Verizon, get me rewrite!

If anyone has ANY idea wtf they are talking about...

Subj: Replacement of Your Verizon Internet Access Service Terms of Service


Effective March 4, 2008 - Important Information Regarding Replacement Of Your Verizon Internet Access Service Terms Of Service

Effective March 4, 2008, the current Verizon Internet Access Service Terms of Service will be replaced by a revised and reordered set of terms and conditions entitled Verizon Online Terms of Service (“VOL Terms”). The VOL Terms are designed to help our subscribers locate terms of interest relating to Verizon Online’s Internet access and other products and services, and to present the service terms and acceptable use policy in a format that is easy to follow. Beginning on March 4, 2008, the VOL Terms will govern your rights and obligations, and ours, with respect to your use of the services we offer.

Described below are some of the changes reflected in the VOL Terms. However, we recommend that you review the entire VOL Terms to familiarize yourself with them. Your continued use of your Verizon Online Services after the above effective date will constitute your agreement to the VOL Terms.

The VOL Terms can be accessed by clicking on the "Policies and Terms of Service" link (www2.verizon.net/policies) at the bottom of any page of our Website.

Here is an overview of some of the changes reflected in the VOL Terms:

1. Reordered and Consolidated Provisions. We have consolidated and reordered a number of sections to put certain information at the beginning of the VOL Terms. These changes involve important terms like the duration and methods for accepting the VOL Terms, provisions allowing for revisions to the VOL Terms, account use and responsibilities, service availability and changes to the services we offer.

2. Restated Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). We have streamlined our Acceptable Use Policy, which now consists of the following four sections: General Policy, Specific Examples of AUP Violations, Usenet Policy and Posting Restrictions, and Copyright Infringement /Repeat Infringer Policy. The AUP is set out in Attachment A to the VOL Terms.

3. New Attachment B, Additional Services Terms. We have added a new Attachment B that provides, in one place, product-specific terms and conditions that pertain to the following services: Personal Web Space and Verizon Online Backup & Sharing, Email and Email Messaging Service, Verizon Internet Security Suite and Verizon Games on Demand.

Again, please take time to review the VOL Terms. Thank you for being a Verizon Online customer.


Verizon Online

I think it says I have to give them my first-born son if I can't use my cell phone to take a picture anywhere but inside my pants pocket.

Seriously, do you think they have any idea how ridiculous this email is? Maybe their lawyers made them send it out.

You know what Shakespeare said about lawyers...

Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Ear-Splittin' Louden-Boomer

My neighbor Jerry was always one to take things apart to see how they tick. He liked to play his Grand Funk Railroad at Ear-Splittin Louden-Boomer until the speakers exploded. Then he'd take apart his woofers and tweeters and make them as good as new.

He was the same way with his electric guitar and amp. You could hear him halfway up the block on Carpenter Street.

He had one of those gas-powered airplanes. It made a lot of noise when the engine was running. It sounded like a wild lawn mower. But I don't remember him ever getting the plane to fly. And even if he did, it would surely have crashed in to one of the gazillion trees on our property.

Did I mention Jerry got me to join the Boy Scouts? Then he got too sick to ever go on any of the camping trips. We tried to send each other Morse Code signals bedroom-to-bedroom with a flashlight. I never could get the difference between a long and a short flash, so, to tell him I was finished, I put the light on my chin and looked like Herman Munster.

No wonder he became a computer program ... when the first PCs came out ... and later made a career - from which he retired - out of keeping a New York bank's computers humming.

He was also a cable TV installer. That was when it was all brand new. He was the first person I ever heard of to have a carpal tunnel operation.

When you looked at the scars from that operation, you'd think he tried to kill himself.

He was the first kid in the neighborhood to play the Woodstock album - and the Fish Cheer really, really loud. It was like we were getting away with something.

Anyway, Jerry always came down from Pennsylvania for my book signings. Once he came down and had to rush back because it was his daughter's prom and he had to take her pictures when she was all dolled up.

Nobody was surprised when he told us that his daughter was an honest-to-God rocket scientist.

Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Fwd: Who's the mystery signer of your guestbook, Anthony

I really don't believe anybody I know would sign my Classmates page. It's much easier to simply Google me, no?

 

"Anthony Buccino"

 

---

From: ClassmatesEmail@classmates.com
To: abiebook@aol.com
Sent: 2/21/2008 7:36:37 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
Subj: Who's the mystery signer of your guestbook, Anthony

 

Your Guestbook Signatures

Hi Anthony, 1 person signed your guestbook yesterday! Can you guess who they are? Find out who's thinking of you.	Your Guests & Visitors Guestbook names Yesterday 1 Since you joined 12 Visitors Since you joined 256

UNSUBSCRIBE: You have received this email through Classmates' subscription-based email services according to your email preferences. To change or update your email preferences, please use the following link: Email Preferences. CONTACT US: If you feel you have received this message in error or for answers to your questions, try our easy-to-use Online Help Center. Please do not reply to this email as we are unable to respond to messages sent to this address. To make sure you continue receiving our emails to your inbox, please add ClassmatesEmail@classmates.com to your address book or safe sender list. Classmates Online, Inc. 2001 Lind Ave SW, Renton, WA 98057 © 2008 Classmates Online, Inc.

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Delicious ideas to please the pickiest eaters. Watch the video on AOL Living.

Keep 'em Flying

While everyone's getting excited at the hoopla surrounding the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, I was tipped off by Bobby Vangieri about an article - The Birds - in a back issue describing a big homing pigeon race in Las Vegas.

Bobby lived a few blocks away from me when I was a kid in Belleville. His neighbor, little Anthony, had learned all he could about flying pigeons from my father. Then little Anthony got his own loft, and Bobby followed suit.

Bobby reminded me of what an amazing carpenter my dad was.

I was never one to step into my father's shoes when it came to being a carpenter or a pigeon flyer.

I mentioned our house filled with race trophies.

Atop our TV, the alarm clock
had a small bird on one side
and a larger bird on the other side
of the time display.
In my room, the AM clock radio
had one metal bird centered on top,
next to the brass plate.
- from Trophies

Eventually, the trophies migrated into the garage where dad built the new coop. Some kid from up the block asked my mom if he could have the old trophies. She said sure. And that was it for most of them.

Bobby says there aren't a whole lot of flyers around anymore.

It was a sport that saw its peak after WWII. In the 70s as the old vets lost steam the youngsters were diverted by TV and less wholesome sports. But if you read that Sports Illutrated article, you might see a new life in the sport.

Once upon a time, our neighbor, Barbara, got an A on her essay about my father's pigeons.

I barely wrote about the boids, seeing them as competition my entire life. They finally turn up in the eponymous A FATHER'S PLACE. Heck, we even put a couple of pigeons on the cover!

Similar to the characters in the Andy Capp comic, my dad had his pigeons and my mom had her Bingo! My friend, Gloria, calls us the Pigeon-Bingo Orphans.

Dad always knew I'd never be his flying partner. I told him so when I was very young. Precociously, I said, it takes you away from your family too much.


SHOOT THE BREEZE - a poem about pigeon flyers waiting for the birds on race day, and SIXTEEN INCHES ON CENTER - a poem about my lackluster carpentry work, are scheduled to appear in Rattlesnake Review #17 Rattlesnake Review, Poetry With Fangs, a print poetry journal.

SIXTEEN INCHES ON CENTER is a poetry collection in progress. May include Trophies, Shoot The Breeze and Sixteen Inches on Center. We'll see.

Running Pigeons

Uncle Tonoose on Homing Pigeons

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

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Key Punch Cards - FORTRAN

Is there a word for someone who waxes 

nostalgic about keypunch cards?

I mean, BESIDES codger, fogey and geezer?

It was in the early 1970s in my Computer Programming class at good old Belleville High School that we were introduced to the coding sequence of FORTRAN and the wonder of keypunch cards.

The keypunch machine ... that punched the holes in the card for each letter you typed and later read the card to perform a task, was not as big as a Univac computer - which would have taken a whole classroom, but was about half that size.

A Keypunch Card

In those days, our first question was What's an Abacus?

From there, we pretended to have computers for which we would write programming on the keypunch cards and I remember a lot zeroes and 1s and you left about 10 digits between coding lines.

Maybe that's how programmers still write programs?

Once during our year of Computer Programming class we actually visited the keypunch room and got to type our cards out and see whether or not our program worked.

My older sister worked down in Newark at one of the big insurance companies - I'm thinking Mutual Benefit, but it could have been Mutual of Omaha? - where she was a keypunch operator. That, of course, was back in the days before spelling was corrected holistically. Anyway, when she got married and moved to Ashtabula, Ohio, she got a job as a keypunch operator at Carlysle's Department store uptown.

Is there a word for someone who waxes nostalgic about keypunch cards?

Oh, now I know: Baby boomer.

Keypunch Machine at Columbia University

Keypunch Machine on Wikipedia

Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Greenie Stick 'em Caps

Believe it or not, we were trying to remember the theme song to Car 54, Where Are You? That comedy TV show from the early 1960s. Turns out, it only has one verse.

I still have the Dick Tracy .38 snubnose revolver cap gun that shot caps and little plastic bullets. It's somewhere in my attic.

And, that reminded me of when my pal Gary and I used to shoot our cap guns. Gary favored Greenie Stick 'em Caps. These caps stuck to the toy bullet and after they exploded you had to peel them off.

I loved the boxes of red-roll caps. You put the roll in the gun and shot off your caps until your fingers went numb.

When we got bored shooting one or two caps off with our toy guns, we would slam a brick on a box and watch it explode.

Those were the 60s. That's how we had fun. That and dirt bombs. We were to fat, dumb and happy to worry about the A-bomb.

Older Than Dirt Quiz:

Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about Ratings at the bottom.

1. Blackjack chewing gum
2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water

Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

PS - You should have believed Margo when she said Tonoose would end up blogging about the lyrics to Car 54, Where Are You?

Links Subject to Change

Grammar Question

Plum wore out

Or

Plumb wore out???

Passed along wisdom

Or

Past along wisdom

Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.