New Domain Names

The Political Right and The Right Nation are going to be parking lots for other domains right now. Once a decision is made on the right use for the domains, I'll move forward. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

AJ

Extra Innings and the Win

Joseph's baseball team improved to 6-1 with an extra inning win Saturday afternoon against the only team that has beaten them this year. Joseph made good contact at the plate but was unable to get on base and only fielded one ball all afternoon.

AJ

5-1

Joseph's baseball team won their game on Thursday night. They play again tomorrow. Hopefully we'll have pictures of Joseph in action. I missed last night's game due to the cooking school.

New Web Sites

I've purchased two more domain names. I've always said if I can find domain names that I think are good names and are available, I will buy them and then find a way to market those names. Well tonight I purchased therightnation.com and thepoliticalright.com. I think both names are great for anyone of the political right and anyone who is looking at blogging and is a conservative.

While I'm neither a conservative or on the political right, I think I can market both these names. Stay tuned...

Planning on Traveling Anytime Soon?

Check out the Gas Buddy site. It's pretty cool.

AJ

Find News Fast

Find News Fast has really stepped it up this past week. My number of unique visits has doubled since Monday. I've been tracking my hits since I launched the page on February 28th and in the past week I have doubled the amount of hits I received for the previous six weeks. And I'm not even close to finalizing the page.

I'm working on a State By State page that will help you zero in on news for a specific community within the U-S. We're then going to focus on Canada and the Europe. It will be a long process but well worth the effort in the long run.

If you haven't already linked to Find News Fast on your blog, please do so. I would really appreciate all the help I can get. Currently more folks find Find News Fast from blogs than anywhere else. The second top place to find links is Listible and Spurl.

AJ

Heck of a Hit and the Game Ball

Joseph drove in the winning run of his game this morning and was given the game ball. I was at the radiothon and didn't attend the game. I hate that Joseph had his best game so far this year and his biggest hit of his life, so far, and I missed it.

According to Joseph and his Mom, the game was tied in the bottom of the sixth inning (in Little League you play six innings or an hour and a half) 5-5 and the first batter to come to the plate hit a ball to deep center and was able to make a triple. Joseph then came to the plate and fouled off the first pitch and then hit the second pitch, a line drive, into center field, scoring the winning run. All of Joseph's teammates ran out to congratulate him when he reached first base. after the game, the coach awarded Joseph with the team ball.


This particular game ball is extra special. The umpire for this game is someone who had polio as a child and was the recipient of a major league ballplayer's visit in the hospital and the major leaguer taught this man to paint baseballs as a way to pass the time while in the hospital. So Joseph's ball is a hand painted ball with the Little League message on one side the importance of good sportsmanship on the other.

We're going to go this afternoon to buy Joseph a display case for the ball. Once we have it properly displayed, I'll post pictures of the ball.

I think this will have along lasting affect on Joseph.

AJ

Radiothon Rocks

This morning the radio station, SKY 104, teamed up with the Creative Learning Center in Clayton to raise money for their scholarship program. When I was first approached about doing a radiothon I was hesitant. I was hesitant because the Creative Learning Center started as a mission of the Methodist Church and while the Methodist Church will always support the CLC, the CLC is attempting to become self sufficient.

In Rabun County, Georgia, the CLC is the only truly professionally run preschool/day care available. And there is a serious lack of quality day care in the community. So I decided to go ahead and help the facility.

After agreeing to do a radiothon, I was expecting to raise between eight and 10-thousand dollars, thinking that was a good amount. After the first hour we were over $10,000 and by the end of the day with cash on hand and pledges we were over $50,000. That's amazing. $50,000 giving to a preschool for scholarships in a town of only 17,000 people.

In my three radiothons I have anchored in Rabun County, the total money raised is over $95,000. We did more than $8,000 for tsunami relief, more than $36,000 for Katrina relief and over $50,000 for the Creative Learning Center.

Amazing for such a small community.

AJ

The DK Republic goes big time.

My newsman and friend David Shideler, aka DK republic, has gone from blogging to a real web page of his own. So far, he is off to a good start. Please visit and give him some feed back on what you think of his site.

AJ

Kallsen makes a Friend

Tonight, during Joseph's baseball practice, Kallsen was just wonderful. He walked around, sat on his own (away from everybody else) and made a new friend. I was able to capture a lot of the night with my camera. In these next two pictures, Kallsen sits alone on a hill playing and just having a good time, all by himself.


In these next two pictures, Savannah, the sister of one of Joseph's teammates and the daughter of the coach, makes friends with Kallsen.

The story of 'Santa Crack'

My recent post about getting locked out of the house while trying to teach my son Joseph a lesson, has gotten a few people to mention 'Santa Crack,' one of my most humbling experiences of my life. Those comments got another friend to ask about 'Santa Crack.' So here is the story...

The story of 'Santa Crack' by Adam Wright
A true story. This should not be attempted with out the proper supervision of a professional. Any resemblance's of real people is not accidental, for this story is real.

Several years ago, when I was working in Union and still doing news, the local Radio Shack had a live broadcast from their store on a weekday a week or two before Christmas. They had someone lined up to play Santa with the idea of having Santa at their store to attract Moms with children under five. The Radio Shack Santa called that morning and was unable to fulfill his duties. The sales rep for the account, Karen Vogt, came to me in a panic that morning asking that I fill in as Santa.

Well I was talked into being Santa. After getting done with my news gathering for the day I went and got the Santa suit. Well the person who was lined up to play Santa was a much smaller than I was and the suit was not only going to not go on over my clothes like I had hoped, it was going to be a bit tight.

So I ran home and dressed in the Santa suit and headed back to the store. Needless to say, I probable already scared some of the kids when they saw Santa pull up to Radio Shack in a Toyota Camry.

Once getting into Radio Shack the sales rep Karen and my wife Sara Beth started laughing and just couldn't control themselves. Apparently, the Santa suit, which we knew was too small, had been showing my 'crack' to anyone and everyone through the course of the morning. So goes the story of 'Santa Crack.'

But this is not the end of the story. I had to leave a few minutes early because I needed to be back to the station to do the Noon Report. I walked out of the Radio Shack at 11:50 in the morning with just enough time to go home and change and get back to the radio station, and I discover that because the Santa suit had no pockets, I had set my keys down in the car and locked it. And this was one of those unseasonable warm December days in South Carolina and the temp was about 85 degrees. So I go back into the Radio Shack and have to get Karen to drive me back to the station. Without my keys, I had no way to get into the house to change my clothes. By this time, my wife had to gone on to school in Spartanburg and was not able to get me back into the house.

In Union, South Carolina, the local police department will unlock your car doors in situations like this. So I called the police and was told they wouldn't be able to unlock my car until three or four that afternoon. So here I am, doing the Noon report at WBCU, in the Main Street Studio, where everyone walking down the street can see me in my Santa suit and at the right angle can see my crack.

After the Noon Report was done, I get talked into going to eat at a Mexican restaurant for lunch. So here we are having lunch and me dressed up as Santa and my crack showing at the local Mexican restaurant. While we're having lunch, a lady and her daughter between the ages of two and four comes into the restaurant. The little girl starts crying and I have to explain to the girl that I'm not really Santa and that I was just pretending. The little girl has probable been traumatized ever since.

Later in the day, I get a call from the police, I need to go down to Radio Shack because they have a policy that won't allow them to get into a car without the owner signing a release saying you won't bring any complaints against them if they damage your car while trying to get it unlocked. So here I am, standing in the Radio Shack parking lot, talking to police while wearing a Santa suit and showing crack. I'm just lucky to not have been arrested for possession of crack.

And that, my friends, is the story of 'Santa Crack.'
AJ

Travels

While traveling across the country last week we went through a small town on the Western side of Alabama. I got a kick out of their name and their sign welcoming people to their town. I guess the sign could be worse, it could say, "Reform Alabama."

AJ

3-1

Joseph's baseball team improved to 3-1 tonight as they won 18-3. Joseph was 0-1 and hit by a pitch. He didn't have any balls hit to him in right field.

Joseph's team has now played each of the other teams in his age group. They'll play each team two more times before a final game between the two top teams. We're hoping Joseph's team will be there in the end. The last game of the season, before the one game championship, is May 30th. We leave the next day for Iowa, so there is a chance he may miss his last game.

Parker was in a really good mood tonight during the game. He ate three things of baby food and had a six ounce bottle. Thing he just hung out, spitting, laughing and smiling at everyone. He really was a lot of fun tonight.

Kallsen, on the other hand, was a bit more challenging. He played hard at school and looked wiped out once he got home. While he wasn't bad, he was just wanting a lot of attention. Here he is checking out the fans that were watching the game.

Lesson Learned?

Recently, when Joseph doesn't want to get up, I go into his room and tell him what time it is and do my best to get him up and going for the day. Well today when his alarm went off, I heard him get up, turn the alarm off and get back into bed, I decided to let him learn a lesson and I did not go in and wake him up.

Well at 7:35, 40 minutes after the bus was to pick him up, he got out of bed and was panicking that he was going to be late for school. So I got my stuff ready, Joseph ate breakfast and we walked out of the house, closed and locked the door and I then realize I left my keys and cell phone in the house. So now it's 7:55, 20 minutes before school starts, we're outside our house with no cell phone or keys.

Joseph and I walked down to the cabinet shop and borrowed a phone from an employee and called the radio station. David, my newsman, came and got us and brought us to the radio station, I then got in the station van and took Joseph to school.

Looking back I realize that if I had gotten Joseph up and got him on the bus this probable wouldn't have happened. So, is me that needed a lesson this morning or was it Joseph?

AJ

Jesus humor

My Dad sent me this today. Enjoy.

* There were 3 good arguments that Jesus was Black:*
1. He called everyone brother
2. He liked Gospel
3. He couldn't get a fair trial*

*But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was Jewish:*
1. He went into His Father's business
2. He lived at home until he was 33
3. He was sure his Mother was a virgin and his Mother was sure He was God

* But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was Italian:*
1 He talked with His hands
2. He had wine with His meals
3 He used olive oil

* But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was a Californian:*
1. He never cut His hair
2. He walked around barefoot all the time
3. He started a new religion

* But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was an American Indian:*
1. He was at peace with nature
2. He ate a lot of fish
3. He talked about the Great Spirit

* But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was Irish:*
1. He never got married
2. He was always telling stories
3. He loved green pastures

* But the most compelling evidence of all - 3 proofs that Jesus was a woman:*
1. He fed a crowd at a moment's notice when there was no food
2. He kept trying to get a message across to a bunch of men who just didn't get it
3. And even when He was dead, He had to get up because there was work to do

* AMEN*

Picture Trip (and 300th post)

Here's a picture of each of the boys from our trip. In the first one, you can pretty much see what Joseph did most of the trip...In this next picture, we discover that Kallsen loves to swing...The picture of Kallsen swinging was taken at our friends JT and Karen Vogt's place in Mississippi. This next picture was taken at the Dairy Queen in Estherville, where we discover Parker loves ice cream...This last picture is of the Gateway Arch in St.Louis. Everytime we travel between the Midwest and the South, we stop some place to get out and look around and get a feel for what makes this country great. On this trip, we stopped in St.Louis...For pictures taken when we were in Minnesota, you can check out my Mom's blog. She posted pictures Sunday from our visit this past week.

Feeling Rested

Getting home a day or to before heading back to work after a vacation is always important. It gives you time to recover from the journey and time to get your mind back to where it needs to be before tackling the things work throws at you. And I have a feeling that work will be throwing things at me when I get back into the office tomorrow.

Vacation was good. We were able to visit with our friend's JT and Karen in Mississippi; find a house in Estherville, Sara was able to interview for jobs in Iowa and we had a nice visit with my parents. While the vacation was somewhat of a working vacation with the coming move, all in all, a good vacation.

I will be going through my photos of the trip this week and will post pictures of things we saw and of the kids sometime later this week.

AJ

Seeing all the Family

Today is our only full day in Minnesota on this trip. In a short while, once the boys get up from their naps, we'll drive out to my sister Sarah's place and visit with her and her kids for a while and then tonight my sister Kara and her kids will come over to my parents house and wisit with us for a while.

Tomorrow we start our journey back to Georgia.

AJ

Sunday Travels

We're leaving Cape Girardeau this morning and headed to Estherville, Iowa. We're going to be stopping in St.Louis and get some pictures at the arch. It should be a good day. I'll continue the audio posts.

AJ

My first day not doing the talk show

My newsman, David Shideler, has taken over our Friday Morning talk show. This is my first Friday in two years not doing the show. And guess what...David's first show is a great show!

His guest today are Georgia Labor Secretary and Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue. And if you reading this between 9:00 and 10:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time, it's being streamed on sky104.com.

01:02:03 04/05/06

It only happens once (actually twice) when the time and date go in this order. This happened at 1:02 AM and 1:02 PM this past Wednesday.

AJ

Six Months Old Today

Parker turned six months old today.

Big Interview

My newsman, David, interviewed Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue today. It was a taped interview that will be aired Friday morning on his talk show (which replaced my talk show) which doesn't have a name yet. This is David's first solo show. I cohosted with him last week.

The interview will be available sometime after Friday's show on the station website. The interview covers eminent domain, illegal immigration and job loss due to overseas competition. David may also have a guest along with airing the pretaped interview.

I think David is really going to grow with this talk show. He has already grown tremendously since beginning here in March 2005. The talk show will really help him with long form interviews, which will lead to much great opportunities in the future.


AJ

Blasting Zone, Power Lines and Sunburn

Highway 441, the main North/South Highway through Rabun County, Georgia; is being widened from Clayton to Tallulah Falls. With this being a mountainous community, you can't widen a road without blasting away rock. Today was a blasting day.

The crews blasting apparently misjudged and when they blasted this afternoon, they took down a power line. The power line that supplies two of the county's schools. The high school and middle school lost power sometime after 1pm.

Now I'm not sure how much damage was caused but I know that with the roads closed due to the accident, school children at those schools had to wait more than an hour before they were able to leave. But that's not all...

It took Sara Beth more than an hour to get from the gorge to Tiger. That drive normally takes less than five minutes. And the air conditioning in the Camery decided not to work today. And she had Kallsen and Parker in the car. Kallsen is sunburn on his legs and his face. Parker not as bad, but you can tell he got some sun. I'm hoping he'll be okay in the morning.

AJ

Pray, please

My niece, Kyleigh Grace Baldwin, has to undergo open heart surgery. She has a hole in her heart. She just turned a year old last month.

Please pray for her health and that she gets through this episode of her young life.

AJ

2000 Hits...

I was checking my blog earlier today and at 3:41, I was over 2,000 hits. I thought we could celebrate...if only for a moment...

AJ

Parker's Day at the Radio Station

Parker woke up this morning with his fever back and not feeling well at all. I would have normally stayed home with him but with us taking vacation next week, Sara's kids at school getting ready for state testing and the radio station hitting crunch time for two packages we need to sell well, I took Parker to work.

We got to the station at 8:00 this morning and Parker slept until 11:00 and then I fed him and changed his diaper he then slept until about 2:00. I was able to sell seven different packages on the phone and get lots of work done that will help leave the station in the best possible shape when I leave in May.

By the time Parker and I went home at 4:30, his fever had broken and I had accomplished more than I thought possible with Parker in my care at the radio station.

I've always said radio is magic. And today, it's magic helped Parker.

AJ

A Long Day (night) for the Wright Family

After a long day with Parker in my care, the radio station doing a phone blitz, and a baseball game and concert for Joseph tonight, we had a long day.

We started with Joseph's baseball game at 5:30. We had to leave the game early. When we left Joseph's team was down 4-0. We later found out that they lost 7-0. Their first loss of the season. They're now 2-1. Joseph was 0-1 with a strike out and one ball fielded. The other team's pitcher struck out the side in the first three innings. I was told by another parent after the game that our team only had one player reach base. In 9-10 year Little League, pitchers are only allowed to pitch six innings per week. The other team let their best pitcher pitch six innings tonight. Apparently, he's the best in this age group and our team is considered to be the best coached, so they brought their best player to the mound with the only goal of shutting our team down. And it worked.

While the game was going on, Kallsen seemed to enjoy watching his brother play ball.

Parker, after being sick the last two days, was feeling better but we still kept him bundled up...
We left the ball field at 6:30 to drive over to the school for Joseph's 4th grade concert. Joseph sang and played the bongo drums. I was really impressed with his school's fourth grade music program. Lots of schools don't get the children interested in more that singing at this early of an age. Hopefully, the schools in Estherville will have similar programs.

The thing that interested me is Joseph had talked about singing but he never mentioned playing the bongo drums. I wonder if he wanted to surprise us or if he just didn't give it much thought. It's not like Joseph to not share something like that. He has always had a desire to perform but has suffered a bit from stage fright. Maybe this will help him fight some of those fears.

All in all a good night. A long night, but a good night.

AJ

This is a 10 digit dialed call...

...please hang up and dial the area code and seven digit telephone number.

This is ridiculous. Starting on Monday, any local call we make must be 10 digits in length. Area code and number. I can see this in bigger cities but small towns too?

I guess its the way cell phones work.

AJ

Parker recovering well...

Last night Parker had a temp of 101.9 and the fever broke sometime over night. When we got up this morning, Parker's temp was 103. It was too late for Sara to get a sub for the day so I stayed home with Parker and took him to the doctor. We were sent to X-ray because they thought there was a chance Parker had pneumonia.

He doesn't have pneumonia, but he does have some sort of infection in his lungs. He is now on three kinds of medicine until the end of the week. Hopefully, he'll be okay soon.

While his fever has been high, his demeanor has been good all along. Smiling and giggling. He has only been fussy when his been hungry. If his fever is down tomorrow, he'll be able to go to school. If not, he'll go to work with me.

AJ

A Great Day

I'm not sure why Saturday was such a great day. It just was. All three boys were in a great moods and Sara and I both were in a great mood. Anyways, we took some pictures of Kallsen and Parker that are really good. So here they are...







Joseph spent good part of the day outside playing with friends and was not in the house when we took these pictures.

AJ

Find News Fast getting its fair share...

...of hits.

I just got done looking at the end of month stats for Find News Fast and I have been averaging 35 hits per day. I think that's pretty good considering I've done very little to promote the site. The stats I'm referring to are coming from my web host and not my stat counter. I think the web host information is a bit more reliable for my web site.

The most popular pages? Top News Headlines and Sports.

I'll be working on the Blog page soon. It will include top political blogs from around the country. I'm going to try and organize them by their particular views. Be it liberal, conservative or moderate.

The state by state page, is coming along. I'm going to wait to launch that when it's complete. That page will be a quick reference for every state in the country. You'll be able to click on which ever state you want news from and then the community and then any page that specifically covers that community for news. So if you live in Union, South Carolina you would click on South Carolina and then Union and you would then have a choice of the two media web pages dedicated to covering news in those communities. That being the local paper and the local radio station. I think that will be a great benefit to the Find News Fast web site.

If you have any suggestions to ways to improve the site, please respond to this blog or email me at findnewsfast@findnewsfast.com.

AJ

PS-feel free to ad a link to your blog to Find News Fast...