little lost robot

Okay, lemme ask you all this simple question: Do you tip when you go to Sonic? When I first moved here, Marla told me, “Hell no, you don’t tip them.” However, I felt guilty and did anyway. I guess my reasoning was that they were bringing my food to me so they must be like a waiter. But over the past few years, I’ve pretty much given up on it. My wife says, “Well, do you usually tip other fast food people?” and that makes sense to me.

Tonight we went to Sonic and I started up the, “Do you think I need to tip them?” conversation. We were on the fence about it (but had a buck in hand), yet I opted not to when the server came out and couldn’t read our order back to us from the receipt. It was really weird. It’s not like we really cared if she read back our order or not, but when she couldn’t and gave up, my tipping fever had broke. Later when she brought us extra ketchups, Kyann said, “Oh. She totally expected a tip.”

So now that I think she expected one, it makes me wonder if we should’ve. When I go to a normal restaurant, I usually tip rather decently (20%) - it’s become automatic, all this tipping. I’ll dump a dollar in the jar at Starbucks when I have one. But Sonic? No idea. It’s not like it’s a big deal or anything. I’m not a cheapskate. It just makes me wonder.

I’ve been busy lately, helping train up our small army of high school VJ reporters for football season - “sideline reporters”, we’re calling them. Of course, high schoolers are video sponges these days, with all their YouTubin’ and Facebookin’, so it’s actually been rather smooth going.

Today, I went out with one of our SLRs as she shot a practice segments about town. We went out to the park, and she ran around on the playground getting video and interviews with kids. I sat on the benches nearby with the adults, occasionally chatting about our youngsters. “Which one is yours?” I’d point to my little VJ reporter proudly, “she’s 4 hours old, that one. We’re so proud of her.”

Anyway, I’m getting kinda excited about my station/company’s new endeavor and I can’t wait to see what the fledgling reporters come up with. The hardest thing about the whole process was learning the video editing software - after spending most of my career becoming an AVID master, it’s kinda frustrating to learn a $79 over-the-counter editing program that’s completely counter-intuitive. But there’s people smiling on the back of the box who look like they’re enjoying it, so I’m gonna give it another shot.

Today is a sad day at work, as I bid farewell to my intern, Dani. And by “my intern”, I mean the intern that I sorta co-opted and began having work for me on all my various projects. She was my most favorite of all our interns (ever), and didn’t object too much to having to walk around holding my turned-out pocket - something I learned from the inmates in the first season of Prison Break.

I know…I know…I’ve written some stuff in the past about how interns annoy me, but I’ll look back fondly of memories of Dani assisting me with my “click” segments. She was extraordinary in her roles as “girl with cell phone” [video] and “female co-worker on photo” [video]. Did I mention that I make interns act? Anyway, I’ll miss that intern - she was a good one. She even got me a card. Thanks, D.

Not much to report here from LLR headquarters this afternoon. I finished the Harry Potter book in just over a day, and was mostly satisfied with it (though, I could’ve done without the epilogue). It reminded me a lot of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer season 5 finale (a watermark that Melinda and I judge finales by) because of all the surprise cameos of people and props.

Right now I’m geeking out watching the CNN / YouTube debate and keeping up with the HuffPo liveblog on my laptop. The show has been pretty awesome, but the quirkier YouTube videos are starting to wear on my nerves - for some reason it makes me think of the “funny” short films on Fox’s On the Lot that kinda annoyed me. Still, it’s been my favorite debate thus far. Although, I think they should have a Twitter debate next. 140 characters to submit a question or answer - now THAT would be crazy.

My pal, Melinda sent me this video and by doign so…BLEW MY MIND! I have no idea how long it’s been around, but it’s an instant classic as far as I’m concerned.

I need to hit the interweb and find out more about how this video even happened. It’s as mind boggling as it is rad. I imagine this being like a plot from an eighties movie, and the inmates come up with this dance routine as a way to help save the the Summer Breakdance Academy. That, or the warden is just really twisted and has them put on humiliating performances - and them emails them to other prison wardens as a way to show off.

Whatever the scenario, I love it.
Also, I would’ve loved to see this on an episode of Oz.

In keeping with tradition: every time a new Harry Potter book comes out, I post these photos of Hasser and I in our wizard outfits. (Of these I will not ask for a caption.)

I’m going to get my book at midnight, if only becuase I have to work on Saturday and don’t know when I’ll get around to it. Also, wearing my Harry Potter costume past tomorrow might start getting creepy. More creepy. Whatever. Hopefully, I’ll get to be on Potter patrol again like last time around.
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In my video blog segment this week I ended with a weird, multiple JL’s scene, which came out looking more realistic than I thought it would (so much in fact, that I took out the third me to make it less creepy).

Anyway, I thought it’d be the perfect photo for a little caption contest (of which there will be no actual prize). I’ll start:

I wish that everyday work assignments came with unlockable achievement points. For those who don’t have Xbox 360 or Windows Live, I’ll explain: in order to make video games more interesting, developers offer virtual merit badges for stuff like killing hundreds of villains or doing radical skate moves.

Today I unlocked a pretty kick-ass achievement point at work. We were shooting a story on the public bus route, and I didn’t have an extra blu-ray disc with me. I was down to my last three minutes of available footage (with at least 20 more minutes of shooting left to go). Luckily, the bus route we were on actually crossed over the one we started at, putting me really close to my news SUV. At one point, my reporter and I convinced the driver to momentarily stop and let me make a mad dash to get another disc.

The bus ground to a halt. I yelled to everyone onboard, “I just need 15 seconds!” and jumped out the back door. I proceeded to run my ass off down the street, cracked open the trunk, and snatched a new disc. I made it back onto the bus with two seconds to spare (the passengers were counting out loud). Bam! Achievement unlocked: photog supergrab!

I had a bunch of surprises this afternoon, and I’ll start with the biggest first. Okay, here’s goes: longtime WYFF News Director Andy Still (my boss) announced his upcoming retirement at this afternoon’s employee meeting.

It was kinda surreal. The meeting started with one of our meteorologists lobbing hacky sacks and a nerf softball around the room - which hit me in the face, I might add - and then ended on this weird downer-vibe. We all got our “thanks for coming to the meeting” Klondike bars afterwards, but they just weren’t as sweet. Anyway, it seems like just yesterday I was making a techno mix CD for my boss…

In other (less interesting news): I just noticed that a recent iTunes update modified how the artist list is viewed in my iTunes library. The artists with number names are no longer first (meaning that 50 Cent is now near the bottom of the list). What does all this mean? Well, now when my iPod accidentally fires off the first song in the cue, it is no longer 112’s “Only You (Bad Boy Remix)”, but rather “Take on me” by A-ha. It’s not like the first song was all that great before, but now….kill me.