1998 Commercials

Some Classic 1990s commercial

This week's media collection features six classic commercials from 1998.

• Small Solder Movie Trailer
• Walmart - Clown Commercial
• Jack in the Box - Featuring the Taco Bell Dog
• McDonalds - Eddie the Echo ordering a McDouble
• Wendy's - Chicken Nuggets for .99
• Blockbuster - Prisoners Commercial

Watch the Video

Health Insurer Quotes

Robo Call that Ends Poorly

This week's audio sound byte is another robot auto-dialer fail.

I got this call earlier this summer. This is a robocall for the Health Insurer Quotes (pretty generic company name eh?) The call was never able to transfer to a live operator.

These types of calls are illegal. There's no way to track the call down. Even the number that they tried to call (773) 207-1080 is a dummy number.

Listen to the Call

Travel to Cape Cod

Hopkinton to Orleans Massachusetts

This past Thursday, I drove down to Orleans, Massachusetts from Hopkinton, Massachusetts. I took out the GoPro Hero 9 and set up the Time Lapse.

My TimeWarp Default Settings on GoPro Hero 9: Resolution: 1080, Lens Wide, Speed Auto, Speed Ramp: Read Speed, Schedule Capture: Off, Duration: No Limit, Timer: Off, Zoom: 1.0x, EV Comp: 0, White Balance: Auto, ISO Min: 100, ISO Max: 1600, Sharpness: High, Color: GoPro, Wind: Auto.

Watch the Trip!

In the following video, I used the default TimeWarp settings. When I got to the Borne Bridge, I enabled the real speed and then went back to Hypersmooth once I was on the Cape.

Video was shot on November. 4, 2021.

This is interesting because the trip started at 4:30 pm, and ended around 6:30 pm. This means the video starts in light and ends in darkness. It's a good way to see how GoPro handles low light in Hypersmooth mode.

Senior Health Services

Scam Calls to gather information about you

Recently I have been overwhelmed with phone calls from Senior Health Services. These calls are targeting senior citizens who may not know these are scam calls.

Here???s a sample of one of the calls:

Facts About These Calls

These are phishing-type calls. The caller is trying to get as much personal information from you as possible. This is why these calls always start by asking your age.

Sometimes these calls start with a robot answering, sometimes it's a real person.

The calls come in bunches. The first set of calls start around 9 and the last one is usually around 7:45 pm.

If this was a litigate call, why wouldn't they say that in the caller id? Why do they need to spoof the caller id to think it is a random call?

According to the real Senior Benefit Services company, these calls are coming from various Pakistan call centers.

California Commercials

Some popular commercials that ran in the late 1990s.

This week's video media features some classic commercials from California. These aired around the late 1990s.

Featuring:

• Al Checchi For Governor of California
• Taco Bells 12 Taco Shells for home
• Computer Learning centers
• SouthWest Airlines - "Finding Inspiration"
• Chevron Cars
• Chia Herb Garden by Terra Cotta
• Sprint PCS

These came from a couple of VHS tapes in my collection. The quality isn't 100% great.

The SouthWest Airlines looks pretty similar to the Morgan and Morgan commercial. (People blowing leaves in front of the house.) I checked and the house is different in both commericals.

Classic 1990s Commercials

The Laura Ingraham Show

Classic Clip from 2004

Back in 2004, it was a tight race between Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and President George W Bush. The race was pretty tight as both sides were hitting the campaign trail pretty hard.

Laura Ingram had her radio show - The Laura Ingraham Show - in full swing. She spent much of her show making fun of John Kerry and praising George Bush.

In this audio clip from just hours before the polls opened, listen to how Laura tries to convince people to not vote for John Kerry. It???s kind of interesting to listen to this clip 17-years later.

Boston Marathon

GoPro Video of the Boston Marathon

This weeks video feature is the 2021 Boston Marathon.

Standing with my GoPro Hero 9 at the 5.5-mile marker in Framingham, I took various video clips of the runnings going by.

I use the GoPro Quik app for the post-production editing. All the transitions and effects were generated by the app. The only thing I did I did was pick the clips and highlighted the moments in the clip.

Framingham 5.5 Moment

Back in 2012 I blogged some useful tips about viewing the Marathon at the 5.5 mile mark.

Many of the timelines didn???t apply this year, as they did more of a rolling start. I suspect that at the 2022 Boston Marathon the times will be closer to the 2012 times.

Tom Leykis

Classic Tom on WRKO in Boston

In 1993 Tom Leykis hosted the mid-day show on WRKO in Boston. He brought a different style of talk radio in Boston.

In these two clips, from my Real Audio library, you'll hear Tom at his best. In the first clip, he is talking about the goal of radio talk show hosts. In the second clip, he talks about a seafood restaurant in Boston.

The audio is currently hosted on SoundCloud. I'll look for a way to host future audio on this site.

MacWorld 1998

Featuring Ben Waldman from Microsoft

This clip is part of the 1998 MacWorld Expo Keynote. It features Ben Waldman talking about all the new Microsoft features.

MacWorld Expo 1998 took place six months after Microsoft committed $150 million to help keep Apple afloat. Microsoft was very quick to put together several product updates in time for the next major Expo.

This clip is from my personal VHS tape collection. I recorded the MacWorld show as ot aired live on BayTV on January 6, 1998. BayTV was a Silicon Valley 24-hour news station. They stopped airing on August 30, 2001.

This clip starts with a promo for the afternoon news lineup on BayTV

Confusing a Credit Card Scammer

What is Card Services??

I get these Credit Card interest rate calls all the time. Clearly, they are scammers trying to get valid credit card numbers.

In this short audio clip, I am confused as to what company this person is calling me from. Whenever I ask this question they always answer that they are "Credit Card Services."

Note: Never give real information to these callers. Any information they do have on you is simply by looking at the number that they called.