Vighpyr's Internet Radio Finally Broadcasting!

Well, I have the radio up in beta mode right now. I'll be broadcasting over the next several days just testing the stream and making sure that the various players work okay. For the beta period, I'll be testing all kinds of formats, from R&B to jazz to hip-hop. After the stream is solid, I'll be going full-time with the station, with a jazz/oldies/old school format. It should be fun. Right now, I've only got the Windows Media Player stream going, and will put the Real Player and Quicktime streams online in a bit. So for now, enjoy the music, and look forward to us going live shortly. Here's the link for Media Player:

Vighpyr's Place Radio

Adventures in Telemarketing

Like anyone else of a sound mind, I hate telemarketers. Well, not the telemarketers themselves; just the whole industry process. Because inevitably, they'll call when I am:

1. getting out of the shower
2. getting in the shower
3. in the shower
4. eating dinner
5. eating snacks
6. on the way in the door
7. on the way out of the door

Well, you get the idea. I was reading about some ways to 'manage' the whole telemarketer experience with cleverness and guile and decided to give it a try. So here is the play-by-play of the call I got earlier in the week.

Him: "Hello, I'd like to speak to Michael J, please!"

Me: "Speaking."

Him: "Hello Mr. J., my name is Brent and I'm calling to follow up on the credit card offer we sent to you last week and want to just get some information from you so that we can activate it and get you going with using your new card right away. So let me just verify your mailing address to get started... I have your address as _______. Is that correct?"

Me: "Brent, thank you so much, but I'm not interested in getting any more credit cards at this time, but thanks for calling!"

Him: "Well Mr. J, you know that we provide a low 8.1% interest rate for the first year of the card and 0% on balance transfers for 6 months. It's a great deal that's only being offered to our preferred customers. So if you'll verify your mailing address for me; I have your address as _______. Is that correct?"

Me: "No, like I said, Brent, I'm not interested in any more credit cards. I have more than enough right now. Thanks anyway, though!"

Him: "Well, Michael.... may I call you "Michael"?"

Me: "No."

Him: "Oh, okay...Well Mr. J, you probably didn't realize that with our platinum MasterCard, you can..."

Me: (abruptly interrupting) "Wait a minute!! Leroy?! Is this you Leroy?!"

Him: "Uh... no..."

Me: "Yes it is!! Leroy, quit playin' man! I know dis' you!! What chu' doin' at home man? Aren't you supposed to meet with your parole officer today?"

Him: "Uh.. this is Brent from _____ bank... I wante..."

Me: (interrupting again) "Leroy you don't even SOUND like a banker man or nothing. You still coming over tonight? You gonna' bring the 40's with you???"

Him: (silence)

Me: "LEROY! Hello?? LEROY?!?"

Him: "Have a good afternoon, sir." (click)

Ahhh... I love telemarketers.

A Brief History of Iraq

My "little" brother is in the process of transitioning to a new location after spending more than 13 years in North Carolina. His new home will be in the D.C. area and fortunately, I'll be close enough to him to be able to visit whenever I want, and vice-versa. But this isn't about his new living conditions. This is about his profession and the impact it has on him, and others like him.

Flip ('short' for Philip) is a U.S. Marine. A hard-core marine. He has been in the corp for 18 years, and was promoted to the rank of Gunnery Sergeant faster than most enlisted personnel achieve the rank of sergeant. He served four tours of duty in his career; Desert Storm in the Gulf, Somalia, Afganistan, and he just returned from Iraq a little more than 5 months ago. Needless to say, we were all ecstatic that he was returned to us safely, particularly since we almost lost him after the Somalia conflict.

I have always been on one distinctly polarized position regarding the war in Iraq. And maybe that's a discussion for another blog entry. Bt one of the most significant challenges that I have with the conflict as it stands is the fact that it has been relegated to an assessment of numbers. Whether it's on the news or in the paper, we constantly hear of the number of troops who have lost their lives on any given day, and most unfortunately, every day. And we have become so numb to the news that it is sometimes almost as expected as the daily weather report. And I was the same way, until my baby brother was shipped out. Then, things took on a different meaning for me. I literally was dreading each time the phone rang during certain times of the day because although I knew that I felt I was prepared to less than the best news, I know that it would have been way too much for me to handle.

Fortunately, through the use of technology, we were able to maintain a connection with him, and shared some of his experiences via email and written notes. Probably most notable was the number of very young men who fought, and who sometimes gave their lives. Flip sent a picture of some of his men and the most striking thing was the fact that they all were so young! And regardless of my personal opinions about the conflict, things seemed to always come into perspective when I would look at the faces of the brave young men who on a daily, and hourly basis put their lives at risk. Beyond the ongoing danger to their lives, the conditions in which they lived were amazing. On a regular basis, RPGs were lobbed into the perimeter, and unless his men were on their toes on a regular basis, serious injury or death could have occurred; particularly since the sand allowed the grenades to operate in somewhat of a stealth mode. And during significant mortar attacks, they had the 'luxury' of taking cover in their state of the art 'bunkers' until the barrage ceased. There was sand on top of sand on top of sand, and eauipment, gear and personal items all became havens for renegrade particles of sand.

For the most part, most of their time was spent on patrol, and waiting for nothing much to happen. And that was one of the most challenging things for Flip. Leading so many young men created a need to have them stay aware and keep on their toes. Sometimes, the calm in-between the storm lent itself to letting their guard down, and therefore, the possibility of getting themselves into trouble.

One of the most exciting things for me, however, was the fact that there were famous personalities in Iraq. Do you remember "Sanford and Son"? Well he sent us the picture below and swore that he had found the "Bubba" of Iraq. I'm not sure that I totally disagree! What do you think?

More "Vighpyr" trivia

My "logo". This was a gift from a friend some time ago that's on the wall in my office. It's an ink drawing made of little dolphins and fish and pandas... Cute, huh?

"Vighpyr", revealed!!

vighpyr [vahy-per] - n

A unique spelling for the pseudonym used by this blogger all over the Internet.

Here's the explanation. I've had numerous pseudonyms in my techie life. My first was when I ran a bulletin board system many moons ago. At that time, I went by the nick, "Silver Shadow". That one, I actually stole from a student who used to play a lot of rpg (role-playing games). It wasn't copyrighted or anything like that so there was no guilt. Some time after that when I became addicted to the game "Quake", I used the name "Shadow Assassin". That was pretty cool because I kept "Shadow" which I thought was neat, and of course, since the main focus of Quake was to run around like crazy just chopping and hacking and slashing and otherwise blowing people up, the moniker "Assassin" seemed appropriate. But when I 'grew up', I decided that I wanted to have a more 'sophisticated' name.

When I was on the AVP circuit for a bit less than 9 years, I was called "Viper" because I was fast and was very quick off the sand at the net. Also, one of my favorite movies, "Top Gun" features one of my favorite actors, Tom Skerritt. And his callsign in the movie was "Viper". Since the normal spelling was practically on every site on the net and I could never get that name, I developed this spelling that apparently, isn't anywhere else on the net. But if you do a Google Search of it, you'll see my electronic footprints all over the place. Every occurrence that you see is somewhere I've been. So that's the origin (and the pronunciation) of "Vighpyr".