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Current News
Every switch off a main track in dark territory (non-signalled) is a potential hazard. They can be deadly if that pesky animal, the human, makes any error of omission or commission. Switches at the top of heavy grades can be especially dangerous.
To play devils advocate (or more accurately, a computer engineer who is slowly learning how real railroading gets done) could the two switches for this crossover and the derail be be linked together via levers (or whatever those pipes are called that used to be common at interlockings, etc.)?
Now, if we could just get rid of all our freight and passenger customers, we wouldn't need no stinking switches!
...the prospect of a southbound train waiting on the siding at Alna Center for a northbound to charge past is interesting.


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Regular price
Marshmallow white
Sparkling creamy white powder perfect for ombre effect and overlay!~ The powders are choice selected superior cosmetic Homopolymers with added pigments to maximize colour. Our polymers are advanced blended polymers preventing crystallization, combined with low, inner injection BPO preventing yellowing. Designed and created for competitors by the top competitor, master teacher & educator, Mr. Max Estrada. These powders will help ensure the perfect finish every time.
All acrylic powder are gross weight.
Maintain Brilliance Benefits:
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Note: The 120 gram acrylic powder size might fluctuate due to the difference in the weight of each acrylic powder. (ie: glitter, coloured, pigmented powder, etc.)


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This particular Rib Cage II was designed with an integrated EMT Cage Mount Road Tool that has all of the roadside necessities required to get you out of a jam on your ride. For the bottle cage itself, you'll find it to be not only a sleek, lightweight water bottle cage, but also fast in the wind and with tremendous holding power for when the roads get rough.
- SWAT™ technology design allows for storage and tool integration.
- Low bottle position improves aerodynamic profile.
- Includes EMT Cage Mount Road Tool with 2, 2.5, 3, 4, 5, 6, and T25 Torx.
- Reinforced composite material improves durability without adding weight.
- Designed with compression for improved bottle hold, while also maintaining easy entry and exit.
- Sleek, minimalist design with razor-sharp graphics.


text:
[meteorite-list] Article - It Came from Outer Space?
From: ken newton <magellon_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Oct 8 23:51:27 2004
Message-ID: <4167603A.9010809_at_earthlink.net>
American Scientist Online
SCIENCE OBSERVER November-December 2004
It Came from Outer Space?
David Schneider
In 1981, I was a beginning graduate student taking a course in field
geology at UC Berkeley. This was only a year after Berkeley physicist
Luis Alvarez, his geologist son Walter and two colleagues published what
was then a startling (and not-much-believed) theory suggesting that the
impact of an asteroid or comet caused, among other things, the
extinction of the dinosaurs. If these Berkeley luminaries could offer up
such patently absurd ideas, the students figured we were entitled to do
the same. So whenever our professor queried us about some puzzling
geologic structure, we had a ready response: "Must have been an
asteroid." Alvarez's theory ultimately triumphed, and appreciation of
the importance of impact events grew enormously within the geological
community. Now earth scientists are far more ready to accept the
validity of extraterrestrial influences. But a recent episode suggests
that the pendulum might have swung too far.
In 2002, Jens Orm?, Angelo P. Rossi and Goro Komatsu, working at the
International Research School of Planetary Sciences in Pescara, Italy,
reported evidence for what they claimed was a relatively recent
meteorite strike: a field of craters located in the Abruzzi Apennines,
roughly 100 kilometers east of Rome. The largest feature of the field is
a 100-meter-diameter circular basin, situated in the Prato del Sirente
plain, close to the town of Secinaro. Associated with the main basin are
17 nearly circular depressions, which presumably formed at the same time
because the extraterrestrial object responsible for them broke up in the
atmosphere just before hitting.
Orm?'s team was unable to locate any definitive markers of an impact,
such as meteoritic material emplaced below a crater or telltale grains
of shocked quartz in the target rock. But these signs could be missing
for good reason: Quartz is almost absent from the limestone-rich
sediments found in the area, and perhaps the group's 4.5-meter-deep
excavation of one of the craters had been too shallow to reach the
meteorite they believed to be buried below. Orm? and his colleagues did
find one line of evidence that they found very compelling?curious
magnetic anomalies associated with many of the smaller craters, which
they interpreted to mean that remnants of meteorites (which are quite
often highly magnetic) were indeed buried there.
In 2003, Orm? and his two coworkers, joined by Roberto Santilli, used
radiocarbon dating to argue that the meteorite that formed this crater
field might have done more than just that, publishing their ideas in the
journal Antiquity. Their finding that the impact took place in the 4th
or 5th century A.D. fit well with a locally preserved legend that
describes people seeing a star falling to earth, an event that was
seemingly important to their conversion from paganism to Christianity.
These authors also proposed ties with the conversion of Emperor
Constantine himself, which took place at very roughly the same time and
place and was said to have been preceded by notable celestial phenomena.
Not surprisingly, this intriguing story garnered the attention of the
popular press. For example, last year New Scientist published a piece
entitled "Crater find backs falling star legend." It seems the glib
answer I gave to my geology professor a quarter-century ago had become
My graduate student career was not long enough to see this shift in the
attitude of the scientific community through, but it was long enough to
introduce me to Pierre Rochette, a French rock magnetist who later
became a close friend. So I was quite interested to learn that earlier
this year he and two Italian colleagues, Fabio Speranza and Leonardo
Sagnotti, published a challenge to the notion that the circular
depressions on the Sirente plain are impact craters at all, much less
ones that have anything to do with Constantine's conversion to
Christianity. (I should note that, having personal connections with one
of the players in this debate, I harbored some bias toward his position
from the outset.)
Rochette, who normally works out of the University of Aix-Marseille,
became interested in the topic while on a sabbatical at the Istituto
Nazionale di Geofisica e Volcanologia in Rome, where he discovered that
one of his new colleagues was very skeptical of the crater theory.
Speranza, a structural geologist, explains the source of his initial
doubt: "I have a house about 10 kilometers away. I've known this place
since I was a child," adding, "I knew that the landscape of Abruzzi was
full of similar shapes." Could they all be impact craters? Surely not,
he thought.
Speranza points out another difficulty with the impact-origins theory.
Large blocks of limestone sit within the boundaries of the Sirente
"crater." Such limestone would not have survived an impact. So if Orm?'s
theory is correct, one must surmise that somebody set these giant chunks
of rock in place since the crater formed. To Speranza, that just didn't
make sense. Speranza and colleagues further argue that Orm?'s
radiocarbon dating gave one age for the main feature (placing it in the
4th or 5th century a.d.) and a completely different age for a nearby
"crater" called C9, a date in the 3rd millennium B.C.
Indeed, to Speranza, the only suggestive evidence for an impact origin
seemed to be the magnetic anomalies that Orm? and his colleagues had
measured over some of the smaller depressions. But according to
Rochette, even those anomalies are easy enough to understand. One needs
simply to realize that these pockets are "dolines," places where the
limestone has dissolved and the hole has filled in with sediments that
are slightly more magnetic. Careful measurements of the magnetic
properties of these materials showed that this mechanism is sufficient
to account for the magnetic anomalies.
If not an impact crater, what is the large circular depression found in
the Sirente plain? Speranza, Sagnotti and Rochette give a plausible
answer: It is a reservoir made by human hands for the purpose of
watering herds of sheep. They describe how this area of Italy was one of
the main wool-producing regions of Europe between the 12th and 16th
centuries, although locals have been involved in the activity since
before Roman times. The great permeability of the underlying rock,
however, does not allow rivers or even large springs to form, which
creates a problem for shepherds trying to maintain millions of sheep
there through the summer. The logical answer to this problem, they
posit, was to dig reservoirs at the low points of these plains, where
water tends to accumulate.
Orm?, Rossi and Komatsu have refused to be questioned about this recent
challenge to their theory. In a written reply to my request for an
interview, Orm? states: "It is not possible for us to comment in [the]
media on the work done by other scientists and on our own unpublished
results." Fair enough. Curiously, the short written remarks these
authors shared with me appear far more tentative than the statements
given in their published papers. They say: "As long as the structure is
not a proven impact crater field, it is impossible to draw any
conclusions about historical consequences." This tone is in stark
contrast to almost the entire body of their Antiquity paper, which is
all about linking the structures seen in the Sirente plain with
historical events.
Speranza notes that officials in the nearby town of Secarino are now in
a bit of a quandary. After Orm?'s papers were published, they began
promoting the site as a crater park, hoping to make it a local tourist
attraction. In August of last year they held a meeting on the "crater,"
which brought together many of the local dignitaries. But now that a
significant scientific challenge has been published, it is hard to see
how officials of the community of Secarino can in good conscience go
ahead with those plans. After all, what tourist would want to visit a
"Crater or Just-Plain-Watering-Hole Park"??David Schneider
Received on Fri 08 Oct 2004 11:51:22 PM PDT
Yahoo MyWeb


text:
astroengine writes: "A weird type of 'hybrid' star has been discovered nearly 40 years since it was first theorized — but until now has been curiously difficult to find. In 1975, renowned astrophysicists Kip Thorne, of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif., and Anna Zytkow, of the University of Cambridge, UK, assembled a theory on how a large dying star could swallow its neutron star binary partner, thus becoming a very rare type of stellar hybrid, nicknamed a Thorne-Zytkow object (or TZO). The neutron star — a dense husk of degenerate matter that was once a massive star long since gone supernova — would spiral into the red supergiant's core, interrupting normal fusion processes. According to the Thorne-Zytkow theory, after the two objects have merged, an excess of the elements rubidium, lithium and molybdenum will be generated by the hybrid. So astronomers have been on the lookout for stars in our galaxy, which is thought to contain only a few dozen of these objects at any one time, with this specific chemical signature in their atmospheres. Now, according to Emily Levesque of the University of Colorado Boulder and her team, a bona fide TZO has been discovered and their findings have been accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
See more here:
Star Within a Star: Thorne-Zytkow Object Discovered


text:
Easy to Read. Easy to Carry.
With an easy-to-read typeface and a slim size, the NIV Thinline Bible, Large Print, invites you to deeply explore God's Word anywhere and at any time. Expertly designed for the New International Version (NIV) text, Zondervan's exclusive Comfort Print(R) typeface delivers a smooth reading experience that complements the most widely read contemporary-English Bible translation. Measuring less than an inch thick, it is the perfect on-the-go Bible to take to church, your Bible study group, work, or travel.


text:
SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio Spurs guard Manu Ginobili is expected to miss 10-14 days with a left hamstring strain.
The Spurs say Ginobili had an MRI on Monday after getting hurt in the second quarter of Sunday night's game against Minnesota.
Ginobili didn't play after halftime against the Timberwolves after scoring 12 points. He also had five assists in his 12 minutes. San Antonio won 106-88 for its 12th consecutive home victory.
The 35-year-old Ginobili has already dealt with back spasms, a left quadriceps bruise and a thigh bruise this season, his 11th in the NBA. In 36 games, he is averaging 12.9 points and 4.6 assists per game.


text:
Generate a Solar Permit Package for a design using Samil Power SR5KTLA1Sign up Learn More
With SolarDesignTool, you can create a design from scratch and generate a full PV permit package in as little as 15 minutes.
This page contains information about the Samil Power SR5KTLA1 inverter. To compare this to other PV inverters, click here.
DC Electrical Properties
- Maximum Input Current 26A
- Start Voltage 100V
- Max DC Input Voltage 550V
- Peak Power Tracking Voltage 200V - 500V
- Number of MPPTs 1
- Operating Voltage Range 70V - 550V
- Polarity of Ground Floating
- DC Disconnect No
- DC Terminal Quantity 2
- Includes Fuses for String Inputs No
- Max Rating for String Fuses 40A
- Rating of Included String Fuses not applicable
- DC Input Wire Gauge Range data not available
- Integrated DC Arc Fault Protection No
AC Electrical Properties
- Rated Power Output 4600W
- Compatible Utility Voltages 240V
- Peak Efficiency 97.6%
- Weighted Efficiency 96.8%
- Maximum Output Current 24A
- Max OCPD rating data not available
- AC Disconnect No
- AC Input Wire Gauge Range data not available
- Sleep Consumption 0W
- Maximum DC-AC Ratio data not available
- Standby Consumption 0W
Mechanical Characteristics
- Height 17in (433mm)
- Width 13in (329mm)
- Depth 7.1in (180mm)
- Weight 42.8lb (19.4kg)
- NEMA Enclosure Rating NEMA 3R
- Cooling Method Forced Air
Environmental Constraints
- Ambient Temperature Range -4°F - 140°F (-20°C - 60°C)
Warranties and Compliances
- Compliances data not available
- CSI Listed No
This web page is not the manufacturer's official data sheet and is not endorsed by the manufacturer in any way. For an official data sheet, please go to Samil Power's website.


text:
$3 Million in Trail Grants Awarded Across Texas
May 24, 2012
Tom Harvey, TPWD News, (512) 389-4453 or email@example.com; Andy Goldbloom, TPWD Trails Grants Contact, (512) 389-8128, or firstname.lastname@example.com
Note: This item is more than 11 years old. Please take the publication date into consideration for any date references.
AUSTIN — The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission today approved $3,014,992 million in federal funding for 26 National Recreational Trail Grant projects in communities across the state. The total includes $485,000 in re-allocated trail funds for trail improvements in seven state parks.
The seven state parks to receive trails funding are Bastrop, Brazos Bend, Cooper Lake, Eisenhower, Government Canyon, Lake Brownwood and Martin Dies Jr. The money will go toward renovating existing trails, making trails more accessible, and helping with layout, design and other improvements.
All told this year, TPWD received 82 project proposals requesting trail grant funding totaling $11.5 million—both figures are records, the most ever received. The 10-member Texas Statewide Trails Advisory Board reviewed the proposals and developed a list of recommended projects for funding based on the quality of the project, its cost effectiveness, its impact on recreational trail opportunities and geographic distribution of funds.
The National Recreational Trails Fund comes from a portion of the federal gas tax generated by the sale of gasoline for use in off-road recreational vehicles such as dirt bikes and All-Terrain Vehicles (ATVs). Money from the trail fund goes toward the creation and maintenance of motorized and non-motorized recreational trails.
The Federal Highway Administration manages the fund and distributes portions of it to states based on a formula that takes into account the state's population and fuel sales for off-road vehicles. Nationwide, the program was appropriated $95 million for the current fiscal year. However, funding for the program is included in the Transportation Funding Bill which Congress has funded through June 30, making only 75 percent of the annual apportionment available to states at present.
The program provides 80-20 matching grants, so that in each case the grant recipient must pay for 20 percent of the total project cost. Dollar amounts shown below are 80 percent of the project cost.
List of sponsors awarded funds for trail projects, by county:
- Angelina County — Cassels-Boykin Trails, $73,336, new 7 mile hike/bike trail, bridges, benches, signs
- Bastrop County — City of Elgin, Shenandoah Trail, $77,395, new 0.6 mile granite trail
- Bexar County — San Antonio River Authority, Helton — San Antonio River Park Trail, $150,000, new 1.1 mile granite/concrete trail
- Bexar County — Friends of Friedrich Wilderness Park, Friedrich Wilderness Park Trail, $76,700, new 4.7 mile natural surfaced nature trail, signs
- Bexar County — City of Converse, North Park Walking Trail, $55,142, new 1.2 mile asphalt trail, benches, signs, drinking fountains
- Brazos County — City of College Station, Iron Bridge Trail, $76,020, renovate 0.6 mile granite trail, benches, signs
- Cameron County — City of Brownsville, Belden Trail, $151,274, new 1.0 mile asphalt trail, benches, bollards
- Childress County — City of Childress, ATV & Moto Park Improvements, $180,024, motorized trail park improvements, fencing, tools, erosion control
- Coke County Economic Development Group, Coke County OHV Park, $50,000, new motorized trail park, restroom, utilities, parking, fencing
- Collin County — Trinity Trail Preservation Association, Trinity Trail Erosion Control Project, $27,960, renovation/erosion control along 25 mile equestrian trail
- Crosby County — White River Municipal Water District, ATV Trails, $141,200, new ATV motorized park, parking lot, fencing, signs, pavilion, tables
- Culberson County — Town of Van Horn, Van Horn Recreational Trails, $150,000, new 4 mile motorized trail, tools/equipment, storage shed, signs
- Fort Bend County — City of Richmond, Richmond Trail, $109,280, new 0.9 mile granite/concrete trail, bridge
- Harris County — City of Baytown, Nature Center Trails, Phase II, $73,350, new 1 mile granite trail, benches, signs, fencing, boardwalk
- Hays County — City of Dripping Springs, Harrison Ranch Park Equine Trail, $100,000, new 1.8 mile natural surface trail, parking area, signs
- Hopkins County — City of Sulphur Springs, Buford Park Trail, $63,960, new 0.5 mile concrete trail, benches, signs, bollards
- Jefferson County — City of Beaumont, Klein Park Walking Trail Improvements, $75,000, resurface 0.7 mile trail, ADA imp., benches, signs, drainage
- Lamar County — City of Blossom, Blossom Recreational Rail Trail, $100,003, new 1.5 mile asphalt trail, bridge railing, vehicle controls
- McLennan County — Texas Equestrian Trailriders Association, Waco Lake Reynolds Creek Trailhead, $41,976, restroom, shade, storage shed, tools hitching posts
- Montgomery County — Sam Houston Trails Coalition, Inc., Richards-Raven Trail Network, $150,000, new 20 mile motorized trail, bridges, trailhead, signs, NEPA
- Montgomery County — Greater Houston Offroad Mt. Bike Association, Spring Creek Greenway Flintridge Trail, $100,000, new 5 mile renovate 6 mile natural surface trail, bridges, signs
- Red River County — City of Clarksville, Gate to Texas Trail, $128,000, new 2.0 mile crushed aggregate trail, bridge decking/railing, signs
- Tarrant County — Fort Worth Mountain Bikers Association, Gateway Park Mountain Bike Trail, $14,372, new 0.5 mile natural surface trail, signs, tools
- Val Verde County — City of Del Rio, San Felipe Creek Trail Improvement, $149,000, new 0.2, renovate 0.2 mile concrete trail, signs
- Walker County — Sam Houston National Forest, Multiple-Use Trail Rehab. Phase IV, $200,000, renovate 20 mile motorized trail, erosion control, bridge, signs, equipment
- Wood County — City of Mineola, Mineola Nature Preserve on the Sabine, $16,000, new 1 mile natural/crushed aggregate trail, signs


text:
November 1st for New York, December 1st for Los Angeles and San Francisco in "late December." That's the promise from Clearwire, Comcast and Sprint in regards to the big switching-on of their 4G WiMax services—Clearwire in the case of CLEAR, Comcast with XFINITY Internet 2go, and Sprint for Sprint 4G. [Clearwire]
Meet Microsoft's New Surface Laptops


text:
Michigan State Falls To Kansas 90-70
TULSA, Okla. (AP) - Everything about Josh Jackson's demeanor screamed this game was personal, from the back-and-forth chirping with childhood friend Miles Bridges to his emphatic late-game dunk and celebration.
Playing against the school he grew up cheering for, Jackson channeled that emotion into a dominating performance to help top-seeded Kansas advance to the Sweet 16 for a second straight year with a 90-70 victory over Michigan State on Sunday.
The standout freshman scored 14 of his 23 points in the second half, finishing 9 of 16 from the field and ousting a Spartans team from the NCAA Tournament that he very nearly joined before signing with the Jayhawks.
"I knew it was going to be a fun game before it even started," Jackson said. "So, it was just really fun to be able to go out there and play against those guys and I'm really proud to see them here and having success."
Frank Mason III added 20 points for the top-seeded Jayhawks, who have advanced to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament in nine of coach Bill Self's 14 seasons.
But it was Jackson who shook off misses on his first three shot attempts - including an embarrassing failed dunk attempt - who shined the most in his second straight dominating performance in the tournament.
And he did so while matched up for much of the game against Bridges, his former elementary school friend in Michigan.
"It's always good when going against Josh," Bridges said. "It gets a little physical at times. We compete every time we play against each other. He's a great player, so it's always good playing against him."
Bridges finished with 22 points to lead Michigan State, doing so despite leaving the game briefly in the first half with a hip pointer before returning.
Nick Ward also finished in double figures with 13 points and Joshua Langford had 10 for the Spartans, who saw their lower-seeded NCAA Tournament magic fail against the high-powered Jayhawks who shot 53.1 percent (34 of 64) in the win.
"Josh is a hell of a player," Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. "... We wanted to beat his brains in today. I'm sure the feeling was mutual. But there's respect, and respect means there will be a friendship when it's over."
Michigan State entered Sunday following a dominating win over Miami in the opening round, a victory that improved the school to 14-10 as a lower seed in the NCAA Tournament under Izzo - the most wins by a lower-seeded school in tournament history.
The Spartans certainly played like anything but an underdog well into the second half against the regular-season Big 12 Conference champions, closing Kansas' lead to 54-53 following a basket by Alvin Ellis.
Jackson took over from there, scoring eight of the next 10 points for the Jayhawks as they pushed their lead back to 64-57. He put the exclamation point on his strong second half with a drive down the middle of the lane and powerful one-handed dunk with 2:05 remaining.
"We've got three or four guys that can all do that, you know," Self said. "And Josh deserves a ton of credit. He was great."
Michigan State: The Spartans played this NCAA Tournament with only three players who saw action in last year's opening-round loss to Middle Tennessee State. Despite that lack of experience, their strong showing in Friday's win over Miami and for much of the game against the favored Jayhawks helped ease the frustration of what had been a largely up-and-down season before the tournament.
Kansas: The Jayhawks put any lingering concerns about their Big 12 Conference Tournament loss to TCU to rest with two convincing wins to open the tournament. In particular, Jackson answered questions about any possible distractions following a one-game suspension in the conference tournament with two of his most efficient games of the season.
Devonte' Graham scored 12 of his 18 points in the second half for the Jayhawks, while Landen Lucas finished with 10 points and 11 rebounds. Graham was 7 of 10 from the field, including 4 of 6 on 3-point attempts.
The Jayhawks advance to next week's Sweet 16 to face fourth-seeded Purdue in Kansas City.


text: You are viewing the Black Star wallpaper titled Black Star Chains and Stars. This Soul Eater anime wallpaper has been viewed 10882 times. If Black Star is your favorite anime character, check out more Black Star wallpapers. To view your Black Star wallpaper as a full sized image, click on the screen resolution you want. Then just right click the full sized image and "Set as Desktop Background".


text:
Age 28 from Washington, DC
Age 28 from Washington , DC
About AILEEN :
"I'm naughty and I don't care. I have a fetish and I need it to be a big part of my life. Maybe you can figure out what it is from my picture. Let's just say I have a different vibrator for every hot doctor in my hospital "
Here are some do's and don'ts to help you make sure you're having a good time, staying safe and being a good fuck buddy:
DON'T: Don't text her at all hours of the evening. Just because she is having casual sex with you doesn't mean you should be bugging her all the time. She might be married...
DO: Always use a condom and make sure to get tested for STD's regularly. Also, look out for cold sores and don't have casual sex with women who look like they may have had a lot of unprotected sex.
DON'T: Don't stay too long. You're there for casual sex and not a relationship. Remember, she might have just fucked you, but her husband or boyfriend could be coming home any minute.
DON'T: Don't cuddle after sex. Remember you are trying to keep this a no string attached night. You're there for sex, and once you are done you should not be giving her the wrong impression.
DO: Keep repeating to yourself before, during and after sex, that this is just about sex and not love. That good feeling you are getting while she is riding you or giving you a blowjob is not love...
DO: Experiment and keep things wild. You're not there to make love, you're there for crazy sex, so make it crazy. Ask her if you can tie her to the bed, or ask her if you can cum on her face. Chances are she is meeting you for local casual sex because she wants to try new things too!
DON'T: Don't be mean to your casual sex partner. Remember, this could be the first time she has ever had sex with a random local stranger too. She could be nervous, and you probably are too. The goal is to have fun and have sex and to go home laid, not to go home angry.


text: 2010 Leadville 100 Trail Race ReportBy Barefoot Ted McDonald Feeling great after 100 miles in the Rockies.My fourth summer in a row visit to Leadville, Colorado and my third completion of the Leadville 100 Mile Trail Race...what an experience. Deep gratitude for good friends and a strong body. Finished! This year's race was to be my second attempt at running the entire course barefoot and with my own Luna Sandals. Two years ago, I started with sandals, but had to change into VFFs KSOs at the top of Hope Pass in order to complete the race due to horrible weather conditions. This year I was able to run the entire race with my sandals (see www.LunaSandals.com) and in bare feet...a pure joy fest. At the finish line carpet, McDougall at my side.I spent the week before the race acclimatizing in Leadville staying at the Labbe Family Compound behind the famous Tabor Opera House. The week leading up to the race included lots of great reunions with old friends along with a couple high mountain hikes. I have thankfully not suffered from any serious altitude problems while participating in the race...which I believe is connected to my practice of deep nose breathing throughout the week and throughout the run.Pacers Jules and Bookis Smuin and me Post Race in Proven GroundsThis year, Mas Loco veteran Chris Labbe, aka Cabro, came up with a terrific strategy. Both he and I had not really been training hard in preparation for the race. In his case, he just didn't have time. In my case, I have been purposely finding out what the lowest amount of training is necessary to complete the race well. For me, that meant averaging less that 15 miles per week throughout the year, completing a marathon in May, a 50K in June and a 50 miler in July,...and concentrating on running gracefully and joyfully everyday. Matt Mahoney and me pre race.So Cabro's plan seemed genius: we would run to Winfield (the 50 mile point) in 12 hours and 30 minutes and come back in the same amount of time...thus getting in at or under 25 hours...and getting the big belt buckle prize. Sounded good to me. The key to this strategy was going be avoiding trying to go too fast...as a matter of fact, we were going to have to go slow...slower than our bodies craved when fresh, slower than most everyone else on the course. No easy feat. However, I bought in to his plan, mostly because it meant I could take it easy and just enjoy the run through the wilderness...barefoot and in my sandals...and focus on staying focused and smooth and graceful and happy. I think I succeeded. Me and Cabro entering Mayqueen outbound - Photo Matt Mahoney All was going according to plan until we started climbing outbound Hope Pass. Cabro just could not keep his speed down. Up he went, passing one runner after another...even though we had already tested the idea of keeping the intensity down on this climb. I tried to stick to the plan, but was sad to see him go, for I was relying on his knowledge of the course and the splits we needed to maintain in order to get under 25. On my way outbound to Hagerman Pass - Photo Matt MahoneyBy the time I got over to Winfield, I was pretty tired. It's amazing how much energy one must have in order to run 50 miles and still have enough energy to run 50 more. Once into Winfield, I met up with my first pacer, Dennis Shaver, and was given some homemade burritos (thanks Joey!) that really tasted great after having basically been living off of gels for the last 12 hours. Dennis' job was to get me up and over Hope Pass a second time...not easy even with fresh legs, but we did it and found ourselves in Twin Lakes for the second time...and me really starting to feel good. Matt Mahoney captured this shot of me on my way towards the Hope climb In Twin Lakes I picked up my second pacer, Luna Sandal wearing Jules Smuin. Jules was in for a treat. As we left Twin Lakes and started our 9 mile journey to Half Moon, I started to feel stronger and stronger. About half way to Half Moon, I started passing runners and would continue to do so for most of the rest of the race. Note: it is a delight to be strong during the last half of a 100 mile race. While others have spent the day running in the heat to gain position, I was able to preserve myself. Running at night is easier, primarily because it is cooler. And with headlights to chase in the distance, one has something to follow and aim for...persistence hunting ones way to the finish. Crossing river out of Twin Lakes - Photo Matt MahoneyAt the Fish Hatchery I picked up my third pacer, Bookis Smuin sporting sandals too. He paced me up and over Powerline and down to Mayqueen. We were amazed at the power of my newest light, a Fenix PD30 - the brightest light you could ever hope for, small, lightweight, a dream...making it possible for me to run sections of the trail that proved impossible last year without good light. Tracy Thomas and me, day before race. Upon arriving in Mayqueen inbound, I picked up my final pacer, Born to Run author Christopher McDougall and he too was wearing sandals. Now, I truly did have a lot of juice left in me, but I was not about to just run without talking to Mr. Oso. We turned the last 3 1/2 hours into a time for catching up...hearing about all the exciting things happening including a possible film adaptation of BTR. Very cool stuff. We finally arrived at the finish line at 7:16am...27 hours after I had left. Me feeling great. Feet feeling great. It is great to be alive. BFT Sponsors: I want to thank the following folks for providing materials necessary for the success of my run: Chocolate #9 of Seattle, ProBar of Utah, Amanda McIntosh and Hammer Gels, Extreme Outfitters of North Carolina and Vibram USA and of course the Luna Sandal Company of Seattle PS. My recovery seems complete less than 4 days after the race. I am stunned and amazed by the body and its capacities...if treated well. Moral of the story: treat it well.


text:
In Search of Performance in Haskell
I was doing ITA Software's "Word Numbers" problem. Now there are various solutions on the Web. Reviewing those solutions tell us it's a graph/grammar problem. Today we're going to solve it brute-force.
Now let me give a quick recap of the problem:
A "word number" is defined as
wordNumber 1 = "one" wordNumber 2 = "onetwo" wordNumber 3 = "onetwothree" ... wordNumber 12 = "onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineteneleventwelve" ...
Find the 51-billion-th letter of the wordNumber Infinity. Assume that letter is found for wordNumber x, also find the sum of 1 to x
(As someone noted in the StackOverflow comments, I actually misinterpreted the original problem. But that doesn't affect our purpose here.)
A naive algorithm in C++
The idea seems simple: 2 counters, one for sum of numbers and one for length. We go from wordNumber 1 until the length meets 51000000000. Here is how I said it in C++:
OK, nothing surprising. It takes 45 seconds on my machine to execute (g++ -O3). We will use this as a baseline.
First attempt in Haskell
OK, I lied. It was not my first attempt. My initial version had space leaks which led to the program eating up 1GB RAM in several seconds. Using profiling techniques from Real World Haskell, I identified the space leaks and sprinkled Bang patterns everywhere.
So how well does that run?
Well, I don't know.
As far as I remember, one version finished in 12 minutes, but I am not sure it is the version posted here. In short, the performance was not bearable.
Now if we were using Perl or Ruby, that might not have been too surprising. But for Haskell this seems something obvious is missing.
The solution
So there I went, I asked for help on StackOverflow and in Haskell-cafe.
There I got help from Bryan O'Sullivan who posted his version. Reiner Pope said that with
-fllvm, it finishes in about 1.5 minutes. (OK, he did not exactly say that. He said Haskell version is half as fast as C++.)
But it did not work for me
So I downloaded Bryan's code (we'll call it
RealWordNumber.hs from now on, sorry bad pun 🙂 and off I went in excitement:
ghc -O2 RealWordNumber.hs RealWordNumber Sum: 1 Segmentation fault/access violation in generated code
RealWordNumber.hs uses
Int, there is an integer overflow in his code. That's also exactly the reason why I had to use
Int64 in my original version.
(I was using Windows where GHC only has 32-bit)
So I patched his code to use
Int64 and off I went. It never finished, I had to kill it.
The culprit — 64-bit integers are slow in 32-bit programs
OK the major reason turned out to be this. To confirm, I compiled the C++ version to 32-bit using VC++ (cl /Ox WordNumber.cpp). It took 4 minutes to complete.
So I took RealWordNumber.hs to Arch Linux x64. It turned out that Int in GHC x64 is actually
Int64, and the program completed in 5 minutes
(ghc -O2).
Since the LLVM backend for GHC 7.0.3 seemed broken at the time I write this, and I did not want to go fixing it immediately, I trusted that it would really turn to 1.5 minutes if I ran it with
Now the fun part — breaking down performance improvements
"So," I figured, "I just needed to take my original version and put it on Arch x64″. So I tried that, and it was still taking longer than my patience allowed (8+ minutes). The following will explain how I got my version up to the same league with
RealWordNumber.hs, step by step.
First of all, I tuned the number down to 510 million (510000000) to avoid having to wait all day doing this.
Here is a base line using 510 million as an input:
RealWordNumber -- 1.94 seconds K2WordNumber -- 5.41 seconds
From here we see that if I had waited about 15 minutes, I could have seen my original version finish 😛
Now on to how I got it up to speed:
1. Change
divMod to
I think I heard it from #haskell, people say that
quotRem is faster than
divMod. So I simply changed all
divMod to
quotRem. Look at what we've got:
K2WordNumber-1 -- 4.48 seconds
OK, that was true. A surprising huge speed up.
2. Change
Int64 to
Since GHC x64's
Int is actually 64-bit, I changed all
Int64 to
Int and removed the unnecessary
fromIntegral calls.
K2WordNumber-2 -- 3.20 seconds
2 simple changes, we are already getting there 😛
3. Change quotRem to separate quot and rem
quotRem returns a tuple of boxed
Int64, which may need to be constructed and reconstructed. Max Bolingbroke suggested that using
quot and
rem separately might help. Here's the experiment result
K2WordNumber-3 -- 3.13 seconds
It might have been an improvement, but might have just been experimental error. Unfortunately it seems like not much speed up was achieved.
4. Removed redundant parameters
It turned out in my original version, there were several redundant parameters being passed recursively in the function solve (the
acc label, and
curr). I used
ghc -Wall to track them and removed them.
K2WordNumber-4 -- 3.16 seconds
No change. Since GHC figured out enough to warn me, it probably did the right thing and optimized them for me anyway.
5. Simplified parameter passing
The original
solve function looked like this
solve :: Int64 -> (Int64, Int64, Int64) -> [Int64] -> (Int64, Int64, Int64) solve !n !acc@(!sumNum, !sumLen, !curr) (!num:nums) | sumLen' >= n = (sumNum', sumLen, num) | otherwise = solve n (sumNum', sumLen', num) nums where sumNum' = sumNum + num sumLen' = sumLen + wordLength num
To quote Bryan:
You're passing parameters in three different ways: a regular Int, a 3-tuple, and a list! Whoa.
He is right. I also noticed that the n parameter does not change and does not need to be passed on. Johan Tibell blogged that GHC could in theory create this closure for us. But I did it manually to see what happens:
solve :: Int -> (Int, Int, Int) solve n = go 0 0 1 where go !sumNum sumLen i | sumLen' >= n = (sumNum', sumLen, i) | otherwise = go sumNum' sumLen' (i+1) where sumNum' = sumNum + i sumLen' = sumLen + wordLength i
That resulted in
K2WordNumber-5 -- 2.87 seconds
6. Using unboxed integer types
I replaced
quot and
rem with these
(I# a) // (I# b) = I# (a `quotInt#` b) (I# a) % (I# b) = I# (a `remInt#` b)
K2WordNumber-6 — 2.77 seconds
Not as much as I had thought
7. Using
Data.Vector.Unboxed instead of
K2WordNumber-7 -- 2.50 seconds
- Using
Data.Vector.Generic.unsafeIndexinstead of the
K2WordNumber-8 -- 2.20 seconds
Wow, this one was huge.
- Move the length vectors inside
wordLength's closure
wordLength :: Int -> Int wordLength i = go 0 i where go !pad !n | n < 10 = lenOnes `VG.unsafeIndex` n + pad | n < 20 = lenTeens `VG.unsafeIndex` (n-10) + pad | n < 100 = go (lenTens `VG.unsafeIndex` (n//10) + pad) (n%10) | n < 1000 = go (go (7+pad) (n//100)) (n%100) | n < 1000000 = go (go (8+pad) (n//1000)) (n%1000) | otherwise = go (go (7+pad) (n//1000000)) (n%1000000) (I# a) // (I# b) = I# (a `quotInt#` b) (I# a) % (I# b) = I# (a `remInt#` b) lenOnes = VU.fromList [0,3,3,5,4,4,3,5,5,4] -- "", "one","two", ... lenTens = VU.fromList [0,3,6,6,5,5,5,7,6,6] lenTeens = VU.fromList [3,6,6,8,8,7,7,9,8,8] -- first element is "ten" 3
K2WordNumber-9a — 2.20 seconds
No improvement at all… But if I add bangs before the vectors…
!lenOnes = VU.fromList [0,3,3,5,4,4,3,5,5,4] -- "", "one","two", ... !lenTens = VU.fromList [0,3,6,6,5,5,5,7,6,6] !lenTeens = VU.fromList [3,6,6,8,8,7,7,9,8,8] -- first element is "ten" 3
K2WordNumber-9 — 2.00 seconds
WOW!! That was a large speed up. It turns out the reason for the speed up is related to strictness.
wordLength is not strict in all
lenTens and
lenTeens, so they might be garbaged collected (?). Putting bangs on them allow them to stay alive. Since we need to use those arrays very frequently, it was better for them to be around all the time.
Haskell did not allow putting bangs on "global" variables, so I missed it in my original bang sprinkling exercise.
OK, so now we have transformed my original sloppy Haskell program to a "well-performing" Haskell program. Since it performs the same as Bryan O'Sullivan (casually) tuned version, I am going to assume it's probably as fast as it should (before maybe resorting to serious hacks).
And here is the final version of the code:
Moral of the story
- Haskell is a very fast functional language. But for tight areas like this, always consider giving plain old C a try — it may just save you days of profiling.
- 64-bit operations in 32-bit programs are slow (*)
quotRemis faster than
- Earlier I argued in #haskell that "if
Intmatters for your performance, your program is probably written wrong". Well, there are cases where it matters quite a lot. It turns out conversions are quite costly. (Though I still believe people should use
Integerby default)
- Use the wrapper-worker pattern liberally.
- If you recurse, make sure every variable actually changes in each recursion. (For most cases this will benefit. If you only recurse several times maybe the closure's overhead will be larger.)
- Don't use a list or tuple just because infinite lists look smart.
Data.Vectoris a better "general case" container than
Try to reduce the scope of "global" variables. Put them in a closure so you can bang on it.
This may be actually the suckage of Windows' "WOW64″ (32-bit emulation layer). I have not tried to prove this on 32-bit Linux GHC)
Extra: the fastest indexing data structure — functions!?
I heard from #haskell that "pattern matching in Haskell is less than O(n)". When I heard it, I didn't really believe it. I have always thought that N pattern matches means translating into N
if-then-else statements for the general case. He said something related to Church encoding but I did not see how it could be applied in the general case to avoid N
if-then-else statements.
Just for fun, I tried changing the length vectors into functions:
lenOnes 0 = 0 lenOnes 1 = 3 lenOnes 2 = 3 lenOnes 3 = 5 -- ... lenTeens 9 = 8
K2WordNumber-10 — 2.00 seconds
Yes, pattern matching is as fast as unsafeIndex. WOW! wren nt thornton from the comments below give a more thorough explanation on this one. It turns out GHC is really darn smart and can figure out fast code given "primitive" definitions.


text:
Friday, February 12, 2010
The Bay Leaf
The recipe called for a bay leaf.
Problem was I had no idea what a bay leaf looked like. I had never even heard of it before. When I had run my finger down the ingredients so I could start a grocery list, I thought I had read it wrong.
A bay leaf? Surely a leaf didn't belong in a stew...
Because that's what I was wanting to make. A stew for the Crock Pot. It's called Beef Bourguignon. To be honest I don't even know how to pronounce bourguignon (ber-gun-yun?). But the picture that accompanied the recipe looked good. And plus, one of my New Year's resolutions was to cook more. So I broke my rule of not making anything with more than five ingredients and decided to go for this. I WOULD make the stew. Well, beef bour—whatever.
I went to the grocery store in search of the elusive bay leaf. I expected to find it right away. In my mind there would be a tiny stand with the words "Get Yer Bay Leaves!" written in big black letters on a sign above it. But there was no stand.
And there was no bay leaf, apparently.
I searched and searched.
"Bay leaf, bay leaf," I muttered. I probably looked like a crazy person. What's that woman with the unkempt hair whispering about a bay leaf for?
I found some rosemary and thought I was getting close. Rosemary is a spice, yes? And so was a bay leaf. Right? Sort of? I pawed the area and nearly touched a turnip. Yuck. I definitely would never make something with a turnip in it.
"Bay leaf," I said again as though I expected one to morph in front of me.
I went down another aisle. The one with all the jarred spices.
"Bay leaf." I scanned the bottles of stuff that I'd probably never use. I marveled at all the spices. Maybe I should use more spices. I should branch out from the usual salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Sometimes if I'm feeling extra bold I'll go for some Paprika.
"Bay leaf."
"Huh?" An old man who had sidled up beside me was tossing me a perplexed look. Maybe he thought I was calling him a bay leaf. For all he knew, maybe it was the latest insult.
"I'm just looking for the bay leaves," I explained with an isn't-that-hilarious shrug.
He blinked at me as though I were an idiot. "Over there. In the jar. The spices are in alphabetical order you know."
Were they? Oh.
"Thank you," I said and then I spotted them.
The bay leaves.
What do they even smell like? I shook the jar once, twice, and the old man shot me one last bewildered stare before walking off.
I also had to buy Burgundy wine for the stew. Or rather, the beef bourguignon. You know what, I'm just going to call it a stew. The other word is a pain to type out.
The thing is, I don't drink wine. I know, weird. I do like alcoholic fruity drinks though. It took me awhile to find the Burgundy wine because I don't drink the stuff. Oh, I found all the white wine but no Burgundy wine.
I almost gave up on the recipe. It was already starting to give me a headache and I hadn't even started on it yet. But I refused to give up. I eventually found the Burgundy wine (by the Chianti, which made me think of that line in Silence of the Lambs which in turn gave me nightmares…)
Then I woke up this morning all prepared to make the stew. I gathered all my ingredients. The first step was to cook the bacon. I could do that.
"What you want to do first is cook the bacon," I said, flashing a make believe camera a smile. Sometimes I like to pretend that I'm on a cooking show. Which is ironic because I can't cook. I should be on that one show on the Food Network called Worst Cooks in America. I'd say into the camera, "And I didn't even know what a bay leaf was for God's sake!"
I poured the Burgundy wine in—how long does it stay good, by the way? I'd hate to have to throw the rest out. Or maybe I could knock on my neighbor's doors and be all, "Do you like wine? You do? Then here is some leftover Burgundy wine, just for you!"
And are you curious about the bay leaf?
Aren't they cute? These are the right bay leaves, right? I was taken aback when I saw TURKISH bay leaves. I didn't need American ones, did I?
The stew smells good so far. I'll update my Twitter and say how it turned out.
Let us pray that it's edible.
73 comments:
Just don't forget to take the bay leaf out before you serve your stew...hope it tastes good :) thanks for stopping by my blog yesterday :)ReplyDelete
So. Have you been watching Julie and Julia? Lol. Whenever I watched that movie I sooo wanted to try the recipe. Hope it turns out for you. Sounds yummy!ReplyDelete
This is quite a jump for you! Good luck! I have been cooking for years and have not attempted this recipe. I always feel like my results would let Ms. Child down somehow. Weird, I know. And Acting Balanced Mom is right, don't eat the bay leaf.ReplyDelete
Thank you for the tips on taking out the bay leaf. I seriously would have kept the thing in there.ReplyDelete
The stew sounds very interesting! Can't wait to hear how it turns out. :)ReplyDelete
That's exactly why I never try new recipes. I have a Five Ingredient Fix It and Forget It book for crock pots. It's my savior! I highly recommend it.ReplyDelete
Hope your stew came out well! Good luck
I would have skipped it, I never liked bay leafs, and I have a huge pack of them, if only I knew, you needed them.ReplyDelete
Don't forget to take the bay leaf out when you're done :DReplyDelete
I pretend I'm on cooking shows too... I always yell "BAM!" when I add a spice.
Found you through the Wannabe WAHM.ReplyDelete
I didnt know the spices were in alphabetical order for a long time :) lol...
Hope your stew turns out great- not just edible! :)
Good luck! Let me know how it comes out! I've thought about making it before, but it just seems so damn invovled.ReplyDelete
Stepping outside the comfort zone, eh? Next you'll be skydiving!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousFebruary 12, 2010 at 2:56 PM
I LOVE to cook so this was a very funny post for me to read. It's so funny what is enjoyable to one person and not to another. I hope your stew turned out well.ReplyDelete
You crack me up!!! I'm so glad I found your blog!!! Alphabetical order.. who knew?? And, I do cook a lot. I guess I never noticed... Hope it turns out great!ReplyDelete
I don't cook either. I do bake though; and when I bake, I pretend I'm on a cooking show. I usually have the dogs as an "audience" though, not that that makes me look any less crazy.ReplyDelete
Good lord don't eat the bay leaf!!ReplyDelete
I've known about the bay leaf but only recently got up the courage to use them. It feels so fancy! That stew sounds fantastic! Could you point us toward the recipe?ReplyDelete
I'm over joyed at the fact that you used the word "unkeMpt". So many people think it's "unkept". Finally, someone who gets it =)ReplyDelete
I hate when I'm looking for an ingredient that I have no clue what it even is! Hope it turns out yummy!ReplyDelete
Make sure you remove the bay leaf when serving your stew. They aren't for eating. :) Can't wait to hear how it turned out!ReplyDelete
When I was a kid, I totally used to pretend to be on a cooking show all of the time. I would make scrambled eggs for myself in the summer and pretend to do my show to the empty room. Good times.ReplyDelete
I hope it turns out great! Can you post a link to the recipe if it's available? Thanks!ReplyDelete
I was going to say not to eat the bay leaf, but it looks like the other ladies covered that. :) I like them...gives it a bit of a "woodsy" flavor. If you have any major cookbook (Betty Crocker, Better Homes and Gardens, Joy of Cooking,) they all have charts about different spices and herbs and when you use them. Very handy if you start to feel adventurous.ReplyDelete
Awhile back I decided my cooking show would be called "The Inattentive Chef," and it would be full of me saying things like, "Oh wait...did I just dump 1 1/2 of sugar instead of 1/2 cup...okay, let's figure out how to fix it..."
I HATE bay leafs. My mom would make turkey soup every year after Thanksgiving, and would put like 5 in the soup. Blech.ReplyDelete
I can't wait until you write a post about cooking something with saffron in it!ReplyDelete
Ha, I didn't know the spices were in alphabetical order until recently either. I also didn't know bay leaves came in the turkish variety. Mine came in a jar that just said "bay leaves." I really can't figure out what they lend to a recipe because I've made the same recipe with them and then again without them and I couldn't taste a difference! Enjoy your stew, it looked really yummy in Julie & Julia.ReplyDelete
I LOVE the taste of bay leaves, and use them in my chicken noodle soup. I also leave them in - because I've heard a legend that whoever gets one in their bowl will have good luck. :)ReplyDelete
Okay, why is it that when someone wants to be helpful, they also feel the need to make you feel like a twit?ReplyDelete
Alphabetical, my ass.
I hope it is edible! That's definitely an undertaking.
I'll cook, too. I'm making hash browns tonight! From a bag!
I was going to ask if you ate the leaf, but someone answered that! I would forget to take it out and someone would choke on it, etc.ReplyDelete
I remember the first time I made something that called for the bay leaf. I was like what? They want me to put leaves in my soup?!ReplyDelete
Go Amber!You show that recipe who's boss.ReplyDelete
Wow, I am impressed. For someone who doesn't know how to cook that is quite the under taking. I hope that it turns out well.ReplyDelete
when I first read this, I immediately thought of "Julie & Julia". Check the book out--she describes her ordeal in making the same thing (in more detail than the movie).ReplyDelete
That's so funny! Strangely, bay leaves were one of the spices I DID know, and that is only because one day my mom was making a stew, I saw her pulling the leaf out, and I said "Eeeewww! What's that?!" Yeah...didn't touch it then, because I didn't want a stew with foliage, but I do use them now (sometimes)!ReplyDelete
Don't forget to drink the wine straight from the bottle while you are cooking - that's the secret to makign everything (even steak ums) taste great when its all cooked.ReplyDelete
I ate a bay leaf once.. you do wanna take it out, you can choke on the durn thing.
The wine would have been the only ingredient I would have on hand! My mother always put Bay Leaf in spaghetti sauce, so when I started cooking, I did. Except now I buy Prego instead of making my own sauce and all my Bay Leaves look like dead, brown leaves.ReplyDelete
How did it come out? Bay leaves are one of those spices I ONLY see in jarred dry form. Other spices I see fresh, I've seen in garden stores, and some I even grew in my beginner's garden last Summer. By the way, if I had a gardening show it'd be Gardening for city kids who only ever had those little cactuses with the pink bulbous flower thing on top that she bought for a dollar every year when she went on the school trip to the botanical garden. Don't even ask about my sewing show. OH! Here's a cooking question you can answer -- what size Crock Pot should I buy? I want to get my first one.ReplyDelete
Since you've got the bay leaf situation covered, I'll give you a tip on the wine leftovers. You can freeze wine. You can fill ice cube trays and then use the cubes for future recipes calling for wine. Or, you know, suck on them in August.ReplyDelete
yummy!! I love stew. I hope it turns out perfectly and yeah...don't eat the leaf. ;) It's yucky.ReplyDelete
Those bay leaves are cute, but I often wonder if it makes a difference in the recipe if I leave one out. Stew sounds delish!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousFebruary 12, 2010 at 8:09 PM
a friend of mine recently made a beef bourg. recipe that took 17 hours. 17 flipping hours. she said it wasn't even stellar or anything. just, fine.ReplyDelete
i hate recipes that call for red wine because red wine messes me up quick so i never drink it. the husband doesn't drink at all so i'm always 'what do i do with the rest...' and then it's just a waste. *sigh*
Bay leafs make the stew taste so good...just don't eat it.ReplyDelete
I have an award over on my blog for you!
I've been seeing this dish everywhere lately, and imagine I'd bury my face in a big bowl of it, so I want to make it. However, I don't want an entire jar of bay leaves. Wish you could just buy one. Getting rid of the remaining burgundy wine, though, wouldn't likely hold as much difficulty!ReplyDelete
I needed a smile tonight, thank you! My mom, sisters, aunts, and myself are making this for our men on V-Day. I guess we'll compare notes after. My mom would always throw a bay leaf in her soups, stews, and sauces. She told us if we accidently ate one, it would cut our throats and we'd die. She was always like that...telling us not to do things or we'd die. I think she told us that about sex too. Hmmmm...ReplyDelete
Never heard of turkish bay leaves...hope you remembered to take the bay leaf out before cooking!ReplyDelete
Bay leaves are gross, DO NOT ACCIDENTALLY EAT IT! I don't drink wine or cook, so you are like my hero now!ReplyDelete
LOL..glad you were already told to take it OUT before eating. :) Wine...yum.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousFebruary 13, 2010 at 6:30 AM
Mmmm! I bet its SUPER tasty. You'll become the next stew master of the UNIVERSE! *cue dramatic music*ReplyDelete
How funny. I am planning on making the same thing for my Valentine's Day dinner.ReplyDelete
I do, however, love to cook and find it therapeutic. All that measuring and watching the food develop can usually take my mind off whatever is bothering me.
Your bottle of bergundy should last quite a while since it has a screw top. Those pesky corks usually require that you finish the whole bottle at a sitting. Or like another poster said you can freeze them into cubes. You could always look up a recipe for sangria, it's a frutiy drink made with wine and is really quite yummy!
I hope your beef berginyawn turned out well!
I hate buying wine to cook with because I know NOTHING about wine hahaReplyDelete
That little bay leaf puts a lot of flavor in stuff. I always use them in my pot roast and any stews I'm making.ReplyDelete
I'm checking twitter for an update!
Stopping in from SITS, happy Saturday Sharefest. Cooking...not so much here. Your story reminded me of one that I posted for Thanksgiving where I had to go to the store 3 times, yeah 3...to get everything I needed for a pie. ugggh! Have a great day and I hope your "stew" was wonderful.ReplyDelete
Bay Leaves can also be used to keep the weevils out of your grains (flour, rice, cornmeal etc), just stick a leaf in the container. You can also put a leaf in each corner of your cabinet or pantry to keep the ants away!ReplyDelete
freeze the wine. put it in bags (I just use ziplock) of a cup (or so) each and then use it for future recipes. I dont' like wine much either (though I've found a few great whites) and living alone (with a two year old) I wouldn't want to finish a bottle quickly. some people do drink the wine with the food they made but I usually have a tiny bit while cooking and then just freeze the rest.ReplyDelete
I'm starving!!!!!!ReplyDelete
And how do I get all those stumbleupon do hickies on my posts????????
I am no Martha Stewart but you always make me laugh!ReplyDelete
Glad you found the leaves, nothing worse than wanting to try a new recipe and not having a clue what half the ingredients are, lol. Congrats on conquering that stew! :DReplyDelete
Thanks for visiting my blog, Happy SITS Saturday Sharefest!
mmmm Boeuf bourguinon! I know one of the other comments mentioned it, but remember to take the leaf out. It's just for flavor. (like when you make a soup base out of bones) and if you haven't watched it, rent Julie & Julia. Its fabulous and inspirational. Perfect for someone who is journeying into trying out recipes!ReplyDelete
mmm bayleaves! SO tasty! i use them in alot of my recipes i buy them bulk from my bulk whole foods store! Thanks for stopping by my blog Darl and for the comment!ReplyDelete
Sounds awesome.ReplyDelete
we go through bay leaves like salt in this house....I hope you likd teh stew, and freeze the wine you did not use and keep for next time. I have mentioned you on my post this week... alll the best, CoryanneReplyDelete
I remember the first time I cooked with fennel. Had to ask someone at the market what it even looked like in order to find it. Like you, I was in the right area..........but what it looked like? No clue. Once I ate a bay leaf by mistake. Yikes. Good for seasoning, NOT for eating whole. I'm going to go check twitter for an update!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousFebruary 14, 2010 at 1:12 PM
This is hilarious. Your first encounter with a bay leaf. I have a MIL from Aruba and have some Bay leaves from the island. They break your meat down, especially steak or pork. They make it seem like you worked for hours on a meal, spicing and seasoning it. Remove them before serving and it will be a delish dish~!ReplyDelete
I always ignored the bay leaf thing. Hate finding them in dishes....ReplyDelete
Good for you for branching out! I can't wait to hear how it came out-- I'm a real gung-ho cook, try new recipes all the time, but I've never made beef bourgignon! Tell us!ReplyDelete
My husband, the cook of our family, often cooks with bay leaves, and I must admit I'm a little miffed by the whole ordeal! I always get nervous that I'm going to actually ingest one when the meal is served!ReplyDelete
Great story, thanks for sharing!!
You are a hoot! So funny you never heard of a bay leaf. Hope it turned out well!ReplyDelete
Stephanie the-still-waters.blogspot.com
I love to cook and have a fully stocked spice cabinet.ReplyDelete
IF you were Martha Stewart you would pour the left over wine into ice cube trays and then pop them into freezer bags to save for your next foray into Gourmet Cooking.
It keeps for a while... I have that I have been using from over 6 months ago and it's still good.
Hope it turned out well! This is so funny! Glad the hunt for the bay leaf wasn't fruitless.ReplyDelete
If a recipe calls for something and I haven't a clue what it is...I just use rum instead. ;) heheReplyDelete
- AnonymousFebruary 15, 2010 at 11:28 AM
i saw the picture of tommy on fb.ReplyDelete
i literally started laughing.
i couldn't wait to come here to read the story...and i'm just now getting to read it.
btw, this is the same Tina from OD...browneyedmonkey...which is no longer.
just figured i should mention that. ;)
Good luck! yes, i know its Monday and I am just getting around to comment. I can't wait to read how the stew turned out!ReplyDelete
Good lord, you are sooooo funny!!! Nice choice on the wine, too. Never buy the cheap shit for cooking, I say. Oh, wait...ReplyDelete
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.ReplyDelete


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Table of contents
Devil May Cry 4 Refrain Cheats :
Unlockable - History of Devil May
Complete the game on Devil hunter difficulty (may also unlock by beating on Human difficulty).
Unlockable - Gallery
Complete the game on Devil hunter difficulty (may also unlock by beating on Human difficulty).
Unlockable - Bonus Art & Character Art
Complete the game on Devil hunter difficulty (may also unlock by beating on Human difficulty).
Unlockable - Bloody Palace Survival Mode
Complete the game on Devil hunter difficulty (may also unlock by beating on Human difficulty).
Unlockable - Full Ending
There are technically two endings in the game. To see the "extended version" of the ending, you must protect the character Kyrie from being damaged for at least a minute and a half as the credits run. If you manage to do this, the rest of the ending is thereafter revealed. Otherwise, you'll have to beat the last boss once more and try again.
Unlockable - More Difficulty Levels
There are three "elite" difficulty levels that can be unlocked in the game. Once you've unlocked Son of Sparda mode, you can play through it. If you get through it, two more difficulty levels will be unlocked -- Dante Must Die and Heaven or Hell. If you get through either of those subsequent difficulty levels, you will unlock the final difficulty level -- Hell or Hell.
Unlockable - Son of Sparda Difficulty
Complete the game on Devil hunter difficulty.
Secret - Control the Camera During Cutscenes
During any cutscene in the game, the camera can be controlled, giving you alternate views of what you're seeing. To move the camera around, use the right analog stick on your controller. You can zoom in and out by using the right trigger button.
Secret - Dice Game Exploit
Here's a great way to cheat at the boardgame in the Game Room. When you roll the dice, you can actually predict the number you will roll every time. The number showing on the die before it's rolled is the number that will show up if you count properly. So, for instance, if you would like to roll the number three, simply way for the "3" to show up on the top of the dice. Count six rotations before you strike the die, and you will have rolled a "3"! This is great for exploiting the game to win extra orbs.
Secret - Easy Orbs (Mission 3)
Here's a great way to collect a lot of orbs. After you finish the game's third mission, go back through and play it again. From the start, run past the statue into the first hall, where you can kill enemies to collect experience points and orbs. Then, seek out a hallway where a wooden wall stands. Break through the wall, where you can find a crystal. Break the crystal to collect an automatic 1,000 orbs. Then, exit the mission. This is a quick way you can repeat over and over again to collect as many orbs as you'd like (and some experience, too).
Here's another great method to get even more orbs on the third mission. The technique is similar enough in the beginning to the one above -- you'll want to seek out the same wooden wall that can be broken down. Kill the enemies there after breaking down the wall, then backtrack to the red crystal in the area. Hitting it with your sword will give you 850 orbs right off the bat. But if you power up (using Devil Trigger) and attack it, you'll get over 3,000 orbs! This only takes a couple of minutes to accomplish, and like the technique above, can be repeated at will.
Secret - Easy Orbs (Mission 7)
There's another easy way to get a lot of orbs, this time on the game's seventh mission. Better yet, it will only take about twenty seconds to get about 4,000 orbs. At the beginning of the mission, break the egg-like objects to your left. Then, head forward to a tunnel and break more of the same egg-like objects. Turn right at the end of the tunnel, and you'll see a gem. Execute a streak with the Exceed Gauge full, and then immediately use the Devil Trigger and combo it. When the gem finally breaks, you should have around 4,000 orbs. After that, all you have to do is retry the mission and do it over and over again as needed.
Secret - Free Health from Faults
Late in the game, you'll occasionally see fault enemies appear from underneath you--they sort of warp up from the ground and try to ensnare your character. If you manage to kill a fault, you will always be rewarded with a free health orb. If you're low on health, look for faults to kill and get their health.
Secret - Quasi-Secret Launch Jump
Either Nero or Dante can perform a launch jump off of ledges that sends them flying far forward, much further forward than a normal jump. This launch jump can be used to collect secrets and sometimes shortcut secret missions. To perform it, stand facing a nearby ledge that you can jump off of. Perform the Streak or Stinger attack (while locked up, press UP + Attack) and Nero or Dante will dash forward--the ledge cuts off the attack animation and instead launches the character far forward.
Unlockable - Super Nero & Dante Costumes
To unlock the Super Costumes for Nero and Dante, beat the game once through on Dante Must Die difficulty.
Devil May Cry 4 Refrain Cheats:


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Univ. of Wisconsin
J.D. Univ. of Wisconsin Law school
Brian was a geometry teacher through the Teach for America program and started the geometry program at his school
To unlock all 5,300 videos, start your free trial.
Univ. of Wisconsin
J.D. Univ. of Wisconsin Law school
Brian was a geometry teacher through the Teach for America program and started the geometry program at his school
The area of circles is derived by dividing a circle into an infinite number of wedges formed by radii drawn from the center. When these wedges are rearranged, they form a rectangle whose height is the radius of the circle and whose base length is half of the circumference of the circle. The area of circles are also used in sectors, segments and annuluses.
If we want to find the area bound by a circle, well we're going to have to chop this up into pieces of something that we know. And we know the area of a parallelogram is equal to its base times its corresponding height.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to imagine that I can cut this circle up into an infinite number of pieces. But since I can't draw an infinite number of pieces, I'm just going to start by drawing in let's say about 16 different pieces here. So if I could cut out all these pieces and rearrange them, what I would be able to do is I could, let's say we just looked at one of these pieces. So you're going to have the little curvature on the outside form the circle and that both of these are going to be a radius. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to set all of these up in opposing order and if I just continue doing this, I would be able to from a parallelogram where each of these is going to be one of the wedges that I cut out.
So I said that my height here is going to be r and I need to find out what is my corresponding base. Well, if I look at this, this outside is part of my circle and this outside right here is also the other part of the circle. So if the whole circumference is equal to 2 pi r, then one of these bases is going to be half of this. And, if I divide this by 2, then half of my circumference is just pi times r. So this distance right here is pi times my radius. So if I know my height is r, and I know my base is pi times r, then I can say the area is just r times r which is r squared times pi.
So if I could cut this up into a infinite testable amount of small wedges, I could create a rectangle where I know that my height is r and one of my bases is pi times r and these areas would be equal. So I can say that the area of my circle, where I know the radius is pi times the radius squared.


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The Perfect Desktop - Debian Lenny - Page 5
This tutorial exists for these OS versions
- Debian 6 (Squeeze)
- Debian 5 (Lenny)
- Fedora 8
- Debian 4 (Etch)
- Fedora 6
On this page
16 VMware Server
With VMware Server you can let your old Windows desktop (that you previously converted into a VMware virtual machine with VMware Converter, as described in this tutorial: https://www.howtoforge.com/vmware_converter_windows_linux) run under your Debian Lenny desktop. This can be useful if you depend on some applications that exist for Windows only, or if you want to switch to Linux slowly.
To download VMware Server, go to http://www.vmware.com/products/server/ and click on Download:
On the next page, log in with your existing VMware account or create a new one:
Follow the on-screen instructions. At the end, you should receive an email with a link to your download page. On the download page, you should see two license numbers, one for Windows and one for Linux. Write down or save the one for Linux and scroll down.
Then download the VMware Server for Linux TAR image (not the RPM image!) to your desktop (e.g. to /home/falko/Desktop):
Then open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal), become root...
... and run the following command to install some necessary packages:
apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential xinetd gcc-4.1
The Debian Lenny kernel was built using gcc 4.1, however we now have gcc 4.3 installed. The VMware installer will complain about this and fail, unless we make /usr/bin/gcc a symlink to /usr/bin/gcc-4.1:
ln -sf /usr/bin/gcc-4.1 /usr/bin/gcc
Then go to the location where you saved the VMware Server .tar.gz file, e.g. /home/falko/Desktop (replace falko with your own username!):
cd /home/falko/Desktop
Unpack the VMware Server .tar.gz file and run the installer:
tar xvfz VMware-server-*.tar.gz
cd vmware-server-distrib
The installer will ask you a lot of questions. You can always accept the default values simply by hitting <ENTER>.
When the installer asks you
In which directory do you want to keep your virtual machine files?
[/var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines]
you can either accept the default value or specify a location that has enough free space to store your virtual machines.
At the end of the installation, you will be asked to enter a serial number:
Please enter your 20-character serial number.
Type XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX or 'Enter' to cancel:
Fill in your serial number for VMware Server.
After the successful installation, you can delete the VMware Server download file and the installation directory:
cd /home/falko/Desktop
rm -f VMware-server*
rm -fr vmware-server-distrib/
If you have accepted all default values during the installation, root is now the VMware Server login name.
VMware Server 2 does not have a desktop application for managing virtual machines - this is now done through a browser (e.g. Firefox/Iceweasel). You can access the management interface over HTTPS (https://<IP ADDRESS>:8333) or HTTP (http://<IP ADDRESS>:8222); the management interface can be accessed locally and also remotely. If you want to access it from the same machine, type https://127.0.0.1:8333 or http://127.0.0.1:8222 into the browser's address bar.
If you're using Firefox/Iceweasel 3 and use HTTPS, Firefox/Iceweasel will complain about the self-signed certificate, therefore you must tell Firefox/Iceweasel to accept the certificate - to do this, click on the Or you can add an exception... link:
Click on Add Exception...:
The Add Security Exception window opens. In that window, click on the Get Certificate button first and then on the Confirm Security Exception button:
Afterwards, you will see the VMware Server login form. Type in root and the root password:
This is how the VMware Server web interface looks. The structure is similar to the old VMware Server 1 desktop application, so the usage of the web interface is pretty straightforward.
17 Inventory (IV)
We have now all wanted applications installed:
[x] The GIMP
[x] F-Spot
[x] Picasa
[x] Firefox/Iceweasel
[x] Opera
[x] Flash Player
[x] FileZilla
[x] Thunderbird/Icedove
[x] Evolution
[x] aMule
[x] Transmission BitTorrent Client
[x] Azureus/Vuze
[x] Pidgin
[x] Skype
[x] Google Earth
[x] Xchat IRC
[x] OpenOffice Writer
[x] OpenOffice Calc
[x] Adobe Reader
[x] GnuCash
[x] Scribus
Sound & Video:
[x] Amarok
[x] Audacity
[x] Banshee
[x] MPlayer
[x] Rhythmbox Music Player
[x] gtkPod
[x] XMMS
[x] dvd::rip
[x] Kino
[x] Sound Juicer CD Extractor
[x] VLC Media Player
[x] Real Player
[x] Totem
[x] Xine
[x] Brasero
[x] K3B
[x] Multimedia-Codecs
[x] KompoZer
[x] Bluefish
[x] Quanta Plus
[x] VMware Server
[x] TrueType fonts
[x] Java
[x] Read/Write support for NTFS partitions
18 Links
- Debian: http://www.debian.org/


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Studio Fluye.
Paola born 1983 and Berta born 1984.
Design studio founded in 2010, in Valencia (Spain) by design engineers Paola Cerdá and Berta Recatalá who aim to find excellence in all their designs and analyse the necessities of consumers and businesses.
They apply investigative and creative methodologies in the projects' development, paying attention to the emotional aspects in people.
They have developed industrial design projects focused on new, innovative products, packaging and graphic design applied to corporate identity for businesses in multiple sectors.
During their trajectory, they have been awarded the Premio Injuve de Diseño in 2010 for their furnishing project titled Desapercibido (Unnoticed) which was shown at international fairs such as the Salone Satellite in Milan as well as travelling exhibits in Turkey and Egypt. In 2016 they were finalists in the Delta Awards, awarded by the ADI-FAD (Association of Industrial Design for the Promotion of Art and Design) for their lighting project "2Sides" for the company Lluria.
Envolée _ modular hangers
Hooks that hold your belongings until you resume your next flight.
Two different models which adapt to your needs like comfortably hanging jackets and/or various objects on the same hook.
Shaped like flying birds, they are inspiring and decorate houses or workspaces allowing the users' imagination to run freely.


text:
Investors have quite an appetite for Whole Foods.
Shares of the grocery chain surged 8% in after-hours trading Tuesday after the firm posted quarterly earnings that beat expectations and increased its earnings guidance.
Revenue this past quarter increased 13% versus a year prior, while same-store sales increased 6.6%. The company also announced a two-for-one stock split that will increase the total shares of common stock outstanding from roughly 185 million to 370 million.
Whole Foods (WFM) focuses on healthy and upscale products, competing with chains like Trader Joe's and Fairway.
The company has booked sales growth of better than 10% in the past few years, and expects sales to increase 13.6% in the 2013 fiscal year. It currently has 349 locations and is in the process of expanding, with plans to open three more stores this quarter and 12 in the upcoming quarter.
Whole Foods co-founder and co-CEO John Mackey said in a statement that the company believes it will "continue to gain market share as we accelerate our new store openings."
Whole Foods says that over the long term, it sees the possibility of 1,000 stores in the United States, as "consumer demand for natural and organic products continues to increase." The chain said it also sees "great promise" in Canada and the U.K.


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In February, mc79hockey revealed that the Edmonton Oilers were poised to be the worst team since the lockout.
How have the Oilers fared?Last night, mc79hockey tweeted that...
Disastrously. In the competition for the title of "Worst Team of the CBA", they've managed to mathematically eliminate 27 teams from the competition, with 24 games left in the life of this CBA. The Oilers magic number to eliminate the Islanders and Blue Jackets and clinch the title is 42 points – any number of Oilers points dropped and Isles and Jackets points gained adding up to 42 and the Oilers clinch.
Yes, with that, your Edmonton Oilers -- who reached the Stanley Cup Final during this time period -- get the worst record over the "life of the CBA. (Toronto is the only team in this same period never to make the playoffs). The agreement ends in September and apparently talks are set to take place over the summer. There may be a temporary one-or-two year deal at basically the same terms as the current CBA, though that's uncertain.
In the meanwhile, though, the Oilers are tops. Second-worst in that time period? Columbus, who learned everything about management they know from Kevin Lowe.


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Supervising the Construction
Follow our guide for establishing a positive working environment while your house begins to take shape.
During your construction project, you will have to deal with the workmen. Even if you feel comfortable with them—and especially if you don't—it is important that you keep a couple of considerations in mind. I call it the "3 P's":
These men and women are pros in their own worlds. You need them. You wouldn't dream of buying a car and assembling it yourself, would you? In the same way you leave a mechanic to do his or her job, let the carpenters and electricians and plumbers do theirs. Watch if you wish, but don't interfere.
Step back, count to ten, think before you speak. Speak your mind, but with a little perspective. Don't violate chains of command. Yes, you're the boss, but unless you are also acting as your own GC, you are not the only boss.
Be polite and complimentary. Even if you are not totally satisfied with the work, you are better off finding something good to say about part of it (to the fellow or gal wielding the hammer, as well as his or her boss). Then, through the proper channels, detail the problem areas to be corrected. It is human nature to want to do better work for someone who appreciates it and, conversely, to be less inclined to work for the person who doesn't know how to do anything but complain.


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In a new study, MagnifyMoney looked at the 50 largest metro areas in the U.S. to determine the best places to retire in 2018. We ranked the metros based on four key factors. Each metro was given a score out of 70 possible points.
The four major categories considered were assisted care availability and quality, medical quality and cost, cost of living and lifestyle.
The assisted care availability and quality score was based on the number of Medicare-registered home nursing service providers, nursing home beds and continuing care retirement communities per 100,000 people, as well as the Medicare scores of those providers and communities.
The medical quality and cost score was based on the average cost that Medicare enrollees pay in a given metro area, the percentage of enrollees discharged from the hospital with conditions that could be addressed with preventative care and the percentage of people older than 65 who were up to date with preventative care like flu shots.
The cost of living score was based on the median monthly housing cost for both renters and owners, and the regional prices of goods and services. Seniors work with fixed incomes that do not see cost-of-living bumps in annual salaries.
The lifestyle score was based on the volunteer rates of people 55 and older, the rate of physical activity in metro areas and the percentage of residents 65 and older who moved into the metro area that year — insight into how desirable the location appears to retirees.
The best 3 cities for relocating retirees
#1 Portland, Ore.
Final score: 62.6
Portland's average monthly housing cost is $1,236, which is above the average for the cities in this survey, but the costs of goods and services are below the national average. Portland also has the second highest medical quality and cost score of all the metro areas in the survey, right behind Seattle. Portland lost ground in the availability of assisted care service, with less than one nursing home provider per 100,000 residents — which isn't rated well by Medicare.
#2 Salt Lake City
Final score: 61.3
Only 1.5% of Salt Lake City's seniors moved to the city from elsewhere, despite the many advantages the metro area has to offer. The average health care cost per Medicare patient in Salt Lake City is $8,914, below the $9,627 average for the 50 cities in this survey. One contributing factor may be that the city has the lowest rate of preventable hospital visits of the cities surveyed. The area also boasts a higher-than-average percentage of seniors participating in volunteer activities. But like Portland, Salt Lake City could improve its assisted care quality and availability, which was below the average for the survey.
#3 Denver
Final score: 61.1
Denver's lifestyle score was well above the survey's average, which has to do with the high percentages of physically active seniors and the fact that Denver has the fourth highest percentage of seniors who move to the city from elsewhere. Its medical quality and cost score was above average for the surveyed metro areas, and the city had the third lowest rate of preventable hospitalizations. But, monthly housing was above the national average at $1,285, and, like with the two previous cities, Denver could improve its assisted care offerings.
The worst three cities for relocating retirees
#48 Miami
Final score: 39.1
Miami comes in above average on assisted care availability and quality, and the cost of living is reasonable. But Miami also has the highest average cost per Medicare enrollee of any city in the survey, topping $11,582, and has the fourth lowest rate for preventative care. Miami also had the lowest rate of volunteering seniors. Many other popular Florida locations came in toward the bottom of the list, including Jacksonville (32nd) and Orlando (40th).
#49 Houston
Final score: 33.7
Houston has the lowest assisted care availability and quality score of all 50 of the metro areas surveyed. The city has fewer than one home nursing service provider per 100,000 people and fewer than 295 beds per 100,00 residents — the 50 metro average is 463.3. On top of that, the nursing homes that are available have the lowest Medicare ratings of any metro area surveyed.
#50 New York City
Final score: 30.8
New York City has the highest costs for goods and services of any metro area in the survey and the housing costs average at $1,528 per month. Only 16.2% of seniors volunteer, and the health care score was below the 50 metro average score. But there are two bright points for the Big Apple: The assisted care availability and quality score is just above average, and seniors get a reasonable amount of exercise.
Tips for relocating retirees
Moving and retirement are two major life events that can have a wide-ranging impact on your fiscal, emotional and physical health. Nancy K. Schlossberg, author of several books including "Revitalizing Retirement: Reshaping Your Identity, Relationships and Purpose," made a career studying these kinds of transitions. Her biggest piece of advice to retirees is to be patient.
"When you retire, you leave a role, relationships and daily routines," she said. "There's a period where you're establishing a new role in life, new routines and relationships. That period between leaving the old life and starting the new life can be very bumpy. Remember, give yourself time."
If retirees are considering relocation, Schlossberg recommends taking an extended vacation in the city of interest to give themselves a chance to see if it's the right fit. Schlossberg lived and worked in Washington, but retired to Sarasota, Fla., where she had spent many summer vacations, but the transition was still difficult.
"I thought it would be a piece of cake, but it took longer for me to adjust than I expected," she said. "I said once when I first moved there, if I could invent patience pills I would make a fortune."
When you do settle on a new city, Schlossberg recommended using all the resources available to get involved and learn about the community, including the local paper, chambers of commerce and community colleges. Research the availability of lifelong learning options, cultural events and sports or exercise venues.
The post The Best Places to Retire in 2018 – TEGNA appeared first on MagnifyMoney.
MagnifyMoney is a price comparison and financial education website, founded by former bankers who use their knowledge of how the system works to help you save money.


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BEAUTIFUL WESTERN JEWELRY -Add a splash of Color to any look with this versatile, Southwest-inspired Anklet made of Sterling Silver. Beautiful dainty Dragonfly Anklet, feature a 4x11mm pear-shaped, Blue Lapis gemstone cabochon body, set in a serrated-bezel with floral design elements in the wings. All with a polished oxidized finish. Blue Lapis is the September birthstone. Prized by the ancients as it brings qualities of vision, truth and awareness.
SPIRIT & STYLE – Even your ankles need a splash of color. Wear this anklet alone or stacked with other Anklets. Choice of 9 inch or 10 inches long with a 1-inch extender. Lobster Claw Clasp. Butterfly measures 1 inch long by 5/8 inch wide. Whether at work, Sunday brunch with friends, a date night with your honey or a special party or social event. This exclusive Southwestern jewelry design from the Earth Spirit Collection captures the lifestyle and rich history of New Mexico.
AFFORDABLE GIFT – The special lady in your life deserves to feel fabulous. Indulge your mom, grandmother, daughter, wife, girlfriend, best friend or even yourself! Packaged in a signature gift box, it?s perfect for any gifting occasion like a birthday or anniversary, congratulations or thank-you. Whether you want to surprise someone with a unique present or simply celebrate a milestone or holiday, our American designed and crafted jewelry shows your loved one how much you really care.
FORGED ON THE AMERICAN FRONTIER – We have been creating jewelry with social responsibility and environmentally friendly ways since 1975, and we are proud to share our legacy with you. Made from sterling silver with 92.5% recycled silver metal, this original piece is handmade in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA by our in-house jewelry makers. Our experienced artisans have honed their craft for decades and hold to the highest standards of quality. Feel confident buying, wearing, and gifting our jewelry!
Buy with Confidence – If oxidation or tarnish darkens the piece over time, use a polishing cloth to restore to desired finish.


text:
Login or Create an Account to Shop
Welcome! Please start by creating a new account or by signing into an existing account to start shopping. Your account will save your patterns so that you can easily and quickly download them after purchasing.
There are 5 gift bags in this pattern set: Candy Candy Striped, Christmas Tree, Reindeer, Santa Claus, and Snowman bag. Crochet these cute gift bags when gifting small items to child and adults. Each bag works up quickly and is crocheted in the round. Each bags is designed with a drawstring at the top making it easy to open and close.
Skill Level: Easy (Candy Cane Striped and Santa Claus), Intermediate (Christmas Tree, Reindeer and Snowman)
Finished Size: each bag measures 5" (12.5 cm) wide, 6" (15 cm) tall when flat
Medium Weight Yarn (approximately 50 yards of main color per bag, small amount of other colors)
Crochet hook I (5.50 mm)
Stitch marker (or safety pin, or scrap of contrasting yarn)
Yarn needle
Login to Shop


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In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
The Islamic State
Quranic perspective
[2:256] There shall be no compulsion in religion: the right way is now distinct from the wrong way. Anyone who denounces the devil and believes in God has grasped the strongest bond; one that never breaks. God is Hearer, Omniscient.
[18:29] Proclaim: "This is the truth from your Lord," then whoever wills let him believe, and whoever wills let him disbelieve. We have prepared for the transgressors a fire that will completely surround them. When they scream for help, they will be given a liquid like concentrated acid that scalds the faces. What a miserable drink! What a miserable destiny!
Freedom is one of God's great gift to humans. The Quran clearly spells out that freedom should be the foundation for any society that claims to be Islamic (Islam is an Arabic word which translates as Submission in English).
For a modern Islamic society (or nation) there are three kinds of freedoms:
- Religious
- Political
- Economic
Religious Freedom
The above verses make it clear that the word of God in the Quran advocates the absolute freedom of religion. Any society or nation which claims to be Islamic must have fundamental freedom of religion. The right to preach any religion, the right to assembly and worship would be the basic tenants. Tolerance of other religions and civility would be the hallmarks of such a society. It will be the duty of the state to preserve and protect the right of any citizen to practice their religion in freedom.
[60:8] God does not enjoin you from befriending those who do not fight you because of religion, and do not evict you from your homes. You may befriend them and be equitable towards them. God loves the equitable.
[60:9] God enjoins you only from befriending those who fight you because of religion, evict you from your homes, and band together with others to banish you. You shall not befriend them. Those who befriend them are the transgressors.
Political Freedom
All freedom originates from religious freedom. The free societies in the west and their political democratic systems originated from religion and religious freedom.
[42:38] They respond to their Lord by observing the Contact Prayers (Salat). Their affairs are decided after due consultation among themselves, and from our provisions to them they give (to charity).
The political system in United States is a good example of two separate elected bodies (House and Senate) agreeing on a proposed law which has to be endorsed by the President, who is also elected. The Supreme Court provides further check and balance if any law is originated which violates the constitution of USA.
Economic Freedom
The Quran has numerous verses which provide for and respect property rights (2:205, 2:220, 4:2, 4:5-6, 4:10, 4:29, 16:71, 38:24, 59:8). The Quran encourages commerce (2:198, 2:275, 30:46). Only mutually acceptable transactions (4:29) are permitted. Excessive interest or usury from lenders (such as mafia) is prohibited.
In the modern world such freedom in commerce and exercise of individual property rights is also known as capitalism. Any society which exercises freedom of economy prospers. Those who place restrictions on such freedom (socialism or communism) do not prosper. It might be noted that religious, political and economic freedoms go together and benefit most of the citizens in a society.
The present "Islamic States", the Mullahs and the "Word of God."
All of us who claim to be Submitters (In Arabic: Muslim) are individually answerable to God on the Day of Judgment for our individual acts and our adherence to God's commandments (in the Quran). Our individual responsibility in a society is to maintain (and strife to keep) the above freedoms using all possible means.
It is obvious from the Quran, that there is no nation on earth now which calls itself Islamic, that in fact is Islamic.
When the Mullahs (religious leaders) and scholars of these states proclaim "Word of (God) Allah" (Allah is the Arabic for God), they refer to writings of humans put in book form 200+ years after the revelation of the Quran. The Quran condemns such writings, which are also known as Hadith and Sunna. The scholars are actually refering to "Word of scholars" rather than the Word of God. The failure of these states to follow the word of God, has lead to loss of all aspects of freedom called for in the Quran in all these states.
This is what the Quran , the Word of God, says about those who follow the words of these scholars.
[9:31] They have set up their religious leaders and scholars as lords,* instead of God. Others deified the Messiah, son of Mary. They were all commanded to worship only one god. There is no god except He. Be He glorified, high above having any partners.
An obvious conclusion cannot escape us - USA as a society and as a nation practices God's laws as laid out in the Quran, more so, than any other nation in the world.
One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for All
Editorial Comment: Submission.org, does not support any policy carried out by any current or previous administration of the US government that is not based on the Quranic law of guaranteeing equal justice, freedom and dignity for ALL humans irrespective of their race, color, religion or national origin. We do not agree with any US government foreign policy which supports aggression, oppression or inhumane treatment by any state or groups against another. We do not agree with any US government foreign policy which supports dictatorial governments while the citizens of those countries do not have freedom of religion, political expression and/or private property rights. We do maintain that the basic laws of freedom and democracy in the USA, when applied, parallel the requirements advocated in the Quran.