1. WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names):
Jay Bell

2. NASCAR NAME: (first name of your mother’s dad, father’s dad):
Clement… uh… it just occurred to me that I don’t know the names of either my paternal grandfather (he’s been dead for decades) or my step-dad’s father. How weird is that?

3. STAR WARS NAME: (the first 2 letters of your last name, first 4 letters of your first name):
Jelesl

4. DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal):
Blue Otter (I think this would make a better Super Hero name myself)

5. SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you live):
Troy Ann Arbor (that one doesn’t really work well at all)

6. SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd favorite color, favorite alcoholic drink, optionally add “THE” to the beginning):
Red Long Island Iced Tea

7. FLY NAME: (first 2 letters of 1st name, last 2 letters of your last name):
Lens

8. GANGSTA NAME: (favorite ice cream flavor, favorite cookie):
Cookie Dough Sugar

9. ROCK STAR NAME: (current pet’s name, current street name):
Melvin Chelsea Circle (that one doesn’t really work either)

10. PORN NAME: (1st pet, street you grew up on):
Tiger Meadowlawn

So thats why I didn’t post anything today. Consider this an open thread on the off-chance that I don’t get around to posting anything else once I get home.

We ended up only attending the first half of the day because most of the topics were for people who already knew what the hell they were doing podcasting-wise and were looking to take it to the next level. The first speaker, for example, talked about how good photography could really help a podcast or even just plain old blogging. The next fellow talked about how we all have a Personal Brand and why cultivating that brand was important. The third person talked about how the most important thing you need for your podcast wasn’t the hardware, but content, content, content.

All of that was interesting enough, but I already knew most of it. I don’t use a lot of photographs on SEB, but I try to make sure I use good ones for the sidebar and the occasional entry. I’m aware that I have a personal brand and it’s thoroughly tied to SEB now, for better or for worse. As for content, while I’m not entirely sure what I’ll podcast about, it’s not like I haven’t had seven years of experience finding something to shoot my mouth off about on the blog so I’m not too worried that I’ll come up with something half-way interesting to podcast about. Which isn’t to say that the talks weren’t informative and interesting, but that they were aimed at folks who had already figured the other stuff out.

What I needed to know was all the basic stuff about doing it with regards to: What’s a good headset that won’t set me back an arm and a leg? Should I even use a headset? Should I host it myself—and thusly drive up my monthly bandwidth usage—or is there a fantastic and inexpensive service provider out there that I should look into? Do I just use Audacity and do it solo, say 20 minutes of me spouting off on something, or would it be more interesting to try and get someone else to jabber at and use something like TalkShoe so I could have folks call in? Would Skypecasting be better? All of that sort of general this-is-how-you-should-get-started crap is what I needed to know. That didn’t look like it was going to be talked about much so we called it a day once lunch time hit.

But before we left I managed to sit down with another Les—that would be Les Zaldor of Zaldor’s World—who’s already been podcasting for some time now. I also got to meet BLUEeyedBanshee who has been an off-and-on SEB regular from way back. I’ve “known” both of them for years and it was pretty cool to finally get a chance to see them in person. We didn’t have a lot of time, they had to rush off to grab some lunch and get back for the second half of the day, but we got a few minutes to chat. Les showed me a wicked cool digital audio recorder he carries with him that looks like a small version of the sort of mic you’d expect to see on a talk show host’s desk and he used it to have me record a promo for his podcast. The kind of thing radio stations are always getting famous musicians to do except I’m not as famous or as well rehearsed as they are. Fortunately I remembered to bring my camera with me so the historic meeting could be immortalized in a pic:

As you can clearly see I am nowhere near as scary in real life as I seem to be on my blog. Les doesn’t look at all concerned for his well being and I have a big friendly smile on my face. I’m a nice guy. Really!

My primary reason for doing this was to provide a spot for people to upload photos they wanted to be able to post to the comments here at SEB so we’re not hotlinking to some other poor schlep’s blog or otherwise stealing bandwidth. I suppose we can also just use it for photos and crap that people think would be of interest to readers of SEB. They could relate to a topic we’re discussing or just be cool photos you’ve taken. Consider the fact that the group is open to anyone to see when uploading pics to it. Other than that, have at it.

It’s free and hopefully will give me an idea of how to go about setting up an SEB Podcast. In addition to the amazingly underwhelming experience of meeting yours truly and discovering that I’m nowhere near as scary in person as I appear to be on my blog, you’ll also get the chance to meet another “Les” in the form of Les Zaldor of the Zaldor’s World podcast who knows more about music than I ever will.

That’s an opportunity to meet two Les’s for the price of FREE! Plus, you know, all that podcasting stuff.

So you get this instead. A lame entry about how I can’t find anything I want to blog about. I’m literally blogging about my inability to blog. There’s a joke in there somewhere, but I’m too lame to find it.

Anyway, perhaps I’ll remember something I forgot I was going to remember to say until I forgot it a little later and then I’ll blog about how I forgot to remember it.

That pic was taken just this morning right outside our townhouse with the sun behind me which explains why my eyes are so puffy. It was a comfortably cool morning for early November. Fresh with the promise of a new day after an election that made history. As you can see I took the shears to my head last night before bed though I didn’t bother to apply a razor as I was already tired. The hair is about as close to the skin as you can get it with standard shears. I had an alternate pic with more of a smile and a bit of the sun flaring around the side of my head, but I wasn’t sure it was as good of a pic as this one. Maybe I’ll post it later if anyone’s curious.

On a totally unrelated note, but something I’ve been meaning to mention for awhile now, what the hell is going on with gasoline prices? Last Friday I filled up the tank at a station selling gas for only $2.09 a gallon! Checking MSN Autos’ Gas Price Finder there’s at least one station in my area selling gas today for $1.99 and the average price has dropped to $2.05! I can only figure the switch from the summer formula to the winter mix must be part of it, but that’s an amazing drop in price. Thanks to living so close to work and school I’m only filling up once every other week these days, but I’ll take the lower gas prices just the same.

My one concern is that some folks will take this as a sign that they can go back to buying big gas guzzlers as the “crisis” is over. It appears, though, that the shitty economy is keeping people from buying cars at all. GM’s sales in October plunged 45%, Chrysler down by 35%, and Ford was down 30%. Even Toyota saw sales fall by 23%. None of which is good news for Michigan. Hopefully when things improve enough for sales to pick up folks will make wiser car buying decisions and not rush back to the huge vehicles because gas is cheap.

Not sure how it goes about formulating its guess, but it didn’t take more than a moment to come back with a response so whatever it does has to be pretty basic. It’s true that my first full name is commonly associated with the female gender, but I don’t use it on my site so that can’t be it.

To its credit, it correctly guess that my mother’s blog was written by a woman and ***Dave Does the Blog is written by a man, but it thinks my dad’s blog was also written by a woman.

So drop on by and tell him the Bastard sent you. I’m sure he’d appreciate the attention.