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Topic: lawsuits
German court rules against Apple 'swipe-to-unlock' patent protection
08/25/2015, 05:08 pm
Judges in a top German court ruled against Apple's European "swipe-to-unlock" patent on Tuesday, stating that it didn't meet high enough standards to secure patent protection.
Samsung to petition Supreme Court over Apple patent fight
08/19/2015, 06:08 pm
After being denied an en banc rehearing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit over a prior decision that kept intact Apple's multi-million dollar patent trial win, Samsung has voiced intent to argue the case in front of the Supreme Court.
USPTO finds Apple iPhone design patent invalid in court fight against Samsung
08/17/2015, 11:08 pm
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office earlier this month found an iPhone design patent successfully leveraged by Apple against Samsung in its first court action invalid on multiple counts, bringing Apple's $548 million damages award into question.
Judge denies group status for lawsuit targeting Apple over lost iMessage texts
08/05/2015, 10:08 am
A California lawsuit over texts lost in Apple's iMessage network can't proceed as a group case, a judge ruled, as it isn't clear all of the proposed members were impacted by a "contractual breach or interference" originating from iMessage.
Federal appeals court declines to stay Smartflash case against Apple
07/30/2015, 03:07 pm
On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit refused to stay proceedings in Smartflash's patent lawsuit against Apple, potentially paving the way for Smartflash claiming recalculated damages.
Google, Facebook, others push for rehearing over damages in Apple v. Samsung patent case
07/20/2015, 10:07 pm
Google, Facebook, eBay, H-P and other Silicon Valley players, along with various interest groups, are asking the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals to rehear a decision that denied Samsung's plea for damage limitations in an ongoing patent lawsuit involving Apple.
Lawsuit over Apple Store employee bag checks becomes class action covering over 12,000 workers
07/16/2015, 04:07 pm
A long-running lawsuit over bag searches of Apple Store workers was certified as a class action on Thursday, broadening the potential impact to over 12,000 past and present retail staff.
Lawsuit targets Apple for directing 'iWatch' Google searches to Apple Watch page
07/14/2015, 11:07 am
A new lawsuit accuses Apple of improperly using Google ads to guide "iWatch" searches to its page for the Apple Watch, abusing a trademark it doesn't own, a report said on Tuesday.
Judge tosses Smartflash's $533M victory against Apple, damages to be retried
07/08/2015, 08:07 am
Months after a Texas jury ordered Apple to pay $532.9 million to a product-less company that critics have dubbed a "patent troll," a judge has tossed out that decision, declaring that instructions given to the jury may have improperly affected the damage assessment.
Apple loses final e-books antitrust appeal, will pay $450M settlement [u]
06/30/2015, 11:06 am
The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday confirmed a lower court's finding that Apple colluded with major publishers to raise the price of e-books following the launch of the iBookstore, putting the case to rest and clearing the way for distribution of a $450 million settlement.
Apple seeks over $15M in fees from patent holdings firm for 'frivolous' lawsuit
06/23/2015, 06:06 am
A federal court motion filed last Friday reveals Apple is looking to garnish more than $15 million in attorneys' fees and costs from non-practicing patent holdings firm Unwired Planet, which engaged in a series "kitchen-sink" lawsuits targeting iOS device connectivity features.
Samsung seeks rehearing of appeal over $400M patent infringement ruling
06/17/2015, 09:06 pm
Writing the next chapter of an ongoing feud with Apple, Samsung on Wednesday petitioned for a rehearing of a recent U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that upheld nearly $400 million in damages for infringing Apple design patents.
Taiwan fines Apple $647K for forcing carriers to seek iPhone pricing approval
06/17/2015, 01:06 pm
Apple has lost a Taiwanese lawsuit accusing it of anti-competitive phone pricing tactics, and barring an appeal will be fined T$20 million, or a little over $647,000 U.S., a report said on Wednesday.
Apple removes cable maker Monster from MFi program in wake of Beats lawsuit
06/16/2015, 03:06 pm
Electronics maker Monster is no longer allowed to manufacture licensed "Made for iPhone" accessories and must stop selling its current stock by October, having been booted from Apple's certification program following a January lawsuit against Apple subsidiary Beats.
Jawbone sues Fitbit for 'systematically plundering' confidential data
05/28/2015, 11:05 am
Jawbone is suing rival fitness tracker maker Fitbit, accusing the latter of "systematically plundering" corporate secrets by hiring Jawbone workers who smuggled sensitive data before exiting the company.
Appeals court denies Apple's bid to remove antitrust monitor in e-books case
05/28/2015, 09:05 am
Apple's efforts to have antitrust compliance monitor Michael Bromwich removed from oversight of its business were denied on Wednesday, as an appeals court said the iBooks operator lacked sufficient reasoning to have him replaced.
Appeals court finds Samsung violated Apple's design patents, but not trade dress
05/18/2015, 09:05 am
An appeals court ruled on Monday that Samsung's $930 million penalty, stemming from its patent infringement suit with Apple, must be adjusted, in a mixed courtroom outcome for the iPhone maker.
Apple and car battery firm A123 on verge of settling job poaching lawsuit
05/13/2015, 11:05 am
Apple and battery maker A123 Systems are nearing the settlement of a federal lawsuit which accused the former of poaching engineers and scientists from A123 in an attempt to create a new battery division, according to court documents submitted this week.
This week in AppleInsider: 12.9" iPad Pro details, Beats Music woes, AppleBot & more
05/09/2015, 12:05 am
This week saw a number of details emerge about Apple's plans for a 12.9-inch iPad, a new Apple TV, and Web search. The company's efforts to relaunch Beats Music appeared to be running into roadblocks however, with word of incomplete deals, and even probes by two U.S. government agencies.
Ericsson turns patent royalty spat with Apple into an international incident
05/08/2015, 08:05 am
Months after taking Apple to court in the U.S., Swedish telecom giant Ericsson has filed separate but related lawsuits in the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands accusing Apple of using Ericsson patents without a legitimate license.


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Jennifer Hudson Stuns With 'Too Beautiful for Words' from 'The Color Purple' (VIDEO)
Jennifer Hudson sang a stunning rendition of "Too Beautiful For Words" from the upcoming Broadway revival of "The Color Purple" at the The New York Times In Performance series.
I can smell a Tony nomination in the works!
Hudson was accompanied by with David Jackson on piano.
The show opens in December 10 at the Jacobs Theater with previews starting on November 10.

subset: commoncrawl


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Investment Tips for Women
It's no secret: With longer life spans and lower earnings on average, women often face unique financial challenges. What follows are a few tips women may want to consider as they create the financial cushion they need.
Contribute to your employer-sponsored retirement plan. Contribute as much as you can possibly afford to your 401(k), 403(b), or 457(b) retirement plan at work and increase your contributions each time your salary goes up. Your retirement plan provides you with tax-deferred earnings and a variety of investment options.
Consider purchasing life or long-term care insurance. With millions of Baby Boomers joining the ranks of the elderly each year, the costs of long-term care are expected to skyrocket. And with many women acting as caretakers, the financial burden often can fall on their shoulders. Shop around for a company with favorable rates, but keep in mind that the financial strength of the insurer matters, too. You want the company to still be there decades later should you need the coverage.
Maximize your IRA contribution. Even if you have a 401(k) or other employer-sponsored retirement plan, you may be eligible to contribute to a traditional or Roth IRA. (However, your ability to fund a Roth IRA depends on your income.) If your income qualifies, the contribution limit to either a Roth IRA or Traditional IRA for 2017 is $5,500, or $6,500 if you're 50 or older.
Invest for growth. Studies have shown that, in many ways, women are better investors than men. Women tend to do less buying and selling, which cuts down on fees and expenses, and women also are more likely to look at the "big picture," which translates into better long-term investment decisions. However, women also seem to invest more conservatively than men, and conservative investments typically do not produce the growth achieved by more aggressive vehicles. Of course, you need to stay within your individual risk tolerance when you invest, but be aware that investing too cautiously could slow your progress toward your ultimate goals.
These suggestions can greatly help in your pursuit of financial security. So invest early, often, and wisely—you'll be glad you did!
This article is provided by RBC Wealth Management on behalf of Gary Kiemele, a Financial Advisor at RBC Wealth Management, and may not be exclusive to this publication. The information included in this article is not intended to be used as the primary basis for making investment decisions. RBC Wealth Management does not endorse this organization or publication. Consult your investment professional for additional information and guidance.
RBC Wealth Management, a division of RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Member NYSE/FINRA/SIPC.


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5 Comments
it must stop July 21, 2015 1:06 pm
Waller County is known for being unfair and unjust! The closed and pending cases presented to the DA's offices needs to be audited. The media needs to keep speaking out to let the community and others know what's going on. I heard of a case in the DA's office that shows a perfect example of selective prosecution, racial prejudice and once I get the court date the media will be informed in hopes that the the injustices in Waller County will continue to be exposed.
Lisa July 21, 2015 1:11 pm
Why was she asked to exit the vehicle? Isn't it safer to keep the person in the vehicle? This story breaks my heart. I pray for her family every day.
Linda July 21, 2015 3:07 pm
I think that they kill that lady because she were black that lady was happy for her new job that is why I don't trust no white cop well I don't trust them because some of them still living in the kkk days and that's why they want to be police officer so they can have control of black people's lives because that's who they stop the most anybody can see it is to many black people's getting kill by white cops and they always getting away with it so they no this so they don't have no reason to stop killing blacks they were just born racist I no this because I was lock up for a ticket and I were in the cell with more black people's and a white lady the white cop call the white lady up there and look at all them monkeys in there I didn't say anything because I didn't want to get beating and kill in there and I hope that lady family don't give up until they find out who kill they daughter because I believe some white cop kill her
Linda July 21, 2015 6:01 pm
The white cop told the white lady to look at all them monkeys in there
Dot July 22, 2015 8:05 am
The officer asked her to put out her cigarette and she refused saying she was in her car and she didn't have to. So he said, ok, then step out of the car. That's when she started going crazy and resisting him.
Comments are closed.


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I have extensive experience in creating fun and engaging learning opportunities for families. I am particularly adept at developing interactions within the gallery spaces that are mindful of the institution's collection. Using various education techniques, I employ gallery-safe materials to give families first-hand experience with the objects.
Additionally I have also worked with children as young as 2 for messy art-making activities within a studio setting. I have worked with children of various ages and develop programmes that include different techniques including age-appropriate discussions, object handling, storytelling, music and art activities.


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Beer Battered Coconut Shrimp with Remoulade Sauce
Pete and I had some fresh frozen shrimp in the freezer the other night and his favorite is Coconut Shrimp so I found a great recipe in fine Cooking magazine. They are crunchy and sweet and the remoulade sauce is so yummy and savory, made with capers, and other mouth watering ingredients. These little crustaceans are addicting! I have been missing my boys lately and probably won't be able to see them until Christmas. I really envy parents that have children that go to school in the same town that they live in. I can't just call and say hey do you want to come over for a Sunday supper? Or hey want to go to lunch today? Or I would even go so far and say, hey would you like to come over and I will do your laundry for you? That is how much I'm missing Morgan and P.J.. I know a lot of other empty nest parents out there that are going through the same issues and honestly that time of my life was the hardest ever. P.J. left last January and Morgan left almost four years ago now. It has gotten a little easier as time goes by. Still, you wonder where did all the years go? I will see families of four out to dinner or shopping together in town and think, treasure every moment you have together because it all goes by way to quickly. Don't get me wrong I'm so happy that they are doing what they love and living in a city that they adore, but I can still miss them can't I? Pete and I have been having a relaxing time in Michigan, Lazy beach days, beautiful sunsets, cocktails on the patio, watching the boats and the world go by. This is a time to reconnect and find each other again, not that we have ever been lost. Even when the boys were growing up we had date nights at least once every two weeks and sometimes once a week. As much as we love our boys we always made time for each other and I think that was very important, especially now. So to those parents that are now empty nest, enjoy the time that you have with your spouse and start a new chapter in your life! And to those that are not empty yet, cherish every moment and love them for all their worth because it really goes by to fast.
Beer Battered Coconut Shrimp with Remoulade Sauce: This recipe is from fine Cooking magazine.
For the Remoulade Sauce
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 Tbs. finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 Tbs. minced celery
2 Tbs. minced shallot
1 Tbs. finely chopped capers
1 Tbs. whole-grain mustard
1 small orange, finely grated to yield 1 tsp. zest, squeezed to yield 1-1/2 tsp. juice
1 tsp. worcestershire sauce
freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste
Make the remoulade sauce: In a small bowl, combine all the sauce ingredients and chill in the refrigerator until the shrimp are ready.
For the Shrimp:
About 4-1/2 cups peanut or canola oil
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 Tbs. granulated sugar
1 Tbs. Cajun seasoning
1/2 tsp Kosher salt
1/2 cup pale lager beer, such as Corona
2 Tbs. hot sauce
1/2 cup panko
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut (I used sweetened)
12 colossal (13 to 15 per lb.) shrimp, peeled and deveined, tails intact. (I used smaller shrimp and took the tails off)
Coat and Fry the Shrimp:
Clip a deep fat/candy thermometer to the side of a 12-inch cast-iron skillet and add enough oil to measure 3/4 inch deep. Heat to 360 F over medium heat.
Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, Cajun seasoning, and 1/2 tsp salt; then slowly whisk in the beer and hot sauce to make a smooth batter. In a shallow bowl, combine the panko and shredded coconut.
Holding the shrimp by the tail if still intact, dip it into the batter, letting any excess drip off, then dredge it in the panko mixture, pressing and rolling it several times to coat well. Transfer to a plate. Repeat with the remaining shrimp.
Fry the shrimp in the hot oil, turning once with tongs, until golden-brown, about 2 minutes. If necessary, adjust the heat to maintain the oil at 360 F. Transfer the shrimp with a slotted spoon to a plate lined with paper towels to drain briefly.
Serve the shrimp with the remoulade sauce.


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Most people who have been assigned the unfortunate task of managing programmers have no idea how to motivate them. They believe that the small perks (such as foosball tables) and bonuses that work in more relaxed settings will compensate for more severe hindrances like distracting work environments, low autonomy, poor tools, unreasonable deadlines, and pointless projects. They're wrong. However, this is one of the most important things to get right, for two reasons. The first is that programmer output is multiplicative of a number of factors– fit with tools and project, skill and experience, talent, group cohesion, and motivation. Each of these can have a major effect (plus or minus a factor of 2 at least) on impact, and engineer motivation is one that a manager can actually influence. The second is that measuring individual performance among software engineers is very hard. I would say that it's almost impossible and in practical terms, economically infeasible. Why do I call infeasible rather than merely difficult? That's because the only people who can reliably measure individual performance in software are so good that it's almost never worth their time to have them doing that kind of work. If the best engineers have time to spend with their juniors, it's more worthwhile to have them mentoring the others (which means their interests will align with the employees rather than the company trying to perform such measurement) than measuring them, the latter being a task they will resent having assigned to them.
Seasoned programmers can tell very quickly which ones are smart, capable, and skilled– the all-day, technical interviews characteristic of the most selective companies achieve that– but individual performance on-site is almost impossible to assess. Software is too complex for management to reliably separate bad environmental factors and projects from bad employees, much less willful underperformance from no-fault lack-of-fit. So measurement-based HR policies add noise and piss people off but achieve very little, because the measurements on which they rely are impossible to make with any accuracy. This means that the only effective strategy is to motivate engineers, because attempting to measure and control performance after-the-fact won't work.
Traditional, intimidation-based management backfires in technology. To see why, consider the difference between 19th-century commodity labor and 21st-century technological work. For commodity labor, there's a level of output one can expect from a good-faith, hard-working employee of average capability: the standard. Index that to the number 100. There are some who might run at 150-200, but often they are cutting corners or working in unsafe ways, so often the best overall performers might produce 125. (If the standard were so low that people could risklessly achieve 150, the company would raise the standard.) The slackers will go all the way down to zero if they can get away with it. In this world, one slacker cancels out four good employees, and intimidation-based management– which annoys the high performers and reduces their effectiveness, but brings the slackers in line, having a performance-middling effect across the board– can often work. Intimidation can pay off, because more is gained by intimidating the slacker into mediocrity brings more benefit than is lost. Technology is different. The best software engineers are not at 125 or even 200, but at 500, 1000, and in some cases, 5000+. Also, their response to a negative environment isn't mere performance middling. They leave. Engineers don't object to the firing of genuine problem employees (we end up having to clean up their messes) but typical HR junk science (stack ranking, enforced firing percentages, transfer blocks against no-fault lack-of-fit employees) disgusts us. It's mean-spirited and it's not how we like to do things. Intimidation doesn't work, because we'll quit. Intrinsic motivation is the only option.
Bonuses rarely motivate engineers either, because the bonuses given to entice engineers to put up with undesirable circumstances are often, quite frankly, two or three orders of magnitude too low. We value interesting work more than a few thousand dollars, and there are economic reasons for us doing so. First, we understand that bad projects entail a wide variety of risks. Even when our work isn't intellectually stimulating, it's still often difficult, and unrewarding but difficult work can lead to burnout. Undesirable projects often have a 20%-per-year burnout rate between firings, health-based attrition, project failure leading to loss of status, and just plain losing all motivation to continue. A $5,000 bonus doesn't come close to compensating for a 20% chance of losing one's job in a year. Additionally, there are the career-related issues associated with taking low-quality work. Engineers who don't keep current lose ground, and this becomes even more of a problem with age. Software engineers are acutely aware of the need to establish themselves as demonstrably excellent before the age of 40, at which point mediocre engineers (and a great engineer becomes mediocre after too much mediocre experience) start to see prospects fade.
The truth is that typical HR mechanisms don't work at all in motivating software engineers. Small bonuses won't convince them to work differently, and firing middling performers (as opposed to the few who are actively toxic) to instill fear will drive out the best, who will flee the cultural fallout of the firings. There is no way around it: the only thing that will bring peak performance out of programmers is to actually make them happy to go to work. So what do software engineers need?
The approach I'm going to take is based on timeframes. Consider, for an aside, peoples' needs for rest and time off. People need breaks at work– say, 10 minutes every two hours. They also need 2 to 4 hours of leisure time each day. They need 2 to 3 days per week off entirely. They need (but, sadly, don't often get) 4 to 6 weeks of vacation per year. And ideally, they'd have sabbaticals– a year off every 7 or so to focus on something different from the assigned work. There's a fractal, self-similar nature to peoples' need for rest and refreshment, and these needs for breaks tap into Maslovian needs: biological ones for the short-timeframe breaks and higher, holistic needs pertaining to the longer timeframes. I'm going to assert that something similar exists with regard to motivation, and examine six timeframes: minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years.
1. O(minutes): Flow
This may be the most important. Flow is a state of consciousness characterized by intense focus on a challenging problem. It's a large part of what makes, for example, games enjoyable. It impels us toward productive activities, such as writing, cooking, exercise, and programming. It's something we need for deep-seated psychological reasons, and when people don't get it, they tend to become bored, bitter, and neurotic. For a word of warning, while flow can be productive, it can also be destructive if directed toward the wrong purposes. Gambling and video game addictions are probably reinforced, in part, by the anxiolytic properties of the flow state. In general, however, flow is a good thing, and the only thing that keeps people able to stand the office existence is the ability to get into flow and work.
Programming is all about flow. That's a major part of why we do it. Software engineers get their best work done in a state of flow, but unfortunately, flow isn't common for most. I would say that the median software engineer spends 15 to 120 minutes per week in a state of flow, and some never get into it. The rest of the time is lost to meetings, interruptions, breakages caused by inappropriate tools or bad legacy code, and context switches. Even short interruptions can easily cause a 30-minute loss. I've seen managers harass engineers with frequent status pings (2 to 4 per day) resulting in a collapse of productivity (which leads to more aggressive management, creating a death spiral). The typical office environment, in truth, is quite hostile to flow.
To achieve flow, engineers have to trust their environment. They have to believe that (barring an issue of very high priority and emergency) they won't be interrupted by managers or co-workers. They need to have faith that their tools won't break and that their environment hasn't changed in a catastrophic way due to a mistake or an ill-advised change by programmers responsible for another component. If they're "on alert", they won't get into flow and won't be very productive. Since most office cultures grew up in the early 20th century when the going philosophy was that workers had to be intimidated or they would slack off, the result is not much flow and low productivity.
What tasks encourage or break flow is a complex question. Debugging can break flow, or it can be flowful. For me, I enjoy it (and can maintain flow) when the debugging is teaching me something new about a system I care about (especially if it's my own). It's rare, though, that an engineer can achieve flow while maintaining badly written code, which is a major reason why they tend to prefer new development over maintenance. Trying to understand bad software (and most in-house corporate software is terrible) creates a lot of "pinging" for the unfortunate person who has to absorb several disparate contexts in order to make sense of what's going on. Reading good code is like reading a well-written academic paper: an opportunity to see how a problem was solved, with some obvious effort put into presentation and aesthetics of the solution. It's actually quite enjoyable. On the other hand, reading bad code is like reading 100 paragraphs, all clipped from different sources. There's no coherency or aesthetics, and the flow-inducing "click" (or "aha" experience) when a person makes a connection between two concepts almost never occurs. The problem with reading code is that, although good code is educational, there's very little learned in reading bad code aside from the parochial idiosyncracies of a badly-designed system, and there's a hell of a lot of bad code out there.
Perhaps surprisingly, whether a programmer can achieve "flow", which will influence her minute-by-minute happiness, has almost nothing to do with the macroscopic interestingness of the project or company's mission. Programmers, left alone, can achieve flow and be happy writing the sorts of enterprise business apps that they're "supposed" to hate. And if their environment is so broken that flow is impossible, the most interesting, challenging, or "sexy" work won't change that. Once, I saw someone leave an otherwise ideal machine learning quant job because of "boredom", and I'm pretty sure his boredom had nothing to do with the quality of the work (which was enviable) but with the extremely noisy environment of a trading desk.
This also explains why "snobby" elite programmers tend to hate IDEs, the Windows operating system, and anything that forces them to use the mouse when key-combinations would suffice. Using the mouse and fiddling with windows can break flow. Keyboarding doesn't. Of course, there are times when the mouse and GUI are superior. Web surfing is one example, and writing blog posts (WordPress instead of emacs) is another. Programming, on the other hand, is done using the keyboard, not drag-and-drop menus. The latter are a major distraction.
2. O(hours): Feedback
Flow is the essence here, but what keeps the "flow" going? The environmental needs are discussed above, but some sorts of work are more conducive to flow than others. People need a quick feedback cycle. One of the reasons that "data science" and machine learning projects are so highly desired is that there's a lot of feedback, in comparison to enterprise projects which are developed in one world over months (with no real-world feedback) and released in another. It's objective, and it comes on a daily basis. You can run your algorithms against real data and watch your search strategies unfold in front of you while your residual sum of squares (error) decreases.
Feedback needs to be objective or positive in order to keep people enthusiastic about their work. Positive feedback is always pleasant, so long as it's meaningful. Objective, negative feedback can be useful as well. For example, debugging can be fun, because it points out one's own mistakes and enables a person to improve the program. The same holds for problems that turn out to be more difficult than originally expected: it's painful, but something is learned. What never works well is subjective, negative feedback (such as bad performance reviews, or aggressive micromanagement that shows a lack of trust). That pisses people off.
I think it should go without saying that this style of "feedback" can't be explicitly provided on an hourly basis, because it's unreasonable to expect managers to do that much work (or an employee do put up with such a high frequency of managerial interruption). So, the feedback has to come organically from the work itself. This means there need to be genuine challenges and achievements involved. So most of this feedback is "passive", by which I mean there is nothing the company or manager does to inject the feedback into the process. The engineer's experience completing the work provides the feedback itself.
One source of frustration and negative feedback that I consider subjective (and therefore place in that "negative, subjective feedback that pisses people off" category) is the jarring experience of working with badly-designed software. Good software is easy to use and makes the user feel more intelligent. Bad software is hard to use, often impossible to read at the source level, and makes the user or reader feel absolutely stupid. When you have this experience, it's hard to tell if you are rejecting the ugly code (because it is distasteful) or if it is rejecting you (because you're not smart enough to understand it). Well, I would say that it doesn't matter. If the code "rejects" competent developers, it's shitty code. Fix it.
The "feedback rate" is at the heart of many language debates. High-productivity languages like Python, Scala, and Clojure, allow programmers to implement significant functionality in mere hours. On my best projects, I've written 500 lines of good code in a day (by the corporate standard, that's about two months of an engineer's time). That provides a lot of feedback very quickly and establishes a virtuous cycle: feedback leads to engagement, which leads to flow, which leads to productivity, which leads to more feedback. With lower-level languages like C and Java– which are sometimes the absolute right tools to use for one's problem, especially when tight control of performance is needed– macroscopic progress is usually a lot slower. This isn't an issue, if the performance metric the programmer cares about lives at a lower level (e.g. speed of execution, limited memory use) and the tools available to her are giving good indications of her success. Then there is enough feedback. There's nothing innate that makes Clojure more "flow-ful" than C; it's just more rewarding to use Clojure if one is focused on macroscopic development, while C is more rewarding (in fact, probably the only language that's appropriate) when one is focused on a certain class of performance concerns that require attention to low-level details. The problem is that when people use inappropriate tools (e.g. C++ for complex, but not latency-sensitive, web applications) they are unable to get useful feedback, in a timely manner, about the performance of their solutions.
Feedback is at the heart of the "gameification" obsession that has grown up of late, but in my opinion, it should be absolutely unnecessary. "Gameifcation" feels, to me, like an after-the-fact patch if not an apology, when fundamental changes are necessary. The problem, in the workplace, is that these "game" mechanisms often evolve into high-stakes performance measurements. Then there is too much anxiety for the "gameified" workplace to be fun.
In Java culture, the feedback issue is a severe problem, because development is often slow and the tools and culture tend to sterilize the development process by eliminating that "cosmic horror" (which elite programmers prefer) known as the command line. While IDEs do a great job of reducing flow-breakage that occurs for those unfortunate enough to be maintaining others' code, they also create a world in which the engineers are alienated from computation and problem-solving. They don't compile, build, or run code; they tweak pieces of giant systems that run far away in production and are supported by whoever drew the short straw and became "the 3:00 am guy".
IDEs have some major benefits but some severe drawbacks. They're good to the extent that they allow people to read code without breaking flow; they're bad to the extent that they tend to require use patterns that break flow. The best solution, in my opinion, to the IDE problem is to have a read-only IDE served on the web. Engineers write code using a real editor, work at the command line so they are actually using a computer instead of an app, and do almost all of their work in a keyboard-driven environment. However, when they need to navigate others' code in volume, the surfing (and possibly debugging) capabilities offered by IDEs should be available to them.
3. O(days): Progress
Flow and feedback are nice, but in the long term, programmers need to feel like they're accomplishing something, or they'll get bored. The feedback should show continual improvement and mastery. The day scale is the level at which programmers want to see genuine improvements. The same task shouldn't be repeated more than a couple times: if it's dull, automate it away. If the work environment is so constrained and slow that a programmer can't log, on average, one meaningful accomplishment (feature added, bug fixed) per day, something is seriously wrong. (Of course, most corporate programmers would be thrilled to fix one bug per week.)
The day-by-day level and the need for a sense of progress is where managers and engineers start to understand each other. They both want to see progress on a daily basis. So there's a meeting point there. Unfortunately, managers have a tendency to pursue this in a counterproductive way, often inadvertently creating a Heisenberg problem (observation corrupts the observed) in their insistence on visibility into progress. I think that the increasing prevalence of Jira, for example, is dangerous, because increasing managerial oversight at a fine-grained level creates anxiety and makes flow impossible. I also think that most "agile" practices do more harm than good, and that much of the "scrum" movement is flat-out stupid. I don't think it's good for managers to expect detailed progress reports (a daily standup focused on blockers is probably ok) on a daily basis– that's too much overhead and flow breakage– but this is the cycle at which engineers tend to audit themselves, and they won't be happy in an environment where they end the day not feeling that they worked a day.
4. O(weeks): Support.
Progress is good, but as programmers, we tend toward a trait that the rest of the world sees only in the moody and blue: "depressive realism". It's as strong a tendency in the mentally healthy among us as the larger-than-baseline percentage who have mental health issues. For us, it's not depressive. Managers are told every day how awesome they are by their subordinates, regardless of the fact that more than half of the managers in the world are useless. We, on the other hand, have subordinates (computers) that frequently tell us that we fucked up by giving them nonsensical instructions. "Fix this shit because I can't compile it." We tend to have an uncanny (by business standards) sense of our own limitations. We also know (on the topic of progress) that we'll have good days and bad days. We'll have weeks where we don't accomplish anything measurable because (a) we were "blocked", needing someone else to complete work before we could continue, (b) we had to deal with horrendous legacy code or maintenance work– massive productivity destroyers– or (c) the problem we're trying to solve is extremely hard, or even impossible, but it took us a long time to fairly evaluate the problem and reach that conclusion.
Programmers want an environment that removes work-stopping issues, or "blockers", and that gives them the benefit of the doubt. Engineers want the counterproductive among them to be mentored or terminated– the really bad ones just have to be let go– but they won't show any loyalty to a manager if they perceive that he'd give them grief over a slow month. This is why so-called "performance improvement plans" (PIPs)– a bad idea in any case– are disastrous failures with engineers. Even the language is offensive, because it suggests with certainty that an observed productivity problem (and most corporate engineers have productivity problems because most corporate software environments are utterly broken and hostile to productivity) is a performance problem, and not something else. An engineer will not give one mote of loyalty to a manager that doesn't give her the benefit of the doubt.
I choose "weeks" as the timeframe order of magnitude for this need because that's the approximate frequency with which an engineer can be expected to encounter blockers, and removal of these is one thing that engineers often need from their managers: resolution of work-stopping issues that may require additional resources or (in rare cases) managerial intervention. However, that frequency can vary dramatically.
5. O(months): Career Development.
This is one that gets a bit sensitive, and it becomes crucial on the order of months, which is much sooner than most employers would like to see their subordinates insisting on career advancement, but, as programmers, we know we're worth an order of magnitude more than we're paid, and we expect to be compensated by our employers investing in our long-term career interests. This is probably the most important of the 6 items listed here.
Programmers face a job market that's unusually meritocratic when changing jobs. Within companies, the promotion process is just as political and bizarre as it is for any other profession, but when looking for a new job, programmers are evaluated not on their past job titles and corporate associations, but on what they actually know. This is quite a good thing overall, because it means we can get promotions and raises (often having to change corporate allegiance in order to do so, but that's a minor cost) just by learning things, but it also makes for an environment that doesn't allow for intellectual stagnation. Yet most of the work that software engineers have to do is not very educational and, if done for too long, that sort of work leads in the wrong direction.
When programmers say about their jobs, "I'm not learning", what they often mean is, "The work I am getting hurts my career." Most employees in most jobs are trained to start asking for career advancement at 18 months, and to speak softly over the first 36. Most people can afford one to three years of dues paying. Programmers can't. Programmers, if they see a project that can help their career and that is useful to the firm, expect the right to work on it right away. That rubs a lot of managers the wrong way, but it shouldn't, because it's a natural reaction to a career environment that requires actual skill and knowledge. In most companies, there really isn't a required competence for leadership positions, so seniority is the deciding factor. Engineering couldn't be more different, and the lifetime cost of two years' dues-paying can be several hundred thousand dollars.
In software, good projects tend to beget good projects, and bad projects beget more crap work. People are quickly typecast to a level of competence based on what they've done, and they have a hard time upgrading, even if their level of ability is above what they've been assigned. People who do well on grunt work get more of it, people who do poorly get flushed out, and those who manage their performance precisely to the median can get ahead, but only if managers don't figure out what they're doing. As engineers, we understand the career dynamic very well, and quickly become resentful of management that isn't taking this to heart. We'll do an unpleasant project now and then– we understand that grungy jobs need to be done sometimes– but we expect to be compensated (promotion, visible recognition, better projects) for doing it. Most managers think they can get an undesirable project done just by threatening to fire someone if the work isn't done, and that results in adverse selection. Good engineers leave, while bad engineers stay, suffer, and do it– but poorly.
Career-wise, the audit frequency for the best engineers is about 2 months. In most careers, people progress by putting in time, being seen, and gradually winning others' trust, and actual skill growth is tertiary. That's not true for us, or at least, not in the same way. We can't afford to spend years paying dues while not learning anything. That will put us one or two full technology stacks behind the curve with respect to the outside world.
There's a tension employees face between internal (within a company) and external (within their industry) career optimization. Paying dues is an internal optimization– it makes the people near you like you more, and therefore more likely to offer favors in the future– but confers almost no external-oriented benefit. It was worthwhile in the era of the paternalistic corporation, lifelong employment, and a huge stigma attached to changing jobs (much less getting fired) more than two or three times in one career. It makes much less sense now, so most people focus on the external game. Engineers who focus on the external objective are said to be "optimizing for learning" (or, sometimes, "stealing an education" from the boss). There are several superiorities to a focus on the external career game. First, external career advancement is not zero-sum–while jockeying internally for scarce leadership positions is– and what we do is innately cooperative. It works better with the type of people we are. Second, our average job tenure is about 2 to 3 years. Third, people who suffer and pay dues are usually passed over anyway in favor of more skilled candidates from outside. Our industry has figured out that it needs skilled people more than it needs reliable dues-payers (and it's probably right). So this explains, in my view, why software engineers are so aggressive and insistent when it comes to the tendency to optimize for learning.
There is a solution for this, and although it seems radical, I'm convinced that it's the only thing that actually works: open allocation. If programmers are allowed to choose the projects best suited to their skills and aspirations, the deep conflict of interest that otherwise exists among their work, their careers, and their educational aspirations will disappear.
6. O(years): Macroscopic goals. On the timescale of years, macroscopic goals become important. Money and networking opportunities are major concerns here. So are artistic and business visions. Some engineers want to create the world's best video game, solve hard mathematical problems, or improve the technological ecosystem. Others want to retire early or build a network that will set them up for life.
Many startups focus on "change the world" macroscopic pitches about how their product will connect people, "disrupt" a hated industry or democratize a utility, or achieve some world-changing ambition. This makes great marketing copy for recruiters, but it doesn't motivate people on the day-to-day basis. On the year-by-year basis, none of that marketing matters, because people will actually know the character of the organization after that much time. That said, the actual macroscopic character, and the meaning of the work, of a business matters a great deal. Over years and decades, it determines whether people will stick around once they develop the credibility, connections, and resources that would give them the ability to move on to something else more lucrative, more interesting, or of higher status.
How to win
It's conventional wisdom in software that hiring the best engineers is an arbitrage, because they're 10 times as effective but only twice as costly. This is only true if they're motivated, and also if they're put to work that unlocks their talent. If you assign a great engineer to mediocre work, you're going to lose money. Software companies put an enormous amount of effort into "collecting" talent, but do a shoddy job of using or keeping it. Often, this is justified in the context of a "tough culture"; turnover is reflective of failing employees, not a bad culture. In the long term, this is ruinous. The payoff in retaining top talent is often exponential as a function of the time and effort put into attracting, retaining, and improving it.
Now that I've discussed what engineers need from their work environments in order to remain motivated, the next question is what a company should do. There isn't a one-size-fits-all managerial solution to this. In most cases, the general best move is to reduce managerial control and to empower engineers: to set up an open-allocation work environment in which technical choices and project direction are set by engineers, and to direct from leadership rather than mere authority. This may seem "radical" in contrast to the typical corporate environment, but it's the only thing that works.


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The Metsimaholo Local Municipality has 42 seats. There were 72,068 registered voters in the local municipality for the 2011 local government elections. The highest voter turn-out was achieved in Ward 14 with 69.12 %. The lowest voter turn-out in the municipality was in Ward 9 with 43.54 %. The average voter turn-out achieved in the 2011 municipal elections was 54.69 %.
Following the 2011 municipal elections, three political parties are represented in the municipality. The African National Congress was returned as the majority party with 26 seats. The Democratic Alliance holds 15 seats and the Freedom Front Plus holds 1 seat. The United Democratic Movement (UDM) and the United Independent Front (UIF) lost the seats the parties held following the 2006 local government elections.
- Results of the Municipal By-Elections, 16 February 2012
- 2011 Election Results of the Metsimaholo Local Municipality


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Accessibility Quick Links
Rein in Your Debt
Originally published in MoneySense
October 2012
Four strategies to help you get your debt back under control
No one wants to borrow more than they can afford, but life doesn't always go as planned. With a few effective strategies you can get your debt under control.
1. Look for lower interest rates.
Ask your credit card provider to lower your interest rate or transfer your high-interest credit card debt to a card that charges less. "The key when you make that phone call is to tell them you're simply looking for their best rate, and not to tell them you're struggling," says Debbie Gillis, credit counselling manager of K3C Credit Counselling in Kingston, Ont.
2. Consolidate debt with loans or a line of credit.
Apply for a debt consolidation loan or a line of credit, since they charge lower interest rates. You can pay your debt off faster if you pay less interest, since more of your money will go towards your principal. Better still, you'll only have one payment to worry about each month.
3. Refine your debt-paying strategy.
Pay off your highest-rate debt first. It may take longer to pay off, but you'll save money on interest. Alternatively, you could pay off your smallest loan first for the satisfaction of having one less bill to pay. "There's an emotional side to debt management that sometimes trumps mathematics," says Scott Plaskett, of Ironshield Financial Planning in Toronto.
4. Pay more than the minimum.
"A lot of people get a false sense of security because they've been making minimum payments on their debts," says Scott Hannah, president of the Credit Counselling Society in New Westminster, B.C. "I call that 'credit creep' and the clients' mouths drop when they look at their total debt, which is actually rising." To avoid this, try applying any bonuses or extra cash you have against the principal. It will cut your debt repayment time substantially.


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War and marketing have many similarities. /marketing/ Al Ries quotes
The copyright mark is handcuffs for thieving authors, and the quality mark is the sympathy of readers. [12/13/2019 01:12:15] More
Love awakens the light even in the dark forces. [11/25/2019 01:11:46] More
Alienation is the interactive interface of being. (Anatoly Yurkin) [12/13/2019 07:12:11] More
Conspiracy is a deception by collective action. (Anatoly Yurkin) [11/17/2019 04:11:54] More
The money ceiling is not a hindrance to tenants in a Palace with a high-speed Elevator of alienated thinking. (Anatoly Yurkin) [11/25/2019 09:11:34] More


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Vegetables that grow under the ground, or root vegetables, are annual plants and grow anywhere. Root vegetables love the cold to the point where they are only planted in the winter in the south. Hot southern summer months can diminish the quality of the crops. All root vegetables need the same soil requirements and can stand up to full sun.
Beet (Beta vulgaris) produces dark-green leaves that emerge from the base of the plant and grow from 4 to18 inches long and turn red. The flower stalk appears in the second year and grows up to 4 feet tall, producing green or red petal-less flowers. Sugar beets produce white roots that weigh from 6 to 15 lbs. Table beets produce red, yellow, orange, white, pink or striped roots in a variety of shapes. Plant beets in full sun or partial shade and a moist soil that is not allowed to go completely dry. Beets grow in all parts of the United States. In the far South, beets grow in the winter.
Rutabaga (Brassica napus) is an annual that grows from 2 to 4 feet tall producing blue-green, flat leaves that grow from 12 to 20 inches long and 8 to 15 inches wide, yellow cross-shaped flowers and sickle-shaped seed pods. Plant rutabaga in full sun and a moist soil. Harvest the corp in about 90 days. The vegetable is grown in the spring and summer in the north and in the winter in the south.
White Potato
White potato (Solanum tuberosum) grows like a vine up to 3 feet tall and more in width. The plant produces compound leaves made up of seven to 15, 3-inch-long leaflets that grow to 10 inches long, and star-shaped flowers with white, lavender, pink or light blue petals and a yellow center that measure 1-inch across. The flowers are followed by small green fruits. The tuber is the only part of the plant that is edible. The fruits, leaves and stems are poisonous. Plant potatoes in full sun and a moist, well-drained soil. Potatoes can be planted early in the spring before the danger of frost has passed.
Carrot (Daucus carota var. sativus) produces triangle-shaped lacy leafs that grow up from 1 to 2 feet tall. The plant will produce tiny white flowers growing in clusters if it is left in the ground for a second season. The edible root grows from 2 to 36 inches long, depending on the variety. Plant carrots in full sun or partial shade and a moist soil. Carrots are cold hardy, able to stand up to frost and stay in the ground in the north over the winter as long as the plants get a good mulch.
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- Grow Beets Indoors
- What Are Fruits & Vegetables That Grow Under the Ground?
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- Cook Fresh Dandelion Root
- Identify Vegetable Plants


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NEEDHAM, Mass. & WATERLOO, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC), The Product Development Company®, and MKS Inc. (TSX: MKX), a global application lifecycle management (ALM) technology leader, today announced that they have entered into a definitive acquisition agreement (the "Arrangement Agreement") pursuant to which PTC has agreed to acquire MKS for CDN$26.20 per share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately CDN$292.5 million in an all cash transaction.
MKS Integrity™ coordinates and manages all activities and artifacts associated with developing software intensive products, including requirements, models, code and test, ensuring comprehensive lifecycle traceability. By unifying MKS's ALM solutions with PTC's industry-leading product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions, PTC will enable manufacturers to better align the management of a product's hardware components and related software.
"At PTC, we recognize that software is an essential component of nearly every manufactured product," said PTC president and CEO Jim Heppelmann. "That's why we have long believed that the development of product hardware and software should be managed as a unified process. With the acquisition of MKS, we are adding a best-of-breed ALM solution to our product portfolio, and extending how our PLM solution manages the development of software-intensive products."
Today, software is considered a critical source of product innovation. Yet, software development is often managed separately from the hardware into which it is embedded. This can lead to reduced product quality and increased total service costs. By unifying the management of the hardware and software development lifecycles, PTC will foster greater collaboration between disparate engineering and development teams, enabling improved requirements management and system engineering.
"As a technology leader, MKS has seen incredible success in the ALM market and we are proud to have built such a strong and loyal customer base," said MKS president and CEO Michael Harris. "We view the opportunity to join PTC, which we believe is the unambiguous PLM market leader, as a way to accelerate our own innovation, offer our existing customers even greater value, and extend our reach into new markets."
The acquisition is expected to close in early June 2011, subject to customary conditions, including approval of the MKS shareholders, Ontario court approval, and regulatory approvals. The acquisition is expected to be neutral to PTC's non-GAAP financial results in fiscal 2011 and slightly accretive to PTC's non-GAAP financial results in fiscal 2012.
About the Transaction
The acquisition will be carried out as a court-approved plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (Ontario) (the "Arrangement") with MKS shareholders receiving cash in the amount of CDN$26.20 per MKS common share. PTC will finance the transaction by drawing on its existing credit facility in the amount of approximately $250 million and with cash on hand of approximately $54 million. All outstanding vested options and RSUs of MKS will be cash settled on the closing date of the Arrangement and all unvested options of MKS will be assumed by PTC. The Arrangement must be approved by at least 66 2/3% of the votes cast by MKS shareholders at a special meeting of MKS shareholders expected to be held in late May 2011. The transaction is subject to court approval in Ontario as well as customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.
The transaction has been unanimously approved by the board of directors of each of PTC and MKS. Mooreland Partners LLP acted as financial advisor to MKS with respect to the Arrangement and provided a fairness opinion to the MKS Board. The Arrangement was reviewed by an independent committee of the MKS Board in consultation with its legal and financial advisors, which unanimously determined that the Arrangement is fair to MKS shareholders and in the best interest of MKS. The MKS Board, based in part on the recommendation of the independent committee, concluded that the transaction is fair to shareholders of MKS and is in the best interests of MKS and recommends that shareholders of MKS vote in favor of the Arrangement at the special meeting of shareholders of MKS.
Directors and managers, including the Executive Chairman, CEO and CFO, who hold shares representing approximately 25% of the outstanding common shares of MKS have agreed to vote their shares in favor of the Arrangement.
The Arrangement Agreement contains customary terms and conditions, including the obligation of MKS to pay PTC a termination fee of CDN$11.55 million in the event that the agreement is terminated in certain circumstances.
Upon completion of the transaction, the MKS shares will be de-listed from the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Morgan Stanley & Co. acted as financial advisor to PTC.
PTC to Hold Investor Call at 8:30 am ET TODAY, April 7, 2011
PTC management will host a conference call to discuss this acquisition TODAY, April 7 at 8:30 am ET.
|PTC to acquire MKS Conference Call
|Thursday, April 7th, 2011 at 8:30 am (ET)
|USA: 1-800-857-5592 and International: 1-773-799-3757
|Call Leader: James Heppelmann
|Passcode: PTC
The audio replay of this event will be archived for public replay until 4:00 pm (CT) on April 12, 2011 at USA: 1-888-293-8912 International: 1-203-369-3023. To access the replay via webcast, please visit www.ptc.com/for/investors.htm.
About PTC
PTC (Nasdaq: PMTC), The Product Development Company®, develops, markets and supports product development software solutions and related services that help companies achieve their product development strategies and optimize their processes. Using the company's tightly integrated CAD and enterprise PLM solutions, organizations are better able to create and manage product information throughout the lifecycle for optimal product development success.
About MKS
MKS enables organizations to reduce the overwhelming complexity of developing software intensive products thereby removing barriers to rapid innovation.
MKS Integrity™ manages all systems and software development processes and connects all engineering artifacts, including requirements, models, code and tests, ensuring comprehensive lifecycle traceability. MKS Integrity's™ open architecture integrates disparate tools into a streamlined engineering process, allowing orchestration of engineering change and collaboration across the technology supply chain. With MKS Integrity™, engineering teams improve productivity and quality, streamline compliance and gain complete product visibility, which ultimately drives more innovative products into the market.
With offices worldwide, MKS supports customers across industries including, Automotive, Aerospace and Defense, High Tech Electronics and Medical Devices. For more information about MKS and MKS Integrity™, visit our web site at http://www.mks.com.
Forward Looking Statements and Risks
This news release contains forward-looking statements, including statements about completion of the Arrangement, future results, integration of the companies' technologies, and anticipated debt levels. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected, including the following: PTC and MKS may be unable to satisfy the closing conditions, which include obtaining MKS shareholder approval and regulatory approvals, and complete the transaction; PTC may be unable to successfully operate the businesses to achieve the expected financial results; PTC may be unable to successfully develop and integrate the technology necessary to offer an integrated solution that complements PTC's product development system; PTC may be unable to retain and maintain relationships with key employees, customers and other strategic partners of MKS; as well as other risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in reports filed by PTC with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including PTC's most recent reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q.
Additional Information and Where You Can Find It
This material is not a substitute for the management information circular that MKS intends to file with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities or any other documents which PTC or MKS may file or distribute in connection with the proposed transaction. INVESTORS AND SECURITY HOLDERS ARE URGED TO READ THE MANAGEMENT INFORMATION CIRCULAR AND ALL OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS IF AND WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROPOSED ARRANGEMENT. Investors and securityholders may obtain any documents pertaining to the proposed Arrangement filed by MKS with SEDAR at www.sedar.com and filed by PTC at the SEC's website (www.sec.gov).
This announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute or form part of any offer or invitation to purchase, otherwise acquire, subscribe for, sell, otherwise dispose of or issue, or any solicitation of any offer to sell, otherwise dispose of, issue, purchase, otherwise acquire or subscribe for, any security.
PTC, the PTC logo and The Product Development Company are trademarks or registered trademarks of Parametric Technology Corporation and its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.
MKS and MKS Integrity are trademarks or registered trademarks of MKS Inc. in Canada and other countries.


text: Advertising with LeeTran Page ContentLeeTran offers advertising opportunities inside buses, on bus stop benches and on bus shelters throughout Lee County. Target the entire county by advertising on heavily traveled arteries, or micro-target your business's neighborhood with bus benches and shelters in close proximity to your address. Transit advertising is one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing because it provides a large number of impressions at a low cost. Unlike print or broadcast media, your ad is seen consistently for one low monthly rate. For more information about advertising opportunities with LeeTran, please call 239-533-0339. Quick Links More ›› No


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Federico Bertolucci is a comic artist and illustrator. After graduating in arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara and after taking a course in comics at the Disney Academy in Milan, in '98 Bertolucci began his collaboration with Disney Italy with some stories for the weekly Topolino magazine (Mickey Mouse).
Soon he started working mainly for Witch magazine where, in addition to numerous issues of the regular series, he was able to realize also several special issues and the first Panini sticker album dedicated to Witch characters.
He produced a short story for the magazine Monster Allergy, several interior pages and two covers (design and color). With Disney he still collaborates with other series such as "PK", "I gialli di Topolino", "Fairies" and other projects developed by the Academy as part of the Disney comic transposition of some successful animated movies ("Monsters, Inc." "Lilo and Stitch").
Meanwhile in France he published two books for Soleil Productions titled "Richard Coeur de Lion", written by Brrémaud, where he took care of the drawings and the colouring. In 2008 the book was published also in Italy and Spain for Planeta DeAgostini.
He made the drawings for the book of gags "Les tennismen" by Editions Bamboo, written once again by Brrémaud, this time in collaboration with Reynès.
In 2006 he was invited to draw a short story for a digest published by Soleil Productions.
In November 2009 he published the comic book Rocambole for Delcourt publisher. The story was once again written by Brrémaud, with whom, in 2011, he won the "Grand Guinigi - Special Jury Award" at the Lucca Comics festival for the book "The Tiger". The book was the first title in the series called "Love", which second book is called "The Fox" and the third - "The Lion", published in France by Editions Ankama and translated in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany.
Bertolucci also worked with other foreign publishers such as Mosaik (Germany), Egmont (Denmark), Mattel (USA).
In 2007 he started working as an illustrator for several publishers of children's books: Piemme Edizioni, Mondadori Ragazzi and EL edizioni. In 2009 EL edizioni published the first 7 issues of the book for children "Dinodino, avventure nel giurassico" (written by Stefano Bordiglioni) with drawings by Bertolucci.
Currently, in addition to the renewed collaboration with the weekly Topolino magazine, he is working on a new series for children entitled Little Stories, a mix of cartoon and illustration, created once again together with Brrémaud.


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November 30, 2008
We'll be back after these short messages!
The end of Thanksgiving break heralds the busiest weeks of the semester for me. The last week of classes, with the assorted papers and assignments and tests that are all being done, and final exams. Plus my choir concerts and P's birthday/birthday party.
We had a great time at Thanksgiving with J's parents. Seriously. Why are you looking at me like that? I swear I can have fun with them.
I only had to bite my tongue a few times. I'll tell you about most of them later, but the worst example occurred the first night: We were playing Apples to Apples with J's parents, his cousin, her husband, and their two kids. I had never met the cousin and her family before, but she mentioned that she felt like she knew me already because they've read my family blog.
For those who have never played Apples to Apples: the first card that's thrown has an adjective on it. Each player has a handful of noun cards–people, things, places, random objects. Everyone except the judge chooses the card they think is best described by the card that was thrown, then the judge chooses the winner. In our game, the first card thrown read "Offensive". All the cards were thrown in and the judge that round was going through them. One of the ones put in was "Democrats", and J's cousin's husband pipes up with "I couldn't think of anything more offensive!"
Mind you, if they read my family blog, then they know I'm a Democrat. And I only bit my tongue halfway off. I was impressed with my self-restraint.
So I'm off to finish the semester and hopefully regain my health. Have I mentioned that, since the walking pneumonia (10 days of antibiotics), I've also had a sinus infection (10 days of antibiotics) and now have bacterial pinkeye (5 days of antibiotic eyedrops)? J thinks the walking pneumonia killed my immune system and I can't disagree with him. He expressed the hope that none of my students come in with the flu in the next two weeks.
Me too, love. Me too.
November 21, 2008
Sometimes I wonder why I bother
Sometimes teaching really drags me down. I have a lot of very difficult students this semester–the ones who whine about being penalized for not completing the assignment as it was directed, the procrastinator, the ones who don't want to know anything except what's on the test, the ones who just complain about everything (even the temperature in the room).
I know a BIG part of it is that I have no science majors this semester, that all of my students are non-majors and really don't care about being there. There's very little positive feedback from them in this situation, because all they want is to finish their requirements and get done with the class–and any work I ask them to do is too much work. They don't need to know this for their majors, so it's unimportant and simply a waste of their time. I'm trying to keep that in mind, but it's the end of the semester and it's wearing on me.
Next semester, the only classes I'm teaching are for health science majors. It is a huge difference to have motivated students who want to do well and actually care about the information since they know they will use it in the future. I'm also trying to remember that.
Metformin 1, Erin 0
I started back on metformin (850 mg extended-release, which is what I've always taken) last week, on Wednesday morning. I had some stomach rumblings that evening and a few more the next day, after another pill on Thursday morning. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were fine, so I decided to add the second one on Sunday evening. I did the same thing Monday evening, though I felt very mildly nauseated. Tuesday night, I felt nauseated to the point that I turned down J's amorous overtures, pulled the covers over my head, and went straight to sleep to escape the nausea. I felt fine on Wednesday morning and through the day. Wednesday night, I had a brilliant idea–if I wait to take the metformin until I'm about to go to bed, I'll sleep through the nausea and my body will start adjusting! Sure enough, I had a small snack along with my metformin as I was about to go to bed and fell asleep no problem.
All was good until about 3:30 a.m., when I woke up feeling very nauseated. To the point where I laid there for 10 minutes debating about getting up to go throw up. Finally, I decided that I did in fact need to throw up, went to the bathroom, vomited repeatedly and horribly, and after copious mouth rinsings (did you know you shouldn't brush your teeth right after you throw up because you can brush off tooth enamel that gets softened by the stomach acid? I learned that from my dental hygiene students.), went back to bed with my stomach feeling pretty well settled. I woke up at 6:30 feeling like you would expect from having been so sick in the middle of the night. Bleh. After a few hours, some water, and some Cheerios, I felt pretty much like my normal self.
Both of the previous times I've started metformin again (once before getting pregnant with P and once when we were TTC#2), I've only had minor stomach upset. I couldn't figure out what happened this time. Then I realized–when I added the second pill each of those times, I would alternate days and do 1-2-1-2 until my stomach was OK before going to 2 pills every day. This time I completely forgot about that and, once I was adjusted to one pill, went straight to two every day. Oops.
So I took yesterday off the metformin entirely and will go back to taking just one per day for the weekend. Then next week, I'll alternate days for two. I'm going to do it for a full week, because we'll be at my IL's house for Thanksgiving and I don't want to risk middle-of-the-night vomiting in a bathroom right next to their bedroom.
On the bright side, I've already lost 2 pounds and have been feeling significantly fewer food cravings. I think it's already really helping to even out my blood sugar levels. I do have to be careful to eat a well-balanced meal with good protein in order not to feel faint between meals (small snacks are good too). Since I would really like to avoid the type II diabetes that my mom has already developed, I know this will be helpful. It's frustrating to feel like all you can think about is that next carb-loaded snack, and I'm really glad this is helping me.
As long as I can avoid the vomiting.
November 20, 2008
I should start a separate blog for teaching vents
So again, feel free to ignore this one.
A student e-mailed me last night to say that he was really sorry, he couldn't come to the test on Monday because he had to go out of town, and could he take it any other time. I e-mailed back to ask what was the reason that he suddenly had to leave town on Monday since the test was on the syllabus on that date back in August. I thought maybe he had some sort of family emergency and was already leaving town, and knew he wouldn't be back by Monday (trying to give him the benefit of the doubt).
He said he was going to visit family and was really sorry that he hadn't been on top of the flight arrangements but didn't think he could get it switched. Mind you, we had class yesterday afternoon. Did he say anything then? No. He chose to wait until the last possible minute and then e-mail me, rather than talking to me in person. I have had several other students who've had the same issue (family members making their flight arrangements without asking them about their schedules), but every one of them came and talked to me about it weeks ago.
I checked my syllabus to see exactly what my written policy is for the class, and it is that they must inform me as soon as possible, all make-ups are essay-style, instead of partly multiple-choice, and they will be given on the first possible date after the scheduled test. I wrote back that this was the policy and that I would let him do a make-up, but that I had didn't believe that he had just booked the tickets the day before and that he had actually informed me "as soon as possible". I said something about how it showed a lack of responsibility for his coursework to procrastinate informing me about this until the last minute.
He felt it appropriate to write back and say something to the effect of "I'm sure you can relate in my procrastinating since you haven't written the test for Monday and sometimes don't get PowerPoints up until right before class."
WTF??????????? I'm sorry, what makes you think that's something appropriate to say? There is a huge difference between procrastinating telling me that you aren't showing up for a test that's been scheduled for 3 months and me working on my PowerPoints until class time because I simply did not have time to finish them earlier. Or between procrastinating telling me about your flight arrangements and me deliberately waiting to write the test to see what material we've covered before then. I rarely procrastinate professionally (because I stress about things until they're done, and it's just not worth the stress). I've been writing the test for the class that I have before that one. I've been writing lectures for the classes I will see between now and Monday. Guess what? You are NOT MY ONLY TEACHING PRIORITY. There is a BIG difference between prioritizing and procrastinating.
Must go write a test now…ha ha.
November 19, 2008
My baby is TWO YEARS OLD!
I can't even believe it. We had K's birthday party the other day (and we even all survived) and it felt incredibly surreal the whole time. Last night when I was making cupcakes for his class, it felt surreal. It's hard to wrap my brain around it. It just seems so fast. I know that it has been a little over 8 months since he came home, but it has gone so quickly. The three months until we got to go get him took forever. These 8 months have sped by.
I have so much to write about him. He is the most special little boy. In some ways he is a very typical two-year-old, complete with tantrums and attitude. Most everything is "MINE!" even though he doesn't say 'mine' yet. I could swear that I heard a toddler-ese "I do it!" this morning, which frightens me even though I knew it was coming. There's plenty "I-want-it-give-me-that-it's-the-best-thing-in-the-world-nowNowNOW-I-don't-want-that-are-you-kidding-me-quit-torturing-me-by-giving-that-to-me!" (This morning we went through it with a banana.)
But there is so much more to him than that. He's so affectionate and cuddly–J and I often wonder how we ended up with the cuddliest kids in the world. He blows kisses every time he says "Bye bye" and charms simply everyone with his beautiful smile and long, curly eyelashes.
He loves to play, though he's still in the parallel-play stage and it's hard to play with him because he hasn't quite figured it out yet. He loves puzzles and has gotten quite good at them. Trucks and cars and trains are still his very favorite toys, and he LOVES the ball pit that my parents got him for his birthday.
K is walking and dancing but not yet running or jumping. He's also starting to talk but is still quite delayed. We've had 6 months of speech and physical therapy and are continuing them on the recommendations of both of his therapists. Regardless, he's such an energetic kid! He loves to be on the go and has come to regard both his carseat and booster chair at the table as torture devices akin to the iron maiden. The booster is a little better because at least there's food associated with that one–but he usually takes the food in one hand and tries to get out of his chair!
He's really funny. This morning, he was dancing around with tiny steps and chanting "Nana! Nana! Nana!" while I peeled a banana for him. (This was, of course, prior to the "bananas are the enemy" part of the show.) Last night he would come into the kitchen, look at me until I looked back, and then raced away with giggles spilling over as I chased him around the house. When he was tired of that, he stopped until I caught up, gave him hugs and kisses, and went back to what I was doing. Then he would come back in and start it over again.
There is so much more to write that I hardly know where to start. He loves to hear stories and to "read" on his own, and his attention span has increased quite a bit. It's funny that the thing that makes him most content and allows him to fall asleep most easily is when he brings his Elmo book into bed and looks at it for a few minutes. (Sometimes Goodnight Moon.) He wants to hear stories and heaven forbid that I forget to sing him a song, but he still wants a book in his crib.
In adoption, there's often talk about preserving the birth order of the adoptive family but there's almost never talk about preserving the birth order of the adopted child. Both P and K are oldest children in their biological families, and P continues to be the oldest child in our family. K, although a younger child in our family, displays a LOT of characteristics that are often attributed to oldest children. According to this site, first-born children are energetic, logical, ambitious, enterprising, and scholarly–and (except for enterprising, which I suppose we'll have to find out in the future), that's both P and K. Middle children, which is what K will ultimately be, are supposed to be flexible, diplomatic, rebellious, attention seeking, competitive, and peacemakers. I would certainly not characterize K as flexible or diplomatic or a peacemaker. He is attention-seeking and competitive, as younger children must be. It's really interesting to see how both of my children display the same traits.
I could go on about him for hours. Seriously. He is so precious. And now he's two.
Happy birthday, my baby.
November 14, 2008
K is turning 2!
His birthday isn't until next week, so I'll blog more about him then. What I can't figure out is how in the world I'm hosting a birthday party for a 2 year old that has 32 people coming to it, 16 of them kids. And that's with 7 families who can't make it. Can you tell that I was a little excited to celebrate his birthday when I invited people?
2 years old. 16 kids. None over age 5. Half of them K's age or less.
Maybe I should have gone on Prozac instead of Metformin.
November 13, 2008
Just a quick vent
Feel free to ignore it.
Gave an assignment to my students that was due today. It said right on there that late assignments would be penalized 10 points. Had a student who came up to me 2 minutes before class to say "I don't have the whole assignment because I couldn't find the sheet that we needed to turn in." When I explained that I would be happy to help but he would still be penalized 10 points for turning the assignment in late, he walked out of class. Then he proceeded to write me a long e-mail about how unfair that was and how I should consider that some students might need more help than others.
I never end a class without saying "If you have questions, please come ask me!" I respond to student phone calls and e-mails as soon as I get them. I take as much time as my students need to help them. PLUS, this wasn't a misunderstanding. This was a case where the student lost a sheet from the assignment that they were to fill out and turn in. Several students e-mailed me over the last 2 days for the same reason. I attached the file and sent it to them. It took 10 seconds each time. I also posted it on my website so they had access to it without e-mailing me. FWIW, I gave the assignment a month ago.
HAD the student taken some personal responsibility to be sure that he had what he needed more than 2 minutes before the assignment was due, this would not be an issue. But to both fail to take responsibility for it and blame me for reminding him that there was a penalty for doing so–that's ridiculous.
If anyone wants to know my biggest pet peeve? Failing to take responsibility for your own actions. That would be it.
And now I've given way too much time and thought to this situation.
November 4, 2008
How to make a fool of yourself
Be in your office with another professor, joking with two students that the two of you share; one has them in lecture and the other in lab. Have them walk out of your office practically shouting with laughter over something that was said. Take a sip of soda. At that very moment, watch as the president of the college sticks his head in your doorx to comment on the situation (favorably, of course). Choke on your soda as you try to say hi to him. Cough all over the tests that you were grading. In front of the president.
xThe president's office is on another campus, and I don't think I've seen him but once before on our campus. So it was something of a surprise to have him poke his head into my office. But still.
November 2, 2008
It's for my health, really
I'm going back on metformin. And I've been off birth control pills for months.
J knew I was off birth control pills. They were completely killing my sex drive, and neither J nor I was particularly happy about that. I had told J that I needed to call the doctor and see about going back on one that I'd previously been on, but I never did and J knew it. I would tell him when I thought I would ovulate. I would tell him when I was post-ovulatory. But we'd never actually talked about what that could mean.
Meanwhile, I have had two or three cycles since going off birth control. And each time I've gotten my period, it's been fine. Sure, I've wondered each time if maybe it might happen but when my period has come right on time, it really has been perfectly OK with me. As J said, when I told him, I have normal person emotions about it!
Today, I asked him about what he thought about me going back on metformin. I said it's unlikely it would actually lead to me getting pregnant, since we did have the whole three years of TTC after having P that didn't work, but it could possibly happen. And if I did get pregnant, it would reduce the risk of another miscarriage. But for health reasons, and the fact that we do actually want to TTC again, I'd like to go back on. He said go for it. K's going to be 2 in a couple of weeks and, if by some miracle I managed to get pregnant again (and not miscarry this time), he and the potential next one would be about 3 years apart. P and K are 3 years apart. We like the age difference between them. It would be OK.
We're not TTC. We'll keep going with our lives as we've been. If it happens, we'll be thrilled. If not, I hope I can maintain this feeling of contentment with my life and lack of disappointment when my period shows up right on schedule. And if it doesn't happen, we'll probably do IVF next fall as we'd planned.
I guess we'll see…


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Bailey Olympus 462 2010Be the first to write a review
We are pleased to offer for sale this 2010 Bailey Olympus 2 berth caravan with a spaciuos seating area, side kitchen with oven, fridge and microwave and an end bathroom/WC. The van benefits... read more
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Disclaimer: This simple loan calculator is designed to give an indication of the APR, monthly repayments and total repayments you could expect to pay. Due to the many factors finance lenders base their decisions upon, we cannot guarantee the figures suggested using this calculator. Please use the figures as a guide and our team will endeavour to provide the best possible payment plan based on your personal circumstances.
We are pleased to offer for sale this 2010 Bailey Olympus 2 berth caravan with a spaciuos seating area, side kitchen with oven, fridge and microwave and an end bathroom/WC. The van benefits from alloy wheels.
Part exchanges are welcome and finance is available subject to status, written quotations are available on request.
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Thursday, 15 January 2015
About Me
So there are probably two ways that you may have stumbled across this blog. The first one being that you follow me on social media and know me best by my youtube channel, or you have just randomly found me, in which case, i am awfully grateful.
So hi...my name is Jess.
For over two years now (roughly) i have ran a youtube channel which underwent the names xJBeautyx and is now formally known as Jessica Alice. I would tell you exactly what my channel is about but it could take a while. Basically i do a mixture of videos between beauty and entertaining. I guess you could say i don't have a specific type of genre. But i feel like it is what makes my channel a little interesting.
This blog is basically going to be the exact same creation.
I did originally have a previous blog which some of you may or may not remember called xJBeautyx. I can honestly say that blogging wasn't a strong point of mine. I think this was because i was so caught up in having to blog about exactly what everyone else was blogging about. At least in the 'beauty' community.
Thats why i decided to start this blog as a lifestyle blog. Not just one topic,but many. After all there is more than one thing I'm interested in.
So i am 21. A professional beauty therapist. A makeup lover. I like to call myself a comedic. An aspirer of more things than i could probably mention on here.
I hope that you take the time out to follow me on my new journey as a blogger and i can only hope that this blog deems as successful as my ever growing video diary.
So sit back, grab a cup of tea (mines herbal) and read on. x
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Keeping Your Sneakers and Shoes Magnificent
No matter the lifestyle one leads, shoes will always get dirty. However, removing grime and excess dirt follows simple steps. Following the steps describe here-in keeps sneakers and shoes magnificent. The process makes one the best shoe cleaner.
Determinants of the procedures are original material, time that the person cleaning has and what the cleaner has at hand. The method is simple but efficient ways of cleaning shoes and sneakers. Everything should be ready in a shoe cleaning kit. In the end, the shoes look smart.
Shoes can be cleaned using washers. Leather shoes also come out of the washer clean. The process starts with the removal of insoles and laces. Washing the sneakers and shoes mean cleaning insoles, laces and shoes. Cleaning these things takes place separately. Doing so minimizes the time that the sneakers will take to dry. The washer can clean all the shoes with laces intact. Drying takes more time if the insoles are intact.
The second step entails cleaning the laces. Buy new laces if the present ones are excessively skuzzy. If they are not in bad condition, clean them with hoes in washers. A soapy brush can be used in scrubbing them. It is recommended that the shoes air dry completely before using them. Laces can be pinned on pillowcases as way of leaning them. Simultaneously, they are washed together with the pillowcases.
Additional recommendations are tie the ends together and putting them in the washing machine. Failure to tie them could make them stick in washer drainage holes. Wash the laces separately if the laces are white and the shoes colored. Follow common steps for washing. After cleaning items used in making shoes appear new are the repellent spray, the water proof spray, suede spray, and the sneaker cleaner.
The cleaner has to move to cleaning and deodorizing the insoles. Use warm water and a soapy mixture of liquid detergents. The items are leather conditioners as well. A shoe rag and soft brush are used in the cleaning. A sponge absorbs the excess soap. Ensure that they dry totally. Consistent smelling is eliminated using a baking soda. They have to be shaken and left throughout the night.
Vinegar and water are mixed and used to remove further smelling. It should followed by soaking the content with a mixture of baking soda, warm water, and important oil. Examples of essential oils are pine oil and tea tree. The cleaner is then supposed to clean stubborn marks and excess debris from the shoes. You can use a soft brush or a toothbrush, whichever is appropriate. The cleaner brushes away any dirt or any mud on the shoes.
Cleaners: 10 Mistakes that Most People Make
Lessons Learned About Tips


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Glitching out
When I edit drawing footage I captured from an iPad, I like to speed up the final movie to around 4-5 minutes max. Keeps the video more interesting and fun to watch.
At this speed it can be hard to observe exactly what is going on and looks more like a magic trick if you ask me. YouTube has bumped my account allowing uploads over 15 minutes so I decided to try a longer edit. I'm not entirely sure what the hard limit is, but I decided against uploading the 1 hour and 23 minute real time capture, and instead went with this 17 minute cut.
Even at 17 minutes it's fairly boring to watch, but maybe 2 or 3 of you will enjoy it.
PaperFaces portrait of @thenimesh.


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Power and Protest in the 1960s: The Vietnam War and Reactions Around the World
Waunakee Library 710 South St., Waunakee, Wisconsin 53597
press release: As a product and battle zone of the Cold War between Communism and Western democracy, the Vietnam War affected the globe. Reactions to the war were at first mixed in the U.S., but as the conflict developed, and the consequences of exerting U.S. power in an unwinnable situation worsened, public protest against the war in Vietnam intensified. The New Left movement organized dissent on campuses across America, but the New Left was also a global phenomenon, erupting throughout Europe, Asia, and Latin America. With pressure coming from all corners of the globe, the US, its allies, and even its enemies, had to address whether intervention in Vietnam was worth the costs. Dr. Vaneesa Cook is a 2015 graduate of the PhD history program at UW-Madison. She finished a postdoctoral lectureship at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario in 2017, and now teaches courses in US history at UW-Whitewater.


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Our latest Brandcation blogger event was held in Pigeon Forge, TN last weekend from Oct. 4th thru Oct. 7th. We chose the location because it was more centrally located, very different from the locales of our past events, and had so many incredible things to do and see.
Set against the backdrop of the Great Smokey Mountains, the area surrounding Pigeon Forge has long been a tourist mecca because of the designation of the Great Smokey Mountains National Park by Dwight D. Eisenhower in the early 1900s. But over the years Pigeon Forge has developed into a flourishing tourist area in its own right, and we experienced first-hand the great activities Pigeon Forge has to offer.
Because of its location, it made sense for many of us to drive down, especially when we could carpool. I was lucky enough to be joined by Paula from Frosted Fingers and Theresa. And the best part is that Kia provided us with a Kia Optima Hybrid to use during our road trip. It was a great car with phenomenal gas mileage.
We left my house in Indiana around 7 pm on Wednesday night and drove through the night thanks to the adrenaline that wouldn't let me sleep.
That and a chocolate chip latte.
We arrived bright and early on Thursday morning long before we had access to our lodgings, so we did what any woman would do with time to kill.
We shopped.
Later that afternoon, the fun began.
Our lodgings were in the form of a cabin. A large cabin that slept 34 people, which was exactly the number of bloggers in our group. The cabin was managed by Cabin Fever Vacations and staying under one roof really made this Brandcation extra special.
Thursday evening Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede hosted our entire group for their dinner show. It was a blast, the food was great and I really felt Dolly's touch in so much of the show.
Friday morning we got up bright and early and headed out to Dollywood. I was so excited to visit and it more than exceeded my expectations. I was so enamored meeting people who had met Dolly that a security person offered me a job as a dispatcher next season.
Friday evening was spent at Lumberjack Feud. Lumberjack is a dinner show that appeals to the whole family and will leave you crying from laughter.
Saturday morning was one of the highlights of the whole trip because of the emotional experience it brought. We visited the Titanic Museum. They provided us with breakfast, we met the co-owner and toured the museum. Definitely a must-see if you visit the area.
Saturday afternoon we could choose between zip-lining with Climb Works or visiting the Hollywood Wax Museum – or both! I decided to skip the zip-lining this trip because our last trip, while fun, just left me needing a break from zipping. From what other bloggers have said, it was a great course and their guides were amazing.
The Hollywood Wax Museum was fun. It was neat to take photos with the figures and the extra things they had, such as the Castle of Chaos made the experience complete. Plus I came in first place in the game, so if you need to be protected from the undead, I'm your gal.
Saturday evening we threw an 80's themed party back at our cabin sponsored by Flashing Blinky Lights. We made pizzas with Flatout Bread, sang some karoake and had a great time.
Sunday was bittersweet. Returning home to families we have missed but having to say goodbye to great friends.
For me, this was the best Brandcation yet!
I would especially like to thank the folks at the Pigeon Forge Department of Tourism. Without them, this entire trip would not have been possible.