That's what work is like. Today, I go in and my computer is off. I had restarted the night before when I left. I turn it on. It starts up but goes into a maddening series of file scanning routines that disables me from booting up any other programs. I wait for more than 20 minutes while this goes on and call Bill, the IT guy and tell him my woes. He comes up, tells me that the UPS surge protector box I have on my computer has low batteries so every time even the slightest surge is detected, the low batteries think it's Armageddon and turn my computer off. By the time it's 9:30, morning news meeting time, I have been successful only at opening my email.
After the news meeting, Todd stops me in the hall to say that Channel 11 is sending a newsfeed to their Twitter account and why can't we do the same thing? I return to my office and my computer has died again. I reboot and spend quite a while trying to determine the URL of my news xml feeds so our news posts automatically to Twitter.
A fire in Tiffin becomes breaking news and must be posted right away. And updated.
I finally read through a couple of posted news stories for mistakes and typos, during which I get email saying the flash creative for the ad campaign that starts March 4 doesn't work right so I forward the bad graphic to the art director who created it who tells me he is too busy to fix it. I try to have Erin fix it, but he's sent an swf file and she can only edit flash in flv.
Then Sean calls me, the webmaster at WTVD in Raleigh. He knows where my xml feed URLs are. About halfway through my conversation with him, I realize I have missed my 11:45 digital sales conference call. When I hang up with Sean, it's 12:30.
I go to lunch, realizing this will be the only calm hour of my day. I eat at Organic Bliss and look at shoes at Elder Beerman and get back to work just minutes before my 2 p.m. webmaster conference call. During which we are chastised by the digital media VPs about our misuse of the newly installed site alerts that we had to learn how to use this week along with populating our new weather page.
I start again to post this xml feed to Twitter which involves a process of logging in to some ultra secure system that requires me to choose 3 pictures from a group of about 20 that I will remember later because they will be my SECRET IMAGES. I choose cats, food and outer space. How could I not forget those?? Then a login approval is sent to my webmaster email. Or so the software says. I wait. I choose Send Again and this time the email comes, I go back to the twitterfeed site, follow all the steps and get to the page where I enter the URL of my xml feed and a couple of other things and right after I click OK for what surely must be the last time, my computer shuts itself down. Again. It's 4:30. I have done no evening news, although Jennifer is there to do that but I always help her.
The IT woman comes up to help me unplug the faulty UPS surge box and we find the monitors were plugged into it instead of anywhere else so she has to go to the basement to get a common household surge protector so that she has somewhere to plug in the monitors.
I get my computer restarted and it's after 5 and the news director has sent me a 14-page pdf file of all the jobs they'll be referencing in the Job Bank call-in portion of tonight's newscasts. The file refuses to convert to text. So I have to ftp the file to a server and then reference it as a URL and send that to Jen so she can post it. And it doesn't show up the first two times I try it. But finally it does.
During all this other stuff, I have answered about 85 emails, discussed an upcoming contest that is so complicated we have to have a conference call about it on Friday, made a graphic and posted it for the Job Bank call-in, updated the Job Center web page with new jobs, posted a story about Tim Hortons roll up the rim contest because news made mistakes LAST night so I have to bail them out with a story that we otherwise wouldn't have posted because face it, it's free advertising.
At least Jen has me watch the video of the hero dog pulling the injured dog from a busy street in Chile. I love the internet.
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