Entries from April 2005 ↓

At last, I’m back in Atlanta. It was an interesting trip home, but it’s great to be here.

Getting out of Las Vegas was easier than expected. The airport wasn’t too crowded, which is unusual just after an NAB show. I’m guessing everyone made their escapes early. My cellphone was briefly misplaced by the highly professional TSA agents at the security checkpoint, and I got a bit irate about that, but they eventually found it. I had a nice drink called a Desert Lemonade which calmed me quite a bit, and I wandered down to the gate where the flight boarded right on time.

I was tired, so I fell asleep almost immediately on the plane. I awoke about 3 hours into the flight, looked out the window, and saw thunderstorms in the distance. They’re beautiful, seen from the air at night, they’re like flickering candle flames in the clouds. There certainly were a lot of them. It was then that I noticed that the moon was in the wrong place, and that we were flying south, probably being vectored around the storms. We made quite a few turns, and I even lost my sense of direction at one point before spotting Anniston, Alabama and getting my bearings again. The captain turned the seat belt sign on and left it on for the rest of the flight, and we started to encounter some light turbulence.

There were no announcements about anything untoward as we descended through very rough air, with lightning flashing on both sides of the plane. I heard the flaps coming out, heard the gear come down, and all the while the ride got rougher. I snugged up my seat belt and hoped fervently that we’d drawn a good, experienced captain. I was glued to the window now, quite attentive. I saw the usual landmarks go by … the warehouses, the truck depot, the Ford factory, and there was the airport perimeter fence … I saw it quite clearly, because the airplane had conveniently (and violently) rolled about 20 degrees toward it. Oops. The captain corrected the roll, only to have the wind shove us so far off course I actually saw the runway centerline lights in my side window. We yawed hard left, and I could feel the plane’s tail swinging back and forth. “Give it up. Don’t push it,” I thought, and as if in response to my suggestion, the 757’s engines spooled up to the roar of full power. For a sickening second we continued to sink toward the runway with which we were now not at all aligned, and then I felt that pleasant acceleration and we climbed away.

The next five minutes were a pilot’s nightmare. Women screamed. While we were now climbing safely away from the ground, we seemed to have flown right into the core of a thunderstorm. Lightning flickered everywhere, the plane bounced, rolled, pitched up and down to alarming deck angles, and vibrated. The engines spooled up and down, people bounced against their seat belts, and rain pelted the windows.

In a few moments, things calmed down. We had climbed above the weather. The captain gave us his best “calmly professional” voice, announcing that we’d executed a missed approach because “conditions at the airport dropped below the minimums and exceeded the wind limitations of the aircraft”, a phrase that easily wins my “euphemism of the year” award. He then announced that since four other aircraft had also gone around, the airport had closed. We were diverting to Birmingham, Alabama, would take on fuel, file a new flight plan, and return to Atlanta when the weather had moved past.

We landed in Birmingham without incident, a very sleepy fuel truck driver refueled us, and a new flight plan was filed. We were told we would be moving out quickly, as another aircraft needed the gate and fuel truck … Birmingham at 12:30 AM is not a bustling place. Off we went, and the second approach and landing at Atlanta were uneventful except for the applause of everyone on board.

Several people had nasty things to say to the captain, who stood in the flight deck door as we filed off the plane. It was after 2 AM, and clearly many of these folks blamed him for the delay. Here we greet yet another bit of evidence that man has not quite finished evolving from the apes. I set down my bag and shook his hand as I went by, simply saying, “Thanks. Well done.” Another captain might have pushed that bad approach, and I might not have had the chance to write this.

I came straight home, arriving at around 3AM. BB the cat was absolutely beside himself when I came through the door. He meowed, he purred, he rubbed against my legs, tried to climb me, and in every other way showed his total glee at my arrival. If he’d been a beautiful woman with long, dark brown hair, a lovely face, and a British accent, it would have been the perfect homecoming! Even the feline welcome, however, was not unappreciated.

The birds were amother story. They were so loud with their welcoming squawks and shrieks, I feared they’d wake the whole neighborhood. I bribed them with some treats and they fell into a nibbling quiet that lasted long enough for me to collapse into bed.

I slept until 10:00 AM, then went directly to the vet’s to collect Tony. To my great relief and joy, Tony looked fantastic … he was bright-eyed, not at all depressed, and he seemed to have even put on a bit of weight. He was very happy to see me, it was a wonderful reunion, and I brought him straight home. He couldn’t quite believe he was home, but settled in quickly. As I write this on Sunday night, he seems quite himself, but he’s totally glued to me. I get up, he gets up. I sit down, and he’s on my lap again within seconds. That’s fine with me.

As for me, I still feel a bit off. I think I’m just readjusting to the time and climate change. I slept most of the day yesterday, and slept until noon today. My sinuses feel a bit raw, and I’m a bit lethargic, but I’ll get a good night’s sleep tonight and should be fine in the morning. I definitely need a short mini-vacation, and since I worked both days last weekend, I fully intend to take Thursday and Friday of this week as comp days. Four days of rest will be just what I need.

Now for some sleep. More tomorrow!

It’s finished. At 9PM last night, our empty crates were dropped off at our booth by highly professional union fork lift drivers, and we began the laborious process of packing. It’s a bit like trying to stuff a mushroom cloud back into a nice, shiny plutonium sphere. It always seems we go back with a little more than we brought.

By midnight, everything was boxed, packed, strapped, shrink-wrapped, and labeled. The boss then suggested we all go for a quick dinner. We walked around the Venetian hotel looking for an open restaurant for about an hour, finally found one, and had an unremarkable but protracted meal. I was caught sleeping soundly at the restaurant table, more than once. I finally got to bed at around 3:30 AM.

Our hotel had a ridiculously early check-out time of 10AM. I reluctantly dragged myself out of bed at 9, got packed, and checked out, leaving my bags with the bellman whilst I wandered off in search of something resembling breakfast, lunch, or brunch. I found a breakfast buffet at the Flamingo hotel nearby and had some nice fruit and pastry. Excess is the watchword here in Las Vegas, with restaurant buffets that stretch into infinity, offering every conceivable variety of food, all in quantities to feed an army … or a casino full of hungry gamblers.

Leaving the buffet, I heard a familiar sound. There, just outside the door, in a cage about 10 feet tall, was a beautiful greenwing macaw. He was introduced to me as “Captain”, the Flamingo’s mascot. He said hello to me as I walked up, dispelling my worries that a bird in such a public, noisy area would not be terribly happy. He seems to soak up the attention from passersby, and is very talkative. His trainer and caretaker came by to check on him, and told me he’s only out for a few hours at a time; I was lucky to catch him on a weekday morning. What a beautiful bird. I can’t wait to get home and give Sammy a cuddle and a treat.

Now I’m back in the lobby of the Not-Summer Not-Bay Not-Resort, having collected my bags and scheduled myself on a shuttle. Bored, I wandered into the souvenir shop and discovered a land mine. I spend so much time convincing myself that I’m over the loss of my marriage, but every now and then something happens that reminds me I’m kidding myself.

My wife used to collect keychains, the souvenir kind. It’s an odd habit but I warmed to it, and for the last 10 years I’ve brought her back a keychain from anyplace I went without her. I never really thought of it as important, but rather as one of those little things I did, just to give her a smile. Why, then, did I just find myself standing in front of a rack of gaudy “Las Vegas” keychains, turning my head and trying not to let the lady down the aisle see me wipe away a tear? Why did I have the strongest compulsion to buy one of those keychains, even though I no longer have anyone to give it to?

Someday.

Time to pack up the laptop and go find a plane headed east. Tony’s doing all right by all accounts, and I wish I could pick him up today, but tomorrow morning will have to do. I hope he’ll be as happy to be home as I will be. This trip has been really traumatic, and I think I won’t be doing any more traveling for a while.

I am trying very hard to think of something I can do to thank my friends Nicholas and Seong for taking such good care of the birds, BB, and my apartment while I was gone. If anybody has any ideas, I’d love to hear them. I don’t want to just pay them because that might be insulting, but I want this to be something nice, something commensurate with the amount of effort they’ve put forth, visiting every other day to change litter boxes, feed and water birds and cats, and just generally keep things in order. They’ve really saved my sanity and I owe them.

Until tomorrow!

It’s 11 PM. Day 3 of this 4-day show has been over for a while now. Desperate for an internet fix, I have set myself up in the lobby of the hotel with my wireless interface, and I’m able to kick back, relax, and write comfortably at last. I feel a bit like SimonG, though.

What an odd trip it’s been. I arrived out here last Thursday night, and for the first couple of days things went well … the booth, chock full of high-tech digital audio gadgetry tied together with little threads of glass with light in them, came together and worked almost perfectly. The setup days were fairly stress-free, and the evenings were relaxing. One night we paid a visit to the Hofbrauhaus, in order to consume proper amounts of sausage and good German bier. Another evening we descended on a sushi restaurant and ate all their fish.

The hotel we’re at is not really a hotel. It’s called the Summer Bay Resort, but it’s not really that either, since it’s open year-round, is located in a desert at least 500 miles from the nearest bay, and consists of an old, low-rent apartment complex that has been renovated and operated as timeshares and hotel suites. With that said, it’s really quite comfortable, and I’ve rested well there. All I really need on a trip like this is a place to sleep anyway.

The weather here has been beautiful, as it usually is in the desert. Clear breezy days and cool nights are the norm, nice weather for a bit of walking about.

The convention itself defies description. The Las Vegas Convention Center has over three million square feet of convention space in four huge halls. The NAB show fills all of it. News vehicles, production trucks, and even helicopters are parked all over the show. The scale of this is unimaginable unless you’ve actually seen it. Nothing compares. Our little 30 by 30 foot space, actually large by comparison with some booths, seems miniscule. SONY corporation’s booth is approximately 12 times that area.

Las Vegas itself boggles the mind. Nowhere else in the country is it possible to see such ostentations displays of opulence. The hotels and attractions on the famed “strip” have even managed, without spending a single taxpayer dollar, to build a quite functional monorail transit system that connects them. It’s actually faster to get from our hotel to the convention on that system than it is to drive our rental van there.

Amazingly, in this city of light and spectacle, I can still manage to be lonely. I find it really hard to understand my own feelings sometimes. This is my fourth consecutive year at NAB with this particular company, and I distinctly remember the previous trips being much more of an adventure. I suppose that the situation, at least for a couple of those trips, was such that I was happy for a reason to be away from home for a while. Now that things have changed in my life, and I’m alone except for my cats and my birds, I’m not as happy to be traveling. Tony’s ill, and I hate that I’m not home to pamper him and pay him the attention he deserves. I’ve finally become comfortable — dare I even say happy? — in my apartment, and now I’m away from that comfort zone. Just as I’d gotten used to cooking for myself and eating smarter, I’m eating out every night again.

I don’t want to become one of those odd hermits who becomes so isolated that his pets are his only companions. I am becoming increasingly aware that I really have no life, and I’ve got to somehow do something about that. Las Vegas is, of course, full of temptations — it’s not called Sin City just because of the gambling — but that would only treat the symptoms and leave the problem intact. I can look, though. There are some phenomenally beautiful women here, and my fertile imagination has given birth to lots of indecent thoughts. I’m male, I’ve been deprived for months, and I’m human. I make no apologies.

I called again today to check on Tony and am told he’s eating, drinking, and getting lots of rest, and doesn’t seem too unhappy. I still hate thinking about him cooped up in that cage, and I can’t wait until I pick him up on Saturday morning. Nicholas reports that the birds are fine and so is BB, although BB did manage to knock over Sammy the Macaw’s play-stand. No damage done.

Barry Manilow is now performing six nights a week at the Las Vegas Hilton. David Brenner’s next door at the Stardust. The other night, Bob Newhart actually did a show at the Riviera. Vegas has gone geriatric, but I suppose worse things could happen. So far, no Britney.

I took all the precautions I could think of after three previous NAB experiences. I’m wearing soft leather shoes that are well broken-in, they’ve got gel insoles in them to further support my feet, and we laid 1/2″ padding under the booth carpet. Today, as is typical on the third day, my feet started to fall apart. It’s getting really painful to stand still now, so I’m doing the one-foot thing quite a bit, alternating my weight from one side to the other, trying to walk around as much as possible to keep the circulation going. There’s got to be a better way. Next year, I may try sandals.

Sorry for the stream-of-consciousness nature of this blog. I’m still a bit wound-up from the day, and thoughts keep bouncing around in my mind like popcorn in a kettle. It’s all I can do to intercept one or two of them as they fly by, and write them down.

I went to a reception tonight for Amateur Radio Operators (HAMS) sponsored by the NAB. I expected to see perhaps a hundred people, and instead found over seven hundred! I had no idea so many broadcasters were also hams. The reception was sponsored by Heil Sound, a microphone manufacturer founded a couple of decades ago by Bob Heil. Bob’s known for supplying mics and FOH engineering services for Joe Walsh, and he’s recently introduced a new line of broadcast microphones. Tonight’s door prizes were two such mics, signed by Joe Walsh. Unfortunately, I didn’t win one of them.

It’s getting a bit late now, so I think I’ll head off to my room and get a bit of rest. Tomorrow will be a long day. The show closes at 4 PM, at which point we begin breaking down the booth. Everything must be packed and crated that night, which is sometimes a challenge as we often wait hours for our empty crates to be brought in from storage. My flight leaves Las Vegas at 4PM on Friday, and I’ll get back to Atlanta at around 11 PM.

Best regards to everyone, and thanks for all your kind encouragement. Good night!

This is apparently going to be my only means of communication this week … I am unable to even keep up with e-mail as there have been some problems with wireless access as well as with dial-up. It seems the phone lines at our hotel are a bit old and noisy.

We’re at the end of the second day of the convention. It’s been tiring, and my feet are complaining bitterly about the two nine-hour days of standing. Perhaps I’ll become accustomed to wearing a suit, just before I leave to go home on Friday.

Tonight I have a nice catching-up dinner with my radio friends from Alaska, so I think I’ll decompress a bit.

Despite the wear and tear on me and the fatigue, it’s actually turning out to be an exhilarating and successful show!

More when I can write … there are people in line for this silly kiosk! Best regards to everyone.

Oh, and the vet tells me Tony’s still doing just fine, and Nicholas reports the same about all three birds and BB. Yay!

Scott

It’s been a while since last blog. I shall try to do better, or at least make them interesting enough that they’ll last longer! Meanwhile, this one will be quite brief. I’m standing at a public e-mail kiosk, which tried very hard to keep me from accessing this web site. It failed. I even managed to connect to SimonG’s chatroom for a short while yesterday, before work pulled me back into the lions’ den.

For those who don’t know, I’m at a big trade show and convention in Las Vegas put on by the National Association of Broadcasters. It’s the biggest electronic media show the US has every year, and is absolutely huge. It fills the whole of the Las Vegas Convention Center, which is the size of a small city.

I’ve been here since the night of Thursday the 14th, and it’s been a lot of work. I have been getting enough sleep, but only just. The desert air, which is unbelievably dry and is difficult to adjust to under normal circumstances, has combined with the remnants of my recent cold to make it exceedingly difficult to breathe well. I am treating the condition with cough drops, beer, and perseverence.

I remain worried sick about Tony. He was left in the care of my veterinarian for the duration of the trip, so that he would have his medicine each day and so that they could keep a good close eye on him. I have called every single day, and so far they tell me he’s doing all right. My other cat and my birds are being looked after at my apartment by my friends Nicholas and Seong, which takes a tremendous load off my mind.

So far, my only truly horrible moment at the show has been during setup. Some folks from a partner company came by to chat, among them a very attractive lady with a very nice accent, which sounded very British to me. I innocently asked if the folks were based in Britain … feeling rather proud of myself for not saying, “England” instead. Unfortunately, she was from Australia and was not at all flattered to have me think her British. I turned several shades of red. In my own defense, neither she nor the other folks in her group sounded at all Australian to me, not having the unusual vowel pronunciation I’ve come to associate with Aussies. I guess I need to study the subtleties a bit more before I embarrass myself again.

I’ll try to write more at some point when I can actually sit down and use a normal keyboard … this kiosk is somewhat unwieldy! I’m here through Friday the 22nd, flying home late that night, so there will be at least another entry or three from here.

Someone has given me such a thoughtful gift. It’s a rhinovirus, otherwise known as the common cold.

It all started yesterday afternoon. My throat started to feel scratchy, and I sneezed a few times. By last night, I had body aches and fatigue. Now it’s in full swing, and I feel miserable. Unfortunately, I am being forced to tough it out at work because we’re on a skeleton crew already. Several people are traveling, and a big trade show is looming large on the horizon.

The common cold is incurable. The best we can do is treat the symptoms and try to shorten the duration. The latter we can supposedly do using a preparation called Zinc Gluconate Glycine. Marketed under several names (Cold-Eeze, Zicam), this stuff has been clinically proven to shorten the duration of a cold. This does not come without a cost, however. The stuff tastes horrible, and the metallic, unpleasant flavor seems to last for hours. In order to be effective, it has to be dissolved in the mouth, you can’t just swallow it. You also can’t drink any citrus beverages or eat any citrus fruit for 1/2 hour before or after, so there goes my Vitamin C intake.

I am beginning to wonder if the (partial) cure isn’t worse than the disease.

In other news, Tony continues to do pretty well, but I am a complete basket case at the idea of leaving him with the vet for a whole week. Three days was a nightmare for me, and probably for him. I sure wish I knew what to do.

I’m being particularly careful about my grammar in this blog, because someone might be proofreading it. I have coined a new nickname for that person, the one who was once known as ‘anon’ and is now called Alan. I think his new nickname should be “Alanon”. Anyway, for his benefit, my grammar and usage shall be squeaky-clean today, and I hope I get a gold star from the self-appointed English enforcement bureau.

Today I am busily trying to pull together the information to file a small-claims lawsuit against Connie Rose and Associates. This real estate broker mistakenly had my car towed while I was visiting a friend in her apartment building. She now refuses to reimburse me the $95 I spent getting my car back at 3AM. It’s not a huge amount of money, but her refusal makes me feel defrauded, and that’s worse than the financial loss. So, I will fight it. Even if I lose, I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I inconvenienced her as much as she inconvenienced me. I’m sorry if that sounds petty. If you’d heard her tone on the telephone, you’d understand.

Now, I’m off to find some chicken soup, or maybe some bangers and mash, since I’m told they’re great comfort food!