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Local Residents Support Their Fire Departments by Testing Fire Safety Knowledge at www.BeFireSmart.com
From New York City to Madison Township, Ind., cities and towns of all sizes are watching a life saving institution struggle for funding, and in some cases close its doors: the community fire house. In fact, less than a quarter of U.S. fire departments are operating with sufficient budgets, according to a 2008 National Fire Protection Association survey. To curb this trend, 10 local departments can again turn to their own community residents to help them earn desperately needed funding: Liberty Mutual Insurance's $100,000 BeFireSmart Safety Pledge Program renews today, enabling community members to complete a fire safety quiz at www.BeFireSmart.com that could lead to their local department earning one of ten $10,000 grants.
This is the second year of the BeFireSmart Safety Pledge Program, designed to help America's fire houses with new equipment or fire prevention program resources. Last year, Liberty Mutual awarded a combined $100,000 to these ten winning communities' fire departments: Ashburn, Va.; Bay City, Mich.; Carmel, Ind.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Crescent Springs-Villa Hills, Ky.; Oklahoma City, Okla.; Quincy, Mass.; Upton, Mass.; Westfield, Ind.; and Weymouth, Mass.
"Struggling cities and towns across the country are making drastic decisions to shutter firehouses or cut back on personnel due to budgetary constraints. This is an opportunity for residents to unite in support of our fire service men and women who tirelessly work to keep us safe and secure," said Greg Gordon, Liberty Mutual senior vice president, Consumer Marketing. "At the same time, the short quiz and tour through the interactive site will provide moms and dads with valuable information about protecting their families and homes from the devastation of a fire."
Now through October 31, residents can support their local fire departments by taking the online "Burning Questions" quiz at BeFireSmart.com to demonstrate their fire safety knowledge. The quiz asks true/false questions about where fires start and how to prevent and extinguish them. Those who complete the quiz, by answering ten questions correctly, pledge that they are "fire smart" and earn a credit for their local fire department. They can then spread the word by importing their e-mail contacts and sending a challenge to friends and neighbors to encourage them to make the same pledge. The ten fire departments that accumulate the greatest number of credits based on the size of their community will each receive a $10,000 donation for their station.
The Liberty Mutual BeFireSmart Safety Pledge donations will be awarded to fire departments based on the size of the communities they serve – small (less than 10,000 residents), medium (between 10,000 and 100,000 residents) and large (greater than 100,000 residents). Communities must have a minimum participation of 1 percent of their population to be eligible.
About BeFireSmart.com
There are vast resources for parents at www.BeFireSmart.com to help them prepare their families about fire safety and to prevent home fires from occurring. The site includes games, instructional videos, interactive fire safety quizzes and a tool to build your own fire escape plan. The fast and fun kids' section also features a downloadable coloring book that tells a story about the importance of never hiding from a firefighter during a fire. The site also offers classroom lesson plans for teachers, and resources for firefighters.
About Liberty Mutual Group
"Helping people live safer, more secure lives" since 1912, Boston-based Liberty Mutual Group (Libertymutualgroup.com) is a diversified global insurer and fifth-largest property and casualty insurer in the U.S. based on 2009 direct written premium. Liberty Mutual Group ranks 71st on the Fortune 500 list of largest U.S. corporations, based on 2009 revenue. The company has over 45,000 employees located in more than 900 offices throughout the world. The eighth-largest auto and home insurer in the U.S., Liberty Mutual (libertymutual.com) sells full lines of coverage for automobile, homeowners, valuable possessions, personal liability, and individual life insurance. The company is an industry leader in affinity partnerships, offering car and home insurance to employees and members of more than 12,000 companies, credit unions, professional associations and alumni groups.
Community News You Can Use
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Saturday, September 11, 2010
Fire Safety Pledges Can Earn Local Fire Departments $10K in Funding From Liberty Mutual Insurance
Local Residents Support Their Fire Departments by Testing Fire Safety Knowledge at www.BeFireSmart.com


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Public Art/Sing for Hope Pianos
"To New York With Love In Loss"
2017 Sing for Hope Pianos
This year I wanted to create a piano that acts as a love letter and homage to the NYC subway. I've been in love with the NYC subways since I moved here 8 years ago. I think it perfectly represents the energy, diversity, and amazing mixture of history-laden solidity and the constant change and fluidity of NYC. Using multiple materials (including collaged newspapers, acrylic photo transfers, paint and drawing techniques) I created a somewhat surreal and disjointed world that highlights the labyrinthine architectural world of the subway system- tunnels, platforms, and trains - with a mix of realistic and abstracted people/portraits layered into this landscape. Found text (in the form of New York Times articles and advertisements from June 2016 and February 2017, subway advertising, and pieces of the post-election, subway therapy post-it wall) is layered under and into the piece as well.
I initially wanted to capture the diversity of the people who rely on this transportation system and how it can create both intimacy and anonymity. However, given current events - which for me were full of personal and national loss - I found myself imagining what these spaces would look like without all of us and the emptiness and decay that would result from our absence. I found myself painting empty stations and trains filled only with shadowy figures overlaying stories and images of a bustling and turbulent metropolis. Some sections are clear cut and unflinchingly realistic while others blur and shift, allowing the viewer to fill in the gaps in the visual story.
If you wait and watch, you will find all of humanity in the NYC subway. It is glorious, ghastly and everything in between, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I created a piece that lets us reflect upon NYC as personified by this shared space and to recognize that all of it - the good, the bad, and the indifferent - is what makes us who we are - vital, flawed, and necessary.
For those of you interested in the evolution of the piece, here is a slideshow of the progress pics I took throughout the process. When the piano hits the streets in June I'll add street pics. Enjoy!
"Operation Freedom"
2016 Sing for Hope Pianos
Piano created on behalf of The Eric + Jessie Decker Foundation/Deckers Dogs
I created this piano for The Eric + Jessie Decker Foundation/Deckers Dogs. The Eric & Jessie Decker Foundation, through its fundraising efforts and community outreach, strives to positively impact the lives of United States military service members and veterans as well as animals. EJDF is committed to service to those who have served us via Deckers Dogs, which helps fund the rescue, care and training of service dogs for military veterans returning home with disabilities. For more information, visit their website at http://ejdeckerfoundation.com/
Here are some images of the piano in progress as well as images from its time on the streets (Liberty Plaza & Central Park, Literary Walk).
2015 Sing for Hope Pianos
Reflection - The act of reflecting or the state of being reflected. Something, such as light, radiant heat, sound, or an image, that is reflected. Serious thinking or careful consideration.
Transformation - The act or an instance of transforming. The state of being transformed. A mapping of one space onto another or onto itself.
I was working on a series about dreams and visions, and my concept for this piano emerged from that. The design for this piano combines imagery and symbols of imagination, reinvention, vision, and reflection. Mirrors of different sizes are affixed in varying patterns around the piano. The mirrors become many things including the pupils of eyes, whole faces, and parts of peacock feather and butterfly wing patterning. Sculpted, textural elements and carefully laid glass add to the landscape of the piano. The entire design is a whirl of colorful abstracted faces, feathers, and other forms connected by fluid black lines. All of these images and shapes morph into and out of each other with pieces of the real world reflecting out of them and absorbing into them - a mix of the surreal and the mundane. You can get up really close and see yourself or catch fragments of the world behind and above you even as you sink into the world of the piano. People are constantly feeding off what we see, hear, and experience, and we reinvent ourselves in ways small and large in response. It is my hope that the piano will capture some of the fluidity, joy and strangeness of reflection and transformation: of seeing ourselves and our surroundings in another context.
My piano was located under the DUMBO Archway from June 5, 2015 - June 21, 2015. A big thank you to the DUMBO BID for taking such good care of the piano and for arranging so many wonderful events with and around it. Special thanks also go out to all the Sing for Hope staff and interns, my fellow piano artists, and to everyone who contributed to my Indiegogo campaign. I could not have made the piano without you. Thank you!
UPDATE: Reflection/Transformation has found it's forever home! It is now residing in NYU's Hospital for Joint Diseases in the Rusk Rehabilitation Unit.
Here is the evolution, in pictures, of my 2015 Sing for Hope Piano "Reflection/Transformation" from concept sketch to it's life on the streets:
Super Bowl XLVIII Piano
2014 Sing for Hope Piano
In late 2013 and early 2014 I had the priviledge and pleasure to work with 11 students from Sing for Hope's arts education classes to create a New York themed piano for display at the 2014 Super Bowl! The NFL had requested a New York themed piano so I had each of the students tell me what their favorite part of NYC was and why. Using source images of the places they chose, they designed (singly & in teams) compositions of those places, transferred them to the sides of the piano & painted them (most of them in under 4 hours). I connected all of their pieces with silhouettes I added of people going about their lives. The NY masses! People watching was an activity mentioned by a good half of the students and, as it's one of my favorite activities, it seemed appropriate to have the piano crawling with people.
I designed and painted the composition on the top and front of the piano depicting Times Square. Since all of the students were such rock stars, I decided they all needed to have their faces on billboards in Times Square - or at least on my piano version of Times Square. So I painted all of their portraits on the top of the piano. I painted 13 portraits in TWO DAYS! That's a personal record for me.
Here are images of the piano in the studio where we worked on it. Images here are a mixture of my work and the students work.
"What Dreams May Come"
2013 Sing for Hope Pianos
"What Dreams May Come" was my first Sing for Hope Piano. I envisioned a piano covered in intertwined faces and bodies with hints of a fantastical landscape behind, in, and through it. To create it, I cast the faces and limbs of adults and children from all over NYC using plaster bandages and attached the casts to the piano. I then created additional texture with super heavy gesso. The piano was then painted with acrylics - connected throughout by the deep-blue line work that became tree branches, waves, flares of sunshine, and swirling winds, winding through this dreamscape.
The piano was installed at Herald's Square and Lincoln Center in June of 2013. See the slideshow below for process and on the street pics.

subset: commoncrawl


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I tried on bathing suits today.
Enough said.
Sometimes we have to make sacrifices for our kids and they wanted to go swimming AT A PUBLIC POOL...
I was not a happy Momma...but I sucked it up {and in} and was relatively okay with the results - boy shorts saved the day!!!! So I was left with enough emotional energy to blog!!!
This Saturday a certain somebody from blogland will be paying an extra "special" visit to my blog. She's a sweetie and I know will fit right in!!! I'll be swapping with another certain someone...but we'll let that remain a "mystery" until the day arrives! I hope you'll stop by and hop around to the other blogs...There will be lots of freebies to be had!
|Thanks to Tessa from Outside the Classroom for organizing this fun event!
|Click above to purchase it for yourself!!!! I just know you'll love it!!
|Edited: Click picture to download freebie! {It WILL work this time!}


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If Indiana Jones wrote epic fiction...
By Aria Cunningham
"Historians will say I am a liar,
But History is written by those who have hanged heroes."
Prologue to the movie Braveheart, 1996.
Where there moral characters in ancient times? It's a difficult question to answer but one that begs consideration. If you believe Hollywood, ancient history was a time of testosterone-fueled bloodshed inspired by high hormones and a lack of clothing. Sadly, classical sources do little to dispel this skewed perspective. History is taught as a series of unrelated events, usually following the shift of power from one conquest to the next. Our understanding of time is broken into Ages, organized by the technology we used to implement death: Stone, Bronze, Iron, etc. Even archaeology is influenced by death and destruction, the best sources for excavation being tombs and cities buried by war.
Taken together, we have a pretty messed up understanding of ancient life, one that suggests mankind was dominated by unscrupulous characters obsessed with war. Aside from the Bible, we rarely discuss the details of everyday life, and the societal ethics that must have influenced ancient man. We lose sight of the real people who lived, loved and lost: the moral, spiritual people whom we must have much in common with.
There is perhaps no greater example of this skewed perspective than with Greek myth. The epic poems of Homer were written 400 years after the real events that took place at Troy, which raises the question about reliability (see the William Wallace quote above). Not only was Homer extremely biased toward Greek supremacy; he celebrated a culture of war. The heroes of Greek myth are warriors who bring wholesale death to Troy, and he glorified them.
In conducting research for my "Heroes of the Trojan War" series, I began to question: Is Homer's version of Troy a true picture of history?
I'm an archaeologist with a background in Late Bronze Age Mediterranean cultures. There is a multitude of evidence that the world of the Greek Heroes, from roughly 1600-1200 BC, was a complex landscape of international trade and diplomacy. It was a time of palatial grandeur, monumental architecture, and massive cultural interaction and tolerance. Taking those factors into consideration, the events that lead to the Trojan War paint a very different picture than the tale depicted by Homer. The world was complex, and the players in that world were too.
That was the kernel of inspiration for my retelling of the fall of Troy. I wanted to find the moral characters of the Late Bronze Age whose stories were stamped out by "those who hanged heroes". I wanted to explore the ethical standards those characters lived by and examine the circumstances that ultimately led to their destruction. Perhaps, in doing so, I could learn from their mistakes.
From that hope, I discovered a new Paris, one who lived up to his true name, Alexandros—which means "protector". Paris and Helen, more than any other Homeric characters, have been mistreated by historical retelling. The vilified prince, in reality, was an ambassador for Troy, well traveled and sophisticated. He would have interacted with countless kingdoms, cultures, and religions. From his own words in "The Princess of Sparta":
"It's a perverse tradition we honor. Kings adorn their halls with images of battles they won, the people they've conquered." He paced as he vented, a lifetime of frustration pent up in that twisted truth. "I have brought kingdoms on the brink of war to peace, and my deeds will never be deemed as heroic as those who kill."
Often, in war and everyday life, the unscrupulous people win. Those who don't have a moral compass, who don't play by the same rules as ethical people, have an inherent advantage. The Trojan Horse is the perfect example. It was an offering of peace to the Gods and Trojans, but one poisoned by deceit. Ultimately, it was the Greek's willingness to take advantage of their enemies' honor that brought them "victory". I found that behavior unworthy of my respect.
Hopefully my readers will too. I hope they will find cause to celebrate a moral character that chooses life over death. I hope they cheer Paris' goodness and see it as strength instead of a weakness. Yes, the tale for Troy ends in tragedy. But, the epic struggle of good verse evil, of right over wrong, of love above hate— that fight doesn't take place on a battlefield. And the heroes who embody it deserve a rightful place on our bookshelves and in our history.
About the Book:
The historically faithful retelling of the epic love that sparked the Trojan War and has captivated the world for 3,000 years…
The star-crossed lovers at the crux of the tragic tale are depicted as you've never seen them before. Helen, no longer the seductress of Homer's poems, begins as a princess of Sparta: honorable, loyal, with promise to become a powerful queen. Her lauded beauty is more curse than blessing, inciting lust and jealousy in the greedy kings who would make her their prize. Paris is a noble prince of Troy, whose reputation for fairness and fortitude precede him as an Ambassador. Unjustly cursed at birth by a dark omen claiming he will cause the destruction of Troy, Paris is a haunted figure, a man who has never known love.
Until the day the Fates intervene and Paris travels to Mycenae as an ambassador of Troy. He meets Helen, and two souls linked by common destiny and purpose are reunited. Their love becomes legend, provoking the greatest war of ancient history, shaking the foundations of the world, and paving the way for the rise of Greece and Rome.
TRADE PAPERBACK Amazon $12.99 ~ Amazon UK £8.99 ~ Amazon EU €10.99 | KINDLE US $5.99 ~ UK £3.99 ~ EU €4.99 | ALL OTHER E-READERS Kobo $5.99 ~ Nook $5.99 ~ Apple $5.99
"I quickly found my ideas of Helen the bratty beauty fall away, and be replaced with a more female empowered version. What Cunningham quickly reminded me of, is that there are many sides to one story, and I might just prefer this romantic one the best!" iErlynn @ Books Hug Back.
"An intricate web of conflict; honor, power, family, love, sex and the powers of the Gods. It transported me to a world of mystical proportions and took me on a journey where I rooted for my heroes, always fearful of what the star-crossed lovers' fate might be. Powerful, gripping, sexy." C.T. Hayes, Slackwire Films
Meet the Author:
Inspired at an early age by the adventures of Indiana Jones, Aria Cunningham studied marine archaeology at UC Berkeley. In 2004, she set forth to create her own adventures and helped excavate a Roman palace from 200 AD at Tel Dor, Israel.
Continuing her old world education, she travelled the expansive fjords of Norway, castle hopped from Wales to the Rhineland, and explored the funeral complexes along the Egyptian Nile. She is an avid scuba diver who has navigated shipwrecks on the ocean floor, the immense kelp forests off the Channel Islands, and the legendary Cenote caverns of the Yucatan.
Aria has a Master's degree in the Cinematic Arts from USC and currently lives off the coast of Southern California.


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ELEMENT 2595 Hoover St. The Shrine Collection the Two Nine
*Disclaimer: Individual unit specifications and features may vary. Photos shown here are not meant to be representative of all units. Please consult with a leasing representative for more specific information. Measurements, dimensions, and angles depicted in floor plans are approximations only, and are made by third parties. Stuho does not accept any liability for the representations and/or claims made in these floor plans.
✔ Fall-2019 Spring 2020 Full Year This apartment complex offers students a quiet affordable lifestyle near shops and restaurants. Located on the North side of campus blocks away from USC these units are perfect for students who want large enough units for themselves or to share. With all utilities included, there isn't much to ask for! NOTE: pictures shown are of renovated unit; not all units are renovated. Consult with a leasing representative to confirm. Pre-leasing for Fall 2019 - Spring 2020
Distance to Campus:
Contact us TODAY for more information:
Call: (323) 731-1034Email: leasing @stuho.com


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The amount of business knowledge in the group is invaluable in my career going forward. Cowtown has given me the chance to learn from experts in an array of industries, and helps me make sound investment decisions. Also, working with startups brings a level of excitement that is hard to find. It is enjoyable to assist in creating something new and help guide how the market chooses to adopt it.Mike B.,
An angel is a high net-worth individual who invests in startup or early stage companies in exchange for an equity share. All Cowtown Angels members must be accredited investors, meaning they must meet one of the following criteria:
• Have individual or joint net worth that exceeds $1,000,000 excluding the value of one's primary residence
• Have an income exceeding $200,000 in each of the two most recent years, or joint income exceeding $300,000, and a reasonable expectation of the same income level in the current year
For more information on accredited investor criteria, please refer to the SEC Guidelines.)
Angel investing is a unique stage of private equity funding. Typically, angels invest after entrepreneurs have invested personal funds and exhausted resources from friends and family to start their businesses. Before a venture has reached later stages, where they may appeal to venture capital firms, angels provide the critical funding to truly bring an idea to market.
While there is a potential for high returns, angel investing can be extremely risky. As a result, many angels seek membership within an angel group where they not only have access to better deal flow, but can also leverage the expertise and experience of other angels within the group. This leads to a higher quality due diligence process and eventually to better deals. More importantly, angels are able to invest smaller amounts in a greater number of deals to develop a diversified portfolio with attractive returns, while entrepreneurs are still able to acquire the necessary amount of capital.
An angel network is an organization made up of members interested in investing in startup and early-stage companies. Members pay annual dues in order to gain access to high-quality investment opportunities beyond their individual network and participate in the angel investment process.
It is important to note that Cowtown Angels is not a fund and does not invest as a group. Members collaborate on due diligence and pool investment funds to create critical mass. Each member, however, makes individual investment decisions and understands that investments in early-stage, privately held ventures are risky and can be highly illiquid. Typical angel investments can take years before capital is returned and, in some cases, the company goes out of business and no money is returned.


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BriefBuy Men's Underwear Store
BriefBuy goes beyond the expected. We bring you traditional options as well as new trends in men's underwear. You'll find trusted Brands you know, plus exciting new Brands with awesome new styles and fabrics — Explore — Maybe you'll find a new fave.
BriefBuy Exploration Guide
From here you can easily:
Explore New Brands, Fabrics | Shop by Style | Shop by 'Best for' Category | Shop by Product Feature | Shop by Brand | View products by Featured Brand Cool Cloze
Explore Trendsetting New Brands and Fabrics
Why bother trying new underwear options when, if you're like a lot of guys we know, you think the cotton undie style you've been wearing since high school is still working for you? Because new designs and new fabrics, like Modals, Bamboo Silk, Milk Silk, are more comfortable in a variety of ways. Compared to traditional and cotton underwear these new options are:
- Softer, soo soft baby clothes are made from Modals — definitely soft enough for the boys
- Cooler and lighter weight
- Quicker drying and have better moisture management, so you won't get swamped out in soggy undies
- Stretchy and flexible so they fit better. Traditional underwear attempts to fit you based on standard sizes of S-4XL, but this only approximates your real size. The 4-Way stretch of these new materials comfortably stretches around your contours which creates a personalized fit for you
If you keep buying the same old thing, you'll never experience all this comfort. So try a pair from the Cool Cloze Bamboo Silk, Modal or Milk Silk collection. Also checkout Bamboo low rise Briefs.
For Boxers, take a look at Nth Degree's modern design which gives you the freedom of a Boxer with the support of a Brief. Learn more about all the new Trendsetters, or….
Shop All Brands by Style
Shop our selection of quality Brands by Style, which includes:
- Boxer Briefs
- Long Leg Boxer Briefs
- Low and Mid Rise Boxer Briefs
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- Boxers
- Briefs
- Full Rise Briefs
- Low and Mid Rise Briefs
In addition to 'standard' style Briefs, Boxer Briefs, Boxers, you'll also find options in leg length as well as Rise – full, mid and low. Rise determines how much coverage you get. To learn about Rise visit our Style Guide. Shop by style:
BriefBuy – Shop by 'Best for' Category
Here's a shortcut to find what you need
Shop BriefBuy by Product Feature. Soft and Lightweight | Breathable and Cool | Flex Fit
Click icon to shop
Featured Brand – Trendsetters by New Men's Brand Cool Cloze
These Cool Cloze Boxer Briefs are made from fantastic fabrics which are ultra soft, lightweight, highly breathable, ultra comfortable. Experience the Cool Cloze comfort – try one.
BriefBuy Men's Underwear Store
We at BriefBuy are dedicated to giving you choices from the traditional as well as the new genres of men's undies. That's why we go beyond the expected to bring you Men's Underwear from exciting new brands, in awesome new styles and fabrics. And, we strive to ensure that you have an effortless shopping experience every time you BriefBuy!


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In each Query Builder 2 report, there is an option to use a saved report as a filter on Tag Code. If you are not familiar with Query Builder 2, please review the documentation first.
In order to use this feature, you must have at least one saved report in your My Reports folder that only contains the Tag attribute and the Count metric.
This report should be saved as static, by unchecking the Keep report prompted option, as highlighted below.
Once you have your target tags saved in a static report, you can use that report as a filter on another report. In Query Builder 2, near the bottom of the Index of attribute filters, there are two options for filtering on Tag Code with a saved report. These are only different if you are planning to use more than one report as a filter. The Intersection option will use the intersection of tag codes and the Union option will use the union. If you are only using one report, it does not matter which option you select.
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Whoever declared dogs don't belong in the church never met Erin, witnessed her impact upon others, nor felt the persuasive power of her personality. I never believed animals could be allowed into a place of worship and the notion wasn't given much thought but sheer luck or a higher power would convince me otherwise. Sunday mornings were usually spent strolling about downtown Savannah and the route took us past a major congregation where folks were often spotted outside engaging passersby into a conversation about the perks of attending service with that particular church. Usually Erin was guided to the other side of the street to avoid conversation in which I was unwilling to enter but one day a dialogue was initiated by me with a young lady bustling about the doorway.
She was promptly disarmed at the sight of a dog thus the topic of conversation revolved around my fur-kid instead of whether I wanted to attend church. Turns out her name was Erin as well and she was impressed by her canine namesake accomplishments as a therapy dog and then an invitation to attend church was extended my direction. It was revealed to them how I'd only attend if they permitted Erin to accompany myself inside the sanctuary and while I figured there was no possibility of that happening; the pastors decided she would not be a distraction so permission was granted for upcoming services. It was really surprising as who permits non-humans into a place of worship but then again there are very few four-legged creatures with the charm, temperament, and obedience skills of my girl.
We appeared the following week prepared to blend in with the crowd to hear God's message but instead of being shown to our pew, Erin was used as an instrument and immediately we were asked to be door greeters where her irresistible personality would put congregation members at ease, nothing like stroking a lovable pooch to ease tension. The masses that streamed past us offered nothing but compliments, positive remarks or paused to give Erin the attention she yearned for, it was a great beginning to our religious days. Over time, we continued in our capacity as door greeters with occasional stints as bulletin distributors thrown in and regardless of our function, the feedback remained upbeat.
Once the service began, an available seat was located near the back where Erin laid at my feet for the duration; she remained prone as I stood during hymns and I reiterated the command "stay" as she remained alone during communion. She waited patiently, not moving an inch as I departed the vicinity and upon return, she happily greeted me with a tail wag while praise was heaped upon her as that's a difficult feat for any dog. On occasion she would drift asleep and snores could be heard much to the delight of folks around us, I'd be embarrassed but neither Erin nor our seat mates seemed to care. If nothing else, I learned to have thicker skin while being more tolerant of snoring doggies in public :)
Due to Erin's background with children and her popularity amongst the church youth, it was suggested that we become part of a youth group. That was an easy decision as I loved to see my angel interact with kids; it was so satisfying to watch her neck being hugged, belly being rubbed, or to witness her lying atop some youngsters lap without a care in the world. Unfortunately, this only lasted a few weeks as I witnessed the kids battling for control over her leash and undivided attention so we stopped participating and returned to greeting duties. It was a good assignment with great kids but my fur kid overshadowed everything else so it ended despite the protests. Life at church continued for several years until I felt a break from service was needed and Erin deserved to become a dog again. I'm very proud as I recall how she had so much fun, positively touched life's, broke another ceiling for canines, and made many new friends along the way; it was an amazing experience that will live on forever in the hearts of many!!
"You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us" ~ Robert Louis Stevenson


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Now days, Mobile Repairing training is a popular career option for all students. There are various training institute for mobile repairing in Bhavnagar but Advance Institute of Latest Technologies is different from others
as we provide you training on fully practical or live motherbord.
We always enhance the skills of the student by keeping him update with the current Smart Mobile Repairing trends and methods. Learn New and Smart Mobile repair techniques from us and become an expert in this field. As we are one of the reputed mobile hardware training institutes in Bhavnagar, we have all latest and advance tools and machines and fully equipied modern labs where students get practical training of various mobile phones.
Our Mobile chip level and card level repairing course designed in such a way that it covers every topics of basic and advanced knowledge of repairing. After the Course, we provide life time techinical support and ISO certificate to all students of our institute.


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Peteetong! It's the home of Larry WACHS, bold leader of unwilling, on the Regular Guys Show, Atlanta's most listened to. Currently heard on Rock 100.5/Atlanta, GA and Rock 105.5/Macon, GA, and one of Atlanta's top Jews…ok...and his cats.
...he gets high on you.
And the role is being played by...
Dude, So, they have JT Wu playing Tom Sawyer. So what? They have a white kid playing Huck Finn!!! (Uh huh, before you complain, STFU and go back and read BOTH books, Tom Sawyer as well as Huck Finn, then tell me I am wrong... Huck was black!)
Please cite the passages from the book that lead you to your interesting literary hypothosis.
Posted by:
Tom, King of Johns Creek |
November 09, 2007 at 07:58 AM
Geddy Lee has announced the 2007 version of the rock classic "Tom Sawyer" has been rewritten. It now goes like this: "Today's Tom Sawyer is JT Wu and Huckleberry Finn is now a Jew"......
I like that better. Now learn to golf.
Posted by:
gunnie the gwinnettian |
November 09, 2007 at 10:13 AM
The comments to this entry are closed.


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You can enjoy The Four Seasons By Candlelight at Nottingham's Royal Concert Hall on Sunday, November 1, starting at 3pm.
The Four Seasons has become one of the most celebrated pieces of classical music ever written and remains as popular today as when it was first performed. The verve and virtuosity of the 18th century is brought to life in this enchanting concert staged in an elegant candle-lit setting with an evocative programme crowned by Vivaldi's sublime masterpiece.
Conducted from the violin by David Juritz it features the Mozart Festival Orchestra in full 18th century costume.
Call the box office on 0115 9895555.


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City Council
Mayor Rod Woodbury
Mayor Rod Woodbury (2015 - 2019)
Mayor Rod Woodbury was first elected to the Boulder City Council in June 2011, and was declared elected as Mayor after the Close of Filing in 2015. He was sworn in as Mayor on June 23, 2015. Mayor Woodbury is a native of Southern Nevada who has lived in Boulder City since he was 11 years old. He and his wife, Leslie, have seven children.
Council Member Woodbury is a small business owner as the President and managing shareholder of his law firm, Woodbury Law. He has been active as a youth sports coach and as a leader for local Boy Scout Troop 213.
Mayor Woodbury comes from a family tradition of public service in Southern Nevada, dating back to the 1950s when his great-uncle Dr. Clare Woodbury served on the Clark County School Board. Mayor Woodbury's father, Bruce Woodbury, was a Clark County Commissioner for 28 years, and his sister Melissa Woodbury currently serves as a State Assemblywoman in the Nevada Legislature.
Mayor Woodbury currently serves as the City Council representative to the Southern Nevada Health District Board, Civilian Military Council Executive Board, Regional Transportation Board, and Clark County Regional Flood District Board.
City Council Main Page
State of the City Announcement
We Stand with Las Vegas
Mayor's Corner
Mayor's Vision for Boulder City
Mayor Rod Woodbury
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Oracle WebCenter and Fusion Middleware 11gJuly 9, 2009 at 7:07 am | Posted in BEA, collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Microsoft SharePoint, Notes/Domino, Oracle, portals, Web 2.0 | 5 Comments
Oracle's analyst summit in mid-June provided a good look at their plans for Fusion Middleware 11g and WebCenter (released July 1st for download; see summary of features here). Now that we're out of non-disclosure mode (and into "please disclose!" mode) I'd like to share my high-level impressions. They covered a ton of stuff, but my view is biased towards my coverage area of portals with connections to search, productivity, and collaboration. Other Burton Group analysts were also in attendance from our Identity and Privacy Strategies team and our Application Platform Strategies team (see Anne Thomas Manes' thoughts here).
First, although Oracle owns 4 portal products, all the portal-related time was spent on WebCenter. Sure, other portals were mentioned in bullets as examples of how they can plug in (or consume WebCenter's social software), but it was clear WebCenter is the leading actor here (and supporting actor in the stories of the SOA, identity, and enterprise application teams). This confirms what I (and Oracle) has been saying: that WebCenter is the primary portal and that the other 3 (Oracle Portal, WebLogic Portal, and WebCenter Interaction née Plumtree) will be supported and have their die-hard fans but will not be best for new portal projects.
It was helpful to hear Oracle frame its collaboration/portal/search/productivity/social software ambitions in relation to Microsoft SharePoint. For all its plusses and minuses, SharePoint provides a common point of reference against which to measure. They described how they line up with SharePoint as an alternative, can coexist with it, and where they surpass it. This is what IBM should have done with Quickr+Connections at Lotusphere.
As with SharePoint, WebCenter provides an impressive set of functions in one box. There is often better integration between WebCenter and other Oracle assets (like their applications and development tools) than Microsoft where other groups can sometimes get away with ignoring what the SharePoint and Office group does.
There are numerous SharePoint analogies in WebCenter. From conversations with the execs there I found that some are intentional and in other cases they say SharePoint copied them (well, copied AquaLogic User Interaction)!
- Business Dictionary as a role based catalog of information assets. Seems like SharePoint's Business Data Catalog. This should be an interesting battle since SharePoint's BDC is clearly a version 1.0 work-in-progress and Oracle has a lot of expertise to bring here being a database company at heart.
- Federated search. 'Nuff said.
- Office integration. Clients I speak with expect Microsoft will always have the best Office integration, but there are cases where Microsoft's internal silos or some good ideas can expose openings. Oracle showed a nice Word sidebar for document management that had people, versions, etc.
- Slide sorter. This was a neat feature that SharePoint offered, but Oracle's version seems to leapfrog it. They demoed picking all the slides for a sales deck. Oracle calls this a "folio" or compound document. Oracle acquired a neat little company called "Outside In" that has sophisticated filters for productivity files. Blending this into Web Center can provide for some good Office integration.
Oracle did a fine job of acknowledging the need to work with SharePoint and others. But the meat boils down to their WSRP producer running on .NET, selective metadata consumption, and Ensemble (a reverse proxy solution). Hopefully this gets beefed up with more programmatic integration, discovery tools, and guidance so it requires less reliance on WSRP.
Of all the competitors, WebCenter is the newest architecture from the ground up. Being the youngest has its advantages. Since WebCenter is newly architected it feels like it more seamlessly integrates new concepts like tagging, linking, social connections, and REST services than IBM and MSFT where it's more bolted on. So they're better at utilizing these features across the suite that Microsoft and a little bit better than IBM.
But will Oracle – the whole company – give WebCenter the resources it needs to win the marketplace(not just the resources required to be a good and useful product)? In the Q&A session, Oracle President Charles Phillips said there are "No plans to have middleware broken out in reporting. We have lots of product lines, we're getting more with Sun… " This hits at the perennial knock on Oracle's efforts around knowledge infrastructure – lack of push and commitment. Oracle did talk about how much revenue Fusion pulled in, the growth rate, penetration, etc. That would indicate the company would have to care. But still, Microsoft manages to report on four breakouts (Client, Server and Tools, Online Services Business, Microsoft Business Division, Entertainment and Devices Division). Oracle sticks to two (Applications, Database and Middleware). Sun will add at least one more (servers and hardware). If Oracle is dedicated to the enormous space between enterprise apps and the database, breaking out middleware from the database would be a great way to track and prove this commitment.
Note: This is a cross-posting from the Collaboration and Content Strategies blog
JSR 286 Grows UpAugust 1, 2008 at 8:00 am | Posted in BEA, IBM, Oracle, portals, SAP | Leave a comment
A belated congratulations to the JSR 286 group, which went into final release in June. You can get the details here. Good job to Stefan Hepper of IBM, the specification lead, who must have had a tough time herding the cats on this one. Right out of the gate it's good to see JSR 286 getting some attention from the portal vendors.
Of course it's been in development for quite some time. When JSR 168 was being created a number of enhancements were shifted to JSR 286 to keep from slowing down the original portal spec's ratification. The most important features of JSR 286 are inter-portlet communication (IPC) and alignment with the ongoing work on Web Services for Remote Portlets 2.0 (WSRP 2.0).
Vendor support has been promised soon as well (or is already here in the case of IBM).
- IBM quickly announced support in for WebSphere Portal 6.1 (as well as for WSRP 2.0). Way to track the standards guys!
- Oracle's ALUI and Oracle Portal don't have support yet. I'm told Oracle Portal may get it in 11gR1 release or later
- JBoss (Red Hat ditched its own portal in favor of the JBoss portal after acquiring JBoss) is promising support in Version 2.7, due out in Q3 2008 according to CMS Watch.
- A document from someone at SAP coldly stated that "SAP supports and actively participates in this new standard as EG member. As this specification is in draft version, it is not supported in NW CE." I checked with my contacts at SAP and was told that JSR 286 is currently in scope for NetWeaver 7.0 Enhancement Pack 2, which is expected around October. I also noticed they did not vote on the standard. I wondered if this was a sign of lack of interest or a passive way to vote "no", but their analyst relations staff said it was in fact because their committee representative was in the hospital.
My guidance to portal architects though is to consider bypassing JSR 168 or 286 portlets and even WSRP and focus on creating web services for information that they want to expose. Once the data portion is available as a web service, any decent portal product can create a quickie portlet (maybe in JSR 168 or some proprietary format) from the WSDL of the web service so it can be used in a portal. And then you have the option of leveraging that interface through non-portal mechanisms as well.
I should mention JSR 301 here as well. Presentation models have changed since the original JSR 168 specification was created. JavaServer Faces (JSF), the most significant of the presentation models for Java and has spawned many proprietary and open source attempts to transform JSF interfaces into JSR 168 portlets. The JSR 301 specification is only in its early stages, but promises to standardize these bridging mechanisms. No solid word yet on what that's coming though.
Fusion Reaction: Oracle Fusion Middleware Gets Additional Nucleus from BEAJuly 1, 2008 at 5:24 pm | Posted in BEA, Oracle, portals | Leave a comment
I got a chance to talk to Oracle yesterday about how they plan to integrate the BEA middleware assets they picked up in their acquisition into their own middleware portfolio. Oracle let it be known that – no surprise – Oracle strategy is constant and BEA integrates into it. Fusion Middleware is the brand and it's all about Fusion in this integration strategy. Dictionary.com defines fusion as "a nuclear reaction in which nuclei combine to form more massive nuclei with the simultaneous release of energy." That seems to be what is happening at Oracle these days as the nucleus of Oracle and the nucleus of BEA (which had already combined with the nucleus from Plumtree) combine to form something pretty massive. And there is certainly a lot of energy being released, so that definition certainly applies.
Still, Oracle assures BEA customers that all products continue under "existing BEA support lifetimes", there's no forced migration, and license costs are grandfathered for existing customers. In fact, some support costs may come down since Oracle policy is to price support as a percentage of net price rather than list, but others could increase or decrease a bit since Tuxedo's pricing tiers get remapped to CPUs.
I won't comment much on development since that isn't my coverage area. I will say that JDeveloper is still the flagship development platform for Oracle. BEA Beehive is just in maintenance and Workshop is a freebie in the Eclipse Pack.
And now, the answer to the portal conundrum I wrote about in my "Four Portals of the Apocalypse" posting when Oracle announced its intention to acquire BEA. For portals, as expected, the winner is WebCenter. It's not that the others are dead, but WebCenter is the "hot" product they want to talk about first, connect everything to, and anoint with all the cool, buzzword-compliant enhancements. Users of the other portals (Oracle Portal, BEA WebLogic Portal, AquaLogic User Interaction aka Plumtree) need to figure out how soon a rewrite is going to be in their future since those products are in the "continue and converge" category (C&C). A C&C portal will keep going forward for existing customers for quite a while (Thomas Kurian publicly stated the lifecycle would be about 9 years), but will not have new customers steered towards it and will eventually be merged into WebCenter.
So, here's my recommended strategy based on which Oracle portal product you're using based on what I know so far. I've been told that more detailed migration plans will probably come out in 2-3 months:
- Oracle WebCenter: You lucky dog! You picked the winner. It's a rosy future for you, full of the best piece parts from other portal products, new Enterprise 2.0 functionality, and you'll meet lots of new friends at each annual WebCenter user's group meeting. For a new portal project being planned, WebCenter is the only reasonable choice in the Oracle portfolio unless you're into planned obsolescence.
- Oracle Portal or BEA WebLogic Portal: You're probably OK coasting along as is unless you fall into one of a few categories. If you're really thinking of adding the newest functionality (Enterprise 2.0) and architectural standards (REST, RIA) you'll want to start thinking about migration soon, although Oracle intends to have some WebCenter services plug into WebLogic Portal, Oracle Portal, and ALUI to be leveragable without migrating. And if you are in the rare situation of having a strategic portal with a long lifespan expected ahead of it (5+ years), you'll have to make a reminder for yourself in 2010 or so to start thinking about migration.
- AquaLogic User Interaction: The picture for ALUI users is pretty similar to that of Oracle Portal and BEA WebLogic Portal – it's in the C&C category so expect it to be supported for quite a while. Still, it's my personal opinion that Oracle will have a harder time with ALUI since it will be chopped up into more pieces and there are lots of legacy installations with deep customization. Also, ALUI has a .NET side to its heritage. In the Plumtree days they had spent quite a bit of effort on building out .NET support. For example, the Enterprise Web Development Kit (EDK) could be installed with either a Java or .NET (C#) development and there was a .NET version of the EDK is available as a dynamic link library (DLL). The .NET portlet creation capabilities are going to be rebranded as the Oracle WebCenter .Net Application Accelerator.
Oracle is rolling out a few new SKUs (packages) that will help portal owners.
- WebCenter Services combines the WebCenter Framework with some Oracle pieces (BPEL Worklist, their portlet bridge and JSR 168 container) and sprinkles some ALUI and WebLogic Portal pieces in. Ensemble is renamed Oracle Ensemble and put into services SKU and Analytics gets Oracle branding.
- WebCenter Suite has everything in WebCenter services as well as restricted licenses for content, Oracle Presence, BPEL Process Manager, and search. ALUI is renamed WebCenter Interaction and goes in the suite for now, although as of 11g there's nothing in ALUI that they'd recommend for new deployments. AL Collaboration is renamed WebCenter Collaboration and goes in the suite until they can roll out new collaboration in WebCenter 11g.
I was a fan of the BEA Pages and Pathways products, both of which will melt into Fusion Middleware. Pages melts into the WebCenter Framework. It will be part of WebCenter Composer for users to create mashups and its wiki and blog capabilities go into WebCenter Services in the 11g timeframe. Pathways melts into two separate places. Its social search merges into secure enterprise search and the social tagging merges into the 11g foundation.
All in all, this roadmap is pretty complete and as good as owners of Oracle Portal or BEA WebLogic Portal could have hoped for. Owners of complex, customized ALUI portals need to see the writing on the wall and plan to migrate to the new WebCenter model (method TBD by Oracle) or re-architect off the Oracle platform entirely. But one more telling statement about nuclear fusion may shed light on Oracle's strategy of unifying all its pieces under the Fusion umbrella. Wikipedia notes that "Artificial fusion in human enterprises has also been achieved, although not yet completely controlled." Ah, yes, how true. We still have to see how well this bit of fusion winds up being under control over the next few years.
Note: This is a cross-posting from the Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog
Portal Governance Case Study at BEA ParticipateMay 20, 2008 at 9:43 pm | Posted in BEA, Governance, portals | 1 Comment
I have been speaking on web and portal governance for 5 years now, and I find it difficult to provide clients with actual examples. It's not that they aren't out there, but that presenting on governance involves airing dirty laundry and most organizations don't want to do that. I recruited a speaker that gave a case study on their portal governance for a conference a few years ago, and it took a lot of searching to find that example (they were a public utility which helped). That's what made the portal governance presentation I saw at BEA Participate especially rare.
The speaker was Jackie Jajdzik, team lead at Weyerhaeuser. I would like to be able to claim I helped her with her governance strategy, but we've never spoken and yet she's done pretty much all of what I recommend a governance process consist of (hear my podcast on portal governance here). This includes deploying incrementally, putting it into a concise document, making the governance easy to find on the website, gathering and using metrics, and creating feedback loops.
I'll boil down the approach here. I apologize for any incorrect paraphrasing – these are my categories not hers. But these categories are what I tend to listen for from a client when discussing governance and Jackie had good answers to all of them – I was quite impressed.
Problem statement: 1600 websites, 500mm web pages accessed by 30,000+ users, no common access point, no governance and search indexed everything (for example, "benefits" returned myriad hits, confidential information would show up like resumes and disciplinary actions). Anyone could customize and there were a few standard portlets and communities. Users had total freedom and no standards to tie them down, and yet were unhappy. Key messages (safety being the most important to them) were lost, liability was an issue since everything was searchable and could show up on a home page, and support costs were growing.
Goals: Reflect unified company, manageable number of sites and communities, decrease management costs, easy to navigate, increased productivity. It was obvious from the presentation that these goals were derived from actual pain points and created with buy-in, not just picked from a list from some paper on how to do governance. She talked about how they received executive buy-in that was useful when they had to clamp down on formerly ungoverned sites. Also, they needed to borrow some staff from the business to trim the sites.
What they did: The homepage was reorganized based on usability studies and analytics. Deleted 400 sites, applied navigation to 120 sites, put limits on search. Their governance includes a concept she called "zoning". Zoning determines which technology to use from 3 options (community/project, conventional website, SharePoint). For example, if you want it indexed by search or have more than 200mb of storage you don't use SharePoint.
Organizational structure: Executive sponsor, public affairs / intranet mgr, standards and operating committee with operational support from IT and their library (taxonomy, search engine hinting) + task teams. Governance is looser for sites with smaller scope and tighter for enterprisewide sites.
Metrics and feedback loops: They do regular audits and have a site registry to track sites and classify them. There are quarterly meetings of the standards and operating committee. Satisfaction surveys track what users like and dislike, request features (biggest request is for social computing like blogs, wikis, and RSS), and how often they use it (don't trust weblogs alone for this information).
Outcome: Resulted in more root site usage, less complaints about finding information, less conflict with the business, information is more current.
Now if I can just find those public examples of written governance documents I get asked for too …
Can Oracle Convert BEA's Customers?May 16, 2008 at 3:20 pm | Posted in BEA, Oracle, portals | Leave a comment
This is the first of several posts I'll be doing about the BEA Participate conference that happened this week. For my first subject, I'll focus on the biggest issue for me this week: What light does this conference shed on how BEA and Oracle will mix?
This was a strange time for a BEA conference, coming on the 2 week anniversary of the closing of their acquisition by Oracle. There weren't a lot of balloons or cake to celebrate the acquisition – it was very quiet (as required by law and quarterly reporting deadlines). For example, Mark Carges (EVP Products and GM, BEA) kicked things off and didn't quite seem up to referring to BEA and Oracle as "we" yet. There was simply a dry reference at the beginning to "Our new owners, who you will meet later". After the one quick reference, the rest of the presentation was BEA business-as-usual.
The second presenter was indeed "the new owners" in the form of Hasan Rizvi, VP of Fusion middleware at Oracle. He showed a chart of all their middleware products and saying (I'm paraphrasing here) they are "best of breed, but of course BEA also has best of breed products in all these categories so that's why this is such a good combination". He said they will be doing "Welcome BEA Customers" events at 25 cities in the US/Canada and 25 in EMEA.
He introduced the BEA crowd to Oracle Fusion middleware and their tools. The crowd didn't seem very partisan, was attentive and soaked in the information. From my 7 years (on and off) of going to BEA conferences I can say that, like past BEA conferences, the vibe is one of a mature, techie environment. While JavaOne may have techies lounging on beanbags, playing videogames, and eating kiddie snacks while challenging each other to coding duels, the BEA conference attendees are mature programmers, in the second or third decade of their careers, confident in their abilities, who tend to understand the value of well architected systems. They like BEA although they don't need expensively produced videos making fun of their competition and they don't paint their hair in the company colors (both of which I've seen at other vendor conferences).
It's appropriate that the Oracle and BEA colors are within a few Pantone shades of the same red since the company colors don't represent a religious issue like it would be in some other acquisitions (the blue and purple devotees of Microsoft and Yahoo! wouldn't have mixed as easily). However, the BEA audience is technically adept and will require practical reasons and detailed roadmaps if they are going to buy into new Oracle+BEA solutions rather than shifting their development platforms, application server, portal, and BPM to IBM or open source. I can't wait to see these roadmaps, particularly in my area of portals, since there are many overlaps that will require sacrifices to resolve. The sacrifices will take the form of placing some products and customers on the sacrificial altar or placing profits on the alter due to the long-term inefficiencies of maintaining redundant products.
And, just to prove that in the end some people always stay loyal, I counted about 300 people in the packed "What's new with AquaLogic User Interaction" session. When the announcer asked "how many of you still call ALUI Plumtree?" about 75% of the audience raised their hands.
The Four Portals of the ApocalypseOctober 12, 2007 at 8:06 am | Posted in BEA, Oracle, portals | 2 Comments
ZDNet writes today that Oracle is making a bid for BEA for the demonic price of $6.66 billion. Well, the devil is in the details and there are plenty of them to hash out if this deal ever flies. There is a large degree of overlap in the application server, development tool, collaboration, and portal spaces between BEA and Oracle. At least BEA doesn't have a content management offering too, so Stellent is safe for now. I find it rather ironic that after writing in May about "How Many Portals Should a Vendor Offer?" that both Oracle and BEA have two sets of portal products on offer, now Oracle could have four (4!) portal products in its portfolio. I'd love to be a fly on the wall as they try to rationalize that one!
There have been rumors of Oracle (or others) buying BEA for quite a while, but it hasn't happened yet. For example, in May of 2004, Java.net reported "Faced with a tough, if not losing, battle for PeopleSoft, Oracle executives said Thursday that they were considering other acquisitions… Henley (CFO, Chairman) said Oracle had been 'looking at a variety of areas' but didn't identify any potential takeover targets. It has expressed interest in BEA as well as reserve over the price." Of course BEA was trading at about $8.00 a share in mid-2004 versus $18.05 at the moment.
Time will tell if this deal shall come to pass. It is not for me to judge the will of Carl Icahn, who has reportedly been pushing for a sale for quite some time now. This simply shows that Oracle is continuing to seek growth through acquisition and that BEA has been undervalued, which should came as no revelation to anyone.
BEA and Different Portals for Different FolksJuly 17, 2007 at 4:17 pm | Posted in BEA, Oracle, portals | Leave a comment
In my previous posting on How Many Portals Should a Vendor Offer I talked about how both Oracle and BEA have dual portal strategies. Since then I had a conversation with Shane Pearson of BEA on this topic. I still stand by my posting, but Shane did point out that BEA is dedicated to maintaining 2 SKUs. This means they are dedicated to 2 purchasable products to meet different needs. They are moving forward over time to unify the infrastructure underneath them and new add-ons will likely support both.
To clarify my posting, I don't think BEA has done anything wrong. There's no magic wand that can be waved when an acquisition occurs to instantly rationalize all the personnel, products, and technologies and integrate everything. My point is twofold:
1. A roadmap should be forthcoming from a vendor within a short time after an acquisition (about 3 to 4 months) to reassure existing and imminent customers that their current path will continue or let them know frankly that a product or technology will no longer be supported so they can plan for migration or another purchase. No one wants to be the last one to buy a product before it is discontinued.
2. It is my opinion that, as a buyer's advocate, software purchasers should be aware that as much as a vendor tries to make redundant services (caused by dual path strategies) under the covers transpearant, cracks start to form over time. These cracks are caused by fragmentation and take the form of higher costs (more specifically, costs that don't decrease over time as quickly as market pressures encourage), higher risk that a piece of redundant infrastructure that a user is dependant on will be eliminated, slightly lower support costs (especially as one set of infrastructure becomes more rare in the marketplace), and slightly more difficulty finding consulting and integration services. I don't know for sure that BEA will encounter this issue, but it is the norm and provides a reason for customers to be pessimistic in the long run.
Portal RoundtableMay 25, 2007 at 3:26 pm | Posted in BEA, BPM/Workflow, IBM, Microsoft SharePoint, Oracle, portals, SOA | Leave a comment
I ran a breakfast roundtable here at the SharedInsights Portal, Collaboration, and Content conference this morning and found it to be quite enjoyable and enlightening (despite the hotel dragging away the coffee and tea service too quickly…). The table had about a dozen attendees, mostly architects, and was a good cross section of portal implementations. A large food franchise, a few large government agencies, a major retailer, a vendor (not a portal vendor), a real estate firm, and an international utility were represented.
The primary issue they were all faced turned out to be integrating service oriented architecture (SOA) concepts into their portal environments. Point goes to Plumtree a few years ago who dedicated themselves to the "enterprise service bus" concept. Portals were originally created as "Swiss army knives" that could connect and adapt to all sorts of identity management, security, content management, and application products. It seems that need is still prevalent. Unfortunately, the vendors have been slipping into the mode of integrating the portals into their infrastructure stacks and playing favorites by connecting to their own infrastructure first and then allowing a standards based connector to everything else (blaming it on the other vendors if they can't take advantage of JSR 170, JSR 168, LDAP, etc.).
It was interesting that while the momentum is certainly in favor of Microsoft and IBM right now, none of the people at the table reported using them as their main portal. Instead it was BEA, Vignette, and a few Oracle. One was interested in open source as well. The table felt that the reason is that legacy environments are not going away, particularly for content management and portal. While many vendors can show a nice, unified stack now, that doesn't help the practical reality that organizations face with the large amount of built up legacy infrastructure. Governance is a key success factor then in getting each part of the organization to agree to corporate standards even if it is a little less useful for them. Optimizing enterprise-wide sometimes means a sub-optimal environment for those that heavily use another app that offers a portal.
Workflow was also important to the attendees. A few had workflow/BPM tools they wanted to hook up to the portal such as TIBCO and Ultimus, while others were interested in the more simple capabilities you get out of a portal itself.
How Many Portals Should a Vendor Offer?May 18, 2007 at 9:10 am | Posted in BEA, Oracle, portals | 2 Comments
I've often been asked how many portals a corporation should have (see my posting on "Portal Factories" for my answer to that one). But today the issue of how many portals a vendor should offer came into clear focus. Oracle and BEA both have two and, at least publicly, still insist that's an OK answer. I disagree, as a conversation with a client today put into focus for me.
So what justification is given?
Let's start with Oracle. The official word in the Oracle press release was
The WebCenter Framework will support portal and content integration standards including JSR 168, JSR 170 and WSRP 2.0 and will inter-operate with standards-based portals including Oracle Portal.
More recently, Peter Moskovits at Oracle said in InfoWorld
Peter Moskovits, product manager for WebCenter, replied that Oracle Portal and WebCenter Suite would coexist at least "for the foreseeable future."
Now on to BEA. They made similar statements when they acquired Plumtree
Because the two portals target fundamentally different aspects of the enterprise, BEA officials said the company plans to keep the Plumtree and BEA portal product lines separate.
WebLogic Portal targets companies using transactional portals in a J2EE application development environment, according to Mark Carges, BEA's CTO and executive vice president., Plumtree's portal is designed for business users in a collaborative workgroup setting,
"We are keeping both [BEA and Plumtree products] as two separate portal product lines for as long as we can see," he said. "Each product is a leader in its own right."
Last year, BEA CEO Alfred Chuang reiterated their commitment to the parallel path, with an honest nod to the challenges
"We could integrate them but some companies are buying both, and nobody's bitching. Yes, it would be much cleaner if we only had one product to support but at the moment I can sell some customers both – I'm trying to sell everyone who has one the other, and it's going well."
The justification in both cases is that one product is more developer focused and the other more user-focused (collaboration, intranet). There may indeed be different segments, but then the correct engineering response is to create a unified infrastructure platform that serves up JSR 168 portlets, WSRP, has identity management hooks, administration screens, delegated administration, and personalization capabilities and then offer different layers and packages on top of that to meet market needs. I suspect at some point BEA and Oracle will have to do that by establishing the core of one of their products to be the underlying infrastructure and keeping the other product as a different skin or layer that is productized on top of it.
Parallel paths just don't work. Unlike consumer packaged goods, where Proctor & Gamble can gain marketshare by offering Tide, Gain, Cheer, etc. , buyers of complex technological products like portals expect their vendor to dedicate significant resources to keeping it up to date and supporting it. This is difficult with a parallel path. Granted, neither BEA nor Oracle have shown strain at supporting both yet (although Chaung's statement above hints at that), but I believe it will start eating away at expenses over time. IBM is just extricating itself from the confusion caused in the Notes/Domino world over its parallel path strategy and has gotten kudos all around for offering a unified vision.
Sure, integration is difficult but it's worth an effort. Vignette did not try to maintain parallel paths when buying Epicentric back in 2002 and went with Epicentric. All is not going swimmingly for Vignette at the moment, but competition in the market and not selection of a single path is the cause of that.
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MP will respond but I think the only option for PS is 11x or 18x
I've got a couple PS in my AIT right now- one is a former Marine that had been out for 4-5 years, the other is Army and she was out for 2-3 (I think.)
SPC Summerlin (Hopefully SGT soon- if I can ever make points)
A question for MP. I have been contemplating for joining over 8yrs now, and have now started to get the ball rolling with resolve, but two weeks ago I hurt my elbow and it is still recovering. To be on the safe side, I wanted to go see a doctor to make sure is everything's ok, but I'm afraid that making a medical record for checking on it will hurt me in the long run. What would you recommend, to allow it to heal for a month and see where I'm at or go to a doc?
The only way it will hurt your enlistment is if you broke it, tore something which requires surgery, pins, plates, screws, but even then you would just have to heal, provide documentation and wait for approval.
Thank you for your help. I'm going to a doctor to check and make sure I'm at full health. Lost 80lbs. since feb. to help with my dream.
Hello and thank you for serving if you are now or ever have!
My 20 y/o son wishes to join the Army. He has a clean background and is in good health. He does however have a GED, and he was told he needed to get the 15 college credits.
I am somewhat familiar with the process of enlisting from dating a recruiter for almost 4 years, so I have questions related to him enlisting and being processed. Is there a waiver that will enlist him with the GED so he can go through enlistment processing while attending college for these credits? I saw many wanna be soldiers get turned down for silly things like a mole on their neck, their tattoo, they broke their toe when they were 9 or some other odd reason during the final stages at MIPS (spelling?). I would think if a potential soldier could be doing both at the same time. He is only attending school to get the credit he needs to enlist and before he has thousands of $$$ on a fed-loan for this, I would like to at least see if there is a waiver to process him while he is attending and will allow him to go through basic to empower him to complete this process the Military is making him complete to enlist now.
I hope you can help him and thank you very much,
Our recruiter on this forum will answer your question (I am not a recuriter) but I know of the GED plus program in which I know some people that are joining in the National Guard for it. I do not know if the Regular Army is doing it. But that benefits people who do not have a GED so look at the irony that your son needs 15 credits. Here is the link
Army GED Plus Enlistment Program
It is MEPS not MIPS but I think your son will need to get the 15 credits first. I know it will be easy to join and have the government pay for the courses but it does not work that way. But MP our recruiter will validate on what I wrote.
Thank you Both,
MP So you are saying, Category is open (now) and if his score on the ASVAB is 50 or above and he has a GED and NO criminal background, and was done with 11 credit/rerolled to get the rest, then he can join active duty now, right?
Also, you are saying.. if the category was closed, with him having his GED, he could enlist without the college credits ?
The Fedloan is paying for it along with grants, but he will have to pay this loan back if he is not in school for 6 months (sure you know this), so my concern is processing and being determined ready to go active or to basic. Fed is paying (with the loan) for the most of it anyway right now, but he has not finished but 6 credits, and this is not a question related to their paying for it at all.
He has a tattoo and (the final processing) MEPS is known to disqualify for many unknown reasons, so this is my concern. He is enrolled to get 2 more classes this fall.
What if a GED only person goes to college, gets the credits, enrolls, goes all the way to MEPS and is disqualified ? Does it happen?
Last edited by Rose252; 08-07-2011 at 07:39 AM. Reason: wording


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Posted on August 24, 2017 by Kevon Storie at esnews.wapa.gov/wordpress/2017/08/24/conference-highlights-initiatives-worth-imitating/
Conference highlights initiatives worth imitating
Rocky Mountain Utility Efficiency Exchange
Rolling into its second decade, the Rocky Mountain Utility Efficiency Exchange has now been around long enough for its many participants to see the fruits of meeting annually to swap program ideas and stories of successes and failures with colleagues from across the region.
Utility program managers will be gathering at the Gold LEED-certified Doerr-Hosier Center at Aspen Meadows Resort Sept. 27-29 to share their ideas for taking customer efficiency programs to the next level. (Photo by Randy L. Martin)
Forward-looking agenda
"Technology often integrates tools and strategies that were part of successful energy-efficiency and load management programs in the past," explained Energy Services Manager Ron Horstman. "Load management today and going forward requires updates and changes in approach that will maximize the new resources and technology that are constantly being introduced to the industry. This year's agenda encourages that kind of thinking."
The future is on the minds of keynote speakers, too. Mark Martinez, the senior portfolio manager for emerging markets and technologies with Southern California Edison will deliver the opening keynote, Preparing Today for an Integrated Demand Side Management Future. He will draw on his more than 25 years of experience in the design, management and evaluation of electric demand side management (DSM) programs to present a vision of how DSM needs to change.
The closing keynote by Ellen Steiner, the vice president of Opinion Dynamics , will explore how utility customer programs can adapt to meet the needs of changing demographics. A master methodologist, Steiner has strong energy-efficiency industry experience encompassing workforce education and training, marketing, community outreach and HVAC program design and evaluation.
Hear from your peers
Friday offers a special treat with a focus on electric vehicles and storage. These topics were overwhelmingly popular at the 2017 Utility Energy Forum in California, and Rocky Mountain area utilities will be facing the same issues sooner than we expect.
Network toward your goals
In addition to breaks and meals (pack your "comfortable" business casual wear), attendees will have plenty of time to mingle with their colleagues and swap ideas. On Wednesday, Sept. 27, grab a snack and a beverage and check out the poster session reception. These mini-presentations allow attendees to talk one-on-one with presenters about topics as diverse as community solar, connected home devices and infrastructure planning.
Relaxed networking continues Thursday night at the Limelight Hotel in downtown Aspen. This venue provides a low-key atmosphere where it is easy to carry on a conversation. If you hatch dinner plans at the end of the evening, the city's world-class dining options are close by, or, you can catch an airport shuttle from the hotel lobby if need to depart early.
Enjoy Aspen
Aspen Meadows Resort is now sold out, but you can still stroll the grounds. The city is close enough that you could park your car at your hotel and walk off the delicious meals—included in your registration fee—on your way to and from the conference.
If you need one more reason to attend the Rocky Mountain Utility Efficiency Exchange, the Building Performance Institute awards continuing education units (CEUs) for many of the sessions. Download the instructions to find out how to verify your attendance.
Tue Jun 11, 2019International OpenADR Symposium: The Protocol for Distributed Energy Resources and the Future Grid
Category: Events
Tue Sep 24, 201913th Rocky Mountain Utility Exchange
Category: Events
Tue Sep 29, 202014th Rocky Mountain Utility Exchange
Category: Events


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Each year I feel it necessary to have a new pair, and this year's choice are the Professor Hayes frames from Cheapass Sunglasses, a simple round black frame with smoke coloured lenses made special with the rose gold metallic nose bridge and brow bar.
They also come in a brown frame with brown lenses, a tortoise shell frame with orange lenses and a black fame with mirrored green/blue lenses... the last two being very Quay Australia-esque.
I find the round frames really flattering to my face shape, they have quite a retro/modern look to them and the smoke lenses give them a bit of sum' sum'! Not only do they look good, but they do the most important job of all by protecting your eyes against harmful sun rays with 100% UV protection.
I chose the black and smoke version as I wanted a pair of everyday sunnies to wear with anything and everything, and they certainly tick all of the boxes.
If this style isn't for you, the site is definitely worth a browse. They have sunglasses in every shape and style you could wish for, for men as well as women.
At such a great price (only $8.95 which converts to just over £6), I'm really tempted to get myself a couple more pairs... A pair for the car, a pair for holidays, a pair for keeping in my handbag - Which may sound extravagant, but when they're so affordable, why not?! The tortoise shell pair are really drawing me in as they're a complete opposite alternative, yet in a style that I know really works for me.
Are you going to update your sunglasses collection this season?
3 comments:
I love these frames! Love that they're UV protected as well, always find cheaper options never include that.ReplyDelete
North of London lifestyle blog
Your blog is so pretty, I adore the design! These sunglasses are so lovely, I love the shape of them and gold detailing :D followed you on GFC! xxReplyDelete
elizabeth ♡ "Ice Cream" whispers Clara | (lets follow each other on bloglovin or instagram)
Super cute frames! I love sunglasses, but since I wear prescriptive glasses they're not really something I buy continuously.ReplyDelete
Kelly Knows It | A life and style blog
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In Manitoba, section 157(1) of The Highway Traffic Act requires physicians and optometrists to report to the Registrar of Motor Vehicles, any patient whose medical condition may adversely affect their ability to drive safely.
In these web pages, we explain your role in referring patients with cognitive and/or physical impairments that may impact driving ability as identified in the Medical Standards for Driving. We also explain the processes and assessments used by Manitoba Public Insurance to determine whether an individual with a cognitive and/or physical impairment is safe to drive. The information in these web pages has been developed specifically for health care professionals.
If you have questions about the Medical Standards for Driving or your role in reporting patients whose medical conditions may affect driving, please contact the Medical Compliance and Assessments department of Manitoba Public Insurance.
Report to Registrar form
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text: Every season, fans and media inevitably ask if this is it for the San Antonio Spurs. The Big Three of Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, along with head coach Gregg Popovich don't yet know what the future holds. They're too busy agonizing over losing the NBA Finals in seven games. Per the AP: "It was a heart-breaking way to end it for these Spurs, who were 21 seconds from title No. 5 when everything went wrong in Game 6. (LeBron) James hit a 3 and Ray Allen hit another with 5.2 seconds to go to tie it, and the Heat outlasted the Spurs in overtime to force a Game 7. 'It's such a fine line between celebrating and having a great summer with now feeling like crap and just so disappointed,' Manu Ginobili said. Now, once again, they will face proclamations of their demise. Only this time, it may be harder to hold those off. (Tim) Duncan is 37, but coming off an All-NBA First Team season and a vintage performance in the finals. The 31-year-old (Tony) Parker is nearing his apex after one of his finest seasons. But Ginobili will turn 36 next month and will be a free agent, perhaps marking the end of the three-person core that helped put the Alamo City on the NBA map, and keep it there for 10 years. 'I couldn't love our guys more,' Gregg Popovich said. 'What they accomplished this year was something nobody ever expected. They showed a lot of mental toughness and a lot of good play to get where they got. I couldn't be more proud of them.' […] The questions begin now. Will Ginobili return? Can Duncan keep turning back the clock? And does the 64-year-old Popovich have another year left in him? Parker chafed when asked if he thought this was the last run with this group. 'I can't believe you're asking that question,' Parker snapped. 'It's been five, six years you saying we're too old, so I'm not going to answer that.' Duncan said flatly that he will be back next season – 'I have a contract that says I am' – and Ginobili said it was too soon to think about that. 'It's not the moment,' Ginobili said. 'I'm very disappointed, very upset. I really can't say anything.' The coach said, win or lose, he will take some time after the season to do some traveling and be with his family before he makes a decision. But he sure didn't sound like the kind of guy who was pondering riding off into the sunset. 'After a little while just getting up when you want to in the morning and really not having challenges gets a little boring,' Popovich said before the game. 'You can only grow so many tomatoes and read so many books. You want to get busy, get competitive again. When I stop feeling competitive around September, then I'll hang it up.'"


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Ugg Womens Grey Classic Smart Leather Glove
Sorry, this item is unavailable to buy.
UGG Classic Smart Leather Glove in 'stormy grey' is UGG's latest colour addition to the new season. Crafted from 100% leather, the women's UGG glove features a luxurious cashmere-blend lining for that added extravagance and quality assurance. A shearling trim features to the cuff and UGG logo hardware is displayed to one glove. The UGG leather gloves have been constructed with U|R Conductive technology that enables electronic devices to be used without the need for removal.
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By achieving a lot of smaller ones along the way.
That's how all great businesses are built.
That's how great churches grow.
That's how a great novel is written.
That's how a hobby turns into a career.
Don't think you have to be hitting your huge goals right out of the gate. That's a recipe for disaster and disappointment. This is not a pass to settle for smaller goals. Keep working towards the bigger goals, but remember it takes smaller goals to reach the big ones.
What is your huge goal? What is a small goal you can reach this week to get you closer?


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Anthony Salcito is Microsoft's worldwide leader for Education, and you have the opportunity to hear him discuss the global trends impacting education and the responses he is seeing in other countries. Anthony will touch on the research programmes into 21st Century learning which Microsoft is supporting, and how these are informing Microsoft's strategy to deliver real impact for education and accelerate the growth potential of every student and educator.
The event will be held at the University of Auckland (see registration link for details), and will also be available live on the internet. Please register your attendance today.
For Primary and Secondary Schools
Thursday 21st June, 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Register Here
For Tertiary Education
Thursday 21st June, 2:00pm - 3:00pm
Register Here
See you there!


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Dave Murray's latest weather Disco for FRIDAY…February 24, 2017
My Spring forecast is on the way…Thursday…February 23rd…as part of Fox 2 news at 9…and an encore presentation at 5pm on Fox 2 news at 5…a look at March, April and May in STL.
Weather patterns working on a shift over the next few days…still mild to warm Friday…maybe some spot storms on Friday as a cold front rolls by…best shot to our east into IL…eastern edges of the viewing area…they will not last long…Here comes a cold front and here comes the winter shock along with strong and gusty winds…first ahead of the front on Friday and then behind the front Friday night(flurries late) and Saturday…down to 32 degrees Friday night and just plain cold on Saturday…mostly cloudy skies, very windy and 39 for the high…but feels colder all day long. Sunday…damp and chilly with clouds and a few showers in the afternoon…maybe a wet snowflake around Sunday night…no big deal. Then we get on the temperature flip-flop train for much of next week.
looking for snow the next 24 hours…an impressive storm comes over the central and southern Rockies and cuts over the northern plains and the upper mid-west…some snow as close as extreme northwest Missouri and all of Iowa….rain in Chicago.


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Any property which remain vacant and unoccupied for any appreciable period of time become an attractive nuisance to children, a harborage for rodents, an invitation to derelicts, vagrants and criminals as a temporary abode and as a place to engage in illegal conduct, frequently including illegal drug-related activity, and an increased fire hazard. Such buildings contribute to the growth of blight within the City which create an unhealthy and unsafe condition affecting the public and constitutes an unreasonable use of property and a public nuisance.
A property owner is required to board up a building/structure if it becomes vacant and is not secure. Accessory buildings/ structures on the property; such as storage sheds and garages, also must be secured to City specifications. A boarding permit from Building Regulations Division is required. Please note: No building shall remain boarded for more than six (6) months.
Property owners must maintain the structure in good shape. All points of entry to a vacant building, including windows and doors must be secured in accordance with City specifications.
City of Taft - 209 E. Kern St - Taft, CA 93268 ~ Phone: (661) 763-1222 ~ Fax: (661) 765-2480
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It's crunch time for meal preparations being in the middle of Hanukkah and Christmas just three days away. RSVPs from friends and relatives are still being sought out, places at tables are being mentally set, and times for all the appetizers and dishes are being calculated down to the minute to keep guests happy. But with all the planning, a minor detailed slipped your mind that one of the guests coming for dinner is a vegetarian.
But before panic ensues, don't worry, because we have you covered with a handful of appetizers, main courses, and desserts perfect for this scenario. Not only are these dishes vegetarian-friendly, but they are also so delicious that everyone celebrating the holidays with you will want to have.
Hot Cheesy Spinach-Artichoke Dip
Shredded mozzarella and parmesan cheese, chopped spinach and artichoke hearts make up this dip that is full of flavor. To be served with bread, crackers, pita chips, or pretzels this appetizer is sure to be a hit.
Mini Brie & Pear Appetizer Quesadillas
Cranberries, hazelnuts (or without to accommodate nut allergies), melted brie cheese, and sliced pear makeup these savory little quesadillas. They are easy and fast to make and only 57 calories each!
For a filling and satisfying meal, these quinoa patties certainly do the trick. Don't let the quinoa's small size deceive you, this whole grain is heavy on the protein side and is also gluten-free.
Get all of the gooey cheesy goodness from lasagna without the meat. Substituting zucchini for ground beef, this recipe will gain attention from all your guests and leave them wanting more.
'Tis the season for cranberries, and these scrumptious bars are no exception. Dairy, egg, and gluten-free this little dessert will please everyone's dietary needs and lives up to its name.
While these cookies may not shaped like men or women, rest assured they still have that flavorful gingerbread taste. And with gluten-free, sugar-free, and vegan ingredients you can indulge without the worry.
*All photos and detailed cooking instructions are courtesy of each respective blogger


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