Archive for the 'Local' Category

Thank you, US Taxpayers!

Published on October 16, 2009 in Local. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Thank you all for the sacrifice and work put into the Recovery Act. I’m very thankful for the millions of dollars that taxpayers across the USA are (or will be) paying to help improve the infrastructure, and especially the roads, here in eastern Massachusetts. Our commonwealth government is putting the money to work right now resurfacing plenty of roadways and repairing some of our elderly bridges – and they even have a nifty map showing you where your money is going.

I now can thank you every day, since there are some key stretches of Rt. 2 and a handful of roads in Belmont that had been pretty bad, which are now beautifully smooth and bump-free thanks to these extra-special Recovery projects. Although, I’m not sure if I should thank you, the taxpayers, or if I should really be thanking your children for their future contributions. I’d better thank some other of our descendants now too, I suppose, just to be sure it’s covered – thanks!

A big shout out to the town of Belmont, which just this week took the Recovery money to heart. I’ve been enjoying the super-smooth new curve of Blanchad Road, even with it’s new traffic calming devices. (Make that Blanchard – but one of the construction signs used to say “BLANCHAD RD UNDER CONSTRUCTION” for so long I kind of got used to it.) And parts of Park Ave and a few stretches near down town are much much better than they’ve been for years.

No, what I really have to hand it to Belmont is for going all out – right down to the dirt. Yes, about half of my drive through Belmont on the way home tonight was on dirt roads. All the way dirt – nice and dusty, with plenty of leftover gravel to jump up at the windshield, and big ruts to make for an interesting ride. I’ll be sure to remember to avoid driving in Belmont for the next week or so until they can bring some major routes back up to paved status. 8-(

Who remembers Caldor Middlesex Mall?

Published on October 13, 2009 in Local. 3 Comments Tags: , , , .

Or, as a friend and I call it, “The Caldor Mall”. This is an old joke, since there have been at least three other stores in that spot since then, and more years than I care to count.

Seriously – anyone else have fond memories of shopping at Caldor in the Middlesex Mall, or other local Caldors? It’s not as big a local name as Lechmere’s, perhaps, but the colorful logo was still a big sign in the region back when.

I’ve seen the variety of deadmalls.com and similar mall memories web boards talking vaugely about it, but very little actual data so far in Google. Seriously: there isn’t a picture anywhere on the web of that particular Caldor? Someone’s gotta have scanned in some old newspaper article about it or something! I’m surprised that some geek has actually setup a cheap mirror of the old caldor.com website(which I don’t remember), before it went under about a decade ago. The Wayback Machine also has some archived web pages, showing the caldor.com domain going from the real thing, through a couple of domain squatters, and then to nothing in recent years.

I was thinking of this as I’m making plans to have dinner with friends at one of the newest big retailers nearby, H Mart. You see, the only way I could explain how to get to H Mart was to say it was behind the Caldor Mall. Luckily, the person I was emailing that too actually understood me.

Ah, H Mart, I’m already excited to see your oodles of Korean and Asian groceries and food court – as evidenced by both local media coverage, and my friend @BigHeadDennis (Famed for assisting with an ocean rescue with his cell phone) who I think has mentioned at least three trips there already. Yum.

So – anyone have pictures of the Caldor at Middlesex Mall?

Any U-Haul haircuts yet?

Published on September 12, 2009 in Local. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

So – how many U-Haul haircuts do you think we’ll have this year?

[poll id="5"]

A U-Haul haircut is defined as when a driver from outside of the Greater Boston area, who, while driving a rental truck, strikes the underside of a bridge inside the Greater Boston area. This commonly occurs on Storrow and Memorial Drives during September, when one of the many new students at local universities (or, their parent) ignores the DANGER LOW BRIDGE warning signs, hanging chains, and other warnings at the entrances to local roadways, and drives down the road smack into a bridge.

Now it seems so far this year that we may have been spared any U-Haul haircuts – an amazing thing! For all things Boston, I trust in Universal Hub, and I haven’t seen any reports of U-Haul haircuts yet. A few Googles of likely news stories doesn’t show any either. Could this really be our year? A year of no U-Haul haircuts? We’ll see.

Today is Arlington FiOS day!

Published on July 1, 2009 in Local. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

As promised by the aggressive canvassers last week, this is the day for FiOS installs in Arlington. The fleet of white and red Verizon vans from across eastern MA gridded the streets of Arlington Heights this morning as they started their FiOS installs.

If you’re interested in FiOS, you’ll probably have to wait a while for an install, and probably pay more – at least that’s what their canvasser said. It was interesting: I actually spent a good 20 min discussing ISPs and phone companies with the canvassing supervisor the second time they came to my door. A simple explanation that we don’t accept unsolicited callers didn’t get him to leave, but he was interesting enough that I spent a while – on one of those rare sunny moments – just chatting.

Well, I was chatting, and he was still selling. They were definitely getting desperate – I’m betting that besides the commissions the door-to-door salespeople make, they’re having trouble achieving their new home penetration rate with their first round of installs. I wonder what it will end up being in the first round – Arlington is very dense, but it’s definitely a mixed community overall. I was still surprised they spent that long at my door even after I made it clear I wasn’t signing up with them under any circumstances. The first salesman wasn’t much; he just kept spouting the party lines. But the backup salesman / supervisor was actually interesting, and asked a few interesting questions amidst the rest of the sales pitch.

I wonder if Verizon will stop sending me their weekly junk mail now, or if it will continue with a higher pitch. I’ve got quite a large pile, and hope to make an art piece out of them someday.

P.S. Verizon, I’m lookin’ at you. If there are any problems with my existing phone or internet tonight, I’m going to be calling. Your technician hit both our POTS and Cable lines pretty hard with his ladder this morning as he was installing the neighbor’s line. Then he hit them again as he moved his ladder around. If my phone goes out, I’ll be blaming you – and most assuredly not getting your service, either. I almost wonder if this is an unwritten rule for the FiOS installers.

Will you buy a Boston Globe this week?

Published on April 30, 2009 in Local. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

As a souvenir?

[poll id="3"]

For those not lucky enough to live near the Hub, the latest news on the Boston news scene is that those mean New York Times owners want to shutter our beloved Boston Globe, where the unions want to be able to keep their lifetime jobs.

Yes, perhaps both sides are engaging in a touch of hyperbole. But for all it’s faults, it would still feel odd to end up living in a one-newspaper town after all these years.

So – what’s the latest bet for what the boston.com domain is worth these days?

Happy Patriot’s Day!

Published on April 19, 2009 in Local. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Although I had grand plans of putting all the local events into a fancy calendar to ease the process of figuring out which ones to attend, sadly, that didn’t happen this year.

Patriot’s Day event information is scattered across a number of different sites, although the most comprehensive reference is BattleRoad.com. Other worthwhile sites for event listings include:

  • Minute Man N.H.P. official site. If you’re attending any of these events, be sure to get there early, and pay attention to where the parking lots are. They will fill up early, and you’ll likely need to walk a ways along the 2A corridor or wait for a shuttle bus in the official parking areas.
  • Wicked Local’s listing of Concord/Lexington events.
  • Town of Arlington’s event listings. The Jason Russell House Battle reenactment is one of the hidden gems of the weekend – you can often get closer to the action than in Tower Park or in the NHP events.

Someone ping me next year if they have good ideas for a great UI for creating a public calendar. I should probably also seek out some of the BattleRoad folks (Mark!) and help them organize their website a bit – frames are so 1900′s.

Happy Evacuation Day!

Published on March 17, 2009 in Local. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Well, at least to those of you living in Suffolk county, which is the only place it’s officially celebrated. Huh – I didn’t realize that Cambridge and Somerville schools also have it off!

HT2UH.

Inauguration in Legos

Published on January 19, 2009 in Local. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Dieses ist so kühl! Photos of Barack Obama’s inauguration – in legos. Wicked. HT2NDW, who also uses .name.