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Firebirds Wood Fired Grill - Leesburg
Etiquetas principales:
With such a tiny kitchen, it's no wonder they had a tough time getting our order out quickly. The wings were cold and dry. The manager came out and apologized for that and we didn't have to pay for them. Would have just preferred better food overall. Service was SLOW. We won't be returning.
The most amazing surf and turf and the best lobster I've ever had! It was so good I shared it with everyone at the table. It'll change your life.
Steak cooked perfectly. Nice venue. Love half price wine night!
Food was great! Great waiter & ambience. Will definitely return.
Loved the Lobster Spinach Queso and Firebird's Cabernet. The Medium Prime Rib was served Medium Rare. After it was returned from the Kitchen it was still Medium Rare. Will return in the future but not have the Prime Rib.
It was terrible
Service was exceptional, I've never had better service at Firebirds and we have been coming here since they opened. They served our kids food first and it came out quickly which is always appreciated. The server was on top of drink refills and replacement forks dropped. The salad seemed especially good and was served on a nice cold plate.
We always have a delicious and very filling meal at Firebirds. Great service and atmosphere too.
Bartender was slow and rude. Our server at table was fantastic but the food was mediocre and expensive for the quality.
Their prime rib is some of the best I've ever had. The filet is top notch and the lobster tail was so good you don't need to ruin it with drawn butter. Their specialty drinks were also wonderful. Can't wait to go back!
They completely messed up our reservation. I made the reservation well in advance (about a week before we were scheduled to go). When we arrived at the restaurant they did not have a table where all 12 of us could sit together. The hostess said "well, we have a bigger party that booked so you will just have to take these other tables". The hostess went on to say "when you book online it can get messed up, you should have called". Funny thing is, when I called a previous time to make a reservation the person answering the phone said "you don't need a reservation, just walk in. If you really feel you need a reservation, just make it online". It is really unfortunate that our reservation was messed up as this was a business lunch and then I had to scramble to find another restaurant that could accommodate us and seat all 12 of us at the same table. Luckily Travinia is just down the street from Firebirds and the host and manager at Travinia was great and was able to seat us as soon as they worked some magic to put tables together for us.
I will most likely not give Firebirds as an option again when I try and scheduled a business lunch. I am sure there are other people who have great experiences there but this was the second time that my reservation was messed up. I would recommend that the person working the reservations make sure they know what is going on and who is coming and plan accordingly. They could have just given me a call and I would have moved our business lunch to a different day/time but they didn't even have the common courtesy to do that.
My recommendation for anyone that makes a reservation at Firebirds, do yourself a favor and call daily to check on the status of your reservation. Make sure you call before you leave for the restaurant and check again. Even then, it is probably a good idea to have a back-up plan just in case your reservation magically got messed up. I would also recommend that you try Travinia down the street instead.
We love this restaurant! The menu has enough variety to please our preferences and the food is always amazing!
We enjoyed their filet mignon special and the half price wine selections. The steak was perfectly cooked and delicious
Went for National Filet Day (cancelled restaurant week reservations at another steakhouse) as had had the filet before and found it to be delicious. Everything was great and so glad we could take advantage of this special. We love coming to Firebirds and love to get to take advantage of such a great offer. It is a frequent place to meet friends and family.
The service was fantastic, food was great. Ask for Tien for your wait staff, she will really take care of you.
Everything was amazing. Food and service.
Table next to us had a dog sitting at their table, Eating from a plate. Literally a dog at the dinner table with its owners.
I was not happy that a steakhouse and restaurant of this level let dogs inside, MUCH LESS to sit at the table and eat. Weird.
Excellent device and food.
great service, love the prime rib. one of our go to places.
First time there. Food was absolutely delicious. Service was quick. The experience was freaky good. By that I mean everyone was attentive, appetizers came out quickly, and the food followed in a timely fashion. And this was during the evening at 7 pm on a Friday night.
Our waitress was outstanding, unfortunately I do not recommend her name. But she gets kudos.
Kitchen a little slow, but Erin kept checking on us. Food excellent, good value. Wine is too expensivd
We go to Firebirds probably once a month. Sadly, like many restaurants, they have their good nights and they have their bad nights. last night, my entree salad was the size of a side salad, with maybe 3 oz of steak, all in all way too small and the steak came out pretty undercooked. I asked for medium it came out medium rare. my wife's specifically said no nuts on her salad and they put them on there anyway. My son asked for double order fries and they only brought him a single order. Our waiter seemed energetic and came to check on us fairly frequently, but obviously wasn't paying attention closely enough to notice all the mistakes on the orders that he put into the kitchen and then he served us. but, the flavors were there, my wife enjoyed her tuna on her salad, my son enjoyed his chicken. And although I didn't have very much, the steak tasted good.
I believe the evening we went to Firebirds they were understaffed. Seemed to have to wait for a longer time to be waited on.
This was our first visit and we are glad to have discovered this place. Excellent food - from the soup to filet minion to salmon - everything was very well prepared. The drinks were great and service was excellent. We could not get to the dessert - so no comments!
Looking forward to going back there again.
We celebrated our birthdays as a couple and went there in lieu of going to DC Prime that night (another local favorite) and we weren't disappointed. Our experience was great—from our hostess who sat us to our server—it was pretty flawless. And you can tell the servers communicate with each other and the kitchen. The food was amazing and cooked to perfection. Seriously we left feeling satisfied and will be returning one day.
The staff and food at this Firebirds location is phenomenal! Highly recommended!!!
Food as always was delicious. Service was wonderful and prompt.
This was a birthday dinner at what has become our go-to place since moving into the area a few months ago. The food and the staff never disappoint - which is probably why it's our go-to place. And, with half off wine on Mondays - a great value.
Firebirds is a great place for friend's to get together. THe staff was welcoming and attentive from the time we arrived to the time we left and the food was amazing and our waiter, Ryan Hannah provided outstanding service!
Good food based on an interesting and changing menu. Very good staff.
They had no trouble seating us early and promptly brought water and menus and followed up with drink and then food orders in turn. Service was warm but not overly familiar. Walked us thru the specials for both drinks and food. Great service.
We had the two seasonal specials, the scallops and pork chop. Both were outstanding. The pork chop was perfectly cooked and the tomato coulis topping was exceptional. The orzo served with the scallops was incredible. We considered taking a quart home with us! The only minor issue was the restaurant temperature. It was a bit too warm for eating and drinking, in our opinion.
Yes absolutely. The food is phenomenal as well as the service!
Great food and service, the ambiance is great.
So much better than the last time. Must have been an off day before.
Great restaurant, probably an off night. Great service but the kitchen was not it's best
Firebirds never disappoints! They always provide the highest levels of service with unbeatable food!
The steaks we ordered were great. The baby back rib was enjoyed by our guest. The server is somewhat green, but he'll learn. He just need to be more personable, but he's finding his niche. We always had the server from Russia and she was very personable. Just tell the server to relax and not be too scared, but do be attentive and know. Example, when someone orders ribs, know that its messy and a nice wet towel or extra napkins are needed. Ask whether diners would like condiments. Don't worry too much about the straw. Personally I think just give it if there's no policy against it. When someone is too concern about such small items it cheapens the experience. Also one bread for 4 adults? If you are going to drop only one for 4 guests, then come back to offer more. When restaurants start getting cheap, then the experience will become cheap. Also, don't ask if the diners want bread. If the bread is something the restaurant provides, then just place it.
We visit this Firebirds a lot for special dinners and it has always been exceptional. This visit was disappointing both in service and food. We ordered an appetizer with our drinks and waited until after the drinks had come to order our entrees. We wanted our appetizer to enjoy before dinner, while we waited. Instead, it took quite a while for the appetizer, which was served at the same time as our salads, making us rush to finish both before our entrees came. We also asked for bread (which is normally offered automatically), but it didn't come until we had requested it twice more. The biggest disappointment of the evening was the food quality, which was much below typical Firebirds standards. All four of us ordered filets prepared medium, two as surf-and-turf with lobster tails. Mine was definitely well-done, not a hint of pink. The other three were at most medium well, with only a tiny strip of light pink. The most disappointing part of the meal was the lobster tails, which were over-cooked and rubbery. Definitely not the delicious lobster tails we have come to expect. We also had to ask for the melted butter three times...the second time we were served table butter, but finally got it on our third try. We have always loved Firebirds and hope that this was an unusual occurrence and not the new norm.
Food took a very long time to come out of the kitchen. The server was inattentive...Lowe had to ask for drink refills and bread.


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Dayton, OH--By combining compact, rigid construction with an innovative drive, a new five-axis gantry offers fast, accurate digitizing and machining. The huge system plows new ground for automakers, shipbuilders, and airframe manufacturers with its unprecedented combination of size and speed.
The gantry enables manufacturers to digitize large parts at speeds as high as 400 inches per minute, feed the design information to CAD/CAM systems, and then mill the parts in the same location. Combining speed, size, and rigidity, it eliminates the need for painstaking hand polishing and grinding of parts.
Prior to the development of the new system, manufacturers hand-polished large molds and dies. The reason: Their machining centers typically lacked the necessary size, speed, or flexibility to do the job.
Reportedly, the DMT1200 Series Gantry Center changes all that. Engineers at Dayton Machine Tool Co. managed to combined the seemingly incompatible qualities of size and speed. The gantry moves at unusually high speeds, despite a work envelope that measures an impressive 20- by 11- by 5-feet.
To achieve their objectives, they incorporated innovative designs in the gantry's drive system and spindles. One of the keys is a dual-pinion gearbox that uses timing-belt technology. Working in conjunction with the rack end of a rack-and-pinion system, the dual pinions provide linear movement of the gantry in both directions along the x-axis. Adjustable preloads on the gearbox's pinions take the "spring," or non-compliance, out of the system, enabling it to accelerate rapidly without losing its position.
Most critical to the drive's design, however, is the use of the timing belt. By employing a timing belt, rather than special gearing, Dayton Machine Tool engineer G. Dan Siler dramatically reduced the inertia of the system.
Dual-pinion gearboxes, available for half a century, typically use special gearing. But the special gearing adds to the inertia around the motor area, which is normally the greatest contributor of inertia to a gantry-type system. Siler estimates that the timing belt system reduces that inertia by as much as 60%. Timing-belt technology also cut the cost of the gearbox by close to $40,000, he says.
As a result, the DMT1200 gantry can accelerate far more rapidly than other large systems. The dual-pinion gearbox drives the gantry at feed rates of 1,200 inches per minute, and acceleration rates of 50 inches/second/second using ac servomotors.
The dual-pinion gearbox also provides a viable alternative to ball screw technology. Because of the long x-axis travel, Siler feared that ball screws would suffer from "stretch," and therefore compromise precision. Using the dual-pinion gearbox, rather than a ball screw, solved that problem. "We need to accurately accelerate this large machine over a broad envelope," Siler says. "The dual-pinion gearbox lends itself well to that application." A new patented feature of the gearbox also balances its output in both directions, thus making it possible to run at high speeds.
To carry out the machine's all-encompassing theme, Siler also designed a special spindle. The spindle is critical to the machine's performance for two reasons. First, its compact size adds rigidity, which, in turn, enables high-speed gantry movement and machining. Second, its broad performance envelope enables users to machine all kinds of materials without changing the cutting head.
Siler travelled the world to find an electric motor that would endow the spindle with high-speed machining capabilities and enough torque for conventional machining. Eventually, he settled on a custom-designed ac motor and vector drive that generates 50 hp, operates at speeds as high as 12,000 rpm, and achieves torques of 95 Nm at 0 to 5,000 rpm.
That combination permits use of the spindle for high speed machining of hard steels. Because machine tool customers typically operate tools at 12,000 to 35,000 rpm during high-speed machining of hard materials, the new spindle can be used for those applications. At the same time, its higher torque at lower speeds endows it with the ability to cut everything from wood to aluminum.
The real key to the design of the new spindle, however, is its compactness. During his preliminary design work, Siler concluded that a spindle more than 21 inches long would lack the necessary rigidity, and could therefore compromise the goals of the machine. "For stiffness' sake, the head must be as short as possible," Siler explains. Unfortunately, no spindle manufacturers could offer off-the-shelf units that would provide the necessary performance in a package less than 30 inches long.
As a result, Siler decided to design his own spindle. In the process, he packed the motor, spindle bearings, nose, release cylinder, and tool gripper into a 21-inch-long package. To do so, he developed a special drawbar. The tapered drawbar doubles the pull-in force of the tool gripper without requiring longer or larger springs. Siler achieved 2,100 pounds of pull-in force using springs designed for 1,100 pounds. In the process, he cut about five inches from the spindle's overall length. He eliminated the remainder by replacing the release cylinder, which typically measures between four and seven inches in length, with an air cylinder only 1.25 inches long.
With its broad performance range, the shorter spindle enables the DMT1200 to perform a wide variety of machining operations. "We were hoping to make a spindle that would handle everything from wood patterns to hardened dies for the automotive industry," Siler says.
Other Applications
Because of the DMT1200's design, large manufacturers can now dramatically reduce cycle times. The spindle's broad operating characteristics eliminate the need to constantly change the head. The innovative drive and light weight of the gantry crossrail enable it to operate at speeds exceeding those of large systems. And the rigidity, speed, and flexibility of the five-axis system permit it to operate at higher spindle speeds, while reaching features that large machines typically can't. Says Siler: "The large-envelope approach, combined with the ability to machine a wide variety of products and materials, set it apart as a product."
Additional details...Contact G. Dan Siler, Dayton Machine Tool Co., 1314 Webster St., Dayton, OH 45404, (513) 224-8528.

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|Up a level
Allinson, N. M. and Brown, M. T. and Johnson, M. J. (1989) {0,1}n space self-organising feature maps: extensions and hardware implementation. In: Artificial Neural Networks, 1989, 16-18 October 1989, London.
Allinson, Nigel and Brammer, R. and Helliwell, J. R. and Harrop, S. and Magorrian, B. G. and Wan, T. (1989) Charge coupled device (CCD) area detector for on-line (40- to 80-ms) acquisition of Laue diffraction data from protein crystals. Journal of X-Ray Science and Technology, 1 (2). pp. 143-153. ISSN 0895-3996
Allinson, Nigel M. (1989) Solid-state detectors for synchrotron radiation experiments. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 275 (3). pp. 587-596. ISSN 0168-9002
Bidaut, Luc (1989) Structure-function localization with PET and MRI: use of three-dimensional data sets. In: J Cereb Blood Flow Metab.
Derbyshire, G. and Dobson, B. and Greaves, G. N. and Harris, N. and Mackle, P. and Moore, P. R. and Roberts, K. J. and Allinson, Nigel and Nicoll, J. and Doyle, S. and Oldman, R. J. (1989) Integrated materials science facility on the SRS. Review of Scientific Instruments, 60 (7). pp. 1897-1900. ISSN 0034-6748
Goodman, D. A. and Eason, R. W. and Shiwai, B. and Allinson, N. and Magorrian, B. and Grande, M. and Ridgley, A. (1989) A comparison of DEF X-ray film and a photodiode array (Reticon) as detectors for an X-ray crystal spectrometer. Journal of X-Ray Science and Technology, 1 (2). pp. 162-170. ISSN 0895-3996
Helliwell, J. R. and Harrop, S. and Habash, J. and Magorrian, B. G. and Allinson, N. M. and Gomez, D. and Helliwell, M. and Derewenda, Z. and Cruickshank, D. W. J. (1989) Instrumentation for Laue diffraction (invited). Review of Scientific Instruments, 60 (7). pp. 1531-1536. ISSN 0034-6748
Hunter, Andrew and Willis, P. J. (1989) Breadth-first quad encoding for networked picture browsing. Computers and Graphics, 13 (4). pp. 419-432. ISSN 0097-8493
Johnson, Martin and Allinson, Nigel (1989) Implementation of a variable cluster self organising algorithm for high speed unsupervised pattern classification (lost in {0, 1}N space). In: Automated Inspection and High-Speed Vision Architectures III, 6-7 November 1989, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Luckman, Adrian and Allinson, Nigel (1989) Modelling peripheral pre-attention and foveal fixation for search directed machine vision systems. In: Automated Inspection and High-Speed Vision Architectures III, 6-7 November 1989, Philadelphia, PA, USA.


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Hi all.
First of all I have to say I am on here because I have something to sell, but hopefully it will something that interests the forum users
I have been clearing though some of my dads old stuff and have came across 5 x J.R.R Tolkien records.
Have put them up on ebay and thought some of you guys may be interested in them. The Item number is 201238051664.
If there is a more appropriate section to put this in let me know and I'll move it.


text: Protected: ELTAC Assignment Feedback Forms This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below: Password: It's only fair to share... Please login to get access to the quiz Protected: ELTAC Sample Assignments (Prev Lesson) (Next Lesson) Protected: ELTAC Observation Tasks Back to This post is password protected. Enter the password to view any comments. Course Syllabus ELTAC Feedback SheetsELTAC Lesson Plan TemplateELTAC LibraryTP Points / ElementaryELTAC Sample AssignmentsELTAC Assignment Feedback FormsELTAC Observation TasksTP Points / IntermediateELTAC Self-evaluation SheetLanguage Awareness Task 1Language Awareness Task 2Interview Summary Sheet Staff Shady R. Abuyusuf Role : BTC Academic Manager / CELTA Tutor, Cambridge University Website : britishey.com Experience : 16 years Specialist in : Teacher Training Read More


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Pizza drivers deserve safety
In "Purloined pies: Prank or delivery threat?" [News, December 22, 2005] reporter Lisa Provence stated "delivery drivers have to be one of the easiest robbery targets– even more so than convenience store clerks." The largest target to fear lately is the uninformed opinions stated in the Hook.
To single out the safety factor of jobs without the facts is downright disrespectful. I worked for Domino's Pizza for 19 years– nine as a delivery driver. We are taught the aspects of safety, security, and, of course, how to prevent robberies. It is not our job to be robbed and harassed as our team member was.
I have made thousands of deliveries– and still do. I serve each customer in a polite, respectful manner. I expect the same in return. Whether meant as prank or theft, if customers physically or verbally threaten me, my company takes action. Feeling threatened should not be in anyone's job description. It is not an expectation.
The article was riddled with assumption, peppered with perceptions, not facts. In reality, we operate as part of this community. We expect community support when team members are robbed or threatened. I agree with Eugene Williams on Mayor David Brown– we do need to see more support of this issue. We need the mayor's thorough understanding of what is truly happening here.
With regard to restricted delivery being a racist issue wrong! This has nothing to do with racism and is everything about team member safety. Just ask the African American delivery driver involved in the incident that sparked the article.
Talk to Alan Asef, our supervisor– Middle Eastern descent. I am the female, part-Blackfoot Indian who is responsible for training at Domino's. We are tired of those who make our business seem racist. It is time we focus on the real issues.
Heather Conrad
Training /Operations
Domino's Pizza


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Meeting with Alberto Toso Fei
As part of the Night at the Museum designed by the Ministry of Heritage and Cultural Activities and Tourism, the Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca ' d'Oro in collaboration with the Association of Culture Wires , offers a night dedicated to Venice its mysteries . The writer Alberto Toso Fei will take visitors on a journey to discover a secret and mysterious Venice , mysterious and legendary. Ghosts and demons , doges and courtesans , historical and legendary creatures reappear, where the imagination and the reality of the city weave plots of suspended time .
Free Event | | Entrance to the museum for a fee.


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Perspectives from the Field presents original, peer-reviewed studies by NCTE members on topics of interest to the English language arts profession.
A Critical Policy Analysis and Response to the Report of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)Curt Dudley-Marling, Lisa Patel Stevens, and Alexander Gurn critique a report on the preparation of teachers of reading produced by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) which concluded that schools of education are not teaching future teachers about the "science of reading."
The Federal Government Wants Me to Teach What? A Teacher's Guide to the National Reading Panel ReportDiane Stephens closely examines the studies cited in the 2000 National Reading Panel report and their findings, and she explains how teachers might interrogate and use the findings so that they can make instructional decisions that support all students as readers.
The South Carolina Reading Initiative: NCTE's Reading Initiative as a Statewide Staff Development ProjectThis research suggests that research-based, statewide staff development programs can have a considerable impact on the beliefs and practices of teachers and on the students who learn from them.
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Dr. Ory lead author on editorial on chronic-disease self-management for aging adults
Marcia G. Ory, Ph.D., M.P.H., Regents and Distinguished Professor in the Texas A&M Health Science Center (TAMHSC) School of Rural Public Health, was lead author for an editorial on chronic-disease self-management for aging adults.
"Self-Management at the Tipping Point: Reaching 100,000 Americans with Evidence-Based Programs," was published in the May issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. This editorial highlights the impact of evidence-based chronic disease self-management programs, focusing on their potential for reducing symptoms and improving function, as well as the recent effort to transition these types of programs from the research stage to practice on a national scale.
"There is an emerging concern about pervasive research-to-practice gaps in which programs developed in research settings fail to be translated in widespread practice in the 'aging services network,'" Dr. Ory said. "The various state and federal agencies on aging and public health recognize the importance of closing the gap and transitioning these programs to a national platform."
In particular, the Stanford University Chronic Disease Self-Management Program has shown great success in test trials at improving participants' ability to manage symptoms and cope with their disease on a daily basis. Study participants used various strategies such as behavior modeling, action planning and feedback, which enabled them to better communicate with their health providers while lowering the number of costly emergency room visits.
"The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, led by the U.S. Administration on Aging in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, allotted $32.5 million to support the translation of the Stanford program in 45 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia," states the study.
This national initiative demonstrated these programs can be successful at reaching a wide cross-section of older adults with chronic conditions when delivered through various dissemination channels. While target goals were reached ahead of schedule, the sustained dissemination of these types of evidence-based programs hinges on aging, public health and medical care sectors working together. This will ensure individuals are properly managing their disease and aware of the various community and clinical care options available to them.
The editorial reflects collaborative efforts among the TAMHSC-School of Rural Public Health, Stanford University Patient Education Research Center and the National Council on Aging. Additional authors include Matthew Lee Smith, Ph.D., Kristie Patton, M.S.W., Kate Lorig, Dr.P.H., Wendy Zenker, B.A., and Nancy Whitelaw, Ph.D.
Interested in this topic? Contact us for more information.


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Alexis Hanford: Flesh-Eating Bacteria Survivor Gets Warm Homecoming
(REDWOOD VALLEY, Calif.) -- She can't bend or flex her toes. Walking is nearly impossible without wearing a brace.
It's a hard reality for 16-year-old Alexis Hanford, of Bethesda, Md., who has always been an active athlete – swimming, and playing basketball, soccer, and lacrosse.
Two months ago while swimming with her sister at Lake Leonard in Redwood Valley, Calif., the former varsity lacrosse player contracted a rare strain of flesh-eating bacteria after falling into the water while going off a rope swing.
"I've lost a lot of use of my leg but I haven't lost my leg," Hanford said. "What you guys would consider normal for walking is going to be very different for me. But eventually, it should become my normal."
She spent the next several weeks in the hospital, forced to undergo 18 surgeries to remove the infection from her leg.
"Every surgery you'd kind of wait in the waiting room wondering what they found and what they needed to remove and what was healthy," said Lynn Knieriem, Alexis' mother.
Alexis celebrated her 16th birthday with her new wheels -- not a car, but a wheelchair.
Even at the worst, she attributes her positive attitude to the love and support of her friends. One friend, Jorge Richardson, even brought her a present every day she was in the hospital.
As for her future, Alexis has a home tutor.
She plans on taking extra classes over the summer to stay on track with her graduating class. She will likely have to wear a brace for the rest of her life, but hopes to eventually run again and return to her active lifestyle. She hopes to study biomedical engineering in college because of this experience.
While Alexis is still healing, on Saturday she managed to attend her high school homecoming dance, where she was welcomed back by being crowned homecoming princess.
"It was amazing to be crowned and I'm guessing probably since I've been away for so long they wanted me to know that I'm still included in the school," she said. "I can't even explain how much that means to me."
As a way of thanking the doctors who saved her life, her best friend Lily Blum launched the "Alexis Healing Project," a nonprofit effort to raise funds for Children's Hospital in Washington, D.C.
"I wanted to turn something negative into something positive," Blum said. "She's a really strong person and she's definitely been an inspiration to me, and I wanted to give back to the doctors who saved her life."
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio


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Calendar Visualization of Fatal Car Crashes
I really like this data visualization from Nathan Yau at FlowingData.com. Vehicles Involved in Fatal Crashes 2010 takes a new look at the statistics released by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Instead of plotting them on a traditional map, Nathan looked at the time data.
After seeing this map on The Guardian, I was curious about what other data was available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Association. It turns out there's a lot and it's relatively easy to access via FTP. What's most surprising is that it's detailed and fairly complete, with columns for weather, number of people involved, date and time of accidents, and a lot more.
The above shows vehicles involved in fatal crashes in 2010 (which is different from number of crashes or number of fatalities). This data was just released last month, at the end of 2011 oddly enough. It's a calendar view with months stacked on top of one another and darker days indicate more vehicles involved.
- Nathan Yau
As was suggested by others in the comments on FlowingData, I agree that since the weekends have the higher incidence rate, starting the week with Monday and moving Sunday to the last column may show that a little bit clearer.
Nathan has made all of the data avaialble for anyone that would like to try a visualization themselves. Student project?


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LAHAINA - There's just something special about a Lahaina man - especially if he is a former Lahainaluna High School wrestler.
Terry Shibao grew up in the molten lava heat of the West Side and steeled an intense love of wrestling on the mats of Lahainaluna. He was a two-time Maui Interscholastic League champion at 205 pounds and a member of the Hawaii National Team in 1986 that traveled to the Orient for the Japan Tour.
Shibao was also a four-peat champion in freestyle wrestling at the Aloha State Games and went on to compete on the Division I level at Washington State University.
Article Photos
The team includes (from left): back row — Kaeo Kanemitsu, Shayla Kanemitsu, Luis Miranda, Kahealani "Tita" Mano-Kapu, Davyn-Lee Ching, Jordan Shibao and Saje Kanemitsu; middle row — Kainalu Kapu, Kai Mairino, Isaac Emeson, Noah Garcia, Ezekiel Kanemitsu, Jack Hussey and Faiva Fonohema; front row — Gustavo Garcia, Shaadi Brands, Bryce Bishaw, Cailee Cuaresma, Shaeyanna Ching and Hunter Cuaresma.
He returned to the Islands after graduating from WSU with a degree in engineering and started a photography business called Imaging Plus. During this time his interest in wrestling never waned, and he soon found himself back on the mat at Lahainaluna coaching the heavyweights on the Luna team.
His mentor and friend, Kim Ball, is a driving force of Maui Style Wrestling and at Lahainaluna, so Shibao maintained his connection to the sport behind the leadership of his former coach.
"Kim Ball does so much for the youth of Maui with his contributions to the sport," beamed Shibao last week. "His experience enriches the programs here on Maui and on the West Side. I just hope I can perpetuate his effort."
To move the wrestling program in Lahaina forward, Shibao formed the Lahaina Red Raiders wrestling club.
"The Lahaina Roughnecks (the youth wrestling program led by Conrad Bolor that practices in the Lahainaluna facility on campus) club had become so big that safety issues began to surface," Shibao explained. "It was so crowded that kids were falling onto each other and into the walls, so we decided to start another club."
That was three years ago, and today the Lahaina Red Raiders boasts 32 youths on its roster and a new mat purchased through fundraisers and a big dip into the Shibao family bank to cover the $12,000 cost of buying and shipping the regulation wrestling mat.
"The kids deserved better than practicing on fold-out exercise mats," said Shibao. "Boy, you should have seen their faces light up when we first got that mat onto the cafeteria floor at King Kamehameha III school this year. They were ecstatic!"
"Our program has grown every year, and this year we had two state champs," he continued. "But really, we just want to create a fun environment of participation, where kids can have camaraderie and a family feeling. We give out participation medals to all of the kids and emphasize the team/family side of club sports. They are great kids and, actually, I think they have helped shape me as a person more than I have to them. It's great!
"I just want to send our gratitude to our coaches, Gerald Ching, Jay Cuaresma, Venus Bravo, Po'omai Keola and Cesar Garcia, along with our other coaches Neil Nakata, Zane Monteleone and Coach Snyder (all longtime Lahainaluna and Roughnecks leaders), who give selflessly year in and year out to the youth programs; to Darnell Shepard of Aloha Self Storage for donating a place to store their new mat; and to Principal Steve Franz and the staff at King Kamehameha III Elementary School for allowing us the opportunity to use the cafeteria for practice. Thank you also to the parents of our wrestlers, the Lahaina community and to Uncle Bob Kawaguchi and the Lahaina Hongwanji for their support of Lahaina Red Raiders wrestling," he concluded.


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IBM MobileFirst for iOS apps for your industry
Material Inspect
IBM MobileFirst for iOS Material Inspect provides inspectors with information needed to prepare and conduct the inspection of materials and services – in collaboration with all parties involved. Using built-in analytics, the app gathers data across a population of similar construction materials, enabling material inspectors to conduct an efficient inspection. Material Inspect minimizes risks through powerful analytics and puts inspection information at an inspector's fingertips.
Safe Site
IBM MobileFirst for iOS Safe Site enables production workers to instantly document and share information about unsafe work conditions with fellow workers and supervisors. It uses powerful analytics to give recommended courses of action and potential resolutions. When incidents are reported, the app can identify risk hotspots on site. The built-in geo-fencing capability alerts workers when they are entering a high risk area.
Rapid Handover
IBM MobileFirst for iOS Rapid Handover empowers foremen to record essential activities and use predictive analytics for better decision making. Many foremen rely on spreadsheets and verbal directions to act on critical details – which can lead to increased production time, errors and safety risks. Rapid Handover's mobile flexibility and built-in analytics can help foremen provide a more informative and productive shift transition for everyone.
Why IBM MobileFirst for iOS app?
Mobile analytics delivered in a simple, intuitive UI is a key differentiator in the IBM MobileFirst for iOS apps. The use of big data is a proven way to positively influence existing work processes. With IBM MobileFirst for iOS apps on iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, this in-the-moment intelligence empowers new, more accurate decision making right at the most critical moments - resulting in more efficient and impactful outcomes. This is something only Apple and IBM can bring to market.


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Who says muffin pans are just for sweet treats? The clueless, that's who! These savory goodies are as adorable as they are delicious. Portion-controlled perfection...
1/12th of recipe (1 pizzette): 155 calories, 4.5g total fat (2g sat fat), 540mg sodium, 21.5g carbs, 1g fiber, 5g sugars, 8g protein -- PointsPlus® value 4* SmartPoints® value 4* Why have a snoozy slice of pizza when you could have a deep-dish mini pie?! With stats this great, have TWO!
Ingredients: 1 cup chopped onion 1 cup chopped bell pepper 1 cup chopped mushrooms 1 cup low-fat or light ricotta cheese 1 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese 1 tbsp. chopped garlic 1/2 tsp. salt 1 package Pillsbury Classic Pizza Crust refrigerated dough 3/4 cup pizza sauce 1/4 cup reduced-fat Parmesan-style grated topping Directions: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a 12-cup muffin pan with nonstick spray. Bring a large skillet sprayed with nonstick spray to medium-high heat. Add onion, bell pepper, and mushrooms. Cook and stir until softened, 6 - 8 minutes. Transfer veggies to a large bowl, and blot away excess moisture. Add ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, garlic, and salt. Stir until evenly mixed. Roll out dough into a large rectangle of even thickness, at least 12" X 9". Evenly cut dough into 12 squares. Place each square in a muffin cup, and press it into the bottom and up along the sides. Evenly distribute veggie-cheese mixture among the cups, and firmly pack it in. Top with pizza sauce and Parm-style topping. Bake until dough is firm and golden brown and filling is hot, about 15 minutes. Enjoy! MAKES 12 SERVINGS
1/12th of recipe (1 mini loaf): 137 calories, 3.5g total fat (1.5g sat fat), 316mg sodium, 9.5g carbs, 1g fiber, 4g sugars, 16g protein -- PointsPlus® value 3* SmartPoints® value 3* How do you make an HG meatloaf even better? Shrink it down, and stuff it with cheese! WOO and HOO! Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups finely chopped onion 1 1/2 cups finely chopped mushrooms 1 1/2 lb. raw extra-lean ground beef (4% fat or less) 3/4 cup fat-free liquid egg substitute (like Egg Beaters Original) 3/4 cup quick-cooking oats 1/2 cup ketchup 2 tsp. chopped garlic 1/2 tsp. salt 1/4 tsp. black pepper 3 sticks light string cheese, each cut into 4 pieces Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 12-cup muffin pan with nonstick spray. Bring a large skillet sprayed with nonstick spray to medium-high heat. Cook and stir onion and mushrooms until softened, 5 - 7 minutes. Transfer veggies to a large bowl, and blot away excess moisture. Add all remaining ingredients except string cheese. Mix thoroughly with your hands. Evenly distribute meat mixture among the muffin cups. Press a piece of string cheese into the center of each cup, and enclose it within the meat mixture. Bake until firm with lightly browned edges, 20 - 25 minutes. Dig in! MAKES 12 SERVINGS
You'll be the talk of the town if you bring a pan of Lasagna Cupcakes to a party! The secret is using wonton wrappers as noodles... Click! Our original micro-meatloaf recipe features broccoli cole slaw and lean turkey... Check out these Turkey & Veggie Meatloaf Minis! This next recipe is loved by all... Whip up a round of BLT Wonton Crunchies! On the brunchy side of things, these Cheesy-Good Breakfast Tartlets put crunchy wonton cups to good use. Yay for cheesy eggs and bacon! And finally, here's ANOTHER li'l pizza recipe for you... Mini Deep-Dish Spinach Pizzas!
These recipes are too cute (and too DELICIOUS) to keep to yourself. Click "Send to a Friend" to pass 'em around!
Happy National Chocolate Milk Day, September 27th. Stick a straw into some Unsweetened Chocolate Almond Breeze -- only 45 calories per cup!
SmartPoints® value not what you expected? Click here for more info on how the values are calculated, plus more FAQs about PointsPlus® and SmartPoints® values on our website.


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Exam 220-802: CompTIA A+ Certification Exam (220-802)
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Long Island Top 10 girls basketball rankings
1. St. Anthony's (7-2): The Friars went 2-1 in the Braggin' Rights Classic in Cincinnati. They lost to DuPont Manuel, 66-56. Symone Kelly had 17 points and 16 rebounds. Then the Friars defeated Digital Harbor, 42-34 before Shannon White scored 21 points in a 57-44 win over Chaminade-Julienne. Junior point guard Rebecca Musgrove missed all three games with a quad injury.
2. Long Island Lutheran (9-1): Boogie Brozoski had 23 points and five assists and Paige Kriftcher had 12 points and four assists for the Crusaders in a 56-42 win over Francis Lewis in the Chicken Murphy and Murry Bergtraum Tip-Off Classic at Murry Bergtraum.
3. Sachem East (3-1): Sachem East defeated St. Mary's, 58-32. Senior Meagan Doherty scored a career-high 27 points.
4. St. John the Baptist (7-5): The Cougars went 2-1 in the Diamond State Classic in Delaware, losing in the finals to South Shore, 40-39. Brianna Thomas scored 14 points. SJB beat Sanford, 55-26 as Anastasia Williams scored 21 points. Williams scored on a putback as time expired in a 48-47 win over Ursuline in the semifinals. Williams had 19 points and 21 rebounds and Thomas had 14 points and 17 rebounds.
5. Holy Trinity (6-3): Katie Poppe had 20 points and nine rebounds and Kelly Carey scored 20, including six three-pointers in a 67-42 win over Mount DeSales in Maryland Holiday Classic in Baltimore. The Titans also defeated Rawlan Park in the Classic, 70-56. Poppe scored 25 and Allison Brennan scored 20.
6. Lindenhurst (4-0): The Bulldogs had the week off.
7. North Babylon (2-3): Jalen Powell hit a three-pointer at the buzzer in a 35-34 win over Baldwin at the Baldwin Tournament. Brianna Jones had 15 points, eight rebounds and five assists. The Bulldogs then lost to Bergtraum, 56-25. North Babylon hosts Riverhead Tuesday.
8. Baldwin (3-1): Alex Hampton scored 12 points in a 35-34 loss to North Babylon.
9. Sacred Heart (8-4): Sacred Heart picked up wins over Division, South Side, and Freeport to capture the Lady Devils Tournament at Freeport. Nina Corcoran was named Tournament MVP.
10. Glenn (7-0): Glenn defeated Smithtown East, 57-15 and Deer Park, 59-27. Allison McKenna had 25 points and 13 rebounds against Deer Park.
On the bubble: Riverhead (6-1), Harborfields (7-0), Massapequa (6-1), Kellenberg (5-4), MacArthur (4-0)
We're revamping our Comments section. Learn more and share your input.


text: The 18" x 13" tabletop pocket chart is portable, making it a great hands-on learning center for small groups or individual use. A self-checking feature allows students to work independently. The 10 clear pockets on the front can hold the tiles currently in use, and a convenient storage pouch sewn in the back stores all the pieces. Folds for easy storage.Two skills"sorting and patterning"can be taught with this easy-to-use set that develops kids™ early math and discrimination skills. First, they learn to sort by color, shape and category. Then, tiles depicting common shapes and colors are used to build patterns, developing important problem-solving and logical-thinking skills.


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The information here was developed to give a grad student's eye-view of our school. We hope that you can visit us, but if you cannot, feel free to browse through the tour. For general information about the University of Arizona, see the UA home page.
The picture of campus to the right was taken by the computer science department's webcam. (Click through for a live view — but remember it might be dark!) The red u-shaped building in the right foreground is the Social Sciences building. The School of Sociology is on the top floor; other departments in the building are Political Science, History, and Philosophy.
We have approximately 20 faculty and 50 graduate students in residence. Graduate students are actively involved in faculty research; it is common for faculty to co-author papers with graduate students, and those co-authorships often develop into published papers, master's theses or dissertations. These relationships form a strong foundation for our future careers.
The backbone of our school is the staff; they do an excellent job of keeping track of graduate students and faculty. Without them, our lives would be much more difficult.
Our seminar room is the heart of our academic life. Almost all graduate seminars are held in this room, as are informal seminars and the school's weekly brown-bag series. Brown-bags are simply Friday afternoon talks -- the school brings in well-known scholars to give presentations. You'll hear questions and comments from professors and students as they enjoy sandwiches and slurpees. This practice highlights our unique combination of intellectual rigor and interpersonal informality, but our brown bags also serve an important social function: they bring us together as a school once a week.
All graduate students are assigned office space. Some of us are lucky enough to have windows with a view, others of us share small offices with only one other grad student, and others enjoy the camaraderie of larger offices. Grad students often pass down convenient items like coffee pots, microwaves, mini-fridges, and even plants. The offices are definitely our space; it's nice to have some place on campus where a professor has to knock before entering! Most of our time on campus is spent in offices or the seminar room; this leads to a small-town feel at our large university. All graduate student offices have ethernet and wireless connectivity, computers and laser printers for student use, and access to the university's computing resources.
Our school library has a growing collection of sociological resources, including books, journals and class readings on reserve. Materials circulate on the "honor system." These resources are very useful to us when we need to do some quick research. Sometimes small groups of grad students meet here to discuss projects. The library also provides a quiet study area when offices get a bit too social! Graduate students have 24-hour access to the Social Science building, our offices, the school library, and the DASL computer lab (more about that later!). You'll often find a soul or two there in the wee hours, trying just one more time to make a data run work.
(Continue to Academics)


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SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Tech stocks closed Friday on a mostly down note, with broad losses and more in the latest round of insults between Carl Icahn and eBay Inc.
EBay EBAY, +0.20% shed 24 cents a share to close at $59.06, as board member Marc Andreessen fired back at Icahn, who has attacked eBay's corporate governance during the past few weeks. In a blog post Friday, Andreessen said, "Carl Icahn of 2014 would take a dim view of the business ethics of Carl Icahn 2005."
Andreessen then referred to a Washington Post article from 2005 about Icahn's involvement in the sale of part of XO Communications' business operations.
Among tech-sector leaders, losses also came from Apple Inc. AAPL, -1.94%, Microsoft Corp. MSFT, -0.15%, Facebook Inc. FB, -0.15%, Netflix Inc. NFLX, +1.83% and Yahoo Inc. US:YHOO.
Network-security technology company Palo Alto Networks Inc. PANW, -0.43% got a late surge, rising 11% to close at $77.12. A Bloomberg report said a mistrial had been declared in a patent infringement case filed against Palo Alto by Juniper Networks Inc. JNPR, -0.70%.
High-end headphone maker Skullcandy Inc.
saw its shares surge more than 24%, to close at $9.23 after the company reported better-than-expected quarterly results on Thursday.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.22% fell almost 16 points to finish the week at 4,336, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index SOX, -0.32% also closed in the red.
More tech news from MarketWatch:
Pandora takes a hit following latest listener data


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My reception of Funcube telemetry is very hit or miss. My station setup is a homebrew turnstile antenna (with radials) at about 25' with no obstructions, about 40' of high quality RG-8 coax, an Icom IC-746, and a PC running Windows 7, SatPC32 for doppler, and the dashboard software. After watching several passes, it looks like I can receive a good part of a south to north pass, but hardly any of a north to south pass (there was just such a pass at 60+ degrees and I didn't decode a single packet). I'm new at this, is this something to do with the orientation of my antenna? Is a turnstile not enough antenna for this application?
Secondly, I use the AF out on the accessory jack of my IC-746 to feed the sound card in my laptop. When a pass goes by I can open the normal audio gain (it doesn't affect the AF out jack) and hear the satellite, almost as soon as SatPC32 says I should. Even though my ear can hear data, the dashboard doesn't seem to decode it. Even when it gets very loud to my ear.If I click the monitor audio box, I can hear the satellite on my laptop speakers as well, still I don't see any packets decoded.
I know it's a lot more complicated than just hearing the packets. Are there some settings I can adjust in the dashboard software and/or my laptop sound card to help improve reception and decoding? Do I need a pretty good sound card to get the best out of the dashboard software?
Thanks in advance for any insight...


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Good Food and Wine Show Melbourne - Spiegelau Beer Tasting
Did you know? Drinking beer from a bottle causes bloating.
Did you know? A good head on your beer will make it taste better.
Did you know? The shape and size of your glass makes a difference.
Join Spiegelau, as part of the Good Food and Wine Show, for an enlightening class about the importance of the shape of your beer glass, hosted by Alan Elder from Spiegelau Australia. After you've done a tasting with us, you'll never drink from the bottle again!
Secure your spot here.


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Despite stellar earnings performances by U.S. corporations and a stock market in record territory, the overall economic picture remains stable perhaps with some modest improvements.
That's the outlook from the newest survey of the CNBC Global CFO Council, a group of chief financial officers representing a broad swath of the economy and controlling roughly $1 trillion in assets.
Members of the council come from a wide range of sectors, including retail, banking, energy and transportation. CNBC surveys this group of 25 CFOs on a regular basis.
About 80 percent of the council said the Federal Reserve should maintain current rate policy, up from a 60 percent approval rating in our last survey in late March. However, the council is split on how much improvement shareholders will see in corporate growth during this quarter.
There is a small appetite to start spending the record amount of cash retained by companies. On average, the council will increase capital expenditures by 7 percent over last year—mainly on information technology and new equipment. And while there are no outward signs of any significant improvement in hiring, the council says their employees' total compensation, including salaries, is rising.
More insights from the survey:
– CFOs, on average, are increasing their health care spending by 7 percent over last year.
– CFOs see U.S. inflation gradually increasing in 12 months∙
– About half the council will be hiring slightly more workers overseas than in the United States.
– A majority of CFOs thinks it is unlikely that all publicly traded firms in the U.S. will mandate a split between the roles of CEO and chairman.
– The council ranked Information Technology as the top spending priority.
– 75 percent of the CFOs have no plans to begin releasing financial information over social media.
The complete results of the CNBC Global CFO Council Survey can be found below.


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Author: Ben Winters
Original language: English
Publisher: Quirk Books, 2011
Alex and Susan Wendt are the perfect couple in search of the perfect brownstone-and they find their dream house in the heart of Brooklyn Heights. Sure, the landlady is a little eccentric, and the handyman drops some cryptic remarks about the previous tenants. But the rent is so low, it's too good to pass up!
Big mistake: Susan soon discovers that the brownstone is crawling with bedbugs… Or is it? She awakens every morning with fresh bites, but neither Alex nor their daughter Emma has a single welt. Exterminators search the property and turn up nothing. Neighbors insist the building is clean. Susan fears that she's going mad-but as the mysteries deepen, a more sinister explanation presents itself: She may literally be confronting the bedbug problem from hell.
An understated horror story filled with loving references to Rosemary's Baby and other classic tales of urban paranoia, Bedbugs will keep your skin crawling into the wee hours of the night.
Ben H. Winters is the New York Times best-selling author of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (Quirk, 2009). His most recent book, the YA novel The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman (HarperCollins, 2010), was nominated for an Edgar Award.


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Now that we have upgraded to the newest and spiffiest version of IP.Board forum software, you can now once again change your own Avatar in your Profile.
Go to your Profile. In the upper Right corner choose Edit Profile. Click on the current avatar picture, and the box above will open.
Make your choice from the list of places you can snag an image and it will upload it, and it will dynamically make the sizes needed for the various Profile avatar locations.
There are some limitations on Avatars as noted below from the Forum Rules:
10. Avatars (uploaded only) are allowed, but limited to the following conditions:
- Type: .gif, .jpeg, .jpg, .png
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Also, note, if you do choose an animated gif file for your avatar, the smaller versions in different places on the forums will not be animated, only the full size versions on posts and in profiles.


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Police and fire chiefs in the Vermont city of Rutland are challenging their departments and emergency and public safety personnel to give blood.
Rutland Police Chief James Baker and Fire Chief Robert Schlachter are encouraging their colleagues in Rutland County to sign up for the Dec. 18 Gift-of-Life-Marathon.
Baker says police deal with life's emergencies every day and understand the importance of a safe and stable blood supply.
The blood drive is trying to break the one-day national blood drive record of 1,968 pints.
Donors are encouraged to make an appointment by calling 800-RED-CROSS or visiting the event's web site www.giftoflifemarathon.com.


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Category : Invoice.
Topic : Taxi service invoice template. Author : Velma Cunningham.
Posted : Mon, Sep 09th 2019 19:58 PM.
Format : jpg/jpeg.
These three concepts may be used as synonyms, but each countrys legislation determines their exact meaning and limits. New technologies have had relatively little success with small and medium-size enterprises, because of the so-called digital gap, the lack of information and the uncertainty brought about by new communication methods between the general public and Public Administrations, among other reasons.


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Business.com's new CEO focuses on social, mobile and local
Business.com Media named Tony Uphoff as its new CEO in mid-January. A veteran of more than 20 years in the business information and media industry, he most recently was CEO of UBM TechWeb. Among his previous posts were CEO of Beliefnet.com, which he founded; president of VNU Media's Entertainment Group and publisher of The Hollywood Reporter and InformationWeek. Uphoff sat down this month during the Online Marketing Summit in San Diego to discuss his plans for Business.com, a site that helps companies research and buy business products and services. Below is an edited transcript of the interview. Media Business: What are some of the new things that Business.com is getting ready to roll out? Tony Uphoff: I think it's fair to call it the new Business.com. So there's a series of things. First off, the company itself as we know it today is less than 24 months old. (We have) new ownership in JMI Equity, a pretty revered equity firm. We have a new headquarters just up the road here in Carlsbad, Calif. There isn't an employee in the company that's been with the organization longer than those 24 months. And then we're rolling out a new site and a new design, a new functional U.I., new content enhancements. We're expanding our suite of performance marketing products. We have hired a whole new design team, including a Ph.D. in human/computer interaction that's really changing the way we think about how the audience interacts with content in the digital format and how they engage with it in particular; and then how do we match that to the advertising and marketing side of the business. MB: What in your background at UBM help set you up for this position? Uphoff: To the extent that there is such a thing, I think I'm a digital media veteran. I launched some of the very first commercial websites back in the mid-'90s, which feels like hundreds of years ago when you consider where the market's gone since then. The team at UBM—now Tech but back then TechWeb—built some of the largest and most scalable lead-generation and demand-generation businesses around brands like InformationWeek, Light Reading and others that were in that marketplace. So I learned a lot about the people, the products, the processes and then the performance metrics to successfully build a scalable digital media business. What's different here for me, from a professional point of view, is I've spent the better part of the last decade going in and frankly saving businesses that have been devastated by the Internet and then reconstituting them and putting them back on a growth curve. I'm more interested in building businesses based on the Internet than I am in saving businesses that have been damaged by the Internet today. MB: How do you see social media and mobile affecting the operations of Business.com? Uphoff: Huge, and we don't have a simple answer for that yet. As we move forward over the next year you're going to see us really advance the understanding of social, local and mobile. Sticking with mobile for a minute, I think really understanding what is that audience experience: what are they looking for, how do we want to set and structure the types of content that we have and also the way the buyer interacts with the seller. On the social side of things, beyond just inserting the social layer, which we've done, and being able to pass content around, what we're going to start to step into is sustained communities. We serve roughly 20 million to 25 million growth companies. So think of these as small-to-medium businesses that are using our site almost like a dashboard to help them make the decisions around the products and services they need. Clearly the peer-to-peer is essential for them. That's really important, so that they can understand what like companies are doing, how they're looking at products and services. So there's a huge opportunity for us to step into that. On the local front, if I'm running a business here in San Diego or in New York or in Chicago, invariably what I want to be able to do is to connect with people who are doing similar things that I'm doing. MB: What are your thoughts on the future of the trade media? Uphoff: We could spend days talking about that. I think we're at an inflection point, and I might suggest that inflection point is pretty significant. I see far too many companies in trade publishing that are still trying to rationalize declining portfolios of print. They've got ancillary businesses in digital media, and they haven't really burned the boats on the shore yet to determine "Look, we can't support all of this." And they haven't found a full-network model, meaning one editor [for] both platforms, both print and online, one sales rep. I don't mean that from a cost point of view; I mean helping to lead them to where the readers are and where the marketing opportunity is. There are huge adjacencies for the trade media if they do have live media. This is one of the things we did at TechWeb, connecting digital and live media.


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Moderator: Hitoru
Hitoru wrote:No dogs were injured, some bruised ribs on one passenger in back when other guy fell on him.
Lesson learned: make sure heavy weight passengers are not all on low side when transversing hill. The only damage incurred was the windshield popped out . It was a slow motion tump-over in sand.. Took about 5 minutes to upright it.
(still struggling to get other pictures up.)
Hitoru wrote:That's something you now know . Kudos.
They have to be 25 years old to be imported into the U.S.
Don't know the rules for the UK.
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Please note: logging into Pressible first automatically passes your account information to the site administrator. Only use this form if you do not have a Pressible account.
Free musical storytelling experience today at TC for adults and kiddies.
Reposted from Music & Music Education. Written by Amy Wolf.
Hank & Doodle ~ A Musical Children's Story
Jenni Kurosman, piano
Jessica Polaniecki, narrator
Tuesday, July 24, 2012 ~ 1:30pm
Milbank Chapel @ Teachers College
When a young, genius inventor goes on a mission to find his missing dog, he discovers sometimes in life not everything goes according to plan. Join us for a (free!) musical storytelling …
Post a comment.


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Two were recovered at the site where U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in Arizona last year.
The Los AngelesTimes reported Tuesday that the three supervisors of the operation — William McMahon, William Newell, and David Roth — have been promoted to management positions at ATF headquarters in Washington. McMahon was the agency's Deputy Director of Operations in the West when the sting operation was carried out. Newell and Roth were field supervisors out of the ATF's Phoenix office. The news brought a quick response from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who last week sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder demanding to know about other alleged ATF operations similar to Fast and Furious.
"Until Attorney General Holder and Justice Department officials come clean on all alleged gun-walking operations, including a detailed response to allegations of a Texas-based scheme, it is inconceivable to reward those who spearheaded this disastrous operation with cushy desks in Washington," said Cornyn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The operation, which ran from November 2009 to January 2011, was part of Project Gunrunner, an ATF surveillance program to track firearms purchased in the United States for resale to Mexican drug dealers. At a congressional hearing in June, three ATF agents said they were repeatedly ordered to stand down while gun buyers in Arizona walked away with AK-47s and other high-powered weapons agents believed were headed to Mexico. "We were fully aware the guns would probably be moved across the border to drug cartels where they could be used to kill," an unidentified agent told CBS News in February.
The serial numbers on the two rifles found at the site where Border Patrol Agent Terry was killed matched two of the guns ATF agents watched suspect Jaime Avila purchase at a Phoenix gun store over the course of a year, CBS reported. Within hours of the killing, ATF agents arrested Avila and later indicted 34 other suspected gunrunners.
Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on May 3, Holder said he "probably" learned about Operation Fast and Furious only within the previous few weeks. But he had surely been aware of Project Gunrunner. In remarks prepared for delivery at the Mexico/United States Arms Trafficking Conference in Cuernavaca, Mexico on April 2, 2009, Holder described "the development of an arms trafficking prosecution and enforcement strategy on both sides of the border."
"Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels," the Attorney General said. "My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner, DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion."
Economic "stimulus" funds were also directed to Project Gunrunner in early 2009, with $10 million of the $40 million in law enforcement money going to the gun trafficking program.
In March of this year, President Obama told the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision that his administration never approved a strategy that allowed the weapons to reach the drug cartels. "I did not authorize it; Eric Holder, the attorney general, did not authorize it. He's been very clear that our policy is to catch gun-runners and put them into jail," Obama said."There may be a situation here in which a serious mistake was made," he continued. "If that's the case, then we'll find out and we'll hold someone accountable."
As reported recently in The New American, members of Congress have learned that other agencies — most likely the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration — may have been involved in the purchase of the weapons. "The evidence we have gathered raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice Department not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons but that taxpayer dollars from other agencies may have financed those engaging in such activities," wrote Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in a letter to Holder. "It is one thing to argue that the ends justify the means in an attempt to defend a policy that puts building a big case ahead of stopping known criminals from getting guns," they added. "Yet it is a much more serious matter to conceal from Congress the possible involvement of other agencies in identifying and maybe even working with the same criminals that Operation Fast and Furious was trying to identify."
"I share responsibility for mistakes that were made," the ATF's McMahon testified to a House committee in July. "The advantage of hindsight, the benefit of a thorough review of the case, clearly points me to things that I would have done differently." As the new Deputy Assistant Director of ATF's Office of Professional Responsibility and Security Operations, McMahon's duties will now include investigating misconduct by agency employees. Acting Director Kenneth Melson announced the promotion in an agency-wide confidential e-mail Sunday, saying McMahon is among ATF employees rewarded for "the skills and abilities they have demonstrated throughout their careers."
Newell, the special agent in charge of the field office for Arizona and New Mexico, has been promoted to Special Assistant to the Assistant Director of the agency's Office of Management. Voth, who was an on-the-ground team supervisor for the sting operation, is now in Washington as Branch Chief for the ATF's tobacco division. The Times reported that three ATF spokesmen did not return calls Monday for comments on the promotions.


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Links of Interest
Lyons is a charming small town (population of just over 2,000), complete with regular carnivals, parades and a delightful culinary scene. Lyons boasts a wide array of colorful highlights, including the RockyGrass Bluegrass Festival held each summer, ice skating rinks in the winter, and lots of antique stores for year-round entertainment. And with the great outdoors in your backyard, each piece of Lyons real estate comes complete with easy access to Colorado's majestic landscape.
Formed in the 1880s as a quarry town, Lyons has become famous for its red flag stone, which has been used to build several of the CU buildings, as well as for many construction and landscaping projects worldwide. Many of these quarries are still operating today. The town itself is home to fifteen sandstone structures, and has a strong Historical Society dedicated to preserving these magnificent reminders of the town's origin.
Lyons real estate offers great outdoor destinations to capture the best of Colorado's invigorating climate, such as the "old swimming hole" of the St. Vrain River, situated in one of many nice parks. Hiking trails crisscross throughout the active community, culminating at Heil Ranch and Hall Ranch, providing over 12 miles of multi-use trails and 8,000 acres of back country combined. Nearby Rabbit Mountain offers a breathtaking view of the Continental Divide, and is home to a diverse collection of animal and plant life, including the Golden Eagle.
For even more of an adventure, only twenty minutes away is Rocky Mountain National Park – Lyons' location at the intersection of State Highway 7 and U.S. 36 has earned it the nickname "The Double Gateway to the Rockies". Lyons is also twenty minutes away from Estes Park, making it prime Colorado real estate for those looking for a peaceful, uncongested community just minutes away from some of the greatest sights in Colorado.


text: The problem is, once the cell voltage gets below about 4.5 volts, most basic battery chargers won't flow current. According to Hot Rod Mag, who say they got this tip from Optima's engineers, this is what you do. Get a battery with good charge, and put it in parallel with the dead optima, using jumpers. Charge the optima as normal. The good battery fools your charger into thinking there is enough volts to charge, while the dead battery provides the sump for the current.


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Over the years, WBHM's Tapestry has made possible conversations with hundreds of musicians, artists, poets, novelists, actors and more. These days we're taking advantage of the (almost unlimited) time and space here on our website to take Tapestry in new directions, and to continue our discussions with some of the most interesting people from the broad spectrum of arts and culture.
Kevin Lehner uncovers hidden gems in the local music scene, Michael Krall covers classical music with an occasional side trip into indy rock, and Greg Bass explores the world of literature. WBHM's news team of Tanya Ott, Andrew Yeager, and Dan Carsen are also regular contributors.
Starting a band is a time-honored tradition in college towns. And there's a new band from Auburn that's starting to get some attention. The Southern Public Media Group's Kelly Walker spent some time with Adventure the Great and has this profile.
Download Bold As Winter
May 18, 2012
In the last decade, the members of alternative rock band Wilco have experienced the highs and lows of a performing life. And they keep coming back for more. Since 1994, the band has released 9 albums. Their latest is "The Whole Love". Wilco brings the show to Birmingham's Sloss Furnaces tonight. WBHM music producer Kevin Lehner caught up with Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy recently to talk about the new album and what making music means to Tweedy.
May 11, 2012
In recent years, Banditos have branded themselves as a gritty, Southern, "Don't give me that #$%" kind of attitude band. They've just released their first full-length album, titled "The Filthy Sessions". Just in time for their show tonight at The Bottletree Cafe, we have a sample of their new music.
April 23, 2012
One hundred years ago, a young missionary couple named Albert and Sylvia Caldwell were coming home after 3 years in Siam (now known as Thailand). The tropical climate had taken a toll on Sylvia's health, and, with their 10-month-old son, they began the long journey home traveling by ship from Southeast Asia to Naples, Italy. There they saw an ad for a new luxury liner that was about to make its maiden voyage from England to America. So they booked passage on the Titanic.
In her new book, A Rare Titanic Family, the Caldwells' Story of Survival, Alabama author and Samford University professor Julie Hedgepeth Williams relates the story her great uncle Albert told her as a child. She spoke with Greg Bass about the night the Titanic went down.
April 16, 2012
They're some of Birmingham's best acoustic musicians who's unique sound is a combination of acoustic-folk-Americana. But with their new album Worth Fighting For, Act of Congres pretty much threw everything out the window. WBHM's Michael Krall produced this audio postcard...
April 13, 2012
Every picture tells a story or so the cliche goes. If that's true, then a photographic exhibit opening tonight at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute offers a look into the lives of 40 families with a Birmingham connection. 40 lesbian families. "Living in Limbo: Lesbian Families in the Deep South" is the creation of award-winning photographer Carolyn Sherer, who herself has been in a committed relationship with another woman for more than 30 years. Sherer tells Greg Bass she was inspired to create the exhibit by the death of a friend and it's unpleasant aftermath.
March 30, 2012
After going through some tough times with the death of his father, Light Skits founding member Sam Goodwin needed to express himself creatively. He says the resulting album, "Nooks & Crannies," lets listeners inside his mind. With diverse song structures, complex math-pop riffs and screamo vocals, Light Skits lets you rock loud and hard.
Light Skits next show is Friday, February 24, 2012 at The Nick at 10 PM. Details on their Facebook page.
The Blues run through the blood of Birmingham musician Sam Frazier Jr. He grew up in Edgewater, the son a coal miner who brought home stories that would eventually inspire Frazier's songwriting. His family would host local barbeques and shows at his mom's house. Performing next to big name artists such as Howl'n Wolf and Jimmy Reed was a typical thing in Frazier's life. Frazier's latest album is "The Long Lonesome Blues".
(Photo Credit: Sam Frazier's Facebook page)
The Los Angeles times called Birmingham author Gin Phillips's first book The Well and The Mine an "astonishing new novel." It's been compared to To Kill a Mockingbird and earned Phillips the Barnes and Noble Discover Award. So when Phillips started shopping her next novel, Come In and Cover Me, she admits there was a bit of pressure. Come In and Cover Me follows the story of Ren Taylor -- an archeologist who's on a mission to understand an ancient community, but ends up discovering some things about herself.
Birmingham--Gospel music has long been a fixture in African American churches around Birmingham. A new documentary film looks at the revolution of a style of gospel music called the Jefferson County Sound. Greg Bass takes a closer look for WBHM's Tapestry.
Over his 50+ year career, singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot has produced a string of hits. His songs have been recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, even Elvis. He's mostly remembered in this country for his hits from the 1970s and the occasional public TV fundraiser. But Gordon Lightfoot is nothing short of a national treasure in his native Canada. At the tender age of 73 he still spends a lot of time on the road and this Sunday evening his tour bus stops at the Alabama Theatre. Greg Bass talked to Gordon Lightfoot.
Georgia native Wilder Adkins (goes by "Wilder") is a lo-fi folk music artist making his way in the Birmingham music scene. Wilder's influences range from Richard Thompson to Bruce Cockburn to Raffi. HIs guitar playing has a dark undertone which allows the songs to bring out eerie yet beautiful melodies. In his first full length album titled "Nightblooms", Wilder introduces us to his songwriting and what music means to him.
Royal and Toulouse has a sound you won't expect -- a mix of jazz, blues, rock, funk and even hip-hop. Founding members Ricky Little, Milyn Satterfield and Alex Troughton hail from Houston, Birmingham and New Orleans. They've been jamming together since 2006. Their latest album is "Southern Circus".
photo credit: andi rice
Rudolph Valentino White, also known as "God Ausar", is a spoken word poet / hip hop artist who also happens to be a barber, actor and designer focused on making a major impact in the entertainment industry while helping the community. With his debut album titled, "Poetic Jazz of Rudolph Valentino" along with other numerous works, God Ausar's music touches many deep and personal topics from love to homeless and greed.
Coming from a family of bluegrass and gospel music, India Ramey knows a thing or two about writing a good ol' country song. She was raised in a family of musicians and grew up listening to everything from Willie Nelson to the Ramones. As Ramey became more interested in music, she began performing publicly. Her latest album "Junkyard Angel" is an autobiographical look at love, turmoil and overcoming adversity.


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Got back from a Christmas market with a bag full of delicatessen, saucisson and cheese, not very Christmacy but so damn good. As for the Christmas spirit I still have a long way to go, I don't know about you, but I'm a little confused this year, not a minus degree in sight yet (won't complain about that!) and December arrived so suddenly, what happened with November?
Anyway, why I'm clearing that mystery out here's what I wore today, as I'm starting to get tired of being wrapped up all the time in big coats I put it aside for the photos and then it went straight back on again. I wore skirt by James Perse, knit Alexander Wang, booties Giambattista Valli, bag Acne and ring Pamela Love for Topshop.


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Flo Rida Donates Bizarre New Uniforms to His Old High School Football Team
Rapper Flo Rida is helping out his high school alma mater by donating brand new uniforms to its football team. While the Miami native's gesture is extremely thoughtful, it's the newly-designed outfits that are raising eyebrows.
In honor of Carol City High's 50th anniversary, which will coincide with the 2013 football season, Flo Rida hired design firm Futuristic Woo to create new uniforms for the Chiefs. The end result are some rather unique garments and helmets.
The Palm Beach Post posted pictures of the uniforms and it's a doozy. We can't help but notice the Native American chieftain's head is placed directly over the player's crotch. WTF? Also, the letters and numbers look like they were designed to resemble marshmallows. The only thing that looks impressive is the detailed feathers that are surrounding the helmet. And the orange and black colorway is a great bold look... for Halloween.
We hate to be Monday morning quarterbacks and nitpick at these uniforms since we are not paying for them, but they are questionable. And since the Chiefs football team are currently playing in subdued uniforms, these garments will definitely catch everyone's attention when they make their debut next year.
Reactions to the uniforms have been mixed so far. "Good for Flo Rida. The kids will love them. Way to give back," wrote one commenter. "If people have something to say bad about that, please go hide under a rock." Another person felt the designs were offensive to Native Americans. Serendipity wrote, "These uniforms are UNBELIEVABLY DISRESPECTFUL TO NATIVE PEOPLE! Please get the already offensive cartoon 'Chief' head off of the players' crotches. Also, feathers are sacred to Native people, Please set an example for our children and SCRAP THIS RACIST DESIGN NOW!"
In the end, we have to give props to Flo Rida for donating money to his old high school so these young athletes will have new uniforms next season -- no matter how odd they look.
What do you think about these football uniforms? Tell us in the comments below.
Watch the Flo Rida Video 'Wild Ones' Feat. Sia


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The hour that gives me the most difficulty is 2pm.
I am good in the mornings. The sunrise is ever hopeful, the strange way you can tell light is new, the way it comes at you, shy through the trees. Yes I love mornings, because it's another chance, you get another stab at it, whatever it is. Nothing bad has occurred really in the early hours to scar me forever or make me hate mornings, not yet anyway. I usually have slept well and I am prepared. I look forward to the coming day, and maybe fondly backward at the night before. The day begins and there's an optimism that I associate with waking, a half full glass I anticipate and drink down all the way in one gulp like freshly squeezed orange juice with some sparkling water mixed in. AM is citrusy and bubbly and just squirted from the fruit and that is glorious and makes my mouth water. It's the best, the opening credits of the movie. Nothing has happened yet and I am ready for it to. I am glad for it to.
The only time this isn't true is when I have stayed up all night, which is rare, I mean, I can count the times I have done this in my relatively long lifetime on one hand. That is terrible, to stay up all night, and this I have never done without some type of drug, an upper, which gives you a burst of good feeling right at the beginning, and then pays you back bad feeling with interest, robbing you of maybe a week's worth of joy and patience and the accepting of things and peace and reason and that unnamed force that gets you out of bed to put on makeup and dress up in something nice and listen to music and dance and sing and think that anything is possible and a good day is coming on. All that for about 15 minutes of shaky bliss at the start, I don't think it's a fair exchange.
There's also a guilt there too, if you haven't been to bed, and you are looking at everyone who has, and you watch them with your bloodshot eyes as they are getting up and getting their coffee and going to work with big white cups with brown recycled paper rings to keep them from burning their hands and their clothes look just put on and they have the morning face that you wish you had, one that had gotten to bed at a decent hour and dreamed and woke untroubled and now is in front of you, and the sanity of it is mocking the insanity of yours. The streets get more and more crowded and you feel more and more alone and even though you may be surrounded it's like an island or a raft is surrounded by water and there's not a drop to drink.
Sometimes you can erase that horror show of being up all night with breakfast, trick yourself with the hot black medicine of strong coffee and the crisp, butter comfort of toast, but it's only while you're eating and maybe a very, very short time after. The healing power of omelettes and pancakes and waffles only lasts for as long as its on the table. After it's in you it doesn't do much good. I don't stay up all night anymore. I can't take it. This is not for me.
I love the morning too much to sully it. it's important to me to feel like there's a newness and a comeuppance and a day that hasn't happened yet that is gonna happen and you never know, you never know. I get excited about the morning like I am a puppy, jumping and batting my paws all for nothing and for no reason other than I get to go around the sun yet once more.
The night is also the same way, as the night dawns much like the day. the sun goes away to reveal the moon herself and there is much delight as she is bright and sometimes a sliver, sometimes full and round, much like me, changing and growing and shrinking and different always and every shape of her has a name and distinct attributes.
The night is often when my workday begins, comedians and musicians and waiters and bartenders and chefs and emergency room doctors and nurses and drug dealers even and police and firemen and all of us on the graveyard shift who ensure the nourishment and care and protection, physical and otherwise, of the majority of the working people who make the world turn day after day.
I feel safe in the velvet cloak of night and I come alive when I go to work and see my friends and play in clubs and it's always been exciting to welcome dusk and the rites of dinner and drinks that go along with it and that moment when you can let go of the day, stop white knuckling the afternoon and know that everything is going to be fine, and even if it isn't soon it will all be over and the bed is a delicious promise that is always kept (unless you happen to do those bad drugs).
The night is good to me and good for me and I feel safe and dangerous at once. I am a night person and a morning person and then that leaves the afternoon which is a problem.
2pm is the fearsome middle I struggle with.
I'm a strong swimmer, having been on swim teams as a child, always smelling a little of chlorine, with dry tight skin and choppy braids that dried into hard gel waves. There was also an issue of mold in my locker. My existence was mostly wet and then you mix that with dark, you get mold. It's a fact.
I can't say I loved swimming but I did it because it was the right thing at the time and I was fairly good at it and there was a simple kind of reward involved because I grew up in a cold climate and the water of the pool was often slightly warmer than the air even though it seemed like it would be colder and you didn't want go in initially as the threat of being colder even still was almost too much to bear but if you actually did it and jumped right in and braved the bracing shock of ice in your life, in a moment you'd be fine and warm and swimming and the fear would melt with the cold and you'd be alright. I swam for that small victory as well as other minor wins like having a place to go in an important somewhat distracted hurry right after school. "I can't. I have practice. Yeah sorry, I can't." which to me kind of meant, "I belong somewhere. I belong to something. I belong."
I remember that Culture Club video where beautiful Boy George is singing and climbing up the ladder out of the pool and I thought that he and I were the same and that song played in my head from beginning to end as I swam and at the point when he would come out of the pool I would come out of the pool to encourage our sameness.
I did have to stop going to the pool when my body started to change, and grownups in the shallow end would give me looks and then more. One old man, who was teaching a tiny girl to swim, she was maybe 4 or 5, just a baby really and too young to be in the big adult pool with the serious and sporty thick black lines painted on the bottom to guide the face down butterfly stroke swimmers in their lanes and rope and floating Styrofoam borders that were supposed to keep everyone not on the swim team out – crossed into illegal pool territory and actually grabbed me between my legs as I crawled my continuous laps that my allegiance to the swim team claimed as its due and lifted me whole out of the water struggling and flopping, exclaiming "I caught a fish! I caught a fish!" and the little new swimmer laughed and clapped as the man rudely and unashamedly shoved his fingers inside me. If he did this to me, a small stranger, I don't want to think about what he did to that little girl. I don't want to think of it.
I swam maybe one or two or three times after that but I eventually quit the team, because it never felt right to go back in the pool. It felt scary and ugly and I started to really notice when people would spit in the porcelain rim around the perimeter of the blue tile and see the spidery clots of hair that would collect in the filters and on the wet ground and I suddenly got fed up with the chlorine and the mucus of others and athlete's foot and the child molesters that all these foul things represented and I refused to go and took up cigarettes instead.
But before all that, I was a strong swimmer, as our coach used to say, whistle and stopwatch hanging from his neck, looking down at me. I forgot his name, which I cannot believe now, because it was so important then. From the ages of 8 to 12, my schoolbag always contained a large plastic ziplock containing a cold and damp athletic orange swimming suit and an old rubber cap that squeezed my temples into a lifelong tendency toward migraine when it was on me, and stuck to itself and stank unreasonably when it was off. I swim good for a long while but then I get tired, unexpected and instant, a wore down feeling that is inescapable as water and it usually happens when I am right in the middle of the pool, where I am surrounded by the wore down and the water and the only thing left to do is drown.
That is what 2pm feels like to me.
It's not the beginning. It's nowhere near the end. What can I do? The sunlight that seemed charmed and uplifting in the hours before now seems ordinary and relentless. Time stretches out before me and behind me and I can't make sense of it and I wonder what I can do until night falls to make me whole again. There's no running from the middle of the day. The broad daylight offers no escape. You can't start drinking or indulging in anything then because then that would mean you have a PROBLEM and I would do anything to avoid having a PROBLEM so I just suffer mid-days as if it is my cross to bear. I wait to be resurrected and it always happens and that's not the concern, it's the waiting that bothers me. It's the waiting that is the cruelty of crucifixion. It takes so goddamned long to die.
I have the worst time of this midday malady in hotel rooms, as usually if I am working somewhere on the road, my day is far emptier, even more than if I am at home. Hotel rooms are bad places in my opinion, as most of my friends who have died thus far have done it in those temporary spaces that are meant to contain us only for a day or two. They have checked into hotels and never checked out and that seems like the worst thing to me, to have to die there and essentially stay there forever. That's hell.
At 2pm in a hotel room I am lost and I don't know where to turn or what to do. The hour oppresses me and there's no escaping from it. The only way out is through, and through means minutes and then hours and the sky can't darken soon enough to save me. I haven't found a solution to this other than to complain and allow the existential dread to overwhelm me and crash over me like a wave and at times I can write and possibly describe the desolation and desperation I feel which helps because when I put words to a thing, it helps me own the thing and understand the thing. It's like I am eating the thing or making love to the thing, letting the thing inside me and have its way and become a part of me.
At 2pm, perhaps I should go swimming. Most hotels have pools. I don't think this is just by chance. I think the pools must be there for me.


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Subaru IRONMAN Mont-Tremblant (Sunday, August 16, 2015)
Mont-Tremblant is an unforgettable venue steeped in French-Canadian charm and culture and an event that has quickly established itself as an athlete favorite. The surrounding area is known for its hiking, skiing, kayaking, golfing and cycling—making it an idyllic location for IRONMAN athletes and their families and friends. The village of Mont-Tremblant and its surrounding communities offer a walkable, easily navigable location for all your race-week activities.
This event will sell out, so do not miss out placing this event on your 2015 race schedule
Subaru IRONMAN 70.3 Mont-Tremblant (Sunday, June 21, 2015)
Kick off your early summer race season and experience why this venue was chosen to be the site of the 2014 IRONMAN 70.3 world championship.
IRONMAN 70.3 Eagleman (June 14, 2015)
The 19th edition of IRONMAN 70.3 Eagleman in 2015 will be once again hosted by Cambridge, Maryland. The event with its deep roots in the American north east triathlon scene and has always been the battle grounds for exciting racing in the pro and age group ranks. The late spring race weather will likely be warm for this event that synonymous for its grassroots feel.


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Jon Huntsman Gets 'Boston Globe' Endorsement
(BOSTON) -- Jon Huntsman got a high-profile endorsement when the Boston Globe backed his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination over a frontrunner from the paper's home state, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
The Globe made clear that it was between Huntsman and Romney for the endorsement. But it suggested Romney has moved too far to the right in his pursuit of the nomination. Indeed, the endorsement of Huntsman spent a fair amount of time describing the faults of Romney.
"Both his supporters and detractors suspect that behind the conservative scaffolding is a data-driven moderate who will make practical compromises. But the way Romney has run his campaign, it's impossible to tell," wrote the Boston Globe editorial board.
Romney has undergone policy evolutions on numerous issues as a candidate and as governor since he first sought office in the 1990s.
The paper suggested its endorsement has something to do with drawing Romney -- who has a good chance at securing the nomination if he wins in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida -- back from the conservative side of the Republican Party.
Read the endorsement here.
"Even if Romney emerges as the nominee, it matters how he gets there," the editorial reads. "Already, the religious right, represented by Rick Santorum, and Tea Party activists, represented by Ron Paul, have pushed Romney in unwanted directions. In New Hampshire, Republican and independent voters have a chance, through Huntsman, to show him a sturdier model. Jon Huntsman would be a better president. But if he fails, he could still make Romney a better candidate."
Huntsman's campaign has focused almost exclusively on New Hampshire, much like Rick Santorum focused on Iowa heading into the caucus there. Surely, Huntsman hopes he can surge in New Hampshire the way Santorum did in Iowa. But while Romney also had to surge to success in Iowa, Huntsman faces Romney near his home turf.
Four years ago, in the 2008 contest, the Globe endorsed Sen. John McCain, the ultimate winner, over Romney, who placed second.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio