text:
Numerous parallel I/O systems have been built, although few have seen wide use. If we look at these file systems we do see trends in how the systems are designed. The architecture of these systems, both hardware and software, can have a significant effect on application performance, particularly with the demanding access characteristics of scientific applications.
We discuss the two most common architectures, including the components of the systems and some of the key characteristics. These architectures serve as a starting point for discussion of specific parallel file systems. For each architecture we give three example file systems, all of which have run on Linux at one time or another, and all of which have had an impact on parallel I/O systems of today.
File systems relying on a shared storage architecture are the most popular approach for large production systems. The reason rests at least in part on the popularity of storage area networks (SANs) and fibre channel (FC) storage. File systems using shared storage have the common feature of accessing block devices remotely, either through direct attach hardware (such as FC disks) or through intermediate I/O servers that provide a block-oriented interface to disks attached locally to the server. In either case, a key component of these systems is a locking subsystem. The locking subsystem is necessary to coordinate access to these shared resources. While we will not discuss the issue of fault tolerance with respect to the locking subsystems of the example file systems, we note that a significant amount of effort has been put forth to ensure that locks can be recovered from failed nodes. This is a complicated problem, and the cited works discuss the issues in detail.
Some file systems that use shared storage implement a "virtual block device" in order to separate the access of logical blocks of data from their physical representation on storage. This virtual block device provides a mapping from logical blocks to physical storage. A file system component builds on this to provide the directory hierarchy for the file system, just as a local file system builds on a disk or RAID volume. This approach is advantageous from a system management point of view. The virtual block device, because it abstracts away physical data location, can provide facilities for data migration and replication transparent to the upper layers of the system. This approach simplifies the implementation of the upper level components. Further, this virtual block device provides a mechanism for adding and removing hardware while the system runs. Data blocks can be migrated off a device before removal and can later be moved onto a newly installed device. This capability is very valuable in systems that must provide high availability.
The abstraction is, however, limiting in some ways as well. First, all file system accesses must be translated to block accesses before hitting this component. Because scientific applications often have noncontiguous access patterns, this approach can result in read/modify/write patterns that could have been avoided if more fine-grained accesses were allowed. Second, control over physical data locations is lost to the upper layers. While few scientific applications currently try to perform careful block placement for performance reasons, this could be an issue as groups attempt to further push the boundaries of I/O performance. Finally, this additional level of indirection adds overhead in the system, increasing the latency of operations.
A number of systems are available with this architecture. The first two example systems that we cover, Frangipani and GFS, rely on virtual block devices. The last, GPFS, uses a slightly different organization. SGI's CXFS file system, not discussed here, has a similar architecture to GFS.
The Frangipani and Petal systems, originally developed at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), together form a good example of the virtual block device approach. The Petal [65] component implements a virtual block device with replication, snapshotting, and hot swapping of devices. It presents a simple RPC-like API for atomically reading and writing blocks that higher-level components can use to build a file system. The Petal component runs on nodes that have attached storage. Instances of the Petal component communicate to manage these devices, as not all Petal instances can directly access all the devices that make up the virtual block device.
The Frangipani [118] component implements a distributed file system on top of Petal. A distributed locking component is used by Frangipani to manage consistency. Locks are multiple-reader, single-writer and are granted on a per file basis. Locks are "sticky"; clients hold onto locks until asked to release them by the locking subsystem, allowing for read and write caching at the client side. The Frangipani component runs on nodes that access the shared storage region. Instances of the Frangipani component do not communicate with each other, only the locking component and Petal.
Figure 19.3: Frangipani and Petal File System Architecture
This architecture provides us with a good opportunity to introduce a common term in distributed file systems. A system can be considered a serverless distributed file system if nodes work together as peers to provide a shared storage region, as opposed to some specific server or servers providing this functionality [5]. When the term was coined back in the mid-1990s, systems weren't particularly large (the referenced paper tested on 32 nodes), and the point was really to distribute both metadata and data across multiple nodes more than to actually use every node as a storage resource.
In any case, it's easy to imagine that the Frangipani and Petal approach could be used in this "serverless" mode with Petal running on all clients, or it could be used in a system with a collection of heavy-duty servers with RAID arrays running Petal, with most nodes running only Frangipani. Without knowing more about a particular architecture, it's not clear which of these would be the right choice.
Frangipani and Petal are an early and well-documented example of this architecture. The Frangipani and Petal code is still around, although obtaining it seems difficult. At the time of writing rumor was that the code has been ported to Linux 2.4 and is floating around at one of the major hardware vendors. Perhaps it will pop up again to compete with some of the currently available systems.
The Global File System (GFS) was originally developed at Minnesota and is now developed and supported by Sistina [89, 88]. GFS is actively maintained and improved by Sistina. An older version of the source code, originally released under the GPL, is also available under the name OpenGFS. GFS also uses a virtual block device architecture, in this case using LVM (Logical Volume Manager) underneath the GFS file system layer.
GFS currently uses a "Pool" driver to organize storage devices into a logical space. They are investigating the use of LVM [52], a newer system for organizing multiple physical storage devices into "volume groups" and then partitioning these into "logical volumes," which are the virtual equivalent of partitions on a disk. Just as with Petal, the Pool driver (and eventually LVM) provides capabilities for snapshotting and hot swapping of devices. The typical installation of GFS uses some number of nodes connected to shared fibre channel storage, with all nodes running both the LVM and GFS software (making it serverless). Alternatively a GNBD component can be used to provide remote access to a storage device over IP. This is similar to the VSD component in GPFS, which will be discussed in the next section.
GFS stores data as blocks on this virtual block device. A locking subsystem, OmniLock, provides the locking infrastructure necessary to ensure consistency. A number of locking modules are available with OmniLock allowing the locking granularity to be tuned to match expected workloads. Locks are sticky here as well, again allowing for read and write caching of data at the client.
The General Parallel File System (GPFS) from IBM grew out of the Tiger Shark multimedia file system [100] and has been widely used on the AIX platform. Unlike the other file systems described, GPFS has no explicit virtual block device component. Instead GPFS simply uses one of two techniques for accessing block devices remotely and manages these devices itself. IBM's Virtual Shared Disk (VSD) component allows storage devices attached to multiple I/O nodes to be accessed remotely. VSD is different from the previous two approaches in that no logical volume management is performed at this level; it just exports an API to allow access to the devices. Alternatively, the VSD component can be avoided by attaching all nodes that wish to access the system to a SAN that gives them direct access to storage devices (Figure 19.4). This can be an expensive solution for large clusters, thus the existence of the VSD component. The newer Linux version of GPFS uses a similar component, called the Network Shared Disk (NSD), to provide remote access to storage devices.
Figure 19.4: GPFS Architecture Using Storage Area Network
In either case, GPFS operates on a shared storage region using block accesses. Because there is no volume management, however, GPFS sees multiple devices. This approach was a conscious decision on the part of the developers to provide the file system with direct control over striping of data across devices. A side effect of this decision is that volume management and fault tolerance capabilities must be handled outside of the VSD, either below the VSD or in GPFS. RAID devices can be used below the VSD layer (or directly attached via the SAN). In addition to or in place of RAID, GPFS also supports data and metadata replication at the file system layer. If this capability is enabled, GPFS will allocate space for a copy of data on a different disk and keep copies synchronized. In the event of a temporary failure, GPFS will continue to operate and will update the device when it is returned to service. Likewise, functionality for migrating data onto new devices or off bad ones is also implemented within GPFS.
GPFS relies on a distributed locking component to guarantee consistency. Similarly to the other two systems, locks are acquired and kept by clients who then cache data. The granularity of locking in GPFS is at the byte-range level (actually rounded to data blocks), so writes to nonoverlapping data blocks of the same file can proceed concurrently.
GPFS provides as an alternative a consistency management system called data shipping. This mode disables the byte-range locks described above. Instead nodes become responsible for particular data blocks, and clients forward data belonging in these blocks to the appropriate node for writing. This approach is similar to the two-phase I/O approach often applied to collective I/O operations [113]. It is more effective than the default locking approach when fine-grained sharing is present, and it forms a building-block optimization for MPI-IO implementations.
The GPFS system also recognizes metadata blocks as distinct from data blocks. A single node that is accessing a file is given responsibility for metadata updates for that file. A multiple-reader, multiple-writer system then is applied to metadata that allows concurrent updates in many circumstances.
GPFS is arguably the most successful parallel file system to date. It is in use on a variety of large parallel machines, such as ASCI White, a 512-node Power3-based system. We note that only 16 I/O server nodes (running VSD) are used in that particular instantiation. At this time GPFS has been made available in a limited fashion on IA32 and IA64 Linux systems but has not seen widespread use on these platforms.
The second common approach to parallel file systems is the use of "intelligent" I/O servers. By this we mean that the servers do more than simply export a block-oriented interface to local storage devices. These systems usually communicate with clients in terms of higher-level constructs, such as files (or parts of files) and directories. Specific operations to act on metadata atomically might be included as well, rather than treating them as data operations as in the previous systems. Further these servers have knowledge that the data they are storing corresponds to particular file system entities (e.g., files or directories), not just arbitrary blocks on a storage device. Hence they have the potential to accept more complex, structured requests than are possible with other approaches. This is a particularly useful capability for scientific applications given their structured file accesses.
Designers of systems using this architecture often logically separate the storage of metadata from the storage of file data. This approach allows for flexibility in configuration because they can choose to handle metadata operations with different servers from the I/O traffic. Because providing distributed metadata services is more complicated than placing metadata in a single location, some systems support only a single metadata server while maintaining many I/O servers. On the other hand, using a single metadata server adds a potential bottleneck, so some systems distribute metadata across multiple servers, possibly even all the I/O servers. We will see examples of both of these approaches in upcoming sections.
Groups have been implementing parallel file systems using this approach for quite some time as well. Two of these systems are the Galley parallel file system and the Parallel Virtual File System (PVFS). An emerging parallel file system, Lustre, also has this type of architecture.
The Galley parallel file system [78] was developed at Dartmouth College in the mid-1990s (Figure 19.5). It was a research file system designed to investigate file structures, application interfaces, and data transfer ordering for parallel I/O systems. As such many things that we expect from a production file system were never implemented, including kernel modules to allow mounting of Galley file systems and administrative tools.
Figure 19.5: Galley Architecture
Galley breaks user's files into subfiles, which are stored on Galley servers. These subfiles have forks that allow for multiple byte streams to be associated with a particular subfile as well and can be used for more complex storage organizations. The client-side code handles placement of file data into appropriate subfiles and forks. Metadata is also stored on all the Galley servers. File names are hashed to find a server on which to store data (a technique also used by the Vesta parallel file system [29], which we will not cover in detail here).
Galley servers understand strided and batch accesses, making the interface quite rich. Many of the application access patterns seen in the CHARISMA study, as well as the patterns seen in the Flash I/O study, could be described with Galley's I/O language as single accesses.
Galley also implements disk-directed I/O [62], a method for organizing how data is moved between client and server. In disk-directed I/O, the server calculates a preferable ordering of data transfer based on predicted disk access costs. This ordering is then used when moving data. The method worked well for many access patterns, although the designers of Galley did see low performance due to network flow control problems in some cases. Later work showed that a more general approach of optimizing for the bottleneck resource can be more effective [97].
While Galley never made it into production, it is an excellent example of the intelligent server approach. Further, many of the ideas embodied in this design, in particular rich I/O request capabilities and more complex file representations, are becoming key components of new parallel file system designs. The Galley source code is available online [41].
The Parallel Virtual File System (PVFS) [22] was originally developed at Clemson University by the authors of this chapter, starting in the mid-1990s, and is now a joint project between Clemson University and the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory. PVFS is designed to be used as a high-performance scratch space for parallel applications.
PVFS file systems are maintained by two types of servers (Figure 19.6). A single metadata server, typically called the "mgr" because of the name of the daemon that runs on this server, maintains metadata for all files. For many workloads and configurations this is not seen as a bottleneck, although it is increasingly becoming one as systems grow in numbers of nodes. Separate I/O servers handle storage of file data. File data is distributed in a round-robin fashion across some set of I/O servers using a user-defined stripe size. Thus a simple algorithm can be used to determine the I/O server holding a particular file region. This simplifies the metadata stored on the metadata server and eliminates the need for metadata updates as files are written. I/O servers write to local file systems, so local disk management is managed by the local file system. Likewise, single disk failures can be tolerated by using a RAID to store local file system data at the I/O server.
Figure 19.6: PVFS File System Architecture
PVFS uses what the authors term stream-based I/O for data movement. PVFS transfers data using TCP, and the stream-based I/O technique leverages this by predefining a data ordering and eliminating all control messages in the data stream. This approach is able to attain very high utilization of TCP bandwidth; however, in many cases PVFS is disk bound, not network bound. The more adaptive approach given in [97] would likely provide better overall performance, but it was not merged into the PVFS source.
PVFS implements simple strided operations. These can be useful for some patterns; however, a more general approach is necessary for implementing MPI-IO operations. More recently a more flexible (but less concise) system was added for accepting arbitrary lists of I/O regions as single operations [27]. Called List I/O, this was first proposed in [115] and has been shown to be of great benefit to some access patterns. Support is provided in ROMIO for leveraging this; the hint to enable this is described in Section 19.4.4.
PVFS has no locking component. Instead, the metadata server supplies atomic metadata operations, eliminating the need for locking when performing metadata operations. Data operations are guaranteed by I/O servers to be consistent for concurrent writes that do not overlap at the byte granularity, but byte-overlapping concurrent writes result in undefined file state. This approach allows for a relatively simple system with no file system state held at clients, but it precludes client-side caching, which makes for very poor performance in a number of cases, particularly uniprocess workloads where systems from the preceding section would perform well.
Further, PVFS does not implement any form of fault tolerance. RAID can be used to tolerate disk failures, but node failures cause the system to be at least temporarily unusable. High-availability (HA) software is being investigated as a solution to this problem.
PVFS is also missing many of the administrative features that file systems such as GPFS offer. This limitation, combined with the lack of fault tolerance, has dissuaded many sites from using PVFS.
Nevertheless, PVFS has made it into production use at a number of sites around the world, mainly as a large, shared scratch space. PVFS is actively developed and supported, and the source for the file system, now commonly referred to as PVFS1 by the developers, is freely available online [90]. Because of its easy installation and source availability, many I/O researchers have chosen to compare their work to PVFS or to use PVFS as the starting point for their own research. We couldn't be happier that so many people have found this work to be so useful!
PVFS1 is showing its age, and a new version is under development to replace it before typical systems scale beyond its capabilities. We discuss this version, PVFS2, later in the chapter.
The Lustre file system [17] is being developed by Cluster File Systems. At the time of writing the Lustre file system is under development, but much documentation and early code is available. The Lustre design benefits heavily from previous work in parallel file systems.
One of the key features of Lustre is the use of modules connected by well-defined APIs. This is seen in at least three areas: networking, allowing for multiple underlying transports; metadata storage, allowing for multiple underlying metadata targets; and object (data) storage, allowing for caching and multiple underlying data storage technologies. In the latter two cases modules can be stacked to implement additional functionality. This provides great potential for the reuse of significant portions of the code when porting to new platforms or adding support for new hardware. Lustre uses the Portals API [19] for request processing and data transfer. Portals is a full-featured, reliable transfer layer designed for use in large-scale systems over multiple underlying network technologies.
Lustre breaks the nodes of the system into three types: clients, Object Storage Targets (OSTs), and Metadata Servers (MDSs). Object Storage Targets store objects, similar to inodes, which hold file data. OSTs perform their own block allocation, simplifying the metadata for a file in a manner similar to previous systems [22]. Objects can be stored on a number of back-end resources attached to OSTs, including using raw file system inodes. Alternatively data can be stored on more traditional SAN resources. In this case OSTs would still be in place, but would handle only authentication and block allocation, allowing data to be transferred directly between clients and SAN storage devices. This is similar to the GPFS approach when the VSD component is not used. This configuration could be convenient for sites with a SAN already in place.
Metadata servers store attributes and directory hierarchy information that is used to build the name space for the file system. Lustre's design calls for multiple MDS nodes in order to help balance the load on these systems. The protocol for metadata operations is explicit and transaction based, allowing for the avoidance of locks. An option is provided for using a node as both a MDS and as an OST.
A snapshot capability is also provided in Lustre, similar to the approach seen in [65], except that snapshotting is performed on object volumes (collections of objects) rather than a collection of blocks.
The designers of Lustre also propose a collaborative caching capability, where caching servers aggregate accesses to particular objects so that a single cache can be shared by multiple applications. This is similar in some ways to the data shipping scheme used in GPFS and distributed caches seen in research parallel file systems [55, 123]. However it is of particular note that Lustre is able to provide this functionality in a modular way.
Lustre relies on a distributed locking system for data coherence. Locks are available at different granularity levels to allow for concurrent access to disjoint file regions. Locks are managed by the OST that stores the object. Metadata operations are also performed by using locks to allow for client-side caching. Lustre adds intent locks for use in metadata operations. These are special locks that are used to perform some type of atomic operation at lock time. While in many instances an explicit operation to perform the intent could be used instead, this approach may lead to fewer opportunities for races between atomic operations by immediately returning a lock that could be used for a subsequent operation.
Lustre implements full POSIX semantics, but this can be turned off on a per file or per file system basis. An interface similar to the List I/O interface described in [115] is proposed as an optimization as well.
Beta versions of Lustre are available, and development is very active. Also released under the GPL license, Lustre could become the next widely used parallel file system for Linux clusters; license compatibility with the PVFS2 project means that the two projects could share components if appropriate APIs were developed.


text:
You know...it's funny...strange.
How we're always reaching out for something, for someone...
and yet pulling and pushing away.
It's funny...strange...
how life or whatever we call
brings people in...and out-
like a storm picking up trees and planting them somewhere else.
Here, then gone in the time it takes to blink
or to touch
or to kiss.
We are the storms...and we are the trees...
and how do we really know that there is any difference-
between you
and the space that I call me?
February 2nd, 2018

subset: commoncrawl


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My latest article for the Computer Corner in Paraplegia News just appeared this month and today I received an e-mail from a reader asking where he could get the iPhone and accessories I wrote about. Well, if you're interested also, I thought I would just put links here for you. Please know that the iPhone is only available from AT&T wireless or directly from Apple. I'm providing you a link to AT&T wireless, but if you have an Apple store near you you can drop in and test it out before you purchase.
So, here's the phone that I purchased, the Apple iPhone 3G - 16 GB - Black.
The case I recommend is the BELLA Protective Leather Case for iPhone 3G by Macally (Color: Black). It features a scratch resistant protective screen overlay; Nappa leather front panel; neck lanyard; lightweight aluminum carabiner; microsuede interior; camera opening; high density, soft and durable back panel; and opening to all controls and parts.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
IT Training for Veterans
If you're a reader of my column, Computer Corner in PN Magazine, or regularly read this blog, you know my background is education and that I often encourage individuals to learn more--that is learn all you can! Well today I came across an opportunity for both U.S. veterans and persons living with a disability, the CompTIA Educational Foundation.
The Educational Foundation's Creating Futures program provides students, IT workers, employers, training providers and educational institutions with the necessary components to build a qualified and diverse workforce. Through the program, transitioning U.S. veterans, individuals with disabilities, youth-at-risk and dislocated workers are given opportunities to build life long, productive and rewarding careers in IT.Check out their offerings and if you apply and complete a course, leave a comment here for other readers.
Posted by Dr. Larsen (Kurt) at 1:41 PM No comments:
Sunday, March 8, 2009
A Nifty New Tool--Google Latitude
Hansel and Gretel gathered white pebbles to leave a trail so they'd find their way home; it didn't work out the way they wanted. As a person dependent on technologies to get around, there have been times I've been stuck (a dead car battery, flat tire, or bent front-fork) with no means of getting help right away. Google Latitude is a new tool that might provide an extra layer of security for persons like me when stranded.
Here's how it can work:
Postscript: I haven't tested this as Google Latitude isn't ready for the iPhone just yet. I'll be sure to let you know when it is.
Here's how it can work:
- I go to town (via wheelchair) and am expected home at 3 p.m.
- Making my way home, I unexpectedly hit a sharp object and blow a tire--the jolt has my cellphone fly off my lap.
- Not home on time, a family member (Brad) calls about 3:10 p.m.--I don't answer because I can't reach my phone.
- Smartly, I've installed Google Latitude on my cellphone and allow him to see my location. At 3:20 p.m., more concerned as time elapses, Brad tracks my location via Latitude and sees that I'm nearly home but haven't moved in awhile.
- Brad comes to my rescue.
With Google Latitude, you can:
- See where your friends are and what they are up to
- Quickly contact them with SMS, IM, or a phone call
- Control what your location is and who gets to see it
Enjoy Google Latitude on your phone, PC, or both.
Postscript: I haven't tested this as Google Latitude isn't ready for the iPhone just yet. I'll be sure to let you know when it is.
Posted by Dr. Larsen (Kurt) at 9:43 PM No comments:
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text:
Kaupa miða / Buy Tickets
Brasilíski söngvarinn og gítarleikarinn Ife Tolentino er staddur við upptökur á Íslandi og kemur til með að leika í Mengi með tónlistarbróður sínum Óskari Guðjónssyni saxófónleikara mánudags-, þriðjudags- og miðvikudagskvöld.
Leiðir þeirra lágu saman í London er Óskar var búsettur þar. Eitt af markmiðum Óskars var að kynnast brasilískum gítarleikara og söngvara til að nema þá fögru list sem þetta einstaklega hjartalýja fólk hefur gefið umheiminum.
Bossa Nova og Samba eru bara þekktustu stílar þessa margslungna tónlistarstíls sem Ife og Óskar munu leika. Það má segja að þetta hafi verið ást við fyrsta tón. Vinátta Ife og Óskars hefur gefið af sér geisladiskinn VOCÊ PASSOU AQUI sem kom út árið 2012. Þeir vinna nú að annarri plötu.
Húsið opnar kl. 20:30 - Miðverð er 2.500 kr.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
The Brazilian singer and guitar player Ife Tolentino is coming to Iceland for the 16th year in a row to play with Óskar Guðjónsson saxophone player at Mengi. They are working on a new record together.
Their paths first crossed in London when Óskar was living there. One of Óskar´s goals was to get to know a Brazilian guitar player and singer to study the beautiful art which these wonderfully warm people have given the world. Bossa Nova and Samba are the two most well known of the complex styles of music which Ife and Óskar will be playing. One could say that this was love at first note. The cd VOCÊ PASSOU AQUI is the product of Ife and Óskars friendship. Ife´s silky smooth voice and complete immersion in the music along with Óskar´s unique saxophone playing is guaranteed to move you.
In Ife´s words "This project actually started without us even realising it the first time I met Óskar in London. It was as if we had been playing together for years and he knew all about the groove and soul of Brazilian music yet in such a way that he added something very special to it. Two years later I was in Iceland playing with Óskar and other Icelandic musicians. The feeling grew even stronger. I had found a new way of playing the music that I love".
Doors at 20:30 - Tickets are 2.500 kr.


text:
A Virgin Atlantic Airbus A330-300 made an emergency landing at London's Gatwick Airport on Monday and evacuated all 299 passengers and 13 crew onto the runway via emergency slides. Four people were injured during the evacuation.
There were conflicting reports as to the nature of the emergency on Virgin Atlantic Flight 72, from Gatwick to Orlando, but all seemed to point to indications of a fire.
One report said the pilots received indication of a cargo hold fire. A second said there was smoke emanating from the cockpit. And a third said fire crews on the ground actually extinguished a "blaze" in the cockpit. Virgin would only say the plane landed due to a "technical problem."
The aircraft remained on Gatwick's Runway 8R for much of the day, causing delays for other traffic at the dual-runway airport.
Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson tweeted an apology to the flight's passengers:
Very sorry to all passengers on board VS27, the staff @virginatlantic are doing everything they can to look after everybody. More info soon
— richardbranson (@richardbranson) April 16, 2012
The aircraft, registered G-VSXY, Beauty Queen, was the first A330 to enter service with Virgin Atlantic about a year ago. The carrier now operates three of the type.


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Are you one of those people who would love to be organized but think you don't have the time? The truth is being unorganized is the time-waster, causing you to spend valuable minutes searching for items. We have rounded up some of the easiest and most creative DIY organizing tips to use in your Springs Apartments home. And since we've saved you all that research time, why not get started today?
- Lids for Tupperware and other plastic food containers are the cause of one of the more annoying kitchen storage problems. A metal CD rack placed inside a cabinet is a great, ready-made solution. Arrange the lids with the larger sizes in back and smaller ones in front. If you prefer a more colorful solution, use scrap material to make a fabric lid holder to hang on the inside of the cabinet door.
- Don't toss away those plastic coffee creamer bottles. Simply remove the label and you have handy, quick-dispense containers for nuts, chocolate chips, cheddar goldfish crackers, sugar or other food items.
- Instead of trying to stuff plastic bags inside a drawer or tuck them in the corner of a cabinet, store them in an empty disinfectant wipes container.
Bed and Bath
- Vanity space is always cluttered up with hair dryers, curling irons and flat irons. Use adhesive hooks to hang a mesh file box from the wall or on the side of a cabinet. Hair appliances will stay out of the way and still have a place to cool off.
- A shoe organizer is the jack-of-all-trades of storage accessories. It can hold cleaning products, tools, toys, belts and scarves, and just about anything else you can think of. Since it hangs vertically, it takes advantage of space that otherwise goes unused.
- This creative metal-hanger holder is perfect for storing flip-flops, but can also work for belts and scarves.
- Place a magnetic strip inside the medicine cabinet door to hold bobby pins, tweezers, nail clippers and other metal grooming items.
Holiday Items and Miscellaneous
- Do you get frustrated trying to find homes for smaller items like thumbtacks, paper clips and hair bands? Stock up on plastic travel soap holders at the dollar store. They're also handy for kids to take playing cards, crayons and small toys on road trips.
- No matter how carefully you pack up holiday ornaments, you're likely to find at least a couple broken ones the following year. Take some plastic cups and glue the bottoms to a sturdy piece of cardboard. Place one ornament in each cup and stack the layers inside a plastic storage bin. Not only will they stay in one piece, you won't have to untangle all the hooks.
- Here's another cardboard-based solution for holiday storage: wrap strands of lights around a large square of cardboard or an empty wrapping-paper tube.
It's said that necessity is the mother of invention.Has a particular storage problem inspired you to come up with an ingenious solution? Share your ideas in the comments!


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Today, the average family is working harder for less and less money as the wealth of the world continues to transfer into the hands of fewer and fewer people. Is that the world you want to stay trapped in?
Pay close attention to today's Daily Shortcut episode — I want to help you tap into the "wealth genome" that naturally lives inside your brain.
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You're also going to get a transcription of today's episode so you can read it and internalize these ideas!
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In your third and most important Daily Shortcut I'm going to give you my entire business, The Total Shortcut System. As you're watching these daily episodes you can earn money and create simultaneous lifestyle if you want.
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Simply fill in your name and best email. Then click the button that says "Give Me The Total Shortcut" and you'll immediately be taken to download your three powerful bonuses.
- Bonus #1: Download Your FREE PDF Workbook That Will Help Me Create Wealth By Applying These Ideas …Including A Full Transcript Of Today's Episode!
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text:
- Home
- Borderline Personality
- Coping with BPD: DBT and CBT Skills to Soothe the Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder
Coping with BPD: DBT and CBT Skills to Soothe the Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder
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- Aguirre, Blaise & Galen, Gillian
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Product Description
Published USA, 2015
This book offers evidence-based solutions for addressing over fifty of the most common problems people with BPD face every day. With a combination of DBT, CBT and mindfulness, the authors help you manage intense emotions and moods, set personal limits, and address issues like substance abuse and doing harm to yourself and others. There are also tools for dealing with negative self-talk, feelings of paranoia and self-invalidation. This is a compassionate and practical book to help individuals diagnosed with the disorder. The authors are both psychologists at Harvard Medical School.
Blaise Aguirre is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Paperback. 204 pages


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Overall Rating: 10
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John Varvatos X Harry Rosen Launch Ft. Performance by Finger Eleven
John Varvatos X Harry Rosen Launch Featuring Performance by Finger Eleven
Fashion and rock and roll usually go hand in hand. And nowhere is it more evident than with American menswear designer John Varvatos, who was in Toronto recently to attend the opening party of the new John Varvatos Shop-in-Shops at the Harry Rosen Bloor Street Flagship store.
Varvatos, who won the CFDA Fashion Award for menswear designer of the year in 2001 and 2005, and was the GQ designer of the year in 2007, has always embraced rock music in his collections and his ad campaigns.
His style is hip, cool yet classic. These are clothes that any man can embrace.
Canadian rock band Finger Eleven did a surprise set, much to the delight of the guests.
Parts & Labour catered the snacks. Drinks served included Patron Tequila, Peroni beer, and Crystal Head Vodka.
Among the guests were MasterChef Canada judges Claudio Aprile (Origin restaurants) and Alvin Leung aka The Demon Chef ( R&D restaurant).
(photos by Terrence)


text: Monday past saw our club host the now annual Golden Mile out at the Woodside Road Industrial Estate. Fastest on the night were in the men's James Turtle in 5 mins exactly with young Katie Agnew from Ballymena & Antrim AC fastest female in 5 mins 50 secs. The club would like to thank all those members who supported the race by either competing, organising or spectating.


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[ "Mini-Gym-1.jpg", "Mini-Gym-2.jpg", "Mini-Gym-3.jpg", "Mini-Gym-4.jpg", "Mini-Gym-5.jpg", "Mini-Gym-6.jpg", "Mini-Gym-7.jpg", "Mini-Gym-8.jpg" ]
[ "5-in-1-Home-Gym-1.jpg", "5-in-1-Home-Gym-2.jpg", "5-in-1-Home-Gym-3.jpg", "5-in-1-Home-Gym-4.jpg", "5-in-1-Home-Gym-5.jpg", "5-in-1-Home-Gym-6.jpg", "5-in-1-Home-Gym-7.jpg", "5-in-1-Home-Gym-8.jpg" ]
[ "All-in-One-Wonder-Gym-0001.jpg", "Wonder-Gym-01.jpg", "Wonder-Gym-02.jpg", "Wonder-Gym-03.jpg", "Wonder-Gym-04.jpg", "Wonder-Gym-05.jpg", "Wonder-Gym-06.jpg" ]
Buy Sports & Fitness
The emergence of e-commerce has definitely re-defined shopping experience. Naaptol, one of India's leading veteran in world of home-shopping has set a new benchmark with its quality focused products. Quality is our foremost goal and we strictly focus to deliver quality-focused brands at discounted price and Branded is one such brand. Naaptol helps you choose the best Sports & Fitness Brand products are identified for their premium quality, exceptional performance and durability. The superior features and benefits of the Branded Sports & Fitness make it stand apart from the crowd. Especially for consumers, choosing a reliable brand in crowd of countless brands becomes a herculean task and this is where Naaptol helps you browse, compare and choose the brand that compliments your needs.


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The Ideas of Selecting the Best Chicago Restaurant
You need to research about the best kind of restaurants where they serve the local cuisine to enjoy your stay at Chicago. There is high competition when it comes to the restaurant business, and it is important that you identify the restaurants that are leading regarding services. Here are the details that you should consider before you select any Chicago restaurant.
Find Out on The Type of Menu That A Restaurant Serves
You should check out to identify the type of foods that you will eat when you go for a given restaurant. You should ensure that the most popular meals are present in the menu when you visit the Chicago restaurant. You can identify if the restaurant is the best by checking at the ques that are forming at the entrance of the restaurant.
Confirm on The Services That You Will Get
You should check out on the different types of services that the restaurant has invested in. When you're planning to have a meeting or even a function at the restaurant, you need to ensure that they provide enough space. Ensure that you go to the Chicago restaurants that have the right delivery channels to ensure that you get your meals at home.
Find Out on What the Companies Do to Ensure That They Have Proper Hygiene
You should never only go to the restaurant that is known to give much attention to the cleanliness. The kitchen area needs to be clean, and the floor should always be prepared nicely. Visiting the premises of the restaurant ensures that you identify with the restaurants that maintain correct hygienic standards.
Check Out to Confirm If There Are Any Benefits
You should check out to confirm all the different value-added services that you will get whenever you visit any Chicago restaurant. You should only identify the Chicago restaurants that have the large screens and free wi-fi to ensure that you have the best moments. Other kind of restaurants will also provide discounts on certain meals, and you need to research about them to ensure that you get the right meals at an affordable price.
Research Online to Identify the Different Types of Restaurant
You will be informed of the best types of restaurants that you can visit when you check on the different online reviews. Only go for the restaurant that are popular and which are attracting the best types of comments from the clients.
You should take your time to do your research and identify the leading types of restaurants in Chicago to have the best meals. Only identify the restaurants that have the best kind of customer service and which provides the right types of meals.
Featured post: Case Study: My Experience With Businesses


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"Brett Leavy is an immersive heritage specialist, virtual historian and artist. His innovative idea to recreate the real environment for mapping Indigenous culture and heritage stems from his passion to educate the community about Indigenous history."
(ABC Open)
"Launched by the Australasian CRC [Cooperative Research Centre] for Interaction Design (ACID), Digital Songlines is a project to develop protocols, methodologies, and toolkits to facilitate the collection and sharing of Indigenous cultural heritage knowledge in Australia. The title of Digital Songlines represents the blend of new media technology, simulation technology, and high–end computer visualisation systems to depict Aboriginal culture and heritage. Through the virtual sharing of oral histories, herbarium data, dreamtime myths, legends, and stories, organisers hope to protect, preserve and promote Indigenous cultural practices and their survival techniques in accessible, interactive, creative ways."
(Ethnos Project Resources Database)
Sign-Up or learn more.


text:
Katrina Kaif begins countdown of Bharat trailer with a stunning Photo | Trailer will be released on April 24
Bollywood actor Katrina Kaif has started the countdown for Bharat trailer by sharing a stunning still. The trailer of Bharat will be released on April 24. Helmed by Ali Abbas Zafar, Bharat also stars Salman Khan, Disha Patani, Nora Fatehi, Sunil Grover, Jackie Shroff. Slated for release on Eid, Bharat is one of the most awaited films of 2019.
Bharat starring Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif is one of the most-awaited films of 2019. Slated to hit the silver screens on the occasion of Eid, the trailer of the film will be launched on April 24. As the excitement level among fans reaches its peak, Katrina has treated everyone with a still from Bharat and it is making restless. Looking absolutely gorgeous, Katrina is seen donning a green saree with minimal makeup.
As she looks into the camera, it is her sparkling eyes, natural beauty and curly hair that will leave you spell-bound. Shared just a few hours ago, the photo has already garnered more than 4 lakh likes including celebrities like Kiara Advani, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Janhvi Kapoor, Aditya Roy Kapur, Deepika Padukone, Tara Sutaria, Fatima Sana Shaikh and Sonakshi Sinha. With this, Shweta Bachchan and Vaani Kapoor have complimented Katrina Kaif's beauty. In her trailer, Katrina said that the trailer of Bharat will be released in 10 days.
An official adaption of 2014 Korean film Ode To My Father, the teaser of Bharat was released in February. Garnering 41 million views, the teaser also revealed that Salman will be seen five different avatars in the film. Helmed by Ali Abbas Zafar and bankrolled by Salman Khan Films and T-Series, Bharat will release on June 5. Along with Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif, the film also stars Disha Patani, Nora Fatehi, Sunil Grover, Jackie Shroff.
After Bharat, Salman Khan will be seen in films like Dabangg 3 opposite Sonakshi Sinha, Kick 2, Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Inshallah opposite Alia Bhatt and Hindi remake of Korean film Veteran. Meanwhile, Katrina Kaif, who was last seen in the film Thugs of Hindostan, is yet to announce her next film after Bharat.
[News Source : Newsx.com]
[Photo courtesy : Instagram]
[News Source : Newsx.com]
[Photo courtesy : Instagram]
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Richard Schletty - Saint Paul, MN
Most Holy Trinity - May 22, 2016
Chord Sheet
Richard Schletty is a graphic designer, voiceover artist and performing songwriter who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. He is an experienced cantor, songleader and choral singer, singing at Masses, funerals, weddings and pro-life prayer services. Richard has sung with Waltham Abbey Singers, a Renaissance-Baroque choir which performed sacred music a cappella. Director: Brian Link. He has also done gigs in local coffee shops, singing his own Folk-Rock originals. Richard is a board member of the Minnesota Association of Songwriters and a member of Catholic Music Ministries. Richard has done many internet collaborations via email, music sharing web sites and FTP file transfer. His favored programs for digital recording, sequencing and mixing are Apple Logic and Steinberg Cubase. He engraves music scores with Sibelius. His college buddies from St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, formed a band in the 1970s called Rocka-Rolla. They still get together once or twice every three years to perform early rock classics. Richard is owner and admin of TopCatholicSongs.com. Voice talent and music web site: www.SchlettySound.com. Graphic design web site: www.SchlettyDesign.com.


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Stathmopoda melanochra Meyrick, 1897 (Stathmopodidae)
Stathmopoda melanochra Meyrick, 1897 (Stathmopodidae, Stathmopodinae). This tiny moth could actually be a related species as the scale patterns are somewhat different from all published images of S. melanochra. Stathmopoda, previously included within the highly diverse Oecophoridae, comprises about 300+ species mainly in the Indo-Australian and Afrotropical regions. Highly brushed hind tibia are characteristic of the family.


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Episode 04: A Deep Dive Into CAC & LTV
If you were to perform one calculation that validated your business model it would be this...is my customer lifetime value greater than the cost of bringing onboard a customer? If not, your business is a no-go. If it is, you've got the potential to succeed.
In this episode Alex and Emma deep dive into the world of Customer Acquisition Cost and Lifetime Value, and help you understand why these 2 metrics are vital. We highlight the key aims for both (hint: lower CAC, increase LTV) and how you can look to do this.
We've included a transcript below in case you can't listen at this moment in time.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- What is Customer Acquisition Cost
- Steps you can take to lower CAC to ensure your business is profitable
- What is Lifetime Value
- How you can maximise lifetime value and unleash a key growth channel
- How CAC and LTV link together to help you understand the viability of your business
Links and resources mentioned in this episode:
The effect of Field Sales on Customer Acquisition Cost
How to calculate Lifetime Value
Thanks For Listening!
Thanks so much for joining us this week. Be sure to join us in episode 5 where we will be discussing empathetic marketing, and how this strategy could be the key to converting more prospects into customers.
Have some feedback you'd like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below.
Episode 4 - CAC and LTV[00:00:01] Welcome to the Leadspeak podcast with me, Alex Thackray.[00:00:17] Welcome to episode four of Leadspeak. The podcast where we'll be talking about automated sales systems that you can build into your own business. Who am I? I'm Alex Thackray, founder of Leadfreak, where we build automated sales systems for many different business types. We want to pass on some of the expertise and knowledge that we have to you.[00:00:40] Hi, and welcome back to Leadspeak, this is Episode 4. We've had some great feedback for the first three episodes, those fundamental episodes where we've been looking at what automated sale systems look like, what's the framework that we use in Leadfreak, and how you can put that into your own business.[00:00:56] Today we're going to be talking about customer acquisition cost and lifetime value. For me two of the more fundamental metrics when we're looking at holistic sales systems for businesses of different types.[00:01:09] With me I've got Emma Thackray, she's the editorial director at Leadfreak. She's going to be taking some of the questions we've had from our clients from our prospects, you know, people around our business as to the deep dive into these two metrics. So we're going to have a discussion around what they are and around how you can optimise them for your business. So before we begin we'll have a little hello from Emma.[00:01:36] Hello[00:01:37] And off we go.[00:01:44] Okay. So as Alex said today we're going to be talking about customer acquisition cost and lifetime value which are two of the key metrics and there's something that we tend to get a lot of questions about from our clients.[00:01:57] So, probably the first and the biggest question that we really need to answer is what is it basically, so we're going to start with customer acquisition cost. What Alex is Customer acquisition cost?[00:02:13] So in speaking to our clients for me customer acquisition cost is exactly what it says on the tin. How much does it cost your business to bring on-board a customer, to purchase in your product. And how, one overall what is that cost? What is cost per channel? So if you use numerous channels to bring the customer on-board how much would it cost to bring each prospect through that particular channel.[00:02:42] What kind of channels would you use?[00:02:42] Being digital marketers we would generally be looking at, you know, social channels, e-mail channels, and online website channels but looking more in to the wider world where you have different business models, you might have a freemium base SAAS product where you know you're looking for people to trial you can be they buy you as well as a very good low customer acquisition cost business model.[00:03:14] There's obviously a lot of work to convert from free to purchase, but that is all part of the process.[00:03:20] And the other end of the scale, which is you know highly specialised, high value products which require a dedicated salesman , or saleswomen to be selling that product.[00:03:33] I feel like you said saleswoman because I'm here. Thanks for that.[00:03:37] Not at all. So where you have a dedicated resource to sell your product or service, you know, and it's a face to face discussion and it takes hours and days, and you know, you secure so many deals per year then the cost of that salesperson is taken into account of customer acquisition cost.[00:03:58] So it can range from pounds or pennies depending on the low cost channels to thousands of pounds per sale.[00:04:11] Okay, awesome. Let's move onto the next question. Think you've answered that pretty well. So why is it so important then, why exactly do we need to know and be sure of what the customer acquisition cost is?[00:04:25] So I think there's kind of three levels to this.[00:04:29] What the fundamental level is, if your customer acquisition cost is greater than the value of the product or service, then instantly that is not going to work and your business is going to fail.[00:04:50] If your customer acquisition cost is lower than the price of the product but you know you still have to take into account the cost to deliver that product or service. So if your customer acquisition cost is lower than the price of the product but still wiping out all the profit you're going to make from that product. Then again this is a negative is, it's a no go.[00:05:11] So what the perfect scenario is, is that the customer acquisition cost is lower than the price of the product and service minus the costs minus the cost of delivery, and gives you your required rate of return on the products that you're selling. Because we all have business goals, we all have financial objectives, we all have strategies and budgets which are dependent on achieving a certain profit. So you have to take all of that data into account when you are analysing what your customer acquisition cost should be.[00:05:44] Okay so it's definitely something that's really important then and everybody has to be we sure of early on.[00:05:50] And it's surprising to speak to so many clients many businesses who one, never consider it, never consider what their customer acquisition cost is, and what it can be.[00:06:01] Yeah, yeah, I've been there certainly.[00:06:01] And also you know how do we calculate? They've never entered that discussion in mind, it's literally, this is not product and service. Now I need to sell it so I'll to sell it to whoever wants to buy it.[00:06:13] Yeah same. Yeah I mean I've had that in the past where we just chuck out Facebook ads without really considering how much it cost or what the goal is or even really who we're selling to. So such a huge error to make but you don't necessarily even realise that you making it until you kind of talk to people who actually know what they're talking about in that kind thing.[00:06:34] So yes they're obviously very important. So another big question then once they obviously know what customer acquisition cost is and why it's important is what kind of thing impacts customer acquisition costs. So what sort of things have an impact on what that is.[00:06:54] So I touched on it a little bit earlier where there are different business models, individual businesses take to on-board clients, so one, it might be the freemium model it might be a dedicated sales person. So that is one factor to take on board.[00:07:12] It's funny, I've seen data plotted on a graph which showed average customer acquisition cost depending on the method to bring the customer in, and it's one of the reasons I also think why Leadfreak as a digital sales system builder is so busy at the minute is because, using people to sell products services is massively expensive. And actually when you see plotted on a graph is exponentially more expensive than using a digital source for that same customer. You can you can actually picture it, if you're having to pay someone's salary, plus commission, plus bonuses, plus admin regarding employing that person,[00:07:53] Yeah just the cost of employing somebody[00:07:55] And they get so many deals per year you know all that cost is spread across each of those deals.[00:08:01] Mm hmm.[00:08:03] So certainly how you're selling your product is a key thing for me in terms or that customer acquisition cost is. Another one is at what point in that buyer journey do you begin talking to people?[00:08:17] When do you begin actually trying to close the sale? If you have sales people and you're speaking to them earlier in the buyer journey, the customer journey, then it's going to be more expensive. Because not only is your sales person's time spent among those people that actually buy but now you spread it across the people that don't buy. And I think for me those are the two main factors when it comes to what impact excessive cost.[00:08:46] So how do you track that. What's the best way of tracking customer acquisition costs?[00:08:50] When it's through a sales person. I think you've just got to be clear with the numbers. You've got to know how many sales people have got. What's the cost of each salesperson. What's the cost of the surroundings support facilities around that salesperson, because not only do you have the sales person themselves you've generally got an internal sales team.[00:09:12] So the cost of the whole the cost of the whole sales ecosystem. What is that. How many deals are you creating, making in a year, a month. And just being clear on what those numbers are so that you can continue to track that as a key metric.[00:09:28] When it comes to digital systems we use lots of different data points within that journey to work out the cost per acquisition. So whether it's cost per click, whether it's conversion rates on different levels of that buyer journey, in different stages within that funnel, and then how many people are converting and was the price of that conversion. And we can track that all the way though so we can then see...[00:09:58] How do you track that?[00:10:00] So that a lot of the platforms we use have that ability to track within the system themselves. Well in the platforms themselves. Okay let's take social, so we use a lot of Facebook stuff, we use LinkedIn, we use e-mail, all of that we can apply these metrics to but what we've also got to consider is the time it takes to run those campaigns and to manage those channels. But being able to break it down channel by channel then gives us, you know, that insight into which channels work for us. And if one channel is greater than the others we put more investment and time into that channel to maximise, to reduce that customer acquisition cost across the board.[00:10:40] So what's the what's the key goal of customer acquisition cost? I guess for the people listening to this it might be to reduce it, they might be kind of almost starting to think about it for the first time, and how they can they can reduce it, but how might you do that and what are the other key goals.[00:11:06] So I think you know you hit the nail on the head. We've regard to the key goal it's got to be reducing customer acquisition cost.[00:11:13] Sorry, did I steal your answer. I said at first.[00:11:19] But is has got to be the key goal. Yes you've got to reduce it but how do you reduce it? Now, one way that we reduce it is to reducing that human touch within that sale. That for us is the key element, because I say I've seen the data and I'll put in the resources section on the website, I'll put you know the graph that I've see so you can see for yourself the exponential growth rate when it comes to, as soon as you've bring a human salesperson on-board, compared to a digital system.[00:11:53] So I mean for me that's one way, a key way, that you can look to reduce it.[00:11:56] Is there any , do you get a lot of people worried about removing the human touch, obviously, you get sales people who are very good at what they do obviously, and a lot of marketing is obviously humans talking to other humans. What do you say to people who are worried about removing that human element and doing it all digitally.[00:12:22] I think the big risk for people is that one the digital systems a change from the way we work now, which okay, we bring salespeople on board we know we have the processes that allow them to sell.[00:12:35] But, I've worked in face to face sales and know lots of different types of salespeople. One the really good sales people are few and far between.[00:12:48] 2 it's completely subjective. A sales person who's got good experience selling in one place might not sell very well in another place. Obviously you train and you improve prove their sales performance over time but for me you can do that with a with a digital system.[00:13:04] Yes.[00:13:05] I wouldn't say, you don't he'd have to replace the salesperson with a digital system, the digital system can, one shift that human contact to the end of the buyer journey which is one element I've talked about.[00:13:16] But two you can also educate your prospects on your products without a salesperson having to do that. If they're just repeating the same messages over and over again because your prospects have the same questions you can deliver the answer to those questions digitally and you can track where that person is within that journey so your sales person knows when they should be in touch.[00:13:39] Yeah and so by the time the salesperson actually speaks to them they're already you know they already are well educated and informed about their product or service or whatever it is then a lot more kind of warmed up an d ready to go I guess.[00:13:52] It's almost a conversion discussion rather a educational discussion. It's a we know, you have this problem, you know you have this problem, you see how our products are service works and how it can be a solution to your problem. So let's just close the deal.[00:14:05] Yeah.[00:14:06] Some people do like that humans human conversation so that's not going to ever be removed. Certainly in some products and services.[00:14:15] Yeah I was reading about it the other day. How in the past when somebody, a potential customer, spoke to a sales person for the first time they were 30 percent sold on the kind of product already. But nowadays they're more like between 70 and 90 percent sure that they want to make the actual buying decision before they buy because they're generally already so well-educated on it before they even speak to somebody.[00:14:46] And that's the perfect scenario. Yeah because nobody likes to talk to people nowadays.[00:14:51] I don't.[00:14:53] Certainly not when they're not educated about the products or service.[00:14:55] Yeah exactly because nobody wants to be sold to from the off especially when you don't know exactly what it is you're purchasing to start off with. I'd much rather go onto a website and have lots of, that's so much of what I do as well is actually creating the content and the education on people's websites isn't it. So that buyers are completely educated on the product and service of all their questions can be answered and then they feel more in control of the decision and then when they're ready to talk to somebody face to face they do so.[00:15:29] And it's a key point in our content strategy where you know we're looking at being straight to the point. Asking the questions our clients and prospects are asking us and providing the information. So that's the base point for all our blog posts it's the base point for Leadspeak, it's the base point for any conversation we have with our potential clients and our clients is "we're already giving you the answers to the questions that you might have".[00:15:55] Yeah. And a lot of that comes from Marcus Sheridan's book "They Ask , You Answer" which is an awesome book.[00:16:05] And that is really good.[00:16:06] It works basically on the principle exactly doesn't it, that you know, brainstorm, think of all of the questions that your clients or potential buyers will ask you and answer these questions on your site through blog post, videos, whatever. And that's the way to do it, it's a really really good book.[00:16:25] Yeah. Be a credible expert. Basically becoming a credible expert by giving all information. Just offhand.[00:16:33] I think just keeping to the customer acquisition cost discussion.[00:16:38] The other key goal for me, certainly at an early point, if you've not considered customer acquisition cost is know the numbers. Put the system in place that you can actually then track how much it is going to cost you to bring on your prospects or how much an average.[00:17:02] Yeah.[00:17:02] And set that goal. And say we know how much it is now costing we need it to cost this much so what processes, what improvements do we put in place to make that happen. And I don't think we need any more on the two key goals with regard to reducing customer acquisition cost. What can you do to reduce human touch, human contact, and two, know your numbers.[00:17:27] Yep, keep it simple. Simple enough. Okay I think that's all we've got on customer acquisition cost now but I guess if the people listening have got any more questions about it they can send them in and we can certainly answer them next time.[00:17:48] So I think we'll move on to lifetime value as a metric and to be honest this is one of my key metrics. I'm so passionate about Lifetime value.[00:17:56] You love lifetime value.[00:18:00] I hosted a lecture at Aston University and pretty much for the three hours I was boring those students it was all about lifetime value.[00:18:09] I am sure they found that really really amazing. Okay so let's let you go on about it for a bit longer I guess. Not too long now I'll stop you. You go off on one. So okay then, so simplest question may be, most difficult question, what is a lifetime value.[00:18:33] Yeah. Okay so it seems like a simple question to ask what is lifetime value. So in its simplest form lifetime value is - how much each customer pays to your business, how much revenue do you generate from each customer on average. What is that number. Because you might not sell just one, two, three products to one cost. It might be the whole business model is to sell 5, 6, 7. So what's the number. What is the revenue generated per customer. That's what lifetime value is.[00:19:07] So by the time first hear of you till they drop off and never buy from you again.[00:19:17] There's a simple example which is take Starbucks. If Starbucks sells one coffee per week to the same person every week for 20 years that's your lifetime value. Now there are three calculations and again this is another thing that I'll add to the resources, there's kind of three ways to look at lifetime value. One is just on revenue. One is on the profit and taking into account your desired profit goal. And the third way's a bit more complex. It looks at integrating customer retention rate and discount cash flow interest rates into the calculation of lifetime value, so you can tell by by that description that it's a bit more complex.[00:20:04] If you're being clever about it, you'd calculate the three because they give you a lower level and a top level of what that customer lifetime value is, you average it out across the three then you say actually this is my average lifetime by taking into account all those different factors.[00:20:19] Ok.[00:20:21] If we just touch on customer acquisition cost again, what the academics say is that, I am academic...[00:20:30] One of the Elites.[00:20:33] If your customer acquisition cost is less than the lifetime value of your customer, based on the average, then your business model is go.[00:20:45] Okay that's like the golden ticket to your business. I'm worth it.[00:20:51] So yeah and the more you can spend to acquire customer the better you'll do. Yeah because you'll just beat the competition.[00:21:00] Yep, yeah yeah, there are lots of companies that spend loads on, that's how they do it. Yeah just spend more than the competition and you'll win basically which is quite interesting.[00:21:17] Does advocacy have anything to do with lifetime value. So if you've got loyal customers who recommend you to people then does that play a part in it, is that something you measure with lifetime value. So if they then obviously bring you more value by spreading the word does that have an impact on them.[00:21:39] You could certainly add that in as a quantitative factor within lifetime value.[00:21:45] I guess it's hard hard to measure isn't that sort of thing.[00:21:47] You don't want to be kind of double booking it and saying, well if Fred recommends Joan and Joan starts to buy based on what Fred is saying, then I'm going to take some of that value and apply it to Fred because he's brought a person in.[00:22:01] It will take it away from Joan.[00:22:02] Yeah, you want to calculate it for Joan.[00:22:04] Yes yes. Fair enough. Don't want to over complicate it. I suppose it's just something to bear in mind I guess.[00:22:10] You'd just look at that as a separate metric. So what's my average referral value as a separate to lifetime value and saying as a business strategy because advocacy and referrals are a real cost effective way of bringing new customers, again will go back to customer acquisition cost. If you can bring in the majority of your customers through referrals, the referral being the most cost effective customer acquisition you can get because basically you don't have to sell to them.[00:22:40] Yeah yeah it's free, or near to free anyway.[00:22:44] So it's an important discussion about how how you maximise that number but for me it's a bit separate to lifetime value. One of the key points I made in my lecture was that.[00:22:57] You love talking about this lecture.[00:23:01] For me lifetime value can almost be a whole business strategy.[00:23:06] So you have, you know it's a common thing in business theory where profit or shareholder value maximisation is the business strategy. Everything that business does is designed to maximise the shareholder value.[00:23:22] While that kind of answers the second question I had then which was why is lifetime value so important. If your saying it's everything then that answers that one for me.[00:23:34] But if I did go one step into that whole philosophy, the element missing in maximising shareholder value is almost like that customer service element, you hear so many stories in 2018 alone where large corporations, it's all about shareholder wealth it's nothing to do with delivering a good service or product, it is what can we do quickly and effectively to increase our share price and get money out to shareholders.[00:24:01] Lifetime value as a business strategy actually delivers shareholder value because it's operating effectively but at the core of it to maximise lifetime value of customers you have to be delivering a good service. And it's not just selling to them either it is the whole business operations that need to deliver for that one customer in order for them to keep coming back and buying more and more.[00:24:25] Makes sense.[00:24:26] And that's for me is why it's so important.[00:24:32] Okay next question then. How do we maximise lifetime value?[00:24:42] Think again we mention this for the customer acquisition cost, but one of the key elements of lifetime value is tracking it and actually knowing the numbers. So what is the average lifetime value of your customers and how can you extract more value per customer. Yet. Now it might be you sell one product or service, what complimentary product or service can you provide which is another revenue stream, but it suits your business in this solves a problem for your client.[00:25:19] So if we look at what we do, we might do workshops and audits which help our clients see where they have holes in their sales bucket, and we can then look at fixing that as our core service. That's where we really like to work. But then we can also look at maintaining and becoming a growth partner. We can then facilitate by giving them access to our Leadfreak academy, so our training services. And also giving them access to the future makers which is the upcoming Leadfreak events around you know solving sales problems for businesses with a mastermind group of people. We can give people access to that.[00:25:59] So we've really been working on how we can maximise our lifetime value by delivering above and beyond the value that we've delivered in that lower down service.[00:26:09] Okay sounds good.[00:26:10] So just to make that simple, how can you deliver more around what your business does to your customers that they will be willing to pay for.[00:26:23] And how do you measure that then how do you calculate it.[00:26:24] I touched earlier in one of my answers about what lifetime value is so those three calculations we can look at doing. One is around maximum revenue of the life of the customer over that lifetime, one is taking into account the profit requirements from that transaction. And there's a third one which integrates customer retention rate in discounted cash-flow interest rates. So that's the value of future moneys now. Also incorporates a profit margin within that calculation as well. This is really where you start to look a bit more of a complex calculation, which I'm going to detail in the resource section of the podcast so you can actually start applying these to your business.[00:27:14] Sounds good.[00:27:15] Certainly customer acquisition cost and lifetime value for me, and you can see why hopefully from today's podcast episode why they are so important.[00:27:23] Very important and they work hand in hand as well. So I guess the moral of the story is customer acquisition cost needs to go down. Lifetime value needs go up.[00:27:33] Absolutely yes. As two fundamental strategies within your business.[00:27:37] Yeah. Okay. And you just gotta remember which ones which. To avoid disaster.[00:27:45] Head to the website where you'll find the resources that we've mentioned today and we hope to see you again next time.[00:27:52] Yes.[00:27:53] Thank you for joining us. It's been a pleasure. Thank you Emma. You have made this far easier than me trying to do it by myself.[00:27:59] Are you going to make me do every week.[00:28:02] Yes, you've just sold yourself.[00:28:05] Thanks for that. Thanks everyone.[00:28:06] Cheers guys.


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Polaris 180/280 Axle Plate for C65/C66, pn C70
Polaris 180/280 Axle Plate for C65/C66, pn C70 is rated out of 5 by 1.
No.14 Image Shown C-70 Axle Plate For C-65 / C-66 Used On Polaris Cleaner Models 180 and 280. C-70 Can also be found on Polaris 180/280 Parts Pages
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Date published: 2018-05-01
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Madhya Pradesh: The State Department of Medical Education has postponed the counseling for PG seats by a week. The counselling was scheduled to start on April 16.
The order was delivered by the State High Court division bench in Jabalpur of April 12, directing the medical education department for implementing 50 per cent quota for 'in-service candidates'."
All the state medical colleges have been notified on the orders of postponement of counseling till April 20 (for PG seats only).
In the interim, the department has also sought written advise from the MCI on the next step pf action post the orders issued by the High Court. Director of Medical Education, Dr GS Patel has further confirmed the news that the department is seeking directions from MCI regarding the new pattern of seat distribution.
As reported by FPJ, acting Dean of MGM Medical College, Dr Sanjay Dixit said, "Counselling has been postponed on the orders of the department till April 20. It has been postponed on the grounds of the orders given by the High Court on April 12."
He said that they have completed the formalities to organise the counselling according to the chart sent by the department earlier but now will wait for new orders and the seat distribution chart for the process.
The whole idea of granting 50 per cent quota for those eligible candidates is to reward their efforts of having served in the government hospitals (especially in rural areas for a minimum period of three years). These candidates are those who appear in the pre-PG examinations as medical officers also.
The State Health Department is also reported to have released the merit list of 'in-service candidates' along with their sponsor certificates (of 74 candidates).


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We welcome submissions from almost every artistic medium. Please read these guidelines carefully, as any submissions that depart from or go over the limits of the guidelines will not be considered for publication.
The most common mediums are listed here. If you are submitting a multi-media piece, visual art and poetry for example, follow the guidelines for both/all the mediums included in the work.
If the medium of your work is not mentioned here, or if you have any questions about submissions CONTACT US and we'll get back to you with all the answers.
Unrelated works of different mediums must be submitted separately.
Our rate for all publications is AUD$25.
Photography: 1-10 photographs with captions if needed. Images/scans must be of high resolution and overall picture quality. JPG or PNG file format.
Audio and Spoken Word: No longer than 10 minutes, MP3 file format.
Poems: Between 3 and 15 A4 pages of poetry. This can be made up by several short poems or one long poem. Mix and match Size 12 font, indicate where each piece ends. Send as a Word Doc.
Prose: Up to and no more than 2500 words. We do not accept excepts or chapters from longer works, only completed stories. This can be made up by several flash fictions or short stories, or one longer piece. Mix and match. Size 12 font. Send as a Word Doc.
Script: Up to 15 A4 pages. Must be a fully contained scene or short. Monologues and duologues are accepted. Send as a Word Doc.
Visual Art and Illustration: 1-10 artworks with captions if needed. Images/scans of work must be of a high quality. This section includes digital art. JPG or PNG file format.
Comics: Up to ten pages/images. Must be a self contained story, no chapters or excerpts. JPG or PNG file format.
Visual Poetry: Up to 10 images, refer to visual art guidelines.


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This product is 100% borosilicate glass. A heat resistant plate with tight flatness tolerances that will not warp during extended term use. 4mm thickness offers higher durability and will not break when prints are removed.
Fits the Creality CR-10, CR-10S, Tevo Tarantula, D-Bot and any other 3D Printers that use a 300x300 PCB Heated Bed.
Boro glass plate specs:
- Dimensions: 310x310mm
- Thickness: 3.9mm
- Material: 100% borosilicate glass
Package contents:
- (1x) 310x310x4mm Borosilicate Glass Plate


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Remind me of your touch, one last time before you leave
Those late nights we spent listening to those songs you like in my car
I just wanted to hold you in my palm
Like I did that night
I know things wouldn't have changed, because you never even looked my way
through all the disappointment and regret, I still saw you
somehow imperfect and faultless all the same
I still saw you, I wish you could've seen me too
Each day was an eternity, a thousand more when I thought of being without you
It hurt when you were far, and I died when you slept with her
My empty screams filled the space between us that night
and your silence meant a thousand words
My indifference wasn't meant for you
No one knows me the way you do, I never want to cause you pain
I promise, each day I wanted to be closer
I feel better when you're near
and I can see your face
and I can see your eyes
and I can see your mouth
How do I say everything I want to say in less than a page?
In the chaos of my world, I didn't mean to show you my back
But trust me, please, when I say the fast beat of my heart was not intentional
and the loss of breath was never meant to make me faint
Just that the implications of this gravitation pull were too much to handle
So, I turned away, to ignore the burning of my flesh from the torch, that is your hand
and the beat of a thousand drums playing in my chest
and the memory of you over my head
I needed a break, to let myself understand what it was that I'd done, what it was that you'd done
You've changed, and I've changed with you
My love for you is unclear with every passing day I sit wondering what she has that I don't
If she can make your pain go away, tell me why I'm not enough to be your drug
What is it that makes me so different than her?
Despite all this, I can't help but keep my thoughts of you
I can never hate you even when you make it hurt this much
I don't blame you for running away, I just wish you could rest that lovely face of yours on mine
God brought you here so that I could choose you
Leave or take my love, I will be here when you lay low
You weren't mine to lose, yet I lost you all the same
When you leave I hope you know I love you in every possible way
You will remain, always, my dearest friend.


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Tournament officials announced today that the SAS Championship, in partnership with the Triangle Youth Golf Association (TYGA) and Prestonwood Country Club, will host the inaugural SAS Junior Championship on Thursday, August 10th.
The event will be open to 105 junior golfers, both male and female, ages 12 – 18 (as of August 10, 2017). All participants must reside in either Wake County or an adjacent county (including Durham, Chatham, Johnston, Franklin, Granville, Harnett or Nash County).
In addition to the golf tournament, the SAS Junior Championship will feature exclusive programs throughout the day, including breakfast with PGA Tour Champions professionals Mike Goodes and Neal Lancaster, a seminar with current collegiate golf coaches and a VIP gift package. SAS Championship volunteers will assist in the management and operation of the day-long event.
Registration to the SAS Junior Championship for TYGA is now open to at www.tygajuniorgolf.org, with a fee of $50 for members and $65 for non-members. Parents and guests are welcome at each meal, but are asked to pay for their meal. Breakfast is $10 and lunch is $15.
A portion of the registration fees will go to support The First Tee of the Triangle and their mission of impacting the lives of young people through the game of golf.
SAS Junior Championship - Schedule of Events
Thursday, August 10, 2017
7:00 am – 8:00 am Player registration
8:00 am – 9:00 am Breakfast
9:00 am – 9:45 am Range open for warm-up
10:00 am Shotgun start
3:00 pm Awards Luncheon
3:30 pm College Golf Seminar
Parents and guests are welcome at each meal, but are asked to pay for their meal. Breakfast is $10 and lunch is $15.


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Yesterday we did 2 passes and today we had to cross/ford 3 large creeks. The low miles are a testament to the slow pace at which we travel when no trail exists.
Left Rae Lakes and headed for Baxter Creek, which we knew we would have to deal with. Every time you cross a mountain pass you have to go through it's valley. This almost guarantees that you will have to battle the torrential creeks and the trillions of gallons of water from rapid snow melt. The Sierra is soaking wet. Everything is wet or frozen.
Passed a couple beautiful lakes early on and couldn't get across where we needed to. Me and Cowboy wanted to try it but too many in the group were uncomfortable. We decided to cut new trail and try and cross the creek further down the valley. We eventually found a sturdy looking snow bridge and crossed it. A few miles later went below tree line and hit Baxter Creek. We're renaming it Bastard Creek because it didn't give us an easy time. We eventually got across it and my feet were so frozen I thought they would fall off. Damn Bastard.
For the first time it felt like we were actually on the JMT. In the valley it was dry and the trail was exposed. Man it felt good to finally walk on dirt again. We snaked down into the valley and crossed a wood and wire bridge. The exposed mountains in this valley have 400 ft waterfalls coming off the side of cliffs. Feeding them are massive glaciers on the peaks. You can hear a massive waterfall in the distance. Water is loud. I hear it every single moment of the day out here. After the bridge I started ascending up into the new valley that will eventually take us to Pinchot Pass tomorrow. The climb was nice and ran along side the intimidating Woods Creek Waterslide. This Creek is no joke, and it's moving at high speeds. It's insane how much power and thrust it creates. No human would last a second if they fell in. Finally the creek crossed the JMT (PCT) and there is no way to pass it. Too dangerous. We al decided to make camp and cut our day short. Hopefully tomorrow the freeze will slow the river enough that we can safely pass. So me and some of the lazy fucks make camp down the trail and prepare for a 6 hour lazy afternoon before bed. About an hour in Spacejam comes to tell us that Happy Hour, being the crazy bastard he is, climbed up a cliff and found a snow bridge 800 ft above where the trail and river intersect. He got across. Everyone in the group opted to just get across before a nasty cloud that had been stalking us all afternoon decided to rain and potentially weaken the snow bridge. So we completely repacked up camp and got back in the game.
I shimmied up the mountain sliding on loose rock, following Spacejam, and the lazy fucks behind me. We got to the bridge and hesitantly crossed, hoping it wouldn't cave into the raging river below it. It supported us. We did a few more miles towards Pinchot and called it a day. I'm too tired to be writing this right now.


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My sister Laura, my daughter Vera, and I represented the Paddle Project at the Avon 2Day walk this month and gave away 36 paddle pendants. It was great to be back at the walk, this time giving something back to those who may be in the thick of the fight. I was caught off guard by the emotions that came up seeing all the walkers rallying en masse for loved ones, and fighting breast cancer with such positivity, strength and humor. Below are photos of some of the recipients of the paddles.
Keep Paddling!


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The Eight of Coins ~ Gentle Perseverance
Tarot Tuesday! The card for the week is the Eight of Coins, representing: Prudence, perseverance, prosperity and carefulness. The Eight of Coins indicates that your creations are almost at full bloom. Now, like a careful gardener, you must gently nurture them so they can come into fruition. This is a particularly important time in your development, as your creations are still vulnerable to the "elements", and need to be protected and treated with the upmost care.
The Eight of Coins says: Don't force anything. Instead let the natural course of events allow an unfolding that will be experienced at exactly the right time. Pay attention to the parts of your being that need more attention and nourishment, and cultivate a practice of self-care. Be gentle and patient with yourself and your process.
If you are feeling frustrated that things aren't happening more quickly, breathe into your current prosperity, and give it room to take bloom. You're in this for this for the long-haul, so there's no need to rush.
Wishing you a nurturing and prosperous week!


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The 974th DANWAKAI(program)Announcement of the 974th DANWAKAI
(Danwakai: ERI Holds "Danwakai", a monthly meeting where its members present
their most recent academic and technical achievements, on a
Friday of every month. Danwakai is open to the public.)
Date: Friday, 21 September 13:30-
Place: ERI Bldg.2, 5th floor, Conference room1
1. 13:30-13:45
TITLE: Cosmic ray tomography of celestial bodies
AUTHOR: * Akimichi TAKETA and Debanjan BOSE (Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur)
SUMMARY: We present a novel method to measure the chemical composition
of the surface of the celestial bodies using cosmic rays.
2. 13:45-14:00
TITLE: A large scale economic simulator for comprehensive evaluations
of disaster recovery plans
AUTHOR: * Lalith MADDEGEDARA・Amit GILL, Sebastian POLEDNA (IIASA, Austria),
Muneo HORI and Tsuyoshi ICHIMURA
SUMMARY: We present an HPC enhanced agent based economic model,
which can be tightly coupled with high fidelity physics based
earthquake disaster simulators, for comprehensive evaluation
of recovery plans considering long term economic performance of a whole nation.
3. 14:00-14:15
TITLE: Elasto-plastic soil amplification analysis with fast and
scalable three-dimensional finite-element solver
AUTHOR: * Kohei FUJITA・Atsushi YOSHIYUKI (Central Japan Railway Company),
Tsuyoshi ICHIMURA・Muneo HORI and Lalith MADDEGEDARA
SUMMARY: We implemented elasto-plastic constitutive models into a fast
and scalable three-dimensional finite-element solver, and applied it
to soil amplification analysis.