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For the past year, Joan and Joe Gros have enjoyed a paradise on earth in Slidell, La. It has now turned into their hell on earth, thanks to Hurricane Katrina, and they, like thousands of others, are in limbo, wondering when and if they will be able to return home anytime soon.
The Groses had a nice life in Mount Vernon, but always thought in the back of their minds that they would like to return to Louisiana, where they both had family. So, last year, they retired and said good-bye to their friends and neighbors. They bought a house on the water and a boat, and soon they were living large. Joan Gros enjoyed spending time with her sisters and Joe Gros was closer to his mother.
Evacuation drills were nothing new to them. Although the Groses had only lived there a year, they had already been evacuated twice.
"That's why you have to understand why people don't go," Joan Gros said. "They don't have the means and they have been through this so many times."
This time, however, it would be for real. Joan Gros said that even though they had planned to leave early Sunday morning, they still didn't think it was going to be too bad. Then at 10 p.m. Saturday evening, the mayor came on the radio and announced that everybody needed to evacuate.
"They couldn't force an evacuation because of a legal issue," Joan Gros said. "That's why they opened the Superdome."
She and her husband left as they had planned, driving to Georgia to stay with his family. They brought his mother, their cat, four outfits and some important papers. Traffic at that point was still light and gas wasn't an issue. They thought that they would return home in a few days.
It has now been two weeks since Katrina's wrath was felt. Joe Gros remains in Georgia, while his wife has been staying in Virginia, dealing with some family matters.
Joan Gros has not spoken to any of her neighbors, but her sister has seen the Groses' home and said that it is still standing and has a roof and a foundation.
However, their 9,000-pound boat is now in front of their neighbor's house; the house was filled with water; the new screen enclosure that they built around the pool is gone; and the retaining wall was ripped apart. They left one of their cars in the garage so they are sure that is filled with water.
They can see aerial views of St. Tammany Parish via the Internet. The water has now receded. They understand that they can get into the neighborhood but aren't allowed to stay.
Joan Gros said that her husband would like to go back, but she said she asked him, "'Where would you live if you went back there?' The infrastructure has to be fixed before we can do anything. I think it's going to be awhile."
There is no power, no electricity and no infrastructure. She knows that they will have to go back eventually; she imagines that her neighbor will want her to move their boat out of their front yard.
"WE'RE SORT OF IN LIMBO," Joan Gros said. "You have a different feeling towards things — they don't matter as much. But you know you can't walk away; you have to rebuild. Fortunately we have good insurance; we had to purchase flood insurance when we bought our home. It's going to be a very long process — I don't know that it has sunk in yet. I don't know what the future is. Some people say that it's foolish to rebuild New Orleans."
One of her sisters is staying in Baton Rouge, La., while another sister's condominium is intact, albeit without power or water. Her sister who was recently elected to the school board no longer has to worry about serving; the school board has been dissolved and the state is taking over. There are no longer any public schools in those areas.
Friends have offered them the use of a condominium in Pensacola, Fla., which they may consider taking advantage of because it would be closer to Louisiana than Georgia. They also have to deal with explaining to Joe Gros's mother why she won't be able to get her hair done next week at her familiar salon. While the retirement home she was staying at didn't suffer too much damage, they're not sure when she will be able to return. It's the same story there — no power, no water, no infrastructure.
"I can understand how the people in Baghdad are so frustrated; not having any organization," Joan Gros said.
Joan Gros spent some time last weekend at Good Shepherd's International Festival and said the hugs she received from friends were important. She's working to get Good Shepherd to adopt her church in Louisiana to help them rebuild. Tom and Pegi Libby collected $525 at Good Shepherd's International Festival for hurricane victims. A second collection was held at all the church's masses and the response was "overwhelming and considerable."
THROUGHOUT THE AREA, concerned residents are trying to contact loved ones living in the hurricane-stricken area. Suzanne Odom's parents and siblings are in Baton Rouge and doing fine, but she has found that the hardest thing is the line of communication.
"I'm still having a hard time reaching them," she said. "I keep getting a busy signal and redial and then get through — it's the luck of the draw."
While her family is out of harm's way, Odom was concerned because they kept hearing rumors of all these refugees coming into Baton Rouge, looting and stealing cars. It appears those rumors are unfounded and things are now getting back to normal in that area; the students returned to school on Monday.
Odom said that her husband, Cal Odom, has a cousin who is a Catholic priest.
"He stayed behind with some international seminary students who didn't have any place to go," she said. "After the flooding he stayed to help. People were very worried about him and a search crew drove with a boat from Lafayette to look for him. They found him but he convinced them to stay and try to help get people out. They did, but then the armed thugs Cal refers to as 'knuckleheads' were trying to steal the boat, so they got out."
Dorothy Boger's family is out of harm's way in central Louisiana, but Boger's brother, who is a Louisiana state trooper, has been removed from his detective job and been asked to go back on patrol. A third of the force has quit and two have committed suicide.
"They're doing their best to get everybody out of there," Boger said. "It's exhausting and very sad. They told them, 'Don't expect a day off for six weeks.'"
Her mother is housing some of her sister's in-laws who lived in the affected area.
UNTIL LAST WEEK, Jan and Mitch Sproul had no family in Louisiana. That is, until they dropped their son, Rob, off at Loyola University.
"It's truly by the grace of God that he got out of there safely," said Jan Sproul, Rob's mother.
She and her husband left Rob Sproul after orientation last Friday. One of the items they discussed during orientation was the need for an individual evacuation plan; they didn't think they would need one anytime soon. Then they received a call Saturday evening; they had already driven as far as Knoxville, Tenn.
"The school was closed; they were evacuating the kids," Jan Sproul said. "The phone lines were jammed; we didn't know how we would get Rob home."
Fortunately Rob Sproul's roommate's parents, who are from Arlington, were still in the area and were able to drive the boys back to Virginia. Rob Sproul grabbed his laptop, cell phone and gym bag. Everything else remains in his dorm room.
"It was fairly simple for him — he was home on Sunday," Jan Sproul said. They learned later that it took some students up to a week to get out of there.
The Sprouls weren't sure at first what the status of Loyola was but thought it was OK. Then they heard that it was closed for the semester. They shared information with parents of other local students who were supposed to be attending Loyola and Tulane Universities. They heard that all the Jesuit colleges were offering the Loyola students a space. They also started making phone calls to the Virginia universities.
"U.Va. was the most accommodating," Sproul said. "They called us and said, 'Mr. Sproul, we'd like to have your son.' They got him room, board, an academic advisor and kept him in his field of study. They had 135 students enrolled, registered and with a schedule in a matter of days."
The Sprouls had to make a decision by 4 p.m. Friday; U.Va. wanted Rob Sproul there that night.
The family decided to accept U.Va.'s offer, but didn't get Rob Sproul down there until Sunday. They needed to regroup, plus they had to purchase all new school supplies.
Once again, they attended orientation, but it was very different this time. The refugee students, or "Katrina's Kids" as they are already known, are considered to be temporary students. Most have intentions to return to their home schools when they re-open. If they decide to stay at their new school, they will be treated as transfer students.
"It has been an emotional rollercoaster, but certainly a positive one. It's been an adventure," Jan Sproul said. "We are thankful that he was able to get out of there as quickly as he did."
Jan Sproul said that her son was disappointed to leave New Orleans, and upset to see what happened, but thankful to have another school.
Sproul said that James Madison University and Randolph-Macon were also very accommodating.
Virginia Tech sent out an email last week stating that they will offer specialized admissions to students displaced by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
"We will offer admission for non-degree status on a case by case basis to qualified undergraduate or graduate students for the fall and/or spring semester. We know that it will be difficult for students already traumatized by the tragedies in the South, but these are not normal times and we want to do everything in our power to help students stay on their academic paths," said Charles Steger, president.
Tech's program will be open to students already enrolled in a school shut down or likely to remain closed as a result of the hurricane.
The university is also investigating ways to expand on-line course offerings to assist affected students. The Sloan Foundation is offering grants to universities to expand existing on-line course programs and Tech is responding. Displaced faculty in hurricane affected areas interested in visiting faculty status are encouraged to contact Provost Mark McNamee at 540-231-6123.
BACK AT HOME, everyone seems to want to do their part to help out. Lemonade stands appeared throughout the neighborhood as children helped to raise money for the hurricane victims. Rose Meyers, age 8, attends St. Mary's Catholic School in Old Town, and had the idea of hosting a lemonade stand this weekend to collect money for the relief efforts in Louisiana. She organized it for Labor Day and had eight other neighborhood friends helping out. Helping Rose were her sisters: Caleigh Meyers age 4 1/2, Jacqueline Meyers age 2 1/2 and friends. Kelly O'Meara age 8, Margaret O'Meara age 8, Kevin O'Meara age 5, Lauren Fish age 8. All of their friends are from the Westgate neighborhood. Cousins included Sydney Meyers age 7, Mackenzie Meyers age 6 of Darnestown, Md.
Patty Meyers, Rose's mother, said, "People were generous. The kids raised $122.35. We will be giving it to St. Mary's Church."
Jacob and AJ Powers sold lemonade to their friends Zach and Connor Sadler; they raised $130.42 to send to hurricane victims.
Christine Macey, Michelle Butchko, Paige Atkins and Rachel Macey also sold lemonade to collect money for hurricane victims. They raised a total of $175.
The Rev. Carl Rush, pastor of Bush Hill Presbyterian Church, is spearheading a mission to bring supplies to the affected area. His church is serving as the collection point for Presbyterian churches throughout the area and information about what they are collecting is outlined in their Web site, www.bushhill.org. Bush and a few others will take a camper with supplies down later this week and then return again with a larger contingent of volunteers.
Five Guys Enterprises, the owners of the Five Guys Burgers and Fries, announced that it donated $10,000 to the Red Cross to benefit the Hurricane Relief Efforts in the Southeast.
The Mount Vernon-Lee Chamber of Commerce sent out an email this week stating that two tractors trailers donated by Universal Debit & Credit Corp. were leaving Northern Virginia Wednesday, Sept. 7, carrying water and food to the hurricane victims. They stopped at the new South County High School to pick up toiletries, diapers, baby food, nonperishable canned goods, paper products, clothing, tents, bedding, stationary, stamps and packing boxes.
The chamber also announced that a fund-raising reception to benefit hurricane victims is being sponsored by the State Societies of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida on Wednesday, Sept. 7, 6-9 p.m., in the Jones Day Building, 311 First Street, NW, 7th Floor, Washington, D.C. Host: $2000, Co-host: $1000, Friend: $20. To RSVP, call Tonya Fulkerson 202-314-3224 or email her at firstname.lastname@example.com
TO HELP OUT WITH EMPLOYMENT, Heidi Koontz, president of Intuitive Fare, has started a Web site for D.C. area restaurants to help workers from the Gulf Coast find a job and a place to live.
To participate, visit www.restaurantjobsforyou.org and list available jobs. Employers can also help by finding a place for new employees to live. Koontz will post the jobs available at restaurants along with a contact person and number, as well as a link to restaurant's Web site.
For more information, call 703-266-1086 or e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com.
The chamber e-mail listed a link to a Web site where employers can post job listings. It is http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/jjj/.
They also listed the Web site where people who have the ability to offer lodging to the relief victims can post that information: http://neworleans.craigslist.org/hhh/. There are several others, including www.hurricanehousing.org and www.katrinahousing.org.
Lyssa Seward has already volunteered to take a family of four in her Mount Vernon home. She said that the ideal situation would be a carpenter who could work with her husband, Charlie, and earn some money while they're here. She knows that a large group of people arrived this week at the D.C. Armory and is hoping to be connected with somebody. She said that one of the Web sites she checked already had 35,000 people offering homes to refugees.
"Charlie would love to have a carpenter — give him a job, house them and feed them," Lyssa Seward said. "It seems like everything is so chaotic — there are so many different variables. But it's hard to watch and not offer to do anything."
With so many people wanting to help in many ways, it is still important to be aware of the potential for scams. A press release issued this week from the Fairfax County Police Department said that four people were arrested for conducting a scam claiming to collect money for victims of Hurricane Katrina. According to the report, police responded to the 12100 block of Sunset Hills Road in the Reston area Sept. 4 for reports of people asking for cash donations on behalf of charities helping victims of Hurricane Katrina. Investigation revealed that the four suspects did not represent any charity and had allegedly misrepresented themselves. The report said that police charged all four individuals for solicitation violations and released them on a summons to appear in court.


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A-1 Concrete Leveling Louisville can help lift and level the deck around your pool creating a safer, and visually pleasing area to enjoy your summer days. Our patented pool deck leveling process (also called pool deck mud jacking) will bring the whole pool deck up without the worry of cracking concrete and without the expense of having to tear it out and replace it with newly poured concrete.
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And, our pool deck crack repair services can help keep your newly leveled concrete beautiful for years to come.
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subset: commoncrawl


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SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Santa Clara baseball lost 3-0 to Oregon on Sunday afternoon at PK Park in Eugene, Oregon. The Ducks completed the sweep of the Broncos behind clutch hitting from their number eight and nine hitters, Spencer Steer and Daniel Patzlaff.
Junior right-handed pitcher Michael Bono went the first 4.1 innings of the game without allowing a hit. However, once the Ducks broke the seal, they scored the game's only three runs in the fifth. A.J. Balta singled and then Matthew Dyer was hit by a pitch to put two runners on base. After a flyout, Spencer Steer's two-out double scored Balta and Dyler. Steer then came around to score on Daniel Patzlaff's single to give Oregon a 3-0 lead.
SCU (3-12) had runners on first and second base in the top of the sixth inning, trying to answer Oregon's three-run outburst. After a single by sophomore third baseman John Cresto, senior left fielder Tyler Meditz walked to bring the tying run to the plate. But, with two outs junior right fielder Grant Meylan flied out to end the inning. SCU went 0-for-11 at the plate with runners on base and 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position.
Oregon (11-4) left-handed pitcher Cole Stringer recorded the win as he threw 5.2 scoreless innings for the Ducks, allowing just four hits and striking out three hitters. He did walk one batter and hit two others while also throwing a wild pitch.
Kenyon Yovan earned his fifth save of the season for the Ducks although it wasn't an easy ninth inning for Yovan. After recording the first two outs, he hit freshman catcher Jake MacNichols. Sophomore second baseman Evan Haberle then reached on an error to put runners on first and second. But, freshman shortstop Austin Fisher's grounder to shortstop ended the game.
Freshman center fielder Andre Nnebe had three of the five Bronco hits on the day including a double. He now leads the team in hitting with a .365 batting average.
Up Next: Santa Clara will play one game at Stephen Schott Stadium on Tuesday at 6 p.m. PT against Connecticut.
Connect with the Broncos on Social Media
Athletics: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
Baseball: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Snapchat
Go Broncos!


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Get Involved
Why get involved with Circulation?
- Who doesn't love free stuff? We can get you early copies of albums, gig tickets, and even festival passes.
- You can get up close and personal with artists you love, by interviewing them for our features section.
- You can be a part of THE premier music publication in York and get your name in shiny print. We're ever-evolving, keeping our fingers on the pulse of exciting new music and always looking for ways we can bring fresh life to our city's music scene. We're not only looking for writers, but also illustrators and photographers as well as DJs and artists to play at our events.
So, since we've hooked you in with those fabulous reasons, here's how to get involved with us, in 3 super-easy steps:
- Sign up by clicking HERE
- Join our Writer's Pool HERE. Here you can see what we're up to; members of the Committee will post about upcoming gigs, albums to review and potential artist interviews. You can also make requests here for any of the aforementioned.
- Get in contact! Share your ideas, send us your articles, or ask any questions. You can do this by emailing us at firstname.lastname@example.com, messaging us on Facebook or contacting individual editors HERE


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California Software Labs (Calsoftlabs) is a software services company specializing in embedded software development and support. Headquartered in Chennai with a revenue of $60m, Calsoftlabs has a presence in 12 global locations. With over 1,000 employees, Calsoftlabs has delivered numerous on-time and budget projects to customers till date.
Calsoftlabs is also an authorized Adobe Flash Lite distributor and offers customized Flash Lite player based on Adobe's technology. To date, Calsoftlabs has ported Flash Lite to numerous operating systems (Linux, Windows CE, Nucleus, ThreadX, etc.) on TI, Freescale, Marvell and Intel platforms. A complete listing is available on www.calsoftlabs.com.
Calsoftlabs also offers Flash Lite port optimized for H.264 and OpenVG.
Other areas catered for by Calsoftlabs include browser porting and multimedia codec optimization such as MPEG, H.264 and On2. Calsoftlabs also specializes in Linux and Windows platform BSP development as well as driver development.
Calsoftlabs is also a Phoenix BIOS distributor and offers customized BIOS for custom boards.


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It's Friday night and you're about halfway through your big bag of Skittles and deep into the third level of your new game purchase. But your thumbs are already getting sweaty and the level's ratcheting things up. All those extr lives you saved up mean nothing now.
It's a situation we've all been caught in at one time or another, and it continues to follow gamers the world over to this day. Maybe it's a stubborn tutorial with a weird button combo. Maybe it's a confusing search and rescue mission. Maybe it's a overpowered enemies. Whatever the case, our palms are sweaty and our foreheads are boiling all over again just thinking about it. Fans took to AskReddit to relive some of these experiences, hopefully with their tempers intact.
"The driving test in the underground parking lot in Driver 1. You had to pass it in order to play the game. They make you slalom between poles, drift, do 360 etc. I never made it. I wonder the percentage of player who who could not play the game at all because they could not pass the test."
"The section of Assassins Creed Black Flag where you have to locate James Kidd by sneaking behind and knocking out loads of Assassins without getting spotted for even a second by any of the other Assassins who are all looking in different directions but who you can't see, while running between bushes and climbing ruins and swinging in trees! And then every time you fail you have to start right back at the beginning and do it again. Then when you've finally managed to do it they catch you anyway in a cutscene! That definitely tested the limits of my frustration."
"Walking on the 'blood lines' in Max Payne. Between the finicky controls of walking on the thin surfaces, and the random panicked baby cries, it's a level that I won't repeat."
"In Earthworm Jim on sega genesis there's a level where you have to escort this little dog through the level, if he gets hurt or falls off a cliff, he beats the shit out of you and takes you back pretty far(there was check points but they are spaced far as hell apart).
It was the first rage inducing level I have ever dealt with.
I beat it but fuck that level."
"High Charity on Legendary always made my 12 year old blood boil. Who the hell decided that the Flood should use guns anyway?!"
"Blighttown from Dark Souls 1! My god the frame rate drop along with the type of enemies you face. All of this combined with the fact that there is an extremely easy shortcut that bypasses 99% of it."
"In Vanilla WoW, there was/is a zone called Arathi Highlands. Even though it's not so bad now from what I've heard, I still avoid it like the plague, leveling in that zone was one of the most monotonous and boring moments I've ever been stuck playing through in a game, there were practically no quests available and you'd need to grind for hours before any of them were available to you.
Fuck that zone, massive waste of time."
"The Fridge in Borderlands 2, not only are the enemies there hard as fuck, but some of them even steal loot that you drop on the ground.
I once got a triple legendary off of the loot run there though."
"In Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, there are these mini levels where you have to collect these drops of light scattered around an area. In order to proceed in the plot, you have to do these mini levels. Every drop allows you ~90 seconds to run around without the enemy being alerted and chasing after you. In these mini levels, you "die" in one hit, and have no weapon, and there is really ominous creepy music when the enemies are chasing you.
These mini levels give me a ton of anxiety, and I wish I could just attack the enemies instead of only being allowed to run from them. I am probably never going to finish the game because of these dumb timed levels. Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess has a similar timed mini level concept (except they are flower droplets or something and there are no enemies) and I am not going to replay that game either because of those mini levels. It's a shame, because otherwise, I love both games."
"Super Mario Galaxy, any level in wich you had to collect all purple coins. I gave up when I fell out of the map ( the one at the penguin island ) after almost 2h, only four coins away from completion."
"Every level of the three Dead Space games where the regeneration Monster showed up. The fact that the creators had the gumption to continue bringing back that stressful fucker into each game is disheartening. I swear, never before have I been as anxious and stressed as I was during those sequences."
"Battletoads level 4.
The game had an almost impossible third level, but with a warp zone just at the start of the nightmarishly hard bit. Actually finishing 3 without hitting the warp zone and skipping level 4 was unbelievably hard.
So much so that I only ever succeeded at it once.
Level 4 was a let down."
"Anything past Hephaestus in Bioshock. The shift in gears and big daddy suit are just so annoying comparison to the rest of the game. On subsequent play throughs I consider the game to stop shortly after reaching Ryan.
Runner up: The Fade in Dragon Age: Origins. Played it once and immediately modded it out thereafter."
"Dead Money in Fallout New Vegas. You're kidnapped, wake up weaponless and must wander around a super toxic poisonous urban wasteland convincing characters totally unhinged from reality to work with you while running through narrow alleys and across rooftops dodging masses of ghost people waiting to kill you around every corner. Will never play that DLC again."


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Friday, 18 January 2013
My First MAC Lipstick: Creme Cup
26 comments:
This was my first MAC lippie over Christmas too :)ReplyDelete
Sophierosehearts xReplies
lol yay lipstick buddy's! :) xDelete
This was my first ever MAC lipstick three years ago, I loved it so much! Looks great on you :) xoReplyDelete
Its such a great colour! Thanks! :) xDelete
This looks so pretty on you! I haven't tried this but my sister has it. My favourite MAC lipstick is Rebel which is a dark reddish purple.ReplyDeleteReplies
Thanks hun!Delete
OMG i really want Rebel its an amazing colour but sooo expensive! x
The color looks great on you! As long as you love it and wear it a ton the price will be worth it for you :)ReplyDelete
Definitely agree with that! :) xDelete
This has to be one of my all time favourite lipsticks. love it. Looks gorgeous on you. xReplyDeleteReplies
Ah thanks so much! its an amazing colour! :) xDelete
I got my first one for Christmas as well! This looks so nice on you :) xReplyDeleteReplies
Yay so many people have said this must have been the year for MAC lipsticks! :) xDelete
This looks like really pretty everyday colour, I think I might have to make a MAC lipstick purchase soon.ReplyDeleteReplies
lol! there just too pretty not too lol! :) xDelete
This is such a lovely everyday colour! My first MAC lipstick was Hue which is still my favourite now :)ReplyDeleteReplies
I love that colour too its amazing! :) xDelete
Love a MAC lipstick, looks so pretty on youReplyDelete
- Anonymous19 January 2013 at 18:10
This is on my hit list of things to get! My favourite is Shy Girl - a great peachy nude which is greatt for my pale skin and red hair! Lovely post hun xReplyDelete
I was tempted by shy girl but ended up with this 1 would of been happy with either! there both lovely colours! :) xDelete
I got my first MAC lipstick this Christmas from my mum as well. I was also thrilled. I got Viva Glam Nicki and it is gorgeous. I've never used a lipstick so creamy and pigmented. Great post, thanks for sharing!ReplyDelete
The Viva glam's look amazing so jealous!Delete
Thanks hun! :) x
Such a beautiful shade:)ReplyDeleteReplies
It really is! :) xDelete
I love this lipstick, it's such a lovely shade and looks fab with almost everything xxReplyDelete
I love and reply to every comment, it seriously makes my day!
If you are a blogger please leave your link so that I can take a look at your blog too!
Hannah :) x
Love, Life, and Makeup Blog/Twitter/Pinterest


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(reduce to 1/2 Tbs table salt if substituting)
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
The Accidental Garden
It was a totally unexpected garden. I wasn't planning it, but I always wanted to have one when the time was right. Sometimes things happen that are not part of your agenda in life and you have to adapt and be ready to take on new responsibilities. Fortunately the reward at the end is worth all the nurturing and hard work. Yes, I am still talking tomatoes and cucumbers and how I got my accidental garden.
I felt obligated to the little homeless plants and decided that if they wanted to live they would have to survive in the untilled, untreated, unfertilized, boring rocky soil in my front yard. Some went in large containers, some went in the flower bed and many were relegated to the pathetic soil on the slope of the side yard. The seedlings arrived unmarked from an excess purchase a dear friend made and didn't have space for in her garden. I didn't have a clue what half the plants were that were being haphazardly planted in the ground. But they grew indeed: tomatoes, yellow squash, cantaloupe, spaghetti squash, peppers and lots and lots of cucumbers. And they made me excited, so I ran out and bought a few more. Soon four tomato plants turned into a dozen, hot peppers join the sweet and I couldn't forget a hopeful (and still struggling) pumpkin vine while I was at it.
I began plans to expand next year. No space was safe. Fences would have to go up and irrigation lines put in. Maybe berries and corn and peach trees! I even fantasized about my own beehives and chicken coops. No doubt it's fabulous to know where your food comes from and the can-do spirit is addictive, but seriously! I have my hands full already and am thoroughly content in this year's crop. Besides, I discovered some local farms that have a done a fabulous job for me! Sometimes, though, all it takes is one homegrown tomato to help you discover your inner pioneer spirit!
So when life gives you unexpected cucumbers, what better thing to do than make pickles! Here's my simple version of a popular recipe. I've played around with it this summer several times and find that I like the dried dill better than fresh and some white wine vinegar adds just the right vinegar taste. I don't like it too sweet either and many recipes call for much more sugar. It's your call on that one. If you have other veggies, you can throw them in, too. I love to add hot or sweet peppers. My favorite thing to serve with this many pickles? Slow cooked barbeque pulled pork. Sweet and sour go great together!
Refrigerator Pickles
3 large pickles, approximately 2 cups sliced
2 c. water
¾ c. white vinegar
¾ c. white wine vinegar
¼ c. sugar
1 Tbs. rock sea salt or kosher salt
(reduce to 1/2 Tbs table salt if substituting)
(reduce to 1/2 Tbs table salt if substituting)
1 Tbs dried dill
1Tbs dill seed
1Tbs mustard seed
Start by mixing ¼ c. boiling water with the salt and sugar to dissolve. Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Cover and store in fridge for at least a couple hours to marinate. They are certainly better after 24 hours. Many recipes claim they are good for weeks in the fridge, but I wouldn't know because they never last that long! So give it a try. Change it up a bit if you like. Make it yours, but just make it!
Posted by Kelleewynne at 8:08 AM
6 comments:
My husband is really into gardening and I love eating the results! So much fun!ReplyDelete
Wow, pickles have been a fave of mine this pregnancy, and those look soooo good. Makes me wish I could garden, but it's not pretty when I try.ReplyDelete
What an awesome story of the tenacious nature of plants. I'm afraid the only ones we have here are cactus and mesquite trees. LOL But your recipe looks delish!ReplyDelete
thanks for sharing the pickle recipe...i'll have to try them!ReplyDelete
Yum! My mom use to can cucumbers when I was younger. This so reminds me of my childhood:)ReplyDelete
We "made" pickles with the boys this year by cutting up our cucumber and putting in an old pickle jar where we saved the juice our store bought pickles came in. It was quite a hit.ReplyDelete
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Barbara Patterson is the owner of a coaching and consulting company bringing the insights of The Principles to her work with coaches, leaders and entrepreneurs from around the world.
She has over 20 years of experience coaching & working globally as both an internal executive and outside consultant. She has worked with and coached CEO's and top executives from all regions of the world, she has built a successful consulting and coaching business and has mentored other coaches to do the same. Today, in addition to running her own coaching & consulting business, Barb is partnering with Linda & George Pransky developing Principles-Based Practitioners through mentoring, training and one-on-one work. She also recently contributed to Elsie Spittle's book, "Nuggets of Wisdom".
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Mexican President to Assign Prosecution Unit for Missing
One year after the disappearance and alleged killing of Mexican students, the families of the 43 missing demanded that President Enrique Pena Nieto launch a review of the country's investigation process after an international group revealed that there are gaps and discrepancies in the official incident interpretation.
Parents of the kidnapped students met with the President to present their demands that his Cabinet will now review.
"I feel very hopeless because the government did not give us a response," said Cristina Bautista, mother of a disappeared student. "From the experts we have gotten a lot, from Pena Nieto, nothing," she said.
The frustration from parents was evident:
"It was a requirement to go and see him," Cesar Gonzalez, father of one of the students said. "Unfortunately⦠the government has never given us anything besides psychological blows."
An international panel of human rights professionals published a report that rejects the official Mexican government's case interpretation. While Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam said in early 2015 when he declared the cased closed that the local police were ordered to go after the students in fear of them interrupting the mayor's wife speech. The international panel reports that the speech was already over when the students arrived in the town and that it is not possible that the bodies were incinerated in the timeframe described by the officials.
Over the last 8 years more than 25,000 people have disappeared in Mexico. The case of the 43 missing students incident brought the issue back into the spotlight. After the meeting with the students' parents, the President has pledged to assign a special prosecutor unit for the country's missing people. Alejandro Hope, a security analyst, commented on the lackluster response by the government:
"Even in an iconic case where the reputation of the Mexican government was at stake, where a lot of resources were deployed to solve the case, what you see is a very primitive form of investigation," he said. "It has gotten increasingly confusing as to why [the attack] happened."
The international panel says that federal security personnel were closely following students on the day and were also present at the site of attack, yet the government didn't question them.
The president's spokesman, Eduardo Sanchez, said that in the closed-door meeting the President rejected parents' demands for investigating involved officials for obstruction of justice. The President, however, promised to collect a group of experts to investigate the Cocula dump and pledged to continue with the investigation for another six months.
"We're on the same side. You and I are seeking the same thing: to know what happened to each and every one of your sons," Pena Nieto said.
Reuters reports that the public doesn't believe officials are able to conduct a fair investigation.
Nieto has also faced questions over his credibility despite he and the Finance Minister having recently been absolved from any wrongdoing regarding home purchases from public contractors.
09 29, 2015 Polymnia Hadjipanayiotou


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I have always enjoyed the sporty things in life and have tried to maintain my fitness levels over the years by walking and engaging in sports at my local community centre. But the one thing I really liked to do was to partake in gym related classes such as yoga, pilates, step, body pump, body attack, spinning; in fact all of them. Everybody has a hobby, and this was mine. Many of my friends used to ridicule me about the number of classes I wanted to join, saying they would find it hard to join even one. But for me, I could happily do a variety of different classes all day long if given half the chance.
Perhaps you might say this is a bit obsessive, but as far as I am concerned I wasn't hurting anyone, and at the end of the day, I had a body that I was proud of – strong, lean and slim. I would actually feel almost sick if I couldn't get my weekly quota.
Recently, like so many, we had been hit by the recession, and my hours were cut at the office, meaning I still had a job, but only really half a job, and sadly, only half the salary. I had to take a serious look at our finances and prioritise. I spent hours online looking at the different utility service providers such as gas, electricity, mobile phone, television, and so on, not to mention insurance providers for home and car. With big savings made almost immediately, I was left wondering why on earth I hadn't engaged in this exercise before. No wonder so many people struggle; the differences in quotations that I received from the various companies was quite incredible.
One of the things I had to also look at was my own gym membership, and sadly that too was charging way over the odds, so again I went online to research clubs that had all the facilities, amenities, and of courses classes that I wanted, but one that provided a more realistic cheap gym membership.
At first I have to admit I was quite heartbroken at having to move from my club, the place that had been home to my fanaticism for so long, but the alternative was so much more attractive that within no time at all I was back into a routine with a renewed enthusiasm and before long, I discovered that in fact the new gym had a whole lot more to offer in terms of classes and facilities.
Modern, clean, and friendly, I quickly signed up to my favourite classes and found that there were other classes available that even I hadn't heard of – happy days! It didn't take long to form new friendships and now we often meet up after our sessions for refreshments. In fact, I happened to meet a girl who was looking for someone to do some work for her and has agreed to give me a couple of extra hours every week in her office. So how is that for double luck!


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Geographic Composition
In response to my post from yesterday fellow blogger Jon Erikson, of San Miguel Photo of the Day, emailed me with a great suggestion for a collaborative photo project. He suggested that we develop a list of topics and each week the photographers involved would submit a new photo based on their interpretation of the topic for me to post here (I'm thinking on Fridays).
The part that I like is having photographers from all over offering a perspective from different cultures. Certainly me, being from the Northeast US, will have a different take than Jon in Mexico, which would be different still from someone from the Midwest or West Coast of the US, and even more so from someone in Europe, Asia, Australia, etc. The juxtaposition of the multiple views of the selected topic could be really interesting.
Right now, we have me and Jon and I would like to invite members of the blogroll and regular visitors to consider taking part. Without going overboard with the number of people, I'd like to get a broad spectrum of photographers involved from as many regions as possible (both US and, especially, non-US). Email me if you are willing to join us and post a comment here with ideas for topics you'd like to see and possible names for the project.
Thanks again, Jon, for the suggestion! And I look forward to getting things off the ground!


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Welcome to WebmasterWorld Guest from 188.8.131.52
Forum Moderators: buckworks
Canada should not be so much of a stretch to support, and I would consider it a more likely candidate then the UK for 'beta' transaction due to free trade, closer financial institutions ties, etc.
Seriously, we want to move forward ahead from typical Paypal payment solutions to something more professional yet not a complete merch solution, but I feel like CDN is getting the short end of the stick. Someone, tell me why Canada is getting left out! :)


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English | Espańol
All Issues > Volume 14, Issue 6
In the USA, today is Thanksgiving Day. Many of us will be enjoying the traditional Thanksgiving feast with our families. We hope that this feast will prefigure the ultimate feast, "the wedding feast of the Lamb" in heaven.
To accept the Lord's invitation to His wedding feast, we must make a covenant of love with Him, completely give our lives to the Lord, and have a relationship with Him which transcends marriage.
This wedding feast is the feast of Jesus, called the Lamb. To come to the wedding feast, we need the weakness of the slain Lamb of God. We must have the weakness of the cross (see 2 Cor 13:4) by which God's power is brought to perfection (2 Cor 12:9).
Furthermore, all those at the heavenly wedding feast "have survived the great period of trial; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (Rv 7:14). At the everlasting, ultimate wedding feast, all present have a purified, crucified, covenant-love for the Lamb of God.
At Holy Communion, the priest proclaims: "Behold, the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world. Happy are those who are called to His supper." Live a life of love and daily Communion. Accept the invitation to the heavenly wedding feast of the Lamb.


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The Grizzly Club Preschool is a licensed child care center in Wadsworth, OH. We are a large center. transportation is provided. Please email us for more information.
Do you run this child care program? If so, click here to add photos and more information!
Parent Reviews
There are currently no parent reviews for this daycare.


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The Economic Impact of the Wine and Grape Industry in Canada is the most comprehensive study conducted on the Canadian wine and grape industry, and aims to improve our understanding of how Canada's wine and grape industry benefits our national and regional economies.
It examines the supply chain linkages, the income effects associated with people spending wages they earn, the fiscal implications for federal and provincial governments, and the effect of related income remittances from people who work in tourism, hospitality, etc., revealing a prosperous and expanding $9 billion dollar industry.
Study Canadian Wine Industry Economic Impact March 2017
Wine and Grape Industry Study Press Release March 2017
Additional Resources:
Ressources en français:
Communiqué de presse sur les retombées économiques liées à l'industrie canadienne de la vigne et du vin – mars 2017


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by David N. Ginsburg, President + CEO, Downtown Cincinnati Inc. //
Summer is a wonderful season for re-reading old books and taking long, contemplative walks with my dogs and a good cigar. This past weekend I (re)discovered Comeback Cities by Paul Grogan and Tony Proscio. This seminal book was written in 2000 when we were only first beginning to see the revival, repopulation, reinvestment and renaissance in American Cities. After years of decline and disinvestment, the book struck me as somewhere between visionary and wishful thinking at the time.
How many American cities were working well in 2000? Maybe a handful. New York City was beginning to clean up its act under Mayor Rudolf Giuliani and the growing impact of Business Improvement Districts (BIDS). Portland, OR was seeing center city revival led by a growing light rail system and Denver was experiencing substantial residential growth in LoDo around the new Coors Field. Finding a successful American City to benchmark was a challenge in 2000 but no more.
As Mayor John Cranley of Cincinnati likes to say, downtown Cincinnati is "on fire!" We recently had a chance to showcase our center city by hosting the 2015 Major League Baseball All Star Game. People from more than 200 countries (and the vast television audience) got to see our spectacular riverfront/Smale Riverfront Park, the vitality of the central business district featuring distinctive architecture old and new, and once downtrodden, now hip Over-the-Rhine. All of these areas are bustling with a diverse array of residents and businesses helping to reinforce a walkable urban environment and a growing tax base.
We are very grateful to Major League Baseball and the owner of the
Cincinnati Reds, Bob Castellini (and his team) for selecting Cincinnati for the All Star Game. There are so many wonderful, vital cities from which to choose. Last year it was Minneapolis and next year San Diego. Organizations like CEO's for Cities have played a vital role in identifying and sharing best practices such as place-based economic development, mixed-use development, attention to diversity, multi-modal transportation, breakthrough research, and securing the environment through "safe/clean" programs and the innovative use of public/private partnerships.
Today, the resurgence of American cities is the norm. It is amazing, as we rediscover Comeback Cities, that is has only been 15 or 20 years since we first recognized this trend. I am confident this success will become a "flywheel" propelling us to even greater, more innovative and inclusive things to come.
Banner photo courtesy of James Patterson


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Fresh off their rafter-raising North American tour, it's the UK's preeminent dubstep duo Skream & Benga. Known for their bass-centric brand of sci-fi sonics, the pair now scorch Scion A/V with this new five-track EP. From their early studio releases on Big Apple Records to their group project Magnetic Man, these childhood friends have put in the necessary work to take their sound from its niche London origins to an awesome level of international prominence. Step to it!
1. "Phat Head"
Snazzy synthesizers and a shuddering bass add
up to this roof-raising slice of instrumental soul.
2. "Nefariousa"
Perhaps inspired by the UK duo's recent experience touring the USA, this track shows why darkness is sometimes so darn appealing.
3. "Ice Cream Jelly Roll"
Carbonated sirens, percussive grumbling, ruthless repetition, and even a quick nod to four-four house?
No one else delivers big bass dubstep quite like this.
4. "Electro West"
Guaranteed to drive your nosey neighbors back
where they belong, this rave-blasted slab comes
with its own intruder alert alarm system.
5. "Any Steppers"
Thinking about taking a leap across a bottomless
crevasse separating two columns of jagged black
ice? Here's the song to listen to while you do it.


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5 Minutes Prep - 2 Hour Interactive Lesson!
Jigsaws aren't the only cooperative learning activity that I do in my classroom. Here is a fun activity for reviewing body parts. I divide the class into groups of three and give each group a sheet of chart paper and a felt marker. I ask the students to take turns being the artist.
The students are instructed to write no English on the paper. All that should be on the paper are drawings. Students are instructed not to draw a whole person, but rather each body part separately as it is called out. I then call out 30 body parts. The first one is something easy like "nose" and then I move on to more challenging ones. It's a great activity for shaking up the atmosphere. Students often get up out of their chairs and lean over the paper and offer opinions on how to draw each part. A lot of laughter is the inevitable outcome.
When the last body part has been drawn, I collect the felt markers and ask each group to take out one ballpoint pen. The chart paper is then passed to the neighbouring group, moving clockwise. This is the labelling stage of the activity. Each group is to label the body parts on the other groups' paper, without the aid of dictionaries or reference to class handouts. Lots more laughter ensues as groups try to make out what the drawings are meant to be.
After a short interval, time is up and the groups must pass the chart paper to the next group to finish labelling any unlabelled parts. This is also the correction stage. Groups are to correct any spelling or labelling errors of the previous group. Another short interval and the paper is passed on again.
When groups finally get their own paper back, they check whether the other groups correctly labelled their body parts. Papers can then be hung on the walls.
They say that students need to see a new word 8 times in order to make it part of active vocabularly. There are many ways to review body parts vocabulary. This fun cooperative learning activity puts students in a receptive mode for learning, integrates listening, speaking, writing and reading and encourages them to focus on the accuracy of their spelling.
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First thing first
**Below steps are mandatory**
– You must have a rooted phone or a phone with custom ROM
– You must install Substratum Theme app
– This is not a standalone app (Substratum Theme app is mandatory)
– 24 navigation bars
– Regular update
How to use ?
Watch this short video for a quick tutorial
Follow the Awesome Navbars collection for the latest update
Follow the developer here
If you have any issue/feedback/concern drop me a mail at email@example.com
Hope you enjoy the app.
Thank you. Have a nice day.


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Magnetic Bookmark
Magnetic Bookmark
Large magnetic bookmarks keep your place in that favorite book or bible.
This bookmark makes a great gift to lift up and inspire that special someone!
Size: 1.875"W x 5.875"H
Material: Paper/Magnet
We Offer The Fastest Shipping & Hassle Free Returns!
Shipping Information:
- FREE Standard Shipping for all USA Orders over $50!
- Most US based orders are shipped directly from our warehouse within 24-48 hrs for your convenience and maximum efficiency.
- Your product should arrive within 2 to 5 Business Days.
Returns Information:
- We offer a 100% Satisfaction guarantee or your money back. Please contact us for return requests.
- Return Policy Does Not Apply To Products Purchased with a Discount Code. All Returns subject to a 15% restock fee at our discretion.
We Are Leading The Industry In Scripture-Inspired Products.
Living Scripture Strong is the world's leading supplier of high quality scripture-based products. We have many great reasons to purchase from us from our quality customer service to the luxury products we carry on our website. We are the fastest growing company in the industry because we always put the needs of our customers first. We have created a user-friendly, customer-centered online shopping experience that has us head and shoulders above the competition. We are positive you will see the difference in your experience from our high quality products to our exceptional online customer service. Take time and shop with us today.
A Few Of The Reasons You Should Buy From Us:• 100% Secure Online Ordering
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• New products with cutting edge designs and special sales for our valued customers
• Knowledgeable and Professional Customer Support
• Thousands of Satisfied Customers
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• All items In Stock And Ready To Ship Upon Ordering
• Everyone Who Uses Our Products Comes Back For More And You Will Too!
What People Are Saying About Us
- Lindsey W.
Item exactly as described! I love wrapping my son in God's word!
- Susan Bauer
Beautiful blankets! Thank you for your ministry!
- Brielle Rawlings-Dubé
I wish there was a gray option. But otherwise I love it.
- Cindy
A great seller always great service.


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Foam Hot Knife
This industrial cutting tool is specifically designed for cutting through foam. Use it to cut custom foam shapes for tool shadowing, storage needs, and other applications in seconds. No more hassle from dull scissors or box knives; this foam hot knife ensures an accurate cut without the need for excessive pressure.
- Cuts styrofoam, plank, and soft foam
- For custom-size packaging applications
- Pre-heats in 15 seconds
- Adjustable temperature control - up to 1000°F
- 4" straight alloy blade included
- 110 volt
- Part #: FOAM-INDHK
Once you've installed tool organization foam in your facility, try adding floor marking tape, signs, and labels to create a complete visual communication system or 5S program.
At Creative Safety Supply, we guarantee the quality of our products. If you̥re unsatisfied with your purchase, you can return new, unopened items within 30 days of purchase for a full refund. That way you can feel confident the products you order will meet your expectations, or you'll get your money back.
For full warranty information, please visit our warranties page.


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M_Canada Hockey Hoodie
In stock
Men's Canada hockey hoodie. Canada and hockey go together like Polar Bears and 7-Eleven slushies. This poly/cotton blend hoodie was designed for those cool nights by the camp fire or an early morning skate on the pond. 10 ounces of toasty warm enjoyment. And the hockey laces are a nice touch too.
Printed in Colorado
Color: Black
Fabric: 20/80 Poly/cotton blend
Weight: 10 oz.
Player approved:
- Locker room tested
- Built to endure
- Designed in the Rockies


text: David Adams is an associate with the firm in the New Orleans office. He clerked with the firm the summer before and during his final year in law school. David graduated from Loyola law school ranked in the top 3% of his class and became an associate upon passing the bar exam. Before law school, David earned his bachelor's degree in Greek and Roman Studies from Rhodes College in December of 2012. David assists firm clients primarily in the area of Health Care Law and Professional Liability, and also in Casualty Litigation and Commercial and Business Litigation.


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In this article you will learn about how you can check and redeem your earnings at Viewpoint Panel. To explain that, first I would like to mention that you receive some small amounts for every single survey that you complete and it gets credited to your Viewpoint Panel Account.
It may take time of 24 Hours to 7 days to reflect/add-up into your viewpoint panel account after the successful completion of a survey by you. So you should be patient about this.
How To Check Earnings
- Firstly, input your login details and hit the login button.
Now, you will see a small navigation bar at the top with two Links. First link takes you to the Profile page of yours and second link takes you to the Reward page. Hit the Reward Link and you will be able to see the the exact amount of you earnings in the form of USD or any other currency you have opted at sign up.
How To Redeem Money
- To Redeem your earnings, you are given two options currently.
- Learn to redeem money with Paypal
- Learn to redeem money with GCodes


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How often have you heard someone express the feeling that they wanted somebody to talk to? It's a sentiment shared by many, especially when it comes to calling businesses. People… Read More »
How can Alarm Monitoring Help Your Business?
Here at Telerep, we've already given you many reasons why you should consider employing us for all your call center services. Businesses as varied as plumbers and retail establishments can… Read More »
A Great Team – Plumbers and Call Center Service
Call center service is great for many different types of businesses from healthcare to retail services. Every company understands how important customer service is with regards to growth and increasing… Read More »
We Prescribe Call Centers for your Healthcare Facility
When a patient calls their doctor's office, they don't want to deal with a cranky receptionist on the other end or be stuck on hold. In fact, one of the… Read More »


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From quick breaks to epic journeys, our trips cover the world from all angles for 18-35 year old travelers like you. It's about making every moment count. At Contiki, that's what we do best. #NOREGRETS
Contiki is pleased to offer special pricing for UBC alumni. Enter promo code PPUBCALUMNI and receive $150 off your next trip.
*Save $150 off the land trip price when you book any trip 7 days or longer. Offer valid until December 20, 2019 for travel before December 31, 2019. Discount applies to land trip price and is not applicable to taxes, internal flight costs, extra accommodation, food funds or optional activities. All Contiki Holidays trips are 'land only' and do not include airfare. Offer is combinable with brochure discounts such as 'Travelling Again', 'Book with Friends', '2 or more' and 'Pay Early' discounts. Discounts are subject to availability and may be withdrawn at any point without notice. Other restrictions may apply. Please contact your travel agent or Contiki Holidays (1-800-268-1835) for full details. Promo code: PPUBCALUMNI


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Artificial ground freezing for groundwater control and excavation support was developed more than a century ago. The technique is cost-effective in a relatively well-defined niche where both support of excavation and groundwater cut-off are required, and it is performed at significant depth or in difficult, disturbed, or sensitive ground.
The ground freezing process converts in situ pore water to ice through the circulation of a chilled liquid via a system of small-diameter pipes placed in drilled holes. The ice acts to fuse the soil or rock particles together, creating a frozen mass of improved compressive strength and impermeability. Brine is the typical cooling agent, although fast acting liquid nitrogen can be used for projects where the freeze only needs to be quickly established and maintained for a short period of time or in emergency situations.
Moretrench is North America's pre-eminent ground freezing contractor and has completed many notable projects since its ground freezing division was established in 1976. We have also completed emergency response work in Canada and South America.
Projects of particular note include the East Side Access Northern Boulevard Crossing; Port of Miami Connector Tunnels; and Access Shaft # 3 in Buenos Aires.
For further information on ground freezing, also visit groundfreezing.com.
The Big Freeze: Brine vs Liquid Nitrogen
Ground Freezing Resolves Complex Challenges Ahead of SEM Tunneling
Improvement for Underground Construction: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Chilling Out in Florida: Port of Miami Cross Passages
Innovations in Ground Improvement Award
Ground Improvement for Groundwater Control
Freezing Under the Fraser River


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Gift Cards
Give the gift of relaxation today
Spoil your loved one with the perfect gift of relaxation at Amora Spa. Choose from either a monetary value or specific treatment gift card.
Please note: All minors (under 18) receiving Amora spa service must have their parent/guardian seated in the room throughout the entire service session, or receiving a service together with their parent/guardian in one of the Couples Rooms.


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No, the Samsung Instinct is not an iPhone killer. So what is it? It's easily the best touchscreen phone available on Sprint, and it's packed with more features than both AT&T's LG Vu and Verizon's Samsung Glyde. Priced at $199 with a two-year contract and $100 mail-in rebate, the Instinct sports a cool customizable user interface, a superior touch keyboard, and compelling voice recognition. Although the Web browser leaves much to be desired, Samsung and Sprint have delivered a very good phone, GPS navigator, and mobile entertainment center all rolled into one.
The Instinct is certainly one of the more attractive touchscreen phones we've tested. The front of the Instinct has a smoke gray hue, and is reflective enough to see your face when the screen is dark. The rear of the unit is made of smooth plastic and is matte black in color. It measures 4.5 x 2.1 x 0.4 inches and weighs just 4.4 ounces, making the Instinct slightly larger than the LG Vu and weighing 1.2 ounces more. It's marginally narrower than the iPhone but is the same length as Apple's device and feels equally comfortable.
While the Instinct has more buttons along its sides than the iPhone, each has a useful purpose. The volume controls on the left side are within thumb reach, along with Samsung's proprietary transfer cable and charging port. The top of the Instinct has a small metal Power and Lock button, as well as a conveniently placed 3.5mm headphone jack. Along the right side of the unit you'll find a microSD Card slot, a voice-command button, and the camera quick-launch button. The front of the phone has just three haptic touch buttons: Return, Home, and a Call button, represented by a telephone icon. These glow white when the phone is on.
We noticed that the phone's plastic screen is very susceptible to scratches. After having the phone in our pocket for a weekend, there were noticeable scuffs and minuscule scratches on the display. The iPhone's glass display is more durable.
Touchscreen and UI
Click to enlarge
When we turned on the Instinct for the first time, our unit took us through a minute-long setup process and then left us on the Favs screen. The 3.1-inch 432 x 240 pixel haptic touchscreen display is bright and colorful. Four tabbed icons run along the bottom of the screen: Favs, Main, Fun, and Web. Each tab has its own menu of application launch icons. On the Favs screen, you can add your favorite and most-used applications and activities, from specific Sprint TV stations to Web pages or an e-mail launch shortcut. We appreciated the ability to customize what we wanted on the home screen right away.
The Main tab has shortcuts to your calculator, calendar, clock, e-mail, messaging, navigation, notes, settings, and voicemail. The next tab, Fun, brings up a list of shortcuts to the Camera, Games/Apps, Music, My Photos, TV/Video/Radio, Shopping, and +Add. You can use +Add to create a new icon that will send your pictures to Photobucket, MySpace, or your Sprint album stored on Sprint's Web site.
The final tab, Web, gives you access to the Web browser, Live Search, Weather, News, Sports, Movies, your account information, and two optional destinations: Marine Forecast for checking the surf and weather at the shore, or Entertainment News for keeping up to date on the latest celebrity high jinks.
The Instinct's user interface is smooth. It loaded menus and icons quickly in a smooth left-to-right or right-to-left motion. The animations aren't as fun or entertaining as the iPhone's UI, but they add to the Instinct's appeal. Scrolling through lists is much easier and more fluid than any other haptic resistive touchscreen we've used before. The phone responds much more like the iPhone does, and you can quickly flip through lists of songs or down through long news articles without having to make too many finger swipes. Whenever you're away from the phone's home screen--inside another application, for example--you can navigate right back to it almost immediately by pressing the Home button.
Using the Web
The Samsung Instinct's browser uses eight icons along the side of each page that act as option buttons for zooming, panning, switching between mobile and standard view, hiding the address bar, search, home, favorites, and history. We tried to test its Ajax support by visiting www.netvibes.com, but it didn't work; the page just didn't load completely. Flash sites like www.pandora.com also aren't fully supported and they may never be; the site returns a message stating the fact.
Click to enlarge
NYTimes.com loaded in 8 seconds, which is pretty speedy, thanks to the Instinct's support of Sprint's EV-DO Rev. A network. However, page formatting isn't as good as on the iPhone. The Instinct defaults to the mobile version of Web sites, and although you can zoom in and out between 1/2X and 3X, there's no support for pinching or pulling to zoom easily as there is on Apple's device.
One small icon that looks like a phone lets you toggle between the mobile version of the Web site you're viewing and the standard version, but we saw no difference on the New York Times Web page, and the URL remained http://mobile.nytimes.com. When we visited CNN.com, we saw the full version of the Web site, and when we toggled to mobile view, http://m.cnn.com loaded.
Panning is easy, and we appreciated the finger-swiping scroll action to navigate quickly from the top of the page to the bottom. If you want to click a link, the best way to do so is to press down and hold your finger, which highlights the link. If it's not the link you're looking for, let go and try again. If it is, push harder, and the link will navigate. On our tests, the Instinct was able to select the right link in most cases, but the overall surfing experience paled in comparison to that of the iPhone's desktoplike browser.
Adding New Applications
We attempted installing the Opera Mini browser; though it isn't optimized for the Instinct, it worked when we launched it the first time. But it froze during subsequent launches, so it's not a reliable solution. Another application, Gmail for Java phones, worked fine (not that you'd need it). Applications that are specific to the Instinct are available under the Games/Apps section, and you can install or buy them directly from that area. Our favorite was a Gameloft demo called Brain Challenge; the full version costs $5.95. When you're ready to uninstall an application, just hold the icon down for a second, and when it starts buzzing, drag it up to the top corner of the screen into the trash bin. This technique can also be used to organize your favorites.
E-Mail and Messaging
We were able to set up a Gmail account in less than a minute. We appreciated the easy-to-use e-mail interface; the phone buzzes and shows a star next to the inbox when new e-mails arrive. There's also support for AOL Mail, AIM Mail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and Work, which can be either Outlook Web Access e-mail or another account. You'll need to install Sprint's Mobile E-Mail software on your computer to set up an account that's not one of the aforementioned services.
The touch keyboard was surprisingly easy to use, and we think it's one of the better virtual keyboards among the resistive touchscreen phones. It's superior to what you'll find on the LG Vu and the Voyager, and it's a definite iPhone contender. The Instinct was very responsive and fairly accurate, and we like that misspelled words are automatically highlighted in red. Although we're accustomed to using on-screen keyboards, most Instinct buyers should be able to pick up this layout quickly.
There's a small key directly below the Delete key that minimizes the keyboard, and we found its positioning to be quite frustrating. Since the delete key runs along the top border of the device, it's very easy to hit the key just below it accidentally, minimize the keyboard, and find yourself confused and staring blankly at the device, wondering what just happened.
When you send an MMS or video message, you can add a 10-second voice recording, which is a unique feature. We appreciate that SMS messages are threaded, so we can view older messages and new ones as a dialogued conversation. We were able to send off a small 5-second video clip of cars whizzing by and honking in New York City to our e-mail address in about 10 seconds, which is a good indicator of the phone's EV-DO Rev. A uplink speeds.
Click to enlarge
The Instinct features a 2-megapixel camera and a camcorder, but you can't send videos more than 2 minutes long or larger than 6MB in size over the air. Our recorded video of cars whizzing by in Manhattan was blurry and washed out, and the audio sounded watery, so don't plan on recording important events with it. Our pictures were crisp and clear, though.
Voice Commands and Live Search with Speech
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The Live Search feature on the Instinct is something that Sprint has been touting for a while now. To activate it, press and hold the Voice Command key and the phone will ask you to say a command. Commands include "Call name or number," "Send text to name or number," "Send picture to name or number," and "Go to Traffic, Weather, News, Sports, Movies, or Search."
The phone only recognized our commands about half of the time, which was frustrating. The first time we asked for "Sushi," it returned results for "a cheap." You really have to hold the phone right up to your mouth and say what you want. On the other hand, the Instinct easily recognized our instruction to "Call Christie," and immediately dialed her number.
What's more fun is the ability to use voice commands for live search. When we instructed the phone to "Go to Search," it launched a new menu where you can say things such as "Pizza." The phone takes about 10 seconds to perform a search, which is on a par with less powerful applications like Yahoo oneSearch with Voice for BlackBerry. The restaurant that we searched for--one that most phones fail to find--came up on the Instinct. Once we clicked on the name of the restaurant from the list of returned results, the Instinct gave us the restaurant's phone number and provided us with a map and directions to the eatery from our current location. We also had the option to save the info right to the address book or share the info with a friend via text or e-mail message. We haven't seen such accurate and easy-to-use search results on a phone before.
Multimedia and TV
The Instinct is packed with multimedia functionality, and its 3.5mm headphone jack lets you use any headset you want. The handset can access both Sprint's built-in Music Store and Sprint TV's streaming videos and television content. The Music store's interface was clearly designed specifically for the Instinct. The menus are divided into horizontal bars, each a menu option such as genre, category, song name, etc, and you can scroll through the long lists with the swipe of a finger.
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The Instinct's fast EV-DO Rev. A speeds really shine here: We were able to download 311's "Down" in just 16 seconds. The music player doesn't have a beautiful album art interface like the iPhone, but when a song is playing, a large graphic of the album's cover art is displayed, along with the regular Skip and Play controls. Above the album art are buttons to shuffle songs or repeat the track currently playing. Unlike some other Sprint phones like the Curve 8330, the Instinct lets you listen to music while performing other tasks on the device.
Sprint TV offers a host of channels, including live broadcasts and small On Demand clips. Live stations include ABC Mobile, ABC News Now, CNN Mobile Live, the Disney Channel, E!, Fox Sports, MTV Mobile, and the NFL Network, among others. When we clicked CNN Mobile Live, we had to wait 30 seconds for the show to start playing. When it did, the audio was crisp and loud, but the picture was not as pleasant as AT&T's Mobile TV. It was pixilated, a bit laggy, and every so often the picture froze for about a second, even though voices were still audible. Sprint said Sprint TV would begin to use Rev. A connectivity "in the next few days" during our first hands on, and that performance would improve, but after four more days of testing, we had yet to see any increase in TV performance even after the upgrades were completed.
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Sprint Navigation is powered by TeleNav, and we really enjoyed the interface on the Instinct. You can choose from an initial menu to find directions, search for local points of interest (including gas stations, restaurants, and ATMs), view maps and traffic, or share your location with friends. The voice-guided directions were dead on, giving us a route from one spot in Manhattan to our offices, but it didn't reroute us when we purposely walked a block off course. We'll be updating this review with in-car test results.
Decent Call Quality
During our testing of the Instinct's call quality, callers told us we sounded a bit muffled and fuzzy. Voice quality on our end was clear, and we had no complaints. Over a weekend of usage, other callers reported the same complaint about hearing some minor fuzziness on the line. However, from both ends, the calls were clearer than the original iPhone.
Visual Voicemail
The Instinct is the first touchscreen phone since the iPhone to provide visual voicemail. The interface is similar to the iPhone's in that the device displays a list of voicemails that have been left on the phone. Unfortunately, we weren't able to see or listen to much more than the demo recording: Sprint said the software wasn't available yet for our review unit but that it would be available shortly as an over-the-air update.
Battery Life and Extras
The Instinct offers great standby battery life: Over a span of two days making casual phone calls and checking the news and our e-mail frequently, the battery indicator barely budged. However, when we streamed music, made more phone calls, and watched movies, the battery drained within 4 hours. The Instinct comes prepackaged with a host of accessories, including a 2GB microSD card, a USB cable, charging cord, leather sheath, stylus, and extra battery pack. Most phones include a USB cable, and sometimes a headset and carrying case. We rarely see phones packaged with an extra battery.
The Samsung Instinct is a very good touchscreen phone, and friends and family were impressed by its performance and design. The iPhone 3G boasts a superior Web browsing experience, Wi-Fi, and a more durable glass multi-touch display, and both it and the first-generation model will soon be able to access an entire store of applications. Nevertheless, Sprint customers looking for a multimedia phone with all the trimmings will be happy with the Instinct's haptic feedback, robust GPS navigation and local search, zippy music store, and unique voice recognition.


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The Port Townsend Rigging sponsored 2012 Port-to-Port race is a challenge race between two yacht clubs: The Port Townsend Sailing Association and the Port Ludlow Yacht Club. In the distance past there was likely a moment in some local sailor's dive where one slightly tipsy resident of one town pointed a finger at the resident of the other town and announced that "you lads can't sail and your bottom needs cleaning." No doubt many of the historic races started this way – a drink, a taunt, a trophy. Australia got the Sydney-Hobart, we got the Port-to-Port. It's our own local version of the America's Cup.
It's also a lot of fun. There's a great party on Saturday night, a long afternoon in the shipping lanes on Sunday where you can settle the boat down and play the current, and a chance to sail against some boats you ordinarily don't see. This race is for a reciprocal trophy, awarded to the club with the most winners in the top three positions, after corrected time using standard PHRF ratings. The winning club gets to defend the trophy the following year and the trophy currently resides at the Port Ludlow Yacht Club. The race alternates direction annually.
The schedule for this years Port-to-Port race is:
Saturday, May 12th, 5pm. Pre-race Party Beer, wine, and refreshments at the white tent near the marina store in Port Ludlow. Greek dinner of kabobs, salad, baklava to follow. Your RSVP to Kathy Grace is appreciated but not mandatory.
Sunday, May 13th, 1030am. Skippers Meeting at the picnic tables near the Marina store
Sunday, May 13th, 12noon. Race begins in Port Ludlow and finishes in between City Dock and the PTSA racing buoy in Port Townsend
Race documents in downloadable format:
2012 Port-to-Port race instructions PDF
U.S. Coast Guard Keep Clear Handout


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Wednesday, August 06, 2014
Mainstreamed madness since V2: Can you handle the truth?
6 comments:
- JM said...
And yet we just canonized two of the four popes who were absolutely responsible for the appointments and administration of the Church during these decades! Which means there are two quite contrasting narratives afoot in the Church of today; Vorris', and the one sponsored by Rome. Thank goodness the Internet now allows for a wide dissemination of information that disputes the party line. And yet almost all of the prominent Catholic commentators would never dream of directly taking issue with a Pope. And so the stalemate will continue. We constantly act like "of course" the Pope means or intends to speak in keeping with Tradition, while instance after instance contradicts this so we function in a position of denial. No wonder clarity is close to impossible. We are paralyzed by our insistence everything will always be OK in the palace.
I had been donating to CMTV for a while. I continued even after I learned that they have jumped on the fun train by heading up cruises I just lost a little respect for them. But by refusing to use their bully pulpit to deal with issues regarding the Pope it is MHO that they have hamstrung their own apostolate. I no longer donate. I don't think that they have "what it takes".
- Pertinacious Papist said...
Hey Donna,
I don't know of any news source whose perspective I agree with 100% or any apostolate without flawed individuals. But I benefit from many who have numerous sound insights as well as information that can be helpful to know. I wouldn't write off CMTV any more than I would write off EWTN, even if I've criticized elements of each.
Dear Dr. Blosser
In "an us-against-them" discussion I'm squarely in your "us" corner and have enjoyed your blog for many a moon and hope that you continue to post for many more moons. But we are different. I can't see helping to support CMTV for the reason that I stated. Notice the latest Vortex link that you posted describing "Schizophrenic Catholicism". He takes the Bishops to task and he nails it but he will not touch the Bishop of Rome, the successor of the first Pope whom Paul confronted to his face. Until he does, and I have been assured that he won't I think that the crisis in the Church needs an apostolate that will be completely in the fight and not just go up to the Rubicon and refuse to cross. I am not objecting to flawed individuals (I number among those sorts of individuals) but I am objecting to what I perceive to be a flawed policy. Also I don't know of any news source that I agree with 100% either. The truth is I have disagreed with CMTV here and there over the years and was very disappointed when they jumped on the fun train but I didn't stop contributing at that time.
Pax et bonum
I'm puzzled. We're expected to "tithe" funds to our dioceses every year, and yet there are many questions I have about how those funds are used, given the things one sometimes hears about our chancery offices and the way our money is spent. What do we do about that? Stop giving?
Bad analogy, maybe. Still, it seems a bit odd that you might want to start supporting CMTV again if only Voris would begin criticizing the pope.
In fact, just the other day, I did hear him come about as close to that as I've ever heard before. He mentioned, in the context of discussing the confusion that comes from our diocesan chancery offices, that not even the pope always expresses himself very clearly.
One of the precepts of the Catholic Church is "contribute to the support of the Church". When the Catholic Church orders me to jump I ask "how high"? I had been a member of a parish that was somewhat progressive before moving to the Phoenix, AZ Diocese but even there I was able to receive absolution in Confession and The Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ.
There is no precept of the Church which tells me that I must donate to any apostolate. I have no problem with anyone supporting CMTV it is your call.
Pax et bonum,