Today was a pretty quick day, so it must have been a good one.
I enjoy keeping distracted, because then I forget that for the most part, I am alone and I don’t know what to do with myself.
Almost right after I got into the office, Editor 1 asked when would be good for a meeting to go over video production with the two guys who cover high school for Baseball America. I don’t know why he was asking me for a time. I have all the time in the world around here.
He asked if 11 would be ok with me, and of course it was.
When 11 rolled around and he was still talking to someone in his office (which is right next to my cubicle, essentially taking away all of his privacy), I just waited at my desk until someone came and got me. They did.
During the meeting, the two high school guys talked a little bit about what they had done with video already, and showed me what they had previously put together. Editor 1 did the same with some footage he had.
Then I showed them a couple of videos I had done at school, to try and give them an idea of what could be done differently. I didn’t really make any suggestions at the time, but I took notes furiously so I could come up with something more formal for them later.
We ended up with a decision to come up with a video with the equipment and space that BA currently has at the office, and then to try and come up with something better so that the bosses can compare.
The better equipment and facility that we might be able to use it at the park of the Durham Bulls, Tampa Bay’s Triple-A team not far from here. I think it would be pretty awesome if we got to go there and use their stuff, but I believe we are still waiting to hear back from them about whether or not that is possible.
So I have my notes, and their ideas floating around, and I am hoping to come up with something for them on the weekend. I will have a lot of time on the weekend, seeing as I have nothing else to do.
It took me a long time to finish the blurbs on the Arizona Rising Stars, my task from the end of yesterday. I was to write only three things about each of the guys on both teams that are playing in the futures game on Saturday. All I had to do was give their Baseball America ranking, some stats from this past season, and a scouting report.
It seemed easy enough. But these are some obscure players. Most I had never heard of before, but that is likely due to my lack of knowledge in drafts and prospects, hopefully growing now. You would think that the Internet would make things like this easy. Not so.
I found them all somewhere, but when I completed the blurbs, some of them had old Baseball America rankings, some weren’t ranked at all, some didn’t have any stats from this season, or any good ones, and for the ones whom I couldn’t come up with any sort of scouting report for, I just tried to add in some interesting fact about them.
Some of them were just not interesting.
I kept working away, and was interrupted by Editor 1 asking if anyone wanted to go for lunch. Of course I did, so once again, I joined him and Editor 2 and we went to a restaurant. I am beginning to wonder why no one else goes with these guys though.
It could be a plethora of reasons I’m sure. One of them being maybe it’s too expensive for the lowly worker bees, and only the editors can afford to go out for lunch each day. Or maybe no one likes them, though I don’t get that impression from anyone.
Perhaps everyone else is afraid to go for lunch with the bosses every day, for fear of wasting time, or saying something wrong.
I’m not sure, but it seems like a fine setup for me. I am not the type of person to pack a lunch each day and then remember to eat it and then take the Tupperware home and wash it. That’s not my style.
And I don’t have to worry about wasting time, because after all, I am free labour. And I’ve stayed at least an hour later than the time they set for me every day except the first, and I think I am averaging an hour-and-a-half of extra free time for BA.
Not that I am trying to impress anyone, or get anything done. Really, I just don’t have anything else to do. This is truly it for me. I hope my time is actually helping me contribute though.
When we came back from lunch I finished the Rising Stars blurbs and sent them away to Editor 2, who had assigned me the task. When I went to ask him if he had received it, and explain what I came up with (or didn’t, in some cases), he told me he was just going to pass it along to Editor 1 because he was the one going to the game in Arizona this weekend.
Editor 1 hadn’t looked at it yet, so I returned to my desk.
Since I really didn’t have another task, I decided to take it upon myself to look at the charticle again. I know they hadn’t really decided on how they were going to lay it out, so why couldn’t I come up with some suggestions for them?
I made a couple of charts with different layouts and colour-coded them with the new pens I had purchased last night at Target. They were one of the things not on my list that I bought because I didn’t have my list. But they’re good pens.
When I was finished I went back to Editor 2 because he seemed to have been trying to figure out what to do with the charticle. He was most impressed by my neat printing I think. He compared it to his own, which I did see at the meeting yesterday, and it is comparable.
He looked at them, and thought they were decent (I think), and said that he had come up with something similar to one of them. His plan was to pass them off to production with his own idea, to try and help them with it. I guess I will just see the final product when it lands on my desk.
I asked if there was anything else I could do, and in retrospect, I probably could have just left. But I asked, and was given a new task. He sent it by email, and I knew I had probably made a bad decision when it started with “See how you like this,” and continued with “If it goes well you can do more”.
It didn’t seem so bad at first, writing a quick-hit for a team to go in the 2011 Almanac. I had to come up with something for the season in a sentence, the high point, the low point, notable rookies, key transactions, down on the farm, and opening day payroll. And my team was the Arizona Diamondbacks.
I started with the easiest thing, the payroll, and worked my way up from there. Some of it was harder than I had expected though. How would I write about a season in a sentence for a team I knew almost nothing about? Not to mention that I hadn’t seen them play a single game this season, or read about anything on the team.
I did what I could and by the time I was finished with what I thought was and ok quick-hit, almost everyone had left the office. Editor 1 and Editor 2 were both gone, and I figured I should leave too. I emailed what I had done to Editor 2 and took off.
Today I had made a list for my post-work activities. I didn’t want to forget anything this time. First, I needed to send Thing 3 (the roommate that I replaced in the apartment) the stuff that she had left in her room, now my room.
I typed ‘post office’ into the GPS. I decided to go for the first one on the list because it seemed good enough. I followed the directions around many twists and turns, and over several of the many highways that seem to be the only roads around here. When the GPS told me that I was at my destination, I believe it was sorely mistaken.
So I tried again. This time I typed ‘UPS’ into the machine. It gave me a new destination, several more miles away. It led me to a plaza, and I couldn’t see any UPS in sight, but I figured it couldn’t steer me wrong twice.
I drove around and eventually found it on the back side of the building. I sent away her things for a whopping $63.31 USD, and can only hope to be reimbursed, as Thing 3 had promised.
From there I went to the gym again, and then to Target once more. I had my list this time, and I was going to follow it to the letter. I did, and it was a success.
I got back home and finally had everything I needed to setup the TV, so I did that first and foremost. I got it working, and watched some Law and Order before heading to bed.
Now that I have the television, and all the American programming that one could want, I don’t think I’ll be lonely anymore.
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