The Worlds Largest Thermometer

One good thing that came of the rain out was the drive from Ontario, CA to Las Vegas, NV. It goes through some beautiful country, lots of mountains/hills, and you can take Route 66 for a good part of it. We took Route 66 for 30 miles or so, eating at a diner and stopping at a tourist trap.

Yes, we stopped at the worlds largest thermometer. It really isn't much, and the area that is around it is very depressed from it's probably once great stature. It made me think of the movie Cars where it shows little towns on Route 66 depressed because the interstates went in and more and more traffic went there and bypassed the smaller towns.

I'd like to take the time and drive Route 66 some day. The last time I had a similar thought was when I saw the movie Elizabethtown. In that movie, one character gives another a book that is a sort of road map on a jouney from The South back to Oregon. It has all places to stop along the way, music to go along with the journey, etc. I wish I could get that book. I'd love to take a few weeks off and go on a journey like that.

Unfortunately, after the tourist trap in Baker, CA we went back on I-15 and continued on our journey.

Adding Insult to Injury

After striking today, we were shuffling rental cars around since we're driving to Vegas in the morning when we got a call from Lenny stating that none of our rooms were actually extended, and we all had no rooms at the hotel. About an hour later, everything got cleared up and we were allowed back in our rooms to stay, but we almost had to create an ugly scene.

It Never Rains in Sunny Southern California

Well, that's just not true. It does rain, and rain alot.

As you know I've been home for 22 hours since January 24th. I was supposed to fly home on a redeye last night and be home until Wednesday AM. Then the rains came this weekend. We knew the rains were coming. NASCAR was watching the same weather reports that we were, but for some reason they thought that they could get not one BUT two races in yesterday. They were hellbent to prove everyone else wrong.

The result- after a 3 hour fill, they started the race, only to have a major crash cause a red flag. During the red flag, they went out and found that what the drivers had said was true- There was water weeping out onto the track through cracks in the asphalt from the ground water. I have to give everyone on the crew credit for hanging in there. We did updates every 30 minutes from 6pm local until 11pm local. We went on the air at 12:30pm local time, and it wasn't until 11pm local time that NASCAR finally admitted what we all knew-- there was no way they were going to be able to safely finish the race that night. The race restarted today at 10am local time, which means a 6am in time for us (and that was generous).

The best part is we have TWO races to do today. The end result for me- I'll only be home for those same 22 hours from January 24th through March 3rd. Really makes me desirable, huh?

Married or Single?

I've been home for a total of 22 hours in the past 32 days. In addition to all the work involved with being gone for that period of time, the work involved with being home is tough also.

For those guys who are married, it is tough for them to be away from their spouses and their children. I don't envy them at all. I've been away from a girlfriend for extended periods of time in the past, and it was a large factor in a failed relationship of mine. It's not easy to do.

Married folks do have an advantage though. They have someone at home to take care of all of the daily stuff. Getting mail. Paying bills. Getting cards out. Doing all the things that just need to get done. I use a cleaning service to help keep my place clean. They came the day that I left for 26 days. Then they came while I was gone. Then they came on the one day that I was home. My place is spotless. Unfortunately they can't do things like pay the rent (I forgot to do that somehow). They don't get my mail, they don't pay my bills. They don't do all the things that I just can't do while on the road.

As a single guy, I think the guys who are married have it easier.

The easy part

I've been busy over the past few weeks to say the least. I've been working on some really big shows that have been taking a lot of time. The good news is that I've settled into my cruise director role on the truck.

Wednesday was career day at the track. An industry group provided an opportunity for about 20 students to learn about the remote television industry. This is a fairly common thing for us now. Part of their career day is that they get to spend 2 hours with me. I give a tour of the truck, explaining the different parts of the system and how they all go together to make the pictures get to you at home. I have different levels of engineering speak depending on the level of the students and what exactly they're looking to do. Many times the crew members will help out with their areas of expertise as we get to their area.

Students are able to ask questions as they go, and I usually try to leave 10-20 minutes at the end in a quiet room to answer questions and go over things. JT was with us this week, and was hanging out in the room where the Q&A happens at the end, and we were all having a conversation, and he said something that is so true- The engineering that we do is the easy part, It's the travel that's rough.

That is so true. Every aspect of the travel takes it toll- the flight delays, getting on a plane, sleeping in a hotel, eating bad food. Beyond that, your interpersonal relationships suffer. The engineering is easy. I can do that in my sleep. It all just makes sense. With all of the technology going on and all the interconnected systems, the hardest part really is the travel. Today is day 26 away from home. I'll be home for under 24 hours and leave again for 6 days. So many people say they'd love to have my job, or they'd switch places with me in a heartbeat. I don't think most could last a month.

Como Se' Dice?

By now you know that things change constantly. For the most part, things this week went very smoothly. Today is no exception. We had more changes and rolled with the punches. We also had our first major problem of the week.

We've ended up on split shifts since they have people editing overnight. We always need to make sure that we are staffed if people are there in case they have problems. Personally, I require that if one person stays, two people stay. The primary reason for this is god forbid something happens to someone, you need someone there to call 9-1-1. It also helps to have a second person there if you need to troubleshoot something -- one person on each end of the problem. We have a room in one of the trucks that is an executive lounge type place that when there aren't executives/VIP's we can normally be found in. On the overnight, this is a great place to be- comfortable chairs, dark room, 52" LCD screen. The guys on the overnight availed them selves of the room, and when the VP came in this morning, he was PISSED because nothing was quite how he knew how to operate it. The GBB took care of getting things back to where they should have been in terms of the AV setup in the room. The GBB also went over again exactly what it was that the VP wanted to be able to see and all was well in there. We ended up changing router panels to allow for one with a display in it.

During today's transmission test, it is noticed that the entertainment show's backup transmission path might not be correct. In the end, we find that this is indeed true, that apparently it was never faxed. It never could have worked during our previous check-in's. It was also said in meetings earlier in the week that if they needed to go on the back up path, it would come through us, and not the studio show.

Next up was the major problem of the week. We're told that a camera man up in the booth was walking around the backdrop and then heard a pop and the telestrator monitor stopped working. Some may like the idea of not seeing someone draw on the screen, but this is a necessary tool for this game. The monitor is special in that it has a film on the front of the monitor that senses touch (actually capacitance/resistance) and sends that out a serial port into a computer, and that's how you draw for TV. This isn't something that's just lying around. This is actually a client provided item, so we're not on the hook for it, but we do try and fix everything and anything. We started in 2 directions immediately. The first direction was to have people work on diagnosing the exact problem and seeing if they can repair it. The second was to locate another touchscreen locally and try to get the drivers for that touchscreen loaded on the PC and use that one. Our sister truck carries an old-fashioned simple telestrator. This was to be our back up plan. Despite valiant efforts, we did have to go with the back up plan. In the end, no one at home really noticed. Troy still had a telestrator and was able to draw and point out the important things to the viewer.

The X-mo guy decided AFTER THE PREGAME SHOW WAS ON THE AIR that he didn't have what he needed in his router. He needed to have some things such as the replay device his camera is going into in the router. I make the changes he needs and send it (as well as dealing with about 100 other things -- more on those later). Shortly after this change, the tape operator comes to me and tells me that some one is changing the input to his machine. Trying to figure out what the hell is happening, I lock the input to his machine. Everything is fine until 5 minutes later when i'm told that the router for the X-mo guy in the other truck isn't cutting. I send Nick over to look at it, and he tells me that it is locked and unlocks it and starts cutting around. When he is cutting around, he's changing the input to the machine. After having Brian and Nick chase all the cables down, I find that I screwed up and instead of putting in the machine as source, I put it in as a destination in the data key list. Once I fixed that, all was well.

Next up is probably going to be one of my favorites of all times (this was actually going on at the same time as the above). Knowing that we were out of video timing when we fed the house during rehearsals on friday, I wanted to make sure that this was fixed since it is the biggest game of the year. I get the number of the house guy from the tech manager and I verify with the house guy that he is seeing me in time to him both audio and video and that I can break the path individually, audio and video. I'm told that yes, everything is good, and he is hearing and seeing me switch to bars and tone. Soon after, I want to break this feed away from everything else so I can be sure of not screwing up the player introductions. Soon there after I'm told that it's out of lip sync. I'm confused as how this could happen since everything in the truck is in time lip sync wise, and all i did was make a router change- no path changes ocurred. I change it back, and i'm told it's back in lip sync. In trying to work out the problem, I fed tone to the commissioner's booth for a little while. FINALLY it was discovered that the audio wasn't actually changing with the video and NEVER was, even early in the morning because the audio guys were just feeding it off the net return DA. Once we get into the game, I'm being told that the commissioners booth (and all the courtesy feeds) are getting Spanish audio. This one really confused me because we don't have any spanish audio in the truck. SAP is a totally separate audio feed direct to LA TOC without ever touching the truck. Once I made that realization, I knew it had to be on Net Return. The guys in transmission were feeding us the SAP channel on 7/8 (which is what was feeding the courtesies) instead of Lt/Rt like they had been doing for the studio show (and the rest of the season).

To the viewer at home, the show was nearly flawless. We had one transmission problem that I'm aware of, but that wasn't anything with us. Everyone on the crew rose to the occasion and the end result was one of the best football broadcasts I've ever seen. It was a great game, but nothing was over the top. It was treated with the reverence it deserves and the outcome was a masterpiece, a game that all can be proud of for all time.

42, a blur

OK, so the last few days have been a blur. There have been a lot of long days. We're now working in shifts since they're editing 24 hours a day. Thankfully I'm working during daylight hours. Unfortunately, i'm also only getting about 5 or 6 hours not working each day as well.

I fell the other day in transmission. I was stepping over TG who was working on something behind the racks, and when I high stepped, I got my foot caught and down I went. It was one of those experiences where I knew I was going down, it was just a matter of how hard the fall was going to be. I had some minor scrapes and cuts, but other than that, I'm doing well.

There has been a lot more of the same. There have been people who have obviously been promoted for their incompetence. There are others who are working hard and trying to get everything done the right way, but they are fought every step along the way. 42 will get on the air. You'll have your parties. You'll watch a great telecast. Everyone will say how easy it all came together-- and it has -- but it could have been easier. It should have been easier. Time for bed.