Well, my second election at WPNI went even smoother than the first one. From Wednesday’s early-morning newsdesk email:

TECH ISSUES: None to report.

That’s what I’m talking about. Actually, everything ran really smooth overall, once again due to preparation work on our behalf. Although I split my time between Express and the WPNI newsroom, I might as well have spent it in the kitchen area watching the returns come in. Of course it’s more exciting to see them on eight TVs at once…

Now that the dust has more or less settled — if you can call it that after a total reversal of congressional power for the first time in over a decade — it’s time to get back to work on all the little things that got put on hold for the election run-up. One project I’ve been kicking around in the back of my head is to re-architect the WPNI newsdesk; it’s a process that I’m told we go through every couple of years or so when hardware needs change, but I’m also thinking it might be a good idea to talk to the editorial department about what they really need and/or want from the technology at their disposal. Do we need to think about relocating computers or monitors for better efficiency? Do we need to look at adding or removing network/phone hookups for redundancy? How about rerouting cables or video hookups to eliminate some of all those tangles under everyone’s feet? And so on.

It’s the kind of project that nobody else really wants to undertake, I suspect, and even though we just lost another team member (to another job, not anything serious) I’m hoping I can scrape together enough spare time to at least come up with a plan for next year. (Getting everything all set by the 2008 election would probably be a good thing.)