taawd's thoughts

I’m experiencing a whole new world of life. I always figured I could be a handy kinda guy. But I’m finding out I’m not as handy as I thought.

Let’s start with grass. It gets water and sun and it grows. You fertilize it, it grows greener and faster. Well, that is if you don’t apply too much of the stuff. Yep, I worked on a golf course and you’d have thought some of the knowledge would have sunken in. It did, I thought, I think. The problem was I couldn’t find the setting on the spreader. So I laid the fertilizer down, boy did I! Thankfully, the grass didn’t burn as bad as it could have been. My gf was very forgiving but I’ve spent some of the summer reseeding and watering. I’m happy to report most of the grass is back.

Running cable through a house shouldn’t be a problem but when you have to fish it around, it ain’t so easy. You can toss away a day and a half on that project. I can’t tell you how happy you can get seeing a coaxial cable coming your way after about two hours of fishing. I’m not talking about the kind where you find animal that spend their lives in water either.

There are also some electric projects, I don’t dabble in that too much, I leave that up to the people who know more than me. I do know that circuit breakers are your friends, make sure they’re turned off and you’ve tested something in the outlet before you start messing around with the wires.

Oh, there’s hanging a door. It wasn’t that difficult but here’s a word to the wise, don’t just go by the instructions. They only work in perfect conditions. By the way, those perfect conditions don’t exist. Use instructions and templates only as guides, not absolutes.

There’s also painting and putting in door knobs, etc. Minor frustrations along the way. I don’t know what’s going to do next but I enjoy getting the knowledge from the job along the way. I just have to resist the temptation to rip up the directions and throw things along the way.

Whatever… time for tennis! Go Federer!

I have the 2nd generation iPod touch (iPhone’s next don’t worry!) and the case that I use to clip it to me when I mow the yard, run or workout, broke.

What would you do? Go out and buy a new one? Sometimes that would be my answer but I didn’t run out and replace it, I called Griffin Technology and talked to their customer support people. I was just going to ask them if they could bill me for a replacement part but instead they told me they’d ship me a new one, FREE! It’s coming UPS as well, complete with a tracking number. If you know me, you know the joy I find in tracking a package as it comes across the U.S. to my humble abode.

I just feel like I have to give a little credit where credit is due and deserved. Bill, the customer rep from Griffin Technology, was helpful, nice and didn’t keep me on the phone for long.

I’d recommend checking out their website. I have a couple of other products from them and have been happy with all of them. I’m thinking of getting the Simplifi to keep my desk a little less cluttered.

You get to hear my rants so I thought it was only right to hear a rave as well.

I probably was among the people who mocked others for their dying allegiance to Apple and its products. “IBM stinks, go Apple and you’ll never go back,” I heard people say.

Well, I caved and bought an iPod Touch, I paid the big daddy dollars for the 32GB version. I could store more of my music. I loved it but there were just a few things I didn’t love as much.

I couldn’t use my bluetooth headphones. I couldn’t cut and paste.

Well, in just a few hours, that’s all about to change. Apple is, for a price, making the new iPhone firmware available to Touch users. Yes, I’m going to feed the corporate beast that is Apple and pay the $9.95 for the update.

I’ve been following the rumors on the upgrade on about every Apple fansite possible. Everything was rumors and predictions. I don’t recall reading anywhere that it would roll out June 17th.

But now, I’m just counting the hours away to the new and improved features that I’ll get to enjoy with my Touch. Pathetic, isn’t it? I’ll probably post something after getting the firmware with a review. I hope I’m not disappointed. After all, I’ve looked forward to the upgrade for a while now.

Message to Sprint: After my contract is up with you, I’ll probably bid you adieu for either Verizon or AT&T. The Samsung Instinct is not an iPhone killer. Its OS is rigid and there’s nowhere close to the applications available for it.

Looking at the calendar, this weekend is Memorial Day. There’s the Greek Fest downtown, the Rib Cook-Offs Downtown and in Berea and all sorts of other things to do in the burg of Clev.

As I was driving down the road today, I just thought how we’ve probably shed the 30 degree days for good, well, as good as it gets living in northern Ohio. The leaves are on the trees, people are outside working, the thermostat is set on A/C instead of heat.

This is what we’ve been waiting on for many months. Enjoy all of the fun there is here in Cleveland.

Just a quick post but I wanted to add something!

I work in TV news. I deal with the news of death every day. It’s something that over the past 15 years, I’ve come to know. Sure, it can make you a little depressed. Sure, it can make you a little immune to the emotions that the passing of someone else normally causes but there are times when it hits you in the face and there’s no way to avoid it.

While looking at my facebook this morning, I saw a post by a “facebook friend” and decided to check out more about it.

It read: “he will be missed by us all, we love you Michael Corrado”

I wanted to find out what happened to Michael Corrado. I didn’t know him but for some reason I wanted to know more.

I clicked to his Michael Corrado’s facebook page to get more information. I read through all of his friends sending sympathies, prayers and tributes to this 22-year-old man. Earlier this week on his facebook, he’d updated that it was time to do laundry, someone had hurled a piece of profanity at him, not in a mean way, but the way you’d call someone an idiot and then laugh it off together.

Then I decided to find out how he died, it obviously wasn’t an illness, it was obviously sudden. I did a Yahoo! news search for his name and I found two links. One of them to a Plain Dealer article and one of them to a story on newsnet5.com.

To use the quote he “never saw this coming” is an understatement. You don’t know what’s next in your life. You can’t, no one can. Instead of having time with his family, they have to read the headlines in the newspaper, they have to hear the stories on TV or radio. Everyone’s lives have changed with some drunken downtown violence.

You can’t know everything that happened that night but one thing you can know is what happened, someone died who didn’t need to pass away. I’m sure we’ll never get past violence, anger and resentment but this isn’t the way to settle disputes, this isn’t the way, we should live.

Unfortunately, Michael will never be able to post another update his facebook status or respond to someone’s comment on his wall. Instead, the only posts that will be there will be from the people, his friends and his family, who tried to put their feelings into writing about how much they’ll miss him.

I had a talk with Narm this week about blogging. I’ve been bad, I’ve not done it regularly, heck, I’ve not even done it recently.

So, for some reason, and maybe it’s the reason of updating the blog, I’m up at 5:15am on a Saturday morning, looking at my Toshiba laptop and spouting words from the tips of my fingers.

My life has gotten busy, really busy. Working overnights don’t provide you with much sleep during the day. I’ve talked about this in the past. No one really realizes that your schedule is exactly opposite of everyone else’s. I used to roll my eyes at people who said “they were busy” or “wished they had more hours in the day”. Yep, that’s where I’m at now. I no longer have such disregard for those statements.

I love where my life has taken me. There’s not much to tell. This isn’t the forum for that. It’s an open space where anyone can log on and read. I just hope you’ll set your Google readers, RSS feeds or just check back every now and then to see if I’m posting. I have another post that I want to write but I just wanted to throw out a little explanation for my recent absence.

Happy reading and thanks for the visit!!

BNL doesn’t sound like the old BNL. By now, any fan of the band knows that Steven Page left the group. At this point, I can’t figure out whether it was on his own accord or whether he was forced out of the band.

I checked out the band’s website to see if there was any insight on the break-up. There wasn’t. I didn’t expect it. I also didn’t expect the band to post their first post-Page live concert. You can find it here, probably for a limited time.

After hearing it, I can say the new ladies don’t sound like the old ladies. Ed tries his part at “Old Apartment”, it sounded strange. “If I Had A 1,000,000” was one of the strangest attempts at sounding like the BNL I love. Kevin Hearn, I believe, sings back-up and puts some weird inflections on many words.

If the ladies come to Cleveland, will I see them? Yeah. Do I think they jumped the shark? Yep! Of course, the classics won’t be the same without Page belting out his lyrics. Hopefully, we can look forward to some new classics by the new band. I’ll withhold judgement for now.

I’m deeply saddened at the passing of Tom Haley. He was a Cleveland broadcasting legend. I’ll so glad I had the chance to know him personally.

Viewers of “Today in Cleveland” remember him as the gruff, grumpy and cantankerous host who sat next to Del Donahoo for decades. Tom would get viewers’ mornings going announcing “Heeere’s Hank” and then you’d see a rooster crowing. The rooster was named after a former production technican named Henry. Tom would ring an old bell just to make sure you were ready to start your day.

That was the person many viewers knew, I got to know the person behind that facade. It’s ironic the man who loved St. Patrick’s Day so much would pass away on March 17th. For years, he and Del would take part in the parade downtown. Del would ride in the “Folkswagon” and Tom would walk the route.

I remember watching Tom and Del while getting ready to board the bus at my grandmother’s house. When I started my intership at WKYC, I worked in the Promotions Department. Tom was part of that department. Part of my responsibilities were to get his community calendar information ready for him the day before it would air on “Today In Cleveland”. When he would come to get the information, he always would have a barb he’d throw at you, but he’d walk away with a smile.

When I worked overnights as a producer for the morning show, I’d help him with some of the weather information. It wasn’t organized so I helped make the task a little easier for everyone involved. I got to work with him on his movie reviews. I’d put them on a tape so he could pick a soundbite for the show. A lot of times, I’d sit back in the viewing area and talk to him about his career and listen to his advice. I think sometimes it was that encouragement that helped keep me in television. Tom, I’m still not sure that was a good thing. I’d love to hear your thoughts now.

Tom could really make you smile, whether it was insulting Martha’s coffee, throwing a harmless insult at a co-worker or just telling a joke. He was one of the good people in television, one of the people who understood the business more than some people do today. He’d tell me it was all about putting good TV on TV. He’d tell me never let someone else get the best of you in this business. He’d tell me he knew I was one of the people who’d make it in this business because I had the intelligence and the drive to keep going when frustrations ran high. He’d smile at me when he knew the day wasn’t going particularily well.

I appreciate his influence on my life and my career. The last time I saw Tom was at Martha Donahoo’s viewing hours. I told him, I believe, promised him we’d get together for breakfast. That was a promise I didn’t keep. I wish, however, I had followed through just to get some final thoughts like he gave on “Today in Cleveland”.

So here’s a final thought that Tom once told me about when he made a mistake, he said “I always tell them I’m just practicing being human.”

Here’s to you Tom, I hope your life was “filled with love and some peace too…”