little lost robot

Last night - for the sake of science - I decided to install the newly minted Windows Vista on my home computer. Going into this, I knew there was going to be some hardware and software issues, but I thought it’d be fun to try anyway.

I downloaded all my important drivers and installed them to a USB backup, and then I ran one of those “we’ll tell you if your computer is ready for Vista” programs on my system. I figured that my desktop would get a glowing review, but it came up short in the “you can run Vista at its full potential” benchmark. Although it was suspicious that it was my video card vendor provided the scan and then told me the only thing I needed was a new video card. They said that my video card would be an issue because it wasn’t a 256mb card - which was an obvious glitch, considering that I have a 512mb card (one model higher than the one they recommended).

Anyway, I did 45 minutes of prep time before getting to actually getting to work. I uninstalled the always-problematic McAffee anti-virus software and was ready to go. From there I watched my computer flash warm, focus group-tested pastel backgrounds on the screen as it routinely rebooted over the course of two hours.

When the install was complete, I reinstalled the crucial drivers and then marveled at how many of my favorite programs were actually Vista ready - and was in disbelief at a few of them that weren’t. Luckily, there’s a feature that lets certain programs run as if it were still on XP (handy!).

I wish I could give a better review of Vista, but the actual installation took so long that I haven’t yet had a chance to mess around with it - although I suspect it’ll be really exciting for a few days and then I’ll realize that it’s just another operating system and move on to my next infatuation.

[I shot the Vista installation process for my weekly “Click on JL” segment [video link], in case you skipped to the bottom of this post and would rather just watch everything I just wrote instead.]

Would this be a good example of irony?

Gordon and I were about to do a live shot in front of the bus station, when a half-dozen people wandered by, each of them saying, “You’re shooting the wrong bus! You gotta go down the block!” Well, as soon as we finished up our live remote, we hustled down the street and came across this scene: city bus vs. sedan.

And on top of all of this, we were doing a story about the bus system’s financial troubles, so it’d suck if their insurance premiums went up as well.

Two Spanish language related items of note on this Sunday evening ( or should I say “tarde de domingo”?).

1. My resolution to learn Spanish this year has went mostly unfulfilled over the past 28 days. However, today I discovered the “Spanish word of the day” feature on dictionary.com. You get a new word each day via email. Odelay!

2. The movie Spanglish is one of the five films that HBO/Cinemax runs about fifteen times a week (it’s the new Love Actually). Somehow I get sucked into watching it every time, yet it’s always the same middle part of the movie. Anyway, today I ended up watching it on the Spanish lanuage HBO, so the whole move was in Espanol - which was messed up. Basically, the movie is about a weird family that hires a maid who only speaks Spanish - they can’t understand her and she can’t understand them. Well, with all of the characters now speaking Spanish, it probably wouldn’t make any sense why they don’t understand each other, right? I think when they dubbed it, they should’ve redubbed all the Spanish parts into English so that the story would still “translate” the same to a hispanic audience. /end of rant

Last week the assignment editor came into my edit bay, while I was slamming a story together for the 5pm newscast. He said, “What’s your number? I Have a call for you.” I begged him t take a message, and minute later he came back with an odd look on his face, “Umm…you’re supposed to call Lensliner’s father.” At this point, I still had to concentrate on my work, but was keep thinking about what on Earth this phone call was gonna be about.

I eventually got a hold of Dick, and he explained that he and Stewart (aka “Lenslinger”) were gonna be in the Charlotte area and wanted to see if I’d be interested in meeting up for dinner and drinks with some fellow photog bloggers.

So last night I cruised up to Charlotte and hung out with Lenslinger, his father Dick, Adam and Colonel Corn. We talked a lot of shop. Drank a lot of drinks. And had an all-around swell time actually talking in person, rather than having one line conversations in each other blog comments.

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Here’s a quick Vanguard update, for those of you who care. The game comes out officially on Tuesday, but Melinda and I have been able to play a few days early - due to our pre-release boxes.

I’m on the Florendyl server (RP preffered) and my main character is a halfling cleric named, Lux. If you’re gonna play Vanguard, look me up - we’ll go kill goblins together something.

Here’s the box(es) of NATAS Emmy entries that shipped out Friday. Even with doing all DVD entries this year, it still seemed rather bulky.

And on a side note: congratulations to Weaver, who just scored an Emmy in his region’s awards banquet last night.

Last week I threw a computer off the roof of the station for my “Click on JL” segment, but I never had a chance to chop together the outtakes. Finally, I got around to doing it…and here it is:

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Last night, half of the Upstate went insane after seeing some mysterious lights in the evening sky. The phone rang off the hook back at the station (luckily, I wasn’t there) and just about every other place someone who thinks they saw a UFO might call. Today the story (from our website) was on the front page of the Drudge Report.

Nigel and I did a follow-up story, and here is the [video link].

It was a long, weird day today. Here’s a quick run down into the events that shaped my day:

8:45 - Arrived at the station and watched a few minutes of the Academy Award nominations before heading out the door with my reporter, Myra. The last nomination I heard was for Jennifer Hudson, which was barely audible over Nigel’s overpowering approval as he shouted, “Oh yeah!”

9:00 - Downtown press conference to name finalists for chief of police. It was already my second press conference this week, but I was savoring every second of it because the moment it was over wed have to go to court.

9:20 - Hung out in the corner of a courtroom, doing everything I could to minimize my presence. We got to watch two preliminary hearings play out - one of them was a homicide case involving a deaf defendant and deaf victims. It was interesting having sign language interpreters in the room because both sides were unable to “whisper” amongst themselves without the other side (or spectators) knowing what they were saying The other case was interesting, but it’ll take too long to explain in any way that actually makes it sound interesting.

11:35 - Lunch. We headed over to Blimpie for “$2.50 Tuesday”. When we got back to the station I kept telling people about “$2.50 Tuesday” - I have no idea why. Maybe I thought I was being helpful. Today I learned how many people I work with don’t like eating stuff from a Blimpie attached to a gas station.

1:00 - Interview with the local police chief candidate in front of the “cop shop” (as we refer to it).

1:30 - Back at the station again. Loaded video onto the server and started to check my email, but was soon sent out the door for some spot news.

2:00 - Arrived at the scene of a “car vs. house” situation less than a mile away. The car totally demolished this guy’s iron railing on his porch, but stopped short of busting into the dining room. The guy that lives there gave me an interview and was unmoved by the incident, saying, “(sigh) this happens all the time here.”

2:40 - Got back to the station and started editing a bunch of stuff, leading up to the evening news. After my story was filed, I got caught-up on making Emmy entry DVDs.

6:00 - Spent the last part of my shift treating video - drawing mosaic tiles over teen-age girls faces on screen to conceal their identities (kinda like they do on select episodes of Cops).

And that’s my Tuesday!