text:
- All Jewelry
Women's Jewelry
Men's Jewelry
Popular & New
Inspiration for NOVICA's
social mission comes
from Roberto's
Missionary grandmother.
Inspiration for NOVICA's
love of all things handmade
comes from Roberto's
Artisan grandmother.
The idea for NOVICA came to co-founder
Roberto Milk in a flash of inspiration during a
Portuguese language class at Stanford in 1995.
Scripps Ventures invests in NOVICA's first
major funding round, providing capital for
a large ad campaign. NOVICA billboards
soon appear throughout New York City.
This captures the attention of National
Geographic, who think our ads look a
little too much like their famous yellow
border. They ask us to use other colors.
2003 - 2009
Our lean start-up philosophy helps us
weather the dot-com crash and build a
rock-solid foundation that sees us
through the recession of 2008.
Our secret?
Failure was not an option...
Too many artisans
depended on us!
In 2014 we launch our enhanced
mission to spread happiness around
the world.
In the coming years we are looking
forward to growth, happiness and
ever increasing levels of artisan
By June 2014, we have sent $50 million to artisans around the world!
At the same time as celebrating our $50 million milestone, NOVICA turned 15 years old! Our teams around the world gather to celebrate, including our team from the Andes (pictured above).


text:
Definitions of shirt
n. - A loose under-garment for the upper part of the body, made of cotton, linen, or other material; -- formerly used of the under-garment of either sex, now commonly restricted to that worn by men and boys. 2
v. t. & i. - To cover or clothe with a shirt, or as with a shirt. 2
The word "shirt" uses 5 letters: H I R S T.
No direct anagrams for shirt found in this word list.
Words formed by adding one letter before or after shirt (in bold), or to hirst in any order:
a - airths b - births d - thirds e - theirs f - firths friths shrift g - girths griths rights l - thirls m - mirths p - thrips s - shirts t - thirst y - shirty thyrsi yirths
Shorter words found within shirt:
hi his hist hit hits is it its sh shit shri si sir sit sith sri stir thir this ti tis
List shorter words within shirt, sorted by length
Words formed from any letters in shirt, plus an optional blank or existing letter
List all words starting with shirt, words containing shirt or words ending with shirt
All words formed from shirt by changing one letter
Other words with the same letter pairs: sh hi ir rt
Browse words starting with shirt by next letter
Previous word in list: shirrs
Next word in list: shirtdress
Some random words: ich pteranodon geanticline vera bub opisthobranch wrack
This is not a dictionary, it's a word game wordfinder.
- Help and FAQ - Examples - Home
Privacy and Cookies Policy - Share - © Copyright 2004-2019 Morewords.com - 19.144mS

subset: commoncrawl


text:
|The Dutch flagged Kroonborg was expected here very early this morning. It will be loading beet pulp pellets and may complete and depart the port by this evening. The Kroonborg is 428 feet long and was built in 1995. This is only the 4th trip here for the ship, the first since 2001. Yesterday, the BBC India came into port with wind turbine parts to be discharged. A barge called the Primary 1 that is coming here to load wind turbine parts has been delayed by weather and will now have to wait until the BBC India completes discharging its cargo, in 3 or 4 days. Photo taken June 8, 2000.
|*submitted to the Duluth News Tribune for publication on 09-19-2006


text:
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- v. To make or build a nest.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- intransitive v. To make a nest, as a bird.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To build a nest; nidificate; nidify.
- In botany, same as nidulant.
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Sorry, no example sentences found.


text:
Om volledige functionaliteit te bieden, heeft de site cookies nodig. For more information about what data is collected by the cookies, please refer to our Privacypagina.
Prijs (Inclusief BTW):
€ 29,90
French Press coffee maker, 3 cup, 0.35 l, 12 oz
Prijs (Inclusief BTW):
€ 29,90
Plus verzending Zien gegevens
Gratis levering over € 50,00
30 dagen retourbeleid
The BRAZIL coffee maker incorporates the BODUM® motto beautifully: good design doesn't have to be expensive. After all, we want to give everybody a chance to brew an excellent cup of coffee in a green way: just add course ground coffee, hot water and press. No paper filters or plastic cups are needed.
The BRAZIL has a heat resistant, borosilicate glass beaker (the standard for all BODUM French press plungers) and a polypropylene handle and base, which make the BRAZIL easy to use and easy to clean. The domed lid is made of a smooth polypropylene and has the special BODUM safety and aroma seal to keep your coffee warm for a longer time. Brewing coffee in the BRAZIL is one of life's great pleasures.
- Item Nummer 10948-906B
- Kleur Bruin
- Inhoud 0.350 L
- Breedte (cm) 11.5
- Hoogte (cm) 16.0
- Diepte (cm) 7.9
- Design Line BRAZIL
- Material Rvs, kunststof, borocilicate glas


text:
Experts Gather to Address Ethics, Regulation in Economic Downturn
A co-author of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the chairman of The BNY Mellon and others noted in the banking and investment industry will discuss new approaches and future directions for the banking and financial services industry at the Duquesne University forum Ethics, Regulation and Risk Management: A New Paradigm for the Financial Services Industry on Tuesday, April 21.
Designed to draw together professionals to explore how leaders in the financial services industry can re-establish stability in light of recent turns in the market, the event will feature keynote speakers Michael Oxley, former congressman and co-author of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and Robert P. Kelly, chairman and chief executive officer of Bank of New York Mellon.
A recent poll found that only eight percent of American consumers have full confidence in banks and other financial services companies.
"Public trust has been shaken, and these are three key paths to restoring trust and working through the crisis. We expect that our dialogue will expand awareness, capture important ideas and help to shape the conversation throughout the industry," said Tom Nist, Donahue Chair in Investment Management at Duquesne University, who is a co-sponsor of this timely event.
Oxley's keynote will follow morning sessions on ethics and regulation, which are aimed at combating this public perception. Oxley was integral in legislating 21st century standards for corporate transparency. Now, with the act in effect for seven years, the former Congressman will reflect on the act's impact and offer his suggestions for additional changes in financial practice and corporate governance.
Following the risk management panel, Kelly will conclude the day with his comments on the interdependent roles of ethics, regulation and risk management in influencing the future of the industry. Kelly was among the first bankers called to Washington to discuss the crisis with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson. Additionally, Kelly has been asked to lead an effort to provide industry input on future bank regulation.
Each of the three panels will include a host of financial services, and regulation and compliance personnel. Additionally, attendees will gather in small discussion groups during the day's networking breaks to address topics such as mark-to-market accounting, fiduciary standards and regulatory issues. Consensus opinions of these discussion groups will be reported to attendees and shared, as appropriate, with legislators and regulators.
The event is presented by Duquesne University's Beard Center for Leadership in Ethics, the Donahue Chair in Investment Management of the Palumbo•Donahue School of Business and the School of Law's Securities Arbitration Practicum, along with the Greater Pittsburgh Compliance Roundtable.
Ethics, Regulation and Risk Management will be held from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in Duquesne's Power Center Ballroom. For more information, to register by April 13 and for a detailed schedule, visit www.business.duq.edu/financialsymposium or call 412.396.4005.
Duquesne University
Founded in 1878, Duquesne is consistently ranked among the nation's top Catholic universities for its award-winning faculty and tradition of academic excellence. Duquesne, a campus of nearly 9,500 graduate and undergraduate students, has been nationally recognized for its academic programs, community service and commitment to sustainability. Follow Duquesne University on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.


text:
Volta Data Centres
Upgrading an existing facility to create a data centre that responds to London's business's technology needs
Volta acquired the leasehold for the former Reuters building in June 2012. Glebe identified the opportunity due to several factors: the number of major carriers already on site, its unique power supply and its close proximity to the City of London – attractive for businesses requiring latency sensitive services.
However, to meet the increasing needs of the capital's technology sector, the facility needed a major overhaul. We oversaw a planning permission to add rooftop plant, appointed specialist M&E engineers and secured a significant power upgrade from 2.5MW to a new 9.6MW.
Volta was developed as a brand and a team of specialist facility managers, sales and support staff were recruited – working under Glebe's managing director Matthew Dent. With significant experience in the sector, Matthew was appointed Volta CEO.
After a major refurbishment, Volta opened as a Tier 3 data centre in mid-2013.
For further information on Volta visit www.voltadatacentres.com.


text:
Guess How Much I Love You and I Love My Little Storybook
The Madison favorite children's touring company, Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia, returns! Little Nutbrown Hare loves Big Nutbrown Hare as far as he can reach. But Big Nutbrown Hare loves him as far as his long arms can reach. And so it continues in Guess How Much I Love You, the award-winning classic from author Sam McBratney and illustrator Anita Jeram. In Anita Jeram's I Love My Little Storybook, an eager little bunny lies on the grass and opens his book, and within moments, the story he's reading comes alive in fascinating detail. Part of American Girl's Fund for Children Family Series.
Date: March 11, 2018
Event Times: 3pm
Ticket Information: $20
URL: http://www.overture.org/events/guess-how-much
Location of this event
Overture Center for the Arts
201 State St
Madison, WI 53703
Phone: 608-258-4141
Accessibility: Fully accessible.
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Web site: www.overturecenter.com


text:
zone transfers, a spammer's dream? Dec 07 2004 10:38PM
Lode Vermeiren (lode linu cx) (1 replies)
Hello all,
while doing some experiments with dig using a .fm domain I made a small
typo. Much to my surprise the whole fm zone was transferable by anyone.
It's obvious this is a fabulous source for dictionary spammers who just
mail to generic addresses at as much domains as they can possibly find.
(info (at) example (dot) com [email concealed], sales (at) example (dot) com [email concealed], ...)
Intrigued by the .fm zone, I did a quick scan to see which other top
level domains allowed zone transfers. It was no surprise to me that some
small zones of developing countries were open, but one top level domain
immediately caught my eye: getting the complete .ca zone (Canada), 48 Mb
in total, serving 471.686 domains is as easy as doing 'dig axfr ca
Some zones weren't transferable at the master nameservers, but were
transferable at slave servers.
Other publicly transferable zones: (quick and dirty count, divide by +/-
3 to get the number of domains, as this lists multiple name servers per
wc -l *.zone
432 ao.zone
5050 ba.zone
15 biz.et.zone
4645 bo.zone
45 bt.zone
923 bw.zone
1031788 ca.zone
20 cf.zone
11167 com.eg.zone
208 com.er.zone
377 com.ye.zone
313 cv.zone
5216 dj.zone
3724 ec.zone
51054 ee.zone
36 eg.zone
42 er.zone
54 et.zone
10063 fm.zone
498 ga.zone
482 gd.zone
6829 ge.zone
885 gp.zone
27 gq.zone
13622 gs.zone
45 gu.zone
31 gw.zone
541 gy.zone
16522 jm.zone
2732 kg.zone
76 kh.zone
17 km.zone
1467 kn.zone
210 lc.zone
36 mh.zone
75 mp.zone
22047 ms.zone
69 mt.zone
3697 museum.zone
2013 mw.zone
156 mz.zone
264 na.zone
732 org.eg.zone
415 org.mt.zone
26665 pk.zone
4280 sm.zone
3172 sn.zone
17495 tc.zone
38 td.zone
1999 tp.zone
171 uk.zone
16 um.zone
70 uy.zone
2407 vc.zone
15645 vg.zone
3308 vu.zone
61 ye.zone
220 yu.zone
This does not include some second level domains like net.** and org.**,
as my quick and dirty script didn't check these.
After a much too long introduction here comes my questions: is this
deliberate? I can understand that Chad has bigger things to worry about
than 24 domains getting on yet another spam list, but why Canada makes
nearly half a million domains as easy to grab as this really is a
mystery to me.
What do you think?
Best regards,
Lode Vermeiren
lode (at) linu (dot) cx [email concealed]
[ reply ]
RE: zone transfers, a spammer's dream? Dec 13 2004 05:01PM
Marcin Pacyna (mpacyna nexvision com)
Privacy Statement


text:
Natural Cures For Depression
If symptoms of depression are many, so is its cure. Depression in any form affects your quality of life. Visiting a medical expert or a psychiatrist becomes the obvious choice when you experience this prolonged period of sadness. You go through some weeklong counseling sessions which no doubt cost you a fortune. And if medication is added to it, then the expenses are much more. Sometimes, medications for depression are over-prescribed. It is here that you look for more natural cures for depression.
It cannot be denied that many depression patients have recovered successfully from prescription medications and never had any such problems. Even talking about their problems through cognitive behavior therapy has improved their mental condition to a far greater extent. However, it cannot be denied that people can also benefit from natural cures of depression. Mild cases of depression are occasionally treated with natural cures. In chronic cases, medical help and medications become unavoidable.
Every year the number of people falling into depression increases. Studies reveal that depression is becoming so common that in the future, it will be one of the main causes of disability, not only in America but worldwide.
The effects of depression can only be mitigated. There is no absolute remedy for depression. Dietary changes or herbal supplements can only mitigate the effects of depression. An effective therapy program suggested by your doctor will help you understand what self-talk is and how it can used to minimize depression naturally. A light, brisk walk around 20 to 25 minutes will help you fight depression, especially when the effect of depression is mild.
Regular exposure to sunlight can affect a person's helplessness to depression. Avoid consumption of alcohol or caffeine, as they play a significant role in sudden mood swings and make it much more pronounced. In addition to all these natural cure therapies, there is a new tool that can fight effectively against some forms of depression. The tool is Omega 3 fatty acids, which significantly reduce the level of depression, especially among people in the industrialized countries.
Always be in touch with your doctor, who will help you in developing a whole-life approach to your depression. Never stop your medication because it can prove fatal. Any consumption of herbal or nutritional supplements should be taken in consultation with your doctor. Live life. Beat depression.
About the Author: Milos Pesic is a successful webmaster and owner of popular and comprehensive Overcome Depression blog. For more articles and valuable resources on Depression related topics, Depression symptoms and treatments visit his blog at:


text:
Through a collaborative interview with Nehemiah Park (pseudonym), a North Korean who defected in 1997, I recently had the opportunity to interview Timothy Lee (pseudonym), a 16-year-old North Korean boy from the North Hamgeong province Hyesan city who escaped the country in 2011. Timothy stands at about 4 feet 5 inches as a 16-year-old, a common height for males his age in North Korea. His permanently stunted growth is one of the many consequences of the chronic malnutrition and starvation that ordinary North Korean citizens face year-round. The following represents a Q&A style interview I conducted with Timothy, offering a glimpse into the daily life of a North Korean teenager. For the full audio interview file, please contact me directly.
Jieun Baek (JB): Describe your childhood. What was the process of defecting like?
Timothy Lee (TL): I lived with my parents until they passed away from starvation and illness when I was 10 years-old. While living in a very under-resourced orphanage between 11-15 years old, I did a lot of labor work on government-sponsored farms. I escaped North Korea in 2011 when I was 15, and with the help of a Christian missionary, I made my way to South Korea by going through China.
JB: What did your daily and weekly schedule look like?
TL: January - April: While living in the orphanage, I would do morning exercises, eat, study a little. After lunch, I'd study some more until 3:30 PM, work, eat dinner, then sleep.
May - July: In exchange for living at the orphanage, I would do work for the orphanage. During these summer months, I moved into the countryside to pick wild roots in the mountains for about 15 hours a day. Between May-November, I would only work and have no time to study.
July-November: I picked blueberries for about 15 hours a day, all of which the government would take from us. With the exception of one month out of the year, I toiled year round doing farm work for my government without earning any money.
JB: What did you do for fun?
TL: Nothing, really. I don't have many joyous memories from North Korea. The older orphan boys and I would steal food, which was kind of fun.
JB: What did you read for fun?
TL: There aren't that many books in North Korea, nor libraries. Most of the books I ever read, including comic books, were about the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il.
JB: What kinds of TV shows and movies did you watch?
TL: I watched a ton of propaganda videos about Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung
JB: What kind of music did you listen to?
TL: Other that North Korean pro-government music, I never heard any other songs.
JB: What kind of radio programs did you listen to?
TL: I was never able to listen to the radio. If I heard radio programs earlier, I probably would have defected sooner.
JB: What kind of games and sports did you play?
TL: Obviously, I never saw -- much less owned -- electronic games. I never saw a computer in North Korea. I did some basic physical exercises, played a little soccer, and played on metal monkey bars.
JB: What kinds of junk food did you eat?
TL: I ate mostly rice porridge with corn husks, and basic dried daikon soup.
JB: What was your favorite activity to do in North Korea?
TL: Singing pro-North Korean songs and roasting potatoes to eat with my friends at the orphanage.


text:
Tweetz Desktop Beta10 Oct 2013
Tweetz Desktop is a desktop version of my twitter gadget tweetz. It has many of a the same features as the gadget. Like the gadget, Tweetz Desktop is designed to sit quietly in the corner of your desktop. The design is minimal, quiet and has almost no window chrome.
One of the best features of Tweetz Desktop (IMHO) is the combined timeline that shows your home timeline, mentions and direct messages in a single view. Mentions and direct messages are shaded to distinguish them. This keeps you current without having to switch views.
In line images further reduce the number of interactions. Just a quick glance is all it takes (there's an option to not display them also). You can also add images to your tweets.
Have a high resolution display? No problem. Tweetz Desktop is written in WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) and scales beautifully.
Give it a try and send feedback.
Full disclosure: The installer will "Ask" to install additional programs from advertisers. You can decline to install them and still use Tweetz Desktop. I get a few bucks if you install one. Now you know.
Windows 7 Users: If you see blank-squares on the navigation bar after installing you'll have to install an update to the Segoe UI Symbol Font. If it says it's already installed, uninstall and reinstall it.
Update: A number of you have asked about changing the width. I'm working on something. The lack of window chrome (i.e. window borders) makes this bit more challenging
Available on the downloads page.


text:
As a relatively unknown band, in June of this year, Australian natives Tonight Alive released arguably one of the year's better EPs. All Shapes & Disguises was a pop-rock enthusiast's dream; it is carefully crafted with memorable hooks, strong vocals and musicianship that soars above many of their peers. Though the comparisons to Paramore are obvious, Tonight Alive brings a youthful vigor to the genre that is fresh compared to all of the contemporary female fronted pop-rock derivatives. Their massive potential has not gone unnoticed; the group recently inked a deal with major label Sony and has plans to record their debut full-length with eminent producer Mark Trombino (Jimmy Eat World, The Starting Line, Valencia). Before they make the jump across waters, the quintet has released Consider This to tide fans over. However, Tonight Alive's latest offering is subpar in comparison to their previous release. The songs are still inherently catchy, but sound like b-sides of All Shapes & Disguises. They lack the same spark and appeal that was prevalent in their last EP.
While the band's youth was its greatest asset in All Shapes & Disguises, in Consider This, youth is the cause of their problems. This is evident from the opening notes of "Revenge And Its Thrills". Musically, the riff is very messy in execution. With the guitar at the center of attention, this folly is especially apparent. In addition to this musical misstep, the melody and hook of "Revenge And Its Thrills" is lacking. It does not have the same lasting value or appeal of the songs on All Shapes & Disguises. On the upside, vocalist Jenna McDougall's vocals are as strong as ever. Additionally, McDougall's vocals are showcased in the subsequent track "Five Years". Her strong voice dominates the forefront, selling the song's melody and hook. However, "Five Years" is not without its flaws; its blunder is its lyrics, specifically McDougall's choice of words. The line in question is "Please don't make me throw up", a phrase that is certainly cringe inducing. Luckily, Consider This ends on quite the high note. "Thankyou and Goodnight" is the pop-punk amalgam of Tonight Alive's strongest qualities. It is fun and accessible.
Despite the aforementioned criticisms of the EP, Consider This is better than most of what the genre has to offer. But as we have seen in their previous works, Tonight Alive is certainly capable of writing stellar pop-rock songs. To put it bluntly, the tracks on the new EP fall very short of expectations. Hopefully, Consider This will just a minor bump in the road. The band has all the potential in the world. With Mark Trombino at the helm, let us see if they can do it. Consider Tonight Alive a band to watch closely in 2011.
2. Consider This
3. Thankyou And Goodnight
Tonight Alive are a 5 piece pop-punk band from Sydney, Australia. Fronted by 17 year old Jenna, the band combine earnest lyrics and youthful energy. Fans of Paramore will enjoy Tonight Alive-one of the most talented up-and-coming bands.
User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.... read more


text:
The community is invited to "Final Words from the Cross" by Adam Hamilton, a Lenten and Easter Bible study, at the United Methodist Church of Plano.
This study course will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday evenings beginning on Feb. 21 and running through March 28. It will be led by Pastor Stevan Saunders and will examine the words that Jesus spoke as he hung on the cross and the meaning and purpose those words give to us today.
Participants are encouraged to order their copies of "Final Words from the Cross" from Amazon or Cokesbury and bring them to the study. To sign up for this study or for more information, call the church office at 630-552-3700.


text:
Pill slimming, whats the deal?.
Beware! Theres a new breed of dieters out there, they don't play by the rules and they certainly don't reek of cabbage or sweat. They cheat their way thin with tablets for weight loss, otherwise known as pill slimming! After years of watching these unethical but successful dieters I eventually decided if I can't beat em, join em! This is my take on the world of popping pills and the slimming elite.
My entrance to the world of dieting.
Ah, good old fashioned dieting! For me it still conjures up images of stick thin leotard clad women prancing about on TV making us believe they live off a diet of carrots and water. For a long time I must have believed it too, my days used to consist of abdominal crunches followed by munching on green things even Bugs Bunny would turn his nose up at!
I was never a really thin child but by the time I reached 20 I realised I had to do something about my ever expanding frame. My friends were all "gym rats" and had the type of figure I could only dream of, I wanted to lose wieght so bad I would often starve myself for days at a time only to binge like crazy when the hunger got to much.
My weight problem was not a joke!
The thing is I like food, I was often told I had a weight problem...I couldn't "weight" to eat, so my lovely friends joked! The problem with diets by there very definition is they mean cutting down on what you eat, what i needed was a miracle pill that would negate any excess fat I consumed. Of course you know there is no such pill that will do that....or is there?
How I found Fat binders....
It was around three years ago, after joining a weight loss forum on the internet, that I was introduced to fat binders. Fat binders work by using a natural ingredient (often hoodia extract) that binds the fat molecules together, this normally happens during digestion and renders the fat molecules too large to be used efficiently by the body. It is now scientifically proven that by using a fat binding ingredient such as hoodia you can take an estimated 28% off your daily fat intake. I have tried a few fat binders over the years but there is one that has worked really well and taken the most weight off. Its called Proactol.
Proactol the natural way to lose weight
Proactol is not only a fat binder but is also an appetite supressent, it is one of the easiest and safest ways to diet. Not only does Proactol negate 28% of your daily fat intake it also will help you with cravings and the actual amount you physically want to eat! It's common knowledge the only real way to lose weight and keep it off is to consume less calories! Proactol makes this really simple.
Taken from Proactol's website;
Pill slimming using Proactol™:
- can reduce your dietary fat intake by 28%
- lower blood cholesterol
- cut your calories by 150 calories per meal
- suppress your appetite
- boost your energy levels
- increase joint flexibility
- ease aches and pains
I want more information on Proactol - where do I go?
Proactol - tablets for weight loss official website - Click below
How much did I lose with Proactol?
I used Proactol for just over a year and lost 25 pounds. This was with no extra exercise program just my normal walks with my dog!
Is there a coupon I could use?
I have contacted Proactol directly to get this code! - enter BABPR1 when your are on the checkout page for an extra 15% off.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Pill slimming with Proactol
Posted by Pauline Illsley at 06:26
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
Saturday, January 24, 2009
"Netochka Nezvanova" Dostoevsky
Russian prose fiction has three main forms: the rasskaz (story, short story), the povest (tale, novelette, novella), and the roman, (novel). I am told that the looseness of the English terms does not quite do justice to the rather more clearly demarcated boundaries of the Russian. A rasskaz depicts one event in the life of a character, illuminating the character and his life by a relationship of metonymy. A povest depicts a series of events illuminating a character and a period of his life. A roman also depicts a series of events, but the range of characters and events is greater and more complex than in the povest.
In his work of the 1840s, Dostoevsky, apart from the epistolary Poor Folk, mainly wrote rasskaz and povest. Netochka Nezvanova was his first attempt in the longer more complex form of the roman, and it is not altogether very successful.
The story consists of three episodes in the life of Netochka, with a prologue detailing the life of her stepfather. The first episode details her grim childhood, the death of her parents and her subsequent adoption by the philanthropic Prince X. The second describes her intense friendship and infatuation with the Prince's daughter, a girl roughly the same age. In the third episode Netochka is adopted by a relative of the Prince, a married woman with a secret past, which Netochka finds out about by accident. It depicts a strange love triangle between Netochka, her patroness, and her patroness's husband. Notwithstanding the fact that all three tales are narrated by the eponymous Netochka, the narrative does not really succeed in uniting these four units into a coherent and novelistically complex whole. The work remains rather obviously three separate povests linked by a common narrator.
However the novel is interesting for two connected reasons: the development of Dostoevsky's prose style, linked to his growing interiority, and the theme of the awakening consciousness.
The prologue and first episode are Hoffmanesque tales of starving artists and miserable childhoods, freezing in garrets, consumption and so on. There is a distance between the narrator and the events she describes, a distance compounded of memory and vision. The narrator holds the events at arms length, describes them from the outside, with a kind of briskness. This kind of writing is a characteristic of the 18th/early 19th century, in particular Hoffman, Pushkin, and Gogol, all of whom write prose that reads with a brevity, a clarity and a swiftness, with a clear distance between narrator and reader on the one hand, and the events being described on the other.
The second episode is quite different. The events are much closer, both to the narrator and the reader. While we read we have the impression that the events are being created in front of our eyes. We enter into the mind of the narrator/character: we become her as we read. It's less an act of memory on the part of the narrator, than an act of creation between writer and reader. It's a much closer focus, much more interior, and very much slower to read, crammed full of internal details and descriptions of subtle and elusive mental and emotional states. It's in this episode that Dostoevsky really creates the psychological novel.
The third episode tries to project this same kind of psychological intensity into a more social realm. In place of the intensity of the one-on-one relationship of the second episode, the third episode brings in more characters and focuses on the interaction between larger groups of people. The writing in this episode is marred by heavy use of melodrama and a prose style reminiscent of De Kock and Sue, often unintentionally ludicrous: She gave a shriek, turned pale and leaned against her chair for support, hardly able to stand on her feet. There's an awful lot of shrieking and fainting.
The second interesting feature of the novel is the birth of consciousness depicted in it. In his masterpiece The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, Hoffman writes: Our first awakening to clear consciousness remains for ever impenetrable to us. If it were possible for that awakening to occur suddenly, I believe the shock of it would kill us. It seems Dostoevsky has taken this to heart and describes this awakening of consciousness in the psychological close-up of the second episode. Netochka herself describes this as an awakening from childhood sleep, my first engagement with life: and gives it a great deal of space and attention in her narrative. From the time when I was eight and a half I began to remember everything very clearly…from that moment when I suddenly became aware of myself I developed remarkably quickly, and was more than capable of contending with many unchildlike impressions… The awakening to consciousness happens too suddenly: … my development began with incomprehensible and exhausting rapidity…I was no longer satisfied with external impressions alone, and I began to think, to reason, to observe. and the psyche takes refuge in fantasy: my mind could not really interpret things properly, and I found myself living in a world of my own… a fairy tale…
This kind of writing is totally alien to the 18th century way of seeing and describing. It's at once much more 19th century, and astonishingly prescient of modern psychological and cognitive theories. After the serial publication of the first part of Netochka Nezvanova, early in the morning of the 23rd of April 1849 Dostoevsky was arrested. He spent the next 5 years in prison and never returned to the novel. It remains unfinished, and marks the transition between the works of his apprenticeship, and his maturity.
Labels: Dostoevsky, Essais, Russia
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Earlier this year, data from 33 million users of the Ashley Madison website was stolen. The website is set up to facilitate out of wedlock affairs, so users were nervous that they might be discovered by a spouse and that their emails and phone numbers had been released to the public. The New York Times reported that the cost to the company would near $900 million dollars. Cyberattack and stealing personal data is increasingly commonplace. According to the 2015 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 79,790 'Security Incidents' and 2,122 'Confirmed Data Breaches' occurred in 61 countries last year. The industries most affected were the public sector, technology information, and finance.The report details several concerns: the increase in incidence of data breach, the amount of time it takes to discover a cyberattack, and the number of attacks that are due to human error. Furthermore, defense that is developed for one firm often does not work for other companies; 70-90 percent of computer viruses, worms, and spyware are unique to the company that is attacked.Effect on Small BusinessAccording to a new survey of small business owners conducted by Nationwide Insurance Company, though 63 percent of small business owners have been victimized by cyberattacks, 79 percent do not have a cyberattack response plan. The country's largest small business insurer released the report in anticipation of the year's most active shopping season over the holidays. The most common attacks are computer viruses and phishing (emails sent to infect a computer with worms or spyware). Over 50 percent of small business owners say it would take at least three months to recover from a cyberattack.A 2015 report from Symantec Security Response found that attacks on small business have risen for the past three years. Smaller information technology budgets and less training for employees on cyber security opens up smaller firms to attack.Data breaches most often occur when employees are not following proper security standards and systems. Securing passwords, avoiding interaction with unknown and untrusted web sites from work computers, and early detection of online security threats by trained employees are all strategies outlined by Symantec.Most small businesses balk at the high cost of employing information technology professionals to thwart cyberattack. Some more affordable, albeit minimal prevention techniques include purchasing and keeping updated malware defense software, protecting access to your Wi-Fi system, and putting into place data recovery capabilities. ----------------------------------------------2014-2015 cyber attacks:[1]- 80 million patient and employee records stolen from Anthem.- N Korean attacks on Sony Pictures leads to cancellation of "The Interview" movie release.- Staples – Information from 1.16 million credit cards stolen.- Data from 56 million payment cards stolen from Home Depot.- Michaels – Credit card information from 3 million customers compromised over several months.----------------------------------------------Preventable Attacks for ConsumersIf there is any bright spot in the Verizon report, it is that many cyberattacks are preventable with consumer awareness. For those sent emails designed to infect a computer through phishing, 23 percent opened dangerous messages and 11 percent clicked on attachments. The easy solution – don't open emails from unknown sources or organizations that are not trusted.The majority of cyberattacks occur at the 'Point of Sale' – a whopping 28.5 percent. When handing over credit cards, the safe bet is to use a card with chip technology and to patronize those businesses whose credit card readers utilize credit card chip technology. Those chips create a new code for every transaction making it much harder to steal data.Consumers should be careful to guard personal data and be wary when entering sensitive data online. Complex passwords should be employed on any and all online transactions and malware protection should be installed and updated on a regular basis. [1] 9 Recent Cyberattacks Against Big Businesses, New York Times, Kevin Granville, Feb. 5, 2015[2] 11 Data Breaches That Stung US Consumers, Bankrate.com, Allison Ross
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Armor 1
Bayonets 38
Belts, Buckles 135
Boxes 3
Bronzes 22
Daggers 386
Damascus 2
Field Gear 47
Firearms 9
Headgear 204
Helmets 2
Hoffmann 1
Holsters 6
Insignia 72
Japanese 3
Lugers 8
Out of Print 19
Period Books 23
Posters 27
Samurai 7
Stamps 4
Swords 60
Tinnies 59
Uniforms 143
Walther 5
Willrich 27
This Section.. 2,685
REFERENCE ONLY. (SOLD or NOT FOR SALE)
The Army Marksmanship Lanyards were instituted to replace the Weimar Marksmanship sleeve stripes. This is an example of the 2nd style lanyard grade 1. This is a great quality example with bright bullion and oakleaf wreath, crossed swords and eagle badge. The badge shows a bit of patina in the recesses, and the field grey wool backing has a few moth nips. The entire reverse of the braided portion is covered with silver grey artificial silk, which helped to protect the tunic from residue from the bullion. Overall the piece shows very minor age and the moth nips, but displays well. A wonderful example!


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Earlier this week Nalini Singh announced the hero of the next Psy/Changeling book. If you don't want to know, look away now, or scroll down see the name ;)
Although I'd hoped to see more of the Changelings in this book, I'm still very pleased to hear this. I'm also a little disappointed (and I know I'm definitely not the only one) that his partner is a new female, and not a certain Arrow, but Nalini had said previously that she never intended them to be like that.
I think given the events of Heart Of Obsidian, it makes sense to have a Psy narrator for this book, as the situation with the Net and Silence is going to be very interesting now, and I don't know if we would have been able to see the full effect of that from a DarkRiver or SnowDancer point of view. I love that we're going to find out more about the Arrows now, too, and I expect that Judd Lauren will make an appearance at some point.
I'm very excited to get to know more about Vasic. All the snippets we've had about him so far in the series have made him seem like a very interesting, complex character. He has his loyalty to the Arrows, and protecting the people in the net. I'm really looking forward to seeing his full reaction to what Kaleb showed him at the end of Heart Of Obsidian, and how that affects him (I don't see how it couldn't cause some ripples).
I really am happy to get to know more about such an intriguing character, and I can't wait till we get some more information about the heroine, and any other hints and snippets about this book.
How about you? What did you think about having Vasic as the next hero in the Psy/Changeling series?
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Nalini Singh announces next Psy/Changeling hero
Author: Ailsa | Filed Under: ailsa, book news, Nalini Singh, Psy/Changeling | at 11:03 AM |
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John Garcia, owner and brewer of Lookout Brewery in Black Mountain, was used to a certain type of Black Mountain tourist before he switched careers. He'd see people in town because their family has a place in Montreat or Lake Lure. Others he talked to were stopping to grab a bite to eat before going skiing or kayaking. That changed when he opened a brewery.
"In our first few months of business, the one thing that's been so surprising is the beer tourism," says Garcia. "Some of the folks that come in don't give a damn about the mountain or rivers — they're here for the breweries and beer."
When Lookout opened in May 2013, Garcia wasn't sure everything would work out. He still had a second job as a bartender at Black Mountain Ale House. But two weeks later, the brewery was making money and Garcia hasn't looked back. The brewery is now open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. almost every day and will soon upgrade its brewhouse to a three-barrel system. "We've been able to hire two bartenders, a brewer, and a cellarman. … The community here in Black Mountain has been a big support and the extended beer community [in Asheville] has just been amazing," says Garcia.
What to Expect
Lookout now occupies two units at 103 S. Ridgeway Ave. in Black Mountain, with one fully dedicated to the tasting room. There are about 10 seats at the wood bar and plenty of larger tables for groups. In the winter there's a fire pit outside, and in the summer a garage door brings the nice weather indoors. Garcia and fellow brewer Chris Terwilliger can be seen at work through a window behind the bar. "We're the monkeys behind the glass," says Terwilliger.
The brewers keep at least eight beers on tap with plenty of rotating specialties. According to Garcia, the most popular beer is the Black Mountain IPA — a malty rye version of the style. Allison's Front Porch, the house pale, is a close second. As the name suggests, it was designed by Garcia's wife, Allison. "She was sick of me screwing around with different recipes for a pale ale. … It turns out her recipe is what people wanted all along," says Garcia.
In addition to the pales, IPAs, ambers and stouts, Garcia and Terwilliger always have experimental batches flowing. At the time of writing there was a pilsner, a tart stout, two beers fermented with yeast from wild figs and an early preview of a summer beer flavored with grapefruit. "We want to keep creative. … What we don't want is the same Oktoberfest as everyone else," says Garcia.
Last year that meant a Thanksgiving IPA brewed with cranberries and pumpkin instead of an Oktoberfest. Then in December they created a champagne-like ale called Happy New Beer. Next, Terwilliger says to look out for a "white stout" for Valentine's Day brewed with cocoa butter, vanilla, lactose and sugar—the key ingredients of white chocolate. The two also can't wait for the hops harvest, when they add wet hops to the kettle within an hour of harvest for a truly local beer. "They're the best beers you'll ever drink," says Terwilliger. "Think of the difference between a tomato in summer and one in winter — that's the difference when you make something this fresh."
Lookout is open Monday-Saturday 11 a.m.-9 p.m. and Sunday 1-6 p.m. Most pints are $4, eight-beer flights are $8-9, and to-go Mason jars (32 ounces) are $8-10.


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- We are built by the community, for the community!
- We proudly serve all members of the LGBTQ community, and match bisexual, transgender, and queer members with singles looking for love.
- Our focus is on serious dating and real relationships. If you are looking for a hook-up, a quickie, or somebody to casually date – this is not the app for you.


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The Land-Grant Mission
The land-grant university concept represents a dynamic educational experience: the body of knowledge constantly changes through research and experimentation and is disseminated to the public through extension education. New knowledge brings new ideas and expanded opportunities, often followed by new milestones and advancements in the land-grant university experience.
In the late 1850s, then U.S. Congressman Justin Smith Morrill from Vermont envisioned universities that were accessible to all, including the working class. And unlike the higher-education institutions of his time, these universities would reach out to improve communities and make their research widely available. The Morrill Act has provided a broad segment of the population with a practical education that has direct relevance to their daily lives.
Signed into law in 1862, the Morrill Act fostered the land-grant mission, which has evolved to serve not only our nation, but also the global population. And as that mission has evolved, universities across the nation have revolutionized the concept of what it means to be a land-grant university and is always planning for what lies ahead. The need for land-grant universities has never been greater. Currently, one-sixth of the world's population suffers from chronic hunger. More than two billion people worldwide live in regions facing water scarcity. And global competition for natural resources is becoming fiercer.
Land-grant university programs benefit many, from individuals to the international community. And together, land-grant universities, are making a powerful and profound impact on our states, our nation, and our world.


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Budget deficit threatens bus service
This year, proposed Port Authority service cuts could affect many Carnegie Mellon students and others affiliated with the university. On Jan. 18, the Port Authority Planning and Development Committee introduced a fare increase and service reduction proposal, which would cut current service hours by 35 percent, effective Sept. 2. A fare increase, effective July 1, would accompany the service changes. The service changes have been proposed as a response to the Port Authority's $64 million budget deficit.
The Port Authority has been cutting service for several years. According to Port Authority data, in 2010, bus services were cut by 15 percent and over 250 Port Authority employees were laid off due to budget shortfalls. In March 2011, the Port Authority scaled back services by another 15 percent, eliminating 29 routes and reducing service on another 37 routes. Bus fare has also been increased several times since 2001.
The steady decrease in available bus service has changed the way that Carnegie Mellon students travel. According to Lieutenant Joseph Meyers of the University Police, Carnegie Mellon shuttles and escort buses gave 40,000 more rides in 2011 than they did in 2009. Meyers, who oversees transportation for the University Police, said that he believes the increased ridership was due to the recently expanded reach of the shuttle routes, along with Port Authority cuts.
Meyers said that if additional routes were necessary for the Carnegie Mellon shuttles, they would be added, but only after more research and information was obtained about the Port Authority cuts. "My top priorities are safety and consistency, so all students can do what they need to do," Meyers said.
The planned service reduction is not, however, a foregone conclusion. Announced route eliminations have been scaled back in the past. For instance, the 15 percent service reduction in 2007 was planned and announced as a 35 percent reduction. However, former Pennsylvania Governer Ed Rendell granted the Port Authority a one-time emergency fund of $45 million dollars. This money allowed the Port Authority to retain more routes. But the $45 million dollars has run out now, and the Port Authority once again faces major service cuts.
According to Heather Pharo, a Port Authority spokesperson, the Port Authority considers several factors when deciding how and where to reduce service. Among them, Pharo said, are ridership levels, the presence of other transportation options in the area, and operating costs.
But Pharo said that all areas would be affected by the proposed cuts. "There's really no fat to trim in the route system," Pharo said. "There are no easy decisions to make. While we are proposing the elimination of probably about half of our routes, there isn't a single route that wouldn't see a reduction."
According to Pharo, one of the effects of the service reduction would be a severe drop in nighttime service. Only 12 routes would continue to run after 10 p.m. Among them would be the 61B and the 86.
In addition, Pharo said, the Port Authority would have to lay off several hundred employees.
Pharo said that the Port Authority has entered what is known in the mass transit industry as "the death spiral," in which service must be reduced and fares must be raised in order to save money, which in turn reduces profits as ridership drops. She said that this is not a problem that the Port Authority can fix on its own. "We need something that's a dedicated solution at the state level, and something that deals with inflation," Pharo said.
Such a solution may take some time to come about. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett's 2012–13 budget, which he released on Tuesday, does not address mass transportation. Carnegie Mellon's Student Senate has created a petition against the Port Authority service cuts at www.stoppatcuts.com, which simultaneously sends emails to Corbett, the Pennsylvania State House transportation committee, and the signer's district's representative, urging them to support Pennsylvania House Bill 2112.
House Bill 2112 would fund mass transit using money from tolls gathered on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. A similar funding scheme was proposed in 2007 with Act 44, which would have turned Interstate 80 into a toll road, some of the proceeds from which would have gone to fund mass transit in Pennsylvania. Rendell, during his term, signed the bill into law.
However, the federal government rejected the application to toll Interstate 80, and in 2010, Act 44 mass transit funding was cut in half. According to Pharo, this funding cut led to the March 2011 service reduction.
While the state searches for a funding solution, Carnegie Mellon students worry about how they will get from one place to another.
"I rely heavily on the Port Authority system to get to and from work," said Carrie Weintraub, a first-year information systems major. "If bus service were to be reduced, then I would not be able to have the job that I have now."
Sophomore chemistry major Haylie Kim said that she feels that Pittsburgh's bus service is already too sporadic.
"I feel as though the bus schedule is sometimes very unreliable," Kim said. "There have been many instances in which I needed to get on the bus to go to an important meeting or an interview, and ended up having to wait for the bus that was said to come in five minutes for half an hour." A substantial service reduction would make buses even rarer.
Weintraub also worried that a reduction in bus service would trap students on campus.
"The buses also allow students to get out and about in order to explore the city and get out of the 'CMU Bubble,' " Weintraub said. "Without the buses, the extent to which students would get off campus would be Craig Street, Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, and Oakland. That would be a real shame, since there are some real gems downtown and on the South Side."
Pharo said that it is the Port Authority's sincere hope that it will not have to reduce service. "Unfortunately, for a lot of the people who take these routes, there will be no options left," Pharo said. "It's been very difficult for us to come up with this. We want to have these routes in our system. They're all vital."


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Lucario Birthday Cake
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In mid-October, this picture was added to the hpgalleries's movie gallery, with the caption, "Harry in his Weasley Sweater." I don't know what to make of this, because we know for a fact from the book, that he received an "emerald green" sweater (no mention of the letter H) for Christmas from Mrs. Weasley. This is clearly blue, with a gold H on it, and just like the red sweater above, seems to fit him well enough, and therefore is not a hand-me-down from Dudley (the "h" pretty much rules out a hand-me-down anyway.) I have no idea what is going on here, seems the movie is changing pretty significant things!
Again this is a drop-shouldered sweater, done in splain stocking stitch, with a loose crew neck. This is another perfect candidate for buying from the store and altering, though I personally would NOT make this sweater, as it does not fit into the book at all. Though I suppose we should wait and see the actual movie before jumping to any conclusions.
Update 11/28/01: After having watched the movie, this sweater is NOT IN IT. It is clearly something that was cut out of the movie for the sake of keeping it short enough. There were over 4 hours of tape for this movie, which got cut down to 2.5 hours, so it's no surprise that there are entire scenes that aren't in the final cut. I am guessing that this shot of Harry is of him sitting in front of the mirror that shows him his parents. I do believe that this is the movie version of Harry's Weasley sweater, and I'm still disappointed with that. It seems, however, that these sweaters may be popping up everywhere because there is at least one site online that is selling them, we may be seeing them on all the little kids. Personally, I hope not.
As shared on the KnitU list, the company that provided the Weasley sweaters has a website. They are selling them! Knitters can definitely use their pictures for details/inspiration if you're trying to replicate one of them. Here is the link:
(this site also has Neville's fair isle sweater and vest and Hermione's fair isle cap)


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Rings and Fings: Episode 22
The Copper
"Well, hello Rachael." The voice came from behind the pair as they were waiting for their pints to be poured.
The Traveler glanced over at her with a look that said "you are extremely popular here for a girl who said she had never been here before."
She gave him a half smile then turned her barstool around and there in full uniform and with a pint of ale in his hand was the village policeman, officer Church.
He was a small man with a disproportionately fat face.
"Oh, hello Officer Church. It's been a while." She heard the new pints being placed on the bar behind her. "Heard you had some trouble at Kelly Mill the other night," he looked at the Traveler and took a swig of his ale.
They both twisted around and picked up their ales.
Rachael took a swig and said,
"No, no trouble. Nothing I couldn't handle, but thanks for your concern."
"Hmm," he returned his gaze to Rachael, "I haven't been on your farm for a long time; I really must start visiting again."
"If you have the time, I'm sure your plate is full with all the crazy farmers that live around here," "and besides, by the time you had cycled down there it would have been all over."
"Harrumph," the copper nodded, gave the Traveler a not so nice look then turned away towards the farmers' corner.
"All they did was give the village idiot a badge so they could still do their crap without getting in trouble. This is a lawless valley, Stranger. Yup," she said sipping her pint.
She thought the Traveler probably did not get the cowboy reference but he smiled back, and said "It certainly is."
Behind them the two musicians launched into a new song, suddenly the Traveler's eyes lit up, "I know this shanty!" he announced.
"Oh yes?" she replied letting the magic of the hobgoblin ale change her outlook.
"Yes, I'll tell you the tale if you would like." His face glowed in the dancing firelight as he began to recount the story.
Outside the weather was boiling up, swirly and dark.
The Story of the Wind
As always it is about a young fair maiden who lived in the countryside. In this one she married a wealthy farmer's son.
So, they were living a very happy life on their farm by the cliffs when the big war started.
He, of course, answers the call from the King and joins the great Navy. Heartbroken she declares undying love for the confident sailor and off he goes. She stands on the cliff all day watching the fleet leave and disappear over the glowing horizon. Every day she goes to the edge of the cliffs and looks out to sea, waiting for that English flag to appear.
Unfortunately she hears the news that the ship her husband was serving on engaged the enemy's flag ship, successfully sinking her but sustaining so much damage that the British ship was also lost. The battle was won and the fleet was heading home.
Very sad, indeed, in fact heartbroken, she walks to the cliff while a violent storms whips around the bay. After a long while staring and cursing at the Black waves, she flings herself into the raging sea, but the storm steals her spirit and she is doomed to haunt the bay as the very wind itself.
One day a ship comes sailing through the bay. The malicious spirit whips up a storm causing the ship to wreck on the ragged rocks. She, well her cursed spirit, watches howling with laughter as the sailors try to swim ashore. The ship goes down with a brave sailor at the helm holding the ship so his mates can abandon the doomed vessel. The ship is cracked and sinks into the deep dark bay.
She is the wind, howling and vindictive. She steals his spirit.
She then realizes that that it is her beloved husband, returning a hero from the war, captaining his own ship.
So now they are doomed to be together and howl as the wind forever more.
Sailors know to stay away from the bay, storm or no.


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- SPIN Magazine
- Johnson & Johnson
- Hewlett-Packard
- Mini Cooper
- 7x7 Big Eats
- Roche
- RealGravity/Scripps Interactive Network
- Shire Pharmaceuticals
- Grand Junction
- N3twork
- Autodesk
- Arts Education Partnership
- Smarter Medical Care
- GreatSchools.org
- Exploratorium
- LinkTV
- GoLo
- Kyle Needs You
- Tides.org
- Bellwether Education Partners
- Clockwork Recruiting
- KidZania
- Cookooree
- WorldLenz
- MogoTxt
- WordDiamonds
- Swapp
- Cult.me
- SendMe Mobile
- Medallia
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- VideoEgg/Say Media
- Radar Networks
- PayFone
- PayPal
- Verifi
- Xoom
- Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco
Bumping-up velocity
Stockpile tapped Lab Zero to add bandwidth to their fast-moving startup team.
What we did
We worked with designers and developers at Stockpile to modernize their website UI and align it with their iOS app to help unify the experience across devices.
We rebuilt the sign-up flow to be a friendlier, step-by-step experience, with breadcrumbs, more helpful field interaction and validation, and simplified questions that got users through the flow faster.
We also rebuilt the account UI, introducing a new header and sidebar. The sidebar is responsive, collapsing into a slide-out panel and then a simple toggle button in the header depending on screen size.
Stockpile also introduced new APIs, which the data layer of the front-end was not yet consuming. We overhauled much of the logic behind front-end account management to take advantage of the newer endpoints that were available.
How we did it
We collaborated with the Stockpile team, meeting regularly at their offices while also working from Lab Zero headquarters. We used Pivotal Tracker to deliver new features within one-week sprints.
The Stockpile front-end is an Angular application sitting on a Rails-based static site generator. We worked on a specific version of Angular and upgraded it to the point where some bugs could be fixed, but found that it was not worth spending the extra time to upgrade it to the latest, greatest version.
We had to thoroughly audit the data access patterns of the existing Angular directives and make sure that the new APIs could support the complete front end feature set. We worked collaboratively with the Stockpile back-end team to identify and fill in any gaps.
The cosmetic changes were rather easy to implement, as we worked with Stockpile UX engineers that delivered mockups to us in Sketch format, using Zeplin, a service that allows for web-based hosting, display, and collaboration on Sketch files. This saved us the extra work of translating visuals to code, as in many cases, we were able to use the automatically generated CSS.
We implemented certain UI patterns that resembled Google's Material Design language, including one where a placeholder became a label when its field became focused. Some of this work was made easier through the use of Angular's form directive, which kept track of empty, touched, and invalid fields.
We wrote many new directives that allowed Stockpile's UI to perform the same, but appear very differently dependent on screen resolution. One of them, a small badge that displayed the current user's initials, was used throughout the header and the sidebar multiple times (which actually required a bit of rewriting to make sure that information was available at all times).
What we learned
In-person and Slack-based collaboration, as well as short sprints, allowed us to communicate well and work efficiently with the Stockpile team. We were able to discuss specifics about the design and existing code, and iterate quickly whenever certain details needed to change. Our decision to focus more on the smartphone and tablet market further allowed us to achieve parity with existing iOS designs, as browser compatibility was not among the most pressing concerns.
We discussed whether the specific version of Angular being used would needed to be upgraded, and weighed the pros and cons of spending the extra effort to move a large codebase to the latest version. We decided that sticking within the minor version would be adequate for the work we needed to do, and even threw in a few custom patches to introduce certain pieces of behavior when needed. Despite its age, we learned about different ways to surface data throughout an Angular application, such as the use of providers versus nested controllers.
The use of Sketch and Zeplin caused us to reconsider the use of Photoshop throughout our company. Since the Stockpile project, designers at Lab Zero have been using a combination of Sketch and Adobe XD to create tighter, more realistic, more usable mockups.
Although we were brought onboard to help speed the process of implementing these new designs, there were many times where our input was instrumental in affecting the look, flow, and architecture of the Stockpile front-end.


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These holidays have involved a bit of introspection, and the realisation that when
I was active in photo archiving, life was archived.
Well, duh, you might say.
What I mean to say is, when people asked me for a floor plan of my house, or I needed
to dig up a before shot of my bathroom, there it was on flickr.
Having such things easily found was pretty sweet.
But then I went looking for pics I remembered taking, and approximately what year
it might have been. Yeah, good luck with that.
Anyhow, this is not a lecture for you ..
more a little rumination for me.
Something to think about thoughtfully before another year speeds past again and I find
myself blogging something similar. Rinse, wash, repeat.
So baby steps .. I added a little button on the sidebar over there called "Holidays"
and there's been a few .. but i've printed none, blogged few.
I know they are around here somewhere - I had a blog once dedicated to our USA holiday
in 2000 - LA, The Hamptons, New York, The Twin Towers, Orlando, Washington, Chicago...
We got to visit the White House and you cant do that anymore.
We also went to Nice & Florence & Roma when I was pregnant with my first baby,
and it would be nice to have them sorted and central too. I must admit, I think they are a bit
boring though.. seeing things you should see, doing things you should do.
I prefer the holidays we take now with kids - everything is better when we factor their interests
and things that might excite them..
And we get them to try new things and open their world too.
Not champagne though, obvs.
No need to be making that call to DOCs. It's ok.
We hang out in parks and take the lower routes. We are blessed with the ability to be
reasonably unplanned and simply googling things to do the next day, on the ipad.
Even using Google translate if need be.
It's kinda scary how life has changed in only a decade.
Cats never change though.
I found my 21st key in the garage today. People mentioned me buying houses and cats.
That's right, i'm living my dream.
This is the cat from a neighbouring apartment. We called him/her STAREYCAT.
Stareycat liked to stare.
Our apartment was small & chic and central. We loved how the owners had designed and
packed so much in to make the space so lovely and roomy. it was like one of those IKEA ads
where they state "10m2 .. here's how to do it " .. divine .. clever .. I could live here.
The boys slept in the living/dining room in a bed that was concealed in the wall.
Smart. And utterly gorgeous.
Here is there webpage: http://www.parispropertyrental.com/apartment_photos
And their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Paris-Property-Rental/226842127327204
And here is some bikes that were parked in the central stairwell.
Why? Because I liked the way they photographed, that's why.
My yummy bedroom and the funny little balcony you had to escape out a window to reach.
I love Paris for it's French windows .. windows you climb out of onto balconies.
One of my favourite memories from my first visit to Paris was French windows..
That, and bathing while watching French-dubbed 90210. What's that Brandon?
Avant je m'éloigne ... avant je sors cette porte pour la dernière fois, je veux vous poser
une question personnelle, et je veux que tu sois honnête avec moi.
Oh well, there's always Dylan ...
Anyway, I found these pics of our Paris Apartment in a folder marked "blog"
So I suppose I meant to blog them!
You can see other images from our holiday here:
i-phone montage
The Arts et Métiers Train Station
Les Marchés de la France
The Cafe de la Prominade
Les Averries :: Our Country House in France


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Why laws have failed to stem the spam
Next month marks a particularly ignominious legal milestone: it will be three years since the passing of legislation to ban the sending of spam emails in the United States and Britain. Do you feel confident that in the past three years the net has been made safer from scam artists and information thieves? What does your inbox look like today? Is it any less cluttered with spam than it was in, say, November, 2003?
I didn't think so.
To put it charitably, the anti-spam laws introduced three years ago are some of the most futile pieces of legislation ever written. Spamalot: why laws have failed to stem the spam - The Net - Times Online
Back to: PC Security, privacy news


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Haley Williams, vocalist of Paramore, is just like that. She has one of the most beautiful faces I've seen, but she has a lot more to offer than that; her voice, her talent, her passion for music, her adventurous taste in style and makeup, I think those caught MAC's attention.
The shade they came up with is Sounds Like Noise.
MAC Sounds Like Noise ss a light and bright orange color in a comfortable matte finish. Definitely lighter than Morange or Neon Orange. It has a warm undertone, though it could look a little neon. It washed me out a little, so I really can't wear it without anything else on my face. Just like the traditional MAC matte formula, its pretty long wearing and opaque.
MAC Sounds Like Noise
CONS: online exclusive, limited edition, expensive
I will definitely repurchase!
Where To Buy:
MAC Sounds Like Noise
Prices may vary (more or less P1000), Try Carefreeshopper (Find them on Facebook)


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Akialoa NaPali Sunset Dinner Sail - Captain Andy's Sailing Adventures
Explore Kauai's rugged Napali Coast on a luxury yacht where guests will see spectacular sea cliffs, enchanting waterfalls and timeless lava tubes. Enjoy a sunset with the history and legends of the ancient civilizations that once inhabited these verdant valleys. The tour destination will be determined based on passenger comfort and safety and ocean conditions. Don't miss this tour for enjoying a wonderful meal with an incredible sightseeing opportunity at a most special time of day, sunset!
Read Full Description
Departure Point: Check in at Port Allen Marina Center Office located at 4353 Waialo Rd.,Ele'ele. Departs from Port Allen Harbor.
Duration: 4 hours.
Equipment: Akialoa - 55' Gold Coast Yacht luxury sailing catamaran with twin diesel powered Cummins 350hp engines. Boat has a large shaded cabin area with clean restrooms and fresh water showers.
Capacity: 49 passengers.
Chef's Appetizer de jour, Garden fresh mixed greens Salad
with papaya seed vinaigrette dressing and French bread with butter.
Garlic and herb grilled Chicken topped with fresh basil, tomato and toasted pine nuts.
Grilled flat iron Steak with sour cream horseradish sauce. Rice pilaf. Grilled asparagus.
Note: Chickpea Cake on a bed of Mixed Greens Topped with Fire Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
for Vegetarians or Vegans is available with 24 hours advance notice.
Menus are subject to change.
Coconut cheesecake topped with toasted coconut, guava sauce and whipped cream.
Soft drinks, water, cocktails, beer, wine and "Sneaky Tikis"
Guests 21 and Up
Please bring a valid picture ID for (purchase and) consumption of alcoholic beverages.
Inclusions: Guide, dinner and drinks.
Foreign Language Translation: There is no foreign language translation available.
Handicapped Accessible: This tour is not suitable for handicapped individuals.
Required Certifications: The participant is not required to have any certification or special license in order to participate.
Serves Alcohol: There is alcohol included or available for purchase with this activity.
Restrictions: Minimum age to participate is 3 years old. No guests with medical conditions including back or neck problems, recent surgeries or pregnant women.
Weather Condition Policy
Cancellation Policy
Pride of America Cruise Ship: For Pride of America Cruise Ship passengers Tour company does not provide pick up. This tour can be reached via private transportation choices, taxi or car rental. Tour can be reserved Thursday of your cruise ship schedule. Please ask agent if you have questions regarding transportation and tour/departure location. Book well in advance to assure availability.
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Akialoa NaPali Sunset Dinner Sail - Captain Andy's Sailing Adventures
Tour/Activity Rates
Retail (Before taxes/fees)
Our Price (Before taxes/fees)*
Adult 13 Years and Up
Children Ages 3-12 Only
Today's Prices are shown. To request a reservation please select a Day and Time from the calendar below.
*Hawaii State sales tax is 4.167%. The cost of additional fees required to be applied by the tour company (if any) can be seen by proceeding to the Activity Cart Order page.
Additional Information
Don't Forget Your Rent-a-Car $45.00/day Inclusive of Taxes and Fees
There have been 7 reviews written about the Akialoa NaPali Sunset Dinner Sail with Captain Andy's Expedition.
Average Product Rating: 4.7 / 5
i am wondering how many people on this cruise, and if it is a seated venu?
There is seating on the outside as well as inside of the cabin. When the boat is underway it is recommended to stay seated as much as possible. If you do need to move around it is reccomended that you keep at least one hand on the boat to steady yourself at all times. This boat takes relatively small groups which are generally less then 50 people.
Kyle Engelsman
Beautiful sites and an awesome time.
Bruce M
The NaPali Sunset Dinner trip was a good adventure. The views of the cliffs were great, but be prepared for rough seas. The day we went had strong winds and with the rough sea most of our group ended up sea sick, even with medication. I thought the trip was great, but some of the members of our group were in survival mode by the end.
Amy Hulbert
Our tour was great and the crew was even better! Nothing but good things to say!
Nancy Hallett
This was again the best day of my 3 week vacation. Great weather amazing crew
kyler and Thomas and a supermoon to boot. The food was tasty also. The music on
the return was fabulous. I love The Green. Thank you for the aloha love!
Jennifer Tomer
We visited Kauai in the beginning of December and wanted to experience the Napoli Coast with style! When we arrived to Kauai we found Captain Andy's via the Internet. We booked our cruise and received a call within a half hour saying the one that we booked was already full. The woman give us multiple dates and different boats that were available instead. We chose another and a few days later arrived in Port Allen for a dinner cruise. The staff was very nice and accommodating. The boat was very clean and our captain was enthusiastic and knowledgeable. Although, half way through the tour the other couple in our party became extremely sick. The crew continued to be accommodating by offering water and replenishing puke bags LOL we were all unable to eat while on the boat but the crew packed up our dinners for us to take with us. The views were amazing the water was relatively calm resolve lots of dolphins and at least two wheels. If you think you may possibly get seasick. You will! Otherwise it was a beautiful adventure. Keep it up!
Julia Smith
We cruised with Captain Sterling on 6/2/17. Other than being sea sick, the cruise was fantastic. Captain Sterling was great and very caring. Thanks for a great cruise! Kerry and Julia Smith and family.
Joel Hough
This tour was perfect for us on our second evening on Kaua'i. Captain Cory along with his crew were great and entertaining. The weather was perfect and it was our first view of the Napali Coast. Awesome! We had so much fun shooting photos, relaxing on the boat, and enjoying the wonderful views that I almost forgot about the sunset which was amazing. Dress nice but with the ability to get a little wet if you want to be up front. There is seating available but you may miss things if you are always seated. Food was good and plentiful and dessert was great! It was so cool to see how Cory handled the boat on the sail back down the coast. Insider tip... If you ever get motion sickness, take Dramamine an hour before the tour. This only affected one person on our tour but I'd hate to be that one person. Also, remember to TIP YOUR CREW! These people are going to make sure you have an awesome time and are there to meet your needs. My suggestion is to book this tour toward the beginning of your trip as it allows you to have great discussions with people who will give you LOTS of great ideas for the rest of your adventure. Aloha! ... and enjoy every minute!


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US Disrupting JCPOA Implementation: Iranian Deputy FM
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Seyed Abbas Araqchi said although Tehran has remained committed to the 2015 nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Washington is disrupting the implementation of the deal.
Addressing a meeting of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) in Tehran on Friday, Araqchi hailed the JCPOA as an outcome of long and intensive negotiations and said it is "an unprecedented diplomatic achievement and perhaps the only positive point in recent years in the chaotic West Asian region".
"The deal ended in an unnecessary 14-year crisis and eliminated the risk of another military confrontation in the unstable Middle East region with widespread complications for many other regions," he noted.
He further emphasized that although Iran has remained committed to its obligations under the JCPOA and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has confirmed the Islamic Republic's adherence to the deal for 9 times, the US has violated major parts of the agreement.
The 29th Meeting of the ICAPP Standing Committee opened in Tehran on Friday and will last until tomorrow.
About 100 leaders and senior officials from 40 political parties and organizations from 25 Asian countries, as well as officials from regional and international organizations, have attended the event.
Last month, US President Donald Trump again waived sanctions against Iran that were lifted as part of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal but threatened he would terminate the agreement if "significant flaws" in it are not fixed.
In October, Trump had said that he would not certify Iran's compliance with the nuclear agreement that was negotiated under the previous administration.
He said he wants Congress to "fix the deal's many flaws" such as existing sunset provisions.


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OTTAWA—As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau moves ahead with plans to bring an era of non-partisan appointments to the upper chamber, a Liberal senator is frustrated by the lack of progress within his own caucus to get moving on reforms.
". . . (The) status quo is more comforting and easier to many. Yet the Senate's best interests and our responsibilities demand otherwise," Quebec Sen. Paul Massicotte, wrote to his fellow Senate Liberals in an email obtained by the Star.
The email comes at a time of great upheaval for the Senate, which is still recovering from a harsh blow to its already fragile reputation as a result of the expense account scandals.
The Trudeau government has struck an independent advisory board to oversee a merit-based selection process that will recommend potential candidates to fill 22 vacancies and counting with non-partisan appointments.
The Senate is still trying to figure out where they will fit in, especially since Trudeau removed the Senate Liberals from his caucus and they are now sitting as a third party that does not represent the government.
Massicotte, who did not respond to a request for comment Thursday and who did not send the email to the Star, has long been calling for less institutionalized partisanship in the Senate as a way to modernize the so-called house of sober second thought.
Along with Conservative Sen. Stephen Greene, Massicotte led working sessions on Senate modernization last fall that produced a list of consensus resolutions on everything from changing the way the Speaker is selected to televising proceedings.
The Senate agreed in December to strike up a special committee on modernization to study the potential changes and find ways to make the upper chamber more effective that would not require reopening the constitution, but its members will not be officially selected until next Tuesday.
That time lag appears to be the main source of frustration for Massicotte, whose email suggests he believes the leadership of the Senate Liberals and the Conservatives are deliberately trying to keep the ball from rolling.
"I am particularly concerned with our lack of momentum on Senate reform," Massicotte wrote in the email sent Wednesday night.
"In my opinion, it has been neatly delegated to a committee to 'make it go away' (at least for now), where the committee is even having problems getting off the ground and where its timetable may very much make it irrelevant. I believe this is in line with the Opposition Senate leader (Sen. Claude Carignan)'s favour, with our mute consent. Rather, current efforts are moreover oriented to delaying any changes and how to preserve the existing power structure," Massicotte charged.
Senate Liberal leader James Cowan did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Jenn Gearey, a spokeswoman for Carignan, said in a statement the suggestion that the Conservative senate leader is trying to delay Senate reform is "ridiculous."
"Sen. Carignan has been a steadfast advocate of Senate reform since his first days as Government leader — notably in pushing transparency, accountability, code of conduct and disciplinary processes," Gearey wrote in the statement.
Nova Scotia Sen. Jane Cordy, a Senate Liberal and deputy chair of the Senate standing committee on internal economy, budgets and administration, said she did not want to put words into Massicotte's mouth but she understands his frustration.
"His frustration is the changes are going to come with our input our without our input, so we should be part of the decision-making," Cordy said.
"It's been quite awhile since those meetings have been held and I can understand his frustration as one of the organizers that we should be farther along at this point," Cordy said Thursday.
New Brunswick Sen. Pierrette Ringuette, who recently left the Senate Liberals to sit as an Independent, said the reforms were not moving quickly enough for her either.
She thinks the Senate Liberal caucus has outlived its usefulness and hopes others follow in her footsteps.
"For me the writing on the wall is clear. The institution needs to become a non-partisan institution and in order to do that, stop going round and round and round and round. Move forward. Walk the talk," she said in an interview this week.
One other long-time Liberal who left the caucus, without much notice at the time, is Newfoundland and Labrador Sen. George Furey, who succeeded Conservative Sen. Leo Housakos as Speaker in December.
Furey now sits as an Independent, saying he was following the trend of Senate speakers becoming less partisan over the past number of years.
"I wanted to follow that path, so this decision was only natural for me, as it is a core of importance for me to ensure that the Speaker is strictly independent," Furey wrote in a statement sent by email Thursday.
"During the last months, it became clear that Canadians want to see a Senate that is more independent, transparent and accountable. By becoming less partisan, the Senate will best fulfill its role as the chamber of 'sobre second thought,' " Furey said.


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Any additional questions? Send email@example.com a message and they'll get back to you as soon as possible.
Contest ends June 19. One winner will be drawn at random.


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WA Fisheries Department beams out real-time shark alerts in unique project
Just before 8am on Thursday a 2.5-metre tiger shark made its way through the temperate waters of Perth's Mangles Bay.
It wasn't seen. And it didn't cross paths with a single human being. But within seconds, the 28,310-plus Twitter users following Surf Life Saving Western Australia's account knew it was there. The shark's silent swim had been detected by one of 19 satellite-linked monitoring stations off Perth's coast.
The shark's presence was picked up by a listening station, which recorded the acoustic transmitter, or tag, attached to the animal by the West Australian Department of Fisheries.
The tag emits a unique coded message that is recognised when tagged sharks come within 400-500 metres of a listening station - typically located 400-600 metres offshore from popular beaches.
In super-swift time, the information is beamed up to a satellite, bounced back to a North American station before being sent to the WA Fisheries Department where the data is decoded, broadcast on Twitter and distributed via SMS to beach authorities.
''It takes less than 30 seconds to go from being detected to being up and publicly available,'' said the department's shark response unit manager Lisa Clack. ''It's certainly been very valuable in both providing real-time information allowing us to close beaches, but also providing data for long-term research projects on white sharks.'' Ms Clack said it was a unique use of the technology, with no other country offering real-time alerts.
Almost 340 sharks have been tagged as part of the project, which was established in 2009 to monitor shark movements. Among the sharks tagged so far are 142 white sharks, 176 whaler sharks and 20 tiger sharks.
The tags are attached either externally on muscle near the dorsal fin or internally, when circumstances allow Fisheries Department staff to carry out the surgery.
The information is valuable for beach-goers, lifeguards and scientific researchers alike. In the case of the highly mobile white sharks, the tracking program will allow scientists to monitor the vast distances the migratory animals travel.
Department of Fisheries principal research scientist Rory McAuley said the battery life of internal acoustic tags was up to 10 years, making the scientific data collected unprecedented.
There have been seven fatal shark attacks off the WA coast in the past three years, the most recent being surfer Chris Boyd in Gracetown in November. From January, the WA government will distribute up to 72 hooks loaded with poisoned shark bait in waters a kilometre offshore from popular beaches. Of the 370 shark species worldwide, more than 160 species live in or pass through Australian waters. More than 100 of those are found in Western Australia.


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More Missouri Daisy Blocks: The above is what I have done 9 pieced blocks. I want to make 12 blocks all together - see I am making it smaller, so here is what I have worked on today... Am machine piecing these "darn" y-seams, I tell you if I never see another y-seam it will be just fine with me...I really like the red circles fabric (see below), but I can't find anymore of that fabric, oh well.. so the sewing and cutting continue... oh the sewing, ripping, sewing, ripping, well you get the picture... here I am trying to piece on machine (yes Y-Seams, UGH) not a pretty sight, but have to get these done so I can start hand piecing the squares and triangles. Then to place yellow center on each one...okay so now once I sew the center this is what they should look like, pretty right?And ofcourse my blog wouldn't be my blog without a picture of my pal, "Cooper" watching me move from sewing room to ironing board and back again... Isn't he getting big?? I don't think he likes it when I take his picture, but he just goes along with it...can't help it, he's my baby!
Well, happy Sunday and off to sew more,
a blog of quilts I make, ideas, love of my family, my life with all its ups, downs and sideway directions...
15 November 2009
Sunday Ramblings...more daisies
Posted by Mary Burns at 1:24 PM
5 comments:
They are looking lovely Mary...ReplyDelete
Yes, those y-seams are not fun to do, but it will be worth it!
Julia ♥
It's nice that you are sticking with it...some might have given up by now!ReplyDelete
Mary I love your work. Oh yes, those Y seams are not fun! This is going to be fabulous though. I love the centers.ReplyDelete
Wow so many points in those flowers. You do such a good job. They look really good.ReplyDelete
Hallo Cooper,ReplyDelete
du bist ein so süßer hübscher Hund.
Deine Betty
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Aaron Hedrick stood shaking in front of a live TV studio audience after coming up short of winning $500,000 by a matter of milliseconds.
He had a second chance but needed calm hands and a clear head.
Hedrick's fiancé, Kimberly Fox, did what she could to help.
"I felt him shaking," Fox said. "I just grabbed his hands and said, 'You got this,' and he just looked at me and was like you're right."
Both Hedrick and Fox went from devastation to jubilation after winning $500,000 when they had missed just moments before.
It is a story-book ending no one could have written from imagination. The turning point of most love stories doesn't come when the knight-in-shining armor successfully stacks 10 bolt nuts on an unstable surface in less than a minute.
This is exactly what Hedrick was able to do on NBC's "Minute to Win It," a game show that has ordinary people do extraordinary tasks with household objects for loads of cash.


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Thanks for visiting my website! Let me know if you have any questions about Face Painting, Balloon Art or Party packages. Please don't be shy—schedule a free consultation. I would be happy to answer your questions.
To get more information about any parties please contact me and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
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You can email me at email@example.com or call me at 909 342-0253. Please include your name and contact information.


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Me? Probably SS Continental Drift. ( 3.5T LDV Van ) Not very fast when it started life, didn't get any faster with age, but always got there somehow.
What would I like to own? Well, the perpetual eighteen year old in me wants a Mitsibishi Evo, or better still, a Nissan Skyline, with all the driver aids. ( Well at my age, I need all the help I can get. )


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So, yesterday, I read this interview with Jennifer Phang director of Advantageous, and immediately added it to my Netflix queue, and set aside my evening plans to watch it.
I have soooooo many thoughts about this film. It is not an easy film to watch, by any means. But it is beautiful and thought-provoking. After watching it, I started it again, re-watching the many different scenes that touched me, often sitting in my chair with it paused trying to sort out my thoughts. Most of which were about how this movie set in the future felt like an indictment of our present. My high school English teacher Mrs. Knorr always told us "there is more truth in fiction." She was right.
At its most basic level, this film is about choices. In nearly every scene we see someone making a choice of one kind of another. The little choices we make on a daily basis and those that set the course of our lives, and the lives of others.
In this future, as it is in our own present, it is how one goes about making these choices that defines their character. But as it is in our time, this is more an illusion of choice than anything else. Available options are often limited and far outside one's ability to influence. And in many cases, the only choice is no choice at all, with the only options to either accept something terrible or suffer the consequences. While it is true our choices may define us, it is our options that set the parameters of our lives.
The set up for this film is like a mash-up of the worst parts of both Brazil and The Handmaid's Tale. We have an overpopulated future where the elite are painfully oblivious to the suffering of the general public, carrying on with their luncheons and school events and reaffirming their role as the privileged class, while resistance fighters attack public targets, and a religiously motivated social movement directs the fate of women as a kind of backlash for the gains they'd made in the previous century.
This future is a society where there are few jobs to be had, where a woman's appearance is key to her success, and where youth is her main selling point. Once she reaches a certain age, 40 let's say, she is no longer employable. A world where a woman would act in a way that is against her best interest simply to have a place to exist. And where, once that place is threatened, she would willingly sacrifice anything and everything she has to ensure a place for her daughter. A world where a secure life is limited to the elite, and one does whatever is advantageous to ensure success.
Early in the film we see three girls walking home from school, playing a guessing game. At one point, one girl turns to another and says, "Only one of you can be the winner. If you cheat, then nobody wins." This professed need for fairness is in contrast to the world surrounding them where nothing is, in fact, fair. News reports in the background give us details about this seemingly quiet and clean world -- unemployment is rampant and terrorist attacks are a regular occurrence.
Those who tend to benefit from advantages tend to see their placement in society as what is fair. We see it time and again in discussions around privilege -- those who benefit from it often don't see it. They are convinced that everyone is faced with the same options, and instead believe they have simply achieved more because they made better choices. Or, even worse, they know very well the privilege they carry, and choose to use it to promote their own well being at the expense of others.
In this world we meet single mother Gwen and her daughter Jules. Gwen works as the spokeswoman for the benign-sounding Center for Advanced Health and Living. As part of her job she writes eloquent statements to sell her company's products. And much like in our own world, the marketers of this world use the lingo of the oppressed for their own purposes.
"In fact, the decisions we make in life define us. So shouldn't every woman be defined by the totality of her choices, rather than her race, height, or health. These are things she often cannot control. Here at the Center for Advanced Health and Living, we are working to offer you the safest alternatives to invasive cosmetic surgery so you'll have every chance to be the you you were meant to be."I wonder, when Gwen wrote and then delivered that line, whether she had any kind of inkling how it would eventually impact her own life? How could she have known it would turn around, all twisted and gnarled, to cut her down once it was too late to change her decision? Which, of course, we quickly learn wasn't much of a choice. She's been caught in a trap; led to this point by the machinations of others. Can we judge a raccoon's decision to gnaw off its own leg to save itself? Or, in this case, a mother making the ultimate sacrifice for her daughter?
"This is the only time in your daughter's life where her choices will make a difference."Tragically, this is truer than anyone would want. And by "her" choices, they mean her family's choices; her mother's. A mother's love and support alone are not enough to make it in this world. "Access costs money." And without access, there is no healthy future. In a world where only the elite can any kind of life worth living, people will give up their very lives to ensure their children become one of them, and those in power will be able to use that to their advantage.
"I have to position Jules now. If I can get her into a good school, she'll have a chance. I can't let her become one of those women, so desperate that they would do anything."
But just as much as this is a movie about the choices a mother will make to protect her daughter, it's also a movie about her decision to become a mother in the first place. Gwen, and Jules, have been living with the fallout from Gwen's choices prior to motherhood. We do not know exactly why she has broken from her parents, but she is adamant that her father will never meet Jules, just as she is adamant that Jules' father will never be a part of their lives. She has been estranged from her "one and only cousin" Lily's life since Jules' birth, which, as we learn later, has been Gwen's decision in order to protect her from a mistake Gwen made when they were younger.
The decision to live as a single mother in this world was a dangerous one, she knew, but she also hoped it would give her life meaning; make it worthwhile. And, in its own way, her ultimate decision simply confirms that. It is her undying love for her daughter that drives everything she does. She cannot change the very system they are both trapped in. So she works within her constraints to give her daughter the very best chance. And then, she goes one step further and gives her something authentic to hold on to as she makes her way in this world.
"Listen to me. It's good to be humble, but you need to know your value. The ideas, the wisdom, and the kindness in you. That's the secret beauty everyone wants."And this is what I find so beautiful, so touching in this film. Despite the hardship and loneliness and this terrible choice she is forced to make, she does it all with the purest of motivations: love.
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Another Double Hitter: Movie Review & Shout-out
I would have loved to have known about Doris Sams and the other professional womens baseball players when I was a girl! No telling how I would have used that info. I wasn't especially athletically inclined, but it certainly would have been inspirational anyway. I'm sure I would have devoured biographies about women ball players if I had found any, the same way I read through every book I could find on Amelia Earhart.
In case you need a reminder... you are amazing!
I just love this poem. I revisit it whenever I'm feeling a down or frustrated or a little powerless. You are amazing. As.you.are. Stronger than you know. More beautiful than you think. Worthier than you believe. More loved that you can ever imagine. Passionate about making a difference. Fiery when protecting those you love. Learning. Growing. Not alone. ...
My more careful thoughts about the movie are a bit more complicated. It's not that I didn't enjoy the movie. I did. I liked the story. I liked the mixing of modern times in with history, and the mix of political with personal. I liked seeing the whole life of such a strong woman who influenced history. We see her as young woman starting out with passion and verve...