Out of the Newsroom

This Sunday morning brought a phone call from a friend for some help setting up a new wireless router in her house. I really don’t mind these kind of calls from friends–except for the amount of time spent saying that it really is no trouble and please don’t think that if I say it isn’t a problem, I’m just being nice.

(Believe me, if it’s a problem–I will say so. I’m not that nice. If you are looking at something too major or completely over my head, I’ll steer you to someone who gets paid to help out.)

I’m usually OK with being a member of the unofficial Friend Geek Squad (sometimes alternatively I am known as a member of the “Freek Squad”, but for completely unrelated reasons…) My Dad always said it was important to have a skill to fall back on–and if this whole Journalism thing ultimately doesn’t work out, I am hoping to land a job at the Apple store or maybe Best Buy.

Assuming those guys are still in business when I need them.

But there are a few informal rules about providing tech support for friends (and family) that I have devised. These seem to be pretty universal, so if you have a geek friend that serves as your unofficial IT, HDTV, and other technology support staff–you might want to give these a shot to preserve the friendship and make sure you get help when you really need it.

First off, Call Before You Buy

This may seem obvious, but many people think it is an imposition to call and ask what to buy before they plunk down their plastic to the eager, yet hopelessly uninformed person at the Best Buy, Circuit City, Staples or wherever. For instance, in my friend’s case –she had gotten a wireless router on the recommendation of a Staples staffer. Which might have been OK, but she was hooking it up to her iMac.

Problem is that what she actually needed was two things, a new router and then an extender to make sure there is a wireless internet signal on the second floor on her house. This is more and more common as folks try to deploy WiFi across their whole house (or business).

Of course, polite people will always say “I didn’t want to bother you when I was out shopping.” A nice sentiment, but here is the deal–if you buy the right thing in the first place, it may make the later call for help unnecessary. Or at least it will make giving the help a lot easier to provide. (Contrary to popular belief, we geeky friends don’t know about every piece of gear that is out there, so it is easier when you ask us to help with stuff we do know something about.)

As an alternative, you can always send a text message if you want to ask if I am busy during the workday.

Second, It is often easier to show up than help over the phone.

Sure, simple things can be addressed over a phone call–but the same reason that the folks on the manufacturer’s tech support line can’t solve your problem is often why I can’t. Every situation is different, and sometimes what may take forever on the phone, is a shorter deal when I can look at it in person. (Don’t worry, my office is as messy as anything in your house.)

But if I offer to come over and fix the problem–it should be on my schedule. So don’t assume that I can either be there in five minutes or in between your other appointments only in the window between 4 and 4:15pm. The correct response is always “whenever you can come by would be great.”

Third, payment is unnecessary–but thoughtfulness is always OK.

Many thanks for asking if I need anything, including a drink or some food if I make a house call. If I say no, it isn’t meant to be rude or that I don’t like whatever you are serving. I probably just don’t want anything right that second.

And I don’t ever expect to be paid for helping out a friend in need. What kind of friend would I be if I did? That said, it is perfectly OK–if I have spent more than a half-hour on whatever the problem is–to do something nice if the mood strikes you. I consider iTunes gift cards to be the best currency to reward anyone for going above and beyond. They sell them everywhere (even at the local supermarket checkout!) or if you are exceptionally lazy, you can send them online, right from your computer.

Someone asked me about that last rule, “What if they don’t have an iPod and only use something like a Zune?”

A Zune? Seriously? Would you call someone who owns a Zune for tech support in the first place?

Is it just me, or with each day that passes does it seem more and more like the only way that the now mythic 700 Billion dollar bailout (also known in some circles as the greatest game of 3 Card Monte ever played by a Secretary of the Treasury)–the only way it will ever reach you and me is by turning to this guy?

That TV Info Guy, Matthew Lesko

OK, I’m only half joking here folks. If my bank can get money to buy another bank, why shouldn’t I get a grant to study the migration habits of navel lint?

A guy who can watch this online parody of himself and then run it on his own show, laughing at himself.

Another reason that love him or hate him, K.O. and “Countdown” have become must watch TV for the masses who don’t think that Fox News is the only thing worth watching.

Priceless.

Ok, my dream when I was nine years old and turned my Mom’s Hoover upright vacuum into a TV studio camera by putting a cardboard box on top, may finally become reality.

The amazing software folks at Boinx Software in Germany (whose FotoMagico I have owned and used for sometime) have introduced something called BoinxTV today. And if it does what it looks like it can, then I will soon build my own TV production empire, complete with multiple cameras, magic chroma key effects and even annoying bottom of the screen “tickers”!

All from the comfort of my own basement.

BoinxTV runs on a Mac, and for the life of me–looks like a cooler, cheaper version of an earlier groundbreaking bit of software magic called the “Video Toaster”. The Toaster revolutionized low cost video production, and the company that made it went on the build a box called the “TriCaster” which may be the closest thing to a television studio in a box that has been built.

But the TriCaster still costs 5 grand–and up. It can easily get in the neighborhood of ten thousand when you add all the bells and whistles.

Compare this to BoinxTV (which I admit sounds a bit like a would-be porn channel) which costs a whopping $499. If you’re willing to give them a plug in all of your productions, they’ll sell you BoinxTV for $199! (You will need a recent vintage, high speed Mac to run it on.)

As soon as I get to feeling a little better (I am fighting off a cold that has sapped me of a lot of energy), I will be so geeking out on this.

Can KirkTV can be far off? (sort of like David Lee Roth’s 1985 video for “Just a Gigolo” )

But likely even more pathetic.

My old boss is back in the public spotlight again this week. Funny and feisty as ever.

R.E. Turner, III–known to most of the world as Ted Turner, has been the subject of a 60 Minutes profile last night and a turn on Letterman this evening. He’ll be all over the place in the next week or two. The appearances coincide with the publication of his new memoir, “Call Me Ted”–which coincides with the occasion of Turner’s 70th birthday on the 19th of this month.

And to me, the guy is still as charming and brilliant as ever. Some would argue as crazy as ever–but when the heck was anyone who was brilliant not called crazy?

Let me be clear, when I say I worked for Mr. Turner–and being from the south, it still is Mr. Turner, no matter what he or his book says–I didn’t work with him in any sense, but I worked for him. I was way down on the food chain on both occasions.

The first was in 1973, when I got my first job in radio in my hometown of Charleston, SC at WTMA-AM & WPXI-FM. The stations were owned then, as were all of the outdoor advertising displays (what most people call “Billboards”) in Charleston, by a company called the Turner Communications Corporation. While the stations were managed locally by a man named Charles Smith, the paychecks we got every other week had the Turner name on them.

Legend has it that Turner’s ownership of the station’s coincided with his interest in sailing, and he spent a great deal of time either on a yacht in Charleston harbor–or at the plantation that his family owned in Yemassee, South Carolina.

I’d end up working for Mr. Turner again some 23 years later, when Turner Broadcasting would merge with Time Warner, where I was employed at the time. Having read a few books about the man, I was excited at the prospect of meeting him at some point along the way, as my career had landed me a little further up the corporate ladder and that was more a realistic possibility.

It would be a few years later at a meeting in Atlanta, the headquarters of the Turner side of the empire when I’d spend about 30 seconds talking with the man as he greeted the group of news executives meeting in a conference room next to his office. I blurted out something about having worked for him before at the radio stations in Charleston, to which he promptly acknowledged the city as one of the great ones on earth and Mr. Smith as a good man.

Southerners will recognize that as perhaps one of the greatest compliments you can receive. Given Turner’s propensity for speaking his mind frankly, it made the compliment all the more sincere. And like a flash, he was gone. He moved on to the next event on his busy agenda, but not before telling the group of us that what we were working on was–in his words–one of the best things the company was developing, and to keep pushing ahead on it.

It was a short, but motivational talk. I was inspired for months afterwards, because if the guy who had had the guts to make CNN a reality thought what we were doing in local news on cable was a good thing, then it really must be so.

It also helped that I think my Dad was more impressed by my story of meeting Ted Turner than just about anything else I ever shared with him. He thought Turner was a true maverick, back before that word became a political punch line. I would have loved to have taken him to one of Ted’s Montana Grill restaurants. I bet he would have enjoyed just chowing down on a bison burger.

No matter what you might think of him, Turner is still a fascinating figure and one of the people on my list of “Five famous people I’d love to have lunch with”. I’m looking forward to reading his book.

After all, anyone who supports the National Forensic League and shows up each year at their national debate competition is a good man–at least in my book.

In the post election day hangover of emotions, the euphoria of hope gives way to the soberness of what change can really be accomplished against the backdrop of what is going on here in the real world, the inevitable cold shower stings a bit as it hits our faces.

A Sunday morning of reading the papers will confirm that, lest anyone have a doubt about it. Sure, there are still the weekly writers like the NY Times Frank Rich, who have to put in their official stamp on the monumental shift in defining who now makes up “the real America”.

I don’t mean to suggest that there is any reason for the hope that fueled Tuesday’s historic events to be quickly cashed out like shares in an underperforming Hedge fund, but Hope is also still a place in Arkansas, and as political rhetoric it still is the most visceral, yet least specific promise for a candidate to issue. The campaign that brought Presidential politics fully into the internet age isn’t about to rest on its laurels and has already moved into governance by web 2.0 with the debut of their spiffy new Change.gov website

But the web itself is trying to cope with its own problems, learning that it isn’t immune from the downturn that has hit all businesses–at least those that haven’t gotten a 700 Billion dollar bail-out with “no strings or accountability attached” (which it seems is quickly turning into the full employment act of the former financial wizards who got us into the mess in the first place.)

My favorite read of the morning was an article by Techno-pundit Nicholas Carr who has postulated on the provocative headline “Who killed the Blogosphere?” Mr. Carr documents the shift away from the collective blogging of an army of dedicated private citizens to the success of the elite professional magazine-types, turned commercial blog-based media that now dominate the lists of sites that keep such lists, like the oft-quoted Technorati. You know, the Huffington Posts, Engadgets, and Boing Boings of the world.

Carr goes on to compare the short lifespan arc of blogging to that of the still surviving arc of amateur radio. While I can agree on some similarities between the two, I think the analysis of what has happened to each since its nascent success early on is flawed. Carr and a subsequent poster suggest that Amateur radio has all but died because of licensing and equipment costs. Nothing could be further from the truth, the equipment is cheaper than its ever been for amateur radio and blogging. Licensing for “ham radio” operators is far easier than it was when I was a kid and unsuccessfully struggled to learn even a tiny bit of morse code.

No, I would suggest that Blogging and amateur radio have actually been dealing with the same social challenge. Those who got in at the start, thinking that their own stream of programming would attract large audiences of others have realized (for the most part) that it wasn’t going to happen. What is left are the people who find the art of casting forth a transmission of their own to be interesting enough, and worth doing whether there is one million or just one recipient.

And that brings us back to the question of hope. It is a very personal emotion, different for each of us. We hope for things based on our situation, whether than be a shared one with the national psyche or an individual one based on our own fates and fortunes.

Don’t ask me why, but somehow I ended up watching three Western themed movies yesterday. (“Hang ‘em High”, “Appaloosa”, and “Open Range”) All three depict life on the western frontier of the United States in the late 1800s, back in the hardscrabble days when the nation was pushing towards the Pacific. It was the time when men were men, and most women were usually categorized as either “whores or squaws”. Every movie about the Old West employs many of the same dramatic devices, but the one that seems to be fundamental to all is that the rough and often deadly times that are portrayed are balanced by the unshakable hope of the characters who know they are living in times of significant change–either to the land they love or to their own existence.

There is usually not much portrayal of what must have been an often dreary and bleak existence, that surely tested the souls of those who lived in the small towns in the corners of desolation that extended towards where the sun set each day. No, that didn’t conveniently fit in the two hour window that the promised land the settlers and sooners would ultimately discover on the western coast of these United States–Hollywood.

And thus, back to the present where we must reconcile the cinematic chapter of the endless campaign season that has just concluded with the reality that was temporarily masked by sitting for months in the darkened theatre of political drama. The credits are rolling now, the instant reviews are beginning, and the finger pointing on what didn’t work and the credit grabbing for what did, is firing up as quickly as the lights have come on.

Now we all wait to see if the first steps of the Obama presidency will give us as much hope and change as the on-screen administrations of men like Bartlet, Shepherd, and Kovic, let alone those real life ones of Washington, Roosevelt and Kennedy.

One early and not-so-hopeful sign on this Sunday morning: The Change.gov website was down for a while while I wrote this. (Update: It is back up as of early Sunday afternoon.)