text:
While the precipitous decline of the stock market may have you feeling blue, planner John Henry McDonald is singing the blues. Literally. Tune in on a Wednesday night to the University of Texas at Austin affiliate of National Public Radio (KUT-FM) and you just might hear him strumming his guitar, wailing away on his harmonica, and crooning a few tunes. Oh, and talking about personal finance, too.
Harmonicas and hedge funds? Guitars and gift tax? Welcome to "Taking Stock," a financial call-in show McDonald initially set up when he was president of his local ICFP chapter to give chapter members an opportunity for media exposure. Although his presidential status and the ICFP are history, he "just keeps on showing up," he laughs, and keeps dragging other planners along. "The first time we did this show, the station had a record number of callers in the first hour," he says. "It was so cool. People are hungry for this kind of information." For McDonald, 52, the show is an excellent forum for public education, an inexpensive method to establish name recognition, and an easy way to build awareness about the planning profession. Not to mention the fact that he's having a ball.
On the air, the rules are basically the same as those back at Austin Asset Management, the fee-only practice that he founded 14 years ago in Austin, Texas: (1) Tell the truth; (2) Don't take yourself too seriously; and (3) Feel free to yell at the on-air guests. Several months ago, a show was sailing merrily along until the visiting planner made a statement about retirement plans that McDonald disagreed with. He could have let it go. He didn't (see Rules 1, 2, and 3). "That's not the way it works!" he burst out. The other planner blinked: "What? Yes, it is!" "No, it's not! You can't do that!" "Yeah, you can!" By the end of the dispute, both planners were shouting and pounding the table. McDonald: "Aww, man, you don't know what the hell you're talking about!" "Yes, I do--I'm a CFP!" McDonald: "What, you think I'm impressed?"
"We were on the air the whole time," McDonald recalls, laughing gleefully. (He's a CFP, too, by the way.) And rather than getting flustered, he found a way to use the argument to make a point with the audience. "I said, 'Whoa! Listeners, this is exactly what happens behind the scenes all the time. You think the experts you hear are all geniuses? They're not geniuses. The reason you are confused is because this is confusing.'" He pauses, still chuckling. "I love radio. It's a gas. You never know what's going to happen."
|Austin Asset Management
John Henry McDonald, CFP
Austin Asset Management Company
5511 Parkcrest Dr., Suite 210
Austin, Texas 78731
Year practice began: 1986
Number of planners in office: 4
Number of clients: 180 financial planning and asset management clients; 40 planning-only clients
Number of clients of his own: 30
Compensation method: Fee-only
Average fee for a comprehensive
financial plan: $4,000
Fee for managing assets: Sliding scale from 1% on first $250,000 to 0.1% of anything over $5 million.
Hourly rate: $200/hour, credited toward asset management fees
Client demographics: Couples and families in the Austin area
Education: Highline Junior College, English; West Washington State College, English
Previous incarnations: Professional musician
Professional designation: CFP
Outside interests: Playing blues guitar and harmonica
Quotable quote: "When I don't know an answer to a listener's question, I play harmonica. I'll say, 'I don't know; that's an excellent question. Hey, have you heard this one?'"
This little anecdote reveals two salient points about John Henry McDonald. First, he is a born showman; although he hasn't played blues guitar and harmonica professionally for 25 years, the performer in him is very much alive and kicking. McDonald seems to thrive on it all--finding pithy ways to explain complicated subjects, bantering with the callers, scrambling to keep the phone calls flowing smoothly, working in his musical riffs, and snickering as he deflects particularly hard questions to the on-air guests.
The second thing this little yelling match reveals is that McDonald is not afraid to tell you, bluntly, what he thinks. While he jokes that the radio show is just a cover for the folk revival he wants to launch ("This is all a thin ruse, this financial planning stuff. Eventually it will just be filler around the music!"), he welcomes the opportunity to set callers and clients straight about financial planning matters. The slogan printed on his brochures and Web site is "When Only the Truth Will Do," and his version of truth is decidedly the unvarnished variety.
"There are three things we can know about money, and only three," he told listeners recently. "Some asset classes do better than others over a given period of time, diversification spreads risk, and profits are made by buying low and selling high. Everything else you hear is malarkey." When a young caller asked how much she'd have after 10 years of investing in a particular mutual fund, McDonald made his point with similar bluntness: "Well, you'll either have more, or you'll have less."
And he doesn't tiptoe around his financial planning clients, either. "I'll tell a client, 'The probability of you achieving anything greater than 10% over 10 years is not great; therefore, I will not allow you to tell me you want more than 10%,'" he says. "'If you want more than 10%, I don't need to change your portfolio; you need to change your mind. You need to spend less money. Or work longer. Or start smoking and die sooner.'" He snickers. "That would work, too, wouldn't it?" Then seriously: "'But if you think I'm going to let you try to double your money in five years, you're out of your mind! I'm not going to let you take that kind of risk.'
"And if they say they think they can do better elsewhere, I tell them, 'Well, hell, then you need to go elsewhere.'"
Wednesday Night Live
So how does a harmonica-playing planner get himself a radio show? McDonald simply asked for one. The NPR affiliate at the University of Texas at Austin already had a regular call-in program with a changing roster of hosts and discussion topics. McDonald showed up at the station and asked the producers if he and another planner could host for an evening. The producers said yes, and in 1993, "Taking Stock" was born.
Since it is public radio, McDonald can't tout his own firm or those of his guests; he can merely mention the firms when identifying himself and the other planners at the beginning of the program. He can't link his firm's Web site to the KUT site; to receive questions from listeners by e-mail, he's going to have to build a separate companion site dedicated solely to the show. Still, these limitations seem minor when you consider the price: free. And besides, pretty soon they're going to pay him. "When the show goes to a weekly schedule, they have to pay me," says McDonald cheerfully. "I'll be making $150 a show."
|Asking for Trouble
John Henry McDonald doesn't mind a good rant now and then, just for exercise, and one topic sure to get him riled up is the question of client questionnaires.
"I've seen what some financial planners use. It ought to be against the law!" he cries. "They send a thing to the client that says, 'Give us your net worth,' and the client thinks it has something to do with fishing rights! 'Give me a list of your tax preference items.' What?! I am assuming the client knows what an alternative minimum tax is?
"Or, 'Here, on a scale of one to 10--one indicating no risk, 10 indicating lots of risk--tell me where on this line you lie.' What does that mean? Clients have no idea! So the client puts a little dot right in the middle, and they say they're right in the middle, and you put together a portfolio that represents right in the middle. And then you lose money, and the clients say, 'I didn't mean 'Lose money,' I meant, 'Take no risk.'
"We don't have clients fill out anything, ever. We take them through the financial plan. I ask the questions, looking for answers in a certain way. 'How's your children? Do you love them equally? Is your mom alive? Is your dad alive? How long have you been married? Is this your first marriage? Second marriage? Third marriage? Last marriage? What are you doing here? What state did you come from? Was it a community property state? Was it a separate property state?'
"We believe the planner should take control of the situation. Why would they come to us if they knew how to do all this stuff?
"Don't get me going on this," he says. "It makes me nuts."
What makes the program work is McDonald's breezy style and his willingness to cut to the chase. Listeners generally have specific questions--Am I doing this right? What does this term mean? Is my brother-in-law's tax shelter scheme legal?--and you can hear in their voices the relief that they've found someone who will give them an answer in four sentences or less and entirely in plain English.
Yet the breeziness is also the program's greatest risk. Comprehensive financial planning, by definition, demands comprehensive information, and it's impossible to collect much more than a name, age, and marital status on a radio show. What to do? McDonald and his guests try to meet the challenge by reminding callers that their answers would differ depending on a variety of factors, and by encouraging callers with particularly complex tax or legal situations to see an accountant or attorney. These aren't perfect solutions, but then again, a little bit of solid information is better than none at all. And McDonald always wraps up the program with a caveat. "At the end of the show, I always say, 'And for God's sakes, don't do what we've said to do,'" he says wryly. "'Don't make life-changing decisions based on a one-minute chat with a radio host. This is only radio.'"
(You can listen to his show on the Internet at www.kut.org on the last Wednesday of every month at 7:00 p.m. CST.)
And Back at the Firm . . .
In addition to KUT-FM, McDonald also makes himself known in the local newspaper, the Austin American Statesman. Clients who are unable to afford Austin Asset Management's fees have the option to receive a comprehensive financial plan in exchange for having their financial makeover printed in the newspaper as a case study. There are more takers than you'd think. "Every time the column appears," McDonald says, "I get three, four, five, six requests from people who are in trouble and want to be in the paper."
McDonald's nine-member firm offers a number of services, some traditional, some unique. Clients receive quarterly reviews and consolidated reports, plus eight additional communications per year. Each communiqu? requests an update to a section of the financial plan. "In January we send out a letter reviewing [clients'] goals; in February, we review their cash flow; April, their taxes; May, phone numbers and addresses," says McDonald. "We have a client services center, and that's all they do." The system helps the planners by keeping clients' plans up to date, and it also sets the tone for client relationships by ensuring that messages from the firm aren't overly focused on investment performance.
Client visits are relaxed and interactive. McDonald's clients plunk down in a big easy chair in his third-floor office, and a large, flat-screen monitor is placed in front of them. Seated at a computer that is hooked to the big screen, an intern arranges the client's data in various windows and punches in new simulations as McDonald requests them. McDonald focuses on the client and uses the screen as a visual aid.
A recurring item on the screen is a proprietary graph showing the client's current financial situation in relation to where he wants to end up. Rather than adjusting future expenses for inflation according to a standard percentage, McDonald uses what he calls a "Family Inflationary Factor." Every expenditure a new client makes, every check she writes, is tracked for six months. A year later, another snapshot of the budget is taken, though this time only for a month. The difference in monthly spending is the Family Inflationary Factor.
"We don't use 4% or 5% or whatever kind of malarkey other people use," says McDonald. "I don't care what the cost of gas is if you're riding a bicycle to work. I don't care what the cost of housing is if your house is paid for. I don't care what the price of meat is if you're a vegetarian. My little old ladies do not spend 4% more each year. They spend $1,800 a month forever. If I have an executive who is spending 8% more each year, that's an interesting number. But do I need to compute an inflationary factor of 2.84% or whatever CPI is? No! That has nothing to do with reality."
All in the Family
McDonald conducts every initial client interview, and then, depending on the clients' needs and personalities, he signs them on as his own client or passes them off to an associate. The firm has four planners, one full-time investment manager, a CFO, and three staff members who run the client services center and handle public relations.
In 1989, McDonald founded a consortium of financial planning, consulting, tax, and law firms to provide truly comprehensive services. Nice idea, but the administrative side was mind-bending. "The issue of the Chinese Wall, where CPAs can share fees with consultants but consultants can't share fees with attorneys who can't share fees with whoever . . . Finally, I just said, 'The hell with it: You guys leave, I'll stay.'" He laughs. "'I'll just hire 'em.'" Which he did. Among the four planners (all CFPs) at Austin Asset Management, one is a CPA, one has a law degree, one has a PhD in psychology, and one, McDonald, is studying for his CLU.
New planners are most likely to enter the fold through McDonald's internship program, which he jovially describes by saying, "There's no opportunity like this on earth!" And it does sound pretty good. The firm pays for the interns' CFP courses, and as their studies take them through each aspect of planning, McDonald makes sure they sit in on client meetings dealing with that subject.
The interns also have an opportunity to play many roles within the firm. "They go through every part of this firm--they work with the money manager, the client service center, they work with the receptionist, everything," he says. "Over those two and a half to three years--because it takes three years to get the CFP experiential requirement--we'll send you to school, we'll pay for your books. And at the end of three years, we'll start giving you clients, and you'll be in practice."
And besides, you might even get to be on the radio.


text:
The 17-year-old prom queen found shot dead in her bedroom a week before she was scheduled to graduate from a New Jersey high school was remembered as a vibrant, loving young woman at her funeral in a church near her hometown Wednesday.
Hundreds gathered a day earlier at Christian Pentecostal Church of Christ in Irvington for the wake of Aquilla Flood, whose body was found in her family's East Orange apartment a week ago. Her funeral was held at the same church, and hundreds of mourners again attended to say their goodbyes.
"It's sad, we're all in mourning, as you can see, all the people that are here, that love her," said Beth Robinson, one of Flood's teachers at Campus High School. "And we're just here to support her family and support her."
Flood, who was voted prom queen by her peers, was looking forward to graduating this weekend, family and friends said. She planned on going to college.
Her mother found her body.
One of Flood's friends said at her funeral that she was a precious angel who was respectful, lovable and helped anyone in need.
"She was a bright young lady; it's so sad that it had to come to this," the friend said.
Authorities said Monday they arrested Flood's ex-boyfriend, 18-year-old Al-Muqqadin Means, in connection with her death. He has been charged with murder and is due in court in Newark Thursday.
Information on an attorney for him wasn't immediately available.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Bio & Incident Details
Age: 38
Tour: 8 years
Badge # 12555
Cause: Struck by vehicle
Incident Date: 5/8/1997
· Leave a Reflection
· Add to My Heroes
· Update this memorial
Officer Martinez died after being unconscious since the early morning hours of May 8, 1997, after he was struck by a vehicle. Officer Martinez and his partner were walking back to their cruiser after stopping for a vehicle on the side of the road when a speeding car, which was driving on the shoulder, struck him. Just before it struck him he pushed his partner out of the way, saving his life. The misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter trial of the driver ended in a mistrial in 2000.
Officer Martinez had his organs donated for the benefit of others. He is survived by his wife and three children.


text:
Leading the Region in Healthcare!
Dedicated to serving the needs of Pratt, Kansas,
Pratt Regional Medical Center is a progressive
medical center serving south central Kansas and
the panhandle of Oklahoma.
Pratt Regional Medical Center
Corporate Information
In our continual pursuit to provide excellent and compassionate healthcare services, we feel it is important that you have access to PRMC's corporate policies, code of conduct and corporate compliance program. If you would like to review or receive any of the documents listed below, please contact PRMC by calling 620-450-1160; or email email@example.com or email@example.com.
Click here for the FY2015 financial statement audit report.
If you have any questions please contact Vince Wilczek at (620) 450-1436 or e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com.
About PRMC
Mission & Vision Statements
Philosophy & Core Value
PRMC Board of Directors &
Pratt County Hospital Board
Corporate Information
Departments & Services
Physician Recruitment
PRMC History
Community Service
Community Support
Our Employees
Simply the Best!
Employee Notice of
Privacy Practices
Scholarships Available
The Future
Pratt Health Foundation
Maps & Directions


text:
At Gemvara, we believe that the jewelry you wear should be as unique as you. Every beautiful Gemvara Yellow Gold Alexandrite Jewelry From $1,750 to $2,249 design will be made just for you. Gemvara uses only the highest quality materials to craft your Yellow Gold Alexandrite Jewelry From $1,750 to $2,249 with meticulous attention to detail. Our precious metals are recycled or responsibly mined. When lit by candles, lamps, and other incandescent lights, alexandrite takes on a vivid red, violet, or purple hue.Yellow gold glows with a rich buttery golden color. Gemvara offers a choice of 14k yellow gold, the most popular gold alloy, or 18k yellow gold, a premium gold with a deeper color and higher gold content.Our wide selection of Yellow Gold Alexandrite Jewelry From $1,750 to $2,249 by talented designers means you can find rings, earrings, and necklaces that are exactly your style. You can also shop by style, choosing our Celtic, Art Deco, or Cross Collections. When our work is done and you open that box, you'll see your design is even more beautiful when brought to life in the finest precious materials.
We can help right away. Chat with a jewelry expert now!


text:
|28 Apr 2013
@ tedcredted...
The following link should 'satisfy' your curiosity....
Windows XP System Restore
From the looks of things, you may be able to copy the restore point to a temp directory and then burn to disk, but you may have to copy the restore point back to that same location to have the system register it.
I guess it's trial and error from here on....
Hope this helps...
I really did this and worked for me, but I am sking myselfy, if there are more than a restore piont, do all they show after burning them in a CD/DVD?
Should I copy all files and folders shown this screenshot to a temp directory and then burn to disk?
Also, Is the DVD/CD will be bootable atutomatically?
|My System Specs
|28 Apr 2013
System Restore works best when used as soon as possible after a problem develops. The few times I have used System Restore it was always the most recent restore point. The further back you go the more likely that the restore will fail or cause more problems than it solves. I would consider using a restore point such as you are proposing to be very high risk, if you can get it to work at all.
Making an image of the drive is a much more reliable way of restoring to a properly working OS.
|My System Specs
|29 Sep 2013
Windows 7 Professional x64
Hey. sry for popping up an old thread, but I have a question:
Can one change the location where System Restore saves restore points? Let's say that I would want to save sys res points of drive C: to drive F:? Is this possible?
|My System Specs
|29 Sep 2013
Can one change the location where System Restore saves restore points? Let's say that I would want to save sys res points of drive C: to drive F:? Is this possible?
|My System Specs
|29 Sep 2013
Vista, Windows7, Mint Mate, Zorin, Windows 8
I would not muck around with the system restore points. In Vista and Windows 7 they will only function from the shadowstorage which has to be on the C: partition.
If you want to store recovery points on another partition or different media, I suggest you make images. Images you can store on any partition (but not C) any internal or external disk, on DVDs and on USB sticks. The best imaging program to use is free Macrium.
Imaging with free Macrium
|My System Specs
|05 Dec 2013
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
Taking Ownership manually is tiresome.
Google for the batch file "Take Ownership", I've used it for nearly 2 years and it saves a lot of time and frustration.
(Or get it from http://www.howtogeek.com/downloads/TakeOwnership.zip like I did)
|My System Specs
|20 Oct 2015
windows 7pro 64bit
system images instead of favoured restore point
But just ask yourself are they worth it?
It is a lot (I mean A LOT) easier to just make system images with either Windows itself or with all those free Imagining programs.
Over the years struggling with annoying glitches wondering if this is virus or hardware issue trying to decode the event logs and finally giving up and reinstalling Windows (and these days you cant even do a repair, the back doesnt really back up just fills more space) you have to wonder again why cant windows add a field to the system restore point which says I really like this system restore point please dont over write it
|My System Specs
|20 Oct 2015
Welcome to the forum.
you have to wonder again why cant windows add a field to the system restore point which says I really like this system restore point please dont over write it
Design decisions were made for System Restore to keep restore points relatively small and these preclude it's use over the long term. It is designed for and is suitable only for resolving problems in the short term. The further back you go the more likely that the restore will fail or cause more problems than it solves. This is all well known to Microsoft so they did not provide an option that is likely to fail.
On the few occasions I have used System Restore it was always the most recent restore point. Do not ask something from System Restore it was never designed for. If you want to have the ability to restore to a point farther back you need to maintain images of the OS. Many members of this forum do this.
|My System Specs
|20 Oct 2015
Windows 7 Pro. 64/SP-1
Restore points were never designed to be Backups.
They do come in hand for me when I'm tinkering or doing things like Windows 7 Updates that go astray.
Restore points and backup used in the desired combination should take care of your needs.
When you do a backup you have drawn a time line.
What is on the backup is all you get nothing more. You can update your backups as often as you need.
Some do backups daily. Me I do them when I get in the mood.
Restore points and backup do not replace each other. I believe one should use both.
|My System Specs
|20 Oct 2015
Windows 7x64 Home Premium SP1
|My System Specs
|Thread Tools
|Similar help and support threads
System Restore isn't creating (or saving?) restore points properly
For some reason my System Restore function isn't automatically creating (or isn't showing) System Restore points as it should be doing for "major" system events (e.g., isn't automatically creating restore points before/after Windows Updates and software/driver updates). I'm not sure if it isn't...
|Backup and Restore
Allocated System Restore space holds far fewer restore points now
I have 8gb of space allocated to System Restore, all monitoring my C partition only. This space is always at least 85-90% used according to the System Protection screen. In the past I have had at least 15 restore points to choose from after ticking "show more restore points." But today I went to...
|Backup and Restore
System restore points saved to recovery partition, possible damage?
Hello, I have done a good bit of searching around the internet about system protection monitoring on recovery partitions. It seems that by default system protection was turned on for the recovery partition of my laptop and many restore points have been saved to the recovery partition. I only...
|Backup and Restore
System Restore Points Saved for Only One Month?
hi all, months and months ago i had to do a system restore and found that there was only one restore point - the original date i got it (even though i had my computer for a while before that). not sure if i noticed the 'show more restore points' check box. i recently decided to look into...
|Backup and Restore
How do I change which partition restore points+page file are saved to?
Hi there I am wondering if it is possible for me to change which partition my system restore points AND my page file are saved to. I am sick and tired of space constantly changing on my C: Drive and would rather the page file and the restore points be saved to a separate hidden partition so this...
|Backup and Restore
Can I Pause/Turn off System Restore WITHOUT losing restore points?
I work with a large software suite. The installer for this suite is really just a collection of many stand-alone installers. If SR is on when I run the installation, it takes a very long time. Additionally, since this is a collection of other installers, SR is somewhat useless to use as a...
|Backup and Restore
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text:
I have been able to change all my 630i led lights to red (with some help on the forum) but my darn hard drive light is still white...BRIGHT..and really anoying!
Is there some way to also change that led's color too?, short of sticking a piece of red tape over it????
(also change the on/off button color too???)
Any tips are appreciated!
I would say probably not. I'm almost 100% sure the LED's used for the Power and Hard Drives plus the circuit driving them are using standard issue motherboard connections.
The case LED's are a different story. They are driven by a separate proprietary circuit board utilizing multiple LED's and specialized software to control the colors
You can usa a magic marker (your choice of color) to go over it to tint it .The more times you go over it the darker it becomes\ DaN
Personally I wouldn't do that on my system. If I was annoyed enough by the brightness or color, I'd change the LED, and or add a resistor in series with the LED to dim it
AT some people may not be as bright and as smart as you are i was only offering a way to tone the lights down some so thet would not be so bright if one wanted a quick way to dim them down some


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GSoC 2011 - Ideas
Shade integration (e.g. JavaDoc and OSGI bundles) and refactoring of MyFaces-Shared
Documentation (Wiki, Site and JavaDoc) usability review and refactoring (unification draft based on the ExtVal, Ext-Script and CODI documentation - requires knowledge of those frameworks).
- Seam-Forge plugin for CODI
Intellij and Eclipse Plugin for ViewConfigs
- Pluggable repositories for different back-button strategies
Seam-Forge plugin for ExtVal
Constraint based JS engine (client-side validation with generated meta-data based on jsr 303 constraints) some ideas
Myfaces Test
Implement support for creating managed beans from faces-config.xml or other JSF config files. (See https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MYFACESTEST-45 for details).


text:
I have decided to get my white Cove Handjob frame enamelled and get some pannier mounts added at the same time.
There are quite a few companies out there Mercian, Argos etc so some recommendations would be nice.
Colour wise I am currently torn between pale blue, vibrant red or potting shed green (I still remember seeing a DeKerf in the mid nineties). Maybe with some white detailing.
I know it is a common theme but let me see your frames


text:
Marriage 1 John O'BRIEN b: 29 FEB 1884 in Osage,Mission,KS
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text:
CHICAGO, April 27 (UPI) -- Evan Longoria and Kelly Johnson each banged out four hits and drove in a pair of runs Saturday in the Tampa Bay Rays' 10-4 drubbing of the Chicago White Sox.
Ben Zobrist added a two-run homer, Desmond Jennings hit a solo shot and James Loney supplied two RBI as the Rays bounced back with 19 hits after dropping the first two contests in their four-game road series.
Matt Moore (5-0) stymied the White Sox on one run over six innings, yielding three hits while striking out nine.
Chicago starter Gavin Floyd (0-4) yielded two runs on two hits before exiting with a right elbow flexor muscle strain after 2 2/3 innings.
Adam Dunn homered while Alexei Ramirez, Conor Gillaspie and Jordan Danks each drove in a run for the White Sox, whose three-game winning streak came to an end.


text:
Smartphone, Cable Prices Set to Drop With Upcoming Israeli Consumer Reforms
New Communications Ministry rules do away with bureaucratic barriers to importing mobile devices, which is expected to cut consumer costs.
Israeli consumers, who have been buffeted by higher prices for everything from bread to electricity, can take comfort in this: Prices for smartphones are likely to drop soon and cable television fees will go down to as little as NIS 100 a month.
Under a reform of the smartphone market, the Communications Ministry is removing a host of bureaucratic barriers to importing mobile devices, a move that is expected to cut the cost to the consumer.
The new rules do away with a requirement that every cell phone importer get a special license from the minister. They also eliminate the requirement that each cell phone model undergo Communication Ministry tests to ensure it meets local standards and operates on authorized frequencies - a lengthy process that limited the range of models available on the local market.
From now on, all devices that meet the European Union standards or those set by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission are automatically approved for use in Israel.
The measures are expected to reduce the time it takes for new smartphones and other devices to reach the Israeli market, increase the number of models available and encourage more importers to enter the market, stimulating competition and leading to lower prices.
Today, the cell phone import market is dominated by the cellular operators, which subsidize the price of phones for those subscribing to their networks. But with the entry of Hot Mobile, Golan Telecom and other new rivals, especially since last spring, the market for so-called SIM-free phones has begun to develop, as consumers buy their phones from independent retailers rather than from their service providers.
Until recently, 90% of all cell phones were bought through service providers, but industry sources say that figure is declining quickly and is likely to settle at just 30% of the market.
Meanwhile, the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council yesterday approved a pilot plan under which Hot Communications and YES - which, respectively, control cable and satellite television broadcasting - will be required to offer subscribers a package of limited channels at a discounted price.
Under the plan, slated to go into effect December 1, subscribers will be able to take a basic package consisting of the three domestic TV networks (Channels 1, 2 and 10 ), four channels devoted to sports, children and youth produced in Israel as well others showing TV series, films and world news.
Hot and YES will be able to choose which channels to offer and the price for the package. Industry sources said the price is unlikely to exceed NIS 100.
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College Softball: Ridgewater wins twice to reach region final
WILLMAR -- The Ridgewater Lady Warriors are in commanding positioning entering the final day of the Region 13A softball tournament.
Ridgewater (35-8) will play at noon today in the championship against the winner of the loser's bracket game at 10 a.m., pitting Anoka-Ramsey and Minnesota West. The Lady Warriors will have a second shot if they lose the first game.
If Ridgewater wins, it would earn its fifth national trip in the last seven years.
The Lady Warriors tumbled both of the elimination-bracket teams on Thursday, beating Minnesota West 11-8 in a noon game and Anoka-Ramey in the late afternoon 19-8.
The Lady Warriors piled up 33 hits, 14 of those going for extra-bases, including five home runs.
"We're a good hitting team and we just wore down their pitchers," commented Ridgewater coach Todd Thorstad.
In their first game, the Lady Warriors belted 13 hits, including two homers, three triples and three doubles to offset seven errors in the field.
The Bluejays scored three times in the top of the first on a couple of solid hits, plus two Ridgewater errors. The Lady Warriors came right back with four runs of their own in the bottom half of the frame. A triple by Amanda Horst provided two of the runs.
Aimee Johnson clubbed a two-run homer in the third for a 6-3 lead. The third baseman also hit a triple and a single to finish with four RBI.
Sara Beyer homered to left-center field in the sixth with Brandi Bodin aboard as the lead climbed to 11-4.
The Bluejays snapped back with four runs in the top of the seventh before Krause, who walked one and fanned eight, got the ninth Bluejay to bat in the inning on a grounder to Emily Roelike at shortstop.
Bevin Williams doubled and tripled in a 13-hit Ridgewater offense against Minnesota West pitcher Steph Maras, who walked two and fanned one.
In the late game, catcher Bodin slugged a pair of homers while going 4-for-4 with seven RBI. Bevin Williams hit a two-run homer and Samantha Cunningham doubled three times and singled in six at bats.
Anoka-Ramsey, which defeated defending region champion Rochester in the day's first game, 9-7, used three pitchers against the state champions, who rang up 20 hits.
Alex Thunborg doubled, tripled and singled for the Golden Rams. Randee Hanson also had three hits, including a three-run homer in the fifth. Ashley Zimmel added three hits in a 12-hit attack.
Winning pitcher Shannon Heitz walked three and struck out four.
Minnesota West erased the Yellowjackets from the tournament, 11-10.
Game One
Ridgewater 11, Minnesota West 8
MN West 300 001 4 -- 8 10 2
Ridgewater 402 004 x --11 13 7
HITTING - Minnesota West: Sam Lynn 2-for-4, 2b; Steph Maras 1-for-3, 2b; Kat Kazemba 2-for-4, 2 runs, rib; LoRel Christensen 1-for-4, 2b, rbi; Kaitlin Banek 1-for-3, 2 runs; Alyson Drooger 2-for-4; Katie Hedler 1-for-4, 2b ... Ridgewater: Emily Roelike 1-for-4; Brandi Bodin 1-for-2, 2 runs, 2b; Sara Beyer 1-for-4, 3-run HR, 3 rbi; Andrea Krause 2-for-3, 2 runs, 2b, rbi; Amanda Horst 1-for-4, 3b, 2 rbi; Bevin Williams 2-for-3, 2b, 3b; Aimee Johnson 3-for-4, 3b, 2-run HR, 4 rbi; Samantha Cunningham 1-for-3
PITCHING (ip-h-r-er-bb-so) -- Minnesota West: Steph Maras (L) 6-13-11-8-2-1 ... Ridgewater: Andrea Krause (W) 7-10-8-4-1-8
Game Two
Ridgewater 19,Anoka-Ramsey 8
Ridgewater 124 014 7 --19 20 3
Anoka-Ramsey 100 150 1 -- 8 12 3
HITTING - Ridgewater: Emily Roelike 2-for-4; Brandi Bodin 4-for-4, 2b, 2-run HR, 3-run HR, 7 rbi; Sara Beyer 2-for-6; Andrea Krause 2-for-4, 2 rbi; Amanda Horst 1-for-4; Aimee Johnson 1-for-6; Jen Storck 2-for-6, 2b, rbi; Samantha Cunningham 4-for-6, 3 2b's, rbi; Whitley Strei 1-for-2; Bevin Williams 1-for-1, 2-run HR, 2 rbi ... Anoka-Ramsey: Alex Thunborg 3-for-5, 2b, 3b, rbi; Alex Conley 1-for-4, rbi; Randee Hanson 3-for-5, 2b, 3-run HR, 3 rbi; Ashley Zimmel 3-for-4; Jill Jansen 1-for-4, 2b; Cassie Nikolaus 1-for-4
PITCHING (ip-h-r-er-bb-so) -- Ridgewater: Shannon Heitz (W) 7-12-8-6-3-4 ... Anoka-Ramsey: Andi Schoethoeister 1/3-0-1-1-4-1, Krystal Plouff (L) 52/3-17-16-11-5-5, Cassey Nikolaus 1-3-2-2-0-0


text: Atlantic Marine, Jacksonville, Fla., has accomplished its first cut of steel for its new fleet of 226-passenger U.S.-flag coastal ships, Delta Queen Coastal Cruises. The steel cut begins construction for AMCV, who in May 1999, signed a $60 million contract with Atlantic for construction of the first two vessels, as well as an option for a third. Measuring 300 ft. (91.4 m), the diesel-driven, coastal ships with nautical and Federal-style decor is scheduled to enter service in 2001 along the East Coast of America. "This project is on a fast track," said Scott Young, executive vice president of AMCV and president of The Delta Queen Steamboat Co. "Four hundred tons of steel have been delivered to the shipyard and sub-assembly is underway on the vessel modules."


text:
At the moment I'm running CM based 4.4.3 mod. But whenever the dialer app is rotated to landscape mode it crashes. Today I had a dangerous situation on the highway and I tried calling 911 but I couldn't because the dialer crashed as soon as I opened it.
I know 4.4.3 is hardly mainstream but maybe someone else has similar issues?


text:
Surabaya – Indonesia, September 2012.
Green and decent jobs are crucial for workers and for the planet. This is the main message coming out from the Asian and the Pacific workers' group after three days of experience-sharing with governments and employers on the International Labour Organisation's Green Jobs Conference in Asia.
Scaling up and tailoring awareness raising actions on environmental challenges, mainstreaming the need for green and decent jobs in public policies and ensuring Green Jobs projects are owned by national trade unions emerged as clear priorities for labour representatives from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Fiji, the Philippines, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, China and Bangladesh.
'This agenda can help us mobilizing and organizing workers which have not joined trade unions yet', said Brother Mathi Yugarajah, Vice President of the Ceylon Workers' Congress, who represented the workers' group in a round table with UN and government officials. 'We need to ensure informal workers are on board in our green and decent jobs agenda'.
In the workers' group final, inspiring remarks, Brother W.M Naim from the Malaysian Trade Union Congress, confirmed the labour movements' commitment to this agenda. "We still have much to learn, but we are conscious that we will only achieve full employment and decent work in our region if we protect the environment and fight climate change", said Naim. And he made a plea to governments and employers, the other two constituencies of the ILO: "We urgently need to act. The transition must start now".
The Workers' group final declaration can be found below.
Find more on the ILO Asian Green Jobs Initiative here
Challenges and opportunities for the future and priorities for action
Workers' messages
Green Jobs are part of the response of the World of Work to environmental degradation and climate change and the need for full employment and decent work.
This can only be achieved if we protect the environment and fight climate change. We urgently need to act.
We welcome the development of green jobs/decent work initiatives in the Asia Pacific region.
However, as workers' representatives from the Asian and the Pacific region, we believe much more needs still to be done to truly modify current patterns of production, which are socially and environmentally unsustainable.
The transition towards sustainability constitutes a far-reaching transformation, bigger than any other faced before. Unless we can ensure social justice in the transformation, it will be impossible to achieve the highest environmental standards.
This is the reason why the Green Jobs initiative needs to contribute to a Just Transition.
In the future, the Green Jobs initiative in the region should aim at:
On awareness raising and capacity building,
- Develop tailored materials and activities targeting all social partners, including trade union leadership, union advisers and workers at the shop floor, and rely on local experts.
- Ensure materials incorporate 'the basics' of environmental challenges and their relationship with workers' interests
- Promote integration of informal sector workers in all activities
When it comes to demonstration projects, it is key that in the future
- There is a consultation with all the three constituents at the country level on the sectors and location of the projects
- There is real involvement of unions in all aspects of the project's implementation, including evaluation and ILO constituents are beneficiaries of the project
- Projects support efforts towards formalization of workers and improving working conditions in all the dimensions of the DW agenda
- Focus on sectors which represent a challenge for environment in the countries, such as manufacturing, mining, etc.
- There is continuous support for projects until they reach self-sustainability, and there is an 'exit' strategy for the ILO. The evaluation should be made public.
Finally, on policy, the Green Jobs Initiative should
- Promote public policies on environmental protection which would make real the job potential of green jobs projects and mainstream them in development planning
- Assess the employment and distributional impacts of environmental degradation as well as of environmental policies.
- Support the development and strengthen social protection systems, in order to secure incomes of those whose jobs and livelihoods might be at risk as a consequence of environmental changes or environmental policies.
- Bring environmental issues to social dialogue structures, and develop partnerships with communities, NGO and academia.
- Support local strategies to create alternative sources of jobs and livelihoods for regions that might suffer from the transition towards sustainability.
- At the international level, it should develop a standard on green jobs which would identify roles and responsibilities in the transition towards sustainability and define the boundaries of green jobs work.


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Difference between revisions of "Transform Feedback"
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Shaders can define which outputs are captured by transform feedback and exactly how they are captured. When a shader defines them, querying the program for the mode of transform feedback will return interleaved mode (since the [[#Advacned interleaving|advanced interleaving]] makes separate mode a complete subset of interleaved mode).
Shaders can define which outputs are captured by transform feedback and exactly how they are captured. When a shader defines them, querying the program for the mode of transform feedback will return interleaved mode (since the [[#Advacned interleaving|advanced interleaving]] makes separate mode a complete subset of interleaved mode).
{{|Transform Feedback/Shader }}
== Buffer binding ==
== Buffer binding ==
Revision as of 09:07, 20 August 2013
OpenGL Rendering Pipeline
Transform Feedback is the process of altering the rendering pipeline so that primitives generated by Vertex Processing will be written to buffer objects. This allows one to preserve the post-transform rendering state of an object and resubmit this data multiple times.
|This article is a stub. You can help the OpenGL Wiki by expanding it.
Shader setup
In order to capture primitives, the program containing the final Vertex Processing shader stage must be linked with a number of parameters. These parameters must be set before linking the program, not after. So if you want to use glCreateShaderProgram, you will have to use the in-shader specification API, which is only available with OpenGL 4.4 or ARB_enhanced_layouts.
The only program object that matters for transform feedback is the one that provides the last Vertex Processing shader stage. These settings can be on any other program in a separate program, but only the settings on the last active Vertex Processing shader stage will be used.
Transform feedback can operate in one of two capturing modes. In interleaved mode, all captured outputs go into the same buffer, interleaved with one another. In separate mode, each captured output goes into a separate buffer. This must be selected on a program object at link time.
To define the capture settings for a program, as well as which output variables are captured, use the following function:
The bufferMode is the capturing mode. It must be GL_INTERLEAVED_ATTRIBS or GL_SEPARATE_ATTRIBS
The count is the number of strings in the varyings array. This array specifies the name of the output variables of the appropriate shader stage to capture. The order that the variables are provided in defines the order in which they are captured. The names of these variables conform to the standard rules for naming GLSL variables.
There are limitations on the number of outputs that can be captured, as well as how many total components can be captured. Within these limits, any output variables can be captured, including outputs of struct types, arrays, members of interface blocks.
Captured data format
Transform feedback explicitly captures Primitives. While it does capture data for each vertex, it does so after spliting each primitive up into separate primitives. So if you're rendering using GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP, and you render with 6 vertices, that yields 4 triangles. Transform feedback will capture 4 triangles worth of data. Since each triangle has 3 vertices, TF will capture 12 vertices, not the 6 you might expect from the rendering command.
Each primitive is written in the order it is given. Within a primitive, the order of the vertex data written is the the vertex order after primitive assembly. This means that, when drawing with triangle strips for example, the captured primitive will switch the order of two vertices every other triangle. This ensures that Face Culling will still respect the ordering provided in the initial array of vertex data.
Within each vertex, the data is written in the order specified by the varyings array (when doing interleaved rendering). If an output variable is an aggregate (struct/array), then each member of the aggregate is written in order. Each component of the basic type of the output is written in order. Ultimately, all of the data is written tightly packed together (though capturing double-precision floats may cause padding).
A component will always be a float/double, signed integer, or unsigned integer, using the sizes for GLfloat/GLdouble, GLint, and GLuint. No packing or normalization is performed. The transform feedback system does not have an automated analog to the much more flexible vertex format specification system.
This of course does not prevent you from manually packing bits into unsigned integers in your shader.
Advanced interleaving
|Core in version
|Core since version
|Core ARB extension
The above settings only provide two modes: either all captured outputs go into separate buffers or they all go into the same buffer. In many cases, it is useful to be able to be able to write several components to one buffer, while writing other components to others.
Also, captured interleaved data is tightly packed, with each variable's components coming immediately after the previous components. It is often useful to be able to skip writing over certain data, if some data changes and other data does not.
These can be achieved by the use of special "varying" names in the varyings array. These special names do not name actual output variables; they only cause some particular effect on subsequent writes.
These names and their effects are:
- gl_NextBuffer
- This causes all subsequent outputs to be routed to the next buffer index. The buffers start at 0 and increment by one each time this is encountered in the varyings list.
- There must not be more of these than the number of buffers that can be bound for use in transform feedback. Therefore, the number of these must be strictly less than GL_MAX_TRANSFORM_FEEDBACK_BUFFERS.
- gl_SkipComponents#
- This causes the system to skip writing # number of components, where # may be from 1 to 4. The memory covered by the skipped components will not be modified. Each component in this case is the size of a float.
- Note that components skipped in this way still count against the limitation on the number of components being output.
Output variables in the Geometry Shader can be declared to go to a particular stream. This is controlled via an in-shader specification, but there are certain limitations that affect advanced component interleaving.
No two outputs that go to different streams can be captured by the same buffer. Attempting to do so will result in a linker error. So using multiple streams with interleaved writing requires using advanced interleaving to route attributes to different buffers.
Note that this ability effectively makes separate capture mode superfluous. Interleaving with these facilities is a functional superset of what separate mode can do, since it can capture one output to each buffer individually.
Doubles and alignment
|Core in version
|Core since version
|Core ARB extension
The alignment of single-precision floats and integers is 4 bytes. However, the alignment of double-precision values is 8 bytes. This causes a problem when it comes to capturing transform feedback data.
The alignment of components must be ensured. This is trivially ensured with floats and integers, but doubles require special care. It is up to the user to ensure 8-byte alignment of all double precision data. Specifically, you must ensure two things:
- Every double-precision component begins on an 8-byte boundary. You may need to insert padding where needed, using the skipping functionality above.
- All of the vertex data going to a particular buffer that includes a double-precision component must have a total vertex data size aligned to 8 bytes. This ensures that the second vertex will start on an 8 byte boundary. You may therefore need to add padding to the end of vertex data.
For example, if you want to capture the following, in the order defined here:
out DataBlock
float var1;
dvec2 someDoubles;
float var3;
This is the sequence of strings that you will need in your varyings data if you want to capture it in the order of definition:
const char *varyings[] =
"gl_SkipComponents1", //Padding the next component to 8-byte alignment.
"gl_SkipComponents1", //Padding out the entire vertex structure to 8-byte alignment.
If you do not do this, you get undefined behavior. You could avoid the padding just by changing the order you capture them. You don't have to change the order you define them in the shader.
In-shader specification
|Core in version
|Core since version
|Core ARB extension
Shaders can define which outputs are captured by transform feedback and exactly how they are captured. When a shader defines them, querying the program for the mode of transform feedback will return interleaved mode (since the advanced interleaving makes separate mode a complete subset of interleaved mode).
Layout qualifiers can be used to define which output variables are captured in Transform Feedback operations. When these qualifiers are set in a shader, they completely override any attempt to set the transform feedback outputs from OpenGL via glTransformFeedbackVaryings.
Any output variable or output interface block declared with the xfb_offset layout qualifier will be part of the transform feedback output. This qualifier must be specified with an integer byte offset. The offset is the number of bytes from the beginning of a vertex to be written to the current buffer to this particular output variable.
The offsets of contained values (whether in arrays, structs, or members of an interface block if the whole block has an offset) are computed, based on the sizes of prior components to pack them in the order specified. Any explicitly provided offsets are not allowed to violate alignment restrictions. So if a definition contains a double (either directly or indirectly), the offset must be 8-byte aligned.
Members of interface blocks can have their offsets specified directly on them, which overrides any computed offsets. Also, all members of an interface block are not required to be written to outputs (though that will happens if you set the xfb_offset on the block itself). Stream assignments for a geometry shader are required to be the same for all members of a block, but offsets are not.
Different variables being captured are assigned to buffer binding indices. Offset assignments are separate for the separate buffers. It is a linker error for two variables captured by the same buffer to have overlapping byte offsets, whether automatically computed or explicitly assigned.
An explicit buffer assignment is made by using the xfb_buffer qualifier on the same declaration as the offset qualifier. This takes an integer which defines the buffer binding index that the captured output(s) is/are associated with. The integer must be less than GL_MAX_TRANSFORM_FEEDBACK_BUFFERS.
Any offsets for global variables or interface blocks that do not specify a buffer explicitly will use the current buffer. The current buffer is set as follows:
layout(xfb_buffer = 1) out;
All following offsets for globals that do not explicitly specify a buffer will use 1 as their buffer. The initial current buffer for a shader is 0.
Variables can have xfb_buffer assigned to them without xfb_offset. This does nothing and will be ignored.
Interface blocks have a special association with buffers. Each interface block is associated with a buffer, regardless of whether any of its members are captured. The buffer is either the current buffer as defined above or a buffer explicitly specified by xfb_buffer.
As previously stated, all members of a block do not have to be captured. However, if any members of a block are captured, they must all be captured to the same buffer. Specifically, the buffer associated with that block. It is an error to use xfb_buffer on a member if the buffer index you provide is different from the index used by the block.
As an example:
layout(xfb_buffer = 2) out; //Default buffer of 2.
out OutputBlock1 //Block buffer index is implicitly 2.
float val1;
layout(xfb_buffer = 2, xfb_offset = 0) first; //The provided index is the same as the block's index.
layout(xfb_buffer = 1, xfb_offset = 0) other; //Compile error, due to changing the buffer index for a block member.
Each buffer has the concept of a stride. This represents the byte count from the beginning of one captured vertex to the beginning of the next. It is computed by taking the output with the highest xfb_offset value, adding its size to that offset, and then aligning the computed value to the base alignment of the buffer. The buffer's alignment is 4, unless it captures any double-precision values in which case it is 8. This means you do not need to manually pad structures for alignment, as you did with outside shader setting.
The stride for a buffer can also be explicitly set using the xfb_stride layout qualifier. This allows you to add extra space at the end, perhaps to skip data that will not change. A compilation error will result if the stride you specify is:
- Too small, given the offsets and computed sizes of the captured data for that buffer.
- Not properly aligned. It must be at least 4 byte aligned, and it must be 8 byte aligned if the buffer captures any double-precision values.
The stride for a buffer is set as follows:
layout(xfb_buffer = 1, xfb_stride = 32) out; //Sets stride of buffer 1 to 32. Also, sets buffer 1 to be current.
Linking errors will result if any captured outputs within a buffer overlap in space or violate padding. For example:
layout(xfb_buffer = 0) out Data
layout(xfb_offset = 0) float val1;
layout(xfb_offset = 4) vec4 val2;
layout(xfb_offset = 16) float val3; //Compiler error. val2 covers bytes on the range [4, 20).
Compiler/linker errors will result if you are using Geometry Shader output streams and two outputs from different streams are routed to the same buffer.
Buffer binding
Feedback process
Feedback objects
|Core in version
|Core since version
|Core ARB extension
Feedback rendering
Feedback pausing and resuming
When using separate capture, there is a limitation on the total number of variables that can be captured. This is GL_MAX_TRANSFORM_FEEDBACK_SEPARATE_ATTRIBS, which will be at least 4. Also, there is a limit to the number of components that any particular variable can contain. This is GL_MAX_TRANSFORM_FEEDBACK_SEPARATE_COMPONENTS, which will be at least 4. If these limits are exceeded, a program linking error will result.
When using interleaved capture, the limit is the total number of components that can be captured. This is GL_MAX_TRANSFORM_FEEDBACK_INTERLEAVED_COMPONENTS, which must be at least 64. Double-precision components count as 2. The number of "components" can be computed for in-shader specification by adding all of the buffer's strides and dividing by 4. That must be less than this queried value.
When using advanced interleaving to route different variables to different buffers, the limit on the number of available buffers is GL_MAX_TRANSFORM_FEEDBACK_BUFFERS.
Before OpenGL 4.0 or ARB_transform_feedback3, the limit on the binding index to glBindBufferRange for GL_TRANSFORM_FEEDBACK was GL_MAX_TRANSFORM_FEEDBACK_SEPARATE_ATTRIBS, since more than one buffer can only be used with separate outputs. With OpenGL 4.0 or ARB_transform_feedback3, it is GL_MAX_TRANSFORM_FEEDBACK_BUFFERS.
- Category:Core API Ref Transform Feedback: Function documentation for all transform feedback commands, except for those that actually render with the results of a feedback operation.


text:
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text:
© 2005 – Routledge
200 pages | 12 B/W Illus.
The purpose of this study is to focus on the intersection of religion and politics. Do different religions result in different politics? More specifically, are there significant contrasts between the political attitudes and behavior of Catholics and Protestants in Latin America?


text: Hi Curtis, Please further explain this problem. I don't think there have been any updates to version 10 as yet. There are training module downloads available. Roger ; ----- Original Message ----- From: Curtis Delzer To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 9:44 AM Subject: beta, necessary query! Will not update! Internet connections all fine with all other programs. JFW10 beta says it is not. Program error, obviously! Sent beta form! ANYONE on list have further information? Curtis Delzer. HS


text:
Legal Question in Personal Injury in Maryland
Is is possible for someone who, according to a police report, was at fault for an auto accident to sue the non at fault person for injury damages?
Asked on 8/13/13, 10:23 am
1 Answer from Attorneys
Robert Sher Wagshal and Sher
The police report is not necessarily determinative of who is at fault, and anyone can sue anyone in this situation. The real question is who can prove a claim of negligence in court under the requisite standard of proof. The police report probably wouldn't even be brought up at trial, since the officer was not a witness, although he/she could testify as to any admissions either party made and as to their physical observations of the aftermath.
Answered on 8/13/13, 12:34 pm


text:
Avian enthusiasts often complain about the rate at which their birds destroy their bird toys and how expensive it is to constantly replace these items. A bird? beak is designed for such destruction. In the wild, parrots spend their days foraging for food, often stripping bark from trees and cracking hard-shelled nuts. They also use their beaks to groom their feathers and to gently separate food from shells and outer skins. We should be happy when our birds tear through a wood block or peck away at a sisal rope piece. They?e behaving as happy, healthy birds should. There are, however, ways to stretch a bird toy? life, so you?e not constantly reaching for your wallet.
Some toy companies have sprung from the creative minds of pet bird owners. Part of the price of that toy on the store shelf is the time and expertise that goes into its creation. For many toy manufacturers, price means better quality.
"To put it bluntly,?said Sally Zonner, owner of Avian Specialties in Florida, who has distributed and manufactured bird toys for more than 20 years, "You usually get what you pay for. Parts, labor and shipping are all figured into the final price, and a quality, domestically-produced toy will cost more than one imported from a questionable source.?lt;/span>
To stretch your dollar, Zonner suggests purchasing "busy?toys that have a lot of features to keep your bird engaged. Buy prepackaged toy parts to replace components that have been soiled or chewed off. When a rope toy becomes frayed, cut the cotton to short lengths so your bird doesn? get caught in the strands. Supervise your bird to ensure it can play safely with a new toy and to know which kinds of toys work best for your bird. You can avoid toys that are either inappropriate for your bird or fail to pique its interest. An appropriately-sized toy will last longer. Don? give your cockatoo a small toy that it will destroy in minutes.
Rotate toys so that they always appear new to your bird. Rotating also lengthens a toy? life by giving it a periodic break from your bird? pummeling.
Does your bird have a favorite toy that you like to keep in the cage at all times? Shop for it in bulk, or buy several when it goes on sale to save a few bucks.
Stay In Shape
Make your toy dollars last by keeping playthings in good shape. Most birds like to poop in one particular spot in the cage. Don? hang the toys there! If an accident does happen, wash soiled toys, and dry them immediately to prevent mold or mildew in cloth or rope fibers.
Your bird? playgym could last years or weeks depending on your choice. Choose a durable material that has chewable but replaceable parts.
Similar to cage buying, amortize the cost over the expected life of your bird? gym. Opt for a cage-top playgym or a bolt-on model if you?e tight on space. You can fashion your own using a variety of bolt-on perches.
Shop Around
Toys are a necessity for birds and should be factored into your monthly bird budget. Lanette Raymond of New York shops around for toys for her conure and six cockatiels.
"I spend between $10 and $20 a month on bird toys,?Raymond said. "I look for them at bird club meetings, bird stores and toy and craft stores. I recycle elements of an otherwise worn-out toy. I thread unused shapes from used toys onto the wires on my perch swings.?lt;/span>
Larger birds might up your toy budget. New York resident Joan Napolitano spends approximately $30 to $40 a month on large wood toys for her cockatoo, so she looks for the best deals.
"I buy most of my toys at bird shows where I can look for specials or discounted items,?Napolitano said. "Sometimes I buy online with discounts offered by the seller to my bird club. I typically receive a 10-percent discount, and that offsets shipping charges.?lt;/span>
Linda LaFleur of New York offered good hints for extending the life of her macaws?toys. "I hang some of the toys on the outside of the cage. That way they have to pull them through before they can chew them up,?she said. Shop carefully, keep an eye on safety and take good care of your bird? toys to make them last. Realize that most toys are meant to be destroyed.
Thrifty Bird Toy Tips
1) Purchase toys with mixed-media components: wood, hardwoods, rope, untreated leather, high-impact plastics. The various materials will be destroyed at different rates, making the toy last longer.
2) Purchase foraging toys that take your bird time to figure out and chew through.
3) Purchase toys with replaceable parts. Fill rod-style toy holders with pre-cut toy parts.
4) Patronize companies that offer discounts to your bird club.
5) Watch magazines, newspapers and online ads for sales and coupons.
Want to learn more about bird toys? Check out these articles:
Homemade Bird Toy Ideas
What bird type does your bird like?
Keep Bird Toys Safe


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No matter what anyone says, every woman's favourite four letter word is 'sale.' There isn't a woman in the world immune to the lure of a discount and that includes the richest of the rich. Today, Nita Ambani is our case in point. While in Sri Lanka recently, we hit the Noritake outlet store — where the brand's finest offerings are available at slashed prices. Every domestic diva worth her diamonds stops by here to add to her collection of fine china, even though the outlet itself (unlike its wares) is far from plush. Now if you think the Ambanis only shop on Rodeo Drive or in the arms of a Mr. Al-Fayed at Harrods, you can think again. While at the Noritake discount store, we saw photographs of Mrs. Ambani buying up bone china by the barrel load. Clearly, even the Ambanis see sense in asking: why pay more when you can pay less, yes?
Picture Credit - indiatimes.in
Article by - Sonali Velinker Kamat


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ACParadise Network: American Cosplay Paradise American Cosplay Experience American Cosplay Snapshots
Cosplayer Kiya > Costume of Umi Ryuuzaki (Magic Knight Rayearth)
- Most Recent Photo
- 07-22-2013
- Series
- Magic Knight Rayearth
- Character
- Umi Ryuuzaki
- Special Variation:
- Final Armor
- Year Completed:
- 2011
- Construction Difficulty:
- Normal
- Awards
- Oni-con: 2nd place
- Costume worn at:
- A-Kon 2011
This Costume has been retired
About this Costume
- Construction Details:
The boots are super fitted boot covers which zip up in the back. The zipper was a bit too short so instead of sacrificing the length of the boots, I added a few grommets in the back so that they lace closed.
The cincher also laces closed in the back. It's made using the vinyl over foam method with multiple layers of foam to give it shape. I wish I could say i came up with the idea and look by myself, but I can't. I loved the look of another Umi cosplayer's cincher, so I tried to mimic it.
The gloves (and that of my group members) were all sewn by me and made out of the same white vinyl as my boots and cincher.
The dress is made from a highly modified princess cut pattern, fully lined and trimmed in gold vinyl. The gold details and front panels were glued on, because I disliked the way stitching looked on the vinyl. The leotard is made with a lycra blend and the pattern was completely drafted by me using flat measurements.
The armor was made using foam and paper mache, then sanded and painted. I used two different spray paints to give it some depth and color variation then sealed it with a poly-acrylic finish.
The hand armor was drafted by tsuki, then painted and weathered by me. It's also made from foam and sealed with a poly-acrylic finish. It's made from three laters of foam. The blue gem sits under the 1st layer of foam and then there is wire in between the next two layers to form around my hand.
The giant gem in the center of my armor and on my headband were casted with custom molds and encased in a vinyl and foam "setting." The headband is made from a regular white headband in which I stretched blue fabric over and trimmed in gold vinyl. The horns are made with paper clay and painted foam, then glued directly to the headband. It was a bit heavy, but was secured with a few bobby pins that slid under the gem into my wig.
The sword! I was afraid of the stability of the detailing on the sword so I made it to break apart for transportation. The blade is made from wood and was sanded down so that it would fit into a pvc pipe. I built up the hilt, wings, and all other details in paper clay. Since the wings were so thick they kept cracking while they were drying so I added some heavy gauge wire as a support. I custom casted a gem to fit on the sword and used a wooden ball as the top of the pommel. Primed, painted, then sealed the sword and I was good to go!
Wig Details
- Wig Brand
- Cosworx / Cosplay.com
- Wig Name
- Ivy Long
- Original Color:
- turquoise
- Wig Quality Rating
- 2 / 5.00
- Styling Notes
- Bangs were cut in the wig
- Wig Review
- Color was beautiful but Wig tangled very easily
Add a Comment


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|Program 303
For more information:
Producer: Donna Ross
Pioneering Theater
Danville's Pioneer Playhouse
The Henson family, led by patriarch "Colonel" Eben and his wife, Charlotte, have been serving up dinner and laughs at the Pioneer Playhouse in Danville since 1950. Here, New York actors live and perform in an old-time village, honing their craft and entertaining Kentuckians with a little of the shine of the Great White Way.
Since the Colonel's death in April 2004, Charlotte and her children Holly and Robby have kept the show going on. Pioneer Playhouse is open mid-June through late August.
Producer: Gene Campbell
A Kentucky Field of Dreams
Louisville's baseball history
The Louisville Slugger is not the city's—or the state's—only contribution to baseball. In this segment, we visit Louisville's Parkway Field (now the home field for the University of Louisville) and remember baseball's past in Kentucky. Louisville was a major league city for many years and was home to the Negro National League's White Sox, Black Caps, and Buckeyes, as well as the barnstorming Washington Nationals in 1867.
As we tour the city's baseball history, we encounter the four Kentuckians who have been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame:
For more information:
Producer, videographer: Gale Worth
Right on Track, Part 1
The Railway Exposition Museum
In the first of two segments for train lovers, come with us to Northern Kentucky's Railway Exposition Museum for a tour of opulent examples of Pullman sleeping cars, "executive cars" from the era of luxury train travel, and old mail cars.
The museum is open each Saturday and Sunday, May through October, from 12:30 to 4:30 pm ET. School groups may arrange special tours.
Producer: Gale Worth
Right on Track, Part 2
Riding the Hardin Southern
All aboard! In Marshall County, we've reserved a private coach for a nostalgic ride on the Hardin Southern Railroad that's a trip both across the miles and back in time. Owner Burneda Koenig talks about what inspired her to buy the line and start her own railroad.
Our visit was in 1995. Since then, the Hardin Southern has gone out of the excursion business. In 2005, it was sold to the Murray-Calloway County Economic Development Corporation for use in hauling freight to the Murray Industrial Park.
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Interview: Wall-E's Writer and Director Andrew Stanton
by Alex Billington
June 23, 2008
I have always dreamed of stepping inside the walls of Pixar. A week ago that dream came true. Disney invited me out to San Francisco to interview Andrew Stanton, the writer and director of Wall-E, at Pixar Studios. I am a true dedicated Pixar fan, from Toy Story all the way to The Incredibles and it's breathtaking to be sitting inside of Pixar with the man who has been a part of some of the greatest films in history. Stanton worked with John Lasseter on A Bug's Life and eventually went on to bring us the wonderful Finding Nemo, easily one of my Pixar favorites (although it's impossible to truly rank them). And now it's a great honor to present my interview with the mind behind Pixar's latest film, Wall-E.
Being inside of Pixar was like being a kid in a candy store. Everywhere you turned, a Pixar memory could be found. There hand-drawn were sketches of Remy from Ratatouille and Wall-E on the walls inches from the ground; concept art, sculptures, and storyboards filled every open square inch in every hallway; life-size figures from Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, and even Finding Nemo welcomed you to the studio. It was a surreal experience but one where I finally got to see where it all happened. Talking with Andrew Stanton to me was much more of an opportunity to talk to someone who had, indirectly, changed my life and inspired me in so many ways - a true honor. It was one of the most unforgettable experiences I've ever had.
I decided to focus my interview not on the obvious questions, but on the more intricate details of Pixar and the development of Wall-E. If you're curious to hear about how Stanton was inspired by binoculars or the basics of the story, you can read our coverage from WonderCon. If you're already familiar with the background story of Wall-E and are curious to hear more, then read on and enjoy!
To start off, can you tell us the story of how Wall-E went from the idea in your mind with the binoculars to actually becoming a film here at Pixar?
Andrew Stanton: Well, actually, I'm sorry, there's no short answer to this, but in '94 we were having a lunch about what to do next because we were finishing up Toy Story and we realized we were already behind schedule-wise if we were going to make another movie soon. So we came up with A Bug's Life from that lunch, but before we got to that, we threw out a bunch of other sort of half-baked thoughts. Some of them just were settings, like an ocean, some of them were your fears, and that's – it's fascinating to see later that they became Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc. But then we just had a character we came up with. We came up with the last robot on Earth, this robot that just keeps doing the same thing, that got left on for whatever reason, and it's just doing the same job. And I just thought that was the saddest character I had ever heard of and I just loved that and I remember Pete Docter and I couldn't drop it for a couple of weeks. We said, wouldn't it be cool if it was sort of like R2D2, you sort of had to infer based on how it was engineered how it -- it would almost be a movie about Luxo Jr. through the whole thing.
And then the very next thing we said is nobody will ever let us do it, because we hadn't even proven ourselves as filmmakers, hadn't proven Toy Story yet and it just seemed so out there. But as filmgoers, as geeks, we were like, I would go see a movie like that! So that just stuck up there for a long time and we got completely swept up in all these other movies and so it wasn't until Finding Nemo that I was having to do rewrites, so about 2002, so we're jumping to eight years later, almost a decade later, and I couldn't stop -- so I started thinking about this little guy again, and I said, he's so lonely, it's such a great character, I don't even know what he's called, I don't why we've left Earth…
And I just started to answer all that. I found myself very quickly writing the first act of the movie, which is not that different then what you have here. Then I couldn't stop. Then, I was like, by the time Nemo came out, this is what I want to do next, and I was definitely emboldened by the idea that Nemo was so huge. I mean, I had gone with my gut on so many things on Nemo that seemed iffy and not so sure. The whole time I was working on them here that it kind of threw me for a loop that it went over so well and it gave me a lot of confidence to just stick with my gut. So I said, well, my gut is telling me to do this movie, so I'm going to do it. So it was in 2003 near the end of the year, Nemo was already out, that I was really thinking seriously about design and stuff like that. And I knew the design of him was going to be crucial to how engaging he was and how much you wanted to follow him and how much you wanted to infer personality on him and the big epiphany was definitely late 2003. I was at a baseball game and I got the binoculars and I think the rest is known. So it had a long gestation period, a long time sitting on the stove, simmering.
And were the higher ups here at Pixar receptive to the original idea?
Stanton: They were receptive to the concept, the idea, but like anybody else, they were a little like, how exactly is that going to work. So I had a lot of leeway because of Nemo. I definitely leveraged off that, because it was so huge, I was sort of like -- this is what I want to do next. And they were like okay. And so I could tell there would be a lot of debate going on about how to do it, not whether we should do it, but how to do it. I didn't want to waste time debating that, so the year that Nemo was out, 2004, people expected me to be on vacation and just slowly research what I may want to do next, so I knew I would be under the radar.
So I actually stayed at work, got three of my favorite board artists and an editor, so I was completely under the radar with nobody paying attention and was able to, without any pressure, just completely free associate how I would want a movie like this to be like. We boarded and put on reels, with scratch voices and stuff like that, the first act, the first 20 minutes of the movie. I figured that I will prove to myself, without any pressure, that I can do something like this and that something like this is possible. If I don't, then I'll just stop and nobody will know and it won't matter, but if I do feel like I've cracked it, then I can just show it to anybody that's skeptical and that will answer it. I won't have to debate it. And that's exactly what happened after about four hard months, we got something that feels very much like what we've watched here and I showed it to John Lasseter and Steve Jobs at the time, who were the biggest guns then, and they said, 'oh, I get it!' And I could tell that when they walked in, they were skeptical. And when they walked out, they weren't, so it worked.
Is technology a limitation at Pixar in terms of building story ideas?
Stanton: No, not at all. Honestly, I've gotten asked that by some people like, where is technology going? I honestly sit there and go, you know what, I kind of think it's here, I think it's been here since Lord of the Rings, I kind of feel like – all the paint and brushes and canvas that you need to realize what you've been imagining are there, now it's just more of a reflection of how good you are with the technology and how good of an artist and visionary are you to use it. But there's the paint, there's the brush, there's the canvas. You can paint whatever you want and I think that's been possible for at least the last five or six years.
To come back to Wall-E, how did you come up with Hello, Dolly! as the film Wall-E watches in his truck?
Stanton: I know, it's bizarre isn't it?
Yeah! I mean, I love the choice--
Stanton: I know, and I love the choice, too, and I couldn't explain it at first. I just knew I wanted an old-fashioned song against space, and I just loved the future against the past, but I thought that's millions of songs. Which one do I pick? And so I started going into standards and a lot of standards come from musicals, and that sort of led me to musicals, and I did musical theater as a kid, so I knew a lot of them. I got to Hello, Dolly!, and I was just hittin' songs on iTunes, and you're just hearing the beginnings and I hear 'Out there…' and I loved it! I was like, that just works, I can't even explain, it just works, with the stars and what a great way to kick off the movie. It kind of propels you into it and it was a great juxtaposition to such a dire background. I loved the two together. I thought it really balanced the movie and it really, in a weird way, helped you meet Wall-E before you meet him.
Then when I thought about the song, I said, why do I like this so much and then I realized not only is it catchy and it has this sort of naiveté to it, but it's about these two guys that have never left their small town and they want to go out into the big world and kiss a girl. And I thought -- that's Wall-E, that's it! So I started looking at other songs, just to see if there would be any other epiphanies, and I got this huge one from watching the movie and seeing 'It Only Takes a Moment' with the two lovers and when I saw them hold hands, it was like, that's exactly it, that's how we will convey that the phrase 'I love you.' When you get that much back from research, you just take it as fate, you just go -- I know and I'm running with it. I know I will be answering this question for the rest of my life, but it's a price I'm willing to pay because it just works.
Did you have any trouble getting the rights to it?
Stanton: No, fortunately we got a lot of cooperation from Fox. We knew enough people that knew each other, we could get past all the red tape, talk to the right people.
How do you go about developing a story, like in Wall-E, that really doesn't have a lot of dialogue. How do you go about writing that?
Stanton: Here's my argument. There's dialogue from frame one. Each of those beeps and those squawks and those whirrs mean something and they're trying to convey a specific thing, so I actually wrote the script with dialogue – wrote it just like a regular script. I would just put the dialogue in brackets. So if he says 'hey, come over here,' I wrote 'hey, come over here' and I put it in brackets. Now it was a map for me and for anybody else, for Ben Burtt, whoever. When you put in a sound, it's got to convey that. And so it was actually very conventional how I wrote it.
The only thing I did that was a little unconventional, is the manner in which I formatted the script. I was very inspired by Dan O'Bannon's script for Alien. His description paragraphs were not your typical paragraphs, they were actually small phrases that were all left justified, almost like a haiku, and they created this rhythm of just being in the moment of quiet and visual. And you found yourself reading the descriptions much more than you normally do a script because of that form, instead of just skipping to the dialogue. It really kind of paced you as a reader and gave you the much more visceral feel of what it will be like to watch that movie. So I used that for Wall-E -- it really helped.
I was very curious about that. And talking about Ben Burtt, I also recently heard that Roger Deakins was involved as a visual consultant on this as well.
Stanton: For a short while, yeah.
Which to me – both of those people are incredible to have on a film like this.
Stanton: And Dennis Muren we had for a couple of months, which was huge. Those three really, really – well Ben, he was the actor. I was casting the character and I was casting all these other characters, so to me that was like two-thirds of my casting. Dennis and Roger were, for more similar reasons, that we wanted to crack the conventionalities of integration, like how to make you truly feel like you're really there. Dennis Muren is the master, and has been for decades now, of integrating the latest in effects into live action and how to make it just feel seamless. Roger Deakins is one of the best cinematographers and so he has a real association with how to light and how to use the camera. And we really wanted both the sense of believability, it wasn't – even though I know it really dips into photorealism, I wasn't trying to trick you into thinking you were there, I just wanted you to believe you were there as much as possible. So much of that was what you were truly seeing in the background, which Dennis was a help on, and what the camera was doing, which Roger was a help with.
We actually had a lot of stuff that wasn't correct in our software. The math wasn't doing the right thing, so all the subtle imperfections that you're used to, that you don't pay attention to that happen with the camera lens -- the way things go distorted in the background, when they do it, how the plane of focus works, what things do in the foreground -- all that was either slightly or majorly incorrect with our software, and had always been. I wanted to use the camera much more directly as a tool for intimacy in the film. I mean, I got a metal box falling in love with a metal box and a dystopian background, where am I going to get the intimacy? I'm going to use it with the camera by how shallow of a lens we use and how shallow the focus is, how narrow the lens is. So fixing all that and having Roger there to sort of confirm that we were in the right ballpark with it visually was just key to getting a lot of what comes, I think, unconsciously when you're watching the film.
You were one of the first hired at Pixar in the animation department and I'm interested in how you've seen Pixar grow over the years.
Stanton: What's fascinating about it is that in a weird way it's never been the same place for more than a year and a half, it's always changed. It's interesting for me to see people panic when we get to a certain size or Disney bought us or whatever and then they all have legitimate concerns but the sense of the act of just the fact that we're changing has never worried me because that's all I've ever known. It's almost this consistent rhythm of change. The thing that's never changed that amazes me, is that if you were to go back and sort of gauge the atmosphere and the sensibility of the ten of us when I was first on, and then gauge it now with a thousand, it's no different. It's fascinating, it's a real experiment.
When we were really small, no matter what the job was, you got interviewed by everybody that was in the group because we cared more about what it was like to work with you late into the night than whether you were qualified for the job. So almost who you were mattered more than what your skills were and that in a weird way has not changed. It's almost like, if you get enough good apples in a barrel, the bad apples just can't stay and they just outnumber the bad apples. So it's sort of this positive form of attrition that's just sort of happened over the years and it's not a perfect place and nobody's perfect, but the reason everybody works so hard-- Somebody had an interesting point the other day, they said, we never get any leaks out of Pixar and yet we do nothing to be tight with our security about it and I think it's because everybody's happy and everybody loves this place and nobody wants to see it go away or falter. They don't want to contribute to putting a chink in the wall, so everybody keeps their mouth shut, which I think is more of a testament than anything to how happy people are working here.
I actually read a quote of yours recently that said, "the day we start thinking about what the audience wants we're going to make bad choices." I love that quote and I wanted you to elaborate more on that and how it plays into the way films get made here.
Stanton: Yeah. I've been saying that since Toy Story. Honestly, we were so driven on Toy Story, we just knew we wanted to make this kind of a movie and nothing was going to stop us no matter what anybody said. When the dust settled and the film came out and it was so well received, we realized so much of that was because we listened to our gut, and I would say the filmgoer part of our gut, not just the filmmaker.
We're all film geeks, we all go and see more movies than you guys ever could and we're all out-geeking each other and out-quoting each other. We love the movies and we are just as disappointed, just as frustrated, just as excited by all the same things. So we feel like that's the part of the film audience to trust -- the audience in ourselves. We don't need to guess what other people want. I don't go to see another filmmaker's movie hoping he's guessed what I want. I go to see it because I like his sensibility and I want to see what he wants to do next, or she wants to do next. Because that was such a direct reason Toy Story worked, because we just finally got to this point of crisis and said, let's just go with what we want, we've been trying to please people for all this time, that we just know that that is the way to stay from here on out, no matter what people say or do.
I think even if we had a film that didn't do well, that wouldn't stop us. I don't see any good from trying to second guess – that just feels like you'll be spinning in a circle for the rest of your life because there'll always be somebody that likes something that you don't or doesn't like something that you do. You'll always find something to derail yourself so why listen to that. You can't please everybody.
That makes a lot of sense… You're writing John Carter of Mars, right?
Stanton: I am. Me and Mark Andrews.
Is it going to be CGI or live action or a mix?
Stanton: We don't know. We honestly don't know, because it's clearly got to be a hybrid of some sort and we're going to basically spend the first -- this year for sure -- just worrying about the story. That's one thing I've learned working on all these movies, is there's plenty of time and very quick ways to answer what way you're going to make something look and you can use it as a crutch to distract yourself from the hard work of making your story work. So we're just completely not even thinking about that stuff. This year is just about writing the script to make it as good as it can possibly be.
And are you worried about the violence in the books?
Stanton: No, no. We'll find the proper venue to put the movie out.
So is this still going to be in the Pixar vein?
Stanton: Who knows? Honestly, this is the pollyanna year where you're just like, let's just make it the movie it should be and then everybody can wring their hands and figure out how the best way is to show it, rate it, distribute it, all that stuff. That should all be decided on based on the story, so it's just about the story now.
Last question: What are your five favorite films? Not to put you on the spot…
Stanton: Really? Films in general?
Stanton: Lawrence of Arabia. Lion in Winter. Cool Hand Luke. Gallipoli. And a toss up between, for number five, is Close Encounters or Cinema Paradiso.
Those are two you can't compare!
Stanton: I know!
Thanks to both Andrew Stanton at everyone at Disney for one of the most amazing interviews I've ever had. It has always been a dream of mine to interview one of the brilliant minds from Pixar and it was an honor to see it come true. Wall-E arrives in theaters this coming weekend and is definitely a film you do not want to miss!
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LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- President Bush and Sen. John Kerry feuded Thursday over the nation's economy, with the Republican incumbent boasting about the impact of his "well-timed tax cuts" and his Democratic rival bemoaning a new report of rising poverty.
"Because we acted, our economy since last summer has grown at a rate as fast as any in nearly 20 years," Bush said during a trip to this swing state where he tried to charm undecided voters. "Because we acted, the people of this country are working."
Later at a rally in Albuquerque, Bush said "The unemployment rate across our country is 5.5 percent. That is well below the national average of the 70s, the 80s and the 90s. ... We are moving forward. We're not gonna go backward."
Kerry, who was wooing undecided voters in Minnesota, pointed to a Census Bureau report that said the number of poor people rose by 1.3 million last year and the ranks of people without health insurance swelled by 1.4 million -- the third straight annual increase for both statistics.
"Today confirms the failure of President Bush's policies for all Americans," Kerry said at a town hall meeting in Anoka, Minn. "While George Bush tries to convince America's families that we're turning the corner, slogans and empty rhetoric can't hide the real story."
Kerry said the census numbers are evidence of how much is at stake in this presidential race and pledged that a Kerry-Edwards administration would serve as a "champion for the middle class and those struggling to join it."
"I don't believe that four years of lost jobs, lower wages, higher health care costs, higher tuitions and tax cuts for the few are the best we can do," he said.
Bush's trip to New Mexico, a state he lost by a scant 366 votes in 2000, followed a weeklong stay at his Texas ranch. It is his first stop on a tour of eight states before the Republican National Convention next week in New York.
Kerry already made four trips to New Mexico this year, and this marked Bush's fourth.
Jabbing the Democrats, Bush painted Kerry as a tax-and-spend politician who has made expensive promises.
"There's not enough money to tax the rich to pay for all his promises," Bush said as his supporters waved signs reading "Viva Bush." "If he gets elected, he's going to tax you. But the good news is we're not going to let him get elected."
Bush said the economy is improving after a recession, corporate scandals and the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, and "one of the reasons we've overcome these obstacles is because of well-timed tax cuts."
But the president had to compete for attention in New Mexico with Kerry's running mate John Edwards, who appeared in nearby Messila. Edwards' plane was parked near Air Force One at Las Cruces International Airport.
Also seizing on the poverty report, Edwards questioned why Bush did not mention the increase in the number of poor.
"The president of the United States came here today to this community and what did he have to say about this?" Edwards asked. "Not a word. Remained completely silent."
Then, Edwards said he was told that Bush asked New Mexico residents to re-elect him for four more years "so he can continue the good that he's doing."
"I don't know about you but I don't know how much more of this good American people can take," Edwards said.
In Farmington, Bush said his administration was championing health savings accounts so that families can save tax-free for their health care. "We've expanded community health centers for low-income Americans," he said. "We will continue to do so over the next four years."
Reaching beyond his base, Bush brought former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a moderate Republican who the president recalled had stood with him in the ruins of the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Giuliani will speak on the first night of the convention.
"We need someone who is going to understand that we have to remain firm against terrorists," Giuliani said in Farmington where supporters waved signs that read: "Registered Democrats for Bush." "We can't change our mind this day and the next day and the day after."
Campaigning for her husband in Ohio, Teresa Heinz Kerry also talked about the economy. "If the economy is turning around, it's obviously turning around in circles," she said.
Read more Election 2004 online
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Not My F***ing Problem
i would hang up the second he called me names. i do NOT tolerate that AT ALL.
sorry hes being a douche. you shouldnt feel one iota bad for putting him on child support, if he wasnt helping.
Don't feel bad, these men deserve what they get. I would also hang up next time he talks to you that way.
This is completely his deal; not yours. he did it to himself.
You gotta do what you got to do momma. My ex husband and I got along fine but when he was just giving me a few bucks here and there you better believe I took him to CS. He was pissed at first but he realized I could take him for a lot more and now he's fine with it.
My ex is 30K in arrears and hasn't spent a second in jail.
Just because you file doesn't mean you'll get it steadily.
I really dont know what they're going to do, really don't care to be honest. Here in TX, they said he could have his wages garnished which wont happen because he gets paid in cash, have his liscense suspended, but most of all jail time depending on the amount. I guess thats what he is so peeved about. He better hope they don't ask me what I think they should do to him, cause I'm going throw the book at him lol