Category Archives: Personal History

New Jersey Steve Mays

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I received a cryptic overnight email that simply asked, "How much for it?" It was signed 'Steve Mays.' At first I thought it was one of the frequent reminders I email myself. But then I noticed the email was different.

Oh. It must be Steve Mays (West), the Seattle attorney who owns the domain SteveMays.com. He's decided to sell the domain? That seemed unlikely, so I pinged back:

"Nope…. Steve Mays from New Jersey. I did a whois on smays.com and found this e-mail address. Let me know of a price that would interest you. I should say now I'm not willing to pay more then 50 bucks for it. I don't think you'll let it go for that much, but let me know."

I hope to learn more about New Jersey Steve Mays. Why, for example, does he (sort of) want to purchase smays.com. Does he blog or have an online business.
If he's poked around here he knows I've been at this address since February, 2002. Why would I move for $50?

I might not hear back from NJSM. I responded –nicely, I hope– that I wouldn't sell smays.com for $100K. Not sure I can explain why. This little blog doesn't make me a dime. And I could pack up and move to www.DigitalLoveMachine.com (which appears to be available) and some of you would find me again. But it wouldn't be the same.

If New Jersey Steve is reading this, I hope he gets back to me because I'd like to learn more about him and his online plans. Maybe an interview?

PS for Steve Mays West: I notice your site appers to be down. Hope all is well.

The photography of Matthew Howard

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Matt Howard is a talented photographer in Kennett, MO (my home town). Matt’s day job is personal trainer so I guess he’s technically an amateur but certainly in the best sense of that word. I stumbled onto Matt’s flickr page recently and was immediately taken with his haunting (for me) images of the flat, empty fields I remember growing up. I got him on the phone for a brief (15 min) chat this afternoon during which he explained his passion for photography started with a book rather than a camera.

AUDIO: Interview with Matt Howard 15 min MP3

 

R.I.P. Whitey

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Richard Whitehorn died last week. Following a long slug-fest with cancer. Richard was just a year ahead of me in school and we weren’t close growing up. But I have lots of memories of him.

I don’t know if Richard was a bully or I was just intimidated by him. But he projected a kind of tough guy image. He and his BFF Tommy Crunk were like Butch and Sundance, tooling around town in Whitey’s ’57 Chevy. When the Honda motorcycle craze hit, Crunk and Whitey were among the first to own them. Yes, they were dashing.

One hot summer night during high school, my friends and I pooled our money and gave it to Whitey to buy us the beer we were not quite old enough to purchase ourselves. We also gave him a detailed list of what each of us wanted. He returned with a case of Champagne Velvet. Nasty stuff that was much cheaper. (“You guys had just enough money.”) A really bad guy would have just taken our money. Whitey gave us beer and a little lesson in free enterprise.

As an adult, Richard (I don’t know if anyone still called him Whitey by then) became a crop duster. Hard to imagine a more fitting occupation. Our friend Pam attended Richard’s funeral this past  weekend in Kennett.

“It was sad as hell. They had visitation starting at 11:00 and a graveside service at 2:00.  The funeral was over, the preacher had just said “amen” and closed the Bible when I heard someone say “here they come” and I wondered, who’s coming? I looked in the direction I heard some noise and here came 3 Pawnee crop dusters in formation, streaming smoke like they were Blue Angels, tree top high right over the funeral tent. Once past the left and right planes peeled off and the middle plane pulled up. I think everyone lost it at that point.”

To which Richard would have growled, “What are you pussies crying about?”

Seven Years Before the Blog

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Every year on this date I pause to recall that it was way back in 2002 that I began blogging. Like many others, I was posting little rants on my website before we had the tools and the name, but this is the date I started “writing some stuff down.”

That post was a long quote from Carl Hiaasen’s novel, Basket Case. He described two types of journalists and alluded to the “slow-strangling dailies,” a number of which have finally strangled in the last year or so.

On the 4th anniversary of this blog I met some friends and had four beers. I’m afraid 7 beers would put me out of commission for several days, so we won’t do that.

Another thing I used to do was browse back through the earlier posts but with 4,000+ that is no longer practical. So this post will serve as another scratch on blog wall.

Keith Sampson’s 20th Learfield anniversary

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Friend and co-worker Keith Sampson is celebrating (woot! woot!) his 20th year with Learfield so we took him out to lunch today. Keith is a senior producer for our sports division and only the good lord knows how many college broadcasts he’s midwifed.

I met Keith when he was program director at the radio station in Clinton, MO. I was doing affiliate relations for our news network. When they needed someone to ride herd on our growing number of sports broadcasts, I suggested they talk to Keith and he got the job. (For what it’s worth, my record in this regard ain’t that good)

While 20 years is a good run (and Keith isn’t done), we had some veterans at the table. Charlie and I are coming up on 25 years; Roger with 26 or 27; and Clarice has been with our company for 31 years.

It would be nice to think some of the young pups working for us can have that kind of staying power, but it feels a little like a Frank Capra movie, when I see it in print. And all over the country there are folks who, like us, have worked half a lifetime at one company and… poof!… it’s over.

Author’s message: enjoy what you do. Every day if you can.

Obama Inauguration

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I have no idea what it was like at previous inaugurations, but everywhere I look, in every face, there’s a real sense of joy and excitement. And these look like people who –like smays.com– never felt like their vote made much of a difference, but do now.

My cynical (“Realistic! Realistic!”) friends tell me I am niave (nice word for chump) to believe/hope Obama is anything more than another smooth talking pol. Once in office, it’ll be business as usual. Well, there’s bunch of chumps everywhere I look. These are the true believers. They think (know?) they can knock on doors and organize and vote and, in time, change things.

Before the Net, you could sway these masses with well placed media buys. I’m thinking that might be changing (have changed). MSM has their own problems and the Net can take a politician down as fast as it can lift her up.

But the people on these cold streets aren’t thinking about that. They see a new day and they’re pumped. They BELIEVE they are part of something big and important and it’s gonna be hard to persuade them otherwise. [Inauguration 2009 flickr images]

http://twitter.com/inauguration

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A week or so ago I got a ping that @inauguration was following my Twitter feed. I assume they just searched all Twitter feeds for “inauguration” and found me. As I always do, I checked the profile page and found:

“Get tips and helpful scoop as you plan for the Presidential Inauguration on January 20, 2009 when Barack Obama takes the oath of office.”

There was a link to a website but I didn’t click it.

@inauguration has been a great source for news about the upcoming event. With links to lots of news sources.

I finally checked the url on the Twitter page and learned that the feed belongs to WUSA-TV in D.C. Thinking back, a lot of the tweets have taken me to pages on the WSUA website.

We’re they being sneaky by not clearly identifying the TV station? Doesn’t feel that way since I now know they pointed me to a variety of sources for relevant news about the inauguration.

My point here is WSUA didn’t just feed the latest news from the station website. They didn’t just promote their coverage. Someone was smart enough to understand how Twitter really works and use it. Cost: zero.

This will be the norm for any big event. And it won’t always be news organizations doing it. It will often be the event organizers. And should be since they will have the most information and have it first.

Yes, I could have set up a Google Alert for “inauguration” but adding @inauguration to my feed was just one-click.

Seasoned Twitter users will remind me there’s a hash tag (#inauguration) that aggregates tweets from ALL Twitter users, not just one source. True, but there’s a lot of noise in that stream. Takes too long to separate the wheat from the chaff.

And to bring it down to the individual level, I could set up a Twitter page just for my tweets from the event, so that my “followers” aren’t drowned in my tweets from DC. Probably won’t be posting enough for that to be a problem, however.

In conclusion… I quickly determined that the @inauguration Twitter feed had useful and interesting information. I didn’t notice or care who was behind the feed.

Texting around the world

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Okay, I’m still in the ooh and aah stage with the iPhone. And I’m playing with texting as alternative to email and voice calls. My brother and his family are back home in Bandar Lampung, Indonesia, and it turns out we can text back and forth.

Yeah, I know I’ll probably get some huge-ass bill at the end of the month but if this is part of my 200 text messages, it’s pretty cool. A great way to stay closer.

Tripping over books

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Barb and I love our home. It fits the way we live perfectly. We seldom entertain so the place usually has what I think of as a “warm clutter.” You’re likely to find more than one pair of shoes on the floor and the stairs always has some of my pocket junk on it (keys, checkbook, etc)

And books. Lots of books. Barb and I both love to read and there are books scattered from one room to the next. The walls of my office (upstairs) are lined with bookshelves and a couple of times  a year I try to get organized. But, like the dogs, the books are part of our lives and I don’t mind having them close at hand.

I like audio books well enough but prefer the real thing. The weight, the feel, the smell. I think I sleep more soundly with a good book on my chest.