Category: General

Mount Vernon Jaycees’ House of Horror to open

October 1st, 2008 · · General 4 comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Can you believe that in a little over a week the Jaycees will open for their 30 or 40-odd-th year of scaring locals? I can’t.

I can say that we have had great fun building the HoH this year like we always do. Sure, there are issues and an occasional disagreement, but overall it’s a great project that everyone has time participating in every year. We may put in more work these 3 months (yes, we start pretty early) than others do in a year. Hearing those screams and watching big men hit the floor make it all worth it.

This year the Jaycees went with the theme of ‘Blackthorn Asylum’. The idea is that these are the last tours before the asylum is torn down. A bubbly nurse welcomes everyone, then visitors tour through cells at their own risk.

It’s amazing and frightful to see what inmates can and will do when left to their own devices. With C.S. Blackthorn disappearing and the building falling to disarray the city has decided it would be better demolished – and all of the horrible memories with it.

Come out and take a tour yourself starting October 10th at 7:30. We will have WDML doing a live remote, and any other surprises we can dig up.

The House of Horror will be open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday starting the 10th, and the 29 – 31. All evenings will open at 7:30.

Just in case…

August 1st, 2008 · · Entertainment, General, Mount Vernon, Podcast No comments - Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Just in case there are actually any people who listen to the podcasts I occasionally put up here (I know from the stats there are a few) – there won’t be any more posted.

The podcasting idea was something I had looked into deeply, toyed with, and helped Kevin a little bit with in his setup. To that end, I will leave the audio market to him alone.

I enjoy making podcasts and spouting-off audibly, but I’m more of a writing guy. Kevin does a great job speaking and anchoring a show. I cannot pull it off myself at this point, so I think it best to drop it from my agenda.

So, all that out of the way, I do plan on participating in Big Kev’s View as a regular. While I’m not anchor material, I like to think that I add a bit of substance to the show.

Just for archiving purposes, I will keep the podcast posts active for maybe a week from now on here. After that, they will not work as I will de-activate the PodPress plugin.

So please go subscribe to the feed over at Kev’s View, and/or subscribe via iTunes. The feeds for both are right on the front page of his site. Thank you all for your support.

“Verizon just bought Alltel…”

June 5th, 2008 · · General No comments

“…here we go again.”

That was the text from one of my friends from the First Cellular of Southern Illinois/Alltel buyout that remains with Alltel. I don’t blame her. Going through one purchase was bad enough when the coordination was just within a local company. I cannot imagine how horrible this buyout will be on such a massive scale.

I also cannot imagine how Verizon will divide up all of the double licenses it will own when this deal goes through. By FCC rules (and monopoly prevention), no single carrier can own two licenses in one area. Verizon already owns the B-side in this area, and will own the A-side as well with this buyout. Someone stands to make a mint picking up these double-licensed areas since they will have to be sold off.

A local Arkansas paper is the only one I can find with coverage right now, but I’m sure it will get mentioned on the 5 o’clock news tonight.

I don’t see how we can be down to 3 cellular carriers in the US and the government let this purchase go through. I mean, there is virtually no competition. At least Alltel was making some innovative plan options available (My Circle). Now we will be stuck with whatever the Big 3 say we can have. Pretty soon it will be a monopoly like the landlines are now with AT&T.

501 – Never thought I’d get this far…

April 29th, 2008 · · General, Technology One comment - Tags: , , , ,

I wrote my 500th post earlier and didn’t even know it. I was checking in to see how the site was holding up, and check for plugin updates. I looked up, and poof! 500 posts. This is a personal celebration of not stopping writing.

I don’t think these posts will ever be remembered as anything profound nor interesting, but at least I can look back and say I left my own little mark on the interwebs. Maybe the kids will look back at this some day and see their dad wasn’t always so boring. Or perhaps they’ll just be embarassed. Either way they will have some insight into my thoughts and life.

Thanks to all of you who get here by accident, those who watch quietly, and you few who comment.

🙂

Hopefully I’ll keep this thing going and get some stuff up here worthwhile.

Stats are looking good

April 29th, 2008 · · General, Technology No comments - Tags: , , , , , ,

I haven’t talked about them in awhile, but the stats on this site/blog are looking good. My RSS feed has skyrocketed in hits (up several thousand percent), pageviews are up several hundred percent, and unique visitors are slowly creeping up. For whatever it means, spiders are crawling my site much more regularly as well.

Feedburner shows a pretty good increase in my feed subscribers. Thanks to you guys, as I think that is a very good metric of who is keeping up with my content. For those of you who have us bookmarked, please subscribe to the RSS, and/or at least look into it.

In general, I just wanted to let anyone who cares know, and thank those of you coming by to read my ramblings.