this is my blog

My Schaumburg day went well this week, no tech issues. I was without access to our office for the entire morning so I just set up camp in the student lounge, drank coffee and read the Trib. 

In Chicago, tech went fairly well with two exceptions. The two very public chances I had to shine were a disaster or embarrassing. The embarrassing moment was in a classroom hooking up an instructors laptop to the projection system. I was flustered (from being interrupted from a critical deadline) and just not thinking very clearly. This particular instructor is “Mr. Convergence” so I was hoping to make a positive impression. With this and the fact that he witnessed the radio station launch, he likely is advocating for my dismissal.

The radio station launch was a disaster. I have been testing our software off and on for two weeks now. There were two known issues: low vocals when broadcasting live and a sporadic connection stall with our host Intercollegiate Broadcasting System (IBS). The morning of the launch we were uploading some music to play after the live ceremony. We were encountering an FTP error. I checked the software preferences and the remote server password had been erased. After adding the password there was still an error (other internet connections were fine). After restarting the software, machine, etc. there was still an error. I called tech support (at this point 12 minutes before we go live) and he had me do somethings I was uncomfortable with so close to launch. He had me reset our DJ interface and he restarted our server.

The server restart did not solve our connection problem. He also did not tell me to restart the streams in our listening rooms. I did not think to do it because I could still hear music. But since we had established our connections before the server restart we heard the automated feed but when it came time to hear the live broadcast, there was radio silence. Once we restarted the streams we could hear both people in the interview (the station manager and the university president) but the vocals were dramatically lower than what they tested as. When I reset the DJ software the default setting for live broadcast reestablished to 28K and we broadcast 56K High Quality. This is like turning the volume half way down from its current setting. IBS tech discovered this after the interviews were over. He forgot update his .xml file (used to reset the program) to default to our broadcast frequency. Also in one of our listening room you could not hear one of the mics at all. I discovered yesterday that the jack on the projector was not connecting to the left channel. A wiggle and it’s fixed. Probably just jiggled loose from the HVAC vibrations. I also discovered the setting on the mixer was on mono and not stereo which was my fault.

The 50 people who showed up for our event were polite about the technology issues brushing it off as learning pains or “this is just student radio” but two asked me why I didn’t test the software in advance. I gave them my “Go fuck yourself” look and told them I did and these issues were beyond my control. The station manager and promotion manager were horribly disappointed. They do not understand technology enough to get what happened. Apparently the student paper has a reputation for spinning the bad side of stories they cover so the managers are worried about the story that will be published.  I am interested too because no one from any of the media outlets present interviewed me about tech problems so I am not sure what can be legitimately written. And even though these issues were largely out of my control, when you are the “computer guy” you are just supposed to make shit work. You may think I’m being hard on myself but you must remember that I am a female in a male dominated field, my position is new, it is also temporary position so I literally earning my keep right now, and Roosevelt is a very small, gossipy place. My position is not popular outside of my department so there are people who will enjoy witnessing, and glorifying, my failures.

The last thing that happened is that the live recordings from the ceremony got deleted. I assumed they got recorded on their server because our live stream goes to their server and gets broadcast from there. They are recorded on to the local hard drive. That’s fine and good except that on Friday we discovered the source of FTP error/intermittent connection error. The software was installed on the Admin accout but being used through a standard user account. I was instructed to create a new user account and reinstall the software directly in that account. In the process of cleaning up this digital debacle I did a hard delete the initial user account. All of the live recordings that I assured everyone we would have, including the interview with the president, are gone. The IBS tech guy tried to make me feel better by offering to be blamed. He just didn’t seem to get how bad of a reflection his actions had on my job. Our radio station had been off the air for 10 years so this was a big deal to a lot of folks. Roosevelt is in a year long contract with this company so I feel like there is no recourse. I have no choice but to shake it off and move on.

I enjoyed my class this week. The class is co-taught and both of my instructors are knowledgeable seem to really enjoy journalism. The highlight of my Tuesday class was a perspective on print journalism that I have not heard before. Basically that print has stood the test of time, which includes radio and tv, and that it will be able to live alongside the web successfully. It’s more the issue of the corporate values print journalism has had to adopt to survive that is not working. We learned the five news values (timeliness, proximity, human interest, consequence, and prominence) and compared them to corporate values (tradition, advertising, and personal values.) I learned we will be doing a lot of on the street reporting on Tuesday nights. He’ll give us an assignment and we hit the streets, go home and write it for a Sunday midnight deadline. He seems to want us to stay around the area of our school to do our reporting. Not too many folks are around in the evenings in the loop so that should be interesting. I am not looking forward to the reporting assignments.

In Thursday’s class we explored the AP Stylebook, the Almanac, and the recommended dictionary. We took a quiz so our instructor can see where we are at with grammar and current events. As I handed her my quiz I said: “Oh, the embarrassment I will feel seeing you in the hallways from now on.”

Homework this weekend is reading 3 chapters and a worksheet to help familiarize us with the above reference tools. The only things I did not like about class was buying my textbooks. I dropped $170 on four books. One book alone was $79. I was thinking I would be spending less than a hundred bucks on books. 

This week I heard from my birth mother Marcy. Her first email was fine. She started with “I don’t know where to start.” and encouraged me to ask questions. I replied, answering the questions she had for me, and asked her a few basic questions. One was about why my name was “Lyra” on my birth certificate and what were the origins of my middle names “Xavieria Gae.” Lyra is indeed a typo on the birth certificate and I was named Tyra the female version of my brother’s name, Tyrone. Gae is a German name that is both Marcy and my grandma’s middle name. Xavieria is actually another typo. I was named after the famous Madame Xaviera Hollander. My genetic father, Phil, was apparently quite fond of the book “The Happy Hooker” and thought that name appropriate for his innocent newborn baby daughter.

She also went on to tell me that she and my brother have both been diagnosed Rapid Cycling Bipolar Disorder. While mentally and physically (just got a clean bill of health from my doctor this week in fact) I feel fine, this really freaked me out. It made me feel like this diagnosis is looming uncontrollably in my future. Now that I have had time to digest it, I think I have dodged a bullet, well several actually. I think it was good in a way that my life was so fucked up when I was a kid because I was in some sort of counseling for most of my teen years. I enrolled in grief counseling after my mom died and that helped me work through a lot of family issues. So I think because I have had an opportunity to work through a lot of my life issues and experiences I am mentally sound. 

This is by far the most intense week I’ve had in about three months (my jobless days were very stressful.) I think things will simmer down for next week. It is cathartic for me to write on my blog.