Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Another School Year

Our last child has entered high school. That means the last Bartlett is moving thru the Abilene Independent School District. At one time, all five of our children were in AISD at about the same time. And our cars knew how to get to the elementary school all on their own, going the same way for more than 20 years.
Now, all three daughters have graduated from college, two are married, one of them has a baby, the other two have jobs, one son is in college, the other in high school. As I have mentioned here before, I would love to have them all still at home. But they aren't....spread across west and north Texas. The house has gradually gotten quieter, one departure at a time. But when any of them is around, and/or our grandson, it seems like the good old days.
We all are cranking things back into a schedule which most of us fall out of during the summer. Here's to early alarms, lunches, school buses, teachers and homework. Some things never change.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Back To The Classroom

L=play. V=insert edit. E=in point. This what I have been dreaming for the last week. And it's not a dream.
It has been a year or two since I have sat in a classroom as a student. In fact, I can't remember the last time I had some formal technical training about anything.
We often have workshops to sharpen skills on writing, editing video, shooting stories with a camera. I always walk away from those, hoping I can put into practice the good things which have been demonstrated (and disregard some of the other stuff).
But KTAB has purchased some new equipment which will help us better tell the news stories we deliver to your tv set and computer every day. It's the equipment you don't see. The computers used to assemble the video, audio and graphics which our reporters, photographers and producers use to tell the stories which we show throughout the day.
The new system requires a great deal of training. And Curtis has flown in to help us through it. So with 8 computers side by side on the big table in the conference room, we hear about "connection manager", "transfer manager engine", and "workspace." It is really a terrific system, and Curtis leads us in, around, and over the topics for today's class. The skills will help us bring you the news of the day and the people who are the news. It's an ongoing process. Kind of like learning the new edit syst!@#$%^&.
(I'm dreaming that Ctrl Z (Undo) will fix everything.)