"PND"—Post-Nationals Depression. Dating back to the days of US Nationals, especially coming to prominence over the last few years of the tournament's existence, it refers to the effect of spending 4 days at the biggest Pokemon event of the year, among friends from around the country (and now world!)…and then returning to real life. The scourge of many a player, it costs the economy untold amounts of productivity in the week after the event.
In all seriousness, I can't say I feel that effect this year as much as "Post-Nationals Immense Relief." 45 weekends have come and gone since this crazy ride got underway in Fort Wayne, IN last September, and I've spent more than the supermajority of them who-knows-where playing a card game among some of the best people in the world. The goal: a Top 16 finish in the North American Championship Point rankings, to acquire a travel award and Day 2 invitation to the 2018 Pokemon World Championships. I outlined most of the motivation behind that in a writeup a few months ago, on a March day where I was yet still quite naive as to what was to come. More on that later, though.
With this past weekend's North American International Championships in the history books, I can finally say this chase is over—and I survived it to place 13th. I'm an incredible mix of happy, relieved, grateful, and thoroughly exhausted.
More than anything else I write here, I want to underscore that this has been an unimaginably incredible experience, one which I'm eternally grateful to have been able to undertake. I have had the opportunity to see more of the world in a year (also, the last 8 weeks) than most Americans will see in a lifetime and to make friends across the globe. That's never something I can begin to complain about.
To be sure, there are days where I wonder what else I could have been doing with life, days I wish I'd pursued other things that came about, and days where I wonder what might have been. There were weeks of this season where those days outnumbered the ones where this felt like a good idea. I am not particularly good at the idea of leaving the past dead—what's the fun in that when I could imagine 100 different pasts instead? I will never know what could have been, though. All I can know is that this has been incredible.
But on the flip side, the unavoidable consequence: I'm entirely burned out at this point.
Today, I'm going to talk about as many different aspects of this season as they come to me. Each is sub-headed and will probably be mostly independent of each other. I hope some of you find some of it interesting, but I'll readily admit this is at least partially a selfish cleanse of the past 10 months—or 8 years, in some cases—of craziness. This is it for me at the highest level—the Top 16 chase isn't something I can imagine myself undertaking again. This is what I've learned on the way.
Opinions, feelings, and memories follow.
That's not an Amazing Race finale open, though your confusion is understood. A few weeks ago, some ignorant sap wrote about this year's travel involved with a Top 16 chase before he had any real concept of what June looked like. Said ignorant sap proceeded to have quite the month. If only he knew then!
That 90,000 miles figure is a low estimate if anything, leaving out a few out-of-the-way connections, and certainly ignoring things like League Cups. It's also entirely way too dizzying to think about for too long, although, honestly, the entire season sort of just turns into an incomprehensible mush the more I think about it. It's been a very long "year"—longer than any 12 months I can remember, for sure.
Between school and this whole card game thing, it's been a long time since I could appreciate January 1 as the start of anything. Instead, my idea of a "year" has generally revolved around late August/early September. After all, that's when the annual World Championships happen and when school gets back underway—the culmination of the last 11 months and the start of a new 9 at the same time.
June 30: Mercifully, only Grand Rapids for a day.
Where's the time for this? In essence, Monday-Thursday I was a Chemistry student on a compressed semester, and Friday-Sunday I spent somewhere doing this. It was doable for the 8 weeks of Chemistry, but I'm fairly sure things would've turned fairly south in a lot of ways had I needed to stretch this any longer.
To be truthful, the academic year itself wasn't too entirely difficult to "balance," at least in the sense that I chose to do it: when merely attempting to get good grades and play Pokemon, there wasn't too much difficulty to be found. But, in this spirit, when I get tagged in the occasional Facebook thread asking how to balance Pokemon and college, I do staunchly maintain that it would be near impossible to do so while attempting to be the full-fledged socialite that many see as typical of the "college experience." Personally, not appealing to me anyway. Nevertheless, even with my opinion on that, there is a balance to be struck, and I don't think I hit it this year. It's on the list of reasons I won't try this again.
If you want to chase Top 16, be prepared to travel far and often. I earned a pitiful number of my points from North American Regionals, and if I'd coordinated it a little better, I bet I could've made up those points attending Special Events or Regionals in smaller areas (where it's objectively less challenging to attain high-value finishes) while attending 0 NA Regionals. Next year, I see no indication that this will change. If you want to be the best in North America, be prepared to prove it in Asia, Europe, and wherever else you find yourself.
Once upon a time, a younger Christopher did not get along very well with a certain P.E. teacher of his. If you ask me, she felt I didn't value her class enough—in fairness, I probably placed fairly low value on it—and I reciprocated the resulting iciness. Nevertheless, in a fun day in 9th grade Health class, we were deciding topics for class presentations. The "system": we would draw names, at which point each person would choose the topic of their choice. If someone later wanted the same topic, we would draw the two names again and the "winner" got to keep it.
I actually had the random first choice of topic, picked whatever I did, and moved on without being "challenged" almost through the entire process. But, at the end, the last chooser decided to "challenge" someone else, which he won. The loser of that challenge then insisted that she be allowed to challenge me for my topic, which I then lost. I, then, insisted I should be allowed the right of a challenge for something else since I'd been booted without ever getting to challenge someone else. This was refused, which 14 year old me was fairly miffed by: she'd just gotten to take my topic after being bumped off her own, why wasn't I afforded the same right? I almost never argued with teachers, and definitely not in public, but for better or worse I made an exception here.
At some point or another—and I promise I'm going somewhere with this—I made a point that a pair of my classmates chose to applaud to. Now, this pair of classmates had a history of trying to antagonize our P.E. teacher, so their support wasn't exactly the bastion of excellence my case needed, but I was welcomed with wide-ranging sympathy in our next-hour Spanish. But, before that, I was sternly chewed out after class—her evidence that I was out of line being my classmates' applause. She said my actions were entirely those of respectful disagreement, with the exceptions of the lines that garnered applause, which allegedly should have been obvious to me: my classmates, with every history of annoying her, approved, so clearly I was wrong.
I was incredulous: you're going to stand here and judge my actions on the reactions they garnered from others, rather than their own merits?
In the end, 14 year old me, the youngest in the room by over a year, just really didn't want to present on the anatomy of the endocrine system—and the pair that got me in hot water apologized for inadvertently setting me up. But the argument has stuck with me for a long time, and after a year of truly being "visible" in the Pokemon community, I'm not quite as offended as I once was at her suggestion that the reactions my actions garnered were on my head. And, in true sincerity, yielding influence terrifies me. I'm fundamentally never going to be convinced that anyone is completely responsible for the actions of another person, but I think we are responsible for the effects of the ideas we represent.
I don't know that everyone is going to follow this leap, but to me, this wasn't something I understood well until I experienced being "known" in the community, which is something that started before this year, but was something I felt ever-present this year. And, really, being known has taken two tracks: there's the autograph-hunting, almost celebrity element, that comes from being a known player, and then there's the "robot" element of knowing, uh, close to everything about the game.
To say the least, the celebrity aspect is something I'm not especially comfortable with at this point, nor something I think I'll ever be entirely comfortable with. If you've ever approached me at an event and come away feeling that I was cold, I genuinely promise I don't hate you! Especially in the first few months after the SixPrizes takeover and my finishes on official stream last season, being approached for autographs, selfies, or whatever else was something entirely foreign to me.
Really, tournaments are already not entirely my most comfortable experience ever: I'm fairly sure I spend more time alone at a table with headphones in than the average player, owing to a healthy dose of introversion and a healthier dose of people to talk to at tournaments. I've tried to get better at this, and I no longer come away from the average autograph request feeling like I've alienated someone forever—that's a win, right? But, it's a battle. Nevertheless, I cannot understate how much some of you have brightened my days, and I'm continually humbled by the attention—even if I'd rather duck.
In the other vein, there's being known as the all-knowing "robot" of the community. Those were someone else's words, though—I cringed repeating them, let alone writing them myself. The robot moniker and I have an interesting relationship that is beyond the scope of this writing, but I do wish to make known that I know most of you mean it in good fun and I accept it as such. In the meantime, though, I've seemingly acquired a reputation for tournament structure analysis, player data analysis, and essentially most other things stats-related in the community. That's before the whole day-of-tournament Math saga comes to light.
With that, I've learned, comes a responsibility to choose my words carefully. Influence terrifies me, and I would naturally rather advocate for my stance on an issue from the back than lead it from the front. As life happens, though, I've been awarded a platform and my goal is to make the best of it for as long as people listen. I do want to say that I'll never be able to properly articulate how much some of what I've been told this year has meant to me. Some of you are too kind.
With a reputation for knowing things comes a responsibility to not get things wrong later. With a reputation for being on the right side of the rules comes a paranoid scramble to stay that way. There is nothing to be had in this game, as far as I'm concerned, if it is marred by impropriety. I have tried tirelessly to stay on the right side of integrity throughout my time here, and I hope to have made it in the end. There are actions I'll question for years, people I know hold me in contempt for decisions I've made, "friends" I have turned in, and things I'd have back. I can only promise that I've always tried to do what I thought was right. At the end of the day, I have that to live with.
More and more, I hear vague comments from people in high places attesting to the stories they've heard of me. Nothing quite so well manages to make my heart soar and my stomach drop simultaneously. I only hope the stories are good.
The words of so many of you mean so a lot to me. I'm merely grateful to have the ability to answer questions. Any positive impact I can leave behind is bonus. I hope some of what I've written makes a bit of sense to anyone else out there, but if not, it boils down to that.
To bring this all back: Once upon a time, I would have argued that I had absolutely zero responsibility for the actions my classmates took earlier. I still didn't move their hands, but in allowing myself to argue publicly with my instructor there in a way that risked inciting their actions, I laid the groundwork for them—and can't completely wash my hands of it. For any Seniors or particularly thoughtful Juniors that happen to have stumbled onto my post today: the adults that tell you life isn't always so black and white are onto something—I promise I didn't believe them at the time either.
This is a particular favorite of mine because that heading alone just evoked so many emotions in the eyes of so many people. I want to be careful with what I say here, so I'm going to do my best to stick to personal anecdotes and ensure everyone else is left out of it. To the degree that I fail to do so, I apologize in advance to anyone who feels I've infringed on them.
Within discourse in any social group, there will be those that receive better or worse treatment based on their standing in that social circle. Biologically, I think that's too much of an ingrained fact that social psychologists have gone about demonstrating for anyone to believe our game is above that. What's important, in my mind, is the degrees to which it is allowed to affect the game. This sort of "immunity to criticism" can arise in a few situations in particular: the results/fallouts of accusations of cheating/improper conduct, "skewed" judge calls, favorable in-game treatment, and intimidation—and the perception, independent of reality, of any of the above. In all cases, the first step to solution is awareness.
First: I sort of alluded to it in the last section, but the easiest way to make me uncomfortable is to try to refer to social standing in the game while at the table. No, my CP total does not mean you are not going to beat me. Sure, maybe I have a better chance, but I'm probably not going to win against your straight Lurantis deck playing Greninja no matter what. My advice to aspiring players is to not let the "star" factor matter to you. Certain folks have an ingrained self-confidence that doesn't allow them to process the idea that someone else could be genuinely better at the game than them (this is something that many grow out of moving into Masters, in my experience, which is why mudslinging is so much more the norm in Seniors) while others have an inferiority complex that instills a belief that measuring up is impossible. The ideal mindset is somewhere in the middle there. I'm not claiming to have found it.
With regard to judge interactions, there's an entire sea of issues to talk about. The reality of a global game in a global tournament structure is that those players traveling on a global level are naturally going to gain a level of familiarity with the judge staff that the first-time player isn't going to have. To me, I have no doubt that 95% of judge calls are made with no regard whatsoever for this effect, and another 4.5% I have fairly good confidence in. There's a 0.5% that sometimes makes me cringe, but that is mostly beside the point: what matters is that perceptions of bias are avoided, because perception is reality in situations like this.
To self-indict here, to me one of the bigger gaffes I made this season came in Hartford. I don't even remember what the situation was, but I needed a fairly simple yes/no ruling to reassure my opponent of the legality of my play. Floor coverage was a bit sparse, so just raising my hand wasn't going to cut it—but instead of "Judge!", "Steve!" slipped out of my mouth to call for Steve Lewis, noted Houstonian and frequent appearance on the judging circuit—and closest person to the scene. I resisted the temptation to slap my hand over my mouth for the idiotic gesture: now, to my opponent, it looks like I've just called in an ally or something.
I probably beat myself up for that one for the next month or so of tournaments, and don't think I've managed to do anything similar since. I'm far more paranoid of appearances than most; this isn't lost on me, but nevertheless I don't want to imagine how many similar things happen on an average weekend. I firmly believe there's no substantial issue of top-player privilege among actual judge rulings, so to muddy the waters with the appearance of it is something I loathe having done.
There's a Top 16 calibre player who has had some double attachment issues on stream over the past few years. I'm distinctly not naming him here because I don't think he deserves the Google hit for something that is entirely circumstantial as far as any of us can know, but for the purposes here it's enough to know that there have been multiple threads accusing him of "cheating" via these game play errors over the last while.
Usually, these threads are initiated by people who have little social standing in the community, or social standing that has been eroded by these threads themselves—right, wrong, or otherwise. There's usually a mix of accusers, white-knighters, and those in-between commenting on the topic. To me, I really don't care whether this player "cheats" or not for the purpose of this topic: it's enough to juxtapose the social media reaction to accusations against him to the reactions we see when an unknown entity is thrown under the spotlight.
In the cases where the high-profile is accused by the nobody, I think the community needs to be conscious of the fact that it has a tendency to bias toward the high-profile player. That doesn't mean to prejudice anyone's reaction, and it certainly isn't a commentary on a particular case, but the key to beating implicit bias is self-awareness. Just because today's accused is innocent doesn't meant tomorrow's is on the grounds that he has 1300 CP. Losing sight of that would be a disservice to everyone involved in the game.
To look from a different angle, I'm pretty sure that if I wanted to, I could bury a few players on my recollection of things that have happened alone. That isn't something I ever would do, for a few reasons. At first thought, it's a strenuous use of social capital that at best ends in inconclusive question marks. But foremost in consideration, I believe the game is healthier when we root out cheaters via the established means—judges and catching actions—rather than oral vigilantism.
If I see a player do something dicey, my position is that it is preferable to report that action to a judge rather than run a social media campaign on the topic. The social media campaign at best mars the accused, but it also puts him on guard for future events—at worst, it backfires against the accuser, something those with lesser social standing in the community implicitly will weigh more heavily than I (and I already weigh it not-insubstantially). By tipping a judge off, the situation can be monitored, and things can be caught definitively.
I am confident that I have made tips that have panned out, and I have faith in the judging system to eventually catch a bad actor. However, with a heavy heart, I allow that there are those whose experiences do not allow them faith in the judging system, and therefore I certainly do not mean to criticize those that take the vocal route in exposing wrongdoing. Perhaps I am entirely wrong in my conviction toward behind-the-scenes maneuvering—I am inclined to behind-the-scenes rather than the spotlight in almost every situation anyway; maybe that's bled too far here. It's a distinct possibility I've weighed, but I continue to believe things are improving, and stand in my conviction—but, that does not mean I condemn those who feel differently.
Unfortunately, I do believe we generally suffer from a degree of conflation between credibility and Championship Points within the community, but I do strongly believe it's an effect limited to areas that don't affect competitive integrity. The court of public opinion is weighed by stature, and I'm not sure there's much we can do about that. Nevertheless, I believe the venue that actually matters in the game on a practical, concrete, and integral level—judging—is free of any degree of this taint. It's fair to wonder what effects can be had on public opinion. It's unfair to speculate on judges' motives, in my mind, when speaking in this area.
To depart from the Masters sphere for a bit, this is a brief aside on the state of Juniors/Seniors…and their parents. Sadly, it's been a mediocre year on the whole for the younger divisions' attendances, though Madison did manage to be the largest Senior Regional ever just a few weeks ago. We saw the continuation of a trend that emerged last year in the rise of the "super-kid," with a few players commanding impressive shares of the total CP availability for the year. With the ability to attend everything, we've seen a number of players and parents take advantage—and props to them for playing the system the way TPCi has designed it.
I've heard a lot of frustration expressed that it's "possible" for players to accumulate these massive CP buffers, and while this is an issue that permeates in Masters as well, something that I think players and parents are going to need to realize is that Championship Point rankings are not strictly intend to offer the "best" 16 players the Day 2 invite. (Or, rather, that "best" is strictly a linear function of performance in a given season—and you cannot prove that status without participating sufficiently.) It fundamentally isn't the fault of players for playing the system the way it is designed, and it's highly unfortunate to see and hear some of the reactions the year has garnered in this respect.
Fundamentally, I believe that deriving basic personal value from relative performance to other players should be discouraged at all costs. You cannot control the actions of another in the game. Being 2nd instead of 1st, 9th instead of 10th, or 101st to 102nd, is not a hair that a healthy person should split. I heard a lot of cringe-worthy statements over the course of the year to effects similar to this, and I'm really not sure what to say beyond expressing my sincerest regret that anyone thinks that way.
Wishing ill upon another, or needing to mar another, to improve one's own self-stature is the mark that something is wrong, and sadly I think this happens all too often in the game—but especially amongst teenagers predisposed to these issues of self-valuation. There are not as many Senior cheaters as their are Senior cheating accusations—though, there are more Senior cheaters than their are Senior disqualifications, which is an issue in which I know I share a passion with many prominent judges. Within your own circles, I challenge you to not tolerate vague, detail-less "he cheated!" as a dismissal for losing. It's the best way to move to a healthier dynamic.
Another issue in the younger divisions that sort of ties in with the above, but also has its own elements entirely: the phenomena of the player-parent "team." So often when a parent tells me about the results of his or her child on the weekend, it's a "We got nth!" or "We hit some rough luck" or "We…"—you get the picture. This isn't something as much that I aim to criticize as much as something I want to express my bewilderment with. At my last check, it isn't the parent sitting down at the table, but the child.
Of all people, I am the last one on earth positioned to denounce the value a committed parent brings to one's chances in the game—there is nothing equivalent—and I don't believe there is implicit danger in the "we" wording. I do, though, believe it's emblematic of a potential pitfall that I'm not sure some have stayed away from all that well. There have been parents, in my years, that I am 100% sure were merely living vicariously through children with middling-at-best interest in the game. More often than not, this over-investment on a parental part runs in parallel with activities like the "we" wording—it's evidence of the mentality behind.
I can think of some notable exceptions to the general trend I'm insinuating here, and once more, I don't think the wording itself is implicitly symptomatic of a problem. But, if you are someone whose inclination is to lead with that "we" phrase, I'd challenge you to reflect on your own reasons for doing so. There are plenty of healthy ones to consider, but there's also no small sum of more problematic ones to root out.
Then again, I am but a 19-year old who has played a card game in a lot of places and would like to see that card game's community thrive in as many ways as possible. There, probably, are reasonable people that could disagree.
Within human nature, making mistakes is something fundamentally torturous. Nobody likes doing it, though the amount of regret, self-torment, and overall pain will vary a lot person-to-person. Within the game of Pokemon, there are a lot of decisions to make, and while some of them are probability plays that just don't work out sometimes, there are a few that can be straight-up wrong. On the other hand, there are sometimes entirely unforced errors that can bubble to the top for a player.
Making a wrong decision is one thing—at least in most cases, there is probably a self-justification for what was done. Maybe it didn't work out, but at least you probably had a conviction that led you down the road you chose. There's some value in being wrong, but at least knowing why you chose wrongly. On the other hand, there's the unforced error: torpedo'ing your own tournament run through things that have no conceivable logical explanation, where just entirely wrong, or otherwise emblematic of a debacle in the making.
I only "threw" a small handful of games this year in ways that were unequivocally indictments of my own actions. Sure, there were likely some plays on the wrong side of ideal percentages here and there, but only a small handful where my own actions directly and obviously led to my own loss. Unfortunately, two of those were on back-to-back days, in Roanoke and at the pursuant Memorial Day League Cup in Ohio.
At Roanoke, I started 7-1, lost to my friend Xander in the match for the #1 overall Day 1 seed, and faced a matchup I considered favorable in Round 10. I'd gotten Game 3 to a point that was systematically impossible to lose; there just wasn't a combination of scenarios where my opponent could draw his 6 prizes before I'd grab mine. In some sort of delusional cloud, though, I decided to lead off my would-be penultimate turn with a Ghetsis to insure against any 0.01% plays that could result in problems. A "Zoroark turn" of Trades, Ultra Balls, and whatnot later, I played a (greedy) Guzma to move my active rather than attaching+retreating. I took that knockout, then midway through my opponent's turn, it occurred to him that he had too few cards in hand: I'd played two Supporters.
I think the responding judge and head judge thought I was irritated with them for what happened next, but as I hope I conveyed at the time and want to absolutely transmit now, I was solely disappointed with myself for allowing the game-losing Double Prize Loss. I'd punted an 8-2 start, with a date with another decently favorable matchup up next, in the crux of the Top 16 chase. It was easily one of the low points of my season, and the rest of the day consisted of bizarre matchups that sunk everything about my chances. My lead over 16th shrunk to a pitiful margin of points, and due to a Cup upload timing matter, I was actually positioned 17th on official rankings for a few days. Even if it wasn't real, the gut punch felt real.
In a furor that I'm still not quite able to diagnose, I'd missed the obvious: I just needed to attach to win! Fundamentally embarrassing, entirely gut-wrenching, and yet another self-inflicted wound—in the course of 24 hours, I'd thrown away untold numbers of points. I lost out at the Cup, missing Top 8, and never attained a second Cup finish for the quarter: that error was one I just never came back from.
Fortunately, I spent the next few weeks playing like it was May 2017, and I get to write this recap of what almost was rather than an autopsy of what went wrong in my Top 16 chase. But I can't quite describe the feeling of sinking my own case so dramatically, let alone doing so twice in such a minimal time. It almost compares to the feeling of essentially winning 3 games in the finals of Mexico, only to have 2 of them be pulled back by miraculous comebacks that I could've likely prevented with some better play, but I do have to say that was the most bittersweet moment of the season by a mile and a half.
When things like this happen, all you can do in the end is move on. I probably dwelled on it longer than I should have, but there's absolutely a certain healthy element to reflection. It isn't something I can go back and fix—all I could do was perform at my best for the rest of the season, and while I'm not even sure I achieved that, I did achieve enough to finish out my goal of finishing in NA16—and that's what matters to me today.
This one will be short and sweet because I lack a personal anecdote and merely wish to underscore a point while I'm here: there is a long history in the game of players flouting the rules, and in particular, I've come to observe that many have a fundamental lack of respect for rules they don't like, and choose to pretend as if they do not exist. Believe it or not, most of the rules in the game exist for very good reasons—for example, the prohibition on flipping a coin to decide a match is because the presence of such actions brings the game under gambling regulations: something that cannot be tolerated for a litany of reasons.
Fundamentally, if you get caught violating the rules on conversations that are allowed—or disallowed—at the table, you deserve what comes to you. The game would be better if we could convince everyone of that.
As I've alluded, stated, or hinted for months, this is it for me on the Day 2 chase trail. I don't believe TPCi will make substantial changes next year, and I don't enjoy playing the game enough at this point to facilitate the time dedication it will take to be within the game's highest level next year. It's simply not something I can justify when there are other things that can be a better use of my time.
Nevertheless, for a few reasons, I cannot go away entirely—nor do I want to go away entirely. Too many people in the game still mean too much to me to take that step, and in a sense, I still want to do what I can to better the parts of the game I can try to affect. The chapter is written; the book is open. You'll still see me at a number of Regional events, and perhaps at an IC, though I'll probably call it quits on the Cup circuit to the extent that I can do so. Though my schedule doesn't facilitate it at the moment, it's my intent to offer coaching in the run-up to Worlds, so if that's of interest, keep an eye out.
At the end of the day, I'm eternally grateful for the opportunities I've been afforded in the game. I hope you found something I wrote here today interesting—that's about all I can ask for.
It's been a fun ride. Thank you for being a part of it.


Turn your favorite fairy tale heroes into modern fashion show models. Or make a new character and dress her up in stylized gown inspired by fairytale characters like Ariel, Elsa, Mulan and Jasmine. How will the fairytale characters fair at the fashion show?


To show work at the Maritime Gallery an artist must first go through the annual jury process that is associated with the International Marine Art Exhibition held each September. The prospectus with all the details for entering is available on our website every January for the fall exhibition that year. The application with digital images is due to the Gallery by May 1. Artists will be notified of their status on June 1 by mail.
Thank you for your interest in the Maritime Gallery.


The CBx Services offering aims to provide bespoke advisory that improves clients' understanding and awareness of the building energy performance and helps to narrow the 'performance gap'.
A partnership with the UCL Energy Institute helps CBx to provide robust, up-to-date knowledge and support for its members through the Institute's collection of on-going building energy consumption research projects and databases.
The two main areas of focus for CBx services are; benchmarking & improvement of buildings and consultancy and support at specific capital spends such as handover or refurbishment.
Using the CBx Upload Form which asks for 16 simple data-points for each building. This will provide a picture of your portfolio, the spread of data and the highest and lowest consumers within it. This exercise will identify candidate buildings for further investigation.
In addition to understanding the spread of data in your portfolio, we are able to perform a benchmarking study to determine the performance of your assets as a comparison to other figures.
Assets against sector specific indicators: for example, kWh/m2/£1000 profit or kWh/m2/guest.
An initial site visit and client interview will provide the context for refurbishment advice. The team will need to access any available building information – log books, O&Ms, drawings and will need a full year of energy use data for the building in order to establish its current performance and benchmark any prospective improvements. Refurbishment options will be drawn up including any pertinent design suggestions for passive improvements and improvements that will complement any technology implementation; draft lobbies, light wells etc. An impact assessment of each fabric option will be made including cost, disruption, likely energy and carbon savings and payback period.
This service will begin with light touch benchmarking exercise and an investigation of relevant legislative obligations and targets to identify buildings for refurbishment. Refurbishment options will be drawn up based on site visits, structures interviews with key members of staff and a desktop study based on available building information – log books, O&Ms, drawings etc. An impact assessment of each option will be made including cost, disruption, likely energy and carbon savings and payback period.
It takes many trades and specialists to deliver a building, particularly one with a large amount of technology. A recent £8million Government funded Building Performance Evaluation study has highlighted handover and commissioning as one of the major trip points for effective operation and energy performance of a building.
The commissioning and handover programme is often susceptible to being squeezed as job overrun and occupants need to move in. The Handover Management Service ensures joined up thinking and installation across all trades and works with the future building and facilities managers to ensure a clear understanding of the systems and their intended use.
In order to ascertain a building's effectiveness in operation, understand occupant satisfaction and to assess its performance against design targets. It is undertaken in three parts; a forensic walkthrough to assess the building's operation and to identify any anomalous processes or observations, an energy survey to determine the energy end-use breakdown and an occupant satisfaction assessment which includes surveys and interviews of building users and occupiers.
Recommended as on-going care and maintenance following a full Building Performance Evaluation or the handover management services. This service will include a site visit, a meeting with key building management personnel, an interrogation of the Building Management System and other checks as required in order to establish any diversion of the building operation from the design intent.
Where gaps are uncovered, a corrective action plan will be put together alongside any further recommendations for boosting the efficiency of the building.
CBx have also recently completed a high-level benchmarking report for the Environment Agency's portfolio of 22 office buildings, which has allowed us to identify specific areas of focus for further investigation. By benchmarking the assets against the rest of the portfolio, the highest and lowest consumers have been illustrated and the Agency's immediate exposure to carbon legislation and costs; the worst performing building across the analysis has been earmarked to target for post occupancy evaluation and energy reduction.
By comparing figures to industry benchmarks, CBx identified problem areas across other buildings; buildings with high gas usage will be investigated for fabric performance, any causes of a high air-change rate that would increase heating demand and the size of any other end use consumption supplied by gas. Similarly, buildings that have been highlighted as having high electricity demand will be examined in order to disaggregate or split the demand into end uses to understand where it is being used. In this way, energy reduction interventions can be targeted, effective and financially viable.
For organisations with large portfolios, this targeted, high-level benchmarking activity is essential to streamline processes and avoid unnecessary work.


MDD250-12N1 Ixys pressure contact diode/diode (dual diode) module designed to industry standard with auxiliary cathode connections rated 1200 VRRM 290 Amps (ITAV) with standard housing.
MDD250-12n1 can be used instead of MDD250-08n1; MDD220-12n1; MDD220-08n1 as mechanically equivalent and electrically superior.
MDD250-12n1 is also similar to semikron SKKD 380/12 devices, please check datasheets carefully.


I know for some of you it has been shocking to find us gone from our Milford location. Greg is English and we've decided to come home. Since the Visa process is quite complex, we were unable to share this until it was a definite. At that point, we had 30 days to go! so Milford, we can't thank you enough for all you did for our little dream. We will miss you dearly.
So here we are, today we have moved Into our new shop location in York, England. We are located at 21 Colliergate and will be unofficially open almost right away as we need to get business going again! We have some great hopes and dreams for this new space and can't wait to share them with you. We will likely have a Christmas Open House with an opening party in early December but will be open for business by the 10th of November. We will update this on our social media and events pages. We invite our new local friends and customers to swing by anytime after Tuesday just to say hello and see the boxes. No formal open hours will be posted until we are settled.


text:
Indian government overprices 700 MHz spectrum again
Written by Scott Bicheno
The first Indian spectrum auction in years ending in two days and brought in loads of cash, but operators once more declined to bid on 700 MHz lots.
700 MHz spectrum should be in very high demand as such low-frequency spectrum offers excellent range and propagation characteristics. This should especially be the case in a country as large as India and yet, for the second auction running, none of it was snapped up.
The reason for this, according to Indian media, was the high reserve price. The same happened five years ago, it seems, leading to a 43% cut in the reserve price, but this was still too steep for Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone idea. The latter two are still reeling from the last shakedown from the rapacious Indian government, which seems to view its telecoms sector as a cash cow to be tapped whenever it's short of cash.
The regionalised 30 MHz chunks of 700 MHz spectrum could transform the connectivity of swathes of the country, but's that's apparently not a priority for the Indian government. Government minister Ravi Shanker Prasad is reported as saying the 77,000 core rupees ($10 billion? $100 billion?) represented a 'satisfactory' haul, so it looks like he'd rather the 700 MHz stuff went unsold than the government gets less than it thinks it deserves for those slivers of air.
It seems most of that money was handed over merely to renew existing 4G licenses, which makes the sums involved even more ridiculous. Apparently there will be '5G auctions' later this year and if loads of that goes unsold that will confirm the Indian government places its own avarice above the communications needs of its citizens.
Tags: 700 MHz, auction, India, spectrum
Professor Peter Curwen 02/03/2021 @ 5:01 pm
I have written many articles/commentaries that basically describe the way telecoms is run in India as bonkers. The only positive result really has been the reduction in the number of operators, but even that has gone fairly bonkers with Jio acting as the most disruptive new entrant the world has ever seen. With every new throw of the dice, Vodafone Idea moves one step nearer to bankruptcy so India could even end up with an effective duopoly but no one with enough cash to roll out a decent 5G network. Has any other country in the world set out to achieve this result? Answers on a postcard please….
Cash-strapped Vodafone Idea reportedly seeks emergency $850 million loan
Bharti Airtel and Meta to extend subsea cable to India
Romania 5G auction finally finishes but falls flat
Indian government at odds with telcos on 5G procurement

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
2014 Hawks Player Review: Kyle Korver
Peachtree Hoops is doing a player-by-player review of the 2013-14 Atlanta Hawks and the series continues with a profile of sharpshooter Kyle Korver.
By Brad Rowland@BTRowland May 21, 2014, 12:00pm EDT
Share All sharing options for: 2014 Hawks Player Review: Kyle Korver
Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports
Kyle Korver is one of the best shooters on planet Earth. This fact is not in dispute at this point, and his 2013-2014 performance reflected his incredible abilities in that aspect of the game, while further establishing him as an above-average starter at the shooting guard spot.
In case you (somehow) had any doubts on the utter ridiculousness of Kyle Korver's shooting performance this season, gaze at the splendor of his shot chart.
With the somewhat amusing exception of the right-corner jump shot in the mid-range, Korver flooded his shot chart with green (above-average) shooting areas. On the whole, the now 33-year-old finished the season with 47.5% shooting from the floor, 47.2% shooting from 3-point range and even 92.6% from the free throw line for good measure. Korver led the NBA (!) in 3-point shooting and true shooting percentage (65.3% to best LeBron James), and his shot-making was brilliant in Mike Budenholzer's free-flowing offense.
We could probably go on for days just about Korver's shooting prowess, and to be honest, one of the more underrated parts of his game is his ability to free himself of opposing defenders with off-ball movement. However, there are other parts of Kyle's game that deserved attention this season, as he is certainly not a one-trick pony at this stage in his career.
Korver's defense has become a point of contention (for me, specifically) in that some people maintain that part of his game as a "weakness". To be honest, that couldn't be further from the truth, and I would go as far as to say that Korver is an above-average defender when examining the entire picture. Yes, he will never be the "lockdown" player on that end as a result of relatively limited explosiveness and athleticism, but he is more than adequate in reasonable match-ups (i.e. not guarding the aforementioned LeBron James) and with DeMarre Carroll next to him, that is all he is asked to do.
Help defense would certainly be the strong suit of Korver's game on that side of the ball, and he is seemingly always in the correct position. Defensive rotations are often overlooked, especially by more casual fans, but they are utterly critical (see Scott, Mike) in maintaining solid defensive metrics, and there is a reason that Korver was 4th on the team in defensive win shares this season. Lastly, the 6-foot-7 swingman is active in passing lanes (shout-out to "Hands Havoc Korver") and his production in the steals category (1.0 per game) is quite solid.
From a play-making standpoint, there has been a ton of discussion about Atlanta's "limitations" with having both DeMarre Carroll and Kyle Korver on the floor together. However, the Korver-Carroll combination performed extremely well offensively, scoring 106.6 points per 100 possessions in more than 1,500 minutes together (with a +6.1 points per 100 net rating), which should put to bed any notion of their "ineffectiveness" in shot creation. Korver will never be someone that a credible offense looks to break anyone down off the dribble, but he is crafty in the mid-range, and when you are as good as he is in coming off screens, the looks create themselves.
When Danny Ferry inked Kyle Korver to the 4-year, $24 million contract prior to this season, there were some vocal critics of the move, even to the extent of calling it the worst contract on the roster. Simply put, that is off-base. Korver earned just over $6.7 million for the 2013-2014 season, but given his production on both ends, that is more than a fair rate, and the deal was built in a way that it now declines in each approaching season. Paying $6 million per season to a very solid starter on the wing is a more than justifiable expense, and unless something vastly changes, Hawks fans should gear up for three more years of incredibly solid production from one of the game's best marksmen.
Atlanta Hawks 2013-14 season reviews
2014 player review: Jeff Teague
2014 player review: Kyle Korver
2014 player review: Pero Antic


text:
  context "create action" do
    should "render new template when model is invalid" do
      <%= class_name %>.any_instance.stubs(:valid?).returns(false)
      post :create
      assert_template 'new'
    end

    should "redirect when model is valid" do
      <%= class_name %>.any_instance.stubs(:valid?).returns(true)
      post :create
      assert_redirected_to <%= item_path_for_test('url') %>
    end
  end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Travel and tourism stakeholders from several regions of Mindanao and the Visayas are converging in Cagayan de Oro City on February 21 and 22 for a travel dialogue and business session dubbed TravelX.
Hosted by the Department of Tourism Region 10 office and organized by tourism consultants and event management company, Selrahco, the two-day event will bring in some 100 representatives from the hotel and resort sectors, local tourism offices, event organizers, tour operators, large and medium-sized corporations and social and civic clubs.
Cagayan de Oro was selected to host TravelX – The B2B Event after it launched direct flight links late last year with several cities and top tourist destinations such as Boracay, Clark, Bacolod, Dumaguete, Tagbilaran, Zamboanga and 10 other points across the archipelago.
"We are inviting travel agents, tour operators, organizations, associations and event and meeting organizers from Cagayan de Oro and Northern Mindanao who plan to organize tours or conferences in places like Cebu, Davao, Dumaguete, Zamboanga, Bohol and Boracay to attend the one day business session on February 22," said Charles Lim, Selrahco President.
Lim said TravelX will provide the perfect networking platform for travel stakeholders and promote increased awareness about tourist attractions of the featured destinations with direct business-to-business contacts and transactions between tourism and travel stakeholders from the various destinations.
Some of the prestigious establishments already signed up for TravelX are Radissons Blu, Park Inn, Bellevue Resort, Be Resort, Almont Resort, Savoy Hotel, Belmont Hotel, Marco Polo, Almont Hotel, San Remegio Beach Club, Quest Hotel, Dakak Resort and Properties, Be Resorts, Bohol Beach Club, Bai Hotel and Cagayan de Oro-based hotels and attractions like Limketkai Luxe Hotel, Seven Seas Waterpark and Resort, and Seda Centrio.
Other entities participating include the Iloilo Provincial Tourism Office, Lite Shipping, Cebu Pacific Air, Asiatic Adventure Tours, Enchanted Kingdom, itravel tourist lane, 4 bros and I events and travel, and GetGo.
TravelX -The B2B Event is supported by the Department of Tourism regional offices of regions 7, 9, 11 and 10 with Limketkai Luxe Hotel and Cebu Pacific as main sponsors and Quest Hotel and Seven Seas Waterpark and Resort as featured event sponsors. Media partners are Business Week Mindanao, CDO Bloggers, KBP Cagayan de Oro Chapter and CDODev.com.
To properly evaluate TravelX in its right context, a look back at recent developments at the Laguindingan Airport in Misamis Oriental is in order.
Last October 20, 2017, top executives of the country's leading airline and chief executives of the government from the national, regional and local levels launched Laguindingan Airport (IATA: CGY) as the 7th Regional Hub of Cebu Pacific Air (PSE: CEB).
This was followed barely a month later by the Philippine Airlines (PAL) launch of direct flights from CGY to Clark Freeport, bringing to ten the destinations served with direct flights from Laguindingan.
Cebu Pacific and its affiliate Cebgo have nine direct connections to and from Cagayan. Manila, Bacolod, Davao, Zamboanga, Cebu, Iloilo, Tagbilaran, and starting today, Caticlan and Dumaguete, while PAL served Clark (Angeles), Cebu, Davao, and Manila.
"That's our mission, to create access for all Filipinos not only to Metro Manila but to all other cities. With the help of Cebu Pacific, many destinations are being discovered and we hope such destinations in Northern Mindanao will be discovered and we'll do our own little part of make that possible," he added.
"It's actually quite timely if we need to develop the hub and location-wise, geographically it's also a good central location to connect to the other islands in the Visayas and Mindanao," said Candice Iyog, CEB Vice President, Marketing, and Distribution, on the sidelines of the event.
"When we enter a market the intention is always to do long-term. Because of the time, the effort to actually set up a hub operationally, resource-wise, is the same whether it's a short-term or a long-term. So when we come into a market, it's really with the full intention of developing it and growing it," she added.
"We always view the government as our partners. We work closely with the Dept. of Transportation (DOTr) and its associated agencies, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) in making sure that all processes and infrastructure are in place, and we work closely with the Department of Tourism (DOT) in promoting destinations in our place," Gokongwei noted.
"We are also very supportive of the government's moves to really Build, Build, Build … because that's what we really need, more infrastructure if the aviation industry's gonna grow, certainly we need more and better airports," he added.
Engr. Jose G. Budiongan, airport/area manager for CAAP Area X, said Laguindingan airport is now gearing up for the increased passenger traffic by opening another gate in addition to the existing two. An additional passenger lounge capable of seating 100 additional departing passengers is also in the works.
"We are considering opening flights to the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-Eaga) maybe in the future, as preparations improve for airports and all that, we will probably start flights of our international airports from Davao and Cagayan de Oro and the like from Mindanao to the Indonesian islands, like Sandakan, like Malaysia," he added.
In his brief talk during the launching program, Gokongwei disclosed how a letter addressed to him epitomized the mission of Cebu Pacific to serve "EveryJuan," the airline's tagline.
"With this as a hub, a tourist from Boracay can now easily explore this region's diverse natural attractions. Small businesses can flourish with additional cargo options, and seat sales enable families and couples to visit their loved ones more," Gokongwei noted.


As expats, we had the opportunity to live in Canada, The Netherlands, France, China and Australia. When you don't have contacts or friends that can help you, it is a real challenge to find a new job. We fully understand the frustration to apply blindfolded to companies that we don't really know where they are and what they are actually offering. If you're in the software industry, you have more chance to have feedback from the job boards as the companies are constantly offering new positions but if you are in a different industry, applying for a new job is really time consuming and stressful.
We search the web and we didn't find any online services that allow candidates to send their cv to several companies in different industries in a particular city or region, in order to reach the market of available jobs and those that are not yet posted.
We also decided to innovate by offering our services, free of charge, to all companies that wish to register. This way, any company that cannot afford to pay hundreds of dollars to post their job offering will benefit. For example the retail, catering or the service industry will directly benefit from this new approach as traditionally job posting in these sectors are really primitive and still use a piece of paper in their front window. We also wanted to give candidates a better chance of being spotted by thousands of registered companies looking for new candidates.


text:
Thailand says nevermind the drought, annual water gun fight is on
Drought, schmought.
By JOCELYN GECKER, Associated Press on April 11, 2016
A young woman tries to defend herself with two water pistols while being sprayed with water 12 April 2000 during a friendly street water battle to celebrate Songkran, the Thai New Year. Credit: PORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKUL/AFP/Getty Images
BANGKOK — Drought? What drought? Bring out the water guns!
Thailand may be going through its driest period in 20 years, but the country's military government wants visitors from around the globe to know that the biggest water fight in the world is still on.
So, get your buckets, hoses and other gear ready for the three-day nationwide street party that begins Wednesday to mark the Thai New Year.
SEE ALSO: Uber launches motorcycle ride service in Thailand
"We can still use water for the new year festival. It's not that dry," said a government spokesman, Sansern Kaewkamnerd. The government has instructed the Tourism Ministry to make sure foreign tourists don't misunderstand the severity of the drought and cancel holiday plans out of concerns the water supply will be cut off, he said.
After all, there are millions of dollars at stake.
"We can still use water for the new year festival. It's not that dry."
The Tourism Authority of Thailand expects this year's holiday will generate more than 15 billion baht ($427 million) for the tourism sector and attract half a million visitors in a span of five days.
Songkran, as the festival is known, has the spirit of a soggy Mardi Gras and is a major tourist attraction. Revelers line the streets, or prowl the roads in pickup trucks, armed with water guns and plastic bowls and douse anyone in sight. Some areas are closed to traffic for wet and wild street parties with loud music, booze and dancing.
Rare controversy has preceded this year's water fight, with environmentalists and other critics calling for festivities to be curtailed.
"Instead of mindlessly wasting water, New Year revelers should be mindful of the crushing drought," The Nation newspaper said in an editorial last week calling for "a dry Songkran" to show solidarity with the country's farmers.
SEE ALSO: A look at Thailand's epic water fight known as Songkran
Seventeen of Thailand's 77 provinces have been declared drought zones with the lowest level of rainfall in more than two decades. Farmers have been ordered to curtail their water use and scale back planting. Tap-water rationing is in effect in certain provinces.
And yet Thailand's military government is playing down the dry spell and says it is powerless to crimp such a popular national holiday.
"As the prime minister has said, Songkran brings happiness to the Thai people, and canceling it would be too difficult," Sansern said.
A ban would also be hugely unpopular both with Thais and tourists.
In past promotions, the tourism authority has played up the party scene, urging tourists "to get wet and wild" and "be part of the largest street water fight the world has to offer." In 2011, TAT used the holiday to organize a Guinness World Record attempt for the world's largest water pistol fight, drawing more than 3,400 people to a 10-minute shootout in central Bangkok.
The Songkran festival is the traditional Thai new years it, is celebrated annually in Thailand from April 13-15. Credit: Atid Kiattisaksiri/LightRocket via Getty Images
The prime minister, a former general who has dictatorial powers after toppling a civilian government in 2014, has bristled at the notion of canceling Songkran.
"I will not ban water throwing, that's impossible," Prayuth Chan-ocha, the prime minister, said in response to a proposal for government controls on holiday water use. He added dismissively, "Parents should teach their children to use less water and not splash it around for three days and three nights."
Prayuth is calling for strict measures this year during the festivities, but not related to water rationing. The junta is putting a damper on dancing and indecent attire, saying specifically that women and trans-genders who show too much skin will face arrest.
"I have told officials, police and soldiers that there should be no women — or transgender women — dressed provocatively or dancing on the backs of trucks," Prayuth said. "If they do, they will be arrested."
Environmentalists say the government should get its priorities straight.
"The government should tell people the truth that the drought is bad. They should not try to cover up the truth," said Smith Thammasaroj, chairman of the Foundation of National Disaster Warning Council. "If people keep thinking we have enough water, it could badly hurt agriculture and farmers."
"They shouldn't worry about clothing and covering up the body," he said. "They should worry about the drought."
Some cities, including Bangkok, have taken it upon themselves to dilute this year's festivities.
Bangkok city hall has ordered a 9 p.m. curfew on water fights and is trying to keep the festival to three days, excluding the weekend — measures that it says will save 5 billion liters (1.3 billion gallons) of water.
Chief adviser to the Bangkok governor, Wanlop Suwandee, made a highly publicized proposal that party goers put down their guns and instead use handheld spray bottles, the kind that one uses on indoor plants to make leaves wet.
The idea struck many as laughable in a city where water guns are not mere pistols, but large pump machine guns often with water storage tanks worn as backpacks.
A 22-year old university student, Krit Pongchaiassawin, said he has no plan to enter into battle firing a gentle mist.
"Are you kidding me?" said Krit, while shopping for a water gun at a Bangkok outdoor market. "I would get laughed off the street if I had a spray bottle. People would see that and just dump more water on me."


text:
Free office 365 download for windows 10
Free office 365 download for windows 10. Download Microsoft Office 2016 On Windows 10 2019-01-11
Friday, January 11, 2019 12:19:59 PM Bob
Office 365 Admin for Windows 10 free download on 10 App Store
However, you can sign up for a 1 month free trial for Office 365 if you are interested in it and want to give it a try. Windows 10 Top - like every one of you- likes freewares, however sometimes the good value is not for free. Make notes as monthly or yearly schedule with OneNote as well. Are you using Windows 10? No product key or not sure if you need one? Its latest version gives you genuine activation and removes all restrictions. You will always find a cheap buying link with discount just above the download links when available.
Download LibreOffice
Safe download with no ads and virus free, developed by The Document Foundation 604. Be at ease and get Microsoft office free download for windows 10 by visiting the official website. Tip: Don't see an install option after signing in? Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access and more. Our site is not affiliated with the developer by any means. Microsoft Office best free alternative.
Download Microsoft Office 2016 On Windows 10
Can I install Office on my iPhone or iPad? The developer is offering special productivity tools for type of business e. Disclaimer— does not provide any keygen activation, key generator, license key, registration codes,. If you already have the My Office app, you will get the new Office app through an automatic update in the coming months. You will always find a cheap buying link with discount just above the download links when available. Now that you have Office installed, here's how to find your Office apps. No 3rd party installers, no adware, no toolbars, no viruses or any other harmful apps.
Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus ISO Free Download Offline Installer
For an product, go to and create a new Microsoft account or sign in with an existing one, then follow the remaining steps on that page such as entering your product key if you have one. Many 3rd party applications like has the feature to uninstall apps also. Like other fields, Microsoft has also contributed its benefits to e-commerce and online business. It provide complete features such as email system, web access, support for mobile device access etc. If Office activation fails, see. Each person can install Office on all their devices and be signed in to five at the same time. Maximum page size of 300cm by 300cm.
The Office app will replace the My Office app, which currently helps users manage their Office 365 subscriptions. The blogs are written to teach the office 365, video tutorials on YouTube, and also a number of institutes providing the training and certifications to Office 365 learning. In addition, It targets business and enterprise organization by providing them a premium set of features. The storage will be live to upload and share office documents with community via OneDrive. A combination of office suite and solutions Provides the perfect work environment. Full standalone Microsoft Office 365 Pro plus edition, home premium edition, small business premium edition download offline installer setup file for Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10. If Office seems to be taking a very long time to install, this may be caused by problems with your internet connection, firewall, or anti-virus software.
LibreOffice was based on OpenOffice. If you're still not able to sign in, contact your administrator. If you have Office 365 Home, you can with up to five family members or other people. You may also read Version Features: Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus comes with the multiple installation options by using single key and setup file. Compatible with all microsoft office formats, so you can open and edit all documents previously created by Microsoft Office App and it is fast, free and efficient.
Office 365 Pro Plus Free Download
The streamlined site has clearly resonated with customers, and now more than 40 percent of Office 365 web users start their work by visiting. If you need help activating Office, see. Office 365 Free Download Now this Microsoft Office 365 software new reading mode mechanically place text in columns. It works on monthly subscribed option and target enterprise organizations. For information about how to assign licenses, see. See all your Office apps in one place and switch between them with a single click.
Office 365 Admin Universal [Beta] for Windows 10 free download on 10 App Store
Their respective logos and icons are also subject to international copyright laws. Note: If you want to only install specific Office apps and not the entire suite, click the Customize button and uncheck the programs you don't want. Under Office 365 or Microsoft Office 2016, click on the Install button. You may also read Additional Features: Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus allows user to continue his work from any part of the world by using any latest browser. The languages support are Arabic, Chinese with two edition Simplified and traditional , Dutch, Finnish, French, English, German, Japanese, Norwegian Bokmål , Hebrew, Italian, Korean, Portuguese Brazil , Russian, Spanish, Hungarian, Polish, Swedish, Danish, Hindi, Portuguese Portugal , Czech, Turkish, Greek, Romanian, Thai, Ukrainian also.
Installation notes Installation notes How do I pin the Office app icons to the dock? Click Get Started to start activating. LibreOffice is developed and maintained by. Choose what is comfortable to you. Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base to open and edit all your office documents. PowerPoint designer feature suggests you a couple of designs based on the input of your image.
You may also read Additional Features: Microsoft Office 365 got the builtin skype integrated which helps users to chat with co-workers share files, audio, video without leaving the App. More than 80% of users make use of this software in Windows 7. Also, it is fully compatible with all type of computing devices like mobile, tablet, laptop and Personal Computer. It bookmarks the last page and then after relaunching it scroll to the last opened page. Tip: The 64-bit version is installed by default unless Office detects you already have a 32-bit version of Office or a stand-alone Office app such as Project or Visio installed. Microsoft is offering productivity based services against their premium subscriptions. Every one has necessary to use it.


Darcy is made from our plush ribbed Corduroy on the front side, and our signature long-staple cotton on the reverse.
Our dusty shade of Moss Green is a mix between an Olive and Cool Grey. You'll find Moss every bit as versatile as a neutral tone yet it will add much more style.


If you want to be able to know exactly what is a Native American loan the want to go ahead and get in touch with total lending concepts as they of the phenomenal staff is can be able to answer such questions is the same my possibly have especially whenever it comes to obtaining a loan of your very own particularly if you are of the native American nation of the United States of America.
This is going to be an incredible thing for you to be able to take advantage of any of really not want to miss out the opportunity to learn exactly What is a Native American Loan by giving a call to total lending concepts are hereby done in the wonderful phone number of 918-254-5626 whenever you have a chance to do so. This incredible place is going to give you an opportunity to speak with them and see exactly what it will take for you to be able to get this incredible services of your very own this incredible staff is going to be going the extra mile in each and every way that possibly can ensure that you can have the best expense possible.
If you don't believe me about how you can have a really phenomenal expense with total lending concepts when I to go to the with the privileges called stevecurrington.com as you'll be of the lucky reviews and some of the different testimonials that many gladly over the years about the phenomenal an incredible and quite truly impeccable expenses that they've been experiencing right here within the walls of total lending concepts all things to the incredible staff of the available help them out with everything that they could possibly need help with including that of questions.
Questions such as What is a Native American Loan have an answer most incredible staff and has returned to get in touch with them as well. You really when I want to miss out on any of the wonderful things a total lending concepts out offer because not only are they can be able to help you with those loans special whenever it comes to home loans and getting a home mortgage of your dreams so that you can put the reality in your life of getting your dream home and that once again.
We also can be able to get the incredible opportunity for you to be help the whenever you're standing in need of some the consolidation or maybe you're looking to refinance your home whatever may be we are here to help you so please be sure the able to get in touch with the absolute best when it comes to any Tulsa mortgage company right here known to be total lending concepts are going to give you the tender loving care all you have to do simply call us by dialing 918-254-5626 or by visiting us on stevecurrington.com.
In the time is now because total in concept is going to be able to answer the question of What is a Native American Loan they been asking yourself over and over over the years. Yes he probably is yourself so many different times what exactly did this possibly mean announce can be your one surefire way to be able to answer the incredible question for your very own because you know exactly who to call not Ghostbusters but you can call total in concepts by telling 918-254-5626.
Whenever you call that phenomenal phone number you're going to give yourself a treat of a lifetime your ears are going to be full of the light as get to listen to the wonderful words as you find out the true answer to the question of What is a Native American Loan. This is a really going to be of the help you on some incredible ways and much more than just for you would be expecting them to be able to help you with because they give you that one-on-one help that your desire anytime you need them there there for you to go ahead and get in contact with them and they'll be of the help you out.
Whenever you need this anything else just make sure that you go ahead and visit them or you can even find the answer of What is a Native American Loan and more for the detail as it is discussed on a podcast that is brought to you by these incredible people. As is can be a free podcast that you be able to gain access to if you just go to our website which is stevecurrington.com you'll be of the final link on their were you able to get access to all the episodes of the incredible parkas AOB of the for the education on such subjects as these loans or any other things that has to do with Tulsa mortgages.
This is just one of the many ways that set total in concepts apart from the competition and why on the website want to go to the reviews and the test money is a COB of this year for know why so many people choose them over the competition especially whenever they need that consolidation Tulsa home loans whenever they need a little bit of refinancing done in their life this is going to be the place to go your one-stop shop for all your needs.
So don't miss out on this incredible opportunity for you to be able to get that guaranteed a 24-hour answer of if you can be qualified for a loan or not is can be the decision of a lifetime that is really going to be able to make or break if you're getting get that dream home to make sure that you work with the absolute best and the best being total in concepts by simply visiting them on stevecurrington.com or by giving a call to 918-254-5626.


Each team may define programmer velocity differently. But within a team, every engineer must use the same definition – their velocities must take the same things into account. If not done consistently, tracking and load balancing will not work and the Iteration and Release plans will be unreliable. If you have not yet started using XP, this paper is not for you – Read this after reading the XP trilogy (see bibliography). If you are using XP, read on – this is how one team in ISS defined Programmer Velocity. This is what the XP literature calls a "local adaptation". More recently, teams in ISS use team velocity and do not track programmer velocity. But back when we did, this is how we did it.
Before discussing velocity, we must define Ideal Engineering Days (IEDs). An IED is when everyone just leaves you alone to program. Unhook the phone; close Outlook, ICQ and AIM; cancel meetings; and put up a do not disturb sign.
Naturally, we never get 5 full IEDs in a week. You do have to go to meetings. You do have to check email and voicemail. And you do have to help others. In our case, the Events team, helping others takes the form of pair programming. If your team is not pairing, helping others takes the form of peer reviews, code walk-throughs, integration testing, and chalk talks.
Still, you might think that the more IEDs you can get in per week the better. Not necessarily – You may be neglecting something. You might not be spending enough time helping others, refactoring bad code and writing tests. If that's the case, your code will be difficult to maintain and your team will suffer.
We estimate tasks and stories in Ideal Engineering Days. We might also call these XPUs (eXtreme Programming Units). Ideally, stories should be broken down into tasks that will each take ½ to 2 IEDs.
Ok, so we estimate in IEDs. What about all those meetings, phone calls, emails and interruptions? What about peer-reviews or pair programming? How do we account for those, and how do we deal with inaccurate estimates? Programmer Velocity must take all of that into account. Reread this paragraph to see what must be included in your velocity.
In the last iteration, I completed my tasks (those that I signed up for and am responsible for), originally estimated at four IEDs. It was a two-week iteration. So, I spent about three days each week pairing with others on their tasks, writing documents like this, attending meetings and fixing defects. In this example, my Velocity is 4.
Velocity is simply the original estimate in IEDs for the tasks you owned and completed last iteration. This is the definition used in the green "Planning eXtreme Programming" book. If I completed tasks originally estimated at five IEDs, then my velocity is five. It doesn't matter how long it actually took. What you count is the original estimate of the stories/tasks actually completed.
Each programmer does a different number of IEDs per week. Everyone's velocity is different.
• Velocity takes into account how much "other stuff" you do. The more "other stuff" you do, the lower your velocity.
• Velocity is also a measure of how over-conservative or ultra-aggressive your estimates are.
• Velocity is measured. After each iteration, look to see how many IEDs you originally estimated for the tasks you completed. If you picked up more tasks during the iteration, add the original estimate for those into your velocity. If you did not complete all of the tasks you signed up for, do not add the estimates for those into your velocity. Remember; only count IEDs for tasks you led. Don't guess – measure it.
You may want to compute velocity over as few as one or as many as three iterations. If your velocity is stable or steadily moving in one direction, use "yesterday's weather" [Planning Extreme Programming, pages 33-34, 90, 117-118]: Your velocity for this iteration is your measured velocity from last iteration. If your velocity is unstable , first make it stable. If you can't, then measure velocity over more iterations.
There is no ideal value for velocity. However, if your velocity is more than 5 in a 10-day iteration, consider whether you are spending enough time refactoring, testing and helping others.
Managers, note: Velocity cannot be used to measure programmer productivity or value. "It's a result, not a control variable." [c2 wiki] It would be inappropriate to compare programmers by their velocity.
Move tasks from programmers that have signed up for too many IEDs to those that have too few. Also, add or remove stories from the iteration to fit the actual size of the iteration.
A common mistake is to divide the number of days in the iteration by 2 "because we're pairing." Don't do this. If you have a 15-day iteration, do not divide 15 by 2 and say there are only 7 days. There are 15. Pairing is accounted for in everyone's velocity. If you multiply the task estimates by velocity AND divide days by two, you are overcompensating (double counting).
Example: Fred's velocity is 2.5. Fred should sign up as lead for 2.5 IEDs worth of tasks. These are tasks that he "owns" and is responsible for. Do not count tasks he intends to do as a partner this iteration – that's accounted for in his velocity.
Example: My velocity is 3.5. I sign up for tasks. My estimate comes out at 5 IEDs. I'm over loaded so I give a 1.5 IED task to someone else. Now I'm balanced. During the iteration, I get behind and need to defer ½ IED of a task to a later iteration. At the end of the iteration, I measure my new velocity. Since I didn't complete all of my tasks, my new velocity is 3 – the original estimate for those tasks I did finish.
Example: Chet's velocity is 6. So is Joe's. Chet and Joe correctly sign up for 6 IEDs for this iteration. Halfway through the iteration, the tracker notices that Chet is falling behind. Chet agrees to give one of his tasks, a 1.5 IED, to Joe, who is making great progress on his tasks. At the end of the iteration, Chet completed tasks originally estimated at 4.5 IEDs. Joe completed tasks originally estimated at 7.5 IEDs. Now, Chet's new velocity is 4.5 and Joe's is 7.5.
When tracking, I prefer to only track and balance a programmer's primary tasks – I don't try to balance work as pairs and I don't sign up as pairs. I like to keep it light. However, signing up and tracking as pairs actually gets people to pair up, so it may be worth the extra effort for your team to track and balance pairing activity as well.
Engineers should pair with others as much as others pair with them. For example, if Sue signs up to lead 5 IEDs, she should pair with someone else for around 5 IEDs. This will happen naturally if the tracker balances the workload.
If Sue doesn't help others with their tasks as much as others help her, some other team member has to pick up the pairing slack. This inflates Sue's velocity and deflates someone or everyone else's. This is not a problem as long as Sue is consistent – otherwise velocities will be unstable and less useful.
Special assignments, such as writing essays like this, can also impact your velocity. If a pair will be working on the assignment and if you can estimate it like a programming task, then treat it just like any other task in the iteration. If not, budget some of your time during the iteration for the special assignment – treat that time as unavailable. At the end of the iteration, measure your velocity as if you had fewer calendar days than everyone else.
Your team does not have to use the velocity definition presented above. You can come up with your own. I used to use a variation that used lots of messy division. It was based on the (now deprecated) Load Factor math from the white eXtreme Programming Explained book. I don't recommend it.
Here is another approach you could use. If your team thinks and estimates in terms of average size stories or tasks, then your team may want to define programmer velocity in terms of points per iteration, w here 1 point is an average size unit of work. For example, I might be able to do one point per iteration, whereas Charlie might crank out 1.5. My velocity would be 1 and Charlie's would be 1.5. Since tasks are not all the same size, Charlie can take on a task that is 50% larger than average, whereas I should work on an average one-pointer or two ½-pointers.
Pick an approach that works well for your team.
Above, I defined velocity as the original estimate in IEDs for the tasks you owned and completed last iteration. You also have a story-velocity. Your team may decide to track Story Velocity or both Story and Task Velocities. If you decide to only track one, Story Velocity is more useful in that it can be used for both Release and Iteration planning. Task velocity is only useful for Iteration Planning. You can't do Release planning without your story velocity. (You cannot predict your end-date if you don't know your Story velocity.) I personally believe this and it's also what Ron Jeffries said at XP Universe 2001.
Why wouldn't the two velocities be the same? Because stories are estimated at a higher (and less accurate) level of granularity. Also, story estimation is done less often and may have been done with different assumptions or different team members. Story estimation should be done by the whole team as a group, but some teams only have a sub-set of the team estimate the stories (not a good idea). Conversely, task estimates are done more often and are usually done by only 1 or 2 programmers. They are done at the start of the iteration in which they'll be implemented, which is the most accurate time to estimate.
Use Task velocity in Iteration Planning to see if the team or any team member is over-committed for the iteration.
Use Story velocity in Release Planning to get a rough idea of what stories are in what iteration.
Update BOTH velocities at the end of EVERY iteration.
In the definition above I said "you or your team". Some teams track Individual velocity (more paperwork, more granularity, more accurate balancing). Other teams track Team velocity (less work, lightweight).
It's up to your team to decide whether to use Team or Individual Velocity.
Ron Jeffries, Ann Anderson, Chet Hendrickson, eXtreme Programming Installed, Addison-Wesley, 2000. (The purple book.) Pages 64 and 65 are especially useful.
A few months into development our director paid us a visit. Being a wise veteran of the software industry, she was concerned how well our system tolerated changes in requirements and scope. Many projects handle such changes poorly. Without hesitation, we confidently explained that our system could not only tolerate a significant amount of change, but that we could keep the system working continuously while making the changes. How could we be so bold? Are we hypercompetent überprogrammers? Or foolhardy script-kiddies who don't fully understand the question we were answering? The key to our confidence lies in our consistent application of refactoring. If you'd like to learn more about refactoring, and perhaps become half as good a programmer as us in the process, read this brief overview, then visit the resources listed at the end of this paper.
Refactoring is changing code you've already written without breaking anything. More formally, it is changing existing code to improve its internal structure while preserving its external behavior. You are already refactoring, though you may not know it: You find a method that needs another parameter to do its job. You find a class which should be split in two. Making these kinds of changes is what refactoring is all about.
Often we make such changes haphazardly, perhaps even ripping up the entire system with the intention of putting it back together in an improved form. Often we break something along the way. But we don't have to. We can introduce discipline into this process. Like with design patterns, we can use a set of common "refactorings" – commonly needed changes to code. Each "refactoring pattern" describes the applicability of the refactoring and a proven step-by-step process for it. We don't have to re-invent the process of changing code every time we do it; we can follow a recipe developed and refined by masters of the art.
"You said we're already doing it – why formalize?" The "father" of refactoring once wondered the same thing. Martin Fowler developed the idea of formalized refactoring after watching Kent Beck make large changes in a system by applying a series of very small changes.
Beck would break a large change into smaller steps and follow a painstaking process of making one change, running his tests to make sure everything still worked, and then repeating this "change, test" process until all the steps were done.
At that time Fowler's own method of refactoring was the slash-and-burn method described earlier – tossing up the code and putting it back together again – with all the debugging headaches that entails.
Fowler noticed that Beck was much faster and more successful at making changes using his incremental approach. The key to understanding why Beck's approach is better is realizing that smaller changes are much easier to understand and control. If you make large changes and the system breaks, you have to do a lot of sleuthing to find exactly what broke the system. But if you make very small changes, testing your system after each one, you know exactly what caused the problem and it's easy to undo the change.
A major tenet of software engineering is breaking large problems into chunks manageable by the human brain. Refactoring applies this principle to the process of changing existing code.
Can I Use It on my Project?
Yes, if you've satisfied a couple of prerequisites. The biggest prerequisite is that you have automated unit tests in place for the code you're changing. This is vital. You must be able to assert that your changes didn't break anything.
Another prerequisite is having some sort of source code control in place. A major benefit of refactoring in small steps is that it allows you to abort the process if you find it's not working. Source control allows you to do this by returning your code to its pre-change state.
How Will It Help me on my Project?
How many software projects have you worked on where the finished product was exactly as envisioned in the initial requirements? All software systems change during the course of development, and a large part of a team's success lies in its ability to deal with change. Refactoring will make your code better, allow you to spend less time on up front design, and give you confidence to make changes. To be successful, we must embrace change – not fear it. It's a fact of life. You have two choices: adapt, or die. Refactoring helps you adapt.
I'm Convinced! (or Just Curious) Where Can I Learn More?
Fowler, Martin. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code. Reading , Mass. : Addison-Wesley, 1999. This is the book on refactoring.
Martin Fowler's Refactoring web site contains a wealth of information, including the PhD thesis that started the formal Refactoring movement, a constantly expanding catalog of refactorings, and links to several Refactoring resources.
Have you ever been on a project that practiced big-bang integration – wait until all the features are done, then throw it all together and see what happens? It usually turns out just like the name implies – a totally chaotic, primordial soup of software. Just getting the code to compile is an amazing feat. Then come the bugs. How painful it is to harness the power of nature to integrate your code!
Or say you have a daily build. But for some reason your daily build is broken daily. So you spend half the day tracking down the slacker who checked in the bad code.
"Ah, but my daily build never breaks", you say. Great! But have you ever spent more than a day tracking down one bug? I thought so.
Our team has overcome these problems using simple techniques: We check-in frequently. And we build and test continuously.
"We measure success one build at a time"
Our automated build and test process runs continuously – not daily. Well, it actually runs every half-hour, but that's close enough to continuous for me.
By building and testing continuously, we find it trivial to figure out what broke the build. Given the short time span between builds, the system is usually built with only one developer's changes at a time. If it broke, we readily know why.
By checking in frequently, we avoid file contention. This means never having to merge two sets of changes.
By doing both of these, we never need more than a few minutes to integrate a piece of code into the system. The code in MKS is always buildable – it always works – every minute of every day. I can't stress this enough: it is never in a broken state. That certainly makes integration easy. And since we check-in frequently, we never have much to integrate.
XP's practices build on each other. That's what makes the process so strong. Like XP, continuous integration's practices are multiplicative. Continuous integration draws its strength from good unit tests and frequent check-ins: The tests are more valuable because they are run more often. The frequent builds are more valuable because by running the tests they do more work each time.
You will get some benefit just by increasing check-in and build/test frequency. We discovered that some additional things we do make continuous integration even better. You may have different needs and different practices. But here is what we do.
We broke our love affair with Make. She was never a very accommodating partner – always wanting things to be perfect, never compromising. I wanted spaces; She wanted tabs. We just couldn't go on.
We started using a tool called Ant. It's an extensible, cross-platform build tool written in Java. When we discovered that it uses XML for the build file, we just had to use it. Ant pulls from MKS, compiles the code, builds and signs the jar files, runs the tests, and lets us know if anything failed. A Windows Scheduled Task kicks it off every 30 minutes.
One cool Ant feature is the ability to write "build listeners". We wrote a listener to yell at us when the build fails. To notify the developers we use a "net send" command. We wanted to make it intrusive as possible so the developers couldn't ignore failures.
Developers need to build and test on their workstations before checking in their changes. Our IDE allows us to build and test. But we also wanted each developer be able to build with the same process as on the "official" build machine. This required us to modify our architecture but it helps keep the build running smoothly.
Once you start running an automated build, you've got to see the results. Our results are on a web page. Prominently shown at the top is the Success / Failure message. Then come the details. If the build was not successful, you can see which files didn't compile or which tests failed.
When the build does fail, it only takes us a couple minutes to find and fix the problem. (Remember all the benefits I mentioned above?) In keeping with the spirit of "continuous", we don't wait 20 minutes for the next regularly scheduled build. We can kick off an unscheduled build at any time from our build page.
Our build page even has a cool plot of the number of unit tests run each day. That helps us focus on writing more tests.
It's always good to be on the lookout for things that you can do to make your life easier (or safer). For example, Mike Slifcak suggested we build the database from scratch before running all the tests. This ensures our production code and our install code don't get out of sync. Now we have continuous integration of the install and production code. See how much you can automate.
Our main goal with the build process was to get the most value by doing the least amount of work. There were lots things we could have added to our build process, like automatically logging all the changes between builds. But that wasn't necessary and would only give us more to maintain. Stay light!
Martin Fowler's article on continuous integration that got us started.
Here's the great great Ant.


text:
This moving, courageous and thought-provoking Blog post called "BLACK AND BIASED IN BRITAIN" was written on 7th June 2020 by my nephew Richard Pain who has African-Caribbean heritage. I am proud to be his aunt.
Richard is uncomfortably honest and challenging about his experiences, feelings and thoughts about racism and how we all have racist attitudes, whatever our so-called 'colour'. It reminds me of a photo taken over the weekend in London of a placard which says "Even the least racist is racist". I hope I have done him justice in this summary – but read on for yourself…….
BLACK AND BIASED IN BRITAIN
"I identify as both black and mixed race. I am both racially privileged from my light skin and racially biased to discriminate against black people. You are too… we all are.
"I did not want to write this. Despite having faced racial discrimination my whole life, I am also aware many others have faced incomparably worse. I now realise I have an opportunity provide the perspective of someone who has faced & benefitted from discrimination due to my relatively lighter skin.
"In Britain, the recent Black Lives Mmatter (BLM) protests are perceived largely as a USA phenomenon. A response to well documented police brutality. The killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Botham Jean, Tamir Rice (to name just a few) maybe catalyst, but these killings are symptomatic of a more distressing truth – that those born black are subjected to a constant barrage of discrimination. If you believe any country is different, then it is time to question your understanding of racism.
"I no longer refer to people as racist. Actions and systems can be racist, but not people themselves. When we start dividing the world's population between racist and not, there is always justification to categorise ourselves as non-racist. There is always someone worse. The relative racial atrocities of others become our personal redemption.
"We have all been taught to racially bias against black people. An often-repeated 1940's experiment by Clark & Clark asked three to seven year olds to attribute positive and negative characteristics to dolls identical except for race. Both black and white children preferred and attributed positive qualities to the white doll and negatives to its black duplicate. We grow up internalising a barrage of messages that white is better. An untruth that white people are more beautiful, intellectual, cultured, rational and hardworking (among others) than their black counterparts.
"My most shameful secret is that I am biased against my own race. This is despite the majority of my role models and loved ones being black. I am a product of our system and our entire system is racist. History books glorify white colonisation, dismissing prior black achievements. TV and film too often romanticise "blue eyed" protagonists and vilify black actors as criminals. News media have allowed us to associate black culture with violence. If you believe that you are still somehow racially neutral or unbiased- think again.
"I can't breathe" – George Floyd, 2020
"George Floyd's final words are even more poignant in the context of a black life. Every black breath comes slightly harder than its white equivalent. This small but incessant resistance takes its toll over time. It is this that is responsible for our exclusion from positions of power across society.
"Two identical children, W & B, enter an education system where teachers are marginally faster to assign positive attributes to child W and negative to B. The slight biases compounded over thousands of teacher interactions result in a slightly worse annual performance for child B compared to W. In the next school year the new teachers have their slight biases against child B reinforced by W's higher previous years grades. How many interactions and reinforcements until child B is in a lower set, taking less challenging subjects or offered less University options than child W? How much compounded and reinforced bias does it take to convince child B that they are less intelligent?
"The reality is that while I focused on education this racial friction permeates every aspect of a black child's life. A slight increase in probability of a police officer feeling threatened by a black citizen compounded over thousands of interactions dramatically increase the likelihood of becoming a victim of police abuse. When our individual biases are taken in aggregate we create a system which increasingly prevents black participation in boardrooms, editorial positions and top political positions.
"Progress takes frequent small steps forward and occasional giant leaps back. Ultimately the steps will outdistance the leaps.
"I was recently asked what simple action the UK government could take. Like asking how to achieve world peace, the question is too broad to have meaning. There are many positive racial changes to be made to education, law enforcement, business diversity, political representation and hundreds of other areas. However, Governments are prone to do the minimum to appear to appease its electorate, rather than to fully commit to meaningful change. This is understandable, we do it ourselves every day. We post our support on social media, but refuse to fully commit to real personal change. However, if you feel inspired, here are 3 steps:
"Accept you are racially biased against black people. We all are! You are not absolved of this by being less racially biased than someone else. Tests like the Harvard IAT tests are useful in revealing range of biases. (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html)
"Recognise your resulting benefit from racial privilege. This does not lessen your acheivements or trump other social barriers. Just a recognition that whatever your accomplishments, these would have likely been harder if you were black.
"Use this racial privilege to continually challenge the system we have created as often as you can. Vote out Governments who try to bribe you to ignore racial inequality with other populist policies. Challenge your company on the diversity of their leadership. Boycott non-inclusive brands.
"This is a lifetime commitment – not just a socially convenient one. Ultimately, we have all made a choice, to reinforce the system created by our racial biases, or to actively challenge it and ourselves to be better. You can start right now. Just know that for your black sisters and brothers, because that's what we are, every day it's getting more tiring to take our next breath."
Thank you, Richard, for writing this and for your courage in sharing it.