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Celebs, they're just like us! They drop off their kids at school, have bad hair days, and are obsessed with Instagram. Yup, there's nothing like the democratizing affect of technology to bring us a little closer to all those beautiful people with bold-faced names. And Christina Milian, the Grammy-nominated singer and social media correspondent for The Voice, couldn't be happier that that's the case.
Milian describes herself as a long-time early adopter of new technologies, from chat rooms and laptops to PDA's and Facebook. If carrying four phones in your designer bag isn't evidence enough of her secret life as a techy we don't know what is. Why four your ask? "You just never know!" says Milian. We can't argue with that!
Recently Milian sat down with us at the Luxe City Center Hotel in Los Angeles to talk about her social media addiction and her most recent online obsession: TheHunt.com. "I'm a shopper" exclaims Milian proudly, but online shopping wasn't a big part of Milian's retail therapy until she started working with The Hunt, the site that turns the work of personal shopping into a social supported search. Itching for a hat just like Kanye's or a dress that looks like Kim's Herve Leger but without the hefty price tag? Post a picture on The Hunt and let your community track it down. So what tops Milian's searches on the Hunt? Think boots and leather pants; looks that take Milian from the red carpet to the stage in no time.
So how does it work to be a celebrity on the Internet these days? As far as social media is concerned, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have been instrumental in giving Milian's fans the opportunity to know her as a personality. "Fans love pictures," says Milian, noting that while a status update is great, images are what drive clicks online.
Milian, who will be releasing a new album this year on Lil Wayne's label Young Money, is also a devoted mother of adorable three-year-old Violet (who gets serious likes on Milian's Instagram feed naturally). See full interview here!


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Bodh Gaya is a religious site and place of pilgrimage associated with the Mahabodhi Temple Complex in Gaya district in the Indian state of Bihar. It is famous as it is the place where Gautama Buddha is said to have obtained Enlightenment.
Pind Daan Or Pitru ShraddhaTour
Pind Daan Or Pitru ShraddhaTour1N Bodhgaya
Itinerary Map
What's Included
Car DetailsRoad transport from Bodhgaya - AC Vehicle
Hotel DetailsHotel options available in the package
|Hotel and Room
|1 night(s)
Standard Room
|Room only
Sightseeing and TransfersOther inclusions available in the package
- All transfers and sightseeing by AC taxis of the kind Indica / Indigo / Tata Sumo / Similar taxi
- The taxis would cover the area as per the defined itinerary. The vehicle will not be at disposal for anything else
Day Wise Itinerary
Here is how you will spend your time
Day 1
Day 01 : Arrival At Bodh Gaya
- Pick up at Airport / Railway Station on arrival at Bodh Gaya / Gaya.
- Visit Vishnupad Temple for carrying out the rituals related to Pind Daan / Pitru Shraadh. Vishnupad Temple is sacred among Hindus and is dedicated to Lord Vishnu. The city has developed around the temple. According to believers and religious texts, the footprints inside the temple are those of Lord Vishnu. As per the Gaya Mahatam mentioned in holy text Vayupuran, anyone who performs rituals here would find salvation. The Pind Daan done at Gaya is also considered a personal way to make offerings on foot prints of Lord Vishnu, thus ensuring all departed souls of our ancestors rest in peace permanently. The temple is built in Shikhara style and is very old. It was again reconstructed in the year 1787, by Ahilya Bai Holkar.
- The temple complex is quite big and houses many images of different Gods and Goddesses. There are many other shrines in and around the temple. Another important temple is of Lord Narsimha, the god which according to Hindu mythology was a man-lion incarnation of Lord Vishnu. The temple and statue is intricately carved and designed and is a major tourist attraction at Gaya.
- Religious rituals are also carried out at Akshayabat and Falgu River. Akshayabat is located in the compound of Vishnupad temple. Akshyavat is a banyan tree, which is believed to be blessed by Sita (wife of Lord Ram) to become immortal and remain green throughout the year.
- After completing the worship, we will leave for hotel for overnight stay.
Day 2
Day 02 : After Completing This Visit Leave For Airport / Railway Station For Return Journey
- After breakfast, visit important sites related to Lord Buddha at Bodh Gaya.
- According to Buddhist traditions, circa 500 BC Prince Gautama Siddhartha, wandering as an ascetic, reached the banks of the river Falgu, near the city of Gaya. There he sat in meditation under a bodhi tree (Ficus religiosa). After three days and three nights of meditation, Siddhartha attained enlightenment and thus became Lord Buddha. He then spent seven weeks at seven different spots in the vicinity meditating and considering his experience.
- The Mahabodhi temple is located in the east adjacent to the original Bodhi tree. It actually stands on the temple erected by Emperor Ashoka and rises in the form of pyramidal spire till it reaches its neck, which is cylindrical in shape. Several Buddhist temples and monasteries have been built by the people of Bhutan, China, Japan, Myanmar, Nepal, Sikkim, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Tibet and Vietnam in a wide area around the Mahabodhi Temple.
- After completing this visit, we leave for Airport / Railway Station for return journey.
Hotels Included
The Royal Residency (4 star)
Domuhan Road, Bodhgaya, Bihar, Bodhgaya, Bihar 824231, Bodhgaya
Cancellation Policy
- The package once booked is refundable and cancellable.
- Flight cancellation will be as per airline cancellation policy.
- Date of booking to 30 days before travel the cancellation charges will be 10% of the tour cost
- 30 to 15 days before travel - cancellation charges will be 50% of the tour cost
- 15 to 7 days before travel - cancellation charges will be 75% of the tour cost
- 0 to 7 days before travel - cancellation charges will be 100% of the tour cost. No refund shall be given
- Please note cancellation policy is subject to change. It depends on the hotel policy. In peak season, some hotels may charge 100% cancellation.
Additional Information
- Check-in at hotel starts from 14:00 hrs.
- Check-out time is until 12:00 hrs.
- Early check-in or late check-out is subject to availability and may be chargeable by the hotel.
- Once your payment has been processed, we will send you an email confirmation.
- You will receive all travel vouchers required for your flights and accommodation shortly afterwards.

subset: commoncrawl


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Candi Rejo Village - Community Based Tourism Project In Central Java
Earlier this year my husband and I experienced the genuine rural life in Central Java. We went along to a village called Candi Rejo. It's located about half-an-hour from Borobudur, the most important Buddhist temple in Indonesia.
We heard from our partners in Indonesia that Candi Rejo has started community based & eco tourism project. We attended learn more about this project. In our perspective, community based tourism means tourism that consults, involves and benefits the local community. We wished to see if it was really the case with this village.
At first, we were not really sure what to expect. We bought our tickets from Bali, made arrangements with all the village chief, and the next thing we know we had been at Jogjakarta's airport.
Our guide was called I.J. (pronounced EE-Jay). She was very friendly and talkative, although her English was limited. She was an interesting lady. She's about 35 years, and everyday she wears a hijab (head scarf) and long sleeves shirt to pay for her arms though the weather was sizzling hot. Obviously it is a normal search for Muslim women there. IJ is really a single mom, raising 2 kids by hand. She is the sole female guide in their own village, and she's very proud of that. She said when there isn't any visitors to guide around she farms just like the rest in the people in their own village.
After we meet IJ we drove for the town, that's about one hour from the airport. The view was amazing. We could see a volcano in the distance while we passed mustard fields, cornfields, tapioca farms and also other kinds of vegetable farms. We also passed a 9th century Buddhist temple called Pawon. It is committed to Kuvera, the God of Fortune.
The very first thing we did when we got to Candi Rejo ended up being meet the village chief. We thought he'd be this older man using a grey mustache much like many other Indonesian government officials. We were surprised once the village chief, Mr. Ian, appeared. A charming 28-year old man, soft spoken and intensely well dressed.
He explained briefly a history of eco-tourism in Candi Rejo. Only a few in years past an Indonesian NGO approached the village and introduced the idea of community-based ecotourism. After many village meetings, the neighborhood in Candi Rejo embraced the concept. The village boasts the benefit of being not far from Borobudur, the biggest Buddhist temple in Indonesia as well as a great wonder of the ancient world. They have a river that can be used for white water rafting, and boasts a nice trail called Watu Kendil, that's the route to Kendil Hill. From the surface of this hill, you can view 5 volcanoes and also the whole construction of Borobudur Temple.
The ecotourism project in Candi Rejo is really a pilot project in Indonesia. The village has about 5,000 people, and majority from the people you can find farmers. The main unit that managed the tourism industry in Candi Rejo is the neighborhood runs cooperative (co-op), not the federal government. The head in the cooperative still reports for the village chief, but the revenue goes directly for the locals.
The locals voluntarily joined the cooperative. For example, individuals who have extra rooms within their houses can join as accommodation providers. People who have horse drawn rickshaws can join the cooperative as one of the village transportation providers. Everyone within the cooperative has to agree using the roster asia green tourism system, which provides the guides, porters, village asia tours, trek trail maintenance, and handicraft sales equal possiblity to make money.
No doubt how the ecotourism project has increased the village's economy. Since Candi Rejo gained its official "tourism village" status in 2003, it has developed into a cleaner and wealthier village. The village chief has ordered every home inside village to cultivate "Rambutan", hawaiian isle fruit tree before their houses. The result is: this village is now very green and shady. The weather in Central Java can get sizzling hot, so these big trees can look after pedestrians from your burning sun.
When we asked the village chief regardless of whether he is worried that particular day the tourism industry would bring outrageous pollution for the village, he was quoted saying the cooperative limit the volume of visitors each year. The tourism programs that they've developed also mainly concentrate on asia green tourism tourism, not touristy programs. So naturally, most of visitors who come to Candi Rejo are green-minded travelers. They want to find out about agriculture as well as to experience the real Javanese rural living.
In 2007, the village saw about 800-900 visitors. We saw photos of these previous visitors. Some schools from Indonesia's big cities have sent students to go to Candi Rejo to understand farming and rural living. It's true that many Indonesian children who grew up inside the big city do not know what the trees and fruit they eat looks like inside the ground. These kinds of learning programs guide them where the food in the market originated from. It also raises awareness one of the students of how important it can be to sustain your environment.
It's not just students from all over Indonesia that visit Candi Rejo. Governments business villages in Indonesia also visit Candi Rejo to discover village tourism and ecotourism.
We can't forget how nice people in Candi Rejo are. Everyone was so friendly and accommodating. We felt that town-based tourism really fit their characters. Their natural eagerness to match their guests made our trip so smooth and memorable.
In Candi Rejo we learned the best way to play the Javanese Gamelan (their traditional musical instruments). We also played volleyball using the locals, that has been very fun! We took the horse rickshaw everywhere during our stay there (0 emission for certain). We were also invited to check out the village chief's house for a community gathering. It feels like i was visiting our house there.
We left Candi Rejo with fond memories of the village. We would go back in a heartbeat. Hopefully the next occasion we could take our travelers there along with us. We're proud how the ecotourism and community-based tourism movement in Indonesia is developing rapidly. We hope these projects can alleviate poverty, create more job opportunities and most importantly sustain Indonesia's ecology.


text:
Already a paid subscriber but not registered for online access yet? For instructions on how to get premium web access, click here.
Q&A with Senate President with Russell Pearce
Even before he became president of the Arizona Senate, Russell Pearce, a conservative Republican from Mesa, was dominating much of the action in the Legislature. But as he takes over the top spot in the Senate, he has lost some of the freedom he had to set his own course.


text: jjh at megalomanic.net wrote: [...meaningful comments...] Thanks! I couldn't agree more. I want to stay out of this thread, but if I were to comment, I couldn't have said it better than you. -- - Michael Lauer <mickey at openmoko.org> http://openmoko.org/ ============================================================================ Software for the worlds' first truly open Free Software mobile phone


text:
Spend the night in Allston
Wiqan Ang for the Boston Globe
D.I.Y. at Shabu-Zen
Can't decide whether to cook at home or go out to eat? Compromise! Shabu-Zen supplies the ingredients, and you cook them in broth in a hot pot at your table. Choose from seafood, meat, or vegetarian options.
Open Thu-Sat until midnight. 80 Brighton Ave. 617-782-8888, shabuzen.com


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A community pharmacist, Mrs Ayodeji Oyelabu, yesterday in Ibadan cautioned Nigerians against practicing self-medication.
Oyelabu, who is also the Director of Talitha Pharmacy, Ashi, Ibadan said self-medication is the prescription and use of medicines by individuals to treat self-recognised or self-diagnosed conditions or symptoms.
"Self-medication can be very dangerous because you cannot overestimate or underestimate the danger it can constitute to your body.
"Many lives have been lost due to this practice, because treating yourself with medication can be highly complicated and something can easily go wrong with the body.
"You don't know how a particular drug might interact with other medications and things around the body and this can prove fatal,'' she said.
According to her, self-medication is fast becoming a public health problem with Nigerian adults on a regular basis.
"The most widely self- prescribed medicines are analgesics, antimalarials and antibiotics and the danger of self-medication is tentative diagnosis or incorrect self-diagnosis.
"Someone may be carrying cancer without knowing, whereas he keeps treating malaria because there are a thousand and one ailments that come with malaria symptoms.
"Other potential risks of self-medication practices include delays in seeking medical advice when needed, dangerous drug interactions, and incorrect manner of administration," Oyelabu explained.
She added that self-medication could also result to under-dose which could be as dangerous as over-dose of drugs.
"When you administer under-dose, you tend to open yourself to risk of non-effectiveness," she explained.
A community pharmacist, Mrs Ayodeji Oyelabu, yesterday in Ibadan cautioned Nigerians against practicing self-medication.


text: Eclipse Community Forums - RDF feed https://www.eclipse.org/forums/ Eclipse Community Forums Updated Trademark and Logo Usage Guidelines https://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php/mv/msg/175917/560415/#msg_560415 http://eclipse-committer-reps.blogspot.com/2007/07/trademark -and-logo-usage-guidelines.html ---- Howdy Eclipse committers! The committer representatives want to make sure that you are aware of the updated Trademark and Logo Usage Guidelines (http://www.eclipse.org/legal/logo_guidelines.php). As Mike mentioned, the big difference is that project names, acronyms and logos as Eclipse trademarks. If people recall the Mylar -> Mylyn transition, this was the primary reason for the rename. To put it simply, the Eclipse Foundation takes a lot of pride in the cleanliness of the intellectual property within Eclipse. Trademarks are considered intellectual property, therefore as committers, we must ensure our project names and logos are clean. Plus, as committers, we can come up with cool and funny names like TPTP or COSMOS for our projects ;) ---- Cheers, ~ Chris]]> Chris Aniszczyk 2007-07-12T16:12:00-00:00


text: On Mon, Dec 09, 2013 at 01:49:29AM -0500, Mouse wrote: > >> Then there are a lot of things that need fixing; the one I'm most > >> aware of is the assumption that all-bits-0 is a nil pointer. > > Yes. I think the official stance on that is to worry about it when a > > real platform appears where it matters. > > So, rather than start fixing it now, at leisure, a big scramble when it > actually becomes important is preferable? Well, I suppose it's their > collective neck - or, rather, their project's. Well... what is a plausible scenario where this becomes important? In what situation is someone going to try to change this convention, or more accurately, in what situation is someone going to try to change this convention in a way that makes it time-critical to fix problems that arise, such that necks become involved? The only cases I can think of are deliberately working this issue out with suitable tools, and porting to some vintage machine where you can't for some reason use 0 as the null pointer representation. Neither is exactly an urgent situation. No new machine will ever have this property because there's too much existing code that would break and there's no plausible reason to bother. Similarly, for all-bits-0 floats, no new machine is going to use anything but IEEE floats. > > The one family of cases where this isn't so clear is kernel things > > where in some cases you get zeroed pages that you know are zeroed and > > it's stupid and slow to write more zeros over them unnecessarily. > > Also possible in userland, though less commonly. Vanishingly rarely; I suppose calloc can avoid rezeroing when it gets fresh pages from the kernel, but does any calloc actually *do* that rather than just calling malloc and bzero? > >> (I've often thought it would be nice to have a checkout compiler > >> that went out of its way to break as many as possible of the usual > >> assumptions that are "true everywhere" but that C does not actually > >> promise....) > > Many people think that, but nobody's really done it, as it's a bit of > > a large project. Go for it :-) > > Heh. Yeah, perhaps some one of these years I'll find the spare time to > start seriously hacking compilers. If you keep worrying about how porky gcc is, sooner or later you'll get irritated enough to write your own... > >> I would even hazard a guess that there's code in the tree that > >> assumes int is exactly 32 bits, > > Yeah probably. It's a big tree and there aren't really adequate > > checking tools for this. > > Checkout compiler! NetBSD/pdp10! :-) One of the reasons I proposed/started on "mint" was to enable checks for stuff like this. But I haven't really put any time into it yet... -- David A. Holland dholland%netbsd.org@localhost


text:
Tom Lane writes: > Since there will always be asynchronous conditions to deal with, it'd > be pretty foolish to design a protocol that assumes that exactly one > 'E' message will arrive during a PQexec cycle. Reasonable. > > I am currently looking into extending the protocol so that more fields can > > be in an ErrorResponse (e.g., error codes). If this were to happen then > > we'd need a smarter way of handling more than one error message per cycle. > > Only if you want to overload ErrorResponse so that successive 'E' > messages mean different things. I do not think that would be a good > design. It'd be better to allow ErrorResponse to carry multiple fields. That's the idea. But I can hardly concatenate the error codes, can I? I looks as though we need an API where all the messages (errors + notices) from each query cycle are collected and can be cycled through after completion. > This'd imply a protocol version bump, but so what? Changing the > semantics of ErrorResponse probably ought to require that anyway. I think I could have done with a minor bump, but if you have some plans, too, the easier. -- Peter Eisentraut peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net http://funkturm.homeip.net/~peter
Next: From: Jan Wieck Date: 2001-06-06 15:06:39 Subject: Re: Re: REPLACE INTO table a la mySQL Previous: From: Jan Wieck Date: 2001-06-06 15:00:11 Subject: Re: REPLACE INTO table a la mySQL


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Posts filtered on Category
Seensters: See who was out at Sawyer Park cheering on Texans
Jordan Graber was out at Sawyer Park on Washington on Sunday. …
An ordinary start led to an extraordinary season for these Texans
An ordinary start leads to something extraordinary, and after seven straight wins, the team's first division title is clinched. A game-by-game recap. …


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James Broughton was a poet, poetic filmmaker, and practitioner of "Big Joy," a pansexual Dionysian approach to life. He's been called the father of the West Coast experimental film movement in the wake of World War II, was part of the San Francisco Renaissance, a literary movement that included Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others. He was an early bard of the Radical Faeries.
More on Wikipedia…
(1 quotes found)
"The only limits are, as always, those of vision."
James Broughton
Quotes Daddy offers a number of tools for developers and bloggers to integrate quotes into their site including customizable widgets, embeddable quotes and API.
Over 1,000,000 famous quotes and user quotes that you can save to your favorites, share with friends and add to your site, blog or social network.


text:
Hello All.
Here is the link to eScan v10 latest build (10.0.968.374), with support for Windows 2000. For installation on Windows 2000, a minimum of W2k SP4 with Rollup 1 is needed.
NEW : Note that this build also includes tool to download critical Microsoft Windows Operating System patches (for Windows 2000 and above, 32-bit and 64-bit)
http://download1.mwti.net/wiki/index.ph ... indows_v10
Also, below is the download link for eScan and MailScan Hotfixes.
The above link will be updated regularly for further release.
If you have any queries, pls write to firstname.lastname@example.com


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Stream: NFL Super Bowl 2017 Live Free
NFL Super Bowl 2017 Live Free can formally begin on February 05, 2017. The show also will be aired live via CBS. And since of the event's quality, it's invariably been thought-about virtually as a holiday within the U.S.A.. Fans lovingly decision the event the NFL Super Bowl 2017 Live Sunday. It's conjointly the day… Read More »


text:
New Orleans - Louisiana - USA:
Considered one of the top young actors in New Orleans, Billy was brought out to Los Angeles at the invitation of Dustin Hoffman. Since he began acting, Billy has been recognized for being an outstanding young talent: he is the youngest lead actor recipient of the "Marquee Award," was the youngest professional acting instructor in New Orleans, the youngest company member of Louisiana's Shakespeare Festival, and the youngest student at Michael Howard Studios in New York City. Billy has trained in England at The British American Dramatic Academy (BADA) and has lived and worked in New York and L.A. He holds a B.A. in Drama and Communications from the University of New Orleans, where he graduated #1 in the Drama program (Cum Laude), and was offered a personal scholarship to The Strasberg Institute by Anna Strasberg. In addition to being featured in The Times Picayune's annual 'Best of New Orleans' edition, Billy received his second "Marquee Award" nomination for Romeo & Juliet, in which he played both Romeo and Mercutio and produced, and his commercial with the New Orleans Saints received the National Sports Forum "ADchievement Award." In a relatively short period of time, Billy has been able to work with some of the top talent in the industry, including: Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro, Gene Hackman, Barbara Streisand, Adam Sandler, and Ben Stiller. Billy Slaughter is president of Panta Rei Productions and is writer, executive producer, and one of the stars of the feature film "Utility," which was on schedule to shoot in New Orleans in 2006, when he and the project lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. Billy is currently trying to get "Utility" back on track. - IMDb Mini Biography
|Geostorm (2017)
as Karl Dright
|Dead on Arrival (2017)
as Dr. Alexander
|Dark Meridian (2017)
as Patrick Fox
|Cold Moon (2016)
as Dr. Everage
|Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016)
as Parasource Aide
|Max Steel (2016)
as Agent Murphy
|The Magnificent Seven (2016)
as Josiah
|Don't Kill It (2016)
as Agent Jackson
|Midnight Special (2016)
as Agent Cole
|Daddy's Home (2015)
as Instigator Dad
|The Big Short (2015)
as Real Estate Agent
|Zipper (2015)
as Sam's Aide
|American Ultra (2015)
as Staff Sgt. Harris
|Return to Sender (2015)
as Kevin
|Focus (2015)
as Passing Thief
|Laundry Day (2015)
as Bart
|When the Game Stands Tall (2014)
as Hip Sports Reporter
|Get on Up (2014)
as Pool Cleaner
|White Rabbit (2013)
as Dr. Clayton
|Shadow People (2013)
|Parker (2013)
as Ohio State Fair Security Guard Ben
|12 Rounds (2009)
as Technician
|Click (2006)
as Newman Employee
|Stay Alive (2006)
as Rex
|Billionaire Boys Club ()
as Loan Officer
|One Nation Under God ()
as Reporter #2


text:
Status : Brand New
Warranty : Full One Year
|IBM Thinkpad T60
|Battery type
|4400 mah
|205.25 x 79.50 x 21.10 mm
|445.00 g
Improve IBM Thinkpad T60 Laptop life specially for business users and professionals with this new IBM T60 battery. Durability, security, usability and performance are all important characteristics of the ThinkPad T-series. The 14" Thinkpad T60 notebook will offer lighter weight and longer battery life at the expense of a smaller screen.
Do not modify or disassemble the battery without professional help and knowledge.
Do not incinerate, or short-circuit the rechargeable battery pack (put battery with metal objects)
Do not expose T60 laptop battery to heat more than 212°F(100°C), which may cause an exposure.
Do not place battery in device for a long period of time if device is not being used. Remove the battery when you store your computer for an extended period of time.
Do remember discharge then recharge the notebook battery for every few weeks during storage.
Do keep the battery away from children.
The length of laptop running time may vary a lot, It depends on the running applications and the external devices connected to your laptop. Battery operating time (the time the battery can hold a charge) will decrease over time. When you travel with your laptop, you would want longer battery life. Here are some basic tips may help you.
1. Dim laptop screen - Adjust your screen brightness(Most laptops come with the ability to dim your laptop screen); As the screen will take 30% also power of the battery, Try turning down the display brightness to the lowest level you can bear(don't no hurt your eyes).
2. Cut down on unnecessary programs - Cut unnecessary auto running programs when boot up ,cut background programs like Itunes, Desktop Search, etc., Shut down everything that isn't crucial when you're on battery. You'd better save the basic firewall software when you are online.
3. Unplug unnecessary devices - USB devices (like mouse, keyboard, other widget chargers), PC cards, DVD drivers, Bluetooth and WiFi will extract your laptop battery power a lot. Remove all of this if applicable. Also check for other built-in components that you could disable to conserve more battery power.
4. Use power saving. Remember that standby mode still uses battery power a lot when you left , But use hibernate instead will save more if your laptop supports this function .
Dell laptop batteries
Dell Inspiron 1501 battery
Dell Inspiron 6400 battery
Dell Inspiron e1505 battery
Dell Latitude D820 battery
Dell Latitude D610 battery
HP laptop batteries
HP Pavilion g4 battery
HP Pavilion dm4t battery
HP ProBook 5310m battery
HP 8770w battery
HP ProBook 470 battery
Sony laptop batteries
Sony PCGA BP2NX Battery
SONY PCGA-BP2V Battery
Sony battery PCGA-BP2NY
PCGA-BP71 battery
Sony pcga-bp2s battery
Lenovo laptop batteries
Lenovo E420s Battery
Lenovo Y410p battery
Lenovo W530 attery
Lenovo T440s Batteries
Lenovo Thinkpad X201 battery
Toshiba laptop batteries
Satellite A665 battery
Toshiba Tecra R840 battery
Satellite L655 battery
Satellite L755 battery
Toshiba C855 battery


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Well, I did it. I killed my Treo 700w. It took a tumble and the screen cracked. I had insurance and I could have gotten it replaced, but I decided to just get a new phone instead. I was up for my "new every 2" with Verizon, so I decided to pick up the Samsung SCH-i760. I've got mixed feelings about it right now. I used to hate my Treo 700w for mostly performance related reasons. After only a couple days of playing with the SCH-i760 I'm starting to miss some of the Treo's better features. It's a mixed bag.
The Samsung SCH-i760 definitely out performs the Treo 700w in terms of speed and stability. Windows Mobile 6 looks pretty, but beyond a user interface "paint job" little has changed in the functionality. The thing I'm missing most about the Treo 700w right now is the ease of one handed operation. The SCH-i760 has a slide out keyboard, so typing with one hand is out of the question. Still, I'm almost glad to have the performance over ease of use at this point.
I will write some posts detailing anything interesting I've found out about the SCH-i760 in the near future. I'm still working out the kinks and trying to figure out how best to use this sucker. The only thing I can see right now is that while the SCH-i760 construction seems tight, its no Treo 700w. I'm afraid the first time I drop this thing its going to shatter into a million pieces. Lets all hope that doesn't happen.


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Friday, December 23, 2016
Welcome to the End of the World...
Love, lust and laughs as everything burns down around us...
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Kindle & Ebook...
Print Edition...
Getting nailed by those badge-wearing bumpkins not only cost me my hot-assed old school Suzuki but their petty jealousies have been following me around, cramp the fuck out of my style, like a wet sack of shit across the neck. Everything goes wrong; missed chances, sub-par dope, strings of minor but galling hassles.
I'm beset with logistical snags, flat tires and dropped calls. Regulars badger for fronts of my badly cut dope then take their cash elsewhere. I've scrambled all over for a decent wholesale connection but keep rolling snake-eyed paper thin puppets who know a guy who knows a guy who knows some other fucking guy ad infinitum.
Years ago, a couple boatloads of Persian traders alighted on our fair shores and filled this three-legged town with brown magic from the fabled hills of Ariana. After their top dogs made a great show of opening vast and glittering discos, they promptly blew themselves up by becoming their own best customers.
Stalwart wops whose forefathers literally built this burgh─even they've lost the way, victims of hubris and canny TV producers. They pigged out on the illustrious Sicilian tit for centuries but too much media fawning turned them into a herd of useless Gotti mimics who tried to leverage Omerta into a household name.
Inbred racist bikers step into the breach now and again, reaching toward this cosmopolis from their surrounding hick town bunkers. Too often their success results in inexplicable farmhouse bloodbaths. Police are left to puzzle over mutilated bodies strewn about after a drunken argument involving some arcane point of order escalates into close range shotguns, crossbows and Bowie knives.
I did have high hopes for a gang of slick West Africans after they'd carved out territory in the east end. Not only were they stylish, happily venal and worldly, their pipeline was based on long established clan ties and appeared rock solid. However, as so many who'd sought to become the gods they once feared, these intrepid sons of the mother continent became infected with fetishistic consumerism. Looking to maximize revenue, they developed a rep for poisoning their clientele after diluting the product with mislabeled industrial effluents. This led to several intramural gun battles, leaving their sleek and shapely network a smoking ruin.
So it's been back to the Saint Clair Porkchops. Stone headed men who beat each other senseless in front of street corner sports bars then stagger home to their mothers' basements, not twenty doors away. They always have stuff but quality is inconsistent, watered down with the usual shortsighted greed and small time turf wars.
Desperate men do desperately stupid things so I go see an old witch on Dundas West, in the dead zone between Lansdowne and Roncesvalles. I've passed her sign a million times: Love Problems and Money.
She's reputed to be the spiritual and titular descendant of the original Madame Schontz, a renowned Gypsy priestess who star centerman Dave Keon hired in 1969 to put an eternal curse on the Maple Leafs after they'd blackballed him at the peak of his impressive career. The team was condemned to never win another Cup, no matter how much coin they blow on superstars come and gone. So far so good. They've managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in a dozen inconceivable ways so I figure what the hell, Madame Schontz Junior is worth a shot. And what's a hundred bucks? I blow a hundred bucks before I'm out the door these days. Just think about money and you've blown a hundred bucks.
A note taped to her doorway sends me around to a back alley. I knock and a suspicious young muzhyk woman opens up a crack. She looks past me and narrows her eyes, sniffs my air.
"Nobody home."
I show her some cash. "I need to see Madame Schontz. Immediately."
The woman's face off-gases about ten years and sixteen tons as she lets me in. "I'm the daughter," she reports, poking a finger between her Double Dees, frayed bra straps cantilevered outward. She leads me into a musty hallway converted to a tiny kitchen. We're pushed up against one another, her knockers pressed into my navel. She gestures further down the corridor. A Socialist Realism Christ on an ancient calendar hangs near the ceiling. We go by a derelict dumbwaiter. I half expect an arm to burst out and brain me with a skillet.
The daughter steers me into a dim backroom, small as a doghouse. Madame Schontz is a four-foot high pyramid of quivering flab wrapped in a sateen Blue Jays jacket, topped with a big pork roast face and pink visor hat. Hunkered on a rug, I can't tell if she's got legs or not. She toys with a few playing cards and some yellow dog's teeth scattered on an overturned plastic bucket. I crouch down and the daughter offers to interpret. She squeezes in beside me and lays her chin on my shoulder. In the mirror behind Madame Schontz, we're a two-headed Diane Arbus freak.
I'm a drug dealer, I explain, but having a truly shitty time finding decent drugs at a good price and it's not only ruining my rep but alienating the most important sector of my customer base; a carefully cultivated collection of successful fags, lawyers, academics, arts parasites, petty government asswipes and other sundry middle class degenerates.
The daughter asks me to write down the drugs I'd like to procure. Just two, I tell her: Clean Colombian Flake and Sweet Brown Afghani H, the old fashioned stuff, if Madame would be so kind. The type processed with ether instead of the kerosene or diesel used nowadays by those cheap-ass CIA toadies. And some good sticky bud wouldn't hurt either but not absolutely necessary since I've got weed more or less covered. And please, no pills or other pharmaceuticals. I find them gauche.
My c-note disappears down the daughter's cleavage as she hands the scrap of paper to her mother. The old woman rubs it on her forehead and on her desiccated neck flab, chews it up and swallows. In about ten seconds she begins to tremble and sweat and jabber in several tongues.
Her nose runs, she pumps at her ears as if they're ringing. Her hands twitch, she puffs on an invisible cigarette. Madame Schontz goes bug-eyed, cackles, yells and nods madly. She's ecstatic and inspired. I smell it, a high Andean clean smell, a cold wind clears the sinuses. She laughs, haughty and luxurious. She freezes.
After some long moments, her eyelids begin to hang, blob body sagging in stages. She smacks her lips and savors a deep earthy flavor. She claws at herself sensually, murmurs with pleasure. I watch her lean forward in tiny increments, finally at a steep angle, her face not quite touching the plastic bucket.
"You mean like this?" the daughter asks.
"Yeah," I point. "Exactly like this. What she's high on, that's what I need. And the thing before."
Madame Schontz snaps out of it and her closed lipped smile beams at me with a heartfelt munificence. Her personal style might be more street corner Carnac than Oracle of Delphi but this bewitched babushka appears to be onto something.
"Go live your life," her daughter tells me as I unfold myself from their lair.
* * *
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Newest member of the family...
Me and my girls...
Newest member of the family on the left...
Kawasaki D'Tracker, modified screamer
with powerbomb exhaust.
Loud and lovely...
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Excerpt from the new novel...
Excerpt chapter:
I'm chaperoning Opium at the jammed apartment of Fil's father, Max. He's a dyspeptic old crip who fancies himself an inventor. We're wedged into his pack rat life, a shabby little place in Christie Pits, owned by the noisy Porkchops downstairs. A lot of incandescent lights are on, red paisley wallpaper. Tables and bed are supported by boxes of third and fourth hand war books every chairborne commando must own. A raft of plastic bags fills one corner. Max always asks about his son but I never reply.
"Filmore P. Mann," he declares. "Whereabouts unknown."
Opium picks her way through this overheated overstuffed crap pad, idly scoping tiny soldier figurines and boxes of hotrod postcards. Her black hair is in long pigtails with red plastic devil barrettes. She wears Oxfords, white knee socks, kids training pants and a child-size wifebeater. She sucks on a popsicle while examining Max's collection of scale model WWII British fighter planes hung from the ceiling by fishing wire.
Max is missing his left hand from mid-wrist. I've heard a bunch of different versions how it happened, from an inexplicable cleaver attack to the extremely rare Doctor Strangelove Syndrome, where the hand was removed because it kept trying to tear out his throat.
Currently, he's using an old fleshtone prosthesis bought at a garage sale after losing his yearly allotment. The losses are down to Max getting boozed up and taking off the hand to play up some drunken gag and forgetting it on the bar.
Pensioned off from the Transit Commission's ideological purity division years ago, he whiles away his days building dildo attachments adapted to fit onto a universally swiveling mount he sticks over his stump, custom braced all the way to the elbow. His dildo arm is twice as thick as his drinking and smoking arm so he's ended up looking like a tennis player.
Max's Friday night visits from Opium have been going on for quite some time─months, I guess. To truly get off, he requires a very specific set up. She must wear her child's underthings and sit in the oversized wingback opposite, feet dangling as she reads aloud from a dumbed down fairy tale collection, one of those volumes with the pop-up 3D characters. Max playfully menaces her with one of his dildo attachments, making it rev up and down with suggestive zings. She smiles shyly and continues to read, slow and unsure, as a child of five might. After about ten minutes of this warm-up, Max discreetly wacks off under a big coffee table volume full of those grainy old trench warfare photos from Passchendaele and Vimy Ridge. Opium pretends not to notice.
I watch Max fuck around with his latest contraption, the Vual 3400 Dildonator, named after a dearly departed pal who Max claims was built like a Khazar donkey─known among aficionados as the donkey's donkey. Max has used the mechanism from a reciprocating saw with a massive twelve-inch red rubber dong mounted on a metal shaft. The thing's thick as the business end of a Louisville slugger. It's powered by heavy duty cables welded to a pair of 24-volt truck batteries sitting on the floor.
He plans to patent and market his creation through "gentlemen's magazines." This new device not only pounds up and down but he's installed a mini gyroscope to effect random wiggles, waggles and figure eights. Max has been badgering me to ask Opium to take a test drive. Yeah, that'll work. The chick's got like a fifteen inch waist.
"Approximates skilled fornication method," Max brags with a bucktoothed grin as he waves it around.
He hits an On switch zip-tied to his upper arm and the dong begins a slow articulated rhumba. A hollow section in its middle is full of colored plastic beads. They rattle and clatter as a blue-lit greeting card diode plays the Average White Band tune, Cut The Cake. The thing does in fact wiggle, woggle and wondrously worm its way through a snappy little routine. Opium doesn't look up from her fairy tales.
After a minute or so the Dildonator seems to get stuck and repeatedly swivels to the left. The motor whines as the mega-dong angrily pogos up and down, as if throwing a tantrum. Max hits the Off switch but no dice. The beast howls and dervishes. Its centrifugal force almost throws him out of his wheelchair. Max battles to unlock it from the gyrating base. It's clamped on tight. He yowls in pain when the thing almost twists off a finger.
The motor bursts into flame, igniting the sparkle-filled red rubber phallus. It quickly liquefies black. Max shrieks as molten effluent runs down to his forearm. I grab the loco dong with the sleeves of my jacket and try to tear it off him. The thing deforms in my hands, its slimy napalm ooze sticking to me and anything else it touches. Pieces of it drip and run onto the carpet. The rug catches fire. I stamp on it but the goop comes up in flaming strings stuck to my boot.
Opium finally springs into action.
"Don't get water!" I holler. "It's an electrical fire."
"So what then?!" she yells from the kitchen.
"Something powder! Baking soda. Anything!"
I grab a dirty towel off the floor and swat at my sleeve, now going up. The dong motor spins and screeches. I duck as it hurls its remaining guts in a wild 360. The distended nightmare glob twists and sizzles, strung between me, Max and his chair. He screams again as more flaming black rubber splatters his face. I try to corral it with the towel. It too goes up, a fiery white flag.
"Hurry the fuck up!" I yell just as me, Max and the rabid dong get hit with a choking cloud of laundry powder. The light blue crystals clump and smoke but finally kill the melted remains of the haywire dildo. The monster buzzes and farts a final time. Opium stands there, empty jumbo detergent box in her hands. She wears an astonished grin. Max shrugs, sheepish, picks at the bits of melted rubber stuck to his glasses.
Monday, December 28, 2015
New novel from eXcessica Books...
Available as Kindle edition or other ebook at:
Sunday, November 23, 2014
When I was a kid my parents knew a couple called George and Georgia. Both were made of that exotic mongrel mix you get in southeastern Europe, the land bridge going into Turkey and the Middle East. Mobs of marauders and rapists have been through there for centuries.
George was swarthy and handsome. He'd have looked right at home with a top-knot and Fu Manchu, shirtless and carrying a scimitar. Georgia wasn't magazine beautiful but had a rare blonde sensuality. Not easy for a woman with pale hair, pale skin and pale gray eyes to come off fiery but she did it with a kind of deeper sweet hunger.
Their real strength was others didn't exist for them. George was a typical man of his era, tall and masculine, didn't dance, a sublime undertone of confidence and power. Women went all girlish and soft near him.
The same way men doted on Georgia's sweetness, which seemed to be for the whole world but she was just being a good girl. When those two looked at one another, they burned everything else away. Married but no kids, which was strange for the time and she openly dismissed the idea as "Not for us."
I guess they were too busy fucking to be parents. I was like ten or something and at some big wedding or baptism in a church basement me and a few other kids saw George and Georgia steaming up their car windows out in the parking lot. I guess they couldn't wait to get home, just had to take a break from the drinking and socializing to lay on a good fuck. They seemed a lot younger than my parents or their other friends. Fucking will do that. Amazing they didn't get sick of one another the way couples usually do.
Anyway, my original point was about this thing Georgia would do. A couple times she dropped George off at a cafeteria my old man owned a piece of. George was a highly skilled carpenter. He usually did bowling alley lanes with an uncle of mine but since my old man had found him a cool hotrod Buick at a good price, George came round for a few days and built a new cafeteria counter.
I'd be sitting outside peeling potatoes in the alley way and see them pull in and she'd wipe his mouth and his mustache with her hand. Actually, more like fondle his face and mouth, this really slutty smile on her. I didn't recognize it as such then, being just some stupid kid, but I realized later on what her look meant.
I asked my old man about the mouth fondling and he was never a subtle guy. "She wipes her wet pussy first," he grunted then gave me a leer and winked but didn't explain further and I didn't ask since I had no clue what he was talking about.
George and Georgia looked so natural in his hopped-up Buick Skylark coupe. They were a pair of Balkan fuck freaks yet easily slipped into the beautiful American open road forever nihilism of that very romantic era. Now it's all about gas mileage and hard-on drugs and traffic tickets.
George and Georgia looked so natural in his hopped-up Buick Skylark coupe. They were a pair of Balkan fuck freaks yet easily slipped into the beautiful American open road forever nihilism of that very romantic era. Now it's all about gas mileage and hard-on drugs and traffic tickets.
I'm talking about ancient ideas pushed so well by those old hotrods merging speed and love in a perfect way cuz they had a front bench seat, like a big sofa, so were pretty much made for George and Georgia. Not like cars nowadays with the straight jacket bucket seats you're strapped into and can't touch each other. Well, maybe hold hands.
Try giving a driver's seat blow job in your average commuter car today. The one doing the blowing will end up eviscerated by some lever or other plastic protuberance - and you'll both get a raft of tickets issued by some safety-obsessed paramilitary idiot cop.
The crazy thing is not long after George built the cafeteria counter they were both killed in a high speed crash. The police said it happened for no apparent reason on a straight away, during a warm sunny day. So I figure they must have died fucking, Georgia straddling George in the driver's seat, the windshield fogged up, her ass knocks the steering wheel sideways and the Buick bashes into the guard rail at 100 mph and goes cartwheeling down a steep rocky gorge to explode on impact - their huge A-Bomb mushroom cloud of burnin' hot love. Talk about going out in style...
Try giving a driver's seat blow job in your average commuter car today. The one doing the blowing will end up eviscerated by some lever or other plastic protuberance - and you'll both get a raft of tickets issued by some safety-obsessed paramilitary idiot cop.
The crazy thing is not long after George built the cafeteria counter they were both killed in a high speed crash. The police said it happened for no apparent reason on a straight away, during a warm sunny day. So I figure they must have died fucking, Georgia straddling George in the driver's seat, the windshield fogged up, her ass knocks the steering wheel sideways and the Buick bashes into the guard rail at 100 mph and goes cartwheeling down a steep rocky gorge to explode on impact - their huge A-Bomb mushroom cloud of burnin' hot love. Talk about going out in style...
Friday, November 14, 2014
An acquaintance of mine in Bangkok recently got the following message and thought I'd find it amusing. She works in the skin trade and ended up on the mailing list of what is a local "swingers collective."
I think I'll give up trying to write satire. The names have not been changed in order to protect the credulous...
I think I'll give up trying to write satire. The names have not been changed in order to protect the credulous...
If you come alone or with your partner please be here no later than 6pm; please bring a chemise or something similar to wear when not actively engaged. You do not have to, it is not required but most of the ladies like slipping something on even if it is waist or hip long when they take a break for a drink or snack, or go to the bathroom to freshen up.
pleas email us at email@example.com and all we ask for is a face picture so we know who is showing up at the door. this is not required either but is a good comfort factor for us.
I think the youngest is 30 and the oldest, bringing his GF too if I remember right, is 65 or 66 and I am 60 and I am a Master.
I hope it is not a problem that all the males are white.
When you get to the house we will give the ladies a quick tour, we have three bedrooms and three full baths w/three showers.
One bedroom has a king sized bed and one has a queen while the middle room has a double.
We have a range of toys and equipment, all well sanitized but pls bring your own if you wish something specific.
If you have special requirements, pls write them down so it can be circulated among the men attending so there are no awkward or embarrassing moments.
Please let me know if you d anal...you can tell me Saturday. We want to make sure the guys know who does so they do not try anything with those that do NOT.
Okay, we currently have several couples; 4-5 single men and 2-3 Single females.
We are in the Esmeralda apartments; 64-66 Soi Nagmduplee, Rama 4 Rd.
Apt 7C, tell the guards you are visiting RichardMcCormick.
Nagmduplee is Sathonr area; behind the big Q House Lumpini.
It can be accessed down Sathon Soi 1 or off of Rama 4. Soi 1 dead ends on nagmduplee , turn RIGHT, 25 ' entrance to Esmeralda on RIGHT we are in UPPER tower.
From Rama 4 you turn directly onto Nagmduplee. Stay straight, all cab drivers want to turn. When you pass the only 7-11 (scary I know) you are close. Stay straight. Pass the intersection (Soi 1 enters on your right) and again stay straight and 25' on right side
Walking distance from the 7-11 or the IBIS Hotel on Soi Nagmduplee.
Again - upper tower.
Anything else? Oh, no drugs, no drunks and no vulgar language. We will have drinks and snacks. We just folk to have fun and get what they want.
And please be aware we practice safe sex and keep to strict safe word limits and all encounters will be monitored to keep all safe and for no misunderstandings.
And if you wish a particular group activity such as GB, please let us know beforehand to again ensure there is no embarrassment.
And if you wish a particular group activity such as GB, please let us know beforehand to again ensure there is no embarrassment.
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- a rich fabric as of silk, rayon, or nylon with a soft, thick pile: pile velvet has the pile uncut, standing in loops, and cut velvet has the loops cut apart
- anything with a surface like that of velvet
- a soft, vascular skin on a deer's growing antlers
- Slang extra or clear profit or winnings; gain
Origin of velvetMiddle English from Old French veluotte from Vulgar Latin villutus from Classical Latin villus, shaggy hair: see wool
- made of or covered with velvet
- smooth or soft like velvet
- A soft fabric having a smooth, dense pile and a plain underside.
- a. Something suggesting the smooth surface of velvet.b. Smoothness; softness.
- The soft, furry covering on the developing antlers of deer.
- Informal a. The winnings of a gambler.b. A profit or gain beyond what is expected or due.
- New England See milkshake.
Origin of velvetMiddle English veluet probably from Old Provençal from Vulgar Latin villūtittus diminutive of *villūtus from Latin villus shaggy hair, nap
(countable and uncountable, plural velvets)
(third-person singular simple present velvets, present participle velveting, simple past and past participle velveted)
- (cooking) To coat raw meat in starch, then in oil, preparatory to frying
(comparative more velvet, superlative most velvet)
- Made of velvet.
- Soft and delicate, like velvet; velvety.


text: by Tiana Feng Welcome to this week's edition of COVER SATURDAYS featuring the great cover discoveries of the week. There weren't many this week, but most were beautiful takes, others blew your mind with craziness. The Young Republic- Chocolate Jesus (Tom Waits Cover)|MYSPACE[audio:http://groovebat.com/download/ezv.mp3] Corinne Bailey Rae- I Wanna Be Your Lover (Prince Cover)|MYSPACE[audio:http://groovebat.com/download/ezw.mp3] more after the jump Picnic Kibun- Two Weeks (Grizzly Bear Cover)|MYSPACE[audio:http://groovebat.com/download/ezx.mp3] Laura Jansen- Use Somebody (Kings of Leon Cover)|MYSPACE[audio:http://groovebat.com/download/ezy.mp3] Metric- Expect to Fly (Buffalo Springfield Cover) [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieDY9_4DQIA]


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Does the Fee Imposed by Section 9010 of the Affordable Care Act Apply to Stop-Loss Coverage?
It was the intent of Congress in enacting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to regulate health insurance comprehensively. Most of the regulatory provisions of Title I (the insurance reforms) apply to "A group health plan and a health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage." The definitions of these terms are drawn from the definitional section of the Public Health Services Act (added by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), which defines a "group health plan" as an ERISA plan, and a "health insurance issuer" as "an insurance company, insurance service, or insurance organization (including a health maintenance organization, as defined in paragraph (3)) which is licensed to engage in the business of insurance in a State and which is subject to State law which regulates insurance." 42 U.S.C. § 300gg-91(a)(1), (b)(2). Thus the ACA covers both self-insured ERISA plans and insured individual and group plans.
In fact, however, the ACA does not apply to all health insurance coverage, and does not apply to all health insurance coverage to which it does apply to the same extent. HIPAA excepted benefit plans, including specific disease and fixed-dollar indemnity plans, and short term individual coverage are not subject to ACA requirements, and many of the provisions of the ACA that apply to individual and small group plans, including the essential benefit package, the risk adjustment program, and the risk pooling, community rating, minimum medical loss ratio, and unreasonable premium increase justification requirements do not apply to self-insured plans. It is, therefore, important to read the ACA section by section to determine which requirements or prohibitions apply to which types of health insurance.
One particularly important provision that has not received enough attention is section 9010, "Imposition of Annual Fee on Health Insurance Providers" (at 811-815 in the link). This provision is found in Title IX of the ACA, but was amended both by the December 2009 Managers' Amendment, which became Title X, and by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, enacted in March 2010. Section 9010 imposes a fee, beginning in 2014, on a "covered entity's net premiums written with respect to health insurance for any United States health risk." The fee is determined by multiplying the fraction determined by dividing the covered entity's net premiums by the net premiums of all covered entities that are taken into account under the statute times a set annual amount, which begins at $8 billion, but rises to $14.3 billion by 2018. This fee will be an important revenue source for funding the ACA's coverage expansions.
The fee imposed by section 9010 does not apply to all insurers equally. Insurers with annual net premiums of $50 million are fully taxed on their revenues, while insurers with annual net premiums of $25 to $50 million are taxed on only half of their net premium revenues, and insurers with net premiums below $25 million are not taxed at all. Certain tax-exempt insurers are also taxed on only half of their net premium revenues (after applying the small insurer discount just mentioned).
The fee also only applies to "covered entities." Section 9010(c) defines "covered entity" as an entity that "provides health insurance for any United States health risk," subject to a number of exclusions. These exclusions include "any employer to the extent that such employer self-insures its employees' health risks;" government entities; certain non-profit insurers that derive 80% of their revenue from government programs; and VEBAs that are tax exempt under I.R.C. § 501(c)(9).What is the universe of "covered entities," however, that remain subject to § 9010 after these exclusions are applied?
To answer this question it is necessary to parse the meaning of "health insurance" and "United States health risk." Both terms are defined in the section, but only in part. "United States health risk" is defined to include the health risk of an individual who is a United States citizen, resident, or located in the United States. § 9010(d). "Health insurance" is defined to exclude certain but not all forms or HIPAA excepted benefits (as defined in I.R.C. § 9832(c)), long-term care insurance, and Medicare supplemental insurance. Nowhere in § 9010, or indeed anywhere in the Internal Revenue Code, however, are the terms "health insurance" or "health risk" defined. Section 9010 tells us what "health insurance" is not, but not what it is.
The most interesting question is whether health insurance for a United States health risk includes stop-loss coverage. The sale of stop-loss coverage to small employer groups is increasing very rapidly. As noted above, self-insured small groups are not subject to many of the consumer and market protections that the ACA applies to insured small groups. Self-insured group plans are also not subject to state regulation because of ERISA preemption. There is thus a great deal of interest in the part of small group plans in self-insuring. Small groups can only self-insure, however, if they can find generous stop-loss coverage that will assume most of the health risk of employees. A small employer that fully assumed coverage for its employees without stop-loss coverage would face unacceptable risk. Some insurers, therefore, are actively marketing stop-loss coverage, often with very low attachment points, to small groups.
Is this stop-loss coverage subject to section 9010? It certainly is "insurance" and it certainly covers a "health risk." It also does not fit within any of the explicit exclusions from the term "health insurance." But is "stop-loss insurance" "health insurance"? The term "health insurance" is nowhere defined in the Internal Revenue Code (which would be the relevant code since the fee is administered by the Secretary of the Treasury and the fee is considered to be an excise tax, see § 9010(f),(h)(1)). "Health insurance coverage" and "Health insurance issuer" are defined in § 9832, but those are not the terms used in section 9010, presumably intentionally. By analogy, the term "group health plan" is used throughout the ACA to mean an ERISA plan, but in § 1301(b) the term "health plan" is explicitly defined to not include self-insured ERISA group plans. Wherever the term "health plan" is used in the ACA without the adjective "group," therefore, it does not include self-insured ERISA plans, but where it appears with the adjective "group" self-insured plans are included. Similarly, it must be presumed that Congress used the term "health insurance" to mean something different from the defined terms "health insurance coverage" or "health insurance issuer," which terms are used throughout the ACA in different contexts.
Is stop-loss insurance that covers health care risks health insurance? This is certainly a reasonable interpretation of the term. Moreover, the fact that Congress explicitly excluded from the definition of "covered entity" risk borne by employers in self-insured plans, but not risk that they pass on to stop-loss insurers, indicates that Congress did not intend to exempt stop-loss plans from the fee.
Applying the fee to stop-loss coverage would help to level the playing field between conventional health insurers and health insurers that insure health risk through stop-loss plans, and might help stem the flood of small groups to self-insured status, which in turn threatens to undo the consumer protections extended to employees insured through small groups and the market protections built into the ACA to stabilize the small group market (such as the risk adjustment and risk pooling requirements).
Section 9010(c) tasks the Secretary of the Treasury with providing implementing regulations and guidance. It is to be hoped that the Secretary will clarify through the regulatory process that the § 9010 fee applies not only to conventional insurance, but also to stop-loss insurance. Stop-loss insurance increasingly serves as an alternative mechanism for covering the same health risks that are covered by conventional insurance, while at the same time providing a means of evading ACA consumer and market protections. Section 9010 should be applied to stop-loss insurance just as it is to conventional insurance.
Tags: Health Care Reform, Health Reform, Private Insurance, Tax


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Ed McNierney
Ed McNierney
Ed McNierney joins XPRIZE as Director, Prize Operations, bringing more than 30 years of wide-ranging technology expertise to the Global Learning XPRIZE team. He is responsible for the technical design, development, and implementation of XPRIZE's first open source software competition.
Mr. McNierney has served as a Chief Technology Officer and senior technology leader at a variety of software and hardware companies. Early in his career he developed educational games for children and high-end graphics display equipment, and led Lotus Development's first Windows spreadsheet project.
He later created the Web's first topographic mapping and aerial photography service, TopoZone, and led the organization up through its sale to Demand Media in 2007. More recently he has been CTO and VP of Engineering at the One Laptop per Child Foundation, bringing low-cost, low-power, rugged laptop computers to millions of children around the world.
Mr. McNierney graduated from Dartmouth College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry. He is an active board member of several local and regional land conservation organizations.


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Adnan Hodzic, the Atlantic Sun Conference's highest-scoring player in 15 years, was named Player of the Year on Tuesday, the conference office announced.
Hodzic, a junior center, finished the regular season with a 22.5 points per game average, the highest in the league since Mercer's Reggie Elliot averaged 22.6 in 1995-96. He scored in double figures in every game and extended to 56 his streak of consecutive games with at least 10 points.
Junior guard Josh Slater joined Hodzic on the Atlantic Sun's all-conference First Team. Slater became the second player in conference history to average at least 15 points, five rebounds and five assists per game.
A-Sun honors
• Belmont's Ian Clark was named Freshman of the Year after having made 70 3-pointers, fourth among all Division I freshman. He also was a unanimous All-Freshman pick and a Second-Team all-conference choice.
He was the Bruins' leader in points and in minutes played.
"We are excited and appreciative of Ian's selection as Freshman of the Year," coach Rick Byrd said. "It is an outstanding individual season when a freshman leads a conference co-champion in minutes played and scoring."
• Belmont sophomore Haley Nelson who averaged close to a double-double for the season (13.0 points, 9.8 rebounds) was named to the A-Sun women's all-conference Second Team.
The 6-foot-2 post player led the Lady Bruins in scoring 10 times and in rebounds 22 times.
"She is very deserving," coach Tony Cross said. "Haley has made tremendous progress from last season."
SEC women
Brentwood Academy graduate Victoria Dunlap was named Player of the Year as Kentucky became the second school ever to sweep the Southeastern Conference's top three individual awards as determined by the conference coaches.
Dunlap, who also was named Defensive Player of the Year, is the ony player among the SEC's top five in scoring (fifth) and rebounding (third). She also is among the top 20 nationally in blocked shots and steals.
"(Defense) is my main forte that I focus on a lot," Dunlap said. "The coaches have pushed me a lot harder to be offensive minded to help my teammates out."
• Also for Kentucky, Matthew Mitchell was named Coach of the Year and A'dia Mathies was named Freshman of the Year.
The only other time one school won all three awards was in 1998 when Tennessee's Chamique Holdsclaw (Player of the Year), Pat Summitt (Coach of the Year) and Tamika Catchings (Freshman of the Year) did so.
Dunlap was one of three unanimous choices for the eight-player All-SEC first team, which included Vanderbilt junior guard Jence Rhoads. Commodores' senior guard Merideth Marsh earned second-team honors, and Tiffany Clarke and Elan Brown made the All-Freshman team. Clarke was a unanimous choice.
Sun Belt awards
Alysha Clark was named the Sun Belt Conference's Player of the Year, the conference office announced Tuesday.
It was the second straight SBC honor for the senior forward from Mt. Juliet, who also was a two-time Atlantic Sun Player of the Year for Belmont before she transferred to MTSU.
Clark also earned First-Team all-conference recognition. Lady Raiders' forward Brandi Brown joined her on the first team, and Jackie Pickel became the eighth straight MTSU player named the conference's women's Defensive Player of the Year.
• Desmond "Boogie" Yates, the leading scorer in MTSU men's basketball history, earned his third consecutive First-Team all-conference honor.
The senior forward was the only honoree for the Blue Raiders, who finished in a three-way tie for the regular-season conference championship. He missed the first seven games of the season with an injury but averaged a team-high 13.6 points in 24 games since he returned.
OVC Tournament
Ivan Aska scored 17 points to lead five players in double figures as Murray State pounded Tennessee State 84-51 in the first round of the Ohio Valley Conference tournament on Tuesday night in Murray, Ky.
Isaiah Canaan added 13 points, Tony Easley 12, Danero Thomas 11 and B.J. Jenkins 10 for the Racers (28-4), who improved to 15-0 at home this season. They will play Eastern Illinois, a 68-61 winner over Eastern Kentucky, in Nashville on Friday.
Murray State, ranked No. 1 in the OVC in field goal percentage (50.9), shot 57.1 percent from the field (32 of 56), 50 percent from 3-point range (9 of 18) and went 11-for-11 from the free throw line against the Tigers.
Jeremiah Crutcher and Martell Buie scored 11 each for Tennessee State, which ended its season at 9-23.


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Ah Bonfire Night.
One of the few nights in the year where it's ok to blast fireworks up into the sky for the majority of the night.
It's also one of the few times you'll find people willing to suffer in the cold, just because it's a tradition, and it's what you have to do.
Ever since I was a little girl, bonfire night meant one thing. And being who I am, that obviously meant it was food.
I loved candy apples. Yummy, crisp, sweet apples, smothered in sweet, hard candy. What's not to love about these treats?
6-8 Apples (I chose Braeburn)
6-8 Wooden Sticks
400g Golden Caster Sugar
1tsp White Vinegar
4tbsp Golden Syrup
100ml Water
Prepare the apples by pushing the wooden sticks through the apples via the stalk end.
Place onto a baking tray covered with greaseproof paper.
(Make sure to have this tray near the stove.)
In a saucepan, pour in the caster sugar and water. Heat for 5 minutes on a medium heat, until all of the sugar has dissolved. Add the vinegar and golden syrup, and stir. Using a sugar thermometer, heat to 140C.
(If you don't have a sugar thermometer, like I didn't, then make sure to have a bowl of cold water ready. To test if the candy is ready, pour droplets into the bowl, and if it instantly turns into hard candy, it's ready. If it's still soft, and has a toffee-like consistency, it isn't ready yet, and needs to be heated up a bit more.)
Once the candy is ready, dip the apples into the saucepan, making sure to cover the apples.
Place back onto the baking tray, and leave the candy to cool and harden.
Et Voila!
Candy Apples!
I couldn't resist biting into one as soon as they were ready, it was like I was seven again.
Sophie xx


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This thread began on May 2, 2012 at CTRN:
I can definitely present a case for there being 2 versions of Sean Lennon, and I'm pretty sure there is a 3rd as well. Here is the first comparison of Sean 1 and 2.
Notice different spacing between eyebrows, and slightly different brows. Different left eye - on the left it is straight, on the right it is slanted upwards and higher. Different face lengths.
The same comparisons again. On the right, his beard grows further down on his neck than on the left. Chin more square on the left, rounder on the right.
The possible third Sean is the one in the middle. It looks to me like a wider jaw, different mouth and eyebrows. In the middle, his lips are a true "Cupid's Bow", while the other two are not, though they are also different from each other. Notice the mole beside his lower left lip is placed differently on all 3 of them.
This is about the only childhood photo of him I can find. He looks like the second version in the first two entries of this thread, with the left eye that slants upward, rather than being straight across.
Is he left-handed?


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Hamid Karzai calls on for Pakistani PM's support in peace talks
Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai wants Pakistan to help get the Taliban to peace negotiations. President Karzai has visited Islamabad to hold talks with the recently elected Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Pakistan is a major supporter of the Taliban and its co-operation is considered essential for any peace deal.
TONY EASTLEY: Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai wants Pakistan to help get the Taliban to peace negotiations.
President Karzai has visited Islamabad to hold talks with the recently elected Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
Pakistan is a major supporter of the Taliban and its co-operation is considered vital.
South Asia correspondent Michael Edwards reports.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: The Afghan president Hamid Karzai's arrival in Islamabad is seen a significant sign that Kabul is serious about bringing an end to the conflict with the Taliban.
And during their meeting, president Karzai called on the Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif's support for peace talks.
HAMID KARZAI: We discussed in this regard, primarily and with emphasis, the issue of joint fight against extremism, and reconciliation and peace building in Afghanistan, with the expectation that the government of Pakistan will facilitate and help in manners it can to the peace process in Afghanistan and in providing opportunities on a platform, for talks between the Afghan High Peace Council and the Taliban movement.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: Kabul views Pakistan as the main source of support for the Taliban. For his part, Mr Sharif gave his commitment that he'd do anything within his power to achieve peace.
NAWAZ SHARIF: I assured president Karzai that Pakistan will continue to extend all possible facilitation and the international community's efforts for the, to the international community's efforts for the realisation of this noble goal. Pakistan would also help reinforce regional efforts in support of stabilisation of Afghanistan.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: The Taliban refused to deal with the Karzai administration, dismissing it as a proxy for the United States, and president Karzai's trip comes after an attempt to start peace talks in Qatar's capital of Doha failed in June.
And scepticism about the latest meeting is pervasive.
Heather Barr is an analyst for Human Rights Watch based in Kabul.
HEATHER BARR: You know, we've seen over the years that there's been a lot of sort of the right statements from both sides - from Pakistan and Afghanistan - saying yes, yes, you know, we're both really committed to working together to promote peace. But I don't think the perception here is that that's actually led to very much.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: Heather Barr says there are even doubts as to whether Nawaz Sharif can control the Pakistani intelligence service - the ISI - an agency viewed as the main conduit between Islamabad and the Taliban.
HEATHER BARR: I mean one of the challenges, one of the questions about this meeting is does Sharif really have the power to decide what Pakistan's approach will be on dealing with the Taliban? Because there are real questions about to what extent Sharif himself is able to control the ISI and the other Pakistani Security bodies.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: President Karzai also requested that Nawaz Sharif release a number of key Taliban leaders presently in Pakistani custody. This is seen as a move that could dramatically improve the prospects of getting the Taliban to talk peace.
This is Michael Edwards reporting for AM.
Author Michael Edwards


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Checkout A Free Preview Of This Raunchy Frat Hazing Vid Here
Don't you wish your college days where like this? This latest fraternity hazing themed video out of HazeHim has six young new pledges lined-up to have their cocks measured up. There given 2 minutes to work their cocks up to the biggest boner possible. The winner is a short twink looking guy wearing a black t-shirt. Why do short men always have the biggest dicks is what I want to know??
These campus studs will do almost anything to be accepted into the brotherhood. First the looser of the dick measuring contest is made to suck the cock of a lucky frat brother. Next the guys are forced to strip naked and get down on all fours to see which pledges ass is the most fuckable. I guess this is one contest most straight guys wouldn't want to be the winner in. The house frat daddy picks out a fine young ass to get poked and the guys go to town on his ass in front of all the other brothers. Watch this unlucky pledge boy get fucked here.


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Star Wars Titles From Dark Horse For July 2011
Jay Cochran - April 15, 2011
Chris Cerasi (W) and Jennifer Meyer (A/C/Cover)
On sale Sept 21
FC, 72 pages
TP, 5 1/4" x 7 1/2"
Journey back nearly two hundred years before the events in A New Hope as Chewbacca relates a story from his youth on Kashyyyk. Determined to prove themselves eligible for the rites of adulthood, Chewie and his young friends venture into the perilous Shadowlands in search of adventure. But they find far more than they bargained for when they stumble upon slavers plotting a raid on the Wookiee village.
The accidental encounter becomes one of Chewies most formative experiencesone he wishes hadnt happened at all!
Fantastic art by comics newcomer Jennifer Meyer!
STAR WARS: DARK TIMESOUT OF THE WILDERNESS #1 (of 5)
Mick Harrison (W), Douglas Wheatley (A), Dan Jackson (C), Pablo Correa (Cover), and Mark A. Nelson (Variant Cover)
On sale Aug 3
FC, 40 pages
Darth Vader confronts a deadly assassin . . .
. . . the outlaw crew of the Uhumele arrives at the scene of Jedi Dass Jennirs last adventurebut Jennir is already gone . . .
. . . and half a galaxy away, Imperial fighters are shot out of the sky by an unarmed pleasure craft . . .
Return to the dark times, that uncharted era of Star Wars history when the Empire was new and the Jedi were hunted by Darth Vader!
Dark Times returns with an all-new story arc!
STAR WARS: INVASIONREVELATIONS #1 (of 5)
Tom Taylor (W), Colin Wilson (A), Wes Dzioba (C), Chris Scalf (Cover), and Dave Dorman (Variant Cover)
On sale July 13
FC, 40 pages
As the invading Yuuzhan Vong penetrate deeper into the galaxy, the Jedi fight back!
But one Jedi in training has taken a different path: Finn Galfridian, under the guidance of the mysterious Master Dray, infiltrates Coruscant and discovers revelations about the leaders of the New Republic that could lead to disaster!
Luke Skywalker, at the height of his Jedi powers, goes to war!
Covers by Chris Scalf, artist of Blood Ties and Purge!
Set within the time frame of the New Jedi Order novels from Del Rey!
STAR WARS: JEDITHE DARK SIDE #3 (of 5)
Scott Allie (W), Mahmud Asrar (A), Paul Mounts (C), and Stéphane Roux (Cover)
On sale July 20
FC, 40 pages
On Telos IV, a priestess has been assassinated, and the planet is on the verge of civil war. Only Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his Padawan Xanatos can protect the planets leaderwho just happens to be Xanatoss fatherand stop the insurgents. But Xanatos is succumbing to his own long-buried resentments and may soon be more of a hindrance than a help.
Twenty years before his fateful meeting with Anakin Skywalker, Qui-Gon Jinn had his first encounter with the dark side . . .
The story of jedi Qui-Gon Jinns Padawan, before Obi-Wan Kenobi!
Death on the palace steps!
STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLICTHE LOST SUNS #2 (of 5)
Alexander Freed (W), George Freeman (P), Dave Ross (P), Mark McKenna (I), Michael Atiyeh (C), and Benjamin Carré (Cover)
On sale July 13
FC, 40 pages
There are dark secrets behind the treaty that brought peace to the galaxy and an end to the war between the Jedi of the Republic and the Sith Empire. Now, with rumors of the secrets spreading, the galaxy is afraid a new war may be beginning . . .
Elite Republic spy Theron Shan has been assigned to find the old Jedi Master behind these rumors. Previously thought lost forever in Sith territory, Ngani Zho is back and more peculiar than before he left. Theron has his hands full with Zho, a troublesome thief, and the threatening Sith Knights who are also on Zhos trail!
LucasArts and BioWares soon-to-be-released online game comes straight to comics with an all-new story that runs concurrent with events in the game!
The debut of the Sith Knights!
Images 1 to 7 of 7 shown - Click here to view all 7 images »
More News
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If you really want to lose weight badly, you will go to great lengths and find means and ways just like everybody else. But after going through so many of them through media exposure, you probably wonder whether weight loss centers are the best way to lose weight fast.
If you have never been to weight loss center before, that will certainly be your question. Weight loss centers are also known as local weight loss courses. Should you decide to register, you will be attending trainings weekly, biweekly or monthly at that specific location.
Before participating, you can choose to pay either monthly or annual membership fee. No matter how tight your budget is, the consultants will do their best to make it as affordable as you through various packages.
When searching for your nearest weight loss centre, you should take note not all of them are similar. Especially the system and programs they conducted. So you find one that you feel comfortable with besides the membership fee.
Those programs are specially designed to track your weight progress and get you to interact with others wanting to lose weight just like you. Some weight loss centers have programs giving you additional membership benefits. Such as bringing along your family member and friend and assuming he or she signs up, you will be entitled to membership discount with the first training free.
Should you not be comfortable training with a group of people, you may consider 1 to 1 coaching. Though the price is much higher since you are investing in your personal trainer's time as well, it is well worth it.
Moreover your trainer is able to pay more attention to you. In order for this to work, you need to find one who is patient and willing to help you no matter how challenging you might find your training and keeping to your diet regularly to be.
Those are the pros of weight loss centers. The cons are no matter how busy you are, you still need to make time to train at the location you chose at least twice a week.
Otherwise you will constantly find yourself delaying your progress to lose weight and when your membership expires before you complete your training, you have to renew your membership by paying the annual fee again.
Having said that, I have provided what you need to know about weight loss centers. It will up to you whether you still want to choose weight loss centers or other options.
Should you need someone to handhold you every step of the way until you lose weight successfully and achieve the figure you want, this is certainly for you.
However if scheduling is your problem, then you should consider other options whereby you can train at your own time and pace. Otherwise you may have to pay more in order for your instructor to accommodate your timing.
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Web Chef Review + Giveaway: Made From Earth Organic Vitamin C Moisturizer
Made From Earth Organic Vitamin C Moisturizer is a multifunctional cream for your face, neck, décoletté, and other dry skin you may have.
This moisturizer works for all skin types, and even works effectively on sensitive skin. Whether you have acne, dry skin or a skin condition, this product provides results.
This moisturizer protects you from the sun, as well as helps with hyperpigmentation, discoloration that occurs with frequent exposure to the sun's rays.
Vitamin C smooths & protects your skin. Furthermore, vitamin C enhances the effectiveness of sunscreen. Vitamin C also boosts collagen production, which keeps you looking younger by brightening & plumping the skin, firming up your fine lines & wrinkles.
Find out about this product on this webisode of What I Say About Stuff:
What's in it?
All of the ingredients are organic, and this Made from Earth Organic Vitamin C Moisturizer is holistic as well.
Made from Earth has put in the highest amount of vitamin C possible in this cream for maximum efficacy.
The coconut oil in this moisturizer works as a sunscreen as well as assisting in clearing up bruises & uneven pigments. Arnica also helps with evening skin tone, and speeding the recovery from bruises.
Here are some of the organic ingredients listed:
- coconut oil – sunscreen, works to help clear bruises & uneven pigments
- arnica – works to help clear bruises & uneven pigments
- herbs
- aloe – healing the skin
- sunflower
- coconut oil
- cocoa butter
- beeswax
- vitamin C
- jojoba
- wheat germ oil
- rosemary
- borage
- flax oil
- grape
- vitamin B5 (panthenol)
- rose hip oil
- evening primrose oil
- lavender
- calendula
- chamomile
- grape seed oil
- macadamia nut oil
How do you use it?
Apply the moisturizer to cleansed skin on the face, neck, décoletté, and other dry skin you may have, except the eye area. The skin around your eyes is extremely sensitive and should only be adorned with eye creams.
Made from Earth Organic Vitamin C Moisturizer can be used daily on normal & dry skin. However, if you tend to have more oily skin, it is only recommended 3 times a week – every other day, in other words.
How did it work?
When I use this vitamin c moisturizer, my faced feels hydrated & supple. I definitely notice an increasingly even skin tone, and more of a fresh, healthy glow to my face. Mom likes it too, as it is non-irritating to her sensitive skin.
Despite being filled with numerous healthy oils for your skin, this formulation does not feel greasy & absorbs quickly. It has virtually no fragrance and no added dyes – just natural goodness to help your skin in so many ways.
Where can I find this product?
Made from Earth products are available online:
Enter the Giveaway:
Want to win yourself a jar of this wonderfully effective Made From Earth Organic Vitamin C Moisturizer?
Enter by May 6th, 2015 before 1:00pm ET by leaving a comment below this post about why you'd like to try Made from Earth Organic Vitamin C Moisturizer, and go LIKE these two fan pages below for extra entries:
One entry will be chosen randomly. We will need your Facebook profile name to confirm. The winning entry will be contacted for shipping information.
We hope you try out Made From Earth Organic Vitamin C Moisturizer, and you find it as effective as we do. #organic
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Time is not a river. It is a vast cosmic sea. Where each life exists as rippling circles on its surface, past and future being eternally present. And occasionally, one expanding ring intertwines with that of another, weaving the lives of two people together....
In 2012, Emme Wilde can't find the right guy. She wants to feel that swept-off-your-feet dizziness of true love. But so far, her dating life has come up short. Star Trek geek? Nice but too serious. Hippy artist? Cute but too vulnerable. Instead, Emme obsesses over the portrait of an unknown man in an old locket. Granted, a seriously dreamy guy with delicious, wind-swept hair she just itches to run her fingers through. But still. Dead men may be great listeners, but they are not exactly boyfriend material. Emme travels to England, determined to uncover his history and conquer the strong connection she feels.
In 1812, James Knight has given up finding the right woman. All he wants is someone to share his love of adventure. Instead, his life has become a Shakespearean drama. His brother languishes in a tragic star-crossed romance. His beloved sister clings to life, slowly dying of consumption. But then he finds a beautiful mystery woman, dripping wet and half-dead, beneath a tree on his estate. Now if he can uncover her history, perhaps adventure - and romance - will find him at last.
©2014 Nichole Van Valkenburgh (P)2015 Nichole Van Valkenburgh
There are no listener reviews for this title yet.
"Engrossing and entertaining.."
I loved this story . The plot was unpredictable and the characters engaging. I enjoyed the touches of humor when the siblings teased each other. I still chuckle when I picture a person from 1812 plAying AngryBirds.
"lovely, funny time travel romance"
This is a bit off the beaten path of your usual time travel romance. So many of them have been obvious rip-offs of Outlander. Plaid and highlanders everywhere you look!
But this story is almost believable, (except for the magic of course!). The h has been obsessed with a miniature portrait of a man in an antique locket. She finally figures out who painted it, and goes to England to research the artist and hopefully find out who was the subject of the portrait. She rents a cottage, there's a time portal, and suddenly she's in the past of 200 years ago. She also has amnesia, and except for a snarky running commentary in her subconscious, she has no connection to who she actually is. But then there's that darn locket...(which turns out to be very, VERY important!)
I loved the love story in this book. The H and h fall in love, but in much the way they might have done back in that time. No clinches, no kisses, not even any real handholding. I normally like erotic content in my romances, but here it serves the story best for that element to not be there. They are abiding by the mores of that time and their station in life...men and women were not permitted those liberties. This is a very well-written book, fast paced but detail-rich. The characters and situations are mostly believable, and there's a wonderfully evocative feeling of being there.
I don't want to give the story away, but I loved this one, and I'll recommend it to friends. I'm very much looking forward to the rest of the series to be available on Audible.
"Cute but predictable"
OK so it's not quite Claire and Jamie Fraser....
I like the performance. The narrator did a good job of switching between American and British accents.
The book was very silly and predictable and a lot of the dialogue made me roll my eyes. That being said, if you've just finished reading a heavy or intense novel and need something light pass the time then this is a good book.
There were not any explicit sex scenes, so I was able to listen to it with my children in the room which is always a plus.
"Sweetly romantic and funny"
Deliciously Romantic even without the bodice ripping. Refreshing to enjoy good writing and a good story not overwhelmed and overly dependent on sex, although I do enjoy those as well..It's a good story that I will definitely listen to again and again.
"Great time travel romance."
Very clever plot, well written, humourous, and romantic. Excellent narration. I'm hoping book 2 is available on Audible soon.
"Absolutely fantastic!!! I loved it!"
This has to be the best time-travel romance bookI have ever read! This is a rare and wonderful love story that you don't find very often anymore! One that you would be comfortable lending to anyone including your mom, your daughter or even your grandma! A very sweet read indeed!
SUPERB... Romantic with full, fleshed-out, easy to love (and hate) characters. Smart with a lovely performance by the narrator. I cannot wait to continue with the remainder of the series. It's so captivating and beautifully written, with no smut in sight. If you are a true romantic who enjoys a gentle love story (none of that bodice ripping, Fabio covered would-be romance), this will be perfect for you!!!
"Super cute take you away romance!"
Loved it. Highly recommend this book!
The narrator was great and the story line was cute. Couldn't stop listening! Yes
"Compared to Outlander?!"
I bought this after I got an email from Audible recommending it to Outlander fans other than it being a time travel romance novel, not much else compares I felt like I was reading a YA novel. Outlander is on a completely different level with outstanding character development and superb writing.
"I tried. "
The premise seemed good. And it was recommended by Audible for people who like Outlander. I suppose the Outlander series is just too good. I managed to listen for 30 minutes trying to make this book appeal to me, but could not listen after that.
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If you find this review inappropriate and think it should be removed from our site, let us know. This report will be reviewed by Audible and we will take appropriate action.


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Many MLMers bring up the idea that small businesses fail too. The implication is that because both MLMs and small businesses fail they are the same.
Unfortunately this is another HUGE MLM myth.
The U.S. Small Business Administration has this handy PDF of information of small businesses in general. It quotes:
"7 of 10 survive the first two years, half at least 5 years, a third at least 10 years, a quarter stay in business 15 years or more."
We can easily flip this around to show that 30% fail in the first two years, 50% in 5 years, 70% in 10 years, and 75% in 15 years.
We also have extensive proof that failure rate in MLM is 99.5% or worse each year.
Let's imagine that a million people start small businesses. After the first two years, 700,000 are still in business. After 5 years, we have 500,000 in business. After 10 years, we have 300,000 still in business. Finally after 15 years, we still have 250,000 successful small business owners.
Now let's see what happens with a million people who start MLM businesses. Assuming a generous 90% failure rate (again it is typically much higher) after two years, we are left with only a thousand people. After 5 years, we are left with 10 people. We can't go any further on, because then we'd be looking at fractions of a person.
It's not even a close competition.
With small businesses you have 500,000 successful businesses. With MLMs you have 10.
It's like comparing the failure rate of running a 5k with running 3000 miles across country. They may both be able to point to success and failures, but the scale is so very different that anyone who attempts to make such a comparison looks ridiculous.This post involves:


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SW stolen ticket seller: Judge had six passes, not two
Besides Monica Guerrero, James Jackson also named another judge who had tickets
Published 12:47 pm, Friday, August 21, 2009
Ex-Bexar County court bailiff James Jackson testified Friday that County Court-at-Law No. 7 Judge Monica Guerrero obtained six stolen Southwest Airlines tickets from him, four more than she had previously disclosed.
In a list Jackson provided Friday during the federal trial of five people charged with wire fraud for buying numerous stolen tickets, Jackson also identified Associate Juvenile Court Judge Pat Garza as having obtained one ticket from him.
By Jackson's testimony, the two judges have now been linked to seven of the 5,600 tickets that Jackson's wife, former airline employee Althea Jackson, stole from the airline. The Jacksons said they sold most of them for $120 each between 2002 and 2005. A prosecutor said Friday that 700 of them have not been found and "were probably destroyed."
The list, read Friday by U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia to defense lawyers outside the presence of the jury, also has more than 20 other names of sheriff's deputies and personnel in the county's adult and juvenile justice system, as well as friends and relatives of the Jacksons. Defense lawyers wanted the names to investigate whether Jackson instructed them to give a cover story if ever questioned by Southwest about the origin of the tickets. No one on the list was charged.
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The list said Guerrero got six tickets from Jackson. In an interview in February 2008, she told the San Antonio Express-News that Jackson gave her two tickets as a Christmas gift. She said she would not have accepted them if she'd known they "had any taint on them."
Through a county courts staff attorney, Guerrero said she could not comment on the testimony because judicial rules bar her from doing so and because she is likely to be a witness in the trial.
Garza could not be reached for comment Friday. The list did not specify whether Guerrero and Garza bought the tickets, and Jackson was not asked before leaving the stand.
Jackson conceded that he may not have told defendant Mark Gudanowski, the former driver and bodyguard of District Attorney Susan Reed, to lie to Southwest about the origin of the tickets. But he said he told everyone else.
The so-called "instruction" involved telling Southwest, if asked, that the tickets were issued free by the airline because the holder was inconvenienced. Purchasers were told to never say they bought the tickets, Jackson said.
"OK, there may have been one person I didn't give the instruction to, but to the best of my ability, I instructed everybody," Jackson testified.
He also said he never told buyers the tickets were stolen or illegitimate, but assumed they knew based on his instructions.
More Information
- mySA Data Central: Review a list of people who used the stolen tickets, and more information about the tickets.
- mySA Politics on Twitter: Sign up for up-to-the-minute updates on the day's drama, developments and data.
Later, Secret Service agent Jarret Palmieri testified about statements obtained from the defendants, or other evidence that showed they bought multiple tickets from Jackson and resold them. Besides Gudanowski, the defendants include suspended bailiff Pedro Martinez Jr.; former sheriff's deputy Mark Kedrowski; Jackson's cousin Mattie Epperson; and Epperson's former co-worker at SBC, Deborah Robinson.
Palmieri testified that two statements Gudanowski gave 45 days apart were inconsistent. In one, Palmieri said, Gudanowski admitted Jackson had given him the instruction and that he made some profit after selling tickets he bought from Jackson. In a second written statement, Gudanowski gave a version that included saying he did not charge anyone more than what he paid Jackson for them, Palmieri testified, reading from the statement.
Palmieri also said agents tried to talk to ticket broker Jerome Cohen, owner of Best Tickets, but he hired a lawyer and "refused to cooperate." One of Cohen's former employees told agents that Cohen bought 2,000 of the tickets from Althea Jackson. Cohen has not been charged.