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Joined: 22 Nov 2002
Posts: 17
Location: DALLAS
Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2003 4:56 am
Post subject:
I'm looking for some kind (any kind) of electronic flash for my Speed Graphic. Any suggestions?
Thanks, from a lost and lightless photographer.
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Joined: 18 Oct 2001
Posts: 1467
Location: South of Rochester, NY
Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2003 6:40 am
Post subject:
On 2003-10-29 20:56, moristano wrote:
I'm looking for some kind (any kind) of electronic flash for my Speed Graphic. Any suggestions?
Thanks, from a lost and lightless photographer.
Well, you've got your own answer: "(any kind) of electronic flash". In operation, there is no difference between electronic flashes. One works the same as any other.
Now, to your camera...
Forget the focal plane shutter's body synch. It can _only_ work with flash bulbs, and FP (focal plane) bulbs at that.
Next is the shuuter on your lens. And hopefully you have one? There is your only chance at using an electronic flash. _IF_ it has synch, _AND_ has X synch, you can use vitually any flash. If it doesn't have X-synch, you're out of luck. The older shutters only offered synch for flash bulbs. The only slightly old shutters offer X, M and somtimes FP synch. The newer shutters only offer X synch.
So, the real qustion is what kind of shutter do you have and does it have synch?
If it doesn't, don't lose hope. "Standard" lenses can be had quite inexpensively in shutters with synch. And replacing your lens/shutter would be the only way to get it. Although there are some people who have added synch to the old shutters. It's far too expensive to have done professionally, but possibly something you may be able to do yourself. If you're comfortable taking apart a shutter, modifying it and putting it all back together. For a standard lens, it's easier to lay out a 100 bucks for one with synch...
"Ya just can't have too many GVIIs"
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Joined: 22 Nov 2002
Posts: 17
Location: DALLAS
Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2003 4:20 pm
Post subject:
Many thanks for the info. Using your input, I called the people at Paramount, and they are sending me out a cord to synch my flash to my Speed Graphic.
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Joined: 26 Mar 2002
Posts: 616
Location: Western Kentucky Lakes Area
Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2003 7:40 pm
Post subject:
Hi. FYI, the flash cord doesn't synch the flash to the camera, it merely connects it. Synch, or synchronization, is accomplished by the timing mechanism in a flash-synched shutter. The contacts close, thereby igniting the flash, approx. 5 milliseconds before the shutter is wide open for F lamps...approx 20 ms before shutter wide open for most M lamps...and at the exact moment the shutter is wide open for electronic (strobe) (X) flash. That is assuming the shutter has settings for F, M, and X. If the shutter doesn't have built-in flash synch, synchronization may be accomplished with a solenoid attached to the shutter tripper. Hope this info is helpful as you continue to learn how all this madness works. Fred.
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Joined: 22 Nov 2002
Posts: 17
Location: DALLAS
Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2003 4:45 am
Post subject:
Well, my lens has the M and X settings so I'm hoping the cord will work. We'll find out.
Thanks for the reply.
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Joined: 27 Jun 2002
Posts: 52
Location: NE Maryland
Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2003 12:13 pm
Post subject:
It should. The obvious test is to look through the camera and trigger the shutter. if you see a flash, you're synched. I'm using a Vivitar 285 with mine, on a Stroboframe bracket intended for square MF cameras. It hangs off the left side, and I attach the three cell flash handle on the right side and trigger the shutter with solenoid as being less detrimental to stability than using then body mounted release.
Rob Dean
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Joined: 26 Mar 2002
Posts: 616
Location: Western Kentucky Lakes Area
Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2003 1:14 pm
Post subject:
On 2003-11-01 04:13, rsdean wrote:
It should. The obvious test is to look through the camera and trigger the shutter. if you see a flash, you're synched. I'm using a Vivitar 285 with mine, on a Stroboframe bracket intended for square MF cameras. It hangs off the left side, and I attach the three cell flash handle on the right side and trigger the shutter with solenoid as being less detrimental to stability than using then body mounted release.
Rob Dean
Hi. Run the test with a white card and the aperture wide open. You should see a perfect bright circle when you look through the camera and test the flash. If you see shutter blades that are not wide open, the synch is off. Fred.
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Joined: 29 Nov 2001
Posts: 903
Location: S.W. Wyoming
Posted: Sat Nov 01, 2003 3:58 pm
Post subject:
The question has been answered but here's a long forgotten way to easily sync non synced shutters. It's the Kalart automatic synchronizer which came with certain models of Kalart Speed Flash guns. It's a cable release with a sync switch and a 2 prong (bi-post) plug that fit onto the flash gun. A bi-post to pc cord will fit it. It has settings for instant and delay. The sync time is adjusted by screwing the threaded adjuster in or out until in sync, using the test method described by Fred. When you see no shutter blades, it is in sync. These things show up on that famous auction site from time to time, for about ten bucks.
"Wyoming - Where everybody is somebody else's weirdo"
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Joined: 22 Nov 2002
Posts: 17
Location: DALLAS
Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 4:18 am
Post subject:
Well, I got a cord from Paramount, and loaded up my Polaroid holder with a sheet of film and, first try, got a great B&W picture of the piano in my living room, black and white keys perfectly exposed.
Thanks for all the help.
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Joined: 13 Nov 2003
Posts: 224
Location: Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 8:41 pm
Post subject:
Electronic flash is kilovolts of electricity arcing through a gas filled tube, it's instantaneous.
If I do buy a speed graphic with flash sync 'prongs' on the shutter it's 'M' sync.
However I therefore cannot use my Metz 45CT1.
This doesn't sound good.
Is there any gun around which can take the bulbs Meggaflash make.
Correct me if i'm wrong but the official Graflite guns took only bulbs which are long out of production.
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Joined: 08 Nov 2001
Posts: 103
Location: Southeast US
Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 9:55 pm
Post subject:
The 3 D-Cell Graflex Synchronizer Battery Case #2773 which has a lamp socket for screw-base bulbs such as the GE #11, GE #22, and Sylvania Press 40, and the Graflex 7" Reflector #2747 is what you need for the Meggaflash screw-base bulbs.
The Graflex aluminum handle bulb flashgun is not as popular with the SW people as the older Graflex shiny chrome handle bulb flashgun is, so prices are reasonable for the #2773 and make sure that you get the #2747 7 inch pan reflector and not the #2745 5 inch angled reflector (which is for the smaller bayonet base bulbs.)
As you may already know, the Meggaflash bulbs are the PF200 (high intensity medium peak), PF300 (high intensity slow peak) and the PF330 (long duration flood flash).
Good luck with your project.
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Joined: 13 May 2001
Posts: 302
Location: Midwest
Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 9:56 pm
Post subject:
Some shutters that do not have X sync setting still have X sync. An example is the Flash Supermatic. To get X sync just don't set the flash delay timer. Russ
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Claude Auclair is, I presume, quite unknown outside of the French speaking world; and even there, he is mostly remembered for his reinterpretation of the legend of Ys in Bran Ruz. Those who spent most of their youth in public libraries, as I did, will remember fondly his other masterwork: Simon du Fleuve (Simon of the River in English). Simon du Fleuve is a realistic comic book series in the Franco-Belgian tradition depicting a rather classic, if somewhat idealistic, post-apocalyptic world. It is not without its flaws, but it explores better than others some aspects of the more advanced stages of the coming energy descent.
Simon du Fleuve takes place several decades after the collapse of our society. The reasons for this collapse are not altogether clear, but it seems that peak oil was involved. Anyway, at some point the crisis became so severe that a world state was created. It quickly fractured, however, into a host of military factions based in the main cities. As a result, the world Simon – the main character – lives in is divided into two very distinct parts. The Masters of the Cities, who still have access to technology, hold a few urban centers which they rule with an iron fist, while in the countryside reconstituted tribes live in harmony with nature, or rather would do so but for the occasional raid from the cities or the violent gangs which roam their outskirts.
Of course this setting is Manichean to the point of caricature. We never know, for instance, who leads the Masters of the Cities and what their projects are. They are basically a blind, faceless force of nature, whose only function is to plunder and destroy. The tribes, on the other hand, whether they live off farming, herding or craftsmanship, are peaceful, egalitarian, and relatively prosperous. They never wage war on each other, never compete for land and never oppress their members. There are violent, armed groups, but they belong, like the military factions, to the world of the cities. Like them, they belong to the old order and like them will ultimately succumb to their own violence. This certainly weakens the series as a work of art or a story – nobody likes to be preached at – it, however, tells a lot about our own ideological bias.
The opposition between tyrannical, decadent and ultimately doomed cities and the virtuous countryside is an ancient one. It appears in the Bible with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, probably a memory of the time when the ancestors of the Hebrew herded their sheep in the shadow of the powerful late Bronze Age city-states. In its modern form, however, it dates back from the French Revolution. Before 1789 the city-dwelling aristocracy despised uncouth peasants while somewhat fearing them. Peasants were the revolutionary class then, or at least was thought to be. Their refusal of the old feudal order had fueled the large revolts which had regularly shaken Western Europe from the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the modern age.
The French revolution changed that. It was a very urban affair, led by a new aristocracy of lawyers and traders. The Jacobin government put feudal taxes and duties into the compost bin of history, while proceeding to destroy local institutions the peasantry relied upon for representation. It no longer had anything to gain from another revolution, and the horrors of Jacobin rule were still fresh in its memory. As a result, it became the conservative class, in which the very aristocracy which so much despised it before placed all its hope of ever regaining its former preeminence. All those who, for one reason or another, fought the French Enlightenment developed a mysticism of the countryside, peasants being described as the true people, virtuous, pious and true to their national tradition in opposition to the cosmopolitan and decadent urban crowds. This vision is pervasive, not only in the bitter rantings of the far right writers who gave fascism its intellectual foundation, but also in the works of the Romantics who were so influential in saving the marginalized cultures of Western Europe.
As often happens, this theme shifted from the right to the left during the late sixties, under the influence of both Maoism and Political Ecology – quite a newcomer in French radical politics, by the way. As in America, communes were set up by enthusiastic young people from the cities, and as in America most of them failed. A few localized successes, such as the successful opposition to the building of a military base on the Larzac Plateau helped to create links between the activist and peasant worlds.
Of course, this "back to the land" ideology has little to do with the reality of agrarian societies. Subsistence agriculture is a back-breaking job and the communities based upon it are often oppressive, united by a set of traditions one disregards only at one's own peril. They are not even particularly virtuous. Prostitution was a thriving business during the European Middle Ages and single mothers were not particularly uncommon in rural Brittany, especially at the bottom of the social ladder. Class relationships were often brutal, especially between land owners and landless hand-to-mouth workers.
Hardly the egalitarian utopia described by Simon du Fleuve.
It is true that in the final years of some civilizations, rural areas were politically separated from cities, but this was only temporary and due to the inability of some "barbarian invaders" to storm walled towns. Thus in some outlying parts of the Western Roman Empire, isolated urban centers held out, for a time, while the countryside was overrun by Germanic tribes. Interestingly, this happened mostly in areas where Roman culture did not survive. Having no access to cities, the invaders built their own tribal orders outside their walls. When finally both societies merged, it was on the tribesmen's cultural terms. The same way, when the Nubian kingdom of Makuria, once a major African power, fell during the closing years of the 14th century, its king's power barely extended beyond the walls of their capital Dongola, while the rest of the country was under the control of desert tribes.
This was, however, the result of a very particular kind of collapse, one where invading tribal groups play a major role. It won't be our fate. Except maybe in some remote parts of Sudan, there are no longer any powerful warrior tribes around, and those that remain, in Amazonia or in Papua New Guinea, are likely to be early causalities. What threatens us and might lead us to a much darker version of Simon du Fleuve's world is more insidious.
As the resources available shrink, our societies will tend to reserve them to what they consider "vital functions", very much as a human body plunged into icy water will focus its remaining resources on keeping the vital organs warm, even if this means losing a toe... or a limb. In real life this will mean, and already means in some areas, the quiet abandonment of marginal regions. Roads fall into disrepair; railroad lines are closed; vital public services such as schools or post offices are withdrawn; courts are rationalized away to big urban centers; law enforcement withers due to budget cuts; and welfare, vital to the more marginal population, erodes away.
Slowly the administrative networks which held the national territory together fall apart.
The modern state basically exchanges services such as law and order, defense or welfare against the taxes and the legitimacy it needs to function. When it fails to provide those services or restricts them to an ever smaller minority, it becomes parasitic and no matter how much ideology it feeds its subjects, it will sooner or latter lose its legitimacy. Thus in 378 CE, when Athanaric's Visigoths ran amok in the Balkans (they were not invaders, by the way, but refugees), they were joined by local miners. Those were not barbarian sympathizers, they were just overtaxed by a government which did not really protect them. It was, by the way, for the same reason that so many people became monks or hermits in that time: there were no tax collectors in the desert.
Over time the state will become a foreigner, then an enemy, in the areas it has abandoned and other power centers will grow in the cracks. They certainly won't outgun the state, not until the process of decline is fairly advanced, but by putting themselves in the center of local networks of solidarity and survival they may take over its role in everyday life. In the western world this will happen mostly in urban ghettos, but as the states loses its ability to administrate its territory it will happen in the countryside as well. The result will be that some rural areas will be basically left to their own devices and their impoverished populations forced to self-organize to survive.
If nobody takes over the way the Germanic tribes did during the fifth century, we will end up with something relatively close to Chad or a Taliban-less Afghanistan. The central government will still control cities and economically important areas. It will still be able to project its force anywhere in its territory, but the countryside will be an administrative desert. This, of course, will be a temporary phenomenon. The "focus on the center" strategy works only during a transient crisis. Should the problem prove permanent – and we know it will – the state will slowly shrink away, not a necessarily peaceful process by the way. Elites, whether they be local or global, old or new, will fight to keep their status and as their resource basis dwindles, this fight will become increasingly savage and desperate.
Simon du Fleuve may therefore not be wrong in imagining military regimes entrenched in decaying cities preying on the countryside. Where Auclair is wrong is when he pictures a countryside essentially free from this phenomenon. There are no reasons why even neglected areas could not develop elites of their own, and no reason why those elites should be less oppressive than the city-based ones. Those elites may grow out of local administrators, wealthy landowners or gang leaders, but also former freedom fighters turned warlords or even sustainability activists taking over out of necessity, then growing into the role. No matter their origin, the circumstances and the necessities of post-peak life will push them along the same way followed by the originally relatively democratic, Anglo-Saxon local leaders after the collapse of Roman Britain.
Our problem is to build resilient local institutions, so that they can remain democratic even as the state apparatus erodes away. This is not an easy task, and in many places we will fail, but picturing the countryside as a place of redemption, a kingdom of virtue, opposed to morally bankrupt cities, certainly won't help.

subset: commoncrawl


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Start-up from scratch? How entrepreneurship can generate sustainable development and inclusion in the Sahel
Also available in: Français
In a first for Africa's Sahel region, entrepreneurs from Senegal to Chad assembled in Niamey, Niger, for the SahelInnov Expo last month to showcase their businesses and exchange ideas. From livestock to drones, all sectors were on display as a new generation of entrepreneurs and start-ups emerges with bold and innovative ways to address the challenges facing their countries and communities. Increasingly recognized as a strategic path to economic growth, supporting SMEs and entrepreneurs has a key impact on development and is generating more interest from governments in the Sahel.
Michaëlle Jean, the Secretary General of the International Organisation of La Francophonie, His Excellency Mahamadou Issoufou, the President the Republic of Niger, and Almoktar Allahoury, the CEO of CIPMEN.
Photo Credit: CIPMEN
Hosting the event was Niger SMEs Incubator Center (CIPMEN) whose CEO, Almoktar Allahoury, lauded the initiative. "This is the first time all stakeholders have come together: entrepreneurs, public officials, investors, academia and development partners in one place to discuss the many opportunities and remaining obstacles for the private sector — this is just what we need to take the region to the next level."
Indeed, entrepreneurship could be especially important for this extremely poor region, with half the population living below the poverty line. Burkina Faso and Niger, for example, are among the fastest-growing economies in the world, yet their GDP per capita are just $395 and $652 respectively, compared to the Sub-Saharan African average of $1,647. A vibrant and active entrepreneurial ecosystem would therefore not only boost economic diversification and improve productivity, it also could prove the vital lever to tackling two of the Sahel's biggest challenges: youth unemployment and climate change.
The devastating combination of climate change, mass migration, trafficking and the rise of violent extremism has resulted in recurring humanitarian crises and massive food insecurity, affecting more than 20 million people across the Sahel in 2015. Enduringly high birth rates, furthermore, will require millions of jobs to be created to respond to the needs of a rapidly growing and increasingly young population. Institutional reach remains weak and a state of protracted insecurity has taken root over vast swathes of territory.


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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former star of the History Channel reality TV show "IRT: Deadliest Roads" is due in court in Las Vegas next month to face first degree kidnapping, extortion and coercion charges, a spokeswoman for the Clark County District Attorney's Office said.
Timothy Zickuhr who appeared on season two of the "Ice Road Truckers" spin-off series, was arrested and charged with assaulting a prostitute and forcing her to jump out of his second-story bedroom window to cover up the attack in December, according to a police report released on Monday.
Zickuhr is scheduled to appear in Las Vegas Justice Court for a preliminary hearing in early May. He posted bond late last year and is out of police custody, the spokeswoman said.
Zickuhr's attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The police report said Zickuhr hired the prostitute who goes by the name "Snow White" and allowed her to use his ATM card to get her payment. A day later, he accused the woman, whose real name is Lisa Cadeau, of stealing.
"'Tim' began to punch her in the face with a closed fist and continuously threaten to kill her if she did not get him the money," the police report said.
Zickuhr then tied Cadeau up using backpack straps, dumped cold water on her and locked her inside a closet, the report said. He demanded that she give him the telephone number of someone who could bring the money. Cadeau gave him the number of a Las Vegas police officer.
"Help me he's going to kill me," the police report quoted Cadeau as saying, before she started screaming and the call disconnected.
Growing nervous that neighbors alerted by the screaming would call police, Zickuhr forced Cadeau to jump out the window.
The report said he took Cadeau to the Eureka Casino near the Las Vegas strip, believing he would receive the money. Instead he met two police officers and was arrested.
Cadeau could not be reached for comment on Tuesday and the History Channel declined to comment on the incident.
Editing by Scott Malone and Andre Grenon.


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Cotton prices have settled into a lower, but tighter, trading range, which has decreased volatility and created some marketing opportunities for producers. On the other hand, there is also some concern about weakening fundamentals, according to Ag Market Network analysts discussing USDA's October supply and demand estimates.
In the reports released Oct. 12, USDA increased the U.S. cotton crop by 52,000 bales to 16.6 million bales, "but I think most people were looking for a crop of between 16 million to 16.3 million bales," said O.A. Cleveland, professor emeritus, Mississippi State University, and featured speaker for the monthly conference call.
The higher estimated production came largely from a 180,000-acre increase in harvested acres. Yields were increased only slightly, 2 pounds, from last month. The estimate of U.S. ending stocks increased 500,000 bales, "a rather significant increase, and would suggest that we begin to push prices lower," Cleveland said.
USDA lowered U.S. exports from 12 million bales to 11.5 million bales, another 500,000-bale decline. "The stocks-to-use ratio is still at 25 percent, so that's a number that we're still very comfortable with," Cleveland said. "But USDA also projected that world carryover was going to increase by 3 million bales, from 52 million bales to 55 million bales, which is beginning to get on the high side."
USDA dropped the Chinese cotton crop a half million bales, and dropped its forecast consumption by an equal amount. Worldwide, USDA increased production by 1.2 million bales and lowered consumption by 850,000 bales. Cleveland noted that USDA also released adjusted figures on stocks which bumped world stocks by 900,000 bales.
Cotton future prices dropped on the news, but bounced back in overnight trading, suggesting some resiliency in the market. "The market is sitting right back where it was before the report," Cleveland said. "So it's difficult for me to say it was a bearish report. We have a lot of work to do to understand what all this cash in the world is going to do, where traders have stepped out of both equities and commodities."
Mike Stevens, a cotton analyst based in Mandeville, La., says the U.S. crop estimate may get smaller from here. "Last year, it was November before the USDA cut 600,000 bales from the Texas estimate. That was based on boll size, not boll count. I don't think the Texas numbers are written in indelible ink by any stretch of the imagination. I have heard of some harvesters getting into the irrigated cotton, and it's being abandoned, too.
"There's no doubt that yesterday's report was bearish," Stevens added. "When you look at the world situation, we are flush with cotton."
The move to a lower and narrower trading range began about a month ago, according to Stevens. "The market looked pretty strong, with the moving average and the momentum all pointed higher. We thought we would stay in the $1.15 to $1.25 trading range to the upside and 95 cents on the downside. Then on Sept. 19, it broke below $1.09. It was an absolute killer. It broke well-defined uptrend lines and led to nine straight sessions below a dollar. The amazing thing was that the market continued to hold.
"The last 16 sessions, we've had three weeks with a less than 6-cent range, from 98 cents to $1.04 area. We've built up layers of overhead resistance on the charts from $1.04 to $1.08. The interest really runs out when you get up to $1.04."
The downside has been firm too, notes Stevens. "For whatever reason, the market continues to have good support around a dollar. We get down there and run out of gas on the downside. We're stuck in this real small trading range."
One good thing about the narrow trading range, according to Stevens, "is that it has brought the option volatility down to some very manageable levels. This low volatility should be taken advantage of."
"There is a shopping opportunity with options." said John Robinson, Extension economist at Texas A&M University. "If somebody had cotton to sell, and hasn't put a floor under it, they could. Or they could harvest, contract it, then buy an inexpensive call spread."
Carl Anderson, Extension professor emeritus, Texas A&M University, is still very concerned about weakness in cotton demand. "Economics always wins in the long run, and (lack of demand) is beginning to show in the numbers," he said. "I'm seeing much more polyester blend with the cotton. It really bothers me that we have an export-driven market. If China and Pakistan, India and Brazil have cotton to sell, they're going to sell it. We have a very troublesome market. I'm very concerned about the future of the market once we get a realistic supply and demand picture in line with the speculative side of the market."
Anderson sees cotton prices ranging from 85 cents to $1.05 for this fall. "But when you have a buildup of cotton supplies, you're going to have a low, weak harvest price throughout the year. Look at what happened in 2003 when October shot up based on unexpected Chinese purchases. Prices started out the year in the 65 cent range and ended up at 40 cents."
Cleveland doesn't see a trading range quite that low, but doesn't see much potential to the upside either. "I've stuck with a 93- to 95-cent floor. Getting above $1.06 to $1.08 is a challenge. I don't think it's possible that it will go above $1.15. I'd be stunned if we got above $1.08."
Cleveland noted that the Chinese typically start to rebuild their reserves somewhere around 95 to 98 cents. "So there's fairly good support there, not for consumption, but to store."
Another buoy for cotton prices in 2012 is that for cotton to acquire acreage, the price has to remain competitive with the grains and oilseeds.
Source: http://deltafarmpress.com/cotton/low-volatility-could-provide-cotton-pricing-opportunities


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Listen to Kid Cudi's 'Hunger Games' Song 'The Ruler & the Killer'
'The Hunger Games' soundtrack is proving to be a simultaneously sinister and beautiful affair. The latest cut from the epic film's score is 'The Ruler & the Killer' from Kid Cudi.
Backed by eerie, powerful drums and distortion, Kid Cudi ruminates on the themes and plot lines of the film: survival, even if it means rebelling against your leaders and maybe watching your friends die. 'Lonely Stoner,' this ain't.
Cudi narrates from the point of view of leaders of the Capitol, who, in the film and books, use a lottery to choose children to fight to the death for the entertainment and horror of the masses. The government in 'The Hunger Games' dystopian Panem is 'The Ruler & the Killer': "Keep your mind on the mission / Remember you belong to me / Come on, we should get it going / What I want is specific / You putting on a show for me / The ruler and the killer baby / You don't talk / You don't say nothing / Ok?"
While Taylor Swift also took a literal look at the literature for her latest contribution to the soundtrack, 'Eyes Open,' the forever good girl took the point of view of the protagonists. Cudi took a deeper and much darker look into the sociopathic nature of Panem's rulers (and killers), even at times yelling and inserting maniacal yelps into the song. Cudi raps, "Please pay attention / You know you all belong to me / Come on, we should get it going / Survival of the fittest, hey hey."
While you can easily associate Swift's lyrics with the love story subplots in the movie, Cudi's track is what you hear when you picture kids actually fighting to the death. Adding to the creepy feel? The gongs at the song's end. This is a true soundtrack for a villain!
Listen to Kid Cudi, 'The Ruler & the Killer'


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(Aren't Angels fabulous?!)
Like I said, Brownie lived 4.5 years after his diagnosis. Most of the time, my biggest fear was that he was at, or would get to a point where he wanted to be let go, and that I would miss all the signals, or be in denial about how bad it really was. But there was no missing it once he got really sick. I would bet my heart that you will also know when it is time to let go. Until then, I hope you can be in a place where you can celebrate and enjoy with her every day that she still feels good.
plebayo wrote: Thanks for sharing your story, I am ALWAYS worried I'll hold on too long and be in denial. I mean I know what to look for, I know I don't want her to go so bad off she can't move or eat or something, but I'm also worried I just won't get how bad it is, you know?
All fingers, toes and paws over here are crossed. Wishing the very best of news when the results come in. We know you will feel better and make better decisions once you know what is actually going on.plebayo wrote:Alright, we're home! The people at VDIC were awesome, way, way nice and I felt like Sofie was in excellent hands. They gave her some Valium and she woke up totally quiet, which we've never given it to her so she's usually kind of whimpery when she wakes up.
They gave me two disks, one for me and one for an oncologist if that was my intentions to take her there. I have no clue what the pictures mean, I'll try to get some of the pictures off of the cd, they're kind of scary to look at and I have no clue what means what. They'll fax over a report tomorrow.
Sofie is recovering well from her anesthesia, I guess she had a reaction to the propofol her heart rate/respiration's increased, but heck I'd rather have her breathing too quickly than not breathing at all!
plebayo wrote:They'll fax over a report tomorrow.
I have no idea what I'm looking at in that picture (is her nose at the top, like she's on her belly stretched out?) but I am totally thinking of you guys today and sending lots and lots of good vibes!
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CHICAGO -- It was a tough night for the champions at WrestleMania 22 Sunday night -- only three of five walked out
with their title belts. And the big one who did retain -- John Cena -- didn't keep all his fans.
In the main event at the sold-out Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Ill., WWE champion Cena somehow overcame Triple H to retain his WWE championship, but in the process, making the former 10-time champ tap out. It was a hard-fought, see-saw battle that saw the fans torn over their
allegiances, chanting for each at different times. Youngsters and women in the crowd cheered Cena, while the louder, larger male portion of the fans
booed him.
In the Smackdown main event, Kurt Angle couldn't hold on to his World title, with Rey Mysterio coming out
on top in an emotional roller coaster of a three-way match, where he pinned Randy Orton. The 5-foot-5 Mysterio
dedicated the victory to the memory of his late friend Eddie Guerrero, who died suddenly in November.
Canada's own Trish Stratus lost her Women's title to Mickie James, and judging by the crowd's reaction, Stratus may
have also lost their support as well to the maniacal James.
The hated Texan JBL toppled Edmonton's Chris Benoit for the U.S. championship, holding on to the ropes for an upset
after rolling over while cinched in Benoit's Crippler Crossface move.
The other champions to emerge unscathed were the Raw tag champions, Kane and Big Show, who handled Carlito and
Chris Masters with relative ease in the show's opener.
In the most exciting match of the evening, full of death-defying stunts and hard-hitting action, fan favourite Rob
Van Dam won a six-way ladder match that guaranteed him a world title shot within the next year. Others in the match
were Ric Flair, Shelton Benjamin, Fit Finlay, Matt Hardy and Bobby Lashley.
For the fans of mayhem and violence, there was Edge against Mike Foley in a bloody hardcore match. With no rules to
speak of, the two traded shots with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire, chairs, cookie sheets, thumbtacks, and,
in the end, a flaming table, which Edge speared Foley through for the win.
And for those who plan ahead, WrestleMania 23 was announced for Sunday, April 1, 2007 in Detroit at Ford Field.
EDITOR'S NOTE: We'll have the typical excellent PPV recap from Dale Plummer and Nick Tylwalk on Monday.
Greg Oliver is the Producer of SLAM! Wrestling and is in Chicago for WrestleMania weekend. He can be emailed at email@example.com.


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MRSA Case Reported At Wall School
The Wall Township School District has sent a letter out to parents and employees saying that the Primary School has one identified case of MRSA, which is an anti-biotic-resistant type of staph infection.
According to the letter, obtained through the school district web site, Interim School Superintendent Stephanie Bilenker says they have extra cleaning crews at the building armed with a heavy duty cleaner to kill the bacteria. All exterior and interior surfaces will be thoroughly scrubbed. They started yesterday afternoon and will continue this morning.
In the letter, Bilenker quoted some tips from the Centers for Disease Control on how to prevent the spread of MRSA infections.
1) Keep your hands clean by washing with soap and water
2) Clean after athletic workouts and contact with other players
3) Utilize hand sanitizers when soap and water aren't available
4) Wash your clothes in hot water and dry them in a hot dryer
5) Sanitize athletic equipment after use
6) Keep open wound's well covered
7) Never share or barrow towels, razors, soaps or other personal items
At this point, the school remains open and officials say parents should not worry. They are working on this matter and believe it was an isolated incident.
The last case of MRSA in the district was at the high school in February.


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Stagecrafters Summer Camp
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Excise taxes are special taxes on specific goods or activities—such as gasoline, tobacco or gambling—rather than general tax bases such as income or consumption. Excise taxes are often included in the final price of products and services, and are often hidden to consumers.
Overall, excise taxes account for less than 10 percent of all federal receipts. All 50 states and many local municipalities levy excise taxes of various kinds. Studies show excise taxes are disproportionately borne by low-income taxpayers, making them one of the most regressive components of the U.S. tax system.


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webhamster needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 122 designs submitted by 52 freelance designers.
Logo for exclusive online clothes shop. Logo must look professional, and will be used as an exclusive brand for an online clothing shop. We will sell exclusive Womens wear (A-brands)
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ATLANTA - The fan festival known as WrestleMania Axxess has been through some changes since it first debuted over a decade ago. Once more of a showcase for WWE's stable of outside licensees, it's become bigger, a mostly in-house affair, and yes, more expensive.
Yet it remains the best way for fans to get close to their favorite WWE Superstars, and the large crowds waiting to get into the Georgia World Congress Center this week seemed as eager as ever to take in all of the attractions inside.
This year's event featured many of the staples fans have come to expect. Plenty of memorabilia was on hand, including a display of various title belts, an array of Shawn Michaels' most memorable entrance outfits, and vehicles used and abused on WWE programming -- though not as many as in the Attitude era.
Hands-on activities were also a big part of Axxess. Younger enthusiasts seemed especially fond of the Superstar Entrance station, where people can make videos of themselves recreating the ring entrances of a host of different WWE performers.
The autograph queues were as long as ever, with everyone from Wade Barrett and Justin Gabriel to Natalya attracting a crowd on Friday night. Main eventers like John Cena and Edge required a separate VIP pass to guarantee a signature, but lest there be any doubt whether people would pay extra money on top of the normal $42 ticket price, VIP packages were sold out for all Axxess sessions.
VIP status also enabled fans to stand just a few feet away from the Main Event ring, where the most interactive portions of Axxess took place. Children from the Make-A-Wish Foundation were ringside to see pro skateboarder Rob Dyrdek team with WWE Hall of Famer Rowdy Roddy Piper lock up with Tyson Kidd and Zack Ryder -- a match Dyrdek won by skating down a ramp on the outside and executing a cross body over the ropes.
"Pay your money and buy the pay-per-view so you can see," snarled Cole when asked what his ring attire would look like when he faces Jerry Lawler at WrestleMania. The self-styled "Voice of the WWE" also gave a shout out to a particularly supportive group of fans from Houston, calling them his "Cole Miners" and thanking them for joining the "Cole-alition."
That interview ended with Tony Chimel on the wrong end of a Swagger ankle lock, meaning Matt Striker had to handle the honors when The Miz came out for his Q&A time. The WWE Champion lobbed some verbal grenades over at Cena, who was signing and talking to a TV crew in the VIP area.
"I don't think he can hear you over there," Miz said. "Should he still be taping that interview while all of you are yelling 'Awesome?'"
He also laughed at a question about his toughest match in WWE so far after some of the ringside supporters chanted for Daniel Bryan. Saying there must be some "internet marks" in attendance, Miz stayed in character and stated his long-held view that he made Bryan's career.
There were some taunts for The Rock when Miz said he wasn't going to be live via satellite because he didn't need to be and a standard bad guy bit when he described the expensive suits he wears on TV. But he was a little more heartfelt when asked what he hopes his legacy will be when he wraps up his WWE career.
"The legacy of The Miz is going to be like this: I'm the guy that worked the hardest, that dedicated himself each and every day," Miz said. "When people sit there and say 'Listen, this job's too hard, we're on the road too much,' I'm the guy saying I need more media. I need more outlets. Give me every radio spot that you have, anything there is. You want me at Axxess, I'll be at Axxess each and every day... And you will remember The Miz as the WWE."
Heel champion or not, The Miz had the fans eating up every minute he was in the ring before taking some time out to film a short segment with a correspondent from The Tonight Show. His part in Axxess was done for the night, but the event rolled on, as big a part of WrestleMania weekend as it's ever been.
Nick Tylwalk is in Atlanta all weekend covering his fourth WrestleMania, but he's looking forward to some Ring of Honor and Dragon Gate action too. Follow his Twitter feed @Nick_Tylwalk.


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Friday, February 25, 2011
Holding Still
"Holding Still is a collection of found travel photographs from a woman's estate. Nothing is known about her other than that she was a resident of Vancouver, Canada. After feeling a strong affinity to her aesthetic and photographic sensibilities, I decided to scan her photos and share her images daily." - Jenilee Marigomen
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Open since October 21, 1998. Copyright PowerBasketball 1998-2000. All rights reserved.
Bird Watching: On Playing and Coaching the Game I Love
by Larry Bird and Jackie MacMullan
Chapter 1
On Retirement
On August 18, 1992, I announced my retirement from the Boston Celtics. It was one of the happiest days of my life.
You have to understand how screwed up my back was at that point. I had been playing through back problems for almost ten years, and I just couldn't take it anymore. The pain was relentless. No matter what I didwhether I was standing up, sitting down, lying down, leaning overI couldn't escape it. It had completely taken over my life. There were some days I couldn't even bend over to pick up a basketball, never mind try to shoot one. Some nights, I had to eat dinner sitting on the floor. Even lifting up my son, Conner, hurt so much that I had to stop doing it. When I'm hurting, and not able to play the way I want, I can be a pretty miserable person to be around. I don't know how my wife, Dinah, lasted through that last season of my career, because I was in pain all the time, which meant I was in a bad mood all the time too.
Maybe that's why when I walked up to the podium at my press conference in the Boards and Blades Club at Boston Garden and finally said out loud that it was over, I felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders. I can't tell you what a relief it was not to have to push myself through all that pain anymore.
I can honestly say I hated basketball at that point.
As soon as that press conference was over, me and some of my good friends, including my physical therapist, Dan Dyrek, went out and celebrated. There was nothing to be sad or sentimental about. It was time for me to be done. I had known for months before the actual press conference that I wasn't going to play anymore. When my back started flaring up in training camp, before the start of the 1991-92 season, I knew that was probably it, but I don't think I actually admitted it to anyoneprobably not even to myself, reallyuntil January or February of 1992. I wasn't afraid of life after basketball. It was more a matter of finishing a job. I don't believe in giving up in the middle of anything. But it really wears you out when you are in constant pain. I had what they call a nerve impingement, which meant the L-4 vertebra was sitting twisted and compressed on the L-5 vertebra, and there was a nerve trapped in between the two. It left my spine very unstable. The bone kept pushing itself into the nerves in my back, and it was just terrible. Dan Dyrek would work on it so he could temporarily push the bone off the nerve, but before long I'd be feeling that burning pain shooting down my leg, and I'd be in serious trouble all over again.
By this time Dan had been treating me for almost a decade, and he was really concerned about the permanent damage I might be doing to myself. There were a whole bunch of times we had serious discussions about retirement. We came to a compromise, and worked out a system where we'd make decisions from game to game. Dan would examine me, and if my back was really "hot," or agitated where the disc was, he would tell me I had to sit out. If Dan gave me a thumbs-down, that was the final word for that night. Neither the Celtics nor I questioned himmost of the time. Looking back, it was a ridiculous way to finish my career, but at the time I just put my head down and tried to get through it.
I missed 37 games in my final season. People knew I was hurting, but very few of them had any idea how bad it really was. It got to the point where I was wearing a brace almost all the time except when I was practicing or playing. I even had to wear it to bed. I really hated that brace. It was made of a quarter-inch of fiberglass and went from my chest all the way down to my hips, and it was really uncomfortable. But I knew it was necessary. One thing is for sure: I wasn't going out much at that point. I didn't want anyone to see me in that thing.
The day I finally didn't need that brace anymore, I took it outside and destroyed it.
Even though I knew I was playing my last season, I kept it to myself. The last thing I wanted or needed was a big commotion at every city we went to. I had no interest in a retirement tour. Our team was still pretty competitive at that point and that's all I wanted to concentrate on, getting as deep as we could into the playoffs and, if we caught a break or two, maybe into the Finals. Of course the media was speculating on how much longer I'd play, but I wasn't saying a word.
Well, not publicly anyway. I do remember walking into Dan's office early in 1992 and telling him, "Dan, the back is really bad. Just get me through this season and I'll quit."
Dan said what he had been saying for over a year: "Larry, you should quit right now. Your back is unstable. Every day you go out there, you are risking further damage. It's over. You have to stop playing."
I knew Dan was right, but I couldn't see quitting in the middle of the season. I promised myself I wouldn't do that, because people had bought season tickets that year thinking they were going to see me play. Most of them knew my back was bad and I might miss some games, but they were counting on seeing me at least some of the time, and I didn't want to let them down.
For the rest of the season I lived on anti-inflammatory drugs and wore that stupid brace. Both Dan and the Celtics trainer, Ed Lacerte, did the best they could to hold me together. It seemed we'd be talking every two weeks or so about retiring, but then I'd have a period of ten days or so where I felt okay, and that would be the end of it. Then, like it always did, the pain would come back. Both Dan Dyrek and Ed Lacerte have told me I played that last season in a state of unconsciousness.
The truth is, I should have retired a couple of years earlier, after I had my first back surgery in the summer of 1991. We had played Indiana in the first round of the playoffs that spring, and I was in really bad shape. The burning down my leg was so bad I couldn't feel my toes. I couldn't sit down, I couldn't stand up. I was in shock, really, but how could I stop in the middle of the playoffs? I remember after we lost Game 4 in Market Square Arena, it was about the worst I had ever felt. I wanted so badly to be healthy, because we had to go back to Boston for a deciding Game 5, and there was no way I could let that team beat us, because I didn't want to hear about it all summer from my friends who lived in Indiana.
I went to see Dan, and he started feeling around, and he said, "There's nothing more I can do for you." I left his office thinking, "Boy, this really is it." I got in the car and started driving, but the pain was so intense that I had to stop after about a mile and get out and walk around.
Somehow I managed to play Game 5 at the Garden. A lot of times I would feel lousy heading into the game, but after Dan worked on me a bit, and all my adrenaline got pumping, I could block it out. I knew I'd pay for it later, but that was later. We beat the Pacers in Game 5 and won the series, but not before I banged my head on the parquet floor chasing after a loose ball. I don't remember much of it, to be honest, because when they took me into the locker room I was in a daze. But I do remember one thing: after all I had been through with my back, no lump on the head was going to keep me out of the playoffs. I remember sitting in the locker room with our team doctor, Arnie Scheller, and after my head started clearing a little bit, I said to him, "Do I have a shot? Can I get back in there?" He said, "Hey, you've done enough. That's it for you." So we sit in that training room some more, and I keep hearing the crowd. They're chanting, "Lar-ry! Lar-ry!" I look at Arnie, and I said, "Aw, hell!" and I get up, I run through that tunnel, back onto the court, and the place goes absolutely nuts. Later, when I got hired by the Pacers, Donnie Walsh said he knew I would play. He said he knew I'd come back, and the place would go crazy, and we'd win the game, which is exactly what happened. Even so, we couldn't sustain the momentum. We ended up losing to Detroit in six games in the next round, and a couple months after that I had my first back surgery.
The procedure involved shaving the disc, as well as widening the canal where the nerves that led to my spinal cord sat. I knew the surgery was not going to solve all my problems. In fact, the pain was back within a couple months. Fusion surgery had been an option, but the surgeons warned me that very few professional athletes had ever played again following fusion surgery, and I wasn't interested in being a guinea pig. The truth? I was just trying to buy myself some time.
The same day I had my first surgery, I went out and walked ten miles. My surgeon was very optimistic. He said, "You should come back in January and I'll take another look, but I think you are going to do just fine." Well, Arnie brought the surgeon to one of our first games of the season. This doc knows nothing about basketballhe's an old hockey player. He came in after the game and he said to me, "Larry, the way you play this game, you're not going to last another month. I had no idea you did all this stuff. Hell, you don't spend any time on your feet." He looked kind of worried, but I didn't pay much attention. I was feeling great!
At the time, we were 28-5, and on our way to the best record in the East at the All-Star break. Not very long after that, I was shooting around before the game, and I turned a little funny, and boom! There goes my back. I couldn't believe it. I knew right then that was the end of it. I was in and out the rest of the season.
Once I realized my back was still going to mess me up no matter what, I seriously considered retiring right then and there. Dave Gavitt, who had come to the Celtics in 1990 to run the team, kept talking me out of it. Not too many people can change my thinking when my mind is made up about something, but Dave was different. We hit it off from the first day we met. Dave had a lot of innovative ideas about how to help the team, and I loved talking about basketball with him. You can tell he was a former coachhe had some really good Providence teams back in the seventiesbecause of how he approached people. He understood how a player saw the game, and understood that a team needed to have an identity, and that whatever went on in the locker room, or on the floor, was something that should be shared among each other, like a family.
I was really excited when Gavitt took over as the team's CEO. We needed someone with his basketball expertise making personnel decisions. I was sure he'd be the one that would win us our next championshipuntil my back interfered.
I went into Dave's office about four months after my first back surgery and told him, "Dave, I don't think I can go on like this. I'm not the same player I was. I can't play the way I want to anymore, and I'm thinking I should retire." He put his arm on my shoulder and said, "Larry, I didn't come here to throw you a retirement party. I came here to help you win a championship." He gave me a little pep talk about how special our team was, and how the NBA would probably never see another front line like me, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish again, and then he got into the whole thing about the Celtics tradition and what it meant to the city of Boston, which was why he had given up his job as commissioner of the Big East to take over the Celtics. I'm telling you, Dave was a pretty persuasive guy. He could get you all fired up. I knew he would back me up, whatever I decided, and I guess I didn't want to let him down. Besides, I agreed with him on one thing: we still had a chance to win a championship. As long as we still had a crack at that, it was going to be hardimpossible, reallyfor me to give up playing.
The last championship we won was in 1986. It was a dream season. Everybody played at the top of their gamesme, Robert, Kevin, Dennis Johnson, Danny Aingeand we had a great bench. We also had the two best centers in the league. That was the year Bill Walton played with us, and he was just phenomenal. He is the best passing big man I've ever seen, and I marveled at the things he could do, even though his feet were a mess and he wasn't anywhere near the player he had once been. That didn't matter on our team. Bill did what he could do, and that was more than enough. But what people tend to forget is that one of the big reasons Walton was able to have that kind of success was because of Robert Parish. Robert was an All-Star center, and he started every game, but there were many times when it was Walton, not Parish, who was on the floor in the fourth quarter. On a different team, with a different guy, that could have caused all sorts of problems. Some players get really protective about minutes, or when they are on the court and how much credit they're given, but not Robert. He was a true pro. He really didn't care how much he played, or when, as long as it worked for the team. That's why that year was so great, because it was all about winning. I'm sure there were some days that Robert wished he was out there, but he would never have said so. I'm sure, also, there were times Robert got tired of all the media attention Bill gotand believe me, it was a lot, which I appreciated, because it took some of the spotlight away from mebut in the end, Robert knew his team respected him, and that's all that really mattered.
Those are the kind of things I told my Indiana team when I took the Pacers job. Never mind what the outside world thinkswhat do the guys who are on the court with you, day after day, think? Because they are the ones who know whether or not you've given them everything you have. I used to laugh when I read things in the paper about how important this guy was to our team, or how that guy wasn't helping us. Because many times they had it all wrong. Take Greg Kite. He was a center from Brigham Young who got drafted by the Celtics in 1983, and Bob Ryan, a sportswriter for the Boston Globe, was constantly killing him. He'd say things like, "He's a twelfth man that doesn't belong in the league, this and that," but what people don't understand is that most fans only see the games. They don't see practice. I always thought the practices were so importantI still believe thatto prepare other guys to play. That's why our 1986 team was so successful. We had Walton going against Parish every day. We had Scottie Wedman going against me for a number of years, pushing me every day. To the second unit, those practices were their games, especially to a guy like Kite who didn't play much. He wanted to beat us every day in practice. He never took a day off. He couldn't afford to. He was excellent for our team. He was a smart player, he knew everything we were doing, and he understood exactly what his role was. I wish I could find me a Greg Kite right now for the Pacers.
After that 1986 championship, everything fell apart. Walton stuck around another season, but he was hurt almost all of it, and he retired after playing only ten games in 1987. The Celtics drafted Len Bias that spring, and he died of a cocaine overdose. That was a real shock. I was taking a shower, and my mom came in and told me. I thought it was somebody's idea of a cruel joke. Then Kevin hurt his foot the next season, and by the time we got to the Finals against the Lakers, he was playing on a broken foot. It just seemed like we couldn't catch a break.
Just before the 1988-89 season, both of my heels started really bothering me. This wasn't a new injury. I had always had some pain down there. Dan said it didn't help matters that I never stretched those Achilles tendons. He also said there had been some inflammation in that area for some time. But what took this pain to an unbearable level was that, over time, with repeated trauma to that area, I developed bone mass in both heels. There shouldn't be any bone anywhere near there, and it was embedded in the tendon. I tried to play through it, but it wasn't going to happen, so they decided to do surgery on both heels and take all that bone out. Dan was against the surgery. He thought he could treat me without it, but I wanted the pain to stop. I told him, "Let's just get the stuff out of there and worry about the rest of it later." Originally the doctors said I would miss about three months, but I ended up missing the whole season. I was miserable. It's no fun watching your team struggle while you're sitting there on the bench in street clothes.
When I started my rehab that summer I knew I would never be the same. My legs felt different. The surgery took all the life out of them. I did all the exercises and all the workouts they gave me, but I couldn't move the way I used to. I could still score and rebound and all that, but defensively it really affected me. I didn't have the same lift, or side-to-side movement. It was very, very frustrating, but there wasn't much use in talking about it. I could either play on or give it up, and I figured I had a lot more playing to do.
Of course, that was before I had any real idea of how bad my back would get. I guess I should have known. The doctors had told me I had congenital problems. I was born with a narrower canal than normal where the nerves lead to the spinal cord. Then there are the joints in my back, called the facet joints. They are supposed to be aligned a certain way. The left and right joints should be parallel to each other, but the ones on my right side were at all sorts of different angles. What all of this meant was my disc was going to slowly break down over the course of my life. Dan says I would have had back problems whether I was a professional athlete or not. Just through the wear and tear of every day, my spinal area was deteriorating, and the disc was degenerating. And the worse that disc got, the more excessive motion it caused in my back. That created a wobbly area that had very little stability.
All of that may have been true, but when you are a kid running around playing basketball and baseball and everything else, you don't want to know that stuff. I didn't have any major injuries as a kid growing up, unless you count a broken ankle that I got playing basketball. I had no way of knowing my back was going to give out on me.
My first real back problems cropped up in 1983, when I went home to my house in French Lick for the summer to do some work on my property. One of the first things I wanted to get done was to install some tile around my basketball court, to help with the drainage. I was never much on hiring people to do work I was perfectly capable of doing myself, and this job shouldn't have been a problem. I needed some gravel to seal it, so I got my brother and his friend Eddie to help me spread it. They weren't doing it the way I wanted, so I said the heck with it, and I took that truck full of gravel and did it all myself. It wasn't the best idea I ever had. I woke up the next morning and I said, "Something is wrong." My back was killing me. I couldn't walk around, much less work out, and I was worried. I had only been with the Celtics for four seasons at that point, and we had already won our first championship, but I knew that if we were ever going to win another one I was going to have to be even better than I was the year before.
I didn't want to have to tell the team I was hurt, so I didn't do anything for about two or three weeks, hoping the rest would make it all better. But by then it was July, and I knew I had to get moving with my conditioning and everything for the season, so I called the Celtics team doctor, Tom Silva, and told him what had happened. He told me to put lots of ice on it. I did that for the rest of the summer, but it wasn't helping much.
I remember really suffering through training camp. Doc Silva would alternate with heat and ice, heat and ice, but it wasn't working. I remember after we played Philadelphia in an exhibition game at home, the pain was so bad I went to Silva again and said, "We've got to try something else." He said, "Larry, I don't know what else to tell you." He called in Dr. Robert Leach, who examined me, then recommended I be seen by this physical therapist, Dan Dyrek, who he thought could help me. I agreed to see Dyrek at my house the next day.
He examined me in my living room, with Doc Leach and our trainer, Ray Melchiorre, watching. He was twisting me this way and that way, and digging into certain areas of my back, and everything he did hurt a whole lot. He explained what he was doing as he went along, and I was listening to everything he said, but I kept looking at Ray and Leach, because I knew them, and I wasn't sure what the hell was going on. I was only twenty-six years old, and I didn't like the looks on their faces.
My first impression of Dan was pretty good. At least he wasn't telling me I needed heat and ice, heat and ice, because it was pretty obvious that wasn't going to work. I remember about an hour after they all left, I got up to turn on a light, and they were all standing in my driveway, still talking. I went back and told Dinah, "They're still out there. You know what that means. My back must be pretty screwed up."
Dyrek called me the next morning and explained that there was what he called a real "hot spot" in my back around the disc that he wanted to treat by mobilizing the tissues and tendons around that area. The idea was to manually manipulate that area to restore normal motion and take pressure off the disc. I said, "Let's start today."
That's how my relationship with Dan Dyrek came about. It started out as professional, but he's become one of my close friends. When you spend that much time with somebody, you find out what kind of person they are, and Dan was always a professional. I never worried that he would be talking to anyone about my treatments. And I could tell early on he knew what he was doing. When I first started seeing him, I was getting these major pains in my side that would last for more than ten seconds when I sat down. It was brutal. But after two or three weeks of seeing Dan, that pain gradually started going away. I ended up receiving treatment every other day for two years.
A couple of months after he started helping me, I offered Dan a couple of my tickets to a Celtics game. I knew he'd never ask for anything. I didn't even know if he was a sports fan until I saw his face when I gave him the tickets. He looked so excited, and surprised. I'm not the type to just go out and give my tickets to anyone, but I really appreciated how much Dan was helping me. So I gave him two tickets to each game for the rest of the season. We spent so much time together that our pregame treatments turned into little challenges. Just before it was time to take the court, Dan would ask, "How are you doing?" and I'd say, "I'm feeling like I can score forty-three points tonight." If I actually got to 43 points, we'd have some kind of prearranged signal, like a salute, and I'd turn and give it to him.
It was really important that I could trust Dan not to discuss my injuries. I didn't want the fans and the media to know every little thing that was wrong with me, but even more important, I didn't want the teams we were playing against to know! That's why nobody knew about the neck problems I was having about this same time. But that was nothing compared to my back. My next serious back episode was in the summer before the 1989-90 season, when I went to a fund raiser that the singer Kenny Rogers put on each year. I love Kenny Rogers's music, and I had been doing his charity event for three years or so and it was a lot of fun. He got four pro basketball players, four fishermen, four tennis players, and four golfers, and we all tried to play one another's sports. I was still having some trouble with my back, but Dan had gotten me to the point where I had long stretches of being pain free. I was feeling pretty good about the upcoming season.
We were in the final minutes of this charity basketball game when I went up for a rebound and came down a little sideways. Michael Jordan was going for the ball too, and he landed on my back. Right away I knew I was in trouble. My back started tightening up, and I could feel the pain coming on. The game was almost over, which was a good thing, because I was done. I just kind of stood there until it ended, and then I walked off the court without telling anybody what had just happened. Dinah was there with me, and she got on the phone to Dan and told him we needed to come up to Boston to see him. It was awkward, because the fund-raising people kept asking me to play tennis, but I couldn't, and I really didn't feel like explaining why.
Within a couple of days we were in Dan's office, and I could tell right away the news wasn't good. I had torn additional portions of the disc wall, and my back was really traumatized. I didn't know it then, all the way back in 1989, but that was the beginning of the end. Dan was able to treat me so I got better and was able to play, but I never came all the way back. For the rest of my career I had to rely on Dan to continually treat me and put things back in their proper place. We told the Celtics what had happened. They took it pretty well. The truth was, my back was so unstable, it was going to give way sometime. It wasn't like it was this violent collision; Michael didn't even land on me that hard. I was just at the point where I was an accident waiting to happen.
Nobody ever found out about that charity gameuntil nowwhich was good. There was nothing I hated more than talking about my injuries. It never helped them feel any better, and to me it always sounded like an excuse. Also, I found myself getting kind of superstitious. I remember one time, I had just finished practice at Hellenic College, which is where the Celtics used to hold all their workouts, and I was feeling fantastic. Peter May, a reporter who covered our team for many years, asked me how my back was feeling. I answered him, "Great!" I drove home from practice, lay down to take a nap, and I woke up with that horrible burning pain down my leg again. The next day, I was at the hospital getting injections. That's when I decided, "That's it. I'm not talking about my injuries anymore." I know it was hard for the reporters covering the team, but they got used to it. They knew that if I was cranky, it meant something was hurting. Near the end, that was every day.
It was just a grueling process. Dan would check my back to see if it had lost its alignment, because things were so unstable, the bones were prone to shifting, and that set off all sorts of spasms. But the worst part about it was that my back prevented me from practicing, and without all that time in the gym, my skills were deteriorating. I loved to practice, and I needed to practice, and my game really suffered when I didn't.
That played a part in my decision to retire too.
My last game at Boston Garden was on May 15, 1992. We had beaten the Pacers 3-0 in the opening round of the playoffs and had Cleveland next. The Cavs were a good team, and had us down 3-2 heading into Game 6. It wasn't a memorable performance for me. I remember feeling a little off balance all night. My shot didn't feel the way I wanted it to feel, and everything was a little out of sync. But Reggie Lewis hit some foul shots at the end, and we won to tie the series 3-3. I wasn't thinking it was the last time I'd play in the Garden, because I truly believed we were going to beat Cleveland and come back home for the next round. But that didn't happen. The Cavaliers beat us at their place,and thenboom!all of a sudden the season was over, and so was my career with the Celtics...
I hadn't told any of my teammates I was done, so there weren't any hugs or handshakes or anything like that. I'm sure some guys suspected, but nobody said anything. I just grabbed the game ball, stuffed it in my bag, and went home.
The official announcement didn't come for about another three months, because I had to play for the United States in the Olympics in Barcelona. When we decided it was time to let everyone know I was retiring, we called up everyone that morning and told them. I didn't want it to get leaked out ahead of time and have people camping out in front of the house. Better to get it over with all at once. Dinah decided to go back to Indiana. There was something going on in French Lick, and I think she really didn't want to be around to see it end. I remember she called me the night after the press conference and said she was getting her hair done at the beauty shop when the announcement came on over the radio. She said it got her all teary-eyed and everything. It was a big change for both of us. We had gone through all this pain and sweat, and now all of a sudden it was going to be over.
There were a lot of reporters at the press conference, even though we hadn't given them much advance notice. They wanted to know how I had spent the previous night preparing for the announcement. I told them I sat in my house in Brookline by myself, and watched old tapes of myself and cried. But that was crap, of course. I don't know why I said it. It just came out, and it sounded good. I remember I did sit home and I started thinking about it, and said to myself, "My God, this is really over. I'm really out of here." Then I started thinking back to when I first got there, and how I went in and saw the house that I really liked, and how much fun we had in that house, and then I started going through in my mind everything that happened during those thirteen years. More than anything, I was so thankful to have played in one place my entire career. That's something I believe is truly special, and I'm so glad it was with the Boston Celtics. I used to tell people, if you haven't played for the Boston Celtics, you haven't played professional basketball. I suppose that's a little bit of bull too, but it felt that way to me. I never tried to imagine wearing another uniform, because I couldn't have. I would have retired first.
Some of my friends think it's too bad the fans didn't know which one was my final game, because they didn't get to say goodbye, but they did. The Celtics held a retirement night for me, and it was one of the greatest things I've ever experienced. It was Dave Gavitt's idea. At first I didn't want any part of it. The way the Celtics usually retire jerseys is at halftime of a game, but Dave said it would be almost impossible to get the ceremony done in such a short time, and it would be disruptive to the game. His idea was to sell tickets to a Larry Bird Night, and donate all the proceeds to charity. The way he envisioned it was to have me onstage, in uniform, and have various people who were important throughout my career come up and talk with me. He also wanted to fly in Magic Johnson from L.A. to be there, which I thought was a great idea, because the two of us were so closely connected throughout our careers. Dave thought Magic should be in his Lakers warmups, and I should be in my Celtics warmups. I fought him a little on that, but I finally gave in. Dave also thought I should take one last shot, but there was no way I'd agree to that. I told him, "Dave, I've already taken all the shots I'm going to take."
Anyhow, once I said yes to this Larry Bird Night, I got concerned about it. Who would come? There wasn't any game being played. But once it was announced, it sold out in a matter of minutes. Everyone got pretty excited about it. Mark Lev, who worked in the marketing department for Boston, came up with the idea of selling 1,033 limited edition Leroy Neiman prints, signed by both Neiman and me, for $1,033 each, with that money going to charity as well. (The additional 33 was for my uniform number.)
The night itself is one I'll never forget. I still can't get over all those people showing up, just to cheer for me. When they cheer for you in a game, you never know if it's because of the play the whole team just made, or because they love the Celtics, or what. But that night, I really appreciated their applause. Bob Costas, who agreed to fly in and be the emcee at no charge, was great. Magic was his usual charming self. My mom made a rare appearance in Boston to attend, and my son, Conner, who was just a baby, helped me raise my number to the rafters.
We raised over $1 million for thirty-three different charities. We gave money to everyone from Celtics Wives Save Lives (to benefit breast cancer research) to Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children. It wasn't easy choosing where the money should go, because there were so many worthy causes. I remember that at the time, Conner loved the show Barney, so I asked that we give something to the public television station that aired it. I wanted to make a donation to the Colonel Daniel Marr Boys and Girls Club, because I had seen for myself all the good they had done, and I wanted to make sure we gave a new van to a homeless shelter in town called Rosie's Place. Some of the donations involved personal connections too. We gave money to an Alzheimer's foundation named after M. L. Carr's father, who died of the disease, as well as to the Red Auerbach Youth Foundation. I also wanted New England Baptist Hospital, whose staff had taken care of me all those years, to receive a donation.
People ask me all the time if I regret playing through all that pain, and if I would do it over again, knowing what I know now. When I list all of the things that went wrong with my body, it sounds like I'm whining about my injuries, and I hate that. That's why you didn't hear me talking about them when I was playing. It was the last thing I wanted to talk about.
I will say this: I should have retired after my first back surgery. I wish I had. But the mentality of our team was to play through anything, to do whatever it takes, and most of us did that. Like when Kevin had that broken foot. We knew it was bad, and if he had decided he couldn't play, we would have lived with it. We would have understood. But the truth is, we all knew Kevin wasn't going to sit, because he knew we had a chance at a championship that season, and those chances don't come too often. I'm sure McHale has some regrets. We lost to the Lakers in the Finals in 1987, and from what I understand, all these years later that foot still gives Kevin some trouble. You hate to hear that.
I think one of the problems with our league today is that guys will sit out more now if they're injured because they don't want to ruin their reputation of being a great player, and it's hard to perform at your top level when you're injured. The other thing is that guys whose contracts are up figure they stand to make a lot of money, so why push it if you don't have to? Then there's the agents. These young kids are letting other people make their decisions for them, and that's too bad. A kid like Marcus Camby, he's got all this talent, but he's hurt so much it doesn't matter. You feel like telling him that if he tries to play through some of the nagging injuries he might actually feel better. I played some of my best games when I had a muscle pull or I was sick. You come in that night figuring you can't feel any worse, and when you finally get out there and run around a little bit, you tend to forget about what was bothering you.
One thing I've tried to understand as a coach, though, is that everyone handles pain differently. Some people know how to play through it. Others just can't. You have to be realistic. I like to see guys play through twisted ankles, stuff like that. When it gets to more serious injuries, though, only you can decide how far you want to push yourself. My whole thing is, if you don't think you can play, then don't. And if you can, then go out there and do it, but don't spend a whole lot of time talking about it. Nobody else knows your pain threshold but you. Sometimes I'd complain privately to Dan Dyrek and say, "Why isn't this guy playing tonight? We could use him." But Dan would always tell me, "Larry, you have an unbelievably high threshold of pain. You can't expect other people to have that same threshold, because they don't. It's not fair to question how much people are willing or able to put themselves through. That's just not fair." I've tried to remember that in dealing with my own players.
So was all that suffering worth it? When you look around Boston Garden and see 15,000 people there, then it's worth every minute. I loved looking around and seeing every seat filled. That's a special feeling I'll never forget.
There are some other things I would rather forget. A few years after I retired, I was in Boston with a friend of mine who was having back trouble, and I called up Dan Dyrek and asked him if he could take a look at him. Dan's offices were in a new place, but even so, the minute I walked in there and started remembering all the pain I had gone through, I felt sick. Dan looked at me and said, "Larry, you look pale. Are you all right?" I took one look around and answered, "As long as I never have to come back here, I'll be fine."
© 1999 by Larry Bird
Excerpt posted with permission from http://www.twbookmark.com
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India aiming to avert slide
Match factsJanuary 11, 2013
Start time 1200 (0630 GMT)
Big PictureThere seems to be no bottom to the abyss India are hurtling into. It seems like only yesterday when they had to just turn up, and a home series, Test or ODI, was theirs. Now they have lost a series in each format in succession, to England and Pakistan. It also seems like only yesterday when India whitewashed England 5-0 in successive home bilateral ODI series. If you are gullible enough to bet on a similar result in this five-match ODI series, you might as well wager on a flood in water-scarce Saurashtra in January.
It is supposedly a side in transition but, apart from Ajinkya Rahane, all the batsmen in India's ODI squad have been around for years now. The same cannot be said of their bowling attack, but that has more to do with the continuing injury sagas of their fast bowlers than anything else. And it was the batting that let India down in all three ODIs against Pakistan.
By no means can you call England's pace attack for this series experienced, but they don't lack in either skill or speed. For an India line-up that was exposed by Mohammad Irfan and Junaid Khan, with a collective 15 ODIs between them going into the series last month, England's pace battery led by the impressive Steven Finn will pose an equal, if not a bigger, challenge.
The visitors are looking forward to building towards the Champions Trophy at home later this year and ultimately the World Cup in 2015 but, before that, they have their woeful record in their previous three ODI series in India to correct. One win in 16 games does no self-respecting modern side justice, especially one of England's calibre and meticulous planning. Their new limited-overs coach Ashley Giles had no insignificant role to play when England drew an ODI series here in 2002 and, despite defeats in their two warm-up games this time, he'll sorely want to improve on that finish from a decade ago.
Form guide(Most recent first)
India WLLWW
England LWWLW
In the spotlightWith Virender Sehwag dropped, Ajinkya Rahane should get to open the India innings along with Gautam Gambhir. The amount of time Rahane's spent on the bench can be gauged from his solitary ODI appearance in all of 2012. Even that came as an afterthought in Sri Lanka after the series had been won. Still, England are a side Rahane must be pretty familiar with. They were the opposition in the first 10 of his 13 ODIs and he's already played a few eye-catching knocks against them, including a 91 in late 2011 in Mohali.
Steven Finn began and ended the Test leg of the ongoing tour with injuries but his lone outing in Kolkata was enough to serve another reminder of his talent, and the unique combination of pace and bounce his gangling frame brings. India have long suffered at the hands of those attributes and, if Finn manages to stay clear of another breakdown, will be put to the test again.
Team newsHe may have made a double- and a triple-century in his previous two Ranji Trophy games, but it is unlikely that Cheteshwar Pujara will make his ODI debut in front of his hometown fans in Rajkot. Transition or not, the batting line-up looks far too settled at the moment. With the new ODI rules making it tough to manage with just four frontline bowlers, India could stick to the side that won the final one-dayer against Pakistan.
India (possible) 1 Gautam Gambhir, 2 Ajinkya Rahane, 3 Virat Kohli, 4 Yuvraj Singh, 5 Suresh Raina, 6 MS Dhoni (capt & wk), 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 R Ashwin, 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10 Ishant Sharma, 11 Shami Ahmed.
With James Tredwell and Finn likely to be the frontline spin and pace choices, England have a couple of fast-bowling places to fill. Jade Dernbach, with his variations, is an important option in India, while Stuart Meaker's extra speed could push him in front of Chris Woakes.
England (possible) 1 Alastair Cook (capt), 2 Ian Bell, 3 Kevin Pietersen, 4 Eoin Morgan, 5 Samit Patel, 6 Craig Kieswetter (wk), 7 Tim Bresnan, 8 James Tredwell, 9 Stuart Meaker, 10 Jade Dernbach, 11 Steven Finn.
Pitch and conditionsThe Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Khandheri, outside Rajkot, is making its international debut. The city has hosted 11 ODIs at the Madhavrao Scindia ground owned by the municipal corporation. The grounds may be different but if it is Rajkot, indications point to bucket-loads of runs. The Challenger Trophy, India's premier domestic one-day competition, produced five totals of 300-plus in four games at the SCA stadium in late 2012. The most recent fixture here was the Ranji Trophy match between Saurashtra and Madhya Pradesh, a match the hosts needed to win to make the knockouts. Accordingly, a dry, slow, and low pitch was prepared, but don't expect anything of the sort for an ODI.
Winter in Rajkot isn't as unforgiving as it is in north India. Evenings are cool and pleasant, while it gets warm during the day. Nights can turn slightly chilly, but with a noon start, we won't get that far.
Stats and trivia
- The only time England have beaten India in an ODI series in India was back in 1984-85.
- The Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium on the outskirts of Rajkot will become India's 41st ODI venue.
Quotes"We'll have to wait and watch. It's not something that's on my mind right now, before the start of an important series. We can't be thinking about that now."
MS Dhoni on giving up the limited-overs captaincy
"Clearly we are the underdogs in this series but, if you look through our side, we have a lot of firepower and world-class players."
Alastair Cook believes his inexperienced side could cause a surprise
Abhishek Purohit is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo


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text: Debian perfect server installation with ISPCFG3 and 2 IPs. I added the second IP to my server as advised by Falko in another thread, then I started getting these warnings in my mail logs. To fix them, I added a reverse DNS entry for the second IP and thought I got rid of them but every now and then, these warnings still appear in my logs. 18.104.22.168: address not listed for hostname h1870666.stratoserver.net My primary IP for this server is: 126.96.36.199 Anything I forgot besides the reverse DNS? I also added the second IP to /etc/hosts like this but I am unsure if this is right: cat /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 localhost 188.8.131.52 h1870666.stratoserver.net h1870666 22.214.171.124 h1870666.stratoserver.net h1870666


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BRC-This two-wheeled motorcycle training course is for novice riders and those with limited riding experience, as well as riders who haven't ridden for a few years. The course teaches the basic skills needed to operate a two-wheeled motorcycle in traffic. Training includes a minimum five hours of classroom activities and 10 hours of riding exercises.
This course requires successful completion of a three hour on-line Basic eCourse prior to attending. The Basic eCourse must be completed within 30-days of the start date of the course you attend. The Basic eCourse is included as part of course fee.
Enrollment Requirements: Student must be at least 16 years of age and hold a valid Vermont driver's license. If the student is under 18 years of age a parent or guardian must sign the course waiver form at the start of the course. Student must be able to balance a two-wheeled vehicle, such as a bicycle.
Riding Gear Requirements: DOT compliant 3/4 or full-face helmet, if you do not have a helmet the program will have one available for you to use during the course; sturdy over the ankle footwear; long sturdy pants; long sleeved shirt or jacket; sturdy full-fingered gloves; protective eyewear.
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