Sephy’s Platzish

I was listening to the radio yesterday and I heard a name that I hadn’t heard before on the radio advertising one of the radio station’s features (their toll-free number that you can call from anywhere around the nation, world, or really anywhere). It was a company called Waterstone Bank. For a few seconds, I was confused about the name and had headed for the search box in Firefox before it hit me. This wasn’t a new bank, it was just another business which had changed its name to something that says almost nothing about what they are or where they do business. Somewhat (very tangentially) like when Phillip Morris changed its name to Altria. Uh, ok…

However, it isn’t the name that they chose to change to that gives me the shits, it’s the fact that they decided to change their name in the first place. Apparently, it isn’t good enough for a company to have the name of a particular city in their corporate image. Well, not any city (where would we be without New York Life or The Hartford or Atlanta Bread Company?) but apparently this one is taboo. What’s the name of this supposedly problematic name?

Wauwatosa.

Admittedly, it’s not the "sexiest" city name out there like Chicago, Atlanta, or anything foreign-sounding. However, some bright spark in a conference or board room, probably wearing the title of "image consultant" or something equally ridiculous, said that the word "Wauwatosa" was inappropriate for branding outside of that city itself. At least that’s the reason they used when announcing this change - it was a supposedly useful change because they’d built branches which are not within the city limits of Wauwatosa, thus they’ve outgrown the city and need a new name. Thus, it was done.

Now, if you think that this is the first business to do something similar, you’d be mistaken. 11 years ago or so, there used to be a realty company known as Wauwatosa Realty. They were a successful company on their own right (even if they were based in Brookfield, which is on the other side of the county line), but they decided that they needed to have some impetus to grow even further, so they decided to change their name as well. They went with the name Shorewest - at first it seemed to be ridiculous, but if you think about it, the name fits what they serve - the shore (of Lake Michigan) and out to the west.

On a somewhat unrelated note, there used to be a bank in this area that was quite successful while maintaining their city-based name - St. Francis Bank. They only changed their name when they got gobbled up by larger banks and had name changes put on them. Now, of course, they’re a part of a much larger chain that extends out to the nation, and now have a name of National City Bank.

Why St. Francis is a more acceptable name for a business than Wauwatosa is something that is beyond me. Could it be that Wauwatosa is hard to say for an "outsider", or that it has 4 syllables?

Come to think of it, the longer the name, the less likely it is that you’ll see a national company using it. Have you heard of anything with Oconomowoc in the name? Heck, can you say Oconomowoc?

I also haven’t seen any businesses using the name Wooloomooloo either…

Right, let’s get into it, hey?

Sunday, 11th May

Horses and turkeys…a bit of a strange combination, but when you think that you can see everything from dogs to horses to squirrels and even some chickens, so it really isn’t that odd to see a combination from time to time.

Distance - 1826 steps, 1.46km

Monday, 12th May

Well, this is an interesting bit of decoration in the grille of this truck, hey? Not too sure what the truckie is thinking with it, but it’s not something you see every day.

Distance - 1825 steps, 1.46km

Tuesday, 13th May

A bit of a lesson for y’all here, even if it is outdated (the current state excise tax is approximately 1 cent higher, if I remember correctly), this is the outline of how taxes are distributed in the $4.00 per gallon we’re paying for our fuel. Of course, here, the state excise tax goes to fund the state’s deficits and not road building, but that’s government for you…

Distance - 2646 steps, 2.11km

Wednesday, 14th May

For some reason, this opening in the tree line along the horse paddock-cum-lake is intriguing to me. Also, I love how everything is greening up, as it is here in the forest -

Distance - After Walk: 5291 steps, 4.23km; end of day: 6581 steps, 5.26km

Thursday, 15th May

So, why am I posting a photo of a camera? Why is the camera in a car? Well, it’s for something that I’m trying out with recording a bit of a video on my commute (and to try to get video of the deer I see at night). What I’m going to do with it is a bit of a mystery, but I’ll do something with it.

Distance - 2580 steps, 2.06km

Friday, 16th May

I had to travel to the city to do some business, and came across this site (after noticing the sign that said “Bridge Out” - they’re repairing a road that desperately needs it, and that means backups which are horrendous along with someone deciding that paving a path for walking is more important than paving a path for driving……

Distance - 6012 steps, 4.80km

Saturday, 17th May

Here I am coming up with solutions again - here’s using a wire rack designed for apparently a condiment rack to store the grill brush in. It’s simple and works like a charm.

Distance - 3818 steps, 3.05km

In other news… I spent a bit of time on Saturday afternoon taking in some good music from a local jazz band to which I had some connections performing their annual end-of-performance-year gig. Ok, I’ll fess up, it was a school band I was in, and I heard the advertisement for the event.

Also, and this was the reason for the trip to the city on Friday, I took the last steps to cutting my ties with my old bank by, ahem, fixing an error I brought upon myself when I bought some gas on my old card when I didn’t quite have enough cash on hand to do it…uhhh, oops :blush: . In any case, by the end of the week, the account should be closed up completely and I’ll be free from their poor location choices (and no, that wasn’t the only reason that I left them ).

A thought occurred to me when I was writing down my phone number recently, about something that we had taken for granted (and see less frequently even on TV) - the 1 you dialed for accessing long distance calling. I haven’t used it for dialing a phone call for at least a half of a year (when I fired the old phone company), and even before then, it was rare for me to use it because we just didn’t do that much long distance phoning.

Here’s the ironic part - as far as I can tell, for a long time, the numbers for area codes (i.e. three digits, second was a 0 or 1), were likely reserved as unavailable. The reason for this was that the telephone numbers used to be Two letters followed by a varying number of digits (in big cities, out where I live, it was more like a ring pattern that was dialled). In fact, some businesses took that particular tactic of advertising their old letter prefix into the 80s, as seen here by this series of Lincoln Carpeting commercials from Chicago -

Of course, the 0 and 1 don’t have letters (unless you have one of those phone models that have the Q and Z on the 1, even though it’s common practice to put them on 7 and 9 respectively), so they weren’t part of the mnemonic dialing system of the olden days, along with a lot of other opening combinations which really didn’t have a logical word to correspond to them like 57. Though of course, I expect to be proven wrong on that.

Why is it that we’re not using the 1 as much as we were before? Simple - the advent of digital phones. The first time I experienced not having to dial the 1 was when I was at my last job when my boss pointed out to me that I didn’t need to dial the 1 to get access to the main phone system out of the office and out of the area. Then, we move a few years into the future and we get the digital phone activated at home, and I try dialing without the leading zero, and voila, it works perfectly.

I know that you can’t repurpose the first number of the 11 in the dialing sequence (i.e. the 1) because of the people who dial into the country from overseas and kind of need that number to make sure that their call gets to here instead of winding up somewhere in Africa or Asia, but I do wonder if it is possible to consider a way to use that almost new opening for another digit to be added to phone numbers, which should alleviate the problem of reducing available phone numbers and constant expansion and contraction of area codes.

I can’t exactly say that my Google Reader is down to 10 unread like it was last time I went through this, and to be honest, I’ve not had much time or that much of a pressing desire to read other blogs - it’s nothing personal, it’s just me.

Another thing that you will have noticed is that I’m not posting every day - I’m ok with that, because I’d rather have posts every few days that are of some quality instead of just having the quantity of mediocre posts. So, with that said, let’s have a bit of a retro edition of the TW3, just looking at the Bumpzee aspect, with a new list of blogs that have joined the US Blogs community. As always, if you have a blog and are in the US, feel free to join the community.

• The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Big Lie
• Just Thinkin’
• Covered With Love
• Nardeeisms
• Ivy League Conservatives
• Beautiful City - Miami
• Just a Girl in shorts talking about whatever

In addition to that, I should also add that I have put together a post for the Aussie Bloggers Blog about one of the subjects which I kind of fancy my talents - reality TV (little that I thought I’d be a pseudo expert on the subject, but really, all you need to do to become one is watch the show. ). I talked about how the first couple of weeks of the new series of Big Brother is going. My opinion - definitely for the better.

Coming up this week, I believe there’s an anniversary coming up pretty soon, and also, logo-free HD, is it possible?

Til next week y’all!

If I’m going to give alternate titles to this, it’d be the “back on track” edition.

Without further ado, back on Sundays now

Sunday, 4th May

Look carefully! There’s a duck in the middle of the puddle-cum-lake. It was just paddling through as it was probably resting in a trip further north. However, we don’t know that.

Distance - 6257 steps, 5.00km

Monday, 5th May

Alright, this is something that most people don’t see on their commutes - it’s a play area for kids that is situated a ways off of the road. Fortunately, it is right where two roads intersect at a 4-way stop, so it’s relatively safe

Distance - 4434 steps, 3.54km (including walking around a parking lot investigating a haircut deal for $8.95)

Tuesday, 6th May

I did take a couple of pictures, but really, they’re nothing to write home about since they’re pictures of a drive-thru Starbucks in the distance…

Distance - 2359 steps, 1.88km

Wednesday, 7th May

This is a picture that almost could be considered for inclusion on a gas sign website. This is the Citgo station that I’ve filled at a couple of times because they’ve had cheaper prices for gas than other stations in the area. From what I had heard on this day, I saved anywhere from 7-10 cents per gallon by filling up there.

Distance - 2457 steps, 1.96km

Thursday, 8th May

This is the lesser photographed, but more often scene of a train - passing by when you and some of your closest commuting compadres are sitting patiently in line for it to get through so that we can continue on our merry ways.

Distance - 2000 steps, 1.60km

Friday, 9th May

Some people take their devotion seriously by putting a simple bumper sticker on their vehicle. Others fly a flag. For some, not only do they have a whole bunch of lips on their vehicle, they put up three separate phone numbers on the vehicle to drum up her business in the Avon trade…wonder if she’ll be seeing people interested in her products with the van than without…

Distance - 6132 steps, 4.90km

Saturday, 10th May

The tulips in one of the outdoor beds have decided to come to life. Now, after having a bit of a break from flowers, we have this specimen. For some reason, I like taking pictures of flowers - I think it’s the color myself.

Distance - 6918 steps, 5.53km

In other news… I’ve been feeling a bit discombobulated lately. I’m not totally sure why, but I kinda feel like I’m complacent with where I am now. Truth be told, I am happy with where I am now - I still want to find a second job on the weekend possibly. Also, I’ve heard some success stories about products being sold on Craigslist and about some things that I should have the knowledge of how to go about doing it.

Speaking of my talents at work, I hinted at it earlier, but I’ve had the fortune to help a couple of people out with their sites. To be honest, I’ve enjoyed the process, even though in one case, it was something that I would have not have thought of for a long time.