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Yes they are very crazy and very usefull! A hand-picked list with 20 web sites that you should bookmark. Ambiently is a web discovery engine. While a search engine answers your query with a list of web links, a discovery engine provides you with relevant web links directly from any webpage you are on.
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the "t" family. celebrating sweet K's first year! xoxo
Monthly Archives: August 2013
walker+heather. they celebrated being married for a year by getting pictures taken. i didn't know it would be possible for me to become smitten with a couple in such a short amount of time. walker+heather ARE THE BEST! happy monday! xoxo
rick+raegan it was a weekend filled with the most purest of joys, laughter, smiles and love. it is an honor and privilege to be friends with these two and their families. it is a story of sweet young love that was fought for… and completely centered around God. it was about bringing two amazing people […]

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A big trend that started in 2017 but is reaching its peak in 2019, ready-to-eat box delivery directly to your home. Whether it's Jérôme Ferrer's Chef's Box, Miss Fresh's Boxes, Good Food Market etc, the concept is the same: ready-made meals of all kinds await you on the website of these companies. Ideal when you are in a hurry and you do not want to eat at the restaurant or if you just want to enjoy differing cultural delights that are brought to your door. Here's a few companies that we believe do it right:
Simply Cook
If you want an affordable recipe kit option and you're happy to buy all the fresh ingredients yourself, then this start-up company is a real find. In each kit (there are over 60 to pick from including light and gluten-free options), you get four meals' worth of specially-blended ingredients, from infused oils to rubs and pastes, for two to four people so that you can get cooking dishes such as Mexican pulled chicken and Goan fish curry.
The box (the first of which is a trial one) fits through the letterbox and can be delivered every week, fortnight or month and the ingredients last over six months. No wonder Simply Cook's customer base quadrupled last year.
These 100 percent organic boxes by Riverford are well-organised into handy sections, with delicious recipes such as Thai green curry and parsnip, or leek barley risotto. If you want your meal on the table within half-an-hour, choose the quick box, and if you've got more time on your hands, go for the original. Both boxes are available as vegetarian options and the non-vegetarian option now includes fish dishes. As there's no subscription, you can buy them as a one-off treat. Our only criticism is that the recipes can be a bit wordy.
There can't be many countries in the world as famed for their culinary delights as Italy is. All Gourmio's ingredients are sourced from the Mediterranean country, and each box focuses on traditional recipes which take 30 minutes or less to cook. Each meal comes with a card explaining the heritage of the dish, while also giving easy-to-follow instructions, with pictures, on how to cook it. There is also handy info on the required utensils and dietary notes. We tried of a starter of octopus, cooked as they do on the island of Elba, and for mains had a spelt macaroni with swordfish ragu and lemon zest (which was as intriguing and delicious as it sounds). Portion sizes are decent, and the ingredients are top quality. There is no subscription involved – rather, you choose your recipes and the preferred delivery date. It all comes wrapped up in sheep wool insulation, which keeps everything suitably fresh.
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Interview Questions to Prepare for Now!September 19th, 2009 | Interviewing | No Comments »
Tell me about yourself
Make a short, organized statement of your education and professional achievements and professional goals. Then, briefly describe your qualifications for the job and the contributions you could make to the organization.
Why do you want to work here?
Few questions are more important than these, so it is important to answer them clearly and with enthusiasm. Show the interviewer your interest in the company. Share what you learned about the job, the company and industry through your own research. Talk about how your professional skills will benefit the company. Money is never a good answer. Remember that during the interview, your goal is to demonstrate why you are an asset to the company, not why you need a job.
Why did you leave/leaving your last job?
The interviewer may want to know if you had any problems in your last job. If you did not have any problems, simply give a reason, such as: the company relocated, the company went out of business, you were laid off, you want a position that is better suited to your skills, etc. If you did have problems with your past employer, be honest. Show that you can accept responsibility, regardless of who is at fault, and learn from the past. Avoid too much detail and avoid negative comments about your last employer. Demonstrate that you are not a person who is caught up in the past or one who holds grudges.
What are your best skills?
If you have sufficiently researched the organization, you should be able to imagine what skills the company values. List them, then give examples of where and how you have demonstrated these skills.
What is your major weakness?
Be positive and up-front about areas that you would like to improve. All of us have some sort of weakness. Briefly state an area where you are striving to improve, and what actions you have been taking to improve in that particular area. Demonstrating that you are aware of some areas that need improvement and are taking action to improve in them, shows that you are aware of your abilities. Avoid the standard answer, "I work too much." It is either a lie (in which case you have lost all credibility) or it is the truth (in which case improving upon the weakness means you will work less).
Do you prefer to work by yourself or with others?
The ideal answer is one of flexibility. However, be honest. Provide an answer, then follow-up the answer with brief descriptions of times you have worked successfully both alone and in a group.
What are your career goals? Or, what are your future plans?
The employer wants to know if your future plans match the company's future plans. Let the employer know that you are ambitious enough to plan ahead. Relate your answer to the company and position, not that you want to open a restaurant or relocate in the future. Talk about your desire to learn more, improve your skills, contribute to the company and create a rewarding career.
What are your hobbies? Or, do you play any sports?
The employer may be looking for evidence of your job skills outside of your professional life. For example, hobbies such as bridge or chess demonstrate analytical skills. Reading, music and painting are creative hobbies. Sports show determination, teamwork, stamina and competitiveness.
What salary are you expecting?
You don't want to answer this question directly. Instead, deflect the question back to the employer by saying something like: "I am open on salary; what were you planning on paying for the right candidate?" or "I want to earn as much as I am qualified to earn. What would you offer someone with my skills?" or "I am currently making $_______ and would like to earn more than I have in my last position. What kind of pay were you thinking for this position?"


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This Assignment Is Published With Permission From The Author For Online Review Only
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Content page
Executive summary………………………………………………………………………………………….. 1
Task 1 Report to human resources at Chemical Incorporation………………………………… 4
1. The rights of the choose of gender identity…………………………………………………… 4
1.1 The legal rights of gender identity transition……………………………………….. 4
1.2 Human rights…………………………………………………………………………………… 5
1.3 Workforce diversity………………………………………………………………………….. 6
2. Resistances to the transgender…………………………………………………………………….. 6
2.1 Fears in experiencing changes……………………………………………………………. 7
2.2 Lack of employees' involvement in the changes…………………………………… 8
3. Advices to HR on the needed changes to help Michael Thomas……………………… 8
3.1 Advices to the company as a whole……………………………………………………. 8
3.2 Advices to help Michael Thomas……………………………………………………….. 9
3.3 Advices to other employees…………………………………………………………….. 10
3.4 Advices to senior management…………………………………………………………. 11
Task 2 Report to the director of Royal Biscuit…………………………………………………… 12
1. Background review………………………………………………………………………………….. 12
1.1 The nature of the planned change…………………………………………………….. 12
1.2 Review of the similar challenges in Daimler Chrysler………………………….. 13
1.2.1 Culture clash………………………………………………………………………… 13
1.2.2 Integration of management structure……………………………………….. 14
2. Objectives of this report……………………………………………………………………………. 15
3. Theoretical analysis of the Royal Edeling……………………………………………………. 15
3.1 Force field analysis…………………………………………………………………………. 15
3.2 Figure 1.0 Force Field analysis…………………………………………………………. 16
3.3 Hofstede's five Cultural Dimensions…………………………………………………. 17
4. Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 19
5. Recommendations……………………………………………………………………………………. 19
5.1 Learning from each other………………………………………………………………… 20
5.2 Create a global perspective………………………………………………………………. 20
Reference……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 22
Task 1 Report to human resources at Chemical Incorporation
1. The rights of the choose of gender identity
Gender change or transition refer to the process by which individuals come to live full time in their preferred gender rather than their birth gender (Inner Discovery Network, 1998).In nowadays, people different gender preference such as gay, lesbian, bisexual are widely accepted in many industries and countries. But employment transgender persons like mentioned in the case at Chemical Incorporation is facing more challenges than the cases of the employment of gay or lesbian, the reasons for these difficulties are many which will be discussed later. But first let's focus on the reasons that support the gender transition and the employment of the transgender persons.
1.1 The legal rights of gender identity transition
In the jurisdiction system of many developed, the protection of the transgender person against employment discriminations are legalized to preserve the equality of everyone in the employment area. The acceptances of employment right of the transsexual employees are very common in the United States than many other developed countries. For example in the states of Minnesota, Rhode Island, California and New Mexico in the United States had amended their state legislations to extend the protection against workplace discrimination to the transsexual individuals and those who are experiencing gender identity disorder (Cadrain, 2004). For example, most recently, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ruled recently that Georgia General Assembly had illegally discriminated against a transgender women by laying of her while she decide to change her sexual indentify from man to woman (Unknown 2010). And it is the trend in the various legal systems to protect the equal employment right of the transgender employees.
1.2 Human rights
A real case happened to Tawni Sheridan, a transsexual woman gives a perfect explanation of the human rights of people to change their sexual identity. Tawni Sheridan started cross-dressing even before she was a teenager but she did not go out the public under 1995. In August of 1995 she began to visit a gay nightclub in Victoria dressing as a woman, and she believed that the club was a good and safe place to start her new identity. But she was told by a "bouncer" not to use the women's washroom or else she will be asked to leave the club with the reason that the club had the policy that only anatomically correct women were allowed to use the women's washroom. Later this case ended up with Tawni Sheridan's victory after The B.C. Human Rights Commission applauds a decision in 1999 of the separate and independent Human Rights Tribunal awarding damages to her (The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal 1999). There are also many similar cases that prove the human rights of transgender persons including the right of being employed with discrimination.
1.3 Workforce diversity
Managing workforce diversity is defined as "a comprehensive managerial process for developing an environment (organizational culture) that works for all employees" (Thomas 1991, p10). And this definition certainly provides protection under the cover of the workforce diversity to those who are with different sexual identities. As the former regional manager for logistics in Eastman Kodak Company concluded that the acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender (GLBT) co-workers is a big part of Kodak's diversity picture (Henneman 2004). But he also admitted the fact that the harassment toward gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender (GLBT) employees are still rampant. And like Kodak, many companies also include the issues of the discrimination of GLBT employees into the diversity training programs design to train all the employees.
2. Resistances to the transgender
While the support to the equal opportunity in the workplace for the transgender employees are affirmative according to the rights given above, but the motivations for the discrimination against gender transition in the working environment also to some extent make sense if we understand how they are formed, and what is more we need to know what are the resistances in order for use to reduces and even eliminate these resistances to achieve the equality of employment in the working place to the transgender employees.
2.1 Fears in experiencing changes
The fears that people will have in experiencing changes no matter positive or negative (some changes are not definite to be positive or negative) are the born nature of resistance. Such kind of fear is more evident in cases in which information is not accessible. The lack of transparent information is one of the most important sources of fear against changes that people will be experiencing during changes. Go back to the case of Michael Thomas in Chemical Incorporation base on the furious reaction that his colleague Jack Melbourne had, it is very possible that before the Michael Thomas turn to the senior vice president for human resources he actually had not communicate with other colleagues around him. And more over, the company had not done a necessary in adding the transgender knowledge into the training programs. And due to this lack of communication of information about transgender knowledge, the born fears to resist the gender transition seem to be understandable.
2.2 Lack of employees' involvement in the changes
One reason why Jack Melbourne was reacting so strongly against the decision is that the decision had been reached without his participation. On one hand, it is Michael Thomas's right to decide to change his sex identity and be treated in equal with other employees. But on the other hand, it is also reasonable for other employees to require to gradually get used to this change that they naturally could not accept in a sudden. So it is true that Michael Thomas's choose to change his gender identity should be respected while the other employees should also be prepared to this change instead of getting sudden exposed of it.
3. Advices to HR on the needed changes to help Michael Thomas
3.1 Advices to the company as a whole
In the corporate level, the company should build up the appropriate and relative transgender friendly policies and physical conditions. First of all, the Chemical Incorporation should add the equal employment policy into the corporate article and policy to speak out the company's viewpoint in protecting the transgender staffs. For example, Lucent Technologies in Ohio had adopted an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) policy statement which includes a protection treaty for transgendered and intersex employees in 1997 as the CEO of the company Rich McGinn said in EEO policy statement that Demonstrated commitment to equal opportunity is an investment in our people and our future growth (Unknown 1997). Such kind of statement will help create a transgender friendly atmosphere in the company by enacting clear policie. Secondly in term of the recruitment process transgender friendly tactics could also be applied here. For example, the intake form of the new candidate in the recruitment could have a third, a blank option for "sex/gender" to let the transgender persons describe their gender. Thirdly, physical conditions also play important roles in reducing frictions. For example, the use of washing room is proved to be one of most frequent issue that lead to disputes. So in this case for the company the use of single-use restroom rather than Men and Women's washing room could be a good meaning to avoid direct frictions between the employees.
3.2 Advices to help Michael Thomas
To Michael Thomas, because Michael's colleagues Jack Melbourne actually had expressed outraged reaction to the fact that the company did accept the gender identity change of Michael Thomas and this over reaction mush have led to the discomfort feeling of him. In this case, the introduction of psychology consulting service to him could be of some help if he feels it is necessary and acceptable. On the other hand, if the Michael Thomas agrees, the company could release an internal statement to clarify the sex change of him to make this known. And the statement should refer to Michael Thomas as she to confirm her sex transition. But such radical measures such as sex change clarification statement should only be down with Michael Thomas's agreement as the privacy of him should also be respected at the same time.
3.3 Advices to other employees
To other employees, involvement into the change process will be necessary and effective to the change of accepting the transgender employees as participation can lead both to designing high-quality changes and to overcoming resistance to implementing them (Vroom & Yetton 1973). For example, the company could start a recommendations collection process under the name of "helping Michael Thomas's sexual transition" to let the employees to participate into the change process. What's more the education of the employees is also very important. The introduction of the transgender programs in the diversity training course could be of great help. In these programs, the knowledge of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender (GLBT) persons could be learn by the employees to understand the position of Michael Thomas. The most important target of the transgender program is to let the employees feel the same way that Michael Thomas feels and make them treat him like they like to be treated the way if they were in the similar position. And by taking the transgender program the fear of the employees who have been unknown to the transgender issue could be reduced.
3.4 Advices to senior management
To the senior management, they will also be put under a lot of pressure as they will be the one the handle the case and influence the outcome of the dispute. First of all, the senior management should have a clear and firm position in supporting Michael Thomas to back him before the great pressure from the peers and society. Some disputes should be anticipated by the management in the process of the sex change of Michael Thomas and the management should not try to neglect the dispute and let them become more serious. Instead the management team should actively try to solve the problems with effort and energy. On the other hand, the senior management is acting as the mediator between Michael Thomas and those employees that hold opposing views such as Jack Melbourne. This means that the managers should keep their door open and let in the different ideas and suggestions on the sex change try to collect these suggestions for further usage later when the company needs to formulate the strategies to implement the change in practice.
Task 2 Report to the director of Royal Biscuit
1. Background review
With the merger of London based Royal Biscuit and Munich based Edeling GmbH, both famous and beloved brand in the food industry; the deal is called by outsiders as "the merger of equals". But according to the current difficulties that we are going through especially in the term of enacting the leadership development plan, difficulties are found in the corporate culture integration rather than the technical level. This is because the hard issues had almost been solved before the merger such as the financial performance, market share and reputation while the soft issues are relatively under less scrutiny (Bryan 2008). So before solving the culture differences between the two stylish companies, the merger could not be announced as a success.
1.1 The nature of the planned change
Changes that happen to tan organization can be distinguished from the change that is planned by the members within the organization (Waddell, Cummings & Worley 2000 p30). Various theories have been developed to explain the planned changes in the business practices. And in term of the scale of change, the changes planned by the member in an organization can be classified into four scales: fine-tuning, incremental adjustment, modular transformation and corporate transformation (Dunphy & Stace, 1991). And for change of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) practices, they are trans-organizational changes in the corporate transformations level which is such a fundamental change that it was referred by a researcher as the "ultimate change management challenge" (Galpin & Robinson 1997).
1.2 Review of the similar challenges in Daimler Chrysler
Now let's first see the similar difficulties that found in the international mergers and acquisitions practices in the past for inspirations. In year 1998 an also called "merger of equals" happened between two globally influential automobile manufactures: German based Daimler-Benz and United Stated based Chrysler to combine its business to achieve the goal of "profitable automotive production". But the result is not as cheerful as the fact that the merged entity ranked the third globally in term of revenue, earning and market capitalization (Bryan 2008). Two key challenges provide explanation of the failure that happened three years after the seemingly merger of equal happened. And these two challenges are also encountered by Royal Edeling.
1.2.1 Culture clash
Daimler-Benz like Edeling is a typical German brand with characteristics of the methodical decision making, punctuality, and rule based while on the other hand, the United States based Chrysler encourage creativity, boldness and flexibility. The culture mismatch of the two companies could be described as the mismatch between the typical German culture and the distinguished American culture. Like And as Tony Cervone (2010) commented to the failure of the merger, "In Europe, and particularly Germany, the expectation was that if you tell them what it is you want, then they'll act that way," but "We had a much more in-depth way of communicating with employees. And we used every tool we had to communicate with Chrysler people." And it was the different business cultures in term of different way of doing business that lead to the final failure of the great merger.
1.2.2 Integration of management structure
Under such obvious cultural difference, the integration of the organizational structure also met difficulties. In term of corporate structure, Daimler-Benz is famous for the high authorities in a clear hierarchy with the philosophy of "quality at any cost" while Chrysler is known to have a top down management with relatively flat hierarchy structure with the philosophy of producing "cost-efficient" vehicles. Such structural differences can be seen from the two distinctive decision making modes of the two companies. Daimler-Benz was known for the methodical and centralized decision making process which was in accordance with its tradition while Chrysler made decisions in another way. Under such circumstances, Daimler Chrysler's German CEO Jurgen Schrempp was reported to have said that "he had always intended Chryslter Group to be a more mere subsidiary of Daimler Chrysler", and when Daimler Chryslter in the later 2000 decided to build a German management team in Chrysler, this action actually accelerated the demolishment of the merger (Kroll, Carpenter & Wyman 2008).
2. Objectives of this report
The target of this report is to verify the statement that there is close relationship between the cultures of an organization and the ability of the organization to perform an effective change and provide recommendations to the Michael Brighton, head of HR of Royal Biscuit Company in the merger case of Royal Edeling to help achieve a successful merger.
3. Theoretical analysis of the Royal Edeling
3.1 Force field analysis
Force field analysis is a simple but useful tool to the viability of a decision by looking at all the forces for and against the change (Unknown 2010). For the desired change of the successful merger of the London based Royal Biscuit and Munich based Edeling GmbH, the forces for the change includes: investors of the two companies, customers like to see the merger of the two famous brands as a great example of European togetherness, the governments support the merger with close supervision, senior management were eager to push forward the integration; and the force against the change include: cultural differences of the two companies, different management style, limited of time according to the schedule. The forced filed analysis of the merger is stated below:
Forces for change Force against change
Successful merger of the London based Royal Biscuit and Munich based Edeling GmbH
Culture differences
Management styles
Time limitations
Senior managers
Total: 11 Total 9
3.2 Figure 1.0 Force Field analysis
The figure above has listed the current forces that go for and against the effective merger of the Royal Biscuit and Edeling GmbH, by attaching the scores which represent the extent of influence to the change to the forces and the total score of the driving forces weighs over the restraining forces which mean that the change is viable. But the close scores of the two kinds of forces also imply that efforts should be attributed to reduce the restrain forces and increase the driving forces in order to make sure the success of the merger.
3.3 Hofstede's five Cultural Dimensions
Based on the Hofstede's early study based on large date analysis from more than 70 countries and sequence studies, Hoftede has shown that there are close relations between grouping national cultures and organizational cultures. Base on the studies Geert Hoftede develop a five dimensional framework to access the national cultures (Geert Hoftede 2001) which have substantial influence over the organizational culture. The five dimensions are: Power Distance Index (PDI), Individualism (IDV), Masculinity (MAS), Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) and Long-Term Orientation (LTO). In the case of Royal Edeling which consisted of London based Royal Biscuit and Munich based Edeling GmbH, the analysis of the German culture and British culture many give explanations and further improvement suggestions to the current dilemma that the Royal Edeling had in integrating the two different country origin corporate culture.
Figure 2.0 Hofstede's five Cultural Dimensions Analysis of Germany
Source: Geert-hofstede.com
Figure 3.0 Hofstede's five Cultural Dimensions Analysis of the United Kingdom
Source: Geert-hofstede.com
From the two figures above, according to Hofstede's study on Germany and United Kingdom, the two European share three dimensions in term of similar scores but the rest two dimensions vary greatly. The first dimension is the Individualism (IDV), and the second dimension is the Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI). Because the British compared with the German one is more focus on individuals and has more tolerance over unstructured situations, so the Royal Biscuit will consider that leadership is more about emotional intelligence and energy rather than cold science. And many other problems showed up in the integration process can also have the answers from the dimensional differences in the result of Hofstede's study.
4. Conclusions
From the failure of Daimler Chrysler and the theoretical analysis of both the force field analysis and Hofstede's five culture dimension, conclusion could be safely reached that the culture of an organization determines its ability to perform a change effectively that need to compromise its culture. And based on this conclusion and the analysis above, recommendations are generated accordingly to help solve the culture differences below.
5. Recommendations
5.1 Learning from each other
As a management professor at IMD from the Lausanne business school once warned the merger between Daimler-Benz and Chrysler that "If they can't create a climate of learning from each other, they (Daimler-Benz and Chrysler) could be heading for an unbelievable catastrophe" (Unknown 2001) which is proved to be so right. And this warning also offers a good suggestion to Royal Edeling which is to learn from each other. And this target could be achieved by the establishment of the cross culture leaning programs to increase the diversity management in the work place. The bottom line of the cross culture learning program is to create appreciation and respect of the different culture.
5.2 Create a global perspective
"Be careful, forget your prejudices, and make business" is the doctrine by holding which the three thousand Finnish companies manage to expand their business in the Europe especially in Russia which had been an enemy of Finland for centuries. As a Finnish business man Pertti Huhtanen adviced in dealing the culture differences, be patient, forget the prejudices, make up your mind but proceed with small steps (Routamo 1999). Companies may have different country origin, corporate culture but doing business is the common thing that share by all business entities, by focusing on the business, the different way of doing business should be accepted under this priority.
Bryan, G. 2008, Failure of Mergers and Acquisitions: The case of Daimler Chrysler, accessed on 28th July 2010 [online] available: http://www.scribd.com/doc/34969643/Mergers-Acquistions-The-Case-of-DaimslerChrysler
Cadrain, D. 2004, Transgender issues in the workplace. HR Wire, 8(6).
Cervone, 2010 The Daimler/Chrysler Experience: Someone Who Lived Through A Failed Merger Provides A Real-Life Lesson In What Can Go Wrong, accessed on July 24th, 2010, [online] available: http://www.awpagesociety.com/site/resources/journal_spr0107
Dunphy, D. & Stace, D., 1991, Strategies for organizational transition, Centre for corporate change, Paper 002, AGSM, University of New South Wales
Galpin, T. & Robinson, D. 1997, Merger integration: the ultimate change management challenge, Merger and acquisitions 31 (1997):24-29
Hoftede, G. 2001, Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations, Sage Publication, London
Henneman, T. 2004, Acceptance of Gays, Lesbians Is A Big Part of Kodak's Diversity Picture, Workforce Management, December 2004, po. 68-70
Inner Discovery Network, 1998, The treatment of gender identity issues, accessed on July 24th, 2010, [online] available: http://innerdiscovery.survivorart.com/gender/treatment.htm
Kroll, M. M., Carpenter, G. & Wyman, O. 2008, The impact of culture on M&A: doing something about it, accessed on 28th July 2010, [online] available: http://www.mmc.com/knowledgecenter/Mercer_impactCultureM&ATransactions.pdf
Routamo, R. 1999, Dragon as a Playmate: Small Businesses in Finland
Make Big Money in Russia, accessed on 28th July 2010, [online] available: http://www.benlore.com/files/emglobal2_1.html
Thomas, R. R., Jr. 1991, Beyond race and gender, AMACOM, New York, p.10
The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal 1999, Sheridan v. Sanctuary Investments Ltd. dba "BJ's Lounge", accessed on July 24th 2010 [online] available: http://www.bchrt.gov.bc.ca/decisions/1999/pdf/sheridan_vs_sanctuary_investments_ltd_dba_b.j.%27s_lounge_jan_8_99.pdf
Unknown 1997, LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES PROTECTS TRANSGENDERED EMPLOYEES, accessed on 28th July 2010 [online] available: http://www.tgender.net/taw/lucent_eo_ann.html
Unknown 2001, Daimler-Chrysler Merger: A Cultural Mismatch? accessed on 28th July 2010, [online] available: http://www.icmrindia.org/casestudies/catalogue/Business%20Strategy1/Daimler-Chrysler%20Merger%20Cultural%20Mismatch.htm
Unknown 2010, Force field analysis: understanding the pressures for and against change, accessed on 29 July 2010 [online] availablehttp://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_06.htm
Unknown 2010, Transgender Workplace Diversity: THE LAW, POLITICS AND POLICY ISSUES OF TRANSGENDER WORKPLACE DIVERSITY, accessed on 28th July 2010, [online] available: http://transworkplace.blogspot.com/
Vroom, V. & Yetton, P. 1973, Leadership and Decision Making, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh
Waddell, Cummings & Worley 2000, Organization development & change, pacific rim 2nd edition, Nelson Australia Pty Ltd, Singapore


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MANILA, Philippines – Even as fans continue to hold on to the hope that everyone's friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is staying in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, actor Tom Holland seems to have accepted a future away from the shared cinematic universe.
"It's been five amazing years. I've had the time of my life. Who knows what the future holds? But all I know is that I'm going to continue playing Spider-Man and having the time of my life. It's going to be so fun, however we choose to do it. The future for Spider-Man will be different, but it will be equally as awesome and amazing, and we'll find new ways to make it even cooler," said Holland backstage at Disney's D23, its bi-annual expo where big announcements are made for majority of its major franchises. The expo began on August 23, Friday, in the US.
Holland first played Spider-Man in Marvel Studios' Captain America: Civil War in 2016. He has since starred in two Spider-Man movies and two Avengers movies. But days before D23, news broke that talks between Disney and Sony, which has the film rights to Spider-Man, broke down.
The two companies had inked a partnership over the Spider-Man franchise; Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige would be producer of the Spider-Man solo films and Holland would appear in the crossover MCU films.
Following Spider-Man: Far From Home, Disney had reportedly asked for a change of terms – it would co-finance future solo Spider-Man films. Sony had previously financed the movies by itself. Until a deal is reached, Holland's Spider-Man may not appear in any future movies in the MCU or the shared cinematic universe between Marvel Studios' film characters.
"We got to make five films within the MCU with Spider-Man: two standalone films and three with the Avengers. It was a dream that I never thought would happen. It was never meant to last forever. We knew there was a finite amount of time that we'd be able to do this, and we told the story we wanted to tell, and I'll always be thankful for that," Feige had told EW over the weekend. – Rappler.com


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Ajax Tadehara Judoka
Home » Judoka » Ajax Tadehara » Judo career
Ajax Tadehara
- Country:United States
- Born:20 March 1989 (31 years)
Ajax Tadehara of the USA won various World Cu plevel events in Santiago, Port Louis, Wollongong and San Salvador. 2014 was his best year so far. He captured a bronze medal at the Pan American Open in Santiago in 2019.
Competitions - Medal overview B S G
- World Cups/Continental Open 521
- International Tournaments 454
- National Championships Seniors 421


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Handicapped, homeless and running out of options
Being handicapped and homeless in Nebraska is a growing problem.
Video: Handicap, homelessness a growing problem in Nebraska
"I haven't checked this area out yet," Vincent Litwinowicz, 45, said. "I don't think I would stay here. It doesn't fit."
Litwinowicz searched downtown Lincoln Wednesday night for a place that wasn't too vulnerable.
"A place where I won't get him rolled by some thugs," Litwinowicz said.
The former graduate student suffers from multiple sclerosis and is bipolar, which forced him out of school and a job several years ago and on disability. He said he had to move out of his subsidized apartment two weeks ago.
"They allowed me to leave with my housing voucher," Litwinowicz said.
That allowed him to get help for alternative housing, if he can find it.
"It could be a few months," Litwinowicz said. "It could be tomorrow. It could be a year."
He isn't alone.
"There's just not a place for them to go," Denise Packard said.
Packard works for Centerpointe, which helps find housing for people with mental disabilities and chemical dependency. They get at least 20 new people coming to their doors each week.
"To also find a place that's also handicapped accessible is extremely hard," Packard said.
The problem is a shortage of low-income housing in general. Lincoln Housing Authority currently has 5,000 individuals on a waiting list just to get a voucher.
"I think the disability issue really needs to be addressed," Jerry Owen said.
Lincoln's People's City Mission tries to help folks like Litwinowicz, but it's not an assisted living facility.
"We're not equipped to do that nor do we have the staff or training to do that," Owen said.
The mission has offered to do what it can for Litwinowicz. In the meantime, he will no longer impose on friends to stay at their homes, choosing to roam the streets, charging his electric wheelchair where he can. He's hoping his plight will shed light on a growing problem.
"Who knows how many people have fallen into this position?" Litwinowicz said.


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Rihanna On 'ELLE' — Wild Curls & Dark Lipstick For December Issue
Wearing a bustier and gown by Atelier Versace, Rihanna looks magnificent on the cover of 'ELLE' magazine's December issue. Read more about her beauty look and a fun Q & A with RiRi herself below.
Rihanna, who returned to Instagram on November 2 after a six month hiatus, used the social platform to preview the December cover of ELLE, writing: "My @elleusa COVER!! On stands in select cities Nov. 11 & US nationwide Nov. 18. Preview the issue at Elle.com."
Rihanna In 'ELLE' Magazine — December 2014 Cover Beauty
Rihanna's hair was styled by her mane man Yusef. Fans are loving the cover with comments on Instagram calling her "Queen," "flawless" and "stunning."
Rihanna's Dark Lipstick For 'ELLE' Cover
Rihanna's makeup was done by Tom Pecheux. On the cover, she rocks a dark lip, but inside the issue, she's wearing barely anything. It's that no makeup makeup look we saw all over the runway for Spring 2015.
The cover beauty centers around that dark lip, along with glossy lids and highlighted skin. Amazing! Her entire look is so high fashion.
Rihanna's Q&A With 'ELLE'
Read Rihanna's funny interview with ELLE:
"ELLE: What's the craziest thing you've ever done?
Rihanna: That's still a secret.
ELLE: What do people misunderstand about you?
Rihanna: I'm shy.
ELLE: What's the sexiest thing a man has ever said to you?
Rihanna: Any man that tells me what to do is sexy!
ELLE: What's your mantra?
Rihanna: "Fuck bitches, get money!"
ELLE: Your worst fear?
Rihanna: Childbirth!
ELLE: The last time you were starstruck?
Rihanna: When I met Aaron Paul at the Spike awards.
ELLE: The best hangover cure?
Rihanna: Ice, Chinese food! And an upside-down trash can and towels, preferably next to the toilet.
ELLE: Are you a good cook?
Rihanna: I'm a fun cook! My specialty is seafood, but I also make the sickest mac 'n' cheese you will ever taste.
ELLE: If you had to listen to three albums on repeat, what would they be?
Rihanna: KoL's Only By the Night, Buju Banton's 'Til Shiloh, and Michael Bolton's Greatest Hits (1985–1995). And the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack.
ELLE: Do you ever sound like your mother?
Rihanna: My mother doesn't say much, but that one "ummmm" is a full paragraph of things I was grateful she didn't say. I catch myself doing that a lot recently.
ELLE: If you weren't a singer, what would you be?
Rihanna: A wife.
ELLE: If you were a piece of jewelry, what would it be?
Rihanna: I'd be a choker!"
Pick up the issue on newsstands everywhere on November 18!
Do you love Rihanna's ELLE cover, HollywoodLifers?
— Dory Larrabee


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This time of year our thoughts turn to decorations, lights and Christmas trees, and not so much about brush, grass and forest fires. But this year's extensive fire season and the latest predictions for 2012 remind us that wildfire can happen almost anytime, almost anywhere.
Download our "12 Days of Firewise" wildfire safety tip sheet and view the videos (look for a new one each day) on the website or right here on the blog, which provide easy steps you can follow as you string up the lights and deck the halls this holiday season and throughout the year.
Day 2: Firewise Central Regional Advisor Todd Chlanda says a good time to check your gutters is while you're putting up holiday lights.


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By Dave B.
A caveat before I begin: I can only review Avengers: Infinity War (currently in theaters) from the perspective of someone who has seen all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies that have preceded it. I suspect that the movie will be enjoyable for those with no experience with the franchise, but I can't say that they will have much emotional investment in the plot and/or characters. As a fan of the MCU, I can say that Infinity War is incredible.
The action in the movie is nearly literally non-stop. From the first shot to the last, fights are nearly continuous. At over two-and-a-half hours, this is a pretty impressive feat. I was not bored at any moment. The choreography of the fights is decent, but the special effects are mind-blowing. I was forced to see the movie in 3D. That's never my first choice, but when it is done well, it can enhance the moviegoing experience and it was done extremely well, in this case.
Most surprisingly to me, my favorite thing about the movie was the villain, Thanos. I was expecting a fairly hollow character, but I feel that Thanos was well-crafted. His motivations are explained (insane, but explained) and not implausible. At least not to me. Except for Killmonger (in Black Panther), I feel that Thanos is the Marvel antagonist that I can most empathize with. It's easy to see how he can be followed out of fear, love, or a combination of both. It's an important factor in adding some complexity and narrative flow to the movie, because perhaps the only real flaw in Infinity War is the huge cast of characters.
I feel that Infinity War does as good of a job as can be expected at juggling a huge cast of primary and secondary characters. However, there are limits to what any movie can accomplish in that regard. That's the sole reason for my initial caveat. Infinity War simply doesn't have the time for much character development and relies on viewers' preexisting knowledge to drive the emotional components of the film. Viewers who do not possess that preexisting knowledge are likely to enjoy the action and visuals of the movie, but I think it may be difficult for them to really care about any of the characters.
I can't see anything stopping Avengers: Infinity War from becoming the highest grossing movie of all time. It's pretty much everything that a summer blockbuster is supposed to be: a high-stakes action-fest, with humor and heart. I enjoyed the experience of watching it immensely, and I hope that you do too! 9/10
Leave a Reply.
I have no clue what I'm doing, but I'll keep doing whatever it is to the best of my ability.
March 2020


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Last month, the night before Halloween, we cohosted a special Test in Production session with Honeycomb.io. We asked speakers to bring their best horror stories of operational outages and other scary events.
Marc Devens, Director of Product at BrandVerge, shared two stories. First he spoke about what happened when Appeagle—a company that provides price management software for 3rd party sellers on Amazon, eBay and Walmart—was caught up in a major pricing error. (Items that typically cost thousands of dollars, were somehow listed as one cent.) Marc also shared a short story of how his current team at BrandVerge avoided potential disaster when launching 5+ major features with an offshore contract team after many months of only shipping fixes.
"When you really want to simulate the full lifecycle of the kind of events that you have, send a feed over to them, you wait for the response. You can only do that with real customer data." – Marc Devens, Director of Product at BrandVerge
Watch the video below to learn how Marc ensures these kinds of disasters never happen again. Learn more about how and why he tests in production. If you're interested in joining us at a future Meetup, you can sign up here.
Marc Devens: I'm Marc Devens, Director of Product with BrandVerge. Similar to Paul's story, I'm speaking about experiences at a company that I was previously with, a little bit more than that. Not only was this a company that I'm no longer representing, I'm no longer with, I actually wasn't with the company at the time of this. That's a pretty big caveat. Did have this cleared by the CTO of the company to make sure that had his blessing to kind of represent the story as a lesson for everyone else, one of these really scary stories that happens. It was really kind of foundational to what the company kind of, the way we did things there, because it was such a scary thing that happened at such an early stage within the company. This happened in July of 2012. I joined the customer success team at that company. The company was called Informed.co. At the time, it was called Appeagle. I joined the team in 2014, so just shy of two years later, before I eventually moved into product. We did, I did with them, price management software for third party sellers on Amazon, eBay, and Walmart.
Amazon was really the vast majority of this business, so it's really what we're going to focus on in this experience, affected Amazon. That landscape has changed a lot since this first happened in 2012, but we have some stats here. You're an Amazon seller, surprise. I think this is really important to kind of understand who these people are, who people are that are sellers, because it's always really important to understand your users, and who you're making a product for. We can go into some background about what that sort of landscape is like. These are stats from, these are recent stats. This was different back in 2012. At the time there were, so right now there is about more than one million sellers on Amazon, third party sellers. When you go on there and buy something, a lot of the time you don't even realize that you're buying it not from Amazon, you're buying from one of these third party sellers. There's over 30 billion dollars in annual revenue, just from these third party sellers. There's also two options for doing fulfillment.
There's Amazon FBA, which is when you as a seller will send your inventory into Amazon and they'll send it off to customers when they buy it. Or you can do seller fulfilled, you're fulfilling it on your own. We'll go into that a little bit later, because that actually plays a really important aspect into this. What happened? We know that Amazon is kind of the everything store, and so we can talk about what you can buy, and what you can sell on there. Obviously there's books, that's Amazon's kind of foundation, that's what they got started in. Third party sellers can sell books on there too. What else can you buy? You can buy tools, you can buy toiletries, groceries, anything you want. Going kind of higher up on the tickets, there you can buy TVs, you can buy cameras. You can buy anything on Amazon, and you could sell anything on Amazon pretty much. How does price management software work? Basically, if we go back to 2012, at the time it was pretty basic.
You could set minimum and maximum thresholds for your pricing, and there were basic rules that you could have, to say that, "If a competitor on the listing, they raised, or they lower their price, I want mine to kind of follow along with them." Now there's more advanced algorithms to kind of take a lot of this, you don't have to come up with your own strategies, the software can do it for you. At the time, that's how it worked, "My customer, my competitor would lower their price from a $100 to 99.99, and I want to match them and be competitive with them so I don't lose out on sales." If you don't want to have the soft price for your inventory, that's fine. You can just not set a minimum price. Those items without that minimum price, they get excluded from the repricing. Except, except, when you modify that single line of code, in a way that makes these items all without a price, go to a penny. That is a pretty scary sort of event, and what caused that to happen.
In, we had all these items that they didn't have that min price set in this system that was kind of a null, or a zero, and something changed in the code that allowed that to get sent to Amazon as a zero. Amazon, unfortunately, rather than rejecting that, they did something that I guess they must have thought was very convenient, they rounded up from zero to a penny. Don't know why they would do that, it seems like it would be a lot easier to just reject that and toss that out, but a penny, that's what it did. All these things that we had here, TVs, cameras, items that could sell for thousands of dollars, they all of a sudden went to that penny. As you can imagine, customers took advantage of that. You could start getting these things for things that, I feel like if you were on there buying something, you saw a $3,000 camera, some SOR, for a penny, probably knew that something wasn't going right, that wasn't some crazy sale that someone was having, but people pounced on that. I can't really blame anyone for trying.
You know how I was talking about the different kinds of fulfillment a little bit ago, where you could either do that seller fulfilled, or that FBA, that Amazon fulfilled. That's where things really started to kind of compound, because with this Amazon fulfillment, these orders kind of started just flying out the door already, sometimes even before a seller knew what had happened. They had gotten this order within an hour or two. These orders have already shipped to customers. This sort of thing is basically the worst case scenario for a company in this industry. Didn't mention that this was really early in this company's history. This was the first day of the fourth employee. Not really a company equipped to handle something like this. How do you even begin to clean something like this up? It was only four people at the time, kind of circle the wagons, trying to figure out how to do it. They were able to thankfully identify what had happened and correct that, get that changed, undone pretty quickly, but then you had to spring into action and really start working with people to get those fixes in.
One of the first steps was to notify Amazon. They needed to be made aware that these hundreds, or thousands, of orders had gone in kind of mistakenly. Also, wanted to work with them to make sure that the sellers, that they could have the best chance of cleaning this stuff up, maybe not fulfilling them, or if they had to cancel orders, that the seller metrics and things that they're compared on wouldn't get dinged, it wouldn't hurt the seller. The company acknowledged full responsibility for the incident, it wasn't the, tried to make that clear to Amazon that this was not the sellers fault. This was the company's fault for the mistake that they had put into place. Then it's working with sellers, trying to get them, all those people that bought these 100, or a $1,000 ticket item for a penny, trying to say, "Hey, I hope you realize that this was a mistake. You, we weren't actually offering this to you as a penny. Can you please go ahead and cancel that order." You of course had obstinate customers that said, "I paid a penny. I'm going to get the product that I paid for."
Then it was kind of at the sellers discretion, maybe they just went ahead and fulfilled that, if it was a low ticket item, it wasn't worth taking the hit on that, on their metrics to cancel that order. Or they just canceled it themselves and took that hit. Now on the company's side, how do you deal with these dozens, hundreds of customers out there, that had something pretty traumatic happen to them? Because this is, it's not only our business that was affected like this, these are all individual businesses that were affected in this way. There was a lot of service credit issued, as a small company that's kind of one of the best ways that you can kind of make good with someone. There were some reimbursements done to kind of cover any losses for people that did go ahead and fulfill those orders at a loss. As a reminder to anyone running a business, don't ever forger to pay your business insurance, because that comes in handy when you have to do some sort of payouts like this.
Surviving and thriving, this was really early stages in the company, this was 2012, the company's still around. It has 10 times the number of employees that it had then. Probably a similar, or even bigger exponential of customers. How do get through an incident like this and not have it kill off the company? One of the first things is obviously to ensure that it never happens again. You need tests and safety checks. Some of the things that we implemented there afterwards were to specifically check for certain kinds of changes, that if there was anything going out with a zero, or a penny, to really reject those, sounds all sorts of alarms to make sure that those weren't hitting any of the marketplaces that we worked with. Even though we went through that issue, and it was pretty visible within that sphere, a lot of people knew that that happened, that didn't prevent other companies from having the same exact mistake repeated on their side.
I was working on the customer success side, and about six months into my role, got a call from a customer saying, "I had all these products just go to a penny," and I was sitting there on the phone, [inaudible] was, "Oh, my God. This happened again. What did we do?" Eventually came to realize that that customer had used another competing piece of software in the past, that actually we were no longer using them, but they never revoked their authorization to their Amazon account. This company still had access to their Amazon account, even though they weren't even using it anymore. The same sort of thing, like what had happened, that these things that weren't actively managed, they didn't have that min price, they got sent to zero. This company, all the inventory that wasn't being managed by the company, got sent to zero. Pay attention to the mistakes that other companies make so that you do not repeat them yourself. Taking care of your customers is again one of the most important ways that the company got through it. This was very present within the company.
A lot of people knew that this had happened to the company, if you Google the name of the company you were interested in purchasing their services, you would find articles that had been written about this. When I first worked in that customer facing role, and I'd speak to customers that were interested in trying out the product, they'd say, "What have you done to make sure that this never happens again?" I can go into the things above, all the tests and safety checks, but at the end of the day, a customer doesn't really care about that. They say, "Well, it's happened before, how do you ensure that it doesn't happen again?" What I would say to them is that, "We had customers that were impacted, really bore the brunt of this, that are still our customers." I know that even today, six plus years after the fact, there are customers that are still with the company. That's the way that this company made it through that event. Going to the theme of this meetup test and production, one of the specific peculiarities with Amazon is that there is no sandbox for their API.
When you really want to simulate the full lifecycle of the kind of events that you have, send a feed over to them, you wait for the response. You can only do that with real customer data. You can try and have some test marketplaces of your own, but it's not going to scale the same way that real live products do. There's some element to just being able to control your rollout and make sure that you have a way to turn it back off. A gate for everything. You get a gate, and you get a gate. That was one of the things that we really learned after this, is that you really need to make sure that you can roll back and adjust quickly. You don't have to spend that time trying to undo whatever problem that you have. A flick of a switch gets you back to where you were. That was definitely one of the major lessons for the company, the way that we did things going forward, and in my takeaways, the way I do things now, even though I'm at a new company. Just, that was kind of this horror story.
I just want to speak a little bit more to my current experience, where gating saves the day again. After four years with Informed and Appeagle, I left earlier this summer. I joined a company called BrandVerge. We are a platform for the discovery and planning of premium marketing programs. When I first came in, we were working with a contract development team based in India. The initial launch of the product was in April of this year. I came on in June. There was a planned deployment for this big V2 of the product for September of 2018. The spec and requirements that were in that kind of, and also, there was not a deployment for anything but bug fixes between April and September. All of the features that were being developed in that time were set to launch in September. That's five, six, pretty banner features that were all set to launch, not only set to launch at one time, but the team was based in India, so it was going to launch at like 3:00 AM New York time.
These were all built to spec and requirements that had been developed six to 12 months prior, before any customers were on the platform, before we really had a good understanding of the way that customers were going to be using the platform. One of the first things that I did when I got in there, unfortunately because the team was a contract team, they had their specs run out, they wanted to build everything exactly as they said that they were going to do it. You can't blame them, that's how that relationship was, but was able to make some modifications, shift some things around, to at least get gates around these things. Because some of these features were just not ready for primetime, and so really great benefit for us to be able to hold these things back to do that additional work that was needed to be done before actually getting them in front of customers. I don't know. I think the way around, and I can say that within the third party marketplaces, eBay is surprisingly like a developer's dream.
Their whole, the development documentation, the environments that they have for developers, these sandbox things, are totally fleshed out. It's just nobody wants to use eBay, so you don't get to take advantage of these things. I think what's happened is that, we always used to joke that within Amazon, their, this division is called Marketplace Web Services, MWS, that they're like in some deep dank basement in Seattle kind of scuttled away from everyone else. Because like they just, I think one of the things is that they know that sellers are going to be selling, that these marketplaces are going to exist around sellers to support them, that they don't really care that much about the APIs. I think unfortunately you kind of have to bear the consequences when things like this happen, because you don't have those sandboxes, but they just didn't really seem to give this much of a, much attention within the organization. Thankfully, I can say that, within the last year or two, I can, we noticed that that was starting to change.
We were getting calls from product managers over at MWS, reaching out to us, as kind of one of the biggest users of their APIs and saying, "What were we looking for out of it?" Didn't see too much kind of done in response to those things, but at least they were reaching out, so hopefully that's a step in the right direction. That I am not sure of. I think we're all too nervous to try and send anything over and see what happens, so I would hope so. At least, as of a couple of years ago, when we saw someone have the same exact thing happen to them, and I mentioned that it happened to a competitor, it actually happened to at least two other competitors in the same space that I know of, there may have been more. It definitely existed as a problem for at least a couple years after this. I don't know if it's since been corrected. I can't speak to, specifically to the actual error in the code, but basically within the software, you would define a minimum price for your item.
You'd say, "I don't ever want this specific piece of inventory to sell for less than $50." You could choose not to assign a minimum price to something, and those things just would be exempted from the price in workflow. It wouldn't send prices for anything that you didn't set a threshold for. Except when something comes in and it fails the safety check, and all the things that basically had no minimum price, and I forget if it was, I'm not clear on the specifics, if it was either a null or a zero on our system, but what ended up happening is, because it didn't have a value set, it got sent to Amazon as a zero, which was then interpreted by Amazon as a penny. I'd say that, I really, in terms of what we could do differently, I wish that there was some better way to kind of, one of the things that we ended up running into more of an issue is like kind of the scale and load testing.
Because the price changes that we were sending were on the order of tens of millions a day, and there was a lot of metadata that existed around each individual price change. When we were doing any sort of work around this, again that slow rollout, being able to kind of to see that as you're rolling stuff out, it was holding up-
Speaker 2: Were you able to do like load tests beforehand?
Marc Devens: That's the thing that when I was leaving the company, was they were really trying to focus on being able to do those simulated load tests. That was something that without having a sandbox environment, it's actually really, really difficult to do.
Speaker 2: Really hard, without having a snapshot of real query traffic and everything.
Marc Devens: Yeah. Unfortunately, it's still a small company. The kind of resources that you need to throw at something like that, to be able to do really that full lifecycle of simulated testing, it's, those are multiple teams that would be responsible for something like that. Great. Thanks, everyone.


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Happy Halloween! Ryan Seacrest and the team — Sisanie, Tanya Rad and Patty Rodriguez — pulled off the perfect Halloween group costume on Thursday, October 31: Diplo and the Jonas Brothers!
While Ryan was at first hesitant to cosplay Diplo after Sisanie and Tanya revealed their group costume idea earlier this week, he epically pulled off the "Lonely" DJ's vibe, complete with a western ensemble, cowboy hat and blond wig.
Tanya, Sis and Patty opted for the JoBros' Happiness Begins tour suits. Tanya portrayed Joe Jonas, Sis portrayed Nick Jonas and Patty portrayed Kevin Jonas.
Watch back the hilarious on-air moment above to see Ryan's reaction to their costumes and vice versa. Plus, Ryan went full Diplo and "interviewed" the JoBros live on-air.
What did you dress as this Halloween? Sound off on social @OnAirWithRyan


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Press Release
U.S. Department of Commerce Invests $1.9 Million to Make Railroad Infrastructure Improvements in Upton
Contact: EDA Public Affairs Department, (202) 482-4085
June 9, 2017
WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced today that the Department's Economic Development Administration (EDA) is awarding a $1.9 million grant to the Upton Economic Development Board of Upton, Wyoming, to construct a railroad track needed to support a cleaning and rail repair facility at the Upton Logistics Park. According to grantee estimates, the project is expected to create 200 jobs and spur $1.4 million in private investment.
"The Trump Administration is committed to not only retaining jobs in this country, but also to creating new opportunities through infrastructure improvements," said Secretary Ross. "I look forward to seeing how this railroad improvement project will help local businesses grow and thrive."
The project will help to install 11,000 feet of railroad track and 14 turnouts to facilitate storage of rail cars at the new car cleaning and repair facility. There is high demand for rail cars to be cleaned and repaired in Upton, with more than 1 million rail cars passing through the park every year.
About the U.S. Economic Development Administration (www.eda.gov)
The mission of the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) is to lead the federal economic development agenda by promoting competitiveness and preparing the nation's regions for growth and success in the worldwide economy. An agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce, EDA makes investments in economically distressed communities in order to create jobs for U.S. workers, promote American innovation, and accelerate long-term sustainable economic growth.


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PIAA Introduces the new LP 530 GL 1800 LED light kit. Change your dim OEM fog lamps to the powerful, yet low amperage draw of the LP 530 LEDs. The LP 530 LEDs will give you a brilliant 6000k color temperature, along with the distance of a 30 degree driving beam pattern. A must upgrade for any Goldwing.


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Whether business or pleasure, the marine industry can be faced with a range of issues that impact on both the vessel and the environment. Whether you are faced with de-greasing a bilge, eliminating odours from a holding tank or having to clean the exterior of the craft, Environmental Intelligence has a solution to meet your needs.
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And he's very special to me and continues to be."When asked by if she wanted her mother to date, Bindi said she just wants her mom to be happy."Honestly, all I want in life in mom's happiness," said the 18-year-old."What people sometimes forget is that when you find your soulmate, if you've found that soulmate you really don't want to move on.So mom had her soulmate and mom and dad will always be married and will always be together.I think that's a beautiful thing."Terri Irwin now works as the owner of the Australia Zoo, where she continues to preserve the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve and cherish Steve's memory.It consists a number of thought provoking statements right from the beginning that show a woman's great personality and sense of humor.It's eloquently written, it's concise, straight and to the point!
I am not sure why people go through the trouble of signing up and filling all those questionnaires and then post a profile that looks like a copy of any other neutral, boring, profile full of cliches and types.
I also don't know what life holds for me tomorrow, but I do know that we can only get older and I feel safer to get old with you.
Someone to remember the days with, and to grow with. Everyone is crying out to say how good they are, how cool they are, how fun they are.
In fact, she hasn't dated anyone since her husband Steve passed away in 2006..
"You know when you take those vows, and say 'we'll be together as long as we both shall live,' I really don't think I would've married if I hadn't met Steve.


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Source: Economic Times
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) worth Rs 24.36 crore has been received in the defence sector till September this year, government said today in the Rajya Sabha.
"After opening up of the defence industry sector for FDI in 2001, 33 FDI proposals/joint ventures have been approved in the defence sector for manufacturing of various defence equipment, both in public and private sectors.
"FDI amounting to Rs 24.36 crore has been received up to September 2014," Minister of State for Defence Rao Inderjit Singh said in a written reply in the House.
To another question, he said 'Make in India' policy also covers manufacturing in defence sector and the initiative covers manufacturing of all kinds of defence equipment.


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Tuition Fees Rates
Tuition fees rates and discounts.
All students are required to pay an annual tuition fee. The tuition fee includes charges for registration, tuition, supervision and examination and is payable for each year, or part of the year for which you are registered, including placement years.
Follow the relevant links below to view our tuition fee rates and learn more about tuition fee discounts.
In this section
Tuition Fees Discounts
Find out more about our discounts including the Alumni Discount and the Upfront Payment Discount.


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Latest Press
In the Bay State Banner: Will you pledge to make sure your community counts in the 2020 Census?
Six months from now, on April 1, 2020, the U.S. census will be in full swing. This is our opportunity of the decade to get our fair share of public resources and political representation. The census will determine our political representation from city council to Congress.
On Universal Hub: Several chances to catch at-large council candidates in forums this month
By adamg on Tue, 10/01/2019 – 10:58am The Cedar Grove Civic Association holds a forum for the eight candidates vying for four at-large seats on the Boston City Council 7 p.m. tonight at Florian Hall, 55 Hallett St. in Dorchester. Other forums for at-large candidates this month: Wednesday, 5:30 p.m., Environmental League of Massachusetts, BPL main library in […]
On Boston City TV: 2020 Census Roxbury Counts (promo)
Mayor Martin Walsh joins the Madison Park Development Corporation to promote the community's effort to facilitate a fair and accurate census count in the neighborhood of Roxbury.
On the Boston University News Service: Sen. Elizabeth Warren calls democratic voters to the polls on Nov. 6
Senator Warren at Hibernian Hall in Roxbury on Saturday, Oct. 13. Photo by Jaymes Farrell / BU News Service ROXBURY, MA- Sen. Elizabeth Warren called on democrats to head to the voting booths on November 6th, as a way to help politicians tackle the issues they cared about. "We want the White House, but to get […]


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5,000. Yes, that's the number of advertisements a common person is exposed to daily. You look anywhere – your phones, televisions, outside your window, these ads are waiting, ready to pounce on you as soon as your eyes land on them. Advertisers do not leave a single platform to reach you whether it is online, t.v., radio, billboard, print etc. But how many of us even remember one ad out of the massive clutter that is thrown at us every day?
So, how will any brand or product effectively reach its customers?
Frankly, customers are extremely bored and tired of being exposed to countless advertisements every minute. They hate it that they're continuously sold some or the other product.
But if you decide to move beyond normal promotions then Experiential Marketing is the answer for you!
Experiential Marketing is a very subtle and exciting way to promote and market anything. This kind of marketing doesn't sell your product to the customer directly but actually makes them well versed with the product, creates enjoyable and inspiring experiences, and then encourages them to want that product for the rest of their lives. You don't just get a one-time customer, but build a loyal and long-lasting friendly client and influencer.
How does experiential marketing create an impact on a person?
Memory: There are many drinking water brands available in the market. But the first option everyone prefers is 'Bisleri'. Why? Well, that's the recall position the brand has created in the minds of its customers. This is exactly what experiential marketing does. It curates events that pay immense attention to the visuals, sounds, games, interactions, audience engagement, unique and beautiful set-ups because all these attributes will, in turn, create the top of the mind recall you desire for your brand. It will create ever-lasting good memories in the minds of all delegates which is the most appropriate way to promote any brand.
Connection : Even the law believes and trusts only the things the eyes have seen. Imagine the impact it would create on the mind of the client who has had the visual experience and personal connection with your brand. Excellently planned and executed events will always incorporate extremely engaging and interactive one-on-one communication that will make your customer feel absolutely privileged, pampered and precious to be a part of that particular brand family.
Reach : Ever heard, gossip spreads like a wildfire? Well, experiential marketing doesn't spread gossip but it definitely spreads true and interesting facts through exceptionally well – planned events. If the event is extremely unique and has a good vibe, it makes the people talk which creates a buzz. And this buzz lasts even after the event is concluded on various social media platforms and even through word of mouth.
Voluntary : With experiential marketing, you have the option of designing an event that interests your audiences who in-turn will truly appreciate you attending the event. Unlike social media ads that are not personalised to each category. One important aspect to keep in mind while planning the event is to make sure you plan something that has a FOMO (fear of missing out) effect on the minds of the audience.
Authenticity : The biggest advantage of experiential marketing is the fact that it provides authenticity to all the delegates. An event is an ideal way to show people you're a real brand with good intentions. Unlike other marketing platforms where many products are fake, untrue and disloyal.
Now that you know the importance of experiential marketing, the second step is to choose the right experiential marketing company for your brand. Shobiz, has the potential to be your one-stop solution to curate an event that creates a necessary impact on all your audiences and design an extremely enjoyable, fun, grand and active event.


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Posts Tagged 'Steamworks'
A Beer Style of Our Own
Some places are known for distinctive beer styles. In fact, some styles are even named after the places where they evolved, e.g. Bock (Einbeck), Kölsch (Köln), Pilsner (Plzeň), Vienna Lager. In BC, the craft beer renaissance is reaching ever greater heights. However, is there anything that we can point to as being distinctly BC? When people think of beer and British Columbia, is there anything that differentiates us from our neighbours? The rest of Canada? Not as such.
There is still a lot of experimenting going on in BC as more and more people join the excitement that is craft beer. For a BC style to be adopted, it would require the co-operation of our craft brewers and the support of the drinking public to succeed. As we've seen with the Cascadia Dark Ale debacle, the former is already a messy thing. In fact, it might make more sense getting the public behind such an idea. Because if there is an obvious market, what brewer would pass up such an opportunity?
New Ownership for The Moon Under Water
I recently heard through the hop bine that Don and Bonnie Bradley had just sold their Victoria brewpub. When I visited The Moon Under Water for the first time on September 7, I learned that, indeed, was the case. I had the pleasure of meeting Clay Potter and Chelsea Walker, the new owners, who were very kind to spend some time with me during a hectic period (lunch before the GCBF's first day), relating their backgrounds and hopes for the Moon. Having just gotten the keys to the pub, it was a moment when one often experiences the duality of excitement and dread as you venture into new territory.
Craft Beer Culinary Tour Highlights Gastown
Whenever I plan to visit a new city, if it isn't in Saudi Arabia, I'm checking out the local craft beer scene online ahead of time to ensure I enjoy some of the local flavour. I know I'm not alone in that regard because If you visit Rate Beer and Beer Advocate, you'll notice each has a section set up for the brews traveller. And with the rapid growth of craft brewing in North America, beer tourism is also on the rise.
Beer festivals, like the Great Canadian Beer Festival in Victoria and the Okanagan Fest-of-Ale in Pentiction, are obvious tourism boosts to those cities. Penticton, however, isn't known as a beer town. Victoria, on the other hand, is well-regarded in craft beer drinker circles for its high per capita number of breweries, pubs, and brewpubs. The fact that I don't see much of Victoria outside of those when I visit is a testament to the quality experience our provincial capital offers.
Another Milestone: The Alibi Room 200th
I remember there was a time when a new change-up in the Alibi Room's draught lineup was newsworthy of being posted on this blog. Those then became such a regular occurrence that even Nigel couldn't keep up with posting copies of his new draught menu to his own Web site. Now we are lucky to get the occasional tweet, warning us of the odd noteworthy beer going on tap.
On December 3, 2009, the Alibi Room celebrated its 100th tap list with a party that has become legend amongst local craft beer nerds and brewers alike, not least of which was Nigel's souvenir the beer geek's guide to the Alibi's 100th beer list. A shade over a year later, and three and a half years after this ball got rolling, it's time to toast the 200th:
The Alibi's 200th Beer List
December 22, 2010, 5:00pm
157 Alexander Street, Vancouver
Beer Wars: The Battle Rages Every Day
CAMRA Vancouver is screening the beer industry documentary, Beer Wars, at 4:00pm on Sunday, January 31. Greg Koch of San Diego's Stone Brewing will be in attendance, and entertainment will be provided by local muscians, Sun Wizard. Central City, Driftwood, Granville Island, Howe Sound, R&B, Red Truck, Steamworks, Swans, and Yaletown brewing will be serving BC craft beer.
This is an ideal event for a person looking to find out more about beer and the craft brewing scene in BC. Where else can you have a good brew and watch a movie at the same time, except at home!
Beer Wars is not a stupid, drunken, frat-boy romp, filled to the brim with crude humor and bad taste. It's a film that looks behind the scenes of the American beer industry (also relevant to Canada), where corporate behemoths are being challenged by small, independent brewers shunning the status quo, and creating innovative new beers. The story is told through two of these entrepreneurs — Sam and Rhonda — battling the might and tactics of Corporate America. Interviews with numerous industry players fill in the big picture.
Beer Wars is also not a flick that was made for the beer geek. Filmmaker, Anat Baron (UBC alumnus), set out to make an accessible movie that would give the average, mass-market beer drinker a better understanding of how their beer is made, where it comes from, and how it gets to them.
Beer Wars Movie
Date: Sunday, January 31
District 319 is an exclusive venue that is only available for private functions. It was an abandoned Asian movie house that has been renovated into a stylish, state-of-the-art multimedia facility.
As of February 1, Beer Wars is now available on demand, as a download, or on DVD.
CAMRA Vancouver Recognizes Local Beer Excellence
The Vancouver chapter of the Campaign for Real Ale has announced the results of its annual members poll recognizing local and regional excellence in brewing and beer service. Surrey's Central City Brewing was awarded Best Local Brewpub; the Alibi Room Best Local Beer Cafe, Pub, or Restaurant; and Brewery Creek Liquor Store, Best Local Liquor Store for beer selection. This is the second year both the Alibi Room and Brewery Creek were rated the best in their categories.
With the growing popularity of cask-conditioned ale (Real Ale) in Vancouver, more establishments have been adding this type of beer to their offerings. For this reason, CAMRA Vancouver added a Best Local Cask Night to its list of awards. In a nod to its pioneering role in popularizing Real Ale in the city, Dix Barbecue and Brewery won this category and won silver for its winter cask ale festival. The Whip is also acknowledged for its Real Ale Sundays with a different cask every week supplied by R&B Brewing.
Since last year, Amber Jack's Tap House, St. Augustine's Restaurant & Lounge, and Yaletown Brewing have each begun offering Real Ale on a weekly or monthly basis. The Alibi Room now offers a continuously changing selection of three cask ales nightly. They celebrated their 100th beer menu rotation on December 3. Read the rest of this entry »
Gastown Cask Carouse
CAMRA Vancouver is hosting a Real Ale pub crawl in Gastown this Saturday, featuring cask-conditioned ales from R&B Brewing at four of the neighbourhood's best locations dedicated to craft beer.
Participants will break up into four groups and hit the Alibi Room, The Irish Heather, Six Acres, and Steamworks. Each person will receive, respectively, a pint of R&B Hoppelganger IPA, Red Devil Pale Ale, Raspberry Sun God Wheat Ale, and Raven Cream Ale, along with an assortment of bar snacks.
People from CAMRA Vancouver and the craft beer industry will also be on hand to talk about cask-conditioned ale and answer any questions.
Gastown Cask Carouse
Time: Saturday, August 29, 12:30 – 5:00pm
Place: meet at Carrall & Water streets, between Koolhaus & Chill Winston
Limit: 80 people
Cost: $30, $25 CAMRA members
Info & Registration: CAMRA Vancouver Web site
The weather forecast for Saturday is sunny and warm, so be sure to register today to ensure your space.
2009 Tarnished Plate Awards
Love them or loathe them, the Georgia Straight's Golden Plate Awards are out. Either way, it would be foolish to ignore them. Consider them a gauge of The Straight's readers' preferences. If, as a business, you are targeting that demographic, then the awards will give you an indication of how successful your efforts have been to date. From the perspective of CAMRA Vancouver, it tells us how much more work we still need to do.
On the beer front, this is an opportunity to measure progress since the Best of Vancouver 2008 awards. Although there were fewer categories offered than the Golden Plates, my accompanying article in that edition covered more ground. I was hoping, at least, it made a few people curious to try something other than what they're constantly being bombarded with in advertisements. The results are mixed, but I see some progress being made.
In terms of beer, readers are clearly influenced by advertising. The Local Microbrew category certainly limits the choices (thankfully, there were no daft awards, such as Molson Canadian), but all the beers chosen are actually brewed in Kelowna. The Granville Island beers that are brewed in Vancouver are only their Limited Releases. The majority of people still need to discover R&B and Storm, it seems. Sorry, folks, per a previous post, Steamworks is not a microbrewery; they are a brewpub. Outside of this category, only one craft brewer made the cut — Phillips, which just reinforces what I said in my last post about the need for craft brewers to collaborate.
In the categories of B.C. Beer (brewed outside Vancouver) and Canadian Beer (not B.C.), people have a reading comprehension problem since a number of choices were breweries, not actual beers. I find the import category to be the most disappointing of all. Given all the beers available at the establishments chosen in the Imported Beer Selection category, you would think there would be more of a mixture of choices other than mass-market lager and mass-market Guinness. There is a much greater diversity available here that people are completely missing out on. A visit to Brewery Creek, Firefly, Libations, or Viti would quickly put that to rest.
On the pub front, I see more progress. All the pubs are actual pubs; all the brewpubs are pubs that brew beer for consumption on their own premises (Granville Island Tap House not being a pub). The majority of the chosen pubs also have good beer. I'm heartened by the fact that The Straight's readers do not equate 'best' with the Granville guzzling galleries. On the food side, I don't think enough people have eaten at the Alibi Room. Their commitment to local and seasonal is deserving of attention. Chef Greg Armstrong formerly worked at Habit Lounge, so he's no slouch.
Finally, I'm curious about the inclusion of Fogg N' Suds. Are people voting for them based on reputation? Their beer selection today is nowhere near that of their halcyon days in the mid-eighties. For B.C. beer, no one in the entire province beats the Alibi Room for the quality of their selection — there is simply no crap on tap. For imported beer, I think Fogg N' Suds has been succeeded by Six Acres, the Irish Heather, and Stella's. I wouldn't call Chambar's selection the best from a comprehensive point of view, but it is very good from the perspective of matching their beer with their food, which no one else in Vancouver has done. I'd like to see them replace their gueuze, though, with Oud Beersel. If we can get anyone to import Cantillon, its inclusion would be essential.
Finally, here are the beer results from the Best Drinks section of the 2009 Golden Plate Awards:
Local Microbrewery
1. Granville Island Brewing
2. R & B Brewing
3. Steamworks Brewing Company
Local Microbrew
1. Granville Island Lions Winter Ale
2. Granville Island English Bay Pale Ale
3. Granville Island Lager
B.C. Beer (brewed outside Vancouver)
1. Kokanee
2. Okanagan Spring
3. Phillips Brewing
Canadian Beer (not B.C.)
1. Sleeman
2. Alexander Keith's
3. (tie) Molson Canadian
3. (tie) Moosehead
Imported Beer
1. Stella Artois
2. (tie) Corona
2. (tie) Guinness
3. Heineken
Best Pub
1. The Irish Heather
2. Yaletown Brewing Company
3. Steamworks
1. Yaletown Brewing Company
2. Steamworks
3. Dix BBQ & Brewery
Pub Food
1. The Irish Heather
2. Yaletown Brewing Company
3. Kingston Taphouse & Grille
B.C. Beer Selection
1. Fogg N' Suds
2. Alibi Room
3. The Whip Restaurant Gallery
Imported Beer Selection
1. Stella's Tap & Tapas Bar
2. Fogg N' Suds
3. Chambar Belgian Restaurant
The Best of… Beer Confusion
WE, the weekly formerly known as the West Ender, recently published its 'The Best of the City' readers choice awards. In their After Dark section, they had a couple of categories covering beer, so fewer issues for me to have than with the Georgia Straight's 'Best of Vancouver' awards. Nevertheless, it is another canary in the coal mine to judge how beer-savvy their readers are. The verdict? Not terribly.
WE had two categories devoted to beer —Microbrewery and Brew Pub. What were the picks?
- Dockside Brewing Co.
- Steamworks Brewing Co.
- Granville Island Brewing
Brew Pub:
- Yaletown Brew Pub (sic)
- Steamworks Brewing Co.
- Dockside Restaurant & Brewing Co. (sic)
Problem? Dockside and Steamworks are not microbreweries They produce beer solely for sale on their premises, hence the term 'brew pub.' Microbreweries produce beer for sale outside of their premises. They've been allowed to have tap rooms to offer visitors a sample of their brews, but full pub service is not available.
So for next year's 'The Best of the City' awards, let's get what we're voting on straight. In Vancouver proper, there are three microbreweries — Granville Island, R&B, and Storm — and four brew pubs — Coal Harbour, Dix, Dockside, Steamworks, Yaletown. If the boundary is actually Metro Vancouver, then the options extend from Lions Bay to Delta, Bowen Island to Abbotsford. That excludes Howe Sound Brewing, Whistler Brewhouse, Dead Frog, and Mission Springs. It also doesn't include Whistler Brewing which doesn't even brew in Whistler. Granville Island is a bit of an anomaly because the only beer they brew at the island is their seasonal releases. Anything that's sold in a six-pack is made in Kelowna.
CAMRA Recognizes Vancouver's Best in Beer
The Vancouver chapter of the Campaign for Real Ale has announced the results of its annual members poll recognizing local and regional excellence in brewing and beer service. Dix BBQ & Brewery was awarded Best Local Brewpub; The Alibi Room is Best Local Beer Cafe, Pub, or Restaurant; and Brewery Creek, Best Local Liquor Store for beer selection.
"While it may seem curious that the best beer is in Surrey and the best brewery in Victoria, this year's results reflect the growth in popularity of real ale in Vancouver," explained CAMRA Vancouver President, Rick Green. "We are fortunate to have brewers throughout the province willing to meet the demand here."
Dix BBQ & Brewery began the trend in 2002, featuring a cask-conditioned ale once a month. With the encouragement of CAMRA Vancouver, the following has grown. Now Dix features a weekly cask ale and hosts a semi-annual cask festival.
"We are very pleased to be awarded favourite brewpub in the Lower Mainland," said Dix brewer, Derrick Franche. "On behalf of the Dix BBQ & Brewery staff, I'd like to thank CAMRA Vancouver for their support."
In January of 2007, The Whip Restaurant & Gallery partnered with local microbrewery, R&B Brewing, to offer a weekly cask from brewers all over BC. Last year, they inaugurated the annual Feast of Five Firkins, a special brewmasters' dinner featuring five courses paired with five firkins from five brewers. Their success is reflected in the three rewards they received this year.
Real ale is also reaching the suburbs. Taylor's Crossing brewpub in North Vancouver offers a monthly cask ale, as does Surrey's BigRidge brewpub. Central City Brewing, also in Surrey, launched their annual cask festival last summer.
Not only is Gastown an evolving dining destination, it's also a growing focal point for craft beer. Steamworks has been the standard bearer since 1995. Two years ago, the Alibi Room changed direction to become a true free house showcasing all of the province's best beers. Publican, Nigel Springthorpe, noted:
"We went out on a limb to try something different. The build has been slow, but I really feel things are coming together. We pick up our own beer from the Island; we even have small breweries in the Interior carpooling their beer or getting visitors to throw kegs in their trunks to bring to us. Things are changing. Craft beer is becoming a bigger part of our culture here in BC."
Last year, the Irish Heather moved across the street into a newly-renovated location. As part of their makeover, they became the first establishment in Vancouver to offer cask-conditioned ale daily, supplied by R&B. And with first-rate imports being sold through progressive retailers, such as Brewery Creek, we can expect the bar to be raised in Vancouver.
The results of the 2009 CAMRA Vancouver Awards are:
Best Local Brewpub
Gold: Dix BBQ & Brewery
Silver: Central City Brewing
Bronze: Yaletown Brewing
Best Local Beer Cafe, Pub, or Restaurant
Gold: The Alibi Room
Silver: The Whip Restaurant & Gallery
Bronze: The Wolf & Hound
Best Local Liquor Store
Gold: Brewery Creek Cold Beer & Wine Store
Silver: Firefly Fine Wines and Ales
Bronze: BCLS Signature Store (39th & Cambie)
Best Local Beer Event
Gold: The Whip Real Ale Sundays
Silver: CAMRA On a Mission to Mission; Feast of Five Firkins (tie)
Best BC Brewery
Gold: Phillips Brewing Co., Victoria
Silver: Storm Brewing Ltd., Vancouver
Bronze: Crannóg Ales, Sorrento; R&B Brewing, Vancouver (tie)
Best BC Beer
Gold: Central City Empire IPA
Silver: Storm Black Plague Stout
Bronze: Crannóg Back Hand of God Stout
Best BC Seasonal Beer
Gold: Yaletown Oud Bruin
Silver: Steamworks The Grand espresso stout
Bronze: Granville Island Winter Ale