San Francisco has one of the worst traffic in the country. It wasn't all that great in 2000.
Here's a mix of the Traffic Report from TV and the Radio.
I am not sure about the date of the radio piece. I believe it was sometime in the 2000s.
PermalinkThis week, I decided to feature some classic New England Commercials.
These I had digitalized in 1998 on my Macintosh Centris 660AV computer. I may still have the orginal DVDs and could create a better quality version in the future.
In this week's video:
Here are a couple of scam voice messages that I got in the past few months. These don't actually seem to be real people but just computer-generated messages. I guess they want to see if I am gullible and will respond to the voice messages to get more information.
Missed Call from 800-258-6019. This isn't a Capital One phone number and I don't even have a Capital one Credit Card.
Hello. This is Elizabeth calling from the underwriting department regarding your Capital one credit card account based on your recent payment activity and balance you may be eligible for an interest rate reduction to as low as 1.9% and there is additional information. I need to confirm your eligibility or so please return my call directly in the underwriting department at 1-800-258-6019. Once again 1-800-258-6019 and will be the only notice you receive and this offer is only valid for three business days. Thank you.
Missed Call from (617) 380-3109. Note the caller never mentions the actual name of the company, just as "student loan processing department."
Hey, sorry, I missed you. This is Andrew of on with the student loan processing department. I'm following up because there's a lot happening right now with the new year and the new President and since you have been completed your student loan forgiveness application with us we really need to finish it now. So please give us a callback today at this number before 6:00 PM if you're no longer interested that's fine too just call us and let us know you're not interested. I will remove you from our follow, up list and cancel the pending application, thanks and happy new year.
Back in 2000, there was a bomb scare by the "Gold Building" in Downtown San Jose. Many streets were closed off because they didn't know how dangerous the package was.
Watch the 6 pm coverage by KRON TV. The video features Pete Wilson at the anchor desk, Sgt. Steve Dixon, and Jim Goldman reporting from the field.
I was there!
The interesting thing about this story is that I was actually n the building when this was all going on. I had arrived at work really early that morning. There wasn't an announcement to the people in the building to leave.
I remember calling co-workers letting them know what was happening.
PermalinkBack in the late 1990s I lived in San Jose, California. One of the shows that I loved to watch was the 11 pm KRON news.
I had a VCR recorder, and every once in a while, I would record the news.
The following are a couple of clips from the year 2000. The first clip features the "Internet Phone" - a phone in the desert. The second clip is a classic "From the File" funny that Pete Wilson would do.
I hope you enjoyed these classic KRON TV moments.
PermalinkThere seems to be a lot of scammers trying to take advantage of people during the pandemic. Back in September, I got this strange voice mail:
This is the transcript done by Apple:
'Hello please listen carefully the new law CV 19 - makes a current credit card balances in certain price of the loans and lines of credit, not a collectible and not enforceable so um do the current situation that we're all facing the new laws helping to stop predatory banks and lenders what we all get back on track if you want to find out how much of your debt will be your race please just call me back at 619-900-2845 again 619-900-2845 thanks take care''
As of today, there has been no law about loans or credit card debt not being collectible or enforceable.
The phone number: 619-900-2845 is the same number on the caller id. It registers to no person or organization - at least nothing found online.
Notice that the voice message never indicates the company/financial company that they represent.
PermalinkI get a lot of Credit Card scams on my cell and landline. This past spring I got a couple of voice messages that seemed very similar. These were left on my cellphone about 24-hours apart.
I am thinking these are going to the same call center in some foreign country.
Apple Voicemail transcript:
Hello. This is Alice calling from the underwriting department regarding your Discover credit card account based on your recent payment activity and balanced you are eligible for an interest rate reduction to as low as 1.9% to take advantage of this limited-time offer please call card member Services directly at 1-800-694-0048. Once again, that's 1-800-694-0048. This will be the only notice you received and this offer is only valid for three business days. Thank you.
Apple Voicemail transcript:
Hello. This is Elizabeth calling from the underwriting department regarding your Capital one credit card account based on your recent payment activity and balance you may be eligible for an interest rate reduction to as low as 1.9% and there is additional information. I need to confirm your eligibility or so please return my call directly in the underwriting department at 1-800-258-6019. Once again 1-800-258-6019 and will be the only notice you receive and this offer is only valid for three business days. Thank you.
Any company that "cold calls" you with an interest rate reduction offer is likely a scam. Especially if they need to "verify" your credit card number so they can look it up.
Have fun with these calls, never give any legitimate information.
PermalinkI don't have any active student loans, but I still get someone trying to scam people that do. In this voice message, the caller puts some pressure to make sure that I call back.
If your looking some some student loan help, there's lots of legitimate places that can help: studentaid.govL Student Loan Forgiveness and Usa.gov: Replay Student Loans.
Apple supplied the following transcript:
'Hi my name is Rachel Cooper and my ''''_ ' ' 0157 I'm calling you today in reference to your student loans I need to discuss your payment options with you as soon as possible um it looks hear that there is an urgent changes to your account ' ''''' ''''' recently so if you can go ahead and give me a call back the number is 866-230-8249 I'm also going to go ahead and give you a reference number to have handy when you do a call back it will just make things a little bit easier on ''' ''''_ and that reference number is 25243''
Don't fall for these scams. Make sure that you know more about the company before giving any confidential information.
PermalinkI have decided to take the plunge and purchase Apple's Final Cut Pro. This means that I won't be using Wondershare Filmora for Video editin.
Filmora is a great application, but I have been playing around with Final Cut Pro and found that its a much better application for my needs. I like the text editing capabilities and I find that it is much easier to align videos from multiple angles.
Over the next few week's I'll share some of the cool features and highlight techniques that highlight the advantages of using Final Cut Pro.
PermalinkHere are a couple of classic technology commercials from my movie collection:
Over the next few weeks, I'll reach into my person VHS collection and pull some more classic Internet/technology commercial from the late 1990s and early 2000s.
My collection also has a lot of great classical Infomercials including Don Lapre, Matthew Lesko, Tom Bosley SMC and Jeff Paul's Shortcut to Internet Millions.
PermalinkWe've collected a variety of media posts only available at cryan.com. Watch and listen to them if you like! Whether you're looking for something to make you laugh or something to make you think, Cryan.com has an extensive library of media posts from all different genres. There's something for everyone!
Checkout all the Media blog posts.
| Saturday | Internet Tools |
| Sunday | Open Topic |
| Monday | Media Monday |
| Tuesday | QA |
| Wednesday | GoPro |
| Thursday | Canon XA40 |
| Friday | Macintosh |