Broadcasting and Poverty

If you have read any of my other posts, you would know that I really, really, really love electronics, audio, and radio/television.  In addition to my Electrical Engineering degree, I also have a minor in Broadcast Communications.  This is not a mistake.  I thoroughly enjoyed being an engineer for my High School radio station.  I also totally ate up working with Brigham Young University's KBYU television while in college.

Right out of college I investigated working with KBYU, but ended up taking a job with General Dynamics in Southern California.  This would be the first of three attempts to work in the broadcasting industry and at KBYU.  Reason for not pursuing this time, amount offered.  I really had a hard time believing that KBYU would offer me so little -- not enough to survive, meet my living expenses.  Strike one!

I had a great four years working for General Dynamics on their F-16 projects.  However, I had an opportunity to move back to my old stomping grounds and work for, then, networking leader Novell.  (My experiences at General Dynamics will have to be savored in a future post.)

During my tenure at Novell, I again investigated working in the broadcasting industry, again with BYU Broadcasting.  This time a position to engineer and program BYU Radio.  The powers that be were very interested in me, but at what turned out to be the final interview, they asked me what I needed to make, and I gave them a very low-ball figure.  The conference room of six men all laughed at me, indicating that only their upper management made that kind of money.  Strike two!

After my time at Novell, I worked for a few other high tech companies doing mostly computer programming/software engineering.  I had read that BYU Broadcasting (what they call the conglomerate of KBYU TV, BYU TV, BYU TV International, BYU Radio, and Classical 89 FM) was looking for a CTO.  I made some inquiries and ended up chatting with the General Manager of BYU Broadcasting, the head honcho himself.

Not to belabor the point, but I ended up also talking to the gentleman who ended up getting the position.  The gist of the matter was that you need to start out at KBYU in a very low paying job and basically work your way up, or you need significant broadcasting experience (i.e. start out with a low paying job and work your way up).  Now the CTO position pays a respectable salary, almost as much as an average programming position.  I have to assume that the General Manager also makes decent money, but you are talking about the highest, executive level, people making about as much as a typical software developer.  (The executives at a typical software house make from the several hundred-thousands to millions a year!)  The average salary for the workers at BYU Broadcasting is much, much lower.

So strike three as you would say it!   I went back to my programming.  However, I discovered that BYU Broadcasting was re-vamping all of their websites, I checked out to see if they were hiring and discovered that they were.  I just happened to be in-between jobs at the time.  The contract paid roughly half of what a comparable contract would pay, but oh well.    I had some fun doing websites and programming an application for the iPhone.  Would I call this a strike four, not necessarily.

So now BYU Broadcasting has this awesomely great new broadcasting facility, currently the best in the world!  Also with a fabulous Hi-def TV production truck to go with it.

Having toured KSL Channel 5's facilities in Salt Lake City, and having been acquainted with BYU Broadcasting's facilities in the Fine Arts Center on BYU Campus and out in the old Billings building (tomb) in south Provo, this building is simply amazing and 25 years over due.

Having been familiar with the coming to be of the Fine Arts Museum on BYU campus, I was acquainted with the way that BYU does fund raising for these types of projects.  The building will not be built until all the money has been raised.  Fund raising for the museum took roughly five years.  I suspect the same was true for the BYU Broadcasting building.  It is nice to know that there are good people (philanthropists) in the world today that will help in these endeavors.

So I guess that a broadcasting career is not in the cards for me in this lifetime.  I suspect that a person cannot expect to have everything that they want in this earth life.

Till next time,
Bill

Close to God

This is a very short post about a wonderful couple named Jeff and Kelly Johnson, but not so much about them as their daughter Bridgette Claralynn.  Bridgette was born with a disease where her intestines do not absorb the nutrients that she needs to survive.  (I bet I am slaughtering this description.)  She has had multiple surgeries, numerous doctor visits and Mom and Dad have practically become practicing doctors.  Jeff and Kelly used to live close to me, but about six months ago moved into a bigger home in the same city.  I was saddened when they left my neck of the woods, but realize that they will be a shining light to their new neighbors.  Jeff and Kelly author a blog about all of Brigette's challenges here.  This is a real service to other children who have been diagnosed with Hirschsprung’s disease.  Below is a picture of Bridgette that I "borrowed" from their blog.

I can guarantee that if the world was filled with more Jeff and Kelly Johnson's, it would be a much better place!

Till next time,
Bill

Six Little Girls and Two Little Boys

Approximately 10 years ago, we moved to a new city, built a new home, and became part of a most excellent neighborhood.  At this same time, I had the opportunity to teach a Sunday School Class at our local church.  This class was made up of six little girls and two little boys.  (I must confess that one of the little girls was my daughter.)

This was quite the opportunity for me, since trying to get eight young children to calm down for 45 minutes each Sunday might well be an impossible thing to do.  My daughter, quite the socialite, had all the solutions.  She suggested that I bring candy to Sunday School and give it to the class.  So, wanting to have success, I took candy to Sunday School.

I tried to use the candy as an incentive at the end of the class.  Be good during class and I'll give you a candy at the end of class.  To which the class responded, when I returned from getting some chalk, by opening the window in the classroom and climbing in and out of the window (we were in a ground level classroom).

My daughter, ever the socialite, gave me another suggestion.  She said that we needed to have a class party.  So we held a class party on Saturday morning.  Had all the pancakes, waffles, sausage, bacon, and eggs that you would want.  Lots of laughs and a little bit of how they all should act in church.

Sunday came around and miraculously the kids were somewhat well behaved.  We talked about the party the previous day and actually made it through the lesson unscathed.  At the end of class, all eight kids were rewarded with a candy.

I have heard it said that out of the mouth of babes come many wise words.  This particular Sunday I realized that my daughter was wise well beyond her years.  All I needed to do was listen.

Today, roughly 10 years later, I still see many of these not so young children, well teenagers, in the neighborhood.  My daughter continues to "hang out" will many of them.  They have all grown into fine young ladies and young men.

Till next time,
Bill

Soccer Coach and Humanitarian

I want to discuss a great man.  My daughter's soccer coach is a part owner of one of the most amazing facilities available to friends and family.  Called Stringtown, this facility boasts a ride-able train, swimming pool, indoor soccer field, three outdoor soccer fields, sports court, sand volleyball, batting cages, and racquetball courts.

(If you are good friends with the coach, you can also use a magnificent home theater, fire pit, and a game room with ping pong, air hockey, fooseball, and pool, not to mention watching your favorite sporting events, and I mean events on the 5 large screen televisions in the room.)

When my son turned 16, we hosted his party at Stringtown.  Needless to say, with a ton of food, this location kept over 60 teenagers happy for a Friday evening.

My daughter's soccer team has benefited from this facility for the past three years.  Being able to practice during the winter in the indoor soccer facility is quite amazing.

This is also quite important since my daughter's team plays Futsal during the winter months.  (Futsal is played on a small field about the size of a basketball court.)  This practice facility allows to keep practicing long kicks used on a regulation soccer field when focusing on foot skills playing Futsal.  Sometimes when a soccer team finishes up a Futsal season and begins Spring season on regulation fields, it takes a game or two to get back in the swing of things playing on a much larger field.  With this indoor facility, that change is minimized.

The beauty of Stringtown is that you can use all of the facilities for free.  Coach has never asked for any fees of any kind.  He has hosted bi-yearly soccer team parties for the girls and parents/families.  He regularly hosts large parties for religious and civic groups.  Basically, he is a very kind and compassionate man.

My daughter's coach is a successful contractor and real estate broker.  He rode the housing wave in the mid to late '90s and early 2000's. I consider him a very fortunate and smart man!

I am grateful for coach and all the time he spends with my daughter's soccer team.  He is truly a great man!
Till next time,
Bill

Competitive Soccer and a Masterful Coach

My teenage daughter plays competitive soccer in a club that is doing quite well.  The team placed second in state last year loosing to an in-state rival.  Today, my daughter's team played that same team for their opening spring season game.  They won 1-0!

My daughter has been playing soccer since her humble beginnings with city league, where we discovered her talent, up through 2A, 3A, and now Premier.  I had thought that she was playing at the highest level she currently can until I was informed, today, that there is a Premier II bracket which is better than Premier.  Her team plays in Premier II.

 
Playing city league soccer is fun.  The girls enjoy it, there is no pressure, and every girl on the team gets to play.  2A is somewhat similar.  However, at the 3A level and Premier, competition heats up, coaching becomes more intense, and the best players get the most playing time.

Playing at the Premier level, my daughter had an excellent coach who went above and beyond in coaching, taking it upon himself to increase his expertise yearly -- even traveling to Germany to get a better coaching certification.  He had always told me that when the team reached a point where his expertise was insufficient, he would find a better coach and fall back to a supporting role.  That changing of the torch occurred roughly a year ago, and with it came serious soccer competition with real world coaching.  The team my daughter plays for now has yearly tryouts with good girls being cut from the team in favor of better girls.  After the first tryout a year ago, my daughter's team lost roughly half of the girls that she had been playing with for close to three years.  In came new, better, girls as replacements.  Also, with this came the philosophy of if you want to play, or play more minutes, you need to become better soccer player.  The great girls played more minutes than the good girls.  Now with Spring season starting, we look to tryouts in May.

Fortunately for my daughter, her coach has told her that she is probably in the top three for defense in the state.

Later,
Bill

Weight

I have to admit that I am not a skinny, muscular person.  However, I find it interesting that some people will not gain weight, regardless of what they eat, while other people pack on the pounds just by smelling food.

I have noted, with interest, three people I have known for quite a while who have successfully lost a substantial amount of weight.  I recall going over to Doug's home and celebrating with his wife and family that he had lost 100 pounds.  They had two buckets filled with sand and other items that totaled 100 pounds.  They asked me to lift it to visualize what the amount of weight Doug lost felt like.  They fed us healthy food like shrimp, vegetables, etc. It was truly a happy occasion.

I also watched with trepidation, a lady named Desire.  She lost a substantial amount of weight by eating healthy and running.  She even indicated to me that she was training for a marathon and triathlon.  I was almost jealous, since I used to run track in High School.  Desire became rather slim and muscular, loosing, I guessed, 50 to 75 pounds.  This too was a happy occasion.

Lastly, I watched another friend, Chancy, loose a massive amount of weight.  He used a "fad" diet, but hey, it worked for him.  Over time, Chancy lost quite a lot of weight and looked amazingly fit.  He celebrated with renewed energy and excitement.

Now, roughly a year later, Doug, Desire, and Chancy are in a contest to see who can gain all their original weight back again.  I'll have to announce a winner soon.

Later,
Bill

Classic Audio and Plywood

When I was young, my Parents had a Hi-Fi, a tube-based monophonic record player in a large box.  I really wish I had a picture of this since it was quite the classic.  I was excited when we went to a stereo shop and my Father bought a Marantz 2010 Stereophonic Receiver.

This would prove to be a defining moment in my foray into the world of audio, music, and plywood!  A second defining moment was when my Father put together a speaker kit, making a single rather nice looking speaker to hook up to his Wolensak reel to reel tape player.  I can still see him playing his Henry Mancini tapes through that surprisingly nice sounding audio system.

Enter my teenage years.  I was able to acquire a Harman Kardon tube receiver from a neighbor, which doubled as a heater for my bedroom.   Needing some speakers, I took a bookcase, and wanting to be like my dad, put a plywood face and back on this bookcase, cut some holes in the front, mounted speakers, hooked up the wires, and viola! stereo sound, or so I thought.  Funny how my speaker didn't have the warm, rich sound of my Dads speaker.  Maybe it had something to do with the charity shop speaker components?

I felt I was really flying when I saved up some money from a summer job and splurged on a Lafayette  LR-5555 Stereo Receiver!  55 watts per channel of classic power!

The problem was that those 55 watts of classic power were going into my charity shop speakers!  It didn't take very long for AC/DC to freeze all of the cones in my speakers.

Just starting High School and not having very much money, I couldn't afford a good set of speakers, so a friend and I embarked on a journey of discovery and speaker building.  We settled on a bass reflex design, with the math telling us that bigger is better.  We bought two 15-inch woofers, two 12-inch mid range horns and two piezo-electric tweeters.  We used half-inch plywood and lots of insulation on the interior.  The finished speakers were almost 6 feet tall by 3 feet wide.  They fit rather well in my basement room.  I was able to rattle the upstairs floor with the power they would produce.  I was amazed, one day, when I actually skipped the needle on the record I was playing due to feedback from the the speakers!

Towards the end of High School my parents bought me a set of really nice Speakerlab mid range horns.  At this point, I realized that the size of my speakers was somewhat limiting, so, with my friend, we rebuilt them using 3/4 - inch plywood, making them a much more manageable 3 feet by 2 feet.  I stained these speakers and carried this system with me into my marriage, where my wife suggested that they were, maybe, a little too big for the family room.

As fate would have it, we discovered we had a neighbor who built stereo speakers on the side, selling them commercially.  Jay Adamson, built two very well designed, speakers that looked really nice in our family room (18 inches by 12 inches).  We bought stands to put them on.  You could really crank them!  The bass parts in the remix of Elton John's "I Don't Wanna Go On With You Like That" were unreal.  (We still have these speakers in our family room and continue to listen to them daily.)

In my city they have a yearly Parade of Homes, where contractors show off their best and brightest homes.  We would typically go and dream of owning one of these amazing works or art.  About this time, one of the homes had been built by Dave Wilson, of Wilson Audio.  He has a listening room crafted to be acoustically pure.  He had a set of his WAMM speakers in the room with a wall of hi-end stereo components with huge amplifiers in the room behind the components.  There was a grand piano in the room, but nobody was playing it.  The music coming from the speakers was so pure that you would have sworn that someone was playing the piano.  So now my appetite was whetted, but I knew that hi-end audio was out of reach.

When I saved a bit of money and did some research, I discovered that in the Mid-Fi offereings, Adcom was at the high end.  I made a purchase of an Adcom pre-amp and amplifier.  Not a bad pair at 200 watts per channel.

This has done me well over the years, and today still powers the custom Jay Adamson speakers in my family room.
However, as much as I like the Adcom system, I miss the sweet sound of my Harman Kardon tube receiver.  I also miss the sound of my Dad's Marantz 2010.  I had always wanted a Marantz 2285B.  Mainly because it has 85 watts/channel old school power, meaning more like 120 watts/channel.  It also has the functionality and inputs/outputs that I need.  Most of all, it is rumored to have the sweetest, tube like sound, of all the Marantz receivers.  But the Marantz was too expensive when I bought my Lafayette.

About two years ago I purchased a Marantz 2285B from eBay.  Cleaned it up, etc.  It now sits in my den with a set of same era Bose 901 speakers on stands.

I have to say that the pictures, above, are accurate.  The monster Marantz does power the Bose 901's very well.  The sound is rich, sweet, and the bass will rock you good!  If you ever get the chance to buy a Marantz 2xxx receiver, go for it.  You will not be disappointed!

Till next time,
Bill

Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear?

There was a 70's vocal duo called the Carpenters.  They were about as good as they come.  One of their big hits was called, "Close To You." 

Why do birds
Suddenly appear?
Everytime you are near
Just like me
They long to be
Close to you

My co-worker, a great guy, commented on pets today.  He said that about a year ago, his wife's cat (of 9+ years) passed away.  Since his wife was so attached to the cat, she could not bear to bury it.  So, to this day, that cat's mortal remains are in their freezer.  She takes it out periodically, as he says, around midnight, to reminisce.

Karen Carpenter had some serious challenges, especially that of eating or better yet, not eating.  This issue eventually took her life in the prime of her career.  I recall back when I was in college having the opportunity to spend a semester abroad in Europe.  We were based in London, England.  The odds were good since there were 26 females and only 5 males in the troup.  One of the more vivacious women was named Sandra.  She was always full of energy, always talking, always had something to say -- fun to be around.  In London, we had a full time chef, a husband and wife team, that would cook us a breakfast and dinner each day that was to die for.  They were British, so we would get wonderful meals twice a day.  Since we lived in a contained five story flat, it was hard for many things to go unnoticed.  One of the other girls discovered a dark secret about Sandra.  She was binging her food after eating.  Had a serious eating disorder.  Like Karen Carpenter, she was in danger.  Gratefully, we had a set of strong Group Directors and an exceptional Religious Leader who worked with Sandra, giving her much needed help.  After the semester was over, we all returned back stateside.  I did not keep in contact with Sandra.  I have to hope that she was able to live a somewhat normal life.

On a side note, I did keep in contact with one girl from this study abroad group.  She has since married a great guy and has an exceptional family.

I am excited about Spring and even like the remaining snow flurries that sprinkle my valley home.  I have heard the birds sing in the morning and realize that old man winter will soon be just a memory.

Till next time,
Bill

What's with Bill Freeton?

Back in the day, my High School had, and still has, an FM Radio Station.  KOHS, 91.7FM.  Educational radio at its best...  I have always had a keen interest in electronics and electricity.  As a result, I joined the engineering team for KOHS in my sophomore year.  Loved it!  When my Senior year rolled around, I decided to enter the delicate conundrum of DJing.  I had an early morning radio show, 6am to 7am.  "Good morning OHS!  Let's get down to some Earth, Wind, and Fire..."  I needed a name, so Bill Freeton was born. Why Bill Freeton, it was weird, it just popped into my head.

I actually made a demo tape, a reel to reel, and took it to a local radio station.  Needless to say, my future was not in DJing.


I remember one time when a good friend and I messed with the sound of the radio station.  We made it so our voices were very low and powerful.  We sounded great!  Totally screwed the music...


Till next time,


Bill