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Monday, Wednesday, Thursday
8:30 a.m. to 4:30 pm
8:30 a.m. to 7:00 pm
8:30 a.m. to 12:00 pm
Snow and Ice
Wood Stoves
Fax: 860-342-6787
The Building Department is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the CT State Building Code* as it relates to new building construction, renovations, alterations, remodeling and demolition of structures. Starting with planning and design to plan review and approvals followed by various inspections through the many aspects of construction, including the testing of building systems to the issuance of certificates of occupancy.
The Building Official performs his duties to accommodate the requirements of CT State Statutes mandating that all Towns adopt and administer the CT State Building Code. Structures must be built to minimally protect the occupants and ensure a predetermined life expectancy of the building and to maintain sound investments for owners, investors and thereby the community. The CT State Building Code encompasses life safety first in order to minimize the loss of life during emergency situations and to protect the property during extreme weather events.
Building construction is one of the nation's major economic indicators and very frequently, a homeowners or a businesses most significant lifetime investment. It can be a very stressful time. Prior to finalizing your plans we strongly encourage everyone and their respective Design Professionals to visit with the Land Use and Building Department, to pre-review your project in order to evaluate how the applicable codes and regulations may impact the proposal.
As a regulatory authority with a focus on public service, the Building Department staff will work with you and your proposed construction project to ensure the success of your project. We regularly coordinate and meet with all pertinent town departments in order to comprehensively assist you through the complicated and sometimes confusing, regulatory process.
The Building Official is also responsible for receiving complaints and issuing initial enforcement action for the recently adopted Blight Ordinance. The Town of Portland has the responsibility of looking out for and overseeing the town as a whole, and part of that responsibility is to protect the financial and personal investments that we all make in our homes and businesses. Primarily a visually based regulation it requires that the collection and accumulation of non-usable items, vehicles or construction debris, are stored in an appropriate enclosure or removed from view of adjacent properties. The ordinance also gives the Town the ability to issue citations for non-compliance.
2013 Amendment to the 2005 State Building Code


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Three major American health groups Tuesday announced a joint campaign to publicize new and stronger warning labels scheduled to appear on cigarette packages and advertisements beginning Oct. 12.
The campaign by the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association and American Lung Association will consist of television, radio and magazine public service announcements and a poster featuring the "disease-specific" labels.
"The tobacco industry spends $2.7 billion a year in advertising. For this reason, our three agencies have pooled our resources . . . to reinforce the messages on the new warning labels," said Walter Hatcher, president of the American Lung Association.
"We believe this health information is urgently needed by the 54 million Americans who still smoke and especially by the young teen-agers who may be considering taking up smoking," Hatcher told a news conference attended by U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
Koop called the ad campaign a "marvelous cooperative effort," adding, "Tobacco is one of the most destructive substances in our environment." But Walker Merryman -- vice president of the Tobacco Institute, the trade association of cigarette manufacturers -- termed the effort "more squandering of tax and tax-exempt money to tell the public what they have already heard endlessly."

subset: commoncrawl


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OCLC Research Senior Program Officer Merrilee Proffitt was inducted as a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists during a ceremony today at the Joint Annual Meeting of the Council of State Archivists, the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators, and SAA in Washington, D.C. The distinction of Fellow is the highest honor bestowed on individuals by SAA and is awarded for outstanding contributions to the archives profession.
Merrilee graduated with a bachelor's degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley. While pursing that degree, she discovered her passion for archives working as the office manager for the Regional Oral History Office (ROHO) at the Bancroft Library at Berkeley.
Throughout her career, Merrilee has embraced leadership roles in significant archiving projects. While serving in positions of increasing responsibility leading up to director of digital archive development at the Bancroft Library, she was a key project team member for a number of the library's pioneering digital projects, including the California Heritage Collection, an online archive of more than 30,000 images illustrating California's history and culture, and the Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives, which provides documentation of the experience of Japanese Americans in World War II internment camps.
In 2004, while working at the Research Libraries Group (RLG), Merrilee was part of a team that authored the RLG Best Practice Guidelines for Encoded Archival Description, a guide that went on to receive the 2004 C.F.W. Coker Award from SAA.
In her current role with OCLC Research, Merrilee leads an initiative that seeks new collaborative methods that will allow the unique materials found in libraries, archives, and museums to be effectively described, properly disclosed, successfully discovered, and appropriately delivered. In the process of shaping and executing this work, she has authored papers on the scholarly and teaching impact of digitizing collections, and organized events that help shape a new professional point of view.
Merrilee is one of five new Fellows named in 2014. There are currently 179 Fellows of the Society of American Archivists.
See the OCLC news release for more information.
For more information:
Merrilee Proffitt
Senior Program Officer
OCLC Research
Melissa Renspie
Senior Communications Officer
OCLC Research


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Popping in on the weekend to share this lovely documented home as well as two fabulous artists. Watch!
happy sunday,
happy sunday,
A recovering coffee addict living in the southwest sharing slices of style with the world. You may see adventures, beauty, décor, design, fashion, or anything fun that sparks my interest. The goal here is to inspire you in one way or another or put a smile on your face. Thank you for visiting, I adore you.


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Friend's Email:
Subject: I have found a DVD that I think you would enjoy
|Inuyasha - Brothers in Arms
Vol. 27
Actor: *
Genres: Action & Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Television, Mystery & Suspense, Anime & Manga, Animation
UR 2005 1hr 15min
Jaken plots to steal the Tetsusaiga from Inuyasha, but ends up getting kidnapped by Naraku?s incarnation, Kagura. Meanwhile, Sesshomaru grows tired of Naraku?s games and plans to destroy him once and for all. When Inuyasha... more »
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Sesho | Pasadena, TX USA | 01/15/2006
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Rin and Jaken are like two peas in a pod when it comes to serving Sesshomaru, in that they do very little in terms of actually serving him. Rin doesn't really care about this fact. She's pretty much taken to Inuyasha's older brother as a protective father figure to make up for her murdered family. Jaken, we learn in this volume, owes his life to Sesshomaru and has been trying all these decades to pay him back. He comes upon the brillant but ill-conceived plan of stealing Inuyasha's sword Tetsusaiga, single-handedly, in what turns out to be a very comedic episode. The last two episodes concern the abduction of Rin by Naraku, who plans to lure Sesshomaru into a trap in order to absorb his power. But in order to lead him into the snare he also reveals his location to Inuyasha.
Volume 27 is another excellent addition to one of my favorite series. Sesshomaru is becoming even more of a likable character as he takes on Naraku for Rin's sake. Yes, to save the life of a human, who Sesshomaru sees as less than worms. Even Jaken is starting to develop a soft spot for her in his slimy little demon heart! It was nice to see most of the main characters coming together and meeting. The only complaint I have at this point is that I wish they would hurry up and kill Naraku. I feel as though that storyline has been dragged on too long and is suffering from the "I'll get you next time Spider-Man" syndrome, in which the main villain always escapes at the end. But I'll forgive the show for that annoying cliche for now, because I sense that it will eventually be dealt with.
The usual skimpy extras are here, Sketches, Japanese promos, and trailers for the English versions of the first two Inuyasha movies."


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Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, the forthcoming DS game from the makers of the Phoenix Wright series, is getting the demo treatment and in a neat twist it's available for everyone to play.
Nintendo's official UK site is currently hosting a Flash-based demo that faithfully mimics the opening puzzles of Ghost Trick – bringing the same experience that's been wowing us at game shows over the last 12 months.
A 'creative, stylish and highly entertaining puzzle game' (not our words but those of Ryan Clements, who was impressed when he saw the game back in July), Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective sees the eccentric nature of the Phoenix Wright world carried over into a visually arresting adventure.
It's due for release in January in the US, while release dates for other territories are yet to be confirmed.


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Teen Vogue - May 2013
Heartthrob Justin Bieber is the cover model for this May's Teen Vogue. Inside we have Georgia Becker wearing We Love Colors socks paired with bright yellow loafers. The contrast of the two colors looks amazing together! Georgia is currently an aspiring fashion designer.
Thanks Teen Vogue!
Thanks Teen Vogue!


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Drywall, also known as sheetrock or gypsum board, is found in many homes. Homeowners and installed nail or screw drywall to the wood framing, known as the wall studs. Drywall hides plumbing pipes, electrical cables and wires, air conditioning and heating duct work and encloses insulation safely behind the wall. After hanging drywall, homeowners can paint, texture or hang wallpaper to decorate the room. Kids roughhousing, an accidental impact or a misplaced hammer can all lead to a hole in the drywall. Repairs to pipes or electrical cables or wires oftentimes require cutting a hole in the drywall. As a house settles, you may see cracking along the seams where the drywall panels abut to each other. All of these scenarios require a repair to return the room to an undamaged condition.
Preparing Drywall for Repairs
Carefully trim the ragged edges of the paper around it with a utility knife. Whether or not the hole is large from a hockey puck penetrating the drywall or a nail from hanging a picture, never rip the paper away from the edges of it. Peeling the paper covering will expose the gypsum core and weaken the drywall.
Wrap 220-grit sandpaper around a sanding block and sand the rough surface surrounding it until it is smooth. If you don't have a sanding block, wrap the sandpaper around a piece of wood that fits in your hand. The use of a sanding block gives you a flat, even finished surface. If you sand by hand without a sanding block you are likely to create depressions in the wall because the pressure on the sandpaper will probably be unequal.
If you are preparing to repair cracked seams or bubble drywall tape, sand the seams until they are smooth, which may involve sanding away the tape.
Repairing a Small Hole
If you are making a small repair, use a pre-mixed drywall joint compound, also known by professionals as mud.
Scoop up the mud on a flexible plastic putty knife and press the mud into it or crack in the wall. Hold the putty knife at a low angle to the wall and drag it across the damaged area. Wipe the excess mud off the putty knife and pull the knife across it to remove excess joint compound. Let the mud dry for about an hour or two.
Examine the repair and run your fingertips across it to feel for a depression. Sometimes drywall joint compound will shrink as it dries, this is normal depending on the type of mud you used to fill it. You may even see the mud doesn't fit tightly into the hole.
Wrap 220-grit sandpaper around a sanding block and lightly sand the area, knocking down high spots and sharp edges. Wipe the wall with a rag to remove the sanding dust.
Scoop up some more mud on the putty knife, hold the putty knife at a low angle to the wall and drag it across the hole to distribute joint compound over the hole a second time. Let the mud dry for one to two hours. You should not see any further shrinkage at this point.
Wrap 220-grit sandpaper around your sanding block and sand off all excess joint compound until the repaired area is smooth and even with the surrounding wall.
Wipe the sanding dust off the wall with a rag or vacuum the wall.
Repairing Large Holes
Large holes are those that are bigger than about 3 inches wide and 3 inches tall.
Use a drywall saw to cut the edges of the hole so you form a square or rectangle with smooth edges. This may cause you to enlarge the hole which is what you should do. Only make the hole bigger if it is absolutely necessary to square off the hole.
Measure the size of the hole after you have squared off the edges. Cut a new piece of drywall from a panel to the exact measurements as the size of the hole if the hole straddles a wall stud. If the hole does not expose a wall stud, cut thin slats of wood 2 inches wider than the hole in the wall.
Test fit the drywall patch, it should fit the hole snugly. If there is a gap greater than 1/8 inch between the existing wall and the patch, cut a new patch.
If your hole does not straddle a stud, apply a large dot of construction adhesive to each end of the wood slat. Put the end of the slat through the wall and maneuver the other end through the wall. With the adhesive side facing the back of the wall pull the slat toward yourself to affix it to the inside of the drywall. Hold the slat in place until the adhesive sets, which takes about three to five minutes. Keep adding slats until you can't fit anymore slats.
If you hole straddles a stud, put you patch in place and sink drywall screws through the patch into the wall studs.
Pour powdered drywall joint compound mix into a large bucket and add water according to the manufacturer's directions. Install a paddle mixer onto a power drill. Submerge the paddle mixer into the bucket, turn the power on and blend the ingredients until it forms a paste.
Scoop up drywall compound on a putty knife, hold the putty knife at a low angle to the wall and drag it across the repair to fill the gap between the patch and the existing wall. If you are filling in a hole from a slat repair, fill the hole ½ inch at a time and allowing the mud to dry for at least one hour in between layers of mud. Continue to fill the hole until the mud sits slightly higher than the existing wall.
After the joint compound it set and dry, wrap 220-grit sandpaper around the sanding block and sand the repair smooth and even. Wipe the wall with a rag to remove the sanding dust.
Run your fingers across the repair to feel for divots and depressions. Look at the repair to see if the mud shrunk. Add another layer of mud to the repair to fill in cracks, shrinkage or depressions. Let it dry for one to two hours. Sand the surface with 220-grit sandpaper wrapped around a sanding block. Wipe the wall or vacuum it to remove the sanding dust.
Hiding the Repair
Apply a coat of interior-grade primer over the patch with a paint roller or paintbrush. Let the primer dry for two to four hours.
Apply a very light coat of the same color paint as the rest of your wall with a paintbrush or paint roller. If you don't have the same color, you will have to repaint the entire wall or room. Let the paint dry for two to four hours. Paint a second light coat of paint over the first. Feather the edges of the second coat 2 to 3 inches past the edges of the repair to blend it into the wall cover.


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Hotels in Ile aux Nattes, Madagascar
Search & Compare Ile aux Nattes Hotels
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Best hotels in Ile aux Nattes
Ile aux Nattes overviewIf you're looking for a new favorite getaway, look no further than Ile aux Nattes. Though Ile aux Nattes might not have many well-known attractions, you don't need to venture far to visit Ile Ste Marie Beach and Ile Aux Forbans.
Where to stay in Ile aux NattesWhether traveling for business or leisure, Ile aux Nattes can comfortably accommodate you. There are Ile aux Nattes accommodations with discounts of up to 30%. Our room prices start at 28 USD per night and here you'll find a breakdown of hotels by star rating in Ile aux Nattes as well as in the surrounding area:
- • 3 4-star hotels from 98 USD per night
- • 6 3-star hotels from 28 USD per night
What to see around Ile aux NattesHere are some recommended places to see in the surrounding area:
- • Ile Ste Marie Beach (4.9 mi/7.8 km from the city center)
- • Ile Aux Forbans (7.9 mi/12.7 km from the city center)
When to visit Ile aux NattesDo you want to know the ideal time of year to visit? Here are the seasonal norms to help with your planning:
Seasonal temperature averages
- • January-March: 86°F day, 73°F night
- • April-June: 84°F day, 65°F night
- • July-September: 79°F day, 64°F night
- • October-December: 85°F day, 66°F night
- • January-March: 0.67 inches
- • April-June: 0.43 inches
- • July-September: 0.28 inches
- • October-December: 0.43 inches


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Man held in W.Va. hate crime case
By DON AINES
Staff Writer, Martinsburg
MARTINSBURG, W.Va. - A Virginia man being sought on charges of malicious wounding and committing a hate crime turned himself in Tuesday, West Virginia State Police said.
Stacey Allen Cooper, 31, of 314 West Lane, Winchester, was arraigned Tuesday night before Magistrate Harold E. Darlington and was jailed on $5,000 bond.
The charges against Cooper stem from a Jan. 4 assault outside Gables Night Club in Inwood, W.Va.
According to state police, a black man assaulted and stabbed Jacob A. Bates, 21, of Winchester, in the club's parking lot.


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hapter 53: Good person Shuhang
Song Shuhang slowly opened his eyes, and found that he could no longer maintain his sitting posture.
His body just fell backwards onto the ground.
"Huh? What's going on? Senior Medicine Master, I suddenly feel weak all over, and can't even muster an ounce of strength?" Song Shuhang was puzzled, he couldn't even shift his fingers.
Medicine Master squatted beside Song Shuhang, and poked him, "This is a very normal condition. You cultivated using the 《True Self Meditation Scripture》 for the first time, so you didn't control the intensity of the qi and blood which your body was full of. Being a little too greedy, a little too much qi and blood was directed to the heart's acupoint. This would cause the body to experience a brief period of weakness. No matter, you'll be fine in a few minutes. Remember that the next time you use 《True Self Meditation Scripture》, leave a tinge of that brimming qi and blood behind, you'd be able to avoid accidentally turning your body into a state of weakness. That would be better for your body as well."
"Oh I see, haha." As Song Shuhang laid down on the scorching hot roof, he was in a fantastic mood.
Finally… the first step to foundation building has been taken.
Hundred days of foundation building, with the aid of the Body Tempering Liquid, even if he was of average aptitude, he should be able to complete it within a hundred days, right?
After completing the foundation building, what kind of power would I possess?
Charms? Magic? Esper? Escape? Invisibility? Clairvoyance?
"By the way, Senior, my 'true self' is just the image of me sitting there with a smile, does this signify that I'm still just an ordinary 'mortal'?" Song Shuhang inquired.
"The true self is usually the person himself, and it has to do with experience. Since you've come into contact with cultivation, your true self should not be an ordinary mortal unless deep inside your heart you still do not believe in the existence of 'cultivation. Or maybe… yep, is the smile on the face of your 'true self' a very gentle smile? One that would make others feel comfortable just from a glance?" Medicine Master pondered as he asked.
"Although it's embarrassing to say, it does seem like a smile that would make one feel comfortable just from a glance." Shuhang answered, after all the 'true self' is himself, boasting about his own smile was pretty shameful.
Medicine Master sighed, "This was indeed the case, little friend Shuhang, you're truly a good person."
"Huh? Senior, don't randomly throw good person cards on other people's heads!" Said Song Shuhang. He didn't mind receiving good person cards, but he won't be able to find a girlfriend if he kept receiving these cards.
"No, I meant that your 'true self' represents that you're a good person, little friend Shuhang!" Medicine Master staunchly answered.
"……." The corner of Song Shuhang's mouth twitched.
The 'true self' could make out such a quality?
"Alright then, little friend Shuhang, you've already completely grasped the 《True Self Meditation Scripture》 and 《Vajra Foundation Building Fist Technique》. Especially the 《Vajra Foundation Building Fist Technique》, you executed it very well, the way you punched nearly made me feel like you've been practising this fist technique for years. I don't have much in the way of pointers to give you, so we shall end here for today." Medicine Master said with a smile.
"Thank you for your pointers, Senior." Shuhang gratefully exclaimed.
Medicine Master, "You need not be so polite, take advantage of the fact that during the time that I will be in the Jiangnan Region, I will be available for consultation if there's anything you don't understand regarding cultivation. Senior North River should have told you this before, when you encounter a problem during cultivation, do not barge your way through, ask around for solutions and ponder over them."
After saying that, he warned again, "Regarding cultivation with the 《Vajra Foundation Building Fist Technique》, you should grasp the problem with intensity yourself. If you feel like your body is truly exhausted and unable to muster up any strength, do not forcefully continue the 《Vajra Foundation Building Fist Technique》. Like in your current state, even if you recover in a while, don't attempt to practise it again. Foundation building fist techniques aren't movements for health, they are violent body tempering movements. A person has limited amounts of 'qi and blood', the amount of qi and blood that could recover in a day also has a limit, overexerting would harm the body."
"I understand. Besides, in my condition, even if my heart is willing, the flesh won't move." Song Shuhang laughed out loud as he spoke. He couldn't even move a finger right now.
"Haha, you're someone who has self-control, so I need not say more." Medicine Master smiled, "Right now, you should just lie down here and reflect on the feeling you had when executing the fist technique and meditation technique. Reflecting is also an integral part of cultivation.
"Alright, Senior." Song Shuhang complied.
Medicine Master was very satisfied, he then waved his hand at Song Shuhang, "Well then, I'm gonna leave now!"
The moment the words were spoken, his body transformed into a sword beam, and disappeared in front of Song Shuhang's eyes with a whoosh. This should be the legendary escaping light?
"Hold on Senior!" Song Shuhang struggled to raise his hand, and spoke in an agonized manner, "Senior, you should… at least send me back into the dormitory……"
He was still lying down on the scorching hot rooftop!
The time was approximately 5:30pm, the sun of June that hung in the sky continued to emit its light and heat.
It was as if the plump sun was asking Song Shuhang: Student Song Shuhang who is the human meat teppanyaki lying on the rooftop, would you like to be cooked medium? Or medium well? Or maybe well done?
"What a misfortune!" Song Shuhang sighed.
I'll get a sunstroke, won't I? If he's left out under the sun for a while more, he'll turn into dried Shuhang, then he can be cut into pieces to be weighed and sold.
At this time, Song Shuhang really wished that a kind soul would come up to the roof to help him out, he would definitely be grateful beyond words.
"Moreover, there was something I forgot. I haven't even had the chance to ask Senior Medicine Master if he had a way to find the person who is secretly investigating me." Song Shuhang gloomily said.
But at this moment Medicine Master was already far gone, he could only wait for the next time they meet. If there's no way around it, he'll make a phone call later.
Anyway, he now had Medicine Master's phone number, if something unexpected happens, he could immediately call him for help.
While Shuhang was deep in thought, maybe a deity heard his prayers; as the sound of footsteps came from the roof's entrance.
"Huh? Why is the door to the rooftop open today?" It was a man who lowered his voice.
Song Shuhang was immediately delighted, he was just about to open his mouth to shout for help.
At this time, a woman's voice was heard, "If it's like this… isn't it better? Phew, let's get on the rooftop, I've never tried doing it there. It will definitely be very exciting."
"I'm thinking that way as well, but be careful, it'd be bad if we got caught." As he spoke, the man pushed open the door to the rooftop.
"If we were caught, wouldn't it be even more exciting?" The woman became even more open-minded instead.
Song Shuhang decisively closed his mouth, and gave up on calling for help; this was a pair of outdoor lovebirds that would provoke envy, jealousy and hatred.
This is a couple that should be burned to death by the FFF Inquisition, they chose to get on the other side of the rooftop. They didn't notice that on the other side of where they were, there was Student Song Shuhang who was lying down on the ground like a corpse.
[TL: FFF Inquisition from the anime Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu]
After the two had fixed the venue, they began to battle like martial arts experts.
Song Shuhang sighed, then closed his eyes to slowly regain his energy. He could still hear the sounds of the two experts duelling.
After a long while, that feeling of weakness was finally gone.
Song Shuhang struggled to crawl up from the ground, then he slowly moved towards the rooftop's door.
"Oh, that's right, the female student earlier seemed to have said that it'd be more exciting if they caught by others?" Song Shuhang pinched his chin, and mumbled to himself.
He felt that he had an obligation to fulfill their wish.
Because his 'true self' informed him that the man named Song Shuhang is a man who loves to help others!
Since it doesn't require any effort at all, he should help this female student fulfill her wishes, right?
"There's no way around it, I can't help being a good person." Said Song Shuhang as he leaned against the wall and bent his body to peek out at the other side of the rooftop.


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College Courses
Trinity offers 65 hours of concurrent college credit for students. The average student will graduate with 30 hours of college credit.
- Classes are taught in Trinity classrooms where Trinity faculty serve as adjunct professors. Students earn both high school and college credit at the same time.
- Classes are taught during the school day. There are no evening classes.
- Students pay an additional fee directly to the appropriate university. Concurrent credit fees, however, are significantly less than typical tuition at a university — just $75 to $80 per credit hour.


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CHICAGO -- Corporate budget-cutters may be taking a hard look at the bottom line, but where charitable contributions are concerned, there's still a soft spot for the needy.
If anyone suffers from a slowdown of corporate giving, it's likely to be arts and cultural activities.
In 1983, following the last recession, total cultural giving declined 15 percent, while total corporate donations jumped 25 percent, according to the American Association of Fund-Raising Counsel.
"From talking with other people in the field, I believe corporate giving patterns are changing," said Sara Levy, manager of community relations for R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co. "There is deep concern to protect programs already being funded and a tendency to direct funding to core needs of society."


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Today I am talking about Sweetwaters in the Ol Pejeta Conservancy. We only stayed for one night but we wished we could of stayed longer but it was still nice to stay there. Right out side of our tent there was a water hole where many animals would come and drink the water there. The Warthogs were fun to watch eat, they stick their butts in the air and munch away on the grass.
When we got to the place we had lunch, and sitting or standing right out side the window of the restaurant, was a Maribou, which is like a mix between a Stork and a Vulture.
And then after lunch, I got to go on a Camel ride. It was fun, but mine was being a bad boy, he kept stopping to eat leaves and he started to run one time.
At four in the afternoon we went out for a game drive. Before we actually started we went to a Rhino sanctuary and a Chimpanzee sanctuary. The Rhino was a blind black one, so he had to be kept in captivity so it could live longer than it would of in the wild on it's own. His name was Baraka.
We didn't see much at Sweetwaters but we were glad of what we saw. But we did see vultures eating a dead giraffe and lots of gazelles and some giraffes and an elephant.
The next morning we got up and went to the town that was nearby so we could fly to the Maasai Mara. As a matter of fact that is what I will be writing about next.


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Selling My 2012 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque Pure With Negotiation Well maintain low mileage, Full Options, Gulf Specifications, Accident Free, No Bruises, Very Clean like New. It was bought new and has not been used for long. I want to sell it out, If Interested.
Contact me for more information about the 2012 Land Rover
Email at: firstname.lastname@example.com »
It is ok to contact this poster with commercial interests.


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Morning Dear Reader, hope you are well? I am so ready for spring now, i am tried of being cold and i would really like to sit out on my bench and read my book without freezing!
But the gloomy weather is giving me the opportunity to catch up on my scrapbooking. I am a convert to the Project Life way of scrapbooking, although i don't do the 365day a year business because i just don't want to commit to that as it would put too much pressure on myself.
So i tend to scrap events, and do a month spread for each of the children's books.
Here is a layout that i have done of a visit to Kew Gardens
{i have used the everyday adventure kit from Stamping' Up!}
I am liking the PL way as i can get layouts done quickly with as little or as many embellishments as i like.
Until next time


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East Thurrock United Football Club
Rookery Hill
Directions from M25 Junction 30.
Take a13 towards Southend.
Exit a13 at Stanford-le-hope exit (a1014), this is just after the BP garage.
Turn right at the roundabout (3rd exit) onto a1014.
Straight over first roundabout.
Through traffic lights.
Ground is 200 yards on your left.
Please note there is limited parking available at the ground so please arrive early if you need to park close to the ground.
Can we also ask for you to be considerate to our neighbours when parking and ensure that you do not block any access points.
By Bus
The '100' bus (www.firstgroup.com) that runs between chelmsford and lakside stops 100 meters from the ground. This bus also runs past the local train station if you are coming via rail.
Nearest stations are Stanford-le-hope or Basildon, both on the Fenchurch Street to Southend line. Stanford is about a mile away as the crow flies. Basildon 3/4 miles. A small cab fair or jump on the'100' bus (see above).


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Read the latest Fund Commentary and Market Outlook From Carlisle Management
As any industry grows from infancy to maturity, there are a number of milestones that usually take place in this natural progression. One of these milestones is simple disintermediation.
How to Select a Life Settlement Fund – by Jose Garcia, Carlisle Management Company CEO
May first of 2009, the Internal Revenue Service issued two Revenue Rulings that constitute the official position of the IRS on certain key tax issues in the life settlement arena.


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Victor Garber & Ashley Greene Sign on for Drama Pilots
Ashley Greene and Rachael Taylor are both headed to ABC for drama pilots.
The 25-year-old Twilight star, who previously appeared in the network's Pan Am, will co-star in Americana, a soapy drama about a fashion designer and his family business, according THR.
Rachael, meanwhile, will play the lead role in ABC's 666 Park Avenue opposite Dave Annable. The show, based on the book series by Gabriella Pierce, centers around a young couple who accept an offer to manage a historic NYC apartment building.
Victor Garber will go to NBC for its drama pilot Notorious, "an opulent soap in which a female detective returns undercover to the wealthy Lawson family she grew up in – as the maid's daughter – to solve the murder of the notorious heiress who was once her closest friend," Deadline reports.
Nico Tortorella will star opposite Kevin Bacon in FOX's untitled thriller about an ex-FBI agent who searches for a diabolical serial killer.
WHICH PILOT are you excited to see?


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A fun and informative one-day workshop on the science of play, motor learning, pain, and the role of the nervous system in movement and perception.
We will use movement lessons based on the Feldenkrais Method to understand and apply the science.
Students will learn a play-based perspective on movement work that can be applied in any context to move better and feel better.
Date: November 11, 2016. 9:15 am - 4:15 p.m.
Location: Athletic Playground, Emeryville, CA
Price: $200 ($180 for members). Get 25% off if you enroll by 7/23!


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Randyposted on 1 October, 2008
This review was posted anonymously
Overall Rating2.1
the girls rather smoke than work.they once charged me $10 and their was only 3 girls what a rip off.go to the fox you will get your money worth.security is more worried about what girl you are talking to.Alto is one of them stupid security gaurds haten on the customers
Ronposted on 14 September, 2007
This review was posted anonymously
Overall Rating2.6
girls have came up i think day shift is better than night.
way better than it use to be.
Toothless trashposted on 24 August, 2006
This review was posted anonymously
Overall Rating1.2
This place is a SHIT HOLE!!! Only place WORSE than this is PONYS on the west side of Jax!!!! You got some UGLY ass girls in here! I had to get drunker than cooter brown just to get a lap dance from the FAT FUCKINH HOG!!!!!!!


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How will clients benefit with you as their coach?
As a co-active coach, I believe strongly in the client and coach working together as equals to bring about the change clients want for themselves. I believe in positivity and possibility, and teach my clients to look at the multitude of options and choices they have in their lives. I help my clients to accept and honor their present situation and to continually learn and grow into a better, more fulfilled life.
Urgent Care Association of America
387 Shuman Blvd. Suite 235W
Naperville, IL 60563
Email Us »


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The Islamist group Hamas is masterminding efforts to have senior Israeli leaders arrested for alleged war crimes when they visit European countries including Britain, a top Hamas official involved in the effort has told The Times.Well, if Hamas is really eager that international law be applied to war criminals, Israel is ready to start treating Palestinian terrorists as the law actually dictates:
The campaign by Hamas takes advantage of an aspect of law in England and Wales that allows anyone to apply for an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes without the need for a prosecuting lawyer. The identity of the person or organisation that applied for Ms Livni's warrant has not been made public, but Hamas says that it initiated the move.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said yesterday that the Government was "looking urgently at ways in which the UK system might be changed in order to avoid this sort of situation arising again".
For Immediate ReleaseUniversal Jurisdiction did not start with the Goldstone Report; neither did the attempts to accuse Israeli leaders of being war criminals and attempt to arrest them. What the Goldstone Report did do, however, is give the appearance of legality and justification to such actions.
December 21, 2009
(JERUSALEM) The human rights organization Shurat HaDin - Israel Law Center
has filed a petition today to the High Court of Justice (BAGATZ) in
Jerusalem demanding that Hamas terrorists arrested by Israel be tried for
war crimes and crimes against humanity, not just murder as is the current
According to the petition, the Attorney General violated Israeli law by
refusing to indict the terrorists who fire rockets into Israel for war
crimes and crimes against humanity-crimes that carry a life sentence without
the possibility of pardon or early release.
Israel is bound by the humanitarian provisions of the Fourth Geneva
Convention, as well as the Hague Convention and other international
treaties, which stipulate that the deliberate targeting of civilians in the
context of an armed conflict is a war crime; while the deliberate and
systemic assault against a particular civilian population constitutes a
crime against humanity.
By engaging in terror activity and deliberately launching Kassam and Grad
rockets into Israeli civilian centers during Operation Cast Lead, Hamas
activists repeatedly and systematically targeted civilians, and specifically
Israeli civilians, for murder-placing them squarely in the definition of
both war crimes and crimes against humanity. Citing previous Supreme Court
rulings, the petition notes that such international law has been accepted as
binding on Israeli courts and law enforcement authorities.
According to the petition, the State of Israel, having suffered inordinately
from the horrors of terrorism, has a unique duty to serve as a model in the
battle against the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by
terrorists and recognized as such under international law.
According to Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of Shurat HaDin and attorney
for the plaintiffs, "The Goldstone Commission report showed that the
Attorney General's policy of indicting Hamas terrorists for ordinary crimes
rather than crimes against humanity has fanned the flames of war crimes
accusations against Israeli leaders and soldiers by the UN and the
Europeans. Not only has this policy played down the heinous nature of the
genocidal atrocities of Hamas, it has left the field open for Israel's
enemies to make wrong and dangerous claims against us. The failure to indict
Hamas activists for crimes against humanity is immoral, hurts Israel's
interests and, above all, is in flagrant violation of Israeli law."
(US) 212-591-0073, Email: email@example.com [emphasis added]
The resultant chaos is attributable to the sloppiness and bias of the Goldstone Report and to those connected to it
Technorati Tag: Lawfare and Universal Jurisdiction and Hamas and Operation Cast Lead.


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TROY, Ala.--Troy University's 2007 Chancellor's Invitational Golf Tournament will be held Sept. 12 at Capitol Hill, the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail site in Prattville.
The tournament, which will be played on the Legislator Course, will begin with registration and lunch at 11 a.m., followed by a shotgun start at 1 p.m. An awards ceremony will follow the tournament with awards being present for first-, second- and third-place teams, as well as for longest drive and closest to the pin. Each tournament participant will receive a gift bag.
Proceeds from this year's event will support Troy University's Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
Registration for the event is $500 for a foursome or $125 for an individual. Event sponsorship opportunities are also available. A Cardinal sponsorship includes registration for a four-person team and a hole sponsorship for $800. A Silver sponsorship, which consists of a hole sponsorship, is available for $500.
For more information, contact Julia Wilson, director of special events, at 334-241-9502 or Bronda Barron, director of annual giving, at 334-670-5843.


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In the blackness of the early morning, vandals hit the rabbi's home. Posters were affixed to the front door and the fence bordering the property declaring him a "terrorist" and "Islamofascist." The vandalism followed hate mail and death threats, but according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (5/4), the police in Berkeley, Calif., are not treating it as a hate crime because the rabbi was being "attacked for his politics, not his religion."
Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine and leader of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, had come under attack from right-wing Jews for his support of Judge Richard Goldstone, whose report to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Israel's Operation Cast Lead, the attack on Gaza during December 2008 and January 2009, found both Israel and Hamas possibly guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Tikkun had announced that it would present Goldstone, a respected South African jurist who served with distinction as a prosecutor in both the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, with its 2011 Tikkun Award for his work on behalf of human rights and social justice. The vandals branded Rabbi Lerner as a "terrorist" because of his backing of Goldstone's report. Though the report also found Hamas responsible, defenders of Israel regarded those who accepted the report's criticisms as enemies because its assembled evidence pointed more emphatically to Israel.
Reaction to support for the Goldstone Report was swift and strong. During the first hour after America's editorial "Siege Mentality" (10/5/09) appeared online supporting the report's recommendation for U.N. action, our office received 25 angry calls. In South Africa, the rabbinic establishment sought to prevent Justice Goldstone from attending his own grandson's bar mitzvah. Some of the complaints may have been fair, but they also appear to have been orchestrated. Planning for Operation Cast Lead is reported to have included an aggressive public relations campaign to deal with critics.
Rabbi Lerner and Judge Goldstone are Zionists. They believe in the dream of a Jewish homeland, as do I. Their fault is to believe that in its conduct of public policy and military affairs Israel should be a "light to the nations." At the very least, it should adhere to the minimal demands of international law on civilian immunity in armed conflict. Goldstone's and Lerner's adversaries want to make Israel a standing exception to those common standards, so it can never be held accountable for the violence it does to others.
There is a growing movement among American Jews that sees an alternative for Israeli security in an end to occupation, in peace with the Palestinians, in justice at home and in responsible membership in the community of nations. In his recent book, Fatal Embrace: Christians, Jews and the Search for Peace in the Holy Land (Synergy Books, 2010), the psychologist Mark Braverman calls on Jews to examine the shadow side of Zionism and on Christians "to overcome their reluctance to question the actions of some Jews" in the interest of restoring the values of justice and compassion as fundamental to Israeli identity.
Support for such an alternative is growing among young American Jews in the boomer and millennial generations, writes M. J. Rosenberg, in his illuminating blog post "The Answer Is Jon Stewart" (5/7) at www.mediamattersaction.org. Jews under 60, he writes, "are not going to support Israeli policies designed to perpetuate an occupation by expelling Palestinians from their homes to make room for settlers." He goes on, "But an Israel that establishes peace with the Palestinians, that brings the settlers home, that ends the tyranny of the Orthodox...will have their support. Their support, not their allegiance."
I was delighted to read that the courageous Judge Godstone was receiving an honor which he richly desrves.
I was even more delighted to read Father Christiansen illuminating article. So often the media adds only heat, rather that light, to the Palestinian conflict. Father Christiansen's article added much needed light.
Many Jews are working fervently for peace with justice for the Palestinians. However, they get little coverage in the media. Hopefully we will read more about these dedicated Jews, and their work, in the pages of America. Keep up the good work.
On the contrary, America Magazine continues to shine a light where (unfortunately) most others fear to tread. Its good to read honest articles and commentary that don't bow to fear, or "political correctness" or politics, but to the truth.
Virtue and vice depend on your point of view. If you see Israel as a small democratic state under constant attack by much larger authoritarian states, it's hard to equate defensive violence with aggressive violence. A bomb, in this case, is hardly a bomb. But if you see Israel as a fascist tool of the capitalist West, I suppose things must look very different.
And if you think that it's no longer desirable that Israel continue to be a safe homeland for the world's Jews, then I suppose it must seem reasonable that the present Jewish leaders just stop trying to resist what must seem the march of historical inevitability and make peace with their enemies on whatever terms those enemies care to offer.


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The controller of the examination of Board of Secondary Education Assam is responsible to release High School Certificate Examination result, result this year exam will upload soon in upcoming month of.
Assam Board HSLC Result Exam 2016 | Result of Board of Secondary Education Assam High School Certificate Exam 2016
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Download Examination Result of Assam Board 10th Class,
Board of Secondary Education Assam 10th Class Exam Result 2016
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Monthly Archives: August 2014
Drinking with Game Designers. Full stop.
Yeah, that's a piss-poor entry, even my by admittedly loose standards. Let me see…
Let's go with a loose, overall set of impressions, shall we? This way, I can cover some ground of what the various game publishers have been doing, and in the process, I can talk about things as they come up. Have no expectations about the content or quality, and you shall be less disappointed than otherwise.
First off, the con was slammed. The press release from Peter Adkison (nice guy, met him once, and he also happened to attend my friends' wedding) that immediately followed said that it was up 10% from last year and has more than doubled over the past five years. It was wall-to-wall people, everywhere you looked, and yet, I was still able to hook up with many old friends from years before, just happening past in the aisles. The con personnel are getting crowd control well in hand, and even picking up my badge from the Will Call line took no time at all.
What's more interesting is that Paizo is starting to get a handle on how popular their booth is, seeing as they always used to run out of their pins within a couple of hours of the exhibitor hall opening. This year was literally the first time I have ever been able to pick up all four days' worth of commemorative pins. (Don't ask me why this matters to me; I don't have any real answer.) They had to run a line outside of the hall, out in the main corridor, but when I wandered in to look at some of the years' merch, it moved pretty fast, all things considered. I didn't go at exactly peak times, but there were plenty of people waiting with me, and it only took twenty minutes, all told.
And while I love Paizo dearly, they still have occasion to let a mistake past, despite otherwise having raised the bar to nigh insurmountable levels for most other publishers. It's oddly amusing to see this happen, precisely because they hold themselves to such standards. This year's new hardcover release was the the Advanced Class Guide, where they meld the basic classes into what amounts to being hybrid classes. It's a nifty book, well worth the time and money (this is where I could bitch about how one should only pick up a book of theirs if it's Advanced, while carefully steering clear of the Ultimate ones; it's a topic for another time), but the first print run is listed as being an Adventure Path on the cover. It's a simple logo switch that happened some time in production, but there it is. The second print run will be rid of the offending text, so snatch up your 'collectible' copies while you can.
Competing with Paizo for the long lines is Fantasy Flight. Unlike Paizo, they couldn't route people out into the outer corridor, so they had people snaking around their booth and demo area for most of the con. They managed to get people through that line pretty quickly, assisted by a 'get to know the people in line with you' card game. In theory, there was a prize for managing to collect the right base of cards, but that was well beyond the ten or twelve people we were in line with.
I didn't pay much attention to the rest of the booth at Fantasy Flight, since I had a singular mission, but they did come out with a number of new minis for the X-Wing game, a new fleet tactical game for Star Wars and the new edition of Dark Heresy. I might have considered a YT-2400 – I've always had a soft spot for Dash Rendar's Outrider and we managed to make it our main ship in Edge – but they were already sold out by the time I got to the line. (The same holds true for AEG's Limited Edition wooden box release of Doomtown. I want badly to get hold of the game, but not at the original price of $120, let alone the notably multiplied eBay markups.)
The Beta for Force and Destiny is a fine thing, as it captures all of the flavor and variance of the old Knights of the Old Republic video game, between the character careers and the lightsaber modifications. I'm sure that some new stuff will be thrown in for the final edition, being that this is merely the Beta, but what I have in front of me is enough that I'm already jonesing for a proper game to go.
I picked up my backer copy of Primeval Thule at the booth. They made a couple of interesting design choices in the book, just from my initial perusal. Since they managed to get the support for three different editions of the damned thing, between 13th Age, Pathfinder and 4e, they had to make some editing decisions in the process. What this boiled down to was a choice to make an appendix that the relevant parts of the book referred back to in-text. This way, only one part of the book needed to be changed between the editions. I'm still debating if this was an elegant or lazy way of doing things. And in doing so, I'm sort of leaning toward elegant, just on the basis of the novelty of it all. We shall see if this judgment holds.
They did commit a cardinal sin with the book, however, by including in-text adventures. Over the years, I've found that I would rather have such things appear as web enhancements, like D&D 3.5 did with many of their products. (A practice that I feel started with Deadlands, back in the day.) Rather than waste valuable pages on an adventure that may only be run once, if at all, I would much rather have the illustrative introductory adventure show up in some other form, when I'm paying for the book to have as much reference material as physically possible.
… and just like that, I find myself standing at the brink of a Wick hole.
This is a lot of the problem I'm finding I have with Wicked Fantasy, overall. There's a lot of wasted space in the book that might have been used for actual interesting things. I don't need to know what the Orkish word for blood is. I want to know what sort of vaguely Klingon-inspired weapon they're going to use to spill it. What do their villages and family units look like? What is it about this world that makes these orks darker and edgier and more dangerous than the orcs of pretty much every other D&D game? Instead, we get … words … about words. There are between fifty and seventy wasted pages of bad fanfic that serves no concrete purpose and does nothing to illuminate the world. The page count on this idiot book could have been cut in half, and I would have come out better for it.
Man, I hate that book. I would burn the damned thing, if that didn't go farther to illustrate the wasted money.
Anyway, my point remains. If you're going to insist on an adventure to properly introduce a game, then it shouldn't have to take up real estate in the book itself. Especially not in this day and age, when a good portion of book sales seems to come in the form of digital copies anyway. It's almost enough to make me want to invest in a tablet PC to be able to carry even more reference material wherever I go.
I invested heavily in Fate books, finishing out my Dresden Files collection (of two books; I know…) and picking up a copy of Fate Core. My main bill at the IPR booth was acquiring materia for other people, including a copy of Tenra Bansho Zero for one of the guys. In doing so, I accidentally ran into Andy Kitkowski, the translator for TBZ and the upcoming Ryuutama. He had come back from Nihon for the sake of Gen Con, dragging along Atsuhiro Okada, the actual writer and designer for Ryuutama. It was an interesting chance meeting, and I took the opportunity to have him sign a couple of the post card GM handouts for me. Alas, since Ryuutama has yet to hit print, there was nothing for me to have Okada sign, alas.
The final note, as I've largely lost the thread of where I was going when I started this post, was that I saw something truly fascinating at the greater DriveThru booth. As has become usual for White Wolf/Onyx Path, there was no actual product of any weight to be had at the booth. It's Print on Demand and digital distribution, after all, why bother with trying to sell it at the convention? They did have some product on display, but very little of it seemed available to sell. One thing, in particular, did catch my eye, however.
And this is so much gaming esoterica, I grant. It was a copy of the oft-lamented BESM 3rd Edition, the final product of Guardians of Order, after the weird horror that was the Game of Thrones RPG that everyone seemed to have tried to buy yet no one ever ran. BESM 3rd was the full sized red cover version of the rules that somehow ended up in the hands of White Wolf for distribution. It came out in January of 2007, got snatched up by the fan base and has never been seen since. Naturally, it's still ridiculously expensive (to the point that a copy of the original printing, even this long out of print, is only about twice as much), but it's once again available.
All in all, there was a lot more that passed outside of my perception at the convention, since I had specific goals and aspirations. There were events for D&D 5th that I blithely ignored, there were new products from publishers I have nothing to do with, and there were games running that I didn't attend. But the things I saw were worth my time, and some of them will even merit further study in future entries.
A discussion of why John Wick is not as smart as he wants you to believe…
I have returned from Gen Con. The republic still stands.
Much consumerism was engaged in. Many bank accounts were logically plundered. And when you go with a crew of doctors, you begin to experience certain pangs of jealousy at their comparative wealth for such endeavors. Alas.
I won't bitch too much. There wasn't actually much that I would have liked to have purchased that I did not. And most of what I bought was either at a steep discount or for someone else. All in all, it was good.
Last time I posted (and no, I cannot immediately declare the hiatus over; there's just stuff I want to talk about before it withers away to memory), I devoted the better part of 4,000 words to a tear down of John Wick's Wicked Fantasy book. The (tl;dr) version of this is that the book is neither dark nor dangerous, despite the cover assuring us that this was just such a revision. The game implies that it is searching for the adult aspects of the fantasy for the grown-up gamer, when in fact, it largely fails to capture any such thing. The "dark lens" that Wick views the world through seems to merely be smudged.
Again, I want to point out that I was a huge fan of the stuff Wick was responsible for during his tenure at Alderac. Legend of the Five Rings and 7th Sea are both some of the finest games on the market. This is one of the worst, if you judge it on the basis of what it promises versus what it actually delivers. It is my disappointment brought on by this disparity of quality that has pushed me to rag on this product as I have. (In fact, I still hold enough regard for L5R that I bought several books of the new edition to help round out my collection. Thankfully, Wick no longer has anything to do with that line.)
In response to my previous post, Gregory wanted some further discussion of what Wick did wrong with the language in this book, something I railed at for a little while. Apparently, I was wrong about my contention that no one wanted to hear me go into depth about what idiocy Wick's ideas on linguistics are.
There are two parts to this discussion.
First, the chapter on Gnolls opens with a sidebar talking about how the mouths of Gnolls is particularly canine in nature and they cannot easily form the words required of other languages. I see where he's going with this, but in all honesty, this is the dumbest idea to attach to a fantasy race. For one thing, D&D and Pathfinder knock the idea of language acquisition so far down the scale of importance that such things are mere skill adds, and every character would be able to learn a new language in the time it takes to level up the next time. For another, it's a magical world, not one of physics or biology, so this is one of those things that should generally be hand-waved out of existence.
Here's why: While it is possible to learn a language without ever being able to speak it, it's one of the most unlikely things to happen. In terms of realism, this is a lot harder to make sense of than the old saw of spending a month in the desert and learning French. (i.e. Going out to adventure for a month and gaining a language when you return to town, as tends to be the way in D&D and Pathfinder.) Language learning requires four main areas of focus – listening, reading, writing and speaking. Reading and listening are the input methods for this, where writing and speaking are the output that's necessary to make everything gel. And the difference between speaking and writing is that writing is done without immediate feedback, placing it well below speaking in terms of language acquisition. Over and over, this is something that I have encountered in my various linguistic studies and time as a teacher. If you don't speak, you don't learn. And to fully cement a language, you need to be immersed in it, where everything around you uses the language and you have to speak it to accomplish basic survival tasks. For my own notations, I have studied a lot of French, but since I never visited a French-speaking country, I've managed to forget quite a bit of it.
So, there it is. I have a huge problem with making it so Gnolls can only really speak Gnoll. This is amazingly harmful for the species overall, since it stunts their development of linguistics to an amazing degree. (There's more about this, where the act of speaking moves a language from one type of memory to another and how it serves to motivate second language learners by the process of communication, but I think I've covered enough for my first point.)
Secondly, Wick seems to be utterly unaware of how few words a mere 250 actually is.
Let's consider for a moment, shall we? 250 words is roughly the range for an average three year old child (meaning that more precocious children are like to know far more), and there are noted cases of Shetland Sheep Dogs (Shelties, for the layman) that know upwards of 500 words in English. Already, we're seeing a bit of a problem going into this. Here you have an entire race that has access to less words than a real world dog. Sure, Shelties can't speak all the words they know, but there is communication already going on. (And with time and research, I would probably go on about how hard it would be for a creature to acquire a language that has orders of magnitude more words, but that's well outside of my range of interest on this.)
In comparison, the created language of Klingon has over 3,000 words in its vocabulary, and it has been proven to be inadequate for actual communication. Reference the somewhat informal study by d'Armon Speers, a linguist that tried to make his son a native speaker of Klingon. While he was in the process of teaching his son this language, Speers made certain that he was simultaneously learning English so his cognitive development wouldn't suffer. The kid stopped speaking Klingon at around three years old, simply because it was too difficult to communicate basic ideas and allow him access to his world. And this is a language with over twelve times as many words. Not only does this not make sense, it implies that Gnolls are functionally retarded as a species, since language development is tied heavily to cognitive development. (This goes back to my notation of how difficult it would be to learn a language other than your own. It's already made very difficult by not being able to speak; throw in some learning disabilities, and it becomes outright impossible.)
Then there's the corollary that, by obviating adjectives of all kinds, Gnolls are unable to rationally recite any form of direction or history to another. The implication is that there is no method of differentiation, rendering all trees and rocks and opponents as being a single concept for each. In doing so, there's no ability to return to a place that they have been, since without such nuance, all things blur together. Hells, at this point, they rank behind honey bees in most cognitive areas, since colors are also apparently off this list as well. Past and present cease to exist without notational modifiers, and so on. (And Wick also makes a point to note that Gnolls don't really keep track of time. Ugh.) It gets stupid real fast.
Looking through the entry on Gnolls, it seems that about a third of the non-food language has already been defined by Wick in the process of yammering on about Gnoll Linguistics. Further, another 10% of the non-food language just goes to talking about the moons. As such, we're up to about forty of our one hundred words, and honestly, we're running out of any ability to actually interact with the world. (It also should be noted that he defines many of the words using the verboten adjectives, which I find fascinating. Why state such a stupid rule, only to immediately break it? Or are we going to hide behind 'running' and 'slow running' as completely separate words, like the oft-repeated saw about Inuit and their extensive vocabulary about snow?)
Then there's the notation that Gnolls are Charismatic, to the point that they gain a +2 to the Attribute at character creation. This is such amazing idiocy, given the rest of the text and the noisome short story. When he says that other races term them as dirty and unclean, I must immediately take issue. I would accept that they have a bonus of some sort amongst their own kind, as Gnolls would be better disposed to dealing with other Gnolls, but how in six hells does a scavenger race that has clear analogues to hyenas get a bonus to deal with other races that view them as filthy or accursed? It boggles the mind.
So, there you go. Wick's all caught up on defining these races according to their racial linguistics, and he doesn't grasp the basic parts of how stupid his contentions truly are. It's one thing to take an interesting idea like a race guide and make it dreadfully dull treatise on language in the process. It's quite another to fuck it up this badly.
Pre-Gen Con Notation, along with a Review of sorts…
So, as an update for anyone who actually still hangs around: The two reasons that I took time off from regular blogging (hells, when I up and vanished entirely) are still in process. That said, with any luck, I will have plenty of things to write about in the coming weeks to justify an occasional column of dubious intent and purpose. I've got the loan paperwork for the new house in hand, but the new house itself is up in the air at present. Alas and alack. As far as the novel goes, I have managed to put it to a final draft and start work on a new novel. In the mean time, I'm looking for an agent that would be willing to work with me, and that looks to be a greater endeavor and time sink than writing the damned thing actually entailed.
But anyway. This week is Gen Con, and I seem to have finalized my travel plans at the last minute, as seems to be the normal undertaking of things. I'm still intent on traveling incognito, just another con-goer with an undifferentiated badge and no real marks of distinction. One of these days, I may think about promoting the blog enough to score myself a proper 'Journalist' badge, but it's pretty unlikely.
The big items of interest for me this year are the new Star Wars RPG Beta, Force and Destiny. Thus far, I've been pretty underwhelmed by the Force powers included in Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion, so it's going to be interesting to see how far Fantasy Flight is going to go to impress me with their new rules. I've loved every aspect of the games up to this point, with that one exception, and I have high hopes that they're going to be able to win me over. There's been talk that the Force Rules in F&D are going to be notably different and well expanded from what we have seen thus far, so either they're paying serious lip service to the voices in my head or there's going to be something truly wonderful to be had in those new rules.
Watch. They'll decide that they've done well enough in their previous Beta runs that they don't need to test out the new rules. I'll go in with the expectation of rough hewn Jedi archetypes, and the guys at the booth will laugh me away with their derision. (And I find it truly interesting that the Firefox dictionary includes 'Jedi', but it lacks 'hewn' as the adjectival of the verb, 'hew.' Weird.)
But enough of that. I actually have something to talk about that's game-related, rather than the boring and vaguely non-specific details of my mostly undocumented life.
Periodically, I browse some of my favorite sellers on eBay, looking for the mad deals that have allowed me to amass the gaming library that gives me legitimacy. And I am the worst sucker for deals. I will gladly pick up a cheap copy of a game that I'm only marginally interested in, if just for the sake of the bargain. This is why I have copies of games like 'Terra Primate' and 'Demon: the Fallen' in my stacks. It's not because I"m likely to run either of these damned things in my immediate future. (And don't get me started on the inanely complete 'Tribe 8' collection that I amassed over one summer. It's a beautiful, flavorful, intricate game. It's also immensely difficult to understand or run, and I have no idea how I would sell it to a new group. "It's like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. But instead of nuclear war, it's all because of an invasion. By nightmares." So, yeah.)
Most recently, I found a couple of books that I was interested in for completionist sake, but would otherwise be unlikely to pick up at any reasonable price. One was a sourcebook for the new iteration of Iron Kingdoms, and the other was the campaign guide for Green Ronin's Song of Ice and Fire line. I mean, I really like Iron Kingdoms, but I know it's going to be a long time before I get around to running that. And the ASoIaF book is one that might be nice, but it's not like I don't know the world well enough to get around without needing it.
In with these two otherwise necessary books, there was a third book that I found from the same seller. It was a $50 supplement by a well-known game designer, and since it was dinged up a little, they were letting it go for $5. What the hell, I thought. It's a bargain. I love bargains. No harm, no foul; right?
Yeah. I think I was better off spending that $5 on anything else. Maybe there are five copies of Terra Primate that I could hand out to my friends.
The book in question is Wicked Fantasy, the Dark and Dangerous Fantasy by John Wick. The back cover informs me of this, along with the condensed bio of why I should care. It's a 'reinterpretation' of ten classic fantasy races, and it's telling me how Dark, Dangerous & Wicked it all is.
I've already bitched about John Wick in prior blog entries. For the life of me, I would love to see a copy of the modules he was going to write that would shake up Wizards of the Coast to the point that they would ashamedly admit that he was their better and Orkworld totally didn't suck. I might even pay a dollar or two for these abominations, just for the sake of being able to review them for what they are.
The cover design is interesting. I think it says something dire when the largest font and most prominent placement goes to Wick's name. I'm not saying that he's an egotist, but he certainly makes a point of highlighting what's most important about the book. And it isn't the actual title of the damned thing, which is the smallest font and placed at the bottom of the cover.
As a sidetrack, I will note that the most disappointing thing about the book thus far – one thing that I knew going into this endeavor, mind you – is that it has nothing to do with the fascinating weirdness that was the Wicked Fantasy Factory series by Goodman games. These were perfectly trashy third party modules for 3.5 and 4e D&D that felt like D&D through the lens of professional wrestling and 80's cock rock. It was what X-Crawl was generally heading in the direction of, only distilled down to a single night of cheap beer and loud music.
And as noted, this isn't what John Wick was selling.
So, I'm going to do this as a sort of 'first impression' notation, as I skim through to make sense of things. I'd looked the book over when it arrived, and that alone was enough to inspire me to fire up the blog for the night.
I've already talked about the cover, in terms of Wick's ego. It's a generally uninspiring appearance, with a purplish black background with some sort of mauve for the front cover text and logo. The back and spine are white on purple, but I figure that's to actually make it stand out on the shelf. There's also a bizarre logo that's haphazardly stamped near the bottom. It wouldn't be bad, except it's two separate logos that are badly fused together, as though they couldn't decide which one to go with. The larger is three co-joined crescents overlaying a triangle. Inside this is a sort of triskelion that someone decided to toss in at the last minute. I realize I'm reading too much into the damned logo, but it hints at a rule of three somewhere, and thus far, I've found nothing to back this up. Moving on.
The interior layout isn't bad, but I'm finding that the use of reds and blues for section headings gives the book a weirdly cheap impression. Part of this calls back to the latter day West End Games products, where they put out a number of supplements with blue ink throughout. There's a psychological effect at play somewhere in here, but I can't exactly put my finger on what it is that's annoying me so badly about it. I think there's something jarring when it shows up with the normal black text.
The book opens with a self-indulgent 'in case you haven't realized how awesome this book is' text in the form of a full page introduction from Wick. He meanders through a largely interest-free history of the product, and at the end of it all, I'm not entirely sure whether or not this was originally published somewhere else or not. He's too busy trying to drop names and reference people I've never heard of to actually make much clear. I do know that he spent a year on the book, with the help of other people, but that's about it. Oh, and he ends with some bit about 'the Enemy.' Given his weird paranoia elsewhere, I'm not sure if this unnamed and weirdly capitalized 'Enemy' is Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, the Gaming Industry in general, or some personification that has yet to be realized.
From there, we move into the races themselves. First up are Humans, which makes a certain sense. The section opens out with an evocative painting of a seemingly Germanic fellow with a skull, a wineglass and a sword of some sort. There isn't much else to be seen, since the scene is Dark for various thematic purposes. I'm already given over to some fear about where this is all going.
Immediately, Wick digresses into etymology, trying to explain the nuances of words like 'kingdom' and 'reign' and 'rule' as a means of getting at some point about human ascendancy. This continues for several pages and drops hints about the godless nature of this world as it delves into weird Nietzschean ideals of 'will' and how it relates to the local variants of Clerics and Paladins. There's an awful lot of half-assed world-building to be found here, and it wanders around for a while before being distracted by other, weirder notations. There's a lot of talk about guilds and senators in the mold of human society and how this all relates to one's duty to the Reign of Man.
And then he talks about calendars.
Literally, he's going on about the Law and the Army and how it relates to the City (I have my faults with weird habits of capitalization, but this book is starting to give me an allergy to such things), and then, out of nowhere, we're talking about how the humans order their calendars. There's no transition or logic to it, yet here we are. And what's the most maddening aspect of this entire section is that he talks about how there are totally two separate calendars that are used by the humans, we only learn about one of them. And then it switches to notes on the Economy. Will we ever see the other calendar that is still in use elsewhere? Who knows.
There's also a strange sort of sidebar in this section, where he starts defining what amount to being Barbarians in his weird and vaguely fascist human society, only to range off into this world's equivalent of Henry David Thoreau. I'm guessing that, if I were ever to build a Barbarian in a Wicked Fantasy game, he'd be a staunch Transcendentalist that pondered the virtues of self-reliance and the corrupting influence of organized religion. His Barbarian Rage would be powered through his utopian idealism, which would appear to outsiders as being beyond reason or sanity.
Ahem. I'm truly and deeply sorry about that. Where was I?
One of the racial traits allows a Human to count all of their allies as having the same Teamwork Feats they have for the purposes of using the Feat. They can also gain the Human Tactics Feat at fifth level, which is a version of the Improved Tactics class feature from the Cavalier. (My initial skim gave me a much worse impression, where I assumed that Wick had given them a much improved version of Improved Tactics. This isn't the case, but this is still fairly powerful.)
Finally, there's the Philosopher and Palatine re-jiggering of Clerics and Paladins. Most of the mechanics remain the same, for some reason. Philosophers can still Channel Positive Energy to Heal, but it's in the service of Pure Knowledge and Intellect rather than dogma. Or something. We gain new Domains in the form of Humanity and Philosophy, the Holy Symbol is replaced by an Item of Meaningful Import, but that's about it.
The end of the section has a little table for Approved Classes. Mind you, this is a world of pure reason and Randian ideals, with 'No Gods, No Kings, Only Man.' So naturally, there's a ban of such classes as Alchemists, Gunslingers and Monks. And then we have a weirdly anachronistic illustration of an Amazon Warrior straight out of some Greek sourcebook. I'm really not sure what the default setting of this world is, if the illustrations are anything to go by. We started it off with a guy that would have fit in nicely in Wick's 7th Sea sourcebooks, and we end with this.
Immediately following this is seven pages of double-spaced fiction, 'A Tale from the World of Wicked Fantasy.' It's not very good and seems to exist mainly to inflate page count. Every race has about this much fiction to end out the race guide. It's pretty flat, rather uninspiring and offers very little in the way of description of the world itself. The parts that I read had two characters standing around talking about politics. Again, maybe this is all to underscore just how dull it is to play a human in this Dark and Dangerous World of Wickedness or something. I don't honestly know.
In the world of Wicked Fantasy, Halflings are Haffuns. And they're servants, for some reason. Unless they're weirdly revolutionary. There's an undercurrent of casting them as the fantasy equivalent of African Americans, where they're essentially slaves until they rise up. Wick even goes so far as to give them a race name that only they can use. And in the same vein as the nonsensical Halfling to Haffun bit, they're Hobyns. It's totally different than Hobbits, right?
Haffuns are given an interesting ghost-speaker archetype for Clerics, and there's a new class, Butler. This is essentially an extremely specialized version of Rogue. They get the equivalent of a Familiar's aspect with their naming convention, but sadly it's Wick's local equivalent, rather than Jeeves or Smithers. The class doesn't seem to be very good, other than as an NPC sort of thing, but if I'm in a game I don't care enough to bother with, I might roll up a Human Butler to fuck around with. I might have to modify a couple of things so that I can better Serve Master, of course.
Naturally, we have to have Orks, since this is Wick. I've never made a point to read through Orkworld, so I don't know how much self-plagiarization he's gone to. As it goes, they are the noble savages who slew the gods that caused them to be evil, or some idea like that. There's an awful lot of discussion about what the Ork word for 'blood' is and how it can range through the declensions and nuances. This is followed by the word for 'bard' and the word for 'friend' and so on. We go through half a dozen Ork words for the next several pages, since this seems to be the best way for Wick to describe the culture.
So, if I might digress for a moment.
He isn't wrong, per se. There's a lot of culture that's bound up in the language that people use. My time living abroad and working as an ESL teacher gives me all sorts of insight about how difficult it is to teach someone to speak without acting as a cultural imperialist at the same time. Linguistics is pretty interesting to me.
This isn't. And I fail to see how five pages of what this or that word means to this culture is taking you any closer to actually being able to do anything with it. And for the love of crap, we're talking about Orks here. When I think of the god-killing savages that serve as the bogeyman for the civilized races, I'm not really wanting to spend this much time on how their perception of 'Blood' serves to define their culture. These Orks are presented in way too civilized a manner to hold my interest on any of it.
I'm starting to see why everyone thinks Orkworld sucked. Oh, and as a final notation before I move on? Orks get a +2 Bonus to Strength. And Charisma. This dude has a crush on Orks. I swear.
Elves come next, and I'm losing interest as I go. Apparently, they're tied to their trees in a vaguely Dryad sort of way, and Wick paints them in broad strokes that cut back to Tolkien again. They're ageless and bored and treacherous. They play games of deceit, for … reasons. I guess we're supposed to get a Seelie Court ideal out of this somehow, but it isn't really dealt with in any meaningful way. Like so many other parts of this book, he lays out some vague character trait that defines the race, only to leave it to the reader to fill in the necessary bits. Haffuns were fleeing a nameless horror that isn't important enough to deal with. Here's their word for Homeless. Orks slew the gods and gained their power. Here's their word for Friend.
In the midst of the Elves and their trees and their games of deceit, there's a sidebar that talks about an Elf going to the University and becoming a Lawyer. And a social justice activist.
Have I mentioned that there are weird tonal shifts in this book?
From there, we run into Gnolls. And the multiple paragraphs about the word Gnoll and so on. For some reason, Wick wants to talk about 1st Edition Gnolls in a Pathfinder book, making very certain that we all know that Gnolls have nothing to do with Gnomes and Trolls. He then wants to talk about the Gnoll language and how it relates to Yiddish and German. Finally, he goes into how the Gnoll language only has 250 words and no adjectives. And nearly half of those pertain to words for food. (This is one of those things that catches in my throat. I could go on, at length, about the sheer nonsense this implies, but I'm pretty sure that literally no one has the interest or fortitude to sit through that.)
Again, we have a perfectly interesting savage race, and we're subjected to linguistic analysis. This guy must be a blast to party with, as he drunkenly holds forth on the most mind-numbingly pedantic topics handy while other people listen to loud music or hook up in dark corners.
If that wasn't enough, once more we've got a savage and brutal race in a Dark and Wicked World that has a bonus to Charisma. Yeesh.
Then there's Gnomes. In their language, it's pronounced "gah-NOHM-ay." I'm fucking done here. Next?
Whee. Then we're up to Goblins. Only in The Wicked World, they're 'Gobowins." That's pwecious.
For the sake of not diving for the ending of the book, let me see if there's anything to redeem this idiocy. There's the usual sort of linguistic notation, which I'm slowly becoming numb to, followed by the different cons that Goblins are prone to. It seems that they're the grifters of the world, for some reason or another. Okay, fine.
And then we come to this gem: Fala No Tala. Okay, sure. Banana fana bo Bala? Gods, Wick. There are days when I hate you with the power of a thousand dying suns. Or as I call it in my native language, 'Fuk'kyu.'
Also, apparently Goblins manage a mail delivery system in this world. True story.
Dwarves are sexless, immortal drones who live to work. And drink beer. I know this because Wick devoted a single page to four words about how they love beer. Beer was in red text. I can't handle much more of this.
We're up to Ratlings. Of course, they're called Roddun here, because why not? They seem to be rodent yakuza, for some reason, working as the oddly eloquent and extremely short-lived protectors of the streets. It's not a bad take on the idea of Ratlings, but as usual, it spends more time on their language than I would like. It does give some rules on making barrios within a city, how to work street level conflict against rival Ratlings, and so on. There's an undercurrent of a weird Hispanic culture in here, with Respect and so on, but it might be a worthwhile system to lift for use elsewhere.
Naturally, I would have liked to see them done like in L5R, but that's me.
Let's see… What's next? Kobolds, apparently. Although, from the look of the art piece that graces this chapter, I'm more inclined to think that he's spinning way off course with a picture of a vaguely Asian seeming psionic monk. (I'm not kidding. There's even a hint of a torii gate in the background, as some bald guy with implanted gems and a sort of toga gestures toward the reader. This isn't helped by the inanely Japanese demonym of 'Kuba-chubisi,' which suggests something much different.) The whole chapter is filled with weird conceptual theories about how the Kobolds are manipulating thought and memory from behind the scenes, and to go with this is an entire glossary of manufactured terms like hapt-uvennen, tey-shalaf, detkiv-shava and the like.
What it doesn't have is anything about Kobolds. Even a little bit.
You know, it's late, and I've already spent way too much time flipping through this book. I might go back and try to make sense of how Wick tried to shoehorn some high concept idea into – oh, let's say … – Kobolds; but for the time being, I'm going to declare that he used the name and nothing else, just so I can move on.
I really didn't have a lot of expectations about this book when I got it. I had heard the baying of the fanboys about the newest, edgiest ideas of the niche grandmaster, but that's the nature of fanboys. So be it. What I saw was a book that normally cost $50 that I could get a mad steal on. What the hell, I might find something interesting in it.
All my bitching aside, this is a book that could fit certain niches of the hobby that were looking for new ideas. The big problem I have with it is that it doesn't do anything that the cover copy would imply. This world isn't dark. It isn't dangerous in any way, other than the usual fantasy ideals. And despite Wick capitalizing on his name, it certainly isn't wicked in the slightest.
It's just sort of dull.
Here you have Kobolds and Gnolls and Orks, and they're reduced to these sad bastardizations of what they were built as originally. When Paizo built Golarion, they made a point of making Gnolls into this twisted race of desert slavers and savages who worshiped the Mother of Monsters, Lamashtu. Their howls in the deep desert would send chills along the spines of the hardened warriors who held the forts against the untamed wastes. In this Dark and Dangerous World that Wick has built up, they bathe fastidiously and are known as great chefs. Orks are noble and get bonuses to their Charisma because they're such paragons. And kobolds? Fuck, they bear no resemblance to anything that shows up in established lore.
At the risk of showing my age, I remember when I first looked over the Dark Sun worldset from 2nd Edition D&D. Here was a brutal and savage world, where life was cheap and the psychological buy-in for the players was that you could die at any time; here's your back-up character for when things go to shit. In this setting, Halflings were cannibals that lived on the far edges of society, as far away from civilized folk as they could get.


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In June, I went to Utopiacon in Nashville, which is a conference for authors, writers, bloggers and readers. I had a blast geeking out over books with my best friend, meeting my favorite authors, and of course, getting my books signed.
Here's some of the highlights.
Amy Harmon, author of Making Faces and The Bird and the Sword, was the keynote speaker. She encouraged aspiring writers to "be a finisher," and when it comes to writing, "what you don't know you'll figure out." She also did a reading out of The Bird and the Sword, which was amazing because she has this awesome husky voice. I could have listened to her all day.
I got to meet Jennifer L. Armentrout. (Yes, that JLA, the woman who brought us Katy/Daemon from the Lux series, and my personal favorite Layla/Roth from The Dark Elements trilogy.) She's one of my favorite authors and I did nothing but fangirl in her presence. (I tried to keep it together guys. I really did.)
I also saw her speak on a panel regarding hybrid authors. JLA talked about how her best career move was taking a risk and publishing with a small press, and discouraged aspiring writers from saying yes to everything. She commented on how that's why she's been working non-stop and putting out so many books. (I'm happy she said yes. #sorrynotsorry). Other authors on the panel had great insight. Shannon Mayer, author of Priceless, encouraged writers to invest in their cover and brand, and Elise Kova, author of The Alchemists of the Loom, talked about changing marketing tactics for each series.
I saw a lot of other great panels and sat through some readings, which are now my favorite thing. Even if you don't know anything about an author or their books, sit through a reading. I found some great new books this way.
I got to meet C.J. Redwine, author of The Wish Granter. She was so sweet. During a panel on the pressures in publishing, she said, "If I wouldn't cry at your funeral, I don't have to care what you think about me." I'm pretty sure that's my new life motto.
Over the weekend, I bought 12 books, which was quite the book haul!
I got to meet a lot of authors.
Ginger Scott was so nice. I fangirled about The Hard Count and A Boy Like Me. We talked about the sports romance genre and how we both think that genre should include scenes where the sport is actually played.
Elise Kova seemed so business savvy. I went to her reading of The Alchemists of the Loom and I immediately wanted to read it.
Abbi Glines was quiet, but she signed my book and gave me Rush underwear so I was a happy camper!
Casey Bond was an author I'd never read before, but she spoke so eloquently during a panel, I had to see what she was about.
Amy Harmon was an absolute doll. So nice. I want to give her books a second chance. I think I'll read The Bird and The Sword since it has some pretty cool magic.
Beth Flynn was such a surprise. I don't know who was more surprised — me or her. She was shocked that I'd read her books, and I was shocked that this sweet older lady wrote a novel that tore my heart from my body. I joked about needing to join a support group after Nine Minutes, and she jokingly warned me that Out of Time might do me in. She's pretty much a badass.
Shannon Mayer was another author I hadn't read before, but I attended her reading and her new series has talking guns…and I was sold from the very first snarky remark. She was also very encouraging when I told her I was an aspiring writer. I kind of want to be her best friend and her Urban Fantasy Rylee Adamson series is next on my TBR.
I didn't get a picture with Cambria Hebert, but she was fun to talk to, and I got to meet Jasinda Wilder.
The weekend ended with an awards ceremony and a Circus-themed Freakshow Ball. My best friend and I had a great time.
Overall, Utopiacon 2017 was a success. Unfortunately, this is the final year of the conference, but they did mention a reunion Utopiacon in a few years.


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I am typing this from Google Chrome, the new web browser that was announced yesterday (after news of it were accidentally leaked) and released about two hours ago. It is blazingly fast! And even without maximizing the browser window, there is so much screen area for viewing the web pages, due to the minimal space used by the tab bar and the "omnibox" (a combined address and search bar) -- and there's no menu bar or status bar to clutter your view. You can drag tabs out of the browser window to view the web page in a separate window -- now that's something I'd like to see in Firefox! Although only a beta release, it appears that the Google Chrome team has already fulfill their goal of creating a fast, responsive and simple-to-use Web browser.
Each browser tab in Google Chrome runs in its own process, and the implications of this is huge. It means that it's easy to isolate which web pages are using up excessive memory and CPU cycles (there is a task manager that lets you see performance stats on all open browser tabs), putting the onus squarely on the web developer to make their web pages more leaner and efficient. And from a stabililty standpoint, if a misbehaving web page crashes a browser tab, it won't take down the whole application with it.
Screen shot of Google Chrome
Check out the incredibly cool comic book, with characters resembling the members of the development team explaining Google Chrome and all of its features in depth. The beta release, initially for Windows only, is now available for download.
There are a few missing features that, I think, needs to be added, like spell checking in web page form fields, and print preview -- but overall, the quality of the product is surprisingly high for such an early beta release.


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January 22, 2015: Daily Bible Reading Commentary for Job 7-8
Click here for the Daily Reading
Context: In chapter 7, Job continues speaking, talking once again of death and expressing his belief that he will soon die. Job asks what sin he has committed to bring about his suffering, this time directing his question to the Lord. In chapter 8, Job's second friend, Bilad, begins to speak. Bilad speaks more directly and offensively than Eliphaz. Bilad rebukes Job, for if Job were blameless as he claims, he would not be suffering. Bilad, like Eliphaz, fails to name the specific sin for which Job is being punished. Job and his three friends held the view that suffering was a punishment from God for sinning. It is a very human way of explaining suffering. We tend to only view rewards and punishments as an earthly matter. We fail to recognize, just as Job and his friends, that life on earth is temporary. Our final reward or final punishment is where God's justice is served.