I find this really amazing. Of the 30 member states in the National Association of State Radio Networks, only 14 have websites. The Web has been around for 10 years now and has revolutionized almost every aspect of daily life and business. I can’t think of many businesses that don’t have some kind of online presence.
Woof!
On the phone with Land’s End tonight (ordering new pants) when Ripley started barking from the deck. The Land’s End lady says, “You have a Golden Retriever.” Whoa! “We have a Golden,” she explains, “and I recognized the bark. I do that with customers all the time.” Give that lady a biscuit.
Let’s get email accounts
Sometime in the late ’80s, at a managers conference in Colorado (Beaver Creek?), I suggested we all get Compuserve accounts so we could communicate by email. I was hooted from the room (you know who you are). Yesterday our company email server went down and people are roaming the halls (“Can you check email?”). Hey guys, you got phone and fax…what’s the problem?
Jackie Cash
I haven’t seen Jackie Cash in thirty (thirty-five?) years. She was a year behind me in high school and I had a bit of a crush on her. She found her way to a couple of my websites last week:
“…we watched her nephews Everett and Matthew sing about Rudy and then she read every word about KBOA the early days. She really enjoyed it. You have a 20 minute interview with Paul about the radio and it was neat for them to hear his voice and share it with Robin’s children who never knew Mr. Jones. I just thought you’d like to know how you’re reaching people.”
This is, for me, the reason we spend countless hours constructing these websites. In hopes that somebody will find them and find them interesting. (Why has the “letter-in-a-bottle” analogy never occurred to me before?)
As I read Jackie’s email, the image I had of her was the high school girl I knew. And then I realized that she is now in her early fifties and –probably– older than her mother was when we were in high school. I confess to a strange sense of loss that’s hard to explain. My youth, perhaps.
There are no secrets
“There are no secrets, only information you don’t have yet.” A great tag. Adam Curry’s blog.
Wireless at home
I put in the Wi-Fi here at home a month or so back but haven’t used it much. Not quite as snappy as the Ethernet connection. But I’m in my big easy chair and it’s kind of nice to be unplugged. More of a psychological freedom than actual.
One week without fries.
Without any fried food, as a matter of fact. The new diet is no great strain, at least in terms of what I don’t eat. I’m not up to the 30 pieces of fruit a day called for (maybe it’s eight) but I’ll get there. My desk is littered with bagels and trail mix and those little carrot nubby things.
Why shouldn’t I work for the N.S.A.?
“Why shouldn’t I work for the N.S.A.? That’s a tough one, but I’ll take a shot. Say I’m working at the N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I’m real happy with myself, ’cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people that I never met and that I never had no problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin’, “Send in the marines to secure the area” ’cause they don’t give a shit. It won’t be their kid over there, gettin’ shot. Just like it wasn’t them when their number was called, ’cause they were pullin’ a tour in the National Guard. It’ll be some kid from Southie takin’ shrapnel in the ass. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, ’cause he’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain’t helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. They’re takin’ their sweet time bringin’ the oil back, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin’ play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain’t too long ’til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy’s out of work and he can’t afford to drive, so he’s walking to the fuckin’ job interviews, which sucks ’cause the schrapnel in his ass is givin’ him chronic hemorroids. And meanwhile he’s starvin’ ’cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they’re servin’ is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I’m holdin’ out for somethin’ better. I figure, fuck it, while I’m at it, why not just shoot my buddy, take his job and give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.”
From Good Will Hunting, written by Matt Damon & Ben Affleck
Game Day (2003)
I spent most of Saturday doing something I’ve wanted to do for years. I shot some video of “game day” at Learfield Communications.
Our company produces the radio broadcasts (some TV?) for many of the top colleges in the country. Play-by-play crews feed back the game broadcasts to Jefferson City where some very hard working folks mush it all together and send it (via satellite) to radio stations throughout the country. Mega-stress. Give me a few days to edit the video and I’ll post something here. My little project will fall far short of capturing what it’s really like on a Saturday. You gotta be there.
DASH Diet
That’s the name of my new cholesterol-lowering diet. It’s just a short walk to becoming a full-fledged vegetarian. The booklet says I should think of meat as a condiment rather than an entree. Can I give up Barb’s good burgers? I don’t know. With a few such exceptions, food is little more than fuel for me so I’m not really giving up much. Of the seven risk factors for heart attack, I have three. I’m over 50. I’m male. And my cholesterol is high. I’ll consider going trans-gender if I can’t stick to the new diet. Stay tuned.