Tag: Day6

Day 6

Today, I spent the day back at the North Carolina Legislative building, lobbying for support with Laura DeVivo and Angel Sams. Today, we spent the day meeting with reps in the house to try and swing them against the passing of a bill attempting to decrease regulation on billboards. Only one day out from a potential vote, the bill was widely-talked about throughout the building. The bill was supported by Republicans mostly, so we spent most of the day meeting with moderate republicans and trying to convince them to vote against the party. It was interesting being the minority because I was able to observe some of the techniques that were used despite not having much power. Last week, much of the legislation we were dealing with seemed like it was certain to pass. Today, it was very interesting to see how lobbying strategy had changed now that we were considered the underdogs. Tomorrow, I will be there to see if the legislation gets passed.

Day 6 at Osceola

Today was all about the beat makers. That was especially exciting for me because that is my field of interest.

The other intern at the studio is a beat maker with considerable numbers on his publications and he was giving me some tips. His best song so far has 350k views on soundcloud. He was telling me all about how to reach out to people, what he uses to make his stuff, and what he suggests as a beat maker.

I learned that a good way to make a standing is to fit into a niche. People in a niche will eat up anything they can get, so your music will be taken well. Also, he suggested buying several pieces of equipment (audio interface, maschine, sub) to improve production. He also suggested making happy or chill songs that make the listener feel good and to put the hook of the song very early so that they will stay interested. Mr. Hodgin calls this “the ride” and listeners either opt in or opt out within the first 30 seconds. We played lots of historical hit songs and they all had this element.

Day Six Kicks

Drugs on drug on drugs. That was my day today. My supervisor dropped me right off with the two ladies of drug chemistry lab for the day and I began my observations. Basically, it is their job to get evidence from the drug vault on DA request cases (meaning cases they plan to prosecute) and check to make sure that the weight and substance is correct. So, they spend their entire day making sure that marijuana is marijuana and cocaine is cocaine etc. Some highlights of my day included watching them weigh about 20 pounds of marijuana and seeing the mass spectrometer in action. I had seen the mass spec in a bunch of crime shows, so I felt like I was in the heart of the action! It was intriguing to learn about the limits for each drug amount that correlate to felonies and trafficking charges. For example, I learned that if you the limit for a trafficking charge is 28g and you have 27g of a cutting agent mixed with 1g of a controlled substance, you would get indicted for the entire mixture, not just the presence of this substance. Basically, sucks for you.

For the last hour of the day I was picked up by the man in charge of toxicology and blood alcohol testing. He was very nice, but clearly not very adept at small talk considering he asked me if I had any questions about every 30 seconds. Overall, while it was not my particular area of interest, it was still fascinating to learn about exactly how drug and DWI convictions happen.

Tomorrow, I am hitting the streets and will be on call for any crimes in Wake County. I am not sure what I will be faced with, but my supervisor said that I may get a homicide if I’m lucky…although don’t know how common it is to commit one’s murderous acts on a Wednesday afternoon. We will see.

Side note: I have made friends with the Wake County Sheriff who works in house and was promised a Chik-Fil-A milkshake from him. Again, we will see.

For my picture, I was very excited because I finagled my way into getting an official badge for a few hours to avoid having an escort during my lunch break. Sadly, very shortly after returning my supervisor whisked it away and I have now felt the hollow feeling after power being brutally stripped from oneself.

Day 6

Upon arriving to the office Ben was slammed with meetings and we got to sit in with the first one of his. It was cool to see game development companies have to think about more than just the video game when it comes out, but also the products and figures and such that is correlated with the game that people can buy to collect. The meeting was focused on a special edition of the game that was to come out soon, and the items that would come with the special edition package.

After the meeting we got to shadow a guy by the name of Adrian, it was cool because he was more into the dirty coding and programming rather than testing. He in his breaks helped us with the projects we were working on and it was so helpful to get that extra eye from someone who really knows what they are doing. He was working on aspect of the game that were way over our heads, but it was cool to see how after a few lines of code and a few shouts of anger he was able to build the level and we could visibly see the changes he had made.

Once we were done with Adrian, we met back up with Ben for some closing remarks to close out the day and also plan out what we are to do tomorrow.

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