I reminded Lisa that I would be using the shot gun shortly and that she probably shouldn't watch that "You could hold Max, just in case he gets a bit upset, give him a hug", she nodded her agreement. As we headed towards the shipwreck and the caravans, I heard the Fog horn go off several more times. Glancing around I caught the little girl in the act of signalling the ship, which dutifully replied, she gave me a cheeky grin. I gave the ship an exaggerated two thumbs up. and got my own blast in return.
The monsters were already stirred up, by the ships horn, they were gathered by the waters edge roaring and snarling at the ship. I stopped, unnoticed about one hundred metres south. retrieved the rifle from the drum and pocketed several shot gun cartridges. Using the rifle, I lined up the biggest one in the group through the telescopic site. Too far away and not a good enough shot, I missed. Manipulating the bolt, I got him with the next one, hitting him in the upper back, well, that caught their attention. They began sprinting towards me. The biggest one wounded but not appreciably slowed.
I think there were ten of them. letting the clutch out, I began closing the distance between us. Picking up the shot gun and hoping the tractor would track fairly ture, I waited til we were about twenty metres apart, the first shot dropped the two in the lead. I pumped another shell through and pulled the throttle all the way down, yelling "Hang on" as we bounced nearer.
The next shot took out the second in line, somehow the leader dodged the shot. Another shell, another shot, another fallen., by the time the fourth shell was in the chamber, we had passed the group. The heavy sand meant they could never match the tractors speed. I travelled about a quarter of a mile up the beach before turning and reloading both guns.
None of those I wounded were dead, they were all up and limping towards me as we neared, the amount of blood leaking out of them meant they probably wouldn't be in the game for long.
Another four shots as we passed through them. two wouldn't be getting back up, three others wounded that I could see. reload and repeat, careful not to get too close, it wouldn't do to have them get too close to the precious cargo patting the dog behind me.
Five runs and still two left standing. The sixth one was the charm. hit the first runner in the leg, and the second mid section, a slow turn and deliver the coup de grace to them both. making sure to do the same to the rest of them, laying in the sand. Reload one last time and head for my beach side home. taking the time to make a lap around the outside of the vans so as to spot any stragglers or encourage them to show themselves, the area appeared empty.
The area under the awning at the front of the van stunk like a pub toilet. Lisa made an "EWW" sound. thankfully they hadn't figured out how to open the door. the inside was unchanged from three days before. All of the battery alarms were buzzing, I fired up the attached cars to charge the batteries and returned to tend to the hungry and still thirsty child.
After feeding her, we shut down the idling cars, Lisa wanted to explore the other vans, she found a lurid pink doona with some little girl emblazoned over it. "Dora" she yelled happily and insisted on bringing it back to the home van. She and the dog curled up on the bed, Lisa insisted on sleeping under the dooner, even though it was already thirty degrees or more, I activated the vans air conditioner. After she drifted off the sleep, I slipped outside to restart the battery charging land cruiser, knowing that the a/c would eat the batteries very quickly.
Back inside the cool van, I opened a coke and began to update this diary. Should I have mentioned her rather than simply hinting at the beginning of this update? Maybe, but maybe not. I would not have found either had it not been for lots of misfortune and a hell of a journey. I felt no malice towards whoever had shot at me on that ship, without them, I'd not have saved the two new friends that slept in the next room.
One of them has woken up, More later.
For a dog that I'm fairly sure never lived in the house, the newly christened "Max" was very well behaved. He trotted outside, returning a few minutes later, signalling his desire to return with a small "yip". He bypassed me, returning to his new friend. as he jumped onto the bed beside her, Lisa awoke. Giving the dog a hug, her face buried in his back, her muffled voice asked "what's to eat, I'm hungry".
As the dehydrated Pasta and Chicken came to a boil, we talked, it seemed she had always lived in Stockton with her Mother. Daddy, it seemed had a girlfriend and she wasn't very nice. Lisa became a little weepy when she told of how her Mother had "not been feeling well" the night that the fireworks were supposed to be on (I took that as being new years eve), and had left the little girl to "go to the doctors". Lisa told of how her Mother had been very angry all through that day, but was crying when she left.
I felt an urgent need to stir the pasta when she asked if I thought Mummy was ok? "I don't know", I wondered if she would judge me poorly for the lie in years to come, assuming we were ok in years to come.
My watch said it was three PM, I had really wanted to return to the lifeboat and contact the ship, there was plenty of time, but I now had a small child to think about. a small grubby child.
I told her that we might be able to talk to the people on the ship by radio, and asked if she would like that, it seemed that she would "Is the radio like a mobile phone"? she asked. "Can we go see them"? "Maybe" I replied "Can we take Max"? "of course". I gave her head an affectionate pat, her hair was knotted and dirty. given the lack of running water, hardly surprising.
"I think you might need a bath young lady" "do I haaave tooo" She dragged out the words, I chuckled a little. The biggest disaster in this little girls life was facing some clean water, kids are resilient I guess. I told her that her lovely clothes needed washing too, so they could look pretty for the people on the boat.
I gave her one of my clean T shirts to wear while I washed her clothes, While she showered, I did my best impression of Charlie Buckets Mum. Scrubbing the bight pink scraps of cloth in the kitchen sink. When I returned from hanging them in the bright afternoon sun, she had emerged from the shower, completely non plussed about the small car cover she was now forced to wear. She looked rather comical with the massively oversized T shirt almost touching the floor.
I told her she looked nice and clean, but her mood remained a little dark due to the yucky shirt. picking up her used towel intending to let it dry with her clothes, I spied a hair brush in the small bathroom. Lisa's mood brightened somewhat when I promised to brush her hair. The sun was losing some of its sting as we entered early evening. So, I suggested we go outside, we could wave to the people on the boat as I brushed....... yes, for as long as she wanted.... sigh.
Perched on the bonnet of one of the 4x4s she was busy waving as I gently brushed AKA pulled her hair and tortured her over the next hour. Max sitting happily soaking up the afternoon rays. After about half an hour, the ship must have noticed us, it gave a short basso toot. Lisa gave her chain pulling gesture, and two more toots came.
They obviously had some pretty powerful scopes as we were about four miles distant. I decided to send them a message and see just how powerful their optics were. Doing my finest Marcel Marceau impression, I used my outstretched thumb and forefinger to make a telephone, holding it to my mouth, I then pointed directly at the ship before extending my arms to the twelve and nine positions.
After my third performance was over, nine short sharp toots carried across the water. They got it, I would be in touch at nine... I gave them an exaggerated two thumbs up . and went back to the extremely important task of brushing Lisa's hair.
It seemed I was now a "Dog in the house" person, I'd generally held with the belief that dogs live outside. There seemed to be no question right from the beginning, that where Lisa went, Max followed. With the sun not yet over the horizon, and the three of us fed and watered. Lisa and Max retired for the evening.
I took the opportunity to visit one of the other vans where I quickly showered, so as not to disturb the sleeping duo. I took the time to search through the small wardrobe, quickly finding what I was looking for. On the way back my home van, I picked up Lisa's now dry clothes.
Taking the very pink satin nightie that I had found in the other van, I cut it down to make a hair ribbon for Lisa, I laid it , along with her dry clothes on a seat, ready for her to look her best for our meeting (hopefully) with the ships crew tomorrow.
It was just after sunset, maybe 8.30 at the latest, but had been a very long day. I spied the half bottle of Scotch on top of the shelf, but really didn't need it or want it.
Relegated to the rather less comfortable folding bed nearest to the caravans entry door, I am nodding off as I update this diary. Goodnight possible future reader.
I wasn't quite asleep when I heard the sounds. First two soft little feet heading my way, then the click, click of toe nails followed.
For the first time in what seemed like years, the "bump in the night" didn't have me cowering or clinging to my gun, backed into a corner with every light blazing. petrified of the monster that I knew was hiding just under the bed.
I knew what was coming next. The little girl, moving by the dull light that came from the bathroom light that I had left on, padded to my bed, without saying a word, she climbed in and cuddled up to my back. No sooner had she got comfortable than I felt the "bump thump" as Max landed on the bed, circled once and found his spot.
Never one to surrender to sleep easily, I was a little shocked when a second later, I woke to the soft yipping of Max, keen to go outside into the already bright morning. After a quick check, I opened the door. Max squeezed through the gap and was gone.
Checking my watch, I found it was already 7 am, we had to get moving if we were to be at the life boat by nine.
I quickly dressed, picked up my gun and joined the dog outside. Moving slightly to the right, so the Jolanda wreck blocked the carriers view of me, I watered the sand. I thought it probably that they had a watch posted on Lisa and I, what can I say, I'm a little shy.
Gave my imagined observer a wave as I headed back to the van, planning on waking, feeding and readying Lisa before heading south to the boat.
As I laid my hand on the door, I heard it, a hollow "thop thop" that grew to a much louder constant "thump thump" as the big military whirly bird quickly closed the distance from the ship to my part of the beach.
The dog was barking madly, looking up at the approaching chopper. My right hand, laid on the door handle, forgotten, until the handle moved from the other side. Lisa burst out, eager to see what all the excitement and noise was about.
They hovered, just off shore, waiting for something, though I wasn't sure what. It took me a moment to think of the shot gun, still clasped in my left hand.
Maybe that was it, I walked slowly toward one of the 4wds parked near the van, and carefully laid the gun on the bonnet, before backing way. They came closer. Hovering overhead, they lowered a bright orange box from the open side door of the helicopter.
As it hit the ground a few metres from where we stood, I was about to unclip the package, when the whole lot came down. Taking no chances on infection I guessed.
The chopper retreated out over the water, then turned side on. The crew enthusiastically returning Lisa's waves. I held my finger up to them, "One minute", as I retreated to the van, returning with Fords Large binoculars. I held them up, so the crew could see what I was holding. before handing them to the little girl, she giggled as she got her first good look at our neighbours. Picking my much smaller scope from around my neck, I got my first up close look at them as well.
It was a bit hard to see the pilot, hidden by the birds canopy, but the two crew in the rear were easy to spot throught he open door. they were waving at the little girl like crazy.
Giving them a thumbs up, I went to check the box, the size of a small esky, I was pretty sure of what I would find.
A fairly large and very rugged looking hand held radio, a car charger, judging by the black tape, made from somebodies phone charger. One final item was looking up at me from the bottom of the box, a small, palm sized pale pink teddy bear. No, make that two items, a small case was hiding under the bear, a hard plastic case, with tape around it, and the word "STOP" written in large letters on the outside. I held up all the items, walking over to the over excited little girl, I handed her the soft pink bear, she hugged it to her. It would have been hard to speak over the noise if the big military bird, harder still with the lump in my throat at that simple act of kindness, I pointed to the chopper and mimicked waving, Lisa got the message. She waved with one arm, holding the bear with the other. Yelling "THANKYOU" to them, of course they wouldn't hear, but I think they could guess. Lifting my scope as I stood behind the child, I pointed at her, then gave a single thumbs up followed by a rather exaggerated bowing of my head. The crew returned the thumbs up, there was even a hand jutting out of the small sliding window from the pilot. Then they turned towards the ship and were gone.
"Hello, Hello, do you copy" came a rather insistent voice from the walkie talkie.
I keyed the mike and told the little girl to answer them.
Not a very professional way to make contact, I can only imagine the looks on the hardened military crew as they heard "what do I say? tell them your name. Ok, this is Lisa...... Hi".
The same voice that had warned me off a few days earlier came onto the line "Well, it sure is nice to make your acquaintance little lady", I could hear his voice cracking amid the cheers and excited voices in the background.
I was about to introduce myself when Max started barking, we had company. and lots of them. Still some way off, they were obviously following the noise of the helicopter. I grabbed the girl, scooped up the gun and called the dog as we returned to the safety of the van.
"We've got company" I informed our new friends, A moment later the radio squawked, "Yep, got em, big group, around a hundred, still about a hundred yards from you, moving slowly" "Ok thanks" I returned.
To many do deal with from the not particularly solid confines of the van. we had to get mobile.
Was it Garfield that said "I don't like Fridays", maybe that was Mondays, but it should have been Fridays. Into my Fridge car, Turn the key "Click" dead battery, the little fridge had been running all this time. No time to spare, into the almost Forgotten Territory, Turn the key and she purrs into life. I can understand why Jim loved this car so.
I had been planning to run over and or shoot the monsters from the sturdy Patrol, The Territory was more car like, no bull bar on the front to protect it. the sporty SUV just wasn't made for that sort of thing. The group of monsters was almost upon us, I selected drive and we headed south. My loader, my kill dozer, was parked near the blockade at the airport. I only hoped that I could get Lisa, the dog and my other gear into it before being mobbed by the locals.
We headed south, down the beach to Stockton, I took a small detour past the lifeboat and the old plumbers van, both exactly where I had left them. We turned North, trundling along the main street. Just as we were about to leave the little town Lisa pointed out her home, quietly she asked if I thought her Mother might be there "No, I don't think so" I said, she answered with a crestfallen "ok" and the car wen quiet. Max rested his head on Lisa's knee from his position in the passengers footwell. I reached over and took her hand.
The sniffles began as the houses ended, probably long past time. she held it together until we reached Stockton bridge, as we passed the bright pink Charger, the first tiny sob escaped her. Once the dam started cracking, that was it, the one tiny leak, that one sob, was soon a torrent of howling, tears streaming down her little face, and unintelligible words trying to sneak past her sobs.
I wanted to stop, to hold her, but this was not the area to do so. I held her hand and continued to make soothing noises as we left Fern Bay. Turning onto the old road, I pulled over, no idea why, its not like anybody was going to come up behind me, and sit there, blowing their horn, Old habits die hard I guess.
The Territory idled quietly, its air conditioning keeping the interior comfortable, the machine had no clue that the inhabitant of its front passenger seat was having the worst day of her life. The realisation that she would never see her Mother again. Max stayed at his post, as I hugged her to me. her wet face buried into my shirt as sobs wracked her body. We sat there for over an hour, as that little girl faced up to things that no child of that age should have to. Stuttering through her tears "MMMummy isn't cccccoming home, , , is, is she"? Sometimes Adulting sucked so very, very much "No sweetheart, she isn't". We sat for another hour or so as her sobs ran out. Was it good luck or divine intervention that no monsters had forced me to abandon Lisa when she needed me the most?
The sun was getting high in the sky when she let go of me, The car said it was a little after ten AM. I'd packed a few emergency supplies into each of my vehicles, I fished out two warm but still wet bottles of water. According to the cars' display, the temperature was already in the low thirties. it was going to be another hot day. Hopefully any monsters near the blockade would have left for somewhere shadier.
"Mummy is dead, isn't she" came a small, broken voice from the other seat. One of the hardest thing I have ever done was to give that one word answer, my voice cracking, and breath hitching as I did.
The only people who had survived the virus were those that had avoided contact, like the Kidman Family, or those like Josie, Me and of course Lisa, who were genetically pre disposed to being immune. The chances of her Mother having the same condition were slim to say the least.
My train of thought was derailed somewhat, by the radio, The captain was enquiring about our whereabouts.
"Captain Burke isn't it"? I asked, he answered in the affirmative. I informed him of my plan to use the loader to dispatch the group of monsters. I needed to know, so I asked "Why did you shoot at me on Monday"? "They were warning shots" he countered "why didn't you contact us by radio"? I informed him that I heard the warning just once, started turning away and was about to answer the calls when the radio malfunctioned, He enquired about the nature of the malfunction, I answered "Lead poisoning". There was barely a pause before the captain answered "I am very sorry about that, I gave orders that they were to be warning shots only". "It was just a misunderstanding , not anger related, you don't have the virus on board"? I asked. It seemed the USS Ronald Reagan was a clean ship, no trace of the virus. I offered the opinion that one of the captains sharp shooters was obviously a little too keen to keep it that way.
Lisa seemed a little closer to her normal self, her sniffles were fading away. I asked if she was ok to carry on, she nodded. We rolled down the road at my driving miss dairy speed of about forty kph. I told Lisa my plan and what I expected of her, she understood.
The group was still crowding the smashed and broken fast food joint as we rolled past. it seemed to draw them in like a magnet. The area around the loader was deserted, though I could see some monsters through my scope heading our way from the RAAF hangars.
Pull up beside the big Swedish bucket out of the car, up the ladder and open the door, back down the ladder, grab kid and dog, help the girl up the ladder and send the dog up after her. grab my bag and gun, and get into the machine.
There was enough room beside the drivers seat for Lisa to sit comfortably with the dog a little squeezed in at her feet.
Turning the key for the first time in a fortnight, the glow plugs cycled, the orange warning light extinguished and the machine was ready to start. Two turns and the engine fired, settling down to a friendly grumbling idle. Checking the gauges as my personal killdozer warmed, I noted that the fuel gauge was below half, a little lower than I would have liked. whilst it was true that the loader had a big fuel tank, I really didn't want the fuel level to get much lower. Fords fuel tank was almost full, I could refill the big machine there.
As I raised the bucket and released the brake, The monsters from the nearby RAAF base arrived. "Hold on" I told Lisa as we began to roll Heading South for a while to lure them onto the road, I turned and charged at them. The group moved as one towards us, never faltering. all nine or ten of them fell. I used the bucket to deliver the final blow to all of them. then turned South again as the group from McDonalds moved our way en masse.
Hundreds of them flooding the road, all with their eyes fixed on the big yellow Volvo. I'd not thought of Lisa witnessing the slaughter until now. "Honey, you might want to close your eyes for a while, what I have to do here, isn't very nice" She looked at me and said, "I saw you shoot them yesterday, this isn't any different you know" .... a little shocked, all I could say was "ah, ok". there was no time left to discuss it, the group had arrived.
Flooring the accelerator, we rolled forward, The oversized forks poking about 5 metres ahead of the bucket caught quite a few of the crowd. those skinny pieces of hardened steel virtually cut those they encountered in half. but they were very narrow and only caught one at a time, as the buckets sharpened cutting edge met the group, I lost count of the number of monsters that got cut down.
Those that weren't in the buckets path crowded towards the sides of the machine as it passed, the closest ones went under the tyres, I barely felt the bumps from my position high above the road.
For the next hour I rolled up and down that section of road, turning at the roundabouts at either end. The monsters numbers dropping from close to five hundred, maybe more, to less than one hundred. With each pass, the number that I swiped diminished, they were beginning to get a little shy. The road was like a slaughterhouse, with broken bodies everywhere, some still moving, most not. I parked near the McDonalds store, hoping to entice any stragglers out. I pointed to the horn button and had Lisa blow it a few times, that did the trick. More of them piled out of Ronalds place. I backed away and came at them again, Lisa sounding the horn the whole way. My watch said one twelve before I had made a big enough dent in their numbers. Feeling that all the easy picking on the ground might stop those that remained from following us. I made a beeline for Fords farm and his diesel fuel tank.
No monsters in sight as I neared Fords gate. get it open and squeeze the big loader between the gate posts , before shutting the gate and pointing the thirsty Swede towards the tanks.
The dog was overjoyed to be out of the cab, I took a more detailed look around before lifting the girl to the ground, realising only now that she was still in my t shirt and had no shoes.
"I need to go to the toilet" Lisa told me, as she tugged on my arm. I had just started filling the loaders tank. "Cant you just go over there" I asked pointing at a small bushy shrub "No" she said, sounding horrified that I would even suggest such a thing.
"OK" I said resignedly. as I released the lever to cut fuel flow, taking her by the hand and heading towards the house. "bindis" she squealed. arggh, I piggy backed her the rest of the way. Max seemed happy to be back at the familiar food and water bowls as Lisa disappeared behind the bathroom door.
I took another coke from Fords dead beer fridge and sat enjoying its fairly cool sweetness while I waited. No roars or screams from monsters, just regular sounds, a loose bit of tin flapping in the breeze, some crickets chirruping, a few cows mooing in the background and a chook clucking in that excited way they do when they are laying an egg, just then the toilet flushed and Lisa emerged.
"Can I have one of those"? she asked, indicating the drink. "They're not real cold" I warned, pointing towards the old rounded fridge that Ford had kept his beer and soft drinks in for as long as I could recall. She selected a lemonade and joined me on the sofa. We sat enjoying our drinks with a panting dog taking the seat between us.
Eggs? chooks? that would need to be looked into.
It occurred to me that not only had Lisa missed getting dressed this morning, she had also missed breakfast and now lunch.
I moved to the front of the house and scoped the distant road, No movement, time to investigate those eggs.
Why hadn't I checked Fords chooks when I was here before, why hadn't I heard them? maybe I had and it just hadn't registered, it was a common enough sound around the area.
Piggy backing Lisa, I returned to and finished fuelling the loader, then walked past the machinery shed to the chook house.
Sure enough quite a few healthy looking chickens scratching in their large enclosure. If any chooks were going to do ok uncared for for the better part of a month, it was going to be Fords. Their water came automatically from a separate rain water tank, fed from the roof of the machinery shed. Their food, pellets and grains, came from large bins that Ford refilled every month or so. it was a simple but great system that saved him having to repeat these tasks every day. All he had to do, was walk in, pick up the eggs, that was it.
Lisa was not keen to set foot in the chicken coupe, I insisted. she stood grumpily near the gate, as I checked the food bins, still better than half full, The water was automatic and the troughs made in such a way that it was almost impossible to foul them. Inside the hen house were many eggs. I picked some of the fresher looking ones on top, careful not to break the older ones underneath, they would stink to high heaven.
"Like eggs"? I asked, as I emerged from the henhouse, Lisa nodded enthusiastically. Back at the house I found a bucket in the laundry, outside I was able to fill it directly from Fords rainwater tank, bypassing the dead electric pump. I had Lisa check the eggs to see if they were ok or rotten, instructing her to keep only the ones that sank to the bottom, any that floated were no good.
We scored six good out of the eight that I had picked. find a big frying pan, in ten minutes we were tucking into eggs, sunny side up. Generally I was more of a scrambled eggs kind of guy, but I was hungry enough not to be picky. Checking my watch, it was almost three pm, we still had five hours of daylight, but it was better to get things tidied up around the caravan with plenty of light to spare, just In case things didn't go to plan, as they so often didn't in the last few weeks.
I retrieved some more water from the tank and cleaned our pan and plates. I had an idea that we would be back here on a semi regular basis and wanted to leave the home clean, I thought about caching a few supplies there.
Before we left the farm, I did a little house keeping in the chook house as well, finding a large plastic tub, I collected the remaining eggs and dumped them some distance away. Some broke as I tipped them out, The stench was stomach turning. That task took a few trips, I picked a few more fresh looking eggs and had my chief egg tester try them, all were good. Thet came with us cushioned by rags from Fords shed inside an old ice cream container.
Back in the loader heading south. The monsters were feeding on their fallen comrades, as I suspected. Some charged, some continued tearing at their departed friends. Some evaded the big yellow machine, I had guns with me, I could have shot them, but had neither the time nor inclination, There would still be plenty inside the RAAF fence, maybe leaving a few here would draw them out, the more I could wipe out with the loader, the better.
Left, onto Lavis lane, with the crowd that had been gathered around McDonalds now thinned out, I could pass through this road with little or no risk. Onto Owens, where I found another large group of monsters gathered at the water hole. I was a little frustrated that the group had multiplied , after I had taken the time to cut their numbers down earlier in the month. This group was not scared of the big Volvo, and they were soon chasing after us. Lisa asked why I wasn't "smooshing" them "Just getting them out in the open so they have nowhere to run", I answered "oh" she replied.
The big wheeled loader was a powerful machine and with its anti vandal shields fitted over the windows, was the next best thing to a tank, it was tough and just about unstoppable, what it wasn't, was fast. The monsters could keep up to the big yellow machine in the short term, I moved towards the pit face that backed onto the sand dunes leading to the beach. Near the face, we turned, and waited as the group continued to come at us.
It was a bit concerning to hear the little girl giggling as we ploughed into the monsters, we would have to talk about that later. My watch beeped "4" as the last of them went to meet their maker.
Up onto the dunes and down to the waters edge, the damp sand made for much easier going for the heavy loader. The radio squawked as we straightened, heading for the caravan.
A different voice asked if it was us in the tractor, I confirmed. "There's about a hundred of them near your van", "tell him we are going to "smoosh" them" I instructed, before keying the mike in front of the little girl, she parroted the comment "Go get em'" the unnamed officer enthused.
By five PM, we got em'. It took another half hour or so to clean up the monsters bodies that I had dispatched over the last two day. The forks attached to the bucket made lifting the bodies a little more difficult, but I managed ok, dumping the bodies further up the beach in the surf. the fish and sharks could have them.
Before we exited the loader, I did a circuit around the van, checking for any stragglers I might have missed. Almost back to van and that damned do made yet another attack on our tender senses. Throwing the door open, the furnace like temperatures hit hard. We rolled to a stop. I got the retching girl out of the confines of the cab, Before lifting Stinky to the ground. As the dog wandered off to take care of business, I retrieved the reminder of the gear from the big machine. Its cab still reeking of Eau de Max. Shutting it down, I left the door open so the odour could hopefully dissipate.
I saw Lisa into the van, she was planning on getting dressed. I wanted to attend to the flat battery in the Patrol that had almost doomed us this morning. Using my again befouled quad I jump started the big Nissan, before starting every other machine and charging every battery, I disconnected the fridge from the back of the car, a cold drink is not worth my life.
The damaged Landcruiser, attached to my van sputtered and quit at around six thirty. I hoped the Vans battery would keep the a/c running for a wile yet, it was still hot.
"Never put off til tomorrow what you can do today" Old Fords voice echoed (boomed actually, as he said it before I discovered his ruse). Lisa and I had been enjoying a cool drink, just discussing what she wanted for tea when the giant dented battery charger, aka the Land Cruiser had died. Lisa was not quite ready for he evening meal yet, so I suggested we go for a drive, so I could get some more fuel .
The Patrol sprang into life and we set off, empty fuel drums "bonging" against each other in the back .. even though they were all water tight, they still made the inside of the car smell like petrol and diesel.
We didn't have to go far for our first fuel donor, a bogged Rav 4. Even though it was cool in the Patrol, Lisa accompanied me as I milked the little Toyota. While the "Jiggler dangler" My name for the siphon hose did its thing, transferring the fuel into my drum, we had a look inside. Two cases of water and some canned goods, we took those, but left the cheap tent and associated camping gear.
As lise ferried he items into the back of our car, I changed drums, as the first one was almost full. With the second drum half full, the jiggling noise from inside the tank went silent. I carefully removed my siphon, careful to avoid the copper valve with the marble at its end, the source of it noise and name, catching as I withdrew it from the tank.
We were soon on our way North again, looking for other donors, when the radio came to life. Captain Bourke was back on the radio "you don't wwant to let the highway patrol catch you milking cars" he chuckled "Only way Lisa and I can make it to the drive in tonight" I joked back. After telling him about the van I was in and how the charging system worked, we got onto other things, Namely how we both ended up still being here. I gave the Captain a condensed version of my last month, then it was his turn.
Coming off tsunami aid work near Japan, "the Gipper" had been headed for scheduled maintenance back in the states when she was ordered into lockdown under a secret programme known as "Operation Noahs Ark".
It seemed that "Noahs Ark" was a policy by which Naval assets would be quarantined in the event of a threat to Humanity, it wasn't exactly a secret, but neither was it ever really made public. As Captain Bourke told it, at the first sight of trouble brewing, ships would be chosen to enter quarantine. These ships were chosen according to the type of emergency, if it were nuclear for example, Ships that were in out of the way location might become the ark, since this was a pandemic, ships that had been at sea and not had contact with others since before the probably start of the infection were chosen. It seemed there were two Carriers and four Submarines selected for Ark duties in the current emergency. When I asked about those other boats, the Captain told me that he was "Not at liberty to say".
Fuel drums all full as we headed back to the van, or "Trailer" as the captain referred to it. we both had one more question of each other. I went first "Why are you here"? it seems they had encountered my friends on the Drake and the Captain had told them of just how helpful I had been, and wouldn't you know it, they had a shopping list as well. We agreed to discuss that later.
I knew what the captain was going to ask "why aren't you d'.. infected"? he corrected himself, probably thinking of the little girl. I explained about my medical condition that was shared with the only other survivors that had been exposed to the infected. He informed me that his ships Doctor had come to the same conclusion after speaking with the Drakes Doctor.
As I refuelled the broken and bent Land Cruiser, and fired it up so that we could run the vans air conditioner, I asked if we were going to meet, face to face "undecided" came the reply "but my Doctor feels that something can be arranged, which brings me to the plastic case ou received this morning". I'd forgotten about it. A bright orange hard shell, about the size of a screwdriver set, with tape wrapped around it and a big "STOP" written on it in black marker pen. "In that case is a finger pricker and some test tubes, my Doctor would like some of your blood, there is a test that will determine if you are infected", "and if we are carriers"? I asked "then I will lose half a years pay, I'm betting you aren't...." " neither of you" he added. "Put me down for a Hundred, I'm good for it", "will do", I signed off as we entered that cool "trailer" eager for a meal a wash and a sleep.
Another excellent and easily prepared dehydrated meal. followed by a quick wash, I was afraid the tanks would be running dry, Lisa and Max went to bed, I updated this journal and was under the covers by ten PM. The land cruiser dutifully idling away outside my window. I would have shut it down, but the power hungry Air Conditioner would not be getting turned off this evening, When Max had ventured outside, just before bed time, it was still way too hot.


text:
Home/Vegas News/Entertainment/Public Health Experts Call Out Spotify Over Joe Rogan And COVID Misinformation – Read The Open Letter! – Perez Hilton
Public Health Experts Call Out Spotify Over Joe Rogan And COVID Misinformation – Read The Open Letter! – Perez Hilton
Team Las Vegas News 1 week ago
Medical professionals from a wide range of scientific specialties are coming after Joe Rogan.
The Spotify podcast host, who signed a nine-digit exclusive deal with the platform back in 2020, is the target of a lot of public concern right now. On Wednesday night, 270 medical experts published an open letter directed at Spotify regarding Rogan's long-time comments on COVID-19, the COVID vaccine, and medical information in general. In it, they accuse the podcast host of misinformation and slam the tech company for contributing to it and promoting it.
Related: Joe Rogan Brags That He Can Suck His Own WHAT?!
In the letter, the doctors and researchers involved say the 54-year-old podcast host is making millions of dollars disseminating bogus medical advice that is harming the health of his listeners. Along with it, the doctors hope the streaming platform can provide "a clear and public policy" to "moderate misinformation on its platform."
The doctors brought the receipts, too.
At one point in the letter, they slam Rogan with a detailed list of problems they found with some of his previous shows, writing:
"Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine. He has discouraged vaccination in young people and children, incorrectly claimed that mRNA vaccines are "gene therapy," promoted off-label use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 (contrary to FDA warnings), and spread a number of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. In episode #1757, Rogan hosted Dr. Robert Malone, who was suspended from Twitter for spreading misinformation about COVID-19. Dr. Malone used the JRE platform to further promote numerous baseless claims, including several falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and an unfounded theory that societal leaders have "hypnotized" the public. Many of these statements have already been discredited. Notably, Dr. Malone is one of two recent JRE guests who has compared pandemic policies to the Holocaust. These actions are not only objectionable and offensive, but also medically and culturally dangerous."
They continue on from there, arguing that it is critical to address Rogan's vaccine and pandemic misinformation issues considering so many of his listeners tend to be younger and more impressionable people.
The letter writers note:
"The average age of JRE listeners is 24 years old and according to data from Washington State, unvaccinated 12-34 year olds are 12 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID than those who are fully vaccinated. Dr. Malone's interview has reached many tens of millions of listeners vulnerable to predatory medical misinformation. Mass-misinformation events of this scale have extraordinarily dangerous ramifications. As scientists, we face backlash and resistance as the public grows to distrust our research and expertise. As educators and science communicators, we are tasked with repairing the public's damaged understanding of science and medicine. As physicians, we bear the arduous weight of a pandemic that has stretched our medical systems to their limits and only stands to be exacerbated by the anti-vaccination sentiment woven into this and other episodes of Rogan's podcast."
Ultimately, the letter writers — who are doctors and other health professionals from all sorts of medical disciplines, and from hospitals and universities across the country — want Spotify to take action.
They write:
"This is not only a scientific or medical concern; it is a sociological issue of devastating proportions and Spotify is responsible for allowing this activity to thrive on its platform. We, the undersigned doctors, nurses, scientists, and educators thus call on Spotify to immediately establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation on its platform."
Can it work?
BTW, you can view the full letter HERE.
[Image via Ivan Nikolov/WENN/Spotify]
call COVID experts Health Hilton Joe letter misinformation Open Perez public Read Rogan spotify
Poor shooting dooms Toronto Raptors against NBA-worst Detroit Pistons
Five power-play goals not enough for Spitfires as Sting rally late to secure win
John Stamos shares eulogy from Bob Saget's memorial: Heartfelt stories and a raunchy sex joke
BTS Featurette Focuses On 'Peacemaker' Opening Credits

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Tuesday, Mar 15 2016
State Highlights: Va. Considers Nursing Facilities Cameras; Fla. Gov. Signs Unscrupulous Guardian Bill
News outlets report on health issues in Virginia, Florida, California, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Texas.
The Virginian-Pilot: Effort To Require Nursing Facilities To Allow Camera Monitoring Delayed
If nothing else, Jane Casey has received an education during the past three years on the Byzantine world of lawmaking. In 2013, the Suffolk resident lobbied legislators to change the law to allow electronic cameras in nursing facilities so families could monitor their relatives' care. (Simpson, 3/13)
The News Service Of Florida: Scott Signs Bill Aimed At Unscrupulous Guardians
Gov. Rick Scott on Thursday signed a bill aimed at better protecting elderly Floridians from unscrupulous guardians. The measure (SB 232), filed by Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, calls for the Department of Elder Affairs to certify and oversee professional guardians. Under the bill, the Statewide Public Guardianship Office at the Florida Department of Elder Affairs will expand to become the Office of Public and Professional Guardians. It will establish standards for public and private guardians, receive and investigate complaints and penalize guardians who breach the standards. (3/13)
Kaiser Health News: Fear Of Future Health Problems Plagues Porter Ranch, Calif., Gas Leak Victims
Kavita Ramchandani loved everything about evenings in her backyard: how the full moon lit up the sky, the way the breeze seemed to talk to her, the smell of the pine trees. She bought the single-story hillside house in this upscale Los Angeles County suburb after emigrating from India, and from the first night it felt like home. Then last fall, gas started leaking from a well at a nearby storage facility, and Ramchandani, 53, began wheezing, getting nose bleeds and persistent headaches. She left her home in January. Now, she says, the house just feels foreign. And scary. (Gorman, 3/15)
The Kansas Health Institute News Service: Feds: Kansas Mental Health Screenings Require Reforms
Federal officials found fault with the way Kansas had screened people for admission to psychiatric hospitals, but left the door open for the state to divert patients if it reforms the screening procedure. Gov. Sam Brownback vetoed a section in Senate Bill 161 that would have reinstated a requirement that Medicaid recipients be screened before admitting them for inpatient psychiatric treatment. Brownback said he supports the screenings, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have threatened to reduce state funding for health programs by up to $1.8 million because of the requirement. (Hart, 3/11)
The Associated Press: Health Care Transparency Bill Passes Florida Senate
The Florida Senate passed a bill on Thursday that would give residents more transparency on the costs of health care. The bill (HB 1175), which passed 27-1, requires Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration to contract with a vendor for a website that will show cost and quality of care. (3/14)
The Philadelphia Inquirer: IBC Offering Telemedicine
Independence Blue Cross said it is offering telemedicine services to certain employer groups through MDLIVE, a national company that connects patients with primary-care physicians by telephone, video or mobile app. MDLIVE physicians, who will be paid through a contract MDLIVE has with IBC, can make diagnoses and prescribe medicines. (Brubaker, 3/14)
The San Antonio Express-News: A Hometown Hospital's Fight Gets Ugly In Insurance Negotiations
In this place of tall pines and fried catfish, where the Texas twang rolls sweet and slow, a hometown hospital took a swing at three of the nation's largest insurers. The legal brawl it unleashed gives a rare glimpse into just how antagonistic the business of health care can become these days. Last summer, just shy of its 65th birthday, East Texas Medical Center filed a lawsuit in state district court in Smith County alleging that Aetna Health, Cigna Healthcare and, especially, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas have plunged the hospital into financial jeopardy by repeatedly shutting it out of the most common and popular group health insurance networks. (Deam, 3/14)


text:
Q: Skip validation for certain fields in Struts2 For example, there is an action class as follows.
@Namespace("/admin_side")
@ResultPath("/WEB-INF/content")
@InterceptorRefs({@InterceptorRef(value="defaultStack", params={"validation.excludeMethods", "load"})})
public final class TestAction extends ActionSupport implements Serializable, ValidationAware, ModelDriven<Transporter>
{
    @Autowired
    private final transient TransporterService transporterService=null;
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    private Boolean deleteOneRow=false; //Getter and setter.
    private Transporter entity=new Transporter(); //Getter and setter.
    private List<Transporter>transporters=new ArrayList<Transporter>();
    private String message; //Getter and setter.
    private List<Long>chk; //Getter and setter.

    @Action(value = "Transporter", results = {@Result(name=ActionSupport.SUCCESS, location="Transporter.jsp"), @Result(name = ActionSupport.INPUT, location = "Transporter.jsp")})
    public String load() throws Exception
    {
        return ActionSupport.SUCCESS;
    }

    @Validations(
            requiredStrings={
                @RequiredStringValidator(fieldName="transporterName", type= ValidatorType.FIELD, key = "transporter.name.required"),
                @RequiredStringValidator(fieldName="transporterWebsite", type= ValidatorType.FIELD, key = "transporter.website.required")},
            stringLengthFields={
                @StringLengthFieldValidator(fieldName="transporterName", type= ValidatorType.FIELD, minLength="2", maxLength="45", key="transporter.name.length", messageParams={"2", "45"}),
                @StringLengthFieldValidator(fieldName="transporterWebsite", type= ValidatorType.FIELD, minLength="10", maxLength="1000", key="transporter.website.length", messageParams={"10", "1000"})})
    @Action(value = "addTransporter",
        results = {@Result(name=ActionSupport.SUCCESS, type="redirectAction", location="Transporter.jsp", params={"namespace", "/admin_side", "actionName", "Transporter", "message", "${message}"}),
        @Result(name = ActionSupport.INPUT, location = "Transporter.jsp")},
        interceptorRefs={@InterceptorRef(value="defaultStack", params={"params.acceptParamNames", "transporterName, transporterWebsite", "validation.validateAnnotatedMethodOnly", "true"})})
    public String insert()
    {
        if(entity.getTransporterId()==null)
        {
            transporterService.insert(entity.getTransporterName(), entity.getTransporterWebsite());
            setMessage(getText("insert.success"));
        }
        else
        {
            setMessage(transporterService.update(entity)?getText("update.success", new String[]{String.valueOf(entity.getTransporterId())}) :getText("update.failed", new String[]{String.valueOf(entity.getTransporterId())}));
        }
        return ActionSupport.SUCCESS;
    }

    @Validations(requiredFields={@RequiredFieldValidator(fieldName="transporterId", type= ValidatorType.FIELD, key = "delete.id.missing")})
    @Action(value = "editTransporter",
            results = {
                @Result(name=ActionSupport.SUCCESS, location="Transporter.jsp"),
                @Result(name = ActionSupport.INPUT, location = "Transporter.jsp")},
            interceptorRefs={
                @InterceptorRef(value="defaultStack", params={"params.acceptParamNames", "transporterId, transporterName, transporterWebsite", "validation.validateAnnotatedMethodOnly", "true"}),
                @InterceptorRef(value="conversionError")})
    public String edit()
    {
        return ActionSupport.SUCCESS;
    }

    @Action(value = "deleteTransporter",
            results = {
                @Result(name=ActionSupport.SUCCESS, type="redirectAction", location="Transporter.action", params={"message", "${message}"}),
                @Result(name = ActionSupport.INPUT, location = "Transporter.jsp")},
            interceptorRefs={
                @InterceptorRef(value="defaultStack", params={"params.acceptParamNames", "transporterId, deleteOneRow", "validation.validateAnnotatedMethodOnly", "true"}),
                @InterceptorRef(value="conversionError")})
    public String deleteTransporter()
    {
        if(transporterService.delete(entity.getTransporterId()))
        {
            //Pagination has not not yet been implemented. Hence, it is static.
            transporters=transporterService.getList(0, 20);
            setMessage(getText("delete.success", new String[]{String.valueOf(entity.getTransporterId())}));
        }
        else
        {
            setMessage(getText("delete.failed", new String[]{String.valueOf(entity.getTransporterId())}));
        }
        return ActionSupport.SUCCESS;
    }

    @Action(value = "deleteTransporters",
            results = {
                @Result(name=ActionSupport.SUCCESS, type="redirectAction", location="Transporter.jsp", params={"namespace", "/admin_side", "actionName", "Transporter", "message", "${message}"}),
                @Result(name = ActionSupport.INPUT, location = "Transporter.jsp")},
            interceptorRefs={
                @InterceptorRef(value="defaultStack", params={"params.acceptParamNames", "chk", "validation.validateAnnotatedMethodOnly", "true"}),
                @InterceptorRef(value="conversionError")})
    public String deleteTransporters()
    {
        setMessage(transporterService.delete(chk)?getText("delete.multiple.success", new String[]{String.valueOf(chk.size())}) :getText("delete.multiple.failed"));
        return ActionSupport.SUCCESS;
    }

    @Override
    public Transporter getModel() {
        return entity;
    }

    public List<Transporter> getTransporters()
    {
        if(CollectionUtils.isEmpty(transporters))
        {
            //Pagination has not not yet been implemented. Hence, it is static.
            transporters=transporterService.getList(0, 20);
        }
        return transporters;
    }

    public void setTransporters(List<Transporter> transporters) {
        this.transporters = transporters;
    }

    @Override
    public void validate(){}
}

The JSP page:
<s:form namespace="/admin_side" action="Transporter" id="dataForm" name="dataForm" cssClass="search_form general_form">
    <s:if test="hasFieldErrors()">
        <s:fielderror fieldName="transporterId"/>
        <s:fielderror fieldName="chk"/>
    </s:if>

    <s:property value="message"/>
    <s:hidden id="transporterId" name="transporterId"/>
    <s:hidden id="deleteOneRow" name="deleteOneRow"/>

   <s:textfield id="transporterName" name="transporterName"/><s:fielderror fieldName="transporterName"/>
   <s:textfield id="transporterWebsite" name="transporterWebsite"/><s:fielderror fieldName="transporterWebsite"/>
   <s:submit id="btnSubmit" name="btnSubmit" value="Submit" action="addTransporter"/>

                Check
                Id
                Transporter
                Website
                Actions

            <s:iterator value="transporters" status="loopStatus">
                <tr class="<s:if test="#loopStatus.odd == true ">first</s:if> <s:else>second</s:else>">
                    <s:checkbox name="chk" fieldValue="%{transporterId}" value="false"/>
                    <s:property value="transporterId" />
                    <s:property value="transporterName" />

                        <a href="<s:property value="transporterWebsite" />">Visit

                                    <s:url id="editURL" action="editTransporter" escapeAmp="false">
                                        <s:param name="transporterId" value="%{transporterId}"/>
                                        <s:param name="transporterName" value="%{transporterName}"/>
                                        <s:param name="transporterWebsite" value="%{transporterWebsite}"/>
                                    </s:url>
                                    <s:a href="%{editURL}" cssClass="action2"/>

                                    <s:url id="deleteURL" action="deleteTransporter" escapeAmp="false">
                                        <s:param name="transporterId" value="%{transporterId}"/>
                                        <s:param name="deleteOneRow" value="%{deleteOneRow}"/>
                                    </s:url>
                                    <s:a href="%{deleteURL}" onclick="return deleteOne(%{transporterId});" cssClass="action4"/>

            </s:iterator>

<s:submit name="btnDelete" id="btnDelete" action="deleteTransporters" onclick="return getCheckedRows();" />

The insert() method accepts two parameters, transporterName and transporterWebsite and the edit() method accepts only one parameter transporterId which is supplied as a query-string, when a link is clicked.
The insert() method is mapped by an action of <s:submit> whereas the edit() method is mapped by an action of <s:url> whose id is given to the href attribute of <s:a>.
When the edit link, <s:a> is clicked, both the text fields transporterName and transporterWebsite are unnecessarily validated which must not happen while editing i.e validation to these text fields should be skipped/disabled, when the edit link is clicked.
Only transporterId which is accepted by the edit() method should be validated. No other fields should be validated, when the edit link is clicked.
The annotation @SkipValidation would not work, in this case.
How to do this?

A: It was because I was missing validateAnnotatedMethodOnly at the class level validation interceptor I defined.
It worked when I modified the class definition to something like the following.
@Namespace("/admin_side")
@ResultPath("/WEB-INF/content")
@InterceptorRefs({@InterceptorRef(value="defaultStack", params={"validation.validateAnnotatedMethodOnly", "true", "validation.excludeMethods", "load"})})
public final class TestAction  extends ActionSupport implements Serializable, ValidationAware, ModelDriven<Transporter>
{
    //...
}

I included validation.validateAnnotatedMethodOnly at method levels but forgot to include it at the class level.
It would have also been appropriate to just annotate the load() method in the action class with @SkipValidation and eliminate the class level @InterceptorRefs annotation in its entirely.

From the documentation:

When multiple methods are used to map different actions on the same
  class, and one of them is annotated with @Validations, those
  validators will be triggered for all the actions, unless they are
  annotated with @SkipValidation or validateAnnotatedMethodOnly is set
  to true in the validation interceptor, like:
<interceptor-ref name="validation">
    <param name="validateAnnotatedMethodOnly">true</param>
    <param name="excludeMethods">input,back,cancel,browse</param>
</interceptor-ref>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Alert the media! Stop the presses! Something went right today.
After multiple home improvement debacles, my gut is firmly trained to seize up and revolt at any mention of the word "handyman." I actually expend quite a bit of energy trying to ignore situations that might require the services of a home repair professional.
Today, however, we actually accomplished something with minimal time, hassle, and expense.
Some time ago, the fluorescent light tubes over Max's bathroom sink burned out. We replaced them. This involved climbing on stepladders, kneeling on the counter, and holding things above my head. There is no question that Max is the one who did the bulk of the heavy lifting. Even in my very limited capacity, I was graceless and ineffectual. However, we did finally get both the light tubes replaced.
A few weeks ago, Max again complained that the lights were flickering on and off. When he flipped the switch to illuminate the bathroom, the lights took his request under advisement. However, they were as likely to stay stubbornly unlit or to tease him with a hopeful flicker as they were to emit actual sustained light. When they did cooperate, Max would leave them on for hours just to avoid another confrontation later. While this strategy had marginal success for a little while, the lights eventually breathed their last.
For a couple of weeks, Max employed various workarounds for light in the bathroom. Like the trooper he is, he found ways to take care of his daily ablutions without benefit of overhead lighting while he patiently waited for the "call electrician" item to work its way up on the "to-do" list.
I finally decided to do something before Max became the victim of a self-inflicted shaving fatality. On Saturday, I called the electrical company we've used in the past. The dispatcher told me that he wasn't sure the company still covered our area. He told me he'd check and call back. Amazingly, he did. But only to tell me that he was still checking and would call back in a little while. Come Monday, we still had not heard back. "Here we go again," I thought.
I went trawling the internet for another highly-rated electrician. I thought I found one and called, only to have the dispatcher tell me their company didn't handle our area for small jobs. Fortunately, she did give me a referral to another vendor, though.
I called electrician #3. Jackpot! He answered the phone immediately. He quoted an acceptable price. He stopped at the supply warehouse and appeared on our doorstep inside half an hour. Twenty minutes later, he was gone and we had light.
It is amazing how this event changed my metabolism. For weeks now, I've been dragging around barely getting through each day doing what I absolutely had to do. Today, after the light came on in Max's bathroom, I was a whirlwind. I finally drove a couple of nails in the Florida room wall to hang a wreath that had repeatedly fallen to the floor after its suction cup hook stopped adhering to either the wall or window. I swept the Florida room. I stopped to get my mother a milkshake on my way to the rehab facility. I had an emotionally-charged conversation with a doctor at the rehab and then visited with my mother for a couple of hours. Then, I went to her mobile home and packed up stuff for an hour. On my way back home, I stopped at UPS to send back her satellite TV box.
It's crazy that we tend to focus on what goes wrong when concentrating on what goes right generates such a power surge. It seems there is no more effective fuel for activity than success.
At any rate, I am all a-flush with victory. I am ridiculously happy about the completion of a simple household repair. But I'll take it!
How about you? Do you find that even small successes can motivate you to keep trying? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can send me an email at terriretirement@gmail.com.
I hope many things go right for you today!
Special programming note: Next week, I may be posting on Tuesday instead of Wednesday morning. I'm sorry I can't be more definitive, but such is life. Thanks for your understanding!
You've inspired me to get going! I've been putting off going to the gym. Yesterday was my birthday, so I gave myself the excuse to laze around and do only what I wanted to do…….like a little stress-free shopping. But the jeans I bought are a little tight. Your energy story woke me up again, and I'm off to the gym.
That's me- a cyberspace alarm clock! Happy to oblige. Hope you had a good workout.
Interesting that one success does make a person feel good and grateful to go on to the next thing. Today I had several things to do, and I actually have things in order already. It is a good feeling to have ones day to day activities work out timely. It makes me happy too, to see completion of jobs that have been waiting, but now are done. Yipee!!
A friend of mine once said that she loves "to do" lists. Then she corrects herself to say she actually loves "have done" lists, but you don't care "have done" lists without "to do" lists!


Maksim Chmerkovskiy on 'Dancing with the Stars' return: "We'll see"
The dancer says his top priority is his summer Broadway musical.
Maksim Chmerkovskiy remains non-committal on whether he will return to Dancing with the Stars in the fall.
The dance professional was not in the ABC reality competition's spring 2013 cast, but he stressed at the time that he could rejoin the show at a later date.
Chmerkovskiy was promoting his upcoming stint in Broadway's Forever Tango on Extra, when he was quizzed on if he will be back on Dancing with the Stars next season.
"Right now I am completely engulfed in Broadway, but we'll see," Chmerkovskiy replied.
He will be starring in Forever Tango opposite former fiancée Karina Smirnoff, who recently joked that she will be taking the lead in rehearsal sessions.
The former couple are performing in Forever Tango in a three-week run through July 28.
Dancing with the Stars returns this fall on ABC.
Maksim Chmerkovskiy for 'DWTS' return?


It was Martins first job of the day, and it was a sod to drill the wall as well, we do have plans to re-vamp all the kitchen, but not until we do extension work, there is no rush would much prefer to get everything established outside first.
Perfect place for the bread, now I wont keep shouting shut the door your letting all the heat out and I am trying to get dough to rise.
And crowd control barriers for me.
The cement mixer will be put to lots of use as we have a few jobs coming up that will need concrete, when we do the new Alpaca shelter it will have a concrete floor, as will Martins workshop.
The anchor points for the new Poly Tunnel.
50cm deep, anchor point goes in and its filled with concrete.
That the goats were happy to dispose of, its great having the goats to feed the weeds to, saves having to dispose of them.
I finally got the new strawberry bed cleared and membrane down.
just need to get the strawberries in now.
then a mulch on top.
There is no overpowering taste of violets just a hint, but a nice refreshing taste.
We also taste tested the canned soup, leek and potato, two of the cans hadn't sealed so we had them for lunch, yes just normal leek and potato soup.
were put to use, we closed off and allowed the Alpacas in to part of the garden to take the grass down, they did a great job.
We will use them as a movable fence.
The forecasters go it wrong, no Arctic blast and no rain, we haven't had rain for almost two weeks apart from the odd little shower that stopped as soon as it started.
Time to get and enjoy the sunshine, going to get some planting out done.
Lucky you with no arctic weather. Up here in the Dales there is a sharp wind from the North and although the sun is out there is no doubt about it being cold.
It's sunny here along the south coast, still not as warm as it could be and evenings get cooler. Another busy time, you must be getting excited as your new poly tunnel gets further along the construction.
Good idea to have the cement mixer, we debated for one, went without to do our poly tunnel poles and now have to think about a load of ready mix for a shed base! Should have gone for it!!!
Too bad we didn't live closer with an ocean between us I would have loaned you my mixer for as long as you want it. I get so tired trying to walk around the thing in the barn.
Good soil with all those worms!!!!
Great investments. Hubby loves tools the more the merrier. He will loan them out and forget who has them. Tut tut.
What a busy day you both had. The violet jelly looks interesting.
You will enjoy having that shelf. Will you be getting a Lazy Susan to hang from the ceiling? Ours has been put to good use this winter for drying the laundry. As for the weather, it has been chilly here, so the Artic weather seems to have come here instead of to you!
I never thought about wanting a small cement mixer but we have some projects in the future that will need cement and this is something I want now, ha! And while we don't have livestock (still a few years from that), those crowd control barriers are genius as temporary placements! Thanks!
I have "crowd control barrier" and oven shelf envy ;). Very nice!!


text:
Dressing for Paradise
Detail, Self-Portrait, Frida Kahlo, 1948.© Private Collection
Was Frida Kahlo Jewish, and does it matter? A blockbuster show at London's Victoria and Albert Museum brings the Mexican artist's contradictions to life.
Frances Brent
"A manner of dressing for paradise, of preparing for death." That's how Carlos Fuentes described Frida Kahlo's wardrobe, the sumptuous grandeur of her satin and velvet skirts, fringed rebozos (shawls), embroidered huipils (tunics), the luster of her rattling bracelets, the weight of her massive beads, the flamboyant rings adorning her fingers and thumbs. There were also the breathtaking resplandors, flowered lace headdresses, which she collected and wore in the 1940s in self-portraits showing tears rolling down her cheeks. With a pleated ruffle surrounding her face like the petals of a flower, she was a tragic bride, a pious nun, an Aztec goddess, and the incarnation of Mexico's ancient sorrows and tragic betrayals.
All of Mexico knew the drama of her life: When she was 6 years old, she was afflicted with polio, which withered her leg. When she was 18, a streetcar collided with the bus she was riding, breaking her collarbone, spine, ribs, and pelvis, shattering her right leg and crushing her foot. The frame of an iron hand rail impaled her abdomen and pierced into the vagina. When she was 22, dressed in clothes borrowed from a maid, she married Diego Rivera, the most famous artist in Mexico and arguably the Americas, a champion of the poor, a Communist who had lived in Paris and the Soviet Union. Twenty years her senior, Rivera was already twice married, weighed over 300 pounds, and had the reputation of a rooster, going after anyone with "the wherewithal under its skirt," as their friend Dr. Leo Eloesser put it.
What followed were infidelities, lost pregnancies, divorce, remarriage, excruciating hospitalizations, and surgeries that included the amputation of her gangrenous right leg a year before she died, perhaps from a pulmonary embolism or perhaps from an overdose of painkillers. Frida Kahlo was mexicanidad; she drew upon it for her paintings and costumes and she surrounded herself with its essence in her home, which contained tens of thousands of objects, ranging from scowling Olmec figures to papier-mâché Judas skeletons, which she occasionally dressed in her shawls and underskirts. It was also said she was Jewish. But was she?
Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up, on view through Nov. 18 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, is both a sold-out blockbuster and a surprisingly somber reconsideration of the artist and her turbulence. It reunites a collection of paintings and drawings, many self-portraits, with about 200 intimate objects on loan from the Museo Frida Kahlo, also known as La Casa Azul, the Blue House, the home where Kahlo spent most of her life, in the Coyoacán neighborhood on the outskirts of Mexico City. The exhibit includes an extensive collection of photographs as well as film documenting Mexico at the turn of the 20th century, her family and childhood, the years she and Rivera socialized with world celebrities, their relationship with Trotsky (who was their guest in Casa Azul from 1937 to 1939 and with whom she had an adulterous affair), as well as the harrowing final years of physical and mental agony. It demonstrates the boundarylessness of her style, evident in everything she did, from the daily ceremony of putting on her clothes, layer by layer, to amusing herself with her menagerie of parrots and spider monkeys, an osprey named Gertrudis Caca Blanca (Gertrude White Shit), her little deer, Granizo, as well as her beloved Señor Xolotl, the Mexican hairless dog whom she depicted tenderly curled on a bed of soft leaves in her startlingly poetic painting The Love Embrace of the Universe.
The show also reminds us that appearances can be deceiving. Las Apariencias Engañan, she inscribed the bottom of an undated self-portrait, a drawing in charcoal and colored pencil showing her half-corseted torso with an architectural column positioned at her spine and a triangular swatch of pubic hair beneath a transparent, pulled-away skirt. Kahlo was well aware that costume could conceal many things, from mercurial sexuality to a traumatized body, and she meticulously drew her withered right foot as well as a left leg decorated with butterflies. "Feet," she wrote in her diary, "what do I need them for, if I have wings to fly."
Like tomb objects, the costumes and an immense trove of idiosyncratic personal items—her prosthetic leg fitted with a red leather boot decorated with Chinese dragons and bells, orthopedic devices, medicine vials, liver pills, face cream, nail polish, and perfume bottles (including a Shalimar flask with the famous fan-shaped stopper)—remained, just as they were left, some in a bathtub or resting against a wall, for 50 years after Kahlo died in La Casa Azul. The rooms where they were kept, a bathroom and storage area with trunks, wooden wardrobes, dressers, and boxes, were unlocked in 2004 when the job of cataloguing, cleaning, and analyzing began. Following on that work, conservators for the current show, to give one example, recently noticed a jade stone with a splash of green paint, indicating that Kahlo may have been matching the stone's color against paint on her paintbrush while she was painting herself wearing the string of jade beads.
This is the first occasion the objects have traveled outside Mexico and the V&A has pulled out all the stops. Using vintage photographs, 3D rendering, and 3D printing, they created exhibition mannequins matching Kahlo's height and silhouette and then developed plaster masks of her head and face, as they say in the video, "to evoke Frida Kahlo without being pastiche." Leaving gaps in the irregular surfaces on the arms and necks, they've managed to suggest her broken body and to approximate the weathered quality of the faces in her paintings.
You may or may not like the way the installation produces the sensation of a pilgrimage with painted replicas of the artist's four-poster bed used as vitrines to display her medicines, anatomy books, painted corsets, as well as cosmetics, sewing box, and cat-eye sunglasses. But the small retablos, inscribed devotional paintings, representing tragedies averted, are a delight. Although Kahlo rejected the Catholicism of her upbringing—she wrote "IDIOT!" on the back of her First Communion photo—she collected hundreds of these vernacular-style votives, especially prizing illustrations of gruesome accidents. You can see the link between the graphic narratives in the ex-votos to her early narrative paintings, such as Portrait on the Border Between Mexico and the United States, where she used the same technique of oil on tin to tell the story of her life in America represented by machinery, skyscrapers, and smokestacks, and her homesickness for Mexico with its ancient ruins and rooted fertility.
Costumes form the centerpiece of the show and they tell the story of astonishing imagination. Kahlo began dressing in Tehuana style at the time of her marriage and her wardrobe helped her craft a unique identity so she could stand her ground beside Rivera, who was already legendary. When they were living in America, starting in 1930, she garnered attention for her beautifully feminine and flamboyant style. From San Francisco, she wrote home: "The gringas have liked me very much and they are impressed by the dresses and shawls that I brought with me, my jade necklaces are amazing for them and all the painters want me to pose for their portraits."
In the exhibit you can see how Kahlo worked in the spirit of a collage artist, mixing Mexican and Guatemalan embroidered and woven work with European and Chinese fabrics, contrasting colors, patterns, and shapes with artistic originality (eventually using the garments as camouflage for the deformity of her body). The clothed mannequins can't convey Kahlo's youthful playfulness and intimacy, the generosity of her spirit, or her devilish side, her irreverence, the way she delighted in using offensive language, particularly in English, calling the sullen bellboy at the Barbizon Plaza "a son-of-a-bitch." And they certainly don't convey the even tougher Frida who was drinking a bottle of cognac a day in 1939. Rather, they present her constructed image, the exotic dignity in the photographs, particularly in the magnificent series of colored images of her made by her lover, Nickolas Muray, who worked for Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar.
Making Her Self Up, of course, is a pun. The camera loved Frida Kahlo and she had known since childhood how to direct her gaze (sometimes confrontationally), telling her story for the photographer's lens. You see this again in the self-portraits which become increasingly defiant and aggressive over the years as losses mounted up along with unbearable loneliness and physical suffering, while the idea of "preparing for death" was more and more on her mind. "I have enjoyed being contradictory," she said at the end of her life.
That idea can be applied to her entire biography which had the quality of magic realism, every detail changeable and changing, starting from the year of her birth, which shifted from 1907 to 1910 in order to coordinate with the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. A great deal has been written about the fluidity of Kahlo's sexuality. It's well documented that she had affairs with both women and men. You can see from family photographs taken in 1927, that for a while after the bus accident she wore her hair cropped short and dressed convincingly like a boy. In her later self-portraits, she audaciously painted in the mannish facial hair above her lip and between her brows.
Did Kahlo make up a Jewish identity? In a famous early painting, My Grandparents, My Parents and I, now owned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, she painted a variant of a family tree. On the one side, high over the Mexican mountains, you see her dark-skinned maternal grandfather, a Mexican Indian from Michoacán, and her maternal grandmother who was a gachupina, descended from a Spanish soldier. On the other side, her European grandparents are depicted far over the sea: Henriette Kessler Kaufmann Kahlo has something of Frida's unibrow and Jacob Heinrich Kahlo is distinguished by fiery eyes and a broad, drooping mustache.
Kahlo's mother was so devoutly Catholic that she and her sisters sat on a reserved bench in Coyoacán's Church of San Juan Bautista, but her father, Guillermo Kahlo, was said to be a nonobservant Jew. Not much is known about Guillermo, a quiet man, who emigrated to Mexico in 1890 and worked for a while at the Loeb Crystal Company before becoming a photographer. He loved German philosophy and literature, German music, his German piano, and had a fine portrait of Schopenhauer. Occasionally, he played chess with a friend and his Spanish was inflected by his German accent. He had monthly epileptic seizures caused by a fall as a young man. Like the itinerant photographer in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, he traveled with his camera throughout the republic, taking inventory of Mexico's architectural heritage on hundreds of glass plates. Perhaps it was a Jewish sense of humor showing through when he said he didn't like to photograph people because he didn't want "to improve what God had made ugly."
Though the V&A exhibit has skirted the controversy, a 2014 book published in Germany has disputed Kahlo's Jewish heritage and until more genealogical research is done, the truth hangs in the balance. According to Kahlo family legend, Guillermo Kahlo came to Mexico from Baden-Baden, but his parents were originally from the city of Arad in Austria-Hungary (now Romania). His mother's family owned a jewelry business which his father eventually took over.
There are other clues. On the back of the photo of her paternal grandmother, Frida inscribed: "My father's mother (a German Jew)." At a restricted hotel in Detroit in 1931, both Frida and Rivera claimed to have "Jewish blood," causing the embarrassed staff to lower the room rate. Many of their friends were Jewish—Dr. Leo Eloesser, Gisèle Freund, Ella and Bertram Wolfe, Lucienne and Suzanne Bloch, Anita Brenner, and Nickolas Muray. Kahlo and Rivera also socialized with a circle of Jewish (and Yiddish-speaking) intellectuals in Mexico City in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1936 Rivera illustrated their friend Isaac Berliner's book of poems, La Ciudad de los Palacios (The City of Palaces), with bold and expressive linocut plates. Written in Yiddish, the book reflects a surreal journey from Jewish Europe to Mexico City, weaving together tragedies of the diaspora with Mexican suffering. Kahlo, who, as Fuentes said, was preparing for paradise, must have felt compassion for that tangle of troubles. Beneath the sweeping costumes, her whole body was wracked with pain. The verification of Jewish identity certainly wouldn't have mattered.
Read more of Frances Brent's art criticism in Tablet magazine here.
Frances Brent's most recent book is The Lost Cellos of Lev Aronson.
#Day of the Dead
#Diego Rivera
#Frida Kahlo
#Mexican art
#Mexican Jews
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Home > News > featured news > Suspension of Technip Energies' Liquidity Contract
PRODUCTS AND TECHNOLOGIES, MARKET OUTLOOK
Suspension of Technip Energies' Liquidity Contract
Technip | November 28, 2022 | Read time : 01:00 min
Technip Energies N.V. announces that the liquidity agreement entered into with Kepler Cheuvreux dated July 9, 2021 has been suspended as of November 22, 2022, pending renewal of the resolution of the general meeting of shareholders authorizing share buybacks.
The number of shares and amount allocated as of November 22, 2022, close of trading, to the Liquidity Contract was 8,900 shares and €9,780,454.34. As a reminder, the securities and amounts that were allocated to the Liquidity Agreement as of June 30, 2022, were 207,823 shares and €6,832,747.61.
About Technip Energies
Technip Energies is a leading Engineering & Technology company for the energy transition, with leadership positions in LNG, hydrogen and ethylene as well as growing market positions in blue and green hydrogen, sustainable chemistry and CO2 management. The Company benefits from its robust project delivery model supported by an extensive technology, products and services offering.
Operating in 34 countries, our 15,000 people are fully committed to bringing our clients' innovative projects to life, breaking boundaries to accelerate the energy transition for a better tomorrow.
Technip Energies shares are listed on Euronext Paris. In addition, Technip Energies has a Level 1 sponsored American Depositary Receipts program, with its ADRs trading over-the-counter.
The R&D division of Mozy Corp. has just developed a chemical for sterilizing the vicious Brazilian "killer bees" which are invading Mexico and the southern United States.
CHEMICAL TECHNOLOGY, MARKET OUTLOOK
BASF and Moleaer™ partner to combine novel technologies in the field of mining to enhance copper recovery at existing mines
BASF and Moleaer Inc. | November 10, 2022
Global chemical company BASF and Moleaer™ Inc., the global leader in nanobubble technology, announced an exclusive partnership. This partnership will combine expertise in mineral processing, hydrometallurgy, gas transfer, and nanobubble technology to develop innovative processes for mining. The initial aim is to target the copper leaching process and improve extraction rates of copper ores containing high levels of chalcopyrite, which have historically been difficult to leach.The demand for copper is expected to increase significantly, as it is an essential raw material for driving the electric revolution. This will play a key role as an enabler to decarbonizing the global economy. According to a report released in July by S&P Global Market Intelligence, the annual demand for copper is projected to reach 50 million metric tons by 2035, from the current 25 million metric tons today. The study also finds a potential copper deficit of as much as 10 million metric tons. As existing mines deplete their resources, higher demand will require new mines. In addition, ore grades are declining, ore mineralogy is becoming more complex, and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) responsibilities are increasing. The result is that new mines are taking longer and longer to come to fruition. Therefore, maximizing the recovery of copper from existing reserves has never been more crucial. Copper is extracted from primary sulfide ores through a flotation process and low-grade ores are traditionally discarded because they are too costly to process. Currently, an alternative hydrometallurgical heap leach process is employed for low grade oxide and secondary sulfide ores. It is, however, very difficult to leach primary sulfide ores, such as chalcopyrite, which leads to low recovery efficiencies. Based on test work conducted by BASF, Moleaer's nanobubble technology improves the extraction process of valuable metals such as copper. When combined with BASF's LixTRA™ reagent, the mineral recovery rates and efficiencies are compounded, especially in sulfide-based ores such as chalcopyrite, which have historically been challenging to leach effectively. "Technological improvements and collaborations like the one we announced today are essential if the industry is to maximize the recovery of copper at existing mines. By combining BASF's LixTRA reagent, allowing greater ore-lixiviant contact, together with Moleaer's nanobubble technology to facilitate a higher oxidative environment, we offer technology to the industry to significantly increase copper recoveries." -Caren Hoffman, who leads the global mining solutions business at BASF Nick Dyner, CEO of Moleaer, added: We look forward to working with BASF, a global leader in mineral extraction chemistry, to improve the recovery of copper and help support the green economy. This important collaboration comes at a time when the ability of mining copper is only getting more costly and challenging. Moleaer's nanobubble technology will allow the mining industry to improve the efficiency and efficacy in existing mines and narrow the gap between supply and demand of copper. About BASF mining solutions With innovative products, global field support and industry leading technical expertise, BASF mining solutions provides sustainable solutions which increase productivity, recovery and flexibility throughout the hydrometallurgical process of mining operations in leaching, solvent extraction, flotation, solid/liquid separation and tailings management. Further information can be found at www.mining-solutions.basf.com BASF mining solutions is part of BASF's Performance Chemicals division. The division's portfolio also includes fuel and lubricant solutions, plastic additives, as well as oilfield chemicals. Customers from a variety of industries including Chemicals, Plastics, Consumer Goods, Energy & Resources, and Automotive & Transportation benefit from our innovative solutions. To learn more, visit www.performancechemicals.basf.com About Moleaer Moleaer™ is the leading nanobubble technology company with over 2,000 nanobubble generator installations in 42+ countries. Deploying the unique power of nanobubbles, Moleaer enhances and improves the performance and productivity of some of the most critical industrial processes, unlocking the power of water to help farmers grow more food, empower businesses to manage their water needs more effectively and efficiently, and restore aquatic ecosystems sustainably without chemicals. Nanobubbles, which are 2,500 times smaller than a grain of salt, allow the scarce resource of water do more with less. They supersaturate water with oxygen, form natural oxidants for disinfection, improve plant health, and increase water's ability to permeate soil and rock. Moleaer's patented nanobubble technology provides the highest oxygen transfer rate in the aeration and gas infusion industry, with an efficiency of more than 85% per foot of water. Its nanobubble generators are a cost-effective, chemical-free solution proven to increase sustainable food production, reduce chemical usage, restore aquatic ecosystems, and improve natural resource recovery. Moleaer technology has been validated by extensive research and renown universities.
NextDecade and Itochu Corporation Sign 1.0 MTPA LNG Purchase and Sale Agreement
NextDecade Corporation | January 20, 2023
On January 19, 2023, NextDecade Corporation, a liquefied natural gas (LNG) development company committed on LNG associated pipelines and export projects, announced signing a 15-year-long sale and purchase agreement with Itochu Corporation for supplying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from NextDecade's Rio Grande LNG export project based in Brownsville, Texas. Under the terms of the sale and purchase agreement, ITOCHU Corporation will purchase 1.0 million tonnes per annum (MPA) of LNG on a free-on-board basis, indexed to Henry Hub. ITOCHU Corporation, a leading sogo shosha, engages in import/export, domestic trading, and overseas trading of various products such as machinery, textile, chemicals, metals, minerals, energy, and others. NextDecade's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Matt Schatzman, said, "We are honored to have Itochu Corporation as our first Japanese customer." He also stated, "We look forward to providing Itochu and their customers with LNG, and we are actively working to reduce the carbon footprint of the Rio Grande LNG facility through our proposed carbon capture and storage project." (Source – Business Wire) NextDecade aims for a favorable Final Investment Decision (FID) on the initial three trains of the Rio Grande LNG export project in the first quarter of 2023, with FIDs on the other trains to follow after that. About NextDecade Corporation Headquartered in Houston, Texas, NextDecade Corporation is an energy corporation expediting the arrival of a future with no net carbon emissions. NextDecade is dedicated to providing the world with cleaner energy with its innovative solutions for more sustainable LNG and carbon capture. Through its wholly-owned subsidiaries NEXT Carbon Solutions and Rio Grande LNG, the organization is developing a 27 MTPA LNG export plant in South Texas as well as one of North America's largest carbon capture and storage projects. It is also working with third-party clients throughout the world to deploy its exclusive processes to reduce CO2 emissions and lower the cost of carbon capture and storage at its industrial-scale facilities.
Aduro Announces Completion of Mechanical Assembly of its R2 Plastic Reactor
Aduro Clean Technologies Inc. | December 05, 2022
Aduro Clean Technologies Inc. a Canadian developer of patented water-based technologies to chemically recycle plastics and transform heavy crude and renewable oils into new-era resources and higher-value fuels, announces it has completed construction and mechanical assembly of its pilot-scale Hydrochemolytic™ continuous flow plastic reactor. Plans for testing and certifications are in place and final certification by the Technical Standard and Safety Authority is progressing with registration expected later this month. Once certified, the reactor unit will be moved to the newly expanded laboratory in London, Ontario for final testing and commissioning. The R2 Plastic unit is the Company's customer engagement unit and is designed to handle various plastic feedstocks such as polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene as single-stream materials, followed by a mixture of these feedstock streams. The R2 Plastic will also be used to evaluate the impact of materials found in multilayer plastics, such as paper, paper board, polymeric materials, metalized layers, and aluminum foil, effectively advancing Aduro's plans of processing higher contaminated materials which are currently rejected by existing technologies. This is important data that will support the Company's established scale-up and optimization program for the scaled-up pilot: R3 Plastic. In 2022, the Company undertook several projects including the construction of both the plastic upcycling and bitumen upgrading reactor units, the construction of a flash drum unit for pre-processing bitumen feedstock, and the expansion of laboratory facilities and laboratory capabilities that will centralize the Company's resources for more efficient execution of our R&D, scale-up and commercialization plans. Completion of these projects positions the Company to execute in 2023 the R2 Reactor research and testing optimization program, the implementation of the customer engagement program and the delivery of reactor unit design, equipment procurement, fabrication, and commissioning of the scaled-up pre-commercial R3 Reactor unit. About Aduro Clean Technologies Aduro Clean Technologies is a developer of patented water-based technologies to chemically recycle waste plastics; convert heavy crude and bitumen into lighter, more valuable oil; and transform renewable oils into higher-value fuels or renewable chemicals. The Company's Hydrochemolytic™ technology activates unique properties of water in a chemistry platform that operates at relatively low temperatures and cost, a game-changing approach that converts low-value feedstocks into 21st-century resources.


Is IATA´s NDC Really the Bad Guy?
Last time we introduced you to the New Distribution Capability (NDC), also known as the Resolution 787, which was adopted during IATA's Passenger Services Conference in Abu Dhabi in October 2012.
We already stated our opinion, that the excitement regarding the NDC is mainly "much ado about nothing", as Shakespeare already titled his comedic play, which was published in 1623. Now we would like to go a little bit further into detail and clarify our position on the main arguments of the discussion about the NDC.
Let´s start with the first argument, often heard in public discussions. This would be that the NDC will make the GDSs redundant. Well, as seen today, it is already possible and a current method to sell tickets without collaboration with the GDSs: About half of the tickets are sold by the airlines via the direct channel. Added to this, please be aware that there are airlines (e. g. Easyjet), that sell their tickets exclusively over their website and not via the GDSs.
As the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is not the advocate for the GDSs, in our opinion it is not the task of the DOT to make sure the GDSs survive. Besides, we are convinced that the GDSs are flexible and creative enough to improve their business case with newer technology: The NDC. Not least because they also operate successfully throughout the entire distribution chain: They run reservation-, distribution- and sales- systems.
The second point you often hear about would be, that due to a lack of transparency caused by the NDC, there won´t be any more comparability for customers, which would result in rising prices. We however see a gain of transparency, enabled by the NDC. Today it appears that a traveler has more transparency when using a GDS, than using the direct channel. Nevertheless, the transparency is only based on prices and not yet on features. Additionally it is provided by only three GDSs, which can influence buying decisions. It seems to be very unreasonable to give all this market power to only three profit-oriented companies, doesn´t it?
We think that a new standard could enable third-party aggregators to provide transparency by company offers from airlines based on features in combination with prices. This in turn causes advantages for the travelers: The needed transparency would increase, so that they could easily pick and choose and most important, compare the offers between different airlines. This would introduce middle ground from the two extremes: Full transparency only on price, provided by GDSs, versus complicated comparison provided by direct distribution through suppliers websites.
As a third argument, the data privacy also is a relevant keyword in the discussion, whether the NDC should be approved by the DOT or not: It is criticized, that the privacy of the traveler would be compromised by the NDC. As entering personal information is and needs to stay optional, we really cannot see any disadvantages for the travelers. Besides, the GDSs are already working on the possibility to exchange frequent-flyer information to make discounts accessible. With the Web 2.0 or Social Media, we even take a step forward and say that data privacy in the internet age needs to be addressed in a global scale by governments and other institutions. It's really absurd to think that the travel industry can resolve these matters alone.
All in all we feel very confident that everything will stay in the way it is now and that the only change will be more transparency and the option for third-party supplier to come up with innovative business models. People who want to be more flexible, will get the opportunity to search for personalized offers – those who don't can just skip this option and search without entering personal information. This all will be made possible by a new and safer standard, which we are delighted to support.
Thank you. Also, check out my update on NCD: http://www.travel-industry-blog.com/travel-industry/ndc/.


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Stop in and enjoy our famous Burger Monday! We start with a huge 7oz. Certified Angus Beef patty grilled to order. Then topped with your choice of 5 different cheeses served on a fresh baked bun from the Creekside Bakery. Add on pickles, onions, lettuce and tomato and you have a Six Buck Burger! Served with crispy French fries. No substitutions, dine in only.
Join us every Tuesday for a great bottle of wine at state minimum retail pricing. Select from a wide variety of bottles to enjoy with your meal. Most bottles are priced at $12 or below. The wines change regularly so stop in often to see what treasures await you!
Enjoy a $5.55 Handcrafted Martini!
Stop in and meet our friendly bartenders and enjoy the best Happy Hour in town! Take advantage of our $3-$4-$5 food and drink specials and $1 off all drinks every Monday thru Saturday from 3-6pm.
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Our Family 4-Pak is a complete meal including a main entree, pasta or potato, tossed salad with dressing, rolls and butter. Each order will feed a family of four and is prepared hot to order! No Substitutions.
Creekside Restaurant has been serving our customers in Northeast Ohio delicious food and beverages for over 25 years. As long time Brecksville residents, we are dedicated to making Creekside Restaurant and Bar an integral member of our local communities. We both graduated from Brecksville Broadview Hts. High School and have raised our children in this community.
Another great dinner at Creekside, following a matinee at Western Reserve Playhouse. We were able to get potato skin appetizer with bacon on the side since my wife opted out of most meat. Entrees were ravioli and carne asada salad. Excellent food, attentive service, and a great view overlooking the fall colors along the creek.
Love this place. Great food, service and patio. The menu selection is really good too. We've been there twice and will definitely go back.
Just hosted a bridal shower for my future daughter-in-law and I couldn't have been more pleased. The room was set up just as discussed and looked very nice. We chose the wrap and apps buffet and it was delicious and plenty for everyone. The strawberry cassata cake was beautifully decorated and tasted as good as it looked. The servers were all very attentive and seemed to know what we needed before we even asked. I would highly recommend Creekside to hold a special occasion.
More than a 5! Great food! Delmonico Steak... INCREDIBLE! Martinis awesome. Service wonderful. Menu perfect. We will be back!