We have some very exciting news for our loyal readers and advertisers! First off, for readers: our ALIVE website has been completely re-designed (you’re here!). Our new site is more user-friendly, offering a comprehensive array of features and options that we know you will love. Next, we have a soon-to-be operational innovation to assist both …

Has it really been 10 years since we thought our computers were going to crash? Not only is 2010 a new year, but it is a new decade. Remember the song “Everything Old is New Again?” Let’s try some “New” questions.   1. “New Moon” is the hit movie of this season. What famous singing …

Let us welcome in 2010 by celebrating positive growth and a flourishing future for our community. San Ramon Regional Medical Center recently broke ground for our new $10.7 million emergency department and laboratory expansion project. San Ramon Regional Medical Center was originally developed in the mid-1980s and built-out over five years. The hospital opened in …

Out with the old… As one of the last events of each year, the Alamo Chamber of Commerce sponsors the Annual Alamo Tree Lighting Festival. Held at Andrew H. Young Park in downtown, the festival is considered the beginning of the Christmas holiday season. Spirits were slightly dampened this year when a light, but cold …

Just about everyone’s heard of “e-mail” and “e-commerce.” Walnut Creek is abuzz over “e-lockers.” That’s the name for the electronically controlled bicycle lockers recently installed in front of City Hall. Each locker has an electronic BikeLink card reader; a user swipes the BikeLink card in the reader to open the locker. Once the locker is …

It’s the holidays! They are filled with battery operated remote toys, cameras, dolls and baby walkers. So where do YOU recycle your old batteries? Hopefully, you march behind the Energizer bunny to the town offices, to your local drugstore, or to an e-waste recycling day. P-l-e-a-s-e do not deposit batteries anywhere else! I grew up …

Workplace safety has always been very important to us here in the United States. When visiting a production facility invariably one will see a sign stating the number of days since the last accident. On construction sites we expect to see workers’ heads well covered with colorful hard hats. Most everywhere we turn we are …

The air is getting cold and the holidays are over. Gifts have been unwrapped and placed into two piles – those we want to keep and those we’d like Santa to recall. For those who managed to score big from Santa, but now need to lug items back to be returned or exchanged – GMC …

There is perhaps no better embodiment of the old saying that “it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game,” than Charley Brown’s baseball team from the old Peanuts comic strip. Several dozen of those strips, dating as far back as 1952, were on display from Nov. 14 to Dec. 20 …

A decade ago, Roberto Benigni was the talk of Hollywood and the world with his award winning Italian film Life is Beautiful. Tea with Mussolini (1999) is also a quasi-autobiography written and directed by Franco Zeffirelli. Both films set in the same time and place, about the same subject: the growing Fascist movement in Italy …