text:
30 South Pearl Street
Albany, New York
Service Tariff No. HC-1 - Firm Hydroelectric Power and Energy
February 12, 2007
30 South Pearl Street
Albany, New York 12207
Niagara County ("Customer") hereby enters into this Agreement with the Power Authority of the State of New York for electric service as follows:
I. Definitions
a. Acceptance of the New License shall mean the date upon which the Power Authority files its acceptance of the New License with FERC, or the date of the expiration of the existing original license, August 31, 2007, whichever occurs later.
b. Agreement means this Agreement.
c. Allocation shall mean the amount of power and associated energy that the Authority has allocated to Customer hereunder.
d. Ancillary Services shall be as defined by the NYISO in its rules, tariffs, manuals and procedures.
e. Commencement Date shall be as set forth in Article XVII.
f. Authority is the Power Authority of the State of New York.
g. Contract Demand will be the amounts set forth in Section II or such other amount as may be determined in accordance with the provisions of this Agreement.
h. Customer is the municipality (Host Community) identified above.
i. Customer's Agent is defined in Article IX.
j. Electric Service is Power and Energy available to Customer in accordance with applicable Service Tariffs, Rules and other contract documents.
k. Excess Power is defined in Article VIII and Appendix A.
l. FERC means the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (or any successor organization).
m. FERC License means the first new license issued by FERC to the Authority for the continued operation and maintenance of the Project, pursuant to Section 15 of the Federal Power Act, which new license will become effective after expiration of the Project's original license issued on January 30, 1958.
n. Firm Hydroelectric Power and Energy are firm power and associated energy from the Authority's Niagara Power Project, intended to be available at all times except for limitations provided in this Agreement, the Rules, applicable Service Tariff or in other contract documents.
o. Green Attributes (sometimes referred to as Renewable Attributes or Renewable Energy Credits) are attributes associated with renewable energy power production facilities as may be defined by law or administrative action now or in the future, including but not limited to the Renewable Portfolio Standard proceeding of the New York Public Service Commission.
p. Host Communities are Niagara County, City of Niagara Falls, Town of Lewiston, Town of Niagara, City of Niagara Falls School District, Lewiston-Porter School District and Niagara-Wheatfield School District.
q. Load Serving Entity is an entity authorized or required by law, regulatory authorization or requirement, agreement, or contractual obligation to supply Energy, Capacity and/or Ancillary Services to retail customers under the rules, tariffs, manuals and procedures of the NYISO.
r. NRA means the federal Niagara Redevelopment Act (18 USC §§836, 836a)
s. NYISO means the New York Independent System Operator or any successor organization.
t. Power Credits are defined in Article VIII and Appendix A.
u. Project means the Niagara Power Project, FERC Project 2216.
v. Project Power and Energy means Firm Hydroelectric Power and Energy produced by the Project.
w. Project Switchyard is the Niagara Project switchyard.
x. Relicensing Settlement Agreement means the Niagara Power Project, FERC Project No. 2216 Host Community Relicensing Settlement Agreement Addressing Non-License Terms and Conditions allocation of Niagara Project Power and Energy to the Host Communities dated June 27, 2005.
y. Rules are the applicable provisions of the Authority's Rules and Regulations for Power Service (Part 454 of Chapter X of Title 21 of the Official Compilation of Codes, Rules and Regulations of the State of New York).
z. Service Tariffs are schedules establishing rates and other conditions for sale of Electric Services to Customer.
aa. Ultimate Users are entities to whom Customer will resell (or otherwise convey benefits associated with) Project Power and Energy purchased from the Authority as provided in Article VI of this Agreement and Appendix A hereto. Customer may designate itself as an Ultimate User.
bb. Unforced Capacity is the capacity required to be provided by Load Serving Entities to serve load as defined by the NYISO in its rules, tariffs, manuals and procedures.
All other terms not otherwise defined herein shall have the meanings ascribed to them in the electric industry.
II. Electric Service to be Provided
a. The Authority shall provide Electric Service pursuant to Service Tariff HC-1 for Power and/or Energy to enable the Customer to receive the Allocation from the Project in accordance with the provisions of the FERC License and Relicensing Settlement Agreement, in the amount set forth below:
Firm Hydroelectric Power and Energy Service pursuant to
Service Tariff No. HC-1 9,000 KiloWatts (Contract Demand)
The Authority shall provide Unforced Capacity in amounts necessary to meet Customer's NYISO Unforced Capacity obligations associated with the foregoing Allocation in accordance with the rules and tariffs of the NYISO. Neither Ancillary Services, nor Green Attributes are included in such allocation.
b. The Contract Demands for Project Power and Energy may be modified by the Authority if the amounts of such Project Power and Energy available for sale from the Project are modified as required to comply with any ruling, order or decision of any regulatory or judicial body having jurisdiction. The Authority shall provide reasonable notice to Customer of any such proposed action that could result in modification of Contract Demands and nothing herein shall be construed as limiting customer's rights to challenge any proposed reduction in Contract Demands.
III. Rules, Regulations and Service Tariffs
The Rules and Service Tariff No. HC-1, as now in effect and/or such superseding tariffs or other tariffs as the Authority may later promulgate, all as such Rules and Service Tariffs may be later amended from time to time by the Authority, are hereby incorporated into this Agreement with the same force and effect as if herein set forth at length. In the event of any inconsistencies, conflicts or differences between the provisions of the Service Tariffs and the Rules, the provisions of the Service Tariffs shall govern. In the event of any inconsistencies, conflicts or differences between Articles I through XVII of this Agreement and the Service Tariffs, the provisions of Articles I through XVII of this Agreement shall govern. The Authority shall provide at least thirty (30) days prior written notice to Customer of any proposed change in the above Rules and Service Tariffs, but in no event shall Authority provide less notice than that provided to similarly affected customers within New York State if that period of minimum notice is greater than herein referenced. Except as expressly provided otherwise herein, nothing contained in this Agreement shall be construed as restricting Customer's rights to participate in processes involving changes to rates, Rules and Service Tariffs or other matters affecting the subject of this Agreement.
IV. Transmission and Delivery of Power and Energy
Authority shall make Project Power and Energy available to Customer or Customer's Agent at the Project Switchyard. It is the Customer's responsibility to act as the Load Serving Entity ("LSE"), arrange for one or more other entities to do so on its behalf or make other arrangements for conveying the benefits associated with the allocation to Ultimate Users. Customer, or the entity acting as LSE or Customer's Agent shall arrange for the transmission of the Project Power and Energy supplied hereunder from the Project Switchyard to Customer's points of delivery or the conversion of the Allocation into financial settlements and benefits by such other method of disposition consistent with Article VI of this Agreement and Appendix A hereto. Such delivery shall be consistent with the terms of the Open Access Transmission Tariff (OATT) or other applicable tariff of the NYISO and Customer shall be responsible for all costs associated with the transmission and delivery of the allocation.
V. Rates
Project Power and Energy shall be sold to Customer hereunder at cost-based rates equivalent to rates charged to in-state preference customers receiving preference power under the NRA.
Customer waives any challenges to any of the following methodologies and principles[1] to the extent that one or more of such methodologies and principles are used by the Authority to set rates different than those adopted by the Authority's Trustees in their meeting on April 29, 2003 based on the "January 2003 Report on Hydroelectric Production Rates" and as modified by the April 2003 "Staff Analysis of Public Comments and Recommendations":
(i) The principles set forth in the March 5, 1986 Settlement Agreement (settling Auer v. Dyson, No. 81-124 (Sup. Ct. Oswego Co.), Auer v. Power Authority, Index No. 11999-84 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Co.) and Delaware County Electric Cooperative, Inc. v. Power Authority, 82 Civ. 7256 (S.D.N.Y.) (the "Auer Settlement").
(ii) Recovery of capital costs using Trended Original Cost and Original Cost methodologies.
(iii) Treatment of sales to third parties, including the New York Independent System Operator.
(iv) Allocation of Indirect Overheads.
(v) Melding of costs of the Niagara Power Project and St. Lawrence-FDR Power Project for ratemaking.
(vi) Post-employment benefits other than pensions (i.e., retiree health benefits).
(vii) Rate Stabilization Reserve (RSR) methodology as supplemented by the explanatory statement attached hereto as Appendix B
In the event the Authority ceases to employ any of the methodologies and principles enumerated above, the Customer shall have the right to take any position whatsoever with respect to such methodology or principle, but shall not have the right to challenge any of the remaining methodologies and principles that continue to be employed by the Authority. Nothing contained herein shall preclude Customer from participating in the rate setting process and raising issues as to whether such methodologies and principles have been correctly employed.
VI. Use and Resale of Project Power and Energy
Customer shall use the Allocation for its facilities or as otherwise allowed in accordance with this Agreement and Appendix A hereof.
In reselling and/or distributing the Allocation, except as otherwise provided in Appendix A hereof, Customer shall: 1) do so pursuant to the appropriate laws of the State of New York, 2) distribute such Allocation only to the Ultimate Users designated pursuant to Appendix A , 3) not permit such Ultimate Users to sell any of such Allocation for resale and 4) comply with the provisions of the NRA, the FERC License and the New York Power Authority Act (N.Y. Pub. Auth. Law Section 1000 et seq.), to the extent such Power Authority Act is not inconsistent with the FERC License.
Customer or Customer's Agent shall keep its books, accounts and records pertaining to the purchase, delivery and sale of the Allocation according to procedures reasonably deemed necessary by Authority to ensure compliance with this Agreement and Appendix A hereof, applicable statutes, licenses, the Rules. Customer shall provide such information and permit such inspection of its books and records as Authority may reasonably request and shall require Customer's Ultimate Users as identified in Appendix A of the Agreement to agree to do likewise.
The distribution of the benefits of the Allocation to Ultimate Users shall, where feasible, be accompanied by a statement indicating the total savings in dollars realized by the individual Ultimate User for the particular billing period as a result of the purchase of hydroelectric power and energy by Customer from the Authority. The form and content of such statement shall be coordinated between Customer and Authority.
VII. Permanent Reallocation of Project Power and Energy
If Customer is, or becomes unable or chooses not to receive any or all of the Project Power and Energy allocated to it on a permanent basis, such Project Power and Energy shall be reallocated by the Authority pro-rata among the other Host Communities. Customer shall provide written notice to the Authority and the other Host Communities of such inability or election within 30 days of its becoming aware of such inability or election. Upon receipt of such notice by the Authority, any required changes in the allocations of Project Power and Energy among the other Host Communities shall become effective as soon as practicable, without need to amend this Agreement and the Contract Demand in this Agreement shall be revised to reflect such reallocation, notwithstanding Article XIV hereof.
VIII. Availability of Energy.
Subject to any other limitations set forth in the Rules or the Service Tariff (including low-flow conditions), if Customer directly or indirectly provides the Allocation to Ultimate Users for physical delivery to such Users' accounts as set forth in Appendix A, Authority will supply Customer's (or Ultimate Users', as the case may be) entire demand and energy usage up to the Contract Demand. If there is any portion of the energy associated with the Allocation made available to Customer (at a monthly load factor of seventy percent (70%) pursuant to the Authority's regular scheduling requirements) that is not required to serve such Ultimate Users' facilities, such energy may be utilized as Excess Power in the manner described in Appendix A.
As between Customer and the Authority, for any usage above the Contract Demand, it is Customer's responsibility to arrange for provision of such excess service by a third party supplier, and the apportionment of energy between suppliers shall be as set forth in Service Tariff No. HC-1, or any successor tariff.
Subject to any other limitations set forth in the Rules or Service Tariff (including low-flow conditions), if Customer provides the benefits of the Allocation to Ultimate Users in the form of Power Credits as set forth in Appendix A, the Allocation will be delivered at a monthly load factor of seventy percent (70%) pursuant to the Authority's regular scheduling requirements.
IX. Appointment of Customer's Agent
Upon reasonable prior written notice to the Authority, Customer shall have the right to delegate to an agent any or all duties under this Agreement ("Customer's Agent") and the Authority acknowledges that such duties may be performed by Customer's Agent. Such duties delegated to Customer's Agent may include the keeping of all records required by Authority, the payment of any or all amounts due to the Authority under this Agreement and any or all such other duties contained in this Agreement as may be specified by Customer; provided that the Customer may choose to assume and perform any or all of the duties previously delegated to Customer's Agent and provided further that nothing herein, including Customer's designation of such an agent, shall be deemed to be approval by the Authority of an assignment of any of Customer's duties and obligations under its Agreement with the Authority. Customer may, on reasonable prior written notice to the Authority (consistent with the Authority's and the NYISO's scheduling and business process requirements), designate a different party as Customer's Agent at any time during the term of this Agreement.
X. Term and Termination of Service
Service under the Agreement shall begin on the Commencement Date and shall continue until the earliest of (a) termination by Customer with respect to all of its Allocation upon ninety (90) days prior written notice, (b) termination by the Authority pursuant to the Rules upon required notice, or (c) September 1, 2025, at which time a new or modified agreement will be entered between the Authority and the Customer to provide Customer with Project Power and Energy for the remainder of the licensing period in the amount and for the rate then in effect which complies with the terms of the Relicensing Settlement Agreement. If such a new or modified agreement is not in place to take effect after September 1, 2025, service will be continued under the terms and conditions of this Agreement on a year to year basis or until a new or modified agreement takes effect between the parties.
The Authority may cancel service hereunder or modify the quantities of Project Power and Energy allocated to Customer only (a) if such cancellation or modification is required to comply with any final ruling, order or decision of any regulatory or judicial body of competent jurisdiction (including any licensing or re-licensing order or orders of the FERC or its successor agency), or (b) as otherwise provided herein or in the Rules. Notwithstanding the foregoing, upon mutual agreement this Agreement may be extended beyond such date on a month to month basis pending execution of any successor agreement between the Customer and Authority. The Authority shall provide reasonable notice to Customer of any matter or proceeding that could result in an order or decision as described in part (a) of this paragraph and nothing herein shall be construed as limiting Customer's right to challenge any such proposed action.
Nothing herein is intended to limit the rights of the Host Communities or Customer under the Relicensing Settlement Agreement and the Authority and Customer understand and agree that the Authority is obligated under such Relicensing Settlement Agreement to make a total of 9 MW of Project Power and Energy available to Customer for the term of the FERC License, whether through extension of this Agreement or by subsequent agreement.
XI. Notification
Correspondence involving the administration of this Agreement shall be addressed as follows:
To: Authority
Manager – Power Contracts
New York Power Authority
123 Main Street
White Plains, NY 10601
To: Customer
XII. Applicable Law and Venue
This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of New York to the extent that such laws are not inconsistent with the FERC License and the Niagara Redevelopment Act. Any action or proceeding arising out of or relating to this Agreement shall be brought in state courts located in Albany County, New York.
XIII. Successors and Assigns
This Agreement shall be binding upon, shall inure to the benefit of, and may be performed by, the legal successors and assigns of either Party hereto; provided, however, that no assignment by either Party or any successor or assignee of such Party of its rights and obligations hereunder shall be made or become effective without the prior written consent of the other Party in each case obtained, which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld.
XIV. Previous Agreements and Communications
This Agreement, together with the Relicensing Settlement Agreement, shall constitute the sole and complete agreement of the Parties hereto with respect to the matters herein set forth. Such Agreements supersede all previous communications between the Parties hereto, either oral or written, with reference to the subject matter hereof.
No modifications of this Agreement shall be binding upon the Parties hereto or either of them unless such modification is in writing and is signed by a duly authorized officer of each of them.
XV. Acceptance and Approvals
Upon approval of the Governor of the State of New York pursuant to Section 1009 of the Power Authority Act, and upon execution by the Parties, this Agreement, the provisions of which shall survive for the term hereof, together with the Service Tariffs and Rules both as they may be amended, shall constitute the contract between the Parties for Electric Service hereunder.
XVI. Severability and Voidability
If any term or provision of this Agreement shall be invalidated, declared unlawful or ineffective in whole or in part by an order of the FERC or a court of competent jurisdiction, such order shall not be deemed to invalidate the remaining terms or provisions hereof.
In such an event and at the request of either Party, the Parties agree to engage in good faith negotiations on possible modification to this Agreement to remedy any portion of this Agreement that was declared invalid, unlawful or ineffective. Such good faith negotiations shall conform to the requirements comparable to those of section 10.1.3 of the Relicensing Settlement Agreement. To the extent that good faith negotiations do not result in an agreement as to whether or how this Agreement should be modified, the Parties agree to resolve their differences in accordance with the alternative dispute resolution mechanism set forth in section 12 of the Relicensing Settlement Agreement. The primary goal of any good faith negotiation or alternative dispute resolution mechanism shall be to preserve to the greatest extent as possible, the benefit of the Parties' intended bargain.
XVII. Effectiveness of Agreement
This Agreement shall take effect on the later of: (i) the acceptance of the new License or (ii) the date of this Agreement's execution under Article XV above.
Title _____________________________________________
Date _____________________________________________
Attest by: __________________________________________
Date _____________________________________________
Attest by: __________________________________________
30 South Pearl Street, Albany, NY 12207
Service Tariff No. HC -1
Schedule of Rates for Firm Hydroelectric Power
and Energy Service
September 1, 2007
To sale of Niagara Firm Hydroelectric Project Power and Energy to the Host Communities customers eligible for cost-based service under the Niagara Relicensing Settlement Agreement.
Alternating current, 60 hertz, three-phase.
RATES (effective May 1, 2006):
Capacity Rate: $2.38 per kilowatt per month of Billing Demand at the Project switchyard.
Base Energy Rate: 4.92 mills per kilowatt-hour
Future rates shall be as determined by the Authority.
The Base Energy Rate set forth herein shall be subject to a monthly adjustment in accordance with a flow adjustment computation (FAC) as described in Appendix B.
The product of the Capacity Rate and the Billing Demand.
Not less than 95% lagging or leading, except as otherwise specified in the Agreement.
Billing Demand: The Billing Demand shall be the Customer's Contract Demand.
Billing Energy: Energy provided by Authority under this service tariff.
Billing Period: Any period of approximately thirty (30) days, generally ending with the last day of each calendar month.
General Provisions for service supplementing or modifying the Rules and Regulations for Power Service and Service Tariff No. HC – 1 with regard to deliveries to Customer are as follows:
A Availability of Energy
Unless otherwise agreed upon by the Parties, Authority shall normally provide in any Billing Period firm Energy to Customer in an amount equal to the product of (A) the number of hours in such Billing Period, (B) the Contract Demand applicable in such Billing Period and (C) the load factor specified in the Agreement. The Authority will have the right to reduce on a pro rata basis the amount of energy provided to Customer if such reductions are necessary due to low flow (i.e., hydrologic) conditions at the Authority's Niagara and St. Lawrence-FDR hydroelectric generating stations. The Authority shall be under no obligation to deliver and will not deliver any such curtailed energy to Customer in later billing periods. The offer of Energy for delivery shall fulfill Authority's obligations for purposes of this Provision whether or not the Energy is taken by Customer. The Authority shall provide reasonable notice to Customer of any condition or activities that could result, or have resulted, in low flow conditions consistent with the notice provided to other similarly affected customers.
Unless otherwise specified in the Agreement, where Customer is taking service solely from Authority, the Billing Energy shall be the total number of kilowatt-hours recorded on Customer's meter (or the meters of entities served by Customer as indicated in the Agreement) during the Billing Period, adjusted for losses.
Unless otherwise specified in the Agreement, where Customer takes service from other sources in addition to service supplied hereunder, the Billing Energy shall be determined by multiplying (A) the number of hours in such Billing Period, (B) the Contract Demand applicable in such Billing Period and (C) the load factor specified in the Agreement.
B Adjustment of Rates
To the extent not inconsistent with the attached Agreement, the rates contained in this Service Tariff HC-1 may be revised from time to time on not less than thirty (30) days written notice to Customer.
C Delivery
For the purpose of this Service Tariff HC -1, Power and/or Energy shall be delivered by Authority at the Project Switchyard to the transmission facilities under the control of the NYISO for delivery to Customer.
For the purpose of these Service Tariffs, Power and/or Energy shall be deemed to be offered when Authority is able to supply Power and Energy and NYISO transmits it to Customer or its designated points of interconnection with Customer's Delivering Agentat the Niagara Project Switchyard. The offer of Energy for delivery shall fulfill Authority's obligations for purposes of this Provision whether or not the Energy is taken by Customer. If, despite such offer, there is a failure of delivery by Customer or Customer's Agent, such failure shall not be subject to a billing adjustment pursuant to Section 454.6(d) of the Rules.
D Scheduling Procedures
1. Authority will advise Customer or Customer's Agent by the tenth (10th) Business Day of the preceding month of the estimated quantity of Energy expected by Service Tariff to be made available from the Project.
2. Authority may require that such Energy from the Project be scheduled in general accordance with the load shape of Customer or Customer's Agent or as otherwise agreed upon by the Customer and Authority.
3. Customer or Customer's Agent shall file with Authority pursuant to procedures established by Authority, a daily schedule setting forth the Customer's requested amounts from the Project on a clock hour basis.
4. Subsequent to Authority approval of schedules for any day, Authority and Customer or Customer's Agent may agree on changes in such schedules subject to NYISO scheduling requirements and procedures Authority shall establish such that an efficient dispatch of Authority facilities will be accomplished.
E Payment by Customer for Power and/or Energy
1 Customer shall pay for Power and/or Energy during any Billing Period the sum of a) and b) below:
a. For Firm Hydroelectric Power and Energy the capacity rate per kilowatt specified in this Service Tariff or any modification thereof applied to Customer's Billing Demand for the Billing Period: and
b. The Energy rate specified in this Service Tariff or any modification thereof applied to the amount of firm Billing Energy delivered by Authority to Customer during such Billing Period.
2. Bills computed under Service Tariff HC-1 are due and payable by electronic wire transfer in accordance with the Rules. Such wire transfer shall be made to J P Morgan Chase NY, NY / ABA021000021 / NYPA A/C # 008-030383, unless otherwise indicated in writing by Authority. In the event that there is a dispute on any items of a bill rendered by Authority, Customer shall pay such bill and adjustments, if necessary, will be made thereafter.
F Supplementary Provision
Sections 454.2 (c) and 454.5 of the Rules are inapplicable to this Service Tariff.
Appendix A
Except as Customer determines otherwise, consistent with the terms of this Agreement, Customer will initially distribute power and energy purchased from the New York Power Authority under the Agreement or the economic benefit of such power and energy to the following Ultimate Users_____________
Customer may add to or delete from the above list of Ultimate Users on thirty (30) day's notice to the Authority. Customer in its sole determination may elect to use its full Allocation or any part thereof, for economic development. The economic development program description, allocation criteria and methodology shall be submitted to and approved by the Authority which approval shall not be unreasonably withheld.
The benefits of the Allocation shall be provided to such Ultimate Users either by direct sale or by allocation by the Customer (or by Customer's Agent) of electricity or the provision of financial settlements and benefits, as set forth below, or through different methods approved by the Authority. Customer shall have the right to recover as Customer Costs its direct administrative and services costs, reasonable compensation for use of third party facilities and services furnished to Customer in the transmission and distribution of such power, all costs associated with negotiating the Agreement and the establishment of mechanisms to accept and distribute the Allocation, and any similar costs, incurred after the execution of the Host Community Relicensing Settlement Agreement dated June 27, 2005. Such Customer Costs shall be reimbursed to Customer or otherwise paid by the Ultimate User by procedures to be determined.
The listing or description of the foregoing Ultimate Users in no way mandates or requires for any reason that the Customer provide any portion of the Allocation (or Power Credits) to an Ultimate User and shall not preclude the Customer from denying any such Ultimate User the benefits associated with an allocation for any reason as determined by Customer.
A. Direct Sale / Allocation, Use of Excess Power
Customer or Customer's Agent may make a portion of the Allocation available to an Ultimate User for delivery at such Ultimate User's electricity accounts under the tariffs, rules and regulations of the NYISO and the utility in whose service area such accounts are located. If there is any portion of the Allocation made available to Customer that is not required to serve such Ultimate User's facilities, such Excess Power (up to the load factor specified in the Agreement) may be utilized as follows:
1. Customer or its agent may schedule Excess Power into the NYISO administered market for financial settlement, and such financial settlement so received by Customer (less Customer's Costs as set forth above and the cost of the power and energy purchased from the Authority), shall be applied by Customer to payment of Customer's (or an Ultimate User's, as the case may be) energy-related costs, including but not limited to, the purchase of energy commodities, the delivery and transportation of electricity and all other energy commodities and/or for energy efficiency or clean energy technology programs or projects now in existence or that may exist during the term of the Agreement.
2. Customer may use the Excess Power (or the benefits associated with such Excess Power derived from a financial settlement as set forth in the preceding Paragraph 1) for economic development by providing credits to a business to apply against the cost of power or energy and/or the cost of delivery of power or energy consumed by such business.
B. Power Credits
Customer, or Customer's Agent, may schedule all of its Allocation (up to the load factor specified in the Agreement) into the NYISO administered market for financial settlement, and such financial settlement so received by Customer (less Customer's Costs as set forth above and the cost of the power and energy purchased from the Authority), may be provided to Ultimate Users in the form of Power Credits by Customer as follows:
Power Credits may be applied towards the cost and/or delivery of electric power or energy consumed by the Ultimate User or for other energy-related costs, including but not limited to, purchase of energy commodities, the delivery and transportation of electricity and all other energy commodities and/or for energy efficiency or clean energy technology programs or projects now in existence or that may exist during the terms of the Agreement.
C. Service through Authorized Entity
Through assignment, transfer or otherwise, including through an agency arrangement, Customer shall have the right to make available its Allocation or any part thereof to any entity that is duly authorized to receive, purchase, transmit, distribute, and/or resell the power and energy included in the Allocation or otherwise to engage in such transactions as are necessary to effectuate the delivery of the Allocation and/or to provide the financial benefits thereof to the Customer, the Customer's Ultimate Users and the Customer's constituents, as determined in the exercise of the Customer's discretion and consistent with the provisions of the Host Community Relicensing Settlement Agreement dated June 27, 2005 and Article VI of the Agreement. Any such assignment, transfer, agency arrangement or similar transaction contemplated by this paragraph may, but shall not be required to, include elements of the other methods described in this Appendix A.
D. Continuity
In the event that any administrative agency or court of competent jurisdiction shall determine that any element of any of the foregoing methods of distributing the Allocations and/or financial benefits thereof is unauthorized or illegal, the Customer shall propose an alternative method of distribution, not necessarily limited to those described above, and the Authority shall promptly determine whether to accept such alternative method. Such acceptance shall not be unreasonably withheld.
E. Right to Alternate Between Methods
Customer shall have the right at its discretion and without restriction to alternate between the methods for the distribution of the benefits of the Allocation as set forth in Sections A through D above, upon giving sixty (60) days written notice to the Authority.
Appendix B
The Rate Stabilization Reserve (RSR) is calculated consistent with Service Tariff provisions regarding the Flow Adjustment Computation (FAC), which was not altered in the January 2003 Report on Hydroelectric Production Rates or the Staff Analysis of Public Comments and Recommendations adopted by the Trustees of the Power Authority on April 29, 2003. The calculation is described below:
[1] These methodologies and principles were employed in and explained by the Authority's January 2003 Report on Hydroelectric Production Rates and the Staff Analysis of Public Comments and Recommendations adopted by the Authority's Trustees on April 29, 2003.


text:
Only in a Woman's World
June 8, 2010
Marrying the consumer insight that relationships are critical to easing conflicts as well as social and media behavior, we developed a portfolio-level campaign to support Frito Lay's Baked! Smartfood, Flat Earth and 100 Calorie Pack brands.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
I've been wanting to try several fancy brownie recipes that I've see on Pinterest, but my pantry has been a bit on the empty side lately. We keep putting off grocery shopping for some reason. We always say, "Next weekend, let's go grocery shopping and really stock up." And then the weekend arrives, and we end up driving to towns we've never been to, going antiquing, and checking out the local activities. As much fun as this is, I think we actually need to go grocery shopping at some point.
By the way, if you have a toddler that wants to grab everything when you go into a fragile store, here's a tip from Aunt B's Kitchen: Give the kiddo a toy for each hand. If their hands are busy, they're less likely to grab everything in sight.
This comment was left on my Facebook page. Thanks Aunt B! Click here to see Aunt B's Facebook page.
Ok, back to the brownies now. So, with a sparse pantry I tried to decide what tasty treat I could make. I wanted something simple because my toddler was next to me and wanted to help. I wanted something fast because, well, I wanted to eat something sweet as soon as possible, but also because my 4-month-old was napping and I knew that would end soon. After some thought, I went with brownies. They are one of the easiest things to bake. You need cocoa powder, flour, sugar, and a few other common ingredients. Some recipes do call for solid chocolate that you have to melt first, which I've made, but I prefer this one because I always have cocoa powder in my house. If you follow the recipe below, with no extra additions, you will get a brownie that's a little more cake-like than some. It does not taste like a cake, it's still a little chewy and dense, but not as chewy and dense as some (you know, the ones that border on fudge). If you want a dense brownie, then add some chocolate chips to help out.
By the way, I love icing on my brownies even though I didn't add any this time around (although, I did drizzle some chocolate sauce over them). For a few icing ideas, head on over to Premeditated Leftovers. Mmmm can't wait to try some of these!
|The dry ingredients (in lovely vintage pyrex!)
|My toddler mixed the dry and wet ingredients
|Mmmmmm brownies!
Serving Size = 1 8-inch square pan
Original Recipe
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
- 1 cup white sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- Preheat oven to 350F and grease an 8x8-inch baking dish.
- Combine the cocoa powder, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
- Combine the melted butter (melted but not hot, might need to let it cool a bit), vanilla, and eggs. Mix until just combined.
- Add the dry to the wet and mix until JUST combined, do not over mix.
- Spread into the baking dish and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let cool, cut and serve. I also drizzled some chocolate sauce over mine.
- Note: I've also doubled the recipe and poured it into a 9x13-inch pan and it worked perfectly. I had to cook it for about 35 - 40 minutes.
Linking to: Mix It Up Monday, Melt In Your Mouth Monday, This Week's Cravings, Mangia Mondays, Savvy Homemade Monday, Hearth and Soul


text:
Apple and major movie studio 20th Century Fox had reportedly signed an agreement under which Apple will rent movies of the studio to end-users via its iTunes service. Online movie rental is hardly something new, but what makes Apple considerably different from similar services is that it will rent the latest DVD releases of the major film maker.
At present only Walt Disney studio sells its latest releases via Apple iTunes, whereas Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Lionsgate sell older library titles. The agreement will allow consumers to rent the latest Fox DVD releases by downloading a digital copy from Apple's iTunes platform for a limited time, Financial Times reports citing a person familiar with the situation. In addition, Apple had reportedly been in talks with with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Paramount and Warner Bros about making their new releases available on iTunes to buy and rent.
Nowadays online movie rental services allow customers to watch a single movie for 24 hours, but after that the file either becomes unplayable, or inaccessible. In order to obtain the same functionality, Apple will have to impose its FairPlay digital rights management system. It is unclear, whether to rent a movie people will need to have Apple TV set-top-box, or a personal computer with iTunes installed will be enough.
Apple iTunes is among the world's most popular digital media stores that has tens of millions of customers and brings stable revenue streams to both Apple as well as its content partners. But there are certain issues with Apple iTunes too, which can impact prospects of its movie rental feature.
Firstly, iTunes it is not available in many countries, therefore, movie studios will have to negotiate directly with local online movie rental services. Secondly, the quality of movies iTunes sells now is below-DVD quality (720x480 [NTSC] or 720x576 [PAL] resolution with Dolby Digital audio) with resolution of 640x480 (up to 480, depending on the aspect ratio), which is insufficient for technically savvy HDTV owners. Thirdly, since movies require translation to different languages and are usually released at a different time for different regions, Apple iTunes movie store does not solve the problem with illegal digital downloads of content from countries where those movies are not available.
Apple, 20th Century Fox and other studios did not comment on the news-story.


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IE Slowdown = StandardizationMarch 31
Think about it.
What makes CSS development so aggravating? Inconsistency across the browsers.
Which are the worst offenders? Older browsers, and Internet Explorer.
What's happening in today's browser market? Absolutely everything is making leaps and bounds in improving its CSS support, except Internet Explorer.
The install base is slowly but steadily moving away from 5.0 browsers. One day we'll reach the point where we don't have to officially support them anymore, and can give them the NN4 treatment. Not today, not tomorrow, maybe not in the next 2 years. But it's coming.
Given every other browser's improvement, this is what we'll enjoy one day (assuming production-site-ready CSS, and not bleeding edge)—testing against the standard, and testing against IE. That's two, instead of today's 5, 8, 12, or 23.
Internet Explorer's slowdown is a nuisance for sure, but it's hardly tragic. Thanks to progressive enhancement and MOSe, the web will become segregated between the haves, who get to experience the high-end visual effects and extra usability tweaks, and the have-nots who get plain vanilla content with a far simpler style.
It's a shame that the latter category is so large, but welcome to the next ten years.
Standards-Based EducationMarch 26
In a former coal town on the western Canadian coast, nestled in a protected harbour which makes the surrounding area a boater's paradise, inaccessible from mainland North America save for an hour and a half ferry ride, I received one of the most encouraging signs in a while that standards-based web design is really catching on.
I had the absolute pleasure of spending a leisurely hour ferrying across the Georgia Straight one morning earlier this week to Malaspina University-College on Vancouver Island, then running an afternoon workshop with Jim Rutherford's Digital Media class. And I'll say this about the experience—it's positively uplifting to hear that there are instructors out there who have shelved old-school design methods in favour of standards-based design, and are seeing their students respond in an overwhelmingly positive way.
New this year, the course syllabus has started to heavily promote standards-based design, and as the semester draws to a close it's proved so successful that a complete 3-credit web standards class is in the works for next year, as well as a heavy bias in this direction across the rest of the course.
This is just fantastic news. I haven't had my finger on education's pulse in a while but I mistakenly assumed it's as bad out there as you'd expect. Instead we have shining examples like Malaspina leading the way, and molding their students for a better web of tomorrow.
It was an honour to go and talk to a class who I suspect could have shown me a few new CSS tricks. (And look at their portfolios, wow.)
March 23
Those aren't Post-Its. That's Simon Willison's Exposé setup. God bless OS X.
The Price of TheftMarch 19
The relative ease of stealing someone else's CSS-based design has been at the top of my radar over the past few weeks. I really don't have the time to write the analysis I'd like to, but suffice it to say that nobody wants this issue to go away more than me, and no one realizes yet how much of a problem this is going to become over the next few months/years.
What I want to draw your attention to is that, due to a few reasons revolving around re-use of his design, Andy Budd has asked me to remove his popular 'sub:lime' design from the CSS Zen Garden, the former #046. I have complied.
Andy's feelings surrounding re-use of his work have been voiced by more than one contributor, and while many are open about allowing others to modify their base design, some are not. There definitely seems to be a price to the success we're enjoying, and because there are so many contributors, each one is going to have a different attitude toward paying that price. Which is to be expected, but I have no idea how to cope when I'm caught squarely in the middle.
I'm not at all happy that this was necessary though. It's the start of a slippery slope, and it's going to cause me to re-write submission requirements yet again. I've been very sensitive toward each designer's needs throughout all this, but I now understand quite a bit better why contest organizers and media promoters require participants to sign waivers.
There's a balance here, but I'm having trouble finding it. The Garden has to be open, which means a small percentage of bad eggs will abuse that openness. The designer's rights have to be protected, but I don't think it's quite fair to the rest of us for one to ride the success for a while and back out when it gets messy.
Lest we all walk away from this with a bitter taste in our mouths, I'd like to note that while I am incredibly disappointed in those re-using his work in commercial situations, I'm not angry at Andy himself. He has made a decision for his own work that, given the terms when he submitted, I guess he's allowed to make.
But I would like to encourage him and others to realize three things. A more restrictive license won't stop any of this from happening, since those who set out to rip off others' work will do it regardless of copyright. And running away from the problem isn't the solution, because when you're producing design work, it will get ripped off sooner or later. Trying to hide it under lock and key deprives the rightful audience, it takes money out of your pocket (how can you make a living off of design work that nobody sees?) and it leads to the scary groupthink of the music industry. A slippery slope indeed.
Finally, the group of people seeing a design who then decide to steal it are really rather small. Don't be fooled by the blind spot—for every 1 person who steals your work, 15 or 90 or 700 others have seen it and been inspired to create new and fresh work of their own. You may not ever hear from them, but they're out there, and they're the ones who suffer for it.
Don't let the bastards bring you down. They can steal one of your works, but they can't steal your soul. Keep on creating because there's only one you, and the world is dimmer without your creative energy.
Hi-Fi Design with CSSMarch 18
And at last, the transcript of Monday's panel from SXSW 2004. Enjoy!See, the way I see it, CSS is about font control. You can manipulate things like your leading, text color, and font face. That's about all it gets you. Well... The old school method of thinking (old school being as late as last year for some, though I'm thinking more of 1998-era methods) was that CSS was useful for typography, and that's about it. I was guilty of that mindset myself for years. In fact, it was embarrassingly recent that I realized that hey, you know, this stuff can do a whole lot more. I'm a graphic designer, image is important to me. I need things to look just right . I'd been hacking with tables and spacer GIFs for years, so I knew the mechanisms of that inside out, and all of us who had to put up with that way of building earned a badge of honour as far as I'm concerned. But I also think it's the finality of those methods that's holding the web of today back. See, once you get comfortable in a way of thinking, you rely on it. I knew how to build a complex set of tables to hold a site together across all the popular browsers; I had no idea how to achieve the same in CSS for the longest time. That was a stumbling block for me, because when you have a deadline you go with what you know. And that's going to keep holding back those learning CSS. But let me tell you, once you get over that hump, it's pretty cool stuff. There's no question about it, this is the future of web design. I'm not going to bother going into a huge list of points about why you should use it, plenty of others can and will do the convincing for you. Suffice it to say it's becoming more common on large commercial sites, and the visual appeal of the new work being built in CSS these days is unrivaled. But that's today. The problem I saw in 2003 was that we really didn't have many example sites. A few major commercial sites like ESPN.com and Wired.com (thanks to Doug, of course) had taken the plunge, and this was absoluetely great for business examples. And they were both well-designed, but they weren't the sort of visually inspiring artisitic free-form sort of work that designers could really latch on to. Something to realize about us freaky artist types is that when we're looking for inspiration, we really don't care about things like usability and successful business targets and fast download times, and all the sorts of things you just HAVE to do when building commercial sites. That's work. We want play! And when it came to CSS, there wasn't much play around at the time. So I got to thinking. What if there were a site that did all that, and demonstrated the flexibility of CSS, and also highlighted the benefits of using it, things like accessibility and degradability and so on? And, you know, what if, by the same token, it were to be approached as a collaborative effort so it's not just one designer's ego-stroking, but a community effort that displayed the multiple takes on a single source document by a bunch of talented people? Well, we all know what happened then. Enter the Zen Garden . I've been maintaining this site for almost a year now, and I've seen some phenomenal design work added. The basic idea here, of course, is that I've built a very simply marked-up XHTML document and that every submitter has used this exact same file as the source code, and contributed only a CSS file with a set of images to radically change the design. Take a look through these next examples—[1] [2] [3] [4]—and keep in mind that the only thing changing between each design is the CSS. I guarantee that's all that's changing too, because I've made it physically impossible for each submitter to alter the XHTML. Let's think about this for a second. These examples are all using the same base XHTML. And because I did most of the legwork when building that markup last year, every single one of these designs, and the other 200 hundred odd on the site, are highly accessible. They work just fine in older browsers and mobile devices and some screen readers because the presentational layer, that is, the CSS and images that go along with it, it's not being served up to devices that can't handle that. All they see is unstyled markup . What you're seeing here is of course, is the bare bones XHTML without any CSS applied. It's ugly. No one wants to look at this for very long. Thanks to the plethora of designs on the Garden, we don't have to. What's really struck me about some of the work being submitted is the wild variation between individual approaches. It's inevitable that when you ask two designers to submit their interpretations of a single theme, you'll get four or five responses. In this case that's more like hundreds and hundreds of responses, but you get what I mean. There are a couple I'm particularly fond of, but of course my tastes vary as much as anyone's—what's nice is that there are so many to choose from. Not So Minimal, Dan Rubin (Shared anecdote about pushing minimalism, process for improving Dan's [beautiful, but too minimal] original design) Door to My Garden, Patrick Lauke (oh man, that's nice. Interesting effect - fixed position background.) Blood Lust, one of mine (Want to clear the air about this one. I like it, most don't, went for Futurist style/patterned GIF dithering... it does it for me) Maya, Bernd Willenberg (oh, you haven't seen this one yet have you? Sneak preview! See? You got your money's worth) (further note: will have this one added soon) This is Cereal, Shaun Inman (great theme, well-executed, and cool menus [which won't work in IE of course]) Oceans Apart, Ryan Sims (oh, how I wish this were one of mine. wow.) So on that note, here's what I want you to take away from this. If you're a designer who hasn't explored advanced CSS yet for one reason or another, do! The world's moving in this direction, and it makes for happy clients. You might be surprised at how much quicker a site can come together. If you're a designer just learning how to build with CSS now, don't worry. It gets easier. It's a tricky thing to learn, but once you have it down, the days spent cursing browsers that don't cooperate get fewer and far between. I promise! If you're a designer who's been using it for a while, uh, where's your Zen Garden design, huh? I'm waiting. If you're a company working with a designer who doesn't use CSS, ask them to start! If you're a company working with a designer who does CSS, you're probably not paying them enough. (Just kidding. Or am I?) Anyway. The benefits of using CSS are being proven time and again. It's a great tool in a designer's toolbox, it's available now, and once more start getting their mind around it, we're going to see some more amazing work. Can't wait to see the Zen Garden this time next year. ]]>
CSS: The Good, the Bad, the UglyMarch 15
I took pretty aggressive notes during the panel that came after mine. Enjoy!
(You can tell I was paying more attention to the two people who were talking about things I hadn't heard much about before; less notes from their portions. Both were very good.)Tantek Çelik Good CSS: standards Bad CSS: abuses, misuses, amazing screwups (tables poorly mixed with css) Ugly CSS: necessary: hacks, workarounds, wishes they never existed CSS2.1 is now a W3C Candidate Recommendation: this is big news. CSS2? forget it. 2.1 incorporates changes, errata, adds the colour orange. CSS2.1 reflects reality of current implementations CSS validator updates, updates for validating against CSS3 coming up: dozen CSS3 modules, and as they get published, pieces are being implemented Tantek: I'm best known for opening Pandora's box for CSS hacks (thanks to the Box Model Hack). It was necessary, had no idea it would propogate as far as it did. Philosophy: avoid hacks if at all possible. Problem is that it builds a mystical voodoo magic around code. Good for movies, not good for work/tech. (DS: Good point.) Given that, if you can't avoid them, the fewer you can use the better. (gave examples) Further hacks are from content, the better. Hacks in CSS, they come and go—in markup, they're there forever. ( ie. they belong in the CSS, not the markup, if you have to use them) Idea: Build content clean, build CSS clean, import separate hack stylesheet (isolate problems today, remove them tomorrow when they're not needed) Should have known better, but despite it all, introduced new hacks between last year's SXSW and this year - IE5Win. SprintPCS used it 40 days after introduction. Incredible. (DS: band pass , I think?) Eric Meyer Here to point out errors that people fall victim to, but to help (not to make you feel bad!) (explained favelets that he'd later use, ran through a couple—turning on borders for tables, inline style, un-ALTed images, and font tags among others, to visually demonstrate bad markup) (DS: clever idea.) Showed LockerGnome redesign. Highlighted tables, missing alt text overuse of classes. Ouch Showed new working draft , ran bookmarklets, much better job. Showed WWW Conference. Not created by W3C, created by committee. been doing it for a decade. Turned on tables—plenty of them. Turned on alt highlighting—not many ALT attributes BAD alt text on some elements Some font elements. bold element, inside font element, inside inline style element. Yikes. doesn't come close to validating didn't bring it up to laugh at them, "ha ha, what a bunch of jerks" showed difference between old one and new quick revision ny himself—page weight dropped 60% (had to admit: bashing low-hanging fruit) debunked a few arguments—code is not religion. most important thing is that it's about the content. Doing it this way allows good accessibility to more devices. Douglas Bowman Image replacement - in the beginning, it was good. We all believed it was good. (listed benefits) Shows original FIR example, explains origins of FIR (Fahrner) View source, simple h2 element and span Why not use images? Listed reasons Downfall: inaccessible to certain screen readers. Can't count on display: none; Alternatives: Phark , Gilder/Levin (touched on CSS on, images off, showed example) Experimental techniques good, push web dev forward. Keeps W3C on its toes, feedback loop for screenreader manufacturers, want it to work. CSS3 has a good new method. Generated content. New 'reader' media type (thanks Joe ) Avoid use of original FIR—officially deprecated as of today Keep in mind appropriateness Inspiration, or RipOffation? Discussing ease of CSS ripoffs, viewing source + it's how we learn + view source, shows you how to build for the web, want it to continue - Design theft becoming increasing problem - all design in one file, you grab that, you're set. Showed examples Ran out of time; didn't get to discuss dual hover method. Look for it on stopdesign.com Brian Alvey publishing system (SiliconAlley maybe?) in 1997—used WYSIWYG control, basically using Word on a web page, nice. source produced is kind of crappy IE had control all along Mozilla just caught up, now adds its own tool. if you're in IE-based one, it adds garbage markup when page is sent to a server, it's easy to strip out and convert something Mozilla's handling is a nightmare. Span span span. Who's building a CMS on these tools that spits out valid markup? Not many. A few. They're going to heaven. listing different types of controls (Java-based best, but worse to load), Flash doesn't count (not truly WYSIWYG) easier to use other people's - if you know enough you can customize them Kimberly Blessing Met Tantek through W3C group, who wondered what the hell is AOL doing here? many web developers in AOL, representing what we all do with CSS target latest and greatest, but have to worry about user with Mac OS 9 on a version of AOL they no longer support. to support that wide list, you need to use hacks interested in moving forward examples: different types of search results are displayed with different styles (cited Zen Garden, whoo-hoo) walked through marking up a featured piece of content (simple: an h3, an img, a few p's, and some ul + li combos) showed a grid, placement of blocks of content not sure I understand it, but it looks very cool, and totally database-driven showed different layouts given the CMS, all CSS-driven flexible design given different types of content/features ]]>
SXSW 2004March 13
To spare those not here this year, I'll contain my entire SXSW experience in this post and just keep updating it. Chronological, with the most recent events up top. I expect it to get lengthy and full of photos, so you'll have to pardon the cut, but I'm sure you know what to do.
I feel so blog.Thursday Officially back at work. Pictures are forthcoming, if and when I ever get time to figure out how to format them. This will be the last update to this post in lieu of those. A list of people I met. Many are doing it, so what's one more? If you're not on here and I had a conversation with you, whoops! Let me know. Adam Greenfield Alex Bischoff Anders Pearson Anil Dash Anitra Pavka Brian Alvey Christopher Schmitt Cory Doctorow D. Keith Robinson Dan Cederholm Doug Bowman Eric Meyer Ethan Marcotte Heather Hesketh Ian Lloyd James Craig James McNally Jason Fried Jay Allen Jeff Veen Jeremy Flint Jish Mukerji John Halcyon Styn Joi Ito Josh Williams June Cohen Kevin Cheng Kimberly Blessing Lance Arthur Leonard Lin Matt Haughey Matt May Matt Mullenweg Michael Schmidt Molly Holzschlag Nick Bradbury Nick Finck Nikolai Nolan Paul Bausch Sam Ruby Simon Willison Stephen Grainer Steve Champeon Tantek Çelik Tom Chi Wendy Chisholm Wednesday Well, technically I'm writing this on Thursday due to a long plane ride and being far too tired to think about writing on the plane. Tuesday evening saw a bunch of people gather at the bar in the lobby of the Hilton, then break up into groups as we headed to a Mexican restaurant called 'Gueros' en masse. Being a local Texas boy, Matt had his car and drove us there, and later to Bruce Sterling's SXSW closer party. Plenty of highlights from the evening. Cliched by now, but there's a brand new mirror shot somewhere out there... (my own were blocked by a fuzzy hat, sadly) I met Cory , only because he thought I was Ev (who I suspect I bear a passing resemblance too, if [as it was] it's dark, and if [as I was] I'm wearing a Blogger T-shirt). Jay is the guy to hang around when the beer runs out. When you leave your iBook in someone else's hotel room, make sure they don't leave the party before you... Yesterday was a travelling day. Coffee with Molly in the morning, shared a cab to the airport (and ended up stiffing the driver of my earlier cab by 5 bucks due to circumstances beyond my conrol, though he was very gracious about it. That's Texas hospitality for you, what a treat). Combining cab rides and airport waiting, it took about 8 hours to get back. That would have been far worse if not for a cheerful and helpful United employee in Austin. Instead of being routed through Chicago again, she stuck me on a trip passing through Denver. Despite the one hour delay on the last leg of that trip, I still arrived in Vancouver 2 hours before scheduled landing time of the original plan, and from the sounds of it, at least 3 additional hours more than I would have been delayed going through Chicago. So I'm back, and it's good to be home. But it was so great to be in Austin. SXSW isn't a conference, it's a party. That's what it felt like; moving from one party to another every day for four days. Wandering down the street and meeting up with a group of people heading in one direction, taking off with them for a few hours and meeting yet another group heading in another direction, and hopping from event to event the whole time is really a wild experience. When you pack that many people who know or are aware of each other into such a confined space of a few city blocks, there's really no choice but to have one hell of a time. I'd love to know how this year's SXSW compared to past years, if any veterans want to share their thoughts. If this wasn't one of the best ever, I've been missing out big time. Tuesday 2:10pm —It's starting to wind down. A few have left already, and we're in the final stages of the panels. (sitting in Jonathan Abrams' keynote at the moment) Last night were the parties. The Death of WebMonkey party kicked off the night, which segued nicely into the Blogger party, which I left to grab some food with the OK/Cancel guys , who are even funnier in real life. Moved on to a continuation of the WebMonkey party in another venue, and ended the night way too late. WaSP meetup this morning bright and early thanks to Ian's way-too-early flight out, where I got a killer shot of Simon's prolific Exposé use. To be posted later, along with plenty of other photos (no way to concentrate on processing those at the moment, which explains the lack so far.) Monday 4:19pm —The panel is done! Load off my mind, though thanks to my excellent fellow panelists it was very well received. When talking to a crowd, my tendency is to digress a little too much; the notes format I used today was perfect for me, even though I wasn't convinced ahead of time it would work. In fact, my notes ended up being a mini-essay, so the chances of them showing up on here some time over the course of the next few days is rather good. Update on the past few days—awards ceremony led into the Fray Cafe, and I'm pretty darned sorry I missed that. Preparation for the panel trumped it unfortunately. Bright and early the four of us panelists wandered over to Chris and Dan's hotel for a quick head-to-head last minute discussion and a bite, over to the conference centre to speak, and when 10am rolled around it was all us. If anyone took notes, let me know and I'll link 'em up. Otherwise expect the afore-mentioned follow up in due time. Stuck around for Tantek, Eric, Doug, Brian Alvey and Kimberly Blessing . " CSS Design: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly " went very well, and I ended up with a plethora of notes that, also, will be posted in due time. Somebody please tell me the Top Ten Rejected Panel Names is online somewhere! Lunch with Molly, Eric, and Chris at a great ol' Texas BBQ house. Coffee in the Hilton after, as mentioned below. Off to an interview at the moment, then the Death of WebMonkey party. Onwards! 2:47pm —Downtime. The last 24 hours have been very much a blur. But in a good way, of course. Somewhat of a summary, while I have the chance. Where did we leave off... after the moblog panel if I recall? So I tried to sit in on the 'Monetizing the Blogosphere' panel by the weblogsinc.com crew, but ended up ducking out to prepare. The cafe in the Hilton is proving quite the CSS geek hangout; met Tantek and Eric here on Saturday, been back three or four times since, and now we're hanging around in a post-panel lull. We being Chris, Doug, Dan, Eric and I. So the awards, you say? Yeah, about that. Wow. I'm not sure what can be said, I'm still a bit shocked. I walked home with Best of Show? What? Really? Me? Surreal. Very surreal. I'm sure my acceptance speech was glib, but it was unexpected and unprepared so I'll take this moment to thank God, my parents, the Academy, and Jill from makeup. Very honoured, very touched. I won Best Canadian Weblog at the Bloggies too. Very cool! Carole Guevin had to grab my arm and usher me into the trade show area to issue an acceptance speech since I wasn't even around at the time; whoops! I guess if a tech weblog like this one can win best in the country, that says something about the country itself eh? (gratuitous eh. Topical humour...) Sunday 9:40pm —Should be out celebrating, but self-imposed confinment to the hotel so I can Get The Damn Panel Finished before tomorrow morning has effectively clipped those wings. Celebrating why? Because the Zen Garden took Best Developer's Resource! And BEST OF SHOW! Pinch me. Tonight, we work. Tomorrow, we drink like men. 4:53pm —Rendezvous is a very cool thing . Caught one panel on Moblogging this morning. Not that it wasn't interesting stuff, but I managed to tune out and get some work done. Tried for a second one, but ditched it in favour of working on the panel presentation. More highlights of the day so far: lunch with Ian and Ethan , grabbing Jamba Juice with Dan , discussing CSS ripoffs with Doug , and now a moment of peace. SXSW Awards are tonight, followed by the Fray Cafe immediately afterward. I'm really looking forward to the latter. More later this evening. 11:35am —In Moblog Nation: You Can Take It With You until 12:30pm. Catch me on Rendezvous or email me if you want to get lunch then. 9:50am —Sitting in the hotel madly preparing what I should have been madly preparing at least a week ago. In the meantime, I forgot to post the notes from Veen's panel! There were three speakers and a moderator, but I found Veen himself most absorbing. This is only a fragment, but you get the idea. No surprises here, all good stuff. early web, as told to designers: forget typography, you can make it, you know, bold and italic. that's about it. images are pretty crap (low compression/color) take a square, 800x600, that's your screen. maybe veen doesn't care about the bad designers anymore, doesn't work with them old designers shaken out by the crash, new designers are making it now "Must be great Jeff, that you can do that" says the skeptic, wistfully business case: good design accessibility standards he works from wireframe, with designer, to bring it to browser designer: "we won't be able to get that menu to float, with good semantics" designer: "we're going to need captions for tables and images, you write them or I?" this is being spoken *by visual designers*?! they know/expect how differently they look different OS'es and browsers know about degradability (some joke about Netscape, missed it...) Taking things for granted that are very good things, very web-spirited Simple markup, easier to maintain, less cost to serve, work cross-platform work better in Google, more accessible for everyone on the web easy to make a business case for this doesn't care about accessibiltiy, cares about good design when good design is practiced like a craft, accessibility just comes out of it case studies: wired news, stop design question: what browsers? NN4? showed Wired with upgrade notice, that's a good way around it cinnamon.nl, showed skip nav link, tried opening in JAWS, no luck (network error) (DS: pronouncing WCAG as "wuh-kag" is really awkward) veen: sprintpcs.com—shown in NN4, some tables for layout how do you get from an old-school huge enterprise site, to where you need to be veen: most complete redesigns are disasters (disruptive to users, not on time) all for incremental design unless it's so bad you have to start from scratch chisholm: prioritize; start from the top, most important issues, then pick off low-hanging fruit 12:30am —I tried. I honestly did. When you're the only one with an iBook whipped out amongst a group of 11 people or more, you just can't get much writing done. Back at the hotel and finally have a chance to write up all this. There's absolutely no way I can even summarize today, let alone the experiences. For my own future record, here's a rough and skin-deep order: registration, wandering 6th alone, running into Bausch and Haughey , having breakfast at the Mexican greasy spoon, wandering to Kick , seeing familiar faces, wandering to the café in the Hilton and meeting the faces behind the names that I've been talking to for ages. I owe Ethan an Americano. Having lunch, discussing Atkins, hosting, and secret projects. Quick jaunt to the hotel to pick up le iBook. Mad dash back to catch Veen 's panel. IM'ing Ethan from two rows back. Meeting Molly . Getting on Anil 's case about MT 3.0. Getting answers! Getting drinks and appies with a lot of now-familar names and faces. Meeting even more at the combined css-discuss/WaSP/webdesign-l/whatever meetup. Moving to the SXSW welcoming party. I'm sorry, but the dancing girls and the Spanish accents and the serious thundering passion of what was supposed to be a cheeseball opening act made my night. Still laughing. Wandering to the Omni. No one there. Took the chance to catch up, but only for a bit; Nick Finck and the Clip 'N Seal guy and I ended up finishing the evening over Chinese food. Back in hotel. Here's just a big old list of some of the other cool people I've met so far, because it's impossible to keep track of when and how, and it probably won't matter at the end of the weekend anyway. The people are important, not the details. Jeff Veen , Molly Holzschlag , Nick Finck , D. Keith Robinson , Anil Dash , Ian Lloyd , Josh Williams , Carole Guevin , Brian Alvey , Jason Calacanis , Michael Schimdt , Adam Greenfield , Nick Finck , Simon Willison , Sam Ruby , Leonard Lin , James Craig , Christopher Schmitt , uh, and a whole lot more. <link rel="met"> indeed. Everyone is exactly as I imagined them. I have another 3 days here with these great people. Wow. Best $185,000CDN I ever spent. Saturday 3:30pm —Made it. At the panel, random chance had me sit down beside, straight from Aus, Ian Lloyd . What luck! 3:05pm —Running, running to catch Veen's panel. More soon. Things are finally starting to go right. 3:00pm —Recovered finally. Still on west coast time, so getting up at 10am here was early for me, but I'm falling behind. Ran to the conference center, spent about 10 minutes standing around feeling completely lost. Info booth? Thank you, tell me what the hell I'm doing please. Got it sorted after false starts and confusion (as if there's any other way). Grabbed a badge, so the next challenge was breakfast. Running on steam at this point, hadn't had a meal in 20 hours. Wandered 6th St/Ave., wasn't feeling the love. Bumped into Matt Haughey and Paul Bausch , found a greasy spoon Mexican eatery and got fed. Problem solved. I owe Matt a meal. ("Canadian money is no good here?" Who knew!?) Wandered down to the Kick game. Baseball with a big ass rubber ball I guess? Never really figured it out. Matt Mullenweg and Ethan Marcotte and I took off and met up with the CSS crew madly constructing their panels, of which I should have been a part due to my complete lack of preparation but wasn't due to my leaving the iBook back at the hotel. Saw Doug Bowman again, and met for the first time Eric Meyer , Tantek Çelik , Christopher Schmitt and Anitra Pavka . Had lunch with 'em all. Friday 2:00am, Austin —Here. Checked in. Going to bed. Adjusted for time, that makes 17 hours and a single meal all day. Does not bode well for attitude tomorrow. On the bright side, ran into some other folk attending and even managed to score a ride from the airport. Thanks Andrew and Allison ! 5:00pm, Chicago —For future reference: entirely inadequate amount of tray space for an iBook when the person in front of you reclines. In Chicago. Waiting for layover. Catching up. No wireless. Nothing much to do. Another update on the ground in Austin. You can't possibly imagine what I'd give for a Vancouver Airport restroom right about now. Not that they're that clean, but… 9:15am, Vancouver —I cleared customs. That's a good sign. I'm typing offline in the US Departures terminal in Vancouver at the moment. Wireless is available, but it's not free, and I'm already paying the company (Telus) for some of my residential services. Thanks, but no thanks. The trip takes me to Chicago this afternoon, where I change planes for Austin after a three hour layover. Which means the entire day is shot. There weren't many better options, either — when your choices are Chicago, Atlanta, or Seattle and Denver for layovers, you take what you can get. James Craig says it's going to rain all weekend. I live in Vancouver, the Seattle of Canada. This isn't going to be a problem. So far I've spent the past hour catching up on my news feeds and email. My new (old) find for this week: NetNewsWire . I finally bit the bullet and picked up a real aggregator, instead of relying on the blo.gs notification service. It served me well, but I won't be going back. The upshot to all this has been that I grabbed my feeds this morning before I left, and have enjoyed reading all of you offline. Cheap thrills. My long-standing problem with newsreaders has been synchronization; when you work on two computers, keeping track of what you've read over what you haven't makes it too much of a pain. When you're primarily using only a single system, problem solved. There are server-side aggregators that take care of that, but I never bothered. Off to get some real work done. Another update in Chicago. ]]>
CSS Problem-SolvingMarch 10
After spending an hour debugging CSS with Tim Bray this morning, it occurs to me that the most valuable skill to possess in the maddeningly complex minefield of today's browser landscape isn't, in fact, knowing which browsers do what to which properties. It's problem-solving.
Browsers are the wild card in CSS. If everything worked according to spec, the development process (once you've figured out the complexities of the box and float models) would be relatively straightforward. But we're not living in that perfect world, and most of the time what they do isn't quite so important as how you cope with what they actually do.
To that end, the CSS Crib Sheet was meant to aid the process of debugging, and it covers a few points, but I realized this morning that there are some tricks I use to diagnose a problem that don't show up on any resource guides. I figured I'd share.
- Turn on borders.
- One of the biggest problems I've faced is visualizing what exactly is happening, and why. Is that extra space a margin, or some padding? Is it the margin of the parent element, or the child? Is it even caused by either of the two elements, or something else? By applying an arbitrary bright-coloured and obvious border (#F00, #0F0, and #00F) to each element, parent and child(ren), the boxes reveal their constraints and spacing a lot more obviously. Background colours often help too.
- Check your selectors.
- Likewise, using the border trick or background colours to highlight the element you think you're working on can save a lot of frustration. Due to cascading and inheritance, your selector may not actually be applied properly. Do something to check when in doubt; make the element obvious by making it ugly. If the change doesn't take effect, then the selector is your cuplrit.
- Adjust values.
- Font size too small in Mozilla, but fine in IE? Bump it up a bit. Even the slightest bit helps. Going from 0.9em to 0.91em can make a world of difference. Similarily, adjusting margin and padding to wild values that you have no intention of keeping can often make a difference in how something renders, and frequently will squeeze out the root problem through process of elimination. You can always set them back after you've solved it.
- Hide selective elements.
- Speaking of process of elimination, how do you know that the element you're working with is the problem? Try hiding surrounding elements, and leaving parent elements (all the way up the chain, as far as the
bodyitself if necessary) as unstyled as possible. Comment them out, don't delete them, because you'll need them later. Sometimes widths and heights and floats and margins and so on can interact in ways that you don't expect. Reduce and isolate the problem as much as you can, to make sure other elements aren't having a deleterious effect.
- Get rid of unneeded CSS.
- If you have dummy properties that aren't contributing to the net styling, comment 'em out. Remove all possible variables by reducing your declarations to the bare minimum needed for the effect you're trying to achieve. Sometimes things you wouldn't suspect will be at fault.
- Set your margins to 0.
- When in doubt, specifically set the margins of your element(s) to 0. You can't always rely on a browser's default values.
- Validate.
- Good lord, nothing is going to work if you have improperly nested and unclosed elements! Always make sure your (X)HTML is kosher before even starting to think about your styling.
These are but a few; there are more I'll write up as I use them. Feel free to comment with your own problem-solving techniques. (This could very well end up an offshoot resource the way the Crib Sheet did.)
Remember, the key is to highlight the behaviour. Why the browser is displaying a quirky behaviour doesn't always make sense, but if you can work around the problem just by quick testing, it doesn't necessarily have to.
Publishing, Coffee, ContractsMarch 8
Welcome to mezzoblue expanded, a fresh Monday afternoon edition featuring commentary on items in the news that would have otherwise been relegated to sidebar status. (Because some days are more reflective than others.)Craig Saila points to a lengthy but good read this morning by Vin Crosbie at Online Journalism Review which may be considered alarmist for the newspaper industry, but advocates practices have long been in use amongst the geek crowd. In particular, Vin outlines a personalization strategy for big media that makes a connection between declining sales over the past four decades and the ever-forward march of technology. Newspapers, he argues, haven't kept pace, especially given the variety of news outlets. Even the web isn't proving a saving grace as the readership numbers are fairly consistent with the dead tree versions. Younger generations are less inclined to read newspapers, and the web isn't drawing them in. So personalization is the solution. The more technically savvy figured this out long ago, and thanks to NetNewsWire and FeedDemon among others, we've had the tools to make it a reality. I used to check in with cnn.com, my local papers (or rather, their web equivalent) and a few other news sources daily. Used to, but I've since moved to more specialized news sources that align with my interests, and I'm not alone. Newspapers have always been content aggregators; the content is no longer behind lock and key, so alternative solutions are cropping up. More content becomes available for consumption every day thanks to RSS/Atom. A newspaper's role in this century is to bring this technology to the masses, or to die. § Coffee is the fuel that powers the web, as far as I'm concerned. In light of that, good news this morning— it's healthy , according to Italian dietician Chiara Trombetti. Anti-oxidants and tannin found in stronger brews are good for the heart and arteries, it's good for the liver, and of course the caffiene boosts circulation. So put a mug on as you work your way through the rest of this, and stock up on the teeth whitening strips, because if you take this advice to heart you're going to need them. § This is the punchline: The sales representative kindly agreed to remove the clause when I pointed out that it wasn't really sensible for us to 'mortgage' our company and all its intellectual property, and all its future, yet-to-be-created intellectual property, just to obtain telephone services worth under $500 a month. This is the post . Excerpted from Martin Ertl's new weblog Boilerplate , dedicted to "elegant drafting in contracts". § First it was Dan Cederholm's new ' Markup and Style Handbook ', and announced today were Eric Meyer's two new books. Forthcoming: a second edition to the O'Reilly-published " Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide ", and a sequel to the now-classic " Eric Meyer on CSS " titled, appropriately, "More Eric Meyer on CSS". Congratulations to the both of you, looking forward to all three. § Finally, a story from my weekend. So, can you explain to us, in layman's terms so that we might even understand, what it is exactly that you do? Well, gee Uncle C., I've been trying to that for years with only a limited degree of success, but here's an example that might work. Think about the billboards, brochures, TV commercials, and businesss signs that you see daily. Somebody has obviously been paid to create them, so try to imagine taking those principles, squishing the production into a little box, and delivering the whole package on a screen. But that's the first half. Now for another analogy: think about your car's dashboard. Somebody has spent a lot of time thinking about the various dials and controls, how they look, how they feel, and how easy they are to grab without taking your eyes off the road. I do that, but again, for things that only show up on screen. So, then, what exactly are you going to be talking about at this conference in Texas next week? Specifically, this technology called CSS which.... oh, hey, we're out of gravy. I'll be right back. § ]]>
A List ApartMarch 5
My first article for A List Apart was published this morning. "CSS Sprites: Image Slicing's Kiss of Death" is an investigation of a new technique that has been formulating for the last six months or so.
The CSS Sprite method enables rollovers, buttons, and dynamic image maps on a simple HTML unordered list. By dropping all
:link and
:hover state images into a single image file, IE flicker can be avoided and download times should be quicker. Not to mention the time saved by not exporting a few dozen sliced images. Have a look, and feel free to discuss the article in the ALA forum.
Interestingly, it seems like my better ideas have about a six month incubation period. The Zen Garden began in late October, 2002, and launched in May of 2003. I extended Pixy's preload method for a set of style-switching buttons on mozilla.org in September last year (which were cut, obviously), but didn't quite put all the pieces together until just the past few weeks.
Two quick technical notes. First, before someone calls it out, the example image uses graphics from Super Mario Brothers. The original Nintendo Entertainment System used a completely different sprite mapping technique than the basic summary in the article, which saw all graphics broken down into 8 pixel by 8 pixel chunks. So the analogy doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, but ALA isn't exactly the place to discuss obsolete tile mapping systems...
Second, though it's obvious to most, I didn't make it that clear in the article that the advantage to this approach is that the containing block can be placed anywhere in your document flow that you'd place an inline item. Yesterday's post on positioning explains this a bit better.
Positioning and the CascadeMarch 4
Two quick CSS tricks that I've been relying on more and more lately:
- Applying positioning to a parent element, to allow absolute positioning of a child element within the parent.
- Context-sensitive elements. Chaining classes by applying two or three or more to the highest parent element possible allows cascading down to deep child elements.
Transitional Layouts, PublicityMarch 2
Lockergnome's regression, continuing the Zen Garden Notification Service, and hey, how about that, Dan Cederholm has a new book out.Via Matt Mullenweg : You might recall the somewhat-simplistic design of our site before we dove head-first into Cascading Style Sheets. Despite its shortcomings and lack of finesse, the sucker worked - and we had few complaints. Pay attention, as we're about to tuck a tail between our collective legs... and trade in modern conveniences for compatibility. Lockergnome.com is about to become less confusing as it goes back to more a basic code structure. We're going to unbury the menus and options and chalk up the past few months to experience. (Source: Lockergnome ) While the wording leaves a lot of unanswered questions, one is led to believe that Mr. Pirillo has either a) decided to throw the new CSS-based Lockergnome design out the window for an older table-based solution for unclear 'compatibility' issues, or b) decided to throw the new fancy Lockergnome design out the window for a simpler site architecture. Speculation is meaningless until we see the results, and there's nothing wrong with adjusting site architecture to suit your needs. But if the first choice appears to be a valid option to the Lockergnome crew, may I humbly suggest a transitional (hybrid) layout that relies on a table for page layout, and CSS for the rest? Long-time readers shouldn't be surprised about this piece of advocacy: it's still about using what works, today. While there is almost nothing that can be done with tables that can't be done with CSS, possessing the simple knowledge that it's possible is not enough. Skills needed to produce these layouts come only after a significant time investment in learning the techniques, and sometimes that time isn't available. Standards are a continuum; everyone starts somewhere. How far you go is entirely up to you. § Continuuing the Zen Garden Notification Service, the following publications have featured screenshots of the following Zen Garden designs recently: § LinuxFormat (UK) — Feb 2004 edition "This is Cereal" — Shaun Inman PIXELmag (Aus.) — Jan. 2004 edition "mnemonic" — Dave Shea "zenlightenment" — Lance Leonard "prêt-à-porter" — Minz Meyer "HoriZental" — Clément Hardouin "First Summary" — Cornelia Lange "ZenGrounds" — Andrea Piernock "Postage Paid" — Mike Stenhouse "Entomology" — Jon Hicks "Dusk" — Jon Hicks CSS Praxis (Germany) "tranquille" — Dave Shea "sub:lime" — Andy Budd "si6" — Shaun Inman "Calm & Smooth" — Cornelia Lange "I Dream in Colour" — Jeff Bilen In other publishing news, the book I contributed to, Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation is at long last available to order. My promo copies showed up last night, and things are looking good. The bulk of the book was written by Owen Briggs , Steve Champeon , Eric Costello , and Matt Patterson . My part, and the part of a few other names you may recognize ( Dan Rubin , Mike Pick , and more) are smaller case studies, near the end of the book. I have yet to read the rest of it, but from all indications it appears to be a pretty comprehensive reference to working with CSS. § Hey, look what else is available for pre-order. § ]]>


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Firefighters lauded
To the Journal editor:
I would personally like to thank Marqette Fire Department Capt. Steve Hodgins and the entire Marquette firefighting crew for their handling of the recent Upper Peninsula Medical Center fire.
Their quick and decisive actions saved millions of dollars in destruction and avoided significant disruption of medical services to the community.
They contained the fire to a relatively small area of the basement with the rest of the building only affected by smoke. Capt. Hodgins kept us all informed throughout the morning.
When I saw the firefighters coming out of the smoke-filled basement covered with ash and sweat, the seriousness of the situation was obvious.
They had put their lives on the line to keep the fire under control. For that we all owe them a heart-felt thank you.
Dale Moilanen
chief operating officer
Advanced Center for Orthopedics


text:
Students from the Bluegrass Community & Technical College Lawrenceburg and Danville campuses visited the capital last week to meet with representatives and other political leaders.
"This day provided a great way for our legislators to hear how Bluegrass Community and Technical College makes a difference in our students' lives," said Lawrenceburg campus director Rhonda Wheeler.
Students present during the Frankfort visit said affordable prices at their local BCTC campuses have allowed them to further their education in a timely and cost-effective manner.
"Students shared their personal stories and the impact the Danville Campus has on their ability to access higher education," said Danville campus director Erin Tipton.


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About the Author: Maura M. Pally serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Professional and Cultural Exchanges in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
The international excitement surrounding the World Cup is evidence of the worldwide passion for soccer, and of the important role it plays in the cultures of many different countries. Soccer also plays an important role in U.S. sports diplomacy and outreach. The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs' SportsUnited office creates programs around soccer and other sports to give foreign participants exposure to American life and culture, as well as connect them with U.S. sports professionals. SportsUnited programs help kids ages 7-17 discover how success in athletics can translate into the development of life skills and achievement in the classroom. These initiatives also give Americans the opportunity to learn about foreign cultures and about the challenges young people from other countries face today.
This June, the SportsUnited office brought twelve teenage girl soccer players and two coaches from Venezuela to the United States for a 10-day Sports Visitor program. This program coincided with the 38th anniversary of the passage of Title IX, landmark legislation that bans discrimination on the basis of gender, which had a huge impact on American education, collegiate and professional sports, and society. The girls participated in a soccer clinic with the coach of the Washington Freedom, the local Women's Professional Soccer team, and met soccer star Abby Wambach. They also participated in several fun team-building activities, played with American high school athletes, and attended a "watch party" at RFK Stadium to see the U.S. Men's National Team play Algeria and advance to the second round of the World Cup.
In addition to bringing young athletes to the United States on Sports Visitor programs, SportsUnited also sends American athletes overseas to conduct clinics, visit schools, and speak to youth. Partnering with U.S. Soccer, this month SportsUnited sent World Cup Champion and two-time Olympic Gold Medal winner Cindy Parlow and former Major League Soccer assistant coach Dr. John Cone to Azerbaijan as Sports Envoys. Cindy and John led clinics for hundreds of children, including many who live in Internally Displaced Persons camps, and held a clinic specifically for coaches to ensure the long-lasting impact of their work.
In addition to soccer, SportsUnited this year has created programs for basketball, baseball, volleyball, swimming, figure skating, and snowboarding. Like the World Cup, SportsUnited programs bring people together across the divisions of region, race and religion, uniting them through a shared passion for sports. The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs joins our many participants and alumni around the world in celebrating our mutual respect for each other's culture, as we watch and cheer on our favorites in the World Cup. GOAL!!!
Donald M. in Virginia writes:
6 27 10
The United States gave it a good shot in the world cup. I did notice Mr. Bill Clinton and his friends having a good time. Glad to see news reporters and Vice Presidents can enjoy themselves. I wrote VP Biden and email offering my help on the BP OIL spill. (chuckle to see if he responds)
Have a Nice Day Peace OUT!
John in Greece writes:
This post is dedicated to "referees" that had a different "viewâ€.
They can not accept the fact that USA has a great team in soccer too!
Next time they will!
(same with England today) ...
Donald in Virginia writes:
6 28 10
@John in Greece
Hey John how you been? Its been awhile. I heard greece is having problems like the rest of the world, including the United States.
John P. in Greece writes:
@ Donald in Virginia
Right Donald. We have to face a financial crisis in Greece too. [Besides my personal bankruptcy (LOL)]. Thank God, USA help us a lot.
Let's see things positive. It may take some time, but we will make it work again.
After all, here in Greece, we are (now) forced to take decisions for actions that we should have taken many decades ago. All this discussion inspired me to adapt one great phrase of Eric in NM. He wrote some months ago: (in my words) the only way to end a war is to win the war. So, I'd say that the only way to end a financial crisis is to fight the crisis.
What I hear about the States is that you are doing great steps and things get better day by day. Of course you cannot have "one-day†miracles, but I assume (and I am not a partisan) that the Obama Administration is doing a great job. This is the image I get from the international news.
However, this time we are off the subject for sure (CHUCKLE).
So, I'd like to post a wish: I' d love to see Donovan in PANATHINAIKOS FC. Although I am not a fanatic, I'd buy plenty of tickets of my favorite team, just for him.
I had watched USA soccer team in 2006. At this time, it was a very good team with great athletes, but medium technical performance. I knew, though, that something big is going on.
2010 USA soccer team was a GREAT, technically complete team that made us (all of us who love the States) proud!
Congratulations to everyone!
My prediction is that in 2014, America will be in the final.
P.S. Indeed it's been awhile. I missed you too guys. I had to "fight†some local lunatics though. My dear friend Donald, don't worry about my presence here. I love this Blog and it is a real school for me. I won't easily leave the "buildingâ€, unless the moderators kick me out of here (LOL). Nevertheless, if you ever attention me "post-less†for more than a year just send a couple of navy copters for my rescue (LOL again).
Saman B. in Iran writes:
@ Israel Gov.
Dear addressee!
In the Arabian gulf,the Iranian freighter is starting towards your realm; its cargo containing the equipment and warlike products for Israel, a few Iranian assembly members are shipmate; please entertain goodly of my compatriots.
Thank You


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10 finger-lickin' good BBQ recipes for your Labor Day cookout.
Labor Day is just around the corner, meaning it's time to say goodbye to summertime and usher in autumn. What a better way to wrap up the season than with a backyard barbecue? Fire up the grill and serve up one of these 10 flavorful, healthy barbecue recipes for your Labor Day cookout. Brought to you by: Spry Living