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United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

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Wednesday, December 04, 2002

Snow Day!   Quite a day this has been.   Forecasts of an ice storm, around for two or three days, never crossed my mind as I went to work. Nearly everyone thought the Bolo de Aipim was cornbread, but it was well-received. Somebody brought over a 10-pound bar of Ghirardelli chocolate to cheer us up, and it worked. Another techie arrived around noon and told me he had trouble finding a gas station that had any gas left. It took him three tries. I joked that you didn’t need gas to sit at home and drink beer and nobody buys that out, assuming we would close if the weather really got ugly.   Rumors began to circulate of cellphone mates shopping for groceries only to report there were no more eggs, no more milk, no more bread. It is a classic panic reaction, every time snow is forecast here, people buy those things just in case. The amateur shoppers at the food stores make it a real pain for serious foodies. Someone else beat me to my timeworn joke that people in NC make French Toast when they fear snow. Someone else said it was because they wanted to be sure they didn't run out of food. I thought about my larder, filled to the brim and running out of space and smiled - the I could fill the jars up again!   There was some drizzle and parents had to leave early because schools announced they were letting the kids out early. That's where the real trouble began.   By the time I left, about 2:30p, all lanes both directions were non-start, objects at rest tending to stay at rest. It took me 20 minutes just to get to Alexander Drive, the first road outside our site. Okay, I thought, just a quarter mile to the Durham Freeway - but when I crossed that I saw there was nothing but stopped traffic there too. I kept right on going, sorta.   By the time I checked my gas gauge, I had spent an hour going 3/4 mile. At this rate, I was going to run out of gas before I even got to I-40 – and that is 16 miles from home. The only choice was to pull off somewhere and wait until traffic died down.   The next turnoff on the right was UNC-TV and the first place that looked friendly was the visitors' parking lot. It was nearly empty, but the receptionist let me in. She was concerned about the roads, I said don't bother, it's not the roads - it's the traffic. Cassandra me, I tried to tell anyone trying to leave that there could sit still there or out on the road. Nearly everyone looked at the weather and decided that "it doesn't look all that bad" and left anyway. Except for a guy named Mark. He listened.   He left the lobby and went down a corridor of offices. A few minutes later, he returned with a golf club, mock-walking on it like a Shillelagh. He showed off the laminated head to a few interested bystanders, then took in outside for a few swings at the peaks of snow mounds created by the snow plow guys.   The snow plow guys were our intelligence reconnaissance  unit. By this time, it was close to  4:30 and I was becoming a minor legend to a slowly accumulating group of "those who chose to wait". I was the guy it took an hour an ten minutes to go a mile.   The snow plow guys would take their plow down the UNC-TV service roads out to the highway and back. Then they'd report on traffic movement out there. Not good, just stopped. Now the TV at the receptionist's desk was on Channel 11 for traffic reports instead of UNC-TV programming. I watched intensely, listened to the snow plow guys, and soon became the Lead Resident Traffic Briefer. Anchor-looking people and technicians alike asked me simple questions and I gave them the best answers I could.   Nice as everyone was, by 5:00 I was hoping that I wouldn't have to overextend my welcome there and spend the night. People who decided to "wait 30 minutes" were seeing me for the third time and saying out loud, "Oh No! - he's still here!". At the same time, people who left when I arrived were returning with horror stories of going a mile-and-a-half, turning around, and making it back 2 hours later.  The snow plow guys were grimly pessimistic,  even though the weather had let up, it had regrouped and mounted another forked assault of snow and freezing rain. When Greg, maybe it was Craig, asked me for the report. I just shook my head.   "Well then, how would you like a tour of the studio?", he asked.   "Sure."   We went to the end of the long corridor and stared through the glass panels in at dozens of rack-mounted monitors and several large ones. Two side by side in the middle had the same picture, but the one on the left had a crosshatch on it. "That's our input tape," he said. The other one was what the viewer will see. Behind that, rows and rows of rack-mounted equipment, some digitally recording multiple satellite shows from the network, a cute piece of equipment converting it all on-the-fly to MPEG-2, going back like Journey Into The Heart Of Darkness. past racks of Studio Beta machines, ultimately to Kurtz in the control rooms.   Kurtz was named Gloria and she made it clear from the start that she was about to go on break, but agreed to sub for Greg-Craig as tour guide while he investigated a glitch captured on tape that another engineer wanted him to see and debug. She explained that I would probably be the last person to see the control room she was manning, because it would be converted to 100% digital by next Wednesday..."Like this," she says, leading me to an adjoining studio that had two huge digital projection monitors central that combined multiple monitors into two screens, any dimension, any aspect ratio you want, anything you want - VU-meters, any channel, real time Fourier, and of course what the station was showing at that time displayed the largest and most central. Greg-Craig came back and whisked me past towering racks of RAID MPEG-2 storage. "Several terabytes," he says, "when a spot hasn't been accessed for 14 days it automatically gets dumped over here..." He pointed at a wall-sized digital tape backup. Back around a corner, he points out a 256-in, 256-out console-controlled digital video patch bay and a 128-in, 128-out analog one.   Then he showed me the studios, sets, and equipment used to tape North Carolina Now, North Carolina People, and the phones they used to use for pledge drives. Another, older studio, had the familiar cutout for The Woodwright's Shop and a nifty $130,000 camera pedastel filled with nitrogen that you can lift with your little finger.    Back to the lobby.   Reports from the snow plow guys were still not encouraging. No movement on Alexander Drive either way. It was starting to snow again and now the traffic/weather dilemma loomed large - Go now and sit still, or wait until the roads are solid ice covered with just enough snow to make them deadly. Mark came by and advised restraint. Most “waiters” sat, probably sullenly, in their offices, but a gentleman in a down vest and I sat and watched local weather and traffic reports on the large monitor on the lobby wall, tuned to Channel 11 just for us.   But then Channel 11 switched to the network feed and our electronic intelligence units were blinded. Thoughts again drifted to the overnight stay, maybe making it back to work and the comfort of my desk instead of here, depending on the kindness of strangers.   But wait! - Deux Ex Machina! - the snow plow guys returned and said that both Alexander Drive and the Durham Freeway were nearly traffic-free!   A whole lot of scraping, and then an unplanned stop for even more before the defroster warmed-up, but I got onto I-40 for 5mph traffic. One mile later, my gas warning light came off. I pulled off at the next stop and the very first station I stopped at had gas. Last crisis: the pumps all said "Prepay Only", but I tried one and it took my ATM after a reasonably dramatic pause. One hour later, and 6 after I started, I was back home with my hungry cats.   My strongest impression of all this was how truly happy, despite the weather, all the employees were at UNC-TV - relaxed, content, easy-going, but intelligent and committed. It must be a great place to work.   9:46:06 PM    comment []

I've heard that if you can stare with naked eyes directly into the sun during a solar eclipse, the Gods will imbue you with special secret powers and wealth beyond the imagination of mortals. 4:12:20 AM    comment []

December 4. I always check On This Day in the NYT. Like any day, many important things happened on this one. It is the day the earth takes similar orientation relative to the sun from an overhead view on all those other days we call December 4. It was 9 years ago today that Frank Zappa died. If you check this blog occasionally, you can tell from references that his music and way of thinking occupy an important niche in my heart. But, even more personally, December 4 is my anniversary of quitting smoking. I was the world's worst smoker and I still don't know exactly how I managed to quit. I decided to spend an entire weekend where I could do anything I wanted except smoke. What I ended up doing was lying on the sofa and getting up to take a tiny little sip of Napoleon Brandy whenever I wanted smoke. When I wanted to light a cigarette, I lit incense. An open pack of cigarettes was on the table right beside a freshly-filled Zippo. A whole carton in the freezer. No temptation. By Sunday night, it had been two days. I went to the grocery telling myself I could have anything I wanted. I bought liver, liver and onions is what I fixed. Was it difficult? Not at all and I haven't wanted a cigarette since. It doesn't bother me when other people smoke and it doesn't occur to me to tell them to stop. To be truthful, I'll never understand how it happened, but I always mark the day. December 4, 1999. Another Frank, a friend who frequents the bar and now drinks O'Douls, attirbuted such effortless cessations to "what Martin Luther called 'Grace'." For the world's best essay on that subject, you need only go here. 3:37:52 AM    comment []

Just woke up from a cooking dream. It was really a baking dream, I guess. I'd already baked three loaves of bread, but the dough was supposed to make only one. As a friend watched, I tried to rectify this by rolling out a fresh piece of dough that I planned to wrap around the smallest, then put the next larger around that, repeat with another piece of dough for the largest loaf, maybe fill the whole thing with jelly, and rebake. This was under control. Problem was, the fresh dough I was rolling was entirely too dry. It kept breaking up. I'd put water on it, but it would soak it up and still be too dry, maybe worse. Meanwhile, my friend effortlessy made some biscuits, decoratively floured them , and stacked them on a platter. By this time, it was obvious we were working in the kitchen of a large restaurant. Then colorful Mack came along in a suit, vest, and red tie, talking about the theater and amusing us in general with his witty and urbane observations. He heard me complain about my dough being dry, so he placed a call on his cell phone. A large Chinese man appeared almost immediately. Armed with a plant mister, he proceeded to mist my friend's biscuits. Mack gave him a $30 tip and began telling him what a good deal the Republicans had for working people like him. Not so, I started to interject , wanting to tell him about last week's Wall Street Journal editorial imploring their government to tax people more who earn $12,000 a year or less. That's what woke me up.. When you think you are having a dream and find yourself quoting the WSJ editorial page, that's when you know it's a nightmare. Not all nightmares have monsters. 2:42:49 AM    comment []