Today's AT40

is Feb 1986.  definitely a good year and a good time.  for myself, i was still rather ridiculously infatuated with someone in my math class, a crush that went nowhere but was borderline neurotic in my internal obsessions and the pseudo-depressions that would come and go.  in short, i was a typical teenager, the most typical trait being i thought i was the only one going through all that.  i did get over it, eventually, about the same time i (re)discovered classic rock.

highlight hits so far

• The Sun Always Shines on TV
• Silent Running
• Alive and Kicking
  
• Life in a Northern Town
• Sara
• Eddie Murphy's Party all the Time
• Kyrie (which became the first top 40 hit with a greek title)
• Talk To Me
  

a few cheesy ballads (Say You Say Me), 5 "movie" hits (including Spies Like Us, When the Going Gets Tough, and 2 from Rocky IV - Living in America and Burning Heart), a Springsteen "hit" I never understood how it got popular aside from the fact that it was Bruce (Your Hometown), some dance songs we could have done without (How Will I Know, Love Bizarre), but otherwise...

HAH - the "long distance dedication" is from a high school girl from here in Fairfax, VA.

And the #1 song 20 years ago was...That's What Friends Are For, the song for AIDS research.

acroyear@io.com finally being retired

It may be a record for all I know, but this longest email address I've had is going to be shut down within the month.  I'm consolidating all of my websites onto one ("under construction 'cause i ain't had the time") page and saying bye bye to an address I've held for over 10 years.

celticdistrict.com will be down for a while as I rethink how I want to present the info and how to get new info there with better security - my open-ended web forms were fine back in the day, when only the occasional online-poker script-kiddie was all I had to deal with in terms of spam.  But looking at the archive sql dump, I was getting tons of bad submissions and comments and that had to go.  i need to look for any free "secure submission" systems in php, stuff that uses the auto-generated image verification approach.  I *think* i recall a recent php-architect magazine discussing one, but I need to look it up.  I should also hit snipeyhead 's pages to find other time-savers out there.

Finally, I need to tweak my CMS system and get the ability to put in google-ads.  This stuff doesn't pay for itself, and though I'm going to be saving $300 / year (well, it was a reasonable price 7 years ago), that little extra helps.  Relatedly, I need to get onto the amazon and bn.com "link to me and if someone buys, you get credit" programs.  I was on cdnow's when the site first started, if that tells you how old I am, online.

For the calendar, I'm probably going to start sending people to dragansmaragach 's yahoo mailing list.  This leaves me with just trying to get the living history groups page back up first, then the musicians listing, probably both I'll do from static copies first.

This move also means that a lot of images I used to host, particularly a lot of the political cartoons I relayed, will be down.  The last was done months ago so the 404s shouldn't be causing anybody's friends page any grief.

however, all of that needs to be lower in priority as I have to get the MSFB site up and running for this year.