We have some great talent here at HM Magazine.

Nate just wrapped up the mixing of the latest podcast episode (which I plan on posting tonight from my home high-speed ISP connection) late last night/this morning. Dude did a killer job mixing, organizing and mastering. It’s easily the best-sounding podcast since we took them back over from Gyroscope last year. And one of the members of For Today pulled me aside last week in San Antonio, just to tell me how awesome it was having Nate hang with the band for the on-the-road cover story he’s writing. “We’ve had interviews and photo shoots that were so awkward,” Mike Reynolds explained. He remarked how refreshing and great it was to work with our people. I’ve read the cover story and am thrilled.

Bianca, who I made an exception for when we had already filled up our maximum intern slots this summer (because her intern application/qualifications were so awesome), has done a stellar job organizing the new HM Street Team. The killer photo used for the cover of our next issue was all her. Even the artist/subjects complimented on how great she was to work with. Wait ’til you hear her on the new episode of the podcast. The instructions and description of the street team is simple, easy-to-understand and downright compelling. Makes me wanna join! HM is so much better with her help.

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…even Otis, who left last week, is a phenomenon. Wait ’til you read his brilliant feature on Anberlin in this next issue. It’s too bad he had to leave his internship early. He ran out of living expenses due to not being able to find a supplemental part-time job here in the Taylor, TX area for the summer. His soft-spoken voice cracks me up, which you’ll hear on the Podcast later on tonight.

Speaking of, if you haven’t listened to the HM Magazine Podcast episodes, you need to check them out. You can find them at itunes, too. They’re free and they’re filled with music. Like I said, I will post the new one up later tonight. I’ll tell you why, but it involves a very frustrating story.

You see, when we moved out here to the HM Ranch in January of 2006, the best internet connection we could get was a satellite connection called HughesNet. They have this weird policy I ran into one day, which is called “Fair Access Policy,” which will shut down my browser speed to slightly below dial-up speeds for 24 hours if we exceed their usage limits. The usage limits are 375 MB in one 24-hour period. The typical album is about 70 MB to download or stream (which both count the same, because streaming actually downloads encrypted files into your cache), so a couple of those and an automatic Windows update will exceed this limit. Once the limit is exceeded, it imposes a slower browsing speed for the following 24 hours, which is irreversible once it starts. So, while I could risk it today and get the podcast up now, it is too risky during deadline, because we’d feel the ramifications through tomorrow.

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