Before I worked for a news media outlet, I had this habit of showing up in the media even when I wasn’t looking for attention.
Ok, not completely. Only in Rochester. There were no media of which to speak in Mississippi, and I didn’t spend enough time in Dallas or California to attract much attention.
But in Rochester, I was interviewed several times for the Democrat and Chronicle, and I showed up in a video ad for the local stadium because unusual hats attract photographers.
Tonight I was on WSKG-TV in Binghamton to help with their auction. They don’t do telethons. Instead, local merchants give them merchandise to auction off. So it takes a lot of volunteers to get those bids.
I interviewed these volunteers for brief 1-minute live cut-ins. I was myself. It worked out pretty well. I give myself a C. But only because I have met Carol Costello in person, and she gets an A+ for live TV. If not for her, I’d give myself a B.
I met a lot of interesting people and had a great time dominating the airwaves… for a minute at a time. I’ll be on again next week on Saturday night from 6 p.m. to midnight.
I found out why the ethernet in my hotel room didn’t work.
It was because the network device in my room was hooked up backwards.
Check this: there are two RJ-11 cables going into the network device. One is the cable they’re using for ethernet, and the other is the cable they use for the phone. Neither of them is labeled, but the phone will work regardless of whether the network device is connected properly.
So this morning, on a hunch, I swapped the cables and noticed the device’s network traffic indicator start to pulse.
To recap from yesterday, I also connected the RJ-45 port on the desk to the network device (it had been disconnected). So now I have corrected two network wiring problems for this hotel.
They ought to be paying me.
So I’m staying at this hotel, which I won’t name, but let’s just say it has a reputation for being really good. It’s near the place where Erin has come for corporate training.
The plan was that Erin would go to training all day, and I would lock myself in the hotel room with a programming book so I could learn PHP and MySQL well enough to make a simple, but elegant web app that makes my life much easier at work.
Except for 2 things:
1) Wireless Internet reception is poor at best. My signal strength indicator shows 1 bar out of 4 (which means either 1 to 25% strength or more likely, 20 to 39% - either way, it’s really poor. This morning I couldn’t start a connection at all, so I went out and bought a network cable at an office supply store. Surprise! Plugging into the desk’s network jack also doesn’t work. Why? Because the desk’s network jack is not connected to anything! Meanwhile, through the course of my investigations, I found two network cables that other travelers had left behind, too.
Today, the radio interference patterns make it so that if I want to work on my web app, I have to be away from the desk, which has the worst wireless reception in the area.
2) Did I mention that I can’t hear myself think?
There are renovations going on throughout the hotel. They like to start early (about 8:30 a.m.) and end about 3 p.m. My ceiling is vibrating because of all the power tools they’re using in the room directly above mine. Yikes.
Not many people get hotel rooms so they can stay in them, so I can’t blame them for doing the construction in the mornings and early afternoons. But darn it, it’s really hard to concentrate on coding when the walls are shaking.
A friend of mine who used to work with me is trying out for a reality show on Oxygen called Mo’Nique’s Fat Chance.
Peuple who want to be on the show can either attend one of the open casting calls or send a video. Patricia asked me to shoot and edit her audition tape. (duration 7:02, size 23.1 MB, requires QuickTime 7) Naturally, i put my heart and soul into it.
(Note to night owls: I started the upload on the file before going to bed, so don’t look for it until the upload is done, probably 4 a.m. eastern time, the way things are going.)
It’s got a few jump cuts in it, but I think it will be better than most of the tapes they recieve. I hope she makes it onto the show.
I am learning php and mySQL this week, because I have a killer web app in my head that would make my job easier. So I’m learning how to do it myself. It will do exactly what I need it to do, and nothing more. It will be elegant but not idiot-proof.
If I get this done, I will be so happy.