John Mays
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Category Archives: Miscellany
Normal
“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”
― Ellen Goodman
Interviews
This is a little housekeeping post. A list of people with whom I have done interviews. A search by name should take you to these. This link will pull them all up.
- Mary Quass – Radio (2003)
- Mike McKean – Journalism (2005)
- Dan Shelley – Radio/Journalism (2005)
- Kevin O’Keefe – Lawyer Blogs (2006)
- Dan Arnall – Journalism (2006)
- Ben Brogdon – Brushes with Near Greatness (2006)
- Dan Shelley – WCBS-TV (2006)
- Dave Shepherd – Radio (2007)
- Mike Spooner – Animation (2008)
- Jason Rogers – Fez-O-Rama (2008)
- Jonathan Brownfield – Sports Photography (2009)
- Joe Bankhead – KBOA (interview by Jeff Wheeler) (2009)
- Tim Robyn – State of Missouri websites (2009)
- Paul Roe – British Ink (tattoos) (2009)
- Clarence Lee Sherrill – Concrete Lawn Art (2009
- Tessie Hubbard – “Panty Mython” (2009)
- Tony Messenger – Covering state capitol (2009)
- Matthew Howard – Photography (2009)
- Keith Povall – UK buddy (2010)
- Jay Parks – Truck Drummer
- Bob Priddy – His career at Learfield (2014)
- Gaylon Watson – KBOA (2014)
- David Gerstmann – Beginning of WireReady (2017)
- David Brazeal – RepublicTigerSports.com (2017)
- Allen Hammock – Straylight (2017)
- Tom Boman – Learfield Sports (2017)
- Ash Furrow – Mastodon (2017)
- Landis Duffett – Teaching Chinese in high school (2018)
“I’d like to cancel my New York Times subscription”
Spoiler: They couldn’t cancel my subscription because “our system is down.” The lady promised to call me back. Stay tuned.
We are our junk
Is there anything more revealing of who we really are than the shit we leave by the curb for the spring trash pick-up?
Woman falls out of chair while on the air
How was your day, Ian?
In chapter 8 of The Inevitable, Kevin Kelly talks about Remixing. “Unbundling existing products into their most primitive parts and then recombining in all possible ways.” He spends a good bit of time talking about video and the amazing new ways we will find to create and use it.
I will have my AI (we’ll all have one, or more than one) pull all of the available video of Ian Emmerson. He lives in the UK somewhere. Don’t know where. Or what he does for a living. But there’s a bazillion cameras in the UK so there will be no shortage of video.
My AI will edit each day’s video into a montage (of sorts). Ian waiting for one of those big red double-decker buses; Ian trudging into the building where he works; Ian in his cubicle; Ian getting fish and chips from a curb-side truck; Ian (alone) in the pub, having a pint before going back to his ‘flat.’ Pretty much the same stuff every day with an interesting character tossed in from time to time. Or, perhaps, just a character.
Each ‘episode’ will end with one of Ian’s songs, like the one below. I’ll let the AI pick the tune, based on that day’s ‘footage.’ I’ll probably let the AI pick a name for the series but I kind of like, “How was your day, Ian?”
Timeline of computer stuff
I’ve got a thing about calendars. That’s not quite right. I’ve got a thing about remembering knowing when things happened and I’m really bad at remembering stuff. Even important stuff. So I kept a journal for a while and when DayTimers came along I kept one with me all the time for meetings and notes and all the rest. I think I mentioned my DayTimer purge. These days Google Calendar is my tool-of-choice for keeping up with everything. With links to Google Drive. I came across the computer related list below while working on another project.
- 1985 – First computer. Zenith with two 7.5 in floppy drives (no HD)
- 1/6/89 – Jefferson City Computer Club meeting
- 10/31/89 – Bought computer made by CompuAdd?
- 12/6/89 – Rick Williams, MSC, Columbia, MO (1st ref?)
- 4/21/92 – Purchased computer for $3,525.86. 33/386 4 meg; 101/VGA Samsung; 16 SCSI controller
- 11/16/93 – Computer Concepts demo (?)
- 11/16/92 – Switched to AmiPro (word processor/desktop publishing) on office computer
- 6/20/94 – First “notebook” computer; purchased from Bill Bahr (Iowa) for $1700. Made by Toshiba. Base price: $1400; Fax/modem PCMCIA card: $300
- 11/21/94 – MCI Internet service – $49.95 for software; $19.95/mo – 7 hours free; $3.00 per hour after that. 9600 baud/14400
- 12/1/95 – Gateway 2000 computer, $3,100
- 4/24/95 – Comdex, Atlanta, GA
- 5/8/95 – New ISP (Internet Service Provider). Summit Information Services, Holts Summit, MO. $30/mo
- 6/3/96 – Comdex, Las Vegas NV
- 6/10/96 – Ordered IBM ThinkPad
- 8/23/96 – Ordered ACT 3.0 (contact manager)
- 4/20/98 – Comdex, Chicago, IL
- 4/19/99 – Comdex, Las Vegas, NV
- 7/1/99 – Shut down Straylight
- 4/21/04 – Signed up for Gmail
- 5/7/04 – First home wifi
- 4/17/06 – First MacBook
- 1/6/11 – Bought Google and Apple stock. 35 shares Google @ $569; 54 shares of Apple @ $368.03. Our investment guys talked us into selling some. “Too heavy in tech”
- 6/15/11 – Google sent me a Chromebook to evaluate. Sent two for some reason.
- 10/28/11 – Closed PayPal account
- 6/15/12 – MacBook Pro delivered
Iowa Network Services
On October 31, 1994 I started using Iowa Network Services for my my ISP (Internet Service Provider). This was part of a barter (service for ads) between Radio Iowa (our company) and INS. I believe I had dial in to an 800 number.
Things obsessive calendar keepers know
I purchased my first VCR on 12/31/84. An electric typewriter on 3/19/85 (Brother?). And my first digital camera on 6/15/85 (Pentax)