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My Mac Pro’s Catch Latch Broke!
Sunday, October 4th, 2015 | Comments Off on My Mac Pro’s Catch Latch Broke!
If there was ever a computer that has been worth the money I spent on it, it is my 2008 Mac Pro tower. It cost me something over 3 grand at the time, and it was the fifth towered Mac I had bought in just a few years, the other four being G4 and G5 Power PC towers we trickled through as we followed Apple from Power PC to Intel processors.. Seven years after I bought it, it is still a very relevant machine and it has suffered only minor failures, a RAM chip here and there and a temperamental hard drive sled. It does its work using dual 2.8 GHz processors, two Radeon 4770 video cards, 16 GB of RAM, three SSD’s, one hard disk, and a ESATA/USB3 PCI card.
That is, until this week when I encountered my first “major” failure while simply swapping out an SSD for a larger one. I had just re-secured a hard drive sled and put the outer case door back on when I went to close the case latch and found it a little stiff. I gave it a little more force than usual and heard a “SNAP”! The case latch had broken and the case door now wouldn’t come off! The Mac Pro tower’s case is ingeniously designed to be almost impenetrable when closed, so I panicked, afraid there was now no way to get into the computer other than sawing it open!!!
I calmed down as I realized the machine was working just fine and would could continue to run until something else broke, meaning I probably had time to find a solution before it did. One of the good things about being on the ‘Net is it is a computer-focused medium; you can usually find someone who has had the problem you are dealing with and, most of the time, a solution if you keep looking. I ultimately found a single discussion on a Mac forum that revealed the broken latch controlled a sliding bar that could be accessed from the front of the case. It’s hard to see but it is there and can be reached, something you wouldn’t get from examining Apple service documentation that says the solution for a case latch failure is to replace the entire case!
Using a very bright light (The light on my iPhone 5s worked better than either of two flashlights.) and a magnifying glass if necessary (The older you are, the more necessary it is), peer through the cooling holes (about 1/8” in dia) just below the lower optical drive and on the right side of the case. Look for a silver metallic block with a circular indent in its center. (This is where I believe a metal rod attaches to the block). That’s your target.
Push on the slide until it moves. It will only move about a quarter to a half of an inch. This UNLOCKS the side door.
Note that you may or may not be able to re-latch the door; and you probably won’t be able to use the latch at all. Frankly, my case door fits tight enough I’m not worrying about relatching the case. If that’s not true for you, then you will have to find some other way to keep the door closed since it helps control airflow through the machine. If you so employ some alternate means of keeping the door closed, be sure to consider that the machine will get warm to hot during operation and that will affect your closure method.
Slow Web Page Loading? Check Your DNS!
Monday, February 10th, 2014 | Comments Off on Slow Web Page Loading? Check Your DNS!
Our Internet service is via Earthlink running on a Comcast backbone. Most of the time, the service is fast with few outages, which is why the problems we’ve been having over the last few days have been driving me nuts. While service seemed to be routine during normal business hours, service from the late evening through early morning hours was incredibly slow and unreliable. Web pages would hang during loading and streaming any videos, even trailers, via our Apple TV became impossible. I had a feeling it might be due to a problem with our DNS servers but really wasn’t initially sure how to troubleshoot that.
While web page loading and streaming video would hang, speed tests I conducted showed normal Internet speeds (23-28Mbps download, about 6 Mbps uploads). That established that once the connection was made, things were working normally. That seemed to confirm my suspicion that our DNS servers were probably involved.
So, I made a quick trip to Google. A search there turned up multiple references that listed free, public DNS servers (as did a trip to Apple Support Discussions). After looking at several, my favorite one is at: http://theos.in/windows-xp/free-fast-public-dns-server-list/. I picked one listed there and went into System Preferences/Network on my Mac Pro, clicked on the Advanced button and the “DNS” tab, and in its widow entered the I.P. address for my choice. As soon as I applied the change, my Internet service went back to normal. I then made the change on all my machines, before realizing that approach and been overkill. I simply needed to use Airport Utility to go into the Internet settings for the router and enter my new DNS settings there. I have done so, and now we’re cooking along.
I contacted Earthlink Support and chatted with a technician there about what I had found and what I had done to fix it. He confirmed they were having DNS problems, even though there was no mention of it on their website. I suggested they put up some notice to prevent folks from pulling their hair out. I hope they do and then let people know when they think their problems are resolved. They owe us that.
The Apple Thunderbolt Display: Will It Be Updated?
Thursday, December 19th, 2013 | Comments Off on The Apple Thunderbolt Display: Will It Be Updated?
Like many Mac users with MacBook Pro or MacBook Air notebooks, I’ve been waiting for a couple of years for Apple to update their Thunderbolt display to USB 3.0. While looking at the options available for the new Mac Pro (which I jokingly refer to as the “Trash Pro”) this morning, I realized that Apple may not be going to perform that upgrade. They might surprise me and update it to Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3, but it appears just as likely they will continue to sell this model without changes or eventually drop it altogether and cede the display market to third parties, which own most it anyway.
Over the years, Apple has been pairing down their display offerings and slowly moving their users to third party monitors. What they have maintained has been differentiated by features and quality, not by price. They have the corner on Thunderbolt-equipped displays and that has sustained some sales, but the appearance of cheaper Thunderbolt equipped docks is slowly eroding user motivation for spending the extra money. I’m waiting for the much delayed Sonnet Thunderbolt Expansion dock. It’s more expansive than Apple’s Thunderbolt monitor with its USB 3, eSata, Firewire 800, gigabit Ethernet, and extra Thunderbolt ports. Additionally, you can order it with a DVD burner or a Blue Ray burner and a 1 to 4 TB internally mounted hard disk, all for less money. I’d opt for a new Thunderbolt monitor over this if it were equipped with USB 3 ports; but without them, the Sonnet dock is the better buy. However, as of this writing, that dock was supposed to have been released last summer and is still listed in a “pre-order” status; so it’s still a ghost product I won’t commit to until it actually shows up.
Now, consider that in the new Mac Pro, there are four USB 3 ports and six Thunderbolt ports. The specs and pricing on the machine mean it is aimed squarely at the professional (and not the prosumer) market, and I suspect it is mainly aimed at video editors who are or soon will be editing 4 K videos. There are enough Thunderbolt ports on this machine to allow it to be used by almost any kind of monitor in existence today. For those who might be already using an Apple Thunderbolt monitor and any legacy equipment (USB 2 and Firewire 800), it will continue to meet their needs. They still maintain those hook-ups and don’t sacrifice any extra machine ports to maintain them. In fact, this is a more desirable approach than hooking up legacy USB 2 equipment via the machine’s USB 3 ports. While that wouldn’t be hurt by a new Thunderbolt monitor with USB 3 ports, mostly new owners rather than upgraders will loose the cash to get them. In other words, I’m not sure the current professional community cares much whether Apple updates the monitor or not. They’re going to be moving to 4K or can be happy using HDMI anyway.
A Thunderbolt monitor with Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3 that would leave the Firewire 800 port in would match it up with Apple’s newest machines and could position the rest of us to upgrade our “before-2013” notebooks without extra cash outlays, providing more incentive to buy. From that perspective, it would be a good marketing move. But is it a market that Apple wants to protect for some time longer? Eventually, despite Apple’s current pronouncements (and I actually think Apple’s slower approach is more correct than Microsoft’s), we will see convergence of tablets and mobile devices with desktop computing at the consumer level and possibly the prosumer level. It’s probably a decade off, but it has begun with the inclusion of 64 bit processors in the iPhone and the iPad. My MacBook Air is still more powerful and portable than an iPad with a keyboard, but not by much.
Some Apple products have also shown through the years they doesn’t always fulfill their promise, and it is usually through the paucity of upgrades available after the initial product is bought. The promise of the Mac Pro has been its expandability, but its video card upgrades have always been few and too far between, leaving its owners in the dust of Windows PC users. Their data buses were stuck at SATA II for too long, with the only way out being a whole new machine that took seven years to release or expensive PCIe card additions. It’s hard to say but not unthinkable that Apple will likely leave its notebook users behind in the same fashion by not upgrading the Thunderbolt monitor or by making its price point so high that its value simply sinks. Let’s hope they show more loyalty and insight than that.
The step back has to do with the Belkin Thunderbolt Dock.
I mentioned in my earlier post about this device that due to its lack of USB 3 support in Windows 7 under Bootcamp I was considering letting my wife see if it would meet her needs on her MacBook Air. So, last night, I set up the unit on her desk and hooked up her 11 inch MacBook Air to it when she got home. She runs a dual monitor (24 inch Apple Cinema Display with a mini-display port as prime with a 23 inch Apple Cinema Display via a DVI/USB 2 adapter) set up that hooks up via mini-display port and USB. I hooked both monitor as well as her other peripherals into the Belkin Dock and then booted up. At first, it all appeared to work with no hitches, but then I discovered that when booting from a cold start, the second monitor, attached via the USB adapter, would not power up. Unplugging the USB adapter and then reinserting it would solve the problem every time; but…again…the whole point of the dock was to eliminate plugging and unplugging things. While the dock did centralize and slightly reduce clutter, in the end it once again did not eliminate having to plug in extra peripherals. So, I have decided to return the dock and try to get a refund from Belkin. I’ll keep you apprised about how that goes.
I suspect all these problems don’t suggest a fundamental design problem with the Dock, but instead center around hidden and minor problems pumping USB 3 inputs over the Thunderbolt bus. I’m not familiar enough with the USB 3 specification or the Thunderbolt specification to go deeper than that, and I don’t have an Apple Thunderbolt monitor to play with to see if it acts in the same way. But the whole experience makes me a bit leery of dumping big bucks into any kind of “all-in-one” Thunderbolt solution, as much as I might like to find one.
The one thing I would suggest as a needed design change to the dock is to include a front facing Thunderbolt port that would become the input port from the Thunderbolt Mac. The pictures you can find on the web showing the cable from the Mac to the unit that appear to run to the front of the device show it running through a cable tray to a port that is on the rear of the device. Most people who are going to be interested in this device are because they don’t have an Apple Thunderbolt monitor, and a lot of them are going to be running mini-display port monitors that plug into the Thunderbolt port, meaning that all Thunderbolt ports on the dock may be taken.
The step forward has to do with noticing that I was able to install a downloaded Mac OS 10.8.4 Combo Updater package on all my machines, including newer ones that have protested in the past that only the App Store could perform the updates. This made downloading and installing the update a time saving and relatively painless process, as opposed to having to latch up to the App Store which each new machine, download a patch and wade through the installation for EACH one. I had been bitching at Apple about this for some time, and it appears they have listened. Thanks, Apple! It made my life with the App Store a bit more loveable.
Like many Mac users, I’ve been hoping for more utilization of the power of Thunderbolt than being able to hook in a few multi-purpose adapters to my MacBook Pro. So, when Belkin proposed the Thunderbolt dock, I thought that might be the way to go. I have one now sitting on my desk, nestled behind a 24 inch Apple Cinema Display with a mini-display port hookup. I use it to hook up my 13 inch Retina MacBook Pro and my 2.5 GHz Core i5 powered Mac Mini using a single Thunderbolt chord to the monitor and a mix of peripherals. Was the dock worth the $299 it cost? I’m not so sure.
There are two major reasons why I’m hedging. The first is that the design just isn’t as well thought through as it could have been. Its advertising says it has two Thunderbolt ports, which it does, but that’s still misleading. Yes, it has two, but one of them is used to hook to the Thunderbolt port of your Mac, so only one Thunderbolt port is usable for peripherals. If your display is, like mine, a mini-display port version, then there are NO Thunderbolt ports remaining for any peripherals on the dock itself. (I tried to ferret this out prior to its release but obviously was unsuccessful…so I took a gamble…and lost!) This is not much better than my Retina MacBook Pro without the dock, since I typically use one Thunderbolt port for the monitor and the other for a Gigabit Ethernet connection rather than run the slower “N” wireless connection on our home network. It does leave one Thunderbolt port free that wasn’t before..on the Mac itself. The dock would have been more worth the money if it had been designed so that the Thunderbolt cable from your Mac connected into the dock’s front, leaving two Thunderbolt ports open on the rear, especially considering the Belkin’s premium cost. The only way to get full utilization out of the dock is to already have an Apple Thunderbolt monitor. That really seems redundant..and expensive!
I do like the convenience of usually having to only plug in a Thunderbolt cable instead of USB, audio, etc; but I am honestly now looking at whether I might just give the dock to my wife whose MacBook Air doesn’t have a Bootcamp partition. For the rest of you thinking about buying it, better think twice if you think it’ll work under Bootcamp; you’ll find yourself doing what I did and plugging stuff in anyway to get it to work. If you’re running OS X and want it, fine, as long as you realize if you have a mini-display port monitor, any Thunderbolt items will have to be hooked into the Mac itself or there will still be three cables you have to hook up to make it all work (two power, one TB cable to the dock, the other to the monitor).
The bottom line with this device is that the single Thunderbolt cable hook up is still a myth, three hundred dollars later.
Thursday, January 31st, 2013 | Comments Off on STOP THE SILENT PUSHES!
If you’re a Mac OS X user, you might want to take a trip to some of the Mac news sites on the Web and read the articles popping up about the “silent push” that Apple apparently performed which completely disables Java on your system. I found it out this morning and confirmed it by going to a “mission critical” website and seeing if it would work. It won’t. Not only will it not work, but Apple insured they put you out of business by telling the operating system that to allow Java to work at all, the version had to be beyond the current version. I’d like to know who gave the company permission to do that? To my knowledge, I didn’t!
So, I say to Apple this: STOP THE SILENT PUSHES!
It truly has become 1984, except now Apple is the Big Brother on the television screen, not the comely woman athlete attacking it to free the enslaved masses. The line out of “The Dark Knight” where Dent says: “ You die or live long enough to see yourself become the villain” is true. In this case, though, it is Apple who’s the villain. They have indeed gone full circle.
We all know how easy it is to allow someone else to do things for us, and how humans will often give their power away to someone who does. That’s what has happened here. Apple, in true Big Brother fashion, has decided it will protect its users and itself by making decisions for you about what software you can run. You can cloak this as “being for the best” but what it is really about is protecting Apple’s public relations at your expense. They are taking from you the right for you to decide what software you want to run, and that’s simply wrong for the consumer and wrong for teaching proper computer security. It may be a logical step in making a computer an appliance, but manufacturers rarely have the ability to tinker with your appliance without your knowledge. Most are smart enough not to do it anyway.
In truth, I needed to have complained about it before now. With silent pushes, Apple becomes nothing more than a legitimized hacker. There is no treason for the company to approach the subject this way unless they think most of us are too dumb to understand what a pop-up announcing the new software, especially one that requires administrator permission, would mean. Maybe some of us are, but even if a user blindly accepts the notification, they have been given the choice and the responsibility is theirs and not the company’s. It’s hard for me to believe that Apple won’t be sued about this at some time in the future, especially when they inadvertently stop a business venture that costs someone a ton of money. Regardless, it is a poor security practice to condone or allow silent pushes. At the very least, the company owes people the blatant opportunity to sign up for them or turn them down…and not tied to some operating system update.
If Apple continues these silent pushes, this will be the straw that pushes me out of the Apple ecosystem. I can put up with a lot (and have over the last few years…software updates that don’t work, user interface changes I haven’t liked, feature removal or system/software requirement changes without notification, and what often appears to be change for the sake of it), but I can’t afford not to have faith that the company isn’t going to jack with my system simply because there is a piece of it they don’t like. If you agree, then I urge you to let Apple know through their feedback system or any way you can that this type of behavior is unacceptable. If not, and you just let them continue to do this, don’t fuss when you wake up one morning and something on your computer or iOS device won’t work because Apple didn’t like it.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been looking at ways I could economically improve the performance of my 2008 Mac Pro in ways that would help mainly with video editing. I’m running Mountain Lion as my main operating system on a SSD with a Snow Leopard backup on a hard disk that also includes the main user profile and data. The ML SSD references that user profile as well, so that for a slight cost in speed I get lots of storage that can be used when I am in either operating system.
About six weeks ago, I bought a Nflightcam for use in my flight school, and I’ve been bringing home video used in testing the camera and getting me used to editing and posting content for student use. I’m not a fan of the current iteration of iMovie, so I do any editing either in iMovie HD or Final Cut Studio 2 (Final Cut Pro 7 and company). I know I could move to Final Cut X or even Premiere Pro CS6, but for now, I’m saving what bucks I can and trying to use what I’ve got. (I also have some projects in FCP I need to finish.) So, I’ve been looking for ways to speed up my video processing workflow. I didn’t really have the bucks to put all the FCP footage on a SSD.
My data and media (including a rather good-sized iTunes library) have been on a 1TB hard disk that was within 70GB of being full. I offloaded the FCP and DVD Studio folders onto another 750GB hard drive and put my Contour Library files there as well. Because I’ve got 16GB of RAM and I’m running on the SSD for most things, the computer’s speed was pretty good. But I still wanted to see if I could decrease video processing time. So, after looking at various options and what they would cost in time and money, I decided to set up a RAID 0 using the two hard disks I use to run OS X.
The first thing I did was boot the Mac Pro up normally, go into System Preferences/User Accounts and reset the USER account from the SL disk to the one on the ML SSD (which has almost no data in it). I rebooted onto the Snow Leopard disk (using the Option key) and used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the Snow Leopard boot drive onto a 1.5TB Seagate drive inside an Esata box. I then manually copied the files on the 750GB to the Esata drive, shut down the Mac Pro, opened it up, and mounted the Esata hard drive in a drive sled. I booted the Mac Pro and, using the Esata drive as the boot disk, used its (Snow Leopard) Disk Utility to partition the 1TB hard drive into 750 and 250GB partitions. I then used DU’s RAID tab to make a RAID 0 set of the 750 GB hard drive and the 750GB partition on the 1 TB hard drive. Rebooting, I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the boot drive onto the RAID 0 set. That left me with a cloned hard drive and a Time Machine backup I could use to recover if things went awry, which I am happy to report they did not.
When I rebooted the Mac Pro normally, it booted into the ML SSD. I reselected the “joint” user account now on the RAID 0 set and the computer rebooted, returning to the Dock and desktop I had before I had started it all. I opened several applications (some of which I have loaded on both the ML and SL partitions) to check their operation and observed no anomalies, except for some registration data that was lost and had to be re-entered. Satisfied I had “normal” system operation, I wanted to see if I could boot into the Snow Leopard RAID set, so I rebooted the Mac Pro while holding down the Option key. Much to my surprise, it showed me each INDIVIDUAL disk (Raid Set 1 1 and Raid Set 1 2) as well as the ML SSD, the Esata disk, and the ML Recovery partition! If software was managing the RAID properly, my thinking was that I could pick either disk in the RAID set and the Mac Pro would boot properly. To test that, I selected the RAID Set 1 2 disk. The system did boot normally into Snow Leopard, though the process seemed to be a bit slower than usual. I launched applications and observed what I thought to be faster performance than I would have seen running single disk. For grins, I also booted into RAID SET 1 1, and while it worked about the same, it did seem like the desktop appeared a little sooner with that selection. (The RAID 1 1 hard disk is the actual 750GB hard disk while 1 2 is a 750GB partition.) After checking system operation here, I shut down the machine, removed the Esata hard disk, and replaced it with my Windows 7 (BOOTCAMP) hard disk I had removed for this experiment. I then booted into Windows 7; and while the initial loading appeared nominal, the machine crashed with a BSOD and a STOP message implying IRQ conflicts. I booted the machine using Windows Safe Mode and got to the desktop and then rebooted into Windows 7 normally. I had no more problems after that.
Overall, this seems to be a worthwhile experiment. Overall responsiveness has definitely improved, though I don’t have any benchmarks to tell you how much. I did see slightly LOWER Geekbench scores (like about 150-200 points) I believe might to be due to the extra overhead of the software RAID. In every other way, though, the machine is snappier under both Mac Operating Systems. For that, the cost is decreased hardware reliability I am mitigating by a good backup strategy and acquisition of a spare 1TB hard drive I’ll keep for quick retrieval in case a failure does occur.
I may not have SSD speeds with this setup or what I could achieve with a Velociraptor RAID set or maybe even hardware RAID, but considering this only cost me some time, this appears to have been a worthwhile thing to do.
Monday, January 7th, 2013 | Comments Off on One Step Forward Two Steps Back!
Today, Apple fixed my main complaint about the new 21.5 inch iMac; you know, the one saddled with a 2.5 inch 5400 RPM hard drive, all to make it unbelievably thinner for reasons only they understand. Today, Apple announced you can pay an extra $250 for the low end iMac so that it will match the glowing performance referred to in nearly all its reviews. You can order the machine with a 1TB Fusion Drive, something you could only previously do with high low-end machine. Of course, that means that a decent entry level iMac now costs $1549, making this the most costly set of iMacs Apple has ever released. They are undoubtedly also the best performing, but whether you are getting what you paid for is still up for debate.
Still, I consider this one step forward. But Apple has performed a lot of missteps lately. IOS 6 Maps, the initial 2.12 HP Printer Driver update, the flakiness of Mountain Lion when it was first released, the inclusion of 5400 rpm hard drives in iMacs, and now there is another…the latest…Tunes 11.
I’ve been saying privately to my wife that I, as a Mac user, was deeply concerned about Apple’s direction. I haven’t minded fixing things now and then…even inventing workarounds haven’t been that frequent….except in the past year or so. Apple software quality control has gotten so poor that I do not automatically apply upgrades; I wait and see what other people are reporting and try to make sure the update is okay before pressing ahead. I actually thought iTunes 11 (and, yes, I’ve downloaded 11.0.1) was okay… I had managed to reconfigure it to behave the way I liked (since many things in its redesign seemed to dumb the software down, something Apple’s been too guilty of lately). That was until yesterday. Then, I noticed that if I selected a song in a playlist, started playing it, selected another playlist, and tried to play it, the first song I selected would continue to play! Worse, I tried the same trick on a different Mac and got exactly the same behavior! That became the last straw for me; as I have done too often recently I reverted back to a software set that worked, i.e., iTunes 10.7 in this case.
Listen up, Apple, you’re being given a BIG APPLE FAIL on this software! Your discussion forums are full of people who, like me, are questioning your technical prowess and value on the dollar. You seem to be moving from “it just works” to “ it only works the way we want it to…most of the time” while making sure “it just hurts” is what resounds from our pocketbooks.
I couldn’t figure out at first why not much was being said about Apple dropping to 2.5 inch 5400 RPM hard drives in these new models but then grew suspicious that nearly every reviewer is being supplied with models equipped with optional Fusion drives. In all the reviews I looked at…especially where they touted the new machine’s speed..this indeed did prove to be the case. Worse, in the large majority of these reviews, the authors were missing the fact that the option added another $250 to the price, and the option is not available on the low end $1299 model at all. So, if your intent is to purchase the low end iMac and your intent is to do any kind of serious (read Photoshop) work on it and you don’t like waiting around for it to finish, you need to think again.
I also will remind people that the 21.5 inch iMac does not have a connector for an SSD, something that does exist in the 27inch iMac, even if you don’t order one with it. That doesn’t mean you can’t put an SSD in it; but whatever you do, one SATA hard disk of some type is your only option.
If you’re just buying one of these machines for basic office work, then you’ll be happy with it; but if your intent is to purchase one for anything else, read the current sets of reviews with an analytical eye. Save yourself from going home and finding out that what you bought wasn’t what you needed; and while that is nothing new, I feel like it’s a bigger thing to be poking at with these machines.
Too Much Form Over Function: Is the new 21.5 inch iMac Too Pricey to Care?
Sunday, December 2nd, 2012 | Comments Off on Too Much Form Over Function: Is the new 21.5 inch iMac Too Pricey to Care?
Like a lot of people, I am trying to understand the design changes to Apple’s latest series of iMacs. It’s said it has something to do with Apple’s vision for the future. I‘m just not so sure the rest of us agree or are willing to go along. Sales numbers will ultimately tell the tale. It may not matter much to Apple’s bottom line but it will help determine the ultimate future of the Mac computer.
An article at Macworld said this was just another bump along the road of “hiding the computer”, always at the heart of Apple’s quest. Fair enough. I like cool designs as much as the next guy; iMacs do usually look very good in the home and office and I admit that is part of their appeal. But to think that is the major reason behind my decision to buy Apple products is to misread my intent. Ultimately, I look for performance and value.
That’s where I think the latest design changes, especially for the 21.5 inch iMac, break down.
We’ve all known that Apple has been pushing for deletion of the optical drive in all their machines. Apple did the same thing with the floppy and new computers no longer carry them. Indeed, advances in storage technology and the inflation of file and program sizes as CPU’s matured made them obsolete. Apple now thinks that the days of optical drive software and media distribution are numbered and they probably are; but anyone who has ever experienced the too often breakdowns of Internet service or Apple’s App Store knows too well the frustration, inconvenience, and , in the worst cases, lost worktimes that come with them. As do users of Apple’s latest computers, when a hard drive fails and you no have no way to get back and reload your operating system because it’s out the Net instead of on a shiny CD in your office. (Which is why I have a Mountain Lion installer burned to dual-layer DVD; sorry, Apple.). From my perspective, the removal of optical drives is premature, especially in a desktop that was, up until now, an “all-in-one”. I buy iMacs because I want that integrated functionality; now, I have to spend money on and find desk space for an optical drive, too. That causes even more of a wince of pain when Apple accompanies this move by raising their price points one hundred dollars. They have, in fact, increased the cost by almost $200 over the older models if you have to also buy an optical drive because they no longer include one (though it depends on what kind of a burner you go after; some are a lot cheaper than a century bill).
The Apple website touts that these iMacs take “Performance and Design. Right to the Edge”. Of what? Mediocrity? Why in the world would anyone put a 2.5 inch 5400 RPM notebook hard drive in a desktop, like Apple has done with all 21.5 inch iMacs? That is beyond me! You mean, for the extra hundred dollars everyone’s paying, they couldn’t slap in 2.5 inch 7200 hard drives, or was that expecting too much? (I have a 5400 rpm hard drive in a 2012 Mac mini and it is almost painfully slow.) What were those extra RPM’s going to do? Cause too much heat? Too much vibration? If either of those are true for this desktop, then Apple’s lost it. No, this looks like simple greed, a way to squeeze a few more bucks out of the design and possibly another $250 out of the consumer who may need to purchase the Fusion Drive option to make the machine perform worth a damn. (And you can’t even do that on the low end machine.) Why did Apple think the performance was good enough and why didn’t they give a damn about trying harder?
I would not recommend to anyone they spend the money on a new 2012 21.5 inch iMac, especially the low end one. Of course, a reason for you to move up and spend more is exactly what Apple wants. It doesn’t take too much imagination to think their ultimate goal is to get everyone on a 27 inch iMac, and they’ll nudge you in that direction by handicapping the 21.5 incher, just like they did when they eliminated their smaller Cinema Displays, leaving users who wanted to stay with Apple no choice but a 27 inch Apple branded display costing a grand. It worked once, why not again?
If you’re not yet willing to jump ship back to Windows or Linux, the smarter move is to buy a MacBook Pro and hook it to a keyboard and screen you already have or invest in a 27 inch Apple Thunderbolt display (Yes, I know that hurts!). You can not only get better performance since you can get i7 CPU’s at lower price points (see the refurbished section of the Apple website for the best deals) but the MacBook Pro’s are now more expandable and easier to fix or expand. Yes, you may spend more setting up a MacBook Pro and a Thunderbolt screen, but my bet is you are better future-proofed and you have more flexibility since you can operate the notebook as a desktop or as a notebook. And, no matter what, hauling around your MacBook Pro is going to be easier than moving your iMac, no matter how thin it is.
Not only that, but the coup de grace is that replacing the pokey 5400 rpm hard drive in your MacBook Pro is no pain at all.


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Primary Teaching With Disability Studies is a full time course taught by Liverpool Hope University in the UK. The course is 4 Year Full Time Degree course, which usually starts in September. Primary Teaching With Disability Studies is usually quoted as BA/PTWDS in Liverpool Hope University.
You need to use UCAS when you apply to Primary Teaching With Disability Studies. The course code is X190 and provider's code is L46. For more information about Primary Teaching With Disability Studies, please contact the provider Liverpool Hope University directly at 0151 291 3295. For similar courses to Primary Teaching With Disability Studies, please find out at Study Primary Teaching With Disability Studies in the UK.

industry_corpus2: Subject Education


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Comparative effect of amidated pectin and psyllium on cholesterol homeostasis in rats – Výzkumný ústav živočišné výroby, v.v.i.
MAROUNEK, Milan, VOLEK, Zdeněk, SKŘIVANOVÁ, Eva, TŮMA, Jan. a DUŠKOVÁ, Dagmar. Comparative effect of amidated pectin and psyllium on cholesterol homeostasis in rats. Central European Journal of Biology, 2010, 5, 299-303. ISSN 1895-104X.
The effects of amidated pectin and psyllium were compared in rats fed diets supplemented with palm fat and cholesterol at 50 and 10 g/kg, respectively. Amidated pectin and psyllium significantly decreased serum cholesterol from 3.41 μmol/ml to 1.68 and 2.04 μmol/ml, respectively, and hepatic cholesterol from 31.9 μmol/g to 7.2 and 9.0 μmol/g, respectively. Faecal cholesterol content was significantly increased in rats that were fed amidated pectin, and non-significantly increased in rats that were fed psyllium. In conclusion, amidated pectin, a novel sequestrant of sterols, demonstrated a similar effect on rat serum and hepatic cholesterol concentration to psyllium, which is a well-established hypocholesterolaemic agent.

industry_corpus2: Biopharmaceuticals


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Before The Hunger Project’s partnership with the Sanar community, 34% of households in the Sanar community of Senegal lived below the poverty line and only 27% of households had access to clean drinking water. Women, men and children struggled to survive on a daily basis.
After travelling to Uganda with The Hunger Project in 2015, April saw real evidence of the lasting change The Hunger Project makes to communities. Now, April has a bold goal for 2017 and has committed to bringing together a consortium of investors in WA to raise the $200,000 needed over the next 2 years to help Sanar reach self reliance.
Create a solid foundation upon which the sanar community can continue to grow, develop and flourish independent of The Hunger Project’s support in 2019 and into the future.
April has been working extremely hard and now only needs $10,000 to ensure that the people of Sanar can achieve self reliance and live lives free from hunger, that are healthy and with dignity.
She has set up a fundraising page here for anyone who would like to help!

industry_corpus2: Others


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A fifth of US consumers (21%) find that going shopping makes them feel stressed, while more than 1 in 10 experience high-stress levels while buying online. That’s according to a new Stress Shopping report from experience analytics firm Clicktale, which examines the role of emotions in shaping consumer experiences both online and in-store.
Clicktale surveyed 2091 consumers, with 991 from the US and 1057 from the UK, with data collected from a combination of online and phone surveys.
The report, which incorporates analysis from Clicktale psychologists, retail experts and a survey of over 2000 US and UK consumers, found that – despite finding offline shopping the most stressful experience – many consumers still feel high levels of stress when navigating e-commerce websites and apps. While 12% feel stressed when buying online, 15% go as far as to say they have ‘lost their temper’ when shopping online or on a mobile app.
Clicktale’s research also reveals that these stress levels rise as shoppers navigate through the customer journey, reaching a peak during the checkout process. In reporting their most stressful digital shopping experiences, 88% of shoppers feel stressed when a voucher code fails at the checkout, while 75% get agitated when mobile apps freeze at the point of payment. 83% are also stressed by slow loading times online.
Currently, Clicktale taps into the wisdom and behavior of millions of visitors so that businesses can deliver the best digital experiences to drive amazing business results. Complex behavioral patterns are synthesized based on millisecond-level actions such as hovers and scrolls, enabling businesses to interpret their customers’ digital body language and understand the intent.

industry_corpus2: Computing & Telecommunications


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The Æloha Kitesurf Camp is located on the west coast of Denmark between the North Sea and the Ringkøbing Fjord. Our training spots as well as many local shops can easily be reached by car, bicycle or on foot.
We are happy to welcome you at our Æloha Kitesurf Camp.
Our proffessional instructors provide great service and high teaching quality.
Get to know other kitesurfers who you can share your passion with.
Yoga classes are offered daily.
You are staying at beautiful old farmhouse with a private access path to the Fjord.
Relax on the terrace and enjoy the fjord view.
The living room with open fire is perfect for relaxing evenings.
The rooms are simply furnished and each has two single or one double bed. All rooms offer a direct or partial view of the Ringkøbing Fjord.
Each evening you are welcome to play a round or two at the Billiards table.
With the Æloha Kitesurf Camp For Beginners we would like to get you started as safe and easy as possible. In 5 days you get to know all theoretical and practical contents to become a safe and independent kitesurfer.
- and an amazing time with a lot of fun and laughs.
With the Æloha Kitesurf Camp For Improvers we would like to support you in achieving your training goals. For 5 days we will provide you with exercises and tips and tricks. Achieve your goals and become a better kitesurfer.
The Æloha Kitesurf Camp is a collaboration with our friends from drivethru. The beautiful farmhouse and the unique sport make the camp an unorgettable experience.
All lessons are being accomplished by qualified instructors within the teaching methods of the VDWS.
In principle, no previous knowledge is absolutely necessary for becoming a kitesurfer. But for sure previous experience with board- or windsports helps.
We provide all kitesurf equipment which is recommendable for a safe training. To stay warm you get A 5/3 mm wetsuit from Rip Curl. Please note that we don't hand out neoprene shoes, gloves or beanies. You can get your shoes for a special price.

industry_corpus2: Sports


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As we all know that cash transactions in banks are difficult and costly too. Most of the Banks have started collecting charges to deposit cash above certain amount. After the demonetization, BHIM App has been launched by the Government of India for Online Transaction. With this App, you can easily do your Bank transactions.
BHIM App will also use less space for your mobile than other App.
Yes, as most of the apps like BHIM are using more space in your smart phone, but BHIM is only of 6MB. So even if you have low ended mobile, you can still install and use it. Full form of BHIM is Bharat Interface for Money.
Now the question is: Why should I use BHIM?
Pay to any user using any UPI application.
Shop online and checkout using “Pay by UPI/BHIM” for a quick and seamless experience.
Request money from any UPI user.
Scan a QR and pay on the fly.
Check account balance and pay via Aadhaar number.
Supports more than 12 Indian Languages.
Your Bank account should be registered for Mobile or Net Banking.
First go to Google Play Store, then search for BHIM. You will see the results. Click on install. You can also use this link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.org.npci.upiapp&hl=en. After installation, launch the BHIM app and select your preferred language and click on “Next”. In next window click on “LET’S GET STARTED”. Now here you need to be careful, in this section you have to select the SIM (If double SIM mobile), select mobile number which is registered with your Bank Account.
Once all above done, the app will send a verification message and you will see a window saying that “Mobile Verified”. Now you need to setup a PIN (As we use ATM PIN). That’s all, now you can start using BHIM app for all your Bank transactions at your fingertip.
Your mobile number is your Payment address. You can now send or receive money and also check your Bank account balance. You can also create a custom Digital Payment Address with your business name or your name or any other.
I hope now you will be able to use BHIM app, if you have any problem using this app, you can always comments below, I will surely reply your queries.

industry_corpus2: Finance & Economics


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LOOKING FOR YOUR DREAM HOME? YOUR JOURNEY STARTS HERE.
We give the same level of commitment to every project, big or small, ensuring the perfect solution to meet each home owner’s lifestyle.
We have a strong belief in the advantages of sustainable design. Such features deliver broad-scale benefits to your ongoing quality of living.
The many industry awards our builders have won are testament to the outstanding design and construction of every Design Artisan home.
Thank you for a wonderful home building experience!
Both my husband and I are completely ecstatic with the end design!
They had a natural ability to extract our thoughts and come up with a home presentation and layout that ticks all the boxes.
The communication from the Design Artisan team was exceptional and every stage of my house design was clearly explained.
From the outset, we committed ourselves to the goal of improving the form and function of housing in the wider community.
Design Artisan’s homes are designer residences featuring elements normally found only in individual, architect-designed homes.
Our homes give pleasure not only to those who live in them but also enhance the built environment for everyone’s benefit.
We are founded on the belief that quality and innovation in home design should be available to as many people as possible.
Design Artisan makes professional design and related services more affordable and accessible.
In doing so, we improve the quality of life of the wider community.
With loads of fine designs to view.
Some glitches? Maybe – it’s all new!

industry_corpus2: Real Estate & Construction


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Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, the Republican chair of the House Science Committee who also happens to believe global warming might actually be a really good thing, flew off the hook this week. The cause? The New York Times publicized a draft version of a federal scientific report which climate scientists worry Donald Trump’s administration is preparing to suppress or doctor.
In a statement, Smith argued the “alarmist media is at it again” and tried to one-up the thousands of studies referred to in the report, suggesting he knows better than the tens of thousands of scientists who wrote them.
Seriously, Smith is done with the whole Republican “I’m not a scientist” line. In his telling, Smith has practically done the research himself, with his mighty brain striking like thunder at dubious scientific methodology.
Several real climate scientists contacted by Gizmodo felt Smith was not as up to snuff on his research as he claimed to be, however.
“These comments reflect the utterances of someone who either doesn’t have the faintest understanding of the science, or has total contempt for scientific truth,” Michael Mann, climatologist, geophysicist and director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center, told Gizmodo.
“This does not say that every extreme can or should be blamed on climate change, but some events are linked, with high confidence,” Alley added.
He added there is “abundant evidence” the recent increase in extreme weather, like Hurricane Sandy and widespread flooding in the southern US, was the result of human-inducted climate change.
“The scientific evidence is overwhelming, and scientific integrity has everything to do with scientists crying out a warning,” Trenberth concluded.
The four scientists who spoke with Gizmodo are just a tiny fragment of the greater climate science community, which nearly universally agrees humans are responsible for climate change, which virtually all of them also agree could have disastrous impacts on the human species. Smith is just one dude who won a few elections in Texas and has no formal scientific qualifications whatsoever, but who does take an awful lot of money from the oil and gas industry.
It doesn’t really take a scientist to figure this one out, but you should probably listen to what they have to say anyway.

industry_corpus2: Power & Energy


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Some Training Day sift from Reserva Privada. This strain is amazing for dry sift. On a good day I can pull just about 10% 99.9% heads from this strain. It just rains heads, and cleans so easy. This is just what fell off during harvest. About 1g sift from harvesting about 4 oz. Would otherwise be lost to the floor, clothes, carpet, etc.
And an older shot of what I called Twin Peaks. Same strain just a different harvest. I just like this picture.
Ok I really need a set of dry sift screens You are KILLIN IT!
Heaps of full melt doesn't help for motivation for anything lol.
Haha ain't that the truth!
Coming from you that means a lot. Thank you sir. One for the comment and 2 for putting this info out there. I would have never started down this road without yours and D420K's videos.


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Archibald Atkinson, nicknamed Tommy, served aboard the light aircraft carrier USS Bataan (CVL-29) from her commissioning on November 17, 1943, through the end of World War II. According to his son and this novel's author William Illsey, his father Tommy had started to sketch a fictional account of his life as far back as the mid-1990s, but no explanation is provided as to why he favored fiction over a biographical memoir. His son, a science writer and columnist who has authored several novels, completed his father's fictional sketch and turned it into a well-written novel with realistic crisp dialog and interesting plot turns. Tommy covers from his childhood in California and Oregon through the return of Bataan from Japan to Boston Naval Shipyard on October 30, 1945.
With a unique perspective in comparison to most war fiction, the hero is an accomplished mathematician. Tommy excels in his mathematics and science courses at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he graduates in 1934 but does not enter the Navy due to a dearth of positions during the depression. He next completes the MBA program at MIT's Sloan School, where he meets Feathers Mason, who becomes a good friend and also serves aboard Bataan with Tommy as a fleet liaison for CINCPAC (Commander in Chief, Pacific Command) Intelligence. Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor puts Tommy back into the Navy but not where he expected. He becomes a professor of mathematics and navigation at the University of Michigan to teach classes to Navy men.
When he gets assigned to the light aircraft carrier Bataan, he uses his mathematical genius to create anti-aircraft protocol to protect the ship from incoming enemy planes by solving differential equations for minimum risk and maximum protection. When the chief navigator gets arrested for misconduct including being drunk on duty and uttering physical threats, the captain asks Tommy to replace him and also to assist with the training of the gun crews. He quickly becomes an expert at gunnery even though that is not his specialty, and his anti-aircraft defense ideas and his intense training of the gun crews lead to Bataan's surviving unscathed from enemy attacks.
In this fictional account, the Japanese kamikaze aircraft do not start to attack the American fleet until Okinawa. Atkinson explains that he made some changes in historical dates and sequences of events in order to create a more readable narrative. On April 1, 1945, the first day of the Allied invasion of Okinawa, Bataan shoots down several kamikaze attackers. A Judy dive bomber misses Bataan's stern by only 18 inches as Tommy takes over steering the ship to avoid the Japanese kamikaze when the young helmsman freezes at the incoming plane. The Bataan crewmen witness the bombing of the carrier Franklin, and one of the CAP (Combat Air Patrol) fighters from Bataan chases and shoots down the Japanese plane that dropped the bomb. During the battle with Japanese planes, an American cruiser's gunfire hits Bataan by mistake and kills seven men, including Tommy's friend Feathers, who Atkinson explains in the Afterword is a totally fictional character. The rest of the book blends fact and fiction, so the reader cannot tell where the truth about Tommy's feats ends and the fiction begins.
Feathers describes the kamikaze suicide operations of the Japanese as "fanaticism" and "crazy hate." He incorrectly explains that Ten-Go refers to the Japanese strategic term for the kamikaze aircraft operations. Ten-Go actually refers to the Japanese naval operation on April 6-7, 1945, when the battleship Yamato and nine other ships headed from Japan's Seto Inland Sea toward Okinawa on a special (suicide) attack mission. Feathers also mistakenly says that Ten-Go literally means "floating chrysanthemums" when it actually means "operation heaven." The Japanese word kikusui means "floating chrysanthemums" and was used by the Japanese to name the ten mass kamikaze attacks made against the Allied fleet between April 6 and June 22, 1945. The author incorrectly gives the date that planes from Bataan assisted in the sinking of the battleship Yamato as April 6 rather than the correct date of April 7, 1945, which cannot be attributed to his desire to create a more readable narrative.

industry_corpus2: Literature & Emotions


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8 Week Jump Start Program: The ultimate mind body makeover!
This 8 Week weight loss coaching program, integrates many elements of the the New York Times Bestseller, The Beck Diet Solution, and several other life changing skills.
Healthy thoughts and behaviors lead to healthy habits, transforming your mind and body forever.
Mindfulness training, cognitive behavioral skills, emotional regulation techniques, and behavior modification.
Mindfulness training can help facilitate slower, more pleasurable dining, increase awareness of hunger and satiety, and significantly enhance comfort and enjoyment while exercising.
You will learn how to tap into a deeper part of you that is receptive to life enhancing suggestions to manage cravings, increase motivation to be physically active, and calm or energize yourself.
Cognitive behavioral skill building is very effective in efficiently changing thoughts to increase feelings of confidence and promote healthy behaviors.
Behavior modification is a method of changing behaviors incrementally so the lifestyle changes you make are doable and sustainable. You will develop new healthy habits in such a way that they are easily accommodated and integrated into your daily routine.
Emotional regulation techniques help you manage the frequency and intensity of various emotional states so you can more easily reduce negative feelings and increase positive feelings.
A complimentary consultation is available to help you learn more about successful weight loss. Or call (206) 355-5776 to schedule your free telephone consultation today.

industry_corpus2: Health & Medicine


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Great to hear that you are enjoying working with SpecFlow.
I’m sure you can see the value of having simple, understandable definitions […] instead of the complicated, developer-only Unit Tests. […] These executable tests can form the basis of your specs, documentation and even training. Your Product Owner can get involved and validate the tests are correct, if they’re particularly tech-savvy they may even write a few themselves!
This makes me wonder if you’ve also taken a look at SpecLog (which is not open source btw). SpecLog is a visual project management tool that help bring techies and non-techies together. You can map out requirements visually, which provides a great basis for discussing requirements in the early stages of a project. You can add acceptance criteria to these requirements, and link the associated Gherkin files in your source repo. SpecLog is also able to access executions statistics from a SpecFlow server and display this information in your requirements. So you get the benefits of BDD as well as a repository that can be used to document your system – you can export your requirements and acceptance criteria to HTML, Word etc.
I hope you don’t take this is pure marketing spam, I genuinely enjoyed reading through some of your articles, and thought that you might find SpecLog interesting.
Next Next post: Why write Unit Tests?


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International Medical Corps, a global humanitarian nonprofit organization devoted to saving lives and relieving suffering by means of health care coaching and reduction and growth applications, seeks candidates for the place of Regional Finance Administrative Director in the Center East. Go to and put your TX zip code into the box and submit it. That will inform you who your federal and state representatives are. First, debt collectors (reminiscent of Regional Finance) aren’t allowed to phone you in case your only form of contact is a cellphone. A regional financial bloc ought to therefore be conceptualized as an entity encompassing and transcending nation-states.
Help Nation Places of work with staffing issues and capacity constructing in RI accounting and finance programs and insurance policies, accounting and financial management. The place is chargeable for finance matters for Xaxis APAC regional entity and coordination, collection, preparation of various financial experiences across APAC region. The put up hold can have a bachelor’s diploma in finance and an accounting professional qualification.
In their infancy, regional financial arrangements might discover it onerous to formulate policy conditionality and monitor its implementation by themselves, through which case such roles may should be assumed by the IMF, with the regional funds providing input for formulating conditionality. Working closely with our central finance crew you’ll review budgets and undertake re-forecasting, negotiating with operations to realize objectives set.
The Supervisor would be the technical manager for finance employees at the Country Workplaces and lead the Regional Finance and Administrative Staff. Once all is claimed and carried out I will sue the particular person for a false police report, will sue Regional Finance, and sue the sheriff’s department. I was late on my cost and a Regional Finance Consultant has called me throughout the day.
In the Government Regulation No. one hundred and five in 2000, states that regional expenditures are all cash expenditure areas relevant fiscal yr interval which incorporates recurrent expenditure (operational), growth expenditure (capital expenditure) and surprising expenditures. Frankly I don’t feel sorry for Regional Finance over all the individuals who money those checks with no intentions of ever paying again the loans.


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Great post! I will share this to my friends who has infertility problems. One is actually in Bournhall Clinic for her IVF treatment (with gender selection) This could be of great help for her.
Can you please provide the bibliographic details for the Pirke study? I can’t see it in the reference list. I would like to read the methodology, including how they defined the ‘vegetarian’ vs ‘non vegetarian’ diets.
Great tips! It’s indeed our food habit that keeps us healthier and keeps away many unwanted physical irregularities. At the same time, it’s always necessary that we know how good food affects our body and in fact helps in managing many conditions like fertility!
Question: Then how come fertility is so high in a country like India where in many parts 50% population is completely vegetarian?


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Intel is not yet active on CompanyMatch. Do you want to know your match with Intel? Join 8 others and ask for a match request anonymously!	You need a account in order to be able to vote.
Are you responsible for recruitment, employer branding or HR marketing at Intel?


text:
Make sure your daughter knows how to spot a good friend. A good friend is the one who will look out for her, care about her, including her in activities and treat her with respect. Good friends are also empathetic, loyal and cooperative.... Build Rapport. Get to know him through your daughter. Ask her how they met, about his interests and his family life. Try to be casual with your questions, not detective-like.
Some will become life long friends and others will fill a mutual need at a point in time. Either way, make strong female friendships. Women need each other. Either way, make strong female friendships.
If your daughter is comfortable with you, she will tell you once she's make a new guy-friend or likes a particular boy. Get to know her , know her weaknesses and strengths and what makes her happy. Be interested in what she tells you.


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Clad in just his boxers, singer Harrysong has sparked a debate online after he shared videos of him being massage by ToyinLawani.
Is Toyin Aimakhu Ready To Divorce Her Husband?!?

industry_corpus2: Film & Entertainment


text:
A 2014 federal government ruling opened the door for insurers to begin offering these fixed rate deferred longevity annuities for purchase with funds from a qualified retirement account.
Thus, a trial court, in fact, has full discretion to award fees from a party's qualified retirement account as part of a family law case.
Once again, there are possible tax consequences and early withdrawal penalties one needs to be aware of when taking money from any qualified retirement account or fund.
Instead, if this child should benefit from the IRA or other retirement benefits, consult with a qualified expert as to the unique provisions that should be included in a special needs trust that will be named as a beneficiary of the qualified retirement account to insure the most favorable stretch-out and tax treatment discussed above.
Under provisions introduced by the Pension Protection Act of 2006, rollovers and transfers to a Roth account may be made from any qualified retirement account, including 401(k) and 403(b) plans.
Cash-Outs Drop - More than half (51%) of plans that reached out to departing employees with distribution options such as staying in plan or rolling over to a qualified retirement account, such as an IRA, decreased the number of participants cashing out.
For example, it may be wise for a person who is heavily vested in company stock inside a qualified retirement account to move at least some of that stock into another retirement account (such as a self-directed IRA), then perhaps to sell it and use the proceeds to fill another need.
Part II, below, discusses various issues and strategies to consider when an account owner wishes to access assets invested in a qualified retirement account.
Lowering your AGI is just one of the benefits of putting money in a qualified retirement account.
A 2014 federal government ruling opened the door for insurers to begin offering these fixed-rate deferred longevity annuities for purchase with funds from a qualified retirement account.
But, if an employee terminates employment and withdraws amounts from the qualified retirement account, they may be subject to penalty if they occur prior to age 55 or fail to meet the exception for substantially equal periodic payments made over a single or joint life expectancy under Sec.
Let's assume that each employee continued the same savings pattern until age 6S and earned an average 8% rate of return on his qualified retirement account.


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I just finished House of Debt by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi, which I bought as a pdf directly from the publisher.
This is a great book. It’s well written, clear, and it focuses on important issues. I did not check all of the claims made by the data but, assuming they hold up, the book makes two hugely important points which hopefully everyone can understand and debate, even if we don’t all agree on what to do about them.
First, the authors explain the insufficiency of monetary policy to get the country out of recession. Second, they suggest a new way to structure debt.
To explain these points, the authors do something familiar to statisticians: they think about distributions rather than averages. So rather than talking about how much debt there was, or how much the average price of houses fell, they talked about who was in debt, and where they lived, and which houses lost value. And they make each point carefully, with the natural experiments inherent in our cities due to things like available land and income, to try to tease out causation.
Their first main point is this: the financial system works against poor people (“borrowers”) much more than rich people (“lenders”) in times of crisis, and the response to the financial crisis exacerbated this discrepancy.
The crisis fell on poor people much more heavily: they were wiped out by the plummeting housing prices, whereas rich people just lost a bit of their wealth. Then the government stepped in and protected creditors and shareholders but didn’t renegotiate debt, which protected lenders but not borrowers. This is a large reason we are seeing so much increasing inequality and why our economy is stagnant. They make the case that we should have bailed out homeowners not only because it would have been fair but because it would have been helpful economically.
The authors looked into what actually caused the Great Recession, and they come to a startling conclusion: that the banking crisis was an effect, rather than a cause, of enormous household debt and consumer pull-back. Their narrative goes like this: people ran up debt, then started to pull back, and and as a result the banking system collapsed, as it was utterly dependent on ever-increasing debt. Moreover, the financial system did a very poor job of figuring out how to allocate capital and the people who made those loans were not adequately punished, whereas the people who got those loans were more than reasonably punished.
About half of the run-up of household debt was explained by home equity extraction, where people took out money from their home to spend on stuff. This is partly due to the fact that, in the meantime, wages were stagnant and home equity was a big thing and was hugely available.
But the authors also made the case that, even so, the bubble wasn’t directly caused by rising home valuations but rather to securitization and the creation of “financial innovation” which made investors believe they were buying safe products which were in fact toxic. In their words, securities are invented to exploit “neglected risks” (my experience working in a financial risk firm absolutely agrees to this; whenever you hear the phrase “financial innovation,” please interpret it to mean “an instrument whose risk hides somewhere in the creases that investors are not yet aware of”).
They make the case that debt access by itself elevates prices and build bubbles. In other words, it was the sausage factory itself, producing AAA-rated ABS CDO’s that grew the bubble.
Next, they talked about what works and what doesn’t, given this distributional way of looking at the household debt crisis. Specifically, monetary policy is insufficient, since it works through the banks, who are unwilling to lend to the poor who are already underwater, and only rich people benefit from cheap money and inflated markets. Even at its most extreme, the Fed can at most avoid deflation but it not really help create inflation, which is what debtors need.
Fiscal policy, which is to say things like helicopter money drops or added government jobs, paid by taxpayers, is better but it makes the wrong people pay – high income earners vs. high wealth owners – and isn’t as directly useful as debt restructuring, where poor people get a break and it comes directly from rich people who own the debt.
There are obstacles to debt restructuring, which are mostly political. Politicians are impotent in times of crisis, as we’ve seen, so instead of waiting forever for that to happen, we need a new kind of debt contract that automatically gets restructured in times of crisis. Such a new-fangled contract would make the financial system actually spread out risk better. What would that look like?
The authors give two examples, for mortgages and student debt. The student debt example is pretty simple: how quickly you need to pay back your loans depends in part on how many jobs there are when you graduate. The idea is to cushion the borrower somewhat from macro-economic factors beyond their control.
Next, for mortgages, they propose something the called the shared-responsibility mortgage. The idea here is to have, say, a 30-year mortgage as usual, but if houses in your area lost value, your principal and monthly payments would go down in a commensurate way. So if there’s a 30% drop, your payments go down 30%. To compensate the lenders for this loss-share, the borrowers also share the upside: 5% of capital gains are given to the lenders in the case of a refinancing.
In the case of a recession, the creditors take losses but the overall losses are smaller because we avoid the foreclosure feedback loops. It also acts as a form of stimulus to the borrowers, who are more likely to spend money anyway.
If we had had such mortgage contracts in the Great Recession, the authors estimate that it would have been worth a stimulus of $200 billion, which would have in turn meant fewer jobs lost and many fewer foreclosures and a smaller decline of housing prices. They also claim that shared-responsibility mortgages would prevent bubbles from forming in the first place, because of the fear of creditors that they would be sharing in the losses.
A few comments. First, as a modeler, I am absolutely sure that once my monthly mortgage payment is directly dependent on a price index, that index is going to be manipulated. Similarly as a college graduate trying to figure out how quickly I need to pay back my loans. And depending on how well that manipulation works, it could be a disaster.
Second, it is interesting to me that the authors make no mention of the fact that, for many forms of debt, restructuring is already a typical response. Certainly for commercial mortgages, people renegotiate their principal all the time. We can address the issue of how easy it is to negotiate principal directly by talking about standards in contracts.
Having said that I like the idea of having a contract that makes restructuring automatic and doesn’t rely on bypassing the very real organizational and political frictions that we see today.
Let me put it this way. If we saw debt contracts being written like this, where borrowers really did have down-side protection, then the people of our country might start actually feeling like the financial system was working for them rather than against them. I’m not holding my breath for this to actually happen.
I’m not sure I understand the debt restructuring. It sounds to me like if the average house price goes down, your payments are lowered, but only your individual house price matters for the lender to claim some of the gain. That is clearly biased against the borrower. Either both should be based on the individual house price or both should be based on a price index.
Also, there is a company that will buy an equity stake in your home. They don’t put their agreement online, so I haven’t been able to determine if the terms are any good. The company is firstrex, and a quick web search turns up lots of negative comments on their offering.
Tinkering with debt is oiling the deck chairs on the Titanic.
What is needed is to eliminate debt as the structure of the financial system. Which means eliminating banks as we know them today.
People are now talking about the basic wage, it was first proposed in 1924 as Social Credit. The financial industry will fight this tooth and nail. We the people have to stand up and demand change.
Great point. Although I think both would be good too.
People can tell when a system is inherently not fair. The mortgage market we have now where you can’t restructure your mortgage because its not in the interest of 1 of the 3 parties involved is infuriating and unfair.
I agree with you that the finance companies will be gaming these index’s to screw the consumers because its in their best interest to and we will have a market that does a disservice to the public.
I think the free market experiment with home mortgages has failed. Its time to nationalize it. The income stream from that can go to fixing our failed free market experiment with college education and our about to fail primary education system.
Eccles starts off by referring to the period after WWI, but which rings true for the Clinton and Bush years. We were projected to pay off the national debt, but for the Bush tax cuts and war spending. His main point about gov’t austerity still holds true. It reduces the buying power of our people and spreads suffering.
Looking forward, student debt is having the same kind of depressing effect now (and likely to get worse). Elizabeth Warren has a proposal for capping student debt payments as a percentage of income that is similar to these ideas.
I think these ideas have some promise. But I was much more optimistic about financial engineering fixes 10 years ago than I am now.


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Downtown Augusta has lots of little hidden gems, just waiting for you to stumble up on them. Tire City Potters, is one such gem! Situated in an old garage, this pottery studio is a lot more than meets the eye. If you're enjoying a First Friday downtown or strolling down 10th Street after a delicious meal at the Rooster's Beak or Bee's Knees you might find yourself wandering into Tire City.
When the large garage doors are open, the studio is quite inviting. Earlier this week, I was enjoying Taco Tuesday at the Rooster's Beak across the street. Since the weather was so nice we sat outside while we ate and watched the crowd at the pottery studio. Our out of town guests were quite curious, so after supper we decided to pop in and see what we could find.
These skull and crossbones mugs would make a perfect gift for even the most macho coffee aficionado!
There is quite a wide variety of pottery from vases and platters, to business card holders and tea kettles.
My favorite were these tiny pinch pots! I bought a few for Christmas gifts, as they would be perfect finger bowls, salt keepers, or jewelry holders!
If you are downtown and the lights are on, stop by and check out Tire City, you might just find something amazing!


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This is just a reminder that the Autism awareness Class being held at parkside Fire company is April 23, All who wish to attend please Direct message our facebook page with a head count. Price for this class is $10 per person and checks can be made out to parkside Fire company.
If you are a current EMT/paramedic you can register for Con-Ed credits, That Information will be available at the door.
Class Starts at 7pm sharp, Address to our station is 107 W Roland Road, Parkside pa 19015.
Thank you for all your prayers and kind words.
We ask everyone to say some prayers for Captain Dave Smiley, the Smiley family, and Minquas Fire Company #1. This morning, Captain Smiley was injured and burned during operating at a house fire.
Dave is not just another firefighter, he is the son of a Crozer medic who we work alongside with on a daily basis. Dave is also a good friend to many of our members.
At approximately 8:30am this morning David Smiley Jr was fighting a house fire in Mill Creek Delaware with The Minquas Fire Co. During the operation the floor collapsed and David fell through the floor from the second floor to the first floor. He sustained 2nd and 3rd degree burns on approx 10% of his body. His burns are on his ankles, hands, neck, ears, stomach and back. He is currently intubated and medicated to keep him comfortable until he can have his airway assessed. David is in for a long road of recovery. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.
Praying for a Speedy recovery, help for the family and God's peace as they all get through this.
Praying for you 🙏 my brother in blue. God will help you 🙏 through this. Be strong.
Thank you God for healing David & for him to continue to be a firemen.
Thank you for putting your life on the line..prayers for a complete recovery!
Sending prayers for healing and no pain!
My thoughts and prayers are with you all. May God lead the medical teams and heal Captain Smiley.
Wishing this hero complete healing.
Prayers for FF Smiley , May God Bless !
Sending prayers for David's full and speedy recovery also prayers for his family and friends.
Prayers on the way. God Bless and keep him.
God bless him and help him recover!

industry_corpus2: Safety Management


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Here are some snazzy birthday facts about 29th of February 1976 that no one tells you about. Don’t wait a minute longer and jump in using the content links below. Average read time of 10 minutes. Enjoy!
What day was my birthday Feb 29, 1976?
February 29, 1976 was a Sunday and it was the 60th day of the year 1976. It was the 9th Sunday of that year. The next time you can reuse your old 1976 calendar will be in 2032. Both calendars will be exactly the same! This is assuming you are not interested in the dates for Easter and other irregular holidays that are based on a lunisolar calendar.
There are 314 days left before your next birthday. You will be 44 years old when that day comes. There have been 15,757 days from the day you were born up to today. If you’ve been sleeping 8 hours daily since birth, then you have slept a total of 5,252 days or 14.38 years. You spent 33% of your life sleeping. Since night and day always follow each other, there were precisely 534 full moons after you were born up to this day. How many of them did you see? The next full moon that you can see will be on May 18 at 21:13:00 GMT – Saturday.
Fun stat: Your first one billion seconds (1,000,000,000) happened sometime on November 7, 2007.
If a dog named Vitek - a Pyrenean Shepherd breed, was born on the same date as you then it will be 192 dog years old today. A dog’s first human year is equal to 15 dog years. Dogs age differently depending on breed and size. When you reach the age of 6 Vitek will be 40 dog years old. From that point forward a small-sized dog like Vitek will age 4 dog years for every human year.
Gordie Howe of the then Hartford Whalers makes NHL history as he scores his 800th goal.
Svend Robinson becomes the first member of the Canadian House of Commons to come out as gay.
What does my birthday February 29, 1976 mean?
Your birthday numbers 2, 29, and 1976 reveal that your Life Path number is 9. It represents selflessness, forgiveness and creativity. You are the philanthropist, humanitarian, socially conscious, and are deeply concerned about the state of the world.
The following celebrities also have the same life path number: Clara Schønfeld, Esther Anderson, M. G. Ramachandran, Kristin Scott Thomas, Akira Emoto, Topi Sorsakoski, Sylvester McCoy, Alba Riquelme, Duff McKagan, Harry Ferguson.
What is the birthday horoscope for Feb 29, 1976?
The Western zodiac or sun sign of a person born on February 29 is Pisces ♓ (The Fish) – a mutable sign with Water as Western element. The ruling planet is Neptune – the planet of dreams and imagination. According to the ancient art of Chinese astrology (or Eastern zodiac), Dragon is the mythical animal and Fire is the Eastern element of a person born on February 29, 1976.
Fun fact: The birth flower for 29th February 1976 is Violet for modesty.
What is the Love Match for Feb 29, 1976?
When it comes to love and relationship, you are most compatible with a person born on April 4, 2005. You have a Love Match compatibility score of +154. Imagine being in love with your soul mate. On the negative side, you are most incompatible with a person born on August 25, 1968. Your incompatibility score is -127. You’ll be like a cat and a dog on a love-hate relationship. Arf-arf, I want to bite you. Meow-meow, stay away from me!
I do not know how you feel about this, but you were a male ♂ in your last earthly incarnation. You were born somewhere around the territory of USA North-Central approximately on 500. Your profession was preacher, publisher, scribbler of ancient inscriptions.
How many babies were born on February 29, 1976?
Base on the data published by the United Nations Population Division, an estimated 121,620,578 babies were born throughout the world in the year 1976. The estimated number of babies born on 29th February 1976 is 332,297. That’s equivalent to 231 babies every minute. Try to imagine if all of them are crying at the same time.
What is the popular baby name on 29 Feb 1976?
Here’s a quick list of all the fun birthday facts about February 29, 1976. Celebrities, famous birthdays, historical events, and past life were excluded.
Try another birth date of someone you know or try the birthday of these celebrities: October 13, 1923 – Cyril Shaps, English actor (d. 2003); June 30, 1983 – Patrick Wolf, English singer-songwriter; February 21, 1996 – Sophie Turner, English actress.


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Removes impaction plug from follical to help prevent future breakouts and relieve congestion.
May be applied over the face or to zones experiencing breakouts and congestion.
At night apply a thin layer of Dermalogica Overnight Clearing Gel all over cleansed face and allow to absorb.
In the morning wash off with Dermalogica Clearing Skin Wash, then for maximum treatment results apply Dermalgica Clearing Mattifier to breakout prone areas.
Salicylic Acid sloughs off pore clogging skin cells to inhibit development of further breakouts.
Niacinamide and Biotin combine with Zinc Gluconate, Yeast Extract, Caffeine and Nordihydroguaiaretic Acid to inhibit overactive sabaceous gland activity, purify to promote skin clarity and help calm irritation brought on by breakouts.
Naturally antiseptic Tea Tree Oil and Rosemary inhibit bacteria while Spirea Ulmaria Extract stimulates the skin`s natural anti-bacterial agents.
Green Tea soothes while Hyaluronic Acid hydrates.


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I am a video designer and After Effects animator and editor based in London, UK. Specialising in video design for theatre and live music & music videos. I also make video art and VJ when I have the time between freelancing.
I graduated in 2007 with a BA in Graphic Design and shortly after joined the team at Peter Anderson Studios where I cut my teeth on a wide variety of work including title-sequences, branding, public art and websites.
After 3 years there I decided I wanted to focus more on video and animation and have been a happy freelancer ever since. I love music and making content for live performances such as dance & theatre but I also still enjoy coming back to more traditional animation and compositing, especially if it is for a good cause.