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.

 

The birds will go hungry

It had been about a month since our last bear visits, but we had stopped trying to feed the birds in an effort to convince our beautiful, sensitive, black-furry neighbor there was nothing interesting to eat here.  When the project was nearly completed last weekend, Norris decided to hang the sunflower seed feeder again. The birds came right back, allowing us and the cats to enjoy their visits for the last five days.

But this morning, Cheryl walked back up the stairs after Kitty Cat Breakfast, and noticed our old friend approaching with eyes on the prize.

 

Yelling "bear" to alert Norris and grabbing the camera, Cheryl feared there would be no photos as her activity would make the timid bear run away.

Here's an artificial zoom of the bear from the photo above.

But this bear was not so easily deterred.  It went up and crossed the steps, then swung around to the back as on prior visits, stopping and making sure we meant it when we said "Go away, Bear!"

But then it turned to come back, and our yelling and arm waving only made it pause briefly.

 

This is another artificial zoom.  All the photos are a little fuzzy since we took them through the screens.

 

 It took some louder noises - banging a grill brush on the metal side of the grill - to finally convince this bear the seed was not to be its snack today.

We got the bear repellent out for Norris' trip to the feeder to take it down.  Sorry, Goldfinches, Titmouses/Titmice*, Doves, and Squirrels:  No more sunflower seeds to tempt this bear who is becoming braver, or more desperate. 

Lu hid under our bed this time - Lily is more like Moki all the time and had to be shooed off the porch.  

*we've checked the plural - titmouses or titmice are both accepted.

The screened in deck

Our contractors finished installing the screens a couple of days ago and got the doors up today. The cats have missed going outside for the whole month, and finally get their wish.  After a moment's hesitation when we first opened the door for them, Lily found this moth on the screen trying to get in.

 

Both Lu and Lily were shocked by how much larger the space is, particularly furnished only with the contractors' tools.  

 

Moki will get a chance to check it out later this afternoon when we swap her with Lily. We're still living with separated cats.

The contractors have some work to finish - attaching the gutters to the drain system, repositioning some of the wood steps that got displaced by the addition, and other details.  But we will clean off the furniture and put it back in place this weekend, then figure out what additional furnishings we may want to put in our expanded outdoor living space. 

Hummingbird Feeding Frenzy

All our hummingbirds seem to have gone into their pre-migration feeding frenzy already.  The video below shows one of our feeders in the middle of the afternoon, which had not been a prime feeding time before, but now they seem to sucking the feeders all through the daylight hours.  We have four feeders in operation and they suck them dry in less than two hours.   They are drinking more than a half gallon of food a day and we are going through a 10-pound bad of sugar in less than 9 days.  Their appetites kick into high gear when they start trying to add body weight for their winter migration.  They usually phase their departure dates so they don't all leave at the same time, but we'll see some of the them take off starting in mid September, with the last hangers-on departing in mid to late Oct.  You can click on the symbol in the lower right of the You Tube frame for a full screen view.

Another Deck Update

Things are still moving along on the deck extension, some days more than others.  The roof is extended, but not yet shingled.  On the bottom side of the roof, new tongue and grove ceiling boards (knotty spruce) started going up today (the lighter colored boards on the right side).  Hopefully once they are given a couple coats of sealer, they will be the same color.  They have also nailed up scaffolding on the right end so they can start installing the framework for screen.  

Our backyard has been turned into the staging area and woodshop.

View from the back yard side.  There is still a temporary support holding up the roof in the center of the deck.  We have a 6" x 12" x 16 ft cedar beam laying in our driveway that will eventually go up as a cross member and the temporary support will then come out, but it arrived in a rough-sawn form so our contractor has got to haul it somewhere to have it planed to a smoother finish before they can hoist the 200 lbs beam up.