Push cart cuts the mustard — “The Common Dog” on Foxboro Common

By Robert Gillis
Published in the Foxboro Reporter 6/27/1996

One of the nicer aspects of taking a vacation and staying home to work on the new house is that I have the opportunity to spend a little more time in Foxboro during the day. These summer days bring many pleasant traditions back to Foxboro joggers, power walkers, Founders Day, Frisbees, kids out of school, concerts, outdoor sports, and on the common, Susan Zakhary’s “Common Dog” hot dog stand.

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It’s ‘service with a sneer’ — bad customer service

By Robert Gillis

One of my very first columns published in the Foxboro reporter, 6/1996

THIS WAS ONE OF MY VERY FIRST COLUMNS FOR THE FOXBORO REPORTER – WRITTEN IN 1996

There is a great scene in the movie “Back to the Future” where Marty McFly, a teenage time traveler from 1985, has just arrived in the year 1955. The first site he sees is a gas station where four uniformed attendants rushed over to the car that has just pulled into the station.

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Technology: Time to draw clear line between work and play

Computer keyboardby Robert Gillis
Published in the Foxboro Reporter 5/1996

“Have you ever sent a fax… From the beach? Have you ever checked out of the supermarket a car load at eight? Have you renewed your drivers license at a cash machine?”

“You will,” the commercial informs us, “and the company that will bring it to you will be AT&T”

Things sure do change rapidly. Adults over 13 are already saying things like, when I was a kid we didn’t have CDs or VCRs or ATM machines.

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Despite problems, Foxboro’s got a lot to offer (my very first op/ed as a regular contributor to the Foxboro Reporter, 4/1996)

Historians note, 2015: after I wrote my first full-length piece about the Foxboro senior center in early 1996, this piece was my very first “regular” op Ed for the Foxboro reporter. The editor at the time suggested I submit three pieces and we would see how it goes. Nearly 20 years later, I am still a regular contributor for the reporter.

For my very first op-ed, I wanted to talk about Foxboro and how much I love the town.

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My very first Reporter Column; Support your seniors!

(After many letters to the editor, I submitted this, my first full-length column to the Reporter.  After it ran, I approached editor Jeff Peterson about a regular, bi-weekly column, and he agreed we’d start with three, the first which ran a month later on April 25, 1996.  I’ve been writing for the paper ever since!)

by Robert Gillis
Published in the Foxboro Reporter, 3/7/1996

Nearly sixty of Foxboro’s seniors crammed the tight quarters of the town hall meeting room last Tuesday for the Advisory Board meeting on the town budget.

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Letter: This is New England, it Snows Here

Before I started my regular column in the Foxboro Reporter I was writing a lot of letters to the editor; this is one of them.

by Robert Gillis
Published as a letter to the editor in the Foxboro Reporter, 11/1995

Last week, the first big snowstorm of the season was threatening the area. After being nearly killed twice by snow-crazed motorists, I stopped at the supermarket for some dog food, milk, and some other necessities. What I saw amazed me.

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Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman: “Tempus Fugitiive,” A Critique

by Robert Gillis
March 25, 1995

“Hello! Duh! Clark Kent is Superman. Ha, ha, ha. Well, that was worth the whole trip. To actually meet the most galactically stupid woman who ever lived.” — Tempus, remarking that Lois Lane couldn’t figure out Clark’s secret

Acknowledging that it is just a TV show, and recognizing that I do have a life, I must still comment on my great disappointment with “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.”

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Letter I wrote to DC Comics when Superman died

Here’s an oldie but a goodie, the only letter I ever wrote to DC Comics (back when they had letter columns). This was in response to the Death of Superman, in 1993…

Dear DC:

This is a letter that I have been meaning to write for a long time. Now that Superman has died, this is a letter that will never see print. That makes me a little sad; I would have loved to get a letter in a Superman letter column.

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One of the first times I was published — Computer Magazine MICROpendium (1987)

WAY back in the day (1987) I got published in a computer magazine for the first time. MICRopendium was the official monthly magazine for the AWESOME TI-99-4/a and its not-at-all awesome successor, the Myarc Geneve. I taught myself to code on the TI-99-4/a and wrote EVERY college paper on that computer using the TI-Writer Word Processor. LOVED that computer. Anyway, someone had asked if there was a way to use the spell-checking program database on the built in RAM disk (512KB) — you read that right, not MB, KB — and GeekBoy (that would be me) had the solution.

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