Sarcastic Bastard

...and the number 1 reason why i hate my job: there's a woman here who works for a department store. she basically is the liason between our company and the store. she is the biggest fucking bitch i've ever met in my life. this skank complains, and yells, and asks stupid questions, and wants ridiculous things. although it is kind of amusing that she's got my boss wrapped around her finger, in the sense that he might like something, but then if she doesn't, neither does he. amusing, but pathetic, really. this job honestly gets worse and worse every day. yesterday, i wasn't in the office (more on that later), but i got a call at around 9:30 am asking if i could come in later in the day! he KNEW i was going to be out of town...how did he think that would work??

but now, finally, the moment you've all (both?) been waiting for...what exactly i do: basically, i create content, or take existing content and prepare it to be displayed on the plasma screens. you're probably thinking "that sounds pretty easy, i'll bet any monkey could even do that!" but whoever thinks that is retarded (and gay). first of all, i have to be somewhat creative when creating content from scratch. secondly, it takes a certain amount of skill to reformat the content, add effects if necessary, etc. for example, i'll have to watch a movie and then edit something resembling a trailer for it to be displayed. another thing i have to deal with on a regular basis is aspect ratios. since some stuff has to go sideways, i have to flip it sideways, stretch it to fit the screen, etc. this means a lot of rendering and crap. it's really stupid, and pointless, because video should NOT be displayed on a 9:16 ratio! (for those who aren't home video purists, this results in two problems: major cropping off the sides, to the point where maybe only a person's face is visible on screen, or half a car, or something; the second is stretching - because video is shot at a certain height, in order to fill it to a higher screen, you must stretch it, and distort the image). then, the other shit i have to deal with is people asking me where things i've never seen are! asking me if someone else did something, and "oh, can you do ?"

but now for some better news. yesterday, i worked for NTV (Nippon TV from japan) in niagara falls. a company i do some freelancing for was hired by them to provide a satellite uplink and a partial crew for a segment of their morning show back in japan. it was pretty fun, if long and tedious. we got to the falls at 8am, and didn't really do much all day, really! some of the setup had been done by the japanese crew the day before, so we just ran a few cables and were pretty much done. they had a huge budget, and the show was pretty cool (even though i couldn't understand it!). they had an underwater camera, and were on both sides of the falls. the funny thing was that they were sending audio and video via microwave from the american side to the canadian side (where the satellite truck was), and they had a backup laser transmitter...but the laser wasn't feasible for the falls because the mist would completely refract the beam and make it unusable. i was on the american side, and it was really cool...i'd never been on that side of the falls, or gone down to the walkways there. my favourite part was the "hurricane deck", which really lives up to its name! you get drenched standing there for a few seconds, and i was up for several minutes! it was fun :) long day, though...i didn't get home till midnight, and then had to be at work early today cuz i wasn't in yesterday.

well, that's about it for now...i'll be continually updating the trials and tribulations of my work saga, and whatever else. next week i'll tell more stories, i hope.

but as i leave, i pose this question: wouldn't it be weird if water was lighter than air?

posted by leor @ 12:26