10 posts tagged “new jersey”
Fair Lawn, New Jersey is the latest battle ground for a turf-war brewing in the cone-eat-cone world of Ice Cream Truck operators. In this business its all about the unwritten rule of respecting the route. When that single rule of the Cream is ignored and prized lanes are encroached upon by another, tempers can flare and in this case, violent acts are unleashed on one’s self.
There were some beautiful shots of local wildlife over at UrbanArtifact's Vox. I have had my own recent experience with local wildlife in a similar manner. Early morning, local deer in search of food and a location to bed for the day.
I have had Jet-lag before, it isn't really a fun thing to experience. Now I am not talking about the East Coast - West Coast jet-lag. Or even the New York to London Jet-Lag. I am talking about the round-the-world jetlag.
I had actually figured out the best way to minimize the effects of this trip, it involves basically preparing your body a day before the flight to react on the destination time zone. That is fine and dandy when you are an adult, but your really can't convince a child that the steps needed to do this are an option. You just have to go with the flow and mentally prepare yourself to deal with some pretty time "jacked-up" children.
By the time we landed at Narita, we were pretty much dealing with a couple of kids who were no better than a couple of zombies. Half awake and half asleep, they might not have known where they were, but they sure knew they were pretty jacked up in terms of their sleep schedule.
When you arrive at Narita, you are still not in Tokyo. Although it is the "Official" airport for Tokyo it is located in Chiba prefecture approximately 1 to 2 hours bus ride outside of Tokyo (depending on the traffic of course.) So just when you survive the 13 hours flight you still have another trip to look forward to.
I am not saying that there are not other ways to get into Tokyo, you could take the train or if you have a small fortune, you could opt for a private car or taxi. We contemplated the Taxi option only due to the logistics of dealing with two kids and the gear, but in the end the decision was to go with the bus. After all it also went straight to the hotel from the Airport. Done deal.
I sat next to Mina who I put next to the window to distract her and it did her well. She gazed out the window the entire way to the hotel. Across the isle Mom and Tyler hung out catching z's together. I fired up the PSP and ran a few AVP laps before turning my attention to Mina as we sat looking out the window whispering children songs together.
Arriving at the hotel, it was a quick off the bus, check in and up to the room. Honestly I don't remember too much about this time. I just know that it took me no time at all to end up in the sack. What I do know is that this feeling of "Ahhhh we made it" which always follows a long flight, was short lived. Tyler began to make his presence known. That set off a night of tag-team action as the two kids alternated their cries for attention. It was o.k., though. I was more than mentally prepared for this to occur at one point or another. I just assumed it would be the night after the arrival, not the day of landing, exhaustion was supposed to be the meal of choice that night. Boy was I wrong.
That night was long... very long. And the next day was no better. Both kids, still being on East Coast U.S. time, spend the day visiting over and over again the sand man. Seeing this most of the day, I just knew that the 2nd night was going to be a long one as well. The difference this time, was that I was not mentally ready for it and therefore was going to make it even more painful. The first full day in Tokyo was depressing as hell adding to the drama. Saturday turned out to be very Cold and rainy.
Nothing was on the agenda, so it was out to a couple of places to pick up some of those things that I had been missing since I left Japan. Onigiri, Black-Black, Oolong Tea, Mikans etc.... I was doing well now. Onto the night.
Both kids went down at their normal time of around 8pm. The one thing about everyone staying in the same room is that I was also forced to go to bed early. Good thing. The tag-teaming started. Tyler was up crying. That got Mina up. She ended up in the bed with me. Not too happy about being awake. Tyler wouldn't stop so Daddy had to take over with him. The plan was to strap him in his stroller and take him for a walk, that always puts him down. Problem was, the unexpected response from Mina seeing me leave. Her first full blown jet-lag induced temper tantrum! UGLY!
I returned with Tyler knocked out. Mina had settled down. The time? 2am. Quick, back to bed before anyone realizes that we are back. DAMN! 4:30am, Back on the street with Tyler, leaving Mina to doll her tantrum out on mom. Good thing nothing was planned for Sunday other than an open morning and going to see old friends that afternoon. Sliding back into bed at 5:15, praying for more than an hour of sleep, we were all down for the count again, as the sun rose on a clear Sunday morning in Tokyo.
Wheels up, slight bank and we were cruising out of Newark airspace. The flight map on the wall displayed a red line outlining the route of travel. Up over New York, into Canada, up over Alaska and down to Japan. Seen that before, all is in order. The airspeed and altitude numbers kept rising as we made our way to 500+ miles per hour and 38,000 feet.
I have blogged about this before, but for many the thought of traveling is always mixed with comments about Jet-Lag and how long a 4 hour flight from New York to L.A. is. You can imagine the mental state one has to be in when you are travelling through a 14 hr time difference and turning the body clock upside down. Jet lag would become an issue.
We left New Jersey at 11am Thursday, which was actually 1am on Friday. We would land in Tokyo at about 3pm on Friday while it was just turning 1am, long past the kids bed time. Getting them switched over to Tokyo time would be killer. Feeds, sleep schedules etc. That would be waiting for us when we landed at Tokyo.
In the air meanwhile, we tried to get settled. Mina's ears were not perfect and she could be seen grabbing them on occasion which indicated she was in discomfort. Not pain thank goodness, but it did make her cranky. Tyler, at first was still not giving a shit about much, but he was definitely not going to go out so easy at this point. He was uncomfortable. I don't think he ever got comfortable and throughout the flight, one of us had to get up and tote him around to get him calmed down.
That was when things got ugly. Mina was cranky, her ears were hurting and she wanted to know why this little punk was getting all of the attention, she was going to have some of that no matter what. So she started whining. Oh boy, 2 hours into the flight and already I knew we were in for an interesting flight. The rest was pretty much a blur and the same, in the seat, out of the seat, walking around, changing diapers. Small cat-nap, before one of them began to seek some sort of attention. Ugh....
The below is the article that ran in the New Jersey Star-Ledger News Paper (Front Page)
Pssst. Hey, buddy. Wanna buy the Brooklyn Bridge? It's a virtual steal
Sunday, December 17, 2006
BY KEVIN COUGHLIN
Star-Ledger Staff
Cory Booker gets all the headlines, but Newark has another mayor. His name is Rik Jones, and he lives in West Orange.
Jones is mayor there, too. He attained these high offices in the time-honored way. He bought them.
For less than $30, Jones, 39, purchased Newark and West Orange at Weblo.com, a new online game where people buy and sell make-believe versions of real places. Buying a city makes you the mayor -- entitling you to kickbacks, er, percentages, of ads, fees and sales within your virtual borders.
"Tell Mr. Booker that I'll sell Newark to him cheap," cracked the ersatz Hizzoner, a corporate tech manager whose pretend portfolio also includes his old hometown of Steubenville, Ohio.
Weblo aims to cash in on the surging popularity of virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, elaborate 3-D fantasy lands where members have created online societies stunning in their complexity. Second Life's nearly 2 million members can attend virtual concerts and lectures, engage in cybertrysts and sell computer-generated property.
Sounds silly to the uninitiated. But, as Walt Disney discovered eons ago, make-believe is serious business. Revenues from U.S. online gaming will triple to more than $3.5 billion by 2009, predicts market research firm Parks Associates.
And don't bother telling players to get real: Forty-three percent of Internet users who belong to online communities "feel as strongly" about these virtual worlds as they do about their real communities, according to a recent survey by the USC-Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future.
And why not? At least one virtual real estate tycoon already is reported to be a millionaire thanks to Second Life.
Weblo founder Rocky Mirza, a Canadian from Ottawa, hopes to start a cyber-land rush to counter the cooling physical real estate market.
"Imagine playing Monopoly on steroids," said Mirza, 33.
Weblo is pretty low-tech for now. Unlike Second Life, where members cavort as cartoonish figures called avatars, there's nothing flashy. Property holdings appear as simple Web pages. The idea is to entice potential buyers by dressing up these pages with photos, video clips (coming soon) and community forums. It's a bit like marrying the free apartment listings of Craigslist with the popular social networking site MySpace.
PROFITS AND WORLD PEACE
Traffic can translate into income for members. Weblo places ads on member pages, and shares proceeds based on a tiered system. Nonpaying members get a 10 percent cut; a $30 monthly VIP membership buys 50 percent of the spoils. Governors (who own states) and mayors also can take a piece of other transactions and membership fees.
As a bonus, Weblovians can take a stab at brokering world peace.
Mirza plans to hold elections among Weblo's 6,000 global members, and then arrange summits between the virtual presidents of the U.S. and North Korea or Iran. "Imagine if a 19- or 20-year-old becomes president of the United States," he said. "They will come up with interesting solutions."
But the real action is in virtual speculation: Buy low, sell high. Weblo set initial prices for states and cities based mostly on actual population. Everything else, from the Brooklyn Bridge to your boss's house, can be registered for a dollar or two.
Launched earlier this month, Weblo sold "California" to a lawyer for $53,000. New York state fetched $19,355 -- more than twice New Jersey's price of $8,829 -- while New York City went for $410.
Mirza said the pseudo mayor of Washington, D.C., quickly sold his city for a 300 percent profit. Someone else paid $1 for the Empire State Building and flipped it for $250, he said.
Members of Weblo -- the name is a play on World Wide Web and a Farsi word for "taking back" -- also can trade familiar dot-com names and celebrity fan club sites. (Mirza wanted to sell actual celebrities, he said, but legal advisers warned against it.)
Death and taxes, alas, are inevitable in cyberspace, too. Weblo sells deeds to virtual property that members can bequeath to their heirs. Profits from virtual sales, meanwhile, are taxable income, said Mirza, whose prior ventures include software company Allainet and UniqueAuction.com.
Weblo, based in Montreal, lists former MySpace.com Chairman Richard Rosenblatt among backers who gave $2.6 million in seed money.
Mirza said he pursued an Internet career to escape working as hard as his parents, Pakistani immigrants who owned corner grocery stores.
"The Internet was made for lazy people like me," he joked.
TECHNOLOGY AND TOGETHERNESS
Barry Parr, a media analyst for marketing consultant Jupiter Research, called Weblo "an interesting experiment."
Many Americans have turned to virtual worlds for a sense of community eroded by automobiles, suburban sprawl and TV since World War II, he suspects.
"Most people in this country do not know their neighbors, and that's a problem," Parr said. "There's a high degree of alienation."
Technology, meanwhile, is enabling entrepreneurs to create digital universes foreshadowed by sci-fi novels like William Gibson's "Neuromancer" and the "Matrix" movies, Parr said.
At the same time, people are exploring how to use the Web as it evolves from a publishing platform to a communication medium. Parr said immersive online communities may offer new ways to channel one of humankind's oldest impulses: play.
Weblo's challenge is drawing enough users to make virtual properties scarce -- creating supply-and-demand pressures that mirror reality, Parr said. And the site must thwart any attempts at gaming the system. Second Life has been targeted by hackers, and plagued by technical problems.
Celebrities and real property owners also might take exception to Weblo's business model -- and Weblo members could be held personally liable for trademark infringement, according to the fine print of the site's user agreement, said John Kettle III, a Rutgers University law professor.
"It's just a matter of time in my opinion before claims are raised by building owners and owners of trademarks and celebrities against this use," said Kettle, explaining that intellectual property is about intangibles. "These are some very novel issues."
Back in virtual Newark, "Mayor" Jones insists his motivations are geeky curiosity and cybercivics, not money. Good thing. So far, his Weblo income is 20 cents.
"This intrigues me because I like the idea of being able to build something," said Jones, who glimpses "awesome potential" commuting through Newark to his investment banking job in Manhattan.
"If I can take the real-world Newark as it was when I bought it and somehow figure how to make it grow and improve it, that would be great," Jones said.
Of course, virtual altruism has its limits.
"I'll do what I can for the sake of the city," he said. "But if I have to, I'll cut my losses and sell."
Kevin Coughlin covers technology. He may be reached at kcoughlin@starledger.com or (973) 392-1763.
There is a new Phenom going through the web called Weblo. For those who have heard about it is another one of those virtual worlds that you can buy/sell things and generally make a profit. Call it eBay meets mySpace or whatever. The others are about these virtual world that don't exist. Weblo is different, the reason why is because it is virtually THIS world.
When it went live, I didn't know much about it and with the small pittence sitting in my PayPal account I decided to see what this hype was all about and spent my $35 on the following purchases (click them to go there):
What I actually found was that by purchasing these I became the defacto Mayor of each of these virtual cities. O.K. so now what? What is next? I left it alone for about a month until last night when I got an email from the WebLo company asking if I minded if a local NJ newspaper contacted me for an interview! WTF?!? This stuff can't be serious! I bit and said sure.
I got the call today from the Star Ledger Newspaper or basically New Jersey's newspaper of choice. They wanted to ask me some questions about being the Virtual Mayor of Newark. I never really gave it much thought, but apparently it is an interesting topic considering the fact that this past year was a huge mayoral race in Newark where a younger affluent politician, Corey Booker, de-thronned the long standing former mayor. The expectations on fresh blood are great. And now I step in and take on the Virtual Newark as the new mayor.
The phone interview was quite interesting and to be honest, I didn't know much about Weblo or how it is set up to make you money even though I am not in it for the $$. But after browsing their site, Newark Airport is actually posted as up for sale for $1000 and other key items in this world are really up there in value now. I think Newark Airport when I first looked at it the day this thing went live it was about $20 or so. I have to do more research on my properties and how they are designed to generate revenue. It must also be said that because someone owns Newark Airport and is generating traffic to the Airport Weblo Site, I have already made $.20 for doing nothing other than owning Newark.
If I promote the City I generate more revenue for myself. Oh this could get fun. It is even more interesting considering the fact that everything in this world is up for grabs, even people. Michael Jackson, Al Gore, Bush and dare I say it... Osama is also there. Domain names are also up for sale or the rights to them in WebLo land. Want the London Bridge....? For Sale! Want the Statue of LIberty? It has a price. Disney Land? Just look for it.
Back to the interview. So after a few laughs about it all and how it would be nice if Mayor Booker solicited my input on the future of Newark, the reporter decides that it would be cool to have a picture of me in the paper standing in front of Newark's City Hall. In all fun, I will do that this Friday! Guess I am now the Virtual Ambassador for Newark New Jersey, West Orange, NJ and my old home town... Steubenville, OH!
There is something strange about the Department of Motor Vehicles that is not limited to a specific country, they look like crap.
The strange thing is, this is my experience in several different states and, wait for it... Japan!
What is it about the process of dealing with the bureacracies involved in owning and driving that fosters an environment that resembles a modern day scene from some 1950's immigration office?
And the poor bastards that work there day in and day out? I have a new found respect for them now that I am just an observer.
The funny thing,is, is that with the cast of characters both in front of and behind the counter, there is plenty of material here for a long running sitcom.
So my view of best and worst is Newark being best (at least the have computers on most desks) and Sumeizu in Tokyo being the absolute worse. My reason for Tokyo being the worst is that, like most government buildings, they have been in the same location since the US occupation after WWII and being a country of "if it aint broke, don't fix it" their processes have also pretty much remained the same; very manual and with lots of papers.
So what about where you are? I would like to think that it is not this bad everywhere and that somehow it is just part of my destiny to have to deal with shit hole DMV Offices.
I have been in kind of a writer's block these past few days, but thought I would take a minute to pull my self out of the gutter to comment on a local news story that I find quite an act of Murphy's Law.
The story goes like this....
Communter train strikes woman, killing her. Another train is dispatched to pick up the stranded passengers of that train, but ends up striking a man killing him enroute. WTF!
Good morning from leg 1 of my commute. That's right, bumper to bumper at 7:00am. Good thing I only have to go a 15 minute drive to get to the train station. Oh, this is route 280 East going into Newark. Harrison is wher you can catch the PATH train to either 33rd st. Manhattan or my station, the World Trade Center Station.
The annual holiday trip has been underway for about a week now and to be honest, there have been no big surprises. One unique part of the trip has been the decision to take a spin in Boston. Now I have not been to Boston before, so I hope to be able to give those of you who have also not been here before look at what is affectionately known as "Beantown."
In the meantime, I am killing time in the Hotel called the Charles Mark Hotel. it is a bit strange, small, but yet somehow handy. The one thing I have heard about Boston is how Mac friendly it is. This hotel has verified this. Simply plug and play via wireless. Nice. Anyhow, the hotel itself is a bit misleading at first glance.
It is as I mentioned smaller, with a gallery under construction on the first floor. You have to take the elevator up to the 2nd floor to get to the "Lobby" if that is what you can call it. The staff are comfortably dressed in black polo shirts and jeans/pants. Ball caps are also the fashion of the front desk staff also in black. Needless to say, it is a modern hotel catering to the young more hip types. Since we travelled into Boston from New Jersey early (6am) we arrived at around 9:30. Too early to check in.
So they have graciously stored our bags and we are hanging out in the lobby area which also provides free pastries, fruits and coffee. I know I will be going through several cups over the next few hours. I am here with my sister-in-law's husband and we haven't really decided yet what we will do until we can check in at around 2 or 3pm. For now, I am quite comfortable hanging out now that I am connected. I know I have been a bit negligent in my plogging, but hopefully I will be able to drop a couple of notes to everyone while I am here.
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