I had completely forgotten about this photo. I was just going to format the memory card in my camera when I ran across this image. I remember when we took it. My sister was in town, and we passed an old mini-mart that had just re-opened as a 7-11. And who better to be at the grand opening? Thats right… The sith lord himself, Darth Vader.
If your a regular visitor to the site (all 3 of you) you’ll notice some pretty big changes. A complete redesign in fact. I had most of the day off work today so I threw this together. I’ve been a big fan of minimalist designs like this recently. No heavy graphics to get in the way… just nice clean white space. The colors come from another project I have been working on. I just got this triad of colors together and fell in love. Put some grey scales in the mix and it just becomes nice and tasty.
The inspiration for the design is here.
This is a story I found here and just loved. It says a lot about what I believe is the majority of Disney Cast.
Pardon my dust… and lack of spelling…
Well first I would like to explain something about the attraction at which this happened. The Tomorrowland Transit Authority is a rail ride powered by magnetic induction motors. Its a train like ride that goes through a few attractions and is about 15 feet above the ground. Ocassionally the motors have problems causing the trains to back up and hit each other a little hard but not that harmful at all.
On this day it had happened in Space Mountian. This Cast Member, CM, had been doing what would have been a normal evacuation of the ride. However a woman was getting very panicky and nervous. CM had done what he could do to calm her and made sure she was right with him the way back, a situation where someone would be just sent on there way to follow the others out.
CM wasn’t quite sure why she was so afraid. It is a rather routine issue at the ride but nothing that would make some one that scared. Mostly the evacutaion is the sounds of clamoring guest upset they have to walk a little ways to safty in the heat. Never a thank you for helping them out.
After she was safe and CM gotten her a bottle of water and calmed her she told CM why she had been scared. She was a survivor of the World Trade Center Attacks on 9/11. She was in the building as the lights went out and things happened around her. She told him that in the darkness of Space Mountian and the cars hitting one another gave her flash backs from the plane crash. She held out a hand to him and gave him something. She told him it was her survivor pin, a pin with the Twin Towers on it given to her after the destruction. She wanted him to have it for saving her life once again.
As I heard the story my heart sank. CM told me that the woman spent the day telling everyone one of her angel and showing him off. But he did nothing more than what was expected of him.
The CM, who we know, would rather not have anyone know about his efforts. He would have done it for anyone. He doesn’t want any recontion but I wanted to make sure that he got respect from me. In situations like that it’s easy to push someone aside and jsut say get over it its not scary…but we don’t know their true fears. CM will at least get some of the recognition from me at least.
At Disney we want everyone to be treated with respect that they deserve and some times we forget about the individual attention can be just as magical for some. We try to create memories that will last a life time. If you are one of the lucky ones who get to visit Disney World in your life. Please take the time to just thank at least one cast member. Whether or not you think it matters it really does. And you as a Cast Member if you can take the time to get a little personal with a few of the 100,000s of guests we have. It can create magic as well.
So it’s a little after midnight on Sat (now Sunday). I should be asleep but my brain is jumping all over the place making it hard to fall asleep. I know myself well enough to not fight it, I just have to get up and occupy this extra brain energy with something. After a little while my eyelids will get heavy and I will drift off. So it seemed like a good idea to blog again. I’m really quite proud of myself for keeping up with this little site as much as I have in the last few days. Sometimes it’s so hard to convince myself to sit down and commit some time to updating the world on what’s up around here. Hopefully people are reading what I’m saying.. and it’s not all in vain.
Today should have been a day off for me, but real life sometimes doesn’t follow the rules. I’ve already put in a solid work week but in this business you just never know when things are going to pop up. I was shaking off sleep at around 11:00AM when my phone rang. It was a colleague in convention services who was having a mini event emergency.
In one phone call she drummed up a good little bit of work for me.
So really all in all there wasn’t too much stuff… I’ve had much much worse phone calls from work (like “can you make it snow in the ballroom about 12 hours from now?”).
The venue move entails several calls since there is many elements to even this little event. We have a Jazz Trio who’s got to plan on a new arrival, a florist delivery, some support from our technical folks, and of course the other half of the Mickey ears and custom Mickey Mouse chocolates that are waiting in various places for me to pick them up in the morning.
The additional ears were the biggest pain. I had to call my good friends at one of the shops on Main Street USA to set them aside, and just go to the park to pick them up myself. Since I was going to the park to pick Janey up anyway (she picked up a White Rabbit shift today) I decided it wasn’t a big deal. I felt a little strange going into meet this merch. manager in my sandals and golf shirt, but hey… I’m not dressing up to pick up some ears.
So a call to a few florists to see what was in stock solved the night event problem, and all was well. But by the time it was all done it was 5:30 PM. Awww man! I wanted to get that 6 ft tall pile of laundry taken care of today. I have to get to work by about 7:00 AM tomorrow to tend the load in of this venue change too… so my Sunday morning is shot too. Ahh well. I have the rest of my life to do laundry.
Even though calls like this one can be annoying… I wouldn’t have it any other way. They call me because I say yes, and make things happen. While so many others can make things happen, they don’t. So… I made this little bed for myself, and I’m OK with lying in it. Making the magic takes a lot of energy, and sometimes it happens off the clock. I love it.
Thanks for reading.
R.
A funny little artcle about Cast Member’s experiences.
USATODAY.com
It’s funny that I completely forgot to blog about this when it happened.
Yesterday at a little before 2:00 PM I was sitting at my desk. I was deep in thought about an up-coming event. I was thinking hard about how I was going to solve an interesting challenge with a few Herbie cars.
I heard some sounds that I would describe as a quiet, but deep, booming. Like you might feel/hear if someone was running down a hallway next to the room you were in. Then everything went really quiet and my chair started to shake. For a second I actually thought somebody in the next cubicle over was just jumping around or something. Sometimes, up here on the entertainment floor, people do strange things. Then… the shaking got a little heavier and it was clear that this was an earthquake.
I could hear a few surprised “is that an earthquake?” sort of noises coming from some other cubicles in the area. Then all of the sudden my heart started to pound. You see… I have been in many kinds of weather related scary situations. A hurricane, driving in blizzards, torrential rain, flooding… but none of them made me as shaky as this quake (no pun indented). It honestly made my palms sweat.
I spun my chair around and contemplated running to a doorway while I sucked my thumb and cried like a little girl. Thankfully my adult brain kicked into gear as I asked my cell mate cubicle roomie if he had been in an earthquake before. He’s lived in CA all his life so he laughed a bit and said cool as a cucumber “ok… this is where it’s either going to go away, or get worse” I gulped dryly and he said “ok, it’s over”. But friends… it wasn’t over. The building was still rocking back and forth when he said that. I was still fighting off the thumb sucking when it finally stopped.
All in all it was about 30 seconds out of my life. It was my first quake (this point is actually not true since there was one on Sunday… but I was asleep when it happened and didn’t believe Janey when she told me about it) and it convinced me that I should stock up on bottled water and gasoline. Maybe I will start hoarding canned goods as well.
For now though friends, I am ok. No more shaking for me, and life is back to normal.
Thanks for reading.
R.
This is one of my new favorite places to waste time.
Photoblogging Disneyland – a photoset on Flickr
I’m posting today… with no real intent at all. I find writing content for this little blog very therapeutic though, and that is sort of what I need right now.
Normally I’m just a positive care free kind of fellow. Things roll off and I don’t take life to seriously. I certainly try not to take myself to seriously. And it all normally adds up to pleasant days just content with life, love, and lemons.
(for the record, I’m not really a fan of lemons, it was just that or lettuce that would make a rhyme and lemons is certainly the lesser of those evils)
Today, however, seems to be something different. I’m in a bit of a funk[see #3] and I am having a hard time pulling out of it. This state of being is thankfully much less common then it used to be in my life. If I remember correctly I spent the entire year of 2000 in funkish blur. Of course if I really think hard about it, I know that a years worth of the blues is and infinitely deeper seated problem then what I am having now.
So lets think hard about what got me into this… There are some things going wrong. There are some things that worry me. There are other things that I fear may go wrong soon.
The things that are going wrong are not terribly significant. They are mostly littleish annoyances stemming from some of the side projects I’m doing. (these are usually web design and IT Consulting projects I take on in addition to my normal work-day) There are circumstances that lie both within my control and well beyond my grasp contributing to the problem. Somewhere inside though I feel as if I could have prevented the problems entirely a month or so ago. I guess there is always a chance to look back with perfect hindsight and critique mistakes, but does it really get you anywhere. I’m much more a fan of just learning, and not making them again. But every once in a while I get stuck thinking “oh, if only I had…”
The things that worry me mostly live in the financial world. As much as I love what I do, the company that I have chosen to do it for has a reputation of paying under the industry standard. Granted, when the entire compensation package is taken into account (benefits, perks, discounts, etc…) the numbers look quite good. But I can’t pay the bills with my health insurance card. I don’t want to make this part sound worse then it is though. I’m living fine, and those who have seen me in the last 6 months know that I certainly haven’t been missing any meals. I just think some years down the road… sometimes only months… and wonder how things are all going to shape up. Like everyone I have obligations and desires. Sometimes it’s a thin tightrope to walk if you try to satisfy both.
In recent days I have been worrying about some things that have shown signs of going wrong in the near future. This is something I can’t really speak to with any specificity, it’s just a general anxiety.
I know all of this just lives in today. And it won’t be long before I’m back on top of my game. It’s just a gripe… you know? This funk is a pain-in-the-neck and it’s time is done. So… be gone funk and let me smile.
Thanks for reading
R.
Work came to a standstill around here as many many people packed into the breakroom to watch the virdict reading in the Michael Jackson case. I haven’t followed the trial at all, but I was all caught up in the frenzy of conversation and movement just down that hall.
So a new little issue has come to light that I would like clarification on. It has to do with the inevitable reality of dropped calls when owning and operating a mobile telephone. On average my cell phone drops one or two calls per day. Your mileage may vary of course depending on your overall call volume, and how much you move around while talking. I don’t know if my own experience is average (it seems rather high considering I live, work, and play within a 5 mile radius) but lets pretend that everyone has at least one dropped call per day.
To be quite honest the fact that the calls get dropped doesn’t annoy me too much. I completely understand the technical and atmospheric challenges my little Motorola faces each time I place a call. In addition to that, my handset is abused quite a bit. It’s really a wonder that it doesn’t just fall apart in my hands. But all that aside the real problem is this:
After a dropped call, who has the responsibility to place the return call.
Since there is no generally understood policy on this I am often caught in a frustrating cycle of calling the other party at the exact moment they are calling me back. We both end up in the “sorry I’m already on the phone” voicemail box only to quickly hang up and redial hoping the other party isn’t doing the same. If both callers are savvy with the keypad this process can repeat itself two or three times before one caller finally gives up and allows the other to ring through. This actually causes a whole new problem…
Once the ‘busy’ cycle has played itself out, all to often BOTH parties have the bright idea of just leaving the phone alone till it rings. Seconds tick passed with no ring. Each party thinks they are being the ‘fresh thinker’ and second guesses the situation. “They must be waiting for me to call them now” I tell myself each time. I would say that at least half of the time I do that, the other party has done the same thing. We shuttle ourselves back into the damned ‘busy’ cycle for at least one round.
At this point the process seems totally futile. Especially since the purpose of the phone call was to say “Hello” and “how is your day going”. If the situation plays out just like I have described above, both parties give up completely and the phone call never actually happens. It’s not really a big deal. They will end up talking at some point… but there’s got to be a better way.
So if your reading this… tell me what you think. Who gets to pick up the pieces after a dropped call?