I'm sorry I'm a terrible, terrible retard. It's just an excuse to get my word count up. So I hope you didn't actually waste time counting them out, because there certainly ARE one-hundred eleven 'blogger's right there.
Moving right along to the 'Terrible Occurrence'. I was asked by Nate at ECTV to program the broadcast computer to air a women's soccer game that had been taped earlier that day. They would run it over to me and I would go up the 7th floor, program the computer, then go down to the seventh floor and put the tape into the VTR. (Video Tape Recorder, for all I can tell, the exact same thing as a VCR). Sounds simple right?
Wrong.
They game ran over, so they were late getting it done, and so the guy who was bringing me the tape, Fred, didn't leave until about 7:30pm (This program is scheduled to air at 8pm. It took 20 minutes for him to arrive on the T. It was now about 7:50pm.
So we meet in the Ansin building (home of ECTV) and he hands me the tape. Here's the bad news. I'm not on the 'authorized list' to enter the building after hours. So I have to talk/argue with the guy for three minutes explaining WHY I need to get into the building right now. He finally relents and unlocks the elevator for me.
So I get to the 7th floor, swipe my access card and go inside. I log the information into the broadcast computer but something doesn't seem right with the totals. To keep this story brief, I will just say that it took almost 4-5 minutes to figure out what was wrong. Then I was going to go downstairs to the third floor to put the tape in. And I couldn't find the key in the desk. I found it pretty quickly and I hopped into the elevator. As I stepped of the elevator, something happened.
The burglar alarm went off.
To my credit, I remained very calm and said to myself, "Self: You have a job to do, and you haven't done anything wrong. Just get it done." So I marched to the broadcast operations suite, and put the tape into the deck. Now they had told me that it wasn't "quite" re-wound all the way. So I pressed rewind.
And nothing happened.
Mind you, the alarm is still wailing, and I have like a MINUTE left. And then I remembered something for ninth grade when I was trained on how to linear edit at Great Falls Television. The faceplate controls on these VTR decks will not work unless they are switched into LOCAL. The decks are all switched to 'REMOTE' so that the computer can remotely control them to air programming! So I toggled the switch and rewound the tape. (Alarm continues to wail) Everything thing looks good, and I go down to the third floor.
Then of course, a campus police officer showed up. Now, fortunately, I know these guys because I see them three times a day getting the key for my channel changing job. So I had to tell this whole story to them, and he had to file a report. Oh brother. Fortunately, I wasn't in trouble, and they said not to worry about it, that I just need to get my boss, Amy, to give me authorization to access that floor in the future. (Well, she was supposed to do that, but didn't).
So with a fast beating heart, I walked back to my dorm, went up to the third floor, and turned on the TV to the Emerson Channel. And I saw BLACK. Not good. Not good at all.
I called Nate, told him the story as I marched back to ECTV, thinking with dread at the idea that I may have to trigger the alarm again to fix the problem. Fortunately Nate told me that I could force the program (since I had remembered to switch the REMOTE/LOCAL switch back to REMOTE) from the 7th floor broadcast computer. AND FORTUNATELY there was a DIFFERENT guard there, who had NO IDEA about what had just occurred, so I got the 7th floor with no problems, and aired the programs successfully, albeit 20 minutes late.
I know that this was a long story, but it was a very very weird experience. I am proud of myself in a way for my courage in the face of such ridiculous circumstances.
A lot of other things happened yesterday, too. I did a bit of walking, because I walked down to Shaw's and back twice, once to go grocery shopping with Kendra, one of our RA's, and two, I was walking back from one of the buildings and I passed Ang, Rachel, and Kayleigh, who were going to get cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory. So I walked with them. But I didn't get cheesecake, instead I went to the Starbucks where Layne (she lives on my floor) works, and bought a 'venti' size Pumpkin Creme Based Frappachino (No coffee). I felt like a sellout ho, but I loved it.
So, yeah, my life is weird.
1 comment:
Wow. It must be a pain trying to work with a burgler alarm blaring at you. And you still manage to be bored enough to write out the word Blogger one-hunder-eleven times. Now THAT takes talent! Hmmm... I know what YOU need! A pop-up waffle!
~~Cathryn
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