RCNJ

The Rensselaer Alumni Association (RAA) announced that the Rensselaer Alumni Club of New Jersey (RCNJ) will be awarded the Craig W. Angell '35 Chapter of the Year Award for 2006-2007. The chapter will be recognized at the Annual RAA Awards dinner during Reunion Weekend June 8 in Troy with a formal presentation taking place in New Jersey sometime in the fall.

This is the second consecutive year that the RCNJ has won Chapter of the Year from the RAA. This is the third overall award for the RCNJ, with the first time in 2000-2001. The RCNJ now stands in second place behind the Boston Chapter (five-time winner) for overall Chapter of the Year awards. (See the list of previous Chapter of the Year winners for more information.)

RCNJ Chapter President Sandeep Nandy '94 said, "This is truly an honor to be recognized for the second consecutive year with this award. This recognition is symbolic of the efforts of our officers and each member of the Rensselaer Club of New Jersey Leadership Committee. A special round of thanks to Vice President John Cloninger '96, Vice President Steve Nudelman '90, Treasurer Phil Lurie '74, Chairman Ken DeGhetto '50, and Leadership Committee Members Dave Aiello '89, Dave Bressen '56, Jason Consoli '01, Betty Lurie '75, Yasmine McNellis '82, Joe Pilaro '55, Henry Rosenblatt '54, Harry Rosenthal '60, Dick Shive '54, and Gordon Snyder '66 for all their hard work and efforts on behalf of the RCNJ."

"I would also like to express my appreciation to all RCNJ event attendees throughout the year, as well as those who attend our monthly Leadership Committee meetings. The RCNJ looks forward to seeing everyone at all future events."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On September 11, 2001, RCNJ.org published an article called NYC Phonathon Cancelled Due to Terrorist Attack, which began:

Dave Aiello wrote, "Of course you know that a coordinated terrorist attack has destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City. We have no idea if any alumni have been killed or injured. I spoke to Kate Potvin on the telephone, and it is obvious that the New York City Phonathon, scheduled for tonight, cannot be held. We are in the process of calling all of the alumni who agreed to attend the Phonathon to make sure that they are OK. We will let you know if there are any further developments."

The article goes on to point out that all of the alumni who were scheduled to attend the New York City Phonathon that night survived, but two members of the Rensselaer family lost their lives that day:

• Nicholas J. Humber '63, an executive of Enron Wind Corporation who was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11 that crashed into the World Trade Center: In Memory of J. Nicholas Humber '63, Killed on September 11.
• Kalyan K. Sarkar, a seismic engineer for the Port Authority, the father of Rensselaer Graduate Kishan Sarkar: In Memory of Kalyan Sarkar, Killed in WTC Disaster.

We remember these men and all of the other victims of the attacks who died five years ago today.

To read more RCNJ articles on the 9/11 attacks, search RCNJ for "World Trade Center".

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

RCNJ President Sandeep Nandy '94 wrote:

As I am sure you know, the RCNJ will be holding its summer picnic on Saturday, June 24. [ See article about the picnic for more details. ]

As part of the picnic, the RCNJ will be holding its elections.

The open positions will be President, Vice President for Administration, Vice President for Communication, Secretary and Treasurer.

The nomination process will be as follows:

1. Anyone with nominations should send them to Henry Rosenblatt '54. He can be reached at jvr3nj [at] worldnet.att.net or (201) 615-1554 (cell). The deadline for nominations is Friday June 16, 2006 at 5 pm.
2. It is understood that not everyone will be able to attend the picnic. If they would like to vote by proxy, all proxy votes should be submitted to Dick Shive '54. Dick can be reached at rshive [at] verizon.net. The deadline for proxy votes is Friday June 23 at 5 pm.

Upon receipt of all nominations and proxy votes, final elections will be held at the picnic on June 24.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Rensselaer Alumni Association has just announced that the Rensselaer Club of New Jersey will be awarded The Craig W. Angell '35 Chapter of the Year Award for 2005-06. The chapter will be recognized at the RAA Annual Dinner during Reunion Weekend on June 9 in Troy with formal presentation taking place in New Jersey sometime in the Fall.

This is the second time that the RCNJ has won Chapter of the Year from the RAA. The first time was in 2000-01.

More information will be added to this article as we receive it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sandeep Nandy wrote up the meeting minutes from the February 22 meeting of the RCNJ Leadership Committee. The minutes include a review of recent RCNJ events and discussion of the status of upcoming events.

The next RCNJ Leadership Committee meeting will take place on Monday, March 20, 2006, at 7:00pm. The meeting will take place at Bill's Plaza Diner, 1262 Paterson Plank Road, Secaucus. [ directions ]

In order to read and print this document, you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. Visit Adobe's website todownload Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm happy to report that I just restored the missing articles from 2005 and 2004 to the RCNJ Website. These articles were temporarily unavailable due to the web server problems that occurred at the beginning of October.

Thanks to Martin O'Donnell '89 for his help in restoring this information to our site.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On behalf of the Rensselaer Club of New Jersey Executive Committee, welcome back to RCNJ.org as we relaunch it.

RCNJ.org has been the place to go to learn about Rensselaer Alumni Activities in the Greater New York and New Jersey area since 1997. With the help of our new web infrastructure we hope to keep it that way for years to come.

As publisher of RCNJ.org, I want to apologize for inadequate disaster recovery planning. During the first week of October, one of the Internet Service Providers that my company uses had an electrical transformer failure that knocked an entire data center off-line for almost a week. The server where RCNJ.org used to be housed was located in this data center.

In spite of the fact that our server suffered no physical damage, it took me about 60 days to put the original content from RCNJ.org back on the Internet. As you can see from the state of the home page, we're still missing almost 18 months of articles. Those articles will make it back up here eventually, but I had to start somewhere.

I've learned a lot from this experience. CTDATA now has two separate server installations in different parts of the country. We're building an automated backup mechanism that sends files from one server to the other. We should have had this before the ISP failure, but we're building it now.

Over the next few days, I'm planning to restore the RCNJ current events calendar and provide a new way for members to subscribe to an alert service that will notify you automatically when we post new information on our website. Thank you for your continued participation in the RCNJ. Feel free to post a comment on this story or email me at dave_aiello [at] ctdata.com if you want to provide any feedback.

--Dave Aiello '89

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

Due to a major infrastructure failure at one of our Internet Service Providers, we've put up a temporary website. We expect to have our website restored in a few days.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (3)

An RCNJ Leadership Committee Meeting took place on May 18, 2004, at Ken DeGhetto's office in Livingston. The following issues came before the committee:

1. President’s report
2. President Elect’s report
3. Vice President’s report
4. Treasurer’s report
5. Discussion about 2004-2005 Dues mailing and fall 2005 newsletter (finalizing fall 2004 calendar)
6. Upcoming RCNJ events
7. Open roundtable discussion
8. Next meeting

Read on for the details....

Continue reading "RCNJ Leadership Committee Meeting Minutes for May 18, 2004" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave Aiello wrote, "Beginning with the meeting that took place on May 18, 2004, the RCNJ Leadership Committee has agreed to post a slightly edited version of its meeting minutes on the RCNJ.org website. We are publishing meeting minutes to provide our members with more information about how our organization is governed. We also hope to encourage more members to participate in the Leadership Committee in the future."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave Aiello wrote, "Many of you who follow the Internet business are aware of the massive attack mounted on Internet servers that began at midnight Saturday, Eastern Time. All of the servers hosted by CTDATA were affected, including RCNJ.org. Our servers were down from about 3:00am to 1:00pm, Eastern Time."

"If you are interested in reading more about the problem, check out CTDATA Servers Temporarily Knocked Off-Line by Massive Internet Server Attack over on CTDATA.com."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave Aiello wrote, "Yesterday, Tom Payne '86 and I set up an automatic headline exchange between The Rensselaer Club of New Jersey and Rensselaer Entrepreneur Network Web Sites. On the right side of our home page, you will now see a box labeled 'Rensselaer Entrepreneur Network' which contains the current headlines from their Web Site. They have the same arrangement for RCNJ.org headlines on the right side of their home page."

"This is another milestone for Rensselaer alumni news sites. Never before have two alumni-related sites shared headlines with each other. We hope to establish many similar relationships with other RPI-related Web Sites in the future."

"We think that displaying the headlines from REN is a great service to RCNJ.org readers. This service provides you with quick access to the latest news from one of our afiliate groups. It also helps promote other Rensselaer-related events in the Metropolitan New York area. Please let us know if you find this service useful."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave Aiello wrote, "On Labor Day weekend last year, the Rensselaer Club of New Jersey relaunched its Web Site with a completely new architecture. Since then, we've published 164 stories about everything from a double dutch jump rope machine to the RCNJ's Chapter of the Year Award. We've used this site to promote RCNJ events, the Liberty Science Center Internship Program, and the college fair program. By any measure, it's been a great year."

"I would like to thank John Cloninger (who is co-editing the Web Site), Joe Pilaro (who has contributed a good number of story ideas), and the other members of the RCNJ Committee for their support and assistance during the redevelopment of this Web Site."

"We hope to roll out a set of new features in the next few weeks that take this Web Site to the next level. If you have any comments or suggestions on how we can improve our Web Site, let us know."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave Aiello wrote, "On Friday, the RCNJ was awarded the Craig W. Angell '35 Chapter of the Year Award for the first time in its history. The Chairman of the RAA's Regional Chapters Committee, Ray Weisner '75, presented the award."

"This picture shows my fiancee Kathleen Kuykendall and me, shortly after the award presentation."

"Sandeep Nandy '94, a member of the RCNJ Leadership Committee also received the RAA Director's Award from RAA Executive Director Dave Bohan '82."

"Read on for more pictures and descriptions of the event...."

Continue reading "RCNJ Cleans Up at RAA Awards Dinner" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

PhilLurie writes, "At the April 17th RCNJ Board Meeting in Morris Plains, I volunteered to lead the 2001-2002 nominating committee. Teleconferences will be held over the next few weeks to indentify candidates to serve as President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary and Committee Chairs."

"The RCNJ Constitution calls for elections to be held at least every three years. The Board has asked that the nominating committee make recommendations about the structure of the group and the length of the terms for new officers. This Web Site will be used to host the election itself, which is planned for late June. Hopefully, a newsletter to the entire NJ alumni community will be distributed in early June containg the slate and proposed changes."

Anyone interested in paticipating in this process should feel free to send Phil an email at phil-lurie@att.net.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave Aiello wrote, "Earlier today, I received a letter from Jan Pirrong '69, President of the Rensselaer Alumni Association, indicating that the Rensselaer Club of New Jersey will be awarded The Craig W. Angell '35 Chapter of the Year Award. The official presentation will take place on Friday, June 8, in Troy."

Read on for the text of the letter...

Continue reading "RCNJ Named 2001 Chapter of the Year by RAA" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Dave Aiello wrote, "Earlier tonight, I posted the one hundredth article to the RCNJ.org Web Site since we relaunched it over Labor Day Weekend 2000. This is a major milestone for our Web Site. In the three year history of the Web Site prior to September 2000, we posted fewer than one hundred articles."

"I would like to thank John Cloninger and the other members of the RCNJ Committee for their support and assistance during the redevelopment of this Web Site."

"When we set out to create a Web Site for the RCNJ back in 1997, I dreamed that we would be able to create an information resource that told our members something new and interesting whenever they visited. I think it's safe to say that we have achieved that."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave Aiello wrote, "RPI finally mailed out the first Chapter Alert newsletter of the year to alumni living in the State of New Jersey. Thanks to Kate Potvin of the Rensselaer Regional Programs and Dave Bressen of the RCNJ leadership committee for helping us get the message out to our members who have never visited our Web Site before."

"To all of the Rensselaer Club of New Jersey members who are visiting our Web Site for the first time, welcome. You are a member of the most active, best organized regional alumni chapter in the United States. The best way to keep up with what we are doing is to sign up as a new user of the RCNJ Web Site and join one of our mailing lists. Then, once you begin to see what we do, contact one of the leadership committee members and get involved."

Continue reading "Rensselaer Mails First RCNJ Chapter Alert for the 2000-2001 School Year" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those of you who have been interested in posting comments on our stories, we believe we have fixed the comment submission problem reported by John Cloninger. A technical explanation of the fix is on ctdata.com.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave Aiello wrote, "John Cloninger reported that he received an error message when he tried to submit a comment to the article called A New Year Assessment of the RCNJ Web Site. I replied that I had seen this error pop up once in a while, but needed more details of what he did in order to trigger the error."

"So, if you experience the same problem, please email me the details at dave_aiello@ctdata.com."

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Rensselaer Club of New Jersey Web Site was discussed on a Web Site that is popular with members of an Open Source development community. The Web Site, Slashcode.com, is the official Web Site of the Slashcode project. The programs that are used to manage RCNJ.org are derived from an older version of the Slashcode code base.

This is important because information from the Slashcode Web Site is syndicated to other Web Sites that are popular within the Linux developer community. We have often found in the past that there are software developers in the Metropolitan New York and Delaware Valley areas that are RPI graduates and do not know that RCNJ.org exists. Getting stories posted to other Web Sites is one way to reach that group.

Continue reading "Open Source Web Site Discusses RCNJ.org" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Whether you are a long time member of the RCNJ Mailing List or someone looking to join the Mailing List for the first time, you must follow a new procedure to receive regular e-mail from us.

Click "Read More..." to get all the details.

Continue reading "How Do I Join the RCNJ Mailing List?" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Rensselaer Club of New Jersey, otherwise known as the RCNJ, is the New Jersey Chapter of the Rensselaer Alumni Association. It is an organization created to serve over 3,500 Rensselaer alumni living and working in the State of New Jersey.

The current President of the RCNJ is Dave Aiello, '89, from Denville, NJ. He is the Founder and President of Chatham Township Data Corporation, a Web Development company. Dave was preceded as president by Rob Mauriello, '90 and Phil Lurie, '74.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)