If you're here...

...you're in the wrong place. This blog has moved to www.greensboroistalking.com

See you there.

You may need to update your feeds

Over the next 48 hours, you may experience temporary outages on this site as we switch over to a new server. You may also have to change your rss or atom feed for this site after the switch as well.

I figured with the server change, it was as good a time as any to make the switch from Blogger to Wordpress that I've been pondering for a while now. I'm going to try to import all of my old posts into the new Wordpress...but I've heard fellow bloggers who've had both good and bad experiences with that.

In regards to the newsfeed change, Blogger uses an Atom feed, Wordpress uses an RSS feed so the addresses will be slightly different. I apologize for this inconvenience but hopefully this change will allow me to do a thing or two that Blogger didn't.

xing fingers and changing the dns now. The site will look the same until the new address propogates and then you will see the new site. It'll be a work in progress thru most of the weekend so please bear with me.

The results are in

The results of the follow-up survey for the Piedmont Blogging Conference are in. About a third of those who attended responded. EdCone.com has posted a .pdf file with the results if you wish to see them.

Beware of dogs packin' heat

Dog Wiggles Paw Free to Shoot Florida Man

Chicken

Bush likely to bow out of one debate

Ya big chicken. To qoute Monty Python's Holy Grail...

"I fart in your general direction."

You can't buy irony like this

Coroner Discussing Gun Safety Shoots Self

Mother Nature

Quick observation...

With all the rain today, it's kind of hard to remember that drought two years ago. I guess it's safe to say the city's water supply is safe for a while. Mother Nature has her own set of checks and balances.

It's disappointing

I have to admit I was a little excited when the announcement was made a few months ago that WZTK was going to an all news/talk format.

So far, I've been supremely disappointed in their news coverage. I was expecting local news and sports coverage like I had yet to hear on an FM station in the Triad. What we've gotten is a pathetic showcase of "rip 'n' read" news. For those that don't know what rip 'n' read is, it's an old term that came from when newswires such as AP, UPI or Reuters actually spewed out volumes of continuous feed paper with news stories on them as they occurred. Newscasters would "rip" the paper off the machine and "read" whatever was there on their next newscast. The old newswires have come into the modern day and age at most broadcast stations whereby the newstories are piped into a computer and the newsperson can pick and choose what they want to print out or even, at times, read the stories directly from the screen.

I was in the car this morning on a return trip from Asheboro and tuned in to hear the noon news. You would think that with Democratic candidate John Kerry in Greensboro, it would be the lead story. Oh no, it was no less than the fourth story on the newscast. After such supremely-important-to-the-Triad stories of how the Russian government was responding to terrorist attacks, hurricane, now tropical depression Frances' impending visit to the Triad, and some other equally less revelant story which I can't even remember now.

And what did their coverage consist of? A two or three sentence blurb about Kerry being in Greensboro for a town meeting at the depot and how people were braving the rain and bringing their children to see Kerry. The newscaster did happen to mention that the station's news director was at the event though. No live report.

Good Lord. When I was first starting out as a radio news reporter at a small country AM/FM station in Lancaster, Wisconsin, if I would have filed a report like that about a presidential candidate in our coverage area, my news director would have honest to God killed me. Not to mention how I would have treated myself when I was a news director at an AM news/talk station in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

The story would have dominated the entire newscast. And even if the meeting was still going on, I would have been required to step off to the side or out in the hall to phone in a live report. That would have been followed up with a ton of pre-recorded audio interviews from event organizers, campaign spokespeople, man-on-the-street interviews, and actual audio from the town meeting itself.

I'd have to say that ZTK really dropped the ball on this one. It was a spectacular chance to really bring their station to the forefront. They blew it. With their FM signal coverage, they are positioned to be the premier news station in the entire Triad. In a market this size, not a newscast should go by without audio in at least one story and preferably, two or three. I find it funny that they advertise that they have a network of nearly 100 traffic reporters throughout the Triad, some of whom are actually paid, but apparently, they aren't willing to spend a few dollars a week on some real news reporters to get out into the communities and do some real news coverage.

It's sad and pathetic the way they are wasting this opportunity. And don't even get me started on their lack of local sports coverage.

Something I forgot

During all the hullabaloo with my server last week, I forgot to mention a sad thing. Last week was former Generals hockey coach Rick Adduono's last week in town. He and his wife Melanie were returning to Canada while he looks for another job in hockey. It is a terrible loss for this town as he had more hope for and faith in Greensboro than most long time residents who suffer from Ed Cone's "Greensboro Disease".

I had a chance to interview Rick for the Generals Booster Club newsletter a few days before he was scheduled to leave. Unfortunately, I can't disclose the contents of that interview as it hasn't been published to the Club yet. But suffice it to say, Greensboro should be ashamed of itself for the way it treated this good man. He kept fighting for Greensboro when others would have packed their bags and ran.

This city has lost a truly good citizen. Let's hope some of these rumors I'm hearing about new hockey ownership groups come to pass and he is still available to return to Greensboro. I hope it is just "goodbye for now" rather than "farewell forever".

The countdown begins

The cynic in me just can't resist. To me it just looks like a bad movie script waiting to happen. Don't get all bent out of shape with this, I'm just having a little fun here.

I've added the countdown to Osama Bin Ladin's arrest to the sidebar on the blog, just to see if this really happens. It probably won't, but it'll be fun in the meantime.

I asked myself the other day, "What is the one thing that would guarantee the re-election of George W. Bush?" I answered myself by saying, "Why of course, the perfectly timed and executed capture and arrest of Osama Bin Ladin." (You see, I'm in my mid-thirties, I've passed the age where it began to be ok for me to have conversations with myself.)

So I thought, when would be the best time for this to happen. I bounced a few ideas off myself and came up with around 10 AM on October 30, 2004. This would be the Saturday before the election. Why then you ask? Two reasons. First, that gives every major newspaper in the country time to splash it all over the front page of the Sunday edition. And second, it gives the Democratic Party almost no time to mount a serious response. Wag the dog? You bet.

Why am I giving this possibility any real thought at all? Again, two reasons. First, W. was on one of the news magazine shows about a year ago and he was asked why, with all the technology available, they didn't know where Osama was? W. smugly responded, "How do you know we don't know where he is?" Evidence that for all practical purposes, they just might be waiting for the time to be right. And second, if my memory serves me correctly, news that Saddam Hussein was in custody hit the mainstream media right around 10 AM on a Saturday morning. A trial run perhaps?

So anyways, let's just have some fun with this and see if the Great Karnac here has any voodoo in his crystal ball. LOL.

Ballpark photos

I took a walk around the new ballpark Saturday and snapped a couple of photos. Forgive the quality, I only have a real cheap digital camera and some of the shots were taken by poking the camera thru those tiny holes in the chain link fence. But I thought I'd get a few shots of stuff you can't see from the official stadium cam. The photos are below.

The playing surface is nearly ready for the sod to be laid down soon.
Photos by TheShu

Looking at the front facade.
Photos by TheShu

The main entrance is starting to take shape.
Photos by TheShu

The brick facade outside of the third base line.
Photos by TheShu

Looking in at home plate from center field.
Photos by TheShu

Apparently some sort of ramp in right field.
Photos by TheShu

Looking down the street at the first base side facade.
Photos by TheShu

Time is running out

Even though I've been out of action the past few days, the followup survey for the Piedmont Bloggers Conference is still up. I would again request that everyone who attended who hasn't already responded please do so soon. The survey will only be active until Wednesday so you need to act now. The survey is relatively short and is anonymous so don't be afraid to say how you really feel. The more responses we receive, the better the next conference will be so take a few minutes and help us out.

Quick thoughts about ABC

I've been casually keeping an eye on Mr. Sun and Hoggard's forays into dealing with ABC of Guilford County. I'm not going to dive into the whole ABC thing...whether they're right or wrong. But I will just make a quick note about their type of group.

My father was on the local school board for 29 years in the town where I grew up in Wisconsin. He was on the board before my oldest brother even started school and was on the board until shortly after I (the last of six children) graduated high school. By the time I graduated, he was the president of the board. I was lucky enough that at that time, the president of the school board handed out the diplomas at the graduation ceremonies so I was actually able to receive my diploma from my father.

During his tenure on the board, various board members including himself, received challenges from groups very similar in nature to the ABC group. Quite often, they were a group of parents and/or members of the community who were upset over one or more issues and organized to take on whichever of the board members happened to be up for election that year. Sometimes they won, most times they lost to the incumbents.

When I was younger, I asked my father about groups like that and he told me something that has always stuck with me. He said that anyone who thinks they are going to get elected and bring about all kinds of sweeping changes is a fool. He said that most people have no idea about just how few things the board is really in control of. When the vast majority of your budget is made up primarily by teacher salaries and debt service for schools, which you never have enough of either teachers or schools, you are basically handcuffed with just how many other items you can deal with. He said that when idividuals from these group get elected, they are quite often frustrated when they realize, that without a majority on the board, they can't make all the changes they would like.

From my own experience covering many different school boards as a news reporter, I can say that whenever individuals from these types of groups did get elected, one of two things tended to happen. 1) The new board member stands their ground trying to reflect the voice of the people who elected them and, for a while, votes against everything in a vain attempt to try show those people that they are trying to make a difference. Eventually though, they realize that sometimes its more important to show a unified front and start to vote with the majority. Or 2) The new board member sticks to their guns throughout the term, is often the sole dissenting voice, and people start to see them as a pain in the ass who votes against everything and they are then seen as an ineffective member of the board and they are voted out at the end of their term.

Either way is fine. But here's where the system falls apart. The group that backs the new candidate who is supposed to change the world, quite often doesn't stick around long enough to make the next election cycle or if they do, they no longer have the momentum they originally did and can't get their candidates elected. This leaves their original candidate hanging with not enough support to get their views across and worse yet, a lack of a majority on the board. Subsequently, their original candidate never has the impact they would like them to have.

Now I hate to be all doom and gloom for ABC. I think citizen watchdog groups are a good thing. They bring issues to light which many times wouldn't see the light of day beyond the board room. But lets just say that I'll be impressed if they are even still around at this time next year AND if they are, if they still carry the weight that they do now. History is against them.

Back among the living

Whew...what a god-awful week this has been. Monday afternoon I noticed that both this site and my hockey site were down. Long story short, my hosting company (AngelNetworkz.net) was a bit behind in payments to the actual server owners (Managed.com). So Monday afternoon, Managed bitch-slapped AngelNetworkz by pulling the plug on all their servers. No warnings. No chance to get backups off the server. Everything just gone.

Long story short, after six days of jumping thru hoops and hearing promises every day that the servers would be turned back on, I'm finally back up. But just long enough to get switched over to a new and hopefully more stable, hosting company.

Valuable lesson learned: Always, always keep multiple backups of your website in different locations. You never know when you're gonna need them. I had one offsite backup, which unfortunately got corrupted on my old computer before I switched to my new Dell last month. I realize it was almost two weeks old, but it would have been better than nothing.

So anyways, I've ordered a new server for my sites and as soon as that is ready, I'll be making my move over and saying goodbye to AngelNetworkz.