Sleepless in Boulder
Yes I know, bad pun.
I can’t help it. I tried to go to sleep, but my brain kept whirring around. So I decided I’d blog some.
So Tim the Enchanter released a new episode for us. I’ve made it available for subscribers only. It’s 30 minutes of him ranting about the holidays. It’s really good stuff. I love that guy.
I realized a couple weeks ago that I need to set up a good system for actually keeping track of our subscribers, so that I know when their subscriptions started, how much they paid and when they expire. So on Tuesday I was bored at work (it’s been a slow month) and whipped up a “subscriber management” program. So now I can open up the program and get a quick list of all the subscribers in order of soonest expiring, with totals of number of subscribers and total money collected. Then I created a “management” form that lets me add subscribers with their start date, end date and initial payment, then they go into a grid. Then if I click on them in that grid a lower grid shows up that lists all the payments and dates the subscriber has made, and I can add payments as they come in, and it adjusts the end date of the subscription. Add to that that I include the email address and forum username with that, and I can easily turn off subscriber benefits if someone chooses not to renew. Now I feel much better about the subscription service. It’s good to be a super-geek.
Also on the subscription front, I added a new page on the main site with details about the subscriptions as well as two options, the initial $5/month option, and there is now a $50/year option, both work through Paypal and should be good for those who really believe in supporting AP. *hint hint*. I don’t actually know which I would prefer. The $5/month is more constant revenue, which helps to offset the monthly costs, but the $50 looks nice. Speaking of money, I have to start doing taxes for AP here soon. That should be fun. Woohoo! Thank goodness for TurboTax Online. I highly recommend checking them out if you’re an adult and don’t like doing all the paperwork. I did my own taxes by hand for about four years, but then I decided I understood it well enough and switched to doing it online. Actually, that’s a bit of a lie, I switched to online because I had to start filling out a lot more paperwork to handle capital gains/losses from stock sales, and short-term/long-term interest, and it was much quicker and easier to do it online.
Privacy has been an issue at the top of my mind recently. One of our listeners (who shall remain nameless, I’ll call this listener pat) has someone found out my real name. Whether pat got it from one of the few listeners who is lucky enough that I IM with them, or whether pat used more devious methods I don’t know, but it’s been an issue before, with pat using my name. Well recently pat decided to do some things that caused me to become seriously irritated. Such as advertising my real name and threatening to track down my address and phone number. Luckily I know pats real name and pats mothers real name, and was able to find pats mothers phone number. Armed with that and some research into California’s cyber-stalking laws, I felt comfortable that if pat wouldn’t cease and desist that I could take some sort of action, whether it would be having and uncomfortable conversation with pats mother, or contacting a lawyer and filing charges in California. Now let me be clear in that I hate doing stuff like this, but pat has a serious history of doing things like this, and nothing we have tried has worked thus far to deter pat from mischief. Luckily, my threat of action seems to have given pat pause, and my name is no longer advertised. I just wish that people would respect the fact that the staff wishes to remain private. We made a conscious decision that we did not want our real names associated with our show, because I knew of another podcaster who’s boss listened to his show, and then he was fired because of the content. Not that our show is anything that is career-limiting, but it’s the principle. I do what I can to keep my name removed from AP, but there will always be ways to find it, that’s the nature of information, it can’t truly be stopped. I just wish that those people who feel so compelled to search it out could keep it to themselves and not harass us. I have the very unfortunate luck to have taken on the “face” role of AP, so it’s my name that’s on everything, whereas Batou and Chigo are completely removed from that. Any leaks of their info are unrelated to the site.
On a happier note, Japanese class started back up this week. I’m currently in 2nd semester of 4th year Japanese at CU Boulder. We have a small class this semester, about 11 people maybe, and look to hav a very good teacher. I’m excited for this semester. I love learning. Period. (I know I used an actual period, but I felt like reiterating it in case some people didn’t get it.)
So it’s been cold here lately, as in the past month. I love winter, and it actually feels like it here. But the problem with Colorado winters in the Front Range is usually that snow melts within a couple days, because it warms back up. Well it hasn’t warmed back up, and we’ve received three significant snowfalls in the last month. So why isn’t there 3-4 feet of snow in my backyard? I’ll tell you why. We’ve had a few days in the 50’s, which doesn’t help the snowpack. But I think the main reason is the humidity in the air, or more specifically the lack there of. The front range of Colorado is “High Desert”, which means it’s at the West end of the great plains, right next to the mountains, but the precipitation never quite makes it to us, it either gets stuck at the Great Divide in the Rockies coming from the West, or spends itself over the plains coming from the East. So we end up with a flat area right at the base of the mountains, at 5000 feet, with 5% humidity if we’re lucky. So I think that the snow is just evaporating. It’s been in the low single digits here at night, usually warming up a bit during the day, with wind. I HATE the wind. But anyways, evaporation. I think that the snow is evaporating, because there is so little humidity in the air that it is literally absorbing the show. Quite a big difference from Alaska, from where I hail. In Alaska the humidity usually hovers around 50%, which means we get a lot of precipitation. Of course, sitting right on the gulf, with the warm water from Japan doesn’t hurt that. So winter to me means temperatures in the teens/twenties and lots and lots of snow. Heavy wet snow. Snow that doesn’t leave until April, when it all melts in two weeks, and the roads look like the surface of the asteroid in Armageddon. We call that season “Breakup”, as potholes open up in the ice big enough to swallow cars, and pedestrians have to watch for walls of water pushed up by passing trucks.
I remember one day when I was in High School, in the mid-90’s. On the front page of the Anchorage Daily News there was a picture of a guy on the side of the road, cowering away from a 10ft high wave of water that was about to crash over him sprayed up by a passing truck. Amazing picture. Turns out it’s actually against the law in Anchorage to spray people like that in breakup. So since we had the guys license number because of the picture, the police tracked him down. What’s the punishment for that law? The guy had to pay for the other guys dry-cleaning. How awesome is that?
The photographers for the Daily News were really great. I was an Alpine Ski Racer growing up. I got pretty good, was ranked in the top 100 juniors in the nation, top junior in Alaska for Slalom my Senior year in high school. Anyways, there was a race either my Junior or Senior year of high school at this craptacular hill in Anchorage called “Hilltop”. It was literally maybe .6 miles of almost flat, and then 100 yards of steep at the end. So races there were all about riding as flat of a ski as possible, and using as little edge as possible, and using the right wax. Anyways, there was a slalom there one weekend, two days, two races. I DNF’d both days. (Did Not Finish). I had the worst luck. Right at the end where the flat transitioned into steep I hooked a gate and lost a ski. Same gate, same place both days. The second day I actually fell and broke my thumb. Lame. But ever worse, there was a photographer there who snapped a pic of me with my lost ski upside-down and backwards, about knee high flying parallel to the ground. It was classic. And I end up on the front page of the sports section. Of all the fucking pictures to get in the paper, it was the one of me crashing. I actually have the page cut out and framed hanging on my wall upstairs. But the silver lining on this story is that later that week my sister and I were driving down to Alyeska (our main mountain) for training and were going a bit too fast on the highway (read 30mph over) and were pulled over. The cop started writing me a ticket, and then took a good look at me. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” he asks. “Um, I was on the front page of the Sunday sports section last weeked, crashing” I reply. “Oh yeah!” he exclaims. “So why are you speeding?” he asks. “Because we’re late getting out of town to get to our training” I reply. “Ok, well that’s important, so I’ll drop the ticket to 19 over so you don’t have to go to court, just slow down some.” 2nd Best cop story ever.
1st Best cop story ever. I’m driving to down to Dallas in the fall of ‘98 to visit TCU and watch a volleyball tournament. It’s 6am and I’m speeding down the Interstate towards Dallas, and I get pulled over by a Ranger going maybe 15 over. He walks up to the car, looks at me, looks at the backseat (where there were three passed out women) and asks me to step out of the car. I go around back with him and his partner, I’m in a bright yellow fraternity T-shirt with the arms ripped off, slicked back bleached hair, and sunglasses on, and I’ve a car full of women who currently looked passed out. I started sweating.
What’s your reason for the hurry this morning? I said that I had been driving all night (true) and that I was headed to Dallas. “Oh yeah?” exclaimed one of the rangers, “you going to the UT vs. OU game?” Not even knowing there was a UT vs. OU game that weekend (one of the biggest college rivalries there is), I proceeded to lie my ass off. “Sure am, I got some fraternity brothers at TCU that scored some tickets, so we can watch the Longhorns kick some ass, and I don’t want to miss all the tailgating.” “I hear that”, said one of the rangers (I shit you not). The other one chuckled and said “well, just slow down some, and have fun” and with that they let me go with just the verbal warning. Thank god for Texas addiction to football.
Ok, looking back over this it started as site stuff, and appeared to have morphed into a stream of consciousness post. I guess I’ll end this now as I should really be going to sleep. Catch you all on the flip-side, and to the subscribers, I’ll see you all at the recording of Episode 63 on Friday.
All right!
- Funny MuffinsThats one hell of a blog post dude!
Your blogs gotta be the best ever.
Payce,
FM