Tom Anthony Personal Blog

OOOOO K sir I’ll let Senator Jim Webb know…

I was hoping for a town hall meeting but what I got was… “Well the Senator is going to Asia for a two week tour starting Sunday, and even the people who work here have not been told of a certain date for any Town Hall events”.  I asked the young man to pass on my “strongly opposed” sentiment to the Health Care bill and the Cap and Trade legislation – and the answer I got was “OOOOO K sir I’ll let Senator Jim Webb know…”  It truly sounded like the Senator’s aid through I was some kind of a nut.

I did fill out the message form on Senator Webb’s website.

“Senator I am really disappointed you have not scheduled any meetings with your constituents to discuss the health care issue.   Are you avoiding a public debate, or perhaps do you feel it is not important? I am not thrilled as a taxpayer to finance your two-week, five-nation tour of Asia “to explore opportunities to advance U.S. interests in Burma and the region”.   If anything sir I would have hoped you could seek out ways to advance U.S. interests here at home where there are grave concerns about our ability to maintain even this weak economy.  What could be more important than listening to the people who elected you?”

http://webb.senate.gov/contact/

And here is an interesting account of someone else who tried to get the same information:

http://swacgirl.blogspot.com/2009/08/jim-webb-has-no-townhalls-scheduled.html

The best example of a cowardly politician is Senator Mark Warner who is only taking moderated questions on Google – no meetings – no live response – in fact, so far no response…

Here is a typical question posed by someone in Richmond… “Sen Warner, you said during July you would answer our questions. It is now August, but I don’t see any responses. Also, you have no public meetings scheduled to discuss healthcare during the Aug. break. Are you afraid to face your constituents?”

After figuring out which button to push I submitted this question: “Senator, why are you so afraid to answer our questions about healthcare?”

BTW You have to log in with a (free) Google Account to participate http://moderator.appspot.com/?embed=#0

There does not appear to be a place on Senator Warner’s website to contact him by email – but if you want to call or write to the Honorable Senator Mark R. Warner;

101 W. Main Street
Suite 4900
Norfolk, VA 23510
Phone Number: 757-441-3079
Fax Number: 757-441-6250

-or-

459A Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-2023
Fax: 202-224-6295

http://warner.senate.gov./public/

here is another interesting blog entry about Senator Warner:

http://swacgirl.blogspot.com/2009/08/will-mark-warner-face-virginia-citizens.html

And next I went to Congressman J. Randy Forbes (VA-04) site… apparently Congressman Forbes has scheduled a meeting… sort of. It’s a free “Seniors Protection Workshop” to be held at the Chesapeake City Council Chambers on Wednesday, August 26th at 10:00 a.m.  It is sort of about health care, but not covering the current health care legislation. In fact is it intended mostly for senior citizens according to his web site.

(https://forbes.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=140880)

Here is the question I posed to Congressman Forbes:

“Are you scheduling any public town hall type hearings dealing with health care? Our two senators are apparently under their desk on this issue – one is fleeing on a two week Asia junket with no town hall meetings scheduled, while the other one is only taking questions through Google Moderator and since July has answered exactly none.”

I would like to make my voice heard – but so far I can’t find anyone to listen.  I mean literally – can not find anyone to listen… I am not just a frustrated citizen – there really does appear to be no one in Washington listening – here is a post revealing that with the notable exception of Democrat Tom Perriello,  pretty much no Virginia Politician has any plans whatsoever to face the citizens this summer: (it is a PDF file)

http://www.richmondteaparty.com/TownHallMeetingsAug2009-1.pdf

You people in Washington should be absolutely ashamed of yourself.

In October 1994, the Star Trek Association of Towson, a fan club in Towson, Maryland, sponsored “The Big E Con,” a convention held aboard the carrier Enterprise while the ship was at its home port of Norfolk, Virginia. The events featured tours of the ship and appearances by Star Trek notables including James Doohan, or “Scotty” on the original series.

At the time I was the production Director for WFOG radio. The week preceding the convention as part of the pre-promotion I had the opportunity to interview Mr. Doohan by phone at his home in Redmond Washington. I tried to keep the interview interesting by focusing on Jimmy Doohan, and not just the Character he played on Star Trek – but you be the judge. Here it is, almost 18:00 unedited and real life. There is a point where he corrects my pronunciation of his last name – his son called to ask for money during the interview, this was the real deal.

 Tom Anthony Interviews Jimmy Doohan [17:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The following week I toured the real USS Enterprise with some of the convention celebs. By some weird stroke of luck I remembered where I stashed some pictures I took during that tour. In this picture I am standing with Actress Terry Farrell from Deep Space Nine, Michael O’Hare the original Commander of Babylon 5, Herman F. Zimmerman the Chief Production Designer for Star Trek Next Generation and DS9, and another actress who’s name totally escapes me. But I think I did pretty good remembering Farrell, O’Hare, and Zimmerman after 15 years!

My daughter is home schooled, so from year to year I buy various text books and computer programs as part of her curriculum.  Sonlight Curriculum Ltd. out of Littleton , CO has always been a dependable source. They specialize in courses with a Christian focus… and I have to believe the following is 100% true. But true or with a slight marketing spin, the following is one of the best email marketing letters I have received recently.

Subject: Explanation of how to get $25 off your Sonlight order (for a very limited time)

Dear Tom,

I am deeply embarrassed. Yesterday afternoon, in preparing my letter about five reasons to order sooner rather than later, we accidentally attached the wrong subject line to the email you received. I had prepared that subject line for a different email headed to a group of people who had never purchased from Sonlight before. I wanted to see if a special offer might help these non-customers place their first order.

The subject line for that email offered $25 off the recipient’s Sonlight order. The email these non-customers received specified a time limit on the offer, as well as a minimum order total of $250.

This morning I discovered we sent that subject line to everyone who has bought anything from Sonlight in the last two years!

Yikes … NOT what we had intended! Talk about expensive mistakes.

But I talked with John and Sarita, who said, “You gave your word. You must fulfill your promise … Since you’ve got lemons, do what you can to make some lemonade.”

So we’re going to do something we pray doesn’t completely swamp our computer system and warehouse crew. I can imagine it may slow our ability to process orders for a few days, but…

We have decided to honor the promise of my last email to you in the following manner:

Since you’ve ordered from us before, we’re extending the offer (originally intended for families new to Sonlight) to you for a very limited time. Place your order worth $250 or more (not including shipping) no later than 11:59 p.m. (MDT) tomorrow (7/23) and you will receive $25 off. That’s in addition to any Sonlighter Club discounts you may receive.

Just enter PRXDY in the box marked “Special Offer Code” at Step 2 of check out.

I hope this little bit of “lemonade” is a blessing to you.

Sincerely,

Tim Heil

Customer Relations Manager

Sonlight Curriculum, Ltd.

For many years I have had a box of old cassette tapes in my closet – or attic – or wherever was out of the way at the time… I finally went out and found a cassette deck at the thrift shop the other day and began transcribing them to digital.   Mainly because at some point the cassettes actually lose the information stored on them.  Audio cassettes, VHS tapes, 8 tracks – there is a reason they are not around anymore.

Each uses the same technology originally known as “Magnetophon” and invented by the Germans during the 1930′s. (more info)  The information is stored by passing a generated magnetic field to a ribbon of plastic tape impregnated with some form of ferrous material.  The little do-dad that generates the magnetic field is called a record head. The tape becomes magnetized in a certain pattern.   Then when passed in front of a similar do-dad called a playback head the magnetic field is transformed back once again into an audio signal.   In my mind this was a kind of magic– especially for the time.

Well the problem is that the magnetic tape is wound into a spool inside the cassette. Eventually the magnetism passes from where it is stored on the tape to the section it is wrapped around. At some point the magnetic field reaches a sort of equilibrium and the original sound or picture is not retrievable.  So the dozens of recordings I had stored away will actually fade away.

Not Ed Scales

I started running the tapes through my studio to get them in MP3 format and found some interesting stuff. Mostly old air checks of me in the early 80′s on the radio in Lakeland Florida. Routinely each radio announcer would record their show on a cassette deck that was wired to record only when the microphone was turned on.  In the jargon of the business it was sometimes called a “telescope” as it condensed an entire workday into a 30 or 40 minute recording. You can hear the song starting and then the tape jumps to the end of the song when the announcer next turns on the mike. The program director would then review your“telescope” to give you constructive critique – or in my case to tell me to stop talking so much.

The one below is pretty long – 45 minutes! It was a show I did on WQPD on a Monday night somewhere in March or April of 1983. I had to figure that out by some clues on the tape. A really talented high school kid named Ed Scales was my guest and we did several improvised “bits”.  Basically I got on the control room studio phone a pretended to talk to a character that Ed performed from the adjoining studio.  We did this live and without rehearsal. In fact in the one where I “interview” Maurice Gibb I had no idea what Ed was going to do. He came on the phone in a falsetto voice that totally cracked me up. Since Ed was in school I knew the recording was made before June. One of the last comments I make on the recording introduces the number one hit song of the day, Billy Jean by Michael Jackson. That was not released until February of 1983 – thus this recording had to be made in March or April.

The last eight minutes of the recording is the air check of the next announcer, Woody Boyer.

 WQPD Aircheck [45:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

So if you read the last entry I owe you a follow up. I did go back to the office last night. The alarm did go off again. I did put the correct code in. It did not work.

When I called my boss at home for the second time on the same day I needed to write down the temporary pass code. While reaching for the ball point pen sitting on my nice new oak (well oak-ish) credenza in my darkened office, a thin blue stream of ink left a gooey filament all the way from the credenza to my new desk to the new leather bound executive pad there. But the Coup de grâce was the moment I walked into the now lit and populated office this morning. Our Office Manager gave me a wink and asked which number I used on the alarm pad. I told her. She tried it. It worked.

Damn.

O.K. – this is how to start a Monday… My office computer was giving me a lot of grief last week – displaying the dread “Blue Screen of Death” several times in a row. So Thursday night I went out and purchased a replacement box.  After being out of town for the weekend I decided to come in bright and early to set up the new computer and not eat into office time on Monday… so around  6:00 AM I entered our new office and proceeded to enter my alarm code… except I did not push something or I pushed the wrong button. Then the Fire Alarm went off.
The Fire Chief was very nice. Now I know to keep my glasses on when entering the building and that the overhead lights take several seconds to come on… and double triple quadruple check which buttons to push in which order.

Then I turned on my flighty computer to find it had not reset text in an out of office message. I had been monitoring my email by blackberry  Thursday afternoon and Friday while traveling – but with the flighty computer turned off I did not know the auto responder function was still on until….  134 emails went out at 6:34am Letting everyone know I would be out of the office from December 19th 2008 through the 22nd.  Before I could answer back a did receive a lot of emails which let me know it was already 2009.

The day got better after that. (Well so far anyway)

There certainly have been a lot of changes lately. This is a time for introspection for me personally as I begin a new life.

The focus of my world recently has been to transition to living solo which is going well. I am now living in Chesapeake, close to my office. My professional life continues to flourish along with the success of Web Teks.

I guess the biggest news is the Open Source Music Project. With more time as of late to devote to my music, it brings me great comfort – and surprisingly –  others seem to enjoy it as well.

The Open Source Music Project was actually germinated during my association with a group knows at A2 in 2006-2007. Although I am obligated to leave out most of the details, A2 is an effort to launch a new kind of digital entertainment. As far as I know that is still an effort in progress.

So what the heck is open source music?

I made it up. But the concept is to allow the free use of any individual tracks as the ingredients for a new song. When you record and produce your own music it is usually a series of separate audio tracks blended together. My inspiration came from getting such different results when mixing certain tracks together and leaving some out of the mix. Some of them are not so great – but a few really shine.

On the Open Source Music Project site I encourage anyone interested to download these tracks and use them any way they like (under the Creative Commons Attribution License). If you take a listen let me know how abysmal that stuff really is. You may comment on any track on that site and if you really are a glutton for punishment subscribe to the RSS feed.

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
Albert Einstein 

Austin is Tom and Dyanne Walkers son, and a budding Steven Spielberg. This video was part of a school project. I just wish I had the five million bucks to purchase a cloaking device for myself !