text:
RealView on a Mac...Secrets Revealed!/
When Apple switched their architecture from PowerPC to Intel in 2005 the race was on to get Windows running on Apple hardware without emulation. Since then we all know the story and anyone can get Windows running on a Mac in a number of configurations without much effort.
I have been doing this since 2006 and have run all the SolidWorks products on 4 different Apple Macbook Pros from the first Core2 MBP in 2006 to the newest Macbook Pro Retina now running Windows 8.1. Over the years I have gone to great lengths to run SolidWorks on my Mac without limits, including support for RealView. Apple has changed video cards, video card manufacturers and Microsoft has shipped 32/64 bit XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and now Windows 8.1. Saying that the playing field has changed a bit would be an understatement to say the least!
On the first builds I had to use Riva Tuner from Guru3d.com to build a hacked or "tuned" driver that enabled the pro series features on my "gamer card" that ships with the Macbook Pro. This method was necessary to meet the requirements on the "Approved" SolidWorks video card testing site in order to unlock the RealView functionality. The other issue was simply the earlier video cards in the various Mac lines were very under powered and tuning was necessary to handle the graphics load of SolidWorks.
The good news is the hacking is over and there is a simple way to enable RealView on your Mac.
A word or warning though, as you all know SolidWorks still states very clearly on its system requirements page that:
Apple Macintosh®-based machines running Windows using Boot Camp are not supported.
I think it is also safe to say that someone whom uses a Mac has it for reasons beyond just using SolidWorks and want the ability to use the same machine for any application, Windows, Linux, or Mac. If you don't have a need to use a Mac, don't buy one. Alright. Now that that is out of the way, here are the bits you were after...
- You must be running SolidWorks 2011 or later (might work on earlier builds but have not tested prior to 2011)
- Close SolidWorks...
- Launch regedit and go to key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SolidWorks\SolidWorks 2012\Performance\Graphics\Hardware\Gl2Shaders\NV40
- Under the NV40 key (This will work for many of the nVidia line for ATI the RV420 key works for many of them) create a new key called GeForce (you can use the full name shown in your device manager as well)
- Under this new "GeForce" key create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value called "Workarounds"
- Double click the "Workarounds" and enter a hex value "40008" (without "") (this is the setting for the nVidia card, ATI is typically 0 but it varies)
- Launch SolidWorks... (Should see the RealView gold ball now)
Keep in mind...
There are a few things that I have noticed since using this registry tune for displaying RealView.
- Editing the registry can cause OS level damage so make sure you know what you are doing...consider yourself warned!
- Typically I have to reset this reg key after installing a service pack so you may want to right click on your key and export it for a simple double click after a patch.
- This step by step is my procedure for the last 3 Macbook Pros that all were running nVidia cards so if you have the ATI version, make sure you use the RV420 key instead to add your generic key to.
- This does not work with virtual machine solutions like Parallels or VMWare Fusion (Only booted into Windows native via Bootcamp).
I get 20-30 emails a year asking me how to do this and I wanted to share it with all of you that are using a Mac and running SolidWorks. It's understandable that SolidWorks has to limit the scope of support to exclude this configuration from its supported list (as they do for some builds of Windows). However, I can personally say that I have been able to successfully do this since 2006 and my Mac laptops have been some of the fastest systems I have owned to date.
I have spoken to hundreds of people that are already running SolidWorks on their Macs via Bootcamp or even using Parallels or Fusion to get their jobs done. Whether you have a Mac for "religious" reasons or require the platform for similar reasons as I do (hardware quality and application preferences only on OSX), this solution will make the SolidWorks experience in Bootcamp at par with most Windows-based laptops. If you run into any issues trying to get this to work, please leave a comment or drop me a line and I'd be happy to help out. ~Lou


text: In an effort to ease tensions, African leaders have called for the July 15 Burundi presidential polls to be delayed to July 30 [AP] A Burundian general who backed a failed coup in May has threatened to launch an armed uprising after President Pierre Nkurunziza refused to bow to opposition and international demands to abandon his bid for a third term. General Leonard Ngendakumana, a deputy to the leader of the aborted coup, accused Nkurunziza of dragging the central African country back into civil war, comments that have alarmed a region with a long history of ethnic conflict. "The next [step] is to organise ourselves just to resist, to make Pierre Nkurunziza understand that he must leave and then that we are prepared to do it by force, by organising a military force," Ngendakumana told Kenya's KTN television, adding that coup leader General Godefroid Niyombare was still in Burundi. The government told the Reuters news agency that any such move would be confronted. "Anybody threatening the security of Burundi, either inside or outside, will meet the full force of our defence and security forces," presidential spokesman Gervais Abayeho said. Ngendakumana said Burundi's government wanted "to engage the region in that civil war, based on ethnic [issues]". The general's interview was recorded on Sunday in an undisclosed location outside Burundi before Monday's meeting in Tanzania of east African states, plus South Africa, who are seeking to end the crisis. Related: Burundi's Nkurunziza: 'It's either me or al-Shabab' At the meeting in the capital Dar es Salaam, the nations called for the July 15 Burundi presidential election to be delayed to July 30, to allow mediation between opposing factions. The government has dismissed previous calls for delays. Violation of deal Opponents argue Nkurunziza's bid for a third term - which triggered weeks of violent clashes between protesters and police in Burundi's capital - violates the constitution and a peace deal that ended an ethnically charged civil conflict in 2005. Nkurunziza says a court ruling allows him to stand again. Nkurunziza makes first appearance since coup attempt As well as calling for an election delay, the African nations said it was appointing veteran Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to establish a dialogue between opposing sides. The Arusha peace accords ended a 12-year conflict that pitted rebel groups of the majority Hutus, including one led by Nkurunziza, against minority Tutsis, which commanded the army at the time. The army and other institutions are now mixed. Ngendakumana said followers of the coup leaders were behind a spate of grenade attacks, which often targeted police, in the run-up to parliamentary elections held on June 26. "We are behind them, and our intent is to intensify," he said when asked about the incidents. RELATED: Political unrest turns deadly in Burundi UN observers said the June vote was not free or fair, an assertion the authorities dismissed. The opposition has said it will boycott all the polls. SOURCE: Reuters War & Conflict Africa Burundi

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Now through Sunday, shop curated merchandise and experiences -- from Reem Acra gowns and Luigi Bianchi Mantova suiting today and tomorrow to, Jetsetter.com getaways and registry-perfect home goods this weekend -- during Gilt Groupe's four-day wedding sale event.
A lunchtime check-in on the site yielded plenty Hanky Panky and some KIki de Montparnasse (wait-listed-then-sold-out bras, plenty remaining silk shorts), $89 freshwater pearl Carolina Amato headbands (perfect for bridesmaids or a modern veil alternative), and white-, ivory-, and bone-hued apparel ranging from gowns to cocktail dresses.
A certain stark white, silk-collared Gianfranco Ferre sweatsuit made us want to crash a wedding just for the outfit.
Regardless of your marital status, we suggest you get clicking.


text:
On this date, the US Supreme Court issued its opinion in the landmark case of Romer v. Evans (517 US 620), declaring unconstitutional an amendment to the Colorado state constitution that prohibited state and local governments from enacting any law, regulation, or policy that would, in effect, protect the civil rights of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. In its ruling, the Court made clear that moral disapproval does not justify governmental discrimination and shattered the "special rights" rhetoric of those who oppose equal treatment for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people.
Romer marked the first time in its history that the Court recognized lesbians and gay men as worthy and deserving of equal rights. The decision helped stem the tide of antigay initiatives that were spreading across the West in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The case was also important because it laid the groundwork for other important gay rights decisions. Most notably, when the Supreme Court reversed Bowers v. Hardwick and struck down all sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), it said that the "foundations of Bowers have sustained serious erosion from our recent decisions in Casey [a right to privacy case on abortion] and Romer."
The amendment at issue in Romer v. Evans, known as Amendment 2, was placed on the November, 1992 ballot following a petition drive. The Amendment provided that:
Neither the State of Colorado, through any of its branches or departments, nor any of its agencies, political subdivisions, municipalities or school districts, shall enact, adopt or enforce any statute, regulation, ordinance or policy whereby homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships shall constitute or otherwise be the basis of or entitle any person or class of persons to have or claim any minority status, quota preferences, protected status or claim of discrimination.
The Amendment was promoted by a conservative Christian group called Colorado for Family Values that had formed to repeal all municipal and state laws and regulations prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. There were two conflicting interpretations circulating in Colorado about these ordinances, state laws, and executive orders:
- Colorado for Family Values and other religious conservatives described the regulations as granting "minority status protections to homosexuals, not granted to any other citizens." That is, the regulations gave special privileges to gays and lesbians that were denied the heterosexual majority and the bisexual minority.
- Gays, lesbians, and others held an opposing view: that these ordinances and laws protected everyone from any discrimination that they might suffer because of their sexual orientation. Specifically, they protect: (1) heterosexuals — the majority of adults who are sexually attracted to members of the opposite gender, (2) homosexuals — a minority of adults who are attracted to persons of the same gender, and (3) bisexuals — a smaller minority who are attracted to persons of both genders. Thus, according to this view, heterosexuals, homosexuals and bisexuals are all protected by antidiscrimination ordinances and laws to the same degree.
Since terms such as "homosexual", "lesbian", "gay", and "bisexual" did not appear anywhere in the ordinances and laws, it seems that the interpretation by gays and others was correct: homosexuals and bisexuals were not given any special privileges by these ordinances and laws. The conservative Christians were factually incorrect. However, they conducted a masterful advertising campaign and Amendment 2 passed by a narrow margin (53.4% to 46.6%). According to the conservative Christian National Legal Foundation, this prevented their state legislature and all local "governments from granting protected status to a group of individuals based not on an inalienable physical characteristic, but on a chosen lifestyle." This comment demonstrates two very common beliefs among religious conservatives:
- That homosexuality is a chosen and changeable behavior; it is what homosexuals do. Religious liberals, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, mental health therapists, human sexuality researchers and others generally believe that homosexuality is actually an immutable, unchosen and unchangeable sexual orientation; it is what homosexuals are.
- That groups should only be protected against discrimination based on immutable factors, such as sex, race, and skin color. They reject the concept that people should be protected from discrimination based on chosen factors. Since they regard homosexuality as a "chosen lifestyle," they feel that homosexuals should not be a protected class. They overlook the fact that people choose the religion that they wish to follow. Nevertheless, religious conservatives demand freedom from religious discrimination.
The Amendment was immediately challenged in the state District Court for the City and County of Denver by a coalition of gays, lesbians, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and representatives from the Colorado municipalities of Denver, Boulder, and Aspen, which had gay rights ordinances in effect. They sued Governor Roy Romer (ironically, who had been on record as opposing the Amendment), state Attorney General Gale Norton, and the State of Colorado. The plaintiffs argued that Amendment 2 violated their federal First Amendment right to free expression and their federal Fourteenth Amendment right to Equal Protection of the laws.
Plaintiffs sought and received a preliminary injunction from the trial court, thus preventing Amendment 2 from ever being implemented. The injunction was upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court. The trial court and the Colorado Supreme Court agreed that Amendment 2 infringed the fundamental right of gays and lesbians to participate in the political process. They found that Amendment 2 had violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. The US Supreme Court agreed (6 to 3).
Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, rejected the assertion that Amendment 2 simply deprived homosexuals of "special rights" which were not shared by the rest of the population. This was the argument used by Colorado for Family Values during their advertising campaign which lead up to the plebiscite. The Court ruled that, under Amendment 2:
Homosexuals are forbidden the safeguards that others enjoy or may seek without constraint. They can obtain specific protection against discrimination only by enlisting the citizenry of Colorado to amend the state constitution or perhaps, on the State's view, by trying to pass helpful laws of general applicability. This is so no matter how local or discrete the harm, no matter how public and widespread the injury. We find nothing special in the protections Amendment 2 withholds. These are protections taken for granted by most people either because they already have them or do not need them; these are protections against exclusion from an almost limitless number of transactions and endeavors that constitute ordinary civic life in a free society.
The court also found:
. . . that Amendment 2 did discriminate against an identifiable class of people and violated their rights to due process and equal protection under the law. The court held that Amendment 2 was based in "animus," or hatred, against a specific group of people.
In unusually frank language, the Court found that:
. . . the amendment has the peculiar property of imposing a broad and undifferentiated disability on a single named group, an exceptional and, as we shall explain, invalid form of legislation. Second, its sheer breadth is so discontinuous with the reasons offered for it that the amendment seems inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class that it affects; it lacks a rational relationship to legitimate state interests. . . . Amendment 2 confounds this normal process of judicial review. It is at once too narrow and too broad. It identifies persons by a single trait and then denies them protection across the board. The resulting disqualification of a class of persons from the right to seek specific protection from the law is unprecedented in our jurisprudence.
In conclusion, Justice Kennedy commented:
The primary rationale the State offers for Amendment 2 is respect for other citizens' freedom of association, and in particular the liberties of landlords or employers who have personal or religious objections to homosexuality. Colorado also cites its interest in conserving resources to fight discrimination against other groups. The breadth of the Amendment is so far removed from these particular justifications that we find it impossible to credit them. We cannot say that Amendment 2 is directed to any identifiable legitimate purpose or discrete objective. It is a status based enactment divorced from any factual context from which we could discern a relationship to legitimate state interests; it is a classification of persons undertaken for its own sake, something the Equal Protection Clause does not permit. . . . We must conclude that Amendment 2 classifies homosexuals not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else. This Colorado cannot do. A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws. Amendment 2 violates the Equal Protection Clause, and the judgment of the Supreme Court of Colorado is affirmed.
In other words, the majority concluded that the creation of so‐called special rights for gays, which prevented discrimination against them, was really just another manifestation of equal rights, to which all persons were entitled. Amendment 2 was dead.
The dissenters, however, were blistering in denouncing the majority's actions. Joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Antonin Scalia accused the Court, in his typical hyperbole and hysteria, of "tak[ing] sides in the culture wars". He characterized Amendment 2 as "rather a modest attempt by seemingly tolerant Coloradans to preserve traditional sexual mores against the efforts of a politically powerful minority to revise those mores through use of the laws." He criticized the Court's majority for "imposing upon all Americans the resolution favored by the elite class from which the Members of this institution are selected." [Scalia dropped his membership in the American Bar Association back in the 1980s when it took a position against gay discrimination.] Pointing to the "centuries-old" condemnation of homosexuality, he concluded that Colorado was "entitled to be hostile toward homosexual conduct" (his emphasis). Scalia even compared homosexuality to murder and cruelty to animals:
The Court's opinion contains grim, disapproving hints that Coloradans have been guilty of "animus" or "animosity" toward homosexuality, as though that has been established as Unamerican. Of course it is our moral heritage that one should not hate any human being or class of human beings. But I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible — murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals — and could exhibit even "animus" toward such conduct.
In reaching his conclusion, Scalia adopted a number of classic stereotypes about the lesbian and gay community. He said "those who engage in homosexual conduct tend to reside in disproportionate numbers in certain communities, have high disposable income, and…possess political power much greater than their numbers, both locally and statewide." Scalia proffered that the goal of the lesbian and gay civil rights movement is to "devote this political power to achieving not merely a grudging social toleration, but full social acceptance, of homosexuality."
Interestingly, Chief Justice Rehnquist's animosity toward gays and lesbians had never been a secret. For example, in Ratchford v. Gay Lib (1978), an opinion from Justice Rehnquist seemed to compare the right of homosexuals to assemble and advocate for legal reform to that of "those suffering from measles [who seek] a constitutional right, in violation of quarantine regulations, to associate together and with others who do not presently have measles".


text:
Whether you run a large multinational or a successful foundation, if you don't know what your target market wants you're most likely going to stumble.
Over the years we've seen organizations waste time and money launching products that don't work. Either they didn't understand their markets or didn't pay attention to important details early in the process.
To avoid this from happening, various organizations from universities to design firms have adopted the "Human-Centered Design" approach, where client feedback becomes the essential component in every product and service's development.
So, What is Human-Centered Design?
As +Acumen beautifully states it, Human-Centered Design is "innovation inspired by people". It is a framework used by designers and managers to find solutions for pressing problems considering their beneficiaries' perspective in every step of the problem-solving process.
How do you differentiate HCD from a traditional design process?
As said by IDEO.org, you know your design is Human-Centered when "you've kept the very people you're looking to serve at the heart of the process"
It all starts with empathy. To build a successful product, "solutioners" must clearly understand the deepest needs and incentives of their target market. To do so, it is crucial to observe, ask and spend quality time with your clients. Unless you know and live the hassles of their everyday life, you won't understand the depth and gravity of a problem.
Going further, because HCD it is based on empathy, it must be collective. When you look for human-centered solutions you won't find them behind a desk by yourself. The more you get involved in your client's life and the more feedback you get from them, the easier it will be to understand the solution that they're craving. Plus, having more people in your research and development team brings more perspective and creativity into the process.
And finally, HCD is different from traditional design because it relies on constant experimentation. Human-Centered solutioners think big but start small. They learn by doing and build the solution based on feedback. This takes more time but saves a lot of resources, mitigates risks and secures success. After all the solution was pretty much given to you by those who will use it.
Source: Grameen Foundation
That said, what are the necessary steps to develop a Human-Centered Design Process?
First, you need to get out there and understand your target market's problem and ideas for solutions. +Acumen calls this the Discovery phase.
Later on, after you've gathered all your key information and have a clear understanding of your market's needs, you move to what IDEO.org calls the Ideation phase. Here your team and you start brainstorming for creative solutions to solve your market's most pressing problem.
Once you've landed a couple great ideas you start the Prototyping phase, where you bring to life an initial "sketch" of your solution and present it to the public for feedback.
Based on this feedback you continue your development process until you reach the final version of the solution and the Implementation phase.
Source: IDEO.org
What tools can be used to successfully complete every step of the process?
Throughout your discovery phase, you will be observing and contextualizing most of the time. Some great tools to do this are: surveys, interviews, photo journals and guided tours (to help you live your beneficiaries' daily life).
After you gather your information you need to map both people and needs to start ideating. You could use stakeholder maps, people profiles, problem tree analyses and some affinity clusters.
Then, for your prototyping phase, the LUMA Institute suggests you storyboard and sketch your ideas before building them. Sketching the idea helps the team visualize the concept and storyboarding helps them understand how they expect users to adopt it. Then you can continue by creating rough prototypes out of simple materials to bring the concept to life.
If you want a complete guide of tools to research, understand and ideate for your target market, check "Innovating for People": the LUMA Institute's handbook for Human-Centered Design.
What can you use Human-Centered Design For?
According to +Acumen, you can use HCD, to create innovative products, services, spaces and systems.
Because HCD is based on human behavior and empathy, this approach can be used not only to build useful products but also to create better experiences for people, nurture more impactful relations and build more efficient facilities.
Who employs Human-Centered Design Today?
Just to mention a few organizations:
IDEO – World leading design and consulting firm
+Acumen – Global learning platform for change makers
Stanford University – Ranking #3 in the world!
Grameen Foundation -Global nonprofit dedicated to sustainable development.
Frog – Global design and strategy firm.
Luma Institute – Global innovation learning platform for businesses and nonprofits.
Why should you employ Human-Centered Design?
HCD will help you save time and money. By focusing on your beneficiaries from the start you are investing in products and services that are guaranteed to work. HCD mitigates risk and increases customer loyalty. Internally, HCD can also improve your design team's creativity, open up their minds to more perspectives and put your company at the top when it comes to understanding your target market and delivering useful and innovative designs!
So don't wait anymore to start involving your beneficiaries! I assure you it will pay off.
If you found this post useful, please let us know with a comment!


text:
By Tucker McCallahan ©
This is a copyrighted work of fiction. All rights reserved.
121 Nautical Miles Off the Coast of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; 1983
The sky over the Tropic of Cancer was a gorgeous wash of blazing pinks, fiery oranges, and electric blues. The Pacific Ocean lay calm and serene under the pre-dawn firmament, reflecting awe-inspiring splendor back at the sailors of the American scientific vessel Thackeray. The ship belonged to Oceana Electric, the third largest producer of power in the American southwest, and at the moment, it served one purpose: it was a big, floating babysitter.
520 meters below the surface, Captain Mike Strong of the United States Marine Corps gazed through the thick observation panel of the underwater habitat, Triton. Constant amazement and awe consumed the first three days he lived in the undersea structure. Now, Mike wondered if astronauts ever looked out into space and thought, damn, it all looks the same. The most excitement he got was when Murray shouted he saw an octopus, and Mike ran to get a look. The thing wasn't even as big as Mike's arm. Talk about a letdown.
He sighed, reminded himself it was better than what the rest of his company was doing, and immediately felt guilty. He should be in Grenada. He should be doing his part in Operation Urgent Fury. Instead he was off on vacation with his best friend and a bunch of kooky scientists, courtesy of Oceana Electric and the DOD. Mike stared out at the foreign wonderland that spread as far as the eye could see and sighed again.
Triton was the largest underwater habitat ever built and successfully operated. Hydrolab had been running missions down in St. Croix, the US Virgin Islands, but that tin can could only house four people. They had six currently living and working in Triton. The Thackeray restocked their essentials every week and provided their satellite com links for TV and phone. All in all, it wasn't a bad set up. Mike was career military from a military family, though, so his opinion might've been a little bit skewed. He probably could've lived in a sardine can and been polite to the other sardines for the duration.
They'd completed three weeks of the eight week assignment, and the isolation was starting to wear on everybody. Mike missed his wife. Married for just over a year, he and Tsukiko still enjoyed the honeymoon phase of their marriage. Mike silently berated himself again. If he'd been deployed to Grenada with the rest of his team, he'd have gone a lot longer than a few weeks without seeing her. Before he got the orders for this crazy gig, they'd been talking about starting a family.
The idea of Kiko pregnant, her little tummy all swollen with his baby, made Mike nuts. He groaned and reached down, palming his dick. That was the other problem living in Triton. No fucking privacy. This place was worse than a bivouac. Five other guys breathing down his neck all the damn time and jeezus… He really missed Kiko.
"Sorry to interrupt your jack off time there, Cap, but we need to talk."
"Son of a fucking whore!" Mike dropped his dick like it burned his hand and yanked his zipper up. His best friend stood less than two feet away.
"My mama was a good Jewish woman. Don't make me come over there and defend her honor."
"Please, bitch. I'm a Marine."
"You wanna throw down? I'll take you out back and thrash that semper fidelis right out of you."
"Out back, huh? Murray, we're in the middle of the fucking Pacific Ocean. You been licking snail slime again?"
Murray Levshtein, a marine biologist and his best friend since high school, frowned, grinned at him, and then shrugged his massively powerful shoulders. "Maybe."
Mike laughed. "What's up, you crazy motherfucker? You look like you're ready to hit the clubs."
Murray's thick, curly brown hair was freshly washed and lay tight to his head in a pony tail he secured at the base of his neck, Willie Nelson-style. His sea foam green polyester suit was pure Saturday Night Fever a la John Travolta. Had Murray stood six feet tall and weighed one hundred sixty pounds like Mike, he would've looked hip. However Murray was a squat five feet six and weighed in at just over two-ten, most of which he carried in his shoulders and chest. He looked like a short, fat power-lifter, which wasn't far from the truth. He was the only civvie Mike knew who could match him press for press on the weight bench.
"I'm all dressed up for my date."
"Your date? You finally said yes to Stallings, huh?"
Their metallurgist, Chad Stallings, succeeded in alienating every man in Triton within hours of arriving at the habitat by announcing in a lisping drawl that he was here, queer, and they should get used to it. He watched gay porn on the closed circuit television in the main living area and hit on all five of the guys, including Mike and Dr. Whittaker who had wives.
"Well, you know me. I'm easy."
"I knew you'd cave, you cheap slut."
"He's such a stud." Murray fluttered his eyelashes. "The way he holds a laser-cutter gets my motor running."
Mike shook his head and finished tucking his shirt back into his pants. "You're seriously freaking me out. If you weren't my best friend I'd punch you. What's up, for real?"
"For real, I'm going out."
Mike stared at the marine biologist, blinking slowly. "You really have been licking snails. Murray, we're 1700 feet below the surface. You're not going anywhere without a JIM or a dive suit."
"Au contraire. The very beautiful Angela van Eberley, Oceana Electric's Vice President of Research & Development, is picking me up in an ocean rover. We're going to have dinner together." Murray grinned like a Cheshire cat. "I may have her for dinner."
"I hate you."
"OE's nearly gone bankrupt financing this little venture. If the DOD hadn't shown interest this whole project would've sunk like the Titanic. I'm going to show Angela our latest numbers and give her the catalog of the hydrothermal vent ecosystem. That alone is worth this trip, but if Stallings is right and those sulfide ores could be mined by the Thackeray while we're here, then Oceana could recoup some of their cost."
"Okay… and you're telling me this why?"
Murray took a deep breath and moved Mike away from the door toward the observation window. "I think Stallings made an error. His report lists an unidentified metal as making up thirty-seven percent of the yield. That's absurd. At first I thought there was just a decimal point missing, but when I re-ran the numbers they came out right. Which means his sample was somehow contaminated; over a third of it is an unknown. The fact that our metallurgist couldn't identify over a third of the sample isn't going to impress Angela. So…"
"I get it. You want a fresh sample."
"Awesome! Thanks, Mike! I'd love for you to lead another dive and retrieve a fresh sample; that would be great!" Murray clapped him on the back and almost knocked him to the floor.
"The shit I do for you…"
Murray offered him a cheeky grin, nodding, his big arms spread wide as he gestured to the splendor of Triton. "Hey, just remember, you could be sweating and living with minimal luxury in the jungles of Grenada. Instead you're here with me… sweating and living with minimal luxury at the bottom of the ocean."
Mike laughed. "Go see your woman."
Murray winked. He had to turn his huge shoulders slightly to get them through the doorway. Mike left the observation area to round up his divers. Each member of the Triton crew had been hand-picked by either Mike or Murray for characteristics necessary to their mission.
Stacy Whittaker, MD was part of NEDU, the US Navy Experimental Diving Unit, and the DMO or Diving Medical Officer for Triton. As bald as the rocks he studied, Doug Morris was a geologist specializing in igneous rock, which was formed by the cooling and solidification of magma. Chad Stallings, their metallurgist, was a New York City native who loved Broadway show tunes and considered himself a modern alchemist. Kibo Hindi, the final member of their team, was a short, thin, jet black African-American physicist from the Department Of Defense.
For this specific mission, Mike tagged Chad and Doug to dive with him. He put Kibo on communications and left Doc on standby, ready to enter the water if need be or handle a medical emergency if they had one. The three divers suited up and exited Triton via the moon pool.
Using surface supplied umbilical diving equipment, the three aquanauts sea-walked across the ocean floor away from their habitat and over to their goal. Hundreds of meters wide, the Triton crew named the field of roughly cylindrical chimney structures that covered the gently sloping hills of the seabed Top o' London. Mike got his first look at the chimneys, vents from underwater volcanoes that spewed forth clouds of black mineral particles, and reminisced with his crewmates about the scene from Mary Poppins when the chimney sweeps danced across the rooftops of London.
Chad, the resident show tunes addict, had broken into Chim-Chim-Cher-ee followed by Step In Time, complete with the soft shoe routine, which had almost resulted in Kibo spraining his ankle trying to get out of Chad's way. He was a rather… exuberant dancer. Murray suggested the name as a way to stop any further impromptu performances in the extremely tight and confined space of Triton.
Top o' London appeared especially ominous today. In addition to the narrow, crooked, black smokers, tube worms covered every surface in great clusters. The intriguing creatures looked like the cut-off ends of giant white Mickey D's straws with huge red tongues hanging out of them that wagged in the ocean current. They were creepy to say the least, even though Murray assured him they were harmless.
Mike kept moving. Today's diving task was difficult and dangerous. The unstable ground below their feet moved with alarming frequency as the tectonic plates shifted underneath them. Likewise, the temperatures fluctuated wildly. Sometimes the water erupting from the vents reached as much as 464 degrees Centigrade, parboiling the ocean around them like a natural hot spring.
Kibo explained to Mike on their last dive that another potential hazard was the pressure of the ocean. Because salt water was denser than fresh water, the hydrostatic pressure combined with the heat from the volcanoes could cause the water to become a supercritical fluid. Mike joked that it had plenty in common then with Murray's Jewish mother, but a supercritical fluid was actually any substance that possessed physical properties between those of a gas and a liquid.
Mike wasn't a brain; the government wasn't paying him to do math or science. He was a soldier, a Marine in Force Recon, an aquanaut who could do just about anything underwater as good as he could do it on land. He'd asked for and received the translation of what all the scientific mumbo-jumbo meant: the vents were fucking dangerous. He should be careful and watch his ass because walking through them was like traipsing through a mine field. Mike understand that.
Maybe Grenada would've been a better assignment than this after all.
"Time to go to work, boys." Chad passed collection kits around as they reached the entrance to Top o' London. "The bigger the piece, the better."
"I heard that's how it worked for your kind." Doug took his kit and took a large step away from the metallurgist.
"And yet I'd settle for you, Dougie. You let me know when you want that little trip to heaven, okay?"
"I hope Strong drops you down one of the black smokers."
"Mikey likes me." Chad blew Mike a kiss, a ridiculous gesture in a diving rig with a large, multi-part umbilical cable that supplied breathing gas, electricity, communications, and water to keep the temperature of his suit regulated looped over his arm, yet Chad managed it with style and a certain degree of grace.
"Clear the channel, you two." Mike put an end to the banter. He took his kit from Stallings and scanned the field. "I'm heading for my objective, Triton. Check in when I get there. Out."
"Received." Kibo's voice over the open channel was crisp and clear. "Hydrogen, helium, oxygen, and nitrogen are all within normal sat levels. Temperatures stable. 25% of cord deployed."
Mike filed the information away and headed for his goal, keeping both his diving buddies in his peripheral vision. Since Triton supplied all their breathing gas, they didn't have the kind of time limitations imposed by scuba equipment. That was a good thing; they'd need the extra time. Mike circled his chimney three times before deciding where he'd try to take his sample.
Pulling his hammer and chisel from his tool belt, Mike examined the surface of the rock. The particles clouding the water made it impossible to see anything clearly. He couldn't feel his way around either since his diving gloves were so thick. He supposed it didn't matter what part of the thing he cut so long as he brought back a sample; he figured he should check with Stallings or Morris just to be sure, though. It would be just his luck to whack a chunk off this thing, find out he cut off a hunk of something worthless, and have to risk his life on a fucking third dive.
Chad was not where he was supposed to be, but a quick reconnoiter of the area located the wayward metallurgist. He was plastered to Doug's back, the two of them huddled next to a huge, towering chimney in Doug's area. Mike found that pretty funny after all Doug's jokes this morning.
As Mike approached he switched his helmet mike on, intending to hail them so that he didn't frighten either of his dive buddies. To his surprise, one of them was already on the alternative channel, and Mike picked up every word the two men spoke.
"You bald men are insatiable." The affectation was gone from Chad's voice. For the first time, he sounded completely normal, and Mike was shocked to discover that the guy had a nice, deep voice.
"High testosterone. Fuck, Chad, I need you."
"So stop screwing around, get your sample, let me get mine, and we'll head back to Triton. God, D, like I don't take care of you?"
"You've been ignoring me."
"You haven't exactly been nice lately. The homophobic asshole routine's getting old, baby."
"Please tell me your com link's off." Doug's voice rang with panic.
"Of course it is." Chad sounded disgusted. "We couldn't possibly let the rest of the team know you're as gay as me, now could we?" He exhaled noisily. "You know if I wasn't in love with your stupid ass I'd let you suffer down here."
The only thing that kept Mike from tripping over his feet or his umbilical was years of training doing covert operations. He couldn't believe what he just heard. He didn't know if this meant that Stallings and Morris had gotten together in the three weeks they'd all been living in Triton, or if they'd known each other on the surface, and had somehow managed to conceal that from he and Murray and get assigned to the mission together. If it was the first circumstance, how crazy was that? If it was the second, that was a major breach of both security and protocol.
Mike carefully switched his helmet off and then popped it on so that they'd hear the buzz with him being so close to their position. Sure enough, Morris jerked and turned just as Mike spoke.
"Approaching on your six, Stallings."
"What's the problem, Mikey?" Chad's lisping drawl was back in full force. Now that Mike knew it was put on, it really annoyed him.
"Not sure where to cut on my chimney. Is there something specific I'm looking for?"
"Come here and watch Dougie."
"My name is Doug."
"Whatever you say, handsome."
Mike observed as Doug found a fissure and followed it until he could fit his chisel into the crack, then struck with his hammer. An explosion of fragments came away from the formation. Doug caught the biggest piece in his specimen jar.
Mike gave the guys two thumbs up and turned to go back to his area when all the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He stowed his equipment and froze. Over the years Mike had learned to trust his instincts. More than once they'd saved him from getting shot, triggering a trip wire, or leading his team into an ambush. He floated, his boots barely touching the ocean floor, eyes scanning all around for the danger he sensed.
Without warning the ground beneath him shifted violently, throwing Mike off balance and into one of the chimneys. A rumbling that was as much a feelings as it was a sound shook Mike like a rag doll. Doug's hysterical voice over the general com link sent adrenaline spiking through Mike's blood stream.
"Chad! Fuck! Fuck! Chad's gone!"
"Dropping packs, Triton, going to rescue and retrieval."
"Received. Stallings's video feed has gone black. Use extreme caution. Ground tremors at Richter 4.0."
"Copy that."
Mike dropped all but his essential search and rescue gear and did a jump-thrust maneuver toward the last place he'd seen Chad and Doug. He landed with a thud and scrambled around in the thick clouds to try to find the two men. The green blaze of a glow stick nearly blinded Mike as Doug cracked one to life right in front of him. Mike batted it from his hands. The stick flipped over their heads, past the chimney, and disappeared from their sight. Mike flipped his com back on.
"He just disappeared!" Doug was still in panic mode.
"Show me."
Doug rounded the tremendous chimney which now had an awful forty-five degree lean to it. As Mike followed him around the unstable structure, he saw the opposite side dropped off into an abyss. What had been a crevice in the seabed was now a canyon without an identifiable bottom.
But Doug's glow stick had stopped about 25 meters down. Chad clutched it in one hand from his perilous perch on a ledge.
"Oh my god! Chad! Don't move!" Despite his good advice to his lover, Doug took two steps toward the stranded man. Mike grabbed his dive belt as the ground below Doug's right foot crumbled.
"And how about you stay far away from the edge? This is my line of work, what I got hired to do." Mike pulled and Doug walked backward, his eyes never leaving the figure huddled against the canyon wall.
"Triton, we've located Stallings. Quake opened a crevasse in the sea floor, running north-northeast to almost due south approximately fifty meters long, unknown. Stallings is on a ledge, looks like he's about twenty-five meters from the lid. No contact on general com, switching to helmet to see if I can raise him." Mike switched his frequency. "Stallings, do you copy?"
Doug paced back and forth beside him, obviously panicked. "I tried that. We've been on helmet since we got here!"
Mike looked at Doug, his eyes finding Doug's through the cloudy water. Mike's face was calm, almost cold. "You need to calm down. I'm going to go get him and bring him back. I might need your help. I need to know I can count on you." He stopped Doug's pacing with a heavy hand to his shoulder. "Can I count on you, Morris? Cause Stallings's life might depend on it."
Doug's anguished face smoothed out. He nodded, the gesture awkward in the heavy diving suit. "You can count on me."
Mike flipped his com back to general. "Commencing rescue. Have Doc ready for injuries."
"Received. Good luck."
What Mike didn't tell Doug was that if Chad's helmet com wasn't working and his video feed was black, it was a pretty good indication that there was significant damage to both his umbilical line and his helmet. That meant every second they delayed getting him up and back to Triton was life-threatening. Mike detached his line and looked at the black smoker behind him. As far as stable structures for anchoring, it wasn't suitable in the slightest. The next closest chimney was five meters away.
"Morris, come with me."
Doug clearly didn't want to leave his spot at the edge of the canyon, where he stared down at Chad. But Mike didn't give him much choice. He grabbed Doug's umbilical and hauled him along. They reached the small, squat black smoker and Mike pointed at it.
"How stable is this rock?"
Doug stared at him blankly.
"Just ten-scale it, Morris. Compared to the one that's leaning like the fucking Tower of Pisa over there, is this one better or worse?"
Doug bobbed his head. "Better. Uh, stable. Maybe, a seven?"
"Okay. I'm going to tie off here and I want you to keep an eye on my line. If it starts to slip you let me know at the first sign, got it?"
"Will you stop if it does?"
Mike took a deep breath. "No, I'll have to go into the wall with krampons, but that takes a lot longer. So just do what I tell you and don't waste fucking time asking me questions. Stallings could be hurt."
Doug's eyes went wide and he moved out of Mike's way. Securing the line, Mike ran the drill the same way he'd done it a thousand times. It could've been an exercise. He walked to the canyon edge, pulled his line taut, leaned back, and tipped over the side, walking down the canyon wall and allowing his weights to adjust as he reached the slightly greater depth.
Stallings clung to the wall like a starfish, his entire body pressed as flat as he could get it, the glow stick between two of his fingers. His helmet was dented, a bad sign, though he gave Mike a thumb's up when Mike came into his line of sight. Mike quickly D-ringed Stallings to his safety harness in case the ledge gave way, and boosted the line up from the wall so that Chad could climb in front of him. He dropped half of Chad's weights and they began the ascent with the New York metallurgist holding his own.
Halfway up, he faltered. Mike saw his arms shaking from the exertion. Though it was cheating, he had no way of knowing how badly Chad was injured. Mike dropped his own weights and shot the rest of the way to the lid, overtaking it by several feet. Mike hauled them back down to the seabed and hit his com.
"We've got Stallings and one sample, Triton. Returning to base."
"Received. Doc is ready for him."
"Morris, give your sample to Stallings to carry and we'll just leave him buoyant, pull him back." Mike left Chad clipped to his line, floating several feet above the sea floor. Doug handed over his container, his arms around Chad. Mike turned away.
"Let me unhook your line, Cap." Doug's voice seemed steadier.
"Thanks. We need to hustle."
As Doug went to the black smoker to unhook and retrieve Mike's line, Mike looked over Chad's umbilical cable to assess the damage. The guy had been incredibly lucky. The video and com cables took the majority of the damage, while the electric and gas lines remained pristine. Mike laid a reassuring hand on Chad's torso. He might come through this with nothing more than a concussion from that knock on his head.
Mike glanced over at where Doug rose up, his line coiled neatly in his hands. Mike motioned for him to hurry up and Doug nodded. Then without warning, the ground sifted beneath their feet again. On instinct Mike leapt up, he and Chad still attached to the line. His movement and the tremor threw Doug off balance and he fell into the nearby chimney. As Mike watched in astonishment, the whole middle of Doug's body disappeared in a gushing eruption of… nothing. Mike never saw what hit the man.
Horrified, Chad thrashed in the water, trying to get to where Doug had been, but what remained of their geologist fell in two pieces to the ocean floor as the water turned red. The temperature shot up and sweat broke out all over Mike's body. The alarm on his suit went off as Kibo's voice sounded on the com.
"Get out of there! Move! The water's reached supercritical stage; it'll go through solids like a knife!"
No shit, Mike thought. He just witnessed that demonstration of physics firsthand. Hauling Chad like a marlin on a line, Mike moved through the water toward Triton as fast as he could. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the specimen container float away. Chad released it as he jack-knifed, whipping around in distraught grief. Mike reached out and plucked it up before the current got hold of it.
After the events of today there was no way Mike was leading a third dive to carve another chunk off those damn black smokers. He wasn't coming back to Top o' London unless somebody with more rank than his two bars ordered him to do it.
Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. 2010
"He's back."
"Oh no, really?"
The two nurses at Georgetown's student health center exchanged looks.
"Dr. McKinley just left for rounds at the hospital."
"Who's here?"
Sarah Barnes, the star of the fourth year medical students, poked her head into the file room.
"Who are you two gossiping about in here? And do either of you have a stick of gum? I'm dying."
The two nurses looked at each other, chuckled, and grinned. Sarah summarily got a stick of gum and a patient file.
"Exam room 4, Dr. Barnes, and don't keep him waiting. He's in bad shape. He's this year's contender for the prayer list."
Sarah frowned as she skinned the piece of Big Red and popped it into her mouth. With a competent flip of her wrist she opened the file and read the notes. She got a third of the way down the first page and scowled at the nurses.
"Is this a joke?"
"No joke."
"He's been in every day this week." Sarah frowned. "McKinley wrote him a script for Percs yesterday. For headaches?"
The portlier of the two nurses nodded. "Do you want his test results from last week? We have x-rays, a CAT, and a contrast MRI of his head."
"Yes, please. Thank you, Clara. And I'd like a blood draw, full tox."
"We did one on Monday. He's clean."
"Oh." Sarah flipped two pages and frowned again. "Run another just in case and do a urinalysis."
"Yes, Dr. Barnes."
"What did you mean when you said he was this year's contender for the prayer list?" Sarah paused at the doorway and smoothed her blond hair with one hand.
The two nurses looked at each other again. "We usually get one every year who we pray transfers out to another college."
Sarah laughed. She walked down the hallway past several rooms with students waiting to be seen for various ailments until she got to room 4. Knocking gently, she opened the door and went in.
Nicholas Pricewater hunched in the dark, in the corner of the exam room. He'd shut the blinds and drawn the drapes as well as turning the lights off. Sarah noted that he sat in the tripod position, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, his fingers in hair as his thumbs massaged his temples. She couldn't tell what color his hair was; he was soaked with sweat.
"Mr. Pricewater? Nicholas? I'm Dr. Barnes." Sarah kept her voice low, a nod to his headache. He looked up at her and Sarah fought to keep a neutral expression.
He had violet eyes.
"Where's Dr. McKinley?"
"He's not on duty today. I've looked over your file. You have a history of migraine headaches that you see a neurologist for in Alexandria. When was your last visit with…" Sarah checked the file. "Dr. Latham?"
Nick fought not to scream. His head felt like it was going to explode at any given moment, and this dumb bitch wanted to know when he'd last seen his neurologist, information that he'd given student health last week. He knew it was all in his file, which she had in her hands. He knew she didn't believe there was anything wrong with him. Or rather, she believed whatever was wrong with him was most likely self-induced, meaning she thought he was a druggie. He was in so much pain he would've cried if he could, but Nick Pricewater hadn't cried in his entire life.
"Look, whoever you are, I've given all this information to you people already. It's in my file."
"I'd like for you to tell me again."
"I'd like for you to get me Dr. McKinley."
"He's unavailable. I'm afraid you're stuck with me. How long have you had the current headache?"
"Since birth. Lady, I'm in an unbelievable amount of pain. I can't read, I can't walk in a straight line, I can't even keep my eyes open. I've been in here every goddamned day for the last two weeks."
Nick's voice grew louder and louder as he reiterated his symptoms, all of which were in the file the stupid woman held in her hands. He focused on her, narrowing his thoughts onto her: blond hair in a $10 haircut, crooked glasses, Wal-Mart clothes; she was a fucking train wreck. The throbbing in his head got worse and worse, pounding behind his eyes and roaring in his ears until he had to shout to make himself heard over the waterfall in his head.
"Please don't exaggerate, Mr. Pricewater. If we're to help you we need to accurately access your symptoms." Sarah stayed calm in the face of the little prick's temper tantrum. If he thought shouting would get him more pain pills he was sorely mistaken. She jotted a quick note in his file about classic drug-seeking behavior.
"Accurately access my symptoms? Did you learn that at the cut rate med school across the street? You cunt. I could get the endowment to that place cut in half with one fucking phone call. Look at my name. And I'm not displaying classic drug-seeking behavior. Have you even taken an addictionology class, you dumb bitch?"
Sarah gaped at him. She wasn't sure how he'd known what she just wrote, or if his words were just extremely coincidental. Sarah hit her emergency com button. "Clara, sed 4 stat." She pulled her flashlight from her pocket and briskly walked over to where Nick sat, his hands over his eyes. "Mr. Pricewater… Nicholas, may I examine your eyes? Please?"
"Woman, don't waste your time. You're not even a doctor. You're one of the fucking fourth years. Put your toys away and go get me some Hypnomorph so I can go to my fucking classes today."
Sarah stared at him, astonished again. She flipped to his treatments. "That's an experimental drug. I don't have clearance to treat you with it, nor do I have access – "
"McKinley runs the damn trials! There's vials of the shit here."
Hot daggers stabbed through Nick's eyes and he screamed, grabbing his head. It was too late; he'd played around with this ignorant whore too long. Nick had been here before, and now he was honestly terrified. He screamed and shrieked, the pain overwhelming as his vision disappeared.
Sarah grabbed at his hands, clamped over his eyes and head like a vise. She pried them loose and jerked back, swearing. His nose bled in streams of bright red arterial blood. Reprimanding herself for not gloving up before she touched him, Sarah hit the sink and scrubbed her hands, stomping on the air dryer. She dried her warm red skin, yanked on a pair of purple nitrile gloves, and approached her shrieking patient again.
"Nicholas! Stop screaming. Hold this gauze under your nose."
She pushed several four-by-fours under his nose and shone her light into his eyes, frowning. His pupils were completely non-reactive to light. Fixed and dilated, the only other time Sarah had seen anyone with pupils like his was when she'd examined a coma patient.
Clara came to the door with a tray holding the syringe full of sedative Sarah ordered, but now she wasn't sure she should give Nicholas Pricewater anything. And he wouldn't stop keening like a wounded animal. Clara winced at the pathetic sounds coming out of the boy's mouth.
"Nicholas, talk to me. Are you experiencing pain or is it something else?" Sarah flicked the light at his eyes again.
"I'm fucking blind. I need Hypnomorph." Another wave of pain crested and Nick braced for it, but he still wasn't prepared when the daggers stabbed into his head. He cried out and jerked away from Sarah.
"Doctor?" Clara asked.
"Just a minute, Clara."
"What's going on in here?"
Sarah looked over at the door. Kazuo Strong, a first semester fourth year medical student stood in the doorway. From California, Kaz favored his Japanese mother. His jet black hair stood straight up on his head like a manga or anime character. Sarah privately thought he was too beautiful to be a doctor, but so far Kaz had proved more than competent. He was part of the complimentary medicine program and had a way with difficult and recalcitrant patients, particularly the very young and the elderly.
"Dr. Strong, chronic migraines. Sudden onset of possible neuralgia with diminished vision." Sarah's report was short and to the point. She didn't think Kaz could do anymore than she could, and figured they'd be paging McKinley shortly.
"I'll take over, Dr. Barnes. Thank you." Kaz walked into the small exam room. "We won't need that, Clara."
The nurse looked at Sarah, who shrugged and nodded. Clara left. Sarah handed the patient file to Kaz. "Thank you, Dr. Strong." She tapped her pen over her notation on the words classic drug-seeking behavior and Kaz nodded, closing the door behind her.
"Who are you?" Nick asked. He was close to passing out and breathed slowly through his mouth to avoid it. His head hurt so badly he didn't think he could take much more, and now he was stuck in a room with somebody he couldn't see.
"My name is Kaz Strong. I'm a fourth year med student. I need your permission to touch you."
"Please… I need Hypnomorph. It's the only thing that helps." At least now he was alone with a guy who'd been honest. Nick hated the med students who played at being doctors.
"I promise you, if I can't help you, then I'll get you some."
Surprised, Nick relaxed. He dropped his defensive posture. "Fine. Touch me. Ass fuck me. Just get it done so this headache stops."
"I don't even kiss on the first date."
Nick let out a shocked laugh. He was kind of sorry he couldn't see this guy. Kaz had a sexy, mesmerizing voice. He smelled good, too, which was strange. Nick couldn't handle most smells when he had a bad headache, but Kaz's scent was pleasant.
Kaz stepped up to Nick Pricewater and didn't bother with gloves. He put his left hand over Nick's "third eye," the space right between his eyes in the center of his forehead. His right hand slid down the back of Nick's True Religion jeans and settled over Nick's tailbone. Nick jerked; he couldn't help it. He hadn't been expecting the touch.
"Relax, Nicholas."
"It's Nick."
"Relax, Nick. Just let yourself drift, like you were going to sleep in my hands. Listen to my voice."
"I'm not susceptible to hypnosis."
"Okay. Listen anyway. Let yourself drift. Feel my hands." Nick felt his hands all right; the guy was palming his ass. Nick grinned and wiggled. Kaz had unbelievably warm hands. The heat surged right up his spine. "Sleep, sleep, sleep… in one, two, three."
Nick Pricewater, who wasn't susceptible to hypnosis, dropped into a deep sleep. Kaz concentrated. Space and time fell away as he entered the man's ravaged cerebro-vascular system.
Kaz hadn't bothered to look at Nick's MRI or CAT scan. In his experience they weren't very accurate. What he found in Nick's brain were thousands of tiny blood vessels that didn't go anywhere. Blood flowed into areas of Nick's brain in far larger amounts than it should've and then didn't flow back out. Daunted, Kaz looked around at what he could fix to give Nick the most relief.
He chose the largest vessels in the main areas of Nick's brain and created connections for them, outlets to other vessels so that they ran on a completed system. The work was a bit like digging trenches for marshland or re-routing blocked inland waterways. By the time he was done, Kaz was thoroughly exhausted. Curing Nick, completely eliminating his headaches, would take hours, possibly days of work. Kaz wasn't sure that he had the skill or the stamina for it. He withdrew from the young man, his hands still securely on Nick's body.
"Three, two, one. Awake, awake, awake. Hear my voice. How do you feel, Nick?"
Nick blinked his eyes. His vision swam back into focus. For a moment he was totally disoriented. He expected to feel the wrenching pain of his headache, but it was gone. The shock of no pain was almost as bad as the shock of severe pain. His head whipped sideways to stare at his benefactor, who was only now drawing away from him.
Kaz Strong was oriental and adorable. His jet black hair and sapphire blue eyes hit Nick like a one-two punch. He was short, about five feet seven inches tall and built spare like a swimmer. Nick put him at around 140 pounds. Kaz's skin was paper white, like it never saw the sun, and as he wrote on Nick's chart with a Mont Blanc ball point pen, Nick noticed that he had small, delicate hands, like a musician.
Nick remembered that hot little hand on his tailbone and got instantly, ragingly hard.
Kaz's deep blue eyes flicked up to lock onto Nick. "Nick? How do you feel?"
"What did you do?"
"Eastern medicine. Alternative therapy. Much more efficient and practical than drugs and far less toxic. Could you look straight ahead for me?"
Kaz shone a light in Nick's pretty violet eyes. Very unusual for a Caucasian to have violet eyes, Kaz thought, but Nick was blessed – or cursed – with them. His pupils were equal and reactive to light now, and Kaz noted it on his chart. The nosebleed had stopped as well. Kaz got a cotton swab and dipped it in peroxide.
"Tip your head back, please."
"You're not wearing any gloves."
"Are you immunosuppressed?"
"You have no infections that I can determine and your health is excellent. I'm just going to clean your face up so we don't have to bother the nurses. They're already overworked."
While Nick wouldn't have sat patiently for another living soul, he let would-be Dr. Kaz Strong dab at his nose, upper lip, and chin with the damp cotton.
"So what did you do?"
"I told you. I'm studying complimentary medicine. I use traditional Eastern therapies –"
Nick reached up and grabbed Kaz's wrist, locking eyes with the pretty med student.
"I've had migraines my whole life. Since before I could even talk. My family's rich. They've taken me everywhere, including Tokyo, Haryana, and Tibet, for treatment. There's nothing you know and no therapy you could've tried that my family hasn't already tried."
Nick searched Kaz's face, those violet eyes so piercing and inquisitive. "So tell me, doctor, why am I without pain for the first time, without drugs, in eighteen years?"
Kaz smiled. "Nick, just because a treatment's been tried, that doesn't mean it was done effectively. Eastern medicine depends a great deal on the melding of energies between practitioner and patient. Perhaps whoever treated you before wasn't able to properly connect with you. Today, I did, and for that I'm very glad. I'm sincerely pleased that I was able to provide you with a modicum of relief. I don't like the idea of you participating in Dr. McKinley's Hypnomorph trials. That drug is very strong and not intended to treat chronic migraines, chronic pain, or cerebro-vascular issues."
Kaz wrote several more notes in Nick's file, then went to the sink where he washed his hands. Nick stared at the beautiful little oriental boy, his mouth agape. He'd never been so effectively put off in his entire life. Nick didn't know whether to be amazed, aroused, or flatly furious. He was all three, and damn, his erection wouldn't go away.
"Sit here a while longer to be sure the headache doesn't return, and then you're clear to go to your classes today."
Kaz turned to shake hands with his patient. Nick Pricewater leaned against the table, his arms crossed over his chest, an unreadable look on his handsome face.
"Was there something else, Nick?" Kaz asked.
"How about your cell number?" Nick never broke his blank expression.
Kaz blinked, then nodded. "All right. If that will make you feel more secure." Kaz took one of the student health cards from the desk and jotted his pager number on the back of it. He wasn't about to give a stranger his personal cell phone number, but he'd give a patient his beeper number. That was appropriate, particularly given Nick's condition. Kaz had a feeling he'd end up treating Nick again. He handed Nick the card.
"If you get another headache, page me. I'll make arrangements to treat you."
"Maybe we should just start dating." Nick smiled at Kaz. "I've had these headaches all my life."
Kaz laughed, but frowned. "You seem like a nice guy, Nick, and you're very attractive, but I'm straight." Kaz flipped the patient file closed. "Increase your water intake. You look a little dehydrated. Have a good afternoon, Nick."
Kaz walked out, leaving Nick to stare after him, baffled. Straight?
No way.
Nick looked at the card in his hand. Kaz Strong. Huh. He got up and grabbed his hoodie from the floor where he flung it when he came in. He had a few phone calls to make, and he was dying for a Naked Juice and a salted bagel.
Straight boys didn't think about how smooth another guy's skin was or how pretty their eyes were, and that's what Dr. Hunk had been thinking about while he palmed Nick's ass. Nick knew. He'd been reading minds for as long as he could remember, after all.
And he had a sneaking suspicion that Kaz Strong was more like him – in more ways than just his orientation – than he wanted to admit.*
Where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods? Where's the street-wise Hercules to fight the rising odds? Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed? Late at night I toss & turn & dream of what I need... I need a hero. I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night. He's gotta be strong & he's gotta be fast & he's gotta be fresh from the fight. I need a hero. I'm holding out for a hero 'til the morning light. He's gotta be sure & it's gotta be soon & he's gotta be larger than life... ~Bonnie Tyler


text:
i had a tumor removed from my spin that an from c2 to c7 in august of 2008. when i woke up i couldnt move the right side of my body i spent 2 months in inpatiet physiccal therapy where i had to learn towalk again. i have been goin 2 outpatient physical and occupational therapy 3x's a week since.
and and i havebeen taking baclofen orally since then but i stil have random spasms mostly when i first wake up and when i stand up aftewr sitti,ng for a long time. but i dont need any assistance when i walk and i can walk very far, i just walk slow and with a limp. but ive kinda gotten 2 the point wherrre im not getting any better could some one tell me there b4/ after story with the baclofen pump


text:
Mr Obama touched down aboard Air Force One at Tel Aviv airport, and was met by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres and US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro.
The trip is Mr Obama's first to Israel since taking over the White House four years ago.
He landed as hopes of reviving peace talks remain increasingly distant following the swearing-in of a new Right-leaning Israeli coalition government on Monday whose dominant partners have no ambition to reopen negotiations with Palestinians.
Mr Obama's failure to visit Israel in his first term saw his approval ratings plummet in Israeli opinion polls, but he will start with a trip to a US-funded Iron Dome missile defence battery in a symbolic move to reconfirm US security guarantees to Israel. Later he will meet Shimon Peres, Israel's president, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, for talks on the threats posed by Iran's nuclear programme and Syria's civil war.
Contains video from APTN


text:
...For the World?
Matthew 17:20
Luke 12:22-34
Luke 7:21-23
Is he enough for this world? Can he heal divisions in my church? In my country? In my government? On my team? In my office? In my household? Between India and China? Between Muslims and Christians? Between PCA and PCUSA? Between Democrat and Republican? Between black churches and white churches? Between Palestinians and Israelis? Between oil barons and greenies?
Is there really neither Greek nor Jew in him? Rich nor poor? Catholic nor Protestant? Capitalist nor communist? Jock nor geek? Haves nor have-nots? Shiite nor Sunni? Is he enough?
Is Jesus enough today? Is Jesus enough to both rise from the dead and overturn man's laws? Or do we need to rely on lobbyists and the Supreme Court for that? Is Jesus enough to create the world and end human trafficking? Or should we pin our hopes on the UN and NGOs? Can the Jesus who fed 5,000 still feed the hungry? Can Jesus who healed the blind and cured the lepers defeat AIDS? Should we hope that Warren Buffett's contributions to the Gates Foundation will suffice?
Can he who calmed the waters heal the planet's wounds, or should we hold out for Kyoto? Can the one who said he'd bring all men to himself reconcile Turks and Armenians, Russians and Chechnyans, North and South Korea? Can he heal South Africa? Can the one who gave the Spirit also guide America wisely?
Can he who tells us that the kingdom is near teach us not to build our own empires? Can the one whose love drives out fear bring peace in the midst of terrorism? Can he who cast out demons cast them out of Darfur? Can the one who said he'd come back for us provide a real family for MS13 members? Can he who raised the temple in three days bring down the sex industries of Vegas and Thailand? Can he who tells us to love also remake the hearts of those engaging in torture? What of tsunamis? New Orleans? Kidnappings? Beheadings? Rape? Corporate corruption? Ireland's wars? Tribal warfare at home and abroad? Widow burning? Is he enough?
Do we barely stammer a "yes" for fear of not having enough faith? Do we qualify "yes" with "As long as six-party talks work, NATO involves itself, the right people are in office, the market picks up, we cut emissions, bills are passed, hearts change miraculously? Would these answers we offer ever be enough?
Or do we believe so much in certain views of scriptures that we've never dared dream he could or would do such if asked? If believed? Do we believe in him? Is he enough?
© 2006 Revolworks.com


text:
Debbie Kay came for a visit. On Friday, Tammy & Erica came over and we had a craft day. We had a fun time and made Christmas treasures. We are all on instagram now.
Debbie Kay blessed me with all of these goodies. She is very sweet and kind. This is the first time we met and it was like we have been friends for years. We have been blogging friends for 9 years. She lives in CA. We went to estate sales, antique shops, thrift stores, out to eat and other fun shops.
Tammy came with some crafting goodies to go along with my huge Christmas stash that we used to make some Christmas treasures.
We made the spoolie girl and Tammy had made the spun head, a mini cloche and fun Santa from a decal that Erica had. We scanned it so she could keep the original. I haven't finished my Santa, he needs some embellishments.
It was great fun with these girls who have very kind hearts! THANK YOU, Friends!
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Seaside Mantel & Question
I just LOVE the ocean or to be at a lake. There is something about the water that is calming! Since I can't be at either...my seaside mantel will have to do! :)
The green and white fish is for appetizers. Isn't that sweet!
Full shot of the mantel. The lady on the fish I've had for a few years. She is a flower frog. No marking on her.
Do any of you remember "A Swap for All Seasons" blog? It was where we exchanged a card, tag and bits & bobs in a color of the swap. I have been thinking of having one for a few months, starting in August. I will do a special post at the end of the month that will have sign ups. Anyone interested???
I hope you are enjoying the summer. It's going by so fast!
AND... Debbie Kay is coming next week to visit! We have been blogging friends for 8 or 9 years. I will certainly take some photos of our time together.
Posted by GARAGE SALE GAL at 4:20 PM 21 comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)


text:
Early Bird Calendar Sale - Save Now on 2020 Calendars!
Early Bird Calendar Sale - Save Now on 2020 Calendars!
When nothing but the best will do, buy your executive gifts from ePromos. This premium collection will make the C-suite jealous, unless they're your client or business partner. Impress everyone with your sophistication and class with promotional gifts customized with your name or logo. Thank executives or anyone else with custom printed gifts and personalized products. Our promo product experts are here to help you create looking gifts that any recipient will appreciate. With ePromos, you will get great products and great customer service.
This promotional computer backpack has a designated laptop-only section that unfolds to lay flat on the X-ray belt to increase your speed, convenience, and security.
These stylish Marble & Bamboo Custom Coaster Set are on trend and ready to be imprinted with your logo! Made of marble and bamboo, these will live a great impression with employees and clients alike.
Custom Imprinted digital photo frame with up to 480 x 234 pixel resolution.
This promotiona computer b has lots of pockets to keep them organized.
Magnetic logo money clip secures loose bills.
Executive custom coasterset includes six individual coasters with UltraHyde tops on non-scratch velvet bottoms in a polished wooden case.
These elegant Pen2Paper rollerball & ballpoint custom pens gift sets are great for employee recognition gifts that will be treasured all year long.
Genuine top grain leather in rich mahogany color with signature C&B lining and debossed writing pad.
This promotional notepad is perfect For taking notes at those important meetings as well as displaying your company logo.
A luxurious promotional blanket is perfect for snuggling up at home.
Logo clipboard offers lightweight convenience for those last-minute meetings.
Get the holiday party started with the Happy Hour Custom Food Gift Set! It makes a wonderful host gift! It comes with a bamboo serving tray, coordinating coasters, an ice tray, a trio of cocktail syrups and a great mix of tasty snacks.
The Mesh Desk Caddy & Custom Clock Combo is a great feature on any desk to help with organize office supplies with stylish colors.
The perfect gift for new hires and students! This Light Up Bluetooth Custom Speaker & Power Bank Gift Set allows the recipient to listen to their favorite music, and keep their phone charged.
Our logo padfolio is a sturdy poly-canvas organizer.
Promotional neoskin leatherette non-refillable 4" x 6" promotional journal.
Perfect for the journalist and writers of all levels. This leather-wrapped debossed journal features leather wrap/tie closure.
Complete stainless steel barbecue promo gift set with sleek stainless steel case.
A beautiful rounded brass custom coaster molded over zinc and bonded leather.
Polished chrome promotional lipstick case with a faux crocodile skin insert.
Analyze profits months in advance with your company logo on this Analyst Custom Monthly Planner.
Brass promotional ballpoint pen cap off style is laser engraved with your logo.
High quality stainless steal steak knife promo gift set fashioned from world famous Laguiole with your logo.
Multi-use leather logo wallet and promotional business card holder has wide 3/4" gusset, 4 pockets and ID window with thumb-slide hole for easy retrieval.
This handy promotional tape measure adds a measure of style and success to every promotion!
Make travelling for business easier with this Carry-On Promotional Garment Bag. This bag has a full length zipper making it easier to use.
Nine -piece promotional wine gift set including ergonomic bottle opener and wine stoppers packed in polished wooden case with your logo.
A Wenger Swiss Army brand promotional pen set bundled with a twist pen for your next conference.
Made of Italian UltraHyde vinyl promotional journal book with tab and loop closure and 100 sheets of lined paper.
Made of genuine leather, this promotional compu-messenger is great for commuting to and from work with your laptop.
This extra plush promotional blanket is that much more inviting and cuddle-able.
Large Tucson Custom Weekly Planner with extensive reference section, perforated page corners, removable address book and ribbon marker.
Large Panama Custom Weekly Planner with textured leatherette cover with stitched date and border to accent your logo and keep them organized.
Textured black and silver finish promotional business card holders with magnetic flap closure.
This sturdy aluminum promotional journal is ideal for traveling.
Gray ribbon page marker helps them keep track of their weekly meetings and dates with this upright Weekly Tucson Custom Pocket Planner.
Think about the best gifts you ever received. Now, imagine your most valuable clients thinking of you when they're asked that question. At ePromos you can exceed expectations with personalized gifts fit for any executive. We're choosy because we know you are, and want to give you some special options for your customers! They will know they are top priority with an executive gift worthy of their expectations.
Our collection includes innovative new technologies and timeless favorites. For the techie, an iPod docking station, Fitbit, or pocketable power bank make perfect gifts. Giving away a high-end gadget will mean your clients will look forward to your gift each year.
If you want to give them something that words even when they're not an outlet, our executive collection's still got you covered. Give them something from today's hottest brands, including: Cutter and Buck®, Wenger Swiss Army®, Kenneth Cole®, Leeman NYC®, OGIO® and more.
At ePromos, the only limit to what you can give to valued executives is your imagination. We offer bags for jetsetters, jewelry organizers, and computer messenger bags. Give the gift of apparel with our executive level clothing options you can customize with your logo or name. Pullovers or windbreakers make excellent, thoughtful gifts, particularly in the cooler months. We make creating the right luxury gift easy, but the positive impact they'll have on your relationship could last for years to come.
It's not difficult to stay a step ahead of the competition. While everyone else is sending a simple card, you'll give them something useful for the office.
Give a present that is a reflection of the quality commitment you make each day. Remember, any time of the year is a wonderful opportunity to say thanks and to make successful connections with your customers. Contact ePromos and we'll help you find the perfect gift from our collection of gifts that are extraordinary, yet the price won't leave you speechless.


text:
Up to a quarter of Hanoi's cultural and sacred sites – usually temples and pagodas – are being "desecrated" because of the encroachment of people who build their houses or set up shop near them.
Capital treasures fall victim to development [Link no longer active]
Viet Nam News, 18 Feb 2008
Despite being considered sacred and cultural places that must be respected, many temples and pagodas are disappearing under a sea of homes and shops. Many of them are just lean-to additions.
The land surrounding Van Phuc Temple in Ba Dinh District, listed for 20 years as a national heritage building, has been narrowed down by the construction of homes. No public organisations objected to the encroachments.
The People's Committee in Ba Dinh District, instead of providing solutions or punishing householders who violate heritage-preservation regulations, actually granted permission for construction.
The situation seems to be easily prevented – just don't allow permits for construction within a certain radius of cultural sites – so it's a shame to see what are supposed to be temple sites have their sacredness taken away from them. But perhaps the situation's indicative of larger socio-economic forces out there? Larger population, pehaps? Would any readers based in Vietnam care to comment?


text:
Hello All,
Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I have taken a few undergrad physics courses, though it was a while back and am sure I didn't learn everything I needed to. Moreover I only have about a month and a half (until April 14) to prepare for the physics GRE, my questions is- should I take it in April ? Or should I wait until Nov./Dec. ? Is a month enough time to prepare with a so-so physics background? How difficult is it really ? The only reason I don't want to wait is it would mean waiting a whole year to apply (a couple of schools told me they'd accept April applications.) Any reply would be greatly appreciated, thanks.


text:
Charlie Mackelden
PR Coordinator / Marketing Photographer
Charlie is responsible for some of the great imagery and design work here at Hargreaves Plants.
She has built an exceptional reputation in photography for the horticultural industry specialising in the home garden market.
Some of Charlie's main duties include copyrighting, photography, press releases, updating website content, managing all social media channels and creating new marketing designs including bringing lots of new ideas to make sales and purchasing easier for you. Working on-site means new material can be photographed instantly.
She has a qualification in Graphic Design, a BTEC National Diploma in Photography and has completed a Foundation Degree in Lens Based Media, so she is very technically skilled in video, photography & design making it so we can provide you with professional imagery.
Charlie also works self-employed on commission based briefs meaning you can contact her company CLMPhotographyUK to discuss your own marketing needs.
Contact Charlie to discuss imagery requirements and enquiries or for a link to view our ever-expanding high-quality image Library.


text:
Mondays 7pm-9:30pm
AINT NO HALF STEPPIN WITH MARCUS J, is a weekly talk show heard LIVE every MONDAY from 7pm – 9:30pm. We feature Socially Conscience talk that's Entertaining with a Dash of Humor. We also feature a missing and/or exploited child in every show. "The Flagship Show" of Legacy Internet Radio, ANHS WMJ features Special Guests each week with segments like WTH!?, The Lightworkers Segment, Diva Diaries, and The Champipple Room. If you are looking for a Fresh, Brutally Honest but fun show, then you've found it!
Missed a show? No problem.
Click below to be directed to the Aint No Half Steppin With Marcus J archives.
iTunes archives
YouTube archives.


text:
What is RelStorage?¶
RelStorage is a storage implementation for ZODB that stores pickles in a relational database. PostgreSQL 9.0 and above, MySQL 5.0.32+ / 5.1.34+, and Oracle 10g and 11g are currently supported. RelStorage replaced the PGStorage project.
It is a drop-in replacement for FileStorage and ZEO.
There is a simple way to convert FileStorage to RelStorage and back again. You can also convert a RelStorage instance to a different relational database.
Designed for high volume sites: multiple ZODB instances can share the same database. This is similar to ZEO, but RelStorage does not require ZEO.
According to some tests, RelStorage handles high concurrency better than the standard combination of ZEO and FileStorage.
Whereas FileStorage takes longer to start as the database grows due to an in-memory index of all objects, RelStorage starts quickly regardless of database size.
Supports undo, packing, and filesystem-based ZODB blobs.
Both history-preserving and history-free storage are available.
Capable of failover to replicated SQL databases.
zodbconvert utility to copy/transform databases.
zodbpack utility to pack databases.
zodburi support.
Free, open source (ZPL 2.1)
See the rest of the documentation for more information.
- RelStorage's Documentation
- Installation
- Configuring Your Database
- Configuring Your Application
- RelStorage Options
- Database-Specific Adapter Options
- zodbconvert
- zodbpack
- Use With zodburi
- Client Cache Tracing
- FAQs
- Performance
- Migrating to a new version of RelStorage
- Developing RelStorage
- Changes
- Historical Changes
- PGStorage history
- Indices and tables
RelStorage is hosted at GitHub:
Continuous integration¶
A test suite is run for every push and pull request submitted. Travis CI is used to test on Linux, and AppVeyor runs the builds on Windows.
Builds on Travis CI automatically submit updates to coveralls.io to monitor test coverage.
Likewise, builds on Travis CI will automatically submit updates to landscape.io to monitor code health (adherence to PEP8, absence of common code smells, etc).
Project URLs¶
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/RelStorage (PyPI entry and downloads)
http://shane.willowrise.com/ (blog)


text:
ROI on Hotel Technology: Are you measuring it 'The Right Way'?
How does hotel technology benefit you?
Have you ever tried measuring it?
What did you find?
Is the investment worth the returns?
ROI i.e. Return On Investment. We are talking specifically about Returns on Technology Investment. Ideally, when you implement high-end software to get something done, you bear in mind benefits it brings to you. Same goes for hotel software when you install it at your property you expect it to improve efficiency and accuracy of operations, reduce labor costs and a lot more.
Well, this makes complete sense. These days, this bigger-than-ever adoption of hotel technology and tools replaces those manual practices on a big scale. Hotel software is no longer limited to operations optimization, they are influencing guest engagement a big way. Thus, a newer formula to calculate returns is called upon.
Let me present a brief guide on changing the role of hotel technology and thereby re-defining and measuring tech investment return.
Hotel Technology and ROI: Old school days
Earlier, investing in right hotel software was somewhat an expensive decision a hotelier had to make. A lot of research, going over requirements and needs, financial planning and in the end evaluating solution resulted in software purchase.
After that tech solution would automate and streamline all hotel operations, boost revenue and ensure maximum output from hotel staff. Correspondingly, hotel ROI calculation formula was primarily focused on,
- Automated basic operations and Reduced man hours
- Freed staff interacting more with guests (Difficult to quantify this. I know!)
- Elimination of human errors and losses
- And, increase in hotel Revenue (Obviously!)
- And, get more done faster with fewer employees.
All in all, conventional formula revolved around measuring cost reduction due to automation by hotel software. "Old ROI Methods Are Holding Back Adoption Of New Technology" cites Andrew Bartels, VP, principal analyst serving CIOs. (Source)
Why those traditional methods of measuring hotel ROI are not working?
The financial models used to calculate return-on-investment (ROI) for tech purchases in hotels show that old formula evaluates capital investment versus customer engagement.
In current times, hotel technology is blending marketing and online presence with the increased guest influx and thereby guest satisfaction. Hence, newer ROI calculation formula must measure these combined efforts. When you have figured it out, you would cross past your others in terms of digital competition.
In this era of on-hand details and enhanced analytics, ultimate benefit is not cost-saving. "Primary business benefit is not doing more work with fewer people. Instead, the main benefit of these new technologies is reducing the probability of bad business outcomes, and increasing probability of good business outcomes," says Andrew. (Source)
ROI with advanced hotel technology: Changing Trends
Latest hotel software has a lot to make it easy for both guests and hoteliers.
Be it smartphones, Mobile Apps, Internet and Social Media, Tablets and Gadgets, not to forget modern traveling tools that give them access to tons of information on a click. Likewise, hoteliers too are armed with cloud-based hotel technology, quicker one-touch operations, faster service and digital settings to be omnipresent in the market.
Therefore, the top objective of hotels inclines to focus more on customer-facing technology, mobile payment, task management tools, flash reports, and all that is needed to provide splendid services to millennials.
Hence, there should be a present-day formula to calculate hotel ROI, right? Because if you try to measure benefits in terms of headcount or operational cost savings, you won't find them, resultantly, you refrain from investing in technology.
The fundamental formula is:
ROI on technology = Net gain on technology / Cost incurred to implement technology.
Therefore, to get positive ROI either you have to focus on both increasing gain and reducing capital cost.
Formula of measuring ROI on technology 'The Right Way'
Guest-facing technology
Term 'guest facing' stretches to the manner in which your services are experienced or seen by your guest. Young generation demands to be dealt with in a high tech way. Hence your need to employ technology that saves THEIR time and delivers services they need. For example, equip them with a mobile guest portal and they can perform the self-check-in/out, fill up details from their smartphones and more. Give them a tablet menu and they can browse through and place the order themselves.
Setting a digital strategy
The overall experience that modern guest perceives at your hotel critically demands the use of the digital mechanism.
- Instant online rates and inventory distribution.
- Mobile-ready hotel website that takes direct bookings.
- Being present on all booking channels your guests might look for you on.
- Offering optimum rates to combat competition.
- No paperwork, using digital devices such as digital menu, or online feedback system.
Everything in this builds a compelling strategy for you to rock and sets you apart from the rest and as a result boosting ROI.
Data Security
This should be a clear priority for you. Investing for data security provisions in cloud environment not only protects your privacy but also gives you a strong edge against any worst case scenario of data loss. Secured data provides you with anytime backup and easy restore options.
Everyone is going Cloud, are you?
Access anywhere and operate from everywhere is mantra you need in your day to day hotel management. The convenient mechanism, eliminated upfront purchases of hardware and affordable subscription plans are becoming favorite to hoteliers as they are saving a big deal in costs. Easily adaptable features, automatic software updates, minimum downtime, low maintenance, all this is just a beginning of positive ROI.
So next time when you want to upgrade to a more efficient Hotel PMS, do consider cloud-based options.
Get set with new payment modes with technology
Millennials are tech savvy, so you should walk a step advance in order to deliver tech-driven services that please them and make them return to your hotel.
Provision of modern payment options is one such factor they prefer. Online payment, credit/debit card swipe, payment gateway integration and variety of mobile-first payment gives a final punch. Make sure you have these options in your hotel software to ensure you get desired cash flow.
Make the most of Mobile engagement
With maps in their palms, they can find the best place to stay, services they want, where-how-and-why of any location. Your guests are online most of the time, and you are too. You see a cool opportunity to connect with them here?
"Be present on their screens, send them push notifications, connect with them on social media platforms. All-time-best guest retention technique."
Make them feel you want to keep in touch with them. And, if your hotel technology can do it for you, then it is bringing you constant revenue flow. Sounds good in terms of ROI? Of course, it does.
Just a random question, do you offer your guests free Wi-fi at your hotel? How effective it is? Give it a thought.
How easily your guests can find you?
How can you increase revenue and thereby returns with hotel technology?Well, simply make your software bring you bookings. Yes, it can bring you bookings from all over the world. Use software that connects you to channels where your guests can reach you easily. What is the result?
More bookings, higher occupancy rate, higher revenue and you guessed it right! Quick ROI.
In a Nutshell
There is no one-size-fits-all technology. Numbers on paper can only give you the calculation of returns on tech purchase. But real ROI comprises of performance, analysis and informed decision making. ROI is a tool that tells you what is working and what is not. Ultimately, it is your brain that helps you make the decision which makes or breaks your business.
Watch over market trends from time to time, stay abreast of the latest technology. Stick to what works best for you and deliver what your guests seek from you. I bet you'll be rewarded with all-time high returns on investment.
2 thoughts on "ROI on Hotel Technology: Are you measuring it 'The Right Way'?"
Comments are closed.


text:
Coconut & Lime - Single Strand Waistbeads
Coconut & Lime - Single Strand Waistbeads
Color blocking never looked so chic. Black, lime and amber seed beads get a pop of texture from tiger's eye chips and cylinders, black jasper chips, and periodot gemstone chips. Gold metal accent beads add sophistication. A dangle in the center of the waistbeads coordinates with the dangle at the end of the extender chain.
This set is secured using high quality beading wire for strength and durability and is finished with a gold plated lobster clasp set, a gold plated extension chain, and a dangle.
Gemstone Symbolism & Healing Properties:
Black Jasper is a stone with a highly protective and very healing energy. Black Jasper is said to bring good luck to the bearer in a fight, whether it be a mental, political, or legal. It is also used for protection against lightning.
Physically, black jasper is said to be helpful for relieving pain, stomach ailments, foot problems, and hip dysplagia. Black jasper is related to the root chakra.
Tiger's-Eye, or Cat's-Eye, is a stone for the mind, not the body. Tiger Eye is used to focus the mind. It will cause the mind to have feeling of oneness and feel more direct in all thoughts. It makes one aware of one's own needs related to the needs of others.
Peridot has be used as a Power Stone for centuries. Peridot fosters emotional balance, and helps us heal from past emotional wounds. It clears the path way to the heart and heals damaged egos. Peridot is particularly good for healing the healers. A Visionary stone, it brings understanding of destiny and purpose. Releases negative vibrations, and promotes clarity and well being.
This strand can be worn under your clothes to enhance your personal sense of beauty and femininity, slightly exposed when paired with low-waist pants or cropped tops, over your clothes like a belt or draped ornament, or fully exposed with a bathing suit at the beach or in a swimming pool setting.
Some queens like to adorn their upper midsection and wear their belly beads above the belly button, while others prefer to position their beads just above their hips below the navel. Feel free to own your look as you please and occasionally switch the style up!


text:
Haven't found anything yet?
High pile shaggy carpet Monaco in 6 different sizes and the colour silver
Get some south french glamor in your house with the high quality high pile carpet Monaco. Through its 100% polypropylene fiber Monaco offers a soft and cuddly pile, which your feet will love. In addition the pile is very durable and dense and is easy to clean.
Of course this carpet is tested for harmful substances according to OEKO-TEX Standard 100 and therefore absolutely free of pollutants.
This product is available in the sizes 80x150 cm / 31.5'' x 59.1'', 120x170 cm / 47.24'' x 66.93'', 140x200 cm / 55.12'' x 78.74'', 160x225 cm / 62.99'' x 88.58'', 200x290 cm / 78.74'' x 114.17'' and 240x340 cm / 94.5'' x 133.86''.
In addition the carpet / rug is also available in the following colours: beige, cream and cream-beige.
Simply use the search function in our shop.
Note: Due representation there may be slight variations in colour reproduction.


text:
Log in
And you will be able to:
- find new friends who would share your interests;
- write reviews and comments to the games;
- be the first to know about news and updates;
- to participate in contests and win prizes;
- and much more!
Registered users: 1078322
Walkthrough Million Dollar Quest
Help, I'm stuck on the final Chapter (22) and the list where you put the gameplay in order of when her trip happened. Please help me get them in the correct order.
.Review Million Dollar Quest