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|Artist: Dawn
|Date Added: March 4, 2011
|Steps: 17
|Favorited: 111 (view)
|Views: 1 in last hour, 15 in last day, 89 in last week, 213725 total
|Comments: 0
|Tags: how to draw angels, how to draw wings
Description: Drawing anime and manga figures is a concept that many artists on this site love doing. That is why I wanted to make another cool tutorial that is based on the very thing that some of us love to create, and that is anime wings. You will learn "how to draw anime wings", step by step and with this tutorial you will get some pretty cool helpful tip steps to make drawing anime wings a whole lot easier. The character or figure I made for this tutorial is an anime fallen angel, and I think he came out pretty darn good. This is one of my favorite drawings that I have made in a long time, and I can't wait to submit the video lesson for it. The way that the angel is in position makes him even more desirable to sketch out. The drawing took me two hours to complete and that's not including making the tutorial steps. I had a hard time choosing what type of background to draw with this character, so I went back to some old lessons on some of the angels I've drawn over time, and looked at some ideas. Eventually I came up with this background and I think it works well with the anime fallen angel. All in all I think you will enjoy learning "how to draw anime wings", and if you have an idea you would like to see as a tutorial, let me know like always and I will see what I can do to get the lesson filled. Thanks guys for joining me once more with this brand new submission. I will be back later or even tomorrow so either come back or stick around for a few. Adios people and enjoy the rest of your drawing day!


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- For other uses see Lannister soldier.
|Although this article is based on canonical information, the actual name of this subject is pure conjecture.
- "Where did you learn the Lannister song?"
- ―The soldier to Bronn
A Singing Lannister soldier is a knight in service to House Lannister.
Season 2
He is drinking with Bronn prior to the Battle of the Blackwater. They sing "The Rains of Castamere" together and he asks how Bronn knows the Lannister song. Bronn says that he learned it from drunk Lannisters. He remains for the awkward face off between Bronn and Sandor Clegane. He rushes to the Mud Gate when the bells sound the call to arms.[1]
He is part of the sortie led by Sandor to repel the attackers. He survives the fighting and takes the water that the Hound refuses afterwards. When Tyrion Lannister tries to rally the men for another sortie he protests that the gate is the only way out and Stannis's men are already at the gate. Tyrion explains that he is going to show them another way out. He is part of Tyrion's sortie and is not seen after the fighting begins.[1]
|Season Two appearances
|The North Remembers
|The Night Lands
|What Is Dead May Never Die
|Garden of Bones
|The Ghost of Harrenhal
|The Old Gods and the New
|A Man Without Honor
|The Prince of Winterfell
|Valar Morghulis
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Blackwater"

subset: commoncrawl


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Coverage of of complementary, holistic and integrated approaches to health care and wellness. Fulltext articles for more than 180 international, and often peer-reviewed, journals and reports. In addition, Alt-HealthWatch includes pamphlets, booklets, special reports, original research and book excerpts.
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Full-text newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic and minority press. Includes popular, news and community publications as well as scholarly journals. Ethnic categories covered include African American/Caribbean/African, Arab/Middle Eastern, Asian/Pacific Islander, European/Eastern European, Hispanic, Jewish, and Native People. Nearly a quarter of the material in the collection is in Spanish. Updated daily.
Gender and women's studies literature. Includes over 300 titles, with more than 250 in full-text, from an array of academic, radical, community and independent presses. Topics include sexuality, religion, societal roles, feminism, masculinity, eating disorders, healthcare, and the workplace.
Left Index
A complete guide to the diverse literature of the left, with an emphasis on political, economic, social and culturally engaged scholarship inside and outside academia. Coverage includes more than 507,000 citations and abstracts (with some full text) and spans from 1982 and earlier to present. Historically significant early Left publications such as The People (est. NY 1891) and The Class Struggle (1931-1937) along with classic texts by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels and others, written in the formative years of the Left are also covered.


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I have some questions about gameplay possibilities:
1, is possible to set that only if player holds "A" and "B" he can assault "C"? so when he holds only "A" or only "B" he can not assault "C"?
2, is possible to set up that if he holds only "A" (and can not assault "C") he can bombard "C"? and as in question 1 after he holds also "B" he can assault "C"?
3, when there is continent furled by regions "A", "B", "C" and continent furled by regions "1", "2", "3" the reinforce is possible only between regions with "letters" and only in regions with "numbers"? so when player conquers "A" from "1" he can advanced it, but not reinforce?


text: Now that the dealer has finally activated my BMW Assist...what can I expect from it? Will they call me and let me know when my car needs service? But wouldn't the car let me know that its time for maintenance? What are the benefits of having the Assist? I didn't get the convenience plan upgrade, which I believe is the directions, etc. But I have nav, so why would I need that?


text:
Hi Everyone,
I am really confused about hexadecimal numbers, and I feel it's holding me back from continuing to learn C++.
So, in C++ For Dummies, it says this:
I really don't understand how 7B to the power of 16 appears as 123 to the computer.123 to the power of 10, becomes 7B to the power of 16.
Any idea's?
Many thanks.


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Hooman has not received any gifts yet
Hey dude, I'm a local pro and i need quality players to mix it up with my open level teenage students. If you're interested get back at me. I pay a little $, and all you have to do is push them around and compete. Thanks,
Hey! Good hits today...glad you made it out. Cheers, Kate
Thanks for telling your friends. (There is an invite button at the top left.)
Hi, I'm Mark, the founder of Tennisopolis, the world's largest and most active tennis network. Please share Tennisopolis with your friends by supporting our Facebook page. Click here for a Guide to Meet Tennis Partners.
Have a look at our introduction page which will help you navigate the massive network which now has over 37,000 members and 500 local tennis groups.
Friend me,
Mark, The Mayor of Tennisopolis
© 2020 Created by Mark / The Mayor. Powered by


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Saints player: Steve Spagnuolo a 'control freak' with 'zero personality'
- New Orleans surrendered most defensive yards in NFL history in 2012
- Disgruntled player claims Spagnuolo allowed no schematic input
- Coordinator joined team after going 10-38 in three years as Rams head coach
By nearly all accounts, the New Orleans Saints' 2012 season was an unqualified disappointment that seemed destined for failure the moment it was marred by the NFL's bounty investigation and subsequent league-mandated penalties.
But one unnamed player is laying plenty of blame at the feet of defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, who watched his unit surrender 7,042 yards (breaking the 1981 Baltimore Colts' record for season-long ineptitude by 249 yards).
According to the anonymous defender, Spagnuolo's personality was as problematic as his work on the whiteboard.
"He does have that good-guy persona, but he is a control freak and treats people like crap," is how the player described his boss to The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune's Larry Holder. "No patience and zero personality. Has a way of pissing players and our defensive coaches off with how he says and does things. (I) think it's even harder after having (former defensive coordinator) Gregg (Williams), who guys enjoyed."
The unit appears to have a solid pedigree with former Pro Bowlers Roman Harper, Will Smith and Jonathan Vilma and rising talents such as Curtis Lofton (who supports Spagnuolo), Cam Jordan and Malcolm Jenkins.
"It was his first year putting it in, and everything we went through, yeah, I'm a firm believer in the system," Lofton said. "I think it's a complicated system, but at the same time it has an answer for everything an offense does. We will be successful in the future. ... Yes, there is some thinking that goes into it before the play and during the play, but once you've got a grasp to it, I really think this is a great system."
Lofton's disgruntled compatriot clearly disagrees.
"To give up what we gave up can't be all talent. Look at where his units (have) been ranked before. I think one top 10?" said the player, who offered that Spagnuolo should be fired.
"Players have no say in anything," he added. "It was (a) complete opposite from before where it was a simple D that players had lot of control and say. We couldn't suggest (expletive). ... Nothing ever changed. It was his way only.
"Don't even get me started on lack (of) ability to adjust during games. Bad, bad, bad."
Spagnuolo has been on a bad run since famously devising the defensive game plan the 2007 New York Giants cited as instrumental in their upset of the previously unbeaten New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.
But Spagnuolo hasn't experienced a playoff victory since and joined the Saints in 2012 after presiding over a three-year head-coaching tenure in St. Louis when the Rams went 10-38. After his departure from the Rams, he also was accused of heavy-handedness.
Vilma actually scolded Holder for reporting quotes from an unnamed source.
"I'm bothered you reported it. We're not the Jets who run to the media for everything," he told Holder.
"If (the player is) man enough to tell you, he should be man enough to put his name on it. And you should do the same."
Though the extent of the Saints' defensive struggles was certainly surprising, it's not unusual to see a team underperform when a drastically new playbook is installed, and Spagnuolo's philosophies and pressure packages contrast starkly with the gambling, blitz-happy Williams. And with suspensions hanging over Vilma and Smith for most of the season, distractions probably were inevitable.
Spagnuolo probably deserves one more year to get everyone on the same page ... and to know whom his unmuzzled detractor is.


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All Items : Pottery and Stoneware : Majolica : Pre 1980 item #651058 (stock #392)
Collector's Connection
$4.00 plus shipping
$4.00 plus shipping
Majolica style blue fruit sugar bowl, about 4 1/2" tall. Small chip on top leaf of lid, one on side of lid. Not marked but may be Inarco. Cute piece!


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Brenner Children's pediatric emergency department has moved back to its original location. Learn more
In order to help protect patients, family members and health care workers from the spread of COVID-19, no visitors are allowed at any of Wake Forest Baptist Health's outpatient or inpatient facilities, except in certain situations.Learn moreMore COVID-19 Updates
Whether you're a new mom or a seasoned parenting pro, breastfeeding often comes with its fair share of questions. Here are answers to some common queries that mothers — new and veteran — may have.
Although breast milk is the best nutritional choice for infants, in some cases, breastfeeding (or exclusive breastfeeding) may not be possible or an option. Your baby's health and happiness is, in large part, determined by what works for you as a family. So if you need to supplement, your baby will be fine and healthy, especially if it means less stress for you.
Babies who need supplementation may do well with a supplemental nursing system in which pumped milk or formula goes through a small tube that attaches to the mother's nipple. They also can be fed pumped milk or formula by bottle.
Some experts feel that giving bottles too early can create "nipple confusion," leading a baby to decide that the bottle is a quicker, better option than the breast. To avoid this, be sure that your little one has gotten used to and is good at breastfeeding before you introduce a bottle. Lactation professionals recommend waiting until a baby is about 3 weeks old before offering artificial nipples of any kind (including pacifiers).
If you're using formula because you're not producing the amount of milk your baby needs, nurse first. Then, give any pumped milk you have and make up the difference with formula as needed.
If you're stopping a breastfeeding session or weaning from breastfeeding altogether, you can begin to replace breastfeeding with bottle feeds. As you do this, pump to reduce uncomfortable engorgement so you will not have problems with plugged ducts or mastitis. As you eliminate nursing sessions, your milk supply will decrease and your body will begin to adapt to produce enough milk to accommodate your new feeding schedule.
Starting your breastfed baby on formula can cause some change in the frequency, color, and consistency of the stools (poop). Be sure to talk your doctor, though, if your baby is having trouble pooping.
If your baby refuses formula alone, you can try mixing some of your pumped breast milk with formula to help the baby get used to the new taste.
If possible, you should have someone else give your little one the bottle at first. This is because babies can smell their mothers and they're used to receiving breast milk from mom, not a bottle. So try to have someone else — such as a caregiver or partner — give a breastfed baby the first bottle.
Also consider either being out of the house or out of sight when your baby takes that first bottle, since your little one will wonder why you're not doing the feeding as usual. Depending on how your baby takes to the bottle, this arrangement may be necessary until he or she gets used to bottle feeding.
If your baby has a hard time adjusting to this new form of feeding, just be patient and keep trying.
For babies who are exclusively breastfed, doctors recommend waiting until a baby is about 6 months old. But some infants may be ready sooner.
How will you know if your baby is ready? Babies who are ready to eat solids foods:
Wait until your baby is at least 4 months old and shows these signs of readiness before introducing solids. Babies who start solid foods before 4 months are at a higher risk of becoming obese.
When the time is right, start with a single-grain, iron-fortified cereal for babies (rice cereal has traditionally been the first food for babies, but you can start with any you prefer). Start with one or two tablespoons of cereal mixed with formula to achieve the right consistency. (As an alternative, you can give an iron-rich puréed meat.) Feed your baby with a small baby spoon, and never add cereal to a baby's bottle unless your doctor instructs you to do so.
At this stage, solids should be fed after a nursing session, not before. That way, your baby fills up on breast milk, which should be your baby's main source of nutrition until age 1.
Once your baby gets the hang of eating cereal, introduce a variety of puréed fruits, vegetables, and meats. Wait a few days between introducing a new food to make sure your baby doesn't have an allergic reaction.
Note: There is no benefit to offering fruit juice, even to older babies. Juice can fill them up and leave little room for more nutritious foods, promote obesity, cause diarrhea, and even put a baby at an increased risk for cavities when teeth start coming in.
In their first few months, babies usually don't need extra water. On very hot days, most babies do well with additional feedings. But you may want to offer your infant water, especially if your baby's pee is dark or your baby urinates less frequently than usual.
Once your baby is eating solid foods, you can offer a few ounces of water between feedings, but don't force it. Water that is fortified with fluoride will help your baby develop healthy teeth and gums. If you live in an area with nonfluoridated water, your doctor or dentist may prescribe fluoride drops.
Reviewed by: Elana Pearl Ben-Joseph, MD
Date reviewed: February 2015
© 2019 Brenner | Site Policies & Statements
The information on this Website is for general informational purposes only and SHOULD NOT be relied upon as a substitute for sound professional medical advice, evaluation or care from your physician or other qualified healthcare provider. If you have a medical problem or a health-related question, consult your physician or call Health On-Call at 336-716-2255 or 1-800-446-2255.


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British Columbia Frequency Modulation Communications Association
*** BCFMCA needs your ongoing support! ***
Welcome to the British Columbia Frequency Modulation Communications Association (BCFMCA). We are an Amateur Radio organization specializing in VHF, UHF, and microwave communications. We operate equipment in a variety of modes, including FM, DMR/MotoTRBO, IRLP (node 1694), and D-STAR. Please select one of the menu buttons on the left to find out more about us.
The BCFMCA is a registered charity with the Canada Revenue Agency. We accept all monetary and in-kind donations, and can issue tax receipts for donations over $25. We gladly accept charitable donations of estates from "silent-key" amateurs. Please see the "How to Reach Us" button on the left menu to get in touch with our Executive.
System Status
If you notice that the Power Status is "On Battery", please refrain from using the repeaters unless you have emergency or priority traffic.
More temperature telemetry is available here.
More power plant telemetry is available here.
VE7RPT IRLP Status
Site Cameras
Please see Events and News for more information.
New VE7RPT-UHF Online!
Another historic day on Mt. Seymour. Following the turn down a little over a year ago of the Motorola Micor for VE7RPT-VHF, the last Micor on VE7RPT has been decommissioned.
Today, the Micor for VE7RPT-UHF was turned off, and replaced with a Motorola SLR5700 and Glenayre 100W amplifier, functionally the same as the package being used on the VHF machine.
For the time being, it is also connected to the RLC-3 Controller. Like the VHF repeater, the power amplifier is powered by AC, reducing the load on the DC battery plant. In the event of AC failure, and when the generator is not running, the repeater will revert to about 5W output through use of a transfer relay.
The transfer relay effectively switches the power amplifier OUT of the transmit path when it looses power, so that the exciter output (from the SLR5700) can be coupled directly to the duplexer (and then to the antenna).
2020 AGM January 12, 2020
When Sun Jan 12, 2020 2pm - 4pm (PST)
Where Coquitlam Amateur Radio Emergency Services Society
2601 Lougheed Hwy
Coquitlam, BC V3C 4J2
Further AGM details
2020 Memberships
Yes, it is that time of the year once again... indeed, it is time to renew your BCFMCA membership!
Renew on-line, it is simple and fast! Online we accept VISA and MASTERCARD for on-line payment through PayPal. Save a stamp! Renew right now!
Never been a member before? We'd love you have you show your support for amateur radio and volunteer emergency communications in the Lower Mainland! You can join right now! Click to start a membership application.
It is YOUR support that helps to maintain eight repeaters at one of the most sought after locations in the Lower Mainland!
Webcams Online!
Our webcams are now online for viewing live (<5 minutes old) images, and archives of up to the last 4 days.
See the webcam page for more details!
New VE7RPT-VHF Online!
A historic day today on Mt. Seymour. After more than 25 years in service, VE7RPT-VHF is no longer running on the Motorola Micor platform. Today, VE7FET replaced the Micor with a new Motorola SLR5700 repeater, coupled to a Glenayre 100W VHF PA.
This is one, of many, steps in upgrading our analog repeaters to some new technology. While the new repeater is currently (still) connected to the RLC-3 Controller, at some point (in the new year) it will get a new controller and also get upgraded to support receiver voting.
The Glenayre 100W PA lets us boost the output of the new Motorola repeater up to 100W, putting
about 65W up the coax, after the duplexer. This also allows us to unload some draw from the DC battery
plant, as the Glenayre PA is powered directly from AC (the Micor was all DC). In the event of AC
failure, the repeater will revert to 5W (approx) output.
2019 AGM January 20, 2019
When Sun Jan 20, 2019 10am - 12pm (PST)
Where Coquitlam Amateur Radio Emergency Services Society
2601 Lougheed Hwy
Coquitlam, BC V3C 4J2
2019 Memberships
Yes, it is that time of the year once again... indeed, it is time to renew your BCFMCA membership!
Renew on-line, it is simple and fast! Online we accept VISA and MASTERCARD for on-line payment through PayPal. Save a stamp! Renew right now!
Never been a member before? We'd love you have you show your support for amateur radio and volunteer emergency communications in the Lower Mainland! You can join right now! Click to start a membership application.
It is YOUR support that helps to maintain eight repeaters at one of the most sought after locations in the Lower Mainland!
DSTAR Server SSL
Today, our D-STAR server was upgraded from ICOM G2 to ICOM G3 Gateway Software. Please be patient while we work through the migration and get a feel for some of the new options.
DSTAR Server SSL
We've added a Letsencrypt SSL certificate to the DSTAR gateway server. That means that you should no longer see warnings when you try connecting to the registration gateway or the status page (unless you are still running Windows XP... and that is your own problem to fix).
Building Relocation
Finally got around to updating our building move page with more pictures and information.
You can read the full story here.
DMR/MotoTRBO Repeater
As of late August 2013 we installed our first DMR/MotoTRBO repeater at the Mt Seymour site. This repeater now occupies the VE7RAG 443.400MHz frequency in place of the D-STAR repeater that used to occupy this frequency. D-STAR is still available on VE7RAG VHF and 1.2GHz.
We are excited to start experimenting with DMR technology as it utilizes TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) to accommodate two simultaneous data/voice streams on a single 12.5KHz channel.
The VE7RAG 443.400MHz repeater is also configured with internet linking using IPSC (IP Site Connect). This allows repeater users to connect to over 300 other DMR amateur radio repeaters around the world.
More information on the new DMR repeater can be found here.
Emergency Power Upgrade
We've done some major work on our emergency power system, replacing the batteries and charging system. You can read more about that project here.
The new equipment lets us easily gather remote telemetry/statistics, which you can see here.
You will notice on the top of this home page, you can see whether the equipment is running on AC or on battery. The status is effectively live (it is polled every minute), and is current when you load this page.
If you notice that the system is running on battery, please refrain from using the repeaters unless you have emergency or priority traffic.
We also have telemetry for temperatures inside and outside our building, which you can see here.
More ways to talk to the world!
We are node number 1694 on the IRLP network, and normally IRLP will be linked to VE7RPT-VHF and VE7RPT-UHF. Don't be surprised if you hear someone connect with a callsign from another part of the world!
Transmissions from the IRLP port can be identified by the CW "I" courtesy tone at the end of the calling party's transmission.
In order to "dial out" and connect VE7RPT to another IRLP node, you will need to be a BCFMCA member. More details on IRLP and our system can be found here.
October 5, 2007
From: Greater Vancouver Amateur Radio Council (GVARC) Interference Committee
Months of hard work tracking various sources of malicious interference directed at the VE7RPT repeater, owned and operated by the BCFMCA and located on Mt Seymour, have finally begun to pay off.
On September 25th the FCC issued a Notice of Apparent Liability, including fines totaling $7,000, to James Grinton, K7VNI, located in Bellingham Washington. A copy of this notice is attached for your information.
Grinton repeatedly and maliciously interfered with the operation of VE7RPT on a frequent basis. During the last 2 years Grinton directed his malicious interference and harassment at the President of the BCFMCA, jammed phone patches and periodically flooded the repeater with music and other forms of intentional interference.
In early 2006 a team of Canadian Hams began tracking the interfering signals and quickly determined they originated south of the Canada/US border. A group of Hams in the US were approached to provide assistance and the source of the interference was identified shortly thereafter. A number of independent confirmations were made to verify the location, the address of which was determined to be that of James Grinton, K7VNI.
A complaint was formally made to the FCC regarding this interference and the information collected by the combined Canadian and US tracking team was provided to the Seattle office of the FCC. An agent from the FCC Enforcement Bureau's Seattle Office independently verified the location and source of the interference during late 2006 and a Warning of Interference to Communications Letter was sent to James Grinton, K7VNI, on January 19, 2007.
Grinton continued to interfere with the operation of VE7RPT after receipt of the warning letter. In fact, the Seattle agent recorded over 160 violations during the period January 19, 2007 to June 23, 2007.
A Notice of Apparent Liability, including fines totaling $7,000, was issued to James Grinton, K7VNI, on September 25, 2007 (see notice).
This is the second of a series of interference complaints affecting repeaters in the Greater Vancouver area to be brought to a conclusion. Additional interference investigations are on-going.
Many thanks to all the people who devoted countless hours tracking and identifying the source of this interference. This is an excellent example of the tremendous spirit of cooperation that exists between Amateur Radio operators in both Canada and the US. In addition, many thanks to the Seattle office of the FCC for their support and subsequent enforcement action.
Are You A Member?!
Membership is open to all licensed amateur radio operators.
If you are not a member, why wait? Join NOW! See here for details.
QRM Problems?
QRM is a problem, we all know that. We will try and locate possible sources of interference on the repeaters, but we need YOUR help.
Please submit a QRM report so that we can try and locate the source. It is important to fill out the report EVEN IF YOU DON'T HEAR the interference from your location when it occurs. Remember to listen to the INPUT of the repeater when listening for interference.
Don't think that your report has an effect? Well, see the press release above. James Grinton was busted by the co-ordinated efforts of a number of volunteers. All information reports are useful.
Are YOU causing QRM on our repeaters? Again, be warned, you never know who is lurking around your neighbourhood gathering evidence for prosecution. We've been at this at lot longer than you, and we're not going to let you destroy our resource... and we've got the law on OUR side.
Coverage Maps
Curious as to the coverage of some of our repeaters? Please see the Equipment page for more information.
Thank you for visiting our website and 73.
This page was last updated 30 April 2020.
Donors, Sponsors and Contributors
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A woman, who is a relative of George Zimmerman, claims he sexually molested her throughout her childhood, according to an interview released by prosecutors Monday.
The woman, who was identified as "Witness #9" by prosecutors, claimed in the March 20 interview that the abuse began when she was 6 years old and Zimmerman was around 8. NBC News attempted to talk to the witness, but she turned down attempts at getting comment about the interview. We have been unable to independently verify her statements, no police report was made in connection with these allegations and no charges were filed.
PHOTOS: Zimmerman Crime Scene Photos
"We would watch movies in front of the TV and we would all lay in front of the TV and we would have pillows and blankets," the woman claims. "And he would reach under the blankets and try to do things and I would try to push him off but he was bigger and stronger and older. It was in front of everybody and I don't know how I didn't say anything but I just didn't know any better."
In a second interview, the woman told authorities that Zimmerman and his family don't like African-Americans.
"Growing up, they've always made, him and his family have always made statements that they don't like black people if they don't act like white people. They like black people if they act white," she said. "And other than that, they talk a lot of bad things about black people."
When asked if she could recall any specific instances of Zimmerman making a racist statement, Witness #9 said she couldn't.
"Now that this statement is part of the public record, the defense will vigorously defend Mr. Zimmerman against the allegations. In the next several weeks, there will be reciprocal discovery filed regarding Witness #9's statement," said a statement posted on the Zimmerman defense's legal case website as part of a longer statement regarding the witness.
U.S. & World
PHOTOS: Zimmerman Case Photos
The interviews were part of a new group of evidence released by prosecutors in the case, which includes 120 phones calls Zimmerman made from the Seminole County Detention Center following his arrest in the Martin shooting.
Zimmerman, 28, is charged with second-degree murder in the Feb. 26 shooting of Martin, 17, in a gated community in Sanford. He has pleaded not guilty, claiming the shooting was in self-defense.
Witness #9 said the alleged sexual abuse began when she was staying at the Zimmerman house.
She said the alleged abuse happened at least a few times, when she would visit. The woman said he would kiss and grope her, and one time allegedly exposed himself to her.
"Every time that we would go up there, I could just look at him and he would give me a certain look and I would know if it was gonna happen when we got together for family gatherings cause he just got this look in his eye like he was going to," she said.
She claims the final attack came when she was 16 and stopped by his house in Lake Mary and he wanted to give her a massage. She claimed she ran out of the house and drove away.
The woman told authorities she was afraid of him and was worried no one would believe her.
"Georgie always made himself look so good, he just sucked up to my dad and he was like the son he never had, and he always was just, you know, very charming and personable with everybody in the family and just always would laugh and entertain everybody," she said. "But he was different behind closed doors with me."
She said her parents found out and confronted Zimmerman at a Lake Mary restaurant when she was around 20 years old. The woman said Zimmerman said he was sorry and walked out.
"He sat down on the end of the booth and said 'I'm sorry' and just got up and walked out," she said.
No police reports were ever made and no charges were ever filed against Zimmerman, however.
When asked why she was coming forward now, the woman said she wasn't afraid of him anymore.
"This is the first time in my life that I'm not afraid of him. I know that nothing can get to me, he can't get to me," she said.
The jail calls released Monday were made by Zimmerman following his arrest in April.
Zimmerman's attorney, Mark O'Mara, had argued against the release of the calls and witness interviews, claiming they are irrelevant to the charges against him and could jeopardize his friends and family if they are released.
But Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester disagreed, and ordered them released on Friday. O'Mara filed a motion Monday morning to try to block their release again but prosecutors released them anyway.
"As the State Attorney previously stated, she certainly would be a rebuttal witness very similar to that in the Sandusky trial showing that he has a history of violence and manipulation. Zimmerman's mentality is very relevant to this trial," Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump told NBC News in an email statement.
Zimmerman remains free on $1 million bond.


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Nearly a Coup
A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President
The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton
When Monica Lewinsky went before Kenneth Starr's grand jury in August 1998, the prosecutors did not ask her an obvious, important question: Had President Clinton urged or induced her to lie about their relationship? The prosecutors knew, because they had interviewed her for days, that if asked she would answer no—and they did not want on the record an answer inconsistent with their planned charges that the President had obstructed justice.
But when the prosecutors finished their examination of Lewinsky, a grand juror asked her whether she wanted to add anything. Yes, she said: "I would just like to say that no one ever asked me to lie, and I was never promised a job for my silence." In the hundreds of pages he sent to the House of Representatives urging impeachment of the President, Starr did not find room to mention that statement.
It seems long ago and far away now, the impeachment crusade, though it is little more than a year since the Senate ended it. But these two books tell us why we should not forget. Kenneth Starr's attempt to drive Clinton from office was the climax of years of effort by others to destroy him, not through ordinary political means but by dubious legal action and tales of wrongdoing larded with fantastic lies. People on the political right set out to unseat a president, and they almost succeeded. In his folly, Clinton played into their hands. But that does not alter the fact that this country came close to a coup d'état.
Was it, then, as Hillary Clinton said, a "vast right-wing conspiracy"? Not as conspiracy is defined in law, Jeffrey Toobin says, because the anti-Clinton efforts were not centrally coordinated. But in a broader sense, he concludes, Mrs. Clinton's charge has
the unmistakable ring of truth. The Paula Jones and Whitewater investigations existed only because of the efforts of Clinton's right-wing political enemies. People who hated the Clintons initiated these projects and sustained them through many years.
It is a sprawling story, with numberless characters, plots, and subplots. The two books, though they overlap, concentrate on different aspects. Joe Conason, editor-at-large at The New York Observer, and Gene Lyons, a columnist for The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, dig into the origins of it all among the Clinton-haters in Arkansas and elsewhere. Toobin, a former federal prosecutor who is now a staff writer for The New Yorker, devotes himself to the unfolding of the two legal processes, Paula Jones's civil suit against the President and Starr's criminal investigations from Whitewater through Monica and impeachment. (Disclosure: Toobin was a student of mine at the Harvard Law School years ago.)
A Vast Conspiracy is a superb work of factual and legal analysis. Toobin brings clarity to complicated issues without sacrificing accuracy. He knows how to tell a story; few novels are as gripping. His judgments, legal and political, are acute.…
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Chrisb1 necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 150 diseños de 32 diseñadores freelance.
Baxter IP, Patent & Trademark Attorneys, Excellence in International IP
We are a dynamic patent attorney firm with a team that has over thirty five years experience in successfully obtaining patent protection in key overseas markets including the United States, Europe & China.
We take the time to educate our clients in the patent strategies used by successful IP licensing companies (we have worked in-house for some of the most well known). This gives our clients the edge in transforming their IP into a valuable financial asset - whether it is licensed or used to guard key product lines.
Our clients range from a number of well-known multinational corporations and Sydney-based SMEs to venture capital firms, business start-ups and many successful entrepreneurs.
We strongly believe in the importance of being open and upfront about costs and likely outcomes.
We specialise in protecting:
• Information Communication & Technology
o Software
o Web-based applications
o Apps for mobile phones
o Social media
o Power systems (particularly for renewable energy)
o Security systems
o Computer engineering
• Business Methods & Financial Methods
• Engineering
o Mechanical
o Fluid dynamics (aeronautical & marine)
o Mining
o Chemical
• Medical Devices
o Biomedical engineering
o Diagnostic monitoring & laboratory equipment
o Therapeutic equipment
o Surgical instruments
• Consumer Products
Our target markets are:
1. Innovative software & app developers
2. Research & development companies
3. Manufacturers of innovative products
4. Entrepreneurs & inventors
5. Our clients are typically male in an age range: 30 - 50
We are looking to refresh our current logo, specifically to give it a more corporate, refined & clean look.
We will probably want to keep the "B/IP" symbol but are open to removing it if you are able to design a better symbol. The "B/IP" symbol includes a "B" for "Baxter IP", an "IP" which stands for "intellectual property" and a flame element above the "I" which represents 'new ideas'. The symbol has generally been well received by current clients.
The logo will be used on our Websites, Business Cards, Powerpoint Presentations and Stationary.
The key things we want our logo to convey are:
• Transforming ideas into valuable financial assets
• Excellence in international law
• Watertight protection of new ideas from being copied
• A firm that is straight forward and easy to work with
The files we require are:
Print file format - .ai (CMYK)
Web file format - .jpg, layered .psd (RGB), .png. (.jpgs in different sizes)
Logos should be delivered in both colour and black & white versions.
Please do not use any stock images or clip art in the logo.
(Our current logo is attached)
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


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In the summer of 1959, while waiting for the walls to go up on St. Michael's, Poway's first Catholic church, Monsignor Michael Coughlan delivered Mass to his fledgling congregation in the Big Stone Lodge, a roadhouse known more for country-western dancing than devotion. The first Sunday collection brought in $35.90.
"It's the only place that we could get at that time," Msgr. Coughlan recalled in a 2004 San Diego Union-Tribune article. "It was used for dances on Saturday nights until 2 a.m. We had to go in and clean it up and move in chairs and the altar to get ready for Mass at 7 and 9 a.m."
Msgr. Coughlan died of leukemia on April 10 at Palomar Medical Center. He was 86.
He started the parish with a $500 loan from Bishop Charles Buddy and a donation of seven acres. By March 1960, the parish rectory was complete and he began saying Mass out of the garage.
Under Msgr. Coughlan's leadership, the parish added an elementary school, several facilities, buildings, religious sisters and staff. After nearly a decade of fundraising and construction, he celebrated the first Mass in the new church building in 1971.
St. Michael's growth was so vigorous that five more parishes were formed in the area — Good Shepherd, St. Gabriel, San Rafael, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and St. Gregory the Great. In August 1979, he was named first dean of the new Escondido Deanery. In 1981, the title of monsignor was bestowed on him by Pope John Paul II.
Msgr. Coughlan remained St. Michael's pastor until 1984 when he was appointed pastor of St. Didacus. Retiring in 1990, he moved to Rancho Bernardo and renewed his relationship with St. Michael's, regularly assisting with confessions and Masses until 2004.
Michael James Coughlan was born Oct. 4, 1926, in Skibbereen, County Cork, Ireland, the youngest of 10 to Patrick and Johanna Coughlan. He studied theology and philosophy at St. Peter's College in Wexford, Ireland, and was ordained a priest there on June 8, 1952.
Arriving in San Diego two months later, he served as associate pastor at, among other places, Our Lady of Guadalupe in Calexico, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in San Diego, St. Francis in Vista, and St. Mary's in Escondido.
Of his 60 years as a priest, he was most proud of being St. Michael's founding pastor, colleagues said.
Sister Celestine Callaghan, who came to St. Michael's in 1977 as principal of the school, said Msgr. Coughlan was a faithful priest and a good friend whose motto in all things administrative was "pay as you go."
"People say he was very frugal, but he was prudent," Callaghan said. "Every word was measured and every action was measured. He made no snap decisions.
"I just knew which buttons to push and when," she said with a laugh.
When she requested a kindergarten class be added to the school's first through eighth grades, Msgr. Coughlan replied "no" in his typical fashion, but recanted after consideration and said "yes," building a new library in the process. Years later, he overturned his own "no" again by agreeing to build a computer lab.
"He was very proud to admit it was one of the first schools in the diocese to have a computer lab," Callaghan said. "Just before he left in 1984, I asked if we could have some kind of decent administration offices.
"I got the 'no' first and then the 'yes.' He either prayed very hard or he counted the money."
Msgr. Coughlan is survived by his sister, Josephine Fox, and brother, Jerome Coughlan, both of Escondido.
Nearly 70 priests attended his funeral service last week. Bishops Robert H. Brom and Cirilo Flores officiated.


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Try this French-inspired dish the next time you serve salmon.
Preparation Time: 10 mins
Cooking Time: 15 mins
Trim green tops and root ends from leeks; slit vertically into quarters, leaving 1/3 inch intact at root end. Separate sections and wash under cold running water; drain well.
In 10-inch sauté pan, melt butter over medium heat. Add leeks and cook 2 to 3 minutes, stirring often, until leeks are wilted. Stir in wine, arrange salmon on leeks, lightly sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Reduce heat to low, cover and cook 5 minutes. Sprinkle cheese over salmon, cover and cook another 3 to 5 minutes or until salmon is opaque around edges and firm, and cheese is melted.
Transfer to warm dinner plate with broad spatula and serve immediately.


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"A magnificent, illuminating and refreshingly readable overview of the entire phenomenon of ancient Egypt."—The Washington Post
"Magisterial . . . [A] rich portrait of ancient Egypt's complex evolution over the course of three millenniums."—Los Angeles Times
"With a literary flair and a sense for a story well told, Mr. Wilkinson offers a highly readable, factually up-to-date account."—The Wall Street Journal
"[Wilkinson] writes with considerable verve. . . . [He] is nimble at conveying the sumptuous pageantry and cultural sophistication of pharaonic Egypt."—The New York Times
"Engrossing . . . Readers will find it hard to put down. . . . This book will serve as a standard for general readers and college students alike."—Library Journal (starred review)
"Absolutely divine . . . a thorough, erudite and enthusiastic gallop through an astonishing three thousand years."—The Sunday Times


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Clips for the Creatively Maladjusted. Helpful Hints for radicals, intellectuals, strangers, artists, dreamers, readers, writers, speakers, activists, pacifists, fools, and professors. Extraordinary Discourse has been long in preparing. A multi-voiced thought adventure, around an hour a week. Its many themes converge in the theme of Play. Walt Whitman: "Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you."
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Extraordinary Discourse 026
Fox Talks, Trickster Mix
"Here, in ancient mythology," writes Horowitz, "is the relationship between genesis, genetics, and the spoken word. Also implied is the concept of wholistic health hinging on oral functions."
Horowitz points out that neurophysiologists have determined that fully
"one-third of the sensory-motor cortex of the brain is devoted to the tongue, oral cavity, the lips, and speech. In other words, oral frequency emissions (i.e., bioacoustic tones) spoken, or sung, exert powerful control over life, vibrating genes that influence total well-being and even evolution of the species."
Dr. Leonard Horowitz
Posted by Jack Saturday at 8:06 AM 0 comments
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Open Source Footwear
Your ideas could become actual shoes
Taking a page from Open Source Software, Open Source Footwear gives everyone a chance to have a say in the shoes they want to see. All you need is an idea. Click the Submit Your Design button below to sign in and send away! If John's inspired by your design, he'll turn it into a real shoe, add it to the collection, name it after you, and send you a pair! Pretty neat, right?


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Non-interactive mode is enabled when the user supplies a command to be run inside the zone. Non-interactive mode does not allocate a new pseudo-terminal.
Note that the command or any files that the command acts upon cannot reside on NFS.
You must be the global administrator in the global zone to perform this procedure.
Become superuser, or assume the Primary Administrator role.
To create the role and assign the role to a user, see Using the Solaris Management Tools With RBAC (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.
From the global zone, log in to the lx-zone zone and supply a command name.
Replace command with the name of the command to be run inside the zone.
global# zlogin lx-zone command
global# zlogin lx_master uptime 21:16:01 up 2:39, 0 users, load average: 0.19, 0.13, 0.11 fireball#


text:
Find a Caregiver
0 caregivers with Cancer Recovery experience found near Canyon Lake
Following rigorous cancer treatment, individuals and caregivers must fully commit to health restoration. While recovering from the disease, elders will likely experience fatigue, pain, swelling, dental problems, nausea, weight changes, or bowel and bladder issues as the aftermath of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. Due to the fragility of seniors health, caregivers are especially attentive towards their individuals needs and wellness changes over time. Maintaining everyday household responsibilities such as cleaning, cooking and laundry; providing a healthy and low-fat diet; calming exercise; follow-up care with doctors and symptom monitoring are all important aspects of caring for cancer survivors.
Search Results
Showing 0 of 0 caregivers found


text:
A few observations on sports radio topics from the last few days:
Could there be just a little less griping about the trip to Japan? Even the media people who didn't make the trip have been complaining and whining non-stop about the whole thing. (That's what makes it the most annoying. I can understand any grousing from those actually making the trip.) Long flight! No power outlets on the plane! Body clocks messed up! It's going to ruin the season for the Red Sox! We get it. Enough already. Business people go to the Far East all the time. (Rob Bradford seems to be having a good time so far.)
No really. The "Does Manny know they're going to Japan?" jokes have been predictable and old since the start. Manny jokes in general are so 5 years ago, guys. It's time to laugh with Manny, rather than at him…right?
Michael Holley is much more entertaining when Dale is away. That's not a knock against Dale Arnold, but Holley just seems much more energetic and fun to listen on the days he works with someone else.
Some PM Links:
Ken Fang, who will be here with his Friday mega-links tomorrow, has a Thursday collection of media links.
If the Patriots have reached an agreement on a one year deal with cornerback Fernando Bryant, John Tomase says that the Pats couldn't have signed a better guy.
Dan Shaughnessy has a report on the Red Sox first few hours in Japan.
If you haven't seen it already, earlier this week Sports Business Journal had a huge article on a PowerPoint Presentation that has been making the rounds of the league offices and ad buyers. The presentation is entitled The Emperor's New Clothes: How ESPN's Multi-Platform Strategy Hasn't Improved Ratings, and was apparently put together by TV networks trying to compete with ESPN.
SI.com has launched the SI Vault, which is a completely free and digitized history of Sports Illustrated since 1954. It contains 150,000 stories, 500,000 photographs and 2,800 covers as well as a Wikipedia search engine and links to related online video content.
Johnny Ludden says that if anyone in Minnesota tanked last season, it was Glen Taylor. Kelly Dwyer also comes to the defense of KG.
Bill Simmons has his NCAA picks.
Bob Ryan looks through the reaction to his March 9th column in which he wrote about being "Favred out."
Ross Tucker has five noteworthy realities about NFL offseason conditioning programs that you should know.
FOXSports.com has their 2008 Red Sox Preview.
Mike Celizic applauds the Red Sox for their stand yesterday. Steve Henson also weighs in on the situation.


text:
Select An Industry:
Major bus manufacturers around the world are developing hydrogen powered buses as the platform for future generations of transit vehicles. Imagine the impact on major city centers if the buses that move millions of passengers each day are suddenly quiet, efficient, and emit only water!
Fuel cell electric buses have made significant advances in performance in recent years, and are currently transporting passengers in regular revenue service on a daily basis. The US, Canada, Japan, Germany, England, and Brazil are among many of the countries actively involved in the deployment and commercialization of these vehicles.
HCNG buses have demonstrated significantly reduced emissions and particulates in numerous deployments around the world. Hydrogen enriched CNG is a pathway to meeting emission targets in the near term, while simultaneously enabling the deployment of hydrogen fueling infrastructure to major city centers.
If you would prefer to contact us by phone, you can call any of our Air Products locations worldwide by visiting Worldwide Locations & Phone Numbers.
This site uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some are essential to make our site work; others help us to better understand our users. By using the site, you consent to the placement of these cookies. Read our Legal Notice to learn more.


text:
Gainward GeForce GTX 460 1GB Goes Like Hell (GLH) Edition in SLI (Page 12)
Dark Void
Version and / or Patch Used: Benchmark Demo
Timedemo or Level Used: Built-in Test
Developer Homepage: http://www.airtightgames.com
Product Homepage: http://www.darkvoidgame.com/
The game's story takes place during World War II and centers around a cargo pilot named William Augustus Grey (voiced by Nolan North) who is teleported to another world while flying through the Bermuda Triangle. In this world, known as the 'Void', Will encounters an alien race as well as other humans, which are known as the Watchers and the Survivors respectively.
Will reluctantly joins the Survivors who are engaged in a feud with the alien race to satisfy his desire to return to Earth. While aiding the Survivors, Will discovers that the Void is a middle ground that connects both the Watchers homeworld and Earth. It also becomes apparent that the Watchers are supplying the Axis powers with various supplies for reasons unknown. With the help of Nikola Tesla, Will utilizes retrofited Watcher technology to combat the Watchers and eventually find a way to escape the Void.
Big numbers without PhysX which again doesn't come as a surprise. With PhysX turned on the setup screams along with it out performing the more expensive GTX 470 SLI setup in areas.
Last updated: Apr 7, 2020 at 12:29 pm CDT
PRICING: You can find products similar to this one for sale below.
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Deutschland: Finde andere Technik- und Computerprodukte wie dieses auf Amazon.de
- Page 1 [Introduction and The Package]
- Page 2 [The Card and Specifications]
- Page 3 [Test System Setup and 3DMark Vantage]
- Page 4 [Unigine Heaven Benchmark]
- Page 5 [Benchmarks - CINEBENCH]
- Page 6 [Benchmarks - Resident Evil]
- Page 7 [Benchmarks - BattleForge]
- Page 8 [Benchmarks - Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.]
- Page 9 [Benchmarks - Darkest of Days]
- Page 10 [Benchmarks - Far Cry 2]
- Page 11 [Benchmarks - Batman Arkham Asylum]
- Page 12 [Benchmarks - Dark Void]
- Page 13 [Benchmarks - High Quality AA and AF]
- Page 14 [Benchmarks - Elcomsoft Wireless Security Auditor]
- Page 15 [Benchmarks - Badaboom]
- Page 16 [Temperature Test]
- Page 17 [Sound Test]
- Page 18 [Power Consumption Test]
- Page 19 [Total Performance Rating (TPR)]
- Page 20 [Total Value Rating (TVR)]
- Page 21 [Final Thoughts]


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Oriental egg fried rice
Nutrition and extra info
- kcal-
- fat-
- saturates-
- carbs-
- sugars-
- fibre-
- protein-
- salt-
- a mugful of American long grain rice
- a cupful of frozen peas
- 2 tbsp sunflower oil
Sunflower oil
Sunflower oil is made from pressing sunflower seeds and extracting the oil. It's usually…
- 2 back bacon rashers, roughly chopped
- 1 small red pepper, chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 2 large eggs
The ultimate convenience food, eggs are powerhouses of nutrition packed with protein and a…
- 1 heaped tsp Chinese five-spice powder
Fill a roomy saucepan with water, bring to the boil and tip in a heaped teaspoon of salt - the water will bubble furiously. Pour in the rice, stir once and return to the boil, then turn the heat down a little so that the water is boiling steadily, but not vigorously.
Boil uncovered, without stirring (this makes for sticky rice) for 10 minutes. After 8 minutes, throw in the frozen peas, boil for 2 minutes and drain (don't rinse).
Heat the sunflower oil in a wok and stir fry the bacon for 3-4 minutes until crisp. Tip in the red pepper and the garlic cloves and stir fry for 2 minutes.
Beat the eggs, pour into the pan and stir fry until the egg just sets. Toss in the Chinese 5-spice


text:
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Shop floor motivation8/13
Hey guys. I am curious what other small shops do to keep their guys motivated and jobs profitable.
We are a small family owned and run shop. We have 6 employees on the shop floor, We are a very custom shop. We never build the same thing twice. Sometimes we are building kitchens....sometimes radius cabinets....interior or exterior doors. So obviously that works against us as we do not have repetition. All of our guys are well paid with benefits, and they deserve it they do work hard and are very skilled. But we find jobs that we expect and that should take 30 hours run into 40 hours or large kitchens that should be 200 hours take 230 hours. You can see where profits would be lost. How do you motivate with out cracking a whip and yelling faster? No one wants to work in an environment like that.
I am very curious to see what you all come up with for responses
First thing is to determine if the jobs that take longer that planned/budgeted do so due to shop problems, or if the time is the real time it takes. This should be known as a shop like yours should review all work to see how the estimating stacks up to reality.
If your estimates are off, you need to correct that. No amount of motivation will offset short build times for long.
As for the motivation, kind words, positive rewards and lots of genuine backpats are good motivators. Don't over do it, and be sure to be genuine. Take photos of complete work and hand them out. Talk openly about your pride in their work. An employee that is told they are important to the company, and feels they are part of the company will develop well in a good environment. Be sure any new hires are well integrated so they will not poison the rest.
It is hard to peg financial rewards directly to job performance since you don't have repetition, but I will also bet you know who the stars are at various things. Let them know when you hand out yearly cost of living raises, or better yet, bonuses. You are fortunate indeed to have success, be sure they know they are a part of it.
Offhand I would say you are underbidding the jobs. If people aren't making mistakes and everybody is working at a normal pace then the jobs were likely shorted some time.
With custom work like that it is very hard to calculate a specific timetable. There are always some unknowns in custom. It's never straight forward, especially with curved work.
If you are pricing the jobs to get them, then you'll always have a problem. You need to price the jobs to make profit on them. It's always hard to lose a job, but sometimes it's the best thing. Especially if you are paying out to give the project to someone.
We do a daily meeting (15 mins max) where we discuss among other things, how is work progressing compared to what is expected.
I would think in your situation, a meeting that discusses: how far someone is into the project, how much time they have used so far, what was the difficulties they ran into, was the estimate under bid, is there something that can be done to bring it back in line if behind, congratulations if on or under schedule.
Teach them why you need their feedback to determine if it is you who under bids or is it something in the process or operation that is slowing them down. If process or operation, work together to solve the issue.
Also a bonus could be tied to speed of completion. If a job is bid as 8 hrs and the work actually takes 8 hours, they get hourly wage. If a job is bid as 8 hrs and the work actually takes 7 hrs, they get a bonus of 1 hrs pay. Just a thought.
One of the facts I have come to accept, is that no employee is ever going to work as fast as me, and I'm certain, as fast as you.
Unless your employees have built a similar kitchen in 200 hrs. rather then the 230 on the last one, then might I suggest you are basing times on your productivity rather then theirs.
Just a thought.
Thanks for the feedback guys.
It's tough to increase how we price a job based on our shops production. In a competitive market we can only charge so much. I do believe shop meetings are a good way to go and is not something we have really ever done or needed to do . As I think about the root of this more , we lost key 2 key employees in the last year and half . Each one moving out of state to better their lives and prepare for retirement . Replacing people like them who understood what it took to get a project done has been our biggest struggle .
And your right Mark, I'm not sure any incentive would really ever make an employee work as quickly as we can or do. And probably not for the lack of wanting to, but perhaps because we focus harder on the jobs .
I find the key to this is to set targets.
Lots of good advice above. Just to add a bit from the "employee" perspective...
Listen to your guys when they tell you what went well and went badly. (The listening alone is a good motivator.) Try to channel that into your next estimate.
If your estimates are, for lack of a better term, crap, then don't tie any incentives to them. That is absolutely guaranteed to demotivate your people. Or cause them to cut corners massively and hope that neither you nor the customer will notice the lack of quality.
Since you talk about losing your senior guys, are your now-most-senior guys out on the shop floor regularly scratching their noggins to figure out how to build such-and-such a detail? If so, maybe you need to step in with a planning process that kicks off prior to the build. (And, I know that sometimes things come up in the moment, but the more you can anticipate, the less downtime.)
We've been using a new method to integrate inexperienced workers in to our shop. We have never used this approach before and it's possibly never been used on face of cabinetmaker planet.
Phase 1 for this integration has been to specifically delineate every step of the manufacturing process. A drawer box, for example, has five parts. The front of the drawer box will have holes drilled in it to seat the drawer face to. The back of the drawer will have notches to receive tandem drawer slides. It's important to separate the fronts from the backs because a new person can easily perform the wrong operation on the wrong part.
Getting them to remember to do this separation can either depend on memory or it can be a sequence that is crossed off a list. Our lists are laminated and we used colored wet-ink pens to cross off the tasks as they happen.
Phase two for this integration has been to practice the operations. It used to be that the first time somebody actually stepped up to bat on the edge sander or side saw was when they were cutting or sanding something that belonged to a customer.
The problem with this approach was that we had a ton of money already invested at this point and the inevitable failure was going be unnecessarily expensive. At the same token we usually always have some obsolete cabinet doors for some reason or other. We have the new guys practice trimming and edge sanding on these orphan doors.
One of the difficulties of integrating new people into the shop is that the veterans (who don't want to train anyway) don't have the time for this distraction. They can help mentor in limited doses but they need to get something built and can often build it faster without help.
Rather than having the new guys constantly pestering the veterans or just polishing the concrete we now have them practice. A 4x8 sheet of plywood is going to get cut up into six base cabinet sides. We now have the new crew in charge of breaking these pieces down. There is a fair amount of fall down from the initial sheet. A finished base cabinet side for us is 580mm x 771mm. The new guys first break it down to 610 x 813 then trim it to 600 x 800 then trim to 590 x 790. The final cut is done by a veteran but we've been able to use the first efforts to get people used to slinging material around the slide saw and stack parts to see if they are square.
We have two apprentices in this mode at current time. One of them is now very adept at breaking lumber down and getting it dead straight on the jointer. The other one can drive sheet goods. They are using these manufacturing lists to teach each other.
They are both very passionate about getting it right and really enjoy the lists because they don't want to fail. A booby prize to this approach is the veterans are picking up their game too. They see this shadow coming across their work bench and realize that others can be taught to do this work too.
Most of these guys have played football in high school so the concept of practice is not unfamiliar. The football team practices four afternoons a week for the Friday game. As soon as they can a build a practice drawer successfully we let them come off the bench. Their wages a tied to how game time they get.
The place to focus is on your training systems. Put your energy into the system and not the guy. Let the system pull the guy through the training rather than push them into the deep end with a sink or swim approach.
These guys want to be successful. Give them the very best opportunity to be successful and you'll a be more successful.
Ooh, I have an apology to make. Re-reading what I wrote earlier about crappy estimates sounded way more harsh than I meant to. Further, I have no idea if your estimates are good/ bad/ or indifferent, so I really shouldn't have sounded so judgmental. So, my sincere apologies.
If you are the owner of your company like I am, then I have to assume that your time is at a premium. I can only imagine how much time it took you to come up with such a system, to write all the instructions and create all the cue cards.
Just like you probably believe in the idea that you are creating a better employee than your competition, and this gives you an advantage, the manner in which you spend your time as the most critical person in your organization is also important.
Does it concern you that at most shops the owner does not spend their time on this kind of thing because they outsource their drawers, they outsource their doors, they don't cut every single side panel 3 separate times using 2 separate employees because they have a CNC router do it perfectly the first time? Does is concern you that while you were laminating your cue cards, the other owners were spending their precious time refining other more important processes than how to build a drawer box?
Your post indicates that you are probably a very sharp and focused individual.
A long time ago I used to outsource doors and drawer boxes.
A problem I would come up against fairly often was the typical door company (I worked with four of them) would stipulate in their catalogue that "a warp or twist of 3/16" is not considered a defect". The quality of the doors that would show up were not appropriate for the marketplace I worked in. Our projects were all flush inset. We probably built 7 out of 10 jobs with fully mortised butt hinges. A door that is warped or twisted will work fine for overlay projects but not for flush inset.
We probably bought 400 dovetail drawer boxes before we realized work was stacking up in the shop. Whenever this would happen it usually had something to do with a drawer box that wasn't in the building. Our vendors would brag that their 7 working day lead times were the best in the industry. Seven days, however, sometimes mean 11 or 12 depending on how the weekends or holidays stacked up. This is a fine lead time.......... until it isn't.
We consequently chose to get really good at building doors and drawers. Being able to build a door or drawer gives us an advantage over someone who has to wait for a door or a drawer.My drawer lists are part of a campaign to get even better at this.
I do agree with you that small cabinetshop owners wear too many hats. Given a limited bandwidth I elected to learn how to write a database and create a website. For my company creating and managing a list is as easy as writing a post for the wood web.
I chose not to learn the nuances of CNC because if the things that CNC was good at were absolutely free, I would still have to solve the other 90 problems to solve.
All strategy is based on lists.
Gavin, do you have some sort of second-in-command on the shop floor?
I find enthusiasm contagious. Roping in Mr Everyday into sharing cerebral energy may help up the enthusiasm by making the projects a little bit more "theirs too".
Guy on a shop floor following along projects and helping direct often results in information sharing with other shop guys. Shop talk at breaks will happen--lots better if they discuss how to get the project moving then peanut gallery your endeavors (people really do tend to do that).
Just a thought.
Hey guys, again alot of great feed back.
Riggles, don't worry I understood what you meant. There are alot of companies that do not bid their jobs well from time to time . If we bid a job poorly we never hold our shop guys responsible. If there is one that we bid poorly we understand it is not the shops fault. They try very hard and certainly do want to see the company succeed. We are a profit sharing company.They understand that and appreciate we take care of them like family, as in our eyes they are. Our company is only as good as the people working within it.
I appreciate all of the positive feedback from this post. For anyone following or who has posted I believe areas we lack and that were suggested are
- communication. Weekly meetings to discuss progress and business.
-training. we have newer guys that are great carpenters but new to our shop.
- on top of everything we did implement CNC technology a year ago. The shop guys may also be reacting to this still.
Chad, I agree that the time Coach was using to train new employees was time that he could have put to producing a product. However, by investing his time into the new hires, they will be able to more work than he could by himself. That is the goal of the game. To have others do the work, so we can deal with the many other things that happen during course of our day.
I started using checklist training several months ago and it has helped . First, it helped me and my existing crew as we had to put in writing all the things that we did. That was eye opening to how each person varied in how they did the job. Now we have one way that works for all. And that is all the new hires know. They are not taught any other way, so they do it the same as everyone else which means that the product produced is consistent.
There are many motivators for people. Most positive motivational items involve recognition of the employee as an important person. So, small things work...recognition of birthdays, family things like kids illness, graduation, etc., a shirt with their name, hats, special treats at DQ when they do something that you want to continue, you cooking a BBQ luncheon for them, you cooking lunch for them and their family, and so on. A key is that motivational items are unexpected, so a salary increase is never motivational as they expect to be paid. But a bonus is motivational. When a visitor comes to the shop, make sure this important person is introduced to employees...this shows how you respect your employees. Involve employees in decision making, especially when the issue involves an area that they are knowledgable about. Be flexible in work hours, especially if a worker has a spouse or child that needs to go to the doctor, etc. with grade school kids, giving the worker a long lunch so they can have lunch with their kid at school.
Consider posting the employees pictures in the office and giving them a title that represents their skills.
Whenever possible, as the employees for their solutions to the problems. This is much better than dictating and also shows that you respect their ideas.
Every employee will get this recognition and will be motivated, so the key is for you to provide it, rather than the bowling team, church, club, scouts, etc.
As an added note, 60 years ago there was an idea that the color of the painted walls was important, and indeed, when painted green, performance improved...for a while. Then when painted blue, performance again improved...for a while. They finally recognized that it was the attention being paid to employees and not the color that was the key. Form this work came a theory on motivation by Maslow that was and still is effective. In this theory, if an employee is worried about safety, health, security, etc., including spouse and children, you will find it hard to motivate them with recognition...they have more basic concerns that will motivate them.
I took a semester class on motivation, so this only scratches the surface.
We are able to get around the problem of time over runs by making each job a sort of subcontract. We agree a price to do the job, be it one chair or a whole kitchen, with the individual or team that is doing the job. The men draw their normal salary while the job is on going, If the job finishes sooner than the paid for elapsed time and is on quality, the balance owing on the job is treated like a bonus. It is agreed that if the job goes over, the job is completed on the worker's time.
Shop floor motivation


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Protection paladins are receiving a number of peripheral changes in 5.4, but nothing that changes our core mechanics. We're still going to be stacking haste thanks to Sanctity of Battle – in fact it's even on two of our tier pieces – and we're still not very interested in avoidance. We're still going to be focusing on high Shield of the Righteous uptime, and we're still going to be one of the best (if not the best) tank classes.
There are, however, a few high-profile changes that affect our talent and glyph choices. The Icy Veins Guide should be up to date with all of the latest information. In this post, I'm going to go over what's changed and discuss many of those changes in greater detail than would be appropriate in a class guide.
Big Changes
Grand Crusader: The first change most players notice is Grand Crusader. It no longer procs from Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous, but instead procs only from avoidance (30% chance per avoided attack). This is probably the change I'm asked about most often, primarily from players wondering if this "kills" haste-tanking.
But while this seems like a significant change, it's actually not. Grand Crusader certainly helped make haste stronger, but only by a tiny amount. The majority of our affinity for haste comes from Sanctity of Battle, which isn't changing. Unless that gets nerfed, we're going to continue to stack haste.
The only noticeable effect that the Grand Crusader change should produce is a slight adjustment in our multiple-mob tanking priorities. As we tank more mobs, we have a higher and higher chance of getting early Grand Crusader procs. So when tanking more than 5 or 6 mobs, we may start prioritizing Grand Crusader procs over Crusader Strike and Judgment.
Eternal Flame and Sacred Shield: This patch, Sacred Shield received a 30% nerf and Eternal Flame's heal-over-time (HoT) component received a 40% buff. Together, this has finally shifted the balance of power in our Level 45 talent tier. When cast with 5 stacks of Bastion of Glory, Eternal Flame's HoT will heal for 3x-4x as much as Sacred Shield absorbs. As such, it becomes the better smoothness option at high haste, essentially through brute-force.
That doesn't make Sacred Shield a bad choice, just a little less effective at smoothing melee damage. It may still be the stronger choice when up against large, one-shot boss attacks. And the ability to put it on your co-tank is another hard-to-quantify benefit; I suspect that two paladin tanks that are alternating Sacred Shields such that each tank has two active at any given time is still superior to a similar strategy with Eternal Flame.
The general strategy when using Eternal Flame should be to refresh it when it's about to expire or shortly after it's expired, ideally at high BoG stacks and always with 3+ Holy Power or a "freebie" proc like Divine Purpose or the Tier 16 4-piece bonus. Note that in many cases it's actually better to let it expire and re-apply than to refresh it early thanks to the instant healing component. For example, if you refresh it a second early while at full health and then take a large hit from the boss, the Word of Glory portion is wasted as overhealing and the first few HoT ticks will go towards healing that damage. If instead you let the HoT expire and held that Eternal Flame until after the melee attack landed, the instant heal would completely offset the melee attack, leaving you at full health with a fresh HoT ticking for the next melee attack.
If you're looking for a good way to track Eternal Flame, I'll be posting about the latest version of my WeakAuras configuration later this week once I've had a chance to test them on the live version of 5.4. They're all uploaded to pastebin, so you can try them out, I just don't guarantee that they're bug-free for 5.4 yet. Also note that the author that's been maintaining WeakAuras the last two years has moved the project to WeakAuras 2, so update your links accordingly.
Selfless Healer: The third choice in this talent tier also saw a notable change this patch. Selfless Healer now consumes Bastion of Glory stacks to apply a healing bonus to Flash of Light when you use it on yourself. Before, it gained no healing bonus when self-cast. Unfortunately, this is still not enough to make the talent attractive.
Since the mechanics of Selfless Healer are less than obvious, here's a detailed explanation of how it works. Each stack of the Selfless Healer buff reduces the cast time by 35%, so at 3 stacks Flash of Light is instant-cast. If you heal an ally, it's just a simple 20%/40%/60% increase to the healing done at 1/2/3 stacks. Simple enough.
However, that healing buff doesn't apply if you heal yourself. Instead, Selfless Healer modifies Bastion of Glory, giving it the following tooltip:
Bastion of Glory
Requires level 40
Increases the strength of your Word of Glory when used to heal yourself by 10%. Selfless Healer also increases healing from Flash of Light on yourself by 20% per stack. Stacks up to 5 times.
So when you use Flash of Light on yourself, you only get the +20% to +100% bonus from having one to five stacks of Bastion of Glory. That 20% per stack bonus doesn't increase with mastery, either, unlike the Word of Glory healing bonus. There's an additional caveat here, in that you only get the bonus when you have at least one stack of the Selfless Healer buff as well. A hard-cast Flash of Light with no stacks of the Selfless Healer buff doesn't consume or benefit from Bastion of Glory. So with 5 stacks of Bastion of Glory you get +100% healing done regardless of whether you had 1 or 3 stacks of Selfless healer.
And just in case that wasn't confusing enough, the buff tooltip is also misleading. If you mouse over the Bastion of Glory buff while Selfless Healer is talented, you'll see:
Bastion of Glory
Your next Word of Glory used to heal yourself heals for an additional 10%.
Your next Flash of Light will heal you for 20% more per stack of Selfless Healer you have accumulated.
20 seconds remaining
which obviously contradicts the spell tooltip. The spell tooltip is correct, however; with 3 stacks of Selfless Healer and 5 stacks of Bastion of Glory, you'll get +100% healing when you cast Flash of Light on yourself and consume the stacks of Bastion.
That was a lot of words to describe a mechanic that's irrelevant to us, but unfortunately that's how the numbers fall out. Unbuffed on the PTR, a Flash of Light healed me for 35k with no Bastion stacks and 70k with five Bastion stacks. A 3-holy-power Eternal Flame that consumed five Bastion stacks healed for 115k immediately and ticked for 35k. Those two aren't even in the same ballpark – Eternal Flame is essentially spamming you with Flash of Light casts automatically via the HoT mechanism, and does a better job of health recovery with the immediate heal. And Eternal Flame is off-GCD. And scales better with spellpower than Flash of Light does.
So while the Selfless Healer buff was a nice thought, it's too little to really make the talent worth taking. Even if it gave the 60% bonus from all three Selfless Healer stacks, it wouldn't be strong enough to rival Eternal Flame's primary heal. It would also have to get full benefit from each BoG stack, including mastery scaling, to have any hope of competing. And probably even then some thanks to the long-tail healing from Eternal Flame's HoT.
Glyph of the Battle Healer: Gutted. Utterly and completely destroyed. Battle Healer's old version was incredibly strong, and basically mandatory because it was a significant amount of free raid healing for the cost of a glyph slot. The new version completely changes how Battle Healer works. Now, it causes Seal of Insight to heal the lowest-health raid member instead of healing you. Unless, of course, you happen to be the lowest-health raid member.
That in and of itself might not completely neuter the glyph, as in many cases you will be the lowest-health raid member anyway. So it would be a trade of some personal survivability for some raid healing, but would generally divert that healing back to you when you were in severe danger.
Unfortunately, the glyph also reduces the size of the heal to 30% of the unglyphed value. That's the part that stings. We might take a small personal survivability loss for some extra raid healing, but not a significant personal survivability loss for very little raid healing. Battle Healer is probably out of the rotation permanently, or at least until it gets changed again in a future patch.
Sanctified Wrath: I'm not sure whether this qualifies as a big change or a little change. Sanctified Wrath was tweaked to generate an extra holy power from Judgment during Avenging Wrath. This makes it a little more attractive to us than before, as it finally gives us a substantial holy power generation increase. We still have to change up our rotation to make most effective use out of it, however; with this talent selected, we switch to a J-CS-J-filler- rotation during Avenging Wrath.
I'm still not 100% sure about where this change leaves Sanctified Wrath. The 3-minute cooldown on Avenging Wrath still limits the total usefulness of the talent. We're probably equally invincible whether we have Avenging/Sanctified Wrath or Holy Avenger active, but Holy Avenger is on a shorter 2-minute cooldown and should generate more average DPS. Divine Purpose should be higher DPS still and provide higher average Shield of the Righteous uptime, though without the same level of control.
My gut feeling is that you're probably a little more survivable during Avenging/Sanctified Wrath than you are during Holy Avenger, but that the longer cooldown and more lmited availability probably makes Sanctified Wrath the slightly weaker choice in most circumstances. But they're all close enough that you can probably take whichever talent you like in this tier.
Little Changes
There are loads of little changes, none of which stand out as particularly worrisome. In no particular order….
Mana Regeneration: Seal of Insight lost its mana return component during PTR, which led to some discussion of whether high-haste builds would be able to continue operating. To compensate us for that loss, Guarded by the Light was buffed from returning 6% of our mana every 2 seconds to returning 15%. This should be enough to keep us rotation-stable even at 50% haste, and has some fringe benefits as well. For example, less waiting time between successive Redemption casts after a wipe.
Weakened Blows: Crusader Strike now also applies Weakened Blows, which is a nice quality-of-life buff. Also makes Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous completely irrelevant. As opposed to pre-5.4, when it was "almost completely irrelevant."
Burdened by a Guilty Point of View: The old Burden of Guilt talent has been turned into a glyph (replacing Glyph of Turn Evil) and replaced with Evil is a Point of View. This new talent allows us to use Turn Evil on Humanoids and Beasts. This probably doesn't have a lot of applicability to PvE, but who knows. On a fight like Faction Champions, having the option to fear something might have been useful.
Unbreakable Spirit: Drastically simplified in 5.4, the new version of Unbreakable Spirit just reduces the cooldowns of Divine Protection, Divine Shield, and Lay on Hands by a flat 50%. This is essentially no change for the latter two spells, but should reduce the cooldown of Divine Protection from ~40-45 seconds to 30 seconds. All in all a fairly clear buff that makes the talent much easier to understand.
There is one caveat: while undocumented, taking this talent will also reduce the healing generated by our tier 16 2-piece bonus. Though the bonus is pretty weak anyway, so that's probably not a big concern.
Lights Hammer: The healing component of this spell has changed slightly thanks to a last-minute change. Instead of healing all players in the area of effect, Light's Hammer now only heals the six players with lowest health. A nerf to be sure, but the smart target selection still makes it pretty powerful.
Alabaster Shield: This glyph was nerfed from 20% per stack to 10% per stack. Still a nice DPS boost, but not as nice as before. Was already less effective than Focused Shield on single targets, so this shouldn't change much.
Glyph of Holy Wrath: Aberrations have been added to the list of creature types on Glyph of Holy Wrath. It's a buff, but I'm not sure if there's any relevant aberrations in Siege of Orgrimmar.
Glyph of Devotion Aura: Formerly the Glyph of Rebuke, this glyph turns Devotion Aura into a personal cooldown rather than a raid-wide cooldown and reduces the cooldown duration from 3 minutes to 2 minutes. Devo is such a strong raid cooldown that I don't expect most people will use this much, especially since 2 minutes is still a fairly long cooldown for a weak, 6-second copy of Divine Protection.
Glyph of Divine Shield: One of two new glyphs this patch, this glyph heals you for 10% of your health for each harmful effect you remove when you bubble. The heal is capped at 50% of your health. Neat idea, but I'm not sure it's that useful in practice.
Glyph of Hand of Sacrifice: This is the other new glyph, which eliminates the damage redirection of Hand of Sacrifice, turning it into a simple 30% damage mitigation cooldown. Neat, but less useful to us tanks since we shrug off that redirected damage in the first place.
Vengance: This probably qualifies as a big change, except that it doesn't really change how we play very much. Apart from being less reckless, I guess. Vengeance was nerfed in two ways this patch. First, the amount of attack power gained from melee attacks was reduced from 1.8% to 1.5% and the amount gained from spell damage was reduced by teh same proportion (from 4.5% to 3.75%). Second, it now has diminishing returns when tanking multiple mobs. The hardest-hitting mob always gives the full amount, but each successively weaker mob gives 1/N-th as much. So the second mob grants 1/2 as much as it would alone, the third grants 1/3 as much, and so on.
This is a fairly big hit to our survivability in AoE tanking situations, so we'll have to be a little more careful with big pulls. Rather than simply grabbing everything in sight and "tanking the world," we'll want to try and split those mobs with other tanks. Thankfully, this diminishing returns mechanism makes that easier as well.
Taunting and Threat: All taunts now cause a 3-second grace period, during which you generate 3x as much threat as usual against the taunted mob. This should eliminate most of the wonky threat-related issues players were experiencing after taunting early in an encounter. In addition, the base threat multiplier of Righteous Fury (and all other tanking presences) was buffed from +400% to +600%. I assume this latter change was to compensate for the significant reduction of Vengeance in 5-man heroics.
Legendary Buffs and Nerfs: The Indomitable Primal Diamond proc was buffed significantly. Now it reduces all damage instead of just physical damage, and the proc rate was doubled as well. On the other hand, the Capacitive Primal Diamond proc rate was nerfed by 40% for tank specs to discourage its use. The new legendary cloaks for DPS classes (Gong-Lu being the relevant one for us) have this 40% proc-rate nerf built in, again, to discourage us from ignoring the tanking cloak (Qian-Ying).
Simulationcraft v540-1
Simulationcraft should be updated to version 540-1 today, though I haven't implemented new T16 TMI bosses yet. Partly because I don't yet have data on how hard these bosses will hit, so for now the T16Q boss will have to suffice. However, I have implemented just about everything else. It should have all of the new 5.4 mechanics, along with several bugfixes. As usual, please let me know if something looks funny.
- APL tweaks – removed HotR, added EF, added Ret's 4T16 bonus
- Bugfixes:
- T16 Normal and Heroic profiles optimized
- Bugfixes:
- SotR no longer ignores the 1% racial expertise bonuses.
- Eternal Flame's base heal was receiving the +100% bonus for self-healing
- Holy Avenger doesn't buff Hammer of Wrath damage for Protection anymore
- Sanctified Wrath's bonus healing taken is now restricted to Protection
Open Q&A
I think that covers the bulk of the relevant changes in 5.4. Of course there's lots of new content as well – the Timeless Isle, Siege of Orgrimmar, Flex Raids, Proving Grounds, and so on – but none of that is super-specific to us.
But if you have any questions that I haven't answered here or think of something I've omitted, please post them in the comments. I'm fairly busy on Tuesdays, so I may not get a chance to respond until this evening.


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One potential benefit of the budget crisis? The state has given school districts more flexibility in how they use some state moneys. But a report from the Public Policy Institute of California says that the way that flexibility was put in place was haphazard -- because of the need to address the budget crisis -- and needs to be fixed.
Among the problems: the new, more flexible system is less transparent and equitable. And the flexibility creates the potential for funds to be gobbled up by teacher salaries and benefits, rather than for student services and materials.
PPIC recommends that the state consolidate its complicated, multi-piece school funding regime into one, and develop clear criteria to determine whether a particular school funding is flexible. Finally, the report suggests that one way to make programs more flexible -- and more transparent and equitable -- is through block grants. The legislature should be working on school funding now, since the current flexibility provisions expire in four years.
U.S. & World
You can read the full report here.


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Saturday, February 4, 2012
The curse of sucessfull blockbusters
This really favors big publishers like EA and Activision that can put out games with production values that appeal to the masses, and still afford the advertising blitz or IPs (say Batman or Star Wars) that will attract the attention of the masses. Mid level publishers like THQ are being pushed out, they just don't have the budgets needed to compete at that scale. What we will soon be left with is a few big publishers selling safe bets with high production values to the masses (think summer blockbuster movies) and indie titles with low production values and miniscule budgets.
To me this seems to be a pretty accurate description of what is happening in console game space. I like to think of myself as an independent minded gamer. However, the games I have played in the last few years on my X-box 360 are generally ones you have heard of and likely ones you have played (e.g., Dragon Age Origins, Mass Effect 2, Halo Reach, Half Life 2, Fallout 3). The only things I could find in my disk collection that weren't connected to wildly popular IPs or from studios that have legions of fans (e.g., Bioware, Bethesda, Valve) were Crackdown and Borderlands. The more obscure games I have played were all downloads from small publishers.
And now we come to the point of the post, which you likely suspected all along. Is this going to happen to MMOs as a genre? I think a lot of the angst currently being directed at Star Wars the Old Republic has to do with this issue. The formula for a summer blockbuster movie seems to be: (1) rehash at least part of the story arc that Campbell outlines in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, (2) glam it the hell up with fancy special effects, a high profile IP, and/ or a huge ass advertising budget. The future that I feel a lot commentators are dreading in MMO space is the following formula for MMO blockbusters: (1) borrow a lot of mechanics and game design elements from World of Warcraft, (2) glam it the hell up with fancy graphics, a high profile IP, and/ or a huge ass advertising budget. This is very much the formula that SWTOR (and LoTRO and Rift for that matter) followed in the eyes of many MMO enthusiasts.
From there it follows that if SWTOR succeeds the formula for an MMO blockbuster will have been established. The financial success of SWTOR would be the first step down a path that inevitably leads to the place video games in general seem headed: all we will have available are predictable blockbusters or (more innovative) indie projects with lower production values.
So how do I feel about all this? I really like SWTOR. I also go out and watch all the Super Hero themed blockbusters in the Spring/ Summer with glee. I also recently bought Arkham Asylum (I won't pay $60 for a console game, I wait for them to go down), and I'm really looking forward to it. At the same time, I think Myst Online is a great MMO if you can get past the clunky controls (it must have at least ten players), I watch a lot of indie and foreign movies through Netflix (recently I watched "Super" and "The Girl who Lept Through Time" and enjoyed them both), and I really enjoyed Braid on my X-box.
I can't say that everyone panicking at the possibility that SWTOR does well is wrong. We may well be entering an era where all big budget MMOs are Diku style. I also can't decide whether I really care. The small guys will still innovate, just like they do in the music and movie industries. Let the giants spit out their predictable fluff, enjoy it for what it is if you can, and support the little guys with your time and your wallet when they make something you like. Hardly sounds like the apocalypse to me.
6 comments:
The thing is MMOs have a very long production cycle. The ones that will come out this year and the next will be influenced by WAR and AOC, not SWTOR.ReplyDelete
Looking ahead we have medium size companies offering This Secret World, Domminus, Guild Wars 2 all of which I think are likely to more than cover their costs. And none of which would have made more money using a cliched IP and a WoW clone format.
That's a really good point, I don't think medium budget MMOs are going any where in the short term. If Secret World and GW2 do well (and I suspect that they will) it may take a lot longer for MMOs to trend in the same direction as video games generally...if they ever do.ReplyDelete
As the video games business has grown, it was inevitable that things would consolidate to the same extent that TV and movies have. But even with those media, there is a diversity if you look for it.ReplyDelete
If we as gamers want more diversity in our games, we need to put our money where our blogs are and support indie games. Which, considering how well several indie games do, I think we're doing pretty well.
@Anjin: I totally agree. Want more innovative products from little guys? Vote with your wallet.ReplyDelete
One sort of related point I wanted to make but couldn't quite fit in to the post is that as technology improves the budget that you need to create a game with pretty graphics is going to go down. I can forsee a future where indie studios will be able to put out games with perfectly acceptable production values that cater to all sorts of niche audiences.
Heck, we may already be there. While it's not a game I'd play, Darkfall looks really good for something put out on such a small budget. World of Tanks looks even better, and it came from a small indie studio. I can also think of a several games from small studios that use a cartoony style to get away with low poly counts and system requirements, and it can work quite well (e.g., Puzzle Pirates, Wizard 101, Allods Online). And of course Minecraft looks like a Super Nintendo era game and sold like hotcakes just on gameplay.
- AnonymousFebruary 8, 2012 at 11:55 PM
I think one of the biggest points you hit on that list is the massive budget for advertising. Only the bigger companies can afford plastering their product everywhere. I mean, we never saw commercials for MMOs until recently, starting with World of Warcraft. Their ads still get played constantly, which probably helped draw in the more casual demographic that's not already tied down to their computers and haven't seen the web ads. If you can afford it, that's a pretty huge advantage.ReplyDelete
@Mmogamerchick: I think you are absolutely right. WoW is pretty much the only MMO you generally see advertised in mainstream media. That has to have something to do with it's success.ReplyDelete
I would also be really curious to know how that Southpark episode affected the trajectory of the populations. It was ostensibly a pretty strong anti MMO message. However, there have to have been some viewers that weren't familiar with how MMOs work that saw the episode and thought "Holy cow that looks like fun."