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Terrors Nextdoor
January 22, 2020 | horror, social media, Yellow King RPG | Leave a comment
Next time you need an ordinary fear to escalate into horror territory, check out the Twitter account @bestofnextdoor. It highlights the oddest and funniest posts from the Next Door social media platform. Frequented mostly by older homeowners, it provides a forum for people to talk to their neighbors. Often this talk concerns yet other neighbors they're worried about or wish to air beefs with. One thing most of us humans fear is other humans—generally with good reason. But what happens when the malign, unknown persons who share our quiet street with us band together with the animal kingdom, as seen here?
"HARASSMENT CAT?!" pic.twitter.com/j08HFLGibx
— Best of Nextdoor (@bestofnextdoor) January 20, 2020
All you need to venture into horror territory is to take one of these neighborhood fears and give them a terrifying reality.
In Fear Itself, some sinister force could be marshalling area felines as spies or killers. They could have gained a collective sentience, perhaps putting humans back on the menu. They could be controlled by aliens, their old friends the witches, or demons of the Outer Dark. A nasty creature could be mistaken for a cat when seen fleetingly—or when observers' minds reject the weirdness of what they did see, in favor of the comfort of what they must have seen.
In Trail of Cthulhu, weird cat behavior could suggest Dreamlands activity. Dreamland residents entering our world could bring cats of Ulthar in their wake. The appearance of strangely stealthy and intelligent cats could appear as an early symptom of a rift between waking and sleeping realms. Maybe they've come to find Randolph Carter to confront a dread manifestation back in Ulthar, but instead have to settle for the player characters.
Obsessive thoughts about cats in The Yellow King Roleplaying Game might likewise be a symptom of a shift in subjective reality, or a rupture in the objective one, particularly in the "This is Normal Now" sequence. Carcosa might make you think the cats are at fault, as a cover for its own actions in the neighborhood. But who's to say that the alien realm of the Tattered King isn't crawling with evil, sentient tabbies?
A pair of new Shock cards might help you develop that further:
AILUROPHOBIA
-1 to Focus tests.
No more than once per scene, confide your fear that cats are up to something to a witness, suspect or authority figure. Even: discard.
CAT HARASSMENT
Before taking any Presence test, roll a die. Odd: you see a cat or an image of a cat, and lose 1 Composure.
If that test succeeds, trade for "Ailurophobia."
New Legacies (1)
January 21, 2020 | dracula dossier, Kate Reed, New Legacies, night's black agents, See Page XX | 1 Comment
The Dracula Dossier Director's Handbook covers the present-day Legacies of the main members of the Crew of Light – Billie Harker, Tabitha Holmwood, Thad Morris and the rest, the descendants of the original group who battled Dracula. However, Unredacted reveals the existence of several other members of this fellowship who, for reasons sinister or editorial, were excised from the narrative. Once the players discover the existence of Kate Reed or Inspector Cotford, might they not try to track down their present-day heirs?
Here's the first in a short series covering some other Legacies…
Anna Marshall
She's in her early 40s, but looks and dresses younger; she lives in departure lounges and hotel lobbies. Her accent is transatlantic; her personality buried with her conscience. If you ask, Anna says she works in public relations, but she won't give you her card. She's employed by a small firm, ReVu, that specializes in crisis management public relations. They're the people you call when you're a celebrity who was just caught with a dead prostitute, or a tech company who just broke democracy. ReVu has a portfolio of special assets – they've got private detectives and hackers to dig up dirt on your detractors, botnets and troll farms to spread disinformation, and lots of blackmail material. The firm exists in the same space as companies like Black Cube or Cambridge Analytica; it's headquartered in London, and definitely wasn't founded by any ex-spies.
Marshall's role is handling the traditional press (she has lunch with the Tabloid Journalist, DH p. 134) regularly, and trades barbs on twitter with the Journalist (DH, p. 120), but she usually stays under the radar. She tells herself that any day now, she's going to leave all this behind her, maybe move into the charity sector (maybe Heal The Children, p. 150), but she knows she's made too many enemies to just walk away. Also, damningly, she's good at this.
She has no idea of her ancestry, although she might recall seeing a photograph of her great-great-grandmother Kate Reed in her parents' place. Optionally, she inherited a brooch like the Westenra Brooch (DH, p. 284). She sleepwalks, especially around mid-March.
Innocent: For certain values of 'innocent', obviously. ReVu might get hired by any well-connected Character or Node to deal with trouble caused by the Agents. Likely clients for Kate include either Holmwood (DH, p. 43/44), the Hungarian (DH, p. 94), maaaaaybe the Psychic (p. 96), the Art Forecaster (DH, p. 103), the Drug Boss (DH, p. 113), the Petroleum Executive (DH, p. 127) and a bunch of Nodes like Nox Therapeutics (DH, p. 163).
Anna's conscience isn't completely dead; if reminded that objective truth and genuine goodness still exist, she might be motivated to assist the Agents. Getting her to read Kate Reed's Diary (DH, p. 272), showing her the true extent of Dracula's evil, or just a hefty Interpersonal spend might convince her to help the Agents.
Another possibility: Marshall hires the Agents as freelancers to track down dirt on some political foe; if the Agents need ready cash, a simple little breaking-and-entering side job might appeal. From there, they can discover the truth about their employer.
Asset: ReVu is an Edom cut-out, possibly founded by a retired ex-Duke (a previous Timnah, DH p. 53) or the MI5 Deputy (DH, p. 95). The company handles cover-ups and media monitoring, and occasionally employs vampiric mind control to flip a witness or guarantee a story gets buried. Marshall's too junior to know much about ReVu's connections to the Secret Service, although she does know the higher-ups sometimes have urgent meetings at Ring (DH, p. 173) or Exeter (DH, p. 167). If she knew about the Reed file that marks her as a Legacy, she might flip on her employer.
Minion: Marshall's family have been part of the Satanic Cult of Dracula (DH, p. 55) for generations; she was initiated as a priestess of Dracula at the age of 13, left alone in the Red Room (DH, p. 187) overnight to bathe in the psychic influence. ReVu covers up the cult's excesses; once Dracula makes his move, the company may be ordered to expose or discredit Edom, distracting "D" with political pressure and scandals while the vampire breaks free. This version of Marshall is likely irredeemable (assuming she's not a full-on vampire); she expects to be an immortal handmaiden of the Count once he takes over the world.
Defining Quirks: (1) Carries an antique umbrella (2) At least three phones (3) Sleeps with the lights on
Investigative Abilities: High Society, Traffic Analysis, Negotiation
General Abilities: Network 15
January 17, 2020 | Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff | Leave a comment
In the latest episode of their chainsaw-handed podcast, Ken and Robin talk comedic horror games, OSS graphic design, Guy Maddin, and sky amoeba UFOs.
Black Star Magic
January 16, 2020 | Black Star Magic, forthcoming, product, Yellow King RPG | 3 Comments
Bring Mind-Bending Spellcasting to The King In Yellow Roleplaying Game
Ritual magic of the Belle Époque! The desperate Science Jaune of a war-torn continent! Parageometrical horrors perfected in the labs of the tyrannical, overthrown Castaigne regime! Signing, the latest way to turn social media dysfunction into sorcerous reality!
Your players can master them all—at perilous risk!
Each spell is a Shock card with effects both useful and sinister. Do they hold onto that that spell they need to do that thing, even as their inner realities start to break apart? Or do they take the safe route, and cast out the buzzing, insistent power of the Yellow Sign?
New magic rules include 144 startling spells, background material on Carcosan magic in all four YKRPG settings, and GM guidance showing you how to incorporate player-facing occult powers into your game.
Plus, a quartet of scenarios, allowing the characters of each sequence to make double-edged deals with the world of sorcery:
Dancer at the Bone Cabaret pits the art students of Paris against a force that lures their Bohemian friends to the latest, hottest nightspot. But are they the patrons, or items on the menu?
A Coffin at Le Thil sends the supernatural-quashing soldiers of The Wars into a village haunted by subterranean enemy activity.
Memories of a Dream Clown confronts the victorious revolutionaries of Aftermath with a treasured but tarnished memory of childhood—and murder!
Love Wears No Mask finds This Is Normal Now's ordinary heroes battling an intrusive yet enthralling phone app, and the dramatic goings-on of the subtly destabilizing dating reality show it promotes.
Play them separately, or chill your players with all of them. All they have to lose is their grip on reality…
Written and designed by: Robin D. Laws, Sarah Saltiel, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, and Ruth Tillman.
Status: Playtesting soon
GUMSHOE Community program
January 15, 2020 | Ashen Stars, GUMSHOE, GUMSHOE Community Content | Leave a comment
It's official – the GUMSHOE Community program is live!
We announced in our Swords, Spies and Shoggoths panel at Gen Con (which you can listen to here, thanks to our friends at the Plot Points podcast) that we were launching the GUMSHOE Community program, making Ashen Stars content available to creators. If you're not familiar with the Community Content concept, it means we've made some elements of Ashen Stars (e.g. some IP elements, art, and layout assets) open for members of the community (that is, you!) to write and publish your own Ashen Stars content on DriveThruRPG.
We've got a number of great Ashen Stars PDFs already available, to show you what's possible. These include:
Pelgrane convention GM Chris Sellers's Rogues' Galaxy – a supplement to play as a morally dubious crew
Hidden Depths, a new adventure from Jakob Schmidt
New Alexandria-class ship schematics from Pelgrane and ProFantasy cartographer Ralf Schemmann.
If you're interested in learning more about the GUMSHOE Community program, check it out here.
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Everyone Believes in Horse Theft
In the latest episode of their scrappy but determined podcast, Ken and Robin talk underdog opponents, the Sandby Borg massacre, All Rolled Up's Fil Baldowski, and lunar metal.
The Plain People of Gaming: What We Did In Paris
January 7, 2020 | Actual Play, Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan, Paris, See Page XX, Yellow King, Yellow King RPG | 2 Comments
Just before Christmas, I finished off the first part of my home campaign of THE YELLOW KING. We're running it at a fairly fast pace (we're alternating sessions with Warhammer in deference to the sensibilities of players who want to hit things with swords), and with only a limited number of sessions, I based virtually all the adventures around the player's Deuced Peculiar Things.
It's useful to my mind to think of YELLOW KING scenario planning as a grid. Along the top, you've got the array of Carcosan characters and tropes – The King, his Daughters, the play, the Yellow Sign, Castaigne, Mr. Wilde, black stars, madness – and any elements from the current sequence (Parisian political and artistic intrigue, the Continental War, the overthrow of the Castaign regime etc). Along the side, you've got the prompts provided by your players as Deuced Peculiar Things. You dig for horror and mystery where those lines cross.
So, my players gave me:
Chester: I met an enchanting man in a bar, we shared a night of passion, but I woke up in bed to discover I was lying next to a woman, who left without a word.
Sillerton: I dreamed I was at a strange party in a chateau outside Paris; when I investigated, I learned that the chateau burned down many years ago.
Ada: My brother Theo has vanished and no-one else – not even my other brother Chester – remembers he ever existed.
Reggie: My cat had a litter of kittens, but they came out as this ghastly congealed mass of conjoined bodies and limbs, a sort of feline centipede.
Dorian: I saw L'Inconnue de la Seine, and chased her into an entrance to the catacombs.
While I could have started with any of these, I picked Reggie and his cat-monster for two reasons. First, it's the most immediate problem – three of the others are weird encounters, and Theo's been missing for some time (and felt more like a long-running plot than a trigger event), whereas Reggie's catipede was right there (well, right there in a bag, as they hammered it to death very quickly). Second, cats give me a link right to Mr. Wilde from the Repairer of Reputations ("the mania he had for keeping that cat and teasing her until she flew at his face like a demon, was certainly eccentric. I never could understand why he kept the creature, nor what pleasure he found in shutting himself up in his room with this surly, vicious beast.")
Carcosan Hybrids
So, what's the crossing point? What Carcosan element might Reggie's cat intersect with. A flip through the Paris book gave me the matagot (p. 159), a supernatural Carcosan spy in the shape of a cat. Maybe Reggie's pet cat mated with a Carcosan entity, and that spawned the malformed catipede?
That worked – and instantly gave me a horrible consequence to play with. If mating with a Carcosan entity creates some sort of hideous hybrid… and Chester slept with a mysterious shapeshifter…
But if I was going to make hybrids a big part of the plot, I needed a reason for them to exist. The cat might be a random encounter, but why would some Carcosan courtier take the time to sleep with Chester? I went with the concept of anchors in our reality, which let me bring in the dreadful play and foreshadow stuff that'll come up in the Aftermath sequence. So, Carcosa needs to get its hooks into reality. It starts with the infiltration of a concept, a malign thought – the play. As the play corrupts reality, it allows the establishment of stronger anchors, allowing Carcosan entities to cross over physically. They then create even stronger anchors, bootstrapping an invasion.
Dorian's encounter with the mysterious inconnue connected to this plot too. L'Inconnue died in the 1880s, so she must have been a ghost, an illusion or some other supernatural weirdness. I decided to loop in both the art world and another of Chamber's tales, the Mask. If there's a mysterious fluid that turns flesh to stone, then maybe the same fluid could turn stone to flesh. The girl with the familiar face was a statue brought to life using Carcosan chemistry. Why? Because these living statues were the middle-stage anchor – host bodies of pseudo-flesh used like space-suits by Carcosan nobles in the period before they could manifest in all their glory.
The Cult of the Yellow Sign
So, there was still a gap in my cosmology – if the existence of the play in a given reality corrupts it enough for Carcosan weirdness to filter in, and if Carcosan weirdness gets worse as the King's court establishes stronger anchors and invades, where did the play come from in the first place? I still had two Deuced Peculiar Things to play with – the vanished brother, and the mysterious party.
I came up with a sketched-out occult society who experimented with telepathy, spiritualism and other weirdness, the Society Jaune, who accidentally made contact with the King and saw the Yellow Sign. Theo fell into the clutches of survivors of this cult, and wrote the play after exposure to the Sign. A twist of temporal weirdness through Carcosa let me shove Theo out of linear time and back to the burning of the cult chateau during the Siege of Paris.
The View From The Cheap Seats
Obviously, slotting Deuced Peculiar Thing A into Carcosan Motif Y is only part of the adventure-design. Just because I knew that, say, a crazed sculptor was creating statues and bringing them to life in the catacombs didn't mean I had a full adventure ready to go. All this technique gave me was a set of Alien Truths to build adventures around. However, keeping everything strongly connected to the players' Deuced Peculiar Things and the most significant bits of the Yellow King Mythos let me give the players a whistlestop tour of Dread Carcosa while giving satisfying answers to all their Deuced Peculiar prompts.
The Wars start next week. Check back in a few months to see how that turns out…
Call of Chicago: The Gatiss Addenda
January 7, 2020 | Dracula 2020, dracula dossier, Kenneth Hite, night's black agents, stuff we didn't actually leave out of the dracula dossier it's all new baby | 3 Comments
"They say much of blood and bloom, and of others which I comprehend not, though I guess what they mean; but nevertheless they tell us all things which we want to know."
— Abraham Van Helsing, in Dracula, by Bram Stoker
Through the persons of writer-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the BBC (and its pals at Netflix) has vouchsafed to us in this year of our Lord 2020 yet another tilt at the Dracula windmill, this time in a three-episode limited series. (Hereafter, "D2020". Also hereafter, spoilers.) The specific merits of this iteration aside (which include a rich, Hammer-inspired camera palette and a credibly terrifying Dracula when he shuts up) it also — as with every version of Dracula, or of Dracula — provides a fair few gameable spins on the myth, and on vampires. For example, the bite of D2020 Dracula creates revenants (they look like zombies, but probably use mostly Feral stats (NBA, p. 150)); only a few of his victims survive Infection with enough personality to become true self-willed vampires themselves. The many, many boxes and crates (and habitrails, and fridges) of ferals work very effectively on screen, and likely works well at the table — it makes those warehouse fights more interesting, that's for sure.
So let's settle in and dip our fingers in the BBC's goblet, shall we?
Dracula, hungry for learning
New Power: Drain Knowledge
When Dracula drinks any blood from a human in D2020, he knows their name and something of their background almost immediately. When he drains them, he picks up their entire knowledge base, possibly even including physical skills. (In episode 3, he complains of the taste of a physicist and a professional tennis player.) His language patterns shift, and he even (briefly) picks up a meaningless exercise habit from modern Londoners. Even by smell, he can detect members of a familiar bloodline and something about them.
Vampires with Drain Knowledge gain immediate, surface knowledge of any human whose blood they taste. A big sip (at least 1 Health) gives them the equivalent of a 0-point spend, or a few minutes' Google search: name, background, emotional state, family connections, etc. Bigger drinks burrow deeper, uncovering closely held secrets; when the amount of Health consumed equals the target's Stability (or kills the target), the vampire knows every aspect of the target's thoughts and memories, including buried traumas or brainwashed secrets. (An Agent can resist giving up a secret with a successful Stability test against a Difficulty equal to 4+ their lost Health.) Even a quick gulp (2+ Health drained) provides language and social skills that allow the vampire to briefly blend into the target's society (the equivalent of 1 point in High Society or Reassurance or another relevant Interpersonal ability); completely draining a suitable target provides technical skills if needed (e.g., a Transylvanian warlord can suddenly use Skype). As a rule of thumb, each point of Health drained past the first provides the equivalent of 1 point in an ability.
In D2020, this seems like a free (almost unavoidable) power; if the vampire can control it, it costs 1 point of Aberrance per target or per scene.
Node: The Jonathan Harker Foundation
The third episode also shares a liter or two of DNA with The Dracula Dossier, not least its covert vampirological operation. In D2020, this secretive medical charity operates out of (and beneath) Cholmely House, a crumbling Victorian building in Whitby near the Abbey ruins. Named for the dead fiancée of Mina Murray, built on the infrastructure of the nuns' order at the Hospital of St. Joseph and Ste. Mary (DH, p. 230), and backed by mysterious financiers, it conducts hematological research and searches for the body of Dracula, presumed lost at sea with the Demeter. Its staff includes doctors and mercenaries, and its facilities include a glass-walled prison with a remote-controlled sun roof.
EDOM: Obviously, this was the first version of the vampire prison, before EDOM built the holding facilities on HMS Proserpine. In some campaigns, this might be the only vampire prison, or a staging area for Proserpine transfers (DH, p. 178). This also fits a much smaller version of EDOM (even Dustier or more Mirrored than on EFM p. 58), one that has to contract out mercenaries (via a shell corporation) for security instead of depending on the SAS' E Squadrons. Either way, its guards use the Special Operations Soldiers stats (NBA, p. 70).
CIA: Or the Russians, or the Chinese, or whomever. Some other agency runs the Harker Foundation, tasked to steal a march on EDOM by trawling the seas off Whitby for lost vampires — either prisoners escaping from Proserpine, or vampirized sailors from the Demeter crawling anoxically over the bottom of the North Sea. Or perhaps, as speculated on DH p. 178, Whitby is one of the magical gates to England, so anyone looking to snare a vampire does well to set up shop here. Either way, they have to keep things to one building and use deniable mercs to avoid MI5 or EDOM noticing.
Conspiracy: Boy, Dracula got ahold of a WiFi-enabled tablet pretty easily in that show, didn't he? What looks like an idiot plot is actually the action of Dracula's sleeper agents, left behind in Whitby to infiltrate just such a facility. He funds it through cut-outs, and allows it to operate on the "keep your enemies closer" school of thought, and as a way to release useful blood samples or lore into the British medical stream.
Connections: At one point, the Foundation canonically has a Vial of Blood (only a single tube rather than the jar on DH p. 284), and a Legacy (Zoë Helsing instead of Dr. Jacqueline Seward (DH, p. 47) but you can switch those out). Given the number of vampiric revenants lying around (nine in Highgate Cemetery alone), the Foundation may have synthesized any of the Seward Serum (DH, p. 51), Serum V (DH, p. 162), Blomberg Serum (DH, p. 282), or Luria Formula (DH, p. 114). If it's EDOM, it's part of Dr. Drawes' operation (DH, p. 50); it may also employ the Pharmaceutical Researcher (DH, p. 128). Its charity work could overlap or partner with Heal the Children (DH, p. 150). Its mysterious backer might be the venture capital group (or government black budget) behind Nox Therapeutics (DH, p. 162), which might have memos or (apparently) even regular Skype session logs documenting their connection. Since we know it runs human trials on the surface, its tunnels potentially even hold Camp Midnight (DH, p. 252) or the British (or private-sector) equivalent. Given its connections to the Budapest hospital, the Hungarian (DH, p. 94) likely knows enough to set Agents (or the Journalist; DH, p. 120) on its trail.
Night's Black Agents by Kenneth Hite puts you in the role of a skilled intelligence operative fighting a shadow war against vampires in post-Cold War Europe. Play a dangerous human weapon, a sly charmer, an unstoppable transporter, a precise demolitions expert, or whatever fictional spy you've always dreamed of being — and start putting those bloodsuckers in the ground where they belong. Purchase Night's Black Agents in print and PDF at the Pelgrane Shop.
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Landlord Reform
January 3, 2020 | Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff | Leave a comment
In the latest installment of their well-rounded and informative podcast, Ken and Robin talk resource refreshing, the espionage career of the inventor of the pie chart, Earthdawn, and Gustavus Aldophus.
Call of Chicago: The Helm of Dungeon-Switching
December 24, 2019 | 13th age, dungeon conversions, Kenneth Hite | Leave a comment
"I could but tell them how I had just emerged from dungeon and jacket in the morning, and without rhyme or reason, so far as I could discover, had been put back in the dungeon after being out only several hours."
— Jack London, The Star Rover
The only problem with dungeon crawls is there aren't enough of them. I don't mean that in a lived-experience sense, or even in a per-game sense. I mean, when you're running a 13th Age game, as I have been for a good while now, there just aren't enough dungeon crawls available that fit: a) your party's level; and b) the general parameter of where the campaign sits at the moment. To say nothing of the paucity of dungeon crawls set in the Hellenistic-era Seleucid Empire, but I admit I've pretty much made my own bed in that particular case.
Don't get me wrong: the dungeon crawls we do have are great! If your characters are ready for them, go right ahead and toss them into the maw of a living dungeon and wait for the chewing to commence! But any given dungeon, no matter how great, might not be right for your campaign, or at least not right now. For more impromptu encounters, I have put the Battle Scenes books to good use everywhere from a volcano in Sicily to Mt. Hermon in Coele-Syria to a dusty provincial capital in Parthia, but they're necessarily somewhat open-ended and thus require a bit of chivvying the PCs that a good old "march down there and kill 'em" dungeon doesn't.
A really great 13th Age dungeon. Everyone says so.
Fortunately, there are approximately eight billion other dungeon adventures available for Those Other F20 RPGs, and after a bit of skeptical poking I have become a total convert to totally converting them to 13th Age. And by "totally converting," I mean, "doing just enough." (If you want to see Whoa Plenty Converting the other direction, allow me to point you at Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan's 5e conversion of Eyes of the Stone Thief.) Let me provide you guidance on such enough-ness, by way of three examples from my own campaign.
For the first dungeon, the characters were 4th level, in Ephesus in Asia Minor. I knew I wanted a drowned city, as Lysimachus drowned Old Ephesus by re-routing a river in 292 BC. (In my history, it was a siege; in our history, it was exuberant urban renewal.) On the advice of Will Hindmarch, I converted Dragons of Despair, an AD&D 2e adventure (Levels 4-6) by Tracy Hickman (the first of the Dragonlance series) to the city of Old Ephesus. For the second dungeon, I needed a fire temple, as my players (by now 6th level) were headed to the Zoroastrian shrine Adur Gushnasp to recover their occultist and the Ark of the Covenant, which the duplicitous Persian magus Gaspar had stolen with a dimension door. At Dark Side Comics & Games in Sarasota I thumbed through all the Pathfinder adventures (on the grounds that a fire temple should be jam packed with Stuff) until Legacy of the Impossible Eye (for 11th level PCs) fell into my hands. At ChupacabraCon in Austin, meanwhile, I had picked up a pretty cheap copy of the original AD&D 1e Against the Giants compilation, and I confess to planting the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl (for Levels 8-12) deliberately in the (7th level) characters' path on Mount Kaukasos. So, how did I do it, and how can you? Easy, that's how.
Step One in dungeon conversion: Find a module that fits where your characters are already going. This might just be "a dungeon," if they're that kind of wandering monster-killers, but in my case it needed to be a drowned city and a fire temple. I just held on to the glacial rift until the PCs decided to go gather Prometheus' blood from the top of Mount Kaukasos, and turned it into the "front door" of the mountain.
Step Two in dungeon conversion: Convert or replace the monsters. This isn't as hard as it sounds. First, most dungeons only use a few monsters, and many of them already have direct 13th Age versions. Second, 13th Age monsters are very easy to shift up or down the scale if need be. As it was, for example, I took the Dragonmen and Gully Dwarves from Dragons of Despair and made them Drakonae (blackscale kroma dragonics) and Khudi (my Greekified name for c.h.u.d.s, but using kobold stats). Frost giants are pretty much frost giants, so no swapping required. I did swap Indian giants, or Daitvas (re-skinned ogre magi), in for the fire giant ambassadors in the original G2, mostly because we'd just had a lot of fire giants in Legacy. Swap (or stat) out as many as you think the players will encounter that session, or do it all at once if you're fancy. I didn't change numbers appearing, treasure (except to cut back on permanent items in favor of gold or healing etc. potions), or traps, because a dungeon is supposed to be pretty grueling. Well, I lie; I added a garrison to the fire temple in Legacy, since it was supposed to be active not abandoned, but I left everything else in place, just changing "former council chamber" to "council chamber" and the like.
Step Three in dungeon conversion: Find the "special thing" in the dungeon and replace it with whatever your PCs are looking for. In Dragons, it's the Disks of Mishkal; they became the Tablets of Cadmus, the first writing. Also I put the mummified Queen Thalestris of the Amazons (and her Sword) in an otherwise empty chamber because the Amazon PC needed something special, and Ephesus has always been an Amazon city so an ancient queen mummy fits in. The temple in Legacy came with a prison (for the occultist) and a treasury (for the Ark instead of the Eye), so that was easy. The giants are just there to man the killing gauntlet in G2, and the exit is the special thing, so it became the passage to Prometheus' cave.
And that, can you believe it, is literally it. If you've ever run dungeons before, you'll find all the old reflexes coming back: add wandering monsters, tangle with the PCs like the inhabitants would under attack, use the terrain tactically, make the players work for those empty rooms where they can get a little rest. You don't even have to sweat levels if you don't want to: 13th Age characters are insanely robust compared to D&D hobos, so even twice the level isn't really stretching it. Remember, monster conversion has already done most of the work up-gunning the dungeon, and traps aren't supposed to be a thing in 13th Age. So delve into those used module bins, and escalate without fear.
13th Age combines the best parts of traditional d20-rolling fantasy gaming with new story-focused rules, designed so you can run the kind of game you most want to play with your group. 13th Age gives you all the tools you need to make unique characters who are immediately embedded in the setting in important ways; quickly prepare adventures based on the PCs' backgrounds and goals; create your own monsters; fight exciting battles; and focus on what's always been cool and fun about fantasy adventure gaming. Purchase 13th Age in print and PDF at the Pelgrane Shop.


If Arnold Schwarzenegger retired from acting with 'The Last Stand' rather than returned from his political career with it, the title would add an extra post-modern kick to a film already full of intertextual allusions. It would have been a lot better than leaving us with 'Collateral Damage' for ten years too.
Arnie plays a former LAPD narcotics detective now taking it easy as the sheriff of a sleepy town in Arizona. The only thing that could ruin his day off would be the escape of a drug cartel boss trying to drive through his town to the safety of Mexico. And what are the chances of that? So after Forest Whitaker's FBI team lets Eduardo Noriega slip through their fingers, Arnie's crack team of small-town cops, including an underutilised Jaimie Alexander, go to war against the cartel goons, disembowelling the scenery with machine-guns in the process.
There's a lot to like in 'The Last Stand'. Not the plot, which is just a thinly-veiled series of excuses to get things to blow up. Or the characters, who are all resiliently monochrome. Or the acting for that matter, with Arnie giving us a performance as nuanced and expressive as the back-end of a pantomime horse. But the wit and invention of director Kim Ji-woon is in full flow, and his refreshing subversions of action movie tropes are a lot of fun.
The ostentation of standard "lock 'n' load" montages that have been ubiquitous since the 80s is deflated with a scene of an old, tired Schwarzenegger slowly loading a single pistol and holstering it. Setting a car chase in a cornfield ensures that neither Arnie nor Noriega can see any more of what's going on than the viewer, producing some great tension. Best known for the paralyzingly creepy horror 'A Tale Of Two Sisters', 'The Last Stand' seems like an odd choice for Kim's Western debut, but to bring us these dissident scenes displays an interest and knowledge of action movies that vindicates his decision.
It's a shame that no one else feels inspired to shake things up, and even Kim Ji-yong, a talented cinematographer whose previous work includes the underrated 'Silenced', allows himself to be trapped into the thoughtless 'orange and teal' convention. I'd like to suggest that producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura is responsible for most of the mediocrity - his production filmography reads like a Razzies nomination list, and even if he's not entirely to blame here we'd still be on the right side of karma.
lf you're in the market for a mindless action movie then I can understand why 'The Last Stand' would look appealing, but honestly you'd be a lot better off watching some classic Schwarzenegger, like 'Predator' or 'Commando'. If you're an action fan though, you've already seen all the classic Schwarzenegger, you already know the traditions, and that's where 'The Last Stand', with its well-observed irony, shows its imagination.
'The Last Stand' is available to purchase on DVD and Blu-ray at amazon.co.uk etc.


New to the North American market in 2018, Revo presents an alternative to traditional corner cabinet storage solutions. Revo smoothly and effortlessly rotates the doors around the inside of the cabinet, along with the shelving carousel. Upon returning to the front of the cabinet, the doors close automatically.


text:
The Cleveland Show Heroes, TV Show Heroes, Redeemed Villains,
On & Off
Robert Tubbs
Robert Tubbs is Donna's former husband and biological father of Roberta and Rallo. He attended school
with Cleveland where he was a perpetual party animal. He often calls Cleveland "Doughboy". He was seen drunk in "Pilot". In "Da Doggone Daddy-Daughter Dinner Dance", he agreed to go to the Father Daughter Dinner Dance with Roberta, but didn't show up because he was buying pot. He was also mentioned by Donna in "Ladies' Night" when talking with Yvette about their ex-husbands. He can never remember his children's names, notably in the "Pilot" and in "A Cleveland Brown Christmas". Also in "A Cleveland Brown Christmas", after he left his family, he told Rallo that he was an FBI agent so he wouldn't be upset. When Rallo found out the truth, Robert claimed that he was actually Santa Claus. Robert and Donna may have had a threesome, as hinted in "From Bed to Worse", when Donna says "There's room for three in this bed." before quickly changing it to "There's room for Clee in this bed."
When Cleveland's parents were getting remarried, LeVar Brown asked Robert to be his best man in "You're the Best Man, Cleveland Brown". The two ended up passed out in a motel room, and Cleveland had to arrive to get Lavar to the wedding.
Although the events in "Cleveland Live!" illustrate that the characters are really actors performing on a show within the show, Robert is shown currently on parole for an unknown reason, and his late parole officer was Julia Robertson. He once spent several days trying to escape from her and hiding out at Cleveland's house, but it turned out all she wanted to tell him was to spend more time with his son.
In "Back To Cool" he begins a father-like bonding with Cleveland Jr.. Throughout the episode, they become friends more and Robert makes Jr. cooler, and even almost have the sex talk, but this is stopped by Cleveland so he can do it himself.
Robert left Donna sometime after the 2002 version of "Dancing with the Stools" when he grew frustrated in always losing to LeVar and Cookie and blamed Donna for choosing to wear costumes that reminded people of the 9/11 attacks.
After Robert Tubbs takes LeVar Brown to Las Vegas for a prize fight for his 63rd birthday in "Hustle 'N' Bros.", he adopts Robert, making him and Cleveland brothers. After they fight and try to bond, Cleveland tries to learn from Robert how to hustle but ends up getting hustled due to Robert's being jealous of Cleveland. When LeVar finds out Robert hustled his own brother, he administers a spanking to Robert.
Rallo goes to Sad Woody's Gentlemen's Club to find Cleveland in "Pins, Spins and Fins!" but bumps into Robert instead. After Robert has waitress Fifi set Rallo up online, he finds out through Holt's Facebook feed that Cleveland and the guys went to Funky Junction amusement park. After Robert drops Rallo off at at the park and leaves him there alone, he returns to the club where he is also found by Donna who is also searching for Cleveland.
In "California Dreamin'". Gina puts together an elaborate production of stand-ins including Robert to convince the Brown family that Cleveland has returned home from Los Angeles and they should do the same.
While spending time with Rallo in "Grave Danger", Robert leaves him to fend for himself while he goes to Baltimore.
Robert hooks up with Dee Dee Tubbs in "Wheel! Of! Family!", having fallen for her after hearing her on a Japanese import record at age 10. Together, they adopt a Chinese boy named Quang Quang in an attempt to become parents. Although Donna disapproves at first, she sees how hard they work to try to be good parents and gives them a chance, as they rename their child "Hong Kong Phooey".
Retrieved from "https://hero.fandom.com/wiki/Robert_Tubbs?oldid=1579230"
The Cleveland Show Heroes
TV Show Heroes
Redeemed Villains

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


SSO20 // Pride Flags // Planner Stickers – Little Dog Paper Co.
One sheet of pride stickers. Flags are approximately 1" wide.
Sheets can be all one flag or a mix as shown. Please leave choice of mixed, pansexual, transgender or gay flag choice in the notes section.


While we strive to provide functionality for any business scenario imaginable, we are ideally suited for, and have active businesses in these industries.
Invoice Numbers & Invoice Dates must follow upon one another.
The words TAX INVOICE must be shown for any VAT registered entity.
A breakdown of VAT items must be shown.
Invoices must be in an encrypted document format that prevents 3rd party alteration.
We know that not every business is the same, and therefore we provide you with a bunch of custom fields that can be added to your documents.
In order to specify these fields, visit the Settings page, click on the Documents tab, and scroll down to the Custom Fields section.
Custom fields can be customised differently for each document type, just click on the different tabs that represent different document types.
With some of our businesses having over 10,000 clients on record, it is important to manage clients properly.
Under Settings -> Interface, you should set Client Selection to "Search by Typing" which will show a search box everywhere you need to select a client. Once you reach around 150 clients, it becomes more efficient than displaying all clients in a dropdown select box. You can type any part of the clients' name, email address, or id, to have matching clients displayed instantly.
We provide you with multiple methods to collect money via debit order from your clients. We understand that not every business operates the same, and thus we've provided methods that should comply with your needs.
With all debit orders, we automatically process payments a couple of days after the batch has run. You have options to specify how we should handle bounced transactions.
The recommended method of collecting money via debit order. You specify clients which should be processed via this method from the Payments -> Automatic Debit Orders page, set a couple of options, such as the Action Date, and an optional bounce fee. Our system will then automatically generate a debit batch 3 Action Dates prior to your specified Action Date, so that you can be sure that your money is collected from your clients on your chosen day. All that is required from you is that you authorise the batch at your payment gateway. We will notify you via email as soon as the batch is ready.


text:
Tag Archives: Barcelona
Has Denis Suarez fallen out of favour at Arsenal?
What is happening with Denis Suarez?
When Arsenal were first linked with Denis Suarez in January, it was clear that Unai emery was pushing for a move for him because he no longer wished to utilise Aaron Ramsey or Mesut Ozil.
There was talk at the time that had Arsenal completed the move early enough in the month, that they might release Ramsey to Juventus earlier – making a couple of million from the deal whilst boasting the Italian's Champions League chances.
It was a long drawn out transfer process.
Arsenal wanted the Spaniard with an option to buy at the end of the season, Barcelona wanted to either insert a compulsory purchase order in the deal, or have Suarez sign a new deal to protect them from losing him on a free in 18 months.
In the end Suarez agreed a new contract with Barcelona, and Arsenal secured their man on a loan with an option to buy.
It is now two months to the day since Suarez completed his move to Arsenal and he is still awaiting his first start.
To date Suarez only has a handful of substitute appearances to his name. Meanwhile Ramsey and Ozil have returned to Emery's first team plans – starting 9 of the last 10 games between them.
It is odd watching Ramsey or Ozil starting pretty much every game whilst the man signed to "replace" them is on the bench, getting 10 minutes here, 12 minutes there.
So what is happening with Suarez?
The first theory is that he is still very much part of Emery's future plans. That we moved for an early loan deal for him so that he could spend 6 months acclimatising to the Premier League whilst Arsenal have both Ramsey and Ozil still at the club.
He would not be under pressure to play, and could spend his time getting both physically and mentality prepared for the Premier League. Bulking up in the gym and physical training sessions meaning that come August, he is ready to go.
This argument is logical, and we have previously seen Arsenal do this before with Emmanuel Adebayor and Jose Reyes. Both signed in January with the view of getting prepared for the next season.
With Ramsey joining Juventus at the end of the season, Arsenal will need a replacement. Suarez will be that replacement and by the time August comes, he would be fully acclimatised to the Premier League.
Getting Suarez in now takes the pressure off the summer, meaning we can concentrate on signing a centre back, left back and winger, without having to be considered about replacing Ramsey.
A second argument is that he is not fully fit.
Prior to joining Arsenal, he had played just 10 games this season for Barcelona, with his only 2 starts coming in the Copa del Rey against Spanish 3rd tier side Cultural y Deportiva Leonesa.
To have barely played in 2018/19 is a problem.
With the added physicality of the Premier League, Suarez would have arrived nowhere near match sharp, and it is taking him a while to get up to speed.
The final theory is that having pursued Suarez, Emery no longer fancies him.
Emery has seen the man he managed at Sevilla up close at London Colney. Alongside Ramsey and Ozil and he is clearly inferior. Not up to it. Not a player for a top tier challenging team.
Having seen him train amongst his peers, Emery does not see a future for the 25-year-old at Arsenal and has already made the decision not to make the move permanent in the summer. He will pursue other options to replace Ramsey; like Christopher Nkunku, whom Arsenal were also heavily linked with in January.
Suarez has become a short term option to a problem that never really existed, and in the summer Arsenal will decide to pursue Nkunku to replace Ramsey, and return Suarez to Barcelona.
The situation of Denis Suarez at Arsenal is interesting, and he is seemingly no closer to starting a game for Arsenal then he was whilst a Barcelona player.
With the club chasing 3rd place, and Ozil and Ramsey returning to Emery's 1st team plans, I doubt we will see Suarez start a game this season.
Ultimate squad photo, wash bag, 100years mug + Clock watch https://t.co/DYtSIZ2ysC pic.twitter.com/s7DwZWM1sc
— 🎗 ShE WoRe A YeLLoW RiBBon (@SheWore) March 11, 2019
This entry was posted in Arsenal and tagged Arsenal, Barcelona, denis suarez, She Wore, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, Unai Emery on March 29, 2019 by keenosafc.
Brazilian "wonderkid" signing sends negative message to Arsenal Academy
Arsenal 'launch £5m offer' for wonderkid Gabriel Martinelli after Man Utd trial is the headline news this morning in many of the click bait media outlets.
I for one do not agree with us targeting the Brazilian teenager.
Gabriel Martinelli is a 17-year-old Brazilian forward who reportedly had a trial with Manchester United 2 years ago. In June he will gain his Italian citizenship meaning that a work permit will not be a problem.
He has reportedly been courted by a whole host of clubs in South America and Europe. The likes of Barcelona, Manchester United and Crystal Palace have been monitoring him, with Arsenal leading the pack.
I do not want to see Arsenal sign the Brazilian teenager.
At the moment we have a lot of exciting young talent in the academy. It is in good health.
Eddie Nketiah deserves his chance next season to replace Danny Welbeck, backing up Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette.
Another who also deserves his chance next season is Reiss Nelson who has developed well in Germany. I expect both Nketiah and Nelson to be part of Arsenal's first team squad next season, and regularly take a place on the bench.
Xavier Amaechi is barely 18-years-old. Some have claimed that he is the quickest player at the club and he potentially has a big future. A year younger is Bukayo Saka.
Would it be right to sign Martinelli instead of continuing these two's development?
Martinelli can also play up top.
In Dubai, Tyreece John-Jules announced himself. Another 18-year-old, it seems a poitnless task to sign someone ahead of him before he has even had his chance.
Finally we have Folarin Balogun, who recently signed his first professional contract with he club.
Another who is just 17-years-old, there is a lot of excitement surrounding him.
With Amaechi, Saka, John-Jules & Balogun all at the club, all 18-years-old or younger, all local lads who have been at the club since children, it is illogical to sign a Brazilian who will then come in and compete with them.
And i have not even mentioned Joe Willock or Emile Smith Rowe yet…
I would rather give the young, local lads a chance.
If the club considered Martinelli as already better than Nketiah and Nelson, I would understand it more. He would be coming in to the 1st squad, able to contribute straight away.
A bit like Matteo Guendouzi last season, it did not matter that he came in ahead of Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Ben Sheaf or Joe Willock, he was ready for first team action and they were not.
I very much doubt that Martinelli is ready for the 1st team. As it stands, he is a YouTube player – with most fans having never seen him play and just getting excited by the "Welcome to Arsenal" videos of him doing a few step overs.
If the local lads were not good enough, I would understand us buying someone ahead of him – like what happened a lot during the 00s. Likewise if he was a special talent – like Cesc Fabregas or Guendouzi – he would be joining up with the first team squad rather than the academy.
If Arsenal do sign him and he joins the academy, it will send out a poor message to youngsters and their families. "Do not join Arsenal as when you reach 17 they will sign someone from abroad to replace you."
Let's give the local lads a chance. Give Saka, Amaechi, John-Jules, Balogun tne opportunity to continue getting time in the U23's and League Cup games next signing.
Signing Martinelli is a poor move.
This entry was posted in Arsenal and tagged Arsenal, Barcelona, Brazil, Bukayo Saka., eddie nketiah, folarin balogun, Gabriel Martinelli, Manchester United, reiss nelson, She Wore, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, tyreece john-jules, Xavier Amaechi on March 28, 2019 by keenosafc.
Sven Mislintat promotion gives peak into Arsenal future
Last night it was announced that Arsenal had promoted Sven Mislintat from Head of Recruitment to Technical Director.
By promoting a scout whose vision of the game is about unearthing stars of the the future gives you a peak into Arsenal's future.
The club will look to recruit young, exciting talent, and develop that talent into global superstars.
A return to Arsene Wenger's early philosophy of making, not buying superstars
Earlier this week I had a little discussion with someone over the N'Golo Kante deal.
It was reported by Football Leaks that his agents had pocketed £10.6m from the deal, which would go some way to explaining why Arsenal did not follow up their interest.
Under Arsene Wenger, rightly or wrongly, we often pulled out of deals that saw a huge chunk of money going to agents.
Wenger was a "purist" and detested agents taking money out of the game. He hated the likes of the Anelka's who would unsettle their own client and move them from club to club, making millions of pounds in the process.
Sadly to compete for the best players, you have to be willing to deal with the likes of Jorge Mendes and Mino Raiola. Dealing with these individuals is a huge reason why Raul Sanllehi was bought in.
The conversation went beyond agents fees and also discussed that Arsenal are still a way behind the likes of Manchester United in terms of wages paid.
Recently it was revealed that Barcelona's wage bill was approximately €487m, with Real Madrid paying out €395. In 3rd place was Manchester United at €337m. The traditional Big 3 of world football were joined by the Billionaire Boys Clubs of PSG (€272m), Manchester City (€296) and Chelsea(€256m). Juventus (€259m) and Bayern Munich (€265m) were also amongst the top 10.
Arsenal were 10th – paying out around €232m.
Whilst that is a huge amount, it is €100m less than United, whilst Barcelona pay out more than twice in wages than Arsenal.
Wages are often the key to success. The rule of thumb is the more you spend in wages, the more higher you finish up the table. This is obviously on average, so there will always be exceptions to the rule such as Leicester.
What is clear is that Arsenal are still not eating from the top table. We are still unable to pay the top wages to attract the best players. We are still a 2nd tier club behind the likes of Barcelona, Real Madrid and Manchester United.
But we were told we moved from Highbury to enable us to compete.
And that was the plan.
The gate receipts from the emirates were meant to bring us back level with the likes of Manchester United and Barcelona – who at the time were doubling our gate receipt income.
Back in the early 00s, gate receipts were king. They were the main source of income.
But the game moved on. TV money and commercial deals are now more important than what comes through the gate.
Moving to the Emirates means that Arsenal have the 4th highest gate receipts in world football – behind the big 3 of Man U, Barcelona and Real Madrid. There is not that much in it. TV deals are also fairly neutral – although the figures above are prior to Arsenal failing to qualify for the Champions League.
What is clear is how far Arsenal fall behind when it comes to commercial revenue.
4th in gate receipts but just 10th in commercial revenue – and £162m less than Manchester United.
When we moved, we could not have predicted that the world would change to the extent it has, and that commercial profits would be king.
The thing with commercial income is it is slightly beyond our control. Manchester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid are bigger brands than Arsenal, so will naturally command more from Nike, Adidas, Emirates, AON, etc, for deals.
We are over €100m behind Manchester United in salaries paid and €162m a year behind in commercial revenue. We are still at the 2nd tier. Not at the top table.
Well we should not have moved then you cry.
Had we not moved our gate receipts would have dropped by £40m to £60m. Without the big commercial deals that Bayern Munich get, or having a super rich owner like Manchester City (Stan Kronenke is rich, but doesn't have £2.7bn he can pump into us) less gate receipts would have left us even further behind.
We would have a similar total revenue as Liverpool – who have won just a single trophy in 10 years. We would be even more reliant on selling players to generate income (Liverpool have sold over £400m worth of players in 5 years, Arsenal just £200m).
The move to the Emirates was supposed to close the gap between Arsenal and those on the top table. The explosion of commercial deals (and Billionaire Boys Clubs) have meant that the move has basically allowed us to maintain our place as a second tier club in European club football.
Hopefully with the new Adidas deal, the Rwanada deal, and other new commercial deals, we will see that gap close up, allowing us to be more competitive.
By promoting Mislintat, Arsenal have shown great self awareness.
We do not have an owner who will pump in £2.7bn of his own, and neither should we expect him to do so.
In European football at the moment, it is only PSG and Man City who have owners bankrolling them. Roman has turned the tap off. Every other club is (attempting at least) to run a self sufficient model. You spend what you bring in.
With a great coach like Unai Emery, and the promotion of Mislintat, Arsenal will continue buying the next global superstars. Lucas Torreira and Matteo Guendouzi rather than N'Golo Kante and Paul Pogba.
Some might see this as the wrong route. That we should be spending hundreds of millions a year on transfers, but this not realistic.
We as fans have to understand that as a club we can not afford to pay the wages of Man U, Barcelona or Real Madrid. Kante is about to sign a £290,000 deal. Alexis Sanchez close to £500,000.
Arsenal are not going to suddenly magic up another £100-150m a year to fund the big transfers.
As Dortmund, Monaco, Atlético Madrid, Liverpool & Napoli have shown, you can build a competitive team through sensible recruitment rather than big money signings.
It is about how you buy, not what you spend.
Good recruitment + good coaching = success.
And Mislintat is key to the future of the club.
Still some Clock Watches that will be ready for Xmas…https://t.co/YCztwa199C pic.twitter.com/JMLwJEBYnb
— 🎗 ShE WoRe A YeLLoW RiBBon (@SheWore) November 9, 2018
This entry was posted in Arsenal and tagged Arsenal, Barcelona, Manchester United, Real Madrid, She Wore, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon on November 21, 2018 by keenosafc.


Amanda Vinson is a negotiator at American Litigation Law Group. She has an Associates degree in Diversified Studies from Oklahoma City Community College. Amanda has whole arrange of professional experience including over two years of negotiation experience. Amanda is highly regarded with several creditors and is known for getting the best outcome for our clients.


text:
package gcemodel

import (
	"k8s.io/klog/v2"
	"k8s.io/kops/pkg/apis/kops"
	"k8s.io/kops/upup/pkg/fi"
	"k8s.io/kops/upup/pkg/fi/cloudup/gcetasks"
)

// ExternalAccessModelBuilder configures security group rules for external access
// (SSHAccess, KubernetesAPIAccess)
type ExternalAccessModelBuilder struct {
	*GCEModelContext
	Lifecycle fi.Lifecycle
}

var _ fi.ModelBuilder = &ExternalAccessModelBuilder{}

func (b *ExternalAccessModelBuilder) Build(c *fi.ModelBuilderContext) error {
	klog.Warningf("TODO: Harmonize gcemodel ExternalAccessModelBuilder with awsmodel")
	if len(b.Cluster.Spec.API.Access) == 0 {
		klog.Warningf("KubernetesAPIAccess is empty")
	}

	if len(b.Cluster.Spec.SSHAccess) == 0 {
		klog.Warningf("SSHAccess is empty")
	}

	// SSH is open to AdminCIDR set
	if b.UsesSSHBastion() {
		// If we are using a bastion, we only access through the bastion
		// This is admittedly a little odd... adding a bastion shuts down direct access to the masters/nodes
		// But I think we can always add more permissions in this case later, but we can't easily take them away
		klog.V(2).Infof("bastion is in use; won't configure SSH access to control-plane / worker node instances")
	} else {
		network, err := b.LinkToNetwork()
		if err != nil {
			return err
		}
		b.AddFirewallRulesTasks(c, "ssh-external-to-master", &gcetasks.FirewallRule{
			Lifecycle:    b.Lifecycle,
			TargetTags:   []string{b.GCETagForRole(kops.InstanceGroupRoleControlPlane), b.GCETagForRole("Master")},
			Allowed:      []string{"tcp:22"},
			SourceRanges: b.Cluster.Spec.SSHAccess,
			Network:      network,
		})

		b.AddFirewallRulesTasks(c, "ssh-external-to-node", &gcetasks.FirewallRule{
			Lifecycle:    b.Lifecycle,
			TargetTags:   []string{b.GCETagForRole(kops.InstanceGroupRoleNode)},
			Allowed:      []string{"tcp:22"},
			SourceRanges: b.Cluster.Spec.SSHAccess,
			Network:      network,
		})
	}

	// NodePort access
	{
		nodePortRange, err := b.NodePortRange()
		if err != nil {
			return err
		}

		nodePortRangeString := nodePortRange.String()
		network, err := b.LinkToNetwork()
		if err != nil {
			return err
		}
		b.AddFirewallRulesTasks(c, "nodeport-external-to-node", &gcetasks.FirewallRule{
			Lifecycle:  b.Lifecycle,
			TargetTags: []string{b.GCETagForRole(kops.InstanceGroupRoleNode)},
			Allowed: []string{
				"tcp:" + nodePortRangeString,
				"udp:" + nodePortRangeString,
			},
			SourceRanges: b.Cluster.Spec.NodePortAccess,
			Network:      network,
		})
	}

	if !b.UseLoadBalancerForAPI() {
		// Configuration for the master, when not using a Loadbalancer (ELB)
		// We expect that either the IP address is published, or DNS is set up to point to the IPs
		// We need to open security groups directly to the master nodes (instead of via the ELB)

		// HTTPS to the master is allowed (for API access)

		network, err := b.LinkToNetwork()
		if err != nil {
			return err
		}
		b.AddFirewallRulesTasks(c, "kubernetes-master-https", &gcetasks.FirewallRule{
			Lifecycle:    b.Lifecycle,
			TargetTags:   []string{b.GCETagForRole(kops.InstanceGroupRoleControlPlane), b.GCETagForRole("Master")},
			Allowed:      []string{"tcp:443"},
			SourceRanges: b.Cluster.Spec.API.Access,
			Network:      network,
		})
	}

	return nil
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


The previous generation of consoles was a great one, they provided us with so many hours of enjoyment. So let's celebrate the 8 best selling games for the Xbox 360, a great console that provided some great games.
I was curious, so I checked it out, and all in all I'd say this list is kinda depressingly bland. I'm not trying to make a statement about the games involved or their quality, just that 7 out of 8 are all fairly similar in nature. What makes it depressing is that last gen saw so many great games of all different varieties.
That said... I really wasn't all that surprised either.
Would be nice to see a '8 Best Selling EXCLUSIVES For 360/PS3/Wii.
Were did you get the figures? because 4 CoD games have sold over 13 million copies each to end users on 360 according to Activision.
I've played exactly none of those. I have interest in playing exactly none of those. Well maybe Minecraft, but if I ever give in it'll be the PC version that I plaly, not the XBox 360.
EDIT: while I couldn't find sales breakdown by system, I did find this about GTA 5: "As of August 2014, the game has sold-in over 34 million units to retailers for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360"
so, the lowest number on your list is 5 million, meaning for GTA to have not made this list, GTA would have had to sell 30 million on PS3 and only 4 million on Xbox, which is stupidly impossible. Your list is broken. And if you managed to forget the best selling piece of entertainment in human history, I'm willing to bet more of your list is misinformed and broken.
No wounder I gave my sister my 360, for kinect purposes. It would have been nice if Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey was ported to the PS3. Now I got to hunt down some things when I get around to it.
just goes to show, relying on wiki is a fool's game.
But what a garbage list it is. Could we have not done a 'only one entry from a series' clause on this one? Maybe give a few other titles some time in the spotlight that weren't another mindless shooter?
I noticed that too, if you look at VGchartz (don't know how reliable that site is) it sold over 14 million copies for the 360.
How is Black Ops an indie game? Activision is the publisher and they surely paid some money for it. I also think that game just had standard Zombies, not Nazi Zombies.
Dude has got to be day dreaming as he types up these articles. Gears of War in the early 2000s?
Half the list for the 360 would be the same, both Halos, both GoW, and Kinect are all exclusive.
Simple because, if they gave more then two slots per franchise, it'd be: Minecraft, GTA V, Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty.
I'm never keen on including bundled games in with sales stats; it always seems a bit artificial (and means that the biggest game of all time is surely Minesweeper).
Also, yeah, GTAV should be there somewhere.
One of the original definitions for an indie game was any game developed by a non-console manufacture.
What a horribly depressing list.


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Download Opera Mini Next 7 handler for Android Mobiles (supports OS 2.1 and higher). Using this modded app, you can change FrontQuery, BackQuery Custom Server etc. so that you can Get free Internet access in your area. It can also help you on Download and Browse restrictions on you by the operator. Now Download and Browse Anonymously! You can also change your user agent. Thus Facebook Gmail like sites can be viewed like that like PC and you will get a great PC like experience. i have included 2 types of handlers in this post. One is External handlerUI and other one is internal.


Since high net worth individuals often operate and own assets through LLCs and other business entities, including foreign corporate entities, a plaintiff must satisfy the requirements of a veil-piercing claim in order to attach assets owned by such entities. Failing to do so could frustrate a plaintiff's ability to satisfy a judgment, as illustrated by Commercial Division Justice Barry Ostrager's recent decision in Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity Fund L.P. v. Kwok Ho Wan.
The New York Court of Appeals, in Congel v. Malfitano, recently ruled that the "Poughkeepsie Galleria Company" (the "Partnership") was not an at-will partnership and that therefore Defendant Marc Malfitano's (the "Defendant") unilateral dissolution of the partnership breached the partnership agreement. In addition, under Section 69 of the New York Partnership Law, the Court sustained the Appellate Division's valuation of the Defendant's partnership interest, including application of a minority discount. The Court modified the order on appeal, holding that the Second Department erred in awarding legal fees in contravention of the American Rule on attorneys' fee awards.


The Australasian Accounting, Business and Finance Journal is a double blind peer reviewed educational journal. In case you are an international scholar and your faculty qualifications are usually not accepted for direct entry to the University chances are you'll be eligible for admission to this degree programme by our Worldwide Foundation Programme. Our graduates go on to careers in all features of enterprise and administration. Each year, some continue their research, becoming a member of the York Management School doctoral programme.
Journal of Business, Economics and Finance (JBEF) is a peer-reviewed, quarterly and publicly out there open-entry journal. The journal aims to offer a supply for tutorial researchers, practitioners, and coverage makers within the space of business, economics and finance. JBEF invitations manuscripts that include empiricial, theoretical, implementitative and aplicable researches.
Our service is also the excellence of our stakeholders. Our professors are from probably the most prestigious universities in the world, in the fields of Finance, Business and Regulation. We additional have prime administration companions from Wall Road. Teaching takes place within the Central Area of the College. Honours students have entry to the Enterprise Faculty's Undergraduate Resource Centre on level 11 of David Hume Tower.
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Die Bahnstrecke Flensburg–Husum über Löwenstedt war eine Nebenbahn im Norden Schleswig-Holsteins. Sie verband den Ostseehafen Flensburg mit dem Nordseehafen Husum.

Geschichte
Die Strecke wurde am 2. November 1926 durch die Deutsche Reichsbahn eröffnet. Von Löwenstedt zweigte seit 1928 eine Bahnstrecke nach Bredstedt ab. Der Personenverkehr und der größte Teil des Güterverkehrs wurden bereits am 31. Mai 1959 stillgelegt. Die Gleise wurden nach der Gesamtstilllegung in den 1970er Jahren demontiert.

Streckenverlauf
Die Gleise der Strecke verliefen von Husum kommend östlich der Bundesstraße 200, kurz vor Immenstedt wurde die B 200 gequert und dann verlief die Trasse westlich der Bundesstraße. Ab Großenwiehe ist auf der ehemaligen Trasse heute eine Schnellstraße, die bis Wanderup durch ihren schnurgeraden Verlauf auffällt. Ab Wanderup wieder parallel zur B200, und dann parallel zur heutigen K126, verlief sie durch den Ort Altholzkrug (heute verläuft auf der Trasse eine gleichnamige Straße) zum Bahnhof Flensburg-Weiche, wo sie auf die Bahnstrecken aus Neumünster und Niebüll traf.

Sonstiges
Etwa einen Kilometer nördlich des Haltepunktes Schwesing-Nord ("Engelsburg") entstand während des Zweiten Weltkriegs ein Außenlager des KZ Neuengamme.

In der Relation Husum–Viöl–Flensburg verkehren heute (Stand: 2012) Schnellbusse der Autokraft. Eine Bahnfahrt von Husum nach Flensburg erfordert ein Umsteigen in Jübek beziehungsweise Schleswig.

Literatur
 Betriebseröffnung Nebenbahn Husum–Flensburg Weiche. In: Die Reichsbahn, Jahrgang 1926, Nr. 43 (27. Oktober 1926), S. 635–637.
 Hans Bock: Die Marschbahn von Altona nach Westerland. Boyens, Heide 1989, ISBN 3-8042-0458-9

Weblinks

 Streckenbeschreibung Husum-Flensburg
 Historische Streckenkarte Schleswig-Holstein

Bahnstrecke in Schleswig-Holstein

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Autoduel is one of the few classic games that don't deserve as much attention as it is getting. It may sound ironic that I review a game just because I don't consider it worth a review, but it isn't so. Autoduel is a very original piece of work, which is seriously flawed by inferior graphics, awkward interface and an extremely steep learning curve. Autoduel is simply the result of applying arcade principles to a pen-and-paper roleplaying game.


text:
Is the GOP Aware That Romney Once Pledged to Turn Boston Into the Rainbow City? (4)
Antonio Cromartie: Father of our Country (1)
Abstinence Isn't Working - But Contraception Is
By Thanos
US News • 4/15/12 12:22:48 pm • Views: 1,555
Earlier this week, when the CDC announced a record low in the teen birth rate, it listed two possible causes: "The impact of strong pregnancy prevention messages" and "increased use of contraception." The Guttmacher Institute came out with an even stronger message: "The most recent decline in teen births can be linked almost exclusively to improvements in teens' contraceptive use," the organization said in a press release, which pointed to another CDC study for evidence.
But that hasn't stopped conservatives from claiming that the drop is a result of, you guessed it, abstinence education and, paradoxically, an increase in abortions.
Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America expressed her outrage over the CDC analysis: "They don't even mention the fact there's been a tremendous increase in effectiveness and pervasiveness of abstinence education. They don't mention the fact that teen sexual activity, by their own admission, is down." As Think Progress noted this week, teen birth rates are actually highest in states with abstinence-only policies. Not only has it been widely documented that such programs are largely ineffective, it's also been shown that such programs may prevent contraception use.
Now, it's true that teens — specifically 15- and 16-year-olds — are delaying sexual activity, but the change in contraceptive use over the years has been much more profound, and there has been no significant change in sexual activity among 18- and 19-year-olds.
Abortions Abstinence-only CDC Analysis CDC Study Contraception Contraceptive Guttmacher Institute Sexual Activity Significant Change Teen Birth Rates Teen Sexual Activity Strong Pregnancy Prevention Pregnancy
Recent Pages by Thanos:
David Bowie - Tryin' to Get to Heaven (Official Audio) Kings of Leon - 100,000 People (Visualizer) Mogwai - Ritchie Sacramento (Official Video) Resolution to Support Climate Change Education Introduced in Congress Amanda Shires - That's All (Official Lyric Video)


text:
Q: MySQLi query not working properly When I execute a MySQLi query with my custom function I get this error...
Fatal error: Call to a member function execute() on a non-object in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/RevFramework/Application/Model/Engine/eMySQLi.php on line 92

I really don't know what's wrong... That is if I set $types and $params to null, else I'm sure call_user_func_array would also throw an error.
public function query($SQL, $types = null, $params = null)
    {
            $this->result = $this->db->prepare($SQL);

            if(isset($types) && isset($params))
            {
                $bind_names[] = $types;

                for ($i = 0; $i < count($params); $i++)
                {
                    $bind_name = 'bind' . $i;
                    $$bind_name = $params[$i];
                    $bind_names[] = &$$bind_name;
                }

                call_user_func_array(array($this->result, 'bind_param'), $bind_names);
            }

            $this->result->execute();
    }

The query it is doing:
$class->query("SELECT name FROM rev_widgets ORDER BY order");

I have absolutely no idea what could be wrong.
Any help is appreciated!

A: I found the answer! Well, I just went ahead and did it very differently.
For everyone who needs it, it all looks like this now.
class Core_Model extends Core_Controller
{

        private $connected;

        private $db;

        protected $result;

    public function __construct()
    {
            //$this->connect();
    }

        protected function connect()
        {
            if($this->connected != true)
            {
                $this->db = new mysqli($this->data['host'], $this->data['user'], $this->data['pass'], $this->data['database']);

                if($this->mysqli->connect_errno)
                {
                    $this->error($mysqli->connect_errno);
                }

                $this->connected = true;
            }
        }

        protected function disconnect()
        {
            if($this->connected == true)
            {
                $this->db->close();
                $this->connected = false;
            }
        }

        public function newQuery()
        {
            $this->connect();

            if(is_object($this->result))
            {
                $this->result->close();
            }

            return $this;
        }

        public function query($SQL, $params = null)
        {
            $this->newQuery();

            if(($this->result = $this->db->prepare($SQL)))
            {
                if($params != null)
                {
                    call_user_func_array(array($this->result, 'bind_param'), $this->refreshParams($params));
                }

                $this->result->execute();
            }
            else
            {
                trigger_error("MySQLi query <i> '" . $SQL . "'</i> failed", E_USER_ERROR);
            }

            return $this;
        }

        public function get()
        {
            $parameters = $this->getFieldNames();
            call_user_func_array(array($this->result, 'bind_result'), $this->refreshParams($parameters));

            while($this->result->fetch())
            {
                $x = array();

                foreach($this->row as $key => $val)
                {
                    $x[$key] = $val;
                }

                $data[] = $x;
            }

            return $data;
        }

        public function id()
        {
            return $this->mysql->insert_id;
        }

        public function num_rows()
        {
            $this->result->store_result();

            return $this->result->num_rows;
        }

    private function getFieldNames()
    {
            $meta = $this->result->result_metadata();

            while($field = $meta->fetch_field())
            {

                $parameters[] = &$this->row[$field->name];

            }

            return $parameters;
        }

        private function refreshParams($params)
        {
            $temp = array();

            foreach($params as $key => $value)
            {
                $temp[$key] = &$params[$key];
            }

            return $temp;
        }
}

Hope this helps someone!

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Copyright © 2017 Oleg Galaev, Evelina Prozorova et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Galaev, O. and Prozorova, E. (2017) Dispersion Effects in the Falkner-Skan Problem and in the Kinetic Theory. Journal of Applied Mathematics and Physics, 5, 522-537. doi: 10.4236/jamp.2017.52045.


The latest batch of Houseguests are likely being collected up and heading to their new home for the summer, but what about the family they're leaving behind? Those moms, dads, and loved ones will be watching nervously from home with emotions the rest of us won't have to worry about.
Congratulations! Your son or daughter will be joining the cast of Big Brother 18. This may have been a lifelong dream, like it was for my son, Big Brother 17's Steve Moses, or this may be just a great opportunity that fell into his or her lap. However he or she was found, you will now be on a wild emotional roller coaster ride for many weeks to come.
When the experience first began and Steve was whisked off to Los Angeles, I was just so excited for him. I knew I would miss him so much, but I had no idea what I was really going to feel. As a super fan of the show myself, I was anticipating watching him first enter the house, the first HOH and veto competitions, the first nomination ceremony, watching the feeds, the show's intro sequence, and those epic Big Brother experiences, such as OTEV and Zingbot.
The feeds first came on after the houseguests were there for about two weeks or so. I instantly saw my son was already nominated for eviction. I tried to count my blessings. Before he left Steve said he was fine with any outcome, even if he was the first one voted out, and he just was so happy to have the chance to do it. I kept reminding myself of what he said, but it didn't work. I was so worried for him – the first of many low points.
Steve did win the first veto competition, the classic spelling competition, with the word TROMBONISTS. I knew then he would get the chance to cast a vote on eviction night. Winning a competition and voting were two big parts of the Big Brother experience. This was the first of many high points.
The entire summer passed ever so slowly with low, high, low, high, low, high moments endlessly repeating themselves. I had trouble sleeping and eating. I found myself constantly checking the feeds, Twitter updates, and Big Brother websites, including this one. I found it difficult to work or to even have conversations with family and friends. I did not expect this to happen.
Eventually I just kept saying to myself I'll be happy if he just makes it to jury. This would give him the full shot with seeing the jury house and voting for the winner at the finale. Right after the slip and slide competition Julie Chen announced all remaining houseguests had made it to jury. My worry didn't leave, however, because I saw the newest HOH would probably nominate Steve and the roller coaster continued.
When I flew to Los Angeles for the finale all I could think about at that point was seeing Steve and hugging him so tight. I believed he could win, but I knew I could be happy with any result as long as he was happy, too. All of the things he told me before he left stayed true all season. He really just wanted to go to the Big Brother house and play the game the best he could.
What an awesome letter! Steve's Mom seems so nice.
She seems nice. Like the type of mother would give you cookies if you were Steve's play date.
During last season, it was very obvious that Steve had a great relationship with his mother. He is a blessed young man to have such a supportive and caring parent. The advice and insight shared in the letter made me see some things in a different light. Very thoughtful of her to write it.
I totally agree with everything you've said KSJB.
Wise words from a wise woman…my beautiful friend, K.
Steve is so fortunate to have a wise, thoughtful and loving Mom. I especially appreciated her telling us about the Mom support group that formed during the season.
I love that picture of Steve and his Mom when he was a little boy! I was so proud of Steve when he won last year…I can't even begin to imagine how his Mom must have felt. Her heart must have been BURSTING!


Dwight Clark Autographed Candlestick Park Seatback - Red Signed in Silver | Sports Memorabilia!
This Dwight Clark Autographed Candlestick Park Seatback has the shape with the 3 horizontal sections. The seatback is red and signed in silver. Dwight Clark signed these seatbacks with "The Catch 1-10-82," the name of the play "Sprint Right Option," the score "49ers 28 Dallas 27" and the drawing of "The Catch" play with the x's and o's from the 49er playbook. This is a very good looking item!
Dwight Clark passed away on June 4, 2018 and stock availability is now very limited. Prices are subject to increase as inventory levels are reduced.
The seatbacks have some oxidation to them which provides that "Game Used" look. Each seatback "tells a story."
All the seatbacks are #16 as Joe Montana secured all the available #16 seatbacks and had them delivered to our National Sports Distributors warehouse in Cotati, CA located in the North San Francisco Bay Area.
The Dwight Clark Autographed Candlestick Park Seatback comes with the Dwight Clark hologram and the National Sports Distributors (NSD) numbered hologram. The NSD hologram is considered the best in the sports memorabilia industry as clearly states that the autograph was witnessed by NSD when the athlete signed the item. A matching Certificate of Authenticy that corresponds to the numbered NSD hologram is also provided with each autographed Candlestick Park seatback.
This Dwight Clark seatback is also available in the orange seatback signed in black. Click here to see all the signed Candlestick Park Seatbacks by Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Dwight Clark and Steve Young.


Grandparents going overboard with gift-giving can cause real problems. Let's explore some real solutions.
It's so easy for Grandparents like us to get caught up in the gift-giving frenzy. Generous Grandparents mean well but often go overboard. Too much of a good thing is not always a good thing. The Grandkids may already have more than they need, parents may be trying to teach their kids to live with less, or the splurging and Grandparents going overboard might be making others uncomfortable.
Whether it's Christmas, a birthday, an Easter basket or any other gifting moment, we need to be conscious of the possible outcomes when going overboard.
Why are Grandparents going Overboard?
I guess there could be many reasons, but here are some that come to mind.
Read more about Overzealous Grandparents.
Giving gifts is an act of love.
Grandparents love their Grandkids and want the best for them. We want to show them how much we care. Giving gifts is an expression of our love.
Some people are givers by nature. There are personalities that simply love to share what they have with others. They take pleasure in seeing the happiness the eyes of their Grandkids. Giving from the heart truly satisfies and nourishes their souls.
Competition with other grandparents and relatives.
We like to feel there is a special bond with our Grandchildren. The other Grandparents feel the same way. You can find yourself going overboard and competing with them instead of enjoying your Grands together.
Realizing that gift-giving is not about who cares the most will allow you to be reasonable in your giving and to appreciate the contributions of the other Grandparents as well. After all, you all want the same thing – a happy Grandchild.
Bribery to control the child in some way.
Some Grandparents may use gifts as a way to control their Grandchildren. "If you are good,…" "if you come over to see me…" or "if you pick up the toys,…" is going overboard. Behaving and helping should be expected and not used as excuses to buy more gifts. Gift giving should not be done to bribe or control a child.
Grandkids should have more than we had as kids.
Finally, we give gifts because we want our Grandkids to have more than we had when we were growing up. We may or may not have suffered or been deprived as children, but every parent and Grandparent wants a better life for their children and Grandchildren. Grandparents often try to make sure this happens by going overboard in their giving.
What happens when we go Overboard?
When Grandparents go overboard with their gift-giving, it can cause friction with the parents. Mom & Dad may have different values about "things".
The parents may become embarrassed by their inability to compete with your gifts themselves.
There may not be enough space in their home for an abundance of toys.
There could be tension, with the parents wondering what strings may be attached to your gift. What are you expecting in return?
It could become awkward for others who care equally for the kids but can't keep up with your level of giving.
Going overboard with gift giving when you're trying to be loving and generous will not have the outcome you're expecting. The result is unnecessary stress, conflict, jealousy, and resentment instead of appreciation and warm fuzzies.
Limit the number of gifts. Set a limit. Make a plan for giving and stick to it. Some Grandparents I know use the 3 gift rule: Something to wear, something to read, and something to do. Think about it and see if setting a limit might work for you.
Ask for guidance from parents. In order to have a relationship with your Grandkids, you need to preserve the relationship with their parents. Asking their permission, advice or input about the gift you would like to give shows respect and consideration for their feelings and desires for their children.
Invest on their behalf. Take the extra money you would have spent on gifts and add to an education fund or contribute to an account that will benefit them later in life.
Use your money for charity. Set an example for your Grandchild. Take them with you to purchase gifts for less fortunate kids or to make care packages to send to the military personnel overseas.
Make a photo or memory book. Giving a gift of memories is always appreciated. Gather photos that you have taken of your time together during the last year. Send them to a service like Snapfish and have them made into a photo book. Kids love looking at photos of themselves and a yearly book reminds them of the time you spent together. Sit with them and look through it together. This would be a great birthday tradition.
GIVE EXPERIENCES INSTEAD OF GIFTS. Try giving experiences instead of gifts. Do something together, make memories instead of clutter. Give something that will last instead of things that will end up broken or lost.
Experiences make us happy. A researcher named Thomas Gilovich at Cornell University has researched why experiences have the ability to contribute to happiness so much more than material purchases. Along with another researcher, Matthew Killingsworth, he published his findings in the Journal of Psychological Science showing that experiences provide more lasting happiness than material possessions.
You're creating memories. Gilovich also says: "Our experiences are a bigger part of ourselves than our material goods … You can really like your material stuff. You can even think that part of your identity is connected to those things, but nonetheless, they remain separate from you. In contrast, your experiences really are part of you. We are the sum total of our experiences." Gifts you give will probably not be around for an extended period of time, but you will take the memory of the experiences with you indefinitely.
They don't take up space. I call them disposable gifts – a gift that will be "used up" instead of taking up residence in your home. Even if you don't hold an item in your hand, you can hold a memory in your heart.
Time to bond. Spending time together, sharing experiences, strengthens your relationship, brings you closer, and allows your connection to grow. Strong family connections are important in encouraging a healthy, confident child.
Individual attention. Start by giving your Grandchild extra special attention, just the two of you (or three if Grandpa wants to go). If you have too many Grands to make this possible, try taking cousins who may be close in age, or just the girls. Individual attention will make your time together more intimate and special.
Individual interests. Take time to explore each Grandchild's interests. Tailor your gift to fit their personality. We are all different. Getting to know them as a person shows you appreciate their uniqueness.
Anticipation. The best part of planning an experience is waiting for the time to come when you can enjoy it. Kids are naturally impatient, but half the fun is thinking about it, talking about it, and looking forward to it.
Your time. There is no better way to show your Grandchildren your love than by giving your time. There are no gifts that could replace you and your attention, experiences, and wisdom.
You get the idea. Do something, instead of getting more stuff.
Start curbing your tendency to go overboard.
Make a gift list and stick to it.
Discuss your ideas for experiences with your Grandchild's parents.
Pay attention to your Grandchild's interests.
Take it slow, consider the benefits, and value the memories you'll make together.
Are you a Grandparent going overboard? Do you think giving experiences instead of gifts would work for you and your family? How do you plan to change your habits? Thanks for sharing your ideas with me in the comment section.
This strikes such a chord with me – it's our granddaughter's 2nd birthday in a fortnight. She has more toys than she needs and more books and more "stuff" – it seems to be the norm for kids now. Her parents don't overindulge her but with all the family members buying birthday and Christmas presents, she's inundated. So, we're buying her a family pass to our city's aquarium and her parents asked if we'd like to come too, so now we all get to share the experience – I can't wait!
I watched my Grands at Christmas and saw how overwhelmed they really were with all the "stuff". The little girls (and big girls) in my family got tickets to A Charlie Brown Christmas as gifts. Had a great time, memories made, and nothing to keep at home forever… Glad to know others have the same idea. The Aquarium is a great idea – you'll enjoy sharing that time together, I'm sure. That's the way to do it when you have too much stuff already!
I'm not a grandparent yet but if things go smoothly then I will be among the ranks in November. Hopefully, I won't be an over-giver. My in-laws gave gifts but they did not go overboard. The things they gave were very simple and inexpensive but more importantly, they gave lots of love and attention which is better than everything else. Thanks for stopping by to visit my A2Z iPad Art Sketch of a big-eyed OWL.
Thank you for visiting my blog Kimberley.
Memory books and experiences sound like the kind of presents that will live on in the grandchildren's memories even when they're all grown up.
Three of my grandchildren are so over gifted by the other set of grandparents it gets embarrassing. The girls are appreciative of everything they get but they treat most things as disposable because they know a birthday or a weekend with Grandma can replace anything. It is funny because my budget is so much smaller yet the girls and I have so much fun together. They know they can stay with me anytime and we shop and laugh and enjoy each others company. I guess it is just a different way of grandparenting.
In the long run, your Grands will remember the time they spent and the fun they had with you. I've talked to my grown boys about what they remember from their childhood. It wasn't the "things", it was the time we went camping and watched the full moon and the raccoons, or when Daddy let them cover themselves in mud when he was doing messy work outdoors. They probably won't remember each gift. Your investment will reap the best return.
I love this!! When my first grandbaby was born, I did the overboard thing. My daughter had a good sitdown with me. I don't do it anymore!
Too much stuff is so overwhelming for kids.
Now, we take them to the park, or use the year passes to the Children's Museum, that my ex bought them.
Visiting places together is more likely to make memories for the long term. I think you're on the right track, Melinda!
I do love giving my grands gifts, but they are not expensive. My grandson is just as happy with bubbles from dollar tree as he is with an over-priced toy from someplace else. He loves my cooking and that what he asks me for.


United Way of Henderson County hosts Days of Caring, The Durham Rescue Mission needs Easter Baskets, The North Carolina Community Foundation awards $25,000 in disaster relief, and more.
NCPIRG Education Fund hosts "No Bees, No Thanksgiving" on November 14th featuring NC Senator Mike Woodward, GSK and Triangle Community Foundation grant ten local nonprofit organizations $40,000, Google to hold two free training programs on their suite of tools for nonprofits on November 30th, and more.
WakeEd Partnership's second annual Trivia Challenge to be held in April, Triangle Art Works and ArtsNC partner up for a workshop, 2015 Fundraiser of the year will present at the AFP-NC Triad March meeting, MetLife commits to a $65,000 Platinum Hammer, and more.
Marbles receives gift from Duke Energy Foundation; SECU Foundation opens Crystal Coast Hospice House; Miraclefeet names new director of programs; Greenhill Center rebrands; AFP chapters call for award nominations, and more.


· Fully compatible with the Garrett ACE 150 & 250 models and with the flip of a switch is compatible with the GTP 1350 and selected GTAX models specifically the GTAX 550, 750 & 1250. (NOTE: Early GTAX models including the GTAX 350, 400, 500 & 1000 are not compatible due to a different "center pin" connector used.! The YF-1 is precision built to ensure peak performance.
· Accurate "bulls eye" pinpointing on coin size targets up to 3" + deep depending on detector used, settings, ground and moisture conditions!
· New compact, Light weight, waterproof/submersible 6" X 1" diameter probe mounts on top of upper shaft or along arm rest rod depending on model) for easy access. YF-1 probe and cable weigh approx. 5 oz. YF-1 switch box, connectors, cable and two probe clips, etc. weigh approx. 5oz. - 10 oz total!
· Installation requires no tools or modifications to the detector.
· High quality custom made, durable probe and connector cable used for precision performance. Probe incorporates a very flexible heavy duty custom 30" straight cable with strain relief for "tangle free" operation.
· "Mode" switch (see lower left photo) shuts off coil as it turns on probe and vise versa. Coil and probe are never on at the same time.
· New "Detector Selection Switch" (see lower right photo) allows you to switch between ACE series models and GTP/GTAX series models for proper Target ID and operation!
· YF-1 switch box is conveniently mounted on detector pole attachment in a neutral position (for both right and left hand users) and to prevent toggles from being accidentally switched or bumped by user or damaged by tree limbs, brush, etc. if switch box is brushed or hit during detecting.
· No external buzzers, vibrators or lights are needed as all target responses are heard clearly through your detector headphones!
· No extra batteries required as the YF-1 utilizes the detectors power source.
· Complete installation & operation instructions included.
No more Empty holes! No more scratched or damaged targets!
Experience a Sun Ray in-line probe on your detector and you'll wonder how you ever got along without it!!


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After assessing a 15 year old, I asked her what her goal was. she said, "to be pain free." It's sad a 15 year old has been in pain for over a year.
Weekly I'm in front of coaches, parents and athletes. As we're talking about training and programming, they're nodding their heads like, "I knew there was a better way." They often ask why isn't everyone doing this stuff?
It's sad how little has made its way to youth sports in the past 20 years regarding the physical preparation of our student athletes, especially with all the knowledge that's out there. As coaches connect the dots and more programs like the ones below gain traction, things will change.
At some point, coaches will focus more on the fundamentals of moving better and less on developing 12 year old superstars. When they do, they'll see kids get better…naturally. Coaches will see fewer injuries and a more durable athlete. They'll also see less burnout and continued participation.
There are some coaches and organizations that have been training like this for years, but they're the minority. Coaches I know personally that have made the shift have experienced what some would call amazing results year in year out.
As parents and coaches we have a choice — athletes, not so much because they do what coaches tell 'em to do. Let's make sure we're telling them to do the right stuff in the right amount at the right time so we can get (and keep) our athletes Strong and Durable.