RootsRain

Since Turner’s taking over management of all of the NBA’s digital properties (web, video, etc.), they’re doing a lot of hiring of creative-types. If you’re interested in working on high-profile sports content with a company with great salaries and benefits, head on over to TimeWarner’s U.S. job site and look around for the creative-type jobs. (There are currently 52 positions open at Turner in Atlanta for job types: “creative,” “graphics design,” and “internet/online/new media.”) If you’re more interested in account management and marketing jobs, I’m sure there are a bunch listed on there as well.

Bon chance!

I figured I’d post some pictures of the almost completed house since my blog’s been collected cobwebs for the past few days.

The closing date has been moved up to April 18th, so we will be moving in a little earlier than usual, which is nice. Emily can’t wait to start planting things in the flower beds. I can’t wait to have a desk. I’m seriously about 1/10th as productive as I could be when I don’t have a nice, large writing/reading surface. I like to spread out 5-6 books, stacks of papers, a nice inky pen, and a cup of coffee and just spend a few hours delving into intellectual or introspective stuff. But I can never manage it when I’m sitting up in bed or on the floor.

ummm… anyway… if you’ve read this far, I’ve got some grass you might enjoy watching grow.

And now for something… completely different.

The Masters is coming up this week (c’mon, admit it… you knew) so work’s been quite busy. This year we’re covering the Masters for both PGA.com (golf’s #2 site) and PGATOUR.com (golf’s #1 site) so we’re having to field sales demands and content requests from twice as many sources now. Oi. Like I’ve mentioned in previous posts, these are the times that you feel like you’re worth more than they pay you.

tingle

On Friday I was presented by Turner with my brand spanking new 15.4″ MacBook Pro (2.16 GHz Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, Radeon X1600 256MB video, if you care to know). I was given the choice of any machine I wanted to work off of and that was my pick. Mmmmm… feel the love… or is that jealousy I’m smelling?

So anyways… (Nacho fans?) I’ll be selling my 12″ G4 SpyBook. Before I do something stupid like list it on eBay, I’d much rather sell it to someone I know (and they in turn will be glad to not pay shipping). Here are the specs:

• 12″ 1.33GHz G4 PowerBook
• 768 MB RAM
• 80 GB Hard Drive (recently replaced)
• Combo drive (i.e., everything except the DVD burner)
• Bluetooth & Airport (802.11g) (recently replaced)
• OS X 10.4.8
• no Applecare
• custom shaping (read: slight dent) near the battery
• complete generic specs
• I’m including my Brenthaven 12″ laptop bag in the deal

I was thinking of charging around $550. I’ll be up in Greenville this weekend, if that matters to anyone.

During Ryder Cup week, Turner moved my department from the downtown CNN Center to the midtown Techwood Campus. You can see a nice aerial (although outdated) shot of the campus on the right. There’s a white-columned mansion in the middle of the picture which was the original building located on the property (home of the Progressive Club in the 60s). It’s now offices for many of the Turner executives. The buildings on the sides are the Turner Studios buildings where a lot of TBS, TNT, TCM, and Cartoon Network programming goes on. There’s actually a new building on the extreme left (not pictured, though) that’s still being built.

My cube is actually located on the 3rd floor of the building just to the left and behind the mansion. I took a couple of pictures of the inside of the building which is in the designer-friendly exposed-warehouse-modern-chic style. It’s weird being in a building like this when I didn’t have to fight tooth and nail for several years to get it that way (like our department had to do back at BJU Press). I hope I don’t get spoiled. You’ll also notice in the picture to the right that there’s a coffee bar in the center-back of the picture. I guess good employers know that real productivity doesn’t happen unless the employees have a steady, free caffeine drip. And it’s all dark roasts. Swit.

A few nights ago I had another of these odd, citified, Turner Sports evenings. The entire PGA and NASCAR creative teams were taken out to Strip Restaurant at Atlantic Station and treated to an evening of whatever we wanted. The waiter asked if anyone would like any appetizers and when everyone looked at each other (thinking: are we allowed?), our boss said “just bring out a couple of everything.” That ended up being fried calamari, spinach dip and chips, and two boatloads of sushi. Yes, boatloads. They were large wooden boats (about 2.5 feet long) with a smorgasboard of sushi on the top deck. There must have been about $300 worth of sushi in each one. And they put one of the boats right in front of me. Now, I’ve never had sushi, but when someone puts $300 worth of fine sushi right in front of you, you feel a little more adventurous. So I had a bunch… raw salmon with rice, raw shrimp with rice, seared (raw) peppered tuna, fried cucumber & salmon sushi with wasabi drizzled on the top… Well, I’m happy to report that I survived. And (sorry Jamie!) I don’t really see what people like about sushi. It was pretty tasteless and… well, cold. I enjoyed my 10oz. steak a lot more. Quite tasty. I’m getting hungry so I’d better change topics.

On the downside, during weeks like this past one, you feel like you’re worth way more than the endless stream of perks + the generous salary. I can’t remember ever being so busy. I’ve been at work 12 hours each day most days (with no lunch) working on the upcoming PGA Championship and every minute is spent revving my little designer engine to 9,000 RPMs. At one point this morning, I had one manager IMing me about changes he wanted immediately-or-the-world-would-explode while at the same time my boss came around the corner and wanted to talk to me just as I got an IM from the creative director asking me to come over to his cubicle to discuss a new project while at the same time I was already on the phone with a sales guy insisting that I had to get that darned Aflac duck animation finished by noon (AAALFAAAAC!). It’s pretty stressful, but I’ve been amazed to see how fast I can design and bang stuff out when I’m under a lot of pressure. You start wondering if you genuinely have a limit to how much work you can do in a limited time. Of course you do, but it’s been interesting realizing that my previous ideas about how much work I could do in a day have been self-imposed. When someone else grabs my schedule and makes wildly unreasonable demands on it, I find that they weren’t entirely unreasonable.

If any of my bosses are reading this, I have way too much work to do and that last paragraph was entirely a joke.

I took this picture (or rather the three pics that make up this quick and dirty photomerge) back when I first started working at Turner. I figured I’d post it now to let other people (inlcuding my wife) see the view from where I work.

Pardon the dirty windows, but the hose wouldn’t reach.

I can’t believe it’s been two weeks since my last aenemic blog posting. Wow. Time is flying.

The work in Atlanta is definitely picking up. This Thursday through Sunday is the Open Championship (also known as the “British Open” to less hoity-toity Americans). I’ve been feverishly at work on the website (making ads, updating content, etc.). Since the event starts tomorrow, and since the first tee time is 6:30 am GMT, feel free to drop by the site at 2:30 am ET and just revel in the knowledge that I’ll be awake posting pictures and daily stats. Ah… The joys of working with a “live” media site…

In general, though, my work day is moving much, much faster than it was at BJU Press. I’ve been so intensely glued to the computer screen that it usually takes TJ calling Tim and telling him to tell me to respond to my bouncing IM icon. Sorry, TJ. Turner makes up for the intensity of the work, though, by spoiling the employees the rest of the time. The benefits at Turner are unbelievable. I think they must have someone in a little room somewhere who just dreams up ways that the company can take care of stuff for employees. And then there’s the goofy, fun stuff: breakfast catered every Friday morning. During the summers there’s also Fabulous Fun Fridays, which have been everything from catered lunch by Moe’s while we watch Three Amigos, or a video game championship (for the guys) while the girls all went and got manicures (courtesy of Turner Sports). This Friday is “Brain Freeze”: all you can eat Edy’s ice cream. I’m going to get fatter. Oh, wait, no. There’s a gymn in the building: employees only. And if my workout goes long and I miss my carpool, I can always have Turner call a cab that’ll take me home (25 miles away) on their nickel. But I might just stay and catch the advance preview of Lady in the Water. But if it’s too scary and I have recurring nightmares, Turner provides free psychological counseling. If I fall out of the rollercoaster during the free “Turner Employees Only” night at Six Flags, I get double the complimentary life insurance. And then there’s that Philips 54″ HD LCD that I get 50% off employee pricing on. And there’s the free K-Cup coffees & teas, creamer, filtered water… oatmeal, too, for some reason… Starbucks in the lobby… Perky perky perky…

Living in Atlanta is different in ways other than work… Tim’s car (an Acura RSX-S) died on the way to work one morning. He got it started again but was a bit concerned so we pulled in to the Acura dealership at the next exit to get it checked out. All the workers there were spiffily dressed. There were two complimentary Starbucks machines in the waiting area (I had two cups). Tim told the guy at the counter that we needed to hook our laptops up to the internet so we could work on the PGA.com site (there were a bunch of things that needed immediate updates). The guy escorted us to the “Quiet Room” (as indicated on the glass doors) where there were cubicles, wireless internet, and, of course, silence. So we worked in that room for an hour until they fixed the car. Awesome. I don’t imagine all Acura dealerships are this well decked out…? I guess it’s the trade back you get for living in a city where your daily, one-way commute is an hour-long fight with crazies.

Emily started her job on Monday of this week. She’s teaching music camp classes in the evening at Berean Music Academy. Her work load should pick up in the coming weeks as more students register for fall classes. She’s been practicing guitar pretty heavily in recent months since it seems like that’s what Berean wants her to focus on teaching. She’s also been looking for a good teacher in Atlanta to help her continue her own guitar proficiency.

There’s not a whole lot new going on besides work, though. Emily’s done some house shopping while I’ve been at work. But she’s been going with Stephanie, so I think now Stephanie’s got the house-shopping bug, too. They’ve been wanting to move for a while, though, so I’m not too surprised.

Okay, so I’ve once again been long absent from my blog and I’m sure everyone’s dying for the news. I have a perfectly valid excuse: I was playing Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter on my brother’s XBox 360. And since we’re so bad we needed a lot of practice. A lot. Like every evening. From the moment we walked in the door until we crawled bleary-eyed into bed. We only made it past the first two multiplayer boards in mission mode (where you only have one life). But we downloaded the expansion pack and played through all the multiplayer boards.

Oh, and I also started my new job in Atlanta.

Yep. That’s it for the news.

Okay, okay… I’ll include a little more job info. I started on Monday at Turner Sports (New Media) and spent most of the week making banners and HTML tweaks to the Senior PGA 2007 new microsite. We also watched the Germany/Argentina World Cup match (at work), which was really great… tie score, overtime, and penalty shootouts with Germany winning the shootout. Deutschland, Deutschland, uber alles.

On another note, it’s looking highly official that Craig & Sarah Oesterling will be buying our house, so that’s good news. That means whenever we come back to Greenville we’ll be able to stay in the attic room that I’m still trying to finish. (Just kidding, Craig!) But it’s always nice to know someone you like will be getting your house.

What do golfers and I have in common? Well, we’re both generally inactive people… we both have no fashion sense… umm… and now we’re both going to be spending a lot of time looking at PGA.com. The reason for that is that I’ve been hired by Turner Sports Interactive (TSI) to head up the PGA website. I’ll actually be taking over from my brother who will be moving up to bigger and better things at TSI.

When you ask? Well, I accepted the job this past weekend and I’ll be moving to Atlanta in about two weeks. Emily will be staying behind a bit longer, but will soon be joining me.

Atlanta? you gasp? Yes, Atlanta. Or, rather, Lawrenceville, 40 miles or so outside of Atlanta. I would rather walk on my face than move into a city. Besides, we’ll be closer to Emily’s job, which will be teaching piano, voice, and guitar at Berean Music Academy. I, however, will be working smack in downtown Atlanta in the CNN building.

So while we’ll miss everyone here, we’re very excited about the upcoming move. Now to get that durned attic finished…

Okay, so I promised something rousingly interesting this week in light of my never-ending stream of attic postings. So here it is. A picture of my BJU parking sticker. Seriously. No Photoshopping on this one.