I flew on a separate flight from the rest of the group. We were supposed to hit Laguardia at the same time, but my flight was early and theirs was late.
After a WILD shuttle van ride to the Hotel (Marriott Marquis on Times Square) we dumped our bags and walked around a bit.
Our hotel is RIGHT on Times Square. I can't believe we're staying here, it's way too nice. I LOVE it.
Just by wandering aimlessly last night, we managed to see where Good Morning America is broadcast, Rockafeller Center, and Radio City. I saw a bunch of Production trailers set up outside of a place, that turned out to be a Will Ferrel HBO special. That was cool. We also walked around the SNL studios (it was a Saturday Night, we HAD to).
Times Square was LEGIT. LEGIT. It was a shoulder-to-shoulder swarm of humanity, and this was 11:45pm. I was cringing at how crazy it must be in the mornings, with everybody trying to actually GET places!
I got back in the room after midnight, and after unpacking and preparing for the conference, I didn't get in bed until 2:30am NYC time.
I turn 19 years old tomorrow, and am greatly looking forward to it. Some people dread birthdays, but I guess I'm not old enough for that yet. I'm pumped.
19 says... I'm the top dog in the teenager food chain.
People ask, "how old are you?" (they're thinking 13, until) "I'm 18" (then they've got a REAL dilemma) "so.... looking forward to Graduation?" (whoops... I'm a college student)
19 says... I have graduated from High School.
I might not be looking forward to 20 so much, I kind of like the immaturity of the teenage lifestyle. You can get away with a lot more as a 19 year old. When you're 'in your twenties', people actually have expectations for you.
Aubrey won't hit 19 until April, so she'll get to enjoy the statement,
"yeah, I'm dating an older man"
for about 5 weeks. Technically that makes me an older man all the time, but it's LEGIT for about a month.
That's the rest of the group's bird, leaving barely before mine. We should arrive at about the same time.
Sitting in the Little Rock airport now, enjoying the culture of the other passengers thoroughly. LR is no International, but there are definitely some here, and "I'm lovin' it". (Sorry Burger King, but lunch was good!)
At the top right hand side of the blog, you can see the latest addition, Twitter.
Twitter is a website that allows you to post small text updates of your whereabouts anytime. I try to keep Twitter pretty regular, but I'm not too zealous. However, while I'm in NYC,
If you click the link "see a big list of these", you can see all my updates. I plan on posting a tweet as often as I can, by text messaging my updates to their server. Hopefully this will be a useful way to document and post details of my trip up North.
Maybe I'm getting all giggly over nothing, but I don't care.
Thanks Mom and Dad, for forking over the cash on the plane ticket. Thanks ORACLE Student Newspaper, for inviting me along to the conference.
Thanks for Czech-ing in. I plan on keeping the blog HOPPIN' over the next few days, with fancy video posts, constant Twitter updates, and point-and-shoot photos from NYC excitement.
After Miss HSU Thursday night, I packed all the PA gear up. Friday morning, a bunch of guys rolled it from Arkansas Hall, all the way across campus to the Garrison Day Gym. The International Students were hosting an event in the Gym Friday night, and I was covering audio for it, as well.
After Philosophy let out at 2pm, I spent the rest of my day in the Garrison, setting up for this event. I got done a bit ahead of schedule, giving me just enough time to load trax into iTunes.
The event was pretty straight forward. The International Students had put together small musical numbers, almost like a talent show, to perform on stage. The audience sat at tables eating dishes from the various countries represented on campus, and listened to the acts.
This meant a lot of different things, but one of my favorites were the Irish:
A lot of singing, and a lot of dancing overall. It was mainly just timing iTunes tracks.
The event went fine, and I even had a little time to get the gear packed up early. Stephen will get here tomorrow afternoon to load it all up and haul it back to TX.
The Miss HSU Pageant was last night, and was one of the smoothest events I have ever been a part of.
The crew was simple. I covered all things Audio. One of our Actresses acted as Stage Manager, and the HSU carpenter handled all the Lighting
The audio was a bit difficult, because of the location I had to be. The entire point of mixing audio is to use your ears to MIX together all the sounds, to create a MIX that sounds best for the audience. Normally the sound booth mix position is placed in the front of the house, (FOH) which is in the audience. This allows the engineer to hear what the audience is hearing.
The mix position for this show was backstage. So, I was mixing audio "deaf" basically, because I could not hear what I was doing. Like asking our lighting guy to run the lights from his dorm, and just IMAGINE how it's going.
It was fine though, my boss gave me a small monitor next to the board, so I had an idea of what was going on. I just walked the house a LOT before the show, to get an idea of how loud different levels were.
The show was great. I had a great time, had a FABULOUS crew, and the pageant flew by without any noticeable errors. I was proud to be a part of such a success.
Oh yeah, I managed to run out in the house for about 46secs while they crowned her, to grab an ORACLE photo. :D
After a WILD shuttle van ride to the Hotel (Marriott Marquis on Times Square) we dumped our bags and walked around a bit.
Our hotel is RIGHT on Times Square. I can't believe we're staying here, it's way too nice. I LOVE it.
