Monthly Archives: April 2002

afternoon ice

Posted by on April 27, 2002 Comments Off on afternoon ice

i stayed up pretty late again and slept in until almost 1:00 again today, had lunch and headed down to the library for the history research project, it’s actually really easy, just had to locate a bunch of sources related to our topic and do a bibliography of them.

i also took some stills of my video cameras now so i have them stored, if you’re interested you can find them at http://ben.franske.com/gallery/vidcams i should probably go grocery shopping now, nothing good on the menu here for dinner so i’ll see if something in the grocerty store catches my interest.

oh yeah we’ve had freezing rain all day today, luckly it’s not accumulating at all yet, let’s hope ti stays that way. i’m ready for it to warm up a little bit, aren’t you?

later guys!

it’s been a long time…

Posted by on April 27, 2002 Comments Off on it’s been a long time…

all together now, this sucks, i had a good start on an entry and i got a bluescreen in xp which never happens… ahh well what can ya do… we’ll try again.

wow it’s been a week since my last blog, that’s pretty bad, but it was a busy week. i worked all last weekend which pretty much kills the weekend.

the first part of the week was pretty slow, tuesday and wednesday nights their were solo tryouts for current jam in the cities, i couldn’t get there of course but i did get to hear about them seem to be looking at some good groups this year. wednesday i bumped up my bowling average a bit and we started integration in calc this week, yuk!

on wednesday (i think, maybe it was tuesday) i decided i needed to outfit my hitachi broadcast camera with it’s new power fittings so i went to the manufacturing lab to have someone do it. lucky me there was no one availible to do it so they let me do it myself, needless to say i got a kick out of getting to use a ram drill to make the holes in the metal plates for the jacks. then i spent some quality time with epoxy and a solderign iron wiring up the new jacks and power supply for the camera, it looks pretty good too!

it starts to get a little more interesting on thursday, after my last class (calc) i headed back to my room, dropped my stuff and ate dinner. then i headed down to the student center to try out being an event tech for a night, which will be a new job for me here on campus next semester. i loved every minute of it, this was unpaid time so i could leave at any time, i got there at ~5:30 and stayed until after 11 when everything was over. i got ot see all the secret passageways around the building too. we had a couple of events going on, there were some groups meeting that needed lcd’s and laptops which we took and setup for them. there was an early childhood conference setting up too so we had to drop power for lots of them. there was also an open mic night in one of the cafes in the building so we had to monitor that equipment too. for a while it was pretty exciting being needed in six places at once and running around the building, this is the sort of stuff i really enjoy doing. anyway i think it’ll be a really fun job, and the people are really nice as well.

that brings us to today, i stayed up until at least 3:15 last night and slept in until the phone woke my up at 1:00PM today. i got up and listened to the message, the front desk had a big package they wanted me to come get asap, so i took a shower and went down for my usual friday omelette(sp?) picked up my mail (which had a key) and stopped my the desk for the package, it was the new JVC camera I’d been waiting for. for those who don’t know i do a fair bit of video work and used to have to rent the broadcast cameras, i bouth two in the last month, so i’m pretty well set up for them now, anyway this one’s a beaut JVC KY27U with a 18x lens and SVHS deck docked on the back, i’ll put up a photo of me and my cameras sometime soon. it was a good buy and i’m very happy with it. in fact i used it to tape a LAN party in the basement here tonight in very low light and it preformed very well although the stills from the video don’t look good.

registered for fall classes today, i won’t say too much about it because i have to get a level wavier for one class and an overload sig for another, but then i’ll take soem time to discuss my classes for fall.

tomorrow i think i have to go to the library and do some research for a historty research project. we’ll see how that goes. oh my, someone just knocked on my door, needs to reinstall their video drivers so i’d better go, then i should get some sleep so i can get up at a decent hour tomorrow. in any event i hope to get back to a little more reular schedule of blogging soon!

cruise pictures up

Posted by on April 19, 2002 Comments Off on cruise pictures up

i’ve put up most of my photos from the cruise, right now a little disorganized and not integrated with the rest of the site, i will fix that when i have more time… for now the URL is http://ben.franske.com/gallery/cruise042002

organized tornado

Posted by on April 19, 2002 Comments Off on organized tornado

i’m at work in the campus lab tonight, i close so i’m here until midnight and don’t have a lot to do, there’s only one guy here right now so i said to myself, i should blog.

thursday started off with a bang, or a siren as it may be. i was awoken at 5:15am by the tonado siren going off, there was a radar indicated tornado north of town. well i was bout the only one who got up right away. i grabbed my keys and phone and ran down to the first floor door (i’m on third) to check out the action, wasn’t much to see, eventually i heard the RA get up on second floor and pound on all their doors and a couple minutes later about 3 of them went down to the basement. the tornado stayed north of town heading westward and the warning expired at 5:45, when i went back up to my room i did see one other guy on the floor up on the phone but all the excitement (or lack there of) was over anyway. my newest inoformation says it touched down north of town, but i haven’t been able to verify that yet. if you’re bored sometime ask me to tell the camping tornado story.

the rest of the day was very blah, i had a little time getting back to sleep and maybe that was it, bu i had little energy the rest of the day. my calc test was the hardest one yet, i’m mildly concerned about it (i don’t get very concerned ever really) but i did very well on all our other tests and quizzes so it shouldn’t bother much. thurday night i got copies of all the mass choir songs for current jam this year, so i’ve been listening to those today getting a feel for them.

that brings us to today i guess. i slept in, or tried to, the semis kept backing up outside my window all morning (neert, neert, neert) so it was a little difficult but i made it until 10ish. i had basically nothing to do (well, homework of course but i can do that at work) so i made it one of my organizing days, got all the paper off my desk and filed away, cleaned my computer dektop off and fixed the ID3 tags, filenames and level gain of all my MP3s (not a small task). after lunch i decided to do something i had seen about a job as an event technician on campus for the fall. i think i’ll be leaving the big campus lab and working for the telecom lab and doing the event tech thing next semester. anyway, i intorduced myself and asked if they’d like to see a demo tape of some shows i’ve done. they were taken aback (hehe) and basically hired me sight unseen, they are pretty desperate for techs i guess, and i think i’ll enjoy it a lot. i got to meet some of the student managers and they were really nice people, i’m scheduled to meet with them again next thursday and friday. i think this will be lots of fun, i’ve missed doing lighting and sound this year. so then i went back to my room, worked on my MP3s some more and had dinner. i saw the first half hour of the screen savers and then headed to work, i taped the rest and can’t wait to get home and check out yosi’s box.

that just about bring you all up to date with my happenings, i hope i didn’t bore you too much! i should read some Ethan Frome for english now, or do some other homework, but i suppose i’ll browse around on the net some more first. later guys!

bowling along

Posted by on April 17, 2002 Comments Off on bowling along

i had a good day today i think. it was fun for the most part. it started off really well when i stuck around after bowling class and practiced for an extra half hour by myself, i raised my average from an embarassingly low score to a respectable 129, i think i made my teacher’s day too.

i mentioned that i might be taking the CCNP routing exam yesterday night, well yesterday i decided to go ahead and do it after talking to my instructor who had more faith in me than i did. unfortunately the testing server went down right before our test was scheduled and it took us too long to fix it (ohh how i hate windows NT and it’s non plug and play capabilities) so we all get to pick anytime we want to take our tests, i’m thinking next friday when i have no classes or work. i’ll let you know how it goes.

my laptop keyboard was acting up again today, i need to have some parts replaced so it doesn’t type on it’s own and so on, but as a temporary remedy i decided to take out the internal keyboard and scrub it down with soap and water, no big deal, but until it drys completely i won’t put it back in the laptop (gives an error at boot) so I’m running my laptop with an external mouse/keyboard for the next few days, it looks funny with the guts exposed 🙂

at work tonight i got pretty bored, so first i fixed our frequency counter and played with some voice over IP equipment. i dug around the office and lab to see what new (and old) equipment was around and played with some for a while. the guys from the telecom policy and regulations class down the hall had a sub prof. today who’s one of our geniuses here, ex-motorola. anyway we went and shot the moon with him for a while to.

just witing for cheers to come on which i’ll watch and then head to bed, tomorrow i have to get up and shower quite a bit earlier than usual because they’re turning off the water in the building from 10AM to 8PM to fix some hot water problems…

everything is hot hot hot

Posted by on April 15, 2002 Comments Off on everything is hot hot hot

i got a number of things crossed off my to do list this weekend and today, but there’s still much to do. my wireless class paper is done and turned in, we’ve started a new unit in history and are about to wrap up all our classroom sessions for bowling class. this weekend was beautiful, but nothing like today. we go up to at least 91 here today, which is amazing, it han’t been that hot since august and we shattered all previous records. spring has truly sprung now and although it will be cooler the rest of the week, that’s ok and it’s still so beautiful out.

tomorrow i need to decide if i’m ready to take the next exam in my cisco certification series. the ccnprouting exam will be offered tomorrow evening, otherwise i’ll probably wait a few weeks and do some more studying. we’ll see, but i think i’ll go for it.

the warm weather is reminding me of all the fun of summer, including current jam, which i love. i had so much fun today just thinking about how much fun it’ll be again. of course i have yet to decide on a firm plan for a summer job yet, i’ve sent off a couple resumes to places, but don’t have definate plans yet.

i will say publicly(sp?) for the first time that i’ll be on vacation in San Francisco this summer, probably sometime around the end of july. i’d like to spend some time with the techtv crew when i’m there, we’ll see how that all plays out, i’m still waiting for definitive dates in SF before contacting anyone there.

happy tax day everyone!

cj, reading and more

Posted by on April 13, 2002 Comments Off on cj, reading and more

i posted some videos earlier you’re probably wondering what they have to do with anything. i’ll tell ya they are from a High School chor show called Current Jam in Edina, MN. I am a technical person for the show and it’s coming up in the end of may so i’m starting to get a little excited. in fact it’s part of the reason i bought the broadcast video cameras recently. so if i mention it you know what it is now.

i got some reading for a cisco class done today, that’s about it i have to get more done tomorrrow. i’ve also come up with some more projects for myself. i’m going to come up with a list of favorite movies, books and plays. i have a lot more projects in my head too, we’ll see how many i can pull off and how long it takes though.

in other news i got to talk to a friend, julie, who i haven’t had a chance to in quite a while, although it was short it was nice to hear from her again. man it was nice outside today! i had my window open all day and went out for a while, it was nice we might make it to 70 by monday.

Current Jam Demos

Posted by on April 12, 2002 Comments Off on Current Jam Demos

These are some examples of the Current Jam Show which I will occasionally Reference in my blog… Note they are streaming Windows Media Format and might take a little while to load. Unfortunately these won’t show up on a Mac and the encoding is pretty bad, if someone can suggest a better free codec I’m listening…
From Upper Left To Lower Right: Like A Prayer, Bye Bye Bye, Ghostbusters, We Built This City

*Note: These videos are no longer availible*

soo busy

Posted by on April 10, 2002 Comments Off on soo busy

mood: exhausted
music: michael bolton – sittin’ on the dock of the bay

i’ve been so busy since getting back, i think things are under control now for the most part…

i did a horribly in bowling today, yikes i need some practice maybe this weekend, although i need to study for my cisco routing exam and write a paper for wireless and finish some more resume cover letters for this summer and so many other things it would be nice to have a week off to get things in order, the end of the semester is coming up so fast…

in other news i got to talk with someone monday (tuesday? i dunno they’re all melting together) night that i haven’t had a achance to in a while, that was good. let’s see i’m at work now then at 10 head back to my room catch up on the news, a half hour of leno, tss and junkyard wars; oh yeah and read some poems for english tomorrow…

i realize this blog is lacking very much content, but frankly i’m out of energy right now and so it’ll have to do. i’ll tell you what i did tonight at work though 🙂 someone totally hosed our wireless acess point and router for it so both of those had to be reconfigured and that took a couple hours of course no i’m here…writing to you… well until another post…

the trip

Posted by on April 8, 2002 4 comments

Ok kids, here’s my blog for my week of vacation. If you’re not interested and want to skip to the newest section pop down to the bottom of this entry.

Friday March 29, 2002: Travel
We left for the aiport about noon CST for a 2:30 flight and we got through security with plenty of time to spare. I thought that I may as well pull out the laptop and see if there were any 802.11b networks to be found. Lo and behold, MSP has a free internet access (through April 30th) wifi network. I was able to check Leoville and my mail one last time, good thing too because I got a great email from Jan about Key West which is bound to help up when we get there. We flew to Atlanta and had a two hour layover, alas there was no wifi network to be found but we did have to eat dinner anyway. We changed planes and flew on to Melbourne, FL where we landed about 10:00 pm EST. We drove up the coast to Merrit Island where we stayed the night.

Saturday March 30, 2002: KSC
We got up early (for me) and drove the few miles out to KSC where we took a tour and got to see a number of presentations and NASA artifacts which I enjoyed, took a number of pictures which I hope will turn out pretty well. After lunch we droveq bac towards Orlando, we soon found our hotel there and unpacked. We went to Steak n’ Shake for dinner but it was not on par with our previous experiances with the chain. Anna was feeling sick muchq of the late afternoon so she stayed at the hotel and sleptq while we went to a 7:30pm Easter Vigil Mass at a local parish. Let me say that it was a very energetic parish, reminded me of a southern protestant church. Anyway, that took the average 2 hours and we returned, hung out by the pool and enjoying the nice weather for a while and then turned in for the night.

Sunday March 31, 2002: Islands of Adventure
We got up early (again) and dad and anna dropped the rest of us off at Universal Islands of Adventure while they went to an Easter Sunday mass. We rode the rollercoasters there and met up with anna and dad a few hours later. We all went and rode the rollarcoasters again together. This was noah’s day for the vacation and he wanted to spend it at the theme park. After a while the rest of us got pretty tired out but he went and rode some more stuff. About 5:30pm We left and drove down the turnpike towards Miami, stopping for the night in Fort Pierce.

Monday April 1, 2002: On to Miami
We got to sleep in for a little while today because we can’t board the ship until at least 1 pm anyway. After a short breakfast I discovered a cat 5 cable hanging behind the desk in our rooms so I thought, why not hook it up and see shat it does… a short while later I was checking some leoville messages and downloading new email. We decided to head out about 11:00 which we did and drove down the Florida Turnpike to Miami. After filling the rental car with gas and returning it to Hertz at the Miami airport we caught a shuttle to the pier. It was a little before 2 when we arrived at the boat, which was perfect because there were no lines to get on. One of the fist things we did was to have lunch at one of the buffets on board. Afterwards we explored the ship for awhile and met again for dinner at an onboard pasta cafe. Dinner was good and afterwards I went and caught a comedy show at one of the clubs. After that got out I headed to the other club for the 70s night. The crowd wasn’t too big and the band pretty good, suffice to say I got down with the dance floor. Since it was midnight by this time and it was an early wakeup in the morning I headed to bed.

Tuesday April 2, 2002: Key West / At Sea
The boat arrived at Key West, FL sometime early in the morning. We got up at 7:30 and it had already been docked and cleared. After eating a quick breakfast at one of the buffets on board we headed ashore to catch the Key West Conch Train which gives an excellent narrerated tour of the island. That took us until 10:30 we had only an hour and a half before the ship left again. I would have liked to have had a full day in Key West, but at least I got some pie. I also took a walk down to see Hemingway’s house and Truman’s “Little White House.” I’ll try to post some pictures once I get them developed. We sailed about 12:30 in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day at sea. It was pretty hot so I took a long swim in the afternoon and then dired off in the sun. I took a shower and had dinner at a poolside bbq. Afterwards I was able to catch a pretty good sunset and got a number of pictures to post. I went to a meet the captain event and then caught a broadway tunes show. Of course it being the second day of a four day cruise I had to meet some crew. Before and after the show I struck up a conversation with Christien, the onboard sound technician who is primarily responsible for mixing the big shows and also doing installation and repair of all sound systems onboard. He was nice enough to take some time after the early show to give me a tour of many of the non-public audio facilities aboard the ship and we had a great time discussing sound and lighting systems for live and studio work. After sticking my head in the other lounge which was doing Karoke I headed down to the cabin to cool off for a while. I’m going to head up to the second showing of the broadway show soon and try to get some still photogrpahs and then pop in to a 50’s through today live music event in the other lounge. At midnight I plan to be at the Chocaholic buffet and will certianly snap some photos too. We get an extra hour of sleep tonight, heading into the central timezone again, of course we loose it going out of Cozumel again tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes I think we’ve got tickets for a sail, snorkel and beach party which should be fun.

Wednesday April 3, 2002: At Sea / Cozumel
We got to sleep in today which was a nice change, after arriving in Cozumel we took a tender to the pier and went out on a catamaran sailbot to a reef where we snorkeled for about forty minutes. I took an underrwater camera and when i get the photos I’ll put some up. We got back on the catamaran and headed toa private beach for another hour or two. We had a leisurely sail back to the pier and got to see a pretty good sunset on the way. We still had some time before the ship left so we went to a local restaurant that was reccommended to us, Pacho’s Backyard, it actually had some very good authentic Mexican food. After dinner we walked back to the pier and caught a tender backt o the ship, we sailed about 10:00 at night. There wasn’t to much going on that night so I caught a live band performance and hung out on the decks for a while before heading to bed.

Thursday April 4, 2002: At Sea
I got up early today on my own free will to catch some breakfast onboard. I got an omelett which was very good and hung around the decks for a while. In the afternoon I went and watched some pool games for a while, watched for flying fish, went to a couple trivia games, and a sing along at one piano location. Just before dinner I went to see the Piqua High School Show Choir from Ohio Valley perform some numbers in the theater. They were pretty good at performing, but their singing was not as good as I’d hoped. We went to one of the fancy restaurants for dinner, I had steak which was pretty good and I ran out for a few minutes for a last chance to capture a sunset which was good but not great. In the evening I went to see another production show by the same preformers as the on-broadway show (the Jean-Ann Ryan Company) it wasn’t as good, but they’re not the best group anyway. I hung around the decks for a while and went to a live liar’s club event in the evening (basically balderdash with the cruise staff).

Friday April 5, 2002: Disembarkation / Travel
Had to get up by eight today which was no fun, I even skipped breakfast to get the extra sleep. We got off the ship around 9:15 and were quickly processed through customs, they even stamped my passport for me. We got our luggage and caught a shuttle to Hertz where we picked up a minivan to drive back up to Melbourne. My dad had the idea to drive up US 1 because we’ll be driving down CA 1 in the summer and they’re on opposite sides of the county. Well, my mom soon found FL A1A on a map and wanted to drive along it to see the ocean, it was sooo slow, after half an hour of it I gave up and I took a nap in the back for a while. They finally gave up the idea and took 95 up the coast to Melbourne, along the way I called and found us a great deal on a hotel room on the beach for the night, even though it didn’t really matter since we would only be there a short while. We got to Melbourne about 5:00 and checked into the hotel. We ate at Ci-Ci’s Pizza which we don’t have in the frozen North (yet) and my sister loves it (if you’ve never tried it do so today, it’s great, I promise!). We went back to the hotel for a while and some people went swimming, others watched a movie on TV, we all turned in at 11 since we had to get up to catch the plane tomorrow early, very early.

Saturday April 6, 2002: Airports / Home
We had to get up at 4:00AM to get showers and get to the airport to get on our 7:00 flight to Atlanta, it was unplesent but I made it. I took a brief nap on the hourlong flight. We had an hour in Atlanta so it was pretty much moving from one gate to the other, we stopped and grabbed some Cinnabons to eat on the plane. The longer 2 hourish flight back to Minneapolis was uneventful I took another nap and listened to some music on my laptop. When we got back we decided not to change back to CST because that night was Daylight Savings anyway. Some of us got back in my grandparent’s car and drove home, I went grocery shopping, my dad drove back to the airport to pick up the rest and the luggage. We went to church so we could sleep in Sunday. I stayed up and caught up on Leoville and read my email, headed to bed exhausted around midnight, long day.

Sunday April 7, 2002: Back to school
Got up around 11, read some for history, had breakfast, the ususal. Packed for school and read some more. Left for school about 4:00, got there about 5:30 (sister, slow driver…) got my mail and unpacked, settled in, caught up on my mail, ate dinner, watched the three TSS and one West Wing eps I taped while gone and did some Cisco reading. Sent some emails and that’s about it. I’m exhausted again today and will head to bed soon I hope. I think I’ll write the English paper tomorrow night, yes that sounds good to me. Sorry today’s and yesterday’s was a little brief, I’m tired, ah well back to a regular schedule tomorrow. That sounds good right now…