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Welcome to a new style of blogging, called the High-level overview (HLO) series. In these blogs, I will describe the problem, which usually is something I came across recently, followed by a high-level solution overview of how it could be solved. The goal is to get you to dig deeper into individual components that make this high-level solution possible.
Very recently, I had a call from one of our architects' who was tasked with comparing different clouds and present a solution to his customer. While the customer was going forward with one solution, they were interested in finding out how a solution would be built out in AWS. The goal here was to have a replication environment for customer's on-premise SQL server so it can be failed over to. Moreover, the customer wanted to be able to stream the data out of the SQL environment into an elastic MapReduce cluster for data analytics purposes. The customer was also concerned about storing large amounts of data into an archive and be able to retrieve it when needed. Needless to say, all the connectivity needed to be secure.
In summary –
Customer Objectives
OBJ.001 – Need to have functional disaster recovery environments for their data
OBJ.002 – Need to have an effective way to do data processing and modeling while keeping costs low
OBJ.003 – Need to have an archival methodology to fulfill long-term storage requirements.
OBJ.004 – Ensure data in transit is secure.
Functional Requirements
FR.001 – A busy SQL server needed replication, backup and archival to ensure availability, disaster recovery, and long-term storage.
FR.002 – Data from SQL server needs to be pushed into elastic MapReduce (EMR) for data processing and modeling.
FR.003 – Data from EMR needs to be archived for long-term storage purposes.
FR.004 – Secure connectivity to all services over which data would traverse from customer on-prem to a cloud provider.
Below is a high-level illustration of the current deployment as I understood.
The Options –
Given the customer objectives and functional requirements, AWS provides multiple products that help us define a solution to satisfy the customer's use case. Let's look at these products individually.
1. Amazon RDS – Amazon's relational database service (RDS) provides scalable DBaaS offering with the ability to migrate and replicate SQL databases.
2. Amazon S3 – Amazon's object storage offering, the Amazon S3 (Simple storage service) allows you to store large volumes of data with virtually unlimited capacity.
3. Amazon Glacier – AWS glacier is Amazon's archival storage offering that allows you to archive PB scale data for extremely cheap prices. AWS glacier can also automatically archive data stored on Amazon S3 using life-cycle policies.
4. AWS Kinesis – Amazon Kinesis allows you to collect, process and analyze real-time data streams. Data can be analyzed using AWS Kinesis data analytics which allows the use of standard SQL queries. You can push this kinesis data stream to a stream processing framework like AWS Elastic MapReduce which support Apache Hadoop, Spark, and other big-data frameworks.
5. AWS Lamda – AWS Lamda is Amazon's serverless technology that allows you to build purpose full functions and calls.
6. AWS SNS – AWS Simple Notification Service (SNS) allows you to trigger notifications or even AWS lambda functions based on pre-defined events.
7. AWS VPN Gateway – Allows you to create secure connections between sites.
8. AWS Storage Gateway – Allows you to deploy a virtual machine instance with different storage options on-premise. This virtual machine replicates all data stored on AWS S3 bucket.
9. AWS Snowball – AWS's solution to migrate large amounts of data using cold migration techniques
10. AWS DirectConnect – Cost effective private network solution from on-premise to AWS datacenter for migrating large data. The solution can also be used to push network traffic on local networks rather than the internet.
Let's connect the dots, slowly.
With AWS VPN Gateway, a customer can connect their on-prem environments securely to the AWS regions. This is crucial and fulfills customer's FR.004 which requires all data to be secure in transit. It is important to remember that there is a limitation of 5 VPN Gateways per region. This limit can be increased by reaching out to AWS Support. Alternatively, there is an option for the customer to use AWS Directconnect that may be a better option in this scenario provided the customer's data center is close to an AWS Partner Network provider (APN Technology Partner). AWS DirectConnect offers consistent high bandwidths (10GB) and a private connection into your VPC network on AWS. This means traffic that does not traverse the internet. DirectConnect is also ideal for real-time streaming data and can be used to seamlessly extend the customer's network into AWS.
The customer currently has large sets of data that need to be migrated to AWS. While using DirectConnect is an option that allows for high bandwidth transfers, it can get very expensive. Amazon offers AWS Snowball to help transfer cold data into the AWS cloud. The process is simple. Once you put in a request for a snowball device, AWS sends you a secure device to your data center which can be connected to your environment. You can then copy all your data to this snowball device. Once done, you ship the device back to AWS. All data on the device is encrypted and is secure. AWS also offers Snowball edge that offers more compute within the device allowing you to access your data using a local EC2 instance. AWS Snowball has a limit of 50TB to 80TB while the edge device has a limit of 100TB.
For PB scale data migration, AWS offers SnowMobile. This is an 18-wheeler truck with a Container as a Datacenter. The container is transported to your data center and needs to be connected to power and network. Once done, you can copy PB scale data to this environment before Amazon picks it back up.
For a simpler way to transfer data, AWS offers storage gateways. A storage gateway is a light-weight virtual machine that can be deployed in your environment and configured with your AWS account. The gateway uses a local disk and exposes it as an iSCSI drive that is accessible by other virtual machines. Any data stored on this drive is then replicated to your AWS S3 storage account. Storage gateways' are can be configured for hot, cold and cached data so you have a variety of options depending on your use case. Download of this storage gateway appliance is free of cost and so is the deployment so it has a low "barrier to entry" and can ideally be used for file transfers.
Storage and Archival
AWS's S3 (Simple Storage Service) is an object data store that offers unlimited storage for files. S3 storage, like any object storage, is accessible over HTTP and HTTPS and can store data securely on AWS's datacenters. The data is locally replicated but can also be replicated (Cross-region replication) across regions to increase availability. You can even serve these files directly from S3 into your application. An interesting concept of S3 is its ability to have life-cycle policies on your files which are stored in "S3 buckets". You can set a life-cycle policy to archive all files after a set amount of time and S3 can move them over to AWS glacier – Amazon's low-cost long-term archival solution.
AWS's Simple notification service (SNS) can be configured to alert the customer based on custom or pre-set triggers. You will find SNS being used in almost everything in AWS. For instance, when you create a new AWS account, the first thing to do is to create an SNS billing alert to ensure that you don't exceed billing thresholds. SNS can also trigger or get triggered by other AWS services such as Lamda functions (Serverless).
AWS Lamda is Amazon's serverless technology which allows you to run objective-based focus functions based on events or triggers. You can trigger a lamda function to perform a certain task. For example, I can have an SNS service to ensure that billing does not exceed $100 per day. If it does exceed, I can have an event trigger sent to a lamda function that will immediately shut down by instances to save on billing costs.
Data analysis
AWS Kinesis is a solution for real-time data stream analysis. Real-time data can be collected and analyzed using AWS Kinesis data analytics – this can be helpful for this customer because the solution allows using regular SQL queries to analyze data. This data can also be pushed to a stream processing framework such as AWS Elastic MapReduce for big-data analysis before being archived.
AWS RDS (Relational Database Service) offers a managed database environment which can be readily consumed. You simply deploy database instances and pick a database flavor. Flavors such as Oracle and SQL are supported and can be deployed. This fulfills the customer's use case where there was a need to migrate SQL database to a remote instance for disaster recovery purposes. AWS RDS allows SQL replication with changed data to be replicated from your primary database. You can even have read-only RDS instances and perform Disaster recovery tests to fulfill your Business continuity plan (BCP).
Putting it all together
I encourage you to read more about the different solutions discussed in this blog post. Feel free to comment.
Some important links


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NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The European Union unveiled a plan Wednesday to create a coordinated banking union rather than leaving troubled nations to deal with their own banking crisis.
But the plans for more a unified EU bank regulator and bailout fund won't come in time to deal with the crisis sweeping Europe right now, including the beleaguered Spanish banking system which has become the epicenter of the European sovereign debt crisis.
The EU proposal would include a single deposit guarantee organization covering all banks in the union, something similar to the FDIC that covers U.S. bank deposits.
There would also be a common authority and a common fund that would deal with bailouts needed for the cross-border banks that are major players in the European banking system.
In addition, there would be a single EU supervisor with ultimate decision-making powers for the major banks, and a common set of banking rules.
"Today's proposal is an essential step towards a banking union in the EU and will make the banking sector more responsible," said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in a statement. "This will contribute to stability and confidence in the EU in the future, as we work to strengthen and further integrate our interdependent economies."
The amount of the common bank rescue fund was not disclosed.
But the EU said that various countries in the 27-nation bloc approved €4.5 trillion in emergency funding for banks between October 2008 and October 2011, an amount equal to 37% of the EU's gross domestic product.
Spain is now weighing a request from Bankia, its fourth-largest bank, for a €19 billion bailout, while Spain's central bank has identified about €300 billion in problem loans across the nation's banks. On Tuesday, the Spanish finance minister said his country will need help dealing with its banking problems, putting the Spanish banking system at the epicenter of worries about European sovereign debt.
And there are fears that the problems in banking systems and sovereign debt of weaker countries such as Spain or Greece could spread to banks in stronger economies. Wednesday credit rating agency Moody's downgraded seven German banks as well as the three largest banking groups in Austria.
"Today's rating actions are driven by the increased risk of further shocks emanating from the euro area debt crisis, in combination with the banks' limited loss-absorption capacity," said Moody's in the German bank note.
The EU's banking union proposal may take years to put into place so it won't do much to address the current banking crisis in Europe.
"The difficulty is for us to do two things at once, take the necessary measures that are urgently needed in order to address specific problems in different countries like Greece and others...but prepare also at the same time for the future," said Michel Barnier, the internal markets commissioner for the EC at the press conference. He said Wednesday's plan will set up the kind of regulatory and banking infrastructure needed to prevent future crisis.
"We've seen the consequences of not having such a system," he said. "Prevention is much much better than cure. If you're prepared, it's much less costly than emergencies."
The announcement came as the European Central Bank held a regularly scheduled meeting, with the ongoing sovereign debt and banking crisis in Europe in focus. The ECB left its key interest rate unchanged at the meeting.
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subset: commoncrawl


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In the midst of America's obesity epidemic, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham are taking a hard look at weight loss for older adults. Their theory: Overall fitness and body composition may be more important indicators of good health than weight.
For seniors, a few extra pounds might not be a bad thing.
"Weight loss for the sake of weight loss might not be appropriate for older adults," said Julie Locher, Ph.D., associate professor in the Division of Gerontology, Geriatrics and Palliative Care. "Studies indicate that overweight seniors tend to live longer than their leaner counterparts, and rapid weight loss in older adults can lead to a decline in overall physical condition."
Locher, who is the associate director of the UAB Center for Aging, and leader of the program for public policy, nutrition and energetics, is the lead investigator for the CrossRoads study. CrossRoads, now in its third year, is examining the effect of physical activity and diet on body composition in older adults, as well as any effects those two factors have on the quality of life for seniors.
Locher said that the percentage of body fat — particularly abdominal fat that is associated with poor health outcomes — tends to increase with age. But, she noted, when older adults lose weight, they also have a greater tendency to lose lean muscle mass rather than fat.
She said one aspect of the study is to help determine a healthy weight range for seniors and help devise strategies to maximize and maintain lean muscle while minimizing abdominal fat.
The CrossRoads trial is looking for 50 additional study subjects, to round out a total complement of 180 older adults. The investigators are looking for adults age 65 and older in general good health who also are taking medication for high blood pressure or diabetes. Participants should be overweight with a body mass index between 30-40 kg/m2.
The study subjects are divided into three groups. One group is tasked to simply increase their physical activity. A second will increase physical activity and switch to a healthier diet. The third will increase physical activity, eat a healthier diet and also reduce their calorie intake.
"We're going to look at changes in body composition among the three groups during the course of one year," said Locher. "We'll be measuring the percentage of body fat and track the participants' overall health, physical condition, wellness and quality of life."
"We hope to gain some valuable insights on the role of weight, body composition and healthy lifestyle behaviors in older adults."
Participants will attend nutritional classes and supervised exercise sessions. Compensation and incentives are provided. Those interested in learning more about the trial can call 205-996-5295.
January 24, 2013


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How did the opportunity to do Stuck on Star Trek come about?
Corroney: I was actually contacted by the art director at Becker & Mayer! Books a few years ago when they wanted to pitch this project to CBS. I think I got recommended for the project by my friend and author Scott Tipton, who was working on Star Trek Vault at the time. Scott and I worked previously together on many Star Trek comic books for IDW Publishing.
What excited you most about the project?
Corroney: I think it was because the project brought me back to my childhood days of playing with Colorforms and Presto Magix, if anyone remembers those. I used to draw a lot as a kid, of course, but those activity sets and games really inspired my imagination quite a bit, too. They allowed me to relive movies and TV shows like Star Trek and Star Wars and make my own comic-book-type adventures in full color with backgrounds and props and so on. Nowadays kids demand much more stimulation for their imagination because of the advancements in video games and big-budget filmmaking and the allure and spectacle of other multimedia, so something like Stuck on Star Trek is kind of a throwback really. It's really geared for the collector market and the fans who grew up with Star Trek already, but hopefully their kids or new Star Trek fans will get a kick out of it and find some enjoyment with it, too.
Which iconic bits of Trek did you have the most fun rendering?
Corroney: The Enterprise bridge was really fun to illustrate. I hadn't really gotten the chance to draw the entire bridge for the The Original Series-era Enterprise in the comics before, just parts of it, so I was excited for this illustration. It was challenging but also an honor to draw such a classic, iconic setting in Star Trek history. I actually had to adjust some of the features for the bridge, though, increasing the distance between Captain Kirk's chair and the command consoles to allow for more playability for the clings.
What's up with the dancing Kirk?
Corroney: I think dancing Kirk looks cool! It does look like he's doing the cha cha cha I guess, but remember, Kirk is a man of action. He needs to look like he's ready to rumble for a playset like this. Also, his arms are raised in an action pose since his hands are designed to hold phasers and other objects for the clings. I do seem to recall Kirk doing some dancing in the classic episode "Plato's Stepchildren," though...
What else is in the ballpark of dancing Kirk?
Corroney: Well, Spock looks like he might be ready to cut a rug, too, and you could make it rain with Tribbles since there are a quite a few of those clings in the book.
In general, what kind of stylistic approach did you take? We you trying for semi-realistic? For the Animated Series look? Something in between?
Corroney: I worked with my friends and frequent collaborators, Hi-Fi Colour Design, on this project and they really knocked it out of the park with the artwork. I think the style evolved naturally since we work primarily as comic book artists in the industry. The general idea was to definitely retain likenesses as much as possible for the characters, but also keep them fun and animated-looking. It's just something we're really good at doing, having worked with Star Trek and other licensed properties for so long now.
If there are more Stuck on Trek books in the future, what would you like to realize?
Corroney: Wow, that's a good question. I would definitely love to do a second book featuring The Next Generation series. That would be especially cool. I love Picard, Data, Riker, Worf, Geordi and the rest of the crew. I think it would be really great to adapt some classic TNG episodes like "The Best of Both Worlds," "QPid," "The Big Goodbye" and "All Good Things..." There are definitely some great characters, costumes and environments in all of those episodes that would lend themselves perfectly for another Stuck on Star Trek book.
You've been a busy man lately on the Trek front, with Federation and Hive. How pleased have you been with the reaction to those two projects?
Corroney: I'm really thrilled the fans have responded so positively to both of those projects. It was great contributing artwork to Federation: The First 150 Years and to see my work featured alongside so many spectacular illustrations by friends of mine in the industry who also contributed art for the book. But I'm especially proud to see Star Trek: The Next Generation: Hive getting some really great reviews and positive feedback online. I worked really hard on my art for that series with my friends at Hi-Fi and Star Trek writer/producer Brannon Braga to make a truly memorable Star Trek adventure for the fans since the story felt like a true sequel to Star Trek: Nemesis. I can't wait for the fourth issue to come out shortly, so everyone can see how this epic final battle with the Borg ends for the TNG crew.
Trek-wise, what else are you working on at the moment?
Corroney: Currently, I'm doing some sketches for IDW Publishing's upcoming Star Trek Volume Two Deluxe Limited Edition book for their "IDW Limited" line. This will be a very rare, limited release for this collection of Star Trek comic books and each book in the black label edition will come with a unique, hand-drawn character sketch inside that I've drawn. There are also rumblings of a new Star Trek series on the horizon at IDW that I might get to draw, so I'm hoping that works out for me later this year.
Stuck on Star Trek will come with wire-o pages and a foldout stand for easy display, and play, in a cubicle or on any surface. It'll be available February 26 from Universe. Click below to pre-order and HERE to visit Corroney's official site.


text: If we are confronted with many options about something crucial in life, we tend to panic and obtain unclear about how to start or how to start selecting. Many people usually choose based on price, which should never be the way it is because it must be good quality over amount. Although some solutions may… Continue reading Natural Gas Supplier


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"Lesbian Separatism" is the choice of some women to surround themselves amongst lesbians only. This was particularly popular in the early years of the feminist movement.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Word of the Gay: "Lesbian Separatism"
Posted by Queers United at 12:00 AM
2 comments:
And I totally get why they wanna do that. But in college,ALL of my friends were dykes. I went to my first Pride march with them in Atlanta. When it was time for the dyke march, I just joined right in...for about 3 seconds until a very butch woman wearing a dildo on her head made me leave. I was sad, but I get it now. Yay Lesbians!
- January 30, 2009 at 1:03 AM
- 42pennies said...
I think it is totally hilarious that the graphic under "Lesbian Separatism" is a straight woman.
- April 10, 2009 at 8:14 PM
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This week, a group of geologists report that they've found a lost continent off the coast of Scotland. 55 million years ago, about 10 million years after dinosaurs died out, a chunk of the seafloor erupted from beneath the water. It created a small continent that existed for at least a million years, covered in dramatic mountains and valleys, and irrigated with streaming rivers. Eventually the landscape sank back beneath the waves, its once-sunny mountains buried beneath 2 kilometers of seabed.
How did this happen? The answer reveals that our planet is even more dangerous and magnificent than we knew.
In Nature Geoscience, Earth scientist Ross A. Hartley and colleagues describe their discovery, and offer some theories about how an entire continent could rise and fall in a million years — a brief moment in geological time. Above, you can see the image they created of part of the continent, including its coastline and a mountain whose slopes were deeply cut by rivers. Write Hartley and his team:
This image was constructed from sound waves which are bounced off different rock layers at depth. An ancient meandering riverbed can easily be seen.
They found this lost continent after using sound waves to map a volume of 10,000 square kilometers on the northwest continental shelf of Europe. Based on the weathering of rocks the researchers studied beneath the waves, it's clear that a huge chunk of the seafloor was once above water, being eroded by wind and sun.
So how did it happen? Hartley and colleagues suggest that this continent rose out of the water on what some geologists call a "thermal anomaly," and others call a "mantle plume." You could also call it a giant explosion inside the Earth. Basically, as you can see in the image at left, superheated rock in the Earth's mantle (near the core of the planet) can sometimes create giant plumes of heat that push to the surface of the planet. When this happens, radical disruptions can occur — such as huge chunks of the seafloor rising suddenly above the surface of the ocean. And that's what probably created this short-lived landmass.
This is the sort of thing that could only happen on Earth. Our planet has the unique feature of being both hard and soft at the same time: On the surface of Earth, we have several vast chunks of hard crust, the continental plates, floating atop a rapidly-churning layer of superheated liquid rock. And sometimes, the superheated liquid rock spurts up out of cracks between the hard crusts, creating your thermal anomalies, volcanoes, and other disaster movie scenarios.
But this mystery continent was part of a disaster even bigger than a giant volcano. It appeared during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or the most recent period of global warming in Earth's history. It was a time possibly much like ours, when the atmosphere was full of carbon and the temperature was going up. Scientists have long wondered what caused this ancient period of global warming, and this thermal anomaly may help answer that question.
Here you can see a map of the Icelandic Plume, which is probably what set this weird geological story in motion. Commenting on the discovery of the lost continent, Earth scientist Phillip A. Allen explains how it could be connected to global warming:
Intriguingly, the timing of formation of the ancient landscape west of the Orkney–Shetland Islands coincides with a global climatic event known as the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum - a period of rapid and extreme global warming. Triggers of this climatic event are unclear, but could be linked to the release of large quantities of methane stored in sediments on the sea bed. Uplift of the sea bed would have caused the methane stored in the ocean floor to become unstable, triggering its release into the atmosphere. Pulses of hot mantle rising up in the Iceland mantle plume therefore provide a viable mechanism to elevate the sea floor at this time. Furthermore, about 33–34 million years ago, the climate suddenly cooled causing the planet to undergo a transition from a greenhouse to an icehouse world. This climatic change has been linked to periods when activity in the Iceland plume was suppressed, causing the sea bed between Iceland and Greenland to subside.
In other words, this thermal anomaly sent a plume of superheated rock to the Earth's surface, warming the waters and thawing the methane beneath them. Our lost continent rose to the surface as greenhouse gases filled the atmosphere, making the birth of this landmass into a veritable environmental apocalypse.
Scientists are trying to understand when such an event might happen again, and what we can learn from it that might help us deal with climate change today. Meanwhile, I wait for the disaster movie version of this scenario from Earth's past, which will hopefully include references to Atlantis and ancient alien civilizations.
Read the full scientific paper via Nature Geoscience


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If you have acne prone skin, you know your way around the facial cleanser aisle at the drugstore. There's an overwhelming number of products to take care of your face and body - but when it comes to your scalp, not so much, right? If you have oily skin or play sports, your scalp absolutely needs some TLC too. EnterClear Poreformance Shampoo and Conditionerofficial Website
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Do you have issues with your scalp? What other acne products do you swear by?


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New Phone Systems
|New NEC Phone System
|Request a Quote
New Phone System Features
Voice Mail Features - Phone Features
Account Codes: allows your company to issue employees a 4 digit code to access phone lines to make long distance calls. When coupled with call accounting software your company will have a complete log on who made what outbound long distance phone calls.
Automated Attendant: allows incoming calls to be directed to their destination with out human assistance. We recommend: have the automated attendant answer unanswered calls after 4 to 5 rings that way if no one can answer the phone call the automated attendant can route the caller to their destination. A day and a night greeting can be set so you will never have to put your phone system into night mode. Kind if a set it and forget it type deal. Voice Mail Required.
Caller ID: allows telephone system users to see who is calling in when information is available. Must have caller ID service available from telco service provider.
Call Logging: Allows telephone system users to keep a of past incoming calls. Must have caller ID service available from telco service provider.
Direct Inward Line: incoming lines can be directed straight to an extension and extensions mail box with out going thru the company directory.
Door Box: instead of a door bell your company can take advantage of a door phone to verify who and speak with people directly who want to gain entrance to your facility.
Door Striker: allows your associates to open the door to your facility from a proprietary telephone.
Group Rings: allows you to associate extensions to a group of telephones. Example you can assign 5 phones to the accounting department ring group and when some one wants to contact the accounting department all they have to do is dial the accounting department ring group number all telephones in the ring group will ring. A mail box can also be associated with a ring group with a flashing function key to alert users of a message.
Music on Hold: allows your company to provide music or messages about your company to be played while incoming callers are on hold.
Names for Extensions and Trunks: you can associate a name for an extension so when an associate calls another associates extension the name of the extension will appear in the telephone's display. You can also associate with an incoming line for phone systems with 2 or more companies the name of the incoming line will appear when a call comes in.
Night Service: allows you to put your system into night mode by simply pressing a button.
Off Premise Extension: allows you to forward an extension to an off-site extension so when an extension is reached the phone system will seize an available outside line and place a call to the pre-configured destination.
Single Line Telephones: allows the capability of using analog telephones at significant savings. The Vodavi 2800 series single line telephones can be used as fully functional end user telephones with a message waiting light at a fraction of the cost.
System Speed Dials: Up to 1000 system speed dials can be programmed for frequently called phone numbers and venders.
T1 Interface: allows the capability to have 24 incoming lines thru a Telco provided T1 interface line.
Voice Mail Capability: allows each user to have the capability to have individual voice mail boxes, the capability of an automated attendant, and notification of voice mail.
Some features may be optional , not applicable to all systems or require additional equipment. Some federal and state laws require notification or require consent from all parties prior to recording a telephone conversation. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice at the sole discretion of EZ System Sales. All trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Trusted Vender Since 2001
New Phone System Features


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DUBLIN, OHIO—Tiger Woods picked the right place to match Jack Nicklaus for career PGA Tour wins, and with a shot that left even Nicklaus amazed.
Two shots behind with three holes to play, his ball in an impossible spot behind the 16th green, Woods holed a flop shot from 50 feet away that turned bogey into birdie and sent him on his way to a stunning comeback Sunday in the Memorial.
Woods made three birdies on his last four holes for a 5-under 67, matching the lowest score of the final round, and he finished in style. He hit 9-iron to just inside 10 feet, and raised his putter — a pose that Nicklaus made famous for so many years — well before the ball tumbled into the cup.
It was his fifth win at Muirfield Village, and the 73rd of his PGA Tour career to match Nicklaus at No. 2 on the all-time list. Sam Snead won a record 82 times.
For Woods, it was a dramatic end to his worst three-tournament stretch as a pro, and it came with the U.S. Open looming.
He started the day four shots behind and wound up with a two-shot victory over Andres Romero (67) and Rory Sabbatini, who was in control of the tournament until he fell victim again to some old magic by Woods.
Woods said he didn't miss a shot all day, though that flop shot stands out.
"The most unbelievable, gutsy shot I've ever seen," Nicklaus said from the TV booth. "Look at the position he was in. If he's short, the tournament is over. If he's long, the tournament is over. He puts it in the hole."
Nicklaus shared those thoughts with Woods as the winner walked off the 18th green. Woods smiled and said, "How about that, huh?"
Woods won for the second time this year, and moved to No. 4 in the world.
This was more impressive than his five-shot win in the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill in March, when he had a one-shot lead on a course where he could get by with par. The Memorial required much more work, especially when he had to go after birdies in the final hour. And that's what he did.
He reached the par-5 15th into the wind in two shots to set up a two-putt birdie and get within one shot of Sabbatini. But just like that, it looked as if his chances were over when his tee shot bounded through the green and into a tough lie behind the green.
Woods is famous for chipping in at Memorial, particularly on the 14th hole. This was tougher by a mile, on fast greens with a shot that required close to perfection.
"I had to take a cut at it because the lie wasn't as great," he said. "It came out just perfect."
With a full swing, the ball came out soft and began tracking toward the hole. It caught the right edge of the cup and dropped for a most improbable birdie, and Woods took two steps to the left and delivered a full uppercut not seen from him in some time.
Sabbatini didn't need to see it. He was on the 15th green, scrambling for par, when Muirfield Village shook with the loudest roar of the day. The South African suddenly was tied for the lead, but not for long. He hit his tee shot into the right bunker on the 16th, the third-hardest hole Sunday that yielded only four birdies, and then blasted out to just inside 15 feet and took bogey to fall one behind.
That was all Woods needed.
From the middle of the 18th fairway, with Nicklaus watching from behind the green, Woods hit 9-iron to the perfect spot on the back of the green that it caught the slope and rolled to just inside 10 feet.
Nicklaus always waits on the 18th green for the winner, a tradition Woods knows better than anyone. This was even more special given the circumstances of his 73rd win.
"To do it here with Jack watching on the last hole . . . he means a lot to all of us as players," Woods said. "We all looked up to him, and he's the greatest champion that's ever lived."
It was a hard-luck finish for Sabbatini, who has a long history with Woods for brazen comments that always backfire on him. He didn't get many breaks, but kept his patience throughout the final round and still had a chance until he failed to take advantage of a big drive on the 17th, having to save par from a bunker.
David Hearn (76) of Brantford, Ont., finished tied for 25th at 3-over.
Spencer Levin, who had a one-shot lead going into the final round, lost the lead to Sabbatini with a two-shot swing on the par-3 12th, then took double bogey on the next hole to fall from contention. He closed with a 75, the same score he shot in the final round at Phoenix when he had a six-shot lead.
That was nothing compared with Rickie Fowler, who played in the second-to-last group with Woods to help generate an enormous gallery. Fowler opened with a birdie, and his day fell apart after that. With a double bogey on the last hole, he closed with an 84.
The only consolation for Fowler was getting a front-row seat to a comeback remarkable even by Woods' standards — especially the chip-in on the 16th. Fowler said a good shot would have been anywhere around 10 feet.
"It came out perfect, landed right on the crown of that ridge there, and the rest is history," Fowler said. "I mean, he loves being in the moment, and that's where he kind of gets down, focuses and hits those shots. It was fun to see."
Woods finished at 9-under 279.
It was the second time this year that Woods has won in his final tuneup before a major. He won Bay Hill, but then tied for 40th at the Masters. The U.S. Open at Olympic Club starts on June 14, and Woods would be quite happy to take the game he had Sunday to San Francisco.
"That was some good stuff out there," Woods said. "I never really missed a shot today."
The Memorial will be remembered for the one flop shot he made.
Tiger Woods asks for patience even as results remain uneven


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Bitcoin ATM Detroit – Coinhub
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About Detroit
Detroit (, locally also ; French: Détroit) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The city of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 census, making it the 27th-most populous city in the United States. The metropolitan area, known as Metro Detroit, is home to 4.3 million people, making it the second-largest in the Midwest after the Chicago metropolitan area, and 14th-largest in the United States. Regarded as a major cultural center, Detroit is known for its contributions to music, along with its art, architecture and design, and its historical automotive background.Detroit is a major port on the Detroit River, one of the four major straits that connect the Great Lakes system to the Saint Lawrence Seaway.
Neighborhoods in Detroit, MI
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Things to do in Detroit, MI
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Elizabeth Davies: The library has it all
I have a confession to make: There's an overdue library book under my bed.
If you are my librarian, that confession shouldn't come as any surprise. In fact, I'm fairly certain the library is thinking of naming its next addition "The Elizabeth Davies Overdue Fine Center."
It's not that I intend to be delinquent, of course. But I seem to have trouble getting through an entire book in just two weeks. I always think I can do it, but since having children, I consistently find myself re-reading the same paragraph over and over again. It seems to take days to turn the page.
It's just a darned good thing that I don't live in Independence, Iowa. That's where a 39-year-old woman was arrested last week for failing to return a library book over the course of nine months. Ironically, the $14 book was "The Freedom Writers Diary" — and it cost the library patron $250 to free herself from jail.
Hopefully, the threat of being jailed for that book under the bed won't keep people out of libraries. It's only in recent years that I found out what awesome places libraries are. Growing up, we lived outside the city limits, so we didn't qualify for a free library card. Thus, I only really thought of the library as a place to do research for homework. It was quiet, boring, confusing and generally not someplace I wanted to be.
The bookstore, however, was the place for me. I was the kind of girl who could sit down with a new book on a Saturday afternoon and be ready for another book by Sunday morning. In fact, I never went to the bookstore without walking out with a bag filled with books. My shelves were overflowing, and yet I always found room for new books. If there wasn't something new to read, I didn't worry about it: I just picked up an old book and enjoyed it again. My parents were constantly amazed that I could read murder mysteries over and over but be pleasantly surprised at the ending each time.
It wasn't until I was an adult, living in a city, that I stumbled across the wonderful world inside a library. It was like a free bookstore — plus it stored everything for you! With limited space in my first grown-up apartment, that was exactly what I needed.
Of course, there was a learning curve at the library. You could spend all day there, wandering the aisles, and still not find what you wanted. And there weren't fancy displays of
easy-to-choose books like at the bookstore. But I quickly found the biggest benefit to the library: If the book's a bore, you aren't out $19.95.
One day, I turned the corner and realized that the library had far more than books. It carried videos, too! What was I doing paying Blockbuster prices on movie night? I could rent from the library and have more money for SnoCaps and popcorn.
Now that I have a small child, the library is an even better place. It has cool kid toys, puzzles and books. It hosts regular story times that feature songs and puppets.
And of course, the price is right. After all, I can't fork over money for new kid books all the time.
I have overdue fines to pay.
Rockford Register Star


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Bowen McCauley Dance Company: Professional Dancer Auditions – To Hire ASAP
April 6, 2021 @ 10:30 am - 12:00 pm
An event every day that begins at 10:30 am, repeating until September 15, 2021
Bowen McCauley Dance Company (BMDC) is a chamber size professional contemporary dance company celebrating its 25th and final season. We are currently seeking two professional dancers with performing experience for the Company's two 2021 full productions at the Kennedy Center. We want to hire the right candidates ASAP as understudies/swings for the May 26 show at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. Candidates should also be prepared to begin rehearsing immediately as you will be cast in the production of our second performance on September 14 at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater.
Under the direction of Founding Artistic Director, Lucy Bowen McCauley, the Company offers competitive wages to our Dancers who are part-time seasonal employees. We value diversity and inclusion encouraging all professionally trained dancers to apply.
For consideration, please forward your resume and sample video(s) to email@example.com. Please include in subject line: Professional Dancer Audition


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Red Sox clout eight homers in romp over Tigers
Sox clout eight homers and Big Papi hits a milestone in romp over Tigers
One after another, the baseballs cleared the fences at Fenway Park – a franchise record-tying eight home runs in all for the Boston Red Sox.
And David Ortiz led the way.
The Red Sox designated hitter homered twice and he also doubled for his 2,000th career hit Wednesday night to lead the Red Sox to a 20-4 romp over the Detroit Tigers.
"I've never really seen that many happy faces in the dugout at the same time," said Ortiz, who was one of a franchise-record seven different Red Sox batters to homer in the game. "It was like lighting a firework. ... I see everybody happy. It's like the fireworks just keep on coming."
Boston pulled away in an eight-run sixth inning when Will Middlebrooks hit a grand slam, Ortiz had an RBI double to reach 2,000 and Daniel Nava added a two-run homer. Ortiz homered again in the five-run seventh – the 427th of his career to move past Billy Williams and into 47th on baseball's all-time home run list.
"Congratulations to David. That's a heck of a milestone," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. "I'm sure the Red Sox fans are proud of him and he's proud of himself. He's had a wonderful career and he's popular here. A very kind man, really. I'm very happy for him. It came against the wrong team, but that's OK."
AL East-leading Boston has won nine of 11, taking two out of three from the Central-leading Tigers to hold onto the best record in the league. After scores of 3-0 and 2-1 in the first two games of the series, the Red Sox burst out with a franchise record-tying eight homers and a season-high 20 runs.
Jacoby Ellsbury, Stephen Drew, Mike Napoli and Ryan Lavarnway also homered as the Red Sox turned a game that was tied 4-4 after four innings into a blowout.
"Just a rare and outstanding offensive night tonight," said Red Sox manager John Farrell, who had Shane Victorino steal second in the fifth inning to try to get the go-ahead run in scoring position. "You think at that point you're looking to somewhat manufacture a run any way you can. Little did we know it would turn out like it did. ... We had no idea of what was about to take place shortly after that."
Ryan Dempster (8-9) allowed four runs on six hits and two walks in six innings, striking out seven to win his second straight start since he was suspended for five games for intentionally hitting New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez.
The Red Sox open a four-game series with the Yankees in New York Thursday night.
Rick Porcello (11-8) gave up nine runs – eight of them earned – on seven hits and four walks in five-plus innings. He allowed three homers, Al Alburquerque gave up two, Jeremy Bonderman allowed two and Evan Reed gave up one.
"That was pretty ugly," Leyland said. "Obviously we just didn't a good job of keeping the ball in the ballpark. The Green Monster's one thing, but you normally don't see them going out to right field like that. They were hitting them out like ping pong balls."
Ortiz homered in the fourth to tie the game 4-all, then added an RBI double in the sixth for hit No. 2,000. He waved his batting helmet as he stood on second base while the crowd cheered and home plate umpire Jeff Kellogg helped the Red Sox dugout retrieve the ball.
Ortiz homered the next time up, prompting another standing ovation from the crowd at Fenway Park. The fans remained on their feet until he popped out of the dugout for a curtain call.
Prince Fielder homered for the Tigers, who were without Miguel Cabrera for the third time in four games with a strained abdominal muscle. A reigning triple crown winner, Cabrera leads the majors again with a .355 average with 130 RBI and is four behind Baltimore's Chris Davis with 43 homers.
Detroit shortstop Jose Iglesias, who was acquired from Boston at the trading deadline, left in the fifth inning with pain in his shins.
Victorino singled with one out in the fifth, stole second and took third when catcher Alex Avila threw the ball into center field. On the 11th pitch of his at-bat, Dustin Pedroia hit a sinking line drive that left fielder Andy Dirks caught just off the grass but he could not keep Victorino from tagging up and scoring to make it 5-4.
The Red Sox blew it open with eight in the sixth thanks to a bases-loaded walk, two homers and Ortiz's double. They added two more in the eighth to make it 20-4.
Infield Chatter
The only other time the Red Sox have hit eight homers in a game was July 4, 1977, against Toronto at Fenway Park. ... Nava has reached base safely in 39 consecutive games, the longest active streak in the majors. ... The Chicago Cubs, run by former Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein, claimed former Red Sox reliever Daniel Bard off waivers. ... Farrell said Clay Buchholz's wife gave birth to a daughter. The right-hander will resume his rehab stint with Triple-A Pawtucket in Rochester on Thursday night before joining the Red Sox in New York. ... Victorino went over the short wall along the first-base line to retire Austin Jackson and end the fourth inning. Victorino then returned what appeared to be a cellphone to a woman in the front row.


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Rapid Fire 2011-12-30: The US Navy's Challenged PlansDec 30, 2011 07:45 UTC
DID would like to wish all of our readers a Happy New Year!
- So, what milestones does India's Ministry of Defence want to highlight from 2011?
- Dynamint Nobel is still working on its classic Panzerfaust, whose modern versions have proven quite popular. The lightweight versions are strong urban warfare weapons, and the next step is integrating them with remote weapons stations for roles like harbor defense.
- Switchblade UAVs to launch from subs? While they could retain their kamikaze capabilities, the reality is that sub-launched UAVs are going to be 1-shot items at first. Why not adapt an existing UAV designed for that?
- InnoCentive offers a $15,000 reward for a concept or design of a medical transportation device that would enable a rescuer to quickly and safely transport an injured person away from an active combat site.
- Range remains a significant challenge for nonlethal weapons.
- Aviation Week Intelligence Network really doubts that the US Navy will be able to keep its resolutions about fielding modernized DDG-51 Flight III destroyers. Worse, operations and maintenance costs are going to be a problem for the existing fleet. Meanwhile Walter Pincus is challenging the Navy's numbers and Bloomberg View bemoans how LCS has turned out so far.
- At least the US Navy is not facing a fire on one of its nuclear submarines, unlike its Russian counterpart yesterday.
- Thursday was not a good day for the Russian military since they also had a Su-24 crash. These crashes have happened like clockwork over the years [in Russian]. Nobody died in either incident yesterday though some people appear to have been injured in the submarine fire.
- Yet another cybersecurity acquisition for Raytheon: Henggeler Computer Consultants, Inc. It's the 2nd this month and the 10th in the last 4 years.


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Quick Notes: Code Geass, kyouran kazoku nikki, Planetess
Just putting some thoughts down as I roll into the end of the second season of Code Geass and the midpoint of Kazoku Kyouran Nikki.
Nearing the end of the second season of the first chunk of Code Geass and just got to the episode where everything hits the fan. I'm half impressed, half disappointed. It was obvious everything was going to hell, and the more it looked like it might have a hard-fought but happy end the more I knew it was all going to fall apart—the optimistic, nice characters in the series are, frankly, too naive to realize it ain't going to be that easy. What impressed me, though, was how fast it went to hell, and how completely. Hope to complete bloodbath in literally ten seconds flat. Now the fun of it is trying to figure out exactly how this new, vicious twist will play out—my friends and I have come up with at least three possible scenarios that would result in layered and brutal tragedy of the highest order, depending on who lives as a broken shell and who will kill who, so we'll see if any of us are right. So far I haven't done too well other than in the general, but I'm more confident in my prediction this time.
The disappointment was that though the disaster is complete, the way it was done was kind of a cop-out. In that the series has gradually set up layered emotional conundrums (I wanted to write conundra, but that's apparently wrong) that would eventually result in exquisite tragedy that the characters only realize they have created when it's too late. The kicker, though, was really just a dumb accident, which, as effective as it was, seemed like a rather blunt instrument by the standards this series has set. Sure, it sets up the impossible actions the characters will have no choice but to follow through on, but I'd have liked it to be done in a more intentional, shoulda-seen-that-coming way.
Also a little worried about how much it's holding back for the second series; I've got a creeping suspicion that it's either going to veer off into some totally different direction or start treading water to keep itself going. But, it's so far held together remarkably well through the soap operatic twists, so maybe it'll keep it up. (Also, maybe I'm a little prejudiced against series that go on longer than a couple seasons—it's one of the reasons I much prefer the finite 1-2 season runs of almost all anime to US TV's choice of either endless treading water or the overblown mess that things like X Files or Lost turn into eventually.)
There's also C.C. and the related Geass business getting ramped up with the addition of some ancient artifacts and the Emperor doing some creepy stuff. My first reaction was "oh, great, ancient ruins and hidden magic powers" until I reminded myself that the entire foundation of the thing is the Geass powers and C.C.'s background, so it's not like it didn't put the supernatural stuff out front from episode 1.  I suppose it's so solidly grounded otherwise it's easy to forget the whole concept is pretty whacked.
Kazoku Kyouran Nikki, I'm completely sold on. The series is flat-out awesome as far as deranged, hyperactive comedy goes. Every time I think it's put the cherry on top of the towering sundae of crazy it goes and adds another scoop of wow. Even the odd, sort-of-prequel episode tossed into the middle had multiple kinds of wonderful madness in it (though why they didn't give you some signal at the beginning as to the fact it took place before the series proper, I don't know—I'd have spent less time trying to figure out how it fit in that way). That you also empathize with and to some degree even care about the family members and side characters is icing on the cake (doubling up on my confectionary metaphors there, but then this series is on a perpetual sugar rush so it's appropriate). It's like Excel Saga with the nutty heroine factor cranked a notch higher (yes, I'm serious) except the world is at least a little bit functional and you actually care about the characters. The tears-to-the-eyes hilarity is chocolate sprinkles on the icing on the cake (…on the sundae?). Usually I fear a series this good falling apart at the end, but thus far it has ignored every opportunity to do wrong, so I'm remaining unusually optimistic.
Speaking of optimistic, Planetes was recommended to me quite some time ago by M Man, a fellow of impeccable taste, but I just recently got around to adding it to my weekly viewing get together. I should have listened sooner—it's like all the best parts of Wings of Honneamise (one of my favorite films) in TV form with lots and lots of good science. The best parts, for reference, are low-key humor, an air of realistic adventure, cool science-based mechanical design, and a sense of wonder (tempered by jaded pessimism) about space. It's a bit preachy on occasion, and I could picture it getting too heavy, but so far I'm loving what I'm seeing.
Also: I'm still not sure how Honneamise is supposed to be pronounced when speaking English without sounding weird, a fact that has been brought to the fore by Bandai's Honneamise blu-ray label. Sometimes writing is easier—it always sounds fine in your head.


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While watching the Minnesota Wild play against the Canadiens recently, the commentator reminded me that the Wild's Mikko Koivu has a brother Saku who plays for Montreal. Both brothers are captains this year. I already know Mikko is very cute, so I wondered what his brother looks like. Well, here he is. That got me to thinking … how many other brother hotties are there in professional sports that are good looking? You'll see my top pics after the break.
Okay, now that I'm done feeling like Ryan Seacrest, I've attempted to pick the best brothers from football, baseball and soccer as well.
Tiki and Ronde Barber (football)
Tiki Barber, former American football running back for the New York Giants. He is the identical twin brother of Ronde Barber, a cornerback who plays for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Obviously, these guys are hot and just too adorable for words. Here they are with a little puppy!
They're so sweet, they even co-authored children's books together. Here's some other great pics of them.
Okay, I know Ronde is considered a douchebag – did he really punch a referee ? – and Tiki is "polite". But otherwise I would have had to default to Peyton and Eli Manning.
In doing my arduous research for the baseball feature of this post, I seriously considered the following:
Jason and Jeremy Giambi (baseball)
or Jose and Ozzie Canseco (baseball) – But steroids aren't sexy.
Then there's Sandy and Roberto Alomar (baseball) – Okay, but Roberto spit in an ump's face, and that's not cool either.
I may have to go all the way back to the 1920s, '30s and '40s to find a contender with the three Ferrell brothers of baseball.
Finally, I looked and looked, and this is the hottest "brothers" I could find in soccer: Matt Brothers.
Matt has made three appearances on the Massachusetts State College Athletic Conference All-Conference team while at Worcester State College. He should appeal to all our younger readers.
Then I got these tips from others:
Stephen and J.D. Drew, courtesy of Lady Andrea.
Eric and Corey Patterson, as suggested by Chitown Chick.
The Sutter brothers (an idea from some guy over at MYFO)
Jeremy and Caleb Campbell, as noted by Gradavid Sizewright in yesterday's paralympic post here.
I guess what we can take away from this review of "hottie" brothers in professional sports is that, with a few limited exceptions, if two brothers have that level of athletic talent, don't expect them to be good-looking as well. I'm sure, however, that there are stunning examples I have missed. Please, do share.


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When Afghan women move forward, believe me, they never want to go back, not to the days when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. – Secretary of State John Kerry
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry and his predecessor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, said Friday that Afghanistan is reaching a turning point in maintaining the advances made by women in Afghan society and any future security agreement needs to respect the rights of women.
Kerry said Afghan women and girls have made great progress since 2001, enjoying greater access to education, health care and technology. But he said many women in Afghanistan remain concerned that the nation's society could revert back to the repressive days under Taliban control.
"When Afghan women move forward, believe me, they never want to go back, not to the days when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan," Kerry said. He said the achievements of women in Afghanistan "is nothing less than remarkable" and it would be a tragedy if those gains were threatened.
Under Taliban rule, girls were barred from attending school, women were forced to stay indoors and cover their heads and faces with burqas. Kerry, Clinton and former first lady Laura Bush noted during a forum at Georgetown University that Afghan women and girls have made great strides, attending school, serving in their country's legislature and owning their own businesses.
Coalition combat forces are scheduled to leave Afghanistan at the end of 2014 and the U.S. and Afghan government are negotiating a security agreement that will determine whether the U.S. leaves in place a small combat force of between 8,000-12,000 troops after next year to train and advise the Afghans.
Kerry expressed optimism that an agreement could be reached in the coming weeks, saying the two nations are "closer than ever" to completing a security plan that will define a new partnership with Afghanistan.
Clinton said security was the "paramount issue" going forward and expressed hope that U.S. troops would be granted immunity from local arrest and prosecution under any agreement. Clinton noted that an agreement on immunity could not be reached with Iraq before U.S. forces departed and the country has been "descending into a cycle of terrible violence."
"This is a big decision for the Afghan government. If you enter into a bilateral security agreement, it doesn't mean that the United States will be there in great numbers. It means that we will be available to help support the security forces of Afghanistan," Clinton said. If it is not signed, Clinton said the Afghans will be "left totally to themselves."
Bush said as U.S. forces transition out of the country, it will be important for Americans to maintain a connection to Afghanistan. "I'm so worried that once our troops leave, nobody will pay attention to Afghanistan," Bush said.
Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas


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- The SSH client
- The firewall, proxy, or NAT at the edge of your network
- The endpoint and ACL for the cloud service in which the virtual machine is contained (for Azure System Management-based virtual machines)
- Network Security Groups
- The settings and the state of the Azure Virtual Machine
New troubleshooting SSH connections
Making a Secure Shell (SSH) connection to an on-premises Linux computer can be pretty straightforward. However, when you make an SSH connection to an Azure-based Linux computer, there are additional intermediate systems and security settings between the SSH client and server. The new Troubleshoot Secure Shell (SSH) Connections to a Linux-based Azure Virtual Machine article steps you through a process for determining the source of the problem and provides advice for correcting many issues. Here are the major sources of problems for SSH connections to Azure Virtual Machines:


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Ten of the Earliest Recorded Near-Death Experiences
Ten Controversial News Stories Surrounding ChatGPT
10 Movies That Accurately Portray Mental Health Issues
10 Things History Gets Totally Wrong about the Black Plague
10 Origins of Commonly Used Phrases
10 Shocking Times Love Led to Murder
10 Haunted Places to Visit in Philadelphia
Ten Strange Things You Never Knew about the Wild West
Top 10 TV Theme Songs from the 1980s
10 Ambitious Projects Aimed at Resurrecting Extinct Animals
Ten of the Earliest Recorded Near-Death Experiences
Ten Controversial News Stories Surrounding ChatGPT
Who's Behind Listverse?
Jamie Frater
Head Editor
Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author.More About Us
10 Movies That Accurately Portray Mental Health Issues
10 Things History Gets Totally Wrong about the Black Plague
10 Origins of Commonly Used Phrases
10 Shocking Times Love Led to Murder
10 Haunted Places to Visit in Philadelphia
Ten Strange Things You Never Knew about the Wild West
Top 10 TV Theme Songs from the 1980s
15 Bogeymen From Around The World
The bogeyman is a legendary ghost-like monster. The bogeyman has no specific appearance and conceptions of the monster can vary drastically even from household to household within the same community; in many cases he simply has no set appearance in the mind of a child, but is just an amorphous embodiment of terror. This list looks at 15 bogeymen from around the world.
The Namahage visits each house on New Year's to ask if any misbehaving children live there. If the parents are able to report that their children are not lazy and do not cry, he moves on to the next house.
The Korean bogeyman is called Kotgahm, which is the word for persimmon. The legend is that a mother told her crying child that she would feed him to a tiger if he did not behave. A passing tiger, hearing the threat, waited outside the door for his meal. Instead, the mother gave the child a persimmon, a kotgahm, and the crying stopped. The tiger thought the kotgahm must be a terrifically fierce creature to be more frightening than a tiger. Today, the kotgahm is most often visualized as an old man with a mesh sack who carries naughty children away.
Duérmete, niño, duérmete ya.
Que viene el coco y te comerá
Go to sleep child, go to sleep now.
The coconut man will come and eat you.
If you think of a coconut as a head, with the three holes the features of a face, you can see how El Coco might be transformed in the mind of a child to a hairy little man. During the 16th and 17th centuries in Spain, there were orphan collectors, who took children away in sacks. The misbehavior? Refusing to go to bed and sleep.
One of the most unusual of the world's bogeys is Groke, a giant blue blob who is so lonely and sad that the ground beneath her feet freezes as she walks. She is not malevolent, just lonely. But she frightens people, and they run from her.
There are many theories about the origin of the word "bogeyman." One is that it devolved from "buggy man," the driver of the cart picking up corpses during the Black Plague that decimated Europe. As in the United States, the bogeyman may be nothing more clearly defined than a mist or fog, scratching at windows, or he is sometimes thought of as a tall, gaunt, scarecrow-like man.
The boggart is a malicious fairy who causes personal calamities, small and large. It sometimes puts a cold hand on people's faces at night. You must not name it, or it will become unreasonable and follow your family wherever you go. A horseshoe over the doorway will protect you from boggarts.
The Small Man has a rolling cart and captures children who are out after sundown. If he gets you, you will become a Small Person yourself, and ride in his cart forever.
The anti-Santa Claus, Baba Yaga's evil partner, Torbalan lurks in the shadows in Bulgaria, waiting to snatch misbehaving children and carry them away in a sack.
Bubak is a scarecrow-like man who hides on riverbanks, making sounds like a lost baby to lure adults as well as children. He drives a cart driven by cats and weaves clothing for the souls he has stolen.
The Bolman has claws and fangs. He hides under your bed or in your closet waiting to grab you and put you in the basement if you don't sleep.
Pugot Mamu is a gigantic, headless shape-shifter who lives in trees and deserted houses. Self-beheaded, he eats children through the hole in his neck.
The Bonhomme Sept-Heures – the seven o'clock man – may have been taken from the English "bone setter," an old name for a traveling medicine man. The seven o'clock man steals children, but can only get you if you are awake.
The Nokken, a lake monster, will get you if you don't come in when called.
The Jumbies live here, post-death misbehavers. They are shape-shifters, so children are taught not to play with random animals. There are several ways to defeat Jumbies, however. You can leave your shoes outside; Jumbies have no feet and will spend the night trying to get the shoes on. You can leave a container of sand or rice outside the door; Jumbies will have to count each grain. You can cross a river; Jumbies won't cross water. You can leave a rope with many knots; Jumbies will have to untie each one.
Italy has l'uomo Nero, a tall man with an unseen face, a heavy coat and a black hat. He hides under the table and parents knock on the table to warn their children that l'uomo Nero is present and will take them away if they don't eat their dinner.


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Man who killed Fla. prison guard with spoon to be executed tonight
A man convicted of abducting and killing a Miami couple and later stabbing a prison guard to death is set for execution at Florida State Prison.
Askari Abdullah Muhammad, previously known as Thomas Knight, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday at 6 p.m.
ALSO: Florida Death Row Inmates
The 62-year-old Muhammad was first condemned to die for the 1974 abduction and killings of Sydney and Lillian Gans of Miami. He was sentenced to die again for killing corrections officer Richard Burke in 1980 using a sharpened spoon.
His execution has been delayed for so long because of numerous appeals and rulings, including a 1987 federal appeals court tossing out his death sentence because he hadn't been allowed to put character and background witnesses on the stand during the penalty phase.


text: Data Views Total Plants: 1 Total Activities: 2 CSV Excel PDF Click on column headings to sort table by that column Activity *Reference Antihistaminic top * Antiinflammatory top * *Unless otherwise noted all references are to Duke, James A. 1992. Handbook of phytochemical constituents of GRAS herbs and other economic plants. Boca Raton, FL. CRC Press.


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No, the communications specialists in the agency are not concerned with veterans in need. They're not concerned with citizens and public officials requesting public information. They're not concerned with journalists seeking the truth.
What these entrenched government employees care most about, above all else, is the business of spin and stonewalling.
The VA mouthpieces are preoccupied with covering their ample bureaucratic backsides, withholding data, monitoring critics, fending off watchdogs and running constant interference for their corrupt, negligent agency.
In a string of internal email documents I obtained from last fall, several VA press staffers spent seven months dragging their feet on a Freedom of Information Act request filed in March 2013 by disabled vet and attorney Benjamin Krause. He and other vets wanted to know how exactly the VA's communications budget was being spent on public relations campaigns, advertisements, online publications and contracts.
VA spokesman Mark Ballesteros warned his colleagues in an October 2013 email that he had read Krause's veterans advocacy website, DisabledVeterans.org. As I reported last week, Krause's investigative site exposed and explained the VA's red-flag system for dissatisfied veterans and also blew the whistle on Federal Protective Service officers harassing sick veterans protesting shoddy care in San Diego.
Ballesteros wrote that Krause's website "appears to have a distinct anti-VA tone." He advised the VA's taxpayer-funded public affairs specialists: "We should proceed cautiously with this one."
What exactly did that mean? Ultimately, the office supplied data in response to Krause's request—but not before Ballesteros imposed what appears to be a selective, pre-FOIA release policy based on viewpoint discrimination. "Let's ensure the material is socialized before we provide it to the organization," Ballesteros told his colleagues.
As Krause explained it to me, the VA "is using systems that allow it to track the influence of Congress and negative reporting" across traditional and social media. Color-coded weekly and monthly "media analysis briefs" cheer on the VA's spin-control penetration on Twitter and Facebook. Bar charts, maps and ratings track congressional critics and activists. Last fall, the office kept paranoid tallies of pro and con statements on the ever-growing backlog of VA cases. Last fall's media analysis reports obsessed over "mitigating" widespread criticism—from social media to "Fox and Friends" to "The Daily Show"—of VA bonuses and shoddy care.
It was in the course of probing those monitoring efforts that Krause discovered that "the VA Public Affairs thinks my website is 'anti-VA' instead of 'pro-Veteran' and is using viewpoint-centric censoring within its FOIA office," he told me.
It certainly may not be the first time.
House Committee on Veterans' Affairs Chairman Rep. Jeff Miller, whose statements are tracked by the VA propaganda machine, also has run into the stone wall. As of last week, the VA was sitting on nearly 100 separate requests for information from the House panel. Sixty-eight of those requests have been pending for more than 60 days. There are three outstanding requests from 2012.
When I called attention to the internal VA documents involving Krause's FOIA request, Miller told me in a statement:
"These emails are troubling, but they are not at all surprising. Stonewalling Congress, the press and the public has become a way of life at the Department of Veterans Affairs, where entrenched bureaucrats play semantic games in an attempt to mislead. Examples of this strategy are everywhere, whether it's VA's habit of pointing to non-disciplinary actions such as employee retirements and transfers, or bureaucratic slaps on the wrist such as temporary written warnings in a disingenuous attempt to create the illusion of accountability, or the department's repeated refusals to answer questions from Congress and the press, as documented on our committee's Trials in Transparency and VA Honesty Project web pages."Miller added: "As VA's despicable delays in care crisis made painfully clear, the department's extreme secrecy has resulted in deadly consequences. And it's well past time for department leaders at all levels to understand that taxpayer-funded organizations such as VA have a responsibility to provide information to Congress and the public rather than stonewalling them."
Whether ordinary taxpayer or congressional investigator, truth-seekers are apparently treated the same by the VA spin patrol: as nuisances and threats to their power and comfort.
Michelle Malkin [email her] is the author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Click here for Peter Brimelow's review. Click here for Michelle Malkin's website. Michelle Malkin is also author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild and Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies


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|NHTSA Recall #
|NHTSA Compaign #
|MFG Compaign #
|Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing
|Model Year
|Date of notification
|Begin date of manufacuring
|End date of manufacturing
|Type of recall
|Recall initiator
|Report received
|Report created
|Regulation part number
|FMV safety standard number
|Estimated number of affected units
|Defect summary
|Toyota motor engineering & manufacturing (toyota) is recalling certain 2012 toyota 4runner, corolla, corolla matrix, sienna, yaris, scion xb, lexus es350, gx460, is-f, is250, is350, is250c, is350c, and lexus lfa vehicles originally sold, or ever registered, in alabama, california, florida, georgia, hawaii, louisiana, mississippi, south carolina, texas, puerto rico, american samoa, guam, the northern mariana islands (saipan), and the u. S. Virgin islands, or "zone a." additionally, unless included in "zone a" above, toyota is recalling certain 2009 toyota corolla, corolla matrix, yaris, yaris hb, scion xb, pontiac vibe, lexus, es350, is250, is350, and is-f vehicles originally sold, or ever registered, in arizona, arkansas, delaware, district of columbia, illinois, indiana, kansas, kentucky, maryland, missouri, nebraska, nevada, new jersey, new mexico, north carolina, ohio, oklahoma, pennsylvania, tennessee, virginia, and west virginia, or "zone b." additionally, unless included in "zone a" or "zone b" above, toyota is recalling certain 2006-2008 lexus is250 and is350, 2007-2008 lexus es350, toyota yaris, yaris hb, and 2008 lexus is-f and scion xb vehicles originally sold, or ever registered in alaska, colorado, connecticut, idaho, iowa, maine, massachusetts, michigan, minnesota, montana, new hampshire, new york, north dakota, oregon, rhode island, south dakota, utah, vermont, washington, wisconsin and wyoming. These vehicles are equipped with certain air bag inflators assembled as part of the passenger frontal air bag modules used as original equipment or replacement equipment. In the event of a crash necessitating deployment of the passenger frontal air bag, these inflators may rupture due to propellant degradation occurring after long-term exposure to absolute humidity and temperature cycling.
|Consequence summary
|An inflator rupture may result in metal fragments striking the vehicle occupants resulting in serious injury or death.
|Corrective action
|Toyota will notify the toyota, scion and lexus owners. General motors will contact the pontiac owners. Depending on the model, dealers will replace the passenger frontal air bag inflator or the air bag assembly, free of charge. The recall began on february 1, 2017. Owners may contact toyota customer service at 1-800-331-4331, or pontiac customer service at 1-800-762-2737. Toyota's numbers for final remedy for this campaign are g0p (toyota zone a), g0r (toyota zone b), h0a (toyota zone c), glg (lexus zone a), glh (lexus zone b) and hla (lexus zone c).
|Recall notes
|Owners may also contact the national highway traffic safety administration vehicle safety hotline at 1-888-327-4236 (tty 1-800-424-9153).


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Red Dot Award: Product Design 2018 for Pureness by V-ZUG
The exclusive and elegant design line Pureness by V-ZUG has been awarded Product Design 2018 for high design quality in the Red Dot Award. The award stands for one of the most prestigious evaluation procedures for good design and innovation. This year, the independent and international jury evaluated submissions from a total of 59 countries. The Red Dot Award is one of the best known design competitions in the world. The award-winning Pureness design line will be presented from 9 July 2018 in the Red Dot Design Museum, the largest museum for contemporary design. In a special exhibit lasting several weeks, design aficionados can be blown away by the elegant and purist design of Swiss kitchen appliances.