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NYC VIP Escorts

Why Use an Escort Service?

NY vip escorts services proposal a variability of companionship, from just someone to talk with to somebody to have sex with. The women who work for these agencies make a living at their occupations just like women who have other occupations do. So, yes, they are deed it for the cash. But that's just their occupation. When you hire a mechanic to fix your car, the mechanic is doing it for the cash too. It's the same thing. Your mechanic may be your friend as well and he may enjoy working on your car because you're a good client. The same kind of relationship can be documented with your escort. If you develop a "regular," you will get to recognize each other and know what you like to do together -- and you will enjoy it more.

Like any other occupation most of the women who work as escorts enjoy their work. Although the situation differs from individual to individual - and from client to client - there are a lot of women who do this as they really like the sex. But some clients are better than others and this article will help instruct you in how to be a good customer who escort look forward to being with. And you don't have to be great viewing or in good shape to please an escort. All you have to do is know how to luxury a woman true. Confidently you will learn from this web page precisely how to do that.

A lot of men have a real mental barricade about having to "pay for it." This is an artificial barrier because there's nothing wrong with paying for sex -- and there are a lot of recompenses to doing so. Paying for it does not make you any less of a man. In fact, if you have never tried escorts before, you will find that the experience is perhaps different than what you've been led to think it is. And when you appreciate how it actually works, you'll look at it in a very different light.

Free New York City Escorts isn't actually free. In order to get a female to have free sex with you, you have to find someone who is attracted to you and wants to have sex with you. For most of us, this takes a lot of work.

If you go after a one-night stand, then you are having sex with a stranger, just as you would with an escort. The woman you pick up for a one-night attitude is not actually fucking you. She's just horny and you're just a penis earner. If you want to retain fucking her, then you're going to have to advance some kind of relationship with her.If you start an affiliation, you run into one of the biggest problems with free sex: You both have to want it at the same time. You can't just get it when you need it.

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Unique Mobile Creation Centre set to transform parties and weddings

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Daisy Chain set to release mobile Creation Centre which will offer guests a personalised piece of the special day

Daisy Chain is a small business which is run by a Mother/Son combo, Christine Haigh runs ‘Oops a Daisy’ which is located on Mirfield high street and Paul Knight runs Daisy Chain. Christine has specialised in Greetings cards and gift shops for over 30 years having started her first shop in Lymington, Hampshire.

But since returned closer to home to be near her family, Paul then joined the family business to help expand and that is what is now Daisy Chain.

Daisy Chain sells a large selection of Blank greetings cards, as well as a large selection of gifts, including Balinese handmade sterling silver jewellery, a good selection of Stirling silver jewellery, as well as Costume jewellery to meet all budgets.

A large selection of WoodWick scented candles, and melts, as well as electric Melt pots and Tea light melt pots, assorted gifts for both male and females, as well as arts and crafts, Haberdashery. Very shortly they will have a large selection of Stationary.

They also have two different machines in store to personalise both greetings cards and gifts. One of those machines is called "Spacehippo.com" where you can personalise high gloss finished cards, with both images and words of your own choosing, and they are printed in store in a matter of minutes.

They have the “Creation Express" which also does high end personalised cards, as well as a huge range of personalised gifts as well, and this system also allows all items to be done in store in a matter of minutes.

Daisy Chain is still in its infancy, having only been started late November 2016, but its sister shop Oops a daisy has been established in Mirfield now for nearly 10 years. The shop was originally called "celebrations", which was also a Greetings card shop as well as gifts.

With the aim to keep supplying the good people of Mirfield and beyond the range of cards they expect to find at low prices.

Their market is to sell to "everyone" from young to old, supplying a huge range of products at a good price, while keeping the idea that no matter what your budget is, they aim to make sure you can buy that perfect card or gift.

An array of personalised items Daisy Chain has on offer

An array of personalised items Daisy Chain has on offer

Daisy Chain is a simple small shop with a big heart, which makes customers want to step through their door, anyone is welcome. To browse or spend a longer time in store or even to chat and socialise.

Daisy Chain’s unique selling point is the ‘Creation Express’, which is a personalised card and gift system, using state of the art technology, which makes them able to offer a huge range of cards and designs, as well as gifts and designs which anyone can personalise.

Examples could be a mug with your family on it or any design that can be used and personalised to suit the customer. Currently ‘Creation Express’ is located instore but it is set to become a mobile service.

This will allow them to offer a service which is unique and not seen on the market, where customers can have this service at for example a wedding service or party. The customer goes to Daisy Chain and discusses their needs and ideas, they are then given a price for the service with Creation Express.

Then when this has been finalised, they turn up at the venue and start setting up the packages which have been chosen, which will give the guests a memorable memento of the occasion.

All guests can have a personalised item from the list of gifts which, so for example if it was a wedding occasion the guests could take away a souvenir from the big day be it a mug, a key ring, or a cushion from a photo on their phone. This will be completed in a matter of minutes.

The list of gifts includes; Luxury Cards, Ceramic mugs, china mugs, Money Boxes, Photo frames, Cushions, iPhone covers, Keyrings, compact mirrors, Tote Bags, Hanging Hearts and Magic Mugs.

The great thing is every single item listed only takes a few minutes to do, and the guest walks away with it, there and then.

Being a family run tight knit group of employees, many have commented on the open and inviting nature of the shop with a large selection of gifts and cards at great affordable prices. Everyone who walks through Daisy Chain will be acknowledged.

Daisy Chain plans to continue building its brand with more gifts and jewellery designs, maintain their great prices.

The great thing about the Personalised items in store is that we can make a Card or gift to reflect on the person, so they can cover so many different religious celebrations, with the added bonus that our customer can create a gift or card for someone that is written in his or her own language. Recently they created several celebration cards for Polish Mother’s day back in May, we also did cards for "Eid-al-Fitr" " "Raksha Bandhan” and "Eid- Ul- Adha" as well as many British celebrations as well.

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Home Sales Hit Two-Year High

Data Provided By National Association of Realtors (NAR)

Home Sales ImproveProviding more evidence of a housing market recovery, home resales increased at the fastest pace in nearly 30 months in August, according to data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Existing home sales rose by 7.8% last month, while the median price for resales climbed to $187,400, a 9.5% year-over-year jump. "The housing market recovery is becoming much more convincing," said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun. "More buyers are taking advantage of excellent housing affordability conditions."

A major key to the improved market, NAR claims, is the reduction of so-called distressed housing sales. Over the last 12 months, distressed sales – in which the seller has much less leverage – have fallen from 31% of total sales to 22%. There are also more homes available for purchase, as the nation's inventory of houses rose 2.9% in August to 2.47 million.

Regionally, existing-home sales in the Northeast U.S. rose 8.6% last month, with properties selling at a median price of $245,200. Sales jumped 8.3% in the West, 7.7% in the Midwest and7.3% in the South.

Also aiding the gains is new housing construction, which also jumped in August. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, builders broke ground on new homes at an annual rate of 750,000 units, a 2.3% rise. Still, experts believe there's room for even more expansion, especially if the number of first-time homebuyers goes up. Last month, that number actually fell to 31%, down from 34% in July.


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Manufacturing Sector Makes Gains

Highest Levels Since May 2010

U.S. manufacturingU.S. manufacturing is expanding, making stateside producers a more attractive market for advertising specialty distributors to target. A report released Monday highlighted manufacturing’s momentum, revealing that the sector’s activity sped forward in February, rising to its highest level since May 2010.

Last month, the U.S. Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index rose to 57.1, beating analysts’ expectations of 56.6 and besting a preliminary reading that initially put the month’s high mark at 56.7. February’s strong showing represents a robust rebound from January when brutal winter weather drove the index down to 53.7, the lowest score in three months. Readings above 50 indicate that the sector is growing.

“While bad weather continued to hamper production at many companies in February, many also reported that weather-related issues were being overcome,” said Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, the financial information and services firm that developed the index. “The upturn pushes the trend over the last three months to the strongest since May 2012, suggesting that the sector maintained robust underlying growth momentum throughout the winter months."

In an indication that the good news on manufacturing could continue into the spring, the new orders component of the index jumped from 53.9 to 59.6. That’s the highest reading for the subindex in nearly four years. Also encouraging, Markit said, is that the manufacturing sector’s output increased last month from 53.5 to 57.8, the highest tally since March 2011.


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Victoria's Secret: 5 Things You Didn't Know - AskMen
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      Victoria's Secret: 5 Things You Didn't Know

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      Back in the old days, buying lingerie for your lady meant an embarrassing trip to the department store where derisive stares made you feel like a deviant in the grips of a perverse panty fetish. This humiliation was the impetus for a guy-friendly place where getting your lady something sexy was met with encouragement, not a raised eyebrow. That is the story of how we came to have the place we call Victoria’s Secret.

      Although intimately associated with its sexy lingerie, today the retailer actually sells a wide range of women’s wear and beauty supplies. It has 1,017 stores in operation, and each year it puts 400 million copies of its famed catalog through the mail. In 2012, sales reached the $6.12 billion mark, and its parent company, Limited Brands, raked in $12.2 billion, business is clearly going well.

      Modeling for any of the company’s collections is considered prestigious, but its Angels are a cut above the rest. Past and present Angels include such well-known names as Tyra Banks, Adriana Lima, Rebecca Romijn, Gisele Bundchen, Helena Christensen, and Stephanie Seymour, and it is without question the most coveted modeling job in the industry.

      Here are five things you didn’t know about the only company in the world with the celestial seal of approval: Victoria’s Secret.

      #1 Its founder jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge

      Tired of the humiliation involved in trying to buy lingerie, Roy Raymund created Victoria’s Secret in 1977 by putting the first store at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California. After opening a few other stores and launching the mail-order catalog, Raymond sold the company to Limited Brands in 1982 for a sizable paycheck.

      By 1993, Limited Brands made Victoria’s Secret a nationally recognized brand, while Raymond’s most recent business venture had ended in bankruptcy. He was last seen alive walking toward the Golden Gate Bridge, and his body was later found washed up on the shores of Marin County. Investigators finally concluded he had tragically committed suicide by leaping off the bridge.

      #2 It is named after a notorious prude

      So the big question is who exactly is this Victoria? Since the first stores were designed to resemble Victorian boudoirs, the company’s namesake is England’s long-reigning 19th-century monarch, Queen Victoria. She and husband Prince Albert managed to have nine children before his unexpected death in 1861 threw her into a state of profound mourning that lasted until her own death 40 years later. Supposedly she refused to take any new lovers following her husband's death.

      Despite the general prudishness of Victorian society, fashions of the day included the corset, a sexually charged garment that embellished a woman’s curves above and below the waist. So what, then, was the Queen’s secret? Was she sexually adventurous? At least by the conservative standards of her day? We’ll never know. I suppose that’s why it’s a secret.

      Keep reading for three more things you didn't know about Victoria's Secret...

      Show comments


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A time for leadership | AspenTimes.com

A time for leadership

Maurice Emmer's letter ("Elected Officials Should be Removed From Office," The Aspen Times, July 6) posed a number of rhetorical questions based on an incorrect assumption, that some city officials broke the law. There is nothing criminal here as Maurice intimates. More properly, District Court's debatable decision on a point of administrative law should be appealed by the city lest bad precedent be allowed to stand. Thus, irrespective of the merits of any new City Hall project the final determination on the ability of the city to act as it did may not be settled for years.

But the District Court may have done the city a favor by interjecting a wrench. As evidenced from last week's debate the city is trying to make a 50-year decision on space needs at a time when the work place is radically changing. Commercial entities, like law firms, consultants, etc. are abandoning conventional work layouts for shared common areas of flexible functionality. They are decreasing square footage requirements to reduce costs. Who can predict what the word "office" will mean 50 years from now?

This is not a time to get mad at people who file lawsuits: it is a time for City Council to reset, critically reconsider and make a decision. Don't bother with the Maurices, they are just noise. Let's concentrate on the questions that really matter since there is at least agreement by all that the city does need more space and is spending too much money on rent.

Start with these three:

1. Has the city critically looked at its space needs not from the perspective of today's conventional office arrangements but rather from the efficiency of tomorrow's floor plans?

2. Does the city have experts with demonstrated experience in laying out 40,000 feet of commercial space divided in potentially multiple locations?

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3. With the needed renovation of the present city hall as a given, what then makes the most sense?

The opportunity presents itself to develop a visionary plan that will gain broad support and will not be seen as either a grand ivory tower or an expensive and insufficient compromise. It just takes leadership.

Neil B. Siegel

Start a dialogue, stay on topic and be civil.
If you don't follow the rules, your comment may be deleted.


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Assorted Gems Corporation - Services

About Us
Jewelry Sales
We sell exquisite antique, estate and modern jewelry. Our merchandise comes from all over the world - the Far East, Europe, South America, Australia and right here at home in America. We also purchase items from Estates and Society Auctions. Our unique inventory allows our customers to find pieces that reflect their individual style and personality.

We will appraise your jewelry for insurance, valuation or other purposes. Interested in the finer details of appraisals? Read more.

Custom Jewelry Design
Can't find what you want? We will be glad to design a custom piece for you. Or perhaps you have a piece that you would like reworked in some manner, upgrading the center stone or altering the setting. We'll be glad to assist you. Read more.

Restoration & Repair
We offer restoration services for those customers who have distressed pieces or need a simple sizing. Our highly trained jewelers have many years of experience and can address any situation.

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Are you looking for a special item and can't locate it anywhere? We have numerous exclusive sources where an item may potentially be found. Just let us know some brief details and we will immediately start a search for it. Read More

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If you are interested in selling your jewelry, Assorted Gems Corporation is ready to assist you with the utmost care and discretion. We purchase exquisitely crafted, unique pieces of fine jewelry that are in good condition. Our expertise assures you the best price for your estate pieces. Contact us at 212-719-1535 or via email at

Find Your Gem @ Assorted Gems Corporation

 Shine Like A Diamond @ Assorted Gems Corporation

"Your'e Unique One Of A Kind, Shouldn't Your Jewelry Be Also?"


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November 1, 2018
Tired of waiting for the US midterms? Voters went to the polls around the world last week, from Rio de Janeiro to Tbilisi. Test your knowledge about who won and lost, as well as the other major news from this past week.

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Participants: Welcome!

Or how we say it in Frisian: Wolkom!

We are looking forward to receiving you. Read all relevant information on this page.

Good to know!

Festival area
The stages, hostels and Food Plaza are located in the center of Sneek. Everything is within walking distance of each other.

The parking for buses and cars is located outside the center. There will be shuttle services from the parking to the festival area.
When staying in a hostel:: buses with participants receive personal assistance from the Sneek ring-road to their accommodation.
When staying in a holiday home:: buses with participants get a separate Kiss & Ride place in Sneek.
Of course further details will follow.

In the course of April, the program book, including the map of the festival area, will be distributed digitally.
The timetables for the opening and closing events will be communicated at a later time, but of course you take part in this.
The performances will take place on Thursday 10 May from 11 am to 10 pm and on Friday 11 May from 11 am to 7 pm.
The whole team of At the Watergate does its utmost to let all orchestras perform 3x 30 minutes. Exact times and locations for your orchestra will follow as soon as possible.

Coordination in the field of instruments (including the various large instruments) will be organized by the organization.
We assume that every orchestra will bring its own instruments and music standards. If instruments are too large to carry (eg drum kit, piano, double bass), the organization can arrange this. You must express this wish explicitly by e-mail.
In various places, storage locations for instruments are present.
The chosen accommodation is mentioned in the confirmation that we will send you separately in March,

In March you will receive an e-mail with full details of your registration. We ask you to check the details and confirm them to us.
After this you will receive the invoice by e-mail with the request to pay the full amount within 10 days.

Social Media
The closer we approach the festival, the more information will be made known through social media, so please pass this link on to all your individual members.
Become a member of our Facebook group so that we can keep in touch:

Look for all kinds of trips and what to do in and around Sneek here:


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Atventus Air : Air Ambulance Services in India

Get Your Emergency Ambulance from Mahuva

Being the one of the busiest state in India, the city Mahuva witnesses a good percentage of the accidents every year. In spite of the numerous precautionary and safety measures, the number of the incidents is constantly growing resulting in the more need of the air ambulance services. The highly experienced and the professional air ambulance services of Atventus Air are easily accessible for the needy people in the city. Now all the people can take the advantage of 24×7 Atventus Air Ambulance in Mahuva metropolis.

Comprehending the varying necessities of our customers, we are immersed in presenting a world-class Helicopter For Air Ambulance. So that you could also experience the Special Care In The Air By Team Atventus Air. A crew of deft and adroit executives imparts these services that are valued and recommended due to their reasonable pricing structure and promptness. As well, these services are broadly cherished by our customers for their affordability, promptness and flexibility .

Wide Range of Medivic Aviation Air Ambulance Services from Mahuva-:

Depending on the existing medical condition of the fatality or your loved one, you can make your choice of booking our air ambulance service , road ambulance or train ambulance services. You can also further select from the various categories including AC or Non-AC, Advanced Life Support (ALS) or Basic Life Support (BLS) and get your patient shifted to the nearest hospital or to the referred centre of medical emergencies in any corner of the globe. We provide air ambulance service with ICU facility all over India . We provide low charges air ambulance service from Mahuva.

Our Top Advantages Include:

  • Dependable air ambulance services all over nation
  • Commercial Stretcher Service & Aeromedical services
  • Photoshoots from the air by our professional photographers(On request).
  • Competitive cost advantage & 24×7 availability
  • Train, Road & Aircraft services

Emerging as one of the best Regional Airlines in India.We provide Medic Aviation all over India.Our Ambulance Services for vital cases are best and one of the safest in the country .We provide the best medical help in your critical time.

Attractions in Mahuva

  • Gandhi Baug

  • Mota Jadra Road, Gandhi Bag, Mahuva, Gujarat 364290, India

  • Ayesha Masjid Mahuva

  • Mahuva, Gujarat 364290, India

  • Khodiyar Mandir

  • Opp. Hotel Blue Diamond, Vasi Talao Rd, Mahuva, Gujarat 364290, India

Contact us for air ambulance service in mahuva


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Spinach Quiche Cups

Just made these and they were delicious!! My husband and I love lemon juice on our eggs, so I added a lemony twist to the recipe: I cooked the mushrooms in fresh lemon juice and did the same with the spinach, cooking until all the juice had evaporated. I also added a sprinkle of lemon zest to the egg batter before pouring it into the muffin cups.

Other than that, I followed the recipe exactly, using extra sharp cheddar as my cheese of choice. The final product has a lovely lemony flavor and was whole heartedly enjoyed by the hubby! Thank you so much for the recipe! It's a keeper! (Also, I used a regular muffin tin with non stick cooking spray, and the quiches popped right out. I was afraid they would stick, but I had no problems!)

Get the recipe here >> Spinach Quiche Cups  @ manilaspoon.com


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Showing results by author "Kathleen Pickering"

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    • The Keepers

    • Christmas in Salem
    • By: Heather Graham, Deborah LeBlanc, Kathleen Pickering, and others
    • Narrated by: Angela Starling, Casey Holloway, Leslie Bellair, and others
    • Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
    • Unabridged
    • Overall
      4 out of 5 stars 8
    • Performance
      4 out of 5 stars 8
    • Story
      4 out of 5 stars 8

    Christmas is coming to Salem, but so is an evil force that threatens all mankind. In this memorable collection led by New York Times best-selling author Heather Graham, four powerful Keepers must save their community as a strange, eternal night creeps over the town. Forced to choose between their time-honored responsibilities or the lovers their hearts desire, these four extraordinary women must risk their own happiness to save the holiday.

    Regular price: $17.95


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Pure Confidence. Pure Assurance. Pure Audi.

It's your turn to take the wheel. During the Audi Certified pre-owned Sales Event, highly qualified customers who finance through Audi Financial Services can receive 1.99% APR for up to 24 months on select 2013-2017 Audi Certified pre-owned vehicles.

Find your Audi CPO  View offer details

*1.99% APR, no down payment required, available on MY13-17 A3, A4, A6, Q5, & Q7 Certified pre-owned vehicles financed by Audi Financial Services through participating dealers. Example: For 1.99% APR, monthly payment for every $1,000 you finance for 24 months is $42.54. Not all customers will qualify for credit approval or advertised APR. Offer valid January 3, 2019 - February 28, 2019. Offer not valid in Puerto Rico. See your local, participating Audi dealer for details or, for general product information, call 1-800- FOR-AUDI. ©2019 Audi of America, Inc.

New Arrivals

  • 2019 Audi A4 2.0T Premium Plus Sedan

    2019 Audi A4 2.0T Premium Plus…

    • $51,250
    View Details
  • 2019 Audi A4 2.0T Premium Sedan

    2019 Audi A4 2.0T Premium Seda…

    • $41,305
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  • 2019 Audi A4 2.0T Premium Sedan

    2019 Audi A4 2.0T Premium Seda…

    • $41,900
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  • 2019 Audi A4 2.0T Premium Plus Sedan

    2019 Audi A4 2.0T Premium Plus…

    • $53,400
    View Details
  1. Audi Calabasas

    Latitude: 34.149213Longitude: -118.662498

    24650 Calabasas Rd.
    Hours & Directions Calabasas, CA 91302

    • Sales: 855-806-4758
    • Service: 855-807-4683
    • Parts: 855-807-4678
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Welcome to Audi Calabasas - Your Local Audi Dealership & Service Center

Audi Calabasas is your Greater Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley Audi Dealership

Audi Calabasas is ready to help you purchase a new Audi or used car in the greater Los Angeles area. When you visit our Audi dealership, expect the superior customer service that you deserve. With years of experience and high-quality training, the Audi Calabasas team will get you into the new or certified used Audi you've been looking for. Come visit us today at our brand new Calabasas Showroom.

Quality Used and Certified Pre-Owned Audi vehicles for sale

Not only do we carry the latest and greatest Audi Models, we also have an extensive inventory of Used Audi and Certifed Pre-Owned Audi Vehicles for sale. you'll get more bang for your buck, and you'll still drive away with a vehicle in excellent condition and monthly payments that won't break the bank. Used and CPO Audi vehicles can help you save in more ways than just the sale price. We also offer CPO and Used specials - check out our offers!

Reliable Audi Service and Quality Parts in Calabasas

Our Audi dealership also serves the Northridge and greater Los Angeles region with quality car repairs, auto service, accessories, and Audi car parts. We staff certified and trained auto technicians to ensure your auto repairs and maintenance are done correctly and to factory specifications. Our Calabasas auto parts team is very knowledgeable when it comes to Audi vehicles, and they will get you the right car part and accessory to keep your vehicle running like new. Schedule your Service Appointment online today!

New Audi Cars and SUVs for sale in Calabasas, California

Audi Calabasas has the inventory of New Audi Cars and SUVs to get you on the road. Our Audi dealership serves Woodland Hills, Northridge, Agoura Hills, Simi Valley & the greater Los Angeles Area and is stocked with all of the latest models including the new A3, A4, A5, A6, Q3, Q5, Q7 and SQ5. Whether you're looking for a used sports car, work truck, van, SUV, convertible, sedan, coupe or something else, the expert salespeople at Audi Calabasas will help you track one down.

Audi Finance and Lease Offers Calabasas

Audi Calabasas is a full-service dealership, so if you need financing for your new or used car come talk to us about obtaining a car loan in Calabasas. Our finance team is here to assist you through the entire car loan and Audi lease process. Start the auto loan approval process in Calabasas right now by filling out our secure car loan application online! Be sure to check out our Monthly Audi Lease Specials as well as Audi Incentives which can help you save even more on your new or used Audi.

About Audi Calabasas

Audi Calabasas thanks our customers for making us such a successful Calabasas area Audi dealership. See why more drivers from Woodland Hills, Northridge, Agoura Hills, Simi Valley & the greater Los Angeles Area choose Audi Calabasas than any other Audi Dealership in our region. If you don't believe us, see what hundreds of satisfied customers have said about our full service Audi Dealership. Give us a call at (818) 574-3211 or better yet, come visit us at 24650 Calabasas Rd. Calabasas, CA 91302 when you're ready to buy your next Audi!

Plus government fees and taxes, any finance charges, $85 dealer document processing charge, any electronic filing charge and any emission testing charge. (Eff 7/1/12)


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Audio Books > Fiction > Gay & Lesbian

Black John: Johnnies, Book 4 (Unabridged)

by Amy Lane, published by Dreamspinner Press LLC
Black John: Johnnies, Book 4

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Tease: Romance on the Edge

Jump off the cliff and into some intense romantic audiobooks

Blade of Darkness

Equal time. In my recent posts, I’ve focused on cozy and historical romances. This time, let’s hit shuffle on the player and turn to edgy and paranormal romance. For any Twilight fans, it’s my opinion that the successful edgy romance is an experience similar to Bella’s jump off the cliff. Nothing’s held back. It’s life or death, do or die, all or nothing, Montagues or Capulets.

Blade of DarknessThese narrators are intense; they’re living the story, making it impossible to stop listening for fear of breaking the emotional experience that feels all-consuming. This type of romance can feel almost like a madness—think of Charlotte or Emily Brontë’s narratives. It’s key that the narrator places listeners at the center of the whirlwind rather than leaving us outside it, staring judgmentally at the couple, wondering, “What were you thinking?” In a romance in which it’s the couple against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, the listener needs to feel at every moment that together is better than apart. Take a deep breath and dive into the addictive experience of being someone’s entire world. Read more…

Caitlin is a librarian from Connecticut who enjoys great narrators and happy endings. She has been reviewing audiobooks for Audiofile Magazine since 2006, and she has had the privilege of judging numerous Audie Award categories since 2009. Her favorite authors are Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer, and whatever she's listening to right now!


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Roasting Glenn Beck, Glenn Beck Style

A satirical website challenges Glenn Beck to his own game

Roasting Glenn Beck, Glenn Beck Style

Ars Technica, as well as our fellow alt-weekly friends over at The Stranger both have pieces on a new website that challenges Glenn Beck to a round of his own game, asking the blatantly outrageous question "Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a young girl in 1990?" Full story with video after the jump.

The website in question,, originated from a joke on On August 31, forum member "oldweevil" employed a Gilbert Gottfried gag, referencing a 2008 roast of Bob Saget, in which Gottfried repeatedly insisted Saget had not "raped and murdered a girl in 1990", The joke on Fark takes the Gottfried joke and simply swaps Saget with Beck.

You can check out the relevant portion of the roast over at Comedy Central (It should go without saying that it's one of the more non-worksafe pieces of audio you can stream through your browser).

Things picked up steam on September 1 when someone set up a website based on the joke. They were then contacted by Beck's lawyers on the 2nd. A phone number and email address are provided on the website. A quick reverse-number lookup shows the phone to be registered in Plano, Texas. Our call for comment so far hasn't been returned.

While the internet-viral meter on this gag is somewhere around burnt umber at the moment, it's sure to be as red as Beck's face by lunchtime tomorrow. The "evidence":

A youtube clip repeating the gag:

A Facebook fan page, already with 600-plus fans.

Domain squatters have already taken to registering common misspellings of the URL.

An obligatory mashup with the endlessly-enduring Downfall (Der Untergang) meme:

The list goes on.

What's surprising is how much the Ars article seriously suggests that this may very well be defamation, because the original domain name of the site did not phrase the accusation in the form of a question. Apparently satire works on Jeopardy rules now.

One of the article's sources, Paul Levy of consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, postulates that if the URL "glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990" is taken as a solitary piece of content —say, within a search result— that there's no way the reader would know the site in question is intended to be satire.

Frankly, The Onion would surely be interested in hearing about this, given that they've been posting fake headlines for years. Additionally, most search engines display a small amount of text below the headline, giving a website the opportunity to further explain itself. Headlines aren't presented by themselves.

Ars' other source is Corynne McSherry, a lawyer with the EFF. McSherry questions the validity of a defamation case. Considering the EFF's greater familiarity with all things defamatory and internet, our money is on McSherry's opinion.

Seriously, who just reads a headline and assumes it's true?

Hmmm. Beck might have a case there yet.

We'll keep you posted.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 36 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

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Sixth Street Showdown

APD's Downtown Area Command contends with the unique pressures of the city's entertainment district

APD's mounted unit clears the streets after 2am. (Photo by John Anderson)

Matthew Wallace wasn't planning on spending the night in jail, but shortly after 2:30am, on Friday, Nov. 6, that's where he found himself. Wallace and some friends, most visiting from San Antonio, were crossing Sixth Street after a night out enjoying Downtown Austin. Caught crossing against the light, Wallace and two others were arrested and sent to jail for a violation that usually results in a ticket.

Three-year veteran Daniel McCameron was the Austin Police officer who decided to arrest Wallace. McCameron wrote, in an arrest warrant filed that Friday morning, that a "Solid Red Hand" pedestrian signal was shining over Sixth Street as Wallace stepped into the crosswalk. McCameron "approached and asked Wallace to come forward." Wallace "refused," wrote McCameron, so "I approached Wallace on foot."

It was during McCameron's second "approach" toward Wallace that Rolando Ramiro turned on his camera. Ramiro had been crossing the street with Wallace. His video, which he posted to Facebook when he got home, begins by showing McCameron pushing Wallace against the wall of a building. Wallace's friend Jeremy King can be seen in the video's background being physically restrained by two officers, identified later as 12-year veteran Brian Huckaby and 20-year veteran Richard R. Munoz. The video shows all three officers, as well as a few others assisting, simultaneously taking King and Wallace to the ground. The officers knee and strike Wallace and King with their hands, while commanding them to stop resisting. The video also shows Wallace and King's friend Lourdes Glen rushing over to King's side as he lies facedown in the street. An officer points at Glen and shouts: "Back up or you're going to jail." She moves left; it's not possible to tell from the video whether she also backs up. Officer Vanessa Jimenez grabs Glen by the arm and places her under arrest.

Wallace, King, and Glen were taken to Travis County Jail. King and Glen were released later in the morning. A prosecutor decided several hours in Travis County Jail was even punishment for jaywalking, a Class C misdemeanor that rarely leads to arrest. Wallace, who was charged with resisting arrest in addition to jaywalking, was kept until that evening. His attorney told the Chronicle that his case is yet to be processed through the District Attorney's intake division.

Seemingly everybody in Austin had seen the video by Friday's lunch break. At 2pm that day, APD released a statement saying they had "been made aware" of the incident and would review the officers' response to resistance, as well as the incident in general, to determine what led up to the events captured in the video, and whether the officers' actions were in compliance with department policy. The Austin Police Association's meet-and-confer agreements grant APD Chief Art Acevedo 180 days to consider disciplinary action, which in this case means a deadline of May 4. King, Wallace, and Glen all say that they've yet to be contacted by Internal Affairs.

The three are hoping that they will eventually. Given the opportunity, each would dispute the officer's description of events. They say they were already midway across the street when they were told to stop walking: Did the officers want them to stop dead in the roadway? According to Wallace, who spoke with the Chronicle shortly after the incident, he heard McCameron's commands and acknowledged them with King, but both agreed without consulting the officer that they could continue crossing the road. Six minutes after the incident began, the police conducted an informal interview with Ramiro, which was captured on his video. Ramiro said Wallace and King were both midway through the street when first told to stop walking. Ramiro also told the officer interviewing him that the pedestrian signal changed from "Stop" to "Walk" immediately after the group was told to stop walking and that either Wallace or King said "Man, fuck you, [indecipherable]" to the other before continuing. Both Wallace and King maintain that they were never asked for identification nor told they were under arrest. They remain puzzled as to how a petty misdemeanor sparked such an aggressive reaction from patrolling officers.

On Monday, Feb. 15, King and Glen filed suit in federal court alleging that Munoz, Huckaby, Jimenez, and Officer Gustave Gallenkamp used excessive force arresting them, and discriminated against King because of his race. (Both King and Wallace are black. Glen is Latina. Wallace was advised against filing suit because of his pending charges with the D.A.'s office.) The lawsuit also argues that Glen's arrest violates her right to free speech – questioning why King was being arrested.

"What happened here was outrageous," says attorney Brian McGiverin, who represents King and Glen. "Everybody here deserves better. They deserve a police department that abides by the Constitution."

A "Dirty" Job

When people think of resisting arrest in Austin, they're likely to think of Sixth Street. Last year alone, there were 230 Downtown arrests that included accusations that the arrestee resisted, according to numbers provided by APD. Those numbers have grown significantly since 2005, when only 99 people were handed the charge (see chart, below).

Search YouTube for the words "Austin Texas cop takedown" and there's a good chance that eight of the first 12 videos you'll see are of nighttime arrests Downtown. The officers assigned to APD's Downtown Area Command – DTAC, the patrol sector that runs from Lamar Boulevard east to Chicon Street, 12th Street south to Lady Bird Lake – have an unenviable job, comparable in many ways to patrolling New Orleans' French Quarter. They're responsible for keeping order among thousands and thousands of drunk Austinites and out-of-towners, in a rapidly expanding entertainment district that happens to contain the city's nexus of homeless resources.

APD officers wrestle Matthew Wallace to the ground. (Video shot by Rolando Ramiro (Oldgold))

Consider this: In 2005, Austin's entertainment sprawl had not yet reached East Austin and Rainey Street, and was just beginning to hit West Sixth, then a much more sedate stretch of beer bars than the scene it is today. A Chronicle story from last decade ("Sixth Street Blues," March 18, 2005) notes that Downtown patrol carried 103 full-time positions – including sergeants, corporals, and lieutenants – back then, when "Downtown patrol" stretched from I-35 to Lamar, and Dean Keeton to the lake. Today, DTAC supports 110 sworn full-time employment positions (FTEs), a difference of seven positions over 10 years.

Yet DTAC patrol has seen an unimaginable amount of growth in that time. Eight thousand new Downtown residents accompany 2,479 new condominiums, 4,353 apartment units, and 8,000 new hotel rooms. More than 1,500 of each are either in construction or planning stages, according to numbers provided by the Downtown Austin Alliance. An entertainment district once confined to Sixth Street's four blocks, the Warehouse District, and Red River Street's rock clubs now extends two miles east-to-west. The Greater Austin Crime Commission estimates that 20,000-60,000 people go Downtown each weekend night.

Then there's the homeless population. Front Steps, the organization that operates the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, did not respond to requests to confirm the number of individuals they serve. But the population that does live Downtown survives in a volatile environment, which has the potential to exacerbate the mental problems that landed some people on the street in the first place. APD says that 26% of DTAC calls concern the transient population. Of those, 39% lead to transient arrests. The listed victim is considered transient in 12% of the aforementioned calls. Assistant Chief Chris McIlvain, who oversees DTAC and Region 1, says APD can tweak those statistics either way by changing the degree to which it enforces certain ordinances, an option that's typically contingent on creating overtime shifts for officers. (The department is constantly threatening to exceed its overtime budget.)

The officers assigned to DTAC divide into shifts of 12 officers, though each shift throughout the department currently runs at a one vacancy minimum, meaning that in practice the DTAC shifts never consist of more than 11 officers. When officers are suspended, put on administrative duty, or need to go on family or medical leave, those shifts shrink even smaller – and therefore more reliant on overtime dollars to fill what's missing. On a typical weekend night in DTAC, APD deploys three shifts around the city, with a few on bikes, a few in cars, and the rest on walking beat. Come midnight, those officers assemble into three groups – DTAC calls them pods, for the way the officers arrange in a circle with their backs facing one another, so they can see fully around the area – stationed one-block-and-a-half from one another, along Sixth Street's four-block stretch of bars.

"What we have seen in the Downtown area: Any Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night has almost become a mini-special event," McIlvain tells the Chronicle. "We've grown and grown," extending to Rainey, West Sixth, and East Austin. "Sixth Street alone requires almost every foot patrol resource we can throw at it at the witching hour – midnight until 3am. That is very manpower-resource-intensive on those nights."

It's a constant refrain in civil service that you do the best you can with the resources you've been allotted. That's nowhere more evident than with DTAC police on weekends.

Bringing Order to Chaos

In January 2013, after considering that the Downtown beast had grown four heads, APD extracted its Downtown Area Command from the larger Region 1 so that it could more accurately track what was happening within the area, and better allocate resources to the unique stretch of the city.

McIlvain was Region 1 commander in 2011. "What I quickly found was that DTAC was borrowing resources from those other areas at such a regular occurrence that it almost made sense," he says. "Why split these duties over three very time-intensive areas when DTAC could use all of those resources itself? The gentrification, the expansion, it just made sense to have a chain of command that could just focus on Downtown."

The chaotic street has yielded to a flexible form of patrol.

"We don't just say, 'Okay, you guys are walking, you guys are cars, and you guys are bikes,'" McIlvain continues. "It's a very fluid assignment based on what we're dealing with. On a busy, very congested night, you might take extras from cars and make sure more officers are on foot – or put them on bikes. If it's cold out and we don't have the foot traffic, you might have more cars out on the perimeter."

He says DTAC Commander Pat Cochran tries to keep at least four officers in cars at all times so that responses can be made around the other entertainment pockets within the area. On weekends that assignment typically falls on Metro Tactical Teams (street-level response teams that specialize in criminal and narcotic arrests) that are brought in on rotations from other regions. The department used to pull individual officers from the five surrounding regions to handle vehicle patrol, but found that communication breakdowns often popped up when the officer needed assistance – tough for your chain of command to help with anything Downtown when that chain of command's station is off Slaughter Lane. A switch came this last November.

APD deploys additional patrol through its mounted unit – two teams of a sergeant (or corporal) and four officers riding horseback from the department's Special Events Unit – to traverse Sixth Street every night. Officers consider the horses to be "force multipliers" in the area. They're able to break up any groundswell just by walking through.

Photo by John Anderson

There are constant groundswells around Sixth Street: outside the bar, in line for pizza, or simply standing in the street. It's a phenomenon I witnessed firsthand in early October when I shadowed a pod of officers between Toulouse and Bar 512 to see the commotion from their sight lines. The team of 11 had two officers on family leave and another out due to injury. Others were in on overtime.

Much of the evening's earlier hours are spent taking pictures with tourists and giving out directions to lost partiers. The job takes a while; APD shifts have officers out 10 hours at a time, no matter the region. DTAC officers get to know Sixth's regular players: bouncers, food truck owners, and transients. They point to teenagers they say sell baking soda masked as cocaine, and visit with one grown man wearing an ankle monitor, whom a few of the veteran officers used to arrest on drug busts throughout his youth. One officer who built a smartphone app with information on Downtown businesses got clever and convinced a homeless guy who often stands in the middle of Sixth Street holding a cardboard sign to let him run advertising for the app on the sign's blank backside.

Most of these officers learn to enjoy Sixth Street, but they can be hesitant going in. Part of that reticence has to do with the demands of the beat: They're on their feet for the full shift, and use of force is standard. It's their job to quell drunks, or bust homeless people when they sleep in doorways. There are thousands of people around them; they go to work expecting to break up fights.

"Almost every time, you know [you will] have to put your hands on someone," admits McIlvain. He adds that the department recently raised the threshold on Downtown officers for activating a Guidance Advisory Program, an early warning mitigation system employed when officers show signs of what the department calls "potential areas of concern," from six instances of response to resistance per year to nine. (Five officers exceeded the threshold in 2015, he says.) "You could go a whole shift in another part of the city; aside from putting handcuffs on them and taking them to jail, that would be the extent of your physical altercations. Downtown, you are in a scuffle and you've got this huge crowd around you. It's not just doing your job, it's doing your job in this environment."

Should that happen – should an officer put their hands on a civilian, whether to arrest them or just attempt to calm them down – it's become routine someone will film it.

"Five years ago when a fight broke out you saw the crowd move back and let [the officers] do their job," says McIlvain. "We're seeing the opposite now. You see the crowd close in; generally [because they want] to get a picture of what's going on. You got social media, cameras. You have people climbing on officers' backs to get the first photo. What used to take four officers responding to a disturbance is now going to take more." APD procedures currently send additional officers to arrest scenes on Sixth Street to establish space for the arresting officer to work.

Last fall, changes in DTAC working conditions led Austin Police Association President Ken Casaday to take a tour of the local TV newscasts to talk about how the officers assigned to DTAC didn't want to work there any longer, and lament the process by which the chiefs' Fifth Floor has chosen to staff the area. To hear Casaday tell it, staffing Downtown – once the choice beat of patrolling officers – is now the bottom of the rung, with officers – often young officers just off their 15-month probationary period – getting assigned to work there against their wishes.

It's menial, he says, unless they've got to make a potentially violent arrest. (Another unofficial axiom of law enforcement is that response to resistance arrests will almost always appear overly violent.) Casaday has stressed that overexposure to the area can lead to work fatigue. But he says the process for getting disgruntled officers out of DTAC is tough. A patrol freeze brought on by the current staffing shortage (APD currently claims more than 130 FTE vacancies) keeps current regional patrol counts set. Both Casaday and McIlvain say reassignments are only being executed in extenuating circumstances.

Speaking for the department, McIlvain tells the Chronicle that Casaday's claims that officers don't want to work DTAC anymore are more likely representative of a few outlying instances. And he maintains that DTAC is not getting staffed with rookie cops. Only 27% of patrolling officers have been on the force for fewer than three years, he says, and 21% have been on for 3-6, leaving 52% of the officers as having six years of experience or more. McIlvain says the department would never staff DTAC with officers still on probation, but concedes that the area patrol is shifting younger. "Seniority counts for something down here," he says. "We're not going to pull a 10-year officer [from another region] when a brand-new guy off probation who did good is available. There's no expectation that you have the same tenure."

Downtown command extends from Chicon Street to Lamar Boulevard, and the Capitol to Lady Bird Lake.

McIlvain admits that the command region puts officers in difficult circumstances. But while the Fifth Floor believes that sending a green cop to DTAC to get some experience can be beneficial, Casaday worries that throwing an officer to the wolves Downtown can wreak havoc on employee happiness – and potentially damage the early stages of their career.

One such example of the unique rigors on Sixth Street became evident shortly after 1:30am on the night that I went out. A report came in that multiple gunshots were fired around Seventh Street and Neches, between the ARCH and the Caritas building, which on weekends converts to a booking station and staging grounds for officers patrolling DTAC. The pod split up; half of the officers broke for the scene of the shooting, and found two shells but no assailant. (A suspected shooter was arrested later in the evening.) On our way back to Sixth Street, a young couple ran up to the officers upset about how one of the cops had pushed the boyfriend out of his way in his pursuit of the crime scene. The officer explained that they were on their way to a potential live shooting, apologized, but made clear that in this case his physicality was merely the cost of doing business.

While this was happening, the girlfriend had started an argument with a cop-watching activist she believed was getting in the way of her boyfriend's conversation with APD. I noticed upon hearing her complaints how close he was when filming the discussion. One of the officers speaking with the boyfriend asked for the activist to step back. He moved the prescribed distance back and shouted the words "Disturbance!" and "Unlawful!" through the remainder of the officer's interaction with the couple.

Cops Vs. Cop Watchers

The activist was Julian Reyes, a 47-year-old street artist who identifies as semi-homeless. He's a known figure among DTAC patrol, having first started cop watching in the summer of 2013 after an officer shot his dog outside of a South Austin storage facility Reyes rented. He currently has a civil case pending against the city and members of APD.

Reyes has been arrested for interfering with police activity, and for crossing against a light. Both times he was filming law enforcement with his camera. He says that he's routinely subject to intimidation and harassment by APD, whether by way of an officer putting hands on him or telling him to stop filming from a certain location already being occupied by other people.

Local activist Julian Reyes (Photo by John Anderson)

Most cops associate Reyes with the Peaceful Streets Project, the most visible cop-watching activist group in Austin; but Reyes considers himself more independent. He touts his connection to the homeless newspaper The Challenger Street Newspaper. Reyes believes in filming everything. In three years, he's captured thousands of hours of city business – a large portion of it uneventful – uploading it to one of his many YouTube channels. His most active channel is called Lizzardo Giganticus. Earlier that night on Sixth Street, shortly after assembling into a pod, one officer spotted Reyes filming from behind a nearby tree.

The topic of Peaceful Streets came up frequently that night. Most of the conversation concerned how many nights its membership has spent documenting menial police activity. "They never catch anything," say officers. PSP membership refutes this, saying it captures tiny infractions all the time. Members say it's only when a video captures the general public's attention that the department chooses to investigate.

Indeed, it was a February 2015 video from Peaceful Streets that got Officer Otho DuBoise in trouble. The 14-year veteran was working DTAC patrol on Feb. 15 when he saw Joseph Cuellar dance too close, he believed, to one of the mounted patrol units walking by. Video recorded by PSP member Richard Boland shows DuBoise approaching Cuellar from a distance, throwing him to the ground, and arresting him without Cuellar offering any resistance. (Cuellar was charged by APD with public intoxication, interfering with police animals, and resisting his arrest. The first two charges never made it to court. Downtown Community Court Administrator Peter Valdez told the Chronicle that the PI charge is still pending.) Nightly news caught wind; the Fifth Floor launched an investigation. Six months later, news emerged that DuBoise received a written reprimand, the lowest form of punishment passable through civil service – a citation not open to public records. He also received a promotion from detective to sergeant. The department declined to confirm whether the promotion was the direct result of any hearing.

Additionally, it was Antonio Buehler, PSP's founder, who captured footage of Detective Ricky Jones refusing to identify himself to Buehler, and making threatening statements about Buehler's First Amendment right to film police from a reasonable distance (which fluctuates based on discretion but often extends to 15 feet). Buehler posted the video to Peaceful Streets' YouTube page and filed a complaint against Jones. Jones received a 10-day suspension for violating APD Policy 302.2, Interaction With Community, and Policy 900.3.2, Acts Bringing Discredit Upon the Department.

"We have [caught things]," says Buehler. "The problem is, Internal Affairs is always like, 'Nope, we don't see anything here.' Even though everybody can just go to YouTube and say, 'That [officer] is assaulting someone.'"

Both the department and association routinely contest PSP's assertions. They say that civilian footage often fails to capture an incident's full context, and rarely depicts use-of-force arrests in an accurate manner. Casaday accuses the activists specifically of antagonizing and routinely interfering with the work of his patrolling officers. "There's a problem when you violate someone's space," he says. "Don't get in my face and start cursing and yelling at me. It's absolutely inappropriate and unprofessional. You can, but expect a bad reaction."

A member of Peaceful Streets filming an arrest (Photo by John Anderson)

On June 7, 2015, after a Saturday night spent on Sixth Street, a gamer visiting town for X Games weekend posted a video to YouTube that shows nine DTAC patrol officers executing the arrest of a black male. (To reiterate McIlvain's assessment: A public desire to film fights has required more officers to secure arrest scenes.) In this case, officers called in the mounted patrol to help establish a safe working area.

Twenty seconds into the clip, one mounted officer making her way around the north side of the scene passes by a man who's holding his phone high in the air so that he can record the scene. The officer grabs his cell phone. Immediately after, another officer pepper sprays the person. 350,000 people watched the video in its first week online. The department acknowledged it and said an investigation was ongoing.

Veteran officers noted privately the manner in which the filmer who got pepper sprayed was holding his phone up in the air when it got snatched – an indication that it was closer to the mounted patrol officer's face than the YouTube video let on. In December, a source told the Chronicle that the mounted patrol officer received a written reprimand.

"Obvious Antagonism"

On Feb. 1, 2016, after complaints made to the Office of the Police Monitor alleging APD misconduct were found to be unsubstantiated by APD Internal Affairs, Reyes went before the Citizen Review Panel to voice his concerns in public forum. The panel heard testimony on three incidents: two that occurred on Feb. 15, 2015, and a third from June 2014.

The first complaint dealt with Boland's video. In addition to issues with DuBoise's actions, Reyes accused the mounted patrol officers of violating the department's responsibility to the community. Reyes said that the mounted units function as "battering rams" to break up crowds, and wondered aloud if their presence was truly necessary. He also mentioned how another officer, who declined to identify himself after the incident, told Boland: "Get a life."

The second derived from an incident later that same evening. Reyes alleged that DTAC Officer Thomas Griffin walked deliberately toward him while he was filming and forced him out of the way. Another officer, Aljoe Garibay, followed Griffin in his path. Garibay stood in front of Reyes and yelled at him to get out of the way. Reyes said the two officers intentionally targeted him and that certain DTAC officers routinely take extraordinary issue with activists who film police.

Reyes' final complaint detailed an incident last June in which he was arrested for jaywalking. He stated that he believed the arresting officer, Spencer Bradley, busted him for the rarely enforced ordinance because he was annoyed that Reyes videotaped an earlier detainment that he worked. Bradley confiscated Reyes' camcorder and stopped it from recording during Reyes' arrest. Reyes believed that both actions were retaliatory.

Because the three complaints were heard together, Reyes was given 30 minutes to speak before the volunteer panel. He pointed to other incidents in which he believed he was retaliated against, and times in which he considered officers to be antagonistic or rude. He spoke of how APD officers take an Internal Oath of Office and have a code of ethics by which they agreed to abide.

After his time was up, he ceded the floor to Boland, who spoke briefly and reiterated much of what Reyes had said. Boland's last remarks were clear: "Obviously, we return the hatred for them, but we're not under policy not to."

The panel broke into executive session after Boland's comments. One week later, the CRP issued a memo to Acevedo. The memo made clear that the panel agreed the officers involved in Reyes' three complaints did not violate APD policy; however, it also issued a recommendation to the chief.

"We urge you to review – and revise if necessary – if APD's policies and/or standard operating procedures with regards to staffing the Downtown Austin area. While not rising to the level of a policy violation, the obvious antagonism between some of the accused officers and the Peaceful Streets Project activist is troubling because we know that the weekly contact between APD personnel and PSP activists will continue. The situation seems ripe for a blowup and should be addressed.

"We ask you to consider whether APD command staff is asking too much of the officers assigned to the evening and night in the Downtown Austin area. We fear that over time, the repetitive use of force required to address the needs and demands of the homeless, the Downtown Austin businesses, the hordes of intoxicated individuals, the unruly crowds, and the activists may cause DTAC officers to, perhaps unknowingly and unintentionally, use an ever increasing amount of force. We also fear that over time, the constant stress of working amongst all these individuals will become unmanageable for DTAC officers. If either of those fears come to pass, our Downtown will be less safe for all involved.

"We ask you to consider whether other staffing models and crowd management tools – for instance: shorter DTAC tours before officers are rotated out into the other areas of the city and innovative 'softer' crowd control techniques that have been successfully used by other police departments – would better serve Austin's public safety and our frontline officers and supervisors."

Time for a Change?

Tensions have historically run high between the review panel, department, and the union, often due to disagreements over the CRP's recommendations to the chief on critical incidents. That's only one half of the CRP's job, however: to review and offer recommendations for APD's critical incidents. History has shown that neither department execs nor the rank-and-file see eye-to-eye with the folks appointed by the city manager to act as civic liaisons. (Certain CRP critics contest that the board shouldn't consider specific critical incidents at all.)

The other half of the job authorizes the panel to submit recommendations for review on departmental issues and patterns it believes could become harmful to both officers and the public. That's different. It's a bit more humanizing. It applies more basically to a situation like the one currently relevant to Downtown.

Austin Police Association President Ken Casaday addresses the crowd at a Police Lives Matter rally last year. (Photo by John Anderson)

Casaday tells the Chronicle that he was happy to see the panel address the issue via memo. He says he asked the department to make it possible for officers to get transferred out of DTAC once they've been there for two years, but says staffing shortages and trouble keeping patrol numbers level throughout the city have made adjustments like that more difficult. He says that Acevedo has been more diligent of late responding to officers who say they need out of Downtown.

"[Right now] the only way to identify the problem is if the officer acts out," he says. "Maybe [that officer's] fuse is a little short because he's been down there too long. I know some people who have been down there for five years; they love it. They love that area. But not everybody's meant for that job."

Police Monitor Margo Frasier reports the chief met with the CRP in early February to discuss the DTAC region. "I appreciate [the CRP's] frustration," she says. "I have a great respect for the individuals who serve on the panel. I think they're dedicated. I watch them in action. I think they take their job seriously and don't make recommendations willy nilly. I think they make recommendations with the eye on improving police relations with the community."

Acevedo told the Chronicle last Thursday that his executive staff and DTAC command were considering an analysis and response to the panel's recommendations and expected a finalized version early this week. On Tuesday (Feb. 23), Cochran reported that a draft was sent to Internal Affairs for review. Acevedo told the Chronicle the memorandum was still in draft; he had not had the chance to review Cochran's response.

Annual Arrests by Offense

Charges for most Downtown arrests have fluctuated over the past decade. Resisting arrest has seen significant growth. (Source: APD)

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Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement

Author(s): Albert Woodfox

Biography & Memoir

Solitaryis the unforgettable life story of a man who served more than fourdecades in solitary confinement--in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell, 23 hours aday, in notorious Angola prison in Louisiana--all for a crime he did notcommit. That Albert Woodfox survived was, in itself, a feat of extraordinaryendurance against the violence and deprivation he faced daily. That he was ableto emerge whole from his odyssey within America's prison and judicial systemsis a triumph of the human spirit, and makes his book a clarion call to reformthe inhumanity of solitary confinement in the U.S. and around the world. Arrested often as a teenager in New Orleans, inspired behind bars in hisearly twenties to join the Black Panther Party because of its social commitmentand code of living, Albert was serving a fifty-year sentence in Angola for armedrobbery when on April 17, 1972, a white guard was killed. Albert and anothermember of the Panthers were accused of the crime and immediately put in solitaryconfinement by the warden. Without a shred of actual evidence againstthem, their trial was a sham of justice that gave them life sentences in solitary.Decades passed before Albert gained a lawyer of consequence; even so, sixteenmore years and multiple appeals were needed before he was finally released inFebruary 2016. Remarkably self-aware that anger or bitterness would have destroyed him insolitary confinement, sustained by the shared solidarity of two fellow Panthers,Albert turned his anger into activism and resistance. The Angola 3, as theybecame known, resolved never to be broken by the grinding inhumanity andcorruption that effectively held them for decades as political prisoners. He survivedto give us Solitary, a chronicle of rare power and humanity that provesthe better spirits of our nature can thrive against any odds. 'This breathtaking, brutal, and intelligent book will move and inspire readers.' Publishers Weekly[starred review]

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Product Information

General Fields

  • : 9781911231271
  • : Text Publishing Company
  • : Text Publishing Company
  • : March 2019
  • : ---length:- '23.4'width:- '15.3'units:- Centimeters
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : 448
  • : Paperback
  • : Albert Woodfox


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Bruce Whitman, Chairman/President/CEO of FlightSafety Int’l. Passes Peacefully at Home

Bruce Whitman, Chairman, President & CEO of FlightSafety International, passed away peacefully at home in the morning of Wednesday, October 10 with his family by his side. He was 85.

FlightSafety said in an announcement:

“All of us with FlightSafety are deeply saddened by Bruce’s passing and have expressed our deepest sympathy and condolences to his family. Bruce will be remembered with great admiration and affection. He will be missed by us and his many friends and colleagues in the aviation industry and beyond.

Bruce was highly-respected and held in the utmost regard by all who knew him. While his loss will be mourned by us all, we also celebrate Bruce’s remarkable life and accomplishments. We are deeply indebted to Bruce for his many contributions to the aviation industry, his service in the United States Air Force, support of our veterans and those who currently serve, his contributions to Orbis International, and dedication to educate and foster patriotism among young people.

We are thankful for his outstanding leadership of FlightSafety and especially for his friendship, guidance, and vision. In addition to his many business accomplishments, which resulted in FlightSafety becoming the world’s premier aviation training organization, he created a culture within the company of customer service, quality, trust, caring, respect, and family.

All join in expressing our appreciation for our friend, mentor and remarkable leader. We are grateful for his boundless energy, commitment to excellence, and fervent dedication to enhance aviation safety around the world.”

Bruce Whitman Bio:

Bruce Whitman joined FlightSafety International in 1961 as Assistant to the President after two years as Senior Executive Assistant with the National Business Aircraft Association. Later that year, he was elected Vice President and a Director of the company. In 1962, he was named Executive Vice President. He was promoted to CEO in 2003.

He served on the Associate Membership Advisory Council of the National Business Aircraft Association and Board of Governors and Executive Committees of the Flight Safety Foundation and the Civil Air Patrol. Bruce is a former Director and Chairman of the Audit Committee of Petroleum Helicopters and chaired the Nominating, Compensation and Governance Committees of the Aviall Board of Directors and was Chairman of the Executive Committee of PASSUR Aerospace. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of FlightSafety Boeing Training International; Aerospace Industries Association; an Executive Committee member of NATA’s Air Charter Safety Foundation; former Board of Governor and President Emeritus of The Wings Club Foundation.

Bruce is Chairman Emeritus of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation; Chairman of the Audit Committee and member of the Executive Committee of Orbis International; a Director Emeritus of the Civil Air Patrol and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. He is on the Boards of the Corporate Angel Network, General Aviation Manufacturers Association and National Aeronautic Association; Trustee of the Air Force Academy Falcon Foundation and past Vice Chairman; Trustee of Kent School; a Trustee, founding member of the Board of the National World War II Museum, member of the Executive Committee and Vice Chair of the Development Committee; member of the Board and Audit Committee of Business Executives for National Security; and Chairman of the USO of Metropolitan New York.

Following graduation from Kent School in 1951, he spent two summers as a seaman with the United States Merchant Marine while attending Trinity College, where he was on the Varsity Tennis Team for three years, and a member of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. Graduating in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the United States Air Force and earned the triple ratings of pilot, navigator and bombardier serving in the Strategic Air Command. In 1957, he was appointed Assistant to the Commander, Homestead Air Force Base.

After active duty, he attended George Washington University Law School for two years. While at GWU, he flew as a Captain for East Coast Flying Service and was a pilot in the Air Force Reserve. During that time, he was Vice President of the Trinity College Washington Alumni Association. Later he also served as Vice President of the King School Board of Trustees.

Bruce was Commodore and a Director of The Belle Haven Club, Greenwich, Connecticut, having also been Vice Commodore, Treasurer, Secretary and Chairman of the Admissions Committee. He is also a former Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Belle Haven Land Association and was its President.


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Sherwin-Williams New Color Program Enables Users to Use More Colors More Ways

Sherwin-Williams Aerospace is introducing its most comprehensive color selection program to design specifiers and paint shops in the aviation marketplace. The new Exterior and Interior Color Selector books and fan deck sets provide more colors – especially effect options, selectors with larger chip sizes (some as much as 50 percent), and improved chip quality with higher gloss.

The company says the new color system delivers more color choices in a simplified format with solid, metallic and mica colors all together. The exterior selector tools feature 333 colors, and the interior version features 107 – almost three times more than the previous interior selector. Each of the exterior topcoat colors are available as a single stage (monocoat) in one of several Sherwin-William systems, or as a basecoat-clearcoat within the popular SKYscapes systems. The interior selector also shows options for solid colors, effects and textures.

“Our new color selection system was designed to provide the most impact and assistance for the leading aircraft OEM and MRO aircraft paint applicators and scheme designers,” says Julie Voisin, Global Marketing manager, Sherwin-Williams Aerospace Coatings. “We now offer one of the industry’s most extensive, focused coatings selections for the plane exterior and aircraft cabin. The new color selection tools not only offer some of our popular, legacy colors, but we also included exciting new colors and effects to the collection.”

The new Aerospace Color Fan Deck Sets feature large samples of solid and effect selections. This provides users the opportunity to view colors in large format and to easily compare colors side by side.

Aircraft scheme designers can now select from an extensive palette featuring exciting exterior hues like Midnight Silk, Electric Indigo, Blue Fantasy, Blue Tempest, Purple Royalty, Blazing Red, Angelic Azure, Black Radiance, Calypso Orange, Tangerine Punch, Casino Gold, Silver Trinket, Dark Treasure Gold, Cayman Island Green, Dark Magnesium, Trinity Blue, Radical Red and Alabaster White Pearl. For the aircraft cabin, a subtler collection of colors are featured such as Toasted Almond, Star Dust, Gourmet Cocoa, Autumn Dawn, Moonlit Seafoam, Frozen Harbor, Coastal Breeze, Diamond Glow and Sunset Blush.

The team at Sherwin-Williams conducted a meticulous evaluation process to develop a resource capable of meeting the aspirations of designers. By reviewing each individual color and examining which colors were most frequently used in the market place, the team established a strong initial field of potential colors.

Several OEM and MRO designers were called upon to offer opinions and rank individual colors. “We examined evolving color trends, compared color ranges within the existing and proposed palettes, and considered different effects before taking our panels through review sessions where colors were thoroughly compared and ranked until we came up with what we feel is among the finest color collections within the industry,” says Voisin.

The new exterior topcoat selector and fan deck set features opaques, micas and metallics for all Sherwin-Williams topcoat systems including Jet Glo, Jet Glo Express, SKYscapes, SKYscapes GA, Acry Glo and Acry Glo HS.

The new interior topcoat selector and fan deck set also feature the latest opaques, effects and textures for all Sherwin-Williams cabin coating systems including JetFlex, JetFlex WR, JetFlex ELITE, Polane L and new Jet Suede soft feel.

”Ultimately, we felt it was more important to have the right color selection than it was to have the widest color selection,” says Voisin. “We selected colors that look great for aircraft. The customer now has many top-quality choices to select from, without getting overwhelmed by too many options.”


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Hilary Lister set in 2008 in a specially designed yacht which uses a ‘sip and puff’ system of three straws linked to a pressure sensitive switch. She faced extreme weather conditions around Britain. She along with her crew were not going to be frightened and discouraged by this.

So they just continued and finally arrived in Dover on 1st September 2009. When asked about her highlight of the trip, Mrs Lister said, it had been seeing marine wild life. ‘Just seeing whales 35ft long fully breached out of the water was just incredible’ she said, ‘two of them jumped like dolphins it was just amazing.’


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Clay World2017-02-05T13:47:48+00:00

Clay World

“Clay World” transforms ordinary clay into a creative world of fun! An artist begins each episode by creating different objects and characters out of modeling clay. The sculptures are then placed into a realistic landscape which is made entirely out of clay! Young viewers’ imaginations will come alive as they watch the clay figures being constructed and interacting with their environment.

See what time Clay World is playing!


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Use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) during pregnancy has been under fire as a result of recent medical study and research that suggests potential side effects associated with taking the anti-depressants. Researchers from The Motherisk Program in Toronto published a study in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada on the impact of using fluoxetine during the first trimester of pregnancy. The first trimester begins before most women know they are pregnant. In cases of unplanned pregnancy, the fetus will come in contact with SSRIs if the mother is being treated.

After reviewing 21 published studies on the impact of fluoxetine on pregnancy and the fetus, researchers found no increased risk of fetal malformations, despite reports to the contrary. Researchers believe reports of complications like cardiac malformations may be based on bias. The overall risk of major fetal complications with the use of SSRIs was 1.12 – not significantly higher than pregnant women who do not take SSRIs during pregnancy.

Source: Riggin L, Frankel Z, Moretti M, Pupco A, Koren G. The fetal safety of fluoxetine: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Obstet Gynaecol Can. 2013 Apr;35(4):362-9.

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Photo, Lerisha Naidu

Lerisha Naidu

Baker & McKenzie

Lerisha Naidu is a partner in Baker McKenzie's Antitrust & Competition Practice Group in Johannesburg.

Practice Focus

Lerisha advises and represents international and domestic clients in mergers and acquisitions, prohibited practices (including cartel-related matters), and compliance and risk mitigation. She has appeared before the Competition Tribunal of South Africa in merger proceedings, and has also worked on matters relating to clients involved in Tribunal proceedings.

Lerisha has acted in a number of high-profile matters involving industry-wide and global cartels (eg, in the construction, aviation and gas industries), interim relief applications, contested mergers and dawn raids. She has also participated in a number of compliance initiatives, including training sessions for firms' employees related to competition risk mitigation.

Representative Legal Matters

  • Advising the South African office of a multinational consumer goods company on a predatory pricing complaint in relation to its washing powder business.
  • Advising and representing the South African office of a multinational consumer goods company in contentious proceedings before the Competition Tribunal of South Africa in respect of allegations of a cartel infringement.
  • Advising a global automotive components manufacturer in relation to potential antitrust risk exposure in South Africa.
  • Advised, as part of global teams, on several high-profile transactions.
  • Representing Oberthur Technologies in notifying its acquisition of Xantium in South Africa.
  • Advising on the industry-wide collusion investigation into the construction industry.
  • Undertaking antitrust compliance training for an international financial services provider and Clariant in South Africa.
  • Undertaking merger filings in a number of African jurisdictions (other than South Africa) including Namibia, Tanzania, Kenya and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa.
  • Advised a number of listed property development firms on a range of antitrust matters, including Redefine Limited, Growthpoint, Investec Property, a leading South Africa bank, Absa Bank, and Liberty.
  • Represented Acucap Properties at the Competition Tribunal and was instrumental in ensuring that the merger between Growthpoint Properties and Acucap Properties was approved without conditions.

Professional Honors

  • Named as a Next Generation Lawyer in the Legal 500 Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Guide 2017

Professional Associations and Memberships

  • Law Society of the Northern Provinces - Member

  • South Africa (2009)

  • University of KwaZulu-Natal (LLB) (2006)

  • English


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About Ballarat Toyota

Welcome to Ballarat Toyota, the Number 1 Toyota Dealer in Western Victoria since 1972.

Ballarat Toyota, Serving the Local Community

At Ballarat Toyota you will find possibly the largest selection of new Toyota vehicles as well as a comprehensive range of quality Used vehicles.

We take pride in ensuring the needs of our customers are fully satisfied whilst providing the highest standards of service and after sales support.

Our service technicians are constantly attending Toyota training programs to ensure they are up to date with the latest technology built into each new Toyota model.

The spare parts and accessories on hand are sufficient to meet your immediate needs ensuring that when your vehicle needs servicing the down time is minimal.

We've been serving the local community for many years.  It is a record we're proud of as over the years we've specialised in :

  • New Toyota Vehicle Sales
  • Used Vehicle Sales
  • Finance & Insurance
  • Vehicle Servicing
  • Genuine Parts & Accessories

We work daily to ensure that our customers are having a fantastic experience, whether that's in the purchase of a new or Used vehicle or even a regular service!

Ballarat Toyota is operated with the highest level of professionalism and we take an active role in our local community.

For many years we've employed and trained many locals in our Dealership, ensuring they're fully qualified to support your vehicle needs as well as take care of the local community.

We're a proud member of the local community and we're looking forward to ensuring you get a great deal and service with a smile!

Ballarat Toyota can provide you with the best.

We feel confident our customer service and the services we provide will leave you impressed!

Craig Dummett

Dealer Principal


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Learning a new Editor

1085 words, a 5m read.

I often fall back to my (now well-worn) copy of The Pragmatic Programmer to take a look at things I can do to hone my abilities as a programmer. Recently, the two rules that have most recently hit me as things I haven't put much focus on are Invest Regularly in Your Knowledge Portfolio, and There Are No Final Decisions. In a fit of Christmas downime enegry, I decided to incorporate these principles by taking myself out of my normal comfort zone, and cutting out one of my most widely used tools - vim.

I've been a vimmer for many years, and I've incorporated utilities passed down from greater minds than I (Tim Pope, the guys at Pivotal, etc.) and had become comfortable in how I used my text editor day-to-day. I had a nice workflow set up, utilizing multiple vim tabs and separate sessions within tmux windows, and life was pretty good.

Then, in December, the challenge was set: strip vim out of my workflow for good, and find something else.

Naturally, and guided by one of my coworkers, I managed to settle on what is generally considered to be the prime competitor to vim - Emacs.

Baby Steps

I've had forays into learning Emacs before, but I've always shied away, after playing with some basic tooling, and forgetting how to close it more often than I care to admit. This time was different, though; I had more years of experience under my belt, and it was more about getting myself into an uncomfortable place before I gain more knowledge.

My first thought was to find some type of starting guide. While the Emacs tutorial helped in terms of understanding navigation and simple editing, it didn't really show me the true power of the environment that I had gained. A cursory google search brought me to the Emacs Starter Kit. This toolkit provides some default setting to get you started with the environment; I used the documentation around it to gain knowledge of things like Melpa and Marmalade, which act as Emacs Package Managers of sorts.

Following my initial setup with the starter kit, I started delving into the emacs wiki. This became a much more handy resource to me, as it provided me with multiple provided solutions to given issues that I've encountered while converting my vim-based mind to a constantly-insert-enabled editor. When I'd run into an issue where I found something I'd like to do similar to vim, I'd head to the wiki to find what analogs are available. Once I'd find a package which did what I looked for, I'd test it out with an M-x pacakge-install, and incorporate it into my init.el when I felt I had it down.

I had been asked while converting why I decided not to use a vi-like editor package for Emacs (like Evil or Viper). I felt that, if I were to do this, it would be skimping out on what I should be learning, and I'd get less of an understanding of Emacs because I was sticking to my old method of doing things. Thus, I opted for Emacs's standard of editing, and no vi-emulation modes.

These are the things that I've discovered in the two months since I switched:

  • Split pane support. I actually like the way that Emacs splits its windows better than vim. A C-x 2 or C-x 3 is an easy way to remember it; coupled with the 'workgroups2' package, configurations can be stored across sessions, too.
  • Lisp. This has been a slow one for me, but I'm becoming more interested in learning Lisp and Lisp-like languages, like Clojure. I have a lot of work to do here, and that will be something to work on in the future.
  • Tramp. Being able to edit files across an SSH tunnel is a fantastic feature.
  • Buffers without files. Since the editor is meant to live on indefinitely, it's nice to spin up a new buffer and set the mode(s) I want, and let it reside in memory for a while before saving it. If I need to, a save is close enough away, but it works wonders for when I need to take some quick notes.
  • ERC. I no longer need a separate IRC cilent; Emacs handles it for me. This is fantastic for me at work, where we frequently use chat to talk around.

Things I wish I had from Vim:

  • Sentence-like movement. I've sort of rebuilt this on my own with a combination of line-jumps (M-x goto-line) and ace-jump-mode, but being able to translate "^3wci(" into what it can do in Vim is a skill I have yet to master.
  • Mixing modes in HTML. This was noticeably less of a problem in Vim, but I don't know if it was due to the editor or my lack of noticing that showed just how difficult it is to switch contexts from HTML/CSS/JS all in the same file. I've tried doing the nXML hack and multiple modes, but those have worked to no avail.
  • Closing the editor. True, I can leave Emacs. But, I miss popping up a new window for one file, and then leaving right after a quick edit.
  • Workspace management. Because of the way I separated files into tabs in Vim, I knew each tab matched a different section of what I was working on (or another project entirely). I lack this with the way that buffers are managed by default in Emacs. I'm still looking for better ways of handling this management, though - workgroups2 has been a nice start.

Things I know I still have yet to learn:

  • More Lisp. I've gotten a good start, but that's a deep rabbit hole.
  • Shell, email within Emacs. I used to use a lot of separate tools - now that Emacs contains most of them, I'd like to get better at handling those tasks within Emacs.
  • Org-mode. I've seen my coworker pull off some crazy things with scheduling and notes within Org-mode, and I'd love to get to the point where I can do them, too.
  • Macros and scripting. My next Pragmatic tenet is Write Code That Writes Code; I think getting your editor set to facilitate your programming counts. :)

We'll see what the next few months hold.


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Santana Row

San Jose, CA
Project Info Credits Recognition

When Phase One of Santana Row opened in the fall of 2002, it quickly became San Jose's mixed-use crown jewel.

BAR Architects designed four blocks of the 8-block Phase One plan. At full build-out, the master plan encompasses 16 blocks on 46 acres. The first two buildings, The DeForest and The Margo, are arcaded loft and retail buildings that face each other on Santana Row and are modeled on turn-of-the-century industrial structures. Their block-long facades are broken into sections to create an urban pedestrian scale. The arcaded ground floors of both structures recall historic shopping venues.

Above the stores and restaurants are 198 loft units, most with 20-foot ceilings and large windows facing Santana Row or with views to the mountains. A third building, The Villa Cornet, symmetrically addresses the street with corner tower elements. Above two levels of retail are 21 luxury townhouses that range in size from 2,100 to approximately 3,900 gsf. The fourth building, The Park Valencia, accommodates a variety of uses including restaurants and retail on the ground level with anticipated office and retail uses for the upper floors. It also houses the central mechanical plant for the entire Santana Row development.