text:
District's quick action helps bring 1,500 jobs to the Jacksonville area
Published by Communications at September 29, 2016
PALATKA, Fla., Sept. 29, 2016 -- More than 1,000 jobs are headed to northeast Florida after Amazon announces the opening of its new fulfillment center. The St. Johns River Water Management District supported the move by quickly assessing and issuing environmental resource permits (ERP) for the 105-acre warehouse facility. The applicant and district employees remained committed to working collaboratively through the permitting process to achieve this positive result.
PALATKA, Fla., Sept. 29, 2016 — More than 1,000 jobs are headed to northeast Florida after Amazon announces the opening of its new fulfillment center. The St. Johns River Water Management District supported the move by quickly assessing and issuing environmental resource permits (ERP) for the 105-acre warehouse facility. The applicant and district employees remained committed to working collaboratively through the permitting process to achieve this positive result.
"By opening lines of communication with district technical staff, potential permitting obstacles are addressed early and keep small problems from becoming big problems," said St. Johns River Water Management District Executive Director Dr. Ann Shortelle. "We worked through technical challenges together over the course of several weeks and by the time the applicant submitted the formal application for the project, we were able to issue a permit in just a matter of days. By working through the permitting process thoroughly and expeditiously, we are supporting businesses looking to grow in the Sunshine State while also protecting water resources."
Published reports state that the $200 million distribution center will bring 1,500 jobs to Jacksonville over the next four years.
The permit issued by the district involved a redesign of a stormwater management system to accommodate the 105-acre warehouse on a vacant site located at I-295 and Duval Road.


Ultra telephoto 4x zoom lens with a focal length of 150-600 mm. Ideal for many types of photography such as sports, airplanes, birds and other distant objects. Equipped with a fast and precise USD (Ultrasonic Silent Drive) ultrasonic sharpening motor that ensures noiseless operation and high-speed AF (autofocus).
The lens consists of 20 elements stored in 13 groups. Three LD (Low Dispersion) glasses provide excellent optical correction and compensation of telephoto abberations. For taking pictures only by hand, there is the VC (Vibration Compensation) image stabilization system with a patented mechanism. The circular aperture creates beautiful background defocus effects. The precision processing structure minimizes lens movement when zooming and reduces the range extension tube, so that the lens has compact dimensions.
1,950 g (1,950 g) Done!
For shipping to other EU countries visit this page TAMRON SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD for Nikon. Für Versand nach Deutschland, besuchen Sie bitte TAMRON SP 150-600 mm F/5-6,3 Di VC USD für Nikon. Chcete doručit zboží do Česka? Prohlédněte si TAMRON SP 150-600mm f/5.0-6.3 Di VC USD pro Nikon. Chcete doručiť tovar na Slovensko? Prezrite si TAMRON SP 150-600mm F/5-6,3 Di VC USD pre Nikon. Für Versand nach Österreich, besuchen Sie bitte TAMRON SP 150-600 mm F/5-6,3 Di VC USD für Nikon. Magyarországra történő kiszállításért tekintse meg ezt a termékoldalt: TAMRON SP 150-600 mm F/5-6,3 Di VC USD Nikon.


Price Chopper Specialty Pharmacy focuses on being the highest quality provider of specialty pharmacy services to our payer partners. Our specialty programs have been designed to provide themost comprehensive medication management services that optimize clinical and financial outcomes.
Our team of highly skilled pharmacy professionals strives to deliver a patient and customer experience to help promote medication adherence, obtain prior approvals, ensure formulary compliance, and provide the highest level of member satisfaction. A key part of our successful patient management is our focus on adhering to and supporting payer clinical protocols and patient medication compliance.


My heart says yes to love!
Our Three Hearts Necklace comes to you in sterling silver and is on an adjustable length chain measuring approximately 15.5-17.5 inches. The tiny three hearts make up our featured pendant that measures approximately 3/4 inches wide. This silver heart necklace combines three small hearts that are bonded together in a bar necklace design. It's perfect for everyday wear and a sweet reflection of love for your family or tribe.
Includes inspirational message card ~ My heart says "yes" to love!
I liked this necklace because I have 3 children and 3 grandchildren. It is a light weight piece and wants to move off center when I am wearing it.


Barter Books : Baily, J T Herbert [ed.] : The Connoisseur: An Illustrated Magazine for Collectors. Volume 13. Sep-Dec 1905.
280 x 210 mm (11 x 8 inches) - 264pp.
G+ : in Good condition plus without dust jacket. Cover scuffed. Heraldic book-plate on paste-down.


Travel and Subsistence allowances are paid, in accordance with Financial Regulations, for expenses actually and necessarily incurred in the course of your duties with the university.
The Finance Office can also arrange travellers cheques and foreign currency for overseas visits. Contact Jacquie Williams on extn. 2050, but please give us as much notice as possible.
Many members of staff will be eligible for a Bangor University Corporate Charge Card. This can be used for your business expenses both in the UK and abroad. It can help you keep track of your business expenses and means that you don't have to use your own cash or credit for university purposes.
There is a 5 annual fee for the card, but you can now charge this as an expense to the university as long as you have an appropriate account to meet the cost.
If you are eligible for a corporate charge card and you are travelling to a country where credit cards are accepted, cash advances for travel expenses will not be given.
In other cases, requests for advances are considered on a case-by-case basis. There is no automatic entitlement. Please address any requests for advances to the Director of Financial Services and be sure to allow sufficient time for the request to be processed.


There was a time in my life I would wreck every family vacation. I would spend all my time fighting territorial spirits, principalities and demonic entities.
As a young person, I had a very intuitive, discerning spirit. Because of that, I could feel everything in the spirit realm. I lived under a constant sense of spiritual warfare. I always had to rebuke oppression off myself.
This battle became very wearisome. I was operating in a genuine gift of discernment, but my focus had become so demonic that I lived in constant spiritual warfare. Then one day God made a statement to me. He said, "You can live in warfare or you can live in My glory. The choice is yours." I didn't even know I had a choice. God brought me through a powerful season of learning to operate in my discernment in a very balanced and joyous way.
In the process, God began to teach me what it was to live out of the third heaven. I know that sounds extremely heavenly and spiritual, and it is. But it is also very practical. It impacts every area of your life, including your thoughts, emotions and behavior, as well as your level of spiritual authority and power. For years, I lived under, rather than over. I had a picture of spiritual warfare that was Old Covenant-based. I saw myself down here in the first heaven, the earthly realm, underneath the second heaven where powers and principalities operate. And I saw God in the third heaven, which is heaven itself, with Jesus sitting at His right hand. I was always warring to breakthrough this demonic second heaven layer to get to God in the third heaven. My model was upside down.
Over the years, God ingrained in me the reality of my true identity and position in Christ. He began to show me the reality of New Covenant spiritual warfare. As believers, we are not fighting a spiritual battle for victory. We are fighting from victory. There is a big difference.
I began to really see what Christ accomplished on the cross. Colossians 2:15 says, "And having disarmed authorities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them by the cross." The enemy is truly defeated!
Ephesians 1:21 teaches we are now seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, far above all power and principality and every name that can be named in this age and in the age to come. Through the blood of Christ, we have been given access to live from a third- heaven reality—a reality of victory, love, joy, peace and constant overcoming spiritual power. We are not under demonic forces trying to break through to where God is. We are spiritually in the third heaven, far above these dark forces, establishing on the earth as it is already established in heaven.
I have found this third-heaven truth to be so transforming for my own personal life that I want to share it with you. You can rule and reign from the third heaven over every demonic plot and live in God's presence and glory on a daily, moment-by-moment basis.
You can access every spiritual blessing God has for you in the heavenly realms. You don't have to labor under demonic warfare. You don't have to live feeling oppressed and depressed. You can have joy. You can have victory. You can overcome the stubborn areas of your flesh and soul. You don't have to settle for moments of temporary relief. You can have permanent transformation.
My teaching set "Living from the Third Heaven" will transition you into the New Covenant reality of living in God's blessing, power and presence. It will help you experience the change you have longed for. You must know who you are in the core of your being and live out of the finished work of Christ. I want to see you living from the glorified position that has already been secured for you.
Matt Sorger, author, prophetic messenger, revivalist, healing evangelist, teacher, television host and philanthropist, has served in full-time ministry for over 23 years, spanning more than 200 nations of the earth through travel and media ministry. He hosts a weekly teaching program titled Power for Life. Matt moves in a unique anointing that fills entire rooms with the tangible glory of God with many healed, set free and empowered. He teaches believers how to live lives saturated with the glory of God and brings a great balance between authentic, supernatural encounter and solid biblical truth. He reaches cities and regions by partnering with and impacting local churches to see a great breakthrough of the Holy Spirit.
For the original article, visit mattsorger.com.


16 Aug 2018, 9:01 p.m.
The Epson EX3260 SVGA has excellent video quality for a low-res data projector.
On the back of the projector are ports (HDMI, USB Types-A and -B, VGA, composite video) and a grille for the 2-watt speaker.
At 5.5 pounds, the EX3260 is quite portable. The included soft case can hold the projector, its remote, and its cables.
The EX3260 can be positioned just above the screen in an optional ceiling mount.
In addition to a focus ring and keystone-correction lever, the top of the projector duplicates many of the controls found on the bundled remote.


text:
class CreateEmsChannelsNews < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def up
    # Create the association table
    create_table :ems_channels_news, :id => false do |t|
      t.integer :channel_id, :null => false
      t.integer :news_id, :null => false
    end

    # Add table index
    add_index :ems_channels_news, [:channel_id, :news_id], :unique => true
  end

  def down
  end
end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Spinach is Popeye's favorite food, it makes him strong and virtually indestructible. It's a bit different in real life, but still spinach is very healthy and nutritious and we should all include it in our diet. If you too love spinach this text will explain certain benefits and the proper ways to consume it.
However, spinach should never be re-heated it, because it also contains nitrates which under the influence high heat turns the nitrites into nitrosamines which are very dangerous and carcinogenic for the human organism. If you hadn't known, remember this and never re-heat the spinach the next day. Always eat it fresh and even if you decide to eat it the next day, don't heat it up, eat it cold. It can be delicious like that as well.
The lesson from this article is that spinach is an excellent and nutritious vegetable, which can be eaten every day, you just need to be careful not to re-heat it again.


I installed Kali on a bootable USB key with a persistence partition (in order to save settings modification or documents), following the official guides (http://docs.kali.org/installation/kali-linux-live-usb-install). Settings are saved (e.g. keyboard layout changed is kept if I shutdown and reboot again with "persistence" option in command line from boot menu). Also, additional users created or documents created and put on desktop are saved.
However, if I change the root password (with command passwd). Then if I logout (so, without rebooting, juts logout), then I have to use the new password to login again, as expected. But, if I reboot completely (going through the boot menu, adding persistence in the command line), then the new password is not saved and I have to use again the default one (toor). Note that changing password for additional users works perfectly with both logout and full reboot: the new password for these additional users are saved.
Is it linked to the default parameters proposed by the boot menu ?
Today I am only pressing TAB key and adding "persistence" at the end of the line.
I have the same question but would like to expand to saving system settings between reboots. I am running Kali on USB with persistence. I would like to save system settings and possibly packages. Any help is appreciated.
And still im waiting too, thanks.
I also have a similar issue, my problem is that even the items on the desktop aren't being saved.
Everytime I boot I have to reinstall flash to view tutorials.
I have the same issue. Has anyone been able to solve this issue yet?
if you and no roots login, you can edit /etc/passwd and change thw first line changing /bin/bash to /bin/false,of course if you need use root previlegies you must edit /etc/sudoers and put your regular user to use any program with root previlegies.
i hope this tips can help.
So I think what you are saying is that, instead of doing a live boot from my usb, I can create a Kali installation on the usb and boot from that. That will allow me to password-protect everything, and even encrypt the installation. I can also keep any settings and any additional software I want to install.
I would create the installation by booting from my existing live usb, or from a dvd, and installing Kali with the usb as my boot drive. I have already tried this and I know it works.
This seems better than the live usb. Is there any down side to doing it this way? Would my installation still be portable to another machine (if I kept all of my Kali files on the usb stick)? Is there any risk of corrupting Kali or Windows, more than there would be with the live usb?
You can also just comment out the line that is setting the password to toor on boot.
Once this has been commented out by adding the # in front of the usermod command then your password will no longer be changed back to toor everytme you boot up.
Have you tried installing directly to USB? Any quirks?
Commenting out the usermod line on a live USB boot may cause startpar to fail during post with [fail] startpar: service(s) returned failure: live-config ... failed!
Instead of commenting out the line you can simply replace X014elvznJq7E with the new password from /etc/shadow.


text:
State v. Wing
285 P.3d 469 (2012)
Montana Supreme Court
Robert Wing (defendant) was charged with driving under the influence. Wing's case theory was that Michael Halverson was driving the car, which belonged to Wing's mother, Helen. There was evidence that Halverson was intoxicated when the police arrived at the scene. At trial, Wing called Halverson as a witness, but Halverson invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Wing then called Helen to ask her about a statement allegedly made to her by Halverson. Specifically, Wing asked whether Halverson had told Helen that he was driving her car on the night in question. The trial court sustained the objection of the prosecution (plaintiff) on the ground that the statement was hearsay. The trial court did permit Helen to state that she had given her keys to Halverson earlier in the night. Wing also presented evidence that the police found the car keys on the passenger seat in the car, which is where Halverson was sitting when the police arrived at the scene. Wing was convicted, and he appealed, arguing that Halverson's out-of-court statement to Helen should have been admitted as a statement against interest.
Holding and Reasoning (McGrath, C.J.)
Rule 804(b)(3) of the Federal Rules of Evidence
Hearsay
Fifth Amendment Privilege against Self-Incrimination
Statement Against Interest
Hearsay Exceptions I
Hearsay Exceptions II
Rule Against Hearsay

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
365 Chili, Diners, and Cold Calls w/ Jordan Robarge
There are plenty of people that think they have a good chili recipe. Very few bet their careers on it. That's what first caught our eye about Jordan Robarge.
After working in the startup world as a Venture for America fellow, Jordan started a food truck business called Revival Chili. He found success quickly and was profitable within three months.
Revival Chili's business is simple: Sell delicious chili products to the people of Pittsburgh in a tiny house style food truck. What makes it different, is Revival's focus on creating jobs for unemployed ex-offenders, a disadvantaged group often overlooked in U.S. Cities.
After proving his business chops, Jordan doubled down and bought a diner. The goal is to put even more people to work.
In this conversation, Aaron and Jordan discuss how he cold called his way to early success, how you can buy a business for less than $100,000, and what the Revival brand represents.
Jordan's Challenge; Go out and connect with 5 people from different background. Have a tangible take away from each conversation.
Revival Chili
Nancy's Revival
If you liked this interview, check out episode 157 with Andrew Yang where we discuss the start of Venture for America, why more people need to work at startups, and how other cities will benefit from this focus.
Subscribe on iTunes | Stitcher | Overcast | PodBay
364 Journalism and Sustainable New Media w/ Tracy Certo
It takes guts, vision, and intelligence to see where things are going before everyone else and act upon it. Tracy Certo is the founder and publisher of NEXTpittsburgh, an online magazine about the people advancing Pittsburgh and the cool and innovative things happening in the region.
Tracy previously started the first online publication in Pittsburgh as editor and then publisher 11 years ago and left to launch NEXT in 2014.
In this conversation, Aaron and Tracy discuss how Tracy has grown as a business person, how she prepared the launch NEXT, and how her team finds their stories.
Never miss one of our best episodes by subscribing to the newsletter.
Tracy's Challenge; Diversify where you get your information.
Connect with Tracy
If you liked this interview, check out our enormous catalog of interviews with Pittsburgh's biggest influencers, top entrepreneurs, and largest power brokers.
363 A/B Testing Everything at a Makeup Startup w/ Rachel Reid
Rachel Reid founded her cosmetics company, Subtl Beauty, to better serve women on the go. Her line of makeup products comes in compact, customizable stacks that can be easily thrown into a purse or bag.
Rachel first realized this need when she was consulting during the summer of 2016. Since she wasn't even spending 2 nights a week in her own home, she needed a beauty solution that traveled well and could fit in a small clutch.
Now, she is challenging the status quo of lazy, bulky cosmetic design. In this conversation, Rachel shares how she does extensive A/B testing to get the most out of her ads, why she studies companies like Stitch Fix, and the goals she is pursuing.
Rachel's Challenge; Start your day with consuming good information.
Daily Carnage
Shopify Blog
Adweek Newsletter
Marketing School
Connect with Rachel
Rachel's Instagram
If you liked this interview, check out episode 352 with Kate Zarvis where we discuss running a nail salon, how to retain talent, and how to create a space where clients can relax.
Don't Marry Your Business, Commit to Your People w/ Jason Wolfe
Jason Wolfe is an entrepreneur through and through. After growing up in the Milton Hershey School, an orphanage founded by Milton Hershey, Jason found himself living out of his car.
He taught himself how to code by using books at the local library and CompUSA's 'Building the Perfect Web'. This led to building the first coupon website and launching his first internet business. From 1995 to 2000, Jason built the business, raising $500k in VC from Jupiter Media and garnering >$1 million in annual sales and 20 million page views per month.
MyCoupons.com sold for roughly $23 million in 2000, shortly before the DotCom bubble burst.
Jason rolled over his proceeds into successive wins with his companies Direct Response Technologies (acquired by Digital River for $22 million), Jambo Media (for $15 million) and Giftcards.com (by Blackhawk Network for $120 million).
Jason's Challenge; Give more. Be Kind. Pull someone else up.
Connect with Jason Wolfe
jason@wolfe.com
If you liked this interview, check out episode 263 with Audrey Russo where we discuss what the Pittsburgh Tech Council does, how Audrey progressed through her career, and some recommended reading.
Also, check out Going Deep Summit 2.0 speaker Gisele Fetterman.
Full Jason Wolfe Interview Transript
Watson: Jason, welcome to Going Deep with Aaron Watson. I'm excited to be speaking with you.
Jason Wolfe: Great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Watson: I want to start, uh, back in 1995, and I hope that this does not peeve or make you feel old, but I was four years old in 1995. And so I don't just frankly have much context for what was entailed in starting a website at that point in time. These days, Squarespace, Weebly, you know, front end developers that you can hire on fiber for whatever limited amount of money and get a website up and running. You launched a website in 1995. Can you just paint a picture for us of what the landscape was, what you had to know, and what you had to do to even get the thing onto the internet?
Jason Wolfe: 1995. So, just to paint the picture where I was at the time, I just came out of having a bunch of surgeries- neck surgery and spinal surgery. I was living out of my car. I was talking about creating this website and trying to work on it, and the people around me thought I was crazy. The internet wasn't commercialized at the time.
There was not even Yahoo, it was just starting. So, I'm creating a website. When I would talk to people, they were used to what was called CompuServe or America online, which was not really the internet. That was like a closed environment that was sent to you on a CD that you installed into your computer and you dialed into, I dunno, it was way before your time, but that's kind of how people experienced the internet, but it wasn't really the internet. Creating websites was where the internet was going, where the future of commercialized internet was going to be.
I looked around and I didn't see anybody doing a coupon related-to website. Again, I was recovering from a bunch of spinal surgery living out of my car and I went to Comp USA. I don't think they're around anymore. And I bought a book and I taught myself how to write code. And it was called 'Learn Pearl in 21 days.'
Then I did another book, 'Creating the Perfect Web,' which was an HTML book. I read them and I practiced, and I figured things out. I went to places like back then called 'Math Scripts', which was a free script website where you can download scripts and use them for different functions.
I took the Math Scripts. I took what I learned from 'Creating the Perfect Web' and 'Learning Pearl in 21 Days'. Then I started to learn how to configure a server, and I put a website up, and it was like 1995, 1996. There was that. If you ever did a search at the time for coupons, we'd be the only one to find, but there was no Google.
Watson: Not to oversimplify, but it was basically a place where a majority 99% of businesses didn't have any sort of digital web fluency. That wasn't even really like a term per se, but they could list their coupons online as opposed to just putting them into an entertainment book.
Jason Wolfe: First of all, domain names were free, so then, it cost nothing. So it was kinda like, you could have gotten any name you thought of, you could have gotten at the time because nobody really knew about what the future was going to be.
There was a company called Network Solutions that eventually controlled the domain registration. They were the only ones that controlled it. So, I went online. I was typing in names. and bought a few, but as they started to charge for them, for me, again, living out of my car, I didn't have much money. So I think it was like 30 bucks and I created the site and built it. Then I started saying, I think that people, instead of getting coupons in the grocery or, in the circulation or through entertainment books, we'll get them digitally.
I ended up going around the internet, and I hired my first employee, $50 a month. She would go around finding coupons and discounts on different websites that were just popping up. Rubbermaid for example, I always remember this one, Rubbermaid had a website. They had a link for a free Rubbermaid container if you brought this principle or a coupon into the store. So, we listed it on our website and thousands and thousands of thousands of people got this, but they didn't mean for everybody to get it, you know? Because people at the time didn't realize that once you put up on the internet, anybody can get it.
So, the coupon site we created was a directory of a place to find coupons and discounts. So, I ended up hiring, her name was Barbara Sherman. She went out finding them, I'm writing code, creating the website. Then I hired another person to go out and look for them.
We started to create a community of people who contributed to the content. It was like a directory of coupons that our people went out and found and brought back to list on our site. Because of that, we got tons and tons of traffic. I ended up getting to the point where we made, I think, in 1995, about $4,000 total. 96 was maybe about 32,000, and then 180,000 the next year, a million dollars in revenue the next year. And then I raised a half million dollars in venture capital in late 99.
Watson: And even in the nineties, venture capital VC wasn't as established there wasn't the Y Combinator startup school that says, well, this is, you know, what a seed round. This is what a series A and that was much more opaque to people or is that not necessarily true?
Jason Wolfe: I don't know about that. I know that I sent an email to Alan Meckler who owns Meckler Media, who owned internet.com at the time, Jupiter Media. And they had two or three funds, and I sent them an email within two days. We had a deal because we are a fast growing top known by then four years later, coupon site.
Watson: Real results, real visitors, real revenue.
Jason Wolfe: That's a great question, Aaron. Here I am in Pittsburgh trying to create the first coupon site and I'm again, getting money and interest from people outside of this area and what I should have, you know, if I would have been out in California, We would have celebrated, oh my goodness look at this person created this coupon site. It was one of the reasons why it benefited me long term. It didn't at the time, but looking back, I'm glad I stayed here. If I would have had that idea and have been building it out West, I would have been able to raise money a lot faster because there was tons of money being thrown out at any idea.
I was in Pittsburgh, and I thought I had to prove that I needed revenue. So I was trying to build a profitable business, which was not what anybody else was doing. So we were profitable, and we raised money based off of our revenue. So, that's why it only took two days because I would imagine internet.com was like, wait, this company is actually a top coupon site, and they're making money, which in 99, not a lot of people were making money.
Watson: That's a very interesting time back in kind of the lore of the unit. Once again,
I wasn't necessarily there to experience it, but I've read about it, books like 'The New New Thing' by Michael Lewis. It gave kind of an insight into what that time was. You sold the company in 2000 and there's a kind of narrative that gets shared, whether it's about a company like free markets here in Pittsburgh, or just the numerous internet startups at the time that completely kind of failed and then proved to be viable models, just a decade or two later.
Companies getting out at the right time versus not getting out at the right time, trying to set up for another raise versus, not being able to find the funds for their next round. Can you talk a little bit about how you navigated that point in time and decided to get out versus the decision to stick with it? How was it influenced by your investors?
Jason Wolfe: Yeah, so I was in my late twenties at the time, and I never did a deal before. Of course, I grew up in Milton Hershey School, which is a school for kids from broken homes, sort of like an orphanage. I don't know if you knew that about me. So I had no real family or mentors to talk to about any of that stuff.
I was kind of learning to wing it on my own. The deal that I did when I sold my coupons was a five year deal. It was made up of stock in the new company cash. Management fees and like one other component, I totally forget what it was, but we did the deal right before the market crashed. It was good timing for us. It was a frenzy at the time. People were looking to just buy anything that was doing well.
We were doing well, and there was a public company that wanted to get in the coupon space, and they owned the circulars. It was called Molasses. They do the newspaper circulars. They owned a domain called save.com. We were the biggest coupon site, so they acquired us and we tried to merge into them. Within a very short period of time, he market starts going down, and all these public companies that went public are not doing well, you know, the.com bubble bursts. They stop making their payments to me. Right before the bubble burst where Save was going to sell this company to another large company at the time, a public company, and they thought it wasn't enough because at the time everybody was greedy. They thought, wow, we can't sell this asset for a hundred million. It's worth, you know, 300 million. And just a few months later, they're not worth anything. They're basically bankrupt, you know? We live through all that. We came out of that. I scaled down, I went from 45 employees down to probably 10, and I started to focus on a tracking technology called direct response and built a company around that.
Watson: Was that now within a different company? You have the Wolf LLC, which incubates companies where there was the gift card. Was this a different company where they tied together? How do you differentiate that?
Jason Wolfe: The Wolf company that owns all the businesses today essentially is owned by me. The companies that have been owned over the years have been my companies. Jason Wolfe owned my coupons. Jason Wolfe also owned Direct Response and Jumbo Media, which we own a part of, not a hundred percent. Wolfe owned gift cards, our common Omni Card, and we've been self-funded all ever since we got out of the My Coupons deal.
Watson: So, and just to maybe put a little more color on that, the proceeds from that obviously some of that went to investors, but your cut, you rolled into the next thing and invested in it.
Jason Wolfe: Yep. I was not able to fund enough of it. So what I did was that I found out that the state of North Dakota was the only state that owned its own bank. And it was in 2002-3ish when everything was crashing and we went up to North Dakota and I met with the governor and their economic development people. We agreed to put an office in North Dakota in exchange for about a million dollars and a piece of property to put an office in Beulah, North Dakota, which is about an hour from Bismark, population of 3000 people. Wonderful people up there. They did us a great favor because they enabled direct response to grow. Now, all of a sudden, we have some money. We have a partner, we have a call center, we've put a call center up there. So that was the exchange. We put a call center in North Dakota. We kept our technology here in Pittsburgh, and we built what became a Direct Response Technologies, which was an affiliate tracking technology. You leave this website, go to this website. We track you leaving this site to site A, to site B and then site B gets paid a commission from site A. For the purchase onsite B.
So, we built a platform that we had and we were marketing and selling. I was able to build that up to 2006. I sold that to Digital River.
Watson: That was another profitable sale, and that was one of the first things that put my antenna up. As I was leading into this conversation, you sold in 2000. Then the market crashed. So in 2006, things started to unwind in 2007. The financial crisis was 2008. How much, as you look back, and I understand this is difficult to do, but as you look back, to some degree there has to be a luck component, but I don't buy the premise of like a hundred percent luck. There has to be some sort of intuitive sense that says there's a lot of buyers right now. This seems like the right time to make this type of decision that this general, you know, you're a serial entrepreneur, you've started multiple companies. You have a sense, you have an intuition on where things are going. Was there a sense in both of these sales that the timing was right or as you make that type of decision and you're putting all these variables in, how much did that play a role of, let's get this while the market's up and not have to ride this through some sort of calamity in the near future?
Jason Wolfe: That's a great question. First of all, I think, um, you know, luck is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration. So being lucky, I'm not sure it would describe what I was doing, which was basically rolling my sleeves up and being intimately involved in everything that I was creating. I don't think I was lucky, but one of the talents I think I have is that I'm able to kind of look down the road and get a sense of where are we?
I don't get married to my businesses. Some people get so married to it. They'll ride that ship right into the water and to drown. They don't want to get off it. You know what I mean? For me, I haven't been like that. I've been attached to the business. The business is not me. So I've been attached to the business, working, rolling sleeves up. 90% perspiration, a great team of people around me. And then my job is typically a visionary, typically looking at where are we going? Then seeing where it's going and then trying to maneuver that ship in order for us not to sink, to get beyond the icebergs, but I would recommend to whoever's listening, you know, don't get married to your businesses. I think a lot of people do, and they ride it right down.
Watson: In terms of the connection between these different businesses that you've started, the affiliate tracking, the direct response, the giftcards.com and then the subsequent companies afterwards or across the whole spectrum, can you talk a little bit about how the skill set or the learnings of one translated into the next, translated into the next, and how maybe as you were, you know, winding down the sale or the earnout associated with an acquisition, what your process was for preparing for the next move?
Jason Wolfe: That's a great question. Let me take, for example, Direct Response Technologies. We owned giftcards.com again under the Wolfe Company. So we didn't sell the whole company. We just sold the business units that we were creating. We sold the tracking technology. We didn't sell the gift card business. During the time as I'm selling direct response, I have a few people in a backroom working on the gift card business, and as I sell Direct Response, I got the next one coming up. That's how I've been able to do it. I did the same after Direct Response, I did it with giftcards.com. I did it with Jumbo Media. We haven't talked about, I own part of that.
One of my clients was using our tracking technology. I really, really liked the guy who was running that business. I thought he had everything that it took to be successful in business, and I invested half a million in his company and I gave him five or six of my main tech people. We kept the offices in Foster Plaza and were able to grow that and sell it for 15 million.
Watson: What did that business do?
Jason Wolfe: That was video ad tech tracking technology. So where we are doing affiliate tracking from site A to site B, this was video ads. You know the annoying video ads that you see, that tracking technology was Jumbo Media. Which was bought eventually by Undertone, a public company.
While we were doing these businesses' direct response, we have people that are segmented out that are focusing on the next generation thing that we're focused on after we sell the company. We did that with Jumbo. We did that with giftcards.com, and right now I've got four businesses or so, four or five companies, that we're doing the same thing we did at giftcards.com.
As I sold giftcards.com, I moved 25 people into a new building. We went through the sale. Those 25 people were working on our site Gift Card Granny, and some of the other things that we're focused on. As we transitioned the ownership to the new owners, Blackhawk, those folks that were working on that core business, I went back and joined them and that was growing it.
Watson: Is that part of the negotiation as these acquisition talks are happening in terms of, you know, it's not uncommon when acquisitions happen that maybe they just want the book of clients or maybe they just want the core piece of technology or some amalgamation of those, and the job security of these people, these team, these people that have dedicated themselves to you and the mission are not necessarily having job security and into the immediate future depending on where the acquirer's perspective is coming from. Is that also a part of, you know, I've found these really high caliber people. I want to keep them in my orbit by having the next thing for them to work on should they be interested versus letting them go by the wayside or not having them feel secure and insightful?
Jason Wolfe: Yeah. That's a perceptive on your part looking at oh, we have people that have been with me for 16, 17 years now.You know, so of course they've been around with me through the multiple sales of the companies that we have. I think that's a very important thing for somebody to build multiple companies like I have, you have to have a core group of people. For some people that help you. You can't do it by yourself.
Really good people that are following you and rowing with you, and then they go to the next one, and that is so true. I've decided to go back, 15-20 years ago, 15 years ago was to give 15% of the company to my employees or fellow seekers. Well, whatever company would sell Wolfe is a holding company for the business units that we ended up building and selling. So I don't sell that company cause that's me. Gotcha. But Direct Response- 15% of the company's sale price went to the employees. I actually, before I sold the company, I put the employees into a limited liability company as members, so that we would guarantee the payout from the buyer for the earnout, because if they didn't pay the earnout, the employees would not be happy.
So I ended up giving the earn-out percentage to the employees to keep that buyer from firing people. By the way, by doing that, I was able to get them capital gains treatment, which is a lot less than ordinary income. So if I gave 15% to the employees as ordinary income on the sale date, they'd have to pay a much higher tax rate than if they became a partner in a limited liability company. If you own that stock for over a year, you get capital gains treatment, which is 20%. So, they got a tax benefit as well.
Waton: So, what I'm hearing then is that you're not married to any of the business units. You're not married to any of the single things you spin up, but you are married to the people that's where the actual marriage is happening.
Jason Wolfe: Yep. So the next company Gift Cards we sold had over a hundred employees, maybe 110 or so, and gave to the employees about $14 million. I don't think the company that bought the company that I sold at Blackhawk, they're in Foster Plaza, by the way, I think they're hiring, which is good. I don't think anybody lost her job.
Watson: That's awesome.
Jason Wolfe: ..for the people that were transferred over to black Blackhawk. In other words, the talent and the technology that we've built here is solid. I think we should get more of that story out. You know, there are companies like Blackhawk that say, you know what? The turnover is low, highly talented, committed to the mission, all these great things about the businesses that we've been fortunate, blessed enough to build that have stayed here. Those folks still work over in Foster Plaza and I think they're happy. I'm happy for them. I see that gift cards has grown even more so than what we thought that they would be. I was told that that site's doing over a billion dollars in value load now per year. Yeah.
Watson: Where did you learn that loyalty or that commitment? Cause it's a spectrum, right? It's not so binary that it's either a boss cracking a whip and squeezing all the juice out of the fruit or the other opposite end of the spectrum of trying to give everything possible thing that they can, and taking, you know, I would say definitely on the upper end of the spectrum to be so conscientious to structure it so that the employees would get capital gains as opposed to income. That, to me, registers on the high end of the spectrum, but it's always, it is always that to some degree, where did you learn or how did you internalize that value so that it would become so crucial? Maybe did you make a mistake early on that you didn't know?
Jason Wolfe: That's a great question. So I don't think you become my age 50 and you're like you learn over time. I've learned over time. When I was in my late twenties, Jason Wolfe, who was running the company, was different from Jason Wolfe today. Of course, I actually had an employee not too long ago, say 'geez, Jason, you know, the last company I worked at with, you wanted it to be this way. Now, all of a sudden you're saying this way.' I said, 'well, I've grown. I want you to grow too.'
I don't look at human resources as a resource, a resource eventually depletes to zero. Right. And you SAP, as much as you can out of that until it's nothing and you let it go. That's not the way it should be.
Let's replenish those folks. Let's educate those folks. Let's let them grow. Become better. And by them becoming better, you become better. Right? Right. I think a lot of times employers don't look at it that way. They look at it as a resource, people that work for them. Where's it come from within me? Probably my growing up in Milton Hershey school, you know, Nolan Hershey for your listeners and maybe you too.
The Hershey Chocolate company was founded by Milton Hershey. And in 1909, his wife and him couldn't have children. So they start an orphanage for boys. And in 1917, she died and instead of remarrying to have more, more having kids, he didn't, he basically. Put his investment into Milton Hershey school. And when he died in 1945, he left, I think it was 60 million, which today would probably be 6 billion to the trust who runs the school.
The benefactor of the trust is the Milton Hershey School. So essentially, he left his fortune to these orphans. When I was 10 years old, I went to that school and I grew up there and I learned about him. I learned about his philanthropic inclinations, and I admired it. I had no mentor really, but he was my mentor, even though he was dead.
I thought someday, I'd like to do that. I'd like to be able to give back. I think because of that, and because I don't really get attached to the material things, it's not hard.
Watson: What's the connection between, you know, making a sum of wealth for yourself having this financial success, and when you turn on the spigot of charitable endeavors, cause when you're kind of in this initial, like we're in the first year of Piper, right? There is not a lot of bandwidth that I have right now to go and volunteer and do charitable giving. Cause we're just trying to get this puppy off the ground, but I have a lot of faith that down the road, we're going to be able to make a positive social impact, in addition to the financial business impact, not just for myself and my cofounder, Hannah, but all the people that interact with our company.
Was there a point at which like the switch flipped and you're like, okay, now I can do that type of type of work? I don't know, just like help me understand how you think about that because you are in a place where you can have that kind of really positive social impact.
Jason Wolfe: So when I was starting and again, living out of my car, my first employee was Barb, and she worked for $50 a month. She was a valuable person to do a lot of the work. Didn't realize that at the time, because it was all remote, and her and I never talked, it was just by email.
Fast forward a couple years later, we raised a bunch of a bunch of money, and we ended up being on the six o'clock news. Here's this young internet entrepreneur meeting somebody that they've never met before. They just sold their company. I flew the employees down to meet Barb for the first time, and it was like maybe 20 of us flew down there. I met her for the first time she was disabled in a wheelchair. She couldn't hardly lift her head up. I didn't know that about her. I didn't know the situation she was in, and that was impactful to me. I decided to give ownership to the employees because without those people, without Barb Sherman, I wouldn't be here.
There's a woman named Donna Glenn who was very important to me at the time. As I was trying to build the company, she made me feel positive about what I was doing and I'd have to take a place to take a shower. I was able to take a shower at her house. She ended up working for me and helping to build the company.
I think, early on, as you're building your company, you're going to see people that are willing to sacrifice, and it's your obligation to give. You know, as the person that's running this, you're given something and you're stewarding something. You have an obligation to give to people because you've gotten talents that maybe other people don't have, and you'll recognize at some point, and that just expands as you get bigger. So, that little piece where Barb was doing something and Donna and Chuck, I expanded to then give a solid 15%, made it part of our company.
Then that expanded to become bigger as I got the next company, and I started to drive around the country and give gift cards to kids during Christmas and an RV with my son, and we saw thousands of children that would never get a gift. I was having the privilege to walk up to them and with my son and say, this is what it's about. You give a gift to a mom who cries because they don't have money to buy for their children for Christmas. I mean, this is motivational stuff.
This is what you're obligated to do as you become successful, and you'll recognize it even early on as you build your company, you know, maybe not today, but very soon because you've been given talents and you are obligated to use that, to help other people.
Watson: Absolutely. I mean, that's one of the core things that I think is a motivator in everything they do. I mean, just personally, my background is in the Boy Scouts where that was, you know, part and parcel of getting through the program as much as it was learning the skill or making the accomplishment. There also was the component of, alright, we're volunteering here today, or we're showing up for this active community service.
There's a deep feeling of that is part of what makes me, that is part of what I'm here to do, but it's a very peculiar situation where there's this feeling of, I just know if I just get a little bit of time, how much I'm going to be able to give. And is that like, Is that a selfish manifestation? Is that a rational, practical manifestation?
Watson: Just to hear some probably justifying in your head, some of the things you're doing, and you're not, you're not taking the time to give right now. You will, it's going to happen. You know, I think it just happens for all of us at different points. All the things that you've learned, and the things that you're telling me, sound to me as though that's going to be a part of what you build with your company, which I think is very, very important. It's very important for talented people to give back for sure.
Watson: Absolutely. So I want to bring us into the present and the work that you're doing now. You talked about developing, they've kind of taken some of the tech for the next project as something else has been wrapped up or acquired. You mentioned Gift Card Granny. We have a couple other companies that you have listed as partially incubating, like forever.com, which is Glenn Meakam's company.
Jason Wolfe: I'm only an investor.
Watson: As you manage these other different projects. What is the next step? Like? What's the vision now with these companies that otherwise, um, kind of been realized in previous iterations?
Jason Wolfe: Glen Meakam, great guy, built free markets, probably one of the most successful success stories in Pittsburgh. Love the guy actually. I'm an investor into forever. I wish him all the best growing that business, that would be great for our city to have him be able to grow that a technology company here too. For me, the Wolfe company does invest into things like forever.
We have another company we own, part of it's called Go Wonder they're out in California. We own part of a company called central, which is a gateway for debit transactions with card linked offers a fairly complicated topic, but a gateway we're building. Then the companies that we have over in Greentree where our building is, we have Gift Card Granny and Perfect Gift, which Gift Card Granny, when I sold giftcards.com to Blackhawk. It wasn't part of the acquisition. What gift card granny did was it was a metal website for the secondary market people that are buying and selling unwanted gift cards. Okay. So the unwanted gift card component is almost like a coupon. It's not a gift. It's something that people are buying to save money.
So when I sold Gift Cards and Omni Card to Blackhawk, the sale was, by the way, we went out to bid on it. So I presented to 60 plus private equity and strategic partners. So it wasn't like they came, approached me to buy the company. I actually went out and marketed. It hired an investment banker. We conducted a process. It took us over a year to do.
Watson: Was that the first time you'd done that?
Jason Wolfe: Yeah, first time I've done that. The other companies I've sold, I basically sold myself right this time. It was totally different. I hired Morgan Lewis, Marley Myers, one of the best lawyers in the city, actually, probably one of the best in the entire country. She's awesome. I hired an investment banker out in California, FT partners, which is run by Steve MacLaughlin, which is a great FinTech investment banker who represented us. We went out to the market and we presented to 60 different P and strategic buyers and sold it. Well, long story short is that inside the presentation, when we were presenting to sell, we weren't selling gift card granny, because it didn't make any sense.
If you're gonna buy giftcards.com and our corporate division which was called Omni Card. They serve a function of gifting and have reward programs for corporate clients. They have nothing to do with discounting and coupons and stuff, so it didn't fit together. So, when I went to go sell Blackhawk, I kind of was thinking about buying the granny piece because you know, it kind of would make sense to them because they own a company called Carpool, but we were able to successfully not sell it to them.
We ended up focusing on that. We've grown it now. We have about 13 or 14 million visitors a year, and they're all looking for discount gift cards. Instead of servicing the secondary market, being a metal website, our non-compete is up on the six, actually this, this month. So our not competed is just about up.
We added a shopping cart to our website, and now we're gonna start selling directly to customers again. Instead of selling gift cards at full face value, we're going to sell them at discounts.
Watson: That was one of the questions that I also had for this present point in time, which to me, my antenna, it goes up like, how is this possible? Is something's off here? That this is just a discounted gift cards. It almost seems too good to be true. What I'm, as I'm just gonna think about a little bit more and picking up a little bit of context clues from what you're saying is this is a gift card that someone has, they're not going to use, and they just want broader liquidity of, you know, 80 cents on the dollar, whatever it may be for that gift card. They're willing to just get rid of it right now, but to someone else that has a much higher proportional value, right. They're happy to go and take that.
Jason Wolfe: Yeah. So Gift Card Granny was a meta website that directed customers that came to our website to the place to get the best deal. If you're selling a card, you're selling a home Depot card. You want to get as much as you can for that a hundred dollars. We may direct you over to Carpool, which will give you $90. So we get paid a commission. We are like a meta website, or if you are looking to buy a home Depot card and it's listed for $95 instead of a hundred dollars at home Depot's website or wherever you can buy it by one of our partners, maybe Carpool, click on it, go buy it. We get paid a commission.
We are a meta website. We had no shopping cart. Now, since the noncompete is over, we've built a shopping cart, and we're going to start selling ourselves again. So basically, we are competing against the company that we just sold.
Watson: In the interim, as the noncompete was going away, what you're building is effectively both like, you know, domain authority and just eyeballs will come to that website, but also brand equity in the sense that like, I trust this website to do this for me. I trust this website. I'll come back because they delivered the goods for me last time.
Jason Wolfe: Right. Granny being a meta site, directing people to the place to get the best discount, I'd say half of our traffic knows us for that. The other half that come to our website, don't know what we do. They just know that we offer a discount. So we are in the process of changing from being the meta site, directing people to then just servicing people directly, and we hope to work with Blackhawk. We still do work with Blackhawk. Actually, they're a partner of ours, which is kind of weird. We're going to be doing corporate cards again. We're going to be selling face value cards at a discount. My bet would be that somebody will come to Gift Card Granny to buy a Home Depot card for $95. Instead of going into Gift Cards and paying a hundred.
There you go. So that's what we're doing with a Perfect Gift and Granny. One of the other companies I really want to talk about, and I think it's really cool because this is where I've been spending a lot of my personal time.
Watson: It's a great signal for someone like you to be spending a lot of your personal time.
Jason Wolfe: I think this one's going to be bigger than any company that I've ever built. We are in the gift card space for a long time, and we see a product as broken. How is it broken? Aaron, if I bought you a hundred dollar Home Depot gift card, you know, the chances are that there is a 10% chance you may never use it. You may have lost it.
Watson: I have a little sleeve of like old gift cards that I've gotten at some point through. It's like, well, I haven't made my way out to, or maybe like the company just folded, but I haven't been to seven Springs in two years or whatever it may be.
Jason Wolfe: Or somebody may steal it from you and lose it and like a cushion. Then you're like, okay, first of all, I don't even know who bought that for me. Secondly, I just lost it. Then who gets the money Home Depot? Right? I would say, if I bought you a toaster, you would probably plug that toaster and use it. You get a hundred percent use of the toaster. The gift card space, you only get 90% of the gift and that's across the board. Isn't that broken? Yeah. On top of that, behind the scenes.
I have never talked about this publicly, but I am going to now, because we're about to launch this business is that these gift cards are being used for things that are not that great. So you can use a gift card because it is not traceable for child trafficking, prostitution. They take these as forms of payment, and then they liquidate them on the secondary market. So remember, I was telling you about the exchanges that buy and sell cards. They make them onto these exchanges. It's very bad. We wanted to change this. We saw a broken market. We saw a lot of the negative stuff around the gift card space.
We created a thing called Gift Yeah that we're launching. We just got done with our MVP, the minimum viable product.
Watson: I saw the little celebration that you were able to run it before the end of 2018.
Jason Wolfe: So we're utilizing your current payment mechanism and your wallet, your visa, or your MasterCard, and you're going to get a text from me that says, Aaron, you got a hundred dollar gift gift card for Home Depot. You can be like, Hey, cool. That's cool. Click on it. You register your card just like you would with Venmo, and then when you swipe your Visa or MasterCard at home, Depot will recognize the transaction and we will credit your card with the gift. So, you never lose it.
Watson: It's almost like a perpetual wallet of sorts.
Jason Wolfe: It's inside your current visa, MasterCard, which you don't have to carry plastics anymore. You have to worry about your gift card. Where's my gift card? And by the way, if you don't use it within six months, me as a buyer, gets my money back.
Watson: Interesting.
Jason Wolfe: So we've solved a lot of the problems and we've created a millennial product because the gift card has not changed in 20 something years. 25 years. So why do you want to use your grandfather's gift card? I mean, look home Netflix replaced Blockbuster. We're continuing to invent new things.
Why has nobody changed the gift card? I'll tell you why, because there's a lot of money to be made of people not using it,s o we're going to change that.
Watson: So we have mobile first?
Jason Wolfe: Absolutely. So you will see this coming out here in the next couple of weeks, and we're very excited about it. We've been working on it. The patents we filed date back to 2010. We tried to launch in 2013. If you go research, you'll see, I put a million into it. We couldn't integrate because of the technology at time wasn't there, but with Venmo, we're utilizing the same platform that Venmo uses, so we can actually conduct the business and it actually works.
Watson: Wow. So I've got one more question and then we'll do our standard wrap-up here. When did you realize you could sell? Cause you just turned something on here for the last one that you were storytelling before, and you just switched a little bit into the pitch, the sale. I felt it.
I saw it. Everyone in the room's ears kind of perked up. When did you realize you could do that?
Jason Wolfe: Probably when I was selling my first or second company. I fashioned myself. I was an outdoorsy guy, I was an active guy, a bartender. I was social, but I never viewed myself as a salesperson.
Even when I started writing code, I thought, you know what, I'm gonna sit inside here and I'm gonna create this thing and everybody's going to come to my website. It wasn't until I went out and met with the folks in North Dakota. Then I actually started to meet people and network, that I realized the real value is not in sitting back and coating. it's creating relationships with people.
If you create relationships with people, more things will happen, more opportunities happen. Just having a chance to talk to you, I'm creating a relationship- who knows what will happen? Maybe I'll see you again. I think when I finally realized that, is when I realized that I can sell, because I really didn't sell something. I'm just explaining something. A lot of times if you're building it too, and you're explaining it and it makes sense and you're not crazy, I don't think I'm crazy. The person on the other end would say, hey, that makes sense. So it's not really a sale to me, it's more of networking and having people understand what I'm doing.
If they get it, it's a sales thing and it sells themselves.
Watson: That's something I've learned in a very deep way. I would say in the last year, I'm sure there's much more to learn, but the concept of the relationship is really the foundation of trust.
What you're stacking on top of once you have trust and maybe some attention from someone, then you can stack on the explanation. But if you don't have that, you're pitching a tent in the middle of a hurricane. It's just going to get blown away.
Jason Wolfe: There's a great, that's a good point. When we sold our company to Blackhawk, a great guy ran the company. He used to run a company, Bill Tauscher, um, CEO of Blackhawk. His company wanted to license some patents. We had some patents that he had back in 2010 ish, somewhere in there. They wanted to license these patents and we ended up doing a deal. So Blackhawk became a licensee of some IP that we created, which was great.
When he came out and met with me, we sat down and had lunch. He knew who I was. We communicated, we did a deal very easily. It wasn't complex with all the lawyers running around and trying to do all this stuff, and it was very smooth. So, fast forward, five years later, when it was time to sell. He knew who I was and he trusted me, I think, and so when we did the sale, it wasn't a big, big problem issue. He treated our employees great, because I trusted him of somebody who I could sell to, and it made a huge difference. It's the networking as a trust.
Also I wanted to mention too, to listeners that are listening is also to identify your strengths. Some people don't have the ability to, to network and look at somebody and communicate like we are today. Some people's personalities aren't like that. If you're not, that's okay. Find somebody that is and partner up with them. Like I did the disc analysis. Do you know what that is?
Watson: Yep. That's one of Hannah's favorite things.
Jason Wolfe: So I'm a high I and D okay. I have people that I work with that are C's and they are great. I need them. But they need me, you know? So, I think if you understand your strength, if you're an influencer or if you're not an influencer, and if you can identify that you're not, that's okay.
You could compensate for somehow yourself or find somebody to partner with to make up the difference for the things you can't do. Sitting down and writing specs is something, I would rather shoot myself. There are people that I work with that like to do that kind of thing. They're not an I and I'm an I.
Watson: I can relate to that hard right now. Jason, this has been absolutely fantastic. I prepped you on the final two questions and I jumped in there with the strengths finder. Anything else that you're hoping to share today that I didn't give you a chance to?
Jason Wolfe: I don't think so. I think, you know, we covered a lot. And you asked some really good questions.
Watson: Thank you.
Jason Wolfe: You did, and I could sense that you're not just servicing, you know, the surface questions, you're actually thinking in depth. I think that's a really, really talented thing that you have. I appreciate you asking me beyond this show with you.
Watson: I really, really appreciate you taking the time to do so because I also recognize that you don't have to. You value it as you explained, but you don't have to do it. So, I'm deeply thankful for that, and all the insights and wisdom that you shared with us today. Folks that want to learn more, they want to, you know, see the launch of Gift Yeah and all the other stuff as it comes out in the intervening years, what digital coordinates can we provide for them who to follow along?
Jason Wolfe: The company again is wolfe.com. We are hiring actually, um, and the sites are Gift Card Granny and Gift Ya, and those are our main focuses. If anybody wants to connect with me, it's my email is easy: jason@wolfe.com. There's a feedback form on the site.
I think it would be, um, a good thing to mention, thanks for the Pittsburgh technology council for the work that they do in the city of Pittsburgh for allowing us to utilize the facilities that they have.
I think, you know, the more that we can have wins in the city of Pittsburgh, the better offer technology ecosystem will be. Of course we are technology. I'm in the technology business, and I'm very interested in that. Um, Audrey Russo does a great job and her team at the tech council. I can't speak enough about them, and anybody listening to technology needs to get plugged in to the Pittsburgh Technology Council so we can grow our technology ecosystem,. I think is very important.
Watson: In addition to leaving links in the show notes for this episode to your site and all the things that you mentioned, I'm also going to link to the interview that we did with Audrey about the Pittsburgh Tech Council, for people that are looking to learn more and get more context on that. All that can be found goingdeepwithaaron.com/podcast show notes for this and every episode of the show or in the podcast app.
You are probably listening to this right now, but as we do at the end of each conversation, Jason, I want to give you the mic one final time to issue an actionable personal challenge for the audience.
Jason Wolfe: A personal challenge. okay. Well, we talked about giving and giving back and I think probably a lot of your guests have spoken about that giving back and how important it is.
Even if it's as simple as saying, something nice or kind of somebody, that's giving. I think the more that we can give to other people, the more love we can give to other people, the better off our world's going to be. So I would just challenge somebody to, you know, go up to a stranger and say how are you doing? Shake their hand. It's not a big deal.
Then to look for somebody that they can pull upward. One of the questions we ask people to find out if they're a giver or taker ,is to give an example of somebody that they've helped. Sometimes takers will say to somebody that they've helped. If you hear somebody and listen, and if somebody talks about somebody that they helped up, they're a giver- big difference.
So be a giver, and help somebody pull somebody up.
Watson: Give more. I love it. That's a beautiful note to wrap up on. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Jason Wolfe: You're welcome. Thanks for having me.
Watson: We just went deep with Jason Wolfe. Hope everyone out there has a fantastic day.
360 Transforming Lives & Teaching Tech w/ Anthony Hughes
Anthony Hughes is the CEO and founder of Tech Elevator, a coding bootcamp programs with physical locations across the Midwest. His work is oriented around supporting people in rapidly acquiring technology skills so they can have more meaningful careers.
Anthony previously worked for JumpStart, an economic development organization focused on startups in Northeast Ohio. At JumpStart, he founded the Entrepreneurial Mentoring Program, which matched successful entrepreneurs and executives with budding technology entrepreneurs in mentoring relationships.
In this conversation, Anthony and Aaron discuss how the program works, how Anthony came to the Midwest from England, and why the work is so fulfilling.
Anthony's Challenge; Broaden your perspective on hiring tech talent. You don't need a degree to be a valuable contributor.
Connect with Anthony
If you liked this interview, check out episode 314 with John Dick, 265 with Kelauni Cook, and other interviews with Pittsburgh power brokers.
A digital agency that provides strategy, delivery, and analysis specializing in a few key service offerings.
Documentary-as-a-Service (Vlogging 2.0)
Instagram Content Production & Account Building
Podcast Production, Strategy Consulting, and Guest Acquisition
If you aren't creating or curating content regularly, your clients and customers might forget you're open for business.


text:
News / Scottish News
999 call asking for bread delivery among requests from public during Beast from the East
March 9, 2018, 11:12 am
A person walks in deep snow in rural Carron Valley near Stirling, Scotland. (Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)
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A request to borrow a shovel and a plea for bread to be delivered were just some of the calls to police as the Beast from the East gripped the country.
As last week's heavy snowfall sparked the first red weather alert of its type, Police Scotland's service centre responded to thousands of calls from members of the public.
A total of 23,626 calls were made to 101 and 5,508 999 calls were received in the four days leading up to and including Thursday March 1.
The number of 999 calls was 12% higher than in a typical four-day period.
Despite various messages on social media informing the public that service centres were experiencing a high volume of calls and redirecting people to the appropriate agencies or organisations, calls were still received about road and school closures.
Throughout this period, police staff also received unsuitable calls to the service which included:
– A member of the public asking police how to get to the shops for alcohol and cigarettes.
– A call asking if police officers were able to make deliveries of bread as they had run out.
– A caller reporting that a gate had frozen.
– A call requesting an emergency vet as the local vet would not arrange a home visit.
– A member of the public asking if they could borrow a snow shovel.
Chief Inspector Alan Gray, of contact, command and control division based in Govan, Glasgow, said: "These types of calls are taking an adviser away from what could be an important 999 call and a member of the public who may need urgent assistance.
"Our service centre advisers deal with a call every 10 seconds. They are highly trained, skilled and knowledgeable, and are there to help.
"Most people contact the police appropriately, however there are a small percentage who do not – this misuse of 101 and 999 could cost lives."
More information about 101 and the ways to contact Police Scotland are available on the Police Scotland website via www.scotland.police.uk/101999aware.
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Illustration has always been a constant companion in my career. Almost every project I've worked on has featured illustration in some way. I've done artwork for all types for the print and digital realms – posters, packages, activity books, coloring pages, games, web sites and more. I do illustration more than any other service I provide. The main software I start with is Adobe Illustrator. Then if more shading effects are needed I go into Photoshop. I love working in my cartoon style when doing illustration. I'm a big fan of Looney Tunes and Disney. Those were my main influences growing up. Even though they are animation properties. I still think about them when doing illustration. Another important factor in my illustrations are layout and design. Often times type may be needed, so I like to use fonts with creative flare. Fonts that suit the theme of the illustration itself.
Promotional poster for campaign on saving water.
Cartoon Dragon in front of 3d smoke.
Giant robots drawn in perspective.
Spoof of Indiana jones movie.
Poster art for school play.
In honor of my wife's old beat up cell phone.
Illustration for a print ad about the web.
Illustration for t-shirt for a brick laying company.
Illustration for brochure about saving water.
Short comics for job safety.
Poster graphic for school play.
Here's an image I created based on a story idea I had.
My version of a classic scene.
Compare the 2 images to find the difference.
These were made into 25 magnet pieces.
Illustrations featuring the famous pilot.
Wall Sign for a web design company.
A template for a song sheet.


The ambition of Cornwall is to get more people moving. To tackle inactivity and to address preventative measures.
This sounds extremely ambitious but it is the belief that we can make a difference.
iCareiMove has the honour of leading on a one year project targeting falls prevention. This has been funded by Public Health England and is in conjunction with Cornwall Council, Cornwall Foundation Partnership Trust and Age UK Cornwall.


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Miniland USA
LEGOLAND California Miniland USA by Dave Lauridsen
See life in miniature at this park favorite
Walking through this star attraction, which recreates—in ultra-miniature—seven iconic American regions—and you'll likely find yourself pointing, gasping, and shaking your head in amazement. Skilled teams used 20 million tiny LEGO bricks to create incredibly detailed dioramas for Miniland: stretch limos pulling up in front of a Hollywood movie premier, tiny tourists lining up in front of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., and even a street parade in New Orleans—not to mention a version of the Las Vegas Strip with 10 hotels. Check out the version of San Francisco's Pier 39 and listen close—its soundtrack was recorded at the actual California pier.
Take your time here—the more you look, the more you see. For a different perspective on this section of the park, take the Coast Cruise ride, a no-minimum-height boat excursion that motors around the lake surrounding Miniland and gives you close-up looks at other LEGO-rendered world sites such as the Taj Mahal, the Sydney Opera House, and Mt. Rushmore.
As Miniland has expanded over the years, so has its fictional counterpart: the LEGO Star Wars area features scenes from the iconic film series, from the planets Tatooine and Naboo, as well as a Death Star that measures eight feet in diameter.
LEGOLAND CALIFORNIA - MINILAND USA
San Diego LGBTQ+ Travel
SeaWorld San Diego - Animals
The Salk Institute
California Attractions for Younger Kids
Smaller Theme Parks & Attractions
Legoland California by Lucas Himovitz
LEGOLAND® California Resort
LEGOLAND Rides & Attractions
Legoland Hotel
LEGOLAND Shopping
It's hard to say who enjoys LEGOLAND more: the little ones running around in a magical world created by 60 million LEGO plastic bricks, or their parents who get a kick out of it too. This theme park in Carlsbad, on the north side of San Diego County, first opened in 1999. It's conveniently located within an hour or two of a variety of theme parks and attractions in Southern California—but it's also just few minutes' drive to a state beach. With both onsite and nearby hotels, as well as its own water park and aquarium, LEGOLAND California has grown from a tribute to the plastic bricks into the kind of place a family could spend a few days.
Walk through Miniland USA for a visual and structural jaw-dropper: expansive miniaturized recreations of Washington D.C., New York, and San Francisco, as well as scenes from several of the Star Wars movies (including an enormous LEGO Death Star). While the focus here leans towards making little ones smile, there's plenty to entertain bigger kids and grown-ups too: the park has more than 60 rides, shows, and attractions—including three rollercoasters, live shows by the LEGO Friends, and entertainment and meet-and-greets related to various LEGO incarnations, from Ninjago to The LEGO Movie and LEGO Batman.
Courtesy of LEGOLAND® California Resort
LEGO NINJAGO World
High-tech ninja power joins forces with a free-form play zone
A hands-on spirit permeates LEGOLAND California more than most theme parks, from the kid-made vehicles in the Build & Test play area to the pulley-driven Kid Power Towers ride. LEGO Ninjago World takes that magic to another level, focusing on LEGO's line of spunky ninja characters.
The one-acre NINJAGO World zone sits near the park's entrance and is festooned with LEGO statues of guardian dragons and ninja warriors, as well as four play areas—each designed to cultivate a different ninja skill. There's Zane's Temple Build, where kids can build with LEGO bricks along the perimeter of a LEGO Asian temple. Nearby, kids can test their balance on the playground-style Kai's Spinners, showcase their agility on Cole's temple-oriented Rock Climb, or test their speed by pushing lit-up buttons in Jay's Lightning Drill speed cage. Recharge at the Ninja Kitchen with a banh mi sandwich on crusty baguette or a steamed bao bun, filled with your choice of crispy pork belly, lemongrass chicken, or baked sweet chili tofu—another good example of LEGOLAND California's ability to diversify its menu beyond hot dogs and pretzels.
Then get ready for the main attraction: NINJAGO The Ride. The 4D interior-style ride seats up to four riders in a car, then glides through 13 areas guarded by NINJAGO foes like Lord Garmaddon, King of the Skulkuns, or the snake-like Great Devourer (who, it turns out, can only be defeated if everyone in the car works together). Wearing your 3D glasses, you fire at targets and earn points along the way. But rather than using a laser gun, you "shoot" with your hands, like a wizard. Sensors over the lap bar help bring that magic to your fingertips—a cool fantasy-come-true for riders of pretty much any age.
"We've really taken the principle of 'hands on, minds on' to a whole new level," says Peter Ronchetti, general manager of LEGOLAND California Resort. "We're firing the imagination to another degree by using gestures to propel fire and ice. It's bridging the gap between the old way of using physical props—bricks and the like—with the new world of virtual technology."
LEGOLAND California – LEGO NINJAGO World
San Diego Tourism – Carlsbad
Visit Carlsbad
LEGOLAND CALIFORNIA - Dining
11 Tips for CA Family Vacations
Smaller Theme Parks and Attractions
Dave Lauridsen
Travel through fantasy worlds to play and explore
The name of the game at LEGOLAND California is discovery and wonder. Everywhere you look, there is a playful use of LEGO bricks and rides with mechanically-themed whimsy, whether it's at Driving School, where kids learn the ways of the road in LEGO-esque mini-cars, or Safari Trek, where riders drive animal-striped Jeeps to wind around a world of life-size giraffes, elephants, and tigers (all made of—you guessed it—LEGO bricks). At Fairy Tale Brook, climb aboard a whimsical boat shaped like a giant leaf to float past recreated scenes from classic stories such as The Three Little Pigs (whose brick house is made of, yes, plastic bricks).
For your child's first roller-coaster experience, take a spin on tot-friendly Coastersaurus, billed as a "pink-knuckle" ride—enough for a thrill but not white-knuckle, I-want-to-go-home-now-mommy scary. Expect to get wet on rides like Splash Battle, where riders not only shoot water from their own ships, but can get fired upon by the water cannons powered by spectators.
For quieter downtime, take the behind-the-scenes factory tour, which shows how LEGO bricks are made, or let your little builders get creative in hands-on Duplo Play. Sky Cruiser is always a crowd-pleaser (and crowds it often has), but who wouldn't want to pedal colourful LEGO-themed cars on tracks overlooking the park? The two fastest coasters are the still-fairly-mellow Technic, in the park's Imagination Zone, and the free-wheeling Dragon (but even on these two rides, the height minimums are just 42 and 40 inches, respectively). For shortest lines, aim to get to the park early, head straight for furthest-away rides and attractions, then work your way back towards the entrance.
San Diego History Center
San Diego Old Town Market
by Dave Lauridsen
The Lego Movie Experience
Get inside peeks at making the movie and more
Long before perfectly average Emmet had to save the world, Legos were just a bunch of really cool building blocks. But ever since 2014's The Lego Movie became a 3-D animated blockbuster, Legos have taken on new star power—and Legoland California knows it. Now, an expansive, interactive attraction, The Lego Movie Experience, lets you get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film. Kids get all start struck seeing their favorite mini-characters and scenes as peer in at the movie's soundstage and models, including pirates, robots, flying ice cream trucks, school bus tanks, and the movie's stunningly self-centered Batman.
THE LEGO MOVIE 4D A New Adventure
Shopping at LEGOLAND
Buy blocks by the pound and more
LEGO animals. LEGO T-shirts. LEGO lunch boxes. And even LEGO wedding cake toppers. Shops are scattered around LEGOLAND California, offering anything from ready-to-build kits to The LEGO Movie and The LEGO Batman Movie memorabilia.
Many stores reflect nearby rides and attractions, so if your child pines for a knight in shining armour (albeit one built out of plastic bricks), head for the King's Market, adjacent to The Dragon and The Knights' Tournament rides. You'll also find Medieval-era costumes—including tiaras, foam swords, and foam shields—if that dress-up box at home needs some new items.
Indeed, there's a shop for every kind of LEGO love, starting with the all-encompassing Big Shop and the Ninjago-related toys at Wu's Warehouse. For LEGO Star Wars toys, check out the Empire Emporium, located just beyond the LEGO Death Star; fans of the LEGO Friends will want to peruse the Heartlake City Boutique. To go old school, go to the LEGO Club House, where you can buy non-kit sets of LEGO bricks, or just buy loose bricks by the pound from colourful bins.
Insider tip: Buy a few bricks at the LEGO Club House and build a few mini-figures, then look for the park's "Model Citizens" (a.k.a. employees). If there's a mini-figure dangling from their name badge, kids can use their own mini-figure to trade for it.
LEGOLAND CALIFORNIA - Shopping
Three words: Granny's Apple Fries
When it comes to mealtime and snacks, Legoland definitely knows its audience. All over the park you'll find restaurants and stands serving kid-friendly fare—lots of hamburgers, hot dogs, and an all-you-can-eat buffet at the Pizza & Pasta Buffet (for a welcome dose of greenery, there are also salads). No matter what, save room for Granny's Apple Fries, a Legoland creation of Granny Smith apple slices cooked until tender and dusted with cinnamon and sugar. Dip them in the accompanying vanilla cream sauce for an extra treat. The fruit fries are available at Castle Hill.
Dietary restrictions in your family? Kids with nut allergies can find options at Burger Stop, Castle Burger or Fun Town Hot Dog, while gluten-intolerant tummies can find options at Garden Restaurant, or stir-fries at Wok 'N' Bowl Ramen.
San Diego Tourism—Point Loma
El Jardín
Hotels at Legoland
Rooms fit for kings, pirates, wizards and adventurers
Now you no longer just visit fantasy land, you live in it. LEGOLAND California has two hotels right outside the Carlsbad theme park entrance—each with their own colourful themes, restaurants, pools and playful features—from a disco lift to a slide in the lobby.
Both properties are designed with travelling families in mind. The hotels' junior-suite-style rooms—emblazoned with colourful walls and LEGO models as art—have separate sleeping areas for grown-ups and children. The children's quarters have bunk beds, their own TV and a LEGO brick box for impromptu building. Both foyers feature giant mosh pits full of plastic bricks, so kids can build away while grown-ups check in. Plus, all hotel guests enjoy both complimentary breakfast buffets and early entry into the park (up to an hour, depending on the season).
Choose your hotel based on the theme: the original, 250-room LEGOLAND Hotel offers four room themes—pirates, adventurers, LEGO friends and Ninjago warriors—and larger-than-life LEGO sculptures, made with more than 3 million bricks, all over the hotel. Head into the Bricks Family Restaurant and neighbouring Skyline Café, and check out the mini cityscape that has Spider-Man scaling a building and a wizard reading a book by a rooftop pool. Industrial-strength glue holds the sculptures together, so go ahead and touch. Outside, there's a real pool, too, with soft LEGO bricks that can be used to build in the water. Meanwhile, don't miss the hotel's disco-themed lift, which is nearly a ride in itself.
The LEGOLAND Castle Hotel, meanwhile, opened in 2018 with 250 rooms based on three kingdom-oriented themes: wizards, knights and princesses, with LEGO art ranging from owls to cats and fire-breathing dragons, and tiny star lights embedded in the ceiling over the children's bunk beds. The Castle's lobby offers its own diversions, from the slide that runs parallel to a flight of stairs, a Knock Knock Door that tells jokes and a small 'dungeon' ready for photo ops. Its courtyard area has its own pool, a LEGO-stocked playground and a big screen TV set on a small lawn, playing LEGO films daily. The hotel's Dragon's Den restaurant has live entertainment (jesters who take requests when you spin the wheel on the wall), and a parent-friendly bar.
With either hotel, remind your children to pack their LEGO Mini Figures, which they can trade with staff at the hotels or in the park.
Accommodations Popular with Children
California Attractions for Younger Children
12 Beaches for Children
Courtesy of LEGOLAND California Resort
LEGOLAND for Toddlers
Little plastic bricks mean big fun for tiny tots
Your little boy or girl may not yet own their first set of DUPLO bricks, but they'll still be drawn into this fantasy world made from millions of miniature bricks. Gentler rides and play areas are delineated by a cuddly teddy bear on the park map. Toddlers can chug around on a pint-size choo-choo, 'pilot' a plane two metres in the air or dig in the sand for dinosaur fossils. (Tip: before you get to Carlsbad, check out the theme park's handy Know Before You Go page.)
Much of the magic happens in Miniland USA, where you'll find to-scale LEGO replicas of iconic landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Las Vegas Strip and New York's Central Park, where short attention spans will love searching for itty-bitty sunbathers or people practicing tai chi. That's if you can peel your tiny Wookie away from the Star Wars attraction next door, where scenes from the films and cartoon have been painstakingly recreated. What could be more mind-blowing than the attention to detail here? The amount of bricks needed to make it all happen: more than 32 million.
For children five and under, DUPLO Playtown is the place to slide, climb and explore playhouses and other interactive structures—which include a hospital, a barn and a supermarket—decked out with buttons, games and, of course, plenty of giant LEGO bricks. The LEGOLAND® Express Train Ride gently navigates hairpin turns as it chugs through a sprouting LEGO garden. It's a great introduction to theme park fun for smaller children just beginning to ramble around on their own. For older LEGO fans, DUPLO® Playtown has the impressively looming Kid Power Towers; children and parents can ascend to the top for panoramic views of the park before 'free falling' back to the ground.
LEGOLAND Rides and Attractions
Spotlight: LEGOLAND
12 Great Beaches for Children
Welcome to Kidifornia
The 'Welcome to Kidifornia' ad offers a quick peek at some trip-of-a-lifetime family holidays in the Golden State—filled with beaches, national parks, theme parks and much more.
LEGOLAND Water Park
Even more slides, waves and water
Chill out at this lively water park located inside LEGOLAND California—which you enter either by upgrading your ticket or buying a bundled ticket at the entry gates. (Just check the LEGOLAND calendar first: the water park is seasonal, open every day in summer, but with blackout dates in spring and fall.) One side of the water park is classic LEGO-themed, while the other side is jazzed up with the lions, crocodiles, and other talking-beast characters from the LEGO-inspired TV series and toy line Legends of Chima.
Slip into your bathing suits to jump into the ultra-cool Lion Temple Wave Pool, where walking under the LEGO lion archway could get you doused by 400 gallons of water every minute from 30 feet/9 meters above the wave pool. Forget a swimsuit? You can buy suits and goggles at the shops by the water park's entrance, stow your regular theme-park clothes and sneakers in lockers, and borrow life jackets for little swimmers.
Granted, this is still LEGOLAND, so there is more to do than just splash or ride the slides. There are plenty of hands-on toys, including water cannons and giant squirt guns. Climb up the pool's 40-foot/12-meter-high floating mountain to watch the endless water wars below. Help the kids build their own boats to take on the water slide, or just let them go at it while you retire to a poolside cabana, a worthwhile splurge for the day; it includes lounge chairs, a mini fridge, complimentary drinks, and the most important commodity of the day—shade.
Courtesy of Legoland California
Holiday Events at LEGOLAND
Giant legos, real snow, & sweet treats
LEGOLAND California makes things extra-lively for events and holidays throughout the year—whether it's annual celebrations or special occasions, like a week highlighting a new Star Wars display in Miniland, or perhaps celebrating the enigmatic LEGO Batman. The Carlsbad theme park shows its national pride in July for its patriotic Red, White & Boom celebration, with games, dance contests, and early-evening fireworks for July 4. There's a "Brick-Or-Treat" party every Saturday night (and some Fridays) in October, with special entertainment, costume contests, giant LEGO Halloween models, fireworks, and of course plenty of sweet treats.
At Christmastime, the park brings snow—yes, real snow—to Southern California, using it to dress up various sites around the park, including the world's largest all-LEGO Christmas tree (a cool fact, but how much competition does it have?). Build a snowman using LEGO bricks, sing carols with the Jingle Jammers, and stock up on LEGO brick gifts too. Come right after Christmas and you can take part in a family-friendly version of New Year's Eve, with live music and a bedtime-friendly "brick drop" at 6 p.m. On special nights in December, add holiday fireworks and light shows to the mix.
Brick-Or-Treat
Holiday Snow Days
Sea Life Aquarium by Linda Balon/Flickr
Touch, learn, and explore
With up-close experiences, touch pools, and extraordinary walk-through tanks, this sister site to LEGOLAND California helps kids (and grownups) learn about all kinds of aquatic life. Upgrade your regular theme park ticket for about $20 more, or bundle your park ticket with passes to the aquarium at a discounted rate. Exploring the aquarium can take just about an hour, but you can extend the time easily if you come for one of the scheduled events, like the tank feedings or the animal encounters.
More than 5,000 creatures, including sharks, rays, seahorses, octopi, and tropical fish (including entertaining "hey, that's Nemo!" clownfish) swim, crawl, and slither through their underwater environments here, with plenty of ways for us landlubbers to enjoy them. Check out the Jellyfish Discovery Zone, where 100 of the enigmatic creatures dance around their own version of a disco, with ceiling-high tube tanks and rainbow-colored spotlights. You can also watch seahorses get their daily fill of brine shrimp, or learn how aquarists use food to enrich the mind of the aquarium's surprisingly savvy giant Pacific octopus.
The SeaLife Aquarium is also home to one of the best-kept dining secrets of LEGOLAND Calfornia: The Ocean Journey Café, a mellow, market-style restaurant with all locally sourced cuisine, from fresh salads to Havarti-and-cheddar grilled cheese sandwiches and Angus-beef sliders.
Sea Life at Legoland California Resort
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EMS Course Application
NATIONAL REGISTRY TESTING
It's been said, out of disaster the noblest of spirits arise! On a warm fall evening in 1955, John Crum watched fire swallow a home, then spread to a neighboring church, burning both structures to the ground. Mr. Crum knew then something had to change. John Crum's dream of change is what would give rise to the Inez Volunteer Fire Department, which would be founded in 1956 with John Crum serving as the 1st Fire Chief.
The department started small with a handful of men. But, with focused dedication, the department began growing in late 1956. After diligent fundraising involving "everything but bootlegging", members finally raised enough money to finance a new 1956 Howe Ford Fire Engine. The cost of the department's first fire engine was $11,375.00, with monthly payments of $444.44 on the principal. During the same year, a large alarm siren was installed on top of the Martin County Courthouse, to alert local firemen of emergencies. The siren was also set off for drills, which would attract local residents as spectators. This was risky, however, as newspaper articles report people being knocked off the courthouse wall by an unmanageable hose line.
From it's founding, until 1975, the Inez Volunteer Fire Department operated on a meager $23,000, which was all the results of fundraising or private donation. However, in 1975 that all began to change. A new, two-story, brick fire station was completed and opened in 1975 with the help of various organizations, such as, Martin County Fiscal Court and the Inez Women's Club. Prior to construction of this station, Chief Crum housed the department's only engine in his garage at Crum Motor Sales in downtown Inez. Then, in 1976, a new Ford Fire Engine was purchased with coal severance tax money for the department. To continue the progress of the mid 1970's, Chief Crum reported that the department's membership had swelled to 24 members, with an average of "14 to 16 members turning out for every fire".
To bring our history into perspective, we have to compare it to today. The Inez Volunteer Fire Department completed an 8,000 square foot, four bay fire station in 2017, costing over $600,000 and located close to the former Crum Motor Sales location. Our department has grown to include 3 stations, covering 164 square miles. Currently, we manage 5 Fire engines, 2 rescue apparatus, 1 aerial apparatus, 1 brush fire apparatus, 1 water rescue boat, a regional hazardous materials response asset and a UTV. Even though the fire service grows and becomes more expensive, the basic goal is still the same!
The vision and dedication of the original membership is still steering the Inez Volunteer Fire Department. The last few years have played out for current firefighters, much like the mid-70's did for Chief Crum and other members of the time. It is our hope, that in forty more years, someone else will be writing a story about great things we did to make our community a better place.
Copyright © 2018 Inez Volunteer Fire / Rescue - All Rights Reserved.


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