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Get SMART in cyberspace: Protect your data
A virtual 'guard' that gives you greater control over your personal data has been developed by experts at Newcastle University.
The unique system works by creating a user-controlled gateway an extra level of security through which anyone has to pass if they wish to use or share data relating to a particular individual.
Initially, the system is being trialled using photos on Facebook and Picasa, but the next step will be to protect financial information held by banks and even GPS tracking data that gives information about the location of an individual via their mobile phone.
Developed by Maciej Machulak, Professor Aad van Moorsel and the team at Newcastle University, the system will be demonstrated for the first time today as part of a national conference to discuss threats and trust in cyber space.
The one-day conference is being hosted by Newcastle Universitys Center for Cybercrime and Computer Security. Being held in the Great North Museum: Hancock, the event includes demonstrations of some of the research taking place at Newcastle including work on Keystroke Dynamics, Identity Theft and Contactless Credit Card Skimming.
Maciej, project lead, said that with so many people now storing their data on the web it was important to provide them with new mechanisms that would help to secure this data but still to allow them to share this data in a controlled fashion.
Allowing people to share their photos across different social profiles such as Facebook or Picasa in a flexible way can be very useful," explains Maciej.
But at the same time you want to retain an element of control over this personal information. Our system crosses these application boundaries and allows users to be able to share their online photos with individuals from various applications no matter where their pictures reside.
The next step is to extend the system to help people share personal and professional information, such as that stored on LinkedIn.
As well as opening up new possibilities for sharing information, the next step will be to use the so-called SMART AM system as a virtual gateway or barrier, protecting individuals data from unwanted viewing, such as GPS tracking via mobile phones.
Maciej explains: Allowing certain applications to track your location can be extremely useful. For example, if youre out of town and are looking for a hotel or restaurant then being sent that information directly to your phone application is just what you need.
But you dont necessarily want to leave yourself open to anyone who might be wanting to use that kind of information about you. With our system the user could control what types of services should see them in cyber space and which should not. This could then filter out applications offering services that might be of use while blocking anyone else from tracking you.
Its about taking control of all this information we have about ourselves out there on the Web.
With the increased amount of services available on the Web, the end user is no longer able to easily control access to their distributed data and is often paying the price in both privacy and convenience. Our system allows us to share it more freely while retaining control.
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NEW YORK (AP) The New York Giants have agreed to terms with free agent linebacker Keith Bulluck.
Agent Gary Wichard says Bulluck and the team came to an agreement Saturday. Media reports said the deal was for one year and $2.5 million.
Bulluck has spent his entire 10-year career with the Tennessee Titans. He was a first-round pick out of Syracuse in 2000 and grew up in New City, N.Y., about 30 miles north of where the Giants play in East Rutherford, N.J.
The Giants have been looking for a replacement for middle linebacker Antonio Pierce, who was released after last season.
The 33-year-old Bulluck is coming off a serious knee injury. He tore his left anterior cruciate ligament in December. He was second on the team with 118 tackles in 14 games.

subset: commoncrawl


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Left Behind Games, maker of Christian-themed video games of… well, dubious quality, reports that it sold $US210,000 worth of product over the past six months.
That's revenue, not profit, and such a figure doesn't make it a major player by any stretch. Still, that's $US210,000, which the publisher said is "considerably more than income in any two consecutive quarters since the company's inception".
Left Behind's figures are no doubt helped by its distribution deals with Walmart across the Bible Belt. The maker of "Left Behind 3: Rise of the Antichrist" (pictured) also credits a strong word-of-mouth campaign spread by experienced brand evangelisers.
"Over the past two years," CEO Troy Lyndon said in a statement, "we've invested in the development of the Christian video game market by giving away more than 50,000 PC games to our network of Pastors who share our desire to provide healthier video game alternatives to their youth."
What Christian Game Developers Consider Success [Game Politics]


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Jennifer Danielson: Leading Through Collaboration
Around Utah
Around Utah
Jennifer Danielson: Leading Through Collaboration
Wayne Searle: Local Values, Global Vision
Legal Briefs
Change in Domain
Money Talk
Transitioning a Business
Economic Insight
Avoiding the Fiscal Cliff
Lessons Learned
Dodging Darwin
Utah's Genome Projects
Plan to Succeed
Business Trends
Play Along
Living Well
New Game in Town
Corporate Cuisine Awards
A Day Late & A Dollar Short
Red Tape
Industry Outlook
A Look at One of Utah's Newest Public Companies
Special Report
Companies to Watch
Larada Sciences
Origins: In 2006, Larada Sciences was spun-off from research conducted at the University of Utah Department of Biology. Its Lousebuster received FDA clearance in 2009 and the product was launched in 2010.
What makes it unique: The Lousebuster is a non-chemical alternative to traditional lice treatments. It only requires one treatment that takes less than an hour, while chemical treatments are harsh and require two treatments total, along with several sessions of nit-picking. In many places, lice are becoming resistant to the chemicals.
Future plans: Larada Sciences has already begun leasing its equipment to businesses, schools and clinics. So far, the company has 30 service providers in the United States and 17 internationally. The next step, says CEO Larry Rigby, is to create a franchise opportunity that will provide a complete, branded, turn-key operation to entrepreneurs.
"We've begun setting up entrepreneurs who want to start their own business in this industry providing treatments as a service…We have the largest network of service providers in this industry in the world."
Larry Rigby, CEO, Larada Sciences
Origins: Zarbee's was founded in 2008 by pediatrician Zak Zarbock
What makes it unique: In 2007, the FDA ruled that the current cough medicines should not be given to children under the age of four. Zarbee's cough syrup was formulated based on clinical research showing that dark honey was effective at soothing sore throats and coughs. Zarbee's includes dark honey, zinc, vitamin C and natural flavorings and is safe for children 12 months and older.
Growth trajectory: Zarbee's is now available in several major grocery stores and pharmacies. About 40,000 pediatricians are currently recommending the product and giving out samples to patients, according to CEO Bryce Johnson. The company plans to release a version for adults in within the next two months, and within the next year it will introduce a total of 12 new products.
"We are first to market with a cough syrup that is all natural and also backed by clinical research."
Bryce Johnson, CEO, Zarbee's
Viva Markets
Origins: Launched in October 2010, this Latino-themed grocery store has four locations in Ogden, Midvale, West Valley and Fairpark.
Greatest accomplishment: The company's marketing strategy that focuses on the Latino family has helped the Viva brand grow quickly has been key to the company's rapid success.
Future plans: After less than two years in business, the company has experienced sales in excess of $14 million. Viva Markets is on schedule to expand rapidly throughout the Pacific Northwest states within the next year, fulfilling the needs of many underserved Latino communities.
"We take great pride in being sure our customers are 100 percent satisfied with their shopping experience."
Dennis Lorencz, COO, Viva Markets
InsideSales.com, Inc.
Origins: Launched in 2004, InsideSales.com develops automation and productivity enhancing technologies for the inside sales team.
Greatest success: The Provo-based company experienced a 225 percent growth rate from 2007 to 2011, which was accomplished without venture funding. The company has also been able to attract and land major enterprise accounts including Dell, Groupon and others.
Innovative technology: CEO David Ellington says innovation sets InsideSales.com apart. The company's products enable its clients to deliver a local touch during their prospecting efforts, which dramatically increases their ability to make contact and ultimately improves their close rates.
"We expect to rock the sales world with our introduction of sales predictive analytics, leveraging big data. Our goal is to ultimately enable our clients to dramatically out sell their competitors."
David Elkington,
CEO, InsideSales.com
Origins: Qualtrics was launched in 2002 by Scott Smith, Stuart Orgill and Ryan Smith. Its Qualtrics Research Suite allows companies to conduct online data collection and analysis including market research, customer satisfaction and loyalty, product and concept testing, employee evaluations, and website feedback. Qualtrics now has 4,000 customers including half of the Fortune 100.
email@example.com | 90 South 400 West, Ste 650 Salt Lake City, Utah 84101 | (801) 568-0114
Advertise with Utah Business


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Just 5 feet tall, with a baby strapped to her chest and a soft, faltering voice, Kim Rivera is anything but soldierly. Yet two years ago, she was a Texas private in the War on Terror, guarding a gate with an M4 rifle and frisking Iraqi civilians at a base in eastern Baghdad.
Now, on a Wednesday evening in January, the 26-year-old mother of three stands in a room in frigid, snow-covered Toronto. Her fair-skinned face and round blue eyes are framed by auburn hair pulled back in a low ponytail, and she places a hand on her bundled baby as she faces about 100 people seated in folding chairs in the middle-class apartment building's community room.
Rivera clears her throat and unfolds a sheet of paper.
"I was fighting your kind for killing my kind," she begins, reading a poem she wrote last summer and dedicated to the people of Iraq. "I was fighting for your liberty; I was fighting for peace." She pauses and takes a deep breath. "But in reality, I was fighting to destroy everything you know and love."
The audience listens in silence. Some nod. A few wipe tears from their eyes. They are peace activists and professors, fellow American Iraq War deserters in their 20s and American hippies in their 60s, Vietnam draft-dodgers, and Canadian mothers.
They're all rooting for Rivera, red-state warrior turned peacenik deserter. They're hoping and praying that by some lucky chance or the benevolent hand of a politician or judge, the young mother will escape the deportation order that has been issued here and the court martial that awaits back home.
Three years ago, before Iraq and Canada, Rivera's dreams of going to college and developing a career had faded. She'd spent five years working at Wal-Mart in her hometown of Mesquite, Texas, met her husband in the store's food court, and had her first two children. After several years of living with relatives and struggling to save for her own apartment, Rivera saw the Army as the only way out. Through the military, she could make more than $10.50 an hour, plus get health insurance and higher education. And since she and her husband were both overweight and she was certain that she could shed the necessary pounds faster than he could, she began talking to recruiters.
She enlisted in early 2006. When she signed the contract, she thought of the war in Iraq as a remote and necessary evil. She was raised to praise the Lord and praise her country, and if that meant ridding the world of terrorists while allowing her and her family to get ahead, so be it. Yet after three desolate months in Iraq, consumed by homesickness, missing her children, and disgusted by what she saw of the war, she deserted while on leave in 2007 and fled with her family to Canada.
Just like her decision to enlist, that gamble hasn't paid off the way she'd hoped. The Canadian government ordered her to leave the country by January 27 or be deported to the United States, where there's a warrant for her arrest. Desertion, according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, carries penalties of up to five years in prison, a dishonorable discharge, and, in wartime, a potential death sentence.
As the first known female soldier to walk away from the war in Iraq and fight for residency in Canada, Rivera has become a poster girl for a new generation of war deserters and, in particular, the small colony of American deserters who are living in Toronto and hoping they'll get to stay there.
More than 15,000 soldiers have deserted the Army since 2003, and most are thought to be living in the United States, keeping a low profile and trying to avoid a traffic ticket or anything else that would alert authorities to their presence. Army spokesmen stress that just 1 percent of all soldiers desert and that the problem is not large enough to warrant pursuing them for prosecution. Nevertheless, desertion figures have nearly doubled, rising from 2,610 in 2003 to 4,698 in 2007, and military records show a crackdown on deserters since the war in Iraq began. While in 2001, only 29 deserters were prosecuted, in 2007 that figure was 108.
The War Resisters Support Campaign estimates that several hundred deserters are living in Canada. Of those, about 40 have come forward to file asylum claims. The others, living under the radar without legal status and likely waiting to see how their peers' cases pan out, have little to stoke their hopes. While an estimated 25,000 draft-dodgers and deserters migrated from the United States to Canada during the Vietnam War, the notion that Canada will absorb today's deserters as it did their predecessors is dead wrong.
The Canadian government — led by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper — has so far rejected all the deserters' requests, and the soldiers referred to as "war resisters" by their supporters are awaiting review from the country's federal courts to determine their fate. As the cases make their way through the Canadian court system, Rivera is among the first wave to face impending deportation, and a host of others are expected to follow in the coming months.
The case of Robin Long, a soldier from Boise, Idaho, who last summer became the first deserter to be deported from Canada, provides a preview of what lies in store for deserters upon their return home. Long was handed over to officials at Fort Carson, Colorado, last August, pleaded guilty to desertion, and is serving a 15-month prison sentence at Miramar Naval Brig near San Diego.
More recently, Cliff Cornell, a deserter from Arkansas who lived in British Columbia since leaving his unit four years ago when he was ordered to Iraq, opted to return to the United States in February after exhausting his legal options. He was arrested by American border agents and sent to Fort Stewart, Georgia, to face charges.
Meanwhile, a former soldier from Cleveland named Andre Shepherd went AWOL from his base in Germany and is requesting political asylum from German authorities. His case will test a 2004 European Union measure that requires member countries to grant asylum to soldiers resisting unlawful wars and, if it succeeds, will likely result in a flood of American deserters arriving in Germany.
As the community of war resisters in Toronto braces for legal blows, deserters from California, Connecticut, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, and New Jersey continue to rely on the help of Canadian anti-war activists and American Vietnam-era draft-dodgers.
The War Resisters Support Campaign, led by New York-born Vietnam deserter Lee Zaslofsky, organized tonight's rally for Rivera and two other Toronto resisters facing deportation. A member of Parliament is here to speak, as well as a local city councilman and various deserters and activists. All watch, silent, as Rivera attempts to describe the emotional and philosophical about-face that led her to abandon her unit and flee to Canada. It's an internal sea change she often finds difficult to articulate. So tonight, less than a week before her scheduled deportation date, she relies on the last stanzas of her poem.
"I was becoming something that wasn't me, that I didn't stand for as a person," she says, choking up. Then she makes a plea: "Canada, I am here. Will you take the time and the heart to understand what I am now fighting for, with words and not a gun?"
In October 2006, Private First Class Rivera deployed to Iraq with the 704th Support Battalion out of Fort Carson. She arrived at Forward Operating Base Loyalty in eastern Baghdad to find a different war from the one she expected. Instead of driving a truck, she was guarding a gate. Instead of doing "lots of rebuilding" as she'd thought the Army would be doing, most of the troops seemed dedicated to raids on civilian homes. She didn't like the way a lot of guys acted when they returned from patrol.
"We tore their house up!" she recalls one soldier saying, jocular and triumphant. She observed that he seemed pretty happy about it. "Hell fuckin' yeah!" he replied. "They prolly killed my buddy."
Rivera began to imagine what it would be like if foreign soldiers broke into her apartment in the middle of the night and dragged her and her husband, Mario, out of bed in front of their 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter. She also disliked the fact that "Hajji" was her unit's preferred term for Iraqis. She didn't know the word was a title for a Muslim who'd made the pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca; all she knew was that the way they said it made it sound just as mean as "sand nigger."
At the same time, Rivera missed her husband and children more than she ever thought she would. She had always loved them, but one of the things that gnawed away at her was that on some level, her decision to enlist — even if it meant going to an unknown and dangerous place — stemmed from a desire to escape her family situation.
She and Mario's money crunch had forced them to shuttle between their parents' homes in Mesquite while trying to save for their own place. This made for friction. Rivera felt that her mother — an insurance agent who became the sole breadwinner when Rivera's father was hurt at his munitions factory job — resented her and felt burdened by the young family. To make matters worse, tension developed between her mother and Mario. Rivera, who is Anglo but took her husband's surname, was convinced that her mother refused to accept Mario because he's the son of first-generation Mexican and Honduran immigrants.
As she worried about money and became exhausted from juggling work and kids and family feuds, Rivera grew increasingly stressed. The more frustrated she became, the more frequently she became enraged at her husband. If he was working, she felt unsupported at home. When he took time off to be with her and the kids, she grew angry because he wasn't making more money. But when she lost her temper, he'd just stare straight ahead and refuse to fight, which fueled her fury. She'd hurl a shoe or two at his head or fling a radio out the window.
At FOB Loyalty, when Rivera recalled those heated moments she felt horrible and missed her family even more. She got in trouble with her commanders for spending an excessive amount of time talking to Mario on the phone, though one night the habit may have saved her life. One mortar explosion after another rocked the base while she was talking to her husband. When she returned to her bunk, a sizable piece of shrapnel lay on her pillow.
The final turning point came one day in December. An Iraqi man walked through the gate with a little girl, and Rivera moved to frisk them. She assumed the man was coming to file a claim for reparations in exchange for damage caused by American forces. Rivera stopped dead when she turned to the girl. The child looked to be the same age as her daughter, Rebecca. The toddler screamed and wailed inconsolably, her cheeks streaked with tears. Rivera felt sickened by the girl's cries and wondered what had happened to her and why her mother wasn't there.
Long after the pair had disappeared, Rivera couldn't stop thinking about them. Seeing that little Iraqi girl weeping was a watershed moment for her. From then on, she couldn't shake the feeling that everything was wrong. The bloodshed. The loss. The fact that her children were on the other side of the world, learning and saying and doing new things each day that she was missing and would never be able to recapture.
She came home in January for two weeks' leave, and she and Mario took the kids to Texas to visit their families. Rivera had trouble sleeping. Every time a car door slammed, she'd flatten herself onto the floor. Her mother-in-law, Reyna Rivera, recalls her having panic attacks and crying on the floor, begging God for a way to avoid another stint in Iraq.
"She wasn't stable enough to handle that, and she shouldn't have been there in the first place," Reyna says. "To think of her going back . . . My God."
Mario, searching for options online, came across the Web site for the War Resisters Support Campaign in Toronto. He called Zaslofsky, the coordinator, who told him the organization would help provide legal aid and temporary housing. The idea at first struck Rivera as ridiculous. They didn't know a soul in Canada. At the same time, she couldn't bear the thought of going back to Iraq. Deliberating and praying over where to go and how to hide, she let her scheduled flight date out of the United States pass. She knew that 30 days after going AWOL she'd be listed a deserter, the authorities at Fort Carson would alert law enforcement and a warrant would probably be issued for her arrest. She didn't want to live as a wanted criminal in her own country, so Canada began to look like a better option.
While her commanders searched for her by calling relatives and left messages on her phone recommending she return within the month and receive more lenient punishment, she and Mario loaded the kids into their Geo Prism and drove north. On February 18, 2007, they reached Niagara Falls and drove over the Rainbow Bridge. It was a gray, dreary day as they made their way across the river gorge. Dark storm clouds gathered behind them, but as they emerged on the other side of the bridge in Ontario, the sun came out.
Rivera took it as a sign that they had done the right thing.
It's late January, and the past few days have brought grim news to Lee Zaslofsky's small office on the fourth floor of a brick building that houses unions and peace organizations. Along with Rivera, two other deserters living in Toronto have been denied residency and are scheduled to be deported by the end of the month. To add insult to injury, immigration minister Jason Kenney was quoted on the news complaining that the "bogus refugee claimants" were clogging up the courts with futile petitions.
Zaslofsky's group has declared the last stretch of January "Let Them Stay Week" and is holding nightly rallies and advocacy events, as well as pushing around-the-clock phone calls to the immigration ministry and the Prime Minister's Office requesting the government reconsider its view that desertion does not merit shelter in Canada.
On this overcast afternoon, Zaslofsky, a mustachioed 60-something with bright blue eyes and thinning brown hair, sits at his desk, typing furiously. The wall behind him is papered with posters. One, an image of a soldier with his back turned, reads, "Stop the deportations now" and "War resisters welcome here." Another advises, "Cut and run. In an immoral war, it's the thing to do."
Amid the fliers are several photographs. One shows Jeremy Hinzman, a paratrooper from South Dakota who served in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. In 2004, after eight months in Afghanistan and with orders to deploy to Iraq, Hinzman fled north with his wife and 1-year-old son to become the first deserter of his generation to seek political refuge in Canada. Nearby is a picture of Joshua Key, a welder and father of four from Oklahoma who served seven months in Iraq with the 43rd Combat Engineer Company and deserted in 2004. A photograph of a smiling Robin Long before he was deported and imprisoned serves as a sobering reminder of what's at stake.
The deserters have become a tight-knit community, enjoying weekly dinners at a Chinese restaurant near the office, keeping tabs on one another's court cases, and celebrating the babies born to resisters and their spouses. To Zaslofsky, the young men and women have become his surrogate children, and he doesn't want any of them put in jail. Hunched at his computer, he reads a recent e-mail from a soldier at Fort Knox.
"I've been having some problems with what my military does and while I've put in for conscientious objector status, it will most likely get denied, leaving me in a real bad spot," the soldier writes. "I believe what the Army does is to commit murder . . . Unfortunately, the Army treats anyone with my feelings poorly. I can't talk to my buddies because, well, simply put, they hate me for what I'm trying to do. I was wondering what the process of political refuge entails and whether it's advisable to do this."
Given the grim political climate, what will Zaslofsky tell the man?
"I'll advise him to call," he says. "You never give up hope. We're not discouraged; we're angry." Indeed, as he speaks, his face grows red and defiant. "We have a Rush Limbaugh government here — this isn't how Canada is supposed to be."
The political landscape was different when he deserted in 1969.
Zaslofsky was drafted after graduating from the State University of New York at Stoney Brook. He reported for basic training but was disturbed by the stories he heard from soldiers returning from Southeast Asia. When news of the My Lai massacre broke, he asked his sergeant major for an explanation of the mayhem that led American soldiers to slaughter more than 300 unarmed civilians and toss them into a mass grave.
"'In war, bad things happen,'" he recalls the man telling him. "I asked myself, 'If I were in a situation like that, would I be the heroic guy who says, "Hey, stop, this is terrible," or would I join in because I was experiencing the same rage and frustration they were?' I felt I couldn't be sure."
When he received orders to go to Vietnam, he filed for conscientious objector status and was denied. In January 1970, he drove into Canada. While President Richard Nixon struggled to keep a lid on the anti-war protests roiling the States, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was welcoming American deserters by the thousands.
It's unclear whether today's deserters will be affected by America's now handing a president who campaigned on his conviction that the Iraq War was illegal, which is precisely the refrain of most war resisters, many of whom volunteered to go to Afghanistan but refused to serve in Iraq.
Stephen Zunes, a professor of politics and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, who has been active in the peace movement, says President Barack Obama is unlikely to make war deserters much of a priority in the near future. "I can't imagine he'd consider amnesty or anything until the war has wound down sometime in his second term," Zunes says. Even if Obama agrees with the resisters about the unfounded case for war in Iraq, he's still the commander in chief, and it remains a crime to desert one's comrades in a time of war.
Wayne Hall, an Army spokesman, emphasizes that desertion constitutes a punishable crime for good reason. "AWOL and desertion are crimes that, in a time of war, put other soldiers' lives at risk," he says. "Not only do these crimes go against Army values, they degrade unit readiness."
Hall questions why soldiers would enlist voluntarily and only later, once receiving orders to deploy, change their minds and cite political or philosophical reasons for deserting. The fact that large numbers of Americans fleeing the war in Vietnam — 33,000 in 1971 alone — were running from a compulsory draft while today's deserters are turning from the consequences of their own choices has earned these new deserters a scarlet letter in the minds of many Americans.
Rivera has been called a "parasite" and a "traitor" in comments posted to her blog, and Zaslofsky says he frequently receives letters from across the United States that not only call the recent deserters "pussies" and cowards who abandoned their brothers in arms, but also fools who enlisted deliberately only to shirk their duty.
Yet Zunes and other sociologists point out that unlike the draft-dodgers and resisters who fled north decades ago, many of whom were well-educated and had been able to put off the draft for several years by attending college, most recent deserters come from impoverished backgrounds and joined the military because it was the only way they could find to get an education and an above-minimum-wage job.
"What we're looking at now is a poverty draft," Zunes says, "a lot of people from rural areas or inner cities who simply don't have job opportunities or money for college — and the Army promises that."
Unlike their counterparts during Vietnam, who were often politically liberal and opposed the war to begin with, many of today's resisters were raised in conservative swaths of rural America. The majority of the dozen or so young resisters at the Toronto rally, for example, had begun their journeys as eager, patriotic recruits, only to undergo wrenching changes of heart that landed them in a foreign city that they'd hardly imagined, much less considered, inhabiting.
Take Joshua Key, who grew up in a trailer in the tiny town of Guthrie, Oklahoma. A burly welder with tattooed arms, Key, 30, grew up admiring his grandfather who fought in the Korean War. By age 12, he was shooting snakes with AK-47s and Glocks, and 10 years later he joined the Army after struggling to support his wife and children on his earnings from KFC. A country boy who recalls his wife saying, "You get 'em, Josh, before they get you. Even if it's a kid. They're terrorists, too," Key never dreamed that, after a tour in Iraq, he'd be living in self-imposed exile, the author of a book titled The Deserter's Tale.
Ryan Johnson, a slight, bearded 25-year-old from California's Central Valley, who looks more like an organic farmer than a soldier, says he enlisted because he was tired of working factory jobs at places like Frito-Lay and couldn't afford college. His mother, a homemaker, and his stepfather, a UPS driver, kept yellow ribbon bumper stickers on their cars and voted Republican.
Dale Landry, a 23-year-old from the Dallas area who deserted in 2007, joined the Air Force during his senior year of high school. Besides it's enabling him to go to college, he figured the military could be a good path out of low-income, red-state America and into a career in Democratic politics. His mother was a waitress who raised him alone except for a series of husbands who came and went, and he wanted his life to look as different from hers as possible. It does, but he couldn't have predicted that would mean watching from Canada as the first Democrat to win the presidency since Landry was 11 years old took the oath of office.
Another difference between the deserter generations seems to be their level of combat experience. John Hagan, a sociologist at Northwestern University and the author of Northern Passage, a book about the migration of Americans to Canada during Vietnam, says 80 percent of the 25,000 draft-age men who fled to Canada bailed after receiving draft notices and never actually fought.
Now — while the Army's Hall maintains that most deserters are junior troops who leave their units early in their military careers for personal, not moral or philosophical, reasons — the Toronto deserters don't fit that description. Most served for at least two years. Patrick Hart, a former sergeant from New York in the 101st Airborne Division, was an active-duty soldier for nearly 10 years and did one tour in Iraq, while Dean Walcott, of Connecticut, served the Marine Corps for nearly five years and did two Iraq tours.
Unlike soldiers in Vietnam, who did only one tour unless they re-enlisted, today's troops are deployed multiple times, which is making for a new, more battle-tested type of war deserter. Phil McDowell of Rhode Island, for example, joined the Army in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks and fled to Canada in 2006 because he received stop-loss orders back to Iraq after he'd already done one tour there and had been discharged.
Regardless of differences between the deserter generations, today's deserters in Canada have a similar unwillingness to fight in an unpopular war. To Zaslofsky, they are even more courageous than were he and his peers. "In a way, I value them a lot more than my generation," he says. "We had this vast anti-war movement to support us and inform our decisions. They don't have that. They've come to this individually, not because of some mass political indoctrination."
Joshua Key's uneasiness about the Army's presence in Iraq began in the first months of the war in 2003 as he served with Fort Carson's 43rd Combat Engineer Company in Ramadi. His platoon would raid one to four houses each night in search of insurgents or evidence of terrorism, but night after night, all they found were tidy, middle-class homes filled with terrified families, he writes in The Deserter's Tale, his autobiography as told to Canadian writer Lawrence Hill.
Drawn from his recollections and with little or no corroboration from other soldiers, the book is a haunting chronicle of the mounting disillusionment that led him to desert. As his unit stormed through Iraqi homes, he recounts, they'd shout at the inhabitants to "Get down!" and "Shut the fuck up!" in English, then knock the men to the ground, often beating them before hauling them off for transport to a detention facility.
"We tore the hell out of those places," Key writes, "blasting apart doors, ripping up mattresses and ripping drawers from dressers. From all our ransacking, we never found anything other than the ordinary goods that ordinary people keep in their houses."
He also tells how the soldiers — him included — would steal from families during the raids, making off with knives, jewelry, gold, cash and, once, a television.
Parts of the book read like scenes out of Apocalypse Now. One chapter tells of an Army specialist who liked to release aggression by body-slamming corpses in a shed, while another shows members of Key's unit coming upon the bodies of dead Iraqis near the Euphrates River and kicking their severed heads around like soccer balls. One day, while riding through Fallujah atop an armored personnel carrier, the sergeant next to him grew annoyed when a pickup swerved in front of their vehicle. Without missing a beat, Key writes that the sergeant "let loose with his .50-caliber machine gun." The bullets tore into the truck's gas tank, transforming it into a fireball and prompting "hollers of delight" from some of the other men.
Perhaps most traumatic for Key was watching, helpless, as a young Iraqi girl he'd befriended while guarding a hospital was felled by M16 gunfire from an unknown location.
All this, he writes, led him to conclude that the American military "had become a force for evil, and I could not escape the fact that I was part of the machine."
Airman Dale Landry says he began to question the Iraq War while stationed at Dyess Air Force Base near Abilene, Texas, in 2005. "I had friends who deployed and came back and said, 'I don't understand what the year I spent in the desert was for — all we did was patrol for IEDs, raid houses, and guard detainees,'" he says.
At the same time, soldiers were being prosecuted for the prisoner-abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, and Landry says he began to read as much as he could about the case for war in Iraq, including reports revealing that much of the intelligence on Iraqi weapons capabilities that the Bush administration used as the basis for war turned out to be shaky. He also read the United Nations resolutions opposing the U.S. invasion and the 9/11 Commission report.
"I decided that our occupation of that country is illegal, so I made a vow to myself," Landry says. "I'm still an airman, I still have a responsibility, but I'll never take part in the occupation of that country."
The Air Force, however, has a different take on Landry's desertion. While Landry says he deserted after receiving orders to Iraq, Robert Krause, a Dyess spokesman, says Landry was never ordered to deploy to Iraq and, in fact, left to avoid disciplinary charges related to behavior problems.
Questions about the legality of the Iraq War were an integral part of the initial case for deserters pursuing asylum in Canada. When they began arriving in 2004 and 2005, their lawyers filed claims for refugee status based on the Geneva Convention and the fact that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees handbook says a deserter is entitled to asylum if he has refused to participate in a war judged to be unlawful by the international community.
But Alyssa Manning, an attorney representing at least a dozen of the deserters, including Rivera, Key, and Landry, explains that the Canadian courts have declined to consider the legality of the Iraq War in their rulings, finding that unless the asylum seeker is a high-ranking officer with decision-making ability, whether the war is condemned by international law is irrelevant.
"When they were first coming, the idea was that the war itself was illegal so they shouldn't have to fight in it," Manning says. "Jeremy Hinzman's 2004 refugee claim was based on that, but the refugee board, the federal court, and the federal court of appeal refused to consider that."
Key is the only one still waiting on a pending refugee claim, since he and Manning are arguing that he merits asylum not because the war itself is illegal but because he was ordered to commit acts — such as the house raids — that have been condemned by the international human rights community.
In most of the cases, instead of pursuing refugee claims, Manning is applying for permanent residence based on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. That requires showing that the deserters would face hardship if they returned to the United States to apply from afar. So far, the immigration ministry has denied all of the requests and Manning has requested judicial review. Three of her petitions for judicial review have been granted, and more are pending. If the federal court reviews a case and finds fault with the decision, rather than reversing it, the court's ruling signals a chance to start the process anew and maybe get a different outcome.
"This is a really hard fight," Manning says, "because every time you get a victory, it's only a partial victory."
In addition to buying time in the courts, deserters and their supporters are hoping the House of Commons might provide a political solution, which would require either the fall of the Conservative government or a successful bid by the liberal parties to pass legislation allowing the Americans to stay. Last summer, Parliament passed a non-binding resolution arguing that the deserters should be given residency, and polls show that 60 percent of Canadians agree.
As they wait in legal limbo, most of the deserters are able to work, pending the resolution of their cases. Landry is a computer technician. Key does welding. Johnson picks up carpentry projects, and before she had her third child, Rivera worked nights at a bakery. While they've developed friendships and see one another frequently, their uncertain future in Canada and inability to return to the United States present a range of challenges. Key and his wife have separated, and she has returned home with their four children. "It sucks," he says, "but it's kind of hard to tell your kids they can't see their grandparents for four years." Landry complains that he can't keep a girlfriend because of the constant specter of deportation.
Many of the deserters are estranged from their families, who disapprove of their decision. Rivera says she hasn't spoken to her mother since she left Texas. She and Mario checked their phone messages when they arrived in Ontario to hear her mother saying that if Rivera didn't turn herself in, she'd call the police and report Mario for kidnapping Rivera and the kids. According to Mario's mother, Reyna, that's just what she did. Rivera's mother, Cathy Miller, didn't return phone calls for this story, but Reyna says that for months she received calls from Mesquite investigators asking about Mario and a kidnapping allegation.
For Ryan Johnson, losing his family has been the hardest part of coming to Canada. His mother is so ashamed of her son that she tells friends he's still serving in the Army and deployed overseas.
"My grandfather died last year," Johnson says. "He was one of the people who pretty much raised me, and he stopped talking to me because of the decision I made. A lot of my family has disowned me."
Landry, over a glass of wine at a Toronto restaurant, says he was never especially close to his mother, but there are a lot of things he misses about home, and he hopes to return.
"I still have aspirations for running for political office," he says. "That was part of the goal of joining the military, getting a foot in the door to the government setting. But yeah, it didn't work." A few minutes later, he spots an American $20 bill while a group of people pay for dinner and drinks. Landry's eyes light up. "I love Andrew Jackson," he says. "Old Hickory, he's one of my favorite presidents." Then he grows serious. "I'm homesick lately. I didn't get to canvass during the election. I didn't get to go to the Democratic National Convention. It's kind of depressing."
It's nearing the end of "Let Them Stay Week," and Rivera, Mario, and their three children are being honored with a dinner at the pacifist Quaker House near the University of Toronto. While Mario holds their 2-month-old, Katie, in the living room of the cozy Victorian, Rivera sits around a wooden table with a dozen other people eating stew, salad, and scalloped potatoes.
Nearby sits Naba Hamid, an Iraqi who used to teach at Baghdad University and is now seeking refugee status in Canada. An elegant woman wearing a pink sweater and large pearl earrings, Hamid hears Rivera is from Texas and explains that she's involved in a number of women's rights organizations and was supposed to attend a conference in the southwestern state. "I couldn't go," she says. "My visa expired, and my refugee status is pending."
Rivera tells her, "I wanted to get involved in a refugee group here. But I didn't know if I'd be accepted, you know, as someone who says, 'I have trauma because I afflicted you.' I just went and saw a counselor. As long as you keep talking about it, it's not so bad." She's quiet for a moment and seems to be lost in faraway thoughts. Earlier she'd mentioned that she still sees little girls who remind her of that 2-year-old Iraqi at the gate, but right now she recalls other incidents that continue to cloud her thoughts. "The soldiers went out on raids every night; the people didn't have electricity; the markets were getting blown up every day."
Hamid nods, her eyes brimming. "There was a raid in my neighborhood after I left," she says. "They came to my house. My neighbor said nothing was disturbed, but I don't know." She asks where Rivera was stationed while in Iraq.
"Southeast Baghdad."
"When did you arrive there?"
"I was there October 2006 through January 2007."
"I left that month, too," Hamid says. "It was horrible. It was hell. Bombings, no electricity, no water, no telephones, no food, no nothing for days. We'd go everywhere in taxis, but it was very dangerous. You didn't know if the driver was a criminal or a terrorist. And I was a target for many reasons. I'm a professor, an activist, a woman."
The two women look at each other for a moment in silence. "That's crazy," Rivera finally says. "We could have crossed paths there, but we met right here."
The next day, January 23, is cold and overcast, only four days before the Riveras are scheduled to be deported. Manning, their lawyer, hasn't yet heard from the federal court about a stay of deportation, and all they can do at this point is pray. On this chilly morning, Rivera has awoken with a head cold. Christian and Rebecca are chasing each other around the living room of the family's two-bedroom apartment on the upper floor of a cramped high-rise.
"Stop that," Rivera tells them. "Mommy's sick." She shakes her head. "Who knows what's going to happen to me in the next few days, and I'll be sick on top of it. Great."
She rises from the couch to dress and run errands. She'll strap the baby to her chest and go to the pharmacy to pick up Mario's medication for high blood pressure. She tries to take good care of her husband. She's well aware that they are in this situation because of her, and while she doesn't regret joining the Army — "I needed the experience to open my eyes," she says — she feels accountable. Sometimes when she looks at her husband, she is amazed. "I can't believe I found someone to love me through all of this," she says. "It's amazing. I mean, we've known each other since we were 17, and he stuck with me through everything. Not even my parents could do that."
While she cooks eggs in the kitchen, the phone rings. Mario, sitting at the computer, picks it up. His eyes widen as he listens.
"Oh, that's great. Wait until I tell Kimberly," he says.
He listens and nods, then hangs up. He calls to his wife, who appears holding a spatula.
"So, unfortunately, Alyssa called about the stay . . . " he tells her.
Rivera's breath catches. "Uh-huh?"
"We didn't get it," he says, trying unsuccessfully to disguise his grin.
"Are you messing with me?" Rivera says.
Her husband laughs. "We got it."
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"For how long?"
"Maybe through June. We don't know."
Rivera exhales, her shoulders relaxing a bit. "All I can say is thank God."
Mario nods. "That buys us a few months," he says. "But we're not out of the woods yet."


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If you come to this post expecting a breakdown of some trend in cleantech transit, you will have to kindly wait until next week. Tonight's post is fully dedicated to a New York City transit center's incompetence that this blogger witnessed first hand just a few short hours ago.
For thousands of travelers each day, for both commuters and tourists alike, the New York City Port Authority Bus Terminal serves as a portal to the "city that never sleeps." By all accounts, this is one of the most bustling public transit hubs in the United States, as it serves over 58 million passengers annually. Simply stepping into the main terminal's entrance on 8th Ave between 41st and 42nd streets, one wonders how this labyrinth even functions to serve it's purpose of transporting passengers on buses throughout the Northeast. The answer is barely. For instance, just today, I had to wait 25 minutes from the time our bus returned to Port Authority until the time we alighted from the bus due to a last second gate logistic switch. In talking to other friends, apparently this type of experience is the norm, not the exception unfortunately.
It is no secret that buses are treated as second class citizens in New York City. Simply look to the lack of bus rapid transit lanes, a strategy that has shown time and again to work in South America and Europe. City planners and policy makers have always favored subways or commuter rail lines over bus transit. Nowhere is this more evident than in the comparison between Grand Central Station and the Port Authority Bus Terminal. One is a beacon of architectural reclamation and commercial triumph, the other is a seventh rate architectural structure whose only commercial highlight is that it contains a Heartland Brewery (brewery should be used loosely……) by one of the main entrances. Such an important transportation hub should be seen as an architectural landmark. Other nations seem to understand this, even China. Apparently, we in the US, especially in New York, missed the memo.
If the exterior architecture weren't bad enough, perhaps one should take a closer look at the circuitous paths leading up to the actual bus gates. It is time for a Grand Central-esque overhaul. And while they are at it, why not let the revised structure rise to the sky with gleaming commercial office space like some of these 2008 proposals. I understand this is a massive capital investment that will probably bankrupt the city and state even further. The city and state probably don't have a cool $10 billion just lying around these days. We must continue to put relevant infrastructure in place that will finally elevate the bus to its proper place alongside trains in the perception of the city public transit user.


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Fuld's return to Trop evokes memory of '11 catch
ST. PETERSBURG -- Sam Fuld is in town with his new team, the Twins, prompting Rays manager Joe Maddon to reflect on the catch Fuld made on April 9, 2011, in Chicago against the White Sox.
"It was pretty spectacular," the Rays' manager said.
Juan Pierre hit for the White Sox with two outs and the bases loaded in the fourth. Pierre connected on one of Wade Davis' offerings and drove the ball into the corner near the wall in right field. Fuld gave chase before leaving his feet at the last instant to make the diving, back-handed catch on the warning track.
"That one there, airborne, into gravel, head going into the wall," Maddon said. "At a moment when we really did need it. All that stuff was there, and I would hope that as they play back the greatest catches of all time that that would be included."
A.J. Pierzynski was the White Sox catcher that day and noted of the play: "Honestly, he ran like 50 yards to get to that ball. It was an incredible catch, and I tip my hat to him for, one, he didn't kill himself on the fence and, two, he got there and made the play. It was an amazing play."


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THEY improv leads the way for corporate event, banquet and private party entertainment with their Wisconsin game shows. These shows are designed to entertain and to produce positive results. Participants in the games have a lot of fun while lowering their personal barriers and increase their ability to participate in personal relationships.
Each Wisconsin game show is individualized with elements adjusted based on the needs of the audience. This includes shifting from ratings G through NC-17, wholly audience driven to packing participants with comedic performers, and from innocuous shows to shows that ambush unwitting audience members.
Most Wisconsin game shows are provided as a low-tech adventure which allows us to focus on the people rather than the equipment and gives us more flexibility to adjust to the audience members as well as to fit into any venue. Additional set elements, equipment, scoreboards, etc. are available at an increased cost. Besides the host, a Vanna is available at an increased fee, and is recommended for shows with larger audiences. Travel costs will also be added to any quote.
Wisconsin game shows come in ranges of 30, 45, 60, and 90 minutes including a variety of options, approaches and playoff versions. Prices range due to the high level of customization to your group, so you should contact THEY improv for a free consultation about your needs and to get you a quote.
Our Wisconsin game shows are available throughout the Badger State including Milwaukee, Madison, Fond du Lac, Lake Geneva, West Allis, Waukesha, Cedarburg, Brookfield, Green Bay, Beloit, Kenosha, Sheboygan, Racine, Appleton, Wauwatosa and practically anywhere else you can think of.
Contact THEY improv to find out the variety of Wisconsin game shows available and how hiring THEY improv is a winning proposition for everyone.
Email THEY improv at firstname.lastname@example.com or by calling (866) 219-4386.
Our Game Shows include:
The Functional Feud:Loosely based on television's popular Family Feud, the Functional Feud has competitors competing to come up with complete lists from popular knowledge. From naming the seven dwarfs to the seven deadly sins, common knowledge is challenged for points and bragging rights in this battle of wits.
Learn more on our Functional Feud Page.
The NewlyMet Game: Loosely based on television's popular the Newlywed Game, the NewlyMet Game pairs contestants off to prove that they know more about each other than the other pairs. Audience members serve as the judges with bizarre and fun ways to show incorrect answers. Often entertaining and amusing, this brings knowledge of each other to a new level and enhances personal relationships in a fun and supportive atmosphere.
Learn more on our Newly Met Game Page.
Match Me If You Can: Loosely based on television's popular Match Game, Match Me If You Can pits two contestants against one another trying to match answers with a panel of six audience members. Other audience members serve as judges with group fun at incorrect answers. This game improves the group mind of a team and helps people to see things through each other's eyes.
Learn more on our Match Me Page.
Timed Tirades: Loosely based on television's popular Minute To Win It or Beat the Clock, THEY improv's Timed Tirades pit contestants against each other in big goofy activities. With dozens of options for contests, with everything from human horseshoes to hopping, there's something for any group. One of our most popular options, you should contact us today to find out how we can increase employee bonding through these fun activities. Because it reinvents itself and changes the contestants, this can be used for a slightly larger group range (20-75).
Learn more on our Timed Tirades Page.
Murder Mystery Mayhem: This is a custom-built murder mystery party for your group with a THEY improv professional facilitating the evening and making sure that everyone has a good time. With our emcee watching over your group, the attendees are pitted against one of their own, a murderer, who works to get away with murder! If someone solves the crime, the murderer is found and the super sleuth gets a prize. If the murderer gets away with it, he or she gets the prize instead! Additionally, a prize is given to the best actor/actress in your group. A great game for smaller groups (15-40) that are looking for unique entertainment.
Learn more on our Murder Mystery Mayhem Page.
Trivia is not Trivial: Designed for larger groups, the audience is divided into teams, usually by table. The teams are provided with the upcoming categories of questions. They talk amongst themselves and determine their confidence for each category. Then, as questions are asked, the teams compete against each other to win a trivia quiz without the benefit of technology. This bonds team mates, has friendly competition and can be done throughout a meal leading to a more lengthy shows. While most are 30-45 minutes, this can run for 90 minutes or so. A great game for slightly larger groups (50-150 or more).
Learn more on our Trivia Games Page.
Audience Olympiad: Having more people participate and maintaining their attention can be an issue for larger groups. To address this, we developed the Audience Olympiad. We divide the audience into teams with each choosing participants to represent them in each activity. Scores are then aggregated together for a total result rather than game by game. Everyone on the team wins prizes whether or not they physically participated or not. This means that they're more likely to maintain their attention to cheer their team on to victory. This is the only game show that we generally do not provide the prizes as the teams can get quite large. We can bring the prizes for a negotiated additional charge.
Learn more on our Audience Olympiad Page.
Getting To Know You: Designed as a team building effort, the audience is divided into several groups. Each group is provided with a period of time to talk to each other. They are expected to learn pertinent details about each other and to get to know each others' personality. One person from each group is brought up in front of the audience. They are each provided with a white board to write answers. The person from each group is asked questions about themselves. Their group then tries to match those answers. It is a great way for people to get to know each other better and learn things about one another. A great game for slightly larger groups (70-150).
So You've Got Talent: We have a variety of formats designed to bring out the unsung talent of your group. Whether singing, dancing, acting, comedy, writing, skills of dexterity or human oddities, there's a format to push the boundaries and to get your coworkers, friends or family to bond as never before. Our facilitators can assist or simply provide the framework for your people to become stars. To learn more about these, please see our Talent Page by clicking here. There are versions for just about any sized group (10-150) or for smaller groups (10-30) to perform in front of major audiences ranging in size into the many 100s.
What's the Deal?: For larger groups, maintaining the interest of the audience can be key. Similar to the Let's Make a Deal TV show, our What's the Deal, our Emcees wander the audience challenging audience members to trade options to win a variety of prizes. The big winners from the audience are then brought on stage to make deals with one another or to trade for potential larger prizes. This is also a fun way to run a White Elephant event or other gift exchanges. Prices vary wildly based on whether we're providing the prizes and the expense involved with the prizes. Likewise, for larger audiences we might provide camera crews and projection for an additional fee.
Learn more on our What's the Deal Page.
We are proud to serve Milwaukee, Madison, Fond du Lac, Lake Geneva, West Allis, Waukesha, Cedarburg, Brookfield, Green Bay, Beloit, Kenosha, Sheboygan, Racine, Appleton, Wauwatosa and practically anywhere else you can think of in the Badger State. "Have Laughter, Will Travel."
Contact us at firstname.lastname@example.com or by calling (866) 219-4386.


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Completed the following three tasks to get to the Gold Medal Level, for now:
A. Comment on a new (to you) genea-blog.
Left a comment at Nana's Diggins, which is a new blog authored by Sue Tolbert. I found her blog by browsing the Blog Network at Facebook. She has three really neat photographs posted so far and has some wonderful stories to go along with them. fM in particular should enjoy This Is Lydia and She Is Dead. Sue is a (relatively new) member of the Genea-Bloggers Group.
B. Join another genea-blogger's blog network on Facebook Blog Networks.
And then I joined Sue's Blog Network! Also confirmed her as the author (extra credit?). And I also joined the Blog Network for several other new Genea-Bloggers.
E. Participate in an indexing project.
Spent several hours this afternoon with six other members of the Genealogical Society of Whitley County. The group is creating an index for some old Clerk of Courts records. One person has indexed about a fourth of the 30+ boxes of packets since April 2007. This project has been made a priority and several more volunteers will be helping. Due to incompatibilities between computers and software I had to create a new spreadsheet for the new people who will be using Excel instead of Works. Once all of the packets have been indexed (hopefully within the next year) I'll merge the various files to create a master index and format it for the website and for hard-copy publication.
- Official Rules and Categories
- My Goals for The Games


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You can find files in Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides by searching for:
- File title
- File contents
- Items featured in pictures, PDF files, or other files stored on your Drive
You can only search for files stored in My Drive. Files stored in folders shared with you won't appear in your search unless you add the folders to My Drive. Learn how to add files to My Drive.
You can also sort and filter search results.
Search for your files
- On your Android phone or tablet, open the Google Drive app.
- At the top, tap Search Drive.
- Type a word or phrase in the search box.
- On your keyboard, tap Search .
Search tips
- Search results will appear as you type.
- Google Drive searches the titles and content of all files you have permission to see.
- To see all results, tap Search on your keyboard.
Filter your Drive results
To find files more easily in Drive, you can narrow search results by filtering them.
- On your Android phone or tablet, open the Google Drive app.
- At the top, tap Search Drive.
- Choose from the following options:
- File types: Such as documents, images, or PDFs.
- Date modified: The date a file was last edited.
- Owned by: Whether the file belongs to you or someone else
- Type a word or phrase in the search box.
- On your keyboard, tap Search .
More search options
You can refine a search in Drive with these advanced searches.
Note: Not all examples work on all devices.
- Find documents that contain an exact word or phrase.
- Example: "match this phrase exactly"
- Find files with at least one of the words.
- Example: tacos OR nachos
Minus sign
- Find documents that exclude a particular word. If you want "salsa," but not "dancing"...
- Example: salsa -dancing
- Find documents owned or shared by a specific person.
- Examples:
- owner:email@example.com
- from:firstname.lastname@example.com
- Find documents you shared with someone.
- Example: to:firstname.lastname@example.com
- Find items marked with a star.
- Find items that are trashed.
- Search by the type of document: folder, document, spreadsheet, presentation, PDF, image, video, drawing, form, script, or table.
- Example: type:spreadsheet
Before & after
- Find items that were edited before or after a certain day. Format the date as YYYY-MM-DD.
- Examples:
- before:2014-05-01
- after:2014-05-01
- Search by title
- Example: title:Conference 2014
- Find Google Fusion Tables or Apps Script files.
- Examples:
- app:"Google Apps Script"
- app:"Google Fusion Tables"
Source:domain (Google for work or school)
- Search for items that have been shared across your organization's entire domain, instead of items created by you or your group.
- Example: To search for files related to domain, use source:domain
Search Drive with your feed
If you have the Drive app on your Android phone or tablet, you can search for files in Drive from your feed.
- Open your feed.
- Type or speak the words, "Search Drive for" followed by the phrase you want to search for in Drive.
- To type your search, tap the search box at the top.
- To speak your search, tap the microphone in the search box.
- Tap Done .
- The Drive app will open and search for the phrase you requested.
To return to "My Drive" after your search, tap Back .


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"Ronald Rolheiser is one of the great Christian spiritual writers of our time, as well as one of my own personal favorites. I have read, and recommended, his beautiful book The Holy Longing more times than I can remember. His sequel, Sacred Fire, is a superb book–one to give to a seeker looking to find God, to a friend struggling with a relationship with God, to a devout believer looking to deepen his or her faith–or best of all, to yourself, as a way of coming to know the God who desires ever more to know you." —James Martin, SJ, author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage
"When Ron Rolheiser writes, it is clear, compelling, and challenging, plus it is about issues that matter to the soul. Well, here he does it again–and does it well!" —Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M., Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque, New Mexico


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Just a quick note to wish everyone who visits my blog a happy and peaceful Christmas break. Over the past few festive seasons I've usually watched the Patrick Stewart version of A Christmas Carol, which I have reviewed here in the past, but this year I had a change by watching a 1977 BBC version starring Sir Michael Hordern as Scrooge and John Le Mesurier, best-known as Sergeant Wilson in the much-loved comedy series Dad's Army, as Marley. I think this is only available on a Dutch DVD or as part of the Charles Dickens BBC Collection, but you can also find it posted on Youtube at the moment.
This is a very small-scale version, packed into just an hour, but I liked it very much – I grew up in the 1970s, and often enjoy adaptations made then. Director Moira Armstrong has made a number of other costume dramas, including some episodes of Lark Rise to Candleford. This short film has a feel of the original illustrations, and also I think all the dialogue in Elaine Morgan's script is taken from Dickens' original words. Sir Michael had earlier played Marley in the famous Alastair Sim version (Scrooge, 1951), which is many people's favourite – I will hope to watch that one soon and compare. Anyway, I get the feeling Sir Michael has great fun as Scrooge, speaking his most outrageous lines in the early scenes with a gleeful wit, and then also making his gradual transformation believable. Le Mesurier doesn't have very much screen time but his vagueness works well for a ghost, and the special effects are good for the period, I'd say.
There is a fine support cast – June Brown, famous as Dot in EastEnders, has a chilling cameo as Mrs Dilber, the horrible woman who steals the shirt from Scrooge's corpse in his vision of the future, while others to watch out for include John Salthouse as the young Scrooge, Zoe Wanamaker as Scrooge's sweetheart Belle, Bernard Lee as the Ghost of Christmas Present, Tracey Childs, who starred in a BBC version of Sense and Sensibility, as Scrooge's sister, Fan, and Zelah Clarke, who later starred in a version of Jane Eyre, as Martha Cratchit. Anyway, no time to write a full-length review but I'd recommend this to anyone who gets a chance to watch it, and happy Christmas to all who are celebrating.


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After three days of mediation, San Diego city leaders have reached some sort of "proposed solution" regarding efforts to oust embattled Mayor Bob Filner from office.
On Wednesday just before 7 p.m., San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith – accompanied by other leaders, including City Council President Todd Gloria and City Councilmember Kevin Faulconer – released a brief statement about mediation efforts in downtown San Diego.
"We have just completed three days of mediation. We have reached a proposed solution," said Goldsmith. "It will be presented to the City Council at a closed session Council meeting on Friday at 1 p.m. at City Hall."
Goldsmith said that immediately thereafter, at a closed session, they may have a report at a public Council meeting.
SPECIAL SECTION: Mayor Under Fire
The City Attorney went on to say that the City Council has not yet heard the proposal, due to confidentiality requirements.
"This is the process we follow. Any rumors you hear about the proposal, you may deem to be untrue because the people standing here are the ones who know of it and we have all committed that we will maintain the confidentiality of the mediation," added Goldsmith.
Goldsmith said there will be no mediation on Thursday. Leaders will not release any further details until Friday afternoon.
READ: Key Players in Mayor Bob Filner Scandal
City leaders had been holed up at the AT&T building in downtown San Diego since Monday for these mediation sessions.
NBC 7 San Diego learned earlier this week that Goldsmith and Filner, two men who have fought publicly in the past eight months, were seated on opposite ends of a long conference room table in Monday's session.


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In a Complaint to Determine Dischargeability of Debt, Court denied cross-motions for summary judgment filed by Plaintiff and Defendant. The Court held that collateral estoppel did not apply to a state court's default judgment on issue of Defendant's fraud. The Court held that state court's default judgment was entitled to full faith and credit.
The Middle District of Georgia offers opinions in PDF format, listed by year and judge. For a more detailed search, enter the keyword or case number in the search box above.
Please note: These opinions are not a complete inventory of all judges' decisions and are not documents of record. Official court records are available at the clerk's office.
Debtor moved to amend her confirmed Chapter 13 plan after confirmation. Confirmed plan treated Respondent's liens as secured claims. Debtor's income decreased, and Debtor wanted to reclassify Respondent's liens as wholly unsecured claims. The Court denied the motion to modify, noting that Debtor's loss of income did not change the nature of Respondent's secured claims as established by the order of confirmation.
Defendant made a loan to Debtor so that Debtor could pay a specific creditor. Debtor understood that loan could only be used to pay that creditor. Debtor sold certain real property and put the proceeds into the same bank account as Defendant's loan. Debtor paid the creditor and repaid the loan to Defendant within the ninety-day preference period. The Court held that the repayment to Defendant was not protected by the earmarking doctrine. The Court held that Debtor held Defendant's loan proceeds in an implied trust and that the trustee could not recover the repayment as a preferential transfer.
The state court awarded custody of two minor children to the debtor's former husband. The state court ordered the debtor to pay some of the attorney's fees and costs incurred by the former husband. The debtor argues that an award of attorney's fees arising from a post-divorce child custody action was dischargeable. The bankruptcy court disagreed and held that the debtor's obligation was in the nature of support and was nondischargeable in bankruptcy.
The Chapter 7 debtor's employer withheld, pursuant to a continuing garnishment, funds from wages that the debtor earned within the ninety-day preference period. The Court held that the debtor could recover the funds and claim the funds as exempt property.
Debtors sought to discharge state income tax obligations for taxable years ending more than three years prior to the Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing under 11 U.S.C.A. § 523(a)(1)(A). Debtors presented no facts in opposition to the state's motion for summary judgment. The Court held that the three-year priority period was equitably tolled during the debtors' prior Chapter 13 cases under 11 U.S.C.A. § 105(a). The Court held that the debtors' obligations for the tax years in question were nondischargeable.
Adopting the "functional nexus" test for determining whether an item is a "household good" for the purpose of lien avoidance.
Judge John T. Laney, III
In a motion to compel Debtor to surrender leased premises, the court held that although the bankruptcy court has the authority to enter such an order, relief in favor of Movant is not proper in this case. Movant leased operating premises to the equity owner of Debtor who allowed Debtor to use the leased premises. After the lease was deemed rejected under § 365, Movant obtained relief from the automatic stay. However, Debtor remained in possession of the property at the express permission of the equity owner. Therefore, the court held that Debtor's right to remain in possession was dependent upon the rights of the equity owner, an issue currently pending in state court.
The Court looked to Georgia state law on what constitutes a fixture to determine that various pieces of automotive equipment installed in the site of a future car dealership were not fixtures. The sale documents and the behavior of the parties involved in demonstrated an intent to treat the equipment not as fixtures but as personal property, and thus the sale of all the car dealership's "assets," as defined in the sale documents, did not include the sale of the equipment. The Court granted the movant's motion for relief.
Sustaining the Chapter 12 Trustee's objection to the secured status of a claim, the court held that no valid UCC-1 existed at the time Debtor filed his petition. Therefore, Creditor's security interest was unperfected. Although Trustee arguably requested the court the determine validity of a lien, which requires an adversary proceeding, the court held that the claim objection process was proper in this case.


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Mrs. Dee Dee Warren continues her series on eschatology by examining Daniel's 70 Weeks Prophecy found in Daniel 9:24-27. Part one of this series is here and part two can be found here.
To listen to the program from the site please click the link provided below. To save this program to your portable listening device please right click the link below and select "save as".
Understanding New Testament Eschatology Part 3 Daniels 70 Weeks Prophecy
The debate with Pastor Terry Boyle that Mrs. Warren referred to on the program can be found at the links below.


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Graphene is incredibly cool stuff: a sheet of interlocking carbon atoms, only one atom thick. It's an extremely interesting material, and a newly pioneered technique has created a way of painting stripes on the graphene sheets to change its functionality.
That representation of an owl you see above was created by adding hydrogen atoms to certain areas of the graphene, transforming it into a graphane superlattice, which is more conductive and suitable for use with organic chemistry where graphene is not.
The researchers discovered a way to strip out those hydrogen atoms and replace them with more carbon, creating an even more functional superlattice — one that could be used for a new generation of microscopic circuitry. The technique allows both spatial and density control, which opens up a raft of possibilities. Similar to microcircuitry, it would be possible to paint circuitboards of sorts on a single sheet of graphene, creating nanoscale electronics, electrical circuits, and chemical sensors. Imagine a blood glucose meter so thin it could be implanted, or a digital camera as thick as a credit card.


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"I Played a Role" is the first track and video from "The Other Person is You", El May's forthcoming album. The video premiered on Entertainment Weekly and is now available on YouTube.
El May is the nom de plume of LA-based Australian musician Lara Meyerratken. The concept for the "I Played a Role" video, directed by Yaara Sumeruk, was to approach strangers in New York and have them listen to the song and dance to it, in the street, with Lara. The dreamy slow-motion results are engaging, enigmatic and utterly charming.
"The Other Person is You" will be released on Lojinx in Europe in August 2014. "I Played a Role", the first single, is out now in all good digital stores.


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Congratulations to the students and faculty of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences for their outstanding work in creating "Reinventing the Wheel," their entry in the 12th Annual Chicago Flower & Garden Show which is continuing at Navy Pier through Sunday, March 19th.
For the first time in its participation in the Show, CHSAS was awarded the Gold Medal in the Horticulture Division, the highest award given in this prestigious competition. The Medal was made possible by a total team effort under the leadership of Principal David Gilligan, Dr. Robert Bush, Scott Nelson and Julie Reynolds and the CHSAS students who designed, built and cultivated the garden,
Over the nine day run of the Chicago Flower & Garden Show, ten of thousands of people will see the great work of the students at CHSAS and see the great opportunities in agricultural education in Chicago. This is the third year that the Ag Mech Tech students under the direction of Dr. Bush and the Horticulture students under the direction of Mrs. Reynolds and Mr. Nelson have worked together to create one the premiere gardens in the show. It is great to see the students and school recognized with gold!


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The idea for the protests came from a HK law professor named Benny Tai in an article published in January of 2013. In June 2014 the Occupy Central group organized an informal poll in which participants voted on three proposals for the general election to be sent to Beijing. All three of the proposals included open nominations. A number equal to about one-fifth of registered HK voters participated in the poll, which was heavily criticized by mainland media.
The actual protests were initiated when a group called Scholarism, led by Joshua Wong (who has received a lot of media attention in the US), led a student strike at the end of September. A week later Benny Tai and the Occupy movement launched their plan for civil disobedience, which they had been threatening to do since becoming organized.
There are many strong opinions of what is going on in HK. Supporters of the Occupy movement consider Beijing's insistence that candidates for Chief Executive be vetted by them as a reneg on the promise of free and open elections. The most disciplined of the protesters will argue that representative government is a good and universally progressive cause, even though there are historical reasons they are protesting for it now as opposed to during their long history of British colonial rule. Democratic governments throughout history have been tailored to the historical conditions of the given political entity, such as the electoral college system in the US, which was implemented to give the less populous Southern states more leverage during slavery and is still in use today. But the Occupy protests are by design leaderless, and many of the factions participating in the protests are doing so for their own reasons, such as resentment or even chauvinism towards mainland Chinese, nostalgia for life under British rule, or just plain hooliganism.
There is a lot of history that the Western media has largely overlooked in their coverage. It is a fact that the people of HK accepted British colonial rule and directly-appointed governors for 150 years. Not only did HK accept these direct appointments, there was never a popular movement even suggesting universal suffrage during British rule. Also, it appears that many of the leaders of the Occupy movement have connections with the US NGO the National Endowment for Democracy, which was also involved in the Arab Spring and the Color Revolutions. NED also supports Uighur separatists in western China.
Here is an article about NED's involvement in the Occupy Central Movement.
I am going to post the best article I have read about the Occupy Central protests, one that sidesteps the issue of the nomination process for Chief Executive in HK and looks at the larger history and social forces that have shaped HK, play a role in the character of the Occupy Central Movement, and should guide HK as it negotiates its future:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -democracy
China is Hong Kong's future – not its enemy
Protesters cry democracy but most are driven by dislocation and resentment at mainlanders' success
Martin Jacques
The Guardian, Tuesday 30 September 2014 14.45 EDT
The upheaval sweeping Hong Kong is more complicated than on the surface it might appear. Protests have erupted over direct elections to be held in three years' time; democracy activists claim that China's plans will allow it to screen out the candidates it doesn't want.
It should be remembered, however, that for 155 years until its handover to China in 1997, Hong Kong was a British colony, forcibly taken from China at the end of the first opium war. All its 28 subsequent governors were appointed by the British government. Although Hong Kong came, over time, to enjoy the rule of law and the right to protest, under the British it never enjoyed even a semblance of democracy. It was ruled from 6,000 miles away in London. The idea of any kind of democracy was first introduced by the Chinese government. In 1990 the latter adopted the Basic Law, which included the commitment that in 2017 the territory's chief executive would be elected by universal suffrage; it also spelt out that the nomination of candidates would be a matter for a nominating committee.
This proposal should be seen in the context of what was a highly innovative – and, to westerners, completely unfamiliar – constitutional approach by the Chinese. The idea of "one country, two systems" under which Hong Kong would maintain its distinctive legal and political system for 50 years. Hong Kong would, in these respects, remain singularly different from the rest of China, while at the same time being subject to Chinese sovereignty. In contrast, the western view has always embraced the principle of "one country, one system" – as, for example, in German unification. But China is more a civilisation-state than a nation-state: historically it would have been impossible to hold together such a vast country without allowing much greater flexibility. Its thinking – "one civilisation, many systems" – was shaped by its very different history.
In the 17 years since the handover, China has, whatever the gainsayers might suggest, overwhelmingly honoured its commitment to the principle of one country, two systems. The legal system remains based on English law, the rule of law prevails, and the right to demonstrate, as we have seen so vividly in recent days, is still very much intact. The Chinese meant what they offered. Indeed, it can reasonably be argued that they went to extremes in their desire to be unobtrusive: sotto voce might be an apt way of describing China's approach to Hong Kong. At the time of the handover, and in the three years I lived in Hong Kong from 1998, it was difficult to identify any visible signs of Chinese rule: I recall seeing just one Chinese flag.
Notwithstanding this, Hong Kong – and its relationship with China – was in fact changing rapidly. Herein lies a fundamental reason for the present unrest: the growing sense of dislocation among a section of Hong Kong's population. During the 20 years or so prior to the handover, the territory enjoyed its golden era – not because of the British but because of the Chinese. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping embarked on his reform programme, and China began to grow rapidly. It was still, however, a relatively closed society. Hong Kong was the beneficiary – it became the entry point to China, and as a result attracted scores of multinational companies and banks that wanted to gain access to the Chinese market. Hong Kong got rich because of China. It also fed an attitude of hubris and arrogance. The Hong Kong Chinese came to enjoy a much higher standard of living than the mainlanders. They looked down on the latter as poor, ignorant and uncouth peasants, as greatly their inferior. They preferred – up to a point – to identify with westerners rather than mainlanders, not because of democracy (the British had never allowed them any) but primarily because of money and the status that went with it.
Much has changed since 1997. The Chinese economy has grown many times, the standard of living of the Chinese likewise. If you want to access the Chinese market nowadays, why move to Hong Kong when you can go straight to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and a host of other major cities? Hong Kong has lost its role as the gateway to China. Where previously Hong Kong was China's unrivalled financial centre, now it is increasingly dwarfed by Shanghai. Until recently, Hong Kong was by far China's largest port: now it has been surpassed by Shanghai and Shenzhen, and Guangzhou will shortly overtake it.
Two decades ago westerners comprised the bulk of Hong Kong's tourists, today mainlanders account for the overwhelming majority, many of them rather more wealthy than most Hong Kong Chinese. Likewise, an increasing number of mainlanders have moved to the territory – which is a growing source of resentment. If China needed Hong Kong in an earlier period, this is no longer nearly as true as it was. On the contrary, without China, Hong Kong would be in deep trouble.
Understandably, many Hong Kong Chinese are struggling to come to terms with these new realities. They are experiencing a crisis of identity and a sense of displacement. They know their future is inextricably bound up with China but that is very different from embracing the fact. Yet there is no alternative: China is the future of Hong Kong.
All these issues, in a most complex way, are being played out in the present arguments over universal suffrage. Hong Kong is divided. About half the population support China's proposals on universal suffrage, either because they think they are a step forward or because they take the pragmatic view that they will happen anyway. The other half is opposed. A relatively small minority of these have never really accepted Chinese sovereignty. Anson Chan, the former head of the civil service under Chris Patten, and Jimmy Lai, a prominent businessman, fall into this category, and so do some of the Democrats. Then there is a much larger group, among them many students, who oppose Beijing's plans for more idealistic reasons.
One scenario can be immediately discounted. China will not accept the election of a chief executive hostile to Chinese rule. If the present unrest continues, then a conceivable backstop might be to continue indefinitely with the status quo, which, from the point of view of democratic change, both in Hong Kong and China, would be a retrograde step. More likely is that the Chinese government will persist with its proposals, perhaps with minor concessions, and anticipate that the opposition will slowly abate. This remains the most likely scenario.
An underlying weakness of Chinese rule has nevertheless been revealed by these events. One of the most striking features of Hong Kong remains the relative absence of a mainland political presence. The Chinese have persisted with what can best be described as a hands-off approach. Their relationship to the administration is either indirect or behind the scenes. Strange as it may seem, the Chinese are not involved in the cut and thrust of political argument. They will need to find more effective ways of making their views clear and arguing their case – not in Beijing but in Hong Kong.


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Record Numbers Apply for 2-Week Specials
The 2-Week High School Specials programs were introduced by Projects Abroad four years ago in response to lots of interest from students who wanted a gap year taster experience either in a school vacation or in the summer before starting college. This year we have had record numbers applying for the programs.
If you want to join a program for this summer you will need to apply as soon as possible. The projects are on set dates throughout the summer.
The range of projects is wide and varied with volunteers joining journalism projects in Romania, sports projects in Ghana, medical projects in India amongst a selection of twenty different projects. To find out more about the other projects available click here.
Deepan Gosrani was in India on the medical project. She says "Thank you for the work experience in India. I had the most amazing time there and found it really enjoyable, with all the staff being very welcoming."


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Harrington named Metro Transit Police Chief0
ST. PAUL (Aug. 27, 2012) — Metropolitan Council Regional Administrator Pat Born has tapped former St. Paul Police Chief and current Minnesota Senator John Harrington to serve as the next Metro Transit Chief of Police.
Harrington served as chief of the St. Paul Police Department from 2004 to 2010, though his service with the department goes back more than 30 years. He was elected to the Minnesota Senate in 2010.
Harrington replaces former Chief Dave Indrehus, who retired in January. Deputy Chief A.J. Olson will continue to serve as Acting Chief until Harrington assumes his duties Sept. 4.
"I'm thrilled to bring John on board as chief," said Born. "John is deeply knowledgeable about law enforcement. He is a demonstrated and experienced leader. And, having served with Metro Transit Police for more than a decade, he is familiar with policing transit. I have every confidence that John will continue the Council's commitment to a safe and secure transit system."
Harrington served the Metro Transit Police Department in various capacities from 1985 to 1997. At the time, Metro Transit relied on part-time law enforcement officers from metro-area municipalities to serve the agency's law enforcement needs.
Today, the Metro Transit Police Department has about 69 full-time officers and 55 part-time officers who ride along on buses and trains, checking in with operators and customers, patrol transit routes and waiting areas and inspect fares on the Hiawatha (Blue Line) and Northstar trains.
"I'm deeply honored by this appointment and look forward to working with peace officers and command staff to ensure a smooth transition," said Harrington. "The Metro Transit Police Department has a demonstrated commitment to protecting the public and ensuring a safe environment for our riders and the drivers. Harrington said working in partnership to solve problems is key not only to public safety, but to keeping the peace in the many communities served by transit.
"Metro Transit police are a vital component of our bus and rail service," said Metro Transit General Manager Brian Lamb. "Just as safety is critical to community vitality, John Harrington well understands that a safe system is critical to ridership and a healthy, vibrant and growing transit system."
Metro Transit PD is engaged in partnerships with other law enforcement agencies and community organizations, such as MADDADS, to maximize effective policing and improve the department's ability to respond to community concerns.
The Metropolitan Council is the regional planning organization in the seven-county metropolitan area. The Council runs the regional bus and light rail system and Northstar commuter rail, collects and treats wastewater, coordinates regional water resources, plans regional parks and administers funds that provide housing opportunities for low- and moderate-income families. The Council board is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the Governor.


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BERLIN – Demolition work began on the old grandstand at Ocean Downs this week, but even after overcoming a handful of problems with asbestos and structural steel, a new target date for the implementation of slot machines at the historic racetrack remains uncertain.
Crews began dismantling certain elements of the old grandstand at Ocean Downs this week with sections of the roof removed and other areas in the interior of the structure demolished. After the Maryland Video Lottery Location Commission awarded the first slots license in the state to Ocean Downs in September, a rather ambitious plan to install the gaming machines by Memorial Day was announced.
However, the start date was moved back indefinitely in December when a preliminary investigation of the old clubhouse area expected to house the first 600 slot machines revealed a handful of problems with asbestos and the structural steel of the facility. With those obstacles on the verge of being overcome, demolition on the clubhouse began in earnest this week, according to Delaware Park Chief Executive Officer William Fasy.
"We've been working through some delays related to asbestos and problems with the structural steel," he said. "It's been somewhat of a headache, but we're hoping to get it all cleared up soon and expect to be done with the demolition elements by the end of the month."
The video lottery commission in September voted unanimously to approve track owner William Rickman, Jr.'s application for one of five slots licenses in the state with a plan for 800 machines in the short term with the potential to expand to as many as 1,500 in the future. The approval set in motion an ambitious plan to convert the existing 34,000-square-foot grandstand at the track into a gaming facility to accommodate 600 machines at first with an additional 200 added within a year of the casino's opening.
The plan called for the initial phase of the casino to be up and running by Memorial Day, but a series of unforeseen setbacks put that opening date in jeopardy. It is uncertain what the delays mean in terms of a potential opening date.
"The demolition work was supposed to be done by now, but this has put us about two months behind schedule," said Fasy. "I can't really say at this point where that puts us in terms of a timetable for getting slots in here."


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Friday, 30 September 2011
sep, 30th - feasting....
Posted by dee at 21:00 2 comments:
Labels: food, friends, holidays, Spain, travelling
Thursday, 29 September 2011
sep, 29th - these two....
day 576:
these two used to be at completely different stages - here Limi is 56 days old and Oats is due in two weeks and then about two weeks later, Oats as a newborn and Limi all 'grown-up' at 10 weeks old.
now, you can hardly tell them apart.
once Limi had adjusted to Oats' impressive scream at the end of 'row, row, row your boat' (our mild scream needs some work) they were firm (if sometimes reluctant-to-share) friends and explored every inch of this house over the weekend.
communal baths were especially a highlight.
and the window cleaner is going to find multiple mini hand-prints at waist level on every single pane of glass.
Posted by dee at 11:00 4 comments:
Labels: friends, holidays, playmates, Spain, travelling
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
sep, 28th - market day....
day 575:
it's market day in Girona on a Saturday...so we headed down to stock up on supplies. with amazing kitchens to cook in, incredibly fresh produce to choose from, wonderful alfresco eating areas, culinary skills to appreciate and babies to put to bed it made sense to eat in every night.
as you would expect in Spain, the market has an impressive array of fresh meats and seafood. with zero Spanish (shameful as that is) it was shopping mostly down to hand gestures and big grins.
after some serious produce prodding, we stopped at a cafe in the market for the local Bocadillo and beer. Bocadillo is pure, delicious simplicity: jamon iberico de belotta (ham) in a crusty baguette that has been rubbed with the cut side of a tomato and drizzled with olive oil. this one was exceptional.
then back into the throngs for more supplies....
and we lingered until closing.....
Posted by dee at 11:00 No comments:
Labels: food, friends, market, Spain, travelling
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
sep, 27th - alemanys5....
day 574:
we stayed in this amazing place over the weekend with some friends. the house is a contemporary restoration of a sixteenth century building by Barcelona architect, Anna Noguera. i'm not sure any of us had ever had a strong desire to visit Girona but the pictures of this place enticed us onto a plane.
and as so seldom happens, it was even better than the pictures. a fantastically well thought out marriage of old stone, steel, wood and glass. it is certainly the small things that make you realise that someone has put serious thought into this building: the perfectly framed and surprising views through windows and doors; gaps between steel shelves and the stone wall to feed through cables; reading lights positioned in just the right spots and interesting shadows created by steel finishes. it was surprising that we saw any of Girona when spending time lounging around the vast space was so thoroughly indulgent after the London Shoebox.
Posted by dee at 11:00 2 comments:
Labels: friends, holidays, Spain, travelling
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The PSS67 PLC is a robust and compact PLC control system with protection type IP67 for applications in which you automate without control cabinet. The module electronics are fully encapsulated. Therefore it is dust-tight and protected against temporary immersion. You can program the control system PSS67 PLC just as the PLC controllers PSSuniversal of the automation system PSS 4000 using the engineering software PAS4000. The PASvisu visualisation software enables you to always have everything in view. Within the automation system PSS 4000, the controller PSS67 can be used instead of the PLC control system PSSuniversal PLC when you want omit the control cabinet.
PSS67 PLC: First safe control system with protection type IP67
Safe automation without control cabinet
Your benefits at a glance:
- Simple installation directly on the machine
- Cost savings by reduced space requirement and reduced cabling work
- Extremely robust by fully encapsulated module electronics with protection type IP67
- Easy programming with PAS 4000 in accordance with EN/IEC 61131-3
- The whole device configuration can be saved on a securely integrated microSD card
- Compatible with all previous components of the automation system PSS 4000
Technical features:
- SafetyNET p connection
- 16 safe digital inputs
- Protection type: IP67
- Configurable and programmable using the software PAS4000 and the programming languages in accordance with IEC 61131-3
- Can be fully integrated into the automation system PSS 4000
- Can be used for applications up to PL e
First safe IP 67 compact controller in well-tried Pilz technology
Simply integrate the PLC controller PSS67 PLC into the automation system PSS 4000. Use them for both safety and automation functions. As part of the automation system, PSS67 IO1 16FDI follows the same removable storage concept: You can save the whole device configuration on a securely integrated microSD card. This makes it easier to exchange devices, as you only need to switch the SD card. There is no need to reconfigure.
Our product range: PSS67 controllers with protection type IP67
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