The Web Guy

New Home ... New Blog!!!!

Well on to newer and better things ... Sandy and I have completed our move to Indianapolis, and on our second weekend the temperature is heading down to freezing.

Oh well ...I still don't miss the beach yet.  It's just all the Colts craziness that is driving me nuts.  After one week of work, the biggest change is the number of people ... The staff at WISH is around 250 people ... KRIS was about 80 at the most.   Trying to figure out everyone's name and job is the biggest challenge.

What's cool is that things I had to do myself at KRIS, there are people to do that at WISH ... Art Design, news writers etc...  It is going to take some time to get used to.

Anyway, I don't know how long KRIS will keeps this blog active, but I have decided to create a new Wordpress blog on my personal site.

Thanks to all the users in Corpus Christi who've sent me the nice notes wishing me luck here in the Circle City. I'm sure we'll be back to visit our friends someday ... when it's not too hot of course.

The beginning of the end

Geez ... it's amazing how so many things can change in one month.   In my last post, I looked back on my three years running KRISTV.COM.  A month later, I'm looking forward to a new challenge.  My days in Corpus Christi are officially numbered.

This week, I accepted a position at WISH-TV in Indianapolis, Indiana.  I'll be in charge of running their Web site WISHTV.COM and a couple smaller sister stations sites.  It's a management position and best of all only four to five hours from our family.  I'm really excited about the new challenge, but there are some parts of me that will miss Corpus Christi and KRISTV.COM very much.

The good news, I'll still be around for five to six weeks to help train a new Internet Content Director.  I want to make sure KRISTV.COM keeps the high standards that I have set over the last three years.  I know you'll still be able to count of KRISTV.COM as your source for local news, weather and information.

3 Years in CC

Last Wednesday, amid the breaking news dealing with the fire aboard the USS Lexington, I missed the fact that it was my 3rd Anniversary in Corpus Christi.

Where has the time gone?   This little web site has come a long way since I took over the reigns. I took some time to check out the WayBack Machine at archive.org.  Archive.org is an organization that archives web sites all across the big blue ball.  Here's a look at some of the top headlines on KRISTV.COM back in the day.

• August 15, 2004 - Hurricane Charley was battering parts of Florida.
• November 26, 2004 - KRIS provided a special satellite shot to allow a local solider serving in Iraq to connect with their family back in the Coastal Bend
• February 6, 2005 - A top story that still sticks in my mind.  A man was fleeing police and smashed into a car full of kids downtown.  It was one of the first times I used the city's wi-fi net to update at the scene.  It happened late on a Friday night and I went to the scene with to get the latest information to update the late breaking details.
• October 1, 2005 - Just days before our major redesign launch.  It's a bummer the archive site didn't cache anything from Hurricane Rita.  It was a major turning point for KRISTV.COM.  I will always say we grew up that week.
• October 28, 2005 - A few weeks after the launch of our redesign. A tornado ripped thru Duval County ... causing a bunch of damage in the small town of San Jose.
• March 7, 2006 - Election Day.  Always a 24 hour day, but a lot of craziness and fun.
• December 31, 2006 - Many downtown businesses were upset their sidewalk signs were against city code.

Of course, none of this all matters without our loyal users who come back day after day to get the latest news, weather and sports.

Corpus Christi is a great place to live, even with all the issues we seem to have. Nothing beats a Hooks game with a nice breeze from the bay, sitting on the beach on a Sunday afternoon or having a nice plate of brisket at the Slivervado or Mac's BBQ.

I'd write more, but we've run out of time for now.... 

Rainy Days and Video Games

I thought it was supposed to be sunny in the summer.  I double checked this morning just to make sure I hadn't been transported to the Pacific Northwest.  Fortunately the tropics are still quiet so I guess I can live with the rain.

Of course the rain has kept me indoors and my new "toy" has kept my busy.  I few weeks ago I finally broke down and bought an XBox 360.  It's the first gaming system I've owned since about 2001.  (I had a Playstation 2 - until my apt. got hit by lightning.)  I have to say I'm very impressed with my new investment.  The HD graphics are amazing.  The big selling point for me was the fact my best friend in Ohio has one and we can do battle online.

So far I've spent most of my time playing NCAA College Football.  The new version came out this week and it's been a ton of fun.  I'm using Toledo as my Dynasty team giving myself a little challenge in the MAC. (OK my Ohio roots are coming out.)

I also have NCAA College Basketball '07 which includes our Corpus Christi Islanders.  To bad the game says their from Coriscana, TX.  I have no idea how in the hell they screwed that up.  Hopefully they fix it in the next version.

I'm sure I'll be sinking more $$ into buying more games in the very near future.  At least as long as it keeps raining.

My head is still above water!

Rain, rain go away!

Yea it's rained a lot over the past few days, you know it's bad when The Weather Channel has Nueces County in their lead video.  I started my Independence Day driving around town taking some pictures of flooded streets.  I will eventually post them to Spotted later today.   I'm sure the rest of the region will be like me and look forward to the sunny weekend ahead.

Hopefully we'll have fireworks tonight.  For now, it looks like the rain is headed north, but it sure dumped a great deal of water.

Last night my wife and I cuddled up in front of my TV to watch Columbus Ohio's "Red White and Boom".  For 27 years now they've put on one heck of a show.  It's televised by WCMH 4 the NBC affiliate for Central Ohio. You can watch the entire show on nbc4i.com.  The show is the largest in the Midwest. I would almost say it's safe to assume they shot off more fireworks in the two minute finale then Corpus Christi will shoot in their entire show.  When I lived in Ohio, we would go to the Boom every year. Our seats would be just across the river from where they were launched.

The nice thing for now is our air conditioning is back on for the time being.  We've lost it several times over the last couple of months, and we now know the condenser unit needs replaced. the challenge for our landlord is it's located on the roof.  Hopefully the latest shot of freon will last until the new unit arrives.

Until next time, enjoy Independence Day and be thankful that God has blessed up with such a great place to live - even with all its problems. It's still the greatest place on earth to live.

End of "The Computer Show"

What a bummer to start my weekend.  I pop on the radio every Saturday morning to 1360 KKTX to listen to Lago and the Saturday Hardwired Magazine.   Well this morning the first thing Lago says that today would be the last computer show.

He boss is giving him Saturday's off.  As someone who works a six day a week schedule, I can understand the excitement of having weekends off. But I'm truly saddened that my Saturday morning ritual will have to change.

I'm pretty good with the computer, but most every week I learned something new from Blake Farenthold, who was just a wizard when it comes to figuring out someone's computer problems.  It was also fun to listen to him talk about the newest gadgets (I don't think he got an iPhone though).  Dobson was also a great computer resource especially when it comes to the MAC.

I'm glad that I had the opportunity to call in to the show on several occasions, thought I never was able to get that in studio guest spot to talk about community journalism, blogging, MySpace and the like.

So I'll miss the show, but it's good to know Lago and Blake will have some well deserved Saturday mornings off.

Now I only hope that KKTX brings At Home w/ Gary Sullivan back to the local airwaves.

Back from vacation - Part II

Now onto the daily saga of "As the Mall Turns"… I'm kind of happy that the council passed the tax insensitive package for the Crosstown Commons.  I'm only kinda happy, because I'm not really sure what the hell happened in the late hours of Tuesday's council meeting. But I think both projects can survive.

On my vacation, I had the chance to visit two fairly new "Lifestyle Malls".  The first, was The Town Center at Levis Commons.  It's located in suburan Toledo, Ohio.  The second mall was Westfield Franklin Park. Three years ago, they tore down an empty anchor store and built a new wing and 16 streen theater. We were very impressed with the final product.

Anyway a few stores overalpped at both Toledo malls, but for the most part the tenants were different. I think the Crosstown Commons would work well with a Super Target as an anchor... it would give the WM Supercenter a run for their money.

The Padre Staples folks have made a lot of noise about this deal.  I have to say they brought a lot of it upon themselves. When I first came to Corpus Christi for my interview, the airline lost my luggage.  I went to the mall to whip up something to wear to my interview.

As we walked around the mall, my wife and I were very unimpressed with what we saw.  We were looking for some food, but as we all know the food court just sucked. It was easily to tell the concourses hadn't been updated in years. It was one of the few negatives we had in our reasons to move or not to move to Corpus Christi.

I'm glad to see that Padre Staples is making an effor to update the mall's appearance.  I would think they would double their efforts to keep their anchor tenants and make their location the signature place in town.  (Note to Padre Staples folks ... GET A WEB SITE!)

I guess we'll just sit back and wait for tomorrow's episode of "As the Mall Turns".

Back from vacation - Part I

Aah... 10 days of not so R&R in the great Buckeye State.  One of the things about living 1,500 miles from the family is we don't get there often enough.  But we still had a good time.  My wife and I did take a few days to have some fun.

We visited former 6 News reporter Shaun Hegarty and his wife, who now live in Toledo, Ohio.  It's ironic that he works across the street from my old station.  His new house has a basement ... I'm so jealous.

It's amazing how much can change in three years.  I got a fresh perspective on several things that have been hot topics here in Corpus Christi.

First ... Corpus Christi has to truly have some of the WORST roads in the county. I always joked that Ohio had much worse roads than the Coastal Bend.  The key difference is they actually fix them. I can say we literally travelled over 100 miles of freshly paved roads.

My hometown of Mansfield, Ohio has probably one of the best plans to keep city streets maintained. Back in the 1970's the city was in financial trouble and the roads were in really bad shape.  The city's main drag - Park Ave. West was in such bad shape, signs were posted along the road warning drivers to drive at their own risk.

The city proposed a tax that would go exclusively to repave roads.  I can't remember if it's a sales, income or property tax.  But I do remember it was a very small amount to the taxpayer.  A community oversight committee selects which roads get paved and they make sure to spread the resurfacing projects evenly across the city.

A prime example, I grew up in an inner city neighborhood.  My little side street was resurfaced twice while I was growing up.  Compared to a Corpus Christi road it didn't need the work, but it had several patch jobs and so it was slated to be resurfaced.

When I was home last week, I counted about ten different streets that were in some stage of repair. Some had their surfaces grated others had received their first or second coats of blacktop. I know we're maxed out on our ability to levy sales taxes, but I would hope city council can work on a plan to develop something that would guarantee our street repairs.

It's getting hot in here....

We'll it's the 3rd quarter and the Spurs are up 7.  I really don't care at this point.  About a half-hour ago, we noticed it was getting warm in the living room.   The thermostat said it was 81.  That's never good.

So I went up into the utility closet and was greeted with a soaking wet floor.   The air exchanger appears to have frozen up.  Well it was full of ice and was melting down thru the filters and all over the floor.  I'm no Dave Matthews, but I knew that wasn't good.

Anyway the wife's now really cranky because there's no air... It's going to be a long night.

***Update ... The maintenance guys were able to come over around midnight and pump some freon into the system.  So it turned out to be a cool night after all.

Earthlink says thanks for my $3.95

Call me spoiled, but I got used to the free wi-fi here in Corpus Christi.  I knew it wasn't going to last forever, and this afternoon I gave my first $3.95 to Earthlink. 

I was getting a tire plugged over at my neighborhood tire shop.  I had about an hour to kill so I pulled out my laptop and fired up the wi-fi.  I was close to a node so I had no problem getting a signal.  Despite the concerns that I wouldn't have a fast connection, it couldn't be further from the truth.

I was able to easily use my Slingbox and watch a little coverage from Cleveland on the Cavs arriving in San Antonio (Go Cavs - Rise Up!).  I never once had a buffering issue the whole hour while I was online.  Oh I also was reading e-mail, surfing the net and even watched some video clips.   If I can have that quality of service all the time ... it's going to be a good system.   Now if I can only get the station to pay for that access.  You never know when news is going to break. ;-)