secureserver.net machines are still rejecting the Internet OTR Digest routinely. I have made various attempts at contacting people there, and as yet have been completely unable to speak to anything approximating a human being. If you are leasing webspace or have your mail services through Go Daddy, and are not receiving the OTR Digest, please file a support ticket to complain about their rejection, and feel free to give them my contact info. I’ll happily help them figure out what screwy content filter is misfiring to reject a family-friendly list like the Digest, if they’ll only have the decency to have an open contact point. (And if they don’t fix this, consider hosting your personal or small-business website elsewhere; there are lots of reasonably-priced registrars and web-hosting services that don’t use such draconian content-filters. I mean, think about it…if they are rejecting the Digest, what other legitimate mail are they bouncing?)

And on the illness front, as I mentioned on Twitter but don’t think I did here, I’ve been diagnosed with the flu. Which flu? Dunno…apparently in this area there are enough strains running around that the CDC is bored and no longer requesting strain tests. I haven’t seen the appearance of a curly tail, though, so I’m thinking Squirrel Flu (hey, we have a lot of ‘em running around the trees in the neighborhood).

Still, it’s been pretty miserable. I can’t even say definitively that I have “rounded the corner” what with all the coughing and nonsense, although I’m no longer feverish and am spending a little more time out of bed every day. It’ll be d*mned nice to get back in-the-groove, and catch up on all the stuff I’ve let slide while feeling like death-warmed-over. Heck, I’m two days behind on listening to The Bob Edwards Show, so you know I’m sick.

From The CNN Wire: Actor Karl Malden dead at 97, manager says

Actor Karl Malden died Wednesday at age 97, his manager said. Links to obits will be added once they are posted. Anyone know if Mr. Malden had any OTR credits?

Edit: New York Times Obit.
CNN Obit.

From the New York Times Gadgetwise Blog: Your Sirius XM Bill to Jump About $2

Gotta love this pull-quote: “It’s not a conundrum: prices go up, services go down, and I go back free FM.”

And if you read my comment on the Gadgetwize blog, you’ll see I’ve decided - July 29th, I will no longer be a full XM Satellite Radio subscriber. More on what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, and how you, too, can stop paying the ever-increasing rates for less and less service in the upcoming weeks.

The last few days, I’ve been down with this URI that has me hacking more than when I used to smoke. I’ve only been crawling to the computer once or twice a day (if that), and am way behind in my email, so naturally things conspired today to require me to push two issues of the Internet OTR Digest out to get important information to the subscribers. I promise, as soon as I feel a bit more human, I’ll catch up on the email. I’ll also have some thoughts about the two great friends of the Old-Radio hobby that were reported lost to us today, Ken Roberts and Gale Storm.

But for now, it’s back to bed.

From CNN: Ed McMahon dies at 86

From the article: “Ed McMahon, the longtime pitchman and Johnny Carson sidekick whose ‘Heeeeeeerre’s Johnny!’ became a part of the vernacular, has died. Ed McMahon had suffered several health problems in recent years. McMahon passed away peacefully shortly after midnight at the Ronald Reagan/UCLA Medical Center, his publicist, Howard Bragman, said Tuesday.”

Not certain why, but secureserver.net is currently rejecting The Internet OTR Digest with, “The message was rejected because it contains prohibited virus or spam content.”

I have no idea what’s triggering the filter, but I do know secureserver.net handles mail for a number of hosting sites and small personal domains, so if you haven’t received a Digest in the past week and you have a small personal or business domain, might want to check with your provider to see if your mail goes through secureserver.

From The New York Times: E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress

From the article: “The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said.”

1984 is comming a little late…

BREADBOX64, a Twitter client for the Commodore 64

Oh, yeah, building clients for those modern machines. How comes no one has written one for the Sinclair ZX-81, huh? Can’t fit it in 1K of RAM?

Jack French, he of the Metro Washington OTR Club and author of Private Eyelashes, sends the following:

Up until a few years ago, Rick Spurlock was a regular poster on the
Digest. His family recently contacted the Metro Washington OTR Club
with a request to get in touch with him. Our only contact with him
was publishing in the August 2000 issue of RADIO RECALL his list of
radio shows that made it to TV. We’ve had no contact with him since.

So, Rick, if you’re out there somewhere, please email me and I’ll
relay the family message. Or if anyone has any current
contact information for Rick, please let me know.

Send the info to me personally via the “Contact the Webmaster” form on the left, and I’ll see Jack gets it ASAP.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before…

A few months ago, SiriusXM violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the FCC ruleset governing the merger by raising the rates on secondary radios in the family plan by $2.00/month, and by adding a $3.00/month charge for the on-line “service.” This caused me to reluctantly cancel one of my three subscriptions.

Then they began to charge a $15 fee for equipment swaps (these have always been free, at least on the XM side) they don’t even tell their subscribers about! This means if you buy a new radio for any reason and change the ID of the subscribed radio, they will charge you $15 for the privilege, just as they charge a $15 fee to initially register your radio. I don’t quite understand it, but you need to pay them for the right to pay them (?!), even if your radio is stolen or lost, and you spend a boatload of money to buy a new radio.

Now continuing the “nickel-and-diming” of their loyal subscribers, effective July 28, 2009 they are raising the rates for primary radios for everyone not on a lifetime plan by $2.00/month (actually $1.98), and “family plan” radios by $1.00/month (actually $0.97). Of course, they are prohibited by the FCC until next year from raising the rates, but they are doing it anyway.

How can they get away with this?
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From Fox News: “‘Kill Bill star David Carradine was found dead in a Bangkok hotel room Wednesday, his manager told FOX News Thursday.

His manager told FOX News that it is believed the actor died of natural causes.

Carradine, 73, was staying in Bangkok while shooting a movie. The film crew became aware of his absence when they went to dine out at a restaurant yesterday. When a producer went to his room, he discovered that the actor had died.

Carradine was best known for his role in the television series ‘Kung Fu.’”

It’s finally happened; I learned about something by watching the trending topics cloud on Twitter via Twitscoop. CNN doesn’t have confirmation of this as of this writing.

Edit 10:29am: AP now reporting the death a suicide, according to unnamed Bangkok police sorces, as per The Nation’s web site.

A while back, I mentioned how KFC screwed up twice, first by providing a coupon without considering the all-too-obvious consequences, and then compounding their error by denying the coupon at their restaurants. While I whined about it here, I also contacted them directly to let them know the level of my disgust.

They finally got back to me today, and in one of the most ironic responses I’ve received from “corporate america,” offered me…wait for it…a coupon. Yes, that’s right, kids - if I rush and get my full name and address into their systems by end-of-business on Wednesday (hum…it took them over four weeks to respond to me, and now I have to answer them in two days?), they will send me a coupon for the same thing they refused a coupon for at the beginning of last month.

My response:

No, thank you. Your company has made it abundantly clear it may pick-and-choose
whatever coupon it wishes to honor on a whim, making any coupon from you effectively
worthless - you denied the others for no reason, why would I believe you would honor
this one? I will continue to patronize restaurants I can trust, avoid those I clearly
can not, and urge others to do the same.

So consider yourself urged. ;)

NB: Picked up chicken the other night from Royal Farm stores, a gas station with a kitchen in it, along with some excellent potato wedges for a little less than KFC, and it was closer to the house, too. The only loser here is…yep…KFC.  –cfs3

From ZeroPaid: RIAA vs. Public Radio - Performance Rights Act Moves Ahead

This is frightening…if I read this right, even classical music stations would need to pay the RIAA “tax” for the right to broadcast non-copyrighted music. I’m thinking a note to our congresscritters would be a really good idea.

From TorrentFreak: The War on Sharing: Why the FSF Cares About RIAA Lawsuits

This is a fascinating guest-post by John Sullivan, Operations Manager at the Free Software Federation who explains why the FSF thinks these cases impact not just music, but also free software and its technology. And, by extension, you.

From Wired: FBI ‘Going Dark’ with New Advanced Surveillance Program

Yipe. Big Brother has arrived.

Anyone who has known me since my misspent youth is asking me if I’m going to go to the Star Trek movie opening in theaters nationwide. So to put this at rest once-and-for-all, the answer is a definitive no. But let me take a moment to explain why I’m not going to be in the theater, and why I probably won’t bother watching it on DVD, either, even if it ends up in the $1/night Redbox.

First off, I do not go to movie theaters anymore. There’s no point. I mean, c’mon, the “communal experience” of going to the movies of my youth is long gone, replaced by louts talking loudly throughout the film, cell phones ringing, and annoyances of every shape and size. Children are no longer taught to be quiet and respectful, and their children are even less well-behaved - “feral” would not be too harsh a description for some of the children I’ve experienced. I think the last film I saw in a theater was the original Superman when it returned to the Hiway Theater (no longer in existence) for a nostalgia release. You can get me to go to the legitimate theater, but movies? Not bloody likely, since I like to actually see and hear the film, not the audience.
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From the AP via the San Francisco Chronicle: PA high school orders shot glasses as prom favors.

No comment.

KFC is promoting the hell out of their unfried chicken…and made a deal with Oprah to promote it with a free two-piece Kentucky Grill Chicken dinner. All you had to do was go to Oprah’s website, download the coupon, and print it. (No more than 4 times, please.)

Yeah, no one can see a problem with that coming…

Gee, Oprah is kinda popular. Lots of people watch Oprah. Lots of people ran to their computers and printed out coupons; emailed friends and co-workers to let them know about the free lunch. KFC retail locations are clearly going to be shoveling out a lot of free meals. What’s a company to do?

Simple. Refuse to honor the coupons.

Seriously, how bone-headed is that from a public-relations perspective? We stop by KFC frequently (I’m partial to the meal bowls, Katie likes the twisters) for a quick meal when Annie’s running late from work. Last night, after an art show at school, we stopped by for a meal; Annie had a two-piece coupon, so we would only need to purchase two meals and sides instead of our usual three. But, “not so fast there, bucko, since we screwed up and offered way too much, we’re not accepting the coupons we ourselves promoted, and instead must demand specific demographic information from you on this form and we will mail you a coupon. Of course, we can’t promise we’ll honor that one any more than we did this one, but at least we’ll have your personal information this way.” I decided to decline their offer, and headed across the street to another chain for a fast dinner.

So KFC screwed up twice. I’m pretty sure they won’t miss our $20-30 a week, but it’s still going to be a loing time before I go back to that fast-food restaurant…and I won’t be stopping at Pizza Hut, Long John Silvers, or any other Pepsi property for that matter. Clearly, those companies not only have no ethics, they don’t have the courage to stand by their own mistakes, instead blaming their customers for their screwups. If enough of us stop bending over, allowing companies like this to screw us around, maybe they’ll get the idea that they exist to serve us, not the other way around.

To keep everything together, I’ve posted an update to the pqi i815 Plus Flashdrive issue - while the folks at pqi spent considerable time on this, the issue still exists, even using the additional equipment they sent to me…and this time, I have some video to demonstrate. (If you missed the original review of this tiny flash drive, scroll up and catch up; that link is to the latest update only.)

As many of you know, the Cincinnati convention had to scramble to find a new hotel at the last minute when the hotel that was already booked closed down suddenly. Bob Burchett, convention organizer, took a big hit financially because the new hotel was substantially more expensive.

To help cover his extra expenses, Bob is offering a special DVD to those who will donate to keep the Cincinnati convention alive. Please read how you can help, and get this unique DVD in the process.