Breaking news near Downtown Miami! Okay, we’re good here, just tell the live truck to send us a signal on one of our ENG channels to the downtown repeater aaaaaaand… BLITHERFART!!! WHAT IS THAT?! Our truck’s signal gets smashed, and there are No Excuses On ‘Da Bowl!
Someone else’s live truck is feeding a tape from hours earlier on the day. Spin the receiver around a bit and it’s clear that they’re aimed at the same receiver site or thereabouts. The station responsible has a receiver up there too, I believe.
Okay, so let’s see. How many people had to FAIL to accomplish this?
1. The studio ENG operator. The studio ENG operator would have been the one responsible for directing the truck to use this channel; or, they would have been able to tell the truck, hey, change channel, we ain’t down with O P C. (Other People’s Channels)
2. The truck’s crew. They should have also known better.
They continued to send the footage from tape for a couple minutes then just sent black for a while after that before *finally* coming down….. after any hope of us getting our shot waned. Fortunately, the story turned out to be a total non-event. But still, FAILURE.
The station responsible called us and apologized so I won’t yell at them specifically here, but come on— don’t just grab someone else’s channel, and at least, not without asking nicely first! News happens, man!
(Working title I’ll probably never bother changing)
Florida was just called for Trump. The Hillary Clinton campaign had stated they don’t *need* Florida to win, but that makes the results even more uncertain since Florida has a big heaping slug of electoral votes.
If Trump wins, it will be a massive blow to… pretty much everything. If Clinton wins, it’s hard to say what will change. Sure, she’ll be the first female president, but it’s hard to say if we’ll notice anything else.
I probably don’t get to go home tonight (or will it be tomorrow?) until we know who we have as a president. Now, one interesting thing I noticed— I went over into our breakroom where the television there is tuned to another station, the local ABC affiliate. (It’s usually just left there so some of our employees can watch daytime soaps on there). They were speaking on there about the results of some very interesting polls – not as to who someone would choose as president, but rather, whether or not they hold any confidence in their current system of government.
The results were pretty much a resounding NO.
I don’t even know anymore
Oops, I guess not everyone likes oligarchy, unless they’re on the rich side of the wall. (Sorry, Drumpf, I will never forgive you for your desire to wall off Mexico.)
In the end— does it even matter who is elected president? No matter what, we will still wake up tomorrow in a system of oligarchy. Both houses of Congress will be dominated by the GOP. The sun will still rise, but at least we didn’t lose our ability to catch it on solar panels. (Florida Amendment 1 crashed and burned, good riddance.) The tolls will keep rising, well, exponentially faster.
Speaking of which, Miami-Dade voters re-elected Carlos Gimenez. Uhh, enjoy that, guys.
Medical marijuana was approved in Florida. We’re going to need it. Actually, at this point, we need to go ahead and approve recreational because we REALLY need that. If we grow it domestically that will probably be our one remaining reliable industry. 😉
At this point I think it’s not worth worrying over who gets the presidency as much as how we’re going to deal with the Republican House and Senate. The GOP has historically been associated more with rule by the corporation, not by the people. They were opposed to, and responsible for watering down, the Affordable Healthcare Act.
I made the mistake of turning on a ham radio earlier today and … regretted this within minutes. I decided to suffer through the pain and listen anyway. The usual concerns came up – “they’re gonna take away our guns!”, “lazy people on welfare are destroying everything”… I get the feeling these voices will change very soon upon a harsh reality check as the world’s economies start to… “adjust” more heavily and the BEAUTIFUL new plans for privatized infrastructure optimized to serve the rich start to kick in.
To summarize my predictions:
If Hillary wins:
Very few changes and PAINFUL bickering between the Executive branch and the houses of Congress due to partisan conflict
Slow but gradual economic growth as the American consumer and financial market regain some confidence
If either win:
Gradual loss of individual freedoms and personal wealth among working class and low income citizens as the fucking wankstain oligarchy continues to become more oppressive and finds new ways through rent-seeking measures to squeeze citizens harder and harder. It’s hard to say whether the public support could be gathered to stop this process but I could see it being possible via extremely large, coordinated campaigns for public transparency and input into government.
If Trump wins:
EXTRMELY RAPID, unstoppable destruction of individual freedom and personal wealth among the working class. Rapid removal of the middle class and widening of income inequality. Basically, at this point, anything that’s profitable to your bank goes, and you can go fuck yourselves.
Sudden creation of, and/or involvement in international conflicts.
HEY AT LEAST YOU GET TO KEEP YOUR GUNS. For now. Shitpouch.
This session of angry posting shall terminate now as the boss is behind the rack next to me.
A refurb DirecTV Slimline receiver we had in service a while just up and died with no warning. It was opened up and showed no signs of trauma but I saw something everyone else missed….
Hmm. Let’s flip it and see what that is at the edge. It’s probably nothing at aaaaaaaaaaaaaa
AAAAAAAAAAAWHATTHEAAAAAAAA
What.
A while back I found these units tended to burn the access card. This appears to be the fix – first, note how far heat would have to travel down those fingers to toast the card. Second, the card is actually heatsinked by a plate above the socket.
Front panel with mystery antenna. Also note the dual die IR LED next to the black lens IR receiver. This is probably used for the unit’s very user – friendly universal remote system.
The rectangles are touch button sensors.
RF filter and very big silkscreen note on where to find power.
I’m beginning to wonder if this city even exists or if this has all been a prolonged mass hallucination caused by ergot growing in the croquettas or something… Kinda like how the ergot growing in the bread in Salem led to the witch trials
There’s just no way any of this is real
Well if it’s hallucination it’s a really good one because dude I can smell the hot vinyl and feel the warmth from that bad crimp splice there that likely breaks about 23 parts of the National Electric Code
