text:
How to fix Epson ME-20 printers error messages: A printer error has occured Printer's ink pads are at the end of their service life.
Waste ink pad in the printer is saturated, Parts have come to the end of their life
Or Epson ME-20 shows an error on personal computer like this:
Epson ME-20 printer Waste Ink Counter was overflowed and You could possibly fix this error by using WICReset and Reset Key to Reset Waste Ink Counters
Epson ME-20 printer Waste Ink Counter overflow
Waste ink counter Full counter is 100%. Overflow means that Waste ink pad counters values are more then 100%.
It is very easy to check Epson waste ink counters with Wic Reset utility tool [Download here].
Click on READ WASTE INK COUNTERS button:
If one and also two counters are overflow – you could not print with your own Epson ME-20 printer – you have to RESET Epson ME-20's WASTE INK COUNTERS
Solution to fix Epson ME-20 ink pads are at the end of their service life error:
How to deal with this issue? Don't worry you may still use your company Epson ME-20 printer by reset your company waste ink counter.
Download Epson ME-20 WIC Reset Utility Tools & reset your company's printer
WIC Reset Utility is used to Reset the Waste Ink Counters in the Epson ME-20 printers.
You may possibly reset your company's waste ink counter on your own by using WicReset program. This software is easy to use with full instruction. With only two clicks, your own personal Epson ME-20 printer hassle solved and you could look for back to business.
+ Download Epson ME-20 WIC Reset Utility for Windows
+ Download Epson ME-20 WIC Reset Utility for Mac OS
WIC Reset Utility Tool detail:
Supported languages: English, Spanish, Japaneese, Chineese, Turkish, Italian, Romanian, Polish, Arabic, French etc
License: FreeWare
Operation Systems: Windows Operating System XP, Windows OS 7, 8, 8.1, Windows Operating System 10 & Mac OS
The One Time RESET KEY is required for RESET FUNCTION in the WIC Reset utility.
You could possibly Reset your current Epson ME-20 printer by Yourself!
Get Reset Key NOW and Save Your Epson ME-20 Printer
DONT BUY A NEW PRINTER! DONT TAKE YOUR Epson ME-20 PRINTER TO A SERVICE CENTER AS YOU JUST NEED TO RESET THE INTERNAL WASTE INK COUNTERS INSIDE YOUR Epson ME-20 PRINTER AND THEN IT WILL WORK PERFECTLY AGAIN!


text:
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Putnam Investments announced Wednesday that it was kicking off an awareness-building campaign to highlight the distinction between anticipating change versus reacting to change.
Why now?
Because financial advisors and their clients need to continually anticipate the evolution of the markets and be ready to seize opportunities as they arise, according to the Boston-based money management firm.
The awareness-building campaign, called "New Ways of Thinking," officially begins Monday with a series of new print, direct marketing and online ads, along with what Putnam calls "content-driven, multi-media vehicles" that communicate the need to incorporate innovative investment approaches into more traditional investment models and mind sets.
"The marketplace needs to think today about tomorrow," said Robert Reynolds, Putnam's president and chief executive, in a statement. "The past five years have brought extreme swings in market conditions, driven by a confluence of factors that left many investors shell shocked and ill-prepared to either seize unprecedented investment opportunities or protect their portfolios from downside risk."
Putnam is not alone in seeking change. The public profile of advisors is growing by the day, ever since the 2008 crisis forced investors to study their financial services firms more closely. By the same token, advisors big and small realized that they had a public relations problem on their hands as they reached out to reassure investors during the crash. The outcome five years later is a sharper focus on image management and brand promotion – a trend that until now was on only a few advisors' radars.
'I Get a Lot of Questions About Branding'
Like Putnam, LPL Financial this year is focused on polishing its brand while helping affiliated registered investment advisors and hybrid RIAs evolve their businesses. LPL is pushing Advisor Institution Solutions, an ensemble of solutions for advisors that runs the gamut from broader research to improved technology to assistance with social media apps such as Twitter.
"I get a lot of questions about branding," Robert Moore (left), LPL's president and chief operating officer, told a crowd of about 200 affiliated advisors at the firm's alternative investments symposium in New York on Jan. 31. "Your choice to associate with LPL has value. You're at the heart of the end client's experience."
While LPL has no plans to put its name on football stadiums or golf tournaments, the notion of branding has become critical as the "flawed models" of wirehouse brokerages give way to new ways to offer advice, Moore said.
"The financial services industry is at a low ebb in terms of tarnished brands," he said, pointing to big banks such as Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. "They're doing precious little to enhance their image. We stand apart from that."
On the smaller end of the scale, advisors who directly serve consumers are waking up to the fact that the details count. One such former advisor, the blogger Average Joe, who describes himself as "a guy who's been in hundreds of advisory offices," talks about how first impressions count the minute someone walks into a reception room.
"It made a huge impression on us when we walked into a financial advisor's office and the receptionist remembered our name and greeted us warmly," wrote a commenter on Average Joe's blog. "She was a perfect host. After four prior meetings at other firms that didn't go so well, this advisor earned our business. And it all started up front with her."
3 Tips for Promoting a Firm
Similarly, Dan Moisand (left), former president of the Financial Planning Association and a principal at planning firm Moisand Fitzgerald Tamayo, writes in the January issue of Journal of Financial Planning about his frustrations in trying to help a friend choose a planner in a part of the country where he doesn't have a professional network.
After spending hours online searching websites, Moisand concludes that planners need to do some work polishing their personal brands.
"Financial planners are terrible at marketing," Moisand says. "One does not need to be a marketing expert to see just how bad the planning community is in this area."
He lists three simple tips for planners to do a better job of promoting themselves:
1) Tell Your Story. Describe your clients, your practice, your specialties and your background. "A listing that is little more than name, address and phone number isn't interesting or helpful to anyone," Moisand writes.
2) Say It in Plain English. Avoid jargon or tired clichés like "we will help you reach your goals," he advises. "That may be true, but it gives no hint about whether you may be a good fit for a client."
3) Review Your Web Presence. Moisand notes that he first thought planners who didn't have a website were making a big mistake – until he saw some of the websites that do exist. "Cheap website templates," he says, "look cheap."
Check out Our 20 Favorite Top Wealth Manager Logos at AdvisorOne.


text:
Pa. attorney general rejects lottery contract
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane on Thursday rejected a long-term contract sought by Gov. Tom Corbett that would let a British firm manage the $3.5 billion Pennsylvania Lottery, saying parts of it contravene the state constitution or are not authorized by state law.
Her politically fraught decision came after Corbett undertook a nine-month process to find and hire a private company to replace state employees atop one of the nation's largest lotteries. Corbett, who had endured months of criticism about the policy and process from Democrats, settled on London-based Camelot Global Services, the United Kingdom's official lottery operator.
Kane announced her decision in a short statement read at a news conference at her Harrisburg offices, but declined to take questions from reporters.
"It is important that my office perform its role in the system of checks and balances that our government desperately needs and that our citizens deserve," she said.
In a memo she sent Thursday to Corbett's Department of Revenue, which oversees the lottery, Kane's office revealed that it had asked Corbett to withdraw the contract because of a pending lawsuit filed by Democratic lawmakers and the union that represents lottery employees. Corbett refused.
Kane's office subsequently decided that state law does not allow the governor to privatize the operation or management of the lottery nor does it allow the expansion of gambling that the contract would permit.
Her office also concluded that the "indirect expenses" that Camelot can claim under the contract — essentially a management fee of up to 0.75 percent of the annual profit, or hundreds of millions of dollars over the life of the deal — are an unconstitutional waiver of the state's "sovereign immunity" protection against paying certain damages or claims.
Corbett and Camelot each later released statements saying they were disappointed. Corbett also reiterated that his motivation is to ensure that lottery profits keep pace with rising demand for programs for senior citizens that the lottery funds in a state that is among those with the largest elderly populations.
Successfully shifting lottery management to Camelot is a crucial test for Corbett, who promised when he ran for governor that he would look to privatize state services wherever he could.
Meanwhile, the rejection is likely to fuel animosity to the relationship between Corbett, a Republican, and Kane, a Democrat who has been in office barely four weeks.
Kane ran on a pledge last year to be an independent voice and to investigate how the attorney general's office under Corbett handled the child sexual abuse investigation into former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky in 2009 and 2010.
For now, it seems the lottery will remain managed by state employees, while it is not clear what will happen next with the contract.
Corbett can challenge Kane's decision in court, but would only say Thursday that he did not agree with the attorney general's analysis and was reviewing his legal options. Camelot's bid expires Saturday, and it would not say Thursday whether it will agree to extend it.
House Republican leaders said they expected that the Legislature will review Kane's decision, while the state Republican Party called Kane's decision "blatantly political." Democrats and labor unions were effusive.
Sen. John Yudichak, D-Luzerne, criticized Corbett's "misguided plan to privatize one of our most consistent and predictable sources of revenue." Rep. Mike Sturla, D-Lancaster, called the contract "ill-conceived" and riddled with loopholes and liabilities.
The attorney general's office reviews state contracts for form and legality, and Kane's office insisted Thursday that the contract's rejection was not politically motivated and was handled by professional staff who had worked for Corbett when he was attorney general.
"We certainly didn't tell them what to conclude one way or the other," First Deputy Attorney General Adrian King Jr. said. "We told them to do their job and follow the law."
The lottery employees' union, Council 13 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, endorsed Kane in her fall campaign and gave her campaign $30,000.
Corbett, whose administration signed the agreement last month, has said he believes Camelot can produce higher and more stable lottery profits. Democratic lawmakers have criticized Corbett as diverting money from programs for the elderly to a foreign firm at a time when the state employees who run the lottery are achieving strong gains in profits and sales and keeping overhead low.
Corbett's agreement with Camelot is for 20 years. Camelot guaranteed at least $34 billion in profit to the state in that period and could earn another 10 years in extensions if it meets certain performance benchmarks. It was allowed to charge the management fee and receive cash incentives for exceeding its annual profit commitments. Those incentives were capped at 5 percent of annual profits.
Besides the lawsuit, other challenges were pending. Treasurer Rob McCord, a Democrat, had warned that he may withhold payment to Camelot unless he was satisfied that the company's still-vague plans to expand the scope of lottery gambling were allowed by current law.
Currently, profits from the 41-year-old Pennsylvania Lottery benefit programs for the elderly, including transit, rent and property tax rebates, prescription drug assistance, senior centers and long-term care services. Two other states, Indiana and Illinois, have hired private lottery managers, while New Jersey is moving in that direction.


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[SOLVED] Which Puppy for this tiny computer?
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Javelin Dan
Joined: 28 Dec 2010
Posts: 121
Location: Akron, Ohio
Posted: Wed 20 Feb 2013, 13:08
Post subject:
Starhawk –
I'm coming to the party a little late on this one and without much technical expertise, but I can give you the benefit of my experience. On my old Dell Inspiron 8000 (750Mhz, 512 MB RAM), I've tested dozens and dozens of different Linux distros, and dozens of versions of Puppy. I'm not doing anything high tech, so for me the criterion is fairly simple – can I configure my wifi USB dongle, and does it play Youtube videos to any degree? On this particular old box, Puppy rocks…but not necessarily all of them. Anything I've tried before version 5.whatever was problematic for me to get my wireless working. So all the versions I could actually test extensively were version 5 and above since I only have two CAT 5 cables hooked to my DSL and they are both occupied. Anything using 'Barry's Simple Set-up" tool in the connection wizard works great for me. For a long time I thought Wary rocked, but through experimentation I found Lucid 5.2.8 to play Youtube videos better than ANY other version of any distro I tried. Precise and Slacko are fairly close seconds. Odd, because I thought Wary was specifically compiled to work better with Civil War vintage equipment like mine. On this box, in Lucid, Youtube actually plays like an actual video albeit somewhat hurky-jerky. In all others it plays like a slide show. Your guess is as good as mine as to what makes the difference. All this is worth what you paid for it and probably won't relate to anything you're doing, but I thought I'd share.
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Posts: 5056
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...
Posted: Wed 20 Feb 2013, 16:30
Post subject:
Thanks! I usually steer clear of the mainline Puppies, but I don't really know why... I'll give Lucid a try once I get a beefier power brick for this thing.
Anyone need a 12v 60w brick, that has a stronger 12v brick? I'll trade!
(I don't have the $20 to get the replacement I need on eBay
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Posts: 5056
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...
Posted: Sun 24 Feb 2013, 20:43
Post subject:
Non-update: still looking for that power brick...
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Posts: 5056
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...
Posted: Tue 26 Feb 2013, 00:30
Post subject:
Update that really IS an update...
Apologies for the long post -- but it's worth reading, and you won't really understand what's going on if you don't read it all.
Someone on another forum was really kind to me, just now.
That other forum has a section where people can buy, sell, and trade computer hardware of various form and origin. Within this section, there is a thread started long ago called the Perpetual Freebies Thread -- for stuff that is considered (by these people, most of them enthusiasts aka "computer power users") too old and worthless to charge anything more than the cost of shipping. All sorts of stuff shows up in that thread, and most of it works. In fact, probably a good portion of the computers accessing this forum regularly (Pentium 2/3/4/M and AthlonXP era stuff) would be considered quite suitable for that thread by the people on that forum.
As part of cleaning up a room in my house that has been a computer-equipment closet for entirely too long, I put up a veritable mountain of stuff in that thread. None of it was worth enough money (to them, not me) to bother putting up a For Sale thread. Nobody there would've paid more than shipping costs for any of that (to me) slightly-old stuff.
At some point, fairly recently, having cleaned up the room sufficiently... I posted a Want To Trade thread (not a Want To Buy, as --per usual-- I have basically no money) asking to trade my 60 watt power brick (for the tiny board) for a 90+ watt brick, as the brick I have isn't quite strong enough. I wanted a much more capable brick to allow for margin-of-error in estimating how much power the board was actually wanting to pull. (I can tell that the 60w brick is probably pretty close, as the board does partially boot, but I can't tell
To make a long story... well, less long... a fellow on that forum came across the three posts where I gave away all that stuff, and he decided to just up and give me the $20 I needed to buy a 96w brick I had picked out on eBay as a just-in-case if I couldn't do the trade after a while.
So, thanks to the wonders of Paypal, I've already ordered the brick. Should be here within a week or so.
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Posts: 5056
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...
Posted: Thu 28 Feb 2013, 12:35
Post subject:
Received the power supply this morning. I also received something for another project -- I'll probably be working on that other project first, and if there's time to test the power supply with this setup, that will come second.
Tomorrow is going to be busy, so if nothing happens on this today, it will happen Saturday.
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Posts: 5056
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...
Posted: Thu 28 Feb 2013, 21:59
Post subject:
Working on this now -- it appears that an insufficient power brick was not the issue at all. The replacement brick did not solve my problem.
However, adding a rather inexpensive (and old) surge suppressor
. Looks like the local electrical company slacks off a bit on line regulation when it comes to its more rural customers
This time, instead of a bunch of text scrolling across the screen, involving AUFS and all sorts of low-level software stuff dying a horrible death... the screen blacked out at the xorgwizard point.
This is progress
, simply because it hasn't gotten this far before, at least in my house... next I'll try attaching a spare LCD to it that I got for free (it needed a repair which ended up costing me 45 minutes and less than $7 in parts). Maybe it's just having some graphic irregularities.
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Joined: 20 Jul 2010
Posts: 5834
Location: Republic of Novo Zelande
Posted: Fri 01 Mar 2013, 15:15
Post subject:
You know how it has multiple connectors for the 12v supply coming onto the board... well, do those connectors all just parallel up? Or do they have something like diodes or fuses linking them to the main power bus of the board? Could there be something like a resistive fuse, dry joint, or dicky diode in the power line? Is it worth trying to bring the 12v onto the board directly or through a different one of the connectors?
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Posts: 5056
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...
Posted: Fri 01 Mar 2013, 17:52
Post subject:
Two onboard connectors are available for power input. One is the barrel jack I've been using. The other is a "P4" connector like on a much larger motherboard. 4pins, +12V on two, ground on the other two.
It IS worth noting that one of the times I've gotten this board to power up at the tech shop I was using the P4 connector -- but that was with a power supply that has a bad filter cap in it. Those caps are LOUD when they die completely (or so I hear) and this one, although it hasn't quite died yet, has a foot in the grave. This also means that the output from that power supply is quite likely to be rippletastic. Poor line regulation = not good for electronics!
If the barrel jack on the board is bad... well, there's one way to find out
I'll go rig up a jack-to-12v adapter. Good thing I'm well acquainted with the soldering iron
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Posts: 5056
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...
Posted: Fri 01 Mar 2013, 19:10
Post subject:
Not the barrel jack. Made a cable. Didn't fix.
It's dying later in the boot process, though... now it gets through language and keyboard selection before it goes kablooey. Hmmm.
EDIT: three things.
(1) sorry for the blurry pictures -- I am rather a lousy photographer!
(2) my tech wizard dude over at the shop says that this is a problem with AUFS. I'm not smart enough with linux to know if he's right or not.
(3) DSL, which (I think) uses a different kind of union filesystem, boots fine. I don't like DSL, though, so it's not much use here, beyond that of troubleshooting. It is interesting to know, though...
Using the new cable.
263 Time(s)
Before the new cable.
251 Time(s)
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Joined: 20 Jul 2010
Posts: 5834
Location: Republic of Novo Zelande
Posted: Sat 02 Mar 2013, 05:37
Post subject:
When the DSL boots does it offer a choice of doing a ramtest? Just wondering how solidly that RAM module performs?
Do you have a copy of 4.3.1? It's so rock solid on so many different PCs it's got to be worth a crack just for the sake of comparison...
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Posts: 5056
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...
Posted: Sat 02 Mar 2013, 12:31
Post subject:
I've 431 with k184.108.40.206 and intel modem drivers. I'll give it a go!
DSL doesn't offer a RAM test, but I've got Memtest86+ around here somewhere, if 431 bombs I'll let it go through memtest a couple times.
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Posts: 5056
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...
Posted: Sat 02 Mar 2013, 12:53
Post subject:
431 died a horrible death
but it left a new clue. This time I got good (intelligible) error reporting. It's
that's exploding, at least in this case. Went into the board's BIOS and found USB keyboard support enabled.
Wonder if that's the problem...? There's nothing hooked up to USB on this board!
EDIT: didn't fix. Disabled USB entirely... we'll see
EDIT2: not USB. Hmm
very strange indeed. I'll go find my memtest CD...
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Posts: 5056
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...
Posted: Sat 02 Mar 2013, 13:57
Post subject:
Running memtest86+ -- first pass completed, no errors, took ~45min. Of course, memory is really fickle, so I'll leave it going for a goodly while yet. Almost always, nothing happens in the first pass unless one's ram is royally ****ed.
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Joined: 20 Jan 2009
Posts: 2288
Posted: Sat 02 Mar 2013, 14:41
Post subject:
It's not Puppy. But. I still have this cd for trouble-shooting purposes on old gear.
Iblio link is no good but the Virginia tech mirror is ok. The Netherlands link is OK also.
Found a better site for more versions. I've been a user since version 7.
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Joined: 22 Nov 2010
Posts: 5056
Location: Everybody knows this is nowhere...
Posted: Sat 02 Mar 2013, 15:28
Post subject:
Worth trying, if only for troubleshooting *shrugs*
~2h 20m into Memtest, I'll give it 4hrs or so (total) and see where things are. If it's not RAM, I'll try that antiX-MEPIS thing. (I'm downloading it now for later.)
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text:
"What no one knew was who the boy was, and neither did he. Wasn't a memory left in the boy's head; everything about his past was gone...except for the note." - Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse by Kaleb Nation
We've all heard about them or seen them. You know, those odd little creatures with the conical hats found in gardens. Up to this point, I've never had the slightest desire to place a gnome anywhere near my home. But after reading Kaleb Nation's debut fantasy book, I just might change my mind. Maybe. It's a thought, anyway.
Of course Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse isn't completely about little gnomes. Actually it's mostly about an orphaned chap named Bran Hambric who struggles to figure out where he fits in a magical world gone awry. After a childhood of not knowing, he discovers the truth about his perplexing past, a past deeply entrenched in an evil sort of magic and a terrible secret curse.
The book begins with a prologue. A six-year-old boy named Bran turns up inexplicably, locked in a bank vault in a city called Dunce--the only city in the world that does not allow magic of any sort. No gnomes, no mages. No magic. A banker named Sewey Wilomas discovers Bran in the vault and finds himself responsible for the boy due to a Finders Keepers Law. Bran ends up living with the very annoying Wilomas family, and they treat him like dirt. A ripped note stating his name and birth date is the only clue to his past. Fast forward eight years later. Bran still lives with the Wilomases and one fateful night finds himself face-to-face with a scary creature. He learns his mother was a powerful mage that used dark magic in horrific ways, discovers the reason for the torn note and determines the meaning behind a special crescent moon necklace. Along his journey of discovery he makes a few new mage friends and meets a gnome named Polland.
Young author Kaleb Nation creatively depicts an exciting magical world in his suspenseful middle grade/YA fantasy. There's many obvious similarities between Bran Hambric and the beloved Harry Potter series--orphaned boy, magical world, an evil counterpart, unpleasant family life. But Nation has developed the city of Dunce and all the people and creatures inside and outside the city entirely from his own imagination. The scenes involving the Wilomas family in the beginning of the book bog down the story a bit, but the pace picks up when Bran learns more about magic and meets some mages and magical characters. Written using uncomplicated language, the book is sure to appeal to all those young readers that have been clamoring for Harry Potter read-a-likes. Nation makes readers chuckle with his over-the-top characters and even a few clever word plays, like measuring magical power in witts, calling those with the most, brightwitts and those with the least, dimwitts. Just so readers know, there are a number of slightly violent scenes involving guns, death and troubling dark magic in this book but nothing is especially graphic. The enticing artwork by Brandon Dorman on the cover is worth a mention and deserves a big thumbs up. The book leaves quite a few questions unanswered and Kalab Nation has plans for a sequel. I'm hoping to learn more about the gnomes and their sacred Givvyng Tree!
As part of his homeschool education, Kaleb Nation started writing the book at the age of 14 and worked on it throughout his teenage years. Currently 20 years old, his young age makes this debut book an impressive accomplishment. Highly ambitious, Kalab Nation is also a successful blogger at his popular TwilightGuy.com website.
Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse by Kaleb Nation. Sourcebooks Jabberwocky (September 2009); 464 pages; ISBN 9781402218576 (Ages 9-12/YA)
Book Source: ARC copy provided by for free by Sourcebooks. All quotations should be checked against final version. (View my full disclosure statement for more information about my reviews.)
Related links:
Bran Hambric - Official Website
Kaleb Nation - Author Website
Downloadable preview of the first 4 chapters of Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse
List of Harry Potter Readalikes from Infosoup.org
Enter to Win Bran Hambric Prizes or an Exclusive Kaleb Nation Event Invite on Sourcebooks.com
Book Trailer:
Win a copy! This review is part of the Bran Hambric blog tour, and Sourcebooks has kindly offered to give away a copy of Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse to a Brimful Curiosities reader.
To enter, leave a comment relevant to this post. Or, just for fun, if you are feeling particularly creative, think of an original gnome name and leave it in the comment section.
• For contact purposes, if you are a non-blogger or your email is not accessible in your blog profile, please leave a valid email address within the comment section.Three ways to gain extra entries (Maximum total entries is 4; please leave a separate comment for each entry):
• Contest is open to US only
• Contest ends on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 11:59 PM CST.
• Winner will be chosen at random and sent an email notification.
1st extra entry: Follow Me! or subscribe by email or RSS reader
2nd extra entry: Blog about this contest then post your link in the comment section.
3rd extra entry: Follow me on twitter (iambrimful) and tweet about the contest.


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Here's your weekly challenge: Trademarks and Patents
View the entire description of this week's challenge, by using my Examiner.com, Phoenix Genealogy Examiner link. Click here.
Remember to choose only the challenges that suit you and fit into your schedule.
These challenges are meant to be a blessing, not a burden!
Amy Coffin of the We Tree blog has put together the helpful 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy series. These prompts are hosted on the GeneaBloggers website. You may be interested in seeing posts about the challenge from other GeneaBloggers. Both sites have been voted among Family Tree Magazine's Top 40 Genealogy Websites this year.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Note from Family Tree Gal, Carolyn: Have you joined the Family Tree Quest at www.familytreequest.com ? I also invite you to join me on Facebook and Twitter. Check out my Family Tree Gal Blog if you haven't done so already.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I am listed on the Genea Bloggers Blog Roll because I find it to be a valuable, shared community resource. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."


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Today's giveaway is courtesy of Marie's Vintage. The winner will receive a $50 credit at their Etsy shop.
To enter, simply visit Marie's Vintage and then leave a comment below. Don't forget to give your email address!
*Bonus entries: If you have an Etsy account, add Marie's Vintage to your favorites! Leave an additional comment with a link to your favorites for a bonus entry. Don't have an Etsy account?Link to this post on your blog, twitter or facebook and comment with a link to where you posted it, and you will receive a bonus entry. Up to three entries per person! Each entry must be posted in a separate comment.
The contest will end on Friday evening, at 9 pm EST. I will choose a winner at random. Good luck!
-Keiko Lynn


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There are other Phänomenta attractions in Bremerhaven, Lüdenscheid and Peenemünde.
Situated in the far north of Germany on the Baltic coast, the Phänomenta Flensburg science centre is an extraordinary attraction that will spark curiosity, pose questions, provide answers and leave the whole family amazed. Suitable for children aged three and above.
Learning by doing is the mantra at the Phänomenta Flensburg world of discovery. In 2,000 square metres of exhibition space spread across four floors, visitors explore the laws of nature through more than 200 exciting experiments that engage all the senses. 'Please don't touch' is unheard of here. In fact, trying things out for yourself is positively encouraged! You can see, learn and discover so much here: from the morse desk, on which the alphabet sounds so different, to experiments involving fascinating oscillations. A moon glider simulates walking on the moon; a tunnel of darkness gives an insight into the world of a blind person. Then there's the hearing curve, the disorientating Hall of Light, and the chance for your body to act as an electricity conductor. Trick mirrors and amazing optical illusions will demonstrate that you can't always trust your eyes.
The Zwergen-Phänomenta contains around 20 experiments suitable for children between the ages of three and six. Among the phenomena that they investigate is the invisible but potent force of magnetism: what makes fish in a large aquarium take the bait? Does everything attract everything else? Another exhibit deals mainly with visual stimuli: it's all about the eyes in the House of Senses with its mirrors, periscope and a wall on which you can write using light. Tasting, smelling, seeing, hearing, pulling, crawling, rolling, playing, experimenting and understanding – the Phänomenta Flensburg science centre promises fun and entertainment for the whole family. There are other Phänomenta attractions in Germany that also aim to teach visitors about the laws and phenomena of physics.
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Is Optimization Immoral?
Dynamic memory allocation in C++ (and C) can be surprisingly expensive. A typical memory allocator keeps a list of available free memory blocks. Each time you ask to allocate memory, it searches the list for an appropriate block, subdivides it if necessary, and returns its address. When you free the memory, that memory must go back into the data structure for future reuse. Moreover, it often makes sense to check whether a block being freed is adjacent to one or two blocks that are already free, so that the memory can be coalesced into a single larger block. As a result, allocating and freeing even a small block of memory can cost dozens, or even hundreds, of instructions, and can easily dominate the execution time of applications that use a lot of dynamic memory.
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Once upon a time, I wrote a simple addition to the memory allocator I was using at the time. This addition took advantage of the fact that unlike C, C++ generally supplies the size of the requested memory both when that memory is allocated and when it is freed. Here's how the code worked:
- I assumed that all memory allocation would be in units of words rather than bytes, so I started by rounding the requested size up to the next multiple of a word.
- Every distinct block size had its own list of available blocks. In other words, there was a list of blocks one word long, another list of blocks two words long, and so on until the size reached an arbitrary upper limit.
- Whenever the user asked to allocate memory, my code would round the size up to a word multiple; determine whether the size exceeded the limit; if the size was greater than the limit, the program would use the system's memory allocator; otherwise, it would find the free list associated with blocks that size. If there was already a block available on the free list, it would return the first such block. Otherwise, it would allocate a single large block, break it into smaller blocks, put all but one of those blocks on the free list, and return that last block as the result.
- Whenever the user asked to free memory, my code would simply put the memory onto the appropriate free list for the block's size.
During execution, this code would maintain literally hundreds of free lists, one for each distinct block size. Many of those lists would be empty, so the only overhead for those lists would be the list headers. None of the memory in the nonempty free lists would ever be returned to the operating system, thereby saving the time that would otherwise be needed to free that memory. I felt that this code would save the time involved in allocating and freeing a large number of small blocks (as, for example, a string library might do), while still freeing large blocks on request. I thought that this was a reasonable compromise, as code that allocates a large block of memory will presumably spend a lot of time working with the contents of that memory anyway.
I was proud to see that there were some applications that became 10 times faster when I added this code to the memory allocator. Moreover, I never saw any evidence that not freeing small blocks made any applications use an unacceptable amount of additional memory.
Several months later, I described this code to a colleague, who said: "I think that what you're doing is immoral." Not surprisingly, I asked him to explain. Although he didn't completely convince me, I think that his argument is interesting enough to be worth considering.
Think about the performance of this allocator as I've described it. For blocks smaller than my arbitrary limit, the allocator runs very quickly: It finds the appropriate list, checks whether it's empty, and then — most of the time — simply takes a block off the head of the list and returns it. If it is necessary to create a new list, or add a collection of blocks to an existing list, there is the additional overhead of a single call to the system allocator; but that happens only once in a while. In general, it is reasonable to assume that it is very time-efficient to allocate or free memory.
When the block size exceeds my arbitrary threshold, the performance characteristics change abruptly: Now, the system allocator is called for every block. That's the bad news; the good news is that now, memory is returned to the system, whereas it is not returned for smaller blocks.
In effect, the optimizing allocator has added a performance breakpoint: The program's performance is sharply different for sizes larger than the threshold than it is for smaller sizes. My colleague argued that such performance breakpoints are evil, because when people who use the code learn about the breakpoints, they will change their own behavior to compensate for the breakpoints. Once they do that, the people who use their code will change their own behavior, and so on. The original performance breakpoint may well result in ripple effects that complicate entire systems. As a result, my colleague argued that it is more important to design systems so that their performance changes smoothly with input size than it is to make them run very quickly on particular input sizes. Nevertheless, my memory allocator really did make some programs run 10 times faster.
Such situations often yield difficult design decisions — especially because software is often used with much larger input than that with which it is tested. Therefore, an optimization such as my memory allocator might make an application appear to run much more quickly during testing, only to have it perform unacceptably slowly in production. On the other hand, even a program that deals with a very large input may do so by requesting a large number of small blocks of memory — a case that this particular memory allocator would handle well.
In short, rather than considering performance breakpoints as always being immoral, I am inclined to think of them as yet one more factor among the many to consider as part of designing any significant piece of software. I'd like to invite readers to mention other examples of performance breakpoints that they may have encountered.


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He had just been arrested and charged with disorderly conduct last week, after police said he shouted from the gallery of the U.S. Senate. He's been convicted five times in the District since 2009, mostly on charges of disorderly conduct and disobeying police....Some of this reminds me of our tenacious Wisconsin protesters, whose deep convictions and emotive righteousness have led them to specialize in loud annoyingness and innumerable petty violations. Grogan is different from them too. He's driven by religious fervor, and he's not on the left.
Police said Grogan once dropped to the ground in the Capitol Rotunda while clutching a doll and screamed in front of 60 visitors. Another time, police said, he paced the Capitol steps holding a bible and shouting, "Stop killing the babies."....
Officer Shennell S. Antrobus, a U.S. Capitol Police spokesman, said officials decided to leave Grogan in the tree until after the swearing in to avoid disruptions. Police said he came down on his own after five hours.
What are the limits of protest?
ADDED: This story reminds me of an old Sunday School song:
I remember singing that as a child and feeling embarrassed by how cute the adults found it whenever a child did the spoken-word part, "Zacchaeus, you come down." Are children's songs written to amuse children or to lure children into performances that will amuse adults? If the latter, is it wrong?
Here's the Bible story, in chapter 19 of Luke:
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.Jesus looked with favor on the tax collector, it was his method to conspicuously reach out to those who seemed conspicuously to be sinners when there was a more subtle point that all are sinners and he is reaching out to all of us.
When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today." So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
All the people saw this and began to mutter, "He has gone to be the guest of a sinner."
But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount."Lefties and righties can argue about what (if anything) Jesus meant to say about taxation. One might say, as I suggested above, that Zacchaeus was chosen because the people had a stereotype equating tax collection with sin, so he easily became The Sinner, for Jesus to bounce his lesson off of. But you might say that Zacchaeus's conversion shows the importance of taxation when it is used to take accumulated wealth from the rich and to distribute it to the poor. That's not the way the taxation of the time was used, and Zacchaeus had become wealthy through his tax collection work. So he's more like a typical rich man, and he is declared saved because he instantly gave half his possessions to the poor, without regard to whether that wealth was ill-gotten. Zacchaeus makes a second promise, to give quadruple restitution of any ill-gotten gains.
Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost."
What is the proper tax rate for the rich? The Bible implies that it's 50% and that the spending should go toward alleviating poverty. And that's not a 50% income tax, by the way, Mr. Buffet. That's a wealth tax. You should cough up about $15 billion to get right with God.


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This is another postcard from my own collection. It's the second one I have shown you from the Yorkshire Dales village of Austwick.
The first one featured the Church of the Epiphany and village cross. This time it is the village green which is just around the corner from the church. The postcard is unused and is in very good condition. There is no publisher and no printer identified on the front or the back of the card.
The area around Austwick is said to have been inhabited for over 4000 years. Archaeological finds in and around the village include prehistoric burial places, a large Bronze Age settlement, and even an Iron Age settlement.
At one time, Austwick and the nearby villages of Clapham, Lawkland and Newby, were independent manors each with their own lord. Together they formed the larger parish of Clapham.
In the Domesday Book Austwick was at the head of a group of 12 manors and was obviously of importance. The Anglican lord at the time Norman Conquest in 1066 was Thorvin. A field in the village is known as 'Thorvin Croft' – a connection or just a coincidence?
Since 1782 the Farrer family has held the Lordship of the Manor of Austwick – the present Lord being Dr John Farrer of Clapham.
Here's a link to the village website.
This is how the postcard scene looks today.


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FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. The federal government is proposing new limits for pollution from a coal-fired power plant on the Navajo Nation that it says will improve visibility at places such as the Grand Canyon, but it could come with a price tag of more than $1 billion, according to the plants owners.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave notice in 2009 that it was considering whether to require upgrades to pollution controls at the Navajo Generating Station in Page. The proposal unveiled recently would reduce haze-causing nitrogen oxide emissions at the 2,250-megawatt plant by 84 percent, or 28,500 tons per year.
The EPA would give the plant owners an additional five years, until 2023, to make the upgrades under its proposal.
That would allow Salt River Project to complete negotiations with the Navajo Nation on a lease for the power plant that is set to expire in 2019, and to secure other right-of-way agreements.
The federal government created the power plant to ensure a low-cost water supply for the Central Arizona Project, which delivers Colorado River water through a series of canals to Arizonas major metropolitan areas. It also fuels the economies of the Navajo and Hopi tribes and fulfills water settlements with other American Indian tribes.
The proposal doesnt mandate a specific technology for cleaning up the power plant but acknowledges that installation of selective catalytic reduction would meet the limits. The Salt River Project, which operates the plant, has argued that requiring anything beyond the low nitrogen-oxide burners already on the three generating units would result in negligible improvements to air quality.


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The Federal Reserve's policymakers announced Wednesday that the Fed will not start winding down its $85 billion monthly bond-buying program.
Noting that the U.S. economy continues to expand at a "moderate" pace, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) said in its announcement that it has decided nevertheless to continue buying additional agency mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $40 billion per month and longer-term Treasury securities at a pace of $45 billion per month.
"Taking into account the extent of federal fiscal retrenchment, the Committee sees the improvement in economic activity and labor market conditions since it began its asset purchase program a year ago as consistent with growing underlying strength in the broader economy. However, the Committee decided to await more evidence that progress will be sustained before adjusting the pace of its purchases," the FOMC said in a statement after concluding a two-day meeting.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke (left) said in a press conference following the announcement that the decision to hold off on tapering came as the FOMC witnessed signs of bond market tightening since its June meeting.
With the fed funds rate expected to remain at 1% for the foreseeable future, he said, the FOMC will make no change to forward guidance while maintaining its third round of quantitative easing at current levels.
"The committee is continuing its highly accommodative policy," Bernanke said during a press conference where reporters peppered him with questions about the recent increase in bond market yields.
In response, Bernanke said "the committee has some concern if conditions tighten further," and he stressed that U.S. economic growth has generally been proceeding at a moderate pace, even though the unemployment rate stands at unacceptable levels and inflation remains below the desired rate of 2%.
After the FOMC announcement, the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose 24/32 in price, yielding 2.764% versus 2.861% in early trading on Wednesday. Treasury yields have steadily trended upward since early May, when the 10-year note's yield rose from 1.61% on May 1 and briefly crossed the 3% mark earlier in September. Stocks rose sharply after the announcement, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing up 0.95% and S&P 500 rising more than 1.22%.
"The Fed surprised markets by holding off on tapering. Bond yields have dropped and the equity market has rallied to new highs on the news," wrote Jim O'Sullivan, chief U.S. economist with High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y., in an analyst note following the announcement. "The implication is that tapering will probably start soon, but they are not ready to make the move yet."
The FOMC announced its third round of bond buying, also known as quantitative easing (QE), a year ago. Since last September, the central bank has pumped about $800 billion into the bond markets in its attempt to stimulate investment in the economy while keeping interest rates down.
Speculation was rife in the days leading up to the FOMC meeting that the Fed would begin to taper its stimulus program.
PIMCO Chief Executive Mohamed El-Erian, for example, told CNBC on Monday that he expected a drop of about $10 to $15 billion in the level of the government's monthly asset purchases. "They'll taper small to begin with, but they will taper," El-Erian predicted, adding that the Fed would likely give itself "quite a bit of wiggle room" while strengthening forward guidance in order to minimize market volatility.
Read PIMCO's El-Erian Asks: What's Happening to Bonds and Why? at ThinkAdvisor.


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|Organisation information
Lee Jordan (host)
To broadcast the truth and oppose Lord Voldemort during the Second Wizarding War
- "Listeners, that brings us to the end of another Potterwatch. We don't know when it will be possible to broadcast again, but you can be sure we shall be back. Keep twiddling those dials: the next password will be 'Mad-Eye'. Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night."
- —Lee Jordan finishes a 1998 broadcast of Potterwatch[src]
Potterwatch was a pirate radio programme hosted by Lee Jordan for those who rebelled against Lord Voldemort and supported Harry Potter during the Second Wizarding War. Fred Weasley co-hosted; Remus Lupin and Kingsley Shacklebolt both appeared on Potterwatch.
Purpose and activitiesEdit
- Royal (Kingsley Shacklebolt): "We continue to hear truly inspirational stories of wizards and witches risking their own safety to protect Muggle friends and neighbours, often without the Muggles' knowledge. I'd like to appeal to all our listeners to emulate their example, perhaps by casting a protective charm over any Muggle dwellings in your street. Many lives could be saved if such simple measures are taken."
- River (Lee Jordan): "And what would you say, Royal, to those listeners who reply that in these dangerous times, it should be 'wizards first'?"
- Royal (Kingsley Shacklebolt): "I'd say that it's one short step from 'wizards first' to 'pure-bloods first', and then to 'Death Eaters'. We're all human, aren't we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving."
- — A broadcast of Potterwatch.[src]
They also tried to discourage the "climate of panic" being promoted by the Ministry by spreading the truth and dispelling rumours, such as one that Voldemort could kill people with only a glance. They announced the deaths caused by Voldemort's Death Eaters and Snatchers, and encouraged wizards and witches to help defend Muggle neighbours from Death Eater attacks by casting a few simple spells.
Safety measures were taken before each broadcast, including switching locations regularly and using codenames to avoid Death Eaters. Since the end of the Second Wizarding War, Potterwatch may not be active anymore.
Contributor codenamesEdit
Each contributor to the show used a codename while on air to protect their identity, but those who knew the individuals could generally tell who was speaking. Every known codename starts with the letter 'R'.
- Lee Jordan was codenamed River, a reference to both the Jordan River bordering Israel and the River Lee in Ireland. It could also mean he is a "river" of information, since he always knows what is happening.
- Kingsley Shacklebolt was named Royal in reference to the "King" in his first name as well as being the personal assistant of the Prime Minister.
- Remus Lupin was named Romulus in reference to the mythological twin orphans Remus and Romulus who were raised by wolves and founded Rome.
- Fred Weasley was initially named Rodent because of the "weasel" in Weasley, but named himself Rapier, probably in reference to his "rapier wit" or simply because he thought it sounded better. A rapier is a type of sword, relatively light, with an extremely sharp tip and very fast and deadly if used properly.
Passwords were required to tune into every show. By tapping a wand on the wireless and saying the password, a wizard could access the broadcast. A new password was announced at the end of each broadcast. It is not entirely clear how this should prevent unauthorised access for a long time, as only one password would have to be guessed in order to gain knowledge of the next. However, all known passwords are the names of members of the Order of the Phoenix. It is possible that all passwords to access Potterwatch were related to the Order; presumably, however, only names of deceased members would be used as to not further condemn known living members.
If one missed a show, the only means to be able to hear the next would be to ask someone working closely with the broadcast crew - a feat not easily accomplished in the times of war and terror, or to guess the password. Bill Weasley was particularly good at this.
Known passwordsEdit
Behind the scenesEdit
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, when Harry Potter arrived in the Room of Requirement, Nigel reported "Lightning has struck," suggesting that for the purposes of the program, Harry had been code-named "Lightning," a reference to his lightning-bolt scar.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (First appearance)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (video game)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (Possibly)


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Providence facilities are located in some of the most popular and scenic parts of the state, granting easy access to the world-famous Kenai Peninsula, magnificent Prince William Sound and Denali, the highest mountain peak in North America. Our locations offer you and your family a range of lifestyle and community choices, whether you prefer small town or city living. Providence is also proud to be Alaska's largest private employer and leading health care provider.
Alaska Hospitals
Providence Health & Services Alaska is among nation's best employers for healthy lifestyles! The National Business Group on Health, a non-profit association of large U.S. employers, has honored Providence Alaska for its commitment and dedication to promoting a healthy workplace and encouraging our caregivers (employees) and families to support and maintain healthy lifestyles. Mountain-Pacific Quality Health has awarded Providence Alaska Medical Center with its Quality Achievement Award for high-quality care in the areas of heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical infection prevention. This is the highest honor awarded by Mountain-Pacific.
As the state's largest hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center provides full-service, comprehensive care to all Alaskans, a role unmatched by any other in the state. Within our community, you will find top notch ski resorts, kayaking, and wildlife. Enjoying the outdoors is just one of many reasons to live in and explore Alaska!
Providence Kodiak Island Medical Center (PKIMC) provides comprehensive health care to residents and visitors of Kodiak Island. This critical care access hospital features 25 acute care beds, including four birthing suites, one OB triage room and 2 ICU beds. In addition, the Elder House, PKIMC's long term care facility, has 22 beds.
PKIMC provides an extensive array of inpatient and outpatient services, including emergency department, surgery, laboratory services, maternity, general medicine, physical therapy, occupational therapy, respiratory therapy, sleep studies, specialty clinics, diagnostic imaging services and pharmacy and is staffed by a mix of primary care physicians, surgeons and specialists who provide family practice, internal medicine, obstetrics, radiology and general practice.
Providence Seward Medical and Care Center is a 6-bed critical access hospital and 40-bed long term care facility providing quality health care to residents and visitors. Our team of physicians, nurses, and support staff deliver compassionate, quality care to all patients. We care for the patients ranging from infants to the elderly with services including, primary care, emergency, inpatient, swing bed, lab, radiology, therapies and nursing home care.
Located only 125 miles south of Anchorage on Resurrection Bay, Seward offers a small community feel and access to a multitude of world class outdoor activities such as kayaking, fishing and hiking.
Providence Valdez Medical Center is an 11 bed Critical Access Hospital co-located with a licensed 10 bed Long Term Care facility. Our team of physicians, nurses, therapists, technicians, clinicians and support staff provide quality and compassionate inpatient and outpatient health care to patients and residents. Our state of the art facility, built in 2004, is able to provide a wide array services including acute, emergency, Labor and Delivery, Radiology, Ultrasound, CT Scan, DEXA scan, CLIA certified laboratory, Rehab services including Physical, Occupational and Speech Therapies.
St. Elias Specialty Hospital in Anchorage is owned by Providence Health System. The hospital has 59 beds, almost all private rooms. The facility features state of the art equipment to provide extended inpatient acute care for patients.
At St. Elias Specialty Hospital, we provide customized, physician-driven services for patients requiring longer stays in an acute care environment due to multiple or complex medical conditions. We are not a permanent placement for patients; rather we are an answer for many patients who are acutely ill and need to take the first steps towards rehabilitation or home.
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RN - Acute (Sign On Bonus Eligible*)Valdez, Alaska
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December 24, 2019
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Archive - Mar 31, 2013
Thomas Friedman publishes a great column this morning on what people need to survive in today's economy. There are great opportunities, but they don't lie in getting a job, but in creating your own job. However, the education system is still preparing people to enter a traditional job. Traditional jobs are vanishing. The people who thrive are on their own. The skills to be on your own are the skills which need to be taught. I would argue this has always been true, but it is even more true now.
As the article points out, the number one problem we all must tackle to survive today: motivation. You are no longer going to be able to show up at a job, go through the motions with a modicum of competence, and collect a check. You are going to have to have the creativity, but most of all the motivation, to package and sell your own talents, not just to get a single job, but to get many little jobs. Not only do you need the motivation to sell your talents, but you then have to learn to charge enough for those talents to pay the bills.


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Entry Level Software Engineer
- Employer
- Revature
- Location
- Baltimore, MD
- Posted
- Aug 12, 2019
- Closes
- Aug 26, 2019
- Ref
- 270505019
- Function
- Engineer, IT, QA Engineer, Software Developer
- Industry
- Other
- Career Level
- Experienced (Non-Manager)
- Hours
- Full Time
Revature is the fastest growing employer of emerging technology talent in the US and we are currently looking to hire over 100 new Software Engineers. Our Software Engineers design, analyze and build next-gen software systems, including business applications, games, computer applications, middleware, and network control systems across a variety of industries, including finance, insurance, retail, healthcare and government. Revature has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Money, Time, on MSN, and was recently named as one of the 8 Cool Companies to Apply to With Awesome Benefits by Glassdoor. Join us and be part of the next generation of Software Engineers. Interviews are starting now! What We Are Looking For: MUST have a Bachelor's Degree (preference given to Computer Science, Engineering and STEM majors ) 0-3 years experience Excellent problem solver Solid understanding of Object Oriented Programming Outstanding verbal and written communication skills Exposure to one of the following: Java, Javascript, C++, CSS Solid foundational knowledge of SQL Willing to relocate anywhere in the US Must be authorized to work in the US on a permanent basis - ability to secure US government security clearance if needed Ability to relocate anywhere in the US Revature is not currently sponsoring work visas or transfers at this time. What We Offer: Competitive Salary Relocation Assistance Corporate Housing Health, Vision and Dental Insurance Paid Time Off Enterprise level development training Life Insurance 401K Mentoring and on-going support throughout your entire Revature career Experience with one of the world's largest and most reputable companies in the US Suitable candidates are encouraged to apply immediately Not Mentioned


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Select a design, then select the device that you would like to style.
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Earnings season for the financial sector had a good start early Friday, with JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Wells Fargo (WFC) both beating analysts' estimates for second-quarter earnings by a wide margin.
JPMorgan Chase says its profits rose 32% on strong results in investment banking business, credit-card operations and mortgage lending. Net earnings were $6.5 billion, or $1.60 a share, on revenue of nearly $26 billion versus earnings of just under $5.0 billion, or $1.21 per share, on sales of about $22 billion a year earlier. (This represents year-over-year sales growth of about 18%.)
"Our earnings reflected strong growth across our businesses," Jamie Dimon, the bank's chief executive, said in a statement on Friday.
Wells Fargo, currently the biggest U.S. mortgage lender, saw its second-quarter profit grow roughly 20%: Net income rose to $5.52 billion, or $0.98, from $4.62 billion, or $0.82. Revenue, though, expanded just 0.5% to $21.4 billion from $21.3 billion.
"Wells Fargo again demonstrated an ability to grow during a dynamic economic and interest-rate environment," the bank's chairman and CEO, John Stumpf, said in a statement.
Bank of America-Merrill Lynch (BAC) plans to report earnings on Wednesday, while Morgan Stanley is set to report its second-quarter results on Thursday.
As measured by the Market Vectors Bank and Brokerage ETF, which has sizeable positions in Wells, JPMorgan and BofA, the overall financial sector is up about 5% year to date and more than 30% in the last 12 months.
Advisor-Focused Businesses
JPMorgan says that its asset management unit had revenue of more than $2.73 billion in the second quarter, up from $2.36 billion a year ago and $2.65 billion in the first quarter. Net income for the group was about $500 million in the most recent period — up from $487 million in March and $391 million in June 2012.
Private banking activities brought in sales of $1.5 billion, up 11% from last year. The retail side had revenues of $654 million, a 35% jump from last year, while the institutional side grew sales 9% year over year to $588 million.
Overall client assets stand at $2.2 trillion, a 10% jump from Q2'12; client assets under management are $1.5 trillion. Overall net flows for the past year were $67 billion, including $3 billion in the most recent period. Plus, the unit has had 17 quarters of positive flows, JPMorgan says.
This business includes 2,804 financial advisors as of June 30, an increase from 2,797 as of March 30 and 2,739 as of June 30, 2012. Across the firm, there are 5,828 advisors vs. 5,795 in the prior quarter and 5,814 a year ago.
Wells Fargo's Wealth, Brokerage and Retirement unit reported revenue of close to $3.3 billion, up 10% from the year-ago period and 2% from the prior quarter, partly due to higher asset-based fees, the bank says.
Net income rose 27% from last year and 29% from last quarter to $434 million.
The retail brokerage reported client assets of $1.3 trillion, up 9% from last year. Managed accounts grew 19% to $52 billion, "driven by strong net flows and market performance," the bank notes.
Wells' wealth-management group said it had client assets of $203 billion as of June 30, up 3% from the prior year. Also, retirement IRA assets grew 12% year over year to $315 billion, while institutional retirement plan assets expanded 11% to $277 billion.
—Check out JPMorgan, Goldman Top First-Half Dealmaking.


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On Thursday afternoon, Deadline reported that J.J. Abrams is going to be the new mastermind behind the forthcoming Disney Star Wars movies. Disney purchased the rights to the franchise in late October and said it was on track to release in 2015. Since then, everybody has been speculating about who will take the helm for Episode 7. (Toy Story 3 writer Michael Arndt was previously introduced as the scribe for Episode 7.)
It should be noted that The Hollywood Reporter reported only that Abrams is "in talks" and "negotiating" his contract as director of the next Star Wars film. But Deadline wrote that a "source with knowledge of the situation" told the blog, "It's done deal with J.J." As recently as November, Abrams told EW that Star Wars wouldn't, in fact, be his next project after Star Trek Into Darkness (which is set to come out this year). "I have some original stuff I am working on next," Abrams told EW. Other sources reported Ben Affleck was also in the running for the role. Affleck recently directed and starred in Argo, a movie based on a story originally appearing in Ars' sister publication, Wired.
During Disney's October conference call about the acquisition of Lucas Film, company executives said they acquired "extensive treatments" for movies seven through nine, in addition to the purchase of George Lucas' company. "We plan to release one film every two to three years" after 2015's Episode 7, an executive said. No word yet on whether Abrams will direct episodes eight and nine. (And no word whether this will turn out OK in the end for fellow Star Wars faithful.)


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Las Vegas building new mall modeled after Istanbul landmark
Las Vegas, where the only design rule is that everything must mirror something else, is getting a new outdoor mall modeled on Istanbul's Grand Bazaar.
Construction began this week on the Grand Bazaar Shops outside of Bally's Las Vegas. The two-acre outdoor mall is expected to open next fall, on the corner of Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard in the heart of the Strip.
Developer Larry Siegel describes the project as a sanitized, glitzed-out version of a traditional Middle Eastern market.
It will feature a spice market, a butcher shop, and the first Swarovski store to allow customers to haggle over crystals.
Other hyper-specific themes rolled out on the Strip this year include an Eastern European glass factory theater and a China-themed casino complete with live pandas.


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There are other Fun Forest climbing parks in Offenbach am Main and Homburg an der Saar.
There are some places that have a certain thrill factor, and this is one of them. One of the biggest climbing parks in Europe, the Fun Forest Adventure Park in Kandel near Karlsruhe makes an ideal day out for active families with children aged six and above.
The Fun Forest Adventure Park is an attraction with the X factor! More than 200 platforms and 15,000 metres of steel cable have transformed this seven-hectare woodland site into a climbing paradise full of surprises for the whole family. Safety comes first, of course, and every participant is given an in-depth induction and a climbing kit with a harness and a helmet that are carefully checked before use. Confident or experienced climbers can chose between 24 different courses depending on what they are comfortable with and what appeals to them. The courses range in difficulty and feature rope bridges, tunnels, zip wires, swings, climbing walls and even a surfboard suspended on wires for children to glide through the air in style. All that energy and determination is rewarded with exhilaration, fun and laughter, as well as fantastic views overlooking the park and the other climbers. Fun Forest Adventure Park Kandel is also home to a woodland discovery trail and a restaurant, which are both well worth exploring.
The Fun Forest Adventure Park has 17 courses – from 1m to 22m in height – offering a range of difficulty levels and including a special course for children aged six and above. And it doesn't end there – other activities include a pedal-car track and a bathtub slide, base jump, the iron course for serious climbers, a flying climbing wall and, the pièce de résistance, a 250m-long mega zip wire. So, helmet on, harness nice and tight, ropes and hooks at the ready and off you climb! There's no need to feel nervous, either. Germany's biggest climbing adventure park is run by an experienced team of professional climbing experts, who you can see practising in their team training zone. The high ropes course is ideal for those with a taste for heights and adventure. Swinging between the tree tops, climbing with the utmost care, overcoming obstacles, keeping your balance and staying fully focused on the wire – it's all possible here.
مجموعتي أزرار مفيدة لغرض التكبير في المتصفح:
تكبير: +
تصغير: +
يمكنك لدى عارض برنامج التصفح الحصول على المزيد من المساعدة من خلال النقر على الأيقونة:


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The world depends on mariners. Mariners depend on SCI. And we depend on you.
Photos taken at Ingram Marine Group's Reserve, LA fleeting facility, May 2014.
Photos by David Rider, President & Executive Director.
SCI maintains a staff of professional chaplains with interfaith and cross-cultural backgrounds. Chaplains and volunteers assist thousands each year, extending a hand of friendship and hospitality.


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Hal Pilger's feature story from St. Louis Rams' training camp
Little big man? At 5 feet 8, kick returner/wide receiver Dante Hall could be the St. Louis Rams' biggest acquisition since the end of last season.
The former Kansas Chiefs superstar and Pro Bowl returner — should he rekindle the kind of performances that a few years ago electrified crowds around the NFL — could provide the special teams spark the Rams have lacked pretty much all of this millennium.
"It's a team — it's special teams, and as a unit we're going to have to turn it around," eighth-year pro Hall said. "My thing is, I'm always looking for the home run ball (on punt returns), but coach (new Rams special teams coach Al Roberts) has kind of showed me on tape that if I take the 10 I could even be better individually.
"So I'm going to concentrate on getting 10 yards, getting the offense the first down, but at the same time I'm going to stick to my game and after so many times, I'm going to do my thing and get it in the end zone.
"That's my game. I know I'm always looking for the home run. But what I've kind of been focusing on, what I want to work on my game as far as special teams is don't always look for the home run. Take the 10, take the 15 and then home runs will come."
Says head coach Scott Linehan, "Dante's done just fine. When we put the pads on, you can tell Dante's been playing. And that's nice to see on the offensive side. One thing is he takes all that anxiety away from whether the ball's going to be caught (on kicks or punts), or him understanding the scheme, those kinds of things.
"I'm excited, as everybody is, to see him go to work when we start playing games."
As a wideout, Hall probably will be used sparingly as a screen pass slot option. Over the last five seasons, Hall has caught 145 passes for 1,615 yards and nine touchdowns. But the Rams are expecting his biggest contributions to come on special teams.
The Rams have had just one touchdown on punt or kickoff returns since 2002. During that time Hall has had 11 — six on kickoff returns and five on punt returns. In 2003 he totaled four — two of each — and returned a kickoff or a punt for a TD in an NFL-record four consecutive games. His 11 returns for TDs are two shy of NFL record-holder Brian Mitchell's 13 and one behind second-place Eric Metcalf.
"That's my only and last individual goal I'm aiming for," Hall said, "to get that all-time kick return record."
The numbers have diminished in recent seasons, with Hall returning one kickoff for a TD in 2005 and one punt for a score last year. But the desire and, Hall believes, the ability have not diminished. And he also believes working with high-energy coach Roberts will help him revitalize his return game.
"I love Al Roberts," Hall said. "He's very detailed, very enthusiastic, a funny guy. He keeps meetings good. I love the way he approaches coaching."
Which does Hall like most, kickoff or punt returns?
"Punt returns," he said without hesitation. "With kickoff returns you line up . . . the kickoff team gets a 15-20-yard head start before they're even touched. So they come down in one complete wave. Whereas punt returns, the guys have to block first, and a lot of times as they're blocking, they get tangled up and a lot of guys get out of lanes.
"So it's more lanes, and if you make one or two guys miss, you're in the open field as opposed to when you're returning kicks. It's just a lot harder to get a kick return to the house than it is a punt return."
Does Hall have a sense of just how poorly Rams special teams have performed in recent years?
"The fact that they traded for me and gave up (a fifth-round draft pick), it had to be pretty bad," Hall said with a chuckle. "I know it's not good, and we — as a unit — we're definitely going to get that turned around.
"I know this was something that needed to be addressed, and by bringing coach Al Roberts in and bringing me in — just putting the focus on it — I think that's the No. 1 thing. A lot of teams want to have great special teams, but they don't want to put the necessary work in to make it a good team. And I think that's one thing that this organization has started to do, put an actual focus in."
The amount of the work the Rams are putting into special teams is testament to that.
"We have two or three (special teams) practice sessions," Hall said. "In the beginning we do a walk-through before our practice. We do one in practice, and then we do another session after practice. That's a lot of special teams.
"Most teams don't put that much work in on the field. They might ask you to do it in the classroom or individually, but to actually set aside three sessions in one practice during training camp lets me know that they're serious."
Most fans say it's about time. There has been an obvious and frustrating lack of emphasis regarding special teams almost every season since the Rams moved to St. Louis in 1995. That seems to be changing this year.
"Of course, it's a team game," Linehan said. "It's not Dante Hall making 11 guys miss. We've got to do it, but it's going to charge some energy into that group. They're going to be held to a different level of accountability now for giving the guy a chance, and everybody's got to buy into that team concept of special teams. It's not going to be just him."
Hall says the biggest key to a successful punt or kickoff return is timing.
"If the guys do a great job of blocking but it's too early or too late, no matter what I'm doing it won't work," Hall said. "So we all must be on the same page. That's why you have to put so much time in it.
"You have to know my style of running; I have to know how they're going to block, how they like to block — is it a kill shot, is it just technique. Once you work together for so long, you get the timing down. That's the No. 1 thing.
"And then after that, of course, all great returners have to, at some point, make a couple of guys miss."
As a kick returner, Hall has been called "The X-Factor, The Human Torch, The Human Glowstick and The Human Joystick," among his many monickers.
The Rams would gladly settle for calling him successful.
Hal Pilger can be reached at (217) 788-1548 or firstname.lastname@example.com.


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You can't talk about 401(k)s for three days without eventually coming around to target-date funds. They're offered in 70% of defined contribution plans and are expected to account for 70% of all assets in DC plans by 2020, according to speakers at a session during the 2013 NAPA/ASPPA 401(k) Summit.
TDFs' "explosive growth masks the fact that they are still in their infancy," Rich Weiss, senior vice president and senior portfolio manager of American Century Investments, told attendees on March 4. "Most funds were launched in the last five or 10 years, but there's a dearth of real-time data." With no industry-accepted standard benchmark, many providers produce their own, he said.
Typical measures of a TDF are to examine the equity allocations at retirement or count the number of asset classes in the fund, but Weiss said these were best undertaken by an independent third party. A more sophisticated measure is to look at the underlying portfolios using both historical and forecasted performance data, he suggested. When evaluating the overall risk of the series, advisors should incorporate the entire lifespan of the fund, he said.
One of the challenges, Weiss said, is that you need a lot of data for a successful risk measurement to be accepted.
To define a target-date objective, according to Jerome Clark, portfolio manager at T. Rowe Price, requires a participant's retirement readiness, expectations and risk priorities. There are three types of risk, he continued: market risk, longevity risk and inflation risk.
Clark noted that the to-versus-through aspect of target-date funds can be confusing to participants and urged advisors to push toward an objective, rather than a date.
John Miller, head of U.S. retirement for PIMCO, noted that target-date fund evaluation was moving from an analysis of performance versus costs to the level of risk relative to the objective. Among the risks to watch out for is a glide path that is riskier than the participant is prepared to tolerate. Furthermore, a fund's diversification may be riskier than it initially appears. Advisors should look at the underlying funds to determine how many asset classes are represented and what the risk drivers are. Finally, multiple economic scenarios can present different levels of risk, he said.
The primary goal, Miller said, is to provide a sufficient rate of return to reach success while minimizing risk.
An attendee asked the panel how target-date funds can be used when assumptions don't take into account participants' behavior.
TDFs "operate in a narrow band of assumptions," Weiss said. "The major drivers of success are how much you saved for retirement and how long you'll live, which is unknowable." With that in mind, you have to "operate in reasonable scenarios," he said, pointing out that if a participant is a bad saver, it doesn't matter which TDF he selects.
Clark added that while a significant number of participants roll their assets into an IRA when they leave the plan, not everyone does. "If they're not taking a rollover, we can't help them," he said. "Why design a product for bad behavior?" Clark added that plan sponsors can make changes to "help participants get to retirement in a better fashion by creating a good glidepath for the people they can help."
Miller stressed that if participants aren't saving much, they have to protect what they do have by minimizing risk. "A key concern," he said, "is what happens if things aren't normal? Can the glidepath withstand market shocks?" Market regimes can last 10 to 30 years, he added.


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New 2020 JeepGrand Cherokee LIMITED 4X4 Sport Utility
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Our knowledgeable sales staff is available to answer any questions that you might have. They'll work with you to find the right vehicle at a price you can afford. Stop in and take a test drive!
KBB.com Consumer Reviews
- 5.0
Love this Jeep!
By cyndim on Sunday, March 12, 2017I have had old jeeps (cj-7, Cherokee, 2004 Grand Cherokee, and the Commander). This was my favorite jeep - loved everything about it. The way it drove everyday and the way it handled snow and rain. Loved the look and the interior. Was in an accident in this jeep and it handled extremely well.
- 5.0
Best Vehicle I Have Owned!
By Razorback Fan on Monday, October 17, 2016I purchased this vehicle brand new due to the looks of the new body style. But what has amazed me is the overall performance. It's an SUV that handles like what an SUV should, but it rides like a car. Very quiet smooth ride. I have the V6 motor and I get awesome gas mileage for an SUV. Overall I would rate this vehicle an 8 out of 10. The only few things I would have changed is more cup holders and a great place to hold your cell phone. By the way, I have had zero issues with my Jeep. Outstanding quality.
- 5.0
Limited and loving it!
By E in Everett on Thursday, June 06, 2019Just purchased my first "loaded" suv, JGC limited. Got an amazing deal! love the color inside and out. (Not black on black but a real color!) Strong V6 and decent mileage for the size. Super easy to make comfortable and see out of, I'm 5'5". All the safety tech you'd ever want and you can dial it in to as sensitive as you want/need it. Easy to set it up and I'm tech challenged. Smooth on the road and happy it can handle off road too. Tons of room for people and stuff and even has heated rear seats for the folks in back. Super happy with my purchase so far! Can't wait to take it on a road trip, or two. No loss of power on hills when loaded with people, stuff, and ac going unlike the 4 cylinder suv I traded in for this.
* MSRP is the Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) of the vehicle. It does not include any taxes, fees or other charges. Pricing and availability may vary based on a variety of factors, including options, dealer, specials, fees, and financing qualifications. Consult your dealer for actual price and complete details. Vehicles shown may have optional equipment at additional cost.
* The estimated selling price that appears after calculating dealer offers is for informational purposes, only. You may not qualify for the offers, incentives, discounts, or financing. Offers, incentives, discounts, or financing are subject to expiration and other restrictions. See dealer for qualifications and complete details.
* Images, prices, and options shown, including vehicle color, trim, options, pricing and other specifications are subject to availability, incentive offerings, current pricing and credit worthiness.
* In transit means that vehicles have been built, but have not yet arrived at your dealer. Images shown may not necessarily represent identical vehicles in transit to your dealership. See your dealer for actual price, payments and complete details.
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