Author: John Bollwitt

Allow me to be a geek for a second, but do you know anything about OS/2? I have no clue what so ever. In fact, prior to working here, I thought the operating system was dead. Yeah, you remember that thing IBM tried to put out in competition with Windows in the mid-1990’s? Well, probably not, but regardless, it existed at one time. In the world of NPR, it lives. In fact, it thrives.

All the satellite feeds you hear on the radio are switched using a single computer running this said system. Somehow, and for some reason, NPR bought into OS/2 back whenever and built its entire network around it. It truly is an amazing thing to behold but hardly pretty to look at. The interface is not easy to understand, and that goes for the OS and the software that switches the satellite streams. It’s ugly. In six months, it will all change as NPR pushes down a new way to do things, but until then, we have a dead computer and are doing all switching by hand.

With two radio stations, pushing out live feeds and recording other feeds for later playback, it can kind of get confusing.

There is nearly nothing better than lazy Sundays, especially ones where I get to watch a Cubs game followed by two DVD’s; Snatch and Identity. It’s like my ultimate fill of pop culture. I think I’ll be quite satisfied for a while.

CPB has sent a guy out to do some measurements on our AM transmitter. To make his readings, he had to kill the signal tonight. Jim called and sent me into the control room to make a legal ID and announce that we’d being going off the air. My first time behind the mic at that place, but no big deal, right? As soon as I piped up the fader, I started shaking. I said what I had to say just fine, but the shakes kicked in. It was like the first time I went on the air all over again. Of course, that was 100 watts not even reaching county limits. This is the eastern part of the state. It was weird. Slightly embarrassing, and weird.

I think what the most interesting thing about working with the guys that I do in this business of broadcasting is the experience. More so, it’s not the technical knowledge. The life experiences of these guys are not to be missed. Stories of growing up with one TV station. Two radio radio stations on the dial. Top 40 on the AM. It’s just the way life is and always will be. Times change, and people are different.

The broken record spins like it always does with history repeating itself. I look at people a few years younger than me and compare how my life was to theirs. The differences are always there. What we have today isn’t what I had in my day. Push it even further to my nephews and nieces and those times look even more strange. How different their lives will be.

I grew up with four TV stations. On days that I was sick and unable to go to school, I would watch public television all day, because, quite frankly, the soaps sucked. I don’t know how many radio stations I had, but I feel in love with that box. Look where it got me today…

Part of my job is to take care of the computer network at the station. Yeah, I’m an I.T. guy. In fact, I’m basically the I.T. department. It’s not like we have a huge amount of stuff to take care of, but I need to know what’s going on in the PC world and all that threatens it. Updates, viruses, blah, blah, blah… Every morning I purge the web in the pursuit of knowledge.

In the midst of today’s brain feeding, I stumbled onto globalsecurity.org. I had heard of the web site from NPR news reports, but the site just sucked me in. Anything that is a country with the potential for military conflict is examined. It gets worse. They even offer insight as to how possible military conflicts and operations should or might happen in the chance that such events arise.

So when I say worse, I mean scary. It’s always good to have a plan. Even if it’s about war, I think everyone can agree that planning before hand is good. It’s very much like history repeating itself though. I remember when my brother was in training for the air force and the books he would bring home, examining all sorts of details of the military readiness of the U.S.S.R. Today, it’s a bit of the same. Lots of theories and hunches about what to expect. However, there’s more than one country to watch that are a lot smaller and harder to see into.

When I was a little kid, we didn’t play cops and robbers. We played war. Russians against the Americans.

I have been a horrible fan of movies. Whenever I pick up the paper, I look through the schedules and do the, “Ooo!… I want to see that.” Of course, I don’t. In fact, I’ve been doing that for about the past year. Last movie I went to go see was Hellboy with Muffin. Before that, Dawn of the Dead, also with Muffin. That was in April. There’s just a lot I want to see. Never enough time to see them, yet alone wanting to part with the money I am so desperately trying to save for a vehicle.

The other thing is that there are a lot of films that I want to see that are not exactly choice films, and I really don’t care. I just like being entertained. Even bad movies are good to me. Hell, I took a film class once where I had to watch russian, non-narrative, silent films. I could pull out some element of entertainment from those, so I’ve had my share of training through torture.

One thing film classes, or film school, can do to you is teach you to hate everything except for a hand full of “good films,” whatever that might have been drilled into you from your professor and/or professors. And yet, I still love my Kentucky Fried Movie and the likes. You’re also talking to the guy who has bought about six DVD’s over the past four months that I haven’t taken the packaging off of to this day. Not like they’re going anywhere.

I thought buying clothes was hard, but doing the same thing for my apartment is twice as much. More so, I have yet to settle on how I want to really decorate this place. And yes, I did just say that. I’m concerned about having everything mismatch or clash. When it comes down to it, I have always been a person of my own style. Now, I won’t say if it’s a great style, but it’s a style. This time around, I’m trying to put some real thought into it, minus paying attention to silly rules. This is my place. I live here, you don’t. Perhaps when I get a couch, you can come over and tell me how much you dislike what I’ve done.

I have a lot going on this week at the station, but that’s really nothing new. Lost a hard drive on a machine, but that’s not nearly as important to you or me as it is to the person who lost all the data on that thing. It’s never good to have that happen. It’s always amusing to listen to parts of a computer make grinding noises. I thought the poor guy was going to cry when I gave him the news. However, I finally got to use the line I have been waiting for ever since I started…

“It’s dead, Jim.”

I have been sucked into a marathon of Band of Brothers. I think it’s the History Channel’s odd way of taking the ease of memory out of today’s significance. Odd thing is, my brother flies for one of the involved airlines from today’s anniversary, and he was trapped at Dulles the day of. The next few days, being held up in a hotel room, not going anywhere for obvious reasons, he too fell in love with this mini-series. I think a lot of it stems from the long history of having family involved in nearly every major affair the U.S. has seen in the past one hundred years.

This week was the longest four day week I have had in a long time. Four live remotes that I engineered, and this weekend, I am beat. I flew Java House solo with Paul as my wing man. The ISDN died on me within a minute or two into the show, meaning dead air being pumped out across the state. I kept my cool, and within two minutes, we were flying high again. Luckily, Ben didn’t notice a thing and the band played on. It’s time like those that you learn for the next mishap.

It’s good to be lazy.

I actually got out of the station today early. I was told to go home. I work too hard? I work too much? Who, me? There might be some validity to that, but the fact that I get paid for what I do is harder for me to comprehend. That’s just an added bonus. Plus, I’ve been going since the sun was barely starting to turn the sky a dark blue hue this morning. I’m a little tired.

Took the extra time today to so some shopping. Mainly for groceries, but I was also hunting for some new running shorts. I think it’s a bad sign when you can’t find anything out there smaller than two sizes larger than what your waist actually is. I found plenty of double XL all the way up to 5-XL.

It’s still amusing for me to go grocery shopping. Single guy in front of me, lots of frozen pizza and cereal. Guy behind me, spaghetti-o’s, can after can of soup, and boxes of various meals destined for the microwave. Which makes me hungry for supper. Chicken breasts sauteed in a white wine vinegar and pea pods. That sounds good.

Even if today is Labor Day and work free, I’ve kept myself pretty busy. Tomorrow, I have to be up at 4:30AM for the kick off event to the Year of Arts and Humanities at the UI. Two hour show at the Java House on the FM. I took some time to put all the equipment together for the morning fun today, among other things. I didn’t have to go in, but I did anyway. It was just like KRUI all over again. Some things never change, nor do they ever slow down. At least my apartment is clean.

Deidre called me this afternoon… From the right-center field of Wrigley Field… During the seventh inning stretch… Holding her cell phone out, echoing the sounds coming from my television… Punk.

The Killers, Hot Fuss. Wow… I realize I haven’t mentioned any of the music that I have been picking up on in quite a while. That’s my latest love, among others. I’ve contemplated doing a mix to send out via snail mail, but not sure if anyone is interested. “John Music”… A term I have heard more than a few times.

I listen to NPR all day long, so the news is something I keep up with on a pretty regular basis. I’ll admit that I’m not the perfect employee. I love my toys. In the car, I listen to my iPod mini. I named it “Greenie”, but that’s not too creative of a name for it. It’s green, so… duh. It goes running with me and, pretty much, everywhere else I go. To kind of get away from work, I’ll listen iTunes at home and what not, just to get my mind off of things. Doesn’t always work, but I do try.

Anyhow, the hostages that were taken in Russia is just dumbfounding me right now. As the reports came in yesterday, I knew it was only going to get worse as the whole situation was sorted out in its aftermath. Of course, it getsworse than you can really imagine. I understand the need of making your voice heard when it becomes a matter of political significance. You can see that in this country almost every place you look right now.

I don’t understand this. I got really curious and researched the history of the conflicts in Chechnya, and there is no really solid way to comprehend what is going on except pure hate. There is some arrows pointing towards a struggle for independence based on the abuse of Chechnya’s natural resources by the Russian government. Immediately when I say that, you probably think oil, to which you’re pretty on the money. However, within the area, there are numerous groups struggling for power, all with deep hatred for the Kremlin. It just keeps getting ugly after that. And confusing. I still don’t know the whole story, but this is something that is not easy to wrap your head around.

Over three hundred have been pronounced dead, most of them being under the age of twelve. Herded into the gym, surrounded by explosives, shot in the back by their captors as they fled, and that was after they blew up the roof. They were stripped naked and forced to watch other hostages be killed in front of them as to make them fear the same fait if they tried to get away, scaring them into place. It’s all over now, but this might be a prelude to a civil war.

Oh yeah, there’s that election thing going on, too.