Week #1 at Sony Imageworks
Monday: Got up at 4:30 AM. Took shower. Brushed teeth. Drove up Washington Blvd. around 5:30ish with nooo traffic at all. SPI is one of many Sony buildings you pass on that street, but it's the white art deco building with a turquoise trim. Took the back entrance and had to buzz security. "Security..." the deep African-american male voice spoke. "Um, yeah. I'm Brian Stokes, a new hire here to see my supervisor so-and-so" The gate buzzed and opened. My battle-worn Toyota Cressida rental descended into the depths of the parking lot to level 2. Made my way up the elevator and told an apparently different security person (this time a she!) that I needed a temp badge. She took my license and then handed me a little clippable card with a chip. Then my supervisor came down and took me up to the 2nd floor where the other PSTs (Production Services Technicians) live. Met Mike & Jeff #1 in one room, then Chris in another.
Of course I had forgotten one important thing. Breakfast! My supervisor started to show me their system via a black IBM linux box with flat-screen. Thankfully, other PSTs were about to order breakfast burritos and I chipped in for one. Learned about their intranet, their filesystem, and various other things before I had to go to 2 classes that every new employee may take (in an upstairs lab, decked out with more flat-screen linux boxes, and monitors controlled by the instructor). My account wasn't ready yet and that put me behind all week. There was only one other new hire this week -- a lighting guy from Cinesite. I wanted to have lunch with him and his other buddies (all cinesite refugees) but we missed each other (easy in a big building like this). Alas, I doubt I'll get the chance to again as the PSTs almost always eat back in the room rather than socialize with the other teams. But I may break that unwritten rule. Lunch was solo today -- fast food Greek? Came back and met some other folks, and worked on my assignment (lots of file manipulations, scripts, etc). Tried unsuccessfully to get a working pager. One of the other Leads seemed very eager for me to be up-to-speed enough to monitor his show -- I hadn't learned how to monitor yet!
Eventually I drove home... exhausted! Watched TV I think. Don't remember at all.
Tuesday: Repeat of the drive. More learning, this time some tape restoration stuff and image processing tools. Had more energy in the morning, courtesy of almonds. Then I had to meet with the HR lady. I got my paperwork and went to my other class. After that I had to finish my homework from the previous day, plus the new set of homework. Whoosh! Haven't had this much to do in a short time for a longgg time. Lunch? A chicken sandwich from the Sony Culver Studios commissary.
Wednesday: Same ol' drive again. Wednesday was all about the cue (er, queue, technically). More almonds. Had to finish yesterday's assignment also. I tried the Sony Culver Studios cafe this time -- had an overpriced salad, which I ate back in the kitchen. Unfortunately, the assignment had not been set up in a way that I could actually finish it (jobs missing, files missing) which really frustrated me and I was kindof stressed the rest of the afternoon. Not to mention really tired from this weird schedule + completely new environment.
Thursday: Thought I was really behind but I managed to finish up. I got to go to the dailies of an upcoming Tim Burton movie! Now that was cool. This made it all seem worth it -- to see precisely what all my hard work would be going towards. The rest of the day I was much more upbeat. Plus it was really sunny out.
When I got home I decided to walk all the way to Santa Monica along the beach/boardwalk. Took me 3 hours round trip :) Venice beach is worthy of its own blog entry.
Friday: More in the swing of things. I didn't really like going there at 8 (my supervisor was coming in late) because I was starting to get used to the sleep schedule. Felt a little more talkative to people. Today was finishing up a bit of cue work that I had forgotten about (diagnosing failed process logs. Fun fun fun.) Learned about how to execute output requests to video, film, quicktime, high-def, etc, which was interesting. This is how the dailies get made now -- no tape necessary! It's all digital. Even the film stuff gets dropped to film printer (via another crew). Unfortunately I had trouble finishing the assignment for all this. The challenge was learning all the new commands, remembering all the stuff earlier in the week about cueing them, getting them executed on limited machines, and then figuring out why they weren't always working. I went into the other room to stay a little later, but that was challenging because the other guy had his machine set up very differently. Still wasn't finished when I left, but oh well.
So now it's Friday night. Tomorrow? Try to find a car to buy. Yeesh.
Monday: Got up at 4:30 AM. Took shower. Brushed teeth. Drove up Washington Blvd. around 5:30ish with nooo traffic at all. SPI is one of many Sony buildings you pass on that street, but it's the white art deco building with a turquoise trim. Took the back entrance and had to buzz security. "Security..." the deep African-american male voice spoke. "Um, yeah. I'm Brian Stokes, a new hire here to see my supervisor so-and-so" The gate buzzed and opened. My battle-worn Toyota Cressida rental descended into the depths of the parking lot to level 2. Made my way up the elevator and told an apparently different security person (this time a she!) that I needed a temp badge. She took my license and then handed me a little clippable card with a chip. Then my supervisor came down and took me up to the 2nd floor where the other PSTs (Production Services Technicians) live. Met Mike & Jeff #1 in one room, then Chris in another.
Of course I had forgotten one important thing. Breakfast! My supervisor started to show me their system via a black IBM linux box with flat-screen. Thankfully, other PSTs were about to order breakfast burritos and I chipped in for one. Learned about their intranet, their filesystem, and various other things before I had to go to 2 classes that every new employee may take (in an upstairs lab, decked out with more flat-screen linux boxes, and monitors controlled by the instructor). My account wasn't ready yet and that put me behind all week. There was only one other new hire this week -- a lighting guy from Cinesite. I wanted to have lunch with him and his other buddies (all cinesite refugees) but we missed each other (easy in a big building like this). Alas, I doubt I'll get the chance to again as the PSTs almost always eat back in the room rather than socialize with the other teams. But I may break that unwritten rule. Lunch was solo today -- fast food Greek? Came back and met some other folks, and worked on my assignment (lots of file manipulations, scripts, etc). Tried unsuccessfully to get a working pager. One of the other Leads seemed very eager for me to be up-to-speed enough to monitor his show -- I hadn't learned how to monitor yet!
Eventually I drove home... exhausted! Watched TV I think. Don't remember at all.
Tuesday: Repeat of the drive. More learning, this time some tape restoration stuff and image processing tools. Had more energy in the morning, courtesy of almonds. Then I had to meet with the HR lady. I got my paperwork and went to my other class. After that I had to finish my homework from the previous day, plus the new set of homework. Whoosh! Haven't had this much to do in a short time for a longgg time. Lunch? A chicken sandwich from the Sony Culver Studios commissary.
Wednesday: Same ol' drive again. Wednesday was all about the cue (er, queue, technically). More almonds. Had to finish yesterday's assignment also. I tried the Sony Culver Studios cafe this time -- had an overpriced salad, which I ate back in the kitchen. Unfortunately, the assignment had not been set up in a way that I could actually finish it (jobs missing, files missing) which really frustrated me and I was kindof stressed the rest of the afternoon. Not to mention really tired from this weird schedule + completely new environment.
Thursday: Thought I was really behind but I managed to finish up. I got to go to the dailies of an upcoming Tim Burton movie! Now that was cool. This made it all seem worth it -- to see precisely what all my hard work would be going towards. The rest of the day I was much more upbeat. Plus it was really sunny out.
When I got home I decided to walk all the way to Santa Monica along the beach/boardwalk. Took me 3 hours round trip :) Venice beach is worthy of its own blog entry.
Friday: More in the swing of things. I didn't really like going there at 8 (my supervisor was coming in late) because I was starting to get used to the sleep schedule. Felt a little more talkative to people. Today was finishing up a bit of cue work that I had forgotten about (diagnosing failed process logs. Fun fun fun.) Learned about how to execute output requests to video, film, quicktime, high-def, etc, which was interesting. This is how the dailies get made now -- no tape necessary! It's all digital. Even the film stuff gets dropped to film printer (via another crew). Unfortunately I had trouble finishing the assignment for all this. The challenge was learning all the new commands, remembering all the stuff earlier in the week about cueing them, getting them executed on limited machines, and then figuring out why they weren't always working. I went into the other room to stay a little later, but that was challenging because the other guy had his machine set up very differently. Still wasn't finished when I left, but oh well.
So now it's Friday night. Tomorrow? Try to find a car to buy. Yeesh.
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