[EAS] Observations and a question

[Mike McCarthy]

Rod,

I generally agree with your comments except for two points. Our group 
purposely delayed deployment until the last minute as I identified a 
time wasting element to all the updates pushed out the past year+. Even 
by remote access and updating, our staff would (have) commit(ed) about a 
1/2 day to the effort for each update we choose to install. Make that a 
full day+ if the remote access isn't/wasn't in place due to sneaker 
netting the update. Multiply that by however many updates and you all of 
a sudden have a significant cost center just for updating EAS boxes. In 
my estimation, we saved no less than a man-week, likely more ($>x,000) 
by waiting. And even then, when we installed the main operations after 
V88, we found V-89 needed to be installed in our Sage boxes.  
Fortunately, the remote studios hadn't been deployed yet and we caught 
them before going out the door.

Additionally, there is all the back-office work needed at stations which 
are either really locked down by a corporate edict or poor networking 
topology alogn with all of FEMA's gyrations.  EAS-II is far more costly 
and time consuming when factoring those additional global elements into 
the mix.

Finally, as much as we try, we can't be current on everything.  The past 
five years I have been consumed with a completely new DA TX site, 
studio/office build while also keeping a double digit group of DA/NDA 
and FM TX's happy while welcoming two daughters into the world. A lot 
has occurred in those five years in the IP world which I need to get 
caught up. EAS being but one. I'm very fortunate to have staff pick up 
in those areas where I'm forced not by choice to simply let things fall 
by the way-side.

Believe me, I feel Greg's pain.

MM

On 7/4/2012 2:10 PM, Rod Simon wrote:
> Gregory nobody forced you to wait till the absolute last monument to install the equipment, that was your choice. Equipment was available last year, we received and installed our DASDEC units last September and have only needed a couple of firmware upgrades that took less than 5 minutes to complete. So whining that someone was holding a gun to your head to make you work till midnight when that person was you, rubs me the wrong way.
>
> Rod Simon
>