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When I read the story from England about needing photo ID to buy teaspoons, I thought British bureaucrats built an insurmountable lead in the U.S. vs. U.K. contest for stupidest government action.
But I should have had more faith in the hare-brained politicians of Illinois. When they're not busy driving businesses from the state with punitive taxes or lining the pockets of the political elite with graft and corruption, these geniuses display impressive levels of brainless behavior.
In this case, they decided to require identification – and a log – for the purchase of drain cleaner and other caustic products.
Why? Well, because somebody could use them in the commission of a crime. Sort of like the killer teaspoons from England.
Here are some excerpts from a local media report.
A new state law requires those who buy drain cleaners and other caustic substances to provide photo identification and sign a log. It's getting a rough reception from customers and merchants alike although perhaps none more than a cashier at Schroeder's True Value Hardware in Lombard. "They're not very happy about it at all," said Don Schroeder, one of the store's owners. …The law, which took effect Sunday, requires those who seek to buy caustic or noxious substances, except for batteries, to provide government-issued photo identification that shows their name and date of birth. The cashier then must log the name and address, the date and time of the purchase, the type of product, the brand and even the net weight. …Jewel-Osco has removed the few items it carried from its shelves, but Schroeder said he does not have that option as a hardware store. He said he does not believe that the precautions written into the bill will prevent such crimes from occurring. "How are they going to find out, by asking every customer, what kid might have done that? It's not going to solve any problems," Schroeder said. "It's not going to cure anything."
The legislation is disliked by both businesses and consumers, so one might be tempted to think it will be repealed.
But that's a silly assumption. You have to remember that the bureaucrats in charge of enforcing the law doubtlessly like having another excuse for bigger budgets.
And since Illinois is a state where bureaucrats engage in public protests for more money, they probably have more political influence than the poor saps who actually pay the bills.
One more nail in the coffin of a state that is vying with California to become the Greece of America.


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I got this virus from frnd's pen drive,in D drive i copied * file from that pen drive which was somehow not completely copied due to the virus.
Now the problem is the folder in which i copied stuff from pen drive is showing *7.0 kb instead of showing(folder of size more than *2gb) coz it has already got some big multimedia files.
[url=http://www.****ge-glasgow.co.uk/glasgow-tooth-whitening-scotland.html]Teeth Whitening Glasgow[/url] | [url=http://www.****ge-glasgow.co.uk/glasgow-tooth-whitening-scotland.html]Tooth Whitening Glasgow[/url]

subset: commoncrawl


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Monday 19 March 2012
One-on-one time
But this weekend I was determined. One-on-one time is important. Good moms spend one-on-one time with their kids. I want to be a good mom. This is going to happen, sobbing be damned. Stay strong, Mama. You can do this.
Saturday afternoon rolls around and I've got some errands lined up. Since one of the errand involves buying (sugar-free! xylitol-based!) chewing gum in an effort to get a certain four-year-old to stop constantly chewing on his clothing and blankets, I decide to take that one along.
The waterworks! The sobbing! The two-year-old is absolutely heartbroken, clinging to my neck like a little monkey. Oh yes. This is good for my kids. Mm-hmm.
I peel him off and leave him crying in his daddy's arms while the boy dances around the front yard waiting for me to hurry up and say my good-byes. I get him buckled in his car seat and we are on our way. Just us! One on one! Success!
(The child left behind, meanwhile, continues to cry for a while, then moves on to angrily muttering my name every few seconds, and eventually falls asleep on his daddy's lap. Great. There goes bedtime.)
The boy and I do our errands. He chooses two gum flavours. I pick up a package. He buys a toy car off a homeless man. I mail some cheques. He runs along the sidewalk, stopping to wait for me at the roads. I huff and puff along behind him. He talks. And talks. And talks and talks and talks. I answers his questions. Somehow the subject ends up on domestic abuse. I'm pretty sure that's an automatic mom-fail right there.
On the way home, I give him the option of stopping at one more place. It's not an urgent stop, though, so I leave it up to him. He tells me he wants to get home because his brother might be sad and lonely. Great! He misses his brother too. And I insisted on one-on-one time why?
But no. This is what Good Moms do, so the next day it's little brother's turn. Big brother, fortunately, knew to expect this, and the toddler and I leave with no waterworks and almost no whining. This is going better! I'm a great mom!
We start at the library to pick up some books I had on hold. Pregnancy-bladder insists that I use the washroom twice during our visit. Fortunately, the toddler only opens the stall door mid-pee on me once, so that's something.
It's only slightly chilly out, so I decide we can walk the two blocks to our other destinations. After all, what's two blocks?
Yeah. Turns out two blocks feels more like ten blocks when your toddler is as slow as molasses. He keeps up a steady stream of chatter the whole way, pointing out every little thing that catches his eye. Fortunately, his chatter requires mostly echos and short responses. We manage to avoid discussing domestic abuse. This is good.
But then it starts.
"Where's [big brother]?"
"At home with Daddy."
"Where's Daddy?"
"At home with your brother."
And repeat. Over and over. For the rest of the trip. Oh yes, this one-on-one stuff is going swimmingly. All they want is each other!
Anyway. We make it to the grocery store and pick up what we need. I manage to prevent him from poking holes in the plastic-wrapped meat, knocking over jars of spaghetti sauce as he walks by with his arm outstretched, and throwing everything that catches his eye into our basket. Whew. The four-year-old was a lot easier the day before. I'm ready for a nap.
But then he bags the groceries for me at the self-checkout and I'm melting all over myself again because gosh, he's just so dang cute. We head to my favourite tea house to share an iced honey jasmine green tea (so heavenly). He squirms all over his chair for a while, then snuggles with me for the rest of the time. The snuggles are nice. I relax.
We make the looooong slooooow two-block walk back to the car ("Where's brother? Where's Daddy?"), which looks positively luxurious when we finally arrive. We're back home a few short minutes later and the brothers are reunited at last.
But I did it. I had one-on-one time with each of them.
And it really was worth it after all.
3 comments:
I put my then-3-year old in preschool mostly so that I could have some "bonding" time with my then not-yet-one-year old.
My kids are both late sleepers, so by the time the waking them, shoveling breakfast down their throats and BEGGING them to WANT to put their clothes on ensued, we were all so stressed out that no amount of bonding could make up for it.
I do still try- just once or twice a year for each of the kids to get some alone time, but a friend reminded me recently that there are ways to have one-on-one time even while you are all together. This will be a learning process for me, but I suspect she's right.
Great post- I'm glad to have found you :)- AnonymousMay 30, 2012 4:56 pm
I get my one-on-one time with my 2 boys in a couple different ways... If one is sleeping and the other isn't that's a good time for us, or if they're playing in different rooms I take advantage of that, but most of the time I'll take the time to focus on one of them for a little bit even when they're in the same room. That really only works if they're really focused on what they're doing. All that being said, they each get time with me maybe twice a week if we're lucky and it's never a big one-on-one trip somewhere together. Good luck! And don't worry about what "other good moms" do because you do your own great things!


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Zamsher (Zamusha)
Review by chachipower
I'm so glad to be doing this review because I was right about these figures getting better and better with each release. The only problem is my favorite characters have all been done already and they could have been better. While I wait for a remake or updated reissues, I will be enjoying whatever new Ultra Acts make their way into my collection. I am really liking this line of figures, whether I am a fan of the characters or not. I had low expectations for Zamsher, but I was actually quite impressed with this figure.
Zamsher comes in your standard Ultra Act box with an offset window. Once you wrestle it out of the clear tray, you get this. A finely sculpted version of Zamsher. It's hard to believe this is from the same line that made the first Ultra Act Ultraman, which looked and felt cheap. This one feels nice and solid.
The set comes with a sword and sheath that can be attached with a peg to his back.
Did I mention he has a good sculpt? It has great detail on the face. I really like how menacing he looks. His red hair piece is the alternate piece. He comes with a less aggressive (in other words, not as cool) hair piece, but for the purpose of this review, I chose not to use it.
I find it hard to believe that I originally thought I would not like this figure but I am really digging it right now. It just looks cool from all angles.
So how does he pose? Just fine. Like all his predecessors in the Ultra Act line, he features great articulation. It is a tad limited in the shoulders due to some armor hinges, but nothing to cry about. However it almost seems like those hinges could swing up out of the way, but they don't on mine. So they are either seized or as-is. The illustrations on the box show a more aggressive posing in the shoulders. Here he is with his nice thin bladed sword unsheathed and ready to slice some opponents.
Can you tell I am having fun posing this figure?
You can even get silly with poses if you'd like. I decided to see if he could do one handed push-ups. He can.
I got a bit too silly with the posing I think.
This figure gets a thumb up from me. It was solid out of the box with no flop and at the end of the day it was still solid except for the neck which got flop syndrome. The paint apps are well done and the figure looks great. I give the price a thumbs down. As with all Ultra Act figures, they are priced a little more than what you would think they should cost.
Review sample provided by Tamashii Nations. You can get yours at BigBadToyStore
Posted 22 May, 2011 - 21:13 by chachipower |
1 comment postedThe one-hand push-ups and the coquettish pose are great!


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Why should students with disabilities consider studying design fields?
According to Building a World Fit for People: Designers with Disabilities at Work, design itself is improved when individuals with disabilities participate as designers. Designers with disabilities found that "living with a disability while thinking about improving designed spaces had heightened their thoughtfulness, determination, maturity, problem-solving skills, empathy, aesthetic consciousness, kinesthetic awareness and social justice in design." The creativity they had developed to live well as an individual with a disability aided them in being successful in careers in design fields.
For students with disabilities interested in a creative career path, design fields like architecture, interior design, apparel design, landscape architecture, and graphic design can be great career choices. Design careers are creative fields that allow an individual to create work that fulfills others' needs, according to an article titled What is Design? by the Institute for Human Centered Design.
Inaccessible studio spaces and activities are often listed as reasons why some students with disabilities are not fully included or encouraged to pursue design. The incorporation of technology and universal design strategies can eliminate or minimize potential barriers so that students with all types of disabilities can participate and succeed in design classes.
AccessDesign has been developed in partnership with Access to Design Professions, Institute for Human Centered Design, (IHCD) Boston, MA and funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).


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Win This Water Bottle!
Staying motivated enough to keep active as the fall weather fades to the doldrums of winter can be tough. Take your workout anywhere with a black + blum eau water bottle: a stick of active charcoal reduces chlorine and balances the pH, so you can snag water anywhere at any time.
The charcoal lasts for up to six months and is easily recycled afterward, while the cork topper makes refilling and toting elegantly simple.
You can buy your own black + blum eau water bottle or enter in the comments for a chance to win one. Just let us know, in the comments, your favorite way to stay in shape. The contest starts at 10:00 a.m. EST today, and ends on Friday, November 2 at 5 p.m. EST.
We're giving away one black + blum eau water bottle to one lucky, randomly-selected commenter. You must include your email address in the "Email" field when submitting your comment so we can communicate with you if you're a winner.
You may only comment once to be considered and you don't have to purchase anything to win; a purchase will not increase your chances of winning. Odds depend on total number of entries. Void where prohibited. Only open to legal residents of 50 U.S. states, D.C. or Puerto Rico, and you must be at least 18 to win. For the first day of the giveaway, all entries (answers) must be entered between 10:00 a.m. EST on October 31 and 5 p.m. EST on November 2, 2012. Subject to full official rules. By leaving a comment on the blog, you acknowledge your acceptance to the Official Rules. ARV of each prize: $20. Sponsor: Scripps Networks, LLC, d/b/a Food Network, 9721 Sherrill Blvd, Knoxville, TN 37932.


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The human capacity to deny reality is one of our defining characteristics. Evolutionarily, it has often served us well, inspiring us to press onward against long odds. Without denial, the American settlers might have aborted their westward trek somewhere around Pittsburgh; Steve Jobs might thrown up his hands after the demise of the Lisa; and Martin Luther King's famous speech might have been entitled, "I Have a Strategic Plan and a Draft Budget."
Yet when danger or failure is just around the corner, denial can be dysfunctional (see Karl Rove on Fox News), even suicidal (see climate change and Superstorm Sandy).
Healthcare is no exception. Emerging evidence suggests that patients and their surrogates frequently engage in massive denial when it comes to prognosis near the end of life. While understandable – denial is often the way that people remove the "less" from "hopeless" – it can lead to terrible decisions, with bad consequences for both the individual patient and society.
First, there is evidence that individuals charged with making decisions for their loved ones ("surrogate decision-makers") simply don't believe that physicians can prognosticate accurately. In a 2009 study, UCSF's Lucas Zier found that nearly two-thirds of surrogates gave little credence to their physicians' predictions of futility. Driven by this skepticism, one-in-three would elect continued life-sustaining treatments even after the doctor offered their loved one a less than 1% chance of survival.
In a more recent study by Zier and colleagues, 80 surrogates of critically ill patients were given hypothetical prognostic statements regarding their loved ones. The statements ranged from "he will definitely survive" to "he will definitely not survive," with 14 statements in between (including some that offered percentages, such as "he has a [10%, or a 50%, or a 90%] chance of survival"). After hearing these statements, surrogates were asked to interpret them and offer their own survival estimates.
When the prognosis was optimistic ("definitely survive" or "90%" survival odds), surrogates' estimates were in sync with those of the physicians. But when the prognosis was pessimistic ("definitely not survive" or "he has a 5% chance of surviving"), surrogates' interpretations took a sharp turn toward optimism. For example, surrogates believed that when the doctor offered a 5% survival chance, the patient's true chance of living was at least three times that; some thought it was as high as 40%. Remarkably, when asked later to explain this discordance, many surrogates struggled. Said one, "I'm not coming up with good words to explain this [trend] because I was not aware I was doing this." The authors identified two main themes to explain their findings: surrogates' need to be optimistic in the face of serious illness (either as a coping mechanism for themselves or to buck up their loved one), and surrogates' beliefs that their loved one possessed attributes unknown to the physician, attributes that would result in better-than-predicted survival (the "he's a fighter" argument).
Religious beliefs also play a part. In Zier's 2009 study, nearly half the surrogates harbored religious objections to the notion of futility. These individuals were far more likely than those with other objections to favor continued aggressive care in the face of a physician's dire prognosis. Even more striking, in a 2008 study of more than 1000 adults by Jacobs and colleagues, 61% believed that a person in a persistent vegetative state could be saved by "a miracle," and 57% believed that divine intervention could rescue a patient even after a physician had characterized the situation as hopeless.
A study in last month's New England Journal of Medicine by Weeks and colleagues further illustrates the gulf between reality and perception when it comes to terminal care. The authors surveyed 1193 patients with metastatic lung or colorectal cancer who were receiving palliative chemotherapy. Approximately half of the lung cancer patients and two-thirds of the colorectal cancer patients believed that a cure was "very" or "somewhat" likely. (Sadly, the chance of a cure is essentially nil in such patients.) Unrealistic expectations were particularly common in nonwhite patients. Interestingly, patients who reported better physician communication were also more likely to have inaccurate expectations – perhaps because the doctors were telling the patients what they wanted to hear.
This literature illustrates that patients' and surrogates' religious beliefs color their perceptions, as do doubts regarding whether their physicians are accurate prognosticators. The latter concern is not entirely without merit. All experienced physicians can recall circumstances in which things did turn out better than advertised. I recently renewed my acquaintance with a former colleague who had a huge MI – which resulted in heart failure and a scary-low ejection fraction – while in his 40s. His physicians told him to retire from practice and enjoy his last few years on earth. He quit his UCSF faculty position and moved to Montana. That was 20 years ago; he's doing just fine today. My dad had stomach cancer in his early 50s, with a positive lymph node found at the time of his gastrectomy. He was told to get his affairs in order, which he promptly did. He needn't have rushed: he's alive and reasonably well today, 30 years later. In both cases, the doctors weren't wrong, per se; the odds were fairly terrible. But both men managed to beat them. These are the cases that we all remember – both patients and doctors need only to see a few like them to soften everyone's sense of prognostic certitude.
But there is something subtler going on here: a type of collusion between doctors and their patients, neither of whom really wants to confront some painful truths. Weeks and colleagues cite a 2000 ethnographic study, in which the investigators observed both oncologists and patients rapidly pivoting from discussions of prognosis to matters of treatment options and logistics. "In other words," Weeks wrote, "a focus on chemotherapy was the instrument that facilitated prognostic misunderstanding."
You may recall Atul Gawande's poignant New Yorker piece on end of life care from 2010. Gawande described a post-op visit with one of his patients, after he found her abdomen filled with widely metastatic colon cancer at surgery, a situation that offers no hope of cure.
I said that it had not been possible to remove all the disease. But I found myself almost immediately minimizing what I'd said. 'We'll bring in an oncologist,' I hastened to add. 'Chemotherapy can be very effective in these situations.'
She absorbed the news in silence, looking down at the blankets drawn over her mutinous body. Then she looked up at me. 'Am I going to die?'
I flinched. 'No, no,' I said. 'Of course not.'
Every physician I know, including me, can recall getting weak-kneed at moments like these. It is only natural.
While there are some valid reasons for undue optimism and misunderstanding, the impact can still be highly destructive. Patients and surrogates need accurate prognostic information in order to make informed choices about their treatment options, whether it is chemotherapy, intensive care, surgery, dialysis, or palliative care and hospice. As Zier writes, "not all optimism is ethically benign."
Moreover, in an era in which the costs of healthcare have become a central concern for all Americans – one-in-four Medicare dollars are spent in the last year of life – we can no longer afford to swim in a sea of wildly inaccurate prognoses. Patients and family members who believe that chemotherapy for metastatic cancer can be curative will not only favor it when they shouldn't, but they and their advocates will demand that it be covered by insurers, even if its meager benefits are not worth the costs and toxicity. And, while patients have every right to their own religious beliefs, should those whose beliefs are grounded in science be forced to contribute to the costs for patients who insist on aggressive care because they believe in miracles?
Fixing this is going to take a multifaceted approach. Both physicians and patients need access to better tools to help them prognosticate accurately. A wonderful example of such a tool is ePrognosis, developed by our VA-based geriatrics group. Clinicians also need better training in communicating prognosis with patients and surrogates, particularly in how to offer accurate information without robbing patients and families of (realistic) hopes.
As everybody who either read or watched Moneyball knows, baseball scouts who used to base their recruiting decisions on gestalt now rely on advanced statistics to make data-based prognostications. Similarly, decisions by patients and surrogates about treatments near the end of life should be based on empirical data and science, not on hope, theology, or magical thinking. And, in a healthcare world in which costs must be cut, policies – including insurance coverage for specific treatments – should be based on accurate information about prognoses and outcomes.
Can we have a calm, rational discussion about all of this, built on a foundation of science? In today's America, I'm sad to say that that would be a miracle. But a person can always hope.
Robert Wachter, MD, professor of medicine at UCSF, is widely regarded as a leading figure in the patient safety and quality movements. He edits the federal government's two leading safety websites, and the second edition of his book, "Understanding Patient Safety," was recently published by McGraw-Hill. In addition, he coined the term "hospitalist" in an influential 1996 essay in The New England Journal of Medicine and is chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine. His posts appear semi-regularly on THCB and on his own blog, Wachter's World.
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This article is more than 1 year old
Windows boss Steve Sinofsky exits Microsoft
Dual execs named to lead Redmond's OS, hardware efforts
Steven Sinofsky, who since 2009 has served as president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live divisions, has left the company less than a month after launching what Steve Ballmer called the most important operating system in Redmond's history.
"It is impossible to count the blessings I have received over my years at Microsoft," Sinofsky said in a statement on Monday. "I am humbled by the professionalism and generosity of everyone I have had the good fortune to work with at this awesome company."
Stepping up to lead product development for all future versions of Windows will be Julie Larson-Green, who has led various projects at Microsoft since joining the company in 1993. Most recently, she was responsible for program management, UI design and research, and internationalization for Windows 7 and 8.
In addition to heading up the Windows group, Larson-Green's new role will see her in charge of engineering for future Windows-based hardware products, such as the company's recently launched Surface fondleslabs.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer expressed the utmost confidence in Larson-Green, calling her "the best possible person for this job." Still, the responsibility of running Redmond's most important product divisions won't fall solely on her shoulders.
Bolstering her on the business side of affairs will be Tami Reller, currently chief financial officer and chief marketing officer for the Windows division, who will add a third hat to her already crowded head.
In her newly expanded role, Reller will be responsible for driving business and marketing strategy for Windows and all Windows-powered devices, including those manufactured by Microsoft partners.
Both women will report directly to Ballmer.
The leadership changes come on the heels of a series of significant new product launches for the Windows division, including not just Surface, but more importantly Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.
Microsoft's news release gave no reason for Sinofsky's departure, but said that it is effective immediately. ®


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Ok, Bravoians – get ready for the new line-up! Bravo has officially released the list of upcoming shows and it includes eleven all-new reality shows and eight returning gems! Among the most exciting news is that Real Housewife of Beverly Hills star Lisa Vanderpump has scored her own show about celebrity hotspot SUR and Real Housewives of Atlanta star Kandi Burruss' spin-off The Kandi Factory has also been added to the permanent roster!
Here's the list of what's to come!
"Silicon Valley" Bravo captures the intertwining lives of young professionals on the path to becoming Silicon Valley's next great success stories.
"Life After Top Chef" For the first time cameras are taken outside of the "Top Chef" kitchen and into the lives of Bravo's most beloved former cheftestants as they reach milestones in their personal lives and culinary careers. From opening their own restaurants to expanding their growing franchises, viewers will follow Jen Carroll in Philadelphia, Richard Blais in Atlanta, Fabio Viviani in Los Angeles and Spike Mendelsohn in DC.
"Below Deck" The upstairs and downstairs worlds collide when this young and single crew of "yachties" live, love and work together onboard a luxurious mega yacht while tending to the ever-changing needs of their wealthy, demanding charter guests.
"Huh?" Ever wonder who is behind those hilarious cat memes? Bravo goes inside the office of Ben Huh and his eclectic staff at icanhascheezburger.com, one of the largest humor publishers on the Internet known for their popular LOLs and FAILs.
"Miss Advised" These single relationship experts can't seem to practice what they preach as Amy Laurent in New York, Emily Morse in San Francisco and Julia Allison in Los Angeles struggle to stay afloat in the deep end of the dating pool.
"Newlyweds: The First Year"From the moment they say "I do" to their one-year anniversary, cameras capture diverse couples across the coasts experiencing the trials and tribulations of their first year of marriage.
"Gallery Girls" Viewers are introduced to seven young women who dream of living a chic and fashionable existence in New York City. All share a passion for art, but are divided amongst their Manhattan and Brooklyn lifestyles with vastly different attitudes and tastes towards fashion, art and men.
"LA Shrinks" It takes one to treat one! The professional and personal lives of dynamic experts are exposed as they counsel a wide array of clients at some of the top private practices in Los Angeles.
"Decades" Renowned boutique owners, Christos Garkinos and Cameron Silver, show off their exclusive and glamorous world of vintage couture filled with Givenchy, Balenciaga and Chanel.
The official preview trailer for all the new reality gems is below!
And now for the list of returning shows. I was surprised to see Chef Roblé & Co and Pregnant in Heels (although I kinda liked that show) coming back. Also returning is Flipping Out, Tabatha Takes Over, Top Chef (including Last Chance Kitchen), Top Chef Masters Million Dollar Listing, Million Dollar Decorators, and Inside The Actors Studio – which will feature the cast of Mad Men.
I was very surprised not to see the Rachel Zoe Project on the list!
And branching out, Bravo also announced the arrival of two scripted shows! "22 Birthdays" focuses on the sordid and scandalous activities of a group of parents at an exclusive private school, with each episode centered around an extravagant and lavish birthday party. And "Blowing Sunshine" is set at a fictional private rehabilitation center and follows its staff and high profile patients.
Moving on, last night Andy Cohen hosted the Watch What Happens Live All-Star Party. Among the proceedings was the official unveiling of the three new Real Housewives of New York; which was pretty much reality television's worst kept secret. Well, it's official Carole Radziwill, Aviva Drescher, and Heather Thomson will be embarrassing themselves on our TVs very soon!
A preview of the upcoming explosive season was revealed and it appears that the rumors of Pinot Singer not getting along with any of her fellow Housewives are confirmed! She goes to battle with everyone and may soon find herself on the Jill Zarin side of things if she keeps this up! The new ladies were shown banding together in an act of solidarity against "mean girl" behavior.
Among last night's surprising events was the conspicuous absence of Teresa Giudice! The entire Real Housewives of New Jersey cast was spotted together on the red carpet and participated in the Housewives East vs. West Battle Royale, but there was no Teresa in sight! It is well established that Teresa is not speaking to any of her castmates and rumors have been swirling that she's headed for a spin-off following the explosive fourth season, airing later this month!
Also interesting was that Lisa did not sit with her fellow RHOBH castmates and instead took the stage solo for a sit-down with Andy. She also skipped the Housewives battle. Perhaps confirming the casting gossip that Taylor Armstrong and Kim Richards are returning next season was their attendance. Oddly, Brandi Glanville was not in the audience!
Finally, the most troubling events of last night were the musical performances of Melissa Gorga and LuAnn de Lesseps. Now I love you both, but please believe – you cannot sing! Step away from the microphones…


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Season Change
Just as fall brings about changes to the leaves of the trees, so too has it brought about changes for RealTime Talent. On October 1st, RealTime Talent moved into the office space of the Center for Economic Inclusion. With boxes in hand, we trekked through the St. Paul skyway and made our way to the Osborn370 building to take advantage of the expansive and warm environment on the 9th floor. This space will allow RealTime Talent to continue to remain diligent in the cross-sector work of statewide labor market analysis and workforce alignment, and we look forward to even more opportunities for CEI and RealTime Talent to collaborate and work to build a prosperous and inclusive economy. We are grateful to Tawanna Black and the CEI team for accommodating and welcoming us.
We are excited to share news that the Minneapolis Regional Chamber Development Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, will now be our fiscal agent, to act on our behalf to perform various financial duties and administrative tasks. We thank Jonathan Weinhagen, Cheri Gengler, and all the Minneapolis Regional Chamber staff for their assistance. We also thank the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce Foundation for serving as our fiscal sponsor over the past two years.
Thank you to all those that partner with RealTime Talent. It is truly the strength of our partnerships that fuels our mission into action.
For more information contact firstname.lastname@example.com


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12 Ways To Curb Your Spending
12 Ways To Curb Your Spending
Page 1 of 2
A particularly effective means of draining your bank account is to do so in small doses. Twenty-dollar withdrawals from the ATM feel so petty that it doesn't seem harmful to go through half a dozen of them over the course of a few days. Of course, when the monthly statement comes in, it becomes clear just how damaging they really are.An obvious remedy to this situation and curb your spending is to cut down on trips to the ATM by withdrawing a lump sum of cash every week. Then again, old habits die hard and you might just find yourself taking out the big amounts with the same frequency that you did the smaller ones.
So how's this for an alternative solution: Eliminate the need for some of those small withdrawals by making some minor adjustments to your spending habits. For instance, cutting out the traditional post-work beers one night of the week might save you $20. Over the course of a month, that small sacrifice will keep an extra $80 in your account.
Here are a dozen other painless ways to curb your spending.
1- Iron and starch your own shirts
Keeping your shirts looking spiffy is a definite necessity; you can't show up to work looking like a slob. So shelling out $3 to $4 per shirt certainly seems like a reasonable cost to have them cleaned professionally. A better price still would be to make the one-time $2 investment toward a spritz bottle and do it yourself.Instead of chucking your shirts into a pile at the end of the day, hang them on the shower curtain rod and give them a quick spray of hot water. They'll be wrinkle-free in the morning, and you'll be a few dollars richer every week you do so.
2- Bring your own wine
Restaurants usually mark their wine stock up to around double the retail price. Seek out establishments in your area that allow you to bring your own wine, and save anywhere from $10 on up when you dine out. A bottle of Penfolds 1998 Kalimna Bin 28 Shiraz, for instance, runs for around $21 retail, but will cost you at least $40 coming from a waiter.3- Rent a movie
With the emergence of multiplex theaters, a night at the movies has turned into a rather expensive ordeal. Even if you go to see a show solo, the ticket price coupled with the ridiculously inflated cost of a drink and popcorn will easily cost you $20 to $25. Save yourself a withdrawal by getting a $4 to $5 rental instead. Drinks not included.4- Clip coupons
Be warned: Clipping coupons may draw some crude remarks from your buddies, but if you do it consistently enough, you'll be laughing all the way to the bank. Coupons will often give you around 20% off the marked price; apply this to a $100 grocery bill and you'll be $20 richer.We have more ways to curb your spending after the jump...


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Crime Free Housing
Click Here For Crime Free Housing Seminar Registration.
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What is it?
The Crime Free Rental Housing Program is a state-of-the-art, crime prevention program designed to reduce crime, drugs, and gangs on rental properties. This program was successfully developed at the Mesa Arizona Police Department in 1992. The International Crime Free Rental Housing Program as spread to approximately 2,000 cities in 48 U.S. States. The Crime Free Rental Housing Program is a unique, three phase certification program for rental properties of all sizes, including single family rental homes. The first phase is the completion of a seminar taught by police personnel. The second phase is an inspection of the property. Upon successful completion of the inspection, the third phase is a police social with the tenants and management. The police-sponsored program is designed to be easily implemented, and extremely effective at reducing criminal activity in rental properties.
What are the benefits?
- A stable, more satisfied tenant base
- Increased demand for rental units with a reputation for active management
- Lower maintenance and repair costs
- Increase property values
- Improved personal safety for tenants, landlords, and managers
- Reduced exposure to civil liability
What does this mean for me?
Landlords/Property Managers
- Attend a 6-8 hour seminar provided by Schiller Park
- Obtain a rental license from Schiller Park for all rental properties owned
- Adopt a Crime Free Rental Housing Lease Addendum
- Pass yearly rental property inspections performed by Community Development
- Pay an annual rental license fee
Renters/Residents at Rental Properties
- Required to have any resident over 18 years of age sign a Crime Free Housing Lease Addendum
- Abide by Crime Free Rental Housing Ordinances
- Breach of Crime Free Rental House Ordinances/Lease Addendum by any resident will be considered a breach of lease and can be grounds for eviction
Essential Crime Free Housing ("CFH")Documents:
Crime Free Housing Seminar Workbook (pdf)
Crime Free Housing Ordinance (pdf)
Crime Free Housing Pamphlet (pdf)
Crime Free Housing Fee Schedule (pdf)
CFH Multi-Family Rental License Application (pdf)
CFH Single Family Home-Condo Rental License Application (pdf)
Crime Free Housing Lease Addendum (pdf)
Outside Agency Seminar Certification (pdf)
Seminar Powerpoint Summary (pdf)
Multi-Family Dwelling License Program Forms:
Confidential Emergency Contact Numbers Form (pdf)
Application for Multi-Family Dwelling License (pdf)
Articles and Informational Resources:
The following are informational resources only and are not endorsed by the Village of Schiller Park. These resources should not be used in place of legal advice from an attorney.


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Many autistic people are said to have difficulty understanding, labelling, and describing their feelings, but I've always considered myself to be quite lucky in this respect – I've always thought I could describe how I felt, most of the time at least. So when Joanna (the my co-admin on this site) asked me yesterday, "How do you know when you're happy", I blithely answered, "When I'm feeling cheerful… when I have that joie de vivre, that glow inside. When I'm glad to be alive." "Yes," she said. "But how does that actually feel?" And I was stumped. She explained that I'd answered a question about a feeling by just using other feelings to describe it, leaving her no wiser about my experience of happiness.
We played around with the idea for a while, talking about anger, anxiety, and fear: we found we could describe those emotions in terms of of physical responses (adrenaline, racing heart, trembling, sweating, etc.), but when Jo said fear and anxiety felt like shouting inside her head, I jumped on that, saying happiness was like laughter inside my head; but none of it describes that all-consuming joy happiness brings. No even remotely. We tried describing happiness as an "absence of those negative emotions" (i.e. anger, anxiety, fear) – giving a feeling of calmness, of being safe – but that only touches on contentment. Again, it doesn't come close to happiness.
Chambers Dictionary defines "happy" as:
1. Lucky
2. Fortunate
3. Expressing, full of, or characterised by, contentment, wellbeing, pleasure, or good.
4. Apt
5. Felicitous
6. Carefree
7. Confident
8. Mildly drunk
Definitions 1-3, and 7 are just other emotions (4, 5 & 8 aren't relevant in this context), so only number 6, I think, comes close to a true explanation; but Chambers goes on to define "carefree" as a "lack of anxiety, worry, or responsibility", which just brings us back to the absence of negative emotions we already talked about.
I could say happiness is when I smile – when I smile a huge genuine smile – the kind another friend of mine describes as my "mountain smile" (the one on my face when I'm on top of a large hill). I can certainly remember how I feel at times like those, but if you asked me, "But what makes you smile?", what caused the primary feeling…? I wouldn't know.
So Jo made me aware that those of us who can supposedly identify and describe our emotions, still over-rely on cross-referencing them with other emotions, merely describing each feeling in terms of other feelings. This means there is no person-to-person datum for happiness – no baseline to which other people can refer. Negative emotions, however, cause obvious physical responses, and are thus easier to explain: everyone knows what an adrenaline rush feels like, or when your heart misses a beat, or when your legs feel like jelly… so why can't I describe happiness in this way? The very closest I can get is to say "my heart feels larger"; but don't our hearts "swell with with pride" and "fill with love"? So perhaps this explanation only describes a generic positive-emotion… it doesn't nail down happiness at all.
I'd love to know how you define it – answers in the comments box please!
©2015 Life on the Spectrum
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Scientists Seek to Rein In Diagnoses of Cancer
By TARA PARKER-POPEA group of experts advising the nation's premier cancer research institution has recommended changing the definition of cancer and eliminating the word from some common diagnoses as part of sweeping changes in the nation's approach to cancer detection and treatment.
The recommendations, from a working group of the National Cancer Institute, were published on Monday in The Journal of the American Medical Association. They say, for instance, that some premalignant conditions, like one that affects the breast called ductal carcinoma in situ, which many doctors agree is not cancer, should be renamed to exclude the word carcinoma so that patients are less frightened and less likely to seek what may be unneeded and potentially harmful treatments that can include the surgical removal of the breast.
The group, which includes some of the top scientists in cancer research, also suggested that many lesions detected during breast, prostate, thyroid, lung and other cancer screenings should not be called cancer at all but should instead be reclassified as IDLE conditions, which stands for "indolent lesions of epithelial origin."
While it is clear that some or all of the changes may not happen for years, if it all, and that some cancer experts will profoundly disagree with the group's views, the report from such a prominent group of scientists who have the backing of the National Cancer Institute brings the discussion to a higher level and will most likely change the national conversation about cancer, its definition, its treatment and future research.
"We need a 21st-century definition of cancer instead of a 19th-century definition of cancer, which is what we've been using," said Dr. Otis W. Brawley, the chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, who was not directly involved in the report.
The impetus behind the call for change is a growing concern among doctors, scientists and patient advocates that hundreds of thousands of men and women are undergoing needless and sometimes disfiguring and harmful treatments for premalignant and cancerous lesions that are so slow growing they are unlikely to ever cause harm.
The advent of highly sensitive screening technology in recent years has increased the likelihood of finding these so-called incidentalomas — the name given to incidental findings detected during medical scans that most likely would never cause a problem. However, once doctors and patients are aware a lesion exists, they typically feel compelled to biopsy, treat and remove it, often at great physical and psychological pain and risk to the patient. The issue is often referred to as overdiagnosis, and the resulting unnecessary procedures to which patients are subjected are called overtreatment.
Cancer researchers warned about the risk of overdiagnosis and overtreatment as a result of new recommendations from a government panel that heavy smokers be given an annual CT scan. While the policy change, announced on Monday but not yet made final, has the potential to save 20,000 lives a year, some doctors warned about the cumulative radiation risk of repeat scans as well as worries that broader use of the scans will lead to more risky and invasive medical procedures.
Officials at the National Cancer Institute say overdiagnosis is a major public health concern and a priority of the agency. "We're still having trouble convincing people that the things that get found as a consequence of mammography and P.S.A. testing and other screening devices are not always malignancies in the classical sense that will kill you," said Dr. Harold E. Varmus, the Nobel Prize-winning director of the National Cancer Institute. "Just as the general public is catching up to this idea, there are scientists who are catching up, too."
One way to address the issue is to change the language used to describe lesions found through screening, said Dr. Laura J. Esserman, the lead author of the report in The Journal of the American Medical Association and the director of the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center at the University of California, San Francisco. In the report, Dr. Esserman and her colleagues said they would like to see a multidisciplinary panel convened to address the issue, led by pathologists, with input from surgeons, oncologists and radiologists, among others.
"Ductal carcinoma in situ is not cancer, so why are we calling it cancer?" said Dr. Esserman, who is a professor of surgery and radiology at the University of California, San Francisco.
Such proposals will not be universally embraced. Dr. Larry Norton, the medical director of the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, said the larger problem is that doctors cannot tell patients with certainty which cancers will not progress and which cancers will kill them, and changing terminology does not solve that problem.
"Which cases of D.C.I.S. will turn into an aggressive cancer and which ones won't?" he said, referring to ductal carcinoma in situ. "I wish we knew that. We don't have very accurate ways of looking at tissue and looking at tumors under the microscope and knowing with great certainty that it is a slow-growing cancer."
Dr. Norton, who was not part of the report, agreed that doctors do need to focus on better communication with patients about precancerous and cancerous conditions. He said he often tells patients that even though ductal carcinoma in situ may look like cancer, it will not necessarily act like cancer — just as someone who is "dressed like a criminal" is not actually a criminal until that person breaks the law.
"The terminology is just a descriptive term, and there's no question that has to be explained," Dr. Norton said. "But you can't go back and change hundreds of years of literature by suddenly changing terminology."
But proponents of downgrading cancerous conditions with a simple name change say there is precedent for doing so. The report's authors note that in 1998, the World Health Organization changed the name of an early-stage urinary tract tumor, removing the word "carcinoma" and calling it "papillary urothelial neoplasia of low malignant potential." When a common Pap smear finding called "cervical intraepithelial neoplasia" was reclassified as a low-grade lesion rather than a malignancy, women were more willing to submit to observation rather than demanding treatment, Dr. Esserman said.
"Changing the language we use to diagnose various lesions is essential to give patients confidence that they don't have to aggressively treat every finding in a scan," she said. "The problem for the public is you hear the word cancer, and you think you will die unless you get treated. We should reserve this term, 'cancer,' for those things that are highly likely to cause a problem."
The concern, however, is that since doctors do not yet have a clear way to tell the difference between benign or slow-growing tumors and aggressive diseases with many of these conditions, they treat everything as if it might become aggressive. As a result, doctors are finding and treating scores of seemingly precancerous lesions and early-stage cancers — like ductal carcinoma in situ, a condition called Barrett's esophagus, small thyroid tumors and early prostate cancer.
But even after years of aggressively treating those conditions, there has not been a commensurate reduction in invasive cancer, suggesting that overdiagnosis and overtreatment are occurring on a large scale.
The National Cancer Institute working group also called for a greater focus on research to identify both benign and slow-growing tumors and aggressive diseases, including the creation of patient registries to learn more about lesions that appear unlikely to become cancer.
Some of that research is already under way at the National Cancer Institute. Since becoming director of the institute three years ago, Dr. Varmus has set up a list of "provocative questions" aimed at encouraging scientists to focus on critical areas, including the issue of overdiagnosis and molecular tests to distinguish between slow-growing and aggressive tumors.
Another National Cancer Institute program, the Barrett's Esophagus Translational Research Network, or Betrnet, is focused on changes in the esophageal lining that for years have been viewed as a precursor to esophageal cancer. Although patients with Barrett's are regularly screened and sometimes treated by burning off the esophageal lining, data now increasingly suggest that most of the time, Barrett's is benign and probably does not need to be treated at all. Researchers from various academic centers are now working together and pooling tissue samples to spur research that will determine when Barrett's is most likely to become cancerous.
"Our investigators are not just looking for ways to detect cancer early, they are thinking about this question of when you find a cancer, what are the factors that might determine how aggressively it will behave," Dr. Varmus said. "This is a long way from the thinking 20 years ago, when you found a cancer cell and felt you had a tremendous risk of dying."


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A wounded man brought to the emergency room at Shifa Hospital.
Photo: AP
In the grisly math of the Israel-Hamas war, conflicting counts of combatants and civilians killed in Gaza are emerging — with the ratio perhaps more important to shaping international opinion of the month long conflict than any final toll.
The UN and rights groups operating in Gaza under the umbrella of the High Commissioner for Human Rights(OHCHR), say about three-quarters of the around 1,900 Palestinians killed were civilians, including 450 children, with many perishing in strikes that killed several family members at a time.
Israel estimates that between 40-50 percent of those killed in Gaza were fighters.
Emergency Room at Shifa Hospital in Gaza. (צילום: רויטרס)
While the overall count is not in great dispute, those doing tallies use different methods and standards to make that all important determination of who is a civilian.
Matthias Behnk, from OHCHR, told the BBC recently that the large number of casualties in such a short time meant that the UN groups, "focused primarily on recording the casualties," and not initially trying to differentiate between civilians and militants.
Related stories:
- UN, US condemn renewed rocket fire at Israel
- Jordanians stage massive pro-Hamas rally
- UN identifies 1,117 Gaza casualties, 83% of them civilians
"As such, we have not at this stage conducted a detailed analysis of trends of civilian casualties, for example in relation to the reasons why different groups are affected and the types of incidents, but hope to carry this out at some point in the coming future," said Behnk to BBC News.
The UN and human rights groups rely on witness accounts and community contacts of field researchers to distinguish civilians from combatants.
Mahmoud AbuRahma of the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights said his researchers require at least two sources and count on their local ties to determine if someone was a combatant or civilian.
For its part, Israel has said it uses its own intelligence reports to determine who among the dead belonged to Hamas or other militant groups.
IDF Spokesman Capt Eytan Buchman told BBC News that "the UN numbers being reported are, by and by large, based on the Gaza health ministry, a Hamas-run organization".
"It's important to bear in mind that in Operation Cast Lead the last Israeli ground offensive in December 2008-January 2009, Hamas and Gaza-based organizations claimed that only 50 combatants were killed, admitting years later the number was between 600-700, a figure nearly identical to the figure claimed by the IDF," the spokesperson told the BBC.
The ratio of civilians to combatants could be used by either side to promote their narrative of what took place in the conflict.
Israel faces growing international criticism over the large number of civilians killed in Gaza, with President Barack Obama and UN chief Ban Ki-moon both saying Israel could do much more to prevent harm to noncombatants.
Ban said this week that "the massive deaths and destruction in Gaza have shocked and shamed the world."
However, a high ratio of civilian deaths does not necessarily point to a violation of the rules of war, said Sarah Knuckey, an international human rights lawyer at Columbia Law School in New York.
It might raise legal concerns, but "does not itself answer whether any party ... violated the rule against disproportionate attacks," she said. In judging if disproportionate force was used, each incident has to be investigated separately, she said.
In explaining the civilian casualties, Israel has accused Gaza fighters of launching attacks from crowded residential areas.
Brig. Gen. Mickey Adelstein, a senior Israeli army commander, said forces under his command "avoided attacking many, many targets" because civilians were present and that "Hamas took advantage of that issue."
Adelstein said Thursday the military estimated that between 1,700 and 2,000 Palestinians had been killed, but that Israel didn't have the names of all the dead yet.
He said the number of dead militants was being underreported.
In one set of 300 names classified as civilians "at least 50 percent were ... members of the Hamas terrorist movement," he said, declining to give further details on exactly who made that classification.
Adelstein did not provide Israel's definition of a Hamas member. The movement has both a political and a military wing, along with thousands of civil servants who worked in the outgoing Hamas government in Gaza.
The initial source of information about deaths in the war has been the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The ministry has become more efficient in collecting data over the years, learning from two previous rounds of fighting in 2008-2009 and in 2012, said Ashraf al-Kidra, the keeper of the statistics.
Overall, there has been little discrepancy between al-Kidra's count and that of the human rights groups, which say they check his figures against their own research.
Al-Kidra sits in an office at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital and receives casualty reports from hospitals and emergency services. Throughout the day, he frequently updates the figures on the ministry website and takes calls from reporters.
On Friday, his overall toll since July 8 stood at 1,902 dead, including at least 450 children and 243 women. Al-Kidra uses a very broad definition of civilians, saying the term applies to anyone who has not been claimed by one of the armed groups as a member.
UN researchers start out with figures from the ministry, the media and other sources, but then cross-check them with the help of Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups.
The UN's overall number of 1,922 killed is slightly higher than that of the Gaza Health Ministry.
The UN said nearly 73 percent of the total, or 1,407, were civilians, defined as those who didn't take part in hostilities and were not members of armed groups.
According to Matthias Behnke, head of the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in the Palestinian territories, the classification of civilians and combatants is based, in part, on witness accounts and field researchers' knowledge of their local communities.
"Gaza people do know each other and there is a good network of identifying people," he said. Figures are preliminary and a more thorough investigation would follow after the war, he added.
The highest toll has been provided by the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which said 1,976 Palestinians were killed over the past month, almost 83 percent of them civilians.
The group's higher count of civilians is due, in part, to a broader definition. The PCHR says anyone who is not effectively participating in a military operation is a civilian, including a Hamas fighter who is killed at home while taking a break.
The Israeli group B'Tselem has adopted the most conservative approach, saying it is only putting women, children and men over 60 — or a total of 615 people out of the 1,510 dead it as counted so far — in the civilian category for now.
B'Tselem's overall count is still incomplete, but Noa Tal, in charge of data, said she expects it to be roughly on par with that of the other groups once all the information has been collected.
In the end, Gaza militants may be the ones providing clarity.
After previous rounds of fighting, Hamas and other groups listed the names of the dead and arranged ceremonies for those killed in battle.
In this war, four smaller groups, including Islamic Jihad, announced a total of 43 deaths, presumably a partial count. Hamas, for now, remains silent.
Polina Garaev contributed to this report.


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For the dough:
• 360 g flour
• 42 g fresh yeast
• 100 ml lukewarm full-fat milk
• 120 g sugar
• 3 egg yolks
• 2 eggs
• 180 g soft butter
• 70 g candied orange peel, diced
• 70 g candied lemon peel, diced
• 70 g raisins
• grated rind or ½ untreated orange and ½ untreated lemon
• 1 pinch of salt
• 20 g melted butter for the mould/ramekins
• 40 g flaked almonds for the mould/ramekins
For the glaze:
• 150 g sugar syrup
• 6 tablespoons orange liqueur
For dusting:
• icing sugar
Advent ring cake
For a 22 cm Gugelhupf mould or for eight ramekins with a diameter of 11 cm and 6 cm high.
1. To make the dough, combine 125 g of flour, the crumbled yeast and the milk and stir well. Cover and leave to prove in a warm place for 30 minutes. Add the remainder of the flour, the sugar, the egg yolks, the eggs, butter, candied orange and lemon peel, raisins, the orange and lemon rind and the salt to the dough and knead well until smooth, using the dough hook of a hand mixer. Cover with a clean cloth and leave to prove in a warm place for about 45 minutes.
2. Brush the mould or ramekins with the melted butter and then sprinkle in the flaked almonds. Fill the mould or ramekins three-quarters full with the dough, leave to prove again for about 10-20 minutes. Bake the ramekins in a preheated oven at 180 °C for about 30 minutes, the large mould for about 60 minutes.
3. To make the glaze, stir together the sugar syrup and orange liqueur. Turn the cake out onto a cooling rack. Brush evenly with the sugar-and-orange glaze. Finally, dust with the icing sugar. Wrapped in cling film, the cake will keep for about 2 weeks. The perfect pre-Christmas gift!
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This article is more than 1 year old
Sony Pictures virtualises filers
Avere gets a big one
Sony Pictures Imageworks, the special effects company behind Alice in Wonderland 3D, is virtualising its filers behind Avere appliances.
SPI has been in the computer-generated imagery (CGI) field since 1992 and worked on movies such as Die Hard With A Vengeance and Anger Management. It has a digital animation studio in Culver City, California, another in Vancouver and one in Albuquerque. The company has been using generations of Isilon scale-out NAS filers to hold animation files.
It's now decided to front-end the filers with Avere's FXT filer accelerator appliance. This holds different sorts of data flowing to and from the filers in four tiers of storage: DRAM, NVRAM, NAND flash and fast SAS hard drives. Data is assigned to the tiers based on things like its I/O characteristics such as being random or sequential, and whether it's read or write data. The aim is to optimise access speed for each I/O type. Data that is not new enough or being accessed repetitively enough to reside on the FXT's internal storage tiers is assigned to bulk filer storage on what Avere calls a traditional filer, typically one using bulk capacity SATA drives.
The scale-out aspect of this comes from the FXT appliances being clusterable.
SPI's Stephen Kowalski, its systems and storage operations director, said SPI chose Avere "to support our digital animation studio in Albuquerque because not only does its FXT Series deliver the IOPs the group needs without driving up operational costs, its two-stage NAS architecture allows us the flexibility to work with a multitude of mass storage systems. Now we can choose whichever solution best suits our changing needs without worrying about being limited by a single vendor's architecture."
This appears to harm Isilon because it has just announced STEC flash-enhanced controllers for its S- and X-series IQ product. Flash technology can deliver eight times lower latency and up twice the IOPS of non-flash Isilon product. The Isilon gear can scale out to 10PB so SPI couldn't have had scale-out limitation problems with Isilon.
Isilon is well-entrenched in Sony - Sony Music Network, Sony Online Entertainment, Sony Pictures Digital Authoring Center, and Sony Pictures Imageworks are just a few of the Sony business units that have deployed its clustered storage systems. Bill Villarreal, technology VP at SPI said in 2007, at which time SPI had three Isilon clusters: "Isilon IQ provides the high data performance, scalability and ease of use we require to power specific areas of our data-intensive visual effects pipeline."
It was intriguing that when these new Isilon products were announced its marketing VP Sam Grocott said: "Avere is doing some really cool things, very intelligent caching. It's complementary to Isilon's scale-out NAS. Frankly it can run with us." Well yes, and so it is at SPI. The thing that grabs your attention here is that Avere is being used to accelerate some of the best scale-out NAS on the planet, not bog standard filers with limited scalability.
Avere sits in front of the Islion IQ clustered kit and enables SPI, if it wishes, to buy cheaper filers and still have blistering performance courtesy of the FXT tiering. If Avere can persuade operators of clustered Isilon NAS that its box is worth having then that sets a high bar for companies like IBM (SONAS) and NetApp with its scalable Data Ontap 8 product, to sell against.
The competitive situation for NetApp might be cherished by Avere as NetApp's CEO Tom Georgens has said tiering is dying. It's all the more ironic given that the FXT is basically a highly intelligent NAS controller in the NetApp PAM (DRAM or flash Performance Acceleration Module) mode but with additional NVRAM and SAS drive tiers.
Avere emphasises the dollar benefits of using its kit instead of adding more filers to an existing set up. It claims "decoupling storage network performance from the disk capacity available enables Avere to deliver enterprise-class application performance while slashing CAPEX acquisition costs by almost 70 per cent and ongoing OPEX expenditures by a 5:1 ratio on average."
It seems to us here at The Register with our scientific back-of-an-envelope analysis service, that Avere is a distinctly purchasable company. If its technology can fit seamlessly in front of servers accessing existing NAS filers, then it could sit equally well inside a NAS filer company's product range as an accelerating controller with virtually no upfront integration required at all. Then it would help them gain entry into Isilon and other filer vendors' accounts, and virtualise the customer's legacy NAS estate as well.
Wow! Surely the same thought must be occurring to every NAS supplier? ®