Split (1)

validation · 2k rows

text stringlengths 202 433k	meta dict
Miscellaneous These are perfect as a cake topper, party favor or add to your dessert buffet ... they have a delicious fruity flavor .... Diameter: 3/4 inches Licking Length: 4.0 inches Weight: .42 ounces Please Note: Due to the interenet there are color limitations... Unicorn Lolly Small These are perfect as a cake topper, party favor or add to your dessert buffet or as a horn on your unicorn cakes ... they have a delicious fruity flavor .... Diameter: 3/4 inches Licking Length: 4.0 inches Weight: 1 ounces. ... Use these fun sour belt streamer candys to create a rainbow effect on your cake and cupcakes ... You can also use them as a party favor for added fun !! They are approx 8 1/4" long ... 10 pcs. They may not be exactly as shown. Note: This product... Pirate Coin Chocolate ( 6 pc ) Have fun finding this cool treasure on your pirate themed cakes,cupcakes and more ... 6 pcs of chocolate coins that are foil wrapped. Can also be used for St Patricks's Day as a pot of gold Sugar, whole milk... Fries Gummy Candy Add some fun on your cakes and cupcakes with these gummy fries .. they are alot of fun to use as a cake topper, border and more .. 1 pc Please Note: Due to the interenet there are color limitations and also manufacturing... Hamburger Gummy Candy Add some fun on your cakes and cupcakes with these gummy hamburger .. they are alot of fun to use as a cake topper, border and more .. 1 pc Please Note: Due to the interenet there are color limitations and also... Hotdogs Gummy Candy Add some fun on your cakes and cupcakes with these gummy fries .. they are alot of fun to use as a cake topper, border and more .. 1 pc Please Note: Due to the interenet there are color limitations and also manufacturing... Pizza Gummy Candy Add some fun on your cakes and cupcakes with these gummy pizza .. they would be a fun addition to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Cake .... they are alot of fun to use as a cake topper, border and more .. 1 pc Please Note:... These pretzels are 7 " long and great for dipping, favors, chocolate, and more ... oh ya they are yummy to eat too !!! :) .. there is approx 25 per bag .... Please Note: We take great care in packaging your pretzel rods for shipping. Unfortunately, we... Rola Cola 1/2" Candy Balls Add some fun on your cakes and cupcakes with these rola cola candy balls as a border or even a party favor .. these are 1/2" diameter. Please Note: Due to the interenet there are color limitations and also... Rola Cola 1/4" Candy Balls Add some fun on your cakes and cupcakes with these rola cola candy balls as a border or even a party favor .. these are 1/4" diameter. Please Note: Due to the interenet there are color limitations and also... Wafer Paper ( 10 pcs ) Wafer paper, also known as rice paper, can be easily manipulated and dyed to match any occasion. It can be shaped into things like flowers, or it can stay in its original form as flat paper to create an image. It is edible...	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
You should now have an image that looks like this: (image sized reduced for faster loading) Use your magic wand tool set to a tolerance of 20 to select a part of the black on the design. Then select similar parts of the design. ("Selections"..."Modify"..."Select Similar") Pick a color you would like your stamped image to be. Make a note of the RGB values by clicking once on the color palette. I chose Red 195, Green 161, Blue 199. Write this down. While your image is still selected, apply the Emboss Works Color Tint filter ("Effects"..."Plug-in Filters"..."Emboss Works"..."Colour Tint") using these settings: (either highlight the sliders and use your arrow keys or highlight inside the little boxes and type in your RGB values) While your image is still selected, add a drop shadow with Eye Candy ("Effects"..."Plug-in Filters"..."Eye Candy"..."Drop Shadow") using these settings:	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Description An exclusive platform to read addictive stories and meet friends. Tried to make an effort to pull out of your day-to-day routine? Meeting new people is a great breakthrough point. StoryFriend is a community dedicated to helping you find new friends. Not only a place for excellent stories but also a good way to know more friends: - Fun capture games to meet authors; - Read his/her chat stories; - Follow the authors for the fresh stories; - Meet interesting friends. Sounds fun? Yeah. We also provide advanced experience. - Totally free capture games - Capture success guaranteed - Unlimited refresh - Access to the full stories of all authors - Unlock top authors list - Remove Ads Subscription options for premium membership service: 1-month subscription with auto renewal: $19.99 3-month subscription: $79.99 6-month subscription: $119.99 **Prices are in U.S. dollars, may vary in countries other than the U.S. and are subject to change without notice. Please note that with all premium subscriptions: • Payment will be charged to iTunes Account at confirmation of purchase • Subscription automatically renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24-hours before the end of the current period • Account will be charged for renewal within 24-hours prior to the end of the current period, and identify the cost of the renewal • Subscriptions may be managed by the user and auto-renewal may be turned off by going to the user's Account Settings after purchase • Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription to that publication, where applicable See more about our privacy policy and terms of use: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bobhuyj/resource/master/Privacy-Policy https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bobhuyj/resource/master/terms Screenshots Reviews Awesome app 5 By DontWorry134 This app is great go for it Works so good 5 By Nafisa.A 👍 Awesome app ! 5 By alex_taboo Great app! Only thing I wish there were more games to play to receive coins .other than that I’m satisfied !	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
The GP took time to listen to me and understood my concerns on this visit. I've always had good care from GPs in the practice and also all the practice nurse. Reception staff are always helpful and accommodating where possible.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Monday, April 12, 2010 A readers poll from the Oakland Tribune shows overwhelming support for keeping the A's in Oakland. 74 percent of respondents were against the A's moving, while just 26 percent were in favor. Let's be clear, the poll was as unscientific as it gets. Yet, it's just one more sign that Oakland and East Bay residents strongly support keeping the A's in Oakland. Somehow, it was fitting that the poll results ran next to a letter to the editor from the event director of the Oakland Running Festival. That event was wildly successful, and it proved that Oakland officials and residents will step up to the plate and more-than-adequately support big events. Like, ahem, a new waterfront ballpark. But our favorite letter to the editor actually accompanied the strong poll numbers published by the Tribune. It was written by our friend, Jorge Leon. Here it is: JUST SAY NO Please don't take our A's away! As an Oakland A's fan, I would be brokenhearted and would not follow the A's if they were to move. If the team moves, you will erase a great history and tradition here in the city of Oakland, I've been an A's fan since '88. The only good thing my father gave me was the passion to love my A's. We have potential here to be even greater than we are right now! Lew Wolff has potential to become a great owner if he would just work with the community and keep the A's in Oakland, but I guess greed for the green plays a lot, too. I just feel bad for the Haas family. Knowing then that the owner now would be trying to move the team, Walter Haas would've never sold the team for a discount price. No, please don't go: 42 great years! Keep it going. I live and die with my Oakland A's. I/we dont want our Oakland Athletics to leave Oakland, California!! I/we would be broken Heart'd, I'm sure as Many Die Hard Fans would be. I have a long history with the A's, since they came to town! My late Mom started taking me to A's Baseball Games since the beginning. At 5 goin on 6 years of age the memories started to stick. I'm 46 now do the math, its all I've known. I have memories of clapping/shouting, "Lets Go A's" .. "Lets Go Oakland" Waving that felt Flag. Memories of that loud BANG! from fireworks everytime one of our players hit a Homerun. Even befor/after the game mom would take me to the Tuttle House Coffee shop on Seminary and E.14th were the player's used to hange out to get autographs. Its not there anymore, but when I drive by there it brings back memories. I have many memories of the A's, Historical or not. I have made many freinds hanging at tailgates. I grew up a few miles from the Colisium. Born and raised in Oakland! I havent stopped representing since, Till this day! Heck, we used to cut school to go to day games. I introduced my Children to the game to carry on the tradition, Even bringing back the Flag to the LF Bleachers, waving it high with PRIDE! Representing my beloved A's. I stopped attending A's games a few years ago becouse of the threat from the new owners trying to take them away... But I realized I cant let em get away with it! So now I'm makin a comback! To represent my Oakland Athletics! Keep'Em in Oakland! The Hass Family sold the team with a Adendom, That the team stay in Oakland. I thought this to be true, I was happy about this. Whatever happin to that loyalty? Please Lew Wolf and Company, Honer this, Be loyal, as many of us our and Keep our/your A's in Oakland. Our team has the last stadium in the MLB league with a multi purpouse stadium/colisium, Why? The Giants have been in the Bay Area For a Decade Longer than The Athletics, They have a New Ball Park and they arent as near successful as our A's! We have 4 World Championships - 6 American Titles - 14 American League Titles while in Oakland!!! Dont you think The A's, us Fans and The City of Oakland Deserve The Same? Build it, and they will come!! "KEEP OUR ATHLETICS IN OAKLAND"	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Low profile beams to provide more storage space between shelves. Double rivet beams at top and bottom of unit form a rigid structure. Shelves are adjustable in 1-1/2" increments. No nuts, bolts or shelf clips. For garage, industrial, basement, warehouse and office. 3/8" particle board decking. 16 gauge posts. Can be assembled as a 72" unit or Two 36" workbenches. 800 lbs. weight capacity per shelf. Low profile beams to provide more storage space between shelves. Double rivet beams at top and bottom of unit form a rigid structure. Shelves are adjustable in 1-1/2" increments. No nuts, bolts or shelf clips. For garage, industrial, basement, warehouse and office. 1/4" MDF decking. Commercial strength 16 gauge posts. Can be assembled as a 60" unit or two 30" workbenches. 450 lbs. weight capacity per shelf. Low profile beams to provide more storage space between shelves. Double rivet beams at top and bottom of unit form a rigid structure. Shelves are adjustable in 1-1/2" increments. No nuts, bolts or shelf clips. For garage, industrial, basement, warehouse and office. 3/8" particle board decking. 16 gauge posts. Can be assembled as a 72" unit or Two 36" workbenches. 800 lbs. weight capacity per shelf. Low profile beams to provide more storage space between shelves. Double rivet beams at top and bottom of unit form a rigid structure. Shelves are adjustable in 1-1/2" increments. No nuts, bolts or shelf clips. For garage, industrial, basement, warehouse and office. 1/4" MDF decking. Commercial strength 16 gauge posts. Can be assembled as a 60" unit or two 30" workbenches. 450 lbs. weight capacity per shelf.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Thursday, 24 November 2016 Fibbing about Father Christmas Today has been a day of BBC radio interviews asking my reaction to an article in a couple of the national newspapers about the long-term damage to children being ‘lied’ to about the existence of Father Christmas.The authors of a piece in The Lancet (Prof Christopher Boyle from the University of Exeter and Dr Kathy McKay from the University of New England in Australia) claim that lying about Father Christmas and the subsequent discovery by the child of the lie destroys the trust between parent and child.Whoa! That’s quite a claim if I do say so myself.As a psychotherapist, I have heard a lot of stories about the traumas of Christmas, but never in my career have I heard anyone talk about how damaged they felt at being lied to about Father Christmas.The authors claim that when children find out their parents have lied about Father Christmas then the bond of trust is broken because, what else have they been lied to about. Granted, the authors say their theory isn’t based on observation but is theoretical so there isn’t actually a body of research to back up the claim.It’s still worth unpicking to see if there is any merit in the argument.Is fibbing about Father Christmas really worse than fibbing about the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny or any other fantasy characters children embrace when they are young? When you think about it, parents lie to their children all the time, often for their own (the child’s) well-being: “Can I watch another film? Please, please, please? “Oh, it looks like the video isn’t working any more; let’s read a bedtime story instead.” And so on. We sprinkle our communication with lies for convenience, protection, expediency - any number of reasons – and children do survive these lies unscathed.Let’s get serious for a moment. There are far more damaging behaviours that parents do to create long-term harm to their children including physical, sexual or emotional abuse; consistently not keeping their word; malicious lying. If we’re concerned about the breakdown of trust that’s where our attention should be.Personally, I’m not keen on parents using Father Christmas as a threat (“he knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake”), but it seems very reasonable to join children in their pretend world till it isn’t pretend anymore.Children thrive on fantasy, on make believe, on using their imaginations to create their unique worlds and often long after they have learned the ‘truth’ about Santa Claus, they enjoy perpetuating the myth for the next lot coming up.In just about every interview I had today, I was asked what parents should say if their children ask if Father Christmas is real. The answer was the same, ask the child what he or she thinks; ask what they like about Father Christmas and what makes them think he isn’t real.Create a dialogue with your child rather than making it a question and answer session because dialogue helps them work things out for themselves in a way that works for their reality, not necessarily yours.This whole notion has felt like a tempest in a tea-pot and I for one will continue to support whatever myths the little ones around me have till they don’t believe them any more and they’re on to something else.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
This Lakers-Inspired Air Jordan 9 Is Another Nod To Kobe Bryant’s Illustrious Career Kobe Bryant’s entire professional basketball career of 20 years has been nothing short of historic and it was shocking for many when he made the announcement that he would be retiring from the sport. Whispers about Kobe’s impending retirement had been heard for months, but it still ultimately seemed like the retirement came rather unexpectedly, so much so that even his own coach was shocked. Jordan Brand paid homage to the Black Mamba and his illustrious career by introducing an exclusive Air JordanKobe Pack. Now they are back with a more general release, which also appears to be a nod to Kobe and the Air Jordan 9. Certainly, Kobe Bryant must have received countless gifts upon his retirement, but it is unlikely any of them were as awesome and unique as the one from Snoop Dogg. Kobe represented the Los Angeles Lakers for 20 seasons before retiring from the sport back in April of this year. Kobe Bryant recently shared a photo on his Twitter account (@kobebryant) of the “Unbelievable retirement gift” Snoop gave to him, a ’67 Pontiac dressed up in the Gold and Purple official team colors of the L. A. Lakers. The car hood features Kobe himself with other legendary former members of the Lakers. Kobe Bryant is one of those few NBA athletes who have played for a single team throughout their entire careers. Therefore, sneakerheads could have guessed what colors the Air Jordan 9 featured here would have been dressed up in even if the photos above were not accompanying this post. The premium leather uppers of this sneaker are predominantly clean White, while the signature patent leather overlays of this model are covered in a bold Purple hue. This Purple hue also appears over the entire collar sections, its midsoles and its rear portions. Last but not least, the mini Jumpman logo that is visible over its heels is covered in Metallic Gold. This probably seems more like a gift to Jordanheads, yet it is also evidence that Jordan Brand has not forgotten the Black Mamba and it is likely he will continue to be remembered for long to come. So far, there have been no clues whether or not this Lakers-inspired Air Jordan 9 will be among 2016’s Air Jordan releases, so stay tuned. Recent Posts Stay with sneakersdog for the latest and most accurate Jordan release dates in May 2020… April 2020May 2020 June 2020 Air Jordan 1 Low “Palm Tree” Light Orewood Brown/Amarillo-White-Laser Blue Release Date: May 1,... Stay with sneakersdog for the latest and most accurate Jordan release dates in April 2020… March 2020April 2020 May 2020 Air Jordan 5 GS “Easter” White/Laser Crimson-Voltage Purple Release Date: April 3rd, 2020 CT1605-100... Stay with sneakersdog for the latest and most accurate Jordan release dates in December 2019… November 2019December 2019 January 2020 Air Jordan 12 White/Dark Grey-Gym Red Release Date: December 2nd, 2019 130690-160 \| $190... Stay with sneakersdog for the latest and most accurate Jordan release dates in November 2019… October 2019November 2019 December 2019 Air Jordan 1 High FlyEase Black/Gym Red-White-Black Release Date: November 1, 2019 CQ3835-001 \|... Stay with sneakersdog for the latest and most accurate Jordan release dates in October 2019… September 2019October 2019 November 2019 Air Jordan 12 GS Racer Pink/Hot Punch-Bright Mango-White Release Date: October 4th, 2019 510815-601... Stay with sneakersdog for the latest and most accurate Jordan release dates in September 2019… August 2019September 2019 October 2019 Jordan Why Not Zer0.2 “Own The Chaos” Multi-Color/Multi-Color-Multi-Color Release Date: September 3rd, 2019 CT5786-900... [ecwid_product id=”149382115″ display=”picture title price options addtobag” version=”2″ show_border=”0″ show_price_on_button=”0″ center_align=”1″] This was the second Air Jordan 4 Retro released, made in collaboration with the famed artist, Kaws. Identical to the “Cool... [ecwid_product id=”149370047″ display=”picture title price options addtobag” version=”2″ show_border=”0″ show_price_on_button=”0″ center_align=”1″] Air Jordan 1 “Homage To Home” are definitely one of the most concerned footwear in recent years, which has combined Air...	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
When I was single, my mother painted the whole kitchen pink. Because when we’d bring the guys in afterward for coffee she figured a pink kitchen … pink… would put a little glow on the puss. We didn’t get married, but four maids ran off with the delivery men. Get our retrolicious free newsletter. Comments My childhood home was built in 1959 – we moved into it when we were transferred from Coronado, California, to Washington, DC. The kitchen – pink fridge, dish washer, wall oven and stovetop. The countertop was pink linen formica. Cabinets were maple. The wall paper had an 1800’s scene with carriages and people in top hats. When I moved my dad out of there in ’03 the countertops were still the pink linen. I wonder what the new owners have done to it! That was a fun little comedic annecdote in the show. I loved Joan Rivers! She’s a bit “different” now (since all the cosmetic surgery) but in her early days she was one of the funniest comediennes out there, and a trail-blazing woman in show business. I have such respect for her.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
In mrgybe's example concerning the Tran's estate, I question why his sons sold the business when new investors could potentially be brought in. Of course, the relative value of the business/estate must be substantiated legally, with some possible portion interpreted to be salable in the end. It's not clear why a total exit was the only alternative. More importantly, it appears like the senior Mr. Tran was a bit short sided on his estate management, as I'm thinking that there were undoubtedly many other viable avenues available to better protect inheritable assets. Of course mrgybe's comment is a straw man as well. There are ways to shelter family businesses, such as creating partnerships along the way. Tax reform in the past has in particular made it possible for farm owners to pass their holdings along to heirs that want to stay in the business. I think those reforms all make sense. In mrgybe's example, rhetorical as it is, the heirs get $3.25 million after taxes. I should weep for them? What percentage of the US wealth spectrum does that put them at? 95th or 98th? Its not onlt that. If the Business was a limted partnership, with his sons as partners, when Tran passed, the tab would be much smaller. If Tran had planned ahead everything would have been ok, but he was the sole owner of the asset, and that is where he erred. I think this country has always had the best incentives for making money and always will. People move here from all parts to grab a slice of the dream, and that will never change, and we've had an estate tax for many many decades of outrageous growth. An exemption in the 2.5-4.5M range is fair. The consensus seems to be that it's OK to keep accumulated wealth provided one is sufficiently sophisticated to put proper estate planning in place........but if one does not possess that sophistication, then it's OK for the government to take the lion's share of a lifetime's effort. Gates, Buffet etc. will likely not pay estate taxes........but an incredibly hardworking, unsophisticated, first generation immigrant will.....and lose the business in the process. Compassion anyone? Incidentally, this is not a straw man..........I estimated the numbers, but otherwise this is real. Oh, and one of the son's in this delightful and very traditional family, was so ashamed at "losing" the business his father had spent his lifetime building, that he left the US and took his own family back to Vietnam. No tears here. He and his family could not have done what they did anywhere else on the planet . And setting up an LP is not estate planning, its just one choice for titling a business. I think one must think long and hard what the outcome would be without any estate taxes. 90% of the heirs of wealthy families are not ambitious, or incentivized to work hard. im not sure if thats because they have tons of money, which they buy good Humbolt buds with or they would rather wait til their parents croak. Wealth redistribution has always, and will always be part of the Western Socialist economic structure. Many, myself included, believe that by lifting someone up, helps to create a more fluid economy. If we pass the bulk of net worth on from family to family, maybe the USA would resemble Saudi Arabia some day. Mr. G. Im always perplexed how those on the right vilify Gates and Buffett, two of Americas greatest capitalists of ALL time.....seems wacked. And setting up an LP is not estate planning, its just one choice for titling a business. Your lack of understanding of the topics on which you apparently advise clients, is truly breathtaking. What is a Family Limited Partnership? January 18, 2010 at 3:19 pm by Anthony Medico, Estate Planning Attorney What is a Family Limited Partnership? The Family Limited Partnership (FLP) is a limited partnership created to transfer ownership of assets to family members with a minimum of tax consequences. The FLP is designed to lower the value of your investments and assets (for estate tax purposes) while still allowing you to maintain full control of your estate inside the limited partnership. It works particularly well to transfer a family business, real estate or an investment portfolio to the next generation.It helps to reduce estate taxes — and to reduce the risk that assets would need to be sold to pay those taxes. You're missing my point. If Mr. Tran set a limited partnership, his children would not have inherited the asset , they would have been OWNERS of the asset. Is this not hard to understand? If you want to contunue to attack attack attack, have at it. But remember, you, Mr. G. bid us farewell last Spring, and now you are back, full of bile. Take a deep breath, be happy to be in America, and enjoy paying taxes like the rest of us. Mr. G I enjoy the debate, but you constantly seem to attack on technicalities, and me , or Mac, or anyone else on the left who is not a wordsmith. My point is the argument gets buried, and you just shove it down my throat. I have ZERO sympathy, ZERO, for someone who prospers in business, but does not take neccessary steps to insure to continuity of his/her business , simple steps. you call them sophisticated Estate planning steps, I disagree. Mr. Tran's son went back to VietNam with millions of dollars, and he made it in the USA, not Thailand, not China, not England, not Australia. mrgybe uses one of the tricks of the right wing, quoting something that you didn't say to disagree with you and ridicule your position. Buried, of course, under a surface veneer of British civility. Here he says: Quote: The consensus seems to be that it's OK to keep accumulated wealth provided one is sufficiently sophisticated to put proper estate planning in place........but if one does not possess that sophistication, then it's OK for the government to take the lion's share of a lifetime's effort. No such consensus. What we are saying is there is ample room in the tax code system for any business to protect a substantial amount of the capital, and the viability of the business, from estate taxes. Indeed, the lion's share of the example's assets pass on to the heirs. If their work helped build the business, they would or should have an ownership interest that could readily be protected. So his "consensus" is fake, created for snarky rhetorical value. Let me be clear. I favor tax policies that would apply equally to the Bush, Clinton and Kennedy families, that would tax a reasonable amount of their inherited wealth when it is inherited. The Republicans, when given authority didn't simply increase the amount that could be protected, it let it all pass without taxation. Kind of like peerage. If mrgybe wants to argue for a fairer taxation system, he might find me agreeing with him--but challenging him to be specific, and to be politically feasible. Snarky comments, with only a veneer of civility, irritate the hell out of me. Living trusts do not reduce inheritance taxes for subsequent beneficiaries. boggsman1 wrote: If the Trust is set up correctly, the spouse can avoid a portion of the inheritance tax, under a certain amount, BUT a Trust does NOT avoid the eventuality of the inheritance tax, when its passed on to the heirs. boggsman1 wrote: And setting up an LP is not estate planning, its just one choice for titling a business. My comments are not mere wordsmithing. All of the quotes above are fundamental misstatements. Coming as they do from a professed subject matter expert, they could lead a reader of this forum, or a client, to take actions, or to fail to take them, which could cost them huge amounts in estate taxes. Mr G . Its not likely that one of my fellow Bay Area windsurfers is going to plan his Estate based on a forum on iwindsurf.com. So, if you want to brow beat me continue to do so, if you get off on it, Im happy to lift your spirits. If you want to have a discussion about the subject matter, then I welcome it...it does not appear to be the case. BTW- item #1 is still factually correct, #2 was a mistake, #3 was a misstatement, you know what I meant, you just chose to avoid the topic, which was the laziness, or ignorance of the hard working Vietnamese man. bye You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forumYou cannot attach files in this forumYou cannot download files in this forum	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
The ramblings of a creative mind. Follow along and perhaps you'll learn a thing or two! Wednesday, April 2, 2014 Walking a Straight Line Or maybe a diagonal one. I've seen so many cards lately with diagonal patterns so I assumed it must be a trend. I'm not one to follow trends, but I thought I'd try my hands at it. For this card, I laid (lied, lay..whatever..grammar is not my strong point) strips of red line adhesive strips on a 4 x 5 1/4 piece of ivory cardstock. I undid the strips one by one and applied Martha Stewart Glitter to each strip in a rainbow pattern. I used the Winged Wished stamp set from Newton's Nook Designs in the middle and paper pieced the "party flag". So cute, so sparkly, so graphic, so diagonal!	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Professor Sherman tries to set up Felicity with her son, who is several years older. Julie suggests that it might be a good idea to date a guy without worrying about the prospect of a long-term relationship. Felicity rearranges her work schedule to avoid Ben. While looking over the course catalog with freshman advisee Ruby, Felicity laments the fact that she is no longer able to pursue her interest in art.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Don’t risk a dodgy DIY repair if you suffer a punctured tyre There are times when a ‘make do and mend’ mentality is called for, like wrapping a bit of sticky tape round the arm of a pair of broken glasses or gluing the handle back on a favourite coffee mug. However, these are the last things you want to do if you suffer a punctured tyre…and if you think that is stating the obvious, take a look at this photo snapped by one of our etyres Milton Keynes and Luton tyre fitters. The customer had suffered a damaged sidewall resulting in a puncture, but instead of replacing it with the spare or pulling over to safety immediately, the driver patched it up with some glue and sellotape, so they could continue driving on it! Fortunately, the driver contacted our etyres team before the situation got any worse and led to an accident, but there is a time and a place for a dodgy DIY job and it is not when it comes to your tyres. etyres offer a mobile puncture repair service, which means we come to you so you don’t have to risk causing further damage to your punctured tyre or wheel by driving to a garage or tyre depot for a repair. All our puncture repairs are carried out in compliance with the British Standard BS AU 159 and our fitters will always remove the tyre from the wheel to fully inspect any damage and judge whether a puncture can be safely repaired or not. We are happy to report that in our experience around 60 per cent of all punctures examined can be repaired safely and spare you the cost of having to buy a brand new tyre. So if you suffer a damaged tyre, remember to stick to the experts and call etyres immediately to book our puncture repair service.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Garden Level and Atrium Wings In the original design, the central rotunda area of the garden level was a dark and often damp basement. The building restoration has transformed the area into the central welcoming place for visitors, with an interpretive exhibit, gift shop, and visitor information desk. Great Seal of the State of Idaho Original state seal painting byEmma Edwards Green Notice the Great Seal of the State of Idaho on the floor of the central rotunda. Adopted in 1891 by the state legislature, the original seal was designed by Emma Edwards Green and is the only state seal designed by a woman. The Latin motto Esto perpetua means “May it endure forever.” The miner represents the chief industry at the time the seal was created, while the woman holding scales represents justice, freedom, and equality. Atrium Wings Senate wing skylight From the central rotunda area, look east and west. You can see a full city block and take in the view of an impressive engineering achievement – the underground atrium wings. These wings were constructed to provide additional space for legislative committee hearing rooms, where the public can participate directly in the legislative process. The wings preserve the integrity of the building’s architecture and improve the functionality of the building. As you explore the new wings, look up. Glass skylights run the length of the central corridors and offer a view of the Capitol dome. These skylights – specially engineered and designed for this project – are consistent with the vision of the original architects and provide a seamless bond between the old and new. The skylights are made of fritted glass – a clear safety glass fired with a pattern of dots for the purpose of shading and lowering solar gain – making artificial light unnecessary in some corridors during the summer and some sunny winter days. Senate hearing rooms and offices are located in the west wing, and House hearing rooms and offices are in the east wing. A large 240-seat auditorium, shared by the Senate and House, is also located in the west wing. As you walk to the west wing, notice the original basement vault doors. These vaults were once used for record storage. All of the original vault doors remain in the building. Vaults The doors to the Visitor Welcome Room and to the lobbyists’ room are some of the original basement vault doors. The basement vaults were originally used to store paper records. There was never any money stored in them. Underground Tunnel Several buildings within the Capitol Mall are connected by an underground tunnel. This tunnel allows state employees to move between the Capitol and a handful of other buildings without having to go outside. It connects the mail room, print shop, and facility services functions as well. The tunnel runs beneath State Street. The tunnel is not open to the public in order to best maintain security.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
ConvertKit is specifically designed with creative people in mind, and that’s why we’ve chosen it as our email marketing software here at Copyblogger. Any member of our editorial team — no matter how technically challenged — can easily perform any task that needs to be done, including sending messages, creating automated sequences, using tags for message segmentation, reviewing analytics, and identifying personalization opportunities. I think this email also makes quite a brilliant use of responsive design. The colors are bright, and it's not too hard to scroll and click -- notice the CTAs are large enough for me to hit with my thumbs. Also, the mobile email actually has features that make sense for recipients who are on their mobile device. Check out the CTA at the bottom of the email, for example: The "Open Stitcher Radio" button prompts the app to open on your phone. 4. Make Links Clear and Visible & Use Text Links: Make sure that all links to your product purchasing pages are clear and visible. When possible, default to blue, underlined links for easy user recognition. Though in web design it is often unadvisable to use the words "click here" in a link, in email design it typically is more effective to use the words "click here." Make sure that your links are text links and not image-based links as images may not appear in all emails. Lead generation is a win-win for both the buyer and seller. Buyers can request information from several businesses that offer the product or service that they are looking for, then the seller is given the opportunity to make its pitch to people who have given their permission. These are some of the hottest leads. Conversion rates on leads received in this way generally have a much higher success rate than cold contacts. These metrics give you a high-level overview of how your subscribers are interacting with your campaigns and allow you to compare the success of one campaign to another. If you want to go deeper and see the exact people who opened and clicked your campaign, what links they clicked, etc. you can do so by choosing some of the other reports from the right hand side menu. Did you know that 74% of companies that weren’t exceeding revenue goals didn't know their visitor, lead, MQL, or sales opportunities numbers? How about that over 70% of companies not achieving their revenue goals generate fewer than 100 leads per month, and only 5% generate more than 2,500 leads per month? These are just a few examples of what you’ll find in the report. Lead generation is not a new form of acquiring a business, but business trends and time necessities have found a better way to get new clients. Rather than sitting at a trade show table for hours on end, or setting up a display in hopes that targeted consumers will complete a form, you can have leads generated and sent to you using available technology, all while you can direct your time elsewhere. Once you have a good mix of high-value content, including visual content, start promoting it on social channels. The more engagement you get, the more Google considers your content to be of high value, which in turn boosts your SEO rankings. Search engines look for natural links, so the more informative your content is, the more likely people will link to it naturally. Visitor Tracking: Hotjar has a heatmap tool — a virtual tool which creates a color-coded representation of how a user navigates your site — that helps you understand what users want, care about, and do on your site. It records visitors and tells you where they spend the most time on your site. You can use it to gather information on your lead generation forms, feedback forms and surveys, and more. What's the difference between them? One-off communications versus prolonged, email-based interactions. For example, email marketing tools are excellent for one-off communications. You can use these tools for the one time you'd like to send someone an automated email response when they join a subscriber list, on their birthday, or when you promote a new product. But marketing automation tools are better suited for prolonged, email-based interactions. For example, you can use marketing automation tools whenever you want to guide someone from a subscriber list to a product purchase. Or you can send thank you emails or send new product promotions—all without having to lift a finger after the workflow is designed. Not only is InVision's newsletter a great mix of content, but I also love the nice balance between images and text, making it really easy to read and mobile-friendly -- which is especially important, because its newsletters are so long. (Below is just an excerpt, but you can read through the full email here.) We like the clever copy on the call-to-action (CTA) buttons, too. Essentially, you can tell Office Autopilot what to do if certain things occur. For example, if a customer places an order, you can send an order to your fulfillment house to fulfill that order. Or if a customer leaves, you can send them a last minute special offer. Just select the trigger for the action, then select what list it applies to then select what to do when that action is trigger. 5. Use Personalization Fields: While always important in email marketing, because an auto-responder list can not be easily segmented, be sure to use the features of your email marketing program, such as those at Comm100, that allow you to personalize fields within your auto responder email with the subscriber's first name, handle, user name or other submitted information. Let’s begin by with the definition of a lead. What does a lead mean to your company? Many companies have different definitions depending on their sales cycle, but standard definition is a qualified potential buyer who shows some level of interest in purchasing your product or solution. For the leads that fill out a form, they often do so in exchange for some relevant content or a compelling offer. Whether you already have a list of subscribers or are starting from scratch, email marketing services can help. All of the services we cover let you add contacts manually using copy and paste or by uploading CSV or Microsoft Excel files. Some integrate with third-party software enabling you to import Gmail and other webmail contacts, Salesforce.com and other customer relationship management (CRM) data, or other software where you might have contacts stored. Depending on the size and location of your list, third-party integration could be key. Verify whether you can export contacts as well (and how easy it is to do so) should you leave the service. Managing users who unsubscribe should also be easy so you're not accidentally contacting anyone who has opted out of your newsletters. Your website is where the magic happens. This is the place where your audience needs to convert. Whether it is encouraging prospective buyers to sign up for your newsletter or fill out a form for a demo, the key is to optimize your website for converting browsers into actual leads. Pay attention to forms, Calls-to-Action (CTA), layout, design, and content. What's the difference between them? One-off communications versus prolonged, email-based interactions. For example, email marketing tools are excellent for one-off communications. You can use these tools for the one time you'd like to send someone an automated email response when they join a subscriber list, on their birthday, or when you promote a new product. But marketing automation tools are better suited for prolonged, email-based interactions. For example, you can use marketing automation tools whenever you want to guide someone from a subscriber list to a product purchase. Or you can send thank you emails or send new product promotions—all without having to lift a finger after the workflow is designed. The only way this page could be better is if it showed some real gratitude to the new lead. “Yipee” might relate to the prospect’s emotion, but it doesn’t convey thanks on behalf of the brand. While your “thank you” page has a number of goals to accomplish, the first thing it should do is right in the name — say “thank you,” and make the lead feel like an invaluable part of the brand. Coupon: Unlike the job application, you probably know very little about someone who has stumbled upon one of your online coupons. But if they find the coupon valuable enough, they may be willing to provide their name and email address in exchange for it. Although it's not a lot of information, it's enough for a business to know that someone has interest in their company. I got an email today from a marketer…. subject line “Don’t Worry, I won’t email you again” Huh? I was never worried in the first place and is I found it insulting to my intellect to assume that in my daily busy life I would actually take the time to worry about a lame marketer trying to get under my skin. I’m not going to open it because it simply sounds pathetic and self serving. Maybe it’s me but I just don’t like time wasters and nonsensical drival. A warm call is much more valuable than a cold one. Many have already declared cold calling dead and would rather focus on warm leads because when you contact a warm lead, a person is expecting to hear from you or at least has shown some interest towards your business. This means that he or she is much more willing to listen to you and consider purchasing your offering since they have already considered you an option. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 was passed by Congress as a direct response to the growing number of complaints over spam e-mails.[citation needed] Congress determined that the US government was showing an increased interest in the regulation of commercial electronic mail nationally, that those who send commercial e-mails should not mislead recipients over the source or content of them, and that all recipients of such emails have a right to decline them. The act authorizes a US $16,000 penalty per violation for spamming each individual recipient.[17] However, it does not ban spam emailing outright, but imposes laws on using deceptive marketing methods through headings which are "materially false or misleading". In addition there are conditions which email marketers must meet in terms of their format, their content and labeling. As a result, many commercial email marketers within the United States utilize a service or special software to ensure compliance with the act. A variety of older systems exist that do not ensure compliance with the act. To comply with the act's regulation of commercial email, services also typically require users to authenticate their return address and include a valid physical address, provide a one-click unsubscribe feature, and prohibit importing lists of purchased addresses that may not have given valid permission.[citation needed] Whether you are hosting a small private function, a large-scale international tradeshow, or an executive-level webinar, event marketing needs to be an integral part of the lead generation mix. After all, events are a critical component of an outbound marketing strategy. Essentially, events offer you the chance to define your brand, clarify the solutions you provide, and establish personal connections with participants. And while they provide you with an invaluable opportunity to engage with prospects and customers, events also give attendees the chance to interact with each other. As every marketer knows, there is no better advertising than the direct words of a satisfied customer. Events also provide a venue to deliver speeches and content that convey your company’s thought leadership and raise your perception in the eyes of buyers. Compared to other marketing tactics, events are more likely to quickly turn a prospect into a strong lead. As a lively, interactive, educational forum, events position your business as a trusted leader in a field of many.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
22 comments: I selected The North Face.a)http://clifbar.ehclients.com/uploads/blog/free_solo_castleton_north_face.jpgb) Douglas Tompkins and Kenneth "Hap" Kloppc) equipment retail stored) The North Face this name was chosen because the north face of a mountain in the northern hemisphere is generally the most difficult face to climb. By the 1980s, skiwear was added to the line of products, and eventually camping equipment was added as well. The North Face is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the VF Corporation. Founded: 1 May 1947 as Malayan AirlinesCommenced Operations: 1 October 1972Changes it made that impacted the world: First to offer free headsets, a choice of meals and free drinks in Economy Class, in the 1970s First to introduce satellite-based inflight telephones in 1991 First to involve a comprehensive panel of world-renowned chefs, the International Culinary Panel, in developing inflight meals in 1998 First to offer audio and video on demand (AVOD) capabilities on KrisWorld in all classes in October 2001 First to operate the world’s longest non-stop commercial flight between Singapore and Los Angeles in February 2004 on the A340-500, and then surpassing the record (in terms of distance) later that year with the non-stop service to New York (Newark), in June 2004 First to fly the A380 from Singapore to Sydney on 25 October 2007 Singapore Airlines became the first airline to operate a B747-400 on a commercial flight across the Pacific. In May 2008, Singapore Airlines created history again by being the first carrier to operate an all-Business Class service between Asia and the USA with its launch of all-Business Class non-stop flights from Singapore to New York (Newark). How my selected brand evolved its product to understand its customers? Who: Bread Talk What:Bread Talk was incorporated in Singapore o 6 March 2003 as an investment holding public company. The company's Chairman, Dr. George Quek, first conceptualised "BreadTalk" in April 2000 when he saw an opportunity for starting a bakery selling freshly baked breads and buns which are visually creative and attractive. How the Brand has evolved:BreadTalk's first retail outlet commenced business on 1 July 2000 at Parco Bugis Junction. They opened their second retail outlet within the next five months in December 2000 at Novena Square. Their first retail outlet was situated in the HDB heartlands that was also opened in December 2000 at Junction 8 Shopping Centre. In 2001, they expanded their operations by opening another five retail outlets. When they first commenced operations, the whole baking process, from the preparation of the dough to the final topping of the bakery items, was done at each individual retail outlet. As their operations continued to grow, and in preparation for our franchising plans, they set up their central kitchen and shifted their corporate headquarters to their present premises at KA FoodLink, Kampong Ampat in September 2001. To expand their production capacity, they acquired more space, machinery and equipment in 2002. The expansion of their central kitchen was completed by November 2002. Over the last two years, BreadTalk have introduced many new varieties of breads, buns, cakes and pastries and we presently have launched more than 100 bakery items. Their specialty is their "see through" kitchen which allows customers to see their bread being made. BreadTalk also have their own "restaurant" now called 'Food Republic.' Besides food and bread, BreadTalk also expanded their Bread business. They have a small cafe called 'ToastBox' and a place where you can design your own cakes, 'Icing House'. I selected Converse.a) http://newhouseprssa.org/dev/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Converse-converse-1554611-2045-1333.jpgb) Marquis Mills Conversec) It's a shoe company.d) When the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, Converse shifted production to manufacturing rubberized footwear, outerwear, and protective suits for the military. Widely popular during the 1950s and 1960s, Converse promoted a distinctly American image with its Converse Yearbook. Artist Charles Kerins created cover art that celebrated Converse's role in the lives of high school and college athletes. Converse has become a fashionable shoe of choice for many celebrities including Demi Lovato, Kristen Stewart, who wore them on the red carpet. B)Who?Blizzard Entertainment was founded by three people, Michael "Mike" Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce. C) What?An American game developing company famous for many of its award winning products based in Irvine, California, USA with its parent company, Activision Blizzard based in Santa Monica, California, USA. D)How has it evolved?It was first created under the name 'Silicon & Synapse' for mainly game ports until 1993 when it started its own software production. In 1994, they were acquired by 'Davidson & Associates' and briefly changed its name to Chaos Studio before renaming as Blizzard Entertainment after finding out that another company the name Chaos already existed. Since then, it was sold, acquired and consumed into various companies such as CUC International, Cendant, Havas, Vivendi (under Vivendi Games) and finally consumed into the Activision Blizzard it now resides in. Its main production is its award winning franchises such as World of Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft. I selected Gibson Les Paul.a) http://gibsonlespaulstudio.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Gibson_Les_Paul_by_ToastMan85.jpgb) Lester William Polsfuss, also known as 'Les Paul'c) The No 1. Guitar brand in the market.d) Over the years, Gibson Guitar Corporation has evolved, from Orville Gibson innovating and inventing archtop guitars, to Les Paul inventing the Les Paul guitar, which literally made Rock n Roll possible, thus changing the face of rock music. A) nintendo is founded by Fusajiro YamauchiB)nintendo has created many video games which is considered one of the best in the worldC)in the past, it sells a playing card game called hanafuda, soon it was a success and later they went into other ventures such as a taxi company, a love hotel chain, a TV network, a food company. All this venture eventually failed . later , they went into the video game industry and created many famous games and till now, nintendo is still creates many best selling titles like mario, legend of zelda and kirby a) http://images.wikia.com/alienswarm/images/archive/2/28/20101024142338!800px-Valve_logo_svg.pngb) Valve was founded by former Microsoft employees, Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington.c) AN american game development and digital distribution company based in Kirkland, Washington.d) Valve evolved from developing games to making their own game engine and also a gaming social network of their own. c) Nike is an American multinational corporation that is engaged in the design , development and worldwide marketing and selling of footwear, apparel , equipment , accessories and services. d) The company started out as a sports shop named ' Blue ribbon sports' and now it has evolved into a $10.7 Billion brand , named ' Nike' And now Nike sponsors many high-profile athletes and sports teams around the world, with the highly recognized trademarks of "Just Do It " and the Swoosh logo. What: Student at the University of Texas at Austin in 1984, Michael Dell founded the company as PCs Limited with capital of $1000. Operating from Michael Dell's off-campus dormitory room at Dobie Center, the startup aimed to sell IBM PC-compatible computers built from stock components.Dell provides technology solutions, services and support. How it has evolved: Dell has since gone through significant priority shifts, internal company changes, and revamped their social media policy to the point where they actually have some of the highest customer service rankings of any company. This ensures that our customers connect with the experts who can address their unique issues and ultimately help them do and achieve more. Dell now has a full blow command center for listening to customer feedback and improving their company based on the opinions of their consumers. My brand is Levi's and its promise is far better than necessary that it has kept. It has improved its products for the customers such as creating the annual 'trade in you old jeans' event after realising that customers had old jeans that were too small jeans for them. This event allows Levi's to collect fabric and for the customers to clear space in their wardrobe, it is a win-win situation. I selected Coca-Cola.a) http://www.freshnetworks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Coca-cola.jpgb) John Pembertonc) A store that sells drinks, specifically Coke.d) In 1886, the recipe was developed and then had three businesses. It was also sold for relieving nausea and mild stomach aches. Then, cans of Coke were made. Two distinct versions of Coke came out, New Coke and Coca-Cola Classic, but new Coke stopped production quickly for the taste which was very different from original versions of Coke. It was then renamed back to Coca-Cola. What: Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. It provides products, technologies, software, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including customers in the government, health and education sectors. How it has evolved: HP has evolved a lot from when it was founded, their very first financially successful product being a precision audio oscillator to having successful lines of printers, scanners, digital cameras, calculators, PDAs, servers, workstation computers, and computers for home and small business use. There is also a HP IdeaLab to further provide a web forum on early-state innovations to encourage open feedback from consumers and the development community. What: Mojang is a Swedish independent video game developer founded in May 2009 under the name Mojang Specifications by Markus Persson, and most known for creating the popular indie game Minecraft. It is currently developing the games Scrolls and 0x10c, while continuing to update Minecraft. Mojang's company headquarters is in Stockholm. How it has evolved: Following a paid trip and employment offer from Valve Corporation in early September 2010, Markus Persson, Jakob Porsér, and Carl Manneh founded Mojang, as Persson desired to run a self-made independent studio for the continued development of Minecraft. Within a year, the company grew to a size of twelve employees, with their second video game, Scrolls, in development, as well as serving as the publisher of Cobalt. In 2011, Napster founder and former Facebook president Sean Parker offered to invest in Mojang, but was declined. By March 2012, the company had accumulated a net income of over $80 million. American global aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technology company with worldwide interests. How it has developed: Merger talks between Lockheed Corporation and Martin Marietta began in March 1994, with the companies announcing their $10 billion planned merger on August 30, 1994. The deal was finalized on March 15, 1995 when the two companies' shareholders approved the merger. The segments of the two companies not retained by the new company formed the basis for the present L-3 Communications, a mid-size defense contractor in its own right. Lockheed Martin later spun off the materials company Martin Marietta Materials.Both companies contributed important products to the new portfolio. Lockheed products included the Trident missile, P-3 Orion, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-22 Raptor, C-130 Hercules, A-4AR Fightinghawk and the DSCS-3 satellite. Martin Marietta products included Titan rockets, Sandia National Laboratories (management contract acquired in 1993), Space Shuttle External Tank, Viking 1 and Viking 2 landers, the Transfer Orbit Stage (under subcontract to Orbital Sciences Corporation) and various satellite models. Lockheed Martin made several successful projects since merger and is now working on the F-35 Lightning 2. What: IBM is a computer manufacturer which people trusted from the late 1880s until now. They manufacture not only computers, but computer hardware and softwares. They offer services from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. How it evolved:At first, their employees and computers were used for helping NASA in their space tracking systems.Later on, they came out with their first computer system family, the IBM System/360, which covers a wide range of application, from small to big, commercial and scientific. And with the new system, companies rewrite applications while upgrading their computer capabilities. Then they started coming out with personal computer and sold the PC business to Lenovo after a period of time. IBM now has surpassed Microsoft in the closing value of the company. How :has my selected brand evolved its product to understand its customers? Who: Valve What: Founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, Valve became famous from its critically acclaimed Half-Life series, (the first game released in November 1998). How the brand has evolved: After the success of Half-Life, the team worked on mods, spin-offs, and sequels, including Half-Life 2. All current Valve games are built on its Source engine, which owes much of its success to mods and sequels. The company has developed six game series: Half-Life, Team Fortress, Portal, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead and Day of Defeat. Valve is noted for its support of its games' modding community: most prominently, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, and Day of Defeat. Valve has branched out with this tradition to continue developing Dota 2 as the stand-alone sequel to the Warcraft III mod.Each of these games began as a third-party mod that Valve purchased and developed into a full game. They also distribute community mods on Steam. Since Valve Corporation's debut, it has expanded both in scope and commercial value. On January 10, 2008, Valve Corporation announced the acquisition of Turtle Rock Studios.On April 8, 2010, Valve won The Escapist Magazine's March Mayhem tournament for the best developer of 2010,beating out Zynga in the semi-final and BioWare in the finale. On August 1, 2012, Valve Corporation announced revisions to the Steam Subscriber Agreement (SSA) to prohibit class action lawsuits by users against the service provider. Alongside these changes to the SSA, the company also declared publicly the incorporation of Valve S.a.r.l., a subsidiary based in Luxembourg. In 2012, the company acquired Star Filled Studios a small video-game development company. Info taken from :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation Apple has expanded from a small corporation that Steve Jobs set up to a revolutionary worldwide company, its name known throughout the world. It was the first to create a computer, which have evolved into what they are now. It was the first to create an iPhone that merged a computer with a phone, along with a touchscreen, which a hundreds of thousands were sold. It always continues to update software, adding new functions and adapting to people's needs.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
, Welcome! This is a community for people interested in stories, icons, discussions, fanart and fiction involving the Supernatural TV show characters Dean Winchester and/or Layla Rourke. Submissions do not have to include both characters, but they do need to at least stem from the idea of some sort of interaction between them, or the episode "Faith." Other canon characters are acceptable as long as they conform to this idea. Remembering of course that the primary interaction or emphasis should stem from that between Dean and Layla or stemming from the episode, Faith, all types of entries are welcome at this time. Please post using the standard warnings for spoilers, as well as the following genre labels: het for heterosexual interaction or relationship, gen for general stories without emphasis on a relationship, RPF-gen or RPF-het for fiction involving any of the actors on the show (including Jensen and Julie). Not sure RPS belongs here, but if you're so motivated, fire away.slash for a story with homosexual interaction or relationship, and wincest for you-know-what interaction between Dean and Sam Winchester (or their other family members). Also, please rate your submission using the following standard ratings:G, PG, NC-17, R, and M (for Mature, strongest rating). BE CERTAIN TO F-LOCK YOUR POSTS TO THE COMMUNITY IF YOUR RATING IS NC-17 or higher. Be as specific as you can about anything your story contains, even if it is not the main emphasis, that others may find disturbing, including violence, sexual situations, strong language, death, and incest. If you have questions, feel free to email susannah at susannaheanes dot com and we'll get back to you swift as a Reaper.And have fun, Dean and Layla are glad you are here!.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
I love camping but one aspect I don’t love is the pesky mosquitoes. My poor middle daughter seems to get eaten alive no matter how much bug spray we put on her. So when I was contacted about trying the Thermacell Mosquito Repellent Lantern, I was happy to accept to see how well it worked on our recent camping trip to Kelley’s Island. When we scheduled our camping trip, I have to admit I was a bit worried about how my daughter would fare in the evenings around the campfire. So in addition to liberal amounts of bug spray, I was happy to put the Thermacell Mosquito Repellent Lantern to the test to see if it would provide adequate protection for my daughter. Thermacell makes quite a few different mosquito repellents. We received the Bristol lantern to test out. This model comes with the lantern, 3 mosquito repellent mats, and 1 butane cartridge. The lantern needs 3 AAA batteries, which are not Benefits of the Thermacell Mosquito Repellent Lantern The lantern uses allethrin to repel mosquitoes. Allethrin is a synthetic version of the natural repellent found in chrysanthemums. Set up is easy. It only takes a few minutes to get the lantern ready to start providing protection. The lantern provides odorless protection which is a vast improvement over mosquito repellent candles and citronella torches. There is no open flame, so you don’t have to worry about using it around little kids. The area of protection is large. One lantern will repel mosquitoes in a 15′ x 15′ space, which is more than adequate for most decks, patios, and campsites. It works really well. We used it for several evenings on our camping trip and did not once have problems with mosquitoes. I was impressed! A couple of things to note: You can’t use the lantern as your only source of light. Light attracts bugs at night time and this lantern is no exception. We tried to set it on the picnic table one evening and had to move it because we were getting bombarded with insects. The solution? Set it 5 feet away or so from where you are sitting. If you use this lantern regularly you will have to buy refills for the butane cartridge and the mosquito repellent mats. The lantern comes with one butane cartridge, which will last 12 hours. That will probably get us through the summer. However the mosquito repellent mats don’t last as long – on average only about 4 hours. So if you entertain or camp frequently you will probably want to have some refills on hand. Other uses for the Thermacell Mosquito Repellent Lantern In addition to camping, this lantern would be wonderful for any evening outdoor events – like watching the fireworks, attending an outdoor concert, or spending an evening at the lake. It would be also be great for providing protection for your summertime parties that extend in to the evening. It would provide excellent protection for your patio or backyard to keep your guests from getting eaten alive. You could also use it for protection while you do a little evening gardening. I always liked to garden as the sun was going down and things cooled down a bit, but the mosquitoes made it unbearable. Now I can set the lantern nearby and garden in peace! Want to try the Thermacell Mosquito Repellent Lantern for yourself? Order it directly from Thermacell. Use code FamilyGuide2016 at checkout on Thermacell.com to receive 20% off your order of $40 or more. Offer expires Dec. 31st, 2016. Buy it locally. You can check out their store locator to find a store near you. We saw it in Bed, Bath, and Beyond last night while we were there. I was really glad to have gotten to try the Thermacell mosquito repellent lantern. It definitely made evenings around our campsite a lot more pleasant. We have added it to our camping gear and will be taking it along on any future camping trips to ensure mosquitoes don’t ruin our fun. A big thank you to Thermacell for sending us a patio shield mosquito protection lantern to try on our recent camping trip. As always, all opinions are my own. No additional compensation was received. Leave a Comment Your Name : Your Comments : Please enter the two words you see below. If they're hard to read, get a new set of words by clicking the reload icon just to the right of the words.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
5 simple ideas to reboot the Toys R Us brand As my better half and I drove by a vacant, dusty former Toys R Us, I uttered: “That’s so sad”. My love looked at me and asked: “Is it, though”? Thinking for a moment, I concluded that the loss of the Toys R Us and Babies R Us brands are a complete and utter travesty. I know full well this comes from a very emotional place deep in my core. Toys are amazing. There are scores of action figures, Vinyl Pops and DC Comics statues littering every desk I use. As a child, Toys R Us was the place to get my action figure fix. From Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to every weird iteration of the Batman figures, Geoffrey the Giraffe had me covered. Those toys helped inform my creative thinking process as I crafted imaginary words where Panthro raced to rescue Junkyard Dog from the wrath of Juggernaut. Knowing that my daughter may not be able to run the aisles of a Toys R Us and have that same joy I did is pretty sad. There’s hope my fellow 80’s kids. Toys R Us via Engadget Toys R Usmay be able to return, as they stop their bankruptcy auction and aim to get the brand back up on its feet. My mind started racing thinking of all the ways I would help elevate the joyful brand to not only be competitive but also a must-visit destination. Keep the logos and the equity they hold The Toys R Us word mark holds a lot of brand equity. Many of the former Toys R Us kids are now adults with kids of their own. Seeing that logo is a reminder of simpler times. Back when you’d beg your parents for the newest plastic figure on the market. Be online always A major downfall of Toys R Us was its inability to embrace emerging technology, mainly digital shopping. It simply jumped on the bandwagon too late. By the time they entered the online game, they could not compete with the digital retail giants. Amazon, Target, and Walmart all dipped into the Toys R Us toy pool with better online experiences than TRU. The toy giant did little to stay relevant online. This time around, the new toy giant will need to put a heavy emphasis on their digital offerings. Whether that’s better pre-order bonuses for games (helping them compete with Amazon as Prime members lose pre-order bonuses), or offering exclusive online deals on the hottest piece of formed plastic on the market. The sky is the limit for the brand; they need to embrace the online space. Perhaps VR store tours for kids? I’m spit-balling here. Be like Nintendo. Create a 1st party toy line Nintendo is a brilliant company. It’s gaming consoles are supported by a dedicated, hardcore base of life-long fans. Whenever Nintendo announced a new Mario, Zelda, or god-help-us Metroid game, they print money before the game is even released. Sure the Wii and Switch have 3rd party and independent games on them, but the money-makers are more often than not a Mario Game. Nintendo owns Mario, making that a closed loop of endless revenue. Toys R Us needs a Mario. Embrace sideshow collectibles and other luxury toy brands I love a good Sideshow Collectible. Finding one in the wild is always a treat. Stores like Midtown Comics or Forbidden Planet in New York cater to folks like me. The adults with disposable income who enjoy the finer toys in life. Toys R Us can get in on this, using high-quality collectible figures as a means to get guys and gals like me back into their stores. The answer could be an offshoot brand called Toys R Us Gold, or Toys R Us Old. Again, I am spitballing. Hold Toy Cons for independent toy makers Conventions are big business. Every brand with a sizable audience invests in a meetup at some point or another. Comic-Con, Designer-Con, Digital Thinkers Conference. The sky is the limit. Just bring Toys R Us back already Whatever the proverbial “they”decide to do, having Toys R Us once more is a net positive for humanity. We can all use a little childish joy in our lives. That’s what Toys R Us can generate in people. The sight of Geoffrey welcoming people into the world of toys is sorely lacking. Do you have any ideas on how to help Toys R Us return and flourish? Drop me a line on Twitter and let’s talk about toys.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
HRC Blog HRC Global Fellow on Women’s History Month HRC Global Engagement Fellow, Jane “TJay” Wothaya Thirikwa of Kenya, spoke to a packed audience earlier this week at the Peace Corps’ headquarters in Washington, DC. TJay spoke as part of an ongoing discussion for Women’s History Month on the realities for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocates on the ground in Kenya and throughout various African nations. As an experienced LGBT leader in Kenya, TJay spoke passionately about the rising tide of violence against LGBT individuals in places that have been popular in the news due to recently passed anti-LGBT bills, like Uganda, Nigeria, but also more silently in places like Cameroon and the Gambia. Kenya, according to TJay, may face anti-LGBT legislation similar to those laws that were passed in Nigeria and Uganda that further criminalizes same-sex relations. When speaking about the governments of various African nations’ refusals to acknowledge the existence of LGBT people within their countries, TJay said, “When the government asks, ‘Where is the data that proves there are a large contingency of LGBT people in this country? Where are the numbers?’ My response is that even if there are five of us, we are citizens with rights just like every other person in this country! As a Kenyan citizen, the government has a responsibility to protect me from discrimination—not let vigilante groups attack me for being the person I am.” In places like Nigeria, groups of marauding citizens are using anti-LGBT laws as pretext for hunting down people, primarily men, who are suspected of being gay and then torturing them in the streets. This is a gross violation and misconception of the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, which, in addition to outlawing same-sex marriage, further criminalizes same-sex relations with up for 14 years in prison and up to 10 years in prison for anyone who supports or participates LGBT organizations or people. Though horrific and a violation of human rights, this law does not provide legal recourse for citizens to attack someone simply because they are suspected of being LGBT. And yet the government has not prosecuted any of those men who instigate the witch hunt and beat others in the street. We congratulate TJay on her eye-opening talk at the Peace Corps and for her continued advocacy for Kenyan and pan-African LGBT rights both at home and in her fellowship with HRC. For more information on how to become an HRC Global Fellow, click here.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
A Simple Guide To Making Rosin Thanks to an emerging solventless technique called “rosin” technology, concentrate enthusiasts and patients alike are now able to enjoy the effects of concentrates without having to be concerned over the solvents used for extraction. Rosin utilizes extreme heat and pressure to extract the resin from the plant, thus eliminating tedious purge and evaporation processes that could take days to complete. When comparing rosin to BHO, the two are indistinguishable on an aesthetic level. Rosin, when extracted properly, retains just as many valuable terpenes that account for the pungent and aromatic flavours present in other cannabis concentrates. Extraction Method Perhaps the reason why rosin has been widely embraced by the cannabis community is that the sheer simplicity of the technology allows cannabis users with no prior chemistry or extraction experience, to try it for themselves safely, and with no risk. Rosin can be easily extracted at home with the following items: 5. Quality cannabis (ensure that your flower is resinous as this will produce better yields) Steps To Make Rosin 1. Turn your hair straightener to the lowest setting (280-300F: anything higher and you will be losing valuable terpenes), and cut yourself a square of parchment paper. Fold the paper in half and place your starting material in between the folded parchment paper. 2. Carefully line up the buds inside of the parchment paper with your hair straightener and apply very firm pressure (some prefer to stand on their hair straightener to apply the firmest possible pressure – be careful you don’t break your heating tool!) for about 5-7 seconds.You will want to hear a sizzle before you remove the heat and pressure – this indicates that the resin has melted from your plant material. 3. Remove the parchment from your hair straightener and unfold the paper. You can toss away the flattened nug, and use your collection tool to capture the fresh rosin you’ve pressed. For larger batches you should press on a new square of parchment each time and then collect all of the rosin at the end. You could also place the parchment in the freezer for a few second to stabilize the rosin if it’s quite sappy. This will help to collect the extract. 4. Temperature is everything when it comes to rosin pressing!Lower temperatures (200’s) give a lower yield but the end product is very flavourful and stable (hard and has a shatter-like consistency). Higher temperatures (300’s) give a larger yield but the end product is less flavourful and less stable (sappy).	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Livestock You will not start out your farm life with a barn to hold livestock animals. To start raising livestock you'll need to hire Gannon to build a Barn, which costs 200 Lumber and 12,000 G (27,000 G combined). There is only 1 animal Barn available, but you can increase its size. The original small size can hold up to 4 Feeder bins, the medium can hold 8, and the large barn can fit up to 12 Feeders. Each Feeder bin can accommodate one cow or sheep. Cows and sheep share the same barn. You can have any combination of the two types of animals as long as you have enough Feeder bins. When you receive a baby cow or baby sheep, it will only grow if you feed it every day. If you don't feed it, then it will take longer to mature. Normally, a cow will take 18 days to mature and a sheep will take 16 days to mature. If you forget to feed it for a day, or can't due to a storm, then that will add an extra day to its growing time. Cows and Jersey Cows After you build your livestock barn, Mirabelle will visit and give you a free, baby normal cow. If you want more normal cows, you can purchase them from her shop for 5000 G each. To collect milk from a cow, you need to buy a Milker from Mirabelle's shop. The Milker's price will vary depending on how many Wonderful slots it has on it (1 slot is 1000 G, 2 slots is 2000 G, etc.). Every day you can milk you normal, black-spotted adult Cow to receive a bottle of Milk. The more hearts your cow has, the higher quality of milk you'll receive. You will unlock the Jersey Cow once you have shipped an S-Rank milk from a normal cow. The day after you ship the S-Rank Milk, Mirabelle will have baby Jersey Cows for 15,000 G each. Jersey Cows take just as long as normal Cows to mature, but they produce milk every 3 days instead of every day. Jersey Milk sells for more profit than normal Milk. The milk you receive from cows can be converted into several different items via the maker machines: Item Recovery Profit Milk +4 STA+1 FUL Avg. 192 G to shipS-Rank max 270 G to ship60 G to Chen Yogurt +4 STA+4 FUL Avg. 288 G to shipS-Rank max 405 G to ship90 G to Chen Butter +1 STA+1 FUL Avg. 386 G to shipS-Rank max 540 G to ship120 G to Chen Cheese +6 STA+4 FUL Avg. 578 to shipS-Rank max 810 G to ship180 G to Chen Item Recovery Profit Jersey Milk +4 STA+1 FUL Avg. 675 G to shipS-Rank max 945 G to ship60 G to Chen Superb Yogurt +4 STA+4 FUL Avg. 1013 G to shipS-Rank max 1417 G to ship90 G to Chen Superb Butter +1 STA+1 FUL Avg. 1350 G to shipS-Rank max 1890 G to ship120 G to Chen Superb Cheese +6 STA+4 FUL Avg. 2026 to shipS-Rank max 2835 G to ship180 G to Chen If you want to birth cows on your farm, buy the Cow Miracle Potion from Mirabelle for 3500 G. The same potion will work on a normal or Jersey Cow. You also need to have an available Birthing Pen, and the cow must be an adult. Use the Cow Miracle Potion on the cow you want to impregnate, and then remember to put Fodder in the Birthing Pen's Feeder every day inside of the barn. After 21 days, the baby cow will be born. The new cow will have half the number of hearts its mother had. It will take 18 days for the baby cow to mature into an adult cow. Cows have a life span of about 6 years. Sheep and Suffolk Sheep You don't need to do anything special to unlock normal Sheep. As soon as Gannon finishes building your Barn, Mirabelle will have Sheep for 4000 G each. You will also need to buy the Clippers from her store for 1000 G per available Wonderful Slot. Normal, adult Sheep can have their Wool clipped every 3 days. The more hearts the Sheep has, the better the Wool that it produces. Mirabelle will also have the Suffolk Sheep for sale after you ship your first S-Rank Wool. Each Suffolk Sheep costs 12,000 G! The pink Suffolk Sheep can have their wool clipped every 6 days, but it sells for much higher than normal Wool. You can convert wool into yarn with the Yarn Maker Machine: Name Profit Wool Avg. 772 G to shipS-Rank max 1080 G to ship240 G to Chen Yarn Avg. 2412 G to shipS-Rank max 3375 G to ship1000 G to Chen Name Profit Suffolk Wool Avg. 1930 G to shipS-Rank max 2700 G to ship240 G to Chen Superb Yarn Avg. 6032 G to shipS-Rank max 8437 G to ship1000 G to Chen Having Sheep born on your farm is similar to the method used for Cows, but the adult Sheep must have all of its wool intact before the Sheep Miracle Potion can be used on it. The Sheep potion is at Mirabelle's shop for 3000 G each. After 16 days, the baby Sheep will be born with half of the hearts that the mother Sheep had. Another 16 days later and the child will be an adult Sheep.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
2018-2019 Waiver May 24, 2018 02:50 PM Waiver & Release: 2018-2019 Release of Liability I understand and recognize the risk of physical injury inherent in dance and dance performances and I am willing to assume those risks. I agree that I will not hold Silhouette Dance Company, its directors or employees liable for injuries sustained while in attendance and/or participating in any dance activity at Silhouette Dance Company or any activity involving Silhouette Dance Company i.e. recital dress rehearsals, recital performances, community performances, conventions and competitions. Enrollment 2018-2019 SEASON ENROLLMENT A non-refundable registration fee is due at the time of enrollment for every student. The fee is $40 per student and $20 for each additional sibling. It is understood that enrollment is from August 2018 to June 2019 (whenever recital take place-TBA). The first month's tuition will also be due at time of enrollment for classes. There is a two month minimum for all dance lessons. Tuition Tuition is automatically debited from your checking account, debit or credit card on the 1st of each month. A $25 late fee will be assessed after the 3rd of the month. MasterCard and Visa debit and credit cards are accepted. All accounts must have a card on file. Silhouette Dance Company is authorized to charge your account the $25 NSF fee should there be insufficient funds. There is a 10% tuition discount when tuition is paid by the semester. (August to December and January to June). Delinquent accounts will be turned over to an outside collection agency if the account holder fails to make satisfactory payment arrangements with SDC. An account is considered delinquent once it is two months past due. No student will be allowed to continue classes if the account is two months past due or prior payment arrangements haven’t been made. There are NO REFUNDS for any reason including Registration Fees, Tuition, Costume Fees or Recital Fees. Withdrawal There is a TWO month minimum for all dance lessons. 30 days notice BEFORE the first of the month is required to discontinue classes. To withdraw from classes, the parent must email the Director at ashley@silhouettedancecompany.com and receive a confirmation in order to ensure automatic debit will discontinue. Withdraw MUST be submitted in writing-phone calls, leaving a voicemail or saying it in person are NOT proper withdraw notices. If you decide to take a leave of absence during the dance year you will need to notify the Director via email (ashley@silhouettedancecompany.com). If you would like to keep your place in class, you can freeze your account by paying 60% of your tuition cost for each month you are out OR you may unenroll completely in which all registration fees will apply when you return to re-enroll. If you wish to unenroll you must be sure to give the 30 days notice before the 1st of the month or else the next month will be charged via auto draft. Non Refundable Fees Auto Drafted Performance Fees It is assumed that ALL STUDENTS will perform in all performances when enrolled and all non-refundable fees associated with the performances are auto drafted. There will be 2 performances throughout the year, a Christmas show and an end of year annual recital. We must receive email notification by September 1 (Christmas show) and October 1st, 2017 (Annual Recital) that your dancer is not participating in order to ensure costume and recital fees are not charged. Dancers who enroll after October 1st, must notify us at time of enrollment. There are two, non-refundable fees associated with the CHRISTMAS SHOW & ANNUAL RECITAL: Costumes and Recital Fee. The Costume & Christmas Performance Fee will be auto drafted on September 15th. Costumes will be minimal for this performance to keep cost low. The Annual Recital costume fees will be auto drafted in 2 installments; October 15 & November 15. Costumes range from $65-80 each and include all accessories and a brand new pair of tights. The Recital Fee will be auto drafted February 15th, 2019. The Recital Fee is $80 per family and helps cover the cost of the production (theatre rental, backdrop, keepsake programs, etc.) so the show will be free for your family and friends to attend. Attendance Regular attendance is the student's and parent's responsibility and is extremely important for dancers to learn and review steps and combinations with their class. Excessive absences may hinder their progress and necessitate a change in class level. In the spring, once students have begun learning their recital dances, no more than 4 absences will be allowed otherwise student may be required to attend and pay for private lessons in order to perform in the routine. Students are always welcome to take a make-up lesson within a similar class level. Simply check the schedule online, find the class that works best for you and inform the studio via email when your dancer plans to attend the make-up class. Dress Code See attached Dress Code Document for dress code guidelines. All students must dress according to their required dress code for that particular class. Failure to do so will result in possible loss of class time or removal from class. Studio Policies 1. Please inform the office if your child must enter class late, leave early or will be picked up by someone other than yourself. We would appreciate a phone call or email if your child will be absent from class. 2. No gum, food, drinks or street shoes are allowed in the studio. 3. Appropriate and courteous behavior is expected from students, parents, visitors and staff. 4. Students are to remain inside the building while waiting to be picked up after lessons. 5. We reserve the right to dismiss, suspend or expel any person who is in violation of studio policies or any other reason deemed reasonable by the owner. 6. No children (students not already in class, siblings or visitors) may be left unattended at any time. Photo Release I understand that photos of my child(ren) taken in dance class, dance camp, picture day and/or performances may be used in promotional advertising including printed brochures, newspaper advertisements, social media such as Facebook, Instagram and the Silhouette Dance Company website. Signature Text Whether I registered online, over the phone or in person, I have read, understand and accept the policies and procedures of Silhouette Dance Company, LLC.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Unfortunately, this project was not successful We as an individual can help many homeless getting up their feet. Come and join the effort by offering help. I am sure you must have seen many people sleeping rough on streets. Let’s help them with a small contribution and lets fill their Christmas and 2017 with smile. I like you to help me raising awareness. Even sharing this page makes a big difference. I like to start this charity project in birmingham area but with your suport i like to go national and internation level. According to National Statistics 17% were found to be homeless but not in priority need; and 8% were found to be intentionally homeless and in priority need. Helping Homeless People . Small Contribution makes a big difference. Sharing is caring.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Avg. Customer Reviews More Ways To Shop I love this chair. It is just as pictured -which means it matches the other furniture in my living room. Also, it was easy to assemble. And the price is amazing! I recommend this chair and Overstock. show more Very Happu Rating: This chair was perfect for my small living room and although it's not as comfortable as I wanted, it still was enough for me! I love the red color of my chair. I definitely recommend this chair for everyone. The quality was great also, but I now it won't last as long as I want, but it will do great for now! show more Modern looking but yet Inviting Rating: Informal entry area needed some chairs in front of fireplace and these work and look great because it is a room between living room and kitchen and oversized chairs would get in the way. These are the just the right size. show more Wow! Rating: I ordered this chair in isolation from other pieces in the room praying it would 'go' with the scheme and colors in the room and be comfortable also. Bingo! it was a home run and at a savings! Thanks!! show more Great accent chair Rating: Perfect accent chair for my living room - chair looks exactly as it does in the picture show more JTO Rating: I do love my rocking chair. We have grandbabies. It is comfy and looks good in my living room. show more Dava Rating: This chair is lovely. Breaks in nicely, we use it lightly in our apartment (morning coffee, drinks) but not as a living room chair. I have two of them and am happy with my purchase. show more Stylish Cortesi Chairs Rating: Love, love, love my chairs. For the price you can't go wrong. Easy to put together and really simply beautiful. This was my very first purchase from O and I must tell you I was thrilled. Arrived in 2 days to boot!! Comfy cute Cortesi! show more Good Looking Chairs! Rating: I bought two of these chairs for my living room. They did not look good in my living room. I put them in my bedroom and they are perfect! They look very stylish and are comfortable to sit in! I'm very happy with them! Shop Overstock™ and find the best online deals on everything for your home and your family. We work every day to bring you discounts on new products across our entire store. Whether you're looking for memorable gifts or everyday essentials, you can buy them here for less. Not just anyone’s mobile outlet, your mobile outlet.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Forest Service seeks $6.3M from man for wildfire CHEYENNE, Wyo.—The U.S. Forest Service wants to collect $6.3 million from a 77-year-old man the agency blames for causing a 2012 forest fire that threatened to burn into the town of Jackson. The Forest Service alleges James G. Anderson Jr. sparked the wildfire on Sept. 8, 2012, by burning twigs and paper in a rusted-out barrel at his son's home and allowing the flames to get out of control. The Forest Service sent Anderson a bill in November for the firefighting costs. The amount was due to the agency's Albuquerque, N.M., service center on Dec. 13, according to a copy of the bill obtained by The Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act. No criminal charges have been filed while the civil matter remains unresolved, said John Powell, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Wyoming. The Horsethief Canyon Fire burned 5 square miles of Bridger-Teton National Forest. At the height of the fire, officials urged some residents of nearby Jackson to be prepared to evacuate at a moment's notice. The firefighters succeeded in halting the flames a couple miles outside town. Firefighting costs for several agencies totaled about $9 million. Anderson's share, according to a Nov. 13 certified letter the Forest Service sent him, includes about $3.8 million incurred by the Forest Service and some $2 million by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. He also owes about $64,000 to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, $154,000 to the National Park Service and $252,000 to the state of Wyoming and Teton County. Advertisement A phone number listed for Anderson didn't work. His attorney, Richard Mulligan, declined comment and Anderson's son, James Anderson III, did not return a phone message Tuesday. Mary Cernicek, a spokeswoman for Bridger-Teton National Forest, declined to comment. Lightning causes the vast majority of wildfires in Wyoming. Relatively few are human-caused. The amount authorities are seeking from Anderson is on the high end of firefighting costs that agencies have attempted to recoup from individuals in Wyoming, State Forester Bill Crapser said. "When the attempts have been made, it's fairly successful," Crapser said. "The problem is, when you're talking about a $6 million or $9 million fire cost, you're probably going to end up with whatever the insurance policy is on it." According to a Forest Service report, Anderson told investigators he had burned twigs, shrub branches and papers in the barrel at his son's home at 6 a.m. Later, after watching football and getting a sandwich, he said he saw smoke outside through a garage window. He called 911, according to the investigation report obtained by AP through a separate FOIA request. The wildfire began when burning material got out of the barrel's rusted-out bottom and flames spread across the property, investigators determined. Firefighters arrived at the home around 2:45 p.m. to find the fire burning toward the national forest land beyond the home, the investigation report said.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Header Ads The 'child of prostitute' story is about far beyond Duterte's messy mouth Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is sad he offended President Obama — kind of. He now "laments" that calling Obama "child of a prostitute" brought on so much debate. On Monday, Duterte lashed out at the United States for bringing up issues around a "medication war" that has killed 2,400 Filipinos. The United States reacted by wiping out a meeting. Today, Duterte attempted to walk the remark back. "Not individual," he said. The occurrence, obviously, is standing out as truly newsworthy. Despite the fact that Duterte is enamored with swearing — the man swore at the pope — it's not each day that you hear a sitting president affront an associate. It's absolutely not each day that you hear a sitting president say the words "child of a prostitute." Be that as it may, the story is about far beyond swear words — for two key reasons. [Nearly 2,000 have passed on in Duterte's 'war on medications' in the Philippines — one is a 5 year-old] In the first place, this is about the medication war, not Duterte's dialect. At the point when Duterte was running for office, he guaranteed a full-out war on medications. What he has conveyed is a war on suspected medication clients, merchants and their families. An expected 2,400 individuals have been killed in two months. The tsunami of extrajudicial and vigilante killings are destroying the Philippines. Late casualties incorporate a 4-year-old young lady out to get popcorn with her dad, and a 5-year old shot to death in her family's store. Duterte is not especially keen on discussing human rights — he has said as much. Presently, on the grounds that he reviled out Obama's mom, he doesn't need to; rather than apologizing for directing executions, he can say sorry for his filthy mouth. Second, U.S.- Philippine ties are no sideshow. Duterte may think that its interesting to utilize a hostile to gay slur to allude to the U.S. diplomat and to affront Obama's mom, yet his remarks play to a strong strain of hostile to U.S. supposition — opinion that could move the equalization of force in the South China Sea. The Philippines is a previous U.S. state. Around 25 years prior, Filipino government officials battled to remove U.S. strengths, promising to free the nation from remote control. Presently, with China squeezing its cases to the greater part of the South China Sea, some — however not all — need U.S. powers back. An assention upheld by previous president Benigno Aquino III, the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, or EDCA, would put more U.S. ships at Philippine ports. China, obviously, is not avid for a U.S. return. Beijing was angry that Aquino took the South China Sea question to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague. What's more, the nation is pushing hard — hard — for the Philippines to disregard the decision and settle on China-Philippine talks. Duterte has demonstrated some readiness to work with Beijing. Duterte's abuse may appear to be inconsequential, But when they prompt the cancelation of abnormal state U.S.- Philippine gatherings, welcoming China, they are definitely not. The 'child of prostitute' story is about far beyond Duterte's messy mouth Reviewed by Maathavan on 05:56 Rating: 5	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
For black North Carolinians, the Great Recession never ended. From 2009 to 2014, black residents’ incomes plummeted 21 percent in Winston-Salem, 17 percent in Raleigh, and 15 percent in Charlotte and Greensboro. North Carolinians of other races aren’t faring much better. In 2015, the average North Carolina household earned $400 less than it did in 2009, after adjusting for inflation. Wages are stagnant or declining because blue-collar North Carolinians face excessive competition from foreign labor. By striking fairer trade deals and lowering immigration, elected leaders could tighten the labor market. Employers would have to boost wages to attract workers. Many companies have shipped jobs overseas to take advantage of cheaper labor. From 2001 to 2011, America lost 3.2 million jobs to China alone. North Carolina – a former powerhouse in textile manufacturing – has suffered more from outsourcing than any other state, according to the Labor Department. To add insult to injury, many employers pass over local workers in favor of cheaper immigrant laborers. Two dozen senior U.S. intelligence and military officers – who tried to warn George W. Bush before the Iraq war that those pushing war were lying – write: Our U.S. Army contacts in the area have told us this is not what happened. There was no Syrian “chemical weapons attack.” Instead, a Syrian aircraft bombed an al-Qaeda-in-Syria ammunition depot that turned out to be full of noxious chemicals and a strong wind blew the chemical-laden cloud over a nearby village where many consequently died. **************************** Former U.N weapons inspector Scott Ritter warned before the start of the Iraq war that claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction were false. Sunday, Ritter wrote that current claims that the leader of Syria launched a chemical weapons attack was false. “those who hated him still hate him while those who supported him now also hate him“. The latest US cruise missile attack on the Syrian airbase is an extremely important event in so many ways that it is important to examine it in some detail. I will try to do this today with the hope to be able to shed some light on a rather bizarre attack which will nevertheless have profound consequences. But first, let’s begin by looking at what actually happened. One-hundred and fifty-two years ago, April 9, 1865 was a Palm Sunday just as today, and in the central part of war-torn Virginia, a major turning point occurred in American history. General Robert E. Lee, that “chevalier sans peur“—that knight without fear—surrendered the tattered remnants of the proud Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant, setting in motion the end phase of the War for Southern Independence. That war was in reality not a “civil war,” that is, it was not a war between two aggrieved parties within the American nation. Rather, it was a war between two ideas of government, and, in reality, two ideas of history and progress. For the North, which now controlled the Federal government, it was a war to suppress what was seen as a rebellion against constituted national authority. For the states of the Southern Confederacy, it was a defense of their inherited and inherent rights under the old Constitution of 1787, rights that had never been ceded to the Federal government. And, more, it became for them a Second War for Independence against an arbitrary and overreaching government that had gravely violated that Constitution. China has flexed its military muscle on state television as tensions escalate between the US and North Korea. China Central Television (CCTV) yesterday revealed footage of the country's various missiles in a daily military programme. According to media, one of the weapons featured in the programme was DF-21 missile. The anti-ship ballistic missile boasts a firing distance of up to 1,926 miles (3,100km) and has been dubbed 'the killer of aircraft carrier'. Trey Gowdy’s office had no official statement but his top aide, Mandy Gonsales, said that the committee isn’t happy with the circumstances of McGill’s death or the fact that his own doctor was summoned to pronounce. Abedin says she called the private doctor because she hoped he could save her friend. There will be no autopsy on the body, which will be cremated before sunset in accordance with his religion. McGill is the single son of deceased parents and has no family. No services are planned. Just days after being summoned to appear before Trey Gowdy’s congressional committee to testify about Hillary Clinton’s email server, one of her aides was found dead at home of “natural causes.” Johnston Wilson McGill, 34, was pronounced dead on his couch by a private doctor after suffering an apparent heart attack. A spokesman for Clinton’s former campaign said that Huma Abedin, Clinton’s deputy campaign coordinator, found McGill when she stopped by for coffee to discuss Clinton’s plans for a run for Mayor of New York. Abedin told police in a statement that McGill suffered from an abnormal heart arhythmia and that his doctor had always said a sudden and massive cardiac event was a possibility. She also told her publicist to make sure that the whole world knew that he was planning to cooperate with the congressional panel. President Trump signed into law the first major national pro-life bill in more than a decade, freeing states to withhold federal family planning money from Planned Parenthood and other clinics that also perform abortions. The Obama administration had issued a last-minute rule trying to prevent GOP-led states from discriminating against abortion providers, insisting that all women’s health clinics be treated the same. But Republicans, aided by Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, have now erased that rule. A federal complaint was unsealed today charging Candace Marie Claiborne, 60, of Washington, D.C., and an employee of the U.S. Department of State, with obstructing an official proceeding and making false statements to the FBI, both felony offenses, for allegedly concealing numerous contacts that she had over a period of years with foreign intelligence agents. The charges were announced by Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary B. McCord for National Security, U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips of the District of Columbia and Assistant Director in Charge Andrew W. Vale of the FBI’s Washington Field Office. “Candace Marie Claiborne is a U.S. State Department employee who possesses a Top Secret security clearance and allegedly failed to report her contacts with Chinese foreign intelligence agents who provided her with thousands of dollars of gifts and benefits,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General McCord. “Claiborne used her position and her access to sensitive diplomatic data for personal profit. Pursuing those who imperil our national security for personal gain will remain a key priority of the National Security Division.” The House and Senate Intelligence Committees are expanding their investigations into former National Security Adviser Susan Rice's alleged "unmasking" of U.S. persons who were incidentally collected in surveillance of foreign officials. An unnamed member of the House Intelligence Committee confirmed that Rice is now under "a full-blown investigation," Fox News reported on Wednesday. "We will be performing an accounting of all unmasking for political purposes focused on the previous White House administration. This is now a full-blown investigation," the committee member said. A Huffington Post blogger proposed Thursday to deny white men the right to vote for 20 years to correct the wrongs they afflicted on the world. Shelley Garland, a MA philosophy student, pondered taking away white men’s voting powers as punishment for their “toxic white masculinity” in an op-ed. Garland argues that if it hadn’t been for white men, President Donald Trump wouldn’t have been elected and the U.K. would still be a part of the E.U. The only way to fix this, Garland reasons, is to take away white men’s voting rights for about twenty years. The new commander of South Korea's Marine Corps took office on Thursday calling on his 30,000 troops to be ready to "mercilessly retaliate" against North Korea's provocations. In a change-of-commander ceremony, Lt. Gen. Jun Jin-goo pointed out that the elite forces have played a key role in the front-line defense of the country. "The Marine Corps has protected places most difficult to defend but should be done so at all costs" from Baengnyeong Island near the western sea border with North Korea to Pohang, Ullleung Island and Jeju Island, he said in his speech at the event held the headquarters of the Marine Corps in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province. "The jets of the so-called US-led coalition launched a strike at about 17:30-17:50 [local time, 14:30-14:50 GMT] on a Daesh warehouse where many foreign fighters were present. First a white cloud and then a yellow one appeared at the site of the strike, which points at the presence of a large number of poisonous substances. A fire at the site continued until 22:30 [19:30 GMT]," The Syrian army yet again denied possessing chemical weapons. According to the Syrian General Staff, the US-led coalition's strike killed several hundred people, including civilians. Hundreds were poisoned as a result of the strike on Daesh's headquarters and depot with chemical weapons. "This confirms that Daesh and al-Nusra terrorists possess chemical weapons and are capable of using, obtaining and transporting it," the document said. Furthermore, if true, the US coalition just did exactly what Russia has claimed occurred in the initial chemical attack (that prompted President Trump's "Tomahawk" torrent). The Russian Defense Ministry said the day after the initial chemical weapons release that an airstrike near Khan Shaykhun was carried out by Syrian aircraft, struck a terrorist warehouse that stored chemical weapons slated for delivery to Iraq. Of course, the propaganda battle is not over so what we need now is some YouTube clip to 'prove' what the US coalition did. Abandoning his tough talk on China and reversing himself on several other campaign themes, President Trump’s 12th week in office could go down as the moment he showed himself to be another establishment Republican, not the unconventional crockery-smashing raging bull he played on the stump. In the past week, Mr. Trump ordered missile strikes against the Syrian military after telling voters during the campaign that the U.S. was involved in too many military operations overseas.Mr. Trump proclaimed Wednesday that NATO is no longer obsolete, after questioning the U.S. commitment to the alliance on the campaign trail. Also this week, Mr. Trump declared that he will not label China as a currency manipulator, after campaigning relentlessly on a promise to do just that. ` Now, some 30 days after Napolitano broke the story, CNN seems to have just confirmed it: British and other European intelligence agencies intercepted communications between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials and other Russian individuals during the campaign and passed on those communications to their US counterparts, US congressional and law enforcement and US and European intelligence sources tell CNN. The communications were captured during routine surveillance of Russian officials and other Russians known to western intelligence. British and European intelligence agencies, including GCHQ, the British intelligence agency responsible for communications surveillance, were not proactively targeting members of the Trump team but rather picked up these communications during what's known as "incidental collection," these sources tell CNN. The European intelligence agencies detected multiple communications over several months between the Trump associates and Russian individuals -- and passed on that intelligence to the US. The US and Britain are part of the so-called "Five Eyes" agreement (along with Canada, Australia and New Zealand), which calls for open sharing among member nations of a broad range of intelligence. Mr. Graham had predicted Mr. Trump’s about-face since last year, when as president-elect he intervened to save hundreds of manufacturing jobs at the Carrier air conditioning plant in Indiana. The bank said it sends any surplus from the interest and fees it assesses back to the Treasury, resulting in a $5.6 billion profit for taxpayers since fiscal 2007. That appeared to help sway the president. President Trump’s embrace of the Export-Import Bank is a major blow to conservatives, who had been on the verge of nixing what they — and Mr. Trump, until now — called a sop to wealthy corporations. During the election campaign, Mr. Trump dismissed the obscure lending agency as “featherbedding” for politicians and huge companies that don’t need it, enthusing opponents who had squeezed its lending powers and said it should die off. But the president now says he is convinced that the corporate welfare produces jobs — an about-face that irked conservatives who have been fighting for years to end the loan program. “Unless the Trump administration has reforms that can get Ex-Im out of the business of picking winners and losers with taxpayer dollars, then it will be difficult to see any upside in this,” said Doug Sachtleben, a spokesman for the Club for Growth, a conservative group that urged Congress to let the bank expire. Three weeks before voters head to the polls to choose the next president of France, all 11 first-round candidates lined up in a large semicircle for a nationally televised debate that quickly dissolved into a cacophony of insults and shouts that steamed rapidly out of control. For an American viewer, it was a Gallic clone of our own Republican primary debates a year before. A week after this televised contest, France's leading daily newspaper, Le Monde, asked, "What would the first months of an Emmanuel Macron presidency look like?" -- effectively baptizing one of the two leading candidates the winner even before the first ballot is cast. It appeared to be a form of wishful thinking, not unlike the broad assumptions of most American newspapers in October that Hillary Clinton was the presumptive heir to the presidency of the United States -- not Donald Trump. Remembrance To die for one’s country is not only an act of bravery, it is THE act of bravery. For soldiers, it is just an extension of their military career, a part of their duty. As leaders have asked their soldiers to sacrifice themselves for the good of the society, it is only right for leaders to go through the same motion. They should practice what they have preached. As war is seen as a noble act, tu sat serves as redemption in case of defeat. It is also a way to tell the enemy: “You might have won the battle/war but you don’t deserve to win because you don’t have the chinh nghia (just cause).” And it is not only just cause: it is the moral belief that the cause they are fighting for deserves their total sacrifice. Continues below Follow by Email Counter Core Creek Militia ==============================My sixth great grandfather, his wife, and five of his six children were killed in battle with the Tuscarora Indians at Core Creek, NC. The Seven Blackbirds ==============================My third great grandfather was an Ensign in the Revolutionary War, and saved his unit's flag after being wounded at the Battle of Brandywine. He was also at Kingston (Kinston), Wilmington, Charleston, Two Sisters and Augusta. He was at the defeat at Brier Creek and also Bee Creek. Requiem Aeternam - Eternal Rest Grant unto Them ============================== My second great grandfather was killed in action on May 3, 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville. ============================= My great grandfather and great uncle knew all the men in the "Civil War Requiem" video as they were part of the 53rd NC which was the sole unit defending Fort Mahone. (Fort Mahone was named "Fort Damnation" by the Yankees) Handpicked men of the 53rd (My great grandfather was one of these) made the final, night assault at Petersburg in an attempt to break Grant's line. This was against Fort Stedman which was a few miles to the slight northeast. They initially succeeded, but reinforcements drove them back. This video is made from photographs which were taken the day after the 53rd evacuated the lines the night before to begin the retreat to Appomattox. I have many more pictures taken by the same photographer, one of these shows a 14 year old boy and the other is the famous picture of the blond, handsome soldier with his musket. =========================== General Gordon promised the men a gold medal and 30 days leave if they accomplished their task and many years after the War my great grandfather wrote General Gordon, who was then governor of Georgia about this incident. They exchanged several letters which I have framed. See first link below. =========================== *The Attack On Fort Stedman ============================ "His Colored Friends" ============================ Lee's Surrender ============================= My Black NC Kinfolks ============================ Punished For Being Caught! Great Grandfather Koonce He was a drummer boy in the WBTS, survived the War only to die a few years later. He was caught in an ice storm on his way home, but instead of seeking shelter, continued on his horse until the end. His clothes had to be cut off and he died a few days later.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Green Lantern: Rebirth (New Edition) Collects the six-issue miniseries that restored Hal Jordan as Green Lantern along with the Wizard Magazine preview story and a new cover by Ethan Van Sciver. The road to Blackest Night begins here, so don’t miss this new printing of the smash-hit re-launch of the decade! Written by Geoff Johns, with art by Ethan Van Sciver (who also provides the cover artwork) and Prentis Rollins.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Wanessa Cooper Bio: Birth Place: Czech Republic Skinny brunette MILF Wanessa Cooper is a Czech born babe with a sex drive that can only be measured in light years! Currently a girl-girl lesbian only performer, Wanessa brings a sensuality to her scenes that has to be seen to be believed. Very tactile in her approach to lovemaking, Wanessa loves to cup the curve of perky tits and to run her body over the shape of a round ass. While she can be smooth to the touch, Wanessa also likes to get rough. The brunette babe loves to participate in bondage play with other ladies, and the more dominant she can be the better! With a surprisingly powerful body for such a small frame, Wanessa knows what she likes, and knows exactly how to get it! All models appearing on this website are 18 years or older.Click here for records required pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 2257 Record Keeping Requirements Compliance Statement. By entering this site you swear that you are of legal age in your area to view adult material and that you wish to view such material.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
VAL-D'OR, QC, Feb. 13, 2019 /CNW/ - Orbit Garant Drilling Inc. (TSX: OGD) ("Orbit Garant" or the "Company") today announced its financial results for the three and six-month periods ended December 31, 2018. All dollar amounts are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated. Percentage calculations are based on numbers in the financial statements and may not correspond to rounded figures presented in this news release. 2 EBITDA is a non-IFRS financial measure and is defined as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. See "Reconciliation of Non-IFRS financial measures". "Our decline in revenue and metres drilled for the quarter reflects lower drilling activity in both Canada and Chile compared to the same quarter last year, which was a record second quarter in both revenue and metres drilled. This past quarter still represents our second highest revenue total for this three-month period in company history. With the recent rapid expansion of our global operations, our margins are more impacted by the slowdown in drilling activity. Our profitability for the quarter was also impacted by costs related to our acquisition in Burkina Faso," said Eric Alexandre, President & CEO of Orbit Garant. "We're pleased with the early results of the Burkina Faso acquisition, with drill deployment up from seven at the time of acquisition to 12 at quarter-end. Looking more broadly at our business, with global gold and base metal reserves of mining companies continuing to be depleted, we expect mineral exploration spending to increase in order to address this decline. With our expanded international presence and our strong position in Canada, we are increasingly well positioned to capitalize on market opportunities as they arise," added Mr. Alexandre. Second Quarter Results Revenue for the three-month period ended December 31, 2018 ("Q2 FY2019") totalled $33.7 million, compared to $43.0 million for the three-month period ended December 31, 2017 ("Q2 FY2018"). Drilling Canada revenue was $23.6 million, compared to $28.3 million in Q2 FY2018, reflecting a decline in metres drilled during the quarter, partially offset by an increase in average revenue per metre drilled. Drilling International revenue was $10.1 million, compared to $14.7 million in Q2 FY2018. The decline in international revenue is primarily attributable to the conclusion of a large drilling contract in Chile, partially offset by increased drilling activity in Burkina Faso. Orbit Garant's fleet drilled a total of 311,318 metres in the quarter, compared to 371,161 metres drilled in the very strong Q2 FY2018 period. Consolidated average revenue per metre drilled decreased 6.7% to $107.85 compared to $115.64 in Q2 FY2018. The decline in consolidated average revenue per metre drilled is primarily attributable to a lower proportion of specialized drilling in international markets in the quarter, partially offset by higher prices on drilling contracts in Canada. Gross profit and gross margin for Q2 FY2019 were $2.9 million and 8.6%, respectively, compared to $5.1 million and 11.7%, respectively, in Q2 FY2018. Depreciation expenses totalling $2.2 million are included in cost of contract revenue for Q2 FY2019 compared $2.0 million in Q2 FY2018. Adjusted gross margin, excluding depreciation expenses, was 15.2% in Q2 FY2019, compared to 16.3% in Q2 FY2018. The decrease in gross profit and margins was primarily attributable to lower drilling volumes in Canada, partially offset by higher gross profit and margins on international contracts. General and administrative (G&A) expenses were $4.8 million (representing 14.4% of revenue) in Q2 FY2019, compared to $4.3 million (representing 10.0% of revenue) in Q2 FY2018. Increased G&A expenses are primarily attributable to $0.7 million of acquisition and integration costs related to the Company's acquisition of the drilling business of Projet Production International BF S.A. ("PPI") in Burkina Faso during Q2 FY2019. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA")¹ totalled $0.9 million in Q2 FY2019, compared to $3.3 million in Q2 FY2018. The Company's net loss for Q2 FY2019 was $1.7 million, or $0.04 per share, compared to net earnings of $0.8 million, or $0.02 per share, in Q2 FY2018. Lower gross profit and margins, as discussed above, and costs related to the acquisition of PPI contributed to the Company's net loss for Q2 FY2019. During Q2 FY2019, Orbit Garant generated $7.6 million from financing activities compared to $5.5 million in Q2 FY2018. The Company drew down a net amount of $7.1 million during Q2 FY2019 on its secured, three-year revolving credit facility (the "Credit Facility"), compared to $1.4 million in Q2 FY2018, largely due to the financing impact of the PPI acquisition. As at December 31, 2018, the Company had $27.1 million drawn under the Credit Facility, compared to $18.1 million as at June 30, 2018. As at December 31, 2018, Orbit Garant had working capital of $57.1 million ($53.3 million as at June 30, 2018), and 37,008,756 common shares issued and outstanding. Orbit Garant's unaudited interim condensed consolidated financial statements and management's discussion and analysis for the three and six-month periods ended December 31, 2018 are available on the Company's website at www.orbitgarant.com or SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Conference call Eric Alexandre, President and CEO, and Alain Laplante, Vice President and CFO, will host a conference call for analysts and investors on Thursday, February 14, 2019 at 10:00 a.m. (ET). The dial-in numbers for the conference call are 416-764-8609 or 1-888-390-0605. A live webcast of the call will be available on Orbit Garant's website at: http://www.orbitgarant.com/en/sites/fog/investors.aspx. The webcast will be archived following conclusion of the call. To access a replay of the conference call dial 416-764-8677 or 1-888-390-0541, passcode: 490114 #. The replay will be available until February 21, 2019. RECONCILIATION OF NON - IFRS FINANCIAL MEASURES Financial data has been prepared in conformity with IFRS. However, certain measures used in this discussion and analysis do not have any standardized meaning under IFRS and could be calculated differently by other companies. The Company believes that certain non-IFRS financial measures, when presented in conjunction with comparable IFRS financial measures, are useful to investors and other readers because the information is an appropriate measure to evaluate the Company's operating performance. Internally, the Company uses this non-IFRS financial information as an indicator of business performance. These measures are provided for information purposes, in addition to, and not as a substitute for, measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. Management believes that EBITDA is an important measure when analyzing its operating profitability, as it removes the impact of financing costs, certain non-cash items and income taxes. As a result, Management considers it a useful and comparable benchmark for evaluating the Company's performance, as companies rarely have the same capital and financing structure. Reconciliation of EBITDA (unaudited) (in millions of dollars) 3 months ended December 31, 2018 3 months ended December 31, 2017 6 months ended December 31, 2018 6 months ended December 31, 2017 Net earnings (net loss) for the period (1.7) 0.8 (1.3) 2.5 Add: Finance costs 0.5 0.5 0.9 0.9 Income tax expense (0.4) (0.3) - 0.6 Depreciation and amortization 2.5 2.3 4.7 4.4 EBITDA 0.9 3.3 4.3 8.4 Adjusted Gross Margin Although adjusted gross margin and margin are not recognized financial measures defined by IFRS, Management considers them to be important measures as they represent the Company's core profitability, without the impact of depreciation expense. As a result, Management believes they provide a useful and comparable benchmark for evaluating the Company's performance. Reconciliation of Adjusted Gross Margin (unaudited) (in millions of dollars) 3 months ended December 31, 2018 3 months ended December 31, 2017 6 months ended December 31, 2018 6 months ended December 31, 2017 Contract revenue 33.7 43.0 71.0 85.5 Cost of contract revenue (including depreciation) 30.8 38.0 62.5 73.7 Less depreciation (2.2) (2.0) (4.2) (3.9) Direct costs 28.6 36.0 58.3 69.8 Adjusted gross profit 5.1 7.0 12.7 15.7 Adjusted gross margin (%) (1) 15.2 16.3 17.9 18.4 (1) Adjusted gross profit, divided by contract revenue X 100 About Orbit Garant Headquartered in Val-d'Or, Quebec, Orbit Garant is one of the largest Canadian-based mineral drilling companies, providing both underground and surface drilling services in Canada and internationally through its 236 drill rigs and more than 1,300 employees. Orbit Garant provides services to major, intermediate and junior mining companies, through each stage of mining exploration, development and production. The Company also provides geotechnical drilling services to mining or mineral exploration companies, engineering and environmental consultant firms, and government agencies. For more information, please visit the Company's website at www.orbitgarant.com. Forward-looking information This news release may contain forward-looking statements (within the meaning of applicable securities laws) relating to business of Orbit Garant Drilling Inc. (the "Company") and the environment in which it operates. Forward-looking statements are identified by words such as "believe", "anticipate", "expect", "intend", "plan", "will", "may" and other similar expressions. These statements are based on the Company's expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections. They are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to control or predict. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in the Company's regulatory filings available at www.sedar.com. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate as actual outcomes and results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements. Readers, therefore, should not place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements. Further, a forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any such statement or to reflect new information or the occurrence of future events or circumstances.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Jewish Dating in Pacific, WA The Evergreen State of Washington. Match.com is an online dating service for Washington singles. Match.com has been the leading online dating site for over 10 years. To laugh often and love much... to appreciate beauty, to find love in Pacific... this is the Match.com way.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Rupert Murdoch, the 81-year-old chief executive of News Corp., has been told by a select committee of the British parliament that he is “unfit” to head his global media conglomerate. It is a particularly British accusation and one that is especially punishing, both because it is so indelible and is so seldom used. “Unfit” is not a charge that is often leveled, so its impact is especially great. In 1971 a publishing rival of Murdoch’s, Robert Maxwell, was indicted as being “unfit” to run a public company. His were sins of greed and venality. Murdoch’s sins, you might say, are sins of encouraging a culture of corruption in two of his London-based tabloid newspapers: the defunct News of the World and The Sun. It should be said that Murdoch did not invent the culture of Britain’s tabloid press, but he encouraged it to lengths of excess that had not been dreamed of earlier. Fleet Street — the collective name for British newspapers which derives from the street where they were once all located — has always been a place of excess. But things really turned white hot in the late 1950s and 1960s. Television and radio were competing for entertainment value, but news was still the province of newspapers. The game was to shock the readers without depressing them. The publisher Lord Beaverbrook said during World War II of his Daily Express: “I want the readers to feel the sun is shining when they read the Express.” When I arrived in Fleet Street, well after the war, the sun was still shining in the popular papers. And what better way to keep the sun shining than by exposing the foibles of the aristocracy, the Royal Family and, of course, film stars? We, the denizens of Fleet Street, were modestly paid but were given essentially unlimited expense accounts to disport ourselves around the clubs and restaurants of London in search of the rich and famous at unguarded play. The culture was one of discover, speculate, elaborate and publish. Reporters were pushed very hard to dig up the titillating, embellish it and present it as news. We descended on crime scenes, the sexually engaged and the overtly greedy. Yet there were limits, unwritten but understood, especially pertaining to private grief and even the Royal Family. Infidelity from a vicar was reportable. Similarly rumored goings on by major politicians and national figures, less so. But change was on its way in the shape of Rupert Murdoch, and in the growing force of television in British life. Murdoch trashed the barriers, such as they were. He started publishing pictures of bare-breasted girls in The Sun, and turned his tabloids from being newspapers that published gossip along with the news to gossip-only papers. They became vicious as well as tawdry. Murdoch also turned his papers from leaning politically left-wing to being savagely right-wing. It worked. The Sun and the News of the World started making enough money to finance Murdoch’s other ventures, including buying and building Fox News. Murdoch established an even more irresponsible culture. There were no rules now: Hence the phone-tapping, police bribing and other sins that have brought Murdoch to his sorry state of being “unfit.” There was a new thuggery and vulgarity that had not existed. Yet if Murdoch is unfit, so are his accusers. It is British politicians — including Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and David Cameron and their followers — who indulged Murdoch, courted him and encouraged the arrogance of Fleet Street. British newspaper publishers have always considered it their right to have access to the prime minister and no holder of that office has sought to disillusion them. – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate White House Chronicle on Social There is disquiet in the soul of America. It has been expressed night after night on the streets of more than 100 towns and cities. That number of urban sites, with all those tens of thousands of people, are a cry from the hurting heart of America — yes, over the death of George Floyd, […] A plow breaks up the soil, turns it over. If seed is put down, that sprouts along with any other seed that happens to be there, weeds and other wild plants. The new normal will be a plowed field where all sorts of innovations will spring forth. It will be a time of innovation, creativity […] Snapshots. That’s what we have of the United States as we emerge tentative and fraught from lockdown. We don’t have the whole picture, just snapshots of this and that. Some of the snapshots are encouraging: The air is clearer, crime is down and a collective spirit is apparent in many places. Others are more disturbing: […] A study envisioning how societies might address the complexities of the COVID-19 pandemic, undertaken by more than 70 leaders in innovation from around the world, is out. It is the largest, nongovernmental study on the virus, and it paints a picture of a world recalibrated by it — with a heavy dependence on data in […]	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
2505 Hidden MeaBallwin MO 63021 322 Fox Hollow Ballwin MO 63021 269 Treasure CoBallwin MO 63021 Property History Of 608 Wood Fern Drive Date Event & Source Price May 26, 2017 Listed (Active) MLS: 17041796 $659,000 The information is being provided by Mid America Regional Information Systems MLS. Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Information is provided for consumers' personal, non-commercial use, and may not be used for any purpose other than the identification of potential properties for purchase. Copyright 2017 Mid America Regional Information Systems MLS. All Rights Reserved. IDX information is provided exclusively for consumers' personal, non-commercial use that it may not be used for any purpose other than to identify prospective properties consumers may be interested in purchasing, and that data is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed accurate by the MLS. The MLS may, at its discretion, require use of other disclaimers as necessary to protect Participants and/or the MLS from liability.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
For a stylish yet sporty look, these Flex Appeal-Serengeti women's trainers by Skechers are perfect. With a stylish animal print upper designed on a breathable mesh fabric upper, your feet can breathe during sportswear or even for leisure wear. Walk, jog or run on luxury comfort memory foam insole to support your feet whilst the padded collar provides additional ankle support. The shock absorbing FlexSole midsole is radically lightweight, as is the nearly seamless upper. Ensure your feet can move naturally with the flexible rubber outsole with great traction which shapes to the movement of your feet. Upper: Textile MeshLining: TextileSole: Rubber Choose a ranking for this item. 1 star is the worst and 5 stars is the best. Please tell us what you think and share your opinions with others. Be sure to focus your comments on the product. NOTE: HTML tags are not allowed.NOTE: Reviews require prior approval before they will be displayed	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Old Town Square REVITALIZING A TREASURED COMMUNITY EVENT SPACE OLD TOWN SQUARE FORT COLLINS, CO INFRASTRUCTURE UPGRADES AT THE CORE OF URBAN REVITALIZATION After 30 years of use, Old Town Square was due for an upgrade. The beloved square was suffering from aging infrastructure that could not keep up with current demand. With the need for utility improvements came the opportunity to refresh the space. The most critical aspect of the renovation effort was to maintain the intimate feeling of the square. Through extensive stakeholder feedback, studioINSITE created a detailed program document, schematic design and construction documentation. PRESERVING COMMUNITY TREASURES, UPGRADING FOR TODAY'S USES The iconic fountain was updated and a new water feature was added. A large performance stage was designed to host Fort Collins' many outdoor concerts. The redesigned Old Town Square is a more unified space that can host large gatherings. studioINSITE's design efforts successfully revitalized the heart of the community while maintaining the essence of the place that people cherish.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Linkbar Welcome! Habit & Home is an online publication which was formed with the hope of bringing strangers together by recognizing similarities in one another through verbal and visual storytelling, celebrating various practices of habit, and broad perspectives on home. Elsewhere Social Follow Other Categories Search Archive Habit & Home contains original written and visual content from both Cassandra Dias, and other fellow creatives. All words and photographs not belonging to Cassandra Dias have been approved for use, and properly credited. Thursday, November 26, 2015 It always amazes me what I am capable of making with my own two hands. Just spent the afternoon in the studio cranking out new pottery pieces, and these beauties were fresh out of the kiln and ready to bring home. It always amazes me what I am capable of making with my own two hands.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Sector 9 started in La Jolla, CA in 1993 with a bunch of friends, a halfpipe, pool table, ping pong table, and a shaping room all across the street from some nice smooth hills that lead down to the reefs. Sector 9 makes longboards of all shapes and sizes. Complete longboard series are available from Sector 9. Check out their Platinum series, Bamboo series, Cosmic Series, sidewinder Series, Mini series, OG series, and Deep End Series.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Why Would Someone End A Good Relationship While Grieving? Recommended Posts Hi everyone, this is my first post, although I've been reading some topics here in recent weeks. I've been struggling to understand and cope with how my boyfriend has been grieving. We had a very close, wonderful relationship and it was going absolutely great until his mother died unexpectedly. I was the person he was emotionally closest to, so at first he turned to me immediately and wanted my comfort and company. He is very much alone in the world right now because his father died a few years ago and he has no remaining close relatives. He had to leave to take care of arrangements because his mother lived in another state. I wanted to go with him but all flights were fully booked that week, and he said he would be fine. I just tried to be as supportive as possible over the phone, and we talked at least once every day. But after about a week, he seemed to collapse emotionally and withdrew, and when he came home, he said we needed to take a break because he couldn't be in a relationship anymore. He said he needed to deal with everything alone and didn't want to talk to anyone about what he was going through. He said maybe it would be different if we had been together for years, but I just didn't know him well enough to understand his grief. He said he loved me and cared about me deeply but didn't know if he should ever be in a relationship with anyone ever again. At the same time, he recognized on some level that this was a rash decision and said to give it some time. It's now been about 2 months, and we've only really had two more conversations since then. I've been trying to give him space, so I contact him rarely and I try not to bring up relationship matters (so as not to make him feel any pressure), but somehow he always ends up talking about them. He seems conflicted and confused about what he wants and says we'll talk more or he'll see me soon, but he never contacts me. I haven't heard anything from him at all in a month now. It is so hard to be treated like we never existed. I've read a lot of threads on here where people have experienced similar shut-outs from their significant others. It has been so hard to deal with this - I'm still crying almost every day, 2 months later. I want so much to be supportive and he seems to really need it, but he won't let me back into my place in his life. I worry that if I give him too much space, I will simply just drop out of his life completely because it'll be harder for us to ever talk again. Every day I come across things that remind me so much of his absence from my life, and I don't know how he couldn't feel the same way because we were so close and spent so much time together. He always told me that I made him happy because I understood him and made everything else in life worthwhile. He only has a small circle of friends, and they say that he doesn't ever talk about his mother or me at all, even if they try to ask him about it, but he just seems to be returning to his old routines now and looking forward. Is there anything I can do?? I feel like I am going crazy because none of this makes any sense and I don't know if I am waiting and hoping in vain. We used to always talk so much and spent nearly every day and night together. All our routines are gone now and it has been such a sudden change in my life. I don't know why he doesn't miss our life together, when he used to miss me so much whenever I wasn't with him. What makes it harder to understand and accept is that I know it probably really has nothing to do with me but just with his own emotional issues. Is two months still early in the grieving process even if outwardly he is trying to seem like everything's back to normal? How can I know whether he'll ever come around? Is there anything more I can do or should be doing differently? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites I don't have much time right now but I know how you feel and I know how much it hurts. I'll post a longer reply later on today when I have more time on my hands. For now, just try and stay busy, spend extra time with friends and family and do things that will help keep your mind off things. If you have a job make sure you go work, works probably been the best place for me over the past 6 weeks since my ex broke up with me after her Dad passed away. Believe me you will be okay! I'm not 100% yet and it will take time but you'll pull through. Like I said, I'll post a longer, more helpful post later on. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Interests:I lead a grief support group and I enjoy volunteering in my church (Treasurer & on Praise Team, choir) and the senior site, where I do the bingo prizes. I love stamping, hiking, nature, singing. I am a retired Office Mgr./Bkpr. I'm sorry you're going through this. You probably read about my fiance dumping me by Fed Ex when his mom was dying (he was her caregiver the last two months of her life). I was shut out completely, not allowed to talk to him, bring him a meal, nothing. After she died he talked to me (grieving issues) on the phone but it was sporadic...he might talk for hours and then not contact me for weeks. I was crying daily, nightly, not sleeping, it was really doing a number on me, until I finally accepted we are broken up permanently and for whatever reason, he doesn't want me anymore. Now we talk on the phone about every other day, but it's more like friends...he still doesn't let me too close and I've only gotten to see him twice since all this happened...he broke up with me ten months ago. This is the man I'd thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with so it was a real shock. I don't understand the reaction, but there are enough of them that this has happened to that it tells me it's actually fairly common. I did a lot of reading on loveshack.org under the breakup and reconciliations section and it helped me a lot in how to deal with it. Here is a link to Don Ho's thread that has some guidelines that really helped me: I can't seem to get the link to work but he's told us we can re-post what he says, so here goes: Reconciliation List I'm not a fan of second chances because they typically end up with the Dumpee getting dumped again and I think the Dumpees most often are holding on to false hope of getting back together. However, I have this list I was working on (based largely on another LS Members thread) for those of you that want to know how to act and what to do IF a Dumper contacts you and really wants you back. Before you read this, you should probably take a look at No Foolin's thread: This should give you PLENTY to read and think about. Ironically, my list turns out to be 12 steps: 1. ACT HAPPY Don’t show any signs of being sad or depressed in front of them. This doesn’t mean going up to them and saying “my life’s fabulous now I’m sooo glad we’re finished”. It just means you should put on an appearance that everything is fine and dandy. This is an especially important rule if your ex found you to be clingy. No one wants to feel like they’re responsible for someone else' happiness, so show them that they’re not. You don’t need them to be happy. 2. DO NOT BRING UP THE RELATIONSHIP! As above under ‘stop questioning them’. If they happen to bring up any relationship type talk, it’s ok to engage if you think you can both do it in a calm collected manner. If not or if it drags on without going anywhere, it’s best to just to divert and go back to normal, friendly chit chat or make your excuses and exit the conversation (in a polite way). If they’re constantly on the phone to you crying over what’s gone on but show no sign whatsoever in wanting to reconcile, they’re just stringing you along and you can’t let them. 3. DON'T ARGUE Arguing closes off lines of communication which is not what you want to do when you’re trying to open them up or keep them open. The more you fight, the more you criticize, the more they defend themselves, the more they back off the less they think of you and the more they think they’ve made the right decision to leave you. Stop arguing, keep your emotions in check! 4. DON’T REACT TO THEIR HOSTILITY It’s not unknown for dumpers to react in a cold or hostile way to the dumpee after a break up even when the dumpee hasn’t done anything to deserve it, especially when they have a new person!! The natural thing to do is react angrily to this and demand to know why you’re being treated unfairly. I don’t know why the dumper feels this need to be cruel but I do know that when you react to it, you just make matters worse. Quite often you don’t get an answer for their behavior and the more you push the more hostile and distant they get. If they tell you that you can’t pick up the rest of your stuff from their place because they’re too busy, just tell them “that’s fine, we can sort that out another time”. You’re easy going, you’re cool, you’re calm and that should hopefully force your ex to stop fighting and start acting rationally. 5. FAKE INDIFFERENCE Fake indifference about the breakup. It’s not what you wanted but it was their decision so that’s ok with you. Obviously it’s not ok, but acting like you care too much is unlikely to work. Especially if they’ve told you there’s no chance they’ll change their mind and want you back. They’ve broken up with you and they’re totally unfazed by the whole thing. You on the other hand are heartbroken, confused, hurt and angry. You cry, you get upset and you give off the impression that you’re desperate and you need them. You push and you push and you push and they back further and further away. When you act indifferent to the break up you stop becoming needy and instead come across as a mature rational person who although didn’t want the break up is willing to accept it and refuses to dwell. 6. STOP TELLING THEM YOU LOVE THEM When they’ve dumped you and you’re saying “I love you” you’re trying to claw them back into a relationship they don’t want to be in. You’re saying to them I need you, I want you, please give me what I’m looking for. As far as they’re concerned it’s all done and dusted and you’re just grasping at straws. You can’t force someone to feel what they don’t feel. They don’t love you anymore, that’s fine. You’re backing off. There’s no pressure and you’re not gonna tell them you love them because although you’d like to have them you don’t need them. 7. STOP QUESTIONING THEM Don’t ask them what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling, what they thinking about the break up, if they’ve noticed how much you’ve changed. This can be very intimidating to people and it puts them on the defensive. Also if you keep asking them and they keep having to explain what they feel they’ve already explained, they’re gonna start getting annoyed with you and want less and less to do with you. Take off the pressure and watch them feel more at ease. 8. STOP CRITICIZING & COMPLAINING Don’t blame them for the break up, don’t complain about what they did wrong in the relationship. It’s fine to talk to let off steam to others about this (just don’t do it too often otherwise your friends will dump you) but if you want to reconcile with your ex, don’t criticize. Judging them and chipping away at them is not gonna keep the lines of communication open. If you wanna discuss the ins and outs of what you both did wrong in the relationship, chances are you’ll have that talk if you get back together. Now is not the time. 9. DON'T TRY TO CONVINCE THEM TO FEEL DIFFERENTLY People don’t like to be told what to think and feel. It’s a form of control and who likes to be controlled? Nobody. They already know how they feel, they’ve made their decision and the more you try to persuade them otherwise, the more they’ll dig in their heels. Don’t try to convince them that you’re so wonderful, the perfect BF or GF and why they should love you and feel a certain way. You’re just pushing and it will push them away. Also, when you try to persuade them to feel differently you’re insulting them because they think you’re questioning their judgement and decision. That’s not going to help your cause. 10. DON'T GIVE THE IMPRESSION YOU'RE WAITING AROUND If you keep letting them know that you’re there if they ever change their mind, you’re nothing but a pushover and a sap. Every time you give off that impression you’re saying I can’t get anyone else, I have low self esteem, I’ll be your plan B, I’m willing to accept whatever breadcrumb you throw in my direction. Not very attractive to a potential mate. This attitude doesn’t give of confidence or sex appeal. You’re absolutely no challenge to them anymore. They don’t even have to try. Boring! Best to tell them or give them the impression that you’re out having fun, seeing people of the opposite sex and moving on. 11. TRY NEW THINGS If you’ve been stuck in a bit of a rut in your life, now’s the time to get out of it. One of the reasons your ex may have left you is boredom. Everyone has things they’ve been putting off doing or have always wanted to do but have never had the time. Now’s the time to take action. Now your partner has gone you probably have that extra bit of spare time to try some new things and show your ex that you’re not as boring and predictable as they thought you were. It could be anything at all. Maybe you’ve always wanted to learn to drive, or learn a language or visit some far flung city or take cooking lessons. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as it’s something you want to do. Your new found confidence that you’ve gained from your new skill/new experience will be alluring and you’ll find yourself having more to talk about which will make you more interesting too. 12. TANTALIZE, REASSURE & WORRY THEM Tantalize them, reassure them and worry them. Tantalize means your new found confidence, your looks, your conversational skills or whatever it was that your ex was attracted to in the beginning. Tantalizing them means alluring them back to you but in an indirect sort of way. You don’t want them to know that all this effort is for them! Reassuring means making sure they realize you’re not gonna be needy, you’re not gonna be possessive, you wont be jealous and you’re not desperate to win them back. Worry means worrying them that they might lose you. Don’t tell them they might lose you, just go out and date and don’t let them know that nobody else compares to them. If you do that they’ll know you’re effectively just waiting in the wings. Reverse the roles and hopefully when they know someone else is cozy-ing up to you they’ll start to wonder what they’ve thrown away. Yes two months is still really fresh, I am not surprised you are still crying and feeling like you are. It takes time and that's the hardest thing to rush. If we can help you, please let us know, keep posting here. Kay 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Thanks for the advice. It's been a difficult adjustment but I'm trying to find happiness on my own again. I think the situation is complicated for us because of the grief component, which is why I found the posts on this site to provide the most insight, rather than a site about general relationship advice. I know that my relationship in itself was great before this death happened - even the night before his mother died, he expressed how happy and in love he was with me, and we were making plans to travel outside of the country together. We had so much we were looking forward to. I can understand needing to put those things aside now, of course, but I can't understand why grieving means that he has to treat me like I don't even exist and it's like he made a decision overnight to throw away everything we had built together. I get very angry sometimes because I feel like he's treating me horribly and I know I deserve better, even though I feel a lot of sympathy for his terrible situation. I wish I could hear from people who have been on the other side of this, to understand why someone would do this in grief and push away their nearest and dearest source of support. At first, my friends who knew both of us thought he had just gone crazy with grief and would surely come around soon because they knew how great we had been together. They can't make any sense out of his behavior. I can understand needing some time alone to grieve but he is letting friends and family gather around him and I am the only one who has to stay away. Memorial services are scheduled for later this month but he has asked me not to come (although originally, the first week after his mom died, he had asked me to be there with him). Why would someone's feelings change like that, when I haven't done anything wrong? It feels so wrong for me not to be there at a time like this. I was closer to him than anyone and most of his friends didn't know anything about his mother at all. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Maybe he feels guilty for spending time with you instead of his mother, I know thats how I feel about my ex boyfriend, all those times and last moments I couldve had with my dad and instead I was with him. Doesnt make sense of course because thats what happens people have boyfriends/girlfriends and dont spend as much time with their parents but its just because you asked how you think someone on the other side might feel and I know thats how I feel. But its different because my ex was never there for me or supportive but thats just a possible reason? 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites I do think there are a lot of guilt issues involved. Although he did talk to his mother over the phone pretty regularly, I felt like he often wasn't very supportive of her emotionally and I once kind of chided him (in a way that was mild and constructive) for that last year. They definitely had a love-hate relationship where he was always resisting her influence because certain aspects of her personality annoyed him. He was always complaining about her to me. I'm sure he feels a lot of remorse for that now. But it isn't fair of him to take it out on me as I've always tried to be supportive. What I find hardest to understand is the sudden breaking off of contact so abruptly, when everything had been going great between us. When she died, we had come back a couple of weeks before from a very romantic trip and we were very happy, more in love than ever. I could tolerate needing to cool off relationship stuff now, as it isn't the time to think about that, but don't know why he can't even treat me as a friend anymore (though at first he begged me to stay in his life), when I had been such an important person in his life before. I feel like he's punishing me for something even though I've been nothing but good and supportive to him. I haven't done anything to deserve being treated like this. I have a hard time deciding between whether it's better to maintain radio silence for a while longer or to try to check in on him again. Friends are of two different minds about this, and I constantly finding myself wishing I could contact him but then holding myself back. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Don't take it personally, it's just what they need right now. It takes a lot for us to understand, I still don't understand but I respect my ex's wishes and I'm now trying to move on after 6 weeks of trying to talk to her. There's nothing we can do to help them unless we bring back that person they want in their lives. Maybe one day they will realise what they have given up, Fern's friends used to tell her that they all thought she had the perfect relationship with me, something Fern thought as well but losing her Dad changed her and changed things for us, there's no one else in the world they want apart from that one person they can't have. My advice would be to protect yourself, retreat and focus on you! If they come back great, if not, remember it's not your fault, it's not their fault but it's just something that happened and you can't chance how they feel. You'll be fine in time, I promise. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites It's hard not to take it personally. On one hand you can say it's not his fault, but of course he can make choices about how he treats people he cares about and he hasn't pushed away anyone else except for me. He is responsible for how he behaves, especially if he seems to be functioning okay with friends, family, and work. Maybe those things require less emotional involvement, but at least he could drop me a line now and then, right? It's hard to understand why I have to be excluded completely when I did nothing wrong and have only been sweet and supportive to him (as he said himself). I think the memorial service is this weekend but I don't even know for sure since he hasn't contacted me in over a month. It's horrible considering how close we were before all of this happened. Not sure I should say anything at this point, or if any contact I try to make before he's ready would be viewed as an intrusion. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites I know how hard this is not to take personally, sometimes I think about it and get angry but Fern's done exactly the same to me as what your boyfriend is doing to you. Fern told me I've done nothing wrong and she doesn't know herself why she's chose just to push me away so I'm guessing your boyfriend will be the same. For now, having a relationship is just too much for them, they're probably scared to lose someone who's so close to them again and so they push us away to protect them. It seems like me and Fern had a very similar relationship to yours and so I can see where you're coming from, and for dropping you a line every now and then, they probably just don't know what to say unfortunately. Don't contact them, maybe a little text or e-mail now and then but not too much and maybe things will be okay again in the future, but for now, just try and focus on you, do things you like and stay busy as it will hit you hardest when you're alone. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Thanks, I had considered posting there originally but thought this was a better section for my topic because it's not just about the loss of a love relationship but specifically about grieving behavior and why it would lead to ending a relationship which should not have ended for any other reason. I want to try to understand why someone would behave this way while grieving. I was hoping to get a broader perspective and insight into grief as it applies to my situation, from people who have grieved in this way - people who have pushed away a significant other as part of their grieving process. It's hard for me to rationalize it but maybe if someone can explain what it is like to go through that and why they would do it, I can begin to understand it a little better. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites I know how hard this is not to take personally, sometimes I think about it and get angry but Fern's done exactly the same to me as what your boyfriend is doing to you. Fern told me I've done nothing wrong and she doesn't know herself why she's chose just to push me away so I'm guessing your boyfriend will be the same. For now, having a relationship is just too much for them, they're probably scared to lose someone who's so close to them again and so they push us away to protect them. It seems like me and Fern had a very similar relationship to yours and so I can see where you're coming from, and for dropping you a line every now and then, they probably just don't know what to say unfortunately. Don't contact them, maybe a little text or e-mail now and then but not too much and maybe things will be okay again in the future, but for now, just try and focus on you, do things you like and stay busy as it will hit you hardest when you're alone. Tom you're so right about how similar our situations are. My boyfriend did say a couple of times before that he had thought about emailing or calling me but couldn't finish the email or didn't know what to say. I guess it is just too much effort and they want to take time out for themselves for a while? He says being around me is too confusing and causes emotional stress but I don't understand why my presence wouldn't be comforting at a time like this, why there is this inner conflict which never existed before. He has a high-pressure job and in the past, he would always vent to me and say how much better I made him feel after he talked to me about things. Now he is going through a more difficult time than ever but he doesn't want to turn to me as usual. I hope he is seeing a therapist as it seems like he really needs it, but of course now I can't know what he has been doing lately or whether he's starting to feel better at all yet. It feels wrong to not send any words of support while he's going through the memorial service stuff this weekend, but I guess I have already reached out enough times to express my condolences and let him know that I care. At this point, I may just have to let it be. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Whatever you do, don't ever feel like you didn't do anything, you gave everything but sometimes your best won't be good enough for anyone, the one person they truely want is no longer here and so to them, nothing means what it used to. Fern told me she had changed and so she broke up with me out of care for me, that she didn't want it to be one sided, maybe it's the same for you? You're right, right now it's all about them, no one else, it's time for them to find themselves again, to find a way of life without that special person. Fern loved me, she might still love me but nothing can replace that love of a parent, it's hard to understand, I still don't understand but I respect Fern's wishes and leave her be, she doesn't want me in her life, yeah she says she's confused but I'd rather stay away for her, and to protect myself and to give myself a chance to heal too and move on. I would send a little text this weekend, just saying that you're thinking of him or something. Nothing too much and nothing to put any sort of pressure onto the situation, if he doesn't reply, then at least you tried. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Miri, Tom, I feel your pain, sorrow and frustrations as I read through each and every post. I find myself in a similar situation, and can relate to questioning "why?". I found KayC's contribution and advice extremely helpful, and my heart just swells with warmth when she talks about the love she had with first husband. My boyfriend (him 43, me 35) of over two years ended our relationship the same day as he came home from cleaning out his deceased father's house out of state. It absolutely slaughtered my heart, my dreams and so much more. It's been over a month and a half since that day and yet the pain is still drags me down. I want to be there for him, hold his hand and share the path thru the good and bad times......but he's let me go and I feel like I have no place in his life or heart anymore. The past two years with him were the best two of my life, so much love, laughter, fun, caring, intellectual and physical stimulation. No drama, infidelity, lies or such things, just pure and honest respect, love and fun. He reasoning for the breakup was that he stated the three following things: I'm too nice, he doesn't feel the same way about me and that I deserve better. He may have said more, but I was in to much shock to grasp what was happening. He never stated the break up had anything to do with his father's passing, but it's hard to not imagine that grieving process was involved in some manner. I guess what complicates the matter is that his relationship with his father was not good. The father had been a disappointment in his life multiple times. They spoke, but not often and ex-b was appalled by the way his fathered lived, handled his health and finances. To add to the complexity of the situation the father had passed in his home, alone and wasn't found until a week later (I haven't mentioned the hoarding yet either.) So the responsibilities that fall on ex-b are huge, I can only imagine a myriad of feelings come with it such as anger and guilt as well. He has wonderful friends, boss, an amazing mother and sister, so I am comforted that he is not alone in this difficult time. Not until I found this forum, did I learn that shutting a partner out like this is not as rare as I thought it was. I felt like I was being punished and really coludn't figure out what I had done to deserve this pain. So I guess we're both grieving, one the loss of a father who never was what a father should have been and the other the loss of the one partner that she took forever to finally find. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Caroline, I feel your pain. It seems like it is a common reaction to a parent's death, as several people here seem to be in the same boat. I wish I could understand it and know whether we can have hope. It is such a difficult place to be in. You might be able to get more responses about your situation if you started a new thread of your own about it. I have decided to move this to the other forum about Loss of Love Relationships, as someone suggested earlier, in hopes that it will get more responses there. [Edit: It looks like a moderator just moved this over to the new section now. Sorry for any confusion.] However, I would still really like to hear from people who have been through grief and pushed loved ones away, if you stumble across this topic and have any words of advice. Sometimes it is just so hard to know what to do, because I don't know how to address his grief. Is space the answer? Or is it okay to try to send him little notes or check in on him even though he never contacts me? How can I know whether he's still grieving or if he's really just done with our relationship? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Today it's been about two weeks after the memorial service. I still haven't heard from him, but a mutual friend confirmed for me that it took place. He had many of his friends there, even though it was in another state and most of them had never met his mother and didn't know much about her. They are old friends from school, but as guys, they don't really talk a lot about intimate emotional stuff. They say he is acting like "business as usual" but I did hear though that he's gone back to smoking (he had just quit before she died) and drinking more heavily than normal. I feel bad that he no longer wanted me to be at the service, even though I was closer to him than anyone and he had actually wanted his mother to meet me. I wanted to be there more than anyone else. I wish I could say something to express my feelings. Right after she died, which was three months ago, I did have flowers sent and he appreciated that, but I could only put a few lines on the card. I don't know what to do now. It helped a lot to talk to a friend at work who lost her mother six years ago. She said three months is nothing when one is devastated by grief, so maybe he just needs more time. But for me, my life has been completely disrupted as well, and I am left hanging. We never got to have a proper talk about anything, there is no real resolution yet, and he kept saying we would talk soon or he would see me soon, but I haven't heard anything from him in almost two months now. I want to be patient, but without signs to give me hope, it is so hard. I don't know whether he just needs more time and whether to keep giving him space. My friend also said to know that it really isn't about me or the relationship, it's just something that is so overwhelming that he cannot deal with my needs right now. On one level I try to understand this intellectually. But then a day like this comes, when I am not busy or have a schedule packed with activities as usual, and I just feel his absence so much and can't understand why he doesn't miss me and won't just drop a line. I want to pick up the phone and check in on him but I don't know if that is the right thing to do. The whole thing has seemed really terrible and abnormal to me. One day we were so happy together, so affectionate with each other and in love, looking forward to so much...then suddenly a few days later, it just ends and there is no contact. And because of nothing that I did, nothing that should have been wrong with us... To have someone you were that close to just ripped out of your life like that is horrible, it is almost as if he died too. How can it just be this way? Everything was going so well and now everything feels wrong with the world. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Interests:I lead a grief support group and I enjoy volunteering in my church (Treasurer & on Praise Team, choir) and the senior site, where I do the bingo prizes. I love stamping, hiking, nature, singing. I am a retired Office Mgr./Bkpr. I'm afraid most of us here can't shed much light on it as we are the dumpees not the dumpers. But as Tom said, they feel a relationship is too much right now and it's taking all that is within them to deal with the death of their parent. It's been 11 months since my fiance broke up with me and he never did resume our relationship after the death of his mom, we are more like "phone pals" but that's it. In the beginning we had two or three months without any contact at all and then he made contact, but it's never been the same since. Neither of us date. For him I think he doesn't want to hurt anyone else and for me, I don't trust anymore. The other thing that I have learned is that they can't handle the slightest bit of pressure. If you offer encouragement and support, maybe send a card with a very short message on it...praying for you, something like that, nothing that could be taken the wrong way. I'm sorry there are so many going through this. The one thing I do know is that it isn't personal, even though it sure feels like it, and it happens often enough to know this is fairly common. It does make it hard to trust again because calamities do strike without warning in life and how can we know it won't happen again? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Time, time, more time and lots of space,....there obviously is no recipe how to successfully deal with the situations we are in. But what gives me hope and keeps me going is that I know the famlies affected and significant others are in my thoughts and prayers every single day. For myself, I'm trying to be that strong confident person I once was, even though I miss and love Chris dearly, I just can't let his method of dealing with his grief leave me behind as damaged goods.....that's just not right. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Thank you for your messages of support. I am sure I will hear from him eventually, because I believe he is a good guy and not the kind to just run off and disappear forever. We also have mutual friends who will make him feel accountable. Nevertheless, it does seem like it's taking a really long time - three months since the death, and almost two months now since I last saw him or heard anything from him. I feel like I was just abandoned, and I don't understand why he can't talk to me at all, when he is interacting with everybody who is important to him, including an old ex-gf from ten years ago (she is with someone else now, but they are still friends). I know it is different with me because of the type of relationship we had, and because he owes me expectations of an emotional commitment that he is unable to give to anyone right now. But it still sucks to be completely shut out when he is still talking to everyone else. I want to believe that he still cares. It doesn't make any sense and seems really wrong for him to simply want to drop all contact with me when I haven't done anything wrong, and have always been good to him. I just want to have faith in him, that he will eventually feel better and come around. We had so much good that was going for us...it would be stupid of him to turn his back on that chance at love and happiness. Our friends think he is being an idiot, because they quite frankly do not believe he will ever be able to meet another person like me again in his life. I was really good for him and made his life better. He says he prefers his solitude right now, but I don't think that will last forever, as he was not happy being alone before he met me. Weekends are the hardest, especially because I think of all the things we should be doing, would be doing together, if his mother hadn't died. Especially on a long holiday weekend like this, when everyone else seems to be going about with their normal happy lives. I probably made a mistake by trying to call him this weekend, he didn't pick up and I just got voicemail and didn't leave a message, but he will see that I called. I don't know if he'll try to call back, but at least he'll know that I'm thinking of him. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Interests:I lead a grief support group and I enjoy volunteering in my church (Treasurer & on Praise Team, choir) and the senior site, where I do the bingo prizes. I love stamping, hiking, nature, singing. I am a retired Office Mgr./Bkpr. I know exactly how you feel, it's almost as if they follow a script it's so similar, all of our experiences. Jim made contact with an XGF that he hadn't talked with in years either, and still keeps up with her. It's like the reach out to everyone who is familiar...except for us. I do not for the life of me understand why/how their response is like this...I know it's nothing personal but it sure feels personal, I know they don't feel they have it in them to invest in a relationship right now and I get that, but they invest in everything else, their friends, etc. I just don't get it. That's why I wonder if there was something they weren't happy with and hadn't told us, I dont know, but just two weeks before he broke up with me he told me he saw us spending our whole lives together...from that to this? He's completely moved on in his life without me...oh sure, he calls now but it's more like he views me as an old friend, not someone he'd intended to share his life with. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites It is a gutt wrenching feeling that we are all experiencing. And it is true, that it feels almost as if this has been scripted -with how similarly we are all facing this situation. And, as it seems, there is a scripted answer. --Be patient, and carry hope inside of your heart. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Interests:I lead a grief support group and I enjoy volunteering in my church (Treasurer & on Praise Team, choir) and the senior site, where I do the bingo prizes. I love stamping, hiking, nature, singing. I am a retired Office Mgr./Bkpr. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites So I never did get a call back to my spur-of-the-moment attempt to call him last weekend, but I wasn't too surprised. The question is I don't know whether that means anything. I've read that when someone is grieving it can just be hard for them to get back to you because of what they're going through. It doesn't necessarily mean that they don't want to hear from you or want you to stop trying, but just that they don't have the emotional energy to deal with it at that moment. But I'm starting to have some moments where I don't know if he just really doesn't want to hear from me anymore. It's been over two months now since I last talked to him. I didn't contact him at all for over a month (all of June and a little before and after). I broke my silence by sending him a postcard a week ago and then trying to call him last weekend (but didn't leave a message). I find it really hard to understand why he won't talk to me at all, as I haven't done anything wrong to him and we did not leave on upset terms. He never asked me not to contact him, or even to give him space, in those words - just said he couldn't be in a relationship with anyone right now, but he asked me to stay in his life and be a friend for now because I was important to him. We were fine, he just said he needed to figure things out and that we'd talk more and he'd see me soon - but that never happened because I gave him some space, and now there's nothing. I don't understand how things came to this. He doesn't seem to have fallen into a deep depression - in fact someone just told me he was kind of upbeat when they last saw him - but he could just be acting that way on the surface with them. His birthday is this weekend and I bought a card to send him. But a friend told me that since I haven't heard anything from him in so long that he seriously needs space (even though he never actually requested this) and that any attempt to contact him might be interpreted as not respecting his wishes. I am so confused - I've always heard advice to give space, but also show that you're still there for him, and to be gentle, patient, supportive, etc. Now I don't know whether it's worse to ignore his birthday or to acknowledge it. What harm could be done, as long as I keep it light and friendly? I posted a bit about this in Tom's thread and he suggested sending a text message instead, but my friend said a card was better because it doesn't imply that a response is expected (unlike a text message, where it would be polite to reply). I am so frustrated right now. I just wish I could talk to him so I could know how he feels, because without that communication, I have no idea how I should act. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites It blows my mind how similar your situation is to mine. I went through the same exact thing. In my case, his birthday was in March and I was angry about him not having spoken to me in a while. The way I thought of it -I knew it would catch his attention if I chose not to wish him a happy birthday, rather than being looked at like everyone else who wished him that day. As a way to attract his attention, rather than pursuing it –I ignored the date. It wasn’t until a month and a half later when we finally saw each other for a mutual friend’s get together that he brought it up saying, “hmm… you didn’t even wish me a happy birthday! Did you? ” And my response to that had simply been, “I tried to contact you before that, and you never honored my trials with a response, so what’s the point?” And he sort of respected that. It is important for a man to see that you respect yourself, before he respects you. Value yourself enough to just back off for a little while, and allow him to realize what a wonderful person you are for himself, instead of it being forced. “Attract, instead of pursue” –that was the best advice I ever got. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites The other thing I remember now is that he seemed to withdraw in stages. For about a week right after his mother died, things were fine between us. Although I wasn't with him as he took care of arrangements (but I offered several times to travel there), we spoke by phone extensively a couple of times a day, and he would tell me everything about what he had been through that day and what he was feeling. He would say how much he missed me, and how he wanted to put this horrible event behind him and come home and spend time with me. He also asked me to help him with things he'd have to deal with later and asked me to be at the memorial service. By the end of the week, he seemed quieter but I thought it was just from being tired and grieving as the harsh truth of his mother's death sank in. Then one evening he said he wanted to spend a little time alone when he got back - but he also said that he wanted to spend time with me too, just needed a little time to himself to think, which I could understand. It seemed like everything would be fine. But a few more days after that, when he came home, he abruptly said he needed to take a break from our relationship. At first it was phrased in such a way that showed he intended it to be "just for now". He said he just couldn't be in a relationship with anyone while he was grieving. He also suddenly reversed everything he'd said a few days earlier and asked me not to come to the memorial service anymore. I tried to give him space, but as time passed, he seemed to withdraw further. Without any further discussion, the break turned into a more serious break-up, then he started saying that he didn't think he could be in a relationship ever again. And now, even though he said we would leave things on hold and not decide anything yet, there is just no contact from him at all. Is it normal for grief to have this effect and progression? I wonder if I have done the right things, or if my giving him so much space (and not reaching out to him more) has made it easier for him to grow more distant. Other than that, I don't see how his change could be due to anything I've said or done, as I haven't changed. I really just don't know what to do anymore, I tried dropping all contact for over a month but nothing came of it. We do have to talk eventually, as we never had closure and everything is still unresolved. I also have all my things still at his apartment (some are valuable and can't be replaced), but he said a long time ago that I didn't have to move my things out yet (as if he thought this break wouldn't last too long) and I'm still clinging to the hope that someday I'll be able to go back again and we can try to return to the life we had together before. I thought it would happen sooner, but it seems like things have been getting worse between us rather than better.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Hi! Can anyone share with an experience of smoking marijuana like this purple urkle http://www.ilovegrowingmarijuana.com/purple-urkle/through a vaporizer. Is it the same as using a bong or not? What are the advantage and disadvantages of using a vaporizer where smoking marijuana? (whether to buy or not to buy? if yes, then what the best compact vaporizer?) thanks	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Free Resume Templates Sort by: The best free resume templates we've found from the amazing sources. Including multiple different free resume templates for different jobs. Including freely downloadable resumes, curriculum vitae / cv, cover letter and many more examples in Photoshop PSD, Illustrator AI, Microsoft Word DOC/DOCX and Indesign INDD formats.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
When managing an access control or security system, there’s a lot of information to process. IDenticard’s new PremiSys Security Management Dashboard simplifies your access control system by giving you access to key functions of your system on a single customizable screen. With the PremiSys Security Management Dashboard, monitoring your facilities will be easier than ever. What is the PremiSys Security Management Dashboard? The PremiSys Security Management Dashboard is an add-on software management tool for the PremiSys access control system and patented Rack Armor Server Protection designed to streamline the monitoring of your access control system.The PremiSys Security Management Dashboard provides information that isn’t available elsewhere in your system, like open door thresholds and graphed trend data, in a convenient central location. The PremiSys Security Management Dashboard can be viewed in a standard web browser window or on a tablet. This helpful software management tool is designed to give users a “quick view” into their access control system, providing key information at a glance. A convenient search function makes finding the information you need simple, while system administrators can customize what information individual users are able to see on the Dashboard. The PremiSys Security Management Dashboard provides convenience and a feature set that other access control providers can’t match. Add the Dashboard to your PremiSys access control system or Rack Armor solution today to make monitoring your sites simpler than ever before! Enhance your system with the PremiSys Dashboard today! PremiSys: The Dashboard provides fast, easy access to a wealth of important data and information about the security of your site. PremiSys Security Management Dashboard: A convenient management tool for your access control system The PremiSys Security Management Dashboard simplifies the management of your access control system while still boasting a comprehensive set of features. With Dashboard, you’ll benefit from a full-featured, easy-to-use security management tool that will give you maximum control over all aspects of your site. Dashboard features include: Doors open now: Helpful graphics display the number of open doors or server cabinets on your system at a given time. Thresholds can be set based on your system needs, allowing you to monitor risk levels and use custom settings to determine “normal” activity. Doors open for a certain time: For facilities concerned about doors being left open, the PremiSys Security Management Dashboard allows users to set a predetermined length of time and be alerted when a door has been open for too long. A clear red indicator shows the number of doors that have been left open, allowing for maximum security. Hardware health: The PremiSys Security Management Dashboard will alert users to various hardware issues and provide detailed information on where the affected doors or locks, power issues, communication issues and more. Total alarms: Quickly view a graph showing the total number of door alarms during a given time period, allowing administrators to view alarm trends and adjust their security protocols accordingly. Point activity: This helpful page shows the most and least active monitor points on your system, allowing administrators to make more informed decisions about where to place hardware. For example, if a door isn’t being accessed frequently, its reader can be moved to monitor a different door, saving a facility money by not requiring the purchase of a new reader. Card activity: A graph provides detailed information on the number of card transactions during a preset time period, allowing administrators to better monitor trends in the number of card transactions. Unused active cards: Eliminate the risk of lost or unused cards with this helpful PremiSys Security Management Dashboard feature. Unused cards can be filtered by a preset time, including days, months or even a year. The Dashboard will display the number of cards that haven’t been used during that time period. Unused cards can be instantly deactivated through the dashboard.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Doug Ford’s budget makes life harder for Northern families Post Views: 193 During question period Monday, NDP Northern Development critic, Michael Mantha, continued to advocate for the North in the face of Doug Ford’s first budget, which attacks northern Ontario, hitting families with deep cuts to services, infrastructure, and economic development. “Ministries that are dedicated to the development of the Northern economy, like the Ministries of Natural Resources and Forestry and Northern Development and Mines, have been cut by hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Mantha. “There wasn’t even lip service to the billion dollars in funding needed to build roads to the Ring of Fire, or a commitment to meaningful consultations with impacted First Nations. “And the government announced its intention to interfere with the successful Northern Ontario Heritage Fund. “Instead of investing in the North, why is Doug Ford choosing to cut funding for Northern Ontario economic development?” Mantha said to make matters worse the Ford government made deep cuts to infrastructure spending which will mean less funding to improve Northern roads, bridges, schools and hospitals, or provide northern transit, like the Northlander. “The government once again refused to commit to reinstating the Northlander passenger rail service,” said Mantha. “And as we all know the cuts to education will hit rural and northern schools the hardest.” Mantha said the North was ignored under Kathleen Wynne and years of Liberal governments — but it looks like Doug Ford is making it much, much worse.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
To our family Web page. We are a family of 5. Our oldest son is 16 and has a great love of computers and Web design. He created the Web page for our construction company. Click on the Artisan Builders button below to see it. Our middle son is 14 years old. His interests right now are skateboarding and indoor rock climbing. Our daughter is 6 years old. Her favorite things to do are swim, ride her bike and be outside.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Products Brochures When you need to communicate key messages to your audience, there’s nothing more effective than a full-color, custom brochure. Business brochures allow you to share detailed information about your products and services in a uniquely presentable way. Bring us your project, and we’ll work tirelessly to craft the perfect brochure for your organization. Ready to get started? Get a Quote! Related Products One of your most important selling tools may be a professionally printed catalog. We'll help you showcase your products in the best way possible with a high-quality catalog you'll be proud to distribute. “It’s what’s inside that counts” may be true—but it can’t hurt to have a little outside appeal as well. Send your mail in style with professionally designed envelopes, from classic black and white to colorful designs.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
All the samples are written in Java and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotlin_(programming_language) Kotlin]. + + = Common Mistakes = + I suggest you to take a read to these two pages for a quick overview over the most common problems, it is a very useful reading, legacy sections are carefully signaled. + + [https://www.opengl.org/wiki/Common_Mistakes OpenGL] + [https://www.opengl.org/wiki/GLSL_:_common_mistakes GLSL] + + Another common mistake that may happen if you port code from C/C++ to Java is this one: + + <code> + Caused by: com.jogamp.opengl.GLException: unpack pixel_buffer_object must be bound to call this method + at jogamp.opengl.gl4.GL4bcImpl.checkBufferObject(GL4bcImpl.java:40621) + at jogamp.opengl.gl4.GL4bcImpl.checkUnpackPBOBound(GL4bcImpl.java:40707) + at jogamp.opengl.gl4.GL4bcImpl.glTexImage2D(GL4bcImpl.java:5535) + at tests.gl320.Gl_320_fbo_blit.initTexture(Gl_320_fbo_blit.java:199) + </code> + + This happens because in C/C++, when you just want to allocate the space for a texture using, for example, ''glTexImage2D'', you should not pass 0 as the last argument, but ''null''. + + + N.B: The use of color picking is '''NOT''' recommended on any hardware whose palette is partially emulated. + + = Java OpenGL Samples Pack = + + The [https://github.com/elect86/jogl-samples Java OpenGL Samples Pack] (called unsurprisingly jogl-samples) is a port of the [http://www.g-truc.net/project-0026.html OpenGL Samples Pack], a collection of OpenGL samples based on the OpenGL "core profile" specifications. + + The project aims to promote the new OpenGL features making easier version transitions for OpenGL programmers with a complementary documentation for the OpenGL specification. Despite the fact that the OpenGL Samples Pack provides as simple (and dumb) as possible samples, it's not a tutorial for beginner but a project for programmers already familiar with OpenGL. The OpenGL Samples Pack is also a good OpenGL drivers feature test. + + These samples illustrate mostly of the OpenGL features from ES 2.0 up to the last GL extenstions, same of them usually also called AZDO (Almost Zero Driver Overhead). Shader-based modern OpenGL 3D graphics programming textbook entirely in JOGL. Also works as a JOGL primer. "Computer Graphics Programming in OpenGL with Java" by V. Scott Gordon and John L. Clevenger, published by [http://www.merclearning.com/titles/Computer_Graphics_Programming.html Mercury], available at [https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Programming-OpenGL-Java/dp/1683920279/ Amazon]. Common Mistakes Another common mistake that may happen if you port code from C/C++ to Java is this one: Caused by: com.jogamp.opengl.GLException: unpack pixel_buffer_object must be bound to call this method at jogamp.opengl.gl4.GL4bcImpl.checkBufferObject(GL4bcImpl.java:40621) at jogamp.opengl.gl4.GL4bcImpl.checkUnpackPBOBound(GL4bcImpl.java:40707) at jogamp.opengl.gl4.GL4bcImpl.glTexImage2D(GL4bcImpl.java:5535) at tests.gl320.Gl_320_fbo_blit.initTexture(Gl_320_fbo_blit.java:199) This happens because in C/C++, when you just want to allocate the space for a texture using, for example, glTexImage2D, you should not pass 0 as the last argument, but null. N.B: The use of color picking is NOT recommended on any hardware whose palette is partially emulated. Java OpenGL Samples Pack The project aims to promote the new OpenGL features making easier version transitions for OpenGL programmers with a complementary documentation for the OpenGL specification. Despite the fact that the OpenGL Samples Pack provides as simple (and dumb) as possible samples, it's not a tutorial for beginner but a project for programmers already familiar with OpenGL. The OpenGL Samples Pack is also a good OpenGL drivers feature test. These samples illustrate mostly of the OpenGL features from ES 2.0 up to the last GL extenstions, same of them usually also called AZDO (Almost Zero Driver Overhead). Shader-based modern OpenGL 3D graphics programming textbook entirely in JOGL. Also works as a JOGL primer. "Computer Graphics Programming in OpenGL with Java" by V. Scott Gordon and John L. Clevenger, published by Mercury, available at Amazon.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Alcohol Cutdown Coachhttp://alcoholcutdowncoach.com Available on the App Store now!Tue, 29 Sep 2015 23:29:33 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4Alcohol Cutdown Coach Interview on 3RRR’s “Byte Into It”http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/alcohol-cutdown-coach-interview-on-3rrrs-byte-into-it/ http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/alcohol-cutdown-coach-interview-on-3rrrs-byte-into-it/#respondTue, 29 Sep 2015 07:36:29 +0000http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/?p=72Continue reading →]]>We had a lot of fun being interviewed on Melbourne radio station 3RRR’s technology program, Byte Into It. Many thanks to Triple R for having us on to talk about the Alcohol Cutdown Coach app, how it came about and how it can be utilized by people who want to cut down on their alcohol use. For anybody interested in listening to the interview in full, here it is. We will look to upload a full transcript of the interview in due course as well. One complaint that is rarely heard these days is that people have too much time. Although this may be true for a small minority, many of us feel the pressures of everyday life eating away at more and more of our day. Whether you’re working, staying at home with the kids or otherwise, you may find like many others that once the working day is done you just have time to get the kids fed and bathed and in bed, ditto yourself, and barely have any time at all left over. And the little amount of time you do have is spent recovering from an exhausting day. You might also find that as soon as you get home you habitually try to unwind by pouring yourself a beer or a wine. This may help you to relax, but have you found that once you do that it’s so much harder to do everything else? And once you’re on the couch having a drink, how difficult is it to get back up again? What if you spent a few nights each week breaking out of the habit and spending some time playing with the kids, gardening outside, going for a run – whatever you choose! And while you’re at it why not turn off the tv as well – you’ll be amazed at how much extra time you can find. Not only this, but the spare time you do have will be made more productive because you’re not feeling so sleepy from alcohol – so it’s a double win. And as you increase your exercise and natural relaxation, the process becomes even more effective. Don’t forget too, without alcohol your sleep can be more refreshing; perhaps you’ll need less of it and be able to get up that little bit earlier, which reclaims even more time. But don’t take our word for it – download the Alcohol Cutdown Coach app, set a number of days per week that you want to test the theory out and go for it today! ]]>http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/reasons-you-should-download-the-alcohol-cutdown-coach-app-reason-3/feed/0Reasons you should download the Alcohol Cutdown Coach app. Reason # 2http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/reasons-you-should-download-the-alcohol-cutdown-coach-app-reason-2/ http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/reasons-you-should-download-the-alcohol-cutdown-coach-app-reason-2/#respondWed, 22 Apr 2015 05:11:04 +0000http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/?p=61Continue reading →]]>Reason # 2: You are spending more money than you would like on alcohol. Unless you’re growing a beer tree at your house, chances are if you drink alcohol, then that alcohol is costing you money. And because alcohol consumption can become such a habit for some, that money can really add up over time. So now you can see what people mean when they talk about peeing their money up against the wall!! Why not do a little experiement and write down how much you think you drink on average, on the days that you consume alcohol. Then have a think about what that is costing you each time and write that figure down. Now, bear in mind that every time you have an extra AFD (i.e. when you deliberately, and in conjunction with the Alcohol Cutdown Coach app, refrain from drinking any alcohol on a day that you otherwise might have opted to drink), that amount on average is roughly what you could be saving each time!! When you download the Alcohol Cutdown Coach app, don’t forget to use the customise feature – that will let you input all the information we’ve just mentioned above and the app will help you to keep track of the money you’re saving. And of course if you have a particular goal in mind (i.e. saving enough money to pay for a holiday, or enough to finance a particular gift to yourself), that will give you all the more motivation to stick to your goals. And then you really will have something tangible to show for all your hard work! ]]>http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/reasons-you-should-download-the-alcohol-cutdown-coach-app-reason-2/feed/0Reasons you should download the Alcohol Cutdown Coach app. Reason #1http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/reasons-you-should-download-the-alcohol-cutdown-coach-app/ http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/reasons-you-should-download-the-alcohol-cutdown-coach-app/#respondTue, 21 Apr 2015 02:59:31 +0000http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/?p=58Continue reading →]]>Hi there, beginning today we are going to make a series of posts about why it might be a great idea for you to cut down on your alcohol consumption and increase your Alcohol Free Days. Of course most of these also double as reasons why you should download the Alcohol Cutdown Coach app and start using it today…. There are a multitude of reasons why this app could help you to change your life, so be sure to stay tuned to these posts!!! Reason #1 : You are frequently hung over. Many of us know how it feels like to wake up with a terrible hangover. This awful feeling is often accompanied by confusion about the events of the night before, as well as guilt and remorse. And of course it’s just so difficult to get much else done when you feel weak and debilitated. Did you stay out late on a Friday night and spend all day Saturday feeling sick? That’s HALF YOUR WEEKEND GONE – what a waste!! Have you ever woken up in this state and said to yourself: “Never again”?! Perhaps you actually followed through on this for a time as well. But for how long did you stick to your promise? If you really want to reduce the amount of time that you are spending hung over (and simultaneously reap all of the other benefits associated with drinking less), it’s important to have a plan, and to stick to it. And of course sticking to it means monitoring your progress as you go. Starting today, why not pick a number of AFDs that you want to achieve and use our app to help you achieve this – spending less time hung over could be one of the many resulting benefits! A new app released this month for iPhone and iPad assists users to track and increase the regularity of their Alcohol Free Days (AFDs) and to improve their health. April, 2015 – available now in the App Store, Alcohol Cutdown Coach is designed for people looking to improve their lifestyle, bank balance and calorie intake by introducing or maintaining alcohol free days into their usual routine. It’s a way to set alcohol free day goals for yourself and track them (with the help of reminders) in a fun and motivating way. Users select a date range and nominate the number of AFDs that they wish to achieve. They then track their AFDs with daily reminders appearing on their device. Over time the app provides a graphical summary of how the user is performing. Users can also input their own drinking habits, allowing the app to provide further statistics such as calories and money saved. “Both my husband and myself were looking for a fun challenge to help us become more energised, lose weight and save money”, says co-developer Vanessa. “We’d tried abstaining over certain months, such as ‘Feb Fast’ and ‘Dry July’, which was great, but these didn’t really modify our lifestyle choices long term. Likewise, setting a hard and fast rule such as “no drinking from Monday to Friday” is so rigid it gets difficult to maintain. We wanted a tool to help us to look at our long term habits, then set and track goals to improve them. Plus we wanted the flexibility to pick and choose which days to abstain and when we could have an occasional drink…. This app is the result.” Alcohol Cutdown Coach is currently available in most countries worldwide for iPhone and iPad. It costs $0.99 in the US and is priced accordingly in other regions. Age restrictions apply. For further information, search for Alcohol Cutdown Coach in the App Store, or visit alcoholcutdowncoach.com. Developed by Dell ‘Aquila Road Pty Ltd in Melbourne Australia. ### ]]>http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/press-release/feed/0Alcohol Cutdown Coach app published for iPhone and iPadhttp://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/alcohol-cutdown-coach-ios-app-published/ http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/alcohol-cutdown-coach-ios-app-published/#respondTue, 17 Mar 2015 01:59:42 +0000http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/?p=25Great news, the Alcohol Cutdown Coach app is now available for download for iPhone and iPad!! If you’re looking for a fun and simple way to cut down your drinking, this app could be a great way to start. ]]>http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/alcohol-cutdown-coach-ios-app-published/feed/0Welcomehttp://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/wordpress-resources-at-siteground/ http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/wordpress-resources-at-siteground/#commentsTue, 30 Dec 2014 02:40:40 +0000Continue reading →]]>Welcome, and thank you for visiting the Alcohol Cutdown Coach Website. Here you will find information relating to the Alcohol Cutdown Coach app. In future we will also be providing some facts, stories and testimonials that we thought might be relevant and interesting to those of you who have downloaded the app or are considering doing so, as well as anybody who is interested in issues related to alcohol consumption and cutting down. ]]>http://alcoholcutdowncoach.com/wordpress-resources-at-siteground/feed/4	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Open Space and Regional Parks Commission The Parks Commission acts in an advisory capacity to the Board of County Commissioners. Examples of items that come before the Board include District and Park Master Plans; schedule of priorities for acquisition and development of park property; purchase, lease or exchange of lands for recreation or park purposes; and rates and charges for services and facility use. Membership The Commission is comprised of nine at-large members appointed by the County Commission for a four-year term. Members can serve two consecutive four-year terms. Authority Nevada Revised Statute 244.308 Meeting Schedule The Commission meets monthly in Commission Chambers, usually on the first Tuesday, at 2:30 p.m., with a minimum of nine meetings annually. Members receive no compensation.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
In today's episode of Pick your Poison we'll take a brief look at popular options for dealing with Internet Explorer's rendering issues, glitches, and bugs. Basically, it's all about feeding specific versions of IE version specific property/value pairs which happen to yield the desired result(s). I say "happen", because those pairs are always complete nonsense and they will usually break the layout in horrible ways if a sane browser were to interpret them. Well, we aren't talking about sane browsers today, but we need to make sure that we won't get in their way with these questionable and awkward workarounds. If you're already familiar with these concepts, you can jump right to "The Small Twist" at the bottom of this article. I always wondered why browsers don't support any lossy 32bit image format. With opaque images you can always pick a suitable image format, which will be reasonably small while looking reasonably good. There are always some trade-offs, but that's alright. If it's photo-based (or just a plain photo), JPG is a great choice. If there are less than 257 colors a PNG8 will work great. If it's also very tiny (like a 1x13 gradient) a GIF might be even a tad smaller than a PNG8. If there are only a few thousand colors and little noise (i.e. there are large areas filled with a solid color), a PNG24 should work great. Now, if you throw alpha channels into the mix, things become a bit annoying. PNG8 and GIF support so called "bitmask transparency", which marks one specific color as fully translucent. PNG8 actually supports one transparency value per palette entry. This means it's effectively like an RGBA palette with up to 256 values. This option is somewhat less well-known and the support by most tools is also somewhat lacking. You can quantize and dither PNG32 images with pngquant and pngnq. PNGOUT will also create this kind of PNG, but only if there are less than 257 colors to begin with. So, this area is covered pretty well by current browsers. However, once you need a "few" more colors, you'll run out of options. There is only PNG32 and – as we all know – PNG is a poor choice for photo-based images. Well, of course it will look perfect (it's lossless after all), but it will be prohibitively huge. Lossy RGBA images are something that always has been missing on the web (If you ignore Mozilla's brief support of JNG, that is). Nowadays, browsers typically support JPG, PNG, GIF, ICO, and BMP. There is obviously some feature overlap, but there isn't any good choice for true color images which also happen to use alpha. Generally your choices boil down to JPG and PNG. If you ignore animated GIFs (which are pretty useless for Canvas usage), PNG can easily replace GIF, ICO, and of course BMP. Today, I'll demonstrate how you can create RGBA images which use JPG for the RGB channels. Since this can decrease the file size up to 75%, it's a very easy and intriguing way to speed up the loading time of your game or application. (If you are currently using heavy PNG32 images, that is.) Update: This whole thing has been superseded with a more uniform and rigid concept. You can check an early draft outline over at the OOCSS Google Group. There is no coupling whatsoever between your CSS and your markup. But don't get me wrong – this is a very good thing. However, this also means you can't use your markup to verify your CSS and of course it also means that you can't use your CSS to check your markup. If you create a relatively complex website with more than 2000 lines of CSS this gets pretty annoying. With practice this just gets more annoying, since the impact on your productivity becomes more apparent with each project. During a site's lifetime you'll often notice how theoretically solid structures start to crumble. One mistake in the markup, another one in the CSS, and sooner or later everything will be in a somewhat inconsistent state. If you come from a programming background this feels just plain wrong. It's almost like your selectors happen to coincidentally select some things here and there. There is no clear way to define a structure and to check if your markup and CSS adhere to your rules. There is currently only one way to check it: the dreaded, time-consuming, and error-prone manual one. Also, if things are inconsistent – and chances are this happens right off the bat – it's very difficult to reason about it. You might look at two pieces of markup and their corresponding CSS and both might wrong in different places. Sure, you can just refer to your documentation… eh, yea, who am I kidding? No one knows how stuff like that is supposed to be documented. And if they do, it probably still won't happen. Generally speaking: off-screen rendering allows you to cache expensive drawing operations in some sort of image, texture, or buffer. With the new Canvas API the vector drawing operations for example can be a bit taxing. Same goes for gradients or patterns (Firefox 3.x). Or well, anything that requires many drawing steps or per-pixel calculations. If you have used any other 2D drawing API in the past, you'll probably picture this a bit more complicated than it actually needs to be. As it turns out, it's surprisingly easy with Canvas since the drawImage function can also take another Canvas as parameter. So, there is no need to construct an actual image – you already got one, kinda. Komodo Edit – the open source spin-off of Komodo IDE – is hands down my personal open source application of the year. It had a massive impact on my productivity and it made web development so much less of a pain. I used so many different text editors in my life, but none of them comes anywhere near the sheer awesomeness of Komodo. There is proper Unicode support, smart indent (which actually behaves smart), remote file editing (FTP, FTPS, SFTP, and SCP), Code Intelligence (~IntelliSense™), and lots of polish on top. It supports many languages and runs on the three most popular platforms (i.e. Windows, Mac OS, and Linux). It's also extremely stable, which is very important for this kind of tools. The ActiveState guys are also very helpful and surprisingly responsive. For example there were some issues with active mode FTP, but after a bit of nagging and poking around in the code (mostly nagging though) the problem was solved. Just like that. I also asked for some shortcut which basically does the same as a double click; selecting the word below the caret. A few minutes later the JavaScript macro was there (thanks Todd!) and it even made it's way upstream; the next version of Komodo will include it as a regular command. I really like standards and absolute strictness when it comes to things which are interpreted by zillions of different programs. After all, a scenario like this just asks for trouble. Validators do help there and as I wrote a few months ago they can really help you avoid many issues, potential issues, and also future issues. However, I do like automation a bit more and herein lies the problem: 100% standards compliance isn't always an attainable goal. And if you simply can't get a perfect score, you cannot use those validators for your automated tests. A test which always fails isn't really helpful. There are many things, which never will be valid and you can't do anything about it. Proprietary or legacy content management systems and components thereof are a good example. Another source of pain are those bloody rich text editors. Some of them produce amazingly awkward markup with zillions of font tags all over the place for good measure. In a nutshell: A static initializer is executed whenever you do anything with that class. It's executed before whatever you wanted to do (e.g. calling the constructor or accessing a field). It's also only executed once. Many moons ago I released some code which utilized a static initializer. That code worked fine back then, but recent versions of the Flex SDK compiler don't really like it. Well, to tell the truth I also didn't like it, because the construct I used was sorta ugly and, well, pretty wrong. Update: Good news, everyone! A proper proposal for this kind of thing is already on its way. :) CSS sprites are a nuisance While CSS sprites offer nice performance benefits (less connections/overhead), they are troublesome in every respect. Putting lots of tiny images with different dimensions into one bigger image is fiddly and very hard – np-hard in fact. But that's the smallest issue. It doesn't need to be perfect after all. Deflate will happily squish all that extraneous white-space to virtually nothing. One of the real problems is CSS. It just isn't flexible enough to let you do everything you might want to do with your sprite sheet. For example repeating parts of the image isn't possible. And if you want to display a sub region of an image in the upper right of some element, it only works if that sub region is in the lower left of the sprite sheet. So, the best thing you can do is to use elements in the size of the sub region and use background-position to slide the image around, but that usually means extra markup for something that should be very simple. But it doesn't stop there. The real nightmare is maintenance. A year or two and several iterations later it becomes very hard to figure out which parts of the sheet are used. Where can you add one? Which one can be removed? How many places do you have to fix if you move this column a bit up? It all becomes a mess of fuzzy uncertainty. CSS sprites are a huge time sink. They waste my time, they waste your time, and they also waste the time of millions of other front-end developers. It's about time to do something about it. About a week ago a friend of mine released his very first indie game – for the iPhone of all platforms. Sounds like a bit of a pain and probably it actually was. The game is basically a bigger and better version of one of his old games. The old one was written in C++ for Win32 (the source is also available over there). Later on he also ported it over to the GBA. The new version looks and sounds pretty cool. If you're interested check out the video over at the official site. By the way, all models were done with everyone's favorite box modeler Wings3D. And the final audio cutting was done in Audacity. Both tools are mind-boggling awesome for these tasks. Check them out if you haven't yet. Well, about a week has passed and he only sold a dozen copies so far. In the meantime it was pirated a few thousand times. Ouch. So, if you got $2.99 to burn (and an iPhone to boot) you can make one poor student very happy.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Product Review: Shark Portable Steam Pocket Cleaner Infomercial-mania I adore the art (and science) of infomercials. I remember sitting up late at night when I was younger, watching the food dehydrator infomercial and being mesmerized by Rom Popeil’s ability to sell something seemingly useless and make it look so fascinating and easy to use (and clean up). I loved the ‘easy payments’ scheme too…that’s how they get ya. Anyway, fast forward a few years and here I am, getting asked from all corners of the globe to examine how a steam cleaner works because many of you have seen them advertised on these infomercials. According to these commercials, steam cleaning is probably as exciting and innovative as the vacuum cleaner was when it came out. Can this technology live up to its hype? At some point I know I’ll do one on a steam mop as well, but we’ll get started with the steam cleaning revolution in-depth examination using the portable steam cleaner. Tool on the exam table is the Shark Portable Steam Pocket Cleaner (also referred to as the Shark Steam Pocket Handheld Steam Cleaner, or some variation of those words). Alright, you’re interested. So, exactly do what do they do, why do we need them, can they replace all of my other cleaning tools and products and do they really work as well as the commercial says they do? We will put it through the paces and let you know these answers as well as some best practices for it if you do choose to use one. First, what is a steam cleaner? A steam cleaner is a machine that runs on water and electricity; the water is poured in, boiled and heated up, at which point vapour is let out through a nozzle and into a hose or attachment. The hose or attachment then allows the user to apply the steam to a variety of cleaning applications by using various nozzles, brush attachments and microfiber pads attached to hollow forms. Steam flows through so that you can use the attachment or pad to scrub, wipe or clean the bacteria or debris that the steam has loosened. People love steam cleaning because it uses only water (i.e. no more chemicals), has the ability to disinfect a surface, it uses powerful and reusable microfiber pads and it can reduce the time and elbow grease you invest in getting challenging areas clean. These ultimately can save you time and money and keep your family healthier (what infomercial product can’t?). The machine creates steam with plain water, steam that is hot enough to break down dirt and kill bacteria (extreme heat will kill bacteria on contact) and dries almost instantly. The steamer comes with a main body, and a small hose with attachments either with bristles or microfiber pads that are used to actually clean the surfaces. And that’s all you need to get the job done! Steam cleaners like this are designed to heat up the water to a certain temperature and that high temperature is what gives you the ability to disinfect a surface quite quickly, like within 10-15 seconds, as opposed to the 5-10 minute wet ‘dwell’ time required for a disinfecting product to use. The steam also helps power through horrible messes that require a lot of scrubbing and product (which can potentially damage a surface). That’s pretty cool, I’ve got to say! Now keep in mind, higher-end steamers will heat up faster and clean and disinfect surfaces quicker because of their superior technology. However, for your home, a consumer product like this one is just fine. Unboxing the Shark Steam Pocket Steam Cleaner First, it’s purple (my favourite colour), so it scores some points there. When I ‘unbox’ something, I like it filmed so that my first impressions can be captured immediately allowing me to give an opinion without much humming and hawing. I took out the product and it had a variety of well-built tools and attachments, good quality microfiber cloths (I know microfiber like a sommelier knows wine) and a lightweight, well-designed body which is what Shark is known for. So here’s what came in the box: Shark Steam Pocket Handheld Steam Cleaner Cylinder Cleaning Wand Wedge Cleaning Attachment 2 Micro-Fiber Cylinder Pockets (white) 1 Cylinder Dusting Pocket (purple) 2 Micro-Fiber Wedge Pockets (white) Direct Steam Nozzle Garment Steamer Kit 2 Bristle Brushes Scrubber Wedge Pocket (bluish/metallic) Squeegee Wedge Pocket (yellow) Tote Bag Filling flask Owner’s manual Build Quality I like this product. Shark makes good quality items. They feel strong and durable; however they are not heavy, clunky or burdensome. I didn’t look at anything and doubted its functionality; in other words nothing looked flimsy. All of the parts had sturdy attachment pieces too, which may sound strange but sometimes attachment pieces snap off and that can render a product useless. The microfiber pockets were all really good quality (as mentioned above) and I liked the variety of the pads. The elastic closures reminded me of a Lulu Lemon garment – I like that system. I really liked the idea of including a storage bag with the kit, because all of those little parts would lead to a storage issue otherwise. I know you could have used your own bag and whatnot, but I liked the extra attention to detail. The downside of that is that there are a lot of small parts, and I know that at times I get flustered with a lot of parts and that has lead to me leaving something in the closet, untouched. I hope this isn’t the case. The Instructions They are fairly straightforward and simple, but read them for goodness sake! I am not going to cover every warning and cautionary word in this blog post, you must do this yourself! Learn how to put everything together, learn how to keep yourself and your finishes safe, learn how to change up the nozzles, hose and attachments and you’ll be all set. In the end, you’ll save time because you will actually know what to do from the get go. Getting Started Assemble the steamer to your preferred configuration before plugging it in. We opted for the wedge tool and an all-purpose pocket (the white one), which was attached by the hose. I then unscrewed the water reservoir and filled the filling flask (aside: while shooting the video, my husband and I couldn’t stop saying that like a bunch of drunk cowboys! Fillin’ flask! ) with water twice and then plugged in the steamer. Although the box claims that it heats up in 25 seconds, we found it took longer. Let it sit for a couple of minutes when you first plug it in to get things going and then start your cleaning. It should be stated that you need to wipe the surface clean of debris before steaming it. In other words, the steam cleaner will not pick up crumbs and debris, you need to. So give any surfaces a quick preliminary wipe to remove debris before using the steamer. It is designed more to remove sticky, tough stains, not pick up debris. This steam cleaner is well designed because it keeps the water cool in the reservoir until it is turned into steam. That’s a good feature, or else we’d be hearing about people being burned with their steam cleaners. Are you wondering just how hot these get? I was too, and when I spoke with Shark about this, I was told ‘the temperature of the steam directly at the nozzle gets to 121 C’. That’s pretty hot, hot enough to melt grime and kill bacteria. The Parts What can all of these wands and wedges actually do? Here’s my framework for what these tools can actually do for you around the house: The microfiber wedge and cylinder pockets Are used for general cleaning, meaning you can tackle anything from cleaning all general surfaces in the house including countertops, sinks, stainless steel appliances, bathroom fixtures and tubs. The two different shapes (4-sided wedge and slender cylinder) allow you to maneuver through parts of your home with ease. The cylinder dusting pocket Can be used to clean window coverings, ceiling fans, dust hard to reach areas, awkwardly shaped items that need dusting (like a wine cellar with a lot of bottles that you don’t want to remove), and general dusting. Direct steam nozzle This monster just powers through grime, it’s amusing to watch actually. Use it to blast away grime in your oven, tough, sticky stains and areas that you feel nothing else can actually help (think: you’ve used 16 SOS pads on the area already to no avail). The direct steam nozzle (depending on how daring you are) can also be used in the bathroom to blast your toilet clean. The nozzle can fit under the rim and can get into grimy corners. Make sure you sanitize the nozzle when you are done. Bristle brushes If you watch my videos, you will often hear me refer to ‘the cleaning toothbrush’ which is an absolute requirement for proper and deep cleaning. Essentially, a toothbrush can get in to those tight spaces we just can’t reach with anything else (sound like a toothbrush commercial?) and cleaning our spaces is no different. These bristle brushes are what to use for cleaning grout (it’s amazing on grout), grimy surfaces, around faucets, and into other sneaky spots where you need steam and scrub to get the job done. Be sure to clean them well when you finish using them. Garment steamer kit Goes without saying; you can use this to steam your clothing to wrinkle-free status. I have an actual Rowenta steamer at home and this one did effectively the same job. The little bonnet can be used to steam and clean surfaces such as upholstery and drapes. Scrubber wedge pocket Is amazing on grimy surfaces like inside the oven, cook tops and the scummiest shower tiles. Wash well when completed! Put your biggest challenge up against this pocket. Squeegee wedge pocket Works wonders on glass. It features a heavily-matted flat-weave microfiber material that is very absorbent and can power through dirty windows and will clean mirrors using less effort and leaving less streaks (if any) than you would get with traditional glass cleaner. For the techies, here are some product specifications Warranty Terms – Parts: 1 year limited Warranty Terms – Labor: 1 year limited Product Height: 10-1/4″ Product Width: 9-7/8″ Product Weight: 2.6 lbs. Product Depth: 5-1/8″ Motor: 1500W Cord Length: 20′ Best Practices Since I’ve used the product and know how to get it to purr, I figured I’d share some of my best practices with you. 1) Always have a microfiber cloth at the ready to wipe up any blasted-away grime, residue or excess liquid. Since you want to have a streak-free finish, you will need to quickly dry areas once you’ve cleaned them as the pocket gets used. Reason being, the pocket cannot be rinsed, wrung out or dried and since it is receiving a constant stream of steam so it is bound to get wet. This means that you will notice film and liquid can get left behind. Plus, you don’t want to re-distribute that crusty grime from your sink all over your counters. 2) Change your pockets when they are heavy and soiled. They will reach the tipping point where they’ll no longer be effective and will produce more film than clean surfaces. On the Shark website, you can purchase replacement (or additional) pockets for about $30. It’s good to have spares, you’ll get your cleaning done fully and effectively as opposed to waiting until the pockets have been laundered and start at it again. 4) Clean your pockets after each use using gentle detergent that is free of fabric softeners or bleach. Hang them to dry! 5) Don’t put your hand directly in front of the nozzle, you’ll have no time to clean if you are sitting in the emergency room with a burn. I kept quickly testing it this way and admittedly, almost burned my hand. 6) Move in one continuous motion instead of starting and stopping this will allow the steam to work effectively without over-dampening the wedge. If you have to go over an area afterward (I usually run my hand over the surface to see if it is fully clean), then you would simply ‘touch up’ that area as opposed to wasting your time starting, stopping and checking. 7) Feel it out because it will seem very awkward when you start using it. You need to administer the steam with one hand by depressing a button on the unit (which I did with my left hand) and operate the wand or tool with your right hand (unless you are not using the hose). You’ll need to get strategic about where you clean so that you prep your area first (or figure out a way to get a 3rd hand). As an example, I cleared off my kitchen counter before cleaning it or else I wouldn’t be able to move items with my left hand as I cleaned with my right hand. Test Lab Kitchen results Stainless steel sink: pretty good, took a few passes but got up all the grime. I’d probably use the cylinder tool next time since it would be easier to maneuver than the wedge. My sink looked shiiiiny! Cruddy countertop: The wedge was perfect for this. It wiped away juice, ketchup, salsa and chocolate sauce that had been sitting there for a few hours prior to filming. I wiped away the chunky debris with a paper towel first and then steamed the surface clean. It was pretty sweet. Cupboard doors: I used the wedge but would probably use the cylinder next time so that I would be able to access the areas behind the hardware (which tend to get grimy). Worked well and the greasy spots came right off. Loved it. Stove exterior: The glass cooktop came out nice and clean. I think I would still have to work at those tough burned-on spots in some of the other methods I’ve discussed before (How to clean a stovetop VIDEO BLOG INSERT HERE) but to get it clean and shiny, this worked well. It was also good for sanitizing the stove dials which can harbour bacteria. Overhead exhaust: It got rid of any dust or stickiness built-up from cooking. It also made the stainless steel shine. I like that! Interior stove door: Wow, this was most impressive. It blasted away those burnt-on grease spatters with ease. It was like watching something on the Discovery Channel, very cool and very effective! I used the direct steam nozzle for this task. Stainless steel fridge: I used the wedge and just worked my way from top to bottom using an ‘S’ pattern. It worked beautifully and took next to no effort to have a shiny fridge. Lime scale build-up in sink: I used the direct steam nozzle for this and didn’t have much luck. I was hesitant to use the bristle attachment because I didn’t want to scratch anything. Bathroom results Toilet bowl (not aired in video footage): It did work at blasting away build-up, however I didn’t like that the steamer had to be used on an angle which steamed in my face. There’s something quite unappealing about toilet bowl vapours. I will stick to the ol’ brush method (check out our toilet cleaning video here). Toilet seat hinges (not aired in video footage): This worked, it blew away any build-up around the toilet seat hinges and didn’t require much effort. All I had to do was wipe up the remnants. I used a paper towel instead of microfiber cloth so that I could toss it when I was done. Good for sanitizing the commode, that’s for sure. Toilet flusher hinges (not aired in video footage): I blasted steam with it using the direct steam nozzle and wiped clean with a paper towel. Clean and sanitized. Nice! Faucet: It blasted away little bits of hair and debris (my husband sports a wicked half-shaven look, so this comes compliments of his face) and made for an easy wipe up. Drain surround: I tried both the direct steam nozzle and the bristle attachment to clean the gunk In the drain surround (the part where the metal meets the porcelain – there’s always something growing in there). I didn’t have much luck with this area, to my disappointment. Bathroom sink: You can’t see much of this in the video, but we did attempt it. However, I used the direct steam nozzle and bristle. Since neither worked, I can tell you that it would require the scrubber wedge pocket to remove build-up for certain. I didn’t try these out in the bathroom, but I know for certain that the scrubber wedge would clean the toothpaste spatters out of the sink and leave it clean and sanitized. Tile grout (not aired in video footage): I didn’t put this in the video but I have tried it in the past and can tell you with certainty that it works. I may do a separate video on more uses for the steamer including this, since it’s a great visual. It is pretty powerful and can blast stains and mildew right out of grout. Have a cloth handy to wipe up the blasted-out gunk! Dusting results Fireplace vent: the small purple ‘fingers’ got right into that vent and made dusting pretty straightforward. However, dusting that area isn’t otherwise challenging so it’s neither here nor there for me. Upholstered pillow: I like the idea that it ‘refreshes’ the upholstery, especially considering that our cats plant themselves on every conceivable horizontal surface in our home, and I sometimes fall asleep on that pillow. Having that pillow steamed makes for sweeter (and less paranoid) dreams, that’s for sure. Sofa (not aired in video footage): Same idea as pillows. The results were not visually obvious, but after waiving the wand atop my sofa, I feel better (cleaner) about sitting on my couch. The sofa isn’t even a year old so didn’t notice much difference in odour-removal (I’d like to think it doesn’t really smell). However, professionals use steam to ‘clean’ upholstery so the same principle must apply in this situation too, although it was sight unseen (or smell un-smelt) for me. Frames, decorative objects (Some aired in video footage): It did a good job on the frames, however if they were very dusty and the wand was very damp, then some of the dust could stick to the frames. Just beware of this. Again, this is something that could or could not be done with a steamer and I think it may be easier to do this with a microfiber cloth. It’s not like the frames or décor objects need to be disinfected. Garment results Silk skirt: Super sweet. It got rid of the wrinkles in a quick and effective manner. I like! Cotton dress shirt (not aired in video footage): Took longer, wrinkles didn’t come out. However my Rowenta steamer(specifically designed for this purpose) can’t really do better, so I think if one has a cotton shirt, one must wield ye olde iron to remove the wrinkles. Closing Arguments Microfiber is the most powerful cleaning material we know of. Steam breaks up even the toughest dirt, grease and grime and kills 99.9% of bacteria in the process. With these two combined and leveraging the good design and quality of Shark, how can you not love this cleaning tool? Pros: Re-usable microfiber pockets, well-designed and quality tools, powerful steam, simple to use (once you read the instructions) and for the most part, holds true to its claims. I also like that it is chemical-free and uses cheap, easily accessible water to do its dirty work. It did make my cleaning (of certain areas) easier and I appreciated that. It kicked butt on the tougher jobs that usually require heavy-duty product, lots of elbow grease or specialized tools. Cons: I will state it is not perfect. My main issues with it are that there are some design flaws (namely the challenge in cleaning with one hand as opposed to two when the hose is in use) and it didn’t work on every surface. It also didn’t heat up in 25 seconds when I first turned it on. It did not power through every single challenge I put it to in my home and finally, I think that some of the touted cleaning uses are superfluous. Finally, there’s a bit of a learning curve with it for certain and a definite adjustment of your cleaning routines. Some people may find this frustrating. Others may be too lax to take the time to use all tools and therefore find it ineffective. But, if you can get past these two metal obstacles, you will learn to love this tool. The Verdict So you want it, right? Well, don’t get it because you think it is going to make your everyday housekeeping easier. It’s not. Keep doing what you’re doing. Get it because you dislike cleaning up the heavy-duty messes and leave them because you don’t want to expend your precious time and energy on it. Get it because you don’t want to use chemicals to get rid of oven soot or soap scum. Get it because the idea of sanitizing with just steam delights and excites you. This tool will make heavy-duty cleaning and sanitizing much easier and you can expect to cut your cleaning time in half on those tasks. What do you think about the Shark Steam Pocket Handheld Steam Cleaner? Are you going to get one? Melissa Maker is an entrepreneur, cleaning expert, founder of Toronto’s most popular boutique cleaning service, and star of the Clean My Space channel on YouTube (but she still hates to clean!). Every week, Melissa delivers new videos dishing expert advice on cleaning products, tools, DIY substitutes, and practical, timesaving solutions to everyday problems. Melissa has appeared on the Today Show, and has been featured in InStyle, Real Simple, and Better Homes and Gardens. This was quite informative and useful however, it would have been better if you had not hinted that you hurt the cat at the beginning. There is nothing redeeming about pretending to injure an animal. I hope you were pretending. I like Shark products. I I have the floor steamer. But I really need an upholstery cleaner. A light one, not too heavy, easy to maneuver. One that cleans, not just refreshes. Enjoyed your video, and I need one of these too!!!! Can you clean showers and the shower doors that are plastic or whatever they are made of, really could use help on the mold and soap build up there. I have this steamer and it makes a loud whirring noise when steaming. Did you have that problem as well, or is it suppose to make that noise? The company let me exchange it, but the second one made the same noise, even though there is nothing in the instructions that indicate it will make a noise. Shark pretty much sums up how they treat their customers. They sell a product with a huge design flaw – THE TIP OF THE STEAM NOZZLE BREAKS OFF FROM STRESS CRACKS FROM CHANGING OUT THE MANY ATTACHMENTS INCLUDED WITH THE MACHINE AND THE HEAT FROM THE STEAM. THIS IS WHAT IT WAS SUPPOSEDLY DESIGNED FOR! Shark offered every other attachment replacement on-line BUT NOT REPLACEMENT NOZZLE TIP. Instead, they wanted to sell me another flawed machine for $39.99 plus shipping & handling. I paid $120.00 for this piece of garbage and now they want another $54.00. Was going to buy a Shark Steam Mop for my office. NOT NOW! Even in France, we bought this Shark Steam Cleaner 15 or 16 months ago and used it 3/4 times (less than 3 hours in total), to clean some moisture in the bathroom, another time for the windows, nothing special, just to use it, like when you get a new toy. It worked but its a job to manage all the stuff just to to clean 4 windows ! Then it was put in a cupboard. Today, thinking “steam cleaning” we remember and want to use it, fill the water, plug it… the water is heated but the pump is dead ! The brand new stuff is going to trash. By chance we got it very cheap. No regret ! That’s a gadget, don’t buy it, at least rent a professional one. Thank you,you were very helpful.I need something lightweight & fast cleaning.I have a bad lower back & trouble bending with a lot of strain on my back & knees.Doing house cleaning,I have to frequently sit and rest my back.I also,need to find a product that would easily clean walls during “spring cleaning”. Betsy You must have special Shark products that nobody else can get! I would never purchase another Shark product again. I purchased this steam cleaner and a hand held vacuum, both Shark products and both broke within 6 months of purchase. The steam feature no longer works on my steam mop. The little beater attachment that came with the hand vac broke within 6 weeks. I vacuum 6 steps with it, and the battery starts to die. What’s worse, the hair and dirt get stuck in the curve that the dirt has to negotiate before it gets to the collection compartment. When I tried to contact Shark, I found that they make it pretty much impossible to get customer support or for customers to leave feedback about their product. Considering how crappy they are, I guess I don’t blame them! If you want a good steam mop, buy a Bissell. Shark stinks:( There were two reasons I bought this thing: 1. The commercial makes it look like it dissolves any grease in milliseconds. 2. The commercial makes it look like it de-wrinkles clothes in seconds. PAY ATTENTION: 1.) The steam is intermittent; 10 seconds on, then 30 seconds to warm back up… ¼ time actual steam… 2.) In order to get grease to budge, you have to hold the nozzle against a sq. cm. of it for three cycles (2.5 minutes). With soap and brillo, you can take up grease in seconds! 3.) I just emptied two containers-full and spent over ½-hour on ONE shirt which was mildly wrinkled. The wrinkle condition of the shirt did not improve ONE BIT. The machine did not relax ONE SINGLE WRINKLE in 30 WHOLE MINUTES of operation. For those who are wondering, I purchased the Shark Steam Mop (the one that all it is is a mop, NOT a handheld) from Sam’s Club. It was $20 more than Walmart, but included twice the amount of cleaning pads (2 white triangle, 2 white rectangle, 2 purple wood triangles, 2 purple wood rectangles). We use Mr Clean with Febreeze in it (following diluting directions) and it makes the house smell fresh just like the Swifter pads. I did a test & mopped before hand with my Swifter (took 6 pads for kitchen, dinning room, short hallway, and bathroom for a weeks worth of grime) then the Shark mop. I still had both sides of the pad almost black when I was done. This mop does heat up right away. You pump the handle (pushing like you are mopping with a swifter) and the steam comes out in less than a minute. Great that there were 2 pads in the box so i could mop again the next day. It also had 2 heads; rectangle for most floors & triangle for bathrooms (for behind the toilet). Good buy at Walmart & great one at Sam’s. $20 for 4 extra pads. And yes, it does laminate great (what I had) and wood without damage (from a neighbor). Entertaining video. And useful, I will not be buying one based on what you showed with regard to steaming around the drain area. The direct Steam mode looks to be poor. We have under mounted sinks in our kitchen and were hoping to clean the joining points of counter and sink.I don,t think this will do the job, and for that I thank-you. I would not build the counter and sink this way again Any chance you have reviewed other shark products? I purchased the lift away pro steam pocket . Which is a floor mop with the removable hand held steam unit all in one for 150 dollars at cdn tire and can’t decide whether to open it up and try it or return it . You did a great job reviewing with the above video Hi! Thank you for the Video- i bought a refurbished Shark portable at a great price and am very happy with it. I initially thought something was wrong when it did not “go to it” as quickly as the box says but thanks to you i know i just had to wait a little! I like sanitizing everything so it is awesome for my household. Thanks again I own a shark steam steam cleaner that is also a steam mop. I looks a lot like a canister vac with attachments. Got it at Lowes 2 or 3 years ago for $100 and it is well worth the price just for the mop alone. I love it, gets my floors barefoot clean and crawling grandchild clean. Thanks Linda – I do really like it. There’s am Amazon link in this blog post which takes you to a shopping cart. It can also be purchased at home hardware stores and bed and bath stores. I just saw the Amazon price and it’s lower than what it’s retailing for where I live by $20!	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Tuesday, November 15, 2016 Werewolf in the Wild: My ProcJam game for 2016 It was super fun, and I did several things for the first time, including... Using Raycasts to do some simple AI steering, so that the birds follow the contours of the land, and fly over obstacles. I want to expand on this so they fly around things, and feel more organic. Procedural terrain generation, allowing the player to generate a new terrain at any time by pressing "T" at any time while playing! This adjusts the height field of the terrain, sometimes making spiky tall terrains, sometimes making smooth low terrains, etc. I went crazy on Image Effects to get a unique look that reminds me of David Lynch's Lost Highway or some surreal dreamscape. This look inspired the werewolf theme, and it all took shape very organically. I built all the props myself in Maya, which was great, as I now feel I can comfortably use that pipeline in future projects. The look of the game allowed me to model things simply, and still have them characterful. Added some sweet werewolf sounds to really bring the unique player character to life! Added some kooky arthouse experimental ambient sounds to set the mood. I want to continue with this game, doing things like... Giving the wolf arms, so they can slash and claw at things. Adding some more AIs into the game, such as foxes, deer, and townsfolk. A goal of some sort, whether it is just to survive being hunted by townsfolk, needing to feed, needing to find your cave before daybreak, or some more narrative driven goal. Townsfolk could track you down using sight and sound, and you can hide in wait, leaping from the shadows, or just go on a massacre and see how long you can survive. Model more varied items for the environment. Have different items that appear at different heights in the world, and things that can be placed on slopes, such as small rocks, or shrubs growing on an angle. Implement more variety into the terrain system. Perhaps a mechanic revolving around the moon. Possible a day/night cycle, which affects whether you're a werewolf or a human, and adding a whole mechanic around that. Perhaps a climbing, bounding, leaping system that lets you climb up towers, mantle up through small trees into larger trees, etc. An asymmetrical multiplayer mode could be very cool, with hunters on one team, and the lone wolf on the other team. Howl at the moon! I feel a bit inspired by Dusk, and thought it'd be fun to add some ghoulish fast paced crazy 90's FPS style gameplay, like slashing things to death, leaping about etc. But I also feel inclined to maintain the arthouse surreal feel in some way, having a bit of a Tangiersvibe. Like Tangiers, I'm very interested in stealth mechanics, loving the original Thief games. I have had a few narrative ideas, around the werewolf being ferocious and driven by a sort of madness, but also still aware of their human form, with their thoughts in their head, regrets, pain, feelings that cause anguish and tension between the killing and violence they need to perform to survive, and their pain at being misunderstood and not being in control of their own behaviour or how others perceive them. I feel that such a story could help facilitate action gameplay, while maintaining some other interesting themes and ideas. Stay tuned, and hopefully I'll have some updates to it soon, in between finishing off my other games! :D	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
A mammoth and humans on the banks of the Marne A nearly complete mammoth skeleton has just been uncovered at Changis-sur-Marne in the Seine-et-Marne department. This type of discovery, in its original context, is exceptional in France since only three specimens have been found in 150 years: the first such discovery, known as “the mammoth of Choulans”, was discovered in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon in 1859. A nearly complete mammoth skeleton has just been uncovered at Changis-sur-Marne in the Seine-et-Marne department. This type of discovery, in its original context, is exceptional in France since only three specimens have been found in 150 years: the first such discovery, known as “the mammoth of Choulans”, was discovered in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon in 1859. This mammoth is probably a Mammuthus primigenius, a wooly mammoth with long tusks that were used to expose edible vegetation under the snow. These animals could attain 2.8 to 3.4 meters high at their withers and were covered with fur and a thick layer of fat. They usually lived in grassy steppe environments. Credit : Inrap This species lived in Eurasia and North America. The mammoth of Changis-sur-Marne lived between 200,000 and 50,000 years ago, at the same time as Neandertals. Mammoths were well adapted to cold climates and thus disappeared from western Europe 10,000 years ago when the climate became warmer. The most recent specimen died off the coast of the Bering Strait, 3700 years ago. Mammoths and humans The current excavation will enable archaeologists to clarify the age of the probscidian and perhaps the circumstances of its death: did it drown, or was it trapped in mud? Was it hunted or scavenged by predators? A usewear analysis of the flint flake will be performed to determine its function and a zooarchaeological study will detect possible cut marks on the bones. Credit : Inrap The discovery at Changis-sur-Marne is exceptional since humans and mammoths have been found together at only two Middle Paleolithic sites in western Europe: Lehringen and Gröbern in Germany. There is also the site of Ranville, in the Calvados region, where an ancient elephant (Elephas antiquus) was scavenged approximately 220,000 years ago. Finally, the excavation at Tourville-la-Rivière, in the Seine-Maritime department, recently uncovered aurochs, horses, bears, lions and panthers that were transported by the Seine, 200,000 years ago. Neandertals, who were fine connoisseurs of their territory, recovered several resources (meat, tendons, hide, etc.) from this natural jackpot. Credit : Inrap In the near future, archaeologists and paleontologists should be able to determine whether the mammoth of Changis was killed by Neandertals, or whether they scavenged the animal after its natural death. This discovery will contribute to the debate among scientists concerning the predatory skills of Neandertals. The ultimate challenge is to determine the precise date of the event, using radiometric and chrono-stratigraphic methods. The excavation of Changis-sur-Marne The animal was discovered in a quarry in Changis-sur-Marne during the preventive excavation of a Gallo-Roman site, which is itself remarkable. The first bones appeared in the front cut of the quarry. Due to the interest of this discovery, the Regional Direction of Cultral Affairs (Drac) of Île-de-France organized a preventive operation, realized conjointly by the Drac and the Institut National de Recherches Archéologiques Préventives (Inrap), with the collaboration of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, the physical geography laboratory of the CNRS in Meudon and the CEMEX, who is exploiting the quarry. This is the first excavation of its kind in France. It will be completed in early November. FACEBOOK TWITTER HeritageDaily is an independent online science publication by HeritageGateway that is dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge on past sciences such as archaeology, palaeontology and palaeoanthropology.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
A1 Racer Beats Boeing 777 In Runway Showdown A Boeing 777 jet and an A1 Grand Prix racer clashed at the Auckland International Airport in New Zealand to see which was the faster machine. The Boeing got a headstart down the runway for the first race, and defeated the A1 handily. When the starting points were equal, however, the A1 emerged as the victor, reaching a top speed of 285 km/h (versus 270 km/h for the Boeing). And is it just me, or does watching this news piece give you a strange urge to watch Flight of the Conchords? [TV New Zealand via Jalopnik] Trending Stories Right Now Video. Pretty much anything can be improved by adding Jeff Goldblum, but Taika Waititi's Thor. Ragnarok really used the actor to his fullest potential. Marvel has been releasing a few of their bonus clips from the upcoming Blu-ray release, and with them we get to see Goldblum at his... Goldblum-iest. Star Wars and toys have gone hand in hand ever since the franchise kicked off four decades ago. But usually, it's the movies dictating what we see on store shelves - not the other way around. But in one particularly odd case, it ended up being that way for The Last Jedi.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Company Description Americo Manufacturing Company, headquartered in Acworth, Georgia, is a world leading manufacturer of environmentally friendly cleaning products such as synthetic and natural fiber floor pads, hand pads, utility pads and floor matting. 100% of the polyester fib...more	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
3.6 - The Lazarus Experiment Rating Votes 10 1% 1 9 2% 2 8 3% 3 7 27% 28 6 18% 18 5 32% 33 4 16% 16 3 0% 0 2 1% 1 1 0% 0 Average Rating 5.8 Votes 102 Synopsis From IMDB: A 76 year old scientist, Doctor Lazarus of LazLabs, has created a device to restore youthfulness. However, the process doesn't go as planned. The Doctor and Martha must stop Lazarus before its too late. There is some over the top criticism of this episode in my opinion. I do agree with some of the reasons it gets criticised but some people overstate the issues I think while others, like me, acknowledge some positives whilst being realistic about its shortcomings. The first 20 minutes of this episode are great. It basically is a body horror like 'The Fly' where a mad scientist carries out an experiment on himself which goes wrong and causes them to turn into a monster. It harks back to greats like The Brain of Morbius where they took aspects of Frankenstein and made a superb horror based Doctor Who story. The build up through the first half of the episode is excellent in many ways. That horror feel permeating the episode which could be traced back as far as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as 50s science-goes-wrong movies and 80s body horror films, is perfect for a Doctor Who episode. It feels hugely promising up up to and including the initial change by Dr. Lazarus into a monster. The transformation scene is great and evokes yet another horror classic An American Werewolf in London for a moment before cleverly leaving the finished appearance of the creature to the imagination. The husks of bodies from the creature's victims is effectively repulsive too. All is set up for a classic episode despite a couple of less interesting scenes along the way. With a great second half and a well designed monster this would have been awesome. The acting is also great as guest stars Mark Gatiss and Thelma Barlow put in fabulous performances as well as regulars David Tennant and Freema Agyeman. Gugu Mbatha-Raw is solid as Martha's sister too though the character is weak and a pale shadow of the wonderful Martha. The problems begin when we see the monster properly. It is not so much the CGI which is at fault, it is the design of the creature. It is reasonably scary looking but is unconvincing and over the top. The idea that it is a genetic throwback from Lazarus's DNA is a nice idea but a huge scorpion like beast just seems the wrong thing entirely. It wastes the opportunity for a terrifying and believable body horror. In addition the plot goes nowhere once the monster arrives. It goes straight into a big monster on the loose action sequence that then seemingly ends only to repeat in an overly similar sequence in Southwark Cathedral which has a rather silly resolution. The acting maintains its quality when Gatiss and Tennant get their moments towards the end but the episode overall has by then dropped away from the promise shown earlier on. It would have been much better with some good make up and a scary but basically humanoid monster. Gatiss could have carried it off well and it could have been fabulous and frightening as well as thoughtful. Instead it went overboard on the monster and its marauding about. What a pity. I still give credit for the great first half, the ideas and the acting but a possible 10/10 drops down to a 7/10 for me. While The Lazarus Experiment has a nice central premise, and a superb guest turn from Mark Gatiss, it's a story that, sadly, leaves the viewer underwhelmed with it's simple plot, strange structural choices and some flat out baffling design decision. The idea of a scientist rejuvenating himself is a sound one, and follows the RTD principle of taking an aspect of modern-day life (this time plastic surgery) to bizarre levels. However, the story has no real momentum, despite the lightning fast pace. As such, the whole thing ends up feeling hollow: nothing more than surface details to both plot and character. It doesn't help that the final 15 minutes appear to have been tacked on at last minute, leading to a conclusion that falls flat because we've already been through one seemingly definitive conclusion. Then, there's all the forced (and I mean forced) set-up for the finale, which just doesn't work, because it lacks total subtlety. Every scene draws attention to it, instead of integrating it into the narrative successfully. This was also the episode where it became apparent that Martha's family just don't work at all. They're so one-note and bland, and Russell spent no real time building them up that it just feels like a waste. Whereas Rose and Donna's family's at least try to ground themselves in reality (even if with Jackie, Pete and Mickey it felt like Russell was hitting you over the head with it), but Martha's family are built out of stock clichés from Eastenders. Overall, while The Lazarus Experiment shows some promise, it just fails to deliver on that promise to any extent. Lazy storytelling and characterisation couple with some terrible CGI (seriously, that Lazarus creature?) and the usual Tennant era irritants to make a poor story that could have been so much better. I think the problem with this is it goes onto long. After 30 minutes the ambulance goes off and you think it's all over, you could wrap up there, another five minutes to resolve everything like the Doctor telling Martha she can go with him on his next adventure but basically the run around in the church just repeats the chase in the building for no real good reason. I think that's the main flaw, but also the monster is crap CGI, Martha's sister fancying the younger Lazarus (despite the older one being a creep) and Martha's mother's overreaction to the Doctor (how dare you talk to any man!) are details that just don't help. Just not a strong story and too long by about 10-15 minutes.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Featured Design Featured design The Hanging Gardens of Laguna This job is special to us. This was our first California job where we were given a chance to stretch our legs–and stretch we did! We poured our hearts and souls into this project and found several creative ways to breathe life into this homeowner's personal paradise. One year and thousands of man-hours later we planted our last tree and the happy homeowner affectionately named his property "The Hanging Gardens of Laguna." We think that's perfect. Below are the details of the job, but of course if you have any additional questions, feel free to drop us a line! We'd be happy to fill you in on any of the details. Design Philosophy Click on the video above. We noticed the rocks on the beach below the house had distinct, slanted sedimentary lines and we decided to copy the look with the rock lines of the falls. The idea is to give you a taste of the natural view in the back yard from the first moment you see the property. Visual Appropriation This property is surrounded by incredible natural beauty and our impulse was to borrow from that beauty and blend into those surroundings. The story of this design starts in the front yard with a bold, 40 ft long waterfall that gives the illusion of continuing into another, larger water course in the back. In total it's 105 feet of falls that give a sense of continuity between the front and back yards and the surrounding area. Upper Water Feature Lower Water Feature Limited Access Construction on this section of coastline provided a few challenges. Accessibility was the biggest issue. Click on the image below to see the challenge of planting trees in this space. Yep, that's a video. Click it. You know you want to... Maximizing the view The most impressive part of this natural landscape is the view. We wanted to make sure there was no shortage of places to sit and enjoy it. Some were obvious, others were meant to be a bit more subtle. Personal Touch Every Job is personal to us and we like to show it. On this project we wanted the homeowners to forever be part of the landscape and pressed their hands (and one very small foot) into the last stone. Guiding the Guests The homeowner had a design concern about their front entrance. There was consistent confusion about which entrance was the front door. So, our solution was to cut a pathway through the drive way and lead any guests to the right place In order to maximise the existing guest parking spaces we surrounded the drive with flagstone to provide a little extra room to walk and enjoy the space. Before & After It's always fun for us to see the dramatic difference between the start and finish of each project. Below are some of those images.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Police: ‘Person of interest’ in Va. elderly couple killing in custody John Wesley Jeffries, 60, of Fredericksburg, is a person of interest in the deaths of two people in The Plains. He is wanted on separate kidnapping and strangling charges in Spotsylvania County. (Courtesy of Facebook/Fredericksburg Police Department) UPDATE: Wednesday – 2/27/2013, 4:24pm ET The man wanted in connection with the killing of 80-year-old Nelson Slack and his 74-year-old wife, Ethel, has been arrested, police say. John Wesley Jeffries was taken into Fredericksburg police custody around 4 p.m. on Wednesday and is being held on outstanding warrant charges. WASHINGTON – Police across Northern Virginia are searching for a man with a violent history after authorities found an 80-year-old man and his 74-year-old wife dead in Fauquier County’s first double murder since the 1980s. Deputies found Nelson and Ethel Slack, long-time residents of The Plains, dead in their home on Bunker Hill Road Sunday afternoon, according to Lt. James Hartman, a spokesman for the Fauquier County Sheriff’s Office. The Fauquier County’s Sheriff’s Office wants to talk to John Wesley Jeffries, 60, of Fredericksburg, Va. Police have identified Jeffries as a “person of interest.” “He has some family ties to the neighborhood where the Slacks lived, and a vehicle known to be operated by Jeffries was found about a half mile from the scene,” says Hartman. Authorities have not charged Jeffries with the Slacks’ murders. Jeffries is wanted in another case. He is charged in Spotsylvania County with kidnapping, felony strangulation and malicious wounding, Hartman says. In the Fauquier case, family members called the sheriff’s office after the Slacks failed to show up for church Sunday, something Hartman said was unusual. Deputies went to the Slacks home twice, Hartman says. The first time it looked as though no one was home. They then returned with a family member’s key. When the key didn’t work, they broke down the door and found the bodies around 1:15 p.m. Sunday. Hartman says the Slacks’ car, which was taken from their home, was found in Fredericksburg, in an area Jeffries frequented. Jeffries is considered armed and dangerous. He is described as white, about 5 feet 8 inches tall, 160 pounds, balding with gray hair and blue eyes. He is listed as a “sexually violent offender.”	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Mainstream Protestantism does not reject Catholicism nor Orthodoxy. There are some outlier Baptist and charismatics who seemed to have picked up issues, but even the SBC actively participates in ecumenical organizations with Catholics ad fellow Christians. I myself have been both Methodist and Orthodox and moved between the two with nary a look nor did I burst into flames. In fact the Orthodox Church took my Methodist Baptism for membership. >> Mainstream Protestantism does not reject Catholicism nor Orthodoxy. There are some outlier Baptist and charismatics who seemed to have picked up issues, but even the SBC actively participates in ecumenical organizations with Catholics ad fellow Christians. << I agree, I think most major protestant denominations have no problem accepting Catholic and Orthodox Christians are legitimate Christians. The "Catholics ain't Christian" stuff seems to a fringe movement limited to some fundamentalist "born again" types. They'd also probably say most of their fellow protestants, and indeed, about 90% of practicing Christians in the world, "ain't Christian", since they only believe their brand of Christianity to be legit. History certainly isn't in their favor, the apostles themselves would be "non Christians" in their eyes. >> I myself have been both Methodist and Orthodox and moved between the two with nary a look nor did I burst into flames. In fact the Orthodox Church took my Methodist Baptism for membership. << True, I think the rule of thumb for Catholic and Orthodox Churches is that a protestant baptism is valid as long as it's a tridentine baptism done with a traditional understanding of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The vast majority of protestant churches fit that definition. Those that are non-tridentine often don't do the sacrament of baptism anyway. And non-Chrisitan churches like Mormons say "Father, Son, and Holy Spirt", but believe them to be three separate gods who "work together". Thus their baptism deviates from historic Christianity and what was established in the Bible, so it's not a Christian baptism. This isn't to say they're bad people though. Many Mormons behave in a more Christian manner than a lot of "Christians" in the world. So does that mean my matched set of Genuine Nephite Chessmen in the Curelom skin pouch could be fakes? There may be another opus in your future... Where can we find an 'OFFICIAL MORMON' teaching website?? Official sites are sites supported by LDS officials unless said official sites are considered unofficial by said officials. At that point such sites are unofficial unless officially referenced for official purposes by officials who can do so officially. This should not be misconstrued as an indication that official sites can be unofficially recognized as official nor should it be implied that unofficial sites cannot contain official information, but are not officially allowed to be offical despite their official contents due the their unofficialness. Official sites will be official and recognized as official by officials of the LDS unless there is an official reason to mark them as unofficial either temporally or permanently, which would make the official content officially unofficial. This is also not to imply that recognized sites, often used on FR by haters and bigots cannot contain official information, it just means that content, despite its official status, is no longer official and should be consider unofficial despite the same information being official on an official site elsewhere. Even then the officialness my be amended due to the use of the unofficial information which may determine the officialness of anything be it official or unofficial depending on how and where it is used officially or unofficially. I hope this clear things up for the lurkers out there. The haters tend to make things complicated and confusing when it is all really quite crystal clear. --Ejonesie22 59 posted on 12/30/2012 3:39:53 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...) John 6:28-29 Then they asked him, What must we do to do the works God requires? Jesus answered, The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent. 1 John 3:21-24 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command:to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps Gods commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us. 61 posted on 12/30/2012 3:44:58 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...) >> As a former mormon who has lived in several mormon-controlled communities, I can assure you that I have personally known of mormon pedophiles, mormon drunks, mormon thieves and mormon wife-beaters. << ALL religious denominations have that. There are examples of Jewish pedophiles, Jewish drunks, Jewish thieves and Jewish wife-beaters.... Southern Baptist pedophiles, Southern Baptist drunks, Southern Baptist thieves and Southern Baptist wife-beaters.... Catholic pedophiles, Catholic drunks, Catholic thieves and Catholic wife-beaters.... all of us are human and fall short of the glory of the God. I don't think anyone would claim a particular religious community is made up of infallible members. I simply said MANY Mormons behave him in a more Christian manner than a lot of self-proclaimed "Christians" in this country. This doesn't mean they don't have their share of seedy Mormons. >> Former LDS bishop arraigned, accused of bilking 'little guys' Is this the behavior that you consider the most "Christian"? << Of course not. By better behavior, I mean that studies have shown that Mormon families on average are much more likely to be intact two parent marriages, have less drug use, crime, adultery, and more weekly church attendance than the "average" Catholic or Protestant household in America. Those are the facts whether you like them or not. I am NOT a Mormon but it certainly looks bad among mainstream Christians that so many Christian families do not behave in a Christ-like manner. It's very sad that half of all marriages now end in divorce. >> Even if it is, mormonism is NOT Christianity...even if "many" behave. << As I previously noted twice, I do NOT claim Mormonism is Christianity. They certainly aren't... but overall they simply behave more morally and Christ-like than a lot of self-proclaimed Christians. In reality, "many" DO NOT claim Mormonism is Christianity. It's baseless propaganda from the mainstream media that only "evangelicals don't think Mormons are Christian". In reality, EVERY mainstream Christian denomination REJECTS the idea that Mormons are Christians. Catholics, Orthodox, and "mainline" protestant churches have ALL said Mormon doctrines are incompatible with Christianity. Mormonism is a polytheistic religion that denies basic Christian tenants and practices things no genuine Christian denomination would accept, such as baptizing death people. They claim Jesus is the messiah and divine, but so do many other non-Christian religions like the Bahá'í faith. Mormons are no more "Christian" than Hindus are. As I previously noted twice, I do NOT claim Mormonism is Christianity. They certainly aren't... but overall they simply behave more morally and Christ-like than a lot of self-proclaimed Christians. What kind of proof do you have to substantiate the "over all" claim? I have personally found that those who claim to be Christians behave more morally than a heckuva lot of mormons that I have known....and some of the most "morally behaved" folks I have met were Jehovah's Witnesses. I guess when there is a sect that spends billions of dollars on TV and radio advertising proclaiming its "morality" and has thousands of internet sites doing the same some folks will buy into the outward appearance. Give us an example of the percentages of "self-proclaimed Christians" vs the "superior moral mormons" that you personally know, along with a description of the location in which you are finding these examples. Thanks. 79 posted on 12/30/2012 10:54:25 AM PST by greyfoxx39 (Romney's gift to the country....Boehner bowing to Obama while kicking the Tea Party.) Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
THE pound is down slightly against the US dollar this morning and is currently trading at $1.2928. Yesterday saw the pound spike around a cent against the dollar on reports of an agreement being reached between the UK and Germany. Related articles The news bolstered market hopes that the UK and EU would not rush to form a detailed deal and may instead use the Brexit transition period to flesh things out. Jordan Rochester, currency strategist at Nomura International Plc., poured cold water on the assertions, claiming they amounted to “kicking the can down the road/fudge exercise and will be taken well by the market”. Broad-based demand for the US dollar has remained solid in the light of gathering global financial turmoil – especially in emerging markets – which has helped it to avoid further losses against the pound. Markets still expect the Federal Reserve to keep gradually raising US interest rates due to a strong economic outlook. On top of this, persistent global trade jitters have kept safe haven currencies like the US dollar looking appealing. As Brexit developments and safe haven demand have been the primary driver of pound to US dollar exchange rate movement this week, those factors are likely to remain influential over the coming days. If there are any more positive developments in Brexit negotiations Sterling could see more of a recovery rally.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
This blog provides stories that Denyse O'Leary, a Toronto-based journalist, has found to be of interest, as she covers the growing intelligent design controversy. It supports her book By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg 2004). Does the universe - and do life forms - show evidence of intelligent design? If so, Carl Sagan was wrong and so is Richard Dawkins. Now what? Enter your search termsSubmit search form Custom Search Sunday, November 23, 2008 Atheist defends intelligent design - and I gather he's pretty good Below are links to the Discovery Institute's five podcasts of University of Colorado (Boulder) professor of the philosophy of physics Bradley Monton - who is an atheist - on why the universe might show evidence of design. Monton teamed up with another skeptic of religion, mathematician David Berlinski, against materialist atheist Lawrence Krauss and British theistic evolutionist Denis Alexander, to defend the design of the universe as an intellectually worthy idea (not just some religious schtick). Well, it's no secret that the intelligent design debate is more nuanced than legacy media portray it. I suspect that fewer than 200 journalists in the world actually know what the controversy is about. How can you tell if they do? First, they realize that the evidence from science does not support current materialist or naturalist or no-design theory. (Shhhh!) They are not columnistsretailing fatuous lines like "There is no conflict between faith and science!" or "No creationism is the schools! Darwin explained it all without God. (But (optionally) you can holler your guts out for Jesus anyway. Maybe it is good for evolution if you do." Often, the same columnist is shouting both slogans, at different times. Good thing too, because there isn't a 360 degree swivel joint in the human head! Second, they have actually read and thought about the books written by ID theorists like Mike Behe, Bill Dembski, and Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, which advance a testable thesis. They have looked beyond the smoke and noise generated by fossil science organizations and the "Christian" scientists who meet with them to plan strategy to prevent considreation of design, purpose, or meaning in the universe. (There is a scandal here, awaiting detailed discovery - rats for me, I am mainly a trade news hack, and may not get in on the best cellar.) This episode of ID the Future features part one of Casey Luskin's interview with atheist philosopher of physics Bradley Monton, author of a new book on intelligent design. Prof. Monton has a unique perspective of the debate over intelligent design as an atheist who is trying to elevate the debate. Professor Monton is debating intelligent design and the existence of God this weekend in Fort Worth, TX. This episode of ID the Future features the second part of Casey Luskin's interview with atheist philosopher of physics Bradley Monton. Prof. Monton shares his experience in the debate over intelligent design and discusses the Dover decision, rebutting trial witness philosopher Robert Pennock. Prof. Monton has a unique perspective of the debate over intelligent design as an atheist who is trying to elevate the debate. In 2006, he authored a paper on Judge Jones' Kitzmiller ruling, "Is Intelligent Design Science? Dissecting the Dover Decision." On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin continues his interview with atheist philosopher of science Bradley Monton. Professor Monton discusses his role in "The Great Debate on Intelligent Design" last weekend. Interestingly, the two presenters on the pro-ID side, including Prof. Monton, were non-theists. Listen is as Prof. Monton shows that the debate over intelligent design is far more nuanced than most portray it. On this episode of ID the Future, atheist philosopher of science Bradley Monton turns the tables on Casey Luskin, putting the question to him about the Dover trial. What is the story of Discovery Institute's involvement in that infamous case? Listen in as Professor Monton asks good questions and gets good answers. This episode of ID the Future features the last in a series of interviews with atheist philosopher of physics Bradley Monton. Professor Monton's perspective enriches and expands the debate over intelligent design, as he discusses whether an ID proponent can be an atheist, the scientific evidence for intelligent design, and the importance of the argument from cosmology. Professor Monton also shares his experience dealing with Robert Pennock, a Darwinist philosopher of science who had an interesting response when Monton published a paper on the Dover decision, critiquing Pennock. Monton breaks this story for the first time in this interview, but the full tale is told in his forthcoming book, Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design, (Broadview Press, 2009).	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Recommended Games Ahead of the bell: Tiffany's shares downgraded Ahead of the bell: Analyst downgrades Tiffany's shares to "hold" from "buy" NEW YORK (AP) -- Tiffany & Co. was stripped of its 'buy' rating by Canaccord Genuity, with growing signs that once unshakeable shoppers at high end stores are finally cutting back on spending. The luxury sector had been one of the few bright spots in retail during the economic downturn, as the wealthy seemed bent on shopping even as housing values tanked and thousands lost jobs. There are now some signs of weakness within the pillars of the luxury market, including Tiffany and Coach Inc., which saw its shares plunge Wednesday after falling short of profit and revenue forecasts for the second quarter. Coach, the upscale handbag maker, said that the economy and heavy price-cutting by competitors took a toll during the most recent quarter. That dragged down the stock price of other luxury retailers as well Wednesday. Canaccord analyst Laura Champine said in a research note published Thursday that Tiffany's sales momentum "continues to decelerate against an uncertain macroeconomic backdrop." And recent changes to tax laws, which focus on the wealthy, could pressure luxury spending even more. Champine replaced her 'buy' rating, with a 'hold." Tiffany in January reported flat comparable store sales during the critical November and December shopping period. While sales rose 4 percent globally, it was less than expected, and the company told investors that it anticipated earnings for the year to come in at the lower end of its prior forecast. Its shares tumbled. "We believe (Tiffany's) near-term visibility is clouded," Champine wrote. She pointed out that Tiffany's has fallen short on per-share earnings projections for four consecutive quarters. Shares of Tiffany slipped 73 cents to $62 in premarket trading Thursday, close to the midpoint of its 52-week range of $49.72 and $74.20.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Gifford House About this service Gifford House provides accommodation for 18+ for single homeless people who may have substance misuse/alcohol issues or who are in recovery. House rules are decided by the service users. Priority is given to those who have a connection to Gateshead. Referral (how to access this service) Self referral or via other agency; priority is given to referrals from Gateshead Council Homeless Section	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Tuesday, March 18, 2008 Tui Labasa and land from wThe Tui Labasa, Adi Salanieta Tuilomaloma, has said that she thinks that unused land should be leased out in her district of Labasa. Of course it is really up to each mataqali to make such a decision - however her initiative is a guideline. But, why don't the men and women of Labasa lease the land back to themselves? They could start intensive vegetable and fruit farms, grow kura, ginger, cassava, etc. Sugar-cane, well, I don't think that is the way to go as there's very little financial reward for a year's work. But the people could do very well with local food crops. Piggeries. Cattle - good for a rainy day - meaning the requirements to feed people at a wedding or funeral. Waiting for lease money twice a year isn't as good as being energetic and productive and having a hands-on relationship with the land. Peceli's family land is in the Wailevu district, west of Labasa, but lots of relatives are in Naseakula and some family units own large tracts of land.----- from Fiji TimesA big step on landWednesday, March 19, 2008 THE proposal by the Tui Labasa, Adi Salanieta Ritova, to turn over unused Native land for lease is a step in the right direction. This move shows the goodwill of the landowners and is an open invitation to farmers to stay in the Northern Division. With this single step, however, small it may be, relations between the communities can make a massive leap forward. And not a single interim minister, government official, politician or unionist was involved in this landmark decision. The people of Labasa, through their chief, have decided that this is the way for the landowners and tenants to benefit from land which, until now, had remained idle. Detractors will say that the vanua of Labasa should have made this move in 1999 when leases on cane fields first started to expire. They will say that seven years have been wasted and countless families have suffered as a consequence. While there may be merit in these arguments, it is important to note that any dealings with land must involve the landowners from the initial stages. Governments in the past have attempted to force the issue at their peril. This newspaper, nine years ago, made it quite clear that the way forward would be found when the landowners found the right time. It cannot be denied that every piece of arable land in this country must be put to good use for the benefit of all. For too long the indigenous people thought it was easy for the land to be worked by diligent farmers. Few landowners realised the tremendous effort, the sacrifice and sheer hard work which went into producing cane or rice from the land. That is why they demanded, with the backing of chiefs and political parties, the return of their land. This was their right ill-advised as they were, to make the demand for the return of the fields handed down through the generations. Now that the land is in their possession, the landowners have three choices: Till the land themselves, lease the fields to tenants or allow the soil to become overgrown. Some villagers will choose the first option and succeed. These are the people who will foster a new generation of indigenous farmer which makes full use of their birthright and maximises revenue opportunities. Landowners who choose the option of leasing the land will make money and, at the same time, foster a generation of villagers who are tolerant and willing to help people of all races. Those who choose to let the land lie idle are a disgrace to the country and to themselves. We salute the Marama Tui Labasa and the Yavusa Wasavulu for a brave, bold move. Adi Salanieta and her people have set an example from which we can all learn. NLTB hails Tui Labasa’s plans (from today's Fijilive news)19 MAR 2008 Fiji’s Native Land Trust Board has described the move by Tui Labasa, Adi Salanieta Tuilomaloma’s initiative to renew native land leases in her district of Labasa as a noble one. NLTB spokesman, Ro Alipate Mataitini confirmed that the Tui Labasa has decided to renew leases, which are under her jurisdiction to farmers in Labasa. He also said that most of the native land in Labasa has been unoccupied since the 2000 coup and it was Adi Salanieta’s wish to lease the land out for agricultural purposes. “Most of the unoccupied land was used for sugarcane planting for so many years until the leases expired and farmers had no choice but to vacate the land. However it was the initiative of the Tui Labasa to see that the land is put to good use once again and we applaud such courage.” Ro Alipate also said that various clans in the Labasa district will have to be consulted first before any plans take place. “It’s a normal process for Fijians to consult their sub-clans before going ahead with any plans and in this case Labasa is a big district so we have to work our way carefully.” Links About Me Babasiga (pronounced bambasinga) is the dry land of Macuata in northern Fiji - our place in the sun in Fiji. Peceli is from Fiji from the village is Vatuadova and the beach is Nukutatava. Peceli Ratawa passed away on 27th December 2015 so this is Wendy's blog now. Wendy is an Australian and today live in Geelong, Australia.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Dental Hygiene Why the Soft Sodas Stain the Teeth? 03/22/2010 Question: Hi, I am a student of 7th grade and I want to know which is the process and the component by what the soft sodas like fanta, cocacola, grape or root beer stains the teeth. Also I want to know which is the worst and the best of that sodas and where can I find references about the this topic. Thanks Answer: The color of the soft drink may stain teeth. You can test this by soaking eggs in the liquid for a certain period of time. Obviosly the darker colored soft drinks may stain more. If you go on the internet under google, type in "google scholar". Then type in a phrase such as staining of teeth by soft drinks; you may get references on this topic. Please note: only your personal physician or other health professional you consult can best advise you on matters of your health based on your medical history, your family medical history, your medication history, and how information from any of these databases may apply to you. Neither University of Cincinnati (NetWellness) nor any party involved in creating, producing or delivering this web site shall be liable for any damages arising out of access to or use of this web site, or any errors or omissions in the content thereof. (More)	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Made in comfy lightweight cotton poplin, this skirt’s voluminous tiers of printed fabric can take it from a casual outing to a major occasion-moment in a snap. You can wear it up high as a strapless maxi dress (it looks great belted!) or traditionally at your waist or slung low on the hips. 100% cotton poplin Flexible elastic waistband Oversized fit that can be worn around hips Three tiered, voluminous ruched skirt Side slit concealed pockets 100% made in Italy Please note print in cotton has a slightly different color than the same print in silk	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
So I'm trying to figre out which route to go, I know the square ones will match the headlights. But I've seen a few round ones and they too look pretty good... so if anyone has any pics that would help me out a ton! Thanks that was before i blew the motor, anyway....now.....i cry when i see her __________________ [FONT=Tahoma][B]Black Jeep Club V2.0 Member #89[/B] [COLOR=Sienna][B]New England Jeep Club Member #5[/B][/COLOR] [B][COLOR=DarkOliveGreen]The Official I Own a Toy Jeep Club Member #5[/COLOR] Swamp Donkey 4x4 [/B]	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Glass Owl Salt and Pepper Set Egg Salt and Pepper Shakers in Crate, Set of 2 Our cute Egg Salt and Pepper Shakers in Crate look like a pair of fresh eggs carried home from the local farmers' market. Crafted of stoneware, these shakers nest cozily in their custom crate while adding adorable farm-to-table appeal.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
This is a brand page for the INTERPACE DIAGNOSTICS trademark by Interpace Diagnostics LLC in Parsippany, NJ, 07054. Write a review about a product or service associated with this INTERPACE DIAGNOSTICS trademark. Or, contact the owner Interpace Diagnostics LLC of the INTERPACE DIAGNOSTICS trademark by filing a request to communicate with the Legal Correspondent for licensing, use, and/or questions related to the INTERPACE DIAGNOSTICS trademark. On Thursday, March 17, 2016, a U.S. federal trademark registration was filed for INTERPACE DIAGNOSTICS by Interpace Diagnostics LLC, Parsippany, NJ 07054. The USPTO has given the INTERPACE DIAGNOSTICS trademark serial number of 86944287. The current federal status of this trademark filing is REGISTERED. The correspondent listed for INTERPACE DIAGNOSTICS is JEANNE HAMBURG of NORRIS MCLAUGHLIN & MARCUS, P.A., 875 THIRD AVENUE, 8TH FLOOR NEW YORK, NY 10022 . The INTERPACE DIAGNOSTICS trademark is filed in the category of Computer & Software Services & Scientific Services , Medical, Beauty & Agricultural Services . The description provided to the USPTO for INTERPACE DIAGNOSTICS is Medical research to develop molecular diagnostic tests to aid in the diagnosis and resolution of diseases. The USPTO makes this data available for search by the public so that individuals can locate ownership information for intellectual property, much the same way a county might make real estate property ownership information available. Since our website is synchronized with the USPTO data, we recommend making any data changes with the USPTO directly. Our website will auto-update when the USPTO data is updated. You may also contact Trademarkia to make a request for the removal of your personally identifiable information or trademark data. Such requests must be made in writing and will be subject to verification of ownership. This policy allows verified trademark owners to specify: (A) that their identifiable information be masked, or (B) that their trademark pages permanently deleted from Trademarkia.com. Requests may be made directly to customer.service@trademarkia.com and every effort will be made to honor them within 48 hours. Trademarkia is the largest search engine for U.S. trademarks. Each month hundreds of trademarks around the world are filed by licensed attorneys in the LegalForce/Trademarkia network! You can register your trademark in 170+ countries in the world through LegalForce Network. LegalForce Network can help you incorporate a business around your INTERPACE DIAGNOSTICS trademark in less than 5 minutes. Trademarkia makes the process easy and convenient, so start now! Trademarkia.com is a free search engine of publicly available government records. Trademarkia.com is not a law firm and does not represent owners & correspondents listed on this page. Trademarkia lets you see how your personal name, product name, trademark name or username is being used on any of 530+ new and popular social networks. Be the first to reserve your name and get help stopping others from using it - all in one place! Trademark Oppose Service You can request for Extension of Time to Oppose this mark or Oppose it now. - If you are new to LegalForce/Trademarkia, please just enter your contact email and create a password; - If you already have a LegalForce/Trademarkia account, please enter your account's email and password. * Email Address: * Enter Password: * Status Update Alerts Status Update Alerts are email updates of the latest trademark status change. Please make sure you provide the correct email. - If you are new to LegalForce/Trademarkia, please just enter your contact email and create a password; - If you already have a LegalForce/Trademarkia account, please enter your account's email and password. * Email Address: * Enter Password: * Review & Rating Please Rate and Review for INTERPACE DIAGNOSTICS INTERPACE DIAGNOSTICS is providing Medical research to develop molecular diagnostic tests to aid in the diagnosis and resolution of diseases. - If you are new to LegalForce/Trademarkia, please just enter your contact email and create a password to be associated with your review. If you already have a LegalForce/Trademarkia account, please enter your account's email and password before posting your review.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Related Comments I am the 3rd owner, and the car was bought locally in 1970. 304 cubic inch. New interior, mild cam, headers, torquer intake, torq thrust mags, Cooper tires. New paint since these pictures. Great cruiser, always turns heads as there are few of these around and is always the only one at the car show! Thanks, yes the paint came out better than I had hoped. Glad the painter put lots on (single stage/no clear coat) Still a few areas to go over again with some 3000 paper and polish, but shouldn't take too long to look even better!	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Our First Video Boyfriend sucking my dick and me face fucking him before shooting on his face. Please give us some feedback! Boyfriend sucking my dick and me face fucking him before shooting on his face. Please give us some feedback!	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
H&Y UV (Ultra Violet) SPRO 1 Wide Band HD MC Silm Filter (Japan) is a general use, clear filter that helps to absorb ultraviolet light and reduce the bluish cast of daylight. No additional coloration or contrast is provided, allowing you to pair this filter with others. The UV filter is also useful as a general protective filter to leave on lenses at all times. Filters help to reduce dust and moisture from reaching your lens element and provide additional protection in case of drops or situations where scratching could occur.â€¨â€¨ Filter Glass Uses high quality Japanese "Ashahi Glass" (AGC) which its hardness and transmittance rate are much superior! Use high quality imported coating film. Firmness and Transmittance are improved through processing of high temperature multi-layer coating. Reflection rate is less than 0.5%. Filter Ring Uses high quality aluminum material with matt anodic oxidation process improves its hardness and resistance of wear which can reach till 250 - 500kg/mm2. Great resistance to heat and corrosion that prolongs the life of the filter. With matt processing, reflection is minimized. Professional Packaging Professional packaging to protect your filter and deliver in the highest quality presentation form! All prices, specifications and product details provided by ShaShinKi® are subject to change without notice. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, ShaShinKi® is not liable for any typographical errors, illustrative errors, pricing errors, or inaccuracies in the information contained herein.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
So we do this thing called church every Sunday night here in Ximending, and I want to take some time to tell you about it. I feel like up to this point I’ve always been directing to you the ministry’s website for more details, but, as the website is part of my ministry responsibilities, it has not been updated for a while. So the best update for everyone right is simply going to be straight from the horse’s mouth! This slideshow requires JavaScript. Above are the faces of the Aroma Church. We meet every Sunday night at 8:00 on the second floor of the Aroma Coffee Shop. We sing, we listen, we pray, we hang out. We come early and stay late. Once a month, we eat a big meal together before the service. During the week, we study the Bible and meet up and live life together. We are the Aroma. Above: This is the Sunday that our late friend Andrew’s parents joined us. They had flown from Plano, IL, to Taipei, TW, to collect the last of what was left of Andrew’s life here on earth. You can read more about Andrew at my blog. Since the beginning of this year, we started having church services every week. Up to that point, we had been doing worship services in our living room once a month, each time sending out a facebook invitation to hundreds of people and serving a big meal before the service. The tagline became “eating together, singing together, listening together and praying together.” Needless to say, the living room would get packed out. You can watch a video of the very last living room church service. That was in September, and then in October, November, and December, we began having the monthly service on the second floor of the new building, which is now The Aroma Coffee Shop. Running a weekly church service every week also meant pulling out of attending church every week, so as a team we were commissioned and prayed out by our church family at Oasis. It was a big step, because it meant we were jumping and trusting God with everything. We were officially accepting our collective role as a church-planting team. Above: Some of the team up front being prayed for by our brothers and sisters at Oasis church, our church family for the last 2-3 years. It was time to go establish our own church family in Ximending. Running church has been…incredible. Exhausting. Amazing. Busy. Life-changing. Frustrating. Nothing short of Kingdom-living. This is what our Sundays look like: Meet in the morning to pray and worship together and discuss any pressing items of business. Most of us eat lunch together. Caleb and Miki (the couple that joined the team in December) take off so they can prepare to open the coffee shop at 2. The rest of the afternoon, we’re preparing for church, which means some of us are making the bulletins, some are preparing the sermon, some are preparing the power point, others are setting up, others still practicing for worship, others are taking prayer walks and interceding for the people who will come. For me personally, there’s never any time for dinner. People start showing up as early as 6-6:30. At about 7:40, the worship team and pastor and prayer warriors go downstairs to the prayer room to pray. Service starts at 8 with announcements and takes off with worship. It ends around 9:30. After the service, the fellowshipping and socializing lingers for a quite a while. Sometime after all the madness settles down and enough feet have cleared the area to give us space to clean up, we debrief about the service as a team. By midnight, most us may already be in bed, exhausted but excited, and thankful that the coffee shop is closed on Mondays. At the end of every Sunday, I am completely and simultaneously thankful, humbled and in awe of what God is doing here in Ximen. Lives are being changed. The truth is being preached to every person who is sitting there on a Sunday night. A diverse and international community of love is being cultivated. Creativity is being inspired through music and design and the Word. And the sound of worship fills the building and reaches down to the sidewalks. This is the church here in Ximen. It’s surprising and wonderful and will change your life. It’s been changing mine for the last 2 1/2 years. Advertisements Rate this: Share this: Like this: LikeLoading... Related Published by victoriascotia I am inspired by the Giver of inspiration. I am surprised by the Inventor of all surprises. I love because Love found me first. I believe in the Prince of Peace. I'm a writer and a creative artist. I like media and movies and reading. Please tell me what you think of my words. View all posts by victoriascotia	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
We offer a professional consultation via email that will give you an idea of the value of your work in today's market. You will receive this information via email within 24 hours. DETAILED APPRAISAL: $75 This extensive appraisal is suitable for submission to your insurance company. In depth research surrounding your personal piece and artist. The APPRAISAL will be sent via email or US Mail. It may take up to a week to complete the document. (For larger collections we will contact you regarding pricing.) CONSIGNMENT LISTING FEE: $25 per item Paintings from First, Second or Third Generation Haitian artists are considered for consignment. Consignment period is 90 days. You may attach images below (.jpg, .gif, .jpeg, .png). Evaluation Order Form Choose Evaluation Type: Email Evaluation - $14.95 Detailed Appraisal - $75 Consignment - $25 Your Name: E-mail: Additional Information: Artist Name: Artwork Dimensions: Please include images below: Artwork Image 1: Artwork Image 2 (optional): Type of card: Credit Card Number: Verification Code: Expiration Date: Cardholder's Name: Street Address: City/Town State/Province: ZIP: Quick Evaluation What's it worth in today's market? This quick evaluation is a tool for buyers and sellers looking for a reliable source of information by a Haitian Art professional with 25 years experience specializing in the art of Haiti. Fee $14.95 Detailed Appraisal As a Member of the On-Line Appraisers Association with 25 years specialization in Haitian Art we also offer detailed Appraisals. Your Appraisal will include: Retail Value, Insurance Value, Artist Biography and unique characteristics of your particular work. Fee $75. Consignment Works considered for Consignment must have a Retail Value of $1000.00 or more.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
SCORCHED EARTH Jason and the Scorchers by Alan Crandall (July 1998) If you happened to turn on Late Night With Conan O'Brien a few months ago, you might have seen something very strange. His musical guests: a long-haired, red-neck-trucker type swayed back and forth while hammering away at the biggest bass guitar seen since John Entwistle's heyday; a little troll of a man made funny faces while whomping away on his drum kit; the guitar player, who seemed to have wandered in from some local heavy-metal bar, was blasting out power chords and fast licks like some kind of roots-rock Eddie Van Halen, while periodically spinning himself around, the guitar held perpendicular to his chest by centrifugal force; meanwhile, a skinny, gawky spaz in an outrageous cowboy suit and hat whirled around the stage, performed awkward/graceful "dance" steps, flailed his arms like a madman, fanned the guitar player with his jacket, blew a harmonica solo and, while doing all of the above, howled out a song that could only be descirbed as "country," even if the band could only be called rock`n'roll. Even O'Brien seemed a little stunned. Who the fuck were these insane people? Ladies and gents, Jason and the Scorchers. In the 1960's, Gram Parson made the fateful re-discovery that country music was at the roots of rock`n'roll, as surely as blues or r&b. Actually he wasn't the only one The Beatles had covered Buck Owens, The Stones did Hank Snow (and later, via association with Parsons, would pen their own rocking country songs). John Fogerty remembered, too - thus "a dinosaur Victoria/listening to Buck Owens" in "Lookin' Out My Back Door," and later the whole Blue Ridge Rangers album, a classic. Parsons also reminded The Byrds of their country roots, thus sparking the Sweetheart of the Rodeo album. But by and large, and largely due to the growing rigidity of popular radio, which relegated country, rock, black music, and everything else, to their own little air slots (and if you want to know what killed good music after the '60's, there's one of the main culprits right there), country music and rock`n'roll, by the late '60's, were becoming two separate entities. Another reason for this is guilt by association - by the late '60's, rock music had become the sound of the counterculture; it symbolized everything it's audience believed in: an end to the war in Vietnam, free love, smoking dope, and all things countercultural. Country music had come to symbolize everything establishment - a listen to Merle Haggard's infamous "Okie From Muskogee" or "The Fightin' Side Of Me" is instructive. The fact that Haggard meant "Okie" as something from a joke had no bearing on the fact that most listeners took him at face value, and loved, or hated him, for it. Today, it's even more true. Leaving aside record freaks and music-lovers like myself, the rock audience is unremittingly hostile to country music - I once had an avowed Eagles and Grateful Dead fan practically foaming at the mouth for mentioning that both of the aforementioned are heavily influenced by country music a fact only the clueless or ignorant could possibly fail to perceive. Try pointing out to a Stones fan that "Honky Tonk Woman" is, in fact, a country song go ahead, try it! By the '80's, this kind of thinking was pretty firmly entrenched. Meanwhile, country music was undergoing a re-shaping, thanks to Urban Cowboy and other absurdities. The music, at least it's most visible end, was continuing it's trend away from traditional sounds to a more pop-rock orientation. What passed for country on the Billboard charts was mostly closer to The Eagles or even Billy Joel; "lite" rock with a little bit of "twang" for flavoring. The old-timers, and those who stuck to their guns, started to get the cold shoulder; by 1983, Johnny Cash found himself unceremoniously dumped from Columbia, his label of the past thirty years. Such was the state when a young band began to tear up Nashville's tiny punk/underground scene. Jason Ringenberg, hog-farmer from Illinois, had his eclectic taste - a love for classic country music in all it's forms, combined with a passion for rockabilly, classic 60's rock`n'roll, and the sheer power and drive of punk rock, found some like-minded mental cases - with Warner Hodges on guitar, Perry Baggs on drums, and Jeff Johnson on bass, he put it all together into something that was genuinely new; a band that played pure country music, except they played it like The Ramones. The term "country-rock" conjures up a mellow, pleasant, front-porch kind of sound The Grateful Dead, The Eagles, Linda Rondstadt this is not how Jason and the Scorchers sounded. Warner Hodges had grown up with country music (his parents were professional musicians, and had even provided back-up for several big names, including Johnny Cash); but in his teens, he got turned on by Jimi Hendrix, and AC/DC. So, while quite capable of picking out pure Luther Perkins licks (which he did, when he wanted to), he cranked his guitar up all the way and let rip, cramming the songs with power chords and pure white-noise/blues guitar licks ala Angus Young. There was nothing fancy about the rhythm section: Baggs and Johnson just whomped the sucker as hard as they could. As for Jason, he whooped, hollered, yelped and howled, using all the tricks he'd learned off of rockabilly records to make the most of his limited but powerful voice, all delivered in an unmistakable southern drawl`n'twang. They sounded like one of Dave Dudley's big-rigs barrelling down the highway at 200 mph. There was nothing genteel or reverent about them this was hard, fast, LOUD music. The music, and their wild stage show, were designed to whip an audience into a frenzy. They did. And, it was real country music. Not the watered-down adult contemporary of then (and still)-current Nashville. Jason had an innate understanding of the tradition of country music songwriting: cheating, drinking, love lost and found, commitment, sin and salvation, old-fashioned values, a sense of history and sometimes, a sense of the macabre. Lines like "I tried to fight through that emptiness/I feel every time you undress" ("Broken Whiskey Glass") come straight from George Jones territory. "Shot Down Again" started off as almost a parody: Jason's girl just can't stop cheating on him, and worse than that, he can't get any; "when I tried to kiss her/Jerry Falwell shot tear gas in my eyes," but then takes a sudden dark turn into the Rubber Room ("Well I went to love my little girl/She had a golden wedding band/I walked these midnight streets alone/Bloodstains on my hands "). "If You've Got The Love (I've Got the Time)" was trash-county so accurate, most thought it was a cover. Of course, they did play covers; country chestnuts by Hank Williams, Faron Young, and Jimmie Rodgers, rockabilly from Carl Perkins, rock`n'roll from The Rolling Stones. In the '90's, there's a host of bands who play a hard rock/country hybrid, in 1981, there was no one. Jason and the Scorchers were something genuinely new and different (although the country sound would take hold on the West Coast around the same time, thanks to The Blasters, X, Rank and File, and later, The Beat Farmers and Long Ryders). In Nashville, The Scorchers were quickly popular, and controversial. Nashville didn't take kindly to having their chestnuts smashed by this bunch of lunatics, but, based on a plethora of Nashville news broadcasts that circulate on video, the general reaction seems to have been one of bemusement. They gained momentum fast. A week after their first gig (January 1982), they laid down Reckless Country Soul in a three-hour session. The disc (long-impossible to find, but now reissued with outtakes by Mammoth) captured their sound brilliantly. Within a year, they had a major-label deal with EMI. They shared stages with R.E.M. (with Michael Stipe appearing on their next EP), The Replacements, and legends like Carl Perkins. The Fervor EP followed in `84. If anything, they were even more overpowering, leaving behind the spare, rootsy sound of Reckless Country Soul in favor of a full-throttle roar. "Help! There's A Fire" from Reckless was here transformed from a country blues to a rockabilly romp with Buddy Holly-esque vocals from Jason. "I Can't Help Myself," their latest country massacre, went from a frantic buildup to a full firestorm, while "Pray For Me Mama (I'm A Gypsy Now)" (another remake from Reckless), and "Harvest Moon" offered further proof of Jason's gift for country songwriting. Best of all was "Both Sides of the Line," a Yardbirds-like rave-up filled with ominous apocalyptic imagery ("But if the mountains fall down and the seas around/Could crumble in my midst/I'd trade it all for a midnight call/And just one holy kiss"). A roaring cover of Dylan's "Absolutely Sweet Marie" became a critic's fave. Soon they were assured Next Big Thing status, and EMI started giving them The Push. Lost and Found, their first full-length LP, wasn't quite the breakthrough for them it seemed a little low on first-rate new material. Still the onstage fave "White Lies," the great hillbilly stomp called "Blanket Of Sorrow," terrific covers of "Lost Highway" and "I Really Don't Want To Know" (done as a mean blues-rocker), a definitive "Broken Whiskey Glass" (another remake from Reckless) and the lovely "Far Behind" were nothing to be ashamed of. I saw them that summer at the packed Keystone in Palo Alto, CA. Onstage, they were incendiary. I have never seen a band so determined to put an audience on their knees. Loud, frantic, thrashing about the stage like crazy men. Jason, who looked like Hector Heathcoat in a suit that would embarrassed Nudie, leaned into a young woman's face, close enough to have kissed her instead he let out with a mighty cowboy yell, then flung himself off the stage, into the audience, and somehow ended up running across tables (those that weren't already occupied by dancing fans) while blasting away on his harp. In good cowboy style, he never once lost his hat, either. To this day, it remains one of the three or four most exciting live rock`n'roll shows I've ever seen. If I may digress for a moment: If there's one thing the rock audience, and rock performers, have forgotten, it's how to be crazy onstage. I remember a friend grimacing at the sight of Joe "King" Carrasco on Saturday Night Live, prancing around in his underwear with a crown on his head ("That guy's an idiot!"). We all know Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd would never stoop to such silliness. In the beginning, rock`n'roll musicians were all crazy. Elvis shook and gyrated and generally shocked (and excited) middle America. Little Richard pounded his piano, played with his feet, howled like a madman and got away with being as fruity as you possibly could in the mid-50's; Chuck Berry duck-walked and shook all over a stage, while Screamin' Jay Hawkins popped out of a coffin; and Jerry Lee Lewis well he did all of these and more. In the 60's, there were still some who remembered: James Brown, Mick Jagger, The Who, Hendrix, Iggy. But more and more, we got the Eric Clapton syndrome - the rock musician as Serious Artist - back to the audience, in commune with his instrument, pulling genius out of some deep inner part of himself. It's remained a model ever since. End of digression. For the next couple years, they toured hard and played the game while EMI publicity beat the bushes. However, EMI wasn't getting the hit they wanted. Still Standing, their `86 followup, solidified their strengths they were, if anything, better than ever. Great songs like the "Tumblin' Dice" knockoff "Golden Ball and Chain" (The Stones are also done tribute here by a cover of "19th Nervous Breakdown"), the furious blues rock of "Shotgun Blues," and the country boogie "My Heart Still Stands With You" were the highlights. It was on that tour that I saw them for the second (and so far, last) time. It was at a place called One Step Beyond, a cavernous club that actually booked a surprisingly hip lineup of acts in the mid-'80's. That time, they played to perhaps 20 people, perhaps 12. I remember standing right up in front, turning around and noticing that the crowd of us gathered around the stage constituted everyone in the club. The show was less frantic than the first time, but they still came out full-throttle, taking requests ("Polk Salad Annie" - Tony Joe White's swamp-rock hit, also one of their B-sides) and surprises: Bobby Womack's "It's All Over Now," a final, gentle "Amazing Grace," and best of all, a murderous assault on "Country Roads Take Me Home," taken at 11 on the volume and 90 mph - hilarious, and rockin'! As the above may indicate, Still Standing didn't sell. EMI dumped them, and for a time they seemed to vanish from the face of the earth. They broke the silence in 1989, when Thunder and Fire suddenly appeared. Y'know what it's like when you buy an album you can't wait to hear, get it home and feel disappointed, try and try to like and then realize it's just not that hot? It started off good even though "When The Angels Cry" is clearly aimed straight at AOR, pure MTV arena-rock, it's so impassioned that they get away with it. Despite some highlights (a typically Scorcherized cover of Phil Ochs' "My Kingdom For A Car," "Bible And A Gun" co-written with Steve Earle, and Perry's blues-rock workout "Six Feet Underground"), most of Thunder sounded generic and rather ordinary. Plain and simple, Jason and company hadn't come up with enough interesting songs. In the meantime, the band had switched labels (to A&M), lost Jeff Johnson and added a second guitar player. And that was it. Except for a showcase gig in Los Angeles, there doesn't seem to have been much of a tour. The band broke up, blaming lack of success and personal problems (read: drugs, booze, not getting along). Now if you'll excuse a little personal digression. As the years passed, I sort of filed Jason and the Scorchers away. Occasionally I'd dig the albums out and groove on them again, and regret that they hadn't stuck it out. Jason (now having dropped his last name) put out a solo album in 1992, One Foot in the Honky Tonk. It flopped too. Not surprisingly, because it was very much a schizophrenic thing, mixing Scorchers-esque rockers that would have come across a lot stronger with a band that really knew how to play them ("Hard Luck Boy"), a handful of hard country gems ("One Foot in the Honky Tonk," "I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water") and a batch of pleasant pop-country numbers that were brilliant compared to Garth Brooks or Alan Jackson, but pretty thin compared to the glories of his past. One night in 1995, I was driving a friend back from an evening's drinking, and had a Scorchers tape in the car. So I put it on. He'd never heard of them, but liked them immediately. Then, just a week or two later, he shows up with a copy of Rolling Stone: "Hey, check it out: Jason and the Scorchers have a new album!" And there it was. Not a compilation, not a posthumous live album . an actual brand-new Jason and the Scorchers album! Jeff Johnson had apparently cajoled the band members back together for an anniversary show in Nashville. During rehearsals and the fated gig, they'd realized they had something, and decided to give it another whirl. A Blazing Grace was a better album than one could have hoped for. Not perfect their cover of George Jones' "Why Baby Why" rips, but there's a stiffness there that wasn't around in the early days. But "Cry By Night Operator," "200 Proof Lovin'" and, finally preserved for all time, "Country Roads Take Me Home" are prime Scorchers. The other tracks were all good if not brilliant. Still, The Scorchers kept a low profile, touring only in their good towns; the South, Midwest, and Europe (American roots music seems to always do well in Europe). Their next opus, Clear Impetuous Morning, appeared without much fanfare a couple years later. It starts off great with "Self-Sabotage," a major Scorchers classic, then gets weird with "Cappuccino Rosie," picks up for a great take on Gram Parsons' "Drugstore Truck Drivin' Man" (about time, guys), moves into country territory with "Going Nowhere" (good, not great), and then falls apart in a mishmash of "the anonymous hard-rock/heavy-metal guitar sound that defined AOR radio in the '80s" (thanks, All-Music Guide) which is not only uninteresting, but dated in the worst possible way. Apparently, Jason and the Scorchers' idea of a mainstream rock song is about ten years out of date, or more. They finally save face with "Jeremy's Glory," a Civil War epic, but it's a little late. In interviews at the time, Jason went on about how they busted their nuts to make the best album they could, but overall it's their least interesting release. Which brings us to Midnight Roads and Stages Seen, a live album celebrating their history, and a clear bid for Bigger Time. Live albums are rarely among an artist's finest work (to be sure, there are exceptions). They're basically gifts to the fans (and as such, highly appreciated), a way to mark time, and sometimes a way to close off a phase of one's career. One reason you don't hear many raves from critics about live albums is, quite frankly, they're not very interesting to write or talk about. Live remakes of old songs; generally a pretty safe selection, usually a surprise or two thrown in for good measure and to help attract sales. This one pretty much plays the game, too. The "hits" and crowd-pleasers are here, there's a new song ("This Town Isn't Keeping You Down," good but not great), and a surprise Warner Hodges' parents join them for a rockin' "Walkin' the Dog" (Warner's mom coulda been a contender she's got a great rockabilly-type voice -- and in fact has an album of her own in the hopper). Jason and the Scorchers are a great live band, but they need to be seen for full appreciation. That being said, there are moments here that easily live up to their rep: "Self-Sabotage" starts things off with a bang; "Absolutely Sweet Marie" improves on the poor-sounding live B-side version from `85; "Golden Ball and Chain" and "Both Sides of the Line" get estimable workouts, and "Harvest Moon" is an absolute motherfucker; the band swings into the last verse as hard as they can. It's the kind of thing that's hard to put into words you know it when you hear it. Midnight Roads has led to their most aggressive attempt at winning over the public since Lost and Found. They're touring extensively (though still not on the West Coast, where they haven't played in close to ten years) and played their first New York gig in many years this past April. They've made a major television appearance and are scheduled, as of this writing, to appear on The Nashville Network in July. They seem to be grabbing for the brass ring again. The question that seems to come up again and again, with Jason and the Scorchers and countless others (The Replacements, Richard Thompson) is why haven't they made it? If they're so damn good, how come they're not selling 50 million albums? It's a stupid question, really. Especially in an e-zine that's focused on underground/obscure/cult/otherwise left-of-center music and musicians; especially when it's possible for artists with such limited commercial potential as Tom Waits or Frank Zappa to build up large and hungry cult followings without ever having a Top 40 hit or going into heavy rotation on MTV - hell, even the no-hit Paul Westerberg rapidly sells out every time he performs in my town; and Elvis Costello (also missing any Top 40 winners) fills stadiums; especially when any time one of these beloved cult artists does manage to break into the mainstream, they're immediately rejected by a big chunk of their following for "selling out" (and witness the fate of poor Soul Asylum, who lost their hip underground constituency by landing "Runaway Train" on the Hit Parade, then threw off their new fans with a pair of half-hearted, desultory followup albums, leaving them now banished to limbo wherever bands go when they're neither hip, respected, or popular). But leaving aside all the facets of that discussion, in Jason and the Scorcher's case, it does matter. Because "making it" has been their intent from Day One. And while countless followers --- The Supersuckers, Wilco, Uncle Tupelo, The Bottle Rockets, and, rarely mentioned but still true, Social Distortion (contemporaries of The Scorchers, but don't tell me their rocked-up covers of "Ring Of Fire" and "Makin' Believe" aren't pages from The Scorchers' songbook) have managed to carve a nice niche for themselves, Jason and the Scorchers seem relegated forever to "oh yeah, them" status. Jason and the Scorchers always meant to be the Next Big Thing. Could be a lot of reasons, I suppose. In one sense, they're probably their own worst enemies: the uninspired riff-rockers that fill up most of Clear Impetuous Morning aren't likely to sway many alt.country fans. Their demented stage show gets them laughed at in this day of "serious" musicians (Ha! See more on this above). One look at Jason's nutty cowpoke duds on The Essential Jason and the Scorchers caused one of my alt.country-loving pals to write them off forever. Still, I hope it works for them, mainly for purely selfish reasons. I love `em despite their recent failings, they're still one of my favorite bands, and I want them to go on being Jason and the Scorchers, and making music, and hopefully, one day, fulfilling the potential of their early releases. I can't imagine them ever actually cracking the Top 40, but then again stranger things have happened. If not, I hope they're determined enough to keep going. Keep rolling on, Scorchers and dammit isn't it time you played the Bay Area again? DISCOGRAPHY Reckless Country Soul (Praxis, 1982) has been reissued on Mammoth and is essential. Fervor and Lost and Found have been reissued by EMI as The Essential Jason and the Scorchers, Vol. 1 and also as Both Sides Of the Line, though I've heard both of these are now out of print. Still Standing was intended for The Essential Jason and the Scorchers Vol. 2, which never appeared. Otherwise, it's out of print. So, to the best of my knowledge, is Thunder and Fire. A Blazing Grace, Clear Impetuous Morning and Midnight Roads and Stages Seen are all available from Mammoth. So is a live video for Midnight Roads that includes material not found on the album. There are a large number of rarities, including great versions of Neil Young's "Are You Ready For the Country, " "Honky Tonk Blues, " "Polk Salad Annie," "Route 66" and an amazing take on the old Kenny Rogers atrocity "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town." Hopefully they'll collect all of these one day. Jason's 1992 solo album, One Foot in the Honky Tonk is also out of print.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
5 Advantages of Blockchain to Enterprises Past Digital currency Caught wind of Bitcoins and cryptographic money of late? You most likely have, on account of all the buzz encompassing Bitcoin’s record-breaking misuses. It’s relatively strange to surmise that, in 2011, Bitcoins exchanged for $1 each. As of late one Bitcoin was justified regardless of an incredible $16,000. As a business visionary, you may not be keen on obtaining Bitcoins or some other cryptographic money as a type of venture. Yet, you need to value the fundamental innovation that makes Bitcoin conceivable – the blockchain. In layman’s terms, the blockchain is a virtual, open record that records everything in a safe and straightforward way. Not at all like banks that encourage exchanges with customary monetary standards, the blockchain permits the free cryptocurreny exchange through a decentralized situation. Every one of the information is then held in an interlinked system of PCs, claimed and keep running by none other than the clients themselves. Certainly, the interest for Bitcoin is huge right now. The advantages of blockchain, be that as it may, are more than sufficiently enormous to support its significance for ages to come. Right away, here are the most vital advantages of blockchain that may turn out to be helpful to organizations in various businesses: Store Network Administration (Supply Chain Management) For store network administration, the blockchain innovation offers the advantages of traceability and cost-adequacy. Put just, a blockchain can be utilized to track the development of products, their starting point, amount et cetera. This achieves another level of straightforwardness to B2B biological systems – disentangling procedures, for example, proprietorship exchange, creation process confirmation and installments. Quality Affirmation On the off chance that an abnormality is identified some place along the production network, a blockchain framework can lead all of you the path to its purpose of source. This makes it less demanding for organizations to complete examinations and execute the vital activities. An utilization case for this is in the nourishment area, where following the start, group data and other vital points of interest is critical for quality confirmation and wellbeing. Bookkeeping Recording exchanges through blockchain for all intents and purposes takes out human mistake and shields the information from conceivable altering. Remember that records are checked each and every time they are passed on starting with one blockchain hub then onto the next. Notwithstanding the ensured precision of your records, such a procedure will likewise leave a very traceable review trail. Obviously, the whole bookkeeping process additionally turns out to be more proficient on a foundational level. As opposed to keeping up partitioned records, organizations can just keep a solitary, joint enlist. The honesty of an organization’s monetary data is additionally ensured. Voting Much the same as in production network administration, the guarantee of blockchains in the part of voting all comes down to trust. As of now, openings that relate to government races are being sought after. One case is the activity of the legislature of Moscow to test the viability of blockchains in neighborhood races. Doing as such will fundamentally lessen the probability of constituent misrepresentation, which is an enormous issue in spite of the predominance of electronic voting frameworks. Stock Trade The thought of utilizing blockchain innovation for securities and wares exchanging has been around for some time. Given the open-yet-solid nature of blockchain frameworks, it isn’t shocking to hear that stock trades now consider it as the following enormous jump forward. Truth be told, Australia’s stock trade is as of now never going to budge on changing to a blockchain-fueled framework for their tasks, which is planned by the blockchain startup Digital Asset Holdings. In an official statement distributed in December 2017, Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset, stated, “after so much buildup encompassing conveyed record innovation, the present declaration conveys the primary important evidence that the innovation can satisfy its potential.” Startups generally celebrate every small reason, But if the reason is about a milestone achievement then it makes a big difference. This victorious path is not an easier one and we have faced and surpassed many challenges in the last few months to meet our target of half a million visitors. While our ambition is a much bigger number, the target we achieved was planned towards the end of the financial year and our team made it possible 4 months in advance. Indeed a great effort by Shishir Kumar and the entire team and a special thanks to the avid readers of IndianCEO for following us. IndianCEO is indeed my first bet in to media business and believe me this is just the beginning. Early next year we have some great product announcements and our next milestone is not far away.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
family relationships "In the Waiting Room," then, properly tells or narrates the "growth of a poet's mind." The poet originates in the recognition of her separation from, and identity with, her world, at once finding and losing her "self." Her birth or awakening comes with a scream from inside the dentist's office that is also the voice of the child in the waiting room, since "inside" says "either." When the child produces her explanation, she is a poet: How—I didn't know any word for it—how "unlikely" . . . To explain an identity in nature, she finds the word "unlikely"; the perception of sameness is unlikely, because it is more than a likeness or likely. If all accounts of phenomena are likely stories only, the breach that gives birth to the poet is an origin that both is and is unlikely. This is also the breach of metaphor—unlikely identities. The scream, which is not "like" the child's voice but is hers all the same, signals a birth into natural identity and an unlikely language. For one's identity, one's sameness with and difference from others and objects, comes to be adequately revealed in the unlikely likenesses of metaphoric language. If there is an "inside" or a primal source that is glimpsed in the child's vertiginous insight, it is covered up or "framed" by the conspiracy of common sense, "objective" facts, and grammar—of nature and poetry: "You are an I, / you are anElizabeth, / You are one of them." And the source disclosed in the grammatical cleavage of "you are an I" is not a luminous star but nothingness itself, "cold, blue-black space," split by a cry—"an oh! of pain"—that might have been ours. Smart Search The Modern American Poetry Site is a comprehensive learning environment and scholarly forum for the study of modern and contemporary American poetry. MAPS welcomes submissions of original essays and teaching materials related to MAPS poets and the Anthology of Modern American Poetry. We are also happy to take questions and suggestions for future materials. Read More	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Alaska Deckhand Jobs – What’s Expected of You If you land a job on a fishing boat you need to be prepared to work hard. Harvesting jobs can be highly lucrative but if you slack off you won’t have as much of a chance to earn good money. What is expected of deckhands on a fishing boat? First of all, don’t complain. You’ve been lucky enough to land a coveted position on a fishing vessel. Don’t blow it by talking your way OUT of a job! Fishing boat owners want people who will work hard when they are asked to without complaining. The manager mentioned above explained what the work load is like for longliner crew members: “We just expect everyone to pitch in and do their job. You can’t call in sick or expect not to work when you don’t feel like it, because it’s a real team effort. You don’t have to be an all-star; you just have to get the job done. It’s very rare that someone ever quits or doesn’t work a shift, and there’s no way to get off the boat, anyway. Everyone works on a straight percentage except for the engineer and the captain, who get a small daily allowance in addition to a percentage. Contracts are just trip to trip, and we usually don’t know how long the trip will be, though we can’t really stay out for more than forty days.” Another vital part of doing well on a fishing boat is being on time. It is imperative that you know when you are expected to report for your shift and that you are there, working, on time. Other important points to keep in mind when working on a fishing vessel include not going inside with rain gear on, and having the proper clothing and equipment. Rain gear with bib-style pants are the best way to go. Other suggestions for what to wear include long-sleeved t-shirts, hooded sweatshirts, rubber boots, wool socks, and long underwear. These items will make life on the job much more bearable. In addition to being aware of what is expected of you, it’s equally important to make sure your own expectations are clear. Be sure you are told up front how much you will be paid and how much you are expected to pay for. Different captains have different policies involving paying for fuel, repairs, and groceries. Are you required to supply or pay for your own rain gear? Bedding? First aid kit? Don’t set yourself up for a rude awakening upon receiving your first paycheck.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Chows are funny with dog interaction. They display, for a lack of better terms, an air of arrogance. This can put other dogs off and put them on the defensive. If you have spent the past years socializing the Chows, then they should be fine. If they haven't spent much time around other dogs, I would be cautious. Yorkie's can be a bit yippy, so it will really depend on that dog assuming the Chows are socialized. I wouldn't worry so much about the size difference as much as the training. Chows can be very gentle when they are used to the situation. Properly trained, they don't tend to be overly aggressive/rough or dominant. They do however expect that boundaries be respected. So that would head on back to the Yorkie having similar social skills. I have issues with my Chow and other dogs! Its never him - its always the other dog. Different breeds tend to take a dislike to them for their different smell and the way they look. However my Chow seems to get on better with smaller dogs rather than big ones. I encourage him to bond with friends dogs by taking them out for a walk together in a mutual environment and by the time we are home - they are the best of friends! My adult male chow LOVES small dogs. He whimpers if I do not let him interact. When allowed time with small dogs, I place him in a sit or down and let the small dog sniff all over him before they mingle. He is very gentle, but extremely curious with the smaller dogs. Larger dogs he is more indifferent towards.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Maui Wowie!! Who's Ridin'? My goodness. What a place to ride and ride and ride. Yes your rather "limited", but when is the last time your max speed, comfortably, was 45-50 mph without cagers tryin' to run you over? If you haven't done a trip of either Maui or their "big Island", I recommend it. Am on business here in the islands for a month, and it's tough. Business expense account permits 'transportation' ... why not a HD???? :newsmile030: Heck, take the day off, come to the islands and lets ride!:newsmile075:	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Nigerian 3G licensees set to pay fees in a matter of days Winners are expected to pay licence fees that amounted to the reserve price of US$150 million each less the intention-to-bid deposit of US$15 million, within 14 business days of the award of the provisional licence. Nigeria's telecoms regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) awarded four 3G licences March 19 to incumbent mobile operators Celtel Nigeria, Globalcom and MTN Nigeria; as well as to long distance landline operator Alheri Engineering. Winners are expected to pay licence fees that amount to the reserve price of US$150 million each less the intention-to-bid deposit of US$15 million, within 14 business days of the award of the provisional licence. Upon receipt of the cleared funds, the NCC will award the spectrum licence. The NCC originally announced the tender for the licences last year and following its advert for expressions of interest in February 2007, 17 companies responded, and four companies made formal applications. “The four applicants’ submissions were evaluated with respect to the compliance details outlined in the information memorandum,” explained the NCC in a statement. “Each applicant was found to have been fully compliant. In these circumstances, where the number of applicants matches the number of lots, no further allocation process is required. As such, the NCC announced that each of the applicants has been successful in its bid for a 10MHz lot in the 2GHz band”. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Development Company claims to be considering bids from as many as 10 telecoms companies to set up operations in Nigeria after securing a licence in the West African country. As reported be CommsMEA in January, NCC confirmed receipt of full payment of US$400 million by the Mubadala Development Company for the award of a unified access service licence in the country. The unified licence consists of permission to operate a mobile network in GSM 900MHz and 1800MHz spectrum bands. The NCC introduced a unified licensing regime in March last year, for the first time allowing operators of wireless local loop operations to roam across wide licence areas. Four unified licences were awarded in May last year, with about two-dozen companies having applied for the concessions.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Get in touch Main Menu DUAL SWISS/U.S. BACHELOR OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (BBA) PROGRAM The UBIS BBA program is designed to provide students with the competencies and business know-how with an international perspective needed to gain employment and start a successful career in any size rm, company or organization or to enter a family business or start an entrepreneurial venture. All BBA students benet from UBIS’s double degree program and earn a Swiss recognized Bachelor in Business Administration as well as an American accredited Bachelor of Science in International Business by following the specially designed UBIS program in coordination with the University of the Potomac in Washington D.C. Our Business students also benet from our Geneva facilities and international lifestyle: live and learn in the very heart of Europe. Duration: 2.5 – 3 years (full-time) 3.5 – 4 years (part-time) Intake: January, March, May, June, September, October DUAL SWISS/U.S. BACHELOR OF ARTS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (BA-IR) PROGRAM The UBIS BA-IR program was developed to provide students with the multinational, multicultural experience they need to succeed in an international environment with a degree in International Relations that is highly versatile. All enrolled students benet from UBIS’s double degree program and earn a Swiss recognized Bachelor in International Relations as well as an American accredited Bachelor of Science in International Business by following the specially designed UBIS program in coordination with the University of the Potomac in Washington D.C. Our International Relations students also benet from our Geneva facilities and international lifestyle: live and learn in the very heart of international aairs, international organizations and diplomatic headquarters.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 Tuesday, September 29, 2009 All concerned parties arrive in the linoleumed halls of the 7th grade, wary and all too knowing. The Saturday prior was likely a birthday, or a reward for good grades, any excuse for a phalanx of larval females to gather in a basement and share secrets. Secrets often prefaced with," I've never told anyone this..." or "Since we're talking about..." There is a nauseated frenzy at a slumber party, an unyielding urge to force untold stories out of the guests and a primal desire to unburden the young soul. It is a ritual of compassion and cruelty and the hostess is the queen bee (This is a fact regardless of social position. She could be the cheeriest cheerleader or the floutiest band nerd, in her house she is empress.). Crushes are revealed. Unspeakable family skeletons rattle forth. Insecurities are admitted to and sympathized with. There are often tears - some from despairing sobs, others from hysterical laughter. And the next morning, Sunday, queasy stomach in tow, the girls fly home for an afternoon of "Family Ties" re-runs and dozing. Then Monday arrives. The girls eye one another in paranoid conspiracy. Who will blab? Anyone? After a night of exposing ones innermost self, will you still be accepted? Was the bond counterfeit? Does Derek know you like him? Like, like him like him? Will you be called into the guidance counsellors office to discuss family issues, mental illness, learning disabilities? Or will one of the girls, in a preemptive strike against you, tell others her own secret, disguised as yours. You are really effing screwed then. To your amazement, Monday passes without incident. You sleep well for the first time since last Friday, safe in the belief that your comrades were true to their word. Only on pain of death will you be exposed. The following morning, you jaunt to your locker and spin the dial, ready to face an easy day. The metal door of the locker swings open to reveal a plush stuffed toy fox, with a condom on its head. Your heart sinks as the clanging bells of teen girl laughter ring down the hall. Your red face glances over and sees First Real Fall Tuesday, icy cold in her gaze, arching her perfectly coiffed eyebrow. With a swish of her ponytail, she turns and heads to Civics. You should NEVER have confessed that you think the animated fox in Disney's Robin Hood is sexy. Thursday, September 24, 2009 It's been a while since I was in something on stage that didn't involve white face. Photo by Fuzzy Gerdes Ever since I was 11 years old and in my first show, I've been playing boys, men, and androgynous women. My first show was Oliver! and, you guessed it, I played Oliver Twist. The idea of gender being a character choice has always appealed to me, as has testing the boundaries of what we consider masculine or feminine. It's interesting coming off of Soiree DADA and DaBo, a character dominant on nearly every level, into R., woman struggling with gender and power, and helpless to affect some sort of change in her life. It's been a challenge for sure. Luckily, my counterpart Casey is one of the most present and open players I've gotten the chance to work with. We have a blast. I think Hendrickson is a woman of vision when it comes to this sort of thing. She's a supportive director and the challenge has been eased by her guidance. The cast and crew is fantastic. Crazy Committed. It is a pleasure to work with these folks. And getting to work with Dianna as a Stage Manager again is always a treat. Bad. Ass. Wednesday, September 23, 2009 A while back, in a post I cannot find, I listed a few guilty pleasure foods. To wit: Pork RindsBeef JerkyDeviled Ham (Not SPAM. I want to be very clear about that.) (Looking at this list it all seems a little Depression Era, doesn't it? When the shit comes down, I will be living large.) Very few people would admit to enjoying such adulterated meat products, but I can't help myself. And it's not as if, in consuming them, I am transported by complexity of flavor. They are meat-ish and salty. Cure it, fry it, smash it, dry it. -j-j- will eat it. Among these foods is the Gyro (pronounced Yee-ro. Not Jie-roor Gee-ro. I believe either pronunciation is acceptable these days, but I still bristle. It's like calling Goethe, Go-thee, an ugly Chicago-ism I have yet to forgive.). Surely, you've seen it. It's that spit of hulking brown rotating by the grill at most hot dog stands. It makes its weary revolution hour in and hour out, drying on the the stake. God knows what they do with it at the end of the day. When one orders Gyros, they slice strips off the mass (which might be lamb or something), grill it up and serve it on a pita with onion, tomatoes and tzatziki(yogurt and cucumbers). It is messy, it destroys your insides, repels your friends, and is a culinary abomination. I love it. I will only allow myself to order Gyros on rare occasions. And lucky me, I had just such an occasion a few days ago at BarbaYianni Grecian Taverna in Lincoln Square. After rehearsal, I met Notnits up on Lincoln and Western. German Fest was ravaging the area and the corner was thick with sizzled sausages and sozzled suburbanites. I'm not very smart about eating, especially when I'm working on a project. Sometimes I forget to do it, and then wonder why I have "out of body" feelings and crank out at the slightest perceived provocation. This was one of those times. There were too many people around, and it was hot. My usual happy greeting was replaced by a peck on the cheek and a gruff, "I need to eat. Now." BarbaYianni is a restaurant that I have often wondered about, but have never ventured into. I like Greek food, I think, but only in the most casual, American way. Greek salads, Gyros, etc. So, when I saw it was half empty, I pointed the way and cave-manned, "Eat here." It's a nice place. Very comfortable and easy going. If I recall correctly, they have some paintings of exposed brick and grapes on the walls, a decorative choice common for mid-range Italian and Mediterranean restaurants. I suppose it's meant to carry us away to Crete, however the effect falls a little short. One feels more carried away to the best Italian Eatery in Glen Ellyn. I ordered a Malbec and took the hungry opportunity to order the Gyros plate. Ordering gyros at a sit down restaurant feels out of place to me. It's a fast food item. But maybe with a glass of wine and some ambiance, it will be fancy. Fancy it not what I would call it. Plentiful, yes. But fancy, no. The waitress arrived and plopped a plate of steaming brown strips in front of me (complete with all the trimmings) as well as a plate of potatoes and peas covered in red sauce. I spread the tzatziki over the meat and pita and what not and took a bite. The gyros were about what I expected: Dry, salty, lamby(maybe). Nothing out of the ordinary. To be fair (and this may echo the sentiment in my Falafill review) can one REALLY distinguish between a bad gyro and a good one? I wonder what that tastes like - a truly gourmet gyro. In this instance, I cannot complain. It was what I wanted. I could only eat about half of it, but it was still decent enough to wrap up and take home. The peas and potatoes were not quite so good. Fairly bland red sauce, and the potatoes were a little on the mushy side. Overall, I liked BarbaYianni fine. It's a comfortable place and food is serviceable. I got what I came for. I'm not sure that I would go again but if I do, I'll try whatever the house specialty might be, rather than the most basic fast food item. And probably best not to go when my body is entering phase 2 starvation mode. Tuesday, September 22, 2009 Tuesday said said she'd make coffee but she didn't and now you have to go to work without caffeine. Tuesday pushed in front of you when you were getting on the bus. Tuesday blamed you for the toner being low in the copier, even though she's the one who sends weekly 27-page-dead-tree memos to everyone the office. Tuesday ate the half a meatball sub you brought for lunch. Tuesday corrected your grammar in front of the boss, and your boss agreed with him. They were both wrong. Tuesday says almost nothing, but clears his throat at 45 second intervals all day. Tuesday bumped into you and you dropped your train pass. When you picked it up (after, not one, not two, but three false grabs on the sidewalk) you saw the train pulling away and Tuesday was in the window seat that should have been yours. One day, Tuesday will get his comeuppance. His tiny, aggravating comeuppance. Thursday, September 17, 2009 1. All over the city sidewalks you can see the ghosts of tiny disasters. Nothing too radical or tectonic. Just evidence left behind that someone was recently disappointed. Or confused. (Every so often, there will be a ghost of an advanced disaster. I once followed a trail of blood from dumpster around a block to the front door of a house. I Nancy Drewed my way to the conclusion that whoever it was had cut themselves on some glass and had to go for stitches. Of course, I never discovered the real story. Maybe there was foul play and I misread the clues.) Often the ghost involves food: A torn paper bag, surrounded by 4 oranges. One is half eaten. An opened styrofoam container, skidded over with cake and icing. The icing is pink and blue. There is a large Reebok shoe print in the middle. A hamburger with one bite out of it, resting on a short wall at the bus stop. An empty Frosty cup on the ground. Five feet away is the actual Frosty. Part of a CD by the curb. A whole unopened package of sausage links resting in the sun. I wonder what happened in the aftermath. What typhoon did the wings of that smirched cake set off? 2. Tonight, walking from Ashland to Broadway, I discovered a face up penny in the crosswalk. I almost passed it over. I've mentioned my preoccupation with face up pennies before, and being fairly superstitious, I turned right around in front of the coolster dudes at Schuba's and claimed it. I figured this penny to be especially lucky since it was A) Beat to hell and B) in a busy cross walk. Luck builds with potential danger in retrieval. (I once saw a penny on the third rail of the EL tracks. Untold ecstasy awaits the brave.) When I came up from picking it up, however, the bus passed me by. I'm still holding out hope. Maybe I'll win the lottery tomorrow. Speaking of which... 3. The Mega Millions Jackpot has advertisements like this up all over town: Flum⋅mox 1837, cant word, origin uncertain, probably from some forgotten British dialect. Candidates cluster in Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, southern Cheshire and also in Sheffield. "The formation seems to be onomatopoeic, expressive of the notion of throwing down roughly and untidily." OED Wednesday, September 16, 2009 Tuesday, September 15, 2009 There are some breakfast cereals that can translate from milk-in-bowl to dry-in-hand with ease. Life Cereal, Frosted Flakes, Frosted Shredded Wheat and Coco Puffs fall into this category, with their limited crumbles, easy to handle size. (There might be some debate on this. Coco Puffs have the roll under the fridge factor, and, as one reaches the bottom of the box of Frosted Flakes, the easy to handle flake size reduces to unmanageable dust.) Cereals like Fiber One, Fruity Pebbles or Honey Smacks are less adaptable. The individual pieces don't stack well so it's like carrying a fistful of instant avalanche. And good luck getting all of the Pebbles into your mouth. Rice Krispies fall into this second classification. (In addition to being almost cruelly taste free.) The Ides of September Tuesday does not seem to care about this. She has brought the box from kitchen and is now sitting next to you on the couch, her toes tucked between the cushions. Moments before, you could hear her rattling around in the kitchen. The cupboard would open and then shut. The rattle of old ranch dressing bottles would chime out as she pulled open the fridge. You could feel the chilled air escaping as she stood, idle, in front of the glowing shelves. The fridge door would shut. And then open again, thirty seconds later. The exhausted refrigerator motor clicks on, begging her to close the door. You try not to sound irritated. "What you see is what we have." "Jeez. I was just asking." The fridge closes. And there is silence. Then it opens again. "Are we out of milk?" You do not change your position, though your eyes shoot tranquilizer darts at the direction of the kitchen. "I guess so." She sighs and closes the fridge door again. Then, a rustling of cereal boxes. TIoST appears in the living room, carrying her box of Rice Krispies. She joins you on the couch. "You're gonna eat those without milk?" "Uh-huh." She shoves her hand into the box. "Want some." "No thanks." "Okay." And with that, she produces a little mound of puffed rice and whips it to her mouth. Ricey pebbles shoot all over the place and into the cushions of the couch. From throat she utters the sound of uh-oh, which sounds like "mm-mm". She then crawls close to your ear and her lips part. "Yisten. Oo cam still heayoodaSmap, Kwackleamd Bop in mahmouf." You close your magazine. There is no way you can read with the deafening and unmistakable roar of Rice Krispies in your ear. I was never a swooner for Patrick Swayze. The year Dirty Dancing came out, all my girlier friends were falling all over themselves. (Dirty Dancing also caused a stir in my youth because it was filmed on location at Lake Lure, situated about an hour away from my hometown. A few of my older friends were extras.) I had just discovered the Lost Boys and was more inclined towards Jason Patrick or Keifer Sutherland. (I was not a Corey girl.) Swayze seemed nice enough...if a little long in the tooth to be cavorting around a bunch of college kids. But I never dreamed of the day when he would Meringue me off into the sunset. Even so, I can appreciate his icon status, and I'm a little sad to see him go. I'm afraid my experience with the song "Unchained Melody" has been hampered by its relationship to the movie Ghost. When Ghost came out in 1990, and was nominated for Best Picture, I think was joined by many around the world in my total confusion. Whuh-HUH? I suppose it makes sense. Almost every Best Picture nominee is a variation on our favorite topics, Death and Sex. But Ghost? Really? The scene when Demi Moore and Swayze are overcome with desire next to the potting wheel has been the subject of some well earned parody (they're just so into it.). The fact that "Unchained Melody" underscores the wet-clay seduction has been a factor in my avoidance over the years. But I gave it a listen last night and the Blue Eyed Soul of the Righteous Brothers can transcend previous notions. It's quite a beautiful song. Monday, September 14, 2009 1. This morning a woman opened the door of a cab street-side, and another car plowed into it, losing its side mirror. She stepped from the car, confusion all over her face, but tinged with a sense of If I just close the door, and get into the train station, maybe I won't have to be responsible. I didn't see the aftermath, except a cop storming up to the cab driver wagging his finger. I think the woman actually got away. 2. There were two guys in neon green body stockings doing some performance art at the bus stop downtown. The spandex covered the whole of them, including the face. I was at first struck - and somewhat indignant - that I couldn't tell if their gyrations were art or advertising. But then I noticed the folks at the bus stop looking on in a sort of bored weltschmerz. If a couple of green encased men dance at a bus stop in the city, and no one cares, does it even matter if it's art or ad? Nope. A human's ineptitude at handling technology grows in relation to the public nature of the technology: ATM use by one's self = quick and agileATM use with line forming behind one = Utter confusion and anguish 5. This morning I had a cinnamonroll from Ann Sather. The guy who waited on me remembered that I was friendly to him on my last visit. He added extra icing and heated it up for me, even though I didn't ask. He might do this for everybody that comes through the door, but I like to think my being nice and the extra icing are related. Tuesday, September 8, 2009 Your eyes bat open and your brain tries to wade through the waters of sleep onto sandy shore. Your body is covered in sweat (hadn’t it been cool when you went to bed? You even put the extra comforter on and burrowed down into the sheets. Now in early September’s cruel mood swings you are caught between autumn chill and sweltering Indian summer. There is no winning.) and your mouth is like an exhaust pipe that belches hot breathes of old beer and hot dogs. You’re probably still drunk. Sleep shows no signs of returning, so you roll over, thump out of bed and drag yourself into the bathroom. Once there your thumb flicks on the light and your eyes stay shut, the blackness they see is exchanged for maroon. Hopefully your eyes will adjust. You pad to the sink and open your eyes, only to catch a glimpse in the mirror of what you fear most. It is you. You, my friend, are the Tuesday after Labor Day. Why is Labor Day on a Monday? Why can’t it be on a Friday? Why is it that every time a weekday holiday arrives we can’t seem to exercise any self control? Suddenly all is chaos and tomorrow never comes…until it does. And on Labor Day, Tomorrow is Tuesday. Friday, September 4, 2009 I wrote this piece about a year and a half ago. It's based on the painting "Night Windows" by Edward Hopper. This is a scene I have mulled over several times, trying to get it to work. I haven't really made any revisions to it, but I think there's something in it somewhere. (As a point of clarification, when people are looking out the window it is the image from the painting that they see. As isf they are the ones looking into the window.)Here is the image: NIGHT WINDOWS (A run down room in a transient hotel. There is a single bed, rumpled having been slept in, SL. Next to it is a small nights stand and table lamp. Immediately up stage is a door. Across the room is a doorway leading to a bathroom. Upstage are two large picture windows, out of which another building is visible. It is very near and it’s windows gape open. All lights in these outside rooms are dark, however there is a dim glow just below the sight line and some shadowy movement, indicating that there may be some life in a room below. There is also some light coming from just above, out of another window. Underneath the window, on the floor, there is an ashtray, overflowing with dead cigarettes and some candy wrappers. The hotel room is dark - the shapes of the furniture in the room are outlined by the dim glow of the city lights outside. Outside the door there is the sound of a distant elevator “ding” as it reached the floor. Instantly following it are footsteps marching down the hall. They stop in front of the door. A key in the lock, the door opens. Standing in silhouette is GWEN. She is breathing heavily as she stares into the room. She reaches for the light switch. As she does this, a door slams down the hallway followed by heavy footsteps running towards her. It is MARTIN. He stops, out of breath, behind her. GWEN turns on the lights. She is dressed as if for a party) GWENIs this it? MARTIN (Still breathing heavily)Gwen, please… GWENThis is it? (Calling out) Chuck? (Pause. No Answer.) MARTINDon’t go in there, Gwen, please don’t… GWENWhaddaya mean, “don’t go in”? (GWEN takes a dramatic step into the room. She continues, looking around, leaving MARTIN by the door.) GWENHuh. Doesn’t look like much. MARTINIt isn’t. It isn’t much at all. In fact, it’s not anything. (GWEN laughs for a second and then cups her hand over her mouth, crying. She turns and rushes into the bathroom slamming the door.) MARTINOh, god, Gwen please don’t cry… GWENWill you stop saying my name please? MARTINGw- (GWEN opens the bathroom door) GWENYou shut up! Shut. Up. Stop saying my name- you’ve said it at least, what, eighteen times in the last fifteen minutes and that average has got to end here, do you understand me? Just cut it out! MARTINFine…yes. (GWEN goes back into the bathroom. MARTIN stands for a moment and then looks heads up to the window. He peers out, lingering for a moment at the glow below. The bathroom door opens and he snaps out of it. GWEN re-appears, her eyes are read and puffy.) GWENI’m going to wait for him. You should leave, probably, or something. MARTINI think I should stay. I could- GWENHow long have you known about this place? MARTINGwe- GWENI swear to god, Martin, if you say my name one more time…(A beat) Answer my question. MARTINWhat difference could that possibly- it can make no possible difference, Gwen, how long I’ve known. GWENThe night manager-or whatever he is- downstairs. I said, “I’ll have the key to Chuck Kildaire’s room please.” And he said, “Well, then, Missy” -He called me “missy”, can you believe it? “Well, then missy, just who in heck are you?” MARTINWhat’d you say? GWEN“His goddamn wife, that’s who.” I thought his head was going to pop. (She laughs and then her face saddens again. A beat, she notices all the cigarettes and candy wrappers on the floor next to the window. She gets up and walks to the window. MARTIN stiffens. She stares at the mess.) GWENYou know it is near impossible for him to keep anything clean-(In an instant, she notices the activity in the room across the alley below. She looks at all the trash and then back out the window, putting it together) Who’s that? MARTIN (Completely unconvincing)Who? (She glares at him) GWENYou know very well “Who.” MARTINGwen, we should be getting back. I told, Abbie I would giver her a ride home and now it’s-(He looks at his watch) well, the party’s probably over by now and what’s she gonna do? GWENNo one forced you to give me a ride here. MARTINNo one should drive your…state of mind. GWENA-DOR-able. Who. Is. That? (She points out the window on “that”.) MARTINI don’t know. GWENIs it her? MARTINNo. GWENWell, then WHO IS IT? MARTINI told you, Gwen, I don’t know. GWENWhat’s going on here? I deserve some answers. I find out, most unceremoniously, from Katy Dennis, of all people that perhaps I may not always know what my husband is up to. And While I thank you, truly, from the bottom of my fragile heart, for owning up about this place, beyond that you have been a complete and utter BUST in the information department. (She looks out the window.) GWENSo. Does she always lounge around like that? In some skimpy pink nightgown? (Pause. MARTIN is at a loss as GWEN stares down into the unseen room. MARTIN approaches her from behind and tentatively puts his hands on her shoulders. GWEN raises her head and turns around to look at him. A beat. She touches his cheek but almost instantly thinking better of it, retracts her hand.) GWEN (Stepping back and away from him)I’m starving. I didn’t get a chance to eat a thing before the, uh, explosion. (Pause.) MARTINThere was a little diner around the corner…I’ll see if I can’t get something. A sandwich? (GWEN nods and MARTIN makes his way out. The door closes and his footsteps plod down the hall. A door opens and closes in the distance and he is gone. GWEN looks around the room, walking aimlessly. She brushes off the bed and sits in the downstage edge, bouncing a little. She looks back over at the window, confusion across her face. After a few beats, the elevator bell rings down the hall, and footsteps march down the hall. In a panic, GWEN lunges over to the light switch above the bed and turns it off as quietly as she can. She edges over to the head of it and sits…keeping still. There is the sound of a key in the lock. The door swings open and light fills the room, although GWEN is still disguised in shadow. CHUCK’s silhouette stands in the doorway.) CHUCKGwen? (GWEN does not answer, but tries to pull herself up tighter. CHUCK enters and slams the door. He does not turn on the light. CHUCK’s breathes heavily for a moment, and heads for the window. He mumbles for a beat, leaning on the sill. Pause. In one quick motion, CHUCK pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and matches. He lights one, the flame illuminating his face for a second. He shakes it out and stands, staring down though the window to the apartment below. He sighs, placing the cigarettes on the sill. GWEN leans forward. Both of their outlines are visible, GWEN watching CHUCK, CHUCK watching the woman below. A long silence.) CHUCKI don’t even know her. (GWEN knows he’s talking to her) CHUCKThis place isn’t what you think it is. Sometimes I just have to…be away. (GWEN does not answer. CHUCK finishes his cigarette, holds for a beat, and stamps it out. He walks to the door and opens it, light flooding the room once again. His shadow remains in the door for a beat, and then he shuts the door. His footsteps walk away from the room, down the hall. The elevator bell rings and the doors close. He is gone. GWEN lets out a long loud breath. Gets up and moves towards the window. She picks up the cigarettes and takes one out. Lighting it. She chuckles, enjoying the moment.) Thursday, September 3, 2009 Recently, I discovered a forgotten note to myself. It was written in the notes section of a palm pilot (God. Remember those? It was like revisiting an Apple IIe.) and it read: Why do I keep eating unsatisfying food? I have a murky recollection of writing this down - I think it came on the heels of eating a dry cookie that tasted like drugstore suntan lotion. Since recovering this note, I've been mulling over my food satisfaction levels. The compulsion to consume any old hairball out of the convenience store is a strange reflex. I am almost NEVER happy with what I've purchased, it doesn't taste good and I wind up resenting the loss of a good $1.59. So I'm going to keep track of new things I eat and, as a new feature here at Shame, Inc., each week I will review the Meat Hut or Food-a-teria from whence it came. The restaurant need not be new to the world. Just new to me. I want to make clear that I have no experience in culinary writing. I am merely recounting my personal experience. I am only what I am: a person who eats. This week: Falafill located at 3202 N. Broadway. I've been drooling over Falafill ever since the sign went up a few weeks ago. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to sample its wares. At around 12:30, I marched over to Falafill carrying a four-pack of Scott toilet paper, without a bag (I had just been to the Walgreens to pick up the toilet paper and exited the drugstore sans bag - the result of a series of microscopic errors which added up to "Managers should not work the cash registers".). When I opened the door, I was hit with a sudden self conscious wave about the toilet paper as some flagrant admission that, yes indeed, I DO use the bathroom, thank you very much. And considering the volatile nature of chick peas in general, it would appear that I came to the restaurant prepared. Falafill is set up just the way Americans like their eateries: Clean, white and sterile enough for a tracheotomy. Or to sell Frozen Yogurt. As you approach the counter, there is a cooler filled with exotic beverages (including cans of Nescafe which, my friend Tina told me, they apparently drink a lot of in Egypt. Ever since she told me that I have softened my previously snooty stance on instant coffee.) The menu is fairly simple: Lots of Falafel. Sandwiches, Salads, and a few combo items offering hummus and fries (there are also sweet potato fries, which I did not order - but I may next time.) They could stand to revise their traffic patterns during a lunch rush. After an extended wait in line, I ordered my falafel sandwich and stood to the side clutching my toilet paper (One or two fellow customers eyed me with some suspicion. Makes sense, my proximity to the bathroom was close.). It's a small place and there is not much of a waiting area. After an e-fricking-ternity, I finally received my sandwich. Falafill has an extensive side and condiment bar. I dumped some lemon tahini sauce over the sandwich and left. There was plenty more to sample, but the toilet paper was getting in my way. The sandwich itself was pretty good. The lemon tahini was a spit gland shocker. The Falafels were soft in the inside without being undercooked and the outside was nice and crisp. Truth be told, though, could I distinguish a bad Falafel from a good one? Can you? My only real gripe about the sandwich is the use of a truly unspectacular pita. It was just one of those plain old whole wheat burlap sacks you can buy at the grocery. A mere vehicle for the falafel...but I wouldn't want to eat it by itself. (Which is how I feel about bread and sandwiches. If I wouldn't want to eat it on its own, why bother?) But why the inflated price? I payed $5.16 for a few fried chick pea balls and a pita. It was good, but I can get pretty much the same thing for $3.25 down the street at Aladdin's. Or ANY Mediterranean fast food joint, for that matter. I don't think there are going to be any riots over this price hike. I seem to recall a quiet hullabaloo when Starbucks charged over a buck for a cup of coffee, but that died down in short order. Why? Because it was fashionable, addictive and non-threatening. Falafill may not be addictive but it is fashionable, in that sterile, non-threatening way. I think it will survive. Overall: Was it what I wanted? Yes.Did it taste good? Yes.Right price? Eh.Would I go back? Yes.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Afc asian cup 2019 qualifiers Sport The United Arab Emirates Football Association was fined US$150,000 (115,571.3 pounds) and its national team ordered to play a home game behind closed doors after sandal-throwing local fans marred an Asian Cup clash against Qatar, the Asian Football Confederation said on Monday. 11 Mar 2019 10:50PM Bookmark REUTERS: The United Arab Emirates Football Association was fined US$150,000 (115,571.3 pounds) and its national team ordered to play a home game behind closed doors after sandal-throwing local fans marred an Asian Cup clash against Qatar, the Asian Football Confederation said on Monday.Eventual champions Qatar defeated hosts UAE 4-0 in the semi-final of the continental championship on Jan. 29, a game in which forward Almoez Ali was pelted with footwear as he celebrated his team's second goal.Qatar's last two scorers - captain Hassan Al-Haydos and Hamid Ismail - were also the target of missiles at the Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi.The AFC said the UAE FA was … [Read more...] about UAE FA fined for crowd trouble in Asian Cup semi-final with Qatar After the massive victory against Thailand, India prepares to take on hosts United Arab Emirates (UAE) in their second group-stage encounter on Thursday, January 10. When does the match start and how to watch it live The match between India and UAE will kick off at the Zayed Sports City Stadium in Abu Dhabi at 8 pm local time, 12:00 am SGT and 4 pm GMT. India vs UAE preview Not even the most ardent follower of Indian football would have predicted the outcome – never mind the 4-1 scoreline – that India achieved against Thailand in the first game. Sunil Chhetri struck twice while midfielder Anirudh Thapa added a third with an audacious chip before Jeje Lalpekhlua found the net in Indian colours after 10 months. Coach Stephen Constantine will be pleased at the ruthlessness with which his attackers converted the chances in their first match. But UAE will be a much tougher test and the Indian defence will, once again, be overworked. The likes of Sandesh Jhingan and Anas … [Read more...] about India vs UAE: AFC Asian Cup 2019 live streaming, TV channel, start time & possible lineup The 17th edition of the AFC Asian Cup will commence on Saturday, January 5 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and 24 teams across Asia will battle it out to be declared the best team in the continent.None of the matches will start before 6 pm local time, 7 pm SGT and 11 am BST. The specific time of every match is listed below under the 'Full Schedule' section.AFC Asian Cup 2019 PreviewIndia heads into the tournament ranked 97 in the world and 15in the continent. They have been placed in a tough group alongside hosts Thailand, Bahrain and hosts UAE.The 24 teams have been divided into six groups of four teams each. The top two teams from each group will qualify for the round of 16 and the remaining for spots will be filled by the four best third-placed teams.There are plenty of strong teams in the tournament and it is difficult to pick an outright favourite but going by the performances in the World Cup, South Korea and Japan will fancy their chances of going all the way.Japan will be … [Read more...] about AFC Asian Cup 2019: Live streaming, TV listings and match details Azkals make history, edge Tajikistan to enter 2019 AFC Asian Cup (philstar.com) - March 27, 2018 - 9:40pm (UPDATED 10:00 p.m.) MANILA, Philippines – From minnows to Southeast Asian contender, the Philippine Azkals have taken the next step and joined the elite teams of the whole of Asia. With history on the line, the resilient Azkals dished out a performance-to-remember in front of more than 4,600 home supporters, formalizing their first-ever qualification to the AFC Asian Cup with a come-from-behind 2-1 thriller over tough Tajikistan Tuesday night in the Group Qualifiers at Rizal Memorial Stadium. Kevin Ingreso headed in the equalizer in the 73rd minute and skipper Phil Younghusband drilled the go-ahead spot-kick in the 89th to propel the Pinoy booters to victory that sent them to the Continent's showpiece tournament along with powerhouses like Japan, South Korea, Australia,and Saudi Arabia. With the pulsating triumph, the … [Read more...] about Azkals make history, edge Tajikistan to enter 2019 AFC Asian Cup MANILA, Philippines – The Philippine Azkals will try to do on Tuesday what they could not get done back in November -- secure a berth in the 2019 AFC Asian Cup. To do so, they have to get past a stubborn Tajikistan squad at the Rizal Memorial Football Stadium. The Azkals currently lead Group F of the AFC Asian Cup qualifiers with nine points after two wins and three draws in their previous five matches. As it stands, they only need a draw in order to advance to the AFC Asian Cup for the first time ever. However, head coach Thomas Dooley and skipper Phil Younghusband made it clear that they want to win at home. READ: Phil Younghusband more focused on getting the W against Tajikistan "We have to be prepared; we have to be focused. Our focus is winning the game," said Dooley at the pre-match press conference on Monday. "If it's a tie, it's okay. But we want to win the game." "We're looking forward to the game, and we're going to the game with good confidence," added Younghusband. … [Read more...] about News Azkals take on Tajikistan with Asian Cup berth on the line	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
TumblrForiOSUpdatedWithNewCamera,PhotosetCreationAndMore The official universal iOS app of Tumblr has just tumbled into another major update, which brings several notable enhancements. And foremost among these enhancements is a redesigned camera. On the iPhone or iPod touch, the Tumblr app's camera has new buttons for setting the flash function, switching between the rear and front cameras, and enabling or disabling grid view. These buttons are also present on the iPad, except for the flash setting, of course, since there's no flash function to speak of on any of Apple's tablet models. Aside from the new buttons, the new camera in Tumblr for iPhone and iPod touch also includes a scrollable view of your photo library. But on the iPad, the photo library view is separated from the app's camera. Either way, from this view, you can easily select multiple photos to add to your post, thereby creating a photoset. Indeed, Tumblr for iOS now lets you create photosets. So, you don't have to do so using Tumblr's desktop site or its dedicatedPhotoset app. The new version of Tumblr for iOS now also lets you like posts by double-tapping them (as in Instagram) and change your avatar by tapping it in your profile. In addition, when creating a link post, the app now automatically fetches the webpage title after you copy or enter a URL. Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad running iOS 5.0 or later, Tumblr for iOS is available in the App Store for free. If you're interested in Tumblr apps other than Tumblr's own official ones, check out our Tumblr Apps for the iPhone and Tumblr Apps for the iPad AppGuides. [gallery link="file" order="DESC"]	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Prices for Chinese solar panels exported into the U.S. are seen to climb by an average of 14 percent due to duties that may be announced later this year, says GTM Research. This will translate into roughly a 10-cent-per-watt increase in the price of solar panels from China. Shayle Kann, VP of research at GTM, says that the increase will negate the price advantage the Chinese makers have had. The anticipated import duties will make panels made in Southeast Asia by U.S. companies First Solar Inc and SunPower Corp. more competitive against the most dominant Chinese producers. GE’s CEO Makes Final Push for Alstom Bid Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric Co.’s chief executive officer, is looking to make a final push for its bid for Alstom SA’s energy assets to counter an offer made recently by Siemens AG. Immelt came to Paris to present new details of GE’s $17 billion plan. GE refined some details of its proposal ahead of the June 23 deadline, including the structure of Alstom’s renewable energy, grid and transport units. GE confronts a $19.3 billion counterbid by Siemens AG together with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Hitachi Ltd. Germany May Install Least Solar Power Capacity in 6 Years Germany, the world’s largest solar market by total capacity, will be installing the fewest panels since 2008 as subsidies fell faster than prices. Compared from the same period last year, solar installations suffered a 45 percent drop for the first five months, adding only 818 MW. The government has cut subsidies for solar to reduce the cost of its plan to remove nuclear sources and expand renewables. BSW- Solar lobby expressed that Germany may miss its target of 2.5 GW to 3.5 GW if additions do not gather pace. 11 Member States Exceeded EU Air Pollution Limits During 2012 The European Environment Agency (EEA) recently revealed that 11 EU member states have exceeded air pollution limits in 2012. Included those who went over the legal limits were France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. The other member states were Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg and Malta. Ironically, despite the fact that the UK is now under threat of EU legal sanctions over its air quality, it is among the member states that is on=track to comply with the limits set by the National Emission Ceilings Directive (NECD).	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Cardboardia is a Russian collaborative art project to create temporary communities built entirely out of cardboard. Participants create cardboard structures and art, and choose a role to play in the community. The 9th cardboard town was erected November 1-6 in Ulyanovsk, Russia. To see more checkout the Cardboardia Flickr and Vimeo sites.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Acura is about to undergo a dramatic renaissance. For several years this brand has soldiered on with some gaping holes in its line-up — RL anyone? (Yeah, that hole is so big it echoes.) In some senses, it is a brand without a flagship because the flagship sedan is so overlooked that it might as well not exist. It doesn’t have any coupes (unless you count the ZDX crossover. I know, that was a reach), sports cars, hybrids or diesels and its entry-level sedan doesn’t even offer the brand’s excellent AWD system. Acura sales were down almost 12 per cent in Canada last year (and down about 25 per cent since 2007), though no one can accurately say how much the tsunami in Japan affected the parts supply chain and production capacity, despite most Acura models being produced in North America. Speaking of production, the MDX and ZDX are produced right here in Canada at Honda’s Alliston, Ontario plant. With CSX production winding down and the RL, TSX and ZDX models sales faring poorly, Acura became predominantly a truck seller, with the MDX and RDX accounting for over half of its vehicles sold in Canada last year. 2012 Acura MDX Elite. Click image to enlarge But the future is bright. Acura just debuted the NSX concept at the Detroit Auto Show, and despite the lack of an interior, it is a convincing reinterpretation of the seminal Acura supercar, abiding by the mid-engine layout, exotic, supercar-worthy design, and application of Honda hybrid technology and all-wheel-drive as befitting the Acura brand. Alongside the NSX, Acura introduced the second generation RDX and upcoming ILX compact luxury sedan, which will put them back on the map with entry-level luxury shoppers looking for a small car or crossover. On the sedan side, the TSX and TL are both standouts offering warm performance and exceptional value that keep people coming back to the Acura brand, though controversial styling may be hurting their adoption rate. Without question, the greatest strength in the Acura line-up for several years has been the MDX SUV, with sales consistently topping 5,000 units annually for the past 5 years. It may be odd that Honda’s luxury brand has been anchored by a mid-size SUV considering Honda’s reputation is rooted in small, efficient cars, but the MDX is to the luxury SUV market what the Fit is to small cars: efficient packaging ahead of its time, strong and nimble performance — yet economical to run — and good value even if it might not win the feature-per-dollar contest. The MDX may not have anything as brilliant as the Fit’s Magic Seats, but it came to market with three rows of seating without bloating into a full-size SUV, which served to make it a reasonable solution to a wide variety of tastes and needs. 2012 Acura MDX Elite. Click image to enlarge Then again, taste is one area that Acura wasn’t afraid to experiment with, and while many lambasted Acura’s various grille and trunk treatments, the MDX has resonated with high-income households looking for one car that fits all needs or as a luxury winter carry-all. A recent trip through Forest Hill, one of Toronto’s most affluent neighbourhoods, and I was crossing paths with MDX models of various generations at practically every turn and intersection. Granted, that’s a fairly limited sample, but it’s worth far more to Acura to have MDXs in a handful of those driveways (or better yet, at the school drop-off) than any number of reviews on a site even as esteemed as this one. Personally, I find the current grille a little blasé compared to the 2007–2009 model years, with its twin, perforated grille shields, but I have to give Acura credit for consistency across the line-up and finding a look that works from compact sedan all the way up to its SUVs. Once you get past the grille, the angular headlights may not sport the latest LED gimmickry (though I’m sure it’s coming soon), but they suit the sharply creased edges and even proportions that make this SUV seem much smaller than its 4,867 mm length (longer than either the 4,807-mm Volvo XC90 or 4,829-mm Land Rover LR4). That length helps accommodate the third row of seats and 425 litres of cargo even with all seats up and 1,215 litres behind the second row, compared with 249 litres and 615 litres for the XC90, or 280 litres and 1,192 litres for the LR4. Max cargo volume with all seats flat is 2,364 litres for the MDX, to the XC90’s 1,837 and the LR4’s 2,558. Overall, utility definitely goes to the MDX (power tailgate as base equipment, thank you very much, Acura), although it should be noted that the third row is not a comfortable option for full-size adults in any of these SUVs. Although by no means unique to this segment, I always feel the need to share when seats are at an ideal height for easy installation of car seats and insertion of children into said car seats for both me and my vertically-challenged wife. Our two-year-old daughter’s favourite feature was the rear entertainment system that meant another week of Barbie and Leap Frog movies whenever we drove anywhere. (It should also be noted that if I never have to listen to another Barbie movie again, it will be too soon. Unfortunately, I likely have many years of Barbie movies and accessories in my future, no doubt.)	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
PBS has renewed the drama — its first original scripted production in more than a decade — for a second season, the public broadcaster said Wednesday. “We are thrilled with the overwhelmingly positive response to ‘Mercy Street’ and the return of high-quality American drama on PBS stations,” said Beth Hoppe, PBS chief programming officer and general manager, general audience programming, in a prepared statement. “We’re looking forward to a second season offering more fascinating stories inspired by historical events. The effort from everyone involved, including the producers, directors, historical consultants, actors and PBS stations, resulted in an extraordinary series that exemplifies PBS’ world-class programming.” PBS may be in search of a new flagship drama. The very popular “Downton Abbey” recently concluded, leaving the broadcaster in search of a new scripted property around which to rally. The drama explores lifein Alexandria, Virginia in the Spring of 1862. The border town between North and South is the longest-occupied Confederate city of the war and ruled under martial law, The drama follows the stories of multiple characters, whose lives intersect at Mansion House, a family luxury hotel transformed into a Union Army hospital. The first season was executive produced by Ridley Scott and David W. Zucker of Scott Free; Lisa Q. Wolfinger; and David Zabel. PBS said its January 17 premiere reached more than 5.7 million viewers, and that the series’ six episodes have streamed 2 million times (from January 14-February 28) across available platforms, which include PBS station websites, PBS.org and PBS apps for iOS, Android, FireTV, Roku, Apple TV, Xbox 360 and Windows 10.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Regulation and Controls Needed for Police 2.0 Practices The increasing use of advanced surveillance technologies by law-enforcement officers in the United States raises issues for citizens’ fundamental rights. Automatic licence plate readers, surveillance cameras and facial recognition software – these are all examples of modern surveillance techniques whose use is now increasing by leaps and bounds across the United States. In 1997, about 20% of all US police departments were using some type of surveillance technology. By 2007, that figure had risen to over 70%, according to an article by Stephen Rushin, Professor of Law at the University of IllinoisCollege of Law. “This radical shift in policing is the beginning of what I call the digitally efficient investigative state,” he writes. In this new environment, advanced technology is being implemented in a bid to substantially improve the effectiveness of police investigations and surveillance. However a serious issue raised by the professor is that these technologies are being used by state and local police departments without any consistent rules. Monitoring the community rather than individuals? In the United States, the spotlight is currently on the much-publicised activities of the National Security Agency, and “we don’t tend to think of our local police force as being particularly scary, intimidating or worrisome,” underlines Professor Rushin. He points out that these technologies could be used not only to track down a ‘wanted’ suspect but also to keep tabs on an entire community. This ability to keep everyone under surveillance at the same time at the very least “ought to pose significant privacy concerns to law-abiding citizens,” he argues. Up to now, there has been a general belief that citizens had no expectation of privacy in public places. However, suggests Rushin, this was probably because people saw the authorities’ surveillance capability as rather limited. Nowadays, given the new techniques in this field, any local police officer can gather large quantities of data on an individual person or a whole section of the population without having to apply for a court order. This consequently raises questions over data storage and integrity. Legislation needed Professor Rushin argues that the federal legislative bodies ought to be taking the lead in regulating the use of surveillance techniques and limiting the retention, access to and sharing of data obtained by efficient digital public surveillance technologies. Meanwhile the state authorities also have a duty to act, he says. The article puts forward a ‘model statute’ intended to address some core issues around information privacy and data confidentiality issues, along the same lines as rules for the use of commercial data. A key challenge will be to provide for the specific needs of different police departments while guaranteeing basic consistency in data collection and use across the United States, points out Stephen Rushin.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
It was discovered that access checks for getEnclosingClass, getEnclosingMethod and getEnclosingConstructor were not performed properly. An untrusted Java application or applet could possibly use this flaw to disclose potentially sensitive information.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
The device, which can reduce pain almost immediately, works by stimulating nerves and blocking the pain from passing to the brain. Pulse stickers are applied to where pain is felt. Users can then turn the device on and adjust the intensity depending on the level of pain. Professor Bari Kaplan from Beilinson Women’s Hospital, who is also medical advisor to the Livia production team, said: “Over 50% of women suffer from primary menstrual cramps, for which they consume large amounts of painkillers. “Livia uses a pain relief method that does not involve drug consumption. “The idea is to close the ‘pain gates.’ The device stimulates the nerves, making it impossible for pain to pass. “The method Livia uses has been proven effective in several clinical studies and I strongly recommend the use of the device to relieve PMS pain at any time.” The device comes in a range of colours and has been praised for being discreet yet effective. One person who trialled the device said: “I always needed to take loads of pills, and even then it didn’t help. Now I usually don’t need any pills at all.”	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
NEW HAMPSHIRE'S EAST-WEST HIGHWAY: As early as 1944, the National Interregional Highway Committee included an east-west highway through northern New England as part of a proposed 48,300-mile Interstate highway network. However, the proposed alignment traversed sparsely populated areas near the Canadian border, and as it failed to meet minimum present and future traffic requirements, and the route subsequently was dropped from consideration in 1947. By the dawn of the 1950s, work had progressed on the Maine and New Hampshire turnpikes, which eventually carried the I-95 designation. The passage of the 1956 Federal Highway Act included the proposed routes for I-89, I-91, I-93, but there still was no east-west route connecting these highways between Massachusetts and Quebec. In 1956, Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Shaw proposed three north-south freeways in the state, tied together by an east-west freeway along the NH 101 corridor from Vermont to the Seacoast region. The statewide network of freeways would have cost $600 million, in contrast to the $132 million allocated for the Interstate system. It was to have been financed with a state sales tax, which was blasted immediately by the Republicans who held most of the statewide offices. One early section of the NH 101 Expressway from NH 114 to I-93 in Manchester got approved for construction. About two-thirds of this segment--from the F.E. Everett Turnpike east to the southern I-93 "split"--was built as part of the original I-193 around Manchester, and the section of NH 101 built immediately to the west was designed as a link to I-93 and the Everett Turnpike. After two years of construction, the NH 101 / I-193 link opened in 1961. The original I-193 designation on this link (as well as on the Everett Turnpike link to the north) was changed to I-293 in 1977 upon completion of I-93 on the east side of Manchester. PIECE BY PIECE: In 1959, the New Hampshire Department of Public Works and Highways (NHDPW&H) commissioned the firm of Fay, Spofford, and Thorndike for a $6 million study examining the feasibility of a four-lane expressway connecting I-93 in Manchester with I-95 (New Hampshire Turnpike) and the Seacoast. This was the first of several studies on the highway, but with the state focused on building its Interstate highway mileage, the construction of a four-lane NH 101 Expressway was seen as a lower priority. Nevertheless, work began on two sections of controlled-access NH 101 as the study was being commissioned. The first section of the Manchester-to-Hampton Beach expressway was the Exeter Bypass, a five-mile-long "super-2" bypass that stretched from EXIT 9 (NH 27) east to EXIT 12 (NH 111). This section opened in August 1960. For many years, Epping Road transitioned directly into the "super-2" section from the west. Just east of EXIT 11 (NH 108), a stub of the original bypass was reconfigured as a connector road to NH 88 (Holland Way). The second section was a 2.6-mile-long segment from the northern I-93 "split" east to EXIT 2 (Hooksett Road) in Auburn that was built between 1959 and 1961. This section was four-lane original construction for most of the distance, though the expressway narrowed to a "super-2" just west of its terminus at EXIT 2. Subsequent to the completion of the study, three additional sections of "super-2" bypass had opened as follows: In 1963, the NHDPW extended the original "Exeter Bypass" section by 10.5 miles to Hampton Beach; the road had become known as the "Exeter-Hampton Expressway." The expressway addressed concerns about the lack of access to Hampton Beach as a new two-lane bridge was built over a wetlands area just west of town. The "super-2" segment still exists in its original configuration east of EXIT 13 (NH 27) in Hampton, and there are no current plans to upgrade this segment. A 2.9-mile-long "super-2" segment from EXIT 2 in Auburn east to EXIT 3 (NH 43) in Candia was opened in 1965. This segment ended originally at a "T"-intersection with NH 43. In 1972, the four-lane freeway conversion was extended 1.5 miles to a point just east of EXIT 2 (the prior terminus of the four-lane freeway segment was west of EXIT 2). A 6.9-mile-long "super 2" segment from EXIT 5 (NH 102 / NH 107) in Raymond east to EXIT 8 (North Road) in Brentwood opened in 1968. This section ended at "T"-intersections at each end. Moreover, the original alignment at EXIT 5 veered slightly north of current NH 101 alignment; the westbound exit ramp at EXIT 5 traces this old alignment. All of the controlled-access "super-2" segments were designed to be expanded to four lanes by converting the existing roadway to an eastbound roadway and building a new westbound roadway. The original routing of NH 101 exited the expressway at EXIT 11 (NH 108) in Stratham, while a separate designation--NH 51--continued east along the Exeter-Hampton Expressway to Hampton Beach. (At the time, the NH 101 designation was routed along NH 108 and what is now NH 33 northeast into Portsmouth.) On July 1, 1995, the NH 101 designation was applied to its current routing east to Hampton Beach in advance of the completion of the expressway. These 1998 photos show the NH 101 Expressway under reconstruction at EXIT 9 (NH 27 / Epping Road) and EXIT 10 (NH 85 / Newfields Road). Both photos were taken in Exeter, the original terminus of the two-lane Exeter-Hampton Expressway. (Photos by Alexander Svirsky, granitehighways.com.) ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT AN INTERSTATE HIGHWAY DESIGNATION: By the end of the 1960s, two substantial gaps remained from EXIT 3 in Candia east to EXIT 5 in Raymond (about eight miles), and from EXIT 8 in Brentwood east to EXIT 9 in Exeter (about three miles). Moreover, only the Interstate (I-193, later I-293) section in Manchester and a brief section of NH 101 east of I-93 in Manchester had four lanes; the rest were "super-2" segments. State officials tried to enlist the help of the Federal government to finish the NH 101 Expressway, and even sought to garner an Interstate designation for a cross-state NH 101 Expressway that would have tied together proposed bypasses further west in Amherst and Keene. In 1970, the states of New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire collaborated on a 174-mile Interstate highway stretching from the Seacoast west to the Albany-Troy area of New York State; 103 miles of the proposed Interstate were to have been in New Hampshire. Part of what was to become the new I-92, the route was among a total of approximately 10,000 miles submitted under the guidelines of the 1968 Federal Highway Act, which called for a total of 1,500 new Interstate miles. However, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) ultimately rejected this proposal. A TOLL ROAD PROPOSAL: Following the rejection of the proposed I-92 in 1971, some members of the New Hampshire State Legislature advocated a $74 million plan to build NH 101 as a four-lane turnpike between Manchester and the Seacoast. Construction was to have begun in 1972 on a 35-mile-long turnpike stretching from I-93 to NH 1A in Hampton Beach, and upon the scheduled completion deadline of 1976, it was to have cost 60 cents to travel the entire length of the road. In absence of tolls, it was estimated that project would be completed by late 1990s (which ended up being underestimated by only a couple of years). However, officials from Rockingham and Hillsborough counties objected to the structure of the toll financing, stating that local residents would fund the road through tolls, but that the tolls would go elsewhere in the state. Furthermore, the routing of the NH 101 Expressway already was approved even before tolls were proposed, though the financing was not in place. This 2006 photo shows the I-293 section of the westbound NH 101 Expressway approaching EXIT 2 (NH 3A) in Manchester. This section of expressway, which was rebuilt in the mid-2000s, uses the exit numbering convention found on I-293, not the Manchester-to-Hampton Beach section of NH 101. (Photo by Steve Anderson.) FILLING THE REMAINING GAPS AND DUALIZING ROUTE 101: After a decade of inaction in the 1970s--save for a 1.5-mile-long conversion to four-lane freeway in the area of EXIT 2 in Auburn--progress on completing the NH 101 Expressway accelerated only slightly in the 1980s. The NHDPW&H began work in 1981 on filling in the eight-mile-long gap between EXIT 3 in Candia and EXIT 5 in Raymond with a four-lane freeway on new right-of-way south of the existing NH 101, which at the time was routed over NH 43 (Old Candia Road), and NH 27 (Raymond Road and Raymond Bypass). At the same time, the NHDPW&H upgraded the existing "super-2" section from just east of EXIT 2 to EXIT 3; this section was to tie into the new four-lane freeway then under construction. Both projects were completed in 1986. Completion of the three-mile-long gap between EXIT 8 and EXIT 9, as well as the conversion of the existing "super-2" sections of NH 101 to a four-lane freeway east of EXIT 5, remained mired in the environmental impact review process through much of the 1980s. The key obstacles were the potential removal of 106 acres of wetlands along the route, as well as the condemnation of a number of homes in the area of EXIT 9 in Exeter. During this time, large signs posted by the New Hampshire Department of Transportation (NHDOT) tallied the number of deaths along the "super-2" segment since 1985, drawing attention of officials to the need to upgrade this section of NH 101. Work on one bridge that was to carry North Street over the proposed NH 101 extension (at the current EXIT 8 in Brentwood) began in the late 1980s, but it soon was called the "bridge to nowhere" as it was still uncertain that the NH 101 Expressway would be completed. Nevertheless, the state was behind construction of the route, and in 1989 the State Legislature called completion of NH 101 its highest transportation priority. The NHDOT reached a preliminary agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for completing the expressway in 1991. Under this plan, 30 bridges were to be replaced (mostly concrete frame overpasses) or built on new right-of-way, two traffic lights were to be removed at NH 88 and NH 85, and bridges and roadways along an older section of the NH 101 Expressway in Bedford were to be rehabilitated. In addition, 130 acres of new wetlands were to be created to compensate for the 106 acres that were to be lost in the project. The proposal received final approval from the federal government in 1992. Work on the $220 million "Epping-Hampton gap" and widening project began in 1993. The first phase of the project, which twinned the 1968 "super-2" section from EXIT 5 east to EXIT 8, was completed in November 1998. The next phase filled in the missing three-mile-long gap between EXIT 8 and EXIT 9, and twinned the existing "super-2" east to the Squamscott River in Exeter; this phase was completed in September 1999. On November 16, 2000, the final "super-2" segment between the Squamscott River and EXIT 13 (NH 27) in Hampton was twinned, giving motorists an uninterrupted stretch of four-lane freeway from Manchester to Hampton for the first time. ROUTE 101 TODAY: According to the NHDOT, the NH 101 Expressway carries approximately 80,000 vehicles per day (AADT) along the I-293 segment in Manchester, while the average section between Manchester and Hampton carries about 45,000 vehicles per day. To accommodate growing volume, the NHDOT spent $13 million in the mid-2000s to widen the I-293 / NH 101 "multiplex" to six lanes from the Merrimack River Bridge east to the southern I-93 "split." Around this time, the NHDOT advanced a $12 million plan to widen NH 101 to six lanes from the northern I-93 "split" east to EXIT 1 (NH 28 Bypass) in Manchester; this plan now is on hold. In 2009, the NHDOT repaved 9.5 miles of the NH 101 Expressway from Epping east to Exeter; the cost--at $1 million per mile--was financed in part by federal stimulus funds. This 2006 photo shows the eastbound NH 101 Expressway approaching unmarked EXIT 14 (US 1) in Hampton. This easternmost section of NH 101 is the only remaining section that has not been converted into a four-lane, dual-carriageway freeway, and there are no current plans to do so. (Photo by Steve Anderson.) THE NEW I-193: The NH 101 Expressway should be re-designated I-193 from NH 114 in Bedford east to US 1 in Hampton, and perhaps as far east as NH 1A in Hampton Beach. The new I-193 would mark the return of this designation to the Granite State and identify clearly an important route from central New Hampshire to the Seacoast. The I-293 designation that exists now on part of NH 101 in Manchester then would be shifted south along the entire length of the Everett Turnpike (now marked I-293 only north of NH 101). As part of the conversion, the four-lane freeway conversion would be extended east of EXIT 13 (NH 27) in Hampton to Glade Path (about one-half mile west of NH 1A) in Hampton Beach, with the US 1 interchange (currently no exit number) in Hampton rebuilt as a reduced-footprint, single-point-diamond interchange (SPUI) and excess land converted into wetlands. There also would be a grade separation at Landing Road in Hampton, where there currently is a traffic signal. Interchanges would be renumbered as follows (with old exit numbers in parentheses): It is possible this route once again may be considered part of a future I-92, and given its length (at 42 miles including I-93 overlap versus only 18 miles for I-97 in Maryland) and place in the national Interstate numbering grid, such a designation already may be justified in its present form. However, it is unlikely that any expressway would be extended west of Bedford, particularly given strident opposition in southwestern New Hampshire and southern Vermont.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
6.0.2 Download Coming Soon The 6.0.2 Download onto live servers began in the background today, and was removed after a short time, thanks to concerns about the size of the download. However, Community Manager Zarhym reported that the download will begin again, with more details on the new file system. Zarhym As some of you may have noticed the background downloader for patch 6.0.2 began today. After discovering issues with the size of the download, however, we have deactivated it for the time being. We'll let you know once when we're ready to start the 6.0.2 background downloader again, as well as provide you with some additional details on how it works and what you can expect when downloading the 6.0.2 patch in advance of its release on live realms. New Beta Build Soon The beta realms are coming down for maintenance--this is a bit later than usual as they usually take 8 hours or more to complete. Zorbrix Greetings All! The Beta realms will be shutting down for maintenance in order to deploy a new build. I'll be updating this thread with information and time estimates as I receive them. I don't have an ETA yet, but these pushes usually take at least 8 hours, if not more. I'll be leaving this thread open for general discussion as long as people remain civil and follow forum rules. Realms are still up as of this post, but should be coming down shortly. Hogs Battle Pet Removed Hogs, created as a "decoy" pet in early alpha datamining, is confirmed to be removed for Warlords' launch. Previously Hogs has been associated with several beta achievements, including WoW's 10th anniversary. Site Updates Warlords of Draenor data improvements continue on Wowhead, here are some of the more interesting things we've done in the past few days! Our Building database was one of the first Garrison sections we added to Wowhead, and we decided it was time to spruce it up. You can now also browse building by their in-game images for the Alliance and Horde! These images can be sorted by Name, Plot Size, and Level. We've got another round of site updates to share with you today! We've added information about legacy achievements and exclusive glyphs to the database, as well as new item bonus information based on Blizzard's sweeping data changes for 6.0. To see other recent developments on Wowhead, check out our What's New page. Item Data Changes in Warlords Items in Warlords of Draenor are receiving a lot of internal changes that we have to adapt to here at Wowhead. Our goal is to have our users think that nothing has changed when using our database and tools, but we're quite busy behind-the-scenes. Instead of each version of an item being linked to a unique item ID, all versions are consolidated into one item ID in Warlords of Draenor. An item can now have a number of bonuses applied--ranging from a Raid Difficulty to a gem socket. So in 6.0, there will be one item ID associated with all versions of a Siege of Orgrimmar item, like Korven's Crimson Crescent. Warlords of Draenor and 6.0 items now display item bonuses on their Wowhead pages. Here's some examples of items with bonuses: 6.0 Siege of Orgrimmar items like Korven's Crimson Crescent now have raid difficulty and Warforged bonuses. All of our comments and screenshots will be consolidated and moved over to these new pages in 6.0 to reduce database clutter. Warlords of Draenor quest items like Frostwolf Hunting Crossbow now display uncommon, rare, and epic versions. When completing a Draenor quest, the reward has a low chance to be rare or epic. Warlords of Draenor dungeon items like Robes of Swirling Light now display a Heroic option as well as bonuses that modify the required level and item level. We're not sure what purpose these later options serve--perhaps different versions drop in various instances? Everyone loves achievements, so we've added even more site achievements to Wowhead this week! You can now get achievements for using our recently-added tools and features, including building a Garrison with the Garrison Calculator, pinning a charcter in the Profiler, and making a Sounds playlist. We've also rewarded users for using our popular features like transmog sets and the modelviewer. As usual, a list of all of the different achievements and their criteria, as well as who has earned them and how many times, can be found in the Website Achievements category, found under the Community menu. Users can view their own achievements in the Achievements tab found on their user page. Achievements are only awarded to registered users, so if you're looking for a reason to de-lurk and register, now is the time. Today the Wowhead team is excited to announce the launch of the Character Planner, as well as a new section in the Warlords database! Character Planner For the character planner, we wanted to create a tool that not only recommends gear, but suggests fun things you'd like to try in game! The new Character Planner suggests achievements and guides you'd be interested in, as well as gear upgrades and zones that have the most upgrades. To get started with the Character Planner, go to http://wowhead.com/planner and enter in your realm and character. If you have a character in the Profiler, just click on the "Character Planner" option in the header and it will automatically load the planner for that character! Today the Wowhead team is proud to present our front-page design revamp! We've all wanted this for a while and we're thrilled to finally share it with you. Each expansion, we evaluate how we present our site's content and if we can do anything better. For Mists of Pandaria, we refined the layout of Wowhead News to better serve our community--we streamlined the design, added some features to the sidebar, and changed the domain. For Warlords of Draenor, we want our community to be better informed about our frequent database updates as well as our in-depth content previews. Many users love our news coverage and blogs announcing new site tools, but we've also heard from other users that they aren't aware of these posts due to the front page layout. The new front page will make it easier to follow all of our database developments, such as updated Warlords of Draenor data from alpha builds, our new Garrison Calculator, and Profiler updates letting you view your character with their Warlords of Draenor model. In addition, the front page layout highlights other popular content on Wowhead such as patch previews, news roundups, user guides, and important recent tweets from our unique Blue Tweet Tracker. The search box on all pages is now bigger and easier to click, plus you can start typing anywhere on the page when not focused on a form element to start searching. The rest of the site looks the same outside of some minor style changes and Class Guides now accessible from the top navigation menu. Thanks again for your feedback on the revamp preview blog. If you find any layout issues, please report them here in the comments or to . Edit: We have addressed some styling issues with the footer, item tabs, the item comparison tool, and talent calc landing page, as well as mobile support, monitors with small widths, and ratings icons. There are still some tweaks we want to address such as quote boxes on darker forum posts and "Save" and "Cancel" buttons overlapping with "Add Reply" on database comments. Each expansion, the Wowhead team evaluates how we present our content and if we can do anything better. For Mists of Pandaria, we refined the layout of Wowhead News to better serve our community--we streamlined the design, added some cool features to the sidebar, and changed the domain. Looking forward to Warlords of Draenor, there are some improvements we want to make. Many users love our news coverage and blogs announcing new site tools, but we've also heard from other users that they initially miss these posts due to the site's design. The current front page is a bit cramped with the search box, dropdown menus, and news featurebox practically on top of each other! Our goal at Wowhead is to provide as much information to players as possible, so the Wowhead team has been hard at work on a front-page redesign. We're putting more of our current content on Wowhead's front page--Alpha previews, guides, and news roundups including current Twitter posts from the Blue Tweet Tracker. The layout tweaks also allow us to highlight more features such as Class Guides on the navigation menu and the Blue Tracker on the sidebar. Below you'll find some screenshots of our upcoming revamp. While the front page is mainly getting changes, we've included a few pictures of popular pages to see how the fonts, styling, and new header affects them. After publishing this blog, we've updated some design elements and posted new images reflecting these changes. Thanks again for your feedback. These images are from a previous design draft which we've left up for comparison purposes.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Errata for Java Examples in a Nutshell The errata list is a list of errors and their corrections that were found after the product was released. If the error was corrected in a later version or reprint the date of the correction will be displayed in the column titled "Date Corrected". The following errata were submitted by our customers and approved as valid errors by the author or editor. Page xiii (This change was made to the 12/98 reprint but please note this information if you have a previous printing of the book.) Under the section "Java Example Online," add the following section regarding licensing information: Licensing Information You may study, use, modify, and distribute these examples for any non-commercial purpose, as long as the copyright notice at the top of each example is retained. If you would like to use the code in a commercial product, you may purchase a commercial use license from the author for a nominal fee. Visit http://www.davidflanagan.com/javaexamples/ for information on obtaining such a license. Please note that the examples are provided as-is, with no warranty of any kind. Anonymous Printed Page xiii 1st para.: the correct URL for the examples is http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9781565923713 Anonymous Apr 01, 1998 Printed Page index now starts on page 369 and has been rerun to reflect the removal of the appendix Anonymous Dec 01, 1998 Printed Page 1 last paragraph, second sentence: changed "They" to "There" Anonymous Apr 01, 1998 Printed Page 1 The last paragraph did read : "There were referring, of course" now reads "They were referring, of course" Anonymous Apr 01, 2000 Printed Page 6 Example 1-3: lines 8 and 9 int current, prev=1, prevprev=0; // Initialize some variables for(int i = 0; i < 20; i++) { // Loop exactly 20 times now reads int current, prev=1, prevprev=1; // Initialize some variables System.out.print("1 1 "); // Output the initial two values for(int i = 2; i < 20; i++) { // Loop, outputting remaining values and in the paragraph above, in line 5 "First, it again uses a for statement to loop 20 times." now reads "First, it again uses a for statement as its main loop." margin_height -- how much space...left and right margin_width -- how much space...top and bottom now reads margin_height -- how much space...top and bottom margin_width -- how much space...left and right Anonymous Dec 01, 1998 Printed Page 124 paragraph 1, line 1: An important features of the Frame class ... should read An important feature of the Frame class ... The program went into infinite loop when reading Japanese file. File f; FileReader in = null; try { f = new File(directory, filename); // Create a file object in = new FileReader(f); // Create a char stream to read it int size = (int) f.length(); // Check file size // This size is the file size in byte. ------(1) char[] data = new char[size]; // Allocate an array big enough for it int chars_read = 0; // How many chars read so far? while(chars_read < size) // Loop until we've read it all chars_read += in.read(data, chars_read, size-chars_read); // chars_read is total read size in unicode char ------(2) textarea.setText(new String(data)); // Display chars in TextArea this.setTitle("FileViewer: " + filename); // Set the window title } The author's response: This is an embarrassing mistake, and I am grateful to you for noticing it. In general, I have difficulty catching internationalization errors like this since I do not have a system that uses or can display Japanese text. (And even if I did, I could not develop meaningful examples, since I have no comprehension of the language...) Of the two solutions you propose, I prefer the first one. We should show an example that is guaranteed to work in all cases. However, to improve the efficiency, I would recommend that you modify the example to read more than one line at a time. You use a BufferedReader, which makes reading individual lines efficient, but I fear that appending individual lines to the TextArea is not efficient. So I propose code like this: f = new File(directory, filename); // Create a file object in = new FileReader(f); // Create a char stream to read it char[] buffer = new char[4096]; int len; while((len = in.read(buffer)) != -1) { String s = new String(buffer, 0, len); textarea.append(s); } Note that I have not tested this code, with English text or with Japanese text. I'm just trying to give you an idea of what I'm suggesting. I think this code is properly internationalized, and should always work. If it does not, go ahead and use the code you proposed. Anonymous Printed Page 163 paragraph 2, line 6: "it creates and display a FileViewer window" should be "it creates and displays a FileViewer window". Page 330 After the line "Object value = rs.getObject(i+1);", added the line if (value != null) and changed indentation of the next line so the code now reads: Object value = rs.getObject(i+1); if (value != null) overwrite(line, colpos[i] + 1, value.toString().trim()); (Don't change the indent of the second "overwrite" line.) Finally, since we added a line, we cut the blank line before: // Finally, end the table with one last divider line (appendix) completely removed Anonymous Dec 01, 1998 Printed Page 381 Example 6, line 10 from the bottom: changed // Add some items to the Edit menu to // Add some items to the View menu Anonymous May 01, 1998 Printed Page 381 Example 6, line 10 from the bottom: changed // Add some items to the Edit menu to // Add some items to the View menu	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Helpful Links Water Quality Management Plan The Tennessee portion of the Red River Watershed is located in Middle Tennessee and includes parts of Cheatham, Davidson, Montgomery, Robertson, Sumner and Stewart counties. It is approximately 1,444 square miles (801 square miles in Tennessee) and drains to the Cumberland River. There are 57 known rare plant and animal species in the Tennessee portion of the Red River Watershed. Other sites within the Red River Watershed include: Cedar Hill Swamp is a 200-acre area managed by TWRA in Robertson County.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
It was three whole years ago we told you about the "Naked Girls Reading Science Fiction" event held by The Pinchbottom Burlesque, but now we're happy to report those who prefer people of the penis-ed variety reading genre fiction aloud to them will finally have their chance, courtesy of Ham Pants Productions and Stage Werx Theatre. The only catch? It's all Cthulhu, baby. There is only one name synonymous with cosmic horror: H.P. Lovecraft. There are only a few dudes who know how to read and are willing to do it in front of a live audience ... uncloaked. Without a stitch. Au Naturel. Just in time for Valentine's Day, Ham Pants Productions and Stage Werx Theatre are proud to present: Naked Dudes Reading Lovecraft. On February 13, 2013 at 8:00 pm, more than a handful of dudes will read a handful of Lovecraft, in the altogether. This is the closest some of us will get to romance this Valentines day. Hey, if you're going to be alone on Valentine's Day, you might as well spend it with a few tentacle monsters, right? And I'm sure the Lovecraft reading will be good, too. The event's site is here, should you need it.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
InterCeltic Festival opens in France Officials estimate that nearly 400,000 people will stampede the city of Lorient in the French region of Brittany to hear oddities like techno-bagpipes as the 28th InterCeltic Festival begins Friday. Among the musicians leading the bill at the festival, which promises to unite more than 4,500 artists, will be Alan Stivell, whose works fuse Celtic, rock and techno music, including those bagpipes. The festival runs through Aug. 16.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Product search We found 192 product(s) under "View All" STYLISH OUTERWEAR FOR WOMEN Outerwear can define a woman's look. This season's outerwear adapts to any weather with style. Wrap yourself in fleece, down or faux fur on the coldest of days. Flowy and ultralight pieces for milder temperatures. Get inspired with the complete collection online, updated weekly.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
Heat Michael is a pitching phenom with dreams of taking his team to the Little League World Series. Afraid of being separated in foster care, or worse, sent back to Cuba, Michael and his brother have been keeping their father’s death a secret from all but those closest to them. As the baseball season becomes more intense, a rival questions Michael’s age and insists that he show a birth certificate to prove he is not too old for little league. With no way to prove his age, no birth certificate, and no parent to stick up for him, Michael’s dream is on the line. Author: Mike Lupica	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }
About Us Telemall Corporation is the largest telemarketing DRTV organization of Pakistan having its franchisees in 30 cities of Pakistan and outlets in various countries including U.A.E, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qattar, etc. Telemall with specialization in advanced technology, excellent services and good reputation in the market, is dedicated in offering high quality products to its customers.	{ "pile_set_name": "Pile-CC" }

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.