bob fishman | RustedRobot

Random

Small world story: Yesterday I get in a cab to go to LaGuardia to fly home and there’s another person who also needs to go, so we split the cab. She calls a few friends and tells them about “the worst day of her life.” I try to sink into the seat and be quiet, because it does sound like she’s had a bad day. Then she tells her friend the name of the person she’s having a problem with and I snort. I work with the guy! Yikes! She knows it right away and tells me this is now officially the worst day of her life. She’s lucky, though, because I’m not a fan of the dude either. So her secrets are safe with me. Even if I was a fan of the dude, her secret would have been safe with me (I’m a trustworthy fellow, people), but she doesn’t know that. Still, a pretty funny story.

I picked up a copy of The Atlantic magazine a few weeks back and I’ve been making my way through the issue. It is a keeper! The cover story is about Barack Obama and how this country might change when whites become the minority (it’s coming sooner than you think). It’s a very good piece, written with enough pop culture references to keep us interested. The author is actually an old roommate of a friend of mine, too, so it was cool to see his byline. The other piece that I implore you to read is the article about Bob Fishman, a Director for CBS Sports. I did some interning/gophering with CBS Sports when I was in college and got to meet and watch Bob Fishman work at the 1992 and 1993 World Series. The man is a freakin’ marvel to watch. I mean it. Watching sports on television is a very easy job. Making it happen and presenting it to us is more work that you could EVER imagine. Watching that group of people present the World Series to millions of people, to this day, remains one of the highlights of my entire life. This article is the best attempt I’ve seen at putting that work into words. If you watch sports on TV, read this. Bob is also a tremendously nice man. He didn’t hesitate to stop and talk to the little college kid interning. Knowing a good contact when I meet one, I kept in touch with him as I explored TV sports jobs after college.

I have a component based home-theatre system at my house. This basically means I have a) a cable box, b) a receiver, c) an AppleTV box and d) a DVD player. The receiver, about nine years old, is on the fritz. I am now doing a complete reevaluation of the setup, wondering if the whole component-based system is still the optimal solution. I believe it is, but I’m not sure. First off, the DVD player will most likely go away entirely. We’ve used it exactly once in the past 18 months. The physical DVD era is coming to an end soon. Sure, some of our lack of DVD usage is because we had kids and we don’t watch movies as much, but MOST of it is because we have the AppleTV box (hacked with Boxee) and/or we use video-on-demand. So with the DVD player going away, that leaves us with AppleTV and the cable box – and possibly a reciever. I’m curious to know if there’s a solution out there that would simply be ONE box that acts both as a receiver AND a media hub that stores all my media. I do love the AppleTV, but if I can minimize boxes (and the energy that they produce) , I’m gonna.