Who Ya Gonna Call?

I have belonged to Linkedin for the past 3 or so years.

There was a time when my password was not allowing me into my account. I had no idea why. So being I am a type of person who feels this is something I should be proactive about, I went looking for a phone number to contact them. No such thing seems to exist on their web pages. Say what, I said? I have no way to reach someone to get into my account (which in the case of Linkedin, is my professional resume). It's not like this is Facebook, where it really means nothing. This is something that people look at when they are thinking of hiring you and as such, needs to occasionally be updated.

A few days later, my password worked, just as mysteriously as they had not worked days before. I had had no successful contact with this web company, so it was not caused by anything I did. I think they probably just had a glitch that eventually got fixed. It scares me though, when I think about a time in the future, where I may again have reason to get in touch.
A year or so passes and I read this article and now the reason comes clear. You can read it HERE.

So after I read this article (and hopefully you did, too). I find out that this was not just an isolated case. These companies do not want to have to deal with the public and so they just don't.

Is this the final "Triumph of the Nerds"? They make billions of dollars off of us all and they really don't care that you need to contact them via a phone? Email or nothing, is their way of life.

Trust me, I may not like to but when there are calls that come my way from viewers, I deal with them, or try to forward them to people who can help them. That is the right thing to do. A viewer doesn't see our signal in Victorville. Give the viewer the phone number of the man who is in charge of the translator in that area. Why are we airing the wrong episode of a series? Research the problem and if needed, make corrections.
As a matter of fact, there was a point in time, early in my career, that this was my job. It wasn't always pleasant, but necessary. I fixed thousands of viewers problems, over that year. I dealt with the money side of the business and being able to get a live operator, was critical to our viewers who paid my salary!

It's as simple as that. Now if only I can convice Linkedin. :-)

The End Of A Monsoon Weather Day

This was the sunset on last Thursday night.

The day began with water on the sidewalks, cars and grass and ended this way.
In between these two things, it was hot and HUMID!
I am sure some of the monsoon weather, went into this sunset. It "almost" made me glad for the humidity. Note the almost. :-)

I think it is outstanding. Enjoy.

A Night At The Bowl 2012

It was a last minute idea. Why not go to the Hollywood Bowl, to celebrate our Anniversary? That seems to be the thing that we like to do, once the weather gets hot. Music under the stars, up in the mountains...it can't be beat.

So I asked my boss for Wednesday off and we booked tickets for the first night that the Los Angeles Philharmonic were playing. Their program for the evening, was Beethoven's 9th. That sounded good to me and my Husband and so on Monday, he booked the tickets.

When we got there, we found a shady spot, right by the drop off point. We had our dinner with us and spent a pleasant half hour eating our sandwiches and drinking a half bottle of wine. Fortified, we started the climb to our seats. As it ended up, we had excellent seats! Over to the far right, which wasn't perfect for reading the screens at the end of the performance, but was right by the exits and bathroom. :-)

The conductor for the evening was Leonard Slatkin, along with the orchestra, the Los Angeles Master Chorale and 4 soloists. You can see the entire program at the end of this post.

The first act of the concert, were works by 3 female composers. The first one, Rewind, spoke the most to me. The work was inspired by analog editing and scoring. The feeling of watching the same piece of video, over and over and over again. The work builds, until the final few notes, when the theme of the piece is played backwards! Very cool! The British composer is only 32 years old, but definitely wise beyond her years. :-)

The second piece was put together with many little snippets of show tunes and orchestral things that you would immediately recognize. It was interesting and not boring.

The third piece was composed by the Conductor's wife and it was the furthest "out there".
I remember thinking of my Mother In Law, who did not like "Long Hair" Classical Music" (whatever that means). It was fine, but definitely different.

After the Intermission, came the 3 movements of Beethoven's 9th. The first movement was fine, lots of stuff going on. The second movement is totally the music that the old NBC show "The Huntley Brinkley Report" used as its music, so it was totally enjoyable. The third movement gets very quiet and I found myself starting to crash a little. Ack, I knew what was coming, so I persevered and then there it was, Ode To Joy! The end of the piece. With the 4 soloists singing and the LA Master Chorale in the back singing, it was masterful.

My one negative was the video that they showed during the final movement of Beethoven. It was lots of city shots with ivy growing up the buildings, bridges and stuff. Totally weird and personally, I did not feel the images matched the words of Ode to Joy. But whatever.

Minus, that one thing, it was a worth the time and money spent. Especially Ode to Joy. What an end to the evening!

Our seat location worked for us and we got seats on the first bus going down the hill, to Hollywood/Highland. Yay team!

A couple of reviews:

The Los Angeles Times

The Jewish Journal

Tuesday Classics 1

Los Angeles Philharmonic

Leonard Slatkin, conductor

Herman Kolgen, video artist

Rachel Willis-Sørensen, soprano

Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano

Gordon Gietz, tenor

Christian van Horn, bass

Los Angeles Master Chorale, Grant Gershon, music director

Anna Clyne Rewind

Anne LeBaron American Icons

Cindy McTee Tempus Fugit

Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 9, w/video (collaboration with Getty)

Happy Anniversary...Happy Anniversary! (2012)

Here it is, once again. Our Anniversary has arrived.

We have reached 32 years married. Life goes on and yeah, I feel those years more and more as the years pass.

In some ways, the past few years have become harder, though in other ways, better.

The not working weighs heavy on my Husband and I keep hoping he finally does come to peace with that.

In good things, we do have some time to occasionally take a few days off together and maybe we might do something this week, to celebrate. I just need to clear it with my boss... :-)

No matter what, it has still been a fun ride and I appreciate the caring and love you show me, every day.

Happy Anniversary my Husband, my friend.

Update: Check back tomorrow, for a review of our evening at the Hollywood Bowl.

White House Diary

This is another book that I got when Tavis Smiley left our lot, back in December of last year. If you remember back in January, I wrote about MTV first 10 Years and that was one of the books that I picked up from him. also.

It has taken me months to read, especially since I did not want to take it with me when we left on our vacation...yes, it's that big. :-)
It is called White House Diary and is written by Jimmy Carter.

Of all the people who Jimmy listened to, it was Richard Nixon who suggested to him that each day he write a little something about what went on during his day. His thoughts and feelings on subjects, people and situations. From what he mentions, the Diary of his 4 years in office turned out to be a total of 21 books. For the 30th Anniversary of his leaving the presidency, he went back to those 21 books and basically used many entries as written. He chose entries about important subjects, or things that showed off the life of the President and the first family. The Middle East Peace negotiations (The Camp David Accords), the Iran Hostage Situation, 3 Mile Island and of course, the 1980 Presidential Election.

I found the book to be enlightening on so many fronts. My opinion of Jimmy Carter, as so many had at the time, was of a Southern Peanut farmer and not very bright. As you can see in the book, he was an incredibly intelligent person, who led this Country admirably. How was the true President, so different from the one we thought was in the White House?

From what is hinted at in the book, the Press never liked him and reported things the way they wanted to, which was not necessarily the truth. The parallels between his presidency and the current Presidential race going on right now, can't be overlooked. Just look at the Health Care ruling and how something for the people of this Country, has become a rallying point for the opposing party. Some things just don't change.

It took forever to read, but I do ultimately recommend this book.

Happy One Year Anniversary!

They said it they wouldn't make it to a year... :-)

In spite of that, here we are, one year later and my Marine "son" and his wife celebrated their Anniversary with a cruise on the Hornblower, out of San Diego. My family did that cruise, back in 1996 and totally enjoyed it, so I was quite happy to hear they chose that as their celebration dinner. I hope they enjoyed it.

It takes a lot to make a marriage and things do not always go as planned, but they did persevere and made it to their first big milestone.

Good luck to them both...and many more.

The Willamette River In Downtown Portland

My Water Post For Today.

It was raining hard, in Frisco...uh, I mean Portland. :-)

In spite of that fact, my Husband and I braved a walk on the Steel Bridge, to cross to the other side of the Willamette River.

Amazingly, somewhere along the way, it actually did stop raining, but at this moment, it was still drizzling. The river was running decently high and it was a pleasure to see, with not one, but two bridges off in the distance. For any who care, that would be the Broadway Bridge leading to the Lloyd District (where we were staying) and the Fremont Bridge, which connects to the I-5 which brings you to Washington State if you head north, or Oregon when, taking it to the south.

Yes, the water is gray...but I like the photo anyway.

I hope you do, too.

High Speed Rail Coming To California?

The big transportation news for this week, was the California Legislature approving the first money needed to start the High Speed Rail project. It is the track that will eventually (God willing) travel from the San Francisco Bay Area, to Los Angeles and places south. In my house, at least, all three of us agree that this is the way to go and we applaud the action.

It's a gamble, since the first part of the project is building the San Joaquin Valley section of the project. The good thing about that area, is that it is almost totally flat and so it will cost a lot less to build then the sections toward the ends, Altamont Pass in the San Francisco Bay Area (seen in the photo) and the Tehachapi Mountains coming toward the Los Angeles area.

As my son pointed out, each phase of construction will be utilized by Amtrak, which currently serves the entire state. In our area, we currently have to take a bus from Downtown LA, to get up to the train connection in Bakersfield, which brings us up to the Central Valley and Sacramento. Opening it in phases, will allow our citizens to get something for the money spent. Our current system can improve, over the course of the project...and that is good for California. So it is not like we have to wait 20 years, to take the first ride on those tracks.

I don't know if I will live to ride on it in its completed form, but I am hoping my son does someday.

Disembodied Head

You may ask, what the heck is this a photo of and why is that disembodied head sitting there in the middle of it?

Good questions and I had a similar one, when I saw her for the first time, sitting not 20 feet from where I sit...but let's start at the beginning.

We have 3 offices in our open suite area. One belongs to my boss, one belongs to the VP of Programming...and then there is a 3rd one. It was originally set aside for future growth, but then when a small amount of money was identified, they decided to trick out the office and make it a Flash Studio, where if something happened and we wanted to go live in a hurry, we could do so. We used to do that by setting up a camera in one of our control rooms, but this way, we would be clear of REAL production.

At first it was just an empty room...but one day, there she was. Disembodied Head, staring at me, as I walked by the door. So I went around to the people who sit closer to the room, then I do. None of them had any idea what I was talking about and it was funny to watch when these same people would walk by her, for the first time. :-)

Now days, she is just a part of the furniture, helping set things up, either in the Flash Studio, or in Stage B (the Green Screen Room). We have been known to insult her frosted hair, but all in all, she beats the cardboard face they also use for set up.

My work life, never truly dull.

If you want to see the Flash Studio in action, here it is on the PBS Newshour, back in June. Remembering Rodney King, with Patt Morrison, live from Los Angeles.

It went on the air, with almost no notice. I was majorly impressed we could do this, though why they didn't key that this was Burbank, I will never know. LOL

Remembering Clete Roberts

We have been airing a nostalgia program during our afternoon pledge drive. Since the move to Burbank, I have been monitoring the station and the closed captions, so I do occasionally glance over, to see how things are doing on our air. The nostalgia show (there are actually two of them) is called "Things that aren't here anymore", with the follow up "More things that aren't here anymore". We usually air the two shows, back to back and so right at around 3:10PM in the afternoon (during More Things), I glance up and see a segment on a reporter I wrote about HERE.

As I mentioned in the post from my blog, in my far flung past (January of 1982 to be exact), I was laid off from KCET. During that 4 month period, I got hired by our news department as a Production Assistant. It was a temp job and when I was offered the job I got laid off from in May, I took it back...but never forgot how much I loved production. As it ended up, that was a good decision, because the news show itself, did not make it past the June fiscal year. The show was called KCET Newsbeat with Clete Roberts and Clete, in his last broadcast job, led a team of reporters who went out and taped stories and interviewed people about the issues of the day. We sometimes shot more then one show and in between tapings, he would sit in the chair by my desk and tell all sorts of stories about a career that I hardly knew anything about. Well, the nostalgia show goes into his career a bit more, showing off photos, from the many eras of Clete.

As I watch the show, I am astounded at how young and (in the case of this 2nd photo) almost actor like, he was. Doesn't he look just a bit like Clark Gable in this photo?

For such a short period of my professional life, it cast a huge shadow and I remember the time with an incredible amount of fondness. I am sure he would approve. Clete died 2 years later, in 1984 and I was one of the people who made the trek to his funeral. His flying friends, did a fly over and I was so touched when they did it. You could almost feel that Clete was up there with his friends, taking one last trip in the plane.

This is the way he always signed off our show and I use it now to end this blog post.

This is Clete Roberts.
For my colleagues and for myself, I thank you, I bid you goodnight.

The Fourth From The Pointe

My Husband and I went to visit our family in North Hollywood, for the 4th. We had a nice dinner together and then drove over to The Pointe, the place where I work, to see what we could see, from the 5th floor of my building.

It was 9PM and suddenly, the show we expected began. It was from the top of the parking structure in the midst of CBS Radford, in Studio City. But wait, there's more...there were 2 other shows that began at 9PM, too. So when Radford got slow, as most displays do, we would watch one of the others. We think one show may have been Van Nuys and the other may have been in Burbank...but that is our best guess.

It wasn't spectacular, but here is one image from the Radford show. For all intents and purposes, it looked to us like the Warner Brother's show, since it was right in the midst of all those buildings I have highlighted in other posts. Look directly down from the firework and you can see the tiny lit WB symbol. :-)

There was no real traffic, so the trip over was easy and all in all, it worked for us. My brother-in-law got the $25 cent tour and then we watched the show.

On a related note. The moment I walked into the building, the Master Control Operator relayed a problem to me. I told him he did well and we will pick up the ball and deal with it tomorrow. Sigh...it just never stops.

I hope you had a good Fourth and God Bless America.

Happy Fourth Of July 2012

Happy Fourth Of July to my readers who live in America.

This photo was taken just before Memorial Day, but I felt it was just as appropriate for today.

This is Downtown St. Paul Minnesota's Wabasha Street Bridge and it is quite the cool thing. Under this bridge is an island that is in the middle of the Mississippi River. The blue thing on the left side, is a staircase that leads down to this island. As you can see, it is quite a large bridge, considering it crosses the Mississippi at a very upstream location. It took a lot of flags to correctly display them.

I thought they looked great and was very impressed.

No matter where you are, enjoy the day.

A Walk To The Starbucks

Since we discussed the Ventura Freeway the other day, I started taking photos, while I walked to my friendly neighborhood Starbucks yesterday.

Here we are at the beginning of the journey, right across the street from The Pointe. Note the power lines...yes, they are very hard to miss. As a matter of fact, they dominate the entire western side of the Burbank area, running diagonal from here until they cross the Hollywood Freeway by the intersection with the I-5. They continue past that point, but since I normally don't go that way, we will just discuss them in my "local" area. By the way, these are the same power lines I would go under when I got off the I-5 at Los Feliz. This was the exit, to get to Sunset Blvd and my old workplace...small world. :-)

I then walk in front of the entire old NBC lot. Now days, just the Tonight Show happens, over on Bob Hope Drive, or the KNBC News happens in one of the buildings I pass on my way. That is what I took a photo of, the KNBC entrance, over at the corner of Alameda and Olive. One day on a Starbucks run, I bumped into a former KCETer, Toni Guinyard. Do click on her name to see what she does now days. She dragged me into this very building, to catch up with KCET and the old guard.
I got a laugh out of it and so did she.
Keen eyes can see me taking the photo over on the far right.

I then turn onto California Street, which is the far end of the NBC lot and pass Stages 2 and 4 and Guest Relations. At that point, it is time to cross over the Ventura Freeway.
Here is the view of the freeway looking toward the West and the Pass Avenue exit. That is Warner Music Group, over on the right. Each part of the building highlights a different division of the Group, such at Atlantic Records, Rhino Records, Warner Brothers Music, etc.
They always hightlight some groups newest recording. Of course, most of the time I have no clue who they are. lol

Over on the left side of the Ventura Freeway is my destination for today. The Warner Brothers building with the Starbucks in it. Yes, I was that desperate for a Mocha Frap Light. :-)

The funny thing is that not only did the guard recognize me and waved me through, the girl at the Starbucks asked if I was back to take the "Real" tour of Warner Brothers. She remembered me from the tour day. Wow!

I told her that I work just down the block from where we were standing right then and that chances are she will see me again sometime.

As I mentioned before, I have to be really desperate to buy from that Starbucks, because it costs about 75 cents more then at any other Starbucks. Seriously, they take major advantage of the poor tourists who are waiting for their tour to begin. I feel for them.

That's it, the end of the tour and yes, another reason to sing Ventura Highway. :-)

Sunset North Dakota

My Water Post For Today.

We had just passed over from Montana, when the sun set. I didn't expect anything worth talking about, but amazingly, we passed some water and there you go. A beautiful North Dakota sunset. It is the western side of the state, somewhere between Williston and Minot. Thank goodness, I tried to photograph as many stations along the journey, or I would have no idea where a photo was taken. :-)

I was glad that I was looking out the window at the time, cause it would have been so easy to miss.

I hope you enjoy.

Disney Houses

I see these houses every day, as the bus drives me to my workplace.

They are on Hollywood Way, just before you get to the Ventura Freeway. As a matter of fact, they are right around the Warner Ranch area. Many of them have been razed to put in bigger living dwellings (see the far right of the first photo), but I think they are super, just the way they are.

From what I can tell, they are called the Seven Dwarf houses, or The Disney Houses. Built around 1950 by someone named Kenneth Worthen, they are whimsical homes, with strange windows that lean inward (see the far right of the second photo), and fireplaces that are weirdly shaped. They are only 800 square feet inside and have 2 bedrooms and 1 bath. They are on a tiny lot, as you can see and they currently go for around the mid 300 thousands. Very cheap for a home in Burbank's Media District.

You can see a better view of a bigger one that was obviously designed by the same person, HERE.

My apologies for the less then steller photos.
I was in a moving bus at the time I took them and some car had the NERVE to pass the bus, while I took the photo. :-)