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Regular price: $31.50
This compilation includes three Jack Reacher novellas and the ultimate fan guide, "Jack Reacher's Rules"....
It's been a while since we first met Lee Child's Jack Reacher in Killing Floor....
Before he was considered a CIA superagent, Mitch Rapp was a gifted college athlete without a care in the world. And then tragedy struck....
For LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch, the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic....
Will Robie, a stone-cold hitman, may have just made the first - and last - mistake of his career....
World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist....
This compilation includes three Jack Reacher novellas and the ultimate fan guide, "Jack Reacher's Rules"....
It's been a while since we first met Lee Child's Jack Reacher in Killing Floor....
Before he was considered a CIA superagent, Mitch Rapp was a gifted college athlete without a care in the world. And then tragedy struck....
For LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch, the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic....
Will Robie, a stone-cold hitman, may have just made the first - and last - mistake of his career....
World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist....
Never go back - but Jack Reacher does, and the past finally catches up with him.... Never Go Back is number-one New York Times best-selling author Lee Child's new novel of action-charged suspense starring "one of the best thriller characters at work today" (Newsweek).
Former military cop Jack Reacher makes it all the way from snowbound South Dakota to his destination in northeastern Virginia, near Washington, D.C.: the headquarters of his old unit, the 110th MP. The old stone building is the closest thing to a home he ever had.
Reacher is there to meet - in person - the new commanding officer, Major Susan Turner, so far just a warm, intriguing voice on the phone.
But it isn't Turner behind the CO's desk. And Reacher is hit with two pieces of shocking news, one with serious criminal consequences, and one too personal to even think about.
When threatened, you can run or fight.
Reacher fights, aiming to find Turner and clear his name, barely a step ahead of the army, and the FBI, and the D.C. Metro police, and four unidentified thugs.
Combining an intricate puzzle of a plot and an exciting chase for truth and justice, Lee Child puts Reacher through his paces - and makes him question who he is, what he's done, and the very future of his untethered life on the open road.
"Expect the Best, Prepare for the Worst" becomes a theme through this book, but no need to prepare for the worst--this story is awesome.
I've listened to all 18 of the Reacher series over the last three years, and Lee Child continues to shine as the creator of Jack Reacher in #18.
As a Jack Reacher fan, all the great qualities are there:
--Lee Child keeps it clean while keeping the action and the story riveting.
--He makes Reacher multi-layered and complex by having Reacher cracks skulls of bad guys, then in another scene, out smart the bad guys through his knowledge of body language, human behavior, math, and yes, even poetry.
--He reveals just a touch of Reacher's soft side.
--He continues to unfold details of Reacher's past, weaving together a complete character that gets better and better with each book.
--Throws in just a bit of humor that makes Reacher human.
This story is even better than many of the first 17 in the Reacher series because there are a couple of great female characters. Like, really, really great female characters--the best he has introduced yet.
The ending did feel a little "quick." I wish the action had been drawn out more, but to me, that's just a sign of a great book. I never want a great book to actually end.
If this is your first Reacher novel, you'll miss out on a few "insider" jokes, like the folding toothbrushes. But overall, you certainly would be able to follow the story and enjoy it.
As for the performance, as usual, Dick Hill is perfect. I think a narrator should disappear and let the story shine and Hill does that. As usual, I'm super impressed with his female voices, you don't even notice him which leaves you free to just enjoy the story.
As with most Reacher fans, I was disappointed with #17, but Lee Child is back and better than ever.
I highly recommend.
60 of 69 people found this review helpful
No one loved Jack Reacher more than I did, at least for the first 6 or 7 installments. The plots were taut and unexpected, our hero intriguing and the wit as dry as the Mojave. But these wonderful books have devolved into self-parody. This novel has a ridiculous plot -- with such risible features as an inflight brawl in an airplane restroom. As if two small people could fit in one of those, much less the Frigidaire-sized Reacher and his opponent! Also, Reacher has theories about himself that involve campfires and howling wolves and he's happy to share them. The mystery of Reacher's stunning fitness (the man eats pancakes and cheeseburgers exclusively, logs countless hours riding around in cars and never so much as skims a gym contract) is explained, basically, as "born this way". I am very very sorry to be unable to recommend this book.
10 of 11 people found this review helpful
What did you love best about Never Go Back?
Great story. Almost as good as Killing Floor - which is my favorite
Who was your favorite character and why?
Jack Reacher of course!
Have you listened to any of Dick Hill's other performances before? How does this one compare?
Dick Hill is one of my favorite narrators. I intentionally search for books he has read and have tried new authors solely because he is the reader.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The end.
Any additional comments?
I can not wait for the next Reacher book, I have enjoyed every one and recommend them to anyone who has never picked up a Lee Child book.
26 of 30 people found this review helpful
I was hoping beyond hope that Child's last book (Wanted Man) was a fluke. I thought that he got the terrible writing out of his system and now he will be back in form. Unfortunately this new book is nearly as bad. The only blessing is this time we didn't have to listen to Reacher speak with a broken nose. I am no longer willing to sit through the seemingly endless redundant dialogue to get a couple of minutes of my "Reacher fix".
Come back to us Lee!!
22 of 26 people found this review helpful
If you have ever enjoyed a Jack Reacher novel, give this one a miss. A more frustrating audio novel I have never encountered. It's as if Lee Childs were getting a penny a word like the old-time journalists used to earn. There's more useless detail in this novel than you could possible imagine. Who is interested whether the heroine's boots are under the chair and Reacher's jacket on the back of the chair when it has nothing to do with the plot. Speaking of which, I'm sure the plot is fascinating, but the snippets are so few and far between as to be laughable.The premise of Reacher's returning to his 101st command base because of a voice on the phone is weak enough, but the rest of the plot unfolds with glacial speed and I find myself longing for the hardcover so I can skim.
20 of 24 people found this review helpful
Reacher has been such a great series, but I think the plots, action and women are wearing thin for me. That isn't to say I won't be ready for the next one when it comes out but for right now I am glad the series is out of unheard books.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful
i read enough reviews of the most recent reacher offering to think that childs had gone soft on plot in service of political commentary, so I skipped #17. many thanks to reviewers for the helpful notes on #18. this is a great addition to the series. the title is perfect - the one thing you are saying after reacher goes back to his old unit and **early plotline but not critical spoiler alert** gets reinstated in order to face felony charges is that jack, you should never go back.
there were three sequences where reacher was breaking bones, and i thought the narrative did not need to be so graphic. that was a minor complaint. the plot twists and turns in this were clever and as good as any i have seen in the 6-7 reachers i have done on audible.
the samantha character was great.
the tell at the end - the underlying scheming that put everything into motion - was fine but not nearly as strong as the rest of the book. and as i captioned the review, i could not put this book down.
someone confused the narrator with scott brick. this is not a brick narration, but rather dick hill, who has a very different style. (i happen to like both.) when dick hill is at his best, he is the best. this was a great narration by hill, especially including the female voices.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
This book is an improvement over the last few books but does not reach the quality of the first few books in the series. It is better to have read the books in order but one still gets the idea if this is the first of the series you have read. In this book Reacher arrives in Virginia at the Military Police Base he once commanded to see Major Turner who he has met on the phone in the book before this one. He wants to invite her out to dinner. Only she is in jail herself for taking bribes. The temporary C.O. want to see Reacher, he informs him he has two charges against him and he is back in the Army. Reacher sets out to clear himself and Turner from the charges. From here the stories suspense and action build but toward the end of the book it starts to lag a bit. For the Reacher fans he is fighting two men with his hands behind his back and other almost unbelievable feat of action. This story also has Reacher doing his usual tricks with math but also reciting poetry. For Reacher fans most will enjoy the story. Looking forward to the next book.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
I would recommend the audiobook. It has a plausible story line and enough hook to keep you wanting to continue.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Never Go Back?
I loved the interaction with the Samantha Dayton character. I thought it was really funny that one of the bad guys in the book is named David Baldacci.
10 of 12 people found this review helpful
I love Jack Reacher, he is one of a kind. I felt the last book was not up to par, this one is fast paced and entertaining. The author actually let some of Reacher's human traits come through, just a wee bit, this is Reacher! Those of you who know Reacher from the inception will be glad to know he's back on track, kicking ass and taking names!
10 of 12 people found this review helpful


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These bones got dug up whilst I was at work. I'm just wondering if anybody can ID them.
Thank you very much.
these are cow bones :> the first one looks like a vertebra(?) cut up to feed to dogs, and then a rib, and then a jaw
Thank you for your reply. They were dug up in the city centre of Sheffield, strange place for a cow. Thanks again

subset: commoncrawl


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August 25, 2009
Xavier + Ashley Headed to Work Today
Thanks, Gabi!
7 comments:
Xavier is really starting to tickle my taste buds. I mean putting him on the same level as Rob is probably a bit extreme and saying that I would be really getting ahead of myself. But dayum. I'm just sayin'...ReplyDelete
- twilightislifeAugust 25, 2009 at 9:18 PM
HEADING TO WORK??!! pfft.ReplyDelete
p.s. he's growing on me too ;)
theyre definatly spotted together a lot lately..ReplyDelete
i mean i know theyre filming the same movie.. but still hmmm
I<3 Ashley she too cute for words
He's always wearing the same pants (it looks like) and with his belt to the side. Xavier put on some different pants every now and then. Still hot though :DReplyDelete
@ THParkle- they all (the guys) seem to wear the same clothes over and over, but I guess if you go to work and change into costume- things can't get too dirty:))ReplyDelete
We needto keep in mind these kids areReplyDelete
working out of suitcases. That's why
they out shopping to buy things they left oh in
say usa, australia, england, south america


text:
Pages: 1
hello! i need a program foe resizing the hdd.i have a big partition of 20 G and i want to create 5 G of vfat (without losing the information on the partition).can u help me?!?
phone cards
How I did it was by simply resizing the filesystem, and then modifying the partition table. But you must be very careful and it's a bit scary, so backup up the most important stuff is a good thing to do (always actually). I left a big gap between the filesystem end and resized partition end to be sure. Perhaps it's best to find a good application, something like the MAndrake installer uses or something (last time I looked parted didn't seem useful, at least not for reiserfs).
now i have another problem....the programs (qtparted and parted) are telling me to umount the partition that i have to resize.....so i tried...but nothing : "umount : /: device busy".it can not be posible.i closed all the programs...then i entered "init 3" "init 2".nothing.same shit "umount : /: device busy". i also have to say that my hda is parted like this:
hda1................BOOT Primary Linux ext2..............34.07
hda2...........................Primary Linux swap..............268.89
hda3...........................Primary Linux ext3...............30447.09 (Gb)
hda3 is /home (the defaults from arch install).
so...can anyone help me?
My mama said once: ...........***K OFF!!!! She was right!
phone cards
more and more shit........i've entered init 1.Then "umount /dev/hda3".....the answer:
"/: device is busy"......how in hell is this possible?
init 1...for god's sakes.......this is gating better and better.....i hate myself
My mama said once: ...........***K OFF!!!! She was right!
phone cards
boot off a live cd. It is hard to unmount the partition when you are running off of it.
"Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept." -- Postel's Law
"tacos" -- Cactus' Law
"t̥͍͎̪̪͗a̴̻̩͈͚ͨc̠o̩̙͈ͫͅs͙͎̙͊ ͔͇̫̜t͎̳̀a̜̞̗ͩc̗͍͚o̲̯̿s̖̣̤̙͌ ̖̜̈ț̰̫͓ạ̪͖̳c̲͎͕̰̯̃̈o͉ͅs̪ͪ ̜̻̖̜͕" -- -̖͚̫̙̓-̺̠͇ͤ̃ ̜̪̜ͯZ͔̗̭̞ͪA̝͈̙͖̩L͉̠̺͓G̙̞̦͖O̳̗͍
Try umount -l /dev/hda3
You cannot unmount the root partition, so use a livecd or something.
hda3 is /home
He say that it is home partition, so it is able to unmount.
Yes, /home is on /dev/hda3, but /home doesn't have it's own partition, so home is part of the root partition. Hence the "/: device is busy" errors...
ok....i tryed on knoppix with qtparted and parted foe shell....nothing ...then i did "e2fsck" on th epartition..........it tooked me a while ...nothing.and yes u are right,...it is the home paatition and also it is / partition .when i installed arch i chosed eraise the disk...alll the disk...and arch made tha partition by himself the way he wanted...now ...i don't know...i will try tomorow..now i have to get some sleeep
My mama said once: ...........***K OFF!!!! She was right!
phone cards
hda3 (/dev/discs/disc0/part3) is his root partition. so it can not be umount-ed
but knoppix does not help either, i've tried to parted it. but if i try a resize from it t sais it can not find that partition. weird stuff. to enter parted i did a parted /dev/hda3 . when i hit a prit from parted it displays it's start and end. qtparted from knoopix does not show the resize option, and the statu of /dev/hda3 s "busy".
Forever newbie !!!
Make sure it isn't automatically mounted by knoppix, and that you run parted as root.
of course .....knoppix doesn't mount anything from your hdd.after i put the cd i and run from it , i loocked in shell if the hdd was mounted...and it says hda3 not mounted.....and parted can only be run by root
My mama said once: ...........***K OFF!!!! She was right!
phone cards
Pages: 1


text: On Tue, 5 Apr 2005, Tony Travis wrote: > Robert G. Brown wrote: > > [...] > > Ah, but the PROPER and ORIGINAL meaning of axiom is "unprovable > > assumption" upon which a system of logic and discourse is built. The > > final half-definition is the only one that is actually correct. > > > In fact, I've got a whole essay entitled "Axioms" on my personal > > website. Seriously. > > Hello, Robert. > > OK, I bow to your greater wisdom: I have now learned that axioms are: > > "...unprovable assumptions whose truth and falsehood cannot be assessed" > [http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Philosophy/axioms.php] > > What struck me was that both Mark and Joe used the word "axiom" > appropriately according to at least one dictionary: > > http://www.thefreedictionary.com/axiom Oh, I have much the same definition from Webster in the very work cited above -- the interesting thing (and reason I brought it up) is that "axiom" in everyday usage HAS come to mean something that is self-evidently true, without question, when the Greek/Latin root meaning is actually in some sense the opposite -- something that is not self-evidently true, but that is assumed to be true literally for the sake of argument. rom Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]: Axiom, n.-- L. axioma, Gr.; that which is thought worthy, that which is assumed, a basis of demonstration, a principle, fr.; to think worthy, fr.; worthy, weighing as much as; cf.; to lead, drive, also to weigh so much: cf F. axiome. See Agent. 1. (Logic and Math.) A self-evident and necessary truth, or a proposition whose truth is so evident as first sight that no reasoning or demonstration can make it plainer; a proposition which it is necessary to take for granted; as, ``The whole is greater than a part;'' ``A thing can not, at the same time, be and not be.'' 2. An established principle in some art or science, which, though not a necessary truth, is universally received; as, the axioms of political economy. "That which is assumed", "That which is thought worthy" is a fair description of meaning, and "the basis of a demonstration" (or argument:-) better still, but Webster makes a common and real mistake in calling an axiom a self-evident truth in Mathematics or Logic. One important enough to discuss in some detail even on a list like this one where it is a bit off topic but where a lot of people participate in reasoning and debate. Axioms shape discourse, and it is very important to understand that to avoid spinning one's wheels or missing new truths, and you can't know too much formal mathematics;-) In Webster's very example, "The whole is greater than the part" precludes the existence of negative numbers or the entirety of vector algebra (where |\vec{A} + \vec{B}| can easily be less than |\vec{A}| and |\vec{B}| and is always <= |vec{A}| + |\vec{B}| (triangle inequality). Curved space geometry follows only when one drops the "self-evident" axiom that parallel lines never meet. Nowhere is it MORE evident that an axiom is that which is assumed as the basis for a demonstration or formal reasoning and >>not<< absolute or self-evident truth than in mathematics and logic. "Its axiomatic that..." is another way of saying "For the sake of argument, let's both assume that..." However, the actual usage in the discussion was sense 2, where calling something an "axiom" (or using something as if it were an axiom) is a political and argumentative step intended to short-circuit the reasoning process. Self-evident truths such as "All men were created equal" are manifestly and obvious falsehoods by any objective measure (and begs at least three or four serious questions to boot, as in "men" (versus women and children and dogs and fish), "created" (as opposed to evolved, appeared out of nowhere, are a figment of my solipsistic imagination), "equal" (in precisely what abstract and projective geometry, given that this usage is clearly not the same as what is meant when I say 1 is equal to 2*(1/2) or my weight is equal to 980 Newtons. This sort of "axiomatic" reasoning is a powerful tool in any debate. Here one makes a statement that one hopes to have ACCEPTED as being "axiomatically true" as this begs the question and precludes any possible argument. The entire discussion on the subject of e.g. abortion is rife with this sort of "axiomatic" reasoning, and unsurprisingly such debate is not only unresolved, it is unresolvable as the participants fail to agree on their basic axioms and will inevitably be led to different, equally "valid", conclusions. Semantically, the argument is that of a typical five year old -- "Is so." "Is not." "Is so." Not terribly useful. > I don't think their discussion was pointless: Actually, I found it > interesting and relevant to my own situation running openMosix on a I agree that it wasn't useless and was enjoying it at least to where I was apparently making Joe feel bad (which was never my intention, and I apologize, Joe:-), but one aspect of it WAS useless -- the issue of whether or not FC is or is not a "beta distribution". Whether you call it an issue of axioms or definitions, it was (and still is) clear that Mark and Joe (and I:-) >>agreed<< about what Fedora Core "is" -- an actual linux distribution, with its own decisioning process, its own testing process (including both alpha and beta phases), its own community-based repair mechanism (whether or not one finds it to be efficient, it is certainly there). It quacks like a duck, likes water, and its mature females lay eggs -- call it a duck. Joe calls it a "rolling beta distribution" because one of several undoubted benefits Red Hat gets from funding it is the ability to see what works and what doesn't and only select from it what works for their (necessarily) ultra-conservative Enterprise release. Mark agrees that Red Hat does get to select from it (and from all the other linuces in existence, and from new or different packages that may not have appeared in FC) for EL, but insists that this doesn't make FC a "rolling beta distribution". (Parenthetically, it is fair to say that the many people who work on or with FC who do NOT work for or even with Red Hat per se might take offense at hearing their work portrayed as a "rolling beta distribution for Red Hat" used as a pejorative term, just as Debian people get tired of hearing that Debian is always either way behind (for the stable version) or unstable (surprise) for the development version and linux people in general get REALLY tired by the old saw that Microsoft is "supported" and linux is not. I'm equally sure Joe never meant to offend any of them, either -- he was just making and emphasizing a point.) This is the point where things do get silly. Two people agree as to what Fedora core "is" in terms of all its functional aspects, but argue over what it is to be called, which distracts from the real point, which is/was whether FC was a suitable distro to choose for use on a cluster and whether any of the specific issues that e.g. Joe encountered with particular packages were problems with FC per se or with those packages. There anybody who has been on the list more than a few days KNOWS that the answer is going to be "it depends" and "YMMV"; a useful >>discussion<< illuminates what it depends ON, so users can answer very reasonable questions such as "ok, so I might have to rebuild a kernel in order to use a kernel-tainting Nvidia driver and still use FC". It is also useful to hear where something will not work under any circumstances, and where particular users have reported problems and gotten less than satisfactory responses (such as Greg's experience). Instead Joe calls it a "beta" in some very large, very general sense in which the >>entire distribution<< is a beta, since it clearly >>has its own<< beta releases, as do (in many cases) the individual >>packages<< from which it is comprised, and calling something that is post-beta for an actual, formal beta test a "beta" is clearly not "technically" correct. Clearly he means to imply that FC as a whole is not acceptable, as beta software is almost by definition full of undiscovered bugs and not ready for a prime time. Beta is being used as a term of indictment. Mark insists that this isn't technically correct (and he's right) -- a post-beta product is not in any accepted sense of the term, a beta product. Also, ALL post-beta releases can still be full of bugs depending on how broad the beta phases were and how complex the product; hence the "gamma release" joke/extension of the series. Show me a major linux distribution that never had a release that was a "beta" in the sense that a ton of stuff in the HUNDREDS of packages distributed was more than a bit broken or buggy, and I'll show you a major distro that doesn't need an update stream. (Any takers? I thought not.) That still leaves open the IMPLICIT indictment and question -- "is FC ready for prime time"? or "Is RH to blame for FC's particular bug stream"? Fortunately, we all know what BOTH of them mean, and fully realize BOTH that RH gains various benefits from the de facto testing that occurs in FC and that FC is not, actually a beta for RHEL in anything like the sense that the term is used in an actual software development cycle. FC >>has<< a beta phase, and its "gamma" phase >>does<< further refine the release because bugs do get fixed however responsive or unresponsive the formal FC "community support" mechanism is. That doesn't save RH from having to run an actual beta on their own EL products, though. Let me be clear in a way I hope everybody can agree on. RHEL is most definitely NOT just some late snapshot of a given FC release rebranded, and that's precisely what it would have to be in order to make Joe's assertion technically correct. Whole releases of FC occur in between RHEL releases, and frankly with only FC 1-3 under our belts it is really difficult for me to accept ANY useful assertion concerning whether FC is going to be "stable" or "unstable" or conservative or radical in the long run. FC 1 was, indeed, pretty much a beta release, but I personally have found FC 2 to be every bit as stable/functional as any given RH x.y <= 9 ever was and far MORE stable and useful than a number of memorable specific releases. FC 3 I'm undecided about -- it works well enough but also has enough differences that I'm a bit uncomfortable with the rate of change, especially in X. However, as always, YMMV, caveat emptor, maybe it sucks for you and not for me, maybe it sucks for me and I'm to stupid to notice it. By this standard Debian is just an "rolling beta for RHEL", as is SuSE, as I'd bet significant amounts of money that packages that are primarily maintained by Debian and SuSE devlopers, or by independent developers e.g. Ximian or the mozilla folks or the gnu folks -- make it into any given EL release without first passing through FC (and whole GENERATIONS of FC occur without making it into EL). They (like the FC packages) are doubtless passed through their very own alpha and beta cycles by their primary developers followed by a fairly standard process of repackaging for EL specifically and subsequent alpha and beta testing all over. The most FC "buys" RH is MAYBE a simpler and more reliable port into EL and fewer problems during the beta for certain overlapping packages, which I actually think is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff and a good deal for everybody concerned but is less than sufficient to convince me that this makes FC automatically "unstable" or "unreliable" or brandable as a "beta distribution". Only time will prove one way or the other, and any such conclusion will remain subject to change again over still more time. > interesting and relevant to my own situation running openMosix on a > 64-node RH-9 based Beowulf cluster. I had a difficult time trying to > upgrade our cluster from RH-8.0 to FC-2 because the Adaptec Ultra160 > drivers in FC-2 were broken, so I went to RH-9 instead. That probably should read "were broken in the particular kernel snapshot I tried to install". Google fairly quickly turns up a few hits on this problem (but not many) and several suggestions on how to proceed. This seems like something that would have rapidly and long since been resolved, given the large number of adaptec users out there. Still, I have definitely seen problems (notably a broken USB subsystem) within some of the FC kernel snapshots. This doesn't make FC "broken" wrt to EL -- I've had BIGGER problems dealing with EL's broken/out of date libraries in my own numerical code. An old GSL alone is a show stopper for HPC applications in my personal opinion. RH has clearly interpreted "stable" as meaning "not to be changed even in clearly positive ways" (that is, "stagnant") in my opinion. Fine for banks, fine for servers, not so good for desktops or clusters expected to run a rapidly changing mix of applications. Note also that the adaptec problem is a linux kernel issue, not one with FC per se. I personally helped work on the linux adaptec drivers some years ago when we got a bunch of brand new systems with unsupported hardware integrated with the motherboards and assure you that the issues are nontrivial (among other things, I recall that the core driver code was shared between freebsd and linux and at the time adaptec itself did not formally support linux, in ADDITION to the actual driver/kernel issues that ALONE were nontrivial). So it wouldn't surprise me in the least if there were issues with any given driver in any given kernel release and by extension any given distribution release that inadvertently used that kernel release and hence driver. Over the years and many, many revisions of various linux distributions there is no doubt in my mind -- some kernel snapshots are broken on at least some hardware combinations, and some of the broken snapshots make it into distribution releases or updates. Most are not COMPLETELY broken (many would pass a beta or the issues are with hardware that isn't -- if one bothers to read the release notes -- technically on the "supported" list, and most -- but not all -- get fixed fairly rapidly. Still, sometimes one has to actually PARTICIPATE in the open source kernel development process or build a kernel/driver from scratch that works on your particular hardware from googled instructions developed by somebody else that does even in these best of times, especially if your hardware is new or a major change in the kernel source has broken something. Such problems generally transcend distribution. RH and EL are in the same boat as everybody else (Debian, SuSE, Mandrake, whoever) -- not even an extensive beta has a ghost of a chance at revealing every possible flaw in something as complex (and multiauthored) as a modern linux kernel. Note also that using things like RH-9 and its more or less frozen kernels simply avoids one problem and the expense of others and has a variety of negative sequellae in the long term -- lack of support for X86_64, frozen in bugs and security problems, lack of driver support. We live in an imperfect world, but in >>this<< imperfect world you aren't helpless and have a number of choices. FC is not a perfect choice, but it is a perfectly reasonable choice (in my opinion) for many users and environments (including cluster environments), while not for others. rgb -- Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:rgb at phy.duke.edu _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf


text: I've been a Harry Potter fan since the first movie came out. It took two of my best friends, my favorite math teacher, and the movie to persuade me to read the series. I'm so glad that I did. Since then, I've enjoyed reading, re-reading, and analyzing the series (with MuggleCast, & as an English major). I've gotten a chance to be part of this amazing fandom, made friends, and wonderful experiences that I'll never forget. I've graduated college last year in December, and trying to figure out what to do as a career. No matter what happens, I know that I'll will always be part of the Harry Potter fandom, love the series, and hope to share it some day with my own kids. I also can't wait to read J. K. Rowling's new book, and anything else she ends up publishing. According to Pottermore, I'm a Ravenclaw. I think it's fitting because I love learning, finding knowledge, reading, the color blue (& purple) and cupcakes. On my free time, I love photography and writing. Besides reading, I love watching movies (action/adventure, romance, scifi/fantasy, inspiring, etc.) and watching tv shows (Castle, Fringe, Bones, Unforgettable, Body of Proof, Cupcake Wars, etc.). Though music, and reading are a big part of my life... my friends & family are very important to me.


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Sutton Hospital, B Block & Admin
hmltnangel, in Hospitals & Asylums
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By Branden_Jones
Explored a long road and found a house that was abandoned, some evidence of vandalism, not the most interesting of building but the way it has naturally fallen is quite beautiful
By little_boy_explores
The woollen mill was owned by Samuel Firth of Gatehead in Marsden, and opened in 1888. He also owned Holme Mill. By the 1960s, it was owned and run by Fisher, Firth & Co. which became Cellars Clough Woollen Mills Ltd, managed by another Firth son, in 1981. The company has now been dissolved.
Situated just off the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, the mill's pond is now a very popular fishing spot. Planning permission was granted for the conversion of the mills and former offices to 101 dwelling units, 9 live/work units, a resident's gym, pool, shop, meeting room, bike store, car park and improvements to the access road.
Previous planning applications have been unsuccessful as bats were found to be residing in the mill. The bats weren't forcibly removed, so the hope was that they would eventually choose the 'improved accommodation' for themselves.
We decided to spend a day in Huddersfield looking at some of the heritage of the town... so we ended up in Marsden which is to the east of the town we came across two mill Cellars Clough and Bottoms Mill.. unfortunately we couldn't find a way in Bottoms Mill so instead explored Cellars.. It looks like some work was carried out some years back as part of the mill is demolished with brick piled around in the courtyard. The Mill is in poor condition and its difficult to access the upper floors due to both staircases been blocked by stone rubble although we did manage to climb the staircases the floors look ready to collapse at anytime.. at the top floor theres a ladder to enter what looked liked an office although we did not attempt the climb ... overall worth a look if not for the explore it offers an insight into how mills were constructed and the size of these is truly astounding ..
Bad video pics
The mill is in a sorry state in 2018
But there is still some nice pics to be had in there...
By little_boy_explores
The "Record" trademark was registered by the firm of C & J Hampton in the Trade Mark Journal in 1909. Charles and Joseph Hampton were Sheffield toolmakers and ironfounders located at Eagle Foundry in Livingston Road, Sheffield, who had originally started their business in 1898 manufacturing marlin spikes and specialist castings. By 1908 C & J Hampton became a limited company.
It wasn't until January 1931 that the company introduced a range of woodworking planes, based on the popular patterns of the Stanley Tool brand, in their No. 10 catalogue. By this time the factory had relocated to Ouse Road in Attercliffe, Sheffield, and the new planes were being marketed as "an entirely new British product", benefitting from new Government import tariffs which penalised imports and assisted British manufacturers in combatting the influx of imported planes from America and other countries. Woodworking planes made by Stanley Tools in particular dominated the British market and so a "Buy British" campaign was instigated to help combat the depression in Britain at that time.
In October 1934, C & J Hampton bought the manufacturing rights from John Rabone And Sons Ltd. for the entire range of iron planes and spoke shaves formally manufactured by Edward Preston And Sons Ltd. of Birmingham. By the early 1930's it had become apparent that Preston's had fallen into financial difficulties and they were subsequently bought out by Rabone's in October 1932. Prior to this, Preston's had been Rabone's main competitor in the manufacture of rules and levels so the takeover made perfect business sense however, after the acquisition, Rabone struggled with the concept of becoming planemakers as well, and saw it as a deviation from their traditional product lines. They did, however, spend almost two years re-organising the iron plane making department at Preston's Whittall Works before deciding that "certain products were found not to conform readily with the company's other interests.", so the rights were then sold to C & J Hampton.
Record continued to add various planes and spokeshaves to its product line over the coming years, but were forced to drop some of their range because of wartime restrictions. It is unfortunate to note that many of these planes and spoke shaves never made it back into production once the restrictions had been lifted.
During the 1950's and into the early 1960's, Catalogue No. 16 was frequently reissued in pocket form to keep customers informed of new tools, as well as the availability of certain pre-war planes, spokeshaves and other tools. Price lists were also updated wherever necessary. It wasn't until the firm had moved into new premises at Parkway Works in 1963 that Catalogue No. 17 was issued and that the product line had "stabilised" from its post-war restrictions.
In 1972, C & J Hampton Ltd. merged with William Ridgway Ltd. to form Record-Ridgway Tools Ltd. By doing so, Record had taken on the manufacturing of wood boring tools, which was Ridgway's core business.
AB Bahco, a Swedish chisel & woodworking tool company, bought Record-Ridgway Tools in March 1981, and renamed it Record Holdings in 1985, before renaming it again three years later to Record Marples (Woodworking Tools) Ltd. Around the same time the names of both "Record" and "Marples" appeared on the body castings of some planes -- predominantly the bench and block planes -- around the front knob.
It was obviously a period of great upheaval for the firm as the company was renamed a further three times in the 1990's -- Record Tools Ltd. in 1991, Record Holdings plc in 1993 and then Record Tools Ltd. (a division of American Tool Companies Inc) in 1998. However, the company struggled financially and went into administration in 1998. It was then acquired by US-based Irwin Tools in 1998 but was closed down soon after as the American owners moved production to China.
Firstly we scaled the building to accomplish if any security were present & possible entry points... No probs with either so decided to take a look. The building is in poor condition and requires a little climbing and clambering through trees to reach. Theres asbestos present on site so was prepared with masks, the building is a fair size and took a little over an hour to explore. Lots of Sheffield graffiti art which is of a high standard and plenty of original features exist (unbelievably).. The building as come under attack from a lot of vandalism including fire damage, deliberate destruction and pigeons (lots of these present in the building), Theres also high levels of natural damage caused to the building via the weather (some areas the roofs not intact). Theres access to the upper floors via a central staircase (also leads to the roof) and a staircase at the west side of the building... lots of rooms leading off the staircases some safer than others. We were joined by SteelCityUrbex during the explore so shout outs to them... Great explore with lots of graffiti and nostalgia to keep you busy on the explore highly recommended (just watch out for the pigeons).
And to end off... a roof shot!
Nothing much has changed in it current day form, just some more graffiti.
By Gromr123
Another local one that I've been wanting to do for ages, but never got round to it until now.
It's filled full of asbestos, so I made sure to bring my good PP3 mask, but even that wasn't enough probably.
During World War 2, the Southern Railway took over the Deepdene Hotel near Dorking in Surrey for its wartime emergency headquarters. In the grounds they excavated an underground control centre taking advantage of a network of existing natural caves that had been acknowledged 300 years before in the diaries of John Evelyn. Because of the natural protection afforded by the location of the caves they were eminently suitable for the development of a bunker to house both the headquarters' telephone exchange and Traffic Control who also had their underground control centre there with underground divisional controls at Woking (South West Division), Southampton (Western Division), Orpington (South Eastern Division) and Redhill (Central Division)
The Explore
I got a message in the morning saying it's doable and to go soon. So a few hours later I was there and inside.
I'd been meaning to do this one for a long time now, especially as its pretty local, so now was a good a time as any.
It's actually not a very large bunker, but its nice for its modest size. The infamous 100 steps lived up to its reputation as terrifying. I only went up a few steps, but that's enough.
I actually bumped into another explorer here who got the fright of his life as I turned the corner and shown my light at him in a moment of confusion and panic. Turned out to be someone else who got the memo and took a trip down to see it from a little further afield.
A nice little bunker, rich full of history.
By crabb
With a 2.5 meter high, fully reinforced security fence, cameras at every angle and motion sensors tucked away in strategical places, this building was designed to keep people out.
A load of good that did, eh?
This building is shrouded in mystery, its former use was totally unknown and even google wasn't any help! Turns out it was the old headquarters for the Department of work and pensions, but they could not afford to keep it running, so became a rejected building for social security. No one has ever documented this building and not a single photo of the insides can be found.. Until now.
Not my fanciest of camera work but the night time was the best time for this trip. So granted the shots could be better but with not a lot of time on our hands (and maybe setting a motion detector off) we had to make do!
The building itself was actually very clean and tidy, in and out. Fair bit of dust and clutter from the stripping off pipes from underneath the flooring but no graffiti, no vandalism.. Not a single sign of "outsiders".
Truly trapped in time with 1990's tech scattered, but nothing of worth, just old school things that required Ethernet and a few tapes and old floppy disks.
For the most part it was quiet and things were calm, the main worry was watching for the missing floor panels and pesky motion sensors above a certain few doors. So I gather most office blocks like this are still protected (A company called 'clear way') which is kind of surprising considering how long it has been abandoned and I cannot find out anything to do with that buildings future.
Originally used as a primary headquarters for the department of work and pensions, handling data and dealing with data to do with peoples income and possibly entitlement of benefits, sits unused and had been abandoned between around 2002 but the exact time is yet to be known.
It was being used through the 90's that's for sure with lift service sheets with the last service being 2002 and floppy disks and tapes dating through the 90's.
It is unfortunate we could not see the whole building, as out of the three floors it had only the ground and second were explored. The lower ground floor proved to be a challenge as that's were the sensors really were, so we decided to leave it and head out quiet as a mouse. But not without having one last look at the glass atrium of course.
Over all this building is still somewhat a mystery and i'm fairly certain we are the only people to document this building, which is mad for me.
This is my first real forum and I hope you enjoy the photos,
Til the next one!
"Take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints"
1. scouting a way in
2. The atrium, looking straight through
5. This tells me they were short of funds.
7. The windows for the atrium
8. Lift mechanics
9. The lift motor and pulley system
10. Service history for the lift
11. A letter (with buildings address) for evaluation of the one lift
12. Typical office corridors, minus the health and safety hazard
13. Vintage mounted desk with plug sockets built in
14. Huge computer room
15. Keys still left as they were since closure
16. Media storage units
16. Hand drawn schematics for lift dated 89
17. Lift room
18. Temperature gauges
19. Wiring for the lift
20. Very rusty keys
21. The motor for the lift
22. Lift schematics
23. The original blueprint before the construction of oak house
24. This still works!
25. Flooring lifted for strip down before being abandoned
26. Old school floppy disk dated 91
27. Media room and units
28. Stannah lift lever
29. Inside the vast atrium
30. Another angle
31. Vintage clock and safe


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Samuel Dunn
I received my BA in Biology from St. Olaf College in Northfield MN in May 2011. While at St. Olaf I was involved in research examining the effects of drying and re-wetting on methanogenesis in wetlands. During the summer of 2009 I was an REU student at the Tank lab at the University of Notre Dame studying denitrification in agricultural streams. During summers 2010 and 2011 I traveled to the North East Science Station in Cherksiy Siberia to conduct research on active layer soil respiration as a member of the Polaris Project (www.thepolarisproject.org). At CSU I am working toward my Ph.D in the von Fischer Lab studying methane emissions from high alpine and Arctic wetlands.


text:
Mercury Fall 81-69 Against Minnesota - Game Recap
Minnesota got 18 points from Lindsay Whalen en route to an 81-69 victory over Phoenix on Wednesday at Target Center.
Minnesota did not, however, defeat the Mercury against the spread, which closed at 15 at most sportsbooks. Totals bettors, meanwhile, saw the game go UNDER the closing number of 164.5.
Minnesota got 16 points from Seimone Augustus and another 14 points from Monica Wright. Lindsay Whalen contributed 7 assists, while Rebekkah Brunson cleaned the glass with 7 rebounds.
Phoenix got 17 points from Candice Dupree in a losing cause and another 15 points from DeWanna Bonner. Alexis Hornbuckle contributed 4 assists for the Mercury, while Krystal Thomas had 10 rebounds.
First-half bettors who backed Minnesota were victorious, as the score was 41-34 at the break.
Phoenix won the battle of the boards, outrebounding their counterparts 36-31.
Minnesota looks to continue their winning ways next game with a battle against the Silver Stars. The Mercury will aim to get back on the winning track at Seattle.


text: "Tierra de Agua," New Documentary Film by MIIS students - Premieres as Part of Earth Week April 19, 2013 – "Tierra de Agua" is new documentary film by three Monterey Institute students shedding light on the challenges related to water issues in Nicaragua. The film is part of their H2Nica campaign to raise awareness about sanitation and accessibility to clean water among developing communities in the country. Read More »


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An Inconvenient Truth 1033
There's a movie teaser line that you may have seen recently, that goes like this: "What if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world, but you knew they'd never believe you?" The answer is "I'd try." The teaser's actually for another movie, but that's the story that's told in the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth": it starts with a man who, after talking with scientists and senators, can't get anyone to listen to what he thinks is the most important thing in the world. It comes out on DVD today.


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ByGreg Bensinger
Amazon.com Inc. likes to keep its playbook close to the vest. And its annual meeting Thursday, where shareholders are free to ask whatever they like, was no exception.
Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, appearing on a stage at a Seattle theater space for the event, was mostly coy about the internal workings of the company despite a series of about half a dozen shareholder queries.
To one stakeholder who asked why Amazon sells violent video games, but has supported tighter gun control measures, Mr. Bezos said "we'll look into it," and no more.
Still, Mr. Bezos did allow that he didn't know whether Amazon sells precious metals or what reasons it would have for not doing so.
And he said Amazon's Seattle-area only grocery delivery program called Fresh had "made progress on the economics over the past year," without giving further details.
Mr. Bezos also challenged media reports that Amazon doesn't pay its third-party merchants quickly enough. "We're incredibly good at paying on time," he said, noting that some vendors had had their payments suspended over questions around their fulfillment practices.
But there were no big revelations in the brisk meeting and shareholders didn't really challenge the company founder.
It's perhaps no wonder: Amazon's shares have advanced 22% since last year's annual meeting.
All board members were reelected and a shareholder proposal that would have required more disclosure of Amazon's political activities was defeated.


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source GAIA package: Sx_MilitaryTimes_M6201410301170016_5675.zip Origin key: Sx_MilitaryTimes_M6201410301170016 imported at Fri Jan 8 18:18:13 2016
Like many Marine recruits, Roland Florenz will ship off to boot camp a month after graduation. But it won't be a high school diploma he earned; Florenz will have completed his doctorate degree — in rocket science.
Staff Sgt. Dominic Freda, a recruiter in Ann Arbor, Mich., said it was clear Florenz, 27, had done some research when he walked into his office for the first time in 2012.
Since he knew Florenz's educational background, Freda set him up with an officer selection officer.
"It doesn't matter if the applicant says, 'I don't want anything to do with the officers,' we still have to let the OSO talk to them," Freda said. "We're looking out for the best interest of that applicant, so he or she knows about every opportunity ... the Marine Corps has to offer."
But he could tell it was in Florenz's heart to enlist, he said. Florenz knows he'll always have the option of becoming an officer, Freda said.
Now Florenz is preparing to ship off to Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., after earning his doctorate degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan.
Florenz declined a request for an interview with Marine Corps Times. He doesn't want to talk about completing a doctorate because he's not a boastful person, Freda said. He described the poolee as "180 degrees from the 'look at me guy.' "
That's just one of the traits that Freda said will make Florenz a good Marine. His commitment to education showed the recruiter that he was capable of meeting tough goals, which is why Freda wasn't surprised when Florenz told him he wanted to become a reconnaissance man.
"If you show that you will put the effort in, the Marine Corps is willing to help you out as well," Freda said. "I look at [his degree] like this guy has worked his butt off to get to this point — he's going to make a darn good Marine."
As for showing up at Parris Island with a doctorate degree in rocket science, Freda acknowledged that it will almost certainly catch the attention of drill instructors, who might wonder about his decision to go enlisted.
"I guarantee they'll razz him," Freda said. "But are they going to treat him a little differently? I doubt it. Just because you're older and you've been around the block a little bit doesn't mean you're qualified to be a Marine just yet."
Freda said he tells all poolees, regardless of age or ability, that they need to approach boot camp with humility. If they don't, the Marine Corps will quickly humble them, he said. And he tells poolees like Florenz, who is a decade older than some recruits, to use age and maturity to their advantage.
"I guarantee the drill instructors will use him to their advantage as well," he said. "If he's showing that he's capable of being a leader ... you've got to utilize that."


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(Literary Movements for Students)
The roots of the Beat literary movement go back to 1944 when Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs met at Columbia University in New York. It was not until the 1950s that these writers and other "Beats" would be recognized as a movement and as a generation of post-World War II youths whose attitudes and lifestyles were far removed from typical Americana. Kerouac used the term "beat" to describe both the negatives of his world and the positives of his responses to it. On one hand, "beat" implied weariness and disinterest in social or political activity, and on the other it was reminiscent of the Beatitudes of Jesus—declarations of blessedness and happiness uttered during the Sermon on the Mount. While certain measures of blissfulness—often drug-induced—may have applied to followers of the Beat Movement, so would feelings of disillusionment, bitterness, and an overwhelming desire to be free of social constraints.
The work of Beat writers is characterized by experimental styles and subjects, including spontaneous writing without regard for grammar, sexually explicit language, uninhibited discussion of personal experiences, and themes ranging from a rejection of American values and fear of nuclear war to sexual escapades and road trips. Representative works of the movement are Kerouac's novel On the Road, Burroughs's novel Naked Lunch, and poems such as Ginsberg's "Howl" and Gregory...
(The entire section is 306 words.)


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Giants aim to regain early-season form in second half
San Francisco will look to Pagan, Scutaro to give team a boost down the stretch
By Chris Haft / MLB.com
SAN FRANCISCO -- It'll be a new beginning for the Giants when they resume the season on Friday in Miami. The 9 1/2-game edge in the National League West they owned on June 8 has become a one-game deficit. But San Francisco can't dwell on its downfall.
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The Giants know what must happen for them to pull ahead of the division-leading Dodgers. The requirements are simple. San Francisco must keep offensive dynamo Angel Pagan healthy. Hunter Pence, Buster Posey, Pablo Sandoval, Michael Morse and Brandon Belt must deliver typically solid performances. Lastly, the Giants' pitching staff must rise above mediocrity and at least approach elite status.
Don't be surprised if general manager Brian Sabean tries to hasten the team's progress by engineering a trade, as he has done virtually every Trade Deadline when San Francisco has been in contention. Here's a look at the Giants' season that has elapsed and their season that remains:
Five key developments so far
1. Tim Lincecum's renaissance
Lincecum won four consecutive starts to end the first half, demonstrating that he has become increasingly comfortable with his changing emphasis from power to finesse.
2. Defensive improvement
The Giants rarely beat themselves afield. Shortstop Brandon Crawford, Belt and Posey all are above average on defense. When Belt missed eight weeks with a fractured left thumb, Morse filled in at first and performed capably.
First-half awards
|MVP: Hunter Pence
He is earning his five-year, $90 million contract by leading the Giants not just in run production, but also inspiration.
|Top starter: Tim Hudson
He erased health doubts following horrific 2013 ankle injury, and until recently, the veteran righty set pace for staff with consistency.
|Top rookie: Ehire Adrianza
He's not hitting much (.225), but the Giants know they can rely on him for solid defense up the middle.
|Top reliever: Santiago Casilla
He remained so effective in setup relief after recovering from a hamstring injury that he took over closer role.
3. Setting the bar high
The Giants did virtually everything right from late April to early June. This success taught them that they're capable of sustaining excellence, which will come in handy if they reach the postseason.
4. Surviving slump
Though the Giants have staggered during most of the past five weeks, they haven't completely collapsed, regaining first place in the NL West on three occasions after the Dodgers passed them. They can draw upon this resilience when times get tight.
5. Morse, not less
The oft-injured slugging left fielder has played in 92 of San Francisco's 96 games so far, allaying their fears about his fragility. Though nobody's health is guaranteed, the Giants can worry less about Morse than they did in Spring Training.
Five storylines to keep an eye on in the second half
1. Sandoval's salary drive
Eligible for free agency after this season, Sandoval should be inspired to go on an extended hitting tear that would help make him a rich man. He has had a few hitting binges so far but nothing extreme. Sandoval's current .272 batting average would be the second lowest of his career. That's a noticeable drop after entering the year with a .298 figure. Sandoval needs to start hitting more consistently not just for the Giants' sake, but also for his own.
Players to watch in second haLF
|Angel Pagan
The center fielder and leadoff hitter must overcome his back injury and resume his role as San Francisco's offensive catalyst. As mentioned above, staying on the field is the key for Pagan, whose left hamstring injury last year sidelined him for virtually half the season and sank the Giants' postseason prospects.
|Marco Scutaro
San Francisco's chances of establishing a steady, productive offense will multiply if Scutaro can merely approach his production as a Giant in 188 games entering this season, which includes a .319 average and a .366 on-base percentage.
|Buster Posey
The Giants thrived optimally when they received offensive contributions from up and down the batting order. But if there's one guy who can carry them, it's Posey, who showed flashes of regaining his imposing 2012 form during the first half.
2. Romo seeking resurgence
Sergio Romo doesn't have to reclaim his closer's role from Santiago Casilla to help San Francisco. Romo can be just as valuable in setup situations. But the Giants wouldn't mind seeing Romo, another potential free agent, and Casilla try to outdo each other. The likely result would be plenty of shutout innings.
3. Hudson tries beating time -- again
The right-hander, who turned 39 on Monday, must continue to prove that age is only a number. His season has nosedived in his last five starts, which have resulted in an 0-4 record and a 6.07 ERA. Before that, Hudson was 7-2, with a 1.97 ERA and looked like a legitimate NL Cy Young Award candidate. Hudson solidified the starting rotation early in the season when others struggled. Now, the Giants need him to reclaim the magic he displayed earlier.
4. Looking for a steal of a deal
Observers assume that Sabean will make a swap before the July 31 non-waiver Trade Deadline to boost the roster. Recent examples include 2010 (Javier Lopez, Ramon Ramirez), 2011 (Carlos Beltran) and 2012 (Pence, Marco Scutaro). Skeptics might claim that not all these moves worked, but the point is, Sabean gets things done. Once Sabean settles on the Giants' biggest need, he'll probably add to his list of key midsummer swaps.
5. Making health a non-issue
Though Bruce Bochy's managing acumen is highly regarded, the less he has to think, the better. When it comes to the Giants' lineup, Bochy wants to be able to write Pagan's name in the leadoff spot without worrying about the center fielder's physical condition. Bochy has similar hopes regarding Scutaro, who's fresh off the disabled list.
Chris Haft is a reporter for MLB.com. Read his blog, Haft-Baked Ideas, and follow him on Twitter at @sfgiantsbeat. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.


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After you've read enough columns by the dozen or so editorial writers and columnists in this industry, you may notice that most of us have certain themes that we keep coming back to, faithfully as homing pigeons.
For example, VT publisher Alicia Lavay writes often about good management principles (with a personal touch). Editor-in-chief Tim Sanford writes regularly about the wise application of new technology to classic business strategies (and vice versa). Bulk and coin-op entertainment editor Hank Schlesinger sometimes focuses on guerrilla tactics for small business, and other times reveals how the latest political and economic environment impacts street operators.
As for your humble music and games editor ... my mind keeps returning to the subject of fun. Specifically, the importance of fun. The value of fun (see VT, Feb. 2007: "From Edison To iPhone: Fun Trumps Technology"). Even the morality, nobility and spirituality of fun (see VT, May 2010: "Are Amusements Necessary?"). If that sounds far-fetched, please keep reading.
You see, I think many in the music and amusements community get so caught up in the incredibly hard work of running a company, expanding their market and defending a besieged industry that they forget this business is supposed to be about fun.
That's understandable. But now and then, somebody should remind us that the amusement business is supposed to be amusing, and not just to its customers, but also to its purveyors. Who trusts a chef who doesn't eat his own cooking?
As professional baseball player Crash Davis reminded his teammates in the classic Kevin Costner movie, Bull Durham: "Let's have some fun out here! This game's fun, okay? Fun, g-ddammit."
One of the smartest, hardest-working, most successful men I know was recently advised, "You should laugh more. It is one of the few things in life that is both extremely enjoyable and actually great for your health." The man decided to take this advice. Today he works as hard as ever, but he smiles more, laughs more, and enjoys each day more. That has to be good for your heart. It's also a fantastic way to reduce stress in a tough, frenetically paced economy.
President Teddy Roosevelt, a man with world-class zest for life, reportedly broke into a big, prolonged belly laugh 40 times a day. Assuming eight hours of sleep, that works out to one session of roaring laughter every 25 minutes. No wonder photos of Teddy always show him grinning.
Steve Shoemaker, owner of the Fun Factory (Los Angeles), turned 75 years young last month. There's a man who knows the value of fun. He not only runs his arcade; he practically lives there. He's always inventing new games -- for fun. He lives life as play. A belated happy birthday to a man who will always be young at heart.
Okay, so fun is good for longevity, mental health and a convivial office atmosphere. But does fun boost your business? Well, it certainly can. The most successful business leaders are the ones who approach work like a game. We've all heard of the game of life, the game of business, even the game of love. The amusement industry is the game of games. We simply have to remember that surprisingly often, the best way to work it, and win it ... is to play at it.
In the short term, the name of the business game is making money. In the long term, the name of the game is keeping the business going and growing. In the longest term, the name of the game is keeping ourselves going and growing, both mentally and -- here comes that word again -- spiritually.
As this column has reported before, there are some successful operators, distributors and manufacturers out there who get their biggest kicks from making fortunes and then giving huge chunks of it to good causes from orphanages to scholarships. The best fun, and the most rewarding fun, is good for your heart in more ways than just oxygenating your blood when you laugh.
The subject of fun came up recently during a very enjoyable interview with incoming AMOA president Andy Shaffer of Shaffer Services (Columbus, OH). Shaffer recalled the era when coin-op games defined the cutting edge of technology and fun. "Where has the fun gone?" he asked. | SEE VT's SHAFFER INTERVIEW
One of Shaffer's presidential undertakings this year will be to encourage the industry to get back some of the buzz, the excitement and the fun of its glory days. That is a very tall order. But Andy's ambition tells me this is a fellow with the right priorities who understands something very important about this industry. Fun isn't just fun. It's a mission, a service and -- for amusement pros -- a high calling.
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Harvey feeling strong, dealing with long layoff
By Anthony DiComo / MLB.com
ATLANTA -- The day after throwing a career-high 121 pitches in his last outing against the Marlins, Matt Harvey felt no soreness in his right arm. Harvey, who once threw 157 pitches in a college game and routinely sat in the 120-130 range, felt characteristically strong.
"I don't get sore at all," Harvey said. "I know if I worked a little bit too hard, the next day might be different. But I was fine all week."
Harvey, in other words, did not need all the extra rest the schedule has afforded him. Due to two team off-days and Saturday's rainout, Harvey will take the mound Tuesday at Citi Field on seven full days of rest. He and manager Terry Collins both wish that wasn't the case.
"I don't like it," Collins said. "This game is about routines and repetitions. When you get these guys out of these routines and their reps, it's a problem."
Added Harvey: "You've got to deal with it. It's an adjustment, but it's definitely not the first time that I've gone seven or eight days without pitching."
In a more general sense, the Mets spent Saturday's rainout wondering which baseball gods are conspiring against them. Just as postponements in Minneapolis and Denver disturbed their momentum earlier this season, rain in Atlanta robbed them of a chance to build off the good vibes of two straight wins.
"Every time it seems like we get a little momentum, it's disrupted," Collins said. "We've just got to pick it up and get after it again today."
Harvey spent his off-day watching his beloved New York Rangers lose to the Capitals in Game 1 of a best-of-seven series Thursday in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. He planned to throw a light bullpen session Sunday, then attend Game 3 of the Rangers' series Monday night at Madison Square Garden.
Boasting that the Rangers are undefeated in the handful of games he has attended since moving to New York, Harvey fashions himself something of a good-luck charm. He is good friends with Rangers center Brian Boyle, and also befriended goalie Henrik Lundqvist this winter.
The Rangers' public relations staff messaged Harvey on Sunday asking if he wanted to take over their Twitter feed during Game 3, and Harvey almost immediately replied back to accept.
"They'll be all right," he said of the Rangers. "They'll be all right."
Familia flashes potential while notching first save
ATLANTA -- The Mets may have caught a glimpse of their future late in Friday's game, when Jeurys Familia came on to close a two-run game in the 10th. With regular closer Bobby Parnell already out of the game, Familia dialed his fastball into the upper-90s while retiring the Braves in order.
"Whether he's a closer or whether he's an eighth-inning guy, he's got all the makings of it," manager Terry Collins said when asked if Familia has the chops to close games.
Still, Collins said he is not ready to move Familia up the bullpen totem pole just yet, with Brandon Lyon, Scott Atchison and LaTroy Hawkins giving the manager a plethora of experienced late-inning options. There may never be an opportunity for Familia to close in New York, with Parnell pitching well and under team control through 2015.
But Collins likes the idea of the hard-throwing Parnell and Familia teaming at the back end of his bullpen, be it now or in future seasons.
"I thought the other night was a big step forward for him, coming into that game to get his first save," Collins said. "Certainly he's the future down the road. He's the guy that everybody looks at to be a back-end-of-the-bullpen kind of a guy. Has he moved up? I think we'll pick our spots for him."
Worth noting
The Mets will make up Saturday's rainout as part of a doubleheader when they next visit Atlanta from June 17-20. The day of the doubleheader has yet to be officially announced. Because the Mets have already lost multiple off-days later this season to make up games in Minneapolis and Denver, they did not want to reschedule Saturday's game on a mutual off-day.
Anthony DiComo is a reporter for MLB.com. Follow him on Twitter @AnthonyDicomo. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.


text: F 370 Integrated Business Core - Finance Component (3 cr.) P: BUS-A 100, A 201, A 202, G 202, K201, L201, X204, X201, X220, CMCL-C 121, ECON-E 201, E 370, ENG- W 131, MATH-M 118, M 119 (all with a grade of C or better). C: J 370, M 370, P 370. Cross-functional survey of business management. The finance component provides a conceptual framework of a firm's investment, financing, and dividend decisions; includes working capital management, capital budgeting, and capital structure strategies. Includes a cross-functional case done in teams.


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After avoiding web programming for half a year, I'm back in it doing this diary thing for friends, and it sucks just as much as it ever did. In fact, I have come to a realization: "web programming" in its current state, must be ended. It's breaking the minds of a generation of programmers.
Olive is a far more complex program than the web app I'm working on now, but it's easier and far more enjoyable to develop, for a single reason which can be expressed in a single word: state.
Olive, being a traditional user-space app, has state information. As much state information as I want, all neatly organized in data structures of my own choosing. Web apps, as we're all aware, have no state, forcing the programmer to painfully reconstruct it via a horrible system of parameter passing and parsing, every single time the user does anything.
Someone who knows more about such things than I do needs to come up a stateful connection protocol for writing browser-embedded apps with server-side data storage. I am thinking less XMLRPCHTTPRequest (which, as I understand it, is just far more sophisticated message passing) and more constrained network-transparent virtual memory with XUL and/or HTML as a user interface definition.
The web was meant to be a collection of linked documents; let it go back to that, and let programmers go back to getting work done instead of coming up with package after package to attempt to work around the horrible pain of HTTP.
It is not going to die. You are falling for the fallacies of distributed computing [java.net].
There is a reason that HTTP was successful and all the stateful protocols that were around at the time or long before it were not. HTTP is beautiful. Learn it and understand it instead of trying to use it like an RPC mechanism which it is not. See, f.ex, How I explained REST to my wife… [naeblis.cx]
No, bandwidth is not infinite, not now, nor is it ever going to be. "Cost" need not (and indeed, for the purpose of that list, does not) have anything to do with money. And the wire protocol is only a fraction of homogenity.
Maybe in a few decades when we'll be used to writing for machines with dozens of CPUs in non-uniform configurations, writing distributed applications will no longer be a huge leap from writing local applications. But local applications on those systems will not be any
Web apps, as we're all aware, have no state, forcing the programmer to painfully reconstruct it via a horrible system of parameter passing and parsing, every single time the user does anything.
You don't have to pass everything around, just pass an ID of where you currently are, and store the actual state data on the server.


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New York Times Co. Awfully Confident In Its Financial Future
In your autumnal Monday media column: the NYT Co's paying back Carlos Slim early, the NYO may buy Dealbreaker, Richard Spencer's OK! mag deal confirmed, Richard Siklos goes into PR, and Nikki Finke is as litigious as ever.
- Shady Mexican megabillionaire Carlos Slim lent the New York Times Co. $250 million at a 14% interest rate early last year, in what amounted to a subprime loan to a desperate, desperate company. The NYT Co. had originally planned to finish paying back the loan in 2015; now they say they'll have it all paid back by January 2012. It's a sign of strength from the Times, and it should save them some money...although if they hit another serious economic rough patch, or if they're not able to reap big revenue gains from online advertising and apps in the coming two years, they're going to wish they hadn't been so hasty. Remember that time the NYT Co. spent billions buying its own stock only to see the value of that stock plummet? It would be a little bit like that. At least it'll put an end to those bi-annual Carlos Slim takeover rumors. And it'll bring back the bankruptcy rumors! So much more fun.
- The New York Observer is reportedly close to buying Dealbreaker, the Wall Street-centric blog, for "$500,000 to $1,000,000," according to Business Insider. Dealbreaker's great, but it's a bit strange that Jared Kushner would sink money into that while letting the NYO's most talented staffers walk out the door, one after the other.
- As we heard this morning, OK! Mag has indeed named former In Touch editor Richard Spencer as its new editor, replacing Mark Pasetsky. Just another month at OK! Magazine.
- Richard Siklos was a big time media reporter for Fortune and the New York Times. No he's Time Warner's newest PR man. At a certain point in a reporter's career, the motherfucker is ready to get paid.
- National Journal, which has been on a freakin' amazing hiring tear lately, has poached former NYT economics writer Edmund Andrews from his current gig at Fiscal Times.
- We have a big surprise for you and that is the news that mild-mannered Hollywood hermit Nikki Finke is suing someone! Her parent company is suing Boxofficeworld.com for copyright infringement, alleging they lift Nikki's stories. Btw Nikki, John Cook will be back soon!


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In 2007 the Twins, in partnership with the Minnesota News Network (now Learfield Communications), assumed control and development of the Twins Radio Network with Treasure Island Resort & Casino becoming the first-ever naming rights partner for the network in 2009. Historically, the Treasure Island Baseball Network has been one of the largest in all of Major League Baseball with hometown radio partners bringing Twins baseball to fans across five states. The Treasure Island Baseball Network has grown to include 97 stations throughout Twins Territory.
The Twins affiliates provide listeners throughout their respective listening areas with pre-game shows, play-by-play action and post-game analysis. Most affiliates will carry all 162 regular season game broadcasts, a number of broadcasts originating from Spring Training as well as exclusive Twins-related programs including "The Paul Molitor Show" and "Inside Twins" which air Sunday mornings beginning at 9:30 a.m. CT.


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Bechtolsheim brainstorms on next networking wave
6 comments
SAN JOSE, Calif. The technical horizon in networking as not as bright as it is for semiconductors, but its pretty darned good, according to network guru Andreas von Bechtolsheim.
Andy should know. He's a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, served as its chief hardware designer and has been designing high-end network switches since he founded Granite Systems in the go-go days of 1995. Cisco Systems bought the company for a cool $220 million, bankrolling this engineers engineer who passed on the favor when Googles founders came calling. He wrote their first check for $100,000.
[Get a 10% discount on ARM TechCon 2012 conference passes by using promo code EDIT. Click here to learn about the show and register.]
The bad news is networking is not keeping up with the heady pace of Moores Law because of I/O bandwidth bottlenecks. Instead of doubling as chips do in transistor density every two years, networking bandwidths double about every four years (see below).
Click on image to enlarge.
Bechtolsheim gathered his thoughts in a keynote at the Linley Tech Processor Conference here.
Moores Law is alive and well, and there has been nothing like it in the history of mankind, he said. Thanks to solid work on serdes and merchant chips, networking is set to continue its traditional bandwidth doubling every four years or so--its a nice improvement, but not at the rate of Moores Law, said Bechtolsheim who briefly worked for Intel when he first arrived in Silicon Valley in 1977.
Bechtolsheim gets deeply technical at the drop of a slide rule. Discussing the impacts of data centers on network design, he quickly dropped down two levels to note a new DCTCP protocol can reduce by ten percent or so the need for mega-buffers on aggregation switchesan interesting detail.
But his bigger point was there is another wave yet to come. Network protocols and apps need to be tuned to better understand the underlying networks capacity. Thats heavy lifting, so in the meantime network switch design is all about right sizing buffers, he said.
Again without a breath he jumps down two levels in the technology to compute the requirements. Thats [a buffer of] 100 Kbytes per flow and 10 flows per server, so a Mbyte per server and 10 Gbytes be switch, he said.


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Read the full story here Web Link posted Saturday, April 20, 2013, 8:12 PM
Town Square
Locals celebrate Earth Day at Palo Alto Baylands
Original post made on Apr 20, 2013
Read the full story here Web Link posted Saturday, April 20, 2013, 8:12 PM
Comments (3)
a resident of South of Midtown
on Apr 20, 2013 at 10:26 pm
The bike path under Hwy 101 in southern Palo Alto is open again. It was closed for 2 years and I thought the city just forgot about it. So glad that we can bike out to the baylands with the kids again. I'm sure my neighbor is glad to be able to bike on this trail to work instead of using San Antonio Road.
a resident of Duveneck/St. Francis
on Apr 21, 2013 at 11:55 am
I am glad the Baylands are noted.
The Palo Alto Baylands are a great, fun resource for open space, easy-access exercise, relaxation in nature (I am not a gym type of person and live near the Baylands, so I can go there often).
I am wondering if there might be a Palo Alto company, foundation, or prominent individual who might be in the position to offer funds to renovate/upgrade the prominent Baylands Center and boardwalk out onto the bay? This would be greatly appreciated, look better, and get a lot of use. Some of the boards on the walkway of the boardwalk have been twisted/come loose/come up (and have been repaired on a spot basis)and the structure and boardwalk are completely weathered past the point of ok weathering - it seems like the right time for it all to be cleaned/repaired/improved/renovated.
The ranger station and renovated sea scout building are fine, but the main Baylands Center should be brought up to 2013 also.
Thanks to those companies, individuals, foundations that may give consideration to stepping up to take care of this for the city of Palo Alto and area residents and workers.
a resident of Palo Alto Orchards
on Apr 22, 2013 at 8:58 am
Does anyone know what's going on with the dump at Byxbee Park? About two or three weeks ago, they kinda sealed off the extension they made to the park and they seem to be working with the soil all over again. There's almost LESS available land to walk on than there was 2 years ago, or whenever they opened up that acreage.
Burger chain Shake Shack to open in Palo Alto
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This time we're not lying. HONEST! No, really!
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Couples: When Wrong Admit It; When Right; Shut Up
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One-on-one time
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In celebration of selling 3 million copies, FaithWords is publishing a special updated edition of BATTLEFIELD OF THE MIND.
Worry, doubt, confusion, depression, anger and feelings of condemnation: all these are attacks on the mind. If readers suffer from negative thoughts, they can take heart! Joyce Meyer has helped millions win these all-important battles. In her most popular bestseller ever, the beloved author and minister shows readers how to change their lives… (more)
Publisher: FaithWords (March 25, 2008)
Format: EPUB
File size: 426 KB
Protection: DRM
Language: English


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They will celebrate their anniversary with a come-and go reception from 2-4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 10 at the East Point Baptist Church fellowship hall in London. Friends and family are welcome to attend.
The couple moved to Russellville in 1971, after Willard retired from a 20 year career with the the United States Air Force. They are members of First Baptist Church of Pottsville.
Willard and Shirley have three children, Ricky Smith of Burke, Virginia, Jeff Smith of London, and the late Terrye Sutterfield of Russellville. They have eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.


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The Galaxy is Yours in Mass Effect 3
- Jason Barr TheFish.com Contributing Writer
- 2012 9 Apr
I have a confession to make. Even though I'm the hardest of hardcore science fiction fans, I never really 'got' the Mass Effect craze. I wrote it off for a number of reasons, without ever even bothering to play it. So, when the 'opportunity' presented itself to take the plunge into Bioware's most famous series (in the form of a request from my editor to review ME3), I was less than enthusiastic about taking it on.
Boy, was I wrong.
The Mass Effect series (of which I've played all the games now) has taken the crown for my favorite series of all time. Better than Bethesda's Elder Scrolls games and Fallout 3, better even than Bioware's older Baldur's Gate titles (the games that got me into gaming, for cryin' out loud!). I've never cared more about a story and seeing it to conclusion than I am about the Mass Effect series.
While this review is specifically geared toward Mass Effect 3, I think any gamer will be doing themselves a disservice if they attempt the game without having played the prior two installments. For myself, I downloaded the demo of ME3 when I was initially assigned the review, as it hadn't released yet. I was so impressed by the gameplay and storytelling present in a 30 minute demo that I immediately bought the first two games of the series and began playing through them. I wasn't able to complete them in time for the release of ME3 on March 7th, but that wasn't for lack of trying on my part. I put 13 hours into the first game and 27 into the second. I'm currently 6 hours into the third, and can't wait to complete the story.
As a player of Mass Effect 3, you take on the role of Commander Shepard, a disgraced Marine who is called back for one final mission after the planet Earth is attacked (as you'd been warning about in previous installments of the series, which in turn caused your marginalization). Your task is to save the galaxy from the Reapers, a race of sentient machines who periodically wipe out all life in the Milky Way. You must assemble a team and amass support for a joint opposition force among alien races in the galaxy prior to the final invasion.
Much of the appeal of the series was Bioware's decision to make the player's actions in prior installments of the game relevant throughout the series. A choice that you made in the original Mass Effect can (and will) come back to influence how characters and alien races behave and react to you in the second and third games. For those folks who have played all three games in the series, much of the enjoyment is derived from being able to import your character into the new game from the final save of your previous game, along with all your traits (physical characteristics, behavioral proclivities, and personal history). If you've customized your character physically from the stock male or female avatars (yes, you can play as a FemShep if you want), those faces are imported, as well. This really helps maintain continuity of story and brings a level of attachment to a character that I'd not experienced before.
The gameplay, from a mechanical standpoint, isn't anything revolutionary. It's a 3rd person action shooter with RPG elements. Cmdr. Shepard has two members of his crew with him/her at all times, and each team member (including Shepard) has special abilities (or "Talents", as the game refers to them). These talents can fall into three broad categories: Combat (for weapons), Tech (for abilities a fantasy RPG would associate with a Rogue/Thief character), and Biotics (usually associated with Magic users). Each class (which is chosen during character creation) allows for a certain tree of development, with talents becoming available as a character progresses, but certain talents will always be locked to a character based on that chosen class. Very standard RPG fare.
Dialog options are presented on a wheel that's familiar to players of previous Bioware titles. A player selects a response in conversation, and then the character replies in a line of dialog that captures the essence (but not verbatim) of the statement chosen. It's very easy to determine which responses are the "Paragon" responses (or 'good') and which are the "Renegade" ('bad'). If the player wants to play as a character who's concerned with the folks around him, one would gravitate toward Paragon responses, while if you're a "Mission First, Last, and Only" type of character, you'll head for the Renegade options. These will influence how NPCs react to your Shepard, so chose wisely.
There won't be any spoilers in this post. The most talked-about aspect of Mass Effect 3 has been its ending, which has many gamers up in arms. There are, however, 16 possible endings to the story based on the makeup of your crew, decisions you've made in game (and in previous games) and the level of support you've managed to secure from other races in the galaxy. Up to the very end, Bioware has created a story in which the player's actions have real and far-reaching impacts on how the game plays out.
While I can't recommend this series of games more highly from a story standpoint, there are some concerns that our audience may have with some of the content of the game (which I'll list below). Please take a look down there, and if you feel you can discern the good from the bad, I don't think you can go wrong in playing through the Mass Effect series.
Mass Effect 3 is rated M for Mature by the ESRB. I noted the following things that may be of concern to some of our readers:
Language: It's salty. Any "bad" word you can think of will make an appearance at least once during the game, probably multiple times. Blasphemies also occur.
Sexuality: Shepard can pursue intimate relationships with any of his/her crew members, but is not obligated to. They aren't integral to the story and can be avoided. They're also much more implied (think PG-13) than shown, in most cases (there are two that I've seen that border on R). Both hetero- and homosexual relationships are available choices. And, as seems to be prevalent in games today, women are objectified much moreso than men by the "outfits" that they wear.
Violence: Mass Effect 3 is an action RPG, with heavy emphasis on the "action". There is a lot of shooting and killing in this game, and there is no option (in contrast to other RPGs available on the market today) to play as a stealthy character and avoid killing. Animations of killed opponents can show blood and gore. Not the worst that I've ever seen, but graphic enough to cause concern for some.
Theme: One of the themes of the Mass Effect series assumes that all races (human and otherwise) have had their evolution and civilization guided, not by God, but by the Reapers, a race of sentient machines who are bent on destroying them. The implicit assumption is atheism.
*This Review First Published 4/9/2012


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CARSON, Calif. -- LA Galaxy head coach Bruce Arena spoke with local and national media on a conference call on Thursday ahead of this weekend's Western Conference Semifinal first leg against Real Salt Lake.
Arena's comments are below…
(On the development of Omar Gonzalez…)
ARENA: "He's had a solid year with a few injuries. I think that the national team call-ups have been challenging for him. It's hurt his contiguity with our team and as well as with the national team. Those are things that happen with young players in their initial outings with trying to balance their club careers and international careers. It's been challenging for Omar, but I think that as of late, he's gotten his feet on the ground and is ready to go. He's a great person, but it's challenging for anyone and he's gone through experiences throughout the year and now that we're at the end of the year, he's settled in. He's using the experiences to get better as a player and as a person."
(On the differences of the Galaxy since August…)
ARENA: "We're a little bit more consistent on both ends of the field. We were fairly erratic in the first half of the season and solidified ourselves on both ends. Part of the reason is our performance, which has not been as consistent as I'd like, is that we've just had a difficult time this year getting our whole group together for any extended period of time. As of late, we've been able to do that with a little more consistency and it's obviously helped us.
(On the influence of [Gyasi] Zardes and [Jaime] Penedo…)
ARENA: If we were going to play Landon and Robbie as forwards, we had to make the decision of what to do with Gyasi, so we made the decision to play him in midfield. That was big for our team. Penedo has come in and given us more consistency in goal. He's capable of making big saves in games to preserve game. A.J. [DeLaGarza]'s injury has been unfortunate, but I think that the moves have helped us. As well as the fact that we've had Robbie and Landon together as strikers, but during the playoffs, I'd imagine that we'll move that around as well."
(On Real Salt Lake…)
ARENA: As usual they have a very good team and I think that they're solid on every end of the field. Nick Rimando has been an outstanding goalkeeper for them this season as he has been for the last five, six, seven years. [Alvaro] Saborío is an excellent goal scorer for them up front. The midfield of [Javier] Morales, [Kyle] Beckerman, [Ned] Grabavoy, and [Luis] Gil is outstanding. The return of [Chris] Schuler helps them in the back; [Nat] Borchers is an excellent leader for them in the back as is [Chris] Wingert. They've got a nice team and an experienced team. It's a team that is very talented."
(On how important it is to figure things out before the playoffs and get through...)
ARENA: The little that I understand with this thing is that you can't win the MLS Cup unless you're in the tournament, so that's half the battle to start. This year was very competitive from start to finish in the league as we know. It's challenging and I don't know if anyone has the formula for success. It's going to be very competitive. I like the home-at-home leg that we have; it's something new over the last couple of years. The schedule is very awkward, the play-in game could take its toll on some teams because they're going to be a number of games over a period for those teams as well. Every step of the way, it's going to be challenging and this is new territory for everybody. There are a lot of games that are coming quick and the teams that are successful and reach the conference final will have to deal with a long layoff between the first and second legs of the conference final and the MLS Cup final. There are a lot of challenges ahead. It's uncharted waters for everyone so it will be interesting to see how everyone comes out of it. It'll be interesting and challenging for sure."
(On the impact of the international break scheduled in the middle of the postseason...)
ARENA: "It makes it more crowded and more open. I think that it's going to be real difficult for the teams and the team coming out of the semifinals not knowing where they're headed for the next game and waiting for teams to prevail. It's going to be difficult and recovery time is very difficult in this schedule. It's going to be interesting. I don't think anyone knows how it is going to play out."
(On the measure of success of the first leg…)
ARENA: "I don't think that we know the formula for success, but one would think that it would be to start the competition with a win, having said that, we didn't do that last year [in the Conference Semifinals] with the San Jose Earthquakes. Anything goes. It's a 180 minute plus competition right now and if you prevail in the first 90, it doesn't mean that you're going to come out on top after 180 plus minutes. Every step of the way is going to be challenging and it's important that you get off in good form in the first 90 minutes. However, we know from experience that it is not all said and done after 90 minutes."
(On the tactical flexibility that his team has…)
ARENA: "We're playing two games in [five days] and if we prevail than it is three games in seven or eight days then it gets a lot more difficult. That's where there could be changes. And the play-in teams, that's where it can be really difficult. In the beginning, I don't think that anything is different, but as you move on and you have a lot of games with a lot of travel, it'll be challenging. We'll have to see players and how they're doing and make decisions based on that."


text: I have alot of fabric scraps that I hate to throw out but was thinking of making a scrappy quilt. I was wondering what to do with them....just throw them in a pile and decide when I have enough or cut them in strips/squares. If cutting thems what is the best size strip/square? I have been reading here on the prices going up and I really don't want to waste any fabric. Thanks to all!!! :D


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Greetings to all. I would like to say hi to all the members and non members who have yet to join. I fully joined about 2 weeks ago after much research in buying a new bike and reading many of the posts of BMW riders. My name is Paul White, some people know me as Rip, and I live in Stamford, Conneticut. I would like to thank all of you for your comments, advice and opinions about all the various topics you can find here as well as other BMW sites. I am now the proud owner of a BMW 2004 K1200GT Dark Metallic Blue with 9910miles on this incredible machine and is sitting comfortably in my garage. I will post pictures asap to show off my bike. It was a great ride home from 90 miles away and living in Connecticut and being able to ride on January 28 is blessing, especially here in the northeast where last year we had 4-5 feet of snow. I have been bikeless for 5 years and now I am one of us again. Thankfully traveling out west the last couple of years awkened me to what I had been missing.
I don't have any riding mates to share my joy, excitement and ever other emotion I have at my good fortune. So I share it with all of you. I will be introducing myself to the riding groups in the CT. NY. VT. PA. to have places to ride to and listen to the stories of their rides, exploits, and other GRAND tells of adventures and mayhem.
Thank you for your time and reading my post. I wish all of us a great riding season with smooth roads, great weather, and the wind at our back and a cold beer at the end of the day.