text:
Virtual desktops have gone from an interesting idea to a technology agencies embrace in increasingly large deployments.
Consider the following: The Energy Department's desktop virtualization pilot has expanded to 500 seats and could grow well beyond that. The Navy kicked off a 7,500-seat desktop virtualization project last year, and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has installed about 18,000 virtual desktops on two networks so far. That's a significant shift from the small-scale demonstration projects that emerged five years ago.
The technology and deployment methods behind such projects are now well-defined and familiar to IT departments. With application virtualization, an organization streams software to desktop computers, where they run on the locally installed operating system. The virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) approach, on the other hand, hosts desktops as virtual machines running on a central server. Applications, operating systems and data reside in the data center.
Large-scale virtualization projects often compel agencies to revisit security policies, pay closer attention to configuration management and assess the types of technical expertise they need to have on hand. Therefore, a key consideration for adopters has become virtual desktop administration.
"We are seeing a shift in the skill set and in the experience needed," said Donald Adcock, deputy CIO for energy IT services at DOE.
Why it matters
The fundamental differences between physical and virtual machines drive the need for a new desktop administration regimen. Virtualization moves the key components of the desktop to the server room, leaving little to manage on the client side. Indeed, a zero-client box provides the ability to connect with a desktop-hosting server and not much beyond that. So although traditional PCs required considerable desk-side support, that's not the case for the minimalist hardware devices used in a virtual desktop setting, and the bulk of the management activities thus shift to the server side.
Furthermore, with server-oriented computing, users partake of a shared resource — and that changes the administration game because what a user does on his or her virtual desktop could affect what other users experience on theirs.
"If one person is watching full-motion videos on their particular virtual desktop, it will have an impact on those sharing the same [computing] resources," said Michael Mestrovich, senior technology officer for innovation at DIA.
The agency has deployed slightly fewer than 12,000 virtual desktops on its top secret Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System and about 6,000 virtual desktops on its secret network.
Mestrovich said desktop virtualization has enabled the agency's thin clients to support a range of activities, from viewing video shot by unmanned aerial vehicles to participating in town hall meetings via streaming video. But to make virtual desktops work, organizations need to understand the types of applications customers run and how those applications affect the CPU, network and storage resources of the underlying infrastructure.
The fundamentals
Government and industry executives point to a number of administrative issues agencies can expect to encounter when fielding a VDI. One obvious consideration is what types of expertise IT personnel should possess to run a virtual desktop installation.
Mestrovich said large-scale VDI administration requires a range of skills and knowledge. IT staffers managing the server side, for example, need to have greater insight into the virtual desktop users' activities and the resulting infrastructure demands. Accordingly, DIA systems administrators working on the back-end VDI now have more of a focus on the customers' endpoints and the applications they might be using, Mestrovich said.
Administrators also need to be much more aware of disk input/output, he added. Indeed, virtual desktop demands on storage can result in bottlenecks that degrade the user experience. For example, thousands of employees arriving at work and simultaneously logging onto their thin clients can result in a boot storm if storage systems aren't designed for VDI.
IT staff, meanwhile, will need to learn how to handle client-side chores remotely while maintaining the same people skills they had when providing desk-side support, Adcock said.
"You really need your personnel dealing with [virtual desktop users] to be people-friendly and people-oriented," he said.
DOE's virtual desktop pilot was originally built to handle 250 seats but has since grown to twice that, Adcock said. The pool of available applications is set to expand as well. The department is currently evaluating its portfolio to determine which applications can be virtualized.
And although server experts might need to study up on user considerations, administrators previously focused on the desktop will need to learn about servers and other infrastructure elements. Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president of Linux and virtualization engineering at Oracle, said administrators must acquire specific knowledge of servers, storage and network capabilities.
They also need to learn about the gold image or virtual machine template. "With traditional desktop management, IT staff can spend a great deal of time configuring individual desktops, visiting an end user's client device to repair it and so on," Coekaerts said. "But with desktop virtualization and its template-based approach, it's easy to clone a specific type of desktop environment, use it for hundreds or thousands of users, and easily replace it if something needs to be changed."
Organizations that are putting a virtual desktop plan into action might want to consider the following tools and technologies:
Remote control. These tools let help-desk staffers and systems administrators remotely log into a virtual desktop to troubleshoot problems.
Virtual infrastructure monitoring. These tools can help administrators track virtual desktop performance metrics and trace problems back to the data center.
Storage optimization. Specialized software or appliances can boost shared storage and address issues such as boot storms.
That method also applies to traditional desktop computers, but agencies often make exceptions for users with needs beyond the standard configuration. Those agencies end up maintaining multiple images, each of which must be secured and updated. Proliferation, however, can also occur with virtual desktop images if IT departments don't actively avoid it.
"If you don't maintain some kind of control over governance, you will find yourself with the same thing in the virtualized environment," Adcock said. "You will quickly find yourself [with] multiple images that have to be maintained and accounted for and tracked."
IT personnel managing virtual desktops should also take security into account. Ken Liska, a virtualization specialist for NetApp's U.S Public Sector, said organizations might have security policies and systems in place that add overhead and cost but don't provide extra protection for virtual desktops. Some security measures, such as antivirus software, are unnecessary for zero clients because they lack an operating system.
The need for remote control in a VDI setting also has security implications. "Many client security systems are in place specifically to prevent the remote control of a client operating system," said José Padin, a systems engineer manager at Citrix Systems. "VDI...is inherently about remotely controlling the virtual client operating system. The two systems are diametrically opposed."
To remedy that issue, most security systems provide the means to "containerize" client operating systems and apply different security policies to each container, Padin said. Host-based intrusion-prevention systems, for instance, can be configured to permit remote control for virtual desktops while preventing remote control of a physical endpoint.
The hurdles
The task of getting everyone up to speed on the new environment could prove the main obstacle to effective virtual desktop administration.
"These are newer technologies, so the agency skill varies depending on how long the agency has used this technology and how far into the process they have gone," said Jim Leake, vice president of the end-user computing portfolio at Unisys. "For agencies just exploring the concept, the learning curve can be steep."
Virtualization vendors offer help in that regard. Mestrovich said VMware, Citrix and Microsoft all offer courses that focus on virtual desktop administration skills. Technical certifications are also available. Citrix, for one, offers a certification program for its XenDesktop 5.
In addition to sending people for training in VDI, DIA also looks for people — both contractors and federal employees — who have experience and certifications in virtual desktops, Mestrovich said.
In addition to systems administrators, help-desk employees should be included in virtual desktop training. Help-desk personnel need to be aware of the hosting infrastructure and desktop provisioning technology to do their jobs effectively. Liska cited a case in which the support staff was left out of the education loop and, as a consequence, ended up troubleshooting virtual desktops as though they were physical machines.
Virtual desktops add to the complexity of the triage stage from the help desk's perspective, Leake said. When users call in to report that their machines have become sluggish, there are several elements to consider.
"The help desk must determine if the issue is being caused by a thin client, the network, the hosted machine or the app," Leake said.
The good news, he said, is that the fix is typically easier to apply in a virtual setting than it is on a physical desktop.
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March 30, 2017
Seasoned government managers are hopeful about an innovation effort backed by the president, but they see pitfalls and the possibility of duplication.
Early self-reporting suggests that 81 percent of agencies are on track to electronically manage email records.
The head of the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental says his goal is to drive culture change in the DOD's acquisition and innovation processes rather than make DIUx the acquisition arm of the DOD.
A plan to reorganize DHS' cybersecurity directorate that stalled in Congress last year is still on the agency's agenda.
Without confirmed subcabinet officials, President Donald Trump's executive order calling for a federal government reorganization will be managed by agency chiefs and career executives.
As promised, a budget blueprint from the Trump administration prioritizes military and homeland security spending, and pays for increases with dramatic cuts to civilian agencies.


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Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths (FamilySearch Historical Records)
This article describes a collection of historical records available at FamilySearch.org. | |
Access the records: Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths, 1916-1947 .
Record Description
The record consists of one-page pre-printed death certificate forms filled in by hand or typed.
Citation for This Collection
The following citation refers to the original source of the data and images published on FamilySearch.org Historical Records. It may include the author, custodian, publisher, and archive for the original records.
- Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths, 1916-1947. Historical Records from Illinois Department of Health. "Certificates of Death." Illinois Department of Health, Springfield, Illinois. FHL microfilm. Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah
Information about creating source citations for FamilySearch Historical Collections is listed in the wiki article Help:How to Create Source Citations For FamilySearch Historical Records Collections.
Record Content
Important genealogical information that Illinois death certificates may contain:
- County and city in which death took place
- Address where death occurred
- Sometimes the voting ward of that place
- Deceased's full name
- Gender
- Marital status
- Birth date
- Age at death
- Date of death
- Occupation
- Employer
- City and state of birthplace
- Name of the informant providing the above information
- Filing date
- Name of the registrar
How to Use the Records
To begin your search it is helpful to know the following:
- The place where the death occurred
- The name of the person at the time of death
- The approximate death date
Compare the information in the death record to what you already know about your ancestor to determine if this is the correct person. You may need to compare the information of more than one person to make this determination.
When you have located your ancestor's death record, carefully evaluate each piece of information given. These pieces of information may give you new biographical details that can lead you to other records about your ancestors. Add this new information to your records of each family.
For example:
- Use the death date or age to calculate an approximate birth year.
- Use the birth date or age along with the place of birth to find or verify their birth records and parents' names.
- Use the birth date or age along with the place of birth to find the family in census records.
- Use the residence and names of the parents (if the deceased is a child) to locate church and land records.
- Occupations listed can lead you to employment records or other types of records such as military records.
- Use the parents' birth places to find former residences and to establish a migration pattern for the family.
- The name of the officiator is a clue to their religion or area of residence in the county.
- The name of the undertaker or mortuary could lead you to funeral and cemetery records, which often include the names and residences of other family members.
- Compile the entries for every person who has the same surname; this is especially helpful in rural areas or if the surname is unusual.
- Continue to search the records to identify children, siblings, parents, and other relatives of the deceased who may have died or been buried in the same county or nearby. This can help you identify other generations of your family or even the second marriage of a parent. Repeat this process for each new generation you identify.
- When looking for a person who had a common name, look at all the entries for the name before deciding which is correct.
If you are unable to find the ancestors you are looking for, try the following:
- Check for variant spellings of the surnames.
- Check for a different index. There are often indexes at the beginning of each volume.
- Search the indexes and records of nearby counties.
Keep in mind:
- The information in these records is usually reliable, but depends upon the reliability of the informant.
- Earlier records may not contain as much information as the records created after the late 1800s.
- There is also some variation in the information given from one record to another record.
For a summary of this information see the wiki article: United States, How to Use the Records Summary.
Information pertaining to death is usually reliable. This includes the cause of death, name of the attending physician or attending medical professional, name and address of the funeral home used, and the exact date and place of burial. Other information is dependent upon the reliability of the informant, often a family member.
Record History
Deaths were not generally recorded at the county level until 1877, although the practice was not universal before 1916. Some records existed in cities prior to 1877.
A 1915 statute provided for the first effective system of registration of deaths and stillbirths in Illinois. It required the State Board of Health and county clerks to record these events. In 1919 the Illinois Department of Public Health was established as the successor agency to the State Board of Health.
Deaths that were recorded prior to 1 January 1916 can be found at the county clerk's office. Death records beginning 1916, with a statewide index from 1916 to the present, are available from the Illinois Department of Health, Division of Vital Records.
Related Websites
Follow this link to the Illinois State Archives for information on obtaining death records.
Related Wiki Articles
Contributions to This Article
We welcome user additions to FamilySearch Historical Records wiki articles. We are looking for additional information that will help readers understand the topic and better use the available records. We also need translations for collection titles and images in articles about records written in languages other than English. For specific needs, please visit WikiProject FamilySearch Records. Please follow these guidelines as you make changes. Thank you for any contributions you may provide. |
Citing FamilySearch Historical Collections
When you copy information from a record, you should list where you found the information. This will help you or others to find the record again. It is also good to keep track of records where you did not find information, including the names of the people you looked for in the records.
A suggested format for keeping track of records that you have searched is found in the wiki article Help:How to Cite FamilySearch Collections.
Citation Example for Records Found in this Collection
"Illinois, Deaths and Stillbirths, 1916-1947." database, FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org): accessed 11 March 2011.Thomas Andrew Stout, died 20 May 1919; citing Death Records, FHL microfilm 1,562,101; Illinois Department of Health, Certificates of Death, Springfield, Illinois.
This Historical Records Collection article is a stub. You can help by expanding it. Please review the wiki article guidelines to assist you in editing. |

subset: commoncrawl


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As 2013 winds down, award season for the film industry is heating up. This year, we've been treated to numerous remarkable films from seasoned Hollywood vets and exciting newcomers. But only a handful will go on to be nominated for the coveted Best Picture Academy Award. Between critical praise and box office success, these movies seem to have the best chances to go for Oscar gold.
1. 12 Years a Slave
Some movies make you feel good — and some just make you feel. Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave is not a feel-good film — but it might be one of the most important movies of the 21st century.
It tells the true story of Solomon Northrup, a free man who's captured and sold into slavery in a pre-Civil War South. It features a large ensemble, led by Chiwetel Ejiofor in a revelatory performance as Northrup. It's a devastating, brutal, and completely memorable film, and one the Academy is almost sure to not forget when it's time to name its nominees.


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In Case You Missed It: Watch 'What's At Stake for Latinos This Election'
At more than 15% of the American population, Latinos are being courted by candidates from the presidential race down to state and local races, which is why yesterday the AFL-CIO teamed up with the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and Univision as part of Latino Heritage Month to host a panel discussing what's at stake in this election for Latino voters.
In case you missed the live webcast, watch the panel in the post or here: www.aflcio.org/latinovote.
Topics explored during the panel include immigration reform, education, unemployment, job training and much more.
Teresa Rodriguez, the co-anchor of Univision's primetime award-winning weekly news magazine "Aquí y Ahora" (Here and Now) and one of the country's leading Hispanic female journalists, served as the moderator and lead a discussion on issues of importance to Latino workers – the economy, jobs, immigration reform, voter protection, and labor standards. Issues we hope President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney will be discuss in tonight's debate.
We also heard from Janet Murguía, president and CEO of NCLR; AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka; Mike Periu, founder of Proximo International; Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF; Neidi Dominguez of Dream Team L.A.; and Ruben Garcia of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
You can also join the conversation on Twitter. If you were moderating tonight's debate, what question would you ask President Obama and Governor Romney? Send your question to @AFLCIOLatino and use the hashtag #MyVoto2012.
Text LATINO to 235246 to receive text alerts updates from the AFL-CIO.
Don't forget to follow AFL-CIO Latino online: www.facebook.com/aflciolatino; and Twitter: https://twitter.com/AFLCIOLatino.


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By Emily Greenhalgh
PBN Web Editor
Twitter: @EGreenhalgh
Jeff Flath, president and CEO of eNow Inc., launched his alternative-energy technology company in 2011 as a way to make the world a better place by driving savings through environmentally sound technology in the trucking and transportation industry.
The former president of The Cooley Group is a member of the New England Clean Energy Councils Rhode Island board and co-host of Renewable Now Radio and TV programs that focus on the "business side of green."
The eNow front man talked to Providence Business News about his company, its unique technology and the future of the alternative energy industry.
PBN: Could you explain a little bit about your technology?
FLATH: eNow has designed our panels specifically for transportation applications and have built in features that will enable these panels to produce power, even if the panels are partially shaded.
PBN: What makes your solar technology unique?
FLATH: What I said above. We have also designed these panels with safety features built in, in case the vehicle is in an accident.
PBN: Can you tell us about your recent partnership with the Arpin Group?
FLATH: The Arpin Group has been Beta testing the eNow system for the last two and a half years. According to Aprin, the eNow system has exceeded their expectations in producing more power and saving more money in operating costs than they expected.
PBN: Why do you think now is the right time for alternative energy?
FLATH: With unstable fuel costs and greenhouse gas emissions increasing, it is clear to customers that they need to invest in technology that will lower their operating costs, and technology that will greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
PBN: How do you envision growth in the alternative energy technology industry in the U.S. in the next decade?
FLATH: You may know that the U.S. government has established a goal of becoming 100 percent energy independent by the year 2020. With transportation currently representing over 20 percent of the U.S.'s annual energy cost, we believe alternative energy technology in the transportation industry is ready to explode.
Tuesday, March 21
Thursday, March 23
Wednesday, March 22


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Johnna R. Meek, Fort Scott, passed away at her home Thursday, June 14, 2012.
She was born July 9, 1934, in Fort Scott, Kan., the daughter of John Ray and Iva Eathel (Hencey) Price.
She married Charles Meek in 1974 and he preceded her in death in 1993.
Johnna worked for Campbell's Laundry and Gibson's Discount Store, and also for a time in Johnny Bean's store.
Survivors include two brothers, George Price and his wife Elaine, of Sun City, Texas, and Jim Price and his wife Theresa of Chicago, Ill.,; several nieces and nephews; several great-nieces and great-nephews; a step-son, Stan Meek, Fort Scott; two step-daughters, Maria Smith, Fort Scott, and Jo Charlene Littlecook of Enid, Okla.; eight step-grandchildren and several great step-grandchildren.
Family and friends will meet at the Konantz-Cheney Funeral Home at 2 p.m. Tuesday, June 19, 2012, and will leave for the Memory Gardens Cemetery at 2:30 p.m. where the Rev. Reed Hartford will conduct graveside services.
Memorial contributions may be made to the FSCC Endowed Scholarship fund and left in the care of the Konantz-Cheney Funeral Home, 15 W. Wall St., P.O. Box 309, Fort Scott, Kan., 66701.


text:
StageCoach Motel
- Suites
- Free High-Speed Internet
- Continental Breakfast
- Swimming pool
- Refrigerator in room
- Microwave in room
Photos of StageCoach Motel
- Swimming pool
- Refrigerator in room
- Microwave in room
- Free High-Speed Internet
- Free parking
- Pets allowed
- Suites
- Continental Breakfast
TripAdvisor Reviews StageCoach Motel La Junta
Travel Blogs from La Junta
We killed a lot of butterflies today!
... that started in the 1800's when it was a railroad town in the middle of the cattle drive. Plenty of brothels back in the early days. Population used to be over 3000 in the 1800's, but now only has 95 people. The train still runs through there today and the road is called the Santa Fe trail. Back on our bikes again and we rode to the Colorado border. The landscape changed a bit finally, with some ...
Crazy day!
... are covered in cob webs. We haven't visited the pool yet. There is a Walmart down the road. I think we are going over to get a cable cord. They have free cable here. It is hot outside so we are all in the trailer relaxing. Patrick is sleeping and the kids are reading. We are planning on going to Wichita, Kansas tomorrow. We will be leaving early again and hope to arrive early with no problems this ...
The Rain on the Plain....
... led to its being bought out. Wyndham has renovated the lobby, and the room we have is reasonably clean (if you discount the roughly 15 flies that Tim killed), but the hallways and staircases are a mess. From outside, the place looks pretty much like a dump. The pool appears to be clean and well-tended, though, and the hotel is cheap. Weirdest thing about our room is that the "suite" entails a wall between the bedroom ...
Great day 78.5 miles
... 20 miles in doing that....way to go Katy. We had a few miles of rain nothing to bad though....If we could of had tail winds we would of been blown into Kansas...... For the all the wind and getting in 78.5 miles neither of us felt that tired, I was refreshed after my shower......
We went to BosHogs for dinner in this little town, there weren't many places to choose from and then Katy and I took a hot tub at the Holiday Inn ...
Buff, tatanka
... wiping them out. Next stop was an old time saloon run by a man in period costume (insert own joke here) when he found out we was on honeymoon he bought us a 'sarsaparilla' which is a drink drunk back in them days, i was looking forward to it but it tasted like horrible medicine, aparantly thats the wintergreen its made from. We thanked him for the free drink and ran away. More exhibits followed in a variety of replica shops, blacksmiths etc it was a pretty decent visit, we must ...


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Icecat: syndicator of product information via global
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The general trademark of a manufacturer by which the consumer knows its products. A manufacturer can have multiple brand names. Some manufacturers license their brand names to other producers.
Product name:
Product name is a brand's identification of a product, often a model name, but not totally unique as it can include some product variants. Product name is a key part of the Icecat product title on a product data-sheet.
All-in-1 Card Reader
Product code
The brand's unique identifier for a product. Multiple product codes can be mapped to one mother product data-sheet if the specifications are identical. We map away wrong codes or sometimes logistic variants.
Card readers and drives with built-in card readers are used for reading from/writing to flash memory cards, for example from your digital camera or cellphone.
card readers
Data-sheet quality:
created/standardized by Icecat
The quality of the product data-sheet can be on several levels:
only logistic data imported: we have only basic data imported from a supplier, a data-sheet is not yet created by an editor.
created by Fujitsu: a data-sheet is imported from an official source from a manufacturer. But the data-sheet is not yet standardized by an Icecat editor.
created/standardized by Icecat: the data-sheet is created or standardized by an Icecat editor.
only logistic data imported: we have only basic data imported from a supplier, a data-sheet is not yet created by an editor.
created by Fujitsu: a data-sheet is imported from an official source from a manufacturer. But the data-sheet is not yet standardized by an Icecat editor.
created/standardized by Icecat: the data-sheet is created or standardized by an Icecat editor.
Included since:
31 Oct 2005
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Long product name Fujitsu All-in-1 Card Reader card reader:
The short editorial description of Fujitsu All-in-1 Card Reader card reader
One reader and writer for all current card types
Marketing text Fujitsu All-in-1 Card Reader card reader
:The official marketing text of Fujitsu All-in-1 Card Reader card reader as supplied by the manufacturer
Maximum flexibility and mobilityThe All-in-1 Card Reader is a universal device for reading all kinds of Compact Flash Cards, Micro Drives, Smart Media Cards, Trans Flash Cards, Multimedia Cards, Secure Digital Cards and Memory Sticks. Easy to use, plug & play and a very small housing are some of the features of this reader/writer.
Peace of mind
Whether it is your holiday pictures or your most important work files the All-in-1 Card Reader complies with all industry standards and is made to the highest quality to ensure that your data is never corrupted or lost. As well as this its stylish design would not look out of place in any modern home office.
Plug & play
The All-in-1 Card Reader could not be easier to use and set up. There are no drivers to install (Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Windows 2000) so all you need to do is plug it in and away you go. It is light and easy to carry and so can easily be taken with you inside your notebook carry case. This is a very versatile reader for all types of flash media.
Short summary description Fujitsu All-in-1 Card Reader card reader:
This short summary of the Fujitsu All-in-1 Card Reader card reader data-sheet is auto-generated and uses the product title and the first six key specs.
Fujitsu All-in-1 Card Reader, 9 MB/s, 63 g, 104 x 57 x 19 mm, Windows 2000,XP
Long summary description Fujitsu All-in-1 Card Reader card reader:
This is an auto-generated long summary of Fujitsu All-in-1 Card Reader card reader based on the first three specs of the first five spec groups.
Fujitsu All-in-1 Card Reader. Write speed: 9 MB/s. Weight: 63 g. Dimensions (WxDxH): 104 x 57 x 19 mm, Compatible operating systems: Windows 2000,XP
This is a demo of a seamless insert of an Icecat LIVE product data-sheet in your website. Imagine that this responsive data-sheet is included in the product page of your webshop. How to integrate Icecat LIVE JavaScript.
Ports & interfaces
I/O ports
An interface on a device to which you can connect another device.
Data transmission
Write speed
The speed at which a device can write data.
9 MB/s
Weight & dimensions
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63 g
Other features
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Dimensions of the product (Width x Depth x Height).
104 x 57 x 19 mm
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List of desktop operating systems tested as compatible with this product.
Windows 2000,XP
Technical details
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Indicates whether this product supports is "plug and play". Plug and play is hardware or software that, after being installed ("plugged in"), can immediately be used ("played with"), as opposed to hardware or software which requires configuration.
USB powered
The device can be powered via a USB connection.


text:
How to Know About Tea Sets
Intertwined with the history of tea, the tea set has a rather ubiquitous existence. Found in almost every culture in some form or another, the tea set is often seen gracing a table top, a sideboard or a kitchen counter. As commonplace as it is, there is much about the tea set worth exploring. From ceremonial uses to a wide variety of styles and materials, the tea set has many angles to inspire the collector or the local tea maven
How to Make Tea:
A Japanese proverb says: If a man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. Tea has been a part of our lives for more than 5000 years and in some cultures, to make tea is an art form. By the cup or by the pot, you can make tea perfectly by following these steps.
Package Included:


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Well you're magic he said
But don't let it all go to your head
Well I bet if you all had it all figured out
Then you'd never get out of bed
No doubt
All the thing's that I've read what he wrote me
Is now sounding like the man I was hoping
To be
Keep on keeping it real
Cause it keeps getting easier indeed
He's the reason that I'm laughing
Even if there's no one else
He said, you've got to love yourself
You say, you shouldn't mumble when you speak
But keep your tongue up in your cheek
And if you stumble on to
You better remember that it's humble that you seek
You got all the skill you need,
You got something
Call it gumption
Call it anything you want
Because when you play the fool now
You're only fooling everyone else
You're learning to love yourself
Yes you are
There's no price to pay
When you give and what you take,
That's why it's easy to thank you
Let's say take a break from the day
And get back to the old garage
Because life's too short anyway
But at least it's better then average
As long as you got me
And I got you
You know we'll got a lot to go around
I'll be your friend
Your other brother
Another love to come and comfort you
And I'll keep reminding
If it's the only thing I ever do
I will always love
I will always love you
Yes you
I will always, always, always, always love
I will always, always love
I will always, always love, love
Climb up over the top.
Survey the state of the soul.
You've got to find out for yourself whether or not you're truly trying.
Why not give it a shot?
Shake it. Take control and inevitably wind up
Find out for yourself all the strengths you have inside of you.
Lyrics taken from http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/j/jason_mraz/song_for_a_friend.html


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Work involving Max/MSP
Im wondering if any of you have jobs that involve the use of Max/MSP?
And if you do, WHAT do you do? And how did you get to do that?
Hi Jake,
Most people that use Max in their work are either involved in the arts or academia. I had a similar question during my undergraduate degree – "Will someone pay me to make patches?!". Yes, they will, but it's more than likely that you will need plenty of other skills to go along with it (familiarity with hardware and programming languages which).
Do you have an idea of what you would like to do? There are plenty of examples here – http://cycling74.com/project/
There have been other threads on this, so a quick forum search will uncover some more useful answers.
Hope that helps,
"WHAT do you do?"
I've done sound-design for video games, exhibit/installation setups, and music software.
"And how did you get to do that?"
If you're lucky, you might find a job or two posted on these forums and elsewhere online, but most of the time, you connect with people in a particular field, let them get to know what you can do(by sharing patches or performing with them), and then when they have a project that can involve max patching, they'll think of you simply because you put yourself out there. Not many businesses are proactively looking for Max/MSP patching(especially during a recession), but if you put yourself out there, you increase the probability that someone will think of you or your work when it's needed. (also, use common sense to focus the probability more: you have more chance to find this work in a large city; you have more chance to find this work, steadily in or around academia, not so steadily in or around other struggling artists(though you might learn more from working with each other); you have more chance of finding this work if you are not desperate to make a living solely by this, etc.)
+what Mike said :)
I make apps for museums and exhibitions, multiprojector with blending and geometric corrections, games with wii controllers, multitouch surfaces, show control and more, and I get paid! Good for me haha…
@Gerardo : a bit OT but reminds me of a story about Ornette Coleman recording the score for 'The naked lunch' with a symphonic orchestra (London's if my memory's right). After a take, one of the orchestra musician comes to Ornette and asks : 'I can't see your score, what are you playing ?' So Ornette explained he was improvising along the orchestra score, inventing melodies and textures on the fly. And got answered : 'Oooh really ? And you get paid for that ?'
Hi ffsjake,
I'm a video engineer in a theatre for opera, ballet and drama.
I use Max in my everyday work, mostly for controlling purposes.
Some examples:
I use an iPad for controlling our Media Servers (Hippotizers) over ArtNet (DMX).
I wrote a patch to control our Panasonic Projectors over RS-232 (saving and transfering projector settings).
I connected the Lightning console with Ableton and the Hippotizers over Max, so anyone can give the GO-command for light, sound and video and everything is in Sync where it should be.
In the end, Max is for me like an Swiss army knife, which I never want to miss in my toolbox. And it is definately one reason why I got the job.
cool, some good answers there :)
I'm currently studying sound design in Denmark and I'm trying to figure out what my opportunities are.
I've done alot of Max/MSP projects during the last year or so, but my education is primarily focused on producing good sound.
And although i love good music and good sound, it has occurred to me that i shouldn't be working with sound as a producer, studio-engineer or traditional songwriter in the digital realm. I easily get tired of those situations.
Making patches for correct playback of small pieces of sound, connecting to X-Box controllers etc. is more up my alley!
Forums > Misc


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Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/07/play_investigation/
Play.com pummelled over purported piracy permissiveness
Etailer spanked for 'dodgy' software sales
Posted in The Channel, 7th June 2011 12:26 GMT
UPDATED Play.com has come under fire for failing to quickly clamp down on an alleged seller of pirated Microsoft software.
An IT consultant advised SME clients to order copies of Office 2003 Professional but says that on arrival it was apparent they were not legit: there was no holographic strip on the COA sticker, it had a fake VBA script and the hologram on the disc was stuck on, not embedded in it.
Despite informing Play.com of the problem, it told the consultant - who asked to remain anonymous - to take up the issue with the vendor DirectSurplus. Six weeks later following a trail of emails, he lost the faint hope that the situation would be resolved.
"I had hoped for a refund but I'm not holding my breath, it seems that [DirectSurplus] knows how to play for time," he told the Reg. "Being a big trader I would have assumed that Play.com would have procedures in place to keep an eye on what is being sold."
"If I can stop the sale of this software than that is a good outcome."
This is exactly what has happened after the Reg contacted Play.com, a spokeswoman for the etailer confirmed.
"The seller's account has been closed while they [Play.com] investigate where the products came from," said the spokeswoman, but she refused to comment further.
In a statement Michala Wardell, head of anti-piracy for Microsoft UK, said it too would look into the matter.
"The damage software pirates inflict on the channel by selling illegal software is huge, whether they're based in a physical shop or online via auction sites and community marketplaces," she said.
"We're committed to stamping out software piracy and investigate every report we receive from the public. As the result of our activity, we take action against over 100 resellers each year and will always undergo legal proceedings where necessary."
DirectSurplus did not respond to emails. ®
The consultant has been in touch to confirm that all clients have now been given a refund from DirectSurplus.


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(a) Terminate the lease contract (section 2A-505(2)); or
(b) Except in a finance lease that is not a consumer lease, modify the lease contract by accepting the available quota in substitution, with due allowance from the rent payable for the balance of the lease term for the deficiency but without further right against the lessor.
(2) If, after receipt of a notification from the lessor under section 2A-405, the lessee fails so to modify the lease agreement within a reasonable time not exceeding 30 days, the lease contract lapses with respect to any deliveries affected.
Note: WV Code updated with legislation passed through the 2016 Regular Session
The West Virginia Code Online is an unofficial copy of the annotated WV Code, provided as a convenience. It has NOT been edited for publication, and is not in any way official or authoritative.


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Maybe music companys could do this to look in your shared folder, see that you have downloaded music , next thing you know your hauled up for illegaly downloading music?
Drugs have taught an entire generation of kids the metric system. http://tazforum.**********.com/
Ok after reading this information, were is this kazaa site? what's the addresse? and secondly i would like to say that the banning of <n.3.c>[i] was in my point of oppinion was uncalled for. He was provoked, but i ain't gonna go into those details, as i do not wish to be subjected to that sort of abuse.......... And thirdly the person or persons involved in hacking he's computer and crashing it, your details were written down, and she is currently in the process of seekin revenge. and fourthly, thumbs up to ANTIONLINE for this killer place.
TELNET_OBSESSED: I did a test from my own box. I shared the entire C:\ drive to see what it would do. Then instead of using the Kazaa client I used a web browser which returned an index. Nobody was exploited or harmed in this experiment. I also tried an FTP and Telnet client with no success, but I assume smarter people can figure that out. One more thing, what was that you were talking about someone getting banned and you are seeking revenge etc.?
NO I ARN'T SEEKING REVENGE, THE PERSON WHO IS SEEKING REVENGE........<N.3.C>[I] IS THE PERSON SEEKING REVENGE. IM NOT HERE TO CAUSE TROUBLE OR TO GET INTO TROUBLE, IM HERE TO LEARN AND LEARN I AM DOING..... SO DON;T SHOOT THE MESSENGER, I WAS ONLY EXPRESSING MY OPINION ON THAT SUBJECT, AND IF THAT'S A CRIME THEN LOCK ME AWAY. aNYHOW I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WERE THIS KAZAA SITE IS??? AS I HAVE HEARD AND READ SOM MUCH ABOUT IT, BUT I HAVE NO IDEA ON WERE TO FIND THIS SITE?????
ugh.... you misunderstood everything. Gawd some people....
Would anyone have any idea of where in my computer is the page that is displayed in a web browser when someone visits my IP in a web browser?
For someone to just type in your ip addy and for them to get something you would need to be running a webserver on your computer if im not mistaken. PeacE -BoB
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -s-- -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RSA-in-3-lines-PERL ($k,$n)=@ARGV;$m=unpack(H.$w,$m.\"\\0\"x$w),$_=`echo \"16do$w 2+4Oi0$d*-^1[d2% Sa2/d0<X+d*La1=z\\U$n%0]SX$k\"[$m*]\\EszlXx++p|dc`,s/^.|\\W//g,print pack(\'H*\' ,$_)while read(STDIN,$m,($w=2*$d-1+length($n||die\"$0 [-d] k n\\n\")&~1)/2)
Would anyone have any idea of where in my computer is the page that is displayed in a web browser when someone visits my IP in a web browser? It's KaZaA. It's a server. When you share files, you open it up to the public. It's not an exploit, and does not take a rocket scientist to see what you have. If you do not want the RIAA or big brother to see what you have, do not use that program. I do not know how else to explain it to you. In fact, I am done. Somebody else take over.
telnet_obssesed: 1) Download AO newsletter #8 (I think it's 8)and read why Caps are really annoying 2) Use http://google.ca and do a quick search on kazaa or kazaalite 3) Don't forget to pick up a copy of AO newsletter #9 :P
Originally posted here by Drunk On Duvel Yup, it worked. If I share just a folder, you see the contents of the folder. If you share "c:\" you get the contents of "c:\" but are unable to browse subdirectories. Here is a screenie: Have you tryed this on an external IP address? I am just wondering if this is something that you can only see if you have local permissions. Like that webpage script that showed the contents of your C: drive. The person who owned the webpage could not seee your c drive, but you could (because you have permissions to it) see the contents of your c drive. (It freaked people out) Edit: I could not get this to work over the internet.
N00b> STFU i r teh 1337 (english: You must be mistaken, good sir or madam. I believe myself to be quite a good player. On an unrelated matter, I also apparently enjoy math.)
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text: Join the Effingham Central Business Group for "Chili Fest" on Friday, October 18th from 5pm to 8pm. Walk Jefferson street and surrounding areas to taste different chilis and vote for "People's Choice"! There will also be kids activities and live music by Firebox. Enjoy the beautiful fall weather and a warm cup of chili... Event is free! Special thank you to the City of Effingham for sponsoring the event.


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He may not be in Foxboro working out with his teammates during the current NFL Lockout, but Patriots receiver Wes Welker is making the most of the time away in hopes of playing later this year should the labor situation get worked out.
Welker spent Saturday working out with kids in Oklahoma City. (FILE:Icon/SMI) |
The Associated Press reported on Saturday that he spent today with about 180 kids who attended the free football camp he holds every year in Oklahoma City.
According to the report Welker tossed a few passes to the participants, along with working with them during receiving drills as well as lining up on defense against them during the 3 1/2-hour camp at Douglass High School.
"You've got to get into it a little bit," Welker said. "I get bored easily. So, for me, I've got to get active and D one of these kids up or catch a pass for 'em, throw to 'em or whatever.
"We have fun with it."
For more be sure and check out this link over at NESN.com for the complete article.


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- 5 years ago by Amanda Chatel
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In not so shocking news, the contract between Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise up! More
In not so shocking news, the contract between Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise up! More
What would Freud say about this? I can't wait to read his recap! Mimi Rogers is set to play Ashton Kutcher's mother on Two and a Half Men, and there's a little weird about the fact that she looks quite a bit like his real-life wife. Perhaps the episode will be titled "The Oedipus Complex"? More
You can always count on a Disney Pixar premiere to bring out the celebrity kids. This time around it was Up, which made its debut at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood yesterday. You're never too old to enjoy cartoons. … More
Image details: 2008 CineVegas Film Festival 10th Anniversary Party – Arrivals served by picapp.com Still gorgeous actress Mimi Rogers took her 13-year-old daughter Lucy Julia to the 2008 CineVegas film festival anniversary party on Friday night. Lucy looks so much … More


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New owners for White Rock Volkswagen
A Surrey-based automotive group has purchased White Rock Volkswagen from longtime owners Gold Key Auto Group.
Trotman Automotive Group has acquired the dealership, located at 2092 152 St., March 1, bringing the total number of dealerships they own in the Fraser Valley to seven – including locations in Abbotsford and Langley.
"We are honoured to take the baton from Bill Sie and the Gold Key Auto Group and what they have build in the White Rock/South Surrey communities," CEO Mike Trotman said in a news release.
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The weekend of June 25 there was an IMATS in Pasadena, the Los Angeles showing. Unfortunately, I did not attend but I was able to go to some of the events held there. The first event I attended was the CoverFX Tweetup Event. I got to meet Jenny Frankel, one of the co-creaters, and Melissa. They're both adorable people! Jenny Frankel told us the story of how she became part of the CoverFX. It's such a great story and you can see why CoverFX has made an impact in people. :)
Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures this past weekend. I've been such a bad blogger. :( Sorry! CoverFX was kind enough to give us a swag bag of their goodies.
They gave us a silver gift bag with purple tissues. That's such a great color combination. I can see it being beautiful on the eyes. ;)
I received Bronzed FX, SkinTint FX, BritePrep FX, and MintTint FX. I will review these in the future posts.
The other event I attended was the Beautylish Cupcake Greet & Meet. It's great seeing Christine, Ning, and Victoria. It's always great seeing familiar faces. :) Again, I did not take any pictures. :X I did pick up some of the things they were giving.
Beautylish gave away this Baggu. It's such a genius idea! Having fold-able, fabric bag you can carry with you. How convenient is it to take it out of your purse when you need a bag around. ;)
Here's how the bag looks when you take it out of the cover. I love the Beautylish logo as well.
I'm not too sure if Taaz sponsored the event, but they were there giving some products out.
They gave out a clear, cherry flavor lipgloss/lipbalm.
They also gave out a small mirror with a crystal star on the cover.
Thank you for both CoverFX and Beautylish for inviting me!!! :)
Disclaimer: The products mentioned in this post are given to me for going to the events. I am not affiliated with any company nor getting paid to advertise any products. This post is written with my honest opinion.


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Y&R Group promotes Yee Poh Ling to SVP, Global HR Asia Pacific
20 September, 2013
— William J. Manfredi, Executive Vice President Global Talent Management today announced that Yee Poh Ling has been promoted to Senior Vice President Asia Pacific, Y&R Group.
Yee joined Y&R Group in October 2009 from ESPN Star Sports, and quickly became the driving force behind the companies' talent management and regional programmes.
In her capacity as Regional HR Director, she has dual responsibility for both Y&R and Wunderman networks across Asia. She was instrumental in the launch of the Zed Academy which began in Singapore and she drove the collaboration with the Singapore Economic Development Board in creating, and gaining financial sponsorship for, the Zed Graduate Programme.
Commenting on the promotion, William Manfredi said, "In my career I have worked with many HR managers. However, Poh Ling has redefined the definition of HR professional with her relentless work ethic, accessibility, can do attitude and her ability to represent and carry out the overall global talent strategy across their regions. This promotion is testament to our ongoing focus on Asia Pacific."
Added Yee Poh Ling, "Our talent management programmes across the region continue to grow. I look forward to driving our initiatives to the next levels and to further enhancing our partnerships with Asian schools and universities."
She remains based in the Group's regional Headquarters in Singapore, reporting to William Manfredi and regional network heads Y&R Asia President Matthew Godfrey and Wunderman Asia Pacific President Stephane Faggianelli.
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In 1999, the U.S. national security state — which has been involved throughout the world in subversion, sabotage, terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, and death squads — launched round-the-clock aerial attacks against Yugoslavia for 78 days, dropping 20,000 tons of bombs and killing thousands of women, children, and men. All this was done out of humanitarian concern for Albanians in Kosovo. Or so we were asked to believe. In the span of a few months, President Clinton bombed four countries: Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq repeatedly, and Yugoslavia massively. At the same time, the U.S. was involved in proxy wars in Angola, Mexico (Chiapas), Colombia, East Timor, and various other places. And U.S. forces are deployed on every continent and ocean, with some 300 major overseas support bases — all in the name of peace, democracy, national security, and humanitarianism. While showing themselves ready and willing to bomb Yugoslavia on behalf of an ostensibly oppressed minority in Kosovo, U.S. leaders have made no moves against the Czech Republic for its mistreatment of the Romany people (gypsies), or Britain for oppressing the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, or the Hutu for the mass murder of a half million Tutsi in Rwanda — not to mention the French who were complicit in that massacre. Nor have U.S. leaders considered launching "humanitarian bombings" against the Turkish people for what their leaders have done to the Kurds, or the Indonesian people because their generals killed over 200,000 East Timorese and were continuing such slaughter through the summer of 1999, or the Guatemalans for the Guatemalan military's systematic extermination of tens of thousands of Mayan villagers. In such cases, U.S. leaders not only tolerated such atrocities but were actively complicit with the perpetrators — who usually happened to be faithful client-state allies dedicated to helping Washington make the world safe for the Fortune 500. Why then did U.S. leaders wage an unrestrainedly murderous assault upon Yugoslavia? The Third Worldization of Yugoslavia Yugoslavia was built on an idea, namely that the Southern Slavs would not remain weak and divided peoples, squabbling among themselves and easy prey to outside imperial interests. Together they could form a substantial territory capable of its own economic development. Indeed, after World War II, socialist Yugoslavia became a viable nation and an economic success. Between 1960 and 1980 it had one of the most vigorous growth rates: a decent standard of living, free medical care and education, a guaranteed right to a job, one-month vacation with pay, a literacy rate of over 90 percent, and a life expectancy of 72 years. Yugoslavia also offered its multi-ethnic citizenry affordable public transportation, housing, and utilities, with a not-for-profit economy that was mostly publicly owned. This was not the kind of country global capitalism would normally tolerate. Still, socialistic Yugoslavia was allowed to exist for 45 years because it was seen as a nonaligned buffer to the Warsaw Pact nations. The dismemberment and mutilation of Yugoslavia was part of a concerted policy initiated by the United States and the other Western powers in 1989. Yugoslavia was the one country in Eastern Europe that would not voluntarily overthrow what remained of its socialist system and install a free-market economic order. In fact, Yugoslavs were proud of their postwar economic development and of their independence from both the Warsaw Pact and NATO. The U.S. goal has been to transform the Yugoslav nation into a Third-World region, a cluster of weak right-wing principalities with the following characteristics:
U.S. policymakers also want to abolish Yugoslavia's public sector services and social programs — for the same reason they want to abolish our public sector services and social programs. The ultimate goal is the privatization and Third Worldization of Yugoslavia, as it is the Third Worldization of the United States and every other nation. In some respects, the fury of the West's destruction of Yugoslavia is a backhanded tribute to that nation's success as an alternative form of development, and to the pull it exerted on neighboring populations both East and West. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Belgrade's leaders, not unlike the Communist leadership in Poland, sought simultaneously to expand the country's industrial base and increase consumer goods, a feat they intended to accomplish by borrowing heavily from the West. But with an enormous IMF debt came the inevitable demand for "restructuring," a harsh austerity program that brought wage freezes, cutbacks in public spending, increased unemployment, and the abolition of worker-managed enterprises. Still, much of the economy remained in the not-for-profit public sector, including the Trepca mining complex in Kosovo, described in the New York Times as "war's glittering prize . . . the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans . . . worth at least $5 billion" in rich deposits of coal, lead, zinc, cadmium, gold, and silver.1 That U.S. leaders have consciously sought to dismember Yugoslavia is not a matter of speculation but of public record. In November 1990, the Bush administration pressured Congress into passing the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, which provided that any part of Yugoslavia failing to declare independence within six months would lose U.S. financial support. The law demanded separate elections in each of the six Yugoslav republics, and mandated U.S. State Department approval of both election procedures and results as a condition for any future aid. Aid would go only to the separate republics, not to the Yugoslav government, and only to those forces whom Washington defined as "democratic," meaning right-wing, free-market, separatist parties. Another goal of U.S. policy has been media monopoly and ideological control. In 1997, in what remained of Serbian Bosnia, the last radio station critical of NATO policy was forcibly shut down by NATO "peacekeepers." The story in the New York Times took elaborate pains to explain why silencing the only existing dissident Serbian station was necessary for advancing democratic pluralism. The Times used the term "hardline" eleven times to describe Bosnian Serb leaders who opposed the shutdown and who failed to see it as "a step toward bringing about responsible news coverage in Bosnia."2 Likewise, a portion of Yugoslav television remained in the hands of people who refused to view the world as do the U.S. State Department, the White House, and the corporate-owned U.S. news media, and this was not to be tolerated. The NATO bombings destroyed the two government TV channels and dozens of local radio and television stations, so that by the summer of 1999 the only TV one could see in Belgrade, when I visited that city, were the private channels along with CNN, German television, and various U.S. programs. Yugoslavia's sin was not that it had a media monopoly but that the publicly owned portion of its media deviated from the western media monopoly that blankets most of the world, including Yugoslavia itself. In 1992, another blow was delivered against Belgrade: international sanctions. Led by the United States, a freeze was imposed on all trade to and from Yugoslavia, with disastrous results for the economy: hyperinflation, mass unemployment of up to 70 percent, malnourishment, and the collapse of the health care system.3 Divide and Conquer One of the great deceptions, notes Joan Phillips, is that "those who are mainly responsible for the bloodshed in Yugoslavia — not the Serbs, Croats or Muslims, but the Western powers — are depicted as saviors."4 While pretending to work for harmony, U.S. leaders supported the most divisive, reactionary forces from Croatia to Kosovo. In Croatia, the West's man-of-the-hour was Franjo Tudjman, who claimed in a book he authored in 1989, that "the establishment of Hitler's new European order can be justified by the need to be rid of the Jews," and that only 900,000 Jews, not six million, were killed in the Holocaust. Tudjman's government adopted the fascist Ustasha checkered flag and anthem.5 Tudjman presided over the forced evacuation of over half a million Serbs from Croatia between 1991 and 1995, replete with rapes and summary executions.6 This included the 200,000 from Krajina in 1995, whose expulsion was facilitated by attacks from NATO war planes and missiles. Needless to say, U.S. leaders did nothing to stop and much to assist these atrocities, while the U.S. media looked the other way. Tudjman and his cronies now reside in obscene wealth while the people of Croatia are suffering the afflictions of the free market paradise. Tight controls have been imposed on Croatian media, and anyone who criticizes President Tudjman's government risks incarceration. Yet the White House hails Croatia as a new democracy. In Bosnia, U.S. leaders supported the Muslim fundamentalist, Alija Izetbegovic, an active Nazi in his youth, who has called for strict religious control over the media and now wants to establish an Islamic Bosnian republic. Izetbegovic himself does not have the support of most Bosnian Muslims. He was decisively outpolled in his bid for the presidency yet managed to take over that office by cutting a mysterious deal with frontrunner Fikret Abdic.7 Bosnia is now under IMF and NATO regency. It is not permitted to develop its own internal resources, nor allowed to extend credit or self-finance through an independent monetary system. Its state-owned assets, including energy, water, telecommunications, media and transportation, have been sold off to private firms at garage sale prices. In the former Yugoslavia, NATO powers have put aside neoimperialism and have opted for out-and-out colonial occupation. In early 1999, the democratically elected president of Republika Srpska, the Serb ministate in Bosnia, who had defeated NATO's chosen candidate, was removed by NATO troops because he proved less than fully cooperative with NATO's "high representative" in Bosnia. The latter retains authority to impose his own solutions and remove elected officials who prove in any way obstructive.8 This too was represented in the western press as a necessary measure to advance democracy. In Kosovo, we see the same dreary pattern. The U.S. gave aid and encouragement to violently right-wing separatist forces such as the self-styled Kosovo Liberation Army, previously considered a terrorist organization by Washington. The KLA has been a longtime player in the enormous heroin trade that reaches to Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Norway, and Sweden.9 KLA leaders had no social program other than the stated goal of cleansing Kosovo of all non-Albanians, a campaign that had been going on for decades. Between 1945 and 1998, the non-Albanian Kosovar population of Serbs, Roma, Turks, Gorani (Muslim Slavs), Montenegrins, and several other ethnic groups shrank from some 60 percent to about 20 percent. Meanwhile, the Albanian population grew from 40 to 80 percent (not the 90 percent repeatedly reported in the press), benefiting from a higher birth rate, a heavy influx of immigrants from Albania, and the systematic intimidation and expulsion of Serbs. In 1987, in an early untutored moment of truth, the New York Times reported: "Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. . . . Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls. . . . As the Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years . . . an 'ethnically pure' Albanian region. . . .'10 Ironically, while the Serbs were repeatedly charged with ethnic cleansing, Serbia itself is now the only multi-ethnic society left in the former Yugoslavia, with some twenty-six nationality groups including thousands of Albanians who live in and around Belgrade. Demonizing the Serbs The propaganda campaign to demonize the Serbs fits the larger policy of the Western powers. The Serbs were targeted for demonization because they were the largest nationality and the one most opposed to the breakup of Yugoslavia. None other than Charles Boyd, former deputy commander of the U.S. European command, commented on it in 1994: "The popular image of this war in Bosnia is one of unrelenting Serb expansionism. Much of what the Croatians call 'the occupied territories' is land that has been held by Serbs for more that three centuries. The same is true of most Serb land in Bosnia. . . . In short the Serbs were not trying to conquer new territory, but merely to hold onto what was already theirs." While U.S. leaders claim they want peace, Boyd concludes, they have encouraged a deepening of the war.11 But what of the atrocities they committed? All sides committed atrocities, but the reporting was consistently one-sided. Grisly incidents of Croat and Muslim atrocities against the Serbs rarely made it into the U.S. press, and when they did they were accorded only passing mention.12 Meanwhile Serb atrocities were played up and sometimes even fabricated, as we shall see. Recently, three Croatian generals were indicted by the Hague War Crimes Tribunal for the bombardment and deaths of Serbs in Krajina and elsewhere. Where were U.S. leaders and U.S. television crews when these war crimes were being committed? John Ranz, chair of Survivors of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, USA, asks: Where were the TV cameras when hundreds of Serbs were slaughtered by Muslims near Srebrenica?13 The official line, faithfully parroted in the U.S. media, is that the Serbs committed all the atrocities at Srebrenica. Before uncritically ingesting the atrocity stories dished out by U.S. leaders and the corporate-owned news media, we might recall the five hundred premature babies whom Iraqi soldiers laughingly ripped from incubators in Kuwait, a story repeated and believed until exposed as a total fabrication years later. During the Bosnian war in 1993, the Serbs were accused of having an official policy of rape. "Go forth and rape" a Bosnian Serb commander supposedly publicly instructed his troops. The source of that story never could be traced. The commander's name was never produced. As far as we know, no such utterance was ever made. Even the New York Times belatedly ran a tiny retraction, coyly allowing that "the existence of 'a systematic rape policy' by the Serbs remains to be proved."14 Bosnian Serb forces supposedly raped anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 Muslim women. The Bosnian Serb army numbered not more than 30,000 or so, many of whom were engaged in desperate military engagements. A representative from Helsinki Watch noted that stories of massive Serbian rapes originated with the Bosnian Muslim and Croatian governments and had no credible supporting evidence. Common sense would dictate that these stories be treated with the utmost skepticism — and not be used as an excuse for an aggressive and punitive policy against Yugoslavia. The mass rape propaganda theme was resuscitated in 1999 to justify NATO's renewed attacks on Yugoslavia. A headline in the San Francisco Examiner tells us: "SERB TACTIC IS ORGANIZED RAPE, KOSOVO REFUGEES SAY." Only at the bottom of the story, in the nineteenth paragraph, do we read that reports gathered by the Kosovo mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe found no such organized rape policy. The actual number of rapes were in the dozens "and not many dozens," according to the OSCE spokesperson. This same story did note that the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal sentenced a Bosnian Croat military commander to ten years in prison for failing to stop his troops from raping Muslim women in 1993 — an atrocity we heard little about when it was happening.15 The Serbs were blamed for the infamous Sarajevo market massacre of 1992. But according to the report leaked out on French TV, Western intelligence knew that it was Muslim operatives who had bombed Bosnian civilians in the marketplace in order to induce NATO involvement. Even international negotiator David Owen, who worked with Cyrus Vance, admitted in his memoir that the NATO powers knew all along that it was a Muslim bomb.16 However, the well-timed fabrication served its purpose of inducing the United Nations to go along with the U.S.-sponsored sanctions. On one occasion, notes Barry Lituchy, the New York Times ran a photo purporting to be of Croats grieving over Serbian atrocities when in fact the murders had been committed by Bosnian Muslims. The Times printed an obscure retraction the following week.17 We repeatedly have seen how "rogue nations" are designated and demonized. The process is predictably transparent. First, the leaders are targeted. Qaddafi of Libya was a "Hitlerite megalomaniac" and a "madman." Noriega of Panama was a "a swamp rat," one of the world's worst "drug thieves and scums," and "a Hitler admirer." Saddam Hussein of Iraq was "the Butcher of Baghdad," a "madman," and "worse than Hitler." Each of these leaders then had their countries attacked by U.S. forces and U.S.-led sanctions. What they really had in common was that each was charting a somewhat independent course of self-development or somehow was not complying with the dictates of the global free market and the U.S. national security state.18 Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic has been described by Bill Clinton as "a new Hitler." Yet he was not always considered so. At first, the Western press, viewing the ex-banker as a bourgeois Serbian nationalist who might hasten the break-up of the federation, hailed him as a "charismatic personality." Only later, when they saw him as an obstacle rather than a tool, did they begin to depict him as the demon who "started all four wars." This was too much even for the managing editor of the U.S. establishment journal Foreign Affairs, Fareed Zakaria. He noted in the New York Times that Milosevic who rules "an impoverished country that has not attacked its neighbors — is no Adolf Hitler. He is not even Saddam Hussein."19 Some opposition radio stations and newspapers were reportedly shut down during the NATO bombing. But, during my trip to Belgrade in August 1999, I observed nongovernmental media and opposition party newspapers going strong. There are more opposition parties in the Yugoslav parliament than in any other European parliament. Yet the government is repeatedly labeled a dictatorship. Milosevic was elected as president of Yugoslavia in a contest that foreign observers said had relatively few violations. As of the end of 1999, he presided over a coalition government that included four parties. Opposition groups openly criticized and demonstrated against his government. Yet he was called a dictator. The propaganda campaign against Belgrade has been so relentless that prominent personages on the Left — who oppose the NATO policy against Yugoslavia — have felt compelled to genuflect before this demonization orthodoxy.20 Thus do they reveal themselves as having been influenced by the very media propaganda machine they criticize on so many other issues. To reject the demonized image of Milosevic and of the Serbian people is not to idealize them or claim they are faultless or free of crimes. It is merely to challenge the one-sided propaganda that laid the grounds for NATO's destruction of Yugoslavia. More Atrocity Stories Atrocities (murders and rapes) occur in every war, which is not to condone them. Indeed, murders and rapes occur in many peacetime communities. What the media propaganda campaign against Yugoslavia charged was that atrocities were conducted on a mass genocidal scale. Such charges were used to justify the murderous aerial assault by NATO forces. Up until the bombings began in March 1999, the conflict in Kosovo had taken 2000 lives altogether from both sides, according to Kosovo Albanian sources. Yugoslavian sources had put the figure at 800. In either case, such casualties reveal a limited insurgency, not genocide. The forced expulsion policy began after the NATO bombings, with thousands being uprooted by Serb forces mostly in areas where the KLA was operating or was suspected of operating. In addition, if the unconfirmed reports by the ethnic Albanian refugees can be believed, there was much plundering and instances of summary execution by Serbian paramilitary forces — who were unleashed after the NATO bombing started. We should keep in mind that tens of thousands fled Kosovo because of the bombings, or because the province was the scene of sustained ground fighting between Yugoslav forces and the KLA, or because they were just afraid and hungry. An Albanian woman crossing into Macedonia was eagerly asked by a news crew if she had been forced out by Serb police. She responded: "There were no Serbs. We were frightened of the [NATO] bombs."21 During the bombings, an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 Serbian residents of Kosovo took flight (mostly north but some to the south), as did thousands of Roma and other non-Albanian ethnic groups.22 Were these people ethnically cleansing themselves? Or were they not fleeing the bombing and the ground war? The New York Times reported that "a major purpose of the NATO effort is to end the Serb atrocities that drove more than one million Albanians from their homes."23 So, we are told to believe, the refugee tide was caused not by the ground war against the KLA and not by the massive NATO bombing but by unspecified atrocities. The bombing, which was the major cause of the refugee problem was now seen as the solution. The refugee problem created in part by the massive aerial attacks was now treated as justification for such attacks, a way of putting pressure on Milosevic to allow "the safe return of ethnic Albanian refugees."24 While Kosovo Albanians were leaving in great numbers — usually well-clothed and in good health, some riding their tractors, trucks, or cars, many of them young men of recruitment age — they were described as being "slaughtered." Serbian attacks on KLA strongholds and the forced expulsion of Albanian villagers were described as "genocide." But experts in surveillance photography and wartime propaganda charged NATO with running a "propaganda campaign" on Kosovo that lacked any supporting evidence. State Department reports of mass graves and of 100,000 to 500,000 missing Albanian men "are just ludicrous," according to these independent critics.25 As with the Croatian and Bosnian conflicts, the image of mass killings was hyped once again. The Washington Post reported that 350 ethnic Albanians "might be buried in mass graves" around a mountain village in western Kosovo. Such speculations were based on sources that NATO officials refused to identify. Getting down to specifics, the article mentions "four decomposing bodies" discovered near a large ash heap, with no details as to who they might be or how they died.26 An ABC "Nightline" program made dramatic and repeated references to the "Serbian atrocities in Kosovo" while offering no specifics. Ted Kopple asked angry Albanian refugees what they had witnessed? They pointed to an old man in their group who wore a wool hat. The Serbs had thrown the man's hat to the ground and stepped on it, "because the Serbs knew that his hat was the most important thing to him," they told Kopple, who was appropriately appalled by this one example of a "war crime" offered in the hour-long program. A widely circulated story in the New York Times, headlined "U.S. REPORT OUTLINES SERB ATTACKS IN KOSOVO," tells us that the State Department issued "the most comprehensive documentary record to date on atrocities." The report concludes that there had been organized rapes and systematic executions. But reading further into the article, one finds that stories of such crimes "depend almost entirely on information from refugee accounts. There was no suggestion that American intelligence agencies had been able to verify, most, or even many, of the accounts . . . and the word 'reportedly' and 'allegedly' appear throughout the document."27 British journalist Audrey Gillan interviewed Kosovo refugees about atrocities and found an impressive lack of evidence. One woman caught him glancing at the watch on her wrist, while her husband told him how all the women had been robbed of their jewelry and other possessions. A spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees talked of mass rapes and what sounded like hundreds of killings in three villages. When Gillan pressed him for more precise information, he reduced it drastically to five or six teenage rape victims. But he admitted that he had not spoken to any witnesses and that "we have no way of verifying these reports."28 Gillan noted that some refugees had seen killings and other atrocities, but there was little to suggest that they had seen it on the scale that was being reported. Officials told him of refugees who talked of sixty or more being killed in one village and fifty in another, but Gillan "could not find one eye-witness who actually saw these things happening." It was always in some other village that the mass atrocities seem to have occurred. Yet every day western journalists reported "hundreds" of rapes and murders. Sometimes they noted in passing that the reports had yet to be substantiated, but then why were such stories being so eagerly publicized? In contrast to its public assertions, the German Foreign Office privately denied there was any evidence that genocide or ethnic cleansing was a component of Yugoslav policy: "Even in Kosovo, an explicit political persecution linked to Albanian ethnicity is not verifiable. . . . The actions of the [Yugoslav] security forces [were] not directed against the Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined group, but against the military opponent and its actual or alleged supporters."29 Still, Milosevic was indicted as a war criminal, charged with the forced expulsion of Albanian Kosovars, and with summary executions of a hundred or so individuals. Again, alleged crimes that occurred after the NATO bombing had started were used as justification for the bombing. The biggest war criminals of all were the NATO political leaders who orchestrated the aerial campaign of death and destruction. As the White House saw it, since the stated aim of the aerial attacks was not to kill civilians; there was no liability, only regrettable mistakes. In other words, only the professed intent of an action counted and not its ineluctable effects. But a perpetrator can be judged guilty of willful murder without explicitly intending the death of a particular victim — as with an unlawful act that the perpetrator knew would likely cause death. As George Kenney, a former State Department official under the Bush Administration, put it: "Dropping cluster bombs on highly populated urban areas doesn't result in accidental fatalities. It is purposeful terror bombing."30 In the first weeks of the NATO occupation of Kosovo, tens of thousands of Serbs were driven from the province and hundreds were killed by KLA gunmen in what was described in the western press as acts of "revenge" and "retaliation," as if the victims were deserving of such a fate. Also numbering among the victims of "retribution" were the Roma, Gorani, Turks, Montenegrins, and Albanians who had "collaborated" with the Serbs by speaking Serbian, opposing separatism, and otherwise identifying themselves as Yugoslavs. Others continued to be killed or maimed by the mines planted by the KLA and the Serb military, and by the large number of NATO cluster bombs sprinkled over the land.31 It was repeatedly announced in the first days of the NATO occupation that 10,000 Albanians had been killed by the Serbs (down from the 100,000 and even 500,000 Albanian men supposedly executed during the war). No evidence was ever offered to support the 10,000 figure, nor even to explain how it was so swiftly determined — even before NATO forces had moved into most of Kosovo. Repeatedly unsubstantiated references to "mass graves," each purportedly filled with hundreds or even thousands of Albanian victims also failed to materialize. Through the summer of 1999, the media hype about mass graves devolved into an occasional unspecified reference. The few sites actually unearthed offered up as many as a dozen bodies or sometimes twice that number, but with no certain evidence regarding causes of death or even the nationality of victims. In some cases there was reason to believe the victims were Serbs.32 Lacking evidence of mass graves, by late August 1999 the Los Angeles Times focused on wells "as mass graves in their own right. . . . Serbian forces apparently stuffed...many bodies of ethnic Albanians into wells during their campaign of terror."33 Apparently? The story itself dwelled on only one village in which the body of a 39-year-old male was found in a well, along with three dead cows and a dog. No cause was given for his death and "no other human remains were discovered." The well's owner was not identified. Again when getting down to specifics, the atrocities seem not endemic but sporadic. Ethnic Enmity and U.S. "Diplomacy" Some people argue that nationalism, not class, is the real motor force behind the Yugoslav conflict. This presumes that class and ethnicity are mutually exclusive forces. In fact, ethnic enmity can be enlisted to serve class interests, as the CIA tried to do with indigenous peoples in Indochina and Nicaragua — and more recently in Bosnia.34 When different national groups are living together with some measure of social and material security, they tend to get along. There is intermingling and even intermarriage. But when the economy goes into a tailspin, thanks to sanctions and IMF destabilization, then it becomes easier to induce internecine conflicts and social discombobulation. In order to hasten that process in Yugoslavia, the Western powers provided the most retrograde separatist elements with every advantage in money, organization, propaganda, arms, hired thugs, and the full might of the U.S. national security state at their backs. Once more the Balkans are to be balkanized. NATO's attacks on Yugoslavia have been in violation of its own charter, which says it can take military action only in response to aggression committed against one of its members. Yugoslavia attacked no NATO member. U.S. leaders discarded international law and diplomacy. Traditional diplomacy is a process of negotiating disputes through give and take, proposal and counterproposal, a way of pressing one's interests only so far, arriving eventually at a solution that may leave one side more dissatisfied than the other but not to the point of forcing either party to war. U.S. diplomacy is something else, as evidenced in its dealings with Vietnam, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, and now Yugoslavia. It consists of laying down a set of demands that are treated as nonnegotiable, though called "accords" or "agreements," as in the Dayton Accords or Rambouillet Agreements. The other side's reluctance to surrender completely to every condition is labeled "stonewalling," and is publicly misrepresented as an unwillingness to negotiate in good faith. U.S. leaders, we hear, run out of patience as their "offers" are "snubbed." Ultimatums are issued, then aerial destruction is delivered upon the recalcitrant nation so that it might learn to see things the way Washington does. Milosevic balked because the Rambouillet plan, drawn up by the U.S. State Department, demanded that he hand over a large, rich region of Serbia, that is, Kosovo, to foreign occupation. The plan further stipulated that these foreign troops shall have complete occupational power over all of Yugoslavia, with immunity from arrest and with supremacy over Yugoslav police and authorities. Even more revealing of the U.S. agenda, the Rambouillet plan stated: "The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles." Rational Destruction While professing to having been discomforted by the aerial destruction of Yugoslavia, many liberals and progressives were convinced that "this time" the U.S. national security state was really fighting the good fight. "Yes, the bombings don't work. The bombings are stupid!" they said at the time, "but we have to do something." In fact, the bombings were other than stupid: they were profoundly immoral. And in fact they did work; they destroyed much of what was left of Yugoslavia, turning it into a privatized, deindustrialized, recolonized, beggar-poor country of cheap labor, defenseless against capital penetration, so battered that it will never rise again, so shattered that it will never reunite, not even as a viable bourgeois country. When the productive social capital of any part of the world is obliterated, the potential value of private capital elsewhere is enhanced — especially when the crisis faced today by western capitalism is one of overcapacity. Every agricultural base destroyed by western aerial attacks (as in Iraq) or by NAFTA and GATT (as in Mexico and elsewhere), diminishes the potential competition and increases the market opportunities for multinational corporate agribusiness. To destroy publicly-run Yugoslav factories that produced auto parts, appliances, or fertilizer — or a publicly financed Sudanese plant that produced pharmaceuticals at prices substantially below their western competitors — is to enhance the investment value of western producers. And every television or radio station closed down by NATO troops or blown up by NATO bombs extends the monopolizing dominance of the western media cartels. The aerial destruction of Yugoslavia's social capital served that purpose. We have yet to understand the full effect of NATO's aggression. Serbia is one of the greatest sources of underground waters in Europe, and the contamination from U.S. depleted uranium and other explosives is being felt in the whole surrounding area all the way to the Black Sea. In Pancevo alone, huge amounts of ammonia were released into the air when NATO bombed the fertilizer factory. In that same city, a petrochemical plant was bombed seven times. After 20,000 tons of crude oil were burnt up in only one bombardment of an oil refinery, a massive cloud of smoke hung in the air for ten days. Some 1,400 tons of ethylene dichloride spilled into the Danube, the source of drinking water for ten million people. Meanwhile, concentrations of vinyl chloride were released into the atmosphere at more than 10,000 times the permitted level. In some areas, people have broken out in red blotches and blisters, and health officials predict sharp increases in cancer rates in the years ahead.35 National parks and reservations that make Yugoslavia among thirteen of the world's richest bio-diversity countries were bombed. The depleted uranium missiles that NATO used through many parts of the country have a half-life of 4.5 billion years.36 It is the same depleted uranium that now delivers cancer, birth defects, and premature death upon the people of Iraq. In Novi Sad, I was told that crops were dying because of the contamination. And power transformers could not be repaired because U.N. sanctions prohibited the importation of replacement parts. The people I spoke to were facing famine and cold in the winter ahead. With words that might make us question his humanity, the NATO commander, U.S. General Wesley Clark boasted that the aim of the air war was to "demolish, destroy, devastate, degrade, and ultimately eliminate the essential infrastructure" of Yugoslavia. Even if Serbian atrocities had been committed, and I have no doubt that some were, where is the sense of proportionality? Paramilitary killings in Kosovo (which occurred mostly after the aerial war began) are no justification for bombing fifteen cities in hundreds of around-the-clock raids for over two months, spewing hundreds of thousands of tons of highly toxic and carcinogenic chemicals into the water, air, and soil, killing thousands of Serbs, Albanians, Roma, Turks, and others, and destroying bridges, residential areas, and over two hundred hospitals, clinics, schools, and churches, along with the productive capital of an entire nation. A report released in London in August 1999 by the Economist Intelligence Unit concluded that the enormous damage NATO's aerial war inflicted on Yugoslavia's infrastructure will cause the economy to shrink dramatically in the next few years.37 Gross domestic product will drop by 40 percent this year and remain at levels far below those of a decade ago. Yugoslavia, the report predicted, will become the poorest country in Europe. Mission accomplished. Postscript In mid-September 1999, the investigative journalist Diana Johnstone emailed associates in the U.S. that former U.S. ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, who had backed Tudjman's "operation storm" that drove 200,000 Serbians (mostly farming families) out of the Krajina region of Croatia four years ago, was recently in Montenegro, chiding Serbian opposition politicians for their reluctance to plunge Yugoslavia into civil war. Such a war would be brief, he assured them, and would "solve all your problems." Another strategy under consideration by U.S. leaders, heard recently in Yugoslavia, is to turn over the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina to Hungary. Vojvodina has some twenty-six nationalities including several hundred thousand persons of Hungarian descent who, on the whole show no signs of wanting to secede, and who certainly are better treated than the larger Hungarian minorities in Rumania and Slovakia. Still, a recent $100 million appropriation from the U.S. Congress fuels separatist activity in what remains of Yugoslavia — at least until Serbia gets a government sufficiently pleasing to the free-market globalists in the West. Johnstone concludes: "With their electric power stations ruined and factories destroyed by NATO bombing, isolated, sanctioned and treated as pariahs by the West, Serbs have the choice between freezing honorably in a homeland plunged into destitution, or following the 'friendly advice' of the same people who have methodically destroyed their country. As the choice is unlikely to be unanimous one way or the other, civil war and further destruction of the country are probable." Michael Parenti is the author of To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia, Contrary Notions, Against Empire, and The Assassination of Julius Caesar. NOTES:
Copyright © 1992 - 2008 Michael Parenti. All rights reserved.


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Regular HVAC maintenance crucial to system performance
Dear Angie: You talk a lot about the importance of taking care of your heating and cooling system and I've seen you quoted as saying that your system loses some of its efficiency each year when you skip servicing it.
My question is, if you have neglected your system for a few years, are you able to regain that lost efficiency by getting back on a regular service schedule or is that efficiency lost forever?
– J.B., Fishers, Ind.
Dear J.B.: There are a number of variables that would determine whether or not your system would return to its original stated efficiency.
There is always going to be wear and corrosion just from the age and use of the equipment, but if there's no major damage caused by neglect, then a good, thorough inspection and cleaning can help restore a system to its original efficiency.
I always recommend homeowners get on an annual maintenance program with a trusted heating and cooling company. A typical maintenance service will include the technician pulling and cleaning the burner and pilot assemblies, checking the gas pressure, and inspecting the strength of the igniters, motors and other components to tell you if your system is operating within designed specifications or if it is starting to fail.
However, if you've neglected your system for some years, you might need more than just routine maintenance. Stress is put on equipment that is not properly maintained. The blower motor works harder and a dirty blower motor will move less air through the house via the ductwork. This alone can take an hour or more to clean and is usually not part of a regular cleaning.
Also, heat exchangers can crack, evaporator coils can malfunction, and dirt can build up on the interior of your furnace and in all of your ductwork. Cleaning the ductwork and furnace can help, but stress on metal and the motor is not reversible.
Of course, a big factor in how well your equipment works is how frequently you've changed your filters. Not replacing filters regularly – or using poor quality filters – can cause permanent damage to your equipment.
How do you know if your air filter is of good enough quality? If you hold it up and can see your fingers through the other side, then it is probably not sufficient enough to protect your system. If filters have been ignored, then it could take several hours of cleaning the furnace, blower and evaporator coil to return the system to its peak operating efficiency.
Ultimately, getting on a routine maintenance program with a reputable company will give you peace of mind that your system will work its best when you need it. I recommend you have a professional evaluation of your equipment. The technician will factor in its age, condition and efficiency to determine if a thorough cleaning will suffice, or if you're better off replacing the system with a more efficient new unit.
Whether you need a new system or if your current system is still in good shape, get on a maintenance plan now, change your filters regularly and your system should provide you with years of efficiency and comfort.
Angie Hicks is the founder of Angie's List, a provider of reviews you can trust on contractors, doctors, dentists and other service professionals. More than 1 million consumers across the U.S. use Angie's List to help make tough hiring decisions easier.


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Fischer Amps FA-4E XB
"I'm going to write a new, proper, monster review of these later on. Just HAD to write something now. This is sort of in between my old review and my upcoming one. Useful iem tips; Comply TS400/500, Auvio tips, Meelec Balanced tips. (All of these are better than the stock tips imo.) The bass: Depending on tips, it hits hard, harder or very hard. My preferred tips are Meelec..." --MoonYeol
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IDEM is actively seeking a better understanding of how air toxics affect the health of Hoosiers. Tools such as the ToxWatch Monitoring Network and National Air Toxics Assessment have helped IDEM identify areas that warrant special attention. IDEM has conducted two community-scale air toxics risk assessments and has plans to conduct more in the future: