Monday and a half

The problem with normal weekends is that you come back Monday morning to face all of the crud that's accumulated over since Friday. The problem with holiday weekends is that Tuesday becomes a more intense version of Monday. Worse, people tend to forget that it's the first workday in the week, and schedule all kinds of stuff for the time you need to dig yourself out of the three-day hole.

Today we have (another) meeting to demo non-linear news editing equipment. We've been through this once already, but the vendor asked for a "do-over" because they didn't do a very good job selling their stuff the first time. Amazingly, we went along with this, even though their competitor's system is clearly superior and less expensive. We're just too nice.

And in about ten minutes some folks from New Jersey show up to verify our inventory of news microwave equipment. This is part of the Sprint / Nextel deal wherein they get part of the 2GHz broadcast auxilary band in exchange for replacing everyone's existing equipment. The inspectors will be taking snapshots and making sure our lists are legitimate. Today it's the studio and live trucks; tomorrow they climb the tower. At 900 feet, better them than me.

I'm still gritting my teeth over an email one of our production folks sent out Sunday about the audio console. It seems that he had a momentary problem with one of the channels and emailed everyone in his own department, but didn't bother to notify engineering, which is actually responsible for fixing it. One of his co-workers finally passed his note along to us yesterday evening with the observation that this is the same problem they have been having with another channel. It was my welcome back this morning.

The justification for not notifying engineering was threefold: first, it wouldn't get fixed anyway; second, he doesn't know how to send a trouble report; third, he didn't want to step on another production staffer's toes. My reply included the reminder that we aren't psychic and can't fix what we don't know is broken, simple directions for the use of paper and pencil, and an observation about whose toes he should be concerned about: the other people who need to use this equipment.

While not psychic, I can predict with remarkable accuracy what's going to happen: we'll get flooded with the most miniscule equipment complaints for a while (some of which blow smoke to cover operator errors and only waste our time), then things will go back to the way they were. "Oh, I didn't write it up... it's been like that for months, everyone knows about it." Then time for another round of dope slaps.

I've finished my lunch; now back to Monday, already in progress.