NewsNotes

Hi! Happy February to all of you! We just added something new to the Maps & Satellite Photos Page to the Dog Roast. National Public Radio has a weekly program called Science Friday, hosted by Ira Flatow, a former UB student. It is that of a video showing our planet Earth from space, and the various views taken by NASA satellites in their observations of how the planet has evolved from over the past few decades and different digital photography showing different wavelengths. Hope you find it interesting, and I will keep the link up as long as the program supplies the video.

We recently received a Philadelphia based joke from Bob Popow, now that Bob is somewhere on a golf course in Central Florida...

Last year I was on a morning flight getting ready to depart for Philadelphia...

I was in seat 22A and a guy took the seat beside me. The guy was an emotional wreck, pale, hands shaking, moaning in anxiety. "What's the matter?" I asked.

"I've been transferred to Philadelphia, there's crazy people there. They've got lots of shootings, gangs, race riots, drugs, poor public schools, terrible weather, corruption, and the highest crime rate."

I replied, "I' grew up in the Philadelphia area. It's not as bad as the media says. Find a nice home in the 'burbs, go to work, mind your own business, enroll your kids in a private school. It's as safe a place as anywhere in the world."

The guy relaxed and stopped shaking and said, "Oh, thank you. I've been worried to death. But if you lived there and say it's OK, I'll take your word for it. What do you do for a living?"

"Me?" I spoke up. "I'm a tail gunner on a SEPTA bus."

This winter, at least from Western New York standards, has been pretty tame for January. I only had to personally used my snow blower one time so far, and that is because my good neighbor from across the street, Carl, decided that since he was out and about with his gas powered model, that he would do other driveway and sidewalk also. I hope the weather stays just the way it has been, without Lake Erie freezing over, and with no Lake Effect Snowstorms.

Jane Patterson is home from a Rochester hospital where she went in for 10 hours of back surgery on Thursday, December 29th. Jane continues to mend at home, but things had gotten a little bit difficult when the water line feeding their property decided to burst, or break a connection, causing them to get a hole dug to fix the problem. Isn't that always the case?

If you would like to send Jane a get well card the address is as follows: Jane Patterson 16318 Route 31 Holley, NY 14470 and I am sure she will appreciate it very much.

Hopefully, Jane will be able to soon, get back on her saddle and ride the hills.

So, you might be wondering what is new with the Geezer, now that he is no longer working at what once was a nice job, and that now, that facility is just a bottomless pit of poop?

Well, I have settled into a routine of looking for suitable work, updating my Resume once again, helping out around the house for Grandma Geezer (she is 89 years young!) and trying not to spend my money as much as I would had previously. I have been in touch with my fellow laid off Engineers and have heard of the horror stories coming out of 7 Broadcast Plaza... incidents like that of black on the air (meaning no programming, commercials, or even a technical difficulties notice) for 2-3 hours one day, wrong commercials being aired or not at all, bad or no sound during programs, simple things like that.

I even heard that The Big Guy In Charge in that corner office, was so upset over (the lack of) quality control, that he told the person who is the Chief Engineer (and was my immediate boss), to make a Maintenance Engineer sit and run all of the station breaks for the last live ABC-TV broadcast of 'Dancing With The Stars'.

That tells me confidence in the new system out of Atlanta, Georgia is low at the upper level, and all of those claims of what they used to call "Union Sabotage", really is that of managers shooting themselves in the foot.

Does this mean that someone at Corporate, or in our local domain, will call us back to work, and make that "pretty please with sugar on top"? No, not on your life.

On the last day I worked (November 6th), I went, and with my camera, and took some pictures to put together with the same computer enhancement technique that we have used for Dog Roast still sequence panoramas. Some of the pictures are for old times sake, but I thought nonetheless, you might be interested in seeing what the inside of a television station looked like. When you look at them, if the rooms seem devoid of personnel, most likely that is the case now in real life. I even set it up so that if you click on the photograph, it will expand to super size in its own window, to see in greater detail...

Master Control where I did my last days of work. All of this now comes from Atlanta.

Production Control 2, better known as PC-2, where all the Newscasts are done,
along with local programming. What took previously at least 4-5 individuals now is mainly
work done by the Director sitting in front of a bunch of flat screen computer monitors.

Studio #2. AM Buffalo is done on the left, and where Sports shows are done on the right.

Now for the News you wanted to hear...the pictures from Dog Roast 2011 are now online! They were uploaded to their own page just this week (November 10th to be exact!), so I hope you enjoy them. If you have a few photos that you want to share with the world, send me an email with the pictures attached as jpeg or jpg files, and I will be more than happy to include them on the page with your name included for proper credit.

Lynn, Cody's grandmother, sent in these pictures she took from Dog Roast 2010 for everyone to see and to share. Hope you like them! Thanks, Lynn!

Late last year, I found out about a video that was made that included Randy Cimino as one of the hikers going from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail. It is titled 'Wizards of the PCT'. I got myself a copy and always wondered what the day to day difficulties were of doing a hike of a very long distance. This from a guy who is lucky to be walking 100 yards without loosing his breath or needing a break.

So, if you have a couple of extra dollars available, search on Facebook for 'Wizards of the PCT', purchase the DVD, and check it out for yourself, and see one of our own make the trek in all kinds of conditions.

If anyone still has pictures they would like posted from the last Dog Roast (either 2010 or now 2011), please feel free to contact me with them at my email address listed on the site.