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October 31, 2004

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween to all! Kinda...

Halloween just isn't the same event that it was when I was young. I've overheard from many different sources how frustrating Halloween is these days, which I agree with:

1. Each city or township decides which day Halloween will OFFICIALLY be observed. This year, some places chose to do Halloween on Saturday instead of Sunday. Why this is is just beyond me. When I was little, Halloween was always on Halloween. I actually saw my brother pondering yesterday if it was the night to go trick-or-treating or not on Saturday.

2. Trick-or-treating hours used to be unlimited when I was a kid. You went until you couldn't go any longer. I recall being out till past 10pm still collecting goodies from neighborhoods that weren't even my own. Today, children are assigned a designated time, usually about 4 hours during daylight, to do all of their candy grabbing. Talk about something being absolutely no fun anymore ...

3. There's never any really good Halloween specials on TV anymore. It used to be that right after trick-or-treating, the kids could come in and watch some great Halloween specials while going through their loot. These days, it seems that the specials air days beforehand and never really get into the spirit of Halloween as is. When I was younger, I would come in after an exhausting night of candy collecting and turn on Disney to watch their "scary" cartoons.

... I guess I still wish the good ol' days were here. I'm sure I'm not alone in this wishful thinking either.

Posted by ed at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)

October 29, 2004

o/~ FFXI is back ... back again ... Fedora's back, tell a friend o/~

I finally decided to get back into Final Fantasy XI after many many months of not playing.

Some may recall that I got out of the game for two main reasons:

1. I couldn't find my niche in the game.
2. Amanda was becoming addicted and needed to be pulled away.

Here's how I found the solutions to both of these problems.

Solution #1:
I've discovered that I've been really playing this game wrong all along. I should've never chosen an elven character and been a RDM. The combination just isn't there. However, since my Fedora character is already built up considerably, I decided that I should work on some other areas instead. I've dropped being a RDM and am now concentrating on being a WAR instead. This was the class that I should've been from the start, but I knew nothing about the game and how everything works. Now I have a better understanding and I'm doing well as a result. I started out playing last Tuesday, and I'm hoping to be able to reach level 10 before the end of the weekend.

In addition, I've decided that crafting just isn't the way to go right now. It's way too expensive to do, and I just don't have the gil for it. I would rather use the gil that I currently have to buy good weapons and armor to help me progress further into the game than what I was beforehand.

Since I'm not worrying about crafting, I've also decided to give up on gardening as well. I've been trying to figure out how in the hell to remove the damn flower pots from my Mog house, but I have only been able to successfully remove one of them thus far. It's not giving me the option to remove any of the others, even though there's absolutely nothing in the plants or anything that could be keeping me from putting them into inventory. I'm just confused.

Solution #2:
Amanda and I came to a mutual agreement that she could no longer play FFXI. She has an addictive personality, and becomes waaaay too involved with the things that she likes. To give you an idea of how bad it was ... this game almost broke up our relationship of (at the time) 4 and a half years. OVER A GAME, can you believe it? Recently, Amanda encouraged me to get back on the game and enjoy myself. She's been way too busy working and going to school to even worry about playing a video game. She still has an interest, which is OK. She stops by the computer and asks me how I'm doing every once in a while, and I tell her what I'm currently doing.

Anyhow ... Kyle had also recently encouraged me to get back into the game. I've been wanting to do so for a while, and since I got problems 1 and 2 figured out, I figured that it may be safe to venture back into Vanadel once again. Kyle sent me a bit of gil to get myself started again (thanks Kyle) and I've been working on leveling since. In addition, Kyle has been offering some good advice from time to time to help me play my game better (thanks again, Kyle).

So, here's to beginning the adventure again. Wish me luck.

Posted by ed at 03:22 PM | Comments (0)

Elections and voter registration

It's only 4 days before election time, and it can't get here soon enough.

Kyle and I have finally gotten the last pieces put in place in the studio for election night. We put in all new cabling and a new phone block. We're using our new 24-port switches that arrived this week to ensure that there will be no networking issues, in addition to putting two new laptops immediately to work entering election data.

Tests have been run. Graphics are in place. Phones are ringing. PCs are networked and ready for action. All we need are the people to use the equipment and the voters to make their choice. We're ready to go. I don't think that we can get any more prepared than what we are.

On an interesting note regarding elections, I checked out the Board of Elections Web site last Thursday only to discover that my voter registration didn't change when I updated my drivers license last year. I'm still registered to vote in Frankfort. What's really odd is that Amanda and I went to get our licenses done on the same day at the same time. I got mine done first, she followed after me. She's registered to vote in Jefferson County, and I'm not.

I sent an e-mail to the Board of Elections and got a phone call back within 10 minutes. It was a lady by the name of Susan, who appoligized for the oversight and explained what I could do to get myself registered. It seems that I will need to go to the Board of Elections on November 2nd and plead my case with some panel to get my right to vote in Jefferson County. If they deny it, I can appeal the decision with a judge.

The downside to all of this is that I'm going to be extremely busy all day on the 2nd. I've done enough of these elections to know that free time isn't something that comes in mass quantities on election days. So, I find out that I have to find time to make it down to the BoE sometime during this day and make my case. When am I going to find time to do this? Will this even be something that I will be able to do considering how important our election coverage is here at the station?

I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm going to have to make a difficult choice. I've never missed an opportunity to vote. I've always been a big believer that every single vote counts, and that only fools throw that opportunity away. However, given the cirumstances of this fucked up event, I may have to opt out of voting in the election this year unless something major happens that allows me the free time to head down to the BoE and spend a few hours waiting to make my case.

Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.

..................

Posted by ed at 03:09 PM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2004

Getting ready for elections

It's about that time ... when every American aged 18 years or older gets to do the one job that is expected of all Americans.

VOTE

I'm a huge believer in voting. I have voted in every single election since I was able to vote. I've never bothered with primaries however, as I never really considered them to be legit. Each party elects whomever they want in the primaries by throwing ungodly amounts of cash at their boy/girl. The people I would vote for in a primary never make it far ... with only a few exceptions that I can recall over the years.

Anyhow, I'm sick of elections. I never really put this much thought into elections until I started working at WHAS 2 years ago. Before then, I did research on the people that I liked and if they satisfied my ideal of a good political candidate, then I voted for them. These days, however, things have really changed. Working at a TV station and handling gazillions of elections every year, you see another side of things that most people don't get to see.

My favorite example of this thus far has been watching candidates record their spots for TV coverage. We've had many many many different political figures from both sides of the fence over a few weeks time come in and read their speeches and the like to get themselves elected. I've seen people edit their stuff on the fly to remove things like party affiliations from their script since they thought that aligning themselves either way may be a bad thing for them. It finally hit me after seeing this that it is truely all politics. Every single person trying to get elected says what they think the people want to hear ... regardless if they really feel that way or not. The most interesting thing is that this happens on both sides of the fence ... it's not just Democrats or Republicans that are doing it. One party is just as bad as the other.

Another way that I've been influenced over the past two years is the fact that I actually have to work election night. I work at a TV station and one of my primary duties during election time is to make sure that all of our election equpiment is working properly. This means making sure that the servers, clients, web interfaces, graphic interfaces, news wires, etc ... are all working properly. I know the dates of elections by heart months before anyone else is really thinking about them. I know where people are going to be and what job roles are going to be handled by any specific person. I also know that people are relying on us to deliver the best possible election coverage in Louisville. It's a pretty big job for anyone to handle. Thank goodness I have Kyle to back me up on it all.

Election night itself is a bit of a headache, due to the preparations required to get everything up and running properly. We need laptops, phones, monitors, cameras, mics, tables, networking equipment, etc etc etc ... and it takes forever to put up properly. It takes just as long to take the darn thing down too. Not to mention the people who're freaking out all day long, which only makes our job 10 times harder than what it has to be.

Keeping this in mind, I've been doing some preventive work this year to make sure everything goes as smoothly as humanly possible. I've created extention cables for phone lines. Kyle and I spent this afternoon rewiring the phone system in the studio and in the phone room. Tomorrow I will be setting up the studio for test run-throughs and Kyle will be concentrating on getting the graphic and wire clients in place for further testing. We're re-building and re-imaging laptops for election night. We're testing AP wires to make sure everything comes in correctly. We're testing graphics that the art department makes to ensure that everything looks good on the air. We're testing squeezebacks to ensure that everything squeezes properly on the air. We're testing phone connections to ensure that all of our rollover phones for the people who answer the lines work properly. We're making sure that the database for the election server is working properly and is accepting data correctly. Blah blah blah blah blah.

All this and two weeks left to go.

I want elections to be over so damn bad I can just taste it. It's like you're running a 10 mile marathon and you have only 1/2 mile left to go. You're worn out but you know you can make it to the finish line if you just keep up the pace and give it all you got.

Thank goodness I have a vacation coming up soon.

Posted by ed at 09:41 PM | Comments (2)

October 09, 2004

News from Cinncinatti

I'm currently in the city of Cinncinatti, visiting my best friend who has been at work since 3pm this afternoon. I came up last night after work, and it was a good trip. I met up with Steven and he and I had some drinks as we watched the Presidential debate. I don't recall too much of the debate, as I put down quite a few drinks in a matter of an hour. Nothing like taking the edge off.

Steven ended up passed out, and I got to meet two of Raphiel's close friends, Viviana and Franco. They are both so damn cool. Viviana and I talked for a bit after her and Raphiel came in, and soon afterwards Franco showed up. We all sat around and shot the shit for a bit until Viviana had to go home.

Today, I've spent the vast majority with Raphiel and Franco. It's been a great experience, as I've never really had an opportunity to really sit down and spend any real time with Raphiel. Franco, as I've come to find out, is awesome, and he and I have been chatting about all kinds of things all day long. I should've done this a long time ago, but things have kept me from doing it. I'm glad that I just decided to go and make the trip this weekend.

I'm sitting here wondering what we're going to be doing tonight. Raphiel is on the phone with Steven, who's apparently finally on his way home. Franco has gone to some girl's house who I didn't quite catch the name of. I'm sitting here writing in my blog while I'm watching Fallen in HD on Raphiel's nice flat screen plasma TV. It's been a rather lazy day. I'm not complaining. I haven't worried about anything all damn day long.

I miss Amanda tho. While it's good to get away from everything this weekend, I miss my honey terribly. I don't like sleeping in a bed without her. I wondered earlier if she is having a good day at work ... and as it's now 7:45pm, I'm wondering exactly how busy she is. I hope that it's a good and busy night and that she brings home a massive amount of tips this evening.

Oh well. I think I've finished ranting for this evening. I'm outta here.

Posted by ed at 07:25 PM | Comments (0)