Day 503

I am exhausted! I got up at 6 AM and didn't get back to the hotel until 6 PM. In between, I didn't even have time to go to the bathroom. Somebody brought me a turkey sandwich from one of those vending machines about 3 PM, but I didn't have time to eat it until almost five. To say I had "first day" problems would have been an understatement. I had huge problems.

There were no electrical outlets anywhere near the exhibit space, so I couldn't even use my good phantom power lav mics . I had to use the on-board camera mic instead and ended up picking up a lot of noise from the hall. The hall was so noisy in fact that I don't know if there was anything I could have done that would have made a difference. The pictures looked good. The sound: not so good. My video editing software crashed about ten in the morning. Luckily, I have two "users" on my laptop: both me. When I logged in as the "other" me, the software worked again. That was great. What wasn't so great was that my e-mail didn't work for the "other" me. I had never bothered to set it up and couldn't remember my SSL password. I kept logging and out all day long to work on the video and check my e-mail for approvals from Germany and Orlando. One me kept telling the other me that I didn't have administrative privileges and wouldn't give me the files I wanted. Most of my graphic files for the video were on the volume where the editing program didn't work. I kept having to drag them to the public folder and log in again as my other self to access them.

Remember, I originally bid this job with a four person crew. I'm still doing everything the four person crew was supposed to do, but there is only me. The people who were interested in the energy blog wondered why I wasn't writing all day. The people who wanted YouTube videos wondered why I was wasting time writing at all. I wasn't allowed by corporate to Tweet directly to Twitter. I had to e-mail my Tweets to somebody in Florida and then they would we Tweeted later after they were approved. When people out at the booth wanted me to Tweet something, they lost interest real quickly when I told them it wouldn't appear on Twitter until two days later

With all they problems I was having, I'll have to say that everyone in the booth was super nice to me. I think they understood what I was dealing with, since most of them had an insane workload themselves. The show itself was pretty amazing. There were 3-D virtual reality presentations. There was a Flash Mob who came and disrupted things at random intervals with pretty professional acappella vocals. There were elaborate models of things I only vaguely understand. My little YouTube videos were pretty Plain Jane compared to some of the things I saw today.

Hopefully, I'll get a little more sleep than I did last night. I'm not even bothering with supper tonight. I'm too tired to walk half a mile to the restaurant on the other side of the hotel. Sleep actually sounds better than room service too. That's how tired I am.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day