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The Boy Scouts can be a wonderful place for a kid to learn skills and qualities. However, negligent supervision and alleged coverups have enabled sexual predators to abuse kids. You are here because:
- Your kid was or you suspect is being abused in the Boy Scouts
- You want to know what your next steps are?
- You want justice and to prevent this from happening to anyone else in the future
Trust our experienced child sexual abuse and molestation lawyers to handle your case.
We have to be able to trust organizations are doing the necessary background checks.
"A Friend & Advocate." I was so angry. Brian helped me get to a better place.
The Boy Scouts was founded in 1910, amid a wave of concern over a perceived lack of guidance for youth due to changing trends in family life and values. Many parents feared that their children would grow up lacking in the traditional values, patriotism, and religious views that they felt were crucial to proper character development.
Boy Scouts: Good Intentions Gone Awry?
The programs designed by the Boy Scouts were supposed to allow "morally upright" men and women to teach boys the skills, morals, and values that they would need to grow into well-rounded young men. Today, the Boy Scouts still purports to help children and young people develop strong moral fiber as they engage in outdoor activities and learn a variety of practical skills.
Yet participation in these Scouting programs has rendered thousands of boys vulnerable to unspeakable abuse. Furthermore, despite claiming to run a"comprehensive" program for education on and prevention of child sex abuse, the BSA reportedly offers scant support to victims, instead choosing to fight abuse complaints and refusing to inform law enforcement.
However well-intentioned the Boy Scouts may be, critics feel their programs and regulations harbor glaring flaws that have rendered innocent youth helpless, time and time again, to the cold-hearted designs of child molesters and rapists, some of which had already been previously-accused or even convicted of sexual offenses.
Turning A Blind Eye To Child Sex Abuse?
Survivors and their families claim that the BSA has actually been aware of sexual abuse regularly occurring in its programs since shortly after the organization was founded, yet didn't take effective measures to stop the misconduct. Instead, BSA officials long handled matters in such a way that not only gave perpetrators the chance to escape punishment, but also allowed them to continue abusing children.
"Perversion Files" Kept Under Seal
Ever since the BSA's beginnings, the organization made a point to keep information on adult volunteer members who behaved inappropriately, violated rules and regulations, or who were found to have a checkered past. A large amount of the entries from these "ineligible volunteer files" had to do with sexual predators and have been also called the "perversion files."
The BSA claims that these files are kept a secret in order to encourage prompt and accurate reporting of abuse incidents, arguing that making the "perversion files" public will make victims and witnesses less likely to report misconduct. But critics of the BSA believe that the organization is actually keeping the files out of the public eye in order to protect the public image of the Boy Scouts as a whole as well as the reputation of BSA officials.
BSA Launches Youth Protection Program
Though longtime BSA administrators have said that sex abuse of Scouts was a problem from the organization's beginnings, it was only in the 1980's that the BSA finally made a serious effort to combat the problem by launching a series of initiatives aimed at preventing sexual abuse of children, including:
- Mandatory reporting of abuse. BSA officials and administrators are required to report any abuse they learn of.
- Getting parents involved through education. Parents are told to make sure their children are aware of the dangers of sexual abuse, enforced through education and measures such as requiring children to fill out a release form of sorts, saying that they've discussed issues of possible sex abuse with their parents before joining a troop.
- "Two-Deep" Leadership. Scouts cannot be alone with just one Scout leader; there always must be at least 2 adults present during troop meetings and outings.
- Respecting Privacy of Scouts. Scout leaders must take care to allow Scouts privacy when showering, using the bathroom, or any other time privacy is needed.
Though these initiatives, along with the BSA's Youth Protection Program as a whole, have been praised as some of the best abuse prevention attempts made by a youth activity organization, their impact on the issues seems to have been limited at best.
Based on victim testimony, these programs have made it no harder for pedophile Scout leaders to abuse the system. At the very least, such programs seemed to shift the responsibility to the victims and their parents rather than truly addressing the root problem--the way BSA was allowing dangerous men to enter their programs and continue volunteering even after serious complaints were made against them.
Former Scouts File Lawsuits Against BSA
Several legal claims filed against the BSA by former Scouts have become extremely high-profile in the past several years, almost rivaling the level of controversy raised by the sexual abuse problems in the Catholic church.
Perversion Files Revealed In Landmark Trial
During a major Scouting abuse trial, in which allegations from former Scout Kerry Lewis were examined, the jury discovered that the BSA had been receiving abuse complaints for decades and not only took insufficient action on many complaints, but also kept the reports hidden so that the public wouldn't even get close to an accurate idea of how bad the abuse problem was in the organization.
"Ineligible Volunteers"
The secret "ineligible volunteer files," which included over 600 complaints from victims, are still being hidden by the BSA to this day, but some of them were brought to light as evidence for the Lewis trial. The existence of such a fount of evidence of rampant sexual abuse, hidden and practically ignored by the BSA, completely stunned and disgusted the jury.
Even worse, law enforcement often cooperated with the BSA, agreeing to help cover up evidence of heinous sexual abuse of innocent boys due to "respect" for the contributions of the BSA to local communities.
$18.5 Million Jury Verdict
The Boy Scouts of America was ultimately ordered by the Oregon jury to pay $18.5 million in damages to Lewis, which was the largest court award granted in a Scout sex abuse case to date, though Lewis had originally asked for $25 million.


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If you are reading this, then is very likely that you've also read other posts related to healthy diets. Nutrition is a complex topic that has gained a lot of attention over the years, mostly for good reasons. But when something becomes popular everybody wants to let their opinion be known and some things really should be left to the experts.
If you make a quick search about "healthy diets" and dedicate only 30 minutes to reading the top results, you'll find that there are a lot of contradictions and inconsistencies between articles. You'll probably find 10 different things about antioxidants and the miracles of fiber. Sadly, most of those articles are written without understanding that a healthy diet is something that changes with circumstances. What is healthy for me may not be healthy for you.
A healthy diet is simply a diet that allows you to consume all the nutrients you need to function properly. Understand what different macro nutrients (carbs, proteins and fats) are needed for. See what choices are available for organic and commercial diets.
That is actually an impossible question and depends on lots of complex variables. Your body type, food allergies, lifestyle and type work you do play a big part in this. At the moment, the scientific community has no magic diets. There are plenty of theories about how some diets are better than others and the benefits that some individuals could obtain from them.
For instance the Mediterranean Diet has been gaining a lot of attention over the last few years for its many recognized effects over risk factors related to cardiovascular disease, insulin sensitivity, inflammation, etc. So it is a fine recommendation if you are looking for a diet with those particular benefits. However, this is just an example; other diets offer benefits that may be more attractive for people under different circumstances.
Different people have different goals. Some want to cut the extra fat and some want to gain lean muscle. A few diet plans focus on simply providing all necessary nutrients that an average man or woman would require based on the nutritional value of each food item and a current understanding of a population's nutritional needs. Such is the case of the Eatwell guide.
Some common recommendations that remain valid and should be considered if you are thinking about creating better eating habits are:
If you suffer from some kind of nutrient deficiency, then a normal diet may not be recommended. Treatment for these conditions can include special & healthy diets designed by a nutritionist and/or supplements.
As we mentioned before, a healthy diet is something very personal. It needs to be healthy for YOU. Don't follow trends without facts. If you want to know and follow a personalized diet or understand your nutritional needs, we recommend getting an appointment with a nutritionist to get a specific diet plan for your needs.

subset: commoncrawl


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February 24, 1952 - October 14, 2020
| Age 68
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"My condolences to the family of Fred Dean, we hope many of the encouraging words and thoughts on this site comforts you during this difficult time. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2008 and to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2009. Thank you for Fred's contribution to football. May you find comfort in your wealth of fond memories together. In the days ahead throw all of your sadness, cries and anxieties on the Hearer of Prayers who cares for you."
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There are many dangers emerging from climate change.
The biggest risk of the current global warming is that there are many ways in which warming can cause more warming, which causes more warming, and so on.
There are also dangers associated with:
So much change threatens the stability which maintains the web of life and supports life as we know it. It threatens to exacerbate human difficulties and create chaos for the 7.6 billion people on the planet.
Consider a 3 C increase in temperature
If rapid action does not occur the planet is headed for a temperature increase of 3 C about pre-industrial times – and more. We do not know where the Earth's tipping points are, but this could easily be passed one of these tipping points. It would kick off the transition to a different planet and the extinction of a large proportion of all species on the planet. During the Pliocene, the temperature of the planet was about 3 C higher than our pre-industrial temperatures. The seas were 25 metres higher over a period of three million years.
What would 3 degrees mean
Climate Code Red: Sep 2010
Global heating is a crime
Around the globe, many politicians and media barons promote the use of fossil fuels and oppose action to limit climate change, e.g. the Trump administration in the US, the Federal Coalition government in Australia, and the Murdoch press.
These people have the whole world of information at their fingertips, so they should know the dangers of climate change. To oppose climate action with the knowledge of its danger is to support the destruction of our liveable planet. So, whether they are acting in ignorance or with knowledge, this is a crime of the highest order. They are climate criminals.
I am a climate alarmist. Global warming is a crime against humanity.
The Guardian: 30 April 2017: Lawrence Torcello


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- Arjo Atayde reel-life autistic role is praised by Autism Society Philippines
- Perfect 10 was given by Maricel Soriano to Arjo's acting in 'The General's Daughter'
- He is really a good and flexible actor in this generation
Arjo Atayde plays one of the vital roles in the most talked-about Kapamilya teleserye 'The General's Daughter.' Recently, the Autism Society Philippines(ASP) commended his good acting with his character Elai, an autistic son of Maricel Soriano in the teleserye.
ASP President Grace Luna Adviento is grateful with how Arjo portrayed his role as an autistic. The actor was able to give justice to his character, because he really acted as a real-life autistic in the teleserye.
"Papa O, sa lahat ng nag-portray ng autistic, si Arjo Atayde ang pinaka-realistic for me. Thank you at justifiable ang pag-portray niya ng role sa 'The General's Daughter.' Ang galing!" Ms. Grace messaged Ogie Diaz.
The claim was supported also by a viewer who has an autistic family member, "Tama ang acting ni Arjo, kapag nagsasalita hindi siya nakatingin sa kausap, may iba siyang tinitingnan. Wala silang masyadong body language, normal lang ang kilos, malalaman mo lang pag nagsalita. At higit sa lahat, wala silang feelings, hindi sila malambing."
No wonder, Diamond Star Maricel gave Arjo a 'perfect 10' score for his acting role.
What more can this actor give to show business? Is there any role he can't portray?
Watch out for more of Elai in 'The General's Daughter.' Meanwhile, Arjo's movie with Jessy Mendiola, 'The Stranded' is now showing nationwide.


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Chan-Chan's Anime Blog03/13/2009 02:34 PM EDT
Soul Eater Episode 48 >>
Totally unexpected!!! Shinigami has lost! Arachne is dead! Oh... who could have guessed that? I'm surprised with the way Shinigami lost. It happens so abruptly. I feel likewise with Arachne's death. With 3 more episodes, it's not difficult to guess what's going to happen in the end. My guess is Maka, Black Star and Kid (the 3 main characters) will win Kishin - Happy Ending! Unless they decide to go for an unconventional ending, my guess should be right. The ending may be easy to guess but what's unpredictable is the process of getting to the end. I can't wait to see what's going to happen. Will it be another episode full of unexpected events next week? SummaryKishin is now in Death City. Finally, it's Shinigami vs Kishin!! The both of them are evenly matched. They manage to fight on equal terms and it's hard to predict who will win as no one looks like he is going to lose.Halfway through the battle, Kishin starts talking about the past and what he thought about back then when he was imprisoned inside the bag made of his own skin by Shinigami. He feels that people's imaginations are frightening, and he argues that imagination is the source of all emotions. Shinigami, who is uninterested with his talk, and Spirit resonate their souls and use Kishin Gari to cut off Kishin's right arm. However, Kishin's right arm regenerates almost immediately. Continuing with his talk earlier, Kishin adds that death isn't frightening, but imagining death is. For this reason, Kishin claims that he has stopped imagining.Meanwhile, Black Star, Tsubaki and Mifune are trying to look for Angela in Baba Yaga's Castle but they are lost. Black Star, who has a bad sense of direction, knocks down walls and he finally manages to reach Angela. The first thing Angela does when she sees him is to kick him in the crotch.Elsewhere in the castle, Arachne decides not to escape as she's confident that Kishin will come back to her.Back to Death City, Shinigami vs Kishin fight continues. Shinigami feels that Kishin is someone who can't be calm unless he crushes his uneasiness one by one. On the other hand, Kishin feels that Shinigami's rules and order can't curb uneasiness. They continue arguing until Kishin fires an energy blast at Kid and Azusa. Shinigami immediately uses himself to block the attack. A few moments after, Kid finds Spirit and Azusa injured and his father fallen and unconscious.Excalibur, who is observing the fight, asks Kishin what's there in a world of madness. Kishin replies that it's fine if there's nothing, as long as there's no fear. He adds that Shinigami has lost because of the idiotic rules and relationships he holds to. Excalibur disagress. Kishin feels that it will be better not to live with any troublesome rules and relationships. At that moment, he suddenly remembers his relationship with Arachne. Realizing that he has to fix it at once, Kishin leaves Death City and returns to Baba Yaga's Castle. Arachne welcomes him back. Kishin expresses his fear for her, and without hesitation, he plunges his hand into her chest, pulls out her soul and eats it!PicturesShinigami vs Kishin!The fight begins!Soul Resonance!Black Star can't tell left from right -.-||But he still manages to find Angela!Shingami uses his body to shield Kid and Azusa from Kishin's sudden attack!Kid is shocked to see his father in this state!Excalibur and Kishin seem to know each other very well.Kishin suddenly remembers Arachne and decides to do what he has to do.That is to kill her and eat her soul!
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta
Episode: Soul Eater Episode 48


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After a hard day's work, it's lovely to be able to get home, kick off your shoes, and relax on the sofa with a nice glass of wine. If a tenant can imagine themselves doing this whilst on a viewing, then it's much more likely that they'll want to live in the property they're looking at.
Here are our top 3 tips for furnishing property to maximise its appeal to prospective tenants.
Keep it light
By keeping furniture relatively neutral, it allows tenants to imagine themselves in your property. The overuse of strong colours can turn off good potential tenants if it doesn't suit their personal taste. Neutral doesn't have to mean boring though – think fresh and modern.
Work with the space you have
You may have found a great deal on a dining room table that looks lovely, but when it's in the space, is it difficult to walk around? Does it make storage space inaccessible? When choosing furniture, think about how a tenant might live in the space.It's always a good idea to have some approximate measurements to hand – it's very easy to misremember the size of space you've got to work with.
Finishing touches
When it comes to both marketing your property, and taking prospective tenants on viewings, a few homely touches can make all the difference. A throw, a few cushions, it really play into the post-work image we mentioned at the start of this post.
If this isn't something you're wanting to do yourself, never fear! At Regent Property we offer bespoke furnishing solutions with our sister company Red Door Furnishings. Every package is comprehensively designed with attracting quality tenants in mind, making your property stand out as the best option in a competitive market.
To enquire, or to find out more information, visit the Red Door Furnishings page.


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2016…and time for a new meme from Helena. This year it is "Snap": between 2 and 4 photos that create a visual set. As is usual for me, I exceeded the 4 photo guideline!
The Manitoba Orchid society held their annual show and sale last week at the Assiniboine Park Conservatory. I had been to the show a few years ago and took TONS of photos with a "real" camera, so this year I decided to go with just my iPad, cell phone and an inexpensive($15) macro lens converter. To see how high-tech this macro lens is, click here.
The iPad shots were not very exciting, so I switched to using the macro lens on my cell phone. To use the macro lens you have to get VERY close to the subject matter. But with the expensive orchids, I was afraid to get too close to them in case I touched them and/or knocked them over(yikes…I can't imagine the hysterics!! And deservedly so!!).
So I mostly got out-of-focus, abstracty shots:
Click on any photo below to start a slide show!
I think I have to play with this lens more often!
Linking to Helena's "Snap" meme here


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1st September 2016, Thursday
LOW DERMA™ Technology Official Launch and Press Conference was held in the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. The launch has introduced a new patented technology to address and solve the issue of glove-induced allergies concerning both occupational and non-occupational users. This technology emphasises on the elimination of Sulphur and Chemical Accelerators in gloves which causes Type IV Hypersensitivity; and the substitution of natural rubber latex with synthetic latex has allowed the elimination of Type I Hypersensitivity caused by latex proteins. The LOW DERMA™ Technology enhanced nitrile gloves is the first to be granted "Low Dermatitis Potential" claim by the United States Food and Drugs Administration (U.S. FDA).
Guests from governmental and non-governmental sectors were furnished with educational sharing related to glove-induced allergies and information on the ability of this technology to address those issues. At the press conference, Tan Sri Lim Kuang Sia, CEO of KOSSAN further explained that there will be continuous innovation to ensure the technology will deliver the best solution to the glove users. Meanwhile, LOW DERMA™ Technology will continue to obtain more accreditations from reputable organisations to give glove users the confidence towards the LOW DERMA™ Technology. He also mentioned that the journey of the technology does not end at the launch as the mission is to ensure the LOW DERMA™ Technology enhanced nitrile gloves is easily accessible by the public and occupational groups. In line with the mission, efforts of extensive educational activities, information access, clinical testing and endorsements of the LOW DERMA™ Technology will be conducted.


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mortgage loan insurance products (5+ units) As Canada's only provider of mortgage loan insurance for multi-unit residential properties, CMHC provides access to preferred interest rates lowering borrowing costs for the construction, purchase and refinance of multi-unit residential properties and facilitates renewals throughout the life of the.
The mortgage insurance requirements are the same for 2, 3, and 4 unit homes as they are for single family residences. You are obligated to pay PMI if you choose a conventional loan and place less than 20% down. If you choose a FHA loan than you must pay the upfront mortgage insurance (1.75%).
5 Year Fixed Mortgage Rates Ontario investment real estate mortgage rates texas Hammer Commercial 100 ltv commercial loan 360 365 Interest The 360-Day Year: Does It Matter to Borrowers? – The difference between a 360-day and a 365-day year is relevant to the calculation of prepaid or per diem interest. This is interest for the period between the loan closing date and the first day of the following month.BoT probes upsurge in auto lending – Commercial banks' auto loans outstanding rose to 1.07 trillion baht last. Mr Somchai said housing loans with an LTV ratio above 100% have declined to around 19% of total mortgages from above 20%.Loncar & Associates was founded in 1988 and operates 11 firms across Texas. Neither the dallas police department nor his wife, Sue Loncar, immediately responded to requests for comment.average commercial real estate Loan Rates for 2019 – ValuePenguin – For 2019, the average commercial real estate loan interest rate ranges from approximately 4% to 5%. Find out more about what the average commercial real estate loan rates are for different types of loans and projects.3 The Annual Percentage Rate (APR) is based on a $300,000 mortgage, 25 year amortization, for the applicable term assuming monthly payments and fee to obtain a valuation of property of $300 (fees vary from $0 to $300). If there are no fees, the APR and interest rate will be the same.
It depends on the loan program, but you'll usually have to put more down for a multi-unit mortgage that you'd have to for a single-family home, which can require as little as 3% down. Typical down payments for multi-unit conventional loans are: Duplex, 15% of the purchase price. triplex, 20% of the purchase price.
Multi-Unit Residential Mortgage . Multi-unit residential property can be financed up to 85% loan-to-value. Rental property mortgage is available for acquisition of newly built or existing properties as well as refinance at a great rate to: Free the equity built within the property to.
Hunt Mortgage Group has provided a $7.6 million conventional Fannie Mae loan to finance the acquisition of a 202-unit multifamily property in Columbus, Ohio. According to Yardi Matrix data, Hamilton.
Minimum property requirements (MPRs) for multi-unit VA loan purchases are different because the property has more living spaces to examine. The VA MPRs change for buildings with more than one unit simply because there's more housing. Each individual unit on the property must be private and accessible.
300 000 Mortgage Monthly Payment The monthly payment for a $300,000 mortgage varies depending on the term of the mortgage as well as your loan's interest rate. It's a complex calculation, so once you understand how it works, there's no shame in using a mortgage interest calculator and short-circuiting the formula.
Here are multi-plex requirements: 2-unit: 15% down payment required; 3-unit: 25% down payment required; 4-unit: 25% down payment required; You will need private mortgage insurance for a 2-unit purchase with 15% down. But you can cancel the PMI policy when your loan balance reaches 78% of the value. Apply for a sub-20% down payment multi-unit loan here.
Buying a multi-unit property in some cases is just like purchasing a single unit home with an FHA mortgage. Multi-unit properties must meet FHA minimum standards and pass an FHA appraisal, which should not be considered an FHA stamp of approval or a guarantee that the property is free of defects.
Pay off personal debts. Since a multi-unit property is more expensive than a single-family home, you'll have a higher mortgage payment to make, which can throw off your debt-to-income ratio. Reducing.


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The electronic force gauges
The electronic dynamometers measure the tensile and compression forces. They are used held in hand or mounted on a test stand, manual or motorized, or suspended from a hoist or crane in weighing handling.
Compact and robust, they offer remarkable measurement accuracy and can easily be connected to a computer.
The measurements range from 0 to 500 kN.
AFG force gauges
The AFG digital electronic force gauges is the most efficient in the MECMESIN range, providing the control for electrical stands and the storage (...)
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BFG force gauges
The BFG digital electronic force gauges is the universal industrial model. Provided with robust aluminium case, it measures both tensile and (...)
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EPX-T force gauges
The EPX-T digital dynamometer is cut in an aluminum block of very high characteristic ensuring its protection against shock. Steel bushings (...)
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Vestal: Witt has next civil rights victory scheduled
Wed., Dec. 5, 2012
On Thursday, Margaret Witt will be first in line again.
Witt, the retired Air Force major who helped dismantle the misbegotten "don't ask, don't tell" law, is set to receive the first marriage license for two women granted in Spokane County, along with her longtime companion, Laurie Johnson. The actual wedding will come a little later, but in terms of public policy – the no-longer-discriminatory limits around the state's issuing of a license – the achievement will have been achieved. The dream Margie Witt has only recently known to dream is coming true.
"I never grew up dreaming of marriage, and especially once I realized I was gay, there was just no reality of that during my lifetime," said Witt, 48. "I never had the dream. It was never a reality."
Starting Thursday, it is. By Sunday – following the required three-day waiting period – the first same-sex couples in Washington will be married. Witt and Johnson's own nuptials will come a little later, in a private ceremony Dec. 15, where Witt plans to wear her formal Air Force "mess dress" and Johnson plans to wear a black cocktail dress.
"I think you should wear your White House shoes," Witt told Johnson the other night as they discussed their plans.
Your White House shoes. The wild and dramatic road that Witt has traveled might be best summed up in the fact that she and Johnson – a very Spokane couple in many ways, living in a meticulously detailed old home near Manito Park – are no longer shocked when they see the gold-embossed return address of the White House in the mail.
Witt attended the bill-signing ceremony for the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" in 2011. Later, a framed copy of the bill arrived from the White House in the mail. Then late last year, they were invited to the Christmas party at the White House – the reason for the shoes.
At the party, as they looked around and listened to a high school choir, Johnson wondered whether the Obamas would be there.
"Then I look out the window and Marine One is descending on the lawn," she said.
Witt said she remembers gazing toward the front fence of the White House, where tourists gather and have their pictures taken, and thinking: "I don't know how I got here."
In sheer, factual terms, how she got there is well known. An Air Force flight nurse, Witt was investigated for violations of "don't ask" in 2004 and formally discharged in 2007. She sued the Air Force and the Department of Justice, with help from the ACLU, and was eventually ordered reinstated in 2010 – a key piece of mortar falling from the edifice of a collapsing law.
Meanwhile, largely out of sight, there was the ongoing story of Margie and Laurie. A love story.
They'd worked together and known each other for a while as friends several years earlier.
Johnson had lived as a straight woman, marrying a man and having three kids. Initially, she said, she just thought Witt was a great person.
"I thought, 'Wow,'" Johnson said. "'You are really something. You are interesting. I've never met anyone like you.'"
Her "light bulb moment" – a very quiet one – came later, Johnson said, when she finally told herself, "'I … think I'm gay. OK then.' Then my soul started falling into place."
Witt said, "I was quite surprised when she took my hand. And that was it. I never wanted to let it go."
Still, the dream of marrying was distant. A couple of states approved marriage equality – then voters overturned it. When Washington's lawmakers voted to approve it, opponents of the law quickly raised the signatures to put a referendum on the ballot. A campaign against gay marriage was mounted, but voters in this state defeated it.
What Washington voters did was historic. What Witt has done is historic. What she and Johnson – and scores of other couples – will do in the coming days is historic.
But it is also intensely personal. It is so personal, so individually conceived, so close to the source of what fundamental freedom is – the right to make the most crucial decisions about our own lives – that however happy we are about the change that arrives Thursday, it must come with the recognition that the change has been stubbornly late in coming and that the change is incomplete.
Margie Witt proposed to Laurie Johnson on Nov. 10, at a banquet in Seattle where she was receiving an award from the ACLU. The crowd of 500 or so erupted in joyous celebration; as has often been the case with their personal milestones, Witt and Johnson have been deluged with celebrations and congratulations.
"For us, it's been that way all along," Witt said.
And as for that dream that Witt could not imagine for so many years – she has it now.
"I'm thrilled to have the ability to marry my soul mate," she said. "It is different. The language makes it different. Marriage is universal. Everybody knows what it means."
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Paula Marie Ranaud was born in Annapolis, Maryland, on Dec. 16, 1963, to Sarah M. Renaud and Frederick A. Renaud, their firstborn. The family traveled all around the United States, eventually relocating to Cody in 1974, where they became part of the original members of the Yellowstone Mountain Men.
Paula graduated from Cody High School (1981), went on to receive her associates of arts degree in theatre and communication, art education, and environmental science at Northwest College (1992), her bachelors of arts degree in anthropology, history and environmental science at the University of Wyoming (2001), and her master's degree in anthropology, ethnohistory, landscape and resources at UW (2004).
She brought two beautiful children into the world and raised them on her own. She enjoyed anything that could be done in the wilderness, from hunting bunnies for her dinner to cliff diving and berry picking. She was a fantastic gardener, inventive cook, and one of the most creative minds the world has ever seen. She believed in leaving as light a footprint on the earth as possible and lived this way to the best of her ability. Never shirking her duties as daughter, sister, mother or friend, Paula was fiercely loyal to all she loved and believed in.
Her spirit stepped away from her body on Dec. 25, 2019, to roam free and truly wild, leaving no footprint at all. Her ashes will add sustenance to the meadows and mountains she loved.
Her dear children Andru Renaud (Stephanie Jacobson) and Forest Renaud-Fontaine, mother, father, brother Karl Renaud (Shannon Larsen), sisters Leah Renaud (Chris Owen) and Erica Johns (Garrett), nieces and nephews Carolyn Wood (David), Mary Marchetelli (Mark), Frederick Lentz (Julie Edwards), Teska Johns, Zoey Lentz, Brice Johns (Kenna Jolley), Lilith Larsen-Renaud, and Kassandra Larsen-Renaud, as well as many other family members and oh so many friends, will all meet her again one day wherever she makes camp.
There has been a private family gathering to celebrate her life. There will be a public display of affection in her honor in the first days of spring. Please contact the family for information about the public gathering planned for Paula in early spring.


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Back to School Night
Mark your calendar. Elementary Back to School Night will take place on Wednesday, September 18 beginning at 5:30 p.m. Back to School Night is a parent evening. This is not an event for children as teachers and assistants will be engaging with you and speaking about learning in our school.
We have been diving into learning these days and are enjoying observing your child's natural curiosity express itself in a variety of ways. All classes have started their units of inquiry and children's questions, wonderings and theories are captured to represent their thinking. You are invited to tap into your own questions about their learning as you engage in conversations at home. Another important observation at school is how positively students are interacting. We are immersed in an amazing culture where different perspectives and experiences come together. Ask your children about what makes them laugh during playtime, about what they are grateful for and what makes them smile when they are in school. Instilling positive thoughts has a remarkable effect on mindset and overall happiness which then allows for children to be even more ready to learn.
After-School Activities
After school activities begin on Monday, September 9. Please send your child an additional snack for 3:00 p.m. If you will pick up your child, please arrive at 4:15 p.m. We will open the car riders gate at that time. If your child is a bus rider, they will also ride the bus at 4:15 p.m. If for any reason, your child will not attend an after school activity in any given day, please complete a change of transportation form.
We have noticed that some students are modeling very healthy eating habits and are bringing snacks that are highly nutritious. Please involve your children in positive decisions regarding their choices for food. In Ecuador, individually wrapped products are labeled to indicate the amount of sugar, saturated fats and salt. Low levels are the best for children and natural non-processed foods present optimal results. Also, speak to your children about how to help the environment by avoiding packaged items. Each of our actions has a direct impact on our world!
Parent Representatives
In elementary, we aim to have at least two parent representatives for each classroom. Parent reps will work towards fostering stronger relationships between families, support our cultural fluency and represent families in our monthly elementary meetings. If you are interested in becoming a parent representative, please contact your child's homeroom teacher. Here are the guidelines for you to review.
Paola de Pereira
Elementary School Principal


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Fully aware of the needs of companies in the pursuit and management of financial resources, at Arrabe Integra we have the necessary experience and collaboration agreements to develop different forms of financial coverage for our customers.
Financial consulting. From obtaining financing to cashflow management
- Financial viability and cash flow plans.
- Request and management of financing: ENISA plans, AVAL Madrid, corporate banking.
- Financial management, cash flow control and resource planning.


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L-Carnitine – Essential Nutrient For Weight Loss And Extra Energy
This article talks about the health benefits of using L-carnitine supplements. This substance can help with weight loss and provide the body with extra energy. However, people who plan to take this drug must obtain approval from doctors and other health professionals. Certain conditions may prevent certain individuals from using this product.


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Migrating data is often the first step towards adopting the cloud. However, when uploading data to the cloud, sometimes even the fastest available public internet connections fall short. For example, on a leased T3 line, migrating 100 TB of data can take up to 8 months – an untenable situation! Oracle Cloud FastConnect offers a great alternative to quickly upload data to the cloud. But it's understandable that using FastConnect may not always be feasible for you, especially when you don't expect to upload data frequently or when the data migration is a part of an effort to retire your on-premise datacenter.
A few short months ago, when we announced the availability of Data Transfer Disk, we promised that there was more to come. Today, I am excited to announce the general availability of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Transfer Appliance.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Transfer Appliance is a PB-scale offline data transfer service. You can now use an Oracle-branded, purpose-built storage appliance to cost-effectively and easily migrate your data to the cloud. Each transfer appliance supports migrating up to 150 TB of data. To migrate PB-scale data sets, you can simply order multiple transfer appliances. The best part is that we charge you exactly $0 to use the service. That's right, Oracle Cloud customers are able to use the Data Transfer Appliance for free. We even pay for the cost of shipping the appliance.
From the time you receive the transfer appliance, you have up to 30 days to copy your data and ship it back to the nearest Oracle data transfer site. When we receive the data transfer appliance, we upload the data to your Oracle Cloud Object or Archive Storage using high-speed internet connections. Large datasets that would've taken weeks or months to upload can now be uploaded in a fraction of the time.
The data transfer appliance is a 2u device that can rest standalone on a desk or fit in a standard rack. Weighing just 38 pounds, the appliance is easily handed by one person. The appliance was built with safety at the forefront. It's tamper resistant and tamper evident. Only the serial port and the network ports are exposed. Any attempt to access the transfer appliance hardware in non-standard ways is detected. All the data copied to the transfer appliance is encrypted by default. The encryption passphrase is stored separately, never on the device with the data. The transfer appliance is shipped to you in a ruggedized case to shield it from the G-forces of transportation. You must ship the transfer appliance back to Oracle in the same shipping case.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Transfer Appliance Shipping Case
How It Works
Order the Data Transfer Service
To use the data transfer appliance to ship your data, place an order for the desired quantity of data transfer appliances. Your Oracle sales rep can help you with the order. Make sure that you have also purchased sufficient Oracle cloud credits, so that we can upload your data to your Oracle cloud tenancy. Placing an order for the data transfer service entitles you to the use of this service.
Requesting the Transfer Appliance
To request an appliance, log into the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console and create a Transfer Job of the type Appliance, in a region of your choice. While creating the Transfer Job, you must also specify the bucket to which the data must be uploaded. Currently, all data from a single transfer appliance can be uploaded to only one bucket.
Next, select the transfer job that you created and click the Request Transfer Appliance button. Specify the address to which the appliance must be shipped. A transfer appliance label is generated with the status Requested, which indicates that Oracle has received your request. When the status of the appliance changes from Requested to Oracle Preparing, your request has been accepted and the transfer appliance you requested will be shipped shortly. If you are requesting more than one transfer appliance, you can request that the appliances be shipped to multiple locations.
Preparing the Transfer Appliance
When you receive the data transfer appliance, it comes with a security tag with a unique number engraved on it. Verify that the tag label matches the number posted in the Oracle Cloud Console. If the number matches, retrieve the transfer appliance from the case, plug it into your network, and assign an IP to it through the serial console.
You can use the provided USB – serial cable and your favorite terminal emulator to access the serial console. You need to unlock the transfer appliance before you can use it. Download the Data Transfer Utility on a Linux host and follow the instructions to prepare the transfer appliance. Retrieve the encryption passphrase using the Data Transfer Utility. This encryption passphrase is used to encrypt the data on the transfer appliance. When the transfer appliance is unlocked and ready for use, create a dataset. A dataset is essentially an NFSv3 mount point. Currently, we support creating one dataset per transfer appliance. That's it! You just configured the Data Transfer Appliance as an NFS filer.
Copying Data to the Data Transfer Appliance
Mount the NFSv3 dataset on any Linux compatible host of your choice and copy data to it using regular file system commands. We preserve the source data file/folder hierarchy by storing objects as a flattened file name, For exampe, a file in the folder hierarchy Logs->July2018->DBLog001.txt will be stored as an object name /Logs/July2018/DBLog001.txt, which simulates a virtual folder hierarchy in Oracle Object or Archive Storage.
Once you have copied all the data to the transfer appliance, seal the dataset. Sealing the dataset creates a manifest file that contains an index of all the files copied, including the file MD5 hashes, which are used to verify the integrity of data as we upload data to your Oracle cloud tenancy. Finally, Finalize the transfer appliance. At this point, you can no longer access the appliance for dataset operations. The transfer appliance is now ready to be shipped back to the Oracle transfer site.
Shipping the Appliance Back to Oracle
When we ship you the data transfer appliance, included in the shipping case is a return shipping label, which you must use to ship the transfer appliance back to the nearest Oracle data transfer site. If you misplace the return shipping label, reach out to us and we are happy to provide you a copy of the shipping label. Make sure that you return the transfer appliance within the allocated 30 days period. If you need more time, request an extension by creating a support request (SR).
Chain of Custody
Using the Oracle Cloud Console or the Data Transfer Utility, you can track the status of the data transfer process throughout its lifecycle, from the time you requested the appliance to the time the data is uploaded to your Oracle cloud tenancy.
Confirmation that Data was Uploaded to your Oracle Cloud Tenancy
When Oracle processes your transfer appliance and uploads data to your Oracle cloud tenancy, a data upload summary is posted to the same bucket where the data was uploaded. The following is a sample of the upload summary:
The upload summary provides a summary and detailed view of the successful and unsuccessful file uploads. It provides information on why some files were skipped so that you can take the necessary corrective action. Before you delete the primary copy of the data, it's important that you review the upload summary and verify the content in your Object Storage bucket.
Once the upload process is complete, your transfer appliance status changes to Complete. Once the transfer job is complete, you must close it out. Closing a transfer job requires that the status of every associated transfer appliance is in a completed state.
Getting Support
If you need help, reach out to the Oracle support channels.
The Data Transfer Appliance service is available for use in the US regions (Phoenix and Ashburn), but we will be rolling out the service to other Oracle Cloud Infrastructure regions soon. For more information, please refer to the FAQs and Data Transfer Appliance product documentation.


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International Talk Like A Pirate Day is September 19th, and Fantasy Faire Radio (FFR) will be two boot-straps ahead of the festivities on Sunday, September 15th as we celebrate PIRATE SUNDAY in the traditional high seas manner. Dust off yer peg leg and get yer fancy dress eye patch out for two hours of merriment and hijinks, beginning at 2pm slt.
The The Pirates Cove on Deep Blue Lagoon will be open for business as we weigh anchor and set musical sail with that most notorious of seafaring brigands, DJ Zander Greene. All scalliwags are welcome – be they one, two, or four legged, tiny, petite, mer, or otherwise. The Cove accommodates all, both above and beneath the waves. Shoulder Parrots optional. If yer mast is miss'n, hoist yer sails anyhow and join us.
If you like salty tales of the sea, stop in at The Friendly Tentacle Tavern, where FFR sponsor Seanchai Library has set up a Pirate Listening Room with stories streaming 24/7 read by the talented talespinner, Shandon Loring. The Library will also be hosting Pirate Story events on Wednesday, September 18th, and Thursday, September 19th at 7pm slt. The Cove will remain open to the public through September 19th
Fantasy Faire Radio presents PIRATE SUNDAY
Sunday, September 15th from 2-4pm
with DJ Zander Greene
at The Pirate Cove on Deep Sea Lagoon
Or tune into fantasy.radioriel.org, or http://streams.radioriel.org:8070/stream.


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Hello, my name is Vanessa and I have been sewing, knitting and making textiles since I was little.
I made my first patchwork quilt when I was 8 (sitting on my bed sewing hexagons by torchlight after "lights out"). Then my grandmother gave me her beautiful hand operated singer sewing machine and I started making my own clothes and accessories. I even made the summer uniform dresses for my friends at school.
Having moved to Cornwall I now have a lovely workshop stocked with all sorts of resources gathered over the years and room to hold small craft workshops.
If you are passing, please drop in and say hello or take a look at some of the things I have been making here on the website.
You can find me at the Making & Mending Workshop, No.4 Station Road, St Blazey, Par, Cornwall PL24 2NF
07792 777060


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Assurant Solutions sells credit insurance and debt protection products. Maybe you've bought a product like theirs. If you lose your job or have medical problems and are unable to make a credit card payment, Assurant Solutions will help you cover it.
Like a lot of insurance products, payment protection is a discretionary add-on often made at the point of purchase. But when customers get the bill and see the additional fee of, say, $10.95 per month for payment protection, maybe they think, "Well, I'll take my chances" and decide to cancel.
When those customers call, they reach Assurant Solutions customer service representatives, because the company manages insurance activation, claims, underwriting and customer retention (for many industry-leading banks and lending institutions).
It's in that last piece — that attempt to retain customers, beat the churn and stem a high exit rate — that Assurant Solutions faced a now-universal management challenge. As a call center positioned as the pivot point of all customer interaction for its clients, Assurant had access to hoards of data as well as the ability to create the kinds of rules and systems that any operationally optimized call center would deploy. With skills-based routing, customized desktops with screen pops, and high-end voice recording and quality assurance tools, its efforts were state-of-the-art.
The Leading Question
If analytics are brought to bear on a call center, how are operations and results affected?
- Many conventional beliefs about call centers prove to be wrong. For instance, customers will wait longer than expected.
- Evidence trumps intuition when predicting outcomes.
- Conflicting goals can be reconciled in real time by analytically driven models.
But it wanted to do better. Its 16% retention rate was consistent with the best industry standards, but that still meant that 5 out of 6 customers weren't convinced to keep their coverage, let alone consider other products. That's a lot of room for opportunity.
So Assurant Solutions tried something new: deep analytics. And it invented an operations system that capitalized on what the analytics prescribed.
The result? The success rate of its call center nearly tripled.
What Assurant Solutions found was that all the conventional tenets about contact centers "are not necessarily wrong, but they're obsolete," says Cameron Hurst, vice president of Targeted Solutions at Assurant. Hurst previously headed up development for HSBC's Indian offshore Global Technology group and served as HSBC's group head of contact center technology after HSBC acquired the call center software company he founded in 1992, so he was already expert in getting the most out of data to run call centers. Or so he thought.
But, he says, "we operated under the fallacy — and I believe it's fallacious reasoning — that if we improve the operational experience to the nth degree, squeeze every operational improvement we can out of the business, our customers will reflect these improvements by their satisfaction, and that satisfaction will be reflected in retention. And that was fundamentally wrong. We learned that operational efficiency and those traditional metrics of customer experience like abandon rate, service levels and average speed to answer are not the things that keep a customer on the books." Assurant Solutions was looking for the key to customer retention — but was looking in the wrong place.
So management attacked the challenge from a different angle. They brought in people like mathematicians and actuaries — people who didn't know anything about running call centers — and they asked different kinds of questions, using analytics to answer them. "We're an insurance company," Hurst says, "so it's in our DNA to be very data-driven. We are able to look at large volumes of historical data and find ways to mine for gold nuggets or needles in haystacks. But this use of analytics was fresh for us."
What they found surprised them. In a sense, it was simple: They found that technology could assist the company in retaining customers by leveraging the fact that some customer service reps are extremely successful at dealing with certain types of customers. Matching each specific in-calling customer to a specific CSR made a difference. Not just an incremental difference. A huge difference. Science and analytics couldn't quite establish why a particular rapport would be likely to happen, but they could look at past experience and predict with a lot of accuracy that a rapport would be likely to happen.
In the interview that follows, Hurst explains how Assurant Solutions figured out the right questions to ask, used analytics to focus on new ways to match customers with reps and figured out the best ways to solve the problem of conflicting goals. He spoke to MIT Sloan Management Review editor-in-chief Michael S. Hopkins.
Different Questions, Different Results
Most organizations already mine their data for insights. How can they apply analytics in new ways that will discover untapped opportunities for value creation?
One of the first questions anyone would have, reading about your experience, is how did you get answers to questions you didn't even know you should be asking? What triggered the epiphany that caused you to start looking at things differently?
The epiphany occurred because we knew we wanted more. We wanted to retain more customers, and we wanted to get more wallet share by up-selling them.
And so we put the problem to a different group. We went to the decision sciences group, to the actuaries and the mathematicians, and we asked them, "Is there anything you can see that we can do better or that we can optimize more?" They weren't looking at it from the perspective of "How do I run a contact center?" In fact, these people don't know anything about contact centers. So I think the first important step was to have a different set of eyes looking at the problem, and looking at it from a completely different discipline.
If they didn't know how a contact center runs, or what things have been effective, where did they start?
The first thing that was interesting about their approach was that rather than thinking about the average speed of answering phone calls, or the average "handle time," or service level metrics, or individual customer experiences or using QA tools to find out what we did right and what we did wrong — all the things we usually consider when looking at customer and representative interaction — they started thinking of it purely from the perspective of, "We've got success and we've got failure."
Success and failure are very easy things to establish in our business. You either retained a customer calling in to cancel or you didn't. If you retained them, you did it by either a cross-sell, up-sell or down-sell.
So this is what they started asking: What was true when we retained a customer? What was true when we lost a customer? What was false when we retained a customer? And what was false when we lost a customer? For example, we learned that certain CSRs generally performed better with customers in higher premium categories while others did not. These are a few of the discoveries we made, but there were more. Putting these many independent variables together into scoring models gave us the basis for our affinity-based routing.
That broadens the information they were looking for, right?
Definitely. These are data-oriented people, so they just simply said, "Give us everything — all the data you've got." And we had a lot, because we've been running this business for years. We had information about our customers that seemed, from the perspective of call center routing, totally irrelevant. We had a lot of data in the contact center about agents' performance, the time they spend on calls and the like. They took the whole data set and started crunching it through our statistical modeling tools.
The approach they took was to break down our customers into very discrete groups. To see what's true about our customers. Any bank or insurance company or financial services company that sells products to customers is tempted to cluster their customers into discrete groups. Almost everyone does.
The thing is, it's not 10 clusters that define your unique customer groups, it's usually hundreds of clusters. That was the first process, to find out all the different kinds of customers that we have: customers with high balances who tend to pay off early, customers who have high credit-to-balance ratios, customers who have low credit scores. The more variables that go into the creation of a cluster, obviously the more clusters you can have; so, not just customers with high balances who tend to pay off early, but customers with those characteristics who also have low credit scores.
When you've got it down to that granular level, you can then look at all the different customer interactions that we had with people in that cluster and say, "How did we do in this particular case? How did we do in that one?"
Wait — are you looking at every single interaction?
Yes. It's wasn't on an aggregate macro but on an individual basis, every single interaction that we recorded over the last four or five years. Looking at all of these interactions let the team see patterns that establish that this CSR tends to do well, historically and evidentially, with customers in these specific sets of clusters.
What they also discovered was that the results were completely different from the existing paradigms in the contact center.
Sales as Matchmaking (Because "Variability" Means There's Someone for Everyone)
What it means to understand — and act on — the critical difference between theoretically inferring why something might be likely to happen and evidentially knowing that it is likely to happen.
Let me stop you. As you've said, call centers tend to be pretty statistically driven places from the start. You named a bunch of the metrics that you would be looking at from the customer service side, and I'm sure you would have known when a customer called in what his products were and what his history was, and potentially matched him up with CSRs who had expertise in those particular product lines, yes?
That's what everyone does in the call center world. When they sit down to write and build their routing strategies for how they're going to move their macro clusters of customers around to CSR groups, they do it almost 100% on anecdote. We say that CSRs have expertise in an area. The problem is that expertise is a subjective term. When you deal with what we'll call carbon-based intelligence — that is, inferential judgments made by us humans — versus silicon-based intelligence, or computerized judgments based on analytics, the carbon-based intelligence will say that this rep goes into this segment because they have expertise. They took a test. Or they grade out well in the QA tools.
What the evidence showed us is that the carbon-based intelligence tends to judge incorrectly. The silicon never does. If the model is set up properly and it has the ability to detect performance through whatever way you tell it to detect performance — by noting cross-sell, down-sell, up-sell, whatever — it will always measure a CSR's performance correctly and in an unbiased way.
So for the first time you're looking at both ends of the equation in some different ways. You've just described the CSR end, where you have this incredible database that reveals patterns about performance with different groups of customers, in spite of what you may or may not have inferred. What happens on the customer side? Are you looking at them in a different way?
Yes. There are obvious characteristics that we can study in our core systems. Think about what a bank or an insurance company would collect about its customers. Credit score, demographics, maybe some psychographics. We might know how many children they have.
You can predict what you think they're going to do in the future, as long as you have a large enough customer base with enough interactions and enough variability to look at. Because what this whole thing is based on is variability. There's a high degree of variability in your customer base, and there's a high degree of variability in your CSR base. We learned to exploit that variability.
It's the old adage in business: People do business with people they want to do business with. If you are successful at first establishing rapport with your customer, you have a higher probability of selling them, because there's a trust relationship versus just taking orders.
We drive rapport and affinity in conversations by finding attributes that we can exploit to match, that create likeness across the CSR-and-customer synapse. It scales to potentially dozens of variables that operate dependently and independently of each other to drive this affinity/rapport relationship.
Having said all this, probably the most significant aspect of our use of analytics to drive conversational affinity was the persistency factor. That is, the length of time that customers remain on the books. We established almost right away that we could save a larger number of customers, as well as more profitable ones, through our new routing engine. But what we wouldn't learn until later was the fact that we were keeping these customers longer than ever before. This was really exciting to us! As the months went by and we watched the new system operate, we observed an overall higher persistency rate for our saved customers compared to the old system. And since we're talking about subscription-style products in our business, the longer the customers keep the product, the more revenue we generate. This turned out to be a much more important factor than a pure save or saved fee rate.
Some of this affinity matching is like a version of online dating.
That's a beautiful metaphor, although there's one breakdown in it. I would suppose that online dating sites work in a somewhat anecdotal way. It's driven somewhat based in fact, but it's also very psychographic.
We also go down to a deep level of granularity. Not body type and hair color like online sites might ask, but we do know that, for instance, certain CSRs perform well with customers that have $80 premium fees, but they don't do so well with customers that have $10 premium fees. We don't necessarily know the reason why. Nor do we need to.
And therein lies the difference. In our system there isn't a lot of science behind why these differences exist, why a rep might be good with $80 versus $10. It's just evident that that person is good with a certain customer type. So we operate off the fact that it's true, based on the body of data that we have about the customer base and our past CSRs' interactions with those customers. On the other hand, matchmaking sites wouldn't have a lot of historical data about a particular individual's interactions with their service (unless, of course, they use it frequently), so they operate off a body of data about people's general characteristics and what makes them interesting to each other.
So do you see the difference? We've become purely evidence-driven: "This CSR always does well with this particular customer type because we've seen it happen."
I would describe it like this: The science does not explain why an affinity will be likely to exist, but it does show that an affinity will be likely to exist.
How Analytics Solves the Problem of Conflicting Goals
What do you do when models predicting things such as best CSR match, willingness of a customer to wait and value of a customer to the company all recommend actions that are in conflict?
It sounds like the kind of information you have about customers is not that different from the kind of information you might have had before this whole process began, and that it's really on the CSR side that you have all this new data, plus the data about what happens in each specific interaction between a customer and a CSR. Is that what drives your models?
That's right. There's one other element that goes into the solution that drives revenue: the predicted economic value of a particular customer. Now, there's not a lot of new science in that, and we have models that tell us how to calculate that. But it's important to the solution, because in a call center we sometimes have to decide which customer to focus on. We like the idea that there's a CSR for everyone, but that's not always true because of call volumes and agent availability. So if your goal is long-term revenue, you can use these economic predictors to determine which customers we should be focusing on.
There was a problem we didn't quite know how to solve right out of the gate, and that was the fact that the best matches are almost always not available. In other words, if we have 50 callers in queue and 1,000 CSRs on the floor, we can create 50,000 different solutions, and we make those calculations 10, 15 times a second. One of the 1,000 CSRs is the best match, so that's the score to beat — the number that shows how often we make that perfect match.
The vast majority of the time, though, those matches weren't immediately possible because that CSR was on the phone, so we had to factor in another predictive model, and that was "time to available." That's not a massively complex model, because the industry has been solving that kind of problem for a long time.
But when you layer "time to available" into the actual scoring engine, you get some interesting results. If an agent's average handle time is three minutes, 30 seconds, and he or she has been on the phone three minutes, 15 seconds, then we can predict they're about 15 seconds away to available. Then we can weigh in our prediction of customer tolerance or customer survivability — how long they're willing to wait in the queue before just hanging up.
We know how long we keep customers in queue. We know what the outcomes are when they've been in queue, and we can find out where the curve starts to steepen in terms of abandon rates or bad outcome rates. We connect that information with our CSR's predictive availability curve. If the optimal match is too far away, maybe 45 seconds or three minutes away, then the score for that optimal match becomes dampened and someone else might look more attractive to us. Because while they may not have perfect affinity, the fact that they're going to become available sooner certainly makes them look more attractive to us.
When you became more rigorously evidence-based, what did you discover about what might have been wrong in your old assumptions?
The conventional wisdom in the contact center is 80/20 — 80% of calls answered in 20 seconds or less. That's a promise that most businesses make, because they believe that drives satisfaction.
What we learned is that satisfaction has almost nothing to do with that. Obviously the faster you answer, the better, over a larger body of interactions. But we found most customers are willing to wait much, much longer, on the order of 39 to 49 seconds, before annoyance affects outcome.
So our observation was, if customers are willing to wait, why are we trying so hard to force them into that 80/20 or 80/25 window? The longer we're willing to wait, the better the match is, the better the outcomes, the more revenue generated.
We've done tests that push all the way out to 60/60 — 60% of calls answered in 60 seconds or less. At some point there is a negative effect on abandon rates. But what we were surprised to learn is that there is no negative effect on abandon rates until you start approaching 60 seconds. Which obviously means we've got that time to work with in order to find the most ideal customer/CSR match. It leads to a very, very direct impact on revenue. A direct correlation between time and revenue.
To see this work so obviously is amazing, because to go from 80/20 and then jump it to 80/40, and then within a few days to see immediate results in terms of save rates and saved fee rates, it's stunning. It makes you wonder why the rest of the world doesn't get this.
Summarize the results you've seen. The problem was that you were at a 15% to 16% retention rate despite operating in a fairly optimized state-of-the-art way. What's happened since?
We've seen our retention rates, our actual save rates, go as high as 30% to 33%. But that's not the end of the story. For us, we're more focused on saved fee rate. Save rate is if two people call in, save one, lose one, that's 50%. But if two people call in and one is worth $80 to you and the other is worth $20, you save the $80 one, you've got an 80% saved fee rate, because you saved $80 out of a total $100 eligible.
This relates back to what you said earlier about having to make choices about which customer to serve during busy periods?
Yeah. We use those predicted economic availability models to help us focus on the more valuable customers. That's not to say we discard the less valuable ones, because diversity in our customer base matches the diversity in our CSR force, so if a $20 customer calls in, we've got a $20 CSR to match him to. But our focus is on revenue, so saved fee rate is more important to us.
So while our save rates went into the 33-ish range, even as high as 35%, our saved fee rates went into the 47% to 49% ranges. We've seen days where we've been in the 58% range. Effectively that means that 58 cents of every dollar that was at risk has been saved. Those are very substantial numbers for us in our business.
Just so we can do the apples-to-apples comparison, what was the saved fee rate before?
The same as the overall save rate, 15% to 16%. And that's actually a very exciting point to us, that our saved fee rates went up so much more than save rates, because we were focusing on saved fee as opposed to just saved customers alone.
If It Makes So Much Money, Why Doesn't
Everyone Do It?
What are the impediments to adopting evidence-based analytics? What can organizations do to overcome them?
Why don't more people see the bottom-line impact of this sort of analytics?
In my own space, in the contact center world, I still am amazed when I come across very, very large Fortune 50 organizations that are still running very, very old technology. They don't have the appetite to adopt it yet. Their current system is basically working, it's been doing fine.
You scratch your head, saying, "Yeah, but don't you want all the benefits that you can get from analytics?" And the answer is sort of subjectively, yes, we want those benefits, but next year.
There are early adopters and there are adopters. I wouldn't call what we do an early adoption of a technology; it's using very state-of-the-art tools just in a little bit of a different way. I think our creativity is in how we deployed it.
The program you developed at Assurant — called "RAMP," for "Real-time Analytics Matching Platform" — is now available to other organizations that have to manage inbound calls. What do you see in organizations that makes it hard to apply analytics in this kind of an effective way?
The first one is, "I don't have the IT resource to go do this right now." You have to go compile the evidence, and that's not a trivial task for most IT departments. It's all data that they have, but in these days everyone's stressed and pushed for projects and IT time.
Another objection is the perception that this is just a skills-based routing solution and that we already have skills-based routing. That's an interesting one to overcome because, first off, this use of analytics is not skills-based routing. It's evidence-based or success-based routing. We don't really care about a CSR's skills as defined by a skills-based routing system, and in fact we tell you that the skills that you assign a CSR are practically irrelevant.
Those are legitimate objections. What do you say to get someone started down the path that could enable them to get results like yours?
Well, we have proof that it works. But hearing about 187% improvement over baseline at Assurant is hard to believe at times. So we say, let us prove it to you by giving us some teaser data.
We can show you, based on your data, that you are not fully optimized and that you are relatively randomized in your routing — because effectively that's the premise statement here. We are taking randomness and chaos and making order out of it.
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The real tragedy of Rosemary's story was that of a family which could accept nothing but perfection. Rosemary could have had a wonderfully productive life, but a combination of the time's lack of understanding of people with developmental disabilities coupled with a level of society which could not tolerate flaw or deficiency combined to make this poor girl's life one of constant worry and frustration, and then one of total debilitation as her mind was destroyed. The latter chapters discussing President's Kennedy's championing of legislation to support the developmentally disabled and the family's founding of private organizations for their aid was a poor substitute for the care that they should have shown to their own flesh and blood. A sad but very worthy read.
The Jesus Cow by Michael Perry
The plot--Harley Jackson's cow Tina Turner gives birth to a calf on Christmas Eve, with the likeness of Jesus Christ himself played out in spots on the calf's side. The rest of the events spool out from here, with Harley first trying to cover up the miracle birthmark, then trying to manage the fall out when the "calf is out of the bag," so to speak. The explosive climax is achieved thanks to the aforementioned quirky characters, and all ends happily (spoiler!), but not in the way I was envisioning. The overall effect is a sweet stroll through rural Wisconsin, with some bumps in the road, ending on the top of McCracken Hill at dusk. Curtain.
March 2020
|Books You Gotta Read
Books You Gotta Read


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Minimalist design, precise workmanship: The high-quality aluminium pedal covers also lend the footwells a distinct athletic-dynamic character. Their rubber treads are raised for excellent grip. That makes them an extremely secure foothold.
This product is not intended to be installed by the customer. Installation must be performed exclusively by an approved dealer. For this reason, an installation manual is not enclosed.
The fitment of this product depends on your vehicles options and or production date.Identify vehicle


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In Episode 28 of the Seleção Podcast, host Danny Pinto welcomes Sean Gillen of PortuGOAL.net back to the show to discuss the winter transfer window, most notably the transfer of Bruno Fernandes from Sporting to Manchester United.
Danny and Sean discuss the other Portuguese transfers in the winter window, and also assess how the major summer transfers of 2019 have worked out six months in.
To listen the podcast click on the play button below.
Related: Bruno Fernandes completes Manchester United move
Related: Barcelona seal Francisco Trincão deal, Cédric Soares heads to Arsenal


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SINGAPORE - A teenager has been taken to the hospital after a fire broke out at a 15th floor condominium unit in Paris Ris, Stomp reported.
The citizen journalism site said that the fire occurred at Ris Grandeur condominium on Tuesday morning. One 16-year-old male was taken to the hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation.
A contributor told Stomp that windows from the unit were seen falling during the fire.
SCDF said that the fire happened in one of the bedrooms in the unit.
"We sent one fire engine, one red rhino, two fire bikes and one support vehicle and one ambulance," the spokesperson said.
The fire was extinguished by SCDF using one hose reel and one water jet.
Visit STOMP for more stories.


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If you're looking to add something shiny and new to your beauty stash, listen up.
This month we've been blessed with some seriously good skincare, makeup and fragrance launches.
From a long-lasting medium coverage foundation from Urban Decay that doesn't feel heavy on the skin, to a new slew of swoon-worthy lipsticks from NARS and a resurfacing treatment from Murad – that FYI is already receiving rave reviews – our bathroom cabinets and makeup bags have not been disappointed.
Ahead – eight beauty products worth shopping this month.
Murad InvisiScar Resurfacing Treatment
Murad's latest skincare innovation InvisiScar Resurfacing Treatment is already causing a stir among skincare fanatics in the US, as the newly launched product boasts an impressive star rating of 4.6 out of 5, with over 200 glowing reviews online at Sephora.
The salicylic acid based treatment claims to help banish pesky acne scars within eight weeks. If you're not yet convinced of its skincare wizardry, 100% of treatment users agreed that their scar texture was smoother and more even, while 91% agreed the roughness on their scars was significantly improved.
Murad InvisiScar Resurfacing Treatment, £35, murad.co.uk and feelunique.com
Urban Decay Stay Naked Foundation
Say hello to Urban Decay's Stay Naked Foundation. Available in 50 shades, nine intensities, three mastertones and seven undertones, it's an all-inclusive foundation launch (hooray) with a medium buildable coverage and breathable texture.
The new foundation is joined by 25 shades of Stay Naked Concealer and two Stay Naked Colour Correctors.
Urban Decay Stay Naked Foundation, £29.50, urbandecay.co.uk
Glossier Berry Balm Dotcom
If, like us, your beauty bag is always eager to welcome new Glossier products you'll be pleased to hear this month Glossier dropped yet another Balm Dotcom in the shade Berry.
The juicy balm not only smells good enough to eat and imparts a pretty berry sheen on the lips, it's formulation of beeswax, lanolin and caster seed oil leaves your pout hydrated and super soft.
Glossier Berry Balm Dotcom, £10, glossier.com
Beauty Bay The Liquid Crystals
Don't disregard Beauty Bay's own line of colour cosmetics – they're impressive in both quality and pricing.
This month the mega online beauty retailer has released a collection of shimmering liquid eyeshadows for just £6 each, which can be worn alone or as a base to intensify powder pigments. Our favourite shades include Moonstone, a silver shimmer and Rutile, an opaque bronze shimmer with silver flecks.
At the third of the price of similar products, you might as well bag a couple of shades, right?
Beauty Bay The Liquid Crystals, £6, beautybay.com
Tan-Luxe Super Glow Hyaluronic Self-Tan Serum
Skincare expert Caroline Hirons dubbed the new hyaluronic/superfood self-tan serum from cult tan brand Tan-Luxe as the 'dog's bollocks brilliant' and boy was she right. It's fantastic.
The gradual face tanner won't leave your face looking like a mahogany dining room table, rather it imparts a hydrated sun kissed glow. Its formulation is brimming with skin hydrators including hyaluronic acid, chia seed oil and avocado oil.
Plus it's non-sticky and the addition of cocoa seed protects from pollution and blue light from your computer screen and mobile phone.
Tan-Luxe Super Glow Hyaluronic Self-Tan Serum , £35, tan-luxe.com and lookfantastic.com
Max Factor Lash Revival Mascara
For fanned-out length and definition Max Factor's new Lash Revival Mascara will lift and enhance your lashes without a smudge in sight.
The curved wand ensures no lash is left behind, perfectly distributing product while leaving the ends of your lashes clump free – we're obsessed.
Max Factor Lash Revival Mascara, £12.99, feelunique.com
Nars The Original 12 Lipstick Collection
To celebrate their 25th anniversary, Nars is releasing a collection of 27 lipsticks from 15 August – yes, you read that right, 27 lipsticks. They're also releasing the 12 original shades that launched the Nars brand, from Jungle Red, a vivid blue red, to Blonde Venus, a cool beige.
Better yet, all the original shades are housed in a special red matte soft touch casing embossed with the white Nars logo.
We'll take one of each please.
NARS The Original 12 Lipstick Collection, £22, narscosmetics.co.uk
Ilia Color Haze Multi-Matte Pigment
If you're a lover of cream formulations and multipurpose makeup products, clean beauty brand Ilia has got you covered as they've released five utterly gorgeous multi-matte pigments that can be used on the cheeks and lips.
The soft, creamy, buildable pigments will leave you wanting to break up with your powders and apply well with your fingers, dampened beauty sponge and brush.
And if you're looking for inspiration, Instagram star and MUA Katie Jane Hughes frequents a monochromatic look and how to's.
Ilia Color Haze Multi-Matte Pigment, £30, spacenk.com
MORE: HBO's Euphoria shows that for teens makeup isn't about covering insecurities
MORE: Kylie Jenner is coming for your money with her own skincare and SPF range


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All five best European Leagues are officially back in action after Bundesliga and Serie A returned last weekend. There are changes at the top in Germany and England but the story is still the same in Italy, France, and Spain. Today, we want to focus on the fans. We want to look at stadiums with the best average attendance in Europe for 2017/18 season.
5. Barcelona- 1,265, 457 Avg. Att.
Camp Nou pic.twitter.com/vrgqHTIauA
— Full Soccer (@jcromero1010) January 11, 2019
Barcelona is ranked fifth when it comes to fans attendance in 2017/18 season when they lifted La Liga and Copa del Rey double. The Catalan side registered 1,265, 457 for the season.
This number will worry the management because Camp Nou had an average attendance of 66,603 supporters per match. The Stadium is capable of holding up to 99, 354 fans. The team is winning matches but attendance numbers are going down every year.
4. Bayern Munich- 1,275,000 Avg. Att.
Allianz Arena
FC Bayern Munich 🇩🇪⚽
Munich, Germany
Know for its full color-changing exterior. Seats 70,000-75,000. #MiaSanMia pic.twitter.com/0DQgxet0l9
— World Stadiums 🏟 (@WorldsStadiums) August 1, 2017
Bayern Munich had the fourth best attendance record in 2017/18 season. Allianz Arena attracted a total of 1,275,000 for the entire season. The Bavarians best match numbers reached 75,000 supporters. This means almost all seats are occupied most of the time. It was another great season for them because they lifted their 6th Bundesliga crown in six years. Borussia Dortmund is threatening to end their dominance this season.
3. Tottenham- 1,291, 107 Avg. Att.
Good view at Wembley for #Tottenham #Manutd C'mon @SpursOfficial #Coys pic.twitter.com/ID1faLdjPp
— Cllr Lee Scordis (@LScordis) January 13, 2019
Premier League second best team in terms of attendance last season is Tottenham Hotspurs. The London side has been playing all their matches at Wembley in the last two seasons as their brand new stadium is constructed.
Mauricio Pochetino side managed to attract 1,291, 107 fans in 2017/18 season. On average, they welcomed 67,953 supporters per match. This means Spurs had more support last season than Barcelona, Real Madrid, Arsenal and Bayern Munich among other top sides.
See Also:
ATTACK KINGS: Top 5 Most Dangerous Teams in Europe This Season…
WEEKEND STARS: Top 5 Best Players in Premier League Last Weekend-…
GODFATHERS: 5 Stars with Most Premier League Appearances in History


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Juanita has contrasting and complimentary colours making it one of the "eye-catchingest" and showy daffodils. The central cup is a rich orange colour with a frilly texture. The petals are a soft yellow colour and slightly overlap one another
The blooms reach 10-13cm in diameter. They do well in a neutral to slightly acidic soil and work well as a natural and beautiful form of ground cover and erosion control.
Daffodils welcome you to spring. They are excellent perennial plants for borders and are great for what to plant in-between shrubs. Planting daffodils in pots is also a viable alternative. Also, they are great in woodland gardens and as cut flowers.
Daffodils can be divided into 13 different types, these differences are mostly based on variations of the cups (corona) and the petals (perianth). Daffodils are commonly and interchangeably called Narcissus or Narcissi. Specifically, daffodils are the varieties which have larger cups and larger overall blooms.
There are early indoor and outdoor daffodils, with some being more fragrant than others. Daffodils have a significant amount of variety with their growth; some stems may only bear 1 or 2 flowers, whereas others can reach upwards of 20.
The flowers are generally yellow, orange or white with either uniform cups and petals or contrasting colours.
Daffodil bulbs planting time is in the fall season, approximately 2-4 weeks before the ground freezes. In more severe climates, ensure that the bulbs are covered with at least 6-7 cm of soil. The general rule is to plant the bulbs to a depth that is three times (3X) the size of the bulb. Also, a good depth will help reinforce the plant structure during growth to prevent bending or drooping.
Daffodils grow best in full sun to partially shaded areas. During flowering the plants will need a moist soil and mulching is suggested to maintain moisture. Although they are tolerant of most soil types, daffodils prefer a slightly acidic soil.
We will endeavour to dispatch your goods on the same day your order is placed if it is received before 7 am (Mon-Fri). If your order is received over a weekend it will be dispatched on Monday. We only ship to the United Kingdom.
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Our free postage is available on all orders regardless of total price.
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Our express delivery service for £3.99 offers your items to be sent on a 24hr courier for orders you need urgently. (Please note DX do not deliver on Saturdays on most occasions)
Please click here to view the full information page for Delivery & Returns


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Dragons Are In The Air!!!
If you´ve been in Barcelona you might noticed dragons everywhere you look around in Old City or the modernist Example neighbourhood. Whatever space was suitable for local sculptors and architects geniuses to put their work into shape, La Casa De Les Puntxes, Casa Amettler or El Palau and almost in every building by Antonio Gaudi you´ll find unless one dragon.
Well, looks like this mythological animal served as inspiration for Catalan architects or it could be due to unconditional love of Catalan people to Saint George and his fights with dragon.
At iconic Casa Batllo where Antoni Gaudí was beyond the mythological allusion to this animal, converting the building into the living representation of the legend of Saint George and shaped in the building´s face, the most popular story of the Catalan people. He designed the roof with the shape of the back of the large animal, it is covered with ceramic scales ceramic in different shades symbolizing the blood shed of the victims. He also ordered a cross to crown the facade as if it were a sword alluding to when the noble knight saved the princess from the fearsome dragon. Here it is Saint George (San Jordi in Catalan) a patron saint of Catalonia.
23 of April celebrated as book´s day around the world and also is Saint Georg´s day in Catalonia the day of books and love. Saint Jordi has been the patron saint of Catalonia since the 15th century and on the other hand we have the famous legend of St George and the dragon and the old medieval tradition of visiting the Chapel of Saint Jordi in the Government Palace, where a rose fair or "lovers" fair used to take place. This is why Saint Jordi is also the patron saint of lovers in Catalonia.
According to tradition couples exchange gifts: a book for the men and a rose for the women.
For me it is the most beautiful day in Catalonia, streets are full of books and you will be able to find the latest publications, see well-known artists signing copies of their books, and of course, smell the scent of the roses.
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Zoo Camps go VIRTUAL for 2020! Make your late summer or fall weekends a blast with one of these great themed sessions:
Ages 5-7:
Ages 8-11:
Each camp includes 5 days of content (1-1.5 hrs/day) that includes pre-filmed animal encounters, exhibit excursions, games, crafts and science explorations. All content is "on demand" so you can access material on your schedule - no need to sign in at predetermined times! For more information, contact the Zoo Education Department at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Section style allow you to quickly and easily apply pre-formatted designs to content when building a proposal. Whether you are building new, custom content or simply reformatting something for the needs of your proposal, just click on the styles dropdown menu that appears whenever you are editing content. From there you can select the appropriate style for the desired content.
You will need to contact VIPER about creating additional, custom section styles. In many cases, the VIPER team can create unique section styles to help your content achieve a desired look and feel.


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IT organisations can best survive the coming years by evolving from service providers to full business partners, according to a report by International Data Corp.
That means partnering with vendors, customers and others across their own organisations to demonstrate information technology's true value, said Mary Hartman, an analyst at the Massachusetts-based research firm.
According to Hartman, increasing competition in the business world is placing more pressure on IT organisations, and as a result they must respond to business requests faster.
They must also deal with the fast-paced evolution of technology, as well as workforce issues such as labour shortages and mobile workers, Hartman said.
If IT organisations focus on offering strategic technology that provides economic value to the business, they're more likely to succeed, she said. However, if they fail to evolve, their businesses won't realise the full benefits of technology - and the organisations themselves could face budget cuts and downsizing, Hartman said. IT departments will also need to work more closely with outsourcers.
Those changes will also alter the role of the CIO, possibly giving each business unit a CIO who reports to a centralised IT consulting office, Hartman said.
The central office would set the protocols and policies, with each CIO implementing them, she predicted.


text: "Our challenges really come back to the issues of workforce development," he said during a recent interview with the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST). "Public education is the No. 1 challenging issue we see here in Oklahoma." Building a deeper pool of young Oklahomans equipped with STEM skills is critical to sustainability of the state's aerospace industry, he said.


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Troubling Winds
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The municipal-bond market has been rattled by Detroit's bankruptcy, but an even bigger problem may be developing in the Caribbean, where Puerto Rico is grappling with a stubbornly weak economy, persistent budget deficits, and onerous debt.
Amid rising investor worries about the U.S. territory's financial health, a $673 million municipal-bond issue earlier this month from the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority offered a top yield of more than 7%. That compares with 5% yields...


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Dr. Seager explains how she and other astronomers are looking for extraterrestrial life. We discuss the Drake and Seager equations. We also talk about how astronomers might be able to detect life by measuring chemicals in distant planet atmospheres. This episode is related to the March 2019 National Geographic cover story, "We are not alone."
Dr. Alicia Lanz talks about the history of astronomical instrumentation, starting with the first telescope. She describes some bizarre historical telescopes and shares a surprisingly inspirational story about bubbles in glass.


text: Almighty Father. We praise you for the gift of life. Walk with us on the beach in the morning. Run with us through peaceful cornfields in the night. Swim with us as we exercise bodies and minds. In the power of your Holy Spirit, transform us into your people. In Jesus' precious name, Amen.


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This heavy hauler will make a terrific display piece or a wonderful toy for some lucky child.
The Mack truck, trailer and Cat are included in this plan and are FULL SIZE!
A fun project any woodworker. Make it your next one!
Mack truck with trailer will measure approximately 34" long x 5 1/2" high.
The Cat will measure approximately 15" long x 5" high.
MANY more plans available!


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rematch comes through! :D
Dec. 26, 2013 by kimipixi
AHHH! Thank you so much, lady! Your postcard meant the world to me. It was a nice feeling to have someone pick things out for me that specifically coordinated with things I am/was going through.
You roused the biggest feels and massive smiles. Thank you so much!
all of the pretties
the magnets in their new home on my magnetic chalkboard :)


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Ascent: Infinite Realm Announced by PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Tera Developer; Coming West
Today Bluehole PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Tera developer Bluehole officially revealed Ascent: Infinite Realm, a new AAA MMORPG that was teased almost exactly a year ago.
The game, that was revealed today at Bluehole's G-Star media showcase in Busan, South Korea, comes with a setting that marries steampunk imagery and fantasy.
Some of the most relevant features of the game are the heavy focus on flight, which also appears in the game Realm vs Realm battle feature (a kind of PvP that pitches factions against one another in server-wide wars, debuted with the old and glorious Dark Age of Camelot). Players will be able using all kinds of flying vehicles, mech, anti-air artillery, cannons, mines, and more, combining aerial and ground combat.
Airships can be customized in type, appearance, color, and performance. Players can also create their own quests, customize their hunting grounds, and alter the difficulty in dungeons or hunting areas. Five classes will be available including Sorceress, Mystic, Warlord, Assassin, and Gunslinger.
So, is it coming west? Yes, it is, by the hand of Black Desert Online publisher Kakao Games, with the closed beta scheduled for the first half of 2018. Also, if you're wondering, the only platform announced so far is PC.
Below you can check an extensive trailer and a gallery of screenshots and artwork.


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Farmers' Market Brunch
- WHEN Ongoing from now until December 29, 2019[days & times]
Vistal Bar + Restaurant, 901 Bayfront Ct Suite 1, San Diego, CA 92101
Map | Website
- AGES All ages
- COST Not available
Vistal Bar + Restaurant, located on the third floor of InterContinental San Diego, is now offering a weekend brunch menu with the freshest finds from Saturday's Little Italy Farmers' Market, from 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Enjoy the scenic bay views, while digging into beautiful dishes featuring some of the best market picks prepared by Executive Chef Amy DiBiase. This brunch allows locals and travelers alike to skip the crowds and hassle of navigating through the markets, and instead enjoy Chef's carefully curated selection of fresh finds from local market vendors.
Below is a sample list of vendors:
• Jackie's Jams (jam)
• Mikolich (honey)
• Polito Farms (citrus)
• JR Organics (greens, berries)
• Suncoast Farms (asparagus)
• Domaine Santé (grape nectar)
• Deux Cranes Candies
• Edible Alchemy Coconut Yogurt
• Bread & Cie Bakery
• Coronado Gluten Free Bakery
Overlooking San Diego Bay at the crossroads of downtown's most storied neighborhoods, Chef Amy DiBiase imparts Vistal, a culinary tribute to the seaside communities and diverse cultures that encompass San Diego's past and present. The award-winning chef presents the region's core flavors, blending bright, bold combinations from the Baja peninsula, Pacific islands, Mediterranean fishing villages and beyond for a refreshing new perspective on coastal Southern California cuisine.
Dates and times of events are subject to change without notice. Always check the event organizer's website for the most updated schedule before attending.
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SPONSORSHIP | Become a sponsor today!


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The adjusting hand cranks can be located on either side of the machine for operator convenience and comfort. A feature of the 700-20 is that it can be quickly adjusted to seal narrow width or short height cartons, while still handling cartons up to 20" width and height. Our Tape Heads are durable, simple to thread and have few moving parts making it uncomplicated to work with.
Standard Features:
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Call (219) 393-5541 or Toll Free (USA) (800) 328-0466 to speak to a sales representative or click below to request a quote now.