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Operator: Good day everyone, and welcome to The Children's Place Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2012 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later you will have the opportunity to ask questions. Please note this call maybe recorded and I will be standing by should you need any assistance.
It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Ms. Jane Singer. Please go ahead Ma'am.
Jane Singer - VP, IR: Thank you, Zac. Thank you for joining us this morning. With me here Jane Elfers, President and Chief Executive Officer and Mike Scarpa, Executive Vice President, and Chief Financial Officer.
We issued a press release earlier this morning announcing fourth quarter and fiscal 2012 financial results. A copy of the release can be found on our website. Before we begin, I would like to remind participants that any forward-looking remarks made today are subject to the Safe Harbor statement found in this morning's press release as well as in our SEC filings. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly release any revision to these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. After the prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions. We request that each of you limit yourself to two questions, so that everyone will have an opportunity to speak.
Thank you and now I will turn the call over to Jane Elfers for her opening remarks.
Jane Elfers - President and CEO: Thank you, Jane and good morning everyone. We had strong finish to 2012 resulting in record sales, our first annual comp increase in four years and 11% increase in EPS and $205 million generated in operating cash. I'd like to highlight the significant progress we achieved on our strategic initiatives in 2012 starting with the senior leadership team. Since my arrival, a top priority has been upgrading talent at the senior leadership level. During 2012, we made significant progress on completing this initiative with key hires. First Mike Scarpa, Executive Vice President, and Chief Financial Officer. Mike joined us at the end of November. He has more than 30 years of financial and operational leadership experience with publicly-held apparel companies. He joined us from Talbots where he was Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer with responsibility for finance, treasury, planning and allocation, supply chain, information technology, and corporate strategy.
Prior to Talbots, Mike spent 25 years with Liz Claiborne, where he held several senior financial positions culminating in his appointment as Chief Operating Officer. I've known Mike for several years and I'm thrilled that he decided to join the team. We're very fortunate to be able to partner with such a strong finance and operating executive.
Greg Poole, Senior Vice President, Global Sourcing joined us last September and has more than 27 years of global sourcing and supply chain leadership experience. Greg joined us from Talbots where he served as Executive Vice President, Chief Supply Chain Officer, and was responsible for product development, global sourcing, global logistics, distribution, quality assurance, social compliance, and technical design. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President, Chief Procurement Officer for Ann and he also held several senior level sourcing positions at Gap, culminating in his role as Senior Vice President, Sourcing and Vendor Development.
John Moroz, Senior Vice President, Global Logistics and Distribution joined us in January. John brings 35 years of multi-channel, multi-brand, and multi-geography experience. He joined us from Fifth & Pacific, where he was Senior Vice President, Global Operations.
Getting the right leadership in the finance and operating areas of the business is critical to unlocking margin growth and these three seasoned executives have already made a meaningful impact on our business.
Merchandise improvements, Big Kids, our primary focus continues to be on improving the performance of the Big Kids business by differentiating the merchandise to keep kids in our brand longer. Big Kids accounts for almost two-thirds of our apparel business and these divisions comp to positive mid-to-high single-digit in 2012. Accessories and footwear, we expanded our non-apparel offerings to make it easier for moms to buy complete outfits, accessories and footwear which account for about 20% of sales comp to positive low-to-mid single-digits during 2012.
Baby, we undertook several initiatives to improve our Baby business in 2012, including new talent and design and merchandising. We created a baby play zone in stores and reduced the duplication between newborn and baby sizing. Baby improved sequentially from the third to the fourth quarter and we expect to continue to see improvement during fiscal '13.
Canada, we hired a Vice President of Merchandising exclusively for Canada with significant experience in Canadian Kids apparel to help us ensure we maximize country appropriate assortments, as well as further focusing our marketing efforts for the Canadian consumer.
Outlets, as you may recall, the Children's Place did not have an outlet strategy prior to 2011. We started introducing made-for-outlet assortments at the end of 2011 and by midyear 2012, we had fully executed our made-for-outlet strategy just in time for the back-to-school season. As a result, comp sales rebounded in the third and fourth quarters after 13 straight quarters of decline. In addition to positive comps, outlet margins significantly strengthened in the second half of 2012. The fiscal '12, outlet margins lagged place by approximately 400 basis point, compared to 600 basis in fiscal 2011, and we expect the outlets to achieve margin parity with U.S. Place stores in fiscal 2014. E-commerce in 2012 total e-commerce sales increased to $215 million, e-commerce has increased 7% of net sales in 2009 to 12% in 2012 and we expected to reach 15% of sales over the next couple of years.
E-commerce will be key in driving gross margin expansion as it is our most profitable channel. Over the past year we've been working to upgrade our e-commerce infrastructure in order to support our aggressive growth plans. Specifically, we've upgraded our core e-commerce platform and implemented a new catalog content and promotions management system.
We also improved the user experience through changes in site navigation, enhancing the browse and checkout features as well as significantly improving the product presentation on the site. Our Canadian e-commerce site is live on the new platform and our U.S. and international e-commerce site will go live this spring.
International expansion, prior to 2011 the Company was focused solely on the North American market. We put together a tight team to develop and implement an international strategy and now have 16 stores opened in the Middle East. We're very pleased with the early results and enthusiasm for our brand in those markets and plan to open another 25 stores in the Middle East in fiscal 2013.
There is a void of high quality, value Children's retailers in those markets and we believe we have the potential to build significant market share. International is an important growth vehicle for the Children's Place and we are in talks to expand into additional markets potentially as soon as the fourth quarter of this year.
Loyalty; customers who purchase in stores and online spend three times more than single channel shoppers. We launched our loyalty program last October to increase multichannel purchasing and to provide incentives for customers to increase their share of wallet with the Children's Place. We currently have 3.6 million active customers enrolled and this program will be a key lever in our marketing efforts going forward.
Sourcing; Mike and I attended our Global Vendor Summit Meeting in Hong Kong two weeks ago. Over the next 24 months, we will be intensely focused on improving our supply chain capability to ensure a constant flow of high quality goods at optimal speed and cost while mitigating the impact of macroeconomic challenges.
With the new leadership in place, we're focused on executing four key strategies. One, we are migrating a significant amount of our business into lower cost manufacturing countries. Close to 40% of our merchandise was sourced from China in fiscal '12 and we expect to reduce that to less than 20% over the next 24 months.
We have started to consolidate our vendor network in order to develop stronger, more strategic relationships with our key partners. Third, we have engaged William E Connor & Associates, a Hong Kong based company as our partner to develop and source footwear and accessories. This will allow us to continue to drive outsized growth in these categories while our owned sourcing offices focus their efforts on the significant opportunity that exist within apparel from vendor consolidation and country migration. We're also in the process of strengthening the sourcing capabilities of our Asian offices to better support our overseas vendors in real time, while simultaneously reducing our operating expenses. We had a strong finish to 2012 and I want to thank the team for all their accomplishments.
During 2012, the Children's Place significantly upgraded the senior team, generated record sales of $1.8 billion, increased comp retail sales 2%, increased e-com sales 22%, grew U.S. market share, opened our first stores outside North America, made significant strides towards optimizing our supply chain, increased earnings 11% to $3.23 per share, generated $205 million in cash from operations and returned $89 million to shareholders through our buyback program.
Moving forward to our outlook for Q1 and fiscal '13, we started 2013 with a significant drop week one, which we believe was due to a combination of factors with weather being the biggest. Mall traffic was down significantly and sales of spring apparel were particularly soft.
We were encouraged to see positive comp sales for the rest of February and into early March. However, you may recall that we had record heat last March and starting with the second week of March this year, temperatures have fluctuated anywhere from 15 to 50 degrees colder than last year throughout the majority of our markets.
This insurmountable weather challenge coinciding with our peak Easter selling period has significantly impacted our traffic and the sales of warm weather apparel versus last year and has resulted in a negative 8 comp quarter to-date.
We are approaching the rest of the quarter cautiously, without visibility into a change in the weather and the generally tough macro environment. For Q2 through Q4, we are projecting an improvement in the run rate of the business.
Thank you and now I'll turn the call over to Mike.
Michael Scarpa - EVP and CFO: Thank you, Jane, and good morning, everyone. I am going to start with an overview of the fourth quarter under the retail method of accounting for inventory, which is consistent with the guidance we gave going into the quarter. I will then discuss our decision to move from retail to cost accounting and to capitalize additional supply chain cost. Then I'll move on to the key operational initiatives we are undertaking in fiscal 2013, and will conclude with our guidance.
For the fourth quarter 2012, net sales increased 11% to $509 million. Excluding the 53rd week, net sales increased 6.7%. Comparable retail sales increased 4.3%. The positive comp was driven by 3.1% increase in transactions and a 1.2% increase in average transaction value. Comparable store sales increased 1.4% in the United States and increased 1% in Canada. E-commerce comp sales increased 29.8%.
Under the retail method, gross margin rate improved 200 basis points to 37.8%. The benefits from an increase in merchandise margin was somewhat offset by higher supply chain cost and cost associated with the rollout of our new loyalty program. Gross margins increased in both the United States and Canada during the quarter.
SG&A was well-managed in the fourth quarter, the rate delevered only by 20 basis points to 26.7% of sales. We were able to largely offset the year-over-year increase in bonus and equity comp by more effectively managing store and other administrative expenses.
On a non-GAAP basis, depreciation and amortization expense in the fourth quarter, which excludes accelerated depreciation for the East Coast distribution center closure, was 3.5% of sales compared to the 4.1% last year.
Non-GAAP operating income increased 250 basis points with 7.6% of sales at $38.7 million. Non-GAAP earnings were $1.15 per diluted share compared with $0.87 in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Moving onto the balance sheet, our cash balance at the end of fiscal 2012 increased 18% to $209 million. We generated $205 million in cash from operations during the year and the Company repurchased 1.8 million shares for a total of $89 million and invested $90 million in CapEx.
Balance sheet inventory at the end of the year increased 13% in dollars and 11% per square foot primarily due to in-transit inventory. Saleable inventory increased 2% in dollars and was flat per square foot. As a result of the 53 week and earlier Easter timing, in-transit inventories increased $27 million.
During fiscal 2012 we opened 64 stores and closed 18. We operated 1,095 stores at the end of the year with a total of 5.25 million square feet. This represents a 2% increase in square footage compared to last year.
In the fourth quarter we made two changes to our accounting policy. We changed our method of inventory valuation from the retail method to the cost method and we began capitalizing additional supply chain costs, instead of reporting them as period expenses. Cost is a more precise method of valuing inventory and is the SEC's preferred accounting method.
Internally, our merchant teams manage their business on the cost method, while finance has been reporting on the retail method. Aligning merchants and finance on the cost method will be a much more effective way to run the business.
Historically, the Company capitalized some, but not most of the supply chain costs. Similar to the cost method, the preferred accounting treatment is to capitalize supply chain costs in order to match the cost for sales with the recording of sales. We are now recording a more appropriate level of supply chain costs in inventory, which will be expensed when the product is sold. From a timing perspective, we thought it was important to make the changes during the fourth quarter. So we could start fiscal 2013 clean, using the new inventory valuation method.
The change has been applied retroactively to prior periods for five fiscal years, 2008 through 2012 and the last eight fiscal quarters, which were included as attachments to this morning's press release. The impact of the change in accounting methods is relatively small on an annual basis. For example, net income for fiscal 2012 increased 1% under the new accounting method, whereas net income for fiscal 2011 declined by 4%. The important thing is that this accounting change is the preferred method of accounting for inventory, it will increase internal alignment and it will increase the organization's focus on margin expansion. I will be providing guidance for the first quarter and fiscal '13 under the cost method.
Going forward, I believe there is tremendous opportunity to improve our operations and strengthen our financial performance and we are currently focusing on four initiatives; managing companywide expenses, increasing hurdles for return on invested capital which will impact our store expansion decisions, making progress on systems implementation and developing alternative channels of distribution.
Companywide expense management; we need to take expense out of our business. I believe there is an opportunity to reduce store expenses, particularly in payroll by better aligning store payroll hours with volume group and store size. In the last three months, we have seen considerable progress in managing store labor and we should see additional progress when we implement a workforce management system in the third quarter of this year. This system will enhance our ability to align the (average) of our sales force with peak selling periods and driving overall efficiency and productivity.
We are also increasing the rigor around corporate expense management. Since my arrival, we have gone back and revisited all of our departments operating budgets. Our goal for 2013 will be to reduce the absolute level of SG&A spending versus last year despite the full year impact of the additional stores added in 2012 and the incremental SG&A associated with planned openings for 2013. Improving operational efficiencies and reducing cost is an imperative and we are making it a priority in our culture.
In order to improve operating margins over the next few years, we need to set higher hurdles for return on invested capital. As the Company mentioned in prior calls we completed a comprehensive fleet review in 2012 to identify the North America fleet potential and market voids.
The team is further leveraging that analysis by conducting a market-by-market portfolio review, utilizing a four-wall contribution hurdle rate in addition to the cash contribution metric that was used in the original fleet review. We believe this additional review will inform management with a fact-based set of parameters we can use in determining opportunities around both store openings and closings.
We are planning openings in fiscal 2013 to be approximately 55 compared to 64 in 2012. Are currently anticipating a square footage increase of approximately 2% which has been factored into the guidance we are providing for fiscal year '13.
Systems implementations; in addition to the website enhancements Jane mentioned, we are in the middle of an ERP implementation that has been in process for about two years now. We completed the implementation of the SAP financial system at the end of fiscal 2012. The next major module will be the core merchandising, which we expect to be operational in the next 12 months. In addition, we are exploring opportunities to implement systems to enhance our planning and allocation capabilities.
We will be starting with the implementation of (buy and size) optimization, followed by allocation and auto replenishment. Each module will start with a specific product assortment that we will widen the assortments as the implementation progresses.
Developing alternative channels of distribution; we are pleased with the initial results of our franchise stores in the Middle East and plan to expand the number of stores in countries of operation. In addition, there's been significant interest from various wholesale retailers and partnering with the Children's Place brand.
In February, (Mary Lee Gallagher) joined as Vice President Wholesale to develop with our wholesale strategy and business channel for the Children's Place. We expect the international and wholesale businesses will become a meaningful contributor to operating margin over time and combined with continued strong e-commerce growth, increase four-wall contribution from North American stores, and (strong) expense management will enable the Company to significantly improve operating margins over the next few years.
Now, I would like to move to the first quarter of 2013. Quarter-to-date, our comp sales were down 8% and we believe we will end the quarter with comps in the negative high single digit range. As a result, we project first quarter earnings per share will be in the range of $0.60 to $0.65 compared to adjusted EPS of $1.14 in the first quarter of 2012 under the cost method.
We expected to leverage gross margin by 300 to 340 basis points primarily as a result of 220 to 240 basis points of the leverage of fixed expenses on our negative comp sales.
We expect SG&A dollar spending will decline in the first quarter, but will deleverage as a percentage of sales by approximately 100 basis points due to the negative comp. We expect inventory per square foot to be up low double-digits at the end of the first quarter due primarily to a higher in-transit as timing of 2013 floor sets in the first half of the year require earlier shipment due dates to the 53rd week in 2013.
We project fiscal 2013 earnings per share to be between $2.90 and $3.10 on a negative low single-digit comps. We expect gross margins to be down approximately 20 to 60 basis points for the year and we expect SG&A to leverage 20 to 30 basis points.
This guidance excludes unusual costs or events that are reported in our non-GAAP adjustments. It also assumes that currency exchange rates will remain consistent with today's rates and does not include the impact of further potential share repurchases in fiscal 2013.
We expect depreciation to increase to approximately $74 million due to more capital being deployed throughout the year and system projects coming online. We expect our tax rate to be approximately in the 33.5% range and we expect capital expenditures to be between $90 million and $95 million.
Finally, I want to say that we remain committed to using our strong balance sheet and cash generated by operations to invest in our business to support long-term profitable growth and to consistently return cash to our shareholders.
During fiscal 2012, the Company repurchased 1.8 million shares for approximately $89 million. At the end of the year we've had $80 million available under our current share repurchase authorization.
At this point, we'll open the call to your questions.
Operator: Lorraine Hutchinson, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch.
Lorraine Hutchinson - Bank of America-Merrill Lynch: Just obviously the first quarter off to a bit of a difficult start, as you think about the second quarter and beyond, do you expect to have any of this inventory carrying over or should we start with the clear slate and look for earnings growth in each of the subsequent quarters?
Michael Scarpa - EVP and CFO: From an inventory perspective, obviously with the negative 8% comp through the first part of first quarter, inventory will be littler heavier than what we have expected as we go into the second quarter. The good news about inventory though is that we bought our spring fashion actually down and put the investment behind the six-month seasonal spring basics in our replenishment twelve-month programs, so we feel as we go into the second quarter that we're in fairly good shape from an inventory perspective.
Lorraine Hutchinson - Bank of America-Merrill Lynch: Mile you listed number of cost reduction issues, any way to put some dollar figures around your goals there?
Michael Scarpa - EVP and CFO: As I said we definitely want to in absolute terms spend less in SG&A than we did in the prior year. We spent about $507 million last year and our goal is to obviously get under that despite adding what I'll say is approximately about $25 million of expense in terms of the new store openings. So, our goal is to come in lower than where we were a year ago. We see opportunities obviously in store payroll. We've done a good job over the last three months and expect to continue reducing overall hours in our store fleet as we go through the rest of 2013. Corporate expenses have gone under a microscope and we continue to reduce period-on-period. And then we've done some good things in our distribution center last year. As you remember we've consolidated our warehousing and our distribution centers are performing very well. We have one left in the United States and one in Canada, and the one in the United States is really performed very efficiently over the first couple of months of operations under a consolidated basis.
Operator: Adrienne Tennant, Janney Capital.
Gabriella Coburn - Janney Capital: This is actually Gabriella Coburn calling in for Adrienne. I was just wondering, if you can share with us trends you are witnessing in different regions of the country. If you are seeing better sales trends in the regions having more favorable weather?
Jane Elfers - President and CEO: It's Jane. February as we said week one was very tough and then we comped positive for the next four weeks. The last two weeks have been painful and this one has started off similar with all the snow storms across the country. We have 20 to 40 point comp swings month-to-date between our western and our south western markets and our Midwestern and our northeastern market and when you look at these comp swings, they are even significantly more pronounced within key item categories like short tank, sandals, flip flops, swims and sunglasses. For an example, just in our short category alone, we have a 95 point swing in comp short sales between the West and the Midwest and the comp swings are even more pronounced in Canada as the entire country has been cold, so there are extraordinarily significant changes from region to region.
Gabriella Coburn - Janney Capital: My second question is regarding the baby business. On the last call I remember you speaking to, I'm keeping baby at about 30% of the business, but directing your focus more to key items such as like (knits and pulleys) and decreasing receipts on (dresses), is that something you did for Easter or is that something we'll see more for holiday?
Jane Elfers - President and CEO: That's something we did for Easter. As Mike had mentioned for inventory, we pulled back our fashion inventory in the spring season and really took our shots more on the key item basics.
Operator: Janet Kloppenberg, JJK Research.
Janet Kloppenberg - JJK Research: Jane, just to stay on the current business trends, I was wondering if there were any disappointment by category, has it been the weather – separating out the weather affected categories that you just discussed, or the regional differences. I'm just wondering if, for instance, the baby catalog – baby category is performing to your expectations and how the factory business is running at this time. I'm also wondering if – given the trends, you were able to modify your inventory receipt flow for the second quarter and also well – Michael, how you are you thinking about inventory planning for the back half of the year that would be helpful a lot. Thank you.
Jane Elfers - President and CEO: Sure. Well, as far as (misses), I think as we've said, we comp positive week two, three and four in February and into week one in March. Then when we came up against the weather, what we're seeing is we haven't seen any of the key item basic hot weather category to open up. So we haven't seen short (short 30s, sandal slip walks) any of those businesses open up. But what we are seeing right now is the consumer that is coming in, our traffic is certainly been impacted by this weather to a great degree, but the customer that is coming is converting and buying through Easter product. So we're in pretty good shape as far as Easter inventories are concern particularly since we did buy them down going into spring. So we're anticipating ending next week post inventory very clean in that fashion and where we really have the ownership is in the key basics. From a flow point of view, we certainly have the ability to flow the receipts. There is lot of receipts coming in April and May and we have receipts in our DC. So we're able to keep the receipts in the DC until we need to flow them into the stores. But as far as changing the total number of receipts. We really don't have the ability to do that we own what we own for the first half of the year.
Michael Scarpa - EVP and CFO: Not to get ahead of the game in terms of how we're planning the second half for the year inventories, but we would see salable inventory in the flattish range. Obviously, we want to increase our overall turns. But we are making a -- an investment in our replenishment goods which will allow us that we believe to capture more sales than we did a year ago.
Operator: Brian Tunick, JPMorgan.
Brian Tunick - JPMorgan: Congrats. I guess a couple of questions. I guess first, can you remind us maybe about the store base, how many leases are coming up over the next year or two, and sort of what your typical lease terms have been? Then maybe on the gross margins, just curious about the loyalty program, sort of what impact you are seeing there relative to the guidance you're providing for the quarter and for the year. On the timing of those sourcing benefits you talked about Mike and the IT initiatives, what do you see as some longer term gross margin goals for the Company?
Michael Scarpa - EVP and CFO: So I will start with the store portfolio question first. We have roughly about 40% of our leases coming due either with expiration or kick outs within the next three years. Our typical lease terms are 10 years. Like I said, we are currently undergoing a fleet review on a market-by-market basis. We have added another financial hurdle when evaluating our stores, also now are putting – taking into account four-wall contribution and not just cash contribution. Based on this review, which is currently are ongoing, I believe there is an opportunity that we find in the overall portfolio. From an overall gross margin perspective and operating margin perspective, we have a lot of initiatives underway as a Company. Obviously, some are directed from an IT perspective and others from a supply chain, but we're going to start to see some of the IT initiatives start to take fruition in 2014. Obviously, our sourcing strategy, which Jane talked about regarding country migration, vendor consolidation, obviously the move that we made to the agent in terms of footwear and accessories and the strengthening of our (Asian) offices, we hope that that will play into our average unit cost over the second half of this year and as we move into 2014. From a loyalty perspective also, we've seen a pretty good reaction initial reaction to our loyalty program. We actually are seeing that individuals that have signed up for loyalty are actually spending about 4% more than our consumers who are not part of that program. So it's early days, it's really implemented about four or five months ago. So stay tuned, but we think that this is going to be a cornerstone of our marketing program to go forward basis.
Operator: (Indiscernible), Goldman Sachs.
Unidentified Analyst - Goldman Sachs: I guess I wanted to start a question for Mike. Can you just quantify the extra week benefit in the fourth quarter both in terms of the EPS, if you can give us clarity around the gross margin and SG&A benefit as well?
Michael Scarpa - EVP and CFO: Sure. We did roughly about $20 million of sales in the 53rd week and I think overall, our operating margin was around $1 million. So it didn't have a very significant impact overall on the quarter.
Unidentified Analyst - Goldman Sachs: Just wanted to ask a follow up on the wholesale opportunity that you guys outlined. If you can just provide some more color around what types of – maybe not specific accounts, what types of channels you'd be considering entering? You had mentioned that was a margin accretive channel I was just curious to get some more clarity around that. Typically when some of these traditional wholesalers when they enter retail they claim that retail is a margin accretive channel so I just wanted to get some more clarity there?
Michael Scarpa - EVP and CFO: Sure. We've done a small test so far with Sam's Club and we think based on early results that on the product sold through very well and it's an opportunity for the Company to explore that channel of distribution. We just brought somebody into the Company about a month ago to help us formulate a strategy, so at this point, it's a little early to be talking about what we're thinking, I would suggest that next call, we'll have much more information that we can share with you regarding our plans.
Operator: Dana Telsey, Telsey Advisory Group.
Dana Telsey - Telsey Advisory Group: Can you talk a little bit about, Jane as you were talking about the big kids product, what are you seeing there on terms of boys and girls, and how do you see the transformation of the product from now until back-to-school and any of the initiatives there and then Mike of the buckets that you mentioned whether it's systems, hurdles rates on returns, where do you see the long-term operating margin potential for the business and how much comes from each bucket?
Jane Elfers - President and CEO: On the big kids transformation, we were really pleased with 2012 where we ended up in big kids, both boys and girls. I think that the merchandising and design team has done a terrific job over the last couple years, really differentiating big versus baby and really putting a focus on that consumer and what they are really looking for. Right now in the business, we see a reaction to our spring fashion and both big girls and big boy and as I said I think that we'll be in very good shape when we exit Easter as far as that product with a very little carryover inventory. I can't really speak to the summer categories in either gender base girl or boy just based on the fact that they haven't opened up yet, but I feel that the design and the styles that are in place are going to be very well accepted when the weather does break open. The only thing we have to go by is the southwest and the western market and the response to the summer product out there has been very strong.
Michael Scarpa - EVP and CFO: From operating margin perspective, I have been with the company just about four months now and, and I do see tremendous opportunity to increase our overall operating margins in all of the areas that you did mention. We're currently working with our senior team to quantify and put strategies behind all the different initiatives that we have. So again, being here four months, I am not in a position really to be quantifying specific buckets and specific opportunities. I would suggest that you give me a couple of more months and on the next call, we'll able to outline a little more in detail in terms of what those buckets could represent overall margin over the next two to three years.
Operator: Richard Jaffe, Stifel Nicolaus.
Richard Jaffe - Stifel Nicolaus: A follow-up on the outlet center opportunity with made-for-outlet product being fully rolled out. What do you see the opportunity for outlet in terms of physical expansion, store count, average store size as you become more committed to the product line?
Jane Elfers - President and CEO: I think from a store rollout point of view, we are in most of the strong outlet centers throughout the country and we certainly are involved in any major projects that come online. So we feel good about – there is probably just a handful of locations and outlets that we'd like to be in and that we're not in. So, from a real estate point of view, I think, we're in good shape. From a product point of view, we're over 80% now made-for-outlet product and we'll continue to try to get that closer to about 85. But we are in good shape as far as the rollout strategy and as we mentioned on the call had a very strong end to the year-end outlet and we predict that we'll continue to be able to make progress in outlets over the next couple years and certainly on the margin line we are looking for parity with the U.S. Place by the end of '14.
Michael Scarpa - EVP and CFO: Currently right now the operating expenses of the outlet group is lower than our U.S. Place store. So if and when we do gain parity in terms of the gross margins, we'll really see a big increase into overall operating margins in terms of the comparison to Place.
Richard Jaffe - Stifel Nicolaus: Just one more question, total number of stores that will be outlet and the average square footage of an outlet store versus the regular stores?
Jane Elfers - President and CEO: They are about 6000 square feet versus an average around 4,000 to 4,200 square feet.
Richard Jaffe - Stifel Nicolaus: The number of stores?
Michael Scarpa - EVP and CFO: Currently, we have about 125 outlets.
Operator: John Zolidis, Buckingham Research.
John Zolidis - Buckingham Research: I was wondering if you could dig into this change in the evaluation for new stores looking at ROIC versus cash contribution margin, obviously those two things are related. So I was wondering if you could talk about what the incremental criteria are that you're putting into place on your capital projects for the stores and then I don't know if that relates back to other uses of cash and how you view that overall and if you could comment on share repurchase versus store openings. Just more color on what you're doing differently on evaluating use of capital, especially in the stores?
Michael Scarpa - EVP and CFO: Sure, obviously, the focus for the company is to improve its overall operating margin. In the past, the Company has really been focused on cash contribution and not so much in terms of four-wall contribution. Obviously the four-wall would include the depreciation and amortization of the leasehold improvements cost. So, as we start to evaluate new stores coming into the portfolio, we want to make sure that the new stores that we're adding are indeed accretive to the overall four-wall profitability of the fleet itself. Also, as we look a market-by-market approach and the opportunities potentially to close some doors, we're looking at four-wall contribution overall and the impact that it has on our total operating income. So it's just an added measure of scrutiny that we put into place and it's informed us in terms of some of this new store opening decisions that have been and we hope that we will be able to – it will inform us in terms of potential closures.
John Zolidis - Buckingham Research: Sorry, I just want to follow-up with that just not every company uses cash contribution margin or four-wall contribution margin in exactly the same way? In some cases companies use those two terms interchangeably. Could you define the difference as far as Children's Place is using it?
Michael Scarpa - EVP and CFO: Obviously, it's a different calculation once you throw in depreciation and amortization. The Company historically has looked at the cash contribution. My sense though is as we try to increase our operating margins from what has been a mid-6% range and obviously, the goal is to get it up into the double-digit range. We need to put that further scrutiny on new stores that we're opening and really take a look at the portfolio and understand which stores are making money from a four-wall perspective and which ones aren't and the decisions around potential closures of some of those stores. So you know it's something that we've added in terms of our real estate portfolio committee. It's something that's reported on now and it's – just like I said it's an extra measure that we want to look at. As far as share buyback, the Company has purchased about $90 million last year, similar amount the year before. We have $80 million that was remaining at the end of fiscal 2012 and obviously we worked very closely with our Board around decisions on repurchasing shares and returning that money back to shareholders. So, I don't expect any difference in terms of potential opportunities around share repurchase as we go into '13.
Operator: Jay Sole, Morgan Stanley.
Jay Sole - Morgan Stanley: Jane, as you looked out into 2013 and the competitive landscape, where do you see the Children's Place having the most advantage versus the peers? Maybe if you can talk about it in terms of age and categories and price that would be really helpful.
Jane Elfers - President and CEO: Sure. I think we overall have a competitive advantage. We have the number four market share in the country in kids' apparel and the strength and scale of our brands I think has allowed us the opportunity to continue to expand share even during our turnaround. The numbers just came out and Children's Place expanded market share by another 40 basis points even with new players and spinoff divisions out there. So they were real optimistic about our ability to continue to expand share as our growth strategies mature. I think from a big versus little kids, our competitive advantages that we carry from zero to 14 size and we can outfit from newborn to big kids. I think also the fact that we can do head to toe outfitting has been a big plus for the Children's Place. When you look at what we do carry, we do carry lifestyle specific end-use product. So I think the ability for us to go from very casual to dress-up is also a competitive advantage for us in our price ranges and we continue – expect to continue to leverage that throughout 2013 and beyond.
Jay Sole - Morgan Stanley: Let me ask you one more. You talked about the senior leadership changes that you made. Where are you now just in terms of having the total team in place that you feel like it is the right team to lead the Company forward? I mean do you feel like you need to add more people or are you satisfied with where things stand?
Jane Elfers - President and CEO: No. I don't feel like I need to add more people. I feel like we made a significant upgrade, particularly in the operational and financial leadership positions at Children's Place during 2012. So we really feel good about where the senior team is right now, how the senior team is interacting and collaborating. By far, since I've been here, I feel the best about the team we have and I'm really excited about the potential go forward.
Operator: Susan Anderson, Citi.
Susan Anderson - Citi: I was wondering if you could talk about product cost for 2013 do you guys still expect to get a benefit on the cost side from lower cut during the first half and then I assume that goes away in the second half and then should we see higher costs from other things like transportation?
Jane Elfers - President and CEO: Where we're at right now is for product cost, we're looking at mid-to-high single-digit decreases in AUCs throughout say first six months of the year that is on apparel, not on the accessories, accessories is more flat to LY. Then, as go into the second half of the year we start to anniversary the cost decreases from LY, so those – the AUC decreases will certainly start to level out in the back half of the year.
Susan Anderson - Citi: Then I think you said that you're expecting April same store sales to be about the same as what they are trending now. So does that mean you're assuming that they stay down (8) for April?
Michael Scarpa - EVP and CFO: No. I think what we said was we had a big comp store decrease in the first week of February followed by three weeks of positive and February was down basically in the low single-digit range. We expect March to be down in down significantly based on the weather impact and then we see a slight rebound as we end up in April giving us a high single-digit comp decrease for the quarter.
Operator: Dorothy Lakner, Topeka Capital Markets.
Dorothy Lakner - Topeka Capital Markets: Just wondered if you could give a little bit more color on vendor consolidation, maybe quantify a little bit, how much do you think is possible, and then looking at the various systems initiatives you've got going, just a little bit of timeline, I understand we're talking about 2014 for seeing the real benefits, but just in terms of implementation?
Jane Elfers - President and CEO: Sure. On the vendor consolidation part, I think we have a significant opportunity to decrease the total number of vendors we do business with, probably up to about a third, we could decrease vendors. The other thing on the vendor side is how much more important we're going to become to our top ten vendors and how much more opportunity we have to really develop those strategic partnerships with those top ten players and to become much more important to each other and get a little bit further out in our long-range planning.
Michael Scarpa - EVP and CFO: From a system's perspective, overall ERP we put in the financial systems at the end of this year and our expectation around the core merchandising portion of SAP will go in within the next 12 months. Planning and allocation we're starting to do certain things as we speak and we hope to have the full benefit of that as we begin to rollout into 2014, and then obviously as Jane mentioned Canada is up and running on our new platform from e-commerce perspective and we expect to have the U.S. (up and on-board) in the next couple months, so we expect to see benefit from e-commerce side of the year.
Operator: (Rick Patel, Stephens)
Rick Patel - Stephens: Can you give us the changes in operating margin for the U.S. versus Canada in the fourth quarter. And then as a follow-up, are the merchandizing changes in Canada gaining traction yet and how should we think about the next year in terms of how that region should perform both from a comp and margin perspective?
Jane Elfers - President and CEO: Merchandizing initiatives, we're able to have a positive comp in Canada in Q4 which we were really proud of, so I think that notwithstanding the current situation we have in weather. I think we're doing a better job up there. As you mentioned on the call, we just hired a VP of merchandizing up there, who has significant Canadian experience. So, anticipate as we go through '13 and into '14, we'll be able to further refine those assortments in Canada.
Michael Scarpa - EVP and CFO: Just from a Canadian and U.S. perspective in terms of operating margin, both saw a nice increases in terms of operating margin basically, just approximating the same increase year-on-year in the fourth quarter for both geographical locations.
Operator: No further question, I would just like to turn the program back over to Mr. Jane Singer.
Jane Singer - VP, IR: Thank you for your interest in the Children's Place. If you have further questions, please call me at 201-453-6955.
Operator: This does conclude today's conference. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.


text:
I stumbled onto a copy of the 3-part special the NFL network ran last July about "Making the Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders"...
I wanted to make a couple of points about it:
Danielle - who was the Dolphins representative at the Pro Bowl - did a Hawaiian dance during auditions. Was she lobbying to go to the probowl before she even made the team? Then again, she was seen helping out the staff during the preliminary auditions.
And then I was noticing that they spent a lot of time talking with 3 hopefuls - Jeannie, Tamara, and Esther - all of whom made the squad. And yet, they do not appear on the website, nor in the media guide. And I can't recall seeing any of them on the field.
What's up with that? Was this a fake made-for-TV moment?
Hmmmm. I think we should investigate. Thorougly. Lots of one-one interviews.
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Saturday, February 25, 2006
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I was thinking about this the other day and wanted to hear some other opinions. My opinion is probably more than slightly out there, but I think Jon Heder should have at least been nominated for Napoleon Dynamite and he probably should have won. I know that movie is polarizing. You either hated it or you loved it (I think if you hated it, you just didn't get it, but that's another topic.)
I know you're probably saying right now, "this guy is nuts," but hear me out on Heder. If you have seen him in any other movie or in interviews, you probably didn't even recognize him at first. In fact, you probably said at one point, "this is the guy who played Napoleon Dynamite?" Isn't that what good acting is? Being able to pull off playing someone who is the complete opposite of your personality and making it believable?
Sean Penn won the Oscar in 2004 for best actor in Mystic River for playing a character he plays in just about every movie he's in. Was that role a stretch for him? I doubt it, since he's played it so many times. Others nominated that year were Jude law in Cold Mountain, Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Ben Kingsley in House of Sand and Fog (a movie nobody watched) and Bill Murray in Lost In Translation. Johnny Depp was more deserving of the Oscar, IMO, because his role was a stretch for him. Heder at least deserved a nomination for playing a role that was equally as challenging.
Blast away.
Welcome to Cyclone Fanatic, Jon Heder.
Two things.
1) I hated Napolean Dynamite. I got it. It was just dumb.
2) This kinda goes against your premise, as I realize he was nominated. But I was watching Lincoln the other night and for the life of me, I can't get over the fact Tommy Lee Jones didn't win best supporting for his role in that movie. I love about everything Chrisoph Waltz does, and he was certainly worthy of the oscar. But TLJ was fantastic.
It's remarkable to me that Marlon Brando nor Martin Sheen were nominated for Apocalypse Now. I can see how Sheen might've been a bit weak for best actor but Brando as supporting actor for me would've been a lock. His monologue about joining SF and the inoculation of the Vietnamese children is amazing.
RIP Janice
b. April 2012 d. April 2012
9 posts
May perpetual light shine upon him.
I don't know how John Cazale was never nominated for an Oscar, especially when every single movie he was in was nominated for Best Picture. I guess he's a victim of there just being so many other good roles at the time.
He's like the Steve Kerr of acting...always overshadowed by the other great players on his team.
Last edited by roundball; 08-12-2014 at 12:46 PM.
I'd argue that Heder played basically the same character in Blades of Glory and The Benchwarmers... he's a poor mans Will Farrell.
Also... put me in the crowd that saw Napoleon Dynamite, understood it, and still hates that movie
Not to hijack the thread but Jon Heder was awesome in Benchwarmers, which is my guilty pleasure movie along with Empire Records
"I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day".-Frank Sinatra
@cyfert26 on Twitter
Originally Posted by Bipolarcy
Being able to pull off playing someone who is the complete opposite of your personality and making it believable?
I get what you're saying. I always hated when people said Eminem was great in 8 Mile. It was a story where he portrayed himself and everything that he went through. In other words, just re-enact what you already did before. How hard is that?
Originally Posted by clones26
Not to hijack the thread but Jon Heder was awesome in Benchwarmers, which is my guilty pleasure movie along with Empire Records
Oh man... I haven't seen or heard that movie in a long time... I might have to pull out the VHS of that I have.
Originally Posted by ISUCyclones2015
Oh man... I haven't seen or heard that movie in a long time... I might have to pull out the VHS of that I have.
Its Rex Manning Day!!
Paris Hilton - House of Wax
Originally Posted by clones26
Its Rex Manning Day!!
My name's not ******* Warren.
Eyes closed, head first, can't lose.
Originally Posted by bos
Paris Hilton - House of Wax
That movie was not even her best acting job...
I'll say Alan Rickman, been in some good movies and played some good roles, Die Hard, Harry Potter, Robin Hood, Sweeney Todd. Other possibilities are Donald Sutherland, Steve Buscemi, Jim Carrey and John Goodman.
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text:
Link: Hambo 2: Hamtouchables
Developer: robotJAM
Genre: Puzzle/Physics/Shooter/Platformer
FlashMush Rating: 8.5/10
Hambo is back with more vigilante justice! This time cleaning up the streets from gangs of lore. You have many weapons at your disposal and this is one job you'll enjoy doing!
If you do not know the Hambo series well it's a pretty great one. It's a typical physics puzzle game but it is one of the few that actually is unique and well done. Aka not just circles and squares falling off platforms, there is thought involved. This of course stems from the whole Hambo theme. Much like Rambo, in the first one Hambo helped escape from POW camps and such. Now he is back cleaning up old 50s gangs and making people sleep with the fishes, but all game mechanics stay the same.
While the game mechanics stayed the same they still play seamlessly as ever. You have nine different weapons at your disposal which range form pistols to tommy guns to rocket launchers. Bet you didn't know gangs had such an armory did you? Either way, can't comment on gameplay too much as it is essentially just a level pack and new theme. Although it's a helluva level pack as it boasts an impressive amount of mind bending levels.


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4-H Youth Projects
New Mexico State 4-H Curriculum Kits:
Any 4-H project or curriculum kit may be used as an Expanded 4-H, Special Interest, School Enrichment, or Club program. Call your local County Extension agency for further information. See Printable Project Resources below.
Printable Project Resources
Project FormsLooking for project forms? You should find them at this link.
2011-2012 Projects Literature Handbook
Note: (PDF) large file size, may take a long time to load for slow connections.
2010-2011 Curriculum Kit Catalog (use in 2012 also)
Note: large file size, may take a long time to load on slow connections.


text:
BARBE>/b>Three-star (Rivals.com) wide receiver from Barbe High School in Lake Charles, La. ... No. 86 wide receiver in the country and No. 24 on the Rivals.com Louisiana Postseason Top 75 list ... No. 23 player on the Superprep Louisiana 40 ... versatile and dynamic in production ... good overall speed, agility and quickness ... helped team advance to state semifinals during senior season and post 12-1 record ... caught a school-record 72 passes for 855 yards, and added 880 rushing yards ... also accounted for 24 touchdowns during the 2008 season ... caught 43 passes for 654 yards and seven touchdowns in 2007 and 10 passes for 196 yards and two scores as a sophomore ... also a proficient return man after averaging 24.4 yards per kickoff return as a sophomore ... also received offers from Tulane, Louisiana Tech, McNeese State, Southern Mississippi and Tulsa ... High School Coach: Jimmy Shaver.
E.J. Celestie ... born June 7, 1991, in Lake Charles, Louisiana ... has one brother and four sisters ... plans on majoring in business.


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Oceania Cruises' new Riviera to feature Andrew Lloyd Webber's music
Oceania Cruises newest ship Riviera debuting this May will feature a theatrical production showcasing the music of British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, the Miami-based cruise line said recently.
The cast of singers and dancers of the production dubbed "Now and Forever –The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber will perform to music from some of Webber's most known shows such as "CATS" and "The Phantom of the Opera".
The 1,250-guest ship will also showcase three other productions: "Up in Flames," featuring the music of Elton John and Billy Joel; "The Dawning of Aquarius," a 1960s review; and "Rock On," a rock and roll love story.
The luxury cruise operator teamed with Fort Lauderdale-based Royal Theatrical Productions to provide the high-quality musical line-up for its newest ship.
"We are thrilled that Riviera guests will enjoy the songbook of Andrew Lloyd Webber," Michael Day, Oceania's vice president of entertainment said in a statement. "Working with Jean Ann Ryan and her team we are assured of the most talented performers and highest quality choreography, sound and lighting."
The luxury ship will have spacious suites, the largest veranda staterooms at sea, 10 dining venues, numerous bars and lounges and a full-service Canyon Ranch SpaClub, among other amenities, Oceania said.
Riviera while make its maiden voyage May 16 and will spend the summer and fall sailing in the Mediterranean. After that the ship will sail from PortMiami on a series of winter Panama Canal and Caribbean cruises.


text: Bellson thanks for the chuckle, it reminds me of the old joke about the guy in a bar that sees to good looking women and wants to buy them both a beer. The bartender says I wouldn't do that if I were you. Well the man tries a few more times, and the bartender keeps telling him I wouldn't do that if I were you. Finally the guy asks, why? The bartender says why don't you ask them yourself. So the man goes over to the two good looking women and says I've been trying to buy both of you and the bartender keeps telling me I shouldn't. Why is that. The women both reply, because we're lesbians. The man says what is a lesbian? The women say we eat pussy. The man then holds up his hand and says bartender, three beers for three lesbians please!! :lol: :lol: :nanabang:


text:
Nikon Coyote Special 4-12x40 BDC Predator Scope
Online Item #: 0000000092785
The Coyote Special is an ideal fit for both bolt-action and AR rifle platforms. With high magnification for long-range shots and a wide field of view at the low end to keep you on predators coming into the call, you can count on it in any situation. Also featured is Nikon's patented BDC reticle, that allows hunters to hold 'dead-on' at ranges exceeding those previously thought possible. The BDC's unique see-through ballistic circles offer an incredible advantage for long range shooting, yet allow a normal sight picture for shorter-range shots where the crosshair itself is the aiming point.
- BDC reticle for improved long-range shots
- Spring-loaded instant zero-reset turrets
- Multicoated lenses boost light transmission for bright, high-res images in all conditions
- High magnification for dependable long-range shots
- Removable anti-reflective lens cover
- Waterproof, fogproof, shockproof, nitrogen-filled, & O-ring sealed 1-in. diameter tube
- Generous eye relief keeps your brow safe - even with heavy recoil or extreme shooting angles
- Precise hand-turn 1/4 MOA click adjustments get you zeroed in more quickly - 60 MOA max
- 7.9 - 23.6 ft. field of view at 100 yds.
- 3.3 - 10mm exit pupil
- 3.6 in. eye relief
- 14.1 in. overall length
- 40mm objective outside diameter
- 44mm eyepiece outside diameter
- Matte black finish
- Weight: Approximately:1.8 pounds
- Shipping Dimensions: Approximately 15.75 x 4.72 x 3.15 inches.
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text:
BFG has been building quite a following in the
past few
years with their excellent line of nVidia powered video cards, and
today we pit
their 6600GT OC against Gigabytes ATI powered X800. So what does SBD
mean? Silent But Deadly. The X800 is a totally silent, fanless design
that should appeal to system builders who want a silent or near silent
machine. I know the HTPC crowd is giving
this card a serious looking over for sure.
Today, we will be putting both cards through their paces to
see how they compare to one another. Some
will argue that the extra memory on the X800 is unfair. I would disagree. It was obvious ATI's X700 was not going to be
competitive on the higher side of the mid range, so they stepped up like a good
Marine and adapted. Both the cards we
are looking at today can be found in the sub $250.00 US price range, and as is
always the case, it boils down to the bottom line--cost.
That being said, I still think the cards are being aimed at
a slightly different portion of the same market segment. In the case of Gigabyte's X800, it will be
hard for users looking for a card capable of playing today's games, and silently powering an HTPC to ignore
this card. BFG won the coin toss, so we
will start with the 6600 GT
This quote from their website sums up BFG's approach to
building and selling video cards:
Many of our employees
are gamers and PC enthusiasts, and we provide hardware and marketing that
reflects our passion and excitement for the latest technology. We build
hardware that is stable, well supported and cost competitive.
Now I know every company out there wants you to
believe they are cool modders and gamers just like you are, but in BFG's case, I
get the feeling it goes beyond hype and rings true. The 6600 GT OC is my first hands-on
experience with one of their cards as they only build on NVIDIA's GPU's, but
you would have to be blind to miss all the press they get. Recently they have ventured into the
motherboard market with their NF4 powered BFGRNF4U which you can read an
excellent review on by the guys at [H]ardOCP here.
Gigabyte is known for their motherboards. They've had some
success with the enthusiast market over the years, more so for feature rich,
stable boards than massive overclockers.
If you visit their site here, you will find the usual Asian leaning
English translation typical of Taiwanese companies; readable, but off a
bit. I find it a little humorous that we
have a video card from a company that builds motherboards, and another from a
video card company getting into the motherboard market. If BFG's track history to date is any
indication, the motherboard companies may soon regret casting their sights on
the video card market. For company score, I am going with the American team
because I really feel like they relate to me better.


text:
By David Stewart White
Americans visiting London may have to search carefully to find a missing holiday. Halloween? Yes. Christmas? Certainly. New Years? Of course. But Thanksgiving is almost exclusively a North American event, celebrated this year in the formerly British territories of Canada on October 13 and in the United States on November 28.
London doesn't totally ignore the North American event though. The official Visit London tourism website provides a helpful short list on a page titled Thanksgiving in London 2013. The Visit London Blog even outlines Thanksgiving menus and events at a handful of participating restaurants in the city.
And for Brits who suffer—or think they suffer—Thanksgiving envy, the Metro news website has a primer headlined "What is Thanksgiving and can I eat it?"


text:
Members in the Media
Francis Everitt, Stanford University, on getting a grant from Saudi Arabia for Gravity Probe B, The New York Times, February 17, 2009
"It will provide advanced tools for discovery-class science in condensed matter and materials physics, chemistry, and biology –science that ultimately will enhance national and energy security and help drive abundant, safe, and clean energy technologies."
Steven Dierker, Brookhaven National Laboratory, on the planned National Synchrotron Light Source II, Newsday, February 12, 2009
"We now have a very, very good chance that we will see hints of the Higgs before the LHC will." "It's a race. Whoever is first is first."
Dmitri Denisov, Fermilab, BBC news.com, February 17, 2009
"If they do find the Higgs, good luck to them. But I think it's unlikely they will find it before the LHC comes online. "
Lyn Evans, CERN, BBC News.com, February 17, 2009
"The stereotype is boys are good at math, and you're not going to have a life if you do science. It's not true."
Jennifer Doebbler, Argonne National Laboratory, at an event encouraging girls to do science, South Town Star (Illinois), February 20, 2009
"It was an important demonstration to make things this small and prove that we can do this. But whether it is feasible depends on many details."
Jeremy Levy, University of Pittsburgh, on a new transistor he designed that is only 2 nm wide, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 20, 2009
"This is a miracle, I think. It is redressing this terrible problem where the success rate for excellent proposals was very low."
A. J. Stewart Smith, Princeton University, on research funding in the economic stimulus bill, The New York Times, February 24, 2009
"Everything you can think of that is a renewable–or somewhat more renewable–energy option has roadblocks to it, and it needs a science solution."
George Crabtree, Argonne National Laboratory, Los Angeles Times, February 23, 2009
"It is a disservice to society to say that only people who are devoted 24 hours a day to their careers can be scientists. Other people can make important contributions."
Rachel Wortis, Trent University, Forbes.com, March 6, 2009.
"We have a plan going forward where we can reduce what could have been years down to months, and we feel very strongly that this thing will work."
Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy, announcing his plan to speed up the integration of green technology outlined in the stimulus package, Atlantic Monthly, February 24, 2009.
"We really need to be careful about our openness to the world."
John H. Marburger III, former science advisor to the Bush administration, explaining how it should be easier for students to gain access to United States universities, The New York Times, March 3, 2009.
"The more pieces of debris up there, the more chance you'll have another collision. Near Earth, space is really very crowded."
Geoffrey Forden, MIT, describing how Earth's orbit is full of space junk, The Wall Street Journal, February 26, 2009.
"We just don't know … I think people should be worried."
David Albright, Institute for Science and International Security, speculating on what Iran's intent might be for enriching uranium. Newsweek, February 28, 2009.
"Options theory is kind of deep in some way. It was very elegant; it had the quality of physics,"
Emanuel Derman, explaining why he left the world of research physics to pursue finance, The New York Times, March 10, 2009.
APS encourages the redistribution of the materials included in this newspaper provided that attribution to the source is noted and the materials are not truncated or changed.
Editor: Alan Chodos


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Waking early Saturday morning to the beauty of the outdoors, I decided to read my book and finish my garden: two of my favorite pastimes. It was going to be a quiet weekend and I was so relieved. Both my children were working on Mothers Day and proud that they were employed. I picked up my cell, no longer a land line owner and noticed that they were 6 missed calls and texts from my daughter. I had forgotten to slip out of silent mode; something I NEVER do. Oh, no...now what...not on my holiday weekend????????????
And she called, I answered and breathlessly, she was worried because I NEVER not answer the phone. She just called to say hi??????? I asked her what she was doing and she said she was busy with a communion in the afternoon which was not far from me. She lived on the North side of Chicago, no car and so it was difficult sometimes to just drop in. A little saddened by her voice that I would not see her; I quickly realized I had been given a great gift. Regardless of the consequences, I was pleased that I could be that Mom that was always there. So we hung up and I went back to my book
Within a few minutes, someone began pounding on the front door....only the police pound on my front door and I was terrified to open it....pounding like that was only bad news. Finally, my significant other wearily woke to the obnoxious interruption, wondering what the hell was going on and opened the door, a sheepish smile on his face. And there she was! My daughter who had gotten up at 6, taken a three hour train trip, and a 45 minute walk to my doorstep. In her arms was a breathtaking array of flowers, my favorite chocolates and a blue ribbon award for not having any children of my own in prison. Not only that, we ran up to Starbucks for my favorite coffee and banana walnut bread before she headed out to the communion.
And there was one more thing she allowed me to do after so many years of bad pictures for both us, my friend took our picture together; one of the best I have ever seen.
How beautiful it was to be a Mom...... in love with the concept all over again.


text:
Andover Sports Award Winners Announced
More than 300 people attended the Andover Sports Awards in December which saw local people rewarded for their dedication to sport throughout the local area in 2012.
The celebratory event gave awards to local people who had achieved the most or inspired a generation this year. The special evening, organised by Valley Leisure and held at the Andover Leisure Centre, started with a fantastic display from the Andover Gymnastic Club acrobatics display team before the nominees were called to the stage and the winners announced.
"We're blessed with an enormous amount of talent in this town," said Kevin Paterson, Chief Executive at Vally Leisure. "It was extremely difficult to choose one winner in each category. We could have given the award to them all."
The winners included Liz Hall, who won the Service to Sport Award for her 30 years of commitment to Andover Cricket Club's colts team. Liz, who is in her 80s, has given support to the club at every level and continues to do so even in her retirement.
All the winners will now be entered into the Sport Hampshire & IOW Sports Awards to be held on Wednesday 20 March at St Mary's Stadium in Southampton.
Full list of winners:
Outstanding Personal Achievement Award (sponsored by The Breeze Andover)
Dan Mason - Triathlon
Volunteer of the Year Award (sponsored by Simplyhealth)
Parkrun volunteers: Jason Briley, Gemma Coombes, Helen Davis and Jon Simmonds
Service to Sport Award (sponsored by Simplyhealth)
Elizabeth Hall - Cricket
Senior Sports Person Award (sponsored by Emerson and Control Techniques Dynamics)
Luke Graham - Cricket
Junior Sports Person Award (sponsored by JPD Property Services)
Jon van de Heuvel - Kickboxing
Senior disability sports person (sponsored by Shakespeare General Builders)
Jack Weatheritt - Football
Junior Disability Sports Person (sponsored by Andover Patio Centre)
George Bull McLean - Athletics
Senior Team of the Year Award (sponsored by Barclays Corporate)
Fighting Falcons - Kickboxing
Junior Team of the Year Award (sponsored by Barclays Corporate)
John Hanson Year 9 Netball
Coach of the Year Award (sponsored by Barclays Corporate)
James Coney - Athletics
More People, More Active Coaching Award (sponsored by Valley Leisure)
Karina Gibbs - Leisure classes
Lifetime achievement award (sponsored by Valley Leisure)
Robyn Brown - Weight Lifting
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College Hockey:U.S. Drops Decision To Czech Republic At WJC
Will Face Sweden In Quarterfinals
GRAND FORKS, N.D. — The United States fell to the Czech Republic, 3-1, in the final game of preliminary-round action at the World Junior Championship. The U.S. team took 39 shots on Czech goaltender Vladislav Koutsky, but was only able to convert once in the loss.
The Czechs opened the scoring, tallying the only goal in the first period with Rostislav Olesz one-timing a bouncing puck over the left shoulder of Al Montoya.
As the second period got underway, Lukas Kasper upped the Czech lead to two, firing a hard shot from the top of the circle for 2-0, Czech Republic. After 18 minutes of scoreless hockey, Dan Fritsche put the U.S. on the board, launching a shot, high to the stick-side to bring the U.S. within one.
The score remained 2-1 until the final minute of play, despite three Drew Stafford chances, two of which hit posts in the third period. With just five seconds remaining to play, Olesz scored his second of the night, an empty-netter, for the 3-1 final score.
The U.S. finished the preliminary round as the third seed in Group A and will face Sweden on Jan. 1, at 7:38 p.m. (CST). The winner of that game will advance to the semifinals on Jan. 2.
In other tournament action, Canada downed Finland, 8-1, at Ralph Engelstad Arena in Grand Forks, N.D.. In games at Thief River Falls, Minn., Sweden defeated Slovakia, 3-0, and Russia beat Switzerland, 6-1.
The following is a self-policing forum for discussing views on this story. Comments that are derogatory, make personal attacks, are abusive, or contain profanity or racism will be removed at our discretion. USCHO.com is not responsible for comments posted by users. Please report any inappropriate or offensive comments by clicking the "Flag" link next to that comment in order to alert the moderator.
Please also keep "woofing," taunting, and otherwise unsportsmanlike behavior to a minimum. Your posts will more than likely be deleted, and worse yet, you reflect badly on yourself, your favorite team and your conference.


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Alumni Win 2013 Betty Bowen Awards
Leo Berk (MFA 1999) is the grand prize winner of this year's Betty Bowen Award competition, hosted by the Seattle Art Museum. There will be an exhibition of his artwork at the museum from 07 November 2013 through 23 February 2014.
Sol Hashemi (BFA 2009) received the Kayla Skinner Special Recognition Award, and Anthony Sonnenberg (MFA 2012) was among the six Betty Bowen Award finalists. They were chosen from 627 artists in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho who applied for the competition.
Congratulations to all!
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Gardening Articles: Landscaping :: Yard & Garden Planning
How to Buy and Plant Trees (page 4 of 4)
by Lance Walheim
After Planting
Watering. Bare-root trees do not need to be watered again until two to four weeks after growth resumes. Container and B&B trees need regular watering until their roots grow into surrounding soil. During hot weather, these trees may need to be watered every two to three days to keep the root-ball moist. Occasionally wetting the soil outside the basin will ensure that roots develop into the surrounding soil. Expand the basin as the tree grows.
Pruning. Most new trees need no pruning the first season other than to remove broken branches. Pruning may reduce the total growth of a young tree. These cautions noted, if large, vigorously growing branches are too low or competitive with more desirably placed branches, you can safely cut them back. This preserves some foliage but reduces competition. Eventually they can be removed.
Pinch out the tips of vigorous growth in order to stimulate side branching. If the leader is growing vigorously and no laterals are forming at a height you would like, pinch out an inch of the tip growth when it is at the height where you would like a permanent branch. Several shoots will grow from below the pinch. When the new shoots are 3 to 4 inches long, select the most vigorous (hopefully the top one) for the leader and pinch back the other shoots. If growth is vigorous, this can be repeated a couple of more times, allowing two or three main branches to be selected the first growing season.
Fertilizer. If young trees are growing slowl poorly colored foliage, they may benefit from adding a nitrogen fertilizer to the watering basin. Remove support stakes soon after the tree can stand on its own.
Lance Walheim is a citrus farmer and garden specialist living in Exeter, California
Photography by National Arbor day Foundation


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Our clubhouse features a demonstration kitchen, as well as a spacious great room equipped with large screen TVs and
gaming consoles. Finish some work in our fully equipped business center and then relax at our Cyber Caf??, coffee bar or
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From our 24-hour fitness center, enjoy a panoramic view of the center of the community. The "Village Green" features a
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Web analysts from all types of corporate backgrounds sometimes conduct "site visits" to glean more knowledge about the company and the customers they serve. So it follows that church website developers could lead similar types of visits, to see how congregation members interact with the site, what they wish to learn, etc.
The notion of a web analyst's "site visit" does not refer to visiting a web site. On the contrary, it is more often described as a "follow-me-home" study (Kaushik, 2007). In other words, a web analyst team physically travels to the customer's world, whether it is a store, office, home, or church.
Take, for example, a major car sales website which is subscribed to by a variety of car dealerships. It is one thing to look at the site and try to figure out its strengths and weaknesses. A "site visit" would mean driving to several dealerships and observing the car salesmen working through the site. They may be trying to update company information, replying to their own customers' feedback, or removing cars from the online inventory. As they interact with the website, some processes may go smoothly while others might slow the users down.
How to Prepare for a Site Visit
Preparing for a site visit takes a bit of time on the front end, but makes the actual visit much more valuable. Sometimes people are resistant to someone watching them work on a computer. Similarly, teachers do not like students reading over their shoulder when typing. A person's potential reaction to being watched may make him or her nervous and make mistakes, which could potentially skew the analyst's data.
Therefore, to best prepare for a site visit, spend time identifying with the panel of attendees or church officials. Set expectations early and clearly, communicate openly to understand their needs, recruit key players, and identify critical tasks and participants. In addition, decide before arriving on time who will perform which role of moderator, note taker, videographer, etc.
Conducting the Site Visit
When actually conducting the site visit, be patient so as not to lead customers to a particular result. About 80% of the analyst team's time should be spent observing. Ask customers to show their typical day's routine, and have them show how they problem solve when problems arise. While observing and listening, formulate strategies about how you could help them the best. The other 20% of the time can be used to ask a few questions and document observations. (Kaushik, 2007).
Analyzing the Data
Finally, upon returning from the site visit, it is time to analyze the data. Have a meeting of all parties who had a role in the visit as soon as possible to capture their thoughts while their memory is fresh. Make sure to take lots of notes and assimilate particular observations into overarching themes. Include specific examples as much as possible. Be sure to note any surprises that customers tended to do repeatedly.
After having a list of themes break each down to identify what the root cause was for customer failure. These will be the problems to address, so developing and recommending an action plan to target each issue will be very valuable to the company. Prioritizing the recommendations, and assigning who is in charge of which aspect, are also important.
Lastly, the analyst team should create a plan for after the recommendations are made. This will check how constructive the recommendations were. This includes such ideas as more site visits, website testing, a change in marketing procedures, or following up with additional customers.
All in all, site visits could truly help church communities better understand the needs of their congregation as it pertains to utilizing a website in this modern era. The focused research-based visit asks the important question of "why" they do what they do on the site. Site visits help identify new and different ways of meeting people's needs and shows them first-hand that the church administration cares about improving their site to best meet those needs.
Kaushik, A. (2007). Web Analytics an hour a day. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing, Inc.


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Founded in 1993 by long time friends and music lovers, Wolfgang Sick, Mousse T. and Errol Rennalls made it not only a driving ambition to control their own musical destinies, furthermore, in a time when strategies and marketing formulas dic..
Playhouse was founded in September 1993 by Heiko Schäfer (M/S/O) and Ata. The sister label to Klang Elektronik, it focuses more on the house side of things, while Klang Elektronik releases music that is more techno- orientated.
Electro based label home to artists such as Pauline, Plume & Jess & Crabbe to name a few.
Sempai Music offer a unique experience in the electronic music scene, publishing a range of musical styles. Sempai Music, run by artist Marcos Valiente, loves quality alternative sounds, adores a great party and thrives on creative, young p..
DJTUNES is a lead provider in legal downloads of electronic dance music.
Download from over 800,000 high quality MP3s of Electro House, House Music, Trance, Minimal, Progressive, and Techno tracks – 320 or 128 MP3 file formats, all DRM-free. Listen and purchase releases from top DJs, artists and labels. Preview, Select, and Buy your music now on DJTUNES.
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Join our DJTUNES Affiliate program and make easy money! Simply link to us using our unique advertising media, and get paid! Join now - its free!Find Out More


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1/10/13 at 6:28pm
Posts by biarritz
1/5/13 at 12:48pm
it is the exact same expresssion in every pic,how do you do it? uncanny.
1/4/13 at 8:38pm
- Forum: Entertainment and Culture
- Thread: Portlandia
I agree,call me crazy but it kind of reminds me of the old Monty Python sketches...no?
1/4/13 at 8:37pm
- Forum: Entertainment and Culture
there's only one female singer more annoying then mariah and that person is Christina Aguillera
1/4/13 at 8:24pm
anybody still following Frenchy's new blog ,a Kiton has been posted frenchyfoundit.tumblr.com


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Reason for extended mass layoffs, third quarter 2008
November 18, 2008
A total of 218,158 workers experienced separation from their jobs for at least 31 days during the third quarter of 2008. Among the seven categories of economic reasons for layoff, business demand accounted for the largest number of separations — 76,979.
Seasonal events were reported as the reason for 38,742 separations; financial issues, 32,812.
The largest over-the-year increases in the number of separations occurred in layoffs attributed to business demand factors and organizational changes; within business demand, the number of separations due to slack work nearly doubled.
Within financial issues, the number of workers terminated because of bankruptcies nearly doubled over the year to 12,156.
Permanent closure of worksites (which could be due to any reason) affected 50,025 workers during the third quarter of 2008.
These data are from the Mass Layoff Statistics program. "Extended mass layoffs" last more than 30 days and involve 50 or more individuals from a single establishment filing initial claims for unemployment insurance during a consecutive 5-week period. These data are preliminary. To learn more, see "Extended Mass Layoffs in the Third Quarter of 2008," (PDF) (HTML) news release USDL 08-1669.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Economics Daily, Reason for extended mass layoffs, third quarter 2008 on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2008/nov/wk3/art02.htm (visited June 27, 2016).
Recent editions of Spotlight on Statistics
Employment and Wages in Healthcare Occupations
Healthcare occupations are a significant percentage of U.S. employment. Some of the largest and highest paying occupations are in healthcare. This Spotlight examines employment and wages for healthcare occupations.
Fifty years of looking at changes in peoples lives
Longitudinal surveys help us understand long-term changes, such as how events that happened when a person was in high school affect labor market success as an adult.
- A look at pay at the top, the bottom, and in between
The Spotlight examines how earnings and wages have changed over time and how they differ within a geographic area, industry, or occupation.


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GetNewSong : Free Mp3 Download , Latest Song Lyrics, Concert news, Popular Songlist, Billboard Top chart!
GetNewSong.Com is song sharing site. You can get here latest song ,Lyrics,YouTube links for free. We offer you to download free mp3 links , lyrics, YouTube video what we got from various sites. So we are not the uploader.
If you see any link is broken , please feel free to write us.
Going to tell you again that we are not the up-loader of any song. We're just sharing links. So don't ask us to remove content. Although, we respect your copyrights.
Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music. -----Jimi Hendrix


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We are about two weeks into the New Year, what were your resolutions? Have you stuck to them? Well, if your resolutions had anything to do with health and happiness you can jump start yourself with an evening at the Yoga Journal Live Event later this week.
Spontaneous Happiness will be the topic on Friday evening with Dr. Andrew Weil. According to Dr. Weil in order to be happy, lead balanced and successful lives, we should work on cultivating resilience. Resilience in the most broad of ways; in our body, mind and spirit.
The lecture will begin at 7:30 p.m., with a book signing to follow. Tickets to the talk range in price from $39 to $125.
If you are planning to make your way to a few classes, plug in SOURCE at check out to get $50 off a weekend 6-class pack.
The San Francisco Yoga Journal Live Event will take place at the Hyatt Regency January 16 - 20. Weekend passes, single day and full event passes are available for purchase. Single class passes will open up a few days before the event. Free community classes will be offered at the conference on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
If this event looks like fun, be sure to subscribe! Just click the 'subscribe' button below the headline.


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The new school year begins this week for many kids in north Texas; with the new school year also comes the requirement for a project if your student will be joining FFA or the local 4-H.
Rabbits are a great project to begin with; but there are a few things to keep in mind. First locate a reputable breeder who will guide you and educate you about the breed they raise. You can visit the American Rabbit Breeders Association for a list of breeders in your area. On the ARBA website you will also find a list of recognized breeds; this is a good place to start if you don't have a particular breed in mind; look at all the breeds and their maximum weights, this will help you get an idea of what breed of rabbit you would like to start with. A good plan is to pick out five breeds that you like the best, then locate a breeder and ask them for help locating one of those breeds.
Talk to your FFA teacher or your 4-H leader, they may also have some resources for you. There are many breeders right here in the north Texas area that will be more than happy to help a student find a rabbit to start with.
A good breeder should welcome you and your questions; and should be a good resource for you after your make your purchase.
Here are a few more articles worth reading:
Cleaning fur and dust off cages
Have more questions not answered here? Feel free to contact Cindi at firstname.lastname@example.com
Have more ideas like this one? Share this article on Facebook or Pinterest and add your own comments!
View other articles written by Dallas Small Farm Examiner by going to her homepage.
Categories include: barn tips, sheep, goats, rabbits, cattle, pigs, chickens, news, history, showing, agriculture, misc farm, weather, dogs, college, fire, and Guardians.
Cindi is also the Dallas Household Tips Examiner she passes along tips and easy recipes she finds.
Categories include: Cleaning tips, Recipes, Household, Kitchen, Stains, Organizing, Laundry, Saving money, Crafts, Farmer's Almanac best days, Homemade cleaners , Family and Health , Outdoors , and Beauty


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JSRs and APIs
In this section on the Java programming language, get news, advice, and tutorials on using Java in enterprise application development. Learn why Java is so widely used in programming today, and discover tricks to use and pitfalls to avoid. It's important to stay informed about the latest Java Specification Requests (JSRs) and application programming interfaces (APIs). We bring you news about JSRs and APIs, popular Java platforms, classes, objects, IDEs, and SDKs that exist for programming in Java.
Troubleshooting the most common compile-time errors in Java code
24 Aug 2012
Tutorial - In this second tutorial in a series on Java programming, we look at how to troubleshoot and fix the most commonly encountered compiler errors.
Install the Java Development Kit (JDK): Setting JAVA_HOME
16 Feb 2012
Video Tutorial - The Java Development Kit (JDK) is a necessity for every Java developer. This video tutorial will guide developers through the process of installing JDK version 6.
Is Java EE7's cloud focus too narrow?
11 Oct 2011
Video - The upcoming Java EE7 release is focused on cloud computing, but at JavaOne 2011 some Java experts wondered if that's a good thing.
Ben Evans and Martijn Verburg on Java 7
22 Mar 2011
Video - In this video Ben Evans and Martjin Verburg talk about Java 7, the new version of Java that's coming out this summer. Find out what sorts of improvements have been made and when to expect your first look at Java 7.
Michael Ernest gives advice on Oracle Certification exam preparation
22 Mar 2011
Video - In this video Michael Earnest gives some quick advice on what to watch out for as you prepare for the Oracle Certification examination. Find out the biggest mistake folks make when they take the Oracle Certification exam.


text: 01 October 2002 archive See all show photos FORGET Posh and the Saints. Burberry has gone indie for spring/summer 2003, with perhaps a light strain of punk. The designer of the company's ready-to-wear Prorsum line, 30-year-old Christopher Bailey, is clearly very aware of the rut the newly revived label could get stuck in if it fails to reinvent itself once again and fast. In his third season, he gave his collection a very distinct British feel at Milan Fashion Week yesterday – but this was definitely more Rock than Royalty. And it was just quirky enough to hold the interest of fashion editors ever on the hunt for the next big thing. The famous Burberry check was translated into a cute, criss-crossed cream string-vest jumper, worn over a brown utility patch-pocket mini skirt, or pared to a black and green stripe on satin jackets and shirts, untucked over drainpipes for full rock impetus. Meanwhile, on luxuriously slouchy cashmere jogging pants and multi-zipped canvas flying jackets, the check played no part at all. Check it out. (October 1 2002, AM) Continue reading Back to top


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Pampers Coupons
Here is a great deal on Pampers Giant Packs at Target! This week you get a $20 Target gift card back when you buy two Pampers Giant Pack Swaddlers, Cruisers, or Baby Dry diapers. Combine that with the Pampers printable coupons released today for a great deal on Pampers!!
Click to print the Pampers Coupons!
Here is how the deal would look:
Buy (2) Pampers Giant Pack Diapers @ $34.99 each
Includes Cruisers, Swaddlers, and Baby Dry
Use TWO $2/1 Pampers Swaddlers printable coupons
OR use TWO $2/1 Pampers Cruisers printable coupons
Pay $32.99 each out of pocket, get back $20 Target gift card
$22.99 each wyb 2 after coupons gift card!
Print two coupons per computer by coming back to this post and clicking on the link a second time after the first print (you may have to scroll to the end of the list of coupons to see it).
Be sure to check out the rest of this week's Target Coupon Matchups as well!
More great Printable Store Coupons!


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EUGENE, Ore. – Oregon senior
linebacker Michael Clay has been named the Pac-12 Conference's defensive player
of the week for his role in the Ducks' 49-0 win over Arizona Saturday night in
Autzen Stadium.
Clay equaled his single-game best of 13 tackles, including 10 unassisted stops, while helping limit the Wildcats to 332 yards of total offense and 243 passing yards. Arizona entered the game ranked fourth in the country in total offense (604.7 avg.) and seventh in passing yards (357.7 avg.).
In addition to his total number of tackles, the San Jose, Calif., standout also was credited with a pair of tackles for loss, one quarterback sack and one forced fumble.
Clay first posted a career-high 13 tackles in the 2012 Rose Bowl win over Wisconsin.
It marks the first conference player-of-the-week honor for the second-year starter who leads the team in tackles with 25 stops. Clay ranked second in the Pac-12 in tackles per game a year ago (8.9 avg.).
-- GoDucks.com --


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OAKLAND – Raiders quarterback Terrelle Pryor is officially out for Sunday afternoon's game against the Washington Redskins. He was listed among the team's inactives six days after suffering a concussion against the Denver Broncos.
Pryor was slated to start, but he experienced concussion-like symptoms late Saturday night that prompted the Raiders to change plans. Matt Flynn will start in Pryor's place.
The Raiders will also play without defensive end Jason Hunter (quadriceps) and left guard Lucas Nix (ankle), starters who were listed as questionable on the team's official injury report. Brian Sanford will start for Hunter and Andre Gurode will start for Nix.
Guard Antoine McClain, receiver Juron Criner, safety Tyvon Branch and tackle Menelik Watson were also ruled inactive.