I love the double negative. In news writing, it can often leave the meaning of a headline vague.

Here is the headline from CNN:

Bush Speaks to Anti-Abortion Protesters
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/24/bush.abortion.ap/index.html

That headline could be read to mean The president is speaking to those protesting the anti-abortion movement.

Or, it could be read to mean The president is speaking to those protesters who are Anti-Abortion.

Whether anti-abortion is a noun or an adjective makes this headline particularily fun.

Liners, in Radio terms, are those little greetings or positioning statements, often made by celebrities. “Hi I’m so-and-so, and you’re listening to…”

I am wondering, how valuable they really are. Are there listener’s out there who think “Wow… Cher just happened to stop by the studio, pop open the mic, and say a quick word or two…” Or even more realistic, are their people who think, “Wow… Bruce Springsteen must really love KXXX, Today’s Classic Rock”

People in radio don’t ask for autographs. It is considered unprofessional. But I have seen some “radio-heads” get as rabid as autograph seeking kids, when it comes to finding an artist and getting a great liner.

Could it be that it is the only way for some of these radio folks to have an excuse to talk to an artist?

Has the day of the liner come and gone, or is it still a timeless radio tool.

“I’m CB, and you are visiting the best blog for today’s random thoughts… Blysse”

My life is surrounded by the church.

That’s not a bad thing, but I realized a while back, that my life had no influence outside of the church. I work in a “religious” environment, and all of my extra time is spent in church or para-church involvements (even my recreation is usually with a bunch of guys from church).

So I decided I needed to get involved in my community. If I really want to influence my neighbors, I need to do stuff with them.

I recognize that will become easier this fall when my daughter starts at the local public school, but I wanted to start on my own.

I joined a citizens advisory board in our town.

I realized my need for this type of involvement when one of the meetings started.

Before the meeting began, I was taking some notes regarding things I wanted to talk about. The city adminstrator walked in and suggested that we start the meeting. Instictively, I dropped my pen and prepared to be led in a short prayer.

I realized right away, that I needed to be there.

Today is January 17, and it is currently -12 F in the Twin Cities. Yesterday when we got up for church, the thermometer in the truck read -16.

I don’t mind the cold so much. I don’t really have to spend a lot of time out there. But here is what I have noticed.

Once the weather gets below zero, I really don’t care what the exact temperature is. -2 feels the same to me as -22. In fact, I would prefer not to know. It is a bit harder on the psyche, but not necessarily on the body. So I would prefer to step outside on a brisk -22 day, and think “Gee. it must be around zero today”.

It all feels the same to me.

The only time I am able to tell the difference, is when the gas bill shows up.

January Budgeting is never fun. I always seem to go a bit overboard during Christma… The Holida… a non-descript time of celebratio… December!

Now that that month is over, we realized that our budget needs a bit more trimming than our Christmas tree.

I decided the first thing to go would have to be our cable bills.

Right now we use Comcast for everything
Comcast Internet
Comcast Telephone
Comcast Digital Cable
Comcast Diaper Service

The total for the services (before tax… or as we say in Minnesota: TAX) was $99. Well, their Christmas gift to us was a $20 rate hike. The new total was $119

Now, because I subcribed to a special package, I couldn’t just throttle one of the services back. If I cut back on one, the others go up, so the service is pretty much the same.

So, we decided to do some shopping, and make some sacrifice.

First, we moved our phone back to Qwest’s $15 basic plan.

Then we cut our cable back to the basic $9 per month. No more ESPN, No more Myth Busters, No more … I guess that’s about it.

(Our girls will be without their Disney Channel programs. You can contribute to the “Give the Girls their Disney Channel Programming Fund” by clicking on the following button.

The next step was to figure out what to do with our Internet. We went with the Qwest DSL 1.5mb service with Qwest Basic ISP. It was only about $10 cheaper than cable, but I wouldn’t mind having the dedicated bandwith into my home.

All in all, the cost cutting saved us about $40 on the new Comcast charges.

In the interest of full disclosure, I do own a little Qwest stock, but only because it is so cheap.

Up until the last few days, I have had a hard time finding good use for the wireless functionality of my PDA.

In the early days of my use, I pretty much just used it to stream radio as I worked around the house, or IM while sitting on the… Well.. Just sitting…

There were a few other cool uses, such as checking TV listings and weather, but I never really found the POP3 e-mail use practical with the Lotus server we are using, and my personal e-mail would load without my anti-spam settings.

Most of my personal e-mail, goes through my GMail anyhow.

This week, however I have discovered 2 applications that have increased my wireless PDA use.

1 – Gmail Lite

Gmail Lite is a PHP client for gmail, that can be installed on any server with PHP.
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=116304

I was able to find a number of servers out there with it installed, but I felt a bit uncomfortable passing my login information through a strangers server. (Gmail Lite does not capture login information, but I can see how it would be easy for an individual install to set it up to do so).

I did, however, set it up on my server
http://www.cyberbliss.net/gmail

Feel free to use it.

2 – PocketPutty

Pocket Putty is a handheld version of the popular PuTTy Shell program. It allows me to to a shell login of any of my Linux accounts from my PDA. With enough knowledge (which I am still working on aquiring), I can pretty much run all of my webservers from that emulation.

I have not had enough experience with PocketPutty to give a recommendation, but the prospect is rather sweet.

O will keep you posted.