Rambles
Yeah, I sort of ignored LJ for the summer. So since I have an hour to kill before going to a meeting, here's a few rambling thoughts and stories.
The radio station changed hours, so now I'm on Thursdays from 6 to 8 pm, FM 88.3 in the area surrounding Palatine. Still playing pretty much the same things. Played the new Skinny Puppy song last week, it's good. Plans we had for the new FM transmitter (more power, higher mounting for greater transmission distance) have been delayed because of (what else) lack of funding.
Last Friday I was called over to the construction area to approve the placement of the communications equipment racks. I thought it would be simple. It was a can of worms. The racks are way bigger than the blueprints showed, so we don't have the room we thought we'd have. The contractor received the elevation detail drawings TWO WEEKS AGO even though I submitted them in JUNE, so the racks were set up incorrectly. He's also worried about the cable lengths now that the rack positions are changing. BUT to top the whole bad experience off, the general contractor gets a phone call while we're in there... he turns to the E.C. and says, "Does one of your guys drive a blue Saturn?" I said, "I do," and he says, "Uh-oh." Well, great! I'm afraid to ask, so I don't. We wrap up our meeting ("further discussion necessary") and the G.C. says "We need to go outside." One of the construction trucks hit my car. Not bad, not bad at all, just scraped paint off the rear bumper, but enough to make me want to take down all his info so I can get it fixed. The car's only a year old. But I must admit before leaving the building, I had pictures in my mind of my car flattened by a truck or something, and I'm glad it wasn't that.
Incidentally, these buildings are HUGE. The campus is being dwarfed by the new construction. I've been all through most of the X and Y sections, but the Z section is farther behind and they haven't let us walk through there yet. Oh, and if you're a Harper College student, you might be happy to know we're working on implementing wireless internet access across campus in all areas INCLUDING outdoors (parking lots, lawns, fields, everything). Should be free public access when it's ready. They're configuring the system, and the outdoor access points will be mounted shortly to some of the new light poles. Possibly will be done by the end of the year. Just, do us a favor, don't connect to our internet if you have a virus, okay?
Cubs game was painful last night. Jill wouldn't watch it because it was "too stressful". But I'm happy enough that they got this far. My dad was a BIG Cubs fan, he would have been thrilled about this. I'm sad he didn't get to see it happen. He only got to see a few games early in the season.
I've got all sorts of demands on my time, and not enough time to dole out to them. I don't like saying no to people who ask "can we get together some Saturday and work on this" but I've got too many things going on to say yes. Most of you know how busy I get in October and November leading up to Thanksgiving weekend. We've got post-production on an hour-long movie, I'm doing promotional art and some of the editing and special effects. That's a lot of work. I'm way behind on the website, and some of my own sites could use an update. I've got to schedule another MT337 writing session (fortunately we've already had one, so I'm way ahead of things on this for once). Need to start working on video room playback tapes, might do them on D-VHS so there's no need to change tapes (one tape will play all day), but I need to create a schedule first.
My other problems besides time are space and money. I spend too much, always have, and have been particularly hurting debt-wise lately. And since I spend too much, I also am running out of space for the things I buy. There's no easy (for me) solution for either problem.
At work, I've been moved from my old cube to one that gives me 1/3 the space, and hides me in a corner where I can't see anyone, so I feel completely isolated. I hate it. And I can't keep my materials handy because there's no frigging space in here. They re-org'd us too, so I have a different supervisor now. Fortunately, she's fine, no complaints there. But the re-org was silly and did little more than raise the irritation level of the staff.
New dance club might be opening up soon, Bobby from the 2nd version of Club 950 is behind this one. I gather he had to promise the city of Chicago that Ves wouldn't have anything to do with this one before they'd give him the licenses. This one will be at Western and Milwaukee, a bit farther for me than the Lawrence location, but accessible from the Blue Line, so I won't have to drive. But it remains to be seen whether it'll be worth going there anyway. I still miss the club DJing, I'd love to do it again and radio DJing is just not as fun.
For the computer geeks: new PC as of late July, 2.8 GHz P4 hyperthreaded (overclocked at 3.08 GHz), 800 MHz FSB, 1 GB of DDR 3200 RAM, Asus mainboard, new DVD burner, running XP pro, one 250 GB drive, one 80 GB drive, one 60 GB drive. I like it. I can FINALLY do video production without compromise. My LAST machine was supposed to do it, but I had constant problems or restrictions. I'm very happy about the capabilities of my new system. Also got Adobe Premiere Pro from work thanks to a special video project they asked me to do, and it's a nice improvement over the previous version(s).
I'm a bit pissed off about the new I-Pass lane at the Touhy toll plaza on the outbound Kennedy. What they did was create a new traffic backup! They extended the I-Pass lane for about a mile, after which it ends, merging with the existing lanes. Well, naturally, you know Chicago drivers, they stay in that lane until the bitter end, which slows traffic to a crawl where it merges. So now I have an extra traffic delay every morning where once there was usually no problem. I WISH MORE PEOPLE WOULD GET I-PASS. It WOULD speed things up for everyone.
(back from meeting)
Well, that was a bit interesting. This was an all-staff meeting with the College president Dr. Breuder. He said they're planning on gauging community support for turning Harper into a 4-year college with residences. Frankly, I've heard that rumor since I started in 1984, and I still don't think it will happen...but Dr. Breuder DID turn a 2-year school into a 4-year school (the first such conversion ever, I think, but I could be wrong) in Pennsylvania before he came here, so I expect he'll be pushing for it. He's still boss until July 2006, he's got time.
The radio station changed hours, so now I'm on Thursdays from 6 to 8 pm, FM 88.3 in the area surrounding Palatine. Still playing pretty much the same things. Played the new Skinny Puppy song last week, it's good. Plans we had for the new FM transmitter (more power, higher mounting for greater transmission distance) have been delayed because of (what else) lack of funding.
Last Friday I was called over to the construction area to approve the placement of the communications equipment racks. I thought it would be simple. It was a can of worms. The racks are way bigger than the blueprints showed, so we don't have the room we thought we'd have. The contractor received the elevation detail drawings TWO WEEKS AGO even though I submitted them in JUNE, so the racks were set up incorrectly. He's also worried about the cable lengths now that the rack positions are changing. BUT to top the whole bad experience off, the general contractor gets a phone call while we're in there... he turns to the E.C. and says, "Does one of your guys drive a blue Saturn?" I said, "I do," and he says, "Uh-oh." Well, great! I'm afraid to ask, so I don't. We wrap up our meeting ("further discussion necessary") and the G.C. says "We need to go outside." One of the construction trucks hit my car. Not bad, not bad at all, just scraped paint off the rear bumper, but enough to make me want to take down all his info so I can get it fixed. The car's only a year old. But I must admit before leaving the building, I had pictures in my mind of my car flattened by a truck or something, and I'm glad it wasn't that.
Incidentally, these buildings are HUGE. The campus is being dwarfed by the new construction. I've been all through most of the X and Y sections, but the Z section is farther behind and they haven't let us walk through there yet. Oh, and if you're a Harper College student, you might be happy to know we're working on implementing wireless internet access across campus in all areas INCLUDING outdoors (parking lots, lawns, fields, everything). Should be free public access when it's ready. They're configuring the system, and the outdoor access points will be mounted shortly to some of the new light poles. Possibly will be done by the end of the year. Just, do us a favor, don't connect to our internet if you have a virus, okay?
Cubs game was painful last night. Jill wouldn't watch it because it was "too stressful". But I'm happy enough that they got this far. My dad was a BIG Cubs fan, he would have been thrilled about this. I'm sad he didn't get to see it happen. He only got to see a few games early in the season.
I've got all sorts of demands on my time, and not enough time to dole out to them. I don't like saying no to people who ask "can we get together some Saturday and work on this" but I've got too many things going on to say yes. Most of you know how busy I get in October and November leading up to Thanksgiving weekend. We've got post-production on an hour-long movie, I'm doing promotional art and some of the editing and special effects. That's a lot of work. I'm way behind on the website, and some of my own sites could use an update. I've got to schedule another MT337 writing session (fortunately we've already had one, so I'm way ahead of things on this for once). Need to start working on video room playback tapes, might do them on D-VHS so there's no need to change tapes (one tape will play all day), but I need to create a schedule first.
My other problems besides time are space and money. I spend too much, always have, and have been particularly hurting debt-wise lately. And since I spend too much, I also am running out of space for the things I buy. There's no easy (for me) solution for either problem.
At work, I've been moved from my old cube to one that gives me 1/3 the space, and hides me in a corner where I can't see anyone, so I feel completely isolated. I hate it. And I can't keep my materials handy because there's no frigging space in here. They re-org'd us too, so I have a different supervisor now. Fortunately, she's fine, no complaints there. But the re-org was silly and did little more than raise the irritation level of the staff.
New dance club might be opening up soon, Bobby from the 2nd version of Club 950 is behind this one. I gather he had to promise the city of Chicago that Ves wouldn't have anything to do with this one before they'd give him the licenses. This one will be at Western and Milwaukee, a bit farther for me than the Lawrence location, but accessible from the Blue Line, so I won't have to drive. But it remains to be seen whether it'll be worth going there anyway. I still miss the club DJing, I'd love to do it again and radio DJing is just not as fun.
For the computer geeks: new PC as of late July, 2.8 GHz P4 hyperthreaded (overclocked at 3.08 GHz), 800 MHz FSB, 1 GB of DDR 3200 RAM, Asus mainboard, new DVD burner, running XP pro, one 250 GB drive, one 80 GB drive, one 60 GB drive. I like it. I can FINALLY do video production without compromise. My LAST machine was supposed to do it, but I had constant problems or restrictions. I'm very happy about the capabilities of my new system. Also got Adobe Premiere Pro from work thanks to a special video project they asked me to do, and it's a nice improvement over the previous version(s).
I'm a bit pissed off about the new I-Pass lane at the Touhy toll plaza on the outbound Kennedy. What they did was create a new traffic backup! They extended the I-Pass lane for about a mile, after which it ends, merging with the existing lanes. Well, naturally, you know Chicago drivers, they stay in that lane until the bitter end, which slows traffic to a crawl where it merges. So now I have an extra traffic delay every morning where once there was usually no problem. I WISH MORE PEOPLE WOULD GET I-PASS. It WOULD speed things up for everyone.
(back from meeting)
Well, that was a bit interesting. This was an all-staff meeting with the College president Dr. Breuder. He said they're planning on gauging community support for turning Harper into a 4-year college with residences. Frankly, I've heard that rumor since I started in 1984, and I still don't think it will happen...but Dr. Breuder DID turn a 2-year school into a 4-year school (the first such conversion ever, I think, but I could be wrong) in Pennsylvania before he came here, so I expect he'll be pushing for it. He's still boss until July 2006, he's got time.