Somerville residents have grown accustomed to Tom Champion’s awesome robocalls for city events. Snow emergencies were what he was best known for, but he was also good for water mane breaks and city firework events. It is with sadness I read last week that he’s stepping down.

A couple weeks ago, I noticed that whenever I mistyped a domain name, instead of getting a “Server not found” message or being redirected to Google, I was being redirected to a RCN search page. Not the end of the world, obviously, but still annoying.

I had heard about other ISPs utilizing DNS redirection or DNS hijacking on user accounts “as a service”, otherwise, I don’t know if I would have realized what had happened. I especially don’t remember RCN in Boston/Somerville informing me of this added benefit or telling me how to get rid of it. Google let me know that other folks have gotten their ISPs to remove the service by opting out, so I gave it a shot.

I looked everywhere in my account for an opt out before sending an email to RCN Customer Service. I would have called, but this post made me think I’d be better off emailing them and waiting for a reply instead of frustratingly trying to explain the problem up a chain of customer service representatives. RCN refers to this service as PaxFire, but I didn’t want to confuse things by using proper nouns. I sent the following email to around 10 in the evening:

It appears that DNS redirection was recently turned on on my account so that when entering text in the browser address bar if the text was not a website the page that loads is a RCN search page as opposed to Google. I would like to opt out of this service please.

By 11 the next morning, I had a response and solution:

…I reviewed your account and it needs to be updated. The PaxFire opt-out has been added to the account and in order to pull a non-PaxFire IP address, a good thing to try would be to power cycle the modem…Once complete, the PaxFire service should not be active on the Internet connection.

Another Somerville RCN user was also able to get the redirect removed by sending the above note to them, so it seems to work.

I had also mentioned my displeasure on Twitter and got a response there the next morning as well. The lesson? If you want good, quick customer service from RCN, email or Tweet at them instead of calling. Though, if they won’t fix your problem, it’s not going to be fun either way.

I hope I don’t get throttled for this.

I’m helping to put on a fun event this weekend in Union Square. Going Nutty! features nuts from Superior Nut being used by chefs from all over Boston (Flour Bakery, Kickass Cupcakes, Channel Cafe, Rocca, OM Restaurant, Bloc 11, and how2heroes) in some of their favorite dishes.

If you want to get nuts this weekend, come to Bloc 11 and Grand from 2-4 PM on Sunday the 4th. All proceeds benefit the newly founded Juniper Fund, which was formed to honor John S. Hall, bass player for local band Addison Groove Project, who passed away in 2004. To RSVP or for more info, check out the Facebook Page.

Another hawk sighting in the city. Along with imagining seeing that giant out on the fire escape and being freaked out that he’d eat me, I’m compelled to blog about hawks in Boston so I can link to one of my first blog posts after starting to blog again in 2004. I was sitting at my desk in Davis Sq when there was a flutter and thump outside the window and a hawk had caught a pigeon in mid-air and then smothered it right on the sidewalk… I went out to check it out, and it flew off thinking I was trying to steal his pigeon. I didn’t realize that happened in the city, but it does. And they attack people at Fenway, too.

Plus this. Sorry for the horrid object frame…

Photo by Flickr user define23Back in the beginning of February, I posted about bill H-2932 in the Massachusetts legislature. The bill aimed to make the fluffernutter the official sandwich of the Commonwealth. According to the Globe, there will be a hearing tomorrow to determine whether Marshmallow Fluff, Necco Wafers, and Charleston Chews will make the cut as state foods.

Massachusetts already has five official state foods, among the most in the country: the baked navy bean, corn muffin, chocolate chip cookie, Boston cream pie, and Boston cream doughnut.

After my initial post about this in February, I emailed everyone in both the House and the Senate, as well as several Somerville politicos. Only a few responded (but I’ll email everyone again regarding this matter) and their responses are below the fold. I’ll continue to add responses as they come in.
Read the rest of this entry »

Back for year number 4, Union Square Main Streets has their What the Fluff fest on Saturday, the 26th from 4-7PM. Lots going on including:

Vendors with lots of Fluff treats will make this a real party. You’ll find a wacky collection of times, from Fluff t-shirts to soaps that look like ’smores, from savory barbeque to whoopie pies. Food vendors include: Kickass Cupcakes, Pao de Acucar, India Palace, Cantina la Mexicana and Somerville High School. Other vendors include: Union Square Main Streets, Groundwork Somerville, Neighborhood Health Plan, Grand, Yelp, Dirty Ass Soap.

Good. Bad.

I can’t believe it took me 2 months to get to this, but I’m kind of glad it did because of the happy ending. At the beginning of April, Union Square’s Grand came in to find their Shepard Fairey mural defaced and if you look at the pictures, not even in a creative way. Fairey had put up the mural and others like it all over Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, etc this winter in advance of his show at the ICA. While some of these murals, like the one on Grand, were officially approved, some were not, resulting in a legal storm with charges being added as quickly as they were dismissed. The police are so interested in adding additional charges, they recently came in to Grand to ask if the mural had been approved.
All this to say, that in the meantime, Fairey sent a local friend some replacement posters and the mural at Grand has been restored to it’s original design. This makes me happy.

I was thinking it’s been a while since I posted one of Chris’s pictures and then I saw TV Vomit and I had to post it. Chris has an opening on June 13 at Chorus Gallery, which is part of Open Bicycle (which I like because it’s aound the corner). Check it out if you like good things.