This particular shining example of living fecal matter appears to reside at 639 Greenwood Cir, Mount Olive, AL.

Whatever comforts to which you cling, of whatever you make your foundation, wherever the bricks you lay, you cannot trust their security.  Nothing can be trusted with certainty.  With your newest faculties seek out your safest footholds, and realize your position.  If we are to free ourselves of the bindings of our evolutionary heritage, we must recognize and address the manifestations of ancient humanity’s pre-scientific patchwork mythologies.

We cannot guide human progress according to the limitations and guidelines  of ancient peoples who did not have a fully realized notion of even the simplest aspects of biology or mechanics.  We are beyond the stopgaps necessitated by a lack of understanding.  Take for a harbinger the clear and consistent pattern of religious persistents to retreat into the nearest region of science that has not yet been fully explored.  When cornered from there, they will simply jump up another rung, until one day we finally obtain every datum on the nature of the universe.  Trust that then, we will succeed them, if never earlier.

Some time now has passed since I lost all faith in God, but it was for the first time tonight that I could say the same of us.  If there is a morality to evolution, it is that if we refuse to evolve, we will die.  Humanity relies on its own progress.  If we don’t start recognizing that there is a more complete, fascinating, and beautiful universe to be explored, if we ignore what we can see with our amazing brains, all standing on the precipice of organic evolution at this place in time, and do so based on a stubborn adherence to archaic tales from lore, we stand to deny ourselves the right to advance in universal history.  The universe and all of space-time are unquestionably the grandest field that we can perceive as a member of reality, and therefor the most significant and necessary stage for humanity to contribute.  We should recoil and nest in our own primitive history to the doom of our significance not as the species of humans, but as representatives of all of life on Earth.

Me, I believe in Earth, faith be damned, and I believe in humanity as her champions, her mouthpiece, her apostle.  What do you believe in?

Read The Magic Pill.

There was some back and forth, and two steps of elevation to get me refunded for the two month’s of Plus I paid for but never benefitted from from, but I did get that refund.  The interesting thing, however, is that they went ahead and kicked me down to the lower “Express” package immediately.  The plan I’d been paying for was supposed to give me 30Mbps, and the Express package is supposed to be 15Mbps.  When I upgraded from Express, I was routinely seeing 18-20Mbps, so I had high hopes for the Plus package, thinking I might get closer to 35Mbps.  Well, after the upgrade, I actually started consistently getting just 15Mbps.  I thought that the reduction was unrelated, though obviously very disappointing.  Now I’m not so sure.

See, after my chat today, when they dropped me back down to Express, my speed went back up to 20Mbps.  Right away this happened.  So, the only conclusion I can draw from this is that somehow, for some reason, upgrading my speed actually was the reason my speed decreased.  Maybe, in a perfect world, I could talk to some technician there who could actually determine why this was the case, but this world is far from perfect.  My best bet will be to see if my friend Tommy (former cable tech) has ever had experience with this same phenomenon, if my curiosity is ever to be sated.

For now, though, I’ve decided that I’d rather save the $10 monthly than have higher speed, especially since getting the higher speed would require me to have those techs at my house again, at least once (but probably more).  15Mbps is pretty decent, and the difference in upload speed between the two plans is tiny, so I won’t sweat that, either.

Back to the Future might be the only movie, apart from certain classic animated Disney films, capable of causing my body to fire of endorphins.  I mean, it helps if there are other chemicals involved, but still.

Hey, I just noticed that the guy who cleaned up and repaired Biff’s car in 1955 in BTTF-II is the same as the guy who, in 2015, talks to Marty about the Cubs winning the World Series in the same movie.  It seems that every time I watch these movies I pick up on another detail that serves only to increase my appreciation for the series.  To make a contradictory point, it’s always bothered me that the Grays Sports Almanac wasn’t thicker.  In BTTF-II we see how the information is arranged in book, and they are not conservative with page real estate.  It is supposed to cover every major sporting event, covering football, baseball, soccer, and even horse races, from the year 1950 to 2000—half a century—and yet it is only about as thick as a magazine (and probably the same dimensions by height and width).

I’m all over the place here, sorry.  Next thought:  It took what seemed like an eternity for Universal to release the BTTF trilogy on DVD.  I was entirely expectant of a very late release of the blu-rays.  I am definitely pleased to have been proven wrong.  Man, these movies are so perfect.  Why haven’t “the Bobs” (Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale) teamed up to create something comparable since?  I mean, I enjoyed Zemeckis’s take on A Chrostmas Carol in 2010, but it wasn’t in any way comparable to the BTTF series.  And nothing else he has done since has really held a candle.  I mean, hell, Polar Express and Beowulf both kind-of sucked.

Read it now.

We got in to the resort last night around 10PM (EDT). Immediately had some complaints about the room, but I rearranged some furniture, so now at least the tv faces the couch, instead of the wall. 11PM last night, fire alarm goes off and the building is evacuated. Emergency responders identified the cause as tile dust getting into the smoke detectors in a part of the building where construction is going on. After all the excitement, Jenn and I watched a few minutes of TV until we were relaxed enough to get to sleep. 4AM, the alarm goes off again. Same song and dance. Police said it was a false alarm (prank) originating in a stairwell.

I haven’t been back to bed yet. Since Friday, I’ve now had about seven hours of sleep. I tried to go back to bed, but I just keep thinking about what I’m going to say when I set forth to have some words with a manager as soon they show up this morning. I know they can’t help the fact that some idiot thought it would be funny to pull a fire alarm at 4AM, but the first alarm was completely on them, and, like I said, we have some other issues to resolve.

When we first arrived, we were hassled about using their valet service, which we didn’t want to do. When I hauled in all of our luggage (bellboy service is only available to valet customers–which is fine, saves us the tip), none of the staff members nearby offered to open the giant closed front doors. Of course, I can handle getting the door for myself, but it just looks bad when you have a bunch of teenage staff members standing around soiling their thumbs when a guest is having to transfer both full suitcases to one hand in order to open the door. The poor customer service there was accented by the fact that when I returned for the one thing I couldn’t carry on the previous run, a tiny cooler that holds about eight cans of soda, and the staff member rushed to open the door for me. I didn’t let him, noting that I could handle the door myself, as I was a grown man who was not carrying, say two suitcases.

There are also several issues with the room. Right away, after having driven thirteen hours to get here, I had to move the couch, coffee table, television cabinet, end table, lamp, and one large relaxing chair just to make it so that the television is visible from somewhere other than from a sideways view while seated in the single-occupant chair. The room now flows and is fully functional, but it’s possible that, if you were to pull out the couch bed (which we won’t), there wouldn’t be enough clearance between it and the television to permit access to the balcony (which has a beautiful view of the parking lot, and okay, some of the beach).

There is no dresser, but one night stand with three small drawers and a television cabinet with two deep drawers that probably intended for video and equipment storage, but which is currently hosting my boxers, socks, and shirts (pants/shorts had to get stacked on the bottom shelf of the entertainment center, which is concealed by doors).

The bathroom is huge, but it’s all wasted on empty floor space, with a standard sized shower-less bath tub and a tiny stand-in shower with no shelves and I high mounted shower head that isn’t adjustable to a low enough position to satisfy the washing needs of me, at 6’0″. I think Jennifer must have found a stool for her shower, or I think she’d still be trying to rinse the soap off.

Also, my phone is completely broken now. We’re going to head off to Walmart later to pick me up a $10 GoPhone that I’ve researched and confirmed should work with my iPhone’s SIM card, so I won’t be without a phone for long, but I thought it was worth noting as the shit-cherry on last night’s “that-ain’t-chocolate” sundae.

Oh, and there is internet, but we can’t do Netflix, because for some reason I can only connect using Linux, and not Windows 7. No big deal, though; we brought a bunch of books, and, hey, we’re at the beach!*

*This was my bad.  I can’t remember why, but I had DHCP disabled on my network adapter.

And, for the sake of balance:

We had a fantastic time visiting Jennifer’s family on the way down. It was my first time meeting her aunt Nora, cousin Margaret, and Margaret’s husband Pete. They were just awesome folks. It was such a long drive that we could only stop to visit for three or four hours, but we probably would’ve kept visiting for many hours more, if we could have. Seriously, the three of them were just the best; it’s a shame that they live so far from us. But then, they are living the life, three blocks from the beach, with a beautiful private pool in the back, so I’m sure they don’t wish they lived any closer to Birmingham.

As for the resort, it does look really pretty. It was dark when we got in last night, so we haven’t checked out the pool or the beach yet, but looking out from the balcony, it looks very cozy and inviting. It’s not too hot out yet, but of course it’s early right now, not quite 8AM.

So, we’re not going to let last night’s events prevent us from enjoying the rest of our trip. Future events may do so (knocked on the maybe-wood/maybe-polymer-resin coffee table in front of me), but let’s keep our fingers crossed against them. We’re still really excited to be here. Like I said: hey, we’re at the beach!

Update:

I went down and spoke to a manager this morning.  I complained, essentially telling her everything that I wrote in my account above, and included some additional details that I left out of the above story (hey, it was long enough already), and essentially asked what they planned to do for those of us (i.e. everyone) who were inconvenienced.  I may have exaggerated and said that we had just settled into bed (referring to the first alarm, which the resort was responsible for, if indirectly), when really we had just gotten ready for bed, but not quite made it into the bed yet.  I was a bit astonished when her answer was “nothing.”

I asked if this was the same answer received by everyone who’d already come to complain.  She said it was, but I don’t know that I believed her.  I told her that there were others with more sympathetic complaints than mine, such as a woman who had to traverse five floors by stair on a walker with the aid of two other people.  I said that I hoped she’d compensate them in some way, if they come forward, even if she wouldn’t acknowledge our negative experience as being worth a free dinner voucher.

I told her that she could expect me to spread the word about our experiences, by way of Facebook, a blog (BKN, of course) which actually has some amount of notoriety and readership (debate just how much if you wish), and RCI, the holy grail of places to complain about a timeshare resort.

Her reply?  [Jamaican accent] “You will do what you do.  Even if I give you some free dinner or something, some free bottle of wine, you will still write these negative reviews.  It does not matter.  I can give you a bottle of wine, sure, but you will do what you do.”

So, she told me two things there.  First, she doesn’t think that customer service is worth the effort, and therefor won’t even bother (I’m sure all of us who have worked customer service have felt this way before, but you never say it!).  Second, she called me a liar.  She told me that even if I did receive any courtesy gifts, I would still write negative reviews, and fail to mention that I had received anything for my troubles.

Of course, that didn’t sit well with me.  That’s an insult.  I told her that when I write about my experiences, and I frequently do, I always strive to give a thorough, even-handed account.  I would not stand to have my integrity questioned.

Perhaps thinking she was calling a bluff, she said that she would send us a bottle of wine.  I told her that my wife and I can’t drink, due to medications, but she said that was all she could offer (I don’t really believe that, either), so I said that we would take it, and just drink it slowly over the week.  I think she thought I was lying about all of this, and maybe the drinking it slowly part will end up being a lie, but hopefully not, because the medication part is true.

So, I’ve included the detail that we are receiving a bottle of wine.  Does it change the overall tone and message of this review?  No, but that isn’t because I’m giving an uneven account, it’s because the fact that she gave us a bottle of wine after a string of negative experiences, beginning from when we arrived, and ending with her calling me a liar, is not, in my opinion, fair compensation.  Did I mention that they are charging us $50 for the privilege to park our car here at the hotel, in a crappy, crumbly parking lot?  That would have been fair compensation.

As I wrote this last paragraph, the bottle of wine arrived.  It is a bottle of Rodney Strong 2008 cabernet sauvignon.  I’m not about to drink it at 10AM, so you’ll have to ask me later if it’s any good.

I used to believe in God.  I believe in God, but, I used to believe in a God who was a whole character, with a personality, a back-story—a character, maybe, from a comic book.  It was pretty exciting stuff, really.  I never could keep track of all the stories, but the one thing I knew for sure was that God was magic, and that he was always the hero, and that he loved me—loved everybody.  The absolute rule was that God controlled everything, even within and beyond the science behind the functions of the universe, and that he was always good, and could never do anything bad.  By this logic, of course, anything bad in the world is attributable to God, and because God could do no bad, it is, despite appearances, a good thing.  You just can’t blame God when things go wrong; it just doesn’t work that way.  I know that any attentive church-goer can give me a list of reasons why I can’t break it down like that, why I can’t blame God for the bad things.  In my experience, each item on that list reads like something recited by the PR representative of a politician after a scandal.

If you have a contemplative and passionate mind, I think you’re bound to eventually need an explanation for everything.  There may be some variation in how long it takes for you to start demanding a genuine, sensible reason why God can’t just make everything good, the damned magical Bastard, but, eventually, you’ll get there.  This is the unavoidable fork in each of our roads.

To the left, there is all of history, going back to the really awesome parts with dinosaurs and giant sharks, and all of the future, without a tangible end.  There is science—physics, math, biology, chemistry—that keeps revealing new and amazing things, like television and space travel and artificial organs, and probably-one-day even teleportation (within the next 100 years, I think).

To the right, there is a guarantee of paradise and happiness, but you have to follow a set of arbitrary rules that will require you to potentially shun loved ones and resent yourself.  The alternative to paradise, the destiny of those who ignore the magic rules, is endless torture and pain, in a place that is commonly believed to be on fire, or maybe made of fire—nobody knows for sure what it’s supposed to be like, but it’s definitely really bad.

When I attempted to approach my faith objectively, I came to the question of “Why?” frequently.  Why did God wait until just 2000 years ago to send Jesus?  Why did He change his mind about pork, and shellfish, and the Sabbath?  Why did he talk to Jewish people, but not Muslims?  Why, if he loved us so much, would he make us guess?

That was the one that got me.  Why would he make us guess?  It really didn’t make sense.  But, the more I thought about it, the more it became clear that that question had a singular and obvious answer.  God doesn’t exist.  Extrapolating from that revelation, God also doesn’t send gay people to hell.  He doesn’t send you to hell for using condoms.  He doesn’t need you to tell other people that they’re going to hell.  He doesn’t listen to you talking to him inside your head and grant you wishes when you’ve been a good boy or girl.  He just doesn’t exist.  Well, not like that, anyway.

I can’t deny that I still feel the presence of God in the world.  I also can’t confirm that it’s real, and not just the product of my own desire to believe that there is something greater than what is known.  Because I do have such a desire, though, I choose to believe that God, in some form, does exist.  I don’t imagine that it’s possible to provide a thorough explanation of what God is, either.  I think that what I’m describing is a sort of connective energy, or spirit, or force, that provides a link between all the parts of the universe, from atoms to photons, to complex systems like the human brain.  I think that, whatever this is, this “God” I feel, there must be a tangible, real connection between it and the mechanisms by which we know the physical world to operate.

It’s doubtful that anyone will succeed in bridging the gap between what we know about the universe and the greater undefined elements that encompass "God" in any of our lifetimes, but, certainly, the pursuit of that understanding must be the most noble, most righteous endeavor that we can undertake.  It is for this reason that it enrages me to see scientific progress arrested by those who claim to be acting on God’s behalf.  Ignorance should never be forced into the place of education and expanding knowledge.

In the terminology of the Protestant world I came up in, I’ve “lost my faith.”  I think that it would be more accurate to say that I’ve found reason.  I feel free, and I’m happier than ever.  I recall hearing warnings that, without God (the Christian God) in my life, I would feel an emptiness in my life.  I was warned, too, that even being a good person, living a good life, and helping and supporting others was not enough.  Even the best people, if they refused to accept Jesus as their savior and “share the joyous word of salvation,” were yet doomed to hell.  In retrospect, these sound like scare tactics, and echo more evil than anything I’ve encountered in my non-Christian life.

I don’t claim to know everything about anything, and I am not willing to close my mind to any possibilities.  However, I am intrinsically an optimist, and I can’t help but feel that the overall ideology of the Christian establishment is one of exclusion, condemnation, and hate—hate.  So, if I’m going to say that anything is possible, I’m going to nonetheless lean away from the idea that the fate of most of the world’s population is eternal damnation.

I actually have the answer to that.  See, Windows branched into two product lines in 1993, when they introduced the NT product, targeted at businesses.  The first NT release was labeled as version 3.1, to match the current consumer product at the time.  Of course, they then immediately ignored that and the version numbers fell out of sync as they started using the release year instead of the version number, starting with Windows 95, because that makes sense.

So, the NT lineage goes like this (I’m skipping sub-integer version numbers unless needed):  NT 3.1 (initial release) in 1993, NT 4.0 in 1996, Windows 2000 (actually NT 5.0) in 2000, Windows XP (actually NT 5.1) in 2001, and I’m stopping again to talk.  You probably just noticed that 2000 and XP both have the same integral version numbers (5.0 and 5.1 respectively).  This is where it get’s extra wacky.  See, beginning with XP, Microsoft merged the consumer and NT products.  Well, really they just dropped the consumer line, after a popular backlash against the final product in the line, Windows Me, and decided to give NT a facelift and sell it directly to everyday consumers.  For this reason, Windows XP is, in many ways, just a prettied up version of Windows 2000.  That should be food for thought to those of you who refuse to move on from XP—it’s based on an eleven-year-old infrastructure.

The next NT version number came in Windows Vista, and that was NT 6.0.  Vista was released in 2007.  Windows 7 came out two years later, in 2009 (a short life cycle pushed through because of a bad reception for Vista from consumers and critics alike).  Here’s the shocker for you, though:  Windows 7 is actually NT 6.1.  It’s not really 7 at all.  That’s all just marketing.  I guess they felt that calling their fancy new OS “Windows 6.1” would be too risky, after the trouble they had with Vista.  I can see where there would be concern that consumers would see the “.1” and think that it was just some sort of patch (which really is all that it was; it was Windows Vista with a lot of the problems fixed).  It’s of course yet to be seen, but it is possible that Windows 8 will be based on NT 7.0, which is still kind of stupid.  My suspicion, however, is that Windows 8 will be based on NT 6.2, considering that the early demos have shown an interface identical to Windows 7.  It could even be stalled at 6.1, come to think of it.  Windows 8 is tricky to judge, because it appears to be two OSs glued together, with their new mobile/tablet inspired Live Tiles interface being built from web standards, and potentially running inside of a modified version of IE9, or some later version of Internet Explorer.  I don’t know how they’ll incorporate that into the version numbers, but I hope they won’t at all, because, unless I’m mistaken, it’s really just going to be a service running inside of the core OS.  Anyway, if I’m right, and Windows 8 is built on NT 6.x, then that means that the eventual Windows 9 will probably be built on NT 7.0.

Now, I’m going to look into my crystal ball, and the predictions go something like this:

Next year, in the summer of 2012, Windows 7 will finally reach equal market share to XP, with both of them near 33%.  At the same time, Windows 8 will be released, and it will promptly cut in to the Windows 7 market share, hoisting XP back into the position of most used OS once again.  By January 2013, Windows 8 will have about 7% of the market, and it will already have a reputation as a dismal user experience.  In 2014-2015, Microsoft will release Windows Nine, and they’ll spell the number out like that.  It will boast an entirely new experience, which will resemble a hybrid of the Live Tiles interface of Windows 8 and the more traditional interface known to Windows users since 1995.  It will run in one of two modes, one for touchscreens and one for mouse-and-keyboard, which will change the size of buttons and the way that context menus interact with the user, and probably a few other things.  Windows Nine will run on NT 7.0, and will receive a warm reception as the OS that Windows 8 should have been.  When Windows Nine is released, Windows 7 will have a market share around 50%, Windows 8 will have around 15%, almost all of which will be tablets, and Windows XP will still have around 10% (Windows Vista’s numbers will be negligible).  Overall, Microsoft products will be down by 15%, having yielded significantly to Macintosh OS and Linux (including, and mostly, Android and Chrome OS), due largely to a loss in consumer confidence after too many disappointing products.  Windows Nine will help Microsoft regain between 5% and 10% of the market over the following two to three years.

Sometime between 2019 and 2022, the next Windows product will be released.  It will be based on NT 8.0, but it will not have a numerical title.  It will probably have some sort of “name,” like Windows XP or Windows Me did, or it may use the release year, in a throwback to the Windows 95/98/2000 branding theme.  It will be a disaster, and analysts will compare it to Windows 8 and WIndows Vista.  Windows Nine will already be established in enterprises across the world, and the new NT 8.0 product will become a joke to the general public, and will be largely swept under the rug by Microsoft.  This will be disappointing, because much of the Untitled NT 8.0 OS will be fantastic and innovative, if hindered by bad actors.  One to two years later, a new NT 8.1 product will be introduced, which will have all the benefits of the previous OS with most of the flaws addressed.  It will also incorporate a new hybrid cloud OS structure, wherein the installed operating system in its entirety will by synchronized to a remote server, mostly hosted by Microsoft for a subscription fee, but with options for businesses to establish their own OS servers, and for home users to establish a home OS server if they have adequate bandwidth (the minimum will be in the neigborhood of 120Mbps, but it will lag if multiple users are connected), but home servers will be discouraged “due to performance issues” but mostly due to less revenue from subscriptions.  The subscription service will allow Microsoft to, for the first time ever, stop users from running pirated versions of Windows, because they will have access to the user’s entire file system.  There will of course be an offline option, but running it will mean giving up many of the features that make the new OS worth running.

After all this, at some point down the line, probably about 15 years from now they will decide to title an upcoming release Windows 9, and it will be based on NT 8.x.  It’s tough to say whether they will name the subsequent OS Windows X, as this will be tempting.  It will probably just depend on how long it has been since Apple moved past OS X, or if they even have by then.  Microsoft won’t want to be accused of trying to copy Apple (but they will be anyway, because they always are).

I carried that forecast perhaps a bit farther than originally intended.  We’ll have to wait and see how close I was over the next 15 years.

You will need to find an icon that you would like to use.  I great resource that I’ve found for high resolution, quality icons is IconArchive.  I always go there first for icons.  The icon I will use in this tutorial is from the Delikate icon set, by artist Kyo-Tux.  It is located here.  Wherever your icon comes from, it will need to be a file with the extension “.ICO”.

The first thing, of course, is to create the application shortcut you want.  Browse to the website you want to use as an application using Chrome, and then click the wrench icon in the top left.  Hover over “Tools”  and click “Create Application Shortcuts…”  Choose where you want the shortcuts to go, and press “Create.”

Now, locate the shortcuts you want to edit the icon for.  I usually don’t bother changing the icons in the Start Menu, but you can if you want to, using the same method described here.

Right-click on the shortcut.  If it is in the taskbar (as shown), you will need to right-click again on the title of the shortcut in the menu that pops up.  In the resulting menu, click on “Properties.”

In the Properties window, click “Change Icon…”

Click “Browse…” and locate the icon file you wish to use.  With it selected, click “OK.”

Then, click “Apply” (not “OK”) in the “Properties” dialog box.

After this, pop over to the “General” tab, and click the checkbox beside “Read only,” and then finish by pressing “OK.”

And your done!

What?  Why are you giving me that look?  What’s wrong?  What do you mean the icon didn’t change?  Well, you must have done something wrong; I don’t know what to tell you.  Just try again, I’m sure you’ll get it right.  You seem smart enough, and I believe in you.

Alright, alright.  Don’t freak out; this is easy enough.  You just need to restart Windows Explorer (the “program” that is the Windows interface).  That may sound scary, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.  Before we do this, though, I need to warn you that you should read through the entire tutorial before continuing.  This is because while Explorer is closed, you will not easily be able to switch between windows to return to the tutorial (you can still switch between running applications using Alt-Tab or, in Windows 7, Windows Key+Tab, if you just don’t trust your own memory to get this right).

Okay, let’s do this.  Press Ctrl+Alt+Del, and choose Task Manager (you know, like you’ve done 87% of every time you’ve ever used Internet Explorer for something other than downloading Chrome or Firefox).  In Task Manager, switch to the “Processes” tab.

Locate “explorer.exe” in the list, select it with a single left-click, and click “End Process.”  Next, laugh maniacally, relishing your dominance over Windows.

Once you’ve finished laughing, freak out as you suddenly realize that your desktop icons are gone, your taskbar is gone, and so, even, is the Start Menu.  Cry a little if you must.  When you’re done being a wimp, recognize that you still have the Task Manager window in front of you.  Click on “File” and then “New Task (Run…).”

In the “Run” box, type “explorer.exe” and click “OK.”

Again, laugh, but this time with an air of relief.  Your precious desktop and taskbar have returned, just like Einstein in the first test of the DeLorean, as if they were nothing happened.

Well, any previously opened folders are now gone.  Sorry about that.  But otherwise, all is well.

You can close the Task Manager now.

Next, direct your eyes to the shortcut that got you into this whole mess.  You should be pleased to find it now updated with the high resolution icon of your preference.

I hope this helps!

Oh, by the way, in case you were curious, the icon you saw next to the Google Docs shortcut I used for the tutorial was one I created for my application shortcut to a Birmingham, AL radio station, 103.1 The Vulcan.  If you want to listen, dial in to 103.1 FM in Birmingham, or check out their site from anywhere in the US.  If you’re interested in the icon I created, I used the free Photoshop plugin from this Australian website.  The icon file itself is attached at the end of this entry.

Please post any questions you may have in the comments, and I’ll try to help in any way that I can.