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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - UC Santa Barbara senior guard Orlando Johnson was named Big West Player of the Week on Monday. Last week, Johnson paced the Gauchos to road wins at UC Irvine and Utah State.
The Player of the Week award is the sixth of Johnson's career, tying him with Long Beach State's Casper Ware and Larry Anderson for the third most in Big West history.
"Orlando really came alive last week," said UCSB head coach Bob Williams. "He played with great energy and showed the type of aggressiveness that has made him the great player that he is."
In the Gauchos' game at UC Irvine on Feb. 15, Johnson had 25 points, 10 rebounds, four assists and one steal. It was his fifth double-double of the season and it was one of his most efficient games of the year. Johnson played 28 minutes, made 9-of-11 shots overall, including both of his three-point attempts, and hit 5-of-6 free throws.
On Saturday, Feb. 18, in a Sears BracketBuster match-up at Utah State, he had 22 points, five rebounds and three steals. Johnson made 7-of-12 shots from the field, including a season-high four three-point baskets. In the end, UCSB handed the Aggies just their sixth home loss in 101 games, 72-64.
In the two games combined, the native of Seaside, Calif., averaged 23.5 points, 7.5 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 2.0 steals per game. He hit 16-of-23 field goals overall, 69.6%, and 6-of-9 from three-point territory, 66.7%.
The 47 points scored by Johnson last week pushes his UCSB career total to 1,674 and puts him just 13 points behind Carrick DeHart (1986-90) for second on the school's all-time list and just 22 shy of Alex Harris' (2004-08) all-time school record of 1,696. DeHart and Harris each hit their marks in four seasons while Johnson is in the midst of his third year overall. If his freshman season at Loyola Marymount is factored in, he has now scored 2,057 career points.
Johnson and the Gauchos travel to Long Beach State on Wednesday night for an 8:00 p.m. game against the 49ers. The game will be televised on ESPN2 and is a battle between the schools that have played for each of the last two Big West Tourament championships. UCSB returns home on Saturday, Feb. 25 to host Cal Poly in an 8:00 p.m. game that will be televised on ESPNU.


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Milflivecamsforce.com Produced Mature Chat Option To Help Candid Adult Interaction
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subset: commoncrawl


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Alec Baldwin has downplayed his brother Stephen's arrest on tax evasion charges, insisting the actor was taken into custody as part of a pre-arranged agreement with New York officials.
"The Usual Suspects" actor was detained on Thursday over allegations he failed to keep up with tax payments between 2008 and 2010.
Baldwin allegedly owes $350,000 and is due back in court in February to face charges of felony tax evasion.
Alec Baldwin explained his sibling's situation during an interview with CNN newsman Piers Morgan on Thursday night, claiming the arrest was pre-planned and his brother has already started paying back his taxes.
He says, "We're talking about him being arrested and taken into custody and what have you, (but) this was all pre-arranged with the D.A. for him to go in and make an appearance. And they've got to shake him down, and they've got to make him walk that gauntlet because that's their procedure, even though steps have been made to begin the process of remediating that money, and down payments have been made.
"His problem as of today is being cleared up, but they did drag him through that mud today."
When asked by Morgan whether he thinks his brother will land a prison sentence, the 30 Rock star replied, "I don't think he's going to jail."
Stephen Baldwin faces up to four years behind bars if convicted.


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Sophie Dulesh, author of the provocative, well-researched book, The Trouble with Religion, is a humanist. She is convinced that it is only by "dispelling the clouds and phantoms of religion that we discover truth, reason and morality."
Readers familiar with the arguments offered by Dawkins, Hitchins, Harris et al, will find little that is new or revelatory.
However, The Trouble with Religion is valuable and necessary as a history of the often overlooked atrocities committed in its name. Unhappily, all too often it has served as an instrument of social exploitation and political tyranny.
Again and again it has opposed scientific progress, only to give way reluctantly to the pressure of persistent truth.
The book's long section on organized political Islam contains valuable factual material not easily available elsewhere.
The indictment of Judaism largely concerns the actions of the extreme Orthodox in Israel.
She writes, "These fanatics have hijacked the Zionist dream of Jewish nationhood, shamelessly claiming Zionism, conceived as a secular and ethical view, as the grounds of their own highly ideological, exclusive and expansionist attitudes."
She quotes Bernard Avishai, a well-known political economist, who points out that Zionism remained secular at least until the Holocaust; that is, for more than half of the century. He maintains that "if things don't change pretty soon, chances are that the two-state-solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will slip through our fingers… As this happens, the dream of the Jewish People to be a free people in their own land all so slowly disappears."
But blackening religion because of its iniquitous bloody history of persecution, oppression and violence is unacceptable as an absolute. There is also a tradition of good deeds and ethical behaviour that flows from faith. Many have given their lives to higher and nobler callings out of a sense of duty to their religious beliefs.
Humanists face an impossible task: how to convince billions of Catholics and Muslims, as well as partisans of other religions, to accept secularism. For believers, religion offers assurance, consolation, the beauty and warmth of tradition and the emotional involvement with community.
Albert Einstein referred to the mysterious as the fundamental emotion, which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. "Whoever does not know it, and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed."
In his book Spiritual Envy, An Agnostics Quest, Michael Krasny writes of the power of tradition. "The memorial dates for both my father and my mother were on the same day in 2010. I wanted to honour their memory not because of the commandment that bid me to honour them. I wanted to honour their memory, simply to maintain the tradition, a ritual that I had been introduced to when I was a boy as I watched my parents light yahrzeit candles for their parents."
Written on and off over a period of eight years, the Winnipeg-based author has compiled over 400 pertinent references from books, newspapers, speeches, interviews etc.
The book can be purchased via www.troublewithreligion.com and is also available on Amazon.


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Find Out How Much Your Baby Weighs
The ultrasound
Few things are more reassuring to an expectant mother than a successful ultrasound appointment. The information gathered at these appointments depends on how far along you are in your pregnancy.
- First trimester: This ultrasound helps determine how far along you are and lets you know whether you are pregnant with more than one baby. This visit can also identify birth defects surrounding the brain or spinal cord.
- Second trimester: With this ultrasound, your technician can estimate the gestational age of the fetus while observing the baby's length, weight and position. Major defects can be detected at this appointment.
- Third trimester: Ultrasounds conducted during the third trimester confirm that the baby is moving and examine how he or she is positioned. Height and weight measurements provide a good indication of the anticipated birth weight.
Estimating prenatal weight
Your baby's fetal weight is typically calculated by your doctor or an ultrasound technician and, in most cases, is done so in grams. The prenatal weight is generally determined after the first trimester and involves specific measurements of your baby-to-be.
These measurements are put into a program that calculates the baby's weight. While it all sounds very scientific, there is a lot of room for error. Because your little one is positioned so tightly, it can be challenging to get an accurate read on the baby's length. And babies grow at different rates, so the best numbers we can get are merely estimates that are based on averages.
Using the conversion chart
The conversion chart is similar to a tax chart: You simply locate, as closely as possible, the weight in grams and use the column headers across the top to convert to pounds and the row headers down the left-hand side to determine the ounces.
For example, your doctor or technician may tell you that your 20-week-old baby weighs 300 grams. Using this handy-dandy conversion chart, you can convert that to about 10-1/2 ounces. At 30 weeks, your little one may weight 1,320 grams which, according to the chart, is just under 3 pounds.
More about your growing baby-to-be
How tall will your baby be?
10 Things you didn't know about newborns
How to make your own baby food


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|Statement by H. E. Ambassador Mr. Wang Qun, at the 63rd Session of UN General Assembly, on the Agenda Item "Report of IAEA"
(New York, 27 October 2008)
Mr. President,
The Chinese Delegation would like to thank Mr. ElBaradei, Director General of IAEA, for his report on the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency over the past year. We are appreciative of the enormous efforts and important role of the IAEA in promoting peaceful uses of nuclear energy and prevention of proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Over the past year, the Agency has come a long way in promoting the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The Agency has provided assistance to member states through nuclear power, nuclear applications and technical cooperation programmes to address challenges in the fields of energy supply, food security and environment protection. Positive progress has been registered on this front.
Meanwhile, the Agency has also played a pivotal role in safeguarding the peaceful use of nuclear material and facilities and preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. China appreciates the positive role of IAEA in facilitating the peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue on Korean Peninsular and Iranian nuclear issue. The Agency has, over the past year, applied safeguards in over 160 countries, and worked to further advance the Additional Protocol process and implement the Integrated Safeguards Framework.
Mr. President,
Today, there is strong momentum in international nuclear power development. How to promote peaceful uses of nuclear energy for member states while preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons is an importance issue which bears on the future orientation of the Agency. China is of the view that the role and function of the Agency should be adequately enhanced on the following scores:
Firstly, it is essential that the expertise of the Agency should be further enhanced so that it could be in a better position to assist member states in establishing their nuclear power and application infrastructure, in accelerating the pace and broadening the scope of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Secondly, the Agency should further work to strengthen its nuclear safety regulatory system and continue to assist member state to establish sound and effective nuclear security systems. Thirdly, the Agency should continue to address verification issues in an impartial and balanced manner, and work to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of its safeguards system, so as to further promote the universality and effectiveness of the Additional Protocol.
Mr. President,
China has always actively supported and participated in the Agency's technical cooperation programmes in close cooperation with the Agency and the relevant member states. I am happy to recall the very fruitful cooperation on nuclear security between China and the Agency during our preparation for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The Agency sent experts to China for consultancy and training missions, and provided China with much-needed nuclear detection equipments. In May, in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Wenchuan of Sichuan Province in China, the Agency provided China through its technical cooperation programme with radioactive material detection equipments and relevant training, which played an important role in post-quake searching operations through radioactive sources. The Chinese government wishes to express its sincere thanks to the Agency for all these efforts.
In conclusion, Mr. President, China will, as always, support the Agency, and continue to work with other member states so as to ensure that fresh headway will be made in the Agency's work.
I thank you, Mr. President.


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Joshua Smith is a .NET / iOS developer working for a major retailer in Seattle, and his company just switched from Subversion to Git. "We had weeks of advance notice prior to the switch. Since I'd never used Git before (or any other DVCS), I read Pro Git and spent a little time spinning up my own repositories and playing around, so that when we switched I'd be able to keep working with minimal pain." Now, he says, because he took the time to become familiar with the system, he's become "the 'Git guy' by default."
Meanwhile, his coworkers are slow to catch on. "They generally look at Git as a scary black box," he writes. He continues, "Given the fundamental nature of source control in our daily work (not to mention the ridiculous amount of power Git affords us), I'm of the opinion that any dev who doesn't achieve a certain level of proficiency with it is a liability." But how far should his team go in learning how to use Git? Should everyone become a Git master or is that overkill?
See the original question here.
Swap source code mindfully
Professionalism would naturally dictate that a developer become familiar with their team's standard tools, even if they are new and unfamiliar (or even unwanted).
However, a few things in your post give me pause.
We had weeks of advance notice prior to the switch.
Weeks? Swapping out source control is a big deal. There should have been months of notice leading up to a change like that.
With a couple of exceptions, most of my team still has no idea how Git works.
So, your company switched to a source control system that few, if anyone, understood at the time?
Unless there is some other context, it seems like the whole move was ill-thought out (the move, not the choice—I'm a huge git fan).
Related: "What does SVN do better than git?"
You need training sessions
Bill Leeper Answers (7 votes):
No matter what tool the "company" has decided on, your development team should spend some time learning how to properly use the tool. Nothing hurts productivity more than a bunch of developers afraid or ignorant of a tool. If they are using it wrong or working against it, problems will arise and as the go-to guy, you will be tasked with cleaning up the mess.
Git is a tough transition for many, so a mandatory sit down training session may be in order. This should help hammer out a lot of the issues people are having.
Define "basic proficiency"
DeveloperDon Answers (6 votes):
Proficient vs. Git-mania: A term like basic proficiency may mean different things to different people. A lot of people seem to have git-mania (not that there is anything wrong with that). Many of us have been burned really badly by our own and other people's sloppiness with source control.
Why it Matters (So Much): Source control tools are critical because misuse can slow not just one person, but a whole team. Misusing Git should be less problematic than misusing SVN, CVS, and other systems. Historically, inept use of systems that locked files was particularly problematic, and companies hired discrete build teams so that when someone got into trouble, there was a fluent expert who did almost nothing but source control who could come cure the wound to the repository. This partially explains some of the passion you find behind git.
What does basic proficiency look like? Some concrete criteria include:
- Without reference to documentation:
- Can add files, commit changes, push and pull updates.
- Can view status and revision activity.
- Can branch and merge quickly and without introducing errors.
- Can use checkout appropriately.
- Create commit comments that meet the group's criteria for comments.
- Diff changes between working copy and archive.
- With documentation:
- Add users and credentials for local repo.
- init a local repo.
- Administer remote repo.
- Configure ignored files, generate PKI public/private key pairs.
- Move and delete files.
- Use bisect to find the change that introduced a particular bug.
Overall, it's critical to have a solid mental model of git and the code being managed to avoid mistakes.
There will always be members of your team who will be power users and use almost every command with almost every option. Others won't be so proficient. My recommendation is that team members are encouraged to keep learning git (and other tools) until the ROI for learning drops below the value of doing something else on the project, with the main limitation being keeping on pace with assigned burn down items from the current sprint.
Find the original post here. See more Q&A like this at Programmers, a site for conceptual programming questions at Stack Exchange. And of course, feel free to login and ask your own.


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Abbot Walter Coggin, O.S.B. (1916 - 1999) was a Benedictine monk, teacher, mentor, prefect, chaplain, coach of the College football team, Chairman of the Philosophy Department, President of Belmont Abbey College, Chancellor of Belmont Abbey College, and the Abbot of Belmont Abbey Monastery.
Abbot Walter entered the Belmont Abbey Monastery in 1936. He was ordained priest of the Order of Saint Benedict in 1943. He became the third president of the college in 1956 and was elected Abbot of the Mary Help of Christians Abbey in 1959.
During his visionary leadership as the president, chancellor, and the Abbot (1956 -70), many physical facilities were completed costing more than $4 � million dollars � a remarkable achievement in a span of 14 years never realized before in the history of the college. A large part of the money was raised from federal government grants and from generous benefactors of the college. A decision was made in May 1956 to discontinue the then high school at the end of that school year and to become a four-year senior college. Belmont Abbey was accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in December 1957 as the four-year college.
Abbot Walter oversaw the completion of The Abbot Vincent Taylor Library (1958), O�Connell Hall (1962), Poellath Hall (1963), Maurus Hall (1963), Renovation of Cathedral (1965), Raphael Arthur Hall (1967), William Gaston Science Hall (1968), Wheeler Center (1970), air conditioning of the library (1970), athletic field, roads and walkways, tennis courts, boiler room, kitchen equipment, and water tower.
Above all, Abbot Walter cherished teaching and loved his students, and students in return loved him. Students from around the world and from several generations benefited greatly from his teaching as well as from his fatherly and caring advice and help.
The dedication of the student cafeteria as the Abbot Walter Coggin Student Commons, now Abbot Walter Coggin Student Center (student union), on the beautiful quad of Belmont Abbey College where students form lifelong bonds of friendship, commemorates the deep love of the Abbey community for Abbot Walter.
Abbot Walter was a gentle monk who possessed many virtues which Saint Benedict emphasized. He personified love, humility, stability, obedience, and prayer. He was dearly loved by the faculty, administration and his brother monks.
In a distant space in the moonlit sky amid the myriad of shining stars, there is a prominent and brilliant star that lights up the galaxy very far.
Author�s note: The historical information is taken from �The First Hundred Years: Belmont Abbey College (1876 - 1976) by Rev. John P. Bradley


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Spring Into Action
Violent Lips
Hi dolls! Lately Ive seen ladies pull of purple lips and I must give them props because honestly it's not the shade for everyone. From delicate, pale lilacs to rich purples, this make up trend promises playful color palette. Wear lilacs with summer maxis and dare to wear bright purple with your leather jacket. Make not only your lips kissable ,but irresistible!
Dressing Up In My Love!
Vintage Beauty: Louise Brooks
Sing Me The Blues
Life Is A Butterfly
Butterfly show-girls fluttered down the Jean Paul Gaultier catwalk in Paris, as the French designer transformed his haute couture gowns into delicate ethereal creations with silky wings in multicolored hues. The collections effect was both sultry and mystifying. Ms. Von Teese brought electricity with all the intensity of her bright teal ensemble, and we were once again reminded that nobody works a corset like the burlesque star.
Just in case you thought of Mariah Carey's "Butterfly" while viewing the collection
Throwback: Candy Queen!
Explosion of color is exactly what we crave! When she was sporting purple hair, #KatyPerry shot the cover for Elle's September 2012 issue dolled up in a Bottega Veneta dress.
Love At Primavera Vista
M.A.C. new cosmetic collection Magnetic Nude will ignite your inner magnetism, as glimmering metallics and natural nudes redefine winter opulence. Skin is radiant in soft peachy nudes, fine golds and sheer pearls. Smoky eyes get a metallic effect, shaded with grey mauve, deep copper and iridescent pink. Flushed nudes lend a subtle yet sexy polish, in cool pink and coral Extra Dimension Blush, and pale, creamy shades for lips create a look that's naturally magnetic.


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Cray Unleashes 100 Petaflop XC30 Supercomputer With Up to a Million Intel Xeon Cores
Cray Unleashes 100 Petaflop XC30 Supercomputer With Up to a Million Intel Xeon Cores — Engadget
Cray has just fired a nuclear salvo in the supercomputer wars with the launch of its XC30, a 100 petaflop-capable brute that can scale up to one million cores. Developed in conjunction with DARPA, the Cascade-codenamed system uses a new type of architecture called Aries interconnect and Intel Xeon E5-2600 processors to easily leapfrog its recent Titan sibling, the previous speed champ. That puts Cray well ahead of rivals like China's Tianhe-2, and the company will aim to keep that edge by supercharging future versions with Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors and NVIDIA Tesla GPUs. High-end research centers have placed $100 million worth of orders so far (though oddly, DARPA isn't one of them yet), and units are already shipping in limited numbers — likely by the eighteen-wheeler-full, from the looks of it.


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Redirecting to LMI Solutions eCommerce website
We're glad you made it!
As of July 3rd, 2017 Parts Now customers will be asked to place all orders to the new LMI eCommerce wesbite, orders.lmisolutions.com.
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About LMI Solutions
LMI Solutions is an award-winning, turnkey Managed Business Services Infrastructure provider to the market, as well as a R2 certified manufacturer, distributor and recycler of premium replacement toner cartridges, related imaging supplies, remanufactured printers and turnkey Managed Print Infrastructure services. In September 2015, LMI Solutions made a strategic investment to acquire Parts Now to expand its market position and become North America's premier value-added supplier of printer parts and related accessories. Since the acquisition, both organizations have expanded their capacity and strengthened their overall value proposition to dealers, managed print providers and imaging resellers.
In April 2017, LMI Solutions was selected as the Winner of the People's Choice Award presented by the INTEC Group as the industries best support provider for Managed Print Services.


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Raising Geese in Backyard for Profit Part 2
What You Need to Know Before Raising Geese
First, why are you raising geese? Are you raising a gaggle of geese for goose eggs? Or are you interested in goose meat? Or perhaps you're just raising geese for the fun of it?
Second, choose your goose breed. The right goose breed for you depends on your level of experience with raising poultry, as well as why you're raising geese.
Third, select how you're going to raise your poultry. Unlike raising chickens, geese don't need a "goose coop." However, they'll still need shelter!
Finally, learn all the basics of goose care. For example, do you know how to feed geese? Raising geese and its specifics, such as feeding geese, is easy with the right resources.
Brooding Goslings
A special building is not required for brooding small numbers of geese. Any small building or a corner of a garage or barn can be used as a brooding area for a small flock if it is dry, reasonably well-lighted and ventilated, and free from drafts. Cover the floor with 4 inches of absorbent litter material, such as wood shavings, chopped straw, or peat moss. Maintaining good litter requires frequent stirring, removal of wet spots, and periodic addition of clean, dry litter. Be sure litter is free from mold.
Heat lamps are a convenient source of radiant heat for brooding small flocks. Use one 250-watt lamp for each 25 goslings.
When using hover-type brooders, brood only about one-third as many goslings as the rated chick capacity of the hover. Because goslings are larger in size, with some brooders it may be necessary to raise the hover 3-4 inches higher than for baby chicks. Have the temperature at the edge of the hover 85 to 90 degrees F when the goslings arrive. Reduce the temperature to 5 to 10 degrees per week until 70 degrees F is reached.
Confine the birds to the heated area for the first 3 or 4 days with a corrugated paper or wire mesh fence. The behavior of the birds is an indication of their comfort: they will move away from the heat source if they are too warm, or may crowd together at corners or under the brooder if too cold. If there is no light at the heat source, a dim light on the birds at night tends to discourage crowding.
High temperatures may result in slower feathering and growth. Heat is usually not needed after the fifth or sixth week, and in good weather, the young geese can be placed on pasture. In warm weather, goslings can be let outdoors even at 2 weeks, but must be sheltered from rain. They must be kept dry to prevent losses from crowding and chilling while in the "down" stage.
Allow at least 1/2 square foot of floor space per bird at the start of the brooding period. Increase this to 1 square foot by 2 weeks. If birds are to remain confined due to inclement weather, be sure additional floor space is provided as they increase in size.
Feeding Geese
Goslings should have feed and drinking water when they are started under the brooder or hen. Use waterers the birds can't get into to prevent losses from chilling. Waterers should be wide and deep enough for the bird to dip both bill and head. Pans or troughs with wire guards are satisfactory. They should be placed over screened platforms to aid in keeping litter dry. Change waterers or adjust size as birds grow.
Feeds formulated for goose feeding programs are not normally available from commercial suppliers.
Goslings can be started on a crumbled or pelted chick starter. Place feed the first few days on egg case flats or other rough paper. Use the same type of feeders as used for chicks, changing type or adjusting size as the birds grow. Keep feed before the birds at all times and provide insoluble grit. After the first 2-3 weeks, a pelted chick grower ration can be fed, supplemented with a cracked grain.
Geese are quite hardy and not susceptible to many of the common poultry diseases so medicated feed is not generally necessary. Certain coccidiostats used in starting and growing mashes may cause lameness or even death in goslings.
Geese are excellent foragers. Good succulent pasture or lawn clippings can be provided as early as the first week. By the time the birds are 5-6 weeks old, a good share of their feed can be from forage. Geese can be very selective and tend to pick out the palatable forages. They will reject alfalfa and narrow-leaved tough grasses and select more succulent clovers, bluegrass, orchard grass, timothy, and bromegrass. Geese can't be grown satisfactorily on dried-out, mature pasture. Corn or pea silage can be fed if available.
An acre of pasture will support 20-40 birds, depending on the size of the geese and pasture quality. A 3-foot woven wire fence will ordinarily confine the geese to the grazing area. Be sure that the pasture areas and green feed have not had any chemical treatment that may be harmful to the birds. The birds should be provided shade in hot weather.
Although supplemental grain feeding of goslings is often continued after they have been established on good pasture, many flocks are raised on green feed alone during the pasture period. Geese to be marketed should be fed a turkey finishing or similar ration for 3-4 weeks before processing. Any birds saved for breeding stock should not be fattened.
Farm geese are usually sold in time for the holiday market in late fall when they are 5-6 months old. They will weigh from 11-15 pounds depending on the strain and breed. Some young geese (also called green geese or junior geese) full-fed for rapid growth are also marketed at 10-12 pounds when they are 10-13 weeks old. For several weeks after this age geese have many pinfeathers which are difficult to remove during processing. Growth of geese after 10-13 weeks is very slow compared with the rapid growth of the young gosling.
Considerable attention has been given to the use of geese to control weeds in cotton, strawberries, and some truck crops. Development of more selective herbicides is reducing this practice. The problems in coordination of bird supply and management with weed and crop growth make goose weeding rather impractical for most producers.
Breeder Flock Management
Select geese that are vigorous and well developed, have shown rapid growth, and have compact meaty bodies. Matings should be made at least 1 month prior to the breeding season (around the first of the year). The larger breeds of geese usually mate best in pairs and trios. Ganders of some lighter breeds will mate satisfactorily with four or five females. Males will usually mate with the same females year after year.
It is difficult to distinguish sex in geese except by examination of the reproductive organs. The process, described by the late T. H. Canfield, follows: Lift the goose by the neck and lay it on its back, either on a table or over your bended knee, with the tail pointed away from you. Move the tail end of the bird out over the edge so it can be readily bent downwards. Then insert your pointer finger (sometimes it helps to have a little vaseline on it) into the cloaca about half an inch and move it around in a circular manner several times to enlarge and relax the sphincter muscle which closes the opening. Next, apply some pressure directly below and on the sides of the vent to evert or expose the sex organs.
In some birds the male organ is somewhat difficult to unsheath. An inexperienced sexer may easily call a bird a female if, after slight pressure, the cork-screw-like male organ is not exposed. However, only the presence of a female genital eminence will positively identify a female.
Geese do not do well if enclosed in a house. They should be confined to a yard with a house for shelter protection during winter storms. When green pasture is not available, breeders can be maintained on roughage such as leafy clover or alfalfa hay, corn or pea silage, with a small amount of grain. If breeding stock becomes overly fat, poor fertility and hatchability may result.
Start feeding a pelleted breeder ration at least a month before egg production is desired. Provide water at all times, as well as a supply of oyster shell and grit. Lights in the breeder house can be used to stimulate earlier egg production if desired. Geese start laying in February or March and often lay until early summer. Nest boxes should be provided to aid in obtaining a maximum number of eggs and reduce the amount of cleaning required. Boxes should be at least 2 feet square and built with partitions or spread some distance apart to reduce fighting. Large boxes or barrels are frequently used for range nests. The heavier geese lay from 20-50 eggs per season, depending on the amount of selection for egg production in the strain being raised.
Eggs should be gathered twice daily, especially during cold weather. They should be stored at 55 degrees F and a relative humidity of 75 percent until set for hatching. Eggs should not be held for more than 7-10 days, and should be turned daily if kept more than a few days.
The incubation period for eggs of most breeds of farm flock geese varies from 29-31 days. Four to six eggs can be incubated under a setting lien and 10-12 under a goose. Mark the eggs so that they can be turned by hand twice daily if the setting hen does not turn them. Better hatchability is reported by some growers if the eggs are lightly sprinkled or dipped in lukewarm water for half a minute daily during the last half of the incubation period. Remove goslings from the nest as they hatch, and keep them in a warm place until the youngest are several hours old. Since it takes some time to complete the hatch, if the goslings aren't removed as hatched, the hen may desert the nest leaving with the hatched goslings before the hatch is completed.
Goose eggs can be hatched in either still-air or forced-draft incubators. Follow the instructions from the machine's manufacturer. You may increase the success of your hatching operation if you can talk with a person who has had success with machine incubation of goose eggs.
sources: sunstar.com.ph, extension.umn.edu, raisinggeese.com, photo from freedigitalphotos.net


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Leave those planters parked. The forecast next week says fields will likely remain too wet to plant before the next storm arrives.
The cold, wet weather covering most of the Corn Belt this week will break soon, but dry weather will only last long enough for producers to get an inkling that they might be able to return to their drenched fields to plant.
"Unfortunately, looking ahead to next week, it will stay cool in the wake this week's storm," says Brad Rippey, USDA meteorologist. "And just when things might be looking up, another storm develops across the Plains states around May 7th or 8th."
The forecast for next week calls for both above-normal precipitation and below-normal temperatures, he says. Fields will likely remain too wet to plant, and then the next storm will arrive.
Persistent rains and cold temperatures in parts of the Corn Belt continue to delay corn planting. Corn planting as of April 27 was 19% complete, which is well behind the five-year average of 28% and less than the 21% expected by the trade.
Even so corn planting is well ahead of last year, when only 5% of the corn was planted at this time. In fact, corn planting this year is progressing at a faster pace than last year in all of the top-18 corn-producing states. But that could change quickly if rain and cold weather persist even longer.
Slow Return to Fieldwork
"It's going to be a very slow return to fieldwork," says Rippey. "A lot of the frost is now out of the ground, but the lingering effect of this year's deep frost coupled with continued low temperatures is that soil temperatures in some areas are in the 30s. Soils this year are slow to warm up." Optimal soil temperature for corn planting is closer to 50° F.
Last spring was even wetter than this spring in the Midwest, and corn planting at the end of April was just 7% complete, which was a record-slow pace over the past 20 years. Eventually better weather arrived, and astounding 43% of the U.S. corn crop was planted during the week ending May 19.
"If we get open weather headed into late May, a lot of corn planting will occur," says Rippey.
Soybean Planting Begins in the Delta
With producers still heavily focused on corn planting, soybean planting is just beginning in some states. As of April 27, only 3% of the nation's beans were already in the ground, compared with zero percent last year and a five-year average of 4%. The majority of soybean planting has occurred in the Mississippi Delta region in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana, where between 16% and 54% of the beans has been planted.
More Information
April Cattle on Feed Report Analysis
Planting Update: Straight Week of Rain Slows Indiana Progress


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The fact that women only account for 17 percent of the U.S. Senate and 17 percent of the House troubles President Obama, who suggested Friday that Congress would be more productive if it boasted more women to help offset all the jerking off that male senators and representatives have earned so much renown for recently.
According to CBS, female candidates may very well be poised to grab some more seats in Congress this fall, which is welcome news for Republican Martha Zoller, who'd be especially happy to see her party put more women on the ballot since, over the last 20 years, Republicans have nominated only half as many women for Congress as have Democrats.
In the history of the Congress, only 2 percent of its members have been women, a fact that could help female candidates in a political climate that's increasingly hostile towards incumbents. There are plenty of explanations for such a persistent gender disparity in American politics, none of them very satisfactory — the U.S., trumpeted as the bastion for freedom, ingenuity, and Yankee-Doodle industriousness, ranks 71st in the world for the number of women in politics, behind Vietnam and Kazakhstan. Why?
"Family responsibilities," Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women's Policy Institute at American University, told CBS, "a lack of political recruitment and the notion that they don't think they're qualified to run for office have traditionally hindered women's candidate emergence." Lawless tacked the enigmatic phrase "self image" onto that little litany of obstacles littered along a woman's path to political power. She may as well have added "dicks," lots of reactionary, patriarchal dicks, a whole dick jungle, in fact, that's proving pretty difficult to, um, prune.


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There's been a delay to the start of the 2013 tax season.
Because of new federal legislation enacted Jan. 2 in response to the "fiscal cliff," the Internal Revenue Service won't begin processing individual income tax returns until Jan. 30.
In typical years, the process starts around the middle of the month.
The IRS has been updating forms and completing programming and testing of its processing system, which will reflect the bulk of the late tax law changes, according to an IRS media release issued last week.
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These Hilton Head breast enhancement surgeons are featured on the world largest plastic surgery directory of board certified surgeons, Perfect Yourself. You can find before and after photos including facelifts, liposuction, tummy tuck and rhinoplasty. These Hilton Head breast enhancement surgeons are also a plastic surgeon specialist in all forms of surgical breast procedures including breast augmentation, breast reconstruction, breast implants, breast lifts, breast enlargement, breast enhancement, breast reduction and male Gynecomastia.


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Nebraska's KKK Time Bomb
Poor Henderson, who is white, contends his wife left him on January 13, 2003 for a "Hispanic,� man and then six months later she filed for a divorce. How overwhelmed was he? He was so distraught that he decided to do what any sensible person would do – he joined the Ku Klux Klan in 2004.
(Would you trust this Klansman/State Trooper to save your life?)
This is a good one folks.
Robert Henderson is 50 years old and has been employed with the Omaha Nebraska State Police as an officer for 18 years. Poor Henderson, who is white, contends his wife left him on January 13, 2003 for a "Hispanic,� man and then six months later she filed for a divorce.
How overwhelmed was he? He was so distraught that he decided to do what any sensible person would do – he joined the Ku Klux Klan in 2004. He paid $35 to join the Knights Party and he mused in his online posting, "Whites are loosing their rights slowly. It's sad. I pray about it. I hope my prayers get answered…� He used the screen name "White Knight in Ne.,� and elsewhere remarks to his new comrades, "I am the new guy from
So a failed marriage negated all the training and the oath of office that Officer Henderson has sworn to uphold? Before joining the State troopers, where he was assigned to traffic patrol in Freemont, he had been an officer with the Nebraska Police Department (NPD) for five years: This all ads up to 23 years in law enforcement. All of this "professionalism,� out the window because his wife ran off with a "Hispanic� male. So the solution? Join a racist organization.
On March 3, 2006, Trooper Henderson was placed on paid investigatory suspension pending the completion of an administrative proceeding. After the completion of a probe he was terminated by Col. Bryan Tuma on March 15. "Being affiliated with a white supremacist organization is not consistent with the practices and policies of our agency,� was how Tuma put it.
On March 20, 2006, State Troopers Association of Nebraska (STAN) union president, Sgt. Glenn Elwell, appealed
After listening to the facts, Paul J. Caffera, an arbitrator, overturned
I contacted Caffera by telephone but he did not want to answer any questions. "I'm not going to be making any comments for the record on that particular case. I'm not speaking to anyone,� he says. He did agree to my request to send some questions via e-mail message and that we'd "see what comes up.� I kept looking—nothing came up.
One of the questions I wanted him to answer was why, though he was said to be an attorney from
Omaha State Senator Ernie Chambers adds: "I'm preparing a complaint with the appropriate state agency to revoke his law enforcement certification. He had over a year to think about what he was doing. It wasn't something on the tail of heated emotions. He thought about it, sort out this organization with the like minded, join and took the pledge.�
Bruning has filed an appeal in Lancaster County District Court in
The Omaha State Police has 394 Troopers assigned to Traffic-Road-Patrol and
However, it makes me wonder. Maybe
"Bob Henderson is not a racist. He wasn't running around in a sheet and hood. There are bigger racists out here than the ones in the KKK,� his attorney, Valentino claims. Somehow, I'm not reassured by Valentino. I feel for the people of
In the meantime, call
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When Dan Duquette was introduced as the Orioles' executive vice president of baseball operations last offseason, he made it clear that he wanted to focus on scouting and signing local talent.
The Orioles' latest scouting addition will help those efforts. Duquette has hired Frank Kolarek to scout the Mid-Atlantic region, which includes Maryland. He will join longtime local scout Dean Albany in the region.
"He likes the Orioles and likes baseball," Duquette said of Kolarek. "He's a good judge of talent. One of our initiatives was to thoroughly scout locally and sign local players and Frank is a local guy with good judgment."
Kolarek, a former minor league catcher in the Oakland organization, has deep local roots. He is a Mount St. Joseph and Maryland graduate. He worked as a scout under longtime local scout and coach Walter Youse in the Orioles and Brewers organizations. He worked under Duquette in Milwaukee when he was the Brewers' scouting director.
He spent this past season working as a consultant for the Orioles in their player development department.
He will scout Maryland, Virginia and southern Pennsylvania.
-- Duquette and Kent Qualls, the team's new director of minor league operations, visited the Orioles' academy in the Dominican Republic to oversee the operations there. Major leaguers Wilson Betemit and Alexi Casilla were also training at the complex.
-- Among their bevy of minor league signings, the Orioles are excited about the addition of Chris Dickerson, signed to a minor league deal with an invitation to spring training. Duquette likes his .352 career on-base percentage at the major league level. He can also play all three outfield positions and has a career 1.000 fielding percentage at the major league level. It will be interesting to see the spring battle between the 30-year-old Dickerson and Trayvon Robinson for the backup outfielder position. Robinson, 25, is out of minor league options.
-- The Orioles were among the teams to watch pitchers Kip Wells, Mark Lowe and Ryan Rowland-Smith during a Wednesday workout in Peoria, Ariz., according to ESPN.com's Jerry Crasnick. The Orioles are always looking at pitching depth, so this isn't surprising. Wells, 35, was 2-4 with a 4.58 ERA in seven starts last season in his first major league action since 2009. Lowe pitched to a 3.43 ERA in 39 1/3 relief innings last season with the Rangers but missed six weeks with an intercostal strain. Rowland-Smith hasn't pitched in the majors since 2010 and was 3-6 with a 3.94 ERA over 77 2/3 innings in Triple-A in 2012.


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Bobby Travis
Latest posts by Bobby Travis (see all)
- Easy Access to US, UK Streaming Services From Anywhere - August 18, 2012
- 5 Fresh Android Games Released in 2012 - July 5, 2012
- Google Chrome Explodes On To iOS, Puts Desktop Experience In Your Pocket - June 30, 2012
Posting your email on a website, or in a blog, social media, or forum comment, opens you up to a world of messages about making money online, viagra, the enlargement of specific body parts, and a host of other fun solicitations and potential virus links. We all know this, and we all know that the safest way to post an email link is this: don't. If you absolutely have to, you can always try to beat the bots by posting it as an image (time consuming), or by killing the link and adding some brackets and such like this: myemail (at) adomain (dot) com. The trouble with this approach is that you are also making trying to contact you annoying for the people you want to connect with.
Here are three ways you can share your email safely and easily:
Scr.im is a convenient and brand-efficient way to post a link to an email address. It provides you with a simple vanity url that is easy to share and doesn't require any specific code in the link. When the link is clicked, the person — or spam-bot — is directed to a captcha page that shows an image of an alpha-numeric code and a game of match the code with one of the nine buttons on the right. If there is, for some reason, a problem with this method, you can simply click the link at the bottom to go to the tried and true "failsafe" captcha method of typing in the code from the image and clicking the "I'm a real human, honest!" button.
To get set up with scr.im, head to their site, enter your email address, click "Protect my email" and go, share, be merry. They will generate a url for you, but if you want some extra awesome, then type in your own vanity url tail in the provided field. Scr.im will automatically let you know if the url is available or not.
reCAPTCHA Mailhide
You are probably familiar with reCAPTCHA, especially if you own a blog. They have put together one of the easiest and most powerful (and best looking) captcha protections out there. They are also owned by Google, now, which I only recently became aware of. Whether that makes you feel more or less comfortable will be determined by how many Google services you already use , and how evil you feel Google is, but the reCAPTCHA Mailhide solution is a great way to safely post an email link to a website.
If you want to try it out, head to the reCAPTCHA Email Protection page and enter your email address in the given field and click "Protect It!" You will be taken to a page that provides the URL of the reCAPTCHA that will need to be solved before anyone can send you an email — which you can then share anyway you like. You can even take the (crazy, long) URL and plug it into your shortener of choice to create an nice and easy to share link. Once the captcha — which can only be solved by humans — is correctly entered, people will be presented with a page that contains an untrackable link to your actual email address.
Web security is important to the people clicking your fancy email link, as well, so if you want to assure them that they are heading toward an email address, you may want to use the customizable HTML code that is also provided by Mailhide. This code will display your email with the first four letters of your address, followed by a clickable "…" and @yourdomain.com. This code can be customized to your liking — which was especially handy in my case, as I used an address with "butter" in the beginning. Posting an email link to butt…@gmail.com is not likely to gain me more than a few laughs. (Note: the clickable … previous is for aesthetics only. It is not an active link to my email address)
If you want to know the technical protocols used by Mailhide, check out this API link.
Google+ Profile Link
If you aren't using Google+ yet, you should be. Yeah, I've drunk the Kool-Aid — and it's sweet, refreshing, beautiful, and I hope it lasts. Aside from the Picasa integration, circles and other neat network and privacy controls, and the fact that social games are finally done right, Google+ also makes one hell of a way to share your email without getting attacked by spam.
The first step is to make sure your Google+ Profile (okay, okay, if you really can't stomach using Google+ yet, you can always just use a regular old Google Profile) has a visible "Send an email" button just below your picture. To do this, you go to the settings gear in the top right, then click on "Profile and privacy," and then the "Edit visibility on profile" button beside "Public profile information."
Step two is click on the "Send and email" area below your profile picture, click the check-box that is next to "Allow people to email you from a link on your profile," and then click on the dropdown that sets your visibility preferences. For the broadest case, you will want to choose "Anyone on the web" as it will allow you to safely share a link to your email with anyone. Save, and then click the "Finished editing" button at the top of the page. People can now send you email right from your Google/Google+ Profile page.
The final thing to do is to share your Profile link with others. There are a number of ways to do this, including the secure (long) Google Profile URL, using a general URL shortener or a vanity URL, or even by using your profiles.google.com/username — though that may defeat the purpose a bit if you don't want people to know your email address (seeing as the username + @gmail.com = is your email address).
Bonus – Bugmenot
If you are after a way to sign up for services without getting spammed, none of the above methods will work for you — so check out Bugmenot, instead. Bugmenot is the perfect way to check out for a multitude of "sign up first" services using dummy emails and passwords set up by other people. It's a great way to avoid spam and solicitations, and it saves time. You could also just use your own dummy email address.
There you have it! Three easy ways to share a link to your email address without painting yourself as a target for spam bots. If you know of any others or have had experiences with any of these methods, please share them in the comments!


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Zhang Wangzhe, AKA Zhetiti World is an illustrator based in Hangzhou, China.
She graduated from The Department of Illustration at China Academy of Art, then earned her masters degree at University of The Arts, London, UK.
Upon her return to China in 2014, Zhetiti became an art teacher. Her favourite thing is drawing, and it is how she spends most of her spare time.
Zhetiti is skilled in both hand made techniques and is digitally proficient - she likes to combine both practices to create her work.
She has already worked for an impressive list of Chinese clients in packaging, publishing and children's picture books.
Give us a few details and we'll get back
to you quickly with an idea of Zhe's
availability and fees.
Written a book?
Read our Guide for Authors and Private Commissioners that gives you a helpful idea of fees, briefing and timing.
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What Out Students Say
"It was like a blindfold that I had on until I was able to understand the theoretical readings. Once I understood what I was reading, I was able to make a change. My vocabularies are enhanced. I learned more about the world."- Victor, READ 200 student
"So when I initially heard I had to take a reading class, I thought why? I already know how to read. But, I've enjoyed this class a lot. I've really learned how to read and really enjoy the readings. Things that I've learned in this class have helped me in other classes. Now I just want to read more and more and more!"- Karen, READ 200 student


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Business Response Conference 4.0 - Global Energy Accessibility
Global demand for energy will continue to increase in both the short and long term. The Business Response Conference 4.0 will promote a candid discussion on how to meet the expanding global demand for energy. Student and professional leaders from across the energy industry will come together at The George Washington University on March 22 to offer a vision for providing accessible energy to meet the challenges of tomorrow.
- Where: The Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University
- What: 3 Speaker Panels (Sustainability, US Energy Outlook, and Global Energy Outlook); Career Fair & Networking Event
- When: Friday, March 22nd from 12:30 pm to 7:00 pm
- Who: 200+ students and professionals representing DC's leading universities and energy companies
The keynote speaker this year will be Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, President of the American Council of Renewable Energy (ACORE).
Worldwatch Climate and Energy Director, Alexander Ochs, will be participating in the Sustainability panel: Connecting the Local & Global: Socially, Economically, & Environmentally Sustainable Energy Systems (2:15pm to 3:15pm)
Panelists include:
- Alexander Ochs, Director of Climate and Energy, Worldwatch Institute
- Scott Sklar, President, Stella Group
- Dr. Amitai Etzioni (moderator), Professor of International Affairs, George Washington University & Director, Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies
Additional speakers include:
- Elliott Roseman, Vice-President, ICF International
- George Ashton, Co-Founder and CFO, Sol Systems
- Bo Poats, Vice President, PACE Global (a Siemens Business)
Purchase your early bird tickets* TODAY! http://businessresponseconference.com/
*Tickets include 1 free beverage and hors d'oeuvres


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There are no listed providers, for this type of service, in our Network. However, our wedding planners will find the right professional for you! Contact us!
Are you a top Wedding Service Provider in Italy, with proved experience and a professional background? Would you like to be considered by our Wedding Planners at the time of organizing high-class destination Weddings


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Stay chic throughout your pregnancy with our Zeta Ville Fashion maternity collection – simple and comfortable maternity clothing for every occasion.
Functional and comfortable flattering maternity dress.
Designed in stretchy jersey the dress offers a flattering fit at every stage of your pregnancy, it also allows you to breastfeed comfortably thereafter. The neckline visually slims the silhouette, while the folds under the breasts provide adequate space for the growing belly.
It fits in all the right places thanks to our viscose jersey while providing the coverage you really desire. Super stylish and significantly versatile, it's chic enough for party or work, and simple enough for everyday too. This simple maternity dress works hard to flatter your figure, highlighting the slimmest part of your body, and skimming comfortably over your curves to conceal your hips, bump and bum.
- Maternity Dress – Skater Dress – Short Sleeve – Wrap V-neckline – Flare Dress
- Beautiful maternity jersey dress with the original deep V-neckline cut perfect for breastfeeding.
- Perfect for day to night style – Ideal for Baby Shower Party.
- Model's height: 5ft 7in
- Dress length: 90-96cm, sleeve length: 10cm


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Quarterly campaign finance reports show two of the potential candidates to replace U.S. Sen. Carl Levin out in front when it comes to raising money.
U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Howell Republican, leads the pack. His quarterly finance statement filed with the Federal Elections Commission shows $1.4 million in cash on hand.
That's nearly twice as much as the $813,385 that U.S. Rep. Gary Peters, a Bloomfield Township Republican, has on hand.
Both men are weighing a run for U.S. Senate in 2014 since Levin decided not to seek a seventh six-year term.
Peters declined comment on a possible run for the Senate through a statement issued from his office.
"I'm grateful for the support from Michiganders who want good jobs and a strong future for our families," said the statement from Peters, whose quarterly report listed $76,716 in contributions from individuals and $294,200 in contributions from political action committees.
Rogers listed $40,734 from individual donors for the quarter and $123,766 from political action committees, and another $1,398 in other receipts for a total of $165,898 for the quarter.
Peters represents a new S-shaped 14th Congressional District that starts in Pontiac and ends in Detroit.
Rogers' 8th Congressional District represents north Oakland County plus Livingston and Genesee counties.
U.S. Rep. Sander Levin, whose 9th Congressional District represents southeast Oakland County and part of Macomb County, showed $155,478 in cash on hand with contributions for the quarter of $115,728.
U.S. Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, from Milford, who replaced former Rep. Thaddeus McCotter in the 11th Congressional District and is in his first quarter in Congress, listed cash on hand of $26,706 with quarterly contributions of $30,101 but campaign debt of $203,854.
Bentivolio's quarterly report led at least one Republican to question whether Bentovolio is strong enough to keep the seat in the 2014 election.
Paul Welday, a former county Republican Party chairman from Farmington Hills, posted on Facebook Tuesday about Bentivolio's finances.
"Like it or not, a reality and necessity in politics is fundraising," Welday wrote with a link to Bentoviolio's quarter campaign finance statement.
"It's a measure of support and indication of strength," he said. "By those standards, surprise Congressman Kerry Bentivolio (R-MI/11) is exceptionally weak politically and puts this district in the toss-up category.
"You simply cannot compete in a congressional district with only $30k in the bank and over $200k in debt," Welday wrote. "This should be a huge "Red Flag" across the 11th District of Michigan and a very real concern for GOP leaders everywhere."
Though Michigan Republican managed to keep control of the state House, Supreme Court and GOP congressional seats, they're still stinging over President Barack Obama's large 54-44 percent victory over Republican Mitt Romney in last November's election.
Contact Charles Crumm at 248-745-4649, firstname.lastname@example.com or follow him on Twitter @crummc and on Facebook. More information is at oaklandmichiganpolitics.blogspot.com. Keep up with the latest in local news by texting OPNews to 22700.


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Jim made this on Sunday as an appetizer before the Super Bowl and it disappeared quick!
We buy a bag of avocados at Trader Joe's for $2.99 so we eat lots of them. They make an appearance in my house at lunch, dinner and breakfast. Well, not at every breakfast lunch and dinner, but you get the picture.
Avocados at one point got a bad rap because they are so high in fat. While this is true, it is the good type of fat (monounsaturated) that can help to lower cholesterol. While you still need to be careful of the high calorie count in an avocado it's a much better choice than say a slice of cheese or mayonnaise. You might want to try swapping out the mayo in a sandwich for some mashed avocado (it's so yummy). I have also found that if I add some avocado to my fajitas I don't need any cheese. Do you know what some mashed avocado is really good on? These or these!
I always like mine mashed and Jim likes his cut into chunks. Ella loves them that way, too.
This pico de gallo is also a FANTASTIC way to use avocado and Jim and I both agreed that it would make an appearance at our house frequently.
Avocado Pico de Gallo
- 1 avodaco diced
- 1 medium tomato diced
- 1 jalapeno pepper diced membranes and seeds removed if you want less heat
- 1/2 medium sized vidalia onion diced
- 1 clove of garlic - minced
- a good handful of cilanto chopped
- Juice from 1/2 lime you can the rest if you like it with more tang
- 1/4 teaspoon of cumin and garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- Combine all ingredients and toss until thoroughly mixed. Refrigerate covered for one hour in order for flavors to blend and then serve with tortilla chips. Enjoy!


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Bush's legacy: 'A fiscal meltdown'
When President George W. Bush unveiled his $3.1 trillion budget on Monday outlining his fiscal plan for 2009, it makes you wonder why anyone would even want to aspire to the presidency post-Bush. The nation's finances are a disaster thanks to tax cuts, large increases in defense spending and the booming costs of health care, social security, etc., that the nation is obligated to uphold. Bush's 2009 budget predicts a $410 billion deficit (not including war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan), and even then is unrealistically low because of inflated revenue projections, low-balling military expenses, and projected cuts that aren't likely to be approved by Congress. In reality, then, the 2009 deficit will most likely exceed the $413 billion deficit record set in 2004 — the largest ever at the time.What makes the current deficit even worse is that it's the sixth year in a row that Bush has proposed large deficits. Since Bush took office, the federal debt will have climbed to $9.7 trillion — a rise of $4 trillion during his administration. That's astounding since the nation had accumulated only $5.7 trillion in all the years before he took office.What can be done? The American people have to pay attention to what gets funded and who gets tax breaks, and then vote their preferences by picking the candidate that best reflects their priorities.In the Bush plan for 2009, for instance, interest on the national debt has grown to $260 billion, about the same amount that will be spent by the departments of Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior and Justice — combined. Good grief. So much for Republicans being the party of fiscal responsibility.Nor is Bush learning. On the contrary, his plan proposes to make permanent his first-term tax cuts beyond their 2011 expiration date, even though that would come at a cost of $635 billion through 2013. While he would extend tax cuts to the wealthy, as well as many corporate tax benefits, according to the Washington Post his budget "eliminates programs that provide food for poor children, research assistance to manufacturers, career and technical education grants, weatherization assistance, community development grants, graduate medical education at children's hospitals and a public housing revitalization program that the House just authorized." He would raise $2.1 billion in health care fees on non-disabled veterans through 2013 and, the Post reports, his budget projections would freeze domestic programs not related to defense or homeland security at $393 billion between 2010 and 2013 in order to allow him to claim his long-term proposals would eventually end in a balanced budget."It's not going to happen," Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. Gregg called Bush's budget "more of an academic exercise" than a "real budget," adding: "Maybe a $400 billion deficit will get people to notice, but in an election year we haven't seen much seriousness, and this budget certainly falls into this category." All this means that the nation's fiscal woes will fall to the next president, who will be hamstrung by a weakened economy, two on-going wars, a huge national debt, a discredited dollar, growing needs at home, a broken health care system that has been underfunded during Bush's presidency, and a political culture promoted by Republicans that has made raising taxes (which used to be the responsible thing to do when used to balance the budget and the mainstay of Republican philosophy in the pre-Reagan years) an act of national sabotage. The next president and Congress, says Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D.), will "inherit a fiscal meltdown. It's just as clear as it can be."Knowing that puts a damper on promises made by candidates of either party, and places a priority on American voters to pay special attention to how their preferred candidates will handle fiscal affairs.


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I know I have been in the city for a while, but I had no idea that drive-ins were still out there across America. I was pleasantly shocked at how many I saw in upstate New York.
Going to the drive-in has to be one of my favorite memories growing up in Indiana. I thought going to a movie in my pj's was pretty cool.
Are there drive-ins in Europe? If not, you have to visit one when you are in New York.


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Stay on top of campus alerts with PSUTXT
Students, faculty, staff, parents and the public are invited to register for PSUTXT, a service that alerts subscribers via text messages to cell phones when situations arise on campus that affect the ability of the campus to function normally, on schedule, and/or conduct business as usual. In addition, subscribers can elect to have alerts sent to an email address.
To subscribe or learn more about PSUTXT, visit http://live.psu.edu/psutxt online. For more information, contact the Beaver campus Office of Campus and Community Relations at email@example.com or 724-773-3815.


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Numerous American journalists seem to be having great difficulty believing the US government's claim that the Iranian government attempted to get Mexican drug cartel members to assassinate the Israeli and Saudi ambassadors in Washington DC. Their argument? That the Iranians would never be so stupid and sloppy as to risk being exposed this way as direct, flagrant perpetrators of a terrorist attack on US soil.
Let's put aside for a moment the bizarre notion that the same regime whose first major international action was seizing the US embassy in Teheran and holding its American occupants hostage for more than a year, and which has spent the last thirty-plus years since then engaging in a steady and completely overt campaign of international terrorism aimed in no small part against the US and Americans, would suddenly get all squeamish about provoking American anger by attacking a couple of foreign ambassadors in Washington DC. Let us instead take it on faith that the Iranian regime would have truly feared being exposed as the initiators of this plot.
Now let's consider the baffled journalists' scintillating logic: it was totally unlike the Iranians, they say, to operate this way--so much so, in fact, that even US investigators doubted Iranian involvement until rock-solid proof more or less fell into their laps. In other words, had the Iranians not been so horribly unlucky as to have chosen a Mexican contact who happened also to have been a paid DEA informant willing to cooperate actively with an FBI anti-terrorist investigation, there would have been every reason to doubt after the fact that the Iranians were in any way involved. Indeed, even today, when the US government claims to have smoking-gun evidence, many journalists have trouble believing it.
Take away that evidence--that is, assume that the plot actually succeeded, with at best a few circumstantial hints of Iranian involvement--and throw in a well-timed fake-but-vaguely-plausible-sounding after-the-fact claim of responsibility from some imaginary new offshoot of al Qaeda, and these doubting journalists would presumably have lots and lots of company among those initially skeptical US government investigators.
Now, remind me again why the Iranians ought to have considered this operation to entail such a hugely reckless risk of exposure?
Friday, October 14, 2011
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Local man cited for domestic violence
WEYBRIDGE — Vermont State Police cited Ryan Phelps, 32 of Shoreham for domestic violence on Wednesday, July 25, after he allegedly assaulted a woman at a home on Quaker Village Road in Weybridge.
Police said they were called to the home at around 5 a.m. to investigate a report of disorderly conduct. Upon their arrival, VSP were told by witnesses that Phelps had allegedly forced his way into the residence and attempted to force the victim into his vehicle. After being unsuccessful in forcing the victim into the vehicle, Ryan allegedly assaulted her, according to police.
Phelps fled the scene prior to police arriving at the scene, but later returned to the residence to confront the victim, according to police. State police went back to the residence and took Phelps into custody.
Police cited Phelps for domestic violence, unlawful trespass, driving with a suspended license and violation of his conditions of release.
Police said Phelps was lodged at the Marble Valley Correctional Center on $2,500 bail.


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The 231 SCX I/O crossover boat by Starcraft is designed to keep the excitement coming. One of the best family boats on the water, its jaw-dropping performance and head-turning style grabs attention wherever your cruising destination.
With maximum horsepower at 350 and a 44-gallon fuel tank, this watersport boat offers a competitive price without compromising quality.


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I've been PAT testing for several years now but have only just been asked to test ten RCD's. The cleaners at the company have them for plugging thier vacuum cleaners into and the company want them tested along with the vacuum cleaners. So, I have a Europa Plus which doesn't have a "TEST RCD" option... what tests can I do?
I know I can do a visual, ensure they trip and I suppose I could do a polarity check but I can't test the trip time to prove it is within limits...although I'm not sure the regulations require this anyway?!
Any advice, support or put downs will be gratefully recieved.


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BACKGROUND IMAGE: iSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
- FeatureDWDM a Boon for the Few
- FeatureFirm Takes Standards Route For Compliance Vault
- FeatureFuture Looks Hazy For Enterprise Drives
- FeatureBackup Bundles of Joy?
- FeatureHashing Makes a Comeback
- FeatureE-mail Management Derailed By Regulations
- FeatureIP storage delivers
- FeatureDisaster recovery relief
- FeatureWrestling with regulations
- FeatureExtreme backup
- FeatureGet control of capacity
- FeatureStorage vendors need to start thinking about security
- FeatureHow many storage admins do you need?
- FeatureStorage vendors should have knocked EMC down when they had the chance
- FeatureSnapshot: Number of terabytes of disk capacity managed
- FeatureWhy don't storage managers consider renting storage?
- FeatureIntelligent confusion
iSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
IP storage delivers
Despite all the FUD surrounding IP SANs, early users say IP-based storage isn't all that difficult to manage and that performance is sufficient. The key is knowing what applications IP SANs should be used for.
Published: 11 Apr 2004
|Top ten IP storage tips
IP storage brings many benefits to the data center, including lower costs compared to Fibre Channel (FC) storage area network (SAN) products. We talked to eight organizations, some of which have been using IP SANs--or IP-based storage in general--for a year or more. Three are using IP as their primary storage mechanism for everything from database to e-mail and customer billing applications; one is using IP for backup and restore only; two are using IP for primary storage and backup; another is using its IP setup as a file server to replace a failing network-attached storage (NAS) box. One organization, Sandia National Laboratories, is still in testing mode and hasn't begun using its IP SAN in production.
In the user world, some installations have mixed FC and IP protocols--as opposed to pure FCIP or iSCSI. This is often due to older storage boxes--or even fabrics--that may use FC to link to other IP-based components of a SAN. This is the situation at the Cancer Therapy Research Center (CTRC) in San Antonio, TX, which is using older, FC-based disks with an IP-based storage router to get its planned ROI out of the storage boxes.
Users' own definitions of what constitutes IP storage or an IP SAN can vary widely. Some are using IP storage over WANs or are using iSCSI over IP or Ethernet networks to connect servers and arrays. Some are doing IP within one data center; others are using the protocol to connect far-flung storage boxes and servers.
Most of the IP implementations are still fairly small at this point, with an average of 3TB to 6TB of actual storage. In most cases, this is a fraction of the storage still in direct-attached mode or even on an FC SAN.
Five of the eight organizations are using an FC SAN in addition to IP, or at least started with FC. All have different ideas about connecting--or not connecting--the two worlds. The global law firm Clifford Chance is hoping to connect its Fibre and IP SANs in the next year or so. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) plans to use both for different applications for the foreseeable future--Fibre for its high-performance, transactional needs and IP for pretty much everything else--with hopes that it can someday manage the two from one management suite. Mortgage provider HomeBanc and water-purification supplier Zenon Environmental will continue to use their FC gear for one dedicated application that's already on the system, but will use IP for almost everything else.
iSCSI for primary storage
There are many reasons to get involved with IP storage. The CTRC implemented an IP network approximately two years ago and hasn't looked back. The CTRC offers radiation and oncology services to major hospitals in four locations, and serves roughly 200 patients each day. Its two primary facilities are 22 miles apart.
The center has seen a huge growth in its storage needs, driven by digital imaging requirements. Many types of scans--CT, MRI and others--move around the network on a regular basis. In 2001, the organization built a new main campus, which was an opportunity to redesign its major IT infrastructure, says Mike Luter, CTO. The major criteria was availability and reliability, because "to have someone miss or have to reschedule a radiation treatment is simply unacceptable."
Luter says it was clear from the get-go they'd need Gigabit Ethernet to provide adequate bandwidth for its images and other files. So while they were at it, CTRC decided to kill many birds--iSCSI storage, voice over IP telephony and an application server at both data centers--with one stone. And with this setup, one IT staffer can now handle all of a user's needs.
Of its 45 major servers--mostly Compaq--some two-thirds are on the IP SAN, with approximately 7.5TB of total storage. There's a spare Compaq DL360 g2 at each location, and there's synchronous mirroring of data for business continuity.
The setup includes two EMC Clariion 4700s, with Cisco SN 5428 storage routers. The 4700s are actually Fibre-based, so they link to the 5428s via Fibre, and then the IP-based 5428s link to the backbone network.
Storage for Space Odyssey
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science started planning a major new project called Space Odyssey and knew that its current technology wouldn't be up to the task. "Our storage is almost all direct-attached and we're in transition," says Vince Wolfe, program technology manager. The museum is in the process of changing into a Microsoft shop from an old Novell environment.
Space Odyssey, though, needed a new kind of storage. The hands-on exhibit and all-digital planetarium required guaranteed uptime and scalability, in part to help deliver information-on-demand to human guides that are a critical part of the program.
The guides carry laptops to look up a range of information to help answer questions--everything from the history of space exploration to recent information gleaned from the Mars rover.
With this in mind, Wolfe says, it was clear they needed a SAN for shared storage, and the organization started looking at alternatives. "We did a pretty thorough evaluation and looked at Fibre Channel" and IP suppliers, Wolfe says. "We decided that an IP SAN was more flexible than Fibre." It was also much more affordable.
Ultimately, the museum went with LeftHand Networks as its IP SAN supplier, and now has 11 Network Storage Modules (NSMs). One reason was the architecture's "easy expandability," Wolfe says.
INTEC Engineering, a Houston-based company serving the oil and gas industry, had another equally clear-cut reason for looking into IP--its NAS was failing. "It was a cheap box, one of the first IDE-based ones that had come out," says Chris Warlick, IT director. "We were beating the heck out of it, using it beyond anything it was originally intended for." After it crashed several times, the company started looking around for something else. As Warlick recalls, "When your data is down, it's an easy sell."
They, too, looked at Fibre, but concluded they "wanted to save money and to be leading-edge, but not necessarily bleeding-edge." When its existing networking supplier, Cisco, started selling an IP switch, INTEC bought one.
At this point, the SAN functions as a file server, with the firm's SQL Server and Exchange application data housed in DAS. As Warlick explains, "If we get to the point where we feel it would benefit us to move the actual e-mail and database data, we'll do that."
Backup and disaster recovery
Clifford Chance, a New York-based law firm, wanted a better way to perform disaster recovery and backup "without interfering with our existing production systems," says Milton Morgan, senior IT manager. And its existing EMA 12000 SAN from Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) was too expensive to add capacity for this task, at least from a maintenance perspective. So, they're running FalconStor's IPStor software on an ATA-based StorageTek box connected to an IP network via Cisco 6509 switches. Under this scenario, the firm mirrors its DAS to the IPStor/StorageTek setup in New York, then replicates the mirror to the office in Washington, D.C. All of the firm's legal documents and home directories are handled this way, to the tune of about 4TB.
This approach saves money, but perhaps not for the most obvious reason. "There's not a huge difference in the price of the drives," Morgan says. There used to be, but HP and IBM Corp. have been "more willing to bring their storage prices down to ATA levels." The bigger problem is the cost of maintenance. The HP SAN--with a little more than 3TB of storage--costs $12,000/year for maintenance. And the StorageTek box--with more than 4TB of storage--costs approximately $6,000 in annually.
The performance question
The motivations for going with IP storage are as different as the organizations using the gear--but there are some constants. Performance was an issue for some companies. Most of the companies interviewed are using Gigabit Ethernet switches, network interface cards (NICs) and associated gear, and have put their IP traffic onto its own VLAN for both performance and security considerations.
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science's Wolfe says flat-out that "there's a performance hit if the network's really busy."
Other adopters, though, say they have no complaints on the performance side. Helen Chen, network researcher at Sandia National Laboratories, says she has seen peak performance of 180Mb/s over its IP network for a write function. "I believe iSCSI has the potential to deliver performance for scientific computing," she says. The lab has already proven that IP performs "as well as Fibre" in a local connection "if we tune it correctly."
The lab is also more interested in open-source solutions. On the hardware side, the problem is that "you can't tune hardware very easily" to do things like increase the distance between initiator and target, Chen says. "So, we used the software stack in the Linux host to modify parameters," including iSCSI command size, TCP/IP window size, etc. "We want to open up the parameters so we can fill up a big, fat pipe between two remote locations," she says. "We're working with Adaptec to get the interface to be able to modify the TOE [TCP/IP offload engine] hardware."
PBS, Alexandria, VA, uses a StoneFly IP concentrator to network the storage for the applications that don't require the highest bandwidth provided by its other SAN, based on FC. They're "quite pleased" with IP's performance, but Ken Walters, senior director of enterprise platforms, emphasizes that not all applications are natural fits for iSCSI. "I use it for equipment used for development work, and on machines that aren't critical or that don't have massive I/O requirements." These are applications that "I can't cost-justify connecting to my Fibre SAN," he says.
And so, he says, PBS is starting to provide iSCSI storage where they really need it. Some of the applications connected via the StoneFly device are a Linux box that processes the logs from the PBS Web site and a SQL Server cluster that's a development environment for an internal PBS user. Walters' group recently received an iSCSI cluster router from StoneFly. "I wanted to get clustering set up before I handed out a lot more storage because I didn't want a single point of failure," he says.
"So now, we'll start to provide iSCSI storage where appropriate." The organization uses the StoneFly Concentrators to stream all Real and Windows media from the Web site.
At Zenon Environmental in Ontario, Canada, Shawn Eveleigh, senior systems administrator, says he's happy with his PeerStorage setup from EqualLogic. He used utilities in Exchange that test how fast a disk subsystem performs. "Our total disk I/O speed was around 40 to 45Mb/s, and most of our systems will never get to that kind of load," he says. "That was forcing the server to go as fast as it possibly can. And the disk I/O kept up with that."
Designing for performance
Almost all the organizations we talked to are using standard-issue, out-of-the-box Gigabit Ethernet NICs, but PBS is an exception. The group is using a combination of regular NICs and cards that offload part of the IP and iSCSI processing load from the server. These include Intel Storage Network Interface Cards (SNICs) and TOE cards from Alacritech and other suppliers. "The offload does work as advertised," PBS' Walters says.
Which type of card he uses to hook up each server to the SAN depends on how much processing power the server has to deal with iSCSI's additional workload. "Much of our hardware is fairly new," he says, "with plenty of processing power. So, I use mostly regular NICs, for about $130, where SNICs are about $550 and TOEs are around $850."
There are some nitty-gritty things to consider for performance, too. Akil Woolfolk, network operations team lead at Atlanta-based mortgage lender HomeBanc, says they had to make registry changes to make sure SQL Server works well with iSCSI. "We had to do some configuration to create a dependency" to make sure the SQL Server wouldn't start before the iSCSI initiator was up and running," he says. Otherwise, the SQL Server will crash because some of the files it needs to see aren't present.
Also, Woolfolk and his team at HomeBanc figured it was wise to plan where to put each application's database associated log files. "That makes a difference in your implementation," he says. "We put the log files on the local disk, with the OS to help boot up storage. Then, we run the iSCSI initiator to connect the servers to the IP SAN."
HomeBanc is using EqualLogic's PeerStorage to host file services for more than 500 users, with more than 80% of its production SQL data on the IP SAN.
Redundancy and security
INTEC bought two Cisco Catalyst 3550 switches and two Cisco 5428 storage routers for redundancy in its IP network. "We did some absolutely rigorous tests from the standpoint of user and server access," Warlick says. "What does a user see if the router fails, if the drives fail? We tried every failure you can imagine, and the test results were phenomenal. If we turned off one of our switches, that would delay the server connection for a few seconds. But you'd still see the data."
Some customers say they're not too concerned about redundancy from their IP SANs. "I'm not trying to re-create the high availability of a FC SAN," PBS' Walters says. "If I need the ultimate in load-balancing and failover, the application belongs on Fibre," and not on IP. Indeed, if you try to design the same level of redundancy and security into IP, you start to erode some of the cost benefits of the technology, he says.
With PBS' clustered StoneFly gear, however, that level of redundancy is already built in. "I pulled the power cable, NIC cables--I powered them off, and the machine never lost a beat," Walters says. Unlike Fibre, where "I'd be lying if I said we didn't have problems. Fabrics can collapse due to hardware problems; sometimes multipathing doesn't work and you lose your connection to the [Fibre] SAN," Walters says. "If you ask people and they're honest about it, they'll tell you that in practice there can be as much or more downtime with Fibre as with DAS if you're not very careful."
Another suggestion Walters has for redundancy in an IP environment is to put in multiple NICs and run multiple drops to different IP switches. It doubles the NIC costs, but it's still less expensive than going with all Fibre, he says.
On the security front, "eventually we'll be able to use IP-based authentication, but it's not quite there yet," says Sandia's Chen. "Password-based security isn't good enough for us."
But for most users, putting the IP SAN on its own VLAN--and using whatever built-in security comes with their associated products--seems to be good enough. HomeBanc is using the security model that already comes with its PeerStorage SAN. With that, "you have to enter passwords, not just set up a workstation and run the iSCSI initiator and connect," says Woolfolk. "And because it's on a separate VLAN, you can't just hit the PeerStorage box from anywhere on the network."
At Zenon Environmental, Eveleigh says, "Because it's a separate network, it's not exposed to anything. It sits behind the servers, so if someone plugged into our network, they wouldn't see the storage side."
"Most people don't worry much about security," Walters says. "You'd have to break into my DC [data center] to get anywhere near the Fibre network. IP is much closer to the hackers, so maybe we do need to start worrying about it."
Driver and other problems
Most of the issues with drivers seem to be resolved with Microsoft's iSCSI Initiator. But that only works with newer versions of Windows--after Windows 2000--and the Linux and Unix worlds don't yet have this same level of standardization, customers say.
The museum's Wolfe says he's looking forward to implementing LeftHand's new Linux drivers as a way of driving even more IP storage in his shop. "But I doubt they'll ever have direct support for Irix," also used at the museum. In general, the more homogenous the environment, and the more up-to-date the operating system, the fewer problems encountered on the driver front. But there are other kinds of things that bite customers, too.
Stan Rehfuss, senior system admin at the museum, says that with the Cisco 4507 switch, the 48-port cards are set up in a way that you need to distribute your gigabit ports or else you don't get the full gig for performance. "It's just a limitation on the 4507," he says.
Clifford Chance ran into problems, all of which "are behind us now," Morgan says. The firm wanted to mirror its DAS to a cheaper ATA system, so they bought a StorageTek ATA box. "We mirrored the data, and found that after 10 days the server abended," he says. "So we went to Novell and found there was an issue with the way that NetWare 5.1 worked with IP--it didn't. Version 6.0 worked, but we were in the process of moving to NT file storage." Once they moved to NT, it worked fine. But "the issues on the Novell side forced us to increase the pace of a planned migration that was already in progress to Windows NT," says Morgan. Another problem area was implementing jumbo frames on its Cisco switches, to allow more data to be moved at one time.
"When we did that, we had to enable jumbo frames on both switches," says Morgan. "But then that affected other network traffic. It may be the hardware we're using, or it may be the version of Cisco IOS that we're on. But the only solution we came up with was to disable jumbo frames on our main production switches, and then move the IP SAN to its own, separate, much smaller switches." And not everyone's run into problems on that score, either. Zenon Environmental enabled jumbo frames with no problems on its Dell Gigabit switches, Eveleigh says.
Overall, Eveleigh and the others say they're happy they invested in IP SANs. Most of the customers who bought IP for primary storage plan on expanding it to handle backup and restore--and vice versa. As Eveleigh says, "Once you set it up, it's not that fancy a technology. It does its job. I don't worry--and that's a good thing."


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Confused Users Keep Racking Up Ridiculous 3G Bills, Wireless Carriers Keep Helping Them
from the your-phone-bill-should-not-require-a-second-mortgage deptWe've seen no limit to stories over the years about wireless customers (including a few semi-famous ones) who wind up with fairly insane wireless broadband bills for any number of reasons. Usually the stories involve someone traveling overseas and not understanding the roaming charges and overages involved, though sometimes the users don't even need to leave port to find themselves hit with a $27,000 3G bill. The latest story of this type (via the Consumerist) involves a user getting a $7,865.84 Verizon Wireless bill after taking his Mifi portable 3G hotspot on a business trip to Tel Aviv. In this case however, the user called Verizon before the trip, studied the overage penalties, and still wound up using 350,000 kb of bandwidth before concluding it was Verizon who screwed up:
"The ugly truth is that upon investigating the issue, I found a number of things could have been done by Verizon to protect me as a consumer. They may not mention them outright, but they are there. The fact that these things were not done can only lead me to assume that Verizon would rather their consumers "understand" as little as possible about their TOS.'"
Except as a consumer, it's his responsibility to read the find print on his contract and understand the limitations and penalties of his plan. The user studied the charges, spoke with representatives -- even seemed to have at least a base understanding of what he was going to be charged per kilobyte -- and then chose to use expensive 3G data on an overseas trip anyway. Consumer responsibility and research plays a big part of the equation.
That said, we've been saying for a long time now that these bills demonstrate the fact that carriers aren't doing a particularly good job making service limits clear or educating customers. Many consumers (more than you would think) can't tell the difference between a kilobyte and a lemur, and Verizon's math skills on this front aren't always reliable to begin with. While most carriers have some kind of mechanism in place to help notify users of excessive usage, carriers haven't done a great job notifying users when their bill starts to go nuclear (like many credit card companies do when a large charge appears on your card) or making overages clear. Fortunately, carriers often agree to slash these bills -- but usually only after they receive media attention.
In the UK, where they've seen the same kind of insane 3G bills, regulators have jumped in and addressed the problem by first capping roaming charges -- but then by also requiring (as of July 1) that carriers allow users to set a monthly maximum cap that limits how much they can spend on data each month. Consumers get an automated alert as they approach 80% of that total, then their service is temporarily suspended when the user crosses the spending cap. If users don't choose a limit, a limit of $68 per month is set for them (that's only data and doesn't include voice minutes or other bill totals). Of course here in the States carriers aren't going to want to voluntarily employ tools that reduce how much money they can make off of confused users, and will fight any regulation that limits how much they can charge. So nothing changes, and story after story emerges about users whose phone bills resemble the GDP of small countries.
Filed Under: bills, ridiculous, roaming, wireless


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A look at California serial rapist's release rules
"Pillowcase Rapist" Christopher Hubbart has been conditionally released to live in a desert community outside of Palmdale, California, about 70 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles.
Hubbart has acknowledged raping and assaulting about 40 women between 1971 and 1982. He got his nickname by using a pillowcase to muffle his victims' screams.
Freedom for the first time in roughly two decades comes with severe limitations. Hubbart must wear a GPS anklet, continue treatment, obey a curfew, and be subject to random searches and seizures, drug testing and polygraph tests.
The 16-page terms of his release detail what Hubbart cannot do without permission. Among them:
— Open a credit card or bank account, buy a car, marry, divorce, buy or lease a home, or make any other major life decision.
— Use the Internet.
— Watch television shows or other media that may arouse him, or ones that involve themes of forced or aggressive sexual acts.
— Work, drive, hitchhike, bike or walk through a neighborhood; join or visit a gym; visit a park, beach or pool; spend time at a bowling alley or its parking lots.
— Possess any video or camera equipment including a phone that allows such capabilities, or have binoculars, telescopes or sexual lubricants.
— Offer money, food, shelter or clothing to those in need.
— Have pets.
— Contact a minor or possess children's clothing, toys, or games.
— "Knowingly date, have a romantic interest in," have a sexual relationship or socialize with anyone who has physical custody of a minor.
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