General George S. Patton, Screen Saver

Another great day of rehearsals. This time I wore a purple shirt with a gray sweater vest. Co-anchors were Erica Hill and Sumi Das. The lighting is pretty close to done now, and we're working out the communication kinks. I actually took a couple of real calls, including one from Richard Feindel of techtvfanatics. (Thanks, Richard!) I'll be doing at least two calls in my hour. It also looks like I'll be doing the Mac tips on Call for Help. That's great! I love the opportunity to do that. I'm not loving the help setup on the TechLive set, though. It's very hard to work with and not at all friendly. It's going to be very tough for them to make an accessible Call for Help on that set, IMHO. Last night I was sitting around on the set at about 6pm - Screen Savers time - and the phones were ringing off the hook. I guess people were calling in for the show, even though it's a repeat. So I answered one. I could hear the caller's brother in the background. He couldn't believe the kid got through. Then the kid told him he was talking with Leo. He wanted to know how to join MP3 files together. The kid was very happy to get a personal answer. And a little stunned I think. Hee hee. (I told him to do it in DOS with the command: copy /b sourcefile1.mp3 + sourcefile2.mp3 + ... destinationfile.mp3 You can put as many source files in as you want separated by plus signs. e.g. to combine 1.mp3 and 2.mp3 into a new file 3.mp3 type: copy /b 1.mp3 + 2.mp3 3.mp3 It works. Try it.) Anchoring is turning out to be more work than I thought. In order to do this, I actually have to keep up with the news of the day and especially financial news. At least three times an hour the producer tells us to "fill" in our earpieces. That means I have to at least ask intelligent questions, if not add something of value on my own. I love to learn new stuff, but it's going to take a lot of work and concentration to anchor 90 minutes every day! On the other hand, anchoring is a great skill to learn. After the rehearsal I donned a General Patton costume to tape some stuff for the open to Leo's Boot Camp. I had a lot of fun strutting around telling the executives to "drop and give me 20." There was a reporter wandering around, too, so I really played it up. Not sure who she was writing for. We'll see! I wore the costume for my OS X tip on Call for Help. I think I scared Scott. Maybe he thought I was Sasquatch. I also re-recorded the voicemail for 888-989-7879 to reflect the new show times. Busy day! Now I've got to buckle down and write a couple of weeks of Mac tips. See you tomorrow for our last rehearsal. I hope.