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I actually made this pasta for lunch on Wednesday morning. It was sunny around noontime that day, but it was hot and humid. The air was filled with a humidity rare for New England this early in the season. It felt like wet wool wrapped around you. At lunch, I knew thunderstorms were on the way. It would break the hot and humid spell, bring us back to the cool, ocean breezes I'm lucky enough to enjoy in this seaside town in which we live.
I didn't know those thunderstorms would do the damage they did.
Three massive tornadoes ripped through the western part of Massachusetts. Four people lost their lives, hundreds ended up in the hospital after several hours late that afternoon and evening where people kept screaming to each other, "Another one is coming, get inside." If they were lucky enough to make it out of their homes again, they saw their own houses, their neighbors' homes, leveled.
Many of you know that my day job is in television news. I'm extremely lucky to work with a team of amazingly talented people with huge hearts. They headed for the heart of this devastation and I'm proud to say they found the most inspiring stories out of the disaster that occurred this week. They shared with our viewers stories of the people who now have to pick up the pieces of their lives. They told the tales of neighbors helping neighbors, and complete strangers who just wanted to help. Here's a look at some of the devastation from the newscast I work on, if you haven't seen it.
Since Wednesday, I've spent a lot of time at work, and that's OK. Stories like these need to be told, these people need to be helped to rebuild. If you'd like to help, the American Red Cross is accepting donations, click here for more information. My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Western Massachusetts as they try to rebuild.
The Lighter Side of Local, Week 6
My day job took precedent this week with all that was going on. It's at these points, when we're the most busy, that versatility is so important in the meals you're creating at home. If you're trying to eat more locally, this is especially important. I've mentioned before that if you're looking to plan around your trips to the farmers' market or a local farm or shop, you are more likely meal planning *after* the fact, not before. It's early June, and in New England, you're not going to find tomatoes or strawberries bursting out of every bin at market. If fact, you're probably not going to find any quite yet.
What I picked up:
Truth is, I haven't yet. My weekend has been so crazy, I missed my market this morning, so I'm heading to the farm tomorrow. I'll try to update this post with my finds.
The rough plan for it all:
I have a good amount of roasted chicken leftover from a dish we made last night. I'm feeling some kind of chicken spring quesadilla, a version of chicken salad, and then definitely a frittata this week again. I just can't get enough of farm-fresh eggs with seasonal ingredients right now.
Where last week's haul went:
1 bag baby chard (for salads) - $4 - in the Market Pasta, and plenty of salads and a frittata
1 bunch rhubarb - $5 - Brown Sugar Rhubarb Tart, Lemon-Rhubarb Martinis, muffins I'll share with you this week.
1 bunch radishes - $3 - they went into salads and scrambled eggs
1 bunch hakurei turnips - $3 - the Market Pasta.
This pasta is perfect example of how being versatile and a little creative with your market finds can really pay off. It's dubbed "Market Pasta" in our house because it basically can be adapted with almost anything on hand in any season. There are always greens, onions, and garlic of some variety available for use. Sub in and out whatever kind of vegetables you think would go well in this dish. Have fun with it and report back to me if something you did really works, I'll want to try it.
Market Pasta with Parmesan-Cream Sauce
Serves 4-6
Why is this not Market Pasta Alfredo? The sauce is very similar but doesn't use the copious amounts of butter an alfredo sauce would, it's a tad lighter and not as creamy.
1 pound penne pasta (any kind would really do)
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 sweet onion (like a vidalia), chopped
pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1 cup sliced turnips (I used small white hakurei ones, you could sub out radishes as well, or omit)
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups roughly chopped baby chard (or spinach, or mustard greens, any kind of hearty greens will do)
salt and pepper
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup reserved cooking liquid (from the pasta)
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese (plus extra for serving)
1 1/2 cups cooked shredded chicken
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil (plus several full leaves for garnish if you'd like)
Cook pasta to according to directions, drain, reserving the cooking liquid. Set aside, covered with a towel to keep somewhat warm.
Now, in a large saute pan over medium heat, melt the two tablespoons butter, add onions, pinch of salt and 1/4 teaspoon sugar. You're not going to necessarily caramelize the onions, but the sugar will help them to get a little more golden quickly. Cook until the onions are golden, about 7-8 minutes.
Next, add your turnips and cook until tender, about 8-9 minutes. At this point, you can add in your garlic, cooking until fragrant, and finally your baby chard (or greens). Sprinkle a little kosher salt and freshly ground pepper over it all. Cook the greens until they wilt slightly, 3-4 minutes.
Next, turn the heat down to medium-low and add the half cup of heavy cream, the 1/4 cup of reserved cooking liquid, and the half cup of freshly grated Parmesan-Reggiano. Stir so everything combines well, and then add in your cup and a half of shredded, cooked chicken. Again, stir until everything is well coated in the sauce.
Add the already cooked pasta and basil to your saute pan and toss until everything is coated again and cook for about 4-5 minutes until everything is warmed through. Pour into large bowl, and top with a few basil leaves for appearance if you'd like. Serve with extra Parmesan if desired.


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BACKGROUND IMAGE: iSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
- FeatureRun storage as a utility
- FeatureOld tapes can lead to sticky situations
- FeatureRunning Fibre Channel over 10Gb Ethernet
- FeatureTalking up server virtualization, security at SNW
- FeatureVTL data management issues
- FeatureSnapshot: Will you adopt LTO-4?
- FeatureTracking down those missing bytes
- FeatureHot technologies for 2008
- FeatureWhat does your CEO want from storage?
- FeatureGreen, greener and greenest
- FeatureHot Spots: The case for unified data management platforms
- FeatureBest Practices: Viewing virtualization from every angle
- FeatureStorage Bin 2.0: Virtualization challenges
iSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
Hot technologies for 2008
Each year, Storage magazine's editors pore through product introductions, study technology developments and ask users about their plans for the coming year to create a short list of must-have technologies for 2008. We think LTO-4, N_Port ID Virtualization, deduplication, ediscovery and green storage can't be ignored, and are likely to impact your storage shop next year.
| We pick the five must-have storage technologies you'll want in your data centers next year.
To be fair, winning products and technologies (those that change the way a storage manager works to store and protect storage, and retrieve data) aren't easy to spot once they move from labs and beta versions into production environments. To identify the hot technologies for 2008, the editors of Storage pored through scores of new storage products and technologies before arriving at five that promise to make storing data more efficient or eloquently solve a nagging data center problem. This year's picks include LTO-4, which adds increased capacity, speed and AES-256 to tape systems; N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV), which allows multiple virtual devices to share a single physical Fibre Channel (FC) port; and deduplication, which can drastically reduce the amount of data to be stored or backed up.
The editors also identified two hot technology areas: ediscovery, which is being driven by the latest Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP); and green storage, a response to soaring electric bills. We also list five technologies we feel need more time to mature and consequently won't be hot in 2008 (see "Not so hot in 2008"). Finally, we review how the predictions we made last year fared (see "Report card: Last year's predictions"). In the discussion that follows, specific vendors or products are mentioned solely as being representative of the particular category.
LTO-4, the latest iteration of the LTO tape format, was unexpectedly quiet at the time of this writing. Few products have actually started shipping in volume.
"IBM [Corp.] has been shipping products for a few months and HP [Hewlett-Packard Co.] recently started shipping products, but the LTO-4 products have been slow in coming," notes Greg Farris, director of marketing at CipherMax Inc., which provides an appliance to assist with the migration of LTO-3 to LTO-4 and, as of late 2007, was still waiting for the LTO-4 market to ramp up.
But given the frequency with which data tapes seem to fall off delivery trucks, and the proliferation of laws like California's SB 1386, which requires public disclosure when unencrypted private data is potentially exposed, companies have little choice but to adopt tape encryption. LTO-4, which provides built-in AES encryption, is the most likely candidate for the job, although key management is still a work in progress.
"Encryption is the only reason to go with LTO-4," says W. Curtis Preston, VP of data protection at GlassHouse Technologies Inc., a consulting firm in Framingham, MA. LTO-4 also doubles capacity to 800GB and boosts the data transfer rate to 120MB/sec, but those are secondary reasons compared to the encryption imperative.
Still, it was speed and capacity that led Patillo Construction, Stone Mountain, GA, to urgently seek a new LTO-4 device from HP. "We have a very tight overnight backup window and were running out of time," says Buzz Kaas, director of information technology at the design engineering and construction company. With HP's StorageWorks LTO-4 Ultrium 1840 Tape Drive, Patillo Construction can now back up 500GB of data in two hours, which fits into its backup window.
| Ironically, encryption wasn't a consideration for Patillo Construction. "Now that we've had the drive for a while, we're starting to think about encryption, but it is not a priority," adds Kaas.
LTO-4 encryption may not be a slam dunk, at least not immediately. "It comes down to three things: key management, key management and key management," says Preston. Security best practices require each individual LTO-4 tape to be encrypted with a different key. Over time, there will be thousands (even tens of thousands) of keys. A lost key means data is gone forever. Therefore, each key has to be protected, yet still be available under all circumstances. That means secure key replication, redundancy and backup on a very large scale. Complicating the situation is that each LTO tape vendor will have its own key management scheme and you can be sure, at least initially, they won't work together.
However, work has started on standards for key management and interoperability. Specifically, the Trusted Computing Group's (TCG) Key Management Services Subgroup (KMSS) has been working for a year on an Enterprise Key Management Infrastructure specification designated T10. Other groups are pursuing related work. The results should begin appearing in 2008 or 2009.
| NPIV tackles the problem of how multiple virtual servers get access to the FC SAN. Usually the SAN wants one port ID for each server. It uses the port ID as the basis for masking and zoning. However, "virtual servers share the physical HBA and get a virtual port ID," explains Clodoaldo Barrera, distinguished engineer and chief technical strategist for IBM's System Storage Group. NPIV defines how multiple virtual servers can share a single physical port ID.
For storage managers, NPIV will be almost transparent. "To get the benefit of NPIV, it must be supported in the HBA and the switch," says Scott McIntyre, VP of software and customer marketing at Emulex Corp. HBA and switch vendors have started building NPIV into their products. Companies will get NPIV as they upgrade their HBAs and switches.
NPIV also needs to happen in the virtualization software. Microsoft Corp.'s Virtual Server began supporting NPIV in 2007. VMware is expected to support NPIV in 2008. IBM supports a version of NPIV for its System z and is working it into its blade servers, which presents a somewhat more complicated technical challenge. But again, this is something vendors, not corporate storage managers, are wrestling with.
This isn't to say storage managers can ignore NPIV. To take advantage of NPIV, they'll have to check the latest hardware, firmware and server operating system versions for NPIV support. Once deployed, storage administrators will need to be aware of NPIV because it may impact how they set up the fabric, handle zoning and masking, and manage quality of service.
| Deduplication
"Deduplication is the single biggest technology to come along in years," declares GlassHouse Technologies' Preston. Deduplication identifies and removes multiple copies of data that eat up storage capacity and lengthen backup windows.
By reducing the amount of data to store and move around, deduplication frees up capacity and bandwidth, and slows the rate at which a company needs to add storage. Less storage means lower costs. It also means reduced energy consumption.
Integral Capital Partners, a private investment firm in Menlo Park, CA, turned to deduplication to speed its overnight backups. The company operates facilities in Menlo Park and Baltimore, stores data locally and replicates data between locations nightly. "The process took eight hours," recalls Jason Paige, information system manager.
Paige began looking for faster options early in 2007. The few he found, however, "wanted disk to emulate tape," he recalls. "I didn't want that." Finally, Paige found Avamar, which has been acquired by EMC Corp. Avamar splits files into segments, applies deduplication and sends only the data that has changed, he explains. Integral Capital Partners replicates 300GB to 500GB nightly over a T1 line. The Avamar devices themselves can store approximately 2TB of data. "With Avamar deduplication, we were able to cut our backup time to about 45 minutes," says Paige.
"Deduplication already is game-changing technology," says Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst at Taneja Group, Hopkinton, MA. "It has gotten to the point where every VTL [virtual tape library] includes deduplication."
Despite enthusiasm for deduplication, there are some potential pitfalls. "It can slow recovery," says Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst at StorageIO Group, Stillwater, MN. "Also, the data reductions are very dependent on your particular data."
| Ediscovery
If you haven't encountered the acronym ESI (electronically stored information) yet, you will--especially if your company is slapped with litigation. ESI has been elevated to the same level of importance as traditional paper documents in litigation, according to the latest FRCP. Most state rules will soon conform to the new FRCP.
Ediscovery is the process of sifting through ESI in search of smoking guns. As soon as litigation has been filed or even anticipated, organizations must preserve, protect and make accessible all data associated with the litigation. "The changes in FRCP are driving interest in ediscovery," says George Socha Jr., founder of Socha Consulting LLC, St. Paul, MN. Beyond search, ediscovery tools and services also address related processes like legal hold management, which is central to preserving ESI for litigation; retention management; case management; workflow; and document management, which are all part of the litigation process.
Socha publishes an annual survey on ediscovery and tracks the vendors in the market. "At last count, there were at least 600 organizations offering ediscovery services or products," says Socha. He tallied more than 800 recently, but a number of them disappear each year.
Not surprisingly, Socha's list of top ediscovery vendors has a legal industry orientation and includes companies like Guidance Software Inc., Kroll Ontrack Inc. and Zantaz Inc. (recently acquired by Autonomy Corp.). Other ediscovery tool vendors, such as Index Engines Inc. and Kazeon Systems Inc., may be more familiar to IT folks, but don't even appear among Socha's Top 20.
| Onsite3, an Arlington, VA-based ediscovery service provider ranked 18th on Socha's list, uses the Index Engines tool to find data buried on backup tapes. "Index Engines lets us index a full tape and run a search without ever having to restore the tape. We only restore the actual files we want," says Jeff Fehrman, president of Onsite3's Electronic Evidence Labs (EE Labs). Compared to restoring entire tapes, Index Engines, which EE Labs deploys as an appliance, "cuts out a huge amount of data and time. We're talking about one-tenth the amount of data," says Fehrman. The savings in time and space are huge. "We have pharmaceutical and financial industry clients with hundreds of thousands of tapes to search," he adds.
TiVo Inc. in Alviso, CA, turned to Kazeon to bolster its legal defenses in the event of an ediscovery request. "We saw that ediscovery could be costly if not well managed," says Karen Kramer, TiVo's director of legal affairs. "Prior to deploying Kazeon, we did things on a piecemeal basis, depending on the request."
The company licensed Kazeon, which recently announced a partnership with PSS Systems' Atlas, a leading suite of legal hold and retention management tools. TiVo runs Kazeon on its own server and uses it to handle ediscovery across the company's Unix, Windows, Mac and Linux systems. "It takes multiple sources of information and consolidates them into one search," explains Kramer. And the cost is reasonable. "Others will do it as a service and charge a lot more money," she adds.
| Green storage
"Green is not a fad ... energy costs will exceed the purchase cost of a server in three years," says Bruce Taylor, chief strategist for energy efficiency and productivity initiatives at the Uptime Institute Inc., Santa Fe, NM. "Storage historically has been less of a problem, but as storage demand escalates, energy will become more of a problem there, too."
The storage industry has barely begun to think through the energy implications of storage or even ask some obvious questions. "Why keep platters spinning for data that is rarely if ever used? Why not shove it onto tape?" asks Taylor. To be green, IT must rethink its approach to data storage (see "Ways to reduce storage energy consumption," below).
When managers of the Epilepsy Phenome/Genome Project (EPGP) at the University of California in San Francisco began planning a data center consolidation, they didn't have storage energy savings specifically in mind. Still, they saw opportunities.
| "We had multiple sites. Our average utilization of DAS was 40%, domain controllers were wasting storage, analysis servers were wasting storage," says Michael Williams, CIO at the project.
The organization embarked on consolidation, virtualization and thin provisioning built around Network Appliance Inc. storage. In the process, it was able to consolidate 10 racks of servers into two racks. Using two deduplicated storage pools, it reduced each of its 150TB pools of provisioned storage to 25TB of physical spinning disks. "Being environmentally friendly is the result of doing efficient systems," says Williams. "We were able to reduce our environmental footprint by a factor of five."
Even if you don't deploy any of these hot technologies this year, you can't avoid them. Green computing, litigation and data privacy are issues that won't go away. Deduplication, NPIV, LTO-4 and ediscovery address these issues. Maybe you won't get hit with a lawsuit, experience a lost backup tape or see energy bills go off the chart in 2008, but eventually you will. And it's comforting to know that there are technologies to help you deal with these issues.

subset: commoncrawl


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Subscribe To Vin Diesel Shows Off His Riddick Goggles In New Set Photo Updates
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Vin Diesel seems to really love Facebook. Over the past few weeks the actor has used his personal page on the social networking site to post various photos of himself in character on the set of the still-untitled sequel to The Chronicles of Riddick. First we saw him wearing some kind of cape, then it was all about what appeared to be a two-bladed knife. Today Diesel has delivered a close-up.
Check out the new photo below, which features the actor wearing his trademark goggles.
The new Riddick film is being written and directed by David Twohy, who also handled both duties on Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick. The untitled movie also stars Karl Urban, Katee Sackhoff, and Jordi Mollà. The story follows Riddick as he is stranded on a desolate planet and forced to fight for survival. When bounty hunters come down to get rid of the hero once and for all, however, his greater plan for revenge is revealed and he returns to his home planet, Furya, to save it from sure destruction. It's being produced by One Race Productions and Radar Films and will be released by Universal Pictures. The film does not currently have a release date, but it's expected to come out some time in 2013.


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Add some sound to your next project with MP3 boards, synthesizers, breakouts and more.
The brains of the operation. Choose your favorite development platform.
There are many well-known names out there, here are our favorite ones!
Wearable electronics and materials.
Buttons, switches, LEDs, and all the other general parts you need to build your next creation.
The Hufflepuff of our product catalog! Here you can find kits, books, and other specialty items. Some of our favorite items are found here!
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Game Leaders
Team Stats
Passing Yards
Rushing Yards
Time of Poss.
MENOMONIE, Wis. (Blugolds.com) – Despite trailing the entire game, the UW-Eau Claire football team made a second-half comeback that came up just short in a 35-27 loss to UW-Stout at Don and Nona Williams Stadium today.
The Blugolds have had the I-94 Trophy in their possession for the past two years after winning in 2011 and 2012 but had to relinquish the trophy with the loss today.
Stout struck first with a touchdown but the Blugolds closed within four after Billy Emanuel (Sr.-Owatonna, Minn.) nailed a 30-yard field goal late in the opening quarter.
The Blue Devils struck again two drives later in the second quarter and found the end zone again one more time to get up 21-3. With one minute remaining before halftime, Eau Claire was able to get one more score with Joel Sweeney (Sr.-Tomah, Wis.) capping a 12-play, 71-yard drive with a three yard touchdown to make the score 21-10.
In the third quarter, Luke Hoyord (Sr.-Scandinavia, Wis./Iola-Scandinavia) intercepted a pass on Stout's first drive and the Blugolds then went 39 yards in three plays to get back to within four (21-17). Sweeney ended the drive with an 18-yard run to the end zone.
But the Blue Devils scored on the following drive and after the Blugolds turned the ball over on downs on the next drive, Stout again found the end zone to finish the third quarter up 35-17.
From there, the Blugolds were able to shut down the Blue Devils. Sweeney had a big play near the beginning of the fourth quarter, running 70 yards for a touchdown to get the Blugolds back within 11 points. The run tied for the 15th longest in school history and was the longest run of Sweeney's career (previous best was 65 against UW-River Falls on Nov. 10, 2012).
With less than two minutes remaining, the Blugolds found themselves on the Stout six yard line but elected to kick a field goal from 23 yards out on fourth-and-goal. Emanuel again came through for the Blugolds and brought them to within eight (35-27). Eau Claire tried an onside kick but the Blue Devils recovered and were able to run out the clock, kneeling the ball three times.
Sweeney finished the game with 192 yards rushing on 33 carries and three touchdowns, the second time this season Sweeny had three touchdowns in a game. He moves into third place on the Blugolds' all-time career rushing yards list with 3,726 yards.
Alex Plaster (Sr.-Stevens Point, Wis./SPASH) led the game with 103 yards receiving on 12 catches as quarterback Mark Munger (Jr.-Eau Claire, Wis./Memorial) went 28-for-36 with a career-high 226 yards passing.
On defense, Sean Graham (Sr.-Hales Corners, Wis./Whitnall) finished with a team-high 11 tackles.
The Blugolds are now 1-7 overall and 1-4 in the conference. Stout improves to 3-5 on the season and 1-4 in the WIAC.
Eau Claire will play its final home game of the season next weekend against UW-Oshkosh for Senior Day. Kickoff at Carson Park is set for 2 p.m.
Photos By Chico LaBarbera - http://chico.zenfolio.com/


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XR models now include 29" sizes. Same name, same technology and now more options than ever.
Key features
- A cross country race tire that excels in fast hardpack conditions
- Super low multi-edged knobs for fast rolling predictable traction
- Ultra-lightweight for fast acceleration
Tubeless-ready tires are compatible with both tubeless-ready and standard rims. When the tire is mounted on a tubeless-ready rim with special tubeless rim tape, valve, and sealant, the tire and rim form an airtight chamber that no longer requires a tube. This lets you run lower tire pressure with less fear of pinch flats and without the added weight of a tube. Lower tire pressure has many benefits, including greater traction and lower rolling resistance over rough surfaces. The tire can also be used with a tube if you mount it on a standard, non-tubeless-ready rim.
Part Numbers
|Black / 27.5 x 2.0
|Black / 29 x 2.0


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The Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges annual meeting takes place in San Diego, CA from April 25-28, 2012.
Biruté Galdikas is the featured speaker. Registration fees include most meals, as well as field trips to the Beckman Center for Conservation Research at the San Diego Safari Park and a historical archeology site at the "haunted" Whaley House in Old Town.
Call for papers open until March 1.
For information and registration, go to www.saccweb.net


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Mimi is Hello Kitty's sister. I didn't see a tutorial for it so I decided to make one! :D
DragoArt members upload artwork and drawing tutorials! They are also allowed to leave comments on tutorials, profiles, etc. Many more features, as well; it's way better than just being a boring guest! Register Now!


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Chess Match: Game 39
No "Covering the Bases" today. I'm going to switch things up and go with a "Chess Match," breaking down an important moment in the Blue Jays' 5-2 win over the Rangers on Sunday.
The situation: Josh Hamilton at the plate for the Rangers with no outs and runners on the corners in the first inning. Blue Jays starter Brandon Morrow on the mound.
The decision: Alternate fastballs and offspeed pitches until reaching a 2-2 count, then switching things up by going with consecutive changeups.
The outcome: Hamilton strikes out swinging on a changeup from Morrow with a full count. Young was running on the play, and Blue Jays catcher John Buck threw him out at second base for a critical strikeout-caught stealing in the first. Morrow then strikes out Nelson Cruz to escape the inning unscathed.
The analysis: This arguably set the tone for the entire game for Morrow. Entering Sunday, the right-hander had a 7.71 ERA in the first inning and he was coming off a disastrous outing in Boston, where he allowed six runs with six walks in just 1 2/3 innings. Morrow ran into another early jam, but settled in and shut Texas down.
In this outing, Buck and Morrow opted to focus more on offspeed pitches than the right-hander's hard four-seam fastball. That meant more curve balls, more changeups and more two-seam fastballs. Morrow throws a hard change — around 90-91 mph — but it is enough off his 95 mph fastball to keep hitters honest when it's working.
During Saturday's game, Hamilton struck out three times against Ricky Romero's changeup. During that first-inning at-bat on Sunday, Hamilton swung through a changeup from Morrow on a 1-0 count. Hamilton entered the game with a .211 average when in a 2-2 count, so a change was a good call. The hitter resisted temptation and worked the count full. Hamilton was hitting .357 with a 3-2 count.
Sticking with the changeup was a good choice for Morrow. First off, Hamilton had already shown he was having trouble with the pitch. Beyond that, Buck and Morrow entered with a game plan and it was important to keep on it. Firing another heater there might have played into Hamilton's hand.
The comment: "He hadnt shown 94 five times in a row when he needed to reach back and get it. We had thrown some other pitches, which I think it helped those hitters not quite be on that 94, because you don't see it over and over again. You see stuff bending. You see some stuff sinking." — Buck
My verdict: In my book, this was the most important at-bat of the game (although Jason Frasor getting out of a bases-loaded, no outs jam with only one run allowed in the seventh was also important). Morrow had shown in other starts that if he could get through the first few innings relatively unharmed, then he could get into a good rhythm. When he has run into trouble early, it has led to some nasty innings and some ugly pitching lines. Having Buck throw out Young on top of the strikeout made this as critical as any other moment in the game.
Expect more "Chess Match" and "Covering the Bases" throughout the season
5 Comments
One of the things I felt caused Morrow difficulty in past outings was the consistent use of the fastball to the point everyone in the stands knew what Morrow was going to throw. Doesn't matter how good it is, if hitters see it enough time without fear of off speed pitches, it's going to get hit.
-just ask A.J. Burnett.
So it's nice to see him become more of a pitcher than a thrower and mix up the pitch selection, because it makes his fastball more effective. Nice start yesterday.
Great post, Jordan, and it's nice to see Morrow developing. Power arms like Morrow's can live and die on their fastball in the minors, because there may be only 1-2 guys in the lineup that they can't throw it past. When they get to the bigs, they quickly find that there are 9 guys in the lineup that love to hit fastballs. If they can't learn to get their breaking stuff across for strikes, their big league careers can be nasty, brutish, and short.
IF playing in the AL east isn't tough enough, I love how the Jays are also facing all the NL division leaders or teams leading the wild card in Interleague play.
Other than colorado rockies, we are facing the top teams in the NL, the phillies, giants and padres.
comparitively the rays are facing the:
Thats pretty much giving another team about 5 more wins
i think beeston needs to write to MLB pointing this out, perhaps they should do it in the future such that all AL east teams face all NL east teams once, instead of random teams.
I was too lazy to research into Yankees and RedSox
If a minor league pitcher can throw heat past most hitters, and has ML aspirations, what woud stop him from building a more diverse repetoire of pitches on the way up, and completely dominate (ie. mess up the few who can hit the fastballs at the minor league level)?
Is the difficulty factor so high, that it just takes time? … is it a function of there being so few who can teach the art of change ups and off speed pitches? …
Curious to hear from anyone with insight on the subject.
I probably didn't explain myself very well, bluejazzed. Any pitcher that wants to pitch in the majors needs to be able to throw a variety of pitches. That being said, I have heard off-speed pitches described as "feel" pitches. You may have seen a pitcher start a game, and go one or two innings before he has control of his breaking pitches. If he can bring it at 95-98 mph, then he can probably throw it past a lot of minor league hitters, and do OK. Once he gets to the majors, there is a big mental adjustment, because there are a lot more guys that can hit those pitches, and he has to rely on messing up their timing, or getting them to chase balls off the plate, etc. I think it's more of an adjustment for a power pitcher than it is for a guy with a "normal" fastball.
One thing AA has said he wants to do is start at the bottom of the system and build a Blue Jays "philosophy", or "method" if you will, so that players coming through the system are trained in such a way that when they get to the big club, the adjustments are minimal. This is something that the really good farm systems like Boston's do already, and it should be a big help to up and coming players, including pitchers.


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The public snob, the grand bastard, was much in evidence when I interviewed V. S. Naipaul in 1994, and this was exactly as expected. A pale woman, his secretary, showed me in to the sitting room of his London flat. Naipaul looked warily at me, offered a hand, and began an hour of scornful correction. I knew nothing, he said, about his birthplace, Trinidad; I possessed the usual liberal sentimentality. It was a plantation society. Did I know anything about his writing? He doubted it. The writing life had been desperately hard. But, I said, hadn't his great novel, "A House for Mr. Biswas," been acclaimed on its publication? "Look at the people's choices for the best books of the sixties," he said. " 'Biswas' is not there." His secretary brought coffee, and retired. Naipaul claimed that he had not even been published in America until the nineteen-seventies, "and then the reviews were awful—unlettered, illiterate, ignorant." The phone rang, and kept ringing. "I am sorry," Naipaul said in exasperation. "One is not well cared for here." Only as the secretary showed me out, and novelist and servant briefly spoke to each other in the hall, did I realize that she was Naipaul's wife.
A few days later, the phone rang: "It's Vidia Naipaul. I have just read your . . . careful piece in the Guardian. Perhaps we can have lunch. Do you know the Bombay Brasserie? What about one o'clock tomorrow?" The Naipaul who took me to lunch that day was different from the horrid interviewee. Stern father had become milder uncle. "It's a buffet system here. Don't pile everything onto one plate. That is vulgar. Put one small thing onto a plate, and when you have finished it they will come and take it away." I didn't think that he was making amends for his earlier behavior, nor that he had so admired my piece that he was compelled to meet me off duty. I thought he was merely curious to talk to someone in his late twenties about writing, and that the habits of a lifetime—the habits of the brilliant noticer, the committed world-gatherer—were asserting themselves almost automatically: he was working. "If you want to write serious books," he said to me, "you must be ready to break the forms, break the forms. Is it true that Anita Brookner writes exactly the same novel every year?" It is true, I said. "How awful, how awful."
The Indian social theorist Ashis Nandy writes of the two voices in Kipling, which have been called the saxophone and the oboe. The first is the hard, militaristic, imperialist writer, and the second is the Kipling infused with Indianness, with admiration for the subcontinent's cultures. Naipaul has a saxophone and an oboe, too, a hard sound and a softer one. These two sides could be called the Wounder and the Wounded. The Wounder is by now well known—the source of fascinated hatred in the literary world and postcolonial academic studies. He disdains the country he came from: "I was born there, yes. I thought it was a mistake." When he won the Nobel Prize, in 2001, he said it was "a great tribute to both England, my home, and India, the home of my ancestors." Asked why he had omitted Trinidad, he said that he feared it would "encumber the tribute." He has written of the "barbarism" and "primitivism" of African societies, and has fixated, when writing about India, on public defecation. ("They defecate on the hills; they defecate on the riverbanks; they defecate on the streets.") When asked for his favorite writers, he replies, "My father." He is socially successful but deliberately friendless, an empire of one: "At school I had only admirers; I had no friends."
The Wounder, we learn from Patrick French's extraordinary biography of Naipaul, "The World Is What It Is" (Knopf; $30), used and used up his first wife, Patricia Hale, sometimes depending on her, at other times ignoring her, often berating and humiliating her. And French's biography, published earlier this year in Britain, is already notorious for a revelation that can only enrich our luxury of loathing: in 1972, Naipaul began a long, tortured, sadomasochistic affair with an Anglo-Argentine woman, Margaret Gooding. It was an intensely sexual relationship, which enacted, on Naipaul's side, fantasies of cruelty and domination. On one occasion, jealous because Margaret was with another man, he said that he was "very violent with her for two days with my hand. . . . Her face was bad. She couldn't really appear in public."
The Wounded Naipaul is the writer who returns obsessively to the struggle, shame, and impoverished fragility of his early life in Trinidad; to the unlikely journey he made from the colonial rim of the British Empire to its metropolitan center; and to the precariousness, as he sees it, of his long life in England—"a stranger here, with the nerves of the stranger," as he puts it in "The Enigma of Arrival" (1987). Again and again, his sense of aggrieved encirclement expands to encompass others, and he manages, with neither vanity nor condescension, to blend his woundedness with theirs: the empire of one is colonized by his characters. They range from the major to the minor, from the educated to the almost illiterate, from the real to the fictional, but they are united by their homelessness. They are the men in "Miguel Street" (1959), a book of linked stories rich in comedy and dialect, based on the street in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad, where Naipaul spent his formative years. Elias, for instance, dreams of being a doctor. "And Elias waved his small hands, and we thought we could see the Cadillac and the black bag and the tube-thing that Elias was going to have." To become a doctor, Elias must sit for a British exam. A friend comments excitedly, "Everything Elias write not remaining here, you know. Every word that boy write going to England." Elias fails the exam, and sits for it again. "Is the English and litritcher that does beat me," he confesses. He fails it again. He decides to become a sanitary inspector. He fails that exam. He ends up as a cart driver, "one of the street aristocrats." And there is Santosh, who narrates "One Out of Many," the first story in "In a Free State" (1971). A servant from Bombay who accompanies his master to Washington, D.C., Santosh is quite lost, away from his old home. He wanders the American streets, sees some Hare Krishna singers, and for a moment thinks that they are Indians. And his mind yearns for his old life:
How nice it would be if the people in Hindu costumes in the circle were real. Then I might have joined them. We would have taken to the road; at midday we would have halted in the shade of big trees; in the late afternoon the sinking sun would have turned the dust clouds to gold; and every evening at some village there would have been welcome, water, food, a fire in the night. But that was the dream of another life.
Instead, as an Indian-restaurant owner tells Santosh, "This isn't Bombay. Nobody looks at you when you walk down the street. Nobody cares what you do." He means it consolingly—that Santosh is free to do whatever he likes. But Naipaul is alert to Santosh's negative freedom, in which nobody in America cares what he does because nobody cares who he is. Santosh leaves his master, marries an American, becomes a citizen. He is now "in a free state," but ends his tale like this: "All that my freedom has brought me is the knowledge that I have a face and have a body, that I must feed this body and clothe this body for a certain number of years. Then it will be over."
Above all, there is Mohun Biswas, the protagonist of Naipaul's greatest novel, "A House for Mr. Biswas," who is born into poverty in Trinidad, begins his professional life as a sign writer ("IDLERS KEEP OUT BY ORDER" is his first commission), miraculously becomes a journalist in Port of Spain, and ends his life at the age of forty-six, lolling on his Slumberking bed reading Marcus Aurelius. He is a homeowner, but barely housed: "He had no money. . . . On the house in Sikkim Street Mr Biswas owed, and had been owing for four years, three thousand dollars. . . . Two children were at school. The two older children, on whom Mr Biswas might have depended, were both abroad on scholarships." Naipaul ends the short prologue to that novel with a deep autobiographical shudder. Imagine if Mr. Biswas had not owned this poor house, he suggests to his comfortable readers: "How terrible it would have been, at this time, to be without it . . . to have lived without even attempting to lay claim to one's portion of the earth; to have lived and died as one had been born, unnecessary and unaccommodated." How much land does a man need? Tolstoy asks in a fierce late tale. Six feet, just enough to be buried in, is that story's reply. Mr. Biswas had a little more than that; but he had so narrowly avoided being the "unaccommodated man," the naked savage, found on the heath in "King Lear."
Unnecessary, unaccommodated—and unnoticed, until Naipaul made him the hero of his book. The shudder is autobiographical because Mr. Biswas is essentially Vidia Naipaul's father, Seepersad Naipaul, and the fictional house on Sikkim Street is the real house on Nepaul Street from which Vidia was launched, at nearly eighteen, on his journey to England—"a box," Patrick French writes, "a hot, rickety, partitioned building near the end of the street, around 7 square metres on two floors with an external wooden staircase and a corrugated iron roof." Seepersad's father had been shipped from India to Trinidad in order to fill out the workforce on the sugarcane plantations. As French notes, indentured servitude differed from slavery in that it was "theoretically voluntary," and families were allowed to stay together. After five or ten years, the laborer could return to India or stay and take a small plot of land. At the time of Vidia Naipaul's birth, in 1932, the literacy rate among Trinidadian Indians (then about a third of the island's population of four hundred thousand) was twenty-three per cent. For the entire island, there were four British government scholarships, which paid for study at a British university, and Vidia felt that this was his only chance to escape. He had won his first scholarship at the age of ten; he won his last in 1949, and left for Oxford the next year.
From this world, Seepersad Naipaul made a career as a reporter and columnist for the Trinidad Guardian and published a book of fictional stories about his community, written with a simplicity and comedy and attention to detail that his son would admire and emulate. It was a remarkable achievement, but, judged by wider standards, it was also a failure, because Seepersad never left the island, and had to live vicariously through his clever children, who did. (He died in 1953, aged forty-seven, while Vidia was still at Oxford.) That double assessment—pride and shame, compassion and alienation—is the stereoscopic vision of "A House for Mr. Biswas," and, in a sense, of all Naipaul's fiction, and it is why he is a writer who has a conservative vision but radical eyesight. The Wounded, radical Naipaul burns with rage at the cramped, colonial horizon of his father's life, and seeks to defend his accomplishments against the colonist's metropolitan sneers, but the conservative Wounder has got beyond the little prison of Trinidad, and now sees, with the colonist's eye and no longer the colonial's, the littleness of that imprisonment. Naipaul is enraging and puzzling, especially to those who themselves come from postcolonial societies, because his radicalism and his conservatism are so close to each other—each response is descended from the same productive shame. Naipaul plays the oboe and the saxophone with the same reed.
In his writing, Naipaul is simultaneously the colonized and the colonist, in part because he never seriously imagines that the colonized would ever want to be anything but the colonist, even as he uses each category to judge the other. Thus an English Oxford student of the early nineteen-fifties might have seen Seepersad's achievement as absurdly minor, and Vidia Naipaul would certainly have agreed with him, but the bitterness of Seepersad's struggle must also qualify that Oxonian complacency. This dialectic seems familiar because it may have less to do with race and empire than with class; it is the classic movement from province to metropolis, whereby the provincial, who has never wanted to be anywhere but the metropolis, nevertheless judges it with a provincial skepticism, while judging the provinces with a metropolitan superiority. In "A House for Mr. Biswas," the Wounded and the Wounder are hard to disentangle, and Naipaul often adopts a kind of cool, summary omniscience that he uses to provoke our rebellious compassion. There is an arresting moment early in the book when he offers a flash-forward, and tells us that Mr. Biswas's fate would probably be that of a laborer, working on the estates like his brother, Pratap, "illiterate all his days." Pratap, he writes, would become "richer than Mr Biswas; he was to have a house of his own, a large, strong, well-built house, years before Mr Biswas." And then he changes course:
But Mr Biswas never went to work on the estates. Events which were to occur presently led him away from that. They did not lead him to riches, but made it possible for him to console himself in later life with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, while he rested on the Slumberking bed in the one room which contained most of his possessions.
Naipaul is here communicating, almost esoterically, with his presumed non-Trinidadian audience: you are the sort of people, he seems to say, who might disdain Mr. Biswas, but you are also the kind of people who know that Pratap's riches are not as important as Biswas's riches, that Marcus Aurelius on a Slumberking bed, small as it is, is better than a Slumberking bed without Marcus Aurelius.
Nowadays, V. S. Naipaul spends so much time being disagreeable and superior, is so masked and armored, that it can be hard to remember the young writer's woundedness. The letters he sent from Oxford to Trinidad, preternaturally confident, occasionally show a chink, as when he writes, "I want to come top of my group. I have got to show these people that I can beat them at their own language." Patrick French shrewdly dips into the Oxford student magazine Isis to give us an idea of "these people," and so of the world Naipaul had to join and beat. It offered portraits of such "Americans-and-Colonials" as the Indian undergraduate Ramesh Divecha: "This fine specimen of Hindu manhood is equally at home theorising on the secrets of his successes in Vincent's or fingering his native chapattis in the Taj . . . He returns to the jungle in August to study for his Bar Finals."
Naipaul had a breakdown at Oxford, and the years immediately after his graduation, as he looked for work in London, were intensely difficult. The hardship was softened by his relationship with Patricia Hale, whom he had met at Oxford in 1952. They were in some ways well matched. Like him, she was from modest circumstances—her father was a clerk in a lawyer's office, and the family lived in a two-bedroom flat in a suburb of Birmingham. She was the only girl at her school to win a state scholarship to Oxford. They were both twenty-two when they married, and neither family was notified. But, whereas Naipaul careered from confidence to anxiety (a year after meeting Pat, he told her that "from a purely selfish point of view you are the ideal wife for a future G.O.M."—Grand Old Man—"of letters"), Pat was stable, supportive, a willing helpmeet. Years later, in one of this biography's many devastating moments, Naipaul reread his early correspondence with Pat and made notes. Characteristically, he did not spare himself. He had got too quickly involved with Pat, he wrote; he had been in too deep and could not get out. It would have been better if he had married someone else. Pat "did not attract me sexually at all." He decided that the relationship, on his side, "was more than half a lie. Based really on need. The letters are shallow & disingenuous."
Pat sometimes seems to have aspired to the condition of the Athenian women adjured by Pericles, in his funeral oration, to "think it your greatest commendation not to be talked of one way or other." Her presence in this biography is a hush around Vidia's noise; her job is merely to hold the big drum of his ego in the right position, the better for him to strike the vital life rhythm. "I am not much good to anyone and Vidia is probably, almost certainly, right when he says I have nothing to offer him," she wrote in her diary, many years on in their marriage. Unassertive, Englishly reticent, a little milky and bland, she became steadily obsessed with his writing—even as she would half-mockingly call him "the Genius" in private—and enjoyed being his spur and amanuensis. In a biography full of intimate and moving revelations, there are seven thrilling pages in which French, with the help of Pat's diaries, shows us the genesis and progress of Naipaul's novel "A Bend in the River" (1979), probably the only rival to "Biswas." One evening, in the fall of 1977, after watching television, he informed his wife that he wanted "to be alone with my thoughts." Half an hour later, she entered his room, and he told her that the novel would begin with these lines: "My family come from the east coast. Africa was at our backs. We are Indian ocean people." Then he outlined for her the story and the main characters. Over the next months, he said, pleadingly, that he could not write the book without her presence, and her diary documents its swift, difficult passage. Sometimes he read to her, and sometimes he dictated to her, calling her in to his bedroom, like Churchill with his secretaries, at one o'clock in the morning. The novel moved fast, and in May, 1978, he asked her to come into his room, at twelve-thirty at night, and "spoke the end of the book. It took an hour to an hour and a half."
"A Bend in the River" is narrated by Salim, a Muslim Indian merchant who has moved to a trading town, on the bend of a great river, in a newly independent African country. In 1966, Naipaul had spent time in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, and in 1975 he travelled to Mobutu's Zaire. In Kisangani, he encountered a young Indian businessman, whose deracination was striking. The essence of his novel, he said, is: "What is this man doing here?" Like so many of Naipaul's characters, Salim feels his status to be precarious: "I was also worried for us. Because, so far as power went, there was no difference between the Arabs and ourselves. We were both small groups living under a European flag at the edge of the continent." An old friend of Salim's, named Indar, who has been educated at a British university, arrives to lecture at the town polytechnic. Indar tells Salim about his journey to England, and once again Naipaul returns to the two beguilingly traumatic stories he has never escaped—the abbreviated, short story of his father's journey, and the arpeggiated, long story of his own journey. (Indar "will be me," he told Pat.)
"When we land at a place like London Airport we are concerned only not to appear foolish," Indar says to Salim. After university, Indar tries to get a job with the Indian diplomatic service, but is humiliated at the Indian High Commission in London. The officials there seem to him cringing, minor pomposities, yet one of them is bold enough to ask Indar how he could possibly represent India when he came from Africa: "How can we have a man of divided loyalties?" Indar tells Salim, "For the first time in my life I was filled with a colonial rage. And this wasn't only a rage with London or England; it was also a rage with the people who had allowed themselves to be corralled into a foreign fantasy." He decides, in London, that he will be a Naipauline empire of one. He realizes that he is homeless, that he cannot go home, that he must stay in a place like London, that "I belonged to myself alone." Yet he consoles himself: "I'm a lucky man. I carry the world within me. You see, Salim, in this world beggars are the only people who can be choosers. Everyone else has his side chosen for him. I can choose. . . . But now I want to win and win and win."
Yet, near the end of the book, Salim hears that Indar has not exactly won and won and won. He lost his academic gig when the Americans pulled the funding. Now "he does the lowest kind of job. He knows he is equipped for better things, but he doesn't want to do them. . . . He doesn't want to risk anything again."
The Naipaul who wrote Indar's incandescent monologue is the Naipaul who, many years earlier, had written this fierce letter to Pat:
Put yourself in my place for a minute . . . If my father had 1/20 of the opportunity laid before the good people of British stock, he would not have died a broken, frustrated man without any achievement. But, like me, he had the opportunity—to starve. He was ghettoed—in a sense more cruel than that in which Hitler ghettoed the Jews. But there was an element of rude honesty in the Nazi approach; and they at any rate killed swiftly. The approach of the Free World is infinitely subtler and more refined. You cannot say to a foreign country: I suffer from political persecution. That wouldn't be true . . . But I suffer from something worse, an insidious spiritual persecution. These people want to break my spirit. They want me to forget my dignity as a human being. They want me to know my place.
Naipaul in this letter resembles no writer so much as Frantz Fanon, the radical analyst of the "insidious spiritual persecution" wrought by colonialism on the colonized. The colonized subject, Fanon writes in "The Wretched of the Earth" (1961), "is constantly on his guard: confused by the myriad signs of the colonial world, he never knows whether he is out of line. Confronted with a world configured by the colonizer, the colonized subject is always presumed guilty. The colonized does not accept his guilt, but rather considers it a kind of curse, a sword of Damocles." Fanon believed in violent revolution, but Naipaul's radical pessimism meets Fanon's radical optimism at that point where the cut of colonial guilt, angrily resisted by both men, is converted into the wound of colonial shame—"a kind of curse." Fanon had argued, "The colonist is an exhibitionist. His safety concerns lead him to remind the colonized out loud: 'Here I am the master.' The colonist keeps the colonized in a state of rage, which he prevents from boiling over." And the title novella of "In a Free State" is practically a working demonstration—spare, bleak, and burning—of that argument. Bobby and Linda, a white Englishman and woman, are driving through an African country resembling Uganda. The man is an administrative officer in a government department. In the course of their journey, they perpetrate, and also witness, flamboyant acts of colonial rage on black Africans, acts whose raison d'être seems to be white self-reassurance. Impotent exhibitionists, in Fanon's sense, these white intruders are at once predatory and fearful, constantly supplicating an assumed black "rage" that they themselves constantly provoke. In a bar, Bobby, wearing a "native" shirt (but made in Holland), tries to pick up a black man, a Zulu. "If I come into the world again I want to come with your colour," Bobby says, and puts his hand on the Zulu's. The Zulu, without moving his hand or changing his expression, spits in Bobby's face. At a decrepit hotel, an old English colonel humiliates Peter, a black assistant, while his white visitors look on. One day, he warns Peter, you will come to my room to kill me, but "I'll be waiting. I'll say, 'It's Peter. Peter hates me.' And you won't come past that door. I'll kill you. I'll shoot you dead." The title novella shifts its perspectives and allegiances, now white, now black, just as the whole collection does: in addition to Bobby and Linda's journey in Africa, there is the story of Santosh, the Bombay servant uprooted in Washington D.C.; a story narrated by a West Indian immigrant trying desperately to survive in England; and two extracts from a reportorial journal apparently kept by the author. Naipaul's publisher wanted to discard everything but the novella. Naipaul, the breaker of forms, demurred, insisting that he had written "a sequence."
Naipaul's sympathy for the political and emotional fragility of his characters did not extend, alas, to his wife. His brutally fulfilling affair with Margaret Gooding—"I wished to possess her as soon as I saw her," he tells his biographer—gradually voided a passionless marriage. In the mid-nineteen-seventies, husband and wife began to spend more and more time apart, as Naipaul travelled on ceaseless journalistic assignments. Naipaul's sister Savi suggests that once Pat realized that she would not have children, and that her husband was committedly unfaithful, she lost her confidence as a woman. This is an extraordinary biography because Patrick French has had access both to Pat's diaries and to searching interviews with Naipaul, whose candor is formidable: as always, one feels that while Naipaul may often be wrong, he is rarely untruthful, and, indeed, that he is likely to uncover twenty truths on the path to error. Pat's diaries make for painful reading: "I felt assaulted but I could not defend myself." "He has been increasingly frenzied and sadly, from my point of view, hating and abusing me." Pat died of breast cancer in 1996. "It could be said that I had killed her," Naipaul tells French. "It could be said. I feel a little bit that way."
The day after Pat's cremation, Nadira Alvi, the well-heeled daughter of a Pakistani banker, soon to be the novelist's second wife, arrived in Wiltshire, at the house so recently vacated by her predecessor, and Naipaul wrote to his literary agent, "She is part of my luck, and I would like you to meet her." This is where French's masterly, mournful book ends, and it seems hideously just, in a life story so consumed by social and racial anxieties, and so transcendent of them, too, that we should see V. S. Naipaul ending up with a haughty woman who tells French that her husband's relatives are "jumped-up peasantry," and that her father "would be shocked that I found happiness with an indentured labourer's grandson."
In "The Enigma of Arrival," the long book that Naipaul wrote about the Wiltshire countryside in which he has lived, intermittently, since 1971, there is a searing parenthesis in which he tells us about two derelict cottages he has been converting into a new home. One day, an old lady was brought by her grandson to look at the cottage where she once spent a summer, and, confused by Naipaul's renovations, thought she had come to the wrong place. Naipaul was "ashamed," he writes, and so "I pretended I didn't live there." But what is the source of the shame? Is it his building project or his very presence in the English countryside? He lives there but is ashamed to live there; the house for Mr. Naipaul in England, as for Mr. Biswas in Trinidad, is a homeless house. The man is still unaccommodated. ♦


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BoBunny Candle Wraps SOD Dec 2 (500×375)
Scrapbooking has become so much more than a hobby! It has become a passion…..food for my soul. I have always loved to create and have gone through different phases of painting, drawing, sewing….Since the births of my son and daughter, it has become increasingly important to me to document my life….my goal is tell the stories (big & small) in photos….on my layouts…..almost like a family recipe….every detail enhances the story for me. I hope these pages will tell my children and generations to come not only about our family today…but also from yesterday.


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favorite former rockies player(s) - Eric Young jr favorite current rockies player - Houston Street and Cargo (i liked him since the trade)
favorite rockies moment, current or past after a loss none of the rockies came to sign autographs except eric young and he was smiling having fun and made my first baseball game at least ending fun.
where u live - westminster colorado
any other interesting tidbits about yourself you'll like to add. i am colorado fan all around and texas longhorns fan (lived in texas half my life as well.


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Interview with Pandora Founder, Tim Westergren
As reported last week, a recent ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board could spell disaster for Internet radio, as we know it. The decision will result in sites like Pandora and Last.fm paying somewhere in the neighborhood of four times the royalty rates of their satellite radio counterparts. While Internet radio is projected to keep growing and growing, these sites don't really generate a huge amount of revenue, so a ruling like this could prove devastation for the fledgling industry.
While they don't make a huge amount of money for themselves, these sites do provide a potentially huge revenue stream for ailing record companies, offering consumers a new music discovery engine, and the means of purchasing the music they hear. This ruling, graciously helped along by those big, lumbering record companies, is likely to prove another misguided move, along the lines of the post-Napster RIAA debacle that we're still sifting through.
I sat down with Pandora founder, Tim Westergren, yesterday, to discuss the ruling, and what, if anything, Internet radio fans can do to help.
What are the details of this recent ruling?
The foundation of the ruling was set about five years ago, when the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) was amended. Among other things, language was inserted into the bill as the legal framework for determining the rates for Internet radio. It's different from the language that governs both terrestrial radio and satellite radio. It's different and unequal, by a standard that's called, "willing buyer, willing seller." It puts Internet radio at a significant disadvantage, compared with satellite and terrestrial radio, for reasons that really I think have to do with some of the lobbying power of the record industry, and the what was back then an almost non-existent Internet radio industry.
It doesn't seem surprising that there there's a line being drawn between Internet and terrestrial radios, but it's a bit more interesting that this kind of line is being drawn between Internet and satellite radios.
Yeah, although it kind of depends on your perspective on it. In terms of the kind of benefits and impact that Internet radio has, it's just like terrestrial. It's a promotional mechanismin terms of promotions, it's actual more immediate, because you can click to buy stuff. I think there's a good argument to be made that it should be treated the same way. I think the consequence of this language is that it makes Internet radio uneconomic. It's just not possible to deliver a business at those rates. And at Pandora, we have 15 full-time sales people cranking on this thing, and with all that we could muster, we could make it work on the old rates, but these new rates make it impossible.
There is potentially a much larger audience for an Internet radio station than a terrestrial, right? So, shouldn't the rates be higher?
The thing is, potentially, yes, but even with a much larger audience, it doesn't make it more profitable. Internet radio is projected to grow substantially over the years, but it doesn't mean more margins. At the existing rates, you could make a business out of it at scale, but each listener you add costs you more. There's not a huge profitability as it grows, so the underlying economics have to make sense.
I know you've already placed some limitations on your service, such as the amount of tracks that users can skip, in a given amount of time. Are those directly related to the guidelines imposed by these sorts of groups?
Right. So, the DMCA only applies in the United Statesin fact, there is no statutory rate anywhere else. You can't stream Internet radio into other countries, without having direct deals with every single rights holder whose music you're playing. So, if you're playing music on Internet radio anywhere in the world, outside of the US, unless you have a direct deal with that label, you're not supposed to do that. So, for within the US, where the DMCA applies, there's a whole bunch of restraints that come with the agreement. There's what's called an "artist's quota." You're only allowed to play a certain amount of songs by a given artist in a three-hour period, and things like that.
What sorts of things can people do, in order to help reverse this ruling?
Because we're a pretty young industry, we don't have very deep roots in Washington. The best recourse for us is looking to rally listeners and try to get a new bill passed, and try to change that language so that we're treated like other radio. It's a grassroots political organization.
Do these new rates also apply to terrestrial stations that also broadcast over the Internet?
They do.
This will likely be taking a much larger toll on public stations than those with deeper pockets like Clear Channel or Infinity.
Well, the financial impact is the same, in terms of per station. I certainly think that maybe a Clear Channel, because it's not really their businessthey are a terrestrial broadcasterthe overall impact on their business isn't that big, but looking down the road, it could be substantial. For someone like Pandora or a college radio station, it's devastating.
Do you foresee a Clear Channel or Infinity getting involved in lobbying against these new rates?
Yeah, they're already involved. The NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) is part of the Internet Radio Consortion.
So, in this case you actually have the media conglomerates on your side.
Yeah, yeah. So are the small Webcasts and the college radio stations. It's one of those rare moments that you get a decision that unifies everybody under one umbrella, kind of like an environmental disaster brings together corporations awnd environmental groups, because they all get impacted.
I assume that the record companies are part of the lobbying on the other side of this bill.
Yes. They have been principle voice for these rates.
It seems like they've haven't really learned their lesson since this on-going Napster/RIAA debacle.
Well, it's hard to know exactly what's going on when you read something like this. It's hard to imagine the RIAA wanting to put an end to Internet radio. I think the underlying dynamic is that the record labels want Internet radio companies to be forced to sign direct, individual deals with them. One of the great benefits of the DMCA is that, because it's statuatory rate, you sign one piece of paper. You have to pay for it, but it gives you one central means of getting access to everything. Pandora plays music from about 34,000 artists. The majority of those artists are not on labels. With this new rate structure, even if the artists don't like it, we still have to pay that rate. The only way we don't have to pay that rate is if we sign a direct deal with each of the individual artists. The logistics and costs of that are just absurd. That's why they created the DMCA. The advantage goes to big labels, because they are this centralized oligopoly, with a lot of artists under one roof. One of the really terrible consequencies for artists is that the revenue for licensing, whereas in the DMCA environment, it's split 50/50 with the artists; in a direct deal setting, it goes mostly to the label, and only a small part goes to the artists.
You also have a site set up that people can visit.
Yeah, we do: Savenetradio.org.
And the main way to get involved at this point is filling out petitions and calling congresspeople?
The first stage of that is to raise awareness. We're introducting a bill soon, and then the next course of action will be to call your congressperson and tell them to support the bill.
What's the timeline on the bill?
How much time is there until these new rates go into effect?
May 15th, and the problem is that it's retroactive since the beginning of 2006, so on that day, enormous bills are going to come due for everybody, bills that are going to dwarf what people have been paying. It's D-Day.


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Yes, it sounds distressingly like the Paris Hilton fiasco "Repo! The Genetic Opera," but the trailer and website for "Repo Men" look pretty good.
The trailer is a couple of weeks old, but a new site launched yesterday features a fake ad for The Union, the fine folks who will sell you a Jarvik Heart for the low, low price of $975,000. But the small print at the bottom of the page warns you that "Action will be taken after the sixth day of the fourth month of non-payment. Repo Men will retrieve the property at your expense."
The original site has the "red band" trailer, if you're into that kind of thing.
This is basically the exact plot of "Repo! The Genetic Opera," the musical which came out in 2008 -- but with a markedly better cast. The new film (from our good friends at Universal) star Jude Law and Forest Whitaker as a couple of guys in the not-too-distant future whose job it is to repossess synthetic organs from people who fall behind on their payments.
This isn't Obama's America, where everybody gets all the medical care they need for free, you tree-hugger.


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Malaysia is the second largest oil and gas producer in Southeast Asia, with proven oil reserves of 3.7 billion barrels and proven natural gas reserves of 38.5 Tcf as of 2013. Its western coast runs alongside the Strait of Malacca, a significant energy corridor linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans, while the eastern part of the nation contains the states of Sabah and Sarawak. Nearly all Malaysia's oil is produced from offshore fields. These are located on a continental shelf comprising the Malay basin in the west and the Sarawak and Sabah basins in the east. Major companies active in Malaysia's oil and gas industry are national oil company Petronas, ExxonMobil and Shell.
RAPID Project ,Southern Johor


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Mike Gray, an author, activist and documentarian who co-wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay for "The China Syndrome," the provocative 1979 film about a cover-up at a nuclear power plant, died Tuesday of heart failure at his Hollywood Hills home, his family said. He was 77.
Gray developed the "China Syndrome" story after reading books and interviewing scientists about the dangers of nuclear power. No one knew how timely the subject would prove. A nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania went into partial meltdown barely three weeks after the opening of the movie, which starred Jack Lemmon, Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas and became a box-office and critical success.
A Newsweek reviewer described the film as "a rare phenomenon — a piece of popular entertainment that immediately foreshadows a major news event and then helps explain it."
"I meant 'China Syndrome' to educate people about what I'd found … that our heavy reliance on nuclear plants hadn't been clearly thought through," Gray, who co-wrote the script with T.S. Cook and James Bridges, told the Chicago Tribune in 1998.
Born Oct. 26, 1935, Gray was a native of Darlington, Ind., who earned an engineering degree from Purdue University before moving to Chicago in the early 1960s. He was making TV commercials for major brands like Kentucky Fried Chicken when the Democratic National Convention came to Chicago in 1968. When police began beating protesters in the streets outside the convention hall, Gray took a film crew to record the events.
"When we came back to our studio at 3 a.m.," Gray, who had been a Goldwater Republican, told the Tribune, "we were different people. We had been changed, transformed."
He gave up TV commercials and turned to projects that reflected his new political sensibilities. With Howard Alk, a founder of Chicago's Second City comedy group, he collaborated on documentary films, including "American Revolution II" (1969), about the social and political turmoil of the 1960s, and "The Murder of Fred Hampton" (1971), about the FBI raid in which Chicago Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton was killed.
After moving to Los Angeles in 1973, Gray wrote screenplays and several books, including "Angle of Attack," about America's race to the moon, and "Drug Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out," about the failures of the U.S. war on drugs.
At his death he was working on a documentary about former Black Panther and Houston community organizer Robert E. Lee III.
Gray is survived by his wife, Carol, and a son, Lucas.


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Welcome to Watch List, where we identify five things on TV to watch while you stay at home and prepare for the NFL lockout. Duct tape? Check. Flashlights? Check. Alcohol? Check. Pens and paper to write increasingly angry and incoherent missives to league ownership? Check. LET'S GO!
ICE BRIGADE – 10:00PM (Food Network) You know what's better than a pool table? A pool table made of ICE! And that's what you'll get tonight when you tune into this new Food Network show about a team of ice sculptors from Michigan. Why ice? Because ice is cool… LITERALLY! Watch them in the premiere episode as they carve out an entire ice lounge (sexy!), complete with an ice bar, the afore-mentioned ice pool table, and even an ice sushi station. Oddly, there's no mention of an ice luge here, which I find odd. If you're building an ice lounge, you gotta have that luge. How else will underage drinkers be able to do shots of cinnamon liqueur and then go throw up in the bushes? ANTICIPATION: ICY!
THE BRIDE WAS SEVEN – 10:00PM (OWN) Lisa Ling travels to Ethiopia, which is apparently the Utah of Africa, to examine the custom of child marriages, and how young girls in the country try and avoid such a binding and abusive commitment at such a young age. Bring Kleenex. ANTICIPATION: SAD!
JERSEY SHORE – 10:00PM (MTV) Sammi returns to the house! Oh, thank goodness! I was praying that a wet blanket would come and interrupt everyone's good time! I missed the way Sammi got mad at people for no reason and sat around pouting while everyone else enjoyed themselves. Also tonight, Snooki thinks she has feelings for Vinny (or did she just drink too much eyeliner?), and the Situation hooks up with a girl who smells. Who would have guessed that the Sitch would attract the kind of people who might be deficient in the area of personal hygiene? ANTICIPATION: DRAMA!
WHEN FISH ATTACK – 8:00PM (Animal Planet) Pfft. Fish attacking? You don't scare me, fish. I eat fish like you for dinner. No really, I do. You're delicious. You think I'm gonna be intimidated by a bunch of brainless, salt water breathing losers like y… GAH! PIRANHAS! I FORGOT ABOUT YOU! GET THEM OFF ME! THEY'VE CHEWED TO THE BONE! Don't taunt fish the way I did! ANTICIPATION: ILL-TEMPERED SEABASS!
AMERICAN IDOL – 8:00PM (FOX) The finalists are announced and J-Lo's new video "On The Floor" debuts. This is when the sausage starts getting made, gang. ANTICIPATION: DREAMS CRUSHED!


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How I Gave Up on the Film Industry and Did What I Loved, Part 2/
By Jacob Kornbluth
So there I was. I had totally given up on my film career in LA, and gone to live in Berkeley, CA. In trying to put together a fiction film, I had met Robert Reich and become friends with him. Reich and I had started making short videos together, they were successful, and I had begun thinking about how to make a film about what had happened to the American economy and the Middle class. But I had no idea where to start.Read More


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Send flowers for delivery to Conder, Theodore, Banks, Richardson, Bonython, Gilmore, Monash, Gowrie and surrounding areas of Canberra. Gordon Florist offers same day flower delivery for orders placed before 2pm weekdays and 10am on Saturday. Flowers can be delivered to all locations of Canberra including homes, work, hospitals, funerals and churches.
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Gordon Florist can deliver flowers anywhere in Gordon including flowers delivered to Gordon hospitals for "New Born Babies" or as a "Get Well" gift, flowers delivered to a church for weddings, baptism or christening, funeral flowers and funeral wreaths delivered to Gordon churches, funeral homes and cemeteries. Flowers can be delivered residential, commercial and industrial addresses in Gordon, 2906.


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My first sitter, Maggie, spoiled me forever. We met, I adored her, she adored the baby, I hired her, and a love affair began. I left for work on her first day without a second thought -- really! I had no urge to run back and ask her 12 more questions about her experience, her references, her opinion on daytime TV or high-fructose corn syrup.
The process of reassessing your child care decision may help you to see that your original choice is still right.
But the love affair had to end after a year -- we moved, too far to keep Maggie -- and we went through four more nannies before the next year came to a close.
I had more than my share of irrational fears (like the time I was sure Christine had a boyfriend lurking around my house; she didn't, though she simply disappeared one day) and rational ones (like the time I was sure Danielle would quit to return to a glam fashion job; she did with no notice!). I second-guessed myself into a pretzel.
Even now, with 3-year-old Daniel and his little brother, James, happily and safely ensconced in day care, I feel the uncertainty that seems part of handing over your kids to someone else. Should I work less or try again for a nanny? Shell out more cash for a ritzier day care? Fact is, "even when you know you've done it 'right' choosing child care, the uncomfortable feelings come," says Linda Smith, executive director of the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies. Parenting.com: Child care's effect on kids
Add in the child-care studies that periodically make alarming headlines in the news media -- like research from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development about how kids in child-care centers exhibit a slight increase in minor behavior problems through sixth grade -- and it's a wonder any of us have a moment's peace of mind. (Of course, that study also found that kids who experience high-quality child care, even in centers, have better-than-average vocabulary skills through fifth grade, but the guilt-provoking part of the findings got most of the play.)
The emotional tug-of-war is as much an unpleasant reality of child care as late-pick-up fees and the times your child calls the sitter "Mommy." To deal with some common childcare trip-ups:
The second-guessing trap
A few weeks ago, when I picked up my boys, I had one of those moments that only other day-care parents can appreciate. I tiptoed in so I could spy for a minute, and found Daniel, my hearty preschooler, on an indoor slide intended for a 1-year-old. My 1-year-old, one sock off and one sock on, was banging a plastic dinosaur against a shelf. The scene made me feel...unsettled. Shouldn't they have been steered to more appropriate activities? Had I made a grave error in choosing this place for them -- or was I just having a bad day?
The truth is, you may find a place that's great in terms of location, cost, curriculum, and other quantifiable aspects, but much of the rest of your choice comes down to fuzzy-around-the-edges feelings. Erin Cecil, mom of 26-month-old Cole, never imagined she could replace the family day care she had in San Diego, California, after a cross-country move to Crofton, Maryland, so she opted for a day-care center. "I figured Cole would do well with more kids and structured activities," she says. But while the center was fine, she soon found that both she and Cole missed their former setup. "Our old caregiver was like a part of the family. She'd even come to Cole's birthday party," she explains.
Cecil called her former provider for advice. "She said, 'If there's a feeling in the pit of your stomach that it's not right, it's not right.' I started looking that day. We checked out a local family day care with four children that we'd heard about, and we loved it. Cole now can't wait to go; I have to drag him out every evening."
The trick is to tease out which pit-of-the-stomach moments are the result of one bad dropoff or chaotic pickup and which may be genuine red flags. In my case, I decided it was no big deal if Daniel sometimes played with baby toys; he also painted elaborate pictures, sat on the potty more reliably than he would at home, and talked glowingly about Miss Rosie and Miss Allison at dinnertime.
Remember, too, that there's a difference between second-guessing and re-evaluation. If you think your child-care choice is no longer working for your family, maybe it's time to make a change. And who knows? The process of reassessing may help you to see that your original choice is still right. As you go about looking to see what else is out there, think outside the box of sitter interview questions or day-care must-haves. For instance, while you should still ask a potential nanny about her previous work experience, go deeper. "See if her child-rearing beliefs mesh with yours. Ask her if she believes in letting a baby cry it out, or if she thinks it's ever OK to admit you were wrong to your child," Smith says. "If they don't, don't be swayed if she assures you she'll follow your rules. When frustrations run high, she's more likely to respond from her gut." Parenting.com: Drop-in day care checklist
When you're visiting potential child-care spots, try not to see things under the best of circumstances. "Go at a potentially chaotic time, like lunch or morning dropoff. You'll get a better idea of how they handle things," says Smith. If the center's director shows you the room your child will be in, ask to speak to the staffers inside. After all, they, not the director, will be in charge of your child's minute-by-minute care.
The grass-is-greener dilemma
Even before Monique Fields took maternity leave from her job as a newspaper reporter, she figured she'd have to hire a sitter when she returned to work. "I was often at my desk well past when most day-care centers close," says Fields, of St. Petersburg, Florida. But she also knew that a per-hour sitter would add up to big bucks -- and found herself envying friends who could easily afford what she viewed as a luxury. "They didn't have to worry if their schedules were nuts -- they could just arrange hours with their sitter."
Fields ended up switching careers to a journalism teaching job with more normal hours and finding a family day care for her daughter, Simone, who is 1. "Now I realize that having a nanny isn't perfect either," she says. "One friend's nanny just quit. That wouldn't happen with my day care."
When you find yourself envying your friends' child-care situations, it can be startling and guilt-inducing. Yet it's common to feel the way Fields did: that everyone's got it figured out -- everyone, that is, except you. Remember that while the grass over there may look nice and green, chances are there are weeds poking through. You may find that your friend with the "perfect" situation is tearing her hair out, too, whether over a no-show sitter or a day-care facility that lets the other kids show up with runny noses. That gleaming new center down the street may make your family care look shabby -- but you may still prefer your slightly careworn toys and homespun circle-time games to its shiny playground and aggressive fund-raisers. Parenting.com: Day-care center germ-swapping
Face it: No sitter is Mary Poppins, no child-care situation is hassle-free, and all working parents have the same woe-is-me story to tell. "If you're comfortable with the person or place you have selected, trust that she or they have something special to contribute to your child's experience," says Veronika Stein, a parent coach and instructor at Parenting Coach Institute at Seattle Pacific University.
The I-can't-let-go problem
Kristen Wilson, a mom in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, got lucky, finding a sitter recommended by her friend and next-door neighbor. Plus, since Wilson works at home, she figured she'd have the best of both worlds. "The nanny would care for my daughter upstairs while I worked downstairs," she says. Sounds ideal, right?
But Wilson, whose daughter, Mackenzie, is 5 months old, still struggles. "I hear Mackenzie crying, and I never know: Should I go soothe her or leave the two of them to work it out?" She has difficulty accepting that even though they're in the same house, she has no idea what's going on with her child all day. "The reality is that infants and toddlers, especially, don't have the language needed to tell you much of anything about their day," says Stein. "That can amplify a parent's sense of being out of touch with her child's experience." While jealousy may play a role here (the sitter has all the good moments; you get the cranky, end-of-day moments), so may guilt. "Parents may think, 'Shouldn't I be the one who's home all day?'" says Barbara Marcus, CEO of Parents in a Pinch, Inc., a nanny and temporary child-care placement agency in Brookline, Massachusetts. The real kicker is that these feelings arise even when you're happy with your child-care choice. Knowing that your child is content at day care only serves to remind you she's leading a life -- albeit just a small part of one -- that you're not privy to. And if you have a nanny you love, chances are that's because she and your child have a bond -- games, hugs, and songs that don't include you. Parenting.com: Too close for comfort
Remember that you're not a busybody if you sometimes request more info about your child's day. "If you have a sitter, just call and say, 'I'm sitting here wondering what Kim's doing. Can you give me a sketch?'" says Stein. Same with a day-care center: "Ask the director when would be a good time to call and get a mini-message about what your child is doing -- the occasional request shouldn't be a problem," she says. Once Daniel gets old enough for school, my child-care needs will shift again. I've learned a few lessons: to trust my judgment, follow my instincts, and not fall prey to child-care envy. Now if only our first nanny would move close enough to baby sit on Saturday nights.... E-mail to a friend
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Copyright 2009 The Parenting Group. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
Denise Schipani writes for a variety of women's magazines, including Redbook, Women's Health, and Woman's Day.
All About Daycare


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Quote:I never did any breaks in karate, but aren't you supposed to drop your weight through the strike?
Quote:but I am almost certain Johnny TKD can't produce 2250 pound of force with that hammer fist if the average boxers right cross hits for ~1000
Quote:Pretty good post. Good food for thought. The most interesting thing is towards the end. The tid bit about the crab. If there isn't already, there should be a Crab Form.When I put my rice bag on the brick pillar in the attic that goes through the center of my house, with my wushu I can make my punches resonate through 2 of 3 floors of my house. I'm using internal short range Fut Sao punches.I'm working on making it through the first floor.
Artifacts from the Ryukyu Kingdom missing since WWII.
Visit www.ShisaLion.Org
to view pictures
Stun Guns
Self Defense Products-stun guns, pepper spray, tasers
and more
Complete surveillance systems for covert operations
or secure installation security
Asylum Images
Book presents photo tour of the Trans-Allegany Lunatic Asylum. A must if you're going to take a ghost tour!


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It's time for the WCCA planning committee to start discussing what did and didn't work this year and I'd like to open the discussion up to the rest of you. So other than examining the categories (which we'll do later) and complaining that you didn't get nominated, what do you think worked well this year and what would you have liked to see done differently?
Also, if you're willing to help make the WCCAs better, please contact me about joining the WCCA planning committee. There are several open executive positions where we really need help.
Mark Mekkes


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Hmmm, is that our dear Kar..Ka...whateverthehellthatevilbeing'snameis....crying out for help??
Amy. <:3 )~~8~
ItaX wrote:Ooh...the timekeepers are chasing him. Now he's gonna get some serious butt-kicking. >=]
Anyways...hey Shirlee. About that pic I gave you...of course you can put it in your fanart page. =) Mind if I post it on VCL?
shirleemouse wrote:oh, by all means itax! and as soon as i've got it loaded there, go by and
take a look folks! itax has art skills he hasn't even used yet! ^.^
WettHenn wrote:He deserves it, that's for sure!
ItaX wrote:Aw c'mon Shirlee Anyways...I'm really glad you liked it. Keep up the neat comic mousie.
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest


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Charlottetown, Canada Real Estate Lawyers and Law Firms
McInnes Cooper
Full Service Law Firm in Canada(902) 368-8473
Law Firm's Overview
Cox & Palmer
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Law Firm's Overview
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Macnutt & Dumont Law Office offers a wide array of services to assist clients, please contact one of our lawyers if you have any questions
Campbell Lea Barristers & SolicitorsCharlottetown, Canada
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Campbell Lea is a full-service independent law firm located in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The firm is devoted to maintaining the highest standards of professionalism. Experienced attorneys offer a range of specialized legal expertise. They are committed to providing the highest quality of...
Key Murray LawCharlottetown, Canada
Full Service Law Firm on Charlottetown, Canada(902) 894-7051
Key Murray Law is a Prince Edward Island law firm with offices in Charlottetown, Summerside and O'Leary. Established from the offices of Matheson & Murray and Key, McKnight and Maynard, the lawyers and staff at Key Murray Law have a reputation for providing exceptional legal and client services. At...


text: +therealbountybob #1 Posted November 14, 2010 Welcome!Firstly feel free to play games immediately. All abilities welcome, seriously we do have a wide spread of players (no names mentioned ) so there's always someone to compare scores with!You can also take part in votes, suggest games that you'd like to play and any other ideas right from the off, don't be shy!We usually play a classic Atari 8-bit game every two weeks, sometimes we have bonus rounds or tournaments (where everyone disappears for no discernible reason )Screen shots are optional, but if you are one of the better players we all like to see them!If you haven't got an Atari then get one on ebay or somewhere but in the mean time you can use one of the many PC (or MAC) Atari emulators.The easiest PC Atari emulator to get started on is Altirra, just follow this link (right click on it, then select open in new window) and 1 page down in the 'Downloads' section click on "Altirra version 2.7 binary". Then run/extract the zip file to an Altirra folder on your hard drive. (e.g. C:\altirra)To run Altirra open the Altirra folder in 'My Computer' and double click on the altirra.exe application.If you want to create a desktop shortcut icon then click on the altirra icon once, then click on 'File' and select 'Create Shortcut'. Then drag the newly created shortcut (it has a little arrow on the icon) to your PC's desktop.Altirra users please set the following:'View' 'Overscan Mode' 'Normal''Input' 'Input Mappings' 'Arrow Keys - Joystick (port 1)' - (this uses left control for fire. You can click on edit if you want to configure the keys manually)'System' 'Firmware' 'default' (works for most games)Download games into the same folder, there are many good sites for games such as Atarimania, Fandal, Atarionline.pl, Homesoft, VJetnam. In the HSC there are links posted to the current game. Then from Altirra's File menu select 'Boot Image' and select the game and you should be up and running. (If a window showing 'Select Cartridge Mapper' appears, click on the first one in the list and then click OK)There's no commitment to play every game but we're always glad to have regulars. Side discussions often develop so it sometimes gets a little crazy around here!If you need any help whatsoever please post or contact me (or Goochman) directly.And the number one rule is to Have fun! 2 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites


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Nocs NS600 Crush In-Ear Headphones Review/
Nocs continues to impress us with yet another new offering that is extending the Swedish line of solid in-ear headphones so called the NS600 Crush. And boy are they looking fine as fine can be. We expect no less coming from the land that gave us Spotify, Abba, IKEA, Absolut, blondacious girls and our most favorite meatballs. That about covers it I think. Aside from that, Nocs has a knack for numbering its headphones in a series of ascending numbers. The higher the number, the more premium your audio experience will get apparently.
Nocs' latest NS600 Crush carry a dual dynamic driver setup that can pump out sound said to be comparable to a set of full fledged headphones - if not better. Our full review awaits you on the other side!Read More


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- Product Information
Candy Striped Downloadable PDF Quilt Pattern features rainbow stripes and ribbon stars on a bright white background. Stitch together in Canning Day by Corey Yoder for Moda Fabrics to make this vivid quilt pop.
Finished size: 74" x 88"
A link to download this pattern will be included in your order confirmation email. You can also download it in your My Account under My Downloadable Products. Please save the file to your personal computer when possible as there are a limited amount of downloads per pattern.
If you need any help downloading or printing your PDF, follow the steps in our Guide to PDF Patterns.
7 pagesAdditional Information
Product Type Patterns Fabric Collection Canning Day Fabric Designer Corey Yoder Paper or PDF Pattern? PDF Downloadable Patterns Difficulty Level Intermediate Pattern/Book Designer Coriander Quilts Pattern Type Quilt Patterns
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