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jasonbehrs · 3 years

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let me be your guarantee

by airauralintensity (aka me, jasonbehrs!)

"You could stand to be a bit more selfish, you know."

"You could stand to be a bit more courteous in general, so I guess we both have things we need to work on."

fandom: kpop, super junior characters: ryeowook, kyuhyun ship: kyuwook genre: friendship, romance themes: genderbent, rule 63, high school, a day in the life, fluff (arguable) word count: 5.2k

read it below or on ffnet, wattpad, aff, or (new!) ao3

A/N (8.27.2021): I have no heterosexual explanation for the effects Ryeowook and Kyuhyun in drag have on me (or my creative process, evidently).

Rating for mildly suggestive language and graphic depictions of geometry. Title comes from Poster Girl by the Backstreet Boys. Cover art made by me. Thanks to Amy for the beta! (Even though you're already so over high school, haha.)

Uploading this as part of kyuwook month on twitter! I actually was gonna publish it wayyy back on July 21, but I waited so I could participate in ryeonamickyuo's #kyuwooksaturdays event on twitter lol. #marketing

~~~

A soothing chime alarm wakes Ryeowook up before dawn. She lets herself stretch in bed, enjoying the warm comfort of her blankets for a moment longer before getting up for a shower. She changes into the outfit she had prepared the night before: a sparkly white sweater and a pink skirt fluffed with tulle, and she painstakingly dries and curls her long lavender hair just the way she likes it before applying some light makeup. After scrutinising her appearance for another minute, she decides to add a small braid to her hair for fun.

With ease and minimal noise, Ryeowook flits through the kitchen to make enough breakfast for her and her parents. She's feeling like sweet potatoes and tofu this morning. She leaves her parents' portions in the oven to stay warm before serving herself, and she mentally checks through yesterday's to-do list to make sure she's all set for today while she chews.

Her homework is printed and neatly filed in their own plastic sleeves as a sustainable alternative to staples.

The cinnamon rolls she made the night before, with a small batch of gluten-free versions set aside, are individually packed in a tin waiting in the fridge.

After she brushes her teeth and puts on her silver flats, she'll be all ready for the walk to school.

Satisfied with her preparations, Ryeowook hums softly to herself as she washes the dishes after eating. With the sink by the kitchen window, she is able to catch the first rays of sunlight streak across the brightening sky, and she smiles. Today is going to be a good day.

~~~

Today is already a shit day.

The alarm blares once again after snoozing it for the third time just as someone bangs on her door, and the annoying sunlight shining through her bedroom window manages to directly hit her eyes. Kyuhyun frowns into her pillow. She was having an excellent dream about kimchi ramen that is already slipping out of her grasp the more she joins the land of the conscious.

She spares a second to flip the bird in Ahra's direction, knowing full well her older sister won't see it through the closed door, before rummaging through her unruly closet for whatever passes the sniff test. She changes into a pleather bodycon skirt (just long enough to meet the school's dress code, but no longer) and a long-sleeve red crop top in a half-awake daze.

Kyuhyun offhandedly recalls she left her homework in the printer last night. Hopefully she remembers to stuff that in her bag before she leaves.

Not one for morning showers, she simply runs a brush through her silky blonde hair a few times just to get the birds' nests out, wipes the oil off her face, and swipes on a thick cat eye to complete her look.

At the breakfast table, Kyuhyun eats in silence while ignoring the looks her dad gives her, no doubt at her mildly revealing outfit. She gives him a side hug anyway before leaving her dishes in the sink for later. She finishes her morning routine, grabs her keys and homework, and shuts the door behind her when she leaves for school.

~~~

Ryeowook cheerily pushes open the school doors with plenty of time left before the first bell. Instead of her locker, she walks purposefully through the hallways for the principal's office.

"Good morning, Ryeowook!" the matronly receptionist-cum-secretary greets when she sees Ryeowook sweep in.

"Good morning, Mrs. Oh!" Ryeowook chirps. "How has your hypoglycemia been treating you?" she asks as she gathers the paperwork she needs for her homeroom duties.

"Probably better if I remembered to eat breakfast in the mornings," Mrs. Oh responds with good humour, pushing her butterfly-themed sunglasses further up the bridge of her nose.

"I thought you might say that," Ryeowook says while rummaging through her bag. "Here, I made these last night. It's gluten-free, and you can't even tell!" She offers a cinnamon roll from her tin, and she smiles at the way Mrs. Oh lights up at the sight.

"Oh, Ryeowook! You're such a dear!" Mrs. Oh effuses.

Ryeowook bows in acknowledgement and waves goodbye, the papers for homeroom loose in her hand. She finally makes her way to her locker—the inside decorated with magnets, pictures, and a helpful calendar—so that she can get the books she'll need for all her pre-lunch classes.

In the hallways, she is greeted at every turn.

"Hey, Ryeowook! I hope you had a great weekend!" "I did, thanks! Happy Monday!"

"Oh my god, your outfit is completely adorable. It really brings out the lavender of your hair." "Wow, you think? I'll invest in more pink then~"

"Thanks so much for helping with the banner last week! It was a hit at our event; everyone wanted a photo with it." "No problem; I'm so glad to hear that! Like I always say, there's no such thing as too much glitter!"

These microtransactions of joy she gets while walking through the halls energise her like nothing else. She loves being helpful and knowing people care about her enough to say hi. It makes her life as a member of the school's community and as a student leader so fulfilling.

She makes it into homeroom with a minute to spare, sets her stuff at her desk, then places the tin of cinnamon rolls on the teachers' desk for everyone's enjoyment.

The bell rings, and the wattage turns up on her smile. "Good morning!" she calls out, easily cutting through the chatter with her high and bright voice. "There are cinnamon rolls at the front for everyone. Feel free to grab some while I take attendance. The ones swirled in a clockwise pattern are gluten free, so please save them for those with that dietary restriction!"

The typical gratitudes spill out—"Oh my god, these taste amazing." "You're so thoughtful, Ryeowook!" "Please marry me."—and she preens at the praise as she goes down the list in her hand.

It isn't until she gets to a specific name near the top, until she doesn't hear the typical 'Present!' that should follow, that she gives her first frown of the day.

She quickly shakes it off and finishes up, returning to her seat with every intention to rehearse her presentation one more time before the bell ending homeroom rings.

~~~

Kyuhyun steps into school right after the warning bell for first period rings, and she seamlessly joins the throngs of people hustling to their first class.

Well, she would join them, if there were throngs to join. Students stop in their tracks and fall silent as soon as they sense her presence, causing nearby students to quiet in confusion then in understanding such that a bubble of non-motion and non-noise follows her as she walks. The typical morning chatter resumes at a lowered volume from a safe distance of six feet behind her, and she is vain enough to presume at least 40% of those conversations are about her.

The stares go unacknowledged of course. So do the hapless love declarations from desperate freshmen and presumptive date offers from cocky upperclassmen. They might as well have said, "Kyuhyun, I bet you don't have better things to do with your time than stroke my ego and go dutch on an oily dinner at a chain restaurant after school." As if.

While leaving another potential suitor in the dust, a janitor accidentally turns on an industrial fan facing her direction just as she takes off her sunglasses. Coupled with the paused state of her classmates, her languid pace through the hall looks like a slow-motion runway walk that even Naomi Campbell in her prime would envy.

Kyuhyun's locker is empty save for the jacket she just shoved into it, then she goes straight to her first class of the day. She slides into her seat—not all the way in the back; cliche, much?—and, as if on cue, the whispers start.

"Do you think her hair is natural?' "Of course not, look at her eyebrows." "She could be dyeing her eyebrows!"

"I heard she drives to school? I thought only third-years and up were allowed to do that!" "I don't think allowances are all it takes to stop someone like her."

"Cho Kyuhyun in red should be one of the seven deadly sins." "That sin already exists, and it's called 'lust,' bro." "No no no no no. There's lust, and there's Cho Kyuhyun in red."

Strangers referring to you by your full name in some sort of layman's equivalent of a celebrity mononym has such a satisfying, powerful feel to it. Alas, save for a sly smirk, these too are ignored.

The smirk is promptly wiped off her face as soon as the teacher walks in, as if their life's greatest joy is teaching 16 year-olds about Korean peninsular history at 8:30 in the morning, and Kyuhyun already lolls her head back in disinterest.

~~~

Ryeowook snaps her hand up, a lone beacon of preparedness in a sea of bored or anxious faces.

"Thanks for volunteering, Ryeowook! Whenever you're ready." The teacher gestures to the podium with a sweep of their hands, pleased with the student's enthusiasm.

Ryeowook flounces out of her seat to the front of the classroom and loads up her presentation on the laptop hooked up to the projector. "S.E.S. as a Pop Culture Juggernaut" appears on screen in bold letters, and the subtle sounds of rustling fill the classroom as students sit up in interest.

"Good morning, everyone! Today I'm going to present on the seminal idol girl group S.E.S. Through interdisciplinary and anthropological analysis, I will illustrate how the mark they've left on Korean culture at the time of their debut carries ripple effects on the entertainment industry that can be observed to this day."

She takes a moment to look over the surprised and interested faces of her classmates and teacher, then smiles internally. She's going to crush this.

She clicks to the next slide. "S.E.S. is a girl group that debuted in 1997 under SM Entertainment. That may seem like a fairly innocuous sentence on its own; in which case, I'll inform you that they are the first girl group ever debuted in K-pop history…"

When the class learned their Forensics and Communication midterm assignment would be free-form, many of her classmates asked if she'd partner with them for a debate. Their topics were interesting enough. She would have customarily had little problem arguing on the cost-benefit analysis of a college education or the validity of prison sentences served overseas (to name a few).

But she graciously turned them all down. In her heart, she knew she'd simply enjoy it more if she gave a presentation on something more personal… and studies show passion for your work drives results. She expects nothing less than an A+.

Thanks to the confident excitement lacing her voice and a powerpoint that took her two weeks to perfect, she handily grabs the interest and attention of every student in the class, even the ones typically uninterested in idol culture. She winds up leading the class in a discussion on the inherent greater interest the Korean general public reserves for girl groups in contrast to the supersaturated boy band market, and the teacher has to regretfully cut them short to allow for the other midterm assignments that had to be seen that day.

"Thanks again, Ryeowook, for that illuminating and impassioned presentation! Why don't we keep that energy going, hmm? I know it may seem like a tough act to follow, but who's ready to present next?"

Expecting the worst, the teacher is pleasantly surprised when a majority of the class raises their hands to volunteer. The teacher looks over at Ryeowook and sends a quick wink in thanks, and Ryeowook gives a thumbs up in acknowledgement.

~~~

Kyuhyun clicks 'downvote' on a thread in the r/poppunk subreddit. As if Retrieve Me the Skyline has anything on Querying Quinn.

Just then, she senses a presence walk up to her desk. She lifts her eyes up from her phone—hidden behind an obviously strategically upright notebook in a semblance of respect for the teacher—to find said teacher looking at her disapprovingly. She sighs without remorse and puts her cellphone away, not one to fight once she's caught red-handed.

"Thank you, Ms. Cho. Now, as I was saying: Just like how Korean borrows from Chinese and English words, English borrows words from many other cultures. This is part of why their grammar rules are so inconsistent. Therefore, it may be helpful to learn the etymology of certain words to reinforce these rules. For example, 'geese' is the plural form of 'goose' because 'goose' was borrowed from German, and Proto-Germanic grammar does allow for plural forms for their nouns. On the other hand, 'moose' does not pluralise to 'meese' because it was borrowed from an Indigenous American language which did not pluralise their nouns."

Kyuhyun barely has the presence of mind to suppress a groan. If this is supposed to be an English class, why is the teacher talking about German all of a sudden? She isn't gaining any more while paying attention as she was while scrolling on her phone! This is why she doesn't bother. It would take her less time and less effort to simply read the textbook.

Honestly, that's how she usually spends her classes. She's not against learning necessarily—if she has to be here, she might as well—but she is against the fluff shit that most teachers feel the need to sprinkle in to keep people's attention or reinforce learning. If it's not going to be on the national exam at the end of the year, it's just a waste of time.

It doesn't help that Kyuhyun's a whole league above the mouthbreathers in this high school anyway. What other people need several hours of studying to understand sinks in for her after a single lecture. She has the makings to be every teacher's dream student, but she's made it very clear: Don't make her participate in class, and she won't eviscerate their self-esteem in exchange. It's an elegant system with an 87.5% success rate.

As her schedule has it, the only class where it doesn't work is her next one. The phys ed grade is almost entirely predicated on participation; and unfortunately for her, the venn diagram of men who have already had their insecurities abused to the point of desensitisation by their superiors during conscription and men who decide to become high school PE teachers seems to be a circle.

Her solution for this class is admittedly less elegant.

Even as the next period is just about to begin and the halls thin out, Kyuhyun still manages to easily breeze past the bumbling office receptionist trying to prevent her from leaving the grounds during school hours.

(Hey, she's gonna get a 0 for participation whether she's wasting time sitting on the bleachers and bored out of her mind or whether she's going to the mall to grab the new Napping with Nixies album. Might as well do the fun one. Bonus: instead of paying the Korean public school system for the rehydrated prison rations they consider 'food,' she can grab lunch at the foodcourt!)

~~~

Ryeowook spends her lunch period like a jetsetting CEO, the precious few minutes taken up by meetings with various teachers, students, and—today—even an administrator.

"Thanks so much for taking the time to meet with me, Ryeowook."

"Of course, Mr. Park! I'm happy to represent the needs of my class. Let me know if I can help with this initiative again later once it gains more momentum."

"I certainly will. Have a good rest of your day, Ms. Kim," Mr. Park replies warmly, his deep voice and barrel-chested physique radiating authority and paternity.

The administrator walks her out of his office, and they bow to each other at the door. The clock in the hallway tells her there is barely any time to make it to the cafeteria and eat a meal, so she sighs and resignedly walks back to her locker to exchange her books with the ones she'd need for her post-lunch classes.

She remembers there is a vending machine along the way to her next classroom, so she pivots her route slightly so that she can pick up a granola bar and a bottle of water. They'll be easy to finish before class starts.

"You know, you'd have time to eat a real lunch and attend your precious meetings if they just expanded our lunch hour to be an actual hour," a voice says from behind her just as she feeds a paper bill into the machine.

"I don't mind. It means we have more time spent in our classes."

She bends at the knee to retrieve her purchases then gracefully hops back up to twirl on her heel, steadfastly ignoring the other's presence as she continues on her way.

"I think we can definitely stand to spend less time in class. Come on; we already sacrifice the most formative years of our lives confined to these 'hallowed halls,' and they can't even let us digest our meals properly?" her nuisance heckles as Ryeowook is followed.

"I bet the Student Council would love to have an impassioned, opinionated person such as yourself on the panel. If you have ideas for change, you're free to share them with people who are empowered to do something about it," Ryeowook comments mildly, gaze trained forward even as the other pulls up beside her.

"The student council is a mockery of democracy and only serves as a mere figurehead for the students' collective political and bartering power to the school administration, and you know it."

Finally, Ryeowook stops. She squares her shoulders and looks her antagoniser in the eye. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't mock an extracurricular about which I'm very passionate to my face, Kyuhyun-ssi."

The taller smirks. "As much as you'd appreciate time to sit and eat lunch with your friends for once?"

They are not alone in the hallway they've entered into. With an almost imperceptible turn of her head, Ryeowook can even see some students eavesdropping on their conversation, eager to hypothesise with their friends what the two most popular girls in school yet for completely opposite reasons are doing talking to each other.

"Hey, isn't that Kim Ryeowook?" "Talking to Cho Kyuhyun?" "Hold up, they know each other?"

If she could hear them, then they could certainly hear her, and that reminder is enough to reign in her annoyance. She allows herself ten seconds to collect her composure.

When she speaks again, her voice is airy and pleasant. "Well, if that's all, I have to go and spend what's left of my lunch period doing something a little more constructive than arguing with someone who'd rather complain than make the best of a situation. If you'll excuse me."

"You should have gotten fig newtons!" Kyuhyun calls as Ryeowook moves around her. Ryeowook counts it as a small blessing that the other does not follow. "They're easier to eat in class! Less noisy."

"You're not allowed to eat food in class," Ryeowook retorts plainly without even turning her head.

She can feel the other's eyes on her as she walks away, but she ignores it as she takes a swig of her water.

(She finishes her bar before crossing the threshold of the classroom, arriving before even the teacher does and finding a half of a sandwich wrap from the deli across the street waiting on her desk.)

~~~

The surface of Kyuhyun's desk is empty save for her arms and elbows organised to support her languid daydreaming. Outside the window, she watches as three red cars pass by.

More so than her other subjects, math just makes sense to her without even trying. There's less up for interpretation, there are consistent and logical rules, and patterns are clearer with numbers.

If she doesn't need to try, then why would she? So she hands in passable attempts at homework, texts throughout lecture, and is generally unresponsive during the class. Ms. Kang would love nothing more than to suspend her for insubordination and churlishness; but Kyuhyun is her best student by far, and they both know it.

"If the altitude of right triangle ABC intersects with the hypotenuse at D, what equation is always true?"

In fact, Kyuhyun would want to skip this class too, but there's just something about its specific learning environment that keeps her attending lesson after lesson.

In her periphery, the student in front of her and one row over hurriedly draws out the question in her notebook to analyse it. She raises her hand in excitement a moment later.

"Yes, Ryeowook?" "AD over AC is equal to AC over BD!"

Kyuhyun suppresses a scoff. The teacher smiles sympathetically, knowing that Ryeowook is doing her best, and says, "Sorry, but no."

Ryeowook pouts. "Aigoooo," she intones as she looks back at her drawing, no doubt trying to understand where she went wrong.

Encouraged by Ryeowook's attempt, more students try their hand at the problem.

"AC over AD equals BD over BC?" "Nope."

"AD over CD equals DB over CD!" "If you bothered to write that down, you'd immediately see why that cannot possibly be the correct answer."

The class lapses into silence, and Ms. Kang begins calling out desperately. "Anyone? Anyone else?" When it was apparent no one else knew the answer, she sighs. "Kyuhyun?"

"AD over AC is equal to CD over BC," she recites boredly, gaze still trained beyond the window. Forget being capable of immediately answering a direct question; if anyone had been observing her during this lesson, they would have thought she wasn't even paying attention at all.

"That is correct," the teacher admits begrudgingly. "Remember class, due to the AA Similarity Postulate…"

Kyuhyun lets the teacher's words drift in one ear and out the other, heeding no further sounds until the bell rings.

The end of the school day is finally upon them.

As much as she looks forward to this point every day, she sits in her chair and lets every other student file out first before packing her things. She's in no rush.

Kyuhyun drops her bookbag off at her locker and wanders the halls aimlessly instead, spending extra time in the art corridor to see the latest student works. The freshmen are working on watercolours, apparently.

After an unfortunate encounter in the bathroom, she beelines for the cafeteria, which happens to be in a completely other building, and runs into the second-to-last person she wants to see right now.

"What are you still doing here, Ms. Cho?" Mr. Park asks with suspicion.

"Just hanging out," she says with a shrug.

"I know you refuse to partake in any of our extracurriculars, but don't you have something better to do than loiter? I'm sure you have homework or some such."

"Maybe if this school started offering a curriculum that actually required me to reinforce what I learned at home, I would."

Mr. Park's eyes narrow in contempt. "Whatever delinquent nonsense you're up to, do it outside of my high school!" he bellows.

Kyuhyun's phone buzzes in her hand just then, and she uses the same hand to offer a sarcastic salute. "Your wish, Mr. Park," she offers in parting before rushing as fast as she can to her locker. She can't wait to get home.

~~~

When her home's doorbell rings its seasonal chime, Ryeowook is several pages deep into her biology packet. She begrudgingly sets down her work and gets up to look out the window.

Her view is exasperating.

"You weren't in homeroom this morning… again," she says in lieu of a greeting, walking back to where she was doing homework in the living room after letting in the guest.

"Babe, don't be like that," the guest whines while she takes off her shoes. "You know that homeroom is a gigantic waste of time. It's just Big Academia's way of—"

"—'Training students to get used to being herded like cattle,' yeah yeah. Tell it to someone who cares."

"Oh? This isn't a suggestion I should take to your precious student council?"

"I don't have time for you right now. I have a whole biology packet to complete before I can start baking," Ryeowook says as she waves said packet in the air for emphasis.

Kyuhyun pouts with her whole face. "Why bother letting me over if you're not even going to pay attention to me!"

Ryeowook sighs and repositions her laptop to rest on the arm of the couch, invitation unspoken. Kyuhyun drops her petulant act immediately and happily trods over to stretch out on the couch and rest her head on her girlfriend's lap. She wiggles in place to get comfortable and pulls out her phone. Ryeowook's typing provides a light, inconsistent soundtrack to her mindless scrolling; and it feels nice.

"How'd your presentation go?" she asks after a while.

"I almost accidentally commandeered the whole period because people were so excited about my topic." Ryeowook tried going for deadpan, but the pride in her voice was unmistakable.

"Well, duh. No one can listen to you talk about something you're interested in and stay indifferent."

"Yeah, it's cool how emotions are infectious," Ryeowook comments offhandedly.

"Sure, but I meant specifically you. You're, like, the most passionate person I know. I bet you had the best topic out of anyone there, anyway."

Ryeowook doesn't reply, but Kyuhyun cranes her neck just enough to watch a grateful and pleased smile cross the other's face.

Satisfied with how awesome of a girlfriend she is, she keeps going. "Did you like the wrap?"

Kyuhyun can somehow feel the change a split-second before she hears it. "It was delicious; thank you; and never do it again," Ryeowook responds with a clipped tone.

Kyuhyun rolls her eyes. "Stop sacrificing your lunch time for things that can be handled over email, and maybe I will."

"I meant skipping class; and don't even try to deny it!" Ryeowook adds as soon as she hears Kyuhyun's sharp intake of breath in preparation for a non-sequitur argument. "I know you. You thought to do it only because you passed by the deli on your way back from wherever truant kids spend their time."

"Napping with Nixies released a new album," Kyuhyun defends.

"And the store would have still had copies for you to buy during the weekend," Ryeowook retorts.

"First day sales are important, Ryeowook!"

"So is your education, Kyuhyun!" Ryeowook parrots back in the same whining tone.

"Spoken like a true cog in Big Academia's machine."

"This sentence probably won't make sense to a self-inflicted lone wolf, but collaboration happens best in person. And I prefer a small lunch anyway." Ryeowook tacks on that last bit like an afterthought. Kyuhyun might have believed her, except she's seen the way Ryeowook packs for picnic dates and knows that statement to be patently untrue.

"You could stand to be a bit more selfish with your time, you know."

"You could stand to be a bit more courteous in general, so I guess we both have things we need to work on," Ryeowook fires back easily.

Kyuhyun strikes the couch with her arms in offense. "I'm plenty courteous! I bought you lunch 'cause I knew you wouldn't have had a real meal otherwise!"

"I meant to people that aren't me!" Ryeowook clarifies exasperatedly.

"Hmph. People that aren't you don't deserve it. It's like Kanye-sunbaenim says: 'Asshole to the world but never to your girl.'"

"… I don't know what's worse: that I'm dating a girl that gets her love advice from Kanye West or the fact that I had to hear the phrase 'Kanye-sunbaenim' with my own two ears."

"Well, what if I told you I also get my life advice from Kimmy K-unnie? That way it counts as women empowerment. Don't you like that kind of stuff?"

Ryeowook finally tears her focus away from her work to eye Kyuhyun incredulously.

Kyuhyun innocently looks up through her eyelashes to meet the other's gaze. "Well if you're not into what I'm posting, don't look."

Mercilessly, Ryeowook shoves Kyuhyun off her lap. "Goodbye," she says as she places her laptop back on her folded legs.

Kyuhyun scrambles up from the floor and looks at the laptop with thinly veiled disdain and jealousy. "Let me back!"

"Not until you're nicer to people."

"I'm nice to people! Today, I heard Yom Syejin gossipping in the bathroom that the only way I could have avoided detention this year is by blowing Mr. Park, and I managed to walk away without dunking her head in the toilet. That seems plenty nice to me."

"Excuse me, Yom Syejin said what?!"

Ah shit, Kyuhyun knew she shouldn't have said anything. This is what she gets for thinking humourous delivery is enough to mask unfortunate content.

"Really, it's not a big deal. I handled it," Kyuhyun maintains.

"I'm sure you did, honey. Come on, help me bake some snickerdoodles," Ryeowook says as she immediately heads into the kitchen.

This would be an excellent idea, except that Kyuhyun can clearly see Ryeowook's biology packet is still unfinished and that Ryeowook's tone of voice sounded disingenuously peppy.

~~~

Ryeowook makes it into homeroom the next day with a minute to spare, sets her stuff at her desk, then places a tin of snickerdoodles on the teachers' desk for everyone's enjoyment.

The bell rings, and the wattage turns up on her smile. "Good morning!" she calls out, easily cutting through the chatter with her high and bright voice. "There are snickerdoodles at the front for everyone. Feel free to grab some while I take attendance. I didn't have time last night to make as many as I wanted to, so I evenly divided the batch into goodie bags for you all! I wrote your names on them too, so please only take one. I'll know if you don't," she faux-threatens with a cute wink.

The typical gratitudes spill out—"You're the best!" "Thanks, Ryeowook!" "Please marry me?"—and she preens at the praise as she goes down the list in her hand.

It isn't until she notices one person in particular eagerly grabbing her designated bag that Ryeowook lets a private smile cross her face.

~~~

from: Kyuhyun-ssi (Geometry) oh my god yom skank-jin just bolted out of my english class like the new galaxy was on sale tf?

from: wookie💜 Maybe if you bothered attending homeroom this morning, you'd have an answer to your crudely-phrased question.

from: Kyuhyun-ssi (Geometry) oh my god what did you do

from: wookie💜 Did you know Syejinnie's favourite cookies are snickerdoodles?

from: Kyuhyun-ssi (Geometry) OH MY GOD WHAT DID YOU DO

from: wookie💜 Bathrooms are for shitting, not shit-talking.

from: Kyuhyun-ssi (Geometry) i am madly in love with you

from: wookie💜 Stop texting me and pay attention in class!

from: wookie💜 And I love you too 💛

~~~

A/N (8.27.2021): Thanks for reading! To prove my thanks, here is fanart that almost made it into the cover photo.

#super junior #super junior fanfiction #kyuwook #kyuhyun #ryeowook #cho kyuhyun #kim ryeowook #jaso*

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 years

Text

#1yrago Touring, complete: what gear survived four months of hard-wearing book-tour?

I had the last official stop of my book tour for my novel Walkaway on Saturday, when I gave a talk and signing at Defcon in Las Vegas. It was the conclusion of four months of near-continuous touring, starting with three weeks of pre-release events; then six weeks of one-city-per-day travel through the US, Canada and the UK, then two months of weekly or twice-weekly events at book fairs, festivals and conferences around the USA.

Now I'm touring complete. There's one more event on Aug 10 -- a kind of victory lap presentation at my local library here in Burbank -- and then a trickle of events over the next six months, but that's more like my normal baseline of public appearances, a very different experience to the kind of thing I did from April until last weekend.

It's been nine years since my first book tour -- the Little Brother tour -- and as always, there were new facts on the ground to adapt to, as well as hard-won wisdom that saw me through.

Here's some new stuff: indie bookstores are doing better than they have in years, and they're expanding into lots of live events, which are better-planned and better organized than ever. In many cities, there is one thriving indie and three or four suburban Barnes & Nobles, and these have changed, too: seeing as they are the only game in town, these B&Ns attract some stellar booksellers who intimately understand marketing and also really, really care about books. Also: all the indie bookstores have devoted substantial floorspace to embroidered socks. I'm calling it: we are at peak funny-sock.

Here's some stuff that's still the same: "Never pass up a chance to take water or make water." That is hard-won, important touring advice, passed from serious traveler to serious traveler as gospel. Airports are worse than they've ever been...and it's easier to buy your way out of the hardship, between TSA Precheck and Clear, which require that you give up a ton of personal information (which I'd already given up when I applied for my Green Card, so I went ahead, and it was so, so worth it -- so much so that I presume that anyone who has the wherewithal will buy their way into these programs and cease to do anything to mitigate the traveling woes of the general public -- watch for travel to get waaaay worse for normals who only fly a couple times per year).

I've been changing out my travel gear for years, trying to find the optimal combination of flexibility and comfort. I check a bag, and my suitcase was not lost once on this tour (it's happened before, though, and had to catch up with me a city or two down the road). The suitcase was severely damaged, and more than once (more on that below).

Here's the gear that survived this trip, stuff that will stay with me on upcoming trips.

Coffee

This goes first. Life it too short for shitty coffee.

I use an Aeropress (but you knew that). I've stopped carrying around a hand-grinder. I have only so many duty-cycles left in my wrist tendons and then I will cease to be a writer. I'm not wasting them on a hand-grinder. Now I grind my coffee before I leave and put the coffee in a Ziploc Easy Open Tab quart-sized freezer bag (I keep a stash of these in my suitcase and resupply at coffee shops when I run out, having them grind for me; this means I can't buy Blue Bottle coffee since they, alone among coffee shops, will not grind their retail beans, boo) (I also bring along a handful of gallon-sized bags for various purposes). I've tried a lot of sealing bags, and Ziploc's easy opens are the only ones I can reliably seal well.

I heat water in the remarkably great Useful UH-TP147 Electric Collapsible Travel Kettle, a silicone collapsing kettle that has a thermostat that keeps water at near-boil so long as it's plugged in and on. It's multi-voltage and worked great in the UK, and it collapses down really small. The only downside: it looks weird enough on an X-ray that it is a very reliable predictor of having your bags searched by the TSA after you check them.

I am utterly dependent on the Orikaso folding cup to use with my Aeropress on the road. The majority of hotels supply paper cups, or glasses that are too narrow for the Aeropress. Carrying a rigid cup that decomposes into a thin sheet of plastic the size of a sheet of printer-paper spares me the awkwardness of holding the body of the Aeropress with one hand while pushing down on the plunger with the other to keep from squashing the paper cup.

For emergencies, I carried a stash of GO CUBES Energy Chews, a "neutraceutical" whose manufacturer makes a lot of extravagant claims for them. I think those claims are silly, but these are basically gummy-chews made from cold brew coffee (and stuff) and they work very fast and well, but did give me jitters (which were preferable to caffeine withdrawal).

Toiletries

I carried my favorite shampoo, conditioner, soap and a supply of generic woolite in a set of four Innerneed silicone tubes (which I kept in a ziploc). I've used a lot of different silicone tubes and these are my current favorites -- they have a locking mechanism that keeps the hard plastic lid more firmly in place on the silicone body of the tube, even when it's lubricated with slippery soaps, preventing the kinds of catastrophic breaches you get when the whole lid assembly just pops off the tube and everything comes pouring out.

I swapped out my old generic pharmacy rotary electric toothbrush for the Violife Slim Sonic Toothbrush, which is a AAA-battery-powered equivalent to one of those unwieldy, induction-charged Braun ultrasonic toothbrushes that my dentist wants me to use. It performs just as well as the Braun on my sink at home.

I suffer from really terrible, untreatable chronic pain and can't sleep or sit for any length of time without serious pain. I am absolutely reliant on my hot water bottle, with a knit sleeve. For my money, these are the best comfort items you can travel with -- I get them filled with boiling water by the flight attendants before take off and refill them hourly. At bedtime, I fill them from my collapsible kettle. The only downside: it's really easy to leave these behind in the bedclothes when you depart at 4AM.

I carried all my toiletries in Eagle Creek's Pack-It Wallaby Toiletry Organizer. It came highly recommended and after hard use, I see why: it has the best zippers I've ever had on a toilet bag, stores an incredible amount of stuff and still rolls up tight, and did a great job of containing one tube-of-goo breach that could have wrecked everything else.

Clothes

Before the tour, I did a bunch of reading on the best travel underwear and decided to try Uniqlo's Airism Low Rise Boxer Briefs -- they were so comfortable and so easy to wash out in the sink (and so quick drying!) that I threw away all my other underwear when I got home and ordered a half-dozen more pairs. I traveled with three pairs of these, which crumpled small enough that I could fit them all in a pants pocket (should I have a need to do so?) and I rinsed the day's underwear in the sink every night and hung them to dry, chucking them in the bag in the morning, dry and clean.

You might already know that I love the look of Volante's jackets and coats, so it won't surprise you to learn that I lived in an Augment hoodie for the first half of the tour (when the weather was cool), switching to a lighter-weight Peregrine for the second half, when things warmed up.

I started the tour with three different pairs of pants in my suitcase, but left two behind on a resupply stop at home, because I was only ever wearing my Betabrand Off-the-Grid pants, which have enough stretchiness in them to do some basic yoga in, have huge pockets that somehow don't bulge much even when overfilled, and a neat little discreet mid-thigh side pocket good for keeping boarding passes in. My complaint: these were not colorfast at all: they were basically gray by the time I got home, even though I only ever hand-washed them in hotel sinks with generic woolite.

I always travel with pajamas: when you're on long flights, you can change into them for comfort; they give you a way to interact with hotel staff from your room early in the morning or late at night without having to get dressed or put a towel around your waist. I've been buying deadstock vintage men's pajamas from Etsy all year, because they look awesome and are more comfortable than anything you'll get in stores today.

I've been using REI's Sea to Summit compression sacks as laundry bags for ages: there's no problem with wrinkling your dirty laundry, right? Compression sacks are sorcerous reminders of just how much space there is between molecules.

I lived in Native Jeffersons: basically a kid's croc shoe, but molded to look like a low-rise Converse All-Star. Super comfortable, and I could rinse them in the hotel sink every night and leave them upside-down against the wall and slip into them in the morning.

Comfort items

I traveled with a Stanley Adventure Flask that I filled with Jefferson's Reserve Pritchard Hill Cabernet Cask Finished, 15-year-old bourbon that's finished with a couple years of rest in old cabernet casks. Yum.

I always keep a couple dozen catering-sized sachets of Tabasco in my suitcase and handful in my carry-on. They don't seem to show up as liquids on TSA X-rays so you can keep them in your bag, and I've never had one burst in a bag. They make everything super-delicious (or at least bearable) and they are way more space-efficient than those cute, tiny, single-use Tabasco bottles.

Swimming

Swimming is the only way I can stay sane on tour. It keeps my chronic pain under control and burns some of the empty airplane-peanut and minibar calories.

I swim with an underwater MP3 player. After trying a lot of models, I settled on the Exeze players, which are only available for sale in the UK. However, I've since discovered that virtually the same players are sold under other brand names in the USA: one model I've tried and liked is the Aerb.

The reason I swim with an MP3 player is so that I can listen to audiobooks. I get through a couple novels per month this way. Audible's proprietary DRM format isn't compatible with MP3 players, so forget about getting your swimming audiobooks that way. Instead, try Downpour and Libro.fm, both of whom sell thousands of DRM-free audiobooks. Audiobooks and swimming are a magic combination. I couldn't make it through the tour without them.

Gadgets

I got my Calyx hotspot just over a year ago. It offers anonymous, unfiltered, unshaped, unlimited 4G/LTE wifi through Sprint's network, and supports the nonprofit good works of Calyx, who provide anonymity and privacy services to whistleblowers, journalists and many others. They are the good guys and this is a great product at a stellar price: $100 for the hotspot and $400/year for unlimited mobile broadband.

I continue to use X-series Thinkpads. I'm currently on the X270 and it runs Ubuntu very well. I didn't need any service on this tour, but I have on other tours, and I'm serene in the knowledge that the extended on-site next-day hardware replacement warranty (about $75/year!) guarantees that no matter what, I won't be without my computer for more than a day. My X270 took a lot of hard knocks on this tour and survived unscathed. My sole complaint: they screwed up the keyboards with the X230 (or so) and still haven't made a new chiclet keyboard that's half as good as the original Thinkpad keyboard. Please, Lenovo, bring my beloved keyboard back!

I use a Google Pixel phone and it's...not terrible. Everything about it works fine, but it has unbelievably shitty battery life. That is a killer on tour. The Alclap case solved that problem...for two weeks, and then it stopped working. I ordered two more, both of which were duds out of the box. The Scosche Magic Mount was more awkward to use, but also longer-lasting (it died last weekend, thanks to fraying in the wire that connected it to the phone).

Luggage

You know all those suitcases that come with ten-year warranties? They're all designed to have a ten-year duty-cycle...assuming that you travel once or twice a year. In decades of hard travel, I've yet to buy a suitcase that can live up to the punishment of daily flying.

So now I buy suitcases based on how easy they are to get warranty service on. I had heard great things about Rimowa, and I loved the look of their cases, so I bit the bullet and sprang for one (they're extremely pricey). I quickly discovered that their much-vaunted service was terrible -- in London, anyway. My options were mailing the case to Germany, or taking it to a service center on Euston Road where they were rude, deceptive, and all-around awful. I was ready to swap the case for another manufacturer when I moved from London to LA two years ago.

But in LA, the whole story is different. Rimowa's service here is handled by a place out in Beverley Hills called Coco's Leather and they're pretty good at fixing stuff (there's sometimes a week turnaround, but I've found that if I call them after messengering the busted case out to them, they can often turn it around in a day).

I needed it. My Rimowa case was seriously damaged three times on tour: twice it had wheels ripped off (the whole wheel assembly, including the riveted-on bracket, torn right out of the aluminum!) by Southwest's baggage handlers in San Diego. Another time, AA baggage handlers destroyed the latches.

I'm sticking with Riwoma for now. Every luggage expert I've spoken to says that there's just not anything that will survive the kind of punishment I put my bags through, so I'm buying based on warranties, and between Coco's Leather and Rimowa's long-lasting warranties, I can live with this situation.

I've gone through a lot of luggage tags over the years and have yet to have one last more than a few flights before it's torn off in the hold, caught in some grinding system. Now I use the TUFFTAAG Travel ID Bag Tag, made of hard-wearing aluminum with braided steel cables. Dozens of flights later, the tags are bent and battered, but still intact and still attached to my case -- that's a first.

https://boingboing.net/2017/08/02/hard-won-wisdom.html

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theonyxpath · 6 years

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It’s that time for a brief (riiight) look at just why we even have Monday Meeting Notes in order to have this blog. As we tighten up and re-purpose this and our other blogs, as you may have noticed these past few months, let me fill you in on just what this one, in particular, is all about.

Really, it’s an extension of the basic idea of starting the week off with a situation report that looks back at the last week to see what was accomplished, and looks forward to the coming week and what needs doin’. Full disclosure, I stole the idea from my head of Creative Services back in my TV days, and grafted it to the company-wide lunch meetings we had in the first months of White Wolf way back in the day.

Back then, I used the meeting to see if the production team had hit their goals from the meeting before, re-evaluate those goals based on why they were missed, and if they were met we set new ones at the meeting. They were individual goals, mostly, and such things as “Finish Mage splat character pencils”, or “Get half of Wraith laid out”, or “Get quotes from three different printers for the Aeon plastic book”.

By doing this during the meeting, the whole department was aware of both the challenges and the status of the various parts of the creation of the books. Sam needed Josh to finish those Mage splat drawings so he could get the initial layout done, for example. I’d also share the info I had learned during the previous Friday’s X-Meeting, which was the name for the WW weekly managers’ meeting. So long as the info was not top secret, I’d share it so that our team had the best information to base their decisions on.

It was a good system, and we had fewer left hands not knowing what the right hands were doing. I even heard rumors that the developer boyfriend of one of our designers would ask her for notes on the info to share with the devs at their meeting.

So naturally, I incorporated a Monday Lunch Meeting when I started Onyx Path. Putting the notes up in this blog was also based on a previous incarnation, this time with notes that started informal but turned into a formal weekly thing years later at WW after we had internet venues to post them to. With our belief in community and transparency, it just made sense to use this blog format to provide a regular reporting on how things stand at Onyx.

They Came From Beneath the Sea! art by Aaron Riley

Plus, for me, this was the modern equivalent of Stan Lee’s Soapbox, a “column” that appeared in the news page of Marvel comics way back in the day that enabled the lead guy at Marvel to continue to talk right to the reader, even if he wasn’t working on every book like he had been.

Love him or hate him, Stan succeeded in making readers feel that there were actual people involved in the making of the comics. At least young Rich Thomas did as he pored over the new X-Men – isn’t that Wolverine from Hulk? – and all the other 20 and 25 cent comics.

As for the meeting itself, we’ve actually put together a pretty organized routine at this point. We start the meeting with any big-picture, company-wide news. Then, Eddy, Matthew, and Dixie go through the status of the upcoming projects they have oversight over, then Mirthful Mike goes over where the projects are in art direction and layout. We discuss all news about the projects, with special emphasis on any roadblocks they are having.

Then Mighty Matt McElroy goes over any Operations news – which is basically things like conventions, sales and sales venues, business opportunities, etc. If there’s anything not covered previously, like vacations or the like, we wrap up with that.

Using their reports, which are also written out and updated each week, I then update the project progress parts of this blog, and then pick through the jokes and banter to get to several topics that the gang discussed in more detail that I think you folks will be interested in.

Which is really a huge part of the point of this blog. Where once, Monday Lunch Meetings allowed our staff to be aware of what everybody was working on, now the Monday Meeting Notes blog is set up so all of you erudite blog readers can look right into what we’re up to, and how, each week.

Cover art for Wraith20’s Handbook for the Recently Deceased by Michael Gaydos

And with that, here are a few highlights from the meeting today:

We’re excited to announce that we’re partnering with Fabricate, LLC to provide Scarred Lands adventures for Expedition!

Expedition is a light RPG using cards and a smartphone or tablet. Whether you’re new to the genre or a D&D veteran, whether you’re playing alone, with a group of friends, your spouse or with your kids – anyone can learn to play in less than 5 minutes! There are new quests and adventures every week, and the Expedition community can even create their own adventures and share them with others. With this new license, Scarred Lands-specific content will be available as booster cards and through the app. The team are really excited about this, so don’t be surprised if you see them posting in our Scarred Lands forums soon as well! If you want to learn more about Expedition, you can look them up here: https://expeditiongame.com/

Gen Con 2018 is only a month away, and we’ve been busy with new brochures (one with all of our lines, and one just for Storypath System games), pins, card hand-outs, signage, all that con stuff we do. We’ll be announcing at least one new license, new projects, and two separate “What’s Up With the Onyx Path?” panels (Thursday and Saturday) which will pretty much cover the same info although the panelists may differ. It’s an experiment to see if we can open up more time for everybody, not jamming folks in to one session. There’s also a freelancing panel and a developer boot-camp session for those creators wanting to get into the biz.

The Onyx Pathcast audience continues to grow, and last week the Trio of Terror interviewed writer and developer Steffie de Vaan and talked a lot about Promethean. This Friday’s Pathcast is all about freelancing in general, since they all do that, and freelancing for Onyx Path specifically. Plus, we’re making plans for some Onyx Pathcast broadcasting at/from Gen Con. More on that when we know more.

We went over the Fetch Quest Kickstarter a bit, just reaffirming that it did well for its audience, but didn’t break out into the larger card game audience. It would have been nice, but we funded and more than tripled that amount, so it will be great to have it in stores. Card games are still something that we’ll do when a cool idea comes our way, and we’ll continue demoing Fetch Quest and Prince’s Gambit, and see where that kind of exposure leads.

Next, we have prepped most of the material for the Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition Kickstarter, and are audaciously planning on putting it live on Monday, July 2nd at 12 noon EDT. We think that the audiences for this and Fetch Quest are significantly different, so there shouldn’t be much KS fatigue, and so we can run this before Gen Con. If, for some reason, we can’t make that happen, we’ll run it over Gen Con – but I’m trying to give our guys a break by letting them enjoy the con and any August vacations they so rightfully deserve without worrying about an ongoing Kickstarter.

So, like we end with every week, you know:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

KICKSTARTER:

Thanks, everyone who backed Fetch Quest and helped us bring it to stores!

Next up, Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition Kickstarter…we’re aiming at starting this Kickstarter at 12 noon EDT on Monday July 2nd…if we can!

ELECTRONIC GAMING:

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is now live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is both rolling and rocking!

Here are the links for the Apple and Android versions:

http://theappstore.site/app/1296692067/onyx-dice

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onyxpathpublishing.onyxdice&hl=en

Three different screenshots, above.

ON AMAZON AND BARNES & NOBLE:

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue you bought it from. Reviews really, really help us with getting folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these fiction books:

Vampire: The Masquerade: The Endless Ages Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Rites of Renown: When Will You Rage II (Kindle, Nook)

Mage: The Ascension: Truth Beyond Paradox (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: The God-Machine Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Mummy: The Curse: Curse of the Blue Nile (Kindle, Nook)

Beast: The Primordial: The Primordial Feast Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Masquerade: Of Predators and Prey: The Hunters Hunted II Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: The Poison Tree (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Songs of the Sun and Moon: Tales of the Changing Breeds (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Requiem: The Strix Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Forsaken: The Idigam Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Mage: The Awakening: The Fallen World Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Masquerade: The Beast Within Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: W20 Cookbook (Kindle, Nook)

Exalted: Tales from the Age of Sorrows (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: Tales of the Dark Eras (Kindle, Nook)

Promethean: The Created: The Firestorm Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Demon: The Descent: Demon: Interface (Kindle, Nook)

Scarred Lands: Death in the Walled Warren (Kindle, Nook)

V20 Dark Ages: Cainite Conspiracies (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: Strangeness in the Proportion (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Requiem: Silent Knife (Kindle, Nook)

Mummy: The Curse: Dawn of Heresies (Kindle, Nook)

OUR SALES PARTNERS:

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the Screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there!

https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

Here’s the link to the press release we put out about how Onyx Path is now selling through Indie Press Revolution: http://theonyxpath.com/press-release-onyx-path-limited-editions-now-available-through-indie-press-revolution/

And you can now order Pugmire: the book, the screen, and the dice! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=296

DRIVETHRURPG.COM:

This Wednesday is a veritable Sword and Sorcery Day, with the DriveThruRPG releases of the PoD version of the Scarred Land‘s adventure the Dagger Of Spiragos, and the PDF and PoD versions of the third of the Scarred Lands adventures: the Ring of Spiragos!

Along with the Gauntlet of Spiragos, these three adventures provide an outstanding way to first get into the epic fantasy Scarred Lands setting – available in both 5e and Pathfinder versions.

As if that wasn’t enough, it is the last Wednesday of the month – so here are our Monthly Exalted 3rd PDF downloads:

For Hundred Devils Night Parade, we have Susurrus and Lodestar, and for Adversaries of the Righteous, we have Fivefold Mask & Lies.

CONVENTIONS!

Prep is seriously underway for Gen Con 2018 in the first week of August, which takes place in Indianapolis. In addition to our booth presence, be sure to check out the games and panels in the Gen Con Event Schedule.

From Fast Eddy Webb, we have these:

Eddy will be speaking at Broadleaf Writers Conference (September 22-23) in Decatur, GA. He’ll be there to talk about writing for interactive fiction, and hanging out with other writers who have far more illustrious careers. http://broadleafwriters.com/3rd-annual-broadleaf-writers-conference/3rd-annual-broadleaf-writers-conference-speakers/

Eddy will also be a featured guest at Save Against Fear (October 12-14) in Harrisburg, PA. He’ll be running some Pugmire games, be available for autographs, and will sometimes accept free drinks. http://www.thebodhanagroup.org/about-the-convention

If you are going and want to meet up, let us know!

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM FAST EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

M20 Book of the Fallen (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

C20 Novel (Jackie Cassada) (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

CofD Dark Eras 2 (Chronicles of Darkness)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Tales of Excellent Cats (Monarchies of Mau)

Adventures for Curious Cats (Monarchies of Mau)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

Changeling: The Lost 2nd Jumpstart (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Witch-Queen of the Shadowed Citadel (Cavaliers of Mars)

Redlines

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Spilled Blood (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)

In Media Res (Trinity Continuum: Core)

Wr20 Book of Oblivion (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Second Draft

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon (Werewolf: The Forsaken 2nd Edition)

Dog and Cat Ready Made Characters (Monarchies of Mau)

Aeon Aexpansion (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

C20 Players’ Guide (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

Development

Signs of Sorcery (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Hunter: the Vigil 2e core (Hunter: the Vigil 2nd Edition)

Fetch Quest (Pugmire)

They Came From Beneath the Sea! Rulebook (TCFBtS!)

CofD Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Dystopia Rising: Evolution (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

Manuscript Approval:

Editing:

Guide to the Night (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)

Post-Editing Development:

Scion: Hero (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Core Rulebook (The Trinity Continuum)

Trinity Continuum: Aeon Rulebook (The Trinity Continuum)

Ex Novel 2 (Aaron Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition)

GtS Geist 2e core (Geist: the Sin-Eaters Second Edition)

M20 Gods and Monsters (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Night Horrors: The Tormented (Promethean: The Created 2nd Edition)

Indexing:

Wraith 20

Cavaliers of Mars

Monarchies of Mau (Monarchies of Mau)

ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE:

In Art Direction

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

Scion Hero – Stuff is progressing…slowly, but progressing.

Trinity Continuum

Geist 2e – KS artwork continues.

The Realm

M20 Gods and Monsters

Ex3 Dragon Blooded – More sketches coming in.

Promethean Night Horrors: The Tormented – Sketches and finals coming in.

VtR – Guide to the Night – Sam is doing the fulls and cover.

Marketing Stuff

Posters and Displays

Gen Con Cards

In Layout

Fetch Quest – Playtest decks uploaded.

Proofing

Scion Origin – Onyx review.

Changeling: the Lost 2 – Josh is working on the interior fixing.

Storyteller System Brochure

At Press

V20 Beckett’s Jyhad Diary & Beckett Screen & V20 Dice – KS backer rewards shipping.

Scion Dice – At fulfillment shipper.

Monarchies of Mau – In Indexing.

Monarchies of Mau Screen – Files sent to printer.

Cavaliers of Mars Screen – Files sent to printer.

Wr20 Guide for Newly Departed – PoD uploaded.

Gen Con Buttons – At press.

WoD and CofD reroll cards – At press.

FQ and PG Gen Con cards – At press.

Wraith 20 Screen – Files sent to printer.

GenCon Brochure – Files sent to printer.

TODAY’S REASON TO CELEBRATE: Although the one-year anniversary of his passing was last week, here’s to the creative work and legacy of my friend, and co-founder of White Wolf, Stewart Wieck. A year? Really? Doesn’t seem real.

#Onyx Path Publishing

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lacrossecouponing-blog · 6 years

Text

Introduction to Couponing

So, you live in La Crosse and you’re interested in couponing. I don’t blame you. You can literally clear a shelf of its products and get paid to do so. You can create a stockpile that will last you months, even years, for a fraction of the regular cost. You can set your family up for success. You will never run out of toilet paper, toothpaste or body wash again.

However, you don’t have the slightest idea of where to begin. Trust me, you’re not alone. Every couponer has gone through an awkward learning phase. When I started couponing in January, I had no idea what I was doing. I made all of the mistakes you possibly could. And I still make mistakes.

The overall purpose of this blog is to help others save money through couponing. I have had plenty of family and friends ask me to teach them how to coupon, but it takes much more than a verbal explanation. It takes practice, patience and research.

This blog post will help you understand the very basics of couponing so you can start the learning process. Read the following points below to start your couponing journey. Notice that it gets complicated quickly, but the best way to learn couponing is to muddle through a few deals until you get the swing of things. Let’s begin:

0. Couponers Can -- and Should -- Give Back

Before I even start teaching you how to coupon, we need to get one thing crystal clear. Couponing is a great way to stockpile and prepare yourself. It is not, however, an excuse to be selfish. I have heard of couponers throwing away hundreds of tubes of toothpaste because they expired. That should not happen.

Couponing enables you to give back to the community. For me, because I’m on a tight college budget, I struggle to find ways to give back. But through couponing, I’ve been able to donate much needed items to much deserving organizations, such as New Horizons and the Coulee Region Humane Society. Always keep in mind what you can do for others with your new knowledge of couponing.

1. It’s not like TLC’s “Extreme Couponing”

If you’ve ever seen the show, please understand that real life couponing is nothing like that. You will never spend 4 hours in a store pushing 6 carts. Even if you find yourself in a scenario where that’s possible, I don’t recommend it. You’ll end up messing something up at the register, annoying the employees and those behind you in line, and looking like a crazy person.

On a good day, I’ll get $100 worth of merchandise for $5, not $1,200 for $.02 like in the show.

2. Store’s Don’t Just Give Stuff Away

You’re never going to come across a store that will automatically give you free or cheap stuff. They will never advertise the potential to get merchandise for free. Additionally, you will rarely come across “easy” deals that get you free stuff with a single coupon. Instead, the good deals happen when you combine a sales promotion with coupons, points, and rebates. More on that later.

3. In La Crosse, Walgreen’s is King

I’ve had success couponing at Target and Walmart, but nothing beats Walgreen’s. Other areas of the country have CVS, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous. CVS has incredible deals that are usually a hair better than Walgreen’s. La Crosse simply doesn’t have CVS, so I would ignore those deals and focus on Walgreen’s.

That said, most of this blog will be about couponing at Walgreen’s. We have 4 Walgreen’s in the area: Hwy 16, West Ave, Mormon Coulee Rd and Rose St. If I find a good deal at Walmart or Target, I will be sure to post that on one of my social media platforms, so be sure to follow me!

4. Deals Come and Go Weekly

Most of the deals are Sunday to Sunday. This is because, as I mentioned earlier, to get a good deal, you must layer coupons, rebates, points, etc on top of the sales that stores are having. And most stores sales last for a week. Understand that to keep up with the deals you must do your research and get organized on a weekly basis.

Deals on certain items come and go, so you don’t want to wait. For example, I recently scored a pile of makeup for about $5, but I might not see another deal on that makeup for 3 months.

Also, be prepared to hit Walgreens early on Sunday, especially for the hot deals. You’re not the only couponer in town.

5. Sign Up for Walgreen’s “Card”

Like I said, Walgreen’s is where 90% of your couponing will happen. It’s IMPERATIVE that you sign up for a Walgreen’s Balance Rewards Card here. When you shop at Walgreens, 99% of the sales will be posted “with card.” That means that without the card you might as well stay home. The card is table stakes, so get one!

In addition to getting the sale price, the card is how you earn points. More on points later, but they are extremely important in the couponing world. Long story short, you can earn points and use them on later transactions. Points are practically cash.

P.S. - Although Walgreen’s calls it a “card,” it’s attached to your phone number, so don’t worry about the physical card. Just make sure you enter your phone number every time you check out at the register.

P.P.S. – Download the Walgreen’s app on your phone. It’s extremely useful to see what’s in stock, look at the weekly ad, see how many points you have and clip digital coupons.

6. Follow Social Media Pages

Believe it or not, there are people who make a living through couponing. Not only do they go out and get stuff for free, they also manage social pages to help others coupon. These social pages help them earn money through ad revenue.

These folks will do the heavy lifting each week. They track down the deals, coupons and other specifics into “matchups.” That way you don’t’ have to think about it at all. All you have to do is get your coupons organized, go to the store and get the deals! Here is an example of a coupon matchup video created by Running Kimono for May 20-26. These couponing experts typically post the matchups a few days before Sunday so you can get organized.

The following are a few pages and channels I recommend that you follow:

Savy Coupon Shopper (YouTube) Running Kimono (YouTube) Hillary Hok (YouTube)

Couponing at Walgreens (Facebook) Walgreens Couponing (Facebook)

I prefer YouTube videos because the deals are personable and detailed. If you’re serious about couponing, I cannot stress how important it is to follow these pages and familiarize yourself. These people know way more than I do and have the patience to hunt down deals for us each week.

7. The Sources of Coupons

When you think of coupons, you might think of your standard paper coupons that you get in the newspaper. Although that’s one type of coupon, there’s so much more to it. I personally do not purchase the Sunday paper because it’s $4.00 and the point of couponing is to save money. However, my dad does get the Sunday paper, so I make sure to get the coupons from his paper if I need them. Thanks dad! Here’s a list of different ways to acquire coupons:

• The Sunday Paper (not recommended) • Walgreen’s Digital Coupons – these are coupons that Walgreen’s offers in their app. I personally find them to be confusing and sometimes they don’t work; however, I’ll use them occasionally. • Printing Coupons from Various Sources, Mostly coupons.com - you’ll be allowed two prints per coupon, per device. This is my primary source of coupons. Although you must invest in a printer and ink, it’s well worth it. • Bulk Purchasing Individual Coupons from Klip2Save – this is a great way to get a ton of coupons for those hot deals. Instead of spending $20 on multiple copies of the paper, I spent about $3 (with shipping) to get exactly what I need. This takes much more planning and patience, since you have to wait half a week to get the coupons, but it’s worth it. I don’t know where this company gets the coupons, but it works and it’s legit.

8. Points = CASH

Just like the heading says, points are equivalent to cash in most couponers minds. That said, 1,000 points is equivalent to $1.00. Walgreen’s also offers a better value for your points when you get a higher value, more on that here. For example, 40,000 points is equal to $50. But most couponers stick to the general rule of thumb, which is 1,000 points=$1. Cash money.

Let’s say you purchase a tube of toothpaste for $2.99 and you earn 2,000 points. In a couponers mind, you got that tube of toothpaste for $.99 after points. On your next transaction, you can use those points to pay. And as couponers, of course there will be another transaction.

As if this isn’t already confusing enough, there are a couple other rules you MUST understand about points. If a deal states that you must SPEND money to get points, you CANNOT use points to pay. If a deal states that you must BUY a certain quantity of items to earn points, you CAN use points to pay. Yes, that was confusing, but trust me, it’ll make much more sense once you practice.

I hope that this initial blog post gave you a good introduction to couponing in the La Crosse Area. If you have any questions, leave them in a comment below or on any of my social pages. Couponing is my favorite hobby. It’s addicting and it enables positive change in my life and in others. I genuinely hope that you try it out.

Next week, we will take a more detailed look at rebates and rewards. Until then, happy couponing!

#MKT400UWL

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textales · 5 years

Text

“Fight for Your Right.”

“Who the fuck are you?” asked the leader of some band we hired to play that night.

Good lord, how could anyone have the audacity to be so disrespectful and rude? He had to have known this was the office where the check would come from as he was being escorted by the guy who hired them.

I stood there with my mouth gaping open, stunned like a deer in the headlights, then just like that he and his entourage moved on before I could scare up an answer.

My work-study job was more fun than most. While others were stocking shelves at the bookstore or washing dishes at the food service, I worked for ASUM Programming, the entertainment arm of “The Associated Students of the University of Montana.” A New Yorker named Erik curated concerts. A grad student picked the lectures. And there were three red-headed sisters – triplets no less – from a windswept town near some Indian reservation. One ran the performing arts program, one picked the movies, and one was the benevolent boss of all of us.

Working for the student government was an honor and a responsibility that I took very seriously, and figured it would pay off when I had to get a real job after graduation. Thirty years later I can say I was right – if not for me, at least for many of my co-workers who went on to become big deals. One girl got a gig at some software company in Seattle and was so successful she retired in her 30s. Our student body president became a senator. And that New Yorker responsible for bringing concerts to our college made a fortune when he sold the newspaper he founded to a big media conglomerate.

I did the advertising – a position that completely went to my head. Looking back, I was a pain-in-the-ass prima donna, but my intentions were righteous (or at least I thought so). Although we were in the sticks, I was insistent that our image be every bit as cool as those of giant schools like UCLA or Harvard. It was my personal mission to showcase how we were so much better than our redneck peers at MSU in Bozeman who offered washed-up has-beens filling dates between county fairs. As our community’s un-elected curators of cool, we presented performers on the cutting edge. Oh sure, occasionally we had a show a little past its prime, but we knew how to position it as the best thing to happen since the advent of electricity, and we’d sell out the biggest venues on campus every time.

I made ridiculous demands of our graphic artists and printers, maxed out every budget and milked my media partners for every last free commercial. I shamelessly coerced radio stations into selling us commercials for pennies on the dollar. I hired the most expensive television production house in the state and ground them down until they agreed to the pittance I was willing to pay. On broadcast TV, The Cosby Show was the number one hit in prime time (years before any controversy) and I demanded our commercials on the local NBC affiliate play “first in set” when the most people were watching. At $75 bucks a pop, I got our money’s worth and then some. I was making my mark, dammit, hell bent on proving this was no hokey small town operation!

The office was situated in the student union building known as University Center. The glass walls were covered with posters from past performers – everyone from Alabama to Van Halen had been through that town. I was proud of the bands we presented during my tenure there, including 38 Special, Cheap Trick and Corey Hart. On that cold winter day, a red and shiny silver poster hung on the front door to promote the music group who had just blessed our office with their presence.

After cooling-off for a minute I conjured a response to that obnoxious “up and comer” who wanted to know my purpose in the overall scheme of things. Given the chance, I would have shot back with something snarky like “I’m the reason you sold out your show here in the middle of nowhere, you stupid fuck.” But by that point the ungrateful bastard and his band were halfway across the snow-covered campus.

“I like Dick’s.”

Once a year, our team would make a trek to Portland to go shopping. We were looking for “the next big thing” and we’d find it at the convention of the National Association for Campus Activities (NACA) where aspiring music artists, comedians and speakers would present themselves for hire by colleges in the region looking for entertainment options for their respective campus constituencies. The convention was held at the Jantzen Beach Red Lion, a big fancy hotel on the waterfront. Artists would do short performances for the crowd, then interested buyers would have an opportunity to meet with them and their agents at a conference room where deals were cut on the spot. At the conclusion of each three-day trip we’d come home with a pretty good idea of what the next year’s entertainment line-up would be.

I was fascinated with Portland – it was a “real city” (at least compared to Missoula) and traveling at the expense of someone else was cool shit for this 21-year-old college kid who at that point could count on one hand the number of times I’d stayed in a hotel or eaten at a restaurant with cloth napkins.

My first taste of fine dining happened on a NACA trip at a restaurant named the Couch Street Fish House. Knowing it would cost a fortune I was reluctant, but caved to peer-pressure as I was reminded such opportunities for fancy were nonexistent where we came from. Trying not to look like a total hick from the sticks I gawked at fish tanks in the lobby where you could pick a lobster or sea critter they’d kill and cook right then - ain’t never seen that before! Dinner was presented in a coordinated reveal as servers lifted silver domes covering the entrees of all patrons at the table, in unison, at the direction of the lead waiter. There were so many different forks and knives I had to ask which to use for what, and I recall being given a hot towel at some point, along with grapefruit sorbet which was to, according to the sharp-looking waiter in a bow tie, “cleanse the palate between courses.” Hardly an adventurous eater, I had a simple Sirloin Steak (AKA high-grade hamburger), but rest of the crowd went crazy with escargot, scallops and crab.

Split among us, my portion of the bill was $106. To put things into perspective, I made $290 a month before taxes, so this was absurdly high for this poor college kid, consuming over half of my take-home for the month. But I don’t regret it, and to this day that dinner over thirty years ago remains one of the fanciest of my life.

We went night-clubbing on Front Street at The Satyricon. This place was buzzing with sketch-looking guys with mohawks, tight leather pants, chain necklaces and tattoos. And there were women in fishnet stockings looking all slutty with black lipstick and winged eyeliner. A few emo kids and some nerds rounded out the crowd, which contained more diversity than anywhere I’d ever been back home. Oh sure, I’d set foot in The Top Hat and AmVets in Missoula, but never a gritty place like this. I recall a wall of black and white TVs showing nothing but snowy static…a wall of TVs just for decoration? This is nuts. It was literally on the edge of railroad tracks, complete with an angry punk rock band, a bouncer with bad teeth and bulging biceps, a coat check hosted by a girl who looked remarkably homeless, and there was a ridiculously high cover charge. The door person asking if my male co-worker and I were a couple. Before I could answer, Kevin blurted “yes,” knowing we’d get a discount. Still deep in the closet, I was mortified at the consequences of having my cover blown.

As college kids are known to do, we drank a lot of beer on those trips. In eco-conscious Oregon, with progressive recycling laws decades ahead of the rest of the country, empty bottles and cans could be redeemed for a refund of five cents each. On the way out of town, we’d stop at Fred Meyer to return the cases of empties. We were so proud of ourselves, having consumed so much beer over the weekend that the refund money was enough for beef jerky and bottled water for the nine hour drive back to Missoula.

In Spokane we stopped for burgers and fries at a drive-in. Without realizing how dumb it would sound, I proudly blurted “I like Dick’s,” as I stood there in acid-washed jeans and a pink polo shirt.

“He is so gay” the New Yorker exclaimed to the red-headed triplets. And here I thought I had them all fooled.

“Fight for Your Right”

Erik must have seen something promising when he hired the group of white rappers at the NACA conference that year. Yes, we wanted to be “cutting edge” and all, but white rappers? In Montana?! I didn’t see it…but what did I know? I was a fan of the fluffy pop I played on the radio, like Exposé, Bananarama and Madonna, which Erik considered the musical equivalent of cotton candy.

As it turned out, he proved to be a programming genius. When he signed The Beastie Boys months prior in Portland they were nothing more than an unknown opening act for Run-D.M.C., dismissed by industry pros as three obnoxious white kids from New York trying to sound black. Then they blew up…and it was like ASUM Programming hit the jackpot. The album “Licensed to Ill” was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on February 2, 1987 – just five days after their appearance in Missoula. This was an unofficial launch of the “License to Ill” tour, which started three weeks later.

Those Beastie Boys were obnoxious alright. And they were pissed, because just before coming to Missoula they were offered a show in Toronto and tried to cancel ours. Erik held their feet to the fire and threatened to file a lawsuit if they bailed on us, so they conceded and came to Montana in the dead of winter to do a gig for pennies of what they might have otherwise made in a bigger city.

They were nice to Erik at first, but told him once the show was on they’d have to portray the image of the obnoxious rebels their managers were so carefully crafting. They delivered on their promise to their management and then some. No wonder the lead guy was such a dick to me at the office.

We suspected they might be rowdy and cause a ruckus early on. Their contract required multiple cases of beer and bottles of whisky, and they wanted their dressing room stocked with a “rainbow assortment” of condoms. Such demands are not uncommon, and often ridiculous demands are written into the contracts just to make sure someone is actually paying attention to the small print. I’m not sure if we provided the condoms, but we definitely didn’t supply the beer and whiskey since University policy wouldn’t allow. So they brought their own, and sprayed two cases of warm Budweiser on the crowd as part of their performance. They encouraged the crowd to rip-up the seating in the first few rows of the venue, and they trashed their dressing room, which I suspect got charged-back to the promoter.

I recall not wanting to see the show….it was rap, after all, and I liked “the musical equivalent of cotton candy.” But I was curious about what made this group so popular, so I found my way to the University Theatre for the last few minutes of their show that snowy January eve.

I don’t remember much, other than the crowd went absolutely wild and most were certainly fighting for their right to party. I also recall fighting for my way to the bathroom, where dozens of drunk fellow college kids were using every available piece of porcelain all at once, including the urinal, toilet, sink, floor drain, and even the garbage can. It was filthy, but efficient.

The Missouri Lounge is located a few blocks from my home in Berkeley, California. I discovered this place after moving into the neighborhood over a dozen years ago. Sometimes referred to as “unassuming” or “low key,” truth is it’s a total dive. The bar and apartments above it were built in 1961 by a serviceman who retired to the area after doing his time in the Navy on The USS Missouri. I just learned the music video for Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” was filmed aboard that battleship. Now I love even more this bar named after the boat.

On the walls you’ll find pictures from the early days. Not unlike the black & white pictures I’ve seen of my grandmother playing pool at Reed’s Tavern in Great Falls, these framed photos are evidence of innocent local fun…people wearing paper hats and shooting confetti at a New Year’s party when 1962 rolled in… people not interested in going to the big celebrations across the bay in San Francisco…people looking for something comfortable and close to home.

The bar has seen many generations of customers and countless changes of ownership and décor. My first visit was in 2003, just a couple months after the then new owner had repainted in pretty pastels and neutral tones. Concert posters from famous folk like Janice Joplin, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones adorned the walls. And they had a brand new 48” flat screen TV hanging smack dab above the middle of the bar, presumably intended to lure sports fans hoping to see their favorite games in a venue more convenient than those in downtown Oakland or Berkeley.

After a few months the newly remodeled bar wasn’t doing so well, so a consultant was hired to “spruce things up” by “dumbing it down.” As she told me a dozen years ago, the bar was essentially “too nice” for the neighborhood, so she decided to make it look more like a pool room in someone’s basement. Down came the framed posters from historic concerts at the Fillmore and Cow Palace. Peach and pastels were covered over with battleship gray and brown paint. A tired old couch was moved in, and so was an old Zenith console TV that for years doubled as the DJ stand. The flat screen TV was moved into the corner, and they’d start showing classic horror movies with a Pulp Fiction feel. Whatever magic she did seemed to work, and the place became a goldmine that it is today.

Regulars at happy hour include Tim the glazier, Ian who works for the county, and Hans who owns a construction company. Later at night, once the pool table is covered and moved to the corner, a totally different crowd of college kids and younger neighborhood professionals come in to drink and dance. There’s a professional sound system and a proper DJ Booth, and the back patio which started out with a portable BBQ from someone’s back yard now features a commercial kitchen with permanent built-in stainless-steel sinks and a granite countertop. But still, honestly, the place is a total dive, with picnic tables and chain link, where a shot and a beer are cheap, and the bathroom walls are covered in graffiti (even if that graffiti was put there on purpose in the first place).

“I Played That Song When It Was New.”

One of the Disk Jockeys at the Missouri Lounge is a guy named Pat, who is around my age and plays lots of songs from the 80s. Whether it’s Thompson Twins, Prince or YES, he’s often spinning something that I can say I put on the air when I was a Top 40 DJ in Missoula.

One random Friday night I noticed Pat wearing a hat from some bar in Whitefish, a small town in Montana, which spawned a conversation about my college days. I learned Pat’s wife is from Missoula, and my world continued to grow smaller as he cued-up “(You Gotta) Fight for your Right (to Party).”

But as much as I was enjoying the conversation, I had to excuse myself (discount dive-bar beer like Olympia has a way of working its way through quite quickly) and headed toward the bathroom where I stood in line as polite millennial men took their turns one-at-a-time in a bathroom that has both a urinal and a toilet. “Why can’t these kids be efficient like at that Beastie Boys concert where they were using the sink, the toilet, the floor drain and a garbage can?” I wondered without saying a word out loud. Okay, I understand not peeing in the sink or the floor drain or the garbage can, but they can use the urinal and the regular toilet and cut the time in line in half. “Hurry the fuck up. I gotta pee, besides, I have to get back to my conversation with Pat.”

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity in line, I returned to the DJ Booth where Pat told me the wife’s father founded “The Independent,” a newspaper in Missoula, and his business partner was a guy named Erik.

Yes, THAT Erik, the same guy from New York who brought the Beastie Boys to Montana for their first concert out west.

It’s a small world when the Missouri and Montana collide with the Beastie Boys.

#Missouri Lounge Beastie Boys Missoula

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ambitiouslyamanda-blog · 7 years

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THIRTY WAYS TO EFFECTIVELY SAVE MONEY AS A UNIVERSITY STUDENT — 05.12.17

University is a weird, interesting experience — one minute you’re out at a bar, drinking with your friends, and the next you’re eating ramen, and only ramen for weeks. With various expenses like books, rent, and tuition, it seems impossible that as a student, you would even have any money left over to save — but it is possible. By being frugal, smart, and aware of your spending habits, you can easily start saving money for further experiences or maybe some food that isn’t just instant noodles as a post secondary student! Read on for thirty excellent tips on how to save money while away at university.

1. Have a budget.

A basic, but necessary tip is to have a budget. By putting aside money for certain things like rent, bills, groceries, and other mandatory amenities, it leaves you with an amount to utilize for other important, but not necessary things like entertainment, shopping, and travel. It’s important to set the budget and follow it, however, so make sure you’re not just setting a budget to go over it each month! You can create a budget through Excel, or if that is too daunting, just start by tracking your expenses to see where the bulk of your money goes so you can adjust accordingly.

2. Take better care of your things.

Another easy tip is to simply take better care of your stuff. This saves you money in the long run because you won’t be going out and repurchasing replacement items as often. If you’re someone who ruins their charger cords in a month or breaks headphones in a matter of weeks, it’s time to be more careful and take better care of your items, not only for your sake, but your wallet’s sake as well! Instead of throwing clothes on the floor when you get home, hang them up; put your laptop in a case; clean your shoes every once in a while! These tips can ensure that you will save money in the long run by having your items for longer.

3. Put a certain % of your paycheck in a savings account you don’t touch.

If you currently work a job, an effortless way to save some cash is to put a percentage of your paycheck into savings each month. Whether it’s 5% or 50%, the savings will accumulate and help you budget the money you do have for spending more accordingly.

4. Thrift everything.

I am a firm believer that if you need an item, you can thrift it. From clothing to appliances to even furniture, your local thrift store has decent quality items for a cheap price that will not only please you, but your wallet. You would be surprised at the amazing selection some thrift stores have and how much money you’ll save buying used instead of new.

5. Only shop fast fashion clothing on sale.

I usually only shop fast fashion twice a year — before school starts and on my birthday — but if you’re someone who doesn’t like thrifting (for whatever reason) or is aching for a traditional shopping spree, only shop in the sale section. If you’re just shopping to shop, its better to pay less with sale and discounted items than to go crazy and buy an expensive t-shirt that would cost you $50 from Urban Outfitters. Just try to make sure you’re buying clothing items you need or will wear, or else you’re really throwing your hard-earned money down the drain on absolute trash.

6. Stop eating out.

Or eat out less. Making your own food can save you an exponential amount of money, while also being much healthier for you in the long run. Forbes.com reports that cutting out restaurant trips for a month can save upwards of $200, which equals $2400 yearly.

7. DIY everything.

Have experience building furniture? DIY your own! You can also DIY your own clothing, home décor, beauty products, and accessories. r/DIY is my favourite resource to find DIY ideas that don’t break the bank.

8. Only drink water.

If you’re already paying for your water in your bills, you might as well drink it. Coffee, alcohol, pop, and juices can add up to a hefty penny every month; switching to water will not only save you calories, but a significant amount of cash as well. The Simple Dollar found that you can save around $70 dollars by switching to water each month, accumulating to a staggering $840 annually.

9. Buy a water filter.

Taking the previous tip up a notch, cut out buying bottled water and switch to using a water filter. Assuming you drink your eight glasses a day, the Treehugger reports that you spend $1400 on bottled water a year. Crazy, right? Buying a filter can save you that money, along with the environmental stressors plastic bottles harbour onto our ecosystems.

10. Quit smoking.

If there already weren’t enough reasons to quit smoking, the fact that someone smoking a pack a day spends about $91 a week on cigarettes, which is over $4745 each year should be enough to reconsider this dangerous habit.

11. Get a library membership.

Instead of buying books, rent them from the library for free. If you’re a massive bookworm, this tip will save you more money as compared to someone who reads minimally.

12. Stop buying lottery and scratch tickets.

Since I turned 18 in 2016, I haven’t purchased one scratch ticket. With the very slim chances of winning, one can spend their saved money from not buying lotto tickets on more important things.

13. Buy reusable bags.

Another environmentally friendly tip, buying reusable shopping and grocery bags may not save you a lot, but it will eventually add up in the long run. If your grocery store gives back a reusable bag credit (usually 5 cents or so), this tip can also make you money, though not a staggering amount.

14. Have a meatless Monday!

Meat is delicious, but also staggeringly expensive. If the thought of going vegan or vegetarian terrifies you, start off by having a “Meatless Monday”, which depending on the number of people in your household, can save you upwards of $520 a year.

15. Switch to cloths and rags instead of purchasing paper towels.

Paper towels are stupid expensive and quite wasteful when you consider using rags or dishcloths instead. Growingagreenfamily.com reports that ditching paper towels in favor for washcloths can save a family around $1000 in five years.

16. Ditch your debit and credit cards and start paying only with cash.

I noticed when I shop with my debit card, I am much more likely to spend a higher amount of money than when I use cash. When you can physically see the money you’re taking out, you have a conscious reflux to spend less of it as compared to using debit or credit.

17. Make your own coffee.

The Simple Dollar reports that the average coffee runs between $2 to $5 dollars and making your own home brew will save you around $2.50 per coffee. Assuming you drink one coffee a day, everyday, you would save a whopping $887 a year, which in Toronto is equivalent to one month of rent in a two-bedroom apartment shared with your roommate. Absolutely crazy.

18. Have a no spend day, week, or month.

Really hurting for some money? Stop spending it entirely. Survive off of what you already have for a day, week, or month and save a good amount of cash.

19. Buy things from the dollar store.

I love the dollar store. I buy everything I can there, from groceries to medicine to beauty products. Instead of purchasing at the grocery or traditional store, check to see if the dollar store has your favourite items for a cheaper price. It’ll save you a lot in the long run!

20. Stop drinking and doing drugs.

Like cigarettes, alcohol and drugs are a dangerously expensive habit. Whether it’s drinking less, making your own drinks, or cutting out alcohol and drugs completely, each will save you a good chunk of cash to place in your savings.

21. Grow your own food!

It’s amazing how easy you can grow fruit and vegetable plants from scraps. If you can, start growing your own spices and seasonings to start, and progress onto fruits and vegetables for maximized savings. Follow this guide for information on how to do it!

22. Do your own manicures and facemasks.

While the saying that beauty is pain might be true, it should be changed to beauty is money instead. If on average you’re spending $30 bucks a manicure twice a month, getting your nails done can cost around $720 a year, while facials can cost much more. DIY instead and see much more money in your pocket!

23. Walk, bike, or take public transit.

Owning a car and paying for it is expensive. If you can, walk or bike to school or work instead to save you a significant chunk of money per day instead of wasting it on gas.

24. Handmake presents and cards.

Why pay $5 for a card when you can make one yourself? With a little bit of creativity, you can give wonderful handmade cards to your family and friends instead of buying them. If you’re handy and very thoughtful, you can also DIY gifts, like making handmade soaps, necklaces, etc. Your family members will likely appreciate these more than store-bought varieties because of the hearty amount of thought and personality you put in. Cute!

25. Hang your clothes to dry instead of using the dryer.

Hanging your clothes up, either in your room or backyard, can save you a little bit of change from your bills while also conserving energy.

26. Use less.

A pretty vague tip, but using less water, electricity, and gas can save you some good money long term. You can also save more by using less of everyday items — shampoo, cleanser, dish soap, food, paper, ink for your printer — you get the idea.

27. Switch your feminine hygiene products.

If you menstruate, switching from tampons to a device like the Diva cup can save you around $120 a year assuming you spend $10 on sanitary products each month. Not to mention the environmental impact it’ll have! Check out the Diva cup here.

28. Buy higher quality items.

Though it sounds counter-intuitive, buying high priced, quality items will last you longer as compared to a cheaper alternative, saving you money from not having to repurchase as often. Buying nicer quality jeans and shoes are a good example of this.

29. Use the thirty-day rule.

Browsing online out of boredom and find something you “absolutely have to have!!!” like a cute shirt or new video game? Wait it out for thirty days to dispel any impulsiveness. If you’re still thinking about the product after a month, you can buy it.

30. Stop using your phone’s data.

Nowadays, there is wifi basically everywhere. Unless it’s an emergency, turn off your data and scour for wifi hotspots instead.

So those are my thirty tips for effectively saving money while in university! Any tips you’re anxious to try? Let me down in the comment section below.

Ambitiously,

Amanda

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#university #money

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glopratchet · 4 years

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Little Sin

In the world to come there is little sin. You have a new life, a new family and you are free. There are just lots of american alligators. After the election of the first ungendered president, the prediatrain movement caught fire in america. Since then most of the metaworkers involved in the project went private and made their fortunes selling to companies who were more intersted in financial gains than induction. Of coarse the metaworkers had been doing it for so long most just didn't need the money and had continued striving to make humans as perfect as possible themselves. Now only the poor have babies the traditional way and they are rarely more than 20% of any given populations usable babies. The demand for american alligator meat skyrocketed after a plague years ago and it became economic sense to breed them in captivity, who knew they stacked so well? Vats after vats of gator esscence sloshing about growing legs and then bodies then slaughtered and processed. Mostly it is a paradise, efficient, structured, specialized. Sadly your specialization did not prove to be highly valued. Who need classics when the old world is gone? Whorals where burned to ash while polled hereford heifors fetched over a billion dollars a head in auction. Your old farmhouse now an airport, your father would have been horrified, of course he was blown to ash scattering over a freeway while you mother's skeleton was proudly put on display in a metaworks museum. The old world REALLY is gone. You worked hard and got your primary education certificate then just as hard to get your secondary equivalent. You spent eight years studying in the library for your humanities and Social Science papers and got a two 2.1s and a 3. Googizon won the bid to construct for the military the most forward thinking alligator farm in existance so far and with your resumé you were head hunted to run it. You work in a half submerged glass an metal building sitting atop 523 alligators who are kept just wake enough through biog gas injection to allow them to shut their eyes without spilling out the layer of meat skewered on huge needles that run from their spinal cords into the machinery. It currently floats near the okeenokee snow swamp. You are so far from the old world it's not even funny. Sure on the T.V. they still talk about sports and throw around polotics but outside the farm all you can see for miles are trees, birds and insects and the odd alligator basking on a sunny 'beach'. Of course the building is still less then half a mile from a military base on an army enforced conservation area so humans can't wander and wipe out all the game for miles.... This is not that story. You have work to do We are primal ponds inc. we specialise in ultra farm husbandry. At the push of a button our gators from young to full grown can instantly become fashion jackets, leather coats, belts...even shoes and bags. We are pushing so many units every day we have sent reps to try and break into the japanese market, so far they haven't called back. A small mom and pop alligator farm attemping to make it. Last week our oldest gator surpass Cochon gate's world record of 880 years. The sun beats down on your farms back glass panels as you watch the thousands of beasts basking sleepily below. You snap a couple of photos with your phone and beam them over to your reps hoping they call you back soon. We need you to make deliveries for us. We have bought, rigged and updated an old freight submarine for you and set you up with a small crew, you just need to tell us where to drop off the goods. Please...we're dying here... On the rhelm of your glass office a pen floats near you. Point of view of the player: Hey, take a minute and think about where you want to go. I'm letting you choose the next sector of this adventure, with four options: theMilitary Side, Economics Side, Terrorism Side or Criminal Side... A delivery champion here is like no other: we have control over the world's only sentient beasts of burden (gators) incentive based economics that allouw us to sell our leather above price-cost, kick-back free operating licenses and few enough regulations that you can get amazing stuff done for you with a couple of well-placed bribes. Pick up the pen and choose your destiny The criminal side sounds fun: trillions of people live outside and inside the law why shouldn't we? He had a secert life as billy fea fbots biggest drug lord all along! And one more thing... It turns out no one has made a crappy real time virtual reality game based on your life and experiences yet and against all attact you have decided to give it a go.... Dedicated to delivering dragon tail in the far, far, future. Maybe that needs to change... Made by two guys on a coffee machine some sleepy afternoons...mayhaps...it's rubbish... We proudly introduce today the glamorous fallout: an adventure in the post-apocalypse and the two men who made it: bruce and ed. Glug, glug...any questions? Alligator delivery service. The story of a normal life in the post-apazaki...noh... The alligator farm where the gator are delivered is currently under a series of construction tasks. Temporary staff will used while these works last. Already we own over four over ten foot alligators including rex lex, the old female godzilla and lesi mellnick, the huge male dominant of our breeding group. We place breed these four as soon and they reach sexual maturity. We also own thirty-six smaller animals, mostly six to seven foot males and females. A massive 14 foot beast. Not nice. Bred for fights but joined our force with strange reluctance when he could do nothing against our huge alpha male. He's actually a right little so and so, never helps the keepers move any of the large trees in our scrapes.... So, we have delivered one alligator from the breeding farm to an area in florida where our electronics arm opened a new factory recently. This factory is currently attempting to recuperate from a bombing and so insurance fraud seems the most reasonable option. The factory is seeded with several obviously fake bomb scares. While this sucks for the factory work as they all have to stop working, many refuse to even enter thir building, others leave by afternoon. We plan to target the wood workers. (alves and winklehaus.....and thunder? A small safe has gone missing and we believe our bomber has probably taken it. he has clearly stolen large sums of money in the past as a means of terrorise his local communities as whenever something is stolen a new threat will appear the next day from ed or one of his fellow crack extortionists so we don't expect public interest into this theft for at least a couple weeks. At two pm on the dot bruce and ed! will enter the building wearing all black. This is when they plant the bomb that they have created in our secret base under a community centre... my brother and me got our name because ed regarded us as two like his brothers. I'm the quiet one and the brother who just does what I'm told. bruce has called ed a right character and I can't altogether dispute it. With me is greg, a new member of our team and an aspiring stand up comedian! Said he killed someone once but I'm not sure I believe that.... I finallly arrive at the building site where our two crack undercover agents are waiting. There were no actual bomb threats but daft people are still refusing to work. Ed hasn't responded to my last message so I assume that the pair of them are happily seeding the factory. We snuck in earlier, hammering boards over the glass walls to the offices at the top of the factory to avoid breaking in after hours. While at the front we pretend to be a work crew extending a main road so no one will questions us creeping about the 'closed' factory.We wander around the dark building looking for the seemingly empty offices on the top floor and come across a man trying to stuff armfuls of fabric printer paper in his sports bag. He is shocked to see us as much as we are him. The gulity man whirls around as we enter , dropping his bag in the doorway. "Hey we can help you there," I say , not knowing what else to say. 'I...um...thanks... ' he answers, patting down his pockets looking for his keys. I pick up the bag and find the keys in the first pocket I try. How about that? I hand them over and he looks at me with clear recognition in his eyes. He had obviously seen my photo in Newsweek. He must have though this was some kind of trap. So, he didn't come here to steal but to destroy the documents? Well these papers seemed pretty regular, all printer paper and cheap fabric....but then they don't exactly make a good quality paper especially not out here for convenience. Why would the guy go to the trouble of destroying these anyway? "Thank you...are you sure you can handle that?" He asks, nervously smiling at me. I'm quite big remember to add. There are two respectable fathers with me afterall. "Yeah why wouldn't we be?" I respond with a faint smile, but my smile is weak and unrealistic so as not to scare the man. I look at my brother who clearly doesn't react much to these kind of situations....or any situations really. "Right...well, you can just toss it over there." He points to a bare corner of a room behind us with his keys still in hand. 'Then um...thanks a lot....goodbye....' We shuffle towards the corner at first then I get the sense that something is not right with this guy. it may be the fact that he still isn't leaving or the nervous sweat pertruding from his forehead. We play air hockey for a second, me shuffling my feet to face him then him shuffling his feet to face me. He keeps his keys held tightly in his hands like some kind of knife. It dawns on me later that I should have grabbed them anyway. What happened after this I still cannot quite recall in exact detail... "Come on guys,.... can you let me go now? Please?", he says heading to the exit, greg mutters to him to just leave but I find myself obnixious and unpredictable as ever. Maybe he could shed some light on this situation? What was he doing with all these non work related papers anyway? Why destroy them in a hurry? It seemed pretty odd to me. I wait for him to take a few steps forward before I speak up from behind. "At least tell us how you make your paper seem so authentic." I like to lob questions like this at recent university grads whenever I can. It's part of human nature to talk about yourself and it also gives us insight into the security of new moneymakers. I had completely forgotten that some of men out there were not security at all but common criminals looking to rip off new businesses like ours so that they wont be such easy pickins later. I wasn't prepared for the booster to pull a 2x4 with screws sticking out of it out of his bag as he whirls on me with unnatural speed. If I had to fight him eye to eye my life would have been quickly terminated. Since I didn't expect the hostile response however, I had enough time to duck and cover inside the cramped bathroom . With it's cheap lock, I was ensured my safety.....or so I thought.Tip: If you're logged in, your games are auto saved for you. You can find them by clicking "My Stuff" on the sidebar menu.Story

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ucnk · 4 years

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I Sure Miss My Old Typewriter

I was experiencing my office a day or two ago searching for something, and afterward I saw it without precedent for some years. It was my old typewriter.

A great many people today have no clue what the typewriter is. I recollect, be that as it may, my absolute first typewriter. I was so eager to get it and start composing with it. I composed a lot of sonnets on that typewriter, and I sure wish I had duplicates of those sonnets.

Up until I got my typewriter, I was composing everything by hand, which can get extremely tiring sooner or later. There were typewriters in my school, and I went to a class to figure out how to utilize a typewriter. Nonetheless, I had no typewriter at home.

That Christmas, my folks amazed me with my own one of a kind typewriter. I was so amped up for it, and I invested a great deal of energy composing babble. I utilized that typewriter for a long time, and it was a serious friend with me.

At that point I chose to move up to an electric typewriter. That was a critical redesign for me. An idea in retrospect: I wished I would've kept that first typewriter. At the point when I got the electric typewriter, I could type quicker than I was ever ready to type previously. I was unable to keep enough paper in the typewriter while composing.

Utilizing those typewriters, you put in each sheet in turn, however since I knew nothing better, it was a great thing. I experienced a great deal of paper.

In those old typewriters, what you composed was actually what you got. On the off chance that you mistyped a word, it was mistyped. I can't recollect how frequently I yanked the paper out of the typewriter, put in another piece and began composing all once more.

The thing so energizing was in the event that I needed a few duplicates of what I was composing, I could utilize carbon paper between each page. What I composed on the primary page was composed on the second and third pages. That sure was energizing since now I had duplicates of what I was composing.

The issue was, the point at which I made a mistake on the primary page, it went completely through to the last page. You couldn't trick those duplicates. What was on one was correctly on the other.

I was pondering that a few days ago and was considering how I spent a backwoods of trees simply figuring out how to type.

That typewriter was a companion of mine, and we worked like a very much oiled machine. The thing about that typewriter, it never attempted to address me. It generally obliged what I said and composed - and never sassed me. I was entirely charge.

I could generally tell where my typewriter was on the grounds that it was the place I put it, and it never moved. To move that typewriter would have been a difficult task, thus it generally stayed around my work area in my room precisely where I put it. I was unable to take it going with me; I needed to utilize it where it was.

At that point, I thought I had no preferable companion over that old typewriter of mine. To take a gander at it now, I kinda grin as I recollect how things have changed.

I was composing my first book, composing each page, when I found out about this new gizmo called a PC. Indeed, I was not going to get anything current. I would do things the old way. All things considered, Ernest Hemingway did all his composing on a typewriter.

The more I found out about these PCs, the more intrigued I became. As indicated by the individuals I was conversing with, I could build my yield multiple times quicker. I at first didn't accept that.

At long last, part of the way through that first book, I chose to switch over to a PC. Those first PCs had no hard drive, so you needed to place a floppy circle in to run any program that you may be utilizing. You likewise needed to spare what you were keeping in touch with a floppy plate.

I set that new PC up in my office and began messing with it to attempt to see how it functioned. Causing me a deep sense of shock, the more I fiddled, the more I enjoyed the music I was hearing.

I didn't need to utilize paper until the composition was finished and I could print it out on a printer. On the off chance that I made a grammatical mistake, I could address it in that spot on the screen, no issue.

Getting changed in accordance with it was hard for me. I recollect the main section I did and endeavored to finish, however I neglected to spare it on a circle and lost that entire part. I was somewhat incited in light of the fact that my old typewriter could never have done that!

As the years progressed, I have normally overhauled my PCs to where I don't need to do a lot of composing any longer. I can direct into my PC and see words show up on the screen.

Taking a gander at that old typewriter, I thought of what Solomon once said. "What hath been, it is what will be; and that which is done is what will be done: and there is no new thing under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

Possibly the manner in which I do certain things today has changed, yet the message is consistently the equivalent. Methods change, however words never will.

Since 1997, Rev. James L. Snyder has composed a week by week religion/humor section, "Out To Pastor," syndicated to more than 300 papers and numerous sites. The Rev. Snyder is an honor winning writer whose compositions have showed up in excess of eighty periodicals including GUIDEPOSTS. In Pursuit of God: The Life of A. W. Tozer, Snyder's first book, won the Reader's Choice Award in 1992 by Christianity Today. Snyder has wrote and altered 30 books through and through.

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canaryatlaw · 6 years

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okay, well today was pretty good. since I had to wake up early to observe an arbitration my alarm went off at the heinously early hour of 6 am, and I very much didn’t want to get out of bed but I couldn’t think of a good enough excuse not to now that I have a real big girl job that gives me real paychecks and a certain number of paid days off. These are the kind of mornings where I tell myself “you can sleep when you’re dead” as an actual motivation, lol. And so I got up, got ready, and headed to the train. I had texted the lawyer I was meeting up with last night asking what time I should get there but she didn’t respond till this morning and she said 8, which is what I was gonna aim for anyway so that worked. Since it was at a different city building I had to walk a little off the train to get there, but I was there by 7:50, just early enough for my liking. So I waited and texted the lawyer saying I was there, and for a while she didn’t respond so I just hung out in front of the building, but then I got a car from her, apparently she’d had a really crazy awful morning because one of the other lawyers called her freaking out that her car had apparently been stolen (we later discovered it was only towed, but of course she’s gonna dispute having to pay the fee because she was legally parked) so this lawyer had to pick the other one up and it was just a whole lotta crazy, but eventually she got there and then she was trying to give the client directions to get there as she was apparently somewhat lost. Apparently the situation was this client had breast cancer and was going through chemotherapy, which of course we all know is brutal on the body and can leave some devastating side effects. the case had nothing to do with that, it was just a rear-end auto accident, but it obviously played into her ability to testify. When we get up there we find out the defendant, who wasn’t gonna be attending, had agreed to stipulate to liability, meaning the hearing would only be over how much in damages should be awarded. You could tell the defendant felt bad and wanted to help the plaintiff, and he was trying to be reasonable. So the arb goes, our lawyer is basically flying by the seat of her pants but she pulls it off. The cross is a little awkward because the other lawyer would ask things like “well isn’t it true that you had complained of neck pain prior to the accident?” and she would just be like “I don’t remember” and like chemo effects memory so it’s not like she was lying, but there really wasn’t anything more he could do. so basically you can ask for damages up to $30K in arbitration which is what we requested, and the defendant requested for it to be $20K. The panel makes a decision and either side can reject it and choose to pursue the matter in court instead. in this case the panel did award us the $30K, so it’ll be interesting to see if the defendant rejects it or just lets it go, I feel like it could go either way. While the lawyers were outside of the room talking before they started I got asked if I was a witness, to which I just said no I’m a new lawyer shadowing, waiting on bar results, which seems to be the key to opening conversation with just about anybody in the legal profession, and we continued to have a casual conversation in a very formal setting and that just kinda felt like fun to me. They all wished me good luck when I left too, so that was nice. We had to run right from there over to the courthouse for the 10 o’clock cases we had, luckily it’s only a few blocks away so we were able to make it fairly quickly. Unfortunately some cases had already moved on so we then had to track down the opposing counsel (if i start referring to them as OPC that’s what it stands for) which apparently our lawyer had had a previous negative interaction with (they tried a case against each other and our lawyer basically wiped the floor with her when she had only been licensed for like 6 months) so that was a whole big debacle because she was being difficult for no reason, and I got sent to find the library to make copies of an order with the lawyer’s credit card, I was told the library was on the 7th floor, but it was not in fact on the 7th floor, luckily a nice employee directed me to where it actually was on the 29th floor. I get up there only to find out the copying is 15 cents a page and they only do cash. well fuck. there were some girls there making some copies which I asked if I could borrow 15 cents from because I wasn't thinking and thought it would cover one job, not just one page, so I got a copy of the first page of the order but not the next two, and was then essentially out of options so I had to go back upstairs and tell the lawyer what happened, and at that point she was really exasperated with the situation and ended up convincing one of the clerks to make copies for her (perk of being nice to the clerks, always). So that was finally done with. We did a few more cases before heading back to the office, taking the train after I assured them that I could deal with taking it despite my traumatic incident on it last week. Things were slightly chaotic when I got there and I asked about the office situation because on Friday someone said I should have an office set up for today, so we did some investigating and found out I did indeed have an office set up on the fourth floor, with one of the other new lawyers waiting on bar results. He’s somewhat older (at one point he mentioned a college job in 1999 and all I could think was yeah I was in 1st grade then) but seems like a good and helpful guy. I spent the rest of the morning trying to get things up and running with my computer, from email to printer to my phone and a whole bunch of other things, and by the time that was all fixed it was like 1 pm, so I was like alright I’m gonna go get some lunch. I had seen an “NYC Bagel Deli” (that’s legit their name) that apparently had a location not far from the office, and I’d only been to one of their stores once before, but it was like two years ago so I figured I’d give them another try. Just got a plain bagel with lox cream cheese (because of course). I find it so strange that some people default to people wanting their bagel toasted. like they always ask me and I’m like ??? no??? if I wanted it toasted I would’ve said toasted??? just very odd to me lol. But the bagel was actually pretty good, so that made me happy. They also had the pepsi version of the “coke freestyle” machines they have at some places that lets you customize your drink and add different flavors, this was the first time I’d seen the pepsi version. the coke drink I usually get is raspberry sprite which is fucking delicious, so I got the closest equivalent of strawberry sierra mist and it was just.....not good. Idk if there was some mix up of syrups or something but it just tasted really bland and not like anything really, so that was somewhat disappointing. but I finished and walked back to the office, where I continued setting up my phone and they were like “is there any extension number in the 400′s that you’d like?” and I was SO very tempted to be like “yeah, 420″ but I knew that would be such a bad idea lol, so I didn’t say anything and ended up with 421, so that’s enough of a joke for me lol. From there I was scrambling to get the daily court schedule done because it was getting kinda late, and once I finished that I moved on to another research project I’ve been given. Headed home at 5, endured the awfully crowded train for about 3 stops before it finally thinned out enough for me to actually sit. I met up with Jess at our normal spot and went searching for a restaurant, and spontaneously ended up at a sushi place that also had other asian cuisine, so Jess got a chicken teriyaki thing and a california roll while I got a few different sushi rolls, one of which I didn't really end up liking much. sorry if I’m rushing now, I’m suddenly really tired and want to shut my eyes now. So we ate dinner, then I went back to my house and watched the season premiere of The Resident, then used my DVR to watch the two night premiere of 9-1-1 that started last night, and after that I pretty much started getting ready for bit, and that’s about all for today. Again, eyes want to be closed immediately, so I’ll end this here. Goodnight dolls. Stay lovely.

#daily journal #September 2018 #Jess tag #Rachel's lawyer adventures

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ergohacks · 7 years

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The Ergohacks Verdict

Printers are not exactly something to set your heart racing in a positive way. They’re annoying. They break at inconvenient times. They’re messy. They stop working. They tell you ‘error’ for no obvious reason when everything seems to be working fine. They set your heart racing with annoyance and stress instead. No matter how hard I try I can’t get my heart racing about the Epson ET 3750. After using it for a couple of weeks I’ve decided it’s something that’s probably more important than a way to get my blood pumping – its practical.

First things first – let’s talk about running costs. With a name like Ecotank, you’d think correctly that its a big focus of Epson’s new line and you’d be right. Epson claims it will reduce costs by 74% on average. To do this they’ve produced something that’s different to the rest of the market – no ink cartridges. Instead, the printer has four discrete ink tanks that you fill up from tiny cans. Epson has made the system virtually idiot proof – and that’s a good thing. The printer is rated to handle 14,000 black and 11,200 colour prints with full tanks and it comes with refills for two complete tanks out of the box. I was a little sceptical about how easy it would be but it turned out to be two-minute processes to fill each tank and a complete tank in the printer was equivalent to one can and they even had different shaped heads so you physically can’t put the wrong link in the wrong tank. A refill black ink cartridge costs £13.50 from Epson and will half fill the tank to do 7,500 average pages – that’s a cost of £0.0018 or a fifth of a pence per page. The same calculation for colour prints works out at around half a penny a page with full colour photographic pages going up to 3 or 4 pence a page.

Installing the driver software was relatively simple – CD in or download from the Epson site and go. There was a whole range of extras offered to optimise everything and keep a minute watch on ink levels but Epson gets points for not forcing you to install it all. I also found that Windows 10 was able to install drivers on its own when it found the printer on the Network. This didn’t give me things like the ability to update the firmware but for most people, the ability to print and scan is all they need.

So what else can it print from? Traditionally we all print from our PC’s but that’s not really the case now. Epson provides apps to allow printing from Android, iOS and MacOS. None of these are particularly impressive but they all work and seem reliable. The ET-3750 also supports Google Cloud Print to allow printing from Chromebooks and there are also third party Linux solutions.

The printer connects via wi-fi, ethernet or USB which will cover most situations. We tried to set ours up on wifi but found it unreliable. It worked perfectly for several prints then gave the message ‘connection error’ on the screen and Windows showed ‘Error’. We tried it on a different wifi network with a different wifi hub and put it 2 feet away from the hub but had the same intermittent problem. Switching off and on solved it every time but it was somewhat frustrating. Switching to a wired connection (on the same LAN with the same drivers and PC) solved the problem immediately although we were interested to discover to activate the wired Ethernet you have to turn the wifi off.

So far I’ve been concentrating on the conventional printing aspects of the ET-3750 but it’s actually a 3 in 1 with a flatbed and a document feeder that can handle up to 30 pages at once. The scanner worked reasonably and although I’d not be comfortable recommending it for someone who wanted to scan hundreds of documents it’ll do a decent job for most home or small office needs. Scans can be sent to a local PC or uploaded to a pre-determined cloud service – although it’d be great to be able to set a default! I also found it quite sensitive to thicker paper – it scanned fine but then tended to fill the exit hopper and this would, in turn, cause a paperjam.

So after two weeks of having the ET-3750 sitting on my desk, printing and scanning everything I can think of would I recommend it? Yes without a doubt. It’s compact, relatively quiet, produces decent quality prints, its quick and once I’d gotten it on a wired connection completely reliable. It doesn’t get my heart racing but that’s a huge step up over most printers. Highly recommended.

Buy it from Amazon +

Price: ± £400 Included: 2 full sets of ink (Bk – 127ml, CMY – 70ml), Main unit, Power cable, Setup guide, Software on CD, Warranty document

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Specification

Product dimensions: 37.5‎ x 34.7 x 23.1 cm Item Weight: 6.7kg Energy Use: 12 Watt (standalone copying, ISO/IEC 24712 pattern), 0.9 Watt (sleep mode), 5.3 Watt (ready), 0.3 Watt (Power off), ENERGY STAR® qualified Compatible Operating Systems: Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Vista, Windows XP, XP Professional x64 Edition Interfaces: WiFi, USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi Direct WLAN Security: WEP 64 Bit, WEP 128 Bit, WPA PSK (TKIP), WPA PSK (AES) Mobile and Cloud printing services: Epson Connect (iPrint, Email Print, Remote Print Driver, Scan-to-Cloud), Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print

Printing Method: PrecisionCore™ Print Head Modes: Print, Scan, Copy

Printing Printing Speed: ISO/IEC 24734 15 pages/min Monochrome, 8 pages/min Colour Printing Speed: 20 pages/min Colour (plain paper 75 g/m²), 33 pages/min Monochrome (plain paper 75 g/m²) Duplex Printing Speed: ISO/IEC 24734 6.5 A4 pages/min Monochrome, 4.5 A4 pages/min Colour Colours: Magenta, Yellow, Cyan, Black

Scanning: Scanning Resolution: 1,200 DPI x 2,400 DPI (Horizontal x Vertical) Scanner type: Contact image sensor (CIS)

Number of paper trays: 1 Paper Formats: A4, A5, A6, B5, C6 (Envelope), DL (Envelope), No. 10 (Envelope), Letter Legal, 9 x 13 cm, 10 x 15 cm, 13 x 18 cm, 13 x 20 cm, 20 x 25 cm, 100 x 148 mm, 16:9, User defined Duplex: Yes (A4, plain paper) Print Margin: 0 mm top, 0 mm right, 0 mm bottom, 0 mm left (Wherever margin is defined. Otherwise 3mm top, left, right, bottom.) Automatic Document Feeder: 30 pages Output Tray Capacity: 30 Sheets multifunction, 150 Sheets Standard, 20 Photo Sheets Media Handling: Auto Sheet Feeder, Automatic duplex (A4, plain paper)

Black yield: 14,000 pages Colour yield: 11,200 pages

Warranty: 12 months Carry-in, 50,000 pages

About Epson

Epson is a Japanese electronics company that makes a huge range of printers, scanners and various types of commercial hardware and projectors. It’s a part of Seiko who are better known for their clocks. Epson employs over 70,000 worldwide and have a turnover over 10 billion dollars a year.

We based our Ergohacks Verdict on 2 weeks of testing, scanning and printing. It was kindly loaned by Epson in October 2017. This article was first published on 2 November 2017.

Epson Ecotank ET-3750 Printer The Ergohacks Verdict Printers are not exactly something to set your heart racing in a positive way.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 years

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Touring, complete: what gear survived four months of hard-wearing book-tour?

It's been nine years since my first book tour -- the Little Brother tour -- and as always, there were new facts on the ground to adapt to, as well as hard-won wisdom that saw me through.

Here's the gear that survived this trip, stuff that will stay with me on upcoming trips.

Coffee

This goes first. Life it too short for shitty coffee.

Toiletries

Clothes

Comfort items

Swimming

Swimming is the only way I can stay sane on tour. It keeps my chronic pain under control and burns some of the empty airplane-peanut and minibar calories.

Gadgets

Luggage

I've gone through a lot of luggage tags over the years anhd have yet to have one last more than a few flights before it's torn off in the hold, caught in some grinding system. Now I use the TUFFTAAG Travel ID Bag Tag, made of hard-wearing aluminum with braided steel cables. Dozens of flights later, the tags are bent and battered, but still intact and still attached to my case -- that's a first.

https://boingboing.net/2017/08/02/hard-won-wisdom.html

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automaticreviewwhispers-blog · 7 years

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Data Center Racks & Cabinets

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While Memorial Day is truly a day to don't forget those guys and women who have died in military service to our country, it is also the unofficial start of the summer season right here at the beach, bringing thousands and thousands of folks here from neighboring cities and states. Several of our secure enclosures have extra attributes to maintain your servers functioning, such as cooling devices, noise-dampening qualities and power distribution facilities. http://kelsusit.com/refurbished-pc-desktop-computers The UCoustic 9210i does not make any compromises, the sophisticated design and style extends to it becoming an outstanding all round 19” data, comms and server cabinet, with totally adjustable front and rear mounting angles and a decision of an unrivalled SIX cable entry ports without having detriment to the required sound or temperature values. This purchasing function will continue to load things. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut essential to navigate to the subsequent or earlier heading. A 23-inch (580 mm) rack is utilized for housing telephone (primarily), pc , audio , and other equipment even though is much less widespread than the 19-inch rack. The size denotes the width of the faceplate for the installed equipment. The rack unit is a measure of vertical spacing and is common to each the 19 and 23 inch racks. It's also possible to place additional I/ cards into blades, as nicely as into rackables. The IBM line makes use of PCI and PCI Express (PCIe) cards in its rackables. Possibilities to improve to two cards tends to make rackables more flexible in terms of I/ card expansion. The memory options in blades and rackables are similar. Rack-mountable equipment is traditionally mounted by bolting or clipping its front panel to the rack. Inside the IT sector, it is typical for network/communications equipment to have multiple mounting positions, like table-leading and wall mounting, so rack mountable gear will frequently function L-brackets that must be screwed or bolted to the gear prior to mounting in a 19-inch rack. With the prevalence of 23-inch racks in the Telecoms industry, the exact same practice is also typical, but with equipment having 19-inch and 23-inch brackets available, enabling them to be mounted in existing racks. When raw computing power and server density is the important drive, blade servers meet the need to have. For instance, in my environment, I have a 10U Dell M1000e blade chassis that can help up to 16 servers. So, each server makes use of the equivalent of .625U of rack space. On prime of that, the blade chassis holds 4 gigabit Ethernet switches and two Fibre Channel switches, so there is further rack space savings given that I do not need to have to rack mount these devices to help diverse connectivity options. In addition, the blade chassis has a constructed-in KVM switch so I never need to have to purchase a third party and cable it up. Get a printer supplied, installed, networked with your workplace PCs, maintained and even with toner supplied, all for a fixed price that attracts 100% tax relief. Then there is the choice to return it at the end of the lease retain it and pay the princely sum of £1 to personal it, or renew the lease and upgrade to a new printer (and if you do, we'll even take the old printer away to quit it cluttering your corridors or gathering dust in the corner. The PE 850 and 860 share chassis with the R200, and other than name badge are visually identical. In addition to skeleton” (or open) racks, some racks support enclosure on some number of sides. (For instance, some racks could supply enclosure of the front, the sides, or both. Some could offer you complete enclosure (cabinets”). Enclosed racks offer added safety, which can be beneficial in circumstances where guests or other personnel with out authorization to access the equipment nonetheless have access to the data center or IT facility. Enclosed racks enable the company to lock its IT equipment away and to keep it out of sight, thereby limiting each access and temptation. Regardless of the positive aspects of enclosed racks, they also pose some challenges—particularly in the area of cooling. An enclosed rack, obviously, has a lot much less access to outside air, creating cooling a challenge. An enclosed rack will require some sort of venting for air cooling, or it will need compatibility with a liquid cooling resolution. Just wanted to attain out and say 'Thanks for all the aid.' I really appreciate that you let me function with you via any concern that arises from the refurbed gear. It really is produced items a bit simpler on my finish when I have numerous things to juggle and I know I can just reach out to you and get outcomes. Configure your storage alternatives to suit your demands. The PowerEdge R320 enables you to tailor your method with up to eight internal drives — one hundred percent more hard drives than the previous Dell generation — two PCIe expansion slots and either hardware or computer software RAID possibilities for information protection. Would the Agentless Nagios plugin work with the SL230 server? I have a consumer asking me this very specific question and they would like to keep away from SNMP use in basic. We offer our sincere thanks to all those who've produced the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country. Pleased Memorial Day. Floor Cabinets. These kinds of cabinets come in a range of different types depending on your requirements. 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I employed the MIB CPQRACK but no monitor is returning any worth.. I also let the opmanager query the OID of the blade encl but it returns a distinct value (.1.3.6.1.4.1.11.5.7.1.two) which is the OID of the on-board admin I believe. The box also contains all of the hardware you'll need to have to rackmount the 2U server. Again, Dell is speaking our language here with thoughtful engineering at each level. Shown beneath is the hardware incorporated with our R730 - from leading to bottom is a cable management arm and the rackmount rail kit, all of which clips together with out the want of nuts, bolts and a socket set. Especially created for the enterprise, the R930 has all the power and capacity required to meet your enterprise needs. Lenovo looks to assure striking Chinese workers that the firm will not slash wages or positive aspects once it requires more than IBM's x86 server enterprise. This past weekend Spouse & I have been back in DC once more. I say 'again' due to the fact we had been there a month ago for Easter, and two weeks ago for his mom's viewings and funeral. But we went back again for two critical factors. Please check out our speak to us section for opening occasions or if you call for consumer service help. The Nfina Technologies 300 Series rack server is developed to provide the greatest mixture of efficiency, reliability, and value in the business. This energy effective custom server is an superb decision for any organization searching for higher performance at a low expense. Our rack-mount 1U servers raise the bar for price and functionality requirements. With numerous possibilities for CPU's, Network, RAID, storage, memory, and Operating Systems, Nfina storage servers are a excellent selection for energy efficient virtualized computing applications. Our wide portfolio of severs incorporate Racks, Tower and Blade that addresses the pressing needs of today's emerging businesses. Maak altijd een afspraak om uw bestelling af te halen, zodat deze voor u klaar ligt. Servers, storage and networking come collectively in a new converged Blade Information see Center supplying. Measure and reduce the sides as effectively. The depth of the sides will be the same as the depth of the best and bottom. The height of the sides will be the height of the open rack plus 2x the thickness of your plywood.

The DSS machines announced this week are all primarily based on Intel's Haswell” Xeon E5 v3 processors, and they have extremely precise and somewhat limited operating program help. The machines have a really standard baseboard management controller and do not have Dell's iDRAC server controller, utilised in its flagship PowerEdge machines, as an choice. Dell also has tailored help for consumers, like scale optimized break/fix services that take into account that the large organizations that are acquiring DSS machines usually have the capability to swap out broken machines with ones they have in stock and then do their own repairs. We know: the believed leaves a undesirable taste in your mouth. These are your personnel, men and women you know and trust. or from R2892.00 per month, mobicred indicative month-to-month pricing, for 12 months at 24.85%pa, excluding the month-to-month fee of R28.50 and a once-off account initiation fee R114.00. We walk the journey to accomplishment with you step by step as we provide the 4 essentials needed to run a thriving online enterprise. We supply Training, Support & Coaching, Tools, and Services in order for you to be successful. Although doors are crucial, the rest of the enclosure plays an important function in keeping airflow. Rack accessories should not impede air ingress or egress. Blanking panels are crucial as are side air dams” or baffle plates, for they avert any exhaust air from returning to the equipment intake (blanking panels install in unused rackmount space while air dams set up vertically outside the front EIA rails). These additional pieces should coexist with any cable management scheme or any supplemental rack accessories the user deems essential. Information located on Google Surch. / / / /. Under Emagenes. especially follows. Intel® Server Boards and Intel® Server Systems are developed to span a number of server use situations and customization requirements with functionality, energy, and price flexibility to meet your current specifications with headroom for growth. I believed about creating a frame on the door panels and putting the roxul in it and covering with more 1/4 plywood. But the noise reduction i'll get out of it wont be a huge improvement so I am significantly less motivated to get it done.

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silviajburke · 7 years

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More Proof of Janet Yellen’s Idiocy

This post More Proof of Janet Yellen’s Idiocy appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

[Ed. Note: To see exactly what this former Reagan insider has to say about Trump and the fiscal threats from politics and the debt ceiling, David Stockman is sending out a copy of his book Trumped! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back to any American willing to listen – before it is too late. To learn how to get your free copy CLICK HERE.]

During the last 129 months, the Fed has held 86 meetings. On 83 of those occasions it either cut rates or left them unchanged.

So you can perhaps understand why Wednesday’s completely expected (for the last three weeks!) 25 bips left the day traders nonplussed. The Dow rallied over 100 points that day.

Traders understandably believe that this monetary farce can continue indefinitely, and that our Keynesian school marm’s post-meeting presser was evidence that the Fed is still their friend.

No it isn’t!

Janet Yellen’s sing-song gibberish was the equivalent of a monetary DEFCON 1, alerting all except the most addicted Kool-Aid drinkers to get out of the casino.

Our monetary politburo has expanded its balance sheet by a lunatic 22X during the last three decades and in the process has systematically falsified financial asset prices and birthed a mutant debt-fueled of simulacrum of prosperity.

But once it begins to withdraw substantial amounts of cash from the canyons of Wall Street as per its newly reaffirmed “normalization” policy, the whole house of cards is destined to collapse.

There will be a stock market implosion soon, and that will in turn generate panic in the C-suites as the value of stock options vanish. Like in the fall of 2008 — except on an even more sweeping and long-lasting scale — corporate America will desperately unload inventories, workers and assets to appease the robo-machines of Wall Street.

But there is nothing left to brake the casino’s fall.

If the money market rate conforms to the Fed’s latest command and settles at 88 basis points, it is still effectively at the zero bound. Our monetary politburo is thus still out of dry powder — except for the nuclear option of QE4, which Yellen herself made quite clear would never happen until after the next recession is already underway.

Yet by then it will be too late — way too late. That’s because the market is priced as if the business cycle has been outlawed and as if the feckless band of Keynesian pretenders who have seized control of financial markets have ushered in the Nirvana of permanent full-employment. World without end.

Needless to say, they haven’t because they haven’t repealed the law of supply and demand. That is, if the Fed plans to keep raising until rates until they reach 3.0% by 2019, it will have to suck massive amounts of cash out of the financial markets.

So doing, it will drive long-term yields substantially higher and thereby obliterate the ultra-low cap rate delusion on which the entire regime of Bubble Finance is based.

In fact, in a blathering response at her presser about the pace by which the Fed intends to shrink its bloated $4.4 trillion balance sheet, Yellen proved she is clueless about the financial firestorm our rogue central bank is about to unleash.

She claimed that the Fed could implement 3-4 money market rate increases a year, while deferring the shrinkage of its balance sheet into the indefinite future.

But that it most assuredly cannot do.

With a staggering overhang of $2.1 trillion of excess reserves in the financial system, even our vaunted monetary politburo cannot command the tides to recede. If it wants the money rate to rise on its appointed path through 2019, it must drain loads of cash from Wall Street.

At the same time, the other event from Wednesday — the freezing in of the Federal debt ceiling at $19.9 trillion — will means that the cash drain will soon intensify.

That’s because the U.S. Treasury has blown a massive wad of cash in order to pay its bills during the last few months, but will soon be back into the market borrowing hand-over-fist. That is, draining cash from the dealer market as it floods Wall Street with new bills, notes and bonds.

At the peak level of its cash hoard on October 24, the U.S. Treasury was sitting on $482 billion of cash.

But as of Wednesday, the Treasury’s cash balance stood at just $77 billion, meaning it burned through $305 billion of cash in just 51 calendar days since the inauguration, and nearly $360 billion since the October 24 peak.

But now that the debt ceiling is again frozen into place, an explosive political crisis is coming soon.

There is simply no pathway to a Congressional majority to raise it until Washington reaches the brink of political crisis and has gone beyond.

The prolonged and turbulent debt ceiling crisis that is coming down the pike is surely not “priced-in.” As I have said, the robo-machines can read headlines, but they can’t read the Washington tea leaves.

The fact is, what is impending is nothing like the 2011 crisis when Obama’s Keynesian advisors scared the wits out of him about a debt rating downgrade, and the GOP backbenches were set-up for a patented betrayal by House Speaker “Lawnchair Johnny” Boehner.

This time there will be no timely compromise.

That’s because the Deep State and its Democratic shills are attempting to re-litigate the election, while the Donald has declared war on them in turn — compounded by his aggressive actions on the immigrant ban, deportation of illegals and the erection of provocative controls and walls at the Mexican border.

The fact is, as a political matter, Hispania is the 51st state, and the channel through which the Democrats hang on to power. They will not support a debt-ceiling increase unless Trump throws in the towel on Obamacare and his anti-immigrant dragnet.

Yet if he folds on those core issues, he will incite a massive revolt in the GOP rank and file, which would make a majority for a debt ceiling increase even more problematic.

Besides, the temporary expedients and accounting gimmicks which the Treasury will now began to roll-out to temporarily defer the day of reckoning actually make no difference where it counts.

Last year during the March through May period, in fact, net debt rose by $96 billion, and there is every reason to believe that this year the shortfall will be even higher.

Accordingly, the current meager cash balance at the Treasury will not even last to Memorial Day.

After that, Uncle Sam will be back on Wall Street borrowing cash hand-over-fist — even as the Fed continues destocking its hoard of government debt through the back door of the repo market.

So what commenced this week and what will remain into the indefinite future is that Washington will be draining massive amounts of cash out of financial markets that have been suckling on the teat of government “stimulus” for most of the past three decades.

Does the school marm running the Wall Street casinos banking window see any of this double whammy coming?

Au contraire.

Again Wednesday she professed to see no bubbles anywhere, while floundering incoherently when asked about the timing of the Fed’s belated normalization campaign. A questioner wondered why the Fed is now raising rates just as the U.S. economy shows signs of gathering weakness and the global economy — centered in China and its supply chain — lurches forward in a slow-motion train wreck.

Anyone buying stock based on confidence that the Fed has their back notwithstanding Wednesday’s action surely deserves the pounding just ahead. What Yellen had to say doesn’t even reach the status of babbling; it was flaming incoherence:

Well, look, our policy is not set in stone. It is data-dependent and we’re — we’re not locked into any particular policy path. Our — you know, as you said, the data have not notably strengthened. I — there’s noise always in the data from quarter to quarter. But we haven’t changed our view of the outlook. We think we’re on the same path, not — we haven’t boosted the outlook, projected faster growth. We think we’re moving along the same course we’ve been on, but it is one that involves gradual tightening in the labor market.

So when faced with actual facts about declining real wages, collapsing Q1 GDP estimates, disappointing retail sales and a wild and woolly fiscal process ahead, the Fed chairman defended the third rate hike in 11 years by saying that the “data is noisy.”

What isn’t noisy is the data on the stock market’s bubble of a lifetime.

When it finally pops Yellen and her posse of Keynesian money printers will be incoherent, speechless and finished.

And that pop could come awfully soon.

Regards,

David Stockman for The Daily Reckoning

The post More Proof of Janet Yellen’s Idiocy appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

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oselatra · 7 years

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What's new and coming soon to Argenta

A riverfront hotel, new residential development, food, drink and more.

The Koehler Building and Koehler Bakery Building

700 block of Main Street, Argenta

I t has taken a while for the continuing revival of Main Street in Argenta to progress beyond a few core blocks between Broadway and Seventh streets, but the push further northward is in progress, with the renovation of four buildings in the 700 block, including the historic Koehler Building and the Koehler Bakery buildings. The mixed-use, two-story redevelopment will feature commercial space downstairs and condominiums and apartments upstairs. Three businesses have committed to locate in the block so far, including studio space for painter Barry Thomas at 711A Main. Next door will be Ozark Escape, the area's newest entry in the popular "escape room" entertainment genre, a live-action puzzle-solving game that locks participants in a themed room filled with clues and gives them a set amount of time to figure out how to escape. Ozark Escape will feature three different rooms that can hold up to 20 players at a time. At 715 Main will be Mortgage Peer Network, a startup company that sells technology to mortgage lenders, run by Greg Ellis.

Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub

201 E. Broadway

Opened in January 2015, Argenta's Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub is a haven for tinkerers. It features a full woodworking shop, a printmaking and screenprinting shop, several 3D printers and two high-powered lasers that can do precision cuts and engraving in materials from paper to plywood. The Hub also offers regular classes on welding, laser-cutting, coding, block printing and more to members who pay a reasonable monthly or per-day fee.

Warwick Sabin, who served as the executive director of the Innovation Hub, now oversees its operations as well as Winrock's other job-creating programs as the senior director of U.S. programs for Winrock International, which combined with the Hub in June 2016.

Sabin said the number of people who used the Hub grew by about 40 percent in 2016. New developments on the drawing board for 2017 include continued work toward satellite makerspaces in other cities and a mobile makerspace that can be towed to far-flung corners of Arkansas.

For Central Arkansas, the big Hub-related news is a new Food Innovation Center, which Sabin said should open this year. While those looking to start food-related businesses — cheesemakers, pie makers, artisan bakers and the like — often have to turn to under-used industrial church kitchens to get their small businesses off the ground, Sabin said the Food Innovation Center would offer a certified industrial kitchen available for use by members, plus industrial packaging and labeling machines, a large garden and cooking classes. "It would take a similar approach as what we've established at our current Innovation Hub," Sabin said. "It would basically be an aggregation of tools, technology, equipment education, making that available to the community, both youth and adults, around food and agriculture."

The location for the Food Innovation Center is still up in the air as of this writing. A source close to the project, however, says developers are looking at sites in East Little Rock and Southwest Little Rock.

Argenta eats

Plenty of good food and nightlife is either in place or coming soon to Argenta. In the "coming soon" category is Kamikaito by Kiyens (521 Main), in the space at Sixth and Main streets that previously housed Good Food By Ferneau and Argenta Market. A spinoff of Kiyen's Seafood Steak and Sushi on Chenal Parkway, the space will reportedly offer sushi, seafood, steaks and Asian fusion cuisine. The original target date for Kamikaito was last October, but permitting snafus got in the way.

Open since early last year and steadily drawing raves since then is Four Quarter Bar (415 Main), the New Orleans-inspired music venue and bar by former Midtown Billiards bartender and talent booker Conan Robinson. Located in the former Sidetracks storefront, Four Quarter features cozy decor reminiscent of a French Quarter dive, over a dozen local beers on tap, a 2 a.m. private club permit and a solid lineup of live music several nights a week. Four Quarter took home the Best New Bar award in Arkansas Times' annual 2016 Toast of the Town issue, and was a finalist for a half-dozen other awards, including Best Dive, Best Neighborhood Bar and Best Bar Food. That last is a nod to a solid menu of booze-soaking fare, including slow-smoked pork sandwiches, burgers, nachos, mac and cheese and more.

A bit longer established is Skinny J's (314 Main), which opened in July 2015, the latest link in a small, Arkansas-only chain by chef and owner James Best, who opened his first Skinny J's near Jonesboro in 2009. Skinny J's features a solid sub-menu of bar vittles, including staples like loaded nachos, cheese curds, cheese fries, fried green tomatoes and crab cakes. For more stick-to-your ribs food, Skinny's has over a dozen incarnations of cheeseburger, 11 different sandwiches, a whole bunch of salads, several pasta choices and more. Unique, however, is Skinny J's status as the lone oyster bar north of the river.

Argenta fills in

Riverside development, apartments and a plaza.

What would happen if you took roughly $100 million and worked with the city of North Little Rock to invest in its downtown?

For one, you'd get an estimated $50 million project on 5.6 acres fronting the Arkansas River and west of the new Broadway Bridge that would include a high-rise building, a hotel, apartments, a boardwalk cantilevered over the seawall where folks could sit outside, enjoy a drink and watch the river, and maybe the River Trail bikers, go by. A development with a view of Little Rock that Mayor Joe Smith, who held up selling the city property until he got something he believed would be "first class," that is unparalleled. (He knows, because he got a ladder truck to lift him up for a view from an elevation equivalent to six stories.)

Smartway LLC, formed by Terraforma developers Doug Meyer and Dave Bruning, closed on the property in early February and is now looking for an anchor tenant, Meyer said. "We have had three companies approach us," Meyer said, to talk about a purchase or lease agreement. North Little Rock sold the land, previously a brownfield, to Smartway for $2.6 million, and will put the proceeds toward the creation of a plaza on an empty lot at Sixth and Main streets.

The Smarthouse plans are fluid, but envisioned is a 91,950-square-foot hotel, an office building 10 to 11 stories tall and 244,250 square feet and an 89,200-square-foot apartment building. The development will be a place where people "live, play and work, with 24/7 activity," Meyer said. The city is dubbing the area the Argenta Riverfront District.

The $50 million estimate is at the top end, but Smith is thinking top end, on the river and over to Main Street. "I'd rather not have anything if it's not first class," he said.

There's another, more solid, first-class development coming to North Little Rock: an upscale multibuilding apartment complex by THRIVE, the Bentonville residential developer. The developer has plans to build on the two blocks that once held the old feed mill, on Fourth Street between Magnolia and Poplar. Harold Tennenbaum and Dave Grundfest are selling the property to THRIVE, which is a venture of ERC Properties Inc., headed by Dawn Cook of Fort Smith. Plans call for 164 units in several three-story Colonial-style brick buildings divided by a plaza-like street. The complex will be north across the street from the Innovation Hub. Some of the buildings may hold retail on the ground floor, Smith said. North Little Rock will create a parking district around the THRIVE development that will dedicate street parking to its residents, much the way Fayetteville has done in its downtown.

Fort Worth's Sundance Plaza was the inspiration for the plaza that Smith envisions on the vacant lot on the east side of Main Street between Fifth and Sixth streets. The mayor, with a party of 60 folks who paid their own way, visited the Sundance Plaza and others to get an idea of what would be good for North Little Rock.

A farmers market occupies the spot now. The city is working with architect Susannah Drake of dlandstudio in New York and TAGGART Architects on a design for the park, which Smith said had to have a "wow factor." They envision a park with a water feature that can be turned on and off: It will spray fountains when the main part of the plaza is not in use, but the fountains will disappear when the space is needed for seating or other uses. Smith would also like to see projected, changing art on the existing wall of the old fire station at 506 Main St., now the North Little Rock Heritage Center.

Smith is also talking to developer John Chandler about a new building that would house a restaurant on the north side of the plaza and a commercial building on the east side.

The city itself wants to build six storefronts on the east side of the 600 block of Main; Smith said he has commitments from businesses to buy two of the storefronts.

Maple Street has undergone enormous change in the past four years as well. In 2013, the city and Argenta Community Development Corp. sold the western half of the blocks between Fifth and Ninth streets to Argenta Flats LLC, bringing 160 new townhouse-style apartments and condos to the street.

Smith said a private developer has plans for a lot north of Firehouse Liquor on Main Street. He added up how many dollars he expected to see invested in the coming years: $100 million. That's a nice round number.

Argenta Suds

When Diamond Bear Brewery packed up its taps and headed to the other side of the Arkansas River to establish the Arkansas Ale House (600 N. Broadway St.) in June 2014, it marked the beginning of a brewery community in North Little Rock's Argenta District. Diamond Bear still serves pre-brewery boom staples like its Pale Ale, Dogtown Brown and the Paradise Porter, as well as a rotating cast of seasonal ales like the Irish Red, the Honey Weiss and the handsome-hued Strawberry Blonde. The Ale House has an expanded taproom, a patio and an ample menu worthy of prepartying before heading to Dickey-Stephens for a baseball game: fried cheese curds, beer nuts, brat plates and one of the best veggie sandwiches in town, a crusty sourdough hoagie loaded with zucchini, caramelized onions, goat cheese, tomato, olive tapenade and fig jam.

Diamond Bear is just a short walk from newcomer Flyway Brewing (314 Maple), a microbrewery whose Bluewing Berry Wheat was a favorite at last year's Riverfest. Flyway, which moved into the space at 314 Maple St. in December 2015, serves up Banh Mi sliders and Duck Confit Nachos alongside standard brews like its Migrate Pale Ale and the Early Bird IPA. Its seasonal brews include the Lord God Imperial Chocolate Stout, with a whopping ABV of 11 percent. If that last one sounds like trouble to you, try the Flyway Root Beer (nonalcoholic).

And, while Flyway Brewing was celebrating its grand opening, Northwest Arkansas's Core Brewing and Distilling was making plans to move into the neighborhood. In March 2016, the Core Public House opened its doors in the former location of the Starving Artist Cafe, 411 Main St., to serve the full range of Core brews, including year-round favorites like the Arkansas Red, Behemoth Pilsner and the Leg Hound Lager.

What's new and coming soon to Argenta

#What's new and coming soon to Argenta

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mostlysignssomeportents · 7 years

Text

Touring, complete: what gear survived four months of hard-wearing book-tour?

It's been nine years since my first book tour -- the Little Brother tour -- and as always, there were new facts on the ground to adapt to, as well as hard-won wisdom that saw me through.

Here's the gear that survived this trip, stuff that will stay with me on upcoming trips.

Coffee

This goes first. Life it too short for shitty coffee.

Toiletries

Clothes

Comfort items

Swimming

Swimming is the only way I can stay sane on tour. It keeps my chronic pain under control and burns some of the empty airplane-peanut and minibar calories.

Gadgets

Luggage

https://boingboing.net/2017/08/02/hard-won-wisdom.html

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