text:
Welcome to the Asia Markets live blog, a running account of what the region's stock markets are doing, along with other news. Today, a positive lead from the U.S. helps some Asian bourses recover from the previous day's losses, but volumes are a little light as Tokyo closes for the Spring Equinox.
4:47 am | Market closing level
Japan (Nikkei Average) (closed for holiday)
Hong Kong (Hang Seng Index) up 1.2% at 21,436.70 (closed)
Shanghai (Shanghai Composite Index) up 2.7% to 2,047.62 (closed)
Sydney (S&P/ASX 200) up 0.8% at 5,338.10 (closed)
Seoul (Kospi) up 0.8% at 1,934.94 (closed)
2:39 am | Markets check -- 2:39 p.m. in Hong Kong | by Laura He
Hong Kong (Hang Seng Index) up 1%
Shanghai (Shanghai Composite Index) up 2.6%
Sydney (S&P/ASX 200) up 0.8%
Seoul (Kospi) up 0.8%
Mumbai (Sensex) up 0.2%
Taipei (Taiex) down 0.2%
12:56 am | Markets check -- 12:56 p.m. in Hong Kong
Hong Kong (Hang Seng Index) up 0.2% (at break)
Shanghai (Shanghai Composite Index) up 0.8% (at break)
Sydney (S&P/ASX 200) up 0.6%
Seoul (Kospi) up 0.7%
Mumbai (Sensex) up 0.1%
Taipei (Taiex) down 0.3%
11:51 pm | Li & Fung has market kung fu | by Mike Kitchen
Li & Fung Limited: It's a supplier to the likes of Wal-Mart and Target. It's a top global logistics manager. It's one of the 50 components of the Hang Seng Index. And whatever else it is, its shares are trading a slamming 18% higher today in Hong Kong.
Part of this is from the 17% rise in 2013 net profit (on a 3% revenue gain) Li & Fung announced late yesterday. And another part is from the company's announcement it plans to spin off its branding/licensing unit as a new entity called "Global Brands Group."
The spinoff is not to raise new funds, but merely to allow for smoother management of the firms various interests, and each current Li & Fung shareholder will get a share of Global Brands if Hong Kong regulators sign off on the deal.
With the separation, each company will be able to focus "on its roots and what it does right," CEO Bruce Rockowitz is quoted as telling Dow Jones Newswires.
Judging from the stock gains, the market agrees with Mr. Rockowitz, at least for now.
11:07 pm | Markets check -- 11:07 a.m. in Hong Kong
Hong Kong (Hang Seng Index) up 0.1%
Shanghai (Shanghai Composite Index) flat
Sydney (S&P/ASX 200) up 0.5%
Seoul (Kospi) up 0.6%
Taipei (Taiex) up 0.1%
10:42 pm | Hong Kong cheers Wall Street gains, but China doubts linger | by Laura He
Wall Street gains are cheering Hong Kong markets, which seem to have shrugged off some concerns about weake
The Hang Seng Index opened higher and is now rising 0.4% to 21,257.01. On the Chinese mainland, the Shanghai Composite Index is also higher, advancing 0.3% to 1.999.15.
Online major Tencent Holdings is rebounding by 0.8% after swinging wildly from losses to gains and back again in the prior session. The company plans to split shares 5-for-1, and earlier this week, it posted quarterly net income of 3.91 billion yuan ($631 million), missing a Bloomberg consensus estimate of 4.1 billion yuan.
Chinese banks also advanced, with China Citic Bank up 0.8%, and both Bank of China and China Merchants Bank up 0.3% each.
However, China Mobile, the world's largest mobile carrier, is tumbling another 3.8% Friday after sinking more than 3.5% in the previous day. During yesterday's market session, the carrier reported its first annual earnings decline in 15 years. The loss was due mainly to rising costs to win customers as it competes against smaller rivals China Unicom and China Telecom, not to mention Tencent's mobil
As some industry giants' earnings disappointed, investors' concerns for a slowdown in Chinese economy are dampening market sentiment. Not helping is the recent drop in the value of the yuan, which has fallen 2.9% over the past month, according to Factset data. This morning, the central bank again lowered the dollar-yuan rate's daily trading mid-point to 6.1475 yuan per dollar, compared to 6.1460 Thursday.
"The continued depreciation of the yuan exacerbated Chinese corporate-default concerns (as local-currency cost of foreign debt increases) and added to the regional fears which kept bargain-hunters away," said analysts from Perpetual Research in a note on Friday.
10:39 pm | Yuan gone too far? | by Mike Kitchen
Another day, another dollar buying more yuan. This morning, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) declared the central parity rate (the level from which the dollar is allowed to trade 2% higher or lower for the day) at 6.1475 yuan. That's above yesterday's parity rate of 6.1460 yuan but well below yesterday's over-the-counter close of 6.2275 yuan, according to figures from Dow Jones Newswires.
The just-a-little-higher parity fix seems to have cooled the selling of yuan in the offshore market, where Dow Jones is quoting the dollar at 6.2020 yuan, down from 6.2090 moments before the parity announcement but still above the so-called "red line" of 6.20 yuan which is said to trigger cash losses for many of the popular offshore yuan-forex products.
Then again, a growing number of voices are now saying a bottom is imminent for the Chinese currency.
"The PBOC won't allow the yuan to depreciate too much from here," Bank of America-Merrill Lynch economist Ting Lu said this morning in a CNBC interview.
In terms of the dollar's break above 6.20, Lu said: "I don't think it's such a big issue. Just a few days ago, people were worried about 6.15" yuan.
Credit Agricole's Dariusz Kowalczyk agreed, calling the yuan "a buy at these levels for investors with medium-term time horizon."
Kowalczyk said in a note that with the central bank close to ending its increases to the parity rate, the "risk-reward trade-off [is] highly skewed towards long yuan positions."
He cited China's ongoing campaign to move the economy away from an export-driven model in favor of a domestic-consumption-driven one as a reason the PBOC won't let the Chinese currency lose too much ground.
"China is beginning to roll out measures to stimulate domestic demand, announcing acceleration of investment projects, and there is a media story today – as yet unconfirmed – talking about consumption incentives," Kowalczyk wrote early Friday.
8:37 pm | Markets check -- 9:37 a.m. in Tokyo
Sydney (S&P/ASX 200) up 0.4%
Seoul (Kospi) up 0.6%
8:17 pm | Silent spring in Japan | by Mike Kitchen
Spring has sprung in the Northern Hemisphere, bringing with it thoughts of blooming flowers, bird song, and for the Japanese, a visit to the graveyard.
The first day of spring, celebrated in Japan as "Shunbun no Hi," is traditionally a time when "many Japanese families clean the household Buddhist altar and go to the graves of their ancestors to pray, as well as perform other rituals designed to honor the dead," according to WanderTokyo.com.
Which means that the stock market is closed today. Were it open, shares would likely be higher, given that U.S. stocks rose overnight, and the dollar is holding to the mid-¥102 range (currently at ¥102.40). And certainly, Singapore-traded futures for Tokyo's Nikkei Stock Average are sitting 1% higher, per FactSet.
But such gains for Japanese equities, if they materialize, will have to wait for Monday. In the meantime, some analysts are citing slightly depressed volumes for regional stock trade today, given the absence of one of East Asia's top markets.
8:02 pm | Yuan worries are for everyone | by Mike Kitchen
As reported in this space previously, the Chinese yuan has been on the downtrend over the past couple months, pulling back from years of gains.
While this has big implications for those investing in the Chinese currency, or in Chinese stocks, or even just in Asia in general, the yuan's depreciation could also be felt well beyond the region, depending on how long it lasts.
MarketWatch's U.S. team has assembled this slide show on how a weaker yuan can impact average folk across the Pacific.
7:40 pm | Australia reviving | by Mike Kitchen
Australia's ASX 200 is standing a little taller this morning, up 0.3% after slouching 1.2% yesterday, with a big tip of the hat to solid overnight gains on Wall Street.
Gains for mining names are again a driver for the market, with the sector ignoring a sharp reversal lower for copper (Comex copper futures fell 2%) and for gold (Comex gold down 0.8%). At this point, we have BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto up 1.1% each, Oz Minerals up 1.2%, and — despite those gold losses — Newcrest and Kingsgate up 2.4% and 3.6%, respectively.
Making news in Australian resources, the big Roy Hill iron-ore project said it has secured the last chunk of financing needed for what, according to Reuters, will become the nation's fifth-largest iron producer. The massive mine is owned by private firm Hancock Prospecting and a consortium of non-Aussie firms (Japan's Marubeni, Korea's Posco, China Steel), but investors seem satisfied that this latest development isn't too big a deal for the other iron-ore majors, as shares of Fortescue Metals are up 2.2%, and those of Atlas Iron are up 1.1%.
Performance for the banks are a little less inspiring. Looking at the Big Four, ANZ is up 0.2%, CBA is up 0.4%, NAB is flat and Wespac is up 0.5%. But Rivkin global investment manager Timothy Radford sees a brighter future ahead for the lenders.
He wrote Friday morning: "Amid the broader market pullback, banks have held steady, tracking sideways with a slight downside bias. And with the Big Four banks holding near 52-week highs, this is evidence to me that there is still plenty of buying interest out there."
"While they have had exceptional runs over the past 12 months and are looking much closer to fair value, I do think they have plenty of upside left," said Radford.
And finally, we have retailers mostly lower, with Myer off 2.4% to extend losses after its disappointing earnings results. Meanwhile, Harvey Norman is down 0.6%, David Jones is down 0.2%, and Woolworth is down 0.4%.


text:
This is a story.
A Sensei was conducting class. As the group began, he said, "Everyone try your best. I'll be watching."
The senior student was clearly stronger and more skilled than the others. He moved faster than the others and his movements were cleaner.
At the end of class, the Sensei spoke to each student. He praised most of them and encouraged the others. But when he got to the senior student he said, "Not so good."
The senior student did not understand. "But I am clearly stronger than the rest of the class," he said. "I did more kata. I'm cleaner. I'm faster. How can you say not so good? I did better than everyone else!"
[OK, this student is a real pain, but please just go along with the story.]
The Sensei shook is head and took a long breath. "I told everyone to try their best. I did not tell you to try the best of the rest of the class, I said to try your best. Stop comparing yourself to others. They tried their best. You did not. You don't get ahead by passing others, you get ahead by surpassing your own best!"
Try your best.
Charles C. Goodin
Trying "Your" Best
This is a story.
Posted by Charles C. Goodin on Wednesday, November 25, 2009

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Part-time Web Programmer / Web Developer
Technical Skills
- Application Development
- Marketing
- Product Development
- Software Development
Job Description
Part-time Web Programmer / Web Developer
Location: Tsuen Wan
Job Description
- Responsible in design, develop and implement of website
- Build and maintain website
- Participate in software development for social Network / Marketing campaign programming
- Provide suggestions and solutions concerning web development to cope with company direction
(University Students are also welcome! )
- Diploma or above in Computer Science or IT related
- Solid programming experience with knowledge of website build up and development
- Strong interest in software product development
- Great sense of technology and highly organized
- Good communication skills with initiative and self-motivated
- Able to work independently and meet tight deadlines
Remuneration will commensurate with qualifications and experience. Interested parties, please send your full resume with expected salary to [email redacted, apply via Jobable]
|Employment Type
|Education Level
|Higher Diploma / Associate Degree


text:
MAKESHOP provides children and families open-access to digital media resources and physical materials in a robust space designed to inspire curiosity, exploration, creativity and innovation. A dedicated facilitation team, comprised of skilled makers, artists and educators, introduce visitors to the diverse materials and processes of making and help visitors translate their visions into tangible products.
Use the drop-down menus above or the links to the right to see more information about MAKESHOP.


text:
Bedroom Interior April 17, 2018. These adaptable and inventive furniture pieces are greatly adored by kids and even parents are energetic in their help about the numerous highlights and accommodations they offer.
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Think about color schemes and room size. Spend some time looking through home magazines and online sites to see what kinds of options you have. Many people are being a lot more creative when it comes to the way their kitchen's interior is laid out.
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text:
Introducing NUBI
We've chosen this name, for now. We intend to improve on o32 with something simpler, but which prefers being trouble-free for the MIPS programming community over ground-breaking innovation. For some background on why are we proposing this, see the specific goals for NUBI.
Unfortunately there can't be just one NUBI. We believe there are three basic choices (related to the hardware) which will create NUBI variants, but which it's essential to support:
- Endianness: big- and little-endian programs are wholly incompatible. However, with some care this document covers both. When we need to distinguish them we'll use a suffix L or B for little/big-endian.
- Use of 64-bit integer instructions: whether the software is restricted to a MIPS32 instruction set (NUBI32), or can use the whole of MIPS64 (NUBI64). If you only ever use MIPS32 instructions all general-purpose registers might as well be 32-bits wide. Even NUBI32 software is assumed to have access to double-precision floating point operations,
- Size of basic C types: we need to recognise a variant of NUBI64 with 64-bit pointers and long. I'm going to use NUBI64W (W for wide) to denote this for now. Better suggestions welcomed.
In the medium term we expect the narrow 64-bit ABI which uses 32-bit pointers and long type to be more popular.
That leads to the following list of six main variants: NUBI32L, NUBI32B, NUBI64L, NUBI64B, NUBI64WL and NUBI64WB. We'll use NUBI32 to mean NUBI32L and NUBI32B, and - at a pinch - NUBI-L to mean NUBI32L and NUBI64L.
How's NUBI different from o32?
- More argument registers : eight instead of four.
- Argument registers shared with return-value registers : helps avoid having too many registers with pre-defined roles.
- Adds a thread pointer : for efficient TLS.
- o32 was stack based, NUBI is register-based: at bottom o32 used a stack-based calling convention, though it's disguised because the first, notional, 4×32-bit locations of the underlying stack argument structure are left unwritten, with the real data passed in four argument registers.
At the time o32 was introduced C programs were frequently written without function prototypes to describe the types of the arguments expected by an external function. Without any prototypes calls to functions with non-standard arguments or (worse) with a variable number of arguments, like printf(), were difficult to get right. The underlying stack structure helped; a troubled function could save the four registers onto the stack to obtain a completely predictable memory structure for its arguments.
The stack-based structure also made it possible to pass data of derived types (structures, principally) by value. This has advantages: sometimes the data types you think are obscure turn out to be common.
In o32's generation, the critical example of this was the Fortran complex-number data type (which is a pair of floating point values).
However, in NUBI32's time the problem is more likely to be that we'd like to handle long long arguments and return values more efficiently. This might be worth a special case (which would cover complex and double-precision floating point numbers too).
- o32 was irredeemably 32-bit, NUBI makes interworking possible: a call between a NUBI64 program and a NUBI32 program will always need gasket code, but a gasket which is automatically produced would be a useful tool for complicated applications which are migrating from 32-bit to 64-bit, and where not all the components are recompiled together.
NUBI draft
The v0.16 from September , 2005 can be downloaded at ftp://ftp.linux-mips.org//pub/linux/mips/doc/NUBI/MD00438-2C-NUBIDESC-SPC-00.16.pdf.
- Since the normal 32-bit MIPS register set treats pretty much all registers the same, the MIPS16e constraint should be unproblematic.


text:
MedAustron is an Ion Therapy Center located in Wiener Neustadt in Austria. This center provides proton and carbon ion therapies to oncology patients.
Undergoing cancer treatment with daily sessions for the duration of 3 to 7 weeks is a strenuous process for patients. Although the beam is invisible and the patient doesn't feel any pain, treatment rooms often resemble a very technical environment and lack a comfortable atmosphere.
Not so at MedAustron: besides becoming a state- of-the-art center using the latest technological equipment, the center wanted to provide a welcoming and pleasant ambient surrounding, especially when it comes to the medical areas. To realize this, MedAustron reached out to the Philips Healthcare Experience Solutions team for advice on how to address this issue. Philips offered healthcare experience solutions for a series of different spaces ranging from patient waiting rooms, changing rooms, preparation rooms, Ambient Experience CT, MR and PET CT rooms and most significantly, the treatment rooms themselves.


text:
Change Country
Products > Audio > powerCON > powerCON Accessories > SCDR
Soft plastic cover for the rear ends of several D-size chassis connectors. It is used to protect the gap between connector and cable. The protection cover works with all common wires and cables – you simply cut off the cover end to the preferred diameter.


text: A beautiful and interesting component. Not a pendant in the true sense as it does not have a hole, but it can be used as one by knotting or wrapping it with all manner of ribbons, cords, wire, and more. I have seen them used with chain maille, and with silk cords. What will you do with them?


text:
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Lancaster County Council should initiate a program that would allow for nonviolent offenders to serve their time at home.
Those who serve their time through the program would have to wear electronic-monitoring devices that monitor where they are through GPS, or global positioning system, technology. The technology would allow authorities to easily keep tabs on those sentenced to home detention, as GPS technology would pinpoint where they are at all times.
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text:
Most mudders use mud clients like zmud, mushclient, tinyfugue, etc., and many of them take advantage of the clients' features to create aliases, triggers, and scripts to assist them in gameplay. Most of the time it isn't a problem-- an alias to cast an ice spell, or trigger to alert the player of an event, for example. However, some players go above and beyond, creating complicated scripts in order to automate parts of combat, gain experience automatically, etc., in order to create an unfair advantage My questions are this: how concerned are you about scripting or "bots," and what are some steps (if any) you've taken to discourage botting and/or catch players?
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 213
I find that I am with many others when I say I can aceppt triggers and scripting but not accept afk triggers and scripting. I do not fault someone for using triggers and scripts in normal MOB hunting (or other forms of XP gain) if they are alert, at their keyboard and responsive to the game environment.
The main thing I currently do is message a player that has been reported (or is suspected) of being afk while gaining experience and ask them a game question. Usually something to do with an idea, forum post, bug etc. that they themselves have brought up.
If I am in a strange mood I may create an aggressive MOB of an appropriate level to the character (and appropriate to an area) and transfer it close to the character. Assigning combat behaviors that force choices to be made beyond what an observed script is capable of is not that hard with the correct tools.
I understand that even if a MUD is role-play encouraged/required a player's concept of a character usually has them doing more then hunting rats or slaying viscious squirrels. Most combat systems have a great amount of repetition and it is up to a game designer to make experience-gaining tasks neither overly repetitive nor boring while allowing a player to build their character toward their envisioned goals.
With the power of scripting it would be very hard to make a game that both provided proper event messaging and randomized that messaging to the extent that it could not be scripted.
One method to cut down on triggers and scripting could be to force usage of a game-specific client. This would likely lose players, and within a short bit of time some enterprising player would hack the client and have a "triggers and scripts mod".
I guess it just comes down to presenting the rules on this type of player action in a manner that noone can say they did not know, trusting that most players will follow the rules, then finding those that do not and consistantly applying whatever penalty you wish.
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 153
I'm a fan of obligatory questing.
The mud I used to play on had many quests with varying points
depending on difficulty. If you solved a simple quest, you got
a few quest points. Solve a major one, and you get much qp.
The "obligatory" part was that you ccould not advance levels
without sufficient quest points. Your abilities were limited by
your level, and your level was limited by the amount of
at-keyboard, actual playing you did. Sure, people would cheat and
give away quest info, but scripting a quest would be
a monstrous task so difficult you might as well just do it
the old fashioned way and *earn* the qp.
If you want to stop a behavior, take away the reward. If a
country is *seriously* against illegal immigration, then they
should make hiring an illegal immigrant a felony. This makes
it unprofitable for everyone involved in the activity. If you
want to stop botters, make it unprofitable to bot. Make
advancement dependent on activities that require human
My opinion is that bots aren't bad. If people want to bot,
and that's how they have fun, who am I to tell them they're
wrong? To me it's like telling someone how to drive the
car you built. Unless it's causing harm to other people, it's
not really my business. So long as they aren't increasing their
PK ability, or lagging my mud, or depriving others of
fun, I don't care much.
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 310
Where I play, the rule is, "You must be at your keyboard for "anything" to happen "period". The only exception being some triggers to help keep members of your party informed of spell failures, etc, and maybe some communication based things, which don't directly effect the game itself. But it it makes you "do" anything to the game world, not just the client end, you better not try it. Getting suspected means teleportation to a jail for questioning. Having the staff conclude that you are unresponsive or something is suspicious about how you are doing things, can mean everything from suspension of the skill you botted, to out right nuking and a ban on your personal IP (when possible).
Its taken quite seriously, maybe too seriously at times. The honest players can work within the rules. If they are not honest... do you really want them anyway? The prior staff used to let more stuff slide, they eventually got coders telling secrets to players, people hacking acounts and a team of super players that knew every bug in the game and how to take advantage of all of them. One very scary day dozens of people started dropping like flies and disappearing of the player list. Not the sort of thing you want to have to do because the rule benders keep bending things until something is outright broken.
Now, we only get the occational fool that doesn't "get" that they can't use looting triggers or ressurrection triggers and is, most of the time, just told to stop. A few still don't get it though, and at least one discovered that his ressurection spell stopped working.
It really depends on how serious you feel it is. Frankly, I wouldn't mind being about to keep connected and gain 25M exp in a day, without doing anything myself, it would get me my next divine power faster. lol However, I spent nearly three years to get where I am, and its not fair if someone else came along, botted for a month, and was suddenly my equal in exp and skill, while not actually having the slightest clue how to "play" the game.
New Member
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 14
Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
Our mud has rules against client-side scripting, specifically:
Use of automated scripts to play the mud is illegal. One-line aliases
using the mud's alias system or in a client is permitted. For example
using a trigger to avoid linkdeath ages your character without your
being actively involved with it. Hence, it is illegal and you
could find yourself demoted for it.
There is not a lot of enforcement done. In some areas where scripting was problematic there was code added to make it less desirable. For example, "speedwalking" by stuffing 80 directional commands in at once might occasionally cause a player to trip over their feet or suffer a minor injury.
Join Date: May 2005
Name: Derek
Location: Orlando
Posts: 354
Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
Not saying it's wrong, but I think it's the first time I've heard of a mud trying to prevent speedwalk aliases. What value does it add to the game / player experience requiring them to type the commands? (Or more realistically, build their speedwalks with a slight random pause between moves).
The only one I could think of off-hand is trying to "encourage" players to read room descs. But you can't force someone to read something, all you can really do is force them to ignore it more slowly.
New Member
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 19
Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 57
Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
It is impossible to police a no trigger, macro, alias rule as you can never be sure exactly who is doing those things. You might get some right, but you will miss a whole lot more. Also a great many do not use simple triggers and macros but use the power of languages like Lua to make simple the very things mud developers want to make hard.
Someone mentioned a proprietary client as one solution, this is also a failed idea, as there are plenty of tools out there to help you create bots including the likes of cheat engine to discover all your memory addresses and auto-it to program bot logic and manipulate the memory of your client down to simple macro programs like quickmacro to script up some repetitive task.
About the only real thing you can do is ensure that the people who are scripting your game are at the keyboard while their bot is in action, i can think of plenty of muds where i have done just that, botted every single level while chatting to my clan mates and having a good time socially.
My game rules have always been simple, you can use whatever tools you like as long as you can respond to a tell from an immortal within a couple of minutes, failing that test your send to jail for 24 hours, every successive time caught afk botting will be double the last penalty. The i didn't see the tell is no excuse either, if your good enought to script the game, your more than good enough to script a chat redirection.
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 208
Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
Remember that manipulating a client's memory might be a breach of EULA. Take a look at the recent discussion about a certain WoW bot tool Raph's Website » Blizzard scores win against WoWGlider
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Emily's Shop
Posts: 60
Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
I have very limited sympathy with people who get worked up about 'botting.
The main objection to 'botting seems to be that it is somehow "cheating" because someone who bots a lot is able to get to be a high level character "without doing the work" that a non-botter has to put in. The simple fact that the above phrase contains the word "work" should be enough to tell you that it is absolute BS. MUDs are not about work, they're about fun! Too many MUD admins seem to apply a bizarre protestant work ethic to their MUDs. "No!" they shriek, "you're not allowed to enjoy yourself on my MUD! You don't deserve to enjoy yourself! You haven't earned the right to enjoy yourself! You haven't done enough work to be allowed to have fun!"
If someone decides that they want to progress by 'botting, why the hell should you care? They've decided, for some bizarre reason, that your game is more enjoyable if they aren't at the keyboard while they're "playing" it. If they've decided to do that, they're only cheating themselves out of what should be an enjoyable experience. If they want to short-change themselves, let them.
And if 'botting is extremely prevalent on your MUD then you need to ask yourself some very serious questions about why that is. Why is it that so many people think that the game is more enjoyable if they don't play it than if they do? Is it, perhaps, because the game is actually boring as hell in the early stages and only becomes enjoyable when you're playing it as a high level character? If so, then that is your problem; and it's your problem, it's not the 'botters who are to blame. The solution is to make your MUD more fun to play.
And if your attitude really is that players should be forced to spend enormous amounts of time online doing stuff which is really, really boring before they "earn the right" to play the sections of the game that are actually fun, then you really, seriously need to consider a change of career: no sane player would want to play a MUD whose admin thinks like that.
If you really want to eliminate 'botting then Cratylus has it absolutely right: you need to make progression within the game work in such a way that 'botting doesn't help you to progress. Remove the incentive, and the practice will die out.
Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 310
Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
Certainly it's petty for players to fuss over virtual goods, but keep in mind that players are petty, many are achievers who pride in their hard work, and that especially women like the sense of security that comes along with a tightly governed mud.
Anarchistic muds are generally small and populated by tough minded individuals who swear, slaughter newbies, and complain. So much for the general enjoyment of a MUD.
Regarding speedwalks, most big muds seem to have movement restrictions, to the degree that I ended up adding hardwired delayed speedwalking to tintin after the 10th person complained about their inability to script it.
Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 310
Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
The bad news is that you can't stop the really good scripters, or proof that they're scripting if they stay and watch the screen. Keep in mind that a good script is generally four times more efficient than a player because the player picks his nose, stares quazy puzzled at the who list for a minute, checks his email and gets distracted, etc, etc. So even non afk script leveling causes a huge imbalance in the game, and the more complex the game becomes, the less people script due to added complexity, and the bigger the gains of the people who actually script. There is however a cut off point where the combat is so complex that people will start buying or being given scripts and the scripting becomes an extention of the game. From what I gathered Achaea is a good example of this trend where everyone scripts. So once you add enough complexity, the game will come full circle, and end up back at Diku's automated combat - though it will obviously look cooler and give people the idea that some scripts are better than others - which could however be obtained by letting people train a limitted amount of modifiers that unclearly impact combat.
The good news is that even though you can't really proof if someone is scripting, you can simply ban someone who plays too efficiently, or even better, use someone like that to make the game harder to script. Stopping speedwalks is one of the methods to add unwanted complexity to a script while not affecting the non scripting players.
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Emily's Shop
Posts: 60
Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
MUDS are not work!
The reason you are supposed to spend time on a MUD is because you enjoy spending time on it, not because you don't enjoy it but you have to go through a whole lot of mindless, boring slog in order to get to the bit that you actually like.
A better analogy would be if everyone had a choice between spending a few hours having a few (free) drinks in a pub with their mates, going home late, sleeping off the alcohol, and then getting a free car the next morning, or watching some TV at home alone, going to bed early, and then getting a new car for (also for free) in the morning. Some people might choose to go and enjoy themselves in the pub for a few hours and stay up late because they enjoy it, other people don't particularly enjoy pubs and just want to get their free car so they will watch TV instead and get an early night instead. The people who decide that they want to go for a drink cannot then (legitimately) complain that the people who chose to go home instead "didn't put in enough drinking time" to be allowed to get a car.
Actually, no, an even better analogy: heterosexual men are given a choice. They can either have sex with a different beautiful woman every day for six months, and then get a free car, or they can construct their own sex robot which gets to have sex with the women instead and then get the car if the robot survives for six months without breaking. Would you then have all the men who chose to have the sex grumbling about the 'bot makers not putting in the work they should have done to get the car?
Last edited by shasarak : 07-22-2008 at 12:35 PM.
New Member
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 19
Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
The MUD administrator's duty is to try to make the majority happy, otherwise the majority may just leave. If the majority of players want botters eliminated, then you have to make an effort or risk losing your base.
New Member
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 3
Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
Hell, let's change the rules of soccer, so everyone can handle the ball with their hands as well, and throw out the goalkeepers, and widen the goals by several meters. That way everyone could score, without any effort and all - because we all know, it's the scoring that's the rewarding part - not the years of practice and dedication because of the love of the sport, to get there.
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
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Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 14
Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Emily's Shop
Posts: 60
Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
Think about why a typical person would want to play soccer. Does a person play a sport because he hates the experience, because every single second of the game he is desparately longing to be doing something, anything else except play this awful, dull, insufferable, pointless thing, but he is nonethless obliged to keep playing anyway because it's the only way he is able to obtain an orange (at half-time)?
If a person actually were in that position he might understandably resent someone who is able to go to the shop and buy his own oranges. "Damn it, he doesn't deserve an orange, he hasn't done the work he needs to do to earn the right to eat an orange!" he might say.
However, it is considerably more likely that the reason a person plays soccer is because he enjoys playing soccer. If someone else chooses not to play soccer (because he doesn't like the game) but instead decides to go to the shop and buy an orange instead, that does not mean he is cheating at soccer. Sure the "reward" that he gets is the same, and it is obtained by other, more direct means, and requires less physical effort; but if that's the way you view soccer (that it's an inherently horrible and unejoyable activity whose sole function or purpose is to obtain oranges) then, frankly, you've missed the point. Actually the purpose and function of soccer is that it is enjoyable to play. Paying soccer is an end in itself: the pleasurable experience of playing is why people do it. If someone chooses not to play it and obtain oranges by another method, there is no earthly reason why soccer players should be upset by that. The sensible reaction is to shrug and say "well, I don't understand why that guy doesn't enjoy sport, but if he doesn't, that's his prerogative."
Similarly, the purpose of playing a MUD is to have fun. Part of the way in which the average player has fun is by completing tasks that require effort or ingenuity to complete, and he quite rightly derives satisfaction from doing that. A MUD in which everyone starts out at max level and which has no challenge is not fun. So, clearly MUDs shouldn't function like that precisely because MUDs are supposed to be about fun not about hard, unenjoyable labour that you only endure because of the reward you get at the end. If any MUD admin thinks it's okay for MUDs not to be enjoyable to play (and that does, of course, include those who think that a complete absence of challenge is not a problem) then I have no desire to play his MUD.
This is what I mean by "MUDs are not work": the purpose of a MUD is to have fun.
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Emily's Shop
Posts: 60
Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
To elaborate a little more: suppose you're playing a game of soccer and someone on the next pitch along decides to play their own version of the game in which you're allowed to pick up the ball: why would that bother you?
Even if they come up to you afterwards and say "hey, I'm a really great footballer!" all you have to do is smile and say "kid, the only person you're fooling is yourself" and walk away. You know the truth of the matter, so why do you care what anyone else thinks?
The only time it becomes a problem is if someone tries to play by different rules on the same pitch at the same time right in the middle of your own soccer game and ends up disrupting it. That is certainly antisocial activity; but that has nothing whatever to do with 'botting. A good 'bot is virtually indistinguishable from a connected player, so, by definition, you cannot have any objection to any effect that a 'bot has on the game world without having exactly the same objection about other actual, real, connected players; and if you object to the presence of other players in the game, then why are you playing a multi-player game?
I think some of the objections people have to 'botting are to do with what they perceive to be undesirable consequences to the game world; things like wiping out every single mob in a zone, or harvesting all the good equipment. But the thing is, a real, connected player could do exactly the same thing if he chose to, and you would object to it just as strongly if he did. So 'botting is actually a red herring in that situation: what you're really objecting to is griefing. There may well be a legitimate case for controlling or banning certain types of in-MUD behaviour which make the game less enjoyable for other players, but whether that behaviour is carried out by players or 'bots make no conceivable difference.
So long as 'bots don't prevent you from playing the game as you enjoy playing it, why do you care if other people choose to play it differently? The only sense in which they are "cheating" is that they are cheating themselves out of an enjoyable gaming experience. That's their problem, not yours.
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Emily's Shop
Posts: 60
Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
So, here's a possible solution to think about: suppose you allow any and all forms of 'botting so long as the 'botting player a) publicises exactly which scripts he is using at any given moment, and b) publishes all of the scripts that he ever uses in a public forum where any other player can download and use them himself if he chooses? This would put everyone on an exactly equal footing: every player would have access to any and all scripts that any other player has access to, and can use them, or not, as he chooses. This completely eliminates the idea that "scripting is cheating" because everyone is now playing by exactly the same rules.
This is not a simple solution, of course: checking that players are actually using the scripts they say they're using would require some ingenuity. But I think it's a more practical way to go than trying to eliminate 'botting. Eliminating 'botting is not only impossible, but the more elaborate your 'bot-detection procedures become, the more intensely annoying they will be for people who are not using scripts.
Edit: this wouldn't be appropriate for a primarily-PK MUD, of course.
Last edited by shasarak : 07-23-2008 at 07:06 AM.
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Re: Triggers, scripts, and bots
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This is not a self portrait, it's a portrait of a fellow RMD member & belongs in the same category. Epq is much more beautiful in real life. Roro, her cat, was supposed to be in this pic too, but due to an epic fail he didn't make it - sorry seke v.v
Flash Draw Created Feb 14, 2010 470 x 338px Unless noted Copyright 2010 shelly.
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You are a great ARTIST. ... yes. .. in capitals !!!!!!
great white and black portrait !
beauty look how nicely formed and implemented in the face of your soul
omg...stunning draw..amazing details ..gr8 tutorial..5h and fav
how did you not run out of ink?
WOW! and AWW! poor cat!! haha! I luv kitties tho O.O hHh :D
how do you make it look sooo realystic? :OO and with the simple drawing tool with limited ink :O it's my dream to draw a realystic portrait atleast once :) this is beautiful, 5h (of course) and fav
Hi Shelly, your art is better than ever! That was me (Gloria) using Graff's acct to draw... wanted to stop by & say hi & thanks for nice comment :) Hope you are well!
Nice draw!


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U Can't Not Be Feelin' Dis
Just found this snippet from the Trailer Park Boys movie. I did makeup for MTV Canada's Aliya-Jasmine and for J-Roc. I almost ruined a few takes by snort-laughing... I had to run out of the room. When I came back in I had to put a sweater over my head so they couldn't hear my muffled laughter. Jonathan Torrens is truly hilarious, he had me cry-laughing in the makeup chair before we even hit the set. What a fun day that was!
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We were chatting the other night about the 23 years St Rynagh's had waited for their 17th Senior championship win, and how alot of good hurlers had ended their careers without the reward of a SHC medal. Many of them played Senior for Offaly, while I'd say most of them played Minor and/or U21 for their county. Here's a St Rynagh's team made up of players who didn't win a Senior championship during that time.
Mark Healy;
Adrian Clancy, Fergus Shortt, Ray Devery;
Shane Horan, Cathal Horan, Pat McIntyre;
Nigel Woods, Darragh Kelly;
Diarmuid Horan, Paudie Mulhare, Declan Tanner;
Kevin Kelly, John Ryan, Gary O'Connor.
Has anyone else any suggestions?


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Lisbon, founded on seven hills and embraced by the Tagus, known for its melancholic Fado music and all its nostalgia. Lisbon invites you to take a walk along its wide avenues and its traditional districts. Soak up the atmosphere in this City of Sun.
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Hope College senior center Carrie Snikkers of Jenison, Mich. (Unity Christian HS) has been voted an NCAA Division III All-American for an unprecedented third consecutive year.
She is one of ten players being honored as a State Farm/WBCA All-American by the Women's Basketball Coaches Association. The team was announced Thursday prior to the Division III final four which is being played this weekend in Bloomington, Ill.
Snikkers becomes the first Hope player (male or female) to receive All-America basketball honors three consecutive years and the first female player in the history of the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MIAA) to achieve that fete.
Hope during Snikker's four seasons amassed a 117-8 (94%) winning percentage, was conference champions all four years and competed in the NCAA tournament each season.
Snikkers ended her career as Hope's second alltime leading scorer (1,430 points, 12.9 ppg). She was the career leader in blocked shots (215) and was among the leaders in field goals (#2, 556), three-pointers (#8, 94), rebounds (#5, 785), and steals (#10, 171).
Her statistical accomplishments were in a program that has a proven team-approach to the game by providing double-digit playing minutes for a large portion of the players. Snikkers in her career, for example, averaged 19.7 minutes over the 40-minute contests.
"I'm very excited and grateful to State Farm and the WBCA for Carrie's All-America selection," said coach Brian Morehouse.
"This honor culminates an amazing career. Carrie will be the first to spread the credit to her teammates which tells you everything about her attitude. It's gratifying to see that the All-America selection committee dug into her numbers and understood how incredibly productive she was statistically based on her minutes played per game.
"Carrie had no interest in building her stats. She was excited to share the ball and playing time with her teammates while winning games. The senior class record speaks to their talent, consistency, and team-first attitude."
Co-captain of the team as a junior and senior, Snikkers was an All-MIAA honoree three consecutive years. She was named the WBCA Division III Player of the Year as a junior.
Snikkers is Hope's first multi-year female basketball All-American. Others who have received All-America honors are Kristin Carlson (1995), Amanda Kerkstra (2003), Bria Ebels (2006), and Jordyn Boles (2008).
Joining Snikkers on the All-America team are Kathryn Berger, Washington-St. Louis; Jessica Berry, Utica, N.Y.; Jaclyn Daigneault, Amherst, Mass.; Andrea Hoover, Lebanon Valley, Pa.; BriAnna Lucas, William Peterson, N.J.; Britta Peterson, UW-Stevens Point; Chelsie Schweers, Christopher Newport, Va.; Taylor Simpson, Univ. of Chicago; and Melissa Teel, Western Connecticut State.
Amherst senior Jaclyn Daigneault was named the Division III Player of the Year.
Calvin sophomore Carissa Verkaik was one of 30 players to receive honorable mention recognition.


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- To Do Today: Happy Place June 26, 2019What? Happy Place–Boston When? Thursday, 11 am to 7 pm, Friday, 10 am to 8 pm, Saturday, 9:30 am to 8 pm, Sunday, 9:30 am to 6 pm Where? 500 Boylston St., Boston How much? $30 to $35, $20 to $25 for children ages 4 to 12. Purchase tickets and select a time to enter […]
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PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) � The photographs show blood on the stairs, blood spatter on walls and furniture, a cocked 9 mm pistol lying on a mat, a damaged metal panel and fallen wall tiles in the bathroom and wooden splinters from the toilet door through which Oscar Pistorius fatally shot his girlfriend.
Like pieces of an unfinished puzzle, the images entered as evidence Thursday at the athlete's murder trial gave a fragmented picture of Reeva Steenkamp's violent end, illuminating the scene where she died but raising a host of questions about what exactly happened.
One of the first police officers to arrive at the scene early on Feb. 14, 2013 stood in the witness box, recreating what he saw as he moved through the house in a macabre, methodical narrative that gripped the court gallery and viewers watching on live television.
"We then followed the trail of blood up the stairs," G.S. van Rensburg, a former police colonel, recalled of his investigation of the scene with Hilton Botha, a police investigator.
As in a fictional drama, court adjournments heightened the suspense of his account. Proceedings ended for the day with the display of the first photograph of the toilet cubicle where Steenkamp was shot, leaving van Rensburg to resume testimony Friday.
Describing his arrival at Pistorius' home, Van Rensburg said he traced spots and bigger blood marks downstairs, where Steenkamp lay dead from multiple gunshot wounds, and followed them across the floor, up the staircase, through a small lounge area and then into Pistorius' bedroom. Ultimately, he reached the bathroom where the double-amputee Olympian shot his girlfriend in the early hours of Valentine's Day last year.
There, van Rensburg said he found Pistorius' gun, hammer back and the safety off. There were spent bullet casings, cellphones and a blood-soaked towel on the floor, and the cricket bat that Pistorius says he used to break down the toilet door to get to Steenkamp after realizing, he says, that he had accidentally shot her. In the toilet cubicle, there was a darker pool of blood and the wooden splinters where the locked door, through which Pistorius shot the model, had been bashed through.
Pistorius, 27, faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted of murder, and also faces three firearms-related charges. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and says he shot the 29-year-old Steenkamp by mistake, thinking she was a dangerous intruder in the tiny toilet cubicle in a bathroom of his Pretoria villa. Prosecutors charge that he intentionally killed her.
Details in the photos were highlighted by the prosecution. One was a gun holster on the side of the bed where Pistorius says Steenkamp was sleeping that night. The size of the bedroom suggested Pistorius had to walk close to where he says he thought Steenkamp was still sleeping to get to the bathroom. In the bathroom, the gun rested on a small towel that was clean in contrast to the blood stains around it, head prosecutor Gerrie Nel noted.
Pistorius mostly kept his head down in court and appeared to avoid looking at the TV monitors where the images were shown. The screen next to Pistorius was switched off before the exhibit.
Van Rensburg confirmed the photos reflected how he found the scene when he got there just before 4 a.m., about 30 to 40 minutes after prosecutors say Pistorius shot Steenkamp. The former police officer said he had been on duty for about 24 hours by then, dealing with other cases.
The photos show blood stains splattered on a white wall close to a group of glittering trophies in the multiple Paralympic champion's home. Pistorius was born without fibula bones because of a congenital defect, and his legs were amputated when he was 11 months old. He ran on carbon-fiber blades and also competed at the London Olympics, but didn't win a medal.
Photos of the bathroom showed wall tiles on the floor and a metal panel that had been damaged, apparently after being hit by a hard object. Prosecutors allege Pistorius killed Steenkamp after an argument.
Also upstairs, there was an air gun and a baseball bat near the door to Pistorius' bedroom. Pictures of the bedroom showed a cabinet with multiple sets of slick sunglasses and a box of watches as well as blood stains on the carpets and across a mirror on the watch box.
Van Rensburg also described how, on arriving at Pistorius' house, he saw Steenkamp's body near the entrance downstairs covered in towels and plastic bags that the daughter of the estate manager said she had used, with assistance from Pistorius, to try and stop the bleeding. Administrator Johan Stander is the first person Pistorius says he called after the shooting.
Pistorius was pacing in the kitchen, van Rensburg said.
"I asked him what happened but he didn't answer me," van Rensburg said. "He was in tears."


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Staff writer
Joshua Weston's hands shake every time he finishes drinking a cup of coffee at his favorite local eatery.
"It's a sign that I need a cigarette, but I can't smoke in here," he said, while eating a meal at Zimmerman's deli and coffee shop in Marion. "Usually, I just go outside and smoke but, on windy days, it's hard to stand out in the cold. I would like to smoke indoors, but there would be hell to pay if I did."
Weston is one of the Marion residents who smoke every day, but isn't allowed to light a cigarette inside a restaurant or bar, due to the 2010 Kansas Indoor Clean Air Act. When implemented, lawmakers didn't know how private businesses would be affected. But three years later, the Kansas Health Institute released their survey findings and discovered that the statewide smoking band had no effect on restaurant and bar sales.
Many, like Weston, said they are not willing to give up going to their favorite restaurants just because they are not allowed to smoke indoors. They said that if they could not resist the urge, they would just step outside for a moment to get their fix.
"I know the dangers of secondhand smoke," he said. "It makes sense that they would ban it. I don't mind going outside — unless it gets really cold or windy out there."
Others, like Justin Welch, said they refuse to smoke while they are in town because they do not want to hurt other people.
"If I know that I'm going to town, I'll just smoke about 15 minutes before I leave," he said. "That usually takes care of the nicotine craving, and I can just go into town and do what I need to do. The ban exists for a good reason — no one wants to get lung cancer."
Local restaurateurs said they appreciate people's willingness to step outside before they light up. Most agreed that their sales had not been affected by the smoking ban, at least not to their knowledge.
"If we were a drinking establishment, I'm sure we would be affected," said Sherry Hess of the Wagon Wheel
restaurant in Marion. "People around here just come, get their food, and leave."
A few residents, like Margaret Carson, said they have never smoked and, therefore, have never seriously thought about the ban.
"People can do what they want to do," she said. "I really don't care. I guess I appreciate being able to eat without someone breathing that nasty smoke in my face. That's a plus."
Looking forward, local business owners hope their customers will continue to respect the statewide smoking ban, knowing that it is there for one purpose: to keep their patrons healthy.


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A better everyday one cup at a time
We drink coffee and tea to wake up in the mornings, to stay awake at night or simply because it's good company. Malin Ljungström, who has been involved in developing the range, have more insights to why we enjoy these steaming drinks so much. "To many, the smell of coffee and tea means well-being and a homey feeling. Since we want to improve people's everyday, we're offering products that make it possible for more to experience more feelgood moments at home."
Cold facts and hot products
Trends travel fast today. In the world of coffee and tea, we pick up interesting habits and quirky behaviours in the blink of an eye. We're exploring and trying new things. And we want to be able to make as good coffee and tea at home as we've tasted in that cosy coffee shop on the corner. "Today it's cool to be an expert and really skilled at something. I think it gives a sense of satisfaction when we notice that we're able make things as good as the experts, without expensive and hard-to-find equipment," says Malin.
Things that make a difference
Malin and her colleagues dug deep into traditional coffee and tea cultures to find out what tools people feel they can't live without. They talked to specialists, investigated living, eating and drinking habits to get an idea of the most necessary products. "We wanted to develop items that make a difference. A kitchen full of gadgets doesn't make it easier to make good coffee and tea, so we've focused on a few, but carefully selected products," she states. To secure the right quality and functions, the team cooperated a lot with IKEA Test Lab in Älmhult, Sweden. It's an IKEA version of a James Bond lab where prototypes are inspected and evaluated. "A couple of the things we checked were that the thermoses can keep fluids really warm for a long time. And that the glass mugs and glass pots are durable and comfortable, even though they look and feel light and airy," tells Malin.
For all tastes and different wallets
The best way to prepare and drink coffee and tea can cause intense discussions. No matter which 'team' you side with, or how you enjoy your cup, you'll be able to find the things that put an extra flavour to your hot drink in the range. Another good thing is that there's something for all wallets. "It's one of our contributions to a better life at home. A way to improve people's everyday one cup at a time," says Malin.


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Letters From Our Avid Readers
Racin' Down Under
Dear Circle Track,
I'm writing from Western Australia and I have just read through the article "Street Stock Nation" in the Sept. 2009 edition. I couldn't help but realize how similar the U.S. sedan racing is to ours here in West Aussie in regards to the people and camaraderie.
I don't know if you are aware or are familiar with our divisions but the people, drivers, and teams here are similar to the U.S., real battlers and everyday people enjoying racing on low budgets. We have a thriving sedan sport here and are very family oriented. My family, for example, all race. My 15-year-old daughter races junior sedans, my 13-year-old son is a quad racer, and my wife and I race senior division sedans.
If you have any questions or would like any info on this subject I would very much welcome the chance to communicate with you further.
Kind regards,
Dave Hall
That's awesome! How bout emailing us some pictures!
Dear Circle Track,
I just got the Jan. 2010 issue of Circle Track and the author of the "unsigned" letter in "Q & A"makes me laugh. This guy almost has the right idea. By that, I mean that racers by nature have a "do whatever you have to" attitude. That being said, there are limits . . . don't take food off the table, make sure you pay your bills first, and so on. I'm in my late 30s and went back to finish college last year. I have been racing for 17 years and driving for 6 years. I finally decided to finish college last fall. I still have two kids at home, a mortgage, bills, blah, blah, blah. We are not rich, not poor. We are very good with money and that has allowed us to do quite a bit with what we have.
I didn't race in 2009 because it didn't make sense to race then borrow money for tuition. Additionally, I wanted to start building a new Sportsman car and move up to the 1/2-mile. I won't race on a 1/2-mile without a head-and-neck restraint, a better seat, and a better fuel cell. I will race again in 2010 or 2011, but not until I have upgraded my safety equipment. I already take a lot of heat because I wear a firesuit, turtleneck underwear, gloves, socks, and shoes.
Now, was I happy about not racing this year? Hell no! I could have raced my Street Stock at the 1/4-mile track I normally run, but I don't want to race unless I can race how I want. Like you said, if you can't afford to race, don't. A friend of mine couldn't afford his Late Model so he moved down to the Sportsman class. He said he is having fun again and spending less money.
By the way, I think racing is an addiction! I guess the bottom line is, I know that I will race again. When I am done with college, I will be making more money and will be better off . . . it will just take a couple years. It's worth the sacrifice now to be better prepared in the future. Not only for racing but for my family as well.
Woo Sprint Costs
Dear Circle Track,
I was wondering if you could answer a question for me? Could you tell me how much (approximately) it costs a team to run a full season of the World of Outlaw Sprint Car Series? And can a team make a good living out of racing in the World of Outlaw Sprint Car Series?
Stephen Laker
Running the full WoO Sprint Car season will cost somewhere around $750,000 to be competitive for the year. With 70 races criss-crossing the country in a time span of about 10 months the biggest and often most overlooked cost factor is the travel and related expenses, such as food, hotel, laundry, and so on. How you roll down the road has a lot to do with how much money you need. The answer to your second question is yes . . . if you have full corporate sponsorship.
January 2010 Issue
As a subscriber to Circle Track since the beginning in 1982, I must tell you that I particularly enjoyed the background photo on the cover of the Jan. 2010 issue. The photo must have been taken at the June 29, 1952 Motor City 250 NASCAR race at the Michigan State Fairgrounds. The No. 59 car is a '52 Chrysler owned by Julian Buesink and being driven by Lloyd Moore. The No. 174 is Bill Rexford in a '51 Nash.
Buesink, Moore, and Rexford were all from Chautauqua County in Western New York. In 1950, Rexford and Moore were teammates on the two-car NASCAR team owned by Buesink. Rexford won the NASCAR Grand National Championship that season, while Moore finished Fourth in points behind his teammate, Fireball Roberts and Lee Petty. Rexford, 23 years old at the time, remains the youngest champion of NASCAR's premier division.
All three gentlemen were inducted into the Chautauqua Sports Hall of Fame in honor of their outstanding racing careers. For more detailed infor-mation about these three NASCAR pioneers, including photos, I invite you and the readers of Circle Track to visit our website www.chautauquasportshallofame.org.
Randy Anderson, Vice-President
Chautauqua Sports Hall of Fame
Jamestown, NY
Thanks for writing in. You correctly identified that picture according to our archives. Folks, go check out that website for some great vintage racing info!


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Puzzle and Dragons Cross Episode 14
Synopsis :
Dorogoza Island is rich in "Drop Energy" that players can use on friendly monsters. Once strong enough, they can face enemies in puzzle wars.
At the Puzzle & Dragons game franchise's 4th anniversary press conference held at Nicofarre in Tokyo today, it was announced that a TV anime adaptation of Nintendo 3DS puzzle role-playing game Puzzle & Dragons X (Pazudora Cross) is in the works for a July 4 premiere.
The first TV anime adaptation from the franchise will be aired on TV Tokyo and its affiliates at 18:25, and Studio Pierrot (Naruto, Bleach, Osomatsu-san) works on anime production. The 3DS game is set for a release on July 28, 2016, in two editions: "Kami no Shou" (Chapter: God) and "Ryu no Shou" (Chapter: Dragon).
GungHo Online Entertainment's free-to-play mobile game for iOS and Android, Puzzle & Dragons started its service in Japan for iOS in February 2012 and for Android seven months later, then it became the top-selling app in the Japanese App Store of the year. Now it has also been available in 33
countries/regions worldwide including North America, Europe and other Asian countries. As of January
2016, it was downloaded over 39 million times in Japan and nine million times in North America.
Information :
Type: TV
Episodes: Unknown
Status: Currently Airing
Aired: Jul 4, 2016 to ?
Premiered: Summer 2016
Broadcast: Mondays at 18:25 (JST)
Producers: Audio Planning U
Licensors: FUNimation Entertainment
Studios: Studio Pierrot
Source: Game
Genres: Game
Duration: 24 min.
Rating: PG-13 – Teens 13 or older
Puzzle and Dragons Cross Episode 14
Trailer :
File Info :
quality 720P
Subtitles: eng


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Lake Fork's Live Baby Shad is a great little finesse lure that is perfect for drop shotting but also works very well on a small jig head (our Finesse Sickle jig heads in size 4 or 6 are a good match). The segmented body and super soft plastic construction ensures that these lures come alive with the smallest twitch of the rod tip. Impregnated with salt and garlic scent for added fish attraction, 15pcs per pack.
Length: 2.25" (5.7cm)
Weight: 2g
Colour: Blue Gill (see photo)
Price: £3.85 per pack


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The Poor Payoff of Pleasure Postponed
A need to feel efficient, and a tendency to feel guilty when we do something "just for fun," may be universally human. But the Israeli-born Keinan says productivity-obsessed Americans take this to an extreme, viewing pleasurable pastimes as wasteful, irresponsible, and even immoral. Keinan and Columbia Business School professor Ran Kivetz call this hyperopia—the habit of overestimating the benefits one will receive in the future from making responsible decisions now. They write that this phenomenon—the name, drawn from ophthalmology, means "farsightedness"—works to our detriment by driving people "to underconsume precisely those products and experiences that they enjoy the most."


text: Use mouse scroll wheel over image or pinch-to-zoom on touch devices. You can also click and drag around on image. Park it 1 1 Follow Ducati 1199 Panigale R - Track Racing Parked to 1199 Panigale R by Ducati Accelerating. Vehicle Info: 2014 Ducati Keywords desmo superbike Ducati Panigale Panigale R Red Motoroso Sign up to add your own keywords More from this Garage: More from this Profile: Garage Monster 1200 R Garage XDiavel Garage Multistrada 1200 Enduro


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In order to satisfy today's customer, a case must be made to incorporate social media into your customer service strategy. Choose the customer service technologies that are ideal for your company in order to enable customer service through online and offline touch points, establish smart listening, engage your community, and consistently respond to customer issues. Get the eBook now!
Latest insightful articles delivered straight to your inbox weekly


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Commercial, Products, Public Service, Regulatory
By By Andrew Drwiega, International Bureau Chief/Consultant | March 26, 2013
Send Feedback
UK Department of Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin has announced that Bristow Helicopters is the final winner of the long awaited, and fought for, UK Search & Rescue helicopter contract worth £1.6 billion ($2.4 billion). It will run from April 2015 until 2026, with the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy Sea Kings being retired from service and all military crews standing down after 70 years. This also fits into the timetable for the expiration of the current Maritime Coastguard Agency contract with CHC Helicopters.
Sikorsky and AgustaWestland are the winning manufacturers, with the S-92 and AW189 selected. Ten aircraft of each type will form the operational 20 aircraft, with one of each type being kept for training.
UK S-92. Photo courtesy of Bristow
The 10 S-92s will be based in pairs at the following sites: Stornoway and Sumburgh (which already operate S-92s), Newquay, Caernarfon and Humberside. The 10 AW189s will be based in pairs at Lee on Solent, Prestwick, St. Athan, Inverness and Manston.
McLoughlin stated that the new basing plan combined with the new aircraft would improve the service currently being provided by the military and MCA: "Helicopters will be able to reach a larger area of the UK search and rescue region within one hour of take off than is currently possible, and based on historic incident patterns we estimate that there will be an overall 20 percent improvement in flying times, with the average flight time reducing from 23 minutes to 19. Presently, approximately 70 percent of high and very high-risk areas are reachable within 30 minutes. Under the new contract, approximately 85 percent of the same areas are reachable within this timeframe."
The final contract contenders with Bristow Helicopters and Bond Offshore Helicopters, with the present operator of services from four bases, CHC Scotia, being told at the end of last year that it would not be asked to provide a final bid.
Spec sheet of AW189. Image courtesy of Bristow
The SAR-H replacement contract has been running for more than 10 years and has been very controversial. The ending of the military involvement in the service and it being handed over to a private contractor has also been controversial.
Half of the helicopter fleet, the AW189s, will be built at AgustaWestland's Yeovil facility. The helicopter OEM had made a commitment for this to happen should their aircraft be selected for the SAR service. Sikorsky, manufacturer of the S-92, also plans to locate a supply hub in the Aberdeen region with will serve both the SAR fleet and the helicopters already working in the North Sea oil and gas industry.
AW189 rendering. Courtesy of Bristow
Defeated finalist Avincis (parent company of Bond) CEO James Drummond stated: "We would particularly like to commend the Department for Transport for running a very professional and robust bid process." (Note: Rotor & Wing will provide a detailed analysis of this decision in the May 2013 print issue.)Related: SAR News
S-92 spec sheet. Courtesy of Bristow


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LOS ANGELES, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- A prominent California physician is under investigation in connection with the deaths of 16 patients from narcotic overdoses, the state medical board said.
An attorney for pain management specialist Dr. Van Vu of Huntington Beach, Calif., told the Los Angeles Times his client would cooperate fully with the investigation.
A Medical Board of California investigator has begun obtaining releases from relatives of the 16 deceased patients of Vu authorizing the board to review their medical records, the newspaper reported Friday.
"The wheels of justice grind slowly but they grind," said Sally Finnila Sloane, whose brother Karl fatally overdosed on a cocktail of drugs in 2007, two of them prescribed by Vu.
Charles Thurber whose 22-year-old daughter Jennifer died of an overdose the same year told the Times the investigation is warranted.
Fatal overdoses involving prescription painkillers and anti-anxiety drugs have risen sharply in the last decade.
The newspaper published a series of articles last year indicating a small cluster of doctors were associated with a disproportionate number of prescription drug overdose deaths.
Vu was linked to more deaths than any other doctor, a Times analysis found.


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Honest, Abe started it
It was Abraham Lincoln who paved the way for the Bay State's university system. In June 1862, both houses of the US Congress passed the Morrill Act, a bill sponsored by Vermont congressman Justin Smith Morrill, calling for the creation of public land-grant colleges and universities.
The legislation — its official title was An Act Donating Public Lands to the Several States and Territories Which May Provide Colleges for the Benefit of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts — gave large tracts of federal land to each state. States in turn sold the land and used the proceeds to fund public colleges.
Lincoln signed the Morrill Act into law on July 2, 1862, and the next year the Massachusetts Agricultural College was founded.
It admitted its first freshman class in the fall of 1867, 2½ years after Lincoln was assassinated.


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With a few amendments by the Memphis-Shelby County Board of Adjustment Wednesday, Oct. 23, the new Midtown Kroger supermarket rolled out of the planning and zoning process and into preparation for demolition of the old Belvedere apartments building and construction of the new store.
The board was the final stop for the project, which is one of several store overhauls and renovations the Delta Division of Kroger is investing $100 million into over six years.
The board amended the recommendations of the city engineer's office, which had wanted one of two curb cuts on Union Avenue to permit right-hand exit and entrance turns only. Brenda Solomito, representing Kroger Limited Partnership, argued both of the curb cuts should permit traffic to turn right or left to keep shoppers from taking alternate side streets through the residential areas south of the store.
Memphis City Council member Jim Strickland was among those urging the board to overrule the recommendation from the city engineer's office.
"If we listened to the city engineers, Union Avenue would still have those "X's" and "O's" that change at morning and at night," he said. "It actually works better now than it did before."
City Engineer John Cameron said his concern is traffic leaving the parking lot to be going east and seeking to turn onto Auburndale and westbound traffic on Union trying to turn left onto the Kroger parking lot. The competing left turns at the same time are close enough that the back up in one direction would block those in the other direction.
"The traffic will start to back up behind them and you will end up with basically gridlock," Cameron said. "It's something we are not going to fall on our sword over, but it is something that will impact the community to the north."
The site now has nine curb cuts on Union that permit traffic to enter or exit going east or west.
Some residents on the residential side streets wanted more limited access or no access on Idlewild Street. An existing curb cut there that encourages drivers to the neighborhood to the south is easily and frequently driven around, they told the board in arguing for no access from the Idlewild side of the property.
"Not having access onto Idlewild is not an option for Kroger," Solomito said.
The board agreed and voted to keep the same driveway entrance on Idlewild.
The supermarket at 1745 Union, which has been a Seessel's, then a Seessel's by Albertson's and a Schnucks would be demolished for a parking lot for the new larger store to be built on the adjoining lot to the west where the apartment building now stands.
The demolition of the apartment building is expected to be the first work on the site and it could begin within the next month.
The 74,000-square-foot supermarket would front on Union at Lemaster Street with employee parking and the trash compactor subsurface completely enclosed within the structure.
The entrance would be on the northeast corner of the structure facing east.
Copyright 1995 -
by The Daily News Publishing Co. Inc. - All Rights Reserved


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In the story from Exodus, we hear the voice of God speaking the Law to the people of Israel. God gave the Law to guide us on how to be in the right relationship with ourselves (our bodies and our souls), with one another, and with God.
In the story from Exodus, we hear the voice of God speaking the Law to the people of Israel. God gave the Law to guide us on how to be in the right relationship with ourselves (our bodies and our souls), with one another, and with God.
Deviation from the Law causes harm and eventually destroys the bonds of love between people and between a people and their God. It is for this reason that the Psalmist proclaims the law of God to be perfect and just, clean and enduring. It protects life and preserves love.
Try as we might, however, we cannot keep the law entirely. In our human frailty, we sin. We let some idol or another take the place of God in our lives - career, money, reputation, self-loathing, revenge, or control.
Whatever idol lures us, it steals our loyalty and attention from God and eventually destroys the bonds of love in our lives. Ask any addict or the family of an addict.
The Law helps us to remember that we sin when we fail to give God priority in our lives. We sin when we fail to appreciate the abundance of gifts God is already pouring upon us and the gifts God is waiting for us to open ourselves to receive. How often do we fail to see what we have because we�re looking elsewhere at what we think we want?
I know of a woman who was engaged to an already married man for a year and a half. This woman found a way to understand this as if it weren�t adultery. We humans are gifted at fooling ourselves into thinking our sin isn�t really sin. The Psalmist calls this presumptuous sin and asks God to �cleanse us from our secret faults,� faults that are a secret to us, not to God.
The thing about sin is that is distracts us from what is real by tempting us with what isn�t real. And for this woman it sounded something like this: �I want a certain lifestyle and he seems to have it. If I have him, I have the life I want. Never mind that he�s married; that marriage never should have happened anyway (everyone says so), so ending it is really the right thing to do.� But once married to this man, the woman finds out that the life she desired didn�t materialize. The reason is , it wasn�t real.
So what is real? God is real. God�s unfathomable love is real. God�s plan of salvation for the whole world fulfilled in Jesus Christ is real. God�s promises are real. The cross of Christ was real, as was the empty tomb. Forgiveness of our sin is real. The gift of the Holy Spirit in our midst is real.
During Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday, Feb 13, we stop and take notice of our sin, being still and listening for the voice of God. Running through the motions won�t do the trick. We might be able to fool ourselves, but there�s no fooling the Almighty.
As St. Paul says, �Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?� True wisdom is found on the cross of Christ where we have salvation by the forgiveness of our sins. We don�t, therefore, have to avoid our sins � we only have to be willing to repent of them.
The Rev. Dr. Valori Mulvey Sherer is rector of The Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Shelby.


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Mplus Home
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Multiple group analysis in complex su...
Mplus Discussion
Multilevel Data/Complex Sample
Shang-Min Liu
posted on Tuesday, April 08, 2008 - 2:40 pm
Dear Dr. Muthen,
I did MIMIC with 7 binary indicators and 2 binary covariates in complex survey with n=1,422. I got significancy result between these two covariates and 2 out of 3 factors, so I want to do Multiple groups (4 groups) analysis to know where the differency from. Since there is no direct effect in my MIMIC model, does it make sence to do Multiple analysis? (because the example in the handout is with direct effect) The other question is how to use "variable" commend for 4 groups? Thank you!
Linda K. Muthen
posted on Tuesday, April 08, 2008 - 3:02 pm
The MIMIC model allows you to test measurement invariance of the intercept parameters. A multiple group analysis allows you to test measurement invariance of other measurement parameters, for example, factor loadings and residual variances.
The VARIABLE command works the same in multiple group analysis as in single group analysis. It names the variables in the data set.
Shang-Min Liu
posted on Wednesday, April 09, 2008 - 8:39 am
Thanks for your reply! About "model" command, could we use overall model for all groups or we have to specify differences between the overall analysis model in each group(in step 2: fit the model in all groups)? How could we know the specific model would be in each group? Also in the step 2, how could we write "grouping" statement under "variable" commend for four groups? The other question is about the numbers of people in these four groups. They are from size 230-589. Is it large enough? Really appreciate for your help!
Linda K. Muthen
posted on Wednesday, April 09, 2008 - 10:59 am
Please see Chapter 13 where the use of the overall and group-specific MODEL commands is described as are other issues with multiple group analysis. The GROUPING option works the same no matter how many groups there are. Please see the GROUPING option in the user's guide. The only way to know if a sample is large enough is to do a Monte Carlo study.
Shang-Min Liu
posted on Wednesday, April 09, 2008 - 2:24 pm
Dear Dr. Muthen,
Thanks. After reading Chapter 13 in user guild, I still not clear about how to choose which indicator not to be constrained in each specific model because I don't have any direct effect between indicators and covariates in my MIMIC model. Would you please let me know how to deal with this? The other question is about the sample size. Since Monte Carlo can't work on design variables (psu, stratum, etc.) in Mplus, is there any other way to figure out whether the sample size in each group is large enough in Mplus? Thank you!
Linda K. Muthen
posted on Thursday, April 10, 2008 - 9:22 am
I would do a Monte Carlo study taking clustering into account. That would be the best you can do.
Please send your input, data, output, and license number to
and be specific about what you want to do.
James McMahon
posted on Saturday, September 12, 2009 - 11:57 am
I am new to MPlus and have a basic question on subgroup analysis. I simply want to run analyses on subsets of data in a single dataset based on some variable attribute. For example, suppose I have a dataset that includes both males and females (in a GENDER variable) and I wanted to run the same analysis on males and females separately. In SAS I would simply include
or use the BY command.
How is this done in MPlus? Thank you.
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Saturday, September 12, 2009 - 12:21 pm
You would use the USEOBSERVATION option in the VARIABLE command to select the subgroup to be studied, and do a run for each gender.
Daniel Schwarzkopf
posted on Thursday, February 04, 2010 - 1:31 am
Dear Dr. Muthen,
I have Multilevel-Data and want to do multigroup analysis. I want to do it with a grouping variable on the within level. In my multilevel model I have random slopes which are predicted by between level variables. Using within level variable for grouping brings me an error message.
Is it only possible to do the grouping on the between level? Or is there a way to do it with a variable from the within level also?
Linda K. Muthen
posted on Thursday, February 04, 2010 - 7:41 am
In multiple group analysis, the groups should contain independent observations. Using a within variable as a grouping variable violates this independence.
posted on Monday, March 09, 2015 - 4:22 pm
Hello Dr. Muthen,
I am doing multi-group SEM with complex data but I have unequal sample sizes. I was going to use bootstrapping to deal with this however I understand with TYPE=COMPLEX Mplus does not allow this. are there any other commands I can use to deal with unequal sample sizes while doing this type of analysis?
Thank you for your time.
Bengt O. Muthen
posted on Monday, March 09, 2015 - 6:23 pm
Multiple-group analysis is not hurt by unequal sample sizes.
posted on Tuesday, March 10, 2015 - 4:48 pm
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Conservative Group Attacks Jennifer Lopez for Racy New Video
While 'American Idol' and Jennifer Lopez fans may like her new 'Dance Again' video, not everyone is too pleased with J. Lo. The sultry songstress is under fire from conservative groups for the racy content in the clip.
The video features J. Lo in various states of undress, though she nor anyone else is ever naked. She romps and rolls around with real-life boyfriend and backup dancer, Casper Smart, as well as a bevy of other beautiful people. While it's certainly sexy, it's not dirty or pornographic — it's tastefully done and not overtly raunchy.
Despite that, Radar Online reports that the Culture and Media Institute is particularly displeased with 'Dance Again.' "Even the supposedly family-friendly TV shows like 'American Idol' are never safe in the hands of Hollywood,: Institute rep Dan Gainor said. "Jennifer Lopez's skanky new video shows how desperate she is to retain her fame despite her fading relevance."
A little harsh, pal!
"A video filled with an enormous orgy scene of dozens of people groping one another serves as a backdrop for such high-class lyrics as 'Let me open your treasure chest'," Gainor continued. "Such sexualized videos aren't appropriate for any children to watch including Lopez's own twins."
While it's true that the video probably isn't the best for tykes, it's not meant for them anyway. There's a reason 'Idol' didn't show the full clip, and we don't think J to the L-O will play this at play dates for Max and Emme. If someone doesn't like it, they can use a V-chip to keep it away from their kids or just not watch it.
For the record, we at PopCrush think La Lopez looks fantastic in the video. If we had a body like that at 42 (or any age!), we'd probably flaunt it, too!
Watch the Jennifer Lopez 'Dance Again' Video Feat. Pitbull


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Director: Alvin Murray
Phone: 305 992 3799
ALM Sports is commencing its 10th annual Education & Sports Summer Camp.
We are most certainly Proud and Excited to be offer our Summer Camp Miami Lakes/PSN ; which will run for the entire Summer 2019 & above all have added some excellent features that you cannot miss out on this year.
Weeks #
* There will be no camp on Thursday July 4th (independence day)
Open House (to be announced) This is a selected evening within two weeks of Camp – for all registered parents to come to camp location, to know and understand the rules and regulations of the camp and for parents to meet the Director and Staff / Final Schedules etc
Camp Details
We are:
All our coaches are:
A few points before you get to the weekly cost
Why? Unlike most Camps, ALM prides itself in its quality service weekly in hopes parents/campers returns the following week. (fyi: our weekly retention rates are 88% across all locations in summer 2018)
Early Registration Discount
if you pay:
Weekly Cost
Only $90 per week (or $30 per day)
+ one time registration fee $50 per child
Your Child will receive a Camp Shirt, Bag and Water Bottle which is part of the registration
Sibling Discount: $10 off the weekly payment
Palm Springs North - Norman & Jean Reach Park
7901 NW 176th Street,, Hialeah, Fl, 33015
Duration: 06/10/2019 — 08/16/2019
Days: monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday
Mrs Ramos


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Geocaching Caption Contest 16 – Win a Barely Coveted Prize
Try your caption writing skills in the sixteenth installment of our Geocaching Caption Contest. You could win a barely coveted prize. These geocaching Halloween costumes come from a post on the official Geocaching.com Facebook page.
What caption would you write? "Muggle-proof Geocoins." You can do better!