The First Email Was Sent In 1971

Since then, spam volume has doubled each day from the day before.

But seriously.

It is true that the First Email Message was sent in 1971.

Yes. There were computers around in 1971.

In 1970, my computer programming class consisted of FORTRAN and key-punch cards. You could say that Belleville High School had a ways to go in those days. Nowadays, my alma mater is toying with fiber optics. Woo woo!

Getting back to the first email, the folks at About.com shared a copy of that first email. You'd be surprised at how much the first test messags have in common with most spam email addresses.

Remember when you learned how to type (on a typewriter for those of us old enought to remember typewriters) and you'll see the significance of those first messages' timeless words "QUERTYIOP" and maybe "ASDFGHJK."

Come to think of it, much of the email going around now that passes for real email hasn't changed much from the usefulness of those test messags. Has it?

NEXT TIME: How I invented Blogging.

Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

My Favorite Line

From my new and unpublished work:

"This place is starting to smell like someone else's lunch"

From HARBORSIDE CAFE INTRIGUE

Poets see the world differently - someone once told me. For the longest time I saw everything as words being typed across a page in my portable typewriter.


Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

But What Is It In 2007 Dollars?

And speaking of poetry, I just read on About.com that Robert Frost sold his first poem in 1894 for $15.

In 2006 dollars that would be about $325.

In 1913, he published his first book – A Boy’s Will.

What do you mean I wasn't speaking of poetry? Of course, I was.


Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Who knew you could HATE AOL email?

Well, anytime something changes without warning, it can be an unpleasant surprise.

I was unpleasantly surprised to find that AOL had virtually completely changed its email display. They've made it slower and more cumbersome giving you things to close to get it back to the way you are nearly used to it.

Just last week, when I was having my Verizon FiOS installed, I was asked why I don't switch from AOL. I said it's because I have THOUSANDS of web pages with the AOL email and it would take forever to switch them.

I could change them to a Yahoo! account but I'm not sure if random emails would get through or fall unaccounted into the junk folder which I delete without opening. Anyway, as it is, more than half the email I get in my filtered Yahoo! email is still junk.

The new AOL email, I guess I'll get used to it. But I don't have to like it. Not now, anyway.

Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

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'Let me guess, you're switching to Verizon?'

That's what the fellow at Cablevision's disconnect said when I told him I was canceling my Silver cable TV subscription. We've had Cablevision - or its predecessors since about 1979 and just now switched over to Verizon FiOS.

One little thing that led to the switch was when the grace period ended for the Cablevision remotes. It came to more than $12 a month for the remote controls. Can you believe it? Last year when we switched to the digital IO the remote control was included.



Now, I have to get the set top boxes, remotes and activation cards back to Beth Page, Long Island. Frankly, it's easier to go to the post office and mail the darn box than to drive to Fair Lawn or somewhere in Paterson to drop it off. I guess that's another thing going against Cablevision.

But for now let me begin to enjoy my high-speed Internet and wireless laptop and the new and strange order of a logical channel progression. Heck, I might even make a long-distance call now that it's included in my three-for package.

NOTE TO VERIZON: If you use this line in your advertising, don't forget where to send me the finder's fee! That's A Buccino, PO Box 110252, Nutley NJ 07110

Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Support this web site, shop at Amazon through this link, thanks

Where Your Gas Dollar Goes

The industry trade group EnergyTomorrow.org says that the price of the pump is distributed thusly: 

Crude Oil = 56 percent; 

Refining, distribution and service stations = 26 percent; 

Taxes = 18 percent.

Fortunately, New Jersey has one of the lowest state fuel taxes at 14.5 cents per gallon for gasoline and 17.5 cents per gallon for diesel. Unfortunately they've p*ssed it away by ignoring the Trust Fund status to divert it to other needs in our money-hungry state.

According to Trucklines, the federal fuel tax is 18.4. cents a gallon for gasoline and 24.4 cents a gallon for diesel. The national average state fuel tax is 23.43 cents per gallon of gasoline and 23.63 cents per gallon for diesel.

That doesn't quite match the 18 percent taxes the EnergyTomorrow.org folks are quoting. But, you know how it is with statistics. There's lies, damned lies and statistics. And, anyway, EnergyTomorrow is talking about percent and the tax is assessed on a per gallon rate. Three dollars a gallon is still taxed at 18.4 cents, but the percentage drops.

But if you think gas is expensive, wait until you buy some corn flakes. The price of corn has sky rocketed because of the profit margin farmers see in selling the commodity for ethanol production.

In May 2005, a bushel of corn sold for $1.95. In May 2006, a bushel sold for $2.60. Last week, a bushel of corn sold for $3.72.

When corn goes up, your milk costs more because it costs more to buy other animal feedstock because farmers are growing more corn and, Yikes! everything's going up but your paycheck.

Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Disclosure: From 1990 to 1996, Buccino worked for the New Jersey Motor Truck Association. In 1997, an editorial written The Independent Press of Bloomfield about federal fuel taxes won a prize in the New Jersey Chapter Society of Professional Journalists annual contest. Buccino also goes back a long ways with Kellogg's corn flakes and Dr. Dentons.

Google Book Search – Phooey!

No one was more surprised than I was when I Googled “Anthony Buccino” and up turned a link to Rambling Round at Google Book Search.

From that link you can read the full text of my book Rambling Round, Inside & Outside at the Same Time which was published in 2002.

Probably a lot of authors might be delighted to find their book, or portions of it, available on Google Book Search. Generally, I’d guess those authors to be folks who granted permission for Google Book Search to digitally store and reproduce their copyrighted work.

Since I had not authorized the use of my copyrighted work, I was not pleased to find pages and pages of it available for searching on Google Book Search.

Perhaps by the time you read this, the Rambling Round link at Google Book Search will have been removed.

If you would like to purchase a copy of the 2nd edition of Rambling Round, then click here.

If you visit the Google Book Search and read excerpts from the books digitally stored there, you’ll notice small ads as you scroll. Those ads point you to products or services that might be of interest to you based on the content of the material you are reading.

As for me, Google AdSense makes no sense. And after what they insinuated about me, I am loathe to provide content for their ads.

Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.