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.

Midnight Mass

I used to go with my mother every Sunday to mass. A long, long time ago, my family switched churches because of more convenient mass times. The church we switched to was very progressive. They had a mass on Sunday nights for teens and their families. That mass practically had a rock band as a choir. Everyone involved in the mas except for the priest, ushers and Eucharistic ministers were teenagers. When the Giants were in the Superbowl in the early 90's, the priest had a Watchman (remember those?) with him and he would give updates on the game during the service.

It was during this time that I became more aware that mass seems like a show, put on for entertainment. Everything is scripted, there is a stage (the altar), singing, and as a friend puts it, "Catholic Calisthenics". Their mass was very polished. It was slick. This church was in an affluent community in New Jersey, so they had all the toys, and I noticed. They had a lighting designer come in and adjust the lighting. Their audio was second to none. The Choir area had several hanging microphones, a monitor mix system, and was acoustically isolated. The priests (called celebrants and presenters) were given wireless microphones. PZM boundary microphones were put on the altar so you could hear the pouring of the wine and the breaking of the host clearly. The whole church was taken into account when speakers were hung. Like I said, their services were slick.

Last night I went to Midnight Mass with my parents. They've since moved down to a shore community and things couldn't be any different. (I should also mention that due to my work schedule and the NBA's penchant for playing basketball on Christmas I haven't been home for Christmas in at least 6 years). First off- Midnight Mass down here is at 8pm. I have a problem with that. They even call it Midnight Mass. Shouldn't Midnight Mass be at I don't know, Midnight? Secondly, I'm not sure where all the people were. At my old parish, they have their excellent musical groups start caroling at 11pm. This means if you want a seat for mass you have show up by 10:30pm. If you're not in the church by 11pm, you're standing in the vestibule it's that packed. Last night, we wanted to get there early because their carols started at 7:30pm and with my dad's back wanted to make sure we had a seat. We arrived shortly after 7pm, and their was no problem getting a seat. In fact, the church never got more than 1/4 full at any time during mass.

The church surprisingly has a similar layout to the one I was talking about. Both probably built during the 60's, they are large and wide, not your traditional church layout with only a single aisle down the middle. That's where the similarities ended. The musical group was awful. Granted, I can't sing or play a musical instrument, but I know that. I'm not going to subject others to it. There were a handful of good voices in the choir, but they were drowned out by the organ and the other singers who happened to be in the pick up pattern of the 2 microphones in the front row. Whenever one of the singers with a good voice would go for a solo to one of the microphones, their voice was too powerful for the microphones, and the small PA speakers they had mounted in the walls behind you couldn't reproduce the frequencies they were singing at accurately. There was a lot of distortion and clipping going on. The violin player never was on the same page as the singers or the organist.

With the way they had the speakers laid out, there was a lot of feedback when the priest would talk. The majority of speakers were facing TOWARD the altar. This doesn't take a genius to figure out. From that point it was down hill. Needless to say, I was back at my parents from Midnight Mass at 9:15pm.

A different Life

This morning I was riding down in the elevator of my hotel at 5am. When I got on there were two very attractive, very drunk women. I was bundled up for the elements today (-1 windchill currently and dropping) and had my credential around my neck. They were asking if I was going to the game. I said yes, I was going in to work. They giggled and said that they were going to the game as well, but were going to sleep first.

I've often wondered what it would be like to be one of those people. We're always going in early, and invariably, there are people going to bed when we're going in to work. There are also people already tailgating when we're going in to work. I often wonder what that would be like.

The kicker of the story was- they were very happy I wanted the Packers to win, and they were actually at the wrong hotel. Ooops.