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Ashwin Madia: "Leading Outside Your Comfort Zone"
On January 15, 2014, Ashwin Madia spoke on Leading Outside Your Comfort Zone as part of the University of Minnesota Law School's Corporate Institute Leadership Foundations Program. Below is a video and transcript of his talk:
Hi, everybody. Thank you very much for having me here today. I just wanted to start off by saying a couple of words. I think the title of my talk today is leadership outside your comfort zone and so I'm going to share a little bit about some of the things I have learned over the last ten years or so since I graduated in law school. But what I want to make clear is that I am sharing them mainly because I think I am little bit older than most of you. I think most of you are 25, 26. You are still in law school so I have had some more experiences but I don't look at it as though I am in a position to give you advice or something like that. I look at it as we are all sort of in the same journey together and we all have stuff to learn from each other.
These are just some of my experiences and things that work for me. The other thing is when I talk about a lot of these things, it doesn't mean that I have necessarily achieved them or done them. So when I preach about certain things, these are things that I'm still trying to practice and strive for everyday too. You know what I mean? So it is like a constant struggle and constant journey and so when I talk about these things, these are things that worked for me, that I am striving for and that I think that might be helpful for other people to think about.
So a little bit about me. It was a really nice introduction. I went here to college. I moved out to New York for law school. After law school, I joined the Marine Corps. I did a year basic training in Virginia, went out to Japan where I was a defense lawyer for most of my time. It is kind of like being a public defender in the military.
Then I got sent out to Iraq. I worked on a rule of law mission out there so I was working with Iraqi judges and Iraqi lawyers trying to help build their legal system, came back here, worked at Robins for a year then had an opportunity to run for congress in my old district, won the democratic nomination but ended up coming up short in the general election and then spent about six months feeling sorry for myself and then I started the civil rights law firm a few years ago.
I think this is a leadership program that they're doing for you guys and what I wanted to say is as sort of preliminarily, I think it is such a great idea that they're doing this and I'll tell you why. Most lawyers, or many lawyers I should say, the path they go through is, they go through high school properly, they did really well, get good grades. Then they go through college, do really well, get good grades. Then come to law school, churn through and get good grades, get through law school and then they may go out to like a private law firm and become lawyers.
And the way that it works in a private law firm-I think you guys are thinking about your careers and all of that kind of stuff-the way it works is you start off as an associate and so you'll be doing kind of litigation work, or whatever, and just by virtue of your time in-so you start off and there is a secretary who is assigned to help you out. Then the longer that you're in that, maybe it's a three or four years, and you get a few associates to manage. Three or four more years and you'll be managing a team and then maybe they'll make you a partner and you'll manage even more people.
At no time have you really gotten any training on leadership or on management. You know what I mean? It's just sort of happening. So oftentimes you'll see law firms, or at least in my opinion, there's real management problems in terms of the way they deal with their subordinates, the way they deal with each other, or whatever it is, and it's because they never got any training on it. No one has ever gotten any real leadership training.
So I think that this seminar and this program, I told them this when we met for lunch a couple of months ago that I think it's a fantastic idea. I think that's really great that you guys took the initiative to be at something like this. You don't to be here but taking initiative to do it is going to serve you really well. The more opportunities like this that come along you should really take them because they will be so valuable to you and they'll really give you an edge on your peers and it will make it better for you just in your career for people you're leading as you go forward.
So, I wanted to talk about leading outside your comfort zone. So when we talk about leadership, what do you think of? If I ask you guys what are some traits you think of for a good leader, what would you say? You, right there with the the tie, what would you say is like a good leadership trait?
Man: Emotionally, a [0:08:22 inaudible].
Speaker: Yeah. Anybody else? How about you, ma'am?
Woman: One that involves two-way communication and not just the speaker that's speaking but someone who can also listen well.
Speaker: Right. Someone who is a good leader and can listen well. Yeah. Some more please. How about you, sir?
Man: Taking responsibility.
Speaker: Taking responsibility.
Man: Having the initiative to move forward. That's it.
Speaker: Yeah, taking the initiative to move forward. All right, one more. How about you, man?
Man: Having integrity.
Speaker: Integrity, absolutely. It is good for everybody, essential for leaders, right. And you?
Woman: Someone who has a vision.
Yeah, of course. What about if I ask you, in terms of what circumstances though — sometimes I think about when we are comfortable like this. You know, when we're in an area that we're familiar with and when we're kind of well- fed and we're well rested and we're healthy and we're around people we know, it's much easier to be a leader then, right? When you're comfortable doing whatever it is that you're doing then it is easier to be a leader.
And sometimes the leadership traits that I admire are when people, especially the ones that I admire, are people who in times of turbulence, that is when things around them really just suck, when everything is just blowing up, when money is not coming in, staff is quitting and unhappy, cases aren't going well, whatever the heck it is, when things are just blowing up all around, people then who have the ability to step up and to manage their emotions, control their emotions and still maintain some of those things we were just talking about, still maintain that vision, still maintain their integrity, still take responsibility for their team, still treat their subordinates properly, still has sense of tact, still maintain their bearing, that's leadership.
Some of the best leaders, at least that I admire — take someone like Abraham Lincoln. Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote a book on him a few years ago. It's so good. And one of the things that is described about him is that Lincoln, during the civil war, we think that, okay, so he had to deal with this civil war and he got this nation through it so what a great leader. Actually that's true but at the same time, he had all kinds of family problems like with his wife and his kid, like one of his sons died. He had problems within his cabinet. People are trying to take over his position, problems with the congress, problems internationally. Even within the military, like his own generals weren't listening to him — nothing went right for that man. For so long, for like a year and half, there was one thing after another. Everything was just going to pot and he just hung in there and he just with such grace and such persistence and such integrity. And now we look back at him as one of the greatest presidents in the history of our country.
So the point I'm making is that sometimes leadership, at least as I think of it, leaders can really sort of emerge in those tough, tough times. And so the question is how do we build those kinds of skills, how do we build our bearing. How do we build bearings so that no matter how much pressure is going on, no matter how much is going on around us or whatever, that we maintain our sense of calm and our ability to think through problems and to maintain our vision even in those circumstances. How do we build courage, both physical and moral courage, when things are just terrible, when people around us are freaking out. People freak out a little bit sometimes, right? At least in my school I found that that was real kind of herd mentality. Everyone is just always looking for what are people highlighting, who is still studying what, who's doing this and that, and people would go nuts about it.
So what I always thought about was in the grand scheme of history and the grand scheme of what is going on in this world, the things that we're doing, you know, taking a contracts exam, you know what I mean? If we can't maintain our calm here where we, I mean, that's not really strong on our part. You know what I am saying?
Well, I'll tell you a story. At my school, finals were so I guess cutthroat. We had these study carols within the library and so people would put their stuff there and study. And after studying for a few hours, they would leave to take a break and people would then throw their belongings on the floor so they can take that study carol. I mean it was really just crazy and bizarre behavior. I mean not the way we would treat anyone in any circumstance. But it just shows you that in times of pressure people can do things they ordinarily wouldn't do. But we can kind of use that.
What I would say is that maybe one way we can build our leadership skills is by throwing ourselves in situations that are unfamiliar to us and that where we might feel a lot of pressure where your heart starts beating and you start breathing really heavily and just that you are unfamiliar with. Maybe intentionally putting ourselves in the suck, for a lack of a better word for it, intentionally throwing ourselves in positions that we haven't been in that are unpleasant that don't feel good and then just learning how to deal with it because maybe every time we do that we sort of strengthen that muscle within us and we learn to be calm during the situation.
You know the Marine Corps is fantastic at this actually. The Marines have to see how officers are going to react and how they're going to lead people in very, very stressful times and they can't really shoot bullets at someone's head and see how they're going to react because that's not a very safe way of training. So instead they make people really hungry so that you're really tired then you're doing very unfamiliar things, you're leading people at night and then they would get a bunch of people to scream at you and give you a number of tasks that you can't possibly accomplish at the same time and just see how people react over days and weeks and then evaluate then that way.
And so that's one example of someone being put in a very unfamiliar circumstance and what happens. One of the reasons I joined the Marine Corps, in fact, is I don't see myself really as an athletic guy at all and it's my family — I think we are a pretty traditional Indian-American family. I have never been camping or either shot a weapon or held a weapon or anything like that, and so it was a very different sort of experience for me. And so like anything when you first get into it, you freak out. All those emotions are going through you like this isn't for me, all the visions of your buddies on Wall Street making a ton of money dancing in your head like what am I doing out here, right?
But then over time it just gets stronger, right? I mean, you realize that there is nothing that you cannot really handle in the moment. So as long as you just breathe, you're just there, that's okay, I'm going to figure this out. And once you've done it once — the best time you ever do anything in your life is always the second time you do something, I think, because the second time you have the experience, you have the knowledge, that muscle's been built. And then the more you do it the more you get more chill or more calm, that perspective.
I used to be very, very shy, incredibly shy like I could not talk to people. It just wasn't a muscle I built up. We have these comfort zones in life and some of them we build on our own and some others are sort of we accept. We don't really know where they come from. So the things we build on our own I think are, for example, people in this room are all pretty comfortable in an academic environment. Why everybody is here has some degree to do with academic success and taking tests. Otherwise you wouldn't be at a top law school. So we're all very comfortable in this environment. That's of our own making and that's awesome, right?
But then there's other sort of comfort zone things to come and we don't really know where they came from or how we got them. And those are the ones like well, you know, I would do that but that's just not for me. I'm just too shy to do that or I'm too skinny to do that. I'm not really athletic or I'm not really a dancer, whatever the heck it is, right? We just have these areas that we don't really want to venture out of, right? So you take me, I probably would never go to a club and start dancing because I would just feel self-conscious. I'm not a dancer. I feel self- conscious. People are looking at me, all that kind of stuff. Everybody has things like that in their life if you really think about it. Just areas that we don't want to venture outside of.
And for me, for a long time, I was just very, very shy. I was just very shy around other people. I wasn't good at talking to people, I didn't want to meet other people. And I just kind of thought okay, well, I'm just who I am. I'm probably good at school and I'll be, whatever. And then came law school and I got to the point where that's a very depressing way to live. Eventually you get to a point, my gosh, this is really making me sad. This isn't good. And then something just snaps, you know, I'm going to figure this thing out. And so I actually just went out. I was in New York at the time. It was kind of crazy. I would just go walk and started introducing myself to random people on the streets of New York like a madman. I just go up to like 10, 20, 50, 100 a day until that muscle just got built.
At first, it sucked, I mean, it was terrible. You can imagine someone who is just very, very afraid of talking to people going up to strangers and trying to make conversation with somebody you don't even know. Even in front of you guys, even for me now seems very easy to do it. At the time it was terrifying. But you just do it and do it. And then of course like any fear what happens once you do it five times your like, my god, is that what I was afraid of this whole time? Like there was nothing there. The whole thing was an illusion the whole time. Nothing bad can ever happen and I think that is true if you really examine most of our sort of imposed comfort zones, I think that they are just illusions like it's not real. There is nothing real to back it up. In fact, you can't even figure out where this stuff came from to get it in your head in the first place like lots of our thoughts.
If you really think about in life how many of your thoughts in your head are really your thoughts. How many are really original and belong to you and weren't put there by somebody either trying to sell you something or advertising it somewhere, or whatever it is, probably very, very few. So I would challenge you guys to really think about what you're uncomfortable doing and why. What limitations we place on ourselves and why? Where that stuff came from? Because I think most of the time these viruses just get in your mind and you didn't even know where they came from and so you really have to take an active effort to kind of get in there and rip them out. To me, the best way to do it is just to face it and go after it because as soon as you face it and do whatever the thing was, I mean, probably if I were to go to a club and I just started dancing-I mean, all right, clear out the club-but I probably realized that there was nothing to be afraid of in the first place. You feel silly for a few minutes but then its gone. And then that muscle is built.
The point I'm trying to make by all of this is when you do that you're not just building that particular skill, the skill of dancing or the skill of talking to people, whatever, that is true and you're definitely enriching your life in growing that way. But even more than that I think you are building that muscle of pushing through, of having the grit to push through discomfort which I think puts you ahead of 90% of people in the world. For me, that's where real leadership is, having the grit to push through discomfort and you do it with grace and humor and humility and you grow from it. And I think that we can build those skills every single day just by focusing on things that may make us uncomfortable.
To me, a great sort of test is just whenever you get that feeling in your gut where you are just like oh, like I just do not want to do that. Like, oh, geez, there's that general counsel of General Electric and I really should go talk to him. Oh, but you know, he likely already has a lawyer and what am I really going to say to him. Oh, like we're maggots. When you get that feeling right there, that is your body and your universe telling you, you got to do it, man. You just have to do it. That's like your sign that you just have to go do it because it's just an alarm that's helping you out. That is when you know.
So that's what I would say in daily life as you kind of go through these things are everywhere where you can just like probably every now and again you get that feeling. I mean, just whenever you see that or you feel that, go for it and if you're not getting that feeling, create that feeling. If you're not getting it, then find ways of creating it. Find ways of creating challenges for yourself where you can build that muscle.
All right. Kind of what goes hand in hand with this is then how you view failure and how you view success because that feeling it's being fed at least in some part by fear. Well, what if I go over and what if he says no, well, then I will be so embarrassed. It's that part of this feeling. It is just fear. It is fear of failing. That's the only thing that really keeps people back from doing a lot that they want in life. I mean, from the very simplest things like maybe approaching somebody that they like across a room to much more complex things like pursuing the biggest dreams that they have in their life.
It's just that fear of failure and I feel like law students and lawyers are particularly susceptible to it because maybe we've been successful at some things for so long in our lives, like I was saying earlier, probably everybody here has been very successful in academics for their whole life. Everyone your whole life has been telling you how smart you are and you're getting on the Dean's list and the honor roll, and boy, you got this scholarship. So you get these things and then pretty soon your ego gets tied into your identity as being a smart person, being a lawyer, being successful.
Conan O'Brien actually has a great sort of metaphor for this. He says eventually it becomes like this bright, white tuxedo that you're wearing, this bright, white tuxedo of success that you're just wearing everywhere and you're just so desperately afraid of getting it dirty or getting specks on it in any way. And I think that is why so many lawyers and law students for that matter like pursue this herd mentality. If I was to ask you guys, if I was to say how many of you guys are first year law students? All right. And then how many are second years? All right, so just a couple of second years. So the second years are the ones who go through early interview week and are looking for jobs and all that stuff. Is that right? Or is it first years that are doing that? You, ma'am, you're second year, right? Yes. All right. So, you guys just went through on- campus interview week and all that stuff?
Woman: We did that last August, yes.
Speaker: Got it, all right. So, if I were to say to you what are the jobs that most people in your class are seeking, what are the most sought after jobs, what would you tell me?
Woman: I would say the jobs from the biggest law firms.
Right. Probably Dorsey, Faegre, Robbins, and all that stuff, right? First years, would you probably agree with that? I mean, that's what everybody is gunning for. And I would say, well – and that's cool. But if I said why are those the most sought after jobs, it becomes this weird circular thing where people are like, well, those are the most competitive jobs. Yeah, I get that they are the most competitive, the most sought after but why? Why do you want that job? Have you talked to people who have those jobs who are really happy and really satisfied with their lives? Have you thought about what that life is and what you want. I don't know.
And I'm not saying that they are wrong to do it. I'm not saying that they're bad jobs. So don't misunderstand me. Absolutely, if that is what your passion is and if that is what you want to excel at, that's what you want to be great at and you thought it through, that's great. I'm just saying that maybe many people are doing it because everybody else is doing it and because if you get the job then automatically people know of your success.
If I said, yup, I am going to be an associate at Dorsey, people are like, "Holy cow, he must really have his stuff together. That guy is really smart." And do you know what that first year at Dorsey is thinking? It's just this whole herd mentality. I'm not saying that all people are basically like this. Please don't misunderstand. I'm just saying that oftentimes we can all get caught in this mentality where we are not really examining what it is we want for ourselves and why. I think that part of that is because we haven't pushed ourselves to do these different things where we got to think for ourselves in this very separate context. I think a lot of this stuff just gets implanted in our heads from sources we don't know.
Here is what I would tell you. Yes, you want practical advice on all this. So far it has been very kind of theoretical, I know. So let me give you some practical advice. The law students I've talked to that, you know, I get the chance to talk with these law students still from time to time and what everybody is telling me is that everyone is very, very concerned about jobs. You know, where are the jobs, what's the job search like, all that kind of stuff. All right. Here's what I would tell you. I would give you absolute, practical, 99% guaranteed advice on how to get a job if you want it. The thing is if you do this, I think it would be very hard not to get a job but I bet you probably 80% of people in here won't do it because it's outside of your comfort zone. All right, it is outside of most people's comfort zone I would say.
I think that the way that at least when I was on law school, the way they teach you to do your job search is that they have this format for a resume, this format for a cover letter and then they help you mail your cover letter and your resume off to everybody and hope that something comes back. What I would say is that the first step is figure out what you want to do. Figure out what kind of law specifically you want to practice, what would drive you and make you passionate everyday to get up and do. Like for me it is doing you civil rights law. I love it. And I can't believe that I get paid to do this. It's so fun for me to try cases against big corporations.
There is nothing wrong with this but maybe it is working for Fortune 100 companies. Maybe it is saying, you know what, there is Wal-Mart. They make a lot of awesome stuff in this world, they make a lot of jobs and they get sued a lot and they need a good lawyer. Maybe it is for small businesses. Maybe it is doing transactional. That's the first step. Figure out what you want to do, where you want to end up and what city you want to do it in.
Second, find 20 lawyers that are doing it right now. They are practicing it now and are doing it. So if you want to be a Fortune 100 company lawyer in Minneapolis, go online, do your research and make your inquiries. Find the 20 people in Minneapolis who are doing exactly what it is that you want to do, exactly what it is that you want to do. And then, smile and dial. Just pick up the phone and start calling people. That's it. And when you call them, you just say, hey, look, I was just looking online. I'm a law student here in the University of Minnesota. I was looking online. I saw your profile. I've read about you. You're doing exactly what I want to do. I want to sit down with you and learn exactly how you got there. Boom, that's it.
Take them out to coffee. Take them out lunch. Do that 20 times, do that 50 times. Once you start doing that then you will be making connections with people who are already doing stuff you're going to be doing. So one, they're going to know who you are. They're going to know what you're doing. You're going to know the steps that they took to get there and what they've done. You're going to be able to plan some things you want and just let the universe work. I'm telling you then let the magic happen. That is absolutely the way to do it.
Now why won't most people do it? Because it's hard. I'm telling you unless you got a background in sales or something, it is really hard to pick up the phone, call someone you've never met before, and say, hey, you know, here I am. You want to get coffee? It's tough. And there's going to be people like oh, who are you? I'm busy right now. Duh-duh-duh, yeah. Right? And whoa, so you're going to hang up the phone and I never want to do that again. That felt terrible. I just feel so vulnerable. I feel like I'm hanging myself out there I got to do 20 of these? I got to do 50 of these? Right. It's going to suck and that's why most people will not do it. But I promise you that the ones that do that stick with it, you'll be fighting off job offers.
And by the way, that is a good strategy not just for getting a job. It's a good strategy just for life. Wouldn't it be cool if you saw someone that you wanted to meet and that you wanted to talk to in any context if you just did it. If you see someone in the papers doing awesome stuff like, holy cow, that's awesome. Let me learn about it. Wouldn't that be a better way to live, more interesting and more rich and fuller experiences? And by the way, it doesn't just have to be with, whatever, superstars or all- stars, or people even if you don't have an agenda with that you want. Probably the lawyers that you're calling, you probably want to learn what they did to get there. You want to try to replicate it. Hopefully you want to make an impression on him so you can try and get a job.
But what if like you just have that mentality? What if you go on a challenge? Like starting today and you say everyday for the next 30 days, 30-day challenge, I'm going to talk to two people. I'm just going to make like a five- minute conversation with just two strangers randomly. And so what if and they can be the janitor outside, they can be your grocer, they can be one of your classmates you never talk to, they can be your professor. They can be anybody. And that is it. And there's no agenda to it. You're just going for the purpose of adding some positivity and adding some value in the universe. Just like talking to someone for their own sake.
Here's what going to happen. One, you got to learn some awesome stuff like there is really, really cool people in this world that because we're so busy and we got these blinders on that we miss a lot, we don't get a chance to talk. So you're going to learn some cool stuff.
Two, it'll put you in a better mood. I find when I'm talking to people it just makes you a little more chill, a little more cool or puts you in a better mood.
Three, you are putting positivity back in the universe so it's going to put that other person in a better mood and they're going to do their thing.
Four, how many of guys want to be trial lawyers in here like actually want to try cases, those kinds of lawyers? Just like five of you? Are you kidding me? This is a law school? See the only reason you are going to law school is to be a trial lawyer. All right, that's a joke. Well, for the five of you who want to be trial lawyers, this is going to make you awesome trial lawyers. What do you do as a trial lawyer? You talk to people. Your juries aren't the people sitting in this room. Your juries are the people who make up the rich fabric of our society. The best trial lawyers are the coolest people. You want to know how to tell a trial lawyer from a bad one? You never even need to see him in the court. You just see who is cool like who would I like to hang out with, who would I like to talk to. People like that are awesome trial lawyers. I'll tell you, I get calls, I deal with lawyers a lot. The ones that are barking at me like ah, we're going to do this to you, I'm like whatever. The ones that I fear are the ones who are like, Ash, what are you going to do to let me have this case? I got a wife and kids. I'm like if I like this guy, what the hell is the jury going to think of this guy? That's it. It's always the coolest people that are the best trial lawyers. And how do you get to be cool? Just by talking to people that you meet all the time. That's the fourth thing that's going to happen.
The fifth thing that's going to happen is what happens any time you put good energy in the universe. I know I'm sounding a bit new-age here. The universe will just spit it back at you like tenfold. I'll give you an example. I think I told you I lost my election and so after I lost, to add insult to injury, I looked down and I had like 15-pound gut that I just put on through the course of the campaign because you're not exercising and you're just grazing at these fund raisers are just terrible things. And during the campaign you're not thinking about it, but I look down, I was like holy cow, like this is even worse than I thought. Things really need to change and so I started just going to the gym and for a few months and trying to get back in shape and so while I was there some guy came up to me and he started telling me, he was like aren't you the guy on TV? I was like yeah, that is me. He was like you're not going to raise my taxes, aren't you? Damn it, I'm not raising your taxes. And so anyway, we just started talking a little bit. We had like a five to seven-minute conversation. I don't even remember what it was we were talking about and that was back in end of 2008, beginning 2009 timeframe. Just a conversation with somebody in the gym. Never heard from him or met him again, never thought of him again.
And then the beginning of last year, I get a call from someone and she says well, you know, we haven't been getting paid properly, not even getting overtime at my employer and it's not just me. It's a whole class of people. I looked into it a little further and it started out to be, I mean, [knocks on wood] it could turn into a class action case and could be the biggest case I'll handle in my career. I was like how did you find me? Like how did you call me? She's like oh, my husband had a conversation with you a few years ago at the gym. He comes in he is like yeah, I remember you. He was like you were really cool to me. You said you were a lawyer and you're out for the little guy and that's what I remember. And I was like wow.
That is just an example of like you don't know, like that's not a reason to do it. The reason to do it is for the other things I'm talking about. The other point I'm making is that when you do, amazing things sometimes come back to you and more even than that. You're just working that muscle. That muscle of just being outside your comfort zone and just working at getting better, getting stronger, getting cooler, getting more calm under pressure. Soon it just doesn't faze you. It just doesn't matter who walks in whether it's another law student, someone on the street or Michael Jordan, or whoever because that you've just done it so much that that muscle, that feeling doesn't really pop up as much.
I also want to talk to you about failures, that is what I'm going back to. It's changing the way we think of success and failure. I think that we think of them as opposites. We think of success on one hand and failure on the other hand. What I will tell you, at least in my opinion, is that they're not. They are companions. You can't have one without the other. You must have failure in order to have success. And so if you call someone, if you're doing this method I'm telling you, if you call someone and that if they tell you that to go pound sand, or if the first ten people tell you to go pound sand, then that's awesome. That's success's companion. You can't get to the person who says yeah, let's go sit down. Let me tell you how to try a case, let me tell you. You can't get to that person until you get through these first ten. Not just because of a game of numbers but because as you go on to these first 10, you're gaining the distinctions and the skill set that you need that makes you better for the next time. You know what I am saying?
Like Michael Jordan couldn't be Michael Jordan if he didn't give himself the freedom to fail. It's the freedom to fail that gives himself the freedom to succeed and be the best. It's the freedom to like miss the game winning shot that gives him the freedom to make the game winning shot. You know what I am saying? And he has just developed that muscle overtime so much it didn't even affect him at times. It got to a point where he was taking last second shots and everyone expected them to go in. Can you imagine how insane that is? You are expecting the most improbable last second shot under the most incredible pressure from this guy, everyone is expecting it to go in because he has just mastered that part of him so much, which comes back to one of the central lessons from all these is that the toughest battles are never outside of you. They're never with opposing counsel. They're never with the people you are talking to on the phone.
The toughest battles are always within you. You know what I mean? Whether it's being a leader, being a good lawyer, always conquering what is in here. It's conquering what you believe about yourself and the expectations you have for yourself. If you can fight that battle, in some ways that is awesome news and in some ways that is terrible news. It's awesome news because it means, alright, great, I don't need to worry about any of those external factors because it is all irrelevant. The only thing that matters is me controlling my mind. That's the only limitation on this. That's great news.
It's bad news because that's the toughest thing to control. You can spend a lifetime trying to just master. It is like an art. It is like study. It takes constant dedication and meditation and thinking, or whatever you're going at and working these muscles. I know that when I say these different exercises, you can do all that and it might seem kind of crazy or whatever but the only point of it is what I am trying to encourage you guys to do or what I say has worked well for me is trying to challenge yourself to develop that muscle that can take you outside your comfort zone so that your comfort zone keeps expanding and expanding and expanding because I think that that is going to make you a better leader because the more you have comfort zone then the more chill you're going to be, the more calm you are going to be, the better your bearing is going to be, the more you will be able to maintain true to your ideals, your integrity and your vision, to take responsibility for your team when you are not freaking out like everybody around you like everybody usually does.
When you think about what kind of society we live in and what time we live in now, you know, [knocks on wood] for the most part it's a time of plenty. Probably most people in this room, you know where you're going to eat tonight, and probably most people in this room you know that you got a roof over your head, and probably most people in this room have people who love you and probably most people in this room, we got pretty good health. Right. You have those things and you got a great education, you are going to a top law school. I mean, in the grand scheme of the world, we're all doing pretty well. I mean, we're all very, very lucky. We all have so much to be thankful for. But it's important to be thankful for it but not get soft because of it. There's nothing good or bad in life. Everything has a positive and a negative. All those things are positives that I just said but they can be made negatives if they make us soft and weak. One can get soft and weak and one can get spoiled through these things so that the smallest of problems, uptown problems become magnified. You know what I am saying?
So with our law school exams, we lose perspective. Or our cases, we lose perspective. You know what? Probably somewhere in Africa or Asia right now, there's some civil war going on and somebody has got real problems. There are warlords doing all kinds of things. There are people with severe health problems. These are all kinds of things in this world we don't need to worry about. So let us focus on getting harder a little bit everyday on pushing our comfort zone, on developing that muscle, becoming a little bit harder so that we can stay calm and become leaders as the people around us who are also kind of soft or when things hit the fan that we can sort of be a calming voice and show some clarity, show some direction, makes some decisions.
Okay. That's what I wanted to say. I got one last thing to say and then hopefully we'll have like a few minutes for questions or comments or a discussion. Just to kind of build off the last point I was making. I think that the last sort of thing from my perspective about leadership is the importance of gratitude and of thankfulness and of humility as we do this. One of the other things I think about being a lawyer, especially about being a lawyer, is the problem of ego like the influence that ego can have on everything. And ego will ruin you, man. I promise. It's a constant battle that we have to fight against. Ego, because we're so smart, we want to prove we're smart. We want the other person to know they are wrong and we want it and you just keep going. It will cloud your judgment, it will get in the way and so as much as you can-and this is something I struggle with a lot to try to keep it in check-trying to be humble and remember how much we have to be grateful for. In the grand scheme of things like how lucky are we that we get to be here right now talking about this stuff in this warm room and well-fed while talking about these things. We all get to be lawyers, right? We all get to go out and do what we want, work for some great companies or litigate, work for plaintiffs, be in air-conditioned rooms. I mean, so much we have to be thankful for. I think that's really important also as we talk about leadership and so remember that gratitude and humility and try to keep that ego in check. That would really help a lot.
So I know that was a lot. I just kind of spit out a lot of my thoughts over the last five or seven years but I really hope that someone has comments or questions about this stuff because I agree with you I think who said that part of leadership is having an on-going discussion, which I haven't done a great job of so far in this 40 minutes but hopefully in this last 10 minutes we can. So any questions or comments? Yes, Sir?
Man: So I'm curious. I imagine that starting your own firm you kind of feel that white tuxedo sort of metaphor. I've invested so much, I've gotten it off the ground. It is functioning. How do you balance and combat that tendency to not want to spoil it with the smallest stain kind of a thing?
What's good about it is that it's very humbling to start your own firm. So when I lost back in '08, I had taken a year off of work from Robins so I just lived off my savings and campaigned full time for a year. And so when I
lost I was broke and I really didn't have any money left. I moved back in with my parents for a while. It's funny in our society like it's really viewed as a sign of a failure. Do you know what I mean? Like, what a bum, he's moving with his parents, all that kind of stuff and that's how I really felt at the time to be honest with you. But it ended up being one of the best things that could have happened to me because I felt like I had been going so much since high school I hadn't really gotten the chance to know my parents as an adult. Do you know what I mean? To talk to them, and whatever, and no one in this world once loves you more than your mom or your parents. You get chance to get acquainted, or whatever.
But, look, that's kind of aside but the main point I was making is that it's very humbling, right? You start off — I didn't have any book of business or something like that. You are really just staring out the window and thinking what do I do now, or I got to get some clients in here. Then clients come in and you try to get their cases going and you mess things up and you're asking people, especially when your first getting going you just make a lot of mistakes and you're going up against – one of the blessings you have is you're going up against very large firms. You're going up against Faegre or Dorsey, or whatever, and you're going up against various experienced attorneys so it's a blessing because with that level of competition you learn very, very quickly. You know what I mean?
Your learning curve is just so fast and it also motivates you to be better to just bring it. I love it when I have those cases because it just motivates you to be that much better. But you lose. I mean, I lost some and you make stupid mistakes, and whatever, and so what's good about it is that it's like this journey where you're being humbled but you're gaining on it every day. I mean, they may be ahead of you but at the end of the day they're like this. Objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they appear. You just gain on every single day and then before you know it you're tapping them on the shoulders and saying hey, what's up now?
For me, the bright white tuxedo, it's just wasn't that much of an issue because at that point I had just lost. All my buddies went to work at kind of big New York firms and I just didn't want to do that. I wanted to go crawl in the mud and shoot machine guns and stuff like that so I joined the Marine Corps. So for me I don't think it was as much of an issue. But then now, you're right, then you start having some success and now I've been at it for four and a half years and start getting employees and start running big cases and start getting reputation. That's when you need to worry about it. For me, it's not so much of the bright, white tuxedo as it is ego that you should really have to keep in check. There's this temptation to think oh, I built this thing, I am taking on these people, I'm just this. Well, hold on a second, man. Like you had a lot of help and you had a lot of people, a lot of blessings that help to get you there so that's what I try to focus on. Thank you for the question.
Anybody else? Yes?
Man: Have you thought there any particular leadership skills that are especially necessary to starting and running your own firm different from working at an already established firm?
You bet, man. Awesome question. Everyone get that? What are skills that are unique to starting your firm as opposed going with an established firm? And the number one skill I'd say is the one that we talked about which is smile and dial, man. The ability to put a smile on your face, dial up people you don't know and smile at them and say, "Hey, I'm doing this. Let me take you out to lunch. Let me tell what I'm doing. Hey, this is what I am doing."
The ability to be on that phone and to work — you guys seen the Wolf of Wall Street? Did anyone see that movie? Great movie. The guy, Jordan Belford, who's the kind of the protagonist/antagonist of the movie, is basically based on a true story of a guy that did some very unethical things. He sold worthless securities to middle class people, which is terrible, right? But one thing that he did that I liked was his persistence on the phone, was his ability to get on that phone and to make calls and to push, push, push through adversity. I mean, he was very unethical in what he did and so I wouldn't recommend that to anyone but if there is anything is that there is always something to learn from anybody. I mean, one thing to learn from him and one thing I would say is critical in setting up your own firm or starting a new enterprise is the ability to talk to strangers and inspire confidence in them, in you, in your brand and your way to inspire confidence in others is to give confidence in yourself. If you believe so much in what you're doing, your ability to just bring it, it will probably transfer to the other person.
Do you know what I'm saying? Like you've met someone and they believe so strongly in something, they don't have to tell you. You're just like, "All right, man. Sign me up. I'm ready to go." When you're passionate about something it's coming out of you. They'll just be silent and you can just feel it in the room. So that's I would say if you're building — and that goes back to that muscle we were talking about earlier, that ability to just – and also when starting your own enterprise, the ability to close your eyes and just take that step and just trust that there's going to be a bridge there when you do because it's risk, right? Like what's everybody's fear of starting a small firm, starting an enterprise? What if no one calls? What if I go broke? What if – it's going to be terrible, I'll be a failure. You just have to trust in yourself. I'm going to throw myself in this situation and trust that everything is going to be okay. I'm going to do my best and I'm going to work my butt off and I'm going to learn every single day and I know it's going to be okay. And everything that has happened in my life, I've been through some terrible things but there's never been anything that happened that I couldn't handle in that moment. Do you know what I mean?
And this is going to be the same way. That's mentality I think that I'll tell people that I think is sort of unique and important to starting your own enterprise is that ability to just believe even though you don't have the evidence you have to believe. When I take a step here, when I walk, I know I can walk because I've been walking my whole life, right? I have a whole lifetime of evidence to support that I can walk. When you're starting a firm, you don't have any evidence that it is just going to work. You just have to believe it. You just have to believe it. Does that make sense?
Man: Yup.
All right. If anyone has more questions, I'll take one more or else we'll cut it and I'll stick around for a bit if you guys want to talk individually.
All right, well no more questions. Listen, thank you guys so much for having me here. It's really like a pleasure to talk to you all. I'm telling you that I look at you guys and I'm so envious of the opportunities that you got in front of you right now to be in your position and to have your whole career in front of you. You have so much to look forward to. The one thing I'll tell you is don't get stressed out by all this stuff, by jobs, by your peers, by all this stuff. You have so many opportunities you're going to blast through it – I have no question about it. If you ever want to talk to me individually, if you want to meet for coffee or whatever, just smile and dial. I'm pretty easy to find on the internet. Pick up the phone and give me a call and I'd love to meet up. So I wish you all the best of luck.
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Not-So-Daily Link of the Day: The Korean game studio WindySoft announced on Monday that it will release Crayon Shin-chan Online , a casual massively multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG) based on the late author Yoshito Usui's four-panel comedy manga. The manga follows the exploits of Shinnosuke Nohara, a mischievous (fictional) kindergartner in Usui's own hometown of Kasukabe.
WindySoft is the Korean publisher of other games such as Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online and Katamari Damashi Online . The studio signed an agreement to develop the game with DaeWon Media (an Korean entertainment company specializing in animation) and Rainfall Soft.
Authorities determined that Usui died from injuries sustained from a fall at Arafune Mountain on September 11. The Japanese publisher Futabasha has since made plans to print a "sequel" manga drawn by another artist or artists. Hiroshi Hayakawa, president of the TV Asahi network, also already said that his company will continue airing the Crayon Shin-chan anime. The 18th anime film, Crayon Shin-chan: Chō Jikū! Arashi o Yobu Ora no Hanayome , will open on April 17.
CMX Manga has been releasing the original manga in English in North America. Funimation has been adapting the television anime into dubbed English, and America's Adult Swim network used to run episodes every Sunday morning.


text:
Q: Get the Olson TZ name for the local timezone? How do I get the Olson timezone name (such as Australia/Sydney) corresponding to the value given by C's localtime call?
This is the value overridden via TZ, by symlinking /etc/localtime, or setting a TIMEZONE variable in time-related system configuration files.

A: If evaluating /etc/localtime is OK for you, the following trick might work - after translating it to python:
> md5sum /etc/localtime
abcdefabcdefabcdefabcdefabcdefab /etc/localtime
> find /usr/share/zoneinfo -type f |xargs md5sum | grep abcdefabcdefabcdefabcdefabcdefab
abcdefabcdefabcdefabcdefabcdefab /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London
abcdefabcdefabcdefabcdefabcdefab /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix/Europe/London
...

The duplicates could be filtered using only the official region names "Europe", "America" ... If there are still duplicates, you could take the shortest name :-)

A: Install pytz
import pytz
import time
#import locale
import urllib2

yourOlsonTZ = None
#yourCountryCode = locale.getdefaultlocale()[0].split('_')[1]
yourCountryCode = urllib2.urlopen('http://api.hostip.info/country.php').read()

for olsonTZ in [pytz.timezone(olsonTZ) for olsonTZ in pytz.all_timezones]:
    if (olsonTZ._tzname in time.tzname) and (str(olsonTZ) in pytz.country_timezones[yourCountryCode]):
        yourOlsonTZ = olsonTZ
        break

print yourOlsonTZ

This code will take a best-guess crack at your Olson Timezone based both on your Timezone Name (as according to Python's time module), and your Country Code (as according to Python's locale module the hostip.info project, which references your IP address and geolocates you accordingly).
For example, simply matching the Timzone Names could result in America/Moncton, America/Montreal, or America/New_York for EST (GMT-5). If your country is the US, however, it will limit the answer to America/New_York.
However, if your country is Canada, the script will simply default to the topmost Canadian result (America/Moncton). If there is a way to further refine this, please feel free to leave suggestions in comments.

A: The tzlocal module for Python is aimed at exactly this problem. It produces consistent results under both Linux and Windows, properly converting from Windows time zone ids to Olson using the CLDR mappings.

A: This is kind of cheating, I know, but getting from '/etc/localtime' doesn't work for you?
Like following:
>>>  import os
>>> '/'.join(os.readlink('/etc/localtime').split('/')[-2:])
'Australia/Sydney'

Hope it helps.
Edit: I liked @A.H.'s idea, in case  '/etc/localtime' isn't a symlink. Translating that into Python:
#!/usr/bin/env python

from hashlib import sha224
import os

def get_current_olsonname():
    tzfile = open('/etc/localtime')
    tzfile_digest = sha224(tzfile.read()).hexdigest()
    tzfile.close()

    for root, dirs, filenames in os.walk("/usr/share/zoneinfo/"):
        for filename in filenames:
            fullname = os.path.join(root, filename)
            f = open(fullname)
            digest = sha224(f.read()).hexdigest()
            if digest == tzfile_digest:
                return '/'.join((fullname.split('/'))[-2:])
            f.close()
        return None

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print get_current_olsonname()

A: I think best bet is to go thru all pytz timezones and check which one matches local timezone, each pytz timezone object contains info about utcoffset and tzname like CDT, EST, same info about local time can be obtained from time.timezone/altzone and time.tzname, and I think that is enough to correctly match local timezone in pytz database e.g.
import time
import pytz
import datetime

local_names = []
if time.daylight:
    local_offset = time.altzone
    localtz = time.tzname[1]
else:
    local_offset = time.timezone
    localtz = time.tzname[0]

local_offset = datetime.timedelta(seconds=-local_offset)

for name in pytz.all_timezones:
    timezone = pytz.timezone(name)
    if not hasattr(timezone, '_tzinfos'):
        continue#skip, if some timezone doesn't have info
    # go thru tzinfo and see if short name like EDT and offset matches
    for (utcoffset, daylight, tzname), _ in timezone._tzinfos.iteritems():
        if utcoffset == local_offset and tzname == localtz:
            local_names.append(name)

print local_names

output:

['America/Atikokan', 'America/Bahia_Banderas',
  'America/Bahia_Banderas', 'America/Belize', 'America/Cambridge_Bay',
  'America/Cancun', 'America/Chicago', 'America/Chihuahua',
  'America/Coral_Harbour', 'America/Costa_Rica', 'America/El_Salvador',
  'America/Fort_Wayne', 'America/Guatemala',
  'America/Indiana/Indianapolis', 'America/Indiana/Knox',
  'America/Indiana/Marengo', 'America/Indiana/Marengo',
  'America/Indiana/Petersburg', 'America/Indiana/Tell_City',
  'America/Indiana/Vevay', 'America/Indiana/Vincennes',
  'America/Indiana/Winamac', 'America/Indianapolis', 'America/Iqaluit',
  'America/Kentucky/Louisville', 'America/Kentucky/Louisville',
  'America/Kentucky/Monticello', 'America/Knox_IN',
  'America/Louisville', 'America/Louisville', 'America/Managua',
  'America/Matamoros', 'America/Menominee', 'America/Merida',
  'America/Mexico_City', 'America/Monterrey',
  'America/North_Dakota/Beulah', 'America/North_Dakota/Center',
  'America/North_Dakota/New_Salem', 'America/Ojinaga',
  'America/Pangnirtung', 'America/Rainy_River', 'America/Rankin_Inlet',
  'America/Resolute', 'America/Resolute', 'America/Tegucigalpa',
  'America/Winnipeg', 'CST6CDT', 'Canada/Central', 'Mexico/General',
  'US/Central', 'US/East-Indiana', 'US/Indiana-Starke']

In production you can create such a mapping beforehand and save it instead of iterating always.
Testing script after changing timezone:

$ export TZ='Australia/Sydney'
  $ python get_tz_names.py
  ['Antarctica/Macquarie', 'Australia/ACT', 'Australia/Brisbane',
  'Australia/Canberra', 'Australia/Currie', 'Australia/Hobart',
  'Australia/Lindeman', 'Australia/Melbourne', 'Australia/NSW',
  'Australia/Queensland', 'Australia/Sydney', 'Australia/Tasmania',
  'Australia/Victoria']

A: One problem is that there are multiple "pretty names" , like "Australia/Sydney" , which point to the same time zone (e.g. CST).
So you will need to get all the possible names for the local time zone, and then select the name you like.
e.g.: for Australia, there are 5 time zones, but way more time zone identifiers:
     "Australia/Lord_Howe", "Australia/Hobart", "Australia/Currie",
     "Australia/Melbourne", "Australia/Sydney", "Australia/Broken_Hill",
     "Australia/Brisbane", "Australia/Lindeman", "Australia/Adelaide",
     "Australia/Darwin", "Australia/Perth", "Australia/Eucla"

you should check if there is a library which wraps TZinfo , to handle the time zone API.
e.g.: for Python, check the pytz library:
http://pytz.sourceforge.net/
and
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pytz/
in Python you can do:
from pytz import timezone
import pytz

In [56]: pytz.country_timezones('AU')
Out[56]:
[u'Australia/Lord_Howe',
 u'Australia/Hobart',
 u'Australia/Currie',
 u'Australia/Melbourne',
 u'Australia/Sydney',
 u'Australia/Broken_Hill',
 u'Australia/Brisbane',
 u'Australia/Lindeman',
 u'Australia/Adelaide',
 u'Australia/Darwin',
 u'Australia/Perth',
 u'Australia/Eucla']

but the API for Python seems to be pretty limited, e.g. it doesn't seem to have a call like Ruby's all_linked_zone_names -- which can find all the synonym names for a given time zone.

A: This will get you the time zone name, according to what's in the TZ variable, or localtime file if unset:
#! /usr/bin/env python

import time

time.tzset
print time.tzname

A: Here's another posibility, using PyICU instead; which is working for my purposes:
>>> from PyICU import ICUtzinfo
>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime(2012, 1, 1, 12, 30, 18).replace(tzinfo=ICUtzinfo.getDefault()).isoformat()
'2012-01-01T12:30:18-05:00'
>>> datetime(2012, 6, 1, 12, 30, 18).replace(tzinfo=ICUtzinfo.getDefault()).isoformat()
'2012-06-01T12:30:18-04:00'

Here it is interpreting niave datetimes (as would be returned by a database query) in the local timezone.

A: I prefer following a slightly better than poking around _xxx values
import time, pytz, os

cur_name=time.tzname
cur_TZ=os.environ.get("TZ")

def is_current(name):
   os.environ["TZ"]=name
   time.tzset()
   return time.tzname==cur_name

print "Possible choices:", filter(is_current, pytz.all_timezones)

# optional tz restore
if cur_TZ is None: del os.environ["TZ"]
else: os.environ["TZ"]=cur_TZ
time.tzset()

A: I changed tcurvelo's script to find the right form of time zone (Continent/..../City), in most of cases, but return all of them if fails
#!/usr/bin/env python

from hashlib import sha224
import os
from os import listdir
from os.path import join, isfile, isdir

infoDir = '/usr/share/zoneinfo/'

def get_current_olsonname():
    result = []
    tzfile_digest = sha224(open('/etc/localtime').read()).hexdigest()

    test_match = lambda filepath: sha224(open(filepath).read()).hexdigest() == tzfile_digest

    def walk_over(dirpath):
        for root, dirs, filenames in os.walk(dirpath):
            for fname in filenames:
                fpath = join(root, fname)
                if test_match(fpath):
                    result.append(tuple(root.split('/')[4:]+[fname]))

    for dname in listdir(infoDir):
        if dname in ('posix', 'right', 'SystemV', 'Etc'):
            continue
        dpath = join(infoDir, dname)
        if not isdir(dpath):
            continue
        walk_over(dpath)

    if not result:
        walk_over(join(infoDir))

    return result

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print get_current_olsonname()

A: This JavaScript project attempts to solve the same issue in the browser client-side.  It works by playing "twenty questions" with the locale, asking for the UTC offset of certain past times (to test for summer time boundaries, etc.) and using those results to deduce what the local time zone must be.  I am not aware of any equivalent Python package unfortunately, so if someone wanted to use this solution it would have to be ported to Python.
While this formula will require updating every time (at worst) the TZ database is updated, a combination of this algorithm and the solution proposed by Anurag Uniyal (keeping only possibilities returned by both methods) sounds to me like the surest way to compute the effective local timezone.  As long as there is some difference between the UTC offset of at least one local time in any two time zones, such a system can correctly choose between them.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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November 13, 2014Renu Zaretsky
Mid-Term Monday: The Calm Before The Storm?
Congress returns next week. We'll resume our regular schedule on Wednesday, November 5, after tomorrow's elections. State ballot initiatives offer clues on how much voters are willing to pay for government services. There are 16 tax-related initiatives on state ballots tomorrow. TPC's Kim Rueben
November 3, 2014Renu Zaretsky
Tax Policy, Tax Outcomes: That's Entertainment!
Congress is in recess through the mid-term elections. Read the Daily Deduction each Monday until then. " California, here I come !" It's official: Democratic Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a $330 million annual incentive program for film and television production. Feature films with budgets
September 22, 2014Renu Zaretsky

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


SP Weather Station recently interviewed Katherine McLeod, SPWS weather interpreter for October 2013, about her recent experience in the Galapagos.
SPWS: How did you find yourself going to the Galapagos?
KM: The whole idea to go to the Galapagos came from an artist I met while on residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Christina Seely. She's doing some amazing work on climate change, on how it alters natural rhythms in ecosystems. One of her projects involves comparing the arctic to the equator, and so was traveling to the Galapagos to finish it, and need help—that's where I came in.
I went down there to try to learn about the community that has formed there. The Galapagos is such a mythic place, and all of the publicity that surrounds it hardly ever mentions the people. But since the 1970's, a lot has been happening in the towns there. Before the 1970s other strange and interesting spurts of population existed, but most of those died out. Initially the main economy was fishing—people came over from mainland Ecuador in search of jobs—and more recently all of the industry is centered around tourism. Families are growing and now there are more and more native Galapagosians.
I went with a somewhat tongue-in-cheek idea to try and find a way to relate to this community that has formed on such a mythic place: to gather information for the 'Galapagos Complaint Department'. I had in mind to talk to full-time residents of the Islands about what in their daily lives irks them, since life living on an environmental celebrity can't be easy.
SPWS: Yes your idea of a Complaint Department does seem like a nice and funny way to engage people and find out what is going on.
KM: Yes, and in many was I fully expected it to be very different than whatever I envisioned for the place before I arrived. The system for finding formal complaints is not so easy to access, and government is organized very differently there. And, most inner workings such as that are decidedly separated from the tourist community. For example I spent a fair amount of time trying to find the municipal dump, to no avail—they keep it behind walls and were not comfortable with me being there.
SPWS: Ah yes—plans adapt when the real world intervenes!
KM: The project now has really become a meditation on change. These Islands have been made famous by their methods of change, and the most apparent thing to me upon arrival there was how fast and interestingly things were moving in the cultural world. There is a lot of construction going on…personal homes mainly, with very beautiful and creative architecture. The kids there have a lot of worldly outside influences (the Galapagos are a huge surfing destination, all the kids surf there). It just become clear that complaints were not the most interesting thing to focus on. One thing that became apparent was the lack of junk on the islands, no "junk" stores, no dusty shelves with anything old on them, or alley ways with useful trash.


Fundraising advantage and enthusiasm for "Getting it done for Iowa" message propels Mauro into the lead for Democratic nomination.
DES MOINES — Following an exploratory period that resulted in a commanding quarterly fundraising performance, Eddie Mauro is officially announcing his candidacy for the United States Congress, representing Iowa's third (3rd) district.
Over the past five months, Mauro has traveled nearly 1,000 miles across Iowa's third district meeting with Iowa families to listen and learn what they need from Washington and Iowa's legislature. The enthusiasm for Mauro's candidacy and inclusive "All of Iowa" message has motivated him to move forward with his candidacy to unseat Republican David Young and truly represent all Iowans of the third district.
"As a husband, a parent and a small business person, I know what's needed right now – good jobs that pay a good wage, healthcare that covers everybody, education that prepares our kids to work, and an economy that's ready for what's next," explains Mauro. "I've taken on government to win protections for mental health in our community. I've built a successful business that respects its employees. I've built teams that bring home championships. I play it straight, stays true to my principles, and always give 100%".
Jobs that pay a fair wage for hard work. It's that simple; if you work hard, you deserve to be paid fairly. Mauro believes that there is an attainable balance between labor and business interests, which will attract industries of all types (technology, energy, retail, service, agriculture and manufacturing) to Iowa.
An education strategy that allows Iowans to compete for great jobs. As a former educator himself, Mauro understands that for Iowa to win the jobs of tomorrow we MUST put enough resources into education. While college is one path to a prosperous future, vocation and technical training are additional ways that kids and adults can gain the skills required to compete and win in our economy. Mauro will work to ensure every Iowan who wants to further themselves has the chance.
Affordable and accessible healthcare for all. Taking away your health insurance protections may make David Young's lobbyist friends happy, but it will devastate thousands of Iowan families. Eddie Mauro will work to block any attempt to dismantle Obamacare. Instead, he'll work to make commonsense improvements to the law to continue to make healthcare more affordable for Iowa's families.
Iowa 3 is currently ranked among the most competitive races in the country. Based on recent polling, David Young's re-election chances have fallen below 50%, due in most part to his 98% pro-Trump voting record. According to recent articles, Eddie Mauro is best positioned financially to win the Democratic nomination and defeat Young in the fall. Visit www.eddiemauro.com for more information about Mauro and his stand on key issues that impact Iowa and will ensure we get things done in Washington.
Eddie Mauro is a successful businessman and lifelong resident of Des Moines. A longtime community leader, Mauro is a founding member of the influential community organization AMOS and serves on the board/s of South Suburban YMCA, the Immigration Committee for the Iowa Catholic Conference, and the Independent Insurance Agents of Iowa. In addition to these leadership roles, Mauro coached Dowling High School to state championships in baseball in 1999 and 2001. He also coached football at North High School and baseball at Lincoln High School and DMACC. Mauro is married to Sharilyn, his wife of 27 years, and has two children in Des Moines.


text:
Josh Shapiro
'Seditious Abuse': Pa. Blasts Texas' Bid to Overturn Biden's Election
By Marc Levy	• Published December 11, 2020 • Updated on December 11, 2020 at 6:51 am
Lawyers for Pennsylvania are responding in the U.S. Supreme Court to Texas' effort to overturn the election result in four states for President-elect Joe Biden.
In a brief filed Thursday, lawyers for Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, are calling it a "seditious abuse" of the courts that rests on conspiracy theories and falsehoods.
They also say Texas lacks standing and that its claims are barred by time limits, meritless and dangerous. They say Texas wants to anoint its preferred candidate for president, Donald Trump.
Lawyers for Pennsylvania responded in the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to Texas' effort to overturn the election result in four states for President-elect Joe Biden, calling it a "seditious abuse" of the courts that rests on conspiracy theories and falsehoods.
Texas lacks standing to bring the challenge, and its claims are not only barred by time limits, but are meritless and dangerous, lawyers for Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, wrote in the 43-page court brief.
Texas is using bogus and false claims in a legally indefensible effort to disenfranchise huge numbers of voters and anoint its preferred candidate for president, Donald Trump, Pennsylvania's lawyers said.
"Texas's effort to get this court to pick the next president has no basis in law or fact," they wrote. "The court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated."
The lawsuit from the Texas attorney general, Republican Ken Paxton, demands that the 62 total Electoral College votes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin be invalidated. That's enough, if switched, to swing the election to Trump.
Paxton's suit repeats a litany of false, disproven and unsupported allegations about mail-in ballots and voting in the four battleground states, including arguments already dismissed by courts.
Republican attorneys general in Ohio and 17 other states signed on to support Texas' brief. Election law experts dismissed Paxton's filing as the latest and perhaps longest legal shot since Election Day.
Suits brought by Trump and his allies have failed repeatedly across the country, and the Supreme Court this week rejected a Republican bid to reverse Pennsylvania's certification of Biden's victory.
Pennsylvania Dec 8, 2020
Trump Campaign Appeals Another Ballot Case in Pennsylvania
Joe Biden Dec 8, 2020
Supreme Court Rejects Republican Bid to Halt Biden's Pennsylvania Win
Meanwhile, seven Republican U.S. House members from Pennsylvania — John Joyce, Fred Keller, Mike Kelly, Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler and Glenn Thompson — on Thursday joined a brief with 99 other House Republicans in the case in line with Texas' arguments.
Republican lawmakers in the state Senate and state House of Representatives also filed friend-of-the-court briefs, criticizing decisions by the state Supreme Court in voting-related cases before the election and guidance to county election officials by Gov. Tom Wolf's top election official, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat.
The Senate Republican brief, endorsed by 24 of 28 Republican members, did not necessarily urge the high court to rule in favor of Texas, saying it was "in support of neither plaintiffs nor defendants," but asking it to rule that legislatures, not courts, set the rules for elections.
The filing by House Speaker Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, and House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-Centre, comes closer to endorsing Texas' position. It says Texas and others "raised important questions about how this procedural malfeasance" affected the election and asked the court to "carefully consider the procedural issues and questions" raised by Texas.
Josh ShapiroDonald TrumpPennsylvaniaJoe BidenTexas


I have spent most of my life hearing that you must start taking take of your skin at a young age. I thought this was some sort of "beauty industry gimmick" as I believed that I was young for a reason, and therefore, didn't need to bother with my skin.
As I reached my mid twenties, I started noticing sudden changes on the health of my skin. My face is now more sensitive and drier than it has ever been. The sides of my forehead, my nose, and my chin are peeling off, and I have noticed some fine lines underneath my eyes and on the side of my lips.
As normal this is, it is also very shocking. Although we know that some day we will going to age, it is still shocking to see the process becoming a reality, especially on our own faces!
As I just have mentioned, I have very dry and sensitive skin. I tried the most natural ingredients/masks (ex. Aloe Vera) and some of the most expensive treatments at Sephora; but no matter what I do, I end up with an extra sensitive and itchy face. As a result, I simply stopped using all sorts of products, as I was tired of spending money on products provoking nothing but an itchy face; but even after leaving my face alone, I still noticed that it wasn't getting any better.
After some research, I came across Geneva Naturals Advanced Vitamin C+E Serum, and after reading its promises, I couldn't hesitate to try it.
This vitamin C+E serum has many ingredients and antioxidants to promote a smoother and youthful skin (without being abrasive), such as hyaluronic acid, moringa oil, coconut oil, edelweiss extract, and even UV protection! One of the things I love the most about this formula is the fact that it is paraben-free, sulfate-free, and phthalate-free, which I thought would be a great addition to my painful peeling skin.
Upon opening the vial, the first thing I did was to smell the formula. I'm very picky about the smells I apply on my skin (especially my face) as anything that smells too strong or overwhelming makes me feel sick (I can't sleep or can't stop sneezing). To my surprise, this formula has an amazingly rich orange smell, without being overwhelming. I don't tend to like any citrus or tropical smells, but this formula smells so natural that it was actually pleasing to my senses.
When I touched the product, I noticed that it had a gel-like hydrating texture, without being oily on my hands. Then, when I applied this to my face, I noticed that my face adsorbed the product right away, without leaving any nasty or oily coat residue. At the moment of application, my face felt "jelly-like" – it was bouncy, smooth, and the best of all: IT DIDN'T BURN!!
I think that was the most important factor for me – the fact that it didn't burn my dry and sensitive skin. After less than a week of using this (about 4 days) I noticed that my chin and the side of my forehead were peeling less. I still struggle with the peeling of my nose, but since it hasn't even been a week of use, I'm still hopeful that it will go away. I also noticed that my skin is actually very smooth and hydrated (I still apply moisturizer throughout the day, but Geneva is an amazing option to apply prior to sleep). And the best of all, the expression lines underneath my eyes are much smoother (it feels like a face lift).
I love that I have found a solution for my sensitive face that isn't greasy of abrasive – I simply think it is fantastic!
Don't forget to check it out! Enter the code TOM5 at checkout to get an additional $5 off on your purchase (LINK BELOW).


Earthpedition Project G5™ is a wonderful collaboration with local artists and charities to offer the public an exciting way to get involved with helping their community. Earthpedition's line of shirts are made up of a new blend of material engineered for flattering lines with a buttery smooth texture.
Partnering with Local Artists allow the designs to be tailored for the individual charity giving a unique look and expression unavailable anywhere else.
Located in North Alabama, serves women and children in crisis. By providing a safe, family-style environment, our residents begin to heal from abuse, addiction and poor life choices. We aim to reflect Jesus as we interact with each individual to foster recovery and reconciliation. Joy's House focuses on a positive and supportive environment and assists residents in making life changes.
The mission of Joy's House is to provide safe, temporary housing in a family-style environment as well as rehabilitation and life skills training needed for independent living. We will reflect the love of Jesus as we serve these homeless women and their children and facilitate their emotional healing.
PAR is an all-volunteer, faith-based organization, trained and ready to serve our neighbors after natural disasters. Founded in 2011, it is a combination of Christian churches, organizations, businesses, and individual volunteers from north Alabama and surrounding areas. It operates on charitable donations. PAR is an organization of Huntsville Dream Center, Huntsville, Alabama, with a 501(c)3 status.
PAR provides assistance to those who have experienced storm damage primarily in the North Alabama area. As a member of Madison County VOAD (Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster) and working closely with our local EMA and other service organizations, PAR volunteers receive proper training, support, and resources to safely and effectively serve the community after disasters.


From the creators of N.Y.Zombies comes an all new blend of action, adventure, castle defense, and role playing elements! Master up to nine legendary Bug Heroes, including a sword wielding Spider assassin, an armored Beetle warrior, a machine gun toting Ant engineer, and more! Shoot, slice, dice, and bash your enemies with a variety of skills, abilities and equipment. Stockpile food, fortify your base, and defend it from hordes of hungry bugs. Explore a variety of familiar landscapes from an all new miniature perspective, collecting food, coins and other items. Enter Bug Heroes, an epic fantasy world you never knew existed!
Ranked one of the top iOS games of 2011 (metacritic.com)!!
"...it's going to be really hard to ever find a way to enjoy a typical dual-stick shooter again."
"One part castle defense, two parts dual stick shooter, and a dash of RPG; Bug Heroes is the most interesting blend of iPhone gaming I've see since Infinity Blade."
"Bug Heroes has slick presentation, charm, and lasting appeal... In my opinion this is one of those games that defines the iOS platform for gamers."
"Without a doubt, Bug Heroes is the year's first must-have release."
- A seamless blend of action, adventure, castle defense, and role playing elements!
- 10 unique Bug Heroes to play as, each with different strengths, weaknesses, equipment, and personalities. Choose any 3 heroes to take into battle!
- Level-up your Bug Heroes, increase their skills, and customize them with a huge variety of equipment and abilities!
- Melee and ranged combat. Slice your enemies with swords, swat bugs off of ledges or into walls, and blast them from long range with rifles and machine guns!
- Scour the lands for food, then defend your food stash from hordes of hungry bugs. Build turrets and fortify your base!
- Optional, randomized side quests for even more depth and re-playability!
- Over 50 unique enemy types, ranging from tiny fleas to giant snails. Detailed "Insectopedia" for background info and strategies on every single enemy!
- Multiple profiles and game saves, tons of achievements, and online leaderboards!
- Supports all devices, old and new. Enjoy crisp retina graphics on the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4g!
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, and for all news on upcoming updates, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter @FoursakenMedia!
Bug who's is such a great game and there's nothing better that feeling of nostalgia. It brings back so many great memories. Just as amazing as I remember it! I know this game has been around for a while and the graphics aren't the best but Skyrim doesn't have the best graphics either and look at how great of a game that is! Please take a chance on the game and enjoy.
Pretty much the best, most entertaining game on the App Store. I've had this game for years and have played it relentlessly. I would love to give this game 5 stars as it is the perfect RPG with such depth and it's unique little world and style. But it crashes constantly, especially when you get far. All your progress gets lost and starts over at some random round. It almost unplayable now. Such a shame. It was such a great game.
So happy they upgraded this to 64 bit. It doesn't end (like temple run or something), but it is different each time you play. I can spend an few mins playing here and there with save games, or I can play for an hour straight blowing up bugs and scorpions and snails. Great times!


text:
package io.quarkus.vertx.http.ssl;

import static org.hamcrest.core.Is.is;

import java.io.File;
import java.net.URL;

import javax.enterprise.context.ApplicationScoped;
import javax.enterprise.event.Observes;

import org.assertj.core.api.Assertions;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.AfterAll;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.BeforeAll;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.extension.RegisterExtension;

import io.quarkus.test.QuarkusUnitTest;
import io.quarkus.test.common.http.TestHTTPResource;
import io.restassured.RestAssured;
import io.vertx.ext.web.Router;

public class SslServerWithJksTest {

    @TestHTTPResource(value = "/ssl", ssl = true)
    URL url;

    @RegisterExtension
    static final QuarkusUnitTest config = new QuarkusUnitTest()
            .withApplicationRoot((jar) -> jar
                    .addClasses(MyBean.class)
                    .addAsResource(new File("src/test/resources/conf/ssl-jks.conf"), "application.properties")
                    .addAsResource(new File("src/test/resources/conf/server-keystore.jks"), "server-keystore.jks"));

    @BeforeAll
    public static void setupRestAssured() {
        RestAssured.useRelaxedHTTPSValidation();
    }

    @AfterAll
    public static void restoreRestAssured() {
        RestAssured.reset();
    }

    @Test
    public void testSslServerWithJKS() {
        RestAssured.get(url).then().statusCode(200).body(is("ssl"));
    }

    @ApplicationScoped
    static class MyBean {

        public void register(@Observes Router router) {
            router.get("/ssl").handler(rc -> {
                Assertions.assertThat(rc.request().connection().isSsl()).isTrue();
                Assertions.assertThat(rc.request().isSSL()).isTrue();
                Assertions.assertThat(rc.request().connection().sslSession()).isNotNull();
                rc.response().end("ssl");
            });
        }

    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


View my articles about Caribbean and Diaspora Artists. Research over 100 artists, their sites and thumbnails of their art work in alphabetical order. Click on artists names for links to the full story or artists' websites or watch videos. Students, cite this material with appropriate references guided by copyright. 'Fair use' allows you to use images in thumbnail size only.
The development of Ralph Campbell's career as a painter parallels similar developments in Jamaica's modern art history. It is not surprising that his maturation as a painter mirrors the same process of maturation in Jamaica's cultural institutions, since a great deal of his artistic achievements were due to their foundation. In his lifetime as an artist he experienced the birth of Jamaican art as well as its rise to public acclaim.


text:
package com.google.template.soy.types;

import com.google.common.base.Preconditions;
import com.google.template.soy.soytree.SoyTypeP;
import java.util.Objects;

/**
 * Represents the type of a list, a sequential random-access container keyed by integer.
 *
 * <p>Important: Do not use outside of Soy code (treat as superpackage-private).
 */
public final class ListType extends SoyType {

  // TODO(lukes): see if this can be replaced with list<?>
  public static final ListType EMPTY_LIST = new ListType(null);
  public static final ListType ANY_LIST = new ListType(AnyType.getInstance());

  private final SoyType elementType;

  private ListType(SoyType elementType) {
    this.elementType = elementType;
  }

  public static ListType of(SoyType elementType) {
    Preconditions.checkNotNull(elementType);
    return new ListType(elementType);
  }

  @Override
  public Kind getKind() {
    return Kind.LIST;
  }

  public SoyType getElementType() {
    return elementType;
  }

  @Override
  boolean doIsAssignableFromNonUnionType(SoyType srcType, UnknownAssignmentPolicy policy) {
    if (srcType.getKind() == Kind.LIST) {
      ListType srcListType = (ListType) srcType;
      if (srcListType == EMPTY_LIST) {
        return true;
      } else if (this == EMPTY_LIST) {
        return false;
      }
      // Lists are covariant (because values are immutable.)
      return elementType.isAssignableFromInternal(srcListType.elementType, policy);
    }
    return false;
  }

  @Override
  public String toString() {
    return "list<" + elementType + ">";
  }

  @Override
  void doToProto(SoyTypeP.Builder builder) {
    builder.setListElement(elementType.toProto());
  }

  @Override
  public boolean equals(Object other) {
    return other != null
        && this.getClass() == other.getClass()
        && Objects.equals(((ListType) other).elementType, elementType);
  }

  @Override
  public int hashCode() {
    return Objects.hash(this.getClass(), elementType);
  }

  @Override
  public <T> T accept(SoyTypeVisitor<T> visitor) {
    return visitor.visit(this);
  }
}


If you like playing physics-based puzzle games, then this title is perfect for you! You are supposed to position the blocks together in groups to make them all disappear. The gameplay is so easy that it just takes a second to learn, even for the youngest members in the family. The graphics are cute and the soundtrack is adorable. The perfect game when you want instant joy!


text:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

    <title>Properties and Arguments Demo Applet</title>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">

        A browser with JavaScript enabled is required for this page to operate properly.

Properties and Arguments Demo Applet


Did you mean flights to Falkland Islands ?
The Falkland Islands, Falkland Islands, or Islas Malvinas, is a British overseas territory that has internal self-governance, with the United Kingdom handling its foreign and defence affairs. Falkland Islands are an archipelago located south of the Atlantic Ocean, on the Patagonian Shelf, with an area of 4,700 square miles, it is made up of East and West Falkland, along with 776 smaller islands. Falkland Islands' capital, Stanley, is within East Falkland.
The archipelago is mainly made up of Falkland Islanders, British, Saint Helenian, and Chilean, with a small number of Argentines mixed in. It has also been known that most of its inhabitants also comprise of Scottish and Welsh descent, with a mix of French, Gibraltarians, and Scandinavians. Previously, the archipelago faced a decline in population when most of its young inhabitants search for a modern lifestyle and better job opportunities. Nowadays, the population has steadied due to immigrants from the United Kingdom, Saint Helena, and Chile. The archipelago's currency is called Falklands pound, or FKP, and its official language is English.
When in the Falkland Islands, its climate can be cold and windy, and can also have humid oceanic climate. Throughout the archipelago, rain averages at 610 millimetres within Stanley, with scattered light snowfalls all throughout the year. Falkland temperatures range from 21.1, to negative 11.1 degrees Celsius, or 70.0, down to 12.0 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Falkland archipelago is more than meets the eye. Among its notable destinations include: East Falkland, West Falkland, and the Outer Islands.
East Falkland, being the largest island within the archipelago, offers sights such as Bertha's Beach, Cape Bougainville, Darwin, Elephant Beach Farm, Fitzroy, Kidney Island, Murrell Farm, North Arm settlement, Port San Carlos, and the Volunteer Point, to name a few. East Falkland is also home to the country's tallest mountain, Mount Usborne, with the Ceritos Corral, built into a slope at its base.
Catch yourself saying "West is best" with West Falkland. It is the second largest island within the archipelago and is home to plenty of wildlife and gorgeous scenery. Among its sights include, Crooked Inlet Farm, Fox Bay, Little Chartres, Shallow Bay, in addition to Port Edgar, Howard, and Stephens. Most of the West is accessible via ferry, through East Falklands' ferry services, or via the Falkland Islands Government Air Service (FIGAS).
Also to be visited are the Falkland Islands' Outer Islands, which could possibly be the highlight of any Falkland adventure. Islands such as Bleaker Island, Carcass Island, Pebble Island, Sea Lion Island, and Weddell Island can be visited and accessed via plane, cruise ship, or boat.
Chile and Brazil are ideal, when looking for a destination near Falkland Islands. Fly out to Santiago or São Paulo, and experience what the countries have to offer through their capital and largest cities.
Santiago, Chile, a modern metropolis, and the retail capital of Chile, offers theatres, restaurants, and shopping centres, to name a few. Among the city's most memorable stops include the tallest building in Latin America, Gran Torre Santiago; and department stores such as Falabella, Ripley, and La Polar, along with high-end brands such as Louis Vuitton, Hermès, and Emporio Armani. Santiago is also home to the most exclusive nightclubs and cafes, within Barrio Bellavista.
On the other hand, São Paulo, in Brazil, offers destinations that include monuments, parks, museums, such as the Latin American Memorial, the Ibirapuera Park, Museum of Ipiranga, São Paulo Museum of Art, and the Museum of the Portuguese Language, to name a few.
To experience difference in scenery and climate, fly out to Los Angeles, California in the United States, or to Budapest in Hungary.
Los Angeles is known for landmarks such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Kodak Theatre, the Hollywood Sign, Hollywood Boulevard, the Staples Center, and Dodger Stadium, to name a few. These destinations offer a bit everything for everyone.
Budapest, Hungary is one of the largest cities in the European Union. It offers museums, operas, festivals, in addition to various sights and tourist attractions. When in Budapest, be sure to check out Matthias Church, Fisherman's Bastion, New York Palace, Dohány Street Synagogue, and Margaret Island, to name a few.
Falkland Islands is served by the Port Stanley Airport, a civil airport and the RAF Mount Pleasant, a military airport. Fly out with airlines like LAN Airlines, Hi Fly, and the Falkland Islands Government Air Services (FIGAS).


All gear hobbing machine manual wholesalers & gear hobbing machine manual manufacturers come from members. We doesn't provide gear hobbing machine manual products or service, please contact them directly and verify their companies info carefully.
Dalian Dahui Machine Tool Co.,Ltd.
Dalian Xinxiang Machinery Co., Ltd.


To inquire about an event order, please email 59life@59belts.com and we will follow up with you quickly with some product ideas to help make your event unique and memorable. Customizable items below range from $20 – $75 for volume pricing.
We have been specializing in creating high quality custom belt buckles since 2007. While we have evolved our styling and fitting options, we have never in 10 years reduced quality that our customers have come to expect. From small team events to high and high end volume club events, we can fulfill your needs.
Contact 59life@59belts.com with design and volume needed for pricing.
Brand New buckle style for 2017 – Custom club or event logo belt buckles / CNC milled from solid aluminum stock / Brushed finish. This line is highly customizable in mini size (46mm x 72mm) and made to fit traditional single prong belt straps 1.5″ (38mm) in width. Custom engraving available to commemorate your event.
Contact 59life@59belts.com with your event logo and volume needed to get a quick price quote.


The levels above are guidelines. In-kind contributions are also welcome. We hope that you'll help in supporting real world HRI research by joining us in Daegu. For more information, please contact Jung Kim and Adriana Tapus (generalchair2019@humanrobotinteraction.org), who serve as the general chairs of HRI 2019.