How does Starbucks free wifi work?

Background: Starbucks offers Starbucks cardholders two hours of free wifi every day through the AT&T network. A friend has a Starbuck’s card and registered it on the Starbucks site, but she can’t log in.

I checked with an AT&T support rep who said there are a couple of ways to register a Starbucks card on their website and not all of them will get you signed up for the free AT&T wifi service. Next I spoke with Starbucks wifi support. The information they gave me (along with a couple of things I know from experience that they didn’t) should hopefully get my friend connected. read more

1 million dollars for a junk car!

I admit that my title is misleading. I wasn’t offered a million dollars for junking my car today, but relative to its cash value what one company did offer me seemed like almost that much.

I want to junk my Chrysler LeBaron 1992 auto, or sell it. Several junkyards including reputable places I’ve dealt with in the past offered me modest amounts of money – GI Salvage in Pine Brook, NJ will pay nothing if they come to tow it, Deb & Dot in North Bergen will pay $75 if they tow it or $125 if I drive it over there. A nice guy in Newark offered me $100 guaranteed and up to $150 if original catlytic converter and other features are present. read more

Real-time news with WordPress and RSS Cloud feed

Today a revolution occurred both in the way millions of web users can receive news and news portals and bloggers can push information out to followers and the web. Dave Winer’s RSS Cloud feed makes the information exchange happen in realtime. Today WordPress enabled all of its blogs with the technology.

With the installation of a simple plugin available in your WordPress control panel, your blog can now push content out to the cloud and individual users as fast as you can click, “Post.” In fact, just as fast as Twitter messages go out. The technology used is the same simple RSS used by popular feed aggregators like googlereader, netnewswire and other over the web and computer-resident applications that gather news you’ve subscribed to receive through RSS feeds. read more

Hunger & Charity Now Crimes in the US?

A friend sent me this link to a fascinating and distressing op-ed piece in today’s New York Times on the increasing criminalization of poverty. An excerpt:

“The viciousness of the official animus toward the indigent can be breathtaking. A few years ago, a group called Food Not Bombs started handing out free vegan food to hungry people in public parks around the nation. A number of cities, led by Las Vegas, passed ordinances forbidding the sharing of food with the indigent in public places, and several members of the group were arrested. A federal judge just overturned the anti-sharing law in Orlando, Fla., but the city is appealing. And now Middletown, Conn., is cracking down on food sharing.” read more

Disney: The Plasticizing of America

America has been transformed by marketing magic and a steady trend away from traditional values (a connection with the land, communities where people know and take an interest in their neighbors, respect for wildlife). We’ve assassinated deer populations and replaced their woodland homes with grass-lawned housing developments named Deer Run and Deerfield.

Many of us think of such wordly trends as being inevitable moves due to some nameless, shapeless “progress”. Doesn’t it bear pondering, though, that many of the most formative progressions of modern times have been merely a result of artificially engineered marketing strategies designed to give us the experiences that will make it easiest for corporations to separate the American people from our money and give up our senses of independence, creation and adventure? read more

Many without TV after switch

It seems my family is just one of many with much less access to television since the switch to digital. Bush’s government kept telling us that all we needed to do to continue to watch TV after the switch to digital was buy a converter box with the free government coupon. Well, this wasn’t any more true than some of Mr. Bush’s other stories.

Thanks to President Obama postponing the switch date my family and many others were able to get a digitial converter box in time but that’s the end of the good news in this story. read more

Swing and more at CMDE studio in Hackensack

My favorite Bergen County dance studio offers all kinds of fantastic dance classes for teens and adults (my own family’s make up) and is now offering a swing workshop. Looks fun! Swing is a one-time workshop but my boys and I have taken CMDE’s (free) family Latin dance classes and love them and I took African dance, another completely free class, alone.

Saturday, August 15, 2009
Swing Fundamentals with Lisa Skates 4:00-6:00 PM
Ages 16 to Adult
$20.00 Per Person
Sign up by contacting Lisa Skates by phone at 201-694-7087
or email lbskates at optonline dot net
read more

Bush occulted climate change data

Revealed: the secret evidence of global warming Bush tried to hide
Photos from US spy satellites declassified by the Obama White House provide the first graphic images of how the polar ice sheets are retreating in the summer. The effects on the world’s weather, environments and wildlife could be devastating.

Jump to full Guardian article

Woman jailed for noisy sex – what about husband?

This is a bit odd to me. An English woman’s been fined, and now jailed, for noisy sex which included the bed banging into the wall. I can understand why her neighbors don’t want to hear the lady screaming and moaning and having the bed banging when she and her husband get into it.

But what about husband Steve? Why isn’t he being held responsible for any of this?

BBC News article

1-9 Restaurant Closed July ’09

On the way to visit our friend Yin Hoong at the crafts show in Point Pleasant Beach where she was exhibiting yesterday, my family drove past the 1-9 Restaurant in Avenel (in the Edison area). Noticing that the parking lot was empty, we pulled in to see why and found a court order notice posted on the door calling for the place to be turned over to its landlord immediately. The door was locked and the restaurant vacant.

This dimsum spot (lately known as A-K Restaurant) has served my family excellent dishes – and a good sampling of it – on the several occasions we’ve visited and we feel sorry to see it go. read more

The new white flight: Facebook

The new way to prove social superiority is in the social media/Web 2.0 environment. Heaven help us.

Dana Boyd is a social media researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. In 2006-7 her

conversations with high school students began showing a trend of white, upper-class and college-bound teenagers migrating to Facebook . . . Meanwhile, less educated and nonwhite teenagers were on MySpace. Ms. Boyd noted that old-style class arrogance was also in view; the Facebook kids were quicker to use condescending language toward the MySpace users. read more

The Philly 60

When 60 Black kids from The Creative Steps Day Camp in North Philly got in the pool at The Valley Swim Club in Philadelphia

” . . . all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool,” Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. “The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately.”

The next day the club told the camp director that the camp’s membership was being suspended and their money would be refunded. read more

Shanghai Park (now Hong Fu) review

The kids and I were near Highland Park tonight at dinner time so we headed over to Hong Fu (formerly Shanghai Park) to find out if their food is as good as people say. We were between ping pong sessions and only had time for a quick bite so we ordered two dishes and some rice, which turned out to be the exact right quantity of food to fill us up but not slow us down. Kind of amazing considering these boys are in their late teens and can eat like soldiers on campaign.

This is the second meal I’ve had out recently that I would have liked to capture some fotos of. Aside from being tasty the dishes were pretty too. I should get used to packing my camera more often. read more

DREAM Act Graduation Event in Hackensack

A National DREAM Graduation solidarity event will take place

Tuesday, 23 June 2009 from 4-5:00 pm
at Johnson Memorial Park, Hackensack, NJ
Map address: 490 River Street, Hackensack, NJ.
(corner of River Street and Cedar Lane/E. Anderson Street)

Local event information:
201-475-1854
kimi@thewei.com
http://twitter.com/kimiwei

Both New Jersey senators, Bob Menendez and Frank Lautenberg, support the DREAM Act but as of today only two (Rush Holt and Steve Rothman) of New Jersey’s 13 Congressmen plan to vote for it. read more