text:
A. S. Kolendo
stories for adventurous readers
a short story
FOR VARVARA, SOCHI WOULD FOREVER remain the land of summer. Every vacation season, the city's population tripled as tourists flocked to its pebble beaches, palm trees, and crumbling piers. Her mother delivered milk every morning to the pensions along the shore, and the girl played soccer barefoot with the visitors' children. Then, in 1999, Varvara's mother, having fallen asleep on her route, crushed a pedestrian with her truck on a gravel road north of Mountain Air Beach.
The sentence was three years in prison. Varvara's grandfather lived in a small village in the Western Urals, and in March Varvara was told to buy warm boots and change to a bus at the train station in Perm.
After three thousand kilometers, she arrived to Kliukovka around midnight. She had been afraid she would not recognize her grandfather when he came to meet her and had squinted for hours on the train trying to remember his face. Yet except for her, the station was empty. The bus creaked and puffed as it drove away. She shivered. Within minutes of arriving, she inhaled a snowflake the size of a peony bloom. The cold gripped the bridge of her nose like a vise.
She waited for an hour before she walked west, toward the loud bass of techno. To her horror, she discovered Kliukovka had a dance club—a hut with lights flashing in the windows and a banner that said, DISCOTHEQUE! over the door. Around the entrance, next to the gray snow banks topped with ice shards, five boys her age stood and smoked.
"You know where Faim Ulyanich lives?" she asked.
"Why on earth do you want Faim Ulyanich? He won't keep you warm at night, honey," the tallest one said. He was slurring his words.
"He's my grandfather," Varvara said.
The boys hooted. "Kostia, did you hear that? The Snow Maiden is Faim Ulyanich's granddaughter!"
"It's a little early for New Year, Snow Maiden. Go back to the forest."
"The devil had progeny? Aren't there laws against that?"
"Nice knapsack!"
"Yeah, like a hump on a camel."
For three days, Varvara had been carrying all of her things in three bags. One was a green cotton alpinist sack her mother had sewn for her thirteenth birthday. The bag might have been patched and faded, but it was still Varvara's favorite. She had stuffed it with books she was reading to prepare for the entrance exams to the Kuban University back south the next summer. All of her friends would apply, and the Kub. U. alpinism team was the best. She started crying. Someone snorted. She turned and walked away.
"What, honey, can't take a joke?"
The music grew quieter as she got farther. Then she realized she was also hearing footsteps behind her. She turned around. One of the boys was following. He was close, only two or three steps behind.
"Help!" she yelled and ran. She felt his hands tugging on one of her bags. "Help!"
"Quiet, you," the boy whispered. He was short. Clumps of ice hung from three curls of black hair that protruded from underneath his cap. "You'll wake the whole village."
"Let go of my bag," she said.
"I'm just trying to help you carry it silly."
"Carry it straight to your house, you thief."
"Just let me—"
"I can manage."
"You have frozen snot on your face," he said.
She let go of the bag and wiped her nose with her sleeve. She decided he was short enough that, if she had to, she could take him.
"I'm Nikifor. Nikifor Uganov," he said. "Your grandfather's on the other side of the village. I'll take you."
"Won't your friends need you for their comedy troupe?"
"My friends are idiots. The village midwife dropped them on their heads. I was serious about the backpack though. Where'd you get it?"
"That was you?" she asked.
"Yes. I said 'nice knapsack.' Call the UN Human Rights Commission."
She stopped and set down her other bags, rubbing her shoulders. He picked up her luggage. "I have one I take to the mountains, but mine doesn't have nearly as many pockets."
"You climb?" she asked.
"You don't believe me?"
She shrugged. "I just think it's easier when you live somewhere with summer."
"Right. Summer."
"So you've heard of it?"
"Once, but it was a vile rumor."
Varvara laughed.
"You going to tell me your name?" he asked.
She sighed. "Varvara."
"Well, Varvarochka." He stopped and pointed to a house across the street. "That's your grandfather. And this is as close as I come."
"This is the other side?"
"It's a small village. You want to go for a walk with me tomorrow?"
"So you and your friends can make more juvenile jokes?"
"No, so that you and I can go skiing. You want to?"
"About as much as I want to lose a toe to frostbite," she said and took back her bags. She crossed the street. The snow crunched under her boots.
"Is it because I'm shorter?" he yelled. "'Cause I don't mind."
Varvara turned and waved, then closed the lattice gate behind her. The footpath to the izba was cleared, and she felt relieved not to have to wade through any more snow drifts. Yet all the lights were out. No one was waiting for her. She pounded on the wooden door. A few minutes later, she heard footsteps.
"Who's there?" a hoarse voice asked.
"Varvara," she said.
The door opened. A thin old man towered over her with a kerosene lamp. He wore a striped terrycloth robe and pilled wool slippers two sizes too large.
Varvara rushed in. "I thought you were meeting me at the bus station."
The man's toothless jaws moved, as if munching on something. "I didn't see you."
"Oh? It might have helped if you'd been there to look."
The old man squinted at her. "I was right. Your mother was a whore. Your skin's so dark I thought you were a gypsy."
"It's a tan," Varvara said.
"A tan. Sun. Rays. Melanin. Tan." To demonstrate, she removed a mitten and peeled a burnt patch of skin from her nose.
"There's pickled trout if you want it," the old man told her and blew out his candle. "You can sleep with me on the stove. I'll heat another room for you tomorrow."
In the dark, Varvara could hear him shuffling away. The snow covering her coat was beginning to melt and drip. Slowly, she followed. She'd always heard her mother say her entire family had slept on a single furnace during the winter. When she was little she had nightmares about being put to bed on the stovetop and boiled in her sleep. She discovered that the kiln was made of brick and that its surface was wide enough to fit three adults. The embers from the logs inside still glowed and crackled through the iron shutter. Varvara could see little else. She removed her coat and lay under a sheepskin blanket. By then, her grandfather was already snoring.
The rooster woke Varvara. Her grandfather was nowhere in sight, and she went to look around. Faim had built the izba himself, and the house had six rooms—large by village standards. Three contained furnaces, three others were heated through the common walls. Five were meticulously clean and shut. In the room used by Faim, there was a stove in the corner, a rug, some benches, a broom, a chest, and a table with two chairs and a tea kettle.
The house itself was built of basswood logs rabbeted together. From the outside, the corners looked like interlocked fingers. The yard was fenced in by pickets of birch, which seemed to Varvara to do little more than prop up the mounds of snow. By the front door, in the ice box next to a birch bench, she finally found the promised trout. She bit into a fish, ignoring its head. The eye glinted at her like a soap bubble. She shivered and went back inside.
Faim had fathered seven children. One died from cancer, two from cirrhosis of the liver, and one in a boating accident. Of the remaining three, two refused to speak to him, and one—the youngest, Varvara's mother—was in prison. All of their pictures hung above the table. Varvara studied them as she sucked on the fish.
Her grandfather reentered, stomping the snow off his boots in the anteroom. "I bought a box," he said. The container was made of recycled cedar, heavy and unfinished. Varvara thought that if she touched it, she'd have to pluck splinters out of her fingers for an hour.
Faim continued, "It's for your mother. We ought to send her a package."
Faim set a few dried fish on the table and wrapped them in an old newspaper. Then he shuffled over to the chest and rummaged through it for three pairs of gray wool socks. Varvara smiled and approached him as he started to stack the things in the box. Reaching behind her neck, she untied her necklace of Sochi sea shells and placed it on top of the trout.
Her grandfather looked in and took out the choker. "What's this?"
"Something to remind her of Sochi," Varvara said. "Maybe she'll look at it and feel like she's still in the sun, feel warm."
Faim slammed the shells into the table and ground a few of them with his thumb. "These are going to crumble in the box right over everything. They'll ruin it all." He rapped on Varvara's forehead with his knuckles. "Is there anything left in there, or did you have one too many heat strokes? Now, sit down and write your mother a letter."
Varvara sulked in her chair as Faim fetched paper and two pens. She looked through her knapsack for something else to send. She found photos. In one, Varvara and her mother were sitting cross-legged on the beach and eating shrimp. Her fingers orange from the spice, Alla was dangling a crustacean over her mouth. Varvara was pointing and laughing. She smiled and slid the photo back into her Herodotus book.
The train ride was bumpy and cold, she wrote. Grandfather's the abominable snowman. I'm going to start taking pictures and selling them to periodicals. She smiled to herself and decided she'd have fit right in among Tolstoy's aristocrats with her bons mots. When she finished, she folded the letter and tried to slide it into the box, but Faim intercepted her hand. "My dearest mamochka," he read out loud. "Good, good." But he soon fell silent and lowered himself onto a chair.
"I ought to whip you."
"That was private."
"I ought to crack that forehead of yours."
"It's also a joke. Did your sense of humor freeze off?"
He crumpled the letter. "You think your mother's life isn't hard enough without worrying about you?" Then he shuffled off to the chest again—slower, Varvara thought. She sighed and started over. The train ride was long. There's so much snow. Grandfather looks healthy. She went over to show Faim, but he wouldn't look. "Just put it in," he said.
Life in Kliukovka had changed little since its founding three hundred years earlier. The residents ate the food they grew or gathered in the summers and heated their homes with wood. Many had left for the cities. Only twelve students and one classroom remained in the village school. Only two places still hired. Nikifor's parents, the Uganovs, sold matreshkas and wooden spoons to stores in Yekaterinburg, where foreign businessmen bought souvenirs during their trips to Siberia for oil and gas deals. Faim's neighbors ran a store in their home. The collective farm went bankrupt after being privatized, and its tractors rusted in the empty fields, like dinosaur skeletons.
Faim lived on his pension, which was enough to pay for electricity, a gallon of pressurized gas for the range, four loaves of bread, two gallons of milk, and an occasional kielbasa. With Varvara there, he had to dispense with the sausage and buy more of everything else instead. He had made all the things he owned with his hands, except for the nugget of malachite he had found in the mountains. A few days after their fight, he showed Varvara where he kept the gem—wrapped in pantyhose at the bottom of the chest.
"Sell it when you need money for the coffin and the wake," he said.
Varvara did not answer. She did not make a single sarcastic remark that day because the old man had sniffed his dead wife's stockings as he talked.
Every day, Varvara walked to and from school. She still moved clumsily on the snow. The wind blew at, over, and under her, and no matter what she did, a stray flurry always wormed its way into her eye or mouth, or under her mitten, where it burned her the whole way. She skidded and fell and even lost a boot in a snowbank.
One afternoon, about a week after she arrived, she noticed Nikifor Uganov watching her from a hill as she stumbled home. In class, he sat a row over and said nothing, not even when the others teased her. Varvara had made no friends. The boys still remembered her crying at the discotheque. Varvara's chest was flat, her shoulders wide, her arms thick, and her thighs muscled. Dresses never flattered her, and she wore boys' jeans. She hadn't even spoken to the girls, who stalked through the school in mini skirts and fake eyelashes.
Just as she became aware that Nikifor was looking, she slid and fell, cursing. He ran to her and pulled her up.
"What happened to the skinny bully who walks you home?" she asked.
"You are welcome," he said. "And Kostia was drafted."
"I hope they send him to Chechnya."
He let go of her coat. "He's my brother."
"Why are you always so angry?"
She shrugged. "I haven't had the warmest of welcomes."
"You might try being friendlier."
"Oh, it's my fault?"
"For example. Come for a walk with me."
She told him no. She said never. Yet Nikifor would not give up. He would follow her every day and ask her to go to the movies if the truck with the projector was around. And though Varvara refused every time, she began noticing how well-made the young man was, how the fabric of his shirt stretched and tautened like the skin on a tambourine every time he turned or twisted. Once, she caught herself wanting to pluck an ice crystal out of the bristles of his rabbit fur collar. She wanted to slip it into her mouth in secret and suck it and taste it as it dissolved. But by then, Nikifor stopped asking and talked to her about mountains instead.
Faim noticed they were becoming friends. Over dinner of potatoes and more fish, which Varvara had oversalted and overfried, he said, "That boy I see skulking around you, Nikifor. He's not good news, Varvara. You stay away from him, you hear?"
"He's all right."
"All boys like that want from ugly girls like you is something they can get easy. At least until they start wanting a real skilled woman around the house for a wife. You keep away."
"No one in this village except for him has said a kind word to me because they all hate you, you old, shriveled wretch."
He pounded on the table. The dishes jumped. "You little snot! I marched two thousand kilometers to Moscow and then another two thousand to Berlin for you. In the winter. In just one sock! You'd all be speaking German if it weren't for me, you guttersnipes!" He rose. His face was red, but the knuckles of his fists were blanching.
Varvara ran outside without her coat and sat on the bench in front of the neighbors' house for an hour.
In the morning, the thaw began, but Varvara could not go out to look; she had pneumonia. After the doctor came and left antibiotics, she lay in her bed, which she preferred to the furnace, and listened to the ringing of the water drops on the metal top of the icebox. She wondered what it would be like to stand right under the roof and catch them with her tongue.
Her grandfather walked in around noon with a pine crate. It was squeaking. Her curiosity piqued, Varvara sat up.
"I thought you'd need something to do while I went hunting in the summer," Faim said. He set the box on the floor, reached into it, and lifted up a small bird. It was yellow, and it peeped as it pecked Faim's thumb with its rose beak. He brought it over to Varvara, and she petted it.
"There are a dozen in there," Faim said.
The gosling stepped out Faim's callused palm onto Varvara's blanket, squeaked and stumbled over her fingers, tickling her. It pecked at her wrist. She laughed, and, cupping it with her palms, rubbed its soft fuzz against her nose. It was May, and spring was finally coming. She would have freckles soon, she thought. She always looked prettier with freckles.
Two weeks later, Varvara woke feeling better and went outside to the bank of the Kama, where, after months of being caged in ice, the river resurged, roaring. Icebergs—racing, breaking, rumbling—floated southward. The snow was almost gone, and she galloped along the shore.
To the Volga! Varvara thought, her heart leaping, To the sea!
When she returned home, Nikifor was waiting in the common room with Faim. "There she is!" the boy exclaimed.
Glaring, Faim cleared his throat and left. Varvara sat down and elbowed Nikifor, who handed her a handmade get well card. "You're just in time," he said. "Faim Ulyanich just finished with the questions about my immunizations and medical records."
She opened the front flap and realized that Nikifor had gotten the teacher and all their schoolmates to sign. The word "camel" had been written only once and crossed out with a marker. She smiled. "Is this what took you two weeks?"
"I also brought you your homework. I knew you'd just die if you didn't get it."
"Now I know you've got to be after something."
He told her he needed a tutor for the entrance exams in July. The Army was worse than he had imagined, Kostia had written. The soldiers in the second year of their military obligation had kicked in his bunkmate's ribs. Another greenhorn was whipped with a leather belt because he stepped onto a floor board in the barracks the Army "grandfathers" had arbitrarily chosen as a no first-year zone. Nikifor would apply everywhere and anywhere to receive a draft deferment.
Varvara agreed to help. "Even though I have my own grandfather problem at home," she joked.
The June days were endless, the clear northern skies staying light until dawn. Varvara, Nikifor, and a dozen geese—all of them occasionally interrogated by Faim—spent the month together, in the forest. Every morning, she would rise with the first rooster to chase the birds out into the clearing where they feasted on baby grass. They would teeter from foot to foot, quack, peck at each other and at Varvara, and, in the afternoon, nap with their beaks tucked under their wings. She had a favorite—the small one—whom she fed bread crusts instead of barley.
Nikifor would join them after lunch and pretend to study. She brought him novels, choosing the ones with erotic scenes. She stopped him every hour to ask how far he'd gotten, and, as he approached the sexy parts, she'd ask him to read to her. Her head pillowed by moss, she listened as Pechorin seduced Bella and Ruslan waited keenly for his first night with Ludmila. She gave him A Thousand and One Nights and wondered if he had fallen in love with her yet. Like Scheherazade, she had plied him with stories.
At the end of July, Faim announced over breakfast that time had come to start slaughtering the geese. "I'll kill the lone gander tomorrow. He hasn't paired. There'll be no one to grieve."
Varvara was buttering her burnt toast. "But he's my favorite. I read Derrida to him."
"You ever see a goose grieve for its partner?" Faim asked. "It loses the will to live. Will put its neck right in a dog's jaws on its own. It'll break your heart to watch."
"Why do we have to kill them at all?"
"Be serious," Faim said. "We've got to send some food to your mother."
"Please?"
"And what are you going to eat in the winter?"
"I'll become a vegetarian!"
"A vegetarian! And you say you want to be treated like an adult."
That day, Nikifor tried to make her laugh. He juggled pine cones. He sang gibberish out of tune. Nothing worked. Then in the evening, after she fed the geese, the gander disappeared. How men underestimated beasts sometimes—the bird, whom Varvara had started calling Derrida, had sensed a threat and escaped. Her grandfather was unperturbed, and, despite her objections, killed another instead.
The next morning, she was sitting on her log and reading when Derrida stumbled up, quacking, with a red bow around his neck and a note. She opened the envelope. "Now will you come for a walk with me?" it said. She laughed and looked up to find Nikifor, squinting at her.
"You saved him!" she screamed.
He sauntered over. "Calm down. No need to have kittens."
"I could just kiss you."
"All right. If you want."
But her tongue was numb. Her feet and hands felt heavy, as if filled with lead. Everything about Nikifor was perfect. The crook of his nose was perfect. The scar on the left hill of his lip was perfect. Wanting to touch him felt perfect too. She was terrified of spoiling something. After a minute, Nikifor sat down next to her and, from inside her book, removed the photo of her and her mother on the beach. He twirled it between his fingers. "What did you love most about Sochi?"
She smiled. "Sochi kisses."
"Because they are just so different?"
"If you have a real Sochi kiss, it is. You kiss on the beach, and you're covered in sand, and your lips are salty and wet, and you touch—"
Nikifor smiled. "Have you ever had one?"
Varvara shook her head.
Nikifor rummaged through her lunch sack and found the match box with the salt. He dipped his fingers into it and smothered the crystals over Varvara's lips. "Don't know what we'll do for sand," he whispered.
She could smell apricots on his breath. "It's all right."
Then he kissed her.
Faim's goose holocaust continued. He killed one every Saturday and expected Varvara to help with the plucking. The down sidled into her eyes, and, unlike the chickens her mother had bought, the geese were still warm when she tore off their feathers. At least Derrida, safe in the Uganovs' barn, was exempt.
Her grandfather hated her whining. "When I was your age, I lay in a wet trench for three months for the Fatherland and didn't complain a peep!"
"Was it because otherwise they'd starve you?"
"And there were bullets!" The grandfather drew his finger through the air and whistled.
Four dead geese and a mountain expedition later, in August, Nikifor went to Yekaterinburg to take his exams. He failed. He scored high on math but low on composition. After he told her, he sat on her bed as she paced across her room, reading the essay he'd written in response to the prompt "Some historians claim that Russia's God-intended destiny is to save our civilization. Discuss." He wrote ten pages and used no commas. When she pointed this out, he sighed and kissed her. His hands swept over her breasts.
"My grandfather will kill you," she whispered.
He chuckled. "Better than Chechnya."
That evening, after Faim had fallen asleep, Varvara grabbed an armful of blankets and went to meet Nikifor at the clearing. She watched him from the shadows of the trees. He had started a fire and was fiddling with the pack of condoms he'd brought from the city as she'd asked. He stretched the latex with his hands, seeing how far he could pull it. It snapped, and Varvara chuckled. He turned and smiled.
They undressed each other. Their mouths grazed and their fingers wandered. He was Varvara's first lover, and when he was halfway inside her, she yelped. He froze, moving neither forward nor back, whispering, "Did I hurt you?" His palms rested on the ground next to her shoulders as he held himself above her, and his arms were trembling—either from desire or from the effort, she could not tell. Grabbing his buttocks, she pulled him inward. "Aah," she sighed, and he kissed her neck.
Afterwards, as they lay beneath a camel-hair blanket, she said, "I feel like a witch. Sneaking out to the forest to be naked with you."
He chuckled. "All you need is a broom."
"Well, I know where to find the handle." She reached for his sex.
The first snow fell early, in October, but this time Nikifor, a true northman, showed Varvara how to winter. They went sledding. They skied. They sculpted obscene snowmen at night and skated across the Kama. They climbed trees and broke icicles off the tin shingles of the roofs. Varvara learned to love the pink fuzz of the snow at dawn, as Pouchkine wrote she should. She loved that, when she cracked the surface of a puddle with her boots, the ice crackled like a crème brûlée.
Meanwhile, the Uganovs exhausted their options. They could not afford a medical or a psychological diagnosis that would get Nikifor a deferment. No university had accepted him, and Nikifor's War Commission summons was served in December. He was to appear at the training center by January 20.
"How nice. They gave me some time to sober up after the holidays," he said. But his voice trembled, and no one found the joke funny.
On Orthodox Christmas Eve, January 6, his parents went to mass and Varvara sneaked into his bedroom. As they made love, the squealing of the mattress springs and Varvara's single moan melded into the choir of carolers singing outside. They laughed about it afterwards and Varvara was still smiling when he asked, "Why don't we get married?"
"Seriously. I bet your grandfather's a funny drunk."
Varvara laughed. "Mmhm. Tempting. But then what?"
"We live together. Have babies. Grow old."
"Nikifor, I am sixteen!"
"So? Ma got married around then."
"You want to tell me what this is really about?"
Nikifor sighed. "Kostia wrote that a guy who was drafted with him got turned into a woman."
Varvara arched her eyebrow. "I'm sure having to wear a skirt's bad—"
"No, Varia. They cut his balls off. He's their woman." Nikifor smoothed a wisp of hair from Varvara's forehead. "I can get an extension if we get married."
She cupped his cheek with her hand. "Nikifor," she mumbled.
"I love you, Varia."
"What's a few months going to do?"
"I can get three years if we have a baby. And I'll never have to go if we have two."
It seemed to Varvara that the blood in her veins froze. "A baby?"
"We can live with Ma for now. I've already asked."
"I'm moving back south in the fall, Nikifor."
"Only if you get into a university. And I didn't."
"You jerk."
"You realize you might be killing me right now?"
"You manipulative ass! Get out!" She pulled the blanket off him.
"Technically, this being my place—"
She started crying. "Why did you have to ruin everything again?"
"I just want to get married," he whispered and started kissing her. She reached for his lips. There were dozens of things she wanted to believe but could not. She grimaced, as if she'd tasted curdled milk, then bit his nose, grabbed her clothes, and, still naked, ran out the door.
The next few days, Varvara stayed home and sat in front of the oven, poking the coals and watching the wood burn through the open shutter. She waited for Nikifor to apologize, but he did not come. He did not visit the next day or the day after. Faim gloated. "These boys are like dandelions now. Blow and they're gone. What did I tell you?"
But Varvara didn't answer, and after a while her grandfather stopped.
A week passed before, in the middle of the night, she realized she had forgotten about Derrida. He was still with Nikifor. Varvara threw a coat over her nightgown and snuck out. The door of the Uganovs' barn creaked and their cow bellowed at her from its stall. Shushing the animal, she petted its muzzle. She did not see Derrida anywhere and gabbled to summon him. He did not come. She called louder. Perhaps he was in the Uganovs' chicken coop, where he slept sometimes because it kept the smaller birds calm. She tiptoed into the picketed promenade and flinched as the ground, covered with a layer of snow and chicken droppings, squished underneath her boots. The door of the henhouse was padlocked.
Varvara returned to ask about Derrida in the morning, wearing a ruby pendant and some blush. She found Kostia and Nikifor home alone, eating inside the izba. Kostia, she had heard, had been wounded in the left buttock during a firefight in Chechnya and had been discharged. The men rose when they saw her walk in.
She nodded instead of saying hello. Her mouth was dry. "When are you leaving?"
"Next Monday," Nikifor said and brought his right hand from the table to his mouth. He was eating a wing. Varvara froze. She watched as he, seeming unconscious of her gaze, gnawed on the meat. It was the fried wing of a bird. She wanted to bite his fat-glossed lip. She wanted to bite him until he bled.
"You murderer," she said. She had not moved.
He looked up at her in surprise.
"You killed him. You killed Derrida. I came to get him from the barn, but he wasn't there."
Nikifor looked at his hand, then at Varvara. He smiled. "Better me than your grandfather. He's tasty." He bit into the flesh so forcefully that the meat spurted juice, dotting his cheek.
Varvara bolted and ran home. On the way, she stopped to uproot a colony of snowdrops with the toes of her boots. Nikifor had brought her a bouquet of them once. The flowers' blossoms faced downwards because of the weight of the melting snow, and, as they toppled, turned up towards the sky. Then she crushed their stems with her steel-tipped toes and stomped them into the ground.
Varvara did not speak to Nikifor again before he left. He did not write. She began watching Mexican soap operas, calling it her hour of comic relief. Faim's neighbors bought two cell phones and no longer had to walk to the post office like the other Kliukovkians to make calls. From then on, they shoveled snow and weeded with their behinds thrust up toward the sun and mobiles nestled between their shoulders and their ears.
Varvara blamed Nikifor most for forcing her to start paying attention to people. She'd spent six months getting used to thinking about him and anticipating everything he wanted. Paying attention had become a habit, and now that he no longer consumed her every thought, she found herself noticing things about others. She noticed that her teacher wanted to be left alone with the principal, that the mailman's coat needed a new lining, and that in the mornings, Faim needed a drink—his voice was hoarse. She offered the mailman hot tea and filled Faim's tin mug with water before he even said a word.
One day, her grandfather had entered the common room of the izba and started bathing his feet in a bucket as she studied on the bench. Faim's breeches were rolled up to his knees, and for the first time Varvara noticed that his soles were scarred and scaly. She went to the oven and put in a kettle. When it boiled, she offered it to Faim. "More hot water, Grandpa?"
"Hmm," he said and chewed on his cheeks.
She poured some into the bucket and handed him a towel.
He looked at it. "Stop being so lazy, Varia. Go fetch me a clean one."
"What, are you blind? That's just a pattern."
A week later, Kostia came to visit with a snowgoose on a leash. He yanked it behind him, and the bird's neck jolted forward. It gaggled loudly to protest.
"We were eating chicken," Kostia told Varvara. "He'd hidden the goose in the henhouse so that you'd come and talk to him rather than sneak your pet out in the middle of the night."
Varvara hugged Derrida, who was impossibly fat now, almost unable to move, and the gander pecked at her ear lobe, as if angry. "How is he?"
"As you can see, alive and obese."
"I meant Nikifor."
"Oh. He charmed some Arctic Fleet major into letting him become a sailor. Thank god Chechnya's land-locked."
Varvara laughed and nodded.
"The grandfathers took away his warm coat his first day on the ship, of course. That, and someone beat his nose to a pulp, so he may no longer be quite as pretty."
Varvara looked away from Kostia, kissing her goose on the beak.
"He tried to kill the bird after you called him a murderer, by the way. Just for your information, you don't get to start calling us names until after Chechnya."
"You called me a camel," Varvara said.
"Did I?" Kostia asked.
"Yes. On my first day here."
He nodded. "Sounds like me. Nikifor got a butcher knife and everything. Caught the fat bastard and held him between his knees, but he just couldn't cut its neck. He said he could hear the heart beating. Said he'd never heard anyone's but yours before."
He waited for Varvara to answer, but she felt stubborn. Eventually, Kostia saluted, turned on his heels and, with small penguin-like steps, marched out the door.
Snows melted. Icebergs calved. Winds shook the glass in the windows of her grandfather's izba, and naked branches of the linden trees scratched it. Derrida became a changed bird. He turned lazy. It took him half an hour just to amble from his shed to the lattice gate of Faim's yard, and yet he still managed to run away every other day. Inevitably, she found him in Nikifor's barn, honking at her through the small vent in his orange beak. He bathed in puddles of mud, and she shuddered at the thought of washing him.
In May, thunderstorms tore the shutters off Varvara's windows. Soon the sunsets merged with dawns. The days were interminable. Spring and summer seemed to Varvara to be seasons of violence. They burned, melted, and transfigured everything. She had no curtains to shut out the light, and she lay awake missing the previous winter.
She reminded Faim to fix her windows for three days before he finally tried. As he started hammering the first nail into the rotted wood of the frame, he slipped in the mud and fell on his back. He lay in the muck for hours before Varvara returned from school and heard him calling and cursing everyone he could name. No bones were broken, but he'd bruised his back and thighs and needed weeks of bed rest. He could not eat unless Varvara cooked and served him his meal, and he lashed out at her with furor.
"When are you going to learn how to cook properly? There's too much salt."
She did not blame him. She too was angry because she needed someone.
Soon after, she wrote to the University of Perm for information on the entrance exams. She could make it back to Kliukovka in less than a day if her grandfather ever fell again. And, though she was afraid to admit it, she knew she wrote to them because in another year and a half Nikifor would return.
One day at the end of June, after Faim had recovered, she finally asked. "Grandpa?"
He looked up from his newspaper.
"When we send a package to Ma next Monday, can we send one to Nikifor as well?"
He smirked. "Ay. The girl's lost. That bad, eh?"
"Like a goose with its neck in the mouth of a bulldog," she said.
"Well, suit yourself. But all we've got is your beloved gander."
Varvara nodded. "C-could you? I'll can the meat Sunday."
The grandfather rose. "You stay inside, Varia. Put another kettle in."
"No, I'll help."
They dressed and went into the yard where she picked up Derrida. He was heavy and pecked at a strand of her hair with his beak, quacking in recognition. His webbed feet teetered on her hand, nipping her skin. She carried him to where the grandfather waited on a bench with a small axe. She set the bird down, bent his neck over an oak stump, and cupped the head with her palms so the goose would not see. Still, through the tips of her fingers, she could feel his pulse quickening. Glimmering, the axe came down.
Weeks passed without a word from Nikifor. Preparing for another winter, Faim went hunting and fishing for days at a time. Dirty, hungry, and mean, he'd return once in a while to sleep, then leave again. Varvara was alone. She wrote to her mother, but not too often—if Alla received letters daily, she would worry about why.
Then the mailman brought something with a military stamp. The paper sheet, folded into a soldier's triangle, served as its own envelope, and at first Varvara could not understand how to get inside. Her fingers trembled.
"Varvara," Nikifor wrote, "so far, no one's tried to rape me. You didn't ask, but I knew, you'd be worried. Personally, I'm hurt. It makes me feel unpretty.
My ship's captain's promised vacations to anyone, who kills ten rats, and I'm up to seven. I can hear them, scurrying in the walls, the varmints, so, there's plenty more, I just have to get them, all, before October, because otherwise we'll freeze solid, in the water, and have to wait weeks for the icebreaker to pull around. But I'll manage. I'm persistent, as you well know.
Wherever you decide to apply, be it Yekaterinburg, be it Sochi, or be it the South Pole, is all kittens by me. I've been to one end of the geography, and I'm ready and willing to go to any other.
Thank your grandfather for the socks. You didn't say they were from him. But I figured.
Nikifor.
PS: I hope you don't miss that goose more than you miss me. It was tasty."
Varvara reread the letter a dozen times, went outside, and sprinted downstream along the bank. She hopped over the gnarled roots of the linden trees. She felt that her heart was beating faster than it should. She felt as strong as the river, carrying the riches of the North down into the Caspian Sea.
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This short story first appeared in Best New American Voices 2009. All rights reserved. Please feel free to quote an excerpt, link, print, and distribute, but do not republish without permission.
Photo credit: Russia. Moscow Region. Ramensky area, Winter pine wood, lake Kratovskoe area, by Aleks G. Used under a creative commons license. Available at Wikimedia.
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text:
{% extends "layouts/layout_dwp.html" %}

{% block page_title %}
  Listing to-dos - DWP design patterns
{% endblock %}

{% block content %}

        Back

          Draft

        Listing to-dos

       Standard pattern

       Use this when:

           a list of things need to be done

           each thing is assigned to a single user

           each thing links to thing that needs to be done

           completed things are stored and viewed elsewhere

       Research notes

       People found the layout easy to use and interact with, especially on mobile. It is important you use verbs for the to-do label so people clearly know what to expect. Whilst people positively responded to doing the to-dos in any order, most naturally completed them top to bottom, so it's important to order them logically for your service. If a to-do can be part-completed, an indication of progress is a must.

      {% include "includes/todo-standard.html" %}

      Alternative pattern

      Use this when:

          a list of things need to be done in a single view by multiple users

          each thing is assigned to one or multiple users

          each thing needs to have supporting content

          each thing needs to be completed by a specific date

          completed things are stored and viewed elsewhere

      {% include "includes/todo-alternative.html" %}

{% endblock %}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Look the best design that match and good ideas that suggested to you, for inspiration and informational about you search, We hope you can find what you need here. We always effort to show a picture with HD resolution or at least with perfect images. Landscape Ideas can be beneficial inspiration for those who seek an image according specific categories, you can find it in this site. You can also look for some pictures that related to Marvelous Landscape Ideas For North Florida Landscaping Front Yard by scroll down to collection on below this picture.


RECIFE, Brazil — Davi Roriz Alves de Carvalho, aged 4, rested his head on his mother's lap, his eyes glazed and mouth slightly open. His mother, Rossandra Débora de Sà, looked down, stroked his hair tenderly and smiled.
"There is a moment of pain, of despair; that is normal," she said, referring to when she discovered her son had microcephaly, a condition where babies are born with unusually small heads and often have associated brain damage.
The family lives in Pernambuco state in Brazil's northeast, at the center of the current crisis over microcephaly. More than a quarter of the 404 confirmed and 3,670 suspected cases identified by officials in Brazil since October are here. Health officials believe the cases are linked to the spread of the tropical Zika virus, leading the World Health Organization to declare a global emergency this week.
Hundreds of mothers are now confronting the diagnosis, which can cause seizures as well as problems with vision, hearing, speech and movement. Davi and his family, though, have long been grappling with his condition. (About 150 cases were recorded in Brazil each year until the current crisis).
The failings of Brazil's public health service — which officials here admit is unable to provide patients with sufficient doctors, equipment and infrastructure — are felt acutely by families of children with microcephaly, who typically need intensive physiotherapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy. Those are rarely, if ever, available.
"We are far from providing the high quality healthcare that Brazilians deserve," said Dr. Jailson Correia, health secretary of the state capital Recife. Even most private health plans favored by the middle class here offer only limited coverage.
There was no indication of Davi's microcephaly, which was caused by the infection toxoplasmosis, before he was born by cesarean on Aug. 15 2011.
Today, Davi cannot yet walk, talk or eat solid foods. Sà, a dentist, and her husband, Cleitson Antônio Alves de Carvalho, a businessman, pay R$5,000 ($1,292) a month for physiotherapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy, which they say is crucial to his development.
Like most people of means, they have private health insurance on top of the state-supported health plan. But their private insurance pays for only a third of Davi's therapy sessions, which he attends six times a week. In their town of Salgueiro, in the interior of Pernambuco state, the public health service would only pay for one treatment every two months, they say. The family sends Davi to a private school and has also paid for their home and the school to be adapted to his needs, with specialist chairs and baths.
The greatest challenge, though, is prejudice. Other families sometimes prevent their children from playing with Davi out of a suspicion that his microcephaly is contagious, his parents say. If there is a silver lining to the outbreak, Sà hopes it will be a heightened understanding of microcephaly.
Dressed in a red flowered shirt and pink plastic watch with her hair in a ponytail, Camila Maria dos Santos Barreto, 26, giggled as her father prompted her to speak.
Born with a head within the normal range, she was not diagnosed with microcephaly until a year after her birth. Hers is a relatively mild case; she can walk and talk and uses a mobile phone to stay in touch with her parents and friends. But she is unsteady on her feet, cannot read and is likely to remain dependent.
"She understands everything," her father, Nivaldo Barreto da Silva, said proudly.
But the family, who live in a small rental apartment on the outskirts of the state capital, Recife, have struggled to afford the doctors, therapy and swimming lessons she needs. They say the public health service offered nothing towards these costs.
"We labored day and night," said her mother, Arineuma Ilma dos Santos Barreto, who worked as an accountant during the day and made cakes to sell at night. Her husband frequently had to travel as part of his job with a restaurant company.
Their efforts paid for up to four therapy sessions a week, which they believe were crucial in Camila learning to walk. Now, as an adult, she still studies at the nonprofit Association of Parents and Friends of Exceptional Children, where they do not pay fees and her parents fought for years to get her a place. Her father is now building a home close to the school so she can attend more easily.
"She adores children," her mother said, adding that her daughter enjoys films such as 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' and playing with her 1-year-old German shepherd called Rex. She washes the dishes, sweeps the house, makes her bed and answers the phone. Someday, she'd like a boyfriend.
At times her condition upsets her. "I would read to her in the morning," her mother said. "And sometimes when I wasn't there she would pick the book up and cry." Her parents still hope she will eventually learn to read.


National Association of Sporting Rifle and Pistol Clubs.
To be held at Radisson Blu Hotel, Athlone, Co. Westmeath at 3pm, Sunday January 29th.
This resolution is proposed by the Committee of the NASRPC.
One third (⅓) of the members of the Association are required to attend, for the meeting to be declared quorate.
A two thirds (⅔) majority, of the votes cast, is required to carry an alteration to the constitution.
On the motion duly submitted, each Member Club shall be entitled to cast one (1) vote.
Voting shall be by a show of voting cards, one of which will be issued to each attending association member, at registration.
In the event of a tie – the Association Chairperson shall have the casting vote.
As you will all have been aware there was a lot of turmoil within the NASRPC in 2015.
Voting procedures at EGM and AGM.
Clarity of affiliation and affiliation fee due dates.
Disaffiliation process for members of the association.
NASRPC sought legal advice as to what changes were required and it was determined that the existing constitution was not fit for purpose, as there were so many errors, omissions and contradictions within it, and that a new constitution was required.
The NASRPC Committee formed a sub-committee to rewrite the constitution, taking into account best practices among other National Governing Bodies and sports bodies.
We also enshrined the concept of "the Governing Body" within the constitution.
Once this was drafted, we again sought legal advice, correcting any problems that were highlighted.
This is the document before you.
We feel that this is a far clearer document, which solves all of the problems highlighted with the previous one. It has far less room for interpretation and will therefore provide clarity in any instance where it is required.
We respectfully request that you adopt this as your constitution.
Any alterations that may be required, shall be dealt with, by normal procedure, at the coming Annual General Meeting.


We like busy work. It's always at least a little bit less painful than the task we know we should be doing. At the same time, we feel at least a little productive.
Cleaning behind the fridge is normally less than inspiring, but it doesn't sound half-bad when the other option is doing your taxes.
It's important to be aware of when you're avoiding your real work for busy work. You'll actually be happier if you make the most of your time each day, and you will be able to safe time to focus on other things such as your health and wellness.
It gives the false impression that you're being productive. We can feel pretty good about doing busy work. We're active and feel like we're accomplishing something. No one can say that cleaning out your desk drawers is a completely useless activity.
However, it's not a pressing activity. It's probably not the absolute best use of your time at that moment.
Busy work gives the illusion that you're productive, but it doesn't make the boss happy or pay the bills. It doesn't make progress toward your goals.
It's a form of procrastination. When engaged in busy work, you aren't being completely useless, but you're avoiding your real work nonetheless. Recognize that busy work is just a way to procrastinate in a way that seems justified.
You're failing to do what's meaningful. Ultimately, busy work prevents real progress from happening. You might be active, but you're not effective.
Using your time wisely is the key to success and progress.
Plan your day. This shouldn't take long. Five minutes is plenty. You can choose whether you do this in the evening or first thing in the morning. Make a list of high-priority items that need to be done before the end of the day.
There are many apps available that will allow you to create a schedule and set reminders. You'll always know what's on your schedule, even if you'd like to forget.
Pick out the three most important items. Ensure that you're using intelligent criteria for choosing these items. These should be items that will move the needle, not just be items that feel good to do. In fact, the most important items will often be the least appealing.
Busy work is about avoiding discomfort. Choose your tasks based on usefulness, not on how enjoyable they seem to be. Average people plan their lives around comfort. Avoid being average.
Get started early. Avoid waiting as long as you can to get started working. Create a little momentum and use that to carry you through the day. If you have a productive morning, the rest of the day will be productive, too.
Before beginning any task, ask yourself, "Is this the best use of my time at this moment?" Asking that question and allowing yourself to be guided by the answer is the solution to avoiding busy work. It can be that simple.
Busy work will waste your time and keep the achievement of your goals off in the distant future. Take control of your day by keeping busy work at bay. You already know what you should be doing. The key is just doing it.


Before we understand the concept of SSL, let us first learn what a "Secure Communication" means. Suppose there exists two communicating parties: Say A(client) and B (server).
So, the bottom line is, whenever you perform an online transaction such asCredit card payment, Bank login or Email login always ensure that you have a secure communication. A secure communication is a must in these situations.


The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is easy to use and generally requires little configuration once it is set up. Many network devices support it and many parameters can be monitored with it. So to help cover all of your monitoring needs, PRTG provides you with around 70 SNMP sensors. These sensors range from monitoring general parameters to very specific parameters. Choosing the right sensor for SNMP monitoring that gives you the desired hardware parameters is a decision that depends on several factors: the type of hardware you have, what values you want to monitor, and a few others.
Make sure that each device you want to monitor supports SNMP, and that it is enabled. You can find out whether a device supports SNMP by either going to the vendor's website or checking that it is enabled in the configuration of the device.
If you are uncertain whether SNMP is enabled on the target device and works, we recommend that you try our SNMP Tester, designed for just this purpose. You can scan for uptime to perform a basic check for SNMP availability of the target device.
Enable SNMP on the device.
Allow access to SNMP for the machine running PRTG Network Monitor in the device's security settings.
Allow User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packages to travel from the machine running PRTG to the device you want to monitor and back.
SNMP requires the use of UDP ports >1023 to the PRTG client side. This is important for your firewall settings.
Ensure that the firmware of the monitored device is up to date.
Select the appropriate SNMP protocol.
It is important to know which SNMP version you have to select, because if it is not supported by the server or device you want to monitor, you will receive an error message.
PRTG offers many vendor specific SNMP sensors for some common vendors. These sensors have been tailored to fit the end devices perfectly. Many years of experience allow us to work around familiar vendor implementation errors, for example if SNMP has not been fully implemented on an end device according to the RFCs. In this case, our vendor specific sensors still automatically receive the most important values with little to no effort on your part (looking for Object Identifiers (OIDs), for example). These sensors take care of everything for you.
For more information, see this article in our Knowledge Base: What SNMP Sensors does PRTG offer?
PRTG offers several generic sensors that work with practically any device that supports SNMP, the corresponding Management Information Base (MIB) and Object Identifiers (OIDs), and correctly implements the according RFCs. The standard SNMP libraries of PRTG include predefined, common values for the generic SNMP sensors so that you can easily get started with monitoring via SNMP. You can monitor the following parameters with the generic sensors.
The SNMP CPU Load sensor monitors the system load using Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).
It shows the load of several CPUs in percent.
The SNMP System Uptime sensor monitors the time a device is running via Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).
It reads the system uptime value of the monitored device and shows it.
PRTG also offers several operating system-based SNMP sensors that extend your SNMP monitoring. You can monitor the following parameters with these sensors.
The SNMP Linux Load Average sensor monitors the system load average of a Linux/Unix system using Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).
For your more individual needs, PRTG offers custom SNMP sensors. The monitoring capabilities of these sensors go beyond the scope of the generic sensors. The custom sensors allow you to show certain values that are not included in the standard libraries of PRTG. With these sensor types, you can monitor most devices that support SNMP and that PRTG does not have native sensor types for. Basically, you just need to find out the required Object Identifiers (OIDs) for your desired device readings, for example, in the vendor's documentation of your hardware device.
For more details, see the Knowledge Base: How do I find out which OID I need for an SNMP Custom sensor?
The SNMP Custom sensor monitors a single parameter that is returned by a specific Object Identifier (OID) using Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).
This sensor shows a single numerical value (int64) for a given OID. Each OID always refers to a specific parameter of a certain SNMP device.
Delta (counter): PRTG calculates the difference between the previous and the current value.
See this video tutorial SNMP Custom and Library Sensor on our website for more information.
This sensor monitors very similarly to the regular SNMP Custom sensor, with the advantage of being able to poll up to 10 specific OIDs with a single sensor. For each OID you will be able to define a name, OID, expected type, and the unit to be displayed. The possible value types are the same as with the SNMP Custom sensor.
Hexadecimal-encoded strings can also be decoded as MAC addresses or IP addresses. The sensor can check for keywords via plain text or regular expression or you can use a regular expression to extract a numerical value from the string that can be evaluated later for additional alerts.
See section Number Extraction with Regular Expression for an example.
The SNMP Custom String Lookup sensor monitors a string that a specific Object Identifier (OID) returns via Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). It can map the string directly to a sensor status by using a defined lookup file. Basically, this sensor type does a "reverse lookup". You have to define all potential return strings in the lookup file as text values, each in one lookup entry. Graphs and data tables show the value to which the string is mapped, usually an integer (lookup type SingleInt). See manual section SNMP Custom String Lookup Sensor—Example.
This sensor shows a retrieved string value and its status, as defined in the corresponding lookup file.
Vendors use tables when there are multiple instances of the same object (for example, memory, disks). The sensor recognizes a table via a meta-scan and allows you to configure the indexes (interfaces) that you want to monitor.
For more details, see the Knowledge Base: What can I monitor with the SNMP Custom Table Sensor?
The SNMP Library sensor uses a compiled Management Information Base (MIB) library file to create sensors that monitor a device via Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). This approach provides custom monitoring beyond the standard SNMP sensors of PRTG.
The content of the MIB file will determine which data types are available for monitoring. When you create the sensor, it will provide a list of counters that came back from the target device based on checking every Object Identifier (OID) in the MIB. From this list, you can choose what you want to monitor.
The SNMP Library sensor is not actually a sensor type and will not appear as running sensor. It is a sensor that uses the meta-scan facility of the PRTG probe to find or match OIDs from an MIB and eases the creation of custom sensors, because you do not have to enter the OIDs manually.
To monitor SNMP capable devices and add sensors using the SNMP Library sensor, download the manufacturer's MIB files for the target device, convert the MIB file to the Paessler oidlib format, and import it into PRTG. To make setting up your monitoring as convenient as possible, PRTG comes with pre-compiled oidlib library files that already contain the OIDs of SNMP counters for the most common devices in a network.
For more details, see the Knowledge Base: How do SNMP, MIBs and OIDs work?
The following files are included in PRTG and are ready to use with the SNMP Library sensor. These allow the extension of your SNMP monitoring to many devices. Please be aware that not all devices and/or parameters may be supported by the libraries.
Can be used to monitor uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) from APC American Power Conversion Corp.
Can be used to monitor alarm status, communication status, humidity, and temperature as shown by an APC sensor station.
Can be used to monitor basic system parameters on Linux systems, such as memory, disk and swap, CPU, etc.
Can be used to monitor Cisco specific parameters, for example, the number of present network interfaces on a system, several states of an interface (admin, oper, speed, type, errors, discards, etc.), and more.
Can be used to monitor queues on a Cisco interface, for example, queue depth and its maximum, discarded messages from the queue, the number of the queue within the queue set, etc.
Can be used to monitor Dell storage devices. Possible parameters include disk arrays, battery and power supply, fan and temperature, virtual disk, etc.
Can be used to monitor the hardware of Dell systems. Possible parameters include ACPower and battery, alerts, base board, Bios, BMC, chassis, COO, cooling, event log, firmware, IDE, keyboard, memory, port, network, processor, SCSI, system, temperature, USB, UUID, etc.
Can be used to monitor toner, paper, and jam status of an HP LaserJet printer.
Can be used to monitor different aspects of Linux systems.
This file may detect a very large number of interfaces. It may take a few seconds until the selection table is shown.
Can be used to monitor many common hardware devices. It is used for several sensors and is encrypted.
Can be used to monitor logical disks, processor, memory, and network interface on Windows systems.
Knowledge Base: How can I import my MIB files into PRTG?
Knowledge Base: Can't find a sensor for my device in PRTG but I believe it supports SNMP. How to proceed?


text:
News - March 2020 RSS Feed
Confirmation Announcement
We look forward to the celebration of Confirmation in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite at the hands of Bishop Francisco Gonzalez Saturday June 6 at 10am. Candidates for Confirmation in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite should contact Fr. De Rosa in preparation for the sacrament.
The Knights of Columbus @ Saint Mary's
We are investigating starting a Knights of Columbus council at St. Mary's. If you would like to join today simply go to KofC.org/joinus and enter our Parish name for local info. More information to come about starting our council here at St. Marys. Contact Julius Jackson: jackson@dcknights.org
Annunciation Mass Facebook Livestream
Annunciation March 25 EF Missa Solemnis 7:30pm to be live streamed and recorded professionally The mass will have music by Chantry as part of supporting voxcorona.com a gofundme effort by the church musicians of DC all fo whom are out of work and who's ministry we so need in Christian ministry Mass Booklet PDF can be found here: https://ec-prod-sites.s3.amazonaws.com/17611/documents/2020/3/Annunciation%20Mass%20livestream%20Mass%20Booklet%20Annunciation%20-%20texts%20and%20translations%202.pdf
TO BE RESCHEDULED 3/19 Happy hour
Our Feast Day happy hour will be rescheduled for a later date.
Join us for Stations of The Cross every Wednesday at 6 PM (after 5:30PM Adoration) and Friday after the 12:00PM Mass.
Coffee Hour at Saint Mary's
Join us for some coffee and donuts in the Parish Hall after the 9:00am Mass on Sundays. See you there!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Order Documents - Southview Property Management Inc. Order Documents - Southview Property Management Inc.
Please fill out the correct Request and return to Southview Property Management Inc. for processing.
All Requests can be submitted directly to our Administrator at Southview Property Management Forms Department.


I was in debt for years and once I started reading your books, I was able to save and invest more in my 401k that I now rolled over to a roth IRA. I have a savings account for my kids, so they could learn how to save. My fiance is investing into stocks and his 401k plan more. We have made this program a family project for our future and plus the children's future. Thank You.


text:
class ExtensionDialog;
class Profile;

namespace content {
class RenderViewHost;
class WebContents;
}

namespace ui {
struct SelectedFileInfo;
class SelectFilePolicy;
}

// Shows a dialog box for selecting a file or a folder, using the
// file manager extension implementation.
class SelectFileDialogExtension
    : public ui::SelectFileDialog,
      public ExtensionDialogObserver {
 public:
  // Opaque ID type for identifying the tab spawned each dialog, unique for
  // every WebContents or every Android task ID.
  typedef std::string RoutingID;

  static const int kAndroidTaskIdNone = -1;

  static SelectFileDialogExtension* Create(
      ui::SelectFileDialog::Listener* listener,
      std::unique_ptr<ui::SelectFilePolicy> policy);

  // BaseShellDialog implementation.
  bool IsRunning(gfx::NativeWindow owner_window) const override;
  void ListenerDestroyed() override;

  // ExtensionDialog::Observer implementation.
  void ExtensionDialogClosing(ExtensionDialog* dialog) override;
  void ExtensionTerminated(ExtensionDialog* dialog) override;

  // Routes callback to appropriate SelectFileDialog::Listener based on the
  // owning |web_contents|.
  static void OnFileSelected(RoutingID routing_id,
                             const ui::SelectedFileInfo& file,
                             int index);
  static void OnMultiFilesSelected(
      RoutingID routing_id,
      const std::vector<ui::SelectedFileInfo>& files);
  static void OnFileSelectionCanceled(RoutingID routing_id);

  // For testing, so we can inject JavaScript into the contained view.
  content::RenderViewHost* GetRenderViewHost();

  // Call SelectFile with params specific to Chrome OS file manager.
  // |owner_android_task_id| is the Android task ID of the owner window if the
  //     owner is Android, or kAndroidTaskIdNone if the owner is browser.
  // |show_android_picker_apps| determines whether to show Android picker apps
  //     in the select file dialog.
  void SelectFileWithFileManagerParams(
      Type type,
      const base::string16& title,
      const base::FilePath& default_path,
      const FileTypeInfo* file_types,
      int file_type_index,
      const base::FilePath::StringType& default_extension,
      gfx::NativeWindow owning_window,
      void* params,
      int owner_android_task_id,
      bool show_android_picker_apps);

 protected:
  // SelectFileDialog implementation.
  void SelectFileImpl(Type type,
                      const base::string16& title,
                      const base::FilePath& default_path,
                      const FileTypeInfo* file_types,
                      int file_type_index,
                      const base::FilePath::StringType& default_extension,
                      gfx::NativeWindow owning_window,
                      void* params) override;

 private:
  friend class BaseSelectFileDialogExtensionBrowserTest;
  friend class SelectFileDialogExtensionTest;
  friend class SelectFileDialogExtensionTestFactory;

  // Object is ref-counted, use Create().
  explicit SelectFileDialogExtension(
      SelectFileDialog::Listener* listener,
      std::unique_ptr<ui::SelectFilePolicy> policy);
  ~SelectFileDialogExtension() override;

  // Invokes the appropriate file selection callback on our listener.
  void NotifyListener();

  // Adds this to the list of pending dialogs, used for testing.
  void AddPending(RoutingID routing_id);

  // Check if the list of pending dialogs contains dialog for |routing_id|.
  static bool PendingExists(RoutingID routing_id);

  // Returns true if the dialog has multiple file type choices.
  bool HasMultipleFileTypeChoicesImpl() override;

  // Returns true if |extension_dialog_| is resizable; the dialog must be
  // non-null at the time of this call.
  bool IsResizeable() const;

  bool has_multiple_file_type_choices_;

  // Host for the extension that implements this dialog.
  scoped_refptr<ExtensionDialog> extension_dialog_;

  // ID of the tab that spawned this dialog, used to route callbacks.
  RoutingID routing_id_;

  // Pointer to the profile the dialog is running in.
  Profile* profile_;

  // The window that created the dialog.
  gfx::NativeWindow owner_window_;

  // We defer the callback into SelectFileDialog::Listener until the window
  // closes, to match the semantics of file selection on Windows and Mac.
  // These are the data passed to the listener.
  enum SelectionType {
    CANCEL = 0,
    SINGLE_FILE,
    MULTIPLE_FILES
  };
  SelectionType selection_type_;
  std::vector<ui::SelectedFileInfo> selection_files_;
  int selection_index_;
  void* params_;

  DISALLOW_COPY_AND_ASSIGN(SelectFileDialogExtension);
};

#endif  // CHROME_BROWSER_UI_VIEWS_SELECT_FILE_DIALOG_EXTENSION_H_


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Audizine Forums > Main Model-Line Discussion > B5 A4 > I'm loosing it!
View Full Version : I'm loosing it!
Hey guys. I've got a 2001.5 A4 with minimal heat. At idle it blows cool air ( I live in Buffalo ) and at around 3000 rpms it gets warmer. So far I've replaced the water pump and flushed and burped the heater core. The blend doors are working and there are no codes in the climate control unit. I haven't touched the thermostat because once it warms up the gauge stays right in the middle. Any help would be great because I really like my car and don't want to bail on it!
try the temp sensor and the thermostat..
if under load it is getting hot, that means that there is enough pressure from the water pump spinning faster to get coolant moving through the heater core.
maybe try flushing again? when you flushed, did you hookup the feed hose to the return of the heater core(sending water through it backwards the intended way)? any junk come out?
When we flushed it it flowed great and no junk came out. After bleeding the system I had great heat for about 2 weeks and now I'm back to luke warm at best.
I should mention that I work at a VW/Audi dealership. The right coolant was definatly used.
seems like you somehow got air in the system again???
bleed again, use new clamps to ensure no air is getting sucked in?
Well interesting developments, if you pinch off the line that goes to the oil cooler the car has great heat.


Abstract: Microsoft has released version 2.0 of the Windows Installer runtime files and the Windows Installer SDK. Besides support for Windows XP and 64 bit applications, this version includes bug fixes and introduces useful operating system properties, e.g. to detect whether setup is running on NT Workstation or Server, or an XP Professional or Home Edition. It also significantly simplifies updates by eliminating the need for complicated ADDLOCAL and REINSTALL constructs, and no longer requires a reboot after installing the runtime files. The good news is that you can benefit from these improvements in your existing projects. Some modifications in your authoring tool may be required to install the new runtime files. As a result of the improvements and fixes in MSI 2.0 you may find that your setups and patches behave differently than they used to or even fail. Even if you don't include MSI 2.0 in your own setup, the new version may already be present on the target machine, so you should at least include MSI 2.0 in your testing scenario.
If you're like me you want to go ahead and play with the new version before getting into the theory. Be warned that installing the new SDK will update common files that InstallShield uses to build your releases. In order to keep your production machine in a known good state until you have fully explored the implications of MSI 2.0 you should use a test machine to play with the new SDK and runtime files.
Please note that the system requirements have changed for Windows NT which now requires Service Pack 6. For previous MSI versions Service Pack 3 was sufficient.
Both redistributable files are named Instmsi.exe. For use with InstallShield you should rename the Unicode version (for Windows NT/2000) to InstmsiW.exe, and the ANSI version (for Windows 95/98/ME) to InstmsiA.exe.
If you have downloaded the MSI 2.0 redistributables before September 25, 2001, you should redownload the version for Windows 9X. MSI 2.0 has first been published on August 28, 2001 with a version number of 2.0.2600.0. However this release has been withdrawn from the web site about three weeks later. On September 25 MSI 2.0 became available again, with a new version 2.0.2600.1 for Windows 9X. The Unicode version is not affected by this change. There is no official information about the reasons behind this, but rumors has it that problems were detected with Windows ME.
MSI 2.0 introduces a bunch of new properties. Many of them deal with the installation of .NET assemblies and 64 bit applications, such as the MsiNetAssemblySupport and System64Folder properties. To support these new technologies you have to use InstallShield Developer 7. But there are several other new properties that come in handy for "old fashioned" applications, too. These can be used to identify the exact type or "flavor" of Windows your setup is running on, without having to get this information from registry entries. The following table summarizes some of these new properties, together with the value of the VersionNT property.
Information about the Windows .NET server versions is subject to change, as they are still in beta.
MsiNTSuiteBackOffice will be set to 1 if Microsoft BackOffice components are installed.
MsiNTSuiteDataCenter will be set to 1 if Windows 2000 Datacenter Server is installed.
MsiNTSuiteSmallBusiness will be set to 1 if Microsoft Small Business Server is installed.
MsiNTSuiteSmallBusinessRestricted will be set to 1 if Microsoft Small Business Server is installed with restricted client license.
Combo box scroll bar: The drop down list now has a scroll bar if there are more items than can be displayed at one time.
Version comparison when applying a patch: This is now working as documented in the latest version of MSI help, which conflicts with the settings in many authoring tools. This will likely cause problems for existing patches - see below.
Other errors have not been fixed, like the MinVersion field in the AppSearch table not working as documented (the file version must be greater than the value you enter in the MinVersion field, not greater or equal as the MSI 2.0 help file says).
You can add components to existing features. While this seems to be a most basic thing, it was causing all kinds of strange behavior in previous versions of MSI.
You can add new sub features and make their selection state dependent on the selection of the parent feature, without having to use ADDLOCAL. You do this by setting the Required property of the feature to yes (this is the equivalent to the msidbFeatureAttributesUIDisallowAbsent flag in MSI help) and selecting Favor Parent from the Remote Installation settings.
For patches the effects of the Version Relationship setting have changed - actually it now works as intended. If you have created a patch that targets multiple older versions, and have accepted InstallShield's default of "New version >= previous version" it is likely to fail! Users have reported error 2768: "Transform in patch package is invalid" when they tried to apply such a patch. It is highly recommended to use "New version = previous version" instead. The wording in the patch wizard is misleading, actually the meaning is "Existing version = base version", where base version is the version that the patch targets. Suppose you have a patch that should update version 1.0.1 of your product to version 1.0.2, then the base version would be 1.0.1. This patch should only be applied to a system where version 1.0.1 is currently installed, not on higher versions. This is all very confusing, as it had been documented incorrectly in earlier versions of the Windows Installer SDK, and also never worked as documented until MSI 2.0.
Several other bugs in the patching process also have been fixed.
Prevent passwords and other confidential information from being written to the installer log file: Set the property MsiHiddenProperties to a list of property names to prevent their values from being dumped into the log file.
Get the user's security identifier: The UserSID property (which is not valid on Windows 9x systems) can even be retrieved in deferred execution custom actions.
Setup can detect whether it is being removed from control panel or by a major upgrade: When a major upgrade removes an existing product it sets the UPGRADINGPRODUCTCODE property.
Note: The initial release of MSI 2.0 was version 2.0.2600.0 for both Unicode and ANSI versions. However a problem was detected with the ANSI version, so it has been replaced with version 2.0.2600.1. The Unicode version is still at version 2.0.2600.0.
Version 2.0 of Instmsi.exe can be used to update the Windows Installer runtime files on Windows 2000 and Windows Me. Windows XP already comes with the latest files. Note that Service Pack 6 is required on Windows NT 4, while Service Pack 3 was sufficient for previous versions of Windows Installer.
InstallShield Developer 7.00 can update the Windows Installer runtime files on all operating systems (including Windows 2000), however as of this writing some modifications are required, as described below. InstallShield Developer 7.01 fully supports for MSI 2.0, so the below instractions do not apply.
Before you start with the modifications create backups of all affected files.
After you have downloaded the Instmsi.exe file for Windows NT/2000 and Windows 95/95/Me rename them to InstmsiW.exe and InstmsiA.exe respectively. Copy them to the redistributables folder that is normally located at [ProgramFilesFolder]\InstallShield\Developer\Redist\Language Independent\i386.
and change the string entry named "Msi Version" to "2.0.2600.1".
You should also adjust the error message that is displayed if this requirement is not met. In directory [ProgramFilesFolder]\InstallShield\Developer\Support\ you'll find INI files with error messages for each language, e.g. 0x409.ini for English messages. Open the file with a text editor and change string entry 1150 to indicate that service pack 6 is required on Windows NT 4.
If you apply this to the setup.ini template all your releases will suppress the Instmsi.exe reboot. Note that Microsoft suggests performing a reboot at the end of installation if it was suppressed during installation of the MSI engine. ISD 7.00 doesn't take care of this so you have to add a ScheduleReboot action yourself.
InstallShield - Windows Installer Edition 2.03 (IPWI) can be used to update the Windows Installer runtime files on Windows 2000, but requires that the setup.exe launcher be replaced with a special version. Note that suppressing the reboot after installing the MSI 2.0 runtime files is not supported by this Setup.exe.
After you have downloaded the Instmsi.exe file for Windows NT/2000 and Windows 95/95/Me rename them to InstmsiW.exe and InstmsiA.exe respectively. Copy them to the redistributables folder that is normally located at [ProgramFilesFolder]\InstallShield\Professional - Windows Installer Edition\Redist\Language Independent\i386.
Download the special Setup.exe from InstallShield knowledge base article Q105501. Copy it to the redistributables folder that is normally located at [ProgramFilesFolder]\InstallShield\Professional - Windows Installer Edition\Redist\Language Independent\i386.
Note that the new Setup.exe should not be used to distribute MSI 1.2, and cannot be used with previous versions of InstallShield for Windows Installer.
You should adjust the error message that is displayed if a system requirement is not met when setup starts. Open file [ProgramFilesFolder]\InstallShield\Professional - Windows Installer Edition\Support\Setup.ini with a text editor. You'll see sections with error messages for each language, e.g. [0x409] for English messages. Change string entry 1150 to indicate that service pack 6 is required on Windows NT 4.
InstallShield Express 3.51 (and 3.52 for the German Edition) can update the Windows Installer runtime files on all operating systems (including Windows 2000), however as of this writing some modifications are required, as described below. The next maintenance pack is expected to include support for MSI 2.0 without modifications.
After you have downloaded the Instmsi.exe file for Windows NT/2000 and Windows 95/95/Me rename them to InstmsiW.exe and InstmsiA.exe respectively. Copy them to the redistributables folder that is normally located at [ProgramFilesFolder]\InstallShield\InstallShield Express\Redist\Language Independent\i386.
You should also adjust the error message that is displayed if this requirement is not met. In directory [ProgramFilesFolder]\InstallShield\InstallShield Express\Support\ you'll find INI files with error messages for each language, e.g. 0x409.ini for English messages. Open the file with a text editor and change string entry 1150 to indicate that service pack 6 is required on Windows NT 4.
This step is optional. With MSI 2.0 you can postpone a reboot that may be required after installing the runtime files until after your setup has finished. The internal details are described below. InstallShield Express 3.51 has an option in the release properties called "Suppress MSI Engine Reboot" that you simply set to "Yes". Note that Microsoft suggests performing a reboot at the end of installation if it was suppressed during installation of the MSI engine. ISX 3.51 doesn't take care of this so you should add "Schedule Reboot at End" from the Custom Action Gallery.
InstallShield Express does not officially support updating the Windows Installer engine on Windows 2000. However Express 3.0 is internally somewhat similar to InstallShield - Windows Installer Editon 2.0, and users have reported that the method described above for InstallShield - Windows Installer Edition 2.0 also works for InstallShield Express 3.0, including the special Setup.exe from the knowledge base article.
If you are using a non Windows Installer based product like InstallShield Professional (Standard Edition) but need to install or update the MSI engine because you want to run a Windows Installer based setup as child install, you can use the following hints.
To detect the version of Windows Installer currently present on the machine you can check the version information of Msi.dll in the system directory (WINSYSDIR). To update Windows Installer run InstmsiW.exe on Windows NT/2000 or InstmsiA.exe on Windows 95/98/ME.
In the past in many cases it was required to reboot the computer after installing or updating the Windows Installer runtime files, before the actual setup could be launched. The reason is that the operating system has msi.dll running in memory so the Windows Installer files are not replaced until after the reboot. This usually is the case on systems with a shell version that includes the Windows desktop update, like Windows 98 and 2000, and Systems with IE4.01 SP1. For more information about this see Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q262974.
With Windows Installer 2.0 you can avoid this additional reboot. It has a command line option to suppress the reboot, and you can load and use the new version of msiexec.exe from the directory it has been installed to. To make this work the program launching Instmsi.exe must be aware of this and tell the main setup to reboot at the end if a required Instmsi reboot has been suppressed.
Both will suppress the reboot prompt, the second will perform a completely silent installation of Windows Installer 2.0.
Instmsi.exe will return ERROR_SUCCESS (0) if no reboot is required, or ERROR_SUCCESS_REBOOT_REQUIRED (3010) if a reboot is required but was suppressed. The bootstrapper must catch these return values and act accordingly, e.g. pass REBOOT=Force to the msi package if ERROR_SUCCESS_REBOOT_REQUIRED was returned. This will cause the setup to request a reboot at the end of installation.
Get the location of the newly installed Windows Installer runtime files. This directory is stored in a string value called InstallerLocation in registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer.
Change the current working directory to the location obtained in step 3 and launch Msiexec.exe from there. This way your setup will use the new runtime version even without a reboot. If the parent install calls the MsiInstallProduct API instead of running Msiexec.exe, it must load Msi.dll from the directory obtained in step 3.
Stefan Krueger is working as freelance setup consultant, offering support, custom programming and workshops independently from InstallShield Software Corporation. Besides his contract work, he answers questions in various newsgroups and maintains the InstallSite.org web site, a place where setup developers share resources and information among peers.


I am no movie reviewer and most of the time I don't generally talk about movies I have seen but I feel this one deserves a post. This is one of the best movies I have seen in some time, in fact, I really want to go back and see it again! I didn't realize it was a Martin Scorsese film until we were at the theater and the movie was very different from what I was expecting from the previews. I expected some crazy film effects and scary images and that's not exactly what I got. Instead, I was delighted to see a film that paid homage to one of my favorite film directors, Aflred Hitchcock. There were definite aspects in the way various scenes were filmed as well as the mode in which the story was told that was reflective of Hitchcocks signature style. Other aspects of the film that I truly enjoyed were the depth and colors in so many of the shots. I truly lost myself in this movie. I highly recommend you check it out!
I want to watch this movie so bad!!! Thanks for the review.
Let me know if you go see it. I'd like to know what you think!
I love Hitchcock thrillers! With all the crap we've been served these last few years, it's nice to hear that Shutter Island restores Hollywood's claim to great thrillers. Unfortunately, I heard from so people that it wasn't as good as they'd hoped or expected considering the director and great cast.


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Home»BSNL»TRAI Report Card July 2015: BSNL @ its Best, positioned within Top Five Operators in the Net Addition of Wireless Subscribers
By Tele Kerala (Chief Editor) October 3, 2015 Updated: August 30, 2021 No Comments4 Mins Read
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released the latest telecom subscription data as on 31st July 2015. State run operator, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has made a wonderful comeback in the net addition of wireless subscribers by gaining around 4.8 lakhs of subscribers on PAN India basis.
By this extra ordinary performance, BSNL positioned itself within the top five operators gained the maximum number of wireless subscribers in the month of July 2015. In the previous month i.e., in June 2015, BSNL lost around 2.7 lakhs of subscribers in the wireless segment.
This latest TRAI report clearly indicates that, the newly launched Free All India Roaming Scheme is getting the desired result. The mobile internet offers (3G/2G data offers) provided by BSNL is also the most economical and attractive in the current telecom market. Moreover, BSNL offers PAN India 3G service with Free Data Roaming including Delhi & Mumbai.
BSNL landline customers are offered with an additional benefit of Unlimited Free Night Calls to Any Network without any additional charges. It includes local as well as STD calls to numbers of any service provider in India.
As per this report, the number of broadband subscribers increased from 108.85 Million at the end of June 2015 to 111.325 million at the end of July 2015 with monthly growth rate of 4.10%.
BSNL holds the No.1 position in Landline segment with 60.77% market share. Airtel holds the No.1 position in Broadband segment (Wired + Wireless) position with 23.39% market share and Vodafone at second position with 20.04% market share as on 31st July 2015.
Top five service providers constituted 83.83% market
share of total broadband subscribers at the end of July 2015. These
service providers were Bharti Airtel (26.51 million), Vodafone (22.71 million), BSNL (18.43 million), Idea Cellular Ltd (17.43 million) and
Reliance Communications Group (9.93 million).
The total number of telephone subscribers in India
increased from 1006.96 million at the end of June 2015 to 1009.31 million at the end of July 2015, thereby showing a monthly growth
rate of 0.23%.
Total wireless subscriber base increased from 980.81 million at the end of June 2015 to 983.21 million at the end of July 2015, thereby registering a monthly growth rate of 0.25%.
As on 31st July, 2015, the private access service providers held 91.72% market share of the wireless subscribers whereas BSNL and MTNL, the two PSUs access service providers, held only 8.28% market share.
In Wired Broadband segment, BSNL holds the No.1 position with 9.92 million customers, followed by Bharati Airtel with 1.50 million customers.
Top Five Wired Broadband Service providers as on 31st July 2015
BSNL (9.92 million)
Bharti Airtel (1.50 million)
MTNL (1.13 million)
Atria Convergence Technologies (0.75 million)
YOU Broadband (0.47 million)
Top Five Wireless Broadband Service providers as on 31st July 2015
Bharti Airtel (25.01 million)
Vodafone (22.70 million)
Idea Cellular (17.42 million)
Reliance Communications (9.81 million)
Mobile Number Portability (MNP)
Inter-Service Area MNP has been implemented in the country w.e.f. 03-07-2015. Now, the wireless telephone subscribers can retain their mobile numbers when they relocate from one service area to another.
In the month of July 2015, a total of 3.98 million subscribers submitted their requests for MNP. Among these MNP requests, 0.21 million MNP requests were for Inter-Service Area MNP.
With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 163.93 million at the end of Jun 2015 to 167.91 million at the end of July 2015.
Dear readers, please share your views and thoughts about this latest TRAI report via comments with us.
Previous ArticleBSNL Mela Offers October 2015 & Consumer Week, Launches New 3G Data STVs and Full Talk Time Offers to Delight the Customers
Next Article BSNL Customers may activate Prepaid 3G/2G Annual Data Plans through Selfcare by sending SMS to 123
BSNL to begin Network Optimization in MTNL Areas
SIM Card (Mobile Connection) Not to be issued to Minors !
4 Mins ReadBy Tele Kerala (Chief Editor) September 24, 2021
TRAI Report July 2021 : BSNL creates history, added 5 lakh+ new fiber broadband connections
TRAI Report May 2021 : BSNL Bharat Fiber (FTTH) win customer hearts, added more than 11.29 lakh new connections
4 Mins ReadBy Tele Kerala (Chief Editor) July 29, 2021


Air is the most practical and economical oxidant to feed to the cathode in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). However, the air is accompanied by small amounts of impurities that affect the performance of the fuel cell. Among these, nitrogen dioxide is the impurity that has been least investigated, and its effect is not fully understood. In this study, a possible mechanism is proposed based on the contamination of the fuel cell at different concentrations and adsorption potentials, and by employing stripping cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The results at different concentrations showed that the catalyst sites are blocked by the adsorption of NO2, and that there is a non-linear relationship between the concentration and degradation. The degradation is suggested to be related to the formation of intermediate species, as also shown by the pseudo-inductive impedance at the concentration of 100 and 200 ppm. Furthermore, the cyclic voltammetry showed that there is an oxidation to NO3- at 1.05 V, followed by the reduction of this specie to NO2- at 0.68 V, and a subsequent reduction of NO2- to N2O and/or NH2OH.


Compiled By Deborah Austin Many U.S. employees -- including members of various minority ethnic groups -- believe corporate diversity programs benefit only blacks, suggests focus group and employee survey research by consulting firm J. Howard & Associates. In a recent J. Howard & Associates survey, 47% of whites, 50% of Asians and Native Americans, and 53% of Hispanics said they think a focus on diversity has helped "only some groups." "What we hear consistently in focus groups is that by 'only some groups' most employees mean African-Americans, and it's widely perceived that diversity efforts help just them," says President and CEO Mike Hyter. But black employees have their own criticisms. Only 37% (versus 62% of whites) believe their management's goals or actions show a real commitment to diversity. The plus side: 84% of black employees and 86% of whites say they understand the benefits of participating in a diverse workplace. J. Howard & Associates is a unit of Boston-based Provant Inc., provider of performance improvement training services and products.


What are you excited about doing this weekend?
Sabrina: "Going to Max's birthday party. And I want to go to the ballerina party, too."
It's not a party, sweetie, it's a ballet, The Nutcracker.
"I want to go to the ballerina show!"
We're going this afternoon, and I know you'll love it! So, how's kindergarten?
What's the best thing about kindergarten?
Sabrina: "I like playing outside and I like playing with my friends forever."
OK, I have a question I've been meaning to ask you.
How come you only wear like to wear short-sleeve shirts even when it's freezing outside?
Sabrina: "Well, actually, I'm wearing a jacket so you won't see them."
And, while we're on the topic, why do you pull dirty pants from the laundry?
Sabrina: "Because I don't I have enough pants!"
And what kind of clothes should I buy you?
Sabrina: "SongeBob SquarePants! Can I type that?"
Would you like to marry him?
Sabrina "Cause you can't marry a TV show!"
Kidding! So, who's your best friend?
Silly person, that's MAX's best friend.
Sabrina: "OK, Klara and Emma and Grace and Noa. Those are all the girls in my class. There are 10 boys!"
Do you like having a lot of boys around?
Sabrina: "I can play with all my fingers! And I like it when Joanne [Max's music therapist] plays SpongeBob and iCarly."
Are you sure you don't want to marry SpongeBob?
Sabrina: "No! He's not even real."
And how's your big-girl bed?
Sabrina: "I like it really much!"
Can Max hang out on it?
Sabrina: "Because I don't want him to be in my bed, so I don't go in his bed."
Do you share with Max?
What's your favorite thing to play with?
What do you love doing with Daddy?
Sabrina: "When we play tennis."
What's your favorite thing to color?
And who's your favorite Mommy?
That girl's got more clarity than a lot of adults I know.
She is so freaking ADORABLE!! What fun to have a clever little girl like Sabrina!!!
And will she LOVE that photo of the two of you in her dotage--there's nothing sweeter than a good mother-daughter picture and that one is flat-out great!
Yes, I like that photo. Yes, her personality is cute. Sweet? Er, wait till you hear how she behaved at Max's party.


Atomically thin 2D semiconductors have been drawing attention for their superior physical properties over silicon semiconductors; nevertheless, they are not the most appealing materials due to their structural instability and costly manufacturing process. To shed some light on these limitations, a KAIST research team suspended a 2D semiconductor on a dome-shaped nanostructure to produce a highly efficient semiconductor at a low cost.
2D semiconducting materials have emerged as alternatives for silicon-based semiconductors because of their inherent flexibility, high transparency, and excellent carrier transport properties, which are the important characteristics for flexible electronics.
Despite their outstanding physical and chemical properties, they are oversensitive to their environment due to their extremely thin nature. Hence, any irregularities in the supporting surface can affect the properties of 2D semiconductors and make it more difficult to produce reliable and well performing devices. In particular, it can result in serious degradation of charge-carrier mobility or light-emission yield.
To solve this problem, there have been continued efforts to fundamentally block the substrate effects. One way is to suspend a 2D semiconductor; however, this method will degrade mechanical durability due to the absence of a supporter underneath the 2D semiconducting materials.
Professor Yeon Sik Jung from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and his team came up with a new strategy based on the insertion of high-density topographic patterns as a nanogap-containing supporter between 2D materials and the substrate in order to mitigate their contact and to block the substrate-induced unwanted effects.
More than 90% of the dome-shaped supporter is simply an empty space because of its nanometer scale size. Placing a 2D semiconductor on this structure creates a similar effect to levitating the layer. Hence, this method secures the mechanical durability of the device while minimizing the undesired effects from the substrate. By applying this method to the 2D semiconductor, the charge-carrier mobility was more than doubled, showing a significant improvement of the performance of the 2D semiconductor.
Additionally, the team reduced the price of manufacturing the semiconductor. In general, constructing an ultra-fine dome structure on a surface generally involves costly equipment to create individual patterns on the surface. However, the team employed a method of self-assembling nanopatterns in which molecules assemble themselves to form a nanostructure. This method led to reducing production costs and showed good compatibility with conventional semiconductor manufacturing processes.
This research, led by PhD candidate Soomin Yim, was published in Nano Letters in April.


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title:  Rætur Eirðarleysisins
date:  10/07/2021
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### Lesefni vikunnar
Matt 10.34-39; Lúk 12.13-21; Fil 2.5-8; Lúk 22. 14-30; Matt 23.1-13.

>
Minnistexti

> "Því hvar sem ofsi og eigingirni er, þar er óstjórn og hvers kyns spilling" (Jak 3.16).

Espitré eru falleg tré sem verða um 15-30m há. Þau þrífast í köldu loftslagi þar sem sumrin eru svöl. Viðurinn er notaður í húsgögn en einnig í eldspýtur og pappír. Hjartardýr og önnur dýr nærast oft á ungum espitrjám í vetrarhörkum þar sem börkur þeirra er næringarríkur. Öspin þarfnast mikils sólarljóss og hún vex stöðugt, jafnvel yfir veturinn sem gerir hana mikilvæga fæðulind fyrir ýmis dýr.

En espitré eru þekktust fyrir þá staðreynd að þau hafaumfangsmesta rótakerfi í heimi plantnanna. Ræturnar dreifa sér með neðanjarðar rótarskotum sem mynda einskonar sambú sem getur breitt úr sér tiltölulega hratt og náð yfir stór svæði. Einstök espitré geta lifað allt að 150 ár en rótarkerfið neðanjarðar getur lifað þúsundir ára.

Þessa viku munum við finna sumar rætur eirðarleysis okkar. Það er svo margt sem getur hindrað okkur í að finna sanna hvíld í Jesú. Sumt er augljóst og við þurfum ekki af gefa því mikinn gaum. Annað liggur ekki endilega jafn mikið í augum uppi, eins og reyndin er með hina umfangsmiklu lífrænu eind asparinnar meðanjarðar ogvið gerum okkur ekki endilega alltaf grein fyrir ýmissi afstöðu og ýmsu atferli sem aðskilur okkur frá frelsara okkar.


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I think we can all agree that 2020 was…well…a unique year. And while it definitely wasn't what we expected, that doesn't mean it was all bad.
In 2020 we saw the return of forwards Austin Staats and Casey Jackson who started the 2019-20 campaign on the injured reserve list. We saw our captain Brodie Merrill take the crown as the National Lacrosse League's all-time loose ball leader when he scooped up his 2,518th loose ball on February 22nd. We also hosted the first-ever NLL game in Las Vegas (and walked away with a huge win over the Colorado Mammoth).
2020 encompassed the good, the great, the bad, the ugly, the funny and everything in between. From high's like a PPE donation to San Diego frontline workers and growing the game of lacrosse in San Diego to the low's like a global pandemic, getting the season cancelled and losing players in free agency, we continue to #DiveIn.
A new year brings new opportunities, and we are thrilled to see what 2021 has in store. Stay safe and healthy. Go Seals!
P.S. – Follow the 2020 Year in Review on Instagram & Twitter!