The Pepsi Center has become a tent city of structures designed to hold hi-tech media equipment used to assist the media in reporting the happenings at the DNC. Right now, the only people at the AP tent are the craftsman that design the network, install the computers, routers, wireless, phones, televisions and other media equipment. I'll introduce you to some of the master technicians in a later blog, they have stories to tell as well.
The AP branch of Frigidaire is temperature controlled and one of the coldest places I've been all summer. Gale force winds circulate air conditioning to protect the equipment, but with nothing to stop the flow of air, it's an icebox. Students like myself are already working in the tent, watching over the extensive equipment, and our shifts are both evening and overnight. Shoshona Tyler has been one of the students working the overnight shift and on Tuesday, she brought long underwear to help keep warm. I kid you not.
It's a strange mix in the AP tent of expensive electronic equipment, leaves and sprinklers. The Pavilion that houses the AP is part of the parking lot closest to the Pepsi Center and under the huge tent, complete with an indoor arboretum, all things that grow need water.
Monday night around 10 p.m. the sprinklers came on. Indoors. Right next to thousands of dollars of electronics. There were four of us there, Virginia Packer, daughter of Katherine Packer, administrative assistant at the AP, Shoshona Tyler and Dominic Graziano and myself and we scrambled fast to move boxed and unboxed computers, wrap garbage bags around the data outlets and try to find someone to shut the water off.
We notified the technicians, and they had to make a late night junket to the tent to check out the damage. Fortunately, there wasn't any, but it was entertaining nonetheless.
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