Radical Agenda Podcast

No Radical Agenda This Evening 20240927

Radical Agenda
Radical Agenda
No Radical Agenda This Evening 20240927
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Here at the Radical Agenda, our occasional technology challenges have become something of a running joke.

In the radio business, it is generally considered poor showmanship to make the audience aware of the equipment at all, since this distracts from whatever message the broadcast is supposed to deliver. I on the other hand have been bucking the radio business since well before I got fired from FCC airwaves.

I’ve mentioned on the show a few times that my playing up of our technical problems was in part a joke inspired by the Opie & Anthony show. Whenever something would go wrong in the studio, Opie would throw a fit and scream at people, usually Sam. This was mildly entertaining to me at first, but once I understood that he was mocking all of his former bosses by breaking this convention, I found it much more amusing.

Here, we’ve had some of that. Over the years when problems have arisen, I’ve sometimes made a bigger deal out of them than they needed to be, just so I could have an excuse to be angry on the radio. This was generally well received by the audience and I had a lot of fun doing it.

At the same time, we never made up problems or caused them to happen just to make a fictional radio bit. This was improv humor, happening as a consequence of real issues.

Even before the great internet crackdown of 2017,  our content was uniquely targeted for censorship by the government and tech companies, as well as malicious activity by private sector criminals such as DDOS attacks and hack attempts. I started my website on a cheap shared hosting plan. Quickly, we needed to upgrade to a dedicated server because the DDOS protection of the shared hosting plan could not withstand the forces arrayed against us.

I was well suited to deal with this stuff because I spent years working in datacenters, and then building the datacenters. I had been the operations manager for a web hosting company, and then the project manager for a company that did builds and installations for web hosting companies. The skills picked up during my IT career served me well as I got into online media.

This diminished some over time. Technology changes, and I was more focused on the content than the infrastructure. Being in prison for three years really set me back, as AI began to revolutionize everything and you could barely do so much as use a word processor without a high end GPU anymore.

I’ve had a lot of help in this realm over the years, and I look forward to a day when I can thank those folks publicly without ruining their careers. In the meantime, you know who you are, and I am very grateful.

In recent weeks, we’ve had more troubles than usual. Local problems in studio. These dramatically injured audio quality when we had a very special guest on to discuss an important subject, and then prevented one broadcast from happening at all.

These things happen from time to time, but the biggest recent disruption came when there was a bug problem in the building where I live. I had to move everything in my small space to clean up the mess made killing bugs myself. Then, as I was just about to put everything back together, the building management told me that I would need to have everything off the walls at least two feet the following week, so they could do a more thorough spraying for bugs.

This incident interfered with my mental state more than it did with any of our equipment. I was so frustrated by the the bugs and the mess and the incompetence of the building management, that it could fairly be said to have pushed me over the edge.

I’ve basically been living like I was still in prison for the last 20 months or so, but even in prison they don’t force you to live with pestilence like this.

I still haven’t fully reassembled the studio since that mess. Everything is just sorta slapped together. I keep on putting off this task, and many others, for two reasons.

  1. Because it stresses me out. It’s a fairly major project because I really don’t have enough space in my room for all of my stuff. To move anything, you must place it on top of something else. A lot of work must be repeated because of this, and it makes me want to set the place on fire (metaphorically, I should state).
  2. Because the task is so substantial, trying to get everything back in order before the next scheduled broadcast is a substantial challenge. The Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule means that during the week, I must be on the air every other day. It’s true that I could probably do it if I just worked straight through the weekend, but that would not be without its time pressures, and I’ve been trying to get out of the room more to preserve what remains of my sanity. The weekends are typically when I accomplish this.

But having had the problems we did in the last couple of weeks, it is plain to see that I cannot put this off any longer. I really need to get the studio reassembled properly, and tend to some long overdue maintenance tasks.

I’ve long been a believer in “The Show Must Go On”. When the show has gone on and tech problems got in the way, I tried to make this part of the entertainment. I’m proud of that work.

I do not take it lightly to skip episodes, but when these challenges ruin a guest appearance, and this is followed by a broadcast becoming impossible, this is not improving the entertainment value of the production.

For these reasons, the Radical Agenda will not air this evening, Friday September 27th 2024.

I will aim to be functional by Monday, but there is a non zero chance that I’ll end up releasing something short and pre-recorded, if the project is not completed in time for me to prepare for SurrealPolitiks.

Thank you for your attention, your understanding, and your support.

 

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