Nassau County Government Homepage

Hi All,

The Nassau County government homepage is chock full of informative and helpful links. Not only is the site easy to navigate - great colors, easy to read, good contrasting links and well organized - there are many ways for visitors to contact various departments on the Nassau County site. Click here for a good start to figure out who/what/where to contact if you have any issues.

One of the best things about the site is eServices link on the homepage. Click here for the direct link.

On the EServices page on the site you have two sections - one for residents and another for business. I'm going to discuss the various parts of the resident section in this blog entry. There is more than enough to talk about on the site for the entry.

So, what's on the resident site? Well, users can view assessment information via the Land Records Viewer, appeal your assessment via the Assessment Review (AROW), make golf reservations (seriously!), pay parking tickets online and find a section on contractor lookup and initiate contractor complaints.

Starting from the top....the Land Records Viewer enables users to view area maps, tax maps, view a property sketch and view correspondence. General and School tax information, property description, recent sales and assessment question information are all available on the site.

The AROW (an acronym for Assessment Review on the Web) section of the site enables homeowners to answer the question, 'Do I have a good case for filing an appeal"? Users can search for residential sales, file an appeal or look up information about pending or prior appeals.

Sorry, but the Golf Reservation section of the site is one of the more clever uses of technology that I've seen recently. Using this service, users can reserve tee time at either the Red, White, or blue courses at Eisenhower Park up to one week in advance of the date you wish to play. Funstuff - especially now that Spring is somewhat around the corner.

The 'My Nassau' part of the site enables users to find information on elected officials, road management authorities, school district information, police/fire/sewage district information. That could be very helpful when you need to lodge a complaint about a fire or sewage issue...

Go figure - park in the wrong place now, get a ticket and you can pay online with a credit card. Want to do just that? Just click on this link to pay your outstanding parking tickets that are returnable to the Nassau County (TPVA) Traffic Court. Easy - and you don't have to go to 16 Cooper Street in Hempstead to pay the ticket. FYI, click on this link to go to the TPVA website directly.

Finally, visitors to the Contractor Lookup/Complaint section of the website can find and check on the license status of prospective contractors and vendors. Visitors can also file complaints with the Nassau County Department of Consumer Affairs from this site as well. Neat stuff -and very helpful when you are doing a renovation or building project on or in your house (think kitchen remodeling or basement finishing or an addition to the house...).

Enjoy the site - there is a huge amount of timely, valuable, helpful information that is available to visitors!

Regards,
Stu

The Academy Awards

Hi All,

Unless you live under a rock - or if you are completely uninterested in the movies and the Academy Awards - you might have missed the Academy Awards last night.

Yes - I am delivering a blog entry about the Academy Awards. Don't worry, if you follow through to the end of the entry, you'll see why I'm writing this entry. (How's that for a hook - I bet that'll get a lot of folks to work their way through the entry!)

Okay, okay...onto the red carpet we go.

So...if you did miss the AA (Academy Awards from here on out will be denoted by AA), click on this link for all the winners for 2012.

You know you want it - click here for lots of AA photos. Note that the pictures came from the AA website at this link. Look at all the pretty stars and actors and actresses!

This next link has interviews and commentary of actors and actresses interviewed on the 'Red Carpet' before the AA's. Can you imagine how many reporters and news hounds were 'on the story' of the AA's? Well, just to give you an idea, click on this link from the AA blog site. Amazing how much is written about the AA's.

This next link - called Oscar Buzz - is basically a real-time feed of readers comments about the AA's. Note that these are really short comments - basically in Twitter format. Funstuff.

Now, for all the back stories, interviews, comments and more, you can click on this link from EW - Entertainment Weekly. More funstuff. Especially with all the pictures and articles the site has.

You might also want to click on this link from EW that is dedicated to just the 2012 AA's. Wow - so much information. On the page there are sections on 'Oscars 2012: Behind the Scenes', and 'Oscards 2012: Myth Busters', and 'Oscars 2012: Nominated For...Nothing'.

Finally, if you click on this link, you'll find all the books in the Farmingdale Public Library that deal with the Academy Awards.

Enjoy the recap and the sites of the 2012 Academy Awards!

Regards,
Stu

High Wind Watch For Friday and Saturday

Hi All,

If you haven't realized it yet - its windy outside. Very windy in fact. Click here for a link to the Wunderground - a weather website that gives forecasts, weather news and more.

But wait, there's more. Click on this link for this weekends' weather in Farmingdale - link is from Yahoo! Weather.

If we have high winds, what does that mean for homeowners? What should they do in case of really, really strong winds?

Click on this link from the NOAA - the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The information at the bottom of the page has a section for 'High Wind Safety Actions'. In this case the example is if a hurricane is approaching your region.

Some of the more obvious things that homeowners should do include bringing in all lawn furniture, barbecues, and dog houses. More info can be found on this link.

Find out if you home meets current building code requirements for high winds by clicking on this link. If you need to reinforce your garage door because of heavy wind, click here. Click here for more information about shuttering the windows on your house.

Finally, click on this link for the modern version of the Beaufort Wind Scale. If you want a really neat picture, click on the last category for a great picture of what hurricane force winds look like on the ocean!

You also might want to click on this link for the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale Summary Table - neat stuff and the categories they cover are really helpful.

Finally, you might want to click on this link for some fun 'Wind Facts'. Click here for the link to the site by the name of 'Wind' from a site called 'Clouds R Us'.

Included on the site is a table of wind chill factors, information on global wind patterns, and winds that have been named (ie. Mistral, Pampero, Levante, etc...)

I hope the links I provided blow you away :)

Regards,
Stu

Crime Statistics From the Nassau County Police Department

Hi All,

Back on February 1st I wrote about crime statistics that are available on the Newsday.com website. That information is good - very good - and very helpful.

At the end of that blog entry, in passing I mentioned that there is a section on the Nassau County Police Department website that contains crime statistics. With all the attention being paid to the new Community Policing Plan - click here for the link to learn more about the plan - I wanted to go into more detail about the data that is presented on the Nassau County Police Department website.

First though, click here on a link from CBS New York's website for an article titled, 'Nassau County Residents Voice Displeasure About Plan to Close 4 Police Precincts'. Also, you might want to click on this link from ABC News titled 'Burglaries Up In Nassau County Amid Precinct Closures'.

Now, on to the statistics. The main page for the Crime Statistics can be reached by clicking on this link. Click on the link for whichever precincts crime statistics that you are interested in. Note also that there is a link for 'Grand Totals' as well.

When you click on a precinct link a document opens up in pdf format. Click here to get a free version of Adobe Acrobat for free.

When you click on any of the links the Crime Report comes up. Interesting columns to note are the comparison's between 2012 and 2011 and the fact that the report has Weekly, 28 Day, Year-to-Date and Year-to-Date Prior Year columns. There is a LOT of information on the chart!

The first column on the left side of the document has the type of crime. Murders, Rapes, Sexual Abuse, Robberies, Assaults, Burglaries, Stolen Vehicle, Grand Larceny and more are included in the report. Note also that the last row on the sheet includes a 'Total Crime Report'. Basically that is a cumulative total...

Other items to note about the report: these stats are for the week and are by precinct. Sometimes the percent change column is drastically large due to few occurrences. For example, if there were 2 residential burglaries in a particular week and then there was only one residential burglary in the next week - the percent change would show that it dropped by 50%. If there were 3 residential burglaries in the next week, the percent increase would show an increase of 200%. Make sure you understand the statistics before coming to any arbitrary conclusions.

Finally, remember that the main Crime Statistics page has a Grand Total link.
Regards,

Stu

Happiness - Finding It and Holding On To It

Hi All,

Wow - what an ambitious topic I chose for this blog entry!

Happiness - it seems like a vague, general term. How can we find it and keep it and share it?

Indeed - these are some of the topics that I'll discuss in this entry.

First - click on this link for a good definition of happiness - link is from Wikipedia. This next link goes to website called 'The Pursuit of Happiness' - from an organization called The Pursuit of Happiness. This site has an interesting link to the history of happiness. Click here for that very link.

How does one 'become happy'? Indeed, great question. Click on this link for a site that claims to have figured out two components of 'how to be happy'. Hint: gratitude and appreciation are factors in happiness.

So, why is happiness so important? Clicking on any of these three links will get you started to figuring out why happiness is so important.

Lifecoachexpert.com

Selfcreation.com

Happiness Show.com

Evidently folks who create quotes and wrote poetry think happiness is very important. Click on this link from Motivating Quotes.com. Some of the quotes are pretty darn funny, clever and insightful.

Enjoy the links!

Stu