It's Wednesday morning, about 10am. I am setting up the playlist for a Smooth Jazz Brunch show. I'm still in my jammies and my face is covered with a green facial product guaranteed to clear pores and vanish fine lines. The Big White Dog has his head underfoot, trolling for the wrapper of the muffin I just polished off.

This is how we work in the high tech world. It's easy, it's fun, and all your resources are close at hand. Is there a danger that it will turn us into extremely productive recluses who sit in comfy rooms with eyes on the screen and mouse in hand, communicating by IM, text, e-mail, and social networking sites? Bring it on. I was never very strong in the social skills department anyway and layoffs and budget cuts have left me wardrobe-deprived (plus the dog ate both of my favorite pairs of shoes). If you rarely go out who will notice that you only have two outfits.

When I had my last Brunch show, almost a decade ago, this is how it worked. I went to the station to schedule the music. This required putting on clothes that matched and had been recently cleaned, as well as doing something with my hair. When I got there I would sit in an office that I shared with three other people. One guy could not stand the smell of Mexican or Thai food and said sushi made him gag. So basically I couldn't eat in there since that's what I live on. Inevitably I would get my brain in the creative work zone and someone would come in and either need to use the computer or want to start a conversation. After I was done with that part of the project I would have to find a studio that was not in use to produce any features that were running that week. On Sunday mornings I would again have to get dressed, drive to the station, and do the show. OK. I cheated sometimes. The building was pretty much deserted at that time of day so I came in wearing my jammies more than a few times. They were official Jacksonville Jaguars jammies, rather dressy actually, so it was OK. Then I would take the actual CDs off the music library shelf, which pretty much covered an entire wall of the studio, and stack them in order. When the time came to play one I actually had to put it in a player, cue up the track, and push a button. I'm surprised the exertion didn't leave my button pushing finger permanently disabled. The other problem was that since I had to actually touch the CDs I could not eat anything gooey while I was doing the show because the residue could end up on the surface of the CD and make it skip. I remember talking up a fabulous newly released song, really hyping it, then about 30 seconds in it sticks and plays the same three notes over and over. I pull it out of the player and there is a big blob of cinnamon bun icing on the surface. It was a brunch show. I was brunching!

Now, a music library that used to take up several shelves is on a hard drive that is about the size of my dog's paw. It's totally enclosed and protected from gunky hands. The only danger is that it could get knocked on the floor and crash from the impact. But that's OK because it is backed up to another hard drive that is equally small and sheltered in a protective case on a shelf that is out of the reach of kids, animals, water and food.

The other problem back then was getting your hands on the music you needed. For most of the 20 years that I did these shows "back in the day" I would have to actually call people up and ask them to send me CDs. This usually involved adventures in phone tag. Toward the end of that period there were a lot of turn downs because there were so many full time stations that the record companies didn't have the budget to service brunch shows. If that happened I had to go on a journey all over town to find the CD at retail, which was always tough because it was hard to find adult oriented music at CD stores, especially on release day. I remember driving all over town in a tropical storm-like downpour trying to get my hands on a new Rippingtons release and finally tracking it down at about the fifth store I hit. My shoes were totally ruined from walking through semi-flooded parking lots during the search. Now, with most artists being on independent labels and wanting exposure from as many venues as possible, most are more than willing to send you their music and mailing cost doesn't even have to be an issue. They can send you MP3s of the songs you need in about the time it takes to send a regular e-mail. If desperation hits - say, I pop out of dreamland at 3am and think "I've just got to have that song for this week" and the deadline is noon - I can just crawl out of bed, go to Amazon or iTunes, click the download box and it's in my library immediately.

There are a few pitfalls. I have recording and editing capabilities but I don't have all the fancy audio processing that made my average girl voice sound deep, full, and professional. Fortunately the trend toward natural voices has totally taken over so that doesn't matter. What is a little tough is that I don't have an enclosed room with soundproofing and acoustic tile. I can't record if the wind is blowing and the wind chimes are clanging, or if anyone in the neighborhood is mowing their lawn, blowing leaves or worse, pressure washing their house! Sound quality for interviews is tougher too. I can't call the station engineer if there is noise on the line. I have to call what consumer advocate radio host Clark Howard calls the "customer no-service" line at the company that provides our phones and wireless who then says "we tested that line and there is no noise on it." One time they actually came out, tweaked around a while, tried to charge us 80 bucks for the visit, and then said "there's no noise on the line."  I went in to check it and there was truly no noise on the line. They had "accidentally" disconnected the phone!

The other problem is that as an obsessive-compulsive music programmer it is very hard to keep a music library organized without the expensive, memory-eating software that real radio stations use. I used to have all the songs categorized by type, tempo, lead instrument, and popularity/strength and the database would give me a complete history of when it had played before. I would hit a key to ask for a song that fit certain criteria and a list would pop up. My little laptop would crash at the sight of such a complex huge program and I have no budget to buy it anyway. I tried to tweak around with various ways to organize the library. Spreadsheet drag and drop? Too unwieldy, after several weeks it was a column as long as I am tall. Simple database? I couldn't make it do what I wanted to do. So what did I end up with? Industry people please hide your eyes because you'll fall on the floor laughing. I'm doing it just like we did at my first radio station in the 80s: a card file. The cards are sorted by category. When one gets played I write the date and hour on it then put it in back of the stack. I had about half of it done - title, artist, CD title, and category all neatly written on one card per song - and spilled a banana protein shake all over the finished cards. So I had to start over again. Now all those cards are in a box with a lid on the corner of the desk that sits by a USB port with 4 things plugged in. It's kind of comforting to have it there. One little low tech throwback in my high tech world.