geekosystem

It's a fairly common practice for unscrupulous bar owners to fill bottles of expensive, top shelf booze with the cheap stuff to raise their profit margins. As if that practice isn't unpleasant enough, 29 New Jersey bars and restaurants -- almost half of them T.G.I Friday's locations -- just got busted for filling bottles of pricey booze with cheaper alternatives including dirty water and rubbing alcohol.

Gas stations don't tend to feature prominently here on Geekosystem, but when they do the stories tend to be pretty epic. Over this past weekend, gas stations suddenly got even more interesting when three stations in New Jersey were mistakenly refilled with jet fuel, and they then passed said jet fuel on to the cars that refueled at them. It's unclear how many automobiles were affected by the mix-up, but none of them were suddenly capable of breaking the sound barrier, so there goes that dream.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie held a press conference today about the news that Hostess was closing, and that it meant the world was ending because there would be no more Twinkies, but he refused to talk about the delicious, spongy, and radiation repellent treat. He refused to talk about it by saying "Twinkies" four times in less than a minute.

One of the potentially unforeseen consequences of Hurricane Sandy's aftermath might see New Jersey boozers left without their favorite beverage. Fedway Associates Inc., the exclusive distributor in the state for fine liquors like Cristal and Svedka vodka, had their warehouse in south Kearny, New Jersey left in shambles thanks to 10-foot tidal surges from the horrendous weather. They don't expect to be back in full operation until December, so folks might be out of luck when it comes to their particular brands.

Hurricane Sandy's left a mess in its path across the East Coast. Much of the public transit system in New York and New Jersey, for example, is still cobbling itself back together. Even so, the show must go on, and the election will still be happening as planned this coming Tuesday. Given the difficulties that voters might find in reaching their polling location, New Jersey has announced that folks will be able to vote by email or fax this year. Cue the cries of electronic tampering.

No doubt we can all appreciate a good historical artifact, but one of the problems with artifacts is that at some point, sentimentality and historical respect aside, they are just old things that sit around getting older. That's the trouble The Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange,  New Jersey has run into recently, as some of the linens from their collection of Edison memorabilia are starting to show their age. Namely, an American flag, one of Edison's original movie projection screens, and one of his last lab coats have all seen better days, and are in need of a little restoration. So while the Internet has to wrangle a posse of nerds to pass the hat just to protect the land for a Tesla museum, taxpayers will be footing the $20,000 bill for Thomas Edison's maid service, eight decades after his death.

Always be sure to log out when you're done using a public computer, but especially if you're using a public computer in New Jersey. Why? A New Jersey court recently ruled that if you do leave yourself logged into a computer, you are giving "tacit authorization" to anyone who'd like to have a look around; according to the court, taking a peek is totally okay.

Yesterday, Verizon Wireless users in New Jersey's Monmouth, Ocean, and Middlesex counties got a terrifying text message that the coming global superpocalypse was not only coming, but had arrived. The message, completely devoid of context, urged recipents to "Take Shelter Now" and purported to be a direct order from the "U.S. Govern[ment]." Of course, the text left a lot of questions unanswered, like "what's going on?" and "why is there such a specific end time?" and people naturally started freaking out. Fortunately, the police were able to send out a message explaining that there was not, in fact, a civil emergency.

 

Attention students of Morris County, New Jersey: Those 'D's on your report card just aren't going to cut it anymore. On a meeting Monday night, the School Board approved the decision to eliminate the D grade, making anything below a C- a failing grade.

There has been some serious disagreement about the issue. While everyone supports putting measures in place to ensure that kids succeed and actually grasp their material instead of skating by, not everyone thinks this is the right way to go about it: