Peoria Pundit

I am so gonna change hosts it’s not even funny.

? Journal Star: Smooth jazz coming to Peoria, but DJs given the can

Steve Tarter writes about yet another format change at Kelly Communications.

/The full name for the new sound is Smooth Jazz Magic 94.3, and all
the cool voices you’ll hear will emanate from Denver, home of the
Jones Radio Network, a company that serves more than 5,000 radio
stations across the country with a whole range of formats.

Welcome to radio in the 21st century. Not just that smooth jazz
serves as easy listening but that the number of men and women from
the community who work in radio continues to decline.

Magic 94.3, of course, had already lost Doc Watson and Renee
Charles. Now you can scratch Glenn Thomas, Amanda Chae Hargis and
Lee Malcolm. Radio stations have always been volatile workplaces
where people come and go. But now they just go, replaced by
computerized systems with smooth-voiced phantoms that make all the
clever asides.

Kelly said that consultants have told him that the downsizing of
radio is no passing fad.

“Everybody (in radio) gets thinner and thinner. It’s not going back
the other way. That’s what they tell me,” he said./

Because that’s what being a business leader is all about: Finding out
the trends and slavishly following them.

Frankly, I don’t find myself too worked up about it.

Apologies to WOAM AM-1350 morning man Roger Monroe, but parent company
Kelly Communication is the armpit of Peoria broadcast media. It has been
for years.

The last best hope for decent local radio isn’t wishing that
corporations decide to start providing some sort of local content. It’s
for Michael Powell’s Federal Communication Commission to stop obsessing
about bare boobs and dirty words and /finally/ release small-power FM
licenses that would give listeners a voice that isn’t being provided by
those who buy and sell radio stations like pork bellies.

… because I forgot to do something today:

Thank you, veterans. And this includes those who have fallen, in
Afghanistan and Iraq and all the wars and police actions in which we
have fought since the birth of our nation.

I can sit here and complain about local, state and national politics
because of the sacrifices you made. With all the minor aggravations and
inconveniences in my life, it’s easy to lose sight of that.

I’m not going to my domain issues are resolved. I’ll crosspost this
edition of Newsbytes to to Blog Peoria!
as soon as I am able.

It’s been a slow news day, so there’s not much to report.

*Journal Star*

? Some gripes about council plan already

/This past Friday, as the council received a hefty packet of
materials accompanying another seven-page agenda, Sandberg told City
Manager Randy Oliver he doesn’t appreciate having to do two weeks of
work in one day.

“It’s all about shutting government up,” Sandberg said.

Meanwhile, at-large Councilman Chuck Grayeb believes there’s been “a
pattern” of burying policy issues on the consent agenda, which
normally is reserved for non-controversial items that can be passed
with a single vote. He, too, has made his feelings known to the city
manager and Mayor David Ransburg./

I find the use of the word “gripes” somewhat dismissive. Perhaps I’m
being insensitive. But perhaps not. The editorial position of the
/Journal Star/ has been that Ransburg, councilmember John Morris, et al,
represent the wise and fiscally responsible majority of the party, while
Sandburg and Grayeb represent the agitator, malcontent wing. The
opposite is closer to the truth.

Sandberg and Greyeb make valid points. Remember folks, Ransburg is
waist-deep into efforts to shut the public out of policy-making through
his work with the Peoria Civic Federation. And new city manager Randy
Oliver is more Ransburg’s choice than the “four horsemen.”

? Grave ceremony at Springdale

Springdale is a cemetery. “Grave” and “cemetery,” get it?

Now, I’m a fan of puns, but the subject matter — a ceremony honoring
fallen military — required a little more tact.

? Clever adventurer was ’student of life’

This is latest in their series honoring central Illinoisans who died in
Afghanistan and Iraq.

*WMBD 1470*

? Elmwood native back from Iraq; appears on Malone show

/An Elmwood Army Reservist says his time in Iraq was worth it.
Captain Steve Selman returned from iraq earlier this month. Selman,
appearing on Thursday’s John Malone (pictured) show on WMBD, says
his most rewarding time in Iraq was as commander of the Iraqi Civil
Defense Corps training more than 4-thousand iraqis to work with U.S.
forces in Baghdad. Selman says he also personally helped rebuild
schools, water treatment plants, electrical sites and medical
facilities. So do the Iraq’s really want the U.S. to leave Iraq??
Selman says not yet. “They want Americans to leave eventually – they
do not want Americans to leave before the job is done,” Selman said.
“They understand there’s more that needs to be done, more security
that needs to be done,” according to Selman. “They know if the
coalition pulls out there will be a civil war, more people will be
killed and there will be literally chaos.” /

Someone is obsessed with a certain body part
. How immature.

I finally got ahold of someone at my hosting company.

I have renewed billscontent.com.

Bad news; It will take 24-48 hours for the domain to “refresh.” There is
nothing they can do to speed it up. Of course, they denied all
responsibility for the screw up. It seems that even though the email
that never replied to is theirs, the email was sent from someone else
and they never reply to responses.

Therefore: It’s time to move.

Anyone have any experience with Netfirms?

I figure a new host couldn’t screw up as badly as these people. So, I’ll
give someone else a chance.

This is the second time I’ve had problems with these characters. In
neither case did they admit the problem was at there end.

Until then, Peoria Pundit is available only at peoriapundit.com. Blog
Peoria! isn’t available at all. Heinleinblog is available at
http://peoriapundit.com/heinleinblog.htm.

Some browsers will show the graphics on these sites because the images
are cashed. Others will see only broken links

I cannot tell you how furious I am right now.

Once I get migrated to a new site, I’ll tell you the name of the hosting
company. Right now, I don’t want to give these losers any excuse to get
mad at me.

*UPDATE:* If everything described above and in the earlier post weren’t
enough, I was just convinced to switch by the owner of the company.
Remember the bandwith problem I had because of the Nick Berg hits? Well,
the end of the month is approaching, so I followed her specific advice
and contected them about downgrading the account because I the storm of
hits had ended, and I didn’t want to get a bill for a second month at
the higher accoutn level.

Fine. She said. I’ve downgraded your account. You are now suspended for
exceeding bandwidth.

The fact that I did not swear at the women is a testament to my self
control.

After explaining in polite terms that she was several different kinds of
stupid, fixed the problem.

It’s all moot anyway, because by the time I’d get a another bill from
these morons, I’ll be with a different company.

I seriously await recomendations.

No more going with the cheapest guys.

I’m probably going to have to kiss off what I have already paid these
people. Hell, I’d pay double to never have to work with them again.

Oh, yeah. It’s obvious my site is screwed.

If you tried to here by way of billscontent.com, you are … well, not
here right now. You are at some crappy page announcing my domain name is
available. DAMN!

They can fix it tomorrow, or I’m out of here.

That’s FIX it, not promise to fix it. FIX it.

I’m just too effen mad right now to think about it.

And if any of my blog buddies can read this, PLEASE announce that my
site can still be found at peoriapundit.com.

A very not safe for work link .

Via Terpsboy .

http://peoriapundit.com/images/arabcomputer.jpg

“Cyber cafes are favourite hangouts for Pakistanis young and old to play
games, chat, e-mail, surf the web… or send terror emails and watch
hard porn.”

For all we know these fine young gentlemen are looking at perfectly
respectable Web pages, such as CNN, MSNBC or other pro-al Qaeda sites.

Maybe they’re just watching video of some American getting their head
cut off, or perhaps some older video of some harlot getting stoned to
death because the smiled in public or something.

I am having trouble with my hosting company.

They have sent me several urgent notices that I need to renew my domain
registration.

Fine. No problem. But when I log into their site to renew using my
trusty PayPal account, it either tells me I am not registered or that I
have zero domains. In reality, I have two.

Not to panic, I thought at the time. I have more than a week to get it
done. I’ll just submit a trouble ticket.

A week passed and I came home from work at 12:30 a.m. today to discover
that I can’t access anything with a URL under the billscontent.com
domain. Peoriapundit.com works just fine. Both use the same server space.

I finally am able to log onto my company’s trouble ticket area, and
there is no record of my original trouble ticket. So I submitted two
tickets, one to the billing department.

Of course, no one is answering my urgent pleas in the chat room, even
though it shows different company reps are there.

What do you think the chances are that anyone if going to reply on
Sunday or that they can get my domain back up? Or that they will
acknowledge that this is their screw up?

In the mean time, I apologize to anyone who is looking at a truly
screwed up version of my site.

There are not words in the English language — non-obscene words, anyway
– that describe how truly angry I am right now. I struggled with these
same issues with this people NOT TWO WEEKS AGO when I needed some
emergency bandwidth because of the Nick Berg video hits I was getting. I
was maybe an hour or two away from exhausting my bandwidth before I got
someone to acknowledge that I was having a very real problem. And even
this it was the same story from them: Submit a trouble ticket.

And now, here we go again.

The problem is that when I am finally able to catch someone’s attention
over there, they provide quick help. But they have a problem responding
to ordinary trouble tickets.

Long time readers remember what happened when I exceeded bandwidth at my
original site. I was off the Web for months. I will not tolerate having
that happen again.

I expend and demand any company that I pay hundreds of dollars to every
year to respond to my requests for assistance. I simply will not put up
with this. I am trying to run a serious site here, and that won’t happen
if my hosting company lets my site do down because of their negligence.

I will migrate my whole freeking site and all my domains somewhere else
if this problem is not resolved before I leave for work tomorrow at 2
p.m. I just freeking KNOW that there will be no one in the office until
Tuesday.

I work too damn hard for my money to be treated this poorly.

I expect 24/7 no-bullsh*t support from my next hosting company. Anyone
have suggestions. I need 10-15 Gigs of bandwidth, multiple MySQL ’s and
preferably Fantastico to make adding blogs easy.

I’ll pay extra to avoid this repetitive crap.

I’d better stop cause I’m just getting angrier and angrier.