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Share.mov II from SHARE Conference on Vimeo.
texts by Jasmina Tesanovic and Bruce Sterling
Street-Smart Cities by Jasmina Tesanovic
I like them big, I like them dirty, I like them loud, and I DON'T like them "smart." My cities. That' s why I like Belgrade, Cairo, Los Angeles, Rome… They have the streets smarts that smart, technocratic cities lack. Utopian visions of "smart cities" always look like Internet switching centers: shiny air-conditioned barns devoid of people. "Cities" without citizens.
After Belgrade survived its most recent war, Belgrade became a world capital street smart city. When first Share Conference was held in April 2011, the streets of the city were flooded with people. Who knew that Belgrade had so many eager high-tech geeks? Finally leaving their screens to come came out of hiding, hibernation or just gestation. No one had seen them gathered in one public place; it had never occured to them that they might have something to say and do as an urban community.
But they hacked the city, they opened the sewers of the mentally-gated mainstream, and something flooded out…Some passive-aggressive stench of misery! Life stinks and Belgrade rocks! Along with that unseen portal in the fortress city, something gushed in: foreigners with their words and gadgets. Not only does the street-smart city exist, its system is full of cracks.
Share By Day was not a wisecracks conference: we were just being there. We had less to say and more to be, and it was smart. Share By Night was awesome: music, river, booze. Those underground city smart people, together with bewildered foreigners, both ready to share despair and knowledge.
So what, if it is not "about revolution"! What is it all about: internet, fun and joy, hacking, civil disobedience, power to the people, electronic, social media, new media, diy, hacktivism. Something changed the balance, and sent the elements whirling like a Calder mobile.
Belgrade is a city on the run, it was built randomly, continuously, without a master plan, and it was regularly destroyed — commonly by people from its own multiethnic population. Like some brassy Ottoman coffee-maker, often broken more often repaired, Belgrade grinds its citizens, its friends and its foes. At the end of this street-smart process they are a heady brew.
Belgrade is a cultural favela, it is an outlaw capital. It was always a capital, even as the capital of war crimes! The infrastructure of a city is not the city, these bricks, sewers, wires, circuits and signals are all contingent things, like a glove for a hand. When creative people in that city get a grip, then the streets come alive, the city lives!
Three Lives, Three Cities by Bruce Sterling
People in Belgrade sometimes wonder why I'm often in Belgrade, yet I'm never there when it makes any sense, or when anyone expects to see me there. Well, I pursue a modern "multilocative" lifestyle. I have three cities and three lives within them.
Beograd is the home of "Boris Srebro," a gloomy and acerbic writer of dark Eastern European fantastyka. Torino hosts "Bruno Argento," an artsy Italian fantascienza writer who likes European high-tech. And Austin, the capital of Texas, is the home of "Bruce Sterling."
Of course, these are just writer pseudonyms, like online avatars in the great game of globalizatsiya. The variety keeps me interested. I learn things this way.
All three of these towns have invented parallel methods of functioning in modernity. Their differences are local, while their commonalities demonstrate what kind of world we all share as contemporary people. Anything that is fully shared by cities as distant as Belgrade, Torino and Austin is just how life is nowadays.
Since I'm a novelist, I like to call the temperament of the twenty-teens "Dark Euphoria." The atmosphere at Share Conference, for instance, was extremely "Dark Euphoria;" it's feelings of startled excitement and gleeful bewilderment in basic conditions of terror-war and economic depression. That's the modern sensibility of Dark Euphoria, which clusters around two poles of existence that I like to call "Gothic High-Tech" and "Favela Chic." "Gothic High-Tech" and "Favela Chic" are forms of cultural behavior that are more or less forced on all of us by the vagaries of our contemporary infrastructure.
"Gothic High-Tech" is Gothic in the Edgar Allan Poe sense: it's abandoned, hollowed-out, haunted, lost, decadent. "Favela Chic" is chic in the sense of being popular, modish, transitional, new and untried. All modern cities everywhere have some aspects of "Gothic High-Tech." Commonly, these are large, solid, former analog industries and institutions that have been obsolesced, disrupted or offshored, leading to their Gothic collapse. These cities also all have "Favela Chic" zones where semi-legal, immaterialized, highly inventive conniving and hustling is the order of the day.
Let me try to illustrate this through example. Torino, Beograd, and Austin, for all their apparent political, ethnic, religious and economic differences, are physically quite similar cities. They are three inland regional capitals, of about the same size and population, situated on rivers. Like a shark, a porpoise and a mosasaur, they've all been shaped by the pressures of urban evolution.
So let's consider how these three cities respond to modern life.
Beograd: splavovi.
Torino: stuffed animal.
Austin: tech incubator.
The Beograd "splav" is a semi-legal houseboat perched on the banks of the Danube. Due to flaws in Belgrade's odd, post-communist real-estate relations, it's easy to get away with a wide variety of gray-market entertainments on these boats and barges. So these watery restaurants, nightclubs and speakeasies have become a major source of the town's reviving tourist economy. Styish, popular, cheap and poorly regulated, but also advanced and modish, the splavs are "Favela Chic." They make money.
Torino is a former automobile manufacturing hub cratered by Asian competition. This means a huge industrial acreage that will be beset with Gothic bats and rats if not reoccupied at cheap rates. The result is the "stuffed animal," a building created for some lost purpose whose actual inhabitants are doing something else entirely. The "Eataly" Slow Food market, occupying the hollow bowels of a former FIAT plant, is a typical Gothic High-Tech "stuffed animal." It is monstrous architecturally, but it makes money.
The Austin "tech incubator" is a garage or cubbyhole occupied by gamer or web-developer start-ups. These enterprises are very plug-and-play and very fly-by-night. Most tech startups die rapidly, but are quickly replaced by others with a similar ethos and often the same personnel. Despite their Favela Chic anonymity and rapid turnaround, they make money.
Beograd: rural depopulation.
Torino: EU regulation.
Austin: environmental disaster.
Belgrade is vastly more prosperous than the ethnically menaced and economically flattened Serbian hinterlands. So Belgrade acts as a population sump, a growing city in a state with a very low birth-rate. Around dynamic Belgrade, rural villages collapse as they fill with the elderly. One response is to reclassify these derelict areas as magnets for green tourism.
Torino's immediate surroundings benefit hugely from generous EU agricultural subsidies. The landscape outside Turin is a rather Disneyfied rural hinterland of wine lakes and butter seas. Some of the less productive mountain villages are in rapid demographic decay.
Austin is suffering an environmental disaster in which sustained drought, unheard-of summer temperatures and raging wildfires are destroying Texan crops and cattle. Since water policies favor cities, this intensifies urbanization, at least until the wells and reservoirs give out.
Beograd: gypsy dumps.
Torino: immigrant neighborhoods.
Austin: barrios and ghettos.
Nine percent of the Beograd population are Romany. Since they double as trashpickers, they tend to live in makeshift housing in dumps and metal-recycling centers. These are classic favelas of an underclass without access to real-estate property relations. These junk-homes are often made of oddly high-tech debris, such as waterproof signage vinyl and butchered car-parts.
Torino lost a third of its population to blue-collar decline in auto manufacturing. Instead of shrinking toward death like Detroit did, Torino chose to liberalize immigration. This policy attracted clusters of Libyans, Somalians, Ethiopians, plus some other non-Italo-speaking fraction populations such as Bangladeshis, Peruvians, Filipinos and the globe-spanning offshore Chinese. These migrants tend to cluster in Torino, but not in old-fashioned ethnic enclaves of "little Peru" or "little Bangladesh." Instead, these modern Turinese foreigners live in weirdly globalized districts, places with the scrambled ethnic mixture of an airport lounge.
Austin, as a consequence of slavery and Mexican secession, has had Mexican and black segregation areas since the city's founding days. The borders ooze around a bit with the decades, but everybody knows who belongs where, except for immigrants, who often seem unsure of the unspoken rules of American race politics.
Beograd: Knez Mihajlova.
Torino: Via Roma.
Austin: Congress Avenue.
Belgrade's Knez Mihajlova street is an axis of political power that leads from the city's ancient river fortress toward its capital building. This street has been ground zero for Belgrade's transition to consumer capitalism and is the prestige address for international retailers. Occasional riots, demos and other financial setbacks haven't been able to halt its relentless gentrification, though, since most stores are less then ten years old, the street is still markedly less genteel than it was during the Austro-Hungarian empire a century ago.
Torino's Via Roma is a Savoyard royalist marble arcade, brimming over with the cream of La Moda. Via Roma sells high heels and incendiary lingerie to Swiss and German housewives.
Congress Avenue is an Austin axis uniting politics, education and banking. Since most Austinites prefer to dress in rags, it has never caught on as a major shopping district, but it's got plenty of theaters, bars and cosmic-cowboy honky-tonks.
Beograd: beer festivals, huge music festivals, and (recently) a high-tech festival.
Torino: huge food festivals and small high-tech festivals.
Austin: huge music festivals and huge high-tech festivals.
Beograd: Nostalgic Serbian nationalist-peasant gear, heroic sports-fan gear.
Torino: Italian shoes and lingerie.
Austin: country-western warehouse outlets, cowboy boots, cowboy hats, rattlesnake belts.
Beograd: Eastern Europeans, fellow ex-Yugoslavs, Danube boaters.
Torino: Swiss, Germans, French, Austrians, some Arab or Russian moguls.
Austin: US snowbirds, Mexicans, German cowboy tourists.
Beograd: un-rentable ex-Communist workers' housing barracks.
Torino: abandoned, unfixable UNESCO world-heritage brick baroque heaps; derelict heavy industry barracks.
Austin: former downtown railway-packing districts, derelict fossil-fuel plants, abandoned airport, flood-prone creek zones.
Beograd: Zemun, Kralja Petra
Torino: Stile Floreale district
Austin: Hyde Park, Travis Heights
All these disparate areas flourished during the Belle Epoque before the first World War, and have never had to struggle much to outmatch successor districts built in more difficult eras.
Beograd: the law-abiding, prosperous capital of functional European state.
Torino: the former Italian royal capital in permanent shadow role as "industrial capital," "media capital," "cultural capital," "creative capital" or anything else that is seasonal and intellectually stylish.
Austin: The Texan curse-of-oil capital becomes a clean-energy capital; Austin is "Kept Weird" as an eccentric darling of the Creative Class.
So that's what these cities are like nowadays. They differ, but they're not as distant as one might think.
To show this let's try a thought experiment. Imagine that the populations of these three cities were magically divided into thirds and scattered among all three cities. In other words, everybody picks up and relocates, everybody becomes "multilocative."
Beograd becomes a polyglot city that is Serbian-Texan-Italian. Torino is Italian-Serbian-Texan. Austin is magically Texan-Italian-Serbian.
Obviously there would be some confusion — for about six weeks.
After that brief transition, however, Belgrade would be blessed with a relatively sober, politically capable, technically advanced population. Somber Torino would be completely electrified and dynamized. Austin would become by far the most sophisticated and soulful city in the American South.
You might think that, since these cities were all shared the same people, these three cities would become just alike. They'd be globally flattened, homogenized places, they'd lose all their local character, they'd be like big airports. That's what people tell us that globalization does to us…. but frankly, I just don't believe it. Humankind is more perverse than that.
No, I'd wager that these three cities would be LESS alike than they were before.


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DLW: Ditalini Pasta & White Beans with Garlic Rosemary Oil
I have been obsessed with white beans as of late. No explanation…I just want them, all the time. Also, tuna. No idea why.
Luckily, Smitten Kitchen delivered and we whipped up this dish for dinner last week. She mentioned that it makes enough to feed a couple starving armies…so we halved the recipe and still had plenty of leftovers for lunches during the week!
Ditalini Pasta & White Beans with Garlic Rosemary Oil
½ medium onion, cut into big chunks
½ medium carrot, in big chunks
½ celery stalk, in big chunks
3 garlic cloves, 2 left whole, 1 finely chopped
¼ cup flat-leaf parsley leaves
pinch of crushed red pepper flakes (or to taste)
¼ cup olive oil, divided
Coarse or kosh salt
1 to 2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 15-ounce can small white beans (such as Great Northern or Cannelini), rinsed
½ pound short tube pasta we used Ditalini
½ tablespoon minced fresh rosemary
Pulse onion, carrot, celery, whole garlic cloves, parsley, and red pepper flakes (to taste) in a food processor until finely chopped. Heat 4 tbsp. oil in a large, heavy pot over medium heat and add vegetable mixture to pot. (Quickly rinse, but no need to fully wash, food processor as you'll use it again shortly.) Season generously with salt. Cook, stirring from time to time, until vegetables take on a bit of color, about 10 minutes. Add tomato paste and cook it into the vegetables for another minute. Add 1 cup water and use it to scrape up any bits stuck to the pot. Let simmer until liquid has almost disappeared, about 5 to 8 minutes.
Add beans and 2 more cups of water to the pot and simmer until the flavors meld, about another 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, cook pasta until al dente, or still a little firm inside.
Reserve 1 1/2 cups cooking water from your drained pasta.
Transfer one cup of the bean mixture to your rinsed food processor and purée it until smooth, then stir it back into the sauce to thicken it. Add drained pasta and 1/2 cup cooking liquid to bean sauce and cook the mixture together, adding more pasta cooking liquid as needed, until the sauce coats the pasta, about 1 to 2 more minutes.
To serve: Heat remaining 1/4 cup olive oil in a tiny saucepan over medium-low heat with garlic and rosemary, until sizzling stops. Divide pasta between serving bowls and drizzle garlic-rosemary oil over each.
Next time we make this, we will wait until the very end to add in most of the beans as we found that we liked them a bit toothier and less mushy. And please, don't underestimate how critical the garlic rosemary oil is at the end. I would even recommend making more of the oil for leftovers and dredging some crusty bread through it.
This is a great vegetarian hearty and filling dish despite looking a little bland. Who knows, next time I might go crazy and throw some lightly dressed arugula on top!

subset: commoncrawl


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LocationFredericksburg VA
5807 Mallard Road
Woodford, VA 22580
New 2019 Jayco Precept 31ULIncredible FALL SAVINGS!!
Jayco Precept class A gas motorhome 31UL highlights:
- Split Bath
- Tri-Fold Sofa
- Booth Dinette
- Pullout Countertop
- King Size Bed
- Outside Entertainment
Been wondering how you and your family can travel in comfort with your own accommodations? This Jayco Precept class A gas motorhome might just be the perfect fit. You will find lots of floor space with triple slide outs and storage throughout for those longer trips. The Jayco-exclusive legless dinette table provides plenty of leg room for everyone to sit comfortably. You will appreciate more food prep space with the pullout countertop, and the storage in the residential refrigerator. You are sure to enjoy your own king size bed while the kids sleep on the furniture or optional drop-down bunk. The outside entertainment center with an LED TV mounted on a swivel bracket and the single-disc DVD/FM radio offer an additional living area outdoors. Take a look today!
The Precept class A motorhome provides exclusive technology and premium ride and handling features for a luxurious home away from home experience on the open road. The JRide Plus feature allows for precise handling and stability for a safe ride anywhere you go. The automatic hydraulic leveling jacks, plus backup and sideview cameras allow for easy set up at your favorite destination. You will also appreciate the Onan Marquis Gold Genset 5,500-watt generator with auto-gen start, and the water filtration system to name a few other standard features. You sure can't go wrong with any Precept model by Jayco that you find to fit your family's size and lifestyle, it's time to choose now!
Stock# 40331
Chassis: Ford F53
|32 ft 9 in
|Ext Width
|8 ft 5 in
|Ext Height
|12 ft 7 in
|Int Height
|7 ft
|Hitch Weight
|5000 lbs
|Gross Weight
|22000 lbs
|Fresh Water Capacity
|72 gals
|Grey Water Capacity
|40 gals
|Black Water Capacity
|50 gals
|Furnace BTU
|30000 btu
|Fuel Type
|6.8L Triton EFI V10
|Ford F53
|320 hp
|Fuel Capacity
|80 gals
|228 in
|Available Beds
|460 ft-lb
|Refrigerator Type
|Refrigerator Size
|21 cu ft
|Convection Cooking
|Cooktop Burners
|Shower Size
|30" x 36"
|Number of Awnings
|LP Tank Capacity
|Water Heater Capacity
|10 gal
|Water Heater Type
|28500 btu
|Basement Storage
|118 cu. ft.
|TV Info
|LR 50" LED on Lift, BR 32" LED, Ext. LED
|Awning Info
|16' Electric with LED Lights
|Gross Combined Weight
|26000 lbs
|Shower Type
|Electrical Service
|50 amp
Scan this QR code with your smartphone to save this page and have mobile access to this unit's information.
Jayco, Inc. was founded in 1968 by a man of strong faith and vision. The late Lloyd J. Bontrager, family man and inventor, felt he could build the world a better RV. He longed to create a company of his own, one that clearly reflected his ideals: a company where everyone would be treated as "family".
With encouragement from his wife Bertha, Lloyd started Jayco on their farm--in two chicken houses and a barn! He developed his own prototype camping trailer and a unique lifter system for fold-down campers, the basic design of which is patented and still in use today. By the end of 1968, his fledging company of 15 employees had sold 132 fold-down camping trailers.
Today, Jayco's "family" of employees has grown to nearly 1,500 people, while more than 25,000 people join our "extended family" of customers each year.
At Jayco, our mission statement is: Committed to being the most respected name in recreation vehicles. We will consistently build a high quality, high value, competitively priced product at acceptable margins, treat every situation with the highest level of integrity in a timely manner, and continually work to reduce total cost to achieve acceptable returns.
*All calculated monthly payments are an estimate for qualified buyers only and do not constitute a commitment that financing or a specific interest rate or term is available. Financing terms may not be available in all Campers Inn locations. Campers Inn RV Sales is not responsible for any misprints, typos, or errors found in our website pages. Any price listed excludes sales tax, registration tags, and delivery fees. Manufacturer pictures, specifications, and features may be used in place of actual inventory in stock on our lot. Please contact us for availability as our inventory changes rapidly.


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To help meet educational expenses, Virginia Western Community College is pleased to participate in Nelnet's tuition payment plan. For a non-refundable fee of $25.00, Nelnet allows monthly, interest-free tuition payments. The earlier students enroll the more payment options they may have. The payment plan for Summer 2014 began on April 11, 2014.
If a payment plan is not established or if tuition is not paid by May 1, 2014 students who registered early for classes will be dropped and will need to repeat the registration process. Financial Aid students are protected from enrollment cancellation up to the amount of their Financial Aid award. Financial Aid students should pay any differences between their total award and the amount due to prevent enrollment cancellation.
Payment plan sign-up instructions and deadlines will be posted on the Student Bulletin, Facebook, Twitter, www.virginiawestern.edu and on the VWtvs located across campus.
Step by step directions on how to enroll in a payment plan are available at http://www.virginiawestern.edu/studenthelp/student/tuitionpaymentplan.php


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Journey to a billion suns – world premiere of planetarium show
A new planetarium show, Journey to a billion Suns, premieres today in Hamburg, Germany, to tell the fascinating story of mapping the Milky Way, from ancient times to ESA's recently launched Gaia mission.
The 45-minute, 360 degree full-dome planetarium spectacular was produced by Stargarten in cooperation with ESA and planetariums across Europe.
Gaia was launched on 19 December and will soon start its five-year mission to measure the positions, motions and physical characteristics of a billion stars to create the most accurate 3D map of our galaxy, the Milky Way, ever made.
The mission follows a long tradition of star mapping dating back to the ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus who, in 129 BC and using only naked eye observations and simple geometry, catalogued the relative positions of around one thousand stars.
Hipparchus laid the foundations for investigations of the Solar System's place among the stars for the next two thousand years, culminating in the breakthrough measurements of roughly 100,000 stars in the Milky Way made by ESA's Hipparcos satellite launched in 1989.
Now, Gaia will take our understanding to a whole new level, surveying a billion stars with much higher accuracy.
Journey to a billion Suns looks back to the astronomers whose quest it was to seek out the distance to the stars, in order to understand how our world has formed. From the star maps of our forefathers to the third dimension soon to be revealed by Gaia, Journey to a billion Suns takes the audience on a beautiful journey through the Milky Way to explore the many questions that have been asked of the origin and evolution of our home galaxy.
The show officially opens today in Hamburg. For a full list of participating planetariums also presenting the show, please visit: http://planetariumshow.eu/journey-to-a-billion-suns/showing/
For more information about the show, see: http://planetariumshow.eu/journey-to-a-billion-suns/


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In commemoration of the United Nations' Holocaust Remembrance Day, B'nai B'rith International held a discussion titled "60 Years of Material Restitution: History and Challenges," in New York City on January 25.
One of the leading experts in the field of material restitution, Arie Bucheister, chief of staff at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, explained the daunting challenges facing survivors and their heirs to have property returned or material compensation made to them.
"The crimes of Nazi murderers and robbers resulted in countries profiting from Jewish victims," Bucheister said.
While Germany has "far reaching compensation and restitution laws," Bucheister says many other countries are without such legislation. Poland has no compensation laws, and a number of countries, such as Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Lithuania have enacted various restitution laws for victims with mixed degrees of effectiveness. It can be especially challenging in the former Soviet bloc countries where much of the property that was confiscated is now nationalized, he said.
"Despite being more than a half-century removed from the horrors of the Holocaust, it remains ever-important that B'nai B'rith and other Jewish groups press on in our fight for some minimal justice to be made to survivors and their families," B'nai B'rith International President Allan J. Jacobs said from New York where he addressed the program. "Programs like this open eyes to the uphill battle we continue to face."
Bucheister, born in Israel and a child of two survivors, has been a principal negotiator for the conference for many years. He says one of the conference's main functions is negotiating for heirless property that's been sold. Whatever is returned—whether it be monetary or physical property—goes toward communal and social welfare needs.
"Each year we have a program on International Holocaust Remembrance Day and every year it's another chilling reminder of the atrocities committed against the Jewish people--atrocities against humanity," B'nai B'rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin, who addressed the program, said. "Recounting these crimes reminds us, once again, that we all must bear witness."
This program preceded the official U.N. Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony, which B'nai B'rith representatives also attended. B'nai B'rith played an active role in the United Nations' adoption of Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2005.
Watch the full event below
Programs & Events:
Get involved with B'nai B'rith International today!
November 2019


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Community on Yoga, Meditation, Ayurveda and Spirituality
Swami Chidananda, 1916-2008, disciple of Swami Sivananda, president of the Divine Life Society 1963-2008, was one of the greatest Yoga and Meditation Masters of modern times. His compassion, serenity and deep wisdom made a strong impression on anybody who came into contact with him.
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So a comment from one of my posts the other day got me thinking. There are many people who have built their tiny home and now have all these tools that they acquired for their build, but don't have a need for them anymore. So now what?
There are those who are professional builders/craftsmen/craftswomen that will have them for their job, but that isn't the case for many. For others they just built a house (just think about that, they built an entire house) at that point they have learned some amazing skills and might just have caught the bug and start other fun project.
However, there are many of us who don't need all those tools and it seems at odds to have a tiny house and a ton of tools. Up until this point I have suggested trying to recoup some of the money by selling them on craigs list, but what if we tried something different.
What if we took the tools that we used to build our Tiny House and passed them on to another tiny house builder? Tools are expensive so I would think there would need to be some sort of exchange, perhaps a labor exchange or money. How neat would it be if you helped out someone on their tiny house for a reasonable amount of time, which gave you the skills for your own home and in exchange, in lieu of a hourly payment, you were to adopt their tools?
I also thought about having a set of tools that I could rent out to people through this website for a small fraction of what the tools cost, but logistically that might be a nightmare because shipping would really expensive on it because of the size of some of these things, and if you get a bad apple who doesn't take care of things.
There are of course website that have this concept where you can connect with local people who have things, some municipalities do things like this and then in Charlotte (and other places) there are tool banks that you can do this from, but I haven't seen an option that would allow you to build a whole house by renting for less than the cost of purchase.
Your Turn!
- What do you think of the idea of passing on tools to another Tiny House builder?
- What do you think about a tiny house tool lending library?


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In This Section:
The career programs and events sponsored by Cornell Career Services offices are announced in our Workshops and Events publication. It is published at the beginning of each semester, and is available in all career offices across campus and at our major events.
Also check our online career calendar regularly for updates to that publication. Note that the career offices in Engineering, School of Hotel Administration, and ILR maintain additional calendars of events.


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That day has changed my life forever.
Marco was granted his wish to be a sports reporter in August 2008 with the generous assistance of FOX Sports and FOX Sports Supports, its charitable initiative that has supported Make-A-Wish® throughout the 2008 Major League Baseball season. Here is Marco's story, in his own words:
From the minute I was born, I had three favorite things in life: music, movies and sports. I remember being real little, going out to my backyard with a mini baseball bat pretending I was Sammy Sosa hitting 62 home runs, even though my "outfield wall covered in ivy" was the bushes in front of my Dad's shed. As an 8-year-old kid, all I wanted to do was play baseball and football with my friends, though as much as I wanted to, I couldn't.
I was born with a rare disease called Prune Belly Syndrome. Prune Belly Syndrome is a disease that affects your heart, kidneys and limbs. Over the course of my first 15 years of life, I've had multiple surgeries. At just 15 months old, I underwent open heart surgery. Over the next three or so years, my kidney function started to rapidly decline, and as a result, I was put on dialysis at 4 years old. Six months later on May 13, 1996, I had a kidney transplant. The kidney was donated by my Dad.
I have been on medicines from Day 1 of my life and will continue to be on anti-rejection medicines for the rest of my life. I will also have to live with the fact that I have a prosthetic leg and a new one needs to be made every time I grow, which makes it difficult because I have growth deficiency issues due to the Prune Belly Syndrome and need to be on medication for this as well.
It was about this time that my family was made aware, through various doctors at Children's Memorial Hospital and segments on TV, about the Make-A-Wish Foundation and all the life-changing things they had done for kids just like me. It was to my surprise that one day, some years later, a wish granter rang my doorbell and asked me if I had one wish, what would it be?
I thought for a few minutes, and flashed back to about six years earlier. It was Christmas morning and I had just gotten the brand new Madden game for Playstation and rushed up to my room to go play. A few hours went by, and my parents were really confused because they hadn't heard the sounds of a video game coming from my room. Instead, they heard me talking. When my mom walked into my room, she saw me sitting there playing the game, but I was commentating on the game and talking about everything that was going on. Through my whole life, I always had the idea that if I couldn't be out there playing the game, I could be just as good talking about it.
So I answered the wish granter's question: I wish I could be a sports reporter at a Cubs game. And I can honestly say that on the day of my wish, I truly experienced the greatest day of my life. I got to meet all the players I had watched and talked about. I got to interview Lou Piniella, and let me tell you, they call him Sweet Lou for a reason. He really is a nice guy. I got to talk to Jim Edmonds, Alfonso Soriano and Carlos Zambrano. By the way, Zambrano enjoys singing really loudly in the dugout.
Then I got to go up to the FOX Sports broadcast booth and call the third inning of the game with Eric Karros and Dick Stockton. Eric is a former Cub first baseman who signed my ball, "Marco: Don't take my job."
That day has changed my life forever. A few weeks later, I started my senior year of high school. On the first day back, I was approached by the TV Production department, asking me if I could commentate all of our high school football games. I met some great people at FOX Sports who told me if I ever needed an in, they would be glad to help me out.
The Make-A-Wish Foundation has given me a new reason to wake up in the morning. And that reason is opportunity. So many roads have now opened for me after my wish. And for a kid who wasn't supposed to live 24 hours, I think I've come a long way, and Make-A-Wish has helped me tremendously. Thank You.
The Make-A-Wish Foundation has given me a new reason to wake up in the morning.
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Lindsey, 13, non-Hodgkin lymphoma
Get connected with Make-A-Wish®.
Marco, you're such a talented writer, so I can only imagine how great you must be as a sports commentator! I'm so glad your wish was fulfilled. I love rooting for the Cubs, and I hope you're calling the plays when they win the World Series! You are truly a courageous and gifted young man. Best of luck in all your future endeavors.
July 22, 2009 - 10:55 AM
I love the Cubs too, and I am so happy that your wish was able to be granted.
November 11, 2009 - 4:55 PM
June 25, 2012 - 11:25 AM
Hodgkins lymphoma
I wish to go to Fenway Park and throw out the first pitch
I wish to be a car designer
I wish to meet Brian Williams
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A Consumer Protection and Service Agency
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
For more information contact:
Holly VonLuehrte
(502) 573-0450
FRANKFORT, Ky. —Agriculture Commissioner James Comer expressed grave concerns for Kentucky's livestock producers and corn growers and cautioned them to take steps to protect themselves from potential losses. Comer said that drought-stricken corn silage could contain toxic levels of nitrogen. If fed to livestock, this corn silage could be fatal.
"I am not going to sugarcoat the severity of this situation," said Commissioner Comer, who raises beef cattle on his farm in Monroe County. "I am very concerned for all our producers and their families."
The Kentucky field office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service reported that, as of Sunday, 72 percent of Kentucky's corn crop and 76 percent of the Commonwealth's pastures were rated poor or very poor. Commissioner Comer said some corn stalks aren't producing ears, which has led many growers, especially those in western Kentucky, to consider chopping their corn into silage to salvage some value.
"Feeding silage can help livestock producers who need to feed their animals because their pastures are suffering from the dry weather," Commissioner Comer said. "But producers should be careful about feeding corn silage until they have determined that the nitrogen content is at an acceptable level."
The University of Kentucky Agricultural Weather Center stated Monday that western Kentucky and the bluegrass region are in extreme hydrological drought while central and eastern Kentucky are in severe drought. Western Kentucky would need more than 16 inches of rain to end the drought, according to UK. Because it does not appear that this drought will abate anytime soon, Commissioner Comer urged farmers who have federal crop insurance to check in with their adjusters before making any major decisions.
Commissioner Comer has communicated with the governor's office regarding the possibility of a declaration of emergency in counties across the Commonwealth.


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2014 Ford Mondeo 2.0 TDCi Zetec Business Nav Edition 5dr
Engine & MPG
- Engine Size:1997cc
- MPG Extra-urban:70.6mpg
- MPG Combined:61.4mpg
- MPG Urban:50.4mpg
Dimensions & Weight
- Height:1,512 mm
- Width:2,078 mm
- Length:4,830 mm
Performance & Safety
- 0-62MPH:9.8 seconds
- BHP:138bhp
- Top Speed:127mph
Ford Mondeo Additional Information
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Ford Mondeo 2.0 TDCi Zetec [Nav] Business Edition 5dr Estate In White,1 Keeper From New With Full Ford Main Dealer Service History,A Very Nice Well Presented Example Throughout & Great Spec Including SatNav-Bluetooth,Parts & Labour Warranty Available Up To 3 Years,Vehicle Price Includes,Service & 12 months mot (if required, a minimum of 6 months will be supplied as per our AA dealership promise to you)
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Ford Mondeo Features
- Satellite Navigation
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Vehicle Enquiry Form
Affordable Cars of Kent
Similar Vehicles


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Emergency Medical Services Information Session
Thursday, February 27, 2020
10:00 am to 12:00 pm
CBIH Building
Attend an Emergency Medical Services (EMT, AEMT & Paramedic) Information Session (Required). No reservation is needed. Learn important facts about the program requirements & selection process. See program application checklist for all details. EMS Program Deadline Dates are: EMT & AEMT – January 15 and July 30 of each year; Paramedic – June 30 of each year. If the deadline falls on a weekend, due Friday before.


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Two men charged in fatal shooting
Harris County prosecutors charged two men with murder for a fatal shooting last year in south Houston.
Police accused Anthony Duhon, 19, and Rodashian Degar, 18, of being responsible for the shooting death of Chase Walker, 20, along the 4200 block of Beran.
On May 15, witnesses told Houston police they heard a gunshot just before 1 p.m. coming from inside a car at the intersection of Beran and Quention Drive.
The witnesses saw a carcome to a stop. The driver got out and walked to the passenger side then pulled Walker to the street. He later died at Ben Taub General Hospital, police said.
The investigation led detectives to Duhon and Degar. They were arrested and charged Sunday with murder and evidence tampering. Both remain in the Harris County Jail with bail set at $150,000 for Duhon and $70,000 for Degar.


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The Jeffs have been exploring the UWisc AVHRR data which is stored as a lot of gzipped ncdf files. I couldn't figure out how to download and open this data into R. So, as I usually do in these cases, I asked CA reader Nicholas who, as usual, has a solution. I edited this slightly to make a function which downloads and unzips the file into a temporary file which can be opened in ncdf and treated in usual ways. The call url can be structured to scrape data.
download.gz.cdf=function(url,tempname="temp.gz") {
download.file(url, tempname, mode="wb")
# decompress the gzipped data into RAM
gz < – gzfile(tempname, "rb")
data <- readBin(gz, "raw", 104857600)
# write the decompressed data back to the temporary file
tempfile <- file(tempname, "wb")
writeBin(data, tempfile)
For example:
year=1982; hour="0200″;tempname="temp.gz"
#this creates a structured url; structures vary
nc < – open.ncdf(tempname)
Then you have to parse the netcdf object to try to find things, but this is standard parsing.


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Unlock BlackBerry free
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To use the free BlackBerry Unlocking Services, you may need your IMEI number and MEP ID code - however instructions on how to get these numbers, are also contained on the page specific to unlocking that model. If the model you're looking for is not on Unlockapedia, visit this site to get your BlackBerry unlocked for free!
Whilst there are a number of services that will tell you how to unlock a BlackBerry, some of these services may give you incorrect codes, this is particularly true for 8000 and 9000 models; so never exceed your number of attempts at inputting an unlock code into your BlackBerry as this can 'brick' the handset. Be careful when entering an unlock code and do not try an incorrect code more than a couple of times.
If you have any questions about unlocking your BlackBerry - take a look at our Unlocking FAQs and don't forget to tell us how you unlocked your BlackBerry to help other members in the future


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House panel: No administration wrongdoing in Benghazi attack
(08-01) 11:42 PDT WASHINGTON -- The House Intelligence Committee, led by Republicans, has concluded that there was no deliberate wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, said Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, the second-ranking Democrat on the committee.
The panel voted Thursday to declassify the report, the result of two years of investigation by the committee. U.S. intelligence agencies will have to approve making the report public.
Thompson said the report "confirms that no one was deliberately misled, no military assets were withheld and no stand-down order (to U.S. forces) was given."
That conflicts with accusations of administration wrongdoing voiced by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), whose House Government Oversight and Reform Committee has held hearings on the Benghazi attack.
Stevens, who grew up in Piedmont, and the other Americans died when Libyans attacked the consulate on Sept. 11, 2012. Among the Intelligence Committee's findings, according to Thompson:
-- Intelligence agencies were "warned about an increased threat environment, but did not have specific tactical warning of an attack before it happened."
-- "A mixed group of individuals, including those associated with al Qaeda, (Moammar) Khadafy loyalists and other Libyan militias, participated in the attack."
-- "There was no 'stand-down order' given to American personnel attempting to offer assistance that evening, no illegal activity or illegal arms transfers occurring by U.S. personnel in Benghazi, and no American was left behind."
-- The administration's process for developing "talking points" was "flawed, but the talking points reflected the conflicting intelligence assessments in the days immediately following the crisis."
Those talking points included assertions that those who attacked the compound were angered by an obscure anti-Muhammad video posted to YouTube in the U.S. There is disagreement to this day about whether that was the case.
Carolyn Lochhead is the San Francisco Chronicle's Washington correspondent. E-mail: email@example.com Twitter: @carolynlochhead


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Photos by Ravell Call / The Deseret News via AP
The Kennecott Copper Bingham Canyon Mine sits quiet after a landslide on April 11, 2013, in Bingham Canyon, Utah. Kennecott has suspended mining inside one of the world's deepest open pits as geologists assess a landslide the company says it anticipated for months.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports:
"We started noticing movement in that part of the mine in February," Rio Tinto-Kennecott spokesman Kyle Bennett said, indicating at that time the mine's wall was slipping a fraction of an inch each day.
As the slipping continued and began to accelerate in the following weeks, Kennecott moved workers out of the area, utility lines were rerouted and the modular building that housed the mine monitoring equipment was relocated to safer ground. Kennecott also closed its visitors center for the rest of the year.
Bennett said the company has not yet determined the exact size of the slide. He said mining experts would be evaluating the slide area and its impact on future operations.
Dump trucks sit under debris in the Kennecott Copper Bingham Canyon Mine after a landslide in Bingham Canyon, Utah.


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Zac Efron has opened up about his troubled last two years for the first time since his rehab stint in 2013, revealing alcohol and drugs led to his demise.
The "Neighbors" actor hasn't spoken about the problems that prompted him to seek treatment last year, but now he tells The Hollywood Reporter he has learned major life lessons after hitting a low in his life.
He tells the publication, "I was drinking a lot, way too much. It's never one specific thing. I mean, you're in your 20s, single, going through life in Hollywood, you know? Everything is thrown at you.
"I wouldn't take anything back; I needed to learn everything I did. But it was an interesting journey, to say the least."
He adds, "When you have success young, and you accept the good things, you have to accept all of it. You have to accept the moments of glory but also a great responsibility. And that responsibility, to some degree, involves being a role model. At the same time, I'm a human being, and I've made a lot of mistakes. I've learned from each one."
The actor admits that work was largely to blame for his past problems – because his career kept him away from family and friends.
He explains, "(It) started to become the reason to go anywhere, the reason to talk to anybody. The phone calls I received were regarding (work), the ones I wanted to make were regarding scripts or to producers. Slowly but surely, I was no longer living in my house. It was just hotel to hotel. So my hobbies went out the window."
He turned to drugs and alcohol in a bid to cope with his busy life, adding, "I was just so deep into my work, it was really the only thing I had. I clung to it in a way that became a little bit destructive."
Following his rehab stint, Efron moved into a new home with his brother, and he admits he's glad his former bachelor pad in Laurel Canyon is no longer his base: "That house was sort of in the middle of everything. It spit you out on one end on Sunset and on the other end onto Ventura Boulevard. It was a great idea initially – concrete floors, metal windows – a great bachelor pad, in my opinion. But it was surrounded by windows, and at night people started coming up and tapping on the glass while I was asleep. It started to get a little bit strange."
Meanwhile, Efron, who entered rehab for an addiction to alcohol and drugs a year ago, maintains a street fight he had with a homeless man in Los Angeles' notorious Skid Row district in March had nothing to do with his substance abuse issues, despite reports to the contrary.
He says, "I had a friend come pick me up late at night – we were looking for a place Downtown to get a bite and catch up. We were having trouble finding somewhere – a lot of places were closed – and the car ran out of gas off the 110. It was ridiculous. We had to pull over.
"A homeless guy, or vagrant, tapped on the driver's-side window. Before I knew it, he (the friend) was out of the car, and they started fighting. I saw that (the homeless man) was carrying some sort of a knife, or shank, and I got out of the car to disarm him. At some point, he dropped the knife, and I got hit pretty hard in the face – and almost instantly the police were there to break up the fight.
"(It was) the most terrifying moment in my life."


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We are a group of students studying at MIT Sloan School. As part of our course we are doing a project on understanding perception issues around PitBulls
We are aware that PitBUlls are the largest number of dogs in shelters and least likely to be adopted since they are considered to be hostile. We are trying to put together a strategy to change public opinion.
Can you pls try to answer questions in the attached form. If you have PitBull as a pet


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|Wallingford, CT
|High School:
|Lyman Hall
Collegiate Personal Bests:
200 Meter Dash: 26.61
55 Meter Hurdles: 9.11
100 Meter Hurdles: 16.55
High Jump: 1.78m
Long Jump: 5.36m
2012 Outdoor Track: Named 2012 Northeast Conference Most Outstanding Rookie...Set an NEC record at the NEC Outdoor Championships in the high jump with a 1.75 meter performance, she surpassed the previous record (set in 1992) of 1.73 meters...Placed second in the high jump at the USA Track and Field Junior Nationals, registering 1.75 meters...Competed on the 4x100 and 4x400 meter relay teams at the NEC Outdoor Championships, the teams earned fifth (48.68) and seventh (3:58.28), respectively.
2012 Indoor Track: Placed second in the high jump at the NEC Indoor Championships, posting a mark of 1.73 meters and qualifying for ECAC competition...Ran the final leg of the 4x400 meter relay at the NECs, the team finished in sixth place with a time of 4:01.41...Placed third in the high jump, clearing 1.75 meters, at the NEICAAA Indoor Championships...Cleared 1.68 meters at the IC4A/ECAC Indoor Champinships for 15th place.
Before Central: High jump and heptathalon State Open Champion her senior year at Lyman Hall High School...Placed second in the high jump at New Englands and seventh at the New Balance Outdoor High School Nationals her senior year.


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Perched on the edge of Booderee National Park's spectacular cliffs, the ruins of Cape St George Lighthouse offer an excellent vantage point for spotting whales and dolphins in the waters below. Rough Guides writer Sara Chare went in search of nature's elusive giants.
Standing on the viewing platform at the Cape St George Lighthouse in Booderee National Park, I hugged my cheap and newly-bought binoculars to my chest and turned towards the rich-blue sea.
The park is situated on the New South Wales coast, less than three hours south of Sydney, and is jointly run by Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community and the Australian National Parks Authority. Covering an area known as the "bay of plenty", it is home to the only Aboriginal-owned Botanic Gardens in Australia, over eight hundred hectares of marine park and dazzling white-sand beaches.
Between September and November, the park's rugged cliffs are one of the best places on the southern coastline to see migrating whales; magnificent Humpback and Southern Right whales pass by with by their young, on their return journey from breeding grounds off the Queensland coast.
I had arrived towards the end of the recommended whale-watching window – between 11am and early afternoon – in the hope that there would at least be some dolphins kicking about. The day was warm and windy, the dark blue ocean flecked with the white of breaking waves. Sea birds wheeled overhead, and grasses rustled above the sound of the sea.
Next to me a man was intently surveying the ocean, a zoom-lens camera dangling from his neck. "There have been twenty whales in the last two to three hours, and a couple of common dolphins", he informed me. I strained my eyes looking hopefully into the distance, but all I could make out was one solitary, white sailing boat amid the foamy seas.
Disheartened, I turned my attention to the lighthouse. It was built here in 1860 to aid navigation, as a result of the number of shipwrecks near Cape St George in the nineteenth century. This turned out to be a poor spot to site a beacon; the light was not visible to ships approaching from the north and only barely visible to those coming from the south. Yet despite the lighthouse's failure to prevent wrecks, it wasn't until nearly forty years later that a replacement was established in a better position.
Today, the skeletons of the lighthouse buildings themselves are fairly intact, the large, thick sandstone blocks bearing up well against the elements. Of the tower, very little remains except for the base; only a mound of weathered rubble faces the sea, interspersed with bright green grass fringed by the odd tree.
My tour of the site complete, I took one last, long look over the waves. I tried not to be too disappointed. After all, I should have arrived earlier.
As dusk softly drew in, I made to leave. Glancing out to the sea for the last time, I searched for something resembling a breaching whale, but only saw a family on the beach below and a group of cyclists stopping to catch their breath.
Suddenly, as I turned, I saw something out of the corner of my eye, a spot of grey, a curved back and then a fin. There they were: three bottlenose dolphins fairly near the shore, taking advantage of the food brought in by the tide. I stood, smiling as I watched them make their way gracefully through the water, surfacing less and less frequently until they finally struck out for the open sea.
Now, I was ready to leave.
Various local companies provide dolphin and whale-watching boat trips in the area. If you want to explore more of the country, buy the Rough Guide to Australia. Book hostels for your trip, and don't forget to purchase travel insurance before you go.
Top image: © 22August/Shutterstock


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Uh, okay, so maybe America is a police state. If it was good enough for Germany, and it's good enough for China, go consume. And don't forget your vaccination.
BERKELEY, California (Feb. 26, 2010) - Overnight, an impromptu "riot" to protest budget cuts and tuition increases at the University of California at Berkeley snowballed to include more than 200 people and resulted in flaming dumpsters, broken windows, and [God forbid!] dancing in the streets. The school newspaper (The Daily Californian) reports that the riot emerged from a campus dance party and metastasized into an all-out fiery clash between students and police. More>>


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I have always been a fan of Firefox and encouraged other developers to use it, addons such as Firebug and YSlow are simply essential tools for anything more than your most basic web page, and will even help with those. Neither the developer tools in Chrome, Safari or IE can really compete.
There certainly does seem to be an issue with the latest version of Firefox though regarding Continue reading


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The standard of evidence that we use at WCSU is "preponderance of the evidence" or more likely than not.
In cases of an alleged sexual offense, when the accused is a student, the victim/survivor can request that disciplinary proceedings begin promptly. Both the victim/survivor and the accused are entitled to have a support person or advisor accompany them to any disciplinary proceedings (as long as it does not postpone or delay the scheduling of the meeting), present evidence and witnesses on their behalf.
Additionally, both the victim and the accused will be informed in writing of the outcome of any university disciplinary proceeding within one business day after the conclusion of the proceedings.
Following a final determination of responsibility when the allegation involves a rape or other sexual offense, the University Judicial Board may impose any sanction or combination of sanctions, including expulsion. Disciplinary proceedings under this Code may be carried out before, during or after any civil or criminal court proceedings against the accused student. Sanctions up to and including expulsion may be imposed upon a finding of responsibility.
The university shall not disclose the identity of the victim or accused except as necessary to carry out the disciplinary proceedings or as permitted under state or federal law.


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|0 Driftwood Lane
0 Driftwood Lane Phippsburg, ME 04562
Legacy Properties Sotheby's International Realty
Summers spent as a child at my aunt's camp on Lake Kezar drew me to Maine ten years ago. Memories of those days past, where "the way life should be" prompted me to consider these rocky coastlines and this rich culture my permanent home. This passion for lifestyle excellence you'll find gives my clients an advantage. With 20 years of marketing and sales experience, I'm confident we'll find the right choice together. I served most recently as the Director of Marketing and Sales for the exclusive and highly-sought after Highland Green resort community in Topsham, Maine. My previous experience includes organizing successful political campaigns and overseeing marketing and public relations initiatives for a diverse group of Maine businesses. While a native of Illinois, I developed my work ethic and commitment to success as a caddy at the famed Olympia Fields Country Club outside of Chicago. After college I worked on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC for seven years and later in Illinois. In my spare time I enjoy being involved in Big Brothers/Big Sisters, playing golf, boating and hiking the many wonderful trails available in midcoast Maine and greater Portland. Exceeding my clients' expectations is necessary in today's real estate business. The benefit: I've built long lasting-friendships with extraordinary people who count on me to help them achieve the lifestyle of their dreams.


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18 U.S.C. Section 2257 Compliance Notice
© 2008
Gay Comics
. All rights reserved.


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Download the firmware/ROM flash for Xiaomi Mi 9 with the code is cepheus. Please make sure the code is exact. You can check model code by command
fastboot getvar product in Fastboot mode. This MIUI version of Firmware/ROM is V10.2.35.0.PFACNXM and Android version is 9.0. This Firmware/ROM size is 3.4G.
|Report dead link
|File type
|China Stable
|Model name
|Mi 9
|MIUI version
|Android version
|File size
|Change log
1. If Fastboot firmware. The ext. must be
tgz. If not. Rename it from
.gz to
.tgz. Extract it by WinRAR
2. For Fastboot firmware. Download XiaomiFlash lastest. Extract tool after downloaded
3. Open XiaoMiFlash.exe. Install driver if tool required. Press select and select to firmware/ROM folder what includes flash_all.bat
4. Make sure your phone are unlocked bootloader. Or you must bring your phone to EDL mode (9008) to flash
5. Bring phone to Fastboot mode by hold Power and Volume down for 5-10s. Release button when It show Fastboot
6. Connect Phone to Computer. Press Refresh to scan device. If a device showed is Ok
7. Tick clean all (very important). If not, your phone will LOCKED BOOTLOADER after flash done
8. Press Flash and wait util it show success or any error
ZIP. ZIP ROM using Update function in System or TWRP
EU. EU ROM flash using TWRP


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Contact Us
High School Contact Info
Mr. Matt McLelland, Principal
Mr. Mickey Ebert, Assistant Principal
808 N. Main St.
Chiefland, Florida 32626
Phone: (352) 493-6000
Fax: (352) 493-6018
Middle School Contact Info
Mrs. Jennifer Bray, Assistant Principal
811 NW 4th Drive
Chiefland, Florida 32626
Phone: (352) 493-6025
Fax: (352) 493-6048
Student request for Guidance appointment
Things to know
Parent access to student grades
Parents with access can view their child's grades online through Skwyward Family Access.
Parents may come to the school to pick up their log in information and directions on how to access the site. See Parents tab above for the link.
When requesting access, everyone must produce photo identification.
Teacher of the Year
Brent Slaughter
ESP of the Year
John Ronchetti
Mrs. Bray
Welcome to Chiefland Middle school!
Assistant Principal, Jennifer Bray
STAFF > Administration > Jennifer Bray


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Real Strategies To Develop An Efficient Skin Care Retail Business Real Strategies To Develop An Efficient Skin Care Retail Business June 24 , 2013 | Author: Abraham Lowe | Posted in Business
Spend your time and effort to make money by doing what you love and open your own beauty products retail business. You want to forage a business plan that is thorough before you start investing to ensure that you are on the right foot. You can follow the guidelines below to watch your business take off.
Most customers like to look at reviews of a beauty products retail business before they visit it. Ask your frequent customers to give you testimonials that you can use on your website to prove to customers that your business is the best of the best. Also, ask your best customers to put out reviews on online review sites.
If there is something you can do yourself in your beauty products retail business, do it and save your money. It might be simpler to hire the job out, but it is also more costly. However, if something needs to be done that is way out of your league , hire someone that knows what they are doing.


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Sound recording technology.
A major focus of Professor Case's research has been the physical, acoustical, psychoacoustical, and musical motivations behind contemporary recording techniques. The recording studio, rich with sophisticated signal processing equipment, is a musical instrument worthy of study, practice, performance, and research. He has presented numerous papers and lectures on the topic at local and national meetings of the Acoustical Society of America and the Audio Engineering Society. In addition, Case has been an invited speaker at press conferences on these topics, speaking to both lay press and science writers of national newspapers and magazines.
An educator since 1997, Case was an adjunct professor at the Berklee College of Music and the Art Institute of New England. He has been an invited guest lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Boston Architectural Center.
A former staff engineer at Blue Jay Recording Studio in Boston and Room with a View in New York City, Case is a freelance producer and engineer who works with independent artists to help make their first studio effort as comfortable and musical as possible.
Case has published many dozens of articles on audio technology, aesthetics and practice, including Recording magazine's "Nuts and Bolts of Recording," a monthly series on the fundamentals of recording. These articles have been adopted into the curriculum of several audio programs in the United States and a book is forthcoming. For more than a decade, Case has provided acoustics consulting services to architects and building owners developing critical listening spaces. Projects include surround sound recording studios, performance auditoria, and outdoor music shells.
A former chair of the Boston Section of the Audio Engineering Society for two terms, Case is active in the professional societies. In addition to the steady stream of papers he presents at local meetings and national conferences, Case contributes to the profession as a member of the Executive Committee of the Boston AES, and the Technical Committee on Architectural Acoustics for the Acoustical Society of America.


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You don't have any saved vehicles!
Look for this link on your favorites:
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Fuel Consumption: City: 23 mpg,Fuel Consumption: Highway: 34 mpg,Remote power door locks,Power windows,Cruise controls on steering wheel,Cruise control,4-wheel ABS Brakes,Front Ventilated disc brakes,1st and 2nd row curtain head airbags,Passenger Airbag,Side airbag,Bluetooth wireless phone connectivity,Audio system security,Digital Audio Input,In-Dash single CD player,Audio system memory card slot,MP3 player,SiriusXM AM/FM/HD/Satellite Radio,Radio Data System,Speed Sensitive Audio Volume Control,Total Number of Speakers: 6,Intercooled Turbo,Braking Assist,ABS and Driveline Traction Control,Stability control,Privacy glass: Light,Silver aluminum rims,Wheel Diameter: 19,Wheel Width: 8,Leather steering wheel trim,Leather shift knob trim,Simulated carbon fibre dash trim,Simulated carbon fibre door trim,Simulated carbon fibre center console trim,Video Monitor Location: Front,Trip computer,External temperature display,Auxilliary engine cooler,Tachometer,Manufacturer's 0-60mph acceleration time (seconds): 9.1 s,Power remote driver mirror adjustment,Heated driver mirror,Heated passenger mirror,Power remote passenger mirror adjustment,Turn signal in mirrors,Dual vanity mirrors,Compass,Daytime running lights,Heated windshield washer jets,Driver and passenger heated-cushion; driver and passenger heated-seatback,Audio controls on steering wheel,Power remote trunk release,Leatherette seat upholstery,Bucket front seats,Rear bench,Fold forward seatback rear seats,Rear seats center armrest,Tilt and telescopic steering wheel,Transmission gear shifting controls on steering wheel,Speed-proportional electric power steering,Suspension class: Regular,Interior air filtration,Automatic front air conditioning,Dual front air conditioning zones,Tire Pressure Monitoring System,Remote activated exterior entry lights,Cargo area light,Max cargo capacity: 16 cu.ft.,Vehicle Emissions: ULEV II,Fuel Type: Regular unleaded,Fuel Capacity: 18.5 gal.,Instrumentation: Low fuel level,Clock: Analog,Headlights off auto delay,Dusk sensing headlights,Coil front spring,Regular front stabilizer bar,Independent front suspension classification,Strut front suspension,Four-wheel Independent Suspension,Coil rear spring,Rear Stabilizer Bar: Regular,Independent rear suspension,Multi-link rear suspension,Front and rear suspension stabilizer bars,Variable intermittent front wipers,Steel spare wheel rim,Spare Tire Mount Location: Inside under cargo,Black grille w/chrome accents,Center Console: Full with covered storage,Overhead console: Mini with storage,Curb weight: 3;263 lbs.,Gross vehicle weight: 4;519 lbs.,Overall Length: 191.9",Overall Width: 72.2",Overall height: 58.5",Wheelbase: 110.4",Front Head Room: 38.3",Rear Head Room: 37.8",Front Leg Room: 42.4",Rear Leg Room: 39.1",Front Shoulder Room: 56.9",Rear Shoulder Room: 57.0",Three 12V DC power outlets,Transmission hill holder,Seatbelt pretensioners: Front,Rear center seatbelt: 3-point belt,Door reinforcement: Side-impact door beam,Engine immobilizer,Cargo tie downs,Floor mats: Carpet front and rear,Cupholders: Front and rear,Door pockets: Driver; passenger and rear,Seatback storage: 2,Tires: Width: 235 mm,Tires: Profile: 40,Tires: Speed Rating: H,Diameter of tires: 19.0",Type of tires: AS,Tires: Prefix: P,Left rear passenger door type: Conventional,Rear door type: Trunk,Right rear passenger door type: Conventional,Body-colored bumpers,Window grid antenna,4 Door,Driver airbag,Manual child safety locks,Rear View Camera,Forward Collision Mitigation : Front Assist w/Autonomous Emergency Braking,Rear Collision Warning : Rear Cross Traffic Alert,2 USB ports,VW Car-Net App-Connect mirroring,Halogen headlights,SiriusXM Satellite Radio
Hawk Volkswagen of Joliet is the premier Volkswagen dealer in Joliet serving the greater Chicagoland area since 1992. We offer a wide range of new and Certified Pre-owned vehicles at our new state-of-the-art facility, as well as a wide selection of quality used cars to Joliet, Frankfort, Lockport, New Lenox and Naperville Volkswagen shoppers. No matter what type of vehicle you are looking for, you will find something that suits all your needs at your Mokena, Orland Park, Bolingbrook and Plainfield VW dealership. We would like to thank you for visiting our website and look forward to assisting with your search for a new Volkswagen or quality used vehicle.
New vehicle pricing includes all offers and incentives. Tax, Title and Tags not included in vehicle prices shown and must be paid by the purchaser. While great effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information on this site, errors do occur so please verify information with a customer service rep. This is easily done by calling us at (815) 741-1100 or by visiting us at the dealership.
**With approved credit. Terms may vary. Monthly payments are only estimates derived from the vehicle price with a 72 month term, 5.9% interest and 20% downpayment.
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† Based on 2017 EPA mileage ratings. Use for comparison purposes only. Your actual mileage will vary depending on how you drive and maintain your vehicle.
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Text HAWKVW1 to 37483 to reach ServiceandText HAWKVW2 to 37483 to reach Sales
(815) 741-1100Call Now
2861 W. Jefferson St. • Joliet, IL 60435Get Directions
Open Today! Sales: 9am-7pm
Open Today! Service: 8am-7pm
Open Today! Parts: 7am-7pm


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New set photos have leaked online from Mad Max: Fury Road. Filming on the upcoming reboot has been underway in Africa since July 9th, and see the eponymous road warrior (Tom Hardy) caught up with a group of people fleeing across the Wasteland in a War Rig driven by the Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). The set photos show that the art department has had a field day drawing up new post-apocalyptic wasteland costumes and vehicles.
Hit the jump to check out the set photos. The film also stars Nicholas Hoult, Zoe Kravitz, Riley Keough, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Hugh Keays-Byrne, and Nathan Jones.


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You know it's election season. The commercials are unavoidable. Candidates kissing babies. "The other guys say…". Shameless promotion and pandering. Division and false dichotomies rule the airwaves.
However, in Fedora-land, the tenor is quite calm, welcoming, and actively non-partisan, even though we have several elections going on.
First (timewise), the code name for Fedora 15. This is the quirky name that we give each release, that both serves as inspiration for the artwork that our fantastic design team generates, and that ties our releases together, both backwards in history to our Red Hat Linux roots and continuing on with each subsequent Fedora release. Each code name has a non-obvious link to the predecessor release, while leaving wide open the range of future release names.
After sifting through 50 suggestions, and trimming the list for possible trademark conflicts, we are left with 5 names that any Fedora member can vote for:
– Asturias
– Blarney
– Sturgis
– Lovelock
– Pushcart
Take a moment to reflect on the nature of each of the above, and then vote for your favorite.
Second, we have started the nomination process for the semi-annual election of seats on the Fedora Project Board and the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo), and for the annual election of members of the Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee (FAMSCo). These are important, highly visible, volunteer positions which guide the Project as a whole, the technical details of the "product" of Fedora the distro, and coordinate the activities of our outreach and evangelism teams. Please consider running for one of these offices by nominating yourself, or, you may nominate someone you would like to see be elected (with their consent of course).
For my part, I have had the pleasure of serving on the Board for the last 5 years since its inception. We have come a long way during my tenure, from the elimination of the dreaded "Core vs Extras" distinction, to the creation of the Spins and Remixes processes that let anyone, anywhere, use Fedora for any purpose, to the creation of the Stable Updates policy, and finally a Vision Statement we can all get behind. While there is plenty more to be done, it's time for me to step aside from policy-making, and assist a new Board in delivering on these visions. I thank the community for allowing me to serve on the Board thus far, and am counting on you to support the newly elected Board, FESCo, and FAMSco, in continuing to develop and deliver a fantastic distribution.


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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: TX
Posts: 518
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Welcome to the forum!
What kind of dog are you getting? Where did you find the breeder? Do they have spay/neuter contracts? have the parents been health tested? Have the puppies been raised outside in a kennel or have they been in the house?
Actually here is a checklist for you, cuz Im sure I will leave out some important points. It is from this website:
--How knowledgeable is the breeder about this particular breed? Are they familiar with its historical origins? Can they educate you about the breed's disadvantages - especially genetic predisposition to health problems and characteristics like shedding, slobber, dominance, inter-dog aggression, etc. that may make owning the breed a challenge? Beware of anyone who sounds like a salesman and tells you that their breed has no disadvantages! Good breeders will play devil's advocate.
--Are the breeder's dogs screened for genetic health defects like hip dysplasia, eye disorders, hypothyroidism, Von Willebrand's disease, epilepsy, cardiac conditions, and anything else that is common in the breed? Can they provide you with proof, e.g., CERF and OFA certification and other relevant veterinary documentation? A good breeder will welcome your concern and be glad to offer the requested information - beware of anyone who is defensive! An excellent breeder will candidly discuss the health of their line of dogs, including the problems that have cropped up. Even good breeders can produce unhealthy dogs on occasion. The difference is that the good breeder is on a mission to find and remove those genetic influences from their breeding lines. The irresponsible breeder approaches health in a haphazard manner.
--Does the breeder have any old dogs on the premises? How long have their own dogs lived, and from what have they died? Beware of the person who sells off their adult dogs that are retired from showing and breeding. You want a breeder who loves the breed, not someone who loves to breed.
--How many breeds is this person breeding? Ideally, someone will have a special interest in only one breed (perhaps two). A Jack-of-all-Breeds truly is a master of none. How many litters does the breeder have in any given year? A good breeder may breed one or two litters, or may not breed at all for a year or more between litters. More is never better. Anyone who is producing a large number of dogs is probably doing it at the expense of quality.
--Are the breeder's dogs kennel dogs or house pets? While it is sanitary to keep large numbers of dogs outside in a kennel, you want a breeder who keeps their dogs in the house with the family. Breeders who keep their dogs in kennels may have temperament defects (like excessive dominance) of which they are not even aware. Puppies should be raised inside an active home to begin socializing them to a household environment.
--Will the breeder provide you with the names of their veterinarian and several past purchasers to serve as references? If given a choice, request pet references. Certainly a professional trainer will be able to handle a tough puppy, but what about a family with three kids and a cat? If the latter just loves the temperament of their dog, that speaks volumes. Ask the breeder about the homes that haven't worked out. There are bound to be some. Is the breeder honest that they made a poor placement, sympathetic to someone who underwent a life change that necessitated returning a dog, blunt that they produced a problem dog... or is the breeder bitter and accusatory about the person who bought the dog? Beware of the narrow-minded breeder who places blame on everyone but themselves.
--What kind of guarantees does the breeder offer? Most will offer a replacement puppy or refund of purchase price if your puppy manifests a serious genetic defect. Any responsible breeder will want to keep in touch with you and be informed if your dog develops health problems. The better ones may ask you to have your pet OFA and/or CERF screened when it is old enough (as your dog reflects on their breeding stock). Truly caring breeders will insist that you return your puppy to them if you are unable to keep it for any reason during its entire life.
--Does the breeder expect to sell you a puppy with strings attached? Concerned, responsible breeders will insist that you neuter your pet puppy as soon as it is old enough. They may have you sign a contract to this effect, or they may sell the puppy with limited registration (which means that if you do breed it, you cannot register the offspring). Remarkable breeders will pediatrically neuter puppies before sending them off to their new homes. This is a very good sign in a breeder, so much so that I would be suspicious of any breeder who does not insist on neutering.
--On the other hand, beware of any breeder who tries to sucker you into a breeding contract. They will treat you like you're stupid by flattering you and trying to con you into agreeing to keep your pet intact and breeding one or more litters, giving the breeder back one or more puppies from each litter. This is the biggest scam around. You get stuck with the expense and inconvenience (not to mention health risks) of keeping an intact animal and then providing the breeder with free puppies. If a breeder tries to talk you into this kind of pyramid scheme, find another breeder.
--At what age does the breeder send puppies to their new homes? Avoid any breeder who wants to send home a puppy younger than seven weeks. Many good breeders will release puppies at 8 weeks, but as long as the puppy is being actively socialized, it is arguably better to wait until 10 or 12 weeks.
--What does the breeder do to socialize their puppies? Ask them for specifics. Good breeders will have lots of toys and activities to which to expose their puppies. Mild stress is excellent for making puppies resilient later in life. A breeder who allows their puppies to experience different sounds, surfaces, etc. and meet different people is trying hard. A breeder who keeps their puppies in some sort of ultra-sanitary, almost sterile vacuum is doing the puppies a great disservice. Puppies raised in a kennel should be avoided.
--A good breeder will be very interested in who you are and somewhat choosy about whether you are able to provide an adequate home for one of their cherished pups. A breeder who wants to see your home, your kids, your spouse, your other pets, proof of your fencing, or talk to your veterinarian is simply trying to make sure that you will take good care of their pup. Do not resent this. Good breeders want to keep in touch with you after you've purchased a puppy and will be there for you with support and advice later on. Avoid breeders who take credit card orders over the internet and ship puppies to anyone who wants them. NO responsible breeder will sell a puppy to a pet store or other broker for resale.
--A good breeder will participate in breed rescue efforts for the breed they love. This is important. Anyone who scoffs at breed rescue or is not personally involved in it in any way is someone to be avoided. Often the best place to begin your search for a good breeder is to ask breed rescue volunteers for their recommendations.
--Good breeders think ahead and make reservations in advance for the puppies they will produce. You may have to wait for a puppy, but that's not a bad thing. Beware of someone who first creates puppies and then worries about how to disperse them.
--What does the breeder do for a living? Dog breeding should be an avocation. Avoid anyone who makes their living through breeding dogs! The corners they cut financially may be at your expense.
--Are the premises clean and orderly? Are the breeder's dogs healthy in appearance? It can be a messy proposition to raise a litter of puppies, but puppies should not be wallowing in waste, covered with fleas, or otherwise appear neglected. Keep in mind that many longhaired bitches will shed their coats heavily during this time, so if the puppies' mother appears a little ratty it is not necessarily inappropriate or unusual.
--Do you like the temperaments of the puppies' parents? Remember, temperament is genetic! Avoid puppies from bitches that demonstrate any aggression or shyness. Specifically inquire about possessiveness (food and object guarding), inter-dog aggression, defensiveness about being handled, etc. Accept no excuses for undesirable behavior. Don't be afraid to ask the breeder to demonstrate the *****'s good temperament to you.
--Has the breeder or will the breeder allow you to temperament test the litter? While puppy-testing is not especially predictive of adult temperament, it's an attempt to gauge a puppy's personality so that it can be best matched with a new owner. Ask the breeder's permission before doing anything to a puppy. No potential buyer has the right to do anything to a puppy which a breeder perceives as potentially harmful.
--Does your breeder respect veterinarians, trainers, groomers, breeders, and other peer professionals in the dog world? Beware of breeders who are paranoid or hostile towards other professionals. One cannot operate competently in a vacuum, and in general, good breeders are socially well-networked. They are liked, like others, and respect competent professionals in their field. A good breeder should make the effort the know other good breeders (especially of their own breed). It is important for a breeder to strive to improve their knowledge and understanding of their breed and submit to peer critique, even if it is not necessarily formalized (as in the show ring).
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Top 14 Status Symbol Cars at Bargain Prices
For many, cars represent an extention of their personal brand: You are what you drive. A recent survey even found that almost half of women think the type of car a person drives is an indicator of income. So if you want to make that good first impression on the cheap, we found solid status-symbol cars you can find for a fraction of the original sticker. Keep in mind that for some of the more premium and exotic cars, maintenance can add a significant amount to your outlay.
2006-2008 BMW 750i
Original cost: $71,000+
Find now for: $8000-$30,000
The E65-generation BMW 7 Series was notorious for starting the brand's "Bangle Butt" styling trend. But by the 2005 refresh, the severe look was toned down somewhat with more conventional rear lamps. The 2005 model year also brought a significant bump in horsepower with a new 4.8-liter V-8 producing 360 hp and 360 lb-ft of torque. We liked the changes that came with the refresh, and particularly appreciated the improvements made to iDrive. A long-wheelbase 750Li version provides plenty of legroom for those who prefer to be driven rather than drive themselves.
2003+ Land Rover Range Rover/Sport/Supercharged
Original cost: $75,000+, $90,000+ for Supercharged
Find now for: $16,000-$58,000
Historically, Land Rover vehicles were viewed as a go anywhere SUV with a moderate amount of amenities. In 2003, then owner BMW repositioned the Range Rover as a luxury SUV. Since then, the Range Rover has only gotten better with new engines in 2006 (300-305 hp 4.4-liter V-8, 385-400 hp 4.2-liter supercharged V-8) and again in 2009 (375-hp 5.0-liter V-8, 510-hp 5.0-liter supercharged V-8) adding Sport and Supercharged models along the way (2011-2012 models are shown here). A pre-owned Range Rover in good condition is as convincing as a new model.
2001-2006 Lexus LS430 / 2007-2010 LS460
Original cost: $55,000+, $75,000+ for LS460L
Find now for: $10,000-$46,000
When the 250-hp Lexus LS400 arrived in 1990, it rivaled the BMW 7 Series and Mercedes-Benz S-Class in nearly every category except price. Over the years, the Lexus LS has had a few displacement increases (290-hp 4.3-liter in 2001 and a 380-hp 4.6-liter in 2007) as well as a long wheelbase version in 2007. Although the LS460 is no sport sedan, the full-size luxury sedan is quick in a straight line while returning decent fuel mileage. A well-maintained third-generation LS (2001-2006) or fourth-gen LS460/L can be a pre-owned bargain.
1991-1997 BMW 8 Series
Original cost: $70,000+
Find now for: $6000-$35,000
Until a successor arrives, the E31-chassis 8 Series remains the ultimate BMW big coupe. Over its seven-year run in the U.S., the 8 Series offered both V-8 (ranging in displacement from 4.0-4.4 liters) and V-12 (5.0-5.6 liters) engines. The ultimate 8 Series for the collector is the '94-'96 850 CSI, which packed a 394-hp, 410-lb-ft 5.6-liter V-12 and had the option of a six-speed manual. If you do decide an 8 Series is in your future, put aside $5000-$10,000 for maintenance, as repairs can be costly.
2005+ Maserati Quattroporte
Original cost: $100,000
Find now for: $25,000-$35,000
The Quattroporte spearheaded the automaker's reemergence as a premium brand on the world market, thrusting into the luxury flagship segment dominated by BMW, Jaguar, and Mercedes-Benz. We loved those Pininfarina lines and the exhaust's sweet symphony, but the Italian car's fit and finish were never quite up to standards set by the competition. However, its exclusivity and rarity compared to all the Bimmers and Benzes remains a bonus.
Maserati Coupe/ GranSport
Original Cost: $98,872
Find now for: $30,000-$40,000
Designed to bring a bit of the Trofeo race car's edgier performance to the street, the Coupe/GranSport looked unlike anything else on the road at the time. Now replaced with the GranTurismo, we loved the Coupe/GranSport's high-intensity handling and the sounds of its ferocious Ferrari-sourced V-8 that made 395 hp, but even that wasn't enough to distract us from the unpleasant exhaust thrum from 1500-2000 rpm. Although we liked the quick-shifting Cambiocorsa box, we missed the regular stick shift.
2001-2005 Audi Allroad 2.7T
Original cost: $40,250
Find now for: $4700-$12,000
The original Audi Allroad started life from the second-generation A6 Avant and was sold in the U.S. from 2001 to 2005. Sporting a high ride height, dark plastic body cladding, flared fenders ,and all-terrain tires, the Audi Allroad was an attractive outlier in ski resorts and country clubs dominated by popular luxury SUVs. Almost a decade later, the wagon is still handsome and is relatively quick with the 2.7-liter turbocharged V-6 rated at 250 hp and 258 lb-ft of torque.
2002-2005 Infiniti Q45
Original cost: $56,200
Find now for: $9400-$13,600
The Lexus LS was and continues to be Japan's strongest competitor against the formidable flagship sedans from Germany, but the Infiniti Q45 provided most of the amenities and luxury shoppers were looking for in the segment. In addition to standard navigation, the Q45 could be had with adaptive cruise control and cooled front seats. The third-gen model, which was powered by a 340-hp 4.5-liter V-8, was sold from 2002 to 2005 and marked the end of the Q45 nameplate.
2003-2009 Audi A8
Original Cost: $70,000-$92,000
Find now for: $5000-$35,000
The 2004-2009 Audi A8 was designed to go toe-to-toe with the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and the Bangle Butt-equipped BMW 7 Series, the A8 sported conservative, yet attractive styling and a wide variety of engines - none more potent than the 6.0-liter W-12 that debuted in 2005. The W-12, which was essentially two narrow-angle V-6s welded side-by-side, packed 420 hp. If that's not enough, Audi offered the S8 in 2007, which was powered by the Lamborghini Gallardo's 450-hp 5.2-liter V-10, good for a 4.9 second 0-60 mph run.
2004-2006 Volkswagen Phaeton
Original Cost: $65,000-$75,000
Find Now For: $9500-$26,000
The Volkswagen Phaeton was a misguided attempt by VW of America execs to sell the American public on an ultra-premium VW. Designed as the company's flagship, the Phaeton was a big executive four-door sedan that shared much of its underpinnings and running gear with the significantly more expensive and prestigious Audi A8 and Bentley Continental GT. Despite the fact that it was essentially a Bentley in VW clothing, buyers stayed away from the luxurious Phaeton, resulting in the bargain basement prices you can get them for today.
2007 Cadillac Escalade
Original cost: $60,000+
Find now for: As low as $19,000
2007 was the last of the prime years for Escalade sales. 61,000 were sold. This most girthsome of status symbols was also in the first year of the current generation and sports more luxury features than you have fingers or toes. But high gas prices and an unchanged design eventually brought sales down to last year's 22,500. Escalade's various trim levels went as high as the low 70,000 range. But we found a few high-mileage 2007s for $20,000. The tail end of the previous generation can be found for as little as $12,000
Cadillac XLR
Original cost: $86,000+, $100,000+ for XLR-V
Find now for: $24,000-$50,000
Cadillac desperately wanted this to be a flagship roadster to take on the Jaguar XKR and the Mercedes SL. They produced the XLR, based on a Corvette platform, for the 2004-2009 model years. We liked the XLR's styling, and we really loved the power when the XLR-V joined the lineup, with its supercharged Northstar V-8 creating 443 hp and 414 lb-ft of torque. We also liked the hardtop that lowered in less than 30 seconds. But we thought the plastic-covered interior wasn't worth the price.
Acura Legend GS
Original Cost: $40,700
Find Now For: $4000-$8000
Way back in 1994, the Legend lineup welcomed a new sport-minded sedan that culled a lot of parts and canyon-carving knowhow from its coupe sibling. Stiffer front anti-roll bars, vented ABS brakes, defeatable traction control, and, most importantly, its Series II 3.2-liter V-6 heart pumping out 230 horses made the GS a formidable sporty offering. The coolest ones on the block, however, equipped theirs with an available six-speed manual gearbox instead of the more mundane four-speed auto.
2005-2006 Porsche Cayenne Turbo
Original Cost: $88,900
Find Now For: $17,000-$25,000+
With 450 horses made by a 4.5-liter twin-turbo V-8, you can imagine how much of a stir the 955-series Cayenne Turbo caused when it first hit our garage in 2003. It was love at first throttle stab. Even by today's standards, the 5000-pound Porsche was a beast: 5.4 seconds to 60 mph; 60 mph to nil in 112 feet; 0.85 g average on the skidpad. We loved its copious supple leather upholstry, adjustable suspension, navigation, full-time all-wheel drive, and snappy Tiptronic S transmission. But it was the burbling quad pipes that always put stupid grins on our faces.
What's your favorite status symbol car that's now available at a bargain price? Tell us about it below.


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I've said it many times before, but I'll say it again: I have always loved good coffee, still love it, and will likely always love it. But I don't love it nearly as much as I love matcha. Here are five reasons why matcha is the winner in Matcha vs. Coffee:
Matcha and Caffeine
- Matcha has a better caffeine high. By "better" I mean that coffee's caffeine high wreaks more havoc on the body. It starts off with a blast, and ends in a crash. Coffee causes spikes in adrenaline glucose and insulin levels, which in turn create jitteriness, nervousness, and, at least for me, often crazy hunger pangs.
- Matcha, in contrast, does a better job of creating a calm alertness, with just a quarter the caffeine. There are no spikes and crashes, it just comes on gently and leaves just as gently. No adrenal weirdness, no glucose spike, and no need for pastry; it satiates like nothing else, making it the perfect treat for anyone worried about their weight. The 25 mg (or so) of caffeine bind with matcha's phytonutrients (especially L-theanine) in a way that slows the body's absorption of the caffeine; it typically lasts at least three hours, though some people report feeling it for as long as six or seven.
- Better breath. There really is no comparison here. Matcha is also better for your teeth: it thwarts the bacteria that causes plaque, making it a powerful ally for everyday oral hygiene. Coffee breath and enamel staining? This is a no brainer.
- Better skin. Ever notice the skin of hardcore coffee drinkers? Matcha helps clear up acne, and has been used for centuries by Japanese women as a facial mask. Matcha's antibacterial properties help to give skin a natural glow.
- More antioxidants. Matcha is ridiculously full of catechins, flavonoids, and polyphenols, especially the mighty epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), which has been linked to so many health benefits and has therapeutic applications to the treatment of so many disorders, including cancer.
- Great matcha is WAY easier to make than great coffee is.
Matcha has the reputation of being difficult to make, but seriously: scoop sifted tea into cup, add hot water, froth. All of 30 seconds to perfection (assuming you're starting with great matcha, of course). Great coffee should be measured (20 grams seems to be the most common weight), freshly ground, then steeped or steamed, using a variety of complicated and expensive machinery. And then there's the waiting for the machine to do its thing.
Needless to say, matcha is not intended to prevent, treat, or cure any disease; it's just green tea, albeit a very special one that has all kinds of interesting health properties. And because there are no known downsides or side effects to regular consumption of matcha, there is little to lose in making the switch from coffee to matcha, at least some of the time.
You needn't give up coffee altogether (unless your doctor tells you to, of course) — I sure don't plan to. But do give matcha try; you have nothing to lose but stained teeth, bad breath, and heart-pounding jitters. And you might have a whole new world of wellness to gain.


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Oh look. Just in time for my delayed-thanks-to-a-late-PAL-release playthrough of Persona 4 Golden. It's a terrific figure of Chie, the game's loud-mouthed ass kicker.
She comes with two outfits and glasses, but also a strangely absurd pricetag; ¥9,400 (USD$100) is a lot for a 1/8 scale figure that doesn't really do anything.


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Start your child's reading journey with ABC Reading Eggs
Watch your child hatch eggs, earn rewards and meet exciting new characters while learning to read.
Brought to you by the creators of The Eggsperts, ABC Reading Eggs is the multi-award winning online reading program designed to make learning to read easy and fun.
Your child will begin their very own adventure through 12 exciting maps as they complete a curriculum of reading lessons and activities.
With over 2000 books, colourful animations and exciting golden eggs to collect and hatch, get ready to fall in love with the wonderful world of ABC Reading Eggs!
Why children love ABC Reading Eggs
- Hundreds of highly engaging and interactive games and activities
- A comprehensive range of self-paced lessons to help children practice their reading skills
- Easy to follow instructions to help children progress through the program with confidence and ease
- Fun rewards and certificates to collect to keep children motivated to learn
- Suitable for ages 2–13
Proven reading results
- Developed by expert educators with over 30 years' experience
- Used in over 12,000 primary schools
- 91% of parents noticed an improvement in their child's reading ability
- Detailed assessment reports to let you track your child's progress
- Carefully designed to help your child build skills across the 5 essential elements of reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension
Actual Screenshots From Inside ABC Reading Eggs
Join over 10 million users from 169 countries
and claim your FREE, 14-day Trial of Reading Eggs now


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To gear up for the May 23 release of Matt Kindt's (Revolver, The Tooth) new telepaths-and-spies series Mind MGMT, Dark Horse Comics is releasing a series of free online prequels stories titled Mind MGMT: Secret Files. These chapters will run on Dark Horse's digital site over the next three Wednesdays. Here's a sneak peek at the first story — which goes up tomorrow, May 2 — and a synopsis:
MIND MGMT: Secret Files introduces the Mind Management program of psychic spies, its most infamous defector, and Meru, the journalist who stumbles upon their incredible secrets [...] Meru's investigation begins with the story of "the Bear," a Soviet mind operative on a mission to eliminate MIND MGMT's top agent.


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The village clerk's office maintains all village records including village board minutes, ordinances, resolutions and the village code.
The office processes inquiries from the public for official village documents in accordance with the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (5 ILCS 140).
Updated Resolutions/Ordinances
All the documents listed on the right side of this page have been updated by the New Lenox Village Board in the last 30 days.