Fri
Jul
10
So when I woke up today, I decided to order the Roku Netflix player. At only $100, I figured it was worth a shot to see if it can give me some quality movie streaming to my tv. Hopefully I will get it early next week.
I have finally finished cleaning my computer room and I must say, it really brightens up my place. Since it is no longer a mess, I can keep the door open and the sun hits the windows pretty well and bleeds out into my living room and dining room.
Im still bummed that I have to wait another 4 weeks to get my Emmy statue. WTF does it take them so long to get them out to you? Its not like they are making millions of them. I sent in my engraving form a week after I found out I won, so two weeks from the ceremony and they claimed 6-8 weeks for delivery. The National Academy of Television arts and sciences called me last night to confirm something and told me it was going to be another 4 weeks. I want my damn statue lol
Thu
Jul
9
So I forgot I had a blog. Time for a fast forward on life……..
Post X games, I went back to sesame street and finished yet another season. I had a dog, lost the dog (dont ask, very sad), completed another draft of my novel, signed on to do a whole bunch of mets games (blah), oh and I won an emmy. (still dont have the stupid statue. god it takes a long time for them to engrave and ship those stupid things).
I promise I will be more dilligent in posting blogs in the future.
Mon
Feb
2
Well, I am at work today, but I think if i had any other job, I wouldnt be. I have a pretty nasty fever and got to enjoy some of those messed up fever dreams last night.
I bought a new tv yesterday, but I have to return it because the picture is very jittery.
This blog sucks cause I dont really feel like typing.
I am very cold, but if I put my coat on, I start to sweat. I was sweating the whole train ride in. When I got off the train, I opened my coat and cooled off a bit. It as pretty cold and people were looking at me like I was crazy.
Sat
Jan
24
So this morning I decided to take a quick run into town. Usually this would be no big deal… I went to breakfast in kraft service at 8am and there was a slight rain. I finished my breakfast by 8:15 and went outside, it was snowing. I figured I had better head into town before it gets any worse. Well it got worse, very very fast. In the process of narrowly avoiding a jack knifed bus, I steered into someone’s driveway and proceeded to get stuck on a gigantic sheet of ice. A tow truck arrived around 11am and proceeded to try to wench me out, which was very difficult considering I was on ice. Instead of my car going straight, the back continued to whip around causing us to try to straighten the car out again before he would contiune wenching. I got back to the x games right before noon. Oh, did I mention I made it less than 2 miles from the compound. After that we hit the air on ABC and shaun white won gold in men’s snowboard slope style which angered me. He should not have qualified. During qualifiers yesterday he messed up every run but was advanced solely because he was shaun white. I hate any sport that relies on judges, I went back up the mountain and took some more pictures today. Check them out on my flickr page flickr.com/photos/tilt215. I will be watching USA v Sweeden friendly in a bit.
Fri
Jan
23
Earlier today I told the story of how the engineers at the x games were screwed on swag (and since some of you have asked swag = shit we always get. it is a perk of the job. You show up to work a show and you are given things as a way of saying thanks. These things include shirts, hats, sweatshirts, jackets, and so on). Well let me tell you that a wrong has been righted and we have recieved our coats. In fact, the coat I got is even better than the coats given to many others (in my honest opinion). You can see all the info about my coat here. A coat worth hundreds of dollars is certainly a good way to make things up to people. This is the special X Games edition as you can see from the logo on the chest.
When did engineers become the whipping boys of TV? When I started in TV back in highschool, engineers were a position of respect; we get you on the air and keep you there. We fix all of your problems and make your life easier. I know everybody likes to think their job is super important and people couldnt get by without them, but in the case of the engineer, its true. Without engineers, your tv shows would never be made or seen. We can make your life easy, or we can make it very painful.
So when did it become ok to shit on us? A perfect example happened yesterday here at the x games. Before everyone left for aspen we got an email explaining that there would be “no swag” this year. For those who dont know, swag items are gifts from the production compay to the crew usually consisting of hats, shirs, jackets, and so on with the shows logo, the stations logo, and whatever else they deem relevent. So all of us came to aspen expecting no swag and while it was a disappointment, we understood.
Interestingly enough, espn changed its no swag policy and ordered swag for the crew which was handed out yesterday. Everyone was getting hats, gloves, nice coats… When it was our turn to get our swag, we got a kids pair of mittens and a hat. No coat? Kids gloves? WTF? We asked the person handing it out and she said, “oh it goes by your position.” Really? Ok, if we are so unimportant, how about we all leave and see how you guys make out without us. It was an obvious case of people not understanding what it is that we do, and that happens far too often these days. We are the backbone of your show, period. We are the first ones in and the last ones out.
Funny enough, shortly after that conversation, the steadicam operator lost his monitor and thus could not work. Two hours later (and a whopping ten minutes before air) we got him all buttoned up and sent him off to the mountain. His problem wasnt even our problem to fix (it was his own gear), but we did it anyway because we actually care.
Keep you swag, seriously. Every engineer here knows that you would not survive a day without us. We will continue to hold your hands and breastfeed you. Dont worry.
Thu
Jan
22
After a week of setup, we hit air (on espn360) last night with no problems. This morning it looks like we have superpipe women’s snowboard eliminations followed by men and womens practice on the slope. In the afternoon we have womens ski superpipe practice followed by mens practice and then mens superpipe ski finals. I hope all that means something to someone cause it doesnt to me. This time next week I will be back working on the second half of season 40 of Sesame Street. I also figure I will take this time to say that I had a very productive web meeting last night with a designer working on something for my next project. In case anyone cares, I am currently listening to the original cast recording of “Thank Goodness”. Somehow it got stuck in my head last night.
Wed
Jan
21
So, it has probably been about two years since I last posted a blog, but I am bored and figure there probably is no better time to start.
I am currently in Aspen for the Winter X Games. I didnt even realize they still did the X Games until I got booked on this job. I am working what we call Venue A which is the Pipe and Slope. It has been very uneventful so far, and the rest of my stay out here will probably be more of the same.
I did get an opportunity to take a drive around the mountain to Snowmass, CO which is an amazingly beautiful little town. Did a little cross country skiing around Snowmass and did a little touristy shopping.
Aspen has been very unimpressive to me. The food is lousey, the people are idiots, and the town is pretty boring. I havent really had the opportunity to make too many runs down Buttermilk Mountain, but I plan on spending most of the day Monday boarding. It will be my first time on a snowboard since highschool.
I’ll try to drop another update later as well as some pictures.
