You could sense the excitement yesterday morning when an email went out from our fearless leader, Chip, informing us that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Terminator himself, would be visiting The Tribune for a meeting with our editorial board.

The email went out around an hour and a half before Arnie was scheduled to arrive. No time to run home to get my copy of T2 – Judgment Day to have him sign it, and certainly not enough time to “set up live streaming video” as my boss, Sergio suggested. And it’s just as well I didn’t set it up – read on.

We decided that a good compromise to streaming video would be to have Larissa use our “shiny new camcorder” to videotape the meeting and edit it down to some highlights before posting it to the Website. Before that though, Larissa took some video of the protesters outside the building, and managed to get some shots of Arnie arriving at the Tribune office.

Not being on the editorial board, because I am a low-level peon, I didn’t get to meet him. I did, however, see him enter the building wearing a beige suit which was disappointingly less intimidating than the biker leathers and sunglasses, or partially uncovered endoskeleton in which I am accustomed to seeing him attired. He strode purposefully and directly from the main entrance to the conference room, waving and smiling. He muttered something indecipherable amid some half-hearted applause, entered the conference room and was then gone from sight.

Soon after that, Larissa left the conference room having been forcibly ejected by Arnie and his goons. OK, so maybe “forcibly ejected” isn’t the right phrase, but it sounds more interesting than “asked politely to leave”, doesn’t it? And perhaps “goons” might get me into trouble, so we’ll call them “security”, you know what I mean though. So, apparently when a movie star becomes a politician, they no longer want to have cameras pointed at them. Sadly then, we didn’t get to use the “shiny new camcorder” to videotape the meeting.

I will, however, work on figuring out a way to have live streaming video on the Website, just so we’re ready for the next time the T-800 visits us. I suppose in the meantime, I can set it up so that you guys can just watch me write code all day long. That’d be exciting, right?