Cat Swaps Afford Unique Views

First to update on the cats, we are seeing changes - some dramatic improvements in fact - in Moki's attitude, but she is still living segregated from Lily.  Every day for several hours, we swap cats, allowing Moki time in the house and to enjoy the sights and sounds of the wildlife from the screened porch, while Lily and one of us spend time in the studio, often but not always joined by Lu.

Today, Lily got the best view in the house -

 

This turkey may be the same one we showed pictures of back on the 16th of June - a lone male turkey that hangs around resting for long periods due to a sore foot.  This turkey is nursing the same foot, as you can see in the second photo of the turkey on the steps in the earlier post.  He was resting on the steps the same as in those earlier photos when Cheryl came home this afternoon so the bird feeder did not get put back out (yes, we are feeding birds again - only when we are home though!)

 

It would be quite the story of survival if he is the same fellow.

The Table Appears

Yesterday, Norris and Cheryl picked up the custom table -- smaller than average -- that will suit us for screened-porch dining for two. Should we ever want to set up for more than three, we'll use the larger round table and push the lounging furniture aside.

 

Later in the afternoon, Cheryl made coverings for a pair of foam cushions to make the swivel-rocking chairs more comfortable. 

 

The table is made of African Sapele, a dense, teak-like wood, finished with teak-oil. Exposed to sun, it will turn gray like teak, unless we treat it with oil again.

DNC Day 3

Day 3 was originally scheduled to take place at the large Bank Of America stadium, but due to weather concerns was moved back to the Time Warner Arena.  The stadium would have held 75,000 people for the big finish, but the arena only holds 25,000.  Although this made a lot of people who had been given passes for the stadium event unhappy, it made life a lot easier for the White Hat team and most of the media.  Moving all the gear from the arena to the stadium would have been a lot of work and the stadium would have added another 10 blocks or so to the walk.  One of the TV people told us he thought the networks had wasted around $2 million setting up circuits at the stadium that would now not be used for anything.

So Day 3 ended up being a lot like Days 1 and 2:  Walk to the downtown area, eat lunch, head to the arena early for the evening shift.  Some of the street sights along the way included random street protesters.  Although the official area designated for protesters was a long way from the arena, a few individual or small group protesters were allowed along the sidewalk outside the hard zone.  Most of  them were the usual megaphone people you see at all street fairs, yelling about abortion or why we should all hate gays.  This particular guy (in the plaid shirt) had a unique angle, as he was from "Homophobes for Gay Marriage."  Is that something like Jews for Jesus?

Also seen was this sand sculpture of Obama that was really an advertisement for Myrtle Beach.  The heavy rains on Monday had erased Obama's face, but it was quickly repaired the next day.

The media was everywhere in downtown Charlotte.  There were reported to be 15,000 media people in town as compared to 6,000 delegates.  Many TV news personalities were seen along the streets,some of whom seemed to have their own cult following of fans.  This was the case for CNN's Roland Martin, who had trouble moving down the sidewalk because of all the requests for photos with his fans.

A lot of media were also roaming the halls of the convention center trying to interview delegates.  Some of the reporters carried signs saying they needed to interview delegates from particular states.  Just about any delegate that wanted to be interviewed could find someone to interview them.  Norris ran into Jordan Carlos, from the Colbert Report, interviewing delegates.  Norris and Cheryl have been watching Colbert's show lately, so Jordan was someone Norris recognized.

Up in the press box, it was usually pretty boring before the convention got started for the evening at 6pm.  Fortunately, the musical groups scheduled for that evening would show up mid-afternoon for sound checks and rehearsals, so that provided some entertainment.  Here the Foo Fighters are rehearsing and providing an ad hoc concert for the couple of hundred technicians and others who were working in the arena that afternoon.  The sound system in the arena was top notch and all the musical groups sounded great.

Here is a picture of James Taylor performing for the convention delegates.  He sounds just as good as he ever did.  He had some good one-liners for the audience too.  Too bad they didn't put him on television, as he put on a really good show.

During the course of the evening, all of the CNN wireless microphones were taken down by an inteferring transmitter somewhere on the floor.  When these things happened, the team would take their direction finding antennas and spectrum analyzers to the floor to track down the offender.  In this case, it was an Eastern European reporter who was sitting near the CNN area with a microphone that is not legal in the US.  Here Norris is seen with a team member using an antenna to get a fix on the source of the interference.  Once an offender was found, he usually had to deal with the FCC part of the team and face either voluntary surrender of his equipment or face a $10,000 federal fine.  The main sources of the problems were news teams from other countries that used frequencies that were legal in their countries, but not legal in the US.  The team tracked down several broadcasters who were transmitting right on top of the Charlotte Police and Fire channels.

After a number of warm up speeches, the main events got started.  Here Vice President Biden delivers his speech, as seen from the press box.

Followed by Pres Obama.  Michelle is sitting on the front row of the floor area.

And the big finale, with the confetti drop and the Obama family on stage.

As soon as the speech was over, Norris got a jump on the crowd and walked back to where his car was parked 6 blocks away.  After a couple of false starts on the way home due to some Interstate closures for the event, Norris finally got on the road and made it back home at 2:15am.  It was a long week, but also an interesting chance to see part of the American political process in action up close and personal.  Regardless of your politics, it was amazing opportunity, but not something Norris necessarily feels he needs to repeat anytime soon.

DNC Day 2

First, some general comments on how the convention was run.

In contrast to the Republicans, the Democrats did not accept any corporate donations to fund the convention.  Instead, they relied heavily on volunteers to run their show.  These volunteers probably did not get a lot of training and the organization of the convention reflected that.  The usual description used in the media was that the convention was a barely controlled chaos.  Norris would agree with that description, although the televised view of the convention gave it the appearance of a mostly well-oiled broadway production.  The chaos was more apparent behind the scenes where security reigned supreme, and everything else seemed to suffer.  Schedules, plans, and rules were changed on a daily, if not hourly, basis.

Norris has one leftover security story from Day 1.  While patrolling the loading dock area in the bowels of the arena, he spotted the room where the signs for the delegates to wave around were made.  Much has been made in the media about how efficiently the signs were distributed to the convention floor and changed out every half hour or so and the sign room was where it all started.  Since the door to the sign room was open, Norris snapped a picture.

If you look closely, you can see they were making up the "We Love Michelle" signs in advance of Mrs. Obama's speech.  As Norris walked on down the hallway after taking the picture, a security person came running after him, wanted to know who he was and why he had taken that picture.  He was especially upset that Norris was wearing a media pass.  It turns out he was concerned that a picture of the "We Love Michelle" signs could leak out to the press and the public before they were revealed on the convention floor.  After Norris convinced him that he didn't really work for the media and after he promised not to post any pictures of the sign anywhere on the internet until after the speech, the guard relaxed and let him go.  Typical of the security nonsense that was prevalent all week.

On to Day 2.  The routine was about the same as the previous day.  On the walk to the arena, Norris spotted the VIP entrance where motorcades dropped off their passengers.  They were about the only ones that didn't have to walk at least a half mile to get to the arena.

Also seen outside the arena was one of the portable cell towers that had been erected to provide extra cell phone coverage for the convention.  Several times during the convention, cell service in the arena was taken down by illegal use of transmitters on the convention floor.  The white hat team successfully found the offenders, usually within about 10 minutes of receiving the trouble call.

Once lunch had been taken care of, Norris again reported early for the start of his shift since he had nothing else to do, and the happy delegates usually provided a constant source of entertainment for the casual observer.

The CNN platform booth was at the rear of the convention floor and just off the main flow of traffic, so the team saw a lot of Wolf Blitzer who was more or less permanently attached to his chair there.  When he wasn't on the air, he just sat there staring off into space waiting for his next big guest.  Here he is chatting with CNN's Cathy Crowley as some poor speaker not deemed worthy of prime time coverage carries on at the podium.

After the lesser speakers had come and gone, the night's main attraction began around 10:30pm.  Bill Clinton got the crowd excited and achieved a nearly painful noise level inside the arena when the delegates cheered.  Norris watched the speech from the press box area.

So ended Day 2.  Fortunately Norris did not have to stick around for the delegate roll call, which went on until 12:30 in the morning.

DNC Day 1

On Tuesday, the first official day of the convention, Norris and his three fellow COMLs had been split into two shifts.  Norris and one other COML were assigned to the 4pm to midnight shift and the other two were assigned to the 9am to 4 pm shift.  Since there was virtually nothing to do back at their "hotel" Tuesay morning, Norris and his partner headed on into the hard zone to get some lunch.  Just outside the hard zone, MSNBC had erected an outdoor set and was broadcasting live during the daytime hours when they weren't on the air from the convention center.  Here some unidentified talking heads were on stage as Norris walked by.  The monitor in the lower left shows what was going out over the air.

CNN had taken over a local Mexican restaurant for the week, turning it into the CNN Grill, where similar live broadcasts were occurring during non-prime time hours.  Supposedly the public was welcome to stop on in, have a bite, and watch the show, but every time Norris passed by, a large "INVITATION ONLY" sign was blocking the entrance.

Once inside the hard zone, some of the support infrastructure for the convention could be seen.  In this photo, an entire mobile hospital had been setup just outside the arena to serve the convention attendees.

The Charlotte Fire Dept had a large contingent of firemen working inside and outside the arena.  Here one of Charlotte's reserve fire engines has been pressed into convention service.  Known as the "Pink Lady," this engine was done up in breast cancer awareness colors in memory of Charlotte's first female firefighter, who died of breast cancer.  It usually only appears at special events, but was actually set up at the convention to provide extra water pressure to the firefighting standpipe system in the arena if needed.

After eating lunch and finding themselves with nothing else to do in the ghost town that was once downtown Charlotte, Norris and his partner decided to go on into the arena to await the start of their shift.  The team had been assigned space in the press box level of the arena.  Since they weren't "real" press, they got the worst seats in the press area, just behind the edge of the podium backdrop.  It really didn't matter since it provided plenty of space to set up their equipment.  On the edge of their area, they did have a good enough view of the convention floor to do their binocular scans looking for unauthorized transmitters.  The black curtain on the right side with the twinkling lights marked the edge of podium area.

Pictured below are some of the portable spectrum analyzers that were one of the main tools for spotting interfering transmitters.

This is a photo of the FCC engineers that were part of the team.  They wore suits, were very serious, and did not have to wear the goofy white hats as they didn't patrol the convention floor like the rest of the team.

As the convention didn't officially start until 5pm, most of the daytime floor activity consisted of networks continuing to set up their equipment.  Here some CNN technicians (the woman in the purple top and the man beside her in the black shirt whose face is blocked) are sitting in for the real CNN anchors that will use those chairs later in the evening.  The bored technicians sat motionless in those chairs for several hours while other technicians tweaked the lighting trying to get it just right.  This must be the most unexciting part of working in television.

While the TV networks were enjoying their access to the convention floor, several large areas in the hallways of the arena were set aside for talk radio shows.  They were jammed in pretty tight and were in the noisiest part of the hallways.  They might have been worse off than the bored CNN technicians.

The day shift of the white hat team spent most of their day at the entrances to the arena grabbing members of the lesser known media who weren't present for the check-in on Monday. All the available channels had been given out to the major media on Monday, so the lesser-knowns who arrived on other days had to be told that they would be restricted to wired microphones.  Their equipment was given yellow tags which meant they would be busted if they were caught transmitting inside the arena.  Here one of the day shift white hat team gives the bad news to a camera man, who is not pleased.

Once the convention kicked off at 5pm, most of the incoming media had already arrived and Norris' evening shift spent most of their time patrolling the floor trying to catch people using their yellow tagged equipment or up in the press box scanning the floor with binoculars.  Norris was patrolling on the convention floor when Michelle Obama gave her Day 1 speech and had an up-close view.

And so ended Day 1.

DNC - Day 0

When Norris completed his training and certification by the Dept of Homeland Security as a Communications Unit Leader (or COML for short), his name was added to a list of 35 other COMLs in the state of North Carolina.  Being on this list means one can be deployed by North Carolina Emergency Management to disasters, large scale exercises, or major events across the state.  Since becoming certified, Norris had only been involved in several large land search exercises, but several months ago the Charlotte Fire Dept contacted Norris and asked if he would be willing to help out with Emergency Services Communications during the Democratic National Convention which was held in Charlotte earlier this week.  Norris agreed and received an assignment to serve inside the Time Warner Arena where the convention was being held.  Norris took a number of pictures throughout the week and will try to post some of them in batches over the next several days.

Many of the state's other COMLs were also in Charlotte to participate, but most of them were assigned to communications centers, command posts, and operations centers that were located well away from the arena.  Norris,and three other COMLs were the only ones assigned to a special project inside the arena.  Their job was to work with a group of FCC engineers and broadcast industry representatives to make sure that the large number of wireless microphones and cameras brought into the arena by the news media did not interfere with any of the police/fire/EMS radios systems or any of the cell phone networks in Charlotte.  The group also was responsible for coordinating the assignment of frequencies to all the wireless microphones and cameras in the arena to make sure the broadcasters did not interfere with each other.  To make sure that unauthorized transmitters were not used in the arena, spectrum analyzers and frequency counters were used to continually check the signal environment.  The job also included scanning the convention floor with binoculars looking for any microphones that didn't have the sticker indicating they had been checked and assigned an authorized channel by the team.  The team also had members walking the halls of the arena and the convention floor looking for untagged microphones and cameras.

Norris arrived in Charlotte on Sunday and checked in with the Incident Command Center to get his IDs and housing assignment.  Since all the hotel rooms in Charlotte had been booked a year in advance for the convention, Norris and the other COMLs working downtown at the arena were provided space in a vacant city office building that formerly housed the old 911 center (most of the other COMLs were housed in a tent city about 10 miles from downtown).  Cots were provided and each COML staked out an empty office as his temporary home away from home.  Norris's luxurious room is shown below with a sleeping bag and chair he brought from home

The building where the group was housed was a six block walk to the arena, which was very convenient, but unfortunately had no showers.  After one day of fighting cross-town traffic to get to a fire station to shower, the group convinced a nearby EMS station to let them use their shower and life got better.

After a fairly good night's sleep, the group walked to the arena for their training on Moday, one day before the convention started.  That date was set aside for set up and testing of the equipment of all the major broadcast networks, and to receive their frequency assignments from our group.  On the walk to the arena, the most striking thing was the overwhelming number of police officers.  Over 4000 out-of-town police from around the country had been brought in to augment the Charlotte PD.  Police were in cars, on foot, on motorcycles, on bicycles, on horseback, and in helicopters constantly circling overhead.

This horse unit was from the U.S. Park Police in Wash DC and was a familiar site for Norris.

The first order of business was getting all the security passes and credentials in order.  Below is the assortment of IDs Norris had to carry around his neck, including a Secret Service ID, a City of Charlotte ID, and a different DNC pass for every day of the week.

Security was unbelievable tight and extremely annoying.  The entire downtown area had been sealed off and fenced in creating the so-called "hard zone."

 Getting through the Secret Service metal detectors and into the area was fairly painless with the right credentials, but the security inside the arena was out of control.

You couldn't go 25 feet without someone stopping you to check your passes.  Usually three or four people standing in the same spot would all demand to check you individually.  There were many different colors of passes that denoted access to different zones within the arena and even the badge-checkers were often mistaken about what colors meant what.  It seemed like a lot of this was way beyond the Secret Service levels of security and was just a nuisance created by the Democratic Party planners for reasons that were never clear to us.

Once we got to the podium area on the convention floor, we met up with the FCC engineers and the broadcasters that were also part of our team.  Here is a shot of the podium as technicians were setting up all the major network equipment on the arena floor.  Our team can be seen at the right side of the picture, all wearing the white caps that allowed us to identify each other and allowed the media people to spot us as well.

It was quite an impressive mass of cameras, lights, and cables throughout the floor.

Pictured below, we are getting our basic training from the man on the left, who is the consultant put in charge of this effort by the broadcasters association.  He had just come from Tampa where he ran the same effort for the Republican convention.  He also did the same for both conventions in 2008, so he is the expert at this job.

After wrapping up our Day 0 training, we called it a day and headed back to our rooms.

More to follow...

Building is done, but the project isn't finished

Work on our porch expansion was completed a week ago.  It's almost not visible from the road and driveway.

Here's a view from the front yard -

Norris thought we could add a swing arm from the deck to feed birds, since the bear has prevented us from leaving a feeder up when we aren't here. But then he realized the location he had in mind, convenient to the house's occupants, was not going to appeal to our feathered friends.  When we moved in, we had a feeder in front of the house that was rarely used. But we can look up and see hawks circling overhead, so we understand the birds' reluctance to come too far from the edge of the woods.  The new location works fine for the hummingbirds though.  We even have one pictured in the next photo.  This hook lets us hang a larger feeder than we can hang from the windows and that  should help us keep up next year during the feeding frenzy at the end of July.

  We expect the new ceiling color will darken with exposure and blend with the old in no time.

Here's a picture that shows just the addition - 8 feet by the width of the existing screened porch, about 14 feet.  The table visible in the interior is there temporarily until our new one arrives.

The next step will be fixing the stairs.  Our contractor put some in, imperfectly spaced - but he's a great carpenter, not a landscaper.  Some stairs are almost visible in the photo above.  The witch hazel is now in the path from the steps to the back door and will be moved.  The existing stair area will be widened.

More new steps, visible in the next photo leading to the retaining wall under the raised bed, will be replaced as well.

 

The garden, by the way, is still producing some eggplants, zucchini, and tomatoes.

We're going to have all of the wildflower area on the sides and behind the raised bed replaced with landscaped areas. 

 While we're having that done, we'll also get new landscaping in the area to the far side of the long stairway - visible in the middle ground in this next photo.  Cheryl has been cutting wildflowers almost weekly all summer to keep the stairs clear and useable.

This is a close up of the wildflowers, taken from the stairs just mentioned. This closest part currently has a nice crop of brown-eyed susans, some of which will be sacrificed.  Just behind them is the jungle of tall weeds.  Perhaps with the wildflower meadow reduced in size, we can have it cut back more often and develop a neater look.

Here's a view of the area just discussed, taken from the deck.  It's probably a five-foot swath of the wildflowers on the left that will go.

The cats are enjoying their outdoor privileges again.  Here are Lily and Lu wondering what the humans are doing outside.

 

Lu also agreed to model the new rug we put out for all of us to enjoy.  The cats seem especially happy with the soft texture.

 

Moki was happy to find a lizard popping up between the deck boards yesterday.  It seems like it would be good to provide real prey for her to work out her aggressions on, but she never eats her catch.  She just plays with it as long as we let her. The lizards occasionally find their way in to the screened area, in spite of the screening even under the deck.  Cats make an excellent back-up system.