I just realized I've stuck this press release everywhere else except my own blog. I hope to see many of you at this special event. Read on...

Local podcaster Pat Radio is teaming up with the Tip Top Kitchen and Cocktails to host the first-ever internet happy hour, Thursday December 6 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Tip Top Kitchen and Cocktails, located at 73 E. Gay Street in downtown Columbus, Ohio. The happy hour is a benefit and awareness event for Simply Living’s broadcast voice, WCRS FM.

Pat Radio’s Pat Leonard will be the guest disc jockey at the Tip Top, and the music he will be spinning will be heard throughout the bar and around the world at www.patradio.org. There will also be cd, gift certificate and t-shirt give-aways and special drink prices.

This event will raise awareness of Simply Living , a non-profit organization dedicated to creating a compassionate and sustainable world. Simply Living is broadcasting on a low-power FM station, WCRS, at two frequencies in the Columbus area: 102.1 FM in Northeastern Franklin County and 98.3 FM near OSU campus. WCRS broadcasts news and current-affairs programs from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays. They plan to expand their programming schedule and include music programming in the near future. Representatives from the Simply Living will be on-hand at the Tip Top to answer questions about Simply Living and WCRS and to accept donations.

The Tip Top Kitchen and Cocktails, open since May, features Ohio comfort food, drink specialties, draught microbrews, and pies.

Pat Radio has been on the internet airwaves since 2005. Pat’s weekly local music podcast attracts hundreds of listeners from central Ohio and around the world.

I ditched the streaming today. If you were one of the handful of people who listened to my stream, then you'll probably like the "radio statiion" I have done up over at last.fm.

I was facing another month of royalty payments here in a couple days and finally decided that it wasn't worth it. Now that cash can go toward making the podcasts better.

Maybe I'll win the lottery and bring it back, but right now, the last.fm thing ain't so bad and it only costs $3 a month.

Play it, homes.

Read about pat radio here and confirm for yourself that yes, I do indeed have a face for radio.

I opted to play Karaoke Revolution with my kids last night instead. A-Ha's "Take On Me" is a much harder song to sing than it would seem.

The show will start an hour later and will only be 60 minutes long tonight. Changes afoot. I'll talk about them on air in a bit.

I just started up a loop of silence on my dj software and uploaded an intro file to my shoutcast servers, urging all my listeners in the USA to call their Congressional representatives and urge them to support the Internet Radio Equality Act.

If you connect to the listen live link, loudcity.com will divert you to a sound effects loop. When I just tried it, I heard what sounded like someone walking through the woods. If you've bookmarked my stream, you'll hear a brief announcement from me and then....nothing. For 24 hours.

If the CBR's rate hikes are not overturned, I will most likely stop the stream and discontinue the mixtape = love podcast until I can determine how to do so legally. That means contacting artists and labels and securing permission to include their songs in my podcast.

It would be so much easier and so much more enjoyable for me ( and I would hope for you as well ) if I could continue to pay a reasonable royalty fee and play whatever I feel like playing, without worrying about breaking the law. I'm trying to be a good guy.

Go to savenetradio.org to find directions on how to contact Congress. The outlook is good for this bill's passage, but it's the timeliness that worries me. If the CBR ruling is not overturned by July 15, I'll have to start paying the new rate and pay the hike retroactive to the beginning of 2006. This is why we need a big push now to get Congress to act. Please do your part. Thanks.

It's either my router or my cable internet connection. One or both is contributing once again to a choppy upstream. Bear with me. It might take a couple more days to resolve.

I'm having technical difficulties and I just don't want to deal with them right now. Those of you who subscribe to the notify list, watch it for when the archive is ready for downloading.

The mixtape will be on Friday this week, roughly the same time.

I switched streaming servers this week for my stereo stream. If you had the old server bookmarked in Winamp, iTunes, RealPlayer, etc, you'll need to visit my "listen live" link, select your application of choice, and bookmark again.

If you are a regular listener to the dial-up stream, you won't need to change anything.

I apologize for the current condition of my live stream. I'm traveling and I'm away from my computer. This morning it sounds okay, but last night when I checked it, it sounded like total garbage, buffering like mad and breaking up a lot. That's the case with the dial-up stream this morning. I'll keep the blog updated with any news about the stream. In the meantime, there's still my two-week old archive of mixtape = love here. And there's plenty of other radio links for you to explore.

If you are experiencing problems with the stereo stream, drop down to the mono dial-up stream. You can do that by going back to the "listen live" link and then click on the "change connection speed" link.

In case you're looking for it, there was no mixtape tonight. I spent some trying to figure out what is wrong and then just gave up. Tomorrow is another day...

The problem was apparently solved with a server restart. Welcome back to the leechers from France, Germany, and Urbana-Champagne, Illinois.

I woke up at 6 a.m. this morning and learned that, again, my internet connection was on the blink. After calling Time Warner support, I was forced to read a book for an hour when I normally would have been dicking around with pat radio.

So now would be as good a time as ever to listen to the latest mixtape = love archive, which isn't subject to my fickle home internet connection. Or you could read a book.

Real-life intervening again tonight. So I won't be on at 7 p.m. tonight. Whenever I get the show done, I'll upload it. It's going to be one of those phoned-in best-of-2006 things anyway. Too busy to dangle from the bleeding edge of indie hipitude this week.

12:49 p.m.
I came back from lunch and discovered that the internets is back up at home and the stream is available again. Enjoy.

I still won't be around until 8 or 9 tonight for the mixtape.

Must have been my uplink this morning, because everything sounds hiccup-free now. Enjoy!