I’m heading east on the Mass Pike returning from a ten day vacation in Westhampton – a small town near Northampton. This part of Pioneer Valley is right up my alley and I leave it reluctantly and with a heavy heart. Also known as the Happy Valley, at least this part has much that appeals to me. The people here are educated, liberal, tolerant, and seem to have similar sensibilities regarding quality of life.
The streets are remarkably clean – even the rural ones. The stores are mostly mom and pop operations – I didn’t see one big box store the whole time. Fast food and chain donut shops exist but in moderation. I saw many historic properties with proud banners proclaiming “Your CPA Dollars At Work”. The area is literally loaded with paved bike paths built on old rail lines. Northampton is the lesbian capital of the US and judging from what I saw every town in MA could use a lot more lesbians. Open space abounds and there are serious well thought out plans for preservation. It’s a stark contrast to the piece meal/knee jerk efforts of most towns.
The people here have a glow that comes with a high quality of life and a noticeable lack of low rent dipshits tossing their Burger King cups out the window as they cruise past the empty downtown storefronts on their way to Walmart.
Anchored by five large universities, the Northampton area seems to have hit on a societal sweet spot that has a lot going for it.
If this article is any indication, Marsha will have a tough time in the next election. All of the comments are indicative as well. April is a long way off and so far marsha has been tough to beat.
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=PUB04
I have posted the link to the Middleboro Gazette. There are two fantastic pieces by Jane Lopes today. She writes about Monday night’s Selectmen’s meeting for the front page and has dedicated her editorial to Marsha’s response. As I write this piece, the links were unavailable at the time; I read the paper this morning on the train. I would encourage everyone to buy the paper, come on splurge- it is 50cents. More importantly, save the paper and keep it until after our next Middleboro town election.
I attended the meeting and was amazed at Marsha’s response. She claimed that she was only trying to adhere to the New Open Meeting Law. No apology, no I made a mistake, she was just trying to obey the law. She further explained to her board, that she “reserved the right to say I told you so” when someone complained that the Selectmen violated the Open Meeting Law. She thought taking away our right to speak was the best way to comply with a law that mandates Meetings be open. It seemed like the right idea to Marsha.
The truth of the matter is that her response was nothing more than revisionist history. On 8/17 Bumpkin posted the video of Allin Frawley’s discussion with Marsha of her new plan. Watch the video closely. See how many times she mentions the New Open Meeting Law! Here is a hint- THE NUMBER IS ZERO! She mentions that her Board has been very “liberal” in allowing people to speak. She further explains that she needs to do this because, “some people tend to comment on everything…., for no purpose”.
Not one time does she mention the Open Meeting Law.
Marsha also tried to claim she never shut anyone off from speaking. To his credit Steve McKinnon called her on that point. He spoke passionately about the importance of allowing people to speak. He did make a motion to remove Marsha as Chair. He later decided to withdraw his motion until next meeting because the full Board was not present. Both Al Rullo and Steve Spataro spoke out against the Marsha plan and I commend them both for standing up for the citizens of Middleboro.
It was an interesting mix of speakers. Allin Frawley, Lincoln Andrews, Adam Bond, Judy Bigelow-Costa and I all took terms speaking. We all in one way or another pointed out this was wrong and clearly this revisionist idea was ridiculous. I will not make an attempt at why Marsha attempted to curtail the Public Comment section but she now has to live with the consequences.
As I pointed out in my last blog, she crossed a line that we cannot tolerate from public officials. I am very thankful that the three other members of the Board of Selectmen decided to do the right thing. Marsha tried to stop the public’s involvement in the democratic process. This cannot be forgotten when the Middleboro Town Elections come in April!
I’m on vacation in north hampton massachusetts. I fell down some steps the very first morning and wrecked my ankle. North hampton is a great town very liberal and people seem to really care about their quality of life. Sorry if this post is clumsy i’m dictating to my wife’s phone. The droid speech to text input is amazing.
http://www.enterprisenews.com/news/x84262225/Backlash-to-new-Middleboro-selectmen-policy-expected
A quick reminder to our readers. Tonight should be a wonderful Selectmen’s Meeting. Can’t miss TV – but I think it would be more important for you to attend the meeting. I will be there and have already sent my request to speak my piece.
For any late afternoon or early evening ‘Netizens:
I’ll be playing at the Flat Iron Cafe in Middleboro tonight – Saturday Aug 31 – from 7:30 PM to 10:30 PM. Joining me for a few songs will be Bery Rinaldo all the way from California. Also on program is Gary Coole – yes that’s his real name – and old friend that I haven’t played with in quite a while – years actually. So we’ll just get it going and see what happens. Last but not least is the legendary Marese aka Mary Barry. Marese outright refused to do her now standard “Closer To Fine” – though perhaps the roar and adulation of the crowd will convince her otherwise. Instead she opted for a deeper cut off the same Indigo Girls album – Love’s Recovery.
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Come on down. Flat Iron management tells me this is traditionally their slowest week so we’ll need all the help we can get..
In the few blog postings I have written here, I have always tried to convey my admiration for anyone that serves their local community. We should always be thankful when someone comes forward to lend a helping hand. For me, this applies to local government, the school systems, local sports groups or any town activity for the benefit of others. These individuals will always have my heartfelt thanks, until they cross the line.
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That line was crossed at the last Selectmen’s meeting. The Chair of the Board decided she would make it impossible to comment on what she termed, “her Board’s business”. She stopped short of asking for a blood sample and a retinal scan of those lowly townspeople that dared to think that they could speak to their elected officials. Marsha instead wanted “her Board” to adopt a set of rules that would make it impossible for anyone to discuss the Selectmen’s meetings agenda the same day. You would be forced to wait until the next meeting to comment on any action taken. EVEN IF THEY WERE BASING THEIR DECISIONS ON ERRORS OR WRONG INFORMATION!
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I try to attend Selectmen’s meeting whenever I can. Sometimes life becomes a roadblock but I enjoy going to listen and comment when appropriate. You see in Marsha’s eyes I have the wrong philosophy. I want to be an active participant in my local government, she would rather have me watch from home and stay away from the meetings. I shouldn’t ask pesky questions or share opinions. Marsha has all the answers; she can solve all of our problems. She doesn’t need our input or ideas. After all we live in a town with no fiscal issues, we have all of our fire stations open, we have a state of the art police station and who can remember the last time the schools had a layoff. Marsha has solved all of our problems single handedly. SHE DOESN”T NEED OUR IDEAS!
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The amazing part is her rationale behind her decision. She said too many people comment on everything and it has gotten out of control. Isn’t that an issue with the Chair of the Board and not the townspeople? If there is an appropriate time to speak and make your opinions heard, shouldn’t she as the Chair ask the person to withhold their comments until the proper time? Last time I looked, that was one of the key responsibilities of the Chair of the Board of Selectmen.
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She also argued that this was the business meeting of “her Board”. I could not disagree with her more. This is a business meeting of the town and the townspeople need to be included and allowed to participate in the discussion. The “Comment’ section should open the meeting, so that those ideas could be included in the Board’s discussion not left until 10pm.
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I attended the meeting prior to this one. I attended to be a part of the discussion on if the Board should adopt Robert’s Rules of Order. I had served as a Chair of a School Board and had the Rules as our operating guideline. At the end of the meeting, it came time to the “Other” portion of the program. She said that no one had followed her new guidelines. I got up and asked if she could explain her new guidelines. She did and they were completely different from the new rules she is trying to impose. They had one meeting in between and she on her own decided that her own rules allowed too much discussion.
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I was allowed to participate in the discussion about Robert’s Rules of Order. During the discussion, Steve Spataro and Mimi Duphily both chose not to adopt Robert’s Rules because they were afraid it would limit the ability of citizen to participate. Let’s see if they choose Marsha’s Way!
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Lawyers representing the Mashpee Wampanoags have made a public record request to the town of Middleboro for any document, video, or audio anything that contains the word “Casino”, “Wampanaog”, or curiously “Adam Bond” according to a Brockton Enterprise story. The size and scope of the records request is interesting.
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The tribe was billed $3K for the documents which are available for public inspection in the offices of the town manager and town planner. My guess is that they are mostly trying to intimidate the town by appearing to prepare for a protracted lawsuite – which they can’t afford. This is to limit their liability for what the town of Middleboro considers to be a unilateral breaking of the IGA.
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Clearly they are going to make the case that there was no written or implied exclusivity. That is indicated by item 12. Items 18-21 are meant to frighten us into believing that the tribe is going to look for repayment of some of the planning monies if we don’t back off. I’m curious about items 16 and 17 – votes about picking IGA negotiators and Adam Bond’s role. There’s something behind that but I don’t know what. Maybe they just wanted to invoke an “Oh no, not Bond” reaction from the BOS. Beyond that they’re just being a pain by requesting so much stuff – stuff that could be used by a competent legal team in the event that legal battles begin in earnest.
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I wonder how much success Middleboro would have if they made a similar request to our sovereign nation former friends? Probably about as much success as we would have had trying to manage a sovereign nation mega casino – a idea that dumb three years ago and just gets dumber over time.
Here is video of the BOS discussion from 8/9/2010 about proposed rule changes that many see as a serious curtailing of the public’s ability to speak. Public comments would need to be submitted on the Wednesday before the meeting.
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In the video, resident Allin Frawley expresses his concern with the change and explains how it introduces a time lag that can exceed two weeks during the summer schedule.
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What cracks me up in this meeting is the mass confusion from the BOS as they try to limit the speech of people they don’t like and allow it for others resulting in painful gyrations that finish up with Selectman Mimi Duphily withdrawing her wish to comment to avoid a “pissing match” with residents and Selectman Brunelle observing that they might have to clarify the rules a little more. I would suggest this addendum to the six pages of proposed rules: “Residents we don’t like can’t speak at all and all others can speak at will – so long as they’re not commenting in a way that disagrees with us”. I think that should pretty much cover it.
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Do you feel represented yet? BTW – what is the proper term for a female BOS member: Selectman, Selectperson(seems awkward), Selectwoman? Maybe I’ll request to put the question to the BOS during public comment and we’ll have an answer in 2.7 weeks.
Playing at Flat Iron Cafe 8/21/2010
I’ll be playing at the
Flat Iron Cafe this Saturday Aug 21 from 7:30 to 10:30 PM. Check out their
event announcement.
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The Flat Iron Cafe is located at:
444 Centre Street
Middleboro, MA 02346
(508) 947-3358
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This is historically their slowest week with people on vacation, getting ready for school and so on. With that in mind please do your best to attend if you have any interest. I’ve played 2 gigs recently so the rust is minimal and I’m hoping to have a good gig.
My bi-weekly column is in the week’s Middleboro Gazette and discusses in some detail things I often mention but perhaps haven’t fully explained: Various offers of help I’ve made to Middleboro BOS and the deafening silence that greeted the offer. This is framed in the discussion of why I think that sitting on the IT assessment committee would be a waste of my time – since past action of the BOS and IT director convince me that they have no interest in what I have to say or what I have to offer.
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Also in this week’s paper is an editorial by Jane Lopes that I’d recommend. It concerns the recent set of meeting rules being proposed by BOS chairman Marsha Brunelle that will have the effect of limiting public speech at meetings. Today anyone can speak during the public comment period. The new rules would force you to submit your comments in writing on the Wednesday before the meeting. It would also limit public comment on other agenda items except for those that are specified as public hearings.
In my opinion, the rules being proposed by Brunelle serve no purpose but to alienate the public. I’ve watched virtually every BOS meeting for the last three years and at no time has the public been disruptive – though things got a little heated during the peak of the casino issue. When Adam Bond took over as Chairman just after TMFH, he brought back the public comment period and I know he was nervous that it would blow up in his face as casino emotion was still high. It didn’t.
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People in this town often complain about the ‘ol boy network. They’ll have fresh evidence if the perceived good ‘ol boys and gals stay silent on this. It’s not up to Allin Frawley or Mike Solimini to fight this on their own and lord knows that BOS fanboys aren’t going to do it. It’s up to the former selectmen and longtime political gadflies to steer the ship of state away from the rocks.
Playing at Soule Homestead 7/31/2010
I’ll be playing at
Eddy Homestead this coming Saturday 8/14 from around 12-1. I’ll also be at the
Flat Iron Cafe on Saturday 8/21. I’d love to see you there to support this cool local asset. I’m referring to the Homestead not myself. Though I am pretty cool and I am a local ass .. et.
One of the oft-repeated mantras of Fox News, Teabaggers, and other right-wing factions is that the current Democratic-controlled Congress and President are somehow violating the Constitution or wishing to. This is indicated by statements such as this Sarah Palin quote implying that Barack Obama wanted to ban guns.:
Back during the the last presidential race, normally sane Orrin Hatch spouted this incendiary crazy talk in an interview with Glenn Beck – the undisputed king of right wing crazy talk:
So there we have it – the US Constitution is hanging in the balance under attack from the left – a nefarious group of people trying to subvert the American way of life to a hell that is socialist at best but more likely communist. Now I don’t think Orrin Hatch believes that – but clearly he was willing to imply it when the Republicans were staring into the teeth of a filibuster-proof Democratic majority. That’s just wrong Orrin. And by the way – how many times did you get beat up by transgender liberals with a name like “Orrin Hatch”?
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And now we have these same defenders of the Constitution bemoaning the desire of “Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to build an Islamic center and mosque at 45 Park Place, two blocks from the perimeter of the former World Trade Center towers.”. Given the tragic events of 911, the once-reasonable war in Afghanistan, and the WTF are we doing in Iraq war, it’s understandable that Americans have a lot of baggage with Islam.
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But here’s the funny thing about the Constitution. It can’t be arbitrarily applied or suspended according to the whim du jour. Freedom of religion is either a fundamental part of our Constitution – or it’s not. Freedom of speech is a constitutional guarantee or not.
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I’m about as left as they come and about the last thing I want to do is defend any religion – but as an American, I can’t pick and choose which fundamental rights I support. It’s all or nothing.
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So go ahead and tell everyone you know that I support building a mosque on privately owned land near ground zero – because I just can’t think of a way to prevent it that isn’t …. un-American. We don’t have to like it and we don’t have to march for it. But we also should not stand by when a fundamental freedom is threatened.
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America has many problems but religious tolerance isn’t one of them. It’s a key thread in the very fiber of the American tapestry.
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In closing, a great man once said:
As I recently posted – my Windows XP machine at home was infected with Antivir Solutions – an “antivirus” program that infects you with itself and then tries to get you to pay to remove it. That was three hours down the toilet.
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Yesterday my family informed me that the computer had been horribly slow lately so I started digging into things. I did all the usual – looking for extra services, removed extra programs, did some XP tuneup things that I found on the net and finally got to defragging the computer. “Defragging” is something that any experienced Windows user knows about but is virtually unheard of in Unix/Linux because their filesystems don’t suck. As your disk starts getting full, there is no one spot on disk large enough to add a large file so filesystem stores pieces of the file throughout the disk – this makes accessing the file slow. It also slows down other things that are waiting in line to access the disk. I had to go through some gyrations freeing up space because my main C: disk was nearly full.
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The computer is a Sony Vaio that we’ve had for probably 8 years. The thing came with a 70-80GB drive that was split up(partitioned) into 13GB C: drive and 64GB D: drive. As you may or may not know, when you create user accounts on Windows, it puts them in C:\Documents and Settings\UserName. Every file you download or application you run leaves things inside this directory. When you start getting involved in graphics and movies these directories can become huge and I have been battling a space shortage on C: for years. Dear Sony – I hate you. This insane artificial limitation on where user directories can be on Windows drives a Unix guy like me crazy. On Unix, user directories can be anywhere on the machine or network and can be moved at will. So – I decided that I would find a way to move my user directories off of C: or die trying. I learned a few things along the way that some of you might find interesting.
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First off – I’m talking about home computers running Windows XP – not networked computers like you might have at work that have profiles and such. After googling around, I found a couple of solutions – all of which had problems. When initially installing Windows, you can create some sort of file that will make it put user directories wherever you say – not an option for me since my computer is already installed. This still doesn’t mean you can put then anywhere – just that you can put them somewhere other than C:. Various people reported that you could get into some ugly hacking of the registry to get the directories elswhere – which looked dangerous and difficult. A coworker had a good suggestion – if I had another disk, you could make that partition appear as a folder anywhere in C: – say replacing C:\Documents and Settings with another drive. I wanted to use H:\Users as my user directory storage not H: – so I didn’t like that idea even though I probably could have made it work.
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So my solution was to use the Windows equivalent of a symbolic link. SymLinks are a very handy construct that have existed since time immemorial on Unix. The are a pointer to another location that might exist anywhere on the machine or network. They look feel and act like regular files and directories but just point to somewhere else. Windows only recently had something similar called “junctions” and in typical Microsoft fashion, they have to take something logical and known and give it their own stupid name – like calling directories “folders” or replacing the defacto directory separator – the slash / – and changing it to be the hard-to-reach backslash \. Junctions first came into being in Windows 2000 probably 30 years after Unix had links and are far less capable. A Windows junction can only point to a local file or directoy – not a location on the network. It was not until Windows Vista in 2006 that Microsoft released a real symbolic link that could point to networked locations. But I have Windows XP and was stuck with junction points.
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So my plan in case it isn’t obvious yet was to copy the user directories from C:\Documents and Settings to H:\Users. I am neither a “Document” or a “Setting”. Then I would create a junction point in “Documents and Settings” pointing to the new location on my H: drive. First I acquired junction.exe because obviously Microsoft couldn’t include something in the operating system that was actually useful. Then I used xcopy to copy the directories, renamed the original dirs, and set the link with junction. Here are the actual commands:
xcopy mjb H:\Users\mjb /O /X /E /H /K /C
rename mjb mjb.orig
junction "C:\Documents and Settings\mjb" H:\Users\mjb
I like this solution over the alternatives – junctions allow me to move any dirctory on my system to another location while maintaining the original path.
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While I was doing all this work, I installed a couple of programs to make Windows more useful and bearable. Curiously I find that Windows becomes more useable as you install more non-Microsoft software. First up was KpyM Telnet/SSH Server. This allows my to login to my XP machine from another computer – this just gives me a simple command line. I already have VNC that give me the whole desktop on a remote machine.
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After that I installed Console2. The windows command line interface cmd is total crap (Start-Run-cmd). It can’t be resized which never fails to infuriate me. Console2 is more like the terminals on Unix/Linux and include tabs.
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So there you go – my space issues are solved, I installed a couple of useful tools on my Windows machine, and I learned a nifty trick with junctions. Enjoy. If you want to really really really piss me – supply me a solution to moving user accounts that is easier – my solution took me quite a while to figure out.
Proof that I'll soon be rich
Ed. The following post is sarcasm in response to an obvious email scam. Do NOT give personal details to anyone you don’t know. Trust me – nobody is going to give you money no matter how official looking it is.
I’ve just received this official-looking email from the FBI that leads me to believe I’ll soon be getting $36M from Banco Pastor – a large Spanish Bank. All I need to do is send my sensitive contact info to
fbi.investigations.gov@hotmail.com. Personally I think it’s cool that the FBI is trying to save public money by using hotmail accounts.
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I think I’ll send a copy of my birth certificate, social security number, and drivers license just to make sure they have everything required to expedite the payments.
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Nice knowing you suckers – I’m rich now and don’t need any of you. So long.
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I don’t know what Spanish angel is giving me $36M but thank you
Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Reminder of this good cause:
This is fairly close to the Nemasket River so watch out for alligators.
Bottle and can drive at Muckey's - Sat. 7/24 10AM - 2PM
I was asked to post this. Seems like an extremely easy way to pitch in for a good cause:
I’ll be opening for the Nashville Clippers at the Soule Homestead Summer Concert Series on July 31, 2010 at 6:00 PM until the main act comes on at 7:00 PM. This is a really idyllic setting with beautiful views of fields, trees, old New England stone walls and gorgeous sunsets.
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Admission is $7 and $5.00 for seniors and students with children under 12 free. The Soule Homestead is located at 46 Soule Street Middleborough MA 02346.
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The series runs every Saturday until 8/21. Please support the series as much as possible but especially on the night I’m playing to feed my already considerable ego. Here are some mp3′s from my last gig and here is the Facebook event page.
This week’s Middleboro Gazette has an article about the presentation by Jeff Stevens of the Green Energy Committee:
It will be interesting to see if Middleboro follows through with something that appears to be a no-brainer. The assessment done by Mr. Kowaslki (and I think his wife) took a huge amount of effort. At the BOS meeting, they were asked if they would audit the other buildings in town. To paraphrase the reply was something like “well .. this was as ton of work and we don’t think you’re really going to do anything – but if you do, we’ll do all the assessments you want”.
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Here is a plug for a magic show to benefit the Rogue Theatre Company – featuring Adam Bond. Adam has been very good about plugging my shows and causes on his radio show. BTW – I’ll plug any event within reason.
| Fun-de-Mental
Friday, September 10 and Saturday, September 11
8:00 PM Performance
Roseland Ballroom @ Hong Kong City
174 Broadway,
Taunton
Reservations: 877-592-7130 or click on one of the reservation dates
below
August 13th | Reserve
August 14th | Reserve
Tickets: $20, Optional Buffet: $12
A benefit for
The Rogue Theatre Company
Silent Auction, Cash Bar and Chinese Buffet at 7:00 PM
You are mental if you miss Fun-de-Mental, the Rogue Theatre Company’s
Summer Fundraiser. We hope you’ll join us for a great night of laughs
and illusion with everyone’s favorite disappearing casino selectman,
Adam Bond. There will be an optional Chinese Buffet, cash bar and silent
auction. We look forward to seeing you there!
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Recently I posted about the letter sent by the Middleboro BOS to the BIA opposing any change to the tribe’s LIT application. I thought people might want to see the actual letter.
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The PDF document, like many Middleboro documents is a scan of a document. The means that it is essentially a giant picture that you can’t copy text from. Instead of a PDF – Portable Document Format you have a Painful Document Format. Middleboro releases documents in this fashion on purpose to make it difficult for people to share and discuss the content. A “normal” PDF document is created in one step – you have a file such as a Word document and you convert it to PDF often by use of a PDF printer – a piece of software that appears as a printer but produces a PDF file instead of a printed sheet of paper. This document was created by taking a printed sheet of paper and running it through a scanner – which essentially takes a picture of the document. Depending on your scanner, you might retrieve the scanned document by email or some other means.
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Creating a good PDF
- Open document
- Print/Save to PDF
Middleboro method of creating a bad PDF
- Open document
- Print document
- Retrieve document from printer
- Run document through a scanner
- Transfer PDF to your computer
- Dispose of wasted printed sheets paid for by Middleboro taxpayers
- Let loose evil chuckle and congratulate yourself for making it difficult for the taxpayer/citizen to extract text from the public document
Hooray for Middleboro IT
BOS assess Middleboro casino
In a
unanimous vote, the Middleboro BOS approved a letter opposing the Mashpee Wampanaoag’s plans to alter their fee to trust application by adding a Fall River site to it:
A draft of the letter surfaced last Friday in a Brockton Enterprise article titled Middleboro selectmen not pleased with tribe’s casino pull-out. As I recently tweeted, the article title begs the question of what the tribal leadership was doing to the town before they pulled out.
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My friends over at ReelWamps have chimed in on the letter as well.
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Would this be a bad time to ask if we’re getting our $250K planning money this year? I would hate to dredge up the past and say “I told you so”. OK well that’s not true – I love saying “I told you so”. It was June 2009 when I posted that last year’s payment would be the last one.
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If only the BOS had engaged the opposition and leveraged their expertise instead of alienating them. But that don’t make no nevermind – the BOS don’t want to hear from me even when I come bearing free web sites.
Brown thumbs up for slots
As Massachusetts continues it’s headlong rush to casino gambling, Senator Scott Brown has taken a break from obeying his party overlords to interject himself into the local casino issue. As we all know by now, the House voted for two resort casinos and slots at the tracks. The state Senate voted for three resort casinos and no slots. The two bills have gone to a House/Senate conference committee that will try to come up with a compromise. That’s where Brown comes in – making a personal plea for the slots portion of the bill that would benefit a personal friend … aahhh politics. From the
Boston Globe:
Being a liberal Democrat, Brown was going to have to work hard to win me over and unfortunately he’s been just as terrible a senator as I thought he would be – and pro-casino to boot. So far I see him as unresponsive and basically toeing the party line.
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Whenever I hear that the Republicans and Democrats are going to “compromise” I start getting frightened. It reminds me of the great compromises during the Reagan administration where the president got more military spending, the Democrats got more social spending and we entered into the modern age of staggering budget deficits. How much do you want to bet that the “compromise” will be all the slots that DeLeo wants and all the resorts that Patrick/Murray want? The good ‘ole taxpayer will foot the bill while all the casino money gets sucked out of local business and whisked offshore to the Cayman Islands. Yay casino!.
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All DeLeo really cares about is Suffix Downs since the same parent company owns Wonderland – the other track he cares about. The magnanimous “compromise” we’re waiting for will probably be a slots gimme to Suffix Downs and inside track on one of the resort licenses. The rest of the tracks will be left to compete for the two remaining resort licenses – one of which seems earmarked for Fall River.
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Come on folks – you didn’t expect that this was going to be an honest transparent process did you? Didn’t Middleboro teach you guys anything?
Recently I took a hard look at our household’s spending on phone, Internet, and cable TV. YIKES!!!!!!!!!
We have Comcast cable TV (no premium channels), Verizon FIOS Internet, and Verizon Wireless (3 cell phones) and no home phone land line – one of the cell phones stays put at the house and serves as our home phone.
| Comcast Digital Starter
| 59.31 |
| Comcast DVR service
| 9.95 |
| Comcast franchise cost
| 0.22 |
| Comcast Digital Classic
| 13.95 (WTF is this?) |
| Verizon Internet
| 49.99 |
| Verizon Cell phone 1
| 110.00 Nationwide Talk/Text FS 1400 |
| Verizon Cell phone 1
| 29.99 Smartphone data plan
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| Verizon Cell phone 1
| 12.56 taxes, surcharges, bull |
| Verizon Cell phone 1 total
| $152.55 |
| Verizon Cell phone 2
| 12.95 |
| Verizon Cell phone 3
| 12.95 |
| TV subtotal
| 83.43 |
| Internet subtotal
| 49.99 |
| TV/Internet subtotal
| 133.42 |
| Cell phone subtotal
| 181.13 |
| Total:
| 311.87 |
That’s $3,742.44 per year. WTF!.
So I’m looking at alternatives. Internet is the only item that is required though I might consider a lesser service if there was one. Some options I’m considering:
- Moving TV/Internet to a single provider to get a better bundle price. It looks like I could get the same TV/Net service I have now from Verizon or Comcast for about $110-$120. Still too much.
- Buy a digital antenna and live with over-the-air broadcast digital TV or bottom end cable service. I could supplement the meager channel selection with Internet content. This would take some effort to get the Internet content onto my TV in a convenient manner. This could be a laptop or some streaming solution.
- Set-top TV/Internet box. There are several set-top boxes that have some level of Internet. The Roku box is one. Tivo has one. None are ideal because they all offer some small subset of Internet content.
- One device that is looking attractive is ths Sezmi set-top box It has a honking 1TB DVR and digital antenna. The bottom end service is $4.95 which basically just gives you digital broadcast TV and DVR. The $19.95 service gives you cable channels that come over your internet connection. There’s not a lot but the ones they have are good – SyFy, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network. The downside to this device is that you have the bogus “channel” concept for Internet access. This means I can’t just fire up a browser, download a show and watch it. It has to be on some pre-packaged Sezmi channel.
- Pure Internet set-top – The Neuros Link is an interesting device. It seems to give pure Internet but I’m not sure if it would suffice.
What to do? I’m really pissed off with the money I’m paying for phone, TV, and Internet. Sezmi seems like the best choice especially if I could combine it with some solution that could get pure Internet on my TV.
Confused, still looking, and open to advice.
There’s an old saying – ask and you shall receive.
I’m in the market for a pop-up camper – probably a 10 footer. I’m looking for one in good condition for a good price and don’t care about fancy features like showers and toilets. Please email me or call me at 774-766-8141
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