First Week

Wow, it’s been since ’06 since I wrote in this thing. It seems I only do it when the Steelers win the Super Bowl, so if you want to hear more, they’d better win again next season!

But really, I decided to blog my first week at the new gig because invariable everyone asks, “How’s it going?” and rather than bore everyone with the same story, I figured, why not give a blow by blow detail on one easily accessible space? That way everyone’s happy J

Day 1: Typical first day at a new place. I spend the morning in FAMS HQ in Reston filling out enough paperwork to think I was buying a house again. Invariably the HR person going through this torture with you is your new tour guide to your new job, and mine is Henry Mak (his last name is MUCH longer, but I don’t want to run the risk of mispronouncing it or misspelling it, so he gets shortened). Henry’s an affable fellow -- early thirties, cool – but the weirdest thing is…he’s not HR!!! He’s the exec assistant to the three head honchos. But he’s the one showing me around, introducing me to people, helping me fill out the forms. So hey, this is how they roll, eh?

After signing my life away and ensuring my benefits and government life continue uninterrupted (cross your fingers!), I’m whisked away to take the oath to serve my country. Now, I’ve done this before with the Agency, but that was in a group. So it’s sort of intimidating with my big boss, his second in command, my direct boss, and Henry standing there as I almost have a Justice Roberts moment while being sworn in.

I eat lunch with new best friend Henry and make my way to my new “home”…Ashburn, VA. Yay! For those of you who don’t know where that is, it’s in BFE…well, it was BFE before Leesburg Outlets and sprawl made it a new suburb of DC. But from Reston, it’s a 15 min hike and I’m there in no time. I’m reintroduced to my coworkers Ryan and Basil and our lone female video nerd, Avalon is out, but I’ll catch up with her Wednesday. Ryan is a 29 year old guy who is supercool and laid back. He’s built like Andre the Giant, but has the demeanor of Jack Black with some surfer dude thrown in. I like him immediately, moreso after we duel with “Princess Bride” quotes. Every video shop needs a “senior” member and Basil is ours. Just a little north of age 55, he’s an interesting guy. I can’t quite peg him, but I do know he has a wicked sense of humor and has that old guy, I-don’t-have-time-to-deal-with-a-lot-of-crap mentatlity which I dig.

I get the tour of THIS facility and it’s a vast improvement over what it looked like 6 months ago when I interviewed. Then, they were just standing up their studio and edit room and most everything was happening in tiny rooms in the basement. Now we have a pristine edit room with 4 Avid workstations (we’ll all share the room) and a spanking brand new studio space with a three-camera setup and lights and anchor desk and all. Pretty sweet. My actual desk is on the opposite side of the building, so I have two workspaces I can clutter up :) And evidently there is a full fledged plane nose in the back of the building used for training. Gotta see that.

While the building is pretty massive, really it’s just us and the IT/Internet Security folks who comprise the ground floor. Upstairs is a meeting hall/cafeteria and break out rooms cause there’s training here every once in awile. Coming from a building that’s constantly occupied and ginormous at the Agency to this one, the joint feels eerily quiet at times and is a little weird, but I’ll get used to it. And in the basement is a gym, assembled with great pride by the head of security here, so I have no excuses to get in shape now...but I’m sure I can think of two or three. We spend the rest of the afternoon just hanging out and I’m informed tomorrow is when the guy comes here to install our new Unity system (more on that tomorrow), so I can “dress down,” which here is polo shirt and slacks/cargo pants that look decent. And after talking to my boss, I try for a 5 day a week schedule from 10-6:30, which is GLORIOUS to me. I get to still take Emily to school and keep a late schedule, but he urges me to think about the alternative work schedule idea. I say I’ll think about it. But all in all, a good day. It’s definitely going to be interesting.

GENERAL RECAP: I can have my cell phone again (yay!) and have internet, but can’t access any, ANY, personal email accounts (booo!); Monday thru Friday I have to wear shirt and tie (eh), but no jeans ever, not even on Fridays! (booo!); my commute is averaging an hour and I’m trying different routes to see what works -- today was the Toll Road to Reston, then Toll Road from there to Sterling. I think no matter what, it’s going to be a haul, but it’s not too horrible. iTunes, I have a feeling, is going to make a lot of money off me this year.

And dude, I miss having a TV at my desk. How will I know what’s going on with the world?!


DAY 2:
God has a very, VERY good sense of humor or at the very least a flair for irony.

A little background: for those of you not in “The Biz,” Avid is a company that makes editing systems for post production on films and TV. Their high-end products have been used in Hollywood for years and by anyone wanting a high standard for their productions. They also have more affordable products aimed at schools and indie filmmakers, but Apple has beaten them in that arena with their Final Cut system for some years, and Avid is now trying to play catchup.

A great tool if you have an Avid is the Unity system, which is basically a giant hard drive (server) where you can store files and information and share that with any other computers on that server. At my previous job, management was practically stalking us in an effort to GET RID of our Unity system. In their wisdom, they were replacing our Avids with Adobe’s Premiere Pro editing system. Nothing against Adobe’s offering, but I’ll use an analogy we constantly told The Powers That Be in our futile effort to have them not take the Avid away: “You’re basically taking away our Ferrari and giving us an Accord and telling us to go just as fast.”

So imagine my surprise that when I come here, we’re installing a Unity system. And because I’m the only one on the team with experience with it, I’m going to be leaned on to help everyone get up to speed. And to make the irony even more delicious, when I walk in to help with the install who should be running the show but Chip, the same guy who did upgrades to our Unity system when I first got to CIA. I recognize him, he recognizes me, we chat it up...the universe is very small indeed. Chip will be with us the rest of the week for the install and so I spend time catching him up to speed on what’s been going on at The Agency, much to his amazement.

And it’s quite funny going from a super secure environment like the Agency to here where it IS secure, but people look at me funny when I ask questions like, “I can use a credit card?” and “I don’t have to lock up when I leave?” I get a lot of head shaking at some of my questions, but to their credit, they understand where I just came from. Oh, and I did learn this: while I do work for the Federal Air Marshal Service, when talking to the general public about where I work, I should just say TSA (cause I don’t want ANYONE thinking I’m a marshal. Jack Bauer, I ain’t!), but internally I should refer to myself working for FAMS. Nobody respects TSA it seems.

And it isn’t til today I put my finger on the different vibe I get here and at HQ. A lot of The Service is made up of former military and law enforcement, mostly Secret Service (who have come from local police and/or military backgrounds anyway). I must’ve been asked was I former military about 4 times walking the halls at HQ. At the Agency, you got a mix of backgrounds and that made things a little more...”relaxed.” Here I do get a little more rigid feel and I’m warned by all of my team that there are huge egos we bump into, so watch out and don’t be afraid to let my boss Jesse take the hit. Mental note: so it seems I’ll be running into a lot of egomaniacs. Must talk to Jamie Cave for practice :) .


DAY 3:
Chip has us knee deep in Unity system training. At the Agency, we didn’t do any admin and had one of our IT guys be the “custodian” of managing the server. Here we’re all the custodians and while there are benefits to us having the responsibility and power, part of me is worried we may just shoot off our foot one day by accident. Stay tuned.

And my last team member, Avalon, is back. Avalon is a lady same age as me, also cool like Ryan, but is his physical opposite. Tall and slender, she’s always on the go and at times talks so fast, I’m like, “Huh?” She has amazing energy and is clearly leaned on by Jesse for IT stuff and is his go-to person for most things -- a natural second in command, which I find interesting given Basil is older. She defers to him on stuff very respectfully and all, but you clearly get the sense she is the one who knows the most of what’s going down at any given moment other than our boss.

So after a day of being battered with Unity info, my brain hurts and I head home. Fairfax County Parkway has become a viable way to and from work, but darn that Fair Oaks Mall. Traffic is a bottleneck mess at that point and at Reston off the Parkway, but it seems the best way for me to go, especially from Mom and Dad’s house. And I’ve talked with my boss Jesse; I WILL do the alternative work schedule. After talking with Katie, it just made sense to work 9hrs/8hrs-for-one-day and then have a day off during the two-week work period. I liked the way things were (remember me, the guy not a fan of change), but I still get to at least have Emily in the mornings and maybe now a whole day with her. And if we do film another Sapling Pictures masterpiece (Keith, Brian, and I) or I get one of my own projects up and running, now I have some time without using my annual leave. So we’ll see.

And I still miss having a TV at my desk. And March Madness is upon us! Even worse timing on my part!


DAY 4:
More Avid Unity training by my main man, Chip. Before, the guys had been saving footage to hard drives at each workstation and working off of those, and since all the files they were working on depended on which machine they were at, their file management isn’t the best. With the Unity, it almost demands that you’re really descriptive with your stuff and organization of your materials is key. As much as I lamented the amount of paperwork and strict workflow at my last gig, this one is the polar opposite and it looks like I’m going to have to come up with a way to wrangle that. Again, God and irony. He’s laughing at me, I just know it.

And today is Chip’s last day with us. I tell him it was good to see him and that if I do see him again, it’ll be here and not at yet another new place. Chip’s a really good guy and it was great to see a somewhat familiar face in this new place, sort of like an episode of a spinoff series and you have someone from the old series show up. But man, Chip smokes like a chimney and the way he smells after a smoke break is not something I’ll miss.

DAY 5:
So I come in late from a doctor’s appointment and the “On Air” light to the studio is on. No shoots were scheduled, so I totally think this is a gag or maybe someone accidentally hit that switch when they turned on the lights and walk in the door anyway. Imagine my surprise when there IS a shoot going on in the studio! Luckily they were in between takes, and everyone was cool about it, but I’ve now established Rule #1: Believe what you see! After helping out with the taping and all, I go through the gear we have, getting an inventory of what I’m dealing with here. They have some good stuff; not nearly as much as we did at MPG when I first got there, but not bad for a new operation that’s two years old. Basil, Avalon and I mess around on our respective systems, see if there are any bugs from Chips handiwork. It’s Friday and everyone’s just killing time to go home and sure enough, I decide today is my 8-hr day and jet.
So Week 1 is done amazingly and I lived through it. Not much of my morning has actually changed in the time I get up and stuff, but that extra hour time in the car IS a bit different for me. And the people here seem nice, but it is the first week. We still need time to annoy each other. :) But I do miss my folks at MPG. It was very weird Monday not going to Langley as I had every day for the past two years. And I miss joking with those guys, and going to lunch with Greg and Brittany, and talking the latest in movies and Idol with Laureen, Rick, and Stephanie, and bitching about management. It’s definitely weird. I’ve just go to find my rhythm here and I’ll be alright. It is only the first week! Oh, and I get my first trip to Atlantic City in April, so that’ll be a hoot. Then I’ll really get to see what we do.