mobilene

The current WBOW isn't actually connected to the OG WBOW, which was on AM at 1230. It went off the air in 2001 after the owner was convicted of some pretty awful crimes. Another company resurrected the call letters on FM some years later.

In commercial radio, DJs haven't selected the music in 40 or more years. I used to show up for my shifts to find a printed playlist from a software product called Selector. I had to follow it.

Local community is probably irreparably damaged. But I was a kid with niche interests and I didn't start to find my people until the Internet entered my life in 1989.

Not controversial, not even within the DJ community.

Who knows why we landed on our system of 3 and 4 letter call signs, but we did. Plenty of stations use them only when they have to: in the top of the hour legal ID, which is "<call sign> <city>," such as WZZQ Terre Haute.

<waves frantically> Hi! How did we overlap at WMHD and never run into each other?

Yes! Exactly this. I'm the OP and I wrote about this specifically as well.

https://blog.jimgrey.net/2023/01/10/connecting-through-the-e...

I'm the OP, and I'm surprised to find this article on HN at all, let alone the front page!

Many comments are focusing on music but the thing I tried to get across in the article was that good radio wasn't primarily about the music, it was about fun and connection. A good DJ kept you from just turning the radio off when you heard that same hit the fourth time today -- you wanted to keep listening because the DJ made it fun. It made homework and hobbies feel a lot less lonely. A Spotify playlist sure as heck can't do that.

I find myself irritated by this article because its headline is about how blogging has collapsed, but you have to get into the article to find that it's only the blogs that were gaming SEO to make a buck that have collapsed. Those blogs deserved to die.

I've had a personal blog for 19 years. I write about my special interests: old cameras, old roads, old buildings. And whatever else comes to mind. My search traffic has been steady for years.

I was in testing for 17 years before moving back into Engineering. I have spent my time in Engineering leading teams to push quality left. But I think it's better to say "quality is a system" than to say "engineers own quality." What are you building into your SDLC that makes sure quality happens? Testing is just a part of that, and not even the biggest one.

I miss the energy of being in the office, but I do not miss the commuting. If I could commute in 15 minutes or so each way I'd strongly consider an in-office role. OTOH, the ease of the home office is very nice.

We do the same here in Indianapolis and my read is that it's about cost containment. Our tax base here really doesn't fully support city services. And then more people move to the high-tax-base suburbs for better services, and the cycle repeats and gets worse.

When I rode the city bus as a teen in South Bend, IN, in the 80s, there were some designated bus stops. But buses worked on a hail model anyway. You could be on any corner on the route, and as the bus approached, you'd just stick up your arm and it would stop. It was really efficient. But I suppose that works best in a small city like South Bend.

Having a graphic file of your signature is hella useful. I did it the old school way thirty years ago -- I signed my name on paper until I liked it, scanned it, created .gif and .bmp files. Still use that.

I completely understand the kind of mind that would catalog such a thing.

This wouldn't be my thing to catalog, but I'm glad somebody did it.

What other industries but tech do any of us bother to talk about finding jobs that align with our values? (Outside of avoiding illegal or immoral work.) I think we were incredibly fortunate before ZIRP went away that we had much greater opportunity to choose companies that appealed to us.

It's stuff like this that makes me still love the Internet.

Thank you.

I entered middle school in 1979, at which time I was slotted into available "advanced" classes. This was as close to a G&T program as we had. It changed my game. Not because of the knowledge imparted, but because (a) I was with other kids who wanted to learn and were willing to work, and (b) I was largely removed from the disruptions I had increasingly experienced from kids who didn't want to be there. At last, I could relax and just do school. It didn't make school a paradise, but it sure removed the worst of what was problematic for me about it. Freed from most of the nonsense, I was in a better head space and was able to do well.

Well _this_ is a pisser for sure. I've relied on POP3 email transfer for years and years so that I have one mailbox to check: Gmail.

This was one of the most wicked cool things I've read in a long time.

I grew up in a TV market that was UHF only (South Bend, IN) in the 1970s. TVs from before about 1963(?) didn't have to have UHF dials. So a company named Blonder-Tongue (Blonder was pronounced like blunder) produced UHF receivers you could attach to your TV through the little screw tab things on the back, the predecessor to the coax input. I had never seen Blonder-Tongue referenced anywhere except in nostalgia articles about my hometown.

I own a 2024 VW Jetta GLI. The haptic steering-wheel "buttons" are sloppy and uncertain. I applaud the return to real buttons.

At least my GLI has a physical volume knob and physical heater controls.

Something similar happened to one of our sons. Unfortunately he has a history of drug use that landed him in legal trouble. The local police recognize him. He had a minor fender bender. The police tested him for alcohol there, clean. But then given history they detained him and took him to the nearest ER for a battery of drug tests -- for which the hospital billed our son, and for which our son is on the hook. It's bonkers.

I've been laid off a few times in my 35-year career. Being laid off felt like a betrayal to me for a long time. But I was operating under a false model: that because I worked hard and did good work, that the company would value me and take care of me.

I also used to shake my fist at the bad outcomes of stupid decisions made by people above me.

It took me this long to realize that this is all a game of chance. Me choosing a company to work for is me playing the odds. The decisions my superiors make are bets, too. And sometimes, even good bets don't work out.

It's still worth it to work hard and deliver what your management wants in spades. I've been brought along to any number of new employment opportunities because I'm remembered well for being a person who did those things.

I've come to see my career as a series of stops, and my current stop is just what I'm doing right now.

This. 1000% this. I'm 57 and still kicking around the industry deliberately choosing companies like the ones described.

It's also important to note that I have a small network of people also working for companies like this who have helped me and sometimes have outright hired me.

Part of the challenge is how wide his text column is. It makes the lines hard to scan; your eye can't fall on a line just once or twice to scan it, but must keep falling, which makes the text feel more tedious. Easily fixed by narrowing the browser window, of course.

This. Yep, automakers have deliberately gone after higher profit margins per vehicle. Huge-volume, lower-cost cars are slowly going away. Get one while you can, if that's your thing.

I'm blown away that this was their response.

My oldest child committed suicide on New Year's Eve of 2021, aged 36. I reached out to my boss and HR saying I'd need some time away. HR responded by telling me not to report to work for two weeks. We'd talk at that point about whether I was ready to come back or not, with a possible extension if need be.

This is the way you do it.

I'm the OP. Good point.

I married into a large Irish family and goodbyes take bloody forever as everyone has to have a ten-minute conversation with everybody else on their way out the door. Irish ghosting goodbye my eye.