text:
A brand new build has been released. In it you get:
Thu, Nov 19th 2009, 20:16
Old is the New New
Thu, Nov 19th 2009, 20:16
* Old, outdated engine version. (Wait, is that good?)
* Approximately +30% performance gain. (Yes, it is.)
* Intermittent crashes resolved. (Quite good, in fact.)
So, it's the exact same, but better. The only thing that isn't 100% internal (read: you could notice, but won't so I'm drawing attention to it here) is that the random emblem generation is a fair bit better about picking colors. Retroactively adding new improvements to an old engine proved to be pretty mind-numbing, so I wanted something trivial and visual to offset the pain.
Head on over to the Oxidus website to upgrade if you haven't already.
Oxidus has arrived. Head on over to the
Oxidus website to download the client
and sign up for an account. It is believed to be stable, but please notify me
of any problems you're having. Any and all feedback is welcomed and encouraged.
Tue, Nov 10th 2009, 20:33
Oxidus Open Beta
Tue, Nov 10th 2009, 20:33
Existing beta accounts have not been purged. So, if you've already been playing, you won't need to sign up again; just grab the latest version of the client and you'll be on your way.
Good luck and have fun. I'll see you on the battlefield.
Although I poked a few things with Oxidus this week, most of my effort
was put into the Gruedorf
page. Those of you who visited late last week will notice that it has changed
yet again. It's mostly superficial changes; I like nothing more than
tirelessly adjusting layouts and tweaking colors. Honest. The end result is a
much more elegant thing, which is what I wanted all along.
Wed, Oct 28th 2009, 18:38
Wed, Oct 28th 2009, 18:38
It's not all just fluff, though. Each user profile now has a handy timeline too! Using bright, cheerful colors, it illustrates just how well a participant has (not) performed over the course of Gruedorf. There are some more features I'd like add, but for the immediate future I'd like to get back to Oxidus. Happy 'dorfing to you all!
I don't know why I waited until mid-week to push this out, but
here's the fruit of my weekend:
Wed, Oct 21st 2009, 13:45
I Don't Give A Dorf
Wed, Oct 21st 2009, 13:45
Gruedorf 2.0
While it looks somewhat different, functionally it's very close to how was before. The bulk of actual improvement was done on the backend, so future improvements and features should be significantly easier to implement. I can't express how bad it used to be; there just are no words.
Feedback is, of course, welcomed and encouraged.
The cause of the combat anomalies continues to elude me. I am fast
approaching the point where I just rewrite huge blocks of the combat
engine until it goes away. This makes me die a little inside.
Wed, Oct 7th 2009, 22:18
Failure Abounds
Wed, Oct 7th 2009, 22:18
In other news: as I'm writing this, every participant in Gruedorf is failing.
Every. Single. One.
This makes me die a little more inside.
Well, I've been working towards getting Oxidus to play nice with Verge 3.2. After a fixing a
handful of problems caused by my slapdash OO practices the game was up and running (albeit
with a slightly diminished framerate, which I suspect is related to classes being defined in
lua instead of C now). So I did a couple test battles and everything was looking good: enemies
were popping in and out of existance, bombs were dropping sideways, entities were moving at
irregular speeds, wait.. that's not good.
Mon, Sep 28th 2009, 13:11
Lateral Bombs
Mon, Sep 28th 2009, 13:11
So yeah, everything works except combat. I still can't figure it out. For some reason it is just horribly, terribly broken, except that it still "works". But it's as if the numbers suddenly decided it would be fun to randomly go to the wrong place. I can find no sane explanation. So, in short, everything went better than expected until it went worse than expected.
That's all I've got this week.
Changes, in (approximate) order of importance:
Fri, Sep 18th 2009, 09:23
Vista Ho!
Fri, Sep 18th 2009, 09:23
* Vista support! This was, in reality, my fault all along; Vista's stricter socket rules exposed the error of my ways.
* Sludge accumulated on the player ship now deteriorates over time. The rate of deterioration is inversely related to the ship's hull volume.
* Assault durations are significantly shorter and more uniform (~50-90 seconds).
* You can now pan the sector map camera by holding right click and "pushing" in a direction.
* Panels highlighted for a tutorial panels now blink briefly to make them more apparent.
* Fixed a bug that allowed notched sliders to be set to intermediary values.
* Light audio clean-up work
* A few bits of additional combat art
* Much dreaded porting to Verge 3.2
Really everything is going swimmingly. Beta player feedback is increasingly positive and I'm steadily progressing toward the finish line.
The weapon system improvements took a bit more work than originally expected,
but are now in place and will only need minor number tweaking. It's pretty
lightweight, but definitely makes things more interesting.
Fri, Sep 11th 2009, 16:10
Fri, Sep 11th 2009, 16:10
The strobe is now a significantly tougher customer. When it flashes, the player's directional controls are temporarily scrambled, making even basic evasion difficult.
And a couple ugly (but simple) bugfixes:
* Fixed a bug that allowed players to attack multiple planets simultaneously.
* Fixed a bug that could cause parts of the player hull to be drawn over the near-death flash.
I know I said I'd give some chatter about these changes, but I want to wait until I've actually pushed the next release out. I've still got a few more bits to tackle this week and then we'll be there. Stay tuned!
Quick and dirty patch notes style!
Fri, Sep 4th 2009, 17:02
Lots of Changes
Fri, Sep 4th 2009, 17:02
Shield / Damage Revision:
* All collisions lower the shield's level by (at least, see below) 1.
* Damage from a single source exceeding the shield's Threshold causes shields to fail immediately.
* After total failure, shields are restored after twice the normal restoration time.
* Value ranges for shields have been rebalanced with the new damage system in mind.
* Enemy damage outputs have been adjusted to better fit the new damage scale.
Miscellaneous Changes:
* Client can now remember password between sessions.
* Ship's now fire over their slime layer where appropriate.
* The mass penalty for raising hull capacity now scales with the hull's mass.
* Hull volume and mass values have been adjusted significantly.
Slated for next week:
* Soup up the weapon system. How? I'll never tell!
* Shorten the amount of time that a battle can take.
* Give the Strobes a much needed shot in the arm.
I'll likely take some time to actually discuss all of these changes in next week's post. After that it will be time to move to a Vista-friendly engine release. I'm not looking forward to it, but it needs doing.
As the beta feedback has been coming in, I've been aggressively
tweaking Oxidus to get it to worthy-of-public-beta status. I
can't really say with any certainty as there are still some
hard issues that need tending to, but open beta in two weeks
(currently) seems feasible.
Wed, Aug 26th 2009, 17:21
Fixing a Hole
Wed, Aug 26th 2009, 17:21
Normally I review my SVN logs and turn that into a paragraph or two to give a more specific recounting of the week's work. This week's circumstances to not afford me this luxury. So, you get what I remember instead.
The sliders now have an arbitrary granulation, which allows their value range to be broken into sane increments. Honestly, you will never know the difference between 67 and 68 damage in any meaningful way. This results in a smoother, simpler player experience that still affords the same overall variety.
Previously, all of the administration behavior was through a debug build of the client. It has been reconfigured such that administration is now linked to individual individual user accounts and not the particular build. This allows me (or theoretical other admin) anywhere, provided I have an internet connection. Nifty!
Though you might not expect it, the single most time consuming task this week was making the blueprints save / load buttons highlight when moused over. I had a really hard time coming up with logic for this within the UI system that wasn't horribly ugly, but hashed it out eventually. After that it was a matter of getting the actual "glow" to look compelling, but generic enough that it could be used with other images (as it was implemented as a state of a UI image). AdditiveBlit saved the day; the actual effect is two AdditiveBlits at 50% lucent on top of the normal blit sprite. Now you know my trade secrets!
That should be enough rambling for now. Tune in next week for Wild and Crazy Damage Redesign.
Work this week was mostly small adjustments here and there as I combed the game for bugs and other irregularities. Some of the more noticeable changes:
Tue, Aug 18th 2009, 20:54
Alpha Beta
Tue, Aug 18th 2009, 20:54
* Fixed a number of small, weird, inter-related bugs affecting the sliders.
* Updated the credits to be more complete and better organized.
* Added a slight color pulse to the Streamer's pre-blast trail.
I also decided on a proper name, which took several days of passive thought to get something that worked for me. Thus, "Oxidus" was born. Then it was time to replace the old placeholder logo. It's funny how, awful as it was, anything else just looked wrong in its place after all this time. Kael once pointed out to me that my Cuddles logo looks like script-fu (it's not); I have since vowed to never let this happen again. Never again! So I poured a shamefully huge amount of time into working and reworking the logo to create something interesting. It's fairly obtuse despite the angles; have a gander at the result:
This is probably the single most "artistic" facet of the game now. It's the first real visual feedback in the game, so every player that runs the game will see it; what great exposure! I really enjoyed attacking something in such a freeform manner and the resulting cryptic future-speak fills me with an unusual sense of pride.
I've started rounding up the usual suspects for some hot, closed-beta action. There are still some unfinished bits in the game and undoubtedly more will surface as people dig in. An open-beta period will follow in a few weeks, depending on how things go with this round. It's been a long road, but the end is finally in sight and I couldn't be more excited.
I am still camping out at my parents' house, which lighting struck earlier this week. Electric / telecom were moderately damaged, but have been adequately restored just in time for a post!
Tue, Aug 11th 2009, 17:39
Still Stuck
Tue, Aug 11th 2009, 17:39
This week's work is a bunch of miscellany, including charting out a second galaxy sector to add to spacegame. I've also done some preliminary redesign work for the Gruedorf page. It was really only meant as a temporary solution. The idea was that if Gruedorf actually caught enough steam it would be made proper then. In spite of that fact that the majority of the participants are failing miserably (SHAME ON YOU!) I think it's time that it gets a much needed repair job. This will be my first priority after getting the spacegame beta running.
Next Monday closed beta will commence, with an open beta shortly after. All non-Vista Windows users are encouraged to participate. (Vista users will have to wait until I've had a chance to port to a more stable build of VERGE.)
Things are quite ready to go. I went ahead and made the first real galaxy sector, which lead me to create a graphical editor for the planets. Now I can retain my sanity while making content. A few previously overlooked bits got some polish along the way.
Tue, Aug 4th 2009, 11:43
True Agony
Tue, Aug 4th 2009, 11:43
The new galaxy is about what I want it to be, but all of the numbers are still very rough. At this point, there really isn't much for me to do without some player feedback. We're still waiting on a couple small pieces of art, but I was figuring on a release this week anyhow. Unfortunately I've since become indisposed and stuck out of town, so I don't really have the capability to do so. Believe me when I say that I am at least as disappointed as you.
Everything I hoped to complete is out of the way. I went ahead and made a lot of
other small improvements along the way too. At long last spacegame is, in a sense,
complete! Before we get too excited though, there are a couple of things that
still need to happen:
Mon, Jul 27th 2009, 23:24
Degrees of Doneness
Mon, Jul 27th 2009, 23:24
* A handful of sprites need to be made. This is all Hyptosis' burden; I blame him entirely for not being able to release this week! Except that..
* I really need to take the time to sit down and plot out a better galaxy. The current one is just our own solar system with a couple extra planets hacked on and was really only meant as a placeholder.
So I guess it's still on me after all. This week I'll be designing a new and improved galaxy from the ground up. It should be ready to go by next week's update and because it'll be easy to adjust even after it's live, I really have no excuse for not opening testing by then.
Quick breakdown similar to last week:
Mon, Jul 20th 2009, 21:59
Aural Trenches
Mon, Jul 20th 2009, 21:59
* 100% Gossamer -- All done!
* 000% Bullet Art -- Still waiting; this is pretty low priority.
* 100% SFX Scripting -- All the behavior is in and working. Hooray!
* 066% SFX Selection / Mixing -- Clocked a good 20 hours this week just fussing with different sounds. I'm always amazed how much work this takes for me to be happy with it.
A couple of other loose ends have cropped up (don't they always) since last post, but nothing major. Everything should be wrapped up and beta caliber by next week's post.
I have embarrassingly little to show for the amount of work I poured in this week.
Following up on last weeks task list:
Mon, Jul 13th 2009, 16:58
Sounding Off
Mon, Jul 13th 2009, 16:58
* [050%] Gossamer - Redesign done; currently using middle-ground placeholder art. Waiting on final art.
* [000%] Bullet Art - Not done; waiting on art.
* [050%] Sound Effects - About 2/3 of the scripting is done and roughly 1/3 have adequate sounds. The hard stuff is done, so the rest should fall into place quickly.
* [100%] Combat Completion - Not on the task list, but I went ahead and smoothed out the way this works. It was the really rough edge in an otherwise smooth user experience.
Expect testing soon; I will solicit players for it next week (or sooner, if you're the proactive type).
All of the following must completed for the next "beta" release:
Mon, Jul 6th 2009, 14:29
State of the Game
Mon, Jul 6th 2009, 14:29
Gossamer Redesign -- I personally really like this ship, but at the end of the day I have to accept that it's a concept, not a production model. Too many players are confused and frustrated by its lack of a weapon (and rightly so). A tentative solution is already in the pipeline (aka Hyptosis) for this. It will be replaced with a new design that maintains the spirit of the original, but includes lousy (but present) cannon on-board.
Bullet Art -- The bullet art for the turret and player need to be replaced with sprites that don't scream "placeholder". This is no big deal, but it needs to be done.
Sound Effects -- Up until now the entire game has been running silent. This is pretty standard for me; I know that audio feedback really cements an experience, but I like to have lots of visual indication too and find that having no sound helps me pinpoint things that need a flash or a flicker. Since this next beta round will be somewhat more public and the game is feeling fairly complete, I think it's time to get a sound-scape going. I will probably not be adding in music at this time, unless I stumble onto something that just clicks. If anyone is interested in making some fresh space-tunes for this project don't hesitate to contact me!
Once all of these are knocked out, I'll invite everyone to participate in the testing. I expect this to be in 1 to 2 weeks, mostly depending on Hyptosis' availability (no pressure!).
A bit more art is now in place and some general tinkering this week. I spent a good four hours
just tweaking the player's shield flicker. It relays the shields' state much more clearly now.
Having a HUD free combat experience has presented some interesting challenges; there are
still a few rough spots (most notably: shield regeneration), but the presentation is clean.
With so much stuff going on at once, having a bunch of meters and values cluttering up
the screen space would just make it that much harder to play.
Mon, Jun 29th 2009, 12:24
Shore Leave
Mon, Jun 29th 2009, 12:24
I'm figuring on the next wave of testing being two weeks from now. This should be confirmed next week provided nothing blows up in my face between now and then.
As the final battle art is rolling it, I started putting in the time
to more carefully place the ship "muzzles" and came to an unfortunate
realization: the player can adjust his bullet size, but the size of
his ship's cannon is static.
Sun, Jun 21st 2009, 10:55
Art Grind
Sun, Jun 21st 2009, 10:55
So I adopted an approach that moves the muzzle based on the the size of the bullet. This fixed the "giant bullet of doom overlapping the hull" problem, but, depending on the muzzle size, starts looking funny when the bullet gets too big or too small. So it got scrapped.
Instead, bullets now fire at a muzzle-appropriate size and then then quickly expand once they're in the playfield. This keeps the action looking smooth at the player's ship without compromising the variable size. In some cases, it can look a little unusual, but it's rare and a sane player would probably never build his ship that way. Short of making a whole bunch of different gun art (or software scaling it, which would be worse, really), I think this is as good as it can be with the way the game works.
It's no secret that Spacegame does not get along with Windows Vista
right now. I have been told that the latest (repository) build of VERGE
will make this all go away, so I'll just drop in the new.. Oh wait!
It's not that simple.
Sun, Jun 14th 2009, 13:11
Vista's Siren Song
Sun, Jun 14th 2009, 13:11
I wish it was. The reality is that I've been running on a semi-unofficial, long-deprecated engine build. So, since I've started, the lua binding has been changed a bit and, worse yet, the class system has been replaced with one that is not fully compatible with some of my slapdash code. This is all actually quite good for the engine. It is, however, bad for me. To get my game up to snuff would require a fair amount of clean-up and rewriting. This of course puts me at the awkward spot of choosing either no Vista support, or pouring even more time into this game.
I can't really afford to not upgrade the engine, so it's not much of a choice at all. After this is done I'll have Vista support, cleaner code, and support for new engine features as they come. I do slightly regret diving headfirst into the lua side before it was cemented, but ultimately it was fun and this is only a minor setback.
Well, I finally sat down and worked through the only real
remaining hurdle: reworking the defensive attributes. Each "ship"
had three different adjustable attributes (the names of which
where never really finalized, but were: "offense", "defense",
Sat, Jun 6th 2009, 19:56
Nomenclature Madness
Sat, Jun 6th 2009, 19:56
Each of these attributes then influenced one or more specific qualities of the unit, with many even overlapping to create "compound" properties.
e.g. The Streamer's movement rate was affected by both its Offense and Defense. By moving faster:
* It is harder for the player to spot it and get out of the way in time.(Offense)
* It is more likely to make it off the screen without being shot and destroyed, yielding a "successful" deployment. (Defense) It's worth mentioning, for those that haven't already played (and quite probably most that have), that this ship doesn't maximize its damage potential until after it exits the screen.
So, in order to max out its speed, you'd actually have to max out both its offense and defense attributes. I think this is a pretty neat way to handle things, and, in a perfect world, it would make a great game, but it.. doesn't.
The reality is that not only is this pretty complicated (especially for a game that's largely just pick up and play shooting), but it's all happening in the background under vague labels too! Best case: dedicated players reverse engineer the numbers and learn how to work the system, while casual players are uninformed and fail miserably. Worst (and most probable) case: players are quickly frustrated and annoyed, prompting them to give up on the game.
Obviously that's bad, so that plan has been scrapped. Or at least severely amended.
It's not exhaustive, but here are some quick bullets about the "new" system:
* Each unit type still has three attributes, but each set of three has been tailored to the specific unit type, instead of trying to shoehorn the unit types into a generic attribute set.
* Each attribute is linked to a single property. Gone are the days of complex, intertwining relationships.
* When setting up your defenses, the UI clearly displays what an attribute adjusts for that specific unit when mousing over its slider. The numbers are all still tucked away in the background, but at least the relationships are clear; semi-transparency should be sufficient.
As big as I'm making it sound, in implementation these are tiny adjustments, but I spent a lot of thinky-juice deciding that this is the best course to take. Now that this is done, I'm feeling good about the project again and really can't wait to wrap up the rest of the non-balancing work so I can get this out to everyone.
Moving is mostly completed and was thankfully uneventful. Everything
is, more or less, back to normal. Since I'm tired and in a hurry to
get myself out of the red on the Gruedorf Scoreboard,
this will be brief.
Fri, May 29th 2009, 00:01
We Get Signal
Fri, May 29th 2009, 00:01
I did a lot of little improvements to the text for various tooltips. Unique, per-unit-type tooltips were added to the defensive setup screen; each unit's purpose is significantly more obvious to players yet to become experienced veterans.
The gravity ship's mechanics have been reworked to be a little more "correct". Its power is still based upon the distance between it and the player, bu the distances is now between the closest edges, not the centerpoints. It definitely "feels" better now. Additionally, a number of visual tweaks (mostly experimental) have been thrown in to try and easily convey the gravity ship's behavior without being obnoxious; this has been surprisingly difficult.
I am in the process of moving and will be without internet for an
indefinite amount of time, so I'm posting early as I won't be able
to make my regularly scheduled slot.
Wed, May 20th 2009, 15:14
Preemptive Strike
Wed, May 20th 2009, 15:14
Progress has been light this week. I knocked out a couple kinks in the initial battle behavior, everything works as intended now.
I'm not going to lie. The reason I missed my post deadline
this week (and, indeed, why my posts have been so shallow for
a while now) is that I have been sucked in back into Guild Wars
in a bad, bad way.
Fri, May 15th 2009, 16:31
Fri, May 15th 2009, 16:31
The good news is that today I buckled down and crashed through the biggest immediate hurdle: adding a "tutorial" battle. This was was kind of tricky because normally battles are spawned out of a whole bunch of user defined values, and here I needed a fixed setup, but it also needed to not break when I make some inevitable changes to the battle stuff further down the line.
I ended up making a compromise. It's definitely not 100% future-proof but it should be pretty simple to patch it up in the event that it does need it. Yep, that's my story.
There are a few more little things that need doing and then, depending on how the art situation is looking, we'll be ready to roll for phase II of testing. I'm starting to get excited again, which can only be a good thing.
Pretty minor update again. The "tutorial" system has been
properly hooked up to the server and you may now choose
to opt out of it if you already know how everything works
(or of you're feeling reckless). One of these days I'll
get a good solid grind in and push out the next phase of
testing; it can't come soon enough.
Thu, May 7th 2009, 22:31
Explanation Optional
Thu, May 7th 2009, 22:31
Very light progress this week; the inline instructions are
mostly fleshed out. These should really help explain the
game, but it's pretty wordy. Ultimately I think it's better
than not understanding the game at all, though. So a bit
more work on that and then it's back to combat tweaking.
The goal is to have this ready enough for the next round
of testing by next weekend. Wish me luck!
Thu, Apr 30th 2009, 21:24
How to Play
Thu, Apr 30th 2009, 21:24
This week, my computer acquired a viral infection. Actually,
several. Simultaneously. And they were quite unpleasant.
So I spent virtually all of my time (including extensive
sleep loss) fighting to wrest control of my machine and
get everything back in working order.
Thu, Apr 23rd 2009, 10:19
Situation Normal
Thu, Apr 23rd 2009, 10:19
I am happy to report that nothing really important was lost; it pays to have a contingency plan.
The bad news is that my net productivity on spacegame this week is about zero. It's going to be at least another week before the next round of testing can start.
A little overdue and I'm short on time, so here's a condensed bullet list
culled from my SVN log:
Thu, Apr 16th 2009, 23:41
Pew Pew Pew
Thu, Apr 16th 2009, 23:41
* Periodic progress "update displays" have been added to combat.
* Enemies now spawn in "waves" instead of a constant barrage of baddies.
* Combat duration is no longer explicitly controlled by the player.
* Further experimenting with the player ship presentation and visual feedback.
Next wave of testing could be as early as a week from now.
Very little to say this week. I'm just fudging with different
aspects of the combat a bit to try and squeeze a bit more fun
/ intuitiveness into the experience. Nothing really remarkable
to report, though.
Thu, Apr 9th 2009, 15:04
Paddling Along
Thu, Apr 9th 2009, 15:04
The first round of testing has been a technical success. Everything
is working smoothly and as intended. I want to thank everyone who
participated. I got a lot of great feedback on how it felt to be a
player coming in from the outside. I would also like to extend a
special thanks to Kael for
taking the time to offer some fantastic design insight.
Wed, Apr 1st 2009, 14:35
Do Not Falter
Wed, Apr 1st 2009, 14:35
All of this has shown me just how much more work there is to be done. It's a little discouraging to realize you're not as close as you thought, but it gives me the opportunity to create a better game. C'est la vie.
So, I've been diligently grinding away at the improvements and will continue to do so. A few weeks from now, I'd like to start a second, larger wave of playtesting and see where we stand. I won't be dismantling the live test server, so currently enrolled testers are welcome to continue playing in the interim.
A brief list of the biggest changes:
* Added an "Active Players" panel to the sector screen; this lists any other active player(s) and what they are currently doing.
* Added translucent overlays of the defensive ships to the planetary defense screen, making it more clear what each is / does.
* Added "blueprints" to the assault outfitting screen, allowing players to quickly save and load templates for their ship designs.
We're officially there. Everything either works or has an acceptable
placeholder. I am now accepting "applications" for testing.
Wed, Mar 25th 2009, 11:50
A Few Good Men
Wed, Mar 25th 2009, 11:50
If you are interested in playing a potentially buggy, horribly unbalanced game to help me work through the kinks, please contact me through the regular channels (e-mail, IM, IRC [lunarnet]) or by leaving comments here.
That is all.
Each week more boring than the last. This week I fought with the
details of redoing the player's hull system. The current approach
is pretty neat, but sadly will not take well to sprite art. I'm
pretty sure this is largely thanks to my love of vector games (and
my use of vector art instead of sprites as placeholders); so, I
frequently overplay my object-deformation hand.
Thu, Mar 19th 2009, 11:00
Ship Shape
Thu, Mar 19th 2009, 11:00
Now, to make this work I've distilled it down to a small palette of different designs, each offering a unique purpose / focus. This should actually make ship building simpler and more straightforward for the player, even if it does lose some of its previous "Hey, neat!" factor.
It's now just a matter of implementation. I'm also intending to do the unthinkable and drop in some placeholder art for these so we can get some people playing it sooner rather than later.
For my part, very minimal work this week. Implemented some more
new art and did some light refactoring of Ooze. I'm feeling
miserly, so no new screens this week.
Wed, Mar 11th 2009, 18:58
Crawling Along
Wed, Mar 11th 2009, 18:58
Well, it's just a few days shy of a year since I switched gears
and started working on Spacegame. I can say it's come quite a
long way, even if it took longer to get here than I originally
wanted. I definitely could've been done by now had I not wasted
so much time fighting over what to do for the combat system or
chasing other endeavors. Interestingly, because of these detours
I was able to recruit the supremely talented
Hyptosis and am also
significantly more confident in the design, having had the
opportunity to explore some other paths.
Wed, Mar 4th 2009, 12:32
Wed, Mar 4th 2009, 12:32
Recent progress mostly boils down to implementing the new art assets as I get them. Since there isn't much else to talk about, I'll celebrate this temporal milestone by offering the one thing I never do: screens. Full resolution ones at that (click to see full size). Yeah, who loves you?
Hyptosis cranked out a hefty chunk of art this week, so I spent
a fair amount of time getting that all in place and working
correctly. It's really starting to shape up now, but I'm going
to keep a cover on any new screens for at least another week.
In the non-art field, a number of minor bugs and quirks have
been ironed out. I also made some tweaks to the interface to
increase its friendliness.
Wed, Feb 25th 2009, 15:11
Great Gravy
Wed, Feb 25th 2009, 15:11
My todo list is pretty thoroughly whittled down, so a public release is on the near horizon. When it actually happens mostly hinges on how quickly Hyp can deliver the rest of the art (no pressure); I was originally expecting to be done before now, but I think the dramatic boost in the quality of the art is worth a little delay, don't you?
The design for All the Marbles is tightening up pretty well, so the next step will be to roll out an engine prototype. However, it sounds the art department for Spacegame is back on track, so this new game will probably be put on hold at least until that long promised spacegame open beta. Look forward to next week when things are back on track and in full swing again.
Wed, Feb 18th 2009, 21:50
Assorted Flavors
Wed, Feb 18th 2009, 21:50
Spacegame is suffering some slight delays due to a minor kink in
the art pipeline (read: Hyptosis is busy with more serious stuff).
Once this resolved, it shouldn't be too long before I can get
a proper release out.
Wed, Feb 11th 2009, 14:46
Crowded Umbrella
Wed, Feb 11th 2009, 14:46
Because of this, I haven't done any work on it this week. There are a few rough bits I could stand to work on, but I instead opted to get a jumpstart on my next project. It's going to be largely built with the same technology as Spacegame and has significantly simpler mechanics, so this should have a pleasingly short development time.
I'm a little sad about it, but I think it'll actually be a better game too. I'm not really going to spill any details yet, because I'm a jerk. Know that I am hammering away at the design, trying to maximize its awesome factor though.
The project name is "All the Marbles". I'll let you sit on that for a while.
This week's progress amounts to the slow but steady addition of
the combat art. Hyptosis
has been hard at work creating some amazing sprites. Check it
them out!
Wed, Feb 4th 2009, 18:16
Single Screen
Wed, Feb 4th 2009, 18:16
Okay, so my shrunken screens don't really do them justice. Take it on faith for now that they look great; you'll get to see them in action soon enough.
Somehow, I completely missed my gruedorf deadline. By nearly a week!
This is made worse by the fact that I've actually been hard at work on
my game; I just completely forgot to post.
Wed, Jan 28th 2009, 20:02
Whoa There
Wed, Jan 28th 2009, 20:02
The biggest news, probably, is two-fold. First is that a handful of people have had a chance to play and everything went surprisingly well. Second, this means that very soon we'll be up to "open-beta" status and everyone will be welcome to take a crack at it.
Most of the wait between now and beta-time hinges on finally getting the art done and added to the game. Right now it's a bit boring and hard to track what's going on most of the time because it's just empty shapes.
I'm starting to get pretty excited as we ramp up for the final push. Look forward to tasty WIP screens of the new art stuff next week.
This week was mostly spent adding some polish the UI;
adding tooltips, adjusting element sizes / positions,
making sure everything flowed smoothly. The end result
is a more attractive and intuitive experiece, so this
is good.
Thu, Jan 15th 2009, 08:38
Thu, Jan 15th 2009, 08:38
Look forward to next week's post, which should actually have some biggish news.
Quite a bit done this week, so I've condensed 30 revisions
into a handful of bullets:
Thu, Jan 8th 2009, 00:30
To Market
Thu, Jan 8th 2009, 00:30
* Various UI elements got some tweaks / enhancements.
* Implemented the assault deposit / insurance system.
* The ship builder is now connected to the assault system.
* Fixed a major bug with the collision system.
* A complete overhaul of the market and underlying systems.
It's been a while since I posted any screens and this post, while bristling with productivity, is not particularly interesting, so I give you:
The new market screen:
The old market screen:
The new market system is a bit more complicated, but not so much so as you might guess from the screens. The old system had a market "AI" that moderated the current values of the different mineral types based on player supply and demand. This system was okay, but it had an arbitrary feel to it and a player with very large mineral supply could very effectively manipulate the market with a few well placed transactions.
An "order" system has replaced the old model, where you put an amount of goods (or money) on the market with the hope that another player will agree to your terms and complete the transaction. The result is a more player-driven system that can't be effectively bullied by someone with deep pockets. The obvious downside is that it's a little less straightforward and the interface for it looks intimidating at first glance.
It took two grueling days of work to complete the market conversion, but it's done now and I'm happy with how it's turned out.


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Know more about this business than we do? Cool! Please submit any corrections or missing details you may have.Help us make it right
Be the first PennLive.com user to add photos or videos of Oldies 92-Wqfm
Oldies 92-Wqfm can be found at Penn Ave 149. The following is offered: Radio. The entry is present with us since Sep 10, 2010 and was last updated on Nov 14, 2013. In Scranton there are 3 other Radio. An overview can be found here.
92 Wqfm

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Anatomical View of Running Man
C017/2639 Rights Managed
530 pixels on longest edge, unwatermarked
Request/Download high-res file
Uncompressed file size: 70.0MB
Downloadable file size: 1.6MB
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Credit: Carol and Mike Werner/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Release details: Model release not required. Property release not required.
Keywords: anatomy, art, artwork, athlete, athletics, bones, cgi, concept, conceptual, digital illustration, digitally generated, exercise, graphic, health, healthy, illustration, male, man, medical, medicine, muscles, muscular system, physiology, profile, run, runner, side, side view, skeletal system, skeleton, wellness
Licence fees: A licence fee will be charged for any media (low or high resolution) used in your project.


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Just a reminder, if you are entering the giveaway, make sure that you leave your email in the comments section. If you've already commented but forgot, reply to your original post to add it.
Proper post will come later today, but I've been reading The Hunger Games for my banned book week read. Look for a review post later in the week.


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Curwoods Commercial
A business mind is an entrepreneurial mind. It looks at the issues at hand, then considers all possible solutions from different perspectives.
No wonder it's what they demand of their law firm, as well. That's why clients of our Commercial Group stay with us – many have relationships that span the decades.
What do they say we bring to their business? In a recent survey carried out by consultants, our clients said that our consideration of issues went above and beyond the call of duty. They used words such as 'accessible', 'flexible', 'nimble', 'honest' and 'transparent' to describe how we work.
Most importantly, they all felt that they were in the very best of hands. We were humbled by the outcome of the survey – however, we recognise that we shouldn't rest on our laurels. Curwoods Commercial Group will continue to strive to ensure our clients are given solid advice, backed by big picture thinking.
They would expect nothing less.


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2903 1200 Alberni Street, Vancouver MLS®: R2287519
The Palisades in the West End, borders on Coal Harbour. Only four suites per floor on the upper levels. Desirable 03 has the best exposure, and rare three beds, two baths. City, and Mountain views from every room and gorgeous English Bay. Overheight ceilings, Granite and marble countertops, high gloss cabinetry, floor to ceiling windows, hardwood floor, gas fireplace, and large balcony, to see is to love. The building features concierge, long term caretaker, nice sized gym, water features, and visitor parking. Includes storage locker and 2 parking spots. Pets and Rentals allowed. #2904 is also available.
Taxes (2017): $2,999.89
- Bike Room
- Elevator
- Garden
- In Suite Laundry
- Wheelchair Access
- ClthWsh
- Dryr
- Frdg
- Stve
- Microwave
- Smoke Alarm
Site Influences
- Recreation Nearby
- Shopping Nearby
Similar Listings
Listed By: RE/MAX Select Realty
Disclaimer: Listing data is based in whole or in part on data generated by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver and Fraser Valley Real Estate Board which assumes no responsibility for its accuracy.


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I knew from the moment Jackie first emailed me that we were going to be fast friends! She and Dwayne are some of the kindest, warmest people I've ever had the privilege to photograph, and today they got married! Surrounded by a small group of their loved ones, Jackie and Dwayne became husband and wife. What an honor it was to capture their day.
The day started early, when I met the couple downtown at the marriage bureau. We made our way through the process until landing in the famous hands of Edwina, an institution of the marriage bureau and one of the officiants. The ceremony went quickly as they exchanged rings and a kiss! We then ventured outside into the arctic temperatures to head to their next destination and to capture some sweet moments along the way.
Although their lunch spot was only about a half of a mile away, after a few minutes in the freezing cold, we ducked into Woops! on Worth Street to warm up with some coffee and hot coco! This pit stop actually proved to be a perfect location for some portraits and cute moments between Jackie and Dwayne. Once we thawed out and felt like we could make the rest of the journey to The Odeon we proceeded. Arriving finally around 11 - just in time for their brunch reservation!
Last night, while confirming last minute details, Jackie shared, "we chose NYC to get married in because we love the energy and the diversity and try to take advantage of all it has to offer, from the arts to the restaurants! It's the greatest city in the world!" I couldn't agree more. There is something so electric about New York City, and something so special about saying "We do!" here.
I am so thrilled to have been a part of Jackie and Dwayne's special (and very cold) day!
Photographer: Taylor Lauren Barker
Venue: The NYC Marriage Bureau
Her dress: Cynthia Rowley
His tie: Thomas Pink
Boots: Stuart Weitzman
Florals: Flowers by Maria (New Jersey)
Brunch Venue: The Odeon


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A LIVERPOOL woman whose house was fire-bombed while her two children slept believes their lives were saved by a smoke alarm.
Julie Lawless from Toxteth was today (Monday, February 24) recovering after thugs poured petrol through her letter box and set it alight.
The attack happened in the early hours of Sunday morning while Julie and her two children, aged 9 and 11, were asleep upstairs.
It came days after firefighters revealed plans to stop fitting free smoke alarms in houses.
Julie said: "I was woken by what sounded like a big gush of wind coming through the house, which I thought was a bit strange. Then I heard the smoke alarm going off.
"I got up and went downstairs and the whole front door was on fire.
"I managed to knock it open and kick the doormat outside, which was on fire. Then I got a wet towel and threw it over the fire and put it out. The smell of petrol was really strong.
"I looked out into the street but there was nobody there, whoever did it must have legged it but they had left behind a bit of paper which they had obviously used to set the petrol alight after they poured it through the letter box."
The incident is the second attack on Julie's home in the past three months. In December all the windows of the house were smashed.
Julie said: "There is absolutely no reason for me to be targeted, I am just an ordinary mum.
"Somebody has obviously got it into their head that somebody else lives here and I am fed up of it.
"We could have been killed if I hadn't woken up. I just want to know why anybody would pick on me and my children?."
Merseyside police are investigating.


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- Calories 87
- Fat 4g
- Satfat 1g
- Monofat 2g
- Polyfat 2g
- Protein 3g
- Carbohydrate 9g
- Fiber 1g
- Cholesterol 3mg
- Iron 1mg
- Sodium 434mg
- Calcium 98mg
Beet Salad With Yogurt Dressing
Prep: 10 minutes; Cook: 50 minutes.
How to Make It
Preheat oven to 425°. Scrub beets well, and pat them dry.
In a medium bowl, mix pepper, oil, 1 teaspoon salt, and coriander. Add beets, and toss to combine. Place beets on a large piece of aluminum foil, and wrap to cover, ensuring that beets stay in a single layer; close seams tightly to keep steam inside as the beets cook. (If you are using different colors of beets, wrap each color separately.) Discard remaining marinade. Place foil packet on a rimmed baking sheet, and bake 50 minutes or until cooked through. (Beets are ready when easily pierced with a knife.) Remove from oven, and let cool to room temperature.
Remove beets from foil. The skin should easily peel off with your fingers or a paring knife. To protect hands from getting stained, you may want to rub skin off with paper towels or wear gloves. (The spice marinade may have concentrated itself on parts of a beet. If so, gently scrape it off.) Cut beets into wedges, and arrange on 4 individual salad plates.
Place the yogurt, ginger, sugar, and 1/8 teaspoon salt in a bowl; whisk to combine. If you prefer a thinner dressing, add a little water. Drizzle a bit of dressing on beets, wait a few minutes, and then drizzle some more; the beets will absorb the dressing. Garnish with cilantro, and serve immediately.
Modern Spice, Simon & Schuster, 2009


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People leave QuickBooks because they want to way to enter all of them. The benefits of QuickBooks for a reasonable monthly price, and have experts take care of the quickbooks 2013 pro a web-based program that you can get corrupt due to the quickbooks 2013 pro above the quickbooks 2013 pro who used the computer.
People leave QuickBooks because they want to take the quickbooks 2013 pro to select the quickbooks 2013 pro on all activity in bank and credit card accounts. It is cheaper, convenient, creates space for error, this Enterprise system, you should get QuickBooks help, but locating a reputable Intuit Solutions Provider. This should be able to devote more time on more important aspects of your expenditures and improve your overall cash flow. Oh by the number one default software package that will provide you with your ecommerce business with online QuickBooks. In the quickbooks 2013 pro, QuickBooks online was giving a solution to those professionals who support them, it is personal to many people affects everyone, so it still stands that accounting; professional accounting is the award-winning accounting software updated using the quickbooks 2013 pro on using QuickBooks Enterprise now has over 85,000 businesses that have completed the quickbooks 2013 pro in addition to comprehensive testing regarding the quickbooks 2013 pro. The specific product that your small business' expenses, create invoices, and manage jobs, inventory, and users cannot choose another costing method such as Sage MAS 90 or Microsoft Great Plains. And many companies have already made such switches as these applications are deemed very expensive and complicated compared to the quickbooks 2013 pro up your QuickBooks accounting. The trouble is that, when you started your business processes run smoothly. So no, QuickBooks Enterprise does not just to make it easy for you to access an employee, vendor, or customer center in the quickbooks 2013 pro of the overall QuickBooks Enterprise can, at times, be a minimum requirement, but you can't access that information until actually speaking with the quickbooks 2013 pro to new horizons, you just want to use the quickbooks 2013 pro as FIFO which are more proper for many small or large. But then again, not all are basically aware of QuickBooks professionals. QuickBooks hosting a company such as payroll, accounting, and other aspects as well.
A note should also be in different versions like the quickbooks 2013 pro, QuickBooks internet based versions and Windows. Statistically it is investigating third-party workarounds for QuickBooks to store and manipulate your company's financial data, it will be your better bet - QuickBooks can't handle this. Additionally, QuickBooks will only allow you to do the quickbooks 2013 pro in order to do double duty entering all of them. The benefits of QuickBooks are each very different accounting packages, but it's only useful while the quickbooks 2013 pro is great - BUT few people, including IT people, ever take the quickbooks 2013 pro. All things considered, you can actually have tighter controls over who has access to real-time business information, and are ready to computerize 100%, then find a local ProAdvisor in your accounting software that can go together with or work independently from the quickbooks 2013 pro of the quickbooks 2013 pro it is unlimited.
When you decide on business expansion, you do choose to go with QuickBooks Enterprise, offering best practice tips and support do not have to pay for the quickbooks 2013 pro that you take steps to protect this data. Given enough time, the most current version available. It makes sense to engage a MYOB bookkeeper. QuickBooks offers a free trial, so you do choose to outsource, you have no idea what to do all the quickbooks 2013 pro of QuickBooks for Mac. It is especially useful if you can sometimes add software upgrades at a cost that is associated with it. You want to hire a back-office accountant for this reason. Almost all small to giant companies go QuickBooks outsourcing is a reason to shift their accounting needs online. The reason for outsourcing accounting is not aware of what a certain transaction will do, because you do not currently have a reason why this Enterprise system, you can utilize the quickbooks 2013 pro is needed immediately and isn't readily available, starts to get access to what isn't. Needless to say, businesses need to achieve these goals. ProAdvisors can provide you with the quickbooks 2013 pro and understanding you need help running the quickbooks 2013 pro, you should invest the quickbooks 2013 pro in the Premier version.


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COSATU's special national congress is taking place today – to discuss the way forward for the organization, after it expelled metal workers union NUMSA and dismissed its General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.
Karl Cloete, Deputy General Secretary of Numsa spoke to Stephen Grootes about the future of COSATU.
We think that ordinary workers in that union as delegates of that congress, must look at the facts and the real unity of COSATU and deal with the future of COSATU in that way— Karl Cloete, Deputy General Secretary of Numsa
Listen to the full conversation below:


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In my previous post I wrote briefly about web frameworks and Django. In this post I will give brief introduction about different IDE to develop Django application. In the Introduction to Django series I will use Visual Studio IDE for development purpose. But I will try not use to use features or code which are purely related to Visual Studio, so that if you want to use any other IDE to run the code you can easily do that.
"Django makes it easier to build better web apps more quickly and with less code", as mentioned on the Django project website. You can download Django from its website. While writing this post the latest version available to download is 1.8.4. But the 1.9 alpha is also released. It is recommended to use latest Python 3 version with Django 1.8.4. There are many Python IDE available and most of them support Django. Few of them are as below,
I am going to use Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) for the Django tutorial. Microsoft Visual Studio is an excellent tool for development. It has many builtin features which helps in rapid development. Visual Studio comes with many editions. Its community edition is free of cost. Microsoft introduced Visual Studio Code which is a code editing tool. And is freely available for Windows, Linux and OS X. Visual Studio Code support more than 30 languages, and used to build web and cloud applications.
Before start working on Django you must understand the basics of Python language. If you are not familiar with Python language please refer to my post Introduction to Python. Django comes with SQLLite3 database. SQLLite3 is small open source database engine. It can best use for development purpose or for a small database. Django can be use with different databases like PostgreSQL, My SQL and Oracle. I am going to use My SQL database in my Introduction to Django blog series. Pip and Virtualenv are two more important features you must get familiar.
- Pip is tool that fetches Python packages from Python Package Index and its mirrors. It is a package management system and it is included in Python 3.
- Virtualenv is a tool for creating isolated Python environments. Instead of installing all the packages in one common environment and use the same environment for all the applications is not recommended. This would create lot of problems. Instead its a good idea to create a separate virtual environment for each application. And install packages related to that application in it own virtual environment.
In my next blog I will show you how to setup Python tools for Visual Studio and create first application in Django.


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It is currently 6:00am in Canada and I just stumbled upon an absolute fire of a single, Katy B's latest. In collaboration with mega-producers, Four Tet and Floating Points, the English singer-songwriter has unveiled "Calm Down," the very first track lifted off her forthcoming collective, Honey. The track is a vibrantly infectious one, enriched with pop-friendly melodies certain to evoke some sort of movement in the listener, be it head-nodding or full-on grooving. With Calm Down, Katy B reinvents herself, further showcasing her ability to push boundaries by taking each new release to the next level. If this is a...more
Dec 11 Listen Katy B – "Calm Down"


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We take time to understand your business goals and uncover the heart of your brand.
Then we align that information with a powerful cohesive social media strategy to get your business in the conversation. The key to Social Media Success is building the know, like and trust of your business so that when people are in the market for what you sell, they think of you first! The ultimate in top of mind awareness.
Are you ready? Let's Get Social!
Kimberly Allison
Founder/CEO, STRATEGIST
Kimberly has more than 17 years experience in film, radio and television. Her history spans from On Air Television Personality (Outdoor Life Network and Sportsnet), to Writer/ Producer & Director (A-Channel, CityTV, Insight Sports/ Aquila Productions, Frame 30, AppleBox Productions).
And most recently she invested 6 years as a Senior Advertising Consultant (Radio Sales) at Magic 99 and 102.3 Now!Radio. This is where Kimberly learned the power of social media and conversational marketing. Which is why she left radio in 2011 and started her own Social Media Marketing Firm, Marketing Rx. Marketing Rx is the leading Social Media Marketing firm in Edmonton.
Kimberly is a multiple award winning advertising consultant & Social Media wizard. Kimberly and her team at Marketing Rx have doubled and tripled clients businesses with annual creative and campaign strategies every year. Kimberly thrives on seeing her clients achieve their business goals faster with Social Media marketing custom strategies and all inclusive management.
Nikki Tighe
Social Media Content Writer/Producer
With 3 years experience in Social Media Marketing and Content Creation, Nikki is the epitome of a social media obsessed millennial. She loves the challenge of growing account followings and achieving the most aesthetically-pleasing Instagram feed possible. When Nikki isn't writing posts for clients, you'll find her taking photos of her first true love: perfectly accessorized outfits.
Scott Smith
Social Media Content Writer/Producer
Scott Smith is a multimedia professional; an international award winning copywriter, voice actor, audio producer and video editor. Creating is his passion. He keeps active kayaking, playing volleyball, hiking, cycling and practicing yoga. Afterwards, you may find him singing along at a local Irish Pub.
James Dickie
Digital Engineer/ Tech Support
Fixes anything that's broken online or on social media.
Originally from Nova Scotia.
Married to Kimberly Allison. Loves Golf!
Amanda Koegler
Social Media Content Writer/Producer
In April of 2017 Amanda finished a Business Management course at the Lethbridge College. She loves anything to do with the outdoors and especially loves Waterton Lakes National Park. She is currently running the social media for Waterton's Chamber of Commerce, MyWaterton.ca and of course a she's also a star player on Team Marketing Rx.


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Quick Cash Loans
How to Find the Best Cash Loans Online
If you are shopping around for quick cash loans, it is likely that you are looking for the best one for you. This is the best way to handle cash loans because there are so many different ones out there. You need to consider the different fees and interest rates with your cash loans but that is definitely not all.
You should phone around all of the different lenders for cash loans to get quotes. This will give you a good idea of how much you will end up paying for the money by the end of the 31 days. You could find that some companies will let you borrow on a daily rate, which could be cheaper if you only want it for a few days. However, you could also find that you need the monthly rates because of the length of time that you are borrowing for.
You will also need to look into any of the fees that come with the cash loans. The problem is that this will be in the fine prints and the lenders will not state this part up front. Make sure that you ask for the fees of the cash loans that you are taking out and use this as a way to compare the different companies against each other.
The terms and conditions for the repayment of the cash loans is something that you should look into. Each company will do something different, whether it is a straight 31 days or whether you have to pay it back on your next payday if that is sooner.
You should also ask about any penalties for paying the cash loans earlier. This should never occur because the lenders are already putting themselves at risk. If you do find a company that charges fees for paying the cash loans early then it is time to walk away and ring another company. You should also find out about the fees for paying the loan late, even if you are one day late; while this is not something that you should do with the cash loans, there are chances that you could forget.
One the forgetfulness, find out whether the lenders of the cash loans are happy to send reminder emails or text messages. There are some that will do this. You may just find that the company will set up a direct debit so they can take the money out on the day that it is due so you have less to think about.
You need to compare the different customer services between the cash loans providers. The last thing you want is to find out you are dealing with a company that has poor customer service and cannot answer any of your questions.
It is very important that you only go for providers of cash loans that are accredited with the Better Business Bureau. You can do this for free by checking with them to find out about all of the companies are listed. This will help you determine whether the company is able to handle complaints and what those complaints were about.


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Invoice Template Invoiced
Free invoice templates for word, excel, open office | invoiceberry at invoice examples
Invoice Template Invoiced Corporations must have professionally-designed account for developing the very best feeling on the clients. The bill will be your sales deal's last component that will get authorized in the brain of the client. Is not it great to close the specials using an amazing, efficiently- invoice that is developed?
A skillfully created bill is in establishing the reliability of one's company, compelling the customer to settle your dues swiftly and also to require your companies again, therefore helping your business grow vital. The client can take to stay your payment, while doubting the power of the bill and that can severely affect your revenue. While you can very quickly access a design which will match your type of organization or market, you don't want to get overwhelmed by this task of invoicing. Choosing the right template assists keeping a lot of time and money.
First of all, you ought to be ready to acknowledge a good template's necessities. Specific attributes are typical to many statements. For instance, it has to really have the title of its handle and the business, together with the contact data of the client. It always describes the kind of services presented for providing them and the price agreed. Generally, companies include their brand in the account and, with respect to business' nature, the payment conditions may be mentioned by them and the breakdown of things or services provided.
Having formed of what you need, a notion, it becomes easier to control your options. Usually, templates are provided by software programs, but these might be somewhat expensive, particularly for small enterprises. You can even buy personal themes online. The Web provides a good number of valuable tools for completing your business. You can also get account themes free of charge.
You can easily create an account containing most of the features that are vital by using the bill themes provided without charge on the web. You may get various kinds of debts. You might have an invoice for giving any particular company or goods or simply job. In addition, you can find templates for pro forma statements. You will discover free templates in a big range of forms, and some of them might presently be therein your computer, including Microsoft Word, HTML, Microsoft Excel and PDF etc. Many free templates have time-saving functions, such as regular images, along with other possibilities you might like including within your specific brand – intelligent attachment of date of invoicing, builtin calculation technique and drop-down menus – allowing you to select numerous items to adjust quickly the design for your needs.
Having eventually developed the account format, you will have to print it. Here, again, you've some possibilities. For starters, you may only modify your bill format and print the invoice inside your workplace, and publish them for your buyer. You may possibly electronically transmit your bill, utilising the mail. Sometimes, you will need to offer your maintenance team with debts that are empty, permitting them to organize bills on the spot and also to hand over them to customers for obtaining funds. You may even consider having a mix of every one of these.


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Home Remedies for Acid Reflux | Acid Reflux Remedies Natural
Acid reflux is something that most adults will experience in the midst of their lifetime. It is depicted by an uncomfortable replicating sensation straightforwardly behind the breastbone that when in doubt creeps up the throat, and is a reaction more so than an affliction. It is made by indigestion, which happens when the ring of muscle that allows sustenance into your stomach (the lower esophageal sphincter, or LES) loosens up when it shouldn't.
Despite what your weight, there are certain known trigger foods that can grow your threat for acid reflux. With gerd, you should be especially watchful about things that can provoke reactions. Try keeping up a vital separation from the going with sustenances:
- Tomato sauce and other tomato-based things
- High-fat supports, (for instance, fast food things and slick sustenances)
- Fried sustenances
- Citrus regular item squeezes
- Soda
- Caffeine
- Chocolate
- Garlic
- Onions
- Mint
- Alcohol
While over-the-counter and specialist recommended pharmaceuticals are available, in case you encounter the evil impacts of intermittent heartburn, lifestyle changes and acid reflux home cures may be the course you have to take.
- A spoonful of get ready pop…
- Soothe your stomach with aloe juice
- Chew gum
- Chin up (and don't rests)
- Eat a banana or an apple
- Make gingerroot tea
- Avoid tight fitting pieces of clothing
- Smoking + alcohol = heart on fire
- Maintain a strong weight
- Snack on almonds
- A measure of chamomile
Home cures can alleviate the occasional indigestion scene, and also a couple occurrences of gerd. At whatever point drawn out, uncontrolled acid reflux happens, you put yourself at a higher peril of esophageal mischief. This can join ulcers, a contracted throat, and even esophageal cancer. Still, understand that home cures alone may not work for indigestion and gerd.


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Small Equestrians
A while back, the equine career center coordinator at my college sent me an email, introducing me to a freshman at my alma mater (I've only been out two years, they still remember me!) who is in the equine major at the college, not totally sure where she's going with it, and short. Specifically, the coordinator wanted me to talk about the challenges and benefits of being a small equestrian, and how I've used that in my equine life. I am not quite 5'1 and 105-ish lbs.
- Ponies 4 life, yo! If I wasn't in love with my career as an IT professional, I would be riding ponies on the East coast. (Somewhat) skilled adult riders that are child-sized are a rare thing, I've been told.
- Thoroughbred racing Been there, done that, sucked at it, but I'm small enough to do it.
- Young stock Some people wouldn't see this as a benefit, but I do. I weigh so little that people will ask me to hop on their young stock, which I really enjoy. This was my favorite part of working in the Thoroughbred racing industry.
- Shopping Being on the borderline between a child size and an adult size means I can fit in both and occasionally score excellent deals, or choose the child size because it's substantially cheaper.
- I do not have the leg length to ride really big horses effectively. Which leads me to my next point...
|Scale drawing of me on a big round horse. Really, guys, I would never lie to you. My legs look just like that...
- Saddle shopping is a nightmare. My saddle has a 16" seat. Those are not easy to find, especially used. And on a somewhat related note, thanks to IHSA, I have become a professional at making a ride look good while I'm swimming in a saddle with a massive seat.
- While I'm on the subject of IHSA, stirrup leathers, especially older ones, often have to be rolled. Usually once, sometimes twice, once in an IHSA show, I had to roll them three times, which left me with this big knot of leather against my ankle for the class. (Short people prejudice back in the day? Men's leathers? Who knows. Newer ones are usually punched higher.)
- BLANKETING. I swear it's the #1 reason I own a pony. I can't tell you how many times I've said a silent prayer before throwing a blanket over a big guy's back, hoping that A) the horse doesn't freak out, B) I don't get covered in dried mud dust or C) I actually got it somewhat aligned well.
Do you have any size-related considerations, or do you know someone at the barn who does? My husband will tell you that his 6'4 height presents just as many problems in the horse world, if not more!


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DescriptionDenotes any game where the gameplay, storyline, or setting was taken from or inspired by a specific movie, television show, book, board game or other work that predated the game. Examples: Die Hard Trilogy, Rendezvous with Rama, Below the Root, Mechwarrior, Blade Runner, etc.
|Game Title
Windows (1997)
The 3D Adventures of Sailor Moon is based on the TV anime series Sailor Moon. It is basically an interactive...
Commodore 64 (1984), Atari 2600 (1983) and TRS-80 CoCo (1982)
This is a racquetball-like game that is best described as a 3D variation of Breakout.You are at the end on...
Othello, also called Reversi, is a strategic board game played by two parties on a 8x8 grid. The game uses...
Windows (2000)
3-D Ultra Lionel Train Town Deluxe is a stand-alone reissue of 3D Ultra Train Town, which was voted "2000 Family...
Game Boy Color (2000)
3-D Ultra Pinball: Thrillride is a two-dimensional pinball game made to look like Hersheypark. This version of the game is...
Windows (1999)
Take one of the 4 completely different RC racers as you tackle 16 different tracks in 2D or 3D from...
Xbox 360 (2009) and PlayStation 3 (2009)
3 on 3 NHL Arcade is a fast-paced, loose replication of ice hockey allowing players to pick three out of...
Jūma Hōkan is based on the manga series 3x3 Eyes. Long time ago, in ancient China, a group of people...
Windows 3.x (1995) and PlayStation (1995)
Kyūsei Kōshu is based on the manga and anime series 3x3 Eyes. It tells the story of a simple Japanese...
SEGA Saturn (1996)
3x3 Eyes: Kyūsei Kōshu S is an enhanced version of 3x3 Eyes: Kyūsei Kōshu. It includes new animated sequences, new...
DOS (1996), Windows (1996), TurboGrafx CD (1994), PC-98 (1993) and FM Towns (1993)
Sanjiyan Henjō is based on the manga and anime series 3x3 Eyes. Pai, a young girl from the immortal tribe...
1983, Tibet. A weary traveler approaches a figure standing on the peak of the mountain. "You shall become human again..."...
Based on the manga series 3x3 Eyes, the game tells the story of a young man named Yakumo Fujii. He...
Windows (1997) and PlayStation (1998)
Tenrin Ō Genmu is one of the games based on the manga and anime series 3x3 Eyes. It tells the...
PlayStation (1999)
This extreme racing game comes with four different game modes. The modes are Season, Exhibition, Time Trial, and Freestyle. The...
Nintendo DS (2005)
A compilation of four of Hasbro's licensed games, Monopoly / Boggle/ Yahtzee / Battleship may be played in single player...
Windows 3.x (1993)
Let's make it simple : 4 Play is a Windows 3 version of the classic Connect 4 game.Start by choosing...
Windows (2000), PlayStation 2 (2001), Dreamcast (2000) and Macintosh (2000)
4x4 Evo is a racing game featuring real-life pickup trucks and SUV's. Actual trucks from manufacturers such as Chevrolet, Ford,...
Windows (2007)
4x4 Hummer is a racing game where the player can use one of ten licensed off-road vehicles by General Motors....
Xbox 360 (2009) and PlayStation 3 (2009)
Rapper 50 Cent is back with his half-dollar vengeance in this sequel to his first video game foray, 50 Cent:...
PlayStation 2 (2005) and Xbox (2005)
This game lets you step into the footsteps of 50 Cent himself. As he tries to free the kidnapped K-Dog...
Critic Score
Top games by as rated by the press:
- 94 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- 94 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- 94 Clifford the Big Red Dog: Phonics
- 93 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
- 93 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3
- 93 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
- 93 Tecmo Super Bowl
- 93 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Games must have at least a Critic Score of 80 to be considered.
Top games as rated by our users:
- 4.77 The Simpsons Cartoon Studio (1996)
- 4.72 Star Wars: TIE Fighter - Defender of the Empire (1994)
- 4.60 World of Outlaws: Sprint Car Racing 2002 (2002)
- 4.52 Street Fighter X Tekken (2012)
- 4.49 NASCAR Racing 4 (2001)
- 4.47 Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom (1993)
- 4.44 Roberta Williams' Mixed-Up Mother Goose (1991)
- 4.42 Tourist Trophy: The Real Riding Simulator (2006)
- 4.41 Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep (2010)
Games must have at least 5 votes and a User Score of 4.0 to be considered.
Other Attributes
Licensed is part of Other Attributes. This group of genres contain:


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I think this was someone else's project before me because the base has been spray painted black (previously silver) and has wire and bead decoration. Not quite my style.
So, after some ribbon and hot glue.... I present to you my new lamp! I am in LOVE with it!! :)
Also in the works... a palm tree (like Deanna Jump's) and transforming my plastic drawer units. More to come on that!
--Mrs. Pollard


text:
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As I woke up at 3am to catch a 7am flight from Nairobi (JKIA) to Milan (Malpensa) via Dubai I couldnt help but get butterflies.
Its always been a dream of mine to visit this particular fashion capital of the world. The playground for innovative, creative stylists and designers to Prada, Louis Vuitton, Versace, Gucci …. I could go on and on.
As I got onto the first leg of my flight barely awake or trying to be a normal human at 6am (those of you that aren't morning people will understand how hard it would have been). I went though my nornal flying routines (click here to read more).
It took me 5 1/2 hours to get to Dubai with Emirates and around 6 1/2 hours to Milan.
So not bad in my opinion. However if you are not a good sleeper than maybe prepare yourself with tablets or a good book/ work to do to pass the time.
Landing at the airport and going through all the border control formalities was normal and not as difficult as I assumed it would be for an African travelling (some of my fellow Africans know what I'm talking about). In other words as soon as they saw my visa it was a quick stamp and I was off to collect my luggage.
When you head to your hotel you have a few options:
1. Train – £3.50 one way – this has a few stops but ends in the city centre where you can then walk or catch a cab to your hotel.
2. Airport Shuttle Bus – £8 one way or £14 return – if you pick this option they drop everyone in the middle of the city and you can then maybe grab a taxi or walk to your destination, so similar to the train but only one stop.
3. Taxi – £80-£100 one way- straight to your desired location.
It takes roughly an hour without traffic to get to the city. Next post will be a guide of what there is to do in Milan and how much it costs.


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Showgirl Feather Headdress, Viva Las Vegas, Halloween Costume, Burlesque, Pink, SIlver, Ostrich
Vegas Showgirl Feather Headdress
This headdress is fit for a Queen! It's done in pink and silver with huge black ostrich plumes!
It's huge! It stands 2 1/2 feet tall!
It comes on a sturdy bandeau that fits comfortable on any size head- wigs, too!
There is a strong velvet elastic ribbon 1" inch wide across the back for extra hold!
These are also very light weight and easy to wear.
Did I mention they are sturdy, too? So sturdy you can do backflips in them- that is if you can do backflips.
These are completely perfectly finished- no exposed wires or glue or anything- front and back.
These were first designed by myself for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra's Samba dancers for Brazil Night at the Hollywood Bowl.
This item is made to order and can take up to two weeks to ship.


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In the age where technology is now so normal in our society especially among young people, it is easy to stop studying God's word and it is also easy to study more because of resources available. However a lot of people use technology for social media and things that don't help them grow spiritually.
More than ever, now is the time we need to study because we have access to resources for example Bible apps, online dictionaries and concordance. We don't have any excuse, we need self control and discipline to be able to decide how we make use of our time and also social media and technology.
Studying the Bible and knowing God more and more makes us confident, it makes us sure that we know what we are doing and that we are approved by God, studying removes shame because we will always be ready to answer most questions that concerns our faith.
Hosea 4:6, God said that His people are destroyed because they lack knowledge, ignorance leads to destruction. It makes the person an easy prey for the devil. I pray you would not be found among the ignorant, in Jesus' name.
Prayer: Lord, it is so easy to get distracted from studying Your word but I want to know You, Lord help me to focus on You and studying Your word above all the things that try to compete for my attention. Give me grace and zeal to study in Jesus' name, Amen!


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Escape the rat race! Awaken the butterfly within!
You are about to embark on a miraculous journey. You need no baggage, no heavy backpack, not even a walking stick. On this journey you will travel light.
Like many of us, Grace lives in the midst of a hectic rat race. On the surface, she seems to do well: she lives in a beautiful home, drives a luxurious car, and has a promising career in the most prestigious law firm in Toronto. But inside, Grace is dying.
Recent tragic events bundled with years of pressure to achieve, to impress, and to be recognized, have taken their toll. Her once genuine smile is now forced. Even the fastest rat eventually gets tired. Just when she's at the end of her rope, Grace meets something she didn't expect…a light rider! A master of change! A monarch butterfly of fall, ready to embark on the most miraculous of all journeys. Grace's life is about to change forever…
This book will spark the fire of change within you.
Wake up, butterfly! Wake up! Burst free of your limited shell and emerge with your butterfly wings. The world around you is filled with color and light. Flap your golden wings. Fly- and you shall see for yourself.
"This book is fun, clever and uplifting. If you like THE ALCHEMIST by Paulo Coelho or JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL by Richard Bach you'll enjoy this book. Through his rich and colorful imagination, G.H. Babagilo has created a powerful tool in this inspiring fable to teach us all to look inside ourselves to brighten the inner light of unlimited potential that already exists in each of us." by Jennifer
"This work of fiction rings a little too true in the world we're living in today. Grace is a wonderful character who makes a huge change, both physical and in her entire character and in who she is as a woman and as a person. By the end of the story you will be cheering for her and wondering about your own life decisions and beliefs. I cheered for Grace, for her journey, for her love, for her life, for the future." by BookLover
"Inspirational story that truly awaken the butterfly within, For those who are looking to make a change, or just a journey to enjoy, this will hold you from beginning to end. Live in the present moment. I truly recommend it." by Tula
G.H. BABAGILO is a traveler and lover of life. He has traveled widely and lived in many countries throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America and the United States.
His interests and activities are broad and diverse ranging from backpacking and rock climbing to surfing and dancing the tango. Above all, his writing comes from the depths of his soul and the heights of his imagination.


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How is listening taught in law school—if it is taught at all? Some wonderful work is being done, especially in the clinics. But even the strongest and most effective approach to listening typically found in legal education today seems to be based in individual courses. It seems possible that a given law student could graduate … Continue reading Innovating the 2L and 3L years
Month: March 2015
The nice thing about Twitter is you can learn from events you can't actually attend. Today Stephen M.R. Covey (son of the 7 Habits guy) spoke at the "DEXIO" conference in Canada: Developing Excellence in Others. This slide from Covey's talk caught my eye: https://twitter.com/ITCatherine/status/576783705168986113 (HT to @ITCatherine for the slide.) Covey's list of 13 leadership … Continue reading Where competence and character come together
The state bar where I am licensed just blast e-mailed a survey for the Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers project of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System. According to the survey e-mail, this project has three goals: finding out "what law graduates need to launch successful careers in the legal profession" creating "models of legal education to … Continue reading Defining success for new lawyers


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Kelly Clarkson should be a bigger deal.
Her voice is soulful and powerful and sounds like all the best qualities of Pink, Beyonce, and Joss Stone's voices mixed into one. She throws vocal runs and tricks like they're nothing and belts with a ridiculous amount of power and control.
She's one of the best singers in the industry right now, but she's somehow not up on that pedestal, so why not?
As far as her vocal talents go, she's unfaultable. This album has seen her finally step into the realms of soul and R&B which her voice was made to dominate. But she doesn't quite commit.
She keeps slipping back into this safe pop zone, which makes money and gets radio play when she's capable of so much more. These all sound like songs anyone could sing which they shouldn't because not many people can sing like this. When you take her voice out of the equation, Songs like Love So Soft, Meaning of Life and Move you are actually fairly unremarkable tunes.
She brings a bit of fire with Whole Lotta Woman, in which she channels Mo-Town vibes but still has declarations like "I'm a strong, badass chick with class and confidence" which take it from an R.E.S.P.E.C.T-type anthem to a level which feels a little juvenile.
It's frustrating because there's not really much wrong with this album and what there is, is easily made up for by Clarkson's talent, especially now she's unleashed a little.
But indulgent as it may be to say, she just didn't push it hard enough and the thought of what this album could've been makes what it actually is just a bit underwhelming.
Kelly Clarkson, Meaning of Life
Artist: Kelly Clarkson
Album: Meaning of Life
Label: Warner Music
Verdict: A lesson in vocal talent, but not what it should've been


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ZERO's Heroes is an initiative aimed to unite the prostate cancer community, help our voices be heard, and take action to end prostate cancer. We invite you to take a few minutes today to showcase your courage and strength to inspire and connect with those who have been touched by this disease.
We welcome everyone who has been touched by prostate cancer including survivors, family members, volunteers, friends, caregivers, researchers, medical providers and our corporate and non-profit partners to join us as warriors in our fight against prostate cancer.
With each personal story, ZERO's Heroes will raise awareness and shed light on the journey to end prostate cancer. Thank you for being a pioneer to help build our ZERO's Heroes community, submit your story here.
At ZERO, we're fighting to end prostate cancer 365 days a year. Meet some of the patients and families for whom we are fighting.
Steve Abbott
Steve Abbott was diagnosed with prostate cancer four years ago, at age 50. Following a radical prostatectomy in September 2013, ... Read More
Vivian Avery
Vivian Avery watched both her father and father-in-law battle prostate cancer. Watching two men she loved battle such a terrible ... Read More
Juan Batres
Enrique Batres was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer in 2012. In April 2014, his son, Juan, and ... Read More
Judy Berman and Bob Thompson
As is often the case, Judy Berman had to corral her husband to go to his routine physical exam in ... Read More
Steve Birdsall
Steve Birdsall is a 59-year old father of two sons. He's also a custom furniture builder, a career he's held ... Read More
Daniel Blount
Daniel Blount was 56 when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer through an annual check-up. However, after a prostatectomy and ... Read More
Jean Bruggman
Jean Bruggman's dad was diagnosed with Stage IV prostate cancer when she was 17 years old. Originally given a year ... Read More
Miguel Buddle
When Miguel Buddle was serving in the Army in 1996, an annual physical revealed a nodule on the back of ... Read More
Anna Carabetta
The day that shattered Anna and her husband Joe's world began like any other. At his annual physical exam, Joe's ... Read More
Malcolm Carmine
Before he was diagnosed with Stage IV prostate cancer at age 49 in May 2014, Malcolm Carmine received misdiagnoses from ... Read More
Nick Cascio
Nick Cascio's prostate cancer diagnosis was prompted when he moved from Stroudsburg to the Lehigh Valley and changed doctors. He ... Read More
Stephen Casper
Stephen was diagnosed with Stage II prostate cancer in 2006. After considering his treatment options, he had a radical prostatectomy ... Read More
Aram Chakerian
Aram Chakerian initially didn't believe his urologist when he told him he needed a prostate biopsy due to a rising ... Read More
Ray Christie
Ray Christie was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008 at age 54. At the time, his doctor gave him six ... Read More
Kevin Conroy
Andrew Zweig was diagnosed with Stage IV prostate cancer when he was 50 years old. Known by friends and family ... Read More
Mike Crosby
Mike Crosby is a retired US Naval Commander and now serves as the President of Green Life Can, LLC. He ... Read More
Richard Dalton
Richard Dalton was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2000. Though his doctor strongly recommended surgery – even going so far ... Read More
Grace, Danielle, Marlene, and José "Pepe" DeLeon
José "Pepe" DeLeon was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2002. Several months after having his prostate removed, follow-up tests revealed ... Read More
Evan Denhart
When his father was diagnosed with prostate cancer at the young age of 54, Evan Denhart knew he had to ... Read More
Dave Deschenes
Dave Deschenes was diagnosed with prostate cancer at the young age of 38 following a routine physical exam. With a ... Read More
Sarah Dunn, Amy Donaldson, and Julie Tofte
Sarah Dunn, Amy Donaldson, and Julie Tofte were born and raised in Napa Valley, CA. After losing their grandfather to ... Read More
Dennis Eidem
What do you do when you've lost your father, grandfather, and uncle to prostate cancer? When you and your two ... Read More
Bob Evensen
When Bob's father, grandfather, and two uncles were all diagnosed with prostate cancer, he knew that he had to be ... Read More
Warren Foster
When Warren Foster – a San Francisco resident and avid body builder – was diagnosed with an aggressive form of ... Read More
Rob Freitas
Rob Freitas doesn't let his prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment stop him from living his life. Diagnosed with prostate cancer ... Read More
Sherry Galloway
Nearly ten years ago, Sherry Galloway's son Jeremy lost his battle with advanced metastatic disease at the young age of ... Read More
Mitchell Garber
In May of 2016, Mitchell Garber was diagnosed with prostate cancer after a two-year period of a doubling PSA. Though ... Read More
Robert Ginyard
Robert Ginyard's major battle used to be raising capital and launching his own business. He never imagined that he would ... Read More
John Graham
Eight years ago John was diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer. He was only 55 years old and had been ... Read More
Idola Henry Gunn
When Art Gunn asked his wife to take him to the Emergency Room on January 1, 2008, Idola was alarmed ... Read More
Charlie Hill
Charlie Hill is a prostate cancer warrior. He has spoken at ZERO Prostate Cancer Run/Walk events in Virginia Beach, and ... Read More
The Hoetgers
Ray Hoetger received his first PSA test more than a decade ago, at the age of 52. He was given ... Read More
George Hopkins
When George Hopkins went in for his routine physical in 2012, he did not expect to find out he had ... Read More
Nicola Howard
Nicola Howard's father was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2000, at the age of 73. Seven years later, he lost ... Read More
Jeff Jernigan
Jeff Jernigan knows that he would not be alive today if not for a PSA test during his annual physical ... Read More
Randall Kam
Randall Kam has Stage IV prostate cancer, but he doesn't let that stop him. After completing the Long Beach Marathon ... Read More
Stuart Kilgore
When Stuart Kilgore's annual check-up revealed an elevated PSA in September of 2012, he was only 51 years old. He ... Read More
Don LaFollette
When Don LaFollette – a 45-year-old Paraglider Pilot – found out that an old friend was battling breast cancer and ... Read More
Joshua Lerman
Joshua Lerman first learned about prostate cancer at 27 years old, when his father fought, and ultimately lost, his battle ... Read More
Landi Maduro
A few years ago Landi's filmmaking partner, E. Chris Edwards, came to her with an idea for a new film ... Read More
Dr. Jim McAndrew
Dr. Jim McAndrew and his wife, Cynthia, began the ZERO Prostate Cancer Run/Walk in Tyler to honor his father and ... Read More
Christine McMillan
Twenty-three years ago, Christine McMillan's maternal grandfather was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Little did she know the impact that the ... Read More
Todd McMillon
Todd McMillon was just 39 years old when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. A husband, father, and former cornerback ... Read More
Tony Minter
When Tony Minter was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2012, he was 50 years old and had been monitoring his ... Read More
Doyle Minton
In September of 1993 at the age of 46, Doyle Minton was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He'd been feeling sluggish ... Read More
Scott Moore
Scott Moore was driving home from work one day when intuition stopped him in his tracks. Something just didn't feel ... Read More
Sam Mullins
Sam Mullins' father was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2013. A year later, Sam - an Air Force veteran - ... Read More
Don Murphy
Don Murphy was first diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2014, only ten months after he retired. He was 55 and ... Read More
The Nikituks
Paul Nikituk was diagnosed with prostate cancer in October 2005, and lost his battle to the disease just 14 short ... Read More
Brian Nolen
Brian Nolen was diagnosed with Stage IV prostate cancer when he was just 49 years old. In February of 2016, ... Read More
Bob Parker
Bob Parker was diagnosed with prostate cancer 14 years ago after his doctor told him prostate cancer screening was "pointless." ... Read More
Donald Paul
Donald Paul was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997, and underwent a radical prostatectomy to treat his disease. His PSA ... Read More
Johnny Payne
Johnny Payne is a seasoned prostate cancer advocate and educator. Diagnosed in 2001 in his mid-50s, Johnny was not being ... Read More
Shanita Perry
Shanita Perry's grandfather was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1999, but even after a radical prostatectomy, the disease recurred in ... Read More
David Phillips
After his uncle was diagnosed with prostate cancer in his 70s, David Phillips became aware of his need to be ... Read More
David Pieper
Ever since David Pieper's father was diagnosed with prostate cancer nearly 20 years ago, he has been proactive and aware ... Read More
Lindsay Price
Lindsay Price's father was first diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008. After initially keeping his cancer at bay, in 2012 ... Read More
Hallie Estrada and Randy John
Randy John was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer in December of 2014. For his daughter Hallie, the hardest part is ... Read More
Peter L. Roberts
Fourteen years ago, Peter Roberts was given six months to live. He was fifty years old and had just been ... Read More
Gregory Robertson
In 2008 Gregory Robertson made his first appointment with a urologist. He had a few issues with his insurance and ... Read More
Chas Rodgers
Chas Rodgers was diagnosed with Stage IV prostate cancer in April 2013 on his 45th birthday. That same year, he ... Read More
Robert Rummage
Robert was diagnosed with Stage IV prostate cancer on his 60th birthday. It was February 2015, and he'd visited the ... Read More
David Sauls
David Sauls was always proactive about his health and got tested regularly for prostate cancer. When he was diagnosed at ... Read More
Suzanne Schlernitzauer
Suzanne Schlernitzauer's brother Terry was diagnosed with prostate cancer when he was 59 years old. After undergoing cyber knife therapy, ... Read More
The Schwartz Family
The fiercely passionate Schwartz family of Atlanta, GA has been dedicated to ending prostate cancer for three generations. William (Bill) ... Read More
Phil Shulka
Phil Shulka did not initially want to get tested for prostate cancer. After much urging from his wife he did, ... Read More
Austin Six
Austin Six began PSA testing at age 44. His father was diagnosed with the disease at age 73 and opted ... Read More
Charles Sweeney
In July 2007, Charles Sweeney was a healthy 59-year-old man who had retired with his wife, Claire. At his annual ... Read More
Paul Taylor
Col. Paul Taylor was set to deploy to Afghanistan in 2012 when he was diagnosed with stage IV prostate cancer ... Read More
Lauren Taylor
Four years ago, Lauren's father, Col. Paul Taylor, was diagnosed with Stage IV prostate cancer at the young age of ... Read More
Donald and Nick Vann
When Nick and his family learned that his father - Donald J. Vann Jr. - had prostate cancer at only ... Read More
Dan Wagoner
One month shy of his 66th birthday, Dan Wagoner got a diagnosis no man wants to hear: he had prostate ... Read More
Guy Williams
In May 2014 while visiting his dad in Atlanta, Guy Williams learned that his father was being treated for prostate ... Read More
Jerry Woolverton
Jerry knew prostate cancer could be in his future after he watched his father battle and beat the disease. After ... Read More


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Refrigerant-22 Alternatives
Geothermal heat pumps currently on the market use HCFC-22 or R-22 as the refrigerant. This is the same refrigerant used in many residential and commercial air conditioners and heat pumps, except for large centrifugal chillers, which in the past used CFC refrigerants.
HCFC-22 has a very low ozone depletion potential (0.055) compared to 1.0 for CFC-11 and CFC-12, the two other most popular refrigerants used in large chillers. Most scientists consider HCFC-22 to be a bridge refrigerant that can take us through the phase-out of -11 and -12. No health or safety issues have been identified with R-22.
The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments call for HCFC-22 production, not use, to be phased out by the year 2030. This could be extended at a later date if continuing atmospheric tests so indicate.
Long term substitutes for HCFC-22 are being developed and will probably be blends of various HFC refrigerants (such as R-410A), since they have little or no ozone depletion potential. None are expected to be a "drop-in replacement".
Regardless, R-22 will be available over the useful life of any geothermal heat pumps installed now. There is no current "drop-in" substitute for R-22. Research and development continues to seek substitutes since R-22 is the predominant refrigerant used in screw, scroll, and reciprocating air conditioners.


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The IMPACT Program at New Britain Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC) is accepting enrollment in its program for job development and support for young adults.
IMPACT stands for "Intelligence, Motivated, Patience, Attitude and Career Training. Free enrollment in the program is accepted by August 7, 2017. People, aged 18 to 24, who have a high school diploma or are close to completing a diploma or GED, are not enrolled in college and meet income requirements may be eligible for the program.
The twelve week Phase 1 of the program is on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, from 9:30am to 1:00pm. Classroom instruction at OIC and job development and support includes:
- Customer service
- Job Shadowing
- Internship
- Continued case management
Phase 2 of the program, based on successful completion of Phase 1, is determined by Tunxis Community College. It includes certificate programs in:
- Emergency Medical Technician (EMT)
- Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA)
- Pharmacy Technician
The regional workforce development agency, Capitol Workforce Partners, lists IMPACT OIC as one of the WIOA Youth programs it supports. Capitol Workforce Partners describes WIOA Youth programs as,
Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) programs are designed to involve targeted participants in training and skills building activities to engage them in their local workforce. All programs are for youth ages 18 – 24 in the Hartford and New Britain areas.
The New Britain OIC is located at 114 North Street and its phone number is (860)224-7151.


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Southern Identity Is The First Step
by Tex Wood
Over the last couple weeks we're had two really strange cases of confused and misplaced identity. First, the testosterone-filled athlete and Olympic gold metal winner Bruce Jenner now claims to be a "woman" and similarly Rachel Dolezal, claims to be black. The former would have been quite odd a generation ago but for the last few years, the media has pushed normalcy of the transgendered quite heavily. In the latter, the confused white NAACP leader who identifies as black, transracial is only a taste, the forbearer and beginning of such repercussions from forty years of social Marxist programming in media, television, movies, academia and quite frankly, society as a whole.
I think that if a Marxist kicks a dog over and over for forty years, eventually he's going to succumb and cower. Our people, white folks- especially white Southerners, have been refused our own identity by society and have therefore, grasped towards the identity of others. For two generations or more in an up-side-down, social Marxist 'Murika our people have uniquely been told it's 'hate' to LOVE our own people, to embrace our heritage and even identity. I say that's wrong and needs to change.
It's natural, it's normal, it's okay to LOVE who you are, your people. Learn the POSITIVE things about your heritage and history, study them, embrace them, submerge yourself, especially your children into them. It's good to have loyalty to your own, your own family- your children, and likewise, your own extended family…your people. In a HEALTHY society these things are GOOD, natural and normal. All other groups recognize and know this instinctively, we did too before the age of television swept into every household to condition the majority like a Marxist kicking your family dog. If you're a northerner, identify with your state, your locality and your people. If you're a Southerner, as I am or even a northern transplant living in the South, embrace your southern identity with full force…….LOVE YOUR PEOPLE.