Saugus Coming Together In The Wake Of The Shooting

I go to work and almost forget it ever happened, but once I am back in my hometown, it all comes back.

It is a sad place right now. Obviously, it is all that residents can talk about at the moment.

The two who are still in the hospital are both doing well.

The shooter, on the other hand, was taken off life support last evening, so he has died.

This week volunteers are busily creating these ribbons, that stand for Saugus (blue) and mass killings (orange).

They are planning to give them out at the Sunday Vigil Service (across the street from the school), at Central Park.

I will be out of the area, so my Husband and I will not be attending...but our hearts will be with all who do.

Not A Good Day In Saugus

I was one of the first ones to see the information on the shooting at Saugus High School.

It is the school my son and his friends graduated from, so there are lots of memories there.

I belong to a Facebook group called Helicopters, Lights and Sirens, Oh, My! and it was the first post, on my Facebook feed, when we pulled out of the parking lot for our daily van commute. We had just reached the freeway. Maybe 7:40AM and I said, there are gun shots at Saugus High. Everyone was a Valencia parent, but within minutes, they were getting texts from their kids, telling us they were on Lock Down.

To say the least, it was a horrid commute for us.

As the day progressed, we ended up all over the International news. Very weird for me to see video from my hometown.

I am glad my Son lives in Michigan, but I feel for so many in this community right now.

Thanks go out to the first responders who were dropping off their children and instead, ran to help the situation. I am sure it would have been so much worse, if not for them.

2 dead and 4 wounded.

So sad.

A New Humidifier

Last year we bought a home humidifier, which you can read about HERE.

It was huge and really a pain to refill and when we serviced it, just before the cruise, we ended up burning up the motor.

I was not happy leaving the cat in the house, but we did the best we could to keep her safe. In other words, we moved it to the garage, where it still lives.

As you can imagine, I do not want this humidifier running in my house again.

We have waited the past 6 months, through the air conditioner season and once, again, it is time for heat in the house.

Thus, my mind starts thinking of another humidifier.

I did not want a 6 gallon one again and so I saw a 2 gallon one that looks like it does not take up a lot of room.

It was all of $59 at Costco...so I went for it.

The main thing I miss that the old one had, was a control that showed the amount of humidity in the house, at any time.

But I figure if it is not raining and the heat is on, it is probably a good time to run it.

We will see how it goes.

Disney +

Yesterday was the launch of Disney + Streaming service.

A major gamble by the Mouse House, to try to dethrone Netflix and other competitors.

I got over to the van pick up point in the evening and this is what I found.

The dwarfs are all lit up in beautiful colors, nothing like the lights that color them during the holiday season.

Glad I got to see this.

It was a beautiful sight.

What PMG SoCal Traffic Does

At our All Staff meeting last month, we had to discuss what it is that we do, on a poster.

As it ended up, this is what we decided to profile.

We have 6 channels between us and the ultimate challenge is going to be bringing them all together (and moving forward), with this combined entity.

Right now PBS Socal is merged into the Joint Master Control database, so combining our traffic systems is not going to happen in the short tern.

Glad I won't be there for that fun. :-)

My favorite part of the poster is the fun fact we had to come up with, that you can see down at the bottom of the poster.
"Traffic is not just what is happening on the 405, we have been handling metadata since punch cards".

That is my boss, btw.

The Gales Of November

This is mostly a repost from 2013, but it hits all the bases, so you get to see it again.

Happy Veteran's Day, to our men and women in the service and a special one to my Husband.

My Water Post For Today.

I heard from friends who live in Oswego, that it was blowing hard on Lake Ontario last week and yesterday was the 44th Anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald sinking. November 10, 1975. Thankfully, it is still the largest ship to sink in the Great Lakes, all these years later. I am sure other larger ships, appreciate that fact.

In honor of the anniversary, here is a tribute to the crew (may they rest in peace), of course, courtesy of Gordon Lightfoot.

"The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald."

On to the photo I took on Sunday, back in 2013.

I was shocked, how the normal "beach" of rocks was almost totally overcome by the waves yesterday. The land you are seeing in the photo is up above the beach, on the side of the road. I wonder if the waves ever crash onto the road by the stands?

Back to me today: As I mentioned last week, I really miss this place and hope that when I retire, my Husband and I will find the time to return.

Traffic In L.A.

This school year has been particularly high in traffic.

It always is bad, but it feels even worse this Fall.

On Friday it took us 90 minutes to drive 20 miles.

Going home, looked like this photo.

On the Thursday prior, I had to go to Hollywood and then come back during evening rush hour.

It was horrid and I felt very bad for my passenger, who had just been released from the hospital.

Nothing I could do about it.

Traffic is what it is.

40 days to go.

My Mono Lake Painting

First Off, Happy 39th Anniversary to my Sister and her Husband. I can't believe we both made it to this milestone.

It has been another depressing week, on top of depressing weeks.

41 days to go, in that regard.

I was mentioning this very painting to one of our Broadcast Operations team and so I took a photo of it the other night.

I still love Mono Lake and gee, now that I will have time to visit places, this might get on my agenda someday.

The absolutely only thing I would change on this painting, is I would love to give some definition to the snow on the ground.

Otherwise, I am still so in love with it.

A Trip To Social Security

We made an early morning trip to our local Social Security Office on Thursday.

My Husband has been on my policy since the mid 90's and so we had to prove to them that he was covered.

Otherwise, his Medicare Part B would have a cost penalty for the rest of his life.

Not something we willingly want to happen.

So off we went and after we did his business, we showed the Social Security worker, my online application.

He took over and finished the application for me.

So now we are both signed up for Medicare.

Now, on to choosing the medicare advantage plan...which we can't do until we get our new Medicare Cards.

One step at a time.

Star Wars Offices

I walk by this window every day, but now that the time changed, I can finally see inside.

It is pretty impressive...all Star Wars posters.

What caught my eye was Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher).

So last evening I chanced a photo and bring it to my blog.

It makes my van partner laugh, because Marvel hides everything from the rest of the staff, not counting the people walking the streets outside the Disney Lot.

These people from Lucasfilm, seem to appreciate what they do and it shows.

Whatever.

A Medicare Seminar At Providence St. Joseph's Hospital

Last Saturday we drove down to my area of Burbank, for a seminar on some of the different options that people can choose for Medicare Advantage plans. This seminar was through Facey Medical Group/Providence Healthcare.

We ended up listening to around 7 presentations. United Healthcare (Secure Horizons), Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Humana, SCAN and Health Net.

It got to the point of total health plan overload, but what we did take away from the 3 hour session was that they are mostly the same. There are nuances though that do make one plan better than others, for individuals.

We have narrowed our choices down a bit and will probably choose one in the next week or so.

This week, we go to Social Security...what fun...not.

I did stop in at the chapel I used to attend daily Mass at. It was nice to see it, once again.

PBS Has A New Logo

Almost 50 years after it was created, PBS has a new logo, for the Digital World we live in.

Whatever.

If you want to see the history of the PBS Logo, they have a video of it HERE.

The many logos bring back the memory of when they moved the "P" head from looking left, to looking right.

What a controversy that was. :-)

Hope it works out well for you, PBS.

Lake Ontario With Rocks On The Shore

My Water Post For Today.

It's November and you know what that means...The Gales Of November are coming.

I thought I would post 2 photos by Lake Ontario (in November), as a remembrance.

This first one shows off some of the waves and the rocks that are around a lot of the shoreline by the school I went to.

Students actually sit on them, at certain times of the year.

It is so beautiful and I miss it so much.

I hope you enjoy.

BBC World News

We lost "The Switch" uplinking BBC World News for the system, back in June.

The upshoot of that whole situation is that the West Coast feed of the show, has been lost.

They send out one at 11PM for the late night East Coast, but not us.

A very sad situation for us and several stations in the area.

Well about a month or so ago, we actually won that feed back.

We package it with WETA elements and send it out for just our air.

On Friday, due to the fact that the Tick Fire made me drive in, I got to see it on our air.

My hard work and I got a quick photo of it, literally as I was walking out for the night.

Glad to have it back.

The Final Sunset

This is it folks. The time changes at 2AM this evening/early morning.

I have been working on it for the past several weeks and hope that it all goes well at work.

My feeds move around, my logs get an extra hour worth of programming and guess what?

This is the last time I will have to do this!

I can't tell you how happy I am about it.

To honor this day, here is the last sunset of the year at around 6:15PM.

Tomorrow, the sun will set at 5PM.

See you next year, 6:00 sunset.