to buy enough layers that I should be able to survive. I already had the basics- a couple of really good jackets, good outer layer snow pants and boots that are good to -40. I had basic layer stuff, but i needed more Base Layer clothing, and then an additional outer layer.

On the way in to town today, we stopped at Target stores buying up electric blankets to keep the equipment warm. You get a lot of weird looks when you're buying 7 electric blankets at a time. It took stops at 4 stores, but we were able to get the 15 that we think we need. More on that later.

Today has been a bad day...

It all started this morning when I filled up with Gasoline, and what kills me is I knew something was wrong when it was happening. I just had a feeling. I live in NJ, and you can't self serve. You have to let the attendant pump gas for you. I pulled up and was handing my gas card to the attendant and said fill it with 87 please. The attendant refuses the card and says we'll do that later.

So he fills my tank, 18+gallons worth and the total was 55.00. He then runs the card and gives me the slip to sign and I go on my merry way. As I pull away, I notice that the charge was for 65.00 and 21+gallons of fuel. My tank doesn't hold 21 gallons. I go back to the attendant and now he doesn't speak English and doesn't understand what I'm talking about. Being the dick that I am, I pursue it further. I'm not going to get fucked out of money. I'm sorry. I'm not the first person he did this to, but i'm going to try and make it the last. I call the police. The come and take a report, but say I have to file a claim with the NJ division of weights and measures. They don't think I'm going to do it. Guess what- Already done. That pump is now out of service until their investigation is complete.

Next up, I return home from that whole incident to park in my garage. The people in my building suck at parking, but as you know, I am the greatest. I park my car right between the lines. Dead smack in the middle. As I'm walking away from my car, the person who's car is to the right of mine says "Excuse me, you're too close to my car." Taken aback by this I look and see that yes I am close to their car, but I am smack dab in the middle of the lines. They on the other hand are parked right on the line, as if they are trying to take up 2 spaces to protect their precious car. I said OK, i'll pull out and let you get out and then pull back in. They told me they weren't leaving, they just happened to be walking by. I feel bad for them, because they don't know of my sarcasm, my intolerance for stupid people or what had just happened at the Sunoco station. They hit the trifecta. I said, "actually, technically, You're too close to my car." They said but they were parked first. I then responded with, I pay $175.00/month to park down in the garage, and for that I get to park in between the lines. I asked if they paid for 2 spots since they were taking up 2 spots, and had been for a while. They said but but but, how do you expect me to get in my car with you parked there? I told them that fell under number 3, not my problem. I suggested climbing over the passenger seat. They didn't like that. I told them they could call a tow truck and it would pull them out and they could then get in. They didn't like that either. I told them I could go to the front desk and have them call a tow truck since they were parked illegally. They then realized they weren't going to win. They decided to take me up on my first offer. I pulled out, let them get in, and they pulled out and parked properly in the middle of the lines instead of on the lines.

Next up was work. We're getting ready for a really big show. I ended up having to work yesterday when i wasn't supposed to. This caused me to not be able to get work I wanted to do during the day yesterday, and cancel plans with someone for 2 days in a row now. Not to be cocky, but I am very good at what I do. I get paid a lot to make decisions and get trusted with over 30million dollars worth of equipment. I put a great deal of effort into this and pride myself in my work. I don't like being second guessed, and I really don't like being second guessed by someone who doesn't have all the information by their own choosing. Today someone from our office started making decisions and second guessing my plans that I made based on information gleaned from a conference call that I was on yesterday afternoon that he was not. He was aware of it and invited and supposed to be on it, but chose not to be. He is now pissed at me for "withholding" information from him, depsite the fact that it was all there and available to him. He chose not to partake. He isn't trusting my judgment with respect to manpower needs, and in my opinion is setting us up to fail. I don't allow myself to be put into that situation. If he is going to continue to make those decisions, then I'm not going to be there. He won't be there. He should not make those decisions.

I've definitely pissed him off. I'm hearing from other people in the company who are talking to him about other things that he's pissed. Also, I'm realizing that once again my job is interfering with my personal life. I had told myself I wasn't going to let this happen again, but sure enough, it has.

Results

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted, but things have been really crazy lately between work, travel, the holidays, and my parents no wonder why I'm always tired. I saw my cousins this week when I was in Florida, and they apparently relayed to my mom that I'm grayer, have lost weight, but look really tired. We're starting to find out WHY I haven't been sleeping well.

I got the preliminary results from the Dr. last Wednesday. The good news is that I never stopped breathing overnight. I had no "apneas". My breathing did become shallow however, causing my Oxygen saturation to drop to 82.%. He explained to me that during waking hours, it should be 100%. Most normal people MIGHT drop to 94% while sleeping. by me dropping to 82% I was creating a sleep deficit. I am not getting a proverbial good sleep. My body works harder to get the oxygen it needs, and this will continue throughout the day to get back up to the 100% saturation.

The Dr. says if I lose weight, that will help. I can also get a sleep mask and a breathing machine. He is optimistic with me that I might actually do it by losing weight however. I lost 8lbs in the 4 weeks between visits, so he's letting me try that first. We'll see how that goes.

I have so much to write, but no time to do it at the present moment.