It Was The Third of June another Sleepy Dusty Delta Day (6-24-12)

Just a quick note of nothingness, but interesting none the less.

It was 46 years and 21 days ago today (Friday June 3, 1966) that Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge (today’s date is Sunday June 24, 2012).

Assuming that it happened on the “3rd of June, another sleepy dusty delta day”.  Later in the song Bobby Gentry sings, “a year has come and gone since we heard the news about Billy Joe”.  So we must assume that the song was written the next year.  The song was written and copywrited in 1967 and first hit #1 on the Hot 100 on August 26th and it stayed there for 4 weeks. So this song is about a slice of Americana from June of 1966, except for the fact that it never happened (this was a work of fiction).  Still, all in all in was a great tune.  Disregarding the cheesy movie, what do you suppose Billy Joe was really throwing off the Tallahatchie Bridge???

It’s been a few days….. (2-10-12)

Flood Blog written a couple of years ago, pictures added 5-3-15

It just dawned on me that it’s been a few days since I posted anything here.  Actually, 1,392 days.  My last post was in the spring of 2008.
One thing, I live across the street from Lincoln Park and the Hospital, and we all know what happened on June 7,2008 (06-07-08)… Central and Southern Indiana got clobbered with water. Just north of Columbus, Southern Johnson County and Southern Shelby County got 14″ and 17″ of rain respectively, all of it Friday night and early Saturday morning.  There were others who got it much worse, and for that I am sorry, yet grateful it was not Columbus..  I am also grateful for the outpouring of love and help from this community that came during the flood. I swear I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.
Total strangers were walking down my street with giant boxes of Wendy’s Cheeseburgers.  Others had containers of bottled water, soda and one evening a good Samaritan strolled through the ‘hood’ with a cooler of Budweiser (I declined).  I have dozens of stories I could share about all of the people God sent to help at this time but there’s just no room. Besides, it’s been almost 4 years and it’s time for me to move on… but I will never, ever forget all of the wonderful people who did wonderful things during a terrible time in my life.  I was a cynical person up until that time but my faith in humanity was restored as I watched people all over Columbus come forward and perform acts of bravery, humility, hard work and personal sacrifice.

The above picture was taken 1and a half blocks north of my house, looking south.  The flood waters stopped at 21st and Hawcreek Ave.  My house was/is in the 1900 block.  Groundwater at my house reach 4 1/2 ‘ above turf, and I have a full finished basement. Down there the water reached 7″ (the FEMA Watermark is prominently displayed on the wall in the den.

If you want to see some cool video, go to youtube.com and search for Columbus Indiana Flood.
You will see incredible scenes of devastation, and you listen closely to those with car radios on, you will hear me on the air while my house was under water.  When Columbus was in CRISIS, Jimbo On The Radio was there, even if his own house is under water.
It was not my intention to go off on a tangent about the Great Flood of 2008, but once I got started…. well, you know.
I have found that posting here on this blog is so much more personal than Facebook and Twitter.
Next time I post (in August of 2016 at the rate I’m going) I’ll fill you in on something I mentioned briefly in an earlier post.  Something historically big is going to happen here… well, just  northwest of Hopkinsville Kentucky on Monday August 21, 2017.  I’m gonna be there.  Want to go?  Here comes what we call in the radio biz the “hook”:
Keep listening for more details!

Earthquake!!! (4-19-08)

Yesterday morning (Friday 8-18-08) at 5:30 I was still in bed (obviously since I rarely get out of bed before 9AM).
At about 5:30 my neighbor’s dog started barking which woke me up.  Then my dog started barking and things started rattling, like my closet door, which rattled on its hinges.  The water in my waterbed started sloshing around a bit (yea, I’m still stuck in the 70’s… been sleeping in a waterbed for 30 years).  I considered the possibility of an earthquake, but I had more important matters on my mind… getting back to sleep.
When I finally got up at 9 AM, I checked the headlines online and found out it really was an earthquake.
Earthquakes somewhat rare in the Ohio Valley, and certainly nothing like the west coast, Alaska, Japan or other parts of the pacific ‘rim of fire’.  But we do have minor earthquakes with some regularity.  The Friday quake registered  5.2 on the Dewey Decimal System, with a 4.5 aftershock at 11:10 or so.
This was not the “Big One” they have been predicting for the New Madrid fault for years… In fact it wasn’t even the New Madrid fault this time. History buffs may know that the New Madrid fault produced four of the largest North American earthquakes in recorded history, with magnitudes estimated to be greater than 7.0 on the Richter scale, all occurring within a 3 month period between late 1811 and early 1812. The Mississippi river course changed by 5 miles and it actually flowed northward/backward for a time.  Accurate measurements of earthquakes were impossible in the early 19th century, but the Feb 17, 1812 quake would most like be rated above an 8.0 (some scientists say it could have been near 9.0).  If this quake occurred in modern times, Evansville, Paducah, Memphis, Cape Girardeau, and even St Louis would sustain catastrophic damage, and Indianapolis would have major damage and loss of life.
However, studies indicate this unstable mass only results in earthquakes every 300-500 years, and the last “major” activity was in 1812, so we aren’t due until 2111 or so, except we all know mother nature doesn’t follow patterns.

When I got to the radio station at 9AM on Friday, I was talking to Chris Fox, Sara Beth and Brittany Gray. They were actually on the air at 5:30 AM, with the microphones on, chatting away. The countertops, which hold the control board and computer monitors, keyboards and CD players isn’t secured very well and I believe they all thought someone was bouncing it around.  Eventually they knew something weird was going on.  Even though they hadn’t considered an earthquake in the early seconds, you might say you heard it “live” on QMIX as they tried to figure out what was going on.  Nikki G took a few days off, and Sara Beth filled in.  I was thinking that wherever Nikki G is, she has to feel bad that she missed an historic event, and the chance to do an entire morning show with virtually no prep (research into what kind of things they are going to talk about).  The entire morning show itinerary was set by 5:30AM, and the phones rang off the hook.
I wonder how many times radio stations played Carol King’s “I Feel The Earth Move, Under My Feet”?
Speaking of the Ohio Valley being a hotbed for mother nature’s frivolity… remember this date and write it down:
Monday – August 21, 2017.
Just over 9 years from now a once in a lifetime event will occur in the Ohio Valley, more specifically just northwest of Hopkinsville Kentucky.  I already tried to make hotel reservations, but I’m going to save that for another blog.  In other words, “keep listening for details”.

It’s Gremlins (4-2-08)

 

Y’all remember that movie back in the 80’s when Hoyt Axton’s kid buys this furry little creature named Gizmo, with instructions not to feed it after midnight, keep him away from bright lights and to never-ever-ever get it wet.
Well, Gizmo jumped into a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken at 2AM, then got wet and you guessed the rest, it morphed into and started releasing those miserable creatures, the “Gremlins” into the world.
In the movie, all of the Gremlins get torched in the end, but I’m here to tell you that someone at Amblin Entertainment and Warner Brothers didn’t burn ’em all.
This one found it’s way to 9th and Washington!

No, I haven’t actually seen this guy yet, but I know he’s there.
Last week Sara Fischer called to say that she’s been losing emails.  She hit the ‘send’ button but the message never showed up on the recipient’s PC, and she didn’t receive a ‘delivery failure” notice.
I did some research and found nothing.  It must have been those Gremlins!
Then, yesterday I was hooking up a new telephone interface in the KORN studio, and no matter what I did, it wouldn’t work (still doesn’t).
I brought the telephone, the interface and the module from the control board into the QMIX studio and it worked fine.  I checked all the wiring for continuity, everything checks out perfectly.  But in the KORN studio, the exact same equipment won’t work.
Keith Maddox and Bobbie Sue will be giving away $100 bills starting Thursday on KORN Country 100.3 (shamelessly trying to buy more listeners) and Mike King (my boss’s boss’s boss) said the phone interface MUST be ready for the Cash Cow Contest on Thursday or there will be.. well, you know.
I’ll eventually figure it out (hopefully by Thursday morning), but for now I’ve thrown up my hands and blamed the Gremlins.
I have made 13 trips to our 3 main transmitter sites in the last month.   Well, except the QMIX transmitter site east of Columbus on 46…. there are snakes in there so any invading Gremlin would last about as long as a mouse in a snake pit… plus I don’t go in there without someone else going in ahead of me with a shovel (I’ll leave those details out).
Anyway, by the time I get to the transmitter site, everything is fine.  I can’t figure it out. More Gremlins.
These aren’t recent happenings, they have been going on for a long time.  Since it could not possibly be my inability to troubleshoot these problems or a lack of knowledge to fix them, it must be Gremlins.  And since all of this weirdness started sometime in the mid 80’s (Gremlins was released in theatres in 1984… coincidence.. I don’t think so), it must be those creatures who escaped from Hollywood.  Kind of like Brittany and Lindsay, you might say.
Now… before I quit bloggin’ and go back to work,  I need to tell you that Sara Beth just walked by and saw my picture of the Gremlin and said the movie Gremlins scared her (she needs to watch Poltergeist, another of Speilberg’s mid 80’s flicks if she wants to see scary), so just to even out the graphics with this blog, I include this to calm down the 7 year olds (and Sara Beth) reading this:

I know, Gizmo is cute and cuddly, but just feed him KFC and get him wet and look out!
I’m not kidding.
Finally, with all due respect to American Motors Corp (RIP),  I must insert a disclaimer that the Gremlins refered to in this Blog have nothing to do with the AMC Gremlin, a terriffic car manufactured in the 70’s.

And… Yes I did have a 1976 Gremlin and it was one of the best cars I ever owned.
Meanwhile I gotta try to get that phone thingy fixed.

Easter Sunday (3-25-08)

I was in the yard Easter Sunday, looking for Easter Eggs and all at once it started snowing.
Hard.
For a few minutes it was nearly a white-out.
It didn’t last long but we managed to have periods of flurries pretty-much all day Sunday.
While it was snowing I started to think that Easter Sunday sure came early this year.
So I did a little research (that means I spent 5 minutes at Wikipedia).
Until now I had no idea how they set the date for Easter.  Perhaps the Pope set the date, or the US Congress, or Henry Kissinger.
Wrong Wrong Wrong
Easter Sunday was/is based on the Jewish Passover, and it officially happens “the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox” (the vernal equinox is the first day of spring).
Whew… Who thought that up?
In any event, Easter Sunday can NEVER happen earlier than March 22nd, nor later than April 25th.
This year Easter was on March 23rd, which is about as early as it can get.
The last time Easter occurred on March 23rd was 95 years ago in 1913.  The next time Easter happens on March 23rd will be in 2160, or 152 years from now.
Just in case you have a need to know when Easter Sunday will happen, and don’t have a lunar calendar, here are the dates for Easter Sunday for the next few years:

2009   April 12th
2010   April 4th
2011   April 24th
2012   April 8th
2013   March 31st
2014   April 20th
2015   April 5th
2016   March 27th
2017   April 16th
2018   April 1st

That means that in 2018 Easter Sunday will be on April’s Fools Day.
Imagine the possibilities.
If you get the warm-fuzzies because Easter was so early THIS year, imagine how they felt in 1918 when Easter was on March 22nd (the absolute earliest Easter can possibly occur).  The next time Easter will be on March 22nd will be in 2285, 277 years from now.
I don’t think it’s that unusual for us to have snow flurries on Easter Sunday…. It is Indiana, you know, but celebrating Easter in March is a rarity.  Of course Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is probably working on legislation to put Indiana on Easter Savings Time, so that when it’s March in Indiana it’s April in Ohio.  Or maybe he will sell the name, “Easter Sunday” to an investor in the Federated States of Micronesia, who will rename it “Federates States of Micronesian Easter”.
But… That’s another blog for another day.

Digital Cameras Have Convex Lenses! (3-21-08)

There was a picture of me taken back in ’97 or ’98 that was basically my QMIX mug-shot for about 10 years. It wasn’t a bad picture, considering  I’ve never been the most photogenic person.  Even Glamour Shots said, “why bother dude!
In any event, we were  told to get new pictures taken for the All New, Redesigned from the Ground-up QMIX dot COM.
Sara Beth brought out the digital camera and snapped my picture.
This is the result:

I realize this isn’t me.  The original picture seems to have been deliberately deleted.. Probably by Gremlins.
The, to add insult to injury, I went to Greensburg last week to set up a streaming audio PC for 1330 WTRE (1330wtre.com).
When I finished I flipped the switch to start the audio stream, Sandy Biddinger (station mgr) told someone to grab the camera to document the occasion.  After sitting there with a stupid smile on my face for 2 minutes I relaxed waiting for the camera to get ready and that was when shutter clicked.  This is the result:

Of course this isn’t me. It’s an old grumpy dude names Walter. The original picture seems to have been deliberately deleted.. Probably by Gremlins.
In this one I looked like should have  been ice fishing in Minnesota with Jack Lemmon and Walter Mathau.
If I was grumpy when  she snapped the picture, it was because I was tired of sitting with a smile on my face for 2 minutes.
My driver’s license picture is the most hideous of all.
My point is…. Sure I’ve gained a few pounds in the past 10 years, and aged 20 years in the past 10 years (mostly from the sins of my youth), but I know I don’t look that bad.
It must be these digital cameras.  They have anamorphicisly convexly concaved lenses that distort the images.
I’m gonna jump on eBay and try to find a Kodak Brownie Automatic or a Polaroid Swinger and try to get a decent picture.
Then again, I might just go back to this 10 year-old picture.

Ahhhh That’s better.
Death to digital cameras…..

Weather Forecasts

First I admit that I have a friend who is a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Indianapolis (who listens to QMIX regularly-thnx Chad!), but that in no way influences my opinion.

As much as I love radio, weather has always been a close second as an interest in my life. I guess it started back on Palm Sunday 1965 when I was just a youngster:
(more info).

Hey… I was out with my camcorder lookin’ for tornadoes years before the Bill Paxton/Helen Hunt movie (I’ve only bagged two in my entire life and one was in Dallas). Plus, I watched the weather channel 24/7 from the day they signed on until it became the Jim Cantore and commercial channel… but I digress.

My point is.. the National Weather Service has had a rough time of it this winter. They have missed the boat on nearly every major winter storm since Christmas (issuing Winter Storm Warnings with nothing of significance developing). But yesterday, our Ops Mrg, Dave Wineland walked into the studio at 2:05 PM and said, “you gotta hand it to the National Weather Service (NWS) forecast. They said we would get sprinkles by 2PM and at exactly 2PM we started getting sprinkles”.
Dave was right on the money… as is the NWS forecast most of the time.

For a long time, our competition got their forecast from the Weather Channel, while QMIX and KORN always used the NWS forecast. As a matter of pride, I compared the NWS forecast with the forecast issued by the Weather Channel, and when they significantly differed, the NWS forecast was more accurate 99.999999% of the time (actually it was 100%). Every time for over two years. That’s incredible!
Forecasting in the winter has always been difficult, everybody wants to know when the snow will start, when it will stop and how much will fall. Not to mention that just 2 or 3 degrees can make a huge difference between rain, freezing rain or snow.  In the summer time, all it takes is, “a chance for afternoon thundershowers” to satisfy everyone. Nobody wants to know exactly how much rain will fall.
For the record… the Weather Channel didn’t do any better this winter. Nor did AccuWeather or anyone else.
It looks like winter may be sliding away, and now it’s raining. And it started at exactly 2PM Monday.

My First Blog (3-19-08)

I finally mastered the technique of posting here.. which is kind of bad because I’m supposed to be the QMIX tech guy.
There was a time when I hand-coded the entire QMIX dot COM website using a text editor, and uploaded it using an FTP client… in the days before Front Page, Hot Dog or Dreamweaver, and now it takes me 4 days to figure out how to post here.
I was originally going to open my blog by complaining… first about how long and dreary this winter has been, then I was going to rant about how Hoosiers (the residents of Indiana, not the IU basketball and football teams) sit by while our legislators pass new laws and taxes, and then complain when they become law (things like the seat-belt law and increase in sales tax are pet peeves of mine), but I really want to keep things positive here, so I won’t utter another complaint, except to say “don’t cruise in the fast lane” (I could go nuts about my #1 pet peeve but that would really make people mad).
Instead I shall focus on the positive and say that from the time I was a little kid, all I ever wanted to do was to be on the radio, and it is a blessing to be able to do what I do and get paid for it!  I once heard that if you find something you really like to do and make it your job, you never have to go to work!   That is my scenario.  Every day I get to play music on the radio and spend the rest of my day playing with all of those wonderful toys (computers, transmitters, microphones etc).
It will be 17 years this fall since I walked through the door of QMIX and started the fun… here’s to another 17 years (well,  this didn’t exactly work out.  I was shown the door in March 2012 but 21 years is a heck of a run for radio)!
Now… about driving while talking on the cell phone…..