You might have noticed some construction in my office-cam photos. Big remodel underway at Learfield Intergalactic with lots of office reshuffle and this blogger is leaving his home of 15 years (something like that) and moving to a different office on the other side of the building. They’re letting me keep an office (only a little smaller) because I’ve been with the company for 21 years. And I appreciate the gesture. I’ll be closer to the IT Gods and that’s a good thing. Still have a window and a better view. Soon as we get moved in get the cam going going, we’ll point it that way.

Update: Photo above was taken nearly 20 years ago in the old Learfield offices located on McCarty Street here in Jefferson City. We wore suits and ties back then.

I started working for Learfield Communications on June 4, 1984. The company had one statewide news network (The Missourinet); one sports property (University of Missouri Tigers); and a farm network (The Brownfield Network). Blink.

After an iorn-clad promise of anonymity, we were given permission to share this memo one of our readers recently received:

“A reminder that Pop Corn is banned from the micro wave ovens in this building. The reason is simple – it catches fire, sets of the smoke alarm, and we evacuate the building into the street – out into the snow for 20 minutes while the fire service responds to the automated alert. THAT IS WHY THERE IS NO POP CORN IN THE VENDING MACHINES. And I can count at least 4 pop corn evacuations over three years.

The fire alarm came within a hairs breath of going off early this afternoon during one such incident. All the micro waves are now brightly marked with yellow tape with NO POPCORN. Despite that, a few minutes ago, someone just made some pop corn in a so marked micro wave. So please – no more pop corn. And you will be held to account if you evacuate this building and that will not be a pleasant experience. If you see someone trying to pop some – don’t call me – tell them to stop immediately and then call me.

If this plea doesn’t work I will simply remove all the micro waves except those in the caf area and turn a camera on those ones so they can be monitored. One way or the other the pop corn will be stopped.”

I hate nit pick on a topic of this gravity but how close is “a hairs breath?”

Our company has registered a lot of domains since we first drank from the Big Web Pond, but two of my favorites are Legislature.com and SchoolViolenceHotline.com. And we registered these very late in the domain game. It is still amazing to me that they were still available. We’ve since transferred SchoolViolenceHotline.com to the client we aquired it for… but still have Legislature.com.

We jumped in early enough that we were able to register (not purchase) the names of most of our networks (RadioIowa, Missourinet, WRN, Learfield). On the other hand, I was reminded this week that 16 members of the National Association of State Radio Networks have NO public, online presence. Maybe they have good domains registered but if not, what are the chances of getting anything CLOSE to the name of your network.