text:
RACIAL EQUITY: It's Time to Step Up. We Need Your Help. Click Here.
Wisbar.org will be unavailable on Octoder 21 starting at 6:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. for system maintenance.
Jordan Furlong
The great actor lay on his deathbed, and his friends gathered close to him. His best friend, holding his hand, leaned in and murmured, "You poor man. Dying is so hard." The actor's eyes shot open and he glared at his friend. "Dying is easy," he snorted. "Comedy is hard."
In much the same vein, we can freely admit that the idea of innovation is easy – it's the work of a moment to imagine any number of ways in which law firm operations could be improved. Implementation – the successful, sustainable execution of the innovation – is what's hard. And the law firm landscape is littered with the remains of many failed innovations that couldn't cross the bridge from idea to implementation.
So how can it be managed? To my mind, there are five steps in this process – and I'm sorry to report that each step is more difficult and challenging than the previous one. But the successful implementation of a legal innovation requires most if not all of these elements, in roughly this order.
This is no small challenge – in fact, as we'll see at the conclusion of this article, it's literally an existential challenge for law firms today. But it can be done. And right now, in this environment, it must be done.
Start with data. Evidence. Verifiable information. Business intelligence. We have a truckload of myths about lawyers and the legal profession, and we have no shortage of opinions and assertions masquerading as law firm strategies. What we need are facts.
ca Jordan law21 Jordan Furlong is a lawyer, consultant, and legal industry analyst who forecasts the effect of the changing legal market on lawyers, clients, and legal organizations. A partner with global consulting firm Edge International and a senior consultant with Stem Legal Web Enterprises, Furlong is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and advisory board co-chair of the Institute for Law Practice Management and Innovation at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. He blogs at Law21. This article originally accompanied a presentation to the 2013 Futures Conference, sponsored by the College of Law Practice Management.
Specifically, you need facts about your own law firm, data about your business. Most law firms know astonishingly little about themselves beyond what they spent, billed, and earned last year. We need to know our firms inside out financially and structurally, both retrospectively and prospectively.
Here's an example: "What is your cost of doing business?" What do you spend, what resources do you consume, to run your business and deliver your services? What did it cost you to serve this particular client or provide this particular service last year? What will it cost next year? We are barreling toward a legal services market where fixed prices for products and services will dominate. But without precise knowledge of your costs, and without a workflow process that ensures those costs are sustainable and predictable, you cannot name a fixed price that will generate a profit.
Here's a harder question to answer: "What do you actually sell?" I don't mean that in the abstract sense of "value to clients" and so forth. I mean, what, precisely, is your inventory? What do your clients actually give you money to accomplish? What are your deliverables? Not just "Conducted a merger: $500,000." What were the specific elements? Who or what did them? How long did they take? How much did they cost? Break down everything you do. No other business with the annual turnover of a law firm is so ignorant of its own inventory.
You need facts in order to choose the right activities and make the right decisions for the future of your firm. But more important, you need facts to get the attention of your partners. Show them that you have evidence for what you're saying and doing. We've had more than enough faith-based decision-making in law firms. It's past time to start making reality-based decisions instead.
You need some sort of outside intervention, something to introduce a sense of urgent change. Law firms are not, shall we say, naturally given to proactive self-improvement. Most are what you might call "steady state": self-contained environments, sealed off from outside influences. It takes a lot of pressure to pierce that steady state. Fortunately, you can have your pick of high-pressure catalysts right now. Falling revenue. Declining profits. Loss of a key client, partner, or practice group – choose one or more.
If you can't find a catalyst, create one: Invite senior representatives of your five biggest clients, and the relationship partner in charge of each one, to a discussion panel in your office. Ask the clients to talk about the pressures they're under, or the three things your firm could do that would make them break off the relationship, or three things they would handsomely reward your firm for doing. Bring the crisis home to the partners who have the most to lose.
If you hope to actually accomplish something big and disruptive in a law firm, you must have a clear, detailed process in place. How to do this? Start with a basic legal-project-management (LPM) template.
Fire up those Gantt charts and lay out the following: This is the goal. These are the steps. These are the milestones. This is the timeframe. This is the budget. These are the people. These are the performance expectations. These are when the expectations will be tested. This is the nature of the commitment we're all making to this project.
And then follow up, all the way through to the end. You don't launch an innovative change process in a law firm the same way you launch a ship. You don't smash the champagne bottle on the hull, call out "Bon Voyage," and look forward to its arrival on the other side of the ocean. You stay with it every step of the way, and see it safely through the storms. And that brings us to the next tough step.
I don't necessarily mean leadership from the top, from the managing partner or CEO, although you certainly do need that. In my experience, these usually are the most forward-thinking, change-amenable people in a firm. I'm talking more about the practice-group and industry-group chairs. In many firms, people occupy those positions in title but not in action: they're often rainmakers or heavyweights, rather than actual managers with leadership skills, and they have the most vested interest in the status quo.
If you want to learn more about the effect of the changing legal market on lawyers, clients, and legal organizations, plan to attend the State Bar of Wisconsin PINNACLE Litigation, Dispute Resolution and Appellate Practice Institute, May 22-23, in Milwaukee. Jordan Furlong will speak on the "Future of the Practice of Law" and "Strategies to Implement Change in Your Practice."
For information and to register.
What do you do if your firm is in this situation? I think you get such people out of leadership positions as fast as you can, and you replace them with people who possess actual leadership skills or are on board with the change process. Move the incumbents out any way you can: buy them off with a bonus for retiring the leadership position, or give them a fancy title, "Strategic Counsel" or "Chair Emeritus" or some such. Lawyers love titles.
There's a larger issue here, however. Projects that ask lawyers to do something new, that require nonbillable effort, and that will change the way they do their jobs, have a very high mortality rate in law firms. The reason is simple: nonperformance by lawyers of requested or assigned duties is common, and few if any consequences flow from that nonperformance. True law firm leadership is evidenced by both a willingness to place oneself at the collision point between what the firm needs and what its individual partners want, and an ability to survive that collision. And that brings us to the final ingredient.
Here's the crucible. If you seriously want to get an innovation from idea to implementation in your law firm – no matter the size of the innovation, no matter the size of the firm – you must have courage. You must be ready and willing to absorb criticism, complaints, threats, and tantrums, and you must be ready and equipped to deal with them swiftly.
If you want to lead a law firm innovation, I recommend this thought experiment: fast-forward to the day, several months down the road, when the process is starting to really dig in and true change is imminent. One of your key rainmakers walks into your office, closes the door, and says, "Let me make myself clear. You can have all the fun and games you want. You can introduce as many little innovations as you like. But not in my department. Not in my practice. Try to push me on this, and tomorrow I'll walk right across the street to our biggest rival, and I'll take my top five clients with me, and the first you'll hear about it is when you get the press release announcing the move."
What do you do? If you're serious about innovation, and if you have the leadership and the courage on hand, I think you have to reply: "Thank you for all your service to this firm and its clients. It has been highly valuable and deeply appreciated. But if that is your position, then you don't need to wait until tomorrow. You can leave right now. We're a team, and we want you on our team; but if that's not what you want, then it's best that we part ways immediately."
The other partners will scream, of course. "You can't let him go. He'll take X clients, deprive us of Y money. You've got to keep him here." And you need to respond, "He's never really been here. If he's ready to walk out over this today, then he'll walk out next week over something else, or when he gets a better offer; or he'll retire, having developed no one to take over his practice. Our firm needs this innovation, and it needs partners who want the firm to come through this process and be stronger on the other side. That's what's at stake here."
That's a highly dramatic example, obviously. But it serves this purpose: if you have an idea for an innovation in your firm and you really want to see it happen, fast-forward several months after the launch, to the moment when that partner is in your office, issuing his ultimatum. If you don't think you can stand up to that lawyer – if you or your partners lack the courage and leadership to draw that line – then I would recommend postponing any innovative efforts until you have what it takes.
This is exactly why you need to start with facts, to make clear just what's at stake; why you need a catalyst to demonstrate that the time is now; why you need a process to get the wheels moving and generate just this sort of crisis. This is how you gain the commitment of leadership to put the interests of the firm ahead of the interests of its individual partners.
Because really, at this stage of the game, this isn't just about innovation anymore. This is really about explicitly deciding a long-simmering, implicit debate over whether you're running a farmer's market of sole practices under one roof or you're running an actual law firm. That's the question of the moment for virtually every law firm of every size out there. Firms have put off dealing with this painful question for as long as they could, but the pain has only gotten worse the longer they've waited. The time has now come to finally deal with it.
Marshal your facts; identify your catalyst; lay out your process; call on your leadership; and summon your courage. That's how innovations get done. It's also how law firms survive, or don't, in this environment.


text:
Home » Sermons » Daniel (Part 11); Dn 6
October 30, 2011 in
Pastor Reid Ferguson
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Weekly services are available online while our building remains closed until further notice. Online service details are posted on facebook.com/ECFnet/ the Saturday before.
Our regular schedule is:
Sunday School: 9:30 a.m. for all ages
Sunday morning worship: 10:30 a.m.
Bible Study and Prayer: 7:00 p.m. Wednesdays
Saturday morning prayer meeting: 6:00 a.m., church library
ECF Life Connection groups: At various days and times in private homes and at 6:00 p.m. Sunday evenings at ECF
All events at Evangelical Church of Fairport, 38 East Church Street, Fairport, unless noted
Evangelical Church of Fairport
38 East Church St.
Fairport, NY 14450
Phone: 585-223-0229
Contact form »
Sola Scriptura • Sola Gratia • Sola Fide • Solus Christus • Soli Deo Gloria!
38 East Church Street, Fairport, NY 14450 • (585) 223-0229 • email@example.com
© 2020 Evangelical Church of Fairport | ECF | Powered by the
Standard Theme

subset: commoncrawl


text:
J. Crew took out a full-page ad to announce it brought back a vintage swimsuit that a customer begged for in an open letter, according to AdWeek.
Last year, Jenni Avins wrote an open letter published by New York Magazine's The Cut blog.
"It's that simple, sexy, and sporty suit with straight, tank-top-style shoulder straps that swoop like the letter U, dipping seductively in the back to the area just above my waist," Avins wrote. "These swimsuits filled the drawer I shared with my older sister in the nineties, and I took them for granted."
Avins' piece sparked other customers saying they missed the swimsuit.
In response, J. Crew just took out an ad in New York Magazine with a message from Creative Director Jenna Lyons.
The swimsuit is available for pre-order and costs $88.
See Also:Domino's New Chicken Product Is Unlike Anything We've Ever Seen Macy's CEO Explains Why He's Against Raising The Minimum Wage Subway Customers Have No Idea How To Pronounce Flatizza Here Are The 5 Best Chick-fil-A Secret Menu ItemsTeens Are Abandoning Their Jeans For A Sportier Look
SEE ALSO: 20 Regional Food Chains That Should Go National
Want to read more fashion news? Follow Business Insider on Pinterest


text:
Rand Paul Stressed Need for Immigration Reform
In an excerpt from a longer interview, Sen. Rand Paul (R, KY) stresses the need for the Republican Party to pass immigration reform. 'Uncommon Knowledge' is produced by the Hoover Institution.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
... Joan Bush has said the GOP in two quotations needs to get immigration beyond what ... you said that up it's impossible for the GOP to make any headway with Hispanics as long as the Republican party is viewed as hostile towards ... Ryman is that it shut down they won't listen to the rest of the message ... okay ... but don't we know what will happen if this immigration reform is enacted ... during this ten year waiting period Democrats will again and again and again say shorten the waiting period ... by again and again they'll say start giving these people federal benefits ... it will put immigration behind the Republican party ... delay may mean there's a problem that I can give Democrats a chance to just make these people such solid Democratic voters the century from now there there is a potential problem and I often believe that maybe the Democrats won voters not workers ... however I would say if we do nothing ... but say we do nothing we have eleven million people here ... they are having children who are becoming citizens and many are in your lawn as their kids are but ... if their kids believe in it they believe ... that the Republican party is the party of deportation ... we will never again in about so I think really it's not the specifics of immigration reform what I've talked to Hispanic leaders in Kentucky and elsewhere they tell me who won be treated with dignity ... when you call us an illegal year implying that we stole some thing and we rob somebody we heard somebody ... who really all we're trying to do is ... make a better way for our family ... so a lot of it is Republicans need to get away from harsh rhetoric ... they need to embrace immigrants is assets to our country my family were immigrants year's Tri were to have all this war ... and the rules were different in and maybe each year to come one point on we can have open borders either in the Milton Friedman said that as well you can have open borders ... and a welfare state ... but some of the arguments for saying ... these people are to come in in overwhelm welfare is ... those are also arguments for fixing welfare ... because those are arguments against any population expansion because any any new verse we have in the country will eventually ... a certain percentage of them will be on welfare ...


text:
What's New
Gaumont Font Family by Harold's Fonts
About: The Gaumont fonts are based on the hand-lettered titles of the film The 39 Steps (1935), a Gaumont-British Picture, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The regular and italic both appear in the opening titles. I've taken a few liberties, regularizing the characters but preserving the quirkier letterforms and rounding out the font in the same spirit.
Tags: 1920s, 1930s, Art Deco, Font, Sans Serif


text:
Sequel server
The sequel, Treasure Island Dizzy, was even more notorious as being by far the hardest game in the series. Having but one solitary life, not only must you trek to and fro to find a means of escape from the titular island, but the ultimate bitch-slap came at the end of the quest courtesy of the penny-pinching ferryman who demands 30 gold coins for a ride home. Presumably a retired London cabbie. This fearless and inventive scum gets his kicks by eking a dishonest living out of the poor unfortunate souls who wash up on his ostensible 'treasure' island.
First among sequels
The single-life aspect, though frustrating, was nonetheless fascinating because it all came about by the inclusion of underwater exploration. Let's say that the game was designed with multiple lives. If a submerged player were to discard the snorkel and lose a life, then there would be no way for them to re-enter the water to retrieve it. A minor cock-up, but one which ultimately guaranteed to keep players on their toes.
Treasure Island on the Speccy
Source: Wikimedia
It was also the first Dizzy game to feature digitised speech, beckoning you into the game upon loading with a friendly "Welcome to Treasure Island, Dizzy". Although the effect was more akin to being greeted by Steve the Dalek after smoking an entire Cuban tobacco harvest.
The third Dizzy game released, but not really considered canon by fans (ie. me) so we'll only touch on it briefly, was Fast Food, an enjoyable Pac-Man homage which saw our sentient ovulation roaming round mazes, consuming junk food such as burgers, milk shakes and pizza, all the while being pursued by four monsters. It's like a bizarre fever dream reimagining of the final act of The Shining.
Presumably reanimated via Zaks' dark sorcery, the food had no real personality, nor was it particularly 'fast', as the items of grub miserably shamble into Dizzy with scant regard for safety, almost as if to end their unnatural existence.
So, to recap, Resident Evil is just Dizzy with zombies. Actually, Fast Food wasn't too far off... ®
Fast food on the Spectrum
To be continued...
Antique Code Show is published every two weeks
Developer The Oliver Twins
Publisher Codemasters
Year of release 1986
Platforms ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64
More Retro Games
The Quest for
Enemy Unknown


text:
Making soft delicious tortillas at home is surprisingly easy. In fact, once I started making my own suddenly all our dinners and lunches were rolled up in fresh tortillas.
The dough is made from flour, shortening, water, and salt. I had all the ingredients on hand but the shortening.. which ended up only costing two dollars and has lasted through many many batches of tortillas. Considering how cheap the ingredients are and how delicious they taste it just doesn't make sense to pay for the much more expensive packaged ones.
To make the dough you first work the shortening into the flour. You want to incorporate it entirely so that no pieces of shortening remain un-mixed. I just use my hands to rub it completely into the flour.
Next some hot tap water and salt is stirred in with a fork until a dough forms. Then the dough is kneaded briefly until it smooths out a bit and comes together.
To make sure that the tortillas are the same size the easiest thing to do is roll the dough into a log and then cut it into equal pieces.
Since the dough is a medium-stiff consistency it might be easier just to squeeze it into a log shape rather than roll it.
I was making a half recipe so I cut my log into six equal pieces and rolled each one into a ball shape.
The balls get put into a plastic bag, or covered with plastic wrap and are left to let the gluten relax for at least 20 minutes. This makes them easier to roll out and gives you time to prepare the filling for them.
When you're ready to start rolling out the tortillas preheat an ungreased heavy skillet or griddle to medium high heat. Its important to get it to temperature before you put a tortilla on it so that they cook properly.It's also helpful to have a plate with tinfoil over it ready to put the cooked tortillas in
Each ball gets rolled out into the seven inch diameter circle. Once the skillet/griddle is at medium high heat place a tortilla on it and cook for 30 - 40 seconds. Flip the tortilla over and cook for another 30 seconds and then place on a plate and cover with tinfoil to keep warm.
I find that the tortillas are cooked the best if I use my phone's stopwatch and flip the tortillas right at 30 seconds. If you over cook them they will get a bit crisp.
For soft tortillas that roll up easily its best to stack them and keep them covered with tinfoil as you cook them and then let them sit for a minute or two after they are all cooked. By covering and stacking them it steams the tortillas below and softens them.
Then you get to fill them with whatever you like!
Left over steak, tomatoes, feta, pickled peppers made a quick dinner one night.
For lunch I filled it with some avocado, salsa, cilantro and cheese
A breakfast tortilla with a fried egg, feta, spinach and tomatoes.
While visiting my sister in Montreal we kept it simple and just spread them with peanut butter and jelly.
These are so versatile, delicious, and cheap! It's a very useful recipe to have on hand because they make a casual, quick meal more interesting and special.
(Recipe from Urban Spork )
- 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus a little extra for rolling the tortillas
- 5 tablespoons vegetable shortening
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup very warm tap water
1. Work the vegetable shortening into the flour with your hands. Make sure to fully incorporate it and rub it in completely.
2. Dissolve the salt in the water. Work the water into the flour - shortening mix with a fork until a dough forms.
3. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until the dough smooths out.
4. Roll the dough out into a log and cut into 12 equal pieces. Roll them into balls and either cover with plastic wrap or place in a plastic wrap. Let them rest for at least 20 minutes
5. Preheat an ungreased heavy skillet or griddle to medium high. Then roll out the dough into seven inch circles.
6. Cook the tortillas (I do them one at a time) for 30 seconds on each size. The tortilla should sizzle a bit when you place it on the hot pan.
7. As you cook them keep the other cooked tortillas warm and soft on a tinfoil covered plate. Let them soften covered by tinfoil for a minute or two before using. The tortillas on the bottom will be softer than the ones on top so use those first.


text:
Dear Annie: I am 40 years old and have a younger brother. My mother died a few years ago. My father is 67, in good health and very active. We all live near one another.
In June, I received a Facebook message from a woman in another state saying she is the mother of Dad's 42-year-old son. It included contact information for "Chris" and a few photos of him with my dad when Chris was about 10. Chris is now a successful businessman with a wife and two kids. Chris agreed that it would be nice to know his siblings. However, out of respect for us, he will do nothing unless we make the first move.
As you can imagine, I hit the roof. I am furious that my parents hid this from us all these years. My brother and I visited Dad, who was quite upset that this woman had made contact. He said she was merely a girl he dated after college and the child was "an accident." He supported Chris financially, but there was minimal contact because Chris' mom moved around a lot. It bothered my mother that Dad would visit Chris, so he hasn't seen him since that photo was taken. Dad asked the woman never to contact my brother or me. Chris sent an occasional Christmas card to Dad, but that was it.
Here is the problem: Dad said he would be extremely angry if we chose to communicate with Chris. Annie, we don't have much family. Chris is our brother. Have we lost too many years to start a relationship? How should we handle this and keep the peace with Dad? -- New Sibling
Dear Sibling: This is no longer Dad's decision to make. You are an adult. Your adult half-sibling would like to be in touch. Whether or not to make contact is up to you, and yes, you could certainly have a relationship at any age. Dad will be upset, but we think he will eventually forgive you. And who knows? Perhaps he would even be willing to get to know his oldest son someday. We hope so.
Dear Annie: Whenever I converse with my sister-in-law, she refers to my brother as "my husband." Why doesn't she say "your brother"? Or even use his first name? Obviously, I know him pretty well. He's my only sibling.
Is this poor etiquette, or am I being too sensitive about it? -- Kentucky Sis
Dear Kentucky: This is not an etiquette issue. It's a matter of personal preference -- yours and hers. You find it overly formal (and probably a bit proprietary) that she refers to your brother this way when speaking to you. But we'd guess she refers to him as "my husband" no matter who she is talking to. It's an ingrained habit and may not be worth trying to change. You can point it out at the time, saying innocently, "Do you mean John?" She'll think that's painfully obvious, but it will force her to think about what she is saying, and over time, it could make a difference.
Dear Annie: I would like to respond to "Wicked Stepmom," whose stepdaughter has a pigsty for a bedroom. My daughter was the same. She lived with us until she was 27. She kept moldy dishes, glasses and silverware in her room, walked over piles of clothes, and threw trash, sunflower seeds, dirty tissues and other things on top. I gave up cleaning her space.
There may be more than a hoarding problem. My daughter was diagnosed with depression, borderline personality disorder, ADHD and PTSD. Perhaps "Wicked" could convince her stepdaughter to have an evaluation. Medication and therapy can help dramatically. -- Been There
Send questions to anniesmailbox @comcast.net or Annie's Mailbox, c/o Creators Syndicate, 737 Third St., Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.
Get to know 'new' sibling at any age
Dear Annie: I am 40 years old and have a younger brother. My mother died a few years ago. My father is 67, in good health and very active. We all live near one another.


text:
Elastic is an open source search company that powers enterprise search, observability, and security solutions built on one technology stack that can be deployed anywhere. From finding documents to monitoring infrastructure to hunting for threats, Elastic makes data usable in real time and at scale. Thousands of organizations worldwide, including Barclays, Cisco, eBay, Fairfax, ING, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, The Mayo Clinic, NASA, The New York Times, Wikipedia, and Verizon, use Elastic to power mission-critical systems. Founded in 2012, Elastic is a distributed company with Elasticians around the globe. Learn more at elastic.co.
Thanks to our ongoing expansion we are now seeking a Sr. SQL Analyst to join our Global Insights & Analytics team, a division within the broader Sales Finance & Strategy team. In this role, you'll have an opportunity to work alongside our Sales Strategy and IT teams developing key elements of our data warehouse to provide critical insights on the performance of our field operations organization.
What You Bring Along:
Key Skills:
As a distributed company, diversity drives our identity. Whether you're looking to launch a new career or grow an existing one, Elastic is the type of company where you can balance great work with great life. Your age is only a number. It doesn't matter if you're just out of college or your children are; we need you for what you can do.
We strive to have parity of benefits across regions and while regulations differ from place to place, we believe taking care of our people is the right thing to do.
Elastic is an Equal Employment employer committed to the principles of equal employment opportunity and affirmative action for all applicants and employees. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status or any other basis protected by federal, state or local law, ordinance or regulation. Elastic also makes reasonable accommodations for disabled employees consistent with applicable law.
When you apply to a job on this site, the personal data contained in your application will be collected by Elasticsearch, Inc. ("Elastic") which is located at 800 W. El Camino Real, Suite 350 Mountain View, CA 94040 USA, and can be contacted by emailing email@example.com. Your personal data will be processed for the purposes of managing Elastic's recruitment related activities, which include setting up and conducting interviews and tests for applicants, evaluating and assessing the results thereto, and as is otherwise needed in the recruitment and hiring processes. Such processing is legally permissible under Art. 6(1)(f) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation) as necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by Elastic, which are the solicitation, evaluation, and selection of applicants for employment. Your personal data will be shared with Greenhouse Software, Inc., a cloud services provider located in the United States of America and engaged by Elastic to help manage its recruitment and hiring process on Elastic's behalf. Accordingly, if you are located outside of the United States, your personal data will be transferred to the United States once you submit it through this site. Because the European Union Commission has determined that United States data privacy laws do not ensure an adequate level of protection for personal data collected from EU data subjects, the transfer will be subject to appropriate additional safeguards under the standard contractual clauses. You can obtain a copy of the standard contractual clauses by contacting us at email@example.com. Elastic's data protection officer is Felix Wittern, who can be contacted at email@example.com. We plan to retain your data until such time as roles you may be suitable for are filled, as such we cannot estimate the specific time period that will be. We would consider this period to have ended once a candidate accepts our job offer. However, once that period of time is over, we may hold your data for an additional period of time that will not exceed 18 months. We do this to ensure you can be considered for potential future opportunities which you might be better suited for. To see additional information, please review our Elastic Privacy Statement.
Sign in with your social account to receive emails when Elastic posts open positions you might be interested in:


text:
Yes he's a dwarf, but the fictionalized version of Warwick Davis is also a vain, self-delusional, preening egotist beset by an endless succession of humiliating social encounters.
He's the perfect antihero for Ricky Gervais' new fake documentary comedy series Life's Too Short, which debuts at 10:30 p.m. Sunday on HBO. In the show, shaky cameras follow Davis around London as he desperately reminds prospective employers and complete strangers that he played an ewok in Return of the Jedi, appeared in Harry Potter movies and starred in the George Lucas-produced bomb Willow.
Like Gervais' delusional David Brent in The Office, Davis tries and invariably fails to win friends and influence people. Life's Too Short treads a tricky line by simultaneously mocking and celebrating a small man's offbeat charisma.
"It's not a half an hour of, 'Isn't it funny that he's so short!'" Gervais said, describing the show to reporters last month during a Television Critics Association panel discussion. "It isn't that at all. He's got small-man complex. It's nothing to do with his height per se. It's about his aims. It's about his ambition. There's a difference between a show that exploits and a show that ridicules exploitation, and we're clearly in the second camp."
With its three-dimensionally flawed protagonist and contemporary setting, Life's Too Short, co-created by Gervais and his frequent comedic conspirator Stephen Merchant, marks an empowering break from the past. Especially in sci-fi and fantasy realms, dwarves historically serve as visual shorthand for "otherworldly" – David Lynch spelled it out in his surreal TV series Twin Peaks by naming dwarf Michael J. Anderson's character "The Man From Another Place." The Wizard of Oz transported viewers to another time and place from the moment Munchkins made their entrance, and what are hobbits if not little people writ large?
But Hollywood is starting to move beyond its reliance on using little people for novelty effect. In Game of Thrones, Peter Dinklage plays witty, whoring conniver Tyrion Lannister with such fierce intelligence that the character's physical stature becomes far less interesting than his machinations.
Sure, size matters, but projects like Life's Too Short and Game of Thrones point toward a more expansive storytelling role for diminutive actors – provided they have big talent.
Check the gallery for a short list of the most magnetic little people in fantasy and sci-fi history, and read on for a longer look at the first two episodes of Life's Too Short.
Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow.
Sneak Peek at Life's Too Short
Episode 1 loads up on not-particularly-funny exposition: Davis' wife is kicking him out of the house. Gervais and Merchant, having cast Davis in their Extras series, now consider the unemployed actor a pest and place the buzzer to their office at a height they know he can't reach. To top it off, Davis owes a huge tax bill.
Episode 2 gets laughs when Davis tutors Johnny Depp on how to get struck by lightning, dwarf-style. Later, while selling autographed photos at a sci-fi convention, Davis gets invited to a wedding. When he shows up in street clothes, the groom, infuriated that he did not wear an ewok costume, forces the actor to dress up as a bear. Davis hops onto a table and gives an insulting toast that makes the bride weep.
Images courtesy various studios except where noted.


text:
There's a Place Like This for You, Too
We created a video to give school-age kids an authentic look at the world of a manufacturing engineer. Here is what I hope my kids will see.
We just finished production on a video that I want my children to see. Both of my kids are daughters.
The video (watch it here) is a profile of GE Aviation manufacturing engineer Rebecca Miller. It was created as part of an outreach aimed at presenting manufacturing to middle school and high school children. As I write these words, the video is so new that I haven't yet shared it with my kids, but I'm looking forward to their response.
We adults tend to overlook some important factors when we try to match young people with vocations. In my own case, for example, I did not know I wanted to be a writer because of any aptitude I showed for composition. Rather, I knew I wanted to be a writer when, at about age 12, I encountered a stack of typewritten pages an author had produced. It hit me that people making pages just like those were the source of all the books and magazines I was reading. I loved that. I wanted to make pages, too (though it turned out a typewriter would not be part of that). In other words, though my aptitude is what qualified me, it was the undefinable that drew me in.
Which brings me, oddly, to gender. Would it have made a difference in that moment if I had seen a female author typing those pages? It might have. I got drawn in because I could imagine myself doing the work. If the person doing the work had been that much different from me, perhaps I could not have made the leap. The undefinable would be less accessible.
Something like that recognition guided our choice in this video. Since manufacturing engineering is a majority-male field, any kid's exposure to it is likely to involve a male engineer. Because of this, Bart Aslin of the SME Education Foundation (which will distribute the video to schools) suggested we aim to portray a female engineer. That complicated the search for a candidate, but in the end I'm glad he suggested this. I am also grateful to the southern Ohio chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, which helped us find the candidate we did. Ms. Miller is someone my daughters could quite naturally aspire to emulate.
Will my kids be drawn to manufacturing engineering because of this video? Probably not. Given all the choices, it's unlikely that this field will be the "thing" for either of them. However, even if the undefinables of this particular vocation do not draw them in, that's not all I want them to see. In this video, I want them to see a woman describing why an environment that is not right for everyone—a manufacturing plant floor—is nevertheless the right place for her. I want my kids to understand that each of us is unique, and we can each find special places to thrive and contribute. I want my daughters to know that they can find just such a place and just such a role for themselves, and that they should not settle for less.


text:
Lillies in Moonlight
- Allison Pittman Author
- 2011 18 May
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is an excerpt from Lillies in Moonlight by Allison K. Pittman (WaterBrook Multnomah).
October 1925
Just ten o'clock in the morning, and already Lilly Margolis could feel the trickle of sweat sliding between her shoulder blades.
Head up. Big smile, chin out, she silently rehearsed.
Good morning, madam. Are you the lady of the house?
Pause, two, three, four.
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lilly, Lilly Margolis. But Lilly's not just my name. It's also the name of the fabulous new body crème from Dalliance
Cosmetics. Lilies in Moonlight. I use it myself.
She held out her arm, focusing on the creamy silk of her skin against the dark wood of the door.
Makes my skin smooth as silk and irresistible to the touch. At least that's what my boyfriend says.
Wink, wink. She didn't really have a boyfriend, but every man who'd ever touched her said she felt like satin. Or cold milk. White and soft and pure. She, of course, didn't use Lilies in Moonlight body crème. She couldn't afford it. Nothing but Ivory soap from the five-and-dime and maybe a dab of Jergens lotion.
May I introduce you to the other irresistible offerings from Dalliance Cosmetics?
This little case right here is a regular treasure trove of beauty.
This is where she'd hold up the case. She wore three bright red bangles on her left wrist, including one that held the case, and they'd clank together as she lifted it. Right arm? Pure, soft, white, unadorned. Left arm?
Fashion and beauty in one grip.
Lilly Margolis was everything—blond, bobbed hair, perfectly plucked eyebrows, bright red lips—all wrapped up in the perfect porch-sized package. What would Mama say if she could be on the other side of that door? No great mystery there. She'd say Lilly looked like a tramp, that God would condemn her for cutting her hair. To her, Lilly's smooth skin meant that she was lazy, pampered, indulged.
Lilly banished such ugliness behind what she knew to be a dazzling face. Her mother might not approve, but the rest of the world sure did.
Men most of all. And if she got lucky, the woman behind this door would too. Resolved, she touched her painted fingertips to her hair, doubled her smile, and rang the bell.
"What do you want?" The woman on the other side of the door wore a faded housedress. Her hair was mostly piled on top of her head, though tendrils floated around her face.
Smile. "Good morning, madam! Are you the lady of the house?"
"Oh, for the love of Pete."
And Lilly faced the door again.
She relaxed her posture, letting her shoulder stoop with the weight of the tan leather case, getting no satisfaction from even the clank of her bangles. She turned and walked down the front steps. Those potted flowers looked a little less lovely than they did when she first walked past them just a minute ago.
"Should've opened with the flowers." Next door, she'd know.
Back on the sidewalk, she assessed the next house. Trim lawn, roses in bloom at the corner.
Chin up, big smile, shoulders squared, she strode up the walkway, looking confident lest the lady be looking out the front window at that moment. At the door, she shifted the leather case from one hand to the other, bangles rattling as she raised her fist to knock.
The door opened and this woman looked much like the previous one, but her hair was a little neater, her dress less faded.
"Good morning, madam. Tell me, are you responsible for those beautiful roses in bloom?"
"Why yes, I am." The woman touched her fingers to her throat, as if shocked to be greeted with such a compliment.
"Well then, it won't surprise you to learn that the delicate rose petal is a key ingredient in Dalliance Cosmetics's Rose of Sharon hand crème. Just a dab worked in at night, and your hands will be as soft as the petals on your lovely flowers. May I offer you a demonstration?"
"Oh, I don't think so, dear. Jergens works fine for me."
A softer closing of the door this time, but a closing nonetheless. Back the sidewalk, Lilly looked up the street. One house after another, all of them small and square. In some ways, no different from the row of clapboard shacks she left behind in Miresburgh. But here there seemed to be a sweetness to the smallness. Maybe it was the trim green lawns, the varied gardens, the short white fences. Who knows? Maybe her own street would take on life and beauty if it were bathed in this relentless Florida sun. Still, small houses meant small lives; small lives meant small dreams. Green grass or not, when she looked down the street all she saw was one closed door after another.
"Never gonna sell nothin' in this lousy neighborhood," she muttered under her breath. Still, she wasn't about to cry over it. After all, it could be worse. She could be one of those women all wrapped up in a housedress nowhere to go. Why, they might be looking out of their windows right now thinking, What is that stunning vision of beauty doing on our humble little street? Lilly herself had been inspired by the beauties she'd seen in the movies and magazines.
Mindful of her purpose, she smiled sweetly at the young woman pushing a pram, followed by two sticky children. Half a block behind Lilly was a park. She'd planned to stop there and sit on one of its bright red benches to eat the cheese sandwich that was wrapped in wax paper and nestled among the bottles and jars of Dalliance Cosmetics in the tan leather case.
She turned around and followed the woman and the pram and the sticky children, who took turns looking back at her. Lilly stuck out her tongue and they did too. The mother never glanced over her shoulder even once.
Once in the park, the sticky children ran to the swing set; the mother settled on a bench and pulled the baby out of the pram to settle it on her lap for a gentle bouncing.
"Cute baby." Lilly chose the bench on the opposite side of the little walking path that stretched around the park.
"His name's John." The recollection of the name seemed an exhausting endeavor.
"I don't have any children myself." Lilly crossed her leg and admired her shoe. White patent leather with a wide sea-foam green ribbon. She'd have to sell ten jars of Lilies in Moonlight to pay for them. "I'm a salesgirl for Dalliance Cosmetics. It's highly rewarding."
The mother smiled weakly, then hollered at the sticky children— June and Teddy—telling them to play nice and take turns.
"Of course, motherhood is its own reward." Though truthfully, Lilly could think of nothing worse. Besides the disaster a pregnancy would bring to her perfect planklike figure, she'd grown up knowing exactly what kind of inconvenience it could bring to a girl's life. "But I bet you like to take yourself a long, hot bath at the end of a day."
Baby John began to fuss, bucking straight back in his mother's lap.
"Or on a hot day like this, maybe a nice cool one. Not too cold—that can be shocking. But tepid. Just enough warm to take off the edge. So when you dip your foot in, you can't hardly tell where the air stops and the water starts, except for the wet. And then, when you lift yourself out, no matter how hot it is, you get this breeze that just chills—"
"Look, lady. I don't usually have time to take a bath. I got three kids."
"Haven't you got a husband?"
"He's a manager down at Parson's. Sometimes he works late."
"So you never have time to bathe?" Lilly widened her eyes, creating an image of innocent incredulity.
"'Course I do." The mother set baby John back in his pram and handed him a bottle of milk, a veneer of resentment on her smile. "Just nothing long and luxurious is all."
Lilly pouted. "Poor dear." She lifted the tan leather case and set it beside her.
Two clicks of the brass latches and she had a wide-mouthed jar— frosted pink glass with a silver-painted lid. "There's no reason you can't pamper yourself with even the shortest dip. It's not the length of the soak but the quality of the soap, that's what we say at Dalliance Cosmetics."
"I use Ivory—"
"As well you should, what with the little ones and all. But how about something like this?" Lilly rose from her bench and crossed the path, carrying the wide-mouthed jar aloft like a treasure. Slowly, holding the jar just under the mother's nose, she twisted the silver lid, wincing a bit at the glare from the bouncing sun. "Bath salts. Lavender. Here, just take a whiff."
The mother closed her eyes, revealing thin lids with tiny blue branching veins. Perhaps it was the shiny silver lid that caught the attention of the now sticky and sweaty children, because they abandoned their swings and ran pell-mell toward their mother.
Lilly stopped them in their tracks with nothing more than a kohl-eyed glare. "Scram, kids. This is for your ma."
The mother opened her eyes again, transformed. Soft and content.
"Very nice."
"Not bad for a nickel, is it?"
"A nickel? You're kidding."
"Well, the whole jar is a dollar thirty, but there's enough in here for at least twenty-five baths, so that works out to about a nickel a bath. Don't you think at the end of a day you deserve a nickel's worth of bath salts all to yourself?"
Perhaps some innate protective sense had taken over the children, because once again they abandoned their swinging and were running— more cautiously this time—toward the benches. Now the mother, with her arms crossed, looked at them with narrowed eyes.
"Teddy and June! You two go play or I'm going to give you a spank right here and now and another when we get home!"
Teddy and June obeyed, taking sulky backward steps so their selfish mother could gaze upon their sweaty, sticky, grubby faces for as long as possible.
The mother scooted an inch or so away from Lilly. "Put that lid back on. I haven't got a dollar thirty to spend on bath salts."
"Don't forget about the beauty of the jar itself," Lilly said, grasping to close the deal. "When you've finished with the lavender, you can always refill it with something from the five-and-dime, and none of your friends need be the wiser. With this beautiful Dalliance Cosmetics jar on your powder-room shelf, you'll be the envy—"
"I don't have friends who visit my powder room." The mother lifted baby John out of the pram again and held him close, resting her chin on top of his bald little head.
Teddy and June would not be denied a third time. They scrambled onto the bench, wedging their way between the two women.
Lilly leaped to her feet, barely snatching the pretty pink jar from the grimy clutches of June.
Once again the mother's manner softened. What sternness she had dissolved like so many bath salts as her children peppered her with silly questions. Who was this lady? What was in the jar? Could they have a Coca-Cola with their lunch when they got home? And could the lady come have lunch with them? And wasn't she pretty?
With gentleness Lilly couldn't have imagined, the mother answered each child. Yes, the lady was pretty, but no, she was far too busy to come home for lunch. This response was given with a wary eye across the top of Teddy's grubby face, but Lilly just smiled and winked.
It was enough that they thought she was pretty.
Lilly checked to be sure the silver lid was screwed on tight. Then, as the little family debated whether they should play on the swings or the slide, she reached inside baby John's pram and nestled the lavender bath salts within his blankets. She quickly closed the latches on her leather case and lifted it off the bench.
Before she could get away, however, the mother called out, "Hey! I told you I can't afford that."
Lilly waved a hand behind her, bangles clanking. "Forget it. You qualify for the free sample of the day."
"No, thanks.
I'm watching my figure."
Three blocks later Lilly sat down again—this time at a drugstore counter—and filled out a sales slip. She thought back to the nearly empty powder box on the washstand in her room at Mrs. Myrtle's Hotel for Women. She had a little more than three dollars in there—two of which were meant for next week's rent. A couple of big sales would make up the difference, but she'd need to find better hunting ground.
"Hey, lady." The man behind the counter wore a blue-and-whitestriped shirt and blue suspenders. His gray hair was thick and curly; the glasses on the bottom of his nose gave a kindly effect absent from his voice.
"This isn't your office. You going to order something?"
Lilly dug into her little beaded purse and pulled out a dime. "Two Coca-Colas." One for later tonight with the supper included in her two-dollar-a-week rent.
The man behind the counter popped the top off one of the bottles before swiping the dime across the polished wood. Lilly quietly unwrapped her sandwich, keeping it hidden on her lap as she tore off one bite at a time, chewing slowly and washing it down with sips of the cold, dark, fizzing soda.
Behind her the bell rang, and though she didn't know another soul in this part of town, Lilly spun on her stool to see who walked in. Two women, probably in their fifties, wearing identical gray dresses, white aprons, and ugly brown shoes.
"Afternoon, ladies." Now the man behind the counter lived up to his friendly visage.
"Afternoon, Ed."
"Two egg salads? Coffee?"
"Oh, it's payday," one of the women said. "Make it two chocolate sodas, right, Annie?"
"You read my mind," Annie said, and the two of them giggled as if it were truly funny.
"Sounds good," Lilly said. She imagined herself part of their conversation, but they responded with a dismissive glare. The few bites of sandwich sat heavy in her stomach, and she wished for just a minute she were sharing a sticky table with little June and Teddy.
Deciding these women weren't worthy of her smile, she drooped her face into an exaggerated pout and twirled back to her sandwich, giving the women a view of the back of her neck, imitating the pose she'd seen on the cover of the Vogue magazine on the newsstand in the corner.
She continued with her sandwich and soda and sales-ticket book, all the while listening to Annie and her friend. Apparently their mistresses were at a weekly country club luncheon, meaning somewhere within walking distance there was a neighborhood with money.
Lilly tore her sandwich into smaller and smaller pieces, making it last long enough for Annie and her friend to finish their egg salads and chocolate sodas. Ed was not fooled for a moment; he'd come close to catching her midbite several times, but every time he asked if she wanted to order something, Lilly smiled her brightest and said no, thank you, she was watching her figure.
At ten minutes to one, the maids slurped the last of their sodas and Bid Ed good-bye. Lilly swigged the last of her Coca-Cola—warm and flat by now—and carefully folded the square of wax paper to put back in her leather case. It would wrap tomorrow's sandwich.
"See ya, Ed." She gave a little salute, bangles clanking, and set the door's bell ringing.
With the women in gray about twenty paces ahead, Lilly straightened her shoulders, refreshed her grip on the case's handle, and took a determined step. Fortune could not be far away.
Excerpted from Lilies in Moonlight by Allison Pittman. Copyright 2011 by Allison Pittman. Excerpted by permission of multnomah Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.