text:
At the time of writing, the Shih Tzu (pronounced shi-zoo), is one of the most popular family dogs in the UK. It is also referred to as the chrysanthemum dog, because of the shape formed around the nose and mouth when the fur first starts to grow, which resembles the flower. The plural of 'shih tzu' is also 'shih tzu'.
General Shih Tzu Information:
This dog breed is generally good natured, non aggressive and just loves being with its owners. They are very cuddly and fluffy, and they are known as non-shedding, so are often suitable for those who suffer from pet allergies. Actually, the shih tzu is not completely non-shedding – see the below Grooming section for more detail.
Typical Shih Tzu
Height: 9 – 11 inches
Weight: 7 – 8 lbs
Average Litter Size: Around 3 – 5 puppies
Life Expectancy: 12 – 14 years, although known to live up to 18 years
Good with Children: Yes
Kennel Club Classification: Utility Group
Colour of a Shih Tzu:
Any – the most common colour is a base of white with patches of brown or beige, although some have black patches. Traditionally, the shih tzu should have a saddle of colour in the middle of their back, a white tip to the tail and what is termed a white 'flame' from just above the nose and between the eyes. A solid colour is quite rare, although you can get solid red and solid black colours. However, any colour is acceptable by the Kennel Club nowadays.
Grooming a Shih Tzu:
The shih tzu has two coats of fur, which is very similar to human hair. The top fur coat is non-shedding, however, the inner coat sheds just a little. This bottom level of fur sheds into the outer coat and hence the shih tzu appears to be non-shedding. If you brush the dog regularly, this small amount of fur becomes caught in the brush so there will be no fur all over your house.
Without clipping, the shih tzu's fur can grown down to the ground (this is the usual image you will see on most shih tzu artwork and memorabilia, and it is how most people who are not acquainted with the shih tzu will know them). If you let it grow, the fur is extremely high maintenance.
Most owners have the fur clipped every six to ten weeks. This costs around £15 – £30, dependent on when and where you go. If you are considering showing the dog, then you should never have them clipped, even at an early age, because a good judge can tell.
Their eyes can weep frequently, so the shih tzu may need his eyes wiping every now and then. As with many dog breeds, their ears need checking to ensure they are dry and clean.
Shih Tzu Common Ailments/Health Issues:
Compared to many breeds, there are fewer problems with the shih tzu, because it is quite a hardy breed. Well-bred lines should have little trouble. Eye or knee problems are the most common ailments. Reading extensive dog profiles, you may find other ailments listed, such as anemia, luxating patella, vWD, thyroid or kidney problems and other such scary sounding problems. These are possible problems with poorly-bred shih tzu puppies but having owned more than 20 shih tzu and never having experienced anything other than one eye problem, it could be considered unlucky to have any of these. Having said that, all puppies should be vet-checked.
Shih Tzu Coughing/Reverse Sneeze (Inspiratory Dyspnea):
The shih tzu is 'brachycephalic' (i.e. snub nosed, with a short muzzle). As such, they are sensitive to high temperatures, like many dog breeds. It also means that occasionally, especially when they get excited, they might seem to cough or snort. From experience, this could happen once a week or so. They will only cough for less than a minute, but you can help them recover quickly by helping them swallow.
To do this, simply place your fingers or thumb over their nostril and rub the throat gently, and slightly open their mouth. This should stop it almost immediately. Be sure that this 'reverse sneeze' is the issue and not something more serious. If this corrects it, then it is probably just a reverse sneeze/cough. If you do this, your shih tzu is likely to learn to run to you when it happens.
Temperament of the Shih Tzu:
Non aggressive, good natured, good with children and pets (subject to the usual correct socalisation). Although friendly, they will bark a warning if someone comes to the door so they make quite effective watchdogs.
Training a Shih Tzu:
The shih tzu is intelligent, responsive and eager to please, so their training requirement is quite low. Some can be quite stubborn and haughty, but with perseverance they make a great addition to the home.
Exercise for a Shih Tzu:
Many describe the shih tzu as having a low exercise requirement level and this is true to some extent. However, there are shih tzu known to be happy to go running with their owner. When raising a shih tzu puppy, it is important to build them to, and maintain, the exercise level you wish them to have. Hence, if you want your shih tzu puppy to enjoy a walk round the block with you, then that will suffice, but if you build him up to going running every day, then that is usually what he will do.
History of the Shih Tzu:
The shih tzu originated in Tibet, and was bred in China. Reportedly, Tibetanese Terriers were used to guard the temples of Tibet and if anyone managed to get past the terriers, the shih tzu acted as warning dogs for the Tibetan monks. Some say that a shih tzu is the reincarnation of a sinned monk.
Since approximately 700BC, the little dogs became known as the little 'lion dog'. They were referred to as 'Shih-Tze-Kou'. The word 'Shi-Tze' or 'Shi-Tzu' is a compound term meaning 'lion' and 'kou' means dog. Reportedly, this name came about because the legends said that when Buddha was travelling as a simple priest, he would always be accompanied by a small shih tzu. Whenever anyone threatened Buddha, the little shih tzu would transform into a lion, allowing Buddha to ride away to safety in a saddle on the back of the shih tzu. This is why the traditional colouring of the shih tzu would include a saddle of colour on his back – see Colour section above. The Chinese Emperors of the imperial dynasties bred dogs to look like small lions to encourage a comparison between themselves and Buddha.
Shih tzu were often given as a gift to indicate good luck, and they were always presented in pairs. Tibetan monks would present a pair of shih tzu to the Emperors, and this was a tradition that the Chinese continued.
The dogs came to England in the 1830's and to the USA around 100 years later when they were initially registered as the 'Lhasa terrier'. Approximately 1940, the American Kennel Club registered the breed as the Shih Tzu but it wasn't until 1969 that the Shih Tzu and Lhasa Apso were officially separated.


text: PAUL E. TIERNEY, JR. is Managing Member of Development Capital Partners and Aperture Venture Partners, two private investment vehicles specializing respectively in African emerging markets and U.S. early stage healthcare ventures. For the past 24 years, Mr. Tierney has been Chairman of TechnoServe, Inc., a private international economic development organization. He was the Founder and Co-General Partner of Coniston Partners and several other large investment partnerships. Previously, Mr. Tierney served as the Managing Director of Gollust, Tierney and Oliver, an investment capital management company. He has been a director of United Airlines Corp., Liz Claiborne, Inc., TW Services Corp., The Argentine Investment Fund, Prosperity Voskhod Fund, Earth Color, Inc. and St. John's College. Mr. Tierney is currently the Chairman of Fidus Mezzanine Fund and a director of Nina McLemore and The Protective Group. He serves as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Tierney is a returned Peace Corps Volunteer, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame (magna cum laude) and the Harvard Business School (Baker Scholar). He is an Adjunct Professor of Emerging Markets at Columbia University.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
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text:
Multi-widget profile feature allows you to customize chat widgets on 3 or more websites and manage chats from all your websites under a single HappyFox Chat account. You can customize look and feel of each chat widget.
This feature is available in Mighty and above plans.
Only admin users will be able to add widget profiles.
Adding a widget profile will not install the widget on the website. Ensure that the correct widget is installed on your website.
How to add a new widget profile?
1. Login to HappyFox Chat account. Go to Manage > Appearance > Click Add a widget profile button.
2. Enter the required details and hit Save Widget Profile button.
3. Click Done or Add another Widget Profile button.
4. Now go to Manage tab > click Installation, copy the code for the corresponding site by clicking on the widget profile drop-down.
5. Paste this installation code to the corresponding website's source code, above the </body> tag and HappyFox Chat widget will be installed.
Feature Description:
You can just click on the Profile name on the drop down, to make the customizations (Appearance, Widget Content, Pre-chat form settings, Language, Time Zone, Chat Status, Transcript email id) and click Save.
On the incoming chat notification, you will see the profile name which indicates the website from which the customer started chat.
Once the chat is accepted, the Profile name will be displayed in the chat window.
Under Chat History, for finished chats and offline messages profile name will be displayed.
When you delete a widget profile, the corresponding installation code will be deprecated or it won't work. If you want to add the widget to a new website or again the same website you need to add a new widget profile and the copy-paste the new installation code.


text:
Manufacturing and forging transmission systems including double pistons and nitrogen front/rear shock absorber, roller weight, pulley, static cover and blade etc, and velocity advanced transfer engine control module etc, and providing color type custom shock absorber.
Adhering to professional and sustainable operational conception, our company adopts global operation, with products all over Taiwan and Asia, and accepts commission development and product manufacture from dealers and distributors and agents OEM at home and abroad, and we will even move forward to European and American market in the future. We will embrace enthusiastic, positive, precise and innovative spirit, fully master global status, focus on forward-looking excellence, dare to pursue innovation and reform, and look forward to manufacturing more sophisticated products to be provided for all our clients.


text:
Getting started with Linq to Querystring Part 2 – Filtering Data
In this second post in my introductory series, I'm going to take a look at how we can filter the results from our API using OData\Linq to Querystring. I'm going to be building on the paging sample from the last post, which you can find here if you want to follow along: https://github.com/Roysvork/LinqToQuerystringPagingSample.
This post is intended as a step by step guide, so if you're just looking for a reference on what you can do with Linq to Querystring, feel free to skip the first two sections.
Making things more interesting
Because our previous sample only contained a single string value (not very interesting for filtering purposes!), I've extended things slightly as a starting point for this post. We're still hardcoding the data, but there's now a concrete class with multiple properties so we have something to play around with:
This really seemed like a good idea for a demo class until it came to populating it with sample data. I'm not a movie buff… so after a good amount of googling here's my test data:
I've made sure to include a mix of different property types so we can apply a range of filters, so if you're using your own test data make sure to do this too.
Rendering results as a table
Last time we used knockout to bind the data coming back from our api into a table, and the markup looked like this:
This was fine for retrieving a list of single values, but now we need it to display all the properties of each movie. We could just hard code the columns, but there's a little trick we can use instead.
As objects in Javascript are just collections of properties, we can iterate over each one, read the property name for each and then add these values to an array from which we can bind our headers. Here's the modified function that gets the data from our api:
Note that we've also added a new observable array to our viewmodel called headers. And to take advantage of that in our UI, we now just need to tweak our table html also:
Remember, in Javascript accessing an object's properties directly by name is exactly equivilent to accessing them via indexer syntax, i.e:
record.Title === record["Title"]
We're using this trick, and nested foreach bindings to render each column. To use the indexer syntax, we need to be able to refer to values from both foreach, which we can do using aliases. If these bindings seem a little confusing, take a look at http://knockoutjs.com/documentation/foreach-binding.html, and see Note 3: Using "as" to give an alias to "foreach" items
Et viola, a nice table. The labels aren't perfect and the dates are ugly, but it was very simple to achieve.
The $filter operator
So, now that we've got some more meaningful results, we can get back to the task at hand. In OData, we use the $filter= query operator to tell our API that we want to apply a filter to our data. Linq to Querystring takes this query filter and then converts it to a Linq 'Where' expression.
A few examples (it's worth noting that the whitespace here is important):
http://localhost/api/values?$filter=Title eq 'Avatar' http://localhost/api/values?$filter=MetaScore ge 60 http://localhost/api/values?$filter=Recommended eq true http://localhost/api/values?$filter=not Recommended
No prizes for guessing what the first one does of course, but some of the other operators such as Greater than or Equal aren't so obvious. These examples give us an idea of the general format for a filter expression in OData; we can reference properties on our model, specify an equality operator, strings are enclosed in single quotes and we can even specify unary boolean expressions.
Here's the full list of logical operators from the OData v2 specification:
|Logical Operators
|/Suppliers?$filter=City eq 'Redmond'
|Not equal
|/Suppliers?$filter=City ne 'London'
|Greater than
|/Products?$filter=Price gt 20
|Greater than or equal
|/Products?$filter=Price ge 10
|Less than
|/Products?$filter=Price lt 20
|Less than or equal
|/Products?$filter=Price le 100
|Logical and
|/Products?$filter=Price le 200 and Price gt 3.5
|Logical or
|/Products?$filter=Price le 3.5 or Price gt 200
|Logical negation
|/Products?$filter=not StockAvailable
|Grouping Operators
|Precedence grouping
|/Products?$filter=Price lt 30 or (City eq 'London' and Price lt 50)
The full OData specification provides a whole host of functions that allow us to manipulate values within our expressions. Linq to Querystring currently supports a very basic subset of these, which will grow as development continues.
Currently only three string functions are supported, the bare minimum which allow us to do useful string searches:
|String Functions
|bool substringof(string po, string p1)
|/Customers?$filter=substringof('Alfreds', CompanyName)
|bool endswith(string p0, string p1)
|/Customers?$filter=endswith(CompanyName, 'Futterkiste')
|bool startswith(string p0, string p1)
|/Customers?$filter=startswith(CompanyName, 'Alfr')
Escape characters
Like all string comparisons, we need to be able to filter using escape characters to indicate certain values. OData is no exception, and Linq to Querystring uses the following escape sequences:
|\ (backslash)
|Non-destructive backspace
|Line feed
|Carriage return
|' (single quote)
|' (single quote – alternate)
Please note that while these work with Linq to Querystring, they may or may not be compatible with other OData providers.
Creating a basic search UI
Hopefully that all makes sense, so back to the sample project. We now want to add the ability to specify an OData filter when pulling down data from our API. We could do this manually like we did with the paging, but it's a lot more complex.
For our search UI I'm going to use a jQuery plugin called OData filter UI, which will take care of generating the filter string for us. Currently in pre-release, this plugin will be the subject of it's own post in this series at a later date. You can follow progress on the github page. For now, install the plugin using nuget:
Install-Package jQuery.ODataFilterUI -Pre
Make sure you've added the jquery.odatafilterui-0.1.js file it to your bundles or otherwise included it in the page. In order to use the plugin we add a textbox as a base and then apply the plugin which will then create the more complex bits of the UI. Here's the markup and the js code that invokes the plugin and tell it what our fields are:
Because the plugin needs to be flexible enough to fit into any UI, it comes with no default styling. I've neatened things up a bit using css you can see in this gist if you like: https://gist.github.com/Roysvork/a4d067e9550d32dc74b8. Anyways if you choose to or not, you should see something like the following:
Have a play around with the UI to familiarise yourself… it's fairly straightforward to add or remove filters. You'll see that for each data type the contents of the operator drop down change accordingly, and also the input type reflects this too. Currently each filter that you add will get 'ANDed' together.
All thats left to do now is wire up the filter to our api call. Here's the final version of the getData function including paging & now filtering:
As you can see, the OData Filter UI plugin has done the hard work of constructing the filter string for us via the getODataFilter() method.
We've also refactored the creation of the url to ensure we use ? and & to seperate querystring elements and the url accordingly.
Try out a few different filters, and use your favourite debugger to inspect the url that gets generated. Here are a few examples:
http://localhost:54972/api/values?$filter=ReleaseDate lt datetime'2000-01-01T00:00'&$top=5&$skip=0&$inlinecount=allpages
http://localhost:54972/api/values?$filter=Recommended eq true and MetaScore gt 55&$top=5&$skip=0&$inlinecount=allpages
Starting with the code from Part 1, we've changed the test data to return a complex type with different properties, and updated the rendering of the results to reflect this.
We've looked at the OData syntax for filtering data, comparison operators, escape sequences and some of the string functions available. We've also seen how we can use the jQuery.ODataFilterUI plugin to provide a basic search UI.
Once again, you can check out the Linq to Querystring github page here: https://github.com/Roysvork/LinqToQuerystring and if you want to download the final source for the example in the post you can find that here: https://github.com/Roysvork/LinqToQuerystringFilteringSample
Stay tuned for the next few posts in the series, in which we'll cover ordering of results, dealing with complex properties and collections, and how Linq to Querystring can work with Mongo DB to query loosely typed data.


text:
Before we even get to the opportunity over fifty workers present to the nation's workforce, let's look at the predicament American labor is in -
Although we have been conditioned to believe that employment is a protected constitutional right we are now chest deep in a global economy where this concept is rare to nonexistent. Americans are shocked when plants close down and people lose jobs. The fact of the matter is - if those companies had been profitable they would still be operating. How can they pay workers if they have no profits? And ironically, the worker's own 'cost of living' salary increases could have been the very thing that put them out of work.
American capitalism evangelists have spread the free market gospel to the third world countries that offer cheap labor, confident that they would never really 'get it'. But as the third world quietly slaved away to make our lives easier, they harbored a deep dark secret that is just coming to light — 'get it' they did, and now they are going for it. Now even the Chinese, who have lived to serve for thousands of years, are becoming members of the global capitalist machine.
If the American workers themselves don't feel enough loyalty to each other to absorb fellow worker's salaries when buying consumer products (AKA: buying American products) why should the employers feel any guilt over buying foreign labor? Reality is calling and big changes are on the horizon.
Young Chinese have a greater grasp of reality than our youth. They study, learn English and work smarter and cheaper and are utterly thrilled to receive a fraction of the purely material rewards we take for granted. In most "cheap labor" countries there is no welfare - it is work or starve.
American business must also do or die and the smart ones will consider all options. If we continue to fight by the Marquis De Queensberry rules and our opponents feel free to hit below the belt we haven't a chance in Hell of winning. To compete globally we must learn how to bring down the cost of our American labor or suffer the consequences of having low prices for consumer goods but no money to buy them. That would, of course, include adapting to a more globally compatible level of "creature comforts".
Companies can divide their work force into on and off site departments, only absorbing the on-site labor overhead when presence on-site is required to perform their job. Since creative talent produces tangible collateral each day it is perfectly suited to off site, virtual offices.
In a virtual office situation there are huge savings to the employer - which enables him to afford the heavier talent offered by the "overqualified".
Employees who have their worker overhead reduced can work for less and still live the same lifestyle.
It is not simply what you get paid - it is what you have left over after the expense of showing up for work every day.
American business cannot compete globally by raising salaries to acquire greater talent, but it can compete by lowering the cost of maintaining currently available talent. America is the world leader in innovations. When a company peels away the tons of government regulated expenses, the actual salary buried underneath is always very reasonable by comparison. By working in his own home office a worker could likely pay for his own benefits package with unused gas money alone.
Although this problem affects all workers the context here addresses web oriented creative talent. By that I mean web design, ad design, graphic design and editorial content, such as copy writing and editing. You can't outsource this to Bombay. The creative talent must intimately know not only our culture as a whole, but know how the diverse segments, sub cultures and demographics they are targeting actually think - and differ from each other.
A creative talent in his or her forties, fifties or even sixties is better than ever at assessing the target audience and producing more effective results in a fraction of the time it takes a lower paid newcomer. Experience is the greatest asset you can have. The less experienced worker is still trying to figure out the necessary approach while the experienced individual is finished and moving on to the next project. The problem is talented people are being riffed by corporations when they are the most valuable to them. All parties lose for lack of a creative solution. Younger biological age is a new phenomenon - people are not "old" at forty or fifty anymore.
- Is sixty the new fifty?
- From
CBS News Online
"Baby boomers will enjoy not just increased longevity but better health as well. Since 1950, the death rate for heart disease has dropped by 60% and for stroke by 70%, according to Health, United States. Since 1990 the death rate for cancer has dropped by 10%.
That suggests that many boomers may be aging more slowly than previous generations because of healthy habits, such as less smoking and more exercise. Maybe 60 really is the new 50."
- Some employer views on hiring "overqualifieds" in the USA
- "While some employers are making an effort to hire and retain over
fifty workers, such as offering flexible work arrangements, most have not
yet made these efforts a priority. Employers cite a number of barriers to
offering more opportunities, such as federal pension regulations and health
care expenses."
the full GAO report)
These barriers would not exist in a virtual office environment with 1099 workers - they do not fall under the same regulations as W2 employees. 1099 contractees don't receive benefits, ergo, the company saves big here. They can staff the office with pretty young faces for company image and making them coffee, but have serious pros off site making them money.
- A growing and valuable resource - if you know how to deploy it.
- There is a tragic lack of insight in the corporate human resources arena
today. It fails to realize that there are thousands of very talented and
productive people seeking work who are ready to compromise - if the employer
is also willing to compromise.
There is no such thing as overqualified. The very use of the word "overqualified" tries to convince us that there is no need to progress beyond mediocrity. Anyone with half a brain knows the more qualified the professional is, the better the product he or she will deliver. This is all about money — and neither side will get everything it wants. Both will survive though, if they can agree to off site work on a 1099 basis. If, on the other hand, the hiring company wants an on site web staff it either pays the price for real pros or gets a group of amateurs to turn out junk.
The bottom line is the baby boomers are creative, clever and in better physical shape at fifty than their parents were at thirty five. The " Road Warrior" will soon be known as your best defense on the front line of the economic battles ahead.
Tips on effective off site staff hiring and management