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Whenever i get a response of RTFM most of the time its either
1 WTFM first (or update it with the new changes)
2 The Kama Sutra covers the subject better
Challenge for the SlashMind locate a current (2.6*) copy of the Blender manual in PDF format.
And then keep both the examples and docs up to date, for god's sake! The only thing worse than no documentation is useless documentation.
In general, yes. But if you spend any time using larger APIs, examples of "how to do basic task X" become much more important. Examples of usage are a key part of any (large) API documentation.
For example, if the method foobar() in class Foo does what I want, how am I supposed to find it? Especially if the library has hundreds of classes spread across multiple namespaces.
Javadoc / doxygen style documentation is great for understanding the details. It is terrible for giving an overview. Look at the Cocoa documentation, for example. If you get all of the Headerdoc (Apple's doxygen equivalent) documentation, it comes to about 8,000 pages. You really, really, don't want to have to read all of that to know how to use the APIs - most people can't keep that much detail in their heads anyway. You want a few high-level overview documents that you can read in their entirety and then refer to the API documentation for reference.
For an open source example, look at LLVM. They have doxygen docs and they have some high-level subsystem docs (e.g. 'How to write an LLVM backend'). The bits that are the easiest to work with are the bits that have both.
to WTFM, please oh please oh please stop writing flowery, circumlocutious prose.
Succinct... Precise... Concise...
Bullet points, short paragraphs, and simple descriptions are fine in most circumstances; this is not an expository writing project. I don't want to have to wade through your awful prose to decipher what the hell you're trying to say.
If I want to read a fucking story, I'll read a novel.
I'm reading Jules Verne and while a fascinating story it could be cut by 20,000 words of travelogue and could still use some pruning. That loquacious verbiage of the evacuation of core is just boring.
Real programmers don't document. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
You youngsters always want things "explained" - geesh.
Seriously, get your hands dirty and work for it.
I consider it no accident that the defacto standard language C (aka, "portable assembler") has a lot to do with not only it being the language of choice for UNIX, but the fact that it was accompanied by one of the masterpieces of programming documentation - "The C Programming Language" - By K&R, who most know also designed and developed the language itself.
Your ideas are no good if they can't be communicated to others. Often, inability to communicate good ideas is more an indicator the ideas aren't that good, than the documentation is lacking.
but his ideas were great, and no one can argue against it.
There are plenty of people who can argue against the design choices in C++, and plenty of people who think his ideas don't translate very well into large scale maintainable systems. He's made a huge computer to computer science, but that does not mean he hasn't made a few mistakes along the way.
No language is as dominant and most crucial to the world's infrastructure
Only if you are one of those people who refuse to acknoweldge the existence of C.
Not to mention that UNIX's 1st 'official' funding at bell labs was to develop TYPESETTING applications for DOCUMENTS
(see nroff - which is used to render man pages.. aka TFM of RTFM on a unix system)
It's a perfectly good tagline, one I've used myself many times. Though to be consistent,you should say "it don't exist".
I once tried Inkscape and realized in disgust that the "manual" was a wiki.
When I was working in aerospace, we would often write the manual first, then implement. This forces developers to deal with ugly problems cleanly, rather than having some elaborate after-the-fact explanation of how to work around some limitation.
When I was working in aerospace, we would often write the manual first, then implement. This forces developers to deal with ugly problems cleanly, rather than having some elaborate after-the-fact explanation of how to work around some limitation.
Also, this gives you a design plan that you can follow while coding.
The problem is not when it's a wiki, but when there are only like 3 articles in it.
Oh, so horribly true. Especially when those three articles are incomplete, inaccurate, or years out of date.
As a tech writer, I've been fighting a losing battle against the wiki-docs approach for years. Nobody seems to grasp that Wikis undo a couple decades of progress in writing well-structured, process-driven docs. Confluence even pushes its own wiki as docs tool. Needless to say, documentation is the weak point in Confluence's otherwise excellent products.
The design-by-document approach just isn't going to fly in this age of minimalist organization and agile development.
The design-by-document approach just isn't going to fly in this age of minimalist organization and agile development.
There is no reason why you can't write the documents first in agile development. You just can't finish the documentation before starting coding. You can write documentation of the next set of code to be written before writing it. Agile mixes well with extreme, test first programming. Do the documentation the same way. Write a bit of documentation; write the tests that match it; write the code to make the tests work. Repeat until finished. At that time, you will have complete documentation, a test sui
The design-by-document approach just isn't going to fly in this age of minimalist organization and agile development.
That's really too bad. At this point in my life/career, I'd rather be doing documentation than slapping some junk together that will need to be fixed two times over once it is in the users' hands just because of someone's arbitrary deadline.
Regarding the parent coment, I've seen way too many open source projects that use a wiki that is both very poorly structured and inadequately populated as a substitute for documentation/manual.
I have an interesting relationship with Agile. Such projects tend to be reluctant to hire me as a tech writer. They look at my resume, full of experience at big, bureaucratic organizations like Sun, and also at my gray hairs, and assume I'll never adapt to their more informal methods.
But in fact I find Agile pretty refreshing. I've sat through too many boring, endless meetings and seen too many projects fall victim to politics and Paralysis by Analysis not to see the merits of Agile. It's adaptive, it respo
When I was working in aerospace, we would often write the manual first, then implement. This forces developers to deal with ugly problems cleanly, rather than having some elaborate after-the-fact explanation of how to work around some limitation.
I used to get paid to WTFMs. If there was a good functional specification for the hardware or software, I could have the first draft done about the same time the early testing started, and much of it was lifted from the specs. You don't have to see it working to describe what it is supposed to do.
If I had to WTFM for something with a bad spec or no spec, something that was being developed ad hoc
I once tried Inkscape and realized in disgust that the "manual" was a wiki.
No, it's not. What gave you that idea?
What you really need to try, though, are the Tutorials. They're under the Help menu and actually consist of SVG documents opened in a normal Inkscape window. It's simple yet brilliant -- when talking about a feature it simply suggests you try it there and then on that document. You should give it a try. Inkscape is an example of documentation done *right*!
The first assumption is that you're actually writing it for somebody else and not yourself. In many cases if you've scratched your own itch, then you're happy and any comments are notes to self, not documentation for others. The second assumption is that you could, that it's only a lack of willpower. To many people coding a piece of software makes the logic of it so apparently obvious that they don't understand why it needs documentation, at least not any that's useful to anyone with a black box understanding of the code. The third assumption is that they're not once bitten, twice shy from useless or even misleading documentation and just decided that the code is the ultimate truth of what the code does and don't want to make any external document that won't stay in sync.
I've met quite a few coders who are disdainful of documentation, citing many of the reasons that coders give for being disdainful of comments. - It gets out of date quickly, there's a good chance it doesn't match the actual behavior, etc. "If I want to know what's going on, I have to read the code anyway, so what's the point?" There's also a very slight alpha-hacker subtext, with the philosophy of "if you can't read code, you're not worthy enough to be using this program in the first place". As well as the "works for me" viewpoint - the coder who wrote it doesn't need any documentation to understand it, so why is it necessary?
It's sometimes difficult to convince a coder that there are people out there who are competent, intelligent, successful people but who have no interest in plowing through 1000+ lines of code in order to find out which flag they should use to get
There's also a very slight alpha-hacker subtext, with the philosophy of "if you can't read code, you're not worthy enough to be using this program in the first place"
Also the alpha hacker view of my code is like poetry, perfect, precise, crystal clear, and self documenting. Usually... not.
I wrote the fine code, YOU write the fine manual. Do I look like a tech writer? No, I do not. (They generally dress better but are more disheveled, which may have to do with the contents of their hip flask)
Fine, I'll write your manual for you. Shall we discuss money?
What, no money for docs? Never mind!
Tell you what, write the manual and get a 90% refund on the price of the free software you're using.
I was making a joke about the fact that commercial softwre projects rarely consider documentation a high priority. If you have an interesing Open Source project that needs a tech writer and dioesn't have the resources to pay one, I'd certainly consider donating a reasonable amount of my time.
Sure thing. However, before I start I'd better get completely familiar with your wonderful program in order to correctly explain it's operation, so I'll just have a good read of the manu... oh, wait...
I'm appreciative of your positive comments about my profession, but you overstate the contribution of English and journalism types. There are indeed many good tech writers with that background, but there are also English types who drift into it because they can't get work doing anything else, and produce cruddy docs based on too-fancy prose styles and lack of serious interest in technology.
Many good technical writers have technical backgrounds. I myself am a college dropout who wanted to be a computer scientist but didn't have the intellectual chops for it. Others I've known have been retooled scientists, humanities professors, and MBA types. The one constant is that you need the ability to explain complicated ideas simply (for which traditional training in writing doesn't always prepare you), a certain amount of simple curiousity, and the ability to ask the right "stupid" questions.
BTW, anybody needs some APIs documented? User manuals? Installations guides? I get off my current assignment in about a month, If you have an interesing open-source project, I will consider donating some of my time.
Never said that all English majors are technically deficient. And even the majority that are sometimes make good tech writers. But I've known a lot of really bad tech writers who thought their English degrees qualified them to write about anything, There are mental skills in tech writing that are a lot more important than the ability to interpret the metaphors of William Faulkner.
Get a simple microphone like the blue-tooth-like headsets. Beg, borrow, or steal a speech-to-text program. (there's one buried in newer versions of MS Word) Train it. (for the S2T program in Word, you read the first few chapters of 'The Wizard of Oz' from the display on the PC screen).
Now open a text file for your speech to go into and the software (or whatever) that you are trying to document. Describe what is displayed on the screen. Pretend that there is a beautiful woman next to you who is totally fascinated in the smallest most exact details of your program, and is totally in love with the sound of your voice describing it to her. If this is too much of a stretch then put a picture of your favorite gorgeous actress next to your PC, stare into her eyes, and describe your program to her.
When you have a long and detailed text file describing your software project, close it and attach it to your source. Do this even if it means putting the whole thing in one long comment block and pasting it to the end of your Main file.
Ignore all sentence structure, punctuation, and grammar mistakes in the file. You'll go crazy trying to repair them and most of the people who be needing this documentation will be so happy to have *anything* that they will overlook all the sentence structure, punctuation, and grammar mistakes in the file.
If you don't speak English well enough to make the speech-to-text comprehend your words then either get a native English speaker to do all the steps above or use a Speech-to-text program that works with your native language. (if there are no speech-to-text programs that works with your native language, quit your present job and form a company is that based solely on making and selling such a program. Make it open-source free and have some NGO or your local Ministry of Culture pick up the cost). The people who are going to be reading the documentation in order to understand your program will either use a PC-based language translation program on your text file or hire someone at minimum wage to read your file and to translate it into more-or-less English.
Read everything written above and Just-eF'ing-Do-It. Don't tell anyone that you did it. Just slip your rambling text 'documentation' file into the final shipping product disk or Zip file and let it be your little secret.
Believe me, everyone who buys or uses your software will be glad that you did this. If you get fired, then become a consultant and teach other companys how to do exactly the steps described above and make twice as much money that you were before at the dingbat cement-head company that fired you.
Just do it. Remember, every major advance in computer science made in the past 30 years was at one time called 'the stupidest fucking thing that I've ever heard' by Bill Gates. Speaking documentation to your PC seems stupid, but it gets the docs created when nothing else seems to work quite as well.
That's a really interesting approach. Are there any examples of it in the wild? I'd be keen to see what one of these narratives looks like.
put a picture of your favorite gorgeous actress next to your PC, stare into her eyes, and describe your program to her.
Yeah, I'm just worried that my documentation of... software might end up x-rated.
(Though on a serious note, I've considered dictating before, and after your post I might actually just follow your advice and "Just do it.". Though I would try to correct the punctuation afterwards anyway.)
I can think of three reasons why nobody WTFM:
1. It's hard. Would you want to write a manual for Excel or 3ds Max? I wouldn't. Where to begin and how to organize it?
2. It's time consuming. Software is bigger than ever, at least on the desktop.
3. It's not sexy.
A programmer does not have to be a good writer, but a good programmer is a person who has good organizational skills, someone who can write lists of topics and subtopics that the documentation should include.
A good programmer is also good at reading and spotting errors in code
Therefore, a programmer could very well cooperate with a professional writer, where the writer does not have to be a good programmer:
The programmer could start writing a terse, stilted documentation. The writer
It is very rare for a good programmer to be also a good writer.
Maybe - but if the programmer does not write any description of what he has done, then someone who is a good writer has no chance at all. So: when you write the code, write (in English/...) what it is trying to achieve, why it is doing it and how it fits in with other code/programs.
Even better: write the documentation first and then the code. There are times that I have done that, realised by trying to explain what it has to do that my spec was not quite right, fixed the spec and documentation - the code pr
Knuth's source for TeX and METAFONT does this (he created the technique to enable him to write the system).
I've found (re)writing a program as a literate program results in a much cleaner representation of the code and algorithms and a clearer, more understandable manual.
DEK has since written an entire book on the concept (_Literate Programming_ a CLSI series book) a decade ago, but one seldom sees source so provided.
There are some really cool example programs which're quite interesting (and educational) to
A cynical answer is that even if the language or framework author/project head was a technical writer worth his or her salt, it makes more sense to write a book and sell it. Because asking money for the language (compiler/interpreter+libraries) itself is not going to fly in the flooded market of programming languages unless it is really really good and only very few of them are actually that good. Maybe not even then, because the price tag of non-zero value is poison for easy availability which is a must if you want someone to look into your project or language on his or her free time. With frameworks you might get more leeway but not much, especially not if you count on having a hobbyist/hacker community to flourish. Of course, getting someone like O'Reilly to greenlight your book about your own virtually-unknown language or framework might prove to be tad difficult too... Of course, if you're someone like Apple or Facebook or Microsoft or Google who offer a platform with sizable userbase with monetization prospects, this isn't really a problem.
And then there is the fact as noted in submission that writing a good manual takes a different skill set than designing and implementing a good programming language. If you don't have it, someone else has to take up that work if it's going to be of any use. And for that to happen, the language or project has to exist in some kind of usable, stable state long enough for those "outsiders" to actually study and learn how this thing actually works.
Which brings me to the last point. The really good books about a given programming language or framework give also "learned in real world use" insights about the pitfalls, deficiencies and suggested "usecases to avoid and the usecases to strive for" of the language which might only be discovered afterwards. This also might or might not be easier for someone who is not intimately knowledgeable with the inner workings of the language or framework by the virtue of being the one who created it. You kind of become blind for the real merits and sore spots in your own work, so to speak.
And fwiw, I actually have no problem with the idea of paying for a book to help me learn a language / framework I want to know how to use. I have even done that! I do, sometimes, lament the fact that online documentation is lacking because looking up things is usually easier on those than on dead tree (or PDF files simulating dead tree).
I do share some of the sentiments of TFA though. Most infuriating is when there's a "quick and easy tutorial"... which also doesn't cover very much beyond the simplest of use cases and then theres a very terse api reference. And virtually nothing in between. At that point I usually ask myself "do I really have to / want to (+ have time to) learn this thing, and is there a good book on it?"
I am a freelancer, I am doing what the customer pays me for. I also write open source software in my free time. You don't like it? I don't care. I don't do it for you. I write it for me. I don't need a manual for my own code. So why do I publish my code at all? Why not? Maybe it is useful for someone. I just don't feel any obligation to make it useful for anyone but me.
I'd love to work on a manual for something I'm really interested in, like Blender, but I doubt that any developer would have the patience to teach me what he knows--all the while trusting that I am going to complete what I set out to do.
It's a problem.
And I'm not going to address the examples either. At least, not exactly. I use Google's Protocol Buffers in a project, and figured out how to use it from Google's documentation. Except I still haven't figure out how to use the ZeroCopy classes. The documentation is that bad. It's horrific. It exists, and tells you the first dozen things you need to know. Then it STOPS. And doesn't tell you anything else. I swear Google puts it up as a test. If you can figure out how to use it from their docs, you
The forces that brought about written documentation were:
1. Computer RAM too small to hold a document, lack of multitasking (in DOS days), and lack of screen resolution/real estate (even pre-dual monitor days, which was only 2-5 years ago).
2. Release cycle of software was annual or longer, rather than automaticaly patched daily from the Internet.
None of those is true any longer. Software should be self-explanitory. And if it's not, there is now an alternative:
It's fairly simple to run a screen capt
The problem isn't just with manuals. It starts with a website. As a programmer, you might rely on other people to write your documentation but those people will never even learn your product without knowing what the hell it does.
I have lost track of the number of times that I have stumbled upon a project's website only to be confronted with a changelog rather than a description of the product. There have been some (mostly open source) programs where I have eventually left the site without ever finding out what the software was actually for.
Every webpage should have a short statement of what the project is designed to do, along with what OS it runs on. You don't have to be a great tech writer to do it, just imagine what a complete newbie would want to see the first time they happen across your site.
Don't assume that your audience are also programmers and you might just get people interested who can actually write your documentation for you.
We used to put older programmers out to pasture writing documentation. Despite their cranky "Get off my lawn!" disposition, they were very good at it, like grandfathers telling a story:
"Children, let me tell you a story from a long time ago, in a far away place, about an associative array of function pointers . . . "
But now we lay off the older programmers.
And now we outsource the younger programmers, so they won't even get to be older programmers.
So there's your documentation for you, right there.
When I need to evaluate some new tech, be it an API, language, tool, or just about anything else, the first thing I look at is the documentation, after that I look at the community support. Because I know I'm going to get stuck at some point and I need to know that there will be a way out. Even if another tool will technically be a better fit for what I'm trying to do, I'll still give it a pass in favor of a tool that I know what it can and can't do.
Not that good docs are easy, they're not. They take lots of time, even for bad ones, but if you want to see adoption you need docs that include usage examples. This is primarily why Open Hardware companies have been growing like crazy while Radio Shack stagnates. They don't just sell a 555 timer, they provide dozens of free tutorials showing all the cool shit you can make with it.
Most developers hate writing technical documentation, and when they do they organize it poorly. I was trained in the "Information Mapping" school of tech writing that is based on the psychological aspects of learning and human working memory. The Information Mapping style has numerous benefits:
Once you have the basics of Information Mapping then as you grow you get better at quickly structuring everything as well as writing examples and unambiguous sentences that can help your learners to avoid many pitfalls.
So, I believe the premise of this thread is correct, many manuals either don't exist or are poor from a learning perspective. The most surprising thing I found when I learned Information Mapping (only takes a day to go through, since it is far easier than learning a programming language, and from then on it is just putting it in to practice) was how easy and effective it is. nb: I don't get kickbacks or anything from Info Mapping, it just happens to be the best and most time-efficient tech writing technique I've seen, so I hope me mentioning it helps someone else who wants to learn to be a great developer (which involves being a great communicator too).
ps: info mapping is about structure and content selection, unfortunately it doesn't help with my typing or (lazy) proof-reading
Almost every university has a technical writing department. Those students often need real-world projects for their classes.
Call the professors and ask them if they would like some real-world software for their students to document.
At our work everything is documented. For every process we have at least 27 different documents, all inacurate or out of date in slightly different but important ways. And of course, they are impossible to find when you need them.
Individually, I have managed to find a way around this mess with my own scripts: I just write a detailed usage description if the script is run without arguments, along with examples if the syntax is complex. Since the documentation is actually part of the script, it is always
Here's a simple list that will keep any unfortunate enough to have to read your "documentation" from tearing their hair out. (I'm looking at you, Microsoft!).
1) Table of contents. Learn to love them.
2) Guess what kids?! Not everyone has immediate access to an internet connection all the time, so no, your cute little wiki page won't cut it as documentation for anything.
3) Index words. They require brains not automation.
4) Never, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, discuss a function, property, or other programming language characteristic, no matter how obscure, without being more than ONE click away from a working code sample that demonstrates that function. Ever. Really. The concept is almost never the problem. Idiosyncratic syntax is.
5) All code samples should be as simple as possible, demonstrating ONLY the behaviour of the function, property or feature under discussion. Embedding your single 2 lines of demonstration in 50 lines of irrelevance only proves you know how to cut and paste.
6) Don't be lazy.
Programmers avoid writing documentation, because documentation is hard. They just got done working, working to write the program, and that was hard work. Now it is time to do the job all over again, in a different language: English. Someone may say the program was harder. I say, only slightly.
As many have said before, good documentation summarizes not only what the program does, but why. The why part is new. You didn't have to program the why part, just the what part. The computer doesn't care why. So you d
Now, see, when I started screwing around with embedded Linux-based single-board computers, I had lots of questions and documentation was not aimed at the newbie. So, naturally, I asked a lot of questions. More often than not, my questions were answered by "did you try Google?" or more obnoxiously, "If I told you how to do X, you'd be standing on the shoulders of giants."
Ironically, I find that even in cases where publishing a book for newbies can be justified, once you're past the newbie stage there is ra
I'm getting annoyed with video tutorials.
More and more often, when I search for documentation, I get links to videos, mostly YouTube videos. At best, these are inefficient; if you really need to explain details of the GUI, you should be able to do it with a few screenshots, but videos involve someone who is almost certainly not a professional voice actor reading technical information aloud, in a format that is difficult to review or index, and doesn't allow for copy-and-paste of URLs or command lines.
It's w
Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy based on excellence of performance. -- James Bryant Conant


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Khoi P
Question: Should I buy this truck?
There is a 2005 F150 Fx4 Crew Cab with 163000 miles. It is priced at $5500. The one thing that scares me is that the engine is very greasy on the surface, and the bed is pretty beat up, it looks like it's been used very rough. Should I buy it? Should I pass? What should I do? How do the transmissions and engnines hold up on these kind of beat up fords? What are some of the costly things that might happen? I'm planning to use the car for at least 4 years for college. What should I do?
Car Brakes: How Do You Know When to Change Them?
By Zach Bowman For those who suffer a daily commute through heavy traffic, your vehicle's braking system can bring thousands of pounds of metal, plastic and empty Starbucks cups to a stop hundreds of times before you get to work. It goes without saying that these pieces wear out, but they do so slowly, meaning you may not notice they need attention until ...

subset: commoncrawl


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This guy was a great back-up lineman for the Jets for 4 seasons from 2002-2005. He was very versatile, he played Guard & Center. I always liked the guy, very underrated. Then for some unknown reason, the Jets let him walk (don't recall if it was Bradway or Tannenbaum who was the GM when it happened - pretty sure it was Bradway though).
Since then, Goodwin was a starter on the Saints O-Line when they won their superbowl a few years ago and he has been the starting center for the 49'ers last season and this season.
Goodwin has had success everywhere he's gone. Why did we let this guy go again? Anyway, I am happy for the guy, he was always very under-appreciated when he was with the Jets, and he wasn't a greedy guy with huge contract demands like James Farrior & Randy Thomas were.....I'm glad that he is having success....
Last edited by ARodFLKeysJetsFan; 11-19-2012 at 11:58 PM.
Last edited by ARodFLKeysJetsFan; 11-20-2012 at 12:09 AM.
Mangold is overrated
Goodwin was our backup center, but when Kevin Mawae got injured the Jets moved Pete Kendall to C and put Goodwin in for the rest of the season at guard.
He was an UFA. We made some sort of token offer, he signed with the Saints for more money.
As I recall, the 2005-2006 offseason was basically about us escaping salary cap hell from 2003-2004 when we beefed up with expensive veterans to try and make a playoff run under Herm.
Rob Turner was the most recent guy for us. Maybe he'll catch on somewhere, maybe he won't. But, he was probably ready for a change instead of being pigeon-holed as the versatile backup for the Jets.
I liked Goodwin though, and while our Guards aren't horrible, he would be a quality player for this team.
I don't know why it didn't work out in NY but am happy he turned into a legit starter, just wish it was here instead.
Sent from my LG-P999
BTW, it's pretty easy to complain about this move looking backwards. Since you've always liked the guy, though, can you point me to your posts from 2005 complaining about how letting him walk was a mistake? I assume they existed, otherwise this thread would be pretty damn pathetic
robert turner was a very reliable C/G for us also
2 pretty good reasons why Turner isn't here anymore. There were no circumstances like that surrounding Goodwin's departure that I can recall....
And revischrist..... just for you brother and take this with you....
Last edited by ARodFLKeysJetsFan; 11-20-2012 at 06:41 PM.


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Mission Statement
Serving as a connection between students and the wider University community, the Office of Undergraduate Advising advises and advocates for students to improve their decision-making skills, enabling them to explore and choose majors and pursue academic and personal goals. The Office, much like other academic departments, engages in instruction within a body of knowledge and learning with students. The Office also affirms the role of academic advising in supporting institutional mission and the stated goals of the College of Arts & Sciences.
See important dates for this semester
What We Do
- Provide academic advising to CAS undergraduate students, primarily open majors with back-up assistance provided for major departments. Assist students in accommodating their academic program to the changing University and school-wide graduation and degree requirements.
- Assist in the management of the faculty advisory component of the Seminar for Freshmen course.
- Support academic advising for non-Freshman undeclared students in the college.
- Actively assist undeclared students in exploring options in choosing a major.
- Supplement academic advising services for conditionally admitted students.
- Supplement academic advising services for students placed on academic probation.
- Provide initial advising and program re-evaluation for students transferring from the Sawyer School of Business.
- Coordinate advising activities at all CAS undergraduate orientation sessions.
- Provide information sessions on academic advising and the curriculum to parent groups, Admission events, guidance counselor networks (local, national, international).
- Work with department chairs, faculty, admission, and Dean of Students to resolve conflicts arising out of academic advising issues.
- Provide leadership and direction for centralized outreach efforts to improve student retention in the College.
- Provide a "home base" for the Archer Fellows program .


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Ice rink brings smiles
WAPAKONETA - Throughout the day Friday, those involved with the Children's Hometown Holiday helped to construct the opening highlight of the event, the ice skating rink. Children were able to enjoy an evening on the rink Friday with the fun continuing today until 3 p.m.
Elaine Poppe, chair of Children's Hometown Holiday, said that there used to be ice skating in and near Wapakoneta, but due to unsafe ice it hasn't been possible in recent years.
"All of the older folks fondly recall skating on the river and the fire barrel along side where you could warm your hands," she said. "We often hear stories about how everyone liked to come watch the skaters even if they did not have skates of their own."
The rink that Poppe and others involved with Children's Hometown
See Ice, Page 6A
Holiday is a little bit different, but enjoyable nevertheless for youth and their families.
"The families of course do not have to have their own skates and there is someone at our rink to sharpen and create the skating ambiance complete with Christmas music, decorations provided by Village Green and signs provided by Schneider Signs."
The owners of the rink also bring along a snow "machine" that is very popular with the young skaters. It doesn't appear that this year's event will have much need for the snow machine as a light snow fell Friday as the first skaters took to the rink and was expected to continue into the evening.
Jessica and Hannah Greiwe came to the ice skating rink soon after it opened Friday and spent almost an hour out on the ice. Jessica, who celebrated her 10th birthday on Friday, enjoyed skating at Children's Hometown Holiday for the first time.
"You have fun," she said. Sister Hannah has skated before on family trips to Pittsburgh, but loves that Wapakoneta gets an ice rink once a year. "It's fun, you get to skate around the rink as much as you want."
The ice skating rink even brought out more seasoned skaters. Lacey Detrick has been taking lessons for several years in Troy. Lacey practiced on the ice before performing at 4:30 Friday evening.
"I think it's great," she said of the rink in Wapakoneta. "I like to see the smiles on kids faces because I don't think there's an ice skating rink near here."
This year's sponsors are several local businesses including G.A. Wintzer and Son, Attorney John Poppe, TSC, Wapakoneta Area Community Foundation, Midwest Electric, the Eagles, Amvets Post 333, Harvest Baptist Church, Alan Davis Insurance, Glacier Hills Lakes, Ring Containers and Kantner and West Chiropractic.
"Most of them are the same generous folks who have been supporting this favorite event since it started," Poppe said. The rink has been a crowd favorite for three years as part of Children's Hometown Holiday.
Friday the halls of the fire station were also filled with candy and treasures that Santa told the Poppe and the other organizers to have ready for he and his Octagon Club elves to pass out today.
Friday included a lot of other prep work for the event. "It was a busy day for Santa's elves young and old, everywhere in Wapakoneta," Poppe said.
"The line up for the parade is set, the barricades are readied and the stores and businesses finished their preparations for visits from the children of Wapakoneta.
"A special surprise this year is that Ralphie will be 'live' in the window at Casa Chic with his bunny suit, Red Ryder gun and his dad's dubious leg lamp."
All of the events during Children's Hometown Holiday are free for all children and families and open to the public.


text:
Good Morning, Senna! It's always a good morning when there is a cute tabby on my screen in the morning! So nice of you to allow pictures to be posted - I know it's such a chore. :rolleyes:
It sounds like you're a wonderful companion for your family and a well deserving COTD! You have a super special day and enjoy the extra treats coming your way!:D


text:
Originally Posted by Axl Rose
RIP Craigos. A true CW legend. You will be missed.
FTR I would like this thread stickied and then a responsible mod, so I'm thinking vic_orthdox, James, Rich2001, four_or_six, Somerset, Fusion, nightprowler10, Neil Pickup, Matt79 or Teja, to delete any posts by posters who have infraction points. If a poster receives an infraction after posting in the thread, that's fine provided they don't do so in future. This is an important thread.
I just realised PEWS booked me for avoiding the filter months ago. WAC.
Brad McNamara @bbuzzmc
Will say this once and then nothing else. Defamation laws quite clear in Aus.be careful.
Wait, GIMH hasn't got any infraction points?
The news is just coming out that Hell has frozen over.
Well isn't somebody going to delete Spikey's post?
i'm still on 0 babeh
R.I.P Craigos, you were a champion bloke. One of the best
R.I.P Fardin 'Bob' Qayyumi
Member of the Church of the Holy Glenn McGrath
"How about you do something contstructive in this forum for once and not fill the forum with ****. You offer nothing." - theegyptian.
"There's more chance of SoC making a good post than Smith averaging 99.95." - Furball
"**** you're such a **** poster." - Furball
Is there something vBulletin can do to stop undesirables from posting in this thread? I'd feel safer
That's no way to talk about your fellow zeros.
Signs in.
Want to be the online Don Bradman or Ian Salisbury?
Then join CW Cricket today. It's what all the cool kids desire.
RIP Craig Walsh (Craig) 1985-2012
RIP Hughesy 1988-2014
As fa as I can see this thread is made up of mainly Australians. WHO ARE THE ****ING CONVICTS NOW, HUH?
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)


text:
People line up to buy train tickets at Changsha Railway Station in Changsha, in southern China's Hunan province. Million of Chinese are expected to cramp onto China's train network in the coming weeks to return home for the Chinese lunar new year that starts on Jan. 23, 2012.
Chinese bullet trains are pretty amazing, but how about some online ticket sales?
AP reports: BEIJING — Chinese Internet users accused the government Thursday of failing to take responsibility for a deadly bullet train crash after it said 54 officials were to blame but none would face criminal charges.
"It looks like they found some scapegoats to fire," said a note posted on the popular Sina Weibo microblogging service.
The government said Wednesday that design flaws and mismanagement caused the July 23 crash that killed 40 people and ignited a public outcry about the high costs and dangers of such prestige projects. It said officials including a former railway minister who had been fired before the crash were to blame and would face reprimands and demotions.
Travelers line up to buy train tickets at a railway station in Hefei, in central China's Anhui province.
China plans further cut to railway spending


text:
Better literacy leads to a better ability to spot the poorly written bogus come-ons that get you infected when you click on them? I just can't believe it.
Better literacy leads to a better ability to spot the poorly written bogus come-ons that get you infected when you click on them? I just can't believe it.
Not from what I've seen...
Having a techie friend call to fix it when it's broke is what gets most people out of the jam.
Though with my friends, I charge $60/hr to friends to fix their computers on the side. As a consequence I do maybe two side jobs a year. I don't want to do side work, and when they know that it'll cost probably $120 to get their $500 computer fixed, they do tend to be at least a little more careful.
Better literacy leads to a better ability to spot the poorly written bogus come-ons that get you infected when you click on them? I just can't believe it.
Not from what I've seen... Having a techie friend call to fix it when it's broke is what gets most people out of the jam. Though with my friends, I charge $60/hr to friends to fix their computers on the side. As a consequence I do maybe two side jobs a year. I don't want to do side work, and when they know that it'll cost probably $120 to get their $500 computer fixed, they do tend to be at least a little more careful.
Amen brotha.
No one expects a mechanic to fix your engine for free. No one expects a lawyer to draw up a contract for you for free. No one expects a doctor to fix a broken leg for free.
For some reason people think that the guy who spent hundreds of hours of his time mastering this skillset should fix their computers for free. They often act hurt and offended when you decline! I don't understand why people think the principles applying to all those other skillsets magically don't apply to this one.
I wouldn't expect my brother to charge me $60 per hour to fix a fucking computer either.
There's a difference between acting as free labor and acting as an entitled asshole. People will literally work 3 hours free of charge to help you move houses, but they get pissy if you expect the same in return for computer work.
In a professional capacity, I can easily charge twice what he charges and still get business, doesn't mean I will charge above $20/hr to friends.
Exactly. After years of dealing with the same old shit from almost everyone you know, it really does start to get old. It starts to feel as if everyone just uses you as a cushion to catch them when they fall, and never make any attempt to learn a damn thing about what they're doing that they shouldn't be doing themselves to prevent it from happening in the future...
Very few people actually listen and try to understand what I have to say. Those that do and actually follow my suggestions, I rarely ever hea
+5, Beyond Insightful! Well said AC. I never have mod points when I need them.
I've personally given up on helping people with their computers for the most part, because in the end they usually seem to be ungrateful assholes who just want to get out of paying some "real" computer repair shop $70 just to fucking look at the damn thing, and who knows what else on tap of that! A shop in a nearby city I noticed advertises that it will remove viruses (that's it!) for a whopping $90. I'm done being walked all
Mine have been forcefully switched to Linux. Much easier to support since I've set up ssh reverse tunnel with port forwarding for vnc. So if a PC is online, I can fix it. If not -- there's a custom LiveCD which does the same trick with reverse ssh.
Oh, and no problems with malware whatsoever.
A few years ago I set up my parents with Ubuntu LTS, since they wanted something that worked and I didn't want to update it every 6 months. Everything was working fine, until my sister's dickhead boyfriend "upgraded" it to the latest version and messed everything up. From then on, when my parents had trouble I referred them back to dickhead boyfriend, since he evidently volunteered to maintain their OS from then on. Once it involved responsibility he wouldn't do shit, and I wasn't inclined to clean up his m
My sister has an icon on her desktop that says "Connect to Steve at home" and one that says "Connect to Steve at work." She calls me up, I set up the VNC client in listen mode, and she clicks the icon.
I then have access to her machine. All the command line stuff is done in a script attached to that icon. She doesn't have to deal with it. It's not that hard.
Maybe. Maybe not. But it is certainly the answer to support. I can support this. When she was using Windows, her "local" support was Best Buy, and they charged her a ton of money without solving the problems. I'm not local (she's 1100 miles away), and my ability to help over the phone was limited, especially since the last version of Windows I used with any regularity was NT4.
If she gets an iPad, she's on her own. I have no expertise with that.
What if the program isn't there or is broken? What if my
And when she buys an iPad, how are you going to duplicate that setup?
Is it really so hard for you to accept that this family found a solution that works for them?
I mean, if he claimed that everyone on the planet should use Linux or else they're less than human, then I could understand your incessent urge to find some flaw or disaster-waiting-to-happen in "steveg's" setup. But he made no such claim (nor did he claim that Linux is completely invulnerable to security issues). He merely described what worked for his family.
What part of that bothers you?
That may be part of the issue.
However there is the other issue of being able to afford a better infrastructure.
Even a basic Home network in America has the following.
A broadband modem That connects to a Router for their Wireless, This router does basic hardware firewall and acts like a switch between mutable PC's, and even old Wireless systems offer modest encryption. Just by being able to Drop a hundred bucks in equipment we have basic safety. If you are in poor country and don't have a few hundred bucks
tl;dr but malware level can only be one metric and is an incomplete definition of security.
You would expect to find people suffering damaging attacks to their livelihood and important data to be found at a computer with high "security".
But I bet suffering spam and phishing target rich people which should screw up their metric.
That, and dividing the world into territories when it should probably be divided into something else like government, military, private computers, mobile, multinationals, kids, etc.
That, and dividing the world into territories when it should probably be divided into something else like government, military, private computers, mobile, multinationals, kids, etc.
I'm intrigued, how exactly does one go about dividing the world into mobile?
Using older software (older versions of windows that is) and not having access to a "computer guy" in your family, combined with not being able to just "buy a new computer because the old one is broken" or even using official support would lead to simply not being able to deal with malware.
I'm not so sure about that. It's not exactly hard to get a pirate copy of Windows 7 in China. Not sure about Vista or 8 though, but I'd be surprised if they were at all hard to get.
Computers at internet cafes in third-world countries look as scary and diseased as truck stop hookers. One imagines that whoever set up the computers way back when might have been tech savvy, but the owner paid him for his one-time services, then for the next 5-10 years kept the machines running with no updates or virus scans. The staff hired to work there are just babysitting the machines to make sure no one steals them; they have no greater knowledge of how to fix a problem than restarting the computer.
I use these establishments only to plug my notebook into a ethernet jack, but a non-insignificant amount of times, to ask to use your own computer instead of their infectious, malware-ridden machines evokes suspicion that are you are some kind of hacker terrorist and they want you to leave.
I use these establishments only to plug my notebook into a ethernet jack, but a non-insignificant amount of times, to ask to use your own computer instead of their infectious, malware-ridden machines evokes suspicion that are you are some kind of hacker terrorist and they want you to leave.
Extending and embracing your analogy, it's like bringing your own hooker to a truckstop and they want you to leave because they think you're a pimp.
Extending and embracing your analogy, it's like bringing your own hooker to a truckstop and they want you to leave because they think you're a pimp.
I don't think GP would appreciate you calling his metaphorical wife/girlfriend a hooker.
Bring your own notebook doesn't protect you from pharming and other MITM attacks.
Bring your own notebook doesn't protect you from pharming and other MITM attacks.
It does if you only use SSL-enabled web sites.
For gmail users, I believe Chrome (and ChromeOS) now come configured by default to check not just the certificate chain, but even to know which specific certificate to expect. So a compromised CA plus compromised DNS just results in a denial of service. You can also manually check the certificates for other sites you go to (get their fingerprints and write them down when you're at a trustworthy connection).
That's what SSH tunneling is for. Just connect to Wifi, set up an SSH tunnel, and forward all traffic through it. It's just like browsing at home.
Now that's a mighty find report.
Care to compare that rate VS Open Source ?
Because my memory says Microsoft cuts off machines that are pirated so if you are unwilling to spend a month of ones cashflow for software just so you can get patches OR one can choose to eat, pay rent or property taxes, or electricity.
This problem lies at the foot of Microsoft and their usary. Unless they can show that it doesn't by comparing Open Source boxes based on things like FreeBSD or any of the various GNU/Linux forkes suff
"the average piracy rate of countries in the low-CCM cluster was drastically lower than the other clusters. The implications of this observation are complex. Countries that do a better job managing cybersecurity may also do a better job mitigating piracy, or countries with higher piracy rates may have a more difficult time containing malware and other cyber threats."
The purpose of the paper is to influence specific policy decisions, so apparently they can't see the obvious conclusion, that pirated software often comes with malware.
> But how can anything that Microsoft says about malware be trusted when Microsoft's own windows OS can be classified as spyware/rootkit approved by clicking through a multipage EULA?
In poor countries the salaries are so low that people can not afford all the software they want. When you make 6000 US$ a year and only one of the application you need costs 2000 US$ , you resort to piracy. There are many cracked applications available in the WEB and most of them insert backdoor traps, trojans and worms.
The reason is because anti-virus software on these computers is not updated. Reasons for not updating primarily revolve around how expensive it is to connect to the Internet. I don't live in my home country, Zimbabwe. When I did visit the one time I installed Ubuntu on the home PC because half the time the PC was unusable thanks to malware. I blogged about it here http://www.mahalasoft.co.za/blog/ubuntu-linux-experiment [mahalasoft.co.za] . The next time I visited, Windows XP had be reinstalled on the machine because that is what most of the "technies" knew back home, yes the PC was unusable again.
How is this modded insightful?
If it's too expensive for them to connect to the internet to update their anti-virus, it's too expensive for them to connect to the internet and contract malware. That's where the majority of it is coming from. I don't doubt expense might be part of the reason (running unlicensed/unpatched windows machines or trying to find free software that comes riddled with spyware) but I don't see the connection you are making being the primary reason...
In most cases the malware is transported to the unconnected PC via a USB stick that was used at an Internet cafe.
Rich countries have better education, news at 10.
IMHO, much of the correlation with broadband and wealth may have to do with the security model of Microsoft: A multi-billion dollar industry building add-on malware protection that works largely by comparing incoming traffic to an ever-growing list of malware "signatures".
To use one of these protection-and-cleanup services you need to do two things:
- Pay a fee periodically. (The poor need not apply.)
- Download an ENORMOUS table of new signatures from time to time. (Those without broadband
+1 because the math is easy: 99.9% of all Malware lives on Windows, hence more Macs means less Malware.
To make sure you're rich.
Among the actual conservatives, it's to try to help you GET rich.
Of course the Neocons are just in it for the loot.
Countries didn't become rich by accident.
It's a combination of several things, starting with higher IQs [wikipedia.org] and then including things like rule of law, hygiene, political stability and emphasis on learning.
In any part of the world, and in every ethnic group, you will find that some countries have broken away from the others and have generally higher intelligence, thus put a priority on things like stability, rule of law, infrastructure, etc.
It's not an accident they're richer.
In life, all things come down to th
When the dodgy $1 Windows+Office disk comes complete with Malware this is really no surprise. I'm sure the $1 Norton disk also comes with free anti-virus+rootkit.
There are many reasons why malware is so rampant in poor countries.
1. If majority of population cannot afford buying software legally, even those who can afford do not buy it, because they see no reason to pay relatively huge money for something that almost everyone gets for free. Piracy creates increases the risk not only because some pirated software may include malware, but automatic update is often disabled to prevent the pirated version being detected by the vendor.
2. Old computers often mean that they
Look at the spam and malware on your system (if any of the latter). Then do a whois on the IP that the spam and phishing comes from, the original received that has a real IP or domain name. Where do they want your money to *go*?
mark "Nevada? Utah? California? Pennsylvania?"
Wow, Microsoft. Really?
So you're saying that we can solve all of our problems with malware by simply.... becoming richer?
We never thought about that. Thanks for informing us! We'll get right on that immediately!
Cancer rates by country (Age-Standardised Rate per 100,000)
1 Denmark 326.1
2 Ireland 317.0
3 Australia 314.1
4 New Zealand 309.2
5 Belgium 306.8
6 France (metropolitan) 300.4
7 United States of America 300.2
8 Norway 299.1
9 Canada 296.6
10 Czech Republic 295.0
11 Israel 288.3
12 The Netherlands 286.8
50 South African Republic 202.0
49 Albania 202.8
48 Montenegro 204.3
47 Romania 205.1
46 Argentina 206.2
Machines that have broken down will work perfectly when the repairman arrives.


text:
New hire in Mount Oliver has a questionable driving record
August 14, 2012
At the July Mount Oliver Borough swore in Melvin Pollard as its new assistant code enforcement officer.
Council President Billie Michener declined to take questions before the swearing in ceremony, preferring to wait until after Mayor James Cassidy administered the oath to Mr. Pollard.
At the time, members of the gallery questioned Ms. Michener whether the new assistant code enforcement officer had a valid driver's license and if he would be driving a borough vehicle. The council president assured the residents in attendance Mr. Pollard did have a valid driver's license and that he would be driving his personal vehicle.
She also said he wasn't going to be paid, but didn't answer when asked if he would be working for free.
Unfortunately, Ms. Michener's choice for her assistant code enforcement officer may be uniquely qualified to chase down deadbeats in the borough. According to municipal court records available on the Internet, Melvin Pollard has outstanding balances on traffic and parking violations in the city of Pittsburgh, Homestead and Baldwin.
Ms. Michener didn't request a background check on Mr. Pollard, as she did when the new borough secretary was recently hired. If she had, she would have learned her new assistant code enforcement officer was in court as recently as July 2 when he was found guilty of driving with a suspended or revoked license.
Over the past several years, his violations ranged from illegally parking where prohibited by official signs and not obeying traffic-control devices, to failure to use the safety belt system and driving without a license (the charge changed from driving while operating privileges suspended or revoked) to actually driving while operating privileges suspended or revoked.
According to information gathered from Pennsylvania's Unified Judicial System's web portal, Mr. Pollard was found guilty of driving without a license, the charge reduced down from driving while operating privileges suspended or revoked, and disorderly conduct in either a physical or hazardous manner in Brentwood Borough in 2010.
In 2010 he was referred to a collection agency by the city of Pittsburgh for a $75 fine on an obedience to traffic-control devices charge; a $60 fine for a failure to use a safety belt; and, a $260 fine for driving without a license (reduced down from driving while operating privileges suspended or revoked.
He still has a past due balance of $51.50 for illegally parking where official signs prohibit in the city of Pittsburgh from 2010.
Mr. Pollard has another hearing scheduled on August 21 in Magisterial District Judge Thomas R. Torkowsky's court from charges of driving while operating privileges suspended or revoked and driving without a valid inspection in Homestead Borough on February 12 of this year.
As recently as August 8, Mr. Pollard missed making a payment of $318 in Magisterial District Judge John N. Bova's courtroom for a fine for the same charge of driving while his operating privileges were suspended or revoked and driving without a valid inspection on March 11 of this year in Baldwin Borough.
According to court officials, when a driver in Pennsylvania is found guilty of driving with a suspended or revoked license, they lose their license for an additional year.
On July 16 The South Pittsburgh Reporter, under Pennsylvania's Open Records law, requested a copy of Mr. Pollard's resume that was submitted to the borough, his application for the position he was hired for, the job description of the position he was hired for and how much he would be paid.
The borough sent back a reply saying the solicitor needs an additional 30 days to study the request. As of deadline for this week's edition, the requested materials haven't been received yet.


text:
Law office of Brodsky & Smith, LLC announces that it is investigating potential claims against the Board of Directors of Sauer-Danfoss, Inc. ("Sauer-Danfoss" or the "Company") (NYSE: SHS) relating to the proposed acquisition by Danfoss A/S ("Danfoss"). Under the terms of the transaction, Sauer-Danfoss shareholders will receive only $49.00 in cash for each share of Sauer-Danfoss stock they own. The investigation concerns possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of state law by the Board of Directors of Sauer-Danfoss for not acting in the Company's shareholders' best interests in connection with the sale process to Danfoss. The transaction may undervalue the Company and will result in a loss many Sauer-Danfoss shareholders. For example Sauer-Danfoss stock traded at $60.25 on May 11, 2011 and $52.73 as recently as November 29, 2012. In addition, Danfoss currently owns approximately 76% of Sauer-Danfoss's outstanding shares and may be taking advantage of its position as the majority shareholder. If you own shares of Sauer-Danfoss stock and wish to discuss the legal ramifications of the proposed transaction, or have any questions, you may e-mail or call the law office of Brodsky & Smith, LLC who will, without obligation or cost to you, attempt to answer your questions. You may contact Jason L. Brodsky, Esquire or Evan J. Smith, Esquire at Brodsky & Smith, LLC, Two Bala Plaza, Suite 602, Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004, by e-mail at firstname.lastname@example.com visiting http://brodsky-smith.com/510-shs-sauer-danfoss-inc.html, by calling toll free 877-LEGAL-90.
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text:
Three tiger cubs abandoned by their mother have found an unusual replacement - a white Swiss Shepherd dog called Tallim.
The cubs were rejected by their natural mother, a tigress called Bagira, soon after their birth in a Russian zoo on November 14.
The Oktyabrsky zoo in the Black Sea resort of Sochi immediately advertised the vacant position of a tiger mother on the internet.
Staff had been prepared for the situation because Bagira had abandoned two other newborn cubs five months previously.
They found a white Swiss Shepherd dog from Yeysk, in the Krasnodar region, to take over.
The canine is now feeding and nurturing the three cubs - two males named Olymp and Dar and one female named Talli after her adoptive mother.
Although the tiger cubs initially showed their claws and hissed, Tallim nursed them patiently and afterwards showered them with attention, nudging them playfully.
The zoo staff say the tiger cubs do not pose any threat to their adoptive mother.


text:
A run against recidivism
DYS program aims to help young offenders to get back on the right track
As "Smooth" by Santana blared over the loudspeakers, 16-year-old Jerrell could see the finish line.Encouraged by his running partner, Jerrell, who had already been moving at a quick pace, exploded into a full sprint, dashed across the finish line, and completed his first half-marathon.
He collected his gold-colored medal, high-fived his partner, and headed straight to a table lined with paper cups of Gatorade. Dressed in a black dry-wick T-shirt and shorts, he blended in with the other sweaty runners who had finished "Boston's Run to Remember," an annual event that honors police officers killed in the line of duty.
Unlike the other runners, however, Jerrell was not going home after the race. He would instead head straight to the Judge Connelly Youth Center, a high-security 57-year-old concrete building in Roslindale where he and 10 other residents were detained for crimes as serious as carjacking, armed assault, and gun possession. (The Globe does not identify juvenile offenders unless they have been prosecuted as adults.)
For a little longer, however, Jerrell enjoyed being outside and reveled in an accomplishment that only a few months before seemed impossible.
"I just feel good," he said, standing near the finish line at South Boston's World Trade Center. "I just feel good I finished it."
Jerrell and other residents of the Department of Youth Services facility began running in February, as the newest members of "Sole Train: Boston Runs Together," a program started in 2009 for teenagers in poorer sections of the city. The goal of the program, started by a mental health clinician who works with the department, is to encourage young people to strive for something big, like running a half-marathon, as a way to pump up their self-
esteem and think more positively about their future. The day of the half-marathon last May, 70 Sole Train members, including youth mentors and children as young as 10, ran the race or completed the five-mile run.
Last winter, the clinician — Jessica Leffler, who works for the Trinity Boston Foundation, a youth services group that launched Sole Train with the help of other community groups — pitched the idea of bringing the program to DYS.
She and Tina Saetti, DYS director of operations for the metro region, decided that the grassy field behind the DYS building in Roslindale would be the best place to start.
Surrounded by a chain-link fence and thick coils of barbed wire, the lot is so small that it takes eight laps to cover a mile.
Residents with good behavior who are close to their release date can run outside, supervised, in St. Michael Cemetery, across from the building. The residents run three days a week for one hour, wearing workout clothes donated by Boston police and sneakers donated by New Balance.
The residents immediately embraced running, at first as an excuse to get fresh air.
One April afternoon, 11 teenagers and young men lapped the field, accompanied by case workers and staff.
Anthony jogged to the water cooler, panting as sweat matted his curly brown hair.
"I need to run in the cemetery," he said. "I'm getting dizzy."
Lenny Beatty, the sturdily built facility manager, reminded him how he could get that chance.
"That's the whole point of making good decisions," Beatty said.
"That's me, man," Anthony said, grinning. "I'm a good kid."
Anthony, who turned 17 in May, began getting in trouble when he was 13, soon after his father died. Anthony was shoplifting and hanging out with the wrong crowd.
Then, a friend suggested that they rob people at knifepoint.
"I thought it would be fun, an adrenaline rush," Anthony said.
He was arrested after police caught him and two friends on surveillance tapes robbing college students.
Every day, he goes to class. At night he reads suspense novels. Running breaks up the monotony, said Anthony, who hopes to run a half-marathon this fall.
"I feel like I'm aged," he said. "I feel like I'm five years older, everything I've been through. At DYS, you feel disconnected. You don't know what's going on outside."
Timothy, a 16-year-old who gets out in March 2013, said he feels exhilarated just running in circles.
"It just relieves a lot; you feel like you have a lot less on your shoulders," he said. "If we run in here and it makes me feel like this, imagine how I'll feel running in the cemetery."
Timothy, a lanky teenager with braids and bravado, recalled once seeing the Boston Marathon on television. He quickly flipped the channel.
" 'I ain't watching this. It's boring. I wouldn't even do this,' " he told himself. "Now I think: 'I can do it. I'm going to win. Watch.' "
Saetti said it is too early to say whether the running program lowers recidivism. But for those still in custody, there has been a marked change, she said. Once-aggressive residents are considerably calmer. Those who had low self-esteem seem more confident and focused.
"It's sort of transformational," Saetti said. The runs are "a stress release, a way to get out that anxiety you have and get that natural adrenaline," she said.
The day of the half-
marathon, one resident was forced to bow out when he pulled a leg muscle. Another failed to wake up in time.
Jerrell was determined to see it through. He called his mother and begged her to come at 7 a.m., the race starting time, and went to sleep early. "This is the first time he worked so hard for something," his mother said.
He finished in two hours and 18 minutes. When he saw his mother at the finish line, he hugged her tightly.
He collapsed into bed almost immediately after he got back, but not before showing off his medal.
To Anthony, it looked like a real first-place medal. He wanted one. "It'll be a good accomplishment," he said, "finishing something, 13 miles."
Maria Cramer can be reached at email@example.com.


text:
Original URL: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/23/tv_audience_measures/
No one watches TV, Nielsen, and you know it
Scraping social media doesn't work either
Posted in Policy, 23rd June 2012 10:00 GMT
Even in the modern world where there is more pay TV, there are few, if any, sources of professional video where consumers can know that they will encounter little or no advertising.
Pay TV networks such as Comcast, DirecTV and Time Warner Cable in the US – and Sky and Liberty Global in Europe – all carry the advertising which is sold into the channels they carry, and they add a sheen of their own advertising in the VoD, EPG or other portions of their content delivery.
Adverts are not only here to stay, but they are proliferating, and form a bedrock of revenue that prevents consumers from bearing the full financial cost of content creation.
And for as long as TV is watched every day within around 1.5 billion households globally, there will need to be ways of measuring the audience for programmes that are watched – and those which are barely tuned into – in order to put a value on that advertising.
This week, Time Warner Cable (TWC) put out a paper that attempts to make sense of new methods coming to market which try to put a different spin on the way TV audiences are measured. Nielsen is the big bad boss of the audience measurement industry and at Faultline we have had no problems criticising some of its frequent statements, mostly because the company continues to purvey the myth that TV viewing is growing, and while we would not argue that video watching is on the rise, we can see sometimes that straightforward linear TV viewing is dying on its feet.
We know of nobody who watches linear TV if it can be avoided, and yet Nielsen continues to put forward the idea that this is on the rise. This is, in part, because there is no room for a dissenting voice and Nielsen, almost a monopoly, can say what it likes.
Each year, sometimes each quarter, Nielsen changes its methodology slightly in order to make its numbers add up. TWC, along with the authors of the paper – titled "Programme Value in the Evolving Television Audience Marketplace" – have explored the idea that simply calculating how many hours a TV is switched on in a household is no longer enough, and that asking people what they watched does little more than that. Instead some measurement of "engagement" needs to emerge.
But while this paper is shrewd and intelligent at some levels, it entirely misses the point and analyses purely what's going on in audience measurement, rather than putting forward any theories of what else might be tried. You can download the paper here (PDF).
Why scraping comment from social media is just not accurate
The issue is that a number of measurement companies, perhaps as many as a dozen, are using screen-scraping and text-analysis tools to take comments off the public segments of social network and movie criticism sites, and attempts to parse them to establish how many positive and negative comments are made about each TV programme. They then use this as a measure of audience engagement, to go with Nielsen measures of People Meter samples which say which programmes were watched.
The paper cites operations such as General Sentiment, Radian6, Crimson Hexagon, Bluefin and Trendrr.tv, as well as opt-in versions.
GetGlue, Miso, IntoNow, Wikia, and SocialGuide all want to be the next Nielsen.
Right now US networks are all subscribing to multiple audience measurements, and with good reason. When a programme has a low level of absolute views, the only way to argue up the price of advertising on those networks is to claim – and perhaps prove – that the viewers are more "engaged," which might mean they are more loyal or that they actually pay attention when they watch this programme, instead of also doing their homework.
In fact, perversely, talking to friends on Facebook about a TV programme may indicate greater involvement, or not. It may be that a) splitting your attention between Twitter or Facebook and the TV, means you take your eyes off the screen more often, and b) that the people you are talking to may bring up other subjects and take your mind OFF what you are watching, leading to a lower level of engagement.
Another issue is that screen scraping of social media does not distinguish between comments made while watching the TV programme and those made in response to a question brought up after the programme ran. For instance a dialog on Facebook happening the morning after a popular show might go, "Did you see Twilight last night?" and the answer may be: "No, don't you think Taylor Lautner is mental?" "Yeah he's sick."
Now to a piece of software that is expected to analyse these words, it might conclude that Lautner is not popular. But of course that language is high praise when it comes from a female 14-year-old's vernacular. But beyond that, even if a comment on an actor is a poor one, it might be because he is a very well-acted villain, and surely that means a high level of engagement with the programme, not a low one? The whole idea of using social media has come up with these companies not because just because it's "possible" but because it is relatively easy to scrape comments from the public walls of Facebook and from Twitter feeds.
No one has said that this is the BEST way to measure audience engagement, but it's one that is available to lots of players. The paper makes this and other points and talks about this being problematic, and so is coming up with a semantic scoring system for comments. Surely measuring the volume of comments relative to comments about other shows tells us more than trying to work out who likes the show versus who doesn't.
While Facebook does not play in this market, it actually has the edge, in that it could peep inside of every Facebook message even the private ones, and let's face it, most social media comments made during TV shows are made in the private messages of Facebook, and these are the least available to mass distortion by the programme makers. They might otherwise create tons of fake Facebook addresses and fill them with commentary about a TV programme (or if you created a million fake Facebook accounts could they be made to talk non-stop about TV programmes, automatically?)
The light's on, but is anyone home?
But still these services offer something better than Nielsen, simply because of the 20 rule. The 20 rule is that every person under the age of 20 in any particular US house leaves a TV on, when they leave a room. It is also the N+1 principle. In any given US home, however many people there are in the home at a given point, this many TVs are left turned on, plus one. Nielsen has our sympathy in trying to accurately measure this. Its people meters ask people to turn on the meter when they enter a room and switch it off when they leave, but young viewers will wander between programmes and rooms incessantly and when asked say: Yes, they watched both programmes, in both rooms.
Because of young people's ability to multi-task, they may even be able to supply the plot of two TV programmes they viewed at one time, with some accuracy. They will however, have no recall of the adverts, because that's when they turned to their tablets and laptops and Facebooked.
So this kind of obviates ALL of this social media research, and yet it does clearly have a place, and as we said earlier, measuring the social babble on a programme, is a measure of engagement in its own right – the more people write about a programme, the better for likely future engagement. Kids think: "I'd better watch and or catch up with this programmeme, or else I won't have anything to say to everyone else and they will all tell me the plot."
Another problem the TWC paper points out is that the methodology of each supplier is different and for the most part secret so that others won't copy its approach. That makes for a real weakness when advertisers want to compare like with like. So they end up doing something insanely stupid: they compare these new social systems with Nielsen. So that's comparing a system which measures just one thing – who watches for how long – with an engagement measure (who or how many people comment about this programme).
If the Nielsen measure supports the social media measure, they figure it's safe to use, which is the exact opposite of what they should be doing. Some people have figured it out, says the paper, and they use the social metrics to distinguish between two programmes that have the same Nielsen measurement. The one that people talk about more is the one where the advertising should be more expensive.
But of course there are two huge underlying problems with this. Firstly certain segments, age and sex are invisible in social media entirely, and others are over-represented. So while 60-year-olds still respond to adverts, and are less likely to have DVRs, they rarely have millions of friends on Facebook. So it is true that 14 per cent of the population creates 85 per cent of consumer-generated online content and while males make up just 47 per cent of people online, they make up 57 per cent of the population of sites talking about TV programmes, so they skew the data.
This is perhaps why no one gives their methodology, because it will be inordinately complex if it tries to unravel that skew.
What might be interesting is to look at other ways to measure engagement which may soon become available to us. Broadcasters and pay TV operators have apps, either "viewing apps" or "companion apps". If we assume that the great majority of TV content these days is viewed while doing something else with a companion device (in the US this is definitely true, with the same starting to happen elsewhere), then if both the TV and the companion device are focused on the same TV programme, that might be considered 100 per cent of engagement.
If they watch TV and comment on it simultaneously on a social media site, then that too is 100 per cent of engagement. We would never know which people were commenting on which programmes, but a correlation between the amount of social commentary done in real time plus viewing figures, might get us there.
But apps which listen to your screen, recognise a TV programme and then offer you companion data for that programme, could also be the primary form of audience viewing collection (except for those irresponsible teenagers who leave their tablet in one room listening to the TV, while doing their homework in front of another TV in another).
Of course the reach of tablets needs to become almost universal, something we cannot count on until at least a five-year time frame. Another area that might be fruitful is the search and recommendation elements that are gradually being put into pay TV systems, which will come to fruition over a similar period.
If a system holds recommendations for an individual, then those programmes are more likely to get viewed. Combine this with metrics on how many programmes are watched all the way through, which in many cases came from the recommendation process in the first place or from a recorded search process, and if that data was amalgamated, it would form the backbone of what "will" be watched in the coming days.
There is the problem that the method of finding a programme, using an EPG, or zapping or search, changes your attitude to the programme, and that in turn may make audiences more or less engaged. If it takes you hours to find a programme and you come in halfway through, that may lead to less engagement, for instance.
Combine all of this with underlying demographics on the household and that could form the basis for advertising placements based on programmes that are going to attract big audiences, but which may not all be watched at the same time, but which will have a high level of engagement, due to the high levels of calculated interest. Anyway, that would be in the future, when the EPG is fully replaced by search and recommendation platforms.
Facebook + new partner = next Nielsen?
But for now we feel that the social media side of this is a no-brainer and whatever the system of choice in a few years, it will need to have a social media element. So how about this?
Facebook needs to partner with someone, perhaps Nielsen, perhaps a newcomer, to make available all the TV commentary which is buried in Facebook and perhaps do this in partnership with Twitter, and provide one definitive social media "buzz" factor to augment traditional audience measurement.
Actually if Facebook could simply leverage aggregated social media commentary in all walks of life, it could probably double its revenue without showing a single advert of its own. So that would be comments about movies, but also comments about other brands, music, devices, etc...
Whichever way we end up going, this will be a slow process. Until Nielsen produces its own social measure (something it has had a stab at), it will undermine any other social media offerings out there in order to continue its hegemony and also because there are two issues here.
First coming up with a better audience measure metric which can be safely collected, and Second getting the acceptance of the advertising industry – these two are not the same thing, one lagging the other by a good few years.
Companies like Optimedia have come up with its Content Power Ratings, and these are supposed to be derived from a combination of data sources, including social media. Nielsen worked with the Sundance Channel (says the paper) to develop what it calls its Measurement Innovation Metric, which also captures a television audience's loyalty, engagement and ad receptivity.
So already the paper argues there is a two tier system. No-one is content to stay purely with eyeball counts any longer, so there is progress. But similarly a token introduction of social media by the same audience partners everyone is used to, could highjack any genuine change in how audiences are measured.
Finally Addressable advertising, where it is possible, has the power to change all that. Putting adverts into programmes in real time, to the right people who are known to have an interest in a subject, who have the wherewithal to afford the advertised product and who are watching TV now, and perhaps even watching a programme on a similar subject, leverages advertising appeal by multiple dimensions.
So, you have to measure by demographic, region and proven interest, and if anyone sets up such a system, they have already moved beyond engagement metrics, and we note that many pay TV operators have already begun to move down the addressable advertising route, although its acceptance among advertising agencies is almost zero at this point.
Copyright © 2012, Faultline
Faultline is published by Rethink Research, a London-based publishing and consulting firm. This weekly newsletter is an assessment of the impact of the week's events in the world of digital media. Faultline is where media meets technology. Subscription details here.


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Want to remind yourself or a friend about this program? Fill out this simple form and klru will email you a reminder on the day that it will air.
Remembering Julia
series: Sara's Weeknight Meals
air date: 5/15/13 7:00 AM
Sara pays tribute to her mentor, Julia Child, by cooking favorite dishes from their years together on Julia Child and More Company and Good Morning America. With lots of never-before-seen photos and archival footage, Sara whips up her versions of Julia's French favorites such as Broccoli and Goat Cheese Souffleed Omelet, Fish Meuniere and Chicken Cassoulet.
WARNING: Email reminders for this program have already been sent out. Your reminder may not reach the intended address in time for this program's airing.
Back to TV Schedule


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Series begins with a new acrylic painting, The Rain Out. Jerry sketches in the basic landscape and begins blocking in the background. The focus is on composition and establishing a focal point. The next three episodes will take you systematically through this painting.
Visit the Website: http://www.yarnellart.com
Episode #801 / Length: 27 minutes


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I am a self confessed lip balm addict. I've tried down right weird ones, very pretty ones and I've even taught you to make your own.
Monu is a brand I like despite it's simplicity and I recently got a sample of the lip balm to test. This product is quite unconventional, in that it is a cream lip balm and comes in a tube with a pump:
Please excuse this lame photograph – photos are about to get a lot better on this blog by the way, now that I have the beautiful Nikon D7000!
This lip balm is supposed to do everything a normal lip balm does; sooth dry lips, protect from the sun and leave a plump, soft, smooth result.This lip balm also contains Rose essential oil, wheat germ oil, beeswax and vitamin A and E.
I would describe this as a thick white cream, similar to a rich eye balm. It does feel odd applying something of this kind of texture to the lips, since I'm used to applying waxy products to the lips.
This product reminds me a lot of the Aesop Lip Balm I bought a while ago, but thicker.
This product has it's advantages and disadvantages.
On the good side, it sinks in quickly, it leaves the lips very soft and is the perfect night time repair treatment. It smells of roses and I did notice less lines on my lips when using this.
On the negative side, the packaging makes it difficult to randomly reapply like you would with a normal lip balm. The cream also can leave a residue on the lips – whilst this is nothing major if you are applying a lipstick on top you may want to know that you lips will be a bit 'greasy'.
Also if you end up eating a bit – it doesn't taste very nice!
Despite the minor negatives, this is a really interesting product for lip lovers – I wouldn't use this too much in the day but as a night time lip balm I think it's excellent. My lips are in better condition since using this although I do forget now and again!
If you are ok with using cream on your lips and with the slightly awkward pump action tube, then this could be for you.
Check out the lip balm here for £9.25.


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Sunday Shrimp Pasta Bake Recipe
Popular Videos
- 12 ounces uncooked vermicelli
- 1 medium green pepper, chopped
- 5 green onions, chopped
- 6 tablespoons butter, cubed
- 6 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 2 pounds cooked medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
- 1 teaspoon celery salt
- 1/8 teaspoon pepper
- 1 pound process cheese (Velveeta), cubed
- 1 can (10 ounces) diced tomatoes and green chilies, drained
- 1 can (4 ounces) mushroom stems and pieces, drained
- 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
- Preheat oven to 350°. Cook vermicelli according to package directions.
- Meanwhile, in a large skillet, saute green pepper and onions in butter until tender. Add garlic; cook 1 minute longer. Gradually stir in flour until blended. Stir in shrimp, celery salt and pepper; cook, uncovered, over medium heat 5-6 minutes or until heated through.
- In a microwave-safe bowl, combine process cheese, tomatoes and mushrooms. Microwave, uncovered, on high 3-4 minutes or until cheese is melted, stirring occasionally. Add to shrimp mixture. Drain vermicelli; stir into skillet. Pour into a greased 13x9-in. baking dish. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.
- Bake, uncovered, 25-30 minutes or until heated through. Yield: 8 servings.
Reviews forSunday Shrimp Pasta Bake
My Review
Average Rating
"If the shrimp is already cooked, then cooked again in the sauce on the stove, then baked, won't it be horribly overcooked?"
"We love this recipe! Great taste and company worthy! Can't stop eating it! Followed the recipe, no changes!"
"Like Kristine, I've been making this for my family since it first appeared in 2006. Even though most of our 6 kids are grown & living away from home now, this is still popular whenever they come home. The only change I make is to eliminate the green pepper because my hubby gets sick from it. Otherwise, I make it exactly as written & it's always terrific. Leftovers are great, too!"
"Just made this dish again last week and have made it often since February 2006, when it first appeared in TOH magazine. My family loves this, and it's a great company dish [I use white American cheese instead of the Velveeta, because of a severe allergy to Annatto, the food dye used in Velveeta]."
"Awesome receipe...it is one of our favorites."
"Have made several times, always a hit!"
"Have made this several times, so good! I also made it for work with chicken instead of shrimp due to a coworkers allergies and that was also good. A keeper!"
"EXCELLENT! Family LOVED! But dangerous.... Hard to stop eating it!!!"
"the green chilies made it a little too spicy for my families taste. The vermicelli seemed to stick together. Thin spaghetti might have been better. We only needed to serve 4 and weren't sure if it could be frozen for later."


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Boulder police ask that anyone with additional information about the Zachary Thomas Meints case call the department's tip line at 303-441-1974. Those who wish to remain anonymous can call Northern Colorado Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS or 1-800-444-3776.
A former Boulder Hockey Club youth coach was arrested Thursday on suspicion of Internet sexual exploitation of a minor in a case police say so far involves at least five victims who were under the age of 15.
Zachary Thomas Meints, 23, is being held at the Boulder County Jail without bond. He is scheduled to make his first appearance in court on five felony counts today.
Boulder police spokeswoman Kim Kobel said detectives are still trying to determine whether Meints -- who was fired from his coaching position in September -- ever had inappropriate physical contact with any of the alleged victims.
"We do believe there are more victims," Kobel said following Thursday's arrest. "We are asking people to call the tip line or the police. If they have any information about any suspicious behavior, we'd like to know about that, too."
Boulder police first learned of the allegations against Meints in September, after somebody tipped off the FBI, and the federal agency passed on the information to Boulder police.
Kobel said police have interviewed 13 potential victims or witnesses, and those interviews yielded more potential witnesses and victims. The incidents under investigation date back to September 2009, and so far includes five victims who were under the age of 15 at the time of the crimes -- representing each of the felony charges.
Police executed a search warrant of Meints' phone and computer, the results of which are sealed.
Hockey officials 'shocked'
Dennis Hefter, president of the Boulder Valley Hockey Foundation, said he was "shocked" when he heard that Meints had been arrested. He said he knew an investigation into Meints had begun in September, but he wasn't aware of the details.
Meints was dismissed as a part-time employee of the Boulder Hockey Club -- he worked at the foundation-owned Boulder Valley Ice rink in Superior -- as soon as police began their investigation, Hefter said. First-tier hockey team Rocky Mountain RoughRiders, which in the fall hired Meints as an assistant coach for their 15-years-old-and-under team, also fired him in September, Hefter said.
"If anybody thought any of these things were in Zach's capabilities, we would have gotten rid of him before then, obviously," Hefter said.
Hefter said Meints spent a couple of years as a volunteer coach with the Boulder Hockey Club, coaching the Midget Major AA team (17 and 18 years old) and the Midget Minor AA team (15 and 16 years old).
Hefter said the Colorado Amateur Hockey Association does background checks on all candidates before they are allowed to coach.
"Is there anything else we could have done here, besides background checks, to prevent this?" Hefter asked.
Colorado court records do not show any previous adult arrests for Meints.
Hefter said he hasn't been told by authorities whether any of Meints' alleged victims were players on his teams.
Gina Finney's husband is a coach within the Boulder Hockey Club for a different level of players.
She said parents of kids in the league were trading messages Thursday about the arrest.
"My first reaction as a parent in Boulder Hockey Club is just the time that we as a family put into hockey," she said. "To hear something like this is happening is very disconcerting because of how it impacts our life."
Talking to your kids
The Boulder Police Department has a unit that specializes in crimes against children and family crimes. Kobel said detectives want parents to be aware of certain warning signs that their children are experiencing sexual abuse or inappropriate sexual contact. Those include mood changes, declining school grades, sexualized behavior, secretive behavior, not sleeping or eating well and a relationship with an adult that doesn't seem normal.
If parents suspect something inappropriate is happening, they should talk with their children in a calm, supportive way, Kobel said.
Try not to get angry or upset in front of the child because that might cause then not to be forthcoming. Many children don't want to upset their parents, Kobel said.
"It's important that the child feel safe," Kobel said.
And if your child does reveal any inappropriate contact with an adult, Kobel said, "believe the child and report it to police."
Kobel said parents also should monitor their children's cell phone and computer use and talk to their children about what is and isn't appropriate behavior.
Camera Staff Writer Heath Urie contributed to this report.


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Plymouth defensive about home record as Rockies host Chargers
PLYMOUTH — Plymouth's "Road Warriors" will return to the Rock on Friday hoping to pick up their first home football win of the 2012 season.
The Rockies, who are 2-0 on the season away from home and a shocking 0-2 at PHS, returned to full strength at Northridge a week ago and the defense responded by pitching a shutout in a 34-0 win. It was a complete turnaround for the unit that was much maligned in the first three games.
"Northridge is a really good football team, and I feel like we smothered them defensively," said Plymouth coach John Barron. "One reason is we changed our scheme. Since I came here as Tom Condon's assistant I've been a 4-4 guy but we finally decided to go with an odd front."
The debate about whether a 3-4 or 4-4 defense is most effective rages all the way to NFL ranks. For the Rockies — as with most teams — it's a matter of personnel.
"More and more people are doing it to us, and we really needed a spark," said Barron. "We needed to put our kids in a position where they could be aggressive. You put a kid like Deandre Pickford at that nose position where he doesn't have to be quite so disciplined, and you have (Ethan) Sampson and (Vincente) Vasquez at those inside (linebacker) spots where in our system they are taught to read the guards on every play and those guards are uncovered right there in front of them.
"In addition it allows a kid like Kyser McCrammer to play in space which is where he is the best. We struggled with pass defense and now those guys have help behind them with two safeties. We really like what we saw, the kids like it, and we're going to do what's best for the personnel we have."
Then there was the offense.
"The numbers speak for themselves — (quarterback) Ike (Kastner) had a great game," said Barron. "But more than just those numbers he affected everybody around him. In the offense we run, if your quarterback is that big a threat to run the football it makes you hard to handle. (Fullback) Sam (Stevens) can beat you by himself and anybody we play is going to have to tie up a bunch of guys to just stop him on that dive. I feel like our wings are pretty good and when your quarterback is that big a threat too it becomes very difficult. With his (Kastner's) game experience it's a matter of managing the offense and worrying about schemes, and that's going to make you better."
"I really like our team right now," he added.
A curious Elkhart Memorial team comes to town Friday with some bizarre numbers for that program. The Crimson Chargers are 0-4 on the year but maybe more shocking is the fact they have managed just three points in those four losses, suffering three straight shutouts, including a strange 2-0 loss to Goshen two weeks ago.
"I really don't know what's up with them. I only know that when you play a school that has as many athletes walking in the hallway as they do you don't take them lightly," said Barron. "Their coach (Bill Roggeman) is in his first year, but he's been a head coach before and he was Tim Dawson's (Concord head football coach) offensive coordinator for years.
"I just know they have a lot of great athletes on that roster and they are a threat to score any time they touch the ball. This is also the game where everything really went south for us last year. We're trying to impress that upon our kids."