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Photo Gallery: 'Active Shooter' training
Video: Sheriff's Department staged active shooter training scenarios at Rancho Cucamonga HS
RANCHO CUCAMONGA - Deputies and school police officers wearing body armor and carrying rifles and firearms made their way toward a school.
They were training for dealing with an armed person on campus.
It was just one of the scenarios that San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies and other first responders went through Friday at Rancho Cucamonga High School.
The training continues today. The training events are part of regularly scheduled exercises planned well before the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings on Dec. 14 in Connecticut, authorities said, but the sessions took on an increased significance in the wake of the shootings that left 27 people dead, including the shooter.
"Just like the military, we train as we fight," said Deputy Anthony Thomas, a school resource officer. "If we don't make it as realistic as possible, we could fail, and failure is not an option."
Lorena Garcia, who has four children in Cucamonga School District, was happy to hear about the training.
"It really does make me feel safer to know that they train like this on a regular basis," said Garcia, an Alta Loma resident. "As a matter of fact, I think it would be a good idea if school personnel were trained as well."
While Garcia is still wrestles with the idea of having an armed teacher on campus, she feels a designated armed school employee at the entrance of the schools would make her feel more at ease.
To make Friday's exercises as realistic as possible, students volunteered to play victims as well as shooters while deputies and fire personnel executed their responsibilities as first responders.
Organizers created a high-stress and realistic situation as part of the training exercises, complete with simulated explosives, blaring sirens and screaming students.
"Before Columbine we never trained like this," Sgt. Mike Kleczko said about the 1999 Colorado shooting in which 12 students and one teacher were killed by two students. "We would wait for reinforcements before going into a live shooting activity."
Since the shooting at Columbine High School, deputies train regularly to finely tune their skills in case the real thing happens, Kleczko added.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has been involved in training scenarios this week as well.
First responders from various agencies in association with California Highway Patrol officers and Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies conducted the drills at Cal State Northridge.
Students and faculty members from the school's National Center on Deafness took part in the drills by acting as victims being terrorized by a mock shooter in a series of 15-minute exercises on Thursday
The exercises were designed to help the agencies work together during emergencies.
The San Bernardino City Unified School District also regularly holds training scenarios to help keep the district's Police Department ready for all situations, Superintendent Dale Marsden said.
"We have one of the most comprehensive and well-trained school police forces in the state," he said.
He added that in the face of budgetary shortfalls, the County Budgetary Advisory Board has made it a point to fill all school officer vacancies.
"This is so we can have the appropriate resources in place in order to keep our children safe," Marsden said.
San Bernardino parents also have the added comfort of knowing several firefighters who are paramedics have been trained as SWAT members and work hand-in-hand with San Bernardino police officers.
"They go through all the training and become peace officers," Deputy Fire Chief Paul Drasil said.
"Essentially, they become like a reserve officer and they are in fact a part of the SWAT team."
Having paramedics as part of the SWAT team means they can care for victims or team members immediately instead of having to wait for SWAT members to clear a location and make sure all's clear.
"The advantage is they are there right as the incident is happening and they initiate care immediately," Drasil said.
"In this instance that medic in within a few feet. It's a huge advantage for the officers to have them right there with them. They can at least begin triage, especially in an active-shooter situation where there may be multiple victims."
Portions of Friday's dynamic scenarios at Rancho Cucamonga High had deputies trying to track down a gunman before more victims were wounded or killed.
"We actively train so deputies and firemen are in the same mindset when it comes to active shooter incidents," Kleczko said.
"We want to engage and isolate the threat to ensure that there is little to no loss of innocent life."
Reach Doug via email, find him on Twitter @CrimeShutterbug, or call him at 909-386-3925.
Reach Beatriz via email, call him at 909-386-3921, or find her on Twitter @IEBeatriz.


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Frances Bean Cobain Wants Twitter To Ban Courtney Love
After her mother publicly accused Dave Grohl of "macking on Kurt Cobain's only child."
A few days ago, Courtney Love accused 43-year-old Dave Grohl of trying to sleep with her 19-year-old daughter, Frances Bean Cobain. Oh god, mum, could you be any more embarrassing? Courtney, as she is oft known to do, went on a 140-character-or-less rampage with all the typing finess of a teenager drunk on sherry, via her private Twitter account @cbabymichelle, which has 795 followers.
Her first Tweet explained that she had heard from Frances' friend that Dave had tried to hit on her and that "I'm not mad at her, him I am about to shoot, dead." Among other things, she claimed that "Dave tried to fuck me a lot and I always thought he had that romney (?) rape thing about him" and that he is a "gross old man macking on Kurt Cobain's only child." Dave's publicist responded saying "unfortunately Courtney is on another hateful Twitter rant. These new accusations are upsetting, offensive and absolutely untrue."
Now Frances has stepped in herself and issued a statement, scolding her mother. "While I'm generally silent on the affairs of my biological mother, her recent tirade has taken a gross turn. I have never been approached by Dave Grohl in more than a platonic way. I'm in a monogamous relationship and very happy."
She also says "Twitter should ban my mother" (who, coincidentally, is looking more and more like an elf dressed as Joan Rivers dressed as a Real Doll each day — see below).

subset: commoncrawl


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Creating your own progressive legal education
Every year the NLG publishes a "Disorientation Handbook" for law students who aren't satisfied with a traditional legal education. In the words of Arthur Kinoy, famed Guild lawyer and author of the handbook's introduction, the purpose of the booklet "is to provoke you to challenge traditional notions of how one must practice law and to suggest ways to make your three years of study more enriching and challenging."
Disorientation Events
At the beginning of each academic year, many NLG student chapters organize "Disorientation" events to introduce the wider student body to the NLG and "people's lawyering" in general. Whether this event is a quick meet-up of like-minded folks or a full-day event with panel discussions and workshops, it's a great opportunity to find allies on campus. To learn more about organizing Disorientation events, or to order free copies of the Disorientation Handbook, contact Director of Research and Education Traci Yoder at email@example.com.
Download a digital version here: Disorientation Manual.


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Happy toddler zone
Everything parents need to know about raising happy, healthy little ones. more
Reflux is a medical condition where the muscle at the top of the stomach doesn't work well enough to stop the contents of the stomach rising up the oesophagus, which results in vomiting. Reflux is a common condition in babies and for most of them, it won't cause any concern. However, it's estimated that approximately 8% of newborns experience either excessive reflux or 'silent' reflux which can be the cause of a very unhappy baby - and mum!
Silent reflux describes a reflux condition where painful 'heartburn' symptoms are experienced rather than vomiting. It is sometimes confused with wind or colic because there is no vomiting.
Babies suffering silent reflux typically experience discomfort 60-90 minutes after feeding, at which time the stomach's contents usually move into the intestines for absorption. Instead, the weak muscle at the top of the stomach allows some food to be squeezed upwards into the oesophagus.
When reflux is excessive it can affect your baby's general health and wellbeing. Excessive reflux is usually identified when the frequency and severity of the reflux begins to affect your baby's general health and wellbeing. Symptoms can include:
While breastfed and bottle fed babies suffer from reflux equally, studies have shown that reflux in breastfed babies tends to be shorter and less frequent than those who are bottle fed. This is perhaps because breast milk is more quickly digested than formula and so has less time to hang around and cause trouble. Regardless of how you are feeding your baby, you should:
You can help your baby with reflux be more comfortable by:
Last revised: Tuesday, 23 February 2010
This article contains general information only and is not intended to replace advice from a qualified health professional.


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WINTER PARK, Fla. - Freshman Jelena Tancic has been recognized as the Sunshine State Conference Women's Cross Country Runner of the Week presented by VALIC.
Tancic was the top Division II finisher at the USF Invitational on Friday. The Erlangen, Germany native completed the 5K race in a time of 17:23.85 to finish second out of a field of 165 Division I and II runners. Her time set a new program record.
For more than half a century, VALIC has served as the leading retirement plan provider for higher education, as well as for K-12 schools and school districts, healthcare, government and other not-for-profit institutions. VALIC has more than $65 billion in total assists under management and manages plans for nearly 25,000 groups serving nearly two million plan participants. VALIC represents The Variable Annuity Life Insurance Company and its subsidiaries, VALIC Financial Advisors, Inc., and VALIC Retirement Services Company.
The Lions return to action on Saturday, September 14, when they take part in the Mountain Dew Invitational hosted by the University of Florida. Start time is slated for 8:30 a.m. at the Mark Bostick Golf Course.
For the latest news, updates, and information on the Saint Leo women's cross country team, be sure to visit SaintLeoLions.com. Fans can also stay up-to-date on the latest Lions news by following Saint Leo Athletics on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube.


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A Model Fainted at Lorena Sarbu's Presentation: MB Fashion Week Fall 2012
Lorena Sarbu's red carpet looks might have been a little overwhelming.
-Heather Taylor
Bright and early on February 12, 2012, Lorena Sarbu's Fall 2012 red carpet collection debuted during Mercedes-Benz Fall 2012 Fashion Week. Upon entering the room inside Lincoln Center, complimentary mimosas were served up all around as people wandered the room, viewing a presentation of the latest collection of cocktail dresses in bold jewel tones like emerald and cobalt.
Read Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and The Worst Dressed of the Grammy Awards
Dresses were encrusted with embellishments like jewels, ostrich feathers and organza flowers. What really popped beyond the extras were necklines and sleeves–or the lack thereof. There was something for every fashionista, from the daring (plunging v-necks) to the sexy (one shoulder, strapless corsets) to the understated (boat neck). The biggest star of the show? A cobalt blue one shoulder geometric embroidered and jet beaded cocktail dress. It moved like liquid and reminded me of a shimmery blue mermaid.
The poor model on the left is the one who fainted–Remember to eat!
It was all gorgeous and rich that I couldn't help but sigh with happiness just a little bit. My couture swoon must have had a sudden domino effect because during the show, a model fainted! Luckily, she was safely taken care of. We can't lose the models, they're far too fabulous!
Heather Taylor is BettyConfidential's LA correspondent


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Visit us at ITB Asia 2013
This year, Victoria Hotels & Resorts will be participating in the sixth ITB Asia – the Trade Show for the Asian Travel Market takes place from 23 to 25 October in Singapore.
All visitors are welcomed to visit us at Booth G43, Hall 403 at the Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre.
Victoria Hotels & Resorts' booth in ITB Asia 2013
ITB Asia is an annually held three day B2B trade show and convention, where international exhibitors of all sectors of the travel-value chain, Asia Pacific's leading travel companies and emerging small and medium-sized enterprises meet with top international buyers from the MICE, Leisure and Corporate Travel markets. It is featuring the full range of travel products and services as well as being a knowledge platform for the industry.
Last year, ITB Asia welcomed almost 8.500 attendees from 92 countries, 865 exhibitor organizations, more than 750 buyers, and over 3720 minutes of conference.


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Exploring the Relationship Between Spare Area and Performance Consistency in Modern SSDsby Anand Lal Shimpi on 12/4/2012 12:00 AM EST
132 Comments
Back to Article
jimhsu - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkOn a TRIM-ed system, is leaving, say, 20% of a partition as free space equivalent to shrinking the partition by that same amount? I would think so, but I'm not getting (subjective) performance like the 25% graph above even with leaving about that much free space available. Reply
jimhsu - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkDrive is a C300 / firmware 0007, BTW. Reply
geddarkstorm - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkOn the last article someone was pondering the same sort of question. It sounds like that is not the case, and if the area is flagged as part of a partition, then it is not treated as spare area; hence the need to turn that area into its own partition, format it, and then delete it.
That's what it sounds like to me, and from the testing done in this article. Reply
geddarkstorm - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkOk, reading more comments, it seems if you have TRIM (i.e. Windows 7/8), then simply spare space even on your partition will count as spare area. Hm, be interesting to test that assumption just in case, if it hasn't been already. Reply
dananski - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkI would have thought the free space on a partition is free to use as spare area as the drive needs. It sounds like the partitioning is just to stop you accidentally filling it up more than you need.
Are you looking at the linear-axis graphs? They show you can still get quite a variation in performance despite the 25% spare area, but it's still a tighter range and overall faster than 12%. What would make a big difference is how your C300 controller makes use of this spare area. I'd certainly like to see these graphs for a wider spectrum of SSDs, though I understand that it all takes time.
Anand, could we see more drives? Also could you look into how RAID 0 affects IO performance consistency? :-) Reply
zyxtomatic - Wednesday, January 16, 2013 - linkYour partitioning comment is exactly what I was just thinking as I read this. How does the drive controller *know* that the extra unpartitioned space is available for use as spare area? There must be something more going on that I'm not understanding. Reply
dcaxax - Monday, January 21, 2013 - linkThe Samsung SSD software (Samsung Magician) creates spare area on your drive by shrinking the existing partition by 20% and leaving the free space unallocated.
This suggests that the spare area used is not free space from the partioned area, but only unallocated space.
Though it is not 100% clear if allocated but free space is also usable, it seems unlikely. Reply
Flying Goat - Thursday, December 06, 2012 - linkI think this is unclear. If the entire drive was originally in use, and then you repartition it, I assume the partition manager would have to be smart enough to TRIM the entire drive when the partition was deleted. Reply
mayankleoboy1 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkFor normal consumer usage, the Samsung840 Pro is the best, but it performs the worst of all here.
The Corsair Neutron is worst of all three in desktops usage, but performs the best here.
(not considering Intel, as its not a consumer SSD) Reply
dishayu - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkThat's a stunning revelation to me. I had no clue SSD i could increase the I/O performance manyfolds by simply increasing the spare area. Thank you Anand and jwilliams4200.
I need around 90 gigs on my system SSD. So, i guess i should just create a single 128GB partition on my 256GB drive and then extend the partition using Partition Magic Pro or something, in case i absolutely NEED more space in the future. That sounds like the best way, please correct me if i'm wrong. Reply
dishayu - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkQuick question. Why does one graph use logarithmic scale and the other one linear scale? That makes it look like Write IOPS are affected more than Read IOPS when in fact the impact is pretty similar. Reply
dishayu - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkOkay, nevermind, got my answer. And I really should learn to read more carefully. :| Reply
B3an - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkI'm not sure if thats what the article is saying... But either way i'd also like to know for sure if simply partitioning an SSD to have about 75% of usable space will increase I/O performance (even over a new drive with hardly anything on it).
Think the article needs to make this more clear... Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkUpdated with more info on this. In short, yes with the controllers used here that's all you need to do to allocate more spare area.
Take care,
Anand Reply
smpltn - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkIf I wanted to increase the spare area on a drive, should I secure erase and reinstall the Windows, or is simple shrinking the partition through Computer Management enough? Reply
smpltn - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - link*simply Reply
twtech - Tuesday, December 11, 2012 - linkYou could do that, or you could just set aside 25% from the beginning and not worry about it after that. The delta between 25% and 50% spare area is relatively small; even 20% is probably enough. Reply
mayankleoboy1 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkAny chance of doing the same testing for a SF 1xxx and 2281 arch based SSD's ? Reply
MadMan007 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkI was just going to write this. They might not be the newest, sexiest controllers, and the SF 1xxx is getting old at this point, but there are a LOT of them out there and the SF 2xxx in particular may be the most widespread controller because so many drives use it. SF 2xxx pretty please (and sugar on top if you do one with standard firmware and an Intel too)? :) Reply
Notmyusualid - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkI'll 3rd that. Reply
Tjalve - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkI actually ndid similar testing on a Vertex 3 120GB Drive for my SSD-Guide. I did this to explain how overprovisining works. Check it out. This graph shows how free space has an inpackt on the drives performance over time.
For you who dint understand swedish:
Minuter = Minutes
Tom = Empty
http://www.nordichardware.se/images/labswedish/art... Reply
GullLars - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - link+1, should be tested. I only have SandForce in my laptop, and it's not avalible for testing. If anyone wants to bench and post their results (that won't be directly comparable to this test) it would be interresting. As SandForce uses encryption remember to use incompressible data. It could also be interresting looking at how much the compressibility of the data affects the sustained random write performance, but that's quite a bit more work as you add a dimention. Reply
Per Hansson - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkYea, the Intel SSD 330 (Sandforce) was quite impressive in the previous performance consistency tests done, so please do test it with more spare area aswell :) Reply
Tjalve - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkCheck out my post above Reply
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkTesting Intel SSD 335 240GB as we speak. Any specific OPs you would like to see tested? Reply
Khato - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkWell just for comparison's sake the default and 25% OP numbers would be the most interesting. Definitely looking forward to seeing the results! Reply
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkResults for Intel SSD 335 240GB:
Default OP: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7934241/Default%20OP.png
Non-logarithmic scale: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7934241/Degault%20OP%20no...
25% OP: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7934241/25%25%20OP.png
Non-logarithmic scale: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7934241/25%25%20OP%20non-... Reply
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkDid you use incompressible data for both the sequential write and the 4KQD32 random write? Are you sure it is incompressible?
With IOMeter, for example, there are three choices of data: repeating bytes, pseudo random, and full random. Only "full random" is actually incompressible. Reply
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkYeah, I did. I admit that the 25% OP graph doesn't make all that much sense, the IOPS should start at ~50K and not below 40K. I can try running the test again just to make sure. Reply
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkReran the test at 25% OP, looks like something was off in the first run.
25% OP: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7934241/25%25%20OP_1.png
Logarithmic: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7934241/25%25%20OP_1.png
I ran it for a total of one hour so here is the graph of the whole run:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7934241/25%25%20OP%201h.p... Reply
Khato - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkThanks for the data, disappointing though it is. Really looks like all the more that providing the 25% OP does is delay the inevitable - the end result looks pretty much exactly the same between default and 25% OP, no? Reply
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkYeah, that seems to be the case. Other drives seem to benefit more from the increased OP.
Looks like I forgot to include the non-logarithmic graph, so here it is:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7934241/25%25%20OP%20non-... Reply
Per Hansson - Thursday, December 06, 2012 - linkThank you very much Kristian! Reply
MasterYoda - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkCould you please clarify the actual procedure for setting the amount of spare area on a drive? Is it as simple as leaving unpartitioned space on the drive? If yes, how does the controller know the unpartitioned space is not being used? I feel like I'm missing something. Reply
gostan - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - link'With TRIM support even the partitioning step isn't really necessary" - ANAND THE BOSS.
If you are on Win 7 / 8, there is nothing you need to do. Just format the drive, leave about 25% of free space, and enjoy the performance :D Reply
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkAs gostan said, there is no need to partition the drive if you're running an OS with proper TRIM support. TRIM will make sure that if you have 25% free space on the drive, that 25% is actually empty. Without TRIM it's possible that you end up in a situation where you think you have 25% free but the drive is actually full (that depends on how your drive handles garbage collection and how heavy your workload is, but it's not a far-fetched scenario). Reply
nathanddrews - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkOn a fresh Windows 7/8 install can you just format 75% of the space to a new partition and leave the 25% unformatted? Or must it be partitioned and formatted?
I assume if the 25% is formatted, you would disable the recycle bin, indexing, page file, etc. for that spare area? Reply
extide - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkI prefer to leave that extra bit un-formatted as it ensures there are never any writes to those LBA's. Reply
nathanddrews - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkSo basically short-stroking the SSD. Nice. Reply
JNo - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkNice analogy! (completely different mechanism behind it all I know but still...) Reply
jwilliams4200 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkExcellent set of tests and well-chosen comparison SSDs! It is interesting to see how the Vector and Neutron compare to the 840 Pro.
One point I think is worth making is that highest minimum performance (or lowest maximum latency) is probably more important for most applications than is having a small variation in performance. In other words, if I had a choice between 40,000 IOPS minimum (say 45,000 average with +/- 5000 variation) and 30,000 IOPS minimum with less than +/- 1000 variation, I would choose the one with five times higher variation but 33% higher minimum IOPS. Yet another way to say it is that I value highest worst-case performance over performance consistency -- no reason to cut off the upside if there is already a good floor supporting the downside.
Only thing that I missed seeing in this article is the Vector at 50% (or perhaps 49% just to be sure to be under 50%). That is potentially interesting due to the way that SSD changes its behavior at 50% full.
One minor correction: On your second set of graphs, the 50% button is labeled "192GB" instead of "128GB" Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkThanks for the inspiration :)
That is a very good point on the Vector. Tests on both sides of the 50% mark could be very interesting. I'll see if I can run some this week.
I also agree on your analysis of which is the more desired configuration. I've been pushing a lot of the controller vendors recently to take performance consistency more seriously. It sounds like at least two of them will have firmware based solutions to this problem within the next 12 months. Hopefully we won't have to make the tradeoff you're outlining anymore if this catches on.
Thanks for the correction as well.
Take care,
Anand Reply
jwilliams4200 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkYes, if you have time to run 49% and 51% on the Vector, I think that would be quite interesting!
One other thing that might be interesting (for all SSDs), if you have time. I noticed that you use a 1sec averaging time. In my data, I used a 0.1sec averaging time, since one of the SSDs I was testing has some variation that was only visible with a resolution of a few hundred milliseconds.
I wonder if the little "blips" that are visible in your graphs for the Vector and Neutron might have some structure that may become apparent if you increased your time resolution. Reply
rob.laur - Wednesday, December 12, 2012 - link"Only thing that I missed seeing in this article is the Vector at 50% (or perhaps 49% just to be sure to be under 50%). That is potentially interesting due to the way that SSD changes its behavior at 50% full"
As per Tweaktowns recent review of the 128GB Vector:
"Vector 128GB performs very well when half of the drive has data on it. This contradicts some of the statements made about the way storage mode works. If storage mode becomes active when half of the drive has data on it we would see a massive performance drop here, but as you can see, there is only a small drop between 25% and 50%"
Storage mode is only temporary and lasts for a couple of minutes and then the drive returns to its previous performance. It does not last forever if the drive is filled over 50%. Reply
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, December 12, 2012 - linkIf you read the tweaktown review, it is clear that they are clueless about how storage mode works. If you check the comments on that review, you can see some discussion of how storage mode may actually work. Reply
rob.laur - Wednesday, December 12, 2012 - linkStorage mode was explained by OCZ reps in depth on their forums as well and they said the same thing tweaktown's tests showed, that it is indeed a mode that lasts for a couple of minutes. Instead of doing tests on empty drives which is not a real world scenario, I think Anand needs to starting doing his tests with lets say 60% of data on the drives so we can really see which performs the best. Mixed reads/writes also is indicative of real world scenarios instead of all read or all write. Reply
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, December 12, 2012 - linkOCZ has never properly explained how storage mode works. For example, OCZ's vague explanation cannot explain these test results:
As for testing SSDs with static data, I agree that is a useful thing to do.
But mixed read/writes is more problematic, because there are so many ways that reads and writes can be mixed in real workloads. I agree it is a useful test, but deciding exactly what type of mix (eg., percentage reads, block size of reads, whether the reads and writes are interleaved with 1 IO each, 16 IOs each, etc.) to run is tricky. Reply
hpvd - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linksorry i didn't get it in all details.
Could you give some concrete advice for the usage of the results from this great article in the following cases:
1) Windows, TRIM => simply make a 25% smaller partition than the size of the SSD? Or does only free space within a partition help?
2) Windows, No TRIM => ?
3) RAID0 (intel), TRIM => ?
4) Raid5, no TRIM => ?
Thanks very much!
Best regards
HPVD Reply
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkWith TRIM: Just make sure you have 25% free.
Without TRIM: Make the volume 25% smaller than the full size. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkJust create an empty partition of roughly 25% of the NAND capacity on the drive and you're good to go. If you've got TRIM, go ahead and format that partition then delete it.
Take care,
Anand Reply
Rick83 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkHey, I'd be interested in getting more information on the underlying date, by ways of some very basic statistical analysis. I understand that you probably want to keep the raw data to yourself, but a quick mean/min/max/stddev/outlier plot/table would render this kind of data much more comparable, than clicking buttons to look at dots.
The same holds true for any kind of benchmark or measure - getting out that kind of info appears to me to be quite important.
I'm still not quite sure why so few (none that I know of) tech site's provide some simple stats on their benchmarking. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkI was very close to publishing exactly what you asked for but kept it out for ease of presentation. I do believe the types of figures you're talking about are necessary for good comparisons with this sort of data going forward so you will see more of it.
We don't always include it because we don't necessarily have the source data that lends itself to producing what you're asking for. A lot of our CPU benchmarks for example are very repeatable and thus you don't see much deviation from the average. Things are different with this SSD data because of the way defrag/GC routines have to run.
Take care,
Anand Reply
jwilliams4200 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkI like to see a normal probability scale cumulative distribution function (CDF) to get a good idea of the statistical distribution of SSD performance parameters. Combine that with a textbox showing number of data points, mean, and SD, and you can read off almost anything you want to know.
Here are a couple examples on a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro, one for 100% capacity utilization, and one for 80% (20% OP):
http://i.imgur.com/Mvj71.png Reply
brundleflyguy - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkI'm still don't understand how to take advantage of this. Do I make the partition 75% of the available size, or do I make the partition 100% of available size. and monitor the space used to keep it under 75%? Reply
gattacaDNA - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkBased on the earlier discussions and these, if you are in the desktop arena and do not have a > high sustained workloads < hitting the SSD, then if you just ensure you leave 25-30% free on the SSD, you have nothing else to do. As the drive gets a "rest" it can handle the trim and cleanup etc..
Personally, I like this option b/c if I do need the area for a large file etc.. then I can use it temporarily. The key is keeping that 25-30% of size free.
However, if you have high sustained workloads hitting the SSD (as in these tests) then from earlier discussions, it would be best to only allocate 70-75% of the SSD's size to the working partition and leave the rest of the unpartitioned area as the extra spare work area on the SSD. jwilliams and anand keep us honest here.. Cheers. Reply
edlee - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkGreat article, but I am not going to buy a 256gb ssd to only use 64gb. I have to use at least 40-50 percent. Reply
ShieTar - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - link75% spare wasn't even mentioned in the article. What is your point? Reply
edlee - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkWhoop I misunderstood, I thought u wrote leave 75% spare space Reply
jwilliams4200 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkIn my comments, I usually refer to the percentage of LBAs being utilized, so I often talk about 80%, by which I mean that 20% of the LBAs are reserved for OP. Anand's article emphasizes the percentage of reserved space rather than the percentage utilization. Reply
SunLord - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkGiven the results from the tests you ran the 3700s firmware is optimized to take full advantage of the spare area and while the other drives can and do make use of the fact there spare area it's not reserved spare area meaning less optimization is offered resulting in some what lower performance. I would imagine you'd see a negative impact on performance if you were to find away to use the 3700s spare area it's all about trade offs. Reply
jabber - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkI did some testing with HDTunePro a few months ago and found that performance smoothed out far more with more space given to spare.
I didn't increase it by much, just a few GB but it made a marked improvement. Reply
designerfx - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkwtf?
You compare everything else to show the flaws, but don't test the S3700 through the same gamut?
If you ask me it's not a popularity thing, it's also an accuracy thing.Show what happens to the S3700 at 12/25/50%. Reply
jwcalla - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkCome on, man. It's like the point of the article whooshed right by ya... or you went right to the graphs without reading (the second paragraph, in particular).
The Intel comes out of the box with 30% spare area, which can't be changed. How would he test 12% and 25%? The whole point was to show that the Intel had such consistent performance largely because it had so much spare area. And if you compare the other drives at 25% to the Intel default, that seems to be the case. Reply
JNo - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkThat's what I understood too. But if this is the case, why is the S3700 so expensive? Surely the recommendation is, even for enterprise, to buy a bunch of Corsair Neutrons and partition off 25%, get similar performance to the S3700 and save $$$ right?
Or are they getting something elsewhere with the S3700 - write endurance, throughput etc? Because if not, that natural conclusion would be that Intel haven't actually achieved much with the S3700... Reply
JNo - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkoh, and by the way, great work jwilliams4200 in seeding a whole anandtech article based on work and conclusions you were able to come to just through curiosity and by tinkering away at home (presumably)... Reply
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkIntel S3700 uses eMLC NAND, whereas the others in this case use MLC NAND. Reply
kozietulski - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkthe difference and important cost factor is - I belive - use of eMLC NAND in S3700. "e"-like-enterprise MLC is supposed to have endurance about 30k in comparison to regular (aka "c"-like-consumer) MLC NAND value of 3-5k.
Whats interesting single nand wafer may be source of both types of MLC dies. These dies best suited for enterprise usage are selected and - as far as I understand - programmed differently then consumer dies. The trick is - in short - to use more gentle, less stressful write sequence which is good for cells endurance but means also (so to say) lower Signal-to-Noise ratio for written data which translates into more vulnerability to fluctuations (both static and these dynamic resulting from disturbances from operations on nearby pages).
Net result is higher endurance at a cost of much lower retension of written data. cMLC is supposed to be able to keep data written at the end of its endurance life still readable for a year, for eMLC such period is measured rather in months if not weeks. Reply
Denithor - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkSo how much difference does this equate to in real-life typical consumer-level use? Will we even notice the difference? Reply
phillyry - Monday, December 10, 2012 - linkThe moral of the story is: If your drive is starting to feel slower, free up some space.
Of course, if you're fanatical about performance then you should always just keep 30% free. Reply
Lepton87 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkIn random write Neutron at 192 drops to Intel performance level only a few times and maintain much better average performance and about the same worst case performance and you say that Intel behaves better in this test? So if a hypothetical drive draw a perfectly smooth line at half intel's average performance you would say it's better than intel because it's more consistent? I don't get your new-found fascination with this new Intel enterprise drive. Reply
jwilliams4200 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkOne thing to keep in mind is that Anand was using an averaging time of 1 second. That tends to smooth out the peaks and dips in performance. In other words, if an SSD dropped all the way to zero IOPS for 0.1 second but maintained 40K IOPS for the other 0.9 seconds of averaging time, then Anand's graph would show the blip in thoughput as a drop to 36K IOPS. But in reality the speed dropped to ZERO for 0.1 seconds.
I'm not saying that the Neutron necessarily drops to zero speed at any time. I'm only saying that it is POSSIBLE that it does, given what we know from the graphs in this article. More likely, it does not drop all the way to zero, but I would be willing to bet it does drop (for a fraction of a second) to a significantly lower speed than the graph might lead you to believe. Reply
jwilliams4200 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkI'll add that it is possible that the Intel S3700 also drops to a lower speed for a fraction of a second, but it would need to be either only slightly lower, or for a very short time (less than a millisecond), or some combination in order for the graph to look as "blip free" as it does. Reply
rrohbeck - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkYes, we should see the PDF of all latencies. Averaging doesn't make sense here. Reply
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkWell, I wasn't actually trying to say that "averaging doesn't make sense here".
My point is that if someone is talking about worst case (or best case) performance, that person needs to have data with sufficient time resolution to actually resolve that worst case (or best case). Any time that there is a one-data-point blip in the data, it is an indication that there is insufficient time resolution to be certain that the event in the data is fully resolved. Good methodology is to then increase the time resolution and repeat the experiment until there are no longer any one-data-point blips. Reply
cserwin - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkSo, this article finally prompted me to find out what the hell 'write amplification' is.
So, if you are operating in a condition where the controller is amplifying writes by a factor of 3 or 4, in addition to crappy write performance, would you also be reducing the logevity of your drive by a similar factor? Reply
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkYes, you would because when you think you're writing let's say 100MB, the controller ends up writing 300-400MB to the NAND. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkCorrect. But most of the estimates we do for lifespan assume fairly high write amplification to begin with so endurance concerns are still a non-issue for the vast majority of consumers.
Take care,
Anand Reply
krumme - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkNow this is great works !
What a pleasure to read Reply
CK804 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - link"Most client drives on the other hand only feature about 7% of their total NAND capacity set aside as spare area (256GiB of NAND, 238GiB of user storage). "
That's incorrect. SSD and HDD manufacturers report their products' total capacity in decimal while Windows and other operating systems report the total capacity in binary. This has been a standard practice for as long as I can remember.
(256GB * 10^9) / 1024^3 = 238.4GB Reply
jwcalla - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkWhat he said is correct though. If we look at the Samsung 256 GB drive for example, there is 256 GiB of NAND on the PCB (NAND capacities are in binary). But after the over-provisioning is put into place, only 238 GiB is available to the user. This 238 GiB translates to 256 GB, which is the advertised capacity.
Basically, NAND capacities are in binary, but they're using the bytes lost in the binary <-> decimal conversion as the over-provisioned spare area that's unavailable to the user, so they continue to advertise with the binary units. Reply
jwcalla - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - link"so they continue to advertise with the binary* units."
*decimal. We need an edit button. :) Reply
rrohbeck - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkEasier said:
GB/GiB=(1024^3)/1E9=1.074. Reply
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkActually, that is reversed. GiB > GB Reply
A5 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - link"Consumer SSD prices are finally low enough where we're no longer forced to buy the minimum capacity for our needs. "
Not really? 256GB drives are still well over $200. That's a significant part of a PC build. Reply
Kevin G - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkThe Samsung 840 Pro figure has two 192 GB buttons in the second table for selecting. One for 25% and 50% free area. One of those buttons should read 128 GB. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkFixed, thank you!
Take care,
Anand Reply
Steve@mac - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkHi friends,
I believe I understood the results.
But as I'm working on the mac (where everything is mostly simple) I want to ask you:
HOW can I customize my SSD for the benefit ON THE MAC?
Is it enough to use disk utility and set up (after erasing) one single partion with only 75% of available space? Or do I have to do more?
Thanks for answers Reply
mayankleoboy1 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkThere is an app for that Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkYep that's all you need to do :)
Take care,
Anand Reply
sonci - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkNice article,
I used to automatically defragment my HDD with diskeeper or similar tools, but not anymore with SSD,
this is an unnecessary step, am I correct?
I have 25% free of my Vertex2 SSD, is it ok, or I should reinstall w7, and partition only 75% of the capacity of my SSD? Reply
mayankleoboy1 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkI too have a 256GB Vertex2. Would be interesting to know how to increase performanmce for older archs. Reply
Tjalve - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkI think some people are missing the point here. For client loads you wont see any diffrence at all. Theese tests are based on a full drive running a 4K Random write pattern at high QD. The only place that this scenario could happen in real life, is in a Server under high load for extended periods of time. Like a database server or a file server handling alot of clients at the same time.
So you dont have to manually overprovion your drive. However if you do, the overall WA will be lower and the drive will last longer. But on the other hand you could just try not to fill you drive all the way. Reply
rrohbeck - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkExactly. As long as you have some main memory free, your OS will buffer writes and you'll never know in a desktop like environment. Reply
Zink - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkNo wonder you have so many complaints about IO consistency Anand, you torture your MBP SSD to the max daily. I don't think there are too many other enthusiast who run right to the point of getting disk space errors. I'm not so sure there is really any problem with SSD consistency for desktop use. Wouldn't statistics on max response time help us understand if there are any noticeable slowdowns? All of these drives are providing 25k IOs during the worst one second periods when filled reasonably. Unless there are some ridiculously long pauses in there I can't see how that would noticeably affect any workload. Reply
JellyRoll - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkThanks for the article, this illustrates a point that i have come across when testing several SSDs.
The Intel isnt that spectacular. The consistent I/O story is marketing hype, there are other enterprise SSDs that perform just as well, or much better.
One can even take consumer SSDs and reach the same level of performance with similar amounts of OP.
Will there be an adjustment to the glowing review of the Intel datacenter SSD? or perhaps some comparisons to other relevant enterprise SSDs so that users can see that in that space the Intel is merely run-of-the-mill, if not slower!, than other alternatives? Reply
Lepton87 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - link
Will there be an adjustment to the glowing review of the Intel datacenter SSD?
Of course not, just as GTX680 is still the fastest card on the market according to ananad. It was already slower then 7970GHz with launch drivers, but anandtech was one of a few sites to say otherwise. Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkSo is it better to set your partition to 75% when you install windows, or simply keep the full partition but never fill the drive past 75%? Is there any difference between these two methods? Reply
Tjalve - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkNo. Reply
M477 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkThese test were all 256 GB drives. But if you have a 512GB drive, do you still need to leave 25% free (128 GB), or is it the amount of space (approx 64 GB) that is important?
I would have thought it is the amount/size of OP space that would be important - not the %.
Might it also explain why advertised drive speed improves with capacity (all with the same 7% OP). Reply
phillyry - Monday, December 10, 2012 - linkVery good point. I second that question. Reply
Death666Angel - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkThe paper you link to is gone, I get a 404 error with both links :). Reply
rigel84 - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - link...but reliability means even more. Just looking at that OCZ brand makes me think of massive return rates.
I was wondering with your name and influence, can't you once in a while (or in an article), include some data from a retailer like behardware.com does on return rates?
http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-7/component... Reply
Chris_DeepBlue - Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - linkHi Anand
To add a plextor M3Pro to this test?
I bought 2 of those (256gb each) which I'll be using on a stripe band configuration as soon as I get them and this kind of testing is just great to see how they fare at each capacity level and the minimum performance that can be expected.
Thanks! Reply
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkMy M3 Pro is currently used in a system but I can test the M5 Pro. Reply
CougTek - Thursday, December 06, 2012 - linkPlease test the Plextor M5 Pro. We hesitate between it and the Corsair Neutron GTX for our next server build. Reply
unityole - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkwell good article, although it'd make sense not to use a SSD to it's maximum capacity, why not do actual test runs on these percentage fill? rather than just IOPS, do tests like running a game, encoding videos and see how long each take should be more practical right?
As for sandforce firmware broken and this article, was already covered by Tweaktown like.. half a year ago lol. They have been going on about Trim not working and fill tests showing vantage score on their website for as far as April iirc I'm more surprised Anand only picked this up now =/
but thumbs up, better late than never, such as SSDreview which doesn't do tests on a filled drive at all. Reply
Tjalve - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkhttp://www.nordichardware.se/images/labswedish/art...
This is somthing that i did for my SSD-Guide. It shows the diffrence in speed compared to hos mutch OP you have and then filled the drive with data. This data is based on a vertex 3 120GB. i also compared the WA.
Free: Write Amplification
0GB 13,22x
1GB 10,78x
2GB 9,40x
4GB 7,41x
8GB 5,46x
16GB 3,82x
empty 1,53x
0GB (compressible) 1,59x Reply
khanov - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkThis is very interesting data Tjalve.
I think what makes the Anandtech article so popular now is that it shows the effects of over-provisioning beyond what you have done. Your data goes between 0GB and 16GB on a 128GB drive. That is a max. of 12.5% OP.
This Anandtech article shows that OP of 25-50% can have a more dramatic effect on performance, particularly on keeping minimum IOPS at a reasonably high level.
So I guess people asking for more data re. Sandforce drives really want to know if the sweet spot for their drives is more like 25% or higher, as it seems to be for drives in this article.
Personally I would love to see some data between 25% and 50% OP as the sweet spot for at least some drives may be 30% or 35% for example.
Given that 50% OP is a bit drastic for most consumers, it would be great to know that, for example, 33% OP can give you 99% of the performance of 50% OP, if that is the case. Any chance of numbers between 25% and 50% Anand? Reply
M477 - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkIs it the % OP or the actual size of the OP that matters?
i.e. would you get the same performance boost on a 512GB drive with 12.5% OP (64 GB) as on a 256 GB drive with 25% OP (64GB) ?
If not, can someone explain...? (i.e. why do you need more OP space as the drive size increases?) Reply
unityole - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkactually, sandforce do better when data present on drive but with partially broken Trim and slower incompressible write speed. Reply
kozietulski - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkfirst, please remember we are taking here about performance for long term heavy (qd32) random 4k write load. It is really not that common case on desktop drives :). Periods of even heavy random writes which are short enough to not exhaust pool of clean blocks do not qualify here. Of course size of clean blocks pool depends directly on the absolute size of free space/OP. So one can say that absolute size of free space defines what is really "short period" of heavy write load and were sustained workloads start :)
Now why for such sustained workload what matters for performace is percentage of free space? It is so because - at least for modern SSD - under such worst case workload (again more likely to be found in some enterprise environments then on the desktop) the factor limiting performance is Write Amplification and WA value depends on average number of free pages you (well actually firmware not you nor me :) can find in each and every block in relation to total number of pages per block. The less of free pages in average block the more unwanted baggage must be written back to nand array together with actual data hence the higher WA value is.
Now if we assume random distribution of free space pages amongst all nand blocks (which is pretty natural assumption for sustained random write load) then by definition percentage of free pages per block (and thus WA) is equal to total percentage of free space on the ssd drive.
Thus general conclusion that given ssd drive with two times more of free space - including implicit OP - should be about two times faster (comparing to the same ssd drive of course) under our worst case random workload. Obviousely conclusion has a chance to holds true only as long as WA is the performace bottleneck - sooner or later, depending on drive/firmware details other bottleneck will pop up breaking that nearly linear relation between WA (and effective free space) and performance. Reply
Tjalve - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkAs i said in an erlier poost. This scenario is VERY unlikley to happen in a client enviroment. Bithout doing synthertic benchmarks, like we do now, i would say that its impossible and will NEVER happen. This is only interersting if you plan to host your database server or similar, on client SSDs, Witch you shouldnt do in any case.
But regarding the data. I testetd between 0 and 16Gb as you said. But with the included OP of evrey drive its alot more then 12,5%.
Total NAND = 128GB or 137,4 GiB. That would mean somthing like 25GB och OP for that test, witch is 18% Reply
gamoniac - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkAnand,
This is what I call great journalism!
Would this be applicable to NAND storage on mobile devices that support TRIM either at the OS or controller level? It just seems to me my Android devices run quite a bit slower over time even though I have a lot of storage space left. I don't suppose Android or iOS support TRIM, do they? (And I assume WP8 does...) Reply
jwcalla - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkThere's no TRIM in mobile NAND flash memory as the command is part of the SATA interface. In these cases, wear leveling and garbage collection is likely the responsibility of the embedded flash controller. Reply
gamoniac - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkGood point. Thanks. Reply
skroh - Wednesday, December 05, 2012 - linkApropos of nothing, the last article (besides causing me to sit up at the Intel 330 results) also inspired me to pull up the Intel Toolbox and look up my usage statistics. I have an 80GB X25-M G2 that I bought in May of 2010. I play a lot of games on that system. In the last 2.5 years of usage, my replacement blocks remaining is at 99% and my write cycles remaining is at 98%. Unless there is some hidden drop-off in the curve waiting ahead for me, this drive may last longer than I do! Reply
Jerryrigged - Thursday, December 06, 2012 - linkIn the test utilizing default memory allocation, once saturated why not reduce the write workload and see how well each drives garbage collection restores performance? Reply
Jerryrigged - Thursday, December 06, 2012 - linkI did not get to complete that email.
During the reduced write workload, schedule reading. Some drives are impacted here, such as the Neutron. Do they recover? Reply
Impulses - Thursday, December 06, 2012 - linkAny thoughts on how RAID 0 would impact any of this? (on motherboards that support TRIM over RAID) Same principle (leave 25% free or partition it off) or would RAID change things in any way? Reply
AbRASiON - Thursday, December 06, 2012 - link:/ very very interesting data - it's appreciated. Reply
chrone - Friday, December 07, 2012 - linkGreat article as always, Anand!
Quick question, will eMMC on smartphone or any flash drive chipset outhere benefit from this? Reply
jameskatt - Sunday, December 09, 2012 - linkThe biggest problem I have with SSDs is that if you keep it nearly full, it wears out FASTER, the FAILS.
SSDs have a limited lifespan. Each storage cell on an SSD can only be written to a few thousand times.
The problem is that if the SSD is nearly full, then the cells in the space left has a higher likelihood of reaching their write limit. When this happens, the entire SSD fails!
Thus, to keep the SSD from wearing out, it is best to keep 25% of it empty.
I backup to a regular hard drive on the same computer, ready to go, in case the SSD fails.
When SSDs fail, it s catastrophically sudden. Reply
Impulses - Sunday, December 09, 2012 - linkNone of that is in any way accurate... Like at all. First off, all SSD employ wear leveling, so even if you constantly keep it 80% or 90% full the write operations are still distributed across all cells and stuff is regularly moved around the drive to account for this.
You seem to be vastly overstating how much of a limited lifespan SSD have... Feel free to reef Anand's previous articles on the matter.
SSD don't generally fail suddenly and in catastrophic fashion when you're talking about cell decay either... They have SMART attributes you can monitor like on any hard drive, and even once the write limit for a cell has been reached you should still be able to read from it. Reply
skroh - Tuesday, December 11, 2012 - linkRead my post on the previous page of this thread. I have an SSD that I've been running as my main system volume for more than 2 years. According to the provided tools, I have used about 2% of its predicted life for read/write cycles. According to Anand, when these counters reach zero, they have a built-in safety margin of about 10% beyond that. Unless you are writing gigabytes per day, every day, to your drive, it will likely last longer than the motherboard you have it plugged into or the traditional hard drive you are backing it up to.
As for the drive dying much faster if you keep it full, Google "spare area." The drive manufacturers already reserve space on the drive to reduce the dreaded write amplification. Keeping a little extra room out of the space visible to you as a user is just common sense for several reasons, including performance, but thanks to the hidden spare area it doesn't have to be anywhere near 25%. In any case, under normal non-server workloads, both wear and performance problems are much smaller than you imagine. Reply
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scottkarch - Tuesday, December 11, 2012 - linkNone of the RAID controllers on our servers support TRIM. Since the OS can't talk to each drive individually, I was wondering if you either know or could give me an educated guess about the following two scenarios.
1) Make a logical RAID volume but when partitioning in the OS, set aside 25% of space as unpartitioned
2) I vaguely recall seeing the option when making the RAID set, to use a % of the available space... This was in the raid controller, prior to OS intstall/config.
I've already done #1 on a test Citrix server with SSDs. I will have to see if #2 is an option on any rebuilds we do.
I'm wondering if this can be made to work with SSDs behind an older RAID controller... Thanks. Great article Reply
scottkarch - Tuesday, December 18, 2012 - linkSorry to bump. I'll try to ask a different way.
If putting SSDs behind a raid controller, does just making it part of a raid set somehow use all the available storage? Or, if you THEN only make a partition with 70% of the available space, would that unused 30% get treated as free by the disk and give the free blocks needed for garbage collection?
2 x 512GB SSDs in a RAID1 but only make a partition of 385GB
6 x 512GB SSDs in a RAID5 = 2.56TB logical volume, and make a single 1.7TB partition.
Would this accomplish the same thing as free space on bare drives? Reply
jonjonjonj - Saturday, December 15, 2012 - linki would have loved to see sandforce and marvell controllers included. id be willing to bet more people have a sandoforce or marvell drive then the 4 above combined. either way its an interesting article. Reply
ssd_distri - Sunday, December 16, 2012 - linkYou put the spotlight on intersting subject, but used a scenario that is pretty useless for 99,99% readers - the scenario is totally crazy from desktop user`s view standpoint.
How about:
- disclose the GB of data that the SSD is filled with for the Heavy and Light Anand SSD benches
- rerun the benches for each SSD with additional data loaded onto the SSD, so it is filled with default load / 50% / 70% / 80% / 90% (100% is pretty uninteresting imo)
- plot a chart for the benches like always, only make it bigger and on each result bar mark respective performance losses at higher SSD capacity usage.
- That way we can see how different SSD controllers manage workload vs increased capacity used in realistic user workloads.... ?
And should include SF2x and V4 for reference and maybe the TLC 840 Reply
olee22 - Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - linkI have this drive as system-boot drive for Windows 7.
Kingston SSDNow V Series SNV125-S2-64GB
What is the good way to set it up regarding free space?
1. Format full free space, leave 20% empty all the time.
2. Partition into two areas (80% = 52GB, 20%=13GB), and only format the bigger space, and fill it as much as wanted, and leave the smaller area unformatted.
This SSD has no native TRIM, I use Diskeeper to make a garbage collection about every week. Reply
olee22 - Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - linkI plan to upgrade to an Intel SSD 330 180GB, to be a system disk.
How shall I partition and format the SSD for optimal performance?
There's a lot written in the article and here on the forum, and I understand extra space is needed, but it's not clear how I should proceed with this drive. Thanks! Reply
MauiHawk - Sunday, January 06, 2013 - linkI recently bought a 64GB SSD to use as an SRT cache drive. Though I don't think in a cache drive scenario write amplification is as big of a deal since SRT enhanced mode doesn't really help write speeds in the first place, I have read in some circumstances SRT can actually lower write performance if the SSD writes are too slow. Therefore I would like to make sure some space is being kept free on the SSD to make sure this doesn't become an issue.
But I suspect the SRT algorithm may keep some free space available on its own, even if you allow it to use the whole drive. I don't want to limit SRT to only 80% of the drive if it's only going to use 80% of what I give it anyway. But I can't seem to find any info on whether SRT will maintain any free space on its own, and if so, how much.
Does anybody know? Reply


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Billabong shareholders have been left in no-mans land - devoid of information that would enable them to make a choice on whether to follow the market rumours that an offer of $1.10 for their stock is real or not.
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Oct. 4, 2004
'Splash' Lives Up To Name
ATHENS, Texas — When Cody Mullennix pulled the new world record blue catfish from Lake Texoma in January 2004, she threshed around in the water so much he dubbed her "Splash."
The 121.5-pound fish's name is doubly appropriate, for she has made a giant splash at her new home, the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center here.
Largely due to people coming to see Splash, attendance at TFFC during the year ended Aug. 31 was 73,447, the second highest since the facility opened in 1996. Revenue for the year did set a new record.
Perhaps dreaming of the day when they, too, might see their name in the record book, 38,460 visitors fished in TFFC's 1.5-acre casting pond, and 469 people caught their first fish ever. Visitors ranked fishing as the activity they enjoyed most while at the center. Watching Splash and other fish eat from a diver's hand during the daily dive show ran a close second.
Splash recently added a new item to her usual diet of frozen smelt. "Smelt are small for a fish her size, and they don't have a lot of smell or juice," said exhibits coordinator Wayne Heaton. "We put a big piece of the chicken we feed the alligators in a plastic bag, and when the diver opened it up in front of her and she smelled the juice, she took the chicken right out of the diver's hand. That was a really good sign."
Whether Splash thinks chicken tastes like fish, or vice versa, is not known.
The largest of the three Budweiser ShareLunkers in the dive tank also has a healthy appetite, said Heaton. "It probably weighs 16.5 or 17 pounds, and it eats seven or right koi every dive show." The big bass positions itself near the diver and stares at him until fed.
Other fish in the dive tank include a flathead or yellow catfish, spotted bass, black crappie, small-mouth buffalo, longnose and alligator gar, bowfin and hybrid striped bass. While the individuals of those species are permanent residents in the tank, the five or six kinds of sunfish are a constantly changing cast of characters. "They are there mainly to provide snacks for the bigger fish," Heaton explained. "The yellow catfish usually sleeps during the day, but it is the big feeder on sunfish when it comes out at night."
TFFC is at 5550 F.M. 2495, four miles east of Athens. Fish in the dive tank may be viewed any time the center is open. Hours are 9 a.m.-4p.m. from Tuesday through Saturday and 1-4 p.m. on Sundays. Dive shows are at 11 a.m. on weekdays, 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Saturdays, and 2 p.m. on Sundays. For more information, visit the Web (http://tpwd.texas.gov/fish/infish/hatchery/tffc/) or call (903) 676-2277.
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(5.4.16 i)


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Fairfax County Sells AAA-Rated Bonds
Fairfax County Office of Public
12000 Government Center Parkway, Suite 551
Fairfax, VA 22035-0065
Aug. 5, 2005
Fairfax County Sells AAA-Rated Bonds
On Wednesday, Aug. 3, Fairfax County sold $543.59 million in Aaa/AAA/AAA-rated tax-free general obligation and refunding 1-to-20-year bonds for public improvements at the fourth lowest interest rate achieved by the county in 30 years since the AAA rating was awarded. This was the largest bond sale ever conducted by the county as nearly all possible candidates were refunded.
The bonds were sold to Lehman Brothers at a true interest rate of 3.882 percent. The lowest rate the county has ever received for 20-year bonds was 3.54 percent in March 2004.
The county received six bids for the bonds with a high bid of 3.896 percent. The closeness of the bids is an indication of the highly competitive nature of the sale. The sale of new public improvement bonds will provide total proceeds of $199.45 million for projects at schools ($109.69 million); parks and park facilities ($20 million); public library facilities ($10.6 million); transportation improvements and facilities ($48.72 million); human services facilities ($4.69 million) and adult detention facilities ($5.75 million). Voter authorization for the sale of these bonds was given by referenda in elections held from 1988 to 2004.
The refunding will result in savings of approximately $11.86 million net present value of the bonds refunded. The refunding bonds were sold to take advantage of current market conditions and low interest rates in order to refund outstanding bonds that have higher interest rates and are subject to redemption prior to their stated maturities. The refunding bonds will fund an escrow account and redeem the outstanding bond obligations at their earliest possible call dates. Future bond sales are not expected to be this large as the county has taken full advantage of low interest rates and has exhausted the possibilities for refunding over the next few years.
With this bond issue, Fairfax County maintains its status as a top rated issuer of tax-free securities from Moody's Investor Services, Standard and Poor's Corporation and Fitch Ratings. Fairfax County has the highest credit rating possible for a local government – Aaa from Moody's Investors Service Inc., AAA from Standard and Poor's Corporation and AAA from Fitch Ratings. As of Aug. 3, only six states, 22 counties and 20 cities have Triple-A ratings from all three investor services. The credit ratings enable Fairfax County to sell bonds at favorable interest rates compared to those of municipalities not so rated, resulting in substantial savings for county taxpayers over the life of the bonds.
Since 1978, including this sale, Fairfax County has saved more than $243.48 million in reduced interest costs as a result of the AAA rating when compared to the Bond Buyer index at the time of the sales. The county also has refunded approximately $1.9 billion of the outstanding general obligation debt since 1989 for cumulative net present value savings of approximately $100 million. All together, the county has saved more than $343.94 million through county bond and refunding sales as a result of the AAA rating.
In addition to the Aaa/AAA/AAA bonds sold, the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority sold parking revenue refunding bonds for the Vienna II Metrorail Station Project on Thursday, Aug. 4. The Aa2/AA/AA-rated bonds were sold to ABN AMRO Financial Services Inc. at an interest rate of 3.93 percent for $18.695 million. The sale resulted in a net present value savings of $1.2 million, or 6.95 percent of the refunded par amount. Average annual savings over the life of the bonds will be approximately $113,000. This refunding savings is available for future parking needs at Fairfax County Metrorail Stations.
The interest rate is a reflection of the strong
credit rating of the county, as well as the market conditions. The rate
obtained was approximately 12 basis points lower than what would be
normally anticipated for this type of bond issue with the Aa2/AA/AA
rating. According to Moody's, "The high grade rating is based on Fairfax
County's contractual obligation to ultimately pay debt service or
replenish any deficiency in the debt service reserve; the county's strong
fundamental credit characteristics (general obligation bond rating Aaa)
reflected in its sizeable, diverse economy; and history of favorable
operating performance by parking facilities."
For more information, contact Leonard Wales, county debt manager, at 703-324-4087, TTY 711.


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Hi guys. I have a heavy heart today.
I don't know if you heard about Bill Shannon, who was a highly-respected baseball official scorer in New York, an author, and a reporter. He died in a house fire yesterday at age 69. This is a man who, in the 34 years I've been in the business, has been at every single home baseball team I've attended, Yankees or Mets.
Just a nice, nice man, an unbelievable scorer — knew the rules better than any manager or player — and somebody who will be terribly missed in pressboxes in New York.
OK, back to hockey. The Thrashers are in town tonight. The great news out of Atlanta is that goalie Ondrej Pavelec, who collapsed mysteriously during a game three weeks ago, was activated from IR on Monday. And I get to see one of this blog's faves, Dustin Byfuglien.
Here are tonight's pregame notes. To read more, click "more."
NEW YORK RANGERS vs. ATLANTA THRASHERS
Wednesday, Oct. 27, 7:00 p.m.
Madison Square Garden • New York, NY
Rangers: 4-2-1 (9 pts)
Thrashers: 3-4-1 (7 pts)
* All information through NHL games on Oct. 25
The Rangers continue their three-game homestand when they will face-off against the Atlanta Thrashers at Madison Square Garden (7:00 p.m.). The Rangers enter tomorrow's contest having defeated the New Jersey Devils, 3-1, on Sunday at MSG to extend their winning streak to three games and improve to 4-2-1 (9 pts) on the season. The Thrashers enter the contest with a 3-4-1 (7 pts) record, having lost each of their last three games. Tomorrow's contest will begin a stretch of four games in six nights for the Blueshirts, who will return to action on Friday, Oct. 29, when they face-off against the Carolina Hurricanes at Madison Square Garden (7:00 p.m.), to close out their three-game homestand.
- TV: MSG Plus
6:30 p.m. – Rangers Pre-Game Show with Al Trautwig
7:00 p.m. – Rangers vs. Thrashers
Broadcasters: Sam Rosen (Play-By-Play), Joe Micheletti (Analyst), John Giannone (In-Game Reporter)
- Radio: Bloomberg Radio
6:30 p.m. – Rangers Pre-Game with Don LaGreca
7:00 p.m. – Rangers vs. Thrashers
Broadcasters: Don LaGreca (Play-By-Play), Dave Maloney (Analyst)
RANGERS vs. THRASHERS:
- All-Time: The Rangers are 18-12-1-9 all-time against the Thrashers: 7-7-1-5 at home and 11-5-0-4 on the road.
- 2010-11: Tonight's contest marks the first of four meetings between the Rangers and Thrashers this season, and the first of two meetings at Madison Square Garden.
- Last Season: New York was 1-1-2 against Atlanta in 2009-10, including a 0-1-1 mark at Madison Square Garden. Two of their four meetings were decided in the shootout.
- Henrik Lundqvist posted a record of 1-1-1 with a 2.61 goals against average in three contests vs. Atlanta last season, and is now 6-3-0-6 with a 2.17 goals against average and one shutout in 16 career games against the Thrashers
- Michael Del Zotto led the Rangers with four assists and five points in four games vs. Atlanta last season
- Ruslan Fedotenko has registered 10 goals and 14 assists for 24 points in 46 career regular season contests vs. Atlanta; Todd White has recorded six goals and 10 assists for 16 points in 12 career games vs. the Thrashers
- NHL Debut: Artem Anisimov made his NHL debut vs. Atlanta on Feb. 3, 2009
- First Goal: Dan Girardi recorded his first NHL goal at Atlanta on Oct. 18, 2007 (Hedberg)
- First Shutout: Martin Biron posted his first NHL shutout with an 18-save performance at Atlanta on Nov. 19, 1999 (3-0)
- New York lists two former Thrashers on their roster: Erik Christensen (2007-08 – 2008-09); Todd White (2007-08 – 2009-10).
- Atlanta lists one former Ranger on their roster: Nik Antropov (2008-09).
- Power Play: The Rangers tallied one goal in seven power play opportunities (13:02) on Sunday vs. New Jersey, and have now notched a power play goal in each of their last two games. New York is tied for 19th in the NHL with a 12.5% (4-32) success rate. The Rangers did not convert on one five-on-three chance (0:30) on Oct. 9 at HSBC Arena, and are now 0-1 on five-on-three attempts (0:30). New York is 0-1 (1:05) with a four-on-three advantage this season. Shorthanded goals allowed (0).
- Penalty Killing: The Blueshirts held the Devils scoreless in four shorthanded situations (7:51) on Sunday at MSG, and now rank 25th in the NHL with a 79.4% (27-34) success rate. The Rangers yielded one goal to Boston in two three-on-five situations (2:02) on Saturday at TD Garden, and are 2-4 on three-on-fives (3:47) this season. The Blueshirts yielded one goal in three, three-on-four situations on Oct. 15, and are now 2-3 (1:10) in those situations this season. Shorthanded goals for (1): 10/9 at BUF (Dubinsky).
- Four-on-Four: New York skated in one, four-on-four situation (0:09) on Sunday vs. New Jersey, and are now even in eight, four-on-four situations (11:28) this season. Four-on-four goals for (1): 10/18 vs. COL (Frolov). Four-on-four goals allowed (1): 10/15 vs. TOR (Kessel).
The Blueshirts currenlty lead the NHL in blocked shots per game, averaging 17.0 blocked shots per contest. Dan Girardi leads the team and is tied for third in the league with 24 blocked shots on the season. The Atlanta Thrashers enter tonight's contest ranked second in the NHL, averaging 16.9 blocked shots per game.
- The Rangers enter tonight's contest riding a three-game winning streak, and have tallied a power play goal in each of the last two contests
- The Blueshirts' penalty kill has allowed just one goal in 15 shorthanded situations over the last three games for a 93.3% (14-15) success rate
- Henrik Lundqvist has won each of his last two games, registering a 1.50 goals against average and .954 save percentage over the span
- Ryan Callahan enters tonight's contest riding a three-game scoring streak, recording four points (one goal and three assists) during the stretch including one assist in each of the three games
- Michal Rozsival has tallied an assist in each of the last three games, and has registered four points (one goal and three assists) during his three-game scoring streak
- Brandon Dubinsky has notched three points (one goal and two assists) in the last two games
- Dan Girardi has registered 12 blocked shots in the last three games and Callahan has tallied 15 hits in the last three contests
Rookie Derek Stepan (three goals) and Alex Frolov (one assist) both registered their first point as a Ranger in the 6-3 season-opening win on Oct. 9 at Buffalo. Three new Blueshirts tallied their first point as a Ranger in home opener on Oct. 15 vs. Toronto, with Ruslan Fedotenko, Derek Boogaard and Steve Eminger each recording one assist in the contest. In addition, Sean Avery registered two assists in the game to record his 100th point as a Ranger. On Oct. 18 vs. Colorado, Frolov notched his first goal as a Ranger with a four-on-four tally assisted by Stepan, who picked up his first career assist on the play. Fedotenko tallied his first goal as a Ranger to open the game's scoring on Thursday at Toronto, and Martin Biron backstopped the Blueshirts to a 2-1 win in the contest with a 24-save performance to record his first win as a Ranger in his first appearance with the team.
Based on opening day rosters, the Rangers have the ninth youngest team in the NHL with an average age of 27 years and 44 days, and the second youngest defensive corp in the league, trailing only Los Angeles with an average age of 25 years and 51 days.
The Rangers have had eight new players dress so far this season: Martin Biron, Derek Boogaard, Steve Eminger, Ruslan Fedotenko, Alex Frolov, and Derek Stepan each skated in the season opener on Oct. 9 at Buffalo. Todd White made his Rangers debut on Oct. 18 vs. Colorado at Madison Square Garden, and Biron saw his first game action with a 24-save effort in a 2-1 win on Thursday at Toronto. Most recently, Jeremy Williams made his Rangers debut in Sunday's 3-1 win vs. New Jersey after being recalled from Hartford earlier in the day.
- Entering the season, the Rangers have posted a record of 276-266-90 all-time in the month of October, including a 175-114-47 mark at home and a 101-152-43 record on the road. New York is scheduled to play 10 games during the season's opening month in 2010-11, with five games being contested at MSG and five scheduled on the road.
- Legendary Rangers' defenseman Brian Leetch holds the franchise record for most points in the month of October, having registered 43 goals and 130 assists for 173 career points in the season's opening month.
- The Blueshirts' all-time leader for most career wins in the month of October is Mike Richter, who registered 40 career wins during the season's opening month.
- Last season, New York tied the franchise record for longest winning streak in the month of October, winning seven consecutive games from Oct. 3, 2009 vs. Ottawa to Oct. 17, 2009 at Toronto. The Rangers also won seven straight October games in 1988-89, beginning on Oct. 16 vs. Vancouver and ending on Oct. 30 vs. Pittsburgh. Their seven-game winning streak last season was also the team's longest since they won seven straight from Feb. 1, 2006 vs. Pittsburgh to Mar. 2, 2006 at Philadelphia.
- Sean Avery: 4 games from 500 NHL career
- Derek Stepan: 1st career NHL game and 1st career NHL goal/point (10/9 at BUF)
- Derek Stepan: 1st career NHL assist (10/18 vs. COL)
- Michael Sauer: 1st career NHL assist/point (10/23 at BOS)
- Ryan Callahan: 100th career NHL point (10/23 at BOS)
- Vinny Prospal (IR on Sept. 24/knee surgery on Oct. 18, 6-8 weeks) – 7
- Marian Gaborik (IR – separated shoulder on Oct. 15, 2-4 weeks) – 4
- Chris Drury (IR – fractured finger on Oct. 15, 6 weeks) – 4
Total Man-Games Lost: 18
- Oct. 24: Recalled forward Jeremy Williams from Hartford
- Oct. 25: Assigned forward Jeremy Williams to Hartford


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I'm a python newbie, and I'm wondering if someone could explain what the operation :: in [1::2] is called and what it does? I understand this is operation on list and what the code does is it prints out the even number lines.
- Code: Select all
with open('file.txt','r') as f:
... print ''.join(f.readlines()[1::2])


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Who loves dramatic glamour? I do! I do! That's what Nicci Gilbert-Daniels gave us with her line…Curvato. As a member of the popular R&B group Brownstone, Nicci experienced low self-esteem "because of my size..Stylist often had to special order or custom make my clothing because buying fashionable clothing off the rack was not an option for me like it was for many of my peers." Who hasn't felt this or experienced this in some way?
According to Curvato's Facebook page…"Curvato is the result of many years of hits and misses in my quest to design clothing that would compliment not cover. My goal is to appeal to women who have discovered that being beautiful, sexy and empowered is only enhanced by clothing and style not created by it."
I love the flow and draping of her designs. They hit at all the right areas. It's apparent she understands a woman's curves. I mean…just take a look at the collection below and let me know what you think!
*All photos were taken by me and are my personal property. No use of these images without my written consent.
Disclosure: I was an official member of the 2012 Full Figured Fashion Week's Fashion Front. I received a gift bag and complimentary access in to all events.


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On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon. Before his momentous first steps, Armstrong served as a naval aviator in the Korean War and flew in the Gemini 8 mission. After he took that "one small step," Armstrong continued to work at NASA, taught as a professor at the University of Cincinnati, and was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. He continues to live a private life and avoids media attention. Armstrong remains one of the most famous astronauts in world history, but he does not wish to capitalize on his fame, and instead lets the legacy of the moon landing speak for itself.
Search through millions of records to find out more.
Anyone can contribute to this page. Please sign in or sign up—it's free.


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Tony Pulis goes into this weekend's clash with Southampton knowing a defeat could see Crystal Palace slip into the bottom three of the Premier League.
Both Palace and the Saints have won three league games since the new year, but Palace's one win in the last four has seen them drop to within three points of the drop zone.
Southampton, meanwhile, rest in ninth safe in the knowledge it would take a disaster for them to be drawn into the mire of a relegation fight.
However, the Saints are on a high after Luke Shaw made his England debut in the 1-1 draw with Denmark on Wednesday, while Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert and Jay Rodriguez continue to push for a place on the plane to Brazil for the World Cup.
Boss Mauricio Pochettino took over the reins at St Mary's in January last year and last weekend's 3-0 defeat at home to Liverpool marked his 50th game in charge, with a win ratio of 36 per cent.
Pulis said: "I have watched them quite a few times and I think the manager has done a fantastic job there.
"They play a certain way, which is a little bit different to most teams - their rotation with the front three and the way they use their full backs is excellent.
"But we are at our place and we want to be positive – we will do what we know we are good at and hopefully that will be enough to give Southampton a good game."
Pulis's only concerns surround Marouane Chamakh, Joe Ledley and Damien Delaney who face late fitness tests.


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Handmade Steel Inspiration Menorah by Ivan McLean
Celebrate Hanukkah with this steel Inspiration Menorah with glass base handcrafted by artist Kendall LeCompte. Hand made from steel with a glass base. Lovely. This steel and glass menorah is hand made to order and ships in 2 to 3 weeks from Portland, OR. 17"L x 15"H. Shipping weight 10 lbs. Free shipping in Continental US! $200.00 On sale now! $170.00


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I opened my freezer a few weeks ago and started listed out what pastry "leftovers" I have in there. You can bet that I have different flavors of joconde, baked cheesecake, mousses, some sponge cake layers among other common things such as frozen berries that I froze last year (red and yellow raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries), as well as frozen purees (passion fruit, guava, apricot, cassis, mango, etc), cherries. That's a whole lot of stuff! I can make half a year worth of desserts without having to buy most of the ingredients. And now that Summer is here, I have to start "cleaning" them up so that I would have space for a new stash of every fruit I can find in farmers' market.
If you follow this blog, you might know that I hate wasting stuff away. I am a firm believer that you can make something completely extraordinary with leftovers and maybe with a bit of extra work. So the spreadsheet planning began. So many things I could make with them that I am almost overwhelmed with excitement, can't decide which one to make first and when I will actually have time to do them.
this cake. I had some leftovers for most of the layers from previous cake, so I partly assembled them and put them in the freezer until I can figure out what I can make with them. So here are the dissected components for this cake:
- chocolate joconde
- raspberry soaking syrup (to moisten the joconde)
- dark chocolate mousse
- chocolate joconde that has been moistened with raspberry syrup
- thin layer of raspberry garniture
- cassis mousse
- decoration: mini chocolate macarons, blueberries, and chocolate decoration
This is just an idea of how you can transform leftovers to something completely different, tasted great and a lot quicker too! I have been feeding this cake to my nephews and niece every night and they always asks for more, a good sign! Although I think they are a bit spoiled with non-kid desserts they have been getting these past few years :). So please don't throw anything away as you'd never know what you can turn it into someday :).


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January 11, 2012 – Gardens by the Bay & HortPark, Singapore
(written by Quill Teal-Sullivan, photographs by Wonsoon Park and Sara Levin)
The past two days have been full to the brim with visits to many of Singapore's beautiful parks and urban green spaces. Tuesday morning started at Gardens by the Bay, Singapore's newest and largest garden project sitting on one-hundred and one hectares encircling Marina Bay. We were greeted by Chris Dalzell, a former Longwood international intern who recently moved from South Africa to act as the garden's Assistant Director of Garden Operations. Chris and his colleagues toured us around the site, which will be completed for an official public opening in June of this year. Gardens by the Bay features two large conservatories – one that will create a cool-dry Mediterranean climate, and the other a cool-moist mountain climate.
We were able to tour the Flower Dome, freshly planted with remarkable specimens imported from around the world. Most notable were the enormous baobabs planted on a cantilevered overlook, and the gnarled one-thousand-year old olive trees just in from southern Spain. Another highlight of the gardens were the eighteen "super trees" gracefully arching overhead, clad with epiphytes and climbers. The "super trees" are one of the spectacularly clever aspects of the garden design, acting as a venting system for the glasshouses, water catchment mechanism, solar energy receptor, as well as an aesthetic wonder.
After a lunch of various local delights, we met with Dan Burcham (our host with the most and LGP alumn), and his colleagues at the National Parks Board (NParks) to tour four exceptional urban greening sites. As part of Singapore's vision of "the city in a garden", NParks offers financial assistance to green the exterior of existing buildings. Three of the sites we visited were vertical green walls each designed by a different firm with a unique system and design philosophy. The end of a long and most stimulating day of garden touring culminated in a trip to the top of Marina Bay Sands Sky Park to decompress and admire the city from above.
On Wednesday we traveled to HortPark, a display garden within the NParks system that features small-scale garden exhibits aimed to inspire Singaporean residents to include gardens and horticulture in their home life. HortPark partners with local landscape companies that rent small plots to display their design, acting as publicity for the company and inspiration for the visitors. As Abby says, "it is the perfect collaboration between government, industry, and community".
HortPark sits within the Southern Ridges region, a chain of parks, gardens and natural areas linked with 'park connectors'. Two knowledgeable NParks staff, Wilson and Eric, led us on an excursion through a few of the natural areas. This included a jungle accessed by a 9 km canopy bridge, home to a delinquent gang of macaque monkeys, as well as a most beautiful wooden bridge with views to the sea and the city.
The evening was capped with a barbeque accompanied by the senior staff of NParks at the Outwardbound Singapore headquarters. We ate satay and fresh fruit in the evening heat, feeling so grateful for the generosity of our Singaporean hosts and, the incredible opportunity we have as Longwood students to experience the 'city in a garden'.


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Indiana Tax Court
115 W. Washington Street
Suite 960S
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Court Administrator
Karyn Graves
Pho: 317.232.4694
As of July 1, 2016, attorneys are required to e-file in any existing appellate case.
An original tax appeal is commenced by filing a petition to set aside the final determination of the Indiana Department of State Revenue or the Department of Local Government Finance. A petition may only be filed with the Tax Court for a direct appeal from a final determination of the Department of Local Government Finance when that final determination is not subject to appeal to the Indiana Board of Tax Review. For appeals from final determinations of the Indiana Board of Tax Review, a verified petition must be filed with the Tax Court. The petitions are filed in the office of the Clerk of the Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, and Tax Court, Room 216, State House, Indianapolis, Indiana, 46204.
The Tax Court hears cases in Allen, St. Joseph, Lake, Vigo, Vanderburgh, and Jefferson counties as well as in Marion County, as elected by the taxpayer. All trials are without a jury.
The taxpayer must comply with all statutory requirements for the initiation of an original tax appeal in order for the Tax Court to obtain jurisdiction. In an appeal from the Department of State Revenue, the taxpayer may either appeal a decision in a letter of findings or pay the tax, file a claim for a refund, and appeal the denial of the claim for refund. If a refund claim is filed and the Department of State Revenue does not act within 180 days, the claim is deemed denied. Appeals from the Department of State Revenue must be filed within 180 days of the letter of findings or within 90 days of the denial of the refund except for certain fuel related taxes which have different deadlines.
With respect to the original tax appeals from final determinations of the Indiana Board of Tax Review, it is necessary to serve copies of the verified petition on the following: the chairperson of the Indiana Board of Tax Review; the Attorney General; each party to the administrative proceedings before the Indiana Board of Tax Review that led to the final determination under review; and if the administrative proceeding before the Indiana Board of Tax Review involved an appeal from a final determination of a county property tax assessment board of appeals, the secretary of such county property tax board of appeals. Copies of the verified petitions shall only be served upon public officials in their official capacity. Appeals from the Indiana Board of Tax Review must be filed within 45 days from the final determination. In addition, a request must be filed with the Indiana Board of Tax Review to prepare a certified copy of the agency record within 30 days after filing the petition.
An appeal from an inheritance tax determination made by a court of probate jurisdiction is commenced pursuant to the Indiana Rules of Appellate Procedure.