Professional Distortion
One word....WOW. Apparently a few months ago Dish Network started carrying all of the Sirius Satellite Radio music channels. I’m jamming out to their college rock/indie station, Left of Center, at the moment. Dish also has plans to pick up Air America (the liberal radio network) in the future. Oh boy!
If you tuned in to Midday today, you heard the sad news that Clay Jordan of Survivor fame has been forced to close his restaurant, Jordan’s. Unfortunately I never got a chance to eat there while it was open. Sorry Clay. He hinted once again about a return to the airwaves for Survivor All-Stars 2.
Radio will get real interesting on June 20th. That’s all I’m going to say. Look for the new website to launch on June 20th as well.
Now back to Earthbound, one of the many games that I am determined to beat this summer.
Back in the saddle
As you can tell, I’m back from vacation. I think that I relaxed a little too much. It’s tough getting back into the swing of things. Today at work I socialized for 3 hours and worked for about an hour and fifteen minutes. I still feel like I am on vacation. In an effort to stomp my lazy slump, here’s an account of my trip to Jamaica.
I stayed at Beaches Resort in the town of Negril (the western side of the island of Jamaica). The all-inclusive resort was located right on Negril’s 7 mile beach. Let me tell you, Jamaica is paradise. The sands of the beach are white, and the scenery is colorful. The sunsets are incredible and the water is crystal clear. The first few days I hung around the beach, enjoyed some Jamaican food, fun, and sun. I took advantage of snorkeling nearly every day that I was on the island. I saw some beautiful fish (think Finding Nemo) and coral. Last Wednesday I explored the city of Negril. I visited the local market and shopping center and bought some local music as well as a coconut bracelet and necklace.
The people of Jamaica were very ncie and laid back. I could do without driving on their roads though. For one thing, they drive on the left hand side of the road. The roads are extremely narrow and have no shoulder. You are inches from the car in the opposite lane at all times. There are no traffic signs outside of Montego Bay (Mo Bay). The motorists honk at one another as a signal. I found the driving to be a little too chaotic for my likes.
I went to Rick’s Cafe, a tourist hot spot in Negril. There the Jamaicans ask for donations from the crowds and in turn jump from trees 90 feet high into the water below. Afterwards, I went to a nice little restaurant on the cliffs called 3 dives and enjoyed some Jerk Chicken and watched the sunset. You can watch the sunset LIVE every Wednesday and Friday starting at 6pm CST by going to RealNegril.com
I really enjoyed the trip and encourage everyone to visit Jamaica (Negril in particular).
Now it’s back to the grind. School starts tomorrow morning. I am still working on a complete website redesign. There’s also some on-air news in the works with me. You’ll have to keep reading to find out more. For now, I’m off to play some video games and enjoy my last day without school.
Finals Week
Phew....finals are half way over! I’ve taken two tests (passed both) and have a group evaluation and a group project left to go. This has been one hell of a month thus far. Last week BOTH computers in AM failed. Apparently the Gigabyte motherboards had a problem with the capacitors. It was a factory defect. Both boards were ordered at the same time so it was no wonder both machines failed at the exact same time. Our engineer was able to repair one using spare capacitors, but the other one is dead. We have a new computer coming in tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ve been holding AM 540 up and studying for finals at the same time.
I was talking to a coworker today about the Google IPO and the future of Google. I voiced concern over Google using datamining on their new gMail service. He was quick to respond that Google’s proposed plan is really no more invasive than an ISP’s spam filtering software. I agree to a point but I still do not like unsolicited advertising. The other day I turned on my satellite PVR and scrolled through the programs that I had recorded. To my surprise there was an advertisement from Dish Network. I had not recorded this program; it was automatically downloaded to my PVR without my concent.
And finally tonight....May 28th 2004 will mark the death of something wonderful. It is on this day that TechTV will become G4TechTV. The only good shows that are surviving the merger are The Screen Savers and Fresh Gear. The rest will be video game, anime, and specialty programming. You can find out more here. I will give the new network one week to prove itself. After the initial week, I may say so long to the network for good.
My band
It seems my blog entries are few and far between lately. There are only 2 more weeks left in the spring semester at ULM. All of my projects are wrapping up at the same time. I spent last week in the computer lab working on SQL queries for my database class. I spent close to 10 hours in the lab last week. On top of that I wrote a 15 page financial analysis of Intel for my finance class. Now I’ve got to work on my executive summary for management, e-commerce website for E-Commerce, and the final group project for database.
That takes care of school. Now for work. A couple of exciting announcements. For starters, KNOE FM 102 is now an official member of the LSU Sports Network. We are only the 3rd 100kw radio station in the state carrying LSU football and basketball. Another announcement is that I will be filling in for Fast Eddie on Friday nights semi-permanently. I’m not sure if I should be happy about this assignment. On one side I get exposure by being on-air on a weekday but on the other hand I lose my Friday nights.
School...work...play? I haven’t had much free time for the last two weeks. I went to an AITP officer’s dinner at the Waterfront Grill last Thursday. All of the food there is grilled (hence the name). I got a grilled shrimp poboy. They were a little pricey but the food was good overall. Yesterday I took Amanda to the zoo...in the rain. It was her idea. We were going to go on Friday but I suggested we postpone it until the weekend to give us more time to enjoy ourselves. Yesterday was the worst possible day of the week to go to the zoo. The rain never stopped all day. I must say that you see the zoo in a different perspective in the rain. All of the birdlife are out and about while the cats are hiding from the rain. We were the only two people in the entire zoo (except for the employees of course). Although most of the animals were asleep or hiding, it was a unique experience and I’m glad I went. We were going to go to Black Bayou and watch the sun rise from the pier but I would have only gotten 5 hours of sleep after working Friday until midnight. I agreed to go anyway but Amanda let me sleep. When we do end up going, I have a surprise for her.
That’s all for now. Keep checking the moblog, it tells more of a story than I can put into words =)
P.S.
The inevitable return….
Wednesday, March 23rd, will be a day like none other in radio. I’m not talking about the launch of the Air America Network either. On Wednesday I will be broadcasting live from Centennial Plaza on the Louisiana Tech campus. As many of you know, I got my start in broadcasting at Louisiana Tech. I’ll be on location for FM 102 promoting the Virgin College Mega Tour that will be at Tech on April 16th. Tickets go on sale Wednesday and I’ll be out to kick that off. Tune in or stop by while I’m out there and check the blog for the aftermath.
I am completely and utterly exhausted. I started this entry about an hour ago but didn’t have the energy to finish it until now. It’s been a long day. Randy Prewitt made his return to television today. He stopped by the AM540 studios to say hello. Unfortunately he’s not returning to the Midday show. Larry Rhymes will be the permanent host. At 4:30pm I helped Gabe and Jeni announce the “Super Duper Grand Prize Giveaway” promotion on FM 102. We’re giving away a grand prize a day for five days starting April 5th. Prizes include cash, a cruise, a vacation to Cancun, a year’s supply of coke, and a furniture shopping spree. At 6pm I was back up at work monitoring the launch of our new show on AM 540, Michael Savage. The show started off sounding horrible. Within 5 minutes the boss was on the phone asking about the poor quality. I couldn’t fix it so I called the engineer and we worked on re routing the satellite to another source. Nothing we tried fixed the problem. About that time, Savage says that the liberals are trying to sabotage his broadcast and to pardon the technical difficulties. Apparently there were difficulties on his end. He switched studios in the 2nd hour and all was well. It’s just my luck that the show would be having technical difficulties on the night that we go live with it. If you’d like to listen, it airs weekdays from 6-9pm on AM540. Alas, I have just returned from work again. I forgot to hit the + sign before the program after Savage and the station went off the air. Can you believe something as trivial as a + will take a radio station off the air? Luckily I was ready for it and we were only off for 5 minutes tops.
If you’ve been monitoring the MoBlog, you’re probably wondering where I went last weekend. I went out to Black Bayou. It’s a wildlife refuge I guess you could say. There are nature trails and a nice visitor’s center. The trails take you through the bayou. It’s really neat to see, and yes...the bayou is murky and black. After the bayou adventure, I took Amanda to see Jersey Girl. Actually I guess you could say I drug her to see the movie. I do not recommend the movie. Although Kevin Smith directed it, the movie falls flat on some many levels. The acting is nice but the plot is silly, full of holes, and predictable. My advice to Smith is to go back and reopen the Jersey Trilogy.
