These stories were related to me by my mother Mary(Maria Natalina)Costanzi they are buttressed by my own experiences and inferences.

Don Filippo Monteleone was my grandmother's father, my father's grandfather.

in which I look at a video, created to influence public opinion and do a quick analysis.

As a change in administration is about to occur. I put down my thoughts on the past, and the need and fear of too much hope.

Apologies to James Brown, but that title to his song "Living in America" has been going through my head the last few weeks.

I bought a GPS car navigation system. I've wanted once since I first started using them on trips to California back in 2000. Back then I used the Hertz Never Lost units which are made by Magellan.
This new system is made by Tom Tom, it's a refurbished system. Which I bought at MicroCenter for $100. It was the price that finally pushed me to get this unit.

I wanted to get the TomTom Rider, which I could have used on the motorcycle as well, but I couldn't justify the price.

So here are my impressions after having used it for a couple of months now. It does a pretty good job, mostly I'm impressed, but there are a few things that leave me a bit disappointed.

First the battery life is not what I would have expected. But perhaps that's because it's a refurbished unit and the battery has wasn't replaced. Essentially I have to keep it plugged in almost always. It will run for a few hours off the charger, but not as long as I would have expected.

Second, and more important the road database has a few notable errors in it. The biggest one of which is about a 1/10th of a mile from my home. Behind my house is a large park, a forever wild space, which probably will always be forever wild because it's the low point and has a stream running through it. The road at the end of my street, Pickett Rd. is broken by the park. The road approaches the park, ends and then about 100 yards further on, Picket starts again. The road is not continuous, and I'm sure it was left that way on purpose. To prevent local traffic from using it as a through road. The TomTom road database does not contain that break. As a result the unit has tried to route me though the park on a number of occasions. I am well aware of the problem at this point and so it's not a problem for me, but I was surprised that this gaff was there. I wonder how many others mistakes are in that DB.

Third, once you ask the unit to plan a route, it will slavishly attempt to route you back to the route, even when it should calculate a new route to get you to the location. This generally occurs when I've decided I want to travel one path and it wants me to travel on the original path. There's one stretch of road where it must have asked me to turn around about a half dozen times, when what it should have done was a complete re-calculate.

After a fair amount of thought, it's not clear how it weights different roads, but it's clear that there are some major issues with those weights. On the trip to work, there's a road through what is essentially an industrial park, that it practically refuses to route me on. Even though it's part of the shortest distance to the final destination. This is a prefectly reasonable road, thousands of cars use it daily I'm sure. Still the TomTom doesn't want to route me on it.

I've been a fan of science fiction since I first started watching Star Trek the original series at the age of 6 or 7. I've read so much over the years. And enjoyed so much good science fiction. Movies, TV, books, short stories. I had the first four issues of the Isaac Asimov Science Fiction Magazine. Its always been something I really enjoyed.

1. Who can join here?
   

   Pretty much anyone. The basics are it would make sense to be associated in some way withe the giaccone family name. You might be a distantly related cousin, or giaccone by marriage. You may be someone who wears a heavy coat. Just try to be polite and keep the discourse civil and you're welcome.

Giaccone.org was my personal site for quite a while. Now I'm moving it to a more robust content management system, that will allow my friends and family to participate. It's more of a blog/family history/image storage site. And I hope everyone in my family will sign up for new accounts and get started with the fun.

I never met my paternal grandfather. He died before I was born. This image, is one my father had, and found recently. We scanned it and I figured it was time to give him a place in the sun, so welcome to our family web site.