Jewelweed

2015-08-28

Jewelweed Flower

Jewelweed is flowering now in New York State.  This beautiful wildflower has been used for medicinal purposes. The oil from the juicy stems has been used as a salve for poison ivy and other skin ailments.

Jewelweed seedpod

Its seed pods ("poppers") burst with a small explosion when touched, to disperse the seeds.

Jewelweed Patch

Generally growing in patches, it's pretty easy to find right now, and is worth looking for.

Adventures with Time Warner

My home internet provider is FrontierNet, our local phone company.  We have "high-speed" DSL.  Sadly, Frontier is unable to deliver consistently reliable service.  We decided to switch to Time Warner's "RoadRunner".  There, our adventure begins.

Tuesday morning, I attempted to sign up through the Time Warner website.  I went through the entire selection process - selecting my package (internet and phone) and entering all of my information.  It took a while for me to enter all of the information, including information about my current phone company so that my number can be switched.  I entered information about the location of my phone jacks, my cable hookups and my computer.  Using their calendar, I scheduled my appointment.  I was all set - I just had to pay.

My payment method of choice was my Discover card (we like their bonus program).  Surprisingly, Discover was not an option - just Visa and MasterCard.  Since we were scheduling automatic recurring payments from the credit card, this was not a trivial matter.

To resolve this issue, I opened an online chat session, asking the agent if I could use Discover.  He said that I could.  I asked how.  After I waited a few minutes for him to research this, he came back and told me that I need to schedule my appointment by phone.

OK.  Start over.  I called Time Warner, expecting a 10 minute process - foolishly, as it turned out.  When I was 37 minutes into my call, having given all of my information to the agent and endured several long waits, I asked the agent if we were close to having the process completed.  He told me that since he had all of my information, he would finish the process and send me a confirming email.  Eager to get off the phone and get on with my life, I agreed.

Later that evening, I had still not received the promised email.  So, I opened up an on-line chat session.  To do this, I entered my contact information, including my email address.  At the onset, I asked to for a supervisor (having learned from my experiences).  I checked the box to send me a transcript of the chat session.  After spending another half hour in this chat (mostly waiting for the agent to "research" this), I was told that they could find no record of an appointment for me.  They suggested that I contact my local office to schedule installation.  I had to leave, so I asked him to send me information on who to contact by email.

Now, the next morning, I have not heard (and yes - I checked my spam email folder).  I did not receive my chat session by email either.  In spite of all of this, I plan to pursue this today (my Frontier service is REAL bad).  Wish me luck.
Update: I called my "local" office this morning.  It wasn't local - it was a call center, but a different one.  I explained what happened, and spent another 32 minutes on the phone.  When we were done, they found my confirmation number from the earlier appointment.  They're supposed to be here tomorrow PM.  Wish me luck.
Update: The installer showed up and installed the service.  He did a great job, and the service is vastly superior.  Last night, we watched a movie with no interruptions at all.  Happy ending...

Thomas Cemetery

Thomas cemetery is a small cemetery with around two dozen graves. It was very old, with graves going back to the early 1800s. It was nestled on top of a hill on Route 12A in Chenango Bridge, NY.

See my Thomas Cemetery photo album on Google+.

Route 12A is a small commercial strip
of road. In spite of that, Thomas Cemetery felt secluded and peaceful.  It was easy to forget about the road and businesses below.

In 2011, Price Chopper started construction. In order to get their parking lot the way that they wanted, they dug up all of the graves in Thomas Cemetery. After the store and lot construction were completed, they replaced the graves in a newly formulated Thomas Cemetery, next to the parking lot.

Although I am glad to have a Price Chopper here to give us another shopping option, I miss the old quirky Thomas Cemetery.

Going Postal

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"


This is a phrase that I had always associated with the Post Office when I was growing up.  "The mail must go through" was another such phrase.  How long has it been since anyone felt that way about the Post Office?  Public perception of the US Postal Service has sunk like a stone.  


The future of the Postal Service is in the public eye.  The US Postal Service is bleeding money. In  these times of budget cuts, politicians are looking for places to get the axe.  The US Postal Service is an obvious target.  Do we really need six days of home delivery per week?  Can we cut back on the number of branch offices?  These are decisions that will need to be made over the coming years.


Our Postal Service is not doing much to help their case.  Here in Binghamton, New York, we are fighting to recover from horrible flooding that has destroyed many homes and businesses.  Many of my friends have lost their houses and almost all of their belongings.  We were lucky - we escaped with almost no damage.  The road in front of our house had a very minor washout.  Right now, there are rocks in front of my mailbox.

Since our highway department was dealing with far more serious problems, we did not even report this.  We figured that it could wait.  However, our mail carrier stopped delivering our mail.  They did not give us any notice.  When we did not receive any mail on Monday or Tuesday after the flooding, my wife went to our branch post office.  They told her that the mail could not be delivered due to the rocks in front of our mailbox.


Ridiculous.


There were some fairly large rocks that were loose, which I removed.  Then, I drove over this area myself - and so did my wife.  I drive a small Saturn sedan, and my wife drives a Toyota minivan.  Neither of us had any problem.  It is apparently, however, too much for our mail carrier, who is too delicate for these rocks.  (I wonder how our mail carrier handles speed bumps?)  Stopping the car and walking two feet to the mailbox is out of the question.


Unfortunately, this is not a case of just one mail carrier.  When my wife went to our local Post Office to discuss this, she was snapped at by the postal clerk at the counter.  My wife was told that mail would not be delivered until the town fixes this problem.  The postal clerk claimed that we had been given notice, which we never received.  Instead of a reasonable explanation, our friendly Postal Service employee copped an attitude.


Our Fenton Highway Department will come and repair this.  They are very good - they work hard, are dedicated, and really try and address any issues or complaints that are presented to them.  Their attitude is the polar opposite of what I have seen in the Postal Service.


For us, this is nothing more than an inconvenience.  Now, we have to pick up our mail.  This does, however, drive home the point of how pathetic our Postal Service has become.  It's sad that this once proud organization  has degraded itself to being the punchline of jokes.


My heart goes out to all of the people who are fighting to rebuild their lives.  I would like to thank all of the individuals and businesses who are doing so much to help our community deal with our adversity.  Sadly, the Postal Service is failing to join in.

Petco abandons animals

One of the tragedies from our flooding here in the Binghamton, New York area was that many animals left abandoned in the Petco store in Johnson City, New York died.  Petco says that they had no advance warning about the flooding.  Everyone who was here for the flooding on 9/6 and 9/7 knows that this is completely untrue.  All day long on Wednesday, 2011/09/06, there was torrential rain falling.  Businesses were closing.  Roads were closing.  A state of emergency was declared.  People were being evacuated.  By 3:30 P.M., route 88 was closed West of Exit 3 due to a rockslide.  Yet Petco claims that by 11:45 PM on Wednesday night, their store was flooded and they had no idea that it might flood.

Other local pet stores handled things better.  After the flooding, Pet Depot employees evacuated their animals by kayak.  Petco did nothing.  Local blogs here say that Petco associates wanted to take animals home on Wednesday night - when the torrential rain was falling but the store was not yet flooded.  This request was denied.

Here are two very different treatments of this story - one from a local TV station (WBNG) and one from our Gannett newspaper (Binghamton Press).  The "Press" story reads more like a Petco publicity release than like news.

http://www.wbng.com/news/local/Saturday--Petco-129586498.html

http://www.pressconnects.com/article/20110910/NEWS01/109100392/PETCO-discovery-Close-100-animals-lost-flood