Sign off

Aircheck has finally reached the end of the road. This is my last post for this, my original, weblog. Thanks to you, dear reader, for riding along memory lane with me. I feel that every story (fit to post) has been covered, sometimes more than once. Radio is a dead end topic; unfortunately, the blog's title, Aircheck, was chosen at a time when I still pined for broadcasting. Events of Summer and Fall of 2011 changed all that. I've moved on to other interests. This site will remain open going forward for those who may discover our legacy posts. The companion blog Peanut Whistle remains my sole active Blogger blog, for now...

Neal

The Original Trilogy

Here is something that I have neglected to say, although I truly feel: thanks for taking the time to read Aircheck and my companion blogs, the Peanut Whistle and the newly reactivated Gospel Aircheck.

I have spent this busy summer away from the blogs often contemplating how each would evolve. Writing at least three weblogs can be a challenge. The one you’re reading now has to change in order to keep me interested.

First, radio is a dead topic to me. It no longer beckons me. Finally, I am cured of the radio bug. Events that unfolded over the summer assured that remedy. Soon I will detail those happenings in the Peanut Whistle. From now on Aircheck will delve into other areas, including: what’s on TV’s new fall season, my obsession with the home teams, and family life in general.

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Also check out my original Gospel Aircheck blog for the upcoming review of the 2011 National Quartet Convention my wife and I attended in Louisville, Kentucky

Stay tuned

Give Me a Break

Now on summer hiatus, My Aircheck Blog will return with new posts soon. This season has been full of family fun. It has also been a time of reflection for the author: how do I continue, what is the future of this weblog?

The blogosphere is a recent invention of a younger generation. Not intending to be left behind, I adopted the blogging hobby after most of these youngsters had moved on to “tweet” and “Facebook” their little hearts out.

I have taken a break from writing in order to read what others have written. Most of what I have discovered is useless to me, but I have gleaned one inescapable fact: there is just too much. The Internet is overwhelming and fickle. How does this or any other blog survive in this onslaught of constantly evolving information overload? How can it be profitable?

Aircheck will continue as the labor of love I began in 2009. In the meantime check out our earlier posts, especially if you are new. Thanks for your time. Read on, my friends.

Stay tuned

Stressed?

I am in the process of digitizing my life. All my important photos, paper documents, and audio recordings will eventually exist somewhere on my hard drive or in the “cloud”. I came across this photo I took in 1988 with a Canon 35mm SLR of a small foam Christmas toy with an expression that represents my occasional frustrations.

Stay tuned

Holding Pattern

Summer 2011 is a blast! The kids are charged this year: a delightful Florida vacation, summer camps galore, and round the clock excitement. This leaves little room for my blogging hobby. Right now a new three part podcast is in the works. Not to give too much away but my idea for this upcoming Gospel Rewind show has its origins in about 1995. Watch this and the Peanut Whistle for more information.

Stay tuned

Info Please!

It never dawned on me to share a link for our readers, Radio-Info. It is a site dedicated to everything radio broadcasting: current news, views and discussion boards. Check it out. Many of our Aircheck topics have been inspired by this webpage that I have been reading for over two years now.

Stay tuned

©2011 Neal Rhoden. Aircheck Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati Tags: Useful Website

No Video, No Problem

A glimpse inside a real radio broadcast studio can be found on my companion Peanut Whistle Blog. It is a multi-part in depth series on my second radio home where I performed as Jim O’Neal—Disk Jockey and Program Director. Back then, I took quite a few photos with my Cannon 35mm SLR, but never any video like I did in the WBKI YouTube video. This series will be adapted for Aircheck and made into a page some future date. Until then…

Stay tuned

©2011 Neal Rhoden, Aircheck Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati Tags: The Peanut Whistle Weblog

Fresh Air

Today marks a new era with this blog; started in March of 2009. Along the way it has gone through numerous changes: layout, title, focus, and now a new home with the domain name www.myaircheckblog.com 

What will not change is its author. Not that I won't change. That is a "given." The new domain name reflects the shift to a more generalized world view Aircheck has adopted. Some time back we dropped the "Gospel" from our name. I feel that implies that this a a weblog about religion. Don't put me in that box, thank you very much. Aircheck is simply my perspective: my testing of the air, so to speak. A view that is topical, opinionated, and reflective. My beliefs are presented from time to time. How can you separate a man from his beliefs? I do promise that one thing will never change: I will keep it real.

Stay tuned

My Wish

Aircheck is an emotional clearing house; valuable, free therapy throughout the year for me, the writer. Right now, I'm listening again to a popular  Raschal Flatts song from 2006:

"I hope you never look back, but ya never forget,

All the ones who love you, in the place you left,

I hope you always forgive, and you never regret,

And you help somebody every chance you get,

Oh, you find God's grace, in every mistake,

And you always give more than you take."

I do not glean all my advice from Country songs; today it is apropos. The My Wish lyric speaks my resolution. In 2011, I resolve not to "look back" as much while remaining keenly aware of my lessons learned the hard way. In yet another Country hit from 1993; Vince Gill sharpens my point singing, "There ain't no future in the past."

Better now than a year ago, twenty-eleven promises abundant topical, opinionated, and reflective Aircheck posts that evolve as this blogger does. Happy New Year.

Stay tuned

©2010-2011 Neal Rhoden, Aircheck blog. All rights reserved.

Keep it Simple, Stupid

At this point in my life one thing has become clear: it is time to simplify. For most of my adult life, shoot all my life, I have been a packrat. Well, it is time to purge. Most of my mess is in small things I’ve kept such as audio cassette mix tapes, tiny electronic parts (patch cords and adapters galore), the list goes on: hand tools, doo-dads, and what-nots. I justified all this clutter by saying, “It’ll come in handy or be worth something some day.” Well, it seldom did. Today, while browsing my Netflix queue I stumbled upon a show that is right up my alley called American Pickers. A new show featured on the History Channel, it follows two guys on a mission to buy junk that they can later sell for a profit. They go around the countryside of the American Mid-west finding individuals willing to part with some of their clutter (for a price). Sign me up for their jobs. I identify both as a hoarder and a seeker.

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This brings me to my mission with this particular blog. The statistics feature in the backbone software of Aircheck and the Peanut Whistle weblogs has been a marvelous tool. It has directed me in the types of posts that you, the reader, like to read. In fact, the number of readers and how they discovered this little blog is part of the Blogger software. I have not quite learned how to interpret all the numbers, but I have a pretty good idea that we’re not setting the blogosphere on fire. That is why big changes are coming to this site in the next few days or weeks. Look for my two Blogger blogs to consolidate into one. The Peanut Whistle will become part of the Aircheck instead of  a separate site. I had considered shutting down both altogether. Merging the two is the more logical course. “Less clutter, more sanity” is my new motto.

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden. Aircheck blog. All rights reserved.

The Pages

A ton of bricks hit me. Nobody cares to read radio shop talk. The weight has crushed the original focus of this blog. For those die-hard enthusiasts remaining, we will redirect future broadcast focused posts to one of our sub-pages called Radio Daze, just click on the link in the margin.

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When we started this thing over a year and a half ago I set out to write what I know, as if it was the only thing I knew. A very short period in my life has been under the microscope far too long. I have grown beyond the topic of an irrelevant past and future postings will reflect the change. This week Gospel Aircheck will become simply, Aircheck.

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden. The Aircheck Blog. All rights reserved.

Pluggin’ Away

Born out of TV talk shows—probably, the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson—the term “plug” came to mean that an actor or performer came on the show to promote their latest project. Today I’m plugging my blogs with our latest YouTube vids.

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Here’s the “stuff”

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My TV promo. Be here!

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden. Gospel Aircheck blog. All rights reserved

On the (Writer’s) Block

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From time to time I am stumped. Other times the words just flow. Over the past few months the former seemed to be true. Back in January I resolved to write every day in order to help myself improve. That resolution crumbled. I need help from the readers. What hooked you on this blog? What will keep you? Please comment; let us know what interests you and we’ll do our best to write about it. Check the archive for the posts that have met your expectations. If preferable e-mail us: nealrhoden@gospelaircheck.com

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden. Gospel Aircheck blog. All rights reserved.

Deferred

An all too common problem in this day and age is project follow through. That is, this blogger specifically. Our most popular post over the last six months was one we shared concerning a book that I started to write. Well, I wrote—really wrote, rewrote, polished, then trashed, and started over—a chapter of my memoir. It was an uphill battle that in the final analysis was beyond my talents as a writer to complete. My hat is off to any successful author. Writing a book is harder than it looks. It is easy to write, but the struggle is in polishing the work: removing the blemishes, ironing out the wrinkles and making my words universally appealing, flowing logically. When I was done polishing what remained was decidedly unsatisfying. Let’s go back to the drawing board. The project is stalled for now.

Tied for second and third place are posts that concern my podcasts done over the last year and my review of a local radio show now streaming on the Internet. Another failed enterprise is the podcasts because of lack of the availability of new, original material. Most of my podcasts were rehashed radio shows and personal tapes I had done years ago. I do intend to continue writing reviews of shows on the air and the Internet.

Maybe it is me. I have had too many hobbies and interests over the years.

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden. Gospel Aircheck blog. All rights reserved.

Lazy Sunday

I was very surprised this morning when I checked the statistics for our companion blog, Gospel Aircheck. It has seen the single biggest jump in readership since I started the dang thing 19 months ago. The funny thing is that we have no idea how that happened. The only difference is that more audio clips have been featured. Maybe it is due to offering more frequent posts. Just how big a jump, you ask? Well, about 50 times the readers on average over the last two days alone! The amount of new international guests to the site is staggering—many of them from countries that are traditionally non-English speaking. Internet discovery is a very tricky thing; you can’t make people find you. I think it’s luck. Here’s to many more posts to come.

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden. The Peanut Whistle blog. All rights reserved.

What’s in a Name

Often I wonder what direction this weblog should take. Do I write for a very specific, small, audience? Let’s face it the topics I tend to cover are not as popular as, say, cute cat videos on YouTube. Originally this blog was to serve as a companion to my podcast, Gospel Rewind. Good ideas for the show became hard to come by and I lost interest. Also, the podcast was supposed to feature some live performances from a few singers near to this blogger. I had great ideas but scheduling conflicts stymied every effort and I was forced to use exclusively archival material. Living in the past really has no appeal to me any more. Most likely, the podcast will cease production as a result.

Gospel Aircheck is a bit of a misnomer. I have not stuck to exclusively radio topics nor do I intend to do so. Broadcasting was a significant part of my life but I have been “retired” from radio longer than I was actually involved in it. I’ve lived my life in phases: for a while interested in my small artistic talents, then Christian radio, working on old cars, selling auto parts, and on and on. Sometimes these activities overlapped; but during my 13 year career in auto parts retail, I had maybe one or two passing thoughts of my previous career. No one who worked with me during this period had a clue of my life in gospel radio. In fact, I was fed up with the futility involving my love for a career versus reward. My first full year in retail I made more money than several good years in radio combined. Long story short, future posts will reflect my varied interests. More than 80% of my life so far does not involve broadcasting. I can say that music has been with me the entire time, regardless of the vocation I choose. Maybe this blog is due another name change, but to quote the Bard, “What’s in a name?”

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden. Gospel Aircheck. All rights reserved.

This is the Spot

Welcome to the best kept secret on the Internet—my weblog known as the Peanut Whistle!

Try not to keep it under wraps too long. Looking at the statistics for my blog they show a either a flat or very slow growth. If you have enjoyed reading my posts, please comment. Remember I am a big boy, so if you haven’t enjoyed it, comment as well. I have allowed our domain name to expire due to lack of readers. The blog has returned to its former Blogspot address. Right now you are invited to catch up on the blog by scanning the archive for posts that you may have missed. Thanks…

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden. the Peanut Whistle blog. All rights reserved.

Three Day Weekend

Wow! Friday already. “Everybody’s working for the weekend,” someone once sang. That may seem ridiculous if you’re reading on a Tuesday. Lately, I have been doing some research in history. Specifically, my own history. Back when I was a teen I kept a dairy spoken into a cassette tape. Listening to playback now makes me keenly aware of how I went about recording these journal entries was all wrong. First, I was perpetually stuck in the present. Every minute detail was recorded: what time I got up, what I ate for breakfast, how often I showered (on and on). Secondly, that overshadowed chunks of important details of the big picture. Of course, it was impossible to know at the time I would be listening to these tape 25 years later.

I refer back to these recordings often: when preparing the blogs or checking facts. The dairy survives to this day to jog my often poor recollections. It keeps me from embellishing—mostly. The disadvantage: unpleasant facts reemerge causing me to reopen old wounds. A quarter century is way too long to hold grudges. So, I have to mentally separate from the old me as though I don’t know the young man on the tapes. It keeps me sane.

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden. Gospel Aircheck. All rights reserved

It's All About me

Constantly taking inventory of the who, what, where and when this blogger sometimes asks the question: why? The purpose of the Peanut Whistle is simple; compose a record of my life now and provide examples of an earlier time that explain what brought me to the present. More often than not my radio career is at the forefront. A goal of mine at the dawn of 2010 was to delve into the relevant topics of the day, but something from my past continues to intrigue me.

This is a great time in my life. Having started a family in my late thirties has kept me on my toes for the last decade. The down side is that since I am, shall we say, more mature keeping up with three little children and a 15 year old is more of a challenge. By the time my parents were in their late twenties they had three kids. A possible advantage to  the age gap shared with my kids is a better perspective on life. Nevertheless, I wouldn't change anything.

I had been out of radio officially many years before my crew were born. I played one of my aircheck tapes in the car of a radio show I did at age 19. My six year old son asked, "Is that you, Daddy?" It dawned one me: they have no idea that I had a life before them.

So, why write the Peanut Whistle? It is dedicated to my children should they ever have interest in their old man; what he accomplished, how he lived, what his life was like in the old days. Being relevant is less important than drawing a vivid portrait of my kids' heritage. Hopefully, along the way the masses will appreciate my posts. But if that doesn't happen I'm satisfied with this somewhat autobiographical picture of my story.

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden, The Peanut Whistle. All rights reserved.

The Blog Beat

Summer 2010 was fun. Facing an empty nest for the first time I am returning to the blogging beat in earnest. In the coming few days we at the Peanut Whistle are gathering a host of ideas both in written and audio form, maybe even video with our YouTube account. I’m playing it by ear. Speaking of video, take the old studio tour as we celebrate over 1,000 viewers on http://www.youtube.com/user/jimoneal1520

Our goal is to combine all of the Peanut Whistle stuff into one website: the blogs, podcasts, radio station and video. If you explore this blog in depth, most of these things will be at your fingertips.

Before I close today, congratulations are in order to one of my former radio homes that is located in Bremen, Georgia. After a couple of decades as a gospel station they have flipped to an oldies format and are streaming online at http://www.1440thetrain.com What a great era we live in! The present owners took over the station 17 years ago, shortly after my time there. They struggled with the Southern Gospel format for years. Best of luck to them. I consider that station one of my radio babies. My friends David, Corky and I laid groundwork which we moved from our metro Atlanta radio homes into the original “Peanut Whistle” out in rural west Georgia. I have listened, they seem to have some great imaging packages and I like the new nickname, the Train. Daddy’s proud. I’ll be listening Monday to their—hopefully live—Morning Show, expect a review in Gospel Aircheck.

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden. The Peanut Whistle. All rights reserved.