So I went and bought it.

I love this show. I think Cara is getting hooked even though she tries to deny it.

Fair Feedback

So here's what our director out at the Fair had to say:
----------------------------
Hey Gang... Once again we survived the Pronto Pups and Cheese Curds and had another great Fair. With the added excitement of the Key Wall I think it was our best Fair yet.
Thanks for all the hard work and hustle...we got a little soggy on the last day, but that didn't damped your spirit or talent.
The crowds were as good as ever...special thanks to Jeffry for getting them fired up and with the addition of the Water Bottles fun was had by all.
So...I'll see you same place...same time next year. Thanks again.

Tom Smith
Director
TV Operations
---------

thanks Tom

VGD show #1

As this day started, Vikings Game Day looked kind of grim. It seemed like a huge, not well thought out, project.

We were supposed to have new chairs for the new set, but they weren't around- someone dropped the ball on that one and everyone at the Mall turned to me to fix it. The At Issue chairs that we used at the Fair were brought down to the Mall for substitutes, but we needed 4 and only had 3. Good times.

We also were missing 8 strips that attach banners to banner frames. Again, everyone turned to me for answer. So I opted to return to the station to get the last chair and the adhesive strips. Robyn went with me. We made it fun, listening to the Cure (cause it was overcast). At the station, we found that someone else had also dropped the ball on the adhesive strip thing. All these issues that I suddenly had to resolve- created by others. Good times.

They sent Robyn and me to the store that supplies us with those things. We spent too much time there trying to explain what we want only to find that they hadn't any. I placed an order for them without any authorization to do so, but figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal since each item we were after cost $.12 each. Good times.

When we got back we found a metal wall with a outside-cafe-looking print on it. Guess what, we need to use this for a segment of our show. A wall. There were no supports or stands for this wall. But we used it. A couple of Vikings employees actually stood behind it holding it up while we shot the segment! Good times.

However, as every piece came together and was decided upon, the show really took a solid form. We have a lot of new elements in the show this year: new host- Rod Simons, new co-host- Rich Gannon, and new producers. The only on-air thing that is familiar is Lea B Olson.
Once the show took off we rocked. Everything started to fall into it's right and familiar place.

Daniel Chapter 6

We had small group tonight. Daniel chapter 6 is the story about Daniel and the Lion's Den. I guess I never knew that the King, King Darius was kind of on Daniel's side in that story.

Robert gave me a Best Buy gift card as well as a computer game he downloaded. Its a Traveller-like game, he says. We'll see if I find time to play it. I'm very tempted to buy the LOST season 1 DVD set with this card.

today was Leesha's first day in 2nd Grade

day off more than expected

We went to Target to get me some glasses, they won't be in for 10 days.
After we get back home, Stew comes in and shortley there after, Dan Kidney arrives. Then Eric.

We cooked food on the grill and ate outside.
We watched Triggerhappy.
We played Settlers - Cara won!

Everyone left, I drove Eric to Keesha's with his new/old transmission

Cara was apologetic because there was a lot going on today. It was a good day.

last day at the fair

after 5 full 12 hour days in a row, it was golden to sleep in for a while. Took my time getting ready, and played Battleship online with Leesha before her dad picked her up.

Cara and I went to Uptwon Bar to meet Greg and Mandy, Jutton, David and Eric. Cara gave me From Russia with Love and Goldfinger DVDs. Greg and Mandy gave me Justice League cartoon DVDs. Jutton gave me a gift certificate for Dream Haven bookstore. My family and friends love me.

happy birthday to me

when I got upstairs this morning, there were a pile of cards for me to open.

Last full day at the MN State Fair. During lunch, I helped with At Issue at the station. Took the 3 o'clock shuttle with the At Issue set chairs immediately after they were finished.

Cara, Leesha and Eric and Keesha came out to the Fair around 3 :30 or 4 and wondered around. They came back to our booth to watch the 6pm. The 6pm was THE WORST SHOW of the entire '05 MN Fair broadcasts. In the A block Todd Baer's sat feed wasn't ready and in the B block, Joe missed about 3 pages and jumped ahead of everyone. It was horrible. They did turn camera 3 on me and acknowledge my birthday on air. Too bad it was in that show.

After the 6 and everything was torn down and put away, I joined my clan to wonder the fair. We went to the cow barn, the milk barn up to Heritage Square and rode the skyride to find fried green tomatoes. It was fun, but very very tiring having worked 12 hours already.

Day 5 of the MN State Fair

Not as much from the fair, more from the station due to Hurricain Katrina. So during Midday some of the blocks were totally from the station, we were trying to entertain our crowd by throwing water bottles for them. I ended up beaming an old lady in the head. My new nickname is Ladykiller. We had a old school country band as our Midday musical guest. They were pretty good. At least we didn't Wright Brothers them.

I did go back to the station for lunch, but I took an earlier shuttle back with a wood staircase. Swifty picked me up in a cart and we took the long way back, driving all over the fair. We had to stop about 3 times for the same parade.

Good Day

Everything fell into place quite well, today, inspite of finding out two days ago that I work this evening even though the schedule says I'm not.

I got to sleep in
had a great breakfast
played LIFE with Leesha and Cara
not too hot at the MN Sate Fair
5pm went well
6pm went amazingly well
got home and watched new DVD.

very good day.

Great Minnesota Get Together's Eve
Today was all about getting ready for the MN Sate Fair. Me 'n Zach had the job of first making enough room on the deck to light a new chroma key wall in and among the engineers.

This whole key wall thing was Dave Dahl's idea, I've heard. He won't even be there for it. He fell off his Harley and broke his collerbone and scraped off his new tattoo! (I made up the part about scraping off his tattoo. He really does have a new one from Stirgess, but I made up the part about scraping it off)

I had to leave our stuff out for them to put away for me because I was also scheduled to work on the 5pm Newscast. Little overbooked. Lot of work today, won't have any difficulty sleeping tonight.

song - Summer Breeze - Seales and Croft or Type-O-Negative

Retro-Updating My Blog.
Here's what that means:
I've had a total of three web logs. The first was an MSN community page that I kind of loosley made myself. While that site was cranking along, James Touchi Peters created conk.com which was a competitor of the MSN communities and included a web log feature. So I ceased using the non-existant blog tools at MSN for the conk site only to find that I didn't really care for it. But that initiated a search for a real blog server that I would like. That lead to the creation of this site. So in the end, my web log was spread out over three different sites. Today I started to cut n paste the old entries into this blog so they'd all be in one web location.

This has also inspired me to try to write something here every day- no matter how boring.

Paint the Weather Wall
My first mission today was to paint the new chroma key wall out at the Fair. I was to put the first layer of primer and than go on in to work. So thats what I did. To my suprise, the primer was already on as well as the first coat of chroma key green! So I applied the 2nd coat and then went on in to work to help out with the midday show.

After lunch, Ahmed and I went back out to apply a 2nd coat. We took Schmitty out with us and brought Kevin Knapp back with us. Kevin was very pissed, because with some communication snafu he had been stuck out at the fair for something like 2 hours longer than he planned. I sinfully took joy in his anger.

Daniel chapter 5, oh wait, Bocce!
for small group, tonight, we had a social night instead of studying the book of Daniel (which is what I emailed as the agenda ^_^). We played bocce ball. Leesha got to stay up (which isn't always a great idea) and she was on my team. Eric and Laura Beth beat us all out. Leesha had a meltdown at about 8:30 which was, as Cara pointed out to me, about the time she usually does when she gets to stay up later.

song - I had a song from Sunday's worship service in my head all day, but I don't recall it now!

did you know that you will NOT hear any promo for KSTP speak the word "channel" as in "Channel 5". It is strictly "5 Eyewitness News!"

we had a garage sale today

Bobo and Laura got married today

A Path of Geekdom Observed

I started a series called Honor Harrington. Its an interesting chain back to how I got into this book.

It all started back in High School when I bought a box of the original edition of GDW's Twilight 2000 rpg from Pegasus Games in Madison Wisconsin with Terry Treleven. This formed an appreciation for quality games with more realistic rules. After playing a couple of games in study hall, the game kind of petered out and remained on my shelf for several years.

Fast forward a decade...

In 2003, T2K resurfaces due to reprints of GDW's catalog. Last year I scored a copy of the reprints and read it often at work (during the Midday newscast). Living with Lord Bobo, I had access to many different rpg books- including the reprints of another GDW game called TRAVELLER.

Having recently submerged myself deep into the world of Firefly, I've checked out alot of web sites and there has been a lot of speculation that Joss Wedon was a fan of Traveller because the 'Verse of Firefly has a similar feel to it. Dreaming about a Firefly rpg (which does happen to be in the works, officially) and being familiar with GDW I made the plunge in to Traveller with Bobo's copy of the reprints.

There is a lot of similarity, naturally, between the writing of T2K and Traveller. It was easy to get into it. The premise of Traveller is a hard science space opera. Your characters usually are retired military types out trying to make a living. Getting into this game, I lurked some of the forums and found a lot of people talking about Honor Harrington. That sent me on a search for what it was all about. Everyone who has read these books say how wonderful they are, so I thought I'd check it out for myself.

and now I find my self fast approaching the middle of the first book- Honor Harrington: On Basilisk Station and here I am, writing about how good it is. Full circle.

music - Seven Nation Army - White Stripes nothing to do with Honor Harrington. Just really enjoying the Stripes right now.

It was so hot today that my rearview mirror fell off!

Leesha and I saved a frog's life today. We named him Ferdinand.

I got my internet access!

London

I didn't see any news untill I came in to work. Thats when I heard about the London Bombing. The first thing about it was how familiar it seemed to me. I thought I had just seen this or read this somewhere or something.

Actually, what it was, was this was almost exactly how the Queen & Country novel started which I finished two days ago. Kind of freaked me out.

got a speeding ticket

watched Superfly at work for work

dropped my new mom and dad off at airport.
Leesha was unbelievably difficult- tired and emotional.
met Leesha's dad at BestBuy in Bloomington to drop her off.
Got home and napped.
Got up, went to church.
Went to Batman Begins
Went to Big V's to see BJ
went home. to bed