All this and a bag of sponsored chips

We start today's blog entry with a definition. I know, sometimes the language can be confusing, so allow me to untangle it just a bit. The word is charity and it definitions are as follows...

- generous actions or donations to aid the poor, ill, or helpless: to devote one's life to charity.

- something given to a person or persons in need; alms: She asked for work, not charity.

- a charitable act or work.

- a charitable fund, foundation, or institution: He left his estate to a charity.

- benevolent feeling, esp. toward those in need or in disfavor: She looked so poor that we fed her out of charity.

- leniency in judging others; forbearance: She was inclined to view our selfish behavior with charity.

- Christian love; agape.

The reason we start here is bacuse of a story that is just lingering in the ether if you will, about how if people are unable to write off charitable giving on their tax form, then that giving might go down. I have no doubt about the accuracy of that claim, I expect that giving will drop significantly if the benefit of a tax write off is removed or lessened, what I have a problem with is calling it a charitable donation. Sure the money is going to a charity, but when you expect something for it, the donation itself is not charity, it is a quid pro quo. I am getting really tired of hearing how people will not give if it adversely affects their tax bill, giving to get something is not charity and calling it anything other than what it is does a disservice to real charitable donations. A person dropping off canned food and expecting nothing more than it will go to a hungry person or family is charity, a person making a financial donation in expectation of getting something in return is not. There, rant ended, we now rejoin regularly scheduled blogging, already in progress.

Hi kids, how the hell are ya? Funny thing happened to me at work today. Not the newsstand, but the radio station. I am in the lounge, getting ready to put my Pepsi in the fridge before setting up the studio for the show, when one of the guys that work there was standing in front of the vending machine. I paid him no mind until he asked for a quarter. that in and of itself isn't a big thing and a quarter being what it is, I had no problem coughing up the change. What was clever was the way he asked it when he asked me to be a cosponsor on a bag of chips and informed me that I would be put on the flyer and my logo would be on the email blast. I don't know why I found this particularly funny, but I did nonetheless.

That being said the radio show is still a work in progress. I am getting a little smarter about that which is going on, the cobwebs are fading somewhat, but until we see some actual numbers and find out roughly how many people are or aren't listening I am not going to be happy.

One of the topics that has come up has been the bonus payments being made to AIG executives and the outrage that has come from it. I am very unmpressed with the response from Washington so far. Last I checked the taxpayers now owned 80% of the company so I don't get the tepid response that has come out of DC on this. This is no longer a private company screwing over its employees, this is a de facto government entity that is failing to perform and sucking at the public teat to boot. While I understand that there were certain contracts in place, I fail to see how the government didn't have the foresight to renegotiate those contracts as a contingency to giving AIG one dollar of taxpayer money. Futhermore, with the taxpayers now holding a majority of the company and those runnimg the company working at a purpose that seems more to benefit themselves than anything else, I can't see how there wouldn't be grounds for a class action suit filed on behalf of the citizens of the United States of America against the executives at AIG that are part of this mess.

You'll have to excuse me if I pop out from time to time, I am wokring on some more podcasts for the radio show while I do this. Right now I have a few moments because I am exporting an edited file to my desktop, which usually takes about ten minutes or so to complete, then I can either upload the edited file to Imeem or go to work on cutting up another hour of the show. That and I am rearranging the keys on my keyboard. A few of them popped out the other day (long story that I don't feel like getting into right now), and a few of the keys I put back in the wrong place.

Okay, that file is exported, now I am uploading the next hour into the editor, which also takes a couple of minutes.

I guess I should say my fantasy hockey season is all but over. Technically I am still in the consolation bracket, though that doesn't get underway until next week, but there was no playoff spot for me this year. Still, it was something I enjoyed tinkering with, and I may make another run at commissionering one again next season. But for now my hockey enjoyment is just watching the resurgent Penguins. As long as they get in the top 8 spots, they will qualify for the postseason, and right now they are 5th, which is good enough. with the talent they have, I don't mind all that much who they eventually match up with because I think they can beat most any team in the East, and gettinbg Chris Kunitz at the trade deadline for Ryan Whitney was a steal. Maybe not as big as getting Marian Hossa last year, but when Hossa joined the Pens, they were already a playoff team, he just made them better, when the Pens got Kunitz they were not a playoff team and now they are. That is my idea of a good trade, and all it cost them was an offensive minded defenseman, which the Pens already have in Sergei Gonchar, Kris Letang, and Alex Goligoski.

Okay, time to get back to editing.

There, another hour is cut. I am making progress with this, slowly but surely. I managed to get the first two shows posted so far and part of a third. I am not real enamoured with the quality of audio, but that has more to do with the audio stream I am working with than anything else. I am using a recorded version of the webstream. I would like to upgrade that to studio quality audio, but so far I have had little luck in that regard. I have been taping the show in studio, but I am burning the audio right to disc and the CD writer I have been given to use has been problematic at best. It is a good thing I have been taping at home as well, otherwise there would be no podcasts to speak of.

Back to sports however, since I now have time to ramble. While I am enjoying the Penguins, it would be foolish of me not to mention the good fortune of the basketball teams around here as well. It seems we are awash in sports goodness, which can only mean baseball is right around the corner for the Pirates to ruin it all. But really, the brackets for the Men's NCAA basketball tournament came out and Pitt got a #1 seed for the first time in school history. They weren't the only team to make it though, Robert Morris also got in for winning the Northeast Conference title, and West Virginia received an at large bid. If that weren't enough, Duquense and Penn State both made the NIT (Penn State won their first tournament game tonight against George Mason) and the women's programs have gotten in on the act as well, with the Pitt women qualifying for the NCAA tourney while Duquesne and West Virginia both made the WNIT.

How was that for a boring diatribe?

The newsstand has been okay recently, nothing great nothing terrible. I was stuck working the St Patrick's Day parade on Saturday, which may not seem like much, but we have one of the largest St Patrick's Day parades in the country here. The parade kicked off at 10am on Saturday and honestly, it went a good 4 hours. And because it is Pittsburgh, we didn't just have people watching the parade, they were tailgaiting the damn thing. Across the street from the newstand is a parking garage and by 8am people were setting up in there with their beer and banners and noisemakers waiting for the parade to pass by. If you were out and not drunk by 10am, then you basically gave up your Pittsburgh citizenship. The highlight or lowlight if you will of the event for us was across the street from us, a guy went all Chris Brown on a girl and punched her in the face, causing her nose to bleed. This being Pittsburgh and beer being involved, it resulted in a crowd of people proceeding to beat the shit out of him. Forget the touch of the blarney, it was a touch of the fist and of the boot and of the other fist and of the other boot.

Woohoo, one hour (actually about 45 minutes) of the show has been added to Imeem, just another 45 minute segment to go, then I decide if I want to continue or not.

Facebook has become a creature in its own right in my life. I still do no blogging over there, I stand by my vow to make this my only blogging home, but I do enjoy a couple of the games, like Tennis and Hammerfall. And from a strictly popularity perspective, it has put me in touch with more people than Multiply, some that I haven't heard from in years. For instance, I have got in touch with Rocco Pendola, who I hadn't heard from in years. Not that he and I ever spoke before, but he used to host a radio show in Pittsburgh, a sports talk show, before moving on to Dallas and working at a larger station. I knew that he left there and moved to California, but after that I had lost track of him, at least until now. Many of our shows listeners also have Facebook accounts, and it is nice to keep them up to date on this page via an RSS feed. The most surprising contact that was made though had to do with my half sister, Heather. I know, she hasn't shown up on this page before, I will take full credit for that, but in order to understand it, you have to understand the family dynamic. My parents divorced when I was around three years old. I say around three because when you are that small, you tend to forget actual dates and what not. My dad was cheating on my mom with Cathy, who became my step mom, and I will admit that by step parent standards, she was pretty awesome. If the story stopped there, that would be one thing, but that would require my father to keep his penis in his pants, as opposed to the 'fly, fly away" freedom which he gave his sexual organ. So his sexual trysts on the side continued with his second wife, resulting in at least one more child, that being Heather (I say at least because there is rumor that I have a half brother out there as well, but I have never been able to confirm or deny that one). After a while, Cathy got rid of my father, can't say as I blame her there and he married another woman, Robin, who I didn't care for all that much, but by that time my father and I didn't speak anyway,. so no harm no foul. Still, third time wasn't a charm and Robin showed him the door as well and he picked number 4, Sue, who happens to be Heather's mom. Yes kids, if you are reading this at home, he got Sue pregnant, divorced his wife, married someone else, divorced her and then married Heather's mom. See why I don't get into fucked up family dynamics here, I could corner the market. I don't know what happened in the interim, but Cathy and her daughter Jennifer (my former step sister, I have a former step brother as well, Phillip, as Cathy had two kids prior to marrying my dad) both moved to Georgia and for reasons that I do not know, maybe because Cathy was the sanest of the bunch, Heather moved down there as well. But that was really all I knew, I didn't have phone numbers or anything of anyone there, so even if I wanted to I had no way of contacting them, save for asking my father, and like I said, he and I don't speak. So imagine my surprise when I check out Facebook the other day and a message was there from Heather. We have exchanged a couple of messages in the last few days, just the get to know you type stuff that heppens when you haven't seen each other in say, a couple of decades or so.

I still haven't got the sleeping schedule thing down, though I hope to do better this week. I am off this entire weekend so there is no reason why I can't get some things done and actually turn myself from slob back into upstanding member of society. Well okay, to non degenerate human being will suffice, but still, two whole days with no interruptions, just me time, and being the self centered person I can be, I like it. But alas, that is a few days off yet, and I am probably due for a nap or three before then, so it is off to bed with me for now.