Back On The Road Another Time Again Once More

Another week on-the-road waiting for equipment at the station. No project ever runs on-time. Soon.

Meanwhile, in the hotel. Same room as last time. For one person it’s a very nice small apartment with comfortable furniture. No complaints.

Actually, one complaint. The clock is about an hour and a half off. Only the hotel’s engineer can set the time. It’s made that way to avoid what I’m going through now… for the second week.

The road is the road. My pilot friend Neal and I commiserate on this. He visits exotic cities, but really only sees nearby hotels.

Helaine has tried to make it easier. She sent me with fruit and mostly prepared meals. There’s a bag of M & Ms too.

I am spoiled. I get it. I love her too.

Back at home this weekend I concentrated on the studio’s physical plant. Everything was piled on shelves. It was a terrible workspace for humans. Monitors and keyboards were awkwardly placed.

Friday night I decided a desk was needed. We headed to Office Max Saturday. Helaine and I put it together on the studio floor. It was time I hadn’t expected to spend.

A new desk meant the luxury of reconfiguring. There’s now a ‘control room’ with equipment that needs human guidance. This week Helaine will attempt to neaten the cables that snake through the room.

My original Western Digital server went back to Amazon! On advice of Facebook friend Jim McGuire I got a 2-disk Synology server. You buy and install the drives yourself, but it couldn’t be simpler. It does exactly what I want. Configuration was simple. A true nerd’s delight piece of equipment.

The station’s computer automatically sends maps to my server. My switcher sees the server as just another hard drive, so it can play the maps and animations directly.

This project is a monumental undertaking, but it’s there. Exciting and scary.