He said What?

Cutter's Log - Stardate 9002.13.30.
Current Song - Right Place Wrong Time (Dr. John)


I wanted to cover a high school sports news event today.


I couldn't make it to the meeting in time, so I sent the president of the oragnization an e-mail asking for the results of the meeting. There was some pretty important stuff going down. I prefered to send an e-mail because the meeting was closed. It was closed because they wanted to shut out the media (they CAN do this; they're exempt from the Open Meeting's Act). They shut out the media because of fear of misquoting.


The best way to prevent that "fear of misquoting" is to ask questions via e-mail.


So I get an e-mail back.


The person asks me to call him.


Nothing angers me more than this when it comes to interviewing. I have an e-mail signature requesting that the best way to prevent miscommunication is to reply to e-mails.

I don't understand the verbal preference. There's too much fooling with grammar and speed talk. Heck, I can't bode well in conversation. Communicating via e-mail doesn't have me going, "uhhh, uhhh ...." It doesn't look good for me if I come along sounding like an idiot.

Now I would have no problem calling people back if I had a speakerphone, but I don't have one. I have found it extremely difficult to wrap my recorder around my phone and record what comes out of the earpiece. I also have difficulty writing down things from ear to paper. I write very slow, and if I try to write fast, I can't read my own writing. And I NEVER want to write down the WRONG thing(s).

So I have to stick to using e-mail to communicate. But they rather have me call.

Plus, I wouldn't have this problem if I were at a newspaper. But since I run a website on my own, they all want to know who the hell I am!!!

The new things I try

Cutter's Log - Stardate 9002.92.30
Current Song - Always Something There to Remind Me (Naked Eyes)

I spent some time looking through my old blog entries tonight. I was amazed about the things I said. A lot of "I'm not going to survive"s and such. Well, I'm still at Shell and still liking Highland for now.

So I brought back the Track and Field Honor Roll. It's something I helped do on NCIpreps a long while back. It's probably the 20th new concept I created for NISB, and about 18 of them blew up at the start.

I've rethought the Bits and Pieces series over and over again.

Talkin' Times

Cutter's Log - Stardate 9002.82.30
Current Song - You Know What to Do (The Beatles)

As a free agent sportswriter, I like to keep up to date on job openings at newspapers. The openings are very hard to come by as of late. However, I found this one ...


Title: Preps Sports Reporter
Location: IA - Davenport
Job Type: News
Division: Quad-City Times
Status: Regular

Description: Quad-City Times Preps Sports Reporter

The Quad-City Times (51,000 daily, 68,000 Sunday), part of the Lee Enterprises chain, is seeking a multipurpose sports journalist who has solid reporting skills and can report for the print paper and the Web.

We are seeking a sports reporter who will devote most of his or her time to covering local high school sports. This is an area in which we place heavy emphasis and consider some of our most important beats. High school teams in the area routinely compete, and win, in state championships in Illinois and Iowa, so our readers expect superior coverage.

The ideal candidate for this job needs to be able to report for our print newspaper and our ever-growing qcvarsity.com site. Online and multimedia knowledge is required. This reporter also must have a hunger for enterprise journalism and exploring new ways of telling stories, whether it is online or in print.

We are in a diverse, two-state, sports-oriented metro area of about 400,000 people that is three hours from the nearest major league sports city but within five hours of six of them. We are just 50 miles from the University of Iowa, have minor-league franchises in several sports and are home to a PGA tournament and the largest non-marathon road race in the Midwest.

Qualified candidates should have a bachelor's degree and possibly some daily newspaper experience.

It's been a couple of years since they last had an opening for a writer.

This is a newspaper that is heavy on the new media. They do a lot of video (hey, I did that), photographs (hey, I did that), articles (hey, I do that), blogs (hey, I also do that), and some radio appearances (currently a one-hit wonder). The QC Times is one of those papers that I always expressed freelancing for if the opportunity came. But, folks, this isn't a freelance position.

This is full-time.

I would have to leave Shell. I'd also have to drive to and from Davenport on a daily basis. That is, unless I somehow, miracously, found a place to stay in the Quads. With the scant $400 I have saved up, dream on! Plus, this isn't like working for SVN. I hear the work hours are mostly during the day, with the usual gamer done quick.

Another source tells me they may be eying for nearby applicants.

Do I send in my resume yet?

To let you know how scarse prep reporting positions are, it's one of few in the nation. So many prep sportswriters are out of work, so they are probably swamped with applications. It would be interesting just to send one in, only to see how far up the ladder I would get. That is, before I would have to back down.

Yes, you're going to have to count me out for the QC Times gig.

Commuting to Davenport and back forces me to suspend my college studies. I'm 16 hours away from getting my Associate's. Plus, the job suggests a bachelor's. I'm already long-delayed. I can't even transfer to another institution because of residency requirements for the A.A. That's the biggest factor. So it seems I'm real stuck until I get out of Sauk. The only gig I'll consider at this moment is one from SVN - but they haven't offered one in five years.

It's too bad, I think I would have liked it there. Hopefully they'll call back in 2010.

Having the Internet Back is Awesome!

Cutter's Log - Stardate 9002.72.30
Current Song - FM (Steely Dan)

The trip to Tucson felt better because I knew I would get the Internet at home finally. I mean, I'm gone for a week. Isn't this how surprises are supposed to brew?

I was able to get caught back up a few things, such as:

*Uploading my photographs on MySpace, as well as updating my MySpace
*Writing about Tucson
*Downloading my NISB articles onto CDs
*Organizing my computer

and that's it so far.

I've still got to update the Goers-Pingatore win tracker (and not bloody again till November!), and find the college-bound athletes. I've also undertaken a class-system project. My Facebook needs updating, too.

TUSCON ... The Vacation

Cutter's Log - Stardate 9002.26.30
Current Song - Jack and Jill (Raydio)

I returned from a 6-day trip to Tucson on Saturday afternoon.

I'm going to put here an account of what I did down there. But first I'm going to tell about the journey there.

I woke up at 2:45 AM on March 16 and left for Quad City Airport at 3:30. The flight was set to take off at 6:20. I wasn't worried about flying as much as I was about my baggage. The screening process wasn't all that bad. I was worrying about it being lost.

As a larger person, I had a difficult time buckling up. It took me up until just before take off to get myself in. I looked out the window the entire flight, and tried to identify the cities below me (I only got Des Moines right - I thought Omaha was Kansas City, and Ottumwa was actually Riverside.) The thought of throwing up didn't come up.

The layover in Denver was interesting. My Uncle Randy was departing to D.C. a couple of hours after I was. We had breakfast at a place called Pour la France. I picked up a Denver Post, read the Woody Paige piece, and completed by NCAA bracket somewhere above New Mexico.

Grandpa and Grandma were so excited to see me, and vice versa. It is so dry there! We got to their place, in a neighborhood called San Carlos Place. They live in a gues house, in the back of a full-sized house. We talked about things back home, gave them our newspaper (and my QC). Our first trip was to downtown Tucson to see the historical sites. Some of the things we saw were the Presidio, the La Placita, the older part of Tucson, the Hotel Congress, the Cup Cafe, and a couple of others. We also walked down Fourth Street, which is a University hangout (I think). We had dinner at a place called Magpies. The place has been voted the best pizza for 20 years running.

We went to a White Sox spring training game on Tuesday. Well, they were the visiting team. The Diamondbacks were the hosts. I packed with me some baseball cards to get signed. I notched two signatures: Ozzie Guillen (on my 1997 Collector's Choice) and Wilson Betemit (on my 2000 Fleer Tradition). I almost got AJ Peryzinski to sign. It was a very good game, going into extras before a wild pitch by Lance Broadway sent in the winning D-Back run.

We also walked around the University of Arizona part of Tuesday. There is also a huge used bookstore called Bookmans. Every book there is used, and priced half-off the cover. I bought 8 books, and 1 of them was a fiction book. I never, never read fiction. I can picture my mother living in this store. There is also a pass through the mountains called Gate's Pass. The sunset is really beautiful there. Dinner was at a place called Tiny's. It used to be a saloon at one time.

Wednesday was spent at Mount Lemmon. Tucson is 3/4 surrounded my mountains. This is the most accessible one going up. We had a picnic up there with Daggwood sandwiches (just like the comic strip). I called back home from the top. Before we went to Lemmon, we went to the transportation museum in downtown.

Thursday was a very good day. We went to the Tucson-Sonora Desert Museum. It is an environmental museum filled with animals, plants, birds, and many walking trails. My skin was about to turn bad as we walked around. Not too far from the desert is Old Tucson. That's where many old westerns were filmed, such as McClintock. The Three Amigos was also filmed there, as well as The High Chaparall. We also went to one of the Indian Casinos, Desert Diamond. I didn't do as good as the past weekend's run in East Peoria. Dinner was at a place called the Depot, which I didn't know had karakoke night - as it pained my ears.

We spent most of Friday at the Pima Air and Space Museum. The place is HUGE! It has Ike's post-WWII to pre-presidency airplane, Kennedy and Johnson's Air Force One, and many military fighting planes. There are over 100 planes outside, and another 100 I think in a few hangars. The hangars also included some Air Force history. There was also the Space part of the museum, which documents the history of space travel. I wrote a paper in seventh grade science class about space travel history, so it interested me a lot. There was better music for our final dinner of the trip. We went to Las Cazulitas, where a live Marachi band was playing.

Saturday I bid goodbye to my grandparents and headed back home though Denver again.

Tucson is a very big city, much bigger that I thought. There were a lot of things I wanted to do, but was unable to. I want to go back one day. But my grandparents, who btw live there for three months, are looking at another place to spend the winter at.

Nevertheless, this will go down as one of the best weeks of my life.

Pictures will come soon, I promise. I got the Internet back at home (WOO-HOO!!!!!!) and need to get caught up on everything.

If you want to know more about my vacation, go ahead and ask.

TUCSON PICTURES - http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=22721799&albumId=2692130

TUSCON

Cutter's Log - Stardate 9002.21.30
Current Song - Jet Airliner (Steve Miller Band)

I'm going to concentrate on preparing tor Tuscon after I post this.
You won't hear from me for a while.

See ya!