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Welcome to Aventura, Florida- City Of Excellence
Aventura, Florida is the perfect community for your permanent residence, seasonal retreat, real estate investment, family vacation, or relaxing escape. A little over 3 square miles, this oasis is one of the most sought after areas in Miami-Dade. Lined along the Gold Coast, Aventura is recognized as the City of Excellence with just a little over 28,000 residents. Incorporated in 1995, Aventura has made its mark on the map as an ideal destination. Whether you are looking to buy Aventura real estate or sell Aventura real estate, this website is your gateway to all. It will provide you with the most up-to-date Aventura, Florida MLS listings, Aventura maps, demographics, lifestyle, schools, shopping and dining.
Clean, safe, economically stable, great for raising a family, pet-friendly, conveniently located between the Miami International and Fort Lauderdale airports, full of entertainment and shopping, scenic views, marinas for boat lovers, less than 1 mile from the beach, you can see why this is a popular location. High-end living with a picturesque lifestyle is what you will find in Aventura.
What is it like to live in Aventura, Florida- the City of Excellence? It is all about you, your family and your quality of life. Aventura is packed with golf courses, marinas, tennis courts, state of the art spas and fitness centers, waterways, shopping, dining, entertainment. It is also one of the top school districts and home of famous Aventura Mall and Aventura Hospital. Safety is very important to this lively town, that never seems to sleeps. In fact, it is quite often you see people power-walking and exercising well past midnight. The city offers every single convenience imaginable to its residents; from houses of worship, to community centers packed with social and cultural activities, to kids parks and playgrounds, and dog parks and playgrounds. There is something to do for literally all age groups: from 1- to 101 years old!
Aventura Mall, with 300 stores, 10 restaurants, and a 24-screen movie theatre, Aventura Mall is South Florida's Number 1 shopping destination.
Aventura Golf Courses: Choose from 8 Aventura golf courses.


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I also love vanilla and had recently picked up some gorgeous Madagascar beans. There is nothing like seeing the flecks of vanilla bean in a cake to really make one feel all earthy and warm. So in went the scrapings of one vanilla bean and 2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract.
The end result is a moist, rich and beautifully infused vanilla cake.
This will be perfect for dessert topped with macerated strawberries and whipped cream.
This will be perfect for dessert topped with macerated strawberries and whipped cream.
8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch loaf pan
1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted
1/2 cup ground almonds - remove any lumps
2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
1 cup superfine sugar
1/2 cup full-fat sour cream
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 vanilla bean, scraped
1/2 cup flavorless oil (ie canola or safflower. I used Becel)
PREHEAT oven to 350F
GREASE a 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch loaf pan
IN LARGE BOWL whisk together first for 5 ingredients
ADD remaining ingredients and whisk until smooth - do not over-whisk to ensure a light cake
POUR batter into prepared pan and smooth the top
PLACE loaf pan on a cookie sheet
BAKE for 50 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean
ALLOW to cool in pan 5 minutes
ALLOW to cool completely on cooling rack

subset: commoncrawl


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Witch Wars has officially been in the wild for one week and it has been so lovely to hear from lots of you!
We've received some ridiculously awesome colouring sheets (see last post), brilliant reader reviews and some very funny emails! Keep sending them in, we all love hearing from you.
As a thank you, we have some Witch Wars goodies to give away! Signed books, bookmarks and some special limited-edition necklaces with vintage star charms.
To enter simply click 'Contact Ritzy City' on the navigation bar and email us the silliest, weirdest, funniest witch name you can think of!
We will announce the winners in a couple of weeks.
Gloria Gloopaglump-Toe


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Chronic Knee Pain Solution Columbus OH Stem Cell Therapy
Visit our site: https://buckeyepmrgrovecity.com today to learn more about Buckeye Physical Medicine & Rehab located in five wonderful locations!
Do You Suffer with Chronic Knee Pain?
Have You Been Told You Must Live With It and It Is Just Part of Life?
Are You Ready to Start to Enjoy You Life and Be Part of the Solution?
Call Today – We Are Ready To Help You Begin!
Our services will address your health challenges using the combination of Chiropractic, Physical Medicine, Physical Rehabilitation, Regenerative Medicine and Pain Relief Treatments to create the perfect combination for total healthcare and pain relief. Best of all measured and progressed with focused care based on state-of-the-art diagnostics!
Buckeye Physical Medicine & Rehab
2222 Stringtown Road
Grove City, OH 43123
(614) 871-2273
For Your Health,
The Team at Buckeye Physical Medicine and Rehab


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Two workshops: Choose one or both to attend!
*Tickets available: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/witness-and-resistance-in-the-mind-and-on-the-page-tickets-36624691438
A portion of all proceeds will be donated to the Indigenous Environmental Network. From their website, "IEN is an alliance of Indigenous Peoples whose Shared Mission is to Protect the Sacredness of Earth Mother from contamination & exploitation by Respecting and Adhering to Indigenous Knowledge and Natural Law"
2PM: From writing prompt to action with Maya Chinchilla
How do you cultivate a reflective stance in your writing and prompts to invigorate your writing and activism? This will be addressed in Maya Chapina's workshop at 2pm.
3PM: ResistBot Poems with Raina J. León
In this workshop we will write poetry and prose of resistance and use the tool, ResistBot, to send these pieces to our representatives and senators. Bring your notebooks, pens, and phones (if you have them) to text through ResistBot.
Maya Chinchilla is a Guatemalan, Bay Area-based writer, video artist, educator and author of "The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética." Maya received her MFA in English and Creative Writing from Mills College and her undergraduate degree from University of California, Santa Cruz, where she also founded and co-edited the annual publication, La Revista. Maya writes and performs poetry that explores themes of historical memory, heartbreak, tenderness, sexuality, and alternative futures. Her work —sassy, witty, performative, and self-aware— draws on a tradition of truth-telling and poking fun at the wounds we carry.
Her work has been published in anthologies and journals including: Mujeres de Maíz, Sinister Wisdom, Americas y Latinas: A Stanford Journal of Latin American Studies, Cipactli Journal, and The Lunada Literary Anthology. Maya is a founding member of the performance group Las Manas, a former artist-in-residence at Galería de La Raza in San Francisco, CA, and La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, CA, and is a VONA Voices, Dos Brujas and Letras Latinas workshop alum. She is the co-editor of "Desde El Epicentro: An anthology of Central American Poetry and Art" and is a lecturer at San Francisco State University, UC Davis and other Bay Area universities.
Raina J. León, PhD, CantoMundo fellow, Cave Canem graduate fellow (2006) and member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, has been published in numerous journals as a writer of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn,sombra: (dis)locate (2016) and the chapbook, profeta without refuge (2016). She has received fellowships and residencies with Macondo, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Montana Artists Refuge, the Macdowell Colony, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, among others. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She is an associate professor of education at Saint Mary's College of California.


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Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Linus and Lucy
I call this piece
Linus and Lucy
, it is my submission for the Hyperlink exhibition called
Dashing and Crashing. It is ink on lithograph paper, 12 x 12 inches in size.
It is my comment or interpretation of the ridiculous insanity of the holidays and how the "Eastern Syndicate" not to be confused with the Orient... has influenced the holiday season which lets face it starts to advertise as early as September! In this piece, I reference four holidays... and what I call the High Holiday Season which in my mind begins October 31 and continues through January, for some ending January 2 for others January 6 with twelve night... I'm actually considering doing something special for 12th night this year, not sure what... it will depend if we are in the new house by then. I must admit, Christmas is my favorite holiday but not for all the commercialism but rather for the spirit, its the birth of Christ, a joyous time that comes through in the music, the decorations, the thoughtfulness of people. I love the lights, the smells and sense of community... in fact when I get down my happy place is Christmas... I put on a little holiday music ans it cheers me right up!
Posted by
Kim Putnam
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dry fruits milkshake recipe – healthy breakfast recipe
dry fruits milkshake recipe – healthy and nutritious milkshake packed with richness of dry fruits. It is very easy to make, healthy, and a delicious milkshake recipe for toddlers and kids. dry fruit milkshake is a variation to the regular fruit milkshakes we make.
This dry fruits milkshake is packed with nutrition. It is filling and can also be served for breakfast. It boosts your energy and keeps your
I have used all the dry fruits like figs, dates, almonds, pistachios, cashew nuts, in this milkshake. But you can add the dry fruits according to your preference or whatever is available at hand. I have added a pinch of saffron or kesar. But it is optional.
This dry fruits milkshake is often made during navratri fasting period as it gives instant energy.
You will find some small pieces of figs and dates in the milkshake, and tastes really great. You can chew those pieces while drinking the milkshake. I often add very little sugar while making milkshakes and juices, but you can increase or decrease the sugar.
Let us see how to make dry fruits milkshake with simple recipe
Other beverages
- strawberry oats smoothie
- masala paal (spiced milk)
- mango milkshake
- fig milkshake
dry fruits milkshake recipe below
- milk - 1¼ cup
- dates - 4
- figs - 2
- almond - 3 (blanched)
- cashew nuts - 3
- cardamom powder - a pinch
- saffron - a pinch
- sugar or honey - 1 tablespoon or as required
- Chop figs and dates.
- Soak dates, fig, cashew nuts, saffron in ¼ cup of hot milk for 15 - 20 minutes.
- Filter the dry fruits and kesar and reserve the milk.
- Add these soaked ingredients to a mixer jar, along with blanched almonds. Add a little milk at a time and grind it to a coarse paste.
- Add the rest of the chilled milk, sugar or honey, cardamom powder and blend again.
- Add more milk and blend once more if you want a thinner consistency.
- Pour it into a serving glass.
- Serve dry fruits milkshake chilled.
You can also use honey instead of sugar.
Related Posts


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Almost all online poker sites offer sign-up bonus offers for first deposits but these bonuses are not created equal. When looking for the best online poker bonus, there are several factors that you should put to consideration. Firstly, the amount of bonus offered is very important as there are some poker sites that match your deposit amount up to thousands of dollars. A common feature of all types of poker bonus offers is that the bonus money is not readily accessible. This is because poker site owners and operators want to ensure that you meet the set criteria to unlock and gain access to the bonus.
|BetOnline Poker
|up to $2000
|Read Review
|Ignition Poker
|up to $100
|Coming Soon
|888 Poker
|up to $700
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|up to $2500
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|up to $500
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Defining A Poker Bonus
A poker bonus can be described best as a cash reward offered by online poker sites to real money poker players after making their first deposit.
Why are bonuses offered by online poker sites?
Poker sites offer bonuses as incentives to attract more players by enabling them build their bankroll thereby motivating them to continue playing at the site of choice. The bonus amounts offered to players are generated from the entry fee charged for tournaments and the revenue collected from real cash poker games.
Types of Poker Bonuses
There are several kinds of bonuses offered in poker sites. These include:
Match bonus
These are the most popular bonus offers in poker sites. In this type of bonus, poker sites match the deposit amount by a specific percent up to a given amount. Most sites match the deposit amount by 100% such that if you deposit $100, the poker site awards you a $100 bonus. However, these bonuses are not instantly released to players after making a deposit as poker sites requires players to play several numbers of hands before the bonus can be unlocked.
Reload Bonus
A reload bonus is a cash reward awarded to players who deposit or reload more money into their accounts. This bonus is quite similar to initial bonus except that it is provided on a lesser percentage hence is of a lesser amount than the initial deposit.
Instant Sign-up Bonus
This is one of the rarest types of bonuses offered by online poker sites. There are a few sites that offer instant cash bonuses after signing up. The bonus amount is directly deposited into the player's account and is usually in small amounts ranging from $1 to $10.
Referral Bonus
A referral bonus is a special kind of bonus awarded to players who refer other players to register and play at the same site. In most cases, the bonus amount offered is $25-$50 with the bonus amount being dependent on the number of hands played by the referred player.
How to clear bonus
Players are required to earn FPPs (Frequent Player Points) to unlock their bonus offers. These points are accumulated according to the amount of rake paid.
Signing up for poker bonus with a bonus code
Generally, there are two ways you can use to register for a poker bonus. These include:
Deposit Code
A deposit code consists of an alphanumerical combination that has the letters and numbers you are going to enter during the sign up process. All you need to do is enter the deposit code in the field that asks for the bonus code in the sign up process to be eligible for a bonus.
Download Link
This is the easiest method of signing up for a bonus as you only need to click on the download link and you qualify for the bonus.
Best ways of clearing poker bonus
To clear your poker bonus, you will need to play several raked hands. There are numerous tricks and tips that you can use to clear this bonus. These include:
Avoid bigger bonus offers
It goes without saying that big bonus offers are quite difficult to clear. As such, it is best to stick to small bonuses such as $10-$50 as these are very easy to clear.
Read the rules
Read and understand the rules provided for the bonus offers. For instance, you should know the timeline required for you to clear the bonus. Ensure that you are aware of the expiration date after which the bonus will be come non-existent.
Choose the right bonus for you
You should always settle on a bonus that is right for you depending on your playing style. Some of the factors worth considering when searching for the right bonus are such as the expiration date, the number of FFPS required for clearing the bonus, and the paying mode of the bonus: whether in installments or a one-off lump sum payment.


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An historical route of about 110km, personally prepared, through picturesque roads with almost no traffic. Caldas da Rainha is one of the cities of the West, founded in 1511, known by the art of decorative ceramic pottery and its Thermal Hospital. Its fame comes from 1484, due to the passage of Queen Leonor, wife of John II of Portugal, through Caldas da Rainha on the road from Obidos to Batalha.
In Caldas da Rainha, we selected a visit to the Fábrica de Faianças (Caldas da Rainha Ceramic Factory) which become famous by the works of Rafael Bordallo Pinheiro. With a walk of about 400mt, we can cross the Thermal Hospital Park D. Carlos I, with its beautiful garden and its lake, where you can ride a boat. Also within the park, we can visit the José Malhoa Museum, a person of enormous faculties and artistic quality and see many of its works. In Caldas da Rainha, we can still visit its traditional shops in the well known " Rua das Montras" as well as a daily open-air market, where small local producers of vegetables and fruits, sell their products in the known "Praça da Fruta".
We began then a trip to Obidos, a land of charms and Queens, where the beauty of its castle walls and of Obidos Castle itself, which was built in the XII century and classified as a national monument, require a mandatory visit.
There we can go up, and walk all over the castle walls, that have about a 1.600mt perimeter, visit its beautiful decorated streets, its local trade shops and traditional bars where taking a Ginjinha de Obidos is mandatory! In Obidos there are restaurants and cafes where you can have a more elaborate meal or a simple snack.
With the increasing demand of Obidos as mandatory tourist destination in the world, many locals invested in chariots and electric vehicles, that can be easily rented for a guided tour inside and outside the walls.
Being near the Atlantic Ocean, before returning again to the Casa da Serra, we prepared a small route to the Obidos Lagoon, where we can enjoy a paradise landscape, both in the lagoon as in its connection to the Atlantic Ocean, to take some pictures of the sunset, for later recall.
* This itinerary can be done in a self-guided way with a GPS available from Casa da Serra.


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High Speed Internet When You Need It
Why Waterloo Wireless Internet:
- A variety of packages to choose from
- Unlimited monthly bandwidth
Get the speed and data you need
- Speed and data to stream video, watch movies and shows or play games online
Your entire home, connected
- Phone and email support
NEW Waterloo Wireless Client Portal Access .
Introducing… The Waterloo Wireless Online Portal!
As of January 1, 2018, all wireless services billing will be managed online. Invoices will be generated on a monthly basis for all customers – using the same account numbers. If you are currently being billed quarterly, this change will be phased in based on the last date of the 3-month cycle (please refer to your latest invoice for your effective date).
The customer portal is now open! This means you will be able to look up your account, retrieve invoices, make payments – and if needed, submit a support ticket – online, any time, from anywhere internet access is available.
You can easily access the portal by selecting "Customer Login" from the menu above or by selecting HERE.


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I have a California based real estate agent with a 2800 square foot home that needs to be staged quickly. The home is partly furnished and is listed at $749,000.
This opportunity is only available to Graduates of the Staging Diva Program.There is a $500 referral fee but ONLY if you get any paid work through this real estate agent. This is a one time fee regardless of how many clients the agent refers you to, or how many other Realtors she puts you in contact with and the number of projects that come from that.
If you're in or around the Palm Desert area, we've made it really easy for you to apply for this home staging project. Simply complete the form at the new Staging Diva Home Staging Project Referral Service.
Be sure to include "Palm Desert Staging Project" for the project location in the first line of the form.
If you don't already have a website or a page on the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers, it will be more difficult to win this project. It's hard to convince a client to hire you over the phone if they can't see your portfolio.
There is a $500 referral fee but ONLY if you get any paid work through the referral to this agent.
Because of all the traffic I get to my two sites, SixElements.com and StagingDiva.com, I get lots of leads on projects from all over Canada and the US and even in South Africa! I will only refer them to Staging Diva Graduates.
I generate tons of traffic for anyone listed on the Staging Diva site. Only one good project would more than pay for your entire Staging Diva Training Program plus me building and hosting your web page for an entire year! When clients find you on their own from your listing in the Staging Diva Directory, I do not charge you a referral fee.
Debra Gould, The Staging Diva™
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging
Home Staging expert Debra Gould also known as The Staging Diva is president of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company that is frequently profiled in the media in both the US and Canada. Debra Gould developed The Staging Diva Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging, real estate enhancement businesses.
Learn more about the Staging Diva Home Staging Training Program.
You can get your company listed in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers. Debra Gould will personally build your page and all the code to help search engines find you!
Learn more about the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers[tags]home staging Palm Desert, home staging California, home stager Palm Desert, home stager California, home stager Town of Palm Desert, home stager, staging diva, real estate staging, home staging business, home staging training, directory of home stagers, home staging directory, home staging project referral service [/tags]


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Gony to replace injured Sreesanth
Manpreet Gony, the Punjab fast bowler, will join the Indian squad for the Bangladesh tri-series as a replacement for Sreesanth, who was ruled out after suffering a side strain.
Gony, 24, has had a remarkable ascent since making his List A debut a little more than three months ago. He came into national reckoning during the Indian Premier League, where he made a string of impressive performances for the Chennai Super Kings, and was instrumental in taking his team to the final. He finished with 17 wickets from 16 matches at 26.05, which made him the leading wicket-taker for Chennai and fourth highest overall.
He was picked up by Chennai after finishing as the highest-wicket taker in the Deodhar Trophy, taking nine from three matches at 14.66. Gony made his first-class debut in December last year against Baroda. He said the IPL was a great learning experience for him.
"The IPL has given me great exposure. You rarely get a chance to bowl to so many world class batsmen and this experience has made me a better bowler," Gony told PTI. Kepler Wessels (the Super Kings coach) made a slight adjustment to my action, helped me hit the deck harder and bowl at right areas.
"But, I will look to have a fresh start when I bowl in the tri-series, where I will also get the opportunity to bowl a longer spell, which should help me show my abilities."
He added that his selection took him by surprise. "After an ordinary first-class debut, getting the call from an IPL franchise came as a surprise," he said. "However, I feel taking eight wickets in two Deodhar Trophy matches for North Zone helped me catch the eye of the team owners."
Sreesanth was assessed in Bangalore on Friday, after which it was decided that he would need two weeks to recover from his injury. He will undergo rehabilitation at the National Cricket Academy and is expected to be fit in time for the Asia Cup in Pakistan.


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Meeting Feb.4 at 7pm
Dues are due,Talk about the Vanentine's dinner with the wives at Brann;s on 28th st. Fri. Feb 12 at 6pm dinner at 7pm. Need to bring a gift for the white elephant game.Talk about the spring outing,Veterans tournament in May,Kids fishing tournament in Aug. Lake of the month will be Skegmog lake. Jim has treats.Please let Chase or I know if your coming to the dinner and how many.
Views: 147
Fishing Meeting April 7 at 7pm.
Tackel swap,bring some tackle you don't want anymore or maybe you'll find something you might need. Talk about the Chicago Seminar from last week ,the spring outing coming up, The Muskegon spoonplugging outing in July.The Veterans fishing tournament in May.Chase will talk about Perch fishing.


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Miriam returned the phone to the cradle. Bill and Lisbon, her partners in crime, crept into the reception area.
"Worked out a plan?" She eyed them devilishly.
"Sending him out of town might stabilize his hormones." Lisbon fiddled with the silver bangles encasing her wrist. "He's been terribly lonely since his divorce, but we can't let him fall in love with Annie. What if his attentions compel her to leave? This is the first time I've been able to send email to clients without a glitch. I refuse to go back to The Stone Age."
Miriam nodded in sympathetic agreement. "He doesn't know the trouble he's in."
Bill rubbed his stomach. "My ulcer could use less excitement." To Miriam, he said, "You haven't mentioned Michael's crush to Annie? Ask if she'll ward him off? We'd hoped you might."
"Do I look nuts?"
"You are her next door neighbor."
"And the reason we're in this mess," Lisbon added in a faintly accusatory tone. "You encouraged her to apply for a position at Rowe."
Miriam brushed off the comment. "Annie has proven her worth. Yes, she's beautiful. No, she doesn't understand the depth of Michael's attraction. She's a geek with a complicated private life."
Bill frowned. "I don't follow."
"Even if she is aware of how Michael feels about her, she won't encourage him. There's too much going on in her life. She's not looking for romance."
Lisbon pursed her lips. "And Michael?"
"The Bedouin?" Miriam snorted. "He's as freewheeling as an Arab traipsing across the Sahara. Since his divorce from Jen, he's more likely to pack up his tent and travel the world than settle down. Love will never ensnare him again."
Relief melted the anxiety on Bill's face. "Maybe you're right," he said. "Once he realizes how he's behaving, he'll take one of his offbeat vacations. To Patagonia or Tibet. Which works for me, as long as he's not gone too long."
Miriam stared at the phone. "I should check if his shots are up-to-date."
"Good thinking," Lisbon said.
Miriam drummed her fingers on her desk. "Until he comes to his senses, let's stick to the plan. Find an excuse to cart him out of town."
"We're on it," Bill said.
Miriam jerked her chin at the closed door to Michael's office. "The pheromones in there have reached toxic levels. I'm worried it's contagious. The new secretary, Bitsy? Yesterday she was batting her eyes at Herman. And that's not all. I find myself less inclined to beat Terrence to a pulp, maybe because he's sugared the art department with Barry Manilow music and chocolates. This ain't good, children."
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Additional information
|150 g
With a focus on Performance, Recovery and Injury Prevention, this 2-Disc DVD features JILL MILLER & DR. KELLY STARRETT guiding you on self-treatment strategies using each of the Roll Model® Therapy Balls (YTU Originals, PLUS, ALPHA & Coregeous). Learn to treat yourself as Jill and Kelly take you through an in-depth educational tour to un-glue internal stiffness and promote slide and glide amongst all of the soft tissue layers including skin, fascia, muscles, tendons, ligaments, and more!
*Note: This content is best suited for serious fitness enthusiasts, professionals and those interested in the educational aspects of treatment.
|150 g


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Over 40 Biker Dating Tips for Single Bikers
Biker is not necessarily a bearded, middle-aged guy in black leather jackets and tattoos all over his body. In his inside world, the lover of biking can be a tender guy who dreams about a tender female companion. There are a lot of couples where the woman doesn't go for biking but strongly supports the passion of her boyfriend or husband.
So, you are a new or experienced motorcycle who wants to date a girl. Your head is stuffed with many things and you are at loss what to start with. We will help you with our useful tips and tricks.
Friendly outings and group gatherings are the best way to find the girl with a similar spirit of mind. As a rule, bike community accepts the girls who adore sports and adventure. Public charity, travel and entertainment are as well a good chance to meet the girl of your dreams. Every city has a place where bikers gather near large shopping centers, fountains, squares, pedestrian streets where there's a lot of girls.
A typical biker loves his bike hundred times more than his girl. This fact might frighten the ladies from your personality type. There are many things about a single biker: permanent departures, motocross, the attention of the other girls, and the fear for his life… Not every girl is able to bear your friends and surrounding.
A great number of people don't consider biking serious thing. The family of your beloved girl will ask about your 'serious' job. You should prove that you can earn money and biking doesn't mean the loss of time and energy. Your well-being isn't the priority, but the material side of the question is crucial too.
The most popular dating websites for bikers are:
ü Routine isn't an inevitable part of bikers' life, but you should reconsider your daily habits if you want to date the girl. You cannot ride your bike days and nights on end. Your beloved is waiting for undivided attention and care. Sometimes romantic adventure on the road should recede into the background.
ü Keep in mind that a great amount of girls are dreaming about the mixture of brutal and romantic biker in a single whole. Spend some evenings with your girlfriends only and close your iron horse in the garage.
Bikers are sure that the true happiness lies on the road. Trim the sails to the wind and enjoy your road together with a beloved person. You are twice happier person now.


text: Thank you to all who made the benefit auction for the Friends of LBJ Nat'l Park a success! We will be presenting a check to the Friends of the Park tomorrow for $3,000. from the auction sale of the incredible Mary Bechtol painting, Quiet on the Pedernales. THANK YOU Mary Bechtol !!


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First Year Residents:
Salary: $59,927/year Vacation: 15 working days & 8 holidays CME: 3 working days, $0 (2019-2020)
Second Year Residents:
Salary: $62,008/year Vacation: 15 working days & 8 holidays CME: 5 working days, $500 (2019-2020)
Third Year Residents:
Salary: $64,089/year Vacation: 15 working days & 8 holidays CME: 5 working days, $750 (2019-2020)
CME Allowances can be used for the following items: medical education conference registration and travel (all travel needs to be pre-approved and booked through the Swedish travel agent); medical books, journals, and subscriptions; medical apps and software for smartphones, tablets, and computers; and can be used to off-set board expenses not covered by the program. CME allowances cannot be used for hardware purchases such as cell phones, computers and laptops.
Prepaid medical and dental benefits effective on the first day of employment. A flexible benefits program which includes additional medical and dental options. Coverage for dependents may be elected at an extra expense which is shared by the employer. Counseling services are covered through health insurance plans.
Additional Benefits for Residents:
Disability Insurance
Malpractice insurance
Sick leave accumulates at the rate of one day per month of full-time employment
Lab coats and uniforms, as well as on-site laundry drop-off services for these items
Free parking at Swedish Medical Center and clinic sites
Meal allowance for on-call rotations in the hospital
Licensure cost during the first and second year of residency
Funds for smartphone and medical applications
Family friendly call rooms and resident lounge
Employee Assistance Program
Reduced Fare Metro bus pass
Zipcar membership for work travel purposes - free!
If you would like to view a copy of the Resident Agreement Appendix for the 2019-2020 academic year or a sample resident agreement, please email Giselle Mitchell to receive a copy.


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Sangha Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy
Effective Date: February 16th, 2018
Welcome to Sangha!
Sangha of Edlio LLC ("Sangha") provides this Privacy Policy to inform you of our policies and procedures regarding the collection, use and disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information we receive when you download and use the Sangha mobile application or use the web client. If you have questions or concerns regarding this Privacy Policy, you should first contact Sangha at email@example.com . For information about your obligations and use of the Application, please see our Terms of Use policy.
This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time to reflect new technology, your needs, and business developments. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on the Application. You are advised to consult this Privacy Policy regularly for any changes.
1. Our Policy Towards Children.
The Service is intended by Sangha to be made available only to individuals who are at least 13 years old. Students 13 years of age or older may only use Sangha with the permission of their teacher.
Teachers may wish to interact with students on the Sangha platform. Teachers agree that all students are 13 years of age or older and you have obtained all necessary consents, including parental consent, prior to providing permission and access to the student.
If you do not qualify for eligibility, then you are prohibited from downloading, accessing, using and registering for the Service. Sangha will not collect Personal Data from any person who is actually known to us to be under the age of 13. If we become aware that a person under 13 has provided Personal Data, Sangha will take steps to remove such information and terminate that individual's account, access and use of the Service.
If you believe that a person under 13 may have provided us personal information in violation of this paragraph, please contact us at email@example.com.
References to "Personal Information" in this Privacy Policy shall apply to personal information of individual users of the Application.
2. Definitions.
Before you review this Privacy Policy, we recommend you are familiar with the following concepts and terms so that you can best understand how Sangha uses data about you and to enhance your experience using the Application.
2.1 We.
"We" is defined as "Sangha Inc.".
An application programming interface or "API" is a particular set of rules and specifications that allows one software program to access and make use of another software program. It helps facilitate the interaction between applications, similar to the way the user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers. Sangha uses APIs to enable programming or other similar third-party technologies, products, or activities available through the Application.
2.3 Cookies and other Tracking Technologies.
Cookies are small text files that web servers typically send to users' computer when they visit a website. Cookies can be used on mobile applications as well. Cookies can be read or edited when the user loads a website or advertisement from the domain that wrote the cookie in the first place. Cookies are used by companies to collect and send information about a user's visit – for example, number of visits to the application, average time spent, pages viewed, navigation history through the website, and other statistics. This information can be used to improve a user's online experience by saving passwords, or allowing companies to track and improve website loading times, for instance. Cookies can also be used to track a user's browsing or online purchasing habits and to target advertisements to specific users. Cookies cannot be used to access any other data on a user's mobile device, to personally identify them, or to act like malware or a virus. Users who prefer not to accept cookies on the web can set their Internet browser to notify them when they receive a cookie or to prevent cookies from being placed on their hard drive. You can read more about cookies at http://www.allaboutcookies.org/cookies/. We may also use "pixel tags," "web beacons," "clear GIFs" or similar means (individually or collectively "Pixel Tags") in connection with our Application to collect usage, demographic and geographical location data. A Pixel Tag is an electronic image, often a single pixel that is ordinarily not visible to users and may be associated with cookies on a user's hard drive. Pixel Tags allow us to count users who have visited certain screens of the Application, to deliver branded Application and to help determine the effectiveness of promotional or advertising campaigns.
2.4 Personally Identifiable Information.
We define personally identifiable information (or "PII") as "information that can be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single person or can be used with other sources to uniquely identify a single individual." e. g. name, address, social security number, e-mail address etc. This is the common industry definition used by most Internet companies. Information they call "non-PII."
Certain Non-Personally Identifiable Information would be considered a part of your Personally Identifiable Information if it were combined with other identifiers (for example, combining your zip code with your street address) in a way that enables you to be identified. However, the same pieces of information are considered Non-Personally Identifiable Information when they are taken alone or combined only with other Non-Personally Identifiable Information (for example, your viewing preferences).
3. Information Collection and Use.
Our primary goals in collecting information are to deliver the Service to you, administer your account, and to enable users to enjoy and easily navigate the Application.
3.1 What We Collect.
- Personally Identifiable Information.
- In the course of using the Application, we will ask you to provide us with certain Personally Identifiable Information that can be used to contact or identify you and administer your account. Personally Identifiable Information includes, but is not limited to, your name, mobile number, e-mail address, school affiliate and/or student affiliation, if applicable.
- Required Account information.
- Please be aware that when you register with Sangha and set up an account (each a "User"), you will at minimum have to download the Application onto your mobile device.
- We may track your mobile device using an identifier ("User ID") assigned by Sangha. This is a number different from your unique mobile device identification (such as "UDID") or phone number. This identifier is used to deliver notifications within the Service.
- No other information is required to participate; however you may choose to provide additional information such as personal or corporate email addresses, photographs, and other contact information.
- Information regarding your use of the Application.
- Our Application also automatically collects log data about your use of the Application, for example, how you communicate with teachers, guardians, administrators, which features you use most, when you are active on the Application, when you have read communications sent through the Application, and what device you are using.
3.2 Why We Collect Your Information and How We Use It.
- Primary Use.
We use your Personally Identifiable Information (in some cases, in conjunction with your Non-Personally Identifiable Information) mainly as follows:
- to administer your requests;
- as part of our efforts to keep the Application and integrations safe and secure;
- to protect Sangha's or User content rights or property;
- for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and Application improvement.
- Combined Data.
We may combine your Personally Identifiable Information with Non-Personally Identifiable Information and aggregate it with information collected from other Users to attempt to provide you with a better experience, to improve the quality of the Application and to analyze and understand how our Application is used. We may also use the combined information without aggregating it to serve you specifically, for instance to deliver a product to you according to your preferences or restrictions.
- Notifications.
We also use your Personally Identifiable Information to contact you with additional information about the Application that may be of interest to you. If you decide at any time that you no longer wish to receive such communications from us, please follow the unsubscribe instructions provided in any of the communications. We will endeavor to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable. Please note that if you opt-out as described above, we will be able to remove your Personally Identifiable Information from our databases or those of our third party service providers to which we have already provided your Personally Identifiable Information as of the date that we implement your opt-out request. Sangha does not share, sell, rent or trade your Personally Identifiable Information with third parties for such third party's direct marketing purposes.
3.3 What We Share.
- Your Contacts on the Application.
By using the Application, users that you have connected with through the Application such as Teachers, Admins, or other Guardians of your child/children will have access to the following information about you:
- Knowledge that you use the Application when they join.
- Your and your child/children's names, profile picture/s and contact info.
- Whether you've volunteered for an event, signed up for material donations, information entered in the form and / or signed / declined a form, paid or not paid a payment, reserved or not reserved a parent teacher meeting slot/s or responded to auto notices.
- Whether you have received and viewed an event or announcement.
- Your one on one messaging with teachers or admins.
- Permissible Use.
While you are allowing us to use the information we receive about you, you always own all of your information. Your trust is important to us, which is why we don't share information we receive about you with others unless we have:
- received your permission;
- given you notice, such as by telling you about it in this policy; or
- removed your name or any other personally identifying information from it.
- Third Party Services That You Access.
Of course, for information others share about you, they control how it is shared. Please note that third parties sites and applications that you access from the Application may use cookies and track your information as well. When using third party services, we suggest you familiarize yourself with their privacy policies and terms and conditions.
- Other.
We may make your personally identifiable information available to other companies, applications or people. For example we may share:
- Information you choose to provide in the course of your use of the Application by communicating it to other users of the Application, by being associated with an event, a child's class or activity group communications.
- Information you allow us to share when you register with us, or through a subsequent affirmative election. or
- Information used when and if we hire or partner with third parties to provide specialized services on our behalf, such as credit card processing, data processing, customer/support services and other products or services that we choose to make available to our Users.
- We may share your information with a third party when we jointly offer a service or a feature with that third party, such as connectivity with other websites or applications, to provide personalization to the Application.
- We may share your information in order to (i) protect or defend the legal rights or property of Sangha our business partners, employees, agents and contractors (including enforcement of our agreements); (ii) protect the safety and security of Sangha users or members of the public including acting in urgent circumstances; (iii) protect against fraud or risk management purposes; or (iv) comply with the law or legal process.
- We also may use and share non-personally identifiable information, such as general demographic or location information, or information about the mobile device or desktop from which you access the Application. Additionally, we may de-identify personally identifiable information and share it in a de-identified or aggregated form with third parties, and/or business partners in order to analyze Application usage, improve the Application and User experience, or for other similar purposes. The use and disclosure of such information is not subject to any restrictions under this Privacy Policy.
- Opting-out of Sharing
You may review, have deleted and/or refuse to permit further collection or use of your information, including any student data you may have entered, by signing on to the Service and deleting the information or contacting Sangha at email@example.com. Refusing to permit further information collection or use of your information may limit or prevent your use of the Service.
4. Notifications and Other Messages.
We may send you notifications and other messages using the contact information we have for you, like your operating system.
If we make changes to this Privacy Policy we will notify you by publication here.
If we make significant changes to the privacy policy impacting the collection, use, disclosure or retention of personal identifiable information, including protection thereof, we will also provide notice to you (30) days in advance of implementing those changes by sending an email notification to the email address on record.
5. Change of Control.
In the event that all or a portion of Sangha or its assets are acquired by or merged with a third party, or in any other situation where personal information that we have collected from users would be one of the assets transferred to or acquired by that third party, we may disclose, share or transfer the information. This Privacy Policy will continue to apply to your information, and any acquirer would only be able to handle your personal information as per this Privacy Policy (unless you give consent to a new policy).
In the unlikely event that Sangha goes out of business, or files for bankruptcy, we will protect your personal information, and will not sell it to any third party.
6. Aggregate Information and Non-Personally Identifiable Information.
We may share aggregated information that does not include Personally Identifiable Information and we may otherwise disclose Non-Personally Identifiable Information and Log Data with third parties for industry analysis, demographic profiling and other purposes. Any aggregated information shared in these contexts will not contain your Personally Identifiable Information.
7. Service Providers.
We may employ third party companies and individuals to facilitate the Application available therein, to provide the Application on our behalf and to perform Application related to administration of the Application ("Service Providers"). The types of Service Providers we use include, without limitation, Application providers that provide the following types of Application: website and application maintenance, hosting, database management, data analytics and administration. These third parties have access to your Personally Identifiable Information only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose. Additionally, these partners and service providers must adhere to confidentiality and security obligations in a way that is consistent with this Privacy Policy.
8. Compliance with Laws and Law Enforcement.
Sangha cooperates with government and law enforcement officials and private parties to enforce and comply with the law. We will disclose any information about you to government or law enforcement officials or private parties as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate to respond to claims and legal process (including but not limited to subpoenas), to protect the property and rights of Sangha or a third party, to protect the safety of the public or any person, or to prevent or stop any activity we may consider to be, or to pose a risk of being, illegal, unethical, inappropriate the foregoing.
9. Deleting and Deactivating your Account.
All Users may delete their account. If you choose to delete your account, Sangha may retain an archive copy of your account information for up to one (1) week after which the content will be fully purged. Sangha will only retain archive copy for longer than one (1) week if required by law or by school/district or for legitimate business purposes. Users may delete their accounts by requesting their school or district to remove their contact info from Sangha. Sangha may retain an archived copy of your records as required by law or for legitimate business purposes.
10. Security.
Sangha is very concerned with safeguarding your information. To prevent unauthorized access, to maintain data accuracy and to ensure the appropriate use of Account Information, Sangha uses appropriate, commercially reasonable physical, technical and administrative procedures to safeguard the information we collect. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, while Sangha strives to use commercially acceptable means to protect your Personally Identifiable Information, Sangha cannot guarantee its absolute security. Do not provide your Personally Identifiable Information if you are concerned with its disclosure. We do our best to keep your information secure. We try to keep the Application available, bug-free and safe, but do not make guarantees about any part of our Application.
We will make any legally required disclosures of any breach of the security, confidentiality, or integrity of your unencrypted electronically stored "personal data" (as defined in applicable state statutes on security breach notification) to you via e-mail or conspicuous posting via the Application in the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay, insofar as consistent with (i) the legitimate needs of law enforcement or (ii) any measures necessary to determine the scope of the breach and restore the reasonable integrity of the data system.
We store data for as long as it is necessary to provide the Application to you and others, including those described above. Typically, information associated with your account will be kept until your account is deleted. For certain categories of data, we may also tell you about specific data retention practices.
11. International Transfer.
Your information may be transferred to - and maintained on - computers located outside of your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the privacy laws may not be as protective as those in your jurisdiction. Your consent to this Privacy Policy followed by your submission of such information represents your agreement to transfer of data across servers located in various states and countries.
12. Phishing.
Identity theft and the practice currently known as "phishing" are of great concern to Sangha. Safeguarding information to help protect you from identity theft is a top priority. We do not and will not, at any time, request your credit card information or national identification numbers in a non-secure or unsolicited e-mail or telephone communication. For more information about phishing, visit the Federal Trade Commission's website.
13. Your California Privacy Rights.
California law permits residents of California to request certain details about what Personally Identifiable Information a company shares with third parties for the third parties' direct marketing purposes. Sangha does not share your information with third parties for the third parties' own and independent direct marketing purposes unless we receive your permission. If you have questions about our sharing practices or your rights under California law, please write us at email@example.com.
14. Contacting Sangha.
If you have any questions about the Privacy Policy, please contact Sangha at:
Attn: Privacy Director
Address: Sangha ℅ Edlio LLC, 12910 Culver Blvd, Suite I
Los Angeles, CA 90066
Tel: 310-204-7300


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I haven't an anecdote directly, but one of the things I've done in my KM class is to ask for activities that encourage or discourage trust in an organization. I think there is a direct connection between trust and creating an environment where collaboration can happen. And my PKM system isn't working very well today, as I cannot find the list I could have sworn I created during class.


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The Good Ship IPO
The seas of the market are constantly shifting. Whether the good ship IPO can set sail may depend heavily on the tides.
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Fairfield, Iowa is home to some of the wily callback companies that are now turning themselves into virtual phone companies to battle telco giants.
The plane lands without incident at Chicago's teeming O'Hare International Airport, where everyone's on a mission, going somewhere, doing something. The industrially correct word for such an airport is hub, but it's a turnstile more than anything else, flinging us to our diverse destinations: this one goes to Los Angeles, that one to Paris, another to Caracas. Me? I'm going to Iowa. I board a half-empty connecting flight, and an hour later the plane lands in Cedar Rapids. It's the only passenger jet in sight, and it will not stay for long - this plane has places to go.
I get in my rental car and head away from Cedar Rapids - far away. I drive a few miles on Interstate 380 and peel off at Route 1, which has one lane going each way- and if I make the mistake of swerving just a tiny bit, I will end up flattened like a bug against the grill of an oncoming 18-wheeler. This is rural territory. There are cornfields all around, an occasional farmhouse with a Ford pickup in front, and modest crossroads sporting the likes of a Dairy Queen and a gas station where the attendant knows most everyone. Traffic congestion is caused not by a scrum of horn-blowing lunatics, but by lone tractors putt-putting along the road, the farmers waving at you as you pass. I drive for an hour, until I reach a marquee-style sign:
Now Showing
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A Story About Excellence
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I have reached my destination, but this is all a bit strange. I am working on a high tech story, yet I am not in Silicon Valley, nor in Manhattan's Silicon Alley, nor in Seattle or Boston or any city associated with high tech. I am not even in a city, not even close to one, and my hotel is on a dirt road. The companies I seek are located on patches of earth that until recently were cornfields, and that ground- upon which the future of global telecommunications is being sculpted- is surrounded by cornfield upon cornfield upon cornfield.
I have come to Fairfield to interview the high tech entrepreneurs behind Telegroup and USA Global Link, telecommunications firms whose wily use of callback technology helped break the spine of the world's telephone monopolies. The upshot may be as earthshaking in the US$600 billion global telecom market as the breakup of Ma Bell was in the US market. Consider this: The average cost of an international phone call is poised to drop as much as 80 percent over the next few years. To anyone who has made an international call and cursed its exorbitant cost, these guys are heroes. Their reward has been considerable so far, leading to annual salaries in excess of half a million dollars for some- and the prospect of greater riches ahead.
It started quite modestly a few years back, when callback companies arrived on the scene using a high tech trick to capitalize on the fact that foreign telephone monopolies charge many times more for international calls than American companies such as AT&T and MCI. The trick consisted of setting up phone switches in the States that customers would call from abroad. Callers would hang up after the first ring, avoiding any charge, and a phone switch would call them back instantly, connecting them to a stateside phone line. The customers then dialed their calls on the American line, incurring reasonable US rates rather than exorbitant rates charged by the foreign monopolies.
Telegroup, which grew from practically nothing a few years ago into a firm that raked in $213 million in revenues last year, just went public, is valued at about $300 million, and aims to evolve into a global phone company offering a full range of services. A few cornfields away, Global Link aims for a similar transition and has unveiled grandiose plans to build an Internet-based phone system. If Telegroup or Global Link stumble during their transitions, they're telecom roadkill. Splat. If they stay on their feet, they're players in an explosion of riches in the warp-speed world of global telephony.
Yes, Fairfield is hot these days. The locals call it Silicorn Valley.
Just prior to my visit, Telegroup had opened a new headquarters building, an attractive structure that stands out amid the area's grain silos because it's topped with Buddhist-style spires. Yes, it looks a bit odd, and it makes you wonder. Staff is still feeling its way around the place when I visit, and workers rumble down the corridors girded with tool belts and wielding power drills, providing low tech solutions for a high tech company. The company has that unmistakable Silicon Valley feel - the casual dress, the sea of young faces, the absence of corporate rigidity, the we-are-building-a-new-world atmosphere.
I head toward the office of Fred Gratzon, the wizard of this Oz. As chair of Telegroup, he pulled down $850,000 in salary and bonuses last year and owns a big chunk of the firm. His clothes are Eddie Bauer-ish, he wears leather slippers, and he has the endearing manner of an ice-cream vendor- which he used to be. Sales tags still hang from underneath his office chairs, and a picture of a familiar-looking Indian guru is propped against a wall. There's something rather special about this office, but a first-time visitor might need some time to piece it together. Because Telegroup's growth has been so fast and hectic, Gratzon hasn't had time to arrange the stuff in his new office, and I jokingly ask how long it will be before he needs to move into a bigger one."No more than a year," he replies, and he is not fooling around. "We play seriously, we play to win, and we'll be successful. But one of the secrets of our success is to not take it so seriously." There's a Zen-like contradiction in him and in his company, an unusual calmness/earnestness. It has something to do with those spires atop the roof and the picture of the guru on his wall, but that's getting ahead of the story.
Gratzon has had the sort of business career that would be defined in a résumé as "wide ranging." More than a decade ago he set up the Great Midwestern Ice Cream Company, which did quite well for a while, earning a couple of culinary prizes- and Nancy Reagan even invited him to cater a White House picnic after she tasted his product. Gratzon took on new investors, but they booted him from the firm in 1988, leaving him to collect unemployment checks and worry about how to support his family in Fairfield.
This guy is no farmer, so he began fiddling around in the phone industry, buying blocks of discounted long distance time from AT&T and reselling bits and pieces to friends. Working out of a spare room of his house, he teamed up with fellow Fairfield resident Cliff Rees, a successful oil trader with an arbitrageur's acute, go-for-the-kill mind-set. Thus was Telegroup born.
Gratzon and Rees stumbled into callback in 1992 after reading a magazine article about the infant technology."Callback is an arbitrage play," Rees says calmly, as though remarking on the weather. His office boasts a number of unusual artifacts, including two samurai swords and his grandfather's cavalry blade on a display case, a wall-sized world map, and a statuette of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth. Rees, president and CEO of Telegroup, explains arbitrage as finding price imbalances and exploiting them with whatever weapons you have- callback technology, for instance.
In the early 1990s, callback's commercial potential was vast. The new callback firms in Iowa and other states aggressively marketed it and underpriced the big guys by margins that were tempting for individuals and small companies- the sort of customers who feel the pain of high phone rates more acutely than large firms (although the US State Department, the United Nations, and the World Bank reportedly used callback). This ignited a somewhat amusing yet momentous war in which foreign telephone monopolies tried to crush the callback upstarts. They failed, and the world will never be the same again.
Estimates of the magnitude of today's callback market vary, but most guesses converge at about $1.5 billion in 1996, and the market is believed to have doubled annually since 1992. It didn't take long for foreign, government-run telcos- known in the industry by the initials PTT (Post, Telephone, and Telegraph)- to realize that they were losing valuable business and that the hemorrhaging would worsen unless something was done.
Basically, international calls have been a glorious cash cow for the PTTs since the dawn of telecom time; until recently, the PTTs faced no competitive pressures and could charge whatever infernal rate they wanted. It was like harvesting cash. A call from Buenos Aires to Miami, for example, would cost $5-$6 per minute for a minimum of three minutes. Ditto for most other countries; rates varied but almost always bore little relation to the PTT's cost of completing the call. They charged as much as they could get away with. It was a racket.
Things began changing in 1992 and 1993, when callback hit its stride. At the start, some PTTs were confused- they knew that callback firms were stealing their business but they didn't quite understand how. One day, a Global Link salesperson in Spain got a visit from several officials of the Spanish PTT who- expecting a switching system of some sort- were surprised to find nothing more than a telephone and a fax machine. In fact, the switches were located in the US, and the salesperson was merely signing up customers for Global Link's service, giving them the callback numbers in the US, and faxing their account information to headquarters in Iowa.
The PTTs- and the governments that operated them- got wise to the system and decided to crush it. A number of countries took legislative action- the Bahamian Parliament passed a law authorizing a $10,000 fine for anyone they caught using callback services ($20,000 and a two-year jail term for a second conviction), and 26 other countries have prohibited callback, according to a US government tally. The European Union, a bit more subtle, imposed a punitive value-added tax on callback firms. Most crucially, PTTs blocked telephone numbers used by callback firms; if you tried to dial a callback firm's number in the US from, say, Paris or Jakarta, you'd get a busy signal.
Like clever mice outwitting fat cats, the callback firms prevailed by changing their numbers as soon as they were blocked. The PTTs were not amused. Instead of using a flyswatter, they took out a hammer and blocked three-digit exchanges within an area code- for example, every number in the 212 area code beginning with 864. The callback firms just laughed, changed their numbers to different exchanges, notified customers of the new numbers, and carried on. So then the PTTs blocked those exchanges, and, of course, the callback firms just hopped to other ones, and so on. In one case, a callback firm, hounded by Uruguay's PTT, acquired the same three-digit exchange as Uruguay's embassy in Washington, DC. The PTT was trumped: if it blocked the exchange, the country's embassy would be cut off from the motherland.
Some PTTs- mostly in the Third World- abandoned the hammer and used the shotgun, blocking calls to entire area codes. This had two results: callback firms changed numbers to different area codes, and the PTTs were inundated with complaints from customers who couldn't call their friends in, say, Seattle. The game became increasingly sophisticated. Realizing call blocking wasn't working too well, some of the PTTs blocked tone dialing after calls from the US were connected, thus making it impossible for callback customers to use their touch-tone phones to communicate with the callback computer switches (or for traveling businesspeople to access their voicemail back home). The callback firms got around this barrier by using voice-recognition software to complete the calls: instead of dialing numbers, customers pronounced them aloud. Some firms used a particularly nifty device to turn the trick- a human operator. The cat-and-mouse permutations took on myriad forms, but in each case the mice came out on top.
"Some of the callback operators proved rather ingenious," admits Jonathan Nadler, an attorney for Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, which represents a consortium of Central and South American telcos. He acknowledges that the economic incentive for callback firms is quite strong."It's classic arbitrage," he said."It doesn't cost anything to be in the business. You buy a cheap switch, you make no contribution to the infrastructure, you don't pay taxes in the country where you're providing the service. It's a great party as long as it lasts, with the one problem being that the party is not necessarily a legal one in a lot of countries."
To make matters worse for the PTTs, late last year AT&T rolled out its own callback service, which was like a trusted ally defecting to the other side. For a variety of reasons, AT&T had long resisted callback technology and had even asked the FCC to crack down on callback firms operating in the US. (The agency refused.) For one, when a PTT transmits a call to America, it can channel the call through any US carrier line. It is supposed to do this proportionally- if AT&T transmits 60 percent of calls from the US, then it should get 60 percent of calls to the States. But if a PTT got miffed at AT&T for some reason- say, because AT&T was operating a callback service or failing to stand in the way of callback services- the PTT could reduce or threaten to reduce the calls channeled through AT&T lines, thus diminishing AT&T's revenue. Even so, AT&T realized last year that in some markets callback's pros outweigh the cons, and it switched sides. Despite the high tech wizardry of global telecommunications, sometimes business decisions boil down to a very old motto: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
With the sky falling in, the foreign telcos began reacting in strange ways. Indosat, the international arm of Indonesia's government-controlled PTT, invested Rp4.68 billion ($20 million) in Global Link last year, even though an Indonesian government decree bans the use of callback. Others emulated this schizophrenic strategy."I remember going to trade conferences, and PTTs would ask, 'What is call reorigination?'" says Joel Eisenberg, chair of Seattle-based International Telcom, one of the first callback firms."Then, they asked how they stop it, and now they want to get on the gravy train."
The PTTs weren't just swatting at the callback firms- they had other forces to contend with. They were being pinched by international calling-card services, such as the one AT&T operates. The company's service allows cardholders in foreign countries to get international AT&T lines by dialing local access numbers. The service is similar to callback, but the calls can be made only in countries where AT&T (or any company offering the service) has local access numbers, and the rates are generally more expensive than callback.
Then there was the growing practice of reselling international line time, which enabled competitors of the PTTs to purchase international line time from foreign carriers and offer international service at lower rates. Most powerfully, a trend toward privatization was creeping across the globe, which meant that foreign governments faced new pressure to open their markets to competition, especially in the hyperprotected realm of telecommunications.
The end of the ancien régime came on February 15 of this year, when 68 countries agreed in Geneva to open their telecommunications markets in 1998. The agreement, under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, marks a new era in telecommunications, according to industry and government officials. US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky predicts that the $600 billion global telecommunications market will double or treble in the next decade, and few experts dispute her estimate. The accord was reached under heavy pressure from the US government, which believes that liberalization will benefit lean-and-mean American firms because they know how to operate in a competitive environment.
US officials hammered away at their counterparts from Europe, Japan, and the Third World, warning them that if they didn't agree to orderly deregulation, American telephone companies would begin their own disorderly deregulation like piranhas going for the kill."The callback phenomenon is tremendously important in terms of where we got," a US trade official told me."It's proof that technological improvements will defeat regulatory structure. It provided us with leverage."
Nobody knows what's going to happen next, except that tectonic shifts will occur as phone companies try to best each other with improved services. The cost of international calls is likely to drop like a rock in a dry well- Barshefsky predicts an 80 percent slide, from an average of $1 per minute to 20 cents within a few years. Rates would plummet even more dramatically if the telcos put the Net to commercial use, which seems inevitable though not imminent (the bandwidth isn't there yet). If you doubt these predictions, just look at Sprint, which in April slashed weekend rates on calls to Great Britain to 10 cents a minute.
Services are likely to get not only cheaper, but better, as telcos offer integrated packages of voice, voicemail, conferencing, paging, cellular phones, fax, email, and Internet access. The idea is that you could access a sophisticated range of personalized phone services from anywhere in the world at the touch of a few buttons. For example, pick up a phone in Budapest or Buenos Aires, and you'll be able to dial a local or toll free number and pick up your voicemail, get voice translations of email, faxes, or pager messages, and be able to respond to all of them on the spot- and, after that, call wherever you want at low prices and on flawless lines. No echoes, delays, or static. That's the idea, at least.
But where does that leave our friends from Fairfield? You would think the game is over for callback firms, and in a sense it is. With phone rates dropping and a range of new services on the horizon, the incentive for customers to use a clunky callback service is fading fast. After all, why bother with the hassle of callback if, instead of saving $2 a minute, you're just saving a few pennies? Telegroup, like Global Link and other callback firms, sees the handwriting on the wall."Nothing lasts forever," says Rees, Telegroup's nonplussed president and CEO."Any arbitrage situation always collapses sooner or later, whether it's in the telecommunications market or the stock market or the gold market." Telegroup's new strategy is to try to accomplish globally what MCI achieved in the US market when deregulation got under way here- take advantage of a newly competitive environment to outhustle the 800-pound gorillas and do what they're doing, only better and cheaper. The global telecom market is up for grabs, and Telegroup wants a piece of it.
The big players realize that they need to expand beyond national borders to prosper. Alliances and takeovers are being made at breakneck speed- the British Telecom/MCI merger is just the largest example. It's no longer enough for Deutsche Telekom to have a stranglehold over the German market. In order to fulfill the needs of its corporate clients- the meat and potatoes of any major telecom's revenue- it must provide worldwide services, so that a German company's subsidiary in Japan or Australia has the same quality of service as the home office. The upshot is that the PTTs, some of which have been loosely allied with each other for years, are expected to broaden and deepen those alliances in the next few years while setting up their own switching facilities in foreign lands. Some will prosper; some certainly will wither.
Enter the small guys, the Telegroups and the Global Links. Telegroup has issued about $40 million in stock, and Global Link executives are traipsing across the globe touting their plans for an Internet-based phone system- a Holy Grail in the telecommunications world that many industry officials think is beyond Global Link's reach. Telegroup and Global Link contend that they have the nimbleness to become"virtual" phone carriers offering a full range of global services without owning all the clunky hardware typically associated with industry behemoths- everything from ditchdiggers to transcontinental cables and geosynchronous satellites.
"There's a lot of room for mixed players in the future," says Eli Noam, a professor of economics at Columbia University and head of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information. Noam defines mixed players as system integrators:"I've been arguing for years that they will become the telecom companies of the future. They will be doing a lot of bundling together of other people's elements rather than providing their own. But of course everyone's jumping on that, and whether it's the small companies that will be able to play the global role is questionable to me."
It's not questionable to the small companies. Global Link executives say that their know-how is more important than their infrastructure and that the firm could be valued at $3 billion to $6 billion in the proposed share offering. Gratzon, Telegroup's chairman, believes that the now-dominant PTTs are as dim-witted as IBM was in the early 1980s, when Apple emerged from nowhere with a better idea and the ability to move quickly.
"We have salespeople in more countries than just about any phone company in the world," Gratzon says."We have customers in more countries than just about any phone company in the world. It's a good springboard." But what about the, um, other guys?"The competition out there is inept when it comes to marketing, even locally, because they're monopolies," he says."Their customer-service track record is abysmal. They clearly have zero competence in marketing over the border. Does France Telecom have any experience in Japan? I would say close to zero. Does Deutsche Telekom know the first thing about Brazil? No. All the phone companies in the world, with the exception of some Yanks, are very geocentric. Their networks are highly localized, they have no marketing infrastructure, they have no cultural experience, they have nothing. So the opportunity is huge."
A word of caution is in order here, and the word is Viatel. This small phone company began with callback services and migrated to conventional international service, primarily in Europe. It went public late last year, promising to dance around the big guys and set up a global phone network similar in scope and strategy to the systems Telegroup, Global Link, and others in their class are planning. One of Viatel's early shareholders was investor George Soros, a man known for having a golden touch. But Viatel has failed to live up to its projections, posting a $29 million loss in 1996 on revenue of $51 million. Its share price, $12 when it went public in October, has tumbled by nearly half. The truth is that although Telegroup would not mind growing into a global MCI, it doesn't need to become that big to become big. Confused? Look at the numbers again. The global phone market is worth more than half a trillion dollars now and could be worth a few trillion dollars in 10 or 20 years."Not a month or a week goes by that I don't have an experience that stretches my perception as to realizing just how big the telecom market is," says Ronald Stakland, Telegroup's vice president for international marketing and operations (and a former oil broker)."The market is so big, it may as well be infinite in terms of market potential. In that sense, any company is going to have the opportunity to be very, very big."
The interesting catch is that in order to be very, very big, a company will need to control only a small piece of the market. In a filing with the SEC, Telegroup reports that it is the second largest carrier of international calls in France, The Netherlands, and Switzerland, though it has no more than a small share of each market. Big deal, you say? Well, the French, Dutch, and Swiss together spend more than $35 billion on both domestic and international phone calls annually, so if Telegroup gains just a decent slice of those markets as they liberalize in the next few years- let's say 3 percent- it will have locked up more than $1 billion in revenue.
Not bad for a couple of guys who started their firm in a spare bedroom in Fairfield, Iowa. But why Fairfield? What's special about these guys, or about Fairfield? The answer may surprise you. Remember those Buddhist spires atop the Telegroup headquarters? (The Global Link headquarters has a similar set.) And remember the picture of the Indian guru propped against the wall in Gratzon's office? And the fact that Gratzon wears slippers in his office?
It's simple: Fairfield is ground zero of the transcendental meditation movement in the US. More than one-third of the town's residents are devout meditators, including the senior executives at Telegroup and Global Link and most of their employees. The Indian gentleman whose picture is in Gratzon's office is Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, leader of the TM movement. Gratzon, a longtime TM instructor, ran for the US Senate last year as a candidate from the Natural Law Party, a spinoff of the TM movement. In fact, Telegroup got its commercial liftoff from TM. Guess who constituted the bulk of Telegroup's international sales force at the outset? Meditators who Gratzon and Rees had gotten to know through their years in the TM movement.
"All my success is due to the practice of transcendental meditation," Gratzon says."I see TM as an enormous competitive edge. People here are enormously focused. It's breathtaking how dedicated and focused everyone is, and at the same time there is a lightness in the air, an easiness. As far as I'm concerned, corporate America is missing out by not considering a TM program for their management." Over at Global Link, where visitors to the corporate headquarters building are expected to remove their shoes before walking on the pristine carpets, the attitude is the same. Global Link founder Christopher Hartnett describes TM as a"mental technology" that has given his company a competitive edge."I don't think we could have had our growth without it," he says."It has provided me with a tremendous amount of clarity of mind."
It's a simple thing, TM. For 20 minutes in the morning, preferably before breakfast, and for 20 minutes in the evening, preferably before dinner, you sit in a quiet place, close your eyes and silently repeat a sound, your mantra. You repeat it over and over again, and if you do it right, your mind wanders into a zone that is neither sleep nor wakefulness- it is between the two and beyond the two. When the session is over you open your eyes, and, if things have gone right and TM does what it is supposed to do, you feel relaxed, refreshed, clearer, as though you have gone for a swim in a mountain lake. For Telegroup's Type A personalities, it means that they can be Type As without the usual hang-ups of Type As- the ulcers, the outbursts, and all the rest. TM calms them down and allows them to work harder; Rees, for example, often slips back into his office at ten at night- after his evening meditation session - and stays until two or three in the morning, working on problems or sending email. And he's up the next morning, ready for more work, ready to conquer the world.
TM can be more than just a matter of meditation: it can include a holistic régime of eating and health care known as Ayurveda and even a form of architecture known as Sthapatya veda, which is said to generate success. Telegroup and Global Link embrace both principles: the spires atop their headquarters, their east-facing entrances, and each building's bramistan - its quiet reception area- are derived from Sthapatya veda. Telegroup goes a step further and offers its employees a health-care package that includes free Ayurveda treatments at The Raj, a local health spa and hotel that offers, among other amenities, herbal massages and"elimination therapy" (known to the rest of us as enemas).
So why Iowa? The followers of the Maharishi ("great seer" in Sanskrit) founded the Maharishi International University in Santa Barbara, California, in 1971. The institution's students soon overcrowded the small apartment complex the university was renting. When a small college in Fairfield went bankrupt and offered its campus for a song ($2.5 million) in 1974, the Maharishi's followers decamped to the heartland. The campus, a smattering of classroom buildings and podlike living quarters, suited them well, though they had to build the meditation domes, one for men, one for women. More than two decades later, the meditators have deep roots here. The town features a couple of vegetarian restaurants, a few New Age bookstores, and a natural-vitamin store, and there's a Maharishi High School, too, for the next generation of meditators. It all lends Fairfield the tie-dyed feel of Berkeley, though of course Fairfield is not Berkeley and Iowa is not California (for which the residents of both states are no doubt equally grateful). No hills surround Fairfield, no bays or bridges or tall buildings, just one movie theater - and if you wander around asking where you can get a double-decaf skim latte, well, you'll find out what Iowa laughter sounds like.
In other words, after a few days it was time to leave Fairfield. I got back in my car, drove back up the dirt road, passed a barn with "Pride-o-Prairie" painted on its side, pulled onto Route 1, waved at the farmers on their tractors, and kept on cruising until I reached the Cedar Rapids Municipal Airport. I arrived home soon enough, turnstiling through O'Hare, but from time to time my mind floats back to where I was on that journey, and what I saw- things I would not have expected to see - and a gee-whiz question rustles around my head like a cornstalk in a breeze. It's a whisper of a question, just one word long, and it is this: Iowa?


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Good Morning,
The verse of the day is Acts 12:5, "So Peter was kept in the prison, but prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God."
"O God of Heaven, we beseech thee on behalf of our brother, Peter, that you would do a miracle and release him from the prison where he is being carefully guarded . . . ." The fervent prayers of the small house church rose into the night. A number of them had gathered at the home of Mary, the mother of John Mark, to pray for the apostle Peter.
Recently King Herod had begun to arrest some of the Christ believers in order to mistreat them. He had taken James, the brother of John, and put him to death with the sword. Still reeling from this tragedy, they had been informed that Peter was now under arrest waiting to be brought before the people after the Passover holiday was over. Tomorrow was the final day and Peter would be brought out and killed. The new church gathered once again to beg the Lord to spare their brother in Christ.
"O, great and powerful God, we know that you can do all things. Please spare Peter from the same fate as James. Bring him back to us so your message can continue to go forth . . . ." The prayers went on and on into the night.
Meanwhile, in the prison, Peter, chained between two guards, was sound asleep. Sixteen soldiers were hired to guard him so that there would be no way he could escape or be rescued. The prison was under such tight surveillance that security cameras could not have done a better job.
Suddenly Peter felt a strong slap on his side. He cracked his eyelids to shield them from the intense light that filled his cell. "Get up quickly," a strong voice commanded. Realizing the chains had fallen from his wrists Peter groggily stood to his feet. "Get dressed. Put on your sandals and cloak and follow me!" the voice continued.
As if in a dream Peter followed the angel through the corridors, carefully stepping around the oblivious guards. When they came to the iron gate that led to the city streets it opened for them automatically like the door at the market. They continued down the street while the cool air revived the released prisoner to his senses. He glanced around for his angelic guide but with a flash he was gone. Peter was left alone in the dim light.
Gently touching the chafing marks on his wrists, he began to recollect what had happened. "Now I know for sure that the Lord has sent forth his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting." Realizing the miraculous escape that God had superintended, Peter headed to Mary's house where he knew the church would be praying.
He saw the light through the window before he heard the soft murmurings ascending into the early morning sky. "God of Angel armies, we continue to ask for your deliverance. We know that You are a God of miracles and we ask for our brother, Peter…."
Suddenly there was a knock on the gate. While the prayers droned on, the servant girl, Rhoda, timidly went to answer the summons. Upon reaching the portal she squinted her eyes to adjust to the dim light. A manly form took shape and upon hearing the request for entrance she recognized Peter's voice. In the thrill of her joy Rhoda forgot to open the gate but ran back in to tell the others.
"God has answered our prayers. Peter is here!" she exclaimed. The devoted prayer warriors stopped their intercession to reprimand the young girl, "You are out of your mind for lack of sleep! Peter is heavily guarded in a Roman prison cell. What time is it? Maybe Herod has already executed our brother and his ghost has come to bid farewell."
Rhoda continued to insist that Peter was alive and well, knocking at the gate until they all rushed to the entrance. They threw open the door and were amazed to see the object of their fervent prayers in the flesh. Peter motioned them to be quiet. They all reentered the prayer chapel where Peter described to them God's divine intervention. He then told them to explain to James and all the other brothers what God had done as he slipped out into the night to find safety in another place.
What are you earnestly praying for? Will you recognize the answer when it knocks on the door?


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San Diego Women's Week
Women's Week
The North San Diego Business Chamber presented its annual San Diego Women's Week in March, a week of events designed to inspire, empower, and connect women of all ages and professions. Women from San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino Counties gathered at four events which featured keynote speakers, panel discussions, networking, vendors, food, makeovers, shopping, breakout sessions, and much more. Conference speakers included U.S. Paralympic track sprinter and jumper Scout Bassett, actress Kim Coles, Co-founder and Content Chief Elliot Kotek, and Ellevest Co-founder and CEO Sallie Krawcheck. Learn more at www.sdwomensweek.com.


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Because it does direct-to-disc recording and so much more, Pioneer's PRV-LX1 ($3995) is a natural. It has professional I/O, can do pro-level encoding straight from an NLE, camcorder or field deck, and can add custom menus on projects, and its straightforwardness is huge. Even an unpolished first-generation user interface can't stop the LX1 from making DVD authoring unusually facile. As either a gateway to DVD-Video for professional print-to-tapers or a down and not-so-dirty get 'em out the door offloading system for experienced DVD authors, look for the LX1 to burn a blazing trail.
July 2003|To video professionals accustomed to outputting finished projects to tape, "authoring" can sound as foreign as writing a book, or at least as bothersome as writing the narration-track text to a corporate promo piece. Or perhaps "authoring" foreshadows the burden of learning a new and potentially complicated skill set just to deliver something as polished as a tape master. Refreshingly, Pioneer's new PRV-LX1—a standalone MPEG-2 encoder and DVD authoring box posing as a video tape recorder (VTR)—may yet assuage those fears by bringing fast and easy DVD disc creation, complete with elegant menus, to tape-centric, nose-to-the-grindstone video producers.
We tested a Beta version of the PRV-LX1 (due to ship in June 2003) to find out if its warm debut reception in April at NAB was the result of sharp images and efficient burning or just smoke and mirrors. At just $3,995, the prospect of high-quality, real-time encoding combined with almost pain-free authoring has obvious appeal, but can "authoring" ever be as easy as printing to tape? The LX1 comes tantalizingly close. Apple won't be hiring any LX1 user interface designers, but not even haphazard UI organization can make building DVDs much harder than designing labels for old VHS window dubs. Make space in your rack; digital delivery just got a lot easier.
Built to Blend in Our test unit was a Beta version, but Pioneer asserts that its features were 99% finalized, save the addition of a full User's Manual that we did not have to critique. Physically, the chassis was as it will be; a BetacamSP-sized (only lighter!), rack-mountable, deck-like device with backlit buttons (Play, Stop, Pause, Fast Forward, Reverse, Scan, and Record) and LED readouts on the front and standard video I/O on the back. It makes a clear statement that the LX1 is ready to fit into your current workflow.
The LX1 has the standard fare for connections: 3X BNC component (in/out), S-Video (in/out), and BNC composite (in/out), as well as both balanced and unbalanced audio jacks (in/out). There's Black Burst (in/out), and LTC in and RS-422 for external control and ECL batch support. For digital input, Pioneer includes a DV via 4-pin FireWire and is planning an SDI/AES EBU option for later this year.
Less familiarly, there are four USB ports (two in both the front and back) for connecting a mouse and keyboard, a VGA port, and a couple of other I/O surprises. First, the inputs feed an MPEG-2 hardware encoder, while the outputs show the decoded MPEG-2 files with a four-second delay (latency is to be expected for MPEG encode/decode, but that's very long). Therefore, an otherwise straightforward incoming source pass-through would require an internal DA and a second set of outputs and doesn't exist on the LX1, save with composite source. That's only a problem if your source doesn't have a monitor attached to it. Secondly, the video output toggles between the MPEG decode and the LX1's user interface. That VGA port is only for service repair or programming, rather than for a dedicated UI monitor. It would be nice to have that option, but Pioneer deserves credit for streamlining the minimum configuration.
Instead of a tape drive, the LX1's front has two drive bays for Pioneer DVR-A05 DVD-R/RW burners and there's a 120GB hard drive inside. In the standard one-burner configuration, the right bay will have just a faceplate. The two-burner version (add $495) supports simultaneous burning if, for example, you regularly burn a delivery copy and an archival copy at one time. It can also copy a non-copy-protected DVD disc. The LX1 supports encoding directly to one or both recorders or to the hard drive, or even to the HDD and one burner simultaneously. Wherever you encode, you'll still have the ability to add a custom menu to the project after you've finished recording the media: a tremendous feature for real-time archival and/or distribution of presentations, digital dailies, and just the fast pace of production work. (See Geoff Daily's "Daily Planet," www.emedialive.com/r18/2003/daily0603.html, pp. 18-25 for more on digital dailies and DVD.)
How do you record video and audio to the LX1? Same as with a deck: hit the Record button on the front. (You can actually configure "Record" for direct recording or to Standby-Record where the first touch engages Standby mode and the second touch of Record starts it.) Naturally, with an encoder rather than a tape deck, there are set-up parameters—such as input, bit rate, set-up level, Audio (Dolby or PCM), etc.—and all are accessed through the UI by familiar DVD navigation arrows and Enter, also on the unit's front. Or you can use the USB keyboard and mouse.
And that interface? It has a utilitarian flair that evokes an engineer who sat down with a list of features that wasn't really in any order. The layout makes more sense if you appreciate the limitations of navigation arrows. With a mouse, there is an awkward collection of single clicks, double clicks, and even a keyboard "Enter" in one place to avoid not saving choices. Still, there's little that's intuitive. Four main hierarchical groups are almost meaninglessly labeled "Edit," "App," "Set-up," and "Status." Set-up parameters are dispersed among Edit, Set-up, and Status, and because the interface changes so much as you drill down, it's hard to know where you are, especially because the entire Status group is positioned as if it were a subdirectory. And "Edit" what? There's no clip-trimming in the LX1, it's menu creation and DVD project set-up. "App" is a disc-copying utility and batch capture conveniently(?) grouped together. Bluntly put, there is no visual workflow. There are also several setting annoyances like a First Play default of "do nothing" rather than "play menu" or first title, so you have to set it each time.