I woke up Sunday evening at around 9:00 PM after spending around 16 hours “frontloading” sleep. Amusingly the first thing I did was to check to see what finals I had on Monday. Probably should’ve checked earlier. After determining I had Biology at 8:00 AM and CompOrg at 3:00 PM, I ate dinner, put on a suit with a red tie, and headed off to my lair for Finals week, the RPI TV closet. I wasn’t very worried about either Biology or CompOrg; the Biology final would be inconsequential to my final grade and the CompOrg tests thus far have been extremely easy. I allotted four hours of studying to each final, giving me plenty of time to pursue other ventures.

I spent a bit of time working on the RPI TV DVDs for the PakSA show (which I had edited Friday), and in no time at all I had 10 freshly burned DVDs in cases with Marc Ebuna designed, Kyle Mackenize printed labels. Next up, the Dance Club Recital. We had shot this production on Saturday in the EMPAC theater using a completely digital 1080p workflow. After coaxing Final Cut into accepting the video in ProRes format, I quickly touched up a couple live-editing mistakes with the stationary wide shot, and called it good. 85 GB file for 90 minutes of video! Once the recital was exported, I went to work on its DVDs. The Dance Club had ordered 30 (!) DVDs. While the DVD was building (took a bit for it to downscale from 1080p), I began work on Biology.

5:00 AM rolled around, the DVD was done building, and substantial progress had been made on the Biology front. I left the closet to print some labels in the VCC. However, the VCC printers were unfriendly, so I went to the CII instead. I found some weird empty classroom with a color laser printer, and rattled off 30 covers. I then traveled to the SGS, where I had supreme fail cutting the covers out with Marc Ebuna’s package cutter. Discouraged, I returned to the closet to continue Biology.

Fueled by a pair of Red Bulls, a pair of Vitamin Water Energys, and a large amount of Tostitos Scoops (with both spicy cheese and salsa dips!), I finished covering the required Biology course matter at 7:34 AM. This meant it was time for celebration, so I fired up my Zune on RPI TV’s stupidly expensive stereo monitors (speakers) and blasted some motivational Muse.

The Biology final was taken in a manner that I was satisfied with.

Post-Biology, I returned to the RPI TV closet and set up my new base of operations. After cutting the DVD covers on the Admin Office paper cutter, it was time to start mass producing! I fired up the Mac Pro’s dual CD/DVD burners and revved them up until they were redlining. DVDs were flying all over the place. DVDs traveled from a spindle to one of two drives. After 3-4 minutes of intense burning heat, they found themselves thrust into a DVD player for quality control before being slapped down hard into a waiting case at which point they were hurtled across the room onto a bookshelf where they would await the arrival of Sara Brown.

Between DVD flights, I also started Public Relationing. I gathered three of the RPI TV bins and stacked them outside the door. Atop this pile of gray bin goodness sat one of our field monitors (this time its a TV, not speakers, stupid terminology). The DVD/HDD recorder was placed above the monitor, however it refused to output video in the requisite 16:9 format, so it was sidelined for even more impressive technology. Since Bin 1, which contains BNC, was at the bottom of the bin stack, I had to found another source of cabling. I grabbed a 25′ XLR from Bin 2 (which was not part of the stack), and after some supreme adapter fail had rigged up a video connection over XLR from the DVD player on the desk to the pile of bins outside. At some later point, I decided the stack needed another monitor, so grabbed a smaller field monitor, and after some T-junction goodness I had two functional displays. Not wanting to run additonal XLR and suffering through additional adapter fests, I resigned to just blasting audio from the stereo monitors in the room. The setup looped footage from the Dance Club Recital all day.

Once the DVD fest was over, I began work on my CompOrg crib sheet. I was helped with the advent of an additional Vitamin Water Energy and two slices of pizza. At around 2:00 PM, I received a call from Akamai Technologies about their CDN services for the RPI TV website. I didn’t like the cut of his jib, nor his accent, nor the price that he offered ($300 a month), so I refused his services. Several DVD purchases took place, and I found myself with $90 that needs depositing.

The CompOrg final went swimingly.

Post CompOrg final, I returned once again to the RPI TV closet to finalize a couple things. I also gave Limelight Networks (another CDN) a call. The representative had a very nice jib cut, and was much more interested in providing a solution for RPI TV. However, I fear that the price may still be too much for our poor Union funded club. Despues de la llama de telefono, y un conversacion con Mike DiTore sobre la futura de la sitio web de RPI TV, fue tiempo para dormir. Hoy desperte a dos en la manana, y fui al armario de RPI TV para editar “Asian Awareness Week”. Y ahora es tiempo por yo para editar mas antes de la examen final de DSA.

Also, just thought I’d throw it out there that when I returned to my room Saturday Night/Sunday Morning PETER HAJAS was in my room. He had apparently bought his netbook from an extremely sketchy Hungarian site. AMANDA GEORGE was not in the room, however.

Monday
Biology 8:00 AM – Sage 3510
CompOrg 3:00 PM – DCC 324

Tuesday
DSA 11:30 AM – DCC 318

Wednesday
Calc II 11:30 AM – DCC 308

Sorry I haven’t updated in a while; I’ve been really quite busy.