No show this weekend, maybe this week

Sorry if I let anybody down, but I didn't do a show this week. Sunday was
a really horrendous day, and shouldn't have been. Doing something fun
shouldn't be so stressful and tiring as to bring one to tears, but
sometimes it goes that way. I wanted to talk about that, but it's two in
the morning Monday, I'm tired out, and I gotta work today. So I got
nothing.

I may feel better about it midweek or so. I hate to miss a week. But
maybe I'd do better with some time to recuperate.

See ya later.

--
grizzly at grizzly dot podzone dot org
Podcast <http://grizzly.libsyn.com>
The Life and Times of a Minor Local Celebrity
Promo <http://media.libsyn.com/media/grizzly/grizprom.mp3>

Kiptronics stats -- Ooooh, pretty!

I just recently started "tinkering" with the Kiptronic ad support thingie
affiliated with Libsyn, where my podcast is hosted. Probably never have
any interest from advertisers, at least not for a while, too small. Put
up a link to their survey thing on my website, no responses yet. Not
critical, just experimental.

Anyway, was poking around in the Reports section on there. Cool! They
comment on the page that Libsyn has much better stats. (I dunno which
Libsyn they're referring to, not the one I'm using at the moment.) They
got yer multicolored piecharts, yer breakdowns on where my files have been
going since the beginning -- I gather they reach into Libsyn's stats to
get the numbers -- and they break down the audience by country, by state,
and by market, in great detail. (I gather the advertisers would need that
sort of thing.) Even if I never get interest from advertisers, it's worth
setting up, just for alla them cool stats and graphs and whatnot. Gotta
have my numbers.

And after only 6 months, I'm amazed so many people are listening. Not as
big as some, but it's just me rambling. States where I've never been, and
where I don't know anybody -- or didn't, before.

And so many countries! I wonder why people in China listen to me. Heck,
I wonder why people in the U.S. listen to me. <grin> Flattering and
humbling, indeed.

This worldwide Interweb stuff's amazing, huh?

--
grizzly at grizzly dot podzone dot org
Podcast <http://grizzly.libsyn.com>
The Life and Times of a Minor Local Celebrity
Promo <http://media.libsyn.com/media/grizzly/grizprom.mp3>

Too Close to Home

Yesterday, here in Minnesota, down in Minneapolis, we had the tragedy of
the collapse of a major freeway bridge, in the midst of rush hour. It
still feels unreal; these things don't happen in Minnesota. Except now
they do.

My heart goes out to those who were hurt and who lost loved ones in this
disaster. I can't watch the news coverage without tears. Oh, the
humanity...

Why can't I find stuff anymore?

It's really discouraging to me that I can't find stuff on the Interweb
anymore.

I used to be one of those guys you could go to for solutions to computer
problems. I could find what was needed, assuming I didn't already have
whatever it was.

I don't seem to be able to do that anymore. For one thing, I don't have
my BBS anymore, so I don't tend to have vast varieties of files and
programs lying around. For another, it seems web search engines just
don't work as well as they used to. Do a search for just about anything,
you'll get a whole stack of ads for buying something allegedly similar to
what you were trying to fix. Then you'll get a stack of links to "link
farms," sites that claim to have the file or info you're looking for. The
rest of the results will have nothing to do with what you're searching
for.

I bring this up because I went to a rummage sale and bought a cheap little
digital camera for a quarter. The guy'd lost the driver disk for it,
though. So I went on the Google and searched and searched, and didn't
find workable drivers for it. Then I went to Yahoo, same results, none at
all. Finally found a technical discussion forum, with an extended thread
from a bunch of folks who also hadn't been able to find drivers for the
same camera. No drivers, though.

Shouldn't bug me that much -- it was only a quarter after all. But hey, I
used to be able to do this stuff all the time! Now, it just doesn't work
anymore.

By the way, I put up a picture of the camera on the blog website (swiped
from that technical forum discussion I found). If you recognize it, and
have drivers that would work, I'd appreciate it much. I'm stuck.

The other day, my sister started having problems with her laptop. So she
took it to a shop,`rather than have me try to fix it. They had it for
three weeks, thought it was a virus (it wasn't), decided it was a hardware
problem (probably not, since it worked fine under Linux) and finally
disconnected her internal keyboard, sold her a USB external keyboard, and
sent it back. I fixed part of what they screwed up while they "fixed" it,
but she doesn't want me to fix the part that was broken in the first
place.

On the other hand, I'm not so sure I could fix it. I don't have the kind
of confidence I used to have about such stuff. The computer world has
moved on without me. Oh, well.

--
grizzly at grizzly dot podzone dot org
Grizzly's Growls Podcast: The Life and Times of a Minor
Local Celebrity <http://grizzly.libsyn.com>
"iPods? We don' need no steenkin' iPods!"
<http://feeds.feedburner.com/grizzlysgrowls>
Welcome to America. Here's your accordion.

What, no millions?

As it turned out, I didn't win the Powerball on the 21st.

I suspect two reasons. While I recorded my 21st show on the 7/21/07, I
didn't get it into MP3 and posted till 7/22. Also, I skipped a very
important element. I didn't record the show at the local Irish Pub, thus
invoking that whole Luck of the Irish thing (I'm 1/4 Irish, so it would
have worked for me).

So much for best laid plans and whatnot.

Shame to miss such an important opportunity.

--
grizzly at grizzly dot podzone dot org
Grizzly's Growls Podcast: The Life and Times of a Minor
Local Celebrity <http://grizzly.libsyn.com>
"iPods? We don' need no steenkin' iPods!"
<http://feeds.feedburner.com/grizzlysgrowls>
Welcome to America. Here's your accordion.

Fair Use Legislation? Yeahbut...

One of the podcasts I listen to regularly is involved in an ongoing an
multifarious rant on Fair Use, and how it's a shame that there's no
legislation for Fair Use. Well, yeahbut...

We didn't used to have legislation about Spam. Now we do, and it makes
spam "legal." A bunch of stuff that had been made illegal by various
states is now perfectly "acceptable," because the Fiddle Gummint says so.

We certainly don't want the Fiddlers writing legislation formalizing fair
use, because they'll mostly abolish it, and make big bucks from the RIAA
in doing so.

If fair use is valid under common law (the law of regular folks, that
means), then that's all that's needed to make it legal. It only needs to
be enforced by the courts -- and not tampered with and diluted or
eliminated by the Fiddlers.

And that's all I have to say about that, for the moment.

--
grizzly at grizzly dot podzone dot org
Grizzly's Growls Podcast: The Life and Times of a Minor
Local Celebrity <http://grizzly.libsyn.com>
"iPods? We don' need no steenkin' iPods!"
<http://feeds.feedburner.com/grizzlysgrowls>
Welcome to America. Here's your accordion.

Never that much, ever

Okay, it'd be nice to be a Big Deal podcaster, with a huge audience. But
it seems like that can never happen:

Wisconsin: Dawn & Drew are the Big Deal Wisconsin podcast. Forget that.

Minnesota: There is no Big Deal Minnesota podcast I've heard of.
Probably never will be, because of the ...

Big Deal Midwestern podcast: Dawn & Drew, of course. NPR does podcasts,
including one or more with Garry Keilor, who does a show about a town in
Minnesota that doesn't exist, and therefore any made-up stuff he cares to
come up with actually happens. Doesn't have to come up with really cool
stuff that actually ever happened here, or is ever likely to happen here
without a Martian invasion.

Hard to compete. I gether he's still living in New York NY, so I guess it
doesn't matter much to him anymore, anyway.

Big Deal Aspie Podcast: Well, we have AutismPodcast.org, which is of
course the definitive podcast about anything related to autism, even
though it isn't by anyone on the spectrum, and admittedly so. But they
have the cool URL, so ignore the rest of us.

And Autistics.org doesn't host a podcast, so nevermind. And that other
fella does a blog he hasn't maintained in months, so why ask?

The rest of the possibilities, well, I can't imagine there's a lot of
demand for podcasts by fat, aging guys from the midwest, so I fail to find
any other categories to fit into.

So I'm doomed to obscurity, and then all the big companies (especially the
drug companies) will jump in and produce something huge and well-funded.
So I'm doomed forever. Glad I have a half-dozen people left who care.

Okay, two-dozen.

--
grizzly at grizzly dot podzone dot org
Grizzly's Growls Podcast: The Life and Times of a Minor
Local Celebrity <http://grizzly.libsyn.com>
"iPods? We don' need no steenkin' iPods!"
<http://feeds.feedburner.com/grizzlysgrowls>
Welcome to America. Here's your accordion.