Wednesday, March 19, 2003

Well, I guess the Army has started their little party now. We are still here in Kuwait, near the UN demilitarized zone, waiting for our orders to move north. I did see the vehicle that David Bloom was in this morning - they left our location last night and we were out of contact with them for a while. I guess they didn't cross the border yet, or if they did, they came back. Dave did a live shot at ~11PM Eastern and we saw it here at our truck. I didn't pay any attention to it, so you probably know more about it than I do. I was trying to get the video of the president's last address up on the internet while they did the live shot. From what I understand, we are going to be waiting here for a couple of days before we move again. Kind of a dull war - not that that's a problem for me. :-) I'm fine with sitting here where it's safe. LOL.

Monday, March 17, 2003

If you're on my e-mail list to let people know I'm still alive, this is a re-run... If you want to be on the list and aren't, drop me an email.

Everything is still okay here. I know it has been a few days since I emailed or put anything on my website, but I really haven't had much opportunity to use the computer. Since the president's speech last night, it looks like we are on a very short time line before this happens. I can't give any information about what's going on, but I'm going to be off of the computer for the next few days, then hopefully we will get settled in and I'll be back up soon. Since I got out here to the desert, it's been a pretty rough time because the antenna was getting beaten up pretty badly by the rough ride of the truck. We (myself, Bob from NBC, and a lot of troops) worked for a couple of days straight trying to both soften up the ride of the truck and firm up the antenna so it could survive. We believe that we are at a "happy medium" point as of right now, but Bob and I are both planning on driving like we had a truckload of loose eggs just to be safe. We did the Today show from here this weekend, and have done several live shots, including one right before the president's speech, so I think the NBC folks are satisfied with the results so far. I suppose we truly won't know until the "show" actually starts how well it's going to work out, but at this point I think we are ready for whatever happens.

I will do my best to check in with at least the M&C room during the next few days. Any chance I have available, I will be checking my email at both jake@donttrythisathome.org and jake_kooser@mtnsat.com and if I am on the computer, I will be connected both at jake_kooser@hotmail.com on MSN messenger and MTNJKooser on AOL instant messenger.

Sunday, March 16, 2003

Bob and I (and the antenna) survived the "today" show this weekend. Both shows went pretty well, with the exception of a bad fuse on one part of the antenna. We may be leaving soon, so I have to make sure everything is cool with the antenna. We've had to make some pretty drastic modifications to the antenna to get it to survive. I just got some parts in, but I'm going to leave the antenna as is for now, so I will have spare parts in hand if anything happens.