I’m in Palm Desert this evening, at the TV station. I drove in from Orange County earlier today. No sooner had I sat down than I got a text message from Eddie Ackerman.

Let’s grab dinner this week.

This week became this night. We went to Five Guys near the station.

Eddie’s a former New Yorker, like me… from Flushing, like me. He lives in Palm Springs now and loves it. How could you not?

I remember meeting Eddie the first time back in the late 70s or early 80s. He was working for Compact Video. They were a large video production company.

Eddie took me around. I wasn’t yet in TV. Everything he showed was dazzling.

In a control room full of monitors a guy was editing a concert. As the tapes played, he punched the show on a switcher. Every once-in-a-while he’d hit a shot he didn’t like, rewind the tapes and pick it up from there.

Close to 40 years later I remember how impressed I was. It’s a day vividly etched in my mind.

Companies like Compact don’t exist anymore. Million dollar plus control rooms aren’t needed. TV can be done on the cheap from nearly anywhere with quality not imagined back then.

Nothing ever stays the same. Certainly not Eddie and me!

We’ve been trying to see Sara Welch since we’ve been in California. That’s around a year-and-a-half of cancelled plans and conflicting schedules. Sara and I worked together at WTNH. Now she’s a reporter at KTLA in Los Angeles.

Finally. Today!

Sara and her husband Bob came for brunch. We also invited Soumada Smith, my weather center cohort at KMIR and a former co-worker of Sara’s at KTLA, and her husband, Jason.

We don’t need an excuse for my Irvine cousins. They were invited too.

It was a great time made even better by Helaine’s catering. She’s been cooking, baking and prepping for the last few days. Damn, she’s good!

Special bonus: I’ll have tasty and fattening leftovers for the next few days.

Why did we wait all this time?

I have a piece of gear at home. It’s a special data modem for a project I’m working on. It comes from Canada. I called tech support tonight. Bucharest, Romania. Actually it was a cool experience. The tech was knowledgeable and didn’t seem rushed. He was used to dealing with techies. He knew my equipment. […]