James Rising

Aggregate Saturday

The Penn State scandal is like a snowball turning into an avalanche. It may crush the entire Penn State football program before all is said and done. In a way I am unable to feel too badly about it all, except for the victims. What kind of society have we built that cherishes sport over mind and rewards the men who stoke the machine even to the point of ignoring their faults. Joepa is NOT a nice guy. He is getting a load of karma back right now. I am unable to feel badly.
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The squirrels have taken up residence above our heads again. The roofer swore that he plugged the entrance. Plan A down. Plan B is to spray the stuff that keeps the deer off the Hosta. I hope plan B works.
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Speaking of deer, four in the backyard yesterday. Two doe and two fawns. As much as I don’t like them eating my bushes there is something restful about watching them graze.
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Penultimate NASCAR weekend. Next week at Homestead the whole season ends. I am ready and I will take the week after Thanskgiving away from cars that go fast and loud.
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It’s now nearly 50 days since I have had caffeine of any sort. For my morning beverage I have hot water and lemon. Today’s “Juiced” entry has some interesting news about my blood work done recently. If it doesn’t make you think about the benefits of what I am doing then you are probably either really healthy (good on ya) or you are stupid. Choose.
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Read Mary Doria Russell- Start with “Sparrow”. She is the best author I have come across since Stephen King and for me that says something.
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Speaking of Stephen King I just received 11/22/63: A Novel
from Amazon. This will be my vacation read while enjoying the Maine coast.
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House is buttoned up for winter pretty much. I need a warm day next week to get the top up on the MG. I am enjoying my new Heater in the kitchen so much, especially since I bought it locally for $176. It’s 28 degrees out and 70 in here and the furnace is not burning dollar bills. Our power bill? We shall see.
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Thanks for reading.

It looks like a scene from a bombed out suburb of Beirut or Pakistan or some some gawd forsaken shit hole where people have little or no regard for property or human life.

But it’s not. It’s “Happy Valley”. It’s Penn State after a good man did nothing.

Mark my words, if you think the stink at Penn State is horrific now, just wait. We haven’t seen the worst of it. There is a storm brewing that will curl your hair and make you want to put your head under a blankie and never come out.

We are…. Penn State. And we will regret it, trust me.

Paterno is sacked

Radio DaZe: This was a test:

The National Alert System test was a spectacular failure yesterday, prompting this memory:

I was in the control room at WSNO on a Saturday morning, suffering with the country music show. My only salvation, it would be over at ten am and I could play some hits.

In the background the AP machine was chugging along but suddenly I heard bells. Bells meant a headline. But these bells were persistent. Ten in all. Hmm…I thought. I ran out to the machine and saw the alert message.
More from wikipedia:

A nationwide activation of the EBS was called an Emergency Action Notification (EAN). This was the only type of activation which broadcast stations were not allowed to ignore; the FCC made local civil emergencies and weather advisories optional (except for stations that had agreed to be the “primary” source of such messages).

To activate the EAN protocol, the AP and UPI wire services would notify stations with a special message. It began with a full line of X’s, and a bell inside the Teletype machine would sound ten times. To avoid abuse and mistakes, the message included a confirmation password which changed daily. Stations that subscribed to one of the wire services were not required to activate the EBS if the activation message did not have proper confirmation.

ED NOTE: The message authenticator was in a pink envelope thumbtacked to the control room wall. Normally you just got a test message and those words were on the outside of the the envelope. This day was different.

False alarm of 1971

Despite these safeguards, the system was inadvertently activated at 9:33 AM EST on February 20, 1971. Teletype operator W. S. Eberhardt accidentally “played the wrong tape” during a test of the system. As a result, an EBS activation message authenticated with the codeword “hatefulness” was sent through the entire system, ordering stations to cease regular programming and broadcast the alert of a national emergency. A cancellation message was sent at 9:59 AM EST; however, it used the same codeword again. A cancellation message with the correct codeword, “impish,” was not sent until 10:13 AM EST.[4]

This false alarm demonstrated major flaws in the EBS. Many stations had not received the alert, but more importantly, the vast majority of those that did ignored it, or did not know what to do during an emergency.

Numerous investigations were launched, and several changes were made to the EBS. Among them, the on-air alert announcement was streamlined, eliminating one version of the script that warned the audience of an imminent attack against the country.

ED NOTE: So there I was. Looking at the message. I was supposed to open the envelope and check the codeword out. Damn! It was the right one! Now what?
The protocol was to play the precorded message and then shut the transmitter off. In those days I just did what I was told. So I did, bumping the plate button off and waiting for the bombs to fall.

I turned on the ancient CONELRAD monitor, which was getting WDEV (640) and “Music to go the dump by”. I was really really scared. I decided that country music was our salavation.

I put the plate back on and finished the country show. What else was I supposed to do?

The PD was furious. The GM said it was all right, no harm no foul. And I was the only operator that I knew that did the correct procedure.

It’s comforting to know that more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s still just a simple idea, but it hasn’t worked right yet.

WEEKENDER Column : No El!

I love the holiday season. No, not exactly right. I love many things about it. Couldn’t care less about the gift giving in my direction. Love seeing the joy the things we send to the relatives bring, especially the grandchild, Haven. I love the meals, the cookies, the extra rations of grog.

I do not love the rushing around, the shopping and the packing of gifts. It has led to considerable strife between the Long-Suffering Wife and me. It cuts into the grog consumption.

I don’t love the hangovers.

I love “Scrooged”, the not perfect but still pretty good Bill Murray depiction of the Charles Dickens classic. It’s a regular for me and always makes me weep. Especially if I have exceeded my ration of grog, a likely outcome after a shopping/wrapping/packing session with the Long-Suffering Wife.

I love my Christmas music selection. I have, over the years, programmed several all Christmas music stations. In so doing I have become more than sick of “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer”. My personal collection is not what you’ll hear on the radio in large part. “Here comes Santy with his bag of shit” and that sort of tune always make me smile.

But, having said all that I was appalled and then furious when I heard the Pennsylvania Lottery run their “Happy Holidays” commercial for the first time last night. This is written on the day that the calendar page just turned to November, by the way. First of all I HATE the Happy Holidays sentiment. Say what you really mean and you risk offending the Kwanza and Jewish among you, they say, whoever “they” are. I think that they don’t care as much as you might think. And I know I don’t. Wish me Merry Christmas, please. But not quite yet.

But really, the background music for the Pennsyvlvania Lottery commercial is “The 12 days of CHRISTMAS”. You get it? There are CHRISTMAS wreaths and trees and candy canes and…

Wait, I just heard a commercial for “Chex Mix” that has the “Carol of the Bells” in it. And another one….and another one. Shoot me now.

I know , this is a pretty standard rant, where the greedy merchants rush the season and I’m not ready for it. But damn it seems really early. Lucky for me it’s always time for grog.

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Reach Jim at contact@jamesrising.com Even more rants are on his blog, updated every day that ends in “y” at jamesrising.com

An artist signs his work

Norman F. Ramsey, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who developed a precise method to probe the structure of atoms and molecules and used it to devise a remarkably exact way to keep time, died on Friday in Wayland, Mass. He was 96.

Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. was born on Aug. 27, 1915, in Washington, the son of Minna Bauer Ramsey, a mathematics teacher, and Norman Foster Ramsey, an Army officer. After receiving his Ph.D. under Dr. Rabi at Columbia, he worked at the M.I.T. Radiation Laboratory and served as a radar consultant to the secretary of war. In 1943 he went to Los Alamos, N.M., to work on the Manhattan Project, leading a team that helped assemble the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

R.I.P. Norman Ramsey

R.I.P. Andy Rooney

So here is my brush with fame story about Andy Rooney.

I was doing the morning show on Froggy 101, a country station. In a misguided attempt to raise the level of discourse on the show I did a lot of interviews. Bill Cosby (VERY disjointed-tough to keep on any subject but funny as hell) James Earl Jones (Erudite. But I got him to say Froggy 101. Tricked him, really-CNN paid him big bucks but I got him for free!) and many, many others.

The interview with Rooney came about quite by accident. Andy Rooney in a 60 minutes segment mentioned the Electric City in a disparaging way commenting on housing prices here (he thought they were too low) and the fact that garbage collection was suspended on Columbus Day.

I called CBS in New York and asked to speak with him. I expected to get the run around, but you could have knocked me over with a feather when the curmudgeon himself picked up the phone. I stammered out who I was and that I would like to talk with him for the morning show and he said, “OK -talk.”

I asked him for five minutes while I got to a studio and he said “Make it fast.”

I raced for the studio praying that I wouldn’t have to negotiate with someone already in there. Home free and minutes later I was on the phone with Rooney.

It didn’t go well. All smarty pants I asked him why he was down on the Electric City. He asked me why it was called the Electric City. I had no clue. It went downhill from there.

Taught me a lot, that interview. Never go in unprepared. Never ask a question you don’t know the answer to. And always know something about what you are taking about. Seems easy now.

Andy Rooney Dead at 92

Sunday Wrap 10/31/11-11/6/11

A look back at the past weeks postings. Many times I forget that people need a little road map to the things that get put up on my blog so this is the best way I know how to catch you up. I sincerely thank you for reading. Both of you! This week an obit, a look at some interesting pictures I find in the WWW and another thrilling chapter of Radio DaZe. Enjoy.

Monday 10/31/11
Blog Post A Halloween Memory

Tuesday 11/1/11
Blog Post A comment on the” Occupy” protest

Wednesday 11/2/11
Blog Post Bah Humbug! Part 1

Thursday 11/3/11
Blog Post Radio DaZe- WACKY 102 Part 1

Friday 11/4/11
Blog Post R.I.P. R.I.P. Robert Pierpoint

Saturday 11/5/11
Blog Post Aggregate Saturday

Aggregate Saturday:

A day at McDonald’s this Thursday, due to total Comcast fail. No TV, No I-net and no phone. Talk about being plunged back into the dark ages. Comcast blamed PPL power line burning up and doing same to their fiber optic cable (according to the phone tech I talked to. Sample convo: Me: Do you know where the cable burned? Him: Some place called…Tunahanock..Tunkanock. Me: Close enough)

Normal day off is Thursday. Odd how elements conspire to put me on my on-line, totally dependent on the I-net job on the day the power lines burn. Odd but predictable, just as bread falls butter side down. I’m a glass half empty kind of guy.

My younger son, also tethered to the WWW for his living had no power or service for several days in CT. where they got what we got after Irene and Lee. He talked about Panera bread throttling back I-net service due to too many glommers. And he spoke about no gas because the service stations had no power. Won’t the apocalypse be fun? I am laying in EXTRA rations of grog. It may be the only thing we have left. Drunkenness in the cold, dark, candle lit night.

We have the outside repairs done. Roof is on anyway. Downed trees need to be removed. But the dreaded inside work needs to be addressed and before the Christmas holday. This wil not end pretty, methinks.

I always loved this image of Bob. And he was always Bob when he signed off after doing a stand-up. Never “Robert”.

The real story is that Bob was an avid tennis buff and was scheduled to play when he was, with no notice, called upon to do a report. Thus, no disrespect was intended. Just Bob being expedient.

Bob’s generation of peers were broadcast legends. We’ll not see their like any time soon.

Robert Pierpoint

Radio DaZe: Wacky 102.

WAQY at 102.1 was a class “B” FM which meant that it really had 50,000 watt coverage even though it ran just 17,000 watts to the antenna. It’s transmitter was in the same building with WWLP TV, on Provin Mountain in Agawam, Mass. With a height above average terrain of about 1,000 feet, WAQY had a massive signal, covering Hartford Ct. to Vermont.

With that big a signal and the fact that it was stereo FM WACKY 102 had a lot going for it. AM was a dying breed, and in 1976 no one else was playing top 40 music in the area on FM. The automated WACKY 102 had done well but with the addition of personalities and some tweaking of the format, we were poised to do very well indeed.

My first task was to assemble a staff. I raided WHYN for Johnny Micheals, a very tight top 40 jock who used a stop watch to talk up his intros. Neil Young (the “real” Neil) came from WHUC along with Jared Wilits (Superjock)-WHUC was near Hudson, New York, and was where Eric Elemendorf (Rick Kelly) had originally come from. Rick had worked for me at WCFR and joined the team. Ken Barlow, who later became a Radio Group owner did nights. And Jim Kaye (The Big Tuna) did overnights.

Then I built the control room. Ken Jones (R.I.P.) was the engineer and was the best at it that I ever knew. He was able to do anything I asked for and did it with the skinflint budget that Don and Mick gave him. We found a sliding pot board, bought two triple-decker ITC cart machines that could trip each other in a sort of crude automation (We called it “minimation”) and I had the entire control room, floor to ceiling done in a reddish shag.

Look close by Jay Christopher’s head and you can see the light bar. Huge colored lights that served as warnings-for the hot line, the WTYM automation going down and end of WACKY Carts. We put secondary tones (inaudible, although I could hear them)30 seconds before songs end then flashed them at the end. Many is the time they woke me up!

Jared Willits (Jay Christopher)

WACKY 102 was a great time in my life and will take up quite a few more chapters.