Vote Today!

[ron_newman]

Polls are open from 7 am to 8 pm.
Click on the local politics tag for more information on today's Somerville election.
If you live in Cambridge, visit Robert Winters' excellent election website instead.

bird buddies

[send-more-cops.livejournal.com]

i'm wondering if anyone has some advice for me. i've been lazy and haven't removed the air conditioner out of one of the rooms in the house. i've often noticed birds bouncing around and generally hanging out around the
a/c.
the other day i noticed one of them crawl out from under (where the a/c hangs over the window frame) with a string in his mouth. F, they're building a nest.

i need to take that a/c out but i have this mental image of the little birds on the other side of the window with really big eyes and one little tear.

will they be able to rebuild? any ideas?

all of wii

[jd-science.livejournal.com]

i'm about to borrow a friend's wii for the weekend (YES!), and i was wondering if anyone had and would be willing to lend 2 extra wii controllers.

if you have and are willing, i promise to be very very good to your things. if you would like to do an exchange for the weekend, we can do that. i have original NES with tetris and arkanoid and super sprint. i think i also have Duck Hunt and the gun. or, i can also offer... uh... my ipod as collateral?

thanks.

ideas?

[elmstreetbaby.livejournal.com]

I am home sick and it's raining (boo!). Does anyone have any good homemade cold remedies to offer? I don't want to walk to Starmarket in the rain, and I have no chicken soup here.

Thank you!

[synergyseeker.livejournal.com]

Thank you to everyone who came Saturday to our Bowling Party at Sacco's. We had over 100 people show up over the 3 hours. It was really great meeting a lot of you from live journal....and I really enjoyed the conversations and ideas for our project. Still booking dates for round table discussions - will keep everyone posted! 

Land surveyors at former Enterprise rent-a-car site

[ron_newman]

While I was holding a political sign this morning across from the Dilboy VFW, a land surveying crew from Medford parked in the former Enterprise rent-a-car lot and did lots of measurements. I don't know anything more, and the surveyors didn't volunteer any information.

Snow Removal Companies?

[shana-lyons.livejournal.com]

Our small condominium association is looking to engage a snow removal company for this winter to clear our sidewalks. We've left messages with a bunch of companies with no callbacks so far. 

Do any of you/your condo associations have a reliable removal company you can recommend? If you do have snow removal, is it some kind of monthly fee or do you pay per storm or per inch of snow? This is our first time trying to hire someone, so any information would be quite helpful. 

Thanks!

Brazilian restaurants

[grapefruiteater.livejournal.com]

Can anyone recommend a good Brazilian restaurant in Somerville or Cambridge? I have a friend coming in from out of town this weekend who is interested in eating Brazilian food. Inexpensive is a plus but not a hard and fast requirement.

All incumbents staying put except one

[elements.livejournal.com]

The Journal and the News are both reporting on their websites that Mayor Curtatone and all the incumbent aldermen were re-elected today. All the (unopposed) school committee candidates were elected/re-elected as well, except for the Ward 4 incumbent, Charlene Harris, who didn't get on the ballot and ran a contested write-in campaign. The new Ward 4 school committee rep is James Norton.

Word also is that Tony Lafuente, who narrowly came in 5th in the alderman-at-large race, is asking for a recount. Depending on the source Tony was either 12 or 21 votes behind Bruce Desmond, who took the 4th place in at-large (the top 4 at-large vote-getters are elected).

Trying to run a pilot program in the community

[mhofner.livejournal.com]

Hi all. My name is Marc.

For a final project for my MBA, I'm working with a team of people to try and test out an opportunity related to personal outsourcing. The concept is basically to outsource mundane tasks (cooking, cleaning, shopping, whatever you can think of) to college students to free up your time for the more important things in life.

In order to test this opportunity, I'm trying to setup a pilot program in the Tufts/Davis Square area where community members would act as the consumers who are dictating what services they need done, and the Tufts students would act as the service providers. This seems to make the most sense since college students typically have more flexible schedules than local working professionals (a ha! assumption #1) and usually are in need of money (okay, who isn't?). In the end, I guess it doesn't really matter who provides the services, and who requests them. I'd simply like to see if a system that could facilitate transactions for such short-duration tasks would be feasible.

Of course, I hit the streets and tried the basic marketing tasks of passing out postcards in the area, but that proved highly inefficient. So I'm turning my attention back to the online community to see if anyone is interested in participating.

I guess, in a nutshell, if you're interested in participating in a 1- or 2-week study that would require only a few hours of your time, and you'd be willing to help out a local neighbor, drop me a line.

mhofner@kudju.com or 617.529.7288

Trying to run a pilot program in the community

[mhofner.livejournal.com]

Hi all. My name is Marc.

For a final project for my MBA, I'm working with a team of people to try and test out an opportunity related to personal outsourcing. The concept is basically to outsource mundane tasks (cooking, cleaning, shopping, whatever you can think of) to college students to free up your time for the more important things in life.

In order to test this opportunity, I'm trying to setup a pilot program in the Tufts/Davis Square area where community members would act as the consumers who are dictating what services they need done, and the Tufts students would act as the service providers. This seems to make the most sense since college students typically have more flexible schedules than local working professionals (a ha! assumption #1) and usually are in need of money (okay, who isn't?). In the end, I guess it doesn't really matter who provides the services, and who requests them. I'd simply like to see if a system that could facilitate transactions for such short-duration tasks would be feasible.

Of course, I hit the streets and tried the basic marketing tasks of passing out postcards in the area, but that proved highly inefficient. So I'm turning my attention back to the online community to see if anyone is interested in participating.

I guess, in a nutshell, if you're interested in participating in a 1- or 2-week study that would require only a few hours of your time, and you'd be willing to help out a local neighbor, drop me a line.

mhofner@kudju.com or 617.529.7288