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Congratulations to Wilmington bands Free Clinic and Museum Mouth, which are included in the initial lineup of bands and performers at September's Hopscotch Music Festival in Raleigh.
Hopscotch celebrates its fifth year in downtown Raleigh Sept. 4-6. The initial lineup comprises 115 acts with 40 more to be announced.
Hopscotch is an annual and massive gathering of music that's become recognized largely for its diverse mix of music programming. This year's festival will be headlined by Spoon, Mastodon, Sun Kil Moon and High on Fire.
More names that locals might recognize include Lonnie Walker, Gems, Valient Thorr, Ghostt Bllonde, Zack Mexico, Virgins Family band, TOW3RS, Dent May and American Aquarium.
In the past few years Wilmington bands ASG, Weedeater, D&D Sluggers and Onward, Soldiers have been asked to be a part of the still growing festival.
Museum Mouth has a new full length album coming out May 27 on Self Aware Records out of Charlotte called "Alex I Am Nothing" and Free Clinic is working on new material.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Texas Health Resources CIO Edward Marx started his career with a commitment to healthcare, not technology, but he settled on promoting the effective implementation of technology as the way he could make the biggest contribution to healthcare.
Last week, he was named the recipient of the 2013 John E. Gall Jr. CIO of the Year Award, which will be presented at the Annual HIMSS Conference and Exhibition in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 25. The winner was selected by the boards of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), the healthcare IT leadership organization; and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), which is specifically for CIOs. Marx is senior vice president and CIO at Texas Health Resources in Arlington, one of the largest faith-based, nonprofit healthcare delivery systems in the United States and the largest in North Texas by patients served.
In an interview earlier this week, Marx said the award was as much a reflection on all the people he works with as on himself. "Even though I'm not an IT person by training, I am a leader," he said. He has succeeded by surrounding himself with good people and by understanding the business and clinical aspects of healthcare well enough to know how technology can contribute.
Marx got his first hospital job in high school working as a janitor and saw healthcare as an industry he wanted to be involved in "because it's about people -- about helping people." When he joined the Army Reserve to help pay for college, he initially wanted to be a combat medic for that reason, although he wound up as a combat engineer instead. "As I was in school, it became clear I wasn't going to be a doctor or anything like that," he said.
Still, when it came time to pick a civilian career, he chose to become an anesthesia technician. It was a job that was probably below what he was expected to take as a college graduate and Army officer, "but it got me in the door and gave me some experience in a clinical setting." From there, he sought out a variety of leadership roles -- until the day a personal crisis focused his attention more sharply on technology.
Technology becomes personal"I had a very personal event, where a child of mine was born in very difficult circumstances, and it was actually technology that saved her life," Marx said. You can read his blog post about the experience, but here's the short version he shared with me: "My daughter was born without life. They resuscitated her, but then we were faced with a major choice: whether to take her to a children's hospital a couple of hours away where she would get better care, but there would also be a lot of risk from the flight. My wife was also hospitalized from trauma associated with the birth." He didn't want to separate mother from child or take unnecessary risks if he could help it.
All this happened in the hospital where Marx was working at the time as a physician services coordinator and had just begun to do some work with the hospital's IT group. The doctors at the children's hospital said they could consult remotely if given an automated way to collaborate, but this was in the early 1990s when such things were not common. Yet Marx and the IT team figured out a way to make it happen over a 2400-baud modem.
"We were able to give the physicians at the childrens hospital access to dial into our clinical systems and consult in real-time, see all the data while they were talking with the docs at our hospital." With that remote assist, his daughter survived the crisis. This year she turned 18.
"That really was a trigger point," Marx said, an event that showed him the potential of health IT to make a difference in people's lives. He has also blogged about a more recent event, the death of his mother, and how seeing the shortcomings of the information available to her care team made him recommit to achieving what he calls "meaningful, meaningful use" of health IT.
First to achieve "meaningful use"As a healthcare technology leader, Marx says it's his job "to enable superior business and clinical outcomes." He took on his first CIO role at Parkview Medical Center in Pueblo, Colo., and later served as CIO of University Hospitals of Cleveland, with another IT leadership role at HCA in between. He arrived at Texas Health Resources as CIO in October 2007.
"I always had a great team, but when I arrived at Texas Health, everything came together -- an excellent organization, a very proactive culture, a great team of leaders, and a great IT organization. While I had leadership capabilities, it was really those things coming together that made the difference."
One key achievement: "We implemented EHR very, very well, and at the time we did it, five or six years ago, most people did not implement well. We were first in the country -- or tied for first in the country -- to achieve meaningful use," he said, referring to the federal incentives program for effective use of health IT. Texas Health implemented Epic electronic health record software across a network of 14 hospitals.
The Texas Health IT team also has received a number of awards for innovation, most recently the HIMSS Davies Award.
Perhaps more importantly, the most recent physician engagement scores, a measure of satisfaction with IT systems, are well over 90%, he said. "That's ridiculously high," he chortled. "Physicians, for one thing, are very difficult to satisfy, so to have that level of satisfaction with IT systems is pretty unheard of." Broader surveys of hospital users, he told us, put satisfaction at over 80%.
Making a national mark"I'm not a big techie, but I believe in surrounding myself with knowledgeable, excellent people, including excellent technologists," said Marx. "I also have a national perspective. I blog a couple of times a month, and those blogs are very, very popular. Most of my blogs are about leadership and developing leaders. It's one thing to do healthcare IT well, within your own organization -- that's really good, that's really important -- but if you really want to make your mark, you need to go outside the boundaries of your institution. To add value externally, to others -- that's like the ultimate to me."


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text: On Wed, Feb 26, 2003 at 12:50:46PM -0500, Robert G. Brown's all... > On Wed, 26 Feb 2003, John Morelle wrote: > > > Hi all, > > > > I would like to notice here to everyone about our complaining problems on > > the TYAN MP based : the Tiger S2460 motherboard. > You can probably find plenty of them in the list archives. I've > detailed ours numerous times. > > a) They persist in crashing (even to this day) when hammered by a > memory-intensive application. We have some 23 2460's, and probably 2 or > 3 times that many 2466's. When the owners run the computation(s) on > them that they got the workstations for, they crash, often with three > days to a week. We put Tbird 1.33s into ours like we were NOT ADVISED TO DO, into 2460s with the original bios, and we've had NO PROBLEMS at all. I wish there was a way to flash back to this old bios, because you can still get 1.33 and 1.4 Tbirds, and they're rock solid. > b) Even that is maddeningly inconsistent. The same job run with the > same parameters might crash in one day one time, four days another time, > and not crash at all on a different 2460 -- until the time it does. Now you need a RAIC - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Clusters. Then you verify the results and toss out the garbage. I actually did this with a bunch of overclocked boxen to weed out the bad ones. I ran each job 3 times, and started flagging which boxes gave results that differed from others. When all 3 differed, I ran it two more times and hand picked through results. (I dont condone OC anymore though at all, this was back in the C300A days -- tho it is interesting to note my C300A OC'd to 450 is going on 5 years at home, as my firewall -- I WISH they built things stable as that still! ;) > c) We had incredibly horrible problems initially getting them to work > with off the shelf risers. Some cards would work, in some slots, > sometimes. Some of the same cards that failed would work in some of the > slots on the motherboard if plugged directly in (no riser at all). > We're not talking odd cards, either -- things like 3c905's and > off-the-shelf PCI video. Man that bios musta been garbage. Hows the new bios? We had no problems with the bios on the 2460 (mfg'd between oct and dec 2001) and on the 2466 (initial release mfg'd between dec 2001 and feb 2002). We NEVER upgraded the bios and dont intend to for fear of having the same problems. Oh do you mean PCI riser cards to let 2U servers have full height PCI cards in them? Bad karma on those - we've used them in a few machines around here and we've had problems with almost every board we've tried them on. PCI doesnt like to have extra goop in the way of its cards. > e) Such as the fact that if you flash the BIOS, it resets the serial > console (which doesn't work horribly well, as it requires a keyboard to > be plugged directly in if you want to do all sorts of important things > but which does work). So if you actually bought 2466's WITHOUT a video > card, expecting to use the serial console, if you reflash the BIOS you > have to disassemble the case, insert a video card, reenter the BIOS, > turn the serial console on again, shut it down and take out the video > card, rerack it, power it up and do whatever via the serial console, and > God help you if you made any sort of mistake or anything failed to > "take" because you then get to do it all over again. WOW. Thats amazing. We can run them without keyboards fine. Occasionally the BIOS is reset by as power flux or something like that, and yes you have to get out the video card and stuff, but thats a minor deal. It happens infrequently enough - when there's a power fail and subsequent very unfriendly repowering (where it flickers and comes back on and just stresses ALL the gear as much as possible..) we find only 2-3% of machines have a problem. [ dont ask why there's no ups. its political at the customer end. ] > Overall, the 2460's are just plain broken unstable pieces of shit that > suck systems administration time like a black hole and have cost us > something like 1/3 of the productivity of the cluster in question and > infinite annoyance at the management level. We are finally biting the > bullet and trying to gradually replace them with 2466's (reusing all the > rest of the hardware). My experience has been completely contrary to this. Perhaps its because we bought them at different times, or perhaps because we dont have MPs in them. We have regular Tbirds, which were "not supported" by AMD. We used them after 2 months of testing and having no problems, and here we are a year later with no problems after the install. We've had to replace two boards, but they were both 2466s (and then we had to buy MPs because the replacements were the 4.01 bios that doesnt work with tbirds. Those new BIOS boards have had more problems than all the 2460s and 2466s in the cluster since then as well! Yay!). > If you can get Tyan to replace them for free, please let us know. God We got RMAs on dead boards pretty easily through our supplier. Not sure what your deal is. extra 10% for 3 year warranty on CPUs and boards was worth it. > knows that they should -- they should replace ours as well and those > belonging to any other poor suckers who bought them. These systems > overall drove us to seriously consider e.g. dual Xeons (at a fairly > similar price) just because they are relatively stable. Alas, the Xeons > don't run my particular problem as well as Athlons... We use alot of athlon gear around here and have built two clusters of them, so far, no complaints. They blow around the same speed as all our intel gear, in the long run. Again, however, if you buy inexpensive gear, just set up so its most cost effective to throw it away! You and I have come to this conclusion before actually. :) Im sure it makes environmentalists (including the tiny one inside me) cringe. As long as you experience regular fail rates, like perhaps a board a month, then yer set. If you have problems across the whole cluster, where 30-60% of your gear is affected you have a different problem. Im just waiting to see what happens at 18-24 months -- see if the 246x's get bit by the exploding capacitor problem, yay! Anyone else experiencing that? /kc > > rgb > > Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ > Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 > Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 > Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:rgb at phy.duke.edu > > > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf -- Ken Chase, math at velocet.ca * Velocet Communications Inc. * Toronto, CANADA


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Frequent Links
Brownfield land
|The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (May 2011)
Brownfield is a term used in urban planning to describe land previously used for commercial uses or industrial purposes. Such land has been contaminated with hazardous waste or pollution or is feared to be so.[1][2] Once cleaned up, such an area can become host to a business development such as a retail park. Land that is more severely contaminated and has high concentrations of hazardous waste or pollution, such as a Superfund site, does not fall under the brownfield classification. Mothballed brownfields are properties that the owners are not willing to transfer or put to productive reuse.[3]
The term applies more generally to previously used land or to sections of industrial or commercial facilities that are to be upgraded,[4] although this usage is becoming more commonplace.
United States
The term brownfields first came into use on June 28, 1992, at a U.S. congressional field hearing hosted by the Northeast Midwest Congressional Coalition. Also in 1992, the first detailed policy analysis of the issue was convened by the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission. The United States Environmental Protection Agency selected Cuyahoga County as its first brownfield pilot project in September 1993.[5]
Generally, brownfield sites exist in a city's or town's industrial section, on locations with abandoned factories or commercial buildings, or other previously polluting operations. Small brownfields also may be found in many older residential neighborhoods. For example, many dry cleaning establishments or gas stations produced high levels of subsurface contaminants during prior operations, and the land they occupy might sit idle for decades as a brownfield.
Typical contaminants found on contaminated brownfield land include hydrocarbon spillages, solvents, pesticides, heavy metals such as lead (e.g., paints), tributyltins, and asbestos. Old maps may assist in identifying areas to be tested.
Redevelopment strategies
|This section needs additional citations for verification. (May 2011)
A number of innovative financial and remediation techniques have been used in the U.S. in recent years to expedite the cleanup of brownfield sites. For example, some environmental firms have teamed up with insurance companies to underwrite the cleanup of distressed brownfield properties and provide a guaranteed cleanup cost for a specific brownfield property, to limit land developers' exposure to environmental remediation costs and pollution lawsuits. The environmental firm first performs an extensive investigation of the brownfield site to ensure that the guaranteed cleanup cost is reasonable and they will not wind up with any surprises.
Innovative remedial techniques used at distressed brownfields in recent years include in situ thermal remediation, bioremediation and in situ oxidation. Often, these strategies are used in conjunction with each other or with other remedial strategies such as soil vapor extraction. In this process, vapor from the soil phase is extracted from soils and treated, which has the effect of removing contaminants from the soils and groundwater beneath a site. Some brownfields with heavy metal contamination have even been cleaned up through an innovative approach called phytoremediation, which uses deep-rooted plants to soak up metals in soils into the plant structure as the plant grows. After they reach maturity, the plants – which now contain the heavy metal contaminants in their tissues – are removed and disposed of as hazardous waste.
Research is under way to see if some brownfields can be used to grow crops, specifically for the production of biofuels.[6] Michigan State University, in collaboration with DaimlerChrysler and NextEnergy, has small plots of soybean, corn, canola, and switchgrass growing in a former industrial dump site in Oakland County, Michigan. The intent is to see if the plants can serve two purposes simultaneously: assist with phytoremediation, and contribute to the economical production of biodiesel and/or ethanol fuel.
The regeneration of brownfields in United Kingdom and in other European countries has gained prominence due to Greenfield land restrictions as well as their potential to promote the urban renaissance.[4]
Post-redevelopment uses
|This section needs additional citations for verification. (June 2011)
Some state governments restrict development of brownfield sites to particular uses in order to minimize exposure to leftover contaminants on-site after the cleanup is completed; such properties are deed-restricted in their future usage. Some legally require that such areas are reused for housing or for new commercial use in order not to destroy further arable land. The redevelopment of brownfield sites is a significant part of new urbanism, while some brownfields are left as green spaces for recreational uses.
For historical reasons, many brownfield sites are close to important thoroughfares such as highways and rivers; their reclamation can therefore be a major asset to a city. Portland, Oregon, has pioneered the use of road and rail infrastructure to support the cleanup and reuse of brownfield sites. Another example is the Atlantic Station project in Atlanta, the largest brownfield redevelopment in the United States.[7] In Seattle, rusted remains of a gasworks were left in place to add character to Gas Works Park. Dayton, like many other cities in the region, is developing Tech Town in order to attract technology-based firms to Dayton and revitalize the downtown area.
But one of the most well-known areas in the United States for brownfield redevelopment is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which has successfully converted numerous former steel mill sites into high-end residential, shopping and offices. Several examples of brownfield redevelopment in Pittsburgh include the following:
- In Homestead, Pennsylvania, the site once occupied by Carnegie Steel has been converted into a successful commercial center, The Waterfront.
- In Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood, a former slag dump for steel mills was turned into a $243 million residential development called Summerset at Frick Park.
- In Pittsburgh's South Side neighborhood, a former LTV Steel mill site was transformed into Southside Works, a mixed-use development that includes high-end entertainment, retail, offices, and housing.
- In the Hazelwood (Pittsburgh) neighborhood, a former Jones and Laughlin steel mill site was transformed into a $104 million office park called Pittsburgh Technology Center.
- In Herr's Island, a Script error: No such module "convert". island on the western bank of the Allegheny River, a former rail stop for livestock and meatpacking was transformed into Washington's Landing, a waterfront center for commerce, manufacturing, recreation and upscale housing
In the United States, investigation and cleanup of brownfield sites is largely regulated by state environmental agencies in cooperation with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).The EPA, together with local and national government, can provide technical help and some funding for assessment and cleanup of designated sites. They can also provide tax incentives for cleanup that is not paid for outright; specifically, cleanup costs are fully tax-deductible in the year they are incurred.[8] Many of the most important provisions on liability relief are contained in state codes that can differ significantly from state to state.[9]
In the United Kingdom, regulation of contaminated land comes from Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act 1990; responsibility falls on local authorities to create a "contaminated land register", sites with dubious past and present uses may be subject to a desktop study,[10] which is sometimes implemented as a condition in planning applications.
Barriers to redevelopment
|This section needs additional citations for verification. (May 2011)
Many contaminated brownfield sites sit unused for decades because the cost of cleaning them to safe standards is more than the land would be worth after redevelopment. However, redevelopment has become more common in the first decade of the 21st century, as developable land grows less available in highly populated areas, and brownfields contribute to environmental stigma which can delay redevelopment.[11] Also, the methods of studying contaminated land have become more sophisticated and established.
Many federal and state programs have been developed to help developers interested in cleaning up brownfield sites and restoring them to practical uses. Some states and localities have spent considerable money assessing the contamination on local brownfield sites, to quantify the cleanup costs in an effort to move the redevelopment process forward.
In the process of cleaning contaminated brownfield sites, surprises are sometimes encountered, such as previously unknown underground storage tanks, buried drums or buried railroad tank cars containing wastes. When unexpected circumstances arise, the cost for clean-up increases, and as a result, the cleanup work may be delayed or stopped entirely. To avoid unexpected contamination and increased costs, many developers insist that a site be thoroughly investigated (via a Phase II Site Investigation or Remedial Investigation) prior to commencing remedial cleanup activities.
Acquisition, adaptive re-use, and disposal of a brownfield site requires advanced and specialized appraisal analysis techniques. For example, the highest and best use of the brownfield site may be affected by the contamination, both pre- and post-remediation. Additionally, the value should take into account residual stigma and potential for third-party liability. Normal appraisal techniques frequently fail, and appraisers must rely on more advanced techniques, such as contingent valuation, case studies, or statistical analyses.[12] Nonetheless, a University of Delaware study has suggested a 17.5:1 return on dollars invested on brownfield redevelopment.[13]
See also
- Brockton Brightfield (brownfield turned into a solar power plant)
- Brownfield regulation and development
- Brownfield status
- Greenfield land
- Greyfield land
- Industrial nature
- Redevelopment of Mumbai mills (unused mills being re-developed)
- Regulatory Barriers Clearinghouse
- Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act
- Waste (law)
- ↑ "Glossary of Brownfields Terms" (URL). Environmental Law Institute. Retrieved 2015-02-25.
- ↑ Sustainable Brownfield Regeneration (PDF). (Concerted Action on Brownfield and Economic Regeneration Network (Report) (University of Nottingham). 2006: 3. ISBN 0-9547474-5-3.
- ↑ "Brownfields Showcase Community Fact Sheet" (URL). Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved 2009-11-29.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Maliene V, Wignall L, Malys N (2012). "Brownfield Regeneration: Waterfront Site Developments in Liverpool and Cologne". Journal of Environmental Engineering and Landscape Management 20 (1). pp. 5–16. doi:10.3846/16486897.2012.659030.
- ↑ "Brownfields Program Achievements Linked to Early Success" (PDF). United States Environmental Protection Agency. October 2006. pp. 1–3. Retrieved 2012-04-10.
- ↑ "ANR Communications" (URL). Michigan State University. July 10, 2006. Retrieved 2009-11-29.[dead link]
- ↑ "Building a City Within the City of Atlanta". Nytimes.com. 2006-05-24. Retrieved 2014-06-16.
- ↑ "Brownfields Tax Incentive" (URL). Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved 2009-11-29.
- ↑ "Brownfields Overview Page" (URL). National Conference of State Legislatures. Retrieved 2009-11-29.
- ↑ "Desktop Study Reports - London, Bristol & Exeter". Southwest-environmental.co.uk. Retrieved 2014-06-16.
- ↑ Coming Back from Economic Despair Henry Mayer and Micheal Greenburg. Economic Development Quarterly, August 2001
- ↑ "John A. Kilpatrick Resume". Greenfield Advisors. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 May 2011. Retrieved 2009-11-29. Article Author of "Valuation of Brownfields", Chapter 29 in Lexis-Nexis Matthew Bender's Brownfield Law and Practice, 2007.
- ↑ Montgomery, Jeff (14 May 2011). "Cleaning up contamination". The News Journal (New Castle, Delaware: Gannett). DelawareOnline. Archived from the original on 14 May 2011. Retrieved 14 May 2011. The first online page is archived; the page containing information related here is not in the archived version.
External links
- Brownfield Land at DMOZ
- Polluted and Dangerous: America's Worst Abandoned Properties and What Can Be Done About Them (University of Vermont Press).
- Parents Demand Curbs on Schools Built on Contaminated Land
- Brownfield Cleanup Legal Updates
- Photographies of French Brownfields.
- Photographies of German Brownfields.
- Brownfields memory with photographies in Europe.
- United States EPA, Brownfields and Land Revitalization
- National Brownfields Conference cosponsored by the U.S. EPA and ICMA
- Sustainability Toolkit: Environmental Models


text:
I'm Not Cured Yet
By Thomas DeLorenzo
December 29, 2010
On December 14, 2010, my inbox was inundated with the news of the "Berlin Cure." My friends without HIV who, thankfully, have no reason to follow HIV-related discoveries as closely as I do, were all excited about this news. They were taken aback by my lack of enthusiasm. I had many reasons to hold back my joy. Some were purely scientific; some were personal.
One personal reason was very simple. I was around during the first supposed "cure." In 1986 the media was ablaze with a "cure" for HIV. It was a drug sitting on a shelf for many years that was originally designed to treat cancer, but it was not very effective. That drug was AZT. The years of AZT monotherapy began, causing much more harm than good -- but what did we know then? We were throwing anything we could at this fire and any success, no matter how small, was still a success. AZT provided promise but did not give us the silver bullet we had hoped for.
But it was a beginning.
The "cure" trumpet sounded again in 1996 with the introduction of protease inhibitors and Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapies were born.
That was nearly 15 years ago and while the epidemic became a "chronic manageable" condition, the need for a cure is greater than ever.
However, I am not quite ready to bring out my trumpet just yet.
First, one man a cure does not make. In order to really know it's a "cure" we need to have studies. Studies are made up of many individuals, from a variety of backgrounds (ideally), and take years to prove. This was one man who accidentally hit on the "cure" when he was originally on the road to treating his leukemia. Yes, I know some of the greatest discoveries of man have been made while on the same accidental road. However, I don't think we can start screaming from the hills just yet. This is a beginning. A promising one, but only a beginning.
Jay Levy, M.D., said it best just in the title of his article in the New England Journal of Medicine on February 12, 2009. The article was called "Not an HIV Cure, but Encouraging New Directions." Levy goes on to say "the case could pave the way for innovative approaches that provide long-lasting viral control with limited toxicities for persons with HIV infection."
One of the other keys to this discovery is the location. The patient was an American living in Germany. Had he been an American living in the US, he would have not received such long-term, high-cost therapy. I am sure his insurance company would have cut him off long ago. I am definitely sure Medicare would have fought to approve the first lifesaving treatment and would have never considered the second one, the very one that created this new media frenzy.
The true discovery here is the fact that it happened in a country with much more generous medical benefits than usually found in the US. The two keys to HIV -- both the "initial discovery" and the "cure" -- did not occur in the US. The "initial discovery" took place in France and the "cure" was in Germany. Both of these countries have a National Health Program that offers both hope and treatments to those in need. Drug companies and their powerful lobbying groups don't get the same say in health policy as they do in the US. Research is actually performed for research's sake -- not for advancement of a specific drug. Research in other countries still believes in curiosity and the human condition.
What motivation do the drug companies have in "curing" us? None. They are far better off having us linger on long-term medications, teasing us with the latest pill with fewer side effects and less dosages and offering more pharmacological "solutions" for the side effects.
Writer and Futurist Alvin Toffler believed that the "new nations" would be corporations and they would rule the land. Allegiances would no longer be to people's country but instead be replaced by corporations. Huge, multi-national corporations, financial and insurance companies, and media giants set the boundaries for our lives. I can see the language being written into health insurance policies across America, specifically removing this incredibly expensive treatment from their list, without naming it or naming HIV in the process. To remove a treatment for a specific disease would violate the Americans with Disabilities Act and a variety of other Federal regulations. But with a few creative words, the spirit of the law is soundly defeated.
Another recent government action prevents me from shouting from rooftops. It is the lack of funding for the treatments we currently have. This year, nearly 5,000 Americans will go without their lifesaving HIV drugs due to lack of funding. The Obama Administration was asked for $125 million in emergency AIDS Drug Assistance Program funding -- a mere fraction of the rest of the budget -- but we only received $25 million, leaving thousands of individuals stranded.
No one marched in the streets on our behalf. No one held three-day walks raising funds and awareness for us. The cries of the disenfranchised fell on deaf ears.
People don't care about us now because the Bush Administration successfully rebranded the disease as a heterosexual African problem. The domestic agenda was pushed off the screen and the global AIDS fight was the only one worth fighting. Nowhere is this more evident than in the (Red) campaign: You became a hero for donating funds to Africa but you are a freak if you actually help your fellow man down the street with AIDS.
This was evidenced in the documentary on Showtime -- The Other City. It talked about Washington, D.C., and its HIV problem. D.C. currently has a 3 percent infection rate -- 1 percent is considered epidemic; 3 percent is beyond comprehension. It is devastation on a human scale like we haven't seen in generations. D.C. has a health problem that is frequently seen in third-world countries and, yet, it is our nation's capital.
Still, there is no public outcry.
Yes, I am hopeful that this is a new path and could provide an improved treatment for many people like myself living with HIV/AIDS. However, I do not think the road will be an easy one. I can only hope that others will realize that the need for such treatments exists in their own backyard and will stand up and do something. I also hope that the stigma about people living with HIV/AIDS that exists in 2010 will begin to diminish in 2011. A treatment can cure, can cause people to live longer, but cannot change what exists in others' minds.
Until then, I am looking for a way to become a citizen of the European Union.
Thomas DeLorenzo
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Who Knew So Few T Cells Could Accomplish So Much?
Until just a few years ago, Thomas DeLorenzo never would have believed he could become an HIV/AIDS activist. Before he was "officially" diagnosed with HIV in 2001 -- with 60 T cells and a viral load of 300,000 -- DeLorenzo had been living in denial. And until 2006, he was too busy dealing with the many side effects of his own HIV meds to think about helping anyone else. Then he and his doctors finally figured out the perfect med combo -- and, finally, DeLorenzo felt that he actually had a future.
DeLorenzo lives in Los Angeles with his partner and is currently attending law school at Southwestern University School of Law. His career goals include making sure all Americans have access to adequate and affordable health care. Prior to law school, DeLorenzo worked as a publicist in the entertainment industry, representing many award-winning celebrities.
In 2006, The New York Times named him an Unsung Hero in the Fight Against HIV/AIDS for his Christmas Goody Bag Project for the residents of the San Antonio AIDS Foundation Hospice. In 2008, DeLorenzo was the San Antonio AIDS Foundation's Angel of the Year. DeLorenzo's alma mater, Hofstra University, named him Alumnus of the Month in August 2009 for his work on behalf of people living with HIV/AIDS. DeLorenzo was recently appointed to the City of West Hollywood's Disabilities Advisory Board.
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text: MainSports & GamesRoller Skating Listen Roller SkatingThis page draws together roller skating-related information for all of Special Olympics. The coaching materials and other links will help you get a good sense of how this sport contributes to Special Olympics. StoriesEventsGames Lifetime Fitness SportRoller Skating is a lifetime fitness sport, well-suited for both children and adults. In addition to building cardiovascular fitness, it contributes to the development of balance and coordination. Another major benefit is the sport's potential for social integration as a recreational activity. People who master basic skills can participate in family, school, church, and community roller skating outings. The wide range of competitive events offered meet the needs of athletes with limited balance and challenge those with advanced skill.About This PageSpecial Olympics focuses on the individuality of each athlete so that coaches can train and encourage growth in skills and accomplishment. The coaching materials, rules and other resources on this page have been specially prepared for coaches working with people with intellectual disabilities. Coaching Special Olympics athletes calls for the same skills and experience that many coaches are familiar with. The extra information in our coaching guides about working with people with ID is what makes our materials helpful and valuable.


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*This item is not regularly stocked or displayed in our Showroom, however it may be Special Ordered for you.
Item Availability is subject to Manufacturer Drop or Discontinuation. Please stop in or click Request More Info for additional details.
Kaleidoscope is a machine-woven collection of textured polypropylene. Designs showcase bright, vibrant colors such as sunshine yellow, tangerine, hot pink and bright poppy while ultramarine blue, citron and chartreuse round out the assortment giving the playful colors more drama. In this collection, more is definitely more...shade upon shade and texture upon texture offer an antiqued, yet modern aesthetic.
The Kaleidoscope 7' 8" X 7' 8" Rug at Rotmans in the Worcester, Boston, MA, Providence, RI, and New England area. Product availability may vary. Contact us for the most current availability on this product.
Browse other items in the Kaleidoscope collection from Rotmans in the Worcester, Boston, MA, Providence, RI, and New England area.
This item has been tagged as: Rugs, Area Rugs, Home Decorations, Accessories, Home Design Accessories, Throw Rugs, Bathroom Rugs, Large Rugs, Small Rugs, Floor Rugs, Unique Area Rugs, Rug, Indoor Rugs, Bed Rug, Living Room Rug, Family Room Rug, Kitchen Rugs, Hallway Rug, Accent Rug, Nursery Rug, Room Rugs, Carpet, Decorative Rugs, Floor Mat, Floor Covering, Coverlet, Mat, Matting, Runner, Carpet Runners, Tapestry, Tapestries, Table Rug
Nothing on this page may be copied or reproduced without explicit permission.


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Kiss-the-Net necessitava di un nuovo design di altri e ha lanciato un contest su 99designs.
È stato scelto un vincitore tra 15 design presentati da 5 designer.
I live and work in Bayside and this website is for the local community and visitors
The banner/header will be used on a website which is for locals to read the latest news as well as find their local merchant. For visitors it may just help them plan their visit a little better. Everyone will recognise from the header image one of the things the area is famous for - the bathing boxes. The image should be about the seaside 'feel of the area as well as the famous bathing boxes...plus it's about shopping!
This is the website is its design/build stage: http://bsv.kissnet.com.au/
I like the stylised look of the current header (so would want this 'style and look'), but Bayside is a beach side community famous for its bathing boxes (not for its hills!). You will note the 'small' favicon bathing box used on the website, this is for the most part the logo and we intend to keep using it - it too is very much a stylised look of a bathing box.
The header image sides must 'bleed' into the background on the sides (as does the current image) so this presents design aspects that you need to be aware of (hence the fact that the design may be more representative than factual.
The keys words are bathing boxes, sun, sand, sea, and colour! Keep the colours simple and the design simple in its look too. Final size should be 940px × 239px (or bigger but keep proportions).
Here are a number of bathing box images to inspire (the first one I really like but how to design and yet bleed the edges is the question):
You can grab the current header image here: http://bsv.kissnet.com.au/templates…dscape.png
You can grab the background image here: http://bsv.kissnet.com.au/templates…_shelf.png


text: Hello all, We are looking for suggestions on multichannel audio cards (models and/or brands) as well as multichannel softwares (to generate more than 2 stereo audio outputs, be it either 5.1 or n-independent channels/outputs) to drive a virtual 3D (audio) environment (i.e., n independent speakers set in a way to produce audio spacialization). The system is to synchronize with a similar virtual 3D visual environment, where objects can be visualized and heard. Those who can advise on this, or think could help if having more information, I would be grateful in contacting. Regis Rossi A. Faria Media Engineering Center LSI - University of Sao Paulo Brazil email@example.com


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T.I., Maino, & B.O.B Discuss Rap Beef On The Parker Report "Rappers Are Sensitive Nowadays"!
T.I., Maino, and B.O.B. construct a law about beef and when one should engage.
Please click the "Report" button below if the video on this page is not working properly.
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Inside Trek's race department – Massive photo gallery
Born from Trek's Advanced Concept Group
Trek's race department is heavily tasked. This six-man team must support the company's professional race teams and individual athletes, and use those programs to test new products and make existing products better – because at Trek, they race what they sell, and sell what they've raced.
The team, who are a mix of engineers, ex-racers and mechanics, work out of a 3,000sq ft corner of Trek's massive 205,000sq ft headquarters in Waterloo, Wisconsin. Every single one of the company's sponsored bikes runs through this 'Race Shop', from those used by K-Swiss triathletes, the C3 gravity program, Trek World Racing and the new RadioShack-Nissan-Trek road squad, to privateer athletes and outfits, like the new ODI-Trek squad.
Between them, these teams require roughly 1,000 frames per season, which range from the new carbon fiber Session 9.9 downhill bike to the super-fast Speed Concept triathlon and time trial machine, and everything in between.
Slick colour scheme for the new RadioShack-Nissan-Trek Speed Concepts
The Race Shop was founded due to pressure from Lance Armstrong for better products during his Tour de France reign. "The starting point was the Lance rise, and what we needed to do to support that," said Mark Andrews, the department's road and triathlon engineer. "Having dedicated resources to support teams became a huge asset."
For years the race department was part of the Advanced Concept Group (ACG) and run entirely by Andrews and Scott Daubert, who then served as Trek's 'Lance liaison'. The 'shop' was just a small corner in Trek's prototype lab. Then, when Trek took on full equipment support of Astana in 2008, the department grew and the true Race Shop space was created.
The Race Shop has four work areas for building bikes
"We've always been best-in-class, with dedicated outdoor support and dedicated indoor support [for our race teams] that's superior to our competitors," said Ben Coates, Trek's former road team liaison and current road product manager. "It shows, at least to us, in the support and happiness of our athletes.
"In 2008, we signed up for Astana, and we were full clothing, full bike, everything, and it was a huge undertaking. At the end of that year John [Burke] and Joe V [Vadeboncoeur, Trek's vice president] talked about expanding our racing presence. We spent a bunch of time identifying what would limit us from doing it properly, and the dedicated space and people were the two hurdles that we had to overcome."
The Race Shop has quite the pedigree
While the department was founded to support Trek's headline road team, its directive – to be on-time and on-target with race team support that's second to none – transfers to all of the company's sponsored teams and athletes. The expansion of the Race Shop allowed Trek to take on Martin Whiteley's Trek World Racing outfit and the C3 gravity program in 2010, and in 2011 a second top-tier European professional road team, in the form of Leopard-Trek.
"The additional teams were only possible, and successful, because we set this place up to support them," Coates told BikeRadar. "You hear about a lot of teams having the disaster of not getting enough bikes fast enough, or new paint schemes, or new product, or stuff like that, and we really don't have those problems.
The department has its own press and lathe
"Mark has a great connection with the manufacturing group and this room really operates as a leverage point. Ray [Waxham, mountain bike teams technician], Vance [McCaw, C3 technician], Matt [Shriver, team liaison] and Scott [Daubert] can walk up to anyone in the building and say, 'I need something', and then use their resources in this room to leverage our external [to the Race Shop but still within Trek] resources to supply and fulfill all those needs."
Making all of this possible are Trek's on-site engineering, product management and 'halo' product production teams. Without that last resource – the on-site carbon factory and custom metal production – Trek's race team support could never be as successful. Managing a similar Asia-based program would be harder, and infinitely slower. "In the event that we have an issue, it's not just four guys back here in a room trying to solve it," said Coates. "It's a 'four guys who have the run of the company' kind of deal."
One of the Race Shop's prototype aero downhill wheels
Of course, it's not all about custom products. There's plenty of more menial work to be done, too. "Simply putting the bikes in boxes can be a huge challenge," said Coates. "Making sure they're all painted properly, sized, have headsets in them [or any other parts], screws, nuts and bolts, and all that, is really what this place does; it makes sure that we deliver on time, on target, and that the support is second to none."
Case in point: the day BikeRadar visited the Race Shop, Matt Opperman and Jon Rourke, the head mechanic and team manager from Subaru-Trek, were there to pack and ship all of their team's equipment for the first UCI World Cup mountain bike race of 2012 in South Africa.
A Subaru-Trek Superfly ready to be transported to South Africa
The fun stuff
It's not all spinning wrenches and packing cardboard, though. The Race Shop facilitates all kinds of special team projects. It's a playful environment and you can tell Andrews, Waxham and McCaw have a fair amount of fun doing their jobs. Recently, Waxham made some custom horizontal dropouts so he could build Frank and Andy Schleck a pair of fixed-gear Madone training bikes.
"They [dropouts] are actually from our T1000 track bike," he said. "And it allows them [the Schlecks] to have a bike that fits just like their race bike, but have a fixed-gear training tool. We did two 58cm bikes for them in the same team colors; they were kind of cool looking once they were built up. Those are the little side things and little tweaks that we'll do to production stuff, if there's a request."
The Schlecks' custom Madone dropouts
The engineers also build their own custom projects just to stay sharp and creative. Andrews is known for his custom bikes for his two girls, and Waxham has become interested in the fixie scene. "It's great to be able to have stuff at your fingertips," said Andrews. "Ray has been doing a lot with fixies and belt drives. I like the kids' bikes. It's just, 'I want to try this' [type projects]. Anyone can make a regular bike but [we like] taking it to the next level. Like, we did a bike for Shaun Bradley, who's 7ft 6in, a few years ago."
Other projects can range from prototyping shock linkages for the gravity teams – Ross Schnell needs these because he runs RockShox rear shocks instead of the stock Fox dampers – to playing with different derailleur hanger materials. Recently, the Race Shop played a part in the Madone 6.9 SSL's swap from an alloy to carbon front derailleur boss, as well as other odds and ends like this.
One of Andrews' pet projects
Andrews built this mini carbon hardtail for his daughters, who've since outgrown it; those cranks are carbon and just 145mm long


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Strange Weather @ The National Academy of Sciences
Flood 5, 2006, oil on canvas, 60 x 78 inches
Strange Weather
New Paintings
By Joy Garnett
in two parts:
Part I:
January 15 - April 30, 2007
by appointment,
call (202) 334-2436
National Academies' Keck Center
550 Fifth Street NW, First Floor Gallery
Washington, DC
Artist's Talk : Thursday Feb 8, 2007, 6 - 8pm
An artist's multiple with essays by Lucy R. Lippard and Andrew C. Revkin is available upon request.
Part II:
Opens to the Public
May 5 - July 30, 2007
Sunday, May 27, 2007, 1 - 3 pm
National Academy of Sciences
2100 C Street NW, Upstairs Gallery
Washington, DC
Open weekdays, 9am - 5pm
NAS Announces 'Strange Weather: New Paintings by Joy Garnett'
Washington - "Strange Weather," an exhibition of paintings by Joy Garnett depicting environmental and social catastrophes, will be on view by appointment from Jan.15 through April 30 at the National Academies' Keck Center, 500 Fifth St., N.W., Washington, D.C. It will then be placed on public view from May 5 through July 30 at the National Academy of Sciences' headquarters, located at 2100 C St., N.W., Washington, D.C.
Joy Garnett gathers photographs of man-made and natural disasters from the Internet and renders the images as richly textured oil paintings. In the process, she locates tensions between the visceral power of paint and the fleeting nature of images in the mass media, addressing the evolving role of art in an information-saturated society.
Curated for the National Academy of Sciences, the exhibition focuses on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In Strange Weather, Garnett takes widely distributed news images of a devastated New Orleans and recasts them as paintings in which geological, political, and sociological weather are inextricably intertwined.
Based in New York City, Joy Garnett studied painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and received her MFA from the City College of New York. Her paintings were recently exhibited in "Image War," organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art , New York City, and "Run for Your Lives!" at DiverseWorks, Houston. In 2004, she received a grant from the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation. In 2000, she received a commission from the Wellcome Trust to participate along with her father, biochemist Merrill Garnett, in "N01se," a multi-site exhibition about information and transformation at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, and the Wellcome Trust's Two10 Gallery, London. The exhibition was organized by artist Adam Lowe and historian of science Simon Schaffer.
For more than 20 years, the Office of Exhibitions and Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences has sponsored exhibitions, concerts, and other events that explore relationships among the arts and sciences.


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Foster Township gun collector Thomas F. Braddock Jr. wants to buy a 9 mm machine gun from a dealer in Georgia as an investment.
He wanted to proceed with the deal by getting the signature of Luzerne County interim sheriff Jack Robshaw. But Robshaw didn't even consider signing the federal government form to authorize the purchase.
"He just flat out refused," said Braddock, a retired Army National Guard major and former employee with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. "I have had a security clearance for 25 years. I am certainly not a criminal."
Robshaw is concerned about civilians, who are not law enforcement officers, acquiring fully automatic weapons that could end up being used in mass shootings, noting they can fire "hundreds of rounds per minute." He said he would rather lose his job than sign the form.
Braddock, 57, is still able to purchase the machine gun he wants by setting up a gun trust, but he is upset he now has to spend extra time and money to get the machine gun.
His story is typical in Pennsylvania, said Joshua Prince, a Berks County attorney who specializes in gun ownership and Second Amendment issues. Law enforcement officials don't have the ability to simply refuse to consider the questions on the form from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Prince said.
Robshaw believes he can refuse to sign the form for any reason. The form authorizes transfer and sales of weapons regulated by National Firearms Act and requires the signature of the "chief law enforcement officer," or CLEO, in a jurisdiction.
NFA-regulated weapons include fully automatic guns manufactured before 1986, short-barreled rifles or shotguns, destructive devices and suppressors, also known as silencers.
Lackawanna County Sheriff John Szymanski said he imposed a moratorium on signing the ATF forms for NFA weapons after the Sandy Hook school shootings in Connecticut in December.
"We wanted to take another look at this," Szymanski said. "I am not saying we won't do it anymore. Right after Sandy Hook, we had two requests for silencers. These requests come from gun collectors. They want exotic weapons."
Szymanski said he wants to consult with the ATF on the process, explaining his signature is "a rubber stamp" for decisions made by the ATF.
Prince disagrees, explaining the CLEO certifies three things on the ATF form - the applicant lives in the jurisdiction; the CLEO has no knowledge the applicant will use the firearm unlawfully; and the CLEO has no knowledge the applicant is prohibited from owning the weapon.
When the forms are submitted, the ATF does its own background check, and the applicant will go through a background check when picking up the weapon from a dealer, Prince said.
In Pennsylvania, county sheriffs are often asked to sign the ATF forms because they are in charge of concealed weapon permits, Prince said. But the ATF form says a CLEO could be a district attorney, a local police chief or a state police barrack captain.
Hazleton Police Chief Frank DeAndrea said he signs about one form a month regarding NFA weapons.
"I don't blame the sheriff," DeAndrea said of Robshaw's stance. "His staff isn't local law enforcement."
Local officers know more about residents, including "things that might not show up" on computer background check, DeAndrea said.
Appointed sheriff
Robshaw has been Luzerne County's interim sheriff since March 2012. He said he has never signed a form for an NFA weapon and is asked to sign the form a couple times a month.
The county's home-rule charter last year abolished a state-mandated system of government, which included a sheriff elected to a four-year term. Under home rule, the sheriff is an appointed official who serves in the administration as an appointed county manager.
"I am not in favor of an appointed sheriff," Prince said, noting Northampton County is the only other county in the state with an appointed sheriff.
Luzerne County Councilman Jim Bobeck said he supports Robshaw's stance against signing ATF forms for NFA weapons, adding it demonstrates why voters should not elect the county's sheriff.
"The appointed person used professional judgment without placation to outside influences or having his decision turn into electoral fodder," Bobeck sad.
Szymanski has been elected to eight terms as Lackawanna County sheriff. He is not running for re-election this year.
Previous Luzerne County sheriffs, John Gilligan and Mike Savokinas, signed the ATF forms, said Chris Scoda, owner of Advanced Arms Gun Shop in Pittston. Scoda has been involved in about 50 machine gun deals, adding the transfer process can last eight months and the price of typical machine gun can range from $4,000 to $10,000.
"It depends on the make and model," Scoda said.
Since 1986, federal law has prohibited ownership of newly manufactured machine guns to civilians. Machine guns are subject to a $200 tax every time ownership changes.
The ATF reported 488,065 machine guns in its national registry, as of March 2012, with 17,384 in Pennsylvania. Almost 3.2 million NFA weapons were registered in the U.S., with 197,217 in Pennsylvania.
Gun trusts
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are the most difficult jurisdictions to get CLEO signatures, Prince said. Some clients considered filing a lawsuit to get CLEO signatures but decided it was less expensive to just get NFA weapons through a gun trust, Prince said.
"It violates equal protection," Prince added, asserting counties and jurisdictions can't have different standards on signing the ATF forms.
Prince said he talks to about 10 people a week about setting up a gun trust and charges $650. He said he once set up a gun trust for a police officer in Philadelphia because he couldn't get a CLEO signature and wanted a short-barreled rifle as "a duty weapon."
Gun trusts have other benefits, such as designating multiple trustees so more than one person can legally have access to and possession of the NFA weapon, Prince said. Other benefits include passing weapons onto heirs.
A gun dealer is required to conduct a background check for the representative of the trust who picks up a NFA firearm, Prince sad. But the New York Times reported in February that a loophole in federal regulations exempts a gun trust's members from requirements that apply to individual buyers, including being fingerprinted and undergoing a background check.
Christopher J. Dorner, the former Los Angeles police officer who was wanted in multiple killings, claimed he used a gun trust to buy silencers and a short-barreled rifle from a gun store in Nevada without a background check. Dorner died Feb. 12 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, during a stand-off with police.
firstname.lastname@example.com, 570-821-2073


text:
Submitted by rc-admin on
Dr. B. C. Barker-Benfield of the Bodleian Library at Oxford sends the following good news about keeping Mary Shelley's manuscripts together under one roof.
December 10, 2003
The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford has been awarded £3 million from the National Heritage Memorial Fund towards the purchase of the Abinger Papers, an archive of major literary significance which includes the surviving manuscripts of Mary Shelley's famous novel Frankenstein. It is the largest grant ever received by the Library towards a single purchase. [cont'd]
The Abinger Papers are the most important collection of Shelley family papers remaining in private hands. The papers include the Frankenstein original draft manuscript of 1816–17, which reveals the novel in its process of conception. The draft contains many autograph corrections by Percy Bysshe Shelley, and so provides unique evidence for the much disputed question: how far did Percy Shelley influence his wife's masterpiece?
The Abinger Papers form one third of the Shelley family papers, including letters and papers of Mary Shelley's parents, Mary Wollstonecraft (the ground-breaking feminist writer) and William Godwin (a major intellectual figure of the period). Two thirds already belong outright to the Bodleian Library through gifts from the family. The remaining third, the Abinger section, has been deposited on loan at the Library since 1974 for the benefit of scholars, but is now offered for sale.
The Bodleian Library is launching an appeal to raise the remaining funds needed to purchase the collection. Richard Ovenden, Keeper of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts, said: "Thanks to the Fund's outstandingly generous grant, and other donations already received of almost £350,000, the Library now has until March 2004 to raise the remaining £500,000 to buy the collection and so prevent its dispersal at auction. Researchers from all over the world have visited Oxford until now to study the combined collections of Shelley materials. By purchasing the Abinger collection, we aim to ensure that the Shelley family papers remain united in one location."
Stephen Johnson, Head of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, said: "The Abinger Papers are exactly the kind of Great British heritage that the National Heritage Memorial Fund was set up to save. Few things are more precious than the Shelleys' personal notes and Mary's autograph draft of Frankenstein. This grant will open up this internationally acclaimed collection for everyone to enjoy in the unique surroundings of the Bodleian Library."


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Mumbai is a very cosmopolitan city. One can find people of all religious staying over here. Due t ... Read More


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NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- If Mr. Information Age and I ever do a face-to-face, I'm going to ask him exactly this: What is up with all the %^$&*#! failing? I'm not talking about the honest, big-time, systemic failure: Say, the Microsoft ( MSFT Bob or the Apple ( AAPL Newton or the Internet itself. But what gives with the otherwise reasonably engineered gadget that, oh sorry, just flat out stops working? Like my demo Samsung Galaxy Note, which I loved until it cracked. Or my assistant's iPhone, which both shattered its screen and crashed. Or my wife's Motorola ( GOOG Droid, which ground to a halt not once, not twice, but three times over three separate units. The thing is, it's not like every digital thing breaks. Plenty of gizmos have chugged along just fine standing up to a skeptic's bashing, crashing and dropping, and as investors head off for some much needed August R&R, here are those that have made the grade here. Big note: Read it and weep, Apple fanboys, but it's been a bad six months for Cupertino here in Blumworld. No Apple technology is truly tough enough these days. The list starts here:
Kyocera ( KYO Hydro XTRM waterproof smartphone ( $29 with a two year plan, U.S. Cellular) There may be other ways to get a legit, rugged, water- and shock-proof phone into your life. Casio, Samsung and others most definitely make such devices. But the Kyocera Hydro line is the category winner for low cost, ease of use and minimal bulk. Hardcore, ruggedized device nerds will sniff at the Hydro; it's far from truly tip-top tough. Drop or drown it enough and it does break. And mainstream users will miss high-end features such as bigger processors and a slick camera -- not to mention the fact the Hydro gets physically hot in your pocket under some conditions. But your $30 can't buy a better tough phone.
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text: At 02:22 PM 2/17/2005, Dean Johnson wrote: >Howdy, >Correct me if I am wrong. Presumably your cpu's have fan kits and if you >may have case fans (or something). Do the motors on fan's not draw more >initial amperage at startup? Thus you would have an initial spike. The fans probably don't draw a significant amount of startup current over their running current. Disk drives, on the other hand, do draw a lot more current when spinning up. > -Dean > >On Wed, 2005-02-16 at 20:10 -0500, Alpay Kasal wrote: > > Hello all I have a question about powering on motherboards > > simulataneously > > > > > > > > I have 18 identical mobos right now with identical ram, cpu, and hard > > disk. I hooked one up to a kill-a-watt and found that it draws 140-150 > > watts when powering on, and stays level at about 90-100 watts > > afterwards. The problem is that I am setting this up at home, where I > > only have 10 amp circuits (and only a couple of them can be freed up). > > Correct me if I am wrong here please > > > > > > > > 1 mobo = 100 watts / 115 volts = .87amps each mobo while steady on > > > > 1 mobo = 150 watts / 115 volts = 1.3amps each mobo while turning on You're basically right. There's also a very high current spike that your Kill-A-Watt won't see when you first turn on the supply, as the capacitors in the input section charge up. This might result in a nuisance trip of your breakers. This current spike will be somewhat dependent on the phase of the AC line voltage when you first close the switch. Some power supplies have inrush current limiting, others don't. A 10 amp circuit would be highly unusual in the U.S., but might be common practice elsewhere. In the U.S., a 15 amp circuit is standard. > > > > > > > > I wont include the rest of the math, but needless to say, itd be a > > pain in arse to turn on the room in piecemeal without tripping a > > circuit breaker. My questions is : > > > > > > > > Will a heavy duty UPS aid in getting me through powering up the room? > > I dont mind splitting up the 18 machines with 6 outlet surge strips. > > Any advice? No, the UPS won't help. It might make things worse, because as you flip on all that load, the voltage will sag, causing the UPS to turn on, which then might trip from the overcurrent (assuming you're not out buying a 2kW UPS). What you want is some way to sequence the power, conveniently. The answer is to use some relays. You could spend some tens of dollars (brand new, much less surplus) and get some time delay relays. You could use the DC power out of the first power supply to turn on to charge a capacitor through a resistor that's hooked to a relay (12V coil, 110V contacts).. Most DC relays have a much higher pull-in than hold current/voltage. You could use the X-10 type (aka Plug n Power) remote controlled relays (don't use Lamp modules.. you need Appliance modules, which are relays inside). You could build a little power sequencing box that sends the appropriate signals to the power supplies to turn them on, one by one... I think you might be able to do this with the parallel printer port on the first mobo to fire up. I haven't looked at the control interface on an ATX power supply recently. > > > > > > > > Thanks. > > > > Alpay Kasal > > > > > > James Lux, P.E. Spacecraft Radio Frequency Subsystems Group Flight Communications Systems Section Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Mail Stop 161-213 4800 Oak Grove Drive Pasadena CA 91109 tel: (818)354-2075 fax: (818)393-6875


text:
What is Pension Prompt Choice 50?
It is a retirement plan with:
- Retirement plan which provide you an early retirement age at 50 years old
- Before retirement get annual coupon payout
- Get increasing annually payout benefit until age of 80
- Get sufficient retirement benefit plus inflation immunity
- Tax reduction at maximum of 100,000 baht
- Free WP
Why is it important to you?
It is a simple yet effective way to save for your retirement, with:
- Guarantee retirement benefit
- To help you manage your retirement income against inflation
- To protect beneficiaries with a death coverage
This is suitable if you want
- Individuals who are saving for the long term retirement
- Individuals who are looking for a guarantee benefit
This is not suitable if you want
- Individuals who are looking for a short term saving
- Risk lovers who looking for high investment rate of return
Key coverage
Can choose term of payment of 5, 10 years or at attain age of 50
Can buy additional riders
Underwriting is reserved and contrived accordance with company's regulation. Representing herein is only concision benefits. The complete term and coverage will be indicated in the policy the insured purchases.
Applicable Riders
- Accidental Death Benefit Rider and Endorsement of Riot and Civil Commotion
- Accidental Death and Dismemberment Rider and Endorsement of Riot and Civil Commotion
- Accidental Indemnity Rider and Endorsement of Riot and Civil Commotion
- Out Patient Department Rider
- Hospital Benefit Rider
- Female Special Diseases Rider
- Hospital and Surgical Rider
- Waiver of Premium Rider
- Payer Benefit Rider
- Early CI Care Rider
- Tokio Health Care Rider
- WPCI Rider
- CI CareCI Care (CIR2)
- Happy Refund


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The "Sundays at 2" recital series coordinated by the department of music at Hope College will feature clarinetist Joel Schekman, violist Barb Corbató and pianist Adam Clark on Sunday, March 13, at 2 p.m. in Wichers Auditorium of Nykerk Hall of Music.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
The faculty trio will be performing "Selection from 8 Pieces for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano, Op. 83," by Bruch; "Passacaglia for Viola and Piano," by Rebecca Clarke; "Petite Piece for Clarinet and Piano," by Debussy; and the "Kegelstatt" trio, by Mozart.
° Barbara Corbató is viola instructor at Hope and Calvin colleges, and the assistant principal viola of the Grand Rapids Symphony, where she has performed since 1990. In addition, she is an active chamber musician, performing with the Perugino String Quartet. She has performed with the New World Symphony, Spoleto Festival of South Carolina and Italy, and the orchestras of Columbus, Flint and Saginaw. She also has participated in music festivals in Saugatuck, Santa Barbara, Aspen and Keystone, Colo. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where she received Bachelor and Master of Music degrees. Her principal teachers include Donald McInnes and Yizhak Schotten.
° Joel Schekman, instructor of clarinet at Hope, has been bass clarinetist with the Grand Rapids Symphony since 2006 and previously played bass clarinet in the Spokane Symphony. A California native, he received his bachelor's at IndianaUniversity, where he studied with Eli Eban and James Campbell, before returning to Los Angeles for his master's at USC, where he studied with Yehuda Gilad. While in Los Angeles, he maintained an active teaching schedule and played with the Santa Monica Symphony and the American Youth Orchestra. An advocate of new music, he was a founding member of the group Music of Changes, performing premieres of many works, and performed in the L.A. philharmonic's Green Umbrella concerts, a new-music series. He has participated in the Sarasota and Spoleto festivals, and has also played concerts with the New World Symphony and the Charleston Symphony. Locally, he has played with the Kalamazoo Symphony, the West Shore Symphony and the Fort Wayne Philharmonic. He also composes.
° Adam Clark is an assistant professor of music at Hope, where he teaches courses in applied piano, keyboard skills and piano pedagogy. An active soloist, chamber musician and concerto soloist, he has performed to great acclaim throughout the United States, as well as in Belgium, Italy and South Korea. He has lectured extensively on diverse topics ranging from technical and musical development to 20th-century pedagogical literature, and is a frequent guest and presenter for local, state and national music teachers associations. He earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), while he completed his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Texas at Austin respectively. His former teachers include Charles Asche, Nancy Garrett, and Eugene and Elizabeth Pridonoff.
Nykerk Hall of Music is located in the central Hope campus at the former 127 E. 12th Street between College and Columbia avenues.


text: hello, Bruce you wrote: > And there's a related problem (to installing) which we might call > "updating" in which, for example, I am running RedHat 6.2 now and > I wish to rip it out and install RedHat 7.0, but I also want to > preserve all(?) of my local changes. from what i've seen, rpm does its best to preserve config files, either by leaving behind an rpmorig version if it replaced the file or creating a .rpmnew if it decided it shouldn't replace the file > Let's make the simplifying assumption that whenever I install a > RedHat distribution I always install everything given that you don't know which packages include new versions of their config files, this doesn't make any difference. all (i can see) you can do is search for the rpmorig and rpmnew files and decide (& edit) those files on a case by case basis. > Anyone solved this updating problem in the context of a single > file system shared by multiple computers? doing the case-by-case once on the first node and incorporating those specific changes by way of a post-install process for the rest of them is as close to solving the problem as you can get, no ? -- arthur m coucouvitis ATIPA Linux Solutions, Inc. tel: 603 622-7171 x 15 850 East Industrial Park Drive fax: 603 622-7272 Suite 8, Manchester, NH 03109 http://www.dcginc.com http:/www.atipa.com


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At launch, it was clear that Passbook's ecosystem had a long way to go before maturing, and it seems like Apple is slowly taking the right steps. But as it goes with growing any app marketplace (which, essentially, is what Passbook is), a platform's success hinges on the number of developers it can woo.
There's undeniable convenience to using your phone as as a wallet. While Apple is trying to get big businesses on board and simultaneously convince users this is he future, there are still plenty of obtacles. At the moment, Passbook needs some obvious improvements, including a bit of an image overhaul (it's been painted as something of a complication for users).
Despite the bumps it'll have on the road to mass adoption, however, Passbook offers enough of a value proposition to early adopting businesses to want to offer it as a service to customers. So two weeks in, how is Passbook evolving? In a word: Quickly.
Early adopters and third-party developers
Among the early adopters is American Express, which started supporting Passbook last week. AmEx's VP of Digital Communications Strategy, Brad Minor, tells Digital Trends that the company decided to work with Passbook so it could be where the users are — smartphones. "American Express is committed to going where its card members are engaged and focused, which is increasingly on their mobile devices. At Amex we're focused on digital innovation and are always looking for ways to reach and engage Cardmembers in new technologies as they emerge." Its app provides users a central location to check their account activity, spending updates, account balances, and customer service information.
Target, which is also using the iOS app, explains its motivation for a Passbook app as a natural next step for its tech savvy customers. It offers customers a quick way to access their existing mobile coupons. Target declined to comment about the usage of its Passbook, but assured us that the "traffic to [Target's] iPhone app has been very strong since Passbook launched." The Target spokesperson added, "We absolutely think Passbook created excitement among our guests."
The industries that have adopted Passbook range from retail, to restaurants, to attractions, and include vendors like Walgreens and Sephora. Accesso, an e-commerce and ticketing software provider, has developed Passbook apps for the Ceder Fair theme parks and the Columbus Zoo. Delta Airlines, Virgin Australia, and American Airlines have also gotten a head start. And just this week, Airbnb, Eventbrite, and McDonald's have joined in on the digital wallet fun.
More importantly, third-party pass creators like PassKit, Tello, and Passdock are filling in the gaps for companies with fewer developer resources. By offering idiot-proof, template-based solutions that anyone (even those without any programming language knowledge) can use to create basic transport, coupon, store card, membership, or event ticket passes, these companies have been thriving since day one of Passbook's announcement.
Even a Passbook competitor like Lemon, a startup that began with digitizing receipts in 2011, has also been positioned to benefit from Passbook's debut. The company grabbed some spotlight this week when it opened up its platform for third-party developers to create passes for its own ecosystem. We briefly spoke with Lemon CEO Wences Casares, who reasoned his product isn't a direct competitor with Passbook.
The undeniable benefits of Passbook
Whatever a business's Passbook strategy is, there's a definite advantage for a company to adopt its system – the primary being unprecedented access to sending notifications to iPhones. For example if you're walking by a Starbucks, granted that you have its app downloaded, your phone can identify that you're near the retailer. Passbook can then push a notification to your iPhone's screen even if it's locked indicating that you have a Starbucks coupon. It's almost like a gentle reminder saying, "Hey you have a redeemable coupon for a free coffee, come and visit Starbucks!"
"Not only does this provide convenience (especially when Passbook kindly reminds you that you have the pass when you walk near the merchant) and economic benefit for the consumer, there is a huge operational opportunity for the merchant; both in terms of cost saving (producing, distributing and updating digital passes) and a huge customer engagement win," Paul Tomes, co-founder and CEO of PassKit, a third-party Passbook pass creating service, explained to Digital Trends.
Consumers, on the other hand, have the convenience of housing tickets, membership cards, coupons, and other items within a single digital wallet. For clarification purposes, there are three ways to add a pass to Passbook: You can either add passes from an iOS app that supports Passbook, click on a URL (or button) that uploads the pass to Passbook, or by clicking on an attachment sent via email.
Growing pains
Right now, Apple has a few hurdles to overcome – some of which, like some of these bugs, have been fixed already. The number of developers adopting the service is far from the critical mass necessary for users to be going all in with Passboo. Note that the list of Apps for Passbook is editorially hand selected by the Apple team; not every supported Passbook pass will show up on that catalog, so there are far more companies supporting Passbook than you see there.
Then there's the responsibility to keep the developers happy by meeting the needs and requests of its third-party developers. Tomes has been noticing that businesses have been requesting that Apple support more types of barcodes. Right now it only supports three types: QR codes, Aztec, and PDF417, and developers want to be able to create for retailers that have point of sales terminals that read alternative formats. It's just one example of how Apple could offer an olive branch to the developers it desperately needs right now.
Apple also hasn't done a terrific job educating developers and iOS 6 users about Passbook. Tomes has sent recommendations to Apple after receiving feedback from small and medium sized businesses, who weren't sure why they were required to open an Apple developer account to acquire a Pass Certificate to create passes.
But with that said, Apple is signs of making an effort to create standards and tie up loose ends to boost its Passbook ecosystem since the success of its platform is contingent on third-party developers.
Among Apple's latest efforts include the release of a uniform Add to Passbook button. Third-party developers can integrate this button in a purchase's receipt or confirmation page that customers can click to quickly add their ticket or coupon to Passbook with a click of a button.
The future of Passbook
In order to make Passbook the first digital wallet that's a market and user-facing success, Apple needs to court and bag a few big name retailers. Walmart and Costco are just a couple of companies that come to mind, but integration with many theme parks and airlines will also be critical to Passbook's success. "If you look at how technology has evolved over the last decade, airlines have been a big driver for consumer adoption of many developing technologies. Theme parks soon followed suit with print at home ticketing and in many cases, now account for as much 40 percent of their overall ticket revenue," Accesso CEO, Steve Brown, said to Digital Trends. "Anything that can be done to speed guests through the initial point of entry is a huge win for everyone, and Passbook's technology significantly accelerates that process."
It's inevitable that Apple will leverage its mobile wallet and evolve it into a mobile payment app — that's just a no-brainer. However it won't come anytime soon as there are regulatory hurdles to bypass. Tomes predicts that it will "probably happen as authentication methods and payment regulations start to converge."
The fact remains that if you're looking to add and use your credit card on a mobile wallet, you have to turn to a solution like Lemon. With Passbook, you can connect to store-specific cards, not your own account — so no, for now, Passbook can't replace your wallet, just your retailer accounts. With Passbook, you can't pay for that coffee with your debit card, only your Starbucks card; it's a way to promote store loyalty, and something Apple hopes will get companies exciting about developing for Passbook.
Which means that Passbook's future is in the hands of third party developers. Apple can but has chosen not to charge developers (except for the $99 fee for a developer account) for Passbook, to make the transition as painless as possible and to speed up adoption. Just like developers drove the success and adoption of the App Store, so it will go (hopefully) for Passbook.
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Visa Srinivasan, MDAccepting new patients
3661 S. Babcock StreetMelbourne, FL 32901Map and directions321.434.7611
We want to collaborate with you, your family/caregivers and your primary care physician to improve your health, functioning, and understanding of the complex issues of aging. Our team will provide a comprehensive evaluation of your physical, cognitive, social, and emotional concerns. A full report or our findings and recommendations can be provided to you, your family, and your primary care provider.
Patients who typically benefit from these services include those with questions or concerns about:
Memory loss/dementia
Falls or gait imbalance
Social isolation
Loss of bladder or bowel control
Weight gain or loss
Medication issues
Multiple medical problems
Daily functioning
Difficulty managing alone at home
Need for daily assistance
Possible need for alternative living arrangements
Driving concerns
Caregiver concerns
A team of specialist representing physical, occupational, and speech therapy; pharmacy; nutritional services; home care; private duty nursing; and hospice can be called to assist in your care as needed.
Online resources available: ElderCARE - ElderCARE is a free online information, referral, and care coordination resource for older adults and those who care about them.
Self-referral or physician referral are accepted for patients 65 years of age and over. (Please call to discuss needs for younger individuals.) Medicare and most secondary insurers cover our services.
For more information or to make an appointment, contact our Melbourne team at 321-727-3370.


text: On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 09:36:09AM -0600, Gerry Creager wrote: > > Couple of follow-up notes. > > MTU=4500: Had one node fall over with the same overflow errors. > MTU=3000: A WRF model is running, but single timesteps are executing > 2.5x slower than MTU=1500 > > I'll go snag the new driver and compile it. After all: What can it hurt! > > Thanks, Guy! > > Regards, Gerry > > Guy Coates wrote: >> Hi, >> >> We have also seen problems with the bnx2 drivers. >> >> I got a more recent set of bnx2 drivers from Broadcom: >> ...... Has the data been snooped for this data to see if all is as expected. If you are seeing a natural MTU running faster than a jumbo MTU then something is fragmenting or causing fragmentation of the data. Should the MTU=4500 causes overflow errors it might be related to fragmentation. Both the sender and receiver have to keep all the bits on a reliable transfer until the data has been acknowledged. At one time fragmentation could only be done once to a minimum MTU in the life of a packet. In addition to snooping packets try "tracepath" to and from all the involved boxes to discover what is going on. -- Regards, T o m M i t c h e l l


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Dimon on Why Bank Isn't Cutting Italian Exposure: 'J.P. Morgan Died in Italy With His Girlfriend'
Deutsche Bank's Anshu Jain and J.P. Morgan Chase's Jamie Dimon shot back at the sector's critics on both sides of the Atlantic Monday night, warning against excessive regulation and the demonization of banking.
Speaking at a public debate near Frankfurt, the CEO's of two of the world's largest banks acknowledged the industry's excessesses but argued that universal banks like their's remain essential.
Policy makers in both the U.S. and Europe have been pushing for banks to take less risk, with some calling for ring fencing investment banking in an effort to keep customer deposits safe. The CEOs mounted a defense of the global investment bank, arguing that risks can be properly managed.
"Do you want me to cut risk? I could cut risk," Mr. Dimon said. He said that Italy and Spain would be logical places to start eliminating risk, but he feels the bank is doing the right thing by staying put in countries where it has been active for decades.
"We've been in Italy for 100 years," Mr. Dimon said. "J.P. Morgan died in Italy with his girlfriend."
J.P. Morgan — the bank, not the man — currently has a net exposure of about $15 billion to Spain and Italy, he said. Most of that is to the government and corporate entities.


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Texans rookie running back Cierre Wood has unique personal insight into the much-discussed life of San Diego Chargers rookie linebacker Manti T'eo.
The duo were roommates at Notre Dame.
"I knew him inside and out really," said Wood, during a media interview Monday at Reliant Stadium.
He added: "Everybody asks me about T'eo. It's something that I expected was going to happen. I got asked on the street a couple of times. I expected it from the locker room and what not."
Wood said questions about T'eo regularly focus on his infamous girlfriend, instead of what the 2013 second-round pick was like as a linebacker for the Fighting Irish.
"His (game) tape speaks for itself. I really don't get questions about his athletic abilities," Wood said. "More of the questions are on the things that surrounded him the most, the main reason he was in the limelight as far as the whole girlfriend situation, that's what I get asked. As far as his talent, he was a second-round pick. That speaks for itself."
The Texans rookie said he heard T'eo's conversations with his fake girlfriend and never questioned the legitimacy of the talks.
"It was more along the line of, if I came in here with a goldfish and said, 'This is my goldfish, Larry.' You guys are going to go like, 'OK.' It was more along the lines of that," Wood said. "I would come over to ask for a controller and he'd be like, 'Come talk to my girl.' It was on the computer screen and it was blank. I really don't care. I heard someone talking, so I introduced myself: 'Hi, I'm Cierre. How are you doing? Nice to meet you,' and just went on about my business."
Twitter: ChronBrianSmith


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Notre Dame sues federal government over health care overhaul's birth control mandate
SOUTH BEND, Ind. – The University of Notre Dame is suing the Obama administration over a federal mandate that its health insurance plans for students and employees cover birth control.
The university filed its lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in South Bend. It claims the mandate violates Notre Dame's freedom to practice religion without government interference.
The Roman Catholic university says the birth control mandate violates the church's teaching prohibiting contraception.
The Obama administration promotes the law's provision of a range of preventive care, free of charge, as a key benefit of the health care overhaul. Contraception is included in the package of cost-free benefits
The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to consider two cases in which business have objected to covering birth control for employees on religious grounds.


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MLB Playoffs: We Have a Game 5 – Orioles at Yankees on 1450
The AL East race between the New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles took all 162 games to decide.
Perhaps it's only fitting then that this division series between these rivals will also go the distance.
(Click here for more on the match-up)
The Yankees and Orioles have split thrilling extra-inning games the last two nights heading into Game 5 on Friday in the Bronx.
New York led the East by as many as 10 games before Baltimore forged a tie during a pulsating final month, with the Yankees finally clinching the division title on the final day of the regular season.
"Well, it's kind of what we've been used to the whole year," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. "It's been a grind. It's been a fight to stay ahead of this club the whole year. So it's pretty fitting."
These teams have alternated wins in this series, with New York taking the odd-numbered games. Now the Orioles have one final chance to move ahead of the Yankees for good.
"It's an honor to be in Game 5 with them," Baltimore manager Buck Showalter said. "You knew all along that the road to where we want to try to get is going to have to pass through there and here."
Both managers said "all hands on deck" applies to this decider.
If the last two nights at Yankee Stadium are any indication, Friday's game could stretch from the early evening well into the Bronx night.
New York took a 2-1 series lead Wednesday with a 3-2, 12-inning victory. Raul Ibanez pinch-hit for a struggling Alex Rodriguez and came through with a dramatic tying homer off Jim Johnson in the ninth inning before going deep again to win it in the 12th.
That ended Baltimore's streak of 16 straight extra-inning victories, but the plucky Orioles recovered by outlasting the Yankees 2-1 in 13 innings Thursday in Game 4.
It's been an eventful two days for Girardi, who earned plaudits for his decision to remove Rodriguez on Wednesday. One day later, the manager disclosed that his 81-year-old father died last Saturday -- the day before this series began.
Girardi again pinch-hit for Rodriguez on Thursday, with Eric Chavez making the final out. Rodriguez was dropped to No. 5 in the order after batting third in the first three games.
Rodriguez is 2 for 16 with nine strikeouts in this series. He notably failed again Thursday when he struck out against Darren O'Day with the score tied and runners on second and third with one out in the eighth inning. The Yankees never got a runner into scoring position again after that frame.
With the Orioles starting right-hander Jason Hammel (0-0, 3.18 ERA), Girardi would not commit to any Friday lineup changes.
"I always tell you I look at -- go home and study the pitcher, and I know our guys and I'll make the decisions tomorrow," Girardi said.
He's unsure if Derek Jeter will be able to play shortstop after the majors' hits leader was forced to serve as the DH on Thursday. Jeter has been limping since he fouled a ball off his left foot Wednesday.
In addition, reliever Joba Chamberlain's status is uncertain after he left with a bruised right elbow, which was struck by a piece of Matt Wieters' broken bat in the 12th.
One factor in Girardi's favor is that he will turn to ace CC Sabathia (1-0, 2.08), who came one out short of a complete game in his 7-2 victory in Game 1. Sabathia is 6-1 with a 3.29 ERA in 11 playoff starts with New York.
"It's time to go," said Sabathia, who has limited opponents to a .199 average at home this year. "You know, this is what you play for. That's a good team over there we've been battling all year, so hopefully I can go out and have a good performance, and keep us in the game and give us a chance to win."
Showalter may again use Lew Ford as Friday's DH. Ford had two hits in that role in Game 1 to make him 4 for 7 against Sabathia this year.
J.J. Hardy, who delivered a 13th-inning RBI double Thursday, is 7 for 14 with four extra-base hits against Sabathia in 2012.
"Tomorrow's going to be a lot of fun," Hardy said. "We have a tough matchup with CC so it's going to be fun."
Baltimore continues to get little out of Wieters (2 for 21) and Adam Jones (2 for 22) in the postseason. Curtis Granderson (1 for 16), Robinson Cano (2 for 18) and Nick Swisher (2 for 15) have been similarly invisible for New York.
"There's guys on the other side that are struggling, too," Girardi said. "You're seeing some really good pitching in these four games."
Hammel will again oppose Sabathia after allowing two runs over 5 2/3 innings in Game 1. If Girardi wants to replace Rodriguez with one of his lefty hitters, neither Ibanez (0 for 9) nor Chavez (1 for 6) has enjoyed much success against Hammel this year.
This will be the Orioles right-hander's fifth overall start against New York this year.
"It seems like we've played these guys to a one-run game every time out," Hammel said. "It's really nothing new. It's going to be a test for both sides, and honestly, it's just going to be a good ballgame."
The winner must deal with a quick turnaround to face Detroit in the AL championship series, which begins Saturday.
Copyright by STATS LLC and The Associated Press


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Tribes to Consult on New South Dakota State Park
PIERRE - Officials from the South Dakota Department of Games, Fish and Parks will meet with Native American tribes next month to discuss the development and interpretation of the new Good Earth State Park.
Gov. Dennis Daugaard recently signed a bill into law establishing the 615-acre Good Earth State Park at Blood Run. It's South Dakota's 13th state park.
Blood Run was designated a national historic landmark in 1970. The area along the Big Sioux River bordering Iowa was used by thousands of Oneota Indians into the early 1700s. The area includes a large oak forest, rolling hills, flood plains, riverside bluffs and burial mounds.
The meeting will take place April 8 in Sioux Falls.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Want to stay up-to-date on all things fitness? Check out the new SKECHERS Fitness Facebook page – your one-stop destination for fitness news, tips, events, product info and more!
Whether you're a new gym member or an elite athlete, SKECHERS Fitness page has something for everyone. Like our page, share us with your friends, and stay tuned for the latest on SKECHERS Fitness!
Can't get enough of SKECHERS on Facebook? After you've become a fan of SKECHERS Fitness page, run on over to our regular SKECHERS page and "like" us to see the latest photos of celebs in SKECHERS, exclusive promotional offers, and more!


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It's not surprising that there's yet another Facebook game that encourages players to engage in legally questionable virtual activities. What is surprising, however, is that this one is a bona fide, officially licensed, television series tie-in product.
Weeds Social Club offers players the opportunity to grow, sell, and otherwise get into the drug business with some assistance from the cast of the award-winning Showtime television series Weeds.
In the game, you play a down-and-out character having some serious money issues. So what do you do when you're facing an impending eviction? You get into the drug game, of course.
The initial stages of the game offer a tutorial narrated by Andy Botwin himself (played by Justin Kirk in the series), the brother of the television series' main character, Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker). Once you're given a 101 on how to grow, harvest, store, and distribute the product of your horticultural endeavors, you're free to make your way up the pot-dealing ladder. And since it's a Facebook game, you can also interact with other players who participate in the game.
My brief play-through of the game — which is currently in beta stage — stalled out around the time I went to visit Andy and pick up some of his stash, so developers Ecko|Code and Mytopia might have a few more bugs to work out. Even so, the game seems to echo its source material by having some surprisingly good music playing as you do, well… whatever drug-friendly things you're doing in the game.
Still, if the world of Weeds is something you're interested in, this could be the Facebook game for you.
Oh, and don't worry. The game doesn't actually make your computer smell like a college dorm — at least, not yet. Future updates could change that, though.