So this morning I get in my car to go to work, and put on 93.1, and.. Party 93.1 is GONE! What the hell? They're playing boring 90's rock music now!

Party 93.1 was an AWESOME South Florida radio station that played nothing but dance music. New dance, classic dance, you name it. They had these great classic freestyle mix shows at noon and filled a market that simply didn't exist anymore in this area.

They seemed to be doing well, too, with lots of promotions, and lots of people I know were listeners.

So why the hell did they abandon their market? They were the ONLY dance radio station in this market at the moment; there are already several rock stations. How can they possibly hope to compete? Not to mention they now have millions of angry listeners wondering where the hell Party 93.1 went. Power 96 is completely useless now, since they play nothing but hip-hop. So us dance music listeners have nowhere to go.

I called the old number, but couldn't get through. I bet thousands of former Party 93.1 listeners are complaining at the moment. I honestly hope they get mercilessly harassed into changing back to the dance format.

If not, I'm going to miss hearing all those freestyle tracks again. It was such a great path through memory lane...

UPDATE 3/25/2005: I'd like to thank everyone for their comments here. I never expected my little rant about this station dying would draw so many comments. It just further proves what a great station this was and what a crime it was for Cox to do a format flip. Hopefully dance will be back; Party 93.1 had good ratings, so I bet some other company is working on filling the hole... The market is out there!

Another UPDATE 4/19/2005: This has become a somewhat popular post, so any trolls or flames will be deleted. Thank you. }:)

UPDATE 4/29/2005: I found Salsa 98.3FM playing Freestyle today a bit after noon while scanning for radio stations across the dial. The fact that a Spanish station is playing Freestyle with english lyrics shows that there is indeed a market for it!

Well, the adorable spotted fuzzball you see at the left is Sierra. She was out at Sawgrass today, along with Ann-Marie, Junior's sister and littermate. Sierra is around four weeks old, and really enjoyed the day, sleeping on a warm heating pad most of the time and getting fed milk from a bottle several times. I wish I could take her home! Alas, maybe someday I'll have the necessary credentials to do so. After Sawgrass I went to the property. Tiffany was being a sweetie today, chuffing up a storm. I hope she gets a new cage-mate soon; she must get lonely in there. That's why I give her extra-special attention. Well, today's pictures are all here, feel free to enjoy!

Cheetah movie!

Okay, I'm probably going to see this. In fact, I can't wait. It's about time cheetahs get good exposure in the theaters...

But... why would anyone call their company "Gaylord Films"? I mean, don't get me wrong, I have NOTHING against gays, but it sounds like a name like that would be bad for business. I mean, what teenager wouldn't at least giggle at that name? It just seems odd.

But the movie looks like it has potential. Gotta love the little cheetah-cub squeaks at the beginning of the trailer. }:)

Here's a classic SNL skit...

Da Tooncinator! (xvid/divx codec required)

Hmm, maybe he should run for Governor of California. }:) Toonces the driving cat!

Well, the Hamboree is this weekend. This is basically an amateur radio and computer show, where people come to sell a huge variety of stuff, some of it new, some of it used, some of it ancient. You can sometimes find fascinating things there, like 1930s radios, ancient computers (here's hoping for some old Apple II stuff!), and so on.

I haven't missed a hamfest since 1994 or so; it's become a yearly tradition for me. It's just so much fun to see all the weird stuff for sale, even though many years I've gone home without buying a thing!

Random tidbit: The mini LED keychain flashlight I bought there three years ago still works!

Anyway, a full report after the show!

I came across this hilarious old error message I saved while cleaning out some directories on my work machine:

You know a system is screwed up when a successfully completed operation is considered an error. }:)

Well, I finally got to meet Bada-Bing's cubs! There are three of them, and they are the most adorable spotty-cougar-cubs you've ever seen in your entire life! I'll even offer a money-back guarantee! We seperate cougars from their mother when they are around this age (two weeks) so that they can be socialized to people and become handleable as adults. These three little guys were in this laundry basket, and were squirming around and squeaking a lot! I even took some video of them and posted it, so take a look. You can hear the squeaking really well in part of the video. Click here to see all the photos I took. Note that cougars have spots when they are cubs; the spots vanish when they mature. Other than that, I had a nice morning at sawgrass and helped a bit at the property. We fed whole chickens today; you gotta love how effortlessly the tigers can pull a chicken through a small feedhole...

• Today's photos
• Video of Bada-Bing's cubs (Note: You must have the DivX or XviD codec installed; http://www.divx.com to download for your platform)

I helped clean up and feed at the property this afternoon, then went over to the house (where they keep the small animals and cubs) hoping to see Badabing's new cubs (three of them!), but they were off at a show.

Arrrrgh! I hope I get to see them tomorrow. I want to take some video of them, and possibly some photos too. I bet those cougar cubs are SO adorable!

I did get to see Taj, Cheech, and Chong though. I took some video of Taj prancing around on a leash and getting dunked in the pool; that was hilarious. I'll probably post the video soon, when I get it cut down and compressed into something less than 1.4GB.

Tomorrow: Sawgrass in the morning, hopefully a visit to see the new cubs at lunch and property in the afternoon!

Then next weekend: TROPICAL HAMBOREE! Whoohoo!

Wow, this is awesome. Click here for a video of Steve Jobs introducing the first Macintosh back in 1984. Even back then he seemed to have a reality distortion field in full effect.

Gotta love how that little 9" black and white screen was adequate back then, and how everyone was cheering. Long live Macintosh! (and Linux too)

Oh, and it's only Monday. And 9:19AM:

User:

It doesn't work. What's going on? Please help me.
Thank you.

Staff:

Hello,
What are you having trouble with? Can be a little more specific so we can assist.

User:

Im trying to finish this report I have to turn into my class tonight, 
I am unsure how to mount the CPU? Can someone please come help me? 
I am told that John in 258 is the person to see about this.
Thank you.

What scares me the most is these are computer science students. Shouldn't people who major in computer science be fellow geeks? You'd think they'd be able to compose a well-written, descriptive E-mail which mentions an error message and what they were doing at the time. But noooo. "It doesn't work." Well, neither do our support services, with information like that. Please hang up and try your call again. }:)

Of course, later in the day, this came in:

Good afternoon,

Can someone please check the fountain printer? It seems to be 
giving us some sort of error message.

Okay, so at least this person told us that they're getting an error message. Is it really that hard to include the error message so we don't have to waste time answering "Uhh, could you please tell us what the error is?" Oh wait, of course it is!