Pickles of the North and her Mother c. 1963
We had some sad news to report on this program: that Pickles of the North's mother had died this past week. Pickles talked about it on the air, and she will be writing something for this Web page as well. It will just take a bit of time for her to be able to do it. We also covered R. Paul's saga of trying to get his anti-viral software to work again. There will be more added to this page, so check back for the updates.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday November 13, 2024, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security. That will be the final meeting of the 13th WBAI LSB, and it will be my final LSB meeting as a member. I term out this December.
Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday of every month, subject to change by the LSB, so we have the following schedule:
These meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.
WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.
•
Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.
•
WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. Now I can again and there are a whole bunch of archive blurbs up there now.
This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says Display,
and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click GO
and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.
For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display,
and find Specify Date
, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO
and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Good luck.
Since the former General Manager banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.
•
Program Note:According to FCC regulations §399. Support of political candidates is prohibited on WBAI, No noncommercial educational broadcasting station may support or oppose any candidate for political office.
Yeah, this is a problem, and that's why we are not able to mention things like the political conventions that have gotten a ton of attention all over the world. We can't even suggest that certain politicians should go to jail. If we're still around on November 9, 2024, we'll be able to mention all of this political stuff again.
•
Radio's Pickles of the North's mother passed away this past week. She talked about that on this program. When she can, Pickles will post something here.
•
I told the story of Microsoft updating my operating system and then telling me that I had ransomware on my computer. That was the point at which the real problems began.
After the update was done Microsoft announced that they had detected ransomware on my computer and that I needed to take care of that. But when I went to the Windows 10 Control Panel
there was no mention of ransomware. The Control Panel said that everything was fine. Being paranoid about these things I then went to my main anti-viral/anti-malware software McAfee. I clicked on the icon to start that application but nothing happened. I tried various ways to get it gong, but nothing worked. As usual this was something that happened in the wee hours of the morning.
I went to the McAfee Web site, and they offered 24/7 customer support via phone or chat. It was way too early in the morning to make a phone call which would have awakened Pickles. So I got on chat. After wrestling with bots on chat for a while I finally got a human to chat with. This human was pretty clearly from another continent. He gave me instructions to follow in the form of links to a pair of Web pages.
So I followed the instructions. The first method, which involved simply removing the McAfee software I had via the Windows 10 uninstall routine, that didn't work at all. I got back on chat and someone else from what I believe was somewhere in Asia eventually got me some software that's used to uninstall McAfee software when the regular method doesn't work. I used that and it worked. I then followed the directions to reinstall McAfee. Well, I tried that several times, getting new serial numbers every time. I went back to the chat. It was just then eight o'clock in the morning and I got someone who was pretty clearly based in the United States of America. She, as the others had, wanted me to give her permission to get into my computer remotely. I didn't allow her to that, as I had not allowed anyone else to do that. Did I mention that I'm paranoid about these things?
This customer support person was also misspelling words and making a lot of typos. So even without my paranoia about this sort of thing it would have been a bad idea to let her go rummaging about in my computer. So she would make a suggestion and then insist that I let her take remote control over my computer. On a couple of occasions I suggested that we get her supervisor on the chat. Part of what was happening was that she kept insisting that I, click on the three dots in the upper right corner.
I had no idea what she was talking about. Turns out that Microsoft Edge has the user access some of their browser's function, including access to downloaded files, by clicking on three dots in the upper right hand corner of the screen. The person helping me apparently couldn't understand that I was using Firefox, which I consider superior to Microsoft's Edge browser. When I was finally able to get her to bring her supervisor on the Supervisor went through some things with me, she also wanted to have remove access which I again refused, and then she said that there was no choice but that I had to use a different browser. So I very reluctantly found Edge on my computer and used it. Typically of Microsoft their Edge browser just accepted all scripts that it was offered. After a while I was able to download the installer software. So I was done, right? No.
When I ran the installer it went on for a while and then stalled out at 74% of completion. It gave me an error with a reference code of 5 - 3.
The supervisor was impressed with that reference code and said that, We can escalate the case to our higher end team now. They will take
Oh, jeez.Remote Access
of your computer and do the troubleshooting steps to resolve the issue.
After about the first half hour or hour of all of this I began to feel hypoglycemic. And it got worse and worse. This made me just want to bail on the entire enterprise. I am a bit amazed that I was able to retain my resolve to not let them get remote access to my computer. It sure sounded like it would have ended the entire ordeal very quickly; however as it turned out it clearly would not have. But I was able to hold out. Oh, I was so miserable Friday morning. The entire chat session ended after more than three hours and Pickles of the North gave me some glucose tablets followed by some food to get me out from under that hypoglycemia. After I ate I passed out.
I find that hypoglycemia can really knock me out. It's like doing a great deal of vigorous exercise, and it leaves me wrecked for some time, up to several hours after the event. So I was doing the program, both the recording and the editing and mixing, while in a fatigued condition. Yeah, the glamorous world of radio.
I plan to go back to McAfee chat later today and see what can be done. Will I have to let the higher tech people run around in my computer? Or maybe I should just take the advice of an article I read about how only old people (!) pay for anti-viral software anymore because it's not needed owing to the availability of free anti-viral software? Oh, I have some decisions to make. One question I have is - did the Windows 10 update kill the McAfee software? I wouldn't put a maneuver like that past Microsoft.
•
There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.
One open list that no longer exists was the WBAI-specific Goodlight
Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board,
owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people
board that was just totally out of hand.
In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.
Sometimes we used to have live interaction with people posting on the Goodlight Board
during the program.
Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Saturday Morning With the Radio On used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.
There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.
•
Back to the Back of the Book page
Back to my home page.
The contents of this Web page are copyright © 2024, R. Paul Martin.
