Audio experimentation

Well, let's get to it shall we? Far be it from me to have this page completely incomplete from scribblings by me from time to time.

I am as I write this, in the process of doing some audio tinkering with the page. I will be the first to admit that in most matters I am computer stupid, and rely more on a trial and error method to solving my computer problems than any amount of inherent computer knowledge. As a result, I was one of the last to the whole imbedding video thing, and I am still way clueless on providing links and such without spelling out the entire link within the blog entry and other than the download picture option, one can rest assured that unless I have done the copy paste thing from another site, pictures are not going to frequent the middle of my rantings. That being said, I am tinkering with a music download program while I type this, and if all goes according to plan, it will be either part of this entry, or part of the next one. The music is just some of the stuff that I use on the radio show for bumper music, certainly not all of it. All of the bumper music I use is stuff I have acquired, as the radio station has provided little in that regard, leaving the "sound" of the show entirely up to me, much to some people's disappoinment I assume.

I would like to thank David DeAngelo for sitting in Lynn's chair today. Coming up with guest hosts is always iffy on my end, foremost because I am not allowed to offer the guests cash, seeing as how I don't have a budget or anything along those lines. As a result, it falls to me to find compelling, talented guest hosts willing to work for free. It sometimes works, sometimes not so much. Don't get me wrong, there is no shortage of people who would love to just babble on air for three hours, at least until the moment of babbling arrives, then the actual work that goes behind it becomes much more obvious. Likewise, some of the people I would find to be interesting people to host don't have the experience behind the microphone, in which case it becomes a lot of coaching as the show goes on. You spend a lot of time just making sure they can get calls on the air and what not. That being said, for his first time hosting today, I thought David did an admirable job. The cool thing is, once you do it once or twice, the mechanical stuff becomes much easier, leaving you to focus more on content than anything else. I will have podcasts up for today's festivities, probably Sunday sometime. I have been stuck with what can best be described as too much production work over the course of the last couple of weeks. It seems everyone that has ever done anything now wants a dub of it as well. Between copies of interviews, and live reads that clients want dubs of, I am swamped in the production end of things. I went in way early last night (1:30am) just so I could finish my work with the weekend programming, and then to cut more commercial dubs of spots just to keep the paying public happy.

I did fire off an email to our GM about the possibility of a raise. Not sure how that will eventually play out, but the good news is it wasn't rejected out of hand, he actually wants to sit down and discuss it sometime this week. Let's not kid anyone, I am not expecting a vast increase in salary, heck, I may get nothing at all, but at least I have my foot in the door to at least talk about the possibility. I will keep my fingers crossed and any other applicable joints that may provide a modicum of luck.

While we wait for the music downloads to finish, we do have a change meter update, as we add another 12 cents to the total. The new number is $13.67. Woohoo. Actually, I haven't been looking as much, partially because I haven't been out as much recently. I have been trying to keep the spending under control until I get off my backside and go get a second job. It is a double edged sword in that I like getting to bed at a decent time and I like having evenings to myself most nights, yet I also know missed the additional income. So, the less I am out, the less chance I have of finding money in the outside world. Heck, when I worked at McDonald's as bad as that was, I could usually find a couple of pennies at least most days. At some point I imagine I will have to get back to the two job thing and my sitting on my butt is just delaying the inevitable.

I did get the gas turned back on in my apartment. Mind you, it wasn't that I didn't pay the bill, gas is actually part of my rent, but my apartment is part of a larger house type setup, and the gas is set in the house itself. When the students started moving out, the gas was temporarily shut off by the landlord, most likely because no one was living in the bigger house. I can usually turn on the heat in my apartment, but given how nice it has been recently there has been no need, and I have been using my microwave and crock pot for cooking, so the only thing I have been missing is warm showers, and given I am a single guy, a cold shower is something that I have taken on more than one occasion. Anyway, it seems they fired the gas back on on Wednesday, so all is good in that regard. I am less likely to be mad at my landlord, who has been awesome in most regards over the last 5 years I have been here, than my phone company, which has made incompetence an artform. They still haven't credited my account for the week that they failed to provide service. I am sure that had the shoe been on the other foot, if I had ordered additional services per se, they would have been more than happy to see my account reflecting the change as soon as possible.

The local news just kicked off. Sorry, I have the TV on while I am blogging and downloading music. Anyway, through the course of the evening, they have been doing teases about a man who was found dead in his home and wait until to hear about the shocking discovery. Mind you the discovery isn't how the man died, nor if anyone was found responsible but that when he was found, he was dressed as a woman. Maybe it is just me, but unless his behavior (cross dressing) was somehow related to his death, I fail to see the relevance beyond shocking the audience, and indirectly, embarrassing the dead. Not that I am big on the cross dressing front mind you, I just don't care unless it directly plays into the man's death, i.e. someone was so disturbed by his behavior that they killed him over it. But when you have nothing newsworthy to talk about, I guess embarrassing the dead is as good as anything.

I am not sure how many of you have followed the SI curse. The concept is a simple one, those people that appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated end up "cursed", usually by a lowering of the level of play in their sport or profession, or getting injured or worse. Anyway, as I was sitting around the other day, I was starting to wonder if maybe there was an Asshat curse as well. After all, when was the last time we heard from Michael Richards since his holding of the title two weeks in a row? He has become persona non grata amongst the Hollywood set. Circuit City saw it's earnings fall after winning the award, apparently customers weren't keen on the idea of buying major ticket items from less than qualified new employees versus their more experienced and more well paid counterparts. Scott Baio saw his autobiography fall through after winning the award, people did not apparently want to read about his attempts to sexually woo costar Erin Moran, only to hook up with the couch beneath her instead. Mitt Romney, who won for quoting Fidel Castro at a speech in Miami while courting Cuban American votes, continues to poll third in the race for the Republican nomination for President, and Chris Simon saw his New York Islanders get bounced from the NHL playoffs in 5 games after his season long suspension for his high stick on an opponent. The reason I mention this is that I am coming up on the next Asshat winner (sometime early next week) and unlike last week, which was hard to pick just one, this week is a little more difficult and as an added bonus, I am thinking that the Asshat has to be able to live up to the susequent curse that should befall them after winning. It really is almost too much pressure. It was like when I used to "get lucky with lasagna". By that I mean, that when I used to invite females over to my place (or I would go to theirs) and I made lasagna for dinner, it would end up with me hooking up. That is all good in its own right, but then you become almost afraid to pull out the lasagna for fear you will break the streak. After all, if I make lasagna and it doesn't work, the streak is over by the same token if I make something else, say orange chicken, and I don't hook up, then I think I should have went with the lasagna. Now I am thinking, if I pick an Asshat and they break the curse, then I break the streak and if I don't pick an Asshat I am going the orange chicken route.

Hey, it looks like we are only a couple of songs away on this end of things. Now the trick of figuring out how to post this comes into play. I guess I should call it an evening and go about the spell checking I am sure this entry so desparately needs. Hopefully very soon, we will have music.