Lottery to accept debit cards in January

Players will be able to put down plastic to take their chances on scratch tickets, Mega Millions jackpots and other lottery games, beginning as early as Jan. 1.

State Treasurer Steven Grossman says he is planning to allow lottery products to be bought with debit cards, joining 33 other states that permit debit card sales for lottery tickets.

"It'll definitely boost sales," said John George, manager of N-B Mini Mart on Brock Avenue in New Bedford. "You'll have another way to pay."

Jon Carlisle, spokesman for the state treasurer, said, "Debit cards are essentially cash. This is an effort at making lottery transactions easier for our customer base."

Carlisle stressed that the change, will not include credit cards and welfare cards.

Grossman told reporters the change will make purchasing tickets more convenient for lottery customers, adding that the allowance of debit cards would likely boost sales, especially at stores where there are no ATMs.

"I think it could have a modest, positive impact on sales," Grossman said after chairing a meeting of the state Lottery Commission Tuesday.

"This is all about customer service. If you make your customer service absolutely as good as it can be, it's bound to have a positive impact on sales."

Grossman also said that agents will be trained to ensure that no lottery tickets are sold with credit cards or welfare cards.

A clerk at a BP gas station convenience store on Route 18 in New Bedford, who declined to give his name, acknowledged that "every now and then," someone will come in and try to pay for the lottery with a debit card and have to be told to produce cash or else they cannot purchase the lottery tickets.

A woman working behind the counter at Quick Mart on Brock Avenue said she had "no idea," what the change would mean for lottery sales.

"I guess we'll see what happens," she said.

Staff at Dusty's Store in downtown New Bedford declined comment.

Councilor David Alves, who is chairman of the council's gaming and casino subcommittee, said the move "shows the state is committed to gaming. They're going to tap into whatever avenue or arena they can."

Les Bernal, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based Stop Predatory Gambling, had a different reaction.

"Our reaction is that the lottery is deliberately trying to get citizens in the New Bedford area who are existing customers to lose even more money," he said.

Bernal referred to lottery as a "failed government program."

"Why is state government working to push people further into debt in these severe economic times?" he asked.

The Massachusetts Lottery generates more than $4 billion in sales each year and pays roughly $900 million a year in profits for local aid to cities and towns.

Information from Statehouse News Service was used in this report.

Uniquely Home

Its stuccoed exterior and flowing shingles on the cross-gabled roof make it stand out as one of the most unusual homes on the block, but to Cecil and Judy Fannin, it’s just home.

Almost a century old and one of the most unique homes on Lexington Avenue in Ashland, the house showcases a blend of early-20th-century architecture as well as features representing the Italian Renaissance era.

Built around 1920 by financier and coal operator Lon Rogers, the home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

The home has seen its share of owners, but when Judy saw that it had gone back on the market in the early 1990s, the woman said she had to have it. She had always admired the house, even considered it her favorite.

“The architecture is just stunning,” she said.

A decade later, the Fannins live in one of the most looked-at homes in Ashland. Sitting right across from Central Park, the Fannin house has been host to home tours, garden tours and front porch tours. Anyone who has ever ridden the trolley around Ashland’s Winter Wonderland of Lights has gazed into the Renaissance loggia that is the Fannin’s porch, glistening with lights, 12 to 15 Christmas trees and ornaments dangling.

Judy said many people ask to take pictures in her gardens. Brides and promgoers have also captured their special moments on the front steps or inside on the spiral staircase.

“We like people to enjoy our gardens and our home,” Judy said. “We’ve always been that way.”

When the Fannins moved in, they renovated the three-story, 12-room home to make it as close to its original look as they could.

“We tried to take it back to the years like it was,” Judy said.

Luckily, a painter that had done work on the house in previous years has kept many of the original hand-blown glass windows and lighting fixtures that had been removed.

Walking in the front door of the home, visitors see some of those original windows. The front door leads into an entry way with black and white checkered tile, original to the home also. Surrounding the walls inside the front door, hangs picture of the historic home from various times and holidays, including renderings of the home when it was built.

The entrance opens to face the large curved staircase with original stained glass window. To the left, a large living room is centered around sitting chairs and a marble fireplace, one of five in the home. Above the fireplace hangs an original impressionist painting by French artist Edmond Petitjean, although Judy said most of the paintings in the house are by local artists, which she prefers.

Opposite the fireplace is an antique bibliotheque that houses treasures from Judy and Cecil’s many trips around the globe as well as Cecil’s collection of Doris Linder porcelain horses.

The dining room boasts an impressive, antique English credenza, Spanish woven cane chairs at a glass top table and an antique chandelier that once graced the Dodge family estate in Michigan.

A swinging door leads into the kitchen, themed with roosters and chickens, where baskets full of fresh-picked produce from Judy’s vegetable garden sit among bouquets of fresh-picked dahlias and zinnias.

The breakfast nook off the kitchen and under the staircase overlooks the fishpond. Pixie and Puff, the family Persian cats, can often be found lounging on the wooden bench seat or sleeping in a decorative bowl on the tabletop.

The second floor of the home has bedrooms and connecting baths. The master bedroom has a canopy bed, antique armoires and sitting room overlooking the backyard.

As impressive as the interior of the home is, Judy said she spends much of her time outside in her gardens.

The backyard features a patio surrounded by greenery and walkways with wisteria-covered trellises. Across from the alley in back, Judy has another garden filled with more than 130 dahlia plants, zinnias, four kinds of pumpkins and elephant ears.

She also grows gourds, which she dries and cleans and uses them for decorating in the fall. Among them are swan, snake and apple gourds.

Winter rose tips

Jolene Adams, the California Garden Club Inc.'s rose chairman and vice president of the American Rose Society, sends a few tips for winter roses:

Winter is the time that roses rest. Or they are supposed to. Deciduous trees and shrubs are dropping leaves now, and your roses should too.

Sanitation in the rose bed is important in winter - our rainy season. Dead leaves and petals lying on the damp soil may harbor molds and mildews that can attack roses and give refuge to the eggs and larvae of many insects.

Beneficial insects don't overwinter on roses, so what is left are the "not good guys." Strip off any remaining leaves and remove them from rose beds to prevent insects and diseases from over-wintering.

Cutting limbs off trees, shrubs and roses stimulates new growth. Late winter is pruning time - a necessary step in good gardening with roses. Prune after the last possible hint of freezing temperatures - usually January or February.

Roses may need to have old growth trimmed back, spindly growth removed and older canes cut off at the base so that the stored food in the root system can start new growth in the spring. When pruning, remove the top growth by about half - more if the rose is a robust grower.

Old canes will have grayish bark. Remove the old ones and save big, juicy new ones. Look closely at the stem - find a leaf scar (like a smiley face) on the outside face of the cane and cut at an angle. Make sure the high side of the cut is on the outside. Slanted cuts help reduce fungal infections by forcing moisture to roll off the cut surface.

After pruning and cleaning up, you might want to spray with a dormant spray (follow manufacturer's direction). Dormant spray is good for eliminating spores from rose diseases and smothering insect eggs that hide in the cracks and crevices of the bark on the rose stems. Spray the whole bush and even the ground around the rose. Then mulch to retain moisture in the soil.

Everyone is welcome to take part in the Redlands Horticultural and Improvement Society rose pruning demonstration and workshop at 9 a.m. Jan. 14 at Plymouth Village, 945 Salem Drive in Redlands.

Dress for the weather and bring your own pruners and gloves. There is no charge for this educational, hands-on workshop.

GMO Busters, The Rolling Cat, Barnyard Mahjong, Tactical Warrior

I can’t believe it’s Monday again, it seems like only last week that I was here telling you all what games you should be downloading…oh, wait. This week we’ve got four more games of the indie persuasion. We’re starting with GMO Busters, a game that tasks you with destroying all of those genetically modified organisms with your little stack of pure vegetables, all in a very “Angry Birds” style. The Rolling Cat is exactly what it says on the tin, a game where you roll about on the screen as a cat collecting sausages. Sounds mental? It is. If you’re a Mahjong player then you might enjoy our third game, Barnyard Mahjong from EnsenaSoft, a classic Mahjong game with a very barnyard theme. Lastly we’ve got Tactical Warrior, a game from James Pawliuk that gives the player supreme control of a battlefield and gives them one task; win.

When you create a popular game, especially one that’s been downloaded millions of times, you’ve got to expect people to come along and copy your work. This isn’t confined just to games, it’s happened with almost every form of entertainment since time immemorial. GMO Busters is a copy and paste job of Angry Birds, there’s no sugar coating it, that’s what it is. The aim of the game is to destroy genetically modified organisms (hence the GMO in the title) with your little team of pure tomatoes by slingshotting them into the structures holding the genetically altered abominations. Simple enough? Yeah, but then again it was simple years ago too when Angry Birds did it.

As I mentioned, the gameplay plays out exactly like a game of Angry Birds, the player is given the task of taking down their enemies by pulling back on the slingshot that’s holding one of their friendly tomatoes, alter the trajectory by changing the angle that the tomato will be launched from and let go. A dotted line will trace the trajectory of your tomato meaning that if you fall just short of your intended target you can make the minor alterations to the trajectory necessary without having to remember the angle you fired from in the first place. This makes the game a little easier than it would otherwise be.

Once the player’s tomato has landed (hopefully on target) points will be awarded based on how many pieces of the structure they were able to hit along with a much larger amount of points for taking out one of the enemy in the process. The player has to clear the level of all enemies before they can proceed to the next level. The skill in GMO Busters, just as in Angry Birds, comes from being able to get three stars on each level. Stars are awarded for getting a certain amount of points; the more points, the more stars you’re awarded. This is the part where the game can get addictive as a lot of players may not allow themselves to move onto the next level before they have gotten three stars on the current one, which usually involves taking out all enemies in the level with a single tomato.

It’s difficult to recommend GMO Busters to anybody considering that the developers, Swift Entertainment, have just copied and pasted the entire concept of Angry Birds and just replaced some of the assets. The visuals look ok and the gameplay is as addictive as anything else currently on the App Store, but if this review has piqued your interest, then you should probably download Angry Birds instead of this. With Angry Birds you can be sure that Rovio will be constantly updating the game, adding new levels and generally providing after-market support for their title. I’m not entirely sure if Swift Entertainment will be able to provide the same support at all. To be honest, I’m not even sure how they were able to put GMO Busters out at all given that it’s such a blatant “homage”. Download it if you want to play Angry Birds but are for some reason repulsed from the original title, otherwise just download the original, Angry Birds. GMO Busters HD - Swift Development

QMB Builders’ Mart displays 2012 designs

Real estate sector will move a notch higher in 2012 with innovative designs in terms of finishing building materials products.

Against this background, QMB Builders has opened its show room to players in the construction industry to have a peep into what it has in stock for next year.

Managing Director of the QMB Builders’ Mart, Mrs Toro Biobaku, said at the event that the company has a new collection of tiles. “They are all 2012 designs and new introductions and unique to us. The finishes are also unique. Some are like wall papers, marble finish, classic in design, rough face, and others plain.

“We have some tiles that can be used for floor and external cladding in locations like hotels, airports, and high traffic areas and they come with 20 years guarantee against all form of defects, such as acid, wear and tear, discoloration, fire, among others,”she said.
She said these tiles are made in Spain and that they are high quality first choice. “Not second choice or rejects, but first choice and we are guarantee that all times.

In addition to all of these, she said are wood finish, branded as laminate.“We have the regular teak even for kitchen cabinet, fitted fridge, fitted wine chiller, fitted dish washer, washing machine, including fitted deep fryer and all these can be incorporated into a kitchen comprehensively.”

On sanitary wares, Biobaku revealed that there are three new designs of sanitary ware; economy, medium and high-end that come with regular and soft seat covers which are unique to them.

On the complaint that some water taps currently in the market are sub-standard, she said: “All our water taps and mixers come with two years guarantee against all forms of defects and algae formation that give people infections. Leaks in taps, she said are caused by poor quality membrane sealant used in inferior quality taps. “What we have are high quality ones and they are guaranteed.

“For domestic use we give five years guarantee, and 10 for commercial. We have never had anyone come to complain about our taps. To safeguard against leakage, kitchen sinks are supplied with factory fitted drains and waste pipes. We sell them with complete kits, including the chopping board, knives, and scissors, among others. It is a complete kitchen accessory and package”.

She said the firm is able to match quality with competitive pricing because “we are relatively new in the market and it is only reasonable for us to position ourselves in the market with better quality than what is available and better prices. We are not making as much profit margin as our competition but we are only investing in our future. We insist on quality products, excellent prices and good before and after sales service.”

She said products, such as sanitary wares should last a lifetime. “We don’t even sell flow master because ours does not give problem. If you say yours is bad then we give you one for free. They are supposed to last a lifetime,” he said.

According to her, a major challenge in the industry, remainsinstallation. She said her company does not engage installers for customers but could recommend them. “They are quite busy and we don’t take responsibility for their work or for the fees they charge,”she said.