Emily's Maids mission is to provide above average cleaning with below average pricing. The story on why this was our mission started in 2011 when I founded Emily's Maid after trying to help a fellow maid service owner.
In 2011 Maid 2 Order was a relatively new home cleaning service struggling to get customers. They were less expensive than my maid service. They needed more cash flow; thus they needed more customers. I thought why not forward our cost-conscious cleaning leads to his service. Unfortunately, they did not survive due to lack of cash flow. I later discovered it was not so much lack of customers. They merely were not charging what they were worth. Anyway, I thought why not start a lower cost maid service for more cost-conscious clientele we encounter. I knew profitability challenges awaited. However, I felt it could be done. I started with the mission of cutting costs wherever I could. And I successfully found ways other maid services were not doing!
First, Emily's Maids would not have all the bells and whistles that more premium services offered. We would be a lean, mean, cleaning machine! One major cost saver was leveraging third world labor for such tasks as customer service, running operations, web design, or any task that could be done remotely. However, we found that to provide sufficient value to our customers we could not cut as many costs as I wanted. For example, Emily's Maids forwent insurance at the beginning with the idea that if something went wrong the customer's homeowners insurance would still protect them. Even though, and fortunately, no major accidents had occurred, I decided to have insurance. We are now insured for $1,000,000.00. Overall, we've done a great job controlling costs to leverage better pricing.
Second, we nearly eliminated marketing costs by 1) referring the cost-conscious customers from my premium maid service to Emily's Maids for free, 2) having semi-respectable search engine optimization (SEO) skills, and 3) relying more and more on word of mouth. First, when a caller says you are too expensive, my staff recommends Emily's Maids. It is nice to be still able to take care of all housecleaning seeking clientele. Second, being able to appear on the first page of Google's search engine for free is a tremendous boost for business. Finally, as we grow more, we are continually receiving more word or mouth. A heartfelt thank you for our awesome customers that are bragging about us! We appreciate you so much!! Utilizing free marketing, dollars otherwise spent on marketing can be reinvested in the business to provide more value. With Emily's Maids, the cost savings are passed on to our customers.
Third, Emily's Maids modus operandi is based on a proven system refined for years before. Adapting much of how we do business at my first maid service allowed Emily's Maids to run smoothly forgoing costly newbie mistakes that plague new ventures. From day one we were producing incredible results from talented cleaning staff that our customers were singing our praise. If we have the privilege to serve you, we ask for your praise and feedback. You will receive an email after each cleaning giving you the opportunity to rank our maids. Please do because your feedback determines the raises of our cleaners. You have a say in how we do business!
Having been in the industry for over 14 years since this writing, I've seen house cleaning services come and go. The #1 reason for failure is not pricing sufficiently enough to maintain operations. Emily's Maids balances lower cost with maintaining operations and providing an excellent home cleaning service. If you find lower pricing it will probably be from a cleaning service that has a) not been in business for long or b) are evading taxes by illegally hiring contract labor instead of employees. At Emily's Maids, I am committed to doing things the right way for our customers. So if you want a great house cleaning professional at a reasonable price, give us a call. We'd love to clean your home!
Creating a service that adds to peoples' happiness!
The benefit of owning a business is you can focus on what you love to do. If you love it, it's not work. If a task seems like work to me, I hire someone more talented to do it.
Their dedication to taking care of our customers and our reputation as a business is inspirational! I am lucky to have the right people at Emily's Maids.
Each year we hold a large, family event. Usually taking everyone to an amusement or water park. We also have Christmas parties, Halloween parties, and anything my office staff comes up with. We occasionally have wine Fridays for the crews. Once the day is done, they come back to the office and hang out, joke around while having wine or beer.
Finding the right people. We go above and beyond during the hiring process to find the right people. Our business relies on our people and our people on the company. The effort we make during our hiring process pays dividends.
Firing a bad customer is OK. Firing difficult clients allows businesses to provide better services. Therefore as a business owner, you owe it to your good customers to fire the bad ones.
How do I determine who to let go? The 98/2 rule: 2% of customers are responsible for 98% of the problems.
Letting the 2% go allows your employees to reallocate their time to serve the other 98% better; your good customers.
Letting go the bad 2% improves employee moral 98%. Happy employees lead to consistent, quality services while preventing costly turnover.
Letting the 2% go just makes your life so much better.
When a customer is continually taking up my staff's time (and patience) with unnecessary hassles and complaints, then it's time to find the best way to fire them.
Don't give up. The first two years of starting a home cleaning business are the hardest as you build a solid customer base. From my experience, the maid services that survive the two-year mark tend to succeed. So my advice is to make sure you have the fund to survive the first two years.


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Some Things I Miss the Most
Erica Scalise, projects editor emerita, FCRH '20, reflects on all the things she misses the most about New York City. (Courtesy of Erica Scalise/The Fordham Ram)
Erica Scalise, Projects Editor Emerita
I didn't know that the last time I rode the subway into Manhattan would be the last time. It was one of those unseasonably pleasant nights where the sun sets all buttery and warm on the city like a melting creamsicle — the kind that stops rush hour traffic in its tracks and temporarily colors every Manhattan office a soupy orange.
I left my apartment on Arthur Avenue to do that weirdly indiscriminate not quite a jog but more than a stroll walk to the subway — the one you inevitably find yourself doing all of the time because you learned to walk this way early on and you're stuck like this now.
In your lifetime you will see close to 29,000 sunsets, many of which will light the sky a clementine orange and smell like hot garbage and feel like coming home, but you will likely forget most of them. If you live in New York City for 50 years, you will ride the subway approximately 26,000 times and get where you need to go, without interruption, maybe ten of those. Most of these too will feel like white noise in the background of your tiny world.
I keep feeling invaded by those classist social media posts about the people who stayed home and read books and cooked meals, about how joy isn't canceled and laughter isn't canceled and how I'm somehow supposed to feel compelled to start baking bread because of this.
Yes, I could bake bread while cogitating on all of the ways I could possibly write about New York. I could remain painstakingly hopeful or possibly even amass enough sentimentality to absolve this state of listlessness that lives with me most, if not all, of the time.
But I don't want to make a sourdough starter. I don't want to take up running or even pretend to like it at all and I'm tired of peeling back layers of myself that were formed in a city where I'm suddenly not.
I want to wake up to hiccupy rain drops on my fire escape, the colossally fake coffee cup atop the Simon's Deli sign, to walk past the "tattoos, tattoos, tattoos" recording and watch the sunset absorb into that one stained glass window at the 4 train station.
If you've ever walked up the winding path where the sun meets the yellow "Fordham Center" sign, that's what my heart looks like. I didn't always know this and I think I realized it kind of late in the game, ceding my affection to a myriad of "big apple" cliches — the concrete coils of the Guggenheim, the paint-chipped pillars of the Williamsburg bridge and that one mini donut place in Chelsea Market that lets you roll the donuts in 20 different kinds of sugar.
I want to wake up in the bedroom of my first apartment that saw me fall in and out of love with the wrong people, the same place that saw me change outfits four times on any given morning, watched me dye and cut my hair new every month, saw more cruelty and capability in myself than I ever knew I had and still allowed me to return each day, forgiving of the previous night's antics.
As time passes, I even find myself mourning the annoying things — like how dining out means being practically seated in the lap of the person at the next table over, how the garbage truck comes almost exclusively at 2 a.m. or how you do a full body shiver every time you're baptized with a drop of dirty water from a building above.
When I first moved to New York for college, my cousin told me the city's biggest draw was never having to do the same thing two days in a row, justifying this newness as good enough of a reason for people like us to never leave.
From time to time I put thought into the aforementioned "us." In the early days, when that newness felt entirely graceless, I became highly convinced that New York was merely composed of haves and have nots and that for every time I got on the uptown 6 when I meant to go downtown, I deservedly belonged to the latter.
Following my most prized days though, when the absolute fullness of one week seemed to spill effortlessly into the next, I began making small, but notable changes. I stuck to the right side of the sidewalk at all times and quickly learned that a fresh bagel is never toasted. I ate old food from bodegas, pushed my way toward nice standing spots on the subway and became cognizant enough to never commit the cardinal sin of pole-hogging. As time went on, I became increasingly self-aware, I became bolder and sharper, sometimes a little too bold, but oftentimes more kind, especially in moments that required I made the right decisions rather than the easy ones.
On that final subway ride back up to the Bronx, I expected I'd be traveling how I arrived: alone. At the end of a long night, I stood weepy on the platform waiting for a D train for over 20 minutes, clutching a single container of roasted red pepper hummus, guilelessly hoping someone would find me as if this were a movie, perhaps a bildungsroman in which I, the protagonist, with a lack of post-grad plans, was having a breakdown despite the fact that I'd finally managed to take the correct train after all of these years.
In a city of 8 million people, I found one of my best friends at the 125th street station.
"Oh my god, what are you doing here?" she asked, arms outstretched.
"What do you mean what am I doing here?" I responded senselessly.
I was there because somewhere along the way, I somehow became one of those people — a part of the collective "us." I got sucked in and it worked on me and now everywhere else is just spoiled background noise.
"I went on a date and I don't know what I'm doing now, or ever, and so I bought roasted red pepper hummus to compensate."
"Babe," she said.
"I know. I know," I mouthed as we piled into a packed subway car, riding uptown through the night.
Erica Scalise
Erica Scalise,
One Response to "Some Things I Miss the Most"
t'Jacques on May 23rd, 2020 10:30 pm
Brilliant writing on this one, as usual. I love the narrative portion at the end. I'd like to see a book of essays like these written by Fordham students about how COVID-19 disrupted their senior plans.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The blind men and the elephant (wall relief in Northeast Thailand).
Once a king invited six blind men to examine an elephant. The first felt his trunk and said, "An elephant is like a tree branch." The second felt his leg and concluded, "An elephant is like a palm tree," while the third felt the elephant's belly and said, "Elephants must be like walls." The fourth felt its tail and said, "You're all wrong. Elephants are like ropes," while the fifth concluded elephants were like pipes because he had felt its tusk. The last blind man, feeling only the elephant's ear said they were all wrong. "Elephants are like giant fans!" The king was greatly amused by it all.
Many people use this story to describe religion and spirituality. God is like the elephant and all religions, like the blind men, have some truth, so it really doesn't matter what you believe. Everyone is correct.
Do all paths lead to God? Most people have smoke detectors in their homes and believe they will wake us up in case of a fire, but when was the last time the batteries were tested? That's a dangerous assumption.
There are at least two major problems with the assumption, all paths lead to God. First, the person making that assumption takes the place of the king. "I'm not blind. I can see the whole elephant!" Worse, he won't be able to test his assumption until it's too late.
I loved my grand, old sailboat and when I set sail on a long-distance voyage, I choose a compass course and blindly believe I will arrive at a distant port if I stay on that heading. However, I won't really know if my choice is correct until I arrive. The port will be there or it won't. That can make for some sleepless nights! I would feel much better if there was a way of testing my assumption along the way. I could rest easy if I passed an island or met a ship coming back from the port I was aiming for. Is there anything in the world of religion like that?
Unfortunately, religious teachers are like blind men describing an elephant. They share their conclusions and we are expected to blindly believe them.
Christianity is completely different. The other teachers taught and died. Jesus died and taught and therein lies the difference. Jesus is the king who saw the whole elephant.


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HomeCharity's Shell Corporation Draws Russian Scrutiny
Charity's Shell Corporation Draws Russian Scrutiny
Anthony WeissJuly 16, 2008
A shell company set up by one of America's largest Jewish charities, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, is on a list compiled by the Russian State Tax Authority as part of its efforts to root out tax fraud.
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Real Estate Company, or AREC, a Cyprus-based commercial holding company that controls much of the JDC's real estate in Russia and in other former Soviet countries, appeared on a list recently posted on the Web site of the St. Petersburg division of the Russian State Tax Authority. A Russian embassy official said that the list is composed of companies operating in Russia that have not earned a profit in the past two-and-a-half years and are thus being scrutinized in case they are hiding profits or involved in illicit financial transactions.
JDC officials say that the listing is simply a routine technicality and that AREC is perfectly legal.
"They're just serving notice to us that we will be audited in September. It's not a big thing," said Asher Ostrin, the JDC's director of programs in the former Soviet Union.
Yevgeniy Khorishko, an official at the Russian embassy, supported the JDC's stand, saying that the listing is a routine matter and that it implies no wrongdoing or legal peril.
While the JDC may work out the problems with AREC, the difficulties compound troubles that the JDC has had recently in Eastern Europe. The JDC and local Jewish organizations have been embroiled in a number of disputes that have spilled into the press and even into court. For some local community leaders, AREC appears to be part of a broader approach by the JDC in which the interests of the local community are determined by the JDC's foreign offices.
"The AREC company, as far as I understand, is a part of the strategy of the JDC, which, to my opinion, is the wrong strategy from the very beginning," said Mikhail Chlenov, secretary general of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress. "Instead of actually fulfilling the mission which American Jewry trusted JDC to do — lending support and help from the American Jewish community to overseas communities and restoring the local community in the USSR — instead of that, the Joint under Mr. Ostrin started to build its own empire."
According to Ostrin, AREC grew out of efforts to make sure that Russian Jewish communities can support themselves in the long run. The JDC's strategy has been to establish Jewish community centers and use the income from rentals and fees to cover the expenses of running and maintaining the buildings.
The concept is a common one among Jewish community centers in America. The difficulty, JDC officials say, is that Russian laws prohibit nor-for-profits from any activity that generates income. In response, Ostrin says, JDC officials established a commercial holding company in 2006 on the island of Cyprus to run and maintain its properties. Ownership of the JDC's properties has been transferred to the holding company. Tenants — both Jewish and non-Jewish — have paid their rent to the holding company.
Four former JDC senior staffers, who declined to be named for fear of reprisals, say that AREC sparked a heated internal debate. According to these sources and to internal documents and e-mails shared with the Forward, a number of JDC employees, as well as Russian community leaders, objected to establishing the offshore company. These sources say that they and other critics of AREC protested that an offshore shell company would look suspicious to Russian authorities and that it could damage efforts to build partnerships with local communities. The appearance of AREC on the Russian tax list has revived that suspicion in some quarters.
"It was strange," said Leonid Kolton, head of a JDC-sponsored welfare agency that rents space in the JDC's St. Petersburg building. "I'm not in business, so I don't know if it happens all the time or it's something strange. Maybe [AREC] needs some time to develop its commercial activities. But it doesn't look nice."
Ostrin said that internal opposition to AREC was minimal and that any questions were answered.
"Everyone else understood that the buildings could never be self-sufficient if there was no way to get income," Ostrin said.
Anthony Weiss


It might be useful to look at Gerz's works as propositions.
Whether incomprehensibly idiosyncratic or utterly banal, the assemblage of voices, like any oral history, forms a fragmented picture of an historic moment. The intention driving Gerz' recent public projects is to literally make people speak, in as many languages as possible.
Gerz… creates a work that lives and dies. Its physical manifestation is temporary, but accompanied by the progressive revelation of an immaterial dimension, which essentially comes to expression through language.
The billboard is realized for the project I Am You – Künstler gegen Gewalt (Artists Against Violence) sponsored by the Goethe-Institut in Munich. Following venues in Odessa, Antwerp and Munich, the work is shown in more than 90 cities on four continents. The billboard shows the words People Speak in thirty different languages, with each color field linking two words from different languages.
Two editions of the same title are realised on the basis of the project (844, 846).
The same work was realised again in Basel in 2001 (878).


Pre-diabetes is the condition that happens before diabetes is actually diagnosed.
You may be told by your doctor that your sugar is a little high and that you should watch what you eat and exercise more, that you should come back in a few months for a follow up visit, or that maybe you need to start a medication to help control your blood glucose. What you need to know is that for many years before you actually see that your glucose level is high, your pancreas has been working overtime to pump out enough insulin to cover your daily requirements (both the basal--or all day long needs--and the extra needs at meals), and/or that you have been developing a resistance to the insulin that you are producing. This type of diabetes, Type 2, frequently develops later in life and is often associated with being overweight or obese. The good news is that it can be reversed or you can at least delay the progression of the disease with lifestyle changes.
1 in 3 children born today will develop diabetes during their lifetime.
29.1 Million people in the United States have diabetes (9.3% of the population). Of those, 27.8% are undiagnosed.
6.1% of Americans aged 65 or older have pre-diabetes.
The estimated costs related to diabetes in the United States for 2012 are $245 Billion*.
The complications of diabetes affect the entire body, from head to toe, including the eyes, heart, kidneys, and extremities (literally the toes). Diabetes is a 24/7 disease, where you are constantly required to monitor your blood sugar to keep it in a range to prevent hyper and hypoglycemia, both of which could land you in the hospital.
When you see your doctor it is routine to have your fasting blood glucose (FPG) checked in your blood work.
Pre-diabetes is defined as a FBG of 100 mg/dL to 125 mg/dL, or a Hemoglobin A1c 5.7% to 6.4%. HgA1c is the average of your blood glucose levels over the past 3 months, and is normally checked only if you have had high blood glucose levels.
If you have any of the risk factors for diabetes but you don't show signs of diabetes, it is still a good idea to follow a healthy diet, be at a healthy weight and exercise accordingly.
General guidelines suggest a diet low in simple sugars, processed foods, saturated and trans fats.
Plan a diet full of fresh fruits (in moderation because of the natural sugars), vegetables, high fiber complex carbohydrates, lean proteins and meats, low fat or non-fat dairy products and healthy fats such as olive and canola oil.
These guidelines are not new, so why is there a fast food store, bakery and pizza place on every block? Why is a salad $10.00 but 2 slices with a soda only $4.00, or a bagel with butter only $2.50. Are we just being lazy or is it truly difficult and nearly impossible to change our habits and lifestyles? The reality is that if it was easy people would "Just Do It". But it's not easy and you can't flip a switch to turn it on. It will take time, energy, motivation, strength, support and persistence.
Start with one small step today and see what you can do...you deserve it!
Directions: Preheat the oven to 350 F. Spray the muffin wells with non-stick cooking spray. Whisk together the dry ingredients in one bowl. Whisk together the wet ingredients and the apple in another bowl. Fold the dry into the wet, being careful not to over-mix. Spoon batter into the muffin wells and bake for 25 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean. Transfer the muffin tin to a cooling rack for 10 minutes before removing the muffins.
Note: To cook the buttercup squash, use a large sturdy chef's knife to split the squash in half. Scoop out the seeds (wash, dry and roast separately for a yummy treat). Rub the flesh with a little canola oil and place cut side down on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake at 375 F for 45-60 minutes or until soft. Cool, then scoop out the flesh.
Directions: Place cut vegetables in a roasting pan and coat with olive oil (about ¼ cup). Cook for 40-50 minutes, at 400 F, and take out and stir a few times during the cooking so they don't stick to the pan. Season with sea salt and pepper as desired.
Call or email today for a free session to see if Wellness Coaching or Nutritional Counseling is right for you.


What Happens if I Abandon My Home and Let It Foreclose?
You might be tempted to pack your suitcases, call the moving van and just walk away from your home if you know there's no possible way you can keep up with the mortgage payments. This won't terminate all your financial responsibilities to the property, however. In fact, it's possible that your lender might not bother to foreclose and you could end up with a zombie home on your hands, along with a host of ongoing financial responsibilities and a lot more debt.
Foreclosure isn't a speedy process. Although it can vary by state law, your lender has to take certain steps first, even if you abandon the property. If you stop making mortgage payments, a month or two probably will pass while your lender reaches out to you to find out when it can expect payment. Next you'll receive an official notice that you're in default. The notice usually gives you another month to pay up before the lender begins foreclosure proceedings -- which typically take longer if you live in a judicial foreclosure state where the lender must go through the court system to take your property.
In some states, you can take advantage of a redemption period, sometimes as long as a year, after your property is foreclosed. You can try to sell the property during this time, refinance it, or otherwise figure out a way to pay off the mortgage. In most states, you're not legally obligated to leave the premises until this redemption period has expired and the foreclosure is complete.
Title to the property remains in your name until the foreclosure process is done. This means you're still responsible for property taxes and homeowners association fees. You'll probably want to keep up with insurance premiums as well, because if anyone should get hurt on the property, you're legally liable even though you're no longer living there. The potential for injury becomes greater if you're not maintaining the house, such as by clearing ice off the sidewalks and cutting back overhanging tree limbs.
Abandoning your house means you also run the risk of vandalism or squatters moving in and tearing the place apart, particularly if you don't remain nearby to keep an eye on the property. If the house loses significant value due to neglect, you probably can forget any hope that it will eventually sell for enough to cover the mortgage balance you owe. You can be sued for this deficiency balance in many states – the difference between what you owe on the mortgage and the ultimate sales price. The property might fetch more money if you stay put and maintain it, so any deficiency balance would be less.
The period of time between your last mortgage payment and a completed foreclosure can be even longer if your lender doesn't initiate foreclosure proceedings right away. Mortgage lenders only can deal with the cost of so many foreclosures at once, and after they have your property back, they become responsible for these ongoing expenses until the property is sold. If the property is disrepair because you've walked away from it, this decreases the likelihood that the lender is going to rust to take possession, because there's a question as to whether selling it would even be worth investing in the costs of foreclosure. The property then becomes a zombie house, abandoned by everyone – and you'll still be responsible for ongoing costs.
If you feel you must abandon your property, keep in frequent contact with the lender for updates on the foreclosure process so you know when you're no longer legally liable for costs associated with the property. Another option is to offer to give the property back with a deed in lieu of foreclosure, sparing the lender the cost and trouble of the foreclosure process and getting the house out of your name sooner rather than later. Otherwise, you might want to stay in place until the last minute, essentially living rent-free without a mortgage payment and protecting the property until it's officially turned back over to the lender.


Here we have two of the most respected names in the hosting community: InMotion Hosting and Bluehost. Many HostingAdvice team members have used various products from each of these providers and come away with excellent experiences. Bluehost is arguably the better fit for first-time site owners, but InMotion's support is second to none. They're neck and neck in the VPS and dedicated niches — touting market-leading hardware, high uptime, and supreme reliability overall. Compare for yourself below.
Offering a wider range of services than most — including shared, dedicated, VPS, and even WordPress-specific plans — InMotion Hosting features a great combination of industry-leading hardware, always-there support, and mass scalability for all hosting needs.
InMotion Hosting has nice SSD drives on its shared plans, which give an added speed boost to your site. The company's customer service and reputation are excellent in the shared space, though InMotion tends to be a bit higher priced than some competitors. If a little extra speed is worth a few dollars more a month, then InMotion is a good choice for you.
In testing InMotion servers and account backends ourselves, there are a few things InMotion does that we especially appreciate. First and foremost, we like to see free and automated backups included with each plan, as data security is vitally important. The company also offers zero-downtime site transfers, which makes switching to InMotion or between its hosting plans a breeze. Finally, multiple datacenters and the ability to choose which will house your site appeals to speed freaks like us.
Regardless of your hosting needs, InMotion seems to have your bases covered. If you value great hardware and support, all at a reasonable price, we highly recommend InMotion as your next host.
InMotion Hosting offers an excellent business-class shared hosting plan. While carrying a higher price tag than some other cheap hosts, it has a very nice list of features to help justify the extra cost.
For the IT crowd in the audience, you'll appreciate SSH access, as well as support for PHP, Ruby, Perl, Python, WP-CLI, and other popular languages. You'll also appreciate the 20-times faster speed, which comes from all-SSD storage and your choice of datacenter locations. You needn't worry about data security, as InMotion plans include automatic data backups.
For the rest of us, we can appreciate the convenience of the free website transfers and 24/7 US-based support. A free domain registration and WordPress website builder with eCommerce support are also appealing.
The overall package and business-class hardware make InMotion's shared hosting a great choice for businesses or those looking for a little higher-end hardware. And, as one of the few remaining independently owned hosting providers left on the market, InMotion has taken every effort to remain cost-competitive.
FREE SSD storage makes your site load up to 20x faster!
InMotion Hosting offers amazingly fast and reliable dedicated hosting on market-leading hardware — making it an easy choice for anyone seeking a premium dedicated server host. From free SSDs to a fanatical support team, InMotion has all the bases covered for both small-scale and large-scale operations.
Unlike some hosts, InMotion gives SSH and root access to its servers. Each plan is fully managed and comes with between two and four hours of dedicated time with a system administrator, which is an excellent help in getting your site configured to meet your needs. Each server is also set up with free cPanel and WHM for easy management.
Plenty of CPU power, RAM, and storage come with each plan, as well as lots of dedicated IP addresses. Perhaps our favorite feature of InMotion is the company's zero-downtime, rebootless kernel updates, which are partially the reason for InMotion's superb 99.999% uptime.
InMotion has a 30-day money-back guarantee on their dedicated plans, which is fairly rare and just another reason you can't go wrong selecting the company as your dedicated host.
Boasting market-leading VPS hardware, slick management software, and free SSD drives and backups, InMotion Hosting offers the most attractive VPS plans you'll find anywhere.
Each VPS plan comes with free SSD storage arranged in a RAID-6 array, which is incredibly fast and secure. Each of the company's plans also come with an awesome amount of RAM for the server cost, so the speed-to-dollar ratio is high with this host.
InMotion's VPS packages run on the CentOS Linux operating system and all feature a license for cPanel and WHM, making it super easy to resell some unused server resources.
InMotion's reputation for uptime is second-to-none, with a solid track record as a large-scale VPS host and a friendly support team available at any time.
Lastly, InMotion has a 90-day money-back guarantee and offers a choice of datacenters, which are nice customer-centric features. The company's support is top-notch and available via chat, email, and phone. We highly recommend you check out InMotion if you are looking for a VPS with great hardware and reseller options at a low price.
If you're aiming to build a dynamic, user-oriented website — an active blog, a photo gallery, an eCommerce store — check out InMotion Hosting. The InMotion team is extremely knowledgeable in the hosting industry, and they're attuned to the ever-evolving needs of the end-user — from the ultra-novice to the über-experienced. Evidence of the team's attention to user needs can be found in BoldGrid: the in-house-built website builder platform that was received so well by the market that InMotion decided to spin the web builder off into its own company.
BoldGrid functions on top of WordPress, bringing intuitiveness and ease of use to a content management environment notorious for bringing beginners frustration. With hundreds of templates and a nice WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, getting started with a new site is a fairly quick and easy process. You can play around with the plethora of site templates, preview the site that could soon be yours, and get a feel for which look most closely matches your intended design or brand. Ready to start selling online? Stress-free integration with PayPal, Authorize.net, and 2Checkout makes starting that online store a simple endeavor.
BoldGrid comes free on all of InMotion's shared hosting packages, which come with all the essential hosting goodies and some of the best support money can buy. Each plan offers powerful hardware, a free domain name, and free data backups — that last one being an extremely valuable feature. InMotion does have lengthy signup periods for their best deals, but they offer a 90-day money-back guarantee to help you feel confident that they are the right host for you.
Having personally worked with the teams behind these hosting brands, and having used their servers personally, these are easily two of our favorite hosts to talk about. We're not alone. WordPress has actually endorsed Bluehost for their WordPress offerings, and InMotion's site builder, BoldGrid (which sits atop WordPress), was met with such rave reviews that the team decided to spin the builder off into an independent brand. Bluehost and InMotion are innovators in web hosting, making them both worthwhile partners in your mission to innovate online.


A snowmobile trail in Groton, New Hampshrie.
Snowmobile on a track on a frozen morass with a mountain and a blue sky in background, picture from the Northern Sweden.
Snowmoblie tracks and footprints in illuminated snow leading into shadow.
snowmobile trail crossing with a sign in the middle, picture from the Northern Sweden.
Racer snowmobile on a snowy mountainside. State Nature Reserve in Adygea, Russia, February 2, 2012.


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import { google } from "googleapis"
import { ID } from "./cache/types"
import ContactsApiClient from "./contacts"
import db from "./db"
import { mock, testAccount } from "./testHelpers"

jest.mock("googleapis")

let listMock: jest.Mock

let accountId: ID

beforeEach(() => {
  listMock = jest.fn()

  mock(google.people).mockImplementation(() => {
    return {
      people: {
        connections: { list: listMock }
      }
    } as any
  })
  const account = testAccount("jack@test.com")
  accountId = account.id
})

it("calls list", async () => {
  listMock.mockResolvedValue({
    data: {
      connections: [
        {
          emailAddresses: [
            { value: "ben.reitman@gmail.com", displayName: "Ben Reitman" }
          ]
        }
      ],
      nextSyncToken: "xe987nsds"
    }
  })
  const client = new ContactsApiClient({} as any)

  await client.downloadContacts(accountId)

  expect(listMock).toHaveBeenCalledWith({
    personFields: "names,emailAddresses",
    resourceName: "people/me",
    requestSyncToken: true,
    syncToken: null
  })
})

it("inserts each user's connection into the google_connections database", async () => {
  listMock.mockResolvedValue({
    data: {
      connections: [
        {
          emailAddresses: [{ value: "ben.reitman@gmail.com" }],
          names: [{ displayName: "Ben Reitman" }]
        }
      ],
      nextSyncToken: "xe987nsds"
    }
  })
  const client = new ContactsApiClient({} as any)

  await client.downloadContacts(accountId)

  const result = db.prepare("select * from google_connections").all()

  expect(result).toEqual([
    {
      id: accountId,
      account_id: accountId,
      host: "gmail.com",
      mailbox: "ben.reitman",
      name: "Ben Reitman"
    }
  ])
})

it("should allow for a contact's name to be null", async () => {
  listMock.mockResolvedValue({
    data: {
      connections: [
        { emailAddresses: [{ value: "ben.reitman@gmail.com" }], names: [] }
      ],
      nextSyncToken: "xe987nsds"
    }
  })
  const client = new ContactsApiClient({} as any)

  await client.downloadContacts(accountId)

  const result = db.prepare("select * from google_connections").all()

  expect(result).toEqual([
    {
      id: accountId,
      account_id: accountId,
      host: "gmail.com",
      mailbox: "ben.reitman",
      name: null
    }
  ])
})

it("skips contacts whose email addresses cannot be parsed", async () => {
  listMock.mockResolvedValue({
    data: {
      connections: [{ emailAddresses: [{ value: "Ben Reitman" }], names: [] }],
      nextSyncToken: "xe987nsds"
    }
  })
  const client = new ContactsApiClient({} as any)

  await client.downloadContacts(accountId)

  const result = db.prepare("select * from google_connections").all()

  expect(result).toEqual([])
})

it("should include the syncToken when requesting from the API twice", async () => {
  listMock.mockResolvedValue({
    data: {
      connections: [
        {
          emailAddresses: [{ value: "ben.reitman@gmail.com" }],
          names: [{ displayName: "Ben Reitman" }]
        }
      ],
      nextSyncToken: "xe987nsds"
    }
  })
  const client = new ContactsApiClient({} as any)

  await client.downloadContacts(accountId)

  listMock.mockResolvedValue({
    data: {
      connections: [
        {
          emailAddresses: [
            { value: "ben.reitman@gmail.com", displayName: "Ben Reitman" }
          ]
        },
        {
          emailAddresses: [{ value: "ben@test.com", displayName: "Ben Reit" }],
          names: [{ displayName: "Ben Reitman" }]
        }
      ],
      nextSyncToken: "fe4vdopow"
    }
  })

  const result = db.prepare("select * from accounts").all()

  expect(result).toEqual([
    { id: accountId, email: "jack@test.com", Google_API_syncToken: "xe987nsds" }
  ])
})

afterEach(() => {
  jest.clearAllMocks()
  db.prepare("delete from accounts").run()
})

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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text:
Georgi Dimitrov () (2 May 1904 – 12 March 1979) was a Bulgarian composer. He was notable for composing the music for the national anthem of Bulgaria from 1947 until 1951, Republiko nasha, zdravey!. Other notable compositions including Foot and Cross, Kulak, and The Chervenkov Way.

Early life
Dimitrov was born to a Bulgarian family of Angelina and Dimitar Petrovi in Belogradchik, Bulgaria. His name was taken from the Gergyovden day (Saint George's Day), that occurred in the eve of his birth.

He spent his youth and teenage years in Belogradchik and Lom, where he studied at the famous Lom Pedagogical School. His initial interest for music came from his family; his father was a violinist and his mother was an excellent singer. This attracted him greatly to music and he started to learn to play the violin. Further development of his musical potential was carried out under the care and guidance of music teachers Belcho Belchev and especially Obreten Evstatiev.

Young Georgi's life was stormy and full of rumors. This is the life of an educated and sensitive young man who opposes public order irregularities and strives for a better life for people. This is not a "rallying rebellion" or "spontaneous" demonstration of "early-stage students", but an active and conscious struggle. His failure in it made him emigrate at 19 years old, and for many years he "has been wandering away from a foreign country". For some time he lived in Romania, then in Yugoslavia and finally - about 15 years in Poland, which became his second homeland. There he got his musical education and in direct contact with the culture of the Central European countries, he created a worldview, a culture and a strategy for his further personal and professional realization.

In the fall of 1927, Georgi Dimitrov became a student at the Warsaw Conservatory. His lecturers were the prominent Polish musicians Stanisław Kazuro, Kasimir Sikorsky, Grzegorz Fitelberg, Stanisław Viekhovich, and others, from whom he received a solid professional musical-theoretical training choral and symphonic conduction, harmony, polyphony, composition, voice production, violin. Of great importance for his prosperity is his communication with the then-head of the Polish music, Karol Szymanowski (1883-1970).

Georgi Dimitrov married the artist Lyuba Palikarova. This puts him in a new dilemma for family support, and therefore, alongside his studies at the conservatory, he started working as a high school music teacher in the town of Grueth. Thanks to the accumulated pedagogical experience, in 1931 he moved to Warsaw and became a teacher in one of the most famous high schools at the time- Stanislav Lorenz.
1934 occupies an important place in the life of the young musician because he graduates with honors the Conservatory; on the recommendation of Karol Shimanovski, the most famous Polish publishing house, Gebetner and Wolf, prints a scroll with "Three Bulgarian Folk Songs" ("Seyla is a Little Girl", "Ummrell Djerman" and "I Move, I Want"); he became a conductor of the Bulgarian Student Society "Hristo Botev" and a head of the chorus at the Polish boarding schools for young people without parents.

Led by his desire to gain more knowledge, the graduate teacher, conductor and composer began studying musicology at the Warsaw University. And the position of Chief Leader of Polish Youth Choirs gives him the exceptionally good opportunity to travel around the country and to discover and realize his managerial qualities that he has not suspected so far.

Career
In 1938, Georgi Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria, filled with ideas and business plans. The qualities of the 35-year-old musician do not go unnoticed and gradually he starts to "climb" on the steep music and public ladder. In this process an important role played the impressive success achieved by the man-made chamber choir - which mainly promotes the work of the Bulgarian composers, who regularly concerts "live" in Radio Sofia. His work as a music inspector at the Ministry of National Education and the Artistic Secretary of the Sofia Opera have confirmed him as a prospective conductor, composer and public figure with a high state feeling.

His rich personal, creative and managerial potential, Georgi Dimitrov, unfolds completely in the years after the end of the Second World War, when he headed the new state structure "Directorate for Music, Creativity and Performing Arts". It can be said that it is becoming a true "Ministry of Music", through which the state policy on the culture in the country was implemented. Under Georgi Dimitrov's leadership, an incredibly active and fruitful activity has developed. For this purpose, on his initiative, a large-scale prospective plan is being developed, carried out gradually in the coming years. I can not fail to mention his main accents:
- the creation of new state symphony orchestras - and, in this case, operas in Plovdiv, Varna, Rousse, Pleven, Bourgas, Shumen, Vidin, Vratsa;
- the introduction of "government procurement" practices into culture as an important stimulus for the creation of new musical works;
- the regulation of Bulgarian music as the main indicator in the repertoire of all music institutes in the country;
- to intensify the concert life in the country by increasing the percentage of the world's most prominent artists;
- turning the export of Bulgarian musicians to acting abroad as an element of state policy;
- the establishment of various types of national competitions for instrumentalists and singers, and the reviews of state symphony orchestras and operas;
- the creation of the State Folk Song and Dance Ensemble "Philip Kutev" and defining its role as an example of the rapid development of folklore art in the country;
- developing a concept of the important role of non-professional (amateur) art as a natural reserve and an integral part of the public phenomenon of musical art;
- systemic state support for young musicians and ballet dancers by participating in international competitions and raising their professional qualifications in the most renowned schools in Europe.

In this series a special place is occupied by Professor Georgi Dimitrov in 1951, choir-conductor specialty at the State Music Academy. For the needs of the choir-conducting education, the professor creates several teaching aids, among which the "Choral arts talks", the multi-volume "choir chorus" (in co-authorship) and others. Parallel to this, starting in 1949, for more than 15 years he has held "summer courses" for the improvement of the professional qualification of the choral conductors and especially of the teachers-choral conductors.

The Choir-conducting School of Prof. Georgi Dimitrov and his chore-conducting cadres are an important part of his "Golden Deposit" not only in the Bulgarian, but also in the world cultural treasury. He created a host of conductors-conductors, conductors-phenomena such as (in alphabetical order) Prof. Vassil Arnaudov, Prof. Veneta Vicheva, Varban Rangelov, Prof. Georgi Robev, Prof. Kiril Stefanov, Prof. Lilia Gyuleva, Lubomir Karoleev, Marin Tzonev, Acad. Hristo Nedyalkov, Acad. Valentin Bobevski, etc., whose art is recognized everywhere in the world. And one more thing - with an inner conviction, he won the "battle" to overcome the former discrimination of women regarding their participation in the "male" conducting profession. I would like to emphasize that for us - his students, he was not only a teacher but also a caring father,
Another important part of the contribution of Prof. Georgi Dimitrov in our national culture is his choral work. It is unclear how, in his incredibly large public engagement, he found strength and inspiration for the creation of choral songs. Unlike his most famous songs written in Poland ("Ummrell Djerman", "I Move, I Move", "Seyla e"), Bulgarians are characterized by their vitality, patriotism, optimism, ingenuity and captivating humor ("Flowering Lichko-lyric "," Dülger's Sword "," Evening Twilight "," Siniger's Wedding "," Spring of Me, "" Sword of the Lilac ", etc.). the first Bulgarian a cappella cantata "Kratka na Rodina", for children, girls,
I have tried to calculate how many hours is the working day of Prof. Georgi Dimitrov. By rough calculations it's about 20 hours! In the morning, he was getting up early and going to the directorate, then to lectures and every night - he was necessarily present at a concert in Bulgaria Hall, where he had a "reserved" place on the first row before the first lodge or a show to be accurately informed. There was a visit to the Club of the Union of Bulgarian Composers and at midnight hours ... composing! He had iron health and easily endured the enormous daily stress. He was a man with a strong sense of humor, which he used "sparingly," but "right on the spot." He loved to cook and I admit that I tasted more gullish than his one in Hungary! He was not speechless, but all his speeches were precise and constructive.

Since Prof. Georgi Dimitrov was a man with a well-respected personal dignity and an excellent manager, everyone was in touch with his expert assessments. It also helped him to oppose the supreme institutions, which often cost him the experience of negative emotions. With regular people, familiar and strange, he always communicated as an equal, without a drop of pride. He managed to welcome guests and create a fresh atmosphere.

The more the time progresses, the more he confirms the significance of the work of the artist, teacher and statesman Prof. Georgi Dimitrov. Despite the serious illness that has diminished his public activity during the last 15 years of his life, he never ceased to be interested in his problems and to give his wise advice about the development of Bulgarian musical art.

References

Bulgarian composers
1904 births
1979 deaths

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia