7.30.2007

Camp Mohican and 'Bug Juice'

My on-line buddy has been keeping me up to date on what’s been going on at our old summer campgrounds, Camp Mohican, in the mountains of Blairstown in western New Jersey.

He told me the lake was renamed from Wildcat Lake to Catfish Pond.

He said that after it closed as a scout summer camp, they filmed the “Friday the 13th” movies with Jason and the goalie mask there.

It’s a little known secret that what made Jason go mad and kill off all those promiscuous teen-agers was when he learned what went into the bug juice.

Continue Reading

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

7.28.2007

FiOS 1st Year Package = $94.99

Everybody keeps wondering what it'll cost after the first year promotional package ends.


When you look at your first few bills from Verizon FiOS, you will wonder what the heck you got into. It seems you pay your old bill a month ahead, plus part of the new bill and some credits and charges that get your head to spinning.

So, after the third FiOS bill that resembled part of the national debt, and having spoken to a robot that told me it would take the first two billing cycles to adjust to the new billing, I sent an email to my new friends at Verizon FiOS.

Here's what they explained about my FiOS bill for Internet, digital TV and telephone service:

The normal price of all three services is $137.97. If you subtract the discounts, $42.98, you will find you are receiving the $94.99 promotional price.
Of course, I'm aware that I pay extra for the Movie package, Set Top Box, DVR and Inside Wire Maintenance. But what I couldn't understand is why the bills were so huge and ran on for pages and pages of charges and credits that would challenge a CPA.

There was also an internet activation fee of $19.99 that I'm sure I authorized somewhere along the line.

Laura at the Verizon Center explained it all very well in her email. Thanks, Laura.

What is the most surprising is that a multi-billion-dollar technology company takes all that time to adjust a bill for a customer who already had Verizon telephone and DSL service.

You would think that in this day and age, the company would be set up to immediately convert its thousands and thousands of new customers it gets each day from rivals like Cablevision.

Obviously, the technology is not perfect. At the end of Laura's clear, concise email explaining the billing of my Internet, TV and phone service, was the following tag line:

Don't miss out on the best broadband value around! Check to see if you qualify for Verizon Online Broadband Internet Service at:

http://www.verizon.com/highspeedtoday
Frankly, I don't mind seeing a pop-up like ad for Verizon each time I change a channel, but will I be interested in paying about $43 more for the same service next year? It had better be good, real good.

And for that, only time will tell.

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

7.19.2007

PARK GAZEBO in REFLECTION

Jersey City photo Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino

J. Owen Grundy Park,

Jersey City, N.J., construction viewed in reflection of riverside building, at noon.


The Never-Ending Kiss

Chalk Fest

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

PAINTERS ON BREAK - HYATT in Jersey City







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

SPALDING! COME BACK!

Copyright © 2007 by Anthony BuccinoSPALDING! Don't Go!

Sometimes you sit on the shoreline and feel like a cast away.

(It's a basketball, get it? Floating away? Like the soccerball in the movie. Get it, now?)


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

7.16.2007

LAST DAYS OF THE PCC SUBWAY CARS!


Check out the series on the last run of the retired Newark City subway cars.

Premodern Lightrail

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

The Old Jersey City Lightrail - One
The Old Jersey City Lightrail - Two


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

7.12.2007

What The Wiz Will Do After The Last Chapter

Courtesy NJ Historical SocietyHarry Potter?


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

7.08.2007

Jack vs. WCBS Oldies!

Our missing-for-some-time favorite Oldies radio station may be headed back on the air. Here's a link to the story.

Are Oldies the New Jack on NYC Radio?
Saturday, July 07, 2007

By LARRY McSHANE, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK — Everything oldies is new again. WCBS-FM, the nation's No. 1 oldies station for more than three decades until a 2005 switch, is ready to shift from its current "Jack" format and re-embrace the classic sounds of its past, according to online reports.

"If this happens, it will be a fantastic move," said "Cousin Brucie" Morrow, one of the veteran DJs jettisoned when the station swapped formats. "There isn't a day that goes by that people don't come up to me and say, `We miss the station so much.'"

CBS Radio, owner of the station, declined to comment on the much rumored change.

Continue Reading the Story

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


You know, not everybody has satellite radio.
Long live the Oldies! Dion, Bobby Rydell, Fabian, Annette and Frankie, Gidget, Vince Edwards, Richard Chamberlain, the Beatles, the Supremes, the Temptations, the Duprees, Johnnie Maestro ... the Four Seasons!

To quote that other guy from that era, we're Bringing it all Back Home!


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

7.07.2007

BULL DOG SAUCE

Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reservedBruce the Bulldog

Bull-dog Sauce. It's a Worcester Sauce. But is it made with real bull dogs?

My friend Margo likes to quote the cookies question from the Addams Family film, “are they made with real girl scouts?”

A Bulldog, also known as the English Bulldog or British Bulldog, is a medium-size breed of dog that originated in England.

Henry the bulldog lives around the block from us. Bruce (in the photo) is the sweetest dog that lives to have his belly rubbed.

Well, the question about Bull-dog sauce came up with this news item and we were wondering if Worcester sauce and Worcestershire sauce were the same thing.

We checked out Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and here's what we found:

Worcestershire sauce is generically referred to as Worcester sauce (IPA), when not manufactured by Lea and Perrins.

Worcestershire sauce (IPA [ˈwʊstə(ɹ)ʃ(ɪ)ə(r)] ("wuster-shur" or "wuster-sheer")) is a widely used fermented liquid condiment originally manufactured by Lea & Perrins, in Midland Road, Worcester, England.

The genuine product, manufactured to the original recipe, available in the U.K., comprises malt vinegar (from barley), spirit vinegar, molasses, sugar, salt, anchovies, tamarind extract, onions, garlic, spices, and flavouring.

It is a flavouring used in many dishes, both cooked and uncooked, and particularly with beef. It is an important ingredient in Caesar salad and in a Bloody Mary. Lea & Perrins supplies it in concentrate form to be bottled abroad.

Worcestershire sauce is generically referred to as Worcester sauce (IPA [ˈwʊstə(ɹ)]), when not manufactured by Lea and Perrins. It may contain vinegar, molasses, corn syrup, water, chili peppers, soy sauce, pepper, tamarinds, anchovies, onions, shallots, cloves, asafoetida and garlic.

Though a fermented fish sauce called garum was a staple of Greco-Roman cuisine and of the Mediterranean economy of the Roman Empire, "Worcestershire sauce" is one of the many legacies of British contact with India. While some sources trace comparable fermented anchovy sauces in Europe to the 17th century, this one became popular in the 1830s.


Then, of course, we began wondering about that OTHER sauce ...

Tabasco Sauce

The classic Tabasco red pepper sauce

Tabasco sauce is a brand of hot sauce made from tabasco peppers (Capsicum frutescens var. tabasco), vinegar, and salt, and aged in white oak barrels for three years. It has a hot, spicy flavor and is popular in many parts of the world.

Tabasco is trademarked as the brand name for the variety of tabasco sauce marketed by one of the United States' biggest makers of hot sauce, the McIlhenny Company of Avery Island, Louisiana.[1] Often, the word "tabasco" is rendered in lowercase when referring to the botanical variety, but in uppercase, "Tabasco," when referring to the actual trademarked brand name. While there are many other kinds of "hot pepper sauce" on the market, most of them are similar to Tabasco, and Tabasco is by far the most famous. Although it is produced in the United States, it acquired its name from the state of Tabasco in Mexico.

The tradename Tabasco has become to hot sauce what Kleenex is to tissue and Xerox is to copying.[2]

The McIlhenny Company is now in its fifth generation as a family-run business. All of the 145 shareholders either inherited their stock or were given it from another living family member.[1]


So, it seems, Henry and Bruce can relax.

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

7.03.2007

RESUME BY HOMING PIGEON

Maybe you saw In Quest To Stand Out, Take Care With Gimmicks in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal.

The article, by Sarah Needleman discusses creative tactics used by job applicants to make their resume stand out.

In her story, Needleman says

A junior marketing professional tried sending his resume to a company hiring manager via homing pigeon, says Cynthia Shapiro, a job-search coach in Chatsworth, Calif. But as far as the job hunter knows, the recruiter wasn't interested, because the animal never returned, says Ms. Shapiro, who began working with the job hunter after the incident.


That might be something junior marketing professionals might do to show their pluck, but it appears to me that the JMP knew nothing about homing pigeons.

As for the JMP, two things about this anecdote strike me as odd.

You see, when released, a homing pigeon goes home to its own coop, usually at a great speed and whatever the distance. Racing pigeons have been known to cruise almost effortlessly at speeds around 50 miles per hour.

So, one thing that strikes me as odd is how the JMP attached a resume to a bird that weighs a pound or less. Perhaps he used very, very fine tissue paper with very, very tiny print in a capsule attached to the bird's leg. That's how it worked in World War II, more or less.

Today, I suppose you affix a micro-chip, or SD-card onto the bird and then set it free. It will circle a few times and then head to its home perch.

If the JMP was able to affix the resume to the bird, well, the bird would have gone home and not to the company hiring manager.

That would be, of course, unless the JMP broke into the company hiring manager's loft, stole a bird, affixed the resume and then released the bird the next day.

That's when it would have gone home, to the company hiring manager's coop where the Pigeon Flyer would have noticed the capsule and retrieved the Ovaltine de-coder and the JMP would have been hired at an exceedingly great sum of money.

That, dear reader, is my take on using a homing pigeon to deliver your resume to a company hiring manager.

IMHO, it's a quaint story, but it probably didn't happen.

Why Attention-Seeking Tactics
Often Backfire on Job Hunters

Some professionals feel the need to use oddball gimmicks to stand out from the competition, such as sending a resume to a recruiter via homing pigeon. But most stunts are embarrassing failures.

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

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7.02.2007

THE NEW FiOS REMOTE CONTROL

The Verizon FiOS TV remote is very cool. When you change channels a strip comes on the bottom to tell you what it is, and it tells you how much longer the show runs, or whether it just started. You also get the logo for Verizon - a subliminal ad.


I got the DVR on one of the set top boxes and you can actually tell it to record a TV Series – like Medium each time it airs on Channel 4. Or in my case, I have about 24 Jeopardy! Shows I haven’t watched.

If there’s an off-timer to turn the TV off when you fall asleep, I haven’t found it yet.

I did find something that enlarged my screen – but the show ID and close-captioning ran off the page. I got it back to normal, but don’t ask me how.

You can delete channels from your program listings and they don't show up when you zip through the channels – but you have to delete them in a way that makes you wonder which ones you wanted to delete. Cablevision made this easier to do.

Also, Verizon has like-show channels near each other. What a concept. All the news talk channels together, all the sports channels, the kids channels. That's great.

You can also set up your favorite channels – but it’s hard to do if you can’t figure out what channel is which. I suppose you could use the printed program guide but then what would I complain about?

You can also program the remote/TV to give you your town’s own weather report. Just set up the widget once and you get weather and traffic.

And the Info button gives you a longer description of the show you’re watching or the show you have highlighted in the guide as you’re surfing.

I still have trouble turning the TV and set-top box on and off. Mostly turning it on. You have to press one button then the on and the other TV button and the on and sometimes it takes me a while to get it on.

Just think of the hours of fun you’ll have figuring out the remote control.

I think this would make a good blog.

We were reminded how much we like Verizon FiOS after a recent visit from the Cablevision regional marketing director.

It's been about a month and a half since we canceled after 28 years with the same cable provider. Now, they want to know what it will take to get us back.

Well, perhaps if you hadn't started charging me five or six bucks a month for the remote control rental, that would have been a start.

But, it's all water under the bridge. I can't see ever going back to the cable company.

Although, one never really knows, does one.


FiOs Billing Needs Work, Does It Ever!

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

Who knew you could HATE AOL email?

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